Captains of adventure
Date: 2023-11-20T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Adventure and adventurers

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Title: Captains of adventure

Author: Roger Pocock

Release date: November 20, 2023 [eBook #72176]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Bobbs-Merrill Company

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CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE

Napoleon Bonaparte

CAPTAINS
OF ADVENTURE

By
ROGER POCOCK

Author of
A Man in the Open, etc.

ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1913
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

ADVENTURERS

What is an adventurer? One who has adventures? Surely not. A person charged by a wild rhinoceros is having an adventure, yet however wild the animal, however wild the person, he is only somebody wishing himself at home, not an adventurer. In dictionaries the adventurer is “one who seeks his fortune in new and hazardous or perilous enterprises.” But outside the pages of a dictionary, the man who seeks his fortune, who really cares for money and his own advantage, sits at some desk deriding the fools who take thousand-to-one chances in a gamble with Death. Did the patron saint of adventurers, Saint Paul, or did Saint Louis, or Francis Drake, or Livingstone, or Gordon seek their own fortune, think you? In real life the adventurer is one who seeks, not his fortune, but the new and hazardous or perilous enterprises. There are holy saints and scoundrels among adventurers, but all the thousands I have known were fools of the romantic temperament, dealing with life as an artist does with canvas, to color it with fierce and vivid feeling, deep shade and radiant light, exulting in the passions of the sea, the terrors of the wilderness, the splendors of sunshine and starlight, the exaltation of battle, fire and hurricane.

All nations have bred great adventurers, but the living nation remembers them sending the boys out into the world enriched with memories of valor, a heritage of national honor, an inspiration to ennoble their manhood. That is the only real wealth of men and of peoples. For such purposes this book is written, but so vast is the theme that this volume would outgrow all reasonable size unless we set some limit. A man in the regular standing forces of his native state is not dubbed adventurer. When, for example, the immortal heroes Tromp and De Ruyter fought the British generals at sea, Blake and Monk, they were no more adventurers than are the police constables who guard our homes at night. Were Clive and Warren Hastings adventurers? They would turn in their graves if one brought such a charge. The true type of adventurer is the lone-hand pioneer.

It is not from any bias of mine that the worthies of Switzerland, the Teutonic empires and Russia, are shut out of this poor little record; but because it seems that the lone-hand oversea and overland pioneers come mainly from nations directly fronting upon the open sea. As far as I am prejudiced, it is in favor of old Norway, whose heroes have entranced me with the sheer glory of their perfect manhood. For the rest, our own English-speaking folk are easier for us to understand than any foreigners.

As to the manner of record, we must follow the stream of history if we would shoot the rapids of adventure.

Now as to the point of view: My literary pretensions are small and humble, but I claim the right of an adventurer, trained in thirty-three trades of the Lost Region, to absolute freedom of speech concerning frontiersmen. Let history bow down before Columbus, but as a foremast seaman, I hold he was not fit to command a ship. Let history ignore Captain John Smith, but as an ex-trooper, I worship him for a leader, the paladin of Anglo-Saxon chivalry, and very father of the United States. Literature admires the well advertised Stanley, but we frontiersmen prefer Commander Cameron, who walked across Africa without blaming others for his own defects, or losing his temper, or shedding needless blood. All the celebrities may go hang, but when we take the field, send us leaders like Patrick Forbes, who conquered Rhodesia without journalists in attendance to write puffs, or any actual deluge of public gratitude.

The historic and literary points of view are widely different from that of our dusty rankers.

When the Dutchmen were fighting Spain, they invented and built the first iron-clad war-ship—all honor to their seamanship for that! But when the winter came, a Spanish cavalry charge across the ice captured the ship—and there was fine adventure. Both sides had practical men.

In the same wars, a Spanish man-at-arms in the plundering of a city, took more gold than he could carry, so he had the metal beaten into a suit of armor, and painted black to hide its worth from thieves. From a literary standpoint, that was all very fine, but from our adventurer point of view, the man was a fool for wearing armor useless for defense, and so heavy he could not run. He was killed, and a good riddance.

We value most the man who knows his business, and the more practical the adventurer, the fewer his misadventures.

From that point of view, the book is attempted with all earnestness; and if the results appear bizarre, let the shocked reader turn to better written works, mention of which is made in notes.

As to the truthfulness of adventurers, perhaps we are all more or less truthful when we try to be good. But there are two kinds of adventurers who need sharply watching. The worst is F. C. Selous. Once he lectured to amuse the children at the Foundling Hospital, and when he came to single combats with a wounded lion, or a mad elephant he was forced to mention himself as one of the persons present. He blushed. Then he would race through a hair-lifting story of the fight, and in an apologetic manner, give all the praise to the elephant, or the lion lately deceased. Surely nobody could suspect him of any merit, yet all the children saw through him for a transparent fraud, and even we grown-ups felt the better for meeting so grand a gentleman.

The other sort of liar, who does not understate his own merits, is Jim Beckwourth. He told his story, quite truthfully at first, to a journalist who took it down in shorthand. But when the man gaped with admiration at the merest trifles, Jim was on his mettle, testing this person’s powers of belief, which were absolutely boundless. After that, of course he hit the high places, striking the facts about once in twenty-four hours, and as one reads the book, one can catch the thud whenever he hit the truth.

Let no man dream that adventure is a thing of the past or that adventurers are growing scarce. The only difficulty of this book was to squeeze the past in order to make-space for living men worthy as their forerunners. The list is enormous, and I only dared to estimate such men of our own time as I have known by correspondence, acquaintance, friendship, enmity, or by serving under their leadership. Here again, I could only speak safely in cases where there were records, as with Lord Strathcona, Colonel S. B. Steele, Colonel Cody, Major Forbes, Captain Grogan, Captain Amundsen, Captain Hansen, Mr. John Boyes. Left out, among Americans, are M. H. de Hora who, in a Chilian campaign, with only a boat’s crew, cut out the battle-ship Huascar, plundered a British tramp of her bunker coal, and fought H. M. S. Shah on the high seas. Another American, Doctor Bodkin, was for some years prime minister of Makualand, an Arab sultanate. Among British adventurers, Caid Belton, is one of four successive British commanders-in-chief to the Moorish sultans. Colonel Tompkins was commander-in-chief to Johore. C. W. Mason was captured with a shipload of arms in an attempt to make himself emperor of China. Charles Rose rode from Mazatlan in Mexico to Corrientes in Paraguay. A. W. V. Crawley, a chief of scouts to Lord Roberts in South Africa, rode out of action after being seven times shot, and he rides now a little askew in consequence.

To sum up, if one circle of acquaintances includes such a group to-day, the adventurer is not quite an extinct species, and indeed, we seem not at the end, but at the beginning of the greatest of all adventurous eras, that of the adventurers of the air.

CONTENTS

Chapter | | Page
I | The Vikings in America | 1
II | The Crusaders | 7
III | The Middle Ages in Asia | 18
IV | The Marvelous Adventures of Sir John Maundeville | 25
V | Columbus | 32
VI | The Conquest of Mexico | 37
VII | The Conquest of Peru | 44
VIII | The Corsairs | 50
IX | Portugal in the Indies | 55
X | Rajah Brooke | 62
XI | The Spies | 69
XII | A Year’s Adventures | 81
XIII | Kit Carson | 88
XIV | The Man Who Was a God | 100
XV | The Great Filibuster | 106
XVI | Buffalo Bill | 112
XVII | The Australian Desert | 123
XVIII | The Hero-Statesman | 131
XIX | The Special Correspondent | 138
XX | Lord Strathcona | 142
XXI | The Sea Hunters | 148
XXII | The Bushrangers | 156
XXIII | The Passing of the Bison | 162
XXIV | Gordon | 173
XXV | The Outlaw | 179
XXVI | A King at Twenty-Five | 186
XXVII | Journey of Ewart Grogan | 194
XXVIII | The Cowboy President | 202
XXIX | The Northwest Passage | 208
XXX | John Hawkins | 215
XXXI | Francis Drake | 219
XXXII | The Four Armadas | 223
XXXIII | Sir Humphrey Gilbert | 231
XXXIV | Sir Walter Raleigh | 234
XXXV | Captain John Smith | 237
XXXVI | The Buccaneers | 246
XXXVII | The Voyageurs | 252
XXXVIII | The Explorers | 260
XXXIX | The Pirates | 266
XL | Daniel Boone | 272
XLI | Andrew Jackson | 280
XLII | Sam Houston | 282
XLIII | Davy Crockett | 285
XLIV | Alexander Mackenzie | 292
XLV | The White Man’s Coming | 298
XLVI | The Beaver | 302
XLVII | The Conquest of the Poles | 307
XLVIII | Women | 315
XLIX | The Conquerors of India | 321
L | The Man Who Shot Lord Nelson | 327
LI | The Fall of Napoleon | 333
LII | Rising Wolf | 340
LIII | Simon Bolivar | 350
LIV | The Almirante Cochrane | 357
LV | The South Sea Cannibals | 363
LVI | A Tale of Vengeance | 371

CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE

CAPTAINS
OF ADVENTURE

I
A. D. 984

THE VIKINGS IN AMERICA

A reverent study of heroes in novels, also in operas and melodramas, where one may see them for half-a-crown, has convinced me that they must be very trying to live with. They get on people’s nerves. Hence the villains.

Now Harold of the Fair Hair was a hero, and he fell in love with a lady, but she would not marry him unless he made himself king of Norway. So he made himself the first king of all Norway, and she had to marry him, which served her right.

But then there were the gentlemen of his majesty’s opposition who did not want him to be king, who felt that there was altogether too much Harold in Norway. They left, and went to Iceland to get away from the hero.

Iceland had been shown on the map since the year A. D. 115, and when the vikings arrived they found a colony of Irish monks who said they had come there “because they desired for the love of God to be in a state of pilgrimage, they recked not where.”

Perhaps the vikings sent them to Heaven. Later on it seems they found a little Irish settlement on the New England coast, and heard of great Ireland, a colony farther south. That is the first rumor we have about America.

The Norsemen settled down, pagans in Christian Iceland. They earned a living with fish and cattle, and made an honest penny raiding the Mediterranean. They had internecine sports of their own, and on the whole were reasonably happy. Then in course of trade Captain Gunbjorn sighted an unknown land two hundred fifty miles to the westward. That made the Icelanders restless, for there is always something which calls to Northern blood from beyond the sea line.

Most restless of all was Red Eric, hysterical because he hated a humdrum respectable life; indeed, he committed so many murders that he had to be deported as a public nuisance. He set off exultant to find Gunbjorn’s unknown land. So any natural born adventurer commits little errors of taste unless he can find an outlet. It is too much dog-chain that makes biting dogs.

When he found the new land it was all green, with swaths of wild flowers. I know that land and its bright lowlands, backed by sheer walled mountains, with splintered pinnacles robed in the splendors of the inland ice. The trees were knee high, no crops could possibly ripen, but Eric was so pleased that after two winters he went back to Iceland advertising for settlers to fill his colony. Greenland he called the place, because “Many will go there if the place has a fair name.” They did, and when the sea had wiped out most of the twenty-five ships, the surviving colonists found Greenland commodious and residential as the heart could wish.

They were not long gone from the port of Skalholt when young Captain Bjarni came in from the sea and asked for his father. But father Heljulf had sailed for Greenland, so the youngster set off in pursuit although nobody knew the way. Bjarni always spent alternate yuletides at his father’s hearth, so if the hearth-stone moved he had to find it somehow. These vikings are so human and natural that one can follow their thought quite easily. When, for instance, Bjarni, instead of coming to Greenland, found a low, well timbered country, he knew he had made a mistake, so it was no use landing. Rediscovering the American mainland was a habit which persisted until the time of Columbus, and not a feat to make a fuss about. A northerly course and a pure stroke of luck carried Bjarni to Greenland and his father’s house.

Because they had no timber, and driftwood was scarce, the colonists were much excited when they heard of forests, and cursed Bjarni for not having landed. Anyway, here was a fine excuse for an expedition in search of fire-wood, so Leif, the son of Red Eric, bought Bjarni’s ship. Being tall and of commanding presence he rallied thirty-five of a crew, and, being young, expected that his father would take command. Eric indeed rode a distance of four hundred feet from his house against the rock, which was called Brattelid, to the shore of the inlet, but his pony fell and threw him, such a bad omen that he rode home again. Leif Ericsen, therefore, with winged helmet and glittering breastplate, mounted the steerboard, laid hands on the steer-oar and bade his men shove off. The colonists on rugged dun ponies lined the shore to cheer the adventurers, and the ladies waved their kerchiefs from the rock behind the house while the dragon ship, shield-lines ablaze in the sun, oars thrashing blue water, and painted square-sail set, took the fair wind on that famous voyage. She discovered Stoneland, which is the Newfoundland-Labrador coast, and Woodland, which is Nova Scotia. Then came the Further Strand, the long and wonderful beaches of Massachusetts, and beyond was Narragansett Bay, where they built winter houses, pastured their cattle, and found wild grapes. It was here that Tyrkir, the little old German man slave who was Leif’s nurse, made wine and got most gorgeously drunk. On the homeward passage Leif brought timber and raisins to Greenland.

Leif went away to Norway, where as a guest of King Olaf he became a Christian, and in his absence his brother Thorwald made the second voyage to what is now New England. After wintering at Leif’s house in Wineland the Good he went southward and, somewhere near the site of New York, met with savages. Nine of them lay under three upturned canoes on the beach, so the vikings killed eight just for fun, but were fools, letting the ninth escape to raise the tribes for war. So there was a battle, and Thorwald the Helpless was shot in the eye, which served him right. One of his brothers came afterward in search of the body, which may have been that same seated skeleton in bronze armor that nine hundred years later was dug up at Cross Point.

Two or three years after Thorwald’s death his widow married a visitor from Norway, Eric’s guest at Brattelid, the rich Thorfin Karlsefne. He also set out for Vinland, taking Mrs. Karlsefne and four other women, also a Scottish lad and lass (very savage) and an Irishman, besides a crew of sixty and some cattle. They built a fort where the natives came trading skins for strips of red cloth, or to fight a battle, or to be chased, shrieking with fright, by Thorfin’s big red bull. There Mrs. Karlsefne gave birth to Snorri the Firstborn, whose sons Thorlak and Brand became priests and were the first two bishops of Greenland.

After Karlsefne’s return to Greenland the next voyage was made by one of Eric’s daughters; and presently Leif the Fortunate came home from Norway to his father’s house, bringing a priest. Then Mrs. Leif built a church at Brattelid, old Eric the Red being thoroughly disgusted, and Greenland and Vinland became Christian, but Eric never.

As long as Norway traded with her American colonies Vinland exported timber and dried fruit, while Greenland sent sheepskins, ox hides, sealskins, walrus-skin rope and tusks to Iceland and Europe. In return they got iron and settlers. But then began a series of disasters, for when the Black Death swept Europe, the colonies were left to their fate, and some of the colonists in despair renounced their faith to turn Eskimo. In 1349 the last timber ship from Nova Scotia was lately returned to Europe when the plague struck Norway. There is a gap of fifty-two years in the record, and all we know of Greenland is that the western villages were destroyed by Eskimos who killed eighteen Norsemen and carried off the boys. Then the plague destroyed two-thirds of the people in Iceland, a bad winter killed nine tenths of all their cattle, and what remained of the hapless colony was ravaged by English fishermen. No longer could Iceland send any help to Greenland, but still there was intercourse because we know that seven years later the vicar of Garde married a girl in the east villages to a young Icelander.

Meanwhile, in plague-stricken England, Bristol, our biggest seaport, had not enough men living even to bury the dead, and labor was so scarce that the crops rotted for lack of harvesters. That is why an English squadron raided Iceland, Greenland, perhaps even Vinland, for slaves, and the people were carried away into captivity. Afterward England paid compensation to Denmark and returned the folk to their homes, but in 1448 the pope wrote to a Norse bishop concerning their piteous condition. And there the story ends, for in that year the German merchants at Bergen in Norway squabbled with the forty master mariners of the American trade. The sailors had boycotted their Hanseatic League, so the Germans asked them to dinner, and murdered them. From that time no man knew the way to lost America.

II
A. D. 1248

THE CRUSADERS

In the seventh century of the reign of Our Lord Christ, arose the Prophet Mahomet. To his followers he generously gave Heaven, and as much of the earth as they could get, so the true believers made haste to occupy goodly and fruitful possessions of Christian powers, including the Holy Land. The owners were useful as slaves.

Not having been consulted in this matter, the Christians took offense, making war upon Islam in seven warm campaigns, wherein they held and lost by turns the holy sepulcher, so that the country where our Lord taught peace, was always drenched with blood. In the end, our crusades were not a success.

About Saint Louis and the sixth crusade:

At the opening of the story, that holy but delightful king of France lay so near death that his two lady nurses had a squabble, the one pulling a cloth over his face because he was dead, while the other snatched it away because he was still alive. At last he sent the pair of them to fetch the cross, on which he vowed to deliver the Holy Land. Then he had to get well, so he did, sending word to his barons to roll up their men for war.

Among the nobles was the young Lord of Joinville, seneschal of Champagne—a merry little man with eight hundred pounds a year of his own. But then, what with an expensive mother, his wife, and some little worries, he had to pawn his lands before he could take the field with his two knights-banneret, nine knights, their men-at-arms, and the servants. He shared with another lord the hire of a ship from Marseilles, but when they joined his majesty in Cyprus he had only a few pounds left, and the knights would have deserted but that the king gave him a staff appointment at eight hundred pounds a year.

The king was a holy saint, a glorious knight errant, full of fun, but a thoroughly incompetent general. Instead of taking Jerusalem by surprise, he must needs raid Egypt, giving the soldan of Babylon the Less (Cairo) plenty of time to arrange a warm reception. The rival armies had a battle on the beach, after which Saint Louis sat down in front of Damietta, where he found time to muddle his commissariat.

On the other hand, the soldan was not at all well, having been poisoned by a rival prince, and paid no heed to the carrier pigeons with their despairing messages from the front. This discouraged the Moslems, who abandoned Damietta and fled inland, hotly pursued by the French. As a precaution, however, they sent round their ships, which collected the French supplies proceeding to the front. The Christians had plenty of fighting and a deal of starving to do, not to mention pestilence in their ill-managed camps. So they came to a canal which had to be bridged, but the artful paynim cut away the land in front of the bridge head, so that there was no ground on which the French could arrive. In the end the Christians had to swim and, as they were heavily armored, many were drowned in the mud. Joinville’s party found a dry crossing up-stream, and their troubles began at the enemy’s camp whence the Turks were flying.

“While we were driving them through their camp, I perceived a Saracen who was mounting his horse, one of his knights holding the bridle. At the moment he had his two hands on the saddle to mount, I gave him of my lance under the armpit, and laid him dead. When his knight saw that, he left his lord and the horse, and struck me with his lance as I passed, between the two shoulders, holding me so pressed down that I could not draw the sword at my belt. I had, therefore, to draw the sword attached to my horse, and when he saw that he withdrew his lance and left me.”

Here in the camp Joinville’s detachment was rushed by six thousand Turks, “who pressed upon me with their lances. My horse knelt under the weight, and I fell forward over the horse’s ears. I got up as soon as ever I could with my shield at my neck, and my sword in my hand.

“Again a great rout of Turks came rushing upon us, and bore me to the ground and went over me, and caused my shield to fly from my neck.”

So the little party gained the wall of a ruined house, where they were sorely beset: Lord Hugh, of Ecot, with three lance wounds in the face, Lord Frederick, of Loupey, with a lance wound between the shoulders, so large that the blood flowed from his body as from the bung hole of a cask, and my Lord of Sivery with a sword-stroke in the face, so that his nose fell over his lips. Joinville, too badly wounded to fight, was holding horses, while Turks who had climbed to the roof were prodding from above with their lances. Then came Anjou to the rescue, and presently the king with his main army. The fight became a general engagement, while slowly the Christian force was driven backward upon the river. The day had become very hot, and the stream was covered with lances and shields, and with horses and men drowning and perishing.

Near by De Joinville’s position, a streamlet entered the river, and across that ran a bridge by which the Turks attempted to cut the king’s retreat. This bridge the little hero, well mounted now, held for hours, covering the flight of French detachments. At the head of one such party rode Count Peter, of Brittany, spitting the blood from his mouth and shouting “Ha! by God’s head, have you ever seen such riffraff?”

“In front of us were two of the king’s sergeants; ... and the Turks ... brought a large number of churls afoot, who pelted them with lumps of earth, but were never able to force them back upon us. At last they brought a churl on foot, who thrice threw Greek fire at them. Once William of Boon received the pot of Greek fire on his target, for if the fire had caught any of his garments he must have been burnt alive. We were all covered with the darts that failed to hit the sergeants. Now, it chanced that I found a Saracen’s quilted tunic lined with tow; I turned the open side towards me, and made a shield ... which did me good service, for I was only wounded by their darts in five places, and my horse in fifteen.... The good Count of Soissons, in that point of danger, jested with me and said,

“‘Seneschal, let these curs howl! By God’s bonnet we shall talk of this day yet, you and I, in ladies’ chambers!’”

So came the constable of France, who relieved Joinville and sent him to guard the king.

“So as soon as I came to the king, I made him take off his helmet, and lent him my steel cap so that he might have air.”

Presently a knight brought news that the Count of Artois, the king’s brother, was in paradise.

“Ah, Sire,” said the provost, “be of good comfort herein, for never did king of France gain so much honor as you have gained this day. For in order to fight your enemies you have passed over a river swimming, and you have discomfited them and driven them from the field, and taken their engines, and also their tents wherein you will sleep this night.”

And the king replied: “Let God be worshiped for all He has given me,” and then the big tears fell from his eyes.

That night the captured camp was attacked in force, much to the grief of De Joinville and his knights, who ruefully put on chain mail over their aching wounds. Before they were dressed De Joinville’s chaplain engaged eight Saracens and put them all to flight.

Three days later came a general attack of the whole Saracen army upon the Christian camp, but thanks to the troops of Count William, of Flanders, De Joinville and his wounded knights were not in the thick of the fray.

“Wherein,” he says, “God showed us great courtesy, for neither I nor my knights had our hawberks (chain shirts) and shields, because we had all been wounded.”

You see De Joinville had the sweet faith that his God was a gentleman.

After that the sorrowful army lay nine days in camp till the bodies of the dead floated to the surface of the canal, and eight days more while a hundred hired vagabonds cleared the stream. But the army lived on eels and water from that canal, while all of them sickened of scurvy, and hundreds died. Under the hands of the surgeons the men of that dying army cried like women. Then came an attempt to retreat in ships to the coast, but the way was blocked, the little galleys were captured one by one, the king was taken, and what then remained of the host were prisoners, the sick put to death, the rich held for ransom, the poor sold away into slavery.

Saint Louis appeared to be dying of dysentery and scurvy, he was threatened with torture, but day after day found strength and courage to bargain with the soldan of Babylon for the ransom of his people. Once the negotiations broke down because the soldan was murdered by his own emirs, but the king went on bargaining now with the murderers. For his own ransom he gave the city of Damietta, for that of his knights he paid the royal treasure that was on board a galley in the port, and for the deliverance of the common men, he had to raise money in France.

So came the release, and the emirs would have been ashamed to let their captive knights leave the prison fasting. So De Joinville’s party had “fritters of cheese roasted in the sun so that worms should not come therein, and hard boiled eggs cooked four or five days before, and these, in our honor, had been painted with divers colors.”

After that came the counting of the ransom on board the royal galley, with the dreadful conclusion that they were short of the sum by thirty thousand livres. De Joinville went off to the galley of the marshal of the Knights Templars, where he tried to borrow the money.

“Many were the hard and angry words which passed between him and me.”

For one thing the borrower, newly released from prison, looked like a ragged beggar, and for the rest, the treasure of the Templars was a trust fund not to be lent to any one. They stood in the hold in front of the chest of treasure, De Joinville demanding the key, then threatening with an ax to make of it the king’s key.

“We see right well,” said the treasurer, “that you are using force against us.” And on that excuse yielded the key to the ragged beggar, tottering with weakness, a very specter of disease and famine.

“I threw out the silver I found therein and went, and sat on the prow of our little vessel that had brought me. And I took the marshal of France and left him with the silver in the Templars’ galley and on the galley I put the minister of the Trinity. On the galley the marshal handed the silver to the minister, and the minister gave it over to me on the little vessel where I sat. When we had ended and came towards the king’s galley, I began to shout to the king.

“‘Sire! Sire! see how well I am furnished!’

“And the saintly man received me right willingly and right joyfully.”

So the ransom was completed, the king’s ransom and that of the greatest nobles of France, this group of starving ragged beggars in a dingey.

Years followed of hard campaigning in Palestine. Once Saint Louis was even invited by the soldan of Damascus to visit as a pilgrim that Holy City which he could never enter as a conqueror. But Saint Louis and his knights were reminded of a story about Richard the Lion-Hearted, king of England. For Richard once marched almost within sight of the capital so that a knight cried out to him:

“Sire, come so far hither, and I will show you Jerusalem!”

But the Duke of Burgundy had just deserted with half the crusading army, lest it be said that the English had taken Jerusalem. So when Richard heard the knight calling he threw his coat armor before his eyes, all in tears, and said to our Savior,

“Fair Lord God, I pray Thee suffer me not to see Thy Holy City since I can not deliver it from the hands of thine enemies.”

King Louis the Saint followed the example of King Richard the Hero, and both left Palestine broken-hearted because they had not the strength to take Jerusalem.

Very queer is the tale of the queen’s arrival from France.

“When I heard tell that she was come,” said De Joinville, “I rose from before the king and went to meet her, and led her to the castle, and when I came back to the king, who was in his chapel, he asked me if the queen and his children were well; and I told him yes. And he said, ‘I knew when you rose from before me that you were going to meet the queen, and so I have caused the sermon to wait for you.’ And these things I tell you,” adds De Joinville, “because I had then been five years with the king, and never before had he spoken to me, nor so far as ever I heard, to any one else, of the queen, and of his children; and so it appears to me, it was not seemly to be thus a stranger to one’s wife and children.”

To do the dear knight justice, he was always brutally frank to the king’s face, however much he loved him behind his back.

The return of the king and queen to France was full of adventure, and De Joinville still had an appetite for such little troubles as a wreck and a sea fight. Here is a really nice story of an accident.

“One of the queen’s bedwomen, when she had put the queen to bed, was heedless, and taking the kerchief that had been wound about her head, threw it into the iron stove on which the queen’s candle was burning, and when she had gone into the cabin where the women slept, below the queen’s chamber, the candle burnt on, till the kerchief caught fire, and from the kerchief the fire passed to the cloths with which the queen’s garments were covered. When the queen awoke she saw her cabin all in flames, and jumped up quite naked and took the kerchief and threw it all burning into the sea, and took the cloths and extinguished them. Those who were in the barge behind the ship cried, but not very loud, ‘Fire! fire!’ I lifted up my head and saw that the kerchief still burned with a clear flame on the sea, which was very still.

“I put on my tunic as quickly as I could, and went and sat with the mariners.

“While I sat there my squire, who slept before me, came to me and said that the king was awake, and asked where I was. ‘And I told him,’ said he, ‘that you were in your cabin; and the king said to me, “Thou liest!”’ While we were thus speaking, behold the queen’s clerk appeared, Master Geoffrey, and said to me, ‘Be not afraid, nothing has happened.’ And I said, ‘Master Geoffrey, go and tell the queen that the king is awake, and she should go to him, and set his mind at ease.’

“On the following day the constable of France, and my Lord Peter the chamberlain, and my Lord Gervais, the master of the pantry, said to the king, ‘What happened in the night that we heard mention of fire?’ and I said not a word. Then said the king, ‘What happened was by mischance, and the seneschal (De Joinville) is more reticent than I. Now I will tell you,’ said he, ‘how it came about that we might all have been burned this night,’ and he told them what had befallen, and said to me, ‘I command you henceforth not to go to rest until you have put out all fires, except the great fire that is in the hold of the ship.’ (Cooking fire on the ship’s ballast). ‘And take note that I shall not go to rest till you come back to me.’”

It is pleasant to think of the queen’s pluck, the knight’s silence, the king’s tact, and to see the inner privacies of that ancient ship. After seven hundred years the gossip is fresh and vivid as this morning’s news.

The king brought peace, prosperity and content to all his kingdom, and De Joinville was very angry when in failing health Saint Louis was persuaded to attempt another crusade in Africa.

“So great was his weakness that he suffered me to carry him in my arms from the mansion of the Count of Auxerre to the abbey of the Franciscans.”

So went the king to his death in Tunis, a bungling soldier, but a saint on a throne, the noblest of all adventurers, the greatest sovereign France has ever known.

Long afterward the king came in a dream to see De Joinville: “Marvelously joyous and glad of heart, and I myself was right glad to see him in my castle. And I said to him, ‘Sire, when you go hence, I will lodge you in a house of mine, that is in a city of mine, called Chevillon.’ And he answered me laughing, and said to me, ‘Lord of Joinville, by the faith I owe you, I have no wish so soon to go hence.’”

It was at the age of eighty-five De Joinville wrote his memoirs, still blithe as a boy because he was not grown up.

Note. From Memoirs of the Crusaders, by Villehardouine and De Joinville. Dent & Co.

III
A. D. 1260

THE MIDDLE AGES IN ASIA

The year 1260 found Saint Louis of France busy reforming his kingdom, while over the way the English barons were reforming King Henry III on the eve of the founding of parliament, and the Spaniards were inventing the bull fight by way of a national sport. Our own national pastime then was baiting Jews. They got twopence per week in the pound for the use of their money, but next year one of them was caught in the act of cheating, a little error which led to the massacre of seven hundred.

That year the great Khan Kublai came to the throne of the Mongol Empire, a pastoral realm of the grass lands extending from the edge of Europe to the Pacific Ocean. Kublai began to build his capital, the city of Pekin, and in all directions his people extended their conquests. The looting and burning of Bagdad took them seven days and the resistless pressure of their hordes was forcing the Turks upon Europe.

Meanwhile in the dying Christian empire of the East, the Latins held Constantinople with Beldwin on the throne, but next year the Greek army led by Michael Paleologus crept through a tunnel and managed to capture the city.

Among the merchants at Constantinople in 1260 were the two Polo brothers, Nicolo and Matteo, Venetian nobles, who invested the whole of their capital in gems, and set off on a trading voyage to the Crimea. Their business finished, they went on far up the Volga River to the court of a Mongol prince, and to him they gave the whole of their gems as a gift, getting a present in return with twice the money. But now their line of retreat was blocked by a war among the Mongol princes, so they went off to trade at Bokhara in Persia where they spent a year. And so it happened that the Polo brothers met with certain Mongol envoys who were returning to the court of their Emperor Kublai. “Come with us,” said the envoys. “The great khan has never seen a European and will be glad to have you as his guests.” So the Polos traveled under safe conduct with the envoys, a year’s journey, until they reached the court of the great khan at Pekin and were received with honor and liberality.

Now it so happened that Kublai sought for himself and his people the faith of Christ, and wanted the pope to send him a hundred priests, so he despatched these Italian gentlemen as his ambassadors to the court of Rome. He gave them a passport engraved on a slab of gold, commanding his subjects to help the envoys upon their way with food and horses, and thus, traveling in state across Asia, the Polos returned from a journey, the greatest ever made up to that time by any Christian men.

At Venice, Nicolo, the elder of the brothers, found that his wife had died leaving to him a son, then aged sixteen, young Marco Polo, a gallant, courageous, hardy lad, it seems, and very truthful, without the slightest symptoms of any sense of humor.

The schoolboy who defined the Vatican as a great empty space without air, was perfectly correct, for when the Polos arrived there was a sort of vacuum in Rome, the pope being dead and no new appointment made because the electors were squabbling. Two years the envoys waited, and when at last a new pope was elected, he proved to be a friend of theirs, the legate Theobald on whom they waited at the Christian fortress of Acre in Palestine.

But instead of sending a hundred clergymen to convert the Mongol empire, the new pope had only one priest to spare, who proved to be a coward, and deserted.

Empty handed, their mission a failure, the Polos went back, a three and one-half years’ journey to Pekin, taking with them young Marco Polo, a handsome gallant, who at once found favor with old Kublai Khan. Marco “sped wondrously in learning the customs of the Tartars, as well as their language, their manner of writing, and their practise of war ... insomuch that the emperor held him in great esteem. And so when he discerned Mark to have so much sense, and to conduct himself so well and beseemingly, he sent him on an embassage of his, to a country which was a good six months’ journey distant. The young gallant executed his commission well and with discretion.” The fact is that Kublai’s ambassadors, returning from different parts of the world, “were able to tell him nothing except the business on which they had gone, and that the prince in consequence held them for no better than dolts and fools.” Mark brought back plenty of gossip, and was a great success, for seventeen years being employed by the emperor on all sorts of missions. “And thus it came about that Messer Marco Polo had knowledge of or had actually visited a greater number of the different countries of the world than any other man.”

In the Chinese annals of the Mongol dynasty there is record in 1277 of one Polo nominated a second-class commissioner or agent attached to the privy council. Marco had become a civil servant, and his father and uncle were both rich men, but as the years went on, and the aged emperor began to fail, they feared as to their fate after his death. Yet when they wanted to go home old Kublai growled at them.

“Now it came to pass in those days that the Queen Bolgana, wife of Argon, lord of the Levant (court of Persia), departed this life. And in her will she had desired that no lady should take her place, or succeed her as Argon’s wife except one of her own family (in Cathay). Argon therefore despatched three of his barons ... as ambassadors to the great khan, attended by a very gallant company, in order to bring back as his bride a lady of the family of Queen Bolgana, his late wife.

“When these three barons had reached the court of the great khan, they delivered their message explaining wherefore they were come. The khan received them with all honor and hospitality, and then sent for a lady whose name was Cocachin, who was of the family of the deceased Queen Bolgana. She was a maiden of seventeen, a very beautiful and charming person, and on her arrival at court she was presented to the three barons as the lady chosen in compliance with their demand. They declared that the lady pleased them well.

“Meanwhile Messer Marco chanced to return from India, whither he had gone as the lord’s ambassador, and made his report of all the different things that he had seen in his travels, and of the sundry seas over which he had voyaged. And the three barons, having seen that Messer Nicolo, Messer Matteo and Messer Marco were not only Latins but men of marvelous good sense withal, took thought among themselves to get the three to travel to Persia with them, their intention being to return to their country by sea, on account of the great fatigue of that long land journey for a lady. So they went to the great khan, and begged as a favor that he would send the three Latins with them, as it was their desire to return home by sea.

“The lord, having that great regard that I have mentioned for those three Latins, was very loath to do so. But at last he did give them permission to depart, enjoining them to accompany the three barons and the lady.”

In the fleet that sailed on the two years’ voyage to Persia there were six hundred persons, not counting mariners; but what with sickness and little accidents of travel, storms for instance and sharks, only eight persons arrived, including the lady, one of the Persian barons, and the three Italians. They found the handsome King Argon dead, so the lady had to put up with his insignificant son Casan, who turned out to be a first-rate king. The lady wept sore at parting with the Italians. They set out for Venice, arriving in 1295 after an absence of twenty-seven years.

There is a legend that two aged men, and one of middle age, in ragged clothes, of very strange device, came knocking at the door of the Polo’s town house in Venice, and were denied admission by the family who did not know them. It was only when the travelers had unpacked their luggage, and given a banquet, that the family and their guests began to respect these vagrants. Three times during dinner the travelers retired to change their gorgeous oriental robes for others still more splendid. Was it possible that the long dead Polos had returned alive? Then the tables being cleared, Marco brought forth the dirty ragged clothes in which they had come to Venice, and with sharp knives they ripped open the seams and welts, pouring out vast numbers of rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds and emeralds, gems to the value of a million ducats. The family was entirely convinced, the public nicknamed the travelers as the millionaires, the city conferred dignities, and the two elder gentlemen spent their remaining years in peace and splendor surrounded by hosts of friends.

Three years later a sea battle was fought between the fleets of Genoa and Venice, and in the Venetian force one of the galleys was commanded by Marco Polo. There Venice was totally defeated, and Marco was one of the seven thousand prisoners carried home to grace the triumph of the Genoese. It was in prison that he met the young literary person to whom he dictated his book, not of travel, not of adventure, but a geography, a description of all Asia, its countries, peoples and wonders. Sometimes he got excited and would draw the long bow, expanding the numbers of the great khan’s armies. Sometimes his marvels were such as nobody in his senses could be expected to swallow, as for instance, when he spoke of the Tartars as burning black stones to keep them warm in winter. Yet on the whole this book, of the greatest traveler that ever lived, awakened Europe of the Dark Ages to the knowledge of that vast outer world that has mainly become the heritage of the Christian Powers.

See the Book of Sir Marco Polo, translated and edited by Colonel Sir Henry Yule. John Murray.

IV
A. D. 1322

THE MARVELOUS ADVENTURES OF SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE

“I, John Maundeville, Knight, all be it I am not worthy, that was born in England, in the town of St. Allans, passed the sea in the year of our Lord 1322 ... and hitherto have been long time on the sea, and have seen and gone through many diverse lands ... with good company of many lords. God be thankful!”

So wrote a very gentle and pious knight. His book of travels begins with the journey to Constantinople, which in his day was the seat of a Christian emperor. Beyond was the Saracen empire, whose sultans reigned in the name of the Prophet Mahomet over Asia Minor, Syria, the Holy Land and Egypt. For three hundred years Christian and Saracen had fought for the possession of Jerusalem, but now the Moslem power was stronger than ever.

Sir John Maundeville found the sultan of Babylon the Less at his capital city in Egypt, and there entered in his service as a soldier for wars against the Arab tribes of the desert. The sultan grew to love this Englishman, talked with him of affairs in Europe, urged him to turn Moslem, and offered to him the hand of a princess in marriage. But when Maundeville insisted on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, his master let him go, and granted him letters with the great seal, before which even generals and governors were obliged to prostrate themselves.

Sir John went all over Palestine, devoutly believing everything he was told. Here is his story of the Field Beflowered. “For a fair maiden was blamed with wrong, and slandered ... for which cause she was condemned to death, and to be burnt in that place, to the which she was led. And as the fire began to burn about her, she made her prayers to our Lord, that as certainly as she was not guilty of that sin, that he would help her, and make it to be known to all men of his merciful grace. And when she had thus said she entered into the fire, and anon was the fire quenched and out; and the brands which were burning became red rose trees, and the brands that were not kindled became white rose trees full of roses. And these were the first rose trees and roses, both white and red, which ever any man saw.”

All this part of his book is very beautiful concerning the holy places, and there are nice bits about incubators for chickens and the use of carrier pigeons. But it is in the regions beyond the Holy Land that Sir John’s wonderful power of believing everything that he had heard makes his chapters more and more exciting.

“In Ethiopia ... there be folk that have but one foot and they go so fast that it is a marvel. And the foot is so large that it shadoweth all the body against the sun when they will lie and rest them.”

Beyond that was the isle of Nacumera, where all the people have hounds’ heads, being reasonable and of good understanding save that they worship an ox for their god. And they all go naked save a little clout, and if they take any man in battle anon they eat him. The dog-headed king of that land is most pious, saying three hundred prayers by way of grace before meat.

Next he came to Ceylon. “In that land is full much waste, for it is full of serpents, of dragons and of cockodrills, so that no man may dwell there.

“In one of these isles be folk as of great stature as giants. And they be hideous to look upon. And they have but one eye, and that is in the middle of the forehead. And they eat nothing but raw flesh and raw fish. And in another isle towards the south dwell folk of foul stature and of cursed nature that have no heads. And their eyes be in their shoulders and their mouths be round shapen, like an horseshoe, amidst their breasts. And in another isle be men without heads, and their eyes and mouths be behind in their shoulders. And in another isle be folk that have the face all flat, all plain, without nose and without mouth. But they have two small holes, all round, instead of their eyes, and their mouth is flat also without lips. And in another isle be folk of foul fashion and shape that have the lip above the mouth so great that when they sleep in the sun they cover all the face with that lip.”

If Sir John had been untruthful he might have been here tempted to tell improbable stories, but he merely refers to these isles in passing with a few texts from the Holy Scriptures to express his entire disapproval. His chapters on the Chinese empire are a perfect model of veracity, and he merely cocks on a few noughts to the statistics. In outlying parts of Cathay he feels once more the need of a little self-indulgence. One province is covered with total and everlasting darkness, enlivened by the neighing of unseen horses and the crowing of mysterious cocks. In the next province he found a fruit, which, when ripe, is cut open, disclosing “a little beast in flesh and bone and blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool. And men eat both the fruit and the beast. And that is a great marvel. Of that fruit have I eaten, although it were wonderful, but that I know well that God is marvelous in all his works. And nevertheless I told them of as great a marvel to them, that is amongst us, and that was of the barnacle geese: for I told them that in our country were trees that bear a fruit that become birds flying, and those that fall on the water live, and they that fall on the earth die anon, and they be right good to man’s meat, and thereof had they so great marvel that some of them trowed it were an impossible thing to be.”

This mean doubt as to his veracity must have cut poor Maundeville to the quick. In his earnest way he goes on to describe the people who live entirely on the smell of wild apples, to the Amazon nation consisting solely of women warriors, and so on past many griffins, popinjays, dragons and other wild fowl to the Adamant Rocks of loadstone which draw all the iron nails out of a ship to her great inconvenience. “I myself, have seen afar off in that sea, as though it had been a great isle full of trees and bush, full of thorns and briers great plenty. And the shipmen told us that all that was of ships that were drawn thither by the Adamants, for the iron that was in them.” Beyond that Sir John reports a sea consisting of gravel, ebbing and flowing in great waves, but containing no drop of water, a most awkward place for shipping.

So far is Sir John moderate in his statements, but when he gets to the Vale Perilous at last he turns himself loose. That vale is disturbed by thunders and tempests, murmurs and noises, a great noise of “tabors, drums and trumps.” This vale is all full of devils, and hath been alway. In that vale is great plenty of gold and silver.

“Wherefore many misbelieving men and many Christian men also go in oftentime to have of the treasure that there is; but few come back again, and especially of the misbelieving men, nor of the Christian men either, for they be anon strangled of devils. And in the mid place of that vale, under a rock, is an head and the visage of a devil bodily, full horrible and dreadful to see ... for he beholdeth every man so sharply with dreadful eyes, that be evermore moving and sparkling like fire, and changeth and stareth so often in diverse manner, with so horrible countenance that no man dare draw nigh towards him. And from him cometh smoke and stink and fire, and so much abomination, that scarcely any man may there endure.

“And ye shall understand that when my fellows and I were in that vale we were in great thought whether we durst put our bodies in adventure to go in or not.... So there were with us two worthy men, friars minors, that were of Lombardy, that said that if any man would enter they would go in with us. And when they had said so upon the gracious trust of God and of them, we made sing mass, and made every man to be shriven and houseled. And then we entered fourteen persons; but at our going out we were only nine.... And thus we passed that perilous vale, and found therein gold and silver and precious stones, and rich jewels great plenty ... but whether it was as it seemed to us I wot never. For I touched none.... For I was more devout then, than ever I was before or after, and all for the dread of fiends, that I saw in diverse figures, and also for the great multitude of dead bodies, that I saw there lying by the way ... and therefore were we more devout a great deal, and yet we were cast down and beaten many times to the hard earth by winds, thunder and tempests ... and so we passed that perilous vale.... Thanked be Almighty God!

“After this beyond the vale is a great isle where the folk be great giants ... and in an isle beyond that were giants of greater stature, some of forty-five foot or fifty foot long, and as some men say of fifty cubits long. But I saw none of these, for I had no lust to go to those parts, because no man cometh neither into that isle nor into the other but he be devoured anon. And among these giants be sheep as great as oxen here, and they bear great wool and rough. Of the sheep I have seen many times ... those giants take men in the sea out of their ships and bring them to land, two in one hand and two in another, eating them going, all raw and all alive.

“Of paradise can not I speak properly, for I was not there. It is far beyond. And that grieveth me. And also I was not worthy.”

So, regretting that he had not been allowed into paradise, the hoary old liar came homeward to Rome, where he claims that the pope absolved him of all his sins, and gave him a certificate that his book was proved for true in every particular, “albeit that many men list not to give credence to anything but to that that they have seen with their eye, be the author or the person never so true.” Yet, despite these unkind doubts as to its veracity, Maundeville’s book lives after five hundred years, and ranks as the most stupendous masterpiece in the art of lying.

V
A. D. 1492

COLUMBUS

Columbus was blue-eyed, red-haired and tall, of a sunny honesty, humane and panic-proof. In other words he came of the Baltic and not of the Mediterranean stock, although his people lived in Italy and he was born in the suburbs of Genoa. By caste he was a peasant, and by trade, up to the age of twenty-eight, a weaver, except at times when his Northern blood broke loose and drove him to sea for a voyage. He made himself a scholar and a draftsman, and when at last he escaped from an exacting family, he earned his living by copying charts at Lisbon. A year later, as a navigating officer, he found his way, via the wine trade, to Bristol. There he slouched dreaming about the slums, dressed like a foreign monk. He must needs pose to himself in some ideal character, and was bound to dress the part. The artistic temperament is the mainspring of adventure.

In our own day we may compare Boston, that grand old home of the dying sailing ship, with New York, a bustling metropolis for the steam liners. In the days of Columbus Genoa was an old-fashioned, declining, but still splendid harbor of the oared galleys, while Lisbon was the up-to-date metropolis of the new square-rigged sailing ships.

From these two greatest seaports of his age, Columbus came to Bristol, the harbor of England, in the Middle Ages, of the slow, scholarly, artistic, stately English. They were building that prayer in stone, Saint Mary Redcliffe, a jewel of intricate red masonry, the setting for Portuguese stained glass which glowed like precious gems.

“In the month of February,” says Columbus, “and in the year 1477, I navigated as far as the Island of Tile (Thule is Iceland) a hundred leagues, and to this island which is as large as England, the English, especially those of Bristol, go with merchandise. And at the time that I was there the sea was not frozen over, although there were very high tides.”

Here, then, is the record of Columbus himself that in his long inquiry concerning the regions beyond the Atlantic, he actually visited Iceland. A scholar himself, he was able to converse with the learned Icelanders in Latin, the trade jargon of that age. From them he surely must have known how one hundred thirty years ago the last timber ship had come home from Nova Scotia, and twenty-nine years since, within his own lifetime, the Greenland trade had closed. The maps of the period showed the American coast as far south as the Carolines,—the current geography book was equally clear:

“From Biameland (Siberia) the country stretches as far as the desert regions in the north until Greenland begins. From Greenland lies southerly Helluland (Labrador and Newfoundland), then Markland (Nova Scotia); thence it is not far from Vinland (New England), which some believe goes out from Africa. England and Scotland are one island, yet each country is a kingdom by itself. Ireland is a large island, Iceland is also a large island north of Ireland.” Indeed Columbus seems almost to be quoting this from memory when he says of Iceland, “this island, which is as large as England.” I strongly suspect that Columbus when in Iceland, took a solemn oath not to “discover” America.

The writers of books have spent four centuries in whitewashing, retouching, dressing up and posing this figure of Columbus. The navigator was indeed a man of powerful intellect and of noble character, but they have made him seem a monumental prig as well as an insufferable bore. He is the dead and helpless victim, dehumanized by literary art until we feel that we really ought to pray for him on All Prigs’ Day in the churches.

Columbus came home from his Icelandic and Guinea expeditions with two perfectly sound ideas. “The world is a globe, so if I sail westerly I shall find Japan and the Indies.” For fifteen bitter years he became the laughing-stock of Europe.

Christopher Columbus

Now note how the historians, the biographers and the commentators, the ponderous and the mawkish, the smug and the pedantic alike all fail to see why their hero was laughed at. His name was Cristo-fero Colombo, to us a good enough label for tying to any man, but to the Italians and all educated persons of that age, a joke. The words mean literally the Christ-Carrying Dove. Suppose a modern man with some invention or a great idea, called himself Mr. Christ-Carrying Dove, and tried to get capitalists in New York or London to finance his enterprise! In the end he changed his name to Cristoval Colon and got himself financed, but by that time his hair was white, and his nerve was gone, and his health failing.

In the ninth century the vikings sailed from Norway by the great circle course north of the gulf stream. They had no compass or any instruments of navigation, and they braved the unknown currents, the uncharted reefs, the unspeakable terrors of pack-ice, berg-streams and fog on Greenland’s awful coast. They made no fuss.

But Columbus sailing in search of Japan, had one Englishman and one Irishman, the rest of the people being a pack of dagoes. In lovely weather they were ready to run away from their own shadows.

From here onward throughout the four voyages which disclosed the West Indies and the Spanish Main, Columbus allowed his men to shirk their duties, to disobey his orders, to mutiny, to desert and even to make war upon him.

Between voyages he permitted everybody from the mean king downward, to snub, swindle, plunder and defame himself and all who were loyal to him in misfortune. Because Columbus behaved like an old woman, his swindling pork contractor, Amerigo Vespucci, was allowed to give his name to the Americas. Because he had not the manhood to command, the hapless red Indians were outraged, enslaved and driven to wholesale suicide, leaping in thousands from the cliffs. For lack of a master the Spaniards performed such prodigies of cowardice and cruelty as the world has never known before or since, the native races were swept out of existence, and Spain set out upon a downward path, a moral lapse beyond all human power to arrest.

Yet looking back, how wonderful is the prophecy in that name, Christ-Carrying Dove, borne by a saintly and heroic seaman whose mission, in the end, added two continents to Christianity.

This text mainly contradicts a Life of Columbus, by Clements R. Markham, C. B. Phillip & Son, 1892.

Americus Vespuccius

VI
A. D. 1519

THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO

“Hernando Cortes spent an idle and unprofitable youth.”

So did I. And every other duffer is with me in being pleased with Cortes for setting an example. We, not the good boys, need a little encouragement.

He was seven years old when Columbus found the Indies. That was a time when boys hurried to get grown up and join the search for the Fountain of Youth, the trail to Eldorado. All who had time to sleep dreamed tremendous dreams.

Cortes became a colonist in Cuba, a sore puzzle to the rascal in command. When he clapped Cortes in irons the youngster slipped free and defied him. When he gave Cortes command of an expedition the fellow cheeked him. When he tried to arrest him the bird had flown, and was declared an outlaw.

The soldiers and seamen of the expedition were horrified by this adventurer who landed them in newly discovered Mexico, then sank the ships lest they should wish to go home. They stood in the deadly mists of the tropic plains, and far above them glowed the Star of the Sea, white Orizaba crowned with polar snows. They marched up a hill a mile and a half in sheer height through many zones of climate, and every circumstance of pain and famine to the edge of a plateau crowned by immense volcanoes, a land of plenty, densely peopled, full of opulent cities. They found that this realm was ruled by an emperor, famous for his victorious wars, able, it seemed, to place a million warriors in the field, and hungry for captives to be first sacrificed to the gods, and afterward eaten at the banquets of the nobility and gentry. The temples were actually fed with twenty thousand victims a year. The Spanish invading force of four hundred men began to feel uncomfortable.

Yet if this Cortes puzzled the governor of Cuba, and horrified his men, he paralyzed the Emperor Montezuma. Hundreds of years ago a stranger had come to Mexico from the eastern sea, a bearded man who taught the people the arts of civilized life. Then birds first sang and flowers blossomed, the fields were fruitful and the sun shone in glory upon that plateau of eternal spring. The hero, Bird-Serpent, was remembered, loved and worshiped as a god. It was known to all men that as he had gone down into the eastern sea so he would return again in later ages. Now the prophecy was fulfilled. He had come with his followers, all bearded white men out of the eastern sea in mysterious winged vessels. Bird-Serpent and his people were dressed in gleaming armor, had weapons that flashed lightning, were mounted on terrible beasts—where steel and guns and horses were unknown; and Montezuma felt as we should do if our land were invaded by winged men riding dragons. To the supernatural visitors the emperor sent embassy after embassy, loaded with treasure, begging the hero not to approach his capital.

Set in the midst of Montezuma’s empire was the poor valiant republic of Tlascala, at everlasting war with the Aztec nation. Invading this republic Cortes was met by a horde of a hundred thousand warriors, whom he thrashed in three engagements, and when they were humbled, accepted as allies against the Aztecs. Attended by an Tlascalan force he entered the ancient Aztec capital, Cholula, famed for its temple. This is a stone-faced mound of rubble, four times the size and half the height of the Great Pyramid, a forty-acre building larger by four acres than any structure yet attempted by white men.

By the emperor’s orders the Cholulans welcomed the Spaniards, trapped them within their city, and attacked them. In reply, Cortes used their temple as the scene of a public massacre, slaughtered three thousand men, and having thus explained things, marched on the City of Mexico.

In those days a salt lake, since drained, filled the central hollow of the vale of Mexico, and in the midst of it stood the city built on piles, and threaded with canals, a barbaric Venice, larger, perhaps even grander than Venice with its vast palace and gardens, and numberless mound temples whose flaming altars lighted the town at night. Three causeways crossed the lake and met just as they do to-day at the central square. Here, on the site of the mound temple, stands one of the greatest of the world’s cathedrals, and across the square are public buildings marking the site of Montezuma’s palace, and that in which he entertained the Spaniards. The white men were astonished at the zoological gardens, the aviary, the floating market gardens on the lake, the cleanliness of the streets, kept by a thousand sweepers, and a metropolitan police which numbered ten thousand men, arrangements far in advance of any city of Europe. Then, as now, the place was a great and brilliant capital.

Yet from the Spanish point of view these Aztecs were only barbarians to be conquered, and heathen cannibals doomed to hell unless they accepted the faith. To them the Cholula massacre was only a military precaution. They thought it right to seize their generous host the emperor, to hold him as a prisoner under guard, and one day even to put him in irons. For six months Montezuma reigned under Spanish orders, overwhelmed with shame. He loved his captors because they were gallant gentlemen, he freely gave them his royal treasure of gems, and gold, and brilliant feather robes. Over the plunder—a million and a half sterling in gold alone—they squabbled; clear proof to Montezuma that they were not all divine. Yet still they were friends, so he gave them all the spears and bows from his arsenal as fuel to burn some of his nobles who had affronted them.

It was at this time that the hostile governor of Cuba sent Narvaes with seventeen ships and a strong force to arrest the conqueror for rebellion. The odds were only three to one, instead of the usual hundred to one against him, so Cortes went down to the coast, gave Narvaes a thrashing, captured him, enrolled his men by way of reinforcements, and returned with a force of eleven hundred troops.

He had left his friend, Alvarado, with a hundred men to hold the capital and guard the emperor. This Alvarado, so fair that the natives called him Child of the Sun, was such a fool that he massacred six hundred unarmed nobles and gentlefolk for being pagans, violated the great temple, and so aroused the whole power of the fiercest nation on earth to a war of vengeance. Barely in time to save Alvarado, Cortes reentered the city to be besieged. Again and again the Aztecs attempted to storm the palace. The emperor in his robes of state addressed them from the ramparts, and they shot him. They seized the great temple which overlooked the palace, and this the Spaniards stormed. In face of awful losses day by day the Spaniards, starving and desperate, cleared a road through the city, and on the night of Montezuma’s death they attempted to retreat by one of the causeways leading to the mainland. Three canals cut this road, and the drawbridges had been taken away, but Cortes brought a portable bridge to span them. They crossed the first as the gigantic sobbing gong upon the heights of the temple aroused the entire city.

Heavily beset from the rear, and by thousands of men in canoes, they found that the weight of their transport had jammed the bridge which could not be removed. They filled the second gap with rocks, with their artillery and transport, with chests of gold, horses, and dead men. So they came to the third gap, no longer an army but as a flying mob of Spaniards and Tlascalan warriors bewildered in the rain and the darkness by the headlong desperation of the attacking host. They were compelled to swim, and at least fifty of the recruits were drowned by the weight of gold they refused to leave, while many were captured to be sacrificed upon the Aztec altars. Montezuma’s children were drowned, and hundreds more, while Cortes and his cavaliers, swimming their horses back and forth convoyed the column, and Alvarado with his rear guard held the causeway.

