Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862», страница 10

CHAPTER II

GORMING AND GETTING ON

Next morning it poured. The cinders before the blacksmith's shop opposite had yielded their black dye to the dismal puddles. The village cocks were sadly draggled and discouraged, and cowered under any shelter, shivering within their drowned plumage. Who on such a morn would stir? Who but the Patriot? Hardly had we breakfasted, when he, the Patriot, waited upon us. It was a Presidential campaign. They were starving in his village for stump-speeches. Would the talking man of our duo go over and feed their ears with a fiery harangue? Patriot was determined to be first with us; others were coming with similar invitations; he was the early bird. Ah, those portmanteaus! they had arrived, and betrayed us.

We would not be snapped up. We would wriggle away. We were very sorry, but we must start at once to pursue our journey.

"But it pours," said Patriot.

"Patriot," replied our talking member, "man is flesh; and flesh, however sweet or savory it may be, does not melt in water."

Thus fairly committed to start, we immediately opened negotiations for a carriage. "No go," was the first response of the coachman. Our willy was met by his nilly. But we pointed out to him that we could not stay there all a dismal day,–that we must, would, could, should go. At last we got within coachee's outworks. His nilly broke down into shilly-shally. He began to state his objections; then we knew he was ready to yield. We combated him, clinking the supposed gold of coppers in our pockets, or carelessly chucking a tempting half-dollar at some fly on the ceiling. So presently we prevailed, and he retired to make ready.

By-and-by a degraded family-carriage came to the door. It came by some feeble inertia left latent in it by some former motive-power, rather than was dragged up by its more degraded nags. A very unwholesome coach. No doubt a successful quack-doctor had used it in his prosperous days for his wife and progeny; no doubt it had subsequently become the property of a second-class undertaker, and had conveyed many a quartette of cheap clergymen to the funerals of poor relations whose leaking sands of life left no gold-dust behind. Such was our carriage for a rainy day.

The nags were of the huckleberry or flea-bitten variety,–a freckled white. Perhaps the quack had fed them with his refuse pills. These knobby-legged unfortunates we of course named Xanthus and Balius, not of podargous or swift-footed, but podagrous or gouty race. Xanthus, like his Achillean namesake, (vide Pope's Homer,)

 
"Seemed sensible of woe and dropped his head,–
Trembling he stood before the (seedy) wain."
 

Balius was in equally deplorable mood. Both seemed more sensible to "Whoa" than to "Hadaap." Podagrous beasts, yet not stiffened to immobility. Gayer steeds would have sundered the shackling drag. These would never, by any gamesome caracoling, endanger the coherency of pole with body, of axle with wheel. From end to end the equipage was congruous. Every part of the machine was its weakest part, and that fact gave promise of strength: an invalid never dies. Moreover, the coach suited the day: the rusty was in harmony with the dismal. It suited the damp unpainted houses and the tumble-down blacksmith's-shop. We contented ourselves with this artistic propriety. We entered, treading cautiously. The machine, with gentle spasms, got itself in motion, and steered due east for Lake Umbagog. The smiling landlord, the disappointed Patriot, and the birdlike George waved us farewell.

Coachee was in the sulks. The rain, beat upon him, and we by purse-power had compelled him to encounter discomfort. His self-respect must be restored by superiority over somebody. He had been beaten and must beat. He did so. His horses took the lash until he felt at peace with himself. Then half-turning toward us, he made his first remark.

"Them two hosses is gorming."

"Yes," we replied, "they do seem rather so."

This was of course profound hypocrisy; but "gorming" meant some bad quality, and any might be safely predicated of our huckleberry pair. Who will admit that he does not know all that is to be known in horse-matters? We therefore asked no questions, but waited patiently for information.

Delay pays demurrage to the wisely patient. Coachee relapsed into the sulks. The driving rain resolved itself into a dim chaos of mist. Xanthus and Balius plodded on, but often paused and gasped, or, turning their heads as if they missed something, strayed from the track and drew us against the dripping bushes. After one such excursion, which had nearly been the ruin of us, and which by calling out coachee's scourging powers had put him thoroughly in good-humor, he turned to us and said, superlatively,–

"Them's the gormingest hosses I ever see. When I drew 'em in the four-hoss coach for wheelers, they could keep a straight tail. Now they act like they was drunk. They's gorming,–they won't do nothin' without a leader."

To gorm, then, is to err when there is no leader. Alas, how mankind gorms!

By sunless noon we were well among the mountains. We came to the last New-Hampshire house, miles from its neighbors. But it was a self-sufficing house, an epitome of humanity. Grandmamma, bald under her cap, was seated by the stove dandling grandchild, bald under its cap. Each was highly entertained with the other. Grandpapa was sandy with grandboy's gingerbread-crumbs. The intervening ages were well represented by wiry men and shrill women. The house, also, without being tavern or shop, was an amateur bazaar of vivers and goods. Anything one was likely to want could be had there,–even a melodeon and those inevitable Patent-Office Reports. Here we descended, lunched, and providently bought a general assortment, namely, a large plain cake, five pounds of cheese, a ball of twine, and two pairs of brown ribbed woollen socks, native manufacture. My pair of these indestructibles will outlast my last legs and go as an heirloom after me.

The weather now, as we drove on, seemed to think that Iglesias deserved better of it. Rain-globes strung upon branches, each globe the possible home of a sparkle, had waited long enough unillumined. Sunlight suddenly discovered this desponding patience and rewarded it. Every drop selected its own ray from the liberal bundle, and, crowding itself full of radiance, became a mirror of sky and cloud and forest. Also, by the searching sunbeams' store of regal purple, ripe raspberries were betrayed. On these, magnified by their convex lenses of water, we pounced. Showers shook playfully upon us from the vines, while we revelled in fruitiness. We ran before our gormers, they gormed by us while we plucked, we ran by, plucked again, and again were gormingly overtaken and overtook. Thus we ate our way luxuriously through the Dixville Notch, a capital cleft in a northern spur of the White Mountains.

Picturesque is a curiously convenient, undiscriminating epithet. I use it here. The Dixville Notch is, briefly, picturesque,–a fine gorge between a crumbling conical crag and a scarped precipice,–a pass easily defensible, except at the season when raspberries would distract sentinels.

Now we came upon our proper field of action. We entered the State of Maine at Township Letter B. A sharper harshness of articulation in stray passengers told us that we were approaching the vocal influence of the name Androscoggin. People talked as if, instead of ivory ring or coral rattle to develop their infantile teeth, they had bitten upon pine knots. Voices were resinous and astringent. An opera, with a chorus drummed up in those regions, could dispense with violins.

Toward evening we struck the river, and found it rasping and crackling over rocks as an Androscoggin should. We passed the last hamlet, then the last house but one, and finally drew up at the last and northernmost house, near the lumbermen's dam below Lake Umbagog. The damster, a stalwart brown chieftain of the backwoodsman race, received us with hearty hospitality. Xanthus and Balius stumbled away on their homeward journey. And after them the crazy coach went moaning: it was not strong enough to creak or rattle.

Next day was rainy. It had, however, misty intervals. In these we threw a fly for trout and caught a chub in Androscoggin. Or, crouched on the bank of a frog-pond, we tickled frogs with straws. Yes, and fun of the freshest we found it. Certain animals, and especially frogs, were created, shaped, and educated to do the grotesque, that men might study them, laugh, and grow fat. It was a droll moment with Nature, when she entertained herself and prepared entertainment for us by devising the frog, that burlesque of bird, beast, and man, and taught him how to move and how to speak and sing. Iglesias and I did not disdain batrachian studies, and set no limit to our merriment at their quaint, solemn, half-human pranks. One question still is unresolved,–Why do frogs stay and be tickled? They snap snappishly at the titillating straw; they snatch at it with their weird little hands; they parry it skilfully. They hardly can enjoy being tickled, and yet they endure, paying a dear price for the society of their betters. Frogs the frisky, frogs the spotted, were our comedy that day. Whenever the rain ceased, we rushed forth and tickled them, and thus vicariously tickled ourselves into more than patience, into jollity. So the day passed quickly.

CHAPTER III

THE PINE-TREE

While we were not tickling frogs, we were talking lumber with the Umbagog damster. I had already coasted Maine, piloted by Iglesias, and knew the fisherman-life; now, under the same experienced guidance, I was to study inland scenes, and take lumbermen for my heroes.

Maine has two classes of warriors among its sons,–fighters of forest and fighters of sea. Braves must join one or the other army. The two are close allies. Only by the aid of the woodmen can the watermen build their engines of victory. The seamen in return purvey the needful luxuries for lumber-camps. Foresters float down timber that seamen may build snips and go to the saccharine islands of the South for molasses: for without molasses no lumberman could be happy in the unsweetened wilderness. Pork lubricates his joints; molasses gives tenacity to his muscles.

Lumbering develops such men as Pindar saw when he pictured Jason, his forest hero. Life is a hearty and vigorous movement to them, not a drooping slouch. Summer is their season of preparation; winter, of the campaign; spring, of victory. All over the north of the State, whatever is not lake or river is forest. In summer, the Viewer, like a military engineer, marks out the region, and the spots of future attack. He views the woods; and wherever a monarch tree crowns the leafy level, he finds his way, and blazes a path. Not all trees are worthy of the axe. Miles of lesser timber remain untouched. A Maine forest after a lumber-campaign is like France after a coup d'état: the bourgeoisie are prosperous as ever, but the great men are all gone.

While the viewer views, his followers are on commissariat and quartermaster's service. They are bringing up their provisions and fortifying their camp. They build their log-station, pile up barrels of pork, beans, and molasses, like mortars and Paixhans in an arsenal, and are ready for a winter of stout toil and solid jollity.

Stout is the toil, and the life seemingly dreary, to those who cower by ingle-nooks or stand over registers. But there is stirring excitement in this bloodless war, and around plenteous camp-fires vigor of merriment and hearty comradry. Men who wield axes and breathe hard have lungs. Blood aërated by the air that sings through the pine-woods tingles in every fibre. Tingling blood makes life joyous. Joy can hardly look without a smile or speak without a laugh. And merry is the evergreen-wood in electric winter.

Snows fall level in the sheltered, still forest. Road-making is practicable. The region is already channelled with watery ways. An imperial pine, with its myriads of feet of future lumber, is worth another path cut through the bush to the frozen riverside. Down goes his Majesty Pinus I., three half-centuries old, having reigned fifty years high above all his race. A little fellow with a little weapon has dethroned the quiet old king. Pinus I was very strong at bottom, but the little revolutionist was stronger at top. Brains without much trouble had their will of stolid matter. The tree fallen, its branches are lopped, its purple trunk is shortened into lengths. The teamster arrives with oxen in full steam, and rimy with frozen breath about their indignant nostrils. As he comes and goes, he talks to his team for company; his conversation is monotonous as the talk of lovers, but it has a cheerful ring through the solitude. The logs are chained and dragged creaking along over the snow to the river-side. There the subdivisions of Pinus the Great become a basis for a mighty snow-mound. But the mild March winds blow from seaward. Spring bourgeons. One day the ice has gone. The river flows visible; and now that its days of higher beauty and grace have come, it climbs high up its banks to show that it is ready for new usefulness. It would be dreary for the great logs to see new verdure springing all around them, while they lay idly rotting or sprouting with uncouth funguses, not unsuspect of poison. But they will not be wasted. Lumbermen, foes to idleness and inutility, swarm again about their winter's trophies. They imprint certain cabalistic tokens of ownership on the logs,–crosses, xs, stars, crescents, alphabetical letters,–marks respected all along the rivers and lakes down to the boom where the sticks are garnered for market. The marked logs are tumbled into the brimming stream, and so ends their forest-life.

Now comes "the great spring drive." Maine waters in spring flow under an illimitable raft. Every camp contributes its myriads of brown cylinders to the millions that go bobbing down rivers with jaw-breaking names. And when the river broadens to a lake, where these impetuous voyagers might be stranded or miss their way and linger, they are herded into vast rafts, and towed down by boats, or by steam-tugs, if the lake is large as Moosehead. At the lake-foot the rafts break up and the logs travel again dispersedly down stream, or through the "thoro'fare" connecting the members of a chain of lakes. The hero of this epoch is the Head-Driver. The head-driver of a timber-drive leads a disorderly army, that will not obey the word of command. Every log acts as an individual, according to certain imperious laws of matter, and every log is therefore at loggerheads with every other log. The marshal must be in the thick of the fight, keeping his forces well in hand, hurrying stragglers, thrusting off the stranded, leading his phalanxes wisely round curves and angles, lest they be jammed and fill the river with a solid mass. As the great sticks come dashing along, turning porpoise-like somersets or leaping up twice their length in the air, he must be everywhere, livelier than a monkey in a mimosa, a wonder of acrobatic agility in biggest boots. He made the proverb, "As easy as falling off a log."

Hardly less important is the Damster. To him it falls to conserve the waters at a proper level. At his dam, generally below a lake, the logs collect and lie crowded. The river, with its obstacles of rock and rapid, would anticipate wreck for these timbers of future ships. Therefore, when the spring drive is ready, and the head-driver is armed with his jackboots and his iron-pointed sceptre, the damster opens his sluices and lets another river flow through atop of the rock-shattered river below. The logs of each proprietor, detected by their marks, pay toll as they pass the gates and rush bumptiously down the flood.

Far down, at some water-power nearest the reach of tide, a boom checks the march of this formidable body. The owners step forward and claim their slicks. Dowse takes all marked with three crosses and a dash. Sowse selects whatever bears two crescents and a star. Rowse pokes about for his stock, inscribed clip, dash, star, dash, clip. Nobody has counterfeited these hieroglyphs. The tale is complete. The logs go to the saw-mill. Sawdust floats seaward. The lumbermen junket. So ends the log-book.

"Maine," said our host, the Damster of Umbagog, "was made for lumbering-work. We never could have got the trees out, without these lakes and dams."

[To be continued.]

TO WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM, AFTER SEEING TWO PHOTOGRAPHS OF HIM

 
The trumpet, now on every gale,
For triumph or in funeral-wail,
One lesson bloweth loud and clear
Above war's clangor to my ear.
 
 
The blood that flows in bounding veins,
The blood that ebbs with lingering pains,
Springs living from the self-same heart:
Courage and patience act one part.
 
 
Doers and sufferers of God's will
Tread in each other's footprints still;
Soldier or saint hath equal mind,
When vows of truth the spirit bind.
 
 
Two portraits light my chamber-wall,
Hero and martyr to recall;
Lines of a single face they keep,
To make beholders glow or weep.
 
 
With gleaming hilt, girt for the fray
Freedom demands, he cannot stay:
Forward his motion, keen his glance:
'Tis victory painted in a trance.
 
 
But, lo! he turns, he folds his hands;
With farther, softening gaze he stands;
His sword is hidden from his eyes;
His head is bent for sacrifice.
 
 
Through looks that match each varied thought
Of holy work or offering brought,
Upon the sunbeam's shifting scroll
Shines out alike the steady soul.
 
 
Young leader! quick to win a name
Coeval with thy country's fame,
For either fortune thou wast born,–
The crown of laurel or of thorn.
 

THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO

CHAPTER III

CARIB SLAVES–INTRODUCTION OF NEGROES–LAS CASAS–DECAY OF SAN DOMINGO

Among the natives captured by the Spaniards in the neighboring islands and upon the Terra Firma, as the South-American coast was called,–were numerous representatives of Carib tribes, who had been released by Papal dispensation from the difficulties and anxieties of freedom in consequence of their reputation for cannibalism. This vicious taste was held to absolve the Spaniards from all the considerations of policy and mercy which the Dominicans pressed upon them in the case of the more graceful and amiable Haitians. But we do not find that Las Casas himself made any exception of them in his pleadings for the Indians;¹ for, though he does not mention cannibalism in the list of imputed crimes which the Spaniards held as justification in making war upon the natives to enslave them, he vindicates them from other charges, such as that of sacrificing infants to their idols. The Spaniards were touched with compassion at seeing so many innocent beings perish before arriving at years of discretion, and without having received baptism. They argued that such a practice, which was worse than a crime, because it was a theological blunder, could not be carried on in a state of slavery. "This style of reasoning," says Las Casas, "proves absolutely nothing; for God knows better than men what ought to be the future destiny of children who die in the immense countries where the Christian religion is unknown. His mercy is infinitely greater than the collective charity of mankind; and in the interim He permits things to follow their ordinary course, without charging anybody to interfere and prevent their consequences by means of war."²

The first possessors of Hayti were startled at the multitude of human bones which were found in some of the caverns of the island, for they were considered as confirming the reports of cannibalism which had reached them. These ossuaries were accidental; perhaps natives seeking shelter from the hurricane or earthquake were overwhelmed in these retreats, or blocked up and left to perish. We have no reason to believe that the caves had been used for centuries. And even the Caribs did not keep the bones which they picked, to rise up in judgment against them at last, clattering indictments of the number of their feasts. Nor do they seem to have shared the taste of the old Scandinavian and the modern Georgian or Alabamian, who have been known to turn drinking-cups and carve ornaments out of the skeletons of their enemies.

But they liked the taste of human flesh. The difference between them and the Spaniard was merely that the latter devoured men's flesh in the shape of cotton, sugar, gold. And the native discrimination was not altogether unpraiseworthy, if the later French missionaries can be exonerated from national prejudice, when they declare that the Caribs said Spaniards were meagre and indigestible, while a Frenchman made a succulent and peptic meal. But if he was a person of a religious habit, priest or monk, woe to the incautious Carib who might dine upon him! a mistake in the article of mushrooms were not more fatal. Du Tertre relates that a French priest was killed and smoke-dried by the Caribs, and then devoured with satisfaction. But many who dined upon the unfortunate man, whom the Church had ordained to feed her sheep less literally, died suddenly: others were afflicted with extraordinary diseases. Afterwards they avoided Christians as an article of food, being content with slaying them as often as possible, but leaving them untouched.

The Caribs were very impracticable in a state of slavery. Their stubborn and rigid nature could not become accommodated to a routine of labor. They fled to the mountains, and began marooning;³ but they carried with them the scar of the hot iron upon the thigh, which labelled them as natives in a state of war, and therefore reclaimable as slaves. The Dominicans made a vain attempt to limit this branding to the few genuine Caribs who were reduced to slavery; but the custom was universal of marking Indians to compel them to pass for Caribs, after which they were sold and transferred with avidity, the authorities having no power to enforce the legal discrimination. The very existence of this custom offered a premium to cruelty, by furnishing the colonists with a technical permission to enslave.

But the supply could not keep up with the insatiable demand. The great expeditions which were organized to sweep the Terra Firma and the adjacent islands of their population found the warlike Caribs difficult to procure.⁴ The supply of laborers was failing just at the period when the colonists began to see that the gold of Hayti was scattered broadcast through her fertile soil, which became transmuted into crops at the touch of the spade and hoe. Plantations of cacao, ginger, cotton, indigo, and tobacco were established; and in 1506 the sugar-cane, which was not indigenous, as some have affirmed, was introduced from the Canaries. Vellosa, a physician in the town of San Domingo, was the first to cultivate it on a large scale, and to express the juice by means of the cylinder-mill, which he invented.⁵ The Government, seeing the advantages to be derived from this single article, offered to lend five hundred gold piastres to every colonist who would fit up a sugar-plantation. Thus stimulated, the cultivation of the cane throve so, that as early as 1518 the island possessed forty sugar-works with mills worked by horse-power or water. But the plantations were less merciful to the Indians than the mines, and in 1503 there began to be a scarcity of human labor.

At this date we first hear that negroes had been introduced into the colony. But their introduction into Spain and Europe took place early in the fifteenth century. "Ortiz de Zuñigo, as Humboldt reports, with his usual exactness, says distinctly that 'blacks had been already brought to Seville in the reign of Henry III of Castile,' consequently before 1406. 'The Catalans and the Normans frequented the western coast of Africa as far as the Tropic of Cancer at least forty-five years before the epoch at which Don Henry the Navigator commenced his series of discoveries beyond Cape Nun.'"⁶

But the practice of buying and selling slaves in Europe can be traced as far back as the tenth century, when fairs were established in all the great cities. Prisoners of war, representing different nations at different times, according to the direction which the love of piracy and conquest took, were exposed at those great periodical sales of merchandise to the buyers who flocked from every land. The Northern cities around the Baltic have the distinction of displaying these human goods quite as early as Venice or any commercial centre of the South: the municipal privileges and freedom of those famous cities were thus nourished partly by a traffic in mankind, for whose sake privilege and right are alone worth having. Seven thousand Danish slaves were exposed at one fair held in the city of Mecklenburg at the end of the twelfth century. They had the liberty of being ransomed, but only distinguished captives could be saved in that way from being sold. The price ranged from one to three marks. It is difficult to tell from this how valuable a man was considered, for the relation of the mark to other merchandise, or, in other words, the value of the currency, cannot be represented by modern sums, which are only technically equivalent,–as a mark, for instance, was then held equal to eight ounces of silver.⁷ That was not exorbitant, however, for those times, and shows that men were frequently exposed for sale. The merchants of Bristol used to sell a great many captives into Ireland; but it is recorded that the Irish were the first Christian people who agreed at length to put a stop to this traffic by refusing to have any more captives brought into their country. The Church had long before forbidden it; and there are no grounds for supposing that any other motive than humanity induced the Irish people to show this superiority to the conventions of the age.⁸

From the essay by Schoelcher, entitled "The Slave-Trade and its Origin," which has been prepared with considerable research, we gather that the first negroes seen in Portugal were carried there in 1441. Antonio Gonzales was the name of the man who first excited his countrymen by offering for sale this human booty which he had seized. All classes of people felt a mania like that which turns the tides of emigration to Australia and California. Nothing was desired but the means of equipping vessels for the coast of Guinea. Previously to this a few Guanches from the Canaries had been exposed for sale in the markets of Lisbon and Seville, and there were many Moorish slaves in Spain, taken in the wars which preceded the expulsion of that nation. But now there was a rapid accumulation of this species of property, fed by the inexhaustible soil of Africa, whence so many millions of men have been reaped and ploughed into the soils of other lands.

In 1443, an expedition of six caravels, commanded by a gentleman of the Portuguese court, went down the coast on one of these ventures, ostensibly geographical, but really mercenary, which then excited the popular enterprise. It managed to attack some island and to make a great number of prisoners. The same year a citizen of Lisbon fitted out a vessel at his own expense, went beyond the Senegal, where he seized a great many natives, discovered Cape Verde, and was driven back to Lisbon by a storm.

Prince Henry built the fort of Mina upon the Gold Coast, and made it a depot for articles of Spanish use, which he bartered for slaves. He introduced there, and upon the island of Arguin, near Cape Blanco, the cultivation of corn and sugar; the whole coast was formally occupied by the Portuguese, whose king took the title of Lord of Guinea. Sugar went successively to Spain, Madeira, the Azores, and the West Indies, in the company of negro slaves. It was carried to Hayti just as the colonists discovered that negroes were unfit for mining. Charlevoix says that the magnificent palaces of Madrid and Toledo, the work of Charles V., were entirely built by the revenue from the entry-tax on sugar from Hayti.

At first, all prisoners taken in war, or in attacks deliberately made to bring on fighting, were sold, whatever their nation or color. This was due to the Catholic theory that all unbaptized people were infidels. But gradually the same religious influence, moved by some scruples of humanity, made a distinction between negroes and all other people, allowing only the former to become objects of traffic, because they were black as well as heathen. Thus early did physiology come to the aid of religion, notifying the Church of certain physical peculiarities which seemed to be the trade-marks of the Creator, and perpetual guaranties, like the color of woods, the odor of gums, the breadth and bone of draught-cattle, of their availability for the market. What renown has graced the names of Portuguese adventurers, and how illustrious does this epoch of the little country's life appear in history! Rivers, bays, and stormy headlands, long reaches of gold coast and ivory coast, and countries of palm-oil, and strange interiors stocked with new forms of existence, and the great route to India itself, became the charter to a brilliant fame of this mercenary heroism. Man went as far as he was impelled to go. While the stimulus continued, and the outlay was more than equalled by the income and the glory, unexplored regions yielded up their secrets, and the Continent of Africa was established by this insignificant nation to be for centuries the vast slave-nursery of the world.

When the habit of selling men began to be restricted to the selling of negroes, companies were formed to organize this business and to have it carried on with economy. The Portuguese had a monopoly of the trade for a long time. They went up and down the African coast, picking quarrels with the natives when the latter did not quarrel enough among themselves to create a suitable supply of captives. Slaves were in great demand in Spain, and quite numerous at Seville. The percentage which the Portuguese exacted induced the Spaniards at length to enter into the traffic, which they did, according to Zuñigo, in 1474.