Journeys Through Bookland_ Vol. 7 Charles Herbert Sylvester 2497 downloads.pdf

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Title: Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7

Author: Charles Herbert Sylvester

Release date: November 7, 2007 [eBook #23405]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOURNEYS
THROUGH BOOKLAND, VOL. 7 ***

Transcriber’s Note
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. A list of these
changes is found at the end of the text. Inconsistencies in spelling and
hyphenation have been maintained. A list of inconsistently spelled and

hyphenated words is found at the end of the text. The original book
used both numerical and symbolic footnote markers. This version
follows the original usage.

The Canoe Race

A NEW AND ORIGINAL
PLAN FOR READING APPLIED TO THE
WORLD’S BEST LITERATURE
FOR CHILDREN

BY
CHARLES H. SYLVESTER
Author of English and American Literature

VOLUME SEVEN
New Edition

Chicago
BELLOWS-REEVE COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1922
BELLOWS-REEVE COMPANY

CONTENTS
PAGE
The Daffodils William Wordsworth 1
To the Fringed Gentian William Cullen Bryant 4
To a Mouse Robert Burns 5
To a Mountain Daisy Robert Burns 8
The Old Oaken Bucket Samuel Wordsworth 11
Bannockburn Robert Burns 15
Boat Song Sir Walter Scott 17
The Governor and the Notary Washington Irving 20
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Samuel T. Coleridge 29
The Black Hawk Tragedy Edwin D. Coe 58
The Petrified Fern Mary Bolles Branch 77
An Exciting Canoe Race J. Fenimore Cooper 79
The Buffalo Francis Parkman 96
The Charge of the Light Brigade Alfred Tennyson 147
For A’ That and A’ That Robert Burns 149
Breathes There the Man Sir Walter Scott 151
How Sleep the Brave William Collins 151
Queen Victoria Anna McCaleb 152
The Recessional Rudyard Kipling 164
The Star-spangled Banner Francis Scott Key 167
How’s My Boy? Sydney Dobell 169
The Soldier’s Dream Thomas Campbell 170
Make Way for Liberty James Montgomery 172
The Old Continentals Guy Humphreys McMaster 175
The Picket-Guard Mrs. Ethel Lynn Beers 177
My Old Kentucky Home Stephen Collins Foster 179
The Forsaken Merman Matthew Arnold 180

Tom and Maggie Tulliver George Eliot 186
A Gorilla Hunt Paul du Chaillu 247
The Cloud Percy Bysshe Shelley 257
Brute Neighbors Henry David Thoreau 260
Ode To a Skylark Percy Bysshe Shelley 275
The Pond in Winter Henry David Thoreau 280
Salmon Fishing Rudyard Kipling 285
Winter Animals Henry David Thoreau 293
Trees and Ants That Help Each Other Thomas Belt 306
The Family of Michael Arout Emile Souvestre 314
On the Receipt of My Mother’s William Cowper 331
Picture
Those Evening Bells Thomas Moore 340
Annabel Lee Edgar Allan Poe 341
The Three Fishers Charles Kingsley 343
The Reaper’s Dream Thomas Buchanan Read 345
The Recovery of the Hispaniola Robert Louis Stevenson 352
John Greenleaf Whittier Grace E. Sellon 381
William Cullen Bryant 391
To a Waterfowl William Cullen Bryant 395
Oliver Wendell Holmes Grace E. Sellon 398
The Cubes of Truth Oliver Wendell Holmes 406
The Lost Child James Russell Lowell 409
James Russell Lowell Grace E. Sellon 411
A Child’s Thought of God Elizabeth Barrett 418
Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 419
Don Quixote Cervantes 431
Pronunciation of Proper Names 487
For Classification of Selections, see General Index, at end of Volume X

ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Canoe Race (Color Plate) R. F. Babcock Frontispiece
A Host of Golden Daffodils Albert H. 2
Winkler
The Fringed Gentian G. H. Mitchell 4
Thou Need Na Start Awa Albert H. 6
Winkler
Robert Burns (Halftone) 8
Thou Bonny Gem Albert H. 9
Winkler
Inclined to My Lips Herbert N. 12
Rudeen
The Notary Enters the Carriage R. F. Babcock 26
He Cannot Choose but Hear (Heading) Donn P. Crane 29
I Shot the Albatross Donn P. Crane 33
And Straight the Sun Was Flecked With Donn P. Crane 38
Bars
I Watched the Water-Snakes Donn P. Crane 42
They Groaned, They Stirred, They All Donn P. Crane 45
Uprose
Slowly and Smoothly Went the Skip Donn P. Crane 48
(Color Plate)
“O Shrieve Me, Shrieve Me, Holy Man” Donn P. Crane 55
I Pass From Land To Land (Ending) Donn P. Crane 57
Black Hawk and the Two Ruffians R. F. Babcock 63
The Women and Children Crossed the R. F. Babcock 71
River
Hawkeye on the Trail R. F. Babcock 80

James Fenimore Cooper (Halftone) 82
Hawkeye R. F. Babcock 85
Gradually I Came Abreast of Him R. F. Babcock 106
One Vast Host of Buffalo R. F. Babcock 125
On Dune and Headland G. H. Mitchell 165
The Little Gray Church on the Windy Walter O. Reese 181
Hill
“Tom’s Coming Home!” Herbert N. 188
Rudeen
“Oh, He is Cruel” Herbert N. 199
Rudeen
“Is it the Tipsy Cake, Then?” Herbert N. 206
Rudeen
“Here, Lucy!” Herbert N. 224
Rudeen
“Ah, You’re Fondest O’ Me, Aren’t Herbert N. 243
You?” Rudeen
Gorilla With Her Young Herbert N. 251
Rudeen
The Battle of the Ants Herbert N. 265
Rudeen
Watching for the Loon R. F. Babcock 272
The Skylark R. F. Babcock 276
Kneeling To Drink R. F. Babcock 281
Salmon Fishing (Color Plate) R. F. Babcock 286
The Red Squirrel Stealing Corn R. F. Babcock 296
“How Much Do We Owe You?” Herbert N. 320
Rudeen
Michael is Come Back Herbert N. 326
Rudeen
“My Mother!” Iris Weddell 336
White
In Her Sepulchre There by the Sea Donn P. Crane 342
The Night Rack Came Rolling Up G. H. Mitchell 344
The Crescent Moon Went by G. H. Mitchell 347
I Looked Into the Cabin R. F. Babcock 354
Whittier’s Birthplace (Color Plate) 382

John Greenleaf Whittier (Halftone) 386
William Cullen Bryant (Halftone) 392
Thy Figure Floats Along Jerome Rozen 396
Oliver Wendell Holmes (Halftone) 398
Down the Sunny Glade Walter O. Reese 409
James Russell Lowell (Halftone) 412
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Halftone) 420
Don Quixote (Heading) Donn P. Crane 431
Don Quixote Tilts with the Windmills Donn P. Crane 439
“Defend Thyself, Miserable Being!” Donn P. Crane 444
The Lion Put His Head Out of the Cage Donn P. Crane 455
Sancho Fell on His Knees Donn P. Crane 464
The Horse Blew Up, with a Prodigious Donn P. Crane 475
Noise

THE DAFFODILS
By William Wordsworth

WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,—
A host of golden daffodils
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I, at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company;
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.
For oft, when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

A HOST OF GOLDEN DAFFODILS

When we look at this little poem we see at a glance that the stanzas are all the same length, that the
rhyme scheme is ababcc (see “To My Infant Son,” Vol. VI), and that the indentation at the beginning
of the lines corresponds with the rhymes. This poem, then, is perfectly regular in form.
There are other things, however, which go to make up perfect structure in a poem. First and
foremost, the words are so arranged that the accented syllables in any given line come at regular
intervals. Take, for instance, the first two lines of this poem. Each line contains eight syllables. If you
number these syllables 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, you will see that it is the second one each time that bears
the accent, thus:
I wan´dered lone´ly as´ a cloud´
That floats´ on high´ o’er vales´ and hills´.
Now, if you read the four remaining lines of the stanza you will see that in each one of these the
second syllable bears the accent, until you come to the last line, where in the word fluttering, which,
by the way, you pronounce flutt´ring, the accent is on the first syllable. If the poet did not now and
then change the accent a little it would become tedious and monotonous.
It is a very simple matter, you see, to separate every line of poetry into groups of syllables, and in
every group to place one accented syllable and one or more syllables that are not accented. Such a
group is called a foot. Thus in each of the first two lines in this poem there are four feet. Each foot
contains an accented and an unaccented syllable.
If you examine To the Fringed Gentian, To a Mouse, and To a Mountain Daisy, the three poems
which follow this, you will see the same structure, except that in To a Mouse and in To A Mountain
Daisy there are some short lines and some double rhymes, making the last foot a little different in
character from the others.
When a line of poetry is composed of two-syllable feet in which the second syllable bears the
accent we call that meter iambic. It is the prevalent foot in English poetry, and if you examine the
different poems in these volumes you will be surprised to find out how many of them are written
substantially on the plan of The Daffodils.
In naming the meter of a poem two things are considered: First the character of the feet, and
second, the number of feet. In this poem the feet are iambic and there are four of them, consequently
we name the meter of this poem iambic tetrameter. Whenever you hear those words you think of a
poem whose meter is exactly like that of The Daffodils.

These words seem long and hard to remember. It may help you to remember them if you think that
the word iam´bic contains an iambic foot.
In naming the meter we use the Greek numerals—mono (one), di (two), tri (three), tetra (four),
penta (five), hexa (six), hepta (seven), and octa (eight), and add to them the word meter, thus: Mo-
nom´e-ter, a line containing one foot, dim´e-ter, trim´e-ter, te-tram´e-ter, pen-tam´e-ter, hex-am´e-
ter, hep-tam´e-ter, and oc-tam´e-ter.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN
By William Cullen Bryant

T HOU blossom, bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven’s own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night;

Thou comest not when violets lean
O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden nest.
Thou waitest late, and com’st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged Year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.
I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

TO A MOUSE
On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plow, November, 1785
By Robert Burns

EE, sleekit, 5-1 cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie,
W O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle! 5-2
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle! 5-3
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker 6-4 in a thrave 6-5
’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin’ wi’ the lave 6-6
And never miss’t!

THOU NEED NA START AWA

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage 7-7 green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin’,
Baith snell 7-8 and keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
And weary winter comin’ fast,
And cozie, here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter 7-9 past
Out thro’ thy cell.
That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald, 7-10
To thole 7-11 the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch 7-12 cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, 7-13
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,
Gang aft a-gley, 7-14
An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain,
For promis’d joy.
Still them are blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e
On prospects drear;
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see, 8-15
I guess an’ fear.

5-1 Sleekit means sly.

5-2 Brattle means a short race.

5-3 A pattle is a scraper for cleaning a plow.

6-4 Daimen-icker means an ear of corn occasionally.

6-5 A thrave is twenty-four sheaves.

6-6 Lave is the Scotch word for remainder.

7-7 Foggage is coarse uncut grass.

7-8 Snell means sharp.

7-9 The coulter is the sharp iron which cuts the sod before the plow.

7-10 Hald means a resting place. But here means without.

7-11 Thole is the Scotch word for endure.

7-12 Cranreuch is hoar-frost.

7-13 No thy lane means not alone.

7-14 Gang aft a-gley means often go wrong.

8-15 In this poem and the one To a Mountain Daisy, does the allusion to the poet’s own hard fate
add to or detract from the beauty of the composition? Do these allusions give any insight into his
character? What was always uppermost in his mind?

Robert Burns
1759-1796

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY
On Turning One Down with the Plough in April, 1786
By Robert Burns

W EE, modest, crimson-tippéd flower,
Thou’s met me in an evil hour,
For I maun 8-1 crush amang the stoure 8-2
Thy slender stem;
To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonny gem.
Alas! it’s no thy neibor sweet,
The bonny lark, companion meet,
Bending thee’ mang the dewy weet,
Wi’ spreckled 8-3 breast,
When upward springing, blithe, to greet
The purpling east.
Cauld blew the bitter biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

THOU BONNY GEM

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,
High sheltering woods and wa’s maun shield.
But thou beneath the random bield 9-4
O’ clod or stane,
Adorns the histie 9-5 stibble-field,
Unseen, alane.
There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise;
But now the share uptears thy bed,
And low thou lies!
Such is the fate of artless maid,
Sweet floweret of the rural shade!
By love’s simplicity betrayed,
And guileless trust,
Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
Low i’ the dust.
Such is the fate of simple bard,
On life’s rough ocean luckless starred!
Unskilful he to note the card
Of prudent lore,

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard
And whelm him o’er!
Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven
To misery’s brink,
Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,
He, ruined, sink!
Even thou who mourn’st the daisy’s fate,
That fate is thine,—no distant date:
Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives, elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight,
Shall be thy doom!

8-1 Maun is the Scotch word for must.

8-2 Stoure is the Scotch name for dust.

8-3 Spreckled is the Scotch and provincial English form of speckled.

9-4 Bield means shelter.

9-5 Histie means dry or barren.

THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET 11-1
By Samuel Woodworth

OW dear to my heart are the scenes of my
H childhood,
When fond 11-2 recollection presents them to
view;
The orchard, the meadow, the deep, tangled wild-
wood,
And every loved spot that my infancy 11-3 knew.
The wide-spreading pond, and the mill 11-4 that stood
by it;
The bridge and the rock where the cataract fell;
The cot of my father, the dairy house 11-5 nigh it,
And e’en the rude bucket which hung in the well
—
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well.
That moss-covered bucket I hail as a treasure;
For often at noon, when returned from the field,
I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure,
The purest and sweetest that nature can yield.
How ardent I seized it, with hands that were
glowing,
And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell 12-6;
Then soon with the emblem of truth 12-7 overflowing,
And dripping with coolness it rose from the well
—

The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket arose from the well.

INCLINED TO MY LIPS

How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it,
As poised on the curb, 12-8 it inclined to my lips!
Not a full blushing goblet 13-9 could tempt me to
leave it,
Though filled with the nectar 13-10 that Jupiter sips.
And now, far removed from the loved situation, 13-11
The tear of regret will oftentimes swell,
As fancy returns to my father’s plantation,
And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well
—
The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket which hangs in the well.

If we compare The Old Oaken Bucket with The Daffodils (page 1), we will see that the lines of the
former are longer, and when we read aloud a few lines from the one and compare the other, we see
that the movement is very different. In The Old Oaken Bucket the accents are farther apart, and the
result is to make the movement long and smooth, like that of a swing with long ropes.
Let us examine more closely the lines of The Old Oaken Bucket in a manner similar to that
suggested on page 2, for The Daffodils. If we place the accent on the proper syllables in the first four
lines, they will read as follows:
How dear´| to my heart´| are the scenes´| of my child´|hood,
When fond´| rec-ol-lec´|tion pre-sents´| them to view’;
The or´|chard, the mead´|ow, the deep´| tan-gled wild´|-wood,
And ev´|’ry loved spot´| that my in´|fan-cy knew.´

The vertical lines above are drawn at the ends of the feet. How many feet are there in the first line;
how many in the second; how many in the third; how many in the fourth? How many syllables in the
first foot in the first line? How many other feet do you find containing the same number of syllables?
How many syllables are there in the second foot in the first line? How many other feet are there
containing the same number of syllables? Examine the feet that contain three syllables. On which
syllable is the accent placed when there are three syllables in the foot? A poetic foot of three syllables
which bears the accent on the third syllable is called an anapestic foot. The meter of this poem, then
is anapestic tetrameter, varied by an added syllable in most of the odd-numbered lines and by an
iambic foot at the beginning of each line.
Can you find any other poem in this volume in which the meter is the same? Can you find such
poems in other volumes?

11-1 Samuel Woodworth, the author of this familiar song, was an American, the editor of many
publications and the writer of a great many poems; but no one of the latter is now remembered,
except The Old Oaken Bucket.
11-2 This means that the author remembers fondly the scenes of his childhood, or remembers the
things of which he was fond in his childhood.
11-3 As the term is used in the law-books, a person is an infant until he is twenty-one years of age;
though, probably the word infancy here means the same as childhood.
11-4 Let us picture a large mill-pond with a race running out of one side of it past the old-
fashioned mill, which has a big wooden water wheel on the outside of it.
11-5 The dairy house was probably a low, broad building through which the water from the stream
ran. The milkpans were set on low shelves or in a trough so that the water could run around them and
keep the milk cool.
12-6 If he could see the white-pebbled bottom of the well, it must have been a shallow one, or
perhaps merely a square box built around a deep spring.
12-7 Water is usually spoken of as an emblem of purity, not of truth; but sometimes truth is spoken
of as hiding at the bottom of a well.
12-8 The curb is the square box usually built around the mouth of the well to a height of a few feet,
to protect the water from dirt. Sometimes three of the sides are carried up to a height of six or eight
feet, and a roof is built over the whole, making a little house of the curb. The fourth side is left open,
except for two or three feet at the bottom. In these old wells two buckets were often used. They were
attached to a rope which ran over a wheel suspended from the roof of the well house. When a bucket
was drawn up it was often rested on the low curb in front, while people drank from it.
13-9 Blushing goblet alludes to wine or some other liquor that has a reddish color.

13-10 Nectar was the drink of the old Greek gods, of whom Jupiter was the chief.

13-11 Situation and plantation do not rhyme well, and situation is scarcely the right word to use.
Location would be better, so far as the meaning is concerned.

BANNOCKBURN
Robert Bruce’s Address to His Army
By Robert Burns

S COTS, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled;
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to glorious victorie!
Now’s the day and now’s the hour—
See the front o’ battle lour;
See approach proud Edward’s power—
Edward! chains and slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward’s grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Traitor! coward! turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland’s king and law
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw!
Freeman stand or freeman fa’,
Caledonian! on wi’ me!
By oppression’s woes and pains!
By our sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be—shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!

Liberty’s in every blow!
Forward! let us do or die!

On pages 2, and 13, of this volume we talked about the different meters in which poetry is written.
In iambic poetry each foot contains two syllables, the second of which is accented. There is another
kind of foot composed of two syllables. In this the accent falls on the first syllable. Bannockburn
gives examples of this. To illustrate, we will rewrite the first stanza, using the words in their English
form, and mark off the feet and the accent:
Scots´, who | have´ with | Wal´-lace | bled´,
Scots´, whom | Bruce´ has | of´-ten | led´;
Wel´-come | to´ your | go´-ry | bed´,
Or´ to | glo´rious | vic´-to | ry´.
Each one of these lines ends with an accented syllable, but that may be disregarded in studying the
feet. This foot is called the trochee, and it will help you to remember it if you will think that the word
tro´chee has two syllables and is accented on the first. This poem, then, is in trochaic trimeter, with
added accented syllables at the ends of the lines. Read the other stanzas carefully, throwing the accent
prominently on the first syllable of each foot.
When you read to bring out the meter of a poem you are said to be scanning it. When you are in
the habit of scanning poetry you will find that you can do it very nicely and without spoiling the
sound. At first you will probably accent the syllables too strongly, and then people will say that you
are reading in a sing-song way, a thing to be avoided. Of course you will understand that the only
way to bring out the meter of a poem is to read it aloud, but after you have become familiar with the
various meters and have read aloud a great deal, you will be conscious of the rhythm when you read
to yourself. It is this consciousness of rhythm that gives much of the enjoyment to those who love
poetry, even when they do not read it aloud.

BOAT SONG
From Lady of the Lake
By Sir Walter Scott

AIL to the Chief who in triumph advances!
Honored and blest be the evergreen
pine!
Long may the tree, in his banner that
glances,
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line!
Heaven send it happy dew,
Earth lend it sap anew,
Gayly to bourgeon, and broadly to grow,
While every Highland glen
Sends our shout back again,
“Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!”
Ours is no sapling, chance sown by the fountain,
Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade;
When the whirlwind has stripped every leaf on the
mountain
The more shall Clan Alpine exult in her shade.
Moored in the rifted rock,
Proof to the tempest’s shock,
Firmer he roots him the ruder it blow:
Menteith and Breadalbane, then
Echo his praise again,
“Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!”

Proudly our pibroch has thrilled in Glen Fruin,
And Bannochar’s groans to our slogan replied;
Glen Luss and Ross-dhu, they are smoking in ruin,
And the best of Loch-Lomond lie dead on her
side.
Widow and Saxon maid
Long shall lament our raid,
Think of Clan Alpine with fear and with woe;
Lennox and Leven-glen
Shake when they hear again,
“Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!”
Row, vassals, row for the pride of the Highlands!
Stretch to your oars for the evergreen pine!
O that the rosebud that graces yon islands
Were wreathed in a garland around him to twine!
O that some seedling gem,
Worthy such noble stem,
Honored and blessed in their shadow might grow!
Loud should Clan Alpine then
Ring from her deepmost glen,
“Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!”

The last of the common feet which we shall have to consider in reading English poetry is called
dactyl. This foot consists of three syllables, the first of which is accented. Scott’s Boat Song is a very
fine example of dactylic tetrameter, in which the last foot consists either of a trochee (see page 16) or
of a single accented syllable. In every stanza there are four short lines of dactylic dimeter. Study the
four lines which we have divided for you below:
Hail´ to the | chief´ who in | tri´umph ad|van´ces!
Hon´ored and | blest´ be the | ev´er green | pine!´
Long´ may the | tree´, in his | ban´ner that | glan´ces,
Flou´rish, the | shel´ter and | grace´ of our | line.´
This is one of the finest meters in which poetry may be written, and one which you will learn to
recognize and like whenever you see it.
To assist you in remembering what we have said on this subject in the four poems we have studied,
we will give this brief outline:
Poetic feet
1. Consisting of two syllables:
Iambic, when the second syllable is accented.
Example: I wan´|dered lone|ly as´| a cloud´.

Trochaic, when the first syllable is accented.
Example: Scots´, who | have´ with | Wal´lace | bled´.
2. Consisting of three syllables:
Anapestic, when the third syllable is accented.
Example: How dear´ | to my heart´ | are the scenes´ | of my child´|hood.
Dactylic, when the first syllable is accented.
Example: Hail´ to the | chief´ who in | tri´umph ad|van´ces.

There are two other feet which are found occasionally in English poetry, namely the spondee,
which has two accented syllables, and the amphilbrach, which consists of three syllables with the
accent on the middle one.
Of course it is not necessary for you to know the names of these different feet in order to enjoy
poetry, but it is interesting information. What you must do is to notice whenever you read poetry the
kind of feet that compose the lines and how many there are in the line. After a while this becomes
second nature to you, and while you may not really pause to think about it at any time, yet you are
always conscious of the rhythm and remember that it is produced by a fixed arrangement of the
accented syllables. If you would look over the poems in these volumes, beginning even with the
nursery rhymes, it would not take you long to become familiar with all the different forms.
While study of this kind may seem tiresome at first, you will soon find that you are making
progress and will really enjoy it, and you will never be sorry that you took the time when you were
young to learn to understand the structure of poetry.