Last in the retreat, grounding his spear butt, he leaped the chasm, a feat of daring which has given a name forever to this place as Alvarado’s Leap. And just beyond, upon the mainland there is an ancient tree beneath which Cortes, as the dawn broke out, sat on the ground and cried. He had lost four hundred fifty Spaniards, and thousands of Tlascalans, his records, artillery, muskets, stores and treasure in that lost battle of the Dreadful Night.

A week later the starved and wounded force was beset by an army of two hundred thousand Aztecs. They had only their swords now, but, after long hours of fighting, Cortes himself killed the Aztec general, so by his matchless valor and leadership gaining a victory.

The rest is a tale of horror beyond telling, for, rested and reinforced, the Spaniards went back. They invested, besieged, stormed and burned the famine-stricken, pestilence-ridden capital, a city choked and heaped with the unburied dead of a most valiant nation.

Afterward, under the Spanish viceroys, Mexico was extended and enlarged to the edge of Alaska, a Christian civilized state renowned for mighty works of engineering, the splendor of her architecture, and for such inventions as the national pawn-shop, as a bank to help the poor. One of the so-called native “slaves” of the mines once wrote to the king of Spain, begging his majesty to visit Mexico and offering to make a royal road for him, paving the two hundred fifty miles from Vera Cruz to the capital with ingots of pure silver as a gift to Spain.

VII
A. D. 1532

THE CONQUEST OF PERU

Pizarro was reared for a swineherd; long years of soldiering made him no more than a captain, and when at the age of fifty he turned explorer, he discovered nothing but failure.

For seven years he and his followers suffered on trails beset by snakes and alligators, in feverish jungles haunted by man-eating savages, to be thrown at last battered, ragged and starving on the Isle of Hell. Then a ship offered them passage, but old Pizarro drew a line in the dust with his sword. “Friends,” said he, “and comrades, on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here Panama and its poverty. Choose each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south.”

Thirteen of all his people crossed the line with Pizarro, the rest deserting him, and he was seven months marooned on his desert isle in the Pacific. When the explorer’s partners at last were able to send a ship from Panama, it brought him orders to return, a failure. He did not return but took the ship to the southward, his guide the great white Andes, along a coast no longer of horrible swamps but now more populous, more civilized than Spain, by hundreds of miles on end of well-tilled farms, fair villages and rich cities where the temples were sheathed with plates of pure red gold. As in the Mexico of eight years ago, the Spaniards were welcomed as superhuman, their ship, their battered armor and their muskets accounted as possessions of strayed gods. They dined in the palaces of courtly nobles, rested in gardens curiously enriched with foliage and flowers of beaten gold and silver, and found native gentlemen eager to join them in their ship as guests. So with a shipload of wonders to illustrate this discovery they went back to Panama, and Pizarro returned home to seek in Spain the help of Charles V. There, at the emperor’s court, he met Cortes, who came to lay the wealth of conquered Mexico at his sovereign’s feet, and Charles, with a lively sense of more to come, despatched Pizarro to overthrow Peru.

Between the Eastern and the Western Andes lies a series of lofty plains and valleys, in those days irrigated and farmed by an immense civilized population. A highway, in length 1,100 miles, threaded the settlements together. The whole empire was ruled by a foreign dynasty, called the Incas, a race of fighting despots by whom the people had been more or less enslaved. The last Inca had left the northern kingdom of Quito to his younger son, the ferocious Atahuallpa, and the southern realm of Cuzco to his heir, the gentle Huascar.

These brothers fought until Atahuallpa subdued the southern kingdom, imprisoned Huascar, and reigned so far as he knew over the whole world. It was then that from outside the world came one hundred sixty-eight men of an unknown race possessed of ships, horses, armor and muskets—things very marvelous, and useful to have. The emperor invited these strangers to cross the Andes, intending, when they came, to take such blessings as the Sun might send him. The city of Caxamalca was cleared of its people, and the buildings enclosing the market place were furnished for the reception of the Spaniards.

The emperor’s main army was seven hundred miles to the southward, but the white men were appalled by the enormous host attending him in his camp, where he had halted to bathe at the hot springs, three miles from their new quarters. The Peruvian watch fires on the mountain sides were as thick as the stars of heaven.

The sun was setting next day when a procession entered the Plaza of Caxamalca, a retinue of six thousand guards, nobles, courtiers, dignitaries, surrounding the litter on which was placed the gently swaying golden throne of the young emperor.

Of all the Spaniards, only one came forward, a priest who, through an interpreter, preached, explaining from the commencement of the world the story of his faith, Saint Peter’s sovereignty, the papal office, and Pizarro’s mission to receive the homage of this barbarian. The emperor listened, amused at first, then bored, at last affronted, throwing down the book he was asked to kiss. On that a scarf waved and the Spaniards swept from their ambush, blocking the exits, charging as a wolf-pack on a sheepfold, riding the people down while they slaughtered. So great was the pressure that a wall of the courtyard fell, releasing thousands whose panic flight stampeded the Incas’ army. But the nobles had rallied about their sovereign, unarmed but with desperate valor clinging to the legs of the horses and breaking the charge of cavalry. They threw themselves in the way of the fusillades, their bodies piled in mounds, their blood flooding the pavement. Then, as the bearers fell, the golden throne was overturned, and the emperor hurried away a prisoner. Two thousand people had perished in the attempt to save him.

The history of the Mexican conquest was repeated here, and once more a captive emperor reigned under Spanish dictation.

This Atahuallpa was made of sterner stuff than Montezuma, and had his defeated brother Huascar drowned, lest the Spaniards should make use of his rival claim to the throne. The Peruvian prince had no illusions as to the divinity of the white men, saw clearly that their real religion was the adoration of gold, and in contempt offered a bribe for his freedom. Reaching the full extent of his arm to a height of nine feet, he boasted that to that level he would fill the throne room with gold as the price of his liberty, and twice he would fill the anteroom with silver. So he sent orders to every city of his empire commanding that the shrines, the temples, palaces and gardens be stripped of their gold and silver ornaments, save only the bodies of the dead kings, his fathers. Of course, the priests made haste to bury their treasures, but the Spaniards went to see the plunder collected and when they had finished no treasures were left in sight save a course of solid golden ingots in the walls of the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, and certain massive beams of silver too heavy for shipment. Still the plunder of an empire failed to reach the nine-foot line on the walls of the throne room at Caxamalca, but the soldiers were tired of waiting, especially when the goldsmiths took a month to melt the gold into ingots. So the royal fifth was shipped to the king of Spain, Pizarro’s share was set apart, a tithe was dedicated to the Church, and the remainder divided among the soldiers according to their rank, in all three and a half millions sterling by modern measurement, the greatest king’s ransom known to history. Then the emperor was tried by a mock court-martial, sentenced to death and murdered. It is comforting to note that of all who took part in that infamy not one escaped an early and a violent death.

Pizarro had been in a business partnership with the schoolmaster Luque of Panama cathedral, and with Almagro, a little fat, one-eyed adventurer, who now arrived on the scene with reinforcements. Pizarro’s brothers also came from Spain. So when the emperor’s death lashed the Peruvians to desperation, there were Spaniards enough to face odds of a hundred to one in a long series of battles, ending with the siege of the adventurers who held Cuzco against the Inca Manco for five months. The city, vast in extent, was thatched, and burned for seven days with the Spaniards in the midst. They fought in sheer despair, and the Indians with heroism, their best weapon the lasso, their main hope that of starving the garrison to death. No valor could possibly save these heroic robbers, shut off from escape or from rescue by the impenetrable rampart of the Andes. They owed their salvation to the fact that the Indians must disperse to reap their crops lest the entire nation perish of hunger, and the last of the Incas ended his life a fugitive lost in the recesses of the mountains.

Then came a civil war between the Pizarros, and Almagro, whose share of the plunder turned out to be a snowy desolation to the southward. It was not until after this squalid feud had been ended by Almagro’s execution and Pizarro’s murder, that the desolate snows were uncovered, revealing the incomparable treasures of silver Potosi, Spain’s share of the plunder.

VIII
A. D. 1534

THE CORSAIRS

In 1453 Constantinople was besieged and stormed by the Turks, the Christian emperor fell with sixty thousand of his men in battle, and the Caliph Mahomet II raised the standard of Islam over the last ruins of the Roman empire.

Four years later a sailorman, a Christian from the Balkan States, turned Moslem and was banished from the city. He married a Christian widow in Mitylene and raised two sons to his trade. At a very tender age, Uruj, the elder son, went into business as a pirate, and on his maiden cruise was chased and captured by a galley of the Knights of Saint John who threw him into the hold to be a slave at the oars. That night a slave upon the nearest oar-bench disturbed the crew by groaning, and to keep him quiet was thrown overboard. Not liking his situation or prospects, Uruj slipped his shackles, crept out and swam ashore. On his next voyage, being still extremely young, he was captured and swam ashore again. Then the sultan’s brother fitted him out as a corsair at the cost of five thousand ducats, to be paid by the basha of Egypt, and so, thanks to this act of princely generosity, Uruj was able to open a general practise. His young brother Khizr, also a pirate, joined him; the firm was protected by the sultan of Tunis who got a commission of twenty per cent. on the loot; and being steady, industrious and thrifty, by strict application to business, they made a reputation throughout the Middle Sea. Indeed the Grand Turk bestowed upon Khizr the title “Protector of Religion,” a distinction never granted before or since to any professional robber. Once after a bitter hard fight the brothers captured a first-rate ship of war, The Galley of Naples, and six lady passengers besides three hundred men were marched ashore into slavery. “See,” said the sultan of Tunis, “how Heaven recompenses the brave!” Uruj, by the way, was laid up some months for repairs, and in his next engagement, a silly attack on a fortress, happened to lose an arm as part of his recompense.

By this time the brothers were weary of that twenty per cent. commission to the unctuous sultan of Tunis, and by way of cheating him, took to besieging fortresses, or sacking towns, Christian or Moslem as the case might be, until they had base camps of their own, Uruj as king of Tlemcen, and Khizr as king of Algiers. Then Uruj fell in battle, and Khizr Barbarossa began to do business as a wholesale pirate with a branch kingdom of Tunis, and fleets to destroy all commerce, to wreck and burn settlements of the Christian powers until he had command of the sea as a first-class nuisance. The gentle Moors, most civilized of peoples, expelled from Spain (1493) by the callous ill-faith of Ferdinand and Isabella, and stranded upon North Africa to starve, manned Barbarossa’s fleets for a bloody vengeance upon Christian Europe. Then Charles V brought the strength of Spain, Germany and Italy to bear in an expedition against Barbarossa, but his fleet was wrecked by a storm, clear proof that Allah had taken sides with the strong pirate king. Barbarossa then despatched his lieutenant Hassan to ravage the coast of Valencia.

It was upon this venture that Hassan met a transport merchantman with a hundred veteran Spanish infantry, too strong to attack; so when this lieutenant returned to Algiers deep-laden with spoil and captives from his raid, he found King Barbarossa far from pleased. The prisoners were butchered, and Hassan was flogged in public for having shirked an engagement. That is why Hassan joined with Venalcadi, a brother officer who was also in disgrace, and together they drove Barbarossa out of Algeria. Presently the king came back with a whole fleet of his fellow corsairs, brother craftsmen, the Jew, and Hunt-the-Devil, Salærrez and Tabas, all moved to grief and rage by the tears of a sorely ill-treated hero. With the aid of sixty captive Spanish soldiers, who won their freedom, they captured Algiers, wiped out the mutineers, and restored the most perfect harmony. Indeed, by way of proof that there really was no trouble among the corsairs, King Barbarossa sent off Hunt-the-Devil with seventeen ships to burn Spain. Ever in blood and tears, their homes in flames, their women ravished, their very children enslaved, the Spaniards had to pay for breaking faith with the Moors of Granada.

Barbarossa was not yet altogether king of Algiers. For twenty years the Peñon, a fortress fronting that city, had been held by Martin de Vargas and his garrison. Worn out with disease and famine these Spaniards now fought Barbarossa to the last breath, but their walls went down in ruin, the breach was stormed, and all were put to the sword. De Vargas, taken prisoner, demanded the death of a Spaniard who had betrayed him. The traitor was promptly beheaded, but Barbarossa turned upon De Vargas. “You and yours,” he said, “have caused me too much trouble,” and he again signed to the headsman. So De Vargas fell.

Terrible was the rage of Charles V, emperor of half Europe, thus defied and insulted by the atrocious corsair. It was then that he engaged the services of Andrea Doria, the greatest Christian admiral of that age, for war against Barbarossa. And at the same time the commander of the faithful, Suleiman the Magnificent, sent for King Barbarossa to command the Turkish fleet.

He came, with gifts for the calif: two hundred women bearing presents of gold or silver; one hundred camels laden with silks and gold; then lions and other strange beasts; and more loads of brocades, or rich garments, all in procession through Constantinople, preceding the pirate king on his road to the palace. The sultan gave him not only a big fleet, but also vice-regal powers to make war or peace. Next summer (1534) eleven thousand Christian slaves, and a long procession of ships loaded with the plunder of smoking Italy were sent to the Golden Horn. Incidentally, Barbarossa seized the kingdom of Tunis for himself, and slaughtered three thousand of the faithful, just to encourage the rest.

It was to avenge the banished King Hassan, and these poor slaughtered citizens that the Emperor Charles V, attended by his admiral, Andrea Doria, came with an army and a mighty fleet to Tunis.

He drove out Barbarossa, a penniless, discredited fugitive; and his soldiers slaughtered thirty thousand citizens of Tunis to console them for the pirate’s late atrocities.

Poor old Barbarossa, past seventy years of age, had lost a horde of fifty thousand men, his kingdom of Tunis, fleet and arsenal; but he still had fifteen galleys left at Bona, his kingdom of Algiers to fall back upon, and his Moorish seamen, who had no trade to win them honest bread except as pirates. “Cheer up,” said he, to these broken starving men, and after a little holiday they sacked the Balearic Isles taking five thousand, seven hundred slaves, and any amount of shipping. Then came the building of a Turkish fleet; and with one hundred twenty sail, Barbarossa went to his last culminating triumph, the defeat of Andrea Doria, who had at Prevesa one hundred ninety-five ships, sixty thousand men, and two thousand, five hundred ninety-four guns. With that victory he retired, and after eight years of peace, he died in his bed, full of years and honors. For centuries to come all Turkish ships saluted with their guns, and dipped their colors whenever they passed the grave of the King of the Sea.

Sea Wolves of the Mediterranean, Commander E. Hamilton Currey, R.N. John Murray.

IX
A. D. 1542

PORTUGAL IN THE INDIES

It was Italian trade that bought and paid for the designs of Raphael, the temples of Michelangelo, the sculptures of Cellini, the inventions of Da Vinci, for all the wonders, the glories, the splendors of inspired Italy. And it was not good for the Italian trade that Barbarossa, and the corsairs of three centuries in his wake, beggared the merchants and enslaved their seamen. But Italian commerce had its source in the Indian Seas, and the ruin of Italy began when the sea adventures of Portugal rounded the Cape of Good Hope to rob, to trade, to govern and convert at the old centers of Arabian business.

Poverty is the mother of labor, labor the parent of wealth and genius. It is the poverty of Attica, and the Roman swamps, of sterile Scotland, boggy Ireland, swampy Holland, stony New England, which drove them to high endeavor and great reward. Portugal, too, had that advantage of being small and poor, without resources, or any motive to keep the folk at home. So the fishermen took to trading and exploration led by Cao who found the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama who smelt out the way to India, Almeida who gained command of the Indian Seas, Cabral who discovered Brazil, Albuquerque who, seizing Goa and Malacca, established a Christian empire in the Indies, and Magellan, who showed Spain the way to the Pacific.

Of these the typical man was Da Gama, a noble with the motives of a crusader and the habits of a pirate, who once set fire to a shipload of Arab pilgrims, and watched unmoved while the women on her blazing deck held out little babies in the vain hope of mercy. On his first voyage he came to Calicut, a center of Hindu civilization, a seat of Arab commerce, and to the rajah sent a present of washing basins, casks of oil, a few strings of coral, fit illustration of the poverty of his brave country, accepted as a joke in polished, wealthy, weary India. The king gave him leave to trade, but seized the poor trade goods until the Portuguese ships had been ransacked for two hundred twenty-three pounds in gold to pay the customs duties. The point of the joke was only realized when on his second voyage Da Gama came with a fleet, bombarded Calicut, and loaded his ships with spices, leaving a trail of blood and ashes along the Indian coast. Twenty years later he came a third time, but now as viceroy to the Portuguese Indies. Portugal was no longer poor, but the richest state in Europe, bleeding herself to death to find the men for her ventures.

Now these arrogant and ferocious officials, military robbers, fishermen turned corsairs, and ravenous traders taught the whole East to hate and fear the Christ. And then came a tiny little monk no more than five feet high, a white-haired, blue-eyed mendicant, who begged the rice he lived on. Yet so sweet was his temper, so magical the charm, so supernatural the valor of this barefoot monk that the children worshiped him, the lepers came to him to be healed, and the pirates were proud to have him as their guest. He was a gentleman, a Spanish Basque, by name Francis de Xavier, and in the University of Paris had been a fellow student with the reformer Calvin, then a friend and follower of Ignatius de Loyola, helping him to found the Society of Jesus. Xavier came to the Indies in 1542 as a Jesuit priest.

Once on a sea voyage Xavier stood for some time watching a soldier at cards, who gambled away all his money and then a large sum which had been entrusted to his care. When the soldier was in tears and threatening suicide, Xavier borrowed for him the sum of one shilling twopence, shuffled and dealt for him, and watched him win back all that he had lost. At that point Saint Francis set to work to save the soldier’s soul, but this disreputable story is not shown in the official record of his miracles.

From his own letters one sees how the heathen puzzled this little saint, “‘Was God black or white?’ For as there is so great variety of color among man, and the Indians are themselves black, they esteem their own color most highly, and hold that their gods are also black.”

He does not say how he answered, indeed it was hardly by words that this hidalgo of Spain preached in the many languages he could never learn. Once when his converts were threatened by a hostile army he went alone to challenge the invaders, and with uplifted crucifix rebuked them in the name of God. The front ranks wavered and halted. Their comrades and leaders vainly pressed them to advance, but no man dared pass the black-robed figure which barred the way, and presently the whole force retreated.

Once in the Spice Islands while he was saying mass on the feast of the Archangel Saint Michael a tremendous earthquake scattered the congregation. The priest held up the shaking altar and went on with mass, while, as he says, “Perhaps Saint Michael, by his heavenly power, was driving into the depths of hell all the wicked spirits of the country who were opposing the worship of the true God.”

Such was the apostle of the Indies, and it is a pleasant thing to trace the story of his mission in Japan in the Peregrination, a book by a thorough rogue.

Fernão Mendes Pinto was a distant relative of Ananias. He sailed for India in 1537 “meanly accommodated.” At Diu he joined an expedition to watch the Turkish fleet in the Red Sea, and from Massawa was sent with letters to the king of Abyssinia. That was great luck, because the very black and more or less Christian kingdom was supposed to be the seat of the legendary, immortal, shadowy, Prester John. On his way back to Massawa the adventurer was wrecked, captured by Arabs, sold into slavery, bought by a Jew, and resold in the commercial city of Ormus where there were Christian buyers. He found his way to Goa, the capital of the Portuguese Indies, thence to Malacca, where he got a job as political agent in Sumatra. With this ended the dull period of his travels.

Francis Xavier

In those days there were ships manned by Portuguese rogues very good in port, but unpleasant to meet with at sea. They were armed with cannon, pots of wild fire, unslaked lime to be flung in the Chinese manner, stones, javelins, arrows, half-pikes, axes and grappling irons, all used to collect toll from Chinese, Malay, or even Arab merchants. Pinto found that this life suited him, and long afterward, writing as a penitent sinner, described the fun of torturing old men and children: “Made their brains fly out of their heads with a cord” or looked on while the victims died raving “like mad dogs.” It was great sport to surprise some junk at anchor, and fling pots of gunpowder among the sleeping crew, then watch them dive and drown. “The captain of one such junk was ‘a notorious Pyrat,’ and Pinto complacently draws the moral ‘Thus you see how it pleased God, out of His Divine justice to make the arrogant confidence of this cursed dog a means to chastise him for his cruelties.’”

So Christians set an example to the heathen.

Antonio de Faria, Pinto’s captain, had vowed to wipe out Kwaja Hussain, a Moslem corsair from Gujerat in Western India. In search of Hussain he had many adventures in the China seas, capturing pirate crews, dashing out their brains, and collecting amber, gold and pearls. Off Hainan he so frightened the local buccaneers that they proclaimed him their king and arranged to pay him tribute.

Luckily for them Faria’s ship was cast away upon a desert island. The crew found a deer which had been left by a tiger, half eaten; their shouts would scare the gulls as they flew overhead, so that the birds dropped such fish as they had captured; and then by good luck they discovered a Chinese junk whose people, going ashore, had left her in charge of an old man and a child. Amid the clamors of the Chinese owners Faria made off with this junk. He was soon at the head of a new expedition in quest of that wicked pirate, Kwaja Hussain. This ambition was fulfilled, and with holds full of plunder the virtuous Faria put into Liampo. Back among the Christians he had a royal welcome, but actually blushed when a sermon was preached in his honor. The preacher waxed too eloquent, “whereupon some of his friends plucked him three or four times by the surplice, for to make him give over.” It seems that even godly Christian pirates have some sense of humor.

Once in the Malay states, Pinto and a friend of his, a Moslem, were asked to dine with a bigwig, also a True Believer. At dinner they spoke evil about the local rajah, who got wind of the slander. Pinto watched both of these Moslem gentlemen having their feet sawn off, then their hands, and finally their heads. As for himself, he talked about his rich relations, claiming Dom Pedro de Faria, a very powerful noble, as his uncle. He said the factor had embezzled his uncle’s money and fully deserved his fate. “All this,” says Pinto, “was extemporized on the spur of the moment, not knowing well what I said.” The liar got off.

Pinto’s career as a pirate ended in shipwreck, capture, slavery and a journey in China where he was put to work on the repairing of the Great Wall. He was at a city called Quinsay in 1544 when Altan Khan, king of the Tumeds—a Mongolian horde—swept down out of the deserts.

The Mongols sacked Quinsay, and Pinto as a prisoner was brought before Altan Khan who was besieging Pekin. When the siege was raised he accompanied the Mongol army on its retreat into the heart of Asia. In time he found favor with his masters and was allowed to accompany an embassy to Cochin China. On this journey he saw some cannon with iron breeches and wooden muzzles made, he was told, by certain Almains (Germans) who came out of Muscovy (Russia), and had been banished by the king of Denmark. Then comes Pinto’s account of Tibet, of Lhasa, and the Grand Lama, and so to Cochin China, and the sea. If it is true, Pinto made a very great journey, and he claims to have been afterward with Xavier in Japan. In the end he returned to Lisbon after twenty-one years of adventure in which he was five times shipwrecked, and seventeen times sold as a slave.

It is disheartening to have so little space for the great world of Portuguese adventure in the Indies, where Camoens, one of the world’s great poets, wrote the immortal Lusiads.

However ferocious, these Portuguese adventurers were loyal, brave and strong. They opened the way of Europe to the East Indies, they Christianized and civilized Brazil. Once, at sea, a Portuguese lady spoke to me of England’s good-humored galling disdain toward her people. “Ah, you English!” she cried. “What you are, we were once! what we are, you will be!”

Vasco da Gama and his Successors, by K. G. Jayne. Methuen.

X
A. D. 1841

RAJAH BROOKE

Borneo is a hot forest about five hundred miles long, and as wide, inhabited by connoisseurs called Dyaks, keen collectors. They collect human heads and some of their pieces are said to be very valuable. They are a happy little folk with most amusing manners and customs. Here is their ritual for burial of the dead:

“When a man dies his friends and relations meet in the house and take their usual seats around the room. The deceased is then brought in attired in his best clothes, with a cigar fixed in his mouth; and, being placed on the mat in the same manner as when alive, his betel box is set by his side. The friends go through the form of conversing with him, and offer him the best advice concerning his future proceedings, and then, having feasted, the body is deposited in a large coffin and kept in the house for several months.”

The habits of the natives have been interfered with by the Malays, who conquered most of them and carved their island up into kingdoms more or less civilized, but not managed at all in the interests of the Dyaks. These kingdoms were decayed and tumbling to pieces when the Dutch came in to help, and helped themselves to the whole of Borneo except the northwestern part. They pressingly invited themselves there also, but the Malay rajah kept putting them off with all sorts of polite excuses.

While the rajah’s minister was running short of excuses to delay the Dutch an English yacht arrived in Sarawak. The owner was Mr. James Brooke, who had been an officer in the East India Company, but being hit with a slug in the lungs during the first Burma war, was retired with a pension of seventy pounds for wounds. Afterward he came into a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, took to yachting, traveled a great deal in search of adventure, and so in 1839 arrived in Sarawak on the lookout for trouble.

An Englishman of gentle birth is naturally expected to tell the truth, to be clean in all his dealings, to keep his temper, and not to show his fears. Not being a beastly cad, Brooke as a matter of course conformed to the ordinary standards and, having no worries, was able to do so cheerfully. One may meet men of this stock, size and pattern by thousands the world over, but in a decayed Malay state, at war with the Dyaks ashore and the pirates afloat, Brooke was a phenomenon just as astonishing as a first-class comet, an earthquake eruption, or a cyclone. His arrival was the only important event in the whole history of North Borneo. The rajah sought his advice in dealing with the Dutch, the Dyaks and the pirates. The Malays, Dyaks, pirates and everybody else consulted him as to their dealings with the rajah. On his second visit he took a boat’s crew from his yacht and went to the seat of war. There he tried to the verge of tears to persuade the hostile forces either to fight or make friends, and when nobody could be induced to do anything at all, he, with his boat’s crew and one native warrior, stormed the Dyak position, putting the enemy to total rout and flight. Luckily, nobody was hurt, for even a cut finger would have spoiled the perfect bloodlessness of Brooke’s victory. Then the Dyaks surrendered to Brooke. Afterward the pirate fleet appeared at the capital, not to attack the rajah, but to be inspected by Brooke, and when he had patted the pirates they went away to purr. Moreover the rajah offered to hand over his kingdom to Brooke as manager, and the Englishman expected him to keep his word. Brooke brought a shipload of stores in payment for a cargo of manganese, but the rajah was so contented with that windfall that he forgot to send to his mines for the ore.

Further up the coast a British ship was destroyed by lightning, and her crew got ashore where they were held as captives pending a large ransom. Even when the captain’s wife had a baby the local bigwig thereabouts saw a new chance of plunder, and stole the baby-clothes. Then the shipwrecked mariners sent a letter to Brooke appealing for his help; but nothing on earth could induce the spineless boneless rajah to send the relief he had promised. Then Brooke wrote to Singapore whence the East India Company despatched a war-ship which rescued the forty castaways.

The rajah’s next performance was to arrange for a percentage with two thousand, five hundred robbers who proposed to plunder and massacre his own subjects. Brooke from his yacht stampeded the raiders with a few rounds from the big guns—blank of course. Brooke was getting rather hard up, and could not spare ball ammunition on weekdays.

So King Muda Hassim lied, cheated, stole, betrayed, and occasionally murdered—a mean rogue, abject, cringing to Brooke, weeping at the Englishman’s threats to depart, holding his throne so long as the white yacht gave him prestige; but all this with pomp and circumstance, display of gems and gold, a gorgeous retinue, plenty of music, and royal salutes on the very slightest pretext. But all the population was given over to rapine and slaughter, and the forest was closing in on ruined farms. The last and only hope of the nation was in Brooke.

Behind every evil in the state was Makota, the prime minister, a polite and gentlemanly rascal, and at the end of two years he annoyed Brooke quite seriously by putting arsenic in the interpreter’s rice. Brooke cleared his ship for action, and with a landing party under arms marched to the palace gates. In a few well-chosen words he explained Makota’s villainy, showed that neither the rajah’s life nor his own was safe, and that the only course was to proclaim Brooke as governor.

No shot was fired, no blow was struck, but Makota’s party vanished, the villain fled, the rajah began to behave, the government of the country was handed over to the Englishman amid great popular rejoicings. “My darling mother,” he wrote, “I am very poor, but I want some things from home very much; so I must trust to your being rich enough to afford them to me. Imprimis, a circle for taking the latitude; secondly, an electrifying machine of good power; thirdly, a large magic lantern; fourthly, a rifle which carries fifty balls; and last, a peep-show. The circle and rifle I want very much; and the others are all for political purposes.” Did ever king begin his reign with such an act as that letter?

But then, look at the government he replaced: “The sultan and his chiefs rob all classes of Malays to the utmost of their power; the Malays rob the Dyaks, and the Dyaks hide their goods as much as they dare, consistent with the safety of their wives and children.” Brooke found his private income a very slender fund when he had to pay the whole expense of governing a kingdom until the people recovered from their ruin.

February the first, 1842, a pirate chief called to make treaty with the new king. “He inquired, if a tribe pirated on my territory what I intended to do. My answer was ‘to enter their country and lay it waste.’ ‘But,’ he asked me again, ‘you will give me—your friend—leave to steal a few heads occasionally?’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I shall have a hundred Sakarran heads for every one you take here!’ He recurred to this request several times—‘just to steal one or two’-as a schoolboy asks for apples.”

Brooke used to give the pirates his laughing permission to go to Singapore and attack the English.

Sir James Brooke

“The Santah River,” he wrote, “is famous for its diamonds. The workers seem jealous and superstitious, disliking noise, particularly laughter, as it is highly offensive to the spirit who presides over the diamonds.... A Chinese Mohammedan with the most solemn face requested me to give him an old letter; and he engraved some Chinese characters, which, being translated signify ‘Rajah Muda Hassim, James Brooke, and Hadju Ibrahim present their compliments to the spirit and request his permission to work at the mine.’”

There were great doings when the sultan of Borneo had Mr. Brooke proclaimed king in Sarawak. Then he went off to the Straits Settlements, where he made friends with Henry Keppel, captain of H. M. S. Dido, a sportsman who delighted in hunting pirates, and accepted Brooke’s invitation to a few days’ shooting. Keppel describes the scene of Brooke’s return to his kingdom, received by all the chiefs with undisguised delight, mingled with gratitude and respect for their newly-elected ruler. “The scene was both novel and exciting, presenting to us—just anchored in a large fresh water river, and surrounded by a densely wooded jungle—the whole surface of the water covered with canoes and boats dressed with colored silken flags, filled with natives beating their tom-toms, and playing on wind instruments, with the occasional discharge of firearms. To them it must have been equally striking to witness the Dido anchored almost in the center of their town, her mastheads towering above the highest trees of that jungle, the loud report of her heavy thirty-two-pounder guns, the manning aloft to furl sails of one hundred fifty seamen in their clean white dresses, and with the band playing. I was anxious that Mr. Brooke should land with all the honors due to so important a personage, which he accordingly did, under a salute.”

It was a little awkward that the Dido struck a rock and sank, but she chose a convenient spot just opposite Mr. Brooke’s house, so that Brooke’s officers and those of the ship formed one mess there, a band of brothers, while the damage was being repaired. Then came the promised sport, a joint boat expedition up all sorts of queer back channels and rivers fouled by the pirates with stakes and booms under fire of the artillery in their hill fortresses. The sportsmen burst the booms, charged the hills, stormed the forts, burned out the pirates and obtained their complete submission. Brooke invited them all to a pirate conference at his house and, just as with the land rogues, charmed them out of their skins. He fought like a man, but his greatest victories were scored by perfect manners.

The next adventure was a visit from the Arctic explorer, Sir Edward Belcher, sent by the British government to inspect Brooke’s kingdom, now a peaceful and happy country.

Later came Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane with a squadron to smash up a few more pirates, and the smashing of pirates continued for many years a popular sport for the navy. The pirate states to the northward became in time the British colonies of Labuan, and North Borneo, but Sarawak is still a protected Malay state, the hereditary kingdom of Sir James Brooke and his descendants. May that dynasty reign so long as the sun shines.

XI
A. D. 1842

THE SPIES

I

From earliest childhood Eldred Pottinger was out of place in crowded England. Gunpowder is good exciting stuff to play with, and there could be no objection to his blowing up himself and his little brother, because that was all in the family; but when he mined the garden wall and it fell on a couple of neighbors, they highly took offense; and when his finely invented bomb went off at Addiscombe College he rose to the level of a public nuisance. On the whole it must have been a relief to his friends when he went to India. There he had an uncle, the president in Scinde, a shrewd man who shipped young Pottinger to the greatest possible distance in the hinder parts of Afghanistan.

The political situation in Afghanistan was the usual howling chaos of oriental kingdoms, and the full particulars would bore the reader just as they bored me. It was Pottinger’s business to find out and report the exact state of affairs at a time when any white man visiting the country was guaranteed, if and when found, to have his throat cut. Being clever at native languages, with a very foxy shrewdness, the young spy set off, disguised as a native horse dealer, and reached Cabul, the Afghan capital.

The reigning ameer was Dost Mahomet, who was not on speaking terms with Kamran, king of Herat, and Pottinger’s job was to get through to Herat without being caught by Dost. The horse-copper disguise was useless now, so Pottinger became a Mahomedan syed, or professional holy man. He sent his attendants and horses ahead, slipped out of the capital on foot by night and made his way to his camp. So he reached the country of the Hazareh tribes where his whole expedition was captured by the principal robber Jakoob Beg, who did a fairly good business in selling travelers, as slaves, except when they paid blackmail. “The chief,” says Pottinger, “was the finest Hazareh I had seen, and appeared a well-meaning, sensible person. He, however, was quite in the hands of his cousin—an ill-favored, sullen and treacherous-looking rascal. I, by way of covering my silence, and to avoid much questioning, took to my beads and kept telling them with great perseverance, much to the increase of my reputation as a holy personage.”

The trouble was that Pottinger and his devout followers were of the Sounee faith, whereas the robber castle was of the Sheeah persuasion. The difference was something like that between our Catholics and Protestants, and Pottinger was like a Methodist minister trying to pass himself off for a cardinal without knowing the little points of etiquette. The prisoners prompted one another into all sorts of ridiculous blunders, so that the ill-favored cousin suspected Pottinger of being a fraud. “Why he may be a Feringhee himself,” said the cousin. “I have always heard that the Hindustanees are black, and this man is fairer than we are.” But then the Feringhees—the British—were supposed to be monsters, and Pottinger was in no way monstrous to look at, so that he managed to talk round the corner, and at the end of a week ransomed his party with the gift of a fine gun to the chief. They set off very blithely into the mountains, but had not gone far when the chief’s riders came romping in pursuit, and herded them back, presumably to have their throats cut according to local manners and customs. The chief, it turned out, had been unable to make the gun go off, but finding it worked all right if handled properly dismissed the spy with his blessing. Eighteen days’ journey brought him to Herat, where he felt perfectly safe, strolling unarmed in the country outside the walls, until a gang of slave catchers made him an easy prey. His follower, Synd Ahmed, scared them off by shouting to an imaginary escort.

Shah Kamran with his vizier Yar Mahomed had been out of town, but on their return to Herat, Pottinger introduced himself to the king as a British officer, and his gift of a brace of pistols was graciously accepted.

Not long afterward a Persian army came up against Herat, and with that force there were Russian officers. For once the Heratis could look for no help from Afghanistan; and for once this mighty fortress, the key to the gates of India, was guarded by a cur. If Herat fell the way was open for Russia, the ancient road to India of all the conquerors. There is the reason why the British had sent a spy to Herat.

The Heratis were quick to seek the advice of the British officer who organized the defense and in the end took charge, the one competent man in the garrison. Shah Kamran sent him with a flag of truce to the Persian army. The Persian soldiers hailed him with rapture, thinking they would soon get home to their wives and families; they patted his legs, they caressed his horse, they shouted “Bravo! Bravo! Welcome! The English were always friends of the king of kings!”

So Pottinger was brought before the shah of Persia, who would accept no terms except surrender, which the Englishman ridiculed. He went back to the city, and the siege went on for months.

A shell burst the house next door to his quarters, but he took no harm. One day he leaned against a loophole in the ramparts, watching a Persian attempt to spring a mine, and as he moved away his place was taken by a eunuch who at once got a ball in the lungs. He had narrow escapes without end.

At the end of six months, June twenty-fourth, 1838, the Persians tried to carry the place by assault. “At four points the assault was repulsed, but at the fifth point the storming column threw itself into the trench of the lower fausse-braye. The struggle was brief but bloody. The defenders fell at their posts to a man, and the work was carried by the besiegers. Encouraged by this first success, the storming party pushed on up the slope, but a galling fire from the garrison met them as they advanced. The officers and men of the column were mown down; there was a second brief and bloody struggle, and the upper fausse-braye was carried, while a few of the most daring of the assailants, pushing on in advance of their comrades, gained the head of the breach. But now Deen Mahomed came down with the Afghan reserve, and thus recruited the defenders gathered new heart, so that the Persians in the breach were driven back. Again and again with desperate courage they struggled to effect a lodgment, only to be repulsed and thrown back in confusion upon their comrades, who were pressing on behind. The conflict was fierce, the issue doubtful. Now the breach was well-nigh carried; and now the stormers, recoiling from the shock of the defense, fell back upon the exterior slope of the fausse-braye.

“Startled by the noise of the assault Yar Mahomed (the vizier) had risen up, left his quarters, and ridden down to the works. Pottinger went forth at the same time and on the same errand. Giving instructions to his dependents to be carried out in the event of his falling in the defense, he hastened to join the vizier.... As they neared the point of the attack the garrison were seen retreating by twos and threes; others were quitting the works on the pretext of carrying off the wounded.... Pottinger was eager to push on to the breach; Yar Mahomed sat himself down. The vizier had lost heart; his wonted high courage and collectedness had deserted him. Astonished and indignant ... the English officer called upon the vizier again and again to rouse himself. The Afghan chief rose up and advanced further into the works, and neared the breach where the conflict was raging.... Yar Mahomed called upon his men in God’s name to fight; but they wavered and stood still. Then his heart failed him again. He turned back, said he would go for aid.... Alarmed by the backwardness of their chief the men were now retreating in every direction.” Pottinger swore.

Yar roused himself, again advanced, but again wavered, and a third time Pottinger by word and deed put him to shame. “He reviled, he threatened, he seized him by the arm and dragged him forward to the breach.” Now comes the fun, and we can forsake the tedious language of the official version. Yar, hounded to desperation by Pottinger, seized a staff, rushed like a wildcat on the retreating soldiers, and so horrified them that they bolted back over the breach down the outside into the face of the Persians. And the Persians fled! Herat was saved.

An envoy came from the Persian army to explain that it was infamous of the Shah Kamran to have an infidel in charge of the defense. “Give him up,” said the Persians, “and we’ll raise the siege.” But the shah was not in a position to surrender Pottinger. That gentleman might take it into his head to surrender the shah of Herat.

Another six months of siege, with famine, mutiny and all the usual worries of beleaguered towns finished Pottinger’s work, the saving of Herat.

II

Now we take up the life of another spy, also an army officer, old Alexander Burnes. At eighteen he had been adjutant of his regiment and rose very steadily from rank to rank until he was sent as an envoy to Runjeet Singh, the ruler of Punjab, and to the ameers of Scinde. In those days Northwestern India was an unknown region and Burnes was pioneer of the British power.

In 1832 he set out on his second mission through Afghanistan, Bokhara and Persia. See how he wrote from Cabul: “I do not despair of reaching Istamboul (Constantinople) in safety. They may seize me and sell me for a slave, but no one will attack me for my riches.... I have no tent, no chair or table, no bed, and my clothes altogether amount to the value of one pound sterling. You would disown your son if you saw him. My dress is purely Asiatic, and since I came into Cabul has been changed to that of the lowest orders of the people. My head is shaved of its brown locks, and my beard dyed black grieves ... for the departed beauty of youth. I now eat my meals with my hands, and greasy digits they are, though I must say in justification, that I wash before and after meals.... I frequently sleep under a tree, but if a villager will take compassion on me I enter his house. I never conceal that I am a European, and I have as yet found the character advantageous to my comfort. The people know me by the name of Sekunder, which is the Persian for Alexander.... With all my assumed poverty I have a bag of ducats round my waist, and bills for as much money as I choose to draw.... When I go into company I put my hand on my heart, and say with all humility to the master of the house, ‘Peace be unto thee,’ according to custom, and then I squat myself down on the ground. This familiarity has given me an insight into the character of the people ... kind-hearted and hospitable, they have no prejudices against a Christian and none against our nation. When they ask me if I eat pork, I of course shudder, and say that it is only outcasts that commit such outrages. God forgive me! for I am very fond of bacon.... I am well mounted on a good horse in case I should find it necessary to take to my heels. My whole baggage on earth goes on one mule, which my servant sits supercargo.... I never was in better spirits.”

After his wonderful journey Burnes was sent to England to make his report to the government, and King William IV must needs hear the whole of the story at Brighton pavilion.

The third journey of this great spy was called the commercial mission to Cabul. There he learned that the Persian siege of Herat was being more or less conducted by Russian officers. Russians swarmed at the court of Dost Mahomed, and an ambassador from the czar was there trying to make a treaty.

Great was the indignation and alarm in British India, and for fear of a Russian invasion in panic haste the government made a big famous blunder, for without waiting to know how Dost was fooling the Russians, an army was sent through the terrible Bolan Pass. That sixty-mile abyss with hanging walls belongs to the Pathans, the fiercest and wildest of all the tribes of men. The army climbed through the death trap, marched, starving, on from Quetta to Candahar and then advanced on Cabul. But Dost’s son Akbar held the great fortress of Ghuznee, a quite impregnable place that had to be taken.

One night while a sham attack was made on the other side of the fortress, Captain Thomson placed nine hundred pounds of gunpowder at the foot of a walled-up gate, and then touched off the charge. The twenty-first light infantry climbed over the smoking ruins and at the head of his storming column Colonel Dennie, in three hours’ fighting, took the citadel. Dost Mahomed fled, and the British entered Cabul to put a puppet sovereign on the throne.

Cabul was a live volcano where English women gave dances. There were cricket matches, theatricals, sports. The governor-general in camp gave a state dinner in honor of Major Pottinger, who had come in from the siege of Herat. During the reception of the guests a shabby Afghan watched, leaning against a door-post, and the court officials were about to remove this intruder when the governor-general approached leading his sister. “Let me present you,” said Lord Auckland, “to Eldred Pottinger, the hero of Herat.” This shabby Afghan was the guest of honor, but nobody would listen to his warnings, or to the warnings of Sir Alexander Burnes, assistant resident. Only the two spies knew what was to come. Then the volcano blew up.

Burnes had a brother staying with him in Cabul, also his military secretary; and when the mob, savage, excited, bent on massacre, swarmed round his house he spoke to them from the balcony. While he talked Lieutenant Broadfoot fell at his side, struck by a ball in the chest. The stables were on fire, the mob filled his garden. He offered to pay then in cash for his brother’s life and his own, so a Cashmiri volunteered to save them in disguise. They put on native clothes, they slipped into the garden, and then their guide shouted, “This is Sekunder Burnes!” The two brothers were cut to pieces.

Pottinger was political agent at Kohistan to the northward, and when the whole Afghan nation rose in revolt his fort was so sorely beset that he and his retinue stole away in the dark, joining a Ghoorka regiment. But the regiment was also beset, and its water supply cut off. Pottinger fought the guns; the men repelled attacks by night and day until worn out; dying of thirst in an intolerable agony the regiment broke, scattering into the hills. Only a few men rallied round Pottinger to fight through to Cabul, and he was fearfully wounded, unable to command. Of his staff and the Ghoorka regiment only five men were alive when they entered Cabul.

Our officer commanding at Cabul was not in good health, but his death was unfortunately delayed while the Afghans murdered men, women and children, and the British troops, for lack of a leader, funked. Envoys waited on Akbar Khan, and were murdered. The few officers who kept their heads were without authority, blocked at every turn by cowards, by incompetents. Then the council of war made treaty with Akbar, giving him all the guns except six, all the treasure, three officers as hostages, bills drawn on India for forty thousand rupees, the honor of their country, everything for safe conduct in their disgrace. Dying of cold and hunger, the force marched into the Khoord-Cabul Pass, and at the end of three days the married officers were surrendered with their wives and children. Of the sixteen thousand men three-fourths were dead when the officer commanding and the gallant Brigadier Skelton were given up as hostages to Akbar. The survivors pushed on through the Jugduluk Pass, which the Afghans had barricaded, and there was the final massacre. Of the whole army, one man, Doctor Brydon, on a starved pony, sinking with exhaustion, rode in through the gates of Fort Jellalabad.

The captured general had sent orders for the retreat of the Jellalabad garrison through the awful defiles of the Khyber Pass in face of a hostile army, and in the dead of winter; but General Sale, commanding, was not such a fool. For three months he had worked his men to desperation rebuilding the fortress, and now when he saw the white tents of Akbar’s camp he was prepared for a siege. That day an earthquake razed the whole fortress into a heap of ruins, but the garrison rebuilt the walls. Then they sallied and, led by Henry Havelock, assaulted Akbar’s camp, smashed his army to flying fragments, captured his guns, baggage, standards, ammunition and food. Nine days later the bands of the garrison marched out to meet a relieving army from India. They were playing an old tune, Oh, but ye’ve been lang o’ comin’.

Meanwhile the British prisoners, well treated, were hurried from fort to fort, with some idea of holding them for sale at so much a slave, until they managed to bribe an Afghan chief. The bribed man led a revolt against Akbar, and one chief after another joined him, swearing on the Koran allegiance to Eldred Pottinger. When Akbar fell, Pottinger marched as leader of the revolted chiefs on the way to Cabul. One day, as the ladies and children were resting in an old fort for shelter during the great heat of the afternoon, they heard the tramp of horsemen, and in the dead silence of a joy and gratitude too great for utterance, received the relieving force.

XII
A. D. 1842

A YEAR’S ADVENTURES

A thousand adventures are taking place every day, all at once in the several continents and the many seas. A few are reported, many are noted in the private journals of adventurers, most of them are just taken as a matter of course in the day’s work, but nobody has ever attempted to make a picture of all the world’s adventures for a day or a year.

Let us make magic. Any date will do, or any year. Here for instance is a date—the twelfth of September, 1842—that will serve our purpose as well as any other.

In Afghanistan a British force of twenty-six thousand people had perished, an army of vengeance had marched to the rescue of Major Pottinger, Lady Sale, Lady McNaughton and other captives held by the Afghan chiefs. On September twelfth they were rescued.

In China the people had refused to buy our Indian opium, so we carefully and methodically bombarded all Chinese seaports until she consented to open them to foreign trade. Then Major Pottinger’s uncle, Sir Henry, made a treaty which the Chinese emperor signed on September eighth.

In the Malacca Straits Captain Henry Keppel of H. M. S. Dido was busy smashing up pirates.

In Tahiti poor little Queen Pomaré, being in childbed, was so bullied by the French admiral that she surrendered her kingdom to France on September ninth. Next morning her child was born, but her kingdom was gone forever.

In South Africa Captain Smith made a disgraceful attack upon the Boers at Port Natal, and on June twenty-sixth they got a tremendous thrashing which put an end to the republic of Natalia. In September they began to settle down as British subjects, not at all content.

Norfolk Island is a scrap of paradise, about six miles by four, lying nine hundred miles from Sydney, in Australia. In 1842 it was a convict settlement, and on June twenty-first the brig Governor Philip was to sail for Sydney, having landed her stores at the island. During the night she stood off and on, and two prisoners coming on deck at dawn for a breath of air noticed that discipline seemed slack, although a couple of drowsy sentries guarded their hatchway. Within a few minutes the prisoners were all on deck. One sentry was disarmed, the other thrown overboard. Two soldiers off duty had a scuffle with the mutineers, but one took refuge in the main chains, while the other was drowned trying to swim ashore. The sergeant in charge ran on deck and shot a mutineer before he was knocked over, stunned. As to the seamen, they ran into the forecastle.

The prisoners had now control of the ship, but none of them knew how to handle their prize, so they loosed a couple of sailors and made them help. Woolfe, one of the convicts, then rescued a soldier who was swimming alongside. The officers and soldiers aft were firing through the grated hatches and wounded several convicts, until they were allayed with a kettle of boiling water. So far the mutiny had gone off very nicely, but now the captain, perched on the cabin table, fired through the woodwork at a point where he thought a man was standing. By luck the bullet went through the ringleader’s mouth and blew out the back of his head, whereon a panic seized the mutineers, who fled below hatches. The sailor at the wheel released the captain, and the afterguard recaptured the ship. One mutineer had his head blown off, and the rest surrendered. The whole deck was littered with the wounded and the dying and the dead, and there were not many convicts left. In the trial at Sydney, Wheelan, who proved innocent, was spared, also Woolfe for saving a soldier’s life, but four were hanged, meeting their fate like men.

It was in August that the sultan of Borneo confirmed Mr. James Brooke as rajah of Sarawak, and the new king was extremely busy executing robbers, rescuing shipwrecked mariners from slavery, reopening old mines for diamonds, gold and manganese. “I breathe peace and comfort to all who obey,” so he wrote to his mother, “and wrath and fury to the evil-doer.”

* * * * *

Captain Ross was in the Antarctic, coasting the great ice barrier. Last year he had given to two tall volcanoes the names of his ships, the Erebus and Terror. This year on March twelfth in a terrific gale with blinding snow at midnight the two ships tried to get shelter under the lee of an iceberg, but the Terror rammed the Erebus so that her bow-sprit, fore topmast and a lot of smaller spars were carried away, and she was jammed against the wall of the berg totally disabled. She could not make sail and had no room to wear round, so she sailed out backward, one of the grandest feats of seamanship on record; then, clear of the danger, steered between two bergs, her yard-arms almost scraping both of them, until she gained the smoother water to leeward, where she found her consort.

* * * * *

In Canada the British governor set up a friendship between the French Canadians and our government which has lasted ever since. That was on the eighth of September, but on the fifth another British dignitary sailed for home, having generously given a large slice of Canada to the United States.

* * * * *

In Hayti there was an earthquake, in Brazil a revolution; in Jamaica a storm on the tenth which wrecked H. M. S. Spitfire, and in the western states Mount Saint Helen’s gave a fine volcanic eruption.

Northern Mexico was invaded by two filibustering expeditions from the republic of Texas, and both were captured by the Mexicans. There were eight hundred fifty prisoners, some murdered for fun, the rest marched through Mexico exposed to all sorts of cruelty and insult before they were lodged in pestilence-ridden jails. Captain Edwin Cameron and his people on the way to prison overpowered the escort and fled to the mountains, whence some of them escaped to Texas. But the leader and most of his men being captured, President Santa Ana arranged that they should draw from a bag of beans, those who got black beans to be shot. Cameron drew a white bean, but was shot all the same. One youth, G. B. Crittenden, drew a white bean, but gave it to a comrade saying, “You have a wife and children; I haven’t, and I can afford to risk another chance.” Again he drew white and lived to be a general in the great Civil War.

General Green’s party escaped by tunneling their way out of the castle of Perot, but most of the prisoners perished in prison of hunger and disease. The British and American ministers at the City of Mexico won the release of the few who were left alive.

* * * * *

In 1842 Sir James Simpson, Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, with his bell-topper hat and his band, came by canoe across the northern wilds to the Pacific Coast. From San Francisco he sailed for Honolulu in the Sandwich Islands, where the company had a large establishment under Sir John Petty. On April sixteenth he arrived in the H. B. ship Cowlitz at the capital of Russian America. “Of all the drunken as well as the dirty places,” says he, “that I had ever visited, New Archangel was the worst. On the holidays in particular, of which, Sundays included, there are one hundred sixty-five in the year, men, women and even children were to be seen staggering about in all directions drunk.” Simpson thought all the world, though, of the Russian bishop.

The Hudson’s Bay Company had a lease from the Russians of all the fur-trading forts of Southeastern Alaska, and one of these was the Redoubt Saint Diogenes. There Simpson found a flag of distress, gates barred, sentries on the bastions and two thousand Indians besieging the fort. Five days ago the officer commanding, Mr. McLoughlin, had made all hands drunk and ran about saying he was going to be killed. So one of the voyagers leveled a rifle and shot him dead. On the whole the place was not well managed.

From New Archangel (Sitka) the Russian Lieutenant Zagoskin sailed in June for the Redoubt Saint Michael on the coast of Behring Sea. Smallpox had wiped out all the local Eskimos, so the Russian could get no guide for the first attempt to explore the river Yukon. A day’s march south he was entertained at an Eskimo camp where there was a feast, and the throwing of little bladders into the bay in honor of Ug-iak, spirit of the sea. On December ninth Zagoskin started inland—“A driving snow-storm set in blinding my eyes ... a blade of grass seventy feet distant had the appearance of a shrub, and sloping valleys looked like lakes with high banks, the illusion vanishing upon nearer approach. At midnight a terrible snow-storm began, and in the short space of ten minutes covered men, dogs and sledges, making a perfect hill above them. We sat at the foot of a hill with the wind from the opposite side and our feet drawn under us to prevent them from freezing, and covered with our parkas. When we were covered up by the snow we made holes with sticks through to the open air. In a short time the warmth of the breath and perspiration melted the snow, so that a man-like cave was formed about each individual.” So they continued for five hours, calling to one another to keep awake, for in that intense cold to sleep was death. There we may as well leave them, before we catch cold from the draft.

* * * * *

Fremont was exploring from the Mississippi Valley a route for emigrants to Oregon, and in that journey climbed the Rocky Mountains to plant Old Glory on one of the highest peaks. He was a very fine explorer, and not long afterward conquered the Mexican state of California, completing the outline of the modern United States. But Fremont’s guide will be remembered long after Fremont is forgotten, for he was the greatest of American frontiersmen, the ideal of modern chivalry, Kit Carson. Of course he must have a chapter to himself.

XIII
A.D. 1843

KIT CARSON

Once Colonel Inman, an old frontiersman, bought a newspaper which had a full page picture of Kit Carson. The hero stood in a forest, a gigantic figure in a buckskin suit, heavily armed, embracing a rescued heroine, while at his feet sprawled six slain Indian braves, his latest victims.

“What do you think of this?” said the colonel handing the picture to a delicate little man, who wiped his spectacles, studied the work of art, and replied in a gentle drawl, “That may be true, but I hain’t got no recollection of it.” And so Kit Carson handed the picture back.

He stood five feet six, and looked frail, but his countrymen, and all the boys of all the world think of this mighty frontiersman as a giant.

At seventeen he was a remarkably green and innocent boy for his years, his home a log cabin on the Missouri frontier. Past the door ran the trail to the west where trappers went by in buckskin, traders among the Indians, and soldiers for the savage wars of the plains.

One day came Colonel S. Vrain, agent of a big fur-trading company, with his long train of wagons hitting the Santa Fe trail. Kit got a job with that train, to herd spare stock, hunt bison, mount guard and fight Indians. They were three weeks out in camp when half a dozen Pawnee Indians charged, yelling and waving robes to stampede the herd, but a brisk fusillade from the white men sent them scampering back over the sky-line. Next day, after a sixteen mile march the outfit corraled their wagons for defense at the foot of Pawnee Rock beside the Arkansas River. “I had not slept any of the night before,” says Kit, “for I stayed awake watching to get a shot at the Pawnees that tried to stampede our animals, expecting they would return; and I hadn’t caught a wink all day, as I was out buffalo hunting, so I was awfully tired and sleepy when we arrived at Pawnee Rock that evening, and when I was posted at my place at night, I must have gone to sleep leaning against the rocks; at any rate, I was wide enough awake when the cry of Indians was given by one of the guard. I had picketed my mule about twenty paces from where I stood, and I presume he had been lying down; all I remember is, that the first thing I saw after the alarm was something rising up out of the grass, which I thought was an Indian. I pulled the trigger; it was a center shot, and I don’t believe the mule ever kicked after he was hit!”

At daylight the Pawnees attacked in earnest and the fight lasted nearly three days, the mule teams being shut in the corral without food or water. At midnight of the second day they hitched up, fighting their way for thirteen miles, then got into bad trouble fording Pawnee Fork while the Indians poured lead and arrows into the teams until the colonel and Kit Carson led a terrific charge which dispersed the enemy. That fight cost the train four killed and seven wounded.

It was during this first trip that Carson saved the life of a wounded teamster by cutting off his arm. With a razor he cut the flesh, with a saw got through the bone, and with a white-hot king-bolt seared the wound, stopping the flow of blood.

In 1835 Carson was hunter for Bent’s Fort, keeping the garrison of forty men supplied with buffalo meat. Once he was out hunting with six others and they made their camp tired out. “I saw,” says Kit, “two big wolves sneaking about, one of them quite close to us. Gordon, one of my men, wanted to fire his rifle at it, but I would not let him for fear he would hit a dog. I admit that I had a sort of idea that these wolves might be Indians; but when I noticed one of them turn short around and heard the clashing of his teeth as he rushed at one of the dogs, I felt easy then, and was certain that they were wolves sure enough. But the red devil fooled me after all, for he had two dried buffalo bones in his hands under the wolf-skin and he rattled them together every time he turned to make a dash at the dogs! Well, by and by we all dozed off, and it wasn’t long before I was suddenly aroused by a noise and a big blaze. I rushed out the first thing for our mules and held them. If the savages had been at all smart, they could have killed us in a trice, but they ran as soon as they fired at us. They killed one of my men, putting five shots in his body and eight in his buffalo robe. The Indians were a band of snakes, and found us by sheer accident. They endeavored to ambush us the next morning, but we got wind of their little game and killed three of them, including the chief.”

It was in his eight years as hunter for Bent’s Fort that Kit learned to know the Indians, visiting their camps to smoke with the chiefs and play with the little boys. When the Sioux nation invaded the Comanche and Arrapaho hunting-grounds he persuaded them to go north, and so averted war.

In 1842 when he was scout to Fremont, he went buffalo hunting to get meat for the command. One day he was cutting up a beast newly killed when he left his work in pursuit of a large bull that came rushing past him. His horse was too much blown to run well, and when at last he got near enough to fire, things began to happen all at once. The bullet hitting too low enraged the bison just as the horse, stepping into a prairie-dog hole, shot Kit some fifteen feet through the air. Instead of Kit hunting bison, Mr. Buffalo hunted Kit, who ran for all he was worth. So they came to the Arkansas River where Kit dived while the bison stayed on the bank to hook him when he landed. But while the bison gave Kit a swimming lesson, one of the hunters made an unfair attack from behind, killing the animal. So Kit crawled out and skinned his enemy.

One of his great hunting feats was the killing of five buffalo with only four bullets. Being short of lead he had to cut out the ball from number four, then catch up, and shoot number five.

On another hunt, chasing a cow bison down a steep hill, he fired just as the animal took a flying leap, so that the carcass fell, not to the ground, but spiked on a small cedar. The Indians persuaded him to leave that cow impaled upon a tree-top because it was big magic; but to people who do not know the shrubs of the southwestern desert, it must sound like a first-class lie.

One night as the expedition lay in camp, far up among the mountains, Fremont sat for hours reading some letters just arrived from home, then fell asleep to dream of his young wife. Presently a soft sound, rather like the blow of an ax made Kit start broad awake, to find Indians in camp. They fled, but two of the white men were lying dead in their blankets, and the noise that awakened Carson was the blow of a tomahawk braining his own chum, the voyageur, La Jeunesse.

In the following year Carson was serving as hunter to a caravan westward bound across the plains, when he met Captain Cooke in camp, with four squadrons of United States Cavalry. The captain told him that following on the trail was a caravan belonging to a wealthy Mexican and so richly loaded that a hundred riders had been hired as guards.

Presently the Mexican train came up and the majordomo offered Carson three hundred dollars if he would ride to the Mexican governor at Santa Fe and ask him for an escort of troops from the point where they entered New Mexico. Kit, who was hard up, gladly accepted the cash, and rode to Bent’s Fort. There he had news that the Utes were on the war-path, but Mr. Bent lent him the swiftest horse in the stables. Kit walked, leading the horse by the rein, to have him perfectly fresh in case there was need for flight. He reached the Ute village, hid, and passed the place at night without being seen. So he reached Taos, his own home in New Mexico, whence the alcalde sent his message to the governor of the state at Santa Fe.

The governor had already sent a hundred riders but these had been caught and wiped out by a force of Texans, only one escaping, who, during the heat of the fight, caught a saddled Texan pony and rode off.

Meanwhile the governor—Armijo—sent his reply for Carson to carry to the caravan. He said he was marching with a large force, and he did so. But when the survivor of the lost hundred rode into Armijo’s camp with his bad news, the whole outfit rolled their tails for home.

Carson, with the governor’s letter, and the news of plentiful trouble, reached the Mexican caravan, which decided not to leave the protecting American cavalry camped on the boundary-line. What with Texan raiders, border ruffians, Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and other little drawbacks, the caravan trade on the Santa Fe trail was never dull for a moment.

During these years one finds Kit Carson’s tracks all over the West about as hard to follow as those of a flea in a blanket.

Here, for example, is a description of the American army of the Bear Flag republic seizing California in 1846. “A vast cloud of dust appeared first, and thence, a long file, emerged this wildest wild party. Fremont rode ahead—a spare, active-looking man, with such an eye! He was dressed in a blouse and leggings and wore a felt hat. After him came five Delaware Indians, who were his body-guard, and have been with him through all his wanderings; they had charge of the baggage horses. The rest, many of them blacker than the Indians, rode two and two, the rifle held in one hand across the pommel of the saddle. Thirty-nine of them there are his regular men, the rest are loafers picked up lately; his original men are principally backwoodsmen from the state of Tennessee, and the banks of the upper waters of the Missouri.... The dress of these men was principally a long loose coat of deerskin, tied with thongs in front; trousers of the same, which when wet through, they take off, scrape well inside with a knife, and put on as soon as dry. The saddles were of various fashions, though these and a large drove of horses, and a brass field gun, were things they had picked up about California. They are allowed no liquor; this, no doubt, has much to do with their good conduct; and the discipline, too, is very strict.”

One of these men was Kit Carson, sent off in October to Washington on the Atlantic, three thousand miles away, with news that California was conquered for the United States, by a party of sixty men. In New Mexico, Kit met General Kearney, and told him that the Californians were a pack of cowards. So the general sent back his troops, marching on with only one hundred dragoons. But the Californians were not cowards, they had risen against the American invasion, they were fighting magnificently, and Fremont had rather a bad time before he completed the conquest.

It was during the Californian campaign that Carson made his famous ride, the greatest feat of horsemanship the world has ever known. As a despatch rider, he made his way through the hostile tribes, and terrific deserts from the Missouri to California and back, a total of four thousand, four hundred miles. But while he rested in California, before he set out on the return, he joined a party of Californian gentlemen on a trip up the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Two of the six men had a remount each, but four of them rode the six hundred miles without change of horses in six days. Add that, and the return to Kit Carson’s journey, and it makes a total of five thousand, six hundred miles. So for distance, he beats world records by one hundred miles, at a speed beyond all comparison, and in face of difficulties past all parallel.

For some of us old western reprobates who were cow hands, despising a sheep man more than anything else alive, it is very disconcerting to know that Carson went into that business. He became a partner of his lifelong friend, Maxwell, whose rancho in New Mexico was very like a castle of the Middle Ages. The dinner service was of massive silver, but the guests bedded down with a cowhide on the floor. New Mexico was a conquered country owned by the United States, at intervals between the Mexican revolts, when Kit settled down as a rancher. The words settled down, mean that he served as a colonel of volunteers against the Mexicans, and spent the rest of the time fighting Apaches, the most ferocious of all savages.

Near Santa Fe, lived Mr. White and his son who fell in defense of their ranch, having killed three Apaches, while the women and children of the household met with a much worse fate than that of death. The settlers refused to march in pursuit until Carson arrived, but by mistake he was not given command, a Frenchman having been chosen as leader.

The retreat of the savages was far away in the mountains, and well fortified. The only chance of saving the women and children was to rush this place before there was time to kill them, and Carson dashed in with a yell, expecting all hands to follow. So he found himself alone, surrounded by the Apaches, and as they rushed, he rode, throwing himself on the off side of his horse, almost concealed behind its neck. Six arrows struck his horse, and one bullet lodged in his coat before he was out of range. He cursed his Mexicans, he put them to shame, he persuaded them to fight, then led a gallant charge, killing five Indians as they fled. The delay had given them time to murder the women and children.

Once, after his camp had been attacked by Indians, Carson discovered that the sentry failed to give an alarm because he was asleep. The Indian punishment followed, and the soldier was made for one day to wear the dress of a squaw.

Kit Carson

We must pass by Kit’s capture of a gang of thirty-five desperadoes for the sake of a better story. The officer, commanding a detachment of troops on the march, flogged an Indian chief, the result being war. Carson was the first white man to pass, and while the chiefs were deciding how to attack his caravan, he walked alone into the council lodge. So many years were passed since the Cheyennes had seen him that he was not recognized, and nobody suspected that he knew their language, until he made a speech in Cheyenne, introducing himself, recalling ancient friendships, offering all courtesies. As to their special plan for killing the leader of the caravan, and taking his scalp, he claimed that he might have something to say on the point. They parted, Kit to encourage his men, the Indians to waylay the caravan; but from the night camp he despatched a Mexican boy to ride three hundred miles for succor. When the Cheyennes charged the camp at dawn, he ordered them to halt, and walked into the midst of them, explaining the message he had sent, and what their fate would be if the troops found they had molested them. When the Indians found the tracks that proved Kit’s words, they knew they had business elsewhere.

In 1863 Carson was sent with a strong military force to chasten the hearts of the Navajo nation. They had never been conquered, and the flood of Spanish invasion split when it rolled against their terrific sand-rock desert. The land is one of unearthly grandeur where natural rocks take the shapes of towers, temples, palaces and fortresses of mountainous height blazing scarlet in color. In one part a wave of rock like a sea breaker one hundred fifty feet high and one hundred miles in length curls overhanging as though the rushing gray waters had been suddenly struck into ice. On one side lies the hollow Painted Desert, where the sands refract prismatic light like a colossal rainbow, and to the west the walls of the Navajo country drop a sheer mile into the stupendous labyrinth of the Grand Cañon. Such is the country of a race of warriors who ride naked, still armed with bow and arrows, their harness of silver and turquoise....

They are handsome, cleanly, proud and dignified. They till their fields beside the desert springs, and their villages are set in native orchards, while beyond their settlements graze the flocks and herds tended by women herders.

The conquest was a necessity, and it was well that this was entrusted to gentle, just, wise, heroic Carson. He was obliged to destroy their homes, to fell their peach trees, lay waste their crops, and sweep away their stock, starving them to surrender. He herded eleven thousand prisoners down to the lower deserts, where the chiefs crawled to him on their bellies for mercy, but the governor had no mercy, and long after Carson’s death, the hapless people were held in the Boique Redondo. A fourth part of them died of want, and their spirit was utterly broken before they were given back their lands. It is well for them that the Navajo desert is too terrible a region for the white men, and nobody tries to rob their new prosperity.

In one more campaign Colonel Carson was officer commanding and gave a terrible thrashing to the Cheyennes, Kiowas and Comanches.

Then came the end, during a visit to a son of his who lived in Colorado. Early in the morning of May twenty-third, 1868, he was mounting his horse when an artery broke in his neck, and within a few moments he was dead.

But before we part with the frontier hero, it is pleasant to think of him still as a living man whose life is an inspiration and his manhood an example.

Colonel Inman tells of nights at Maxwell’s ranch. “I have sat there,” he writes, “in the long winter evenings when the great room was lighted only by the crackling logs, roaring up the huge throats of its two fireplaces ... watching Maxwell, Kit Carson and half a dozen chiefs silently interchange ideas in the wonderful sign language, until the glimmer of Aurora announced the advent of another day. But not a sound had been uttered during the protracted hours, save an occasional grunt of satisfaction on the part of the Indians, or when we white men exchanged a sentence.”

XIV
A. D. 1845

THE MAN WHO WAS A GOD

John Nicholson was a captain in the twenty-seventh native infantry of India. He was very tall, gaunt, haggard, with a long black beard, a pale face, lips that never smiled, eyes which burned flame and green like those of a tiger when he was angry. He rarely spoke.

Once in a frontier action he was entirely surrounded by the enemy when one of his Afghans saw him in peril from a descending sword. The Pathan sprang forward, received the blow, and died. In a later fight Nicholson saw that warrior’s only son taken prisoner, and carried off by the enemy. Charging alone, cutting a lane with his sword, the officer rescued his man, hoisted him across the saddle, and fought his way back. Ever afterward the young Pathan, whose father had died for Nicholson, rode at the captain’s side, served him at table with a cocked pistol on one hand, slept across the door of his tent. By the time Nicholson’s special service began he had a personal following of two hundred and fifty wild riders who refused either to take any pay or to leave his service.

So was he guarded, but also a sword must be found fit for the hand of the greatest swordsman in India. The Sikh leaders sent out word to their whole nation for such a blade as Nicholson might wear. Hundreds were offered and after long and intricate tests three were found equally perfect, two of the blades being curved, one straight. Captain Nicholson chose the straight sword, which he accepted as a gift from a nation of warriors.

This man was only a most humble Christian, but the Sikhs, observing the perfection of his manhood, supposed him to be divine, and offered that if he would accept their religion they would raise such a temple in his honor as India had never seen. Many a time while he sat at work in his tent, busy with official papers, a dozen Sikh warriors would squat in the doorway silent, watching their god. He took no notice, but sometimes a worshiper, overcome with the conviction of sin, would prostrate himself in adoration. For this offense the punishment was three dozen lashes with the cat, but the victims liked it. “Our god knew that we had been doing wrong, and, therefore, punished us.”

There is no need to explain the Indian mutiny to English readers. It is burned deep into our memory that in 1857 our native army, revolting, seized Delhi, the ancient capital, and set up a descendant of the Great Mogul as emperor of India. The children, the women, the men who were tortured to death, or butchered horribly, were of our own households. Your uncle fought, your cousin fell, my mother escaped. Remember Cawnpore!

Nicholson at Peshawur seized the mails, had the letters translated, then made up his copies into bundles. At a council of officers the colonels of the native regiments swore to the loyalty of their men, but Nicholson dealt out his packages of letters to them all, saying, “Perhaps these will interest you.”

The colonels read, and were chilled with horror at finding in their trusted regiments an abyss of treachery. Their troops were disarmed and disbanded.

To disarm and disperse the native army throughout Northwestern India a flying column was formed of British troops, and Nicholson, although he was only a captain, was sent to take command of the whole force with the rank of brigadier-general. There were old officers under him, yet never a murmur rose from them at that strange promotion.

Presently Sir John Lawrence wrote to Nicholson a fierce official letter, demanding, “Where are you? What are you doing? Send instantly a return of court-martial held upon insurgent natives, with a list of the various punishments inflicted.”

Nicholson’s reply was a sheet of paper bearing his present address, the date, and the words, “The punishment of mutiny is death.” He wanted another regiment to strengthen his column, and demanded the eighty-seventh, which was guarding our women and children in the hills. Lawrence said these men could not be spared. Nicholson wrote back, “When an empire is at stake, women and children cease to be of any consideration whatever.” What chance had they if he failed to hold this district?

General Nicholson

Nicholson’s column on the march was surrounded by his own wild guards riding in couples, so that he, their god, searched the whole country with five hundred eyes. After one heart-breaking night march he drew up his infantry and guns, then rode along the line giving his orders: “In a few minutes you will see two native regiments come round that little temple. If they bring their muskets to the ‘ready,’ fire a volley into them without further orders.”

As the native regiments appeared from behind the little temple, Nicholson rode to meet them. He was seen to speak to them and then they grounded their arms. Two thousand men had surrendered to seven hundred, but had the mutineers resisted Nicholson himself must have perished between two fires. He cared nothing for his life.

Only once did this leader blow mutineers from the guns, and then it was to fire the flesh and blood of nine conspirators into the faces of a doubtful regiment. For the rest he had no powder to waste, but no mercy, and from his awful executions of rebels he would go away to hide in his tent and weep.

He had given orders that no native should be allowed to ride past a white man. One morning before dawn the orderly officer, a lad of nineteen, seeing natives passing him on an elephant, ordered them sharply to dismount and make their salaam. They obeyed—an Afghan prince and his servant, sent by the king of Cabul as an embassy to Captain Nicholson. Next day the ambassador spoke of this humiliation. “No wonder,” he said, “you English conquer India when mere boys obey orders as this one did.”

Nicholson once fought a Bengal tiger, and slew it with one stroke of his sword; but could the English subdue this India in revolt? The mutineers held the impregnable capital old Delhi—and under the red walls lay four thousand men—England’s forlorn hope—which must storm that giant fortress. If they failed the whole population would rise. “If ordained to fail,” said Nicholson, “I hope the British will drag down with them in flames and blood as many of the queen’s enemies as possible.” If they had failed not one man of our race would have escaped to the sea.

Nicholson brought his force to aid in the siege of Delhi, and now he was only a captain under the impotent and hopeless General Wilson. “I have strength yet,” said Nicholson when he was dying, “to shoot him if necessary.”

The batteries of the city walls from the Lahore Gate to the Cashmere Gate were manned by Sikh gunners, loyal to the English, but detained against their will by the mutineers. One night they saw Nicholson without any disguise walk in at the Lahore Gate, and through battery after battery along the walls he went in silence to the Cashmere Gate, by which he left the city. At the sight of that gaunt giant, the man they believed to be an incarnate god, they fell upon their faces. So Captain Nicholson studied the defenses of a besieged stronghold as no man on earth had ever dared before. To him was given command of the assault which blew up the Cashmere Gate, and stormed the Cashmere breach. More than half his men perished, but an entry was made, and in six days the British fought their way through the houses, breaching walls as they went until they stormed the palace, hoisted the flag above the citadel, and proved with the sword who shall be masters of India.

But Nicholson had fallen. Mortally wounded he was carried to his tent, and there lay through the hot days watching the blood-red towers and walls of Delhi, listening to the sounds of the long fight, praying that he might see the end before his passing.

Outside the tent waited his worshipers, clutching at the doctors as they passed to beg for news of him. Once when they were noisy he clutched a pistol from the bedside table, and fired a shot through the canvas. “Oh! Oh!” cried the Pathans, “there is the general’s order.” Then they kept quiet. Only at the end, when his coffin was lowered into the earth, these men who had forsaken their hills to guard him, broke down and flung themselves upon the ground, sobbing like children.

Far off in the hills the Nicholson fakirs—a tribe who had made him their only god—heard of his passing. Two chiefs killed themselves that they might serve him in another world; but the third chief spoke to the people: “Nickelseyn always said that he was a man like as we are, and that he worshiped a God whom he could not see, but who was always near us. Let us learn to worship Nickelseyn’s God.” So the tribe came down from their hills to the Christian teachers at Peshawur, and there were baptized.

XV
A. D. 1853

THE GREAT FILIBUSTER

William Walker, son of a Scotch banker, was born in Tennessee, cantankerous from the time he was whelped. He never swore or drank, or loved anybody, but was rigidly respectable and pure, believed in negro slavery, bristled with points of etiquette and formality, liked squabbling, had a nasty sharp tongue, and a taste for dueling. The little dry man was by turns a doctor, editor and lawyer, and when he wanted to do anything very outrageous, always began by taking counsel’s opinion. He wore a black tail-coat, and a black wisp of necktie even when in 1853 he landed an army of forty-five men to conquer Mexico. His followers were California gold miners dressed in blue shirts, duck trousers, long boots, bowie knives, revolvers and rifles. After he had taken the city of La Paz by assault, called an election and proclaimed himself president of Sonora, he was joined by two or three hundred more of the same breed from San Francisco. These did not think very much of a leader twenty-eight years old, standing five feet six, and weighing only nine stone four, so they merrily conspired to blow him up with gunpowder, and disperse with what plunder they could grab. Mr. Walker shot two, flogged a couple, disarmed the rest without showing any sign of emotion. He could awe the most truculent desperado into abject obedience with one glance of his cool gray eye, and never allowed his men to drink, play cards, or swear. “Our government,” he wrote, “has been formed upon a firm and sure basis.”

The Mexicans and Indians thought otherwise, for while the new president of Sonora marched northward, they gathered in hosts and hung like wolves in the rear of the column, cutting off stragglers, who were slowly tortured to death. Twice they dared an actual attack, but Walker’s grim strategies, and the awful rifles of despairing men, cut them to pieces. So the march went on through hundreds of miles of blazing hot desert, where the filibusters dropped with thirst, and blew their own brains out rather than be captured. Only thirty-four men were left when they reached the United States boundary, the president of Sonora, in a boot and a shoe, his cabinet in rags, his army and navy bloody, with dried wounds, gaunt, starving, but too terrible for the Mexican forces to molest. The filibusters surrendered to the United States garrison as prisoners of war.

Just a year later, with six of these veterans, and forty-eight other Californians, Walker landed on the coast of Nicaragua. This happy republic was blessed at the time with two rival presidents, and the one who got Walker’s help very soon had possession of the country. As hero of several brilliant engagements, Walker was made commander-in-chief, and at the next election chosen by the people themselves as president. He had now a thousand Americans in his following, and when the native statesmen and generals proved treacherous, they were promptly shot. Walker’s camp of wild desperadoes was like a Sunday-school, his government the cleanest ever known in Central America, and his dignity all prickles, hard to approach. He depended for existence on the services of Vanderbilt’s steamship lines, but seized their warehouse for cheating. He was surrounded by four hostile republics, Costa Rica, San Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, and insulted them all. He suspended diplomatic relations with the United States, demanded for his one schooner-of-war salutes from the British navy, and had no sense of humor whatsoever. Thousands of brave men died for this prim little lawyer, and tens of thousands fell by pestilence and battle in his wars, but with all his sweet unselfishness, his purity, and his valor, poor Walker was a prig. So the malcontents of Nicaragua, and the republics from Mexico to Peru, joined the steamship company, the United States and Great Britain to wipe out his hapless government.

The armies of four republics were closing in on Walker’s capital, the city of Granada. He marched out to storm the allies perched on an impregnable volcano, and was carrying his last charge to a victorious issue, when news reached him that Zavala with eight hundred men had jumped on Granada. He forsook his victory and rushed for the capital city.

There were only one hundred and fifty invalids and sick in the Granada garrison to man the church, armory and hospital against Zavala, but the women loaded rifles for the wounded and after twenty-two hours of ghastly carnage, the enemy were thrown out of the city. They fell back to lie in Walker’s path as he came to the rescue. Walker saw the trap, carried it with a charge, drove Zavala back into the city, broke him between two fires, then sent a detachment to intercept his flight. In this double battle, fighting eight times his own force, Walker killed half the allied army.

But the pressure of several invasions at once was making it impossible for Walker to keep his communication open with the sea while he held his capital. Granada, the most beautiful of all Central American cities, must be abandoned, and, lest the enemy win the place, it must be destroyed. So Walker withdrew his sick men to an island in the big Lake Nicaragua; while Henningsen, an Englishman, his second in command, burned and abandoned the capital.

But now, while the city burst into flames, and the smoke went up as from a volcano, the American garrison broke loose, rifled the liquor stores and lay drunk in the blazing streets, so the allied army swooped down, cutting off the retreat to the lake. Henningsen, veteran of the Carlist and Hungarian revolts, a knight errant of lost causes, took three weeks to fight his way three miles, before Walker could cover his embarkment on the lake. There had been four hundred men in the garrison, but only one hundred and fifty answered the roll-call in their refuge on the Isle of Omotepe. In the plaza of the capital city they had planted a spear, and on the spear hung a rawhide with this inscription:—

“Here was Granada!”

In taking that heap of blackened ruins four thousand out of six thousand of the allies had perished; but even they were more fortunate than a Costa Rican army of invasion, which killed fifty of the filibusters, at a cost of ten thousand men slain by war and pestilence. It always worked out that the killing of one filibuster cost on the average eight of his adversaries.

Four months followed of confused fighting, in which the Americans slowly lost ground, until at last they were besieged in the town of Rivas, melting the church bells for cannon-balls, dying at their posts of starvation. The neighboring town of San Jorge was held by two thousand Costa Ricans, and these Walker attempted to dislodge. His final charge was made with fifteen men into the heart of the town. No valor could win against such odds, and the orderly retreat began on Rivas. Two hundred men lay in ambush to take Walker at a planter’s house by the wayside, and as he rode wearily at the head of his men they opened fire from cover at a range of fifteen yards. Walker reined in his horse, fired six revolver-shots into the windows, then rode on quietly erect while the storm of lead raged about him, and saddle after saddle was emptied. A week afterward the allies assaulted Rivas, but left six hundred men dead in the field, so terrific was the fire from the ramparts.

It was in these days that a British naval officer came under flag of truce from the coast to treat for Walker’s surrender.

“I presume, sir,” was the filibuster’s greeting, “that you have come to apologize for the outrage offered to my flag, and to the commander of the Nicaraguan schooner-of-war Granada.”

“If they had another schooner,” said the Englishman afterward, “I believe they would have declared war on Great Britain.”

Then the United States navy treated with this peppery little lawyer, and on the first of May, 1857, he grudgingly consented to being rescued.

During his four years’ fight for empire, Walker had enlisted three thousand five hundred Americans—and the proportion of wounds was one hundred and thirty-seven for every hundred men. A thousand fell. The allied republics had twenty-one thousand soldiers and ten thousand Indians—and lost fifteen thousand killed.

Two years later, Walker set out again with a hundred men to conquer Central America, in defiance of the British and United States squadrons, sent to catch him, and in the teeth of five armed republics. He was captured by the British, shot by Spanish Americans upon a sea beach in Honduras, and so perished, fearless to the end.

XVI
A. D. 1857

BUFFALO BILL

The Mormons are a sect of Christians with some queer ideas, for they drink no liquor, hold all their property in common, stamp out any member who dares to think or work for himself, and believe that the more wives a man has the merrier he will be. The women, so far as I met them are like fat cows, the men a slovenly lot, and not too honest, but they are hard workers and first-rate pioneers.

Because they made themselves unpopular they were persecuted, and fled from the United States into the desert beside the Great Salt Lake. There they got water from the mountain streams and made their land a garden. They only wanted to be left alone in peace, but that was a poor excuse for slaughtering emigrants. Murdering women and children is not in good taste.

The government sent an army to attend to these saints, but the soldiers wanted food to eat, and the Mormons would not sell, so provisions had to be sent a thousand miles across the wilderness to save the starving troops. So we come to the herd of beef cattle which in May, 1857, was drifting from the Missouri River, and to the drovers’ camp beside the banks of the Platte.

A party of red Indians on the war-path found that herd and camp; they scalped the herders on guard, stampeded the cattle and rushed the camp, so that the white men were driven to cover under the river bank. Keeping the Indians at bay with their rifles, the party marched for the settlements wading, sometimes swimming, while they pushed a raft that carried a wounded man. Always a rear guard kept the Indians from coming too near. And so the night fell.

“I, being the youngest and smallest,” says one of them, “had fallen behind the others.... When I happened to look up to the moonlit sky, and saw the plumed head of an Indian peeping over the bank.... I instantly aimed my gun at his head, and fired. The report rang out sharp and loud in the night air, and was immediately followed by an Indian whoop; and the next moment about six feet of dead Indian came tumbling into the river. I was not only overcome with astonishment, but was badly scared, as I could hardly realize what I had done.”

Back came Frank McCarthy, the leader, with all his men. “Who fired that shot?”

“I did.”

“Yes, and little Billy has killed an Indian stone-dead—too dead to skin!”

At the age of nine Billy Cody had taken the war-path.

In those days the army had no luck. When the government sent a herd of cattle the Indians got the beef, and the great big train of seventy-five wagons might just as well have been addressed to the Mormons, who burned the transport, stole the draft oxen and turned the teamsters, including little Billy, loose in the mountains, where they came nigh starving. The boy was too thin to cast a shadow when in the spring he set out homeward across the plains with two returning trains.

One day these trains were fifteen miles apart when Simpson, the wagon boss, with George Woods, a teamster, and Billy Cody, set off riding mules from the rear outfit to catch up the teams in front. They were midway when a war party of Indians charged at full gallop, surrounding them, but Simpson shot the three mules and used their carcasses to make a triangular fort. The three whites, each with a rifle and a brace of revolvers were more than a match for men with bows and arrows, and the Indians lost so heavily that they retreated out of range. That gave the fort time to reload, but the Indians charged again, and this time Woods got an arrow in the shoulder. Once more the Indians retired to consult, while Simpson drew the arrow from Woods’ shoulder, plugging the hole with a quid of chewing tobacco. A third time the Indians charged, trying to ride down the stockade, but they lost a man and a horse. Four warriors had fallen now in this battle with two men and a little boy, but the Indians are a painstaking, persevering race, so they waited until nightfall and set the grass on fire. But the whites had been busy with knives scooping a hole from whence the loose earth made a breastwork over the dead mules, so that the flames could not reach them, and they had good cover to shoot from when the Indians charged through the smoke. After that both sides had a sleep, and at dawn they were fresh for a grand charge, handsomely repulsed. The redskins sat down in a ring to starve the white men out, and great was their disappointment when Simpson’s rear train of wagons marched to the rescue. The red men did not stay to pick flowers.

It seems like lying to state that at the age of twelve Billy Cody began to take rank among the world’s great horsemen, and yet he rode on the pony express, which closed in 1861, his fourteenth year.

The trail from the Missouri over the plains, the deserts and the mountains into California was about two thousand miles through a country infested with gangs of professional robbers and hostile Indian tribes. The gait of the riders averaged twelve miles an hour, which means a gallop, to allow for the slow work in mountain passes. There were one hundred ninety stations at which the riders changed ponies without breaking their run, and each must be fit and able for one hundred miles a day in time of need. Pony Bob afterward had contracts by which he rode one hundred miles a day for a year.

Now, none of the famous riders of history, like Charles XII, of Sweden; Dick, King of Natal, or Dick Turpin, of England, made records to beat the men of the pony express, and in that service Billy was counted a hero. He is outclassed by the Cossack Lieutenant Peschkov, who rode one pony at twenty-eight miles a day the length of the Russian empire, from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg, and by Kit Carson who with one horse rode six hundred miles in six days. There are branches of horsemanship, too, in which he would have been proud to take lessons from Lord Lonsdale, or Evelyn French, but Cody is, as far as I have seen, of all white men incomparable for grace, for beauty of movement, among the horsemen of the modern world.

But to turn back to the days of the boy rider.

“One day,” he writes, “when I galloped into my home station I found that the rider who was expected to take the trip out on my arrival had gotten into a drunken row the night before, and had been killed.... I pushed on ... entering every relay station on time, and accomplished the round trip of three hundred twenty-two miles back to Red Buttes without a single mishap, and on time. This stands on the record as being the longest pony express journey ever made.”

One of the station agents has a story to tell of this ride, made without sleep, and with halts of only a few minutes for meals. News had leaked out of a large sum of money to be shipped by the express, and Cody, expecting robbers, rolled the treasure in his saddle blanket, filling the official pouches with rubbish. At the best place for an ambush two men stepped out on to the trail, halting him with their muskets. As he explained, the pouches were full of rubbish, but the road agents knew better. “Mark my words,” he said as he unstrapped, “you’ll hang for this.”

“We’ll take chances on that, Bill.”

“If you will have them, take them!” With that he hurled the pouches, and as robber number one turned to pick them up, robber number two had his gun-arm shattered with the boy’s revolver-shot. Then with a yell he rode down the stooping man, and spurring hard, got out of range unhurt. He had saved the treasure, and afterward both robbers were hanged by vigilantes.

Once far down a valley ahead Cody saw a dark object above a boulder directly on his trail, and when it disappeared he knew he was caught in an ambush. Just as he came into range he swerved wide to the right, and at once a rifle smoked from behind the rock. Two Indians afoot ran for their ponies while a dozen mounted warriors broke from the timbered edge of the valley, racing to cut him off. One of these had a war bonnet of eagle plumes, the badge of a chief, and his horse, being the swiftest, drew ahead. All the Indians were firing, but the chief raced Cody to head him off at a narrow pass of the valley. The boy was slightly ahead, and when the chief saw that the white rider would have about thirty yards to spare he fitted an arrow, drawing for the shot. But Cody, swinging round in the saddle, lashed out his revolver, and the chief, clutching at the air, fell, rolling over like a ball as he struck the ground. At the chief’s death-cry a shower of arrows from the rear whizzed round the boy, one slightly wounding his pony who, spurred by the pain, galloped clear, leaving the Indians astern in a ten mile race to the next relay.

After what seems to the reader a long life of adventure, Mr. Cody had just reached the age of twenty-two when a series of wars broke out with the Indian tribes, and he was attached to the troops as a scout. A number of Pawnee Indians who thought nothing of this white man, were also serving. They were better trackers, better interpreters and thought themselves better hunters. One day a party of twenty had been running buffalo, and made a bag of thirty-two head when Cody got leave to attack a herd by himself. Mounted on his famous pony Buckskin Joe he made a bag of thirty-six head on a half-mile run, and his name was Buffalo Bill from that time onward.

That summer he led a squadron of cavalry that attacked six hundred Sioux, and in that fight against overwhelming odds he brought down a chief at a range of four hundred yards, in those days a very long shot. His victim proved to be Tall Bull, one of the great war leaders of the Sioux. The widow of Tall Bull was proud that her husband had been killed by so famous a warrior as Prairie Chief, for that was Cody’s name among the Indians.

There is one very nice story about the Pawnee scouts. A new general had taken command who must have all sorts of etiquette proper to soldiers. It was all very well for the white sentries to call at intervals of the night from post to post: “Post Number One, nine o’clock, all’s well!” “Post Number Two, etc.”

But when the Pawnee sentries called, “Go to hell, I don’t care!” well, the practise had to be stopped.

Of Buffalo Bill’s adventures in these wars the plain record would only take one large volume, but he was scouting in company with Texas Jack, John Nelson, Belden, the White Chief, and so many other famous frontier heroes, each needing at least one book volume, that I must give the story up as a bad job. At the end of the Sioux campaign Buffalo Bill was chief of scouts with the rank of colonel.

Colonel Cody

(“Buffalo Bill”)

In 1876, General Custer, with a force of nearly four hundred cavalry, perished in an attack on the Sioux, and the only survivor was his pet boy scout, Billy Jackson, who got away at night disguised as an Indian. Long afterward Billy, who was one of God’s own gentlemen, told me that story while we sat on a grassy hillside watching a great festival of the Blackfeet nation.

After the battle in which Custer—the Sun Child—fell, the big Sioux army scattered, but a section of it was rounded up by a force under the guidance of Buffalo Bill.

“One of the Indians,” he says, “who was handsomely decorated with all the ornaments usually worn by a war chief ... sang out to me ‘I know you, Prairie Chief; if you want to fight come ahead and fight me!’

“The chief was riding his horse back and forth in front of his men, as if to banter me, and I accepted the challenge. I galloped toward him for fifty yards and he advanced toward me about the same distance, both of us riding at full speed, and then when we were only about thirty yards apart I raised my rifle and fired. His horse fell to the ground, having been killed by my bullet. Almost at the same instant my horse went down, having stepped in a gopher-hole. The fall did not hurt me much, and I instantly sprang to my feet. The Indian had also recovered himself, and we were now both on foot, and not more than twenty paces apart. We fired at each other simultaneously. My usual luck did not desert me on this occasion, for his bullet missed me, while mine struck him in the breast. He reeled and fell, but before he had fairly touched the ground I was upon him, knife in hand, and had driven the keen-edged weapon to its hilt in his heart. Jerking his war-bonnet off, I scientifically scalped him in about five seconds....

“The Indians came charging down upon me from a hill in hopes of cutting me off. General Merritt ... ordered ... Company K to hurry to my rescue. The order came none too soon.... As the soldiers came up I swung the Indian chieftain’s topknot and bonnet in the air, and shouted: ‘The first scalp for Custer!’”

Far up to the northward, Sitting Bull, with the war chief Spotted Tail and about three thousand warriors fled from the scene of the Custer massacre. And as they traveled on the lonely plains they came to a little fort with the gates closed. “Open your gates and hand out your grub,” said the Indians.

“Come and get the grub,” answered the fort.

So the gates were thrown open and the three thousand warriors stormed in to loot the fort. They found only two white men standing outside a door, but all round the square the log buildings were loopholed and from every hole stuck out the muzzle of a rifle. The Indians were caught in such a deadly trap that they ran for their lives back to camp.

Very soon news reached the Blackfeet that their enemies the Sioux were camped by the new fort at Wood Mountain, so the whole nation marched to wipe them out, and Sitting Bull appealed for help to the white men. “Be good,” said the fort, “and nobody shall hurt you.”

So the hostile armies camped on either side, and the thirty white men kept the peace between them. One day the Sioux complained that the Blackfeet had stolen fifty horses. So six of the white men were sent to the Blackfoot herd to bring the horses back. They did not know which horses to select so they drove off one hundred fifty for good measure straight at a gallop through the Blackfoot camp, closely pursued by that indignant nation. Barely in time they ran the stock within the fort, and slammed the gates home in the face of the raging Blackfeet. They were delighted with themselves until the officer commanding fined them a month’s pay each for insulting the Blackfoot nation.

The winter came, the spring and then the summer, when those thirty white men arrived at the Canada-United States boundary where they handed over three thousand Sioux prisoners to the American troops. From that time the redcoats of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police of Canada have been respected on the frontier.

And now came a very wonderful adventure. Sitting Bull, the leader of the Sioux nation who had defeated General Custer’s division and surrendered his army to thirty Canadian soldiers, went to Europe to take part in a circus personally conducted by the chief of scouts of the United States Army, Buffalo Bill. Poor Sitting Bull was afterward murdered by United States troops in the piteous massacre of Wounded Knee. Buffalo Bill for twenty-six years paraded Europe and America with his gorgeous Wild West show, slowly earning the wealth which he lavished in the founding of Cody City, Wyoming.

Toward the end of these tours I used to frequent the show camp much like a stray dog expecting to be kicked, would spend hours swapping lies with the cowboys in the old Deadwood Coach, or sit at meat with the colonel and his six hundred followers. On the last tour the old man was thrown by a bad horse at Bristol and afterward rode with two broken bones in splints. Only the cowboys knew, who told me, as day by day I watched him back his horse from the ring with all the old incomparable grace.

He went back to build a million dollar irrigation ditch for his little city on the frontier, and shortly afterward the newspapers reported that my friends—the Buffalo Creek Gang of robbers—attacked his bank, and shot the cashier. May civilization never shut out the free air of the frontier while the old hero lives, in peace and honor, loved to the end and worshiped by all real frontiersmen.

XVII
A. D. 1860

THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT

I

When the Eternal Father was making the earth, at one time He filled the sea with swimming dragons, the air with flying dragons, and the land with hopping dragons big as elephants; but they were not a success, and so He swept them all away. After that he filled the southern continents with a small improved hopping dragon, that laid no eggs, but carried the baby in a pouch. There were queer half-invented fish, shadeless trees, and furry running birds like the emu and the moa. Then He swamped that southern world under the sea, and moved the workshop to our northern continents. But He left New Zealand and Australia just as they were, a scrap of the half-finished world with furry running birds, the hopping kangaroo, the shadeless trees, and half-invented fish.

So when the English went to Australia it was not an ordinary voyage, but a journey backward through the ages, through goodness only knows how many millions of years to the fifth day of creation. It was like visiting the moon or Mars. To live and travel in such a strange land a man must be native born, bush raised, and cunning at that, on pain of death by famine.

The first British settlers, too, were convicts. The laws were so bad in England that a fellow might be deported merely for giving cheek to a judge; and the convicts on the whole were very decent people, brutally treated in the penal settlements. They used to escape to the bush, and runaway convicts explored Australia mainly in search of food. One of them, in Tasmania, used, whenever he escaped, to take a party with him and eat them one by one, until he ran short of food and had to surrender.

Later on gold was discovered, and free settlers drifted in, filling the country, but the miners and the farmers were too busy earning a living to do much exploration. So the exploring fell to English gentlemen, brave men, but hopeless tenderfeet, who knew nothing of bushcraft and generally died of hunger or thirst in districts where the native-born colonial grows rich to-day.

Edgar John Eyre, for instance, a Yorkshireman, landed in Sydney at the age of sixteen, and at twenty-five was a rich sheep-farmer, appointed by government protector of the black fellows. In 1840 the colonists of South Australia wanted a trail for drifting sheep into Western Australia, and young Eyre, from what he had learned among the savages, said the scheme was all bosh, in which he was perfectly right. He thought that the best line for exploring was northward, and set out to prove his words, but got tangled up in the salt bogs surrounding Torrens, and very nearly lost his whole party in an attempt to wade across. After that failure he felt that he had wasted the money subscribed in a wildcat project, so to make good set out again to find a route for sheep along the waterless south coast of the continent. He knew the route was impossible, but it is a poor sort of courage that has to feed on hope, and the men worth having are those who leave their hopes behind to march light while they do their duty.

Eyre’s party consisted of himself and his ranch foreman Baxter, a favorite black boy Wylie, who was his servant, and two other natives who had been on the northward trip. They had nine horses, a pony, six sheep, and nine weeks’ rations on the pack animals.

The first really dry stage was one hundred twenty-eight miles without a drop of water, and it was not the black fellows, but Eyre, the tenderfoot, who went ahead and found the well that saved them. The animals died off one by one, so that the stores had to be left behind, and there was no food but rotten horse-flesh which caused dysentery, no water save dew collected with a sponge from the bushes after the cold nights. The two black fellows deserted, but after three days came back penitent and starving, thankful to be reinstated.

These black fellows did not believe the trip was possible, they wanted to go home, they thought the expedition well worth plundering, and so one morning while Eyre was rounding up the horses they shot Baxter, plundered the camp and bolted. Only Eyre and his boy Wylie were left, but if they lived the deserters might be punished. So the two black fellows, armed with Baxter’s gun, tried to hunt down Eyre and his boy with a view to murder. They came so near at night that Eyre once heard them shout to Wylie to desert. Eyre and the boy stole off, marching so rapidly that the murderers were left behind and perished.

A week later, still following the coast of the Great Bight, Wylie discovered a French ship lying at anchor, and the English skipper fed the explorers for a fortnight until they were well enough to go on. Twenty-three more days of terrible suffering brought Eyre and his boy, looking like a brace of scarecrows, to a hilltop overlooking the town of Albany. They had reached Western Australia, the first travelers to cross from the eastern to the western colonies.

In after years Eyre was governor of Jamaica.

II

Australia, being the harshest country on earth, breeds the hardiest pioneers, horsemen, bushmen, trackers, hunters, scouts, who find the worst African or American travel a sort of picnic. The bushie is disappointing to town Australians because he has no swank, and nothing of the brilliant picturesqueness of the American frontiersman. He is only a tall, gaunt man, lithe as a whip, with a tongue like a whip-lash; and it is on bad trips or in battle that one finds what he is like inside, a most knightly gentleman with a vein of poetry.

Anyway the Melbourne people were cracked in 1860 when they wanted an expedition to cross Australia northward, and instead of appointing bushmen for the job selected tenderfeet. Burke was an Irishman, late of the Hungarian cavalry, and the Royal Irish Constabulary, serving as an officer in the Victorian police. Wills was a Devon man, with some frontier training on the sheep runs, but had taken to astronomy and surveying. There were several other white men, and three Afghans with a train of camels.

They left Melbourne with pomp and circumstance, crossed Victoria through civilized country, and made a base camp on the Darling River at Menindie. There Burke sacked two mutinous followers and his doctor scuttled in a funk, so he took on Wright, an old settler who knew the way to Cooper’s Creek four hundred miles farther on. Two hundred miles out Wright was sent back to bring up stores from Menindie, while the expedition went on to make an advanced base at Cooper’s Creek. Everything was to depend on the storage of food at that base.

While they were waiting for Wright to come up with their stores, Wills and another man prospected ninety miles north from Cooper’s Creek to the Stony Desert, a land of white quartz pebbles and polished red sandstone chips. The explorer Sturt had been there, and come back blind. No man had been beyond.

Wills, having mislaid his three camels, came back ninety miles afoot without water, to find the whole expedition stuck at Cooper’s Creek, waiting for stores. Mr. Wright at Menindie burned time, wasting six weeks before he attempted to start with the stores, and Burke at last could bear the delay no longer. There were thunder-storms giving promise of abundant water for once in the northern desert, so Burke marched with Wills, King and Gray, taking a horse and six camels.

William Brahe was left in charge at the camp at Cooper’s Creek, to remain with ample provisions until Wright turned up, but not to leave except in dire extremity.

Burke’s party crossed the glittering Stony Desert, and watching the birds who always know the way to water, they came to a fine lake, where they spent Christmas day. Beyond that they came to the Diamantina and again there was water. The country improved, there were northward flowing streams to cheer them on their way, and at last they came to salt water at the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria. They had crossed the continent from south to north.

With blithe hearts they set out on their return, and if they had to kill the camels for food, then to eat snakes, which disagreed with them, still there would be plenty when they reached Cooper’s Creek. Gray complained of being ill, but pilfering stores is not a proper symptom of any disease, so Burke gave him a thrashing by way of medicine. When he died, they delayed one day for his burial; one day too much, for when they reached Cooper’s Creek they were just nine hours late. Thirty-one miles they made in the last march and reeled exhausted into an empty camp ground. Cut in the bark of a tree were the words “Dig, 21 April 1861.” They dug a few inches into the earth where they found a box of provisions, and a bottle containing a letter.

“The depot party of the V. E. E. leave this camp to-day to return to the Darling. I intend to go S. E. from camp sixty miles to get into our old track near Bulloo. Two of my companions and myself are quite well; the third, Patten, has been unable to walk for the last eighteen days, as his leg has been severely hurt when thrown from one of the horses. No person has been up here from Darling. We have six camels and twelve horses in good working condition. William Brahe.”

It would be hopeless with two exhausted camels to try and catch up with that march. Down Cooper’s Creek one hundred fifty miles the South Australian Mounted Police had an outpost, and the box of provisions would last out that short journey.

They were too heart-sick to make an inscription on the tree, but left a letter in the bottle, buried. A few days later Brahe returned with the industrious Mr. Wright and his supply train. Here is the note in Wright’s diary:—

“May eighth. This morning I reached the Cooper’s Creek depot and found no sign of Mr. Burke’s having visited the creek, or the natives having disturbed the stores.”

Only a few miles away the creek ran out into channels of dry sand where Burke, Wills and King were starving, ragged beggars fed by the charitable black fellows on fish and a seed called nardoo, of which they made their bread. There were nice fat rats also, delicious baked in their skins, and the natives brought them fire-wood for the camp.

Again they attempted to reach the Mounted Police outpost, but the camels died, the water failed, and they starved. Burke sent Wills back to Cooper’s Creek. “No trace,” wrote Wills in his journal, “of any one except the blacks having been here since we left.” Brahe and Wright had left no stores at the camp ground.

Had they only been bushmen the tracks would have told Wills of help within his reach, the fish hooks would have won them food in plenty. It is curious, too, that Burke died after a meal of crow and nardoo, there being neither sugar nor fat in these foods, without which they can not sustain a man’s life. Then King left Burke’s body, shot three crows and brought them to Wills, who was lying dead in camp. Three months afterward a relief party found King living among the natives “wasted to a shadow, and hardly to be distinguished as a civilized being but by the remnants of the clothes upon him.”

“They should not have gone,” said one pioneer of these lost explorers. “They weren’t bushmen.” Afterward a Mr. Collis and his wife lived four years in plenty upon the game and fish at the Innaminka water-hole where poor Burke died of hunger.

Such were the first crossings from east to west, and from south to north of the Australian continent.

XVIII
A. D. 1867

THE HERO-STATESMAN

There is no greater man now living in the world than Diaz the hero-statesman, father of Mexico. What other soldier has scored fourteen sieges and fifty victorious battles? What other statesman, having fought his way to the throne, has built a civilized nation out of chaos?

This Spanish-red Indian half-breed began work at the age of seven as errand boy in a shop. At fourteen he was earning his living as a private tutor while he worked through college for the priesthood. At seventeen he was a soldier in the local militia and saw his country overthrown by the United States, which seized three-fourths of all her territories. At the age of twenty-one, Professor Diaz, in the chair of Roman law at Oaxaca, was working double tides as a lawyer’s clerk.

In the Mexican “republic” it is a very serious offense to vote for the Party-out-of-office, and the only way to support the opposition is to get out with a rifle and fight. So when Professor Diaz voted at the next general election he had to fly for his life. After several months of hard fighting he emerged from his first revolution as mayor of a village.

The villagers were naked Indians, and found their new mayor an unexpected terror. He drilled them into soldiers, marched them to his native city Oaxaca, captured the place by assault, drove out a local usurper who was making things too hot for the citizens, and then amid the wild rejoicings that followed, was promoted to a captaincy in the national guards.

Captain Diaz explained to his national guards that they were fine men, but needed a little tactical exercise. So he took them out for a gentle course of maneuvers, to try their teeth on a rebellion which happened to be camped conveniently in the neighborhood. When he had finished exercising his men, there was no rebellion left, so he marched them home. He had to come home because he was dangerously wounded.

It must be explained that there were two big political parties, the clericals, and the liberals—both pledged to steal everything in sight. Diaz was scarcely healed of his wound, when a clerical excursion came down to steal the city. He thrashed them sick, he chased them until they dropped, and thrashed them again until they scattered in helpless panic.

The liberal president rewarded Colonel Diaz with a post of such eminent danger, that he had to fight for his life through two whole years before he could get a vacation. Then Oaxaca, to procure him a holiday, sent up the young soldier as member of parliament to the capital.

Of course the clerical army objected strongly to the debates of a liberal congress sitting in parliament at the capital. They came and spoiled the session by laying siege to the City of Mexico. Then the member for Oaxaca was deputed to arrange with these clericals.

He left his seat in the house, gathered his forces, and chased that clerical army for two months. At last, dead weary, the clericals had camped for supper, when Diaz romped in and thrashed them. He got that supper.

So disgusted were the clerical leaders that they now invited Napoleon III to send an army of invasion. Undismayed, the unfortunate liberals fought a joint army of French and clericals, checked them under the snows of Mount Orizaba, and so routed them before the walls of Puebla that it was nine months before they felt well enough to renew the attack. The day of that victory is celebrated by the Mexicans as their great national festival.

In time, the French, forty thousand strong, not to mention their clerical allies, returned to the assault of Puebla, and in front of the city found Diaz commanding an outpost. The place was only a large rest-house for pack-trains, and when the outer gate was carried, the French charged in with a rush. One man remained to defend the courtyard, Colonel Diaz, with a field-piece, firing shrapnel, mowing away the French in swathes until his people rallied from their panic, charged across the square, and recovered the lost gates.

The city held out for sixty days, but succumbed to famine, and the French could not persuade such a man as Diaz to give them any parole. They locked him up in a tower, and his dungeon had but a little iron-barred window far up in the walls. Diaz got through those bars, escaped, rallied a handful of Mexicans, armed them by capturing a French convoy camp, raised the southern states of Mexico, and for two years held his own against the armies of France.

President Juarez had been driven away into the northern desert, a fugitive, the Emperor Maximilian reigned in the capital, and Marshal Bazaine commanded the French forces that tried to conquer Diaz in the south. The Mexican hero had three thousand men and a chain of forts. Behind that chain of forts he was busy reorganizing the government of the southern states, and among other details, founding a school for girls in his native city.

Marshal Bazaine, the traitor, who afterward sold France to the Germans, attempted to bribe Diaz, but, failing in that, brought nearly fifty thousand men to attack three thousand. Slowly he drove the unfortunate nationalists to Oaxaca and there Diaz made one of the most glorious defenses in the annals of war. He melted the cathedral bells for cannon-balls, he mounted a gun in the empty belfry, where he and his starving followers fought their last great fight, until he stood alone among the dead, firing charge after charge into the siege lines.

Once more he was cast into prison, only to make such frantic attempts at escape that in the end he succeeded in scaling an impossible wall. He was an outlaw now, living by robbery, hunted like a wolf, and yet on the second day after that escape, he commanded a gang of bandits and captured a French garrison. He ambuscaded an expedition sent against him, raised an army, and reconquered Southern Mexico.

Porfirio Diaz

It was then (1867) that the United States compelled the French to retire. President Juarez marched from the northern deserts, gathering the people as he came, besieged Querétaro, captured and shot the Emperor Maximilian. Diaz marched from the south, entered the City of Mexico, handed over the capital to his triumphant president, resigned his commission as commander-in-chief, and retired in deep contentment to manufacture sugar in Oaxaca.

For nine years the hero made sugar. Over an area in the north as large as France, the Apache Indians butchered every man, woman and child with fiendish tortures. The whole distracted nation cried in its agony for a leader, but every respectable man who tried to help was promptly denounced by the government, stripped of his possessions and driven into exile. At last General Diaz could bear it no longer, made a few remarks and was prosecuted. He fled, and there began a period of the wildest adventures conceivable, while the government attempted to hunt him down. He raised an insurrection in the north, but after a series of extraordinary victories, found the southward march impossible. When next he entered the republic of Mexico, he came disguised as a laborer by sea to the port of Tampico.

At Vera Cruz he landed, and after a series of almost miraculous escapes from capture, succeeded in walking to Oaxaca. There he raised his last rebellion, and with four thousand followers ambuscaded a government army, taking three thousand prisoners, the guns and all the transport. President Lerdo heard the news, and bolted with all the cash. General Diaz took the City of Mexico and declared himself president of the republic.

Whether as bandit or king, Diaz has always been the handsomest man in Mexico, the most courteous, the most charming, and terrific as lightning when in action. The country suffered from a very plague of politicians until one day he dropped in as a visitor, quite unexpected, at Vera Cruz, selected the eleven leading politicians without the slightest bias as to their views, put them up against the city wall and shot them. Politics was abated.

The leading industry of the country was highway robbery, until the president, exquisitely sympathetic, invited all the principal robbers to consult with him as to details of government. He formed them into a body of mounted police, which swept like a whirlwind through the republic and put a sudden end to brigandage. Capital punishment not being permitted by the humane government, the robbers were all shot for “attempting to escape.”

Next in importance was the mining of silver, and the recent decline in its value threatened to ruin Mexico. By the magic of his finance, Diaz used that crushing reverse to lace the country with railroads, equip the cities with electric lights and traction power far in advance of any appliances we have in England, open great seaports, and litter all the states of Mexico with prosperous factories. Meanwhile he paid off the national debt, and made his coinage sound.

He never managed himself to speak any other language than his own majestic, slow Castilian, but he knew that English is to be the tongue of mankind. Every child in Mexico had to go to school to learn English.

And this greatest of modern sovereigns went about among his people the simplest, most accessible of men. “They may kill me if they want to,” he said once, “but they don’t want to. They rather like me.” So one might see him taking his morning ride, wearing the beautiful leather dress of the Mexican horsemen, or later in the day, in a tweed suit going down to the office by tram car, or on his holidays hunting the nine-foot cats which we call cougar, or of a Sunday going to church with his wife and children. On duty he was an absolute monarch, off duty a kindly citizen, and it seemed to all of us who knew the country that he would die as he had lived, still in harness. One did not expect too much—the so-called elections were a pleasant farce, but the country was a deal better governed than the western half of the United States. Any fellow entitled to a linen collar in Europe wore a revolver in Mexico, as part of the dress of a gentleman, but in the wildest districts I never carried a cartridge. Diaz had made his country a land of peace and order, strong, respected, prosperous, with every outward sign of coming greatness. Excepting only Napoleon and the late Japanese emperor, he was both in war and peace the greatest leader our world has ever known. But the people proved unworthy of their chief; to-day he is a broken exile, and Mexico has lapsed back into anarchy.

XIX
A. D. 1870

THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

A lady who remembers John Rowlands at the workhouse school in Denbigh tells me that he was a lazy disagreeable boy. He is also described as a “full-faced, stubborn, self-willed, round-headed, uncompromising, deep fellow. He was particularly strong in the trunk, but not very smart or elegant about the legs, which were disproportionately short. His temperament was unusually secretive; he could stand no chaff nor the least bit of humor.”

Perhaps that is why he ran away to sea; but anyway a sailing ship landed him in New Orleans, where a rich merchant adopted him as a son. Of course a workhouse boy has nothing to be patriotic about, so it was quite natural that this Welsh youth should become a good American, also that he should give up the name his mother bore, taking that of his benefactor, Henry M. Stanley. The old man died, leaving him nothing, and for two years there is no record until the American Civil War gave him a chance of proving his patriotism to his adopted country. He was so tremendously patriotic that he served on both sides, first in the confederate army, then in the federal navy. He proved a very brave man, and after the war, distinguished himself as a special correspondent during an Indian campaign in the West. Then he joined the staff of the New York Herald serving in the Abyssinian War, and the civil war in Spain. He allowed the Herald to contradict a rumor that he was a Welshman. “Mr. Stanley,” said the paper, “is neither an Ap-Jones, nor an Ap-Thomas. Missouri and not Wales is his birthplace.”

Privately he spent his holidays with his mother and family in Wales, speaking Welsh no doubt with a strong American accent. The whitewashed American has always a piercing twang, even if he has adopted as his “native” land, soft-voiced Missouri, or polished Louisiana.

In those days Doctor Livingstone was missing. The gentle daring explorer had found Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika, and to the westward of them, a mile wide river, the Lualaba, which he supposed to be headwaters of the Nile. He was slowly dying of fever, almost penniless, and always when he reached the verge of some new discovery, his cowardly negro carriers revolted, or ran away, leaving him to his fate. No word of him had reached the world for years. England was anxious as to the fate of one of her greatest men, so there were various attempts to send relief, delayed by the expense, and not perhaps handled by really first-rate men. To find Livingstone would be a most tremendous world-wide advertisement, say for a patent-pill man, a soap manufacturer, or a newspaper. All that was needed was unlimited cash, and the services of a first-rate practical traveler, vulgar enough to use the lost hero as so much “copy” for his newspaper. The New York Herald had the money, and in Stanley, the very man for the job.

Not that the Herald, or Stanley cared twopence about the fate of Livingstone. The journal sent the man to make a big journey through Asia Minor and Persia on his way to Zanzibar. The more Livingstone’s rescue was delayed the better the “ad” for Stanley and the Herald.

As to the journey, Stanley’s story has been amply advertised, and we have no other version because his white followers died. He found Livingstone at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, and had the grace to reverence, comfort and succor a dying man.

As to Stanley’s magnificent feat of exploring the great lakes, and descending Livingstone’s river to the mouth of the Congo, again his story is well exploited while the version of his white followers is missing, because they gave their lives.

In Stanley’s expedition which founded the Congo State, and in his relief of Emin Pasha, the white men were more fortunate, and some lived. It is rumored that they did not like Mr. Stanley, but his negro followers most certainly adored him, serving in one journey after another. There can be no doubt too, that with the unlimited funds that financed and his own fine merits as a traveler, Stanley did more than any other explorer to open up the dark continent, and to solve its age-long mysteries. It was not his fault that Livingstone stayed on in the wilderness to die, that the Congo Free State became the biggest scandal of modern times, or that Emin Pasha flatly refused to be rescued from governing the Soudan.

Henry M. Stanley

Stanley lived to reap the rewards of his great deeds, to forget that he was a native of Missouri and a freeborn American citizen, to accept the honor of knighthood and to sit in the British parliament. Whether as a Welshman, or an American, a confederate, or a federal, a Belgian subject or a Britisher, he always knew on which side his bread was buttered.

XX
A. D. 1871

LORD STRATHCONA

It is nearly a century now since Lord Strathcona was born in a Highland cottage. His father, Alexander Smith, kept a little shop at Forres, in Elgin; his mother, Barbara Stewart, knew while she reared the lad that the world would hear of him. His school, founded by a returned adventurer, was one which sent out settlers for the colonies, soldiers for the army, miners for the gold-fields, bankers for England, men to every corner of the world. As the lad grew, he saw the soldiers, the sailors, the adventurers, who from time to time came tired home to Forres, and among these was his uncle, John Stewart, famous in the annals of the Canadian frontier, rich, distinguished, commending all youngsters to do as he had done. When Donald Smith was in his eighteenth year, this uncle procured him a clerkship in the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Canada was in revolt when in 1837 the youngster reached Montreal, for Robert Nelson had proclaimed a Canadian republic and the British troops were busy driving the republicans into the United States. So there was bloodshed, the burning of houses, the filling of the jails with rebels to be convicted presently and hanged. Out of all this noise and confusion, Donald Smith was sent into the silence of Labrador, the unknown wilderness of the Northeast Territory, where the first explorer, McLean, was searching for tribes of Eskimos that might be induced to trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company. “In September (1838),” wrote McLean, “I was gratified by the arrival of despatches from Canada by a young clerk appointed to the district. By him we received the first intelligence of the stirring events which had taken place in the colonies during the preceding year.” So Smith had taken a year to carry the news of the Canadian revolt to that remote camp of the explorers.

Henceforward, for many years there exists no public record of Donald Smith’s career, and he has flatly refused to tell the story lest he should appear to be advertising. His work consisted of trading with the savages for skins, of commanding small outposts, healing the sick, administering justice, bookkeeping, and of immense journeys by canoe in summer, or cariole drawn by a team of dogs in winter. The winter is arctic in that Northeast Territory, and a very pleasant season between blizzards, but the summer is cursed with a plague of insects, black flies by day, mosquitoes by night almost beyond endurance. Like other men in the service of the company, Mr. Smith had the usual adventures by flood and field, the peril of the snow-storms, the wrecking of canoes. There is but one story extant. His eyesight seemed to be failing, and after much pain he ventured on a journey of many months to seek the help of a doctor in Montreal. Sir George Simpson, governor of the company, met him in the outskirts of the city.

“Well, young man,” he said, “why are you not at your post?”

“My eyes, sir; they got so bad, I’ve come to see a doctor.”

“And who gave you permission to leave your post?”

“No one, sir.” It would have taken a year to get permission, and his need was urgent.

“Then, sir,” answered the governor, “if it’s a question between your eyes, and your service in the Hudson’s Bay Company, you’ll take my advice, and return this instant to your post.”

Without another word, without a glance toward the city this man turned on his tracks, and set off to tramp a thousand miles back to his duty.

The man who has learned to obey has learned to command, and wherever Smith was stationed, the books were accurate, the trade was profitable. He was not heard of save in the return of profits, while step by step he rose to higher and higher command, until at the age of forty-eight he was appointed governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, sovereign from the Atlantic to the Pacific, reigning over a country nearly as large as Europe. To his predecessors this had been the crowning of an ambitious life; to him, it was only the beginning of his great career.

The Canadian colonies were then being welded into a nation and the first act of the new Dominion government was to buy from the Hudson’s Bay Company the whole of its enormous empire, two thousand miles wide and nearly five thousand miles long. Never was there such a sale of land, at such a price, for the cash payment worked out at about two shillings per square mile. Two-thirds of the money went to the sleeping partners of the company in England; one-third—thanks to Mr. Smith’s persuasion—was granted to the working officers in Rupert’s Land. Mr. Smith’s own share seems to have been the little nest egg from which his fortune has hatched.

When the news of the great land sale reached the Red River of the north, the people there broke out in revolt, set up a republic, and installed Louis Riel as president at Fort Garry.

Naturally this did not meet the views of the Canadian government, which had bought the country, or of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which owned the stolen fort. Mr. Smith, governor of the company, was sent at once as commissioner for the Canadian government to restore the settlement to order. On his arrival the rebel president promptly put him in jail, and openly threatened his life. In this awkward situation, Mr. Smith contrived not only to stay alive, but to conduct a public meeting, with President Riel acting as his interpreter to the French half-breed rebels. The temperature at this outdoor meeting was twenty degrees below zero, with a keen wind, but in course of five hours’ debating, Mr. Smith so undermined the rebel authority that from that time it began to collapse. Afterward, although the rebels murdered one prisoner, and times were more than exciting, Mr. Smith’s policy gradually sapped the rebellion, until, when the present Lord Wolseley arrived with British troops, Riel and his deluded half-breeds bolted. So, thanks to Mr. Smith, Fort Garry is now Winnipeg, the central city of Canada, capital of her central province, Manitoba.

But when Sir Donald Smith had resigned from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s service, and became a politician, he schemed, with unheard-of daring, for even greater ends. At his suggestion, the Northwest Mounted Police was formed and sent out to take possession of the Great Plains. That added a wheat field to Canada which will very soon be able to feed the British empire. Next he speculated with every dollar he could raise, on a rusty railway track, which some American builders had abandoned because they were bankrupt. He got the rail head into Winnipeg, and a large trade opened with the United States. So began the boom that turned Manitoba into a populous country, where the buffalo had ranged before his coming. Now he was able to startle the Canadian government with the warning that unless they hurried up with a railway, binding the whole Dominion from ocean to ocean, all this rich western country would drift into the United States. When the government had failed in an attempt to build the impossible railway, Sir Donald got Montreal financiers together, cousins and friends of his own, staked every dollar he had, made them gamble as heavily, and set to work on the biggest road ever constructed. The country to be traversed was almost unexplored, almost uninhabited except by savages, fourteen hundred miles of rock and forest, a thousand miles of plains, six hundred miles of high alps.

The syndicate building the road consisted of merchants in a provincial town not bigger then than Bristol, and when they met for business it was to wonder vaguely where the month’s pay was to come from for their men. They would part for the night to think, and by morning, Donald Smith would say, “Well, here’s another million—that ought to do for a bit.” On November seven, 1885, he drove the last spike, the golden spike, that completed the Canadian Pacific railway, and welded Canada into a living nation.

Since then Lord Strathcona has endowed a university and given a big hospital to Montreal. At a cost of three hundred thousand pounds he presented the famous regiment known as Strathcona’s Horse, to the service of his country, and to-day, in his ninety-third year is working hard as Canadian high commissioner in London.

XXI
A. D. 1872

THE SEA HUNTERS

The Japanese have heroes and adventurers just as fine as our own, most valiant and worthy knights. Unhappily I am too stupid to remember their honorable names, to understand their motives, or to make out exactly what they were playing at. It is rather a pity they have to be left out, but at least we can deal with one very odd phase of adventure in the Japan seas.

The daring seamen of old Japan used to think nothing of crossing the Pacific to raid the American coast for slaves. But two or three hundred years ago the reigning shogun made up his mind that slaving was immoral. So he pronounced an edict by which the builders of junks were forbidden to fill in their stern frame with the usual panels. The junks were still good enough for coastwise trade at home, but if they dared the swell of the outer ocean a following sea would poop them and send them to the bottom. That put a stop to the slave trade; but no king can prevent storms, and law or no law, disabled junks were sometimes swept by the big black current and the westerly gales right across the Pacific Ocean. The law made only one difference, that the crippled junks never got back to Japan; and if their castaway seamen reached America the native tribes enslaved them. I find that during the first half of the nineteenth century the average was one junk in forty-two months cast away on the coasts of America.

Now let us turn to another effect of this strange law that disabled Japanese shipping. Northward of Japan are the Kuril Islands in a region of almost perpetual fog, bad storms and bitter cold, ice pack, strong currents and tide rips, combed by the fanged reefs, with plenty of earthquakes and eruptions to allay any sense of monotony. The large and hairy natives are called the Ainu, who live by fishing, and used to catch sea otter and fur seal. These furs found their way via Japan to China, where sea-otter fur was part of the costly official winter dress of the Chinese mandarins. As to the seal, their whiskers are worth two shillings a set for cleaning opium pipes, and one part of the carcass sells at a shilling a time for medicine, apart from the worth of the fur.

Now the law that disabled the junks made it impossible for Japan to do much trade in the Kurils, so that the Russians actually got there first as colonists.

But no law disabled the Americans, and when the supply of sea otter failed on the Californian coast in 1872 a schooner called the Cygnet crossed the Pacific to the Kuril Islands. There the sea-otters were plentiful in the kelp beds, tame as cats and eager to inspect the hunters’ boats. Their skins fetched from eighty to ninety dollars.

When news came to Japan of this new way of getting rich, a young Englishman, Mr. H. J. Snow, bought a schooner, a hog-backed relic called the Swallow in which he set out for the hunting. Three days out, a gale dismasted her, and putting in for shelter she was cast away in the Kuriles. Mr. Snow’s second venture was likewise cast away on a desert isle, where the crew wintered. “My vessels,” he says, “were appropriately named. The Swallow swallowed up part of my finances, and the Snowdrop caused me to drop the rest.”

During the winter another crew of white men were in quarters on a distant headland of the same Island Yeturup, and were cooking their Christmas dinner when they met with an accident. A dispute had arisen between two rival cooks as to how to fry fritters, and during the argument a pan of boiling fat capsized into the stove and caught alight. The men escaped through the flames half dressed, their clothes on fire, into the snow-clad wilderness and a shrewd wind. Then they set up a shelter of driftwood with the burning ruin in front to keep them warm, while they gravely debated as to whether they ought to cremate the cooks upon the ashes of their home and of their Christmas dinner.

To understand the adventures of the sea hunters we must follow the story of the leased islands. The Alaska Commercial Company, of San Francisco, leased the best islands for seal and otter fishing. From the United States the company leased the Pribilof Islands in Bering Sea, a great fur-seal metropolis with a population of nearly four millions. They had armed native gamekeepers and the help of an American gunboat. From Russia the company leased Bering and Copper Islands off Kamchatka, and Cape Patience on Saghalian with its outlier Robber Island. There also they had native gamekeepers, a patrol ship, and the help of Russian troops and gunboats. The company had likewise tame newspapers to preach about the wickedness of the sea hunters and call them bad names. As a rule the sea hunters did their hunting far out at sea where it was perfectly lawful. At the worst they landed on the forbidden islands as poachers. The real difference between the two parties was that the sea hunters took all the risks, while the company had no risks and took all the profits.

In 1883 Snow made his first raid on Bering Island. Night fell while his crew were busy clubbing seals, and they had killed about six hundred when the garrison rushed them. Of course the hunters made haste to the boats, but Captain Snow missed his men who should have followed him, and as hundreds of seals were taking to the water he joined them until an outlying rock gave shelter behind which he squatted down, waist-deep. When the landscape became more peaceful he set off along the shore of boulders, stumbling, falling and molested by yapping foxes. He had to throw rocks to keep them off. When he found the going too bad he took to the hills, but sea boots reaching to the hips are not comfy for long walks, and when he pulled them off he found how surprisingly sharp are the stones in an Arctic tundra. He pulled them on again, and after a long time came abreast of his schooner, where he found one of the seamen. They hailed and a boat took them on board, where the shipkeeper was found to be drunk, and the Japanese bos’n much in need of a thrashing. Captain Snow supplied what was needed to the bos’n and had a big supper, but could not sail as the second mate was still missing. He turned in for a night’s rest.

Next morning bright and early came a company’s steamer with a Russian officer and two soldiers who searched the schooner. There was not a trace of evidence on board, but on general principles the vessel was seized and condemned, all her people suffering some months of imprisonment at Vladivostok.

In 1888, somewhat prejudiced against the virtuous company, Captain Snow came with the famous schooner Nemo, back to the scene of his misadventure. One morning with three boats he went prospecting for otter close along shore, shot four, and his hunters one, then gave the signal of return to the schooner. At that moment two shots rang out from behind the boulders ashore, and a third, which peeled some skin from his hand, followed by a fusillade like a hail storm. Of the Japanese seamen in Snow’s boat the boat steerer was shot through the backbone. A second man was hit first in one leg, then in the other, but went on pulling. The stroke oar, shot in the calf, fell and lay, seemingly dead, but really cautious. Then the other two men bent down and Snow was shot in the leg.

So rapid was the firing that the guns ashore must have heated partly melting the leaden bullets, for on board the boat there was a distinct perfume of molten lead. Three of the bullets which struck the captain seem to have been deflected by his woolen jersey, and one which got through happened to strike a fold. It had been noted in the Franco-Prussian War that woolen underclothes will sometimes turn leaden bullets.

“I remember,” says Captain Snow, “weighing the chances ... of swimming beside the boat, but decided that we should be just as liable to be drowned as shot, as no one could stand the cold water for long. For the greater part of the time I was vigorously plying my paddle ... and only presenting the edge of my body, the left side, to the enemy. This is how it was that the bullets which struck me all entered my clothing on the left side. I expected every moment to be shot through the body, and I could not help wondering how it would feel.”

With three dying men, and three wounded, he got the sinking boat under sail and brought her alongside the schooner.

Of course it was very good of the Alaska Commercial Company to preserve the wild game of the islands, but even gamekeepers may show excess of zeal when it comes to wholesale murder. To all of us who were in that trade it is a matter of keen regret that the officers ashore took such good cover. Their guards, and the Cossacks, were kindly souls enough, ready and willing—in the absence of the officers to sell skins to the raiders or even, after some refreshments, to help in clubbing a few hundred seals. It was rather awkward, though, for one of the schooners at Cape Patience when in the midst of these festivities a gunboat came round the corner.

The American and the Japanese schooners were not always quite good friends, and there is a queer story of a triangular duel between three vessels, fought in a fog. Mr. Kipling had the Rhyme of the Three Sealers, he told me, from Captain Lake in Yokohama. I had it from the mate of one of the three schooners, The Stella. She changed her name to Adele, and the mate became master, a little, round, fox-faced Norseman, Hans Hansen, of Christiania. In 1884 the Adele was captured by an American gunboat and taken to San Francisco. Hansen said that he and his men were marched through the streets shackled, and great was the howl about pirates, but when the case came up for trial the court had no jurisdiction, and the ship was released. From that event dates the name “Yokohama Pirates,” and Hansen’s nickname as the Flying Dutchman. Because at the time of capture he had for once been a perfectly innocent deep sea sealer, he swore everlasting war against the United States, transferred his ship to the port of Victoria, British Columbia, and would hoist by turns the British, Japanese, German, Norwegian or even American flag, as suited his convenience.

Once when I asked him why not the Black Flag, he grinned, remarking that them old-fashioned pirates had no business sense. Year after year he raided the forbidden islands to subvert the garrisons, rob warehouses, or plunder the rookeries, while gunboats of four nations failed to effect his capture. In port he was a pattern of innocent virtue, at sea his superb seamanship made him as hard to catch as a ghost, and his adventures beat the Arabian Nights. I was with him as an ordinary seaman in the voyage of 1889, a winter raid upon the Pribilof Islands. At the first attempt we clawed off a lee shore in a hurricane, the second resulted in a mutiny, and the third landing was not very successful, because the boats were swamped, and the garrison a little too prevalent ashore. On the voyage of 1890 the Adele took four hundred skins, but in 1891 was cast away on the North Island of the Queen Charlotte group, without any loss of life. The Flying Dutchman took to mining on the outer coast of Vancouver, where he rescued a shipwrecked crew, but afterward perished in the attempt to save a drowning Indian.

Quite apart from the so-called Yokohama pirates, a large fleet of law-abiding Canadian schooners hunted the fur seal at sea, a matter which led to some slight unpleasantness between the American and the British governments. There was hunting also in the seas about Cape Horn; but the Yokohama schooners have left behind them by far the finest memories. Captain Snow says that from first to last some fifty white men’s schooners sailed out of Yokohama. Of five there is no record, two took to sealing when the sea otter no longer paid, and four were sold out of the business. The Russians sank one, captured and lost two, captured and condemned three, all six being a dead loss to their owners. For the rest, twenty-two were cast away, and twelve foundered with all hands at sea, so that the total loss was forty ships out of fifty. For daring seamanship and gallant adventure sea hunting made a school of manhood hard to match in this tame modern world, and war is a very tame affair to those who shared the fun.

XXII
A. D. 1879

THE BUSHRANGERS

It is a merit to love dumb animals, but to steal them is an excess of virtue that is sure to cause trouble with the police. All Australians have a passion for horses, but thirty years ago, the Australian bushmen developed such a mania for horse-stealing, that the mounted police were fairly run off their legs. The feeling between bushmen and police became so exceedingly bitter that in 1878 a constable, attempting to make arrests, was beset and wounded. The fight took place in the house of a Mrs. Kelly, who got penal servitude, whereas her sons, Ned and Dan, who did the actual shooting, escaped to the hills. A hundred pounds were offered for their arrest.

Both of Mrs. Kelly’s sons were tainted, born and raised thieves. At the age of sixteen Ned had served an apprenticeship in robbery under arms with Power the bushranger, who described him as a cowardly young brute. Now, in his twenty-fifth year he was far from brave. Dan, aged seventeen, was a ferocious young wolf, but manly. As the brothers lurked in hiding they were joined by Joe Byrne, aged twenty-one, a gallant and sweet-tempered lad gone wrong, and by Steve Hart, a despicable little cur. All four were superb as riders, scouts and bushmen, fairly good shots, intimate with every inch of the country, supported by hundreds of kinsmen and the sympathy of the people generally in the war they had declared against the police.

In October, Sergeant Kennedy and three constables patroling in search of the gang, were surprised by the outlaws in camp, and, as they showed fight, Ned and Dan Kelly attacked them. Only one trooper escaped. At this outrage, Byrne was horrified, Hart scared, but the Kellys forced them to fire into Sergeant Kennedy’s corpse that they might share the guilt. Then Ned Kelly, touched by the gallantry with which the sergeant had fought, brought a cloak and reverently covered his body.

In December, the outlaws stuck up a sheep station, and robbed the bank at Euroa.

In February, 1879, they surprised the police station at Jerilderie, locked two policemen in the cells, disguised themselves as constables, captured the town, imprisoning a crowd of people in the hotel, then sacked the bank, and rode away shouting and singing with their plunder.

By this time the rewards offered for their capture amounted to eight thousand pounds, and the whole strength of the Victoria police was engaged, with native trackers, in hunting them. Had these wicked robbers ever showed rudeness to a woman, or plundered a poor man, or behaved meanly with their stolen wealth, they would have been betrayed at once to the police, but the Australians are sportsmen, and there is a gallantry in robbery under arms that appeals to misguided hearts.

The four bad men were so polite to all women, so kindly to unarmed citizens, so humorous in their methods, so generous with their gold, so daring in making war against a powerful British state, that they were esteemed as heroes. Even bad heroes are better than none at all, and they were not betrayed even by poor folk to whom the rewards would have been a fortune. For two years they outwitted the whole force of police, scouts and trackers at a cost to the state of one hundred fifteen thousand pounds.

But with all this the best of Australian manhood was engaged in the hunt, and the real heroes of this adventure were the police, who made no moan through months of outrageous labor and suffering in the mountains.

Superintendent Hare, in charge of the hunt, made friends with a kinsman of the outlaws, a young horse-thief, named Aaron Sherritt. This lad knew all the secrets of the outlaws, was like a brother to them, and yet, so worshiped Mr. Hare that he served with the police as a spy. In treachery to his kinsmen, he was at least faithful to his master, knowing that he went to his own death.

He expected the outlaws to come by night to the house of Joe Byrne’s mother, and led Mr. Hare’s patrol, which lay for the next month in hiding upon a hill overlooking the homestead. Aaron was engaged to Byrne’s sister, was daily at the house and slowly a dim suspicion dawned on the outlaw’s mother. Then the old woman, uneasily searching the hills, stumbled into the police bivouac, and saw Aaron Sherritt, the spy, asleep in that company. His dress betrayed him to her, a white shirt, breeches and long boots, impossible to mistake. And when he knew what had happened, the lad turned white. “Now,” he muttered, “I am a dead man.”

Mrs. Byrne sent the news of Aaron’s treachery to her outlawed son in the hills. On June twenty-sixth, the spy was called out of his mother’s cabin by some one who cried that he had lost his way. Aaron opened the door, and Joe Byrne shot him through the heart.

So the outlaws had broken cover after months of hiding, and at once Superintendent Hare brought police and trackers by a special train that they might take up the trail of their retreat back to the mountains. The outlaws, foreseeing this movement, tore up the railway track, so that the train, with its load of police, might be thrown into a gully, and all who survived the wreck were to be shot down without mercy.

This snare which they set for their enemies was badly planned. Instead of tearing up the tracks themselves, they brought men for the job from Glenrowan station close by; and then, to prevent their presence from being reported, they had to hold the village instead of mounting guard upon the trap. They cut the wires, secured the station and herded all the villagers into the Glenrowan hotel some two hundred yards from the railway. Then they had to wait for the train from three o’clock on Monday morning all through the long day, and the dreary night, guarding sixty prisoners and watching for the police. They amused the prisoners, men, women and children with an impromptu dance in which they shared by turns, then with raids upon outlying houses, and with athletic feats, but always on the alert lest any man escape to give the alarm, or the police arrive unobserved. The strain was beyond human endurance. So Byrne, fresh from the murder of his chum Aaron Sherritt, relieved his mind by getting drunk, Ned Kelly kept up his courage by bragging of the death prepared for his enemies, and, worst of all, the local schoolmaster was allowed to take his sick wife home.

The schoolmaster had been most sympathetic all day long, helping the outlaws until he won their confidence; but now, escaped to his house, he made haste to prepare a lantern covered with a red shawl with which to signal the train. He stood upon the track waving the red light, when in the pitchy darkness before dawn, the train-load of police came blindly straight for the death-trap. The train slowed, stopped and was saved.

Out of plowshares and scrap iron, a blacksmith had forged for each of the outlaws a cuirass and helmet of plate armor, and now at the sound of the approaching train they dressed in this bullet-proof harness. Ned Kelly’s suit weighed ninety-seven pounds, and the others were similar, so clumsy that the wearer could neither run to attack nor mount a horse to escape. Moreover, with a rifle at the shoulder, it was impossible to see for taking aim. So armed, the robbers had got no farther than the hotel veranda when the police charged, and a fierce engagement began. The prisoners huddled within the house had no shelter from its frail board walls, and two of the children were wounded.

Byrne was drinking at the bar when a bullet struck him dead. Ned Kelly, attempting to desert his comrades, made for the yard, but finding that all the horses had been shot, strolled back laughing amid a storm of lead. Every bullet striking his armor made him reel, and he had been five times wounded, but now he began to walk about the yard emptying his revolvers into the police. Then a sergeant fired at his legs and the outlaw dropped, appealing abjectly for his life.

The escape of the panic-stricken prisoners had been arranged, but for hours the fight went on until toward noon the house stood a riddled and ghastly shell, with no sign of life. A bundle of straw was lighted against the gable end, and the building was soon ablaze. Rumors now spread that an old man lay wounded in the house, and a priest gallantly led in a rush of police to the rescue. The old man was saved, and under the thick smoke, Dan Kelly and Hart were seen lying dead upon the floor in their armor.

Ned Kelly died as he had lived, a coward, being almost carried to the gallows, and that evening his sister Kate exhibited herself as a show in a music-hall at Melbourne. So ended this bloody tragedy in hideous farce, and with the destruction of the outlaws closed a long period of disorder. Except in remote regions of the frontier, robbery under arms has ceased forever in the Australasian states.

XXIII
A. D. 1883

THE PASSING OF THE BISON

May I recommend a better book than this? If anybody wants to feel the veritable spirit of adventure, let him read My Life as an Indian, by F. W. Schultz. His life is an example in manliness, his record the best we have of a red Indian tribe, his book the most spacious and lovely in frontier literature.

The Blackfeet got their name from the oil-dressed, arrow-proof leather of their moccasins (skin shoes) which were dark in color. They were profoundly religious, scrupulously clean—bathing daily, even through thick ice, fastidiously moral, a gay light-hearted people of a temper like the French, and even among Indians, the most generous race in the world, they were famed for their hospitality. The savage is to the white man, what the child is to the grown-up, of lesser intellect, but much nearer to God.

When the white men reached the plains, the Blackfeet mustered about forty thousand mounted men, hunters. The national sport was stealing horses and scalps, but there was no organized war until the pressure of the whites drove the tribes westward, crowding them together, so that they had to fight for the good hunting grounds. Then there were wars in which the Blackfeet more than held their own. Next came the smallpox, and afterward the West was not so crowded. Whole nations were swept away, and those that lived were sorely reduced in numbers. After that came white frontiersmen to trade, to hunt, or as missionaries. The Indians called them Hat-wearers, but the Blackfeet had another name—the Stone-hearts. The whites were nearly always welcomed, but presently they came in larger numbers, claiming the land for mining camps and ranching, which drove away the game. The Indians fought the whites, fought for their land and their food, their liberty; but a savage with bow and arrows has no chance against a soldier with a rifle. For every white man killed a hundred would come to the funeral, so the Blackfeet saw that it was no use fighting.

In 1853 they made a treaty that secured them their hunting ground, forever free. The Great Father at Washington pledged his honor, and they were quite content. It was the same with every western tribe that the United States was pledged by solemn treaty which the Indians kept, and the white men always broke. Troops drove the settlers off, but went away and the settlers came back. So young warriors broke loose from the chiefs to scalp those settlers and burn their homes; and the army would break vengeance. Such were the conditions when Schultz, a green New England boy of nineteen, came by steamer up the Missouri to Fort Benton.

The truly respectable reader will be shocked to learn that this misguided youth went into partnership with a half-breed trader, selling water with a flavoring of whisky at very high prices to the Indians. In other words, he earned his living at a very risky trade. He married a Blackfoot girl, becoming a squaw-man, which, as everybody knows, is beneath contempt. In other words, he was honest enough to marry a most charming woman instead of betraying her to ruin. He went on guilty expeditions to snatch scalps and steal horses. He shared the national sports and so learned the inmost heart of a brave people.

When our own countrymen get too self-righteous, bigoted, priggish, smug and generally beyond bearing, what a blessing it would be if we had a few wild Indians to collect their scalps!

Schultz had a chum, a Blackfoot warrior called Wolverine, who taught him the sign language and a deal of bush craft. At times this Wolverine was unhappy, and once the white man asked him what was wrong. “There is nothing troubling me,” answered the Indian, then after a long pause: “I lied. I am in great trouble. I love Piks-ah’-ki, and she loves me, but I can not have her; her father will not give her to me.”

The father, Bull’s Head, was a Gros Ventre, and hated Wolverine for being a Blackfoot.

“I am going,” said Wolverine, “to steal the girl. Will you go with me?”

So one evening the pair stole away from the Blackfoot camp, rode eastward across the plains, marching by night, hiding by day. Once, at a river crossing they discovered the trails of a large war party of Crees on the way to the Gros Ventre camp. “I knew,” said Wolverine, laughing happily, “that my medicine would not desert me, and see, the way is clear before us. We will ride boldly into camp, to the lodge of the great chief, Three Bears. I will say that our chief sent me to warn him of a war party working this way. I will say that we ourselves have seen their tracks along the bars of the river. Then the Gros Ventres will guard their horses; they will ambush the enemy; there will be a big fight, big excitement. All the men will rush to the fight, and that will be my time. I will call Piks-ah’-ki, we will mount our horses and fly.” So riding hard, they came in sight of the Gros Ventre camp. “Ah!” said Wolverine, “there is the camp. Now for the big lie.” Then more seriously, “Pity me, great Sun! Pity me, you under water creatures of my dream! Help me to obtain that which I seek here.”

So they came to the lodge of Three Bears, presented tobacco as a present from the chief Big Lake and were welcomed with a special feast of boiled dog, which had to be eaten, no matter how sick they felt. Gros Ventres believed the enemy were coming and kept close watch on their herd, but Bull’s Head sat in the chief’s lodge, sneering at the visitors, “To-night,” he said, “I shall sit in my lodge and watch for women stealers, and my gun will be loaded.”

So he got up, and flounced out of the lodge.

That night all happened as Wolverine had said, for the Cree war party attempted to stampede the herd, and all the Gros Ventres, including Bull’s Head, ran out of camp for the battle. Wolverine and Schultz found Bull’s Head’s daughter ready but crying in her mother’s arms at parting. They mounted, they rode, they thought they were clear of the battle-field, when suddenly a gun exploded in front of Wolverine, and down he went with his horse. Then the girl screamed, “They have killed him! Help, white man, they have killed him!”

But Wolverine fired his gun at something that moved in the sage brush, and a deep groan followed. Wolverine clubbed something three of four times with his rifle. Then stooping, he picked up the gun which had been fired at him. “I count a coup,” he laughed, and handed the enemy’s weapon to Schultz.

At that moment Bull’s Head appeared, and in a frightful passion seized his daughter’s horse by the head attempting to drag her from the saddle. She shrieked, while Wolverine sprang at her father, threw him, disarmed him and flung away his gun. Then the young lover leaped lightly behind the girl upon her pony, and the father raged astern while they fled.

Four days’ ride brought them home to the Blackfoot camp, but Bull’s Head got there first, and whined about his poverty until Wolverine gave him ten ponies, also the captured gun. It was not much to pay for a beautiful woman who became a faithful and loving wife.

One day news reached the three main camps of the Blackfoot nation that a white buffalo had been sighted in the herds. Midwinter as it was, the hunters turned out, for the man who killed a white buffalo was held to have the especial favor of the Sun, and not only he, but his tribe. The head chief of a nation has been known to use the robe for a seat, but it could never be sold, and at the next building of a temple to the Sun it was offered up as a national sacrifice.

Great was the hunting through many days of bitter cold, until at last the white buffalo was found by a lone horseman who brought it down with his arrows “When we rode up,” says Schultz, “the hunter was standing over it, hands raised, fervently praying, promising the Sun the robe and tongue of the animal.... Medicine Weasel was so excited, he trembled so that he could not use his knife ... and some of our party took off the hide for him, and cut out the tongue, he standing over them all the time and begging them to be careful, to make no gashes, for they were doing the work for the Sun. None of the meat was taken. It was considered a sacrilege to eat it; the tongue was to be dried and given to the Sun with the robe.”

Only one more white buffalo was ever taken, in 1881, two years before the last herds were destroyed.

Heavy Breast and Schultz were once out hunting, and the chief’s saddle was newly loaded with mountain sheep meat, when the hunters met a first-class grizzly bear. He sat up, fifty yards distant and wriggled his nose as he sniffed the air. Both men fired and with a hair-lifting roar old sticky mouth rolled over, biting and clawing his wound, then sprang up and charged, open mouthed. The hunters rode hard, Schultz firing backward a couple of shots while the bear with long bounds, closed upon the Indian. “I fired again, and made another miss and just then Heavy Breast, his saddle and his sheep meat parted company with the fleeing pony. The cinch, an old worn rawhide band, had broken.

“‘Hai Ya, my friend,’ he cried pleadingly, as he soared up in the air, still astride the saddle. Down they came with a loud thud not two strides in front of the onrushing bear. And that animal, with a dismayed and frightened ‘woof,’ turned sharply about and fled back toward the timber, I after him. I kept firing and firing, and finally a lucky shot broke his backbone.

“‘Do not laugh, my friend,’ said Heavy Breast; ‘surely the Sun listened to my prayer. I promised to sacrifice to him, intending to hang up that fine white blanket I have just bought. I will hang up the blanket and my otter-skin cap.’”

There was no end of trouble about that bear, for Mrs. Schultz dared not skin a sacred animal until she had sacrificed her best blue frock, also one of her husband’s revolvers—the same being out of order. And when the skin was dressed, nobody dared to visit the lodge until it had been hidden.

I want to copy out the whole book, for every paragraph contains some fresh delight, but these two or three stories must have shown something at least of Blackfoot character. I knew, and loved these people.

It was in January, 1870, that Colonel Baker was sent with a force of United States regular troops to chasten a band of Blackfeet who had killed a trader. The band accused of the crime, belonged to the Northern Blackfeet of Canada, whose camp at the time was on Belly River, two hundred miles north of the boundary. The band found by Baker belonged to the Piegans, a southern tribe camped on their own lands in Montana. There were eighty families in camp, but the men were nearly all away hunting buffalo when Baker’s force attacked at the break of dawn. The chief, Bear’s Head, ran toward the white men, waving a paper, a certificate of good character. He fell. Then the slaughter began in cold blood: Fifteen fighting men, eighteen elder men, ninety women, fifty-five little children, and when the last wounded mothers and their babies had been put out of their misery, the soldiers piled the corpses upon the wreckage before they burned the camp.

The whisky traders, like Schultz, have been blamed for the ruin of the Blackfeet; but since they had to die, it seems to me that the liquor gave them a certain amount of fun and excitement not so bad for them as Baker, or smallpox, or their Indian agent, or the white robbers who slaughtered their herds of buffalo, and stole their treaty lands. In 1874, Schultz was one of fifty-seven white men hunting or trading with the Canadian or Northern Blackfeet. They had trading forts at Whoop-up, Standoff, Slideout, the Leavings, all in Canada. But the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Canadian wolfers made complaint against these American rivals; and so the Canadian government raised the Northwest Mounted Police. Three hundred men were sent across the plains to take possession and run the American traders out of the country. But the police were only tenderfeet in those days, eastern Canadians unused to the western ways, who came hungry through the countless herds of the bison. A band of hunters brought news to the Blackfeet. “Some men are coming,” they said, “who wear red coats, and they are drawing a cannon.”

“Oh,” said the Blackfeet, “these must be Hudson’s Bay.” For in old times the company’s officers are said to have worn red coats when they administered justice, so that the color was a sign of honest dealing. So the police were not attacked by the Blackfeet, and they were welcomed by the American traders, who sold them food in abundance.

The liquor trade ceased altogether but the police and the traders became fast friends, while the police and the Northern Blackfeet have been loyal allies ever since. After the buffalo vanished, the tribes were fed by the Canadian government and not lavishly, perhaps rather stingily, helped to learn the important arts of ranching.

Meanwhile far away to the southward, the white men were slaughtering buffalo for their hides, and in Kansas alone during ten years, thirty-five million carcasses were left to rot on the plains. The bison herds still seemed as large as ever, the country black with them as far as the eye could reach. But men like Schultz who had brains, had news that away from these last migrating herds, the plains were empty for thousands of miles. I remember the northern plains like a vast graveyard, reaching in all directions to the sky-line, bare save for its tombstones, the bleached skulls of millions of bison. Afterward the sugar refiners sent wagons and took them all away.

In 1880, the whole of the prairie nations surrounded the last herds, and white men took a hundred thousand robes leaving the carcasses to rot as usual. The Indians slaughtered also but sold the robes for groceries, and dried the whole of the meat for winter food.

“We are near the end of it,” said Red Bird’s Tail. “I fear that this is our last buffalo hunt. Are you sure,” he asked Schultz, “that the white men have seen all the land between the two salt waters?”

“There is no place,” answered the trader, “where the white men have not traveled, and none of them can find buffalo.”

“That being the case,” said the chief with a deep sigh, “misery and death are at hand for me and mine.”

The Indians were compelled to strip the plains of every living creature, the Blackfeet, despite their religion, to eat fish and birds. Then came the winter; Schultz and his wife rode at dusk to the camp of Lodge-Pole chief.

“Hurry,” he commanded his women, “cook a meal for our friends. They must be hungry after their long ride.”

His wives brought out three small potatoes and two little trout, which they boiled. “’Tis all we have,” said one of them, brushing the tears from her eyes, and then the chief broke down.

“We have nothing,” he said haltingly. “There are no more buffalo. The Great Father sends us but a little food, gone in a day. We are very hungry. There are fish, to be sure, forbidden by the Gods, unclean. We eat them, but they do not give us any strength, and I doubt not we will be punished for eating them. It seems as if our gods had forsaken us.”

Mrs. Schultz went out and brought back a sack of food, and they made a feast, merry as in the days of plenty, which were gone forever.

Schultz came from the starving camps to write a letter to a New York paper, but it was never printed—a matter of politics. Then he advised the Indians to kill their agent, but they remembered Colonel Baker’s visit.

In his next annual report the agent wrote much about the Blackfeet, whose “heathenish rites were most deplorable.” And then came the Winter of Death, when a chief, Almost-a-dog, checked off daily the fate of a starving people. Women crowded round the windows of the agent’s office, holding out skinny children. “Go,” he would say; “go away! I have nothing for you!”

The thirty thousand dollars provided for their food had all been stolen, but there was plenty of corn to fatten fifty chickens, some geese and ducks.

Wolf Head, once known as Wolverine, rode south to Schultz’s trading post where he and his partner were feeding hosts of people, but when they heard his story of death after death, one by one they stole away out into the darkness, sitting upon the frozen ground where they wailed for their dead.

That night Schultz wrote to a friend of his in New York, known to the Indians as Fisher Cap. Then he rode hard and far to consult with Father Prando, a Jesuit priest, who had also been writing letters. Thanks to Fisher Cap, perhaps, or to Father Prando, the government sent an inspector, and one day he drove into the agency. “Where is that chicken house?” he yelled, and when he found the place, kicked it open. “Here you!” he called to the Indians, and they did the rest.

Next, he kicked open the agent’s office. “You —— —— ——,” said he.

Since then some agents have been honest, but the Piegan tribe has never recovered from the Winter of Death, for in their weakness, they fell a prey to disease, and only a remnant is left of that ruined people. But for Schultz, the despised squaw-man, not one would be left alive.

XXIV
A. D. 1885

GORDON

During the Crimean war, when our men in the trenches before Sebastopol crowded under their earthworks to escape the Russian fire, one of the subalterns showed fear unbecoming an officer. The young chap meant no harm, but as he had to be taught manners, a lieutenant slightly his senior, invited him up upon the ramparts. There, arm in arm, the two walked up and down, the senior making amusing remarks about the weather, while the storm of lead swept round them, and the Tommies watched horror-struck, expecting both to fall. That officer who gave lessons in courage, was Charles George Gordon.

After eight years of varied service in many lands, Major Gordon came to Shanghai, where the British officer commanding had need of such a man. The Taiping rebels at war with the Chinese government numbered one million five hundred thousand, holding impregnable cities, and threatening the British merchants of Shanghai. These had raised a force of four thousand Chinese with white officers, known as the Ever Victorious Army because they were always thrashed, and Gordon took over the command. He was helped by Li Hung Chang, commander-in-chief of the Chinese armies, but no great impression had as yet been made upon fifteen hundred thousand rebels, trenched in the impregnable rock cities, which stood as islands over flat lands laced with canals. Those channels made the land impassable for troops, but Gordon brought steamers, and where a city fronted him with hundreds of guns and tier upon tier of unscalable walls, he steamed round the canals, cut off the line of communications, then dropped in, unexpected, in the rear. His attack was always a most unpleasant surprise to the rebels, beginning with gunnery that battered down the walls, until up a slope of ruins the storming party charged. The Taipings, led by white adventurers, defended the breach with desperation, and Gordon would weep because of the slaughter, his gentle spirit shocked at the streams of blood. “Two men,” he says, “of the Thirty-first Regiment were on the breach at Fort San, as Taiping leaders for the defense. One was killed, the other, struck by a shell splinter, was taken prisoner. ‘Mr. Gordon, Mr. Gordon, you will not let me be killed!’

“‘Take him down to the river and shoot him!’ And aside: ‘Put him in my boat, let the doctor attend him, and send him down to Shankhai.’”

Gordon not only saved the poor adventurers, but where he captured garrisons of Taipings, he would arm his prisoners, drill them, and lead them on to attack fresh cities in the march of the Ever Victorious Army. The odds were slightly against him, three hundred and seventy-five to one—an army against three hundred and seventy-five armies—but his third siege reduced the rebel capital, which he starved into surrender. The Taiping generals laid down their arms to Gordon because he gave them their lives. Then Li Hung Chang jumped in and murdered the whole gang of generals, and Gordon, sorely annoyed, for the only time in his life carried a gun. For a whole day, revolver in hand, he hunted the Chinese commander-in-chief through the streets of Soo Chow, but Li was too sly for him, and hid under some matting in a boat until Gordon’s rage cooled down.

This Scotchman who, with forty men in a steamer, destroyed a Taiping army near Quin San, had only one weapon for his personal use—a little bamboo swagger cane, such as Tommy carries in the street. It was known to the Chinese as his Magic Wand of Victory, with which he had overthrown an army seven times as big as that of Great Britain.

The Chinese emperor sent an imperial decree conferring four thousand pounds and all sorts of honors. Gordon wrote on the back of the parchment: “Regret that owing to the circumstances which occurred since the capture of Soo Chow, I am unable to receive any mark of his majesty the emperor’s recognition.” So he sent the thing back—a slap in the face for China. The emperor sent a gold medal, but Gordon, scratching out the inscription, gave it to a charity bazaar. The emperor made him a prince of the Chinese empire, and with the uniform of that rank as a curio in his trunk, he returned to England.

In China he was prince and conqueror; in Gravesend Major Gordon did garrison duty and kept ducks, which he delighted to squirt with the garden syringe.

He was a Sunday-school teacher, and reared slum boys to manhood, he was lady bountiful in the parish, he was cranky as an old maid, full of odd whims, a little man, with tender gray eyes, and a voice like a peal of bells. For six years he rotted in Gravesend, then served a couple of years as British commissioner on the Danube, and then in 1874 was borrowed by Egypt to be viceroy of the equatorial provinces. There he made history.

The Turkish empire got its supply of slaves from this big Soudan, a tract the size of Europe, whose only trade was the sale of human flesh. If Gordon stopped the selling of slaves, the savages ate them. But the Egyptian government wanted money, so Gordon’s work was to stop the slave trade, get the people prosperous, and tax them. To aid him he had Egyptian officials, whose only interest in the job was the collecting of bribes, plunder and slaves for their private use; also a staff of Europeans, all of whom died of fever within the first few months. Moreover, the whole native population was, more or less, at war with the Egyptian government.

Gordon had a swift camel, and a reputation for sorcery, because leaving his escort days astern in the desert, he would ride alone into the midst of a hostile nation, dressed in a diplomatic uniform consisting of gold lace and trousers, quite unarmed, but compelling everybody to obey his orders. He was so tired that he wanted to die, and when the tribes disobeyed he merely cut off their whole supply of water until they learned to behave. So for five years, the only honest man in all that region fought the Soudanese, the Egyptian government and the British ministry, to put an end to slavery. He failed.

Charles George Gordon

Long chapters would be required for the story of Gordon’s work in Bessarabia, Armenia, India, South Africa, or the second period in China.

In 1884, England, having taken charge of Egypt, was responsible for the peace of Soudan. But the Arabs, united for once, and led by their prophet—the Mahdi—had declared a holy war against everybody, and wiped out an Egyptian army. So England said, “This is very awkward; let us pray”; and the government made up its mind to scuttle, to abandon the whole Soudan. Of course the Egyptians in the Soudan, officials, troops and people, would all get their throats cut, so our government had a qualm of conscience. Instead of sending an army to their rescue, they sent Gordon, with orders to bring the Egyptians to the coast. With a view to further economies they then let the Arabs cut off Gordon’s retreat to the coast. England folded her hands and left him to perish.

As soon as Gordon reached Khartoum, he began to send away the more helpless of the Egyptian people, and before the siege closed down some two thousand five hundred women, children and servants escaped from the coming death. At the last moment he managed to send the Englishmen, the Europeans and forty-five soldiers down the Nile. They were saved, and he remained to die with his soldiers. “May our Lord,” he wrote, “not visit us as a nation for our sins; but may His wrath fall on me.”

He could not believe in England’s cowardice, but walled his city with ramp and bastion, planned mines and raids, kept discipline while his troops were starving to death, and the Union Jack afloat above the palace, praying for his country in abasement, waiting for the army which had been sent too late. So for nine months the greatest of all England’s engineers held at bay an army of seventy-five thousand fighting Arabs. And when the city fell, rallying the last fifty men of his garrison, he went to his death, glad that he was not doomed to outlive England’s honor.

Year after year our army fought through the burning deserts, to win back England’s honor, to make amends for the death of her hero-saint, the knightliest of modern men, the very pattern of all chivalry. And then his grave was found, a heap of bloodstained ashes, which once had been Khartoum.

Now, in Trafalgar Square, men lay wreaths at the base of his statue, where with his Magic Wand of Victory, that Prince of the Chinese Empire and Viceroy of the African Equatorial Provinces, stands looking sorrowfully on a people who were not worthy to be his countrymen. But there is a greater monument to Gordon, a new Soudan, where men live at peace under the Union Jack, and slavery is at an end forever.

XXV
A. D. 1896

THE OUTLAW

Dawn was breaking of a summer’s day in 1896, when Green-Grass-growing-in-the-water, a red Indian scout, came trotting into Fort MacLeod with a despatch from Standoff for Superintendent Steele, of the Mounted Police. He brought news that the body of a Blood warrior, Medicine-Pipe-Stem, shot through the skull, and three weeks dead, had been found in an empty cabin.

The Blood tribe knew how Bad-Young-Man, known to the whites as Charcoal, had three weeks before come home from a hunting trip to his little cabin where his wife, the Marmot, lived. He had found his wife in the arms of Medicine-Pipe-Stem, and by his warrior’s right to defend his own honor, had shot the intruder down. Charcoal had done justice, and the tribe was ready to take his part, whatever the agent might say or the Mounted Police might do for the white man’s law.

A week had passed of close inquiry, when one of the scouts rode up to the ration house, where the people were drawing their supplies of beef, and gave warning that Charcoal was betrayed to the Mounted Police. Charcoal demanded the name of his betrayer, and learned that Mr. Wilson, the agent, was his enemy. That evening Charcoal waited outside the agent’s house, watching the lighted windows, where, on the yellow blinds there were passing shadows cast by the lamp within, as various members of the household went about their business. At last he saw Mr. Wilson’s shadow on the blind, fired and shot the agent through the thigh. The household covered the lamps, closed the shutters, sent for help and hid the wounded man on a couch behind the front door, well out of range from the windows. Next morning, in broad daylight, Charcoal went up to the house with a rifle to finish Wilson, walked in and looked about him, but failed to discover his victim behind the open door. He turned away and rode for the hills. The Mounted Police, turned out for the pursuit, were misled by a hundred rumors.

D Troop at the time numbered one hundred seventy men, the pick of the regiment, including some of the greatest riders and teamsters in North America, and led by Colonel S. B. Steele, the most distinguished of all Canadian frontiersmen. After he had posted men to guard all passes through the Rocky Mountains, he had a district about ninety miles square combed over incessantly by strong patrols, so that Charcoal’s escape seemed nearly impossible. The district however, was one of foothills, bush, winding gorges, tracts of boulders, and to the eastward prairie, where the whole Blood and Piegan tribes were using every subtlety of Indian craft to hide the fugitive.

Inspector Jervis, with twenty police and some scouts, had been seventy hours in the saddle, and camped at Big Bend exhausted, when a rider came flying in reporting Charcoal as seen at Kootenai. The white men rallied for the twenty-eight-mile march, but the Indians lay, and were kicked, done for, refusing to move. The white men scrambled to their saddles, and reeled off on the trail, unconquerable.

One day a Mormon settler brought news to Mr. Jervis that while cutting fence rails, he had seen Charcoal creep out from the bush and make off with his coat. So this Mormon led them to a little meadow, where they found and surrounded a tent. Then Mr. Jervis took two men and pulled aside the door, while they covered the place with their revolvers. Two Mormons were brought out, shaking with fright, from the tent.

Further on in the gray dawn, they came to another clearing, and a second tent, which they surrounded. Some noise disturbed the Marmot, who crept sleepily to the door, looked out, then with a scream, warned her husband. Charcoal slashed with his knife through the back of the tent, crept into the bush, and thence fired, his bullet knocking the cap from the officer’s head; but a volley failed to reach the Indian. The tent was Charcoal’s winter quarters, stored with a carcass of beef, five sacks of flour, bacon, sugar and deerskin for his shoes, and there the Marmot was taken, with a grown daughter, and a little son called Running Bear, aged eight.

So far, in many weeks of the great hunt Charcoal had his loyal wife to ride with him, and they used to follow the police patrols in order to be sure of rest when the pursuers camped. Two police horses, left half dead, were taken up and ridden by this couple an extra forty miles. An officer and a buck were feeding at Boundary Creek detachment when Mr. and Mrs. Charcoal stole their chargers out of the stable. But now Charcoal had to face the prospect of a lone fight, and with the loss of his family, fell into blind despair. Then all his kinsfolk to the number of thirty-seven, were arrested and lodged in prison.

Since his raid on the horses at Boundary Creek, all police stables were locked, and visited frequently at night. Corporal Armour, at Lee’s Creek came out swinging his lantern, sniffing at the night, bound for the stable, when he saw a sudden blaze revealing an Indian face behind the horse trough, while a bullet whisked through his sleeve. He bolted for the house, grabbed his gun and returned, only to hear a horse galloping away into the night. Charcoal for once, had failed to get a remount. Sergeant Wilde was universally loved by the tribes. The same feeling caused his old regiment, the Blues, at Windsor, to beg for Black Prince, his charger, after his death, and sent the whole body of the Northwest Mounted Police into mourning when he fell. Tradition made him a great aristocrat under an assumed name, and I remember well how we recruits, in the olden times, were impressed by his unusual physical beauty, his stature, horsemanship and singular personal distinction. Ambrose attended him when he rode out for the last time on Black Prince, followed by an interpreter and a body of Indian scouts. They were in deep snow on a plain where there stands a line of boulders, gigantic rocks, the subject of weird legends among the tribes. Far off against the sky was seen riding fast, an Indian who swerved at the sight of the pursuit and was recognized for Charcoal. Wilde ordered Ambrose to gallop the twenty miles to Pincher Creek, turn the people out in the queen’s name, send a despatch to Fort Macleod, and return at once. The Indians tried for Charcoal at long range, but their new rifles were clogged with factory grease hard frozen, so that the pin failed of its impact, and they all missed fire. Wilde’s great horse was drawing ahead of the ponies, and he called back:—

“Don’t fire, or you’ll hit me by mistake!”

As he overtook Charcoal he drew his revolver, the orders being to fire at sight, then laid the weapon before him, wanting for the sake of a great tradition, to make the usual arrest—the taking of live outlaws by hand. Charcoal’s rifle lay across the saddle, and he held the reins Indian fashion with the right hand, but when Wilde grabbed at his shoulder, he swerved, touching the trigger with his left. The bullet went through Wilde’s body, then deflecting on the bone of the right arm, traversed the forearm, came out of the palm, and dropped into his gauntlet where it was found.

Wilde rolled slowly from the saddle while Black Prince went on and Charcoal also, but then the outlaw turned, galloped back and fired straight downward into the dying man. Black Prince had stopped at a little distance snorting, and when the Indian came grabbing at his loose rein, he struck with his forefeet in rage at his master’s murderer. Charcoal had fired to disable Wilde as the only way left him of escaping “slavery”; now he had to conquer the dead man’s horse to make his escape from the trackers.

Some three weeks ago, Charcoal’s brothers, Left Hand and Bear Paw, had been released from jail, with the offer of forty pounds from the government and ten pounds from the officer commanding, if they could capture the outlaw. The tribes had decided that Charcoal’s body belonged of right to the police, and after Wilde’s death he could expect no mercy on earth, no help or succor from any living man. From the slaying, like a wounded beast to his lair, he rode direct for home, came to the little cabin, tied Black Prince to a bush and staggered toward the door. Out of the house came Left Hand, who ran toward him, while the outlaw, moved by some brute instinct, fled for the horse. But Left Hand, overtaking his brother, threw his arms about him, kissing him upon both cheeks, and Bear Paw, following, cast his rope over the helpless man, throwing him down, a prisoner. The brothers carried Charcoal into the cabin, pitched him down in a corner, then Left Hand rode for the police while Bear Paw stayed on guard.

It was Sergeant Macleod who came first to the cabin where Bear Paw squatted waiting, and Charcoal lay to all appearance dead in a great pool of blood upon the earthen floor. He had found a cobbler’s awl used in mending skin shoes, and opened the arteries of his arm, that he might take refuge from treachery in death. From ankle to groin his legs were skinned with incessant riding, and never again was he able to stand upon his feet.

For four months Charcoal had been hunted as an enemy by D Troop, now for a like time he was nursed in the guard-room at Fort Macleod, and, though he lay chained to the floor in mortal pain, his brothers of the guard did their best. As he had been terrible in the field, so this poor hero was brave in suffering—humble, and of so sweet a disposition that he won all men’s hearts. Once he choked himself with a blanket; once poisoned himself with a month’s collection of cigarette stubs; each time nearly achieving his purpose, but he never flinched, never gave utterance even to a sigh, except for the moaning in his sleep.

At the trial his counsel called no witnesses, but read the man’s own defense, a document so sad, so wonderfully beautiful in expression, that the court appealed to the crown for mercy, where mercy had become impossible.

When he was taken out to die, the troop was on guard surrounding the barracks, the whole of the tribes being assembled outside the fence. The prisoner sat in a wagon face to face with the executioner, who wore a mask of black silk, and beside him was the priest. Charcoal began to sing his death song.

“Stay,” said the priest, “make no cry. You’re far too brave a man for that.” The song ceased, and Charcoal died as he had lived.

XXVI
A. D. 1898

A KING AT TWENTY-FIVE

When a boy has the sea in his blood, when he prays in church for plague, pestilence and famine, for battle and murder and sudden death, his parents will do well to thrash him tame. For then if he can be tamed he may turn out well as a respectable clerk; but if he has the force of character to get what he wants he will prove himself and be, perhaps, like John Boyes, of Hull, a king at twenty-five.

Boyes ran away to sea, and out of the tame humdrum life of the modern merchant service made for himself a world of high adventure. As a seaman he landed at Durban, then earned his way up-country in all sorts of trades until he enlisted in the Matabeleland Mounted Police, then fought his way through the second Matabele war. Afterward he was a trader, then an actor, next at sea again, and at Zanzibar joined an Arab trading dhow. When the dhow was wrecked, and the crew appealed to Allah, Boyes took command, so coming to Mombasa. From here the crown colony was building a railway to Uganda, a difficult job because the lions ate all the laborers they could catch, and had even the cheek to gobble up white officials. Up-country, the black troops were enjoying a mutiny, the native tribes were prickly, the roads were impossible and there was no food to be had. Boyes was very soon at the head of a big transport company, working with donkey carts and native carriers to carry food for the authorities.

Northward of the railway was Mount Kenia, a lofty snow-clad volcano; and round his foothills covering a tract the size of Yorkshire or of Massachusetts lived the Kikuyu, a negro people numbering half a million, who always made a point of besieging British camps, treating our caravans to volleys of poisoned darts, and murdering every visitor who came within their borders. Boyes went into that country to buy food to supply to the railway workers (1898).

He went with an old Martini-Henry rifle, and seven carriers, over a twelve thousand foot pass of the hills, and down through bamboo forest into a populous country, where at sight of him the war cry went from hill to hill, and five hundred warriors assembled for their first look at a white man. Through his interpreter he explained that he came to trade for food. Presently he showed what his old rifle could do, and when the bullet bored a hole through a tree he told them that it had gone through the mountain beyond and out at the other side. A man with such a gun was worthy of respect, especially when his drugs worked miracles among the sick. Next day the neighbors attacked this tribe which had received a white man instead of killing him, but Boyes with his rifle turned defeat to victory, and with iodoform treated the wounded. The stuff smelt so strong that there could be no doubt of its magic.

The white man made a friend of the Chief Karuri, and through the adventures which followed they were loyal allies. Little by little he taught the tribesmen to hold themselves in check, to act together. He began to drill them in military formation, a front rank of spearmen with shields touching, a rear rank of bowmen with poisoned arrows. So when they were next attacked they captured the enemy’s chief, and here again the white man’s magic was very powerful—“Don’t waste him,” said Boyes. The captive leader was put to ransom, released, and made an ally, a goat being clubbed to death in token that the tribes were friends. Then a night raid obtained thirty rifles and plenty of ammunition, and a squad of picked men with modern arms soon formed the nucleus of the white man’s growing army. When the Masai came up against him Boyes caught them in ambush, cut their line of retreat, killed fifty, took hundreds of prisoners and proved that raiding his district was an error. He was a great man now, and crowds would assemble when he refreshed himself with a dose of fruit salts that looked like boiling water. His district was at peace, and soon made prosperous with a carrier trade supplying food to the white men.

Many attempts were made by the witch doctors against his life, but he seemed to thrive on all the native poisons. It was part of his clever policy to take his people by rail drawn by a railway engine, which they supposed to be alive, in a fever, and most frightfully thirsty. He took them down to the sea at Mombasa, even on board a ship, and on his return from all these wonders he rode a mule into the Kikuyu country—“Some sort of lion,” the natives thought. It impressed the whole nation when they heard of the white man riding a lion. He had a kettle too, with a cup and saucer to brew tea for the chiefs, and a Union Jack at the head of his marching column, and his riflemen in khaki uniform. All that was good stage management, but Boyes had other tricks beyond mere bluff. A native chief defied him and had five hundred warriors in line of battle; but Boyes, with ten followers only, marched up, clubbed him over the head, and ordered the warriors to lay down their arms on pain of massacre. The five hundred supposed themselves to be ambushed, and obeyed. It was really a great joke.

So far the adventurer had met only with little chiefs, but now at the head of a fairly strong caravan he set forth on a tour of the whole country, sending presents to the great Chiefs Karkerrie and Wagomba, and word that he wanted to trade for ivory. Karkerrie came to call and was much excited over a little clock that played tunes to order, especially when a few drops of rain seemed to follow the music. “Does it make rain?” asked Karkerrie.

“Certainly, it makes rain all right,” answered Boyes.

But it so happened that rain was very badly needed, and when Boyes failed to produce a proper downpour the folk got tired of hearing his excuses. They blamed him for the drought, refused to trade and conspired with one of his men to murder him. Boyes’ camp became a fort, surrounded by several thousands of hostile savages. One pitch-dark evening the war cry of the tribe ran from village to village and there was wailing among the women and children. The hyenas, knowing the signs of a coming feast, howled, and all through the neighborhood of the camp the warriors were shouting, “Kill the white man!”

As hour by hour went by the sounds and the silences got on the white man’s nerves. It was always very difficult to keep Kikuyu sentries awake, and as he kept on his rounds, waiting the inevitable storming of his camp at dawn, Boyes felt the suspense become intolerable. At last, hearing from one of his spies that Karkerrie was close at hand disposing his men for the assault, Boyes stole out with a couple of men, and by a miracle of luck kidnaped the hostile chief, whom he brought back into the fort a prisoner. Great was the amazement of the natives when at the gray of dawn, the very moment fixed for their attack, they heard Karkerrie shouting from the midst of the fort orders to retreat, and to disperse. A revolver screwed into his ear hole had converted the Chief Karkerrie. Within a few days more came the copious rains brought by the white chief’s clock, and he became more popular than ever.

Boyes made his next journey to visit Wakamba, biggest of all the chiefs, whose seat was on the foothills of the great snow mountain. This chief was quite friendly, and delightfully frank, describing the foolishness of Arabs, Swahili and that class of travelers who neglected to take proper precautions and deserved their fate. He was making quite a nice collection of their rifles. With his camp constantly surrounded and infested by thousands of savages, Boyes complained to Wakamba about the cold weather, said he would like to put up a warm house, and got plenty of help in building a fort. The chief thought this two-storied tower with its outlying breastworks was quite a good idea. “What a good thing,” said he, “to keep a rush of savages out.”

After long negotiations, Boyes managed to bring the whole of the leading chiefs of the nation together in friendly conference. The fact that they all hated one another like poison may explain some slight delay, for the white man’s purpose was nothing less than a solemn treaty of blood-brotherhood with them all.

The ceremony began with the cutting into small pieces of a sheep’s heart and liver, these being toasted upon a skewer, making a mutton Kabob. Olomondo, chief of the Wanderobo, a nation of hunters, then took a sharp arrow with which he cut into the flesh of each Blood-Brother just above the heart. The Kabob was then passed round, and each chief, taking a piece of meat, rubbed it in his own blood and gave it to his neighbor to be eaten. When Boyes had eaten blood of all the chiefs, and all had eaten his, the peace was sealed which made him in practise king of the Kikuyu. He was able at last to take a holiday, and spent some months out hunting among the Wanderobo.

While the Kikuyu nation as a whole fed out of the white chief’s hand, he still had the witch doctors for his enemies, and one very powerful sorcerer caused the Chinga tribes to murder three Goa Portuguese. These Eurasian traders, wearing European dress, were mistaken for white men, and their death showed the natives that it would be quite possible to kill Boyes, who was now returning toward civilization with an immense load of ivory. Boyes came along in a hurry, riding ahead of his slow caravan with only four attendants and these he presently distanced, galloping along a path between two hedges among the fields of a friendly tribe—straight into a deadly native ambush. Then the mule shied out of the path, bolted across the fields and saved his life. Of the four attendants behind, two were speared. Moreover the whole country was wild with excitement, and five thousand fighting men were marching against Boyes. He camped, fenced his position and stood to arms all night, short of ammunition, put to the last, the greatest of many tests. Once more his nerves were overstrung, the delay terrified him, the silence appalled him waiting for dawn, and death. And as usual he treated the natives to a new kind of surprise, taking his tiny force against the enemy’s camp: “They had not thought it necessary to put any sentries out.”

“Here,” says Boyes, “we found the warriors still drinking and feasting, sitting round their fires, so engrossed in their plans for my downfall that they entirely failed to notice our approach; so, stealthily creeping up till we were close behind them, we prepared to complete our surprise.... Not a sound had betrayed our advance, and they were still quite ignorant of our presence almost in the midst of them. The echoing crack of my rifle, which was to be the signal for the general attack, was immediately drowned in the roar of the other guns as my men poured in a volley that could not fail to be effective at that short range, while accompanying the leaden missiles was a cloud of arrows sent by that part of my force which was not armed with rifles. The effect of this unexpected onslaught was electrical, the savages starting up with yells of terror in a state of utter panic. Being taken so completely by surprise, they could not at first realize what had happened, and the place was for a few minutes a pandemonium of howling niggers, who rushed about in the faint light of the camp-fires, jostling each other and stumbling over the bodies of those who had fallen at the first volley, but quite unable to see who had attacked them; while, before they had recovered from the first shock of surprise, my men had reloaded, and again a shower of bullets and arrows carried death into the seething, disorganized mass. This volley completed the rout, and without waiting a moment longer the whole crowd rushed pell-mell into the bush, not a savage who could get away, remaining in the clearing, and the victory was complete.”

It had taken Boyes a year to fight his way to that kingdom which had no throne, and for another eighteen months of a thankless reign he dealt with famine, smallpox and other worries until one day there came two Englishmen, official tenderfeet, into that big wild land which Boyes had tamed. They came to take possession, but instead of bringing Boyes an appointment as commissioner for King Edward they made him prisoner in presence of his retinue of a thousand followers, and sent him to escort himself down-country charged with “dacoity,” murder, flying the Union Jack, cheeking officials, and being a commercial bounder. At Mombasa there was a comedy of imprisonment, a farce of trial, an apology from the judge, but never a word of thanks to the boyish adventurer who had tamed half a million savages until they were prepared to enter the British Peace.

XXVII
A. D. 1898

JOURNEY OF EWART GROGAN

From the Right Honorable Cecil Rhodes to Ewart S. Grogan in the year 1900:—

“I must say I envy you, for you have done that which has been for centuries the ambition of every explorer, namely, to walk through Africa from South to North. The amusement of the whole thing is that a youth from Cambridge during his vacation should have succeeded in doing that which the ponderous explorers of the world have failed to accomplish. There is a distinct humor in the whole thing. It makes me the more certain that we shall complete the telegraph and railway, for surely I am not going to be beaten by the legs of a Cambridge undergraduate.”

It took death himself to beat Rhodes. Two years after that letter was written news went out through the army in South Africa that he was dead. We were stunned; we felt too sick to fight. For a moment the guns were hushed, and silence fell on the veldt after years of war. That silence was the herald of lasting peace for British Africa, united by stronger bonds than rail or telegraph.

* * * * *

Grogan was an undergraduate not only of Cambridge, but also of the bigger schools called War and Adventure, for he had traveled in the South Seas, climbed in the Alps, and fought in the Matabele campaigns, before he made his holiday walking tour from the Cape to Cairo. He was not the usual penniless adventurer, but, reckoned by frontier standards, a man of means, with the good manners that ease the way for any traveler. From the Cape to the Zambesi he had no need to tread old trails again, and far into the heart of Africa there were already colonies with steamers to speed the journey up to Lake Tanganyika, where his troubles really began. Through two-thirds of the journey Grogan had a partner, Mr. A. H. Sharp, but they were seldom in company, for one would explore ahead while the other handled their caravan of one hundred fifty negro carriers, or one or both went hunting, or lay at the verge of death with a dose of fever.

Their route lay along the floor of a gash in the continent, a deep abyss called the Great Rift, in which lies a chain of lakes: Nyassa, Tanganyika, Kevu, Albert Edward, and Albert, whence the Nile flows down into distant Egypt. This rift is walled and sometimes blocked by live volcanoes, fouled with swamps, gigantic forests and new lava floods, reeking with fever, and at the time of the journey was beset by tribes of hostile cannibals. This pleasant path led to Khartoum, held in those days by the Khalifa with his dervish army. The odds were about a thousand to one that these two British adventurers were marching straight to death or slavery. Their attempt was madness—that divine madness that inspires all pioneers.

Now for a glimpse into this great adventure:

“I had shot a zebra ... and turning out at five-thirty A. M. crept up within sixty yards.... I saw in the middle of a circle of some two hundred vultures a grand old lion, leisurely gnawing the ribs, and behind, four little jackals sitting in a row.... Behind stretched the limitless plain, streaked with mists shimmering in the growing light of the rising sun, clumps of graceful palms fenced in a sandy arena where the zebra had fallen and round his attenuated remains, and just out of reach of the swish of the monarch’s tail, the solid circle of waiting vultures, craning their bald necks, chattering and hustling one another, and the more daring quartette within the magic circle like four little images of patience, while the lion in all his might and matchless grandeur of form, leisurely chewed and scrunched the titbits, magnificently regardless of the watchful eyes of the encircling canaille.... I watched the scene for fully ten minutes, then as he showed signs of moving I took the chance afforded of a broadside shot and bowled him over with the .500 magnum. In inserting another cartridge the gun jammed, and he rose, but after looking round for the cause of the interruption, without success, started off at a gallop. With a desperate effort I closed the gun and knocked him over again. He was a fine black-maned lion and as he lay in a straight line from tip to top ten feet, four inches, a very unusual length.”

Among the volcanoes near Lake Kivo, Grogan discovered a big one that had been thrown up within the last two years, and there were vast new floods of lava, hard to cross. One day, while searching out a route for the expedition, he had just camped at a height of nine thousand feet in the forest when he found the fresh tracks of a bull elephant, and the spoor was much larger than he had ever seen. When he overtook this giant the jungle was so dense that only the ridge of his back was visible, and for some time he watched the animal picking the leaves off a tree. When fodder ran short he tore down a tree whose trunk was two feet thick, and fearing he might move on, Grogan fired. The elephant fell, but recovered and clashed away, so that there were some hours of tracking before the hunter could catch up again. And now on a flaw of wind the giant scented him.

“The noise was terrific, and it suddenly dawned upon me that so far from moving off he was coming on. I was powerless to move—a fall would have been fatal—so I waited; but the forest was so dense that I never saw him till his head was literally above me, when I fired both barrels of the .500 magnum in his face. The whole forest seemed to crumple up, and a second later I found myself ten feet above the ground, well home in a thorn bush, while my gun was lying ten yards away in the opposite direction; and I heard a roar as of thunder disappearing into the distance. A few seconds later the most daring of my boys, Zowanji, came hurrying along with that sickly green hue that a nigger’s face assumes in moments of fear, and with his assistance I descended from my spiky perch. I was drenched with blood, which fortunately proved to be not mine, but that of the elephant; my gun, which I recovered, was also covered with blood, even to the inside of the barrels. The only damage I sustained was a slightly twisted knee. I can not say whether the elephant actually struck me, or whether I was carried there by the rush of the country.”

Following up, Grogan found enormous pools of blood, and half a mile farther on heard grunts that showed that the elephant had scented him. The animal rushed about with terrifying shrieks, devastated half an acre of forest, and then moved on again. Several times the hunter caught up, but the elephant moved on at an increasing pace, until sunset put an end to Grogan’s hopes.

This part of the Rift has belts of forest, and close beside them are patches of rich populous country where black nations live in fat contentment. But for five years there had been trouble to the westward where the Congo army had chased out the Belgian officials and run the country to suit themselves. Still worse, there were certain cannibal tribes moving like a swarm of locusts through Central Africa, eating the settled nations. Lately the swarm had broken into the Rift, and as Grogan explored northward he found the forest full of corpses. Here and there lurked starving fugitives, but despite their frantic warnings he moved on until he came to a wide province of desolated farms and ruined villages. Seeing that he had but a dozen followers a mob of cannibals attacked at night; but as they rushed, six fell to the white man’s rifle, and when the rest fled he picked them off at the range of a mile, as long as he could find victims. Then he entered a house where they had been feasting. “A cloud of vultures hovering over, the spot gave me an inkling of what I was about to see; but the realization defies description; it haunts me in my dreams, at dinner it sits on my leg-of-mutton, it bubbles in my soup, in fine, Watonga (the negro gun bearer) would not eat the potatoes that grew in the same country.”

Grogan fled, and starved, for the mountain streams were choked with corpses, the woods were a nightmare horror, to eat and sleep were alike impossible. He warned his partner and the expedition marched by another route.

Two very queer kinds of folk he met in the forests: the pygmies and the ape-men. The pygmies are little hunters and not more than three feet tall, but sturdy and compact, immensely strong, able to travel through the pig-runs of the jungle, and brave enough to kill elephants with their tiny poisoned arrows. He found them kindly, clever little folk, though all the other explorers have disliked them.

The ape-men were tall, with hanging paunch and short legs, a small skull and huge jaws, face, body and legs covered with wiry hair. The hang of the long powerful arms, the slight stoop of the trunk, and the hunted vacant expression of the face were marked. The twenty or thirty of them Grogan met were frightened at first but afterward became very friendly, proud to show him their skill in making fire with their fire sticks.

Once in the forest he found the skeleton of an ape of gigantic size. The natives explained that such apes were plentiful, although no white man has ever seen one. They have a bad habit of stealing negro women.

At the northern end of the Rift, where the country flattens out toward the Nile, Grogan and Sharp met with the officials of British Uganda, which was then in a shocking muddle of mutinous black troops, raids from the Congo, drought and famine. There Mr. Sharp left the expedition, making his way to Mombasa; the carriers were sent back home as a good riddance, and Mr. Grogan, with only five faithful attendants, pushed on down the Nile Valley. The river was blocked with a weed called the sudd, which a British expedition was trying to clear away, and Grogan was forced to the eastward through horrible marshlands. He had in all only fourteen men when he came to the Dinka country, and met that queer race of swamp folk. They are very tall, some even gigantic, beautifully built, but broad-footed, walking with feet picked up high and thrust far forward—the gait of a pelican. At rest they stand on one leg like a wading bird, the loose leg akimbo with its foot on the straight leg’s knee. They are fierce, too, and one tribe made an attack on Grogan’s party. His men threw down their loads, screaming that they were lost, and the best Congo soldier fell stabbed to the heart, while two others went down with cracked skulls.

“I took the chief,” says Grogan, “and his right-hand man with the double barrel, then, turning round, found that my boy had bolted with my revolver. At the same moment a Dinka hurled his spear at me; I dodged it, but he rushed in and dealt me a swinging blow with his club, which I fortunately warded with my arm, receiving no more damage than a wholesome bruise. I poked my empty gun at his stomach, and he turned, receiving a second afterwards a dum-dum in the small of his back. Then they broke and ran, my army with eight guns having succeeded in firing two shots. I climbed up an ant hill that was close by, and could see them watching at about three hundred yards for our next move, which was an unexpected one, for I planted a dum-dum apparently in the stomach of one of the most obtrusive ruffians, whom I recognized by his great height. They then hurried off and bunched at about seven hundred yards, and another shot, whether fatal or not I could not see, sent them off in all directions.”

The battle was finished, and Grogan toiled on with his wounded men, famished, desperate, almost hopeless. One day in desert country he came to the camp of Captain Dunn, a British officer.

“Captain Dunn: ‘How do you do?’

“I: ‘Oh, very fit, thanks; how are you? Had any sport?’

“Dunn: ‘Oh, pretty fair, but there is nothing here. Have a drink?’

“Then we washed, lunched, discussed the war, (South Africa), and eventually Dunn asked where the devil I had come from.”

The battle of Omdurman had destroyed the dervish power, and opened the Nile so that Grogan went on in ease and comfort by steamer to Khartoum, to Cairo, and home. Still he heard in his sleep the night melody of the lions—“The usual cry is a sort of vast sigh, taken up by the chorus with a deep sob, sob, sob, or a curious rumbling noise. But the pukka roar is indescribable ... it seems to permeate the whole universe, thundering, rumbling, majestic: there is no music in the world so sweet.”

It is hard to part with this Irish gentleman, whose fourteen months’ traverse of the Dark Continent is the finest deed in the history of African exploration.

XXVIII
A. D. 1900

THE COWBOY PRESIDENT

Let others appraise the merits of this great American gentleman as governor of New York, secretary of the United States Navy, colonel of the Rough Riders, historian of his pet hero, Oliver Cromwell, and, finally, president of the republic. He had spent half his life as an adventurer on the wild frontier breaking horses, punching cows, fighting grizzly bears, before he ever tackled the politicians, and he had much more fun by the camp-fire than he got in his marble palace. Here is his memory of a prairie fire:—“As I galloped by I saw that the fire had struck the trees a quarter of a mile below me, in the dried timber it instantly sprang aloft like a giant, and roared in a thunderous monotone as it swept up the coulée. I galloped to the hill ridge ahead, saw that the fire line had already reached the divide, and turned my horse sharp on his haunches. As I again passed under the trees the fire, running like a race horse in the bush, had reached the road; its breath was hot in my face; tongues of quivering flame leaped over my head, and kindled the grass on the hillside fifty yards away.”

Thus having prospected the ground he discovered means of saving himself, his companions, and his camp from the rushing flames. It is an old artifice of the frontier to start a fresh fire, burn a few acres, and take refuge on the charred ground while the storm of flame sweeps by on either hand. But this was not enough. The fire was burning the good pasture of his cattle and, unless stayed, might sweep away not only leagues of grass, but ricks and houses. “Before dark,” he continues, “we drove to camp and shot a stray steer, and then split its carcass in two length ways with an ax. After sundown the wind lulled—two of us on horseback dragging a half carcass bloody side down, by means of ropes leading from our saddle-horns to the fore and hind legs, the other two following on foot with slickers and wet blankets. There was a reddish glow in the night air, and the waving bending lines of flame showed in great bright curves against the hillside ahead of us. The flames stood upright two or three feet high. Lengthening the ropes, one of us spurred his horse across the fire line, and then wheeling, we dragged the carcass along it, one horseman being on the burnt ground, the other on the unburnt grass, while the body of the steer lay lengthwise across the line. The weight and the blood smothered the fire as we twitched the carcass over the burning grass, and the two men following behind with their blankets and slickers (oilskins) readily beat out any isolated tufts of flame. Sometimes there would be a slight puff of wind, and then the man on the grass side of the line ran the risk of a scorching.

“We were blackened with smoke, and the taut ropes hurt our thighs, while at times the plunging horses tried to break or bolt. It was worse when we came to some deep gully or ravine—we could see nothing, and simply spurred our horses into it anywhere, taking our chances. Down we would go, stumbling, sliding and pitching, over cut banks and into holes and bushes, while the carcass bounded behind, now catching on a stump, and now fetching loose with a ‘pluck’ that brought it full on the horses’ haunches, driving them nearly crazy with fright. By midnight the half carcass was worn through, but we had stifled the fire in the comparatively level country to the eastwards. Back we went to camp, drank huge drafts of muddy water, devoured roast ox-ribs, and dragged out the other half carcass to fight the fire in the west. There was some little risk to us who were on horseback, dragging the carcass; we had to feel our way along knife-like ridges in the dark, one ahead and the other behind while the steer dangled over the precipice on one side, and in going down the buttes and into the cañons only by extreme care could we avoid getting tangled in the ropes and rolling down in a heap.” So at last the gallant fight was abandoned, and looking back upon the fire which they had failed to conquer: “In the darkness it looked like the rush of a mighty army.”

Short of cowboys and lunatics, nobody could have imagined such a feat of horsemanship. Of that pattern is frontier adventure—daring gone mad; and yet it is very rarely that the frontiersman finds the day’s work worth recording, or takes the trouble to set down on paper the stark naked facts of an incident more exciting than a shipwreck, more dangerous than a battle, and far transcending the common experience of men.

Theodore Roosevelt

Traveling alone in the Rockies, Colonel Roosevelt came at sundown to a little ridge whence he could look into the hollow beyond—and there he saw a big grizzly walking thoughtfully home to bed. At the first shot, “he uttered a loud moaning grunt and plunged forward at a heavy gallop, while I raced obliquely down the hill to cut him off. After going a few hundred feet he reached a laurel thicket ... which he did not leave.... As I halted I heard a peculiar savage whine from the heart of the brush. Accordingly I began to skirt the edge standing on tiptoe, and gazing earnestly in to see if I could not get a glimpse of his hide. When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket he suddenly left it directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on the hillside a little above. He turned his head stiffly toward me, scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips, his eyes burned like embers in the gloom. I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes so that it was hard to aim.

“I waited until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a ball which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him. He came unsteadily on, and in another moment was close upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw, and going into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled trigger, and through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me. The rest of his charge carried him past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three jumps onward, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle only holding four, all of which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his muscles seemed to give way, his head drooped, and he rolled over—each of my first three bullets had inflicted a mortal wound.”

This man who had fought grizzly bears came rather as a surprise among the politicians in silk hats who run the United States. He had all the gentry at his back because he is the first man of unquestioned birth and breeding who has entered the political bear-pit since the country squires who followed George Washington. He had all the army at his back because he had charged the heights at Santiago de Cuba with conspicuous valor at the head of his own regiment of cowboys. He had the navy at his back because as secretary for the navy he had successfully governed the fleet. But he was no politician when he came forward to claim the presidency of the United States. Seeing that he could not be ignored the wire-puller set a trap for this innocent and gave him the place of vice-president. The vice-president has little to do, can only succeed to the throne in the event of the president’s death, and is, after a brief term, barred for life from any further progress. “Teddy” walked into the trap and sat down.

But when President McKinley was murdered the politicians found that they had made a most surprising and gigantic blunder. By their own act the cowboy bear fighter must succeed to the vacant seat as chief magistrate of the republic. President Roosevelt happened to be away at the time, hunting bears in the Adirondack wilderness, and there began a frantic search of mountain peaks and forest solitudes for the missing ruler of seventy million people. When he was found, and had paid the last honors to his dead friend, William McKinley, he was obliged to proceed to Washington, and there take the oaths. His women folk had a terrible time before they could persuade him to wear the silk hat and frock coat which there serve in lieu of coronation robes, but he consented even to that for the sake of the gorgeous time he was to have with the politicians afterward.

XXIX
A. D. 1905

THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE

Once upon a time the Foul Fiend wanted a death-trap that would pick out all the bravest men and destroy them, so he invented the Northwest Passage.

So when Europe needed a short route to China round the north end of the Americas our seamen set out to find a channel, and even when they knew that any route must lie through the high Arctic, still they were not going to be beaten. Our white men rule the world because we refuse to be beaten.

The seamen died of scurvy, and it was two hundred years before they found out how to stay alive on salted food, by drinking lime juice. Safe from scurvy, they reached the gate of the passage at Lancaster Sound, but there the winter caught them, so that their ships were squashed in driving ice, and the men died of cold and hunger. Then the explorers got ships too strong to be crushed; they copied the dress of the Eskimo to keep them warm; and they carried food enough to last for years. Deeper and deeper they forced their way into the Arctic, but now they neared the magnetic pole where the compass is useless, in belts of drifting fog darker than midnight. Still they dared to go on, but the inner channels of the Arctic were found to be frozen until the autumn gales broke up the ice-fields, leaving barely six weeks for navigation before the winter frosts. At that rate the three-thousand-mile passage would take three years. Besides, the ship must carry a deck load of sledge dogs with their food, so that the men might escape overland in case they were cast away. Only a big ship could carry the supplies, but once again the seamen dared to try. And now came the last test to break men’s hearts—the sea lane proved to be so foul with shoals and rocks that no large vessel could possibly squeeze through. At last, after three hundred years, the British seamen had to own defeat. Our explorers had mapped the entire route, but no ship could make the passage because it was impossible to raise money for the venture.

Why should we want to get through this useless channel? Because it was the test for perfect manhood free from all care for money, utterly unselfish, of the highest intellect, patience, endurance and the last possible extremity of valor.

And where the English failed a Norseman, Nordenskjöld made the Northeast passage round the coast of Asia. Still nobody dared to broach the Northwest passage round America, until a young Norse seaman solved the riddle. Where no ship could cross the shoals it might be possible with a fishing boat drawing only six feet of water. But she could not carry five years’ supplies for men and dogs. Science came to the rescue with foods that would pack into a tenth part of their proper bulk, and as to the dog food, one might risk a deck load big as a haystack, to be thrown off if the weather got too heavy. Still, how could a fishing boat carry twenty men for the different expert jobs? Seven men might be discovered each an expert in three or four different trades; the captain serving as the astronomer and doctor, the cook as a naturalist and seaman. So Roald Amundsen got Doctor Nansen’s help, and that great explorer was backed by the king. Help came from all parts of Scandinavia, and a little from Great Britain.

The Gjöa was a forty-seven ton herring boat with a thirteen horse-power motor for ship’s pet, loaded with five years’ stores for a crew of seven men, who off duty were comrades as in a yachting cruise. In 1903 she sailed from Christiania and spent July climbing the north current in full view of the Greenland coast, the Arctic wonderland. At Godhaven she picked up stores, bidding farewell to civilization, passed Upernivik the last village, and Tassinssak, the last house on earth, then entered Melville Bay with its three-hundred-mile frontage of glacier, the most dangerous place in the Arctic. Beyond, near Cape York, she found a deck load of stores left for her by one of the Dundee whalers. There the people met the last white men, three Danish explorers whose leader, Mylius Erichsen, was making his way to death on the north coast of Greenland. So, like a barge with a hayrick, the overload Joy crossed from the Greenland coast to Lancaster Sound, the gate of the Northwest passage, whose gatepost is Beechey Island, sacred to the memory of Sir John Franklin, and the dead of the Franklin search. The Joy found some sole leather better than her own, a heap of useful coal and an anvil, among the litter of old expeditions; made the graves tidy; left a message at Franklin’s monument, and went on. For three hundred years the channels ahead were known to have been blocked; only by a miracle of good fortune could they be free from ice; and this miracle happened, for the way was clear.

* * * * *

“I was sitting,” writes Amundsen on August thirty-first, “entering the day’s events in my journal, when I heard a shriek—a terrific shriek, which thrilled me to the very marrow. It takes something to make a Norseman shriek, but a mighty flame with thick suffocating smoke was leaping up from the engine room skylight. There the tanks held two thousand two hundred gallons of petroleum, and close beside them a pile of soaked cotton waste had burst with a loud explosion. If the tanks got heated the ship would be blown into chips, but after a hard fight the fire was got under. All hands owed their lives to their fine discipline.”

A few days later the Joy grounded in a labyrinth of shoals, and was caught aground by a storm which lifted and bumped her until the false keel was torn off. The whole of the deck load had to be thrown overboard. The only hope was to sail over the rocks, and with all her canvas set she charged, smashing from rock to rock until she reached the farther edge of the reef which was nearly dry. “The spray and sleet were washing over the vessel, the mast trembled, and the Gjöa seemed to pull herself together for a last final leap. She was lifted up and flung bodily on the bare rocks, bump, bump, with terrific force.... In my distress I sent up (I honestly confess it) an ardent prayer to the Almighty. Yet another bump worse than ever, then one more, and we slid off.”

The shock had lifted the rudder so that it rested with the pintles on the mountings, and she would not steer; then somehow the pins dropped back into their sockets, the steersmen regained control and the Joy was saved, after a journey across dry rocks which ought to have smashed any ship afloat. She did not even leak.

Near the south end of King William’s Land a pocket harbor was found, and named Joy Haven. There the stores were landed, cabins were built, the ship turned into a winter house, and the crew became men of science. For two years they were hard at work studying the magnetism of the earth beside the Magnetic Pole. They collected fossils and natural history specimens, surveyed the district, studied the heavens and the weather, hunted reindeer for their meat and clothing, fished, and made friends with the scented, brave and merry Eskimos. During the first winter the thermometer dropped to seventy-nine degrees below zero, which is pretty near the world record for cold, but as long as one is well fed, with bowels in working order, and has Eskimo clothes to wear, the temperature feels much the same after forty below zero. Below that point the wind fails to a breathless calm, the keen dry air is refreshing as champagne, and one can keep up a dog-trot for miles without being winded. It is not the winter night that people dread, but the summer day with its horrible torment of mosquitoes. Then there is in spring and autumn, a hot misty glare upon the snow-fields which causes blindness with a deal of pain. The Arctic has its drawbacks, but one remembers afterward the fields of flowers, the unearthly beauty of the northern lights, the teeming game, and those long summer nights when the sun is low, filling the whole sky with sunset colors.

The greatest event of the first year was the finding of an Eskimo hunter to carry letters, who came back in the second summer, having found in Hudson’s Bay an exploring vessel of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police of Canada. Major Moody, also the captain of the Arctic, and the Master of an American whaler, sent their greetings, news of the outer world, some useful charts, and a present of husky dogs.

The second summer was over. The weather had begun to turn cold before a northerly gale smashed the ice, and sea lanes opened along the Northwest passage. On August thirteenth the Joy left her anchorage, under sail and steam, to pick her way without compass through blinding fog, charging and butting through fields of ice, dodging zigzag through shoals, or squeezing between ice-fields and the shore. There was no sleep for anybody during the first three nights, but racking anxiety and tearing overstrain until they reached known waters, a channel charted by the old explorers. They met an American whaler, and afterward had clear open water as far as the mouths of the Mackenzie River. A few miles beyond that the ice closed in from the north and piled up-shore so that the passage was blocked and once more the Joy went into winter quarters. But not alone. Ladies must have corsets ribbed with whalebone from the bowhead whale. Each whale head is worth two thousand pounds, so a fleet of American whalers goes hunting in the Arctic. Their only port of refuge is Herschel Island off the Canadian coast, so there is an outpost of the Northwest Mounted Police, a mission station and a village of Eskimos.

The Joy came to anchor thirty-six miles to the east of Herschel Island, beside a stranded ship in charge of her Norse mate, and daily came passengers to and fro on the Fort Macpherson trail. From that post runs a dog-train service of mails connecting the forts of the Hudson’s Bay Company all the way up the Mackenzie Valley to Edmonton on the railway within two thousand miles. The crew of the Joy had company news, letters from home, and Captain Amundsen went by dog-train to the mining camps on the Yukon where at Eagle City he sent telegrams.

At last in the summer of 1906 the Joy sailed on the final run of her great voyage, but her crew of seven was now reduced to six, and at parting she dipped her colors to the cross on a lone grave. The ice barred her passage, but she charged, smashing her engines, and charged again, losing her peak which left the mainsail useless. So she won past Cape Prince of Wales, completing the Northwest passage, and entering Bering Sea called at Cape Nome for repairs. There a thousand American gold miners welcomed the sons of the vikings with an uproarious triumph, and greeted Captain Amundsen with the Norse national anthem.

XXX
A. D. 1588

JOHN HAWKINS

Master John Hawkins, mariner, was a trader’s son, familiar from childhood with the Guinea coast of Africa. Worshipful merchants of London trusted him with three ridiculously small ships, the size of our fishing smacks, but manned by a hundred men. With these, in 1562—the “spacious times” of great Elizabeth—he swooped down on the West African coast, and horribly scared were his people when they saw the crocodiles. The nature of this animal “is ever when he would have his prey, to sob and cry like a Christian bodie, to provoke them to come to him, and then he snatcheth at them.” In spite of the reptiles, Master Hawkins “got into his possession, partly by the sword, and partly by other means,” three hundred wretched negroes.

The king of Spain had a law that no Protestant heretic might trade with his Spanish colonies of the West Indies, so Master Hawkins, by way of spitting in his majesty’s eye, went straight to Hispaniola, where he exchanged his slaves with the settlers for a shipload of hides, ginger, sugar and pearls.

On his second voyage Master Hawkins attempted to enslave a whole city, hard by Sierra Leone, but the Almighty, “who worketh all things for the best, would not have it so, and by Him we escaped without danger, His name be praised for it.” Hawkins had nearly been captured by the negroes, and was compelled to make his pious raids elsewhere. Moreover, when he came with a fleet loaded with slaves to Venezuela, the Spanish merchants were scared to trade with him. Of course, for the sake of his negroes, he had to get them landed somehow, so he went ashore, “having in his greate boate two falcons of brasse, and in the other boates double bases in their noses.” Such artillery backed by a hundred men in plate armor, convinced the Spaniards that it would be wise to trade.

On his third voyage, Master Hawkins found the Spaniards his friends along the Spanish main, but the weather, a deadly enemy, drove him for refuge and repair to San Juan d’Ullua, the port of Mexico. Here was an islet, the only shelter on that coast from the northerly gales. He sent a letter to the capital for leave to hold that islet with man and guns while he bought provisions and repaired his ships. But as it happened, a new viceroy came with a fleet of thirteen great ships to claim that narrow anchorage, and Hawkins must let them in or fight. “On the faith of a viceroy” Don Martin de Henriquez pledged his honor before Hawkins let him in, then set his ships close aboard those of England, trained guns to bear upon them, secretly filled them with troops hid below hatches, and when his treason was found out, sounded a trumpet, the signal for attack. The Englishmen on the isle were massacred except three, the queen’s ship Jesus, of Lubeck, was so sorely hurt that she had to be abandoned, and only two small barks, the Minion and the Judith, escaped to sea. The Spaniards lost four galleons in that battle.

Sir John Hawkins

As to the English, they were in great peril, and parted by a storm. The Judith fared best, commanded by a man from before the mast, one Francis Drake, who brought the news to England that Hawkins had more than two hundred people crowded upon the Minion without food or water. “With many sorrowful hearts,” says Hawkins, “we wandered in an unknown sea by the span of fourteen dayes, till hunger forced us to seeke the lande, for birdes were thought very goode meate, rattes, cattes, mise and dogges.”

It was then that one hundred fourteen men volunteered to go ashore and the ship continued a very painful voyage.

These men were landed on the coast of Mexico, unarmed, to be stripped naked presently by red Indians, and by the Spaniards marched as slaves to the city of Mexico, where after long imprisonment those left alive were sold. The Spanish gentlemen, the clergy and the monks were kind to these servants, who earned positions of trust on mines and ranches, some of them becoming in time very wealthy men though still rated as slaves. Then came the “Holy Hellish Inquisition” to inquire into the safety of their souls. All were imprisoned, nearly all were tortured on the rack, and flogged in public with five hundred lashes. Even the ten gentlemen landed by Hawkins as hostages for his good faith shared the fate of the shipwrecked mariners who, some in Mexico and some in Spain, were in the end condemned to the galleys. And those who kept the faith were burned alive. From that time onward, whatever treaties there might be in Europe, there was never a moment’s peace for the Spanish Indies. All honest Englishmen were at war with Spain until the Inquisition was stamped out, and the British liberators had helped to drive the Spaniards from the last acre of their American empire.

When Hawkins returned to England, Mary, Queen of Scots, was there a prisoner. The sailor went to Elizabeth’s minister, Lord Burleigh, and proposed a plot. By this plot he entered into a treaty with the queen of Scots to set her on the throne. He was to join the Duke of Alva for the invasion and overthrow of England. So pleased was the Spanish king that he paid compensation to Hawkins for his losses at San Juan d’Ullua and restored to freedom such of the English prisoners as could be discovered. Then Hawkins turned loyal again, and Queen Elizabeth knighted him for fooling her enemies.

XXXI
A. D. 1573

FRANCIS DRAKE

The Judith had escaped from San Juan d’Ullua and her master, Francis Drake, of Devon, was now a bitter vengeful adversary, from that time onward living to be the scourge of Spain. Four years he raided, plundered, burned along the Spanish main, until the name Drake was changed to Dragon in the language of the dons.

Then in 1573 he sailed from Plymouth with five little ships to carry fire and sword into the South Seas, where the flag of England had never been before. When he had captured some ships near the Cape de Verde Islands, he was fifty-four days in unknown waters before he sighted the Brazils, then after a long time came to Magellan’s Straits, where he put in to refresh his men. One of the captains had been unfaithful and was now tried by a court-martial, which found him guilty of mutiny and treason against the admiral. Drake offered him a ship to return to England and throw himself on the queen’s mercy, or he might land and take his chance among the savages, or he could have his death, and carry his case to the Almighty. The prisoner would not rob the expedition of a ship, nor would he consort with the degraded tribes of that wild Land of Fire, but asked that he might die at the hands of his countrymen because of the wrong he had done them. So the date was set for his execution, when all the officers received the holy communion, the prisoner kneeling beside the admiral. After that they dined together for the last time, and when they had risen from table, shook hands at parting, the one to his death, the others to their voyage. May England ever breed such gentlemen!

The squadron had barely got clear of the straits and gained the Pacific Ocean, when bad weather scattered all the ships. Drake went on alone, and on the coast of Chili, met with an Indian in a canoe, who had news of a galleon at Santiago, laden with gold from Peru. The Spaniards were not at all prepared for birds of Drake’s feather on the South Seas, so that when he dropped in at Santiago they were equally surprised and annoyed.

The galleon’s crew were ashore save for six Spaniards and three negroes, so bored with themselves that they welcomed the visitors by beating a drum and setting out Chilian wine. But when Master Moon arrived on board with a boat’s crew, he laid about him outrageously with a large sword, saying, “Down, dog!” to each discomfited Spaniard, until they fled for the hold. Only one leaped overboard, who warned the town, whereat the people escaped to the bush, leaving the visitors to enjoy themselves. The cargo of gold and wine must have been worth about fifty thousand pounds, while Santiago yielded a deal of good cheer besides, Master Fletcher, the parson, getting for his “spoyle” a silver chalice, two cruets and an altar cloth.

Sir Francis Drake

Greatly refreshed, the English went on northward, carefully inspecting the coast. At one place a sleeping Spaniard was found on the beach with thirteen bars of silver. “We took the silver and left the man.” Another place yielded a pack-train of llamas, the local beast of burden, with leather wallets containing eight hundred pounds’ weight of silver. Three small barks were searched next, one of them being laden with silver; then twelve ships at anchor, which were cut adrift; and a bark with eighty pounds’ weight of gold, and a golden crucifix set with emeralds. But best of all was the galleon Cacafuego, overtaken at sea, and disabled at the third shot, which brought down her mizzenmast. Her cargo consisted of “great riches, as jewels and precious stones, thirteen chests full of royals of plate, four score pounds weight of golde, and six and twentie tunne of silver.” The pilot being the possessor of two nice silver cups, had to give one to Master Drake, and the other to the steward, “because hee could not otherwise chuse.”

Every town, every ship was rifled along that coast. There was neither fighting nor killing, but much politeness, until at last the ship had a full cargo of silver, gold and gems, with which she reached England, having made a voyage round the world. When Queen Elizabeth dined in state on board Drake’s ship at Greenwich, she struck him with a sword and dubbed him knight. Of course he must have armorial bearings now, but when he adopted the three wiverns—black fowl of sorts—of the Drake family, there were angry protests against his insolence. So the queen made him a coat-of-arms, a terrestrial globe, and a ship thereon led with a string by a hand that reached out of a cloud, and in the rigging of the said ship, a wivern hanged by the neck.

It was Parson Fletcher who wrote the story of that illustrious voyage, but he does not say how he himself fell afterward from grace, being solemnly consigned by Drake to the “devil and all his angells,” threatened with a hanging at the yard-arm, and made to bear a posy on his breast with these frank words, “Francis Fletcher, ye falsest knave that liveth.”

Drake always kept his chaplain, and dined “alone with musick,” did all his public actions with large piety and gallant courtesy, while he led English fleets on insolent piracies against the Spaniards.

From his next voyage he returned leaving the Indies in flames, loaded with plunder, and smoking the new herb tobacco to the amazement of his countrymen.

Philip II was preparing a vast armada against England, when Drake appeared with thirty sail on the Spanish coast, destroyed a hundred ships, swept like a hurricane from port to port, took a galleon laden with treasure off the western islands, and returned to Plymouth with his enormous plunder.

Next year Drake was vice-admiral to Lord Howard in the destruction of the Spanish armada.

In 1589 he led a fleet to deliver Portugal from the Spaniards, wherein he failed.

Then came his last voyage in company with his first commander, Sir John Hawkins. Once more the West Indies felt the awful weight of his arm, but now there were varying fortunes of defeat, of reprisals, and at the end, pestilence, which struck the fleet at Nombre de Dios, and felled this mighty seaman. His body was committed to the sea, his memory to the hearts of all brave men.

Queen Elizabeth

XXXII
A. D. 1587

THE FOUR ARMADAS

Here let us call a halt. We have come to the climax of the great century, the age of the Renaissance, when Europe was born again; of the Reformation, when the Protestants of the Baltic fought the Catholics of the Mediterranean for the right to worship in freedom; and of the sea kings who laid the foundations of our modern world.

Islam had reached her fullest flood of glory with the fleets of Barbarossa, the armies of the Sultan Suleiman, and all the splendors of Akbar the Magnificent, before her ebb set downward into ruin.

Portugal and Spain, under one crown, shared the plunder of the Indies and the mastery of the sea.

Then, as the century waned, a third-class power, the island state of England, claimed the command of the sea, and planted the seeds of an empire destined to overshadow the ruins of Spain, as well as the wreck of Islam.

Here opened broad fields of adventure. There were German and English envoys at the court of Russia; English merchants seeking trade in India, Dutch gunners in the service of eastern princes, French fishermen finding the way into Canada, seamen of all these nations as slaves in Turkish galleys or in Spanish mines; everywhere sea fights, shipwrecks, trails of lost men wandering in unknown lands, matters of desert islands, and wrecked treasures with all the usual routine of plague, pestilence and famine, of battle, of murder and of sudden death.

In all this tangle we must take one thread, with most to learn, I think, from a Hollander, Mynheer, J. H. van Linschoten, who was clerk to the Portuguese archbishop of the Indies and afterward in business at Terceira in the Azores, where he wrote a famous book on pilotage. He tells us about the seamanship of Portuguese and Spaniards in terms of withering contempt as a mixture of incompetence and cowardice, enough to explain the downfall and ruin of their empires.

The worst ships, he says, which cleared from Cochin were worth, with their cargo, one million, eight hundred thousand pounds of our modern money. Not content with that, the swindlers in charge removed the ballast to make room for more cinnamon, whereby the Arreliquias capsized and sank.

The San Iago, having her bottom ripped out by a coral reef, her admiral, pilot, master and a dozen others entered into a boat, keeping it with naked rapiers until they got clear, and deserted. Left without any officers, the people on the wreck were addressed by an Italian seaman who cried, “Why are we thus abashed?” So ninety valiant mariners took the longboat and cleared, hacking off the fingers, hands and arms of the drowning women who held on to her gunwale.

As to the pilot who caused this little accident, he afterward had charge of the San Thomas “full of people, and most of the gentility of India,” and lost with all hands.

But if the seamanship of the Portuguese made it a miracle if they escaped destruction, that of the Spaniards was on a much larger scale. Where Portugal lost a ship Spain bungled away a fleet, and never was incompetence more frightfully punished than in the doom of the four armadas.

Philip II was busy converting Protestant Holland, and in 1587 he resolved to send a Catholic mission to England also, but while he was preparing the first armada Drake came and burned his hundred ships under the guns of Cadiz.

A year later the second, the great armada, was ready, one hundred thirty ships in line of battle, which was to embark the army in Holland, and invade England with a field force of fifty-three thousand men, the finest troops in Europe.

Were the British fleet of to-day to attack the Dutch the situation would be much the same. It was a comfort to the English that they had given most ample provocation and to spare, but still they felt it was very awkward. They had five million people, only the ninth part of their present strength; no battle-ships, and only thirty cruisers. The merchant service rallied a hundred vessels, the size of the fishing smacks, the Flemings lent forty, and nobody in England dared to hope.

To do Spain justice she made plenty of noise, giving ample warning. Her fleet was made invincible by the pope’s blessing, the sacred banners and the holy relics, while for England’s spiritual comfort there was a vicar of the inquisition with his racks and thumbscrews. Only the minor details were overlooked: that the cordage was rotten, the powder damp, the wine sour, the water putrid, the biscuits and the beef a mass of maggots, while the ship’s drainage into the ballast turned every galleon into a floating pest-house. The admiral was a fool, the captains were landlubbers, the ships would not steer, and the guns could not be fought. The soldiers, navigators, boatswains and quartermasters were alike too proud to help the short-handed, overworked seamen, while two thousand of the people were galley slaves waiting to turn on their masters. Worst of all, this sacred, fantastic, doomed armada was to attack from Holland, without pilotage to turn our terrific fortifications of shoals and quicksands.

Small were our ships and woefully short of powder, but they served the wicked valiant queen who pawned her soul for England. Her admiral was Lord Howard the Catholic, whose squadron leaders were Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher. The leaders were practical seamen who led, not drove, the English. The Spanish line of battle was seven miles across, but when the armada was sighted, Drake on Plymouth Hoe had time to finish his game of bowls before he put to sea.

From hill to hill through England the beacon fires roused the men, the church bells called them to prayer, and all along the southern coast fort echoed fort while guns and trumpets announced the armada’s coming. The English fleet, too weak to attack, but fearfully swift to eat up stragglers, snapped like a wolf-pack at the heels of Spain. Four days and nights on end the armada was goaded and torn in sleepless misery, no longer in line of battle, but huddled and flying. At the Straits they turned at bay with thirty-five hundred guns, but eight ships bore down on fire, stampeding the broken fleet to be slaughtered, foundered, burned or cast away, strewing the coast with wreckage from Dover to Cape Wrath and down the Western Isles. Fifty-three ruined ships got back to Spain with a tale of storms and the English which Europe has never forgotten, insuring the peace of English homes for three whole centuries.

A year passed, and the largest of all the armadas ventured to sea, this time from the West Indies, a treasure fleet for Spain. Of two hundred twenty ships clearing not more than fifteen arrived, the rest being “drowned, burst, or taken.” Storms and the English destroyed that third armada.

The fourth year passed, marked by a hurricane in the Western Isles, and a great increase of England’s reckoning, but the climax of Spain’s undoing was still to come in 1591, the year of the fourth armada.

To meet and convoy her treasure fleet of one hundred ten sail from the Indies, Spain sent out thirty battle-ships to the Azores. There lay an English squadron of sixteen vessels, also in waiting for the treasure fleet, whose policy was not to attack the escort, which carried no plunder worth taking. Lord Howard’s vice-admiral was Sir Richard Grenville, commanding Drake’s old flagship, the Revenge, of seven hundred tons. This Grenville, says Linschoten, was a wealthy man, a little eccentric also, for dining once with some Spanish officers he must needs play the trick of crunching wine-glasses, and making believe to swallow the glass while blood ran from his lips. He was “very unquiet in his mind, and greatly affected to war,” dreaded by the Spaniards, detested by his men. On sighting the Spanish squadron of escort, Howard put to sea but Grenville had a hundred sick men to bring on board the Revenge; his hale men were skylarking ashore. He stayed behind, when he attempted to rejoin the squadron the Spanish fleet of escort was in his way.

On board the Revenge the master gave orders to alter course for flight until Grenville threatened to hang him. It was Grenville’s sole fault that he was presently beset by eight ships, each of them double the size of the Revenge. So one small cruiser for the rest of the day and all night fought a whole fleet, engaging from first to last thirteen ships of the line. She sank two ships and well-nigh wrecked five more, the Spaniards losing four hundred men in a fight with seventy. Only when their admiral lay shot through the head, and their last gun was silenced, their last boarding pike broken, the sixty wounded men who were left alive, made terms with the Spaniards and laid down their arms.

Grenville was carried on board the Flagship, where the officers of the Spanish fleet assembled to do him honor, and in their own language he spoke that night his last words: “Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his country, queen, religion and honor; whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body; and shall leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true soldier that hath done his duty as he was bound to do.”

Sir Richard Grenville

With that he died, and his body was committed to the sea. As to those who survived of his ship’s company, the Spaniards treated them with honor; sending them as free men home to England. But they believed that the body of Grenville being in the sea raised that appalling cyclone that presently destroyed the treasure fleet and its escort, in all one hundred seven ships, including the Revenge.

So perished the fourth armada, making within five years a total loss of four hundred eighty-nine capital ships, in all the greatest sea calamity that ever befell a nation. Hear then the comment of Linschoten the Dutchman. The Spaniards thought that “Fortune, or rather God, was wholly against them. Which is a sufficient cause to make the Spaniards out of heart; and on the contrary to give the Englishmen more courage, and to make them bolder. For they are victorious, stout and valiant; and all their enterprises do take so good an effect that they are, hereby, become the lords and masters of the sea.”

* * * * *

The Portuguese were by no means the first seamen to round the Cape of Good Hope. About six hundred years B. C. the Pharaoh of Egypt, Niko, sent a Phœnician squadron from the Red Sea, to find their way round Africa and through Gibraltar Strait, back to the Nile. “When autumn came they went ashore, wherever they might happen to be, and having sown a tract of land with corn, waited till the grain was fit to eat. Having reaped it, they again set sail; and thus it came to pass that two whole years went by, and it was not until the third year that they doubled the Pillars of Hercules, and made good their voyage home. On their return, they declared—for my part, do not believe them, but perhaps others may—that in sailing round Lybia (Africa), they had the sun on their right hand” (i. e. in the northern sky). Herodotus.

XXXIII
A. D. 1583

SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT

“He is not worthy to live at all, that for any fear of danger of death, shunneth his countrey’s service and his own honor.”

This message to all men of every English nation was written by a man who once with his lone sword covered a retreat, defending a bridge against twenty horsemen, of whom he killed one, dismounted two and wounded six.

In all his wars and voyages Sir Humphrey Gilbert won the respect of his enemies, and even of his friends, while in his writings one finds the first idea of British colonies overseas. At the end of his life’s endeavor he commanded a squadron that set out to found a first British colony in Virginia, and on the way he called at the port of Saint Johns in Newfoundland. Six years after the first voyage of Columbus, John Cabot had rediscovered the American mainland, naming and claiming this New-found Land, and its port for Henry VII of England. Since then for nearly a hundred years the fishermen of Europe had come to this coast for cod, but the Englishmen claimed and held the ports where the fish were smoked. Now in 1583 Gilbert met the fishermen, English and strangers alike, who delivered to him a stick of the timber and a turf of the soil in token of his possession of the land, while he hoisted the flag of England over her first colony, by this act founding the British empire.

When Gilbert left Saint Johns, he had a secret that made him beam with joy and hint at mysterious wealth. Perhaps his mining expert had found pyrites and reported the stuff as gold, or glittering crystals that looked like precious stones. Maybe it was the parcel of specimens for which he sent his page boy on board the Delight, who, failing to bring them, got a terrific thrashing.

When the Delight, his flagship, was cast away on Sable Island, with a hundred men drowned and the sixteen survivors missing, Gilbert mourned, it was thought, more for his secret than for ship or people. From that time the wretchedness of his men aboard the ten-ton frigate, the Squirrel, weighed upon him. They were in rags, hungry and frightened, so to cheer them up he left his great ship and joined them. The Virginia voyage was abandoned, they squared away for England, horrified by a walrus passing between the ships, which the mariners took for a demon jeering at their misfortunes.

They crossed the Atlantic in foul weather, with great seas running, so that the people implored their admiral no longer to risk his life in the half-swamped Squirrel.

“I will not forsake my little company,” was all his answer. The seas became terrific and the weird corposants, Saint Elmo’s electric fires “flamed amazement,” from masts and spars, sure harbinger of still more dreadful weather.

A green sea filled the Squirrel and she was near sinking, but as she shook the water off, Sir Humphrey Gilbert waved his hand to the Golden Hind. “Fear not, my masters!” he shouted, “we are as near to Heaven by sea as by land.”

As the night fell, he was still seen sitting abaft with a book in his hand.

Then at midnight all of a sudden the frigate’s lights were out, “for in that moment she was devoured, and swallowed up by the sea,” and the soul of Humphrey Gilbert passed out of the great unrest.

XXXIV
A. D. 1603

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

To its nether depths of shame and topmost heights of glory, the sixteenth century is summed up in Sir Walter Raleigh. He was Gilbert’s young half-brother, thirteen years his junior, and a kinsman of Drake, Hawkins and Grenville, all men of Devon.

He played the dashing young gallant, butchering Irish prisoners of war; he played the leader in the second sack of Cadiz; he played the knight errant in the Azores, when all alone he stormed the breached walls of a fort; he played the hero of romance in a wild quest up the Orinoco for the dream king El Dorado, and the mythical golden city of Manoa. Always he played to the gallery, and when he must dress the part of Queen Elizabeth’s adoring lover, he let it be known that his jeweled shoes had cost six thousand pieces of gold. He wrote some of the noblest prose in our language besides most exquisite verse, invented distilling of fresh water from the sea, and paid for the expeditions which founded Virginia.

Sir Walter Raleigh

So many and varied parts this mighty actor played supremely well, holding the center of the stage as long as there was an audience to hiss, or to applaud him. Only in private he shirked heights of manliness that he saw but dared not climb and was by turns a sneak, a toady, a whining hypocrite whose public life is one of England’s greatest memories, and his death of almost superhuman grandeur.

When James the Cur sat on the throne of great Elizabeth, his courtiers had Raleigh tried and condemned to death. The charge was treason in taking Spanish bribes, not a likely act of Spain’s great enemy, one of the few items omitted from Sir Walter’s menu of little peccadillos. James as lick-spittle and flunkey-in-chief to the king of Spain, kept Raleigh for fifteen years awaiting execution in the tower of London. Then Raleigh appealed to the avarice of the court, talked of Manoa and King El Dorado, offered to fetch gold from the Orinoco, and got leave, a prisoner on parole, to sail once more for the Indies.

They say that the myth of El Dorado is based on the curious mirage of a city which in some kinds of weather may still be seen across Lake Maracaibo. Raleigh and his people found nothing but mosquitoes, fever and hostile Spaniards; the voyage was a failure, and he came home, true to his honor, to have his head chopped off.

“I have,” he said on the scaffold, “a long journey to take, and must bid the company farewell.”

The headsman knelt to receive his pardon. Testing with his finger the edge of the ax, Raleigh lifted and kissed the blade. “It is a sharp and fair medicine,” he said smiling, “to cure me of all my diseases.”

Then the executioner lost his nerve altogether, “What dost thou fear?” asked Raleigh. “Strike, man, strike!”

“Oh eloquent, just, and mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou hast cast out of the world and despised:

“Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet.”

James I

XXXV
A. D. 1608

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

The sentence just quoted, the most beautiful perhaps in English prose, is copied from the History of the World, which Raleigh wrote when a prisoner in the tower, while wee James sat on the throne. It was then that a gentleman and adventurer, Captain John Smith, came home from foreign parts.

At the age of seventeen Mr. Smith was a trooper serving with the Dutch in their war with Spain. As a mariner and gunner he fought in a little Breton ship which captured one of the great galleons of Venice. As an engineer, his inventions of “flying dragons” saved a Hungarian town besieged by the Turks, then captured from the infidel the impregnable city of Stuhlweissenburg. So he became a captain, serving Prince Sigismund at the siege of Reigall. Here the attack was difficult and the assault so long delayed “that the Turks complained they were getting quite fat for want of exercise.” So the Lord Turbishaw, their commander, sent word that the ladies of Reigall longed to see some courtly feat of arms, and asked if any Christian officer would fight him for his head, in single combat. The lot fell to Captain Smith.

In presence of the ladies and both armies, Lord Turbishaw entered the lists on a prancing Arab, in shining armor, and from his shoulders rose great wings of eagle feathers spangled with gold and gems. Perhaps these fine ornaments marred the Turk’s steering, for at the first onset Smith’s lance entered the eye-slit of his visor, piercing between the eyes and through the skull. Smith took the head to his general and kept the charger.

Next morning a challenge came to Smith from the dead man’s greatest friend, by name Grualgo. This time the weapons were lances, and these being shattered, pistols, the fighting being prolonged, and both men wounded, but Smith took Grualgo’s head, his horse and armor.

As soon as his wound was healed, at the request of his officer commanding, Smith sent a letter to the ladies of Reigall, saying he did not wish to keep the heads of their two servants. Would they please send another champion to take the heads and his own? They sent an officer of high rank named Bonni Mulgro. This third fight began with pistols, followed by a prolonged and well-matched duel with battle-axes. Each man in turn reeled senseless in the saddle, but the fight was renewed without gain to either, until the Englishman, letting his weapon slip, made a dive to catch it, and was dragged from his horse by the Turk. Then Smith’s horse, grabbed by the bridle, reared, compelling the Turk to let go, and giving the Christian time to regain his saddle. As Mulgro charged, Smith’s falchion caught him between the plates of his armor, and with a howl of anguish the third champion fell. So it was that Smith won for his coat of arms the three Turks’ heads erased.

After the taking and massacre of Reigall, Smith with his nine English comrades, and his fine squadron of cavalry, joined an army, which was presently caught in the pass of Rothenthurm between a Turkish force and a big Tartar horde. By Smith’s advice, the Christian cavalry got branches of trees soaked in pitch and ablaze, with which they made a night charge, stampeding the Turkish army. Next day the eleven thousand Christians were enclosed by the Tartars, the pass was heaped with thirty thousand dead and wounded men, and with the remnant only two Englishmen escaped. The pillagers found Smith wounded but still alive, and by his jeweled armor, supposed him to be some very wealthy noble, worth holding for ransom. So he was sold into slavery, and sent as a gift by a Turkish chief to his lady in Constantinople. This lady fell in love with her slave, and sent him to her brother, a pasha in the lands north of the Caucasus, begging for kindness to the prisoner until he should be converted to the Moslem faith. But the pasha, furious at his sister’s kindness to a dog of a Christian, had him stripped, flogged, and with a spiked collar of iron riveted on his neck, made servant to wait upon four hundred slaves.

One day the pasha found Smith threshing corn, in a barn some three miles distant from his castle. For some time he amused himself flogging this starved and naked wretch who had once been the champion of a Christian army; but Smith presently caught him a clip behind the ear with his threshing bat, beat his brains out, put on his clothes, mounted his Arab horse, and fled across the steppes into Christian Russia. Through Russia and Poland he made his way to the court of Prince Sigismund, who gave him a purse of fifteen thousand ducats. As a rich man he traveled in Germany, Spain and Morocco, and there made friends with Captain Merstham, whose ship lay at Saffee. He was dining on board one day when a gale drove the ship to sea, and there fell in with two Spanish battle-ships. From noon to dusk they fought, and in the morning Captain Merstham said, “The dons mean to chase us again to-day. They shall have some good sport for their pains.”

“Oh, thou old fox!” cried Smith, slapping him on the shoulders. So after prayers and breakfast the battle began again, Smith in command of the guns, and Merstham pledging the Spaniards in a silver cup of wine, then giving a dram to the men. Once the enemy managed to board the little merchantman, but Merstham and Smith touched off a few bags of powder, blowing away the forecastle with thirty or forty Spaniards. That set the ship on fire, but the English put out the flames and still refused to parley. So afternoon wore into evening and evening into night, when the riddled battle-ships sheered off at last, their scuppers running with blood.

When Captain Smith reached England he was twenty-five years old, of singular strength and beauty, a learned and most rarely accomplished soldier, a man of saintly life with a boy’s heart. I doubt if in the long annals of our people, there is one hero who left so sweet a memory.

Sir Walter Raleigh’s settlement in Virginia had been wiped out by the red Indians, so the second expedition to that country had an adventurous flavor that appealed to Captain Smith. He gave all that he had to the venture, but being somewhat masterful, was put in irons during the voyage to America, and landed in deep disgrace, when every man was needed to work in the founding of the colony. Had all the officers of the expedition been drowned, and most of the members left behind, the enterprise would have had some chance of success, for it was mainly an expedition of wasters led by idiots. The few real workers followed Captain Smith in the digging and the building, the hunting and trading; while the idlers gave advice, and the leaders obstructed the proceedings. The summer was one of varied interest, attacks by the Indians, pestilence, famine and squabbles, so that the colony would have come to a miserable end but that Captain Smith contrived to make friends with the tribes, and induced them to sell him a supply of maize. He was up-country in December when the savages managed to scalp his followers and to take him prisoner. When they tried to kill him he seemed only amused, whereas they were terrified by feats of magic that made him seem a god. He was taken to the king—Powhatan—who received the prisoner in state, gave him a dinner, then ordered his head to be laid on a block and his brains dashed out. But before the first club crashed down a little Indian maid ran forward, pushed the executioners aside, taking his head in her arms, and holding on so tightly that she could not be pulled away. So Pocahontas, the king’s daughter, pleaded for the Englishman and saved him.

King Powhatan, with an eye to business, would now give the prisoner his liberty, provided that he might send two messengers with Smith for a brace of the demi-culverins with which the white men had defended the bastions of their fort. So the captain returned in triumph to his own people, and gladly presented the demi-culverins. At this the king’s messengers were embarrassed, because the pair of guns weighed four and a half tons. Moreover, when the weapons were fired to show their good condition, the Indians were quite cured of any wish for culverins, and departed with glass toys for the king and his family. In return came Pocahontas with her attendants laden with provisions for the starving garrison.

The English leaders were so grateful for succor that they charged Captain Smith with the first thing that entered their heads, condemned him on general principles, and would have hanged him, but that he asked what they would do for food when he was gone, then cheered the whole community by putting the prominent men in irons and taking sole command. Every five days came the Indian princess and her followers with a load of provisions for Captain Smith. The people called her the Blessed Pocahontas, for she saved them all from dying of starvation.

During the five weeks of his captivity, Smith had told the Indians fairy tales about Captain Newport, whose ship was expected soon with supplies for the colony. Newport was the great Merowames, king of the sea.

Captain John Smith

When Newport arrived he was fearfully pleased at being the great Merowames, but shared the disgust of the officials at Captain Smith’s importance. When he went to trade with the tribes he traveled in state, with Smith for interpreter, and began by presenting to Powhatan a red suit, a hat, and a white dog—gifts from the king of England. Then to show his own importance he heaped up all his trading goods, and offered them for such maize as Powhatan cared to sell, expecting tons and getting exactly four bushels. Smith, seeing that the colony would starve, produced some bright blue beads, “very precious jewels,” he told Powhatan, “composed of a most rare substance, and of the color of the skies, of a sort, indeed, only to be worn by the greatest kings of the world.”

After hard bargaining Powhatan managed to get a very few beads for a hundred bushels of grain.

The Virginia Company sent out more idlers from England, and some industrious Dutchmen who stole most of their weapons from the English to arm the Indian tribes; James I had Powhatan treated as a brother sovereign, and crowned with all solemnity, so that he got a swollen head and tried to starve the settlement. The colonists swaggered, squabbled and loafed, instead of storing granaries; but all parties were united in one ambition—planning unpleasant surprises for Captain Smith.

Once his trading party was trapped for slaughter in a house at Powhatan’s camp, but Pocahontas, at the risk of her life, warned her hero, so that all escaped. Another tribe caught Smith in a house where he had called to buy grain of their chief. Smith led the chief outside, with a pistol at his ear-hole, paraded his fifteen musketeers, and frightened seven hundred warriors into laying down their arms. And then he made them load his ship with corn. This food he served out in daily rations to working colonists only. After the next Indian attempt on his life, Smith laid the whole country waste until the tribes were reduced to submission. So his loafers reported him to the company for being cruel to the Indians, and seven shiploads of officials and wasters were sent out from England to suppress the captain.

This was in September of the third year of the colony, and Smith, as it happened, was returning to Jamestown from work up-country. He lay asleep in the boat against a bag of powder, on which one of the sailors was pleased to knock out the ashes of his pipe. The explosion failed to kill, but almost mortally wounded Captain Smith, who was obliged to return to England in search of a doctor’s aid. After his departure, the colony fell into its customary ways, helpless for lack of leadership, butchered by the Indians, starved, until, when relief ships arrived, there were only sixty survivors living on the bodies of the dead. The relieving ships brought Lord Delaware to command, and with him, the beginnings of prosperity.

When the great captain was recovered, his next expedition explored the coast farther north, which he named New England. His third voyage was to have planted a colony, but for Smith’s capture, charged with piracy, by a French squadron. His escape in a dingey seems almost miraculous, for it was on that night that the flagship which had been his prison foundered in a storm, and the squadron was cast away on the coast of France.

Meanwhile, the Princess Pocahontas, had been treacherously captured as a hostage by the Virginian colonists, which led to a sweet love story, and her marriage with Master John Rolfe. With him she presently came on a visit to England, and everywhere the Lady Rebecca Rolfe was received with royal honors as a king’s daughter, winning all hearts by her beauty, her gentleness and dignity. In England she again met Captain Smith, whom she had ever reverenced as a god. But then the bitter English winter struck her down, and she died before a ship could take her home, being buried in the churchyard in Gravesend.

The captain never again was able to adventure his life overseas, but for sixteen years, broken with his wounds and disappointment, wrote books commending America to his countrymen. To the New England which he explored and named, went the Pilgrim Fathers, inspired by his works to sail with the Mayflower, that they might found the colony which he projected. Virginia and New England were called his children, those English colonies which since have grown into the giant republic. So the old captain finished such a task as “God, after His manner, assigns to His Englishmen.”

XXXVI
A. D. 1670

THE BUCCANEERS

It is only a couple of centuries since Spain was the greatest nation on earth, with the Atlantic for her duck pond, the American continents for her back yard, and a notice up to warn away the English, “No dogs admitted.”

England was a little power then, Charles II had to come running when the French king whistled, and we were so weak that the Dutch burned our fleet in London River. Every year a Spanish fleet came from the West Indies to Cadiz, laden deep with gold, silver, gems, spices and all sorts of precious merchandise.

Much as our sailors hated to see all that treasure wasted on Spaniards, England had to keep the peace with Spain, because Charles II had his crown jewels in pawn and no money for such luxuries as war. The Spanish envoy would come to him making doleful lamentations about our naughty sailors, who, in the far Indies, had insolently stolen a galleon or sacked a town. Charles, with his mouth watering at such a tale of loot, would be inexpressibly shocked. The “lewd French” must have done this, or the “pernicious Dutch,” but not our woolly lambs—our innocent mariners.

The buccaneers of the West Indies were of many nations besides the British, and they were not quite pirates. For instance, they would scorn to seize a good Protestant shipload of salt fish, but always attacked the papist who flaunted golden galleons before the nose of the poor. They were serious-minded Protestants with strong views on doctrine, and only made their pious excursions to seize the goods of the unrighteous. Their opinions were so sound on all really important points of dogmatic theology that they could allow themselves a little indulgence in mere rape, sacrilege, arson, robbery and murder, or fry Spaniards in olive oil for concealing the cash box. Then, enriched by such pious exercises, they devoutly spent the whole of their savings on staying drunk for a month.

The first buccaneers sallied out in a small boat and captured a war-ship. From such small beginnings arose a pirate fleet, which, under various leaders, French, Dutch, Portuguese, became a scourge to the Spanish empire overseas. When they had wiped out Spain’s merchant shipping and were short of plunder, they attacked fortified cities, held them to ransom, and burned them for fun, then in chase of the fugitive citizens, put whole colonies to an end by sword and fire.

Naturally only the choicest scoundrels rose to captaincies, and the worst of the lot became admiral. It should thrill the souls of all Welshmen to learn that Henry Morgan gained that bad eminence. He had risen to the command of five hundred cutthroats when he pounced down on Maracaibo Bay in Venezuela. At the entrance stood Fort San Carlos, the place which has lately resisted the attack of a German squadron. Morgan was made of sterner stuff than these Germans, for when the garrison saw him coming, they took to the woods, leaving behind them a lighted fuse at the door of the magazine. Captain Morgan grabbed that fuse himself in time to save his men from a disagreeable hereafter.

Beyond its narrow entrance at Fort San Carlos, the inlet widens to an inland sea, surrounded in those days by Spanish settlements, with the two cities of Gibraltar and Maracaibo. Morgan sacked these towns and chased their flying inhabitants into the mountains. His prisoners, even women and children, were tortured on the rack until they revealed all that they knew of hidden money, and some were burned by inches, starved to death, or crucified.

These pleasures had been continued for five weeks, when a squadron of three heavy war-ships arrived from Spain, and blocked the pirates’ only line of retreat to the sea at Fort San Carlos. Morgan prepared a fire ship, with which he grappled and burned the Spanish admiral. The second ship was wrecked, the third captured by the pirates, and the sailors of the whole squadron were butchered while they drowned. Still Fort San Carlos, now bristling with new guns, had to be dealt with before the pirates could make their escape to the sea. Morgan pretended to attack from the land, so that all the guns were shifted to that side of the fort ready to wipe out his forces. This being done, he got his men on board, and sailed through the channel in perfect safety.

Sir Henry Morgan

And yet attacks upon such places as Maracaibo were mere trifling, for the Spaniards held all the wealth of their golden Indies at Panama. This gorgeous city was on the Pacific Ocean, and to reach it, one must cross the Isthmus of Darien by the route in later times of the Panama railway and the Panama Canal, through the most unwholesome swamps, where to sleep at night in the open was almost sure death from fever. Moreover, the landing place at Chagres was covered by a strong fortress, the route was swarming with Spanish troops and wild savages in their pay, and their destination was a walled city esteemed impregnable.

By way of preparing for his raid, Morgan sent four hundred men who stormed the castle of Chagres, compelling the wretched garrison to jump off a cliff to destruction. The English flag shone from the citadel when Morgan’s fleet arrived. The captain landed one thousand two hundred men and set off up the Chagres River with five boats loaded with artillery, thirty-two canoes and no food. This was a mistake, because the Spaniards had cleared the whole isthmus, driving off the cattle, rooting out the crops, carting away the grain, burning every roof, and leaving nothing for the pirates to live on except the microbes of fever. As the pirates advanced they retreated, luring them on day by day into the heart of the wilderness. The pirates broiled and ate their sea boots, their bandoleers, and certain leather bags. The river being foul with fallen timber, they took to marching. On the sixth day they found a barn full of maize and ate it up, but only on the ninth day had they a decent meal, when, sweating, gasping and swearing, they pounced upon a herd of asses and cows, and fell to roasting flesh on the points of their swords.

On the tenth day they debouched upon a plain before the City of Panama, where the governor awaited with his troops. There were two squadrons of cavalry and four regiments of foot, besides guns, and the pirates heartily wished themselves at home with their mothers. Happily the Spanish governor was too sly, for he had prepared a herd of wild bulls with Indian herders to drive into the pirate ranks, which bulls, in sheer stupidity, rushed his own battalions. Such bulls as tried to fly through the pirate lines were readily shot down, but the rest brought dire confusion. Then began a fierce battle, in which the Spaniards lost six hundred men before they bolted. Afterward through a fearful storm of fire from great artillery, the pirates stormed the city and took possession.

Of course, by this time, the rich galleons had made away to sea with their treasure, and the citizens had carried off everything worth moving, to the woods. Moreover, the pirates were hasty in burning the town, so that the treasures which had been buried in wells or cellars were lost beyond all finding. During four weeks, this splendid capital of the Indies burned, while the people hid in the woods; and the pirates tortured everybody they could lay hands on with fiendish cruelty. Morgan himself, caught a beautiful lady and threw her into a cellar full of filth because she would not love him. Even in their retreat to the Atlantic, the pirates carried off six hundred prisoners, who rent the air with their lamentations, and were not even fed until their ransoms arrived.

Before reaching Chagres, Morgan had every pirate stripped to make sure that all loot was fairly divided. The common pirates were bitterly offended at the dividend of only two hundred pieces of eight per man, but Morgan stole the bulk of the plunder for himself, and returned a millionaire to Jamaica.

Charles II knighted him and made him governor of Jamaica as a reward for robbing the Spaniards. Afterwards his majesty changed his mind, and Morgan died a prisoner in the tower of London as a punishment for the very crime which had been rewarded with a title and a vice-royalty.

XXXVII
A. D. 1682

THE VOYAGEURS

This chapter must begin with a very queer tale of rivers as adventurers exploring for new channels.

Millions of years ago the inland seas—Superior, Michigan and Huron—had their overflow down the Ottawa Valley, reaching the Saint Lawrence at the Island of Montreal.

But, when the glaciers of the great ice age blocked the Ottawa Valley, the three seas had to find another outlet, so they made a channel through the Chicago River, down the Des Plaines, and the Illinois, into the Mississippi.

And when the glaciers made, across that channel, an embankment which is now the town site of Chicago, the three seas had to explore for a new outlet. So they filled the basin of Lake Erie, and poured over the edge of Queenstown Heights into Lake Ontario. The Iroquois called that fall the “Thunder of Waters,” which in their language is Niagara.

All the vast region which was flooded by the ice-field of the great ice age became a forest, and every river turned by the ice out of its ancient channel became a string of lakes and waterfalls. This beautiful wilderness was the scene of tremendous adventures, where the red Indians fought the white men, and the English fought the French, and the Americans fought the Canadians, until the continent was cut into equal halves, and there was peace.

Now let us see what manner of men were the Indians. At the summit of that age of glory—the sixteenth century—the world was ruled by the despot Akbar the Magnificent at Delhi, the despot Ivan the Terrible at Moscow, the despot Phillip II at Madrid, and a little lady despot, Elizabeth of the sea.

Yet at that time the people in the Saint Lawrence Valley, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas and, in the middle, the Onondagas, were free republics with female suffrage and women as members of parliament. Moreover the president of the Onondagas, Hiawatha, formed these five nations into the federal republic of the Iroquois, and they admitted the Tuscaroras into that United States which was created to put an end to war. In the art of government we have not yet caught up with the Iroquois.

They were farmers, with rich fisheries, had comfortable houses, and fortified towns. In color they were like outdoor Spaniards, a tall, very handsome race, and every bit as able as the whites. Given horses, hard metals for their tools, and some channel or mountain range to keep off savage raiders, and they might well have become more civilized than the French, with fleets to attack old Europe, and missionaries to teach us their religion.

Their first visitor from Europe was Jacques Cartier and they gave him a hearty welcome at Quebec. When his men were dying of scurvy an Indian doctor cured them. But to show his gratitude Cartier kidnaped the five principal chiefs, and ever after that, with very brief intervals, the French had reason to fear the Iroquois. Like many another Indian nation, driven away from its farms and fisheries, the six nation republic lapsed to savagery, lived by hunting and robbery, ravaged the white men’s settlements and the neighbor tribes for food, outraged and scalped the dead, burned or even ate their prisoners.

The French colonies were rather over-governed. There was too much parson and a great deal too much squire to suit the average peasant, so all the best of the men took to the fur trade. They wore the Indian dress of long fringed deerskin, coon cap, embroidered moccasins, and a French sash like a rainbow. They lived like Indians, married among the tribes, fought in their wars; lawless, gay, gallant, fierce adventurers, the voyageurs of the rivers, the runners of the woods.

With them went monks into the wilderness, heroic, saintly Jesuits and Franciscans, and some of the quaintest rogues in holy orders. And there were gentlemen, reckless explorers, seeking a way to China. Of this breed came La Salle, whose folk were merchant-princes at Rouen, and himself pupil and enemy of the Jesuits. At the time of the plague and burning of London he founded a little settlement on the island of Mount Royal, just by the head of the Rapids. His dream was the opening of trade with China by way of the western rivers, so the colonists, chaffing him, gave the name La Chine to his settlement and the rapids. To-day the railway trains come swirling by, with loads of tea from China to ship from Montreal, but not to France.

During La Salle’s first five years in the wilderness he discovered the Ohio and the Illinois, two of the head waters of the Mississippi. The Indians told him of that big river, supposed to be the way to the Pacific. A year later the trader Joliet, and the Jesuit Saint Marquette descended the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas. So La Salle dreamed of a French empire in the west, shutting the English between the Appalachians and the Atlantic, with a base at the mouth of the Mississippi for raiding the Spanish Indies, and a trade route across the western sea to China. All this he told to Count Frontenac, the new governor general, a man of business who saw the worth of the adventure. Frontenac sent La Salle to talk peace with the Iroquois, while he himself founded Fort Frontenac at the outlet of Lake Ontario. From here he cut the trade routes of the west, so that no furs would ever reach the French traders of Montreal or the English of New York. The governor had not come to Canada for his health.

La Salle was penniless, but his mind went far beyond this petty trading; he charmed away the dangers from hostile tribes; his heroic record won him help from France. Within a year he began his adventure of the Mississippi by buying out Fort Frontenac as his base camp. Here he built a ship, and though she was wrecked he saved stores enough to cross the Niagara heights, and build a second vessel on Lake Erie. With the Griffin he came to the meeting place of the three upper seas—Machilli-Mackinac—the Jesuit headquarters. Being a good-natured man bearing no malice, it was with a certain pomp of drums, flags and guns that he saluted the fort, quite forgetting that he came as a trespasser into the Jesuit mission. A Jesuit in those days was a person with a halo at one end and a tail at the other, a saint with modest black draperies to hide cloven hoofs, who would fast all the week, and poison a guest on Saturday, who sought the glory of martyrdom not always for the faith, but sometimes to serve a devilish wicked political secret society. Leaving the Jesuit mission an enemy in his rear, La Salle built a fort at the southern end of Lake Michigan, sent off his ship for supplies, and entered the unknown wilderness. As winter closed down he came with thirty-three men in eight birchbark canoes to the Illinois nation on the river Illinois.

Meanwhile the Jesuits sent Indian messengers to raise the Illinois tribes for war against La Salle, to kill him by poison, and to persuade his men to desert. La Salle put a rising of the Illinois to shame, ate three dishes of poison without impairing his very sound digestion, and made his men too busy for revolt; building Fort Brokenheart, and a third ship for the voyage down the Mississippi to the Spanish Indies.

Then came the second storm of trouble, news that his relief ship from France was cast away, his fort at Frontenac was seized for debt, and his supply vessel on the upper lakes was lost. He must go to Canada.

The third storm was still to come, the revenge of the English for the cutting of their fur trade at Fort Frontenac. They armed five hundred Iroquois to massacre the Illinois who had befriended him in the wilderness.

Robert Cavalier de la Salle

At Fort Brokenheart La Salle had a valiant priest named Hennepin, a disloyal rogue and a quite notable liar. With two voyageurs Pere Hennepin was sent to explore the river down to the Mississippi, and there the three Frenchmen were captured by the Sioux. Their captors took them by canoe up the Mississippi to the Falls of Saint Anthony, so named by Hennepin. Thence they were driven afoot to the winter villages of the tribe. The poor unholy father being slow afoot, they mended his pace by setting the prairie afire behind him. Likewise they anointed him with wildcat fat to give him the agility of that animal. Still he was never popular, and in the end the three wanderers were turned loose. Many were their vagabond adventures before they met the explorer Greysolon Du Luth, who took them back with him to Canada. They left La Salle to his fate.

Meanwhile La Salle set out from Fort Brokenheart in March, attended by a Mohegan hunter who loved him, and by four gallant Frenchmen. Their journey was a miracle of courage across the unexplored woods to Lake Erie, and on to Frontenac. There La Salle heard that the moment his back was turned his garrison had looted and burned Fort Brokenheart; but he caught these deserters as they attempted to pass Fort Frontenac, and left them there in irons.

Every man has power to make of his mind an empire or a desert. At this time Louis the Great was master of Europe, La Salle a broken adventurer, but it was the king’s mind which was a desert, compared with the imperial brain of this haughty, silent, manful pioneer. The creditors forgot that he owed them money, the governor caught fire from his enthusiasm, and La Salle went back equipped for his gigantic venture in the west.

The officer he had left in charge at Fort Brokenheart was an Italian gentleman by the name of Tonty, son of the man who invented the tontine life insurance. He was a veteran soldier whose left hand, blown off, had been replaced with an iron fist, which the Indians found to be strong medicine. One clout on the head sufficed for the fiercest warrior. When his garrison sacked the fort and bolted, he had two fighting men left, and a brace of priests. They all sought refuge in the camp of the Illinois.

Presently this pack of curs had news that La Salle was leading an army of Iroquois to their destruction, so instead of preparing for defense they proposed to murder Tonty and his Frenchmen, until the magic of his iron fist quite altered their point of view. Sure enough the Iroquois arrived in force, and the cur pack, three times as strong, went out to fight. Then through the midst of the battle Tonty walked into the enemy’s lines. He ordered the Iroquois to go home and behave themselves, and told such fairy tales about the strength of his curs that these ferocious warriors were frightened. Back walked Tonty to find his cur pack on their knees in tears of gratitude. Again he went to the Iroquois, this time with stiff terms if they wanted peace, but an Illinois envoy gave his game away, with such extravagant bribes and pleas for mercy that the Iroquois laughed at Tonty. They burned the Illinois town, dug up their graveyard, chased the flying nation, butchered the abandoned women and children, and hunted the cur pack across the Mississippi. Tonty and his Frenchmen made their way to their nearest friends, the Pottawattomies, to await La Salle’s return.

And La Salle returned. He found the Illinois town in ashes, littered with human bones. He found an island of the river where women and children by hundreds had been outraged, tortured and burned. His fort was a weed-grown ruin. In all the length of the valley there was no vestige of human life, or any clue as to the fate of Tonty and his men. For the third time La Salle made that immense journey to the settlements, wrung blood from stones to equip an expedition, and coming to Lake Michigan rallied the whole of the native tribes in one strong league, a red Indian colony with himself as chief, for defense from the Iroquois. The scattered Illinois returned to their abandoned homes, tribes came from far and wide to join the colony and in the midst, upon Starved Rock, La Salle built Fort Saint Louis as their stronghold. When Tonty joined him, for once this iron man showed he had a heart.

So, after all, La Salle led an expedition down the whole length of the Mississippi. He won the friendship of every tribe he met, bound them to French allegiance, and at the end erected the standard of France on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. “In the name of the most high, mighty, invincible and victorious Prince, Louis the Great, by the Grace of God, King of France and of Navarre,” on the nineteenth of April, 1682. La Salle annexed the valley of the Mississippi from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, from the lakes to the gulf, and named that empire Louisiana.

As to the fate of this great explorer, murdered in the wilderness by followers he disdained to treat as comrades, “his enemies were more in earnest than his friends.”

XXXVIII
A. D. 1741

THE EXPLORERS

From the time of Henry VII of England down to the present day, the nations of Europe have been busy with one enormous adventure, the search for the best trade route to India and the China seas. For four whole centuries this quest for a trade route has been the main current of the history of the world. Look what the nations have done in that long fight for trade.

Portugal found the sea route by Magellan’s Strait, and occupied Brazil; the Cape route, and colonized the coasts of Africa. She built an empire.

Spain mistook the West Indies for the real Indies, and the red men for the real Indians, found the Panama route, and occupied the new world from Cape Horn up to the southern edge of Alaska. She built an empire.

France, in the search of a route across North America, occupied Canada and the Mississippi Valley. She built an empire. That lost, she attempted under Napoleon to occupy Egypt, Palestine and the whole overland road to India. That failing, she has dug the Suez Canal and attempted the Panama, both sea routes to the Indies.

Holland, searching for a route across North America, found Hudson’s Bay and occupied Hudson River (New York). On the South Sea route she built her rich empire in the East Indian Islands.

Britain, searching eastward first, opened up Russia to civilization, then explored the sea passage north of Asia. Searching westward, she settled Newfoundland, founded the United States, built Canada, which created the Canadian Pacific route to the Indies, and traversed the sea passage north of America. On the Panama route, she built a West Indian empire; on the Mediterranean route, her fortress line of Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, Adon. By holding all routes, she holds her Indian empire. Is not this the history of the world?

But there remains to be told the story of Russia’s search for routes to India and China. That story begins with Martha Rabe, the Swedish nursery governess, who married a dragoon, left him to be mistress of a Russian general, became servant to the Princess Menchikoff, next the lover, then the wife of Peter the Great, and finally succeeded him as empress of all the Russias. To the dazzling court of this Empress Catherine came learned men and travelers who talked about the search of all the nations for a route through North America to the Indies. Long ago, they said, an old Greek mariner, one Juan de Fuca, had bragged on the quays of Venice, of his voyages. He claimed to have rounded Cape Horn, and thence beat up the west coast of America, until he came far north to a strait which entered the land. Through this sea channel he had sailed for many weeks, until it brought him out again into the ocean. One glance at the map will show these straits of Juan de Fuca, and how the old Greek, sailing for many weeks, came out again into the ocean, having rounded the back of Vancouver’s Island. But the legend as told to Catherine the Great of Russia, made these mysterious straits of Anian lead from the Pacific right across North America to the Atlantic Ocean. Here was a sea route from Russia across the Atlantic, across North America, across the Pacific, direct to the gorgeous Indies. With such a possession as this channel Russia could dominate the world.

Catherine set her soothsayers and wiseacres to make a chart, displaying these straits of Anian which Juan de Fuca had found, and they marked the place accordingly at forty-eight degrees of north latitude on the west coast of America. But there were also rumors and legends in those days of a great land beyond the uttermost coasts of Siberia, an island that was called Aliaska, filling the North Pacific. All such legends and rumors the astrologers marked faithfully upon their map until the thing was of no more use than a dose of smallpox. Then Catherine gave the precious chart to two of her naval officers, Vitus Bering, the Dane—a mighty man in the late wars with Sweden and a Russian lieutenant—Tschirikoff—and bade them go find the straits of Anian.

The expedition set out overland across the Russian and Siberian plains, attended by hunters who kept the people alive on fish and game until they reached the coasts of the North Pacific. There they built two ships, the Stv Petr and the Stv Pavl, and launched them, two years from the time of their outsetting from Saint Petersburg. Thirteen years they spent in exploring the Siberian coast, northward to the Arctic, southward to the borders of China, then in 1741 set out into the unknown to search for the Island of Aliaska, and the Straits of Anian so plainly marked upon their chart.

Long months they cruised about in quest of that island, finding nothing, while the crews sickened of scurvy, and man after man died in misery, until only a few were left.

The world had not been laid out correctly, but Bering held with fervor to his faith in that official chart for which his men were dying. At last Tschirikoff, unable to bear it any longer, deserted Bering, and sailing eastward many days, came at last to land at the mouth of Cross Straits in Southern Alaska.

Beyond a rocky foreshore and white surf, forests of pine went up to mountains lost in trailing clouds. Behind a little point rose a film of smoke from some savage camp-fire. Tschirikoff landed a boat’s crew in search of provisions and water, which vanished behind the point and was seen no more. Heart-sick, he sent a second boat, which vanished behind the point and was seen no more, but the fire of the savages blazed high. Two days he waited, watching that pillar of smoke, and listened to a far-off muttering of drums, then with the despairing remnant of his crew, turned back to the lesser perils of the sea, and fled to Siberia. Farther to the northward, some three hundred miles, was Bering in the Stv Petr, driving his mutinous people in a last search for land. It was the day after Tschirikoff’s discovery, and the ship, flying winged out before the southwest wind, came to green shallows of the sea, and fogs that lay in violet gloom ahead, like some mysterious coast crowned with white cloud heights towering up the sky. At sunset, when these clouds had changed to flame color, they parted, suddenly revealing high above the mastheads the most tremendous mountain in the world. The sailors were terrified, and Bering, called suddenly to the tall after-castle of the ship, went down on his knees in awestruck wonder. By the Russian calendar, the day was that of the dread Elijah, who had been taken up from the earth drawn by winged horses of flame in a chariot of fire, and to these lost mariners it seemed that this was no mere mountain of ice walls glowing rose and azure through a rift of the purple clouds, but a vision of the translation of the prophet. Bering named the mountain Saint Elias.

There is no space here for the detail of Bering’s wanderings thereafter through those bewildering labyrinths of islands which skirt the Alps of Saint Elias westward, and reach out as the Aleutian Archipelago the whole way across the Pacific Ocean. The region is an awful sub-arctic wilderness of rock-set gaps between bleak arctic islands crowned by flaming volcanoes, lost in eternal fog. It has been my fate to see the wonders and the terrors of that coast, which Bering’s seamen mistook for the vestibule of the infernal regions. Scurvy and hunger made them more like ghosts of the condemned than living men, until their nightmare voyage ended in wreck on the last of the islands, within two hundred miles of the Siberian coast.

Stellar, the German naturalist, who survived the winter, has left record of Bering laid between two rocks for shelter, where the sand drift covered his legs and kept him warm through the last days, then made him a grave afterward. The island was frequented by sea-cows, creatures until then unknown, and since wholly extinct, Stellar’s being the only account of them. There were thousands of sea otter, another species that will soon become extinct, and the shipwrecked men had plenty of wild meat to feed on while they passed the winter building from the timbers of the wreck, a boat to carry them home. In the spring they sailed with a load of sea-otter skins and gained the Chinese coast, where their cargo fetched a fortune for all hands, the furs being valued for the official robes of mandarins.

At the news of this new trade in sea-otter skins, the hunters of Siberia went wild with excitement, so that the survivors of Bering’s crew led expeditions of their own to Alaska. By them a colony was founded, and though the Straits of Anian were never discovered, because they did not exist, the czars added to their dominions a new empire called Russian America. This Alaska was sold in 1867 to the United States for one million, five hundred thousand pounds, enough money to build such a work as London Bridge, and the territory yields more than that by far in annual profits from fisheries, timber and gold.

XXXIX
A. D. 1750

THE PIRATES

There are very few pirates left. The Riff Moors of Gibraltar Straits will grab a wind-bound ship when they get the chance; the Arabs of the Red Sea take stranded steamers; Chinese practitioners shipped as passengers on a liner, will rise in the night, cut throats, and steal the vessel; moreover some little retail business is done by the Malays round Singapore, but trade as a whole is slack, and sea thieves are apt to get themselves disliked by the British gunboats.

This is a respectable world, my masters, but it is getting dull.

It was very different in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the Sallee rovers, the Algerian corsairs, buccaneers of the West Indies, the Malays and the Chinese put pirate fleets to sea to prey on great commerce, when Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Bartholomew, Roberts, Lafitte, Avery and a hundred other corsairs under the Jolly Roger could seize tall ships and make their unwilling seamen walk the plank. They and their merry men went mostly to the gallows, richly deserved the same, and yet—well, nobody need complain that times were dull.

There were so many pirates one hardly knows which to deal with, but Avery was such a mean rogue, and there is such a nice confused story—well, here goes! He was mate of the ship Duke, forty-four guns, a merchant cruiser chartered from Bristol for the Spanish service. His skipper was mightily addicted to punch, and too drunk to object when Avery, conspiring with the men, made bold to seize the ship. Then he went down-stairs to wake the captain, who, in a sudden fright, asked, “What’s the matter?” “Oh, nothing,” said Avery. The skipper gobbled at him, “But something’s the matter,” he cried. “Does she drive? What weather is it?” “No, no,” answered Avery, “we’re at sea.” “At sea! How can that be?”

“Come,” says Avery, “don’t be in a fright, but put on your clothes, and I’ll let you into the secret—and if you’ll turn sober and mind your business perhaps, in time, I may make you one of my lieutenants, if not, here’s a boat alongside, and you shall be set ashore.” The skipper, still in a fright, was set ashore, together with such of the men as were honest. Then Avery sailed away to seek his fortune.

On the coast of Madagascar, lying in a bay, two sloops were found, whose seamen supposed the Duke to be a ship of war and being rogues, having stolen these vessels to go pirating, they fled with rueful faces into the woods. Of course they were frightfully pleased when they found out that they were not going to be hanged just yet, and delighted when Captain Avery asked them to sail in his company. They could fly at big game now, with this big ship for a consort.

Now, as it happened, the Great Mogul, emperor of Hindustan, was sending his daughter with a splendid retinue to make pilgrimage to Mecca and worship at the holy places of Mahomet. The lady sailed in a ship with chests of gold to pay the expenses of the journey, golden vessels for the table, gifts for the shrines, an escort of princes covered with jewels, troops, servants, slaves and a band to play tunes with no music, after the eastern manner. And it was their serious misfortune to meet with Captain Avery outside the mouth of the Indus. Avery’s sloops, being very swift, got the prize, and stripped her of everything worth taking, before they let her go.

It shocked Avery to think of all that treasure in the sloops where it might get lost; so presently, as they sailed in consort, he invited the captains of the sloops to use the big ship as their strong room. They put their treasure on board the Duke, and watched close, for fear of accidents. Then came a dark night when Captain Avery mislaid both sloops, and bolted with all the plunder, leaving two crews of simple mariners to wonder where he had gone.

Avery made off to the New England colonies, where he made a division of the plunder, handing the gold to the men, but privily keeping all the diamonds for himself. The sailors scattered out through the American settlements and the British Isles, modestly changing their names. Mr. Avery went home to Bristol, where he found some honest merchants to sell his diamonds, and lend him a small sum on account. When, however, he called on them for the rest of the money, he met with a most shocking repulse, because the merchants had never heard, they said, of him or his diamonds, but would give him to the justices as a pirate unless he shut his mouth. He went away and died of grief at Bideford in Devon, leaving no money even to pay for his coffin.

Meanwhile the Great Mogul at Delhi was making such dismal lamentations about the robbery of his daughter’s diamonds that the news of Avery’s riches spread to England. Rumor made him husband to the princess, a reigning sovereign, with a pirate fleet of his own—at the very time he was dying of want at Bideford.

We left two sloops full of pirates mourning over the total depravity of Captain Avery. Sorely repenting his sins, they resolved to amend their lives, and see what they could steal in Madagascar. Landing on that great island they dismantled their sloops, taking their plentiful supply of guns and powder ashore, where they camped, making their sails into tents. Here they met with another party of English pirates who were also penitent, having just plundered a large and richly-laden ship at the mouth of the Red Sea. Their dividend was three thousand pounds a man, and they were resolved to settle in Madagascar instead of going home to be hanged. The two parties, both in search of a peaceful and simple life, made friends with the various native princes, who were glad of white men to assist in the butchering of adjacent tribes. Two or three pirates at the head of an attacking force would put the boldest tribes to flight. Each pirate acquired his own harem of wives, his own horde of black slaves, his own plantations, fishery and hunting grounds, his kingdom wherein he reigned an absolute monarch. If a native said impudent words he was promptly shot, and any attack of the tribes on a white man was resented by the whole community of pirate kings. Once the negroes conspired for a general rising to wipe out their oppressors at one fell swoop, but the wife of a white man getting wind of the plot, ran twenty miles in three hours to alarm her lord. When the native forces arrived they were warmly received. After that each of their lordships built a fortress for his resting place with rampart and ditch set round with a labyrinth of thorny entanglements, so that the barefoot native coming as a stranger by night, trod on spikes, and sounded a loud alarm which roused the garrison.

Long years went by. Their majesties grew stout from high feeding and lack of exercise, hairy, dressed in skins of wild beasts, reigning each in his kingdom with a deal of dirty state and royalty.

So Captain Woods found them when he went in the ship Delicia, to buy slaves. At the sight of his forty-gun ship they hid themselves in the woods, very suspicious, but presently learned his business, and came out of the woods, offering to sell their loyal negro subjects by hundreds in exchange for tobacco and suits of sailor clothes, tools, powder, and ball. They had now been twenty-five years in Madagascar, and, what with wars, accidents, sickness, there remained eleven sailor kings, all heartily bored with their royalty. Despite the attachments of their harems, children and swarms of grandchildren and dependents, they were sick for blue water, hungry for a cruise. Captain Woods observed that they got very friendly with his seamen, and learned that they were plotting to seize the ship, hoist the black flag, and betake themselves once more to piracy on the high seas.

After that he kept their majesties at a distance, sending officers ashore to trade with them until he had completed his cargo of slaves. So he sailed, leaving eleven disconsolate pirate kings in a mournful row on the tropic beach, and no more has ever transpired as to them or the fate of their kingdoms. Still, they had fared much better than Captain Avery with his treasure of royal diamonds.

XL
A. D. 1776

DANIEL BOONE

As a matter of unnatural history the British lion is really and truly a lioness with a large and respectable family. When only a cub she sharpened her teeth on Spain, in her youth crushed Holland, and in her prime fought France, wresting from each in turn the command of the sea.

She was nearing her full strength when France with a chain of forts along the Saint Lawrence and the Mississippi attempted to strangle the thirteen British cubs in America. By the storming of Quebec the lion smashed that chain; but the long and world-wide wars with France had bled her dry, and unless she could keep the sea her cubs were doomed, so bluntly she told them they must help.

The cubs had troubles of their own and could not help. Theirs was the legal, hers the moral right, but both sides fell in the wrong when they lost their tempers. Since then the mother of nations has reared her second litter with some of that gentleness which comes of sorrow.

So far the French in Canada were not settlers so much as gay adventurers for the Christ, or for beaver skins, living among the Indians, or in a holiday mood leading the tribes against the surly British.

So far the British overseas were not adventurers so much as dour fugitives from injustice at home, or from justice, or merely deported as a general nuisance, to join in one common claim to liberty, the fanatics of freedom.

Unlike the French and Spaniards, the northern folk—British or Dutch, German or Scandinavian—had no mission, except by smallpox to convert the heathen. Nothing cared they for glory or adventure, but only for homes and farms. Like a hive of bees they filled the Atlantic coast lands with tireless industry until they began to feel crowded; then like a hive they swarmed, over the Appalachian ranges, across the Mississippi, over the Rocky Mountains, and now in our own time to lands beyond the sea.

Among the hard fierce colonists a very few loved nature and in childhood took to the wilds. Such was the son of a tame Devon Quaker, young Daniel Boone, a natural marksman, axman, bushman, tracker and scout of the backwoods who grew to be a freckled ruddy man, gaunt as a wolf, and subtle as a snake from his hard training in the Indian wars.

When first he crossed the mountains on the old warrior trail into Kentucky, hunting and trapping paid well in that paradise of noble timber and white clover meadows. The country swarmed with game, a merry hunting ground and battle-field of rival Indian tribes.

There Boone and his wife’s brother Stuart were captured by Shawnees, who forced the prisoners to lead the way to their camp where the other four hunters were taken. The Indians took their horses, rifles, powder, traps and furs, all lawful plunder, but gave them food to carry them to the settlements with a warning for the whites that trespassers would be prosecuted. That was enough for four of the white hunters, but Boone and Stuart tracked the Indians and stole back some of their plunder, only to be trailed in their turn and recaptured. The Shawnees were annoyed, and would have taken these trespassers home to be burned alive, but for Boone’s queer charm of manner which won their liking, and his ghostlike vanishing with Stuart into the cane brakes. The white men got away with rifles, bullets and powder, and they were wise enough not to be caught again. Still it needed some courage to stay in Kentucky, and after Stuart got scalped Boone said he felt unutterably lonely. Yet he remained, dodging so many and such varied perils that his loneliness must really have been a comfort, for it is better to be dull in solitude than scalped in company. He owed money for his outfit, and would not return to the settlements until he had earned the skins that paid his debt.

At the moment when the big colonial hive began to swarm Boone led a party of thirty frontiersmen to cut a pack-trail over the mountains into the plains of Kentucky. This wilderness trail—some two hundred miles of mud-holes, rocks and stumps—opened the way for settlement in Kentucky, a dark and bloody ground, for white invaders. At a cost of two or three scalps Boone’s outfit reached this land, to build a stockaded village named for the leader, Boonesborough, and afterward he was very proud that his wife and daughters were the first women to brave the perils of that new settlement.

Under a giant elm the settlers, being British, had church and parliament, but only on one Sunday did the parson pray for King George before the news came that congress needed prayers for the new republic at war with the motherland.

Far to the northwest of Kentucky the forts of Illinois were held by a British officer named Hamilton. He had with him a handful of American Tories loyal to the king, some newly conquered French Canadians not much in love with British government, and savage Indian tribes. All these he sent to strike the revolting colonies in their rear, but the whole brunt of the horror fell upon poor Kentucky. The settlements were wrecked, the log cabins burned, and the Indians got out of hand, committing crimes; but the settlers held four forts and cursed King George through seven years of war.

It was in a lull of this long storm that Boone led a force of thirty men to get salt from the salt-licks frequented by the buffalo and deer, on the banks of Licking River. One day while he was scouting ten miles from camp, and had just loaded his horse with meat to feed his men, he was caught, in a snow-storm, by four Shawnees. They led him to their camp where some of the hundred warriors had helped to capture Boone eight years before. These, with much ceremony and mock politeness, introduced him to two American Tories, a brace of French Canadians, and their Shawnee chiefs. Then Boone found out that this war party was marching on Fort Boonesborough where lived his own wife and children and many women, but scarcely any men. But knowing the ways of the redskins Boone saw that if he let them capture his own men in camp at the salt-licks they would go home without attacking Boonesborough. He must risk the fighting men to save the fort; he must guide the enemy to his own camp and order his men to surrender; and if they laid down all their lives for the sake of their women and children—well, they must take their chance. Boone’s men laid down their arms.

A council followed at which fifty-nine Indians voted to burn these Americans at the stake against sixty-one who preferred to sell them to Hamilton as prisoners of war. Saved by two votes, they marched on a winter journey dreadful to the Indians as well as to the prisoners; but all shared alike when dogs and horses had to be killed for food. Moreover the savages became so fond of Boone that they resolved to make an Indian of him. Not wanting to be an Indian he pleaded with Hamilton the Hair Buyer, promising to turn loyalist and fight the rebels, but when the British officer offered a hundred pounds for this one captive it was not enough for these loving savages. They took Boone home, pulled out his hair, leaving only a fine scalp-lock adorned with feathers, bathed him in the river to wash all his white blood out, painted him, and named him Big Turtle. As the adopted son of the chief, Black Fish, Boone pretended to be happy, and in four months had become a popular chief, rather closely watched, but allowed to go out hunting. Then a large Indian force assembled to march against Fort Boonesborough.

Daniel Boone

Boone easily got leave to go out hunting, and a whole day passed before his flight was known. Doubling on his course, setting blind trails, wading along the streams to hide his tracks, sleeping in thickets or in hollow logs, starving because he dared not fire a gun to get food, his clothes in rags, his feet bloody, he made his way across country, and on the fifth day staggered into Fort Boonesborough.

The enemy were long on the way. There was time to send riders for succor and scouts to watch, to repair the fort, even to raid the Shawnee country before the invaders arrived—one hundred Canadians and four hundred Indians, while Boone’s garrison numbered fifty men and boys, with twenty-five brave women.

By Hamilton’s orders there must be no bloodshed, and he sent forty horses for the old folks, the women and children to ride on their way northward as prisoners of war.

Very solemn was Boone, full of negotiations for surrender, gaining day after day with talk, waiting in a fever for expected succor from the colonies. Nine commissioners on either side were to sign the treaty, but the Indians—for good measure—sent eighteen envoys to clasp the hands of their nine white brothers, and drag them into the bush for execution. The white commissioners broke loose, gained the fort, slammed the gates and fired from the ramparts.

Long, bitter and vindictive was the siege. A pretended retreat failed to lure Boone’s men into ambush. The Indians dug a mine under the walls, but threw the dirt from the tunnel into the river where a streak of muddy water gave their game away. Torches were thrown on the roofs, but women put out the flames. When at last the siege was raised and the Indians retreated, twenty-four hours lapsed before the famished garrison dared to throw open their gates.

In these days a Kentucky force, led by the hero George Rogers Clark, captured the French forts on the Illinois, won over their garrisons, and marched on the fortress of Vincennes through flooded lands, up to their necks in water, starving, half drowned. They captured the wicked Hamilton and led him away in chains.

Toward the end of the war once more a British force of Frenchmen and Indians raided Kentucky, besieging Logan’s fort, and but for the valor of the women, that sorely stricken garrison would have perished. For when the tanks were empty the women took their buckets and marched out of the gates, laughing and singing, right among the ambushed Indians, got their supply of water from the spring, and returned unhurt because they showed no fear.

With the reliefs to the rescue rode Daniel Boone and his son Israel, then aged twenty-three. At sight of reinforcements the enemy bolted, hotly pursued to the banks of Licking River. Boone implored his people not to cross into the certainty of an ambush, but the Kentuckians took no notice, charging through the river and up a ridge between two bushed ravines.

From both flanks the Wyandots charged with tomahawks, while the Shawnees raked the horsemen with a galling fire, and there was pitiless hewing down of the broken flying settlers. Last in that flight came Boone, bearing in his arms his mortally wounded son, overtaken, cut off, almost surrounded before he struck off from the path, leaping from rock to rock. As he swam the river Israel died, but the father carried his body on into the shelter of the forest.

With the ending of the war of the Revolution, the United States spread gradually westward, and to the close of his long life old Daniel Boone was ever at the front of their advance, taking his rest at last beyond the Mississippi. To-day his patient and heroic spirit inspires all boys, leads every frontiersman, commands the pioneers upon the warrior trails, the ax-hewn paths, the wilderness roads of marching empire.

XLI
A. D. 1813

ANDREW JACKSON

The Nations were playing a ball game: “Catch!” said France, throwing the ball to Spain, who muffed it. “Quick!” cried Napoleon, “or England will get it—catch!” “Caught!” said the first American republic, and her prize was the valley of the Mississippi.

Soon afterward the United States in the name of freedom joined Napoleon the Despot at war with Great Britain; and the old lion had a wild beast fight against a world-at-arms. In our search for great adventure let us turn to the warmest corner of that world-wide struggle, poor Spanish Florida.

Here a large Indian nation, once civilized, but now reduced to savagery, had taken refuge from the Americans; and these people, the Creeks and Seminoles, fighting for freedom themselves, gave shelter to runaway slaves from the United States. A few pirates are said to have lurked there, and some Scottish gentlemen lived with the tribes as traders. Thanks perhaps to them, Great Britain armed the Creeks, who ravaged American settlements to the north, and at Fort Minns butchered four hundred men.

Northward in Tennessee the militia were commanded by Andrew Jackson, born a frontiersman, but by trade a lawyer, a very valiant man of high renown, truculent as a bantam.

Without orders he led two thousand, five hundred frontiersmen to avenge Fort Minns by chasing the Spanish governor (in time of peace) out of Pensacola, and a British garrison from Fort Barrancas, and then (after peace was signed) expelled the British from New Orleans, while his detachment in Florida blew up a fort with two hundred seventy-five refugees, including the women and children. Such was the auspicious prelude to Jackson’s war with the Creeks, who were crushed forever at the battle of Horseshoe Bend.

XLII
A. D. 1836

SAM HOUSTON

Serving in Jackson’s force was young Sam Houston, a hunter and a pioneer from childhood. Rather than be apprenticed to a trade he ran away and joined the Cherokees, and as the adopted son of the head chief became an Indian, except of course during the holidays, when he went to see his very respectable mother. On one of these visits home he met a recruiting sergeant, and enlisted for the year of 1812. At the age of twenty-one he had fought his way up to the rank of ensign, serving with General Andrew Jackson at the battle of Horseshoe Bend.

The Creeks held a line of breastworks, and the Americans were charging these works when an arrow struck deep into young Houston’s thigh. He tried to wrench it out but the barb held, and twice his lieutenant failed. “Try again,” said Houston, “and if you fail I’ll knock you down.” The lieutenant pulled out the arrow, and streaming with blood, the youngster went to a surgeon who dressed his wound. General Jackson told him not to return to the front, but the lad must needs be at the head of his men, no matter what the orders.

Hundreds of Creeks had fallen, multitudes were shot or drowned attempting to swim the river, but still a large party of them held a part of the breastwork, a sort of roof spanning a gully, from which, through narrow port-holes, they kept up a murderous fire. Guns could not be placed to bear on this position, the warriors flatly refused all terms of surrender, and when Jackson called for a forlorn hope Houston alone responded. Calling his platoon to follow him he scrambled down the steep side of the gully, but his men hesitated, and from one of them he seized a musket with which he led the way. Within five yards of the Creeks he had turned to rally his platoon for a direct charge through the port-holes, when two bullets struck his right shoulder. For the last time he implored his men to charge, then in despair walked out of range. Many months went by before the three wounds were healed, but from that time, through very stormy years he had the constant friendship of his old leader, Andrew Jackson, president of the United States.

Houston went back to the West and ten years after the battle was elected general of the Tennessee militia. Indeed there seemed no limit to his future, and at thirty-five he was governor of the state, when his wife deserted him, and ugly rumors touched his private life. Throwing his whole career to the winds he turned Indian, not as a chief, but as Drunken Sam, the butt of the Cherokees.

It is quite natural for a man to have two characters, the one commanding while the other rests. Within a few months the eyes of Houston the American statesman looked out from the painted face of Drunken Sam, the savage Cherokee. From Arkansas he looked southward and saw the American frontiersmen, the Texas pioneers, trying to earn a living under the comic opera government of the Mexicans. They would soon sweep away that anarchy if only they found a leader, and perhaps Drunken Sam in his dreams saw Samuel Houston leading the Texas cowboys. Still dressed as a Cherokee warrior he went to Washington, called on his old friend President Jackson, begged for a job, talked of the liberation of Texas—as if the yankees of the North would ever allow another slave state of the South to enter the Union!

Houston went back to the West and preached the revolt against Mexico. There we will leave him for a while, to take up the story of old Davy Crockett.

XLIII
A. D. 1836

DAVY CROCKETT

Far off on his farm in Tennessee, old Davy Crockett heard of the war for freedom. Fifty years of hunting, trapping and Indian warfare had not quenched his thirst for adventure, or dulled his love of fun; but the man had been sent to Washington as a member of congress, and came home horrified by the corruption of political life. He was angry and in his wrath took his gun from over the fireplace. He must kill something, so he went for those Mexicans in the West.

His journey to the seat of war began by steamer down the Mississippi River, and he took a sudden fancy to a sharper who was cheating the passengers. He converted Thimblerig to manhood, and the poor fellow, like a lost dog, followed Davy. So the pair were riding through Texas when they met a bee hunter, riding in search of wild honey—a gallant lad in a splendid deerskin dress, who led them to his home. The bee hunter must join Davy too, but his heart was torn at parting with Kate, the girl he loved, and he turned in the saddle to cheer her with a scrap of song for farewell:

“Saddled and bridled, and booted rode he,

A plume in his helmet, a sword at his knee.”

But the girl took up the verse, her song broken with sobbing:

“But toom’ cam’ the saddle, all bluidy to see,

And hame cam’ the steed, but hame never cam’ he.”

There were adventures on the way, for Davy hunted buffalo, fought a cougar—knife to teeth—and pacified an Indian tribe to get passage. Then they were joined by a pirate from Lafitte’s wicked crew, and a young Indian warrior. So, after thrashing a Mexican patrol, the party galloped into the Alamo, a Texan fortress at San Antonio.

One thousand seven hundred Mexicans had been holding that fort, until after a hundred and twenty hours fighting, they were captured by two hundred and sixteen Americans. The Lone Star flag on the Alamo was defended now by one hundred and fifty white men.

Colonel Travis commanded, and with him was Colonel Bowie, whose broken sword, used as a dagger, had given the name to the “bowie knife.” Crockett, with his followers, Thimblerig, the bee hunter, the pirate and the Indian, were warmly welcomed by the garrison.

February twenty-third, 1836, the Mexican president, Santa Anna, brought up seventeen hundred men to besiege the Alamo, and Travis sent off the pirate to ride to Goliad for help.

On the twenty-fourth the bombardment commenced, and thirty cowboys broke in through the Mexican lines to aid the garrison.

On the twenty-eighth, here is a scrap from Davy’s private diary: “The settlers are flying ... leaving their possessions to the mercy of the ruthless invader ... slaughter is indiscriminate, sparing neither age, sex, nor condition. Buildings have been burned down, farms laid waste ... the enemy draws nigher to the fort.”

On the twenty-ninth: “This business of being shut up makes a man wolfish—I had a little sport this morning before breakfast. The enemy had planted a piece of ordnance within gunshot of the fort during the night, and the first thing in the morning they commenced a brisk cannonade pointblank against the spot where I was snoring. I turned out pretty smart and mounted the rampart. The gun was charged again, a fellow stepped forth to touch her off, but before he could apply the match I let him have it, and he keeled over. A second stepped up, snatched the match from the hand of the dying man, but Thimblerig, who had followed me, handed me his rifle, and the next instant the Mexican was stretched upon the earth beside the first. A third came up to the cannon, my companion handed me another gun, and I fixed him off in like manner. A fourth, then a fifth seized the match, but both met with the same fate, and then the whole party gave it up as a bad job, and hurried off to the camp, leaving the cannon ready charged where they had planted it. I came down, took my bitters and went to breakfast. Thimblerig told me the place from which I had been firing was one of the snuggest stands in the whole fort, for he never failed picking off two or three stragglers before breakfast.”

March third.—“We have given over all hope.”

March fourth.—“Shells have been falling into the fort like hail during the day, but without effect. About dusk in the evening we observed a man running toward the fort, pursued by about a dozen Mexican cavalry. The bee hunter immediately knew him to be the old hunter who had gone to Goliad, and calling to the two hunters, he sallied out to the relief of the old man, who was hard pressed. I followed close after. Before we reached the spot the Mexicans were close on the heels of the old man who stopped suddenly, turned short upon his pursuers, discharged his rifle, and one of the enemy fell from his horse. The chase was renewed, but finding that he would be overtaken and cut to pieces, he now turned again, and to the amazement of the enemy became the assailant in turn. He clubbed his gun, and dashed among them like a wounded tiger, and they fled like sparrows. By this time we reached the spot, and in the ardor of the moment followed some distance before we saw that our retreat to the fort was cut off by another detachment of cavalry. Nothing was to be done but to fight our way through. We were all of the same mind. ‘Go ahead!’ cried I; and they shouted, ‘Go ahead, Colonel!’ We dashed among them, and a bloody conflict ensued. They were about twenty in number, and they stood their ground. After the fight had continued about five minutes a detachment was seen issuing from the fort to our relief, and the Mexicans scampered off, leaving eight of their comrades dead upon the field. But we did not escape unscathed, for both the pirate and the bee hunter were mortally wounded, and I received a saber cut across the forehead. The old man died without speaking, as soon as we entered the fort. We bore my young friend to his bed, dressed his wounds, and I watched beside him. He lay without complaint or manifesting pain until about midnight, when he spoke, and I asked him if he wanted anything.

“‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Poor Kate!’ His eyes filled with tears as he continued: ‘Her words were prophetic, Colonel,’ and then he sang in a low voice.

“‘But toom’ cam’ the saddle, all bluidy to see,

And hame cam’ the steed, but hame never cam’ he.’

“He spoke no more, and a few minutes after, died. Poor Kate! who will tell this to thee?”

March fifth: “Pop, pop, pop! Bom, bom, bom! throughout the day—no time for memorandums now—go ahead. Liberty and independence forever!”

David Crockett

* * * * *

So ends Davy’s journal. Before dawn of the sixth a final assault of the Mexican force carried the lost Alamo, and at sunrise there were only six of the defenders left alive. Colonel Crockett was found with his back to the wall, with his broken rifle and his bloody knife. Before him lay Thimblerig, his dagger to the hilt in a Mexican’s throat, his death grip fastened in the dead man’s hair.

The six prisoners were brought before Santa Anna, who stood surrounded by his staff amid the ruins. General Castrillon saluted the president. “Sir, here are six prisoners I have taken alive; how shall I dispose to them?”

“Have I not told you before how to dispose of them—why do you bring them to me?”

The officers of the staff fell upon the prisoners with their swords, but like a tiger Davy sprang at Santa Anna’s throat. Then he fell with a dozen swords through his body.

Up with your banner, Freedom.

Thy champions cling to thee.

They’ll follow where’er you lead ’em—

To death or victory.

Up with your banner, Freedom!

Tyrants and slaves are rushing
To tread thee in the dust;
Their blood will soon be gushing
And stain our knives with rust,
But not thy banner, Freedom!

While Stars and Stripes are flying
Our blood we’ll freely shed;
No groan will ’scape the dying,
Seeing thee o’er his head.
Up with your banner, Freedom!

Let us return to Sam Houston. His life of cyclone passions and whirling change—a white boy turned Indian, then hero of a war against the redskins; lawyer, commander-in-chief and governor of a state, a drunken savage, a broken man begging a job at Washington, an obscure conspirator in Texas—had made him leader of the liberators.

The fall of the Alamo filled the Texans with fury, but when that was followed by the awful massacre of Goliad they went raving mad. Houston, their leader, waited for reinforcements until his men wanted to murder him, but when he marched it was to San Jacinto where, with eight hundred Texans, he scattered one thousand six hundred Mexicans, and captured Santa Anna. He was proclaimed president of the Lone Star republic, which is now the largest star in the American constellation.

XLIV
A. D. 1793

ALEXANDER MACKENZIE

The very greatest events in human annals are those which the historian forgets to mention. Now for example, in 1638 Louis XIV was born; the Scots set up their solemn league and covenant; the Turks romped into poor old Bagdad and wiped out thirty thousand Persians; Van Tromp, the Dutchman, whopped a Spanish fleet; the English founded Madras, the corner-stone of our Indian empire; but the real event of the year, the greatest event of the seventeenth century, was the hat act passed by the British parliament. Hatters were forbidden to make any hats except of beaver felt. Henceforth, for two centuries, slouch hats, cocked hats, top hats, all sorts of hats, were to be made of beaver fur felt, down to the flat brimmed Stetson hat, which was borrowed from the cowboys by the Northwest Mounted Police, adopted by the Irregular Horse of the Empire, and finally copied in rabbit for the Boy Scouts. The hatter must buy beaver, no matter what the cost, so Europe was stripped to the last pelt. Then far away to east and west the hunters and trappers explored from valley to valley. The traders followed, building forts where they dealt with the hunters and trappers, exchanging powder and shot, traps and provisions, for furs at so much a “castor” or beaver skin, and skins were used for money, instead of gold. Then came the settlers to fill the discovered lands, soldiers to guard them from attack by savages, judges and hangmen, flag and empire.

The Russian fur trade passed the Ural Hills, explored Siberia and crossed to Russian America.

Westward the French and British fur trade opened up the length and breadth of North America.

By the time the hatter invented the imitation “beaver,” our silk hat, this mad hat trade had pioneered the Russian empire, the United States and the Dominion of Canada, belting the planet with the white man’s power.

Now in this monstrous adventure the finest of all the adventurers were Scotch, and the greatest Scot of them all was Alexander MacKenzie, of Stornoway, in the Scotch Hebrides. At the age of seventeen he landed in Montreal, soon after Canada was taken by the British, and he grew up in the growing fur trade. In those days the Hudson’s Bay Company was a sleepy old corporation with four forts, but the Nor’westers of Montreal had the aid of the valiant French Canadian voyageurs as guides and canoe men in the far wilderness.

Their trade route crossed the upper lakes to Thunder Bay in Lake Superior, where they built Fort William; thence by Rainy River to the Lake of the Woods, and Rat Portage; thence up Lake Winnipeg to the Grand Saskatchewan. There were the forts where buffalo hunters boiled down pemmican, a sort of pressed beef spiced with service berries, to feed the northern posts. Northward the long trail, by lake and river, reached à la Crosse, which gave its name to a famous Indian ball game, and so to the source of the Churchill River at Lac la Loche, from whence the Methye portage opened the way into the Great Unknown.

When MacKenzie reached Clear-water River, Mr. Peter Pond of the Nor’westers had just shot Mr. Ross of the X. Y. Company. MacKenzie took charge, and he and his cousin moved the trade down to the meeting of the Athabasca and the Peace, at an inland sea, the Athabasca Lake, where they built the future capital of the North, Fort Chipewyan. From here the Slave River ran down to Great Slave Lake, a second inland sea whose outlet was unknown. MacKenzie found that outlet six miles wide. The waters teemed with wild fowl, the bush with deer, and the plains on either side had herds of bison.

MacKenzie took with him four French voyageurs, a German and some Indians, working them as a rule from three A. M. till dusk, while they all with one accord shied at the terrors ahead, the cataracts, the savage tribes, the certainty of starvation. The days lengthened until there was no night, they passed coal fields on fire which a hundred years later were still burning, then frozen ground covered with grass and flowers, where the river parted into three main branches opening on the coast of an ice-clad sea. The water was still fresh, but there were seaweeds, they saw whales, the tides would wash the people out of camp, for this was the Arctic Ocean. So they turned back up that great river which bears MacKenzie’s name, six thousand miles of navigable waters draining a land so warm that wheat will ripen on the Arctic circle, a home for millions of healthy prosperous people in the days to come.

MacKenzie’s second journey was much more difficult, up the Peace River through the Rocky Mountains, then by a portage to the Fraser Valley, and down Bad River. All the rivers were bad, but the birch bark canoe, however much it smashes, can be repaired with fresh sheets of bark, stuck on with gum from the pine trees. Still, after their canoe was totally destroyed in Bad River and the stock of bullets went to the bottom, the Indians sat down and wept, while the Frenchmen, after a square meal with a lot of rum, patched up the wreck to go on. Far down the Fraser Valley there is a meadow of tall grass and flowers with clumps of wild fruit orchard and brier rose, gardens of tiger lilies and goldenrod. Nobody lived there in my time, but the place is known as Alexandria in memory of Alexander Mackenzie and of the only moment in his life when he turned back, beaten. Below Alexandria the Fraser plunges for two hundred miles through a range of mountains in one long roaring swoop.

So the explorers, warned by friendly Indians, climbed back up-stream to the Blackwater River; and if any big game hunter wants to shoot mosquitoes for their hides that valley would make a first-class hunting ground. The journey from here to the coast was made afoot with heavy loads by a broad Indian trail across the coast range to the Bilthqula River, and here the explorers were the guests of rich powerful tribes. One young chief unclasped a splendid robe of sea-otter skins, and threw it around MacKenzie, such a gift as no king could offer now. They feasted on salmon, service berries in grease, and cakes of inner hemlock bark sprinkled with oil of salmon, a three-hour banquet, followed by sleep in beds of furs, and blankets woven from wool of the mountain sheep. The houses were low-pitched barns of cedar, each large enough to seat several hundred people, and at the gable end rose a cedar pole carved in heraldic sculpture gaily painted, with a little round hole cut through for the front door.

Each canoe was a cedar log hollowed with fire, then spread with boiling water, a vessel not unlike a gondola. One such canoe, the Tillicum, has made a voyage round the world, but she is small compared with the larger dugouts up to seven tons burden. An old chief showed MacKenzie a canoe forty-five feet in length, of four foot beam painted with white animals on a black hull, and set with ivory of otter teeth. In this he had made a voyage some years before, when he met white men and saw ships, most likely those of the great Captain Cook. MacKenzie’s account of the native doctors describes them to the life as they are to-day. “They blew on the patient, and then whistled; they rubbed him violently on the stomach; they thrust their forefingers into his mouth, and spouted water into his face.” MacKenzie, had he only waited, would have seen them jump on the patient’s stomach to drive the devils out.

He borrowed canoes for the run down the Bilthqula to Salt Water at the head of one of British Columbia’s giant fiords. There the explorer heard that only two moons ago Captain Vancouver’s boats had been in the inlet. An Indian chief must have been rude, for one officer fired upon him, while another struck him with the flat of a sword. For this the chief must needs get even with Alexander MacKenzie as he wandered about the channels in search of the open sea. He never found the actual Pacific, but made his final camp upon a rock at the entrance of Cascada inlet. Here is Vancouver’s description of the place. “The width of the channel did not anywhere exceed three-quarters of a mile; its shores were bounded by precipices much more perpendicular than any we had yet seen during this excursion; and from the summits of the mountains that overlooked it ... there fell several large cascades. These were extremely grand, and by much the most tremendous of any we had ever beheld.”

Those cataracts, like lace, fell from the cornice glaciers through belt after belt of clouds, to crash through the lower gloom in deafening thunder upon black abysmal channels. The eagles swirl and circle far above, the schools of porpoises are cleaving and gleaming through the white-maned tide. In such a place, beset by hostile Indians, as the dawn broke the great explorer mixed vermilion and grease to paint upon the precipice above him:

“Alexander MacKenzie, from Canada by land 22nd July, 1793.”

He had discovered one of the world’s great rivers, and made the first crossing of North America.

XLV
THE WHITE MAN’S COMING

It is our plain duty here to take up the story of Vancouver, an English merchant seaman from before the mast, who rose to a captaincy in the royal navy, and was sent to explore the British Columbian coast. He was to find “the Straits of Anian leading through Meta Incognita to the Atlantic,” the famous Northwest passage for which so many hundreds of explorers gave their lives. His careful survey proved there was no such strait.

Of course it is our duty to follow Vancouver’s dull and pompous log book, and show what savage tribes he met with in the wilds. But it will be much more fun to give the other side, the story of Vancouver’s visit as told by the Indians whose awful fate it was to be “discovered” by the white man with his measles, his liquor and his smallpox.

In the winter of 1887–8 I was traveling on snowshoes down the Skeena Valley from Gaat-a-maksk to Gaet-wan-gak, which must be railway stations now on the Grand Trunk Pacific. My packer was Willie-the-Bear, so named because a grizzly had eaten off half his face, the side of his face, in fact, which had to be covered with a black veil. We were crossing some low hills when I asked him about the coming of the white men. Promptly he told me of the first ship—a Spaniard; the second—Vancouver’s; and the third—an American, all in correct order after a hundred years. Who told him? His mother. And who told her? Her mother, of course.

So, living as I was among the Indians, and seeing no white man’s face for months on end, I gathered up the various memories of the people.

At Massett, on the north coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Haidas were amazed by a great bird which came to rest in front of the village. When she had folded her wings a lot of little birds shot out from under her, which came to the beach and turned out to be full of men. They were as fair of color as the Haidas, some even more so, and some red as the meat of salmon. The people went out in their dugouts to board the bird, which was a vast canoe. All of them got presents, but there was one, a person of no account, who got the finest gift, better than anything received by the highest chiefs, an iron cooking-pot.

In those days the food was put with water into a wooden trough and red-hot stones thrown in until it boiled. The people had copper, but that was worth many times the present price of gold, not to be wasted on mere cooking pots. So the man with the iron pot, in his joy, called all the people to a feast, and gave away the whole of his property, which of course was the right thing to do. The chiefs were in a rage at his new importance, but they came, as did every one else. And at the feast the man of no account climbed the tall pole in front of his house, the totem pole carved with the arms of his ancestors, passing a rope over the top by which he hauled up the iron pot so that it might be seen by the whole tribe. “See,” he said, “what the great chief has given me, the Big Spirit whose people have tails stiff as a beaver tail behind their heads, whose canoe is loaded with thunder and lightning, the mother of all canoes, with six young canoes growing up, whose medicine is so strong that one dose makes you sick for three days, whose warriors are so brave that one got two black eyes and did not run away, who have a little dog which scratches and says meaou!

“This great chief has given us presents according to our rank, little no-account presents to the common people; but when I came he knew I was his brother, his equal, and to me, to me alone, he gave this pot which sits upon the fire and does not burn, this pot which boils the water, and will not break!”

But as the man bragged he kept twitching the rope, and down fell the pot, smash on the ground, and broken all to pieces.

Now as to the first white man who came up Skeena River:

A very old man of Kitzelash remembered that when he was a boy he stood on the banks of the cañon and there came a canoe with a white man, a big chief called Manson, a Spaniard, and a black man, all searching for gold. He remembered that first one man sang a queer song and then they all took it up and sang, laughing together.

A middle-aged man of Gaet-wan-gak remembered that in his childhood a canoe came up the river full of Indians, and with two white men. Nobody had ever seen the like, and they took the strangers for ghosts, so that the women ran away and hid. The ghosts gave them bread, but they spat it out because it was ghost food and had no taste. They offered tea, but the people spat it out, because it was like earth water out of graves. Rice, too, they would not touch, for it was like—perhaps one should not say what that was like.

XLVI

THE BEAVER

In the heart of the city of Victoria I once found an old log barn, the last remnant of Fort Camosun, and climbing into the loft, kicked about in a heap of rubbish from which emerged some damp rat-gnawed manuscript books. From morning to evening, and far into the dusk, I sat reading there the story of a great adventuress, a heroine of tonnage and displacement, the first steamer which ever plied on the Pacific Ocean.

Her builders were Messrs. Boulton and Watt, and Watt was the father of steam navigation. She was built at Blackwall on London River in the days of George IV. She was launched by a duchess in a poke bonnet and shawl, who broke a bottle of wine against the ship’s nose and christened her the Beaver. Then the merchant adventurers of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in bell toppers, Hessian boots and white chokers, gave three hearty cheers.

The Beaver was as ugly as it was safe to make her, but built of honest oak, and copper bolted, her engines packed in the hold, and her masts brigantine-rigged for the sailing voyage round Cape Horn. She went under convoy of the barque Columbia, a slow and rather helpless chaperon, who fouled and nearly wrecked her at Robinson Crusoe’s Island. Her master, to judge by the ship’s books, was a peppery little beast, who logged the mate for a liar: “Not correct D. Home;” drove his officers until they went sick, quarreled with the Columbia’s doctor, found his chief engineer “in a beastly state of intoxication,” and finally, at the Columbia River, hounded his crew into mutiny.

“Mr. Phillips and Mr. Wilson behaved,” says the mate, “in a most mutinous manner.” So the captain had all hands aft to witness their punishment with the cat-o’-nine-tails. Phillips called on the crew to rescue him, and they went for the captain. Calling for his sword, the skipper defended himself like a man, wounding one seaman in the head. Then he “succeeded in tying up Phillips, and punishing him with two dozen lashes with a rope’s end over his clothes,” whereupon William Wilson demanded eleven strokes for himself, so sharing the fun, for better or worse, with a shipmate.

Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, an old stockade of the Nor’westers, was at this time the Hudson’s Bay Company’s capital on the Pacific coast, where reigned the great Doctor McLauchlan, founder of Oregon. Here the Beaver shipped her paddles, started up her engines, and gave an excursion trip for the ladies. So came her voyage under steam out in the open Pacific of eight hundred miles to her station on the British Columbian coast. She sailed on the last day of May in 1836, two years before the Atlantic was crossed under steam. On the Vancouver coast she discovered an outcrop of steam coal, still the best to be had on the Pacific Ocean.

In her days of glory, the Beaver was a smart little war-ship trading with the savages, or bombarding their villages, all the way from Puget Sound to Alaska. In her middle age she was a survey vessel exploring Wonderland. In her old age the boiler leaked, so that the engineer had to plug the holes with a rag on a pointed stick. She was a grimy tug at the last, her story forgotten; and after fifty-two years of gallant service, was allowed to lie a weed-grown wreck within a mile of the new City of Vancouver, until a kindly storm gave her the honor of sea burial.

It was in 1851 that the Beaver brought to the factor at Fort Simpson some nuggets of the newly discovered Californian gold. At first he refused to take the stuff in trade, next bought it in at half its value, and finally showed it to Edenshaw, head chief of the Haida nation. As each little yellow pebble was worth a big pile of blankets, the chief borrowed a specimen and showed it to his tribe in the Queen Charlotte Islands.

There is a legend that in earlier days a trader found the Haidas using golden bullets with their trade guns, which they gladly exchanged for lead. Anyway an old woman told Edenshaw that she knew where to find the stuff, so next day she took him in a small dugout canoe to the outer coast. There she showed him a streak seven inches wide, and eighty feet in length, of quartz and shining gold, which crossed the neck of a headland. They filled a bushel basket with loose bits, and left them in the canoe while they went back for more. But in the stern of the canoe sat Edenshaw’s little son watching the dog fish at play down in the deeps. When the elders came back Charlie had thrown their first load of gold at the dog fish, and later on in life he well remembered the hands of blessing laid on by way of reward.

Still, enough gold was saved to buy many bales of blankets. Edenshaw claimed afterward that, had he only known the value of his find, he would have gone to England and married the queen’s daughter.

News spread along the coast and soon a ship appeared, the H. B. C. brigantine Una. Her people blasted the rocks, while the Indians, naked and well oiled, grabbed the plunder. The sailors wrestled, but could not hold those oily rogues. In time the Una sailed with a load of gold, but was cast away with her cargo in the Straits of Fuca.

Next year Gold Harbor was full of little ships, with a gunboat to keep them in order while they reaped a total harvest of two hundred eighty-nine thousand dollars. H. M. S. Thetis had gone away when the schooner Susan Sturgis came back for a second load, the only vessel to brave the winter storms. One day while all hands were in the cabin at dinner the Indians stole on board, clapped on the hatches and made them prisoners. They were marched ashore and stripped in the deep snow, pleading for their drawers, but only Captain Rooney and the mate were allowed that luxury. The seamen were sold to the H. B. Company at Fort Simpson, but the two officers remained in slavery. By day they chopped fire-wood under a guard, at night crouched in a dark corner of a big Indian house, out of sight of the fire in the middle, fed on such scraps of offal as their masters deigned to throw them.

Only one poor old woman pitied the slaves, hiding many a dried clam under the matting within their reach. Also they made a friend of Chief Bearskin’s son; and Bearskin himself was a good-hearted man, though Edenshaw proved a brute. Rooney was an able-bodied Irishman, Lang a tall broad-shouldered Scot, though this business turned his hair gray. For after the schooner was plundered and broken up, a dispute arose between Bearskin and Edenshaw as to their share of the captives. Edenshaw would kill Lang rather than surrender him to Bearskin, and twice the Scotchman had his head on the block to be chopped off before Bearskin gave in to save his life. At last both slaves were sold to Captain McNeill, who gave them each a striped shirt, corduroy trousers and shoes, then shipped them aboard the Beaver. Now it so happened that on the passage southward the Beaver met with the only accident in her long life, for during a storm the steering gear was carried away. Lang was a ship’s carpenter, and his craftsmanship saved the little heroine from being lost with all hands that night. This rescued slave became the pioneer ship-builder of Western Canada.

XLVII
A. D. 1911

THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES

The North Pole is only a point on the earth’s surface, a point which in itself has no length, breadth or height, neither has it weight nor any substance, being invisible, impalpable, immovable and entirely useless. The continents of men swing at a thousand miles an hour round that point, which has no motion. Beneath it an eternal ice-field slowly drifts across the unfathomed depths of a sea that knows no light.

Above, for a night of six months, the pole star marks the zenith round which the constellations swing their endless race; then for six months the low sun rolls along the sky-line on his level rounds; and each day and night are one year.

The attempt to reach that point began in the reign of Henry VIII of England, when Master John Davis sailed up the Greenland coast to a big cliff which he named after his becker, Sanderson’s Hope. The cliff is sheer from the sea three thousand four hundred feet high, with one sharp streak of ice from base to summit. It towers above Upernivik, the most northerly village in the world, and is one thousand one hundred twenty-eight miles from the Pole.

In 1594 Barentz carried the Dutch flag a little farther north but soon Hudson gave the lead back to Great Britain, and after that, for two hundred seventy-six years the British flag unchallenged went on from victory to victory in the conquest of the North. At last in 1882 Lieutenant Greely of the United States Army beat us by four miles at a cost of nearly his whole expedition, which was destroyed by famine. Soon Doctor Nansen broke the American record for Norway, to be beaten in turn by an Italian prince, the Duke d’Abruzzi. But meanwhile Peary, an American naval officer, had commenced his wonderful course of twenty-three years’ special training; and in 1906 he broke the Italian record. His way was afoot with dog-trains across the ice of the Polar sea, and he would have reached the North Pole, but for wide lanes of open sea, completely barring the way. At two hundred twenty-seven miles from the Pole he was forced to retreat, and camp very near to death before he won back to his base camp.

Peary’s ship was American to the last detail of needles and thread, but the vessel was his own invention, built for ramming ice-pack. The ship’s officers and crew were all Newfoundlanders, trained from boyhood in the seal fishery of the Labrador ice-pack. They were, alas! British, but that could not be helped. To make amends the exploring officers were Americans, but they were specially trained by Peary to live and travel as Eskimos, using the native dress, the dog-trains and the snow houses.

Other explorers had done the same, but Peary went further, for he hired the most northerly of the Eskimo tribes, and from year to year educated the pick of the boys, who grew up to regard him as a father, to obey his orders exactly, and to adopt his improvements on their native methods. So he had hunting parties to store up vast supplies of meat, and skins of musk-ox, ice-bear, reindeer, fox, seal and walrus, each for some special need in the way of clothing. He had women to make the clothes. He had two hundred fifty huskie dogs, sleds of his own device, and Eskimo working parties under his white officers. In twenty-three years he found out how to boil tea in ten minutes, and that one detail saved ninety minutes a day for actual marching—a margin in case of accident. Add to all that Peary’s own enormous strength of mind and body, in perfect training, just at the prime of life. He was so hardened by disaster that he had become almost a maniac, with one idea, one motive in life, one hope—that of reaching the Pole. Long hours before anything went wrong an instinct would awaken him out of the soundest sleep to look out for trouble and avert calamity.

A glance at the map will show how Greenland, and the islands north of Canada, reach to within four hundred miles of the Pole. Between is a channel leading from Baffin’s Bay into the Arctic Ocean. The Roosevelt, Peary’s ship, forced a passage through that channel, then turned to the left, creeping and dodging between the ice-field and the coast of Grant Land. Captain Bartlett was in the crow’s-nest, piloting, and Peary, close below him, clung to the standing rigging while the ship butted and charged and hammered through the floes. Bartlett would coax and wheedle, or shout at the ship to encourage her, “Rip ’em, Teddy! Bite ’em in two! Go it! That’s fine, my beauty! Now again! Once more!”

Who knows? In the hands of a great seaman like Bartlett a ship seems to be a living creature, and no matter what slued the Roosevelt she had a furious habit of her own, coming to rest with her nose to the north for all the world like a compass. Her way was finally blocked just seventy-five miles short of the most northerly headland, Cape Columbia, and the stores had to be carried there for the advanced base. The winter was spent in preparation, and on March first began the dash for the Pole.

No party with dog-trains could possibly carry provisions for a return journey of eight hundred miles. If there had been islands on the route it would have been the right thing to use them as advanced bases for a final rush to the Pole. But there were no islands, and it would be too risky to leave stores upon the shifting ice-pack. There was, therefore, but one scheme possible. Doctor Goodsell marched from the coast to Camp A, unloaded his stores and returned. Using the stores at Camp A, Mr. Borup was able to march to Camp B, where he unloaded and turned back. With the stores at Camp B, Professor Marvin marched to Camp C and turned back. With the stores at Camp C, Captain Bartlett marched to Camp D and turned back. With the stores at Camp D, Peary had his sleds fully loaded, with a selection, besides, of the fittest men and dogs for the last lap of the journey, and above all not too many mouths to feed.

It was a clever scheme, and in theory the officers, turned back with their Eskimo parties, were needed to pilot them to the coast. All the natives got back safely, but Professor Marvin was drowned. If Peary had not sent all his officers back, would he have been playing the game in leaving his Eskimo parties without navigating officers to guide them in the event of a storm? There is no doubt that his conduct was that of a wise and honorable man. But the feeling remains—was it sportsman-like to send Captain Bartlett back—the one man who had done most for his success, denied any share in the great final triumph? Bartlett made no complaint, and in his cheery acceptance of the facts cut a better figure than even Commander Peary.

With his negro servant and four Eskimos, the leader set forth on the last one hundred thirty-three miles across the ice. It was not plain level ice like that of a pond, but heaved into sharp hills caused by the pressure, with broken cliffs and labyrinthine reefs. The whole pack was drifting southward before the wind, here breaking into mile-wide lanes of black and foggy sea, there newly frozen and utterly unsafe. Although the sun did not set, the frost was sharp, at times twenty and thirty degrees below zero, while for the most part a cloudy sky made it impossible to take observations. Here great good fortune awaited Peary, for as he neared the Pole, the sky cleared, giving him brilliant sunlight. By observing the sun at frequent intervals he was able to reckon with his instruments until at last he found himself within five miles of ninety degrees north—the Pole. A ten-mile tramp proved he had passed the apex of the earth, and five miles back he made the final tests. Somewhere within a mile of where he stood was the exact point, the north end of the axis on which the earth revolves. As nearly as he could reckon, the very point was marked for that moment upon the drifting ice-field by a berg-like hill of ice, and on this summit he hoisted the flag, a gift from his wife which he had carried for fifteen years, a tattered silken remnant of Old Glory.

“Perhaps,” he writes, “it ought not to have been so, but when I knew for a certainty that I had reached the goal, there was not a thing in the world I wanted but sleep. But after I had a few hours of it, there succeeded a condition of mental exaltation which made further rest impossible. For more than a score of years that point on the earth’s surface had been the object of my every effort. To obtain it my whole being, physical, mental and moral, had been dedicated. The determination to reach the Pole had become so much a part of my being that, strange as it may seem, I long ago ceased to think of myself save as an instrument for the attainment of that end.... But now I had at last succeeded in planting the flag of my country at the goal of the world’s desire. It is not easy to write about such a thing, but I knew that we were going back to civilization with the last of the great adventure stories—a story the world had been waiting to hear for nearly four hundred years, a story which was to be told at last under the folds of the Stars and Stripes, the flag that during a lonely and isolated life had come to be for me the symbol of home and everything I loved—and might never see again.”

Here is the record left at the North Pole:—

“90 N. Lat., North Pole,
“April 6th, 1909.

“I have to-day hoisted the national ensign of the United States of America at this place, which my observations indicate to be the North Polar axis of the earth, and have formally taken possession of the entire region, and adjacent, for and in the name of the president of the United States of America.

“I leave this record and United States flag in possession.

“Robert E. Peary,
“United States Navy.”

Before the hero of this very grand adventure returned to the world, there also arrived from the Arctic a certain Doctor Cook, an American traveler who claimed to have reached the Pole. The Danish Colony in Greenland received him with joy, the Danish Geographical Society welcomed him with a banquet of honor, and the world rang with his triumph. Then came Commander Peary out of the North, proclaiming that this rival was a liar. So Doctor Cook was able to strike an attitude of injured innocence, hinting that poor old Peary was a fraud; and the world rocked with laughter.

In England we may have envied the glory that Peary had so bravely won for his flag and country, but knew his record too well to doubt his honor, and welcomed his triumph with no ungenerous thoughts. The other claimant had a record of impudent and amusing frauds, but still he was entitled to a hearing, and fair judgment of his claim from men of science. Among sportsmen we do not expect the runners, after a race, to call one another liars, and were sorry that Peary should for a moment lapse from the dignity expected of brave men.

It is perhaps ungenerous to mention such trifling points of conduct, and yet we worship heroes only when we are quite sure that our homage is not a folly. And so we measure Peary with the standard set by his one rival, Roald Amundsen, who conquered the Northwest passage, then added to that immortal triumph the conquest of the South Pole. In that Antarctic adventure Amundsen challenged a fine British explorer, Captain Scott. The British expedition was equipped with every costly appliance wealth could furnish, and local knowledge of the actual route. The Norseman ventured into an unknown route, scantily equipped, facing the handicap of poverty. He won by sheer merit, by his greatness as a man, and by the loyal devotion he earned at the hands of his comrades. Then he returned to Norway, they say, disguised under an assumed name to escape a public triumph, and his one message to the world was a generous tribute to his defeated rival. The modern world has no greater hero, no more perfect gentleman, no finer adventurer than Roald Amundsen.

XLVIII

WOMEN

Two centuries ago Miss Mary Read, aged thirteen, entered the Royal Navy as a boy. A little later she deserted, and still disguised as a boy, went soldiering, first in a line regiment, afterward as a trooper. She was very brave. On the peace of Ryswick, seeing that there was to be no more fighting, she went into the merchant service for a change, and was bound for the West Indies when the ship was gathered in by pirates. Rather than walk the plank, she became a pirate herself and rose from rank to rank until she hoisted the black flag with the grade of captain. So she fell in with Mrs. Bonny, widow of a pirate captain. The two amiable ladies, commanding each her own vessel, went into a business partnership, scuttling ships and cutting throats for years with marked success.

In the seventeenth century an escaped nun did well as a seafaring man under the Spanish colors, ruffled as a gallant in Chili, and led a gang of brigands in the Andes. On her return to Spain as a lady, she was very much petted at the court of Madrid. The last of many female bandits was Miss Pearl Hart, who, in 1890, robbed a stage-coach in Arizona.

Mr. Murray Hall, a well-known Tammany politician and a successful business man, died in New York, and was found to be a woman.

But of women who, without disguise, have excelled in adventurous trades, I have known in Western Canada two who are gold miners and two who are cowboys. Mrs. Langdon, of California, drove a stage-coach for years. Miss Calamity Jane was a noted Montana bull-whacker. Miss Minnie Hill and Miss Collie French are licensed American pilots. Miss Evelyn Smith, of Nova Scotia, was a jailer. Lady Clifford holds Board of Trade certificates as an officer in our mercantile marine. A distinguished French explorer, Madame Dieulafoy, is an officer of the Legion of Honor, entitled to a military salute from all sentries, and has the singular right by law of wearing the dress of a man. Several English ladies have been explorers. Miss Bird explored Japan, conquered Long’s Peak, and was once captured by Mountain Jim, the Colorado robber. Lady Florence Dixie explored Patagonia, Miss Gordon-Cumming explored a hundred of the South Sea Isles, put an end to a civil war in Samoa and was one of the first travelers on the Pamirs. Mrs. Mulhall has traced the sources of the Amazons. Lady Baker, Mrs. Jane Moir, and Miss Kingsley rank among the great pioneers of Africa. Lady Hester Stanhope, traveling in the Levant, the ship being loaded with treasure, her own property, was cast away on a desert island near Rhodes. Escaping thence she traversed the Arabian deserts, and by a gathering of forty thousands of Arabs was proclaimed queen of Palmyra. This beautiful and gifted woman reigned through the first decades of the nineteenth century from her palace on the slopes of Mount Lebanon. Two other British princesses in wild lands were Her Highness Florence, Maharanee of Patiala, and the sherifa of Wazan, whose son is reverenced by the Moslems in North Africa as a sacred personage.

Among women who have been warriors the greatest, perhaps, were the British Queen Boadicea, and the saintly and heroic Joan of Arc, burned, to our everlasting shame, at Rouen. Frances Scanagatti, a noble Italian girl, fought with distinction as an officer in the Austrian army, once led the storming of a redoubt, and after three years in the field against Napoleon, went home, a young lady again, of sweet and mild disposition.

Doctor James Barry, M. D., inspector-general of hospitals in the British Army, a duelist, a martinet, and a hopelessly insubordinate officer, died in 1865 at the age of seventy-one, and was found to be a woman.

Apart from hosts of adventurous camp followers there have been disguised women serving at different times in nearly every army. Loreta Velasquez, of Cuba, married to an American army officer, dressed up in her husband’s clothes, raised a corps of volunteers, took command, was commissioned in the Confederate Army during the Civil War of 1861–5, and fought as Lieutenant Harry Buford. She did extraordinary work as a spy in the northern army. After the war, her husband having fallen in battle, she turned gold miner in California.

Mrs. Christian Davies, born in 1667 in Dublin, was a happy and respectable married woman with a large family, when her life was wrecked by a sudden calamity, for her husband was seized by a press gang and dragged away to serve in the fleet. Mrs. Davis, crazy with grief, got her children adopted by the neighbors, and set off in search of the man she loved. When she returned two years later as a soldier, she found her children happy, the neighbors kind, and herself utterly unknown. She went away contented. She served under the Duke of Marlborough throughout his campaigns in Europe, first as an infantry soldier, but later as a dragoon, for at the battles of Blenheim and Fontenoy she was a squadron leader of the Scots Grays. The second dragoon guards have many curious traditions of “Mother Ross.” When after twelve years military service, she ultimately found her husband, he was busy flirting with a waitress in a Dutch inn, and she passed by, saying nothing. In her capacity as a soldier she was a flirt herself, making love to every girl she met, a gallant, a duelist, and notably brave. At last, after a severe wound, her sex was discovered and she forgave her husband. She died in Chelsea Hospital at the age of one hundred eight, and her monument may be seen in the graveyard.

Hannah Snell left her home because her husband had bolted with another woman, and she wanted to find and kill him. In course of her search, she enlisted, served as a soldier against the Scots rebellion of 1745, and once received a punishment of five hundred lashes. A series of wonderful adventures led her into service as a marine on board H. M. S. Swallow. After a narrow escape from foundering, this vessel joined Admiral Boscawen’s fleet in the East Indies. She showed such extreme gallantry in the attack on Mauritius and in the siege of Areacopong, that she was chosen for special work in a forlorn hope. In this fight she avenged the death of a comrade by killing the author of it with her own hands. At the siege of Pondicherry she received eleven wounds in the legs, and a ball in the body which she extracted herself for fear of revealing the secret of her sex. On her return voyage to England she heard that she need not bother about killing her husband, because he had been decently hanged for murder. So on landing at Portsmouth she revealed herself to her messmates as a woman, and one of them promptly proposed to her. She declined and went on the stage, but ultimately received a pension of thirty pounds a year, and set up as a publican at the sign of the Women in Masquerade.

Anna Mills, able seaman on board the Maidstone frigate in 1740, made herself famous for desperate valor.

Mary Ann, youngest of Lord Talbot’s sixteen natural children, was the victim of a wicked guardian who took her to the wars as his foot-boy. As a drummer boy she served through the campaigns in Flanders, dressing two severe wounds herself. Her subsequent masquerade as a sailor led to countless adventures. She was a seaman on a French lugger, powder monkey on a British ship of the line, fought in Lord Howe’s great victory and was crippled for life. Later she was a merchant seaman, after that a jeweler in London, pensioned for military service, and was last heard of as a bookseller’s housemaid in 1807.

Mary Dixon did sixteen years’ service, and fought at Waterloo. She was still living fifty years afterward, “a strong, powerful, old woman.”

Phœbe Hessel fought in the fifth regiment of foot, and was wounded in the arm at Fontenoy. After many years of soldiering she retired from service and was pensioned by the prince regent, George IV. A tombstone is inscribed to her memory in the old churchyard at Brighton.

In this bald record there is no room for the adventures of such military and naval heroines as prisoners of war, as leaders in battle, as victims of shipwreck, or as partakers in some of the most extraordinary love-affairs ever heard of.

Hundreds of stories might be told of women conspicuous for valor, meeting hazards as great as ever have fallen to the lot of men. In one case, the casting away of the French frigate Medusa, the men, almost without exception, performed prodigies of cowardice, while two or three of the women made a wonderful journey across the Sahara Desert to Senegambia, which is the one bright episode in the most disgraceful disaster on record. In the defenses of Leyden and Haarlem, besieged by Spanish armies, the Dutch women manned the ramparts with the men, inspired them throughout the hopeless months, and shared the general fate when all the survivors were butchered. And the valor of Englishwomen during the sieges of our strongholds in India, China and South Africa, has made some of the brightest pages of our history.

XLIX

THE CONQUERORS OF INDIA

Only the other day, the king of England was proclaimed emperor of India, and all the princes and governors of that empire presented their swords in homage. This homage was rendered at Delhi, the ancient capital of Hindustan; and it is only one hundred and ten years since Delhi fell, and Hindustan surrendered to the British arms. We have to deal with the events that led up to the conquest of India.

The Moslem sultans, sons of the Great Mogul, had long reigned over Hindustan, but in 1784 Shah Alam, last of these emperors, was driven from Delhi. In his ruin he appealed for help to Madhoji Scindhia, a Hindu prince from the South, who kindly restored the emperor to his palace, then gave him into the keeping of a jailer, who gouged out the old man’s eyes. Still Shah Alam, the blind, helpless, and at times very hungry prisoner, was emperor of Northern India, and in his august name Scindhia led the armies to collect the taxes of Hindustan. No tax was collected without a battle.

Scindhia himself was one of many turbulent Mahratta princes subject to the peshwa of Poona, near Bombay. He had to sit on the peshwa’s head at Poona, and the emperor’s head at Delhi, while he fought the whole nobility and gentry of India, and kept one eye cocked for British invasions from the seaboard. The British held the ocean, surrounded India, and were advancing inland. Madhoji Scindhia was a very busy man.

He had never heard of tourists, and when De Boigne, an Italian gentleman, came up-country to see the sights, his highness, scenting a spy, stole the poor man’s luggage. De Boigne, veteran of the French and Russian armies, and lately retired from the British service, was annoyed at the loss of his luggage, and having nothing left but his sword, offered the use of that to Scindhia’s nearest enemy. In those days scores of Europeans, mostly French, and scandalous rogues as a rule, were serving in native armies. Though they liked a fight, they so loved money that they would sell their masters to the highest bidder. Scindhia observed that De Boigne was a pretty good man, and the Savoyard adventurer was asked to enter his service.

De Boigne proved honest, faithful to his prince, a tireless worker, a glorious leader, the very pattern of manliness. The battalions which he raised for Scindhia were taught the art of war as known in Europe, they were well armed, fed, disciplined, and paid their wages; they were led by capable white men, and always victorious in the field. At Scindhia’s death, De Boigne handed over to the young prince Daulat Rao, his heir, an army of forty thousand men, which had never known defeat, together with the sovereignty of India.

The new Scindhia was rotten, and now the Italian, broken down with twenty years of service, longed for his home among the Italian vineyards. Before parting with his highness, he warned him rather to disband the whole army than ever be tempted into conflict with the English. So De Boigne laid down the burden of the Indian empire, and retired to his vineyards in Savoy. There for thirty years he befriended the poor, lived simply, entertained royally, and so died full of years and honors.

While De Boigne was still fighting for Scindhia, a runaway Irish sailor had drifted up-country, and taken service in one of the native states as a private soldier. George Thomas was as chivalrous as De Boigne, with a great big heart, a clear head, a terrific sword, and a reckless delight in war. Through years of rough and tumble adventure he fought his way upward, until with his own army of five thousand men he invaded and conquered the Hariana. This district, just to the westward of Delhi, was a desert, peopled by tribes so fierce that they had never been subdued, but their Irish king won all their hearts, and they settled down quite peacefully under his government. His revenue was eighteen hundred thousand pounds a year. At Hansi, his capital town, he coined his own money, cast his own cannon, made muskets and powder, and set up a pension fund for widows and orphans of his soldiers. All round him were hostile states, and whenever he felt dull he conquered a kingdom or so, and levied tribute. If his men went hungry, he starved with them; if they were weary, he marched afoot; the army worshiped him, and the very terror of his name brought strong cities to surrender, put legions of Sikh cavalry to flight. All things seemed possible to such a man, even the conquest of great Hindustan.

De Boigne had been succeeded as commander-in-chief under Scindhia by Perron, a runaway sailor, a Frenchman, able and strong. De Boigne’s power had been a little thing compared with the might and splendor of Perron, who actually reigned over Hindustan, stole the revenues, and treated Scindhia’s orders with contempt. Perron feared only one man on earth, this rival adventurer, this Irish rajah of the Hariana, and sent an expedition to destroy him.

The new master of Hindustan detested the English, and degrading the capable British officers who had served De Boigne, procured Frenchmen to take their place, hairdressers, waiters, scalawags, all utterly useless. Major Bourguien, the worst of the lot, was sent against Thomas and got a thrashing.

But Thomas, poor soul, had a deadlier enemy than this coward, and now lay drunk in camp for a week celebrating his victory instead of attending to business. He awakened to find his force of five thousand men besieged by thirty thousand veterans. There was no water, spies burned his stacks of forage, his battalions were bribed to desert, or lost all hope. Finally with three English officers and two hundred cavalry, Thomas cut his way through the investing army and fled to his capital.

The coward Bourguien had charge of the pursuing force that now invested Hanei. Bourguien’s officers breached the walls and took the town by storm, but Thomas fell back upon the citadel. Then Bourguien sent spies to bribe the garrison that Thomas might be murdered, but his officers went straight to warn the fallen king. To them he surrendered.

That night Thomas dined with the officers, and all were merry when Bourguien proposed a toast insulting his prisoner. The officers turned their glasses down refusing to drink. Thomas burst into tears; but then he drew upon Bourguien, and waving the glittering blade, “One Irish sword,” he cried, “is still sufficient for a hundred Frenchmen!” Bourguien bolted.

Loyal in the days of his greatness, the fallen king was received with honors at the British outposts upon the Ganges. There he was giving valuable advice to the governor-general when a map of India was laid before him, the British possessions marked red. He swept his hand across India: “All this ought to be red.”

It is all red now, and the British conquest of India arose out of the defense made by this great wild hero against General Perron, ruler of Hindustan. Scindhia, who had lifted Perron from the dust, and made him commander-in-chief of his army, was now in grave peril on the Deccan, beset by the league of Mahratta princes. In his bitter need he sent to Perron for succor. Perron, busy against his enemy in the Hariana, left Scindhia to his fate.

Perron had no need of Scindhia now, but was leagued with Napoleon to hand over the Indian empire to France. He betrayed his master.

Now Scindhia, had the Frenchmen been loyal, could have checked the Mahratta princes, but these got out of hand, and one of them, Holkar, drove the Mahratta emperor, the peshwa of Poona, from his throne. The peshwa fled to Bombay, and returned with a British army under Sir Arthur Wellesley. So came the battle of Assaye, wherein the British force of four thousand five hundred men overthrew the Mahratta army of fifty thousand men, captured a hundred guns, and won Poona, the capital of the South. Meanwhile for fear of Napoleon’s coming, Perron, his servant, had to be overthrown. A British army under General Lake swept Perron’s army out of existence and captured Delhi, the capital of the North. Both the capital cities of India fell to English arms, both emperors came under British protection, and that vast empire was founded wherein King George now reigns. As to Perron, his fall was pitiful, a freak of cowardice. He betrayed everybody, and sneaked away to France with a large fortune.

And Arthur Wellesley, victor in that stupendous triumph of Assaye, became the Iron Duke of Wellington, destined to liberate Europe at Waterloo.

L
A. D. 1805

THE MAN WHO SHOT LORD NELSON

This story is from the memoirs of Robert Guillemard, a conscript in the Grand Army of France, and to his horror drafted for a marine on board the battle-ship Redoubtable. The Franco-Spanish fleet of thirty-three battle-ships lay in Cadiz, and Villeneuve, the nice old gentleman in command, was still breathless after being chased by Lord Nelson across the Atlantic and back again. Now, having given Nelson the slip, he had fierce orders from the Emperor Napoleon to join the French channel fleet, for the invasion of England. The nice old gentleman knew that his fleet was manned largely with helpless recruits, ill-paid, ill-found, most scandalously fed, sick with a righteous terror lest Nelson come and burn them in their harbor.

Then Nelson came, with twenty-seven battle-ships, raging for a fight, and Villeneuve had to oblige for fear of Napoleon’s anger.

The fleets met off the sand-dunes of Cape Trafalgar, drawn up in opposing lines for battle, and when they closed, young Guillemard’s ship, the Redoubtable, engaged Lord Nelson’s Victory, losing thirty men to her first discharge.

Guillemard had never been in action, and as the thunders broke from the gun tiers below, he watched with mingled fear and rage the rush of seamen at their work on deck, and his brothers of the marines at their musketry, until everything was hidden in trailing wreaths of smoke, from which came the screams of the wounded, the groans of the dying.

Some seventy feet overhead, at the caps of the lower masts, were widespread platforms, the fighting tops on which the best marksmen were always posted. “All our topmen,” says Guillemard, “had been killed, when two sailors and four soldiers, of whom I was one, were ordered to occupy their post in the tops. While we were going aloft, the balls and grapeshot showered around us, struck the masts and yards, knocked large splinters from them, and cut the rigging to pieces. One of my companions was wounded beside me, and fell from a height of thirty feet to the deck, where he broke his neck. When I reached the top my first movement was to take a view of the prospect presented by the hostile fleets. For more than a league extended a thick cloud of smoke, above which were discernible a forest of masts and rigging, and the flags, the pendants and the fire of the three nations. Thousands of flashes, more or less near, continually penetrated this cloud, and a rolling noise pretty similar to the sound of thunder, but much stronger, arose from its bosom.”

Guillemard goes on to describe a duel between the topmen of the Redoubtable and those of the Victory only a few yards distant, and when it was finished he lay alone among the dead who crowded the swaying platform.

“On the poop of the English vessel was an officer covered with orders and with only one arm. From what I had heard of Nelson I had no doubt that it was he. He was surrounded by several officers, to whom he seemed to be giving orders. At the moment I first perceived him several of his sailors were wounded beside him by the fire of the Redoubtable. As I had received no orders to go down, and saw myself forgotten in the tops, I thought it my duty to fire on the poop of the English vessel, which I saw quite clearly exposed, and close to me. I could even have taken aim at the men I saw, but I fired at hazard among the groups of sailors and officers. All at once I saw great confusion on board the Victory; the men crowded round the officer whom I had taken for Nelson. He had just fallen, and was taken below covered with a cloak. The agitation shown at this moment left me no doubt that I had judged rightly, and that it really was the English admiral. An instant afterward the Victory ceased from firing, the deck was abandoned.... I hurried below to inform the captain.... He believed me the more readily as the slackening of the fire indicated that an event of the highest importance occupied the attention of the English ship’s crew.... He gave immediate orders for boarding, and everything was prepared for it in a moment. It is even said that young Fontaine, a midshipman ... passed by the ports into the lower deck of the English vessel, found it abandoned, and returned to notify that the ship had surrendered.... However, as a part of our crew, commanded by two officers, were ready to spring upon the enemy’s deck, the fire recommenced with a fury it had never had from the beginning of the action.... In less than half an hour our vessel, without having hauled down her colors, had in fact, surrendered. Her fire had gradually slackened and then had ceased altogether.... Not more than one hundred fifty men survived out of a crew of about eight hundred, and almost all those were more or less severely wounded.”

When these were taken on board the Victory, Guillemard learned how the bullet which struck down through Lord Nelson’s shoulder and shattered the spine below, had come from the fighting tops of the Redoubtable, where he had been the only living soul. He speaks of his grief as a man, his triumph as a soldier of France, who had delivered his country from her great enemy. What it meant for England judge now after nearly one hundred years, when one meets a bluejacket in the street with the three white lines of braid upon his collar in memory of Nelson’s victories at Copenhagen, the Nile and Trafalgar, and the black neckcloth worn in mourning for his death.

It seemed at the time that the very winds sang Nelson’s requiem, for with the night came a storm putting the English shattered fleet in mortal peril, while of the nineteen captured battle-ships not one was fit to brave the elements. For, save some few vessels that basely ran away before the action, both French and Spaniards had fought with sublime desperation, and when the English prize-crews took possession, they and their prisoners were together drowned. The Aigle was cast away, and not one man escaped; the Santissima Trinidad, the largest ship in the world, foundered; the Indomitable sank with fifteen hundred wounded; the Achille, with her officers shooting themselves, her sailors drunk, went blazing through the storm until the fire caught her magazine. And so with the rest of eighteen blood-soaked wrecks, burned, foundered, or cast away, while only one outlived that night of horror.

Lord Nelson

When the day broke Admiral Villeneuve was brought on board the Victory, where Nelson lay in state, for the voyage to England. Villeneuve, wounded in the hand, was unable to write, and sent among the French prisoners for a clerk. For this service Guillemard volunteered as the only uninjured soldier who could write. So Guillemard attended the admiral all through the months of their residence at Arlesford, in Devon, where they were at large on parole. The old man was treated with respect and sympathy.

Prisoners of war are generally released by exchange between fighting powers, rank for rank, man for man; but after five months Villeneuve was allowed to return to France. He pledged his honor that unless duly exchanged he would surrender again on the English coast at the end of ninety days. So, attended by Guillemard and his servant, he crossed the channel, and from the town of Rennes—the place where Dreyfus had his trial not long ago—he wrote despatches to the government in Paris. He was coming, he said in a private letter, to arraign most of his surviving captains on the charge of cowardice at Trafalgar.

Of this it seems the captains got some warning, and decided that for the sake of their own health Villeneuve should not reach Paris alive.

Anyway, Guillemard says that while the admiral lay in the Hotel de Bresil, at Rennes, five strangers appeared—men in civilian dress, who asked him many questions about Villeneuve. The secretary was proud of his master, glad to talk about so distinguished a man, and thought no evil when he gave his answers. The leader of the five was a southern Frenchman, the others foreigners, deeply tanned, who wore mustaches—in those days an unusual ornament.

That night the admiral had gone to bed in his room on the first floor of the inn, and the secretary was asleep on the floor above. A cry disturbed him, and taking his sword and candle, he ran down-stairs in time to see the five strangers sneak by him hurriedly. Guillemard rushed to the admiral’s room “and saw the unfortunate man, whom the balls of Trafalgar had respected, stretched pale and bloody on his bed. He ... breathed hard, and struggled with the agonies of death.... Five deep wounds pierced his breast.”

So it was the fate of the slayer of Nelson to be alone with Villeneuve at his death.

When he reached Paris the youngster was summoned to the Tuileries, and the Emperor Napoleon made him tell the whole story of the admiral’s assassination. Yet officially the death was announced as suicide, and Guillemard met the leader of the five assassins walking in broad daylight on the boulevards.

The lad kept his mouth shut.

Guillemard lived to fight in many of the emperor’s battles, to be one of the ten thousand prisoners of the Spaniards on the desert island of the Cabrera, whence he made a gallant escape; to be a prisoner of the Russians in Siberia; to assist in King Murat’s flight from France; and, finally, after twenty years of adventure, to return with many wounds and few honors to his native village.

LI
A. D. 1812

THE FALL OF NAPOLEON

The greatest of modern adventurers, Napoleon Bonaparte, was something short of a gentleman, a person of mean build, coarse tastes, odious manners and defective courage, yet gifted with Satanic beauty of face, charm that bewitched all fighting men, stupendous genius in war and government. Beginning as a penniless lieutenant of French artillery, he rose to be captain, colonel, general, commander-in-chief, consul of France, emperor of the French, master of Europe, almost conqueror of the world—and he was still only thirty-three years of age, when at the height of his glory, he invaded Russia. His army of invasion was gathered from all his subject nations—Germans, Swiss, Italians, Poles, Austrians, numbering more than half a million men, an irresistible and overwhelming force, launched like a shell into the heart of Russia.

The Russian army could not hope to defeat Napoleon, was routed again and again in attempting to check his advance, yet in retreating laid the country waste, burned all the standing harvest, drove away the cattle, left the towns in ashes. Napoleon’s host marched through a desert, while daily, by waste of battle, wreckage of men left with untended wounds, horrors of starvation, and wolf-like hordes of Cossacks who cut off all the stragglers, the legions were swept away. In Lithuania alone Napoleon lost a hundred thousand men, and that only a fourth part of those who perished before the army reached the gates of Moscow.

That old city, hallowed by centuries of brave endeavor, stored with the spoils of countless victories, that holy place at the very sight of which the Russian traveler prostrated himself in prayer, had been made ready for Napoleon’s coming. Never has any nation prepared so awful a sacrifice as that which wrenched a million people from their homes. The empty capital was left in charge of a few officers, then all the convicts were released and provided with torches. Every vestige of food had been taken away, but the gold, the gems, the silver, the precious things of treasuries, churches and palaces, remained as bait.

Despite the horrors of the march, Napoleon’s entry was attended by all the gorgeous pageantry of the Grand Army, a blaze of gold and color, conquered Europe at the heels of the little Corsican adventurer with waving flags and triumphal music. The cavalry found cathedrals for stabling, the guard had palaces for barracks, where they could lie at ease through the winter; but night after night the great buildings burst into flames, day after day the foraging parties were caught in labyrinths of blazing streets, and the army staled on a diet of wine and gold in the burning capital.

In mortal fear the emperor attempted to treat for peace, but Russia kept him waiting for a month, while her troops closed down on the line of escape, and the winter was coming on—the Russian winter.

From the time when the retreat began through a thousand miles of naked wilderness, not a single ration was issued to the starving army. The men were loaded with furs, brocades, chalices, ingots of silver, bars of gold and jewels, but they had no food. The transport numbered thousands of carts laden with grain, but the horses died because there was no forage, so all the commissariat, except Napoleon’s treasure train, was left wrecked by the wayside.

Then the marching regiments were placed in the wake of the cavalry, that they might get the dying horses for food, but when the cold came there was no fuel to cook the frozen meat, and men’s lips would bleed when they tried to gnaw that ice. So the wake of the army was a wide road blocked with broken carts, dead horses, abandoned guns, corpses of men, where camp followers remained to murder the dying, strip the dead and gather the treasures of Moscow, the swords, the gold lace, the costly uniforms, until they were slaughtered by the Cossacks. Then came the deep snow which covered everything.

No words of mine could ever tell the story, but here are passages from the Memoirs of Sergeant Burgogne (Heineman). I have ventured to condense parts of his narrative, memories of the lost army, told by one who saw. He had been left behind to die:—

“At that moment the moon came out, and I began to walk faster. In this immense cemetery and this awful silence I was alone, and I began to cry like a child. The tears relieved me, gradually my courage came back, and feeling stronger, I set out again, trusting to God’s mercy, taking care to avoid the dead bodies.

“I noticed something I took for a wagon. It was a broken canteen cart, the horses which had drawn it not only dead, but partly cut to pieces for eating. Around the cart were seven dead bodies almost naked, and half covered with snow; one of them still covered with a cloak and a sheepskin. On stooping to look at the body I saw that it was a woman. I approached the dead woman to take the sheepskin for a covering, but it was impossible to move it. A piercing cry came from the cart. ‘Marie! Marie! I am dying!’

“Mounting on the body of the horse in the shafts I steadied myself by the top of the cart. I asked what was the matter. A feeble voice answered, ‘Something to drink!’

“I thought at once of the frozen blood in my pouch, and tried to get down to fetch it, but the moon suddenly disappeared behind a great black cloud, and I as suddenly fell on top of three dead bodies. My head was down lower than my legs, and my face resting on one of the dead hands. I had been accustomed for long enough to this sort of company, but now—I suppose because I was alone—an awful feeling of terror came over me—I could not move, and I began screaming like a madman—I tried to help myself up by my arm, but found my hand on a face, and my thumb went into its mouth. At that moment the moon came out.

“But a change came over me now. I felt ashamed of my weakness, and a wild sort of frenzy instead of terror took possession of me. I got up raving and swearing, and trod on anything that came near me ... and I cursed the sky above me, defying it, and taking my musket, I struck at the cart—very likely I struck also at the poor devils under my feet.”

Such was the road, and here was the passing of the army which Burgogne had overtaken.

“This was November twenty-five, 1812, perhaps about seven o’clock in the morning, and as yet it was hardly light. I was musing on all that I had seen, when the head of the column appeared. Those in advance seemed to be generals, a few on horseback, but the greater part on foot. There were also a great number of other officers, the remnant of the doomed squadron and battalion formed on the twenty-second and barely existing at the end of three days. Those on foot dragged themselves painfully along, almost all of them having their feet frozen and wrapped in rags, and all nearly dying of hunger. Afterward came the small remains of the cavalry of the guard. The emperor came next on foot, carrying a baton, Murat walked on foot at his right, and on his left, the Prince Eugene, viceroy of Italy. Next came the marshals—Berthier, Prince of Neuchâtel, Ney, Mortier, Lefevre, with other marshals and generals whose corps were nearly annihilated. Seven or eight hundred officers and non-commissioned officers followed walking in order, and perfect silence, and carrying the eagles of their different regiments which had so often led them to victory. This was all that remained of sixty thousand men. After them came the imperial guard. And men cried at seeing the emperor on foot.”

So far the army had kept its discipline, and at the passage of the River Berezina the engineers contrived to build a bridge. But while the troops were crossing, the Russians began to drive the rear guard, and the whole herd broke into panic. “The confusion and disorder went on increasing, and reached their full height when Marshal Victor was attacked by the Russians, and shells and bullets showered thickly upon us. To complete our misery, snow began to fall, and a cold wind blew. This dreadful state of things lasted all day and through the next night, and all this time the Berezina became gradually filled with ice, dead bodies of men and horses, while the bridge got blocked up with carts full of wounded men, some of which rolled over the edge into the water. Between eight and nine o’clock that evening, Marshal Victor began his retreat. He and his men had to cross the bridge over a perfect mountain of corpses.”

Still thousands of stragglers had stayed to burn abandoned wagons, and make fires to warm them before they attempted the bridge. On these the Russians descended, but it was too late for flight, and of the hundreds who attempted to swim the river, not one reached the farther bank. To prevent the Russians from crossing, the bridge was set on fire, and so horror was piled on horror that it would be gross offense to add another word.

Of half a million men who had entered Russia, there were only twenty-five thousand left after that crossing of the Berezina. These were veterans for the most part, skilled plunderers, who foraged for themselves, gleaning a few potatoes from stripped fields, shooting stray Cossacks for the food they had in their wallets, trading with the Jews who lurked in ruined towns, or falling back at the worst on frozen horse-flesh. Garrisons left by Napoleon on his advance fell in from time to time with the retreating army, but unused to the new conditions, wasted rapidly. The veterans found their horses useful for food, and left afoot, they perished.

Even to the last, remnants of lost regiments rallied to the golden eagles upon their standards, but these little clusters of men no longer kept their ranks, for as they marched the strong tried to help the weak, and often comrades would die together rather than part. All were frozen, suffering the slow exhaustion of dysentery, the miseries of vermin and starvation, and those who lived to the end were broken invalids, who never again could serve the emperor.

From Smorgony, Napoleon went ahead, traveling rapidly to send the relief of sleighs and food which met the survivors on the German border. Thence he went on to Paris to raise a new army; for now there was conspiracy in France for the overthrow of the despot, and Europe rose to destroy him. So on the field of Leipsic, in the battle of the nations, Napoleon was overwhelmed.

Once again he challenged fate, escaped from his island prison of Elba, and with a third army marched against armed Europe. And so came Waterloo, with that last banishment to Saint Helena, where the great adventurer fretted out his few sore years, dreaming of glories never to be revived and that great empire which was forever lost.

LII
A. D. 1813

RISING WOLF

This is the story of Rising Wolf, condensed from the beautiful narrative in My Life as an Indian, by J. B. Schultz.

“I had heard much of a certain white man named Hugh Monroe, and in Blackfoot, Rising Wolf. One afternoon I was told that he had arrived in camp with his numerous family, and a little later met him at a feast given by Big Lake. In the evening I invited him over to my lodge and had a long talk with him while he ate bread and meat and beans, and smoked numerous pipefuls of tobacco.” White man’s food is good after years without any. “We eventually became firm friends. Even in his old age Rising Wolf was the quickest, most active man I ever saw. He was about five feet six in height, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and his firm square chin and rather prominent nose betokened what he was, a man of courage and determination. His father, Hugh Monroe, was a colonel in the British army, his mother a member of the La Roches, a noble family of French émigrés, bankers of Montreal and large land owners in that vicinity.

“Hugh, junior, was born on the family estate at Three Rivers (Quebec) and attended the parish school just long enough to learn to read and write. All his vacations and many truant days from the class room were spent in the great forest surrounding his home. The love of nature, of adventure and wild life were born in him. He first saw the light in July, 1798. In 1813, when but fifteen years of age, he persuaded his parents to allow him to enter the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company and started westward with a flotilla of that company’s canoes that spring. His father gave him a fine English smoothbore, his mother a pair of the famous La Roche dueling pistols and a prayer book. The family priest gave him a rosary and cross and enjoined him to pray frequently. Traveling all summer, they arrived at Lake Winnipeg in the autumn and wintered there. As soon as the ice went out in the spring the journey was continued and one afternoon in July, Monroe beheld Mountain Fort, a new post of the company’s not far from the Rocky Mountains.

“Around about it were encamped thousands of Blackfeet waiting to trade for the goods the flotilla had brought up and to obtain on credit ammunition, fukes (trade guns), traps and tobacco. As yet the company had no Blackfoot interpreter. The factor perceiving that Monroe was a youth of more than ordinary intelligence at once detailed him to live and travel with the Piegans (a Blackfoot tribe) and learn their language, also to see that they returned to Mountain Fort with their furs the succeeding summer. Word had been received that, following the course of Lewis and Clarke, American traders were yearly pushing farther and farther westward and had even reached the mouth of the Yellowstone. The company feared their competition. Monroe was to do his best to prevent it.

“‘At last,’ Monroe told me, ‘the day came for our departure, and I set out with the chiefs and medicine men at the head of the long procession. There were eight hundred lodges of the Piegans there, about eight thousand souls. They owned thousands of horses. Oh, but it was a grand sight to see that long column of riders and pack animals, and loose horses trooping over the plains. We traveled on southward all the long day, and about an hour or two before sundown we came to the rim of a valley through which flowed a cotton wood-bordered stream. We dismounted at the top of the hill, and spread our robes intending to sit there until the procession passed by into the bottom and put up the lodges. A medicine man produced a large stone pipe, filled it and attempted to light it with flint and steel and a bit of punk (rotten wood), but somehow he could get no spark. I motioned him to hand it to me, and drawing my sunglass from my pocket, I got the proper focus and set the tobacco afire, drawing several mouthfuls of smoke through the long stem.

“‘As one man all those round about sprang to their feet and rushed toward me, shouting and gesticulating as if they had gone crazy. I also jumped up, terribly frightened, for I thought they were going to do me harm, perhaps kill me. The pipe was wrenched out of my grasp by the chief himself, who eagerly began to smoke and pray. He had drawn but a whiff or two when another seized it, and from him it was taken by still another. Others turned and harangued the passing column; men and women sprang from their horses and joined the group, mothers pressing close and rubbing their babes against me, praying earnestly meanwhile. I recognized a word that I had already learned—Natos—Sun—and suddenly the meaning of the commotion became clear; they thought that I was Great Medicine; that I had called upon the Sun himself to light the pipe, and that he had done so. The mere act of holding up my hand above the pipe was a supplication to their God. They had perhaps not noticed the glass, or if they had, had thought it some secret charm or amulet. At all events I had suddenly become a great personage, and from then on the utmost consideration and kindness was accorded to me.

“‘When I entered Lone Walker’s lodge that evening—he was the chief, and my host—I was greeted by deep growls from either side of the doorway, and was horrified to see two nearly grown grizzly bears acting as if about to spring upon me. I stopped and stood quite still, but I believe that my hair was rising; I know that my flesh felt to be shrinking. I was not kept in suspense. Lone Walker spoke to his pets, and they immediately lay down, noses between their paws, and I passed on to the place pointed out to me, the first couch at the chief’s left hand. It was some time before I became accustomed to the bears, but we finally came to a sort of understanding with one another. They ceased growling at me as I passed in and out of the lodge, but would never allow me to touch them, bristling up and preparing to fight if I attempted to do so. In the following spring they disappeared one night and were never seen again.’

“Think how the youth, Rising Wolf, must have felt as he journeyed southward over the vast plains, and under the shadow of the giant mountains which lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri, for he knew that he was the first of his race to behold them.” We were born a little too late!

“Monroe often referred to that first trip with the Piegans as the happiest time of his life.”

In the moon of falling leaves they came to Pile of Rocks River, and after three months went on to winter on Yellow River. Next summer they wandered down the Musselshell, crossed the Big River and thence westward by way of the Little Rockies and the Bear Paw Mountains to the Marias. Even paradise has its geography.

“Rifle and pistol were now useless as the last rounds of powder and ball had been fired. But what mattered that? Had they not their bows and great sheaves of arrows? In the spring they had planted on the banks of the Judith a large patch of their own tobacco which they would harvest in due time.

“One by one young Rising Wolf’s garments were worn out and cast aside. The women of the lodge tanned deerskins and bighorn (sheep) and from them Lone Walker himself cut and sewed shirts and leggings, which he wore in their place. It was not permitted for women to make men’s clothing. So ere long he was dressed in full Indian costume, even to the belt and breech-clout, and his hair grew so that it fell in rippling waves down over his shoulders.” A warrior never cut his hair, so white men living with Indians followed their fashion, else they were not admitted to rank as warriors. “He began to think of braiding it. Ap-ah’-ki, the shy young daughter of the chief, made his footwear—thin parfleche (arrow-proof)—soled moccasins (skin-shoes) for summer, beautifully embroidered with colored porcupine quills; thick, soft warm ones of buffalo robe for winter.

“‘I could not help but notice her,’ he said, ‘on the first night I stayed in her father’s lodge.... I learned the language easily, quickly, yet I never spoke to her nor she to me, for, as you know, the Blackfeet think it unseemly for youths and maidens to do so.

“‘One evening a man came into the lodge and began to praise a certain youth with whom I had often hunted; spoke of his bravery, his kindness, his wealth, and ended by saying that the young fellow presented to Lone Walker thirty horses, and wished, with Ap-ah’-ki, to set up a lodge of his own. I glanced at the girl and caught her looking at me; such a look! expressing at once fear, despair and something else which I dared not believe I interpreted aright. The chief spoke: “Tell your friend,” he said, “that all you have spoken of him is true; I know that he is a real man, a good, kind, brave, generous young man, yet for all that I can not give him my daughter.”

“‘Again I looked at Ap-ah’-ki and she at me. Now she was smiling and there was happiness in her eyes. But if she smiled I could not. I had heard him refuse thirty head of horses. What hope had I then, who did not even own the horse I rode? I, who received for my services only twenty pounds a year, from which must be deducted the various articles I bought. Surely the girl was not for me. I suffered.

“‘It was a little later, perhaps a couple of weeks, that I met her in the trail, bringing home a bundle of fire-wood. We stopped and looked at each other in silence for a moment, and then I spoke her name. Crash went the fuel on the ground, and we embraced and kissed regardless of those who might be looking.

“‘So, forgetting the bundle of wood, we went hand in hand and stood before Lone Walker, where he sat smoking his long pipe, out on the shady side of the lodge.

“‘The chief smiled. “Why, think you, did I refuse the thirty horses?” he asked, and before I could answer: “Because I wanted you for my son-in-law, wanted a white man because he is more cunning, much wiser than the Indian, and I need a counselor. We have not been blind, neither I nor my women. There is nothing more to say except this: be good to her.”

“‘That very day they set up a small lodge for us, and stored it with robes and parfleches of dried meat and berries, gave us one of their two brass kettles, tanned skins, pack saddles, ropes, all that a lodge should contain. And, not least, Lone Walker told me to choose thirty horses from his large herd. In the evening we took possession of our house and were happy.’

“Monroe remained in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company a number of years, raising a large family of boys and girls, most of whom are alive to-day. The oldest, John, is about seventy-five years of age, but still young enough to go to the Rockies near his home every autumn, and kill a few bighorn and elk, and trap a few beavers. The old man never revisited his home; never saw his parents after they parted with him at the Montreal docks. He intended to return to them for a brief visit some time, but kept deferring it, and then came letters two years old to say that they were both dead. Came also a letter from an attorney, saying that they had bequeathed him a considerable property, that he must go to Montreal and sign certain papers in order to take possession of it. At the time the factor of Mountain Fort was going to England on leave; to him, in his simple trustfulness Monroe gave a power of attorney in the matter. The factor never returned, and by virtue of the papers he had signed the frontiersman lost his inheritance. But that was a matter of little moment to him then. Had he not a lodge and family, good horses and a vast domain actually teeming with game wherein to wander? What more could one possibly want?

“Leaving the Hudson’s Bay Company, Monroe sometimes worked for the American Fur Company, but mostly as a free trapper, wandered from the Saskatchewan to the Yellowstone and from the Rockies to Lake Winnipeg. The headwaters of the South Saskatchewan were one of his favorite hunting grounds. Thither in the early fifties he guided the noted Jesuit Father, De Smet, and at the foot of the beautiful lakes just south of Chief Mountain they erected a huge wooden cross and named the two bodies of water Saint Mary’s Lakes.” Here the Canada and United States boundary climbs the Rocky Mountains.

“One winter after his sons John and François had married they were camping there for the season, the three lodges of the family, when one night a large war party of Assiniboins attacked them. The daughters Lizzie, Amelia and Mary had been taught to shoot, and together they made a brave resistance, driving the Indians away just before daylight, with the loss of five of their number, Lizzie killing one of them as he was about to let down the bars of the horse corral.

“Besides other furs, beaver, fisher, marten and wolverine, they killed more than three hundred wolves that winter by a device so unique, yet simple, that it is well worth recording. By the banks of the outlet of the lakes they built a long pen twelve by sixteen feet at the base, and sloping sharply inward and upward to a height of seven feet. The top of the pyramid was an opening about two feet six inches wide by eight feet in length. Whole deer, quarters of buffalo, any kind of meat handy was thrown into the pen, and the wolves, scenting the flesh and blood, seeing it plainly through the four to six inch spaces between the logs would eventually climb to the top and jump down through the opening. But they could not jump out, and there morning would find them uneasily pacing around and around in utter bewilderment.

“You will remember that the old man was a Catholic, yet I know that he had much faith in the Blackfoot religion, and believed in the efficiency of the medicine-man’s prayers and mysteries. He used often to speak of the terrible power possessed by a man named Old Sun. ‘There was one,’ he would say, ‘who surely talked with the gods, and was given some of their mysterious power. Sometimes of a dark night he would invite a few of us to his lodge, when all was calm and still. After all were seated his wives would bank the fire with ashes so that it was as dark within as without, and he would begin to pray. First to the Sun-chief, then to the wind maker, the thunder and the lightning. As he prayed, entreating them to come and do his will, first the lodge ears would begin to quiver with the first breath of a coming breeze, which gradually grew stronger and stronger till the lodge bent to the blasts, and the lodge poles strained and creaked. Then thunder began to boom, faint and far away, and lightning dimly to blaze, and they came nearer and nearer until they seemed to be just overhead; the crashes deafened us, the flashes blinded us, and all were terror-stricken. Then this wonderful man would pray them to go, and the wind would die down, and the thunder and lightning go on rumbling and flashing into the far distance until we heard and saw them no more.’”

LIII
A. D. 1819

SIMON BOLIVAR

Once at the stilted court of Spain young Ferdinand, Prince of the Asturias, had the condescension to play at tennis with a mere colonial; and the bounder won.

Long afterward, when Don Ferdinand was king, the colonial challenged him to another ball game, one played with cannon-balls. This time the stake was the Spanish American empire, but Ferdinand played Bolivar, and again the bounder won.

“Now tell me,” a lady said once, “what animal reminds one most of the Señor Bolivar?”

And Bolivar thought he heard some one say “monkey,” whereat he flew into an awful passion, until the offender claimed that the word was “sparrow.” He stood five feet six inches, with a bird-like quickness, and a puckered face with an odd tang of monkey. Rich, lavish, gaudy, talking mock heroics, vain as a peacock, always on the strut unless he was on the run, there is no more pathetically funny figure in history than tragical Bolivar; who heard liberty, as he thought, knocking at the door of South America, and opened—to let in chaos.

“I don’t know,” drawled a Spaniard of that time, “to what class of beasts these South Americans belong.”

They were dogs, these Spanish colonials, treated as dogs, behaving as dogs. When they wanted a university Spain said they were only provided by Providence to labor in the mines. If they had opinions the Inquisition cured them of their errors. They were not allowed to hold any office or learn the arts of war and government. Spain sent officials to ease them of their surplus cash, and keep them out of mischief. Thanks to Spain they were no more fit for public affairs than a lot of Bengali baboos.

They were loyal as beaten dogs until Napoleon stole the Spanish crown for brother Joseph, and French armies promenaded all over Spain closely pursued by the British. There was no Spain left to love, but the colonials were not Napoleon’s dogs. Napoleon’s envoys to Venezuela were nearly torn to pieces before they escaped to sea, where a little British frigate came and gobbled them up. The sea belonged to the British, and so the colonials sent ambassadors, Bolivar and another gentleman, to King George. Please would he help them to gain their liberty? George had just chased Napoleon out of Spain, and said he would do his best with his allies, the Spaniards.

In London Bolivar unearthed a countryman who loved liberty and had fought for Napoleon, a real professional soldier. General Miranda was able and willing to lead the armies of freedom, until he actually saw the Venezuelan troops. Then he shied hard. He really must draw the line somewhere. Yes, he would take command of the rabble on one condition, that he got rid of Bolivar. To get away from Bolivar he would go anywhere and do anything. So he led his rabble and found them stout fighters, and drove the Spaniards out of the central provinces.

The politicians were sitting down to draft the first of many comic-opera constitutions when an awful sound, louder than any thunder, swept out of the eastern Andes, the earth rolled like a sea in a storm, and the five cities of the new republic crashed down in heaps of ruin. The barracks buried the garrisons, the marching troops were totally destroyed, the politicians were killed, and in all one hundred twenty thousand people perished. The only thing left standing in one church was a pillar bearing the arms of Spain; the only districts not wrecked were those still loyal to the Spanish government. The clergy pointed the moral, the ruined people repented their rebellion, and the Spanish forces took heart and closed in from every side upon the lost republic. Simon Bolivar generously surrendered General Miranda in chains to the victorious Spaniards.

So far one sees only, as poor Miranda did, that this man was a sickening cad. But he was something more. He stuck to the cause for which he had given his life, joined the rebels in what is now Colombia, was given a small garrison command and ordered to stay in his fort. In defiance of orders, he swept the Spaniards out of the Magdalena Valley, raised a large force, liberated the country, then marched into Venezuela, defeated the Spanish forces in a score of brilliant actions, and was proclaimed liberator with absolute power in both Colombia and Venezuela. One begins to marvel at this heroic leader until the cad looms out. “Spaniards and Canary islanders!” he wrote, “reckon on death even if you are neutral, unless you will work actively for the liberty of America. Americans! count on life even if you are culpable.”

Bolivar’s pet hobbies were three in number: Resigning his job as liberator; writing proclamations; committing massacres. “I order you,” he wrote to the governor of La Guayra, “to shoot all the prisoners in those dungeons, and in the hospital, without any exception whatever.”

So the prisoners of war were set to work building a funeral pyre. When this was ready eight hundred of them were brought up in batches, butchered with axes, bayonets and knives, and their bodies thrown on the flames. Meanwhile Bolivar, in his office, refreshed himself by writing a proclamation to denounce the atrocities of the Spaniards.

Southward of the Orinoco River there are vast level prairies called Llanos, a cattle country, handled by wild horsemen known as the Llaneros. In Bolivar’s time their leader called himself Boves, and he had as second in command Morales. Boves said that Morales was “atrocious.” Morales said that “Boves was a man of merit, but too blood-thirsty.” The Spaniards called their command “The Infernal Division.” At first they fought for the Revolution, afterward for Spain, but they were really quite impartial and spared neither age nor sex. This was the “Spanish” army which swept away the second Venezuelan republic, slaughtering the whole population save some few poor starving camps of fugitives. Then Boves reported to the Spanish general, “I have recovered the arms, ammunition, and the honor of the Spanish flag, which your excellency lost at Carabobo.”

From this time onward the situation was rather like a dog fight, with the republican dog somewhere underneath in the middle. At times Bolivar ran like a rabbit, at times he was granted a triumph, but whenever he had time to come up and breathe he fired off volleys of proclamations. In sixteen years a painstaking Colombian counted six hundred ninety-six battles, which makes an average of one every ninth day, not to mention massacres; but for all his puny body and feeble health Bolivar was always to be found in the very thick of the scrimmage.

Europe had entered on the peace of Waterloo, but the ghouls who stripped the dead after Napoleon’s battles had uniforms to sell which went to clothe the fantastic mobs, republican and royalist, who drenched all Spanish America with blood. There were soldiers, too, whose trade of war was at an end in Europe, who gladly listened to Bolivar’s agents, who offered gorgeous uniforms and promised splendid wages—never paid—and who came to join in the war for “liberty.” Three hundred Germans and nearly six thousand British veterans joined Bolivar’s colors to fight for the freedom of America, and nearly all of them perished in battle or by disease. Bolivar was never without British officers, preferred British troops to all others, and in his later years really earned the loyal love they gave him, while they taught the liberator how to behave like a white man.

It was in 1819 that Bolivar led a force of two thousand five hundred men across a flooded prairie. For a week they were up to their knees, at times to their necks in water under a tropic deluge of rain, swimming a dozen rivers beset by alligators. The climate and starvation bore very heavily upon the British troops. Beyond the flood they climbed the eastern Andes and crossed the Paramo at a height of thirteen thousand feet, swept by an icy wind in blinding fog—hard going for Venezuelans.

An Irishman, Colonel Rook, commanded the British contingent. “All,” he reported, “was quite well with his corps, which had had quite a pleasant march” through the awful gorges and over the freezing Paramo. A Venezuelan officer remarked here that one-fourth of the men had perished.

“It was true,” said Rook, “but it really was a very good thing, for the men who had dropped out were all the wastrels and weaklings of the force.”

Great was the astonishment of the royalists when Bolivar dropped on them out of the clouds, and in the battle of Boyacá they were put to rout. Next day Colonel Rook had his arm cut off by the surgeons, chaffing them about the beautiful limb he was losing. He died of the operation, but the British legion went on from victory to victory, melting away like snow until at the end negroes and Indians filled its illustrious companies. Colombia, Venezuela and Equador, Peru and Bolivia were freed from the Spanish yoke and, in the main, released by Bolivar’s tireless, unfailing and undaunted courage. But they could not stand his braggart proclamations, would not have him or any man for master, began a series of squabbles and revolutions that have lasted ever since, and proved themselves unfit for the freedom Bolivar gave. He knew at the end that he had given his life for a myth. On the eighth December, 1830, he dictated his final proclamation and on the tenth received the last rites of the church, being still his old braggart self. “Colombians! my last wishes are for the welfare of the fatherland. If my death contributes to the cessation of party strife, and to the consolidation of the Union, I shall descend in peace to the grave.” On the seventeenth his troubled spirit passed.

LIV
A. D. 1812

THE ALMIRANTE COCHRANE

When Lieutenant Lord Thomas Cochrane commanded the brig of war Speedy, he used to carry about a whole broadside of her cannon-balls in his pocket. He had fifty-four men when he laid his toy boat alongside a Spanish frigate with thirty-two heavy guns and three hundred nineteen men, but the Spaniard could not fire down into his decks, whereas he blasted her with his treble-shotted pop-guns. Leaving only the doctor on board he boarded that Spaniard, got more than he bargained for, and would have been wiped out, but that a detachment of his sailors dressed to resemble black demons, charged down from the forecastle head. The Spaniards were so shocked that they surrendered.

For thirteen months the Speedy romped about, capturing in all fifty ships, one hundred and twenty-two guns, five hundred prisoners. Then she gave chase to three French battle-ships by mistake, and met with a dreadful end.

In 1809, Cochrane, being a bit of a chemist, and a first-rate mechanic, was allowed to make fireworks hulks loaded with explosives—with which he attacked a French fleet in the anchorage at Aix. The fleet got into a panic and destroyed itself.

And all his battles read like fairy tales, for this long-legged, red-haired Scot, rivaled Lord Nelson himself in genius and daring. At war he was the hero and idol of the fleet, but in peace a demon, restless, fractious, fiendish in humor, deadly in rage, playing schoolboy jokes on the admiralty and the parliament. He could not be happy without making swarms of powerful enemies, and those enemies waited their chance.

In February, 1814, a French officer landed at Dover with tidings that the Emperor Napoleon had been slain by Cossacks. The messenger’s progress became a triumphal procession, and amid public rejoicings he entered London to deliver his papers at the admiralty. Bells pealed, cannon thundered, the stock exchange went mad with the rise of prices, while the messenger—a Mr. Berenger—sneaked to the lodgings of an acquaintance, Lord Cochrane, and borrowed civilian clothes.

His news was false, his despatch a forgery, he had been hired by Cochrane’s uncle, a stock-exchange speculator, to contrive the whole blackguardly hoax. Cochrane knew nothing of the plot, but for the mere lending of that suit of clothes, he was sentenced to the pillory, a year’s imprisonment, and a fine of a thousand pounds. He was struck from the rolls of the navy, expelled from the house of commons, his banner as a Knight of the Bath torn down and thrown from the doors of Henry VII’s Chapel at Westminster. In the end he was driven to disgraceful exile and hopeless ruin.

Four years later Cochrane, commanding the Chilian navy, sailed from Valparaiso to fight the Spanish fleet. Running away from his mother, a son of his—Tom Cochrane, junior—aged five, contrived to sail with the admiral, and in his first engagement, was spattered with the blood and brains of a marine.

“I’m not hurt, papa,” said the imp, “the shot didn’t touch me. Jack says that the ball is not made that will hurt mama’s boy.” Jack proved to be right, but it was in that engagement that Cochrane earned his Spanish title, “The Devil.” Three times he attempted to take Callao from the Spaniards, then in disgusted failure dispersed his useless squadron, and went off with his flag ship to Valdivia. For lack of officers, he kept the deck himself until he dropped. When he went below for a nap, the lieutenant left a middy in command, but the middy went to sleep and the ship was cast away.

Cochrane got her afloat; then, with all his gunpowder wet, went off with his sinking wreck to attack Valdivia. The place was a Spanish stronghold with fifteen forts and one hundred and fifteen guns. Cochrane, preferring to depend on cold steel, left the muskets behind, wrecked his boats in the surf, let his men swim, led them straight at the Spaniards, stormed the batteries, and seized the city. So he found some nice new ships, and an arsenal to equip them, for his next attack on Callao.

He had a fancy for the frigate, Esmeralda, which lay in Callao—thought she would suit him for a cruiser. She happened to be protected by a Spanish fleet, and batteries mounting three hundred guns, but Cochrane did not mind. El Diablo first eased the minds of the Spaniards by sending away two out of his three small vessels, but kept the bulk of their men, and all their boats, a detail not observed by the weary enemy. His boarding party, two hundred and forty strong, stole into the anchorage at midnight, and sorely surprised the Esmeralda. Cochrane, first on board, was felled with the butt end of a musket, and thrown back into his boat grievously hurt, in addition to which he had a bullet through his thigh before he took possession of the frigate. The fleet and batteries had opened fire, but El Diablo noticed that two neutral ships protected themselves with a display of lanterns arranged as a signal, “Please don’t hit me.” “That’s good enough for me,” said Cochrane and copied those lights which protected the neutrals. When the bewildered Spaniards saw his lanterns also, they promptly attacked the neutrals. So Cochrane stole away with his prize.

Although the great sailor delivered Chili and Peru from the Spaniards, the patriots ungratefully despoiled him of all his pay and rewards. Cochrane has been described as “a destroying angel with a limited income and a turn for politics.” Anyway he was misunderstood, and left Chili disgusted, to attend to the liberation of Brazil from the Portuguese. But if the Chilians were thieves, the Brazilians proved to be both thieves and cowards. Reporting to the Brazilian government that all their cartridges, fuses, guns, powder, spars and sails, were alike rotten, and all their men an encumbrance, he dismantled a squadron to find equipment for a single ship, the Pedro Primeiro. This he manned with British and Yankee adventurers. He had two other small but fairly effective ships when he commenced to threaten Bahia. There lay thirteen Portuguese war-ships, mounting four hundred and eighteen guns, seventy merchant ships, and a garrison of several thousand men. El Diablo’s blockade reduced the whole to starvation, the threat of his fireworks sent them into convulsions, and their leaders resolved on flight to Portugal. So the troops were embarked, the rich people took ship with their treasure, and the squadron escorted them to sea, where Cochrane grinned in the offing. For fifteen days he hung in the rear of that fleet, cutting off ships as they straggled. He had not a man to spare for charge of his prizes, but when he caught a ship he staved her water casks, disabled her rigging so that she could only run before the wind back to Bahia, and threw every weapon overboard. He captured seventy odd ships, half the troops, all the treasure, fought and out-maneuvered the war fleet so that he could not be caught, and only let thirteen wretched vessels escape to Lisbon. Such a deed of war has never been matched in the world’s annals, and Cochrane followed it by forcing the whole of Northern Brazil to an abject surrender.

Like the patriots of Chili and Peru, the Brazilians gratefully rewarded their liberator by cheating him out of his pay; so next he turned to deliver Greece from the Turks. Very soon he found that even the Brazilians were perfect gentlemen compared with the Greek patriots, and the heart-sick man went home.

England was sorry for the way she had treated her hero, gave back his naval rank and made him admiral with command-in-chief of a British fleet at sea, restored his banner as a Knight of the Bath in Henry VII’s chapel, granted a pension, and at the end, found him a resting-place in the Abbey. On his father’s death, he succeeded to the earldom of Dundonald, and down to 1860, when the old man went to his rest, his life was devoted to untiring service. He was among the first inventors to apply coal gas to light English streets and homes; he designed the boilers long in use by the English navy; made a bitumen concrete for paving; and offered plans for the reduction of Sebastopol which would have averted all the horrors of the siege. Yet even to his eightieth year he was apt to shock and terrify all official persons, and when he was buried in the nave of the Abbey, Lord Brougham pronounced his strange obituary. “What,” he exclaimed at the grave side, “no cabinet minister, no officer of state to grace this great man’s funeral!” Perhaps they were still scared of the poor old hero.

LV
A.D. 1823

THE SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS

Far back in the long ago time New Zealand was a crowded happy land. Big Maori fortress villages crowned the hilltops, broad farms covered the hillsides; the chiefs kept a good table, cooking was excellent, and especially when prisoners were in season, the people feasted between sleeps, or, should provisions fail, sacked the next parish for a supply of meat. So many parishes were sacked and eaten, that in the course of time the chiefs led their tribes to quite a distance before they could find a nice fat edible village, but still the individual citizen felt crowded after meals, and all was well.

Then came the Pakehas, the white men, trading, with muskets for sale, and the tribe that failed to get a trader to deal with was very soon wiped out. A musket cost a ton of flax, and to pile up enough to buy one a whole tribe must leave its hill fortress to camp in unwholesome flax swamps. The people worked themselves thin to buy guns, powder and iron tools for farming, but they cherished their Pakeha as a priceless treasure in special charge of the chief, and if a white man was eaten, it was clear proof that he was entirely useless alive, or a quite detestable character. The good Pakehas became Maori warriors, a little particular as to their meat being really pig, but otherwise well mannered and popular.

Now of these Pakeha Maoris, one has left a book. He omitted his name from the book of Old New Zealand, and never mentioned dates, but tradition says he was Mr. F. C. Maning, and that he lived as a Maori and trader for forty years, from 1823 to 1863 when the work was published.

In the days when Mr. Maning reached the North Island a trader was valued at twenty times his weight in muskets, equivalent say, to the sum total of the British National Debt. Runaway sailors however, were quite cheap. “Two men of this description were hospitably entertained one night by a chief, a very particular friend of mine, who, to pay himself for his trouble and outlay, ate one of them next morning.”

Maning came ashore on the back of a warrior by the name of Melons, who capsized in an ebb tide running like a sluice, at which the white man, displeased, held the native’s head under water by way of punishment. When they got ashore Melons wanted to get even, so challenged the Pakeha to a wrestling match. Both were in the pink of condition, the Maori, twenty-five years of age, and a heavy-weight, the other a boy full of animal spirits and tough as leather. After the battle Melons sat up rather dazed, offered his hand, and venting his entire stock of English, said “How do you do?”

But then came a powerful chief, by name Relation-eater. “Pretty work this,” he began, “good work. I won’t stand this not at all! not at all! not at all!” (The last sentence took three jumps, a step and a turn round, to keep correct time.) “Who killed the Pakeha? It was Melons. You are a nice man, killing my Pakeha ... we shall be called the ‘Pakeha killkillers’; I shall be sick with shame; the Pakeha will run away; what if you had killed him dead, or broken his bones”.... (Here poor Melones burst out crying like an infant). “Where is the hat? Where the shoes? The Pakeha is robbed! he is murdered!” Here a wild howl from Melons.

The local trader took Mr. Maning to live with him, but it was known to the tribes that the newcomer really and truly belonged to Relation-eater. Not long had he been settled when there occurred a meeting between his tribe and another, a game of bluff, when the warriors of both sides danced the splendid Haka, most blood-curdling, hair-lifting of all ceremonials. Afterward old Relation-eater singled out the horrible savage who had begun the war-dance, and these two tender-hearted individuals for a full half-hour, seated on the ground hanging on each other’s necks, gave vent to a chorus of skilfully modulated howling. “So there was peace,” and during the ceremonies Maning came upon a circle of what seemed to be Maori chiefs, until drawing near he found that their nodding heads had nobody underneath. Raw heads had been stuck on slender rods, with cross sticks to carry the robes, “Looking at the ’eds, sir?” asked an English sailor. “’Eds was werry scarce—they had to tattoo a slave a bit ago, and the villain ran away, tattooin’ and all!”

“What!”

“Bolted before he was fit to kill,” said the sailor, mournful to think how dishonest people could be.

Once the head chief, having need to punish a rebellious vassal, sent Relation-eater, who plundered and burned the offending village. The vassal decamped with his tribe.

“Well, about three months after this, about daylight I was aroused by a great uproar.... Out I ran at once and perceived that M—’s premises were being sacked by the rebellious vassal who ... was taking this means of revenging himself for the rough handling he had received from our chief. Men were rushing in mad haste through the smashed windows and doors, loaded with everything they could lay hands upon.... A large canoe was floating near to the house, and was being rapidly filled with plunder. I saw a fat old Maori woman who was washerwoman, being dragged along the ground by a huge fellow who was trying to tear from her grasp one of my shirts, to which she clung with perfect desperation. I perceived at a glance that the faithful old creature would probably save a sleeve.

“An old man-of-war’s man defending his washing, called out, ‘Hit out, sir! ... our mob will be here in five minutes!’

“The odds were terrible, but ... I at once floored a native who was rushing by me.... I then perceived that he was one of our own people ... so to balance things I knocked down another! and then felt myself seized round the waist from behind.

“The old sailor was down now but fighting three men at once, while his striped shirt and canvas trousers still hung proudly on the fence.

“Then came our mob to the rescue and the assailants fled.

“Some time after this a little incident worth noting happened at my friend M—’s place. Our chief had for some time back a sort of dispute with another magnate.... The question was at last brought to a fair hearing at my friend’s house. The arguments on both sides were very forcible; so much so that in the course of the arbitration our chief and thirty of his principal witnesses were shot dead in a heap before my friend’s door, and sixty others badly wounded, and my friend’s house and store blown up and burnt to ashes.

“My friend was, however, consoled by hundreds of friends who came in large parties to condole with him, and who, as was quite correct in such cases, shot and ate all his stock, sheep, pigs, ducks, geese, fowls, etc., all in high compliment to himself; he felt proud.... He did not, however, survive these honors long.”

Mr. Maning took this poor gentleman’s place as trader, and earnestly studied native etiquette, on which his comments are always deliciously funny. Two young Australians were his guests when there arrived one day a Maori desperado who wanted blankets; and “to explain his views more clearly knocked both my friends down, threatened to kill them both with his tomahawk, then rushed into the bedroom, dragged out all the bedclothes, and burnt them on the kitchen fire.”

A few weeks later, Mr. Maning being alone, and reading a year-old Sydney paper, the desperado called. “‘Friend,’ said I; ‘my advice to you is to be off.’

“He made no answer but a scowl of defiance. ‘I am thinking, friend, that this is my house,’ said I, and springing upon him I placed my foot to his shoulder, and gave him a shove which would have sent most people heels over head.... But quick as lightning ... he bounded from the ground, flung his mat away over his head, and struck a furious blow at my head with his tomahawk. I caught the tomahawk in full descent; the edge grazed my hand; but my arm, stiffened like a bar of iron, arrested the blow. He made one furious, but ineffectual attempt to wrest the tomahawk from my grasp; and then we seized one another round the middle, and struggled like maniacs in the endeavor to dash each other against the boarded floor; I holding on for dear life to the tomahawk ... fastened to his wrist by a strong thong of leather.... At last he got a lock round my leg; and had it not been for the table on which we both fell, and which in smashing to pieces, broke our fall, I might have been disabled.... We now rolled over and over on the floor like two mad bulldogs; he trying to bite, and I trying to stun him by dashing his bullet head against the floor. Up again! another furious struggle in course of which both our heads and half our bodies were dashed through the two glass windows, and every single article of furniture was reduced to atoms. Down again, rolling like made, and dancing about among the rubbish—wreck of the house. Such a battle it was that I can hardly describe it.

“By this time we were both covered with blood from various wounds.... My friend was trying to kill me, and I was only trying to disarm and tie him up ... as there were no witnesses. If I killed him, I might have serious difficulties with his tribe.

“Up again; another terrific tussle for the tomahawk; down again with a crash; and so this life and death battle went on ... for a full hour ... we had another desperate wrestling match. I lifted my friend high in my arms, and dashed him, panting, furious, foaming at the mouth—but beaten—against the ground. His God has deserted him.

“He spoke for the first time, ‘Enough! I am beaten; let me rise.’

“I, incautiously, let go his left arm. Quick as lightning he snatched at a large carving fork ... which was lying among the debris; his fingers touched the handle and it rolled away out of his reach; my life was saved. He then struck me with all his remaining fire on the side of the head, causing the blood to flow out of my mouth. One more short struggle and he was conquered.

“But now I had at last got angry ... I must kill my man, or sooner or later he would kill me.... I told him to get up and die standing. I clutched the tomahawk for the coup de grace. At this instant a thundering sound of feet ... a whole tribe coming ... my friends!... He was dragged by the heels, stamped on, kicked, and thrown half dead, into his canoe.

“All the time we had been fighting, a little slave imp of a boy belonging to my antagonist had been loading the canoe with my goods and chattels.... These were now brought back.”

In the sequel this desperado committed two more murders “and also killed in fair fight, with his own hand the first man in a native battle ... which I witnessed.... At last having attempted to murder another native, he was shot through the heart ... so there died.”

Mr. Maning was never again molested, and making full allowance for their foibles, speaks with a very tender love for that race of warriors.

LVI
A.D. 1840

A TALE OF VENGEANCE

In the days of the grandfathers, say ninety years ago, the Americans had spread their settlements to the Mississippi, and that river was their frontier. The great plains and deserts beyond, all speckled now with farms and glittering with cities, belonged to the red Indian tribes, who hunted the buffalo, farmed their tobacco, played their games, worshiped the Almighty Spirit, and stole one another’s horses, without paying any heed to the white men. For the whites were only a little tribe among them, a wandering tribe of trappers and traders who came from the Rising Sun Land in search of beaver skins. The beaver skins were wanted for top hats in the Land of the Rising Sun.

These white men had strange and potent magic, being masters of fire, and brought from their own land the fire-water and the firearms which made them welcome among the tribes. Sometimes a white man entered the tribes and became an Indian, winning his rank as warrior, marrying, setting up his lodge, and even rising to the grade of chief. Of such was Jim Beckwourth, part white, part negro, a great warrior, captain of the Dog Soldier regiment in the Crow nation. His lodge was full of robes; his wives, by whom he allied himself to the leading families, were always well fed, well dressed, and well behaved. When he came home with his Dog Soldiers he always returned in triumph, with bands of stolen horses, scalps in plenty.

Long afterward, when he was an old man, Jim told his adventures to a writer, who made them into a book, and in this volume he tells the story of Pine Leaf, an Indian girl. She was little more than a child, when, in an attack of the Cheyennes upon the village, her twin brother was killed. Then, in a passion of rage and grief, she cut off one of her fingers as a sacrifice to the Great Spirit, and took oath that she would avenge her brother’s death, never giving herself in marriage until she had taken a hundred trophies in battle. The warriors laughed when she asked leave to join them on the war-path, but Jim let her come with the Dog Soldiers.

Rapidly she learned the trade of war, able as most of the men with bow, spear and gun, running like an antelope, riding gloriously; and yet withal a woman, modest and gentle except in battle, famed for lithe grace and unusual beauty.

“Please marry me,” said Jim, as she rode beside him.

“Yes, when the pine leaves turn yellow.”

Jim thought this over, and complained that pine leaves do not turn yellow.

“Please!” he said.

“Yes,” answered Pine Leaf, “when you see a red-headed Indian.”

Jim, who had wives enough already as became his position, sulked for this heroine.

She would not marry him, and yet once when a powerful Blackfoot had nigh felled Jim with his battle-ax, Pine Leaf speared the man and saved her chief. In that engagement she killed four warriors, fighting at Jim’s side. A bullet cut through his crown of eagle plumes. “These Blackfeet shoot close,” said Pine Leaf, “but never fear; the Great Spirit will not let them harm us.”

In the next fight, a Blackfoot’s lance pierced Jim’s legging, and then transfixed his horse, pinning him to the animal in its death agony. Pine Leaf hauled out the lance and released him. “I sprang upon the horse,” says Jim, “of a young warrior who was wounded. The heroine then joined me, and we dashed into the conflict. Her horse was immediately after killed, and I discovered her in a hand-to-hand encounter with a dismounted Blackfoot, her lance in one hand and her battle-ax in the other. Three or four springs of my steed brought me upon her antagonist, and striking him with the breast of my horse when at full speed, I knocked him to the earth senseless, and before he could recover, she pinned him to the earth and scalped him. When I had overturned the warrior, Pine Leaf called to me, ‘Ride on, I have him safe now.’”

She was soon at his side chasing the flying enemy, who left ninety-one killed in the field.

In the next raid, Pine Leaf took two prisoners, and offered Jim one of them to wife. But Jim had wives enough of the usual kind, whereas now this girl’s presence at his side in battle gave him increased strength and courage, while daily his love for her flamed higher.

At times the girl was sulky because she was denied the rank of warrior, shut out from the war-path secret, the hidden matters known only to fighting men. This secret was that the warriors shared all knowledge in common as to the frailties of women who erred, but Pine Leaf was barred out.

There is no space here for a tithe of her battles, while that great vengeance for her brother piled up the tale of scalps. In one victorious action, charging at Jim’s side, she was struck by a bullet which broke her left arm. With the wounded arm nursed in her bosom she grew desperate, and three warriors fell to her ax before she fainted from loss of blood.

Before she was well recovered from this wound, she was afield again, despite Jim’s pleading and in defiance of his orders, and in an invasion of the Cheyenne country, was shot through the body.

“Well,” she said afterward, as she lay at the point of death, “I’m sorry that I did not listen to my chief, but I gained two trophies.” The very rescue of her had cost the lives of four warriors.

While she lay through many months of pain, tended by Jim’s head wife, her bosom friend, and by Black Panther, Jim’s little son, the chief was away fighting the great campaigns, which made him famous through all the Indian tribes. Medicine Calf was his title now, and his rank, head chief, for he was one of two sovereigns of equal standing, who reigned over the two tribes of the Crow nation.

While Pine Leaf sat in the lodge, her heart was crying, but at last she was able to ride again to war. So came a disastrous expedition, in which Medicine Calf and Pine Leaf, with fifty Crow warriors and an American gentleman named Hunter, their guest, were caught in a pit on a hillside, hemmed round by several hundred Blackfeet. They had to cut their way through the enemy’s force, and when Hunter fell, the chief stayed behind to die with him. Half the Crows were slain, and still the Blackfeet pressed hardly upon them. Medicine Calf was at the rear when Pine Leaf joined him. “Why do you wait to be killed?” she asked. “If you wish to die, let us return together. I will die with you.”

They escaped, most of them wounded who survived, and almost dying of cold and hunger before they came to the distant village of their tribe.

Jim’s next adventure was a horse-stealing raid into Canada, when he was absent fourteen months, and the Crows mourned Medicine Calf for dead. On his triumphant return, mounted on a piebald charger the chief had presented to her, Pine Leaf rode with him once more in his campaigns. During one of these raids, being afoot, she pursued and caught a young Blackfoot warrior, then made him her prisoner. He became her slave, her brother by tribal law, and rose to eminence as her private warrior.

Jim had founded a trading post for the white men, and the United States paid him four hundred pounds a year for keeping his people from slaughtering pioneers. So growing rich, he tired of Indian warfare, and left his tribe for a long journey. As a white man he came to the house of his own sisters in the city of Saint Louis, but they seemed strangers now, and his heart began to cry for the wild life. Then news came that his Crows were slaying white men, and in haste he rode to the rescue, to find his warriors besieging Fort Cass. He came among them, their head chief, Medicine Calf, black with fury at their misdeeds, so that the council sat bewildered, wondering how to sue for his forgiveness. Into that council came Pine Leaf. “Warriors,” she cried, “I make sacrifice for my people!” She told them of her brother’s death and of her great vengeance, now completed in that she had slain a hundred men to be his servants in the other world. So she laid down her arms. “I have hurled my last lance; I am a warrior no more. To-day Medicine Calf has returned. He has returned angry at the follies of his people, and they fear that he will again leave them. They believe that he loves me, and that my devotion to him will attach him to the nation. I, therefore, bestow myself upon him; perhaps he will be contented with me and will leave us no more. Warriors, farewell!”

So Jim Beckwourth, who was Medicine Calf, head chief of the Crow nation, was wedded to Pine Leaf, their great heroine.

Alas for Jim’s morals, they did not live happily ever after, for the scalawag deserted all his wives, titles and honors, to become a mean trader, selling that fire-water which sapped the manhood of the warrior tribes, and left them naked in the bitter days to come. Pine Leaf and her kindred are gone away into the shadows, and over their wide lands spread green fields, now glittering cities of the great republic.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations.

The pages in the introductory chapter “Adventurers” were not numbered. Transcriber did so with Roman numbers.

Page 210: “the overload Joy” may be a misprint for “the overloaded Joy”.

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Table of Contents

- CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE
- ADVENTURERS
- CONTENTS
- CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE

- CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE I A. D. 984 THE VIKINGS IN AMERICA

- II A. D. 1248 THE CRUSADERS

- III A. D. 1260 THE MIDDLE AGES IN ASIA

- IV A. D. 1322 THE MARVELOUS ADVENTURES OF SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE

- V A. D. 1492 COLUMBUS
- VI A. D. 1519 THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO
- VII A. D. 1532 THE CONQUEST OF PERU
- VIII A. D. 1534 THE CORSAIRS
- IX A. D. 1542 PORTUGAL IN THE INDIES
- X A. D. 1841 RAJAH BROOKE

- XI A. D. 1842 THE SPIES

- I

- II

- XII A. D. 1842 A YEAR’S ADVENTURES
- XIII A.D. 1843 KIT CARSON
- XIV A. D. 1845 THE MAN WHO WAS A GOD
- XV A. D. 1853 THE GREAT FILIBUSTER
- XVI A. D. 1857 BUFFALO BILL

- XVII A. D. 1860 THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT

- I

- II

- XVIII A. D. 1867 THE HERO-STATESMAN
- XIX A. D. 1870 THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
- XX A. D. 1871 LORD STRATHCONA
- XXI A. D. 1872 THE SEA HUNTERS
- XXII A. D. 1879 THE BUSHRANGERS
- XXIII A. D. 1883 THE PASSING OF THE BISON
- XXIV A. D. 1885 GORDON
- XXV A. D. 1896 THE OUTLAW
- XXVI A. D. 1898 A KING AT TWENTY-FIVE
- XXVII A. D. 1898 JOURNEY OF EWART GROGAN
- XXVIII A. D. 1900 THE COWBOY PRESIDENT
- XXIX A. D. 1905 THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE
- XXX A. D. 1588 JOHN HAWKINS
- XXXI A. D. 1573 FRANCIS DRAKE
- XXXII A. D. 1587 THE FOUR ARMADAS
- XXXIII A. D. 1583 SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT
- XXXIV A. D. 1603 SIR WALTER RALEIGH
- XXXV A. D. 1608 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH
- XXXVI A. D. 1670 THE BUCCANEERS
- XXXVII A. D. 1682 THE VOYAGEURS
- XXXVIII A. D. 1741 THE EXPLORERS
- XXXIX A. D. 1750 THE PIRATES
- XL A. D. 1776 DANIEL BOONE
- XLI A. D. 1813 ANDREW JACKSON
- XLII A. D. 1836 SAM HOUSTON
- XLIII A. D. 1836 DAVY CROCKETT
- XLIV A. D. 1793 ALEXANDER MACKENZIE
- XLV THE WHITE MAN’S COMING
- XLVI THE BEAVER
- XLVII A. D. 1911 THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES
- XLVIII WOMEN
- XLIX THE CONQUERORS OF INDIA
- L A. D. 1805 THE MAN WHO SHOT LORD NELSON
- LI A. D. 1812 THE FALL OF NAPOLEON
- LII A. D. 1813 RISING WOLF
- LIII A. D. 1819 SIMON BOLIVAR
- LIV A. D. 1812 THE ALMIRANTE COCHRANE
- LV A.D. 1823 THE SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS
- LVI A.D. 1840 A TALE OF VENGEANCE
- Transcriber’s Notes
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE