all eyes were fixed upon it. At first, it swept on without cohering, like a cataract of sand; but, on coming in contact with the moister snow below, it formed into a thousand balls and masses, some rolling and some sliding, but each gathering bulk and velocity as it went.
By the aid of our glasses we were able to sweep the rough slopes and precipitous descents below, to the distance of many miles; and, forgetting De Aery, we watched the development of the phenomenon with terror. The larger slides gradually absorbed the smaller ones, as common fish are swallowed by sharks; but those which remained, fattened and expanded by what they fed on, assumed enormous dimensions. Choosing different paths, they pursued their course in smoking tracks of devastation. Rocks, precipices, forests, furnished no obstruction. Roaring, crashing onward, as though Mars or the Sun had opened its batteries upon us, those sliding, whirling worlds of snow swept through valleys large enough to have furnished sites for cities, without a check, and bore down or over-leaped all obstacles, as easily as a man would walk over an ant-hill, or some hollow where a toad had burrowed. Finally they were lost to sight, passing behind intervening spurs or ridges of the mountain, or becoming hidden in the cloud-mists which lay heavily about its base; but the sound continued to roll back upon us for some time, like the roar of distant artillery. I could no longer wonder at the terror with which the cry of an avalanche is said to fill the dwellers among the Alps.
As this absorbing pageant of the mountains disappeared, our thoughts reverted to De Aery. Had he been carried away by the snow-slip? or was his mangled corse below us among the black crags laid bare by that catastrophe? Turning my gaze beneath, I discovered, far down, many hundred feet, a moving object, scarcely bigger than a fly, and, on bringing my glass to bear upon it, perceived that it was the Frenchman. He was standing on a bare rib of rock, with his flag still in his hand, and apparently unharmed. Waving the ensign to attract our attention, at the same time he shouted with the whole strength of his lungs. But his voice scarcely reached us, and probably would not alone have attracted our notice. We replied with encouraging cheers; and the “three times three,” which we had intended for the American eagle, was given on the spot to De Aery.
But how to rescue him from his perilous condition was indeed a serious question. The “Flying Cloud,” it was obvious, with her great size and spreading pinions, could not venture among those ticklish quicksands, whose insecure foundations had just been so strikingly illustrated before us. Indeed, the slightest jar might precipitate another fall of snow, and bury the object of our solicitude five hundred feet deep in its bosom. The sagacity of Mr. Bonflon relieved us from our dilemma. He hoisted out the small car or tender, and, letting it down with great care and precision, safely accomplished the object. In the space of half an hour, De Aery, without a scratch, and, like a gallant Gaul, rather proud of his adventure than frightened at it, was again restored to our arms.
Drawing off from our dangerous proximity to the “Old Man of the Mountain,” which had so nearly proved fatal to at least one of our number, but astonished beyond measure at the novelty of our experiences and the grandeur of the scenes we had witnessed, we retraced our course for a short distance, and, gradually lessening the interval between us and the earth, soon had the satisfaction of hearing the cry of “Land, ho!” from the look-out man. The valley was in sight where we were to take in water and enjoy a little picnic on the green grass, ere the form and smell of Mother Earth, with her homely but blessed realities, should be quite forgotten.
We effected our landing in complete safety. The spot was a little, luxurious nook among the lesser hills, with few trees, but full of wild flowers, wild fruits, and wild grasses. Everything about it was wild, but cheering and charming, especially to air-wanderers like us. The foot of the white hunter, or even of the roving Indian, had perhaps never visited it, nor foraging-parties of the buffalo or deer, for we saw no signs of them; but birds of varied plumage and song, and troops of squirrels, with footprints here and there of the grizzly bear, and a drove of wild turkeys, with red heads aloft, rushing over an eminence at our left as we approached, and an occasional whir of a rattlesnake at our feet, sufficiently indicated the kind of denizens by which the plateau was inhabited.
Here, on the rich sward and delicate mosses, under the shadow of some willows, we spread out our repast by the side of a clear mountain-spring; and, to say nothing of old Otard and Schiedam Schnapps, opened some bottles of Sparkling Catawba, and old Jersey Champagne, of a remote vintage, which I have now quite forgotten. With the flow of these beverages flowed our speech, in jovial words and songs and raillery enough, if not in wit. De Aery, as having by a hair’s breadth just escaped with his life, and in virtue of his extraordinary feat in leaping five hundred feet or more through a bank of snow, now that the danger was over, was made the butt of much pleasantry, which he bore with his usual equanimity and grace.
When these arrowy flights at the expense of the light-hearted Frenchman had exhausted themselves, I took occasion to inquire of him what his sensations were during his brief burial. He replied as follows:–
“I thought nothing at all about it. I remember feeling chagrined because I was making a failure, and clung tight to my flag, fearing to lose that too. _Mon Dieu!_ It might be expected that one would feel cold, buried up in ice; but such was not the case. I was hot. The snow burned my face, as it came in contact with it. As to the ride, it was pleasant enough, but rather rapid and perplexing to the breath. It was like sinking into a pit of quicksand, where everything gives way below one, as though the bottom of the world had fallen out. There was the struggle of a moment to keep the fine snow out of my mouth and nostrils, as I drew in my breath, and the next instant my feet came in contact with the solid rock, where you discovered me. The magnificent avalanche you describe I know nothing about. I neither heard nor saw anything of it, only as I afterward examined the marks it had left behind it. This leads me to suppose that I was a good deal confused at the time, though I was not aware of it. Indeed, I have an impression of seeming to turn somersets in my descent, and this may account for it. But, for the honor of France, I saved my adopted country’s flag.”
High-minded Gaul! We all praised and honored him, and comforted him for his disappointment. It was a noble attempt he had made, to nail the American banner to the head of Mount James, impelled by the loftiest of motives,–and, like many others of its kind, had for the present failed. At some other time he might prove more successful; or some other might achieve the object in his place, and so appropriate his laurels; but no one would be likely to excel him in his flying leap. In this he had distanced even the famous traveller at Rhodes.
Having given a couple of hours to this species of recreation, we weighed anchor, and again got under way. Slowly and smoothly, without a ripple or a jar, we ascended through the blue ether to our former altitude, and floated off over those majestic mountain-tops, toward the west. Loath to part from scenes of such impressive beauty,–scenes, alone paralleled in our recollection by fabulous tales of Oriental enchantment,–we gazed behind us at those flashing crests of alabaster, until they grew small in the distance, and finally were wholly lost to our sight. With them disappeared the last vestige of the solid earth, and we were again afloat in space.
The following night and day were passed like their predecessors. Another night came, and we were over the eastern bound of the State of California. A few hours more, without accident, would terminate our remarkable voyage, and set us down in the city of San Francisco. All of us were brimming high with hope. Though we did not anticipate reaching the station before one or two o’clock in the morning, and probably should not disembark before dawn, we were loath to retire to rest. It was near midnight before all of us were in our berths.
But when at length there, I found it impossible to sleep. The excitement attendant on the beginning of the trip seemed to have returned on me with a double force. I listened for some sound to relieve the awful stillness which, like the wing of Death, seemed to have settled over the “Flying Cloud”; but there was no soughing of the wind, as at sea, and no noise to be heard, save the monotonous movement of the engine and the paddle-wheels; and this, so evenly did they play, was rather a motion than a sound.
This period of restlessness was succeeded by one of strange bewilderment, which might have been sleep, or might not Rapidly changing scenes and fantastic figures, some of them beautiful and some horrible, flitted before me like a dissolving panorama. A band, as though of steel wire, seemed to encircle my brain, and to compress it closer and closer; and the spine, for its whole length, felt as though subjected to a like crushing pressure.
How long this state of hallucination continued I have no means of knowing. From it, by a great effort, I suddenly aroused myself, and returned to my proper senses. Where I was, and all the extraordinary events of the last few days, were clear in my recollection. But I was weighed down with weakness, and found, on attempting to speak, that I had no voice.
Suspecting that I had been stricken by some terrible disease, I attempted to rise; and, loath to disturb any of my fellow-travellers, undertook to crawl out upon the upper deck. This, after a good deal of effort, I accomplished. Lying, therefore,–I could not stand,–I prayed for a breath of air to relieve my hot and oppressed brow; but in vain. The atmosphere seemed gone. Chill and dark, the heavens spread out above me without a twinkle or a smile. The full-moon was there, and there was no cloud or haze to obscure her light; but she did not shine. Her white, rayless face was a mockery to the night. The same was true of the stars. The dazzling canopy was faded out, and Cygnus and the Great Bear were subdued to pallid points, like patches of white-gray paper stuck upon a wall.
Floating by the side of the “Flying Cloud,” and nearly of her size, I discovered a dark, irregular object, and dragged myself to the edge of the deck to investigate it more closely. The two came together, but without damage or friction. They touched and parted, like substances nearly at rest in still water. I put out my hand on the strange visitor, and received a pretty severe shock, as though I had been subjected to the action of an electric battery. At the same time, a light, bluish flame ran over its surface, showing me more accurately its form and dimensions. To the touch, it was solid and cold, like iron or granite. I pressed upon it, and it yielded like a floating dish. I tried to break off a fragment, but was unable to separate so much as a scale.
A moment’s reflection convinced me of the nature of this apparent island in the air. It was an immense aerolite; and with this conviction came the solution of my own painful state. We had unconsciously passed beyond the controlling power of the earth’s gravitation, into that region of the upper atmosphere, where, science informs us, these meteoric stones float in equilibrium, until some accidental impulse throws them from their balance, when they are precipitated to the surface of the earth. I must be dying for lack of air. And the man at the helm, where was he? He must have fallen asleep, and left our vessel to her own buoyant fancies. And my companions! Bonflon! De Aery! All ere this might have perished, and the “Flying Cloud,” aside from myself, be bearing into these upper altitudes nothing but a load of death.
Terror-struck, I dragged myself, with all the speed I could accomplish, to the stern. There sat the helmsman at his post, but asleep or insensible. I shook him, but he gave no signs of life. I shouted with what little strength I had, but in vain.
“Wake up! wake up!” I cried, “or we are lost!”
At length he opened his eyes, but did not move.
“Wake up!” I screamed again. “Breakers ahead, and worse. You have let the craft run wild. We are above our level. We are all dying for lack of air.”
“Oh, let me sleep!” he murmured. “I must sleep a little while longer. It can’t–can’t be morning yet.”
By this time, fright, or the necessity of the occasion, was renewing my strength.
“Dick!” I shouted in his ear, “Dick, you scoundrel! you will murder us all. Do your duty, or I will shoot you!”
With this I discharged a barrel of my revolver above his head, which, like my voice in my efforts at hallooing, sounded only as a faint echo of itself, but, nevertheless, proved sufficient to give his dormant faculties a shock. He started up, and, though still but half-conscious, took the helm and gave it the direction I bade him.
From him I hastened to the engineer, whom I found in a like state of insensibility. I succeeded in arousing him; but it was necessary that he should be made to comprehend the difficulties of our situation,–that our craft, water-logged as it were, would float forever where she was, for all anybody could say to the contrary, until forced down by the power of the engine alone to lower and life-giving atmospheric planes. To get him to understand this was not so easy. But I succeeded in part, and, in my anxiety for my friends, rushed below to look after their condition.
As I anticipated, I found every one of them in a state of incipient asphyxia. But the “Flying Cloud” was already descending into denser air. Oxygen and pressure were performing their mystic work; and within half an hour I had the pleasure of seeing them all restored to consciousness and rapidly returning strength. But the renewed lights exposed a sight almost too frightful to mention. Every man of us was crimson from escaped blood, which seemed to have oozed forth, like a pale-red dew, from every pore of our bodies.
Messrs. Bonflon and De Aery, when they came to realize the danger from which we had so narrowly escaped, were nearly dumb with horror. The lively Frenchman exhibited a sensibility which the extremity of his single peril, a day or two before, had failed to call up. He wept aloud. Mr. Bonflon was circumspect and thoughtful. He did not lose his Yankee balance; but both of them, each in his own way, overwhelmed me with expressions of obligation.
But the dangers of this dreadful night–a night which can never pass from my recollection–were not yet over. We were all gathered in the main cabin, congratulating each other, next after our escape, on our rapidly returning strength,–happy in the thought that our trip out, though sprinkled with danger, was so near a prosperous completion, and almost momently expecting to hear the stroke of the bell which should announce to us that the red light to designate our place of landing was in sight, when, instead of the silver ring of this messenger of peace, we were startled and horrified by an alarm of fire.
Bonflon and De Aery rushed to the engine-room. A cloud of smoke poured out from the door by which they disappeared. They were gone only for a moment; for no man could remain in the hell of flames and vapors into which they ventured and live. They came out dragging with them the half-suffocated, scorched, and blazing engineer. How the accident occurred, it was impossible to divine and useless to inquire. Closing the door tightly after them to confine the flames, where confinement, except for the briefest period, among matter so combustible, and partitions scarcely more formidable than those of a paper bandbox, was clearly impossible, they threw the burning engineer into our arms, and themselves took the management of the craft.
De Aery, in this crisis, rose from the man to the hero, almost to a demigod. His orders rung through the startled air clear and round like the voice of a golden bell. Bonflon seconded him with coolness and decision. With us a moment sufficed to extinguish the burning garments of the engineer; but by that time the flames had burst from the engine-room, and that part of the beautiful boat was a ragged, crackling ruin.
Fleeing to the upper deck, and taking refuge in the bow, we became sensible that we were descending through the air with frightful rapidity. When the accident occurred, we were already at a low level, on the look-out for the signal at our station. This circumstance was in our favor, if anything could be, when a danger so imminent and dreadful was pressing. Land, like a hazy shadow, was just discoverable in the dim distance below us; and oh for one foot of it as a place of rest! But if it were possible to escape the flames, it was clear enough that we must be dashed in pieces against the solid earth.
De Aery was now the only one remaining in the stern. He was exposed to great peril, but refused to quit his post while it remained possible to control in any degree the motions of the vessel. The flames played about him without shaking his courage or his coolness, and broke through upon the upper deck and separated him from us with a seething hedge and whirlpool of fire. We lost sight of him, and supposed he had perished, when suddenly his voice, issuing from the midst of the furnace, rung on our ears like a trumpet.
“Up the ropes! quit the ship, or you die, every man of you!” he shouted; and at the same time we discovered him emerging from the flames and smoke, and ascending the network which enveloped the balloon and connected it with the ship. We followed his example; some of our number–the more timid or the more daring, it would be difficult to say which–continuing the ascent until they had reached the upper surface of the gas-chamber, and placed its entire fragile bulk between them and the hazard they most dreaded.
The momentary refuge afforded by these upper works was scarcely attained, when the bow, where we had stood but a minute before, and the whole hull of the “Flying Cloud” with it, blended together in one mass of surging fire. The appearance in the heavens of this strange sight, to a watcher at some _rancho_, or in the not distant city of San Francisco, if such there were, must have afforded a more vivid illustration of the fall of a blazing star or meteoric wonder than astronomer has ever put on record.
But I delay the catastrophe. Land and water soon became distinguishable from each other beneath us, and hills from valleys, and forests from bare plains. There was little wind, except the fierce currents rushing upward, produced by the heat of our own conflagration. This, for the time, subdued everything to itself, and, as we approached the ground, served by its direction to modify the fury of our descent. The denser lower atmosphere also contributed to the same end; and, most fortunately, when we reached the earth, and the collision came, we struck in water instead of on the land.
Still, the collision was a fierce one. With the mass of fire between us and the ground directly below, blinded by the smoke and half suffocated by the heat, we were not conscious of the good fortune that awaited us, until, with a swoop and a plunge, we found ourselves submerged, and, with an equal velocity, immediately thrown back again by the buoyant force of the balloon into the open air. The flood of fire in which we had descended was instantly extinguished; and we awoke to a sense of our possible safety in darkness rendered doubly profound by the contrast.
Daylight was near at hand. By a careful adjustment of our weights we kept the balloon from rolling, and sustained ourselves above the water among the netting. As morning came, we discovered we had landed in a small lake, hardly large enough to be dignified with the name, but obviously of considerable depth. The shore was not distant: and as the day was sultry, with a little grateful labor at swimming and towing, on the part of a few of us, we soon reached it. There we examined into each other’s condition. Scarce one of us but was able to show damage by fire, or from too rough contact with the fragments of the “Flying Cloud,” which preceded us in our plunge into the lake. But no bones were broken, and no one badly flayed. The case of the engineer was the worst; but even he was able to keep upon his feet, and pronounced in no danger.
No hut or field or sign of inhabitants was to be seen. With mixed feelings, in which, for the present at least, the sense of personal safety triumphed over all regrets, even with Messrs. Bonflon and De Aery, at the shipwreck of so many brilliant hopes, we scuttled that part of our craft still afloat, and sunk it in the lake; and with weary footsteps, but unobstructed with baggage, as near as we could determine by the aid of a compass, took the direction toward San Francisco. A couple of hours brought us to the _rancho_ of Senor Jose Dianza, who received us as a band of pilgrims over the Plains, who, at the hands of robbers and the elements, had lost everything but life, and helped us on to the city of the land of gold.
It is needless to detain the reader with the particulars of our return. They were such only as occur to thousands in the rough and circuitous transit between San Francisco and New York. We came home by the Isthmus route, and in ships that ploughed the honest waves. We explained our absence to our disturbed families and friends as best we might; and some will remember–and if they do not, they can refresh their recollection by a reference to the public prints–that several missing gentlemen of some importance in the world, about that time, suddenly reappeared upon the stage of action.
We resolved that the whole affair in which we had been engaged should remain forever buried in oblivion. But time and reflection have wrought a change with me, though I shall not presume to disturb the veil which covers my associates. I have come to consider the adventure quite too good to be lost, and the experiment in aerial navigation, which came so near proving successful, of too much importance to science to be suppressed. Hence, conquering my repugnance, I have decided, on my own responsibility, to give these interesting and valuable particulars to the world.
* * * * *
DOG-TALK.
Exactly,–Dog-Talk. And I sit down to write some of it out, in the middle of this pleasant month of May, lest, peradventure, if I postpone my task for a few weeks longer, I may fall in with my memories some time in the raging days of the dog-star, when the overwhelming sense of dog, in which, for the true working out of these memories, I must first dip my mind, may debar me from enjoying to the fullest extent the bounteous tap of Croton water which tinkles with such rivulet chiming from the silver (German) faucet into the marble (wash-hand) basin with which one side of my apartment is adorned. Hydrophobia is one thing, and hydrophobiaephobia is another.
Although but the mid-time of May, as I have said, the thermometer is reported at something not far short of eighty degrees, and that in as much shade as can possibly be had in the street in which I write, which is a brick street of New York, with one catalpa-tree in it,–a poor, vegetable fakir, standing on his one leg at a distance of about three blocks from “our corner,” and sprawling out all round with his shrivelled hands, as if to catch the passing robe of some rambling breath of fresh air. With a trustful hope that this statement may be accepted in extenuation of the inevitable platitudinism down the gently inclined plane of which I feel myself impelled to slide into my memories, I will endeavor to bring some of the latter to the surface.
I fancy it has been already remarked by writers,–though that will not prevent me from repeating it,–that, of all the four-footed friends of man, none, not even that corpulent chap, Elephant, has contributed more voluminously to the literature of anecdote than that first-rate fellow, Dog. Let me also take the liberty of recalling, in corroboration of others who have previously drawn attention to the same fact, that from the earliest ages we trace Dog as the companion, friend, and ally of him whom alone he condescends to acknowledge as master, to accept as tutor, and to sympathize with in the spirit of hostility to obnoxious things, and in attachment to the sports of the field. It can hardly be necessary for me to explain that I allude to Man.
Above all other created things, Man is the one that laughs,–a remark, so far the present writer is aware, entirely original, and vastly more indicative of genius than the best of the platitudes incidentally referred to above. Some of the lower animals weep. The deer, for instance, has been observed to shed tears in the extremity of terror, and the hard-pressed hare cries like an ill-regulated child; but not one of them indicates any emotion analogous to the laughter of Man, excepting Dog. True it is, that we hear of a “horse-laugh.” There is a beast, too, called the “laughing hyena,” and a dismal beast he is. Among the feathered tribes there flourishes an individual named the “laughing falcon.” From inanimate creation the poet has evoked for us “Minni Haha,” or the “laughing water”; and the expression, “it would make a cat laugh,” is frequently made use of in reference to anything very ridiculous. But in every one of these cases of so-called laughing things, the sound only of the laughter is there,–the sentiment is wanting. Not so with Dog, who, when the spirit of fun moves him, smiles beamingly with his eyes, giggles manifestly with his chops, or laughs uproariously with his tail, according as the occasion demands.
Yet, with all his wonderful gifts of intellectual ability, we cannot concede to Dog the possession of the supereminent faculty called reason,–the faculty which, as an eminent writer–Tupper, I think–remarks, places Man immeasurably above all the other animals stationed so much lower down, and by virtue of which he is lord and master of them all, leading Behemoth over the land with a ring in his nose, and towing Leviathan across the waters with a harpoon in his ribs. Fine as the line may appear which separates instinct from the divine gift of reason, we must see that progress, an essential consequence of the latter, is denied to the former. It is quite possible that the dogs which accompanied the first mariner in the first argosy were educated to fetch and carry, or were even so far accomplished as to sit up and beg; and it is but little more their descendants can do at the present day. But what of Man, who weathered safely the storm of storms in that same Ark? Compare that venerated bark, as imagined by us from traditionary description, with the least eligible of the ferry-boats which scud across our crowded rivers, and we have answer enough for the present, so far as progress is concerned.
Well, if Dog has never invented so much even as a patent rat-trap,–a thing, you see, that might have saved him some labor,–if he persists in disregarding the majesty of Fashion, and continues to move about in society with the same kind of coat on his back as that worn by his first ancestor, hatless, disaffected of shoes, and totally obtuse to the amenity of an umbrella,–if, in fact, his only approach to humanity, as distinguished by apparel, is his occasional adoption of a collar precisely similar in general effect to those in which Fashion, empress of Broadway and of a great many other ways, condemns her wretched votaries to partial strangulation,–well, say I again, in spite of all this, Dog is prime company. Intimately associated as I have been from earliest boyhood with many excellent fellows of the family, from social communion with which I am at present debarred only by the direful necessity of dwelling in lodgings,–a necessity which, if distasteful to Man, to Dog, oh, how fatal!–bound, I may say, as I was for years, not by straps and chains only, but by ties of confident friendship also, to canine comrades possessing the purest elements of worth and humor, it is to me a task not altogether devoid of interest to fall back on such memories as may enable me to chronicle a few reminiscences of the nobilities and eccentricities of the race.
Before I discourse of individual dogs of the present century, however, with whom I have had the pleasure of being personally acquainted, let me reproduce the following short tale of a dog from an old French volume,–a tome fittingly adorned with ears of that noble animal innumerable.
Persimel St. Remi was a gentleman of fortune, whose income was derived principally from large rented farms, the dues arising from which he sometimes collected himself, in preference to intrusting that important duty to a steward or agent. On his excursions for that purpose, he was generally accompanied by a favorite little spaniel, of a kind too small to be of any service to him as an escort, but inestimable for his qualities as a companion. One day M. St. Remi had ridden a long way to collect certain sums of money due him in arrears of rent, but which he had little expectation of being able to obtain without further trouble. To his agreeable surprise, however, his tenants paid him the whole arrears,–an event so unexpected that he could not conceal his exultation as he clinked the heavy bag of money on the pommel of his saddle, when cordially taking leave of his farmers. Merle–that was the little dog’s name–was equally delighted; for his moods were always regulated by those of his master,–such is the mysterious sympathy between Dog and us; and ever as his master laughed cheerily to the chink of the gold, on his homeward ride, Merle barked and bounded alongside of him, clearly understanding that gold is a thing to be laughed _with_ and not _at_, and that it is no laughing matter to be without it. This is what the old French writer asserts respecting the inward sentiments of that small dog. How he arrived at a knowledge of them, I know not, nor is it any business of mine. Well, Persimel St. Remi galloped on and on, until they reached the way-side well about halfway home,–the old stone trough, with the water sparkling into it from the grotesque spout carved out of the rock. Here he pulled bridle to water his horse, refreshed him further by slackening the girths of the saddle, and, unstrapping the bag of gold which was attached to the holsters, he placed it by his side on the rock, while he splashed his hands and face in the cool water. By-and-by he drew up the girths, mounted his horse dreamily, for he was a man of contemplative moods, and rode away from the way-side well, forgetful of his treasure, which lay temptingly on the flat rock, ready to the hand of the first comer. Not so his faithful dog, who, having in vain tried to lift the bag, which was too heavy for him, ran swiftly after the rider, whose attention he strove to arouse by barking violently, and careering round and round the horse when he slackened his pace. Failing thus to attract notice, he went so far in his zeal as to bite the horse pretty severely in the fetlock, which caused him to swerve on one side, and wake up his master to a vague sense of something wrong, the first idea that occurred to him being that his dog had gone mad. Cases of hydrophobia had lately occurred in the neighborhood, and St. Remi was convinced of the seizure by it of his poor dog when they reached the brook which flowed across the road. Instead of luxuriating and drinking in this, as he usually did, the spaniel circled away to where it narrowed, and leaped across it in his run. Then St. Remi, drawing a pistol from his holsters, fired at and shot his faithful companion, averting his eyes as he touched the fatal trigger, and galloping rapidly away from the death-cry that smote upon his ear; and, as he dashed the spurs into his reeking horse, he invoked maledictions on the money which was the cause of this unfortunate journey. The money! but where was it? Suddenly he pulled up his harassed steed, and the unhappy truth flashed upon him: he had left his treasure by the way-side well, and had shot his faithful dog for trying to remind him of it. Riding back to the well with mad speed, he found by traces of blood upon the path that the poor spaniel had dragged himself thither again to guard his master’s gold to the last. There he found him, stretched out beside the bag of money, with just strength enough left to raise his head towards his master, with a look of forgiveness, ere he died.
The chronicler does not state what M. St. Remi did with all that money,–though we may be safe in supposing that he very exactly knew; but we would fain hope that he expended a moiety of it in founding a retreat for decayed dogs, as a monument to the poor little spaniel so faithful to him in life and in death.
Sporting dogs,–the setter, the pointer, the fox-hound, and all the several varieties of hound, have had their historians, from Dame Juliana Berners to Peter Beckford, and that more recent Peter whose patronymic was Hawker; while, on our side of the Atlantic, the late “Frank Forester” has reduced kennel-practice to a system from which the Nimrod of the ramrod may not profitably depart. Apart from history, however, and from didactic argument, the individual trails of dogs remarkable in their day have but too rarely been recorded. Certainly the shepherd’s colley has been admirably individualized by the Ettrick Shepherd; but many a terrier–“a fellow of infinite fancy”–has passed through the world’s worry without ever seeing his name in print,–unless, indeed, he happened to have fallen among thieves, and found himself lamp-posted accordingly,–has passed the grizzle-muzzle period of doghood unbiographied, and gone down to his last burrow unsung.
Among the regrets with which we are saddled for our omissions, not the least of mine is now galling me for having neglected to reduce to writing, on the spot, curious facts which fell under my immediate notice in the course of many years’ companionship with a somewhat miscellaneous assortment of canine friends,–
“The little dogs and all,
Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart.”
Nevertheless, I will endeavor to bring together in this paper such stray reminiscences of doggery in general as may occur to me while I write, illustrating the subject, as I proceed, with occasional passages from the careers, of humble, but eccentric individuals of the race.
Extinction has been the fate of some varieties of the dog, which have been either superseded by the progress of machinery, or have gone to decay in consequence of the annihilation of the animals for the chase of which they were maintained. When there were wolves in the mosses and caverns of Ireland, for example, there were wolf-dogs to hunt them. The last wolf of that country–and _he_ was a wonder, from the then rarity of the animal–was killed about one hundred and fifty years ago; and although the breed of hound then known as the Irish wolf-dog–one of the largest, noblest, and most courageous of the canine race–was kept up to some extent for nearly a century later, we doubt much whether a single pure specimen of the variety is now in existence; unless, indeed, it may so happen that some _ultimus Romanorum_ of the tribe still licks his patrician chops in the kennels of the Marquis of Sligo, in the possession of which family the last litter was many years ago supposed to be.
Reverting to times when I was a boy, I remember me of a generation of bandy-legged, foxy little curs, long of body, short of limb, tight of skin, and “scant of breath,” which were regarded as the legitimate descendants of a superseded class,–the Turnspit of good old times. The daily round of duty of that useful _aide-de-cuisine_ transpired in the revolution of a wheel, along the monotonous journey of which he cantered, as a squirrel does in his rolling cage, keeping in motion, by his professional exertions, the wheels and spinners of the spit upon which the joint was kept turning before the fire. The tight skin of this ugly dog was evidently a provision of Nature to secure him from entanglement with the machinery amid which his business was conducted. Had a Scotch terrier, for instance, whiskered and plumed, descended from his own more aristocratic circle to disport himself in that where turnspit was the principal mover,–the kitchen-wheel,–he might have found himself cogged, and caught up, and spitted, and associated promiscuously with leg of mutton as roasted hare; in which capacity he might eventually have been eaten with currant-jelly and considerable relish, receiving more honor, perhaps, “in that connection,” than had ever in his lifetime been lavished on him as a member of society.
But Turnspit’s profession is a thing of the past, his very existence a myth. The roasting-jack, with a wind-up weight by which the spit was turned, cut him out first of all; other inventions further diminished his importance. But the tea-kettle–which he somewhat resembled in figure, by-the-by–scalded him clean off the face of creation; for the bright steam-engine, attached nowadays to the kitchens of our principal hotels, has given a new turn to affairs, ruling the roast after a fashion that sets back old Turnspit into the remotest corner under the backstairs of the Dark Ages. I have alluded to his alleged descendants, as pointed out to my observation in boyhood; but they were an effete and degenerate race, purposeless, and wallowing much with the pigs, whom their grandsires would have recognized only to roast.
In one instance only, and that on this side of the Atlantic, do I remember having been introduced to any dog whose profession was at all analogous to that of the turnspit of other days. Falling into conversation with an old Dutch-Yankee farmer, in a remote and very rural district, I made some remarks about his dog, which was a very large, heavy one, of that no-particular-kind happily classified by the comprehensive natural philosophers of the barn-floor as “yellow dog.” Farmer assured me that this fine fellow–whose name I am ashamed to say I have forgotten–did all the churning of the farm-dairy by imparting his motive power to a wheel. This piece of ingenuity, Farmer informed me, was originally and exclusively an inspiration from the intellect which animated his, Farmer’s, proper clod; nor was he greatly exhilarated when I narrated to him the tradition of the turnspit, whose memory, I regret to record, he spurned as that of a “mean cuss,” destitute of that poetry which dwelleth in the pastoral associations of the dairy.
Although not strictly in connection with the subject of this article, I will here relate a story told to me, on the same occasion, by that old farmer, because it struck me as being rather a good one, and is not particularly long.
Seeing that I took notice of a smock-frocked rustic employed in foddering the cattle,–a rustic whose legs and accent were to me exclusively reminiscent of the pleasant roads and lanes of cheery Somersetshire,–Farmer informed me that he was a newish importation, having made his appearance about there early in the previous winter. While snow, of such quality and in such quantity as they have it in that region, was yet a novelty to the bumpkin, he was dispatched on horseback, one day, to the neighboring village, strict instructions being given him to ride carefully in the middle of the track, as, treading in the deep snow, the horse might “ball,”–an expression applied to taking up snow in the hollow of the hoof, which causes the animal to stumble. An unusually long time elapsed before the messenger made his appearance from his mission, and then he was seen making his way painfully through the snow, leading the horse after him by the bridle.
“What’s wrong now?” inquired Farmer, as he glanced at the animal’s knees; “been down, I guess; did Old Horse ball?”
“Noa,” replied Bumpkin, “a didn’t joost bawl, but a groonted consoomedly every toime a coom down. Oi thowt a wur a-gwoan to bawl the last toime we coom down together, and zo oi joost stayed down and walked ‘im whoam.”
When doggy men beyond ocean talk about a terrier, they usually pronounce it _tarrier_, and not _terrier_, as we mostly call him on this bank of the Atlantic. There is no authority for the former pronunciation, that I know of, beyond usage, which, however, is much taken as a standard in England. Thus, an English merchant will talk to you about his _clarks_, an American about his _clurks_. The French word _terrier_–derived, of course, from _terre_–signifies not only the dog, but a burrow in the earth; a kind of retreat in which such dogs are supposed to pass a portion of their existence, occupied in the subterrene branches of the chase. It means, also, a land-roll or register. In Lower Canada, which is essentially France, I recollect the label, _”Papier Terrier,”_ upon the door of a public-land-office. A friend of mine, clandestinely and under cover of darkness, removed the label, substituting for it a scurrilous one setting forth “Pasteboard Poodle,” an announcement which did not appear to convey any particular idea whatever to the unsettled mind of the haggard provincial _chef du bureau_, as it flashed upon him next morning in the light of the glad young autumn day. But, reverting to pronunciation, _tare_-ier would, of course, more correctly reverberate the sound of the French original than either of the other usages, while it would possess the advantage of conveying a suggestion of that proclivity for tearing, so characteristic of the animal designated by the term. On this important question the learned philologists wrangle. For my part, I stick to _tarrier_, which comes “oncommon handy,” as the horse-dealer hinted, when reproved by the Cambridge student for reducing a noble animal nearly to the level of a donkey by calling him “an ‘oss.”
And of all the terrier tribe, there is no quainter little fellow than he of the Island of Skye,–known to his friends and admirers as the “Skye dog.” This little animal, which, in length of spine, shortness of legs, wildness of hair, and litheness of movement, resembles one of those long, hirsute caterpillars oft-times to be observed by the happy rambler in the country, as it promenades across his path, possesses many distinctive traits, which separate him, in a manner, from Dog in general, assimilating him somewhat, indeed, to the _ferce_, which find in rapine and carnage the subsistence which Nature evidently has not intended that they should realize in communion with man. The peculiar odor of the fox is his, though in a mitigated degree. He loves to make a lair under the bushes by tearing up the turf with his teeth and paws, and to lie in it. He is of a shy and reserved disposition, and usually more lively at night than by day. These are attributes of beasts of prey. Unlike all other members of the terrier family, he cares nothing about rats. He will sit down and bark in a tone of contempt at one turned out before him in a close passage or room, declining, in fact, to recognize rats as game, unless entered at them while very young. I speak only of the pure, unmixed Isle-of-Skye dog, or “tassel terrier,” as he is sometimes called by rabbit-hunters,–a breed difficult to obtain in perfection, and one which is particularly scarce in this country. The proper game or quarry of this animal is the otter, which he does not hesitate to follow into his very burrow in the river-banks; nor is he afraid to attack one nearly double his size.
Having, time after time, possessed several of these dogs, verified as being derived from the best stock on the island, from which their parents–who understood no language but Gaelic–were brought direct, I have noted some of their odd, whimsical ways, a few of which I will illustrate, taking for my exponent one very remarkable little fellow who was a genuine type of his kind.
This animal was one of the smallest of his family, and of a color uncommon among them; for they are mostly either of a yellowish dun, or of that slaty mouse-color known among dog-fanciers as “blue,”–a tint, by the way, particularly appropriate for a dog of Skye. Sometimes they are black; but Sambo, better known to his familiars as Sam, was of a sooty brindle, with a very dark muzzle, and eyes burning out like black stars from the cloud of shaggy hair that mantled upon his brow. Next to the shortness of his legs, the length of his body was one of the most remarkable physical freaks I remember to have observed; neither of these attributes, however, having a chance of notice in comparison with the quantity and denseness of his long, soft hair,–for the coat of a true Skye dog is fleecy, rather than wiry. It was the joint result of the shortness of his legs and the length of his beard that the fatter appendage continually swept the ground,–an inconvenience which I once undertook to remedy by trimming it off short with scissors. No Turk could have more indignantly resented the process than did that small quadruped,–his Celtic feelings being so severely wounded by it, in fact, that he abstained from sustenance for three days, putting himself into moral sackcloth and ashes for that period by retiring into his penitential cell under a chest of drawers.
When quite a pup, hardly half-grown, he played a trick unaccountable to me at this day as it was then. Sam had the run of the house, and he availed himself of it. On going into the breakfast-room, one morning early, I observed a singular phenomenon in connection with a large, cold round of beef, which was the _piece de resistance_ on the table. It was curious to behold a round of cold beef with a tail, which it wagged, and feathered, and beckoned with, as if to say, “Come, eat me.” The tail was the tail of Sam, whose body was concealed far down in the interior of the tower of beef, into which he had cut his way with great perseverance and success. But the puzzle was, how he got there; for there was no chair within reach of the table, and he was much too small to have jumped up on it; while the theory of the servant, who propounded that he must have climbed up by the table-cloth, tooth over claw, was wild, and simply entitled to the contempt of any person aware of the difference between dog and cat. There is but one acceptable theory on the subject,–that he was down in the caverns of the beef, _tail and all_, before it was brought up-stairs, and so escaped notice.
Early in life, he contracted–from evil association, perhaps–a vulgar trick of running after carriages and barking at the horses’ heels, a trick of which I in vain tried to break him. Once, when he was about a year old, I took him up beside me into a high _caleche_, in which we were going some distance. The moment the horse started, Sam jumped out to have a bark at his heels, when, to my horror, the wheel of the vehicle, in which there were three of us, went right over the middle of his body, cutting him, apparently, in two; but he was up in a second, and barking at heels and wheels for half a mile before we could pull up and get him in again. This accident appeared to decide him in the choice of a profession, for he devoted himself energetically, from that hour, to the pursuit and baying-at of all manner of wheeled things propelled by horse-power.
A rat he would never touch, although I introduced him to one before he was a year old; he manifested neither fear of the vermin, nor surprise at it, but simply took no interest in it. He had much pleasure in worrying cats; but that was owing, I fancy, to a sad discomfiture he once met with from one. Walking through a suburb one day, with Sammy trotting before me in dreamy mood, to which he was much given, a small, but remarkably severe cat made a sudden and very fierce dash at him from a cottage-door, taking him so completely aback, that he tumbled, head over tail, into a deep, dirty pool of green, stagnant water, such as is usually to be seen in the pleasure-grounds environing a suburbo-Hibernian shanty. His appearance, on emerging from that cesspool, was the reverse of majestic; but the incident gave him such an idea on the subject of cats, that he always persecuted them remorselessly from that day; nor did he ever again walk through a suburb in any other frame of mind than a particularly wide-awake one, and with his tail up.
These dogs are curiously sensitive about their dignity, and sometimes do not recover their elasticity of spirits for several days after having undergone a process of correction. I recollect a singular instance of this sensitiveness displayed by Sambo, in which he also manifested a kind of inferential power wonderfully akin to reason.
One morning, a tumult of dogs in the street drew him to the window, out of which he looked by jumping on a chair, just as a troop of “curs of low degree” tore past after a rather genteel-looking dog with a kettle tied to his tail. They whirled rapidly by in a turmoil of dust, and clink, and cur-dog yelp, but not so rapidly as to prevent Sam from perceiving the terrible degradation to which a gentleman-dog had been subjected. The sight had a visible effect on his spirits, for he immediately became quite depressed as to tail and mind, a condition which influenced him for a day or two, after which he again appeared comparatively cheerful, and took his place in society with his accustomed cautious conviviality. About a month after this, he was seen coming very slowly along a lane which led up to the back of the house,–a course hardly ever taken by him, as he was a parlor-dog, and considered himself entitled to the freedom of the hall-door. Creeping on in the shadow of the wall, he arrived with a very crest-fallen aspect at the kitchen-door, where the cause of his ignominious approach was made manifest to those who were watching him. _He had a kettle tied to his tail_. Now this animal must surely have argued in his own mind, that running away with a tin kettle is a sure way of attracting undesirable notice; also, that proceeding through a public thoroughfare with such an appendage is injudicious, and likely to result in trouble. The circumstance of the runaway dog and the tumult after him had left its impression upon him; and, travelling on his experience, he rightly judged that an unpleasant affair of the kind might best be hushed up by quietly making one’s way home through back-lanes and the kitchen-door.
Skye terriers, when young, are apt to have a bad trick of gnawing and tearing up articles of wearing apparel, particularly slippers, gaiters, and such other things as are handy to toss up and catch. The fellow I am writing about, when very young, destroyed sundry items of my property in that way. He occupied a buffalo-robe in my room, and I heard him very busy one night about something, but did not pay much attention to it, as he was often lively at night. In the morning, however, on looking for a pair of leather gaiters, I recognized the remains of them, after much investigation, in a mass of pulp, to which they had been reduced by the little beast as completely as they could have been by the most experienced boa-constrictor. This habit I soon broke him of, by chastising him with the remnants of the worried article, when there were any left of substance sufficient to weave into a scourge; nor did he ever recur to it when grown up, except once, evidencing upon that occasion a remarkable instance of hereditary instinct.
Some fur caps, and other articles of winter wear, had been shaken out of their summer quarters for the purpose of beating the moths out of them and ventilating them generally, with a view to which they were placed upon the sill of an open window. By some means Sam obtained access to the room, where he was discovered in the act of mauling a valuable otter-skin cap, which he had selected out of the whole collection for his particular amusement. This dog had never seen an otter; but his ancestors were noted for their game qualities in the pursuit of that animal, and their speciality must have descended to him.
Eventually Sambo lost all his self-respect. He became discontented and addicted to low company, dissipating with vile curs whose owners enjoyed anything but unblemished reputations,–a fact first notified to me by a clergyman of my acquaintance who knew him well. The worst of this was, that he wore a collar with my name engraved on it in full; and it was a long time before I had an opportunity of redeeming that misused badge. About the very last time I ever saw him, I think, he came home with one of his eyes gouged out, a split ear, and other marks but too suggestive of the tavern brawl. I then deprived him of his collar; soon after which he returned to his unsettled course of life, and I never saw him again.
The peculiar, otter-like form of these animals, and the buoyancy given to them by their long, floating hair, endow them with great facility for swimming; while the small compass into which they will pack in a canoe or skiff makes them very useful companions to the sportsman whose propensities are for paddling about “in the melancholy marshes.” I made an excellent retriever of one of mine by carrying in my pocket a stuffed snipe, which I would make her hunt up and fetch out of the weeds into which I had thrown it. She would go back half a mile and fetch this, when I had hidden it ever so cunningly in a thicket by the way-side. I also taught her to dive, by making her, while young, fetch up a little bag of shot from the bottom of a bathtub in my room. By throwing this into deeper water, gradually, she would soon go down to a great depth for it. A charge of shot, tied up in a piece of white kid-glove, with a “neck” left to hold on by, is a good object for the purpose, as it is readily seen in deep water, and teaches the animal, besides, to nip gingerly,–a valuable qualification in a retriever. I remember one of these dogs fetching up from a considerable depth the watch of a friend of mine, which had slipped out of his pocket into a clear, still bay, over which he was loitering in his canoe.
From times unrecorded until about twenty years ago, the Skye terrier awaited confidently his summons to the sphere of rank and fashion. About that time, the day, which, as the proverb figuratively informs us, it falls to the lot of each individual of the canine race to enjoy, began to shine out brightly for the dog of Skye, the first rays of it that reached him being reflected from no less a luminary than the Crown of Great Britain; for it was among the Scottish fancies of England’s Queen to adopt as a prime favorite this hitherto obscure quadruped. Reckoned until that time–if anybody took the trouble of computing him at all–as one of the ugliest of his race, he at once found himself invested with all the attributes of a canine Adonis,–a very Admirable Crichton of dogs,–perfect in intellect, face, figure, and the Hyperion luxuriance of his copious mane and tail. In our youth, we knew–and hated–a small, unmitigated snob of a dog called the Pug, a kind of work-basket bull-dog, diminutive in size, dyspeptic in temper, disagreeable to contemplate, and distressing to be obliged to admire. One of the missions in society of Skye Terrier–who, when going before a high wind, bears no unapt resemblance to a mop or a wisp of tow–was to mop up Pug, and polish him off the hearth-rug of Fashion; a mission which he appears to have at least partially accomplished. For now the black muzzle of Pug is but seldom to be seen protruded from carriage-window, biding his time for a snap at the first kid-gloved finger that wags within range of his overlapping tusks in waving salutation to his dowager mistress,–for, of the dowagers, above all, he was one of the chronic calamities. Oftener, now, are the well-combed whiskers and moustaches of Skye Dog to be recognized, dropping over the drawing-room window-sill, or framed, like a portrait by Landseer, in the panelled sash of the barouche, out of which he gazes pensively with the impressive speculation of the true _flaneur_;–yea, for as men of fashion are, so are their dogs; and so also of the fighting butcher, who ever has his counterpart in the fighting bull-dog that glowers from his gory stall.
This exalted value of Skye Dog, in a commercial point of view, has, of course, given rise to the manufacture of a spurious article; whence it comes, that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the animal palmed off on the unsophisticated as genuine has nothing of the real stuff in his constitution, but is simply a shallow imitation, compounded according to prescription,–one part common cur-terrier to two parts insignificant French poodle. And so I take leave of the Skye terrier with a _caveat emptor_ to the purchaser who does not want to be sold while he buys.
The sense of humor must surely exist in individual dogs; otherwise it would puzzle me to account for the singular practical jokes played off by a water-spaniel once possessed by me. This individual, whose name was Muff, was a rather small-sized one, of the pure Kentish blood; liver-colored, with a white ring on his neck, and white paws; close-curled, wicked-eyed, deep-chested, and remarkably powerful for his size. Professionally a retriever,–and one of great promise, although never fully tested with the gun,–his leisure hours, which included every one in the twenty-four, were passed in the invention and perpetration of curiously regulated mischiefs, with all of which he took pains to combine an element of the ludicrous. His great spree was to run amuck into a flock of small children coming out of school. If there was a dirty crossing hard by, over which they had to pass, he would wait until they had got half-way, and then, going through them like a rocket, would chuck them down into the mud, right and left, as he sped, keeping straight on in his career until far beyond range of pedagogue’s rod. His trick of making a sudden rush at the heels of unsuspecting persons–and he invariably selected the right sort for his purpose–might often have got me into ugly scrapes, but for the tact with which he invariably ignored his master on such occasions. If pursued, he never came near me for protection, but fled wildly on, assuming the character of a dog “on the loose,” belonging to nobody in particular, and quite able to take care of himself. He had a decided objection to street industrials in general, including Italian organ-grinders and image-sellers. Once I saw him crouching stealthily after one of the latter, who was passing through an open square with a tray of casts upon his head; and before I could get up a whistle or call him off by name, he had darted like a javelin at the legs of the refugee, startling him so much out of the perpendicular that the superstructure of plastic art came to the ground with a crash, top-dressing the sterile soil of the Campus Martius with a coat of manufactured plaster of Paris. Marius, blubbering over the shattered chimney-stacks of Carthage, could not have displayed a more touching classical spectacle than did that modern Roman lamenting to and fro among the fragments of his collapsed martyrs and ruined saints; nor were his pangs fully assuaged even by the application of the universal panacea to an amount more than double the value of his lost wares.
A great difficulty in training this dog was to bring him “to heel,”–a still greater one to keep him there when he came. If thrashed into his proper place in his master’s wake, he always resented the indignity by biting him pretty severely in the legs with a savage whimper. This he invariably did on first leaving the house with me, sometimes nipping me so severely, after we had gone a short distance, that I have hesitated whether to go back for a pistol to shoot him, or forward for a pennyworth of biscuit to buy him off. When told to “hie away,” the extravagance of his joy knew no bounds. He would have been as invaluable to a tailor as was to the Parisian _decrotteur_ the poodle instructed by him to sully with his paws the shoes of the passengers; for, in the exuberance of his gladness, he but too often rent insufferably the vestments of the hapless pedestrians in his line of fire. Sometimes he would turn his assaults upon me, and, springing suddenly at my “wide-awake,” take it from my head, trailing it wildly away through the mud, and dropping it in some place where it would be difficult to get at it without wading. Then I would have to conciliate him to fetch it,–a favor not to be obtained without much stratagem and diplomacy.
One of this dog’s abnormal qualities was the bull-dog one of holding on to his antagonist in a fight. But few dogs of his size were able to cope with him; and I once saw him, when in grips with a fierce bull-terrier by a riverside, precipitate the result by dragging his adversary into the water, and dipping his head under. He would jump off the highest bridge to fetch out of the water anything thrown in for him, never failing to bring it to his master’s feet,–except once, when he steadily declined to recover from the raging element a cane with which I had, some time previously, administered to him a sound thrashing for some delinquency. On the first occasion of his being accidentally left behind at a ferry across a very wide and rapid river, he swam out some distance after the boat; but, finding the enterprise a rather hopeless one, soon put back again and waited for the next boat, on board of which he took his place with a tranquil and business-like air. This he regularly did on subsequent occasions, without risking the swim; and when on board, he always seated himself on the upper deck and as far forward as possible, so as to catch early glimpses of his friends in waiting.
Among the gifts of this clever animal, I must not forget to reckon a perception of the truthful in Art. I had a walking-stick, upon the crooked handle of which was carved, with tolerable skill, a pointer’s head. This piece of sculpture was a source of frequent anxiety to Muff,–his embarrassment apparently arising from the circumstance of his not having the gift of speech wherewith to deliver himself of an opinion on the subject. He would sometimes get up from the sunny spot on the carpet where he lay, walk over to the corner in which the stick was deposited, contemplate the handle attentively, with his head on one side, for several minutes, and then, shaking his head doubtfully, return to his lair with a sigh. Philanthropist as well as critic, he once saved the life of a dissipated old sergeant of dragoons, to whom he had taken a fancy, by rushing into a house which the man had just quitted in a state of intoxication, and so rousing the inmates by his gestures, that they at once followed him into the road, alongside of which the beery old _sabreur_ was found prostrate in a pool of water, setting his face pertinaciously against that hostile element, even to what was very near being his last gasp.
Large dogs often appear to take a humorous view of the futile attempts of small ones to accomplish some feat beyond their strength or stature. A friend of mine once possessed a very large animal of a cross between the Mount St. Bernard dog and the English mastiff, and as remarkable for his good-nature as for his great strength and courage. Rambling out one day, accompanied by this trusty friend, they came upon a group of rustics engaged in the ignoble diversion of baiting a badger, an animal much in request among English dog-fanciers as a test for the pluck of their terriers. “Drawing a badger” is the proper sporting-phrase,–the animal being chained to a barrel, from the recesses of which he contends savagely with the fierce little dogs pitted against each other to drag him out within a given time. Nero looked on at the sport with a majestic air of contempt, as dog after dog was withdrawn from the conflict. At length, disgusted with the failures, he watched his opportunity until the badger made a dive from his den at a retreating foe, when, snapping him up by the collar, he thundered away down the road with the barrel flying after, nor ever stopped until he reached home, nearly a mile away, where he safely deposited badger and barrel in the immediate vicinity of his private residence in the stable-yard.
One of the worst vices by which a dog can be beset is a propensity for killing sheep. It is not a common vice, but, where it exists, it appears to be inveterate and beyond all hope of reform. Shutting up the delinquent with a dangerous ram has often been recommended as a certain mode of disgusting him with mutton, should he survive the discipline inflicted on him by the avenger of the blood of his race. I can recall but one instance within my experience in which this corrective was tested. It was in the case of a sulky dog of a breed between the red Irish setter and something larger, but less patrician, upon whom the thirst for blood fell at uncertain intervals, impelling him then to devastate the very sheepfolds of which in his capacity as watch-dog he might have been considered as _ex officio_ the guardian. This vile malefactor had been ordered for execution, and the noose was already coiled for his caitiff neck, when a neighbor of his master’s–a great raiser of sheep–begged for him a reprieve, kindly volunteering the use of a truculent, but valuable ram belonging to him, for the purpose of illustrating the homaeopathic theory above alluded to. At nightfall the ram was brought and turned into a paddock, where he was left fettered to the dog with a couple of yards of chain. At the dawn of morning the ram’s master approached confidently the arena of discipline, secure of a result triumphant for his theory. But theory was a delusion in this instance; for the red dog Tanner sat there alone and surfeited with mutton,–though there was a good deal of the ram still left.
It is wonderful what an amount of crime can be committed, even by a small dog, when, like the _Chourineur_ of Eugene Sue, he is under the glamour of blood. Of this there came to my knowledge a well-authenticated instance, one for the truth of which I can vouch. A settler in a remote bush-district had been to the nearest village, which was many miles from his clearing. It was in March, and the surface of the snow–which was quite two feet deep–was frozen to a hard crust, as he travelled homewards in his cutter, accompanied by a currish dog, not nearly so large as an average pointer. About nightfall, and when some two miles from home, a herd of nine deer crossed his track, struggling away into the woods with uncertain plunges, as the treacherous crust gave way beneath them at every bound. While they were yet in sight, the dog gave chase, and they all disappeared into the dark forest together; nor did the dog return to the call of his master, who, after whistling to him for a short time, proceeded on his way and drove home without him. Early next morning the cur made his appearance, glutted and gory, and looking the very picture of dissipation. Struck by his appearance, they took the back track on his trail, which led them to a hollow in the bush, where the snow was much trampled and draggled with blood, and in and around which every one of the nine deer lay dead, pulled down and throttled by one miserable cur, who had the mastery over them, because he could run on the surface of the snow, through which they sunk. The dog’s master–at whose shanty I once stayed when on a fishing-excursion–was much mortified at the occurrence, as the deer-hunting season was past, and he was one of Nature’s sportsmen, a game-keeper by instinct.
I have but one more anecdote of a dog, for the present; and that is one for the truth of which I distinctly decline to vouch. It was imparted to me by a calker, who owned a woolly French poodle, which remarkable animal, he informed me, used to swim out regularly once a week,–on Saturday evenings, I think he said,–with a large wisp of tow in his mouth, upon the ascension of his fleas into which place of refuge, he would “let it slide” down the current and swim back tranquilly to the shore, there to slumber away another week in comparative comfort.[1]
[Footnote 1: The calker’s dog had probably never read Olaus Magnus, though that worthy Archbishop wrote something very like dog-Latin; but, as dwellers on the margin of the “Atlantic,” we have too great a respect for a prelate who believed in the kraaken and the sea-serpent, not to refer our valued Cynophilist to the Thirty-Ninth Chapter of the Eighteenth Book _De Gentibus Septentrionalibus_, where he will find the same story told of the fox.–_Eds. Atlantic._]
Having thus calked my Dog-Talk–bark, in fact–with this very tough bit of yarn, I now trustfully commit it to the mercies of the “Atlantic.”
THE RECKONING.
Your thought may recur with mine
To a certain place in the city,
Where you sometimes have chanced to dine; If not, why, the more’s the pity!
Did you notice the delicate way
Whereby, with the trencher and cup, Comes a hint of the matter of pay,
In a counter laid _blank side up_?
Now,–not to pervert the intent
Of a courtesy gentle and rare,
Or observance so civilly meant
With disparaging things to compare,–
By the token your messenger brings,
Did such services never suggest
A likeness to manifold things
Of the world, and the flesh, and–the rest?
Command whatsoever you will,
To pamper your folly or pride;
You shall find, that unfailingly, still, The _counter_ is laid beside,
Silently,–seemingly fair,–
Till an angel the disk shall turn, And the soul’s great debt, the inscription there, On her vision shall burst and burn!
* * * * *
A TRIP TO CUBA.
MATANZAS.
A hot and dusty journey of some six hours brought us to Matanzas at high noon. Our companions were Cubans, Spaniards, Americans, and game-chickens, that travel extensively in these parts, sometimes in little baskets, with openings for the head and tail, sometimes in the hands of their owners, secured only by a string fastened to one foot and passed over the body. They seem to be objects of tender solicitude to those who carry them; they are nursed and fondled like children, and at intervals are visited all round by a negro, who fills his mouth with water, and squirts it into their eyes and under their feathers. They are curiously plucked on the back and about the tail, where only the long tail-feathers are allowed to grow. Their tameness in the hands of their masters is quite remarkable; they suffer themselves to be turned and held in any direction. But when set down, at any stage of the journey, they stamp their little feet, stretch their necks, crow, and look about them for the other cock with most belligerent eyes. As we have said that the negro of the North is an ideal negro, so we must say that the game-cock of Cuba is an ideal chicken, a fowl that is too good to be killed,–clever enough to fight for people who are too indolent and perhaps too cowardly to fight for themselves,–in short, the gladiator of the tropics.
Well, as we have said, we and they arrived at our journey’s end in the extreme heat of the day; and having shown our paper and demanded our trunks, we beat an instantaneous retreat before the victorious monarch of the skies, and lo! the Ensor House, dirty, bare, and comfortless, was to us as a fortress and a rock of defence.
Here I would gladly pause, and, giving vent to my feelings, say how lovely I found Matanzas. But ever since Byron’s time, the author is always hearing the public say, “Don’t be poetical,” etc., etc.; and in these days both writer and reader seem to have discovered that life is too short for long descriptions,–so that, when the pen of a G. P. R. James, waiting for the inspirations of its master, has amused itself with sketching a greater or less extent of natural scenery, the rule of the novel-reader is invariably, “Skip landscape, etc., to event on thirty-second page.” Nevertheless, I will say that Matanzas is lovely,–with the fair harbor on one hand and the fair hills on the other, sitting like a mother between two beautiful daughters, who looks from one to the other and wonders which she loves best. The air from the water is cool and refreshing, the sky is clear and open, and the country around seems to beckon one to the green bosom of its shades. “Ob, what a relief after Havana!” one says, drawing a full breath, and remembering with a shudder the sickening puffs from its stirring streets, which make you think that Polonius lies unburied in every house, and that you nose him as you pass the door and window-gratings. With this exclamation and remembrance, you lower yourself into one of Mr. Ensor’s rocking-chairs,–twelve of which, with a rickety table and a piano, four crimson tidies and six white ones, form the furniture of the Ensor drawing-room,–you lean your head on your hand, close your eyes, and wish for a comfortable room, with a bed in it. A tolerable room you shall have; but for a bed, only a cot-bedstead with a sacking bottom,–further, nothing. Now, if you are some folks that I know, you will be able to establish very comfortable repose on this slender foundation, Nature having so amply furnished you that you are your own feather-bed, bolster, sofa-cushion, and easy-chair, a moving mass of upholstery, wanting only a frame to be set down in and supported. But if you should be one of Boston’s normal skeletons, pinched in every member with dyspepsia, and with the mark of the beast neuralgia on your forehead, then your skin will have a weary time of it, holding your bones, and you will be fain to entreat with tears the merciful mediation of a mattress.
Now I know very well that those of my readers who intend visiting Cuba will be much more interested in statistics of hotels than in any speculations, poetical or philosophical, with which I might be glad to recompense their patience. Let me tell them, therefore, that the Ensor House is neither better nor worse than other American hotels in Cuba. The rooms are not very bad, the attendance not intolerable, the table almost commendable. The tripe, salt-fish, and plantains were, methought, much as at other places. There were stews of meat, onions, sweet pippins, and _ochra_, which deserve notice. The early coffee was punctual; the tea, for a wonder, black and hot. True, it was served on a bare pine table, with the accompaniment only of a bit of dry bread,–no butter, cake, nor _dulces_. But Mr. Ensor has heard, no doubt, that sweet things are unwholesome, and is determined, at whatever cost to his own feelings, to keep them out of the way of his guests, who are, for the time, his children. Then there is an excellent English servant called John, whom, though the fair Ensor did berate him, we must enumerate among the comforts of the establishment. There is a dark corner about _volantes_, which they are disposed to order for you at a very unreasonable profit; but as there are plenty of livery stables at hand, and street _volantes_ passing all the time, it will be your own fault, if you pay six dollars where you ought to pay three.
The first thing to be done at Matanzas is to drive out and see the Cumbre, a hill in the neighborhood, and from it the valley of the Yumori. The road is an improvement on those already described,–the ruts being much deeper and the rocks much larger; the jolting is altogether more complete and effective. Still, you remember the doctrine that the _volante_ cannot upset, and this blind faith to which you cling carries you through triumphantly. The Cumbre is lofty, the view extensive, and the valley lovely, of a soft, light green, like the early leaves and grass of spring, dotted everywhere with the palms and their dark clusters. It opens far, far down at your feet, and on your left you see the harbor quiet and bright in the afternoon sun, with a cheering display of masts and pennons. You would look and linger long, but that the light will wane, and you are on your way to Jenks his sugar-plantation, the only one within convenient distance of the town. Here the people are obviously accustomed to receive visitors, and are decently, not superfluously, civil. The _major-domo_ hands you over to a negro who speaks English, and who salutes you at once with, “Good-bye, Sir!” The boiling here is conducted in one huge, open vat. A cup and saucer are brought for you to taste the juice, which is dipped out of the boiling vat for your service. It is very like balm-tea, unduly sweetened; and after a hot sip or so you return the cup with thanks. A loud noise, as of cracking of whips and of hurrahs, guides you to the sugar-mill, where the crushing of the cane goes on in the jolliest fashion. The building is octagonal and open. Its chief feature is a very large horizontal wheel, which turns the smaller ones that grind the cane. Upon this are mounted six horses, driven by as many slaves, male and female, whose exertions send the wheel round with sufficient rapidity. This is really a novel and picturesque sight. Each negro is armed with a short whip, and their attitudes, as they stand, well-balanced on the revolving wheel, are rather striking. They were liberal of blows and of objurgations to the horses; but all their cries and whipping produced scarcely a tenth of the labor so silently performed by the invisible, noiseless slave that works the steam-engine. From this we wandered about the avenues, planted with palms, cocoas, and manifold fruit-trees,–visited the sugar-fields, where many slaves were cutting the canes and piling them on enormous ox-carts, and came at last to a great, open field, where many head of cattle were quietly standing. Our negro guide had not been very lavish or intelligible in his answers to our numerous questions. We asked him about these cattle. “Dey cows,” he replied. We asked if they gave milk, and if butter was made on the plantation. He seemed quite puzzled and confused, and finally exclaimed,–“Dat cows no got none wife.” Coming nearer, we found that the cows were draught oxen, employed in dragging the canes and other produce of the plantation. Jenks his garden we found in good order, and beautiful with many plants in full blossom; but Jenks his house seemed dreary and desolate, with no books, a wretched print or so, dilapidated furniture, and beds that looked like the very essence of nightmare. Nothing suggested domestic life or social enjoyment, or anything–; but as Jenks is perfectly unknown to us, either by appearance or reputation, we give only a guess in the dark, and would suggest, in case it may displease him, that he should refurnish and repaint a little, and diffuse an air of cheerfulness over his solitary villa, remembering that Americans have imaginations, and that visitors will be very apt to construct an unknown host from his surroundings.
The second thing to be done in Matanzas, if you arrive on Saturday, is to attend military mass at the Cathedral on Sunday morning. This commences at eight o’clock; but the hour previous may be advantageously employed in watching the arrival and arrangement of the female aristocracy of Matanzas. These enter in groups of twos and threes, carrying their prayer-books, and followed by slaves of either sex, who bear the prayer-carpet of their mistresses. The ladies are wonderfully got up, considering the early hour; and their toilettes suggest that they may not have undressed since the ball of the night before. All that hoops, powder, and puffery can do for them has been done; they walk in silk attire, and their hair is what is technically termed dressed. Some of them bring their children, bedizened like dolls, and mimicking mamma’s gestures and genuflexion in a manner more provoking to sadness than to satire. If the dressing is elaborate, the crossing is also. It does not consist of one simple cross, “_in nomine Patris_,” etc.; they seem to make three or four crosses from forehead to chin, and conclude by kissing the thumb-nail, in honor of what we could not imagine. Entering the middle aisle, which is divided from the rest by a row of seats on either side, they choose their position, and motion to the dark attendant to spread the carpet. Some of them evince considerable strategic skill in the selection of their ground. All being now in readiness, they drop on their knees, spread their flounces, cross themselves, open their books, and look about them. Their attendants retire a little, spread a handkerchief on the ground, and modestly kneel behind them, obviously expecting to be saved with the family. These are neatly, sometimes handsomely dressed. In this status things remain until the music of the regiment is heard. With a martial sound of trumpets it enters the church, and fills the aisles, the officers taking place within the chancel, and a guard-of-honor of eight soldiers ranging on either side of the officiating priest. And now our devotions begin in good earnest; for, simultaneously with the regiment, the _jeunesse doree_ of Matanzas has made its appearance, and has spread itself along the two long lines of demarcation which separate the fair penitents from the rest of the congregation. The ladies now spread their flounces again, and their eyes find other occupation than the dreary Latin of their missals. There is, so to speak, a lively and refreshing time between the youths of both sexes, while the band plays its utmost, and _Evangel_, _Kyrie_, and _Credo_ are recited to the music of Trovatore and Traviata. That child of four years old, dressed in white and gold flounces, and white satin boots with heels, handles her veil and uses her eyes like mamma, eager for notice, and delighted with the gay music and uniforms. The moment comes to elevate the Host, thump goes the drum, the guard presents arms, and the soldiers, instead of kneeling, bend forward, in a most uncomfortable manner. Another thump, and all that is over; the swords are returned to their sheaths, and soon, the loud music coming to an end, the regiment marches out of church, very much as it marched in, its devotional experiences being known to Heaven alone. Ladies and lovers look their last, the flounces rise in pyramids, the prayer-carpets are rolled up, and, with a silken sweep and rush, Youth, Beauty, and Fashion forsake the church, where Piety has hardly been, and go home to breakfast. To that comfortable meal you also betake yourself, musing on the small heads and villanous low foreheads of the Spanish soldiery, and wondering how long it would take a handful of resolute Yankees to knock them all into–But you are not a filibuster, you know.
THE PASEO–THE PLAZA–DINING OUT.
“As this Sunday is Carnival, you cannot do better than drive about the city, and then go to the Plaza to see the masks. My partner’s wife, with whom you have now so comfortably breakfasted, will call for you in her _volante_, between five and six o’clock. She will show you the Paseo, and we will go and see the masks afterwards.”
So spoke a banker, who, though not _our_ banker, is our friend, and whose kind attentions we shall ever recall, when we remember Cuba. So he spoke, and so it befell. The pretty American lady, Cubanized into paleness, but not into sallowness, called at the appointed hour, and, in her company, we visited the principal streets, and the favorite drive of the Matanzasts. The Paseo is shorter than that of Havana, but much prettier. We found it gay with _volantes_, whose fair occupants kept up an incessant bowing and smiling to their friends in carriages and on horseback. The Cubans are generally good riders, and their saddle-horses have the easiest and pleasantest gait imaginable. The heat of the climate does not allow the severe exercise of trot and gallop, and so these creatures go along as smoothly and easily as the waves of the sea, and are much better broken to obedience. The ladies of Matanzas seem to possess a great deal of beauty, but they abuse the privilege of powder, and whiten themselves with _cascarilla_ to a degree that is positively ghastly. This _cascarilla_ is formed by the trituration of eggshells; and the oval faces whitened with it resemble a larger egg, with features drawn on it in black and red. In spite of this, they are handsome; but one feels a natural desire to rush in amongst them with a feather duster, and lay about one a little, before giving an available opinion of their good looks.
If the Paseo was gay, the streets of the city were gay also; the windows filled with faces and figures in full dress, with little groups of children at the feet of the grown people, like the two world-famous cherubs at the feet of the Madonna di San Sisto. There were crowds of promenaders too, everywhere, interspersed with parties of maskers, who went about screaming at the public with high, shrill voices. Leaving the _volante_, we descend to the Plaza, where is now the height and centre of movement. We find it flanked on all sides with little movable kitchens, where good things are cooked, and with tables, where they are sold and eaten. Fried cakes, fish, and meats seem the predominant bill of fare, with wine, coffee, and fruits. The masks are circulating with great animation; men in women’s clothes, white people disguised as negroes, and negroes disguised as whites, prodigious noses, impossible chins and foreheads; the stream of popular fancy ran chiefly in these channels. We met processions consisting of a man carrying a rat in a cage, and shouting out, “Catch this rat!” followed by a perfect stampede of wild creatures, all yelling, “Catch that rat!” at the top of their voices. The twanging of the guitar is heard everywhere, accompanied by the high nasal voices of the natives, in various strains of monotony. In some spots the music is more lively, accompanied by the shaking of a gourd filled with dry seeds, which is called _ghiera_, and whose “chick-a-chick, chick-chick” takes the place of the more poetical castanets;–here you find one or more couples exhibiting their skill in Cuban dances, with a great deal of applause and chattering from the crowd around. Beside those of the populace, many aristocratic groups parade the Plaza, in full dress, crowned with flowers and jewels;–a more motley scene can hardly be imagined. Looking up, one sees in curious contrast the tall palms with which the Plaza is planted, and the quiet, wondering stars set in the deep tropical heavens.
But in our evening’s programme, tea has been omitted; now, what availeth a Bostonian without his tea? By eight o’clock, we are pensive, “most like a tired child at a show,”–by half-past eight, stupid,–by nine, furious. Two hours of folly, taken on an empty stomach, alarm us for our constitution. A visit to the _cafe_ is suggested and adopted. It proves to be crowded with people in fancy attire, who have laid aside their masks to indulge in beer, orgeat, and sherbet. While our Cuban friends regale themselves with soursop and _zapote_ ice sweetened with brown sugar, we call for a cup of delicious Spanish chocolate, which is served with a buttered toasted roll, worthy of all imitation. Oh, how much comfort is in a little cup of chocolate! what an underpinning does it afford our spiritual house, a material basis for our mental operations! In its support, we go it a little longer on the Plaza, see more masks, hear more guitars and “catch-this-rat!” and finally return, in a hired _volante_, to the Ensor House, where rest and the bedless cots await us.
But we have friends in Matanzas, real born Cubans, who will not suffer us to remain forever in the Ensor House. They send their _volante_ for us, one day, and we visit them. Their house, of the inevitable Cuban pattern, is richly furnished; the marbles of the floor are pure and smooth, the rug ample and velvety; the wainscoting of the walls, so to speak, is in handsome tiling,–not in mean, washy painting; the cane chairs and sofas are fresh and elegant, and there is a fine Erard piano. The master of the house is confined to his room by illness, but will be happy to see us. His son and daughters speak English with fluency. They inform us, that the epidemic colds which prevail in Cuban winters are always called by the name of some recent untoward occurrence, and that their father, who suffers from severe influenza, has got the President’s Message. We find Don Jose in a bedroom darkened by the necessary closing of the shutters, there being no other way of excluding the air. The bedsteads are of gilded iron, with luxurious bedding and spotless mosquito-nettings. His head is tied up with a silk handkerchief. He rises from his rocking-chair, receives us with great urbanity, and expresses his appreciation of the American nation and their country, which he himself has visited. After a short interview we leave him, but not until he has placed his house and all it contains _”a la disposicion de Usted.”_ We are then shown the pretty bedroom of the young ladies, whose toilettes are furnished in silver, the bath lined with tiling, the study, and the dining-room, where luncheon awaits us. We take leave, with a kind invitation to return and dine the next day, which, upon mature deliberation, we accept.
The _volante_ comes for us next day, with Roque, brightest of all living _caleseros_, fixed in his boots and saddle. After a pleasant drive we attain the house, and are received by its hospitable inmates as before. The interval before dinner, a tolerably long one, is filled up by pleasant chitchat, chiefly in English. The lady of the house does not, however, profess our vernacular, and to her understanding we lay siege in French, Italian, and laughter-provoking Spanish. Before dining we pay a second visit to the host, who is still busy digesting the President’s Message. Obviously, the longer he has it under consideration, the worse he finds it. He has nausea from its bragging, his head aches with its loudness, and its emptiness fills him with wind. We are at our wits’ end to prescribe for him, and take our leave with grave commiseration, telling him that we, too, have had it, but that the symptoms it produces in the North are a reddening in the cheek and a spasmodic contraction of the right arm. Now comes great dinner on. A slave announces it, and with as little ceremony as may be we take our places. And here we must confess that our friend the banker had rendered us an important service. For he had said,–“Look not upon the soup when it is hot, neither let any victuals entice thee to more than a slight and temporary participation; for the dishes at a Cuban dinner be many, and the guest must taste of all that is presented; wherefore, if he indulge in one dish to his special delectation, he shall surely die before the end.” And it came to pass that we remembered this, and walked through the dinner as on egg-shells, gratifying curiosity, on the one hand, and avoiding satiety, on the other, with the fear of fulness, as it were, before our eyes. For, oh, my friends! what pang is comparable to too much dinner, save the distress of being refused by a young woman, or the comfortless sensation, in times of economy, of having paid away a five-dollar gold piece in place of a silver quarter of a dollar?
But you, Reader, would like more circumstantiality in the account of this dinner, which united many perfections. It was handsome, but not splendid,–orderly, but, not stately,–succulent, but not unctuous. It kept the word of promise to the smell and did not break it to the taste. It was a dinner such as we shall wish only to our best friends, not to those acquaintances who ask how we do when they meet us, and wish we were dead before we part. As for particulars, we should be glad to impart much useful information and many choice receipts; but the transitory nature of such an entertainment does not allow one to improve it as one could wish. One feature we remember, which is that the whole dinner was placed on the table at once, and so you had the advantage of seeing your work cut out before you. None of that hope deferred, when, after being worried through a dozen stews and _entrees_, you are rewarded at last with an infinitesimal fragment of the _roti_. Nor, on the other hand, the unwelcome surprise of three supplementary courses and a dessert, when you have already dined to repletion, and feel yourself at peace with all the world. Here, all was fair play; you knew what to expect and what was expected of you. Soup, of course, came first,–then fish,–then meat stewed with potatoes and onions,–then other meat with _ochra_ and tomatoes,–then boiled chicken, which is eaten with a _pilaff_ of rice colored with saffron,–then delicious sweet potatoes, yams, plantains, and vegetables of every sort,–then a kind of pepper, brought, we think, from the East Indies, and intensely tropical in its taste,–then a splendid roast turkey, and ham strewed with small colored sugar-plums,–then–well, is not that enough for one person to have eaten at a stretch, and that person accustomed to a Boston diet? Then came such a display of sweetmeats as would exercise the mind of a New England housekeeper beyond all power of repose,–a pudding,–a huge tart with very thick crust,–cakes of _yuca_,–a dish of cocoanut, made into a sort of impalpable preserve, with eggs and sugar,–then a course of fruits,–then coffee, of the finest quality, from the host’s own plantation,–and then we arose and went into the drawing-room, with a thankful recollection of what we had had, and also a thankful assurance that we should have no more.
A drive by moonlight was now proposed, to see the streets and the masks, it being still Carnival. So the _volante_ was summoned, with its smiling, silent Roque, and the pretty daughter of the house took seat beside us. The streets around the Plaza proved quite impassable from the crowd, whose wild movements and wilder voices went nigh to scaring the well-trained horses. The little lady was accustomed, apparently, to direct every movement of her charioteer, and her orders were uttered in a voice high and sweet as a bird-call. “_Dobla al derecho, Roque! Roque, dobla al derecho_!” Why did not Roque go mad, and exclaim,–“Yes, Senorita, and to heaven itself, if you bid me so prettily!” But Roque only doubled as he was bid, and took us hither and thither, and back to the nest of his lady-bird, where we left her and the others with grateful regrets, and finally back to the Ensor House, which on this occasion seemed to us the end of all things.
GAME-CHICKENS–DON RODRIGUEZ–DAY ON THE PLANTATION–DE-PARTURE.
As there are prejudices in Cuba, and elsewhere, touching the appropriate sphere of woman, Halia was not taken to the cockpit, as she had demanded and expected,–not to see the chickens fight, but to see the Spaniards see it.
Forgive her, ye Woman’s-Righters, if on this occasion she was weak and obedient! You would have gone, no doubt,–those of you who have not husbands; but such as have must know how much easier it is to deal with the article man in his theoretical than in his real presence. You may succeed in showing by every convincement, that you are his natural master and superior, and that there is every reason on earth why you should command and direct him. “No! —- ,” says the wretch, shaking his fist, or shrugging his shoulders; and whatever your intimate convictions may be, the end is, that you do not.
Propitiated by that ready obedience which is safest, dear sisters, in these contingencies, the proprietor of Halia takes her, one morning, to see the establishment of a man of fortune in the neighborhood, where one hundred and forty game-chickens are kept for training and fighting. These chickens occupy two good-sized rooms, whose walls are entirely covered with compartments, some two feet square, in each of which resides a cock, with his little perch and drinking-vessel. They are kept on allowance of water and of food, lest they should get beyond fighting-weight. Their voices are uplifted all day long, and on all moonlight nights. An old woman receives us, and conducts us to the training-pit, pointing out on the way the heroes of various battles, and telling us that this cock and the other have won _mucho dinero_, “much money.” Each has also its appointed value;–this cock is worth forty dollars, this four ounces, this one six ounces,–oh, he is a splendid fellow! No periodal and sporadic hen-fever prevails here, but the gallo-mania is the chronic madness of the tropics.
The training-pit is a circular space inclosed with boards, perhaps some twelve feet in diameter. Here we find the proprietor, Don Manuel Rodriguez, with a negro assistant, up to the ears in business. Don Manuel is young, handsome, and vivacious, and with an air of good family that astonishes us. He receives us with courtesy, finds nothing unusual in the visit of a lady, but is too much engrossed with his occupation to accord us more than a passing notice. This is exactly as we could wish,–it allows us to study the Don, so to speak, _au naturel_. He is engaged at first in weighing two cocks, with a view to their subsequent fighting. Having ascertained their precise weight, which he registers in his pocket-memorandum, he proceeds to bind strips of linen around their formidable spurs, that in their training they may not injure each other with them. This being accomplished,–he all the while delivering himself with great volubility to his black second,–the two cocks are taken into the arena; one is let loose there; the negro holds the other, and knocks the free fowl about the head with it. Sufficient provocation having been given, they are allowed to go at each other in their own fashion, and their attacks and breathing-spells are not very unlike a bout of fencing. They flap, fly at each other, fly over, peck, seize by the neck, let go, rest a moment, and begin again, getting more and more excited with each round. The negro separates them, when about to draw blood. And as for Don Manuel, he goes mad over them, like an Italian _maestro_ over his favorite pupil. “_Hombre, hombre!_” he cries to the negro, “what a cock! By Heaven, what a couple! _Ave Maria santisima!_ did one ever see such spirit? _Santisima Trinidad!_ is there such fighting in all Matanzas?” Having got pretty well through with the calendar of the saints, he takes out his watch;–the fight has lasted long enough. One of the champions retires to take a little repose; another is brought in his place; the negro takes him, and boxes him about the ears of the remaining fowl,–brushing him above his head, and underneath, and on his back, to accustom him to every method of attack. Don Manuel informs us that the cock made use of in this way is the father of the other, and exclaims, with an air of mock compassion, _Pobre padre!_ “Poor father!” The exercise being concluded, he takes a small feather, and cleans out therewith the throat of either chicken, which proves to be full of the sand of the arena, and which he calls _porqueria_, “dirt.”
We leave Don Manuel about to employ himself with other cocks, and, as before, too much absorbed to give our departure much notice. Strange to say, Hulia is so well satisfied with this rehearsal, that she expresses no further desire to witness the performance itself. We learn subsequently that Don Manuel is a man of excellent family and great wealth, who has lavished several fortunes on his favorite pursuit, and is hurrying along on the road to ruin as fast as chickens’ wings can carry him. We were very sorry, but couldn’t possibly interfere. Meantime, he appeared excessively jolly.
Our kind friends of the dinner were determined to pay us, in their persons, all the debts of hospitality the island might be supposed to contract towards strangers and Americans. Arrangements were accordingly made for us to pass our last day in Matanzas at a coffee-plantation of theirs, some four miles distant from town. They would send their travelling _volante_ for us, they said, which was not so handsome as the city _volante_, but stronger, as it had need to be, for the roads. At eleven o’clock, on a very warm morning, this vehicle made its appearance at the door of the Ensor House, with Roque in the saddle,–Roque with that mysterious _calesero_ face of his, knowing everything, but volunteering nothing until the word of command. Don Antonito, he tells us, has gone before us on horseback;–we mount the _volante_, and follow. Roque drives briskly at first, a slight breeze refreshes us, and we think the road better than is usual. But wait a bit, and we come to what seems an unworked quarry of coral rock, with no perceptible way over it, and Roque still goes on, slowly indeed, but without stop or remark. The strong horses climb the rough and slippery rocks, dragging the strong _volante_ after them. The _calesero_ picks his way carefully; the carriage tips, jolts, and tumbles; the centre of gravity appears to be nowhere. The breeze dies away; the vertical sun seems to pin us through the head; we get drowsy, and dream of an uneasy sea of stones, whose harsh waves induce headache, if not seasickness. We wish for a photograph of the road;–first, to illustrate the inclusive meaning of the word; second, to serve as a remembrance, to reconcile us to all future highways.
Why these people are content to work out their road-tax by such sore travail of mind and body appeareth to us mysterious. The breaking of stone in state-prison is not harder work than riding over a Cuban road; yet this extreme of industry is endured by the Cubans from year to year, and from one human life to another, without complaint or effort. An hour or more of these and similar reflections brings us to a bit of smooth road, and then to the gate of the plantation, where a fine avenue of palms conducts us to the house. Here resides the relative and partner of our Matanzas friends, a man of intelligent and humane aspect, who comes to greet us, with his pleasant wife, and a pretty niece, their constant guest. This lady has made use of her retirement for the accomplishment of her mind. She has some knowledge of French and Italian, and, though unwilling to speak English, is able to translate from that language with entire fluency. The plantation-house is very pretty, situated just at the end of the palm-avenue, with all the flowers in sight,–for these are planted between the palms;–it has a deep piazza in front, and the first door opens into one large room, with sleeping-apartments on either side. Opposite this door is another, opening upon the court behind the house, and between the two our chairs are placed, courting the draught.–_N.B._ In Cuba, no one shuns a draught; you ride, drive, sit, and sleep in one, and, unless you are a Cuban, never take cold. The floor of this principal room is merely of clay, rubbed with a red powder, which, mixed with water, hardens into a firm, polished surface. The house has but one story; the timbers of the roof, unwhitened, forming the only ceiling. The furniture consists of cane easy-chairs, a dining-table, and a pretty hammock, swung across one end of the room. Here we sit and talk long. Our host has many good books in French and Spanish,–and in English, Walter Scott’s Novels, which his wife fully appreciates.
A walk is proposed, and we go first to visit _los negros chiquitos,–Anglice_, “the small niggers,” in their nursery. We find their cage airy enough; it is a house with a large piazza completely inclosed in coarse lattice-work, so that the _pequenuelos_ cannot tumble out, nor the nurses desert their charge. Our lady friend produces a key, unlocking a small gate which admits us. We found, as usual, the girls of eight and upwards tending the babies, and one elderly woman superintending them. On our arrival, African drums, formed of logs hollowed out, and covered with skin at the end, were produced. Two little girls proceeded to belabor these primitive instruments, and made a sort of rhythmic strumming, which kept time to a monotonous chant. Two other girls executed a dance to this, which, for its slowness, might be considered an African minuet. The dancing children were bright-looking, and not ungraceful. Work stops at noon for a recess; and the mothers run from the field to visit the imprisoned babies, whom they carry to their own homes and keep till the afternoon-hour for work comes round, which it does at two P.M. We went next to the negro-houses, which are built, as we have described others, contiguous, in one hollow square. On this plantation the food of the negroes is cooked for them, and in the middle of the inclosed square stood the cooking-apparatus, with several large caldrons. Still, we found little fires in most of the houses, and the inmates employed in concocting some tidbit or other. A hole in the roof serves for a chimney, where there is one, but they as often have the fire just before their door. The slaves on this plantation looked in excellent condition, and had, on the whole, cheerful countenances. The good proportion of their increase showed that they were well treated, as on estates where they are overworked they increase scarcely or not at all. We found some of the men enjoying a nap between a board and a blanket. Most of the women seemed busy about their household operations. The time from twelve to two is given to the negroes, besides an hour or two after work in the evening, before they are locked up for the night. This time they improve mostly in planting and watering their little gardens, which are their only source of revenue. The negroes on this estate had formed a society amongst themselves for the accumulation of money; and our friend, the manager of the plantation, told us that they had on his books two thousand dollars to their credit. One man alone had amassed six hundred dollars, a very considerable sum, under the circumstances. We visited also the house of the mayoral, or overseer, whose good face seemed in keeping with the general humane arrangements of the place,–as humane, at least, as the system permits. The negroes all over the island have Sunday for themselves; and on Sunday afternoons they hold their famous balls, which sometimes last until four o’clock on Monday morning. Much of the illness among the negroes is owing to their imprudence on these and like occasions. Pneumonia is the prevalent disease with them, as with the slaves in our own South; it is often acute and fatal. Everything in Cuba has such a tendency to go on horseback, that we could not forbear asking if dead men did, and were told that it was so,–the dead negroes being temporarily inclosed in a box, and conveyed to the cemetery on the back of a horse. Our friend, seeing our astonishment, laughed, and told us that the poor whites were very glad to borrow the burial-horse and box, to furnish their own funerals.
Dinner was served at four o’clock, quite informally, in the one sitting-room of the house. A black girl brushed off the flies with a paper fly-brush, and another waited on table. The dinner was excellent; but I have already given so many bills of fare in these letters, that I will content myself with mentioning the novelty of a Cuban country-dish, a sort of stew, composed of ham, beef, mutton, potatoes, sweet potatoes, _yuca_, and yams. This is called _Ayacco_, and is a characteristic dish, like eel-soup in Hamburg, or salt codfish in Boston;–as is usual in such cases, it is more relished by the inhabitants than by their visitors. On the present occasion, however, it was only one among many good things, which were made better by pleasant talk, and were succeeded by delicious fruits and coffee. After dinner we visited the vegetable garden, and the well, where we found Candido, the rich negro who had saved six hundred dollars, drawing water with the help of a blind mule. Now the philanthrope of our party was also a phrenologist, and had conceived a curiosity to inspect the head of the very superior negro who had made all this money; so, at his request, Candido was summoned from the well, and ordered to take off his hat. This being removed disclosed the covering of a cotton handkerchief, of which he was also obliged to divest himself. Candido was much too well bred to show any signs of contumacy; but the expression of his countenance varied, under the observation of the phrenologist, from wonder to annoyance, and from that to the extreme of sullen, silent wrath. The reason was obvious,–he supposed himself brought up with a view to bargain and sale; and when informed that he had a good head, he looked much inclined to give somebody else a bad one. He was presently allowed to go back to his work; and our sympathies went with him, as it would probably take some days to efface from his mind the painful impression that he was to be sold, the last calamity that can happen to a negro who is in kind hands. We now wandered through the long avenues of palm and fruit trees with which the estate was planted, and saw the stout black wenches at their out-door occupations, which at this time consisted chiefly in raking and cleansing the ground about the roots of the trees and flowers. Their faces brightened as their employers passed, and the smaller children kissed hands. Returned to the house, we paused awhile to enjoy the evening red, for the sun was already below the horizon. Then came the _volante_, and with heartfelt thanks and regrets we suffered it to take us away.
And who had been the real hero of this day? Who but Roque, fresh from town, with his experience of Carnival, and his own accounts of the masked ball, the Paseo, and the Senorita’s beaux? All that durst followed him to the gate, and kissed hands after him. _”Adios, Roque! Roque, adios!”_ resounded on all sides; and Roque, the mysterious one, actually smiled in conscious superiority, as he nodded farewell, and galloped off, dragging us after him.
As we drove back to Matanzas in the moonlight, a sound of horses’ feet made us aware that Don Antonito, the young friend who had planned and accompanied our day’s excursion, was to be our guard of honor on the lonely road. A body-servant accompanied him, likewise mounted. Don Antonito rode a milk-white Cuban pony, whose gait was soft, swift, and stealthy as that of a phantom horse. His master might have carried a brimming glass in either hand, without spilling a drop, or might have played chess, or written love-letters on his back, so smoothly did he tread the rough, stony road. All its pits and crags and jags, the pony made them all a straight line for his rider, whose unstirred figure and even speech made this quite discernible. For when a friend talks to you on the trot, much gulping doth impede his conversation,–and there is even a good deal of wallop in a young lady’s gallop. But our friend’s musical Spanish ran on like a brook with no stones in it, that merely talks to the moonlight for company. And such moonlight as it was that rained down upon us, except where the palm-trees spread their inverted parasols, and wouldn’t let it! And such a glorification of all trees and shrubs, including the palm, which we are almost afraid to call again by name, lest it should grow “stuck up,” and imagine there were no other trees but itself! And such a combination of tropical silence, warmth, and odor! Even in the night, we did not forget that the aloe-hedges had red in them, which made all the ways beautiful by day. Oh! it was what good Bostonians call “a lovely time”; and it was with a sigh of fulness that we set down the goblet of enjoyment, drained to the last drop, and getting, somehow, always sweeter towards the bottom.
For it was set down at the Ensor House, which we are to leave to-night, half-regretful at not having seen the scorpion by which we always expected to be bitten; for we had heard such accounts of it, patrolling the galleries with its venomous tail above its head, that we had thought a sight might be worth a bite. It was not to be, however. The luggage is brought; John is gratified with a _peso_; and we take leave with entire goodwill.
I mention our departure, only because it was Cuban and characteristic. Returning by boat to Havana, we were obliged to be on board by ten o’clock that evening, the boat starting at eleven. Of course, the steamer was nowhere but a mile out in the stream; and a little cockle-shell of a row-boat was our only means of attaining her. How different, ye good New Yorkers and Bostonians, from your afternoon walk on board the “Bay State,” with valise and umbrella in hand, and all the flesh-pots of Egypt in–well, in remembrance! After that degree of squabbling among the boatmen which serves to relieve the feelings of that habitually disappointed class of men, we chose our craft, and were rowed to the steamer, whose sides were steep and high out of water. The arrangements on board were peculiar. The body of the main deck was occupied by the _gentlemen’s_ cabin, which was large and luxurious. A tiny after-cabin was fitted up for the ladies. In the region of the machinery were six horrible staterooms, bare and dirty, the berths being furnished simply with cane-bottoms, a pillow, and one unclean sheet. Those who were decoyed into these staterooms endured them with disgust while the boat was at anchor; but when the paddle-wheels began to revolve, and dismal din of clang and bang and whirr came down about their ears, and threatened to unroof the fortress of the brain, why, then they fled madly, precipitately, leaving their clothes mostly behind them. But I am anticipating. The passengers arrived and kept arriving; and we watched, leaning over the side, for Don Antonito, who was to accompany our voyage. Each boat had its little light; and to see them dancing and toppling on the water was like a fairy scene. At last came our friend; and after a little talk and watching of the stars, we betook ourselves to rest.
Many of the Dons were by this time undressed, and smoking in their berths. As there was no access to the ladies’ cabin, save through the larger one, she who went thither awaited a favorable moment and ran, looking neither to the right hand nor the left. The small space was tolerably filled by Cuban ladies in full dress.–_Mem_. They always travel in their best clothes.–The first navigation among them was a real balloon-voyage, with collisions; but they soon collapsed and went to bed. All is quiet now; and she of whom we write has thrown herself upon the first vacant bed, spreading first a clean napkin on the extremely serviceable pillow. Sleep comes; but what is this that murders sleep? A diminutive male official going to each berth, and arousing its fair occupant with “Dona Teresita,” or whatever the name may be, “favor me with the amount of your passage-money.” No comment is necessary; here, no tickets,–here, no stewardess to mediate between the unseen captain and the unprotected female! The sanctuary of the sex invaded at midnight, without apology and without rebuke! Think of that, _those_ passengers who have not paid their fare, and, when invited to call at the captain’s office and settle, do so, and be thankful! The male passengers underwent a similar visitation. It is the Cuban idea of a compendious and economic arrangement.
And here ends our account of Matanzas, our journey thither, stay, and return. Peace rest upon the fair city! May the earthquake and hurricane spare it! May the hateful Spanish government sit lightly on its strong shoulders! May the filibusters attack it with kisses, and conquer it with loving-kindness! So might it be with the whole island-vale!
* * * * *
THE FIRST AND THE LAST.
It was the last December of the eighteenth century. All night a fierce northeast snow-storm had been hissing and drifting through the frozen air, pelting angrily at the shuttered and curtained windows of the rich, and shrieking with scornful laughter as it forced its way through the ill-fitting casements and loose doors of the poor, clutching at them with icy fingers as they cowered over their poor fires, and spreading over the garret-beds in which they sought to hide from him a premature shroud of cold white snow.
But with morning the storm ceased, and a little before noon the sun, peering from behind his clouds, seemed to wink with astonishment at seeing how much had been done in his absence.
Not only the sun, but Mr. Phineas Coffin, guardian of the “town’s poor,” in the town of Newport, was astir, and, standing at the door of the “poor-‘us,” bent a contemplative eye upon the progress made by two stout youths who were clearing the snow from the sidewalks and paths upon his premises.
Mr. Coffin perceived that a trial of skill and speed was going on between one of his own pioneers and a lad similarly engaged on behalf of the next estate. About half-way between the rapidly approaching competitors stood a rough-hewn block of stone, marking the boundaries of the two estates.
To first reach this, the winning-post, was evidently the emulous desire of each. As they approached near and nearer, the snow flew from their shovels with a force and velocity which would certainly have reminded Mr. Coffin of a steam snow-plough, had he ever seen or heard, of such a thing, which he most assuredly never had.
Each boy performed prodigies of skill and valor. The “poor-‘us” lad evidently gained, and his patron did not conceal a wide smile of satisfaction; the rival looked up, saw it, was stung with generous rage, threw himself with fury upon his shovel, and in three enormous plunges laid bare his own side of the post, before “poor-‘us” had come within a foot of it.
Then, clapping his numb fingers upon his thighs, the successful champion uttered a melodious crow, which so disgusted the spectator that he was about to retire within doors, when his eyes fell upon a thinly clad, timid-looking woman who was advancing along the newly opened path, casting deprecating glances at the two boys, who from peaceful rivalry were now proceeding to open warfare, carried on with the ammunition so plentifully spread before them.
Nor was the alarm of the poor woman groundless; for, as she advanced into the battle-field, she found herself saluted upon the breast with an immense snow-ball, which, being of loose construction, adhered to the red broadcloth cloak of the pedestrian, forming a conspicuous and remarkable ornament to that garment.
“Come, stop that, you young limbs, or I’ll—-,” shouted the chivalric Phineas, hastily gathering, as he spoke, material for a formidable missile, which, being completed before the sentence, was used by him as a ready means of rounding his period, being at once more forcible and easier to come at than the words which most men would have used.
Besides, Nathaniel, the poorhouse lad, turning round at sound of his master’s voice, presented so fair a mark, with his gaping mouth, that, half involuntarily, the snow-ball left Mr. Coffin’s hand, and the next instant formed the contents of Nathaniel’s open mouth, leaving, however, a liberal surplusage to ornament his cheeks, chin, and nose. The recipient of this bulletin choked, spluttered, and pawed at his face after the manner of a cat who has tried to eat a wasp.
His rival did not seek to conceal the expression of his triumph and derision, the consequence of which was, that, as soon as “poor-‘us” could see, he fell upon his antagonist, and both immediately disappeared from view in the bosom of an enormous drift.
“Come right along, Mum,” called Mr. Coffin to the horror-stricken woman, who stood contemplating the spot where a convulsive floundering and heaving beneath the snow showed that the frozen element had not yet extinguished the fire of passion in the breasts of the buried heroes,–“come right along, and don’t be scaart of them young uns. They’re dreffal rude, I know; but then boys will be boys.”
The woman returned no answer to this time-honored defence of youthful enormities, but, hurrying on, reached the door, saying,–
“How’s your health this morning, Mr. Coffin?”
“Waal, Ma’am, I’m pooty middlln’ well, thank ye,” replied Phineas, slowly, and with an evident effort at recollection; then suddenly added, with more vivacity,–
“Why, it’s Widder Janes,–a’n’t it? Declare to goodness I didn’t know ye, with yer hood over yer face. Walk in, Miss Janes, and see my woman,–won’t ye?”
“Waal, I dunno as I can stop,” replied the widow, beginning, nevertheless, to shake the snow from her scanty skirts, and to stamp her numb feet, which were protected from the biting cold by a pair of old yarn socks, drawn over the shoes.