THE GOVERNOR AND THE NOTARY
By Washington Irving

N former times there ruled, as governor of the Alhambra 20-1, a
doughty old cavalier, who, from having lost one arm in the wars,
was commonly known by the name of El Gobernador Manco, or
the one-armed governor. He in fact prided himself upon being an
old soldier, wore his mustachios curled up to his eyes, a pair of
campaigning boots, and a toledo 20-2 as long as a spit, with his pocket
handkerchief in the basket-hilt.
He was, moreover, exceedingly proud and punctilious, and tenacious of
all his privileges and dignities. Under his sway, the immunities of the
Alhambra, as a royal residence and domain, were rigidly exacted. No one
was permitted to enter the fortress with firearms, or even with a sword or
staff, unless he were of a certain rank, and every horseman was obliged to
dismount at the gate and lead his horse by the bridle. Now, as the hill of the
Alhambra rises from the very midst of the city of Granada, being, as it
were, an excrescence of the capital, it must at all times be somewhat
irksome to the captain-general, who commands the province, to have thus
an imperium in imperio, 21-3 a petty, independent post in the very core of his
domains. It was rendered the more galling in the present instance, from the
irritable jealousy of the old governor, that took fire on the least question of
authority and jurisdiction, and from the loose, vagrant character of the
people that had gradually nestled themselves within the fortress as in a
sanctuary, and from thence carried on a system of roguery and depredation
at the expense of the honest inhabitants of the city. Thus there was a
perpetual feud and heart-burning between the captain-general and the
governor; the more virulent on the part of the latter, inasmuch as the
smallest of two neighboring potentates is always the most captious about

his dignity. The stately palace of the captain-general stood in the Plaza
Nueva, immediately at the foot of the hill of the Alhambra, and here was
always a bustle and parade of guards, and domestics, and city functionaries.
A beetling bastion of the fortress overlooked the palace and the public
square in front of it; and on this bastion the old governor would
occasionally strut backward and forward, with his toledo girded by his side,
keeping a wary eye down upon his rival, like a hawk reconnoitering his
quarry from his nest in a dry tree.
Whenever he descended into the city it was in grand parade, on
horseback, surrounded by his guards, or in his state coach, an ancient and
unwieldy Spanish edifice of carved timber and gilt leather, drawn by eight
mules, with running footmen, outriders, and lackeys, on which occasions he
flattered himself he impressed every beholder with awe and admiration as
vicegerent of the king, though the wits of Granada were apt to sneer at his
petty parade, and, in allusion to the vagrant character of his subjects, to
greet him with the appellation of “the king of the beggars.”
One of the most fruitful sources of dispute between these two doughty
rivals was the right claimed by the governor to have all things passed free
of duty through the city, that were intended for the use of himself or his
garrison. By degrees, this privilege had given rise to extensive smuggling.
A nest of contrabandistas 22-4 took up their abode in the hovels of the
fortress and the numerous caves in its vicinity, and drove a thriving business
under the connivance of the soldiers of the garrison.
The vigilance of the captain-general was aroused. He consulted his legal
adviser and factotum, a shrewd, meddlesome Escribano or notary, who
rejoiced in an opportunity of perplexing the old potentate of the Alhambra,
and involving him in a maze of legal subtilities. He advised the captain-
general to insist upon the right of examining every convoy passing through
the gates of his city, and he penned a long letter for him, in vindication of
the right. Governor Manco was a straightforward, cut-and-thrust old soldier,
who hated an Escribano worse than the devil, and this one in particular,
worse than all other Escribanoes.
“What!” said he, curling up his mustachios fiercely, “does the captain-
general set this man of the pen to practice confusions upon me? I’ll let him

see that an old soldier is not to be baffled by schoolcraft.”
He seized his pen, and scrawled a short letter in a crabbed hand, in which
he insisted on the right of transit free of search, and denounced vengeance
on any custom-house officer who should lay his unhallowed hand on any
convoy protected by the flag of the Alhambra.
While this question was agitated between the two pragmatical potentates,
it so happened that a mule laden with supplies for the fortress arrived one
day at the gate of Xenil, by which it was to traverse a suburb of the city on
its way to the Alhambra. The convoy was headed by a testy old corporal,
who had long served under the governor, and was a man after his own heart
—as trusty and stanch as an old Toledo blade. As they approached the gate
of the city, the corporal placed the banner of the Alhambra on the pack
saddle of the mule, and drawing himself up to a perfect perpendicular,
advanced with his head dressed to the front, but with the wary side glance
of a cur passing through hostile grounds, and ready for a snap and a snarl.
“Who goes there?” said the sentinel at the gate.
“Soldier of the Alhambra,” said the corporal, without turning his head.
“What have you in charge?”
“Provisions for the garrison.”
“Proceed.”
The corporal marched straight forward, followed by the convoy, but had
not advanced many paces before a posse of custom-house officers rushed
out of a small toll-house.
“Halloo there!” cried the leader. “Muleteer, halt and open those
packages.”
The corporal wheeled round, and drew himself up in battle array.
“Respect the flag of the Alhambra,” said he; “these things are for the
governor.”
“A fig for the governor, and a fig for his flag. Muleteer, halt, I say.”

“Stop the convoy at your peril!” cried the corporal, cocking his musket.
“Muleteer, proceed.”
The muleteer gave his beast a hearty thwack, the custom-house officer
sprang forward and seized the halter; whereupon the corporal leveled his
piece and shot him dead.
The street was immediately in an uproar. The old corporal was seized,
and after undergoing sundry kicks and cuffs, and cudgelings, which are
generally given impromptu by the mob in Spain, as a foretaste of the after
penalties of the law, he was loaded with irons, and conducted to the city
prison; while his comrades were permitted to proceed with the convoy, after
it had been well rummaged, to the Alhambra.
The old governor was in a towering passion, when he heard of this insult
to his flag and capture of his corporal. For a time he stormed about the
Moorish halls, and vapored about the bastions, and looked down fire and
sword upon the palace of the captain-general. Having vented the first
ebullition of his wrath, he dispatched a message demanding the surrender of
the corporal, as to him alone belonged the right of sitting in judgment on the
offenses of those under his command. The captain-general, aided by the pen
of the delighted Escribano, replied at great length, arguing that as the
offense had been committed within the walls of his city, and against one of
his civil officers, it was clearly within his proper jurisdiction. The governor
rejoined by a repetition of his demand; the captain-general gave a
surrejoinder of still greater length, and legal acumen; the governor became
hotter and more peremptory in his demands, and the captain-general cooler
and more copious in his replies; until the old lion-hearted soldier absolutely
roared with fury at being thus entangled in the meshes of legal controversy.
While the subtle Escribano was thus amusing himself at the expense of
the governor, he was conducting the trial of the corporal; who, mewed up in
a narrow dungeon of the prison, had merely a small grated window at which
to show his iron-bound visage, and receive the consolations of his friends; a
mountain of written testimony was diligently heaped up, according to
Spanish form, by the indefatigable Escribano; the corporal was completely
overwhelmed by it. He was convicted of murder, and sentenced to be
hanged.

It was in vain the governor sent down remonstrance and menace from the
Alhambra. The fatal day was at hand, and the corporal was put in capilla,
that is to say, in the chapel of the prison; as is always done with culprits the
day before execution, that they may meditate on their approaching end and
repent them of their sins.
Seeing things drawing to an extremity, the old governor determined to
attend to the affair in person. He ordered out his carriage of state and,
surrounded by his guards, rumbled down the avenue of the Alhambra into
the city. Driving to the house of the Escribano, he summoned him to the
portal.
The eye of the old governor gleamed like a coal at beholding the
smirking man of the law advancing with an air of exultation.

THE NOTARY ENTERS THE
CARRIAGE

“What is this I hear,” cried he, “that you are about to put to death one of
my soldiers?”
“All according to law—all in strict form of justice,” said the self-
sufficient Escribano, chuckling and rubbing his hands. “I can show your
excellency the written testimony in the case.”

“Fetch it hither,” said the governor.
The Escribano bustled into his office, delighted with having another
opportunity of displaying his ingenuity at the expense of the hard-headed
veteran. He returned with a satchel full of papers, and began to read a long
deposition with professional volubility. By this time a crowd had collected,
listening with outstretched necks and gaping mouths.
“Prithee man, get into the carriage out of this pestilent throng, that I may
the better hear thee,” said the governor. The Escribano entered the carriage,
when in a twinkling the door was closed, the coachman smacked his whip,
mules, carriage, guards, and all dashed off at a thundering rate, leaving the
crowd in gaping wonderment, nor did the governor pause until he had
lodged his prey in one of the strongest dungeons of the Alhambra.
He then sent down a flag of truce in military style, proposing a cartel or
exchange of prisoners, the corporal for the notary. The pride of the captain-
general was piqued, he returned a contemptuous refusal, and forthwith
caused a gallows, tall and strong, to be erected in the center of the Plaza
Nueva, for the execution of the corporal.
“Oho! is that the game?” said Governor Manco; he gave orders, and
immediately a gibbet was reared on the verge of the great beetling bastion
that overlooked the Plaza. “Now,” said he, in a message to the captain-
general, “hang my soldier when you please; but at the same time that he is
swung off in the square, look up to see your Escribano dangling against the
sky.”
The captain-general was inflexible; troops were paraded in the square;
the drums beat; the bell tolled; an immense multitude of amateurs had
collected to behold the execution; on the other hand, the governor paraded
his garrison on the bastion, and tolled the funeral dirge of the notary from
the Torre de la Campana, or tower of the bell.
The notary’s wife pressed through the crowd with a whole progeny of
little embryo Escribanoes at her heels, and throwing herself at the feet of
the captain-general implored him not to sacrifice the life of her husband and
the welfare of herself and her numerous little ones to a point of pride.

The captain-general was overpowered by her tears and lamentations, and
the clamors of her callow brood. The corporal was sent up to the Alhambra
under a guard, in his gallows garb, like a hooded friar; but with head erect
and a face of iron. The Escribano was demanded in exchange, according to
the cartel. The once bustling and self-sufficient man of the law was drawn
forth from his dungeon, more dead than alive. All his flippancy and conceit
had evaporated; his hair, it is said, had nearly turned gray with fright, and he
had a downcast, dogged look, as if he still felt the halter round his neck.
The old governor stuck his one arm akimbo, and for a moment surveyed
him with an iron smile. “Henceforth, my friend,” said he, “moderate your
zeal in hurrying others to the gallows; be not too certain of your own safety,
even though you should have the law on your side; and, above all, take care
how you play off your schoolcraft another time upon an old soldier.”

20-1 The Alhambra was the fortified palace, or citadel, of the Moorish kings when they reigned
over Granada, in Spain. It was built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and is one of the most
beautiful examples of Moorish architecture.
20-2 A toledo is a sword having a blade made at Toledo, in Spain, a place famous for blades of
remarkably fine temper and great elasticity.
21-3 Imperium in imperio is a Latin phrase meaning a government within a government.

22-4 Contrabandista is a Spanish name for a smuggler.

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 29-*
By Samuel T. Coleridge

PART I

T IS an ancient Mariner,
IAnd he stoppeth one of three.
“By thy long gray beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
“The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.”
He holds him with a skinny hand.
“There was a ship,” quoth he.
“Hold off! unhand me, gray-beard loon!”
Eftsoons 30-1 his hand dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-guest stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner: 30-2—
“The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.

“The sun came up upon the left, 30-3
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
“Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon—” 30-4
The Wedding-guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner:—
“And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong;
He struck with his o’ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
“With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who 31-5 pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe 31-6,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
“And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald. 32-7
“And through the drifts, the snowy clifts 32-8
Did send a dismal sheen:

Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
“The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound! 32-9
“At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough 32-10 the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God’s name. 32-11
“It ate the food it ne’er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through.

I SHOT THE ALBATROSS

“And a good south wind sprung up behind; 34-12
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner’s hollo!
“In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white moonshine.”
“God save thee, ancient Mariner,
From the fiends that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?”—“With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross.”

PART II

HE Sun now rose upon the right: 34-13
“T Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.
“And the good south wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariner’s hollo!
“And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work ’em woe:
For all averred I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow,—
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow.
“Nor dim, nor red, like God’s own head,
The glorious Sun uprist: 35-14
Then all averred I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.

’Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist. 35-15
“The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free; 35-16
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
“Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
’Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!
“All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand, 35-17
No bigger than the Moon. 35-18
“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
“Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
“The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
“About, about, in reel and rout 36-19
The death-fires 36-20 danced at night;
The water, like a witch’s oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.
“And some in dreams assurèd were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;

Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.
“And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.
“Ah! well a day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung. 36-21

PART III

HERE passed a weary time. Each throat
“T Was parched, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time!
How glazed each weary eye!
When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.
“At first it seemed a little speck,
And then it seemed a mist:
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist. 37-22
“A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it neared and neared:
As if it dodged a water-sprite,
It plunged, and tacked, and veered.
“With throats unslaked, with black lips baked
We could not laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, A sail! a sail!

“With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
Agape they heard me call:
Gramercy! 37-23 they for joy did grin, 37-24
And all at once their breath drew in,
As they were drinking all.

AND STRAIGHT THE SUN WAS
FLECKED WITH BARS

“See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!
Hither to work us weal;
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel!
“The western wave was all a-flame,
The day was well-nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad, bright Sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.
“And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,
(Heaven’s Mother send us grace!)

As if through a dungeon grate he peered
With broad and burning face.
“Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres? 39-25
“Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a Death? and are there two?
Is Death that Woman’s mate?
“Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.
“The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
‘The game is done! I’ve won, I’ve won!’ 39-26
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
“The Sun’s rim dips: the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark; 40-27
With far-heard whisper, o’er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.
“We listened and looked sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman’s face by his lamp gleamed white;
From the sails the dew did drip—
Till clomb 40-28 above the eastern bar
The hornèd Moon, 40-29 with one bright star
Within the nether tip.

“One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
And cursed me with his eye.
“Four times fifty living men,
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropped down one by one.
“The souls did from their bodies fly,—
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whiz of my cross-bow!”

PART IV

FEAR thee, ancient Mariner!
“I I fear thy skinny hand!
And thou art long, and lank and brown.
As is the ribbed sea-sand. 41-30
“I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand so brown.”
“Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-guest!
This body dropt not down.
“Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
“The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand, thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

“I looked upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.
“I looked to heaven, and tried to pray
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.
“I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky, 42-31
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.
“The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they:
The look with which they looked on me
Had never passed away.

I WATCHED THE WATER-SNAKES

“An orphan’s curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
“The moving Moon went up the sky,
And nowhere did abide:

Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside—
“Her beams bemock’d the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship’s huge shadow lay,
The charmèd water burnt alway
A still and awful red.
“Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
“Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
“O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware. 43-32
“The selfsame moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.”

PART V

SLEEP! it is a gentle thing,
“O Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!

She sent the gentle sleep from heaven,
That slid into my soul.
“The silly 44-33 buckets on the deck,
That had so long remained,
I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
And when I awoke, it rained.
“My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank.
“I moved, and could not feel my limbs:
I was so light—almost
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessèd ghost.
“And soon I heard a roaring wind:
It did not come anear;
But with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.
“The upper air burst into life!
And a hundred fire-flags sheen, 44-34
To and fro they were hurried about!
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.
“And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge: 45-35
And the rain poured down from one black cloud:
The Moon was at its edge.

THEY GROANED, THEY STIRRED,
THEY ALL UPROSE

“The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
The Moon was at its side:
Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.
“The loud wind never reached the ship,
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.
“They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.
“The helmsman steered; the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up blew;
The mariners all ’gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do;

They raised their limbs like lifeless tools—
We were a ghastly crew.
“The body of my brother’s son
Stood by me, knee to knee:
The body and I pulled at one rope,
But he said naught to me.”
“I fear thee, ancient Mariner!”
“Be calm, thou Wedding-guest!
’Twas not those souls that fled in pain,
Which to their corses came again,
But a troop of spirits blest:
“For when it dawned—they dropped their arms,
And clustered round the mast;
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,
And from their bodies passed.
“Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the Sun;
Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mixed, now one by one.
“Sometimes a-drooping from the sky
I heard the sky-lark sing;
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seemed to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!
“And now ’twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel’s song,
That makes the heavens be mute.
“It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
“Till noon we quietly sailed on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe:
Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
Moved onward from beneath.
“Under the keel nine fathom deep,
From the land of mist and snow,
The spirit slid: and it was he
That made the ship to go.
The sails at noon left off their tune,
And the ship stood still also.
“The Sun, right up above the mast,
Had fixed her to the ocean:
But in a minute she ’gan stir,
With a short, uneasy motion—
Backwards and forwards half her length
With a short, uneasy motion.
“Then like a pawing horse let go,
She made a sudden bound:
It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down in a swound.
“How long in that same fit I lay,
I have not to declare;
But ere my living life returned,
I heard, and in my soul discerned,
Two voices in the air.
“‘Is it he?’ quoth one, ‘Is this the man?
By him who died on cross,
With his cruel bow he laid full low
The harmless Albatross.
“‘The spirit who bideth by himself
In the land of mist and snow,

He loved the bird that loved the man
Who shot him with his bow.’
“The other was a softer voice,
As soft as honey-dew:
Quoth he, ‘The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do.’”

Slowly and Smoothly Went the Ship

PART VI

First Voice
UT tell me, tell me! speak again,
“‘B Thy soft response renewing—
What makes that ship drive on so fast?
What is the ocean doing?’

Second Voice
“‘Still as a slave before his lord,
The ocean hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast—
“‘If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim.
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him.’
First Voice
“‘But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?’ 49-36
Second Voice
“‘The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.
“‘Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high!
Or we shall be belated:
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the mariner’s trance is abated.’
“I woke, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather:
’Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high;
The dead men stood together.
“All stood together on the deck,
For a charnel-dungeon 50-37 fitter:
All fixed on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.
“The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never passed away:
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.

“And now this spell was snapt: 50-38 once more
I viewed the ocean green,
And looked far forth, yet little saw
Of what had else been seen—
“Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
“But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:
Its path was not upon the sea,
In ripple or in shade.
“It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring—
It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming.
“Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze—
On me alone it blew.
“Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The lighthouse top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree?
“We drifted o’er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray—
O let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.
“The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
So smoothly it was strewn!

And on the bay the moonlight lay,
And the shadow of the Moon.
“The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,
That stands above the rock:
The moonlight steeped in silentness
The steady weathercock.
“And the bay was white with silent light,
Till, rising from the same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.
“A little distance from the prow
Those crimson shadows were:
I turned my eyes upon the deck—
O Christ! what saw I there!
“Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood! 52-39
A man all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood.
“This seraph-band, each waved his hand:
It was a heavenly sight!
They stood as signals to the land.
Each one a lovely light;
“This seraph-band, each waved his hand:
No voice did they impart—
No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart. 52-40
“But soon I heard the dash of oars,
I heard the Pilot’s cheer;
My head was turned perforce away,
And I saw a boat appear.
“The Pilot and the Pilot’s boy,
I heard them coming fast:

Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy
The dead men could not blast.
“I saw a third—I heard his voice:
It is the Hermit good!
He singeth loud his godly hymns
That he makes in the wood.
He’ll shrieve my soul, he’ll wash away
The Albatross’s blood.”

PART VII

HIS Hermit good lives in that wood
“T Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with marineres
That come from a far countree.
“He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve—
He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.
“The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,
‘Why, this is strange, I trow!
Where are those lights so many and fair,
That signal made but now?’
“‘Strange, by my faith!’ the Hermit said—
‘And they answered not our cheer.
The planks look warped! and see those sails,
How thin they are and sere!
I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were
“‘Brown skeletons of leaves that lag
My forest-brook along;
When the ivy-tod 53-41 is heavy with snow,

And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
That eats the she-wolf’s young.’
“‘Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look!’
(The Pilot made reply)
‘I am a-feared’—‘Push on, push on!’
Said the Hermit cheerily.
“The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirred;
The boat came close beneath the ship,
And straight a sound was heard.
“Under the water it rumbled on,
Still louder and more dread:
It reached the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead.
“Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,
Which sky and ocean smote,
Like one that hath been seven days drowned
My body lay afloat;
But swift as dreams, myself I found
Within the Pilot’s boat.
“Upon the whirl where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round;
And all was still, save that the hill
Was telling of the sound.
“I moved my lips—the Pilot shrieked
And fell down in a fit;
The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
And prayed where he did sit.
“I took the oars: the Pilot’s boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.

‘Ha! ha!’ quoth he, ‘full plain I see,
The Devil knows how to row.’
“And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land!
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.

‘O SHRIEVE ME, SHRIEVE ME,
HOLY MAN’

“‘O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!’
The Hermit crossed his brow.
‘Say quick,’ quoth he, ‘I bid thee say—
What manner of man art thou?’
“Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
With a woeful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.
“Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
“I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
The moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.

“What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bridesmaids singing are:
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!
“O Wedding-guest! This soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea:
So lonely ’twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
“O sweeter than the marriage feast,
’Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!
“To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay!
“Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
“He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.” 57-42
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-guest
Turned from the bridegroom’s door.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:

A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.

29-* Note.—In 1798 there was published in England a little volume of poems known as Lyrical
Ballads. This collection brought to its two young authors, Wordsworth and Coleridge, little
immediate fame, but not long afterward people began to realize that much that was contained in the
little book was real poetry, and great poetry. The chief contribution of Coleridge to this venture was
The Ancient Mariner.
The poem as originally printed had a series of quaintly explanatory notes in the margin, and an
introductory argument which read as follows:
“How a ship having passed the Line, was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South
Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical latitudes of the great Pacific Ocean,
and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancient Mariner came back to his own
country.”
30-1 Eftsoons means quickly. The poem is written in ballad form, and many quaint old words are
introduced.
30-2 Such rhymes as this—Mariner with hear,—were common in the old ballads which Coleridge
so perfectly imitates.
30-3 Does this line tell you anything about the direction in which they were sailing?

30-4 Where was the ship when the sun stood “over the mast at noon”?

31-5 Two words are to be understood in this line—“As one who is pursued.”

31-6 Is not this an effective line? Can you think of any way in which the closeness of the foe could
be more effectively suggested?
32-7 Coleridge’s wonderful power of painting word-pictures is shown in this and the succeeding
stanzas. With the simplest language he makes us realize the absolute lonesomeness and desolateness
of the scene: he produces in us something of the same feeling of awe and horror that we should have
were we actually in the situation he describes.
32-8 Clifts means cleft rocks.

32-9 “Like noises one hears in a swound.”

32-10 Thorough is used here instead of through, as it often is in poetry, for the sake of the meter.

32-11 Besides the joy the sailors felt at seeing a living creature after the days in which they had
seen “nor shapes of men nor beasts,” they had a special pleasure in welcoming the albatross because
it was regarded as a bird of good omen.
34-12 Coleridge does not state that it was the albatross that brought the “good south wind:” he lets
us infer it.
34-13 In what direction were they sailing now?

35-14 Uprist is an old form for uprose.

35-15 It was this attitude of the sailors toward the mariner’s brutal act of killing the bird that
brought punishment upon them; they cared nothing for the death of the harmless bird, but only for its
effect upon them.
35-16 Note the striking alliteration in these two lines. Read this stanza and the succeeding one
aloud, and see how much easier it is to read these alliterative lines rapidly than it is any of the other
six lines. Such relation of movement to meaning is one of the artistic things about the poem.
35-17 How far northward had the ship returned?

35-18 When such a definite picture is presented, close your eyes and try to see it. Did you ever see
the sun when it seemed to have no radiance—when it was just a red circle?
36-19 A rout is a confused and whirling dance.

36-20 The death-fires are a sort of phosphorescent light, or will-o’-the-wisp, supposed to portend
death.
36-21 The shipmates try in this manner to fasten all the guilt on the ancient mariner and mark him
alone for punishment.
37-22 Wist means knew.

37-23 Gramercy is an exclamation derived from the French grand merci, which means great
thanks.
37-24 In a comment on The Ancient Mariner Coleridge says: “I took the thought of ‘grinning for
joy’ from my companion’s remark to me, when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were
nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak from the constriction, till we found a little puddle under a
stone. He said to me: ‘You grinned like an idiot.’ He had done the same.”
39-25 Gossameres are the cobweb-like films seen floating in the air in summer.

39-26 Death and Life-in-Death have been casting dice for the crew, as to whether they shall die, or
live and suffer. Life-in-Death has won the ancient mariner.
40-27 This is Coleridge’s beautiful way of telling us that in the tropics there is little or no twilight.

40-28 Clomb is an old form of climbed.

40-29 That is, the waning moon. Did you ever see the moon “with one bright star within the nether
tip”?
41-30 In his notes on the poem, Coleridge stated that the last two lines of this stanza were
composed by Wordsworth.
42-31 Can you see any reason for the repetition in this line, and for the unusual length? Does it
suggest the load and the weariness in the next line?
43-32 This is the turning point of the poem. As soon as the mariner felt in his heart love for the
“happy living things,” the spell which had been laid on him for the wanton slaying of the albatross
began to break. In the third stanza from the end of the poem, this point is clearly brought out.
44-33 Silly here means helpless, useless.

44-34 Sheen means bright, glittering.

45-35 Note this fine alliterative line.

49-36 The mariner has been thrown into a trance, for the ship is being driven northward faster than
a human being could endure.
50-37 A charnel-dungeon is a vault or chamber underneath or near a church, where the bones of
the dead are laid.
50-38 The sin is finally expiated.

52-39 The holy rood is the holy cross.

52-40 “The silence sank like music on my heart,” is among the beautiful lines that you will often
hear quoted.
53-41 An ivy-tod is a thick clump of ivy.

57-42 A friend of Coleridge’s once told him that she admired The Ancient Mariner, but had a
serious fault to find with it—it had no moral. Do you think, as you read this stanza, that her objection
was a valid one?

THE BLACK HAWK TRAGEDY 58-1
By Edwin D. Coe

DO not pose as an Indian lover. In fact the instincts and
impressions of my early life bent me in the opposite direction.
My father’s log house, in which I was born, stood within a few
rods of Rock River, about forty-five miles west of this city. The
stream was the boundary line, in a half-recognized way, between
two tribes of Indians, and a common highway for both. I well remember
their frequent and unheralded entries into our house, and their ready
assumption of its privileges. I can see them yet—yes, and smell them, too.
In some unventilated chamber of my rather capacious nostrils an abiding
breath of that intense, all-conquering odor of fish, smoke and muskrat,
which they brought with them, still survives. I well remember their
impudent and sometimes bullying demeanor; and the horror of one occasion
I shall never forget, when a stalwart Winnebago, armed with a knife,
tomahawk and gun, seized my mother by the shoulder as she stood by her
ironing table, and shook her because she said she had no bread for him. I
wrapped myself in her skirts and howled in terror. Having been transplanted
from the city to the wilderness, she had a mortal fear of Indians, but never
revealed it to them. She had nerve, and resolution as well; and this
particular fellow she threatened with her hot flat-iron and drove him out of
the house. So you see I have no occasion for morbid or unnatural sympathy
with any of the Indian kind.
Black Hawk was born in 1767 at Saukenuk. His father was the war chief
of the nation and a very successful leader. Young Black Hawk inherited his
martial spirit and conducted himself so valorously in battle that he was
recognized as a brave when only fifteen years old. He was enthusiastic and
venturesome, and before the close of his twentieth year had led several

expeditions against the Osages and Sioux. It was his boast that he had been
in a hundred Indian battles and had never suffered defeat.
Life passed pleasantly with Black Hawk and his tribe at Saukenuk for
many years. The location combined all the advantages possible for their
mode of existence. When Black Hawk was taken to Washington after his
capture in 1832, he made an eloquent and most pathetic speech at one of the
many interviews which he held with the high officials of the government.
He said: “Our home was very beautiful. My house always had plenty. I
never had to turn friend or stranger away for lack of food. The island was
our garden. There the young people gathered plums, apples, grapes, berries
and nuts. The rapids furnished us fish. On the bottom lands our women
raised corn, beans and squashes. The young men hunted game on the prairie
and in the woods. It was good for us. When I see the great fields and big
villages of the white people, I wonder why they wish to take our little
territory from us.”
We are apt to regard the agriculture of the Indians as of small moment,
but the Sauks and Foxes cultivated three thousand acres on the peninsula
between the Rock and the Mississippi. Black Hawk said it was eight
hundred acres, but the measurement of the cornfields shows that the area
was nearly four times that. Of this the Foxes, who were much the smaller
and weaker tribe, farmed five hundred acres; they also occupied
considerable land on the opposite side of the Mississippi, where the city of
Davenport now stands. These lands were all fenced with posts and rails, the
latter being held in place by bark withes. The barrier was sufficient to keep
the ponies out of the corn, but their lately acquired razor-back hogs gave
them more trouble. The work of preparing a field for their planting involved
much labor. The women heaped the ground into hills nearly three feet high,
and the corn was planted in the top for many successive years without
renewing the hills. Accordingly a field was much more easily prepared on
the mellow bottom lands than on the tough prairie sod. They raised three
kinds of corn: a sweet corn for roasting ears, a hard variety for hominy and
a softer for meal. They also cultivated beans, squashes, pumpkins,
artichokes and some tobacco. The Sauks at one time sold three thousand
bushels of corn to the government officials at Fort Crawford for their
horses. The Winnebagoes at Lake Koshkonong sold four thousand bushels
of corn to General Atkinson when he was pursuing Black Hawk in 1832.

The hundreds of acres of corn hills still visible about the latter lake show
how extensively that region was inhabited and farmed by the Indians.
Aside from the devastating wars which the tribe carried on with their new
enemies west of the great river, whereby their numbers were steadily
reduced, no serious shadow fell upon their life at and about Rock Island till
the year 1804. A French trader had established himself a few miles below
on the Mississippi. The young braves and squaws delighted in visiting his
place and were always sure of a dance in the evening. One night in that year
an Indian killed one of the habitues of the place, the provocation being
unbearable. A few weeks after demand was made that he be given up, and
he was at once surrendered and taken to Saint Louis.
Soon after, his relative, Quashquamme, one of the sub-chiefs of the tribe,
and four or five other Sauks went to Saint Louis to work for his release. A
bargain was made to the effect that a tract of land including parts of Iowa,
Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois, comprising fifty million acres, be ceded to
the government, the consideration being the cancellation of a debt of
$2,400, which the Indians owed trader Choteau, of Saint Louis, and a
perpetual annuity of $1,000 thereafter. It was also tacitly agreed that the
imprisoned Indian should be released. This part of the program was carried
out, but the poor fellow had not gone three hundred feet before he was shot
dead. We are sorry to say that General William Henry Harrison was the
chief representative of the government in this one-sided treaty, though, of
course, he knew nothing of the predetermined killing of the Indian prisoner.
This treaty, made without due authority on the part of Quashquamme, was
not accepted by the Sauks till 1816, when its ratification was made a side
issue in an agreement which the government negotiated between the Sauks
and the Osages or Sioux.
Black Hawk always claimed that he had never consented to the sale of
Saukenuk; and it is but fair to Quashquamme to say that he always insisted
that his cession of land went only to the Rock—and therefore did not
include Saukenuk—and not to the Wisconsin, as the whites asserted. I have
been thus explicit, as the disagreement about this treaty led to the final
conflict between the Sauks and the whites.

One proposition of the original paper was that the Indians should be
allowed to occupy all the territory as aforetime until it was surveyed and
sold to settlers. Along in the ’20’s the frontier line rapidly approached the
great river; and about 1823, when still fifty miles distant, squatters began to
settle on the Indian lands at Saukenuk. Protest was made against this to the
commander of Fort Armstrong (which was built on Rock Island in 1816)
and to the government, but without avail.
The squatters, relying for protection on the troops near by, perpetrated
outrages of the most exasperating character. They turned their horses into
the Indian cornfields, threw down fences, whipped one young woman who
had pulled a few corn suckers from one of their fields to eat, while on her
way to work, and finally two ruffians met Black Hawk himself one day as
he was hunting on the river bottom and accused him of shooting their hogs.
He indignantly denied it, but they snatched his rifle from his hand,
wrenched the flint out, and then beat the old man with a hickory stick till
the blood ran down his back, and he could not leave his house for days.
Doubtless this indignity surpassed all other outrages in the proud old chief’s
estimation, and we can imagine him sitting in his cabin on the highest
ground in the village, looking over the magnificent landscape, brooding
upon the blight which had fallen upon the beautiful home of his tribe, and
harboring thoughts of revenge. Still he refrained from open resistance till
the spring of 1831.

BLACKHAWK AND THE TWO
RUFFIANS

It was the custom of the tribe to spend the winter months hunting and
trapping in northeastern Missouri, returning in the spring to Saukenuk. This
time they found the whites more aggressive than ever. They had fenced in
the most of the cultivated land, plowed over the burying ground, and
destroyed a number of houses. They received the Indians with hostile looks,
but Black Hawk at last did what he ought to have done at first, ordered the
squatters all off the peninsula. He then went to an island where a squatter
sold liquor and had paid no heed to his entreaties not to sell to the Indians,
and with a party of his braves knocked in the heads of the whisky barrels
and poured their contents on the ground. The liquor vendor immediately
hurried to Governor Reynolds, of Illinois, with his tale of woe and
represented that Black Hawk was devastating the country with torch and
tomahawk.
Governor Reynolds at once issued a flamboyant proclamation calling for
volunteers, and asked the United States authorities at Saint Louis for aid. A
considerable body of regulars was dispatched up the river and reached
Saukenuk before the volunteers. Black Hawk told his people to remain in
their houses, and not to obey any orders to leave Saukenuk, for they had not
sold their home and had done no wrong. But when he saw the
undisciplined, lawless and wildly excited volunteers, who came a few days

later, he told the people that their lives were in danger and they must go.
Accordingly the next morning at an early hour all embarked in their canoes
and crossed the Mississippi. They were visited there by the officials, and
Black Hawk entered into an agreement to remain west of the river.
Black Hawk’s band spent the fall and winter, after their expulsion from
Saukenuk, in great unhappiness and want. It was too late to plant corn, and
they suffered from hunger. Their winter’s hunt was unsuccessful, as they
lacked ammunition, and many of their guns and traps had gone to pay for
the whisky they had drunk before Black Hawk broke up the traffic. In the
meantime Black Hawk was planning to recover Saukenuk by force. He
visited Canada, but received little encouragement there, except sympathy
and the assurance that his cause was just.
Black Hawk’s worst adviser was Neapope, his second in command, and a
terrible liar. He also visited Canada and claimed that the British whom he
had seen stood ready to help Black Hawk with men, arms and ammunition,
and that a steamboat would bring them to Milwaukee in the spring. This
was good news to the credulous old chief; and quite as acceptable as this
was Neapope’s story that the Winnebagoes and Pottawatomi would join in
the campaign to secure his rights. Added to these encouragements were the
entreaties of the homesick hungry women, who longed for their houses and
cornfields at Saukenuk.
Keokuk did his utmost to dissuade Black Hawk but in vain, and then he
gave warning to the whites of Black Hawk’s purpose. He feared that the
whole nation might be drawn into the war if it was once started. Black
Hawk’s first move with his band in the spring of 1832 was to visit Keokuk’s
village, set up his war post and call for recruits. He wore a British uniform
and displayed a British flag. This foolishness and gratification of vanity cost
him dearly in the end. He made an impassioned speech and wrought the
Indians up to such enthusiasm that they demanded that Keokuk join with
Black Hawk. It was a critical moment for the young chief—even his life
was in danger; but he was a more skillful master of oratory than even the
eloquent Black Hawk, and, seeming at first to fall in with his plan, he
gradually showed up its danger and its impracticable character, until at last
he saved all his own party and even won a considerable number away from
Black Hawk.

On the 26th of April the Black Hawk band crossed the Mississippi
several miles below Rock River. They numbered twelve hundred in all, less
than four hundred being warriors, and these only partly armed. Their
destination was Prophetstown, as Black Hawk’s plan was to raise a crop
there and go on the war path in the fall. The braves struck across the
country, while the women, weak with famine, slowly paddled the canoes up
against the swift current of the river. They reached Prophetstown late in
April, the heavy rains which had swollen the rivers greatly impeding their
progress. A marvelous feature of this journey across the territory which the
whites claimed had been ceded to them, is the fact that not the slightest
depredation was committed at any farm or house on the march. The
inhabitants fled, but the hungry Indians touched none of the abundant food
which they left behind. Not a gun was fired. Black Hawk had ordered that
no offense be given, and he was strictly obeyed.
Black Hawk was disappointed to find that the Winnebagoes were
lukewarm as to his enterprise, and also reluctant to let him plant a crop,
fearing to get into trouble with the government. He then pushed on to
confer with the Pottawatomi, who had a village at Sycamore Creek about
forty miles farther on. Here he found similar conditions; also he learned the
falsity of the story that he could get aid from the British.
He says that he then determined to return to Iowa and make the best of it
there. But he was too late—Governor Reynolds had issued another
proclamation, and two thousand volunteers besides a considerable body of
regulars were on his trail. He had made a farewell dog feast for his
Pottawatomi friends, when a scout brought news that about three hundred
whites were going into camp five miles distant. This was a sort of
independent command under Major Stillman, who had pushed ahead of the
main body. It was composed of lawless, undisciplined material, and at that
moment was suffering under the effects of drinking two barrels of whisky
which the troops had poured down their throats rather than leave it on a
wagon that was hopelessly stuck in the mud.
Black Hawk directed three young braves to take a white flag, go to the
camp, ask what the purpose of the command was, and to say that he desired
a conference with them. He then sent five others on horseback to report the
reception which the flag bearers met with. Three of them an hour later came

at full speed into camp, reporting that the whites had surrounded the flag
bearers and killed them and then chased the five who had followed, killing
two of them, and were coming on in full force. All the devil in the old
warrior’s heart was roused by this brutal treachery, and calling on the forty
warriors who were with him at the conference, the rest being in camp some
miles away, he hastened to meet the enemy. Forming an ambush in the
brush, the Indians fired their guns as the whites approached, just at
nightfall, and rose up and charged with a wild yell. The drunken volunteers
at once turned and fled, the panic gathering force as they went. The
fugitives rushed through the camp pell-mell, and all who were left there
joined in the stampede. In their desperate fear, every soldier thought every
other an Indian and fired hither and yon. Eleven were killed, probably only
one by the redskins. The survivors for the most part continued their flight,
spreading the most exaggerated stories of the numbers and ferocity of the
Indians, until they reached their several homes. As it proved, the three
Indian flag bearers were not harmed till the stampede began, when one of
them was shot by a soldier just mounting his horse to run. One of the
surviving Indians immediately killed him with his tomahawk.
This easy triumph changed Black Hawk’s purpose. He regarded it as an
omen of victory and determined to go on. But his strenuous efforts to enlist
the Pottawatomi in the cause were unavailing. Old Chief Shaubenee had
absolute control over them and steadily said “no.” Even Chief Big Foot at
the head of Lake Geneva refused. He was a drunken, sullen, brutal savage,
but had given his word to keep the peace and did so, though he bitterly
hated the whites and would have been glad to see the war go on. About one
hundred reckless, lawless individuals of the Winnebago and Pottawatomi
tribes joined Black Hawk, but gradually deserted him as his fortunes waned.
Black Hawk was now anxious to take his women, children and old men
to a place of safety, and, following the guidance of two Winnebagoes, they
made their way up the Rock to Hustisford Rapids and there went into camp.
Fish, game, clams, roots and the bark of trees constituted their food while
there, but Black Hawk in his biography says they found it difficult to keep
from starving. And, adding to their present misery, the thrifty, provident
squaws saw another harvestless summer passing and a winter of famine
before them. With his warriors he then returned to continue the contest. A
few skirmishes and collisions took place along the line that now separates

Wisconsin and Illinois, and predatory parties of Winnebagoes and
Pottawatomi worked out their grudges and revenges on whites who had
incurred their enmity. These outrages were numerous and were attributed to
the Sauks, as their perpetrators expected would be the case. It is now
believed that not a single case of the murder of an unarmed man or of a
woman or child was justly chargeable to the Sauks.
Governor Reynolds had called for a second levy of two thousand
volunteers, and General Atkinson, with a considerable force of regulars,
was in the field. All were under his command, and he followed Black
Hawk, as the latter retired northward, with an army of four thousand, all
mounted, fully twelve times as great in number as the starving band which
he was pursuing. They camped near Beloit, camped at Milton, near the
south end of Storr’s Lake, and followed on cautiously to Lake Koshkonong,
for Atkinson had a most wholesome regard for Black Hawk’s prowess. At
the lake they found an old blind Sauk who had been left behind. They gave
him food, but a straggler coming along later shot him as he was crawling to
a spring for water. His bones lay on the ground unburied for years after the
country was settled, the skull having been hung on a bush. At the junction
of the Bark and Rock rivers Atkinson went into utter bewilderment and
uncertainty as to Black Hawk’s whereabouts, and he finally built the
stockade at the point which bears his name. He dispatched a considerable
force under Colonels Alexander, Dodge and Henry to Portage for supplies.
There they learned where Black Hawk’s camp was; Henry and Dodge set
out to attack it, while Alexander returned to Atkinson. The latter had heard
that Black Hawk was in full force at Burnt Village on the Whitewater River,
about four miles north of the location now occupied by the city bearing that
name. He sent off messengers for the remainder of the army to join him for
an attack.
But in going and coming, the trail of Black Hawk and his entire band was
discovered leading to the west. Henry and Dodge started in rapid pursuit,
sending word to Atkinson that the game had been flushed. That doughty
warrior had in the meantime learned that the Burnt Village story was a
myth; and those of his men whose time had expired, broke ranks and
returned to their homes, all believing that Black Hawk had finally escaped.
The fugitive’s trail crossed the site of the present city of Madison and also
the University grounds, bearing thence northwest to the Wisconsin River.

Singularly enough, Black Hawk struck this stream directly opposite the site
of his people’s ancient village of Prairie du Sac. Soon after leaving Fourth
Lake the Indians discovered their pursuers and hastened their painful flight.
All along the trail had been marked by evidences of their extremity: in the
skeletons of ponies robbed of their flesh, in the trees stripped of bark for
food, and the ground dug over for roots. To these proofs were now added
kettles and blankets which the enfeebled women could no longer carry, and
the dead bodies of famished papooses and old people.

THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN
CROSSED THE RIVER

About four o’clock in the afternoon, the rear guard of the Sauks was
overtaken a few miles from the river. This was on the 21st day of July, and
the troops had made a forced march of eighty miles in three days from the
Rock to the Wisconsin, much of the way through swamps and dense forests.
Until dark a series of skirmishes was maintained, the Indians skilfully
forming new lines and holding the enemy back while the women and
children were crossing the river. Black Hawk directed the fight while sitting
on his pony, his stentorian voice reaching every part of the field. He always
counted this battle as most creditable to his military genius, and there is
reason for the claim, for he delayed the whites till the passage of the river

was secured. Jefferson Davis, who was present, says that the squaws tore
the bark off the trees and made little canoes in which to float their papooses
and utensils across the river; and that half the braves swam the river holding
their rifles in the air, while the rest kept the whites back, and then, having
landed, fired on the whites from the other side, while the remaining braves
crossed. Davis pronounced it the most brilliant defensive battle he ever
witnessed.
The next morning the Indians had disappeared, but during the night they
had constructed a raft upon which a large number of the women and
children and old men were placed and set adrift, hoping that they would be
allowed to go down the river unmolested, and reach their late village in
Iowa. But Colonel Dodge sent word ahead, and the soldiers at Fort
Crawford lay in wait for them; and when the raft approached they fired
upon the helpless creatures, killing a large number. A few were taken
prisoners, but the rest were drowned or swam ashore and afterwards
perished of hunger in the woods.
Late in the night after the fight at Wisconsin Heights, a loud, shrill voice
was heard from the eminence which Black Hawk had occupied during the
conflict. It caused consternation at first among the whites, as it was thought
to signify a night attack. But the voice continued in strong, impassioned
harangue for more than an hour, eliciting, however, only jeers and an
occasional rifle shot. It was afterwards learned that the orator was Neapope,
speaking in the Winnebago tongue. He had seen a few Winnebagoes with
the whites in the afternoon but did not know that they had gone away at
nightfall. He told how they saw their great mistake in leaving Iowa, that
they had their wives and children with them, that all were dying for want of
food, and that they only asked to be allowed to go in peace; and they
pledged themselves to return to Iowa, and never again come east of the
river. Neapope was an orator of great power, and he presented his plea with
all the eloquence of which he was master. But it fell on ears that understood
not its purport. I know of no more pathetic incident in all the long chapter
of human woe and despair than this pitiful prayer of a perishing people for
mercy and forgiveness, spoken in a tongue that carried no meaning to those
who heard. Let us hope that if the petition had been understood it would
have been granted.

The loss in the battle on the 21st had not been large on either side, and
the Black Hawk band pursued their journey to the Mississippi without
guides, through a rugged, trackless wilderness, sorrowing, suffering and
despairing. The whites continued down the Wisconsin to Helena, where
General Atkinson took command. Helena was a deserted village which had
been built to carry on shot-making. The soldiers tore down the log houses
and made rafts of the logs to cross the river. Five days in all were consumed
before the Black Hawk trail was discovered, and then the pursuers were
guided to it by crows and buzzards gathering in the air over the bodies of
dead refugees left by the wayside.
On the first of August the Indians reached the Mississippi and began
crossing in two canoes. In the afternoon the steamer Warrior, which had
been sent up from Fort Crawford to notify the Sioux Chief, Wabasha, one
hundred and twenty miles above to look out for his enemy, Black Hawk,
who was headed that way, stopped opposite the spot where the Indians had
gathered. Black Hawk raised a white flag and tried to parley; but the captain
assumed that it was an attempt to trap him and, without warning, fired into
the Indians at short range with a cannon loaded with cannister. Thus a
second time was the usage of all nations violated in this war by refusing to
recognize the flag of truce. Twenty-three were killed by this discharge.
There were twenty riflemen on the boat who then began firing, and the
Sauks responded. The Warrior soon after steamed away to Fort Crawford,
twenty miles below, and the Indians continued their efforts to cross the
river, here three hundred rods wide and running a strong current. Some
were drowned and others were carried down the stream on improvised rafts.
A few of these were rescued at Prairie du Chien.
The next day Atkinson appeared on the ground. Black Hawk seems to
have been utterly demoralized and had told those who had not crossed that
he was going to the Chippewa country, and that they had better follow. Only
a few did so, and after going a few miles he turned back on August 2nd, just
in time to see the closing scene of the massacre called the battle of Bad
Axe.
As Atkinson approached he was skilfully decoyed beyond the Indian
camp some distance, but its location was finally discovered and a fierce
onslaught was made. The poor wretches at first begged for quarter, but as

the soldiers shot them down without discrimination, they fought for a time
with desperation, and then men, women and children plunged into the river,
the most of them to drown before reaching the other side. The steamer
Warrior reappeared, and the sharpshooters fired at the swimmers, some of
them women with babies on their backs. The incidents of the merciless
slaughter are too harrowing for recital, and would be incredible if not
thoroughly authenticated. It is difficult to understand the ferocity with
which Black Hawk’s band was pursued and destroyed. Probably the belief
that he was still in the British service had much to do with it; also his first
success at Stillman’s Run, and the murder of the whites in Northern Illinois
by marauders from other tribes, which were unjustly charged to him, may
account for it in large part. About three hundred Indians succeeded in
crossing the river, but their ill fate still pursued them. Their fierce enemy,
Wabasha, was on their track, and before reaching the Iowa river half of the
three hundred had been relentlessly slain. Of the twelve hundred who
crossed the Mississippi in April, only one hundred and fifty, and they barely
living skeletons, returned in August.
Black Hawk gave himself up soon after the Bad Axe massacre to the
Winnebagoes, and was surrendered to our officers at Prairie du Chien.
Thence he was taken to Saint Louis, Washington, through the east, and back
to Fort Armstrong, where he was delivered over to Keokuk, who became
surety for his good behavior. Although always kindly treated by the latter,
the old chief never ceased to be mindful of his subordination. For five years
he brooded over his misfortunes and humiliation, and then died in his
seventy-second year. Even his body was not allowed to rest in peace; it was
stolen, and when the Indians discovered the theft and demanded the return
of the bones, the building in which the skeleton was stored burned before it
was delivered up, and only indistinguishable ashes remained.
A word further is due the stalwart old chief, whose good qualities
certainly surpassed his evil ones. He was honorable, brave, generous and
magnanimous. He never permitted a captive to be tortured, and early gave
up the practice of scalping the enemies he had slain. As a leader in Indian
warfare he ranks high, and his final campaign had in its purpose the same
comprehensive idea which actuated Tecumseh and Pontiac, that of a union
of all Indian tribes; and he had the further intent of drawing in the British to
enforce the treaty of 1815, which he claimed had been violated in his own

case—the guarantee of immunity to all Indian allies of the British having
been disregarded. Absolute honesty and truthfulness in business matters
were among his characteristics. These he shared with his people generally.
Colonel Davenport, who had a trading establishment on the island for many,
many years, used often to go to dinner leaving his store full of Indians, and
he said they never took so much as a clay pipe in his absence.
Black Hawk was impulsive, hopeful and credulous, and so was easily
imposed upon; he had an ardent love for the beauties of nature; he was
deeply religious, and said that he never took a drink of water from a brook
without sincere gratitude to the Great Spirit who cared for him. He was a
tender husband and father, and, contrary to the usage of his tribe, married
only one wife. When his father was killed he mourned and fasted five years.
He did the same for two years, when a son and daughter died, eating only a
little corn each evening, “hoping that the Great Spirit would take pity on
him.” We wish for the honor of our race that this poor savage whose only
offense was that of loving his home too well to give it up without a struggle,
had not gone out of life leaving such a red, indelible page on the book of
history against us.

58-1 The following account is taken from a paper read before the Loyal Legion at Milwaukee,
May 6, 1896, by Mr. Coe.

THE PETRIFIED FERN
By Mary Bolles Branch

I N aGrew
valley, centuries ago,
a little fern-leaf, green and slender,
Veining delicate and fibres tender;
Waving when the wind crept down so low.
Rushes tall, and moss, and grass grew round it,
Playful sunbeams darted in and found it,
Drops of dew stole in by night, and crowned it,
But no foot of man e’er trod that way;
Earth was young, and keeping holiday.
Monster fishes swam the silent main,
Stately forests waved their giant branches,
Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches,
Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain;
Nature revelled in grand mysteries,
But the little fern was not of these,
Did not number with the hills and trees;
Only grew and waved its wild sweet way,
None ever came to note it day by day.
Earth one time put on a frolic mood,
Heaved the rocks and changed the mighty motion
Of the deep, strong currents of the ocean;
Moved the plain and shook the haughty wood,
Crushed the little fern in soft moist clay,—
Covered it, and hid it safe away.
O the long, long centuries since that day!

O the agony! O life’s bitter cost,
Since that useless little fern was lost!
Useless? Lost? There came a thoughtful man
Searching Nature’s secrets, far and deep;
From a fissure in a rocky steep
He withdrew a stone, o’er which there ran
Fairy pencilings, a quaint design,
Veinings, leafage, fibres clear and fine,
And the fern’s life lay in every line!
So, I think, God hides some souls away,
Sweetly to surprise us, the last day.

AN EXCITING CANOE RACE
By J. Fenimore Cooper

HE heavens were still studded with stars when Hawkeye 79-1 came
to arouse the sleepers. Casting aside their cloaks, Munro 79-2 and
Heyward 79-3 were on their feet while the woodsman was still
making his low calls at the entrance of the rude shelter where
they had passed the night. When they issued from beneath its
concealment, they found the scout awaiting their appearance nigh by, and
the only salutation between them was the significant gesture for silence
made by their sagacious leader.
“Think over your prayers,” he whispered, as they approached him; “for
He to whom you make them knows all tongues; that of the heart, as well as
those of the mouth. But speak not a syllable; it is rare for a white voice to
pitch itself properly in the woods. Come,” he continued, turning toward a
curtain of the works; “let us get into the ditch on this side, and be regardful
to step on the stones and fragments of wood as you go.”

HAWKEYE ON THE TRAIL

His companions complied, though to two of them the reasons of this
extraordinary precaution were yet a mystery. When they were in the low
cavity that surrounded the earthen fort on three of its sides, they found the
passage nearly choked by the ruins. With care and patience, however, they
succeeded in clambering after the scout until they reached the sandy shore
of the Horicon.
“That’s a trail that nothing but a nose can follow,” said the satisfied scout,
looking back along their difficult way; “grass is a treacherous carpet for a
flying party to tread on, but wood and stone take no print from a moccasin.
Had you worn your armed boots, there might indeed have been something
to fear; but with the deerskin suitably prepared, a man may trust himself,
generally, on rocks with safety. Shove in the canoe nigher to the land,
Uncas; 81-4 this sand will take a stamp as easily as the butter of the Jarmans
on the Mohawk. Softly, lad, softly; it must not touch the beach, or the
knaves will know by what road we have left the place.”
The young man observed the precaution; and the scout laying a board
from the ruins to the canoe, made a sign for the two officers to enter. When
this was done, everything was studiously restored to its former disorder;
and then Hawkeye succeeded in reaching his little birchen vessel without

leaving behind him any of those marks which he appeared so much to
dread.
“Now,” continued the scout, looking back at the dim shore of William
Henry, which was now fast receding, and laughing in his own silent but
heartfelt manner; “I have put a trail of water atween us; and unless the imps
can make friends with the fishes, and hear who has paddled across their
basin this fine morning, we shall throw the length of the Horicon behind us
before they have made up their minds which path to take.”
“With foes in front and foes in our rear, our journey is like to be one of
danger.”
“Danger,” repeated Hawkeye, calmly; “no, not absolutely of danger, for,
with vigilant ears and quick eyes, we can manage to keep a few hours ahead
of the knaves; or, if we must try the rifle, there are three of us who
understand its gifts as well as any you can name on the borders. No, not of
danger; but that we shall have what you may call a brisk push of it is
probable; and it may happen a brush, a scrimmage, or some such divarsion,
but always where covers are good and ammunition abundant.”

James Fenimore Cooper
1789-1851

It is possible that Heyward’s estimate of danger differed in some degree
from that of the scout, for, instead of replying, he now sat in silence, while
the canoe glided over several miles of water. Just as the day dawned, they
entered the narrows of the lake 82-5, and stole swiftly and cautiously among
their numberless little islands. It was by this road that Montcalm had retired
with his army, and the adventurers knew not but he had left some of his
Indians in ambush, to protect the rear of his forces and collect the
stragglers. They therefore approached the passage with the customary
silence of their guarded habits. Chingachgook 83-6 laid aside his paddle,
while Uncas and the scout urged the light vessel through crooked and
intricate channels, where every foot that they advanced exposed them to the
danger of some sudden rising on their progress. The eyes of the sagamore
moved warily from islet to islet and copse to copse as the canoe proceeded;
and when a clearer sheet of water permitted, his keen vision was bent along
the bald rocks and impending forests that frowned upon the narrow strait.

Heyward, who was a doubly interested spectator as well from the
beauties of the place as from the apprehension natural to his situation, was
just believing that he had permitted the latter to be excited without
sufficient reason, when the paddle ceased moving, in obedience to a signal
from Chingachgook.
“Ugh!” exclaimed Uncas, nearly at the moment that the light tap his
father had made on the side of the canoe notified them of the vicinity of
danger.
“What now?” asked the scout; “the lake is as smooth as if the winds had
never blown, and I can see along its sheets for miles; there is not so much as
the black head of a loon dotting the water.”
The Indian gravely raised his paddle, and pointed in the direction in
which his own steady look was riveted. Duncan’s eyes followed the motion.
A few rods in their front lay another of the low-wooded islets, but it
appeared as calm and peaceful as if its solitude had never been disturbed by
the foot of man.
“I see nothing,” he said, “but land and water; and a lovely scene it is.”
“Hist!” interrupted the scout. “Ay, sagamore, there is always a reason for
what you do. ’Tis but a shade, and yet it is not natural. You see the mist,
major, that is rising above the island; you can’t call it a fog, for it is more
like a streak of thin cloud——”
“It is a vapor from the water.”
“That a child could tell. But what is the edging of blacker smoke that
hangs along its lower side, and which you may trace down into the thicket
of hazel? ’Tis from a fire; but one that, in my judgment, has been suffered
to burn low.”
“Let us then push for the place, and relieve our doubts,” said the
impatient Duncan; “the party must be small that can lie on such a bit of
land.”
“If you judge of Indian cunning by the rules you find in books or by
white sagacity, they will lead you astray, if not to your death,” returned

Hawkeye, examining the signs of the place with that acuteness which
distinguished him. “If I may be permitted to speak in this matter, it will be
to say that we have but two things to choose between: the one is, to return
and give up all thought of following the Hurons——”
“Never!” exclaimed Heyward in a voice far too loud for their
circumstances.
“Well, well,” continued Hawkeye, making a hasty sign to repress his
impatience, “I am much of your mind myself; though I thought it becoming
my experience to tell the whole. We must then make a push, and, if the
Indians or Frenchers are in the narrows, run the gantlet through these
toppling mountains. Is there reason in my words, sagamore?”

HAWKEYE

The Indian made no further answer than by dropping his paddle into the
water and urging forward the canoe. As he held the office of directing its
course, his resolution was sufficiently indicated by the movement. The
whole party now plied their paddles vigorously, and in a very few moments
they had reached a point whence they might command an entire view of the
northern shore of the island.

“There they are, by all the truth of signs,” whispered the scout; “two
canoes and a smoke. The knaves haven’t yet got their eyes out of the mist,
or we should hear the accursed whoop. Together, friends—we are leaving
them, and are already nearly out of whistle of a bullet.”
The well-known crack of a rifle, whose ball came skipping along the
placid surface of the strait, and a shrill yell from the island interrupted his
speech and announced that their passage was discovered. In another instant
several savages were seen rushing into the canoes, which were soon
dancing over the water in pursuit. These fearful precursors of a coming
struggle produced no change in the countenances and movements of his
three guides, so far as Duncan could discover, except that the strokes of
their paddles were longer and more in unison, and caused the little bark to
spring forward like a creature possessing life and volition.
“Hold them there, sagamore,” said Hawkeye, looking coolly backward
over his left shoulder, while he still plied his paddle; “keep them just there.
Them Hurons have never a piece in their nation that will execute at this
distance; but ‘Kill Deer’ 86-7 has a barrel on which a man may calculate.”
The scout, having ascertained that the Mohicans were sufficient of
themselves to maintain the requisite distance, deliberately laid aside his
paddle and raised the fatal rifle. Then several times he brought the piece to
his shoulder, and when his companions were expecting its report he as often
lowered it to request the Indians would permit their enemies to approach a
little nigher. At length his accurate and fastidious eye seemed satisfied, and
throwing out his left arm on the barrel, he was slowly elevating the muzzle,
when an exclamation from Uncas, who sat in the bow, once more caused
him to suspend the shot.
“How now, lad?” demanded Hawkeye; “you saved a Huron 87-8 from the
death-shriek by that word; have you reason for what you do?”
Uncas pointed toward the rocky shore a little in their front, whence
another war canoe was darting directly across their course. It was too
obvious now that their situation was imminently perilous to need the aid of
language to confirm it. The scout laid aside his rifle, and resumed the
paddle, while Chingachgook inclined the bows of the canoe a little toward
the western shore, in order to increase the distance between them and this

new enemy. In the meantime they were reminded of the presence of those
who pressed on their rear, by wild and exulting shouts. The stirring scene
awakened even Munro from his apathy.
“Let us make for the rocks on the main,” he said, with the mien of a tried
soldier, “and give battle to the savages. God forbid that I or those attached
to me or mine should ever trust again to the faith of any servant of the
Louises.”
“He who wishes to prosper in Indian warfare,” returned the scout, “must
not be too proud to learn from the wit of a native. Lay her more along the
land, sagamore; we are doubling on the varlets, and perhaps they may try to
strike our trail on the long calculation.”
Hawkeye was not mistaken; for, when the Hurons found that their course
was likely to throw them behind their chase, they rendered it less direct,
until, by gradually bearing more and more obliquely, the two canoes were,
ere long, gliding on parallel lines, within two hundred yards of each other. It
now became entirely a trial of speed. So rapid was the progress of the light
vessels that the lake curled in their front in miniature waves, and their
motion became undulating by its own velocity. It was, perhaps, owing to
this circumstance, in addition to the necessity of keeping every hand
employed at the paddles, that the Hurons had not immediate recourse to
their firearms. The exertions of the fugitives were too severe to continue
long, and the pursuers had the advantage of numbers. Duncan observed,
with uneasiness, that the scout began to look anxiously about him, as if
searching for some further means of assisting their flight.
“Edge her a little more from the sun, Sagamore,” said the stubborn
woodsman; “I see the knaves are sparing a man to the rifle. A single broken
bone might lose us our scalps. Edge more from the sun, and we will put the
island between us.”
The expedient was not without its use. A long, low island lay a little
distance before them, and, as they closed with it, the chasing canoe was
compelled to take a side opposite to that on which the pursued passed. The
scout and his companions did not neglect this advantage, but, the instant
they were hid from observation by the bushes, they redoubled efforts that
before had seemed prodigious. The two canoes came round the last low

point, like two coursers at the top of their speed, the fugitives taking the
lead. This change had brought them nigher to each other, however, while it
altered their relative positions.
“You showed knowledge in the shaping of birchen bark, Uncas, when
you chose this from among the Huron canoes,” said the scout, smiling,
apparently more in satisfaction at their superiority in the race, than from
that prospect of final escape which now began to open a little upon them.
“The imps have put all their strength again at the paddles, and we are to
struggle for our scalps with bits of flattened wood, instead of clouded
barrels and true eyes. A long stroke, and together, friends!”
“They are preparing for a shot,” said Heyward; “and as we are in a line
with them, it can scarcely fail.”
“Get you then into the bottom of the canoe,” returned the scout; “you and
the colonel; it will be so much taken from the size of the mark.”
Heyward smiled, as he answered:
“It would be but an ill example for the highest in rank to dodge, while the
warriors were under fire!”
“Lord! Lord! that is now a white man’s courage!” exclaimed the scout,
“and, like too many of his notions, not to be maintained by reason. Do you
think the sagamore, or Uncas, or even I, who am a man without a cross,
would deliberate about finding a cover in a scrimmage when an open body
would do no good? For what have the Frenchers reared up their Quebec, if
fighting is always to be done in the clearings?”
“All that you say is very true, my friend,” replied Heyward; “still, our
custom must prevent us from doing as you wish.”
A volley from the Hurons interrupted the discourse; and, as the bullets
whistled about them, Duncan saw the head of Uncas turned, looking back at
himself and Munro. Notwithstanding the nearness of the enemy, and his
own great personal danger, the countenance of the young warrior expressed
no other emotion, as the former was compelled to think, than amazement at
finding men willing to encounter so useless an exposure. Chingachgook
was probably better acquainted with the notions of white men, for he did

not even cast a glance aside from the riveted look his eye maintained on the
object by which he governed their course. A ball soon struck the light and
polished paddle from the hands of the chief, and drove it through the air far
in advance. A shout rose from the Hurons, who seized the opportunity to
fire another volley. Uncas described an arc in the water with his own blade,
and, as the canoe passed swiftly on, Chingachgook recovered his paddle,
and, flourishing it on high, he gave the war-whoop of the Mohicans, and
then lent his strength and skill again to the important task.
The clamorous sounds of “Le Gros Serpent!” 91-9 “La Longue
Carabine!” 91-10 “Le Cerf Agile!” 91-11 burst at once from the canoes behind,
and seemed to give new zeal to the pursuers. The scout seized “Kill Deer”
in his left hand, and, elevating it above his head, he shook it in triumph at
his enemies. The savages answered the insult with a yell, and immediately
another volley succeeded. The bullets pattered along the lake, and one even
pierced the bark of their little vessel. No perceptible emotion could be
discovered in the Mohicans during this critical moment, their rigid features
expressing neither hope nor alarm; but the scout again turned his head, and,
laughing in his own silent manner, he said to Heyward:
“The knaves love to hear the sounds of their pieces, but the eye is not to
be found among the Mingoes that can calculate a true range in a dancing
canoe! You see the dumb devils have taken off a man to charge, and by the
smallest measurement that can be allowed we move three feet to their two.”
Duncan, who was not altogether as easy under this nice estimate of
distances as his companions, was glad to find, however, that, owing to their
superior dexterity, and the diversion among their enemies they were very
sensibly obtaining the advantage. The Hurons soon fired again, and a bullet
struck the blade of Hawkeye’s paddle without injury.
“That will do,” said the scout, examining the slight indentation with a
curious eye; “it would not have cut the skin of an infant, much less of men
who, like us, have been blown upon by the heavens in their anger. Now,
major, if you will try to use this piece of flattened wood, I’ll let ‘Kill Deer’
take a part in the conversation.”
Heyward seized the paddle and applied himself to the work with an
eagerness that supplied the place of skill, while Hawkeye was engaged in

inspecting the priming of his rifle. The latter then took a swift aim and fired.
The Huron in the bows of the leading canoe had risen with a similar object,
and he now fell backward, suffering the gun to escape from his hands into
the water. In an instant, however, he recovered his feet, though his gestures
were wild and bewildered. At the same moment his companions suspended
their efforts, and the chasing canoes clustered together and became
stationary. Chingachgook and Uncas profited by the interval to regain their
wind, though Duncan continued to work with the most persevering industry.
The father and son now cast calm but inquiring glances at each other, to
learn if either had sustained any injury by the fire; for both well knew that
no cry or exclamation would, in such a moment of necessity, have been
permitted to betray the accident. A few large drops of blood were trickling
down the shoulders of the sagamore, who, when he perceived that the eyes
of Uncas dwelt too long on the sight, raised some water in the hollow of his
hand, and, washing off the stain, was content to manifest, in this simple
manner, the slightness of the injury.
The lake now began to expand, and their route lay along a reacher, that
was lined, as before, by high and rugged mountains. But the islands were
few and easily avoided. The strokes of the paddles grew more measured and
regular; while they who plied them continued their labor, after the close and
deadly chase from which they had just relieved themselves, with as much
coolness as though their speed had been tried in sport, rather than under
such pressing, nay, almost desperate circumstances.
Instead of following the western shore, whither their errand led them, the
wary Mohican inclined his course more toward those hills behind which
Montcalm was known to have led his army into the formidable fortress of
Ticonderoga. As the Hurons, to every appearance, had abandoned the
pursuit, there was no apparent reason for this excess of caution. It was,
however, maintained for hours until they had reached a bay nigh the
northern termination of the lake. Here the canoe was driven upon the beach,
and the whole party landed. Hawkeye and Heyward ascended an adjacent
bluff, where the former, after considering the expanse of water beneath him,
pointed out to the latter a small black object, hovering under a headland, at
a distance of several miles.

“Do you see it?” demanded the scout. “Now, what would you account
that spot, were you left alone to white experience to find your way through
this wilderness?”
“But for its distance and its magnitude, I should suppose it a bird. Can it
be a living object?”
“’Tis a canoe of good birchen bark, and paddled by fierce and crafty
Mingoes. Though Providence has lent to those who inhabit the woods eyes
that would be needless to men in the settlements where there are inventions
to assist the sight, yet no human organs can see all the dangers which at this
moment circumvent us. These varlets pretend to be bent chiefly on their
sundown meal, but the moment it is dark they will be on our trail as true as
hounds on the scent. We must throw them off. These lakes are useful at
times, especially when the game takes the water,” continued the scout,
gazing about him with a countenance of concern; “but they give no cover,
except it be to fishes. God knows what the country would be, if the
settlement should ever spread far from the two rivers. Both hunting and war
would lose their beauty.”
“Let us not delay a moment without some good and obvious cause.”
“I little like that smoke which you may see worming up along the rock
above the canoe,” interrupted the abstracted scout. “My life on it, other eyes
than ours see it, and know its meaning. Well, words will not mend the
matter, and it is time we were doing.”
Hawkeye moved away from the lookout, and descended, musing
profoundly, to the shore. He communicated the result of his observations to
his companions, in Delaware, and a short and earnest consultation
succeeded. When it terminated, the three instantly set about executing their
new resolutions.
The canoe was lifted from the water, and borne on the shoulders of the
party. They proceeded into the wood, making as broad and obvious a trail as
possible. They soon reached a water course, which they crossed, and
continued onward until they came to an extensive and naked rock. At this
point, where their footsteps might be expected to be no longer visible, they
retraced their route to the brook, walking backward with the utmost care.

They now followed the bed of the little stream to the lake, into which they
immediately launched their canoe again. A low point concealed them from
the headland, and the margin of the lake was fringed for some distance with
dense and overhanging bushes. Under the cover of these natural advantages,
they toiled their way, with patient industry, until the scout pronounced that
he believed it would be safe once more to land.
The halt continued until evening rendered objects indistinct and uncertain
to the eye. Then they resumed their route, and, favored by the darkness,
pushed silently and vigorously toward the western shore. Although the
rugged outline of mountain, to which they were steering, presented no
distinctive marks to the eyes of Duncan, the Mohican entered the little
haven he had selected with the confidence and accuracy of an experienced
pilot.
The boat was again lifted and borne into the woods, where it was
carefully concealed under a pile of brush. The adventurers assumed their
arms and packs, and the scout announced to Munro and Heyward that he
and the Indians were at last in readiness to proceed.

79-1 Hawkeye is an American scout working with the English army. He is one of the most
important characters in this book, and under different names figures in the other volumes of The
Leather-Stocking Tales. In one he is known as the Deerslayer, in others as Leather-Stocking and the
Pathfinder. His real name is Natty Bumppo. The five stories which Cooper includes among The
Leather-Stocking Tales are in their natural order: Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The
Pathfinder, The Pioneers and The Prairie. This selection is taken from The Last of the Mohicans.
79-2 Munro is the father of two young ladies who have been captured and carried away by the
Indians. With his companions he is now following the trail of the captors, and this canoe race is but
one of many adventures through which they pass before they finally rescue the women.
79-3 Duncan Heyward is a British officer who was with the young ladies when they were
captured.
81-4 Uncas is the son of the last chief of the Mohicans, a fine Indian who sides with the
Americans, and is, as his tribe has always been, a bitter enemy of the Huron Indians.
82-5 The beauties of Lake George are well known to every American tourist. In the height of the
mountains which surround it, and in artificial accessories, it is inferior to the finest of the Swiss and
Italian lakes, while in outline and purity of water it is fully their equal, and in the number and
disposition of its isles and islets much superior to them altogether. There are said to be some
hundreds of islands in a sheet of water less than thirty miles long. The narrows, which connect what
may be called, in truth two lakes, are crowded with islands, to such a degree as to leave passages

between them frequently of only a few feet in width. The lake itself varies in breadth from one to
three miles.
83-6 Chingachgook, the father of Uncas, is the chief of the Delaware or Mohican Indians.

86-7 Kill Deer, his favorite rifle, has a particularly long barrel, much longer than the rifle used by
the soldiers. Hawkeye’s appearance is described in another place as follows: “The frame of the white
man, judging by such parts as were not concealed by his clothes, was like that of one who had known
hardships and exertion from his earliest youth. His person, though muscular, was rather attenuated
than full; but every nerve and muscle appeared strung and indurated by unremitted exposure and toil.
He wore a hunting-shirt of forest green, fringed with faded yellow, and a summer cap of skins which
had been shorn of their fur. He also bore a knife in a girdle of wampum, like that which confined the
scanty garments of the Indian, but no tomahawk. His moccasins were ornamented after the gay
fashion of the natives, while the only part of his under-dress which appeared below the hunting-
frock, was a pair of buckskin leggings that laced at the sides, and which were gartered above the
knees with the sinews of a deer. A pouch and horn completed his personal accoutrements, though a
rifle of great length, which the theory of the more ingenious whites had taught them was the most
dangerous of all fire-arms, leaned against a neighboring sapling. The eye of the hunter, or scout,
whichever he might be, was small, quick, keen, and restless, roving while he spoke, on every side of
him, as if in quest of game, or distrusting the sudden approach of some lurking enemy.
Notwithstanding these symptoms of habitual suspicion, his countenance was not only without guile,
but, at the moment at which he is introduced, it was charged with an expression of sturdy honesty.”
87-8 The Huron tribe sided with the French, and as they were powerful Indians, wise in woodcraft
and fierce in battle, they were among the most deadly foes whom the English colonists had to meet.
91-9 Le Gros Serpent is a French phrase meaning The Great Serpent, or The Big Snake, a name
which the Hurons gave to Chingachgook.
91-10 La Longue Carabine means The Long Rifle, and is the French name which the Hurons gave
to Hawkeye.
91-11 Le Cerf Agile is a French phrase which means The Nimble Deer. It is the name given to
Uncas by the Hurons.

THE BUFFALO
Note.—The following selections are taken from The Oregon Trail, a narrative written by Francis
Parkman describing the journey which he undertook in order to study the manners, customs and
character of the Indians in their native state. Parkman planned this investigation to prepare himself
more fully for writing his splendid Histories of the French and Indians in America, a series of books
which are not only the best accounts we have of the period, but are also written in most charming
style. His Conspiracy of Pontiac and La Salle are among the most readable of these works. The
selections which we have made are peculiarly interesting. His journey was begun in the spring of
1846, and in the brief time that has elapsed the wilderness he describes has given way to populous
states and thriving cities. The red man is seen there no longer, and the vast herds of buffalo whose
numbers seem to us incredible have become wholly extinct. In the United States there remain almost
no wild bison, and to study the animal at all a person must now examine those half domesticated
groups that are confined in public parks.
The extravagant slaughter which he chronicles bears little comparison to the hunts in which others
engaged. The cruel and wanton destruction of the bison takes its place in history with the more fierce
and relentless persecution which the Indians have suffered. When we read of the innumerable herds
of bison which Parkman saw, we are inclined, however, not to wonder that he expressed the belief
that the extinction of the animal was impossible. His description of his hunts are fascinating, and will
rouse the wild blood in any boy’s nature.

OUR days on the Platte, and yet no buffalo! Last year’s signs of
them were provokingly abundant; and wood being extremely
scarce, we found an admirable substitute in the bois de vache,
which burns exactly like peat, producing no unpleasant effects.
The wagons one morning had left the camp; Shaw and I were
already on horseback, but Henry Chatillon still sat cross-legged by the dead
embers of the fire, playing pensively with the lock of his rifle, while his
sturdy Wyandotte pony stood quietly behind him, looking over his head. At
last he got up, patted the neck of the pony (whom, from an exaggerated
appreciation of his merits, he had christened “Five Hundred Dollar”), and
then mounted with a melancholy air.
“What is it, Henry?”

“Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before; but I see away yonder
over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black—all black with
buffalo!”
In the afternoon he and I left the party in search of an antelope; until at
the distance of a mile or two on the right, the tall white wagons and the little
black specks of horsemen were just visible, so slowly advancing that they
seemed motionless; and far on the left rose the broken line of scorched,
desolate sand-hills. The vast plain waved with tall rank grass that swept our
horses’ bellies; it swayed to and fro in billows with the light breeze, and far
and near antelope and wolves were moving through it, the hairy backs of
the latter alternately appearing and disappearing as they bounded
awkwardly along: while the antelope, with the simple curiosity peculiar to
them, would often approach us closely, their little horns and white throats
just visible above the grass tops, as they gazed eagerly at us with their
round black eyes.
I dismounted, and amused myself with firing at the wolves. Henry
attentively scrutinized the surrounding landscape; at length he gave a shout,
and called on me to mount again, pointing in the direction of the sand-hills.
A mile and a half from us, two minute black specks slowly traversed the
face of one of the bare glaring declivities, and disappeared behind the
summit. “Let us go!” cried Henry, belaboring the sides of Five Hundred
Dollar; and I following in his wake, we galloped rapidly through the rank
grass toward the base of the hills.
From one of their openings descended a deep ravine, widening as it
issued on the prairie. We entered it, and galloping up, in a moment were
surrounded by the bleak sand-hills. Half of their steep sides were bare; the
rest were scantily clothed with clumps of grass, and various uncouth plants,
conspicuous among which appeared the reptile-like prickly pear. They were
gashed with numberless ravines; and as the sky had suddenly darkened, and
a cold gusty wind arisen, the strange shrubs and the dreary hills looked
doubly wild and desolate. But Henry’s face was all eagerness. He tore off a
little hair from the piece of buffalo robe under his saddle, and threw it up to
show the course of the wind. It blew directly before us. The game were
therefore to windward, and it was necessary to make our best speed to get
around them.

We scrambled from this ravine, and galloping away through the hollows,
soon found another, winding like a snake among the hills, and so deep that
it completely concealed us. We rode up the bottom of it, glancing through
the shrubbery at its edge, till Henry abruptly jerked his rein, and slid out of
his saddle. Full a quarter of a mile distant, on the outline of the farthest hill,
a long procession of buffalo were walking in Indian file, with the utmost
gravity and deliberation; then more appeared, clambering from a hollow not
far off, and ascending, one behind the other, the grassy slope of another hill;
then a shaggy head and a pair of short broken horns appeared issuing out of
a ravine close at hand, and with a slow, stately step, one by one, the
enormous brutes came into view, taking their way across the valley, wholly
unconscious of an enemy. In a moment Henry was worming his way, lying
flat on the ground, through grass and prickly pears, toward his unsuspecting
victims. He had with him both my rifle and his own. He was soon out of
sight, and still the buffalo kept issuing into the valley. For a long time all
was silent; I sat holding his horse, and wondering what he was about, when
suddenly, in rapid succession, came the sharp reports of the two rifles, and
the whole line of buffalo, quickening their pace into a clumsy trot, gradually
disappeared over the ridge of the hill. Henry rose to his feet, and stood
looking after them.
“You have missed them,” said I.
“Yes,” said Henry; “let us go.” He descended into the ravine, loaded the
rifles, and mounted his horse. We rode up the hill after the buffalo. The herd
was out of sight when we reached the top, but lying on the grass not far off
was one quite lifeless, and another violently struggling in the death agony.
“You see I miss him!” remarked Henry. He had fired from a distance of
more than a hundred and fifty yards, and both balls had passed through the
lungs—the true mark in shooting buffalo.
The darkness increased, and a driving storm came on. Tying our horses to
the horns of the victims, Henry began the bloody work of dissection,
slashing away with the science of a connoisseur, while I vainly endeavored
to imitate him. Old Hendrick recoiled with horror and indignation when I
endeavored to tie the meat to the strings of rawhide, always carried for this
purpose, dangling at the back of the saddle. After some difficulty we

overcame his scruples; and heavily burdened with the more eligible
portions of the buffalo, we set out on our return. Scarcely had we emerged
from the labyrinth of gorges and ravines, and issued upon the open prairie,
when the pricking sleet came driving, gust upon gust, directly in our faces.
It was strangely dark, though wanting still an hour of sunset. The freezing
storm soon penetrated to the skin, but the uneasy trot of our heavy-gaited
horses kept us warm enough, as we forced them unwillingly in the teeth of
the sleet and rain, by the powerful suasion of our Indian whips.
The prairie in this place was hard and level. A flourishing colony of
prairie dogs had burrowed into it in every direction, and the little mounds of
fresh earth around their holes were about as numerous as the hills in a
cornfield; but not a yelp was to be heard; not a nose of a single citizen was
visible; all had retired to the depths of their burrows, and we envied them
their dry and comfortable habitations.
An hour’s hard riding showed us our tent dimly looming through the
storm, one side puffed out by the force of the wind, and the other collapsed
in proportion, while the disconsolate horses stood shivering close around,
and the wind kept up a dismal whistling in the boughs of three old half-dead
trees above. Shaw, like a patriarch, sat on his saddle in the entrance, with a
pipe in his mouth, and his arms folded, contemplating, with cool
satisfaction, the piles of meat that we flung on the ground before him. A
dark and dreary night succeeded; but the sun rose with a heat so sultry and
languid that the captain excused himself on that account from waylaying an
old buffalo bull, who with stupid gravity was walking over the prairie to
drink at the river. So much for the climate of the Platte!
We encamped that night upon the bank of the river. Among the emigrants
there was an overgrown boy, some eighteen years old, with a head as round
and about as large as a pumpkin, and fever-and-ague fits had dyed his face
of a corresponding color. He wore an old white hat, tied under his chin with
a handkerchief; his body was short and stout, but his legs of disproportioned
and appalling length. I observed him at sunset, breasting the hill with
gigantic strides, and standing against the sky on the summit, like a colossal
pair of tongs. In a moment after we heard him screaming frantically behind
the ridge, and nothing doubting that he was in the clutches of Indians or
grizzly bears, some of the party caught up their rifles and ran to the rescue.

His outcries, however, proved but an ebullition of joyous excitement; he
had chased two little wolf pups to their burrow, and he was on his knees,
grubbing away like a dog at the mouth of the hole, to get at them.
Before morning he caused more serious disquiet in the camp. It was his
turn to hold the middle guard; but no sooner was he called up, than he
coolly arranged a pair of saddle-bags under a wagon, laid his head upon
them, closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and fell asleep. The guard on our
side of the camp, thinking it no part of his duty to look after the cattle of the
emigrants, contented himself with watching our own horses and mules; the
wolves, he said, were unusually noisy; but still no mischief was anticipated
until the sun rose, and not a hoof or horn was in sight! The cattle were
gone! While Tom was quietly slumbering, the wolves had driven them
away.
Then we reaped the fruits of R.’s precious plan of traveling in company
with emigrants. To leave them in their distress was not to be thought of, and
we felt bound to wait until the cattle could be searched for, and, if possible,
recovered. But the reader may be curious to know what punishment awaited
the faithless Tom. By the wholesome law of the prairie, he who falls asleep
on guard is condemned to walk all day, leading his horse by the bridle, and
we found much fault with our companions for not enforcing such a sentence
on the offender. Nevertheless, had he been of our own party, I have no
doubt he would in like manner have escaped scot-free. But the emigrants
went farther than mere forbearance: they decreed that since Tom couldn’t
stand guard without falling asleep, he shouldn’t stand guard at all, and
henceforward his slumbers were unbroken.
“Buffalo! buffalo!” It was but a grim old bull, roaming the prairie by
himself in misanthropic seclusion; but there might be more behind the hills.
Dreading the monotony and languor of the camp, Shaw and I saddled our
horses, buckled our holsters in their places, and set out with Henry
Chatillon in search of the game. Henry, not intending to take part in the
chase, but merely conducting us, carried his rifle with him, while we left
ours behind as incumbrances. We rode for some five or six miles, and saw
no living thing but wolves, snakes, and prairie dogs.
“This won’t do at all,” said Shaw.

“What won’t do?”
“There’s no wood about here to make a litter for the wounded man; I
have an idea that one of us will need something of the sort before the day is
over.”
There was some foundation for such an apprehension, for the ground was
none of the best for a race, and grew worse continually as we proceeded;
indeed it soon became desperately bad, consisting of abrupt hills and deep
hollows, cut by frequent ravines not easy to pass. At length, a mile in
advance, we saw a band of bulls. Some were scattered grazing over a green
declivity, while the rest were crowded more densely together in the wide
hollow below. Making a circuit to keep out of sight, we rode toward them
until we ascended a hill within a furlong of them, beyond which nothing
intervened that could possibly screen us from their view. We dismounted
behind the ridge just out of sight, drew our saddle-girths, examined our
pistols, and mounting again rode over the hill, and descended at a canter
toward them, bending close to our horses’ necks. Instantly they took the
alarm; those on the hill descended; those below gathered into a mass, and
the whole got in motion, shouldering each other along at a clumsy gallop.
We followed, spurring our horses to full speed; and as the herd rushed,
crowding and trampling in terror through an opening in the hills, we were
close at their heels, half suffocated by the clouds of dust.
But as we drew near, their alarm and speed increased; our horses showed
signs of the utmost fear, bounding violently aside as we approached, and
refusing to enter among the herd.
The buffalo now broke into several small bodies, scampering over the
hills in different directions, and I lost sight of Shaw; neither of us knew
where the other had gone. Old Pontiac ran like a frantic elephant up hill and
down hill, his ponderous hoofs striking the prairie like sledge-hammers. He
showed a curious mixture of eagerness and terror, straining to overtake the
panic-stricken herd, but constantly recoiling in dismay as we drew near. The
fugitives offered no very attractive spectacle, with their enormous size and
weight, their shaggy manes and the tattered remnants of their last winter’s
hair covering their backs in irregular shreds and patches, and flying off in
the wind as they ran.

At length I urged my horse close behind a bull, and after trying in vain,
by blows and spurring, to bring him alongside, I shot a bullet into the
buffalo from this disadvantageous position. At the report, Pontiac swerved
so much that I was again thrown a little behind the game. The bullet,
entering too much in the rear, failed to disable the bull, for a buffalo
requires to be shot at particular points, or he will certainly escape. The herd
ran up a hill, and I followed in pursuit. As Pontiac rushed headlong down
on the other side, I saw Shaw and Henry descending the hollow on the
right, at a leisurely gallop; and in front, the buffalo were just disappearing
behind the crest of the next hill, their short tails erect, and their hoofs
twinkling through a cloud of dust.
At that moment, I heard Shaw and Henry shouting to me; but the muscles
of a stronger arm than mine could not have checked at once the furious
course of Pontiac, whose mouth was as insensible as leather. Added to this,
I rode him that morning with a common snaffle, having the day before, for
the benefit of my other horse, unbuckled from my bridle the curb which I
ordinarily used. A stronger and hardier brute never trod the prairie; but the
novel sight of the buffalo filled him with terror, and when at full speed he
was almost uncontrollable. Gaining the top of the ridge, I saw nothing of
the buffalo; they had all vanished amid the intricacies of the hills and
hollows. Reloading my pistols, in the best way I could, I galloped on until I
saw them again scuttling along at the base of the hill, their panic somewhat
abated. Down went old Pontiac among them, scattering them to the right
and left, and then we had another long chase.
About a dozen bulls were before us, scouring over the hills, rushing
down the declivities with tremendous weight and impetuosity, and then
laboring with a weary gallop upward. Still Pontiac, in spite of spurring and
beating, would not close with them. One bull at length fell a little behind
the rest, and by dint of much effort I urged my horse within six or eight
yards of his side. His back was darkened with sweat; he was panting
heavily, while his tongue lolled out a foot from his jaws. Gradually I came
up abreast of him, urging Pontiac with leg and rein nearer to his side, when
suddenly he did what buffalo in such circumstances will always do; he
slackened his gallop, and turning toward us, with an aspect of mingled rage
and distress, lowered his huge shaggy head for a charge. Pontiac, with a
snort, leaped aside in terror, nearly throwing me to the ground, as I was

wholly unprepared for such an evolution. I raised my pistol in a passion to
strike him on the head, but thinking better of it, fired the bullet after the
bull, who had resumed his flight; then drew rein, and determined to rejoin
my companions. It was high time. The breath blew hard from Pontiac’s
nostrils, and the sweat rolled in big drops down his sides; I myself felt as if
drenched in warm water.

GRADUALLY I CAME ABREAST OF
HIM

Pledging myself (and I redeemed the pledge) to take my revenge at a
future opportunity, I looked round for some indications to show me where I
was, and what course I ought to pursue; I might as well have looked for
landmarks in the midst of the ocean. How many miles I had run or in what
direction, I had no idea; and around me the prairie was rolling in steep
swells and pitches, without a single distinctive feature to guide me. I had a
little compass hung at my neck; and ignorant that the Platte at this point
diverged considerably from its easterly course, I thought that by keeping to
the northward I should certainly reach it. So I turned and rode about two
hours in that direction. The prairie changed as I advanced, softening away
into easier undulations, but nothing like the Platte appeared, nor any sign of
a human being; the same wild endless expanse lay around me still; and to

all appearance I was as far from my object as ever. I began now to consider
myself in danger of being lost; and therefore, reining in my horse,
summoned the scanty share of woodcraft that I possessed (if that term be
applicable upon the prairie) to extricate me. Looking round, it occurred to
me that the buffalo might prove my best guides. I soon found one of the
paths made by them in their passage to the river; it ran nearly at right angles
to my course; but turning my horse’s head in the direction it indicated, his
freer gait and erected ears assured me that I was right.
But in the meantime my ride had been by no means a solitary one. The
whole face of the country was dotted far and wide with countless hundreds
of buffalo. They trooped along in files and columns, bulls, cows, and
calves, on the green faces of the declivities in front. They scrambled away
over the hills to the right and left; and far off, the pale blue swells in the
extreme distance were dotted with innumerable specks. Sometimes I
surprised shaggy old bulls grazing alone, or sleeping behind the ridges I
ascended. They would leap up at my approach, stare stupidly at me through
their tangled manes, and then gallop heavily away. The antelope were very
numerous; and as they are always bold when in the neighborhood of
buffalo, they would approach quite near to look at me, gazing intently with
their great round eyes, then suddenly leap aside, and stretch lightly away
over the prairie, as swiftly as a racehorse. Squalid, ruffianlike wolves
sneaked through the hollows and sandy ravines. Several times I passed
through villages of prairie dogs, who sat, each at the mouth of his burrow,
holding his paws before him in a supplicating attitude, and yelping away
most vehemently, energetically whisking his little tail with every squeaking
cry he uttered. Prairie dogs are not fastidious in their choice of companions;
various long, checkered snakes were sunning themselves in the midst of the
village, and demure little gray owls, with a large white ring around each
eye, were perched side by side with the rightful inhabitants. The prairie
teemed with life. Again and again I looked toward the crowded hillsides,
and was sure I saw horsemen; and riding near, with a mixture of hope and
dread, for Indians were abroad, I found them transformed into a group of
buffalo. There was nothing in human shape amid all this vast congregation
of brute forms.
When I turned down the buffalo path, the prairie seemed changed; only a
wolf or two glided past at intervals, like conscious felons, never looking to

the right or left. Being now free from anxiety, I was at leisure to observe
minutely the objects around me; and here, for the first time, I noticed
insects wholly different from any of the varieties found farther to the
eastward. Gaudy butterflies fluttered about my horse’s head; strangely
formed beetles, glittering with metallic luster, were crawling upon plants
that I had never seen before; multitudes of lizards, too, were darting like
lightning over the sand.
I had run to a great distance from the river. It cost me a long ride on the
buffalo path before I saw from the ridge of a sand-hill the pale surface of
the Platte glistening in the midst of its desert valleys and the faint outline of
the hills beyond waving along the sky. From where I stood, not a tree nor a
bush nor a living thing was visible throughout the whole extent of the sun-
scorched landscape. In half an hour I came upon the trail, not far from the
river; and seeing that the party had not yet passed, I turned eastward to meet
them, old Pontiac’s long swinging trot again assuring me that I was right in
doing so. Having been slightly ill on leaving camp in the morning, six or
seven hours of rough riding had fatigued me extremely. I soon stopped,
therefore; flung my saddle on the ground, and with my head resting on it,
and my horse’s trail-rope tied loosely to my arm, lay waiting the arrival of
the party, speculating meanwhile on the extent of the injuries Pontiac had
received. At length the white wagon coverings rose from the verge of the
plain. By a singular coincidence, almost at the same moment two horsemen
appeared coming down from the hills. They were Shaw and Henry, who had
searched for me awhile in the morning, but well knowing the futility of the
attempt in such a broken country, had placed themselves on the top of the
highest hill they could find, and picketing their horses near them, as a signal
to me, had lain down and fallen asleep. The stray cattle had been recovered,
as the emigrants told us, about noon. Before sunset, we pushed forward
eight miles farther.

TÊTE ROUGE

HE next morning, having directed Delorier to repair with his cart
to the place of meeting, we came again to the fort to make some
arrangements for the journey. After completing these we sat down

under a sort of perch, to smoke with some Cheyenne Indians
whom we found there. In a few minutes we saw an extraordinary little
figure approach us in a military dress. He had a small, round countenance,
garnished about the eyes with the kind of wrinkles commonly known as
crow’s feet and surrounded by an abundant crop of red curls, with a little
cap resting on the top of them. Altogether, he had the look of a man more
conversant with mint juleps and oyster suppers than with the hardships of
prairie service. He came up to us and entreated that we would take him
home to the settlements, saying that unless he went with us he should have
to stay all winter at the fort. We liked our petitioner’s appearance so little
that we excused ourselves from complying with his request. At this he
begged us so hard to take pity on him, that at last we consented, though not
without many misgivings.
The rugged Anglo-Saxon of our new recruit’s real name proved utterly
unmanageable on the lips of our French attendants, and Henry Chatillon,
after various abortive attempts to pronounce it, one day coolly christened
him Tête Rouge, in honor of his red curls. He had at different times been
clerk of a Mississippi steamboat, and agent in a trading establishment at
Nauvoo, besides filling various other capacities, in all of which he had seen
much more of “life” than was good for him. In the spring, thinking that a
summer’s campaign would be an agreeable recreation, he had joined a
company of Saint Louis volunteers.
“There were three of us,” said Tête Rouge, “me and Bill Stevens and
John Hopkins. We thought we would just go out with the army, and when
we had conquered the country, we would get discharged and take our pay,
you know, and go down to Mexico. They say there is plenty of fun going on
there. Then we could go back to New Orleans by way of Vera Cruz.”
But Tête Rouge, like many a stouter volunteer, had reckoned without his
host. Fighting Mexicans was a less amusing occupation than he had
supposed, and his pleasure trip was disagreeably interrupted by brain fever,
which attacked him when about halfway to Bent’s Fort. He jolted along
through the rest of the journey in a baggage wagon. When they came to the
fort he was taken out and left there, together with the rest of the sick. Bent’s
Fort does not supply the best accommodations for an invalid. Tête Rouge’s
sick chamber was a little mud room, where he and a companion attacked by

the same disease were laid together, with nothing but a buffalo robe
between them and the ground. The assistant surgeon’s deputy visited them
once a day and brought them each a huge dose of calomel, the only
medicine, according to his surviving victim, which he was acquainted with.
Tête Rouge woke one morning, and turning to his companion, saw his
eyes fixed upon the beams above with the glassy stare of a dead man. At
this the unfortunate volunteer lost his senses outright. In spite of the doctor,
however, he eventually recovered; though between the brain fever and the
calomel, his mind, originally none of the strongest, was so much shaken
that it had not quite recovered its balance when we came to the fort. In spite
of the poor fellow’s tragic story, there was something so ludicrous in his
appearance, and the whimsical contrast between his military dress and his
most unmilitary demeanor, that we could not help smiling at them.
We asked him if he had a gun. He said they had taken it from him during
his illness, and he had not seen it since; “but perhaps,” he observed, looking
at me with a beseeching air, “you will lend me one of your big pistols if we
should meet with any Indians.” I next inquired if he had a horse; he
declared he had a magnificent one, and at Shaw’s request a Mexican led
him in for inspection. He exhibited the outline of a good horse, but his eyes
were sunk in the sockets, and every one of his ribs could be counted. There
were certain marks too about his shoulders, which could be accounted for
by the circumstance, that during Tête Rouge’s illness, his companions had
seized upon the insulted charger, and harnessed him to a cannon along with
the draft horses. To Tête Rouge’s astonishment we recommended him by all
means to exchange the horse, if he could, for a mule. Fortunately the people
at the fort were so anxious to get rid of him that they were willing to make
some sacrifice to effect the object, and he succeeded in getting a tolerable
mule in exchange for the broken-down steed.
A man soon appeared at the gate, leading in the mule by a cord which he
placed in the hands of Tête Rouge, who, being somewhat afraid of his new
acquisition, tried various flatteries and blandishments to induce her to come
forward. The mule, knowing that she was expected to advance, stopped
short in consequence, and stood fast as a rock, looking straight forward with
immovable composure. Being stimulated by a blow from behind she
consented to move, and walked nearly to the other side of the fort before

she stopped again. Hearing the bystanders laugh, Tête Rouge plucked up
spirit and tugged hard at the rope. The mule jerked backward, spun herself
round, and made a dash for the gate. Tête Rouge, who clung manfully to the
rope, went whisking through the air for a few rods, when he let go and
stood with his mouth open, staring after the mule, who galloped away over
the prairie. She was soon caught and brought back by a Mexican, who
mounted a horse and went in pursuit of her with his lasso.
Having thus displayed his capacities for prairie traveling, Tête proceeded
to supply himself with provisions for the journey, and with this view he
applied to a quartermaster’s assistant who was in the fort. This official had a
face as sour as vinegar, being in a state of chronic indignation because he
had been left behind the army. He was as anxious as the rest to get rid of
Tête Rouge. So, producing a rusty key, he opened a low door which led to a
half-subterranean apartment, into which the two disappeared together. After
some time they came out again, Tête Rouge greatly embarrassed by a
multiplicity of paper parcels containing the different articles of his forty
days’ rations. They were consigned to the care of Delorier, who about that
time passed by with the cart on his way to the appointed place of meeting
with Munroe and his companions.
We next urged Tête Rouge to provide himself, if he could, with a gun. He
accordingly made earnest appeals to the charity of various persons in the
fort, but totally without success, a circumstance which did not greatly
disturb us, since in the event of a skirmish he would be much more apt to do
mischief to himself or his friends than to the enemy. When all these
arrangements were completed we saddled our horses and were preparing to
leave the fort, when looking round we discovered that our new associate
was in fresh trouble. A man was holding the mule for him in the middle of
the fort, while he tried to put the saddle on her back, but she kept stepping
sideways and moving round and round in a circle until he was almost in
despair. It required some assistance before all his difficulties could be
overcome. At length he clambered into the black war saddle on which he
was to have carried terror into the ranks of the Mexicans.
“Get up,” said Tête Rouge. “Come now, go along, will you.”

The mule walked deliberately forward out of the gate. Her recent conduct
had inspired him with so much awe that he never dared to touch her with
his whip. We trotted forward toward the place of meeting, but before he had
gone far we saw that Tête Rouge’s mule, who perfectly understood her
rider, had stopped and was quietly grazing, in spite of his protestations, at
some distance behind. So getting behind him, we drove him and the
contumacious mule before us, until we could see through the twilight the
gleaming of a distant fire.
We began our journey for the frontier settlements on the 27th of August,
and certainly a more ragamuffin cavalcade never was seen on the upper
Arkansas. Of the large and fine horses with which we had left the frontier in
the spring, not one remained; we had supplied their place with the rough
breed of the prairie, as hardy as mules and almost as ugly; we had also with
us a number of the latter detestable animals. In spite of their strength and
hardihood, several of the band were already worn down by hard service and
hard fare, and as none of them were shod, they were fast becoming foot-
sore. Every horse and mule had a cord of twisted bull-hide coiled around
his neck, which by no means added to the beauty of his appearance. Our
saddles and all our equipments were by this time lamentably worn and
battered, and our weapons had become dull and rusty. The dress of the
riders fully corresponded with the dilapidated furniture of our horses, and of
the whole party none made a more disreputable appearance than my friend
and I. Shaw had for an upper garment an old red flannel shirt, flying open in
front and belted around him like a frock; while I, in absence of other
clothing, was attired in a time-worn suit of leather.
Thus happy and careless as so many beggars, we crept slowly from day
to day along the monotonous banks of the Arkansas. Tête Rouge gave
constant trouble, for he could never catch his mule, saddle her, or indeed do
anything else without assistance. Every day he had some new ailment, real
or imaginary, to complain of. At one moment he would be woebegone and
disconsolate, and the next he would be visited with a violent flow of spirits,
to which he could only give vent by incessant laughing, whistling, and
telling stories. When other resources failed, we used to amuse ourselves by
tormenting him; a fair compensation for the trouble he cost us. Tête Rouge
rather enjoyed being laughed at, for he was an odd compound of weakness,
eccentricity, and good-nature. He made a figure worthy of a painter as he

paced along before us, perched on the back of his mule, and enveloped in a
huge buffalo-robe coat, which some charitable person had given him at the
fort. This extraordinary garment, which would have contained two men of
his size, he chose, for some reason best known to himself, to wear inside
out, and he never took it off, even in the hottest weather. It was fluttering all
over with seams and tatters, and the hide was so old and rotten that it broke
out every day in a new place. Just at the top of it a large pile of red curls
was visible, with his little cap set jauntily upon one side, to give him a
military air. His seat in the saddle was no less remarkable than his person
and equipment. He pressed one leg close against his mule’s side, and thrust
the other out at an angle of 45°. His pantaloons were decorated with a
military red stripe, of which he was extremely vain; but being much too
short, the whole length of his boots was usually visible below them. His
blanket, loosely rolled up into a large bundle, dangled at the back of his
saddle, where he carried it tied with a string. Four or five times a day it
would fall to the ground. Every few minutes he would drop his pipe, his
knife, his flint and steel, or a piece of tobacco, and have to scramble down
to pick them up. In doing this he would contrive to get in everybody’s way;
and as the most of the party were by no means remarkable for a fastidious
choice of language, a storm of anathemas would be showered upon him,
half in earnest and half in jest, until Tête Rouge would declare that there
was no comfort in life, and that he never saw such fellows before.
On the next afternoon, as we moved along the bank of the river, we saw
the white tops of wagons on the horizon. It was some hours before we met
them, when they proved to be a train of clumsy ox-wagons, quite different
from the rakish vehicles of the Santa Fé traders, and loaded with
government stores for the troops. They all stopped, and the drivers gathered
around us in a crowd. I thought that the whole frontier might have been
ransacked in vain to furnish men worse fitted to meet the dangers of the
prairie. Many of them were mere boys, fresh from the plow, and devoid of
knowledge and experience.
Just after leaving the government wagons, as Shaw and I were riding
along a narrow passage between the river bank and a rough hill that passed
close upon it, we heard Tête Rouge’s voice behind us. “Hallo!” he called
out; “I say, stop the cart just for a minute, will you?”

“What’s the matter, Tête?” asked Shaw, as he came riding up to us with a
grin of exultation. He had a bottle of molasses in one hand, and a large
bundle of hides on the saddle before him, containing, as he triumphantly
informed us, sugar, biscuits, coffee, and rice. These supplies he had
obtained by a stratagem on which he greatly plumed himself, and he was
extremely vexed and astonished that we did not fall in with his views of the
matter. He had told Coates, the master-wagoner, that the commissary at the
fort had given him an order for sick-rations, directed to the master of any
government train which he might meet upon the road. This order he had
unfortunately lost, but he hoped that the rations would not be refused on
that account, as he was suffering from coarse fare and needed them very
much. As soon as he came to camp that night Tête Rouge repaired to the
box at the back of the cart, where Delorier used to keep his culinary
apparatus, took possession of a saucepan, and after building a little fire of
his own, set to work preparing a meal out of his ill-gotten booty. This done,
he seized on a tin plate and spoon, and sat down under the cart to regale
himself. His preliminary repast did not at all prejudice his subsequent
exertions at supper; where, in spite of his miniature dimensions, he made a
better figure than any of us. Indeed, about this time his appetite grew quite
voracious. He began to thrive wonderfully. His small body visibly
expanded, and his cheeks, which when we first took him were rather yellow
and cadaverous, now dilated in a wonderful manner, and became ruddy in
proportion. Tête Rouge, in short, began to appear like another man.

THE CHASE

HE country before us was now thronged with buffalo, and a
sketch of the manner of hunting them will not be out of place.
There are two methods commonly practiced, “running” and
“approaching.” The chase on horseback, which goes by the name
of “running,” is the more violent and dashing mode of the two.
Indeed, of all American wild sports, this is the wildest. Once among the
buffalo, the hunter, unless long use has made him familiar with the
situation, dashes forward in utter recklessness and self-abandonment. He
thinks of nothing, cares for nothing, but the game; his mind is stimulated to
the highest pitch, yet intensely concentrated on one object. In the midst of

the flying herd, where the uproar and the dust are thickest, it never wavers
for a moment; he drops the rein and abandons his horse to his furious
career; he levels his gun, the report sounds faint amid the thunder of the
buffalo; and when his wounded enemy leaps in vain fury upon him, his
heart thrills with a feeling like the fierce delight of the battlefield. A
practiced and skilful hunter, well mounted, will sometimes kill five or six
cows in a single chase, loading his gun again and again as his horse rushes
through the tumult. An exploit like this is quite beyond the capacities of a
novice.
In attacking a small band of buffalo, or in separating a single animal from
the herd and assailing it apart from the rest, there is less excitement and less
danger. With a bold and well-trained horse the hunter may ride so close to
the buffalo that as they gallop side by side he may reach over and touch him
with his hand; nor is there much danger in this as long as the buffalo’s
strength and breath continue unabated; but when he becomes tired and can
no longer run at ease, when his tongue lolls out and foam flies from his
jaws, then the hunter had better keep at a respectful distance; the distressed
brute may turn upon him at any instant; and especially at the moment when
he fires his gun. The wounded buffalo springs at his enemy; the horse leaps
violently aside; and then the hunter has need of a tenacious seat in the
saddle, for if he is thrown to the ground there is no hope for him. When he
sees his attack defeated the buffalo resumes his flight, but if the shot be well
directed he soon stops; for a few minutes he stands still, then totters and
falls heavily upon the prairie.
The chief difficulty in running buffalo, as it seems to me, is that of
loading the gun or pistol at full gallop. Many hunters for convenience’ sake
carry three or four bullets in the mouth; the powder is poured down the
muzzle of the piece, the bullet dropped in after it, the stock struck hard
upon the pommel of the saddle, and the work is done. The danger of this
method is obvious. Should the blow on the pommel fail to send the bullet
home, or should the latter, in the act of aiming, start from its place and roll
toward the muzzle, the gun would probably burst in discharging. Many a
shattered hand and worse casualties besides have been the result of such an
accident. To obviate it, some hunters make use of a ramrod, usually hung by
a string from the neck, but this materially increases the difficulty of loading.

The bows and arrows which the Indians use in running buffalo have many
advantages over firearms, and even white men occasionally employ them.
The danger of the chase arises not so much from the onset of the
wounded animal as from the nature of the ground which the hunter must
ride over. The prairie does not always present a smooth, level, and uniform
surface; very often it is broken with hills and hollows, intersected by
ravines, and in the remoter parts studded by the stiff wild-sage bushes. The
most formidable obstructions, however, are the burrows of wild animals,
wolves, badgers, and particularly prairie dogs, with whose holes the ground
for a very great extent is frequently honeycombed. In the blindness of the
chase the hunter rushes over it unconscious of danger; his horse, at full
career, thrusts his leg deep into one of the burrows; the bone snaps, the rider
is hurled forward to the ground and probably killed. Yet accidents in buffalo
running happen less frequently than one would suppose; in the recklessness
of the chase, the hunter enjoys all the impunity of a drunken man, and may
ride in safety over the gullies and declivities where, should he attempt to
pass in his sober senses, he would infallibly break his neck.
The method of “approaching,” being practiced on foot, has many
advantages over that of “running”; in the former, one neither breaks down
his horse nor endangers his own life; instead of yielding to excitement he
must be cool, collected, and watchful; he must understand the buffalo,
observe the features of the country and the course of the wind, and be well
skilled, moreover, in using the rifle. The buffalo are strange animals;
sometimes they are so stupid and infatuated that a man may walk up to
them in full sight on the open prairie and even shoot several of their number
before the rest will think it necessary to retreat. Again at another moment
they will be so shy and wary, that in order to approach them the utmost
skill, experience, and judgment are necessary. Kit Carson, I believe, stands
pre-eminent in running buffalo; in approaching, no man living can bear
away the palm from Henry Chatillon.
The next day was one of activity and excitement, for about ten o’clock
the men in advance shouted the gladdening cry of “Buffalo, buffalo!” and in
the hollow of the prairie just below us, a band of bulls were grazing. The
temptation was irresistible, and Shaw and I rode down upon them. We were
badly mounted on our traveling horses, but by hard lashing we overtook

them, and Shaw, running alongside of a bull, shot into him both balls of his
double-barreled gun. Looking around as I galloped past, I saw the bull in
his mortal fury rushing again and again upon his antagonist, whose horse
constantly leaped aside, and avoided the onset. My chase was more
protracted, but at length I ran close to the bull and killed him with my
pistols. Cutting off the tails of our victims by way of trophy, we rejoined the
party in about a quarter of an hour after we left it.
Again and again that morning rang out the same welcome cry of
“Buffalo, buffalo!” Every few minutes in the broad meadows along the
river, we would see bands of bulls, who, raising their shaggy heads, would
gaze in stupid amazement at the approaching horsemen, and then breaking
into a clumsy gallop, would file off in a long line across the trail in front,
toward the rising prairie on the left. At noon, the whole plain before us was
alive with thousands of buffalo—bulls, cows, and calves—all moving
rapidly as we drew near; and far off beyond the river the swelling prairie
was darkened with them to the very horizon. The party was in gayer spirits
than ever. We stopped for a nooning near a grove of trees by the river-side.
“Tongues and hump ribs to-morrow,” said Shaw, looking with contempt
at the venison steaks which Delorier placed before us. Our meal finished,
we lay down under a temporary awning to sleep. A shout from Henry
Chatillon aroused us, and we saw him standing on the cart-wheel, stretching
his tall figure to its full height while he looked toward the prairie beyond
the river. Following the direction of his eyes we could clearly distinguish a
large dark object, like the black shadow of a cloud, passing rapidly over
swell after swell of the distant plain; behind it followed another of similar
appearance though smaller. Its motion was more rapid, and it drew closer
and closer to the first. It was Arapahoe hunters pursuing a band of buffalo.
Shaw and I hastily sought and saddled our best horses, and went plunging
through sand and water to the farther bank. We were too late. The hunters
had already mingled with the herd, and the work of slaughter was nearly
over. When we reached the ground we found it strewn far and near with
numberless black carcasses, while the remnants of the herd, scattered in all
directions, were flying away in terror, and the Indians still rushing in
pursuit. Many of the hunters, however, remained upon the spot, and among
the rest was our yesterday’s acquaintance, the chief of the village. He had
alighted by the side of a cow, into which he had shot five or six arrows, and

his squaw, who had followed him on horseback to the hunt, was giving him
a draught of water out of a canteen, purchased or plundered from some
volunteer soldier. Recrossing the river we overtook the party, who were
already on their way.
We had scarcely gone a mile when an imposing spectacle presented itself.
From the river bank on the right, away over the swelling prairie on the left,
and in front as far as we could see, extended one vast host of buffalo. The
outskirts of the herd were within a quarter of a mile. In many parts they
were crowded so densely together that in the distance their rounded backs
presented a surface of uniform blackness; but elsewhere they were more
scattered, and from amid the multitude rose little columns of dust where the
buffalo were rolling on the ground. Here and there a great confusion was
perceptible, where a battle was going forward among the bulls. We could
distinctly see them rushing against each other, and hear the clattering of
their horns and their hoarse bellowing. Shaw was riding at some distance in
advance, with Henry Chatillon; I saw him stop and draw the leather
covering from his gun. Indeed, with such a sight before us, but one thing
could be thought of. That morning I had used pistols in the chase. I had now
a mind to try the virtue of a gun. Delorier had one, and I rode up to the side
of the cart; there he sat under the white covering, biting his pipe between
his teeth and grinning with excitement.

ONE VAST HOST OF BUFFALO

“Lend me your gun, Delorier,” said I.
“Oui, monsieur, oui,” 126-1 said Delorier, tugging with might and main to
stop the mule, which seemed obstinately bent on going forward. Then
everything but his moccasins disappeared as he crawled into the cart and
pulled at the gun to extricate it.
“Oui, bien chargé; 126-2 you’ll kill, mon bourgeois; 126-3 yes, you’ll kill—
c’est un bon fusil.” 126-4
I handed him my rifle and rode forward to Shaw.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Come on,” said I.
“Keep down that hollow,” said Henry, “and then they won’t see you till
you get close to them.”
The hollow was a kind of ravine very wide and shallow; it ran obliquely
toward the buffalo, and we rode at a canter along the bottom until it became
too shallow, when we bent close to our horses’ necks, and then finding that
it could no longer conceal us, came out of it and rode directly toward the
herd. It was within gunshot; before its outskirts, numerous grizzly old bulls
were scattered, holding guard over their females. They glared at us in anger
and astonishment, walked toward us a few yards, and then turning slowly
round retreated at a trot which afterward broke into a clumsy gallop. In an
instant the main body caught the alarm. The buffalo began to crowd away
from the point toward which we were approaching, and a gap was opened
in the side of the herd. We entered it, still restraining our excited horses.
Every instant the tumult was thickening. The buffalo, pressing together in
large bodies, crowded away from us on every hand. In front and on either
side we could see dark columns and masses, half hidden by clouds of dust,
rushing along in terror and confusion, and hear the tramp and clattering of
ten thousand hoofs. That countless multitude of powerful brutes, ignorant of
their own strength, were flying in a panic from the approach of two feeble
horsemen. To remain quiet longer was impossible.
“Take that band on the left,” said Shaw; “I’ll take these in front.”

He sprang off, and I saw no more of him. A heavy Indian whip was
fastened by a band to my wrist; I swung it into the air and lashed my horse’s
flank with all the strength of my arm. Away she darted, stretching close to
the ground. I could see nothing but a cloud of dust before me, but I knew
that it concealed a band of many hundreds of buffalo. In a moment I was in
the midst of the cloud, half suffocated by the dust and stunned by the
trampling of the flying herd; but I was drunk with the chase and cared for
nothing but the buffalo. Very soon a long dark mass became visible,
looming through the dust; then I could distinguish each bulky carcass, the
hoofs flying out beneath, the short tails held rigidly erect. In a moment I
was so close that I could have touched them with my gun.
Suddenly, to my utter amazement, the hoofs were jerked upward, the tails
flourished in the air, and amid a cloud of dust the buffalo seemed to sink
into the earth before me. One vivid impression of that instant upon my
mind. I remember looking down upon the backs of several buffalo dimly
visible through the dust. We had run unawares upon a ravine. At that
moment I was not the most accurate judge of depth and width, but when I
passed it on my return, I found it about twelve feet deep and not quite twice
as wide at the bottom. It was impossible to stop; I would have done so
gladly if I could; so, half sliding, half plunging, down went the little mare. I
believe she came down on her knees in the loose sand at the bottom; I was
pitched forward violently against her neck and nearly thrown over her head
among the buffalo, who amid dust and confusion came tumbling in all
around. The mare was on her feet in an instant and scrambling like a cat up
the opposite side. I thought for a moment that she would have fallen back
and crushed me, but with a violent effort she clambered out and gained the
hard prairie above. Glancing back I saw the huge head of a bull clinging as
it were by the forefeet at the edge of the dusty gulf. At length I was fairly
among the buffalo. They were less densely crowded than before, and I
could see nothing but bulls, who always run at the rear of the herd. As I
passed amid them they would lower their heads, and turning as they ran,
attempt to gore my horse; but as they were already at full speed there was
no force in their onset, and as Pauline ran faster than they, they were always
thrown behind her in the effort.
I soon began to distinguish cows amid the throng. One just in front of me
seemed to my liking, and I pushed close to her side. Dropping the reins I

fired, holding the muzzle of the gun within a foot of her shoulder. Quick as
lightning she sprang at Pauline; the little mare dodged the attack, and I lost
sight of the wounded animal amid the tumultuous crowd. Immediately after
I selected another, and urging forward Pauline, shot into her both pistols in
succession. For a while I kept her in view, but in attempting to load my gun,
lost sight of her also in the confusion. Believing her to be mortally wounded
and unable to keep up with the herd, I checked my horse. The crowd rushed
onward. The dust and tumult passed away, and on the prairie, far behind the
rest, I saw a solitary buffalo galloping heavily. In a moment I and my victim
were running side by side. My firearms were all empty, and I had in my
pouch nothing but rifle bullets, too large for the pistols and too small for the
gun. I loaded the latter, however, but as often as I leveled it to fire, the little
bullets would roll out of the muzzle and the gun returned only a faint report
like a squib, as the powder harmlessly exploded. I galloped in front of the
buffalo, and attempted to turn her back; but her eyes glared, her mane
bristled, and lowering her head, she rushed at me with astonishing
fierceness and activity. Again and again I rode before her, and again and
again she repeated her furious charge. But little Pauline was in her element.
She dodged her enemy at every rush, until at length the buffalo stood still,
exhausted with her own efforts; she panted, and her tongue hung lolling
from her jaws.
Riding to a little distance I alighted, thinking to gather a handful of dry
grass to serve the purpose of wadding, and load the gun at my leisure. No
sooner were my feet on the ground than the buffalo came bounding in such
a rage toward me that I jumped back again into the saddle with all possible
dispatch. After waiting a few minutes more, I made an attempt to ride up
and stab her with my knife; but the experiment proved such as no wise man
would repeat. At length, bethinking me of the fringes at the seams of my
buckskin pantaloons, I jerked off a few of them, and reloading the gun,
forced them down the barrel to keep the bullet in its place; then
approaching, I shot the wounded buffalo through the heart. Sinking to her
knees, she rolled over lifeless on the prairie. To my astonishment, I found
that instead of a fat cow I had been slaughtering a stout yearling bull. No
longer wondering at the fierceness he had shown, I opened his throat, and
cutting out his tongue, tied it at the back of my saddle. My mistake was one

which a more experienced eye than mine might easily make in the dust and
confusion of such a chase.
Then for the first time I had leisure to look at the scene around me. The
prairie in front was darkened with the retreating multitude, and on the other
hand the buffalo came filing up in endless unbroken columns from the low
plains upon the river. The Arkansas was three or four miles distant. I turned
and moved slowly toward it. A long time passed, before, far down in the
distance, I distinguished the white covering of the cart and the little black
specks of horsemen before and behind it. Drawing near, I recognized
Shaw’s elegant tunic, the red flannel shirt, conspicuous far off. I overtook
the party, and asked him what success he had met with. He had assailed a
fat cow, shot her with two bullets, and mortally wounded her. But neither of
us were prepared for the chase that afternoon, and Shaw, like myself, had no
spare bullets in his pouch; so he abandoned the disabled animal to Henry
Chatillon, who followed, dispatched her with his rifle, and loaded his horse
with her meat.
We encamped close to the river. The night was dark, and as we lay down
we could hear mingled with the howling of the wolves the hoarse bellowing
of the buffalo, like the ocean beating upon a distant coast.

THE BUFFALO CAMP

HE morning was a bright and gay one, and the air so clear that on
the farthest horizon the outline of the pale blue prairie was
sharply drawn against the sky. Shaw felt in the mood for hunting;
he rode in advance of the party, and before long we saw a file of
bulls galloping at full speed upon a vast green swell of the prairie
at some distance in front. Shaw came scouring along behind them, arrayed
in his red shirt, which looked very well in the distance; he gained fast on the
fugitives, and as the foremost bull was disappearing behind the summit of
the swell, we saw him in the act of assailing the hindmost; a smoke sprang
from the muzzle of his gun, and floated away like a little white cloud; the
bull turned upon him, and just then the rising ground concealed them both
from view.

We were moving forward until about noon, when we stopped by the side
of the Arkansas. At that moment Shaw appeared riding slowly down the
side of a distant hill; his horse was tired and jaded; and when he threw his
saddle upon the ground, I observed that the tails of two bulls were dangling
behind it. No sooner were the horses turned loose to feed than Henry,
asking Munroe to go with him, took his rifle and walked quietly away.
Shaw, Tête Rouge and I sat down by the side of the cart to discuss the
dinner which Delorier placed before us; we had scarcely finished when we
saw Munroe walking toward us along the river bank. Henry, he said, had
killed four fat cows, and had sent him back for horses to bring in the meat.
Shaw took a horse for himself and another for Henry, and he and Munroe
left the camp together.
After a short absence all three of them came back, their horses loaded
with the choicest parts of the meat; we kept two of the cows for ourselves
and gave the others to Munroe and his companions. Delorier seated himself
on the grass before the pile of meat, and worked industriously for some
time to cut it into thin broad sheets for drying. This is no easy matter, but
Delorier had all the skill of an Indian squaw. Long before night cords of
rawhide were stretched around the camp, and the meat was hung upon them
to dry in the sunshine and pure air of the prairie. Our California companions
were less successful at the work; but they accomplished it after their own
fashion, and their side of the camp was soon garnished in the same manner
as our own.
We meant to remain at this place long enough to prepare provisions for
our journey to the frontier, which as we supposed might occupy about a
month. Had the distance been twice as great and the party ten times as large,
the unerring rifle of Henry Chatillon would have supplied meat enough for
the whole within two days; we were obliged to remain, however, until it
should be dry enough for transportation; so we erected our tent and made
the other arrangements for a permanent camp.
In the meantime we had nothing to do but amuse ourselves. Our tent was
within a rod of the river, if the broad sand-beds, with a scanty stream of
water coursing here and there along their surface, deserve to be dignified
with the name of river. The vast plains on either side were almost level with
the sand-beds, and they were bounded in the distance by low, monotonous

hills, parallel to the course of the Arkansas. All was one expanse of grass;
there was no wood in view, except some trees and stunted bushes upon two
islands which rose from amid the wet sands of the river. Yet far from being
dull and tame, this boundless scene was often a wild and animated one; for
twice a day, at sunrise and at noon, the buffalo came issuing from the hills,
slowly advancing in their grave processions to drink at the river. All our
amusements were at their expense. Except an elephant, I have seen no
animal that can surpass a buffalo bull in size and strength, and the world
may be searched in vain to find anything of a more ugly and ferocious
aspect. At first sight of him every feeling of sympathy vanishes; no man
who has not experienced it can understand with what keen relish one
inflicts his death wound, with what profound contentment of mind he
beholds him fall.
The cows are much smaller and of a gentler appearance, as becomes their
sex. While in this camp we forebore to attack them, leaving to Henry
Chatillon, who could better judge their fatness and good quality, the task of
killing such as we wanted for use; but against the bulls we waged an
unrelenting war. Thousands of them might be slaughtered without causing
any detriment to the species, for their numbers greatly exceed those of the
cows; it is the hides of the latter alone which are used for the purpose of
commerce and for making the lodges of the Indians; and the destruction
among them is therefore altogether disproportioned.
Our horses were tired, and we now usually hunted on foot. The wide, flat
sand-beds of the Arkansas, as the reader will remember, lay close by the
side of our camp. While we were lying on the grass after dinner, smoking,
conversing, or laughing at Tête Rouge, one of us would look up and
observe, far out on the plains beyond the river, certain black objects slowly
approaching. He would inhale a parting whiff from the pipe, then rising
lazily, take his rifle, which leaned against the cart, throw over his shoulder
the strap of his pouch and powder-horn, and with his moccasins in his hand
walk quietly across the sand toward the opposite side of the river.
This was very easy; for though the sands were about a quarter of a mile
wide, the water was nowhere more than two feet deep. The farther bank was
about four or five feet high, and quite perpendicular, being cut away by the
water in spring. Tall grass grew along its edge. Putting it aside with his

hand, and cautiously looking through it, the hunter can discern the huge
shaggy back of the buffalo slowly swaying to and fro, as with his clumsy
swinging gait he advances toward the water. The buffalo have regular paths
by which they come down to drink. Seeing at a glance along which of these
his intended victim is moving, the hunter crouches under the bank within
fifteen or twenty yards, it may be, of the point where the path enters the
river. Here he sits down quietly on the sand. Listening intently, he hears the
heavy, monotonous tread of the approaching bull. The moment after he sees
a motion among the long weeds and grass just at the spot where the path is
channeled through the bank. An enormous black head is thrust out, the
horns just visible amid the mass of tangled mane. Half sliding, half
plunging, down comes the buffalo upon the river-bed below. He steps out in
full sight upon the sands. Just before him a runnel of water is gliding, and
he bends his head to drink. You may hear the water as it gurgles down his
capacious throat. He raises his head, and the drops trickle from his wet
beard. He stands with an air of stupid abstraction, unconscious of the
lurking danger. Noiselessly the hunter cocks his rifle. As he sits upon the
sand, his knee is raised, and his elbow rests upon it, that he may level his
heavy weapon with a steadier aim. The stock is at his shoulder; his eye
ranges along the barrel. Still he is in no haste to fire. The bull, with slow
deliberation, begins his march over the sands to the other side. He advances
his fore-leg, and exposes to view a small spot denuded of hair, just behind
the point of his shoulder; upon this the hunter brings the sight of his rifle to
bear; lightly and delicately his finger presses upon the hair-trigger. Quick as
thought the spiteful crack of the rifle responds to his slight touch, and
instantly in the middle of the bare spot appears a small red dot. The buffalo
shivers; death has overtaken him, he cannot tell from whence; still he does
not fall, but walks heavily forward, as if nothing had happened. Yet before
he has advanced far out upon the sand, you see him stop; he totters; his
knees bend under him, and his head sinks forward to the ground. Then his
whole vast bulk sways to one side; he rolls over on the sand, and dies with a
scarcely perceptible struggle.
Waylaying the buffalo in this manner, and shooting them as they come to
water, is the easiest and laziest method of hunting them. They may also be
approached by crawling up ravines or behind hills, or even over the open
prairie. This is often surprisingly easy; but at other times it requires the

utmost skill of the most experienced hunter. Henry Chatillon was a man of
extraordinary strength and hardihood; but I have seen him return to camp
quite exhausted with his efforts, his limbs scratched and wounded, and his
buckskin dress stuck full of thorns of the prickly pear among which he had
been crawling. Sometimes he would lie flat upon his face, and drag himself
along in this position for many rods together.
On the second day of our stay at this place, Henry went out for an
afternoon hunt. Shaw and I remained in camp until, observing some bulls
approaching the water from the other side of the river, we crossed over to
attack them. They were so near, however, that before we could get under
cover of the bank our appearance as we walked over the sands alarmed
them. Turning round before coming within gunshot, they began to move off
to the right in a direction parallel to the river. I climbed up the bank and ran
after them. They were walking swiftly, and before I could come within
gunshot distance they slowly wheeled about and faced toward me. Before
they had turned far enough to see me I had fallen flat on my face. For a
moment they stood and stared at the strange object upon the grass; then
turning away, again they walked on as before; and I, rising immediately ran
once more in pursuit. Again they wheeled about, and again I fell prostrate.
Repeating this three or four times, I came at length within a hundred yards
of the fugitives, and as I saw them turning again I sat down and leveled my
rifle. The one in the center was the largest I had ever seen. I shot him
behind the shoulder. His two companions ran off. He attempted to follow,
but soon came to a stand, and at length lay down as quietly as an ox
chewing the cud. Cautiously approaching him, I saw by his dull and
jellylike eye that he was dead.
When I began the chase, the prairie was almost tenantless; but a great
multitude of buffalo had suddenly thronged upon it, and looking up, I saw
within fifty rods a heavy, dark column stretching to the right and left as far
as I could see. I walked toward them. My approach did not alarm them in
the least. The column itself consisted entirely of cows and calves, but a
great many old bulls were ranging about the prairie on its flank, and as I
drew near they faced toward me with such a shaggy and ferocious look that
I thought it best to proceed no farther. Indeed, I was already within close
rifle-shot of the column, and I sat down on the ground to watch their
movements. Sometimes the whole would stand still, their heads all facing

one way; then they would trot forward, as if by common impulse, their
hoofs and horns clattering together as they moved.
I soon began to hear at a distance on the left the sharp reports of a rifle,
again and again repeated; and not long after, dull and heavy sounds
succeeded, which I recognized as the familiar voice of Shaw’s double-
barreled gun. When Henry’s rifle was at work there was always meat to be
brought in. I went back across the river for a horse, and returning, reached
the spot where the hunters were standing. The buffalo were visible on the
distant prairie. The living had retreated from the ground, but ten or twelve
carcasses were scattered in various directions. Henry, knife in hand, was
stooping over a dead cow, cutting away the best and fattest of the meat.
When Shaw left me he had walked down for some distance under the
river bank to find another bull. At length he saw the plains covered with the
host of buffalo, and soon after heard the crack of Henry’s rifle. Ascending
the bank, he crawled through the grass, which for a rod or two from the
river was very high and rank. He had not crawled far before to his
astonishment he saw Henry standing erect upon the prairie, almost
surrounded by the buffalo.
Henry was in his appropriate element. Nelson, on the deck of the Victory,
hardly felt a prouder sense of mastery than he. Quite unconscious that any
one was looking at him, he stood at the full height of his tall, strong figure,
one hand resting upon his side, and the other arm leaning carelessly on the
muzzle of his rifle. His eyes were ranging over the singular assemblage
around him. Now and then he would select such a cow as suited him, level
his rifle, and shoot her dead; then quietly reloading, he would resume his
former position. The buffalo seemed no more to regard his presence than if
he were one of themselves; the bulls were bellowing and butting at each
other, or else rolling about in the dust. A group of buffalo would gather
about the carcass of a dead cow, snuffing at her wounds; and sometimes
they would come behind those that had not yet fallen, and endeavor to push
them from the spot. Now and then some old bull would face toward Henry
with an air of stupid amazement, but none seemed inclined to attack or fly
from him.

For some time Shaw lay among the grass, looking in surprise at this
extraordinary sight; at length he crawled cautiously forward, and spoke in a
low voice to Henry, who told him to rise and come on. Still the buffalo
showed no sign of fear; they remained gathered about their dead
companions. Henry had already killed as many cows as we wanted for use,
and Shaw, kneeling behind one of the carcasses, shot five bulls before the
rest thought it necessary to disperse.
The frequent stupidity and infatuation of the buffalo seems the more
remarkable from the contrast it offers to their wildness and wariness at other
times. Henry knew all their peculiarities; he had studied them as a scholar
studies his books, and he derived quite as much pleasure from the
occupation. The buffalo were a kind of companions to him, and as he said,
he never felt alone when they were about him. He took great pride in his
skill in hunting. Henry was one of the most modest of men; yet in the
simplicity and frankness of his character, it was quite clear that he looked
upon his pre-eminence in this respect as a thing too palpable and well
established ever to be disputed. But whatever may have been his estimate of
his own skill, it was rather below than above that which others placed upon
it. The only time that I ever saw a shade of scorn darken his face was when
two volunteer soldiers, who had just killed a buffalo for the first time,
undertook to instruct him as to the best method of “approaching.” Henry
always seemed to think that he had a sort of prescriptive right to the buffalo,
and to look upon them as something belonging peculiarly to himself.
Nothing excited his indignation so much as any wanton destruction among
the cows, and in his view shooting a calf was a cardinal sin.
Henry Chatillon and Tête Rouge were of the same age; that is, about
thirty. Henry was twice as large, and fully six times as strong as Tête
Rouge. Henry’s face was roughened by winds and storms; Tête Rouge’s
was bloated by sherry cobblers and brandy toddy. Henry talked of Indians
and buffalo; Tête Rouge of theaters and oyster cellars. Henry had led a life
of hardship and privation; Tête Rouge never had a whim which he would
not gratify at the first moment he was able. Henry moreover was the most
disinterested man I ever saw; while Tête Rouge, though equally good-
natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would not have
lost him on any account; he admirably served the purpose of a jester in a
feudal castle; our camp would have been lifeless without him. For the past

week he had fattened in a most amazing manner; and indeed this was not at
all surprising, since his appetite was most inordinate. He was eating from
morning till night; half the time he would be at work cooking some private
repast for himself, and he paid a visit to the coffee-pot eight or ten times a
day. His rueful and disconsolate face became jovial and rubicund, his eyes
stood out like a lobster’s, and his spirits, which before were sunk to the
depths of despondency, were now elated in proportion; all day he was
singing, whistling, laughing, and telling stories. As he had a considerable
fund of humor, his anecdotes were extremely amusing, especially since he
never hesitated to place himself in a ludicrous point of view, provided he
could raise a laugh by doing so.
Tête Rouge, however, was sometimes rather troublesome; he had an
inveterate habit of pilfering provisions at all times of the day. He set
ridicule at utter defiance; and being without a particle of self-respect, he
would never have given over his tricks, even if they had drawn upon him
the scorn of the whole party. Now and then, indeed, something worse than
laughter fell to his share; on these occasions he would exhibit much
contrition, but half an hour after we would generally observe him stealing
round to the box at the back of the cart and slyly making off with the
provisions which Delorier had laid by for supper. He was very fond of
smoking; but having no tobacco of his own, we used to provide him with as
much as he wanted, a small piece at a time. At first we gave him half a
pound together, but this experiment proved an entire failure, for he
invariably lost not only the tobacco, but the knife intrusted to him for
cutting it, and a few minutes after he would come to us with many
apologies and beg for more.
We had been two days at this camp, and some of the meat was nearly fit
for transportation, when a storm came suddenly upon us. About sunset the
whole sky grew as black as ink, and the long grass at the river’s edge bent
and rose mournfully with the first gusts of the approaching hurricane.
Delorier ensconced himself under the cover of the cart. Shaw and I,
together with Henry and Tête Rouge, crowded into the little tent; but first of
all the dried meat was piled together, and well protected by buffalo robes
pinned firmly to the ground.

About nine o’clock the storm broke, amid absolute darkness; it blew a
gale, and torrents of rain roared over the boundless expanse of open prairie.
Our tent was filled with mist and spray beating through the canvas, and
saturating everything within. We could only distinguish each other at short
intervals by the dazzling flash of lightning, which displayed the whole
waste around us with its momentary glare. We had our fears for the tent; but
for an hour or two it stood fast, until at length the cap gave way before a
furious blast; the pole tore through the top, and in an instant we were half
suffocated by the cold and dripping folds of the canvas, which fell down
upon us. Seizing upon our guns, we placed them erect, in order to lift the
saturated cloth above our heads. In this agreeable situation, involved among
wet blankets and buffalo robes, we spent several hours of the night during
which the storm would not abate for a moment, but pelted down above our
heads with merciless fury.
Before long the ground beneath us became soaked with moisture, and the
water gathered there in a pool two or three inches deep; so that for a
considerable part of the night we were partially immersed in a cold bath. In
spite of all this, Tête Rouge’s flow of spirits did not desert him for an
instant; he laughed, whistled, and sung in defiance of the storm, and that
night he paid off the long arrears of ridicule which he owed us. While we
lay in silence, enduring the infliction with what philosophy we could
muster, Tête Rouge, who was intoxicated with animal spirits, was cracking
jokes at our expense by the hour together.
At about three o’clock in the morning, “preferring the tyranny of the
open night” to such a wretched shelter, we crawled out from beneath the
fallen canvas. The wind had abated, but the rain fell steadily. The fire of the
California men still blazed amid the darkness, and we joined them as they
sat around it. We made ready some hot coffee by way of refreshment; but
when some of the party sought to replenish their cups, it was found that
Tête Rouge, having disposed of his own share, had privately abstracted the
coffee-pot and drunk up the rest of the contents out of the spout.
In the morning, to our great joy, an unclouded sun rose upon the prairie.
We presented rather a laughable appearance, for the cold and clammy
buckskin, saturated with water, clung fast to our limbs; the light wind and
warm sunshine soon dried them again, and then we were all incased in

armor of intolerable rigidity. Roaming all day over the prairie and shooting
two or three bulls, were scarcely enough to restore the stiffened leather to
its usual pliancy.
A great flock of buzzards were usually soaring about a few trees that
stood on the island just below our camp. Throughout the whole of yesterday
we had noticed an eagle among them; to-day he was still there; and Tête
Rouge, declaring that he would kill the bird of America, borrowed
Delorier’s gun and set out on his unpatriotic mission. As might have been
expected, the eagle suffered no great harm at his hands. He soon returned,
saying that he could not find him, but had shot a buzzard instead. Being
required to produce the bird in proof of his assertion, he said he believed
that he was not quite dead, but he must be hurt, from the swiftness with
which he flew off.
“If you want,” said Tête Rouge, “I’ll go and get one of his feathers; I
knocked off plenty of them when I shot him.”
Just opposite our camp was another island covered with bushes, and
behind it was a deep pool of water, while two or three considerable streams
coursed over the sand not far off. I was bathing at this place in the afternoon
when a white wolf, larger than the largest Newfoundland dog, ran out from
behind the point of the island, and galloped leisurely over the sand not half
a stone’s throw distant. I could plainly see his red eyes and the bristles
about his snout; he was an ugly scoundrel, with a bushy tail, large head, and
a most repulsive countenance. Having neither rifle to shoot nor stone to pelt
him with, I was looking eagerly after some missile for his benefit, when the
report of a gun came from the camp, and the ball threw up the sand just
beyond him; at this he gave a slight jump, and stretched away so swiftly
that he soon dwindled into a mere speck on the distant sand-beds.
The number of carcasses that by this time were lying about the prairie all
around us summoned the wolves from every quarter; the spot where Shaw
and Henry had hunted together soon became their favorite resort, for here
about a dozen dead buffalo were fermenting under the hot sun. I used often
to go over the river and watch them at their meal; by lying under the bank it
was easy to get a full view of them. Three different kinds were present;
there were the white wolves and the gray wolves, both extremely large, and

besides these the small prairie wolves, not much bigger than spaniels. They
would howl and fight in a crowd around a single carcass, yet they were so
watchful, and their senses so acute, that I was never able to crawl within a
fair shooting distance; whenever I attempted it, they would all scatter at
once and glide silently away through the tall grass.
The air above this spot was always full of buzzards or black vultures;
whenever the wolves left a carcass they would descend upon it, and cover it
so densely that a rifle-shot at random among the gormandizing crowd
would generally strike down two or three of them. These birds would now
be sailing by scores just above our camp, their broad black wings seeming
half transparent as they expanded them against the bright sky. The wolves
and the buzzards thickened about us with every hour, and two or three
eagles also came into the feast. I killed a bull within rifle-shot of the camp;
that night the wolves made a fearful howling close at hand, and in the
morning the carcass was completely hollowed out by these voracious
feeders.
After we had remained four days at this camp we prepared to leave it. We
had for our own part about five hundred pounds of dried meat, and the
California men had prepared some three hundred more; this consisted of the
fattest and choicest parts of eight or nine cows, a very small quantity only
being taken from each, and the rest abandoned to the wolves. The pack
animals were laden, the horses were saddled, and the mules harnessed to the
cart. Even Tête Rouge was ready at last, and slowly moving from the
ground, we resumed our journey eastward.
When we had advanced about a mile, Shaw missed a valuable hunting
knife and turned back in search of it, thinking he had left it at the camp. He
approached the place cautiously, fearful that Indians might be lurking about,
for a deserted camp is dangerous to return to. He saw no enemy, but the
scene was a wild and dreary one; the prairie was overshadowed by dull,
leaden clouds, for the day was dark and gloomy. The ashes of the fires were
still smoking by the river-side; the grass around them was trampled down
by men and horses, and strewn with all the litter of a camp. Our departure
had been a gathering signal to the birds and beasts of prey; Shaw assured
me that literally dozens of wolves were prowling about the smoldering
fires, while multitudes were roaming over the prairie around; they all fled as

he approached, some running over the sand-beds and some over the grassy
plains. As he searched about the fires he saw the wolves seated on the
distant hills waiting for his departure. Having looked in vain for his knife,
he mounted again and left the wolves and the vultures to banquet freely
upon the carrion of the camp.

126-1 “Yes, sir, yes.”

126-2 “Yes, well loaded.”

126-3 “My master” or “gentleman.”

126-4 “It is a good gun.”

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
By Alfred Tennyson
Note.—The Battle of Balaklava, in which the charge commemorated by Tennyson in this poem
occurred, was one of the important engagements of the Crimean War, between Russia on the one
hand and Turkey, France and England on the other. The battle was fought on October 25th, 1854.
Through some error in issuing orders, a brigade of six hundred light cavalry, under Lord Cardigan,
was ordered to advance against the Russian center. The numbers of the enemy were overwhelming,
and but a remnant of the brigade returned alive.

H ALF a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said;
Into the valley of death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;

Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d;
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not,
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

FOR A’ THAT AND A’ THAT
By Robert Burns

I S there,
Wha
for honest poverty,
149-1hangs his head, and a’ that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Our toils obscure, and a’ that;
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The man’s the gowd 149-2 for a’ that!
What though on hamely 149-3 fare we dine,
Wear hodden-gray, 149-4 and a’ that;
Gie 149-5 fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that!
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show and a’ that;
The honest man though e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that!
Ye see yon birkie, 150-6 ca’d 150-7 a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, and a’ that;
Though hundreds worship at his word
He’s but a coof 150-8 for a’ that.
For a’ that, and a’ that,
His ribbon, star, and a’ that;
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a’ that.

A prince can mak’ a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon 150-9 his might,
Guid faith, he mauna 150-10 fa’ 150-11 that!
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their dignities, and a’ that;
The pith o’ sense, and pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.
Then let us pray that come it may—
As come it will for a’ that—
That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,
May bear the gree, 150-12 and a’ that.
For a’ that, and a’ that,
It’s coming yet, for a’ that,
When man to man, the warld o’er,
Shall brithers be for a’ that!

149-1 Wha is the Scotch form of who. It modifies a man, understood, after is there.

149-2 Gowd means gold.

149-3 Hamely means homely, in the sense of simple, or common.

149-4 Hodden-gray is coarse woolen cloth.

149-5 Gie is the Scotch contraction for give.

150-6 A birkie is a conceited, forward fellow.

150-7 Ca’d is a contracted form of called.

150-8 A coof is a stupid person, a blockhead.

150-9 Aboon means above.

150-10 Mauna is must not.

150-11 Fa’ means try.

150-12 Bear the gree means carry off the victory.

BREATHES THERE THE MAN
By Sir Walter Scott

B REATHES there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE
By William Collins

H OW sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country’s wishes blessed!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy’s feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell a weeping hermit there!

QUEEN VICTORIA
By Anna McCaleb

EORGE III, King of England, was by no means fortunate in his
sons, for there was in the most of them little of which a father
could be proud. Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son, was by far
the best; he was honorable, generous and charitable, so much so
in fact that he lived far beyond the small income which his royal
father was willing to allow him. This son married, and to him was born on
the twenty-fourth of May, 1819, in the Palace of Kensington at London, a
daughter.
One month after her birth the child was baptized with great ceremony, a
gold font being brought from the Tower for the purpose, and the Archbishop
of Canterbury and the Bishop of London officiating. The Prince of Wales, at
that time acting as Prince Regent in the place of his father, who was insane,
was the chief sponsor for the child, and he gave her the name of
Alexandrina in honor of Alexander, Emperor of Russia. The Duke of Kent
wished her to bear her mother’s name also, and George IV added the name
Victoria. “Little Drina,” the child was usually called when she was small,
but when she grew older she decided that her mother’s name should stand
second to no other, and desired that she be called simply Victoria. There
were uncles and cousins and her own father between the little princess and
the throne, and it did not look as if her chances of becoming queen were
very great, so that people used to laugh indulgently when the Duke of Kent
would produce his baby and say proudly, “Look at her well; she will yet be
Queen of England.”
Victoria’s father died when she was but eight months old, but the child
knew no lack, for her mother superintended her training and her teaching in
a very wise manner, for she thought that it was possible, if not probable,

that her child would one day have the chief place in the kingdom, and she
wanted to fit her for it. Very simply was the little princess brought up; her
clothing as well as her food was of the plainest, and habits of economy and
regularity were impressed upon her and stayed with her all her life. Her
governess, Baroness Lehzen, was German, as were all of her teachers until
the time she was twelve years old, and it is said that she spoke English with
a German accent.
Of course Victoria’s life was different from the lives of other children,
and this she must early have perceived. There are, however, little stories of
her childhood which show that she was really not so different from ordinary
children as some of her serious biographers would have one think. She was
very fond of dolls, and had, it is said, one hundred and thirty-two of them
who lived in a house of their own. Even with these, however, she was not
allowed to play just as other children did, for her governess made use of
them to teach her little charge court etiquette. And indeed, some means of
teaching the child court etiquette was necessary, as her mother refused to
allow her to appear at the royal court and receive her lessons there at first
hand. The court of George IV was most disreputable, and the Duchess of
Kent wisely judged that it was no place for her little daughter. When
William IV came to the throne in 1830, Victoria’s mother still refused to
allow the child to be much at court, for though the new king was in some
ways better than his predecessor had been, he was far from being a moral
man.
When Victoria was twelve years old her mother felt that it was time she
should know of the high destiny to which she might be called, for there now
stood no one between her and the throne, William IV’s children having died
in infancy. Accordingly, the governess placed in a book which the princess
was reading, a genealogical table, so that the princess might come upon it as
if by accident. Victoria examined it gravely and then exclaimed, “Why I
never saw this before!”
“It was not necessary that you should see it,” replied the governess.
“I am nearer the throne than I supposed,” said the child, and then, with a
seriousness beyond her years, she added, “It is a great responsibility, but I
will be good.”

Kept as she was from the court world, Victoria was the subject of intense
interest and curiosity to the English people. England had always been
fortunate in her queens if not always in her kings, and it was felt that if
Victoria should come to the throne, England would be the better morally.
Certain it is that the young girl was adored by the British people generally;
her simplicity, her prettiness, her fresh girlishness appealed to them, and the
thought of what she would probably be called upon to do lent more than a
touch of romance to all that concerned her. Nathaniel P. Willis, the
American writer, who had seen Victoria during a visit to England, wrote:
“The princess is much better looking than any picture of her in the shops,
and for the heir to such a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily
pretty and interesting.”
Her “Uncle King,” as she called William IV, was very wrathful because
his young niece was not allowed to appear at all court affairs, and at one
time when the Duchess of Kent and Victoria were present, with about a
hundred other guests, at his birthday celebration, he made a most
remarkable speech.
“I only hope,” he said, “that I may live for nine months longer, until the
Princess Victoria is of age, so that I may leave the power in her hands and
not be forced to entrust it to a regent in the person of a lady who sits near
me.”
At this insult to her mother, Victoria burst into tears, but the Duchess
herself made no reply.
In 1837 Victoria became of age, and her birthday was celebrated with
rejoicing throughout the country. Schools were closed, feasts were held, and
the city of London was brightly illuminated. But at the great ball which was
given that night, the king could not be present; for he was that very day
taken ill, and in less than a month he died.
Early in the morning of June twentieth, the Archbishop of Canterbury
and the Lord Chamberlain hastened to Kensington Palace to acquaint
Victoria with the fact that she was queen of England. They reached there in
the gray dawn and found no one stirring. After much waiting and knocking,
they were shown into the palace, and finally succeeded in having the
princess’s special attendant sent to them. They asked her to inform her

mistress that they desired to see her immediately on very important
business; whereupon the attendant told them that she preferred not to waken
her mistress, who was sleeping soundly. With great dignity then the
Archbishop said, “We are come on business of State to The Queen”; and
thus, startled out of her sleep, Victoria was told by her attendant that she
was now the first person in Great Britain.
Hastily taking off her nightcap and throwing a shawl over her nightgown,
Victoria descended to receive the official announcement of her succession
to the throne of England, and to receive on her hand the kiss of allegiance
from these two great lords of the realm.
Her first reported words after she was made queen were to the
Archbishop of Canterbury—“I beg your Grace to pray for me;” and one of
her very first acts after the august messengers had left her was to write to
the widowed queen of William IV, Adelaide, offering her condolences and
begging that she would remain as long as she chose in the royal palace. She
addressed the letter to “Her Majesty the Queen,” and when some one
standing by said to her, “you are now the queen, and your aunt deserves the
title no longer,” she replied, “I know that, but I shall not be the first to
remind her of that fact.”
Later in the same day, the eighteen-year-old queen was called upon to
meet the council of the high officers of Church and State. Dressed in her
simple mourning she looked dignified and calm, and her behavior
corresponded well with her looks. Of course all the great statesmen who
were thus called on to meet her, felt much curiosity as to how she would
carry off her new honors, and one of the greatest. Sir Robert Peel, said
afterward that he was “amazed at her manner and behavior; at her apparent
deep sense of her situation, her modesty and at the same time her firmness.
She appeared to be awed but not daunted.”
On the following day she was publicly proclaimed at Saint James’s
Palace, and all of those who had gathered to watch the ceremony, which
was performed at a window looking out on the courtyard, were as deeply
impressed as the peers and princes had been on the preceding day. It must
have been difficult for the simple, unassuming young girl to preserve her

calm dignity when she heard the singing of that grand national anthem, God
Save the Queen, and knew that it was for her.
In midsummer the queen moved to Buckingham Palace, and on July
seventeenth she took part in her first elaborate public ceremony—that is,
she drove in state to dissolve Parliament. All were impressed with the
manner in which she read her speech, and one distinguished observer said
to another, “How beautifully she performs!”
A pleasant story is told of the young queen shortly after her accession.
The Duke of Wellington, whom Victoria greatly admired, brought to her for
signature a court-martial death sentence. The queen, horrified, and feeling
that she could not sign her name to such a document, begged the Duke to
tell her whether there was not some excuse for the offender.
“None,” said the Iron Duke; “he has deserted three times.”
“Oh, think, your Grace,” Victoria replied, “whether there be not
something in his favor.”
“Well,” said the Duke, “I am certain that he is a very bad soldier, but he
may, for aught I know, be a very good man. In fact, I remember hearing
some one speak for him.”
“Oh, thank you!” exclaimed the queen, as she joyously wrote the word
“Pardoned” across the document.
It soon became evident that the tender-hearted queen would never be able
to deal with questions of this sort—that there was danger of all offenders
being pardoned; and a commission was finally appointed to attend to such
matters.
On June twenty-eighth, 1838, after she had been queen for over a year,
Victoria was formally crowned at Westminster Abbey. The crown worn by
her predecessors was far too large for her, so a new crown was made at a
cost of over five hundred thousand dollars. The spectacle was a most
impressive and inspiring one, and the queen went through her part in it, as
she had gone through her part at all ceremonies in which she had
participated, in a manner which roused anew the enthusiasm of her subjects.
When the prime minister finally placed the crown on Victoria’s head, all the

peers and peeresses placed their coronets on their heads and shouted God
Save the Queen. Carlyle said of her at that time, “Poor little Queen! She is
at an age at which a girl can hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself,
yet a task is laid upon her from which an archangel might shrink.”
Another writer, however, said, “I consider that it would be impossible to
exaggerate the enthusiasm of the English people on the accession of
Victoria to the throne.” And it was this enthusiasm on the part of her
subjects, joined with her own extraordinary common sense, which enabled
her to bear up under circumstances which might well have daunted an older
and a wiser sovereign.
Of course one of the chief questions with regard to the new queen was
that of her marriage. Usually the marriage of a sovereign was practically
settled as a question of statecraft, but Victoria showed no inclination to
allow her domestic life to be regulated by her ministers. In 1836 there had
visited her at Kensington Palace her cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg, and
Victoria had looked upon him very favorably. Her uncle Leopold of
Belgium, who had always been one of her chief advisers, desired her to
marry Albert, and urged the matter after her accession to the throne, but
Victoria’s answer was, “I am too young and he is too young. I shall not
think of marrying for four years yet.” However, when in 1839 Albert and
his brother came to England, it was unnecessary for uncle or ministers to
urge upon Victoria the wisdom of a speedy marriage; her own heart was her
counselor, and Albert had not been long in the palace, before the queen, to
whom it was impossible that he should propose marriage, proposed
marriage to him. She persisted in looking upon it as a sacrifice on Albert’s
part, but we may readily believe that he looked upon it in no such manner.
They were married on February 10, 1840, and then began a life of domestic
happiness which was unbroken until the death of Albert.
Immediately after the wedding the young couple drove to Windsor,
passing through over twenty miles of frantically cheering, loyal subjects.
On their return, after a brief season of seclusion, to Buckingham Palace,
Victoria turned her attention at once to her royal duties, and Albert showed
himself from the outset a man peculiarly fitted to aid and advise her. His
one desire was to sink his own individuality in that of the queen, but this
was by no means her desire. She could not bear that her husband should be

regarded as in any way subordinate to herself—that he should be forced to
take a lower seat, or to walk behind her; and it was a real grief to her that
she was not able to bestow upon him the title of “King Consort” rather than
that of “Prince Consort.” In one of her first letters after her marriage,
Victoria said of her husband, “There cannot exist a purer, dearer, nobler
being in the world than the prince,” and this same attitude toward her
husband she kept throughout her life.
Victoria and Albert had nine children, the first the Princess Victoria,
being born in November, 1840, and the second, the Prince of Wales,
afterward Edward VII of England, being born in November, 1841. The
pictures that we have of the home life of this royal family; of the discipline,
loving but firm, to which the children were subjected, and of the way in
which the parents really lived with their children, are most charming. A
little story tells how the Princess Victoria, when but a child, was told that if
she persisted in speaking to the family physician simply as “Brown”
without prefixing either “Mr.” or “Dr.,” she should certainly be sent to bed.
When the doctor came the next morning, the little girl said, “Good-
morning, Brown,” and then hastily added, “and good-night, Brown, for I am
going to bed.”
Of course the life of this queen of the greatest of all European countries,
and that of her husband, were not all made up of pleasant domestic duties,
and journeyings from Buckingham Palace to Osborne, the summer home on
the Isle of Wight, and to Balmoral in Scotland; infinite in number were the
demands made by the State on Victoria’s time and on her clear intelligence.
Prince Albert, too, was unweariedly busied on public matters. No great
enterprise was considered fairly launched, no public building was thought
properly opened without a speech from the Prince Consort. Victoria could
not well have been made prouder of him than she was on her marriage day,
but she was happy beyond words to find that the English people were
coming to recognize his worth. They had been suspicious of him at first,
and had found fault with almost every act of his. And indeed, they did not
come to do him full justice until after his death.
That men should have been found ready and willing to make attempts on
the life of this queen, who showed herself no less wise in ruling than she
was loving and womanly in her domestic life, seems well-nigh incredible;

but as one writer has said, Victoria was “the greatest royal target in
Europe.” Repeated attempts were made to assassinate her, but they were
always made by fanatics or insane men, and were in no wise the result of
any general movement against her. Indeed, at each attempt she endeared
herself the more to her people by her firmness and fearlessness, and by her
willingness to show herself bravely in public.
The exquisitely happy home life of the queen was brought to a close, and
new public burdens were laid upon her, by the death of Prince Albert on
December fourteenth, 1861. Throughout his illness of but two weeks, the
queen was constantly with him, and not until the end was almost at hand did
she admit even to herself that there was no hope. She had so earnestly
desired that they might grow old together and that she might never be left
after his death, that she could not persuade herself that he was really to die.
Her account in her diary of his illness and death is most beautiful. His
tenderness for her never failed, and when, shortly before his death, when he
knew no one else, she bent over him and whispered, “It is your own little
wife,” he knew her and kissed her.
After her husband’s death the queen withdrew largely from public affairs,
and her place was most admirably taken on all social occasions by her
daughter-in-law, Alexandra of Denmark, whom the Prince of Wales married
in 1863. When, however, the queen felt that her presence was necessary on
any public occasion, she was always ready and willing to set aside her
personal feelings, and let herself be seen by her subjects. To the last, too,
she maintained her hold on affairs, directing business, political and
domestic matters, with the same excellent judgment that she had shown all
her life.
A most notable event in the queen’s life occurred in 1897. This was the
celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of her reign, and it was
commemorated throughout her dominions with an enthusiasm which was
without parallel. Processions, illuminations, and speech-making took place
in every town in Great Britain, and city vied with city in erecting memorials
of the occasion. The queen’s strength was greatly taxed during the Jubilee
period, but she speedily regained her customary vigor.

Somewhat less than four years later, however, in January of 1901, the
entire nation was made anxious by the news that the queen was ill. She
grew steadily worse, and late in the afternoon of January 22nd, she died, to
the intense grief, not only of her own subjects, but of all peoples in the
world.
In this brief sketch of the life of England’s great queen, practically no
reference has been made to political affairs; her life has been treated merely
from the personal, or domestic, side. However, it is not to be for a moment
supposed that the queen was so absorbed in her family and her friends, dear
as these always were to her, that she neglected matters of state. Every
important project that was attempted during her reign had her consideration,
and all of her ministers united in regarding her opinion as valuable beyond
words. The influence of this wonderful woman on the history of her times
was incalculable, and further study of her life and character will only
deepen and intensify the respect and love which all must hold for her
memory.

THE RECESSIONAL
By Rudyard Kipling
Note.—The Recessional is one of the most delicate and graceful poems in the language, yet it has
such strength and virility, is so easily understood and has such profound religious sentiment, that it is
regarded as one of the noblest things ever written. Kipling himself tells us how it was written:
“That poem gave me more trouble than anything I ever wrote. I had promised the Times a poem on
the Jubilee, and when it became due, I had written nothing that had satisfied me. The Times began to
want the poem badly, and sent letter after letter asking for it. I made many more attempts but no
further progress. Finally the Times began sending telegrams. So I shut myself in a room with a
determination to stay there until I had written a Jubilee poem. Sitting down with all my previous
attempts before me I searched through those dozens of sketches, till at last I found just one line I
liked. That was, ‘Lest we forget.’ Round these words The Recessional was written.”

OD of our fathers, known of old—
G Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies—
The Captains and the Kings depart.
Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart. 164-1
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

ON DUNE AND HEADLAND

Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire;
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of all Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard—
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on thy People, Lord!
Amen!

A recessional is a hymn sung while the clergy and the choir are retiring at the end of a church
service. We must remember that this hymn was written for the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary
of the coronation of Queen Victoria, and that its sentiment is English. The central idea appearing in
the refrain at the end of each stanza is that the nation must recognize the presence of God, and
remember its duties to Him. While the phrases in the poem call us constantly back to England and

English dominions, yet the sentiment is so universal and so applicable to all nations, that the hymn is
admired everywhere.
The first stanza refers to the conquests of England, whose battle lines have been flung far over all
parts of the world, and to the fact that under the awful hand of God the British hold dominion over
India and the tropical lands where the palm tree grows, as well as over the pine-clad hills of Canada
and other Northern regions. It is an appeal to the Almighty to be with the nation, and to remind the
people of their duty to the God of Hosts. The succeeding stanzas may be paraphrased as follows:
After the tumult and the shouting of the celebration die away, when the captains and the kings,
who have met from all parts of the world to pay homage to the queen and to the nation, depart, there
still remains as the most acceptable gift to God, the ancient sacrifice—an humble and a contrite heart.
The British navies, called to far distant climes, separate and melt away. Sinking below the horizon
they see behind them on the dunes and headlands the smouldering bonfires lit in celebration of the
Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The once magnificent cities of Nineveh and Tyre are now in
ruins, perhaps covered by shifting desert sands. Their pomp and their glory have departed, but no
more completely than the glory and the pomp of yesterday have gone from the nation. Judge of all
Nations, spare the English from destruction, and keep them in mind of their obligations to Thee.
If, glorying in our power, we talk wildly of what we have done in words that give no praise to God,
and boast as the barbaric races do, we pray Thee, Lord God of Hosts, to remind us that everything we
possess has come from thy guiding hand.
Show mercy to thy people, Lord, for frantic boasts and foolish words, for heathen hearts that put
their trust in reeking cannon and the fragments of bursting shells, and to those who, bravely guarding
the wide borders of our land, forget that they are but valiant dust, and call not upon Thee to guard
them.

164-1 This is a reference to Psalms LI, 17: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and
a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER 167-*
By Francis Scott Key

O SAY, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s
last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the
perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly
streaming!
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still
there;
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?
On that shore dimly seen through the mists of the
deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence
reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering
steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first
beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;
’Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’
pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s
desolation!
Blest with vic’try and peace, may the heaven-rescued
land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us
a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, “In God is our trust”;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

167-* On the night of Sept. 12, 1814, Fort Henry in Chesapeake Bay not far from Baltimore was
unsuccessfully attacked by a British fleet. The author, detained a prisoner on the fleet, witnessed the
bombardment and began the song there.

HOW’S MY BOY?
By Sydney Dobell

“H O,How’s
sailor of the sea!
my boy—my boy?”
“What’s your boy’s name, good wife,
And in what ship sailed he?”
“My boy John—
He that went to sea—
What care I for the ship, sailor?
My boy’s my boy to me.
“You come back from the sea,
And not know my John?
I might as well have asked some landsman
Yonder down in the town.
There’s not an ass in all the parish
But he knows my John.
“How’s my boy—my boy?
And unless you let me know
I’ll swear you are no sailor,
Blue jacket or no,
Brass buttons or no, sailor,
Anchor and crown, or no!
Sure his ship was the ‘Jolly Briton—’”
“Speak low, woman, speak low!”
“And why should I speak low, sailor,
About my own boy John?

If I was loud as I am proud
I’d sing him over the town!
Why should I speak low, sailor?”
“That good ship went down.”
“How’s my boy—my boy?
What care I for the ship, sailor,
I was never aboard her.
Be she afloat or be she aground,
Sinking or swimming, I’ll be bound
Her owners can afford her!
I say, how’s my John?”
“Every man on board went down,
Every man aboard her.”
“How’s my boy—my boy?
What care I for the men, sailor?
I’m not their mother—
How’s my boy—my boy?
Tell me of him and no other!
How’s my boy—my boy?”

THE SOLDIER’S DREAM
By Thomas Campbell

O UR bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had
lower’d,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the
sky;
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpower’d,
The weary to sleep, and the wounded to die.
When reposing that night on my pallet of straw
By the wolf-scaring fagot that guarded the slain,
At the dead of the night a sweet Vision I saw;
And thrice ere the morning I dreamt it again.
Methought from the battlefield’s dreadful array
Far, far, I had roam’d on a desolate track:
’Twas Autumn—and sunshine arose on the way
To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me
back.
I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft
In life’s morning march, when my bosom was
young;
I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft,
And knew the sweet strain that the corn-reapers
sung.
Then pledged we the wine-cup, and fondly I swore
From my home and my weeping friends never to
part;

My little ones kiss’d me a thousand times o’er,
And my wife sobb’d aloud in her fulness of heart.
“Stay—stay with us!—rest!—thou art weary and
worn!”—
And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;—
But sorrow return’d with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.

MAKE WAY FOR LIBERTY!
By James Montgomery
Note.—In the fourteenth century the Swiss people rose against their Austrian oppressors, and at
Sempach they won, on July 9, 1386, a complete victory over an army which greatly exceeded them in
numbers. According to tradition, a Swiss hero, Arnold Winkelried, seeing that the Austrian line was
well-nigh unbreakable, gathered the spears of several of his enemies in his arms and pressed the
points against his breast, thus making a way for his companions. A monument was erected in his
honor five centuries after the battle.

AKE way for Liberty!”—he cried;
Made way for Liberty, and died!
In arms the Austrian phalanx stood.
A living wall, a human wood!
A wall, where every conscious stone
Seemed to its kindred thousands grown;
A rampart all assaults to bear,
Till time to dust their frames should wear;
A wood, like that enchanted grove
In which with fiends Rinaldo strove,
Where every silent tree possessed
A spirit prisoned in its breast,
Which the first stroke of coming strife
Would startle into hideous life;
So dense, so still, the Austrians stood,
A living wall, a human wood!
Impregnable their front appears,
All horrent with projected spears,
Whose polished points before them shine,
From flank to flank, one brilliant line,

Bright as the breakers’ splendors run
Along the billows to the sun.
Opposed to these, a hovering band
Contended for their native land:
Peasants, whose new-found strength had broke
From manly necks the ignoble yoke,
And forged their fetters into swords,
On equal terms to fight their lords,
And what insurgent rage had gained
In many a mortal fray maintained;
Marshaled once more at Freedom’s call,
They came to conquer or to fall,
Where he who conquered, he who fell,
Was deemed a dead or living Tell!
Such virtue had that patriot breathed,
So to the soil his soul bequeathed,
That wheresoe’er his arrows flew
Heroes in his own likeness grew,
And warriors sprang from every sod
Which his awakening footstep trod.
And now the work of life and death
Hung on the passing of a breath;
The fire of conflict burnt within,
The battle trembled to begin;
Yet, while the Austrians held their ground,
Point for attack was nowhere found,
Where’er the impatient Switzers gazed,
The unbroken line of lances blazed;
That line ’t were suicide to meet,
And perish at their tyrants’ feet,—
How could they rest within their graves,
And leave their homes the homes of slaves?
Would they not feel their children tread
With clanging chains above their head?

It must not be: this day, this hour,
Annihilates the oppressor’s power;
All Switzerland is in the field,
She will not fly, she cannot yield,—
She must not fall; her better fate
Here gives her an immortal date.
Few were the number she could boast;
But every freeman was a host,
And felt as though himself were he
On whose sole arm hung victory.
It did depend on one indeed;
Behold him,—Arnold Winkelried!
There sounds not to the trump of fame
The echo of a nobler name.
Unmarked he stood amid the throng,
In rumination deep and long,
Till you might see, with sudden grace,
The very thought come o’er his face,
And by the motion of his form
Anticipate the bursting storm,
And by the uplifting of his brow
Tell where the bolt would strike, and how.
But ’t was no sooner thought than done,
The field was in a moment won:—
“Make way for Liberty!” he cried,
Then ran, with arms extended wide,
As if his dearest friend to clasp;
Ten spears he swept within his grasp.
“Make way for Liberty!” he cried;
Their keen points met from side to side;
He bowed amongst them like a tree,
And thus made way for Liberty.
Swift to the breach his comrades fly;
“Make way for Liberty!” they cry,

And through the Austrian phalanx dart,
As rushed the spears through Arnold’s heart;
While, instantaneous as his fall,
Rout, ruin, panic, scattered all;
An earthquake could not overthrow
A city with a surer blow.
Thus Switzerland again was free;
Thus death made way for Liberty!

THE OLD CONTINENTALS
By Guy Humphreys McMaster

I N their ragged regimentals
Stood the old continentals,
Yielding not,
When the grenadiers were lunging,
And like hail fell the plunging
Cannon-shot;
When the files
Of the isles,
From the smoky night encampment, bore the banner
of the rampant
Unicorn,
And grummer, grummer, grummer rolled the roll of
the drummer,
Through the morn!
Then with eyes to the front all,
And with guns horizontal,
Stood our sires;
And the balls whistled deadly,
And in streams flashing redly
Blazed the fires;
As the roar
On the shore,
Swept the strong battle-breakers o’er the green-
sodded acres
Of the plain;
And louder, louder, louder, cracked the black gun-

powder,
Cracking amain!
Now like smiths at their forges
Worked the red Saint George’s
Cannoneers;
And the “villainous saltpetre”
Rung a fierce, discordant metre
Round their ears;
As the swift
Storm-drift,
With hot sweeping anger, came the horseguards’
clangor
On our flanks.
Then higher, higher, higher, burned the old-fashioned
fire
Through the ranks!
Then the old-fashioned colonel
Galloped through the white infernal
Powder-cloud;
And his broad sword was swinging
And his brazen throat was ringing
Trumpet loud.
Then the blue
Bullets flew,
And the trooper jackets redden at the touch of the
leaden
Rifle-breath;
And rounder, rounder, rounder, roared the iron six-
pounder,
Hurling death!

THE PICKET-GUARD
By Mrs. Ethel Lynn Beers

“A LL“Except
quiet along the Potomac,” they say,
now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
’T is nothing: a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost—only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death rattle.”
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;
Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
Or the light of the watch-fires, are gleaming.
A tremulous sigh, as the gentle night wind
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping;
While stars up above, with their glittering eyes,
Keep guard—for the army is sleeping.
There’s only the sound of the lone sentry’s tread
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain,
And he thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed,
Far away in the cot on the mountain.
His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep,
For their mother,—may Heaven defend her!

The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then,
That night when the love yet unspoken
Leaped up to his lips—when low, murmured vows
Were pledged to be ever unbroken;
Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to its place,
As if to keep down the heart-swelling.
He passes the fountain, the blasted pine tree,—
The footstep is lagging and weary;
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shade of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it the night wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle: “Ha! Mary, good-by!”
And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,—
No sound save the rush of the river;
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead,—
The picket’s off duty forever.

MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME
By Stephen Collins Foster

T HE’Tissunsummer,
shines bright in our old Kentucky home;
the darkeys are gay;
The corn top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the
bloom,
While the birds make music all the day;
The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy, all bright;
By’m by hard times comes knockin’ at the door,—
Then my old Kentucky home, good night!
CHORUS
Weep no more, my lady; O weep no more to-day!
We’ll sing one song for my old Kentucky home,
For my old Kentucky home far away.
They hunt no more for the possum and the coon,
On the meadow, the hill, and the shore;
They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,
On the bench by the old cabin door;
The day goes by, like a shadow o’er the heart,
With sorrow where all was delight;
The time has come, when the darkeys have to part,
Then, my old Kentucky home, good night!
The head must bow, and the back will have to bend,
Wherever the darkey may go;
A few more days, and the troubles all will end,

In the field where the sugar-cane grow;
A few more days to tote the weary load,
No matter, it will never be light;
A few more days till we totter on the road,
Then, my old Kentucky home, good night!

THE FORSAKEN MERMAN
By Matthew Arnold

OME, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!
Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away!
This way, this way!
Call her once before you go—
Call once yet!
In a voice that she will know
“Margaret! Margaret!”
Children’s voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother’s ear;
Children’s voices, wild with pain—
Surely she will come again!
Call her once and come away;
This way, this way!
“Mother dear, we cannot stay!
The wild white horses foam and fret.”
Margaret! Margaret!
Come, dear children, come away down;
Call no more!
One last look at the white-wall’d town,
And the little gray church on the windy shore;

Then come down!
She will not come though you call all day;
Come away, come away!

THE LITTLE GRAY CHURCH ON
THE WINDY SHORE

Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea beasts, ranged all around,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture ground;
Where the sea snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,

Round the world for ever and aye?
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?
Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.
She comb’d its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.
She sigh’d, she look’d up through the clear green
sea;
She said: “I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
In the little gray church on the shore to-day.
’Twill be Easter-time in the world—ah me!
And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee.”
I said: “Go up, dear heart, through the waves;
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea
caves!”
She smil’d, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?
Children dear, were we long alone?
“The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan;
Long prayers,” I said, “in the world they say;
Come!” I said; and we rose through the surf in the
bay.
We went up the beach, by the sandy down
Where the sea stocks bloom, to the white-wall’d
town;
Through the narrow, pav’d streets, where all was
still,
To the little gray church on the windy hill.
From the church came a murmur of folk at their
prayers,
But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.
We climb’d on the graves, on the stones worn with

rains,
And we gaz’d up the aisle through the small leaded
panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear;
“Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!
Dear heart,” I said, “we are long alone;
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.”
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were seal’d to the holy book!
Loud prays the priest: shut stands the door.
Come away, children, call no more!
Come away, come down, call no more!
Down, down, down!
Down to the depths of the sea!
She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
Singing most joyfully.
Hark what she sings: “O joy, O joy.
For the humming street, and the child with its toy!
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;
For the wheel where I spun,
And the blessed light of the sun!”
And so she sings her fill.
Singing most joyfully,
Till the spindle drops from her hand,
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,
And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh,
For the cold, strange eyes of a little Mermaiden
And the gleam of her golden hair.

Come away, away, children;
Come, children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows colder;
Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.
Singing: “Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she!
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea.”
But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow,
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring-tides are low;
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starr’d with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanch’d sands a gloom;
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hillside—
And then come back down.
Singing: “There dwells a lov’d one,
But cruel is she!
She left lonely forever
The kings of the sea.”

TOM AND MAGGIE TULLIVER
Note.—This account of Tom and Maggie Tulliver is taken from the early chapters of George
Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. The book follows the fortunes of Tom and Maggie, whom at the
opening of the story we find living with their parents at the old mill house on the Floss River, until
they meet their death, in their early manhood and womanhood. We give here, however, only a part of
the story of their childhood.

I

T was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was not
allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch
Tom home from the academy; but the morning was too wet, Mrs.
Tulliver said, for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet. Maggie
took the opposite view very strongly, and it was a direct
consequence of this difference of opinion that when her mother was in the
act of brushing out the reluctant black crop Maggie suddenly rushed from
under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near, in
the vindictive determination that there should be no more chance of curls
that day.
“Maggie, Maggie!” exclaimed Mrs. Tulliver, sitting stout and helpless
with the brushes on her lap, “what is to become of you if you’re so
naughty? I’ll tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when they come next
week, and they’ll never love you any more. Oh dear, oh dear! look at your
clean pinafore, wet from top to bottom. Folks ’ull think it’s a judgment on
me as I’ve got such a child,—they’ll think I’ve done summat wicked.”
Before this remonstrance was finished, Maggie was already out of
hearing, making her way toward the great attic that run under the old high-
pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye
terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Maggie’s favorite retreat on a
wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here she fretted out all her ill

humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten
shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs; and here she kept a
Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a
large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the
reddest of cheeks; but was now entirely defaced by a long career of
vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the head commemorated as
many crises in Maggie’s nine years of earthly struggle; that luxury of
vengeance having been suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying
Sisera in the old Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke
than usual, for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Glegg. But
immediately afterward Maggie had reflected that if she drove many nails in
she would not be so well able to fancy that the head was hurt when she
knocked it against the wall, nor to comfort it, and make believe to poultice
it, when her fury was abated; for even aunt Glegg would be pitiable when
she had been hurt very much, and thoroughly humiliated, so as to beg her
niece’s pardon. Since then she had driven no more nails in, but had soothed
herself by alternately grinding and beating the wooden head against the
rough brick of the great chimneys that made two square pillars supporting
the roof. That was what she did this morning on reaching the attic, sobbing
all the while with a passion that expelled every other form of consciousness,
—even the memory of the grievance that had caused it.

TOM’S COMING HOME!

As at last the sobs were getting quieter, and the grinding less fierce, a
sudden beam of sunshine, falling through the wire lattice across the worm-
eaten shelves, made her throw away the Fetish and run to the window. The
sun was really breaking out; the sound of the mill seemed cheerful again;
the granary doors were open; and there was Yap, the queer white-and-brown
terrier, with one ear turned back, trotting about and sniffing vaguely, as if he
were in search of a companion. It was irresistible.
Maggie tossed her hair back and ran downstairs, seized her bonnet
without putting it on, peeped, and then dashed along the passage lest she
should encounter her mother, and was quickly out in the yard, whirling
around like a Pythoness, and singing as she whirled, “Yap, Yap, Tom’s
coming home!” while Yap danced and barked round her, as much as to say,
if there was any noise wanted he was the dog for it.
“Hegh, hegh, Miss! you’ll make yourself giddy, an’ tumble down i’ the
dirt,” said Luke, the head miller, a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty,
black-haired, subdued by a general mealiness, like an auricula.
Maggie paused in her whirling and said, staggering a little, “Oh no, it
doesn’t make me giddy, Luke; may I go into the mill with you?”
Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill, and often came out
with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark eyes
flash out with new fire. The resolute din, the unresting motion of the great
stones, giving her a dim, delicious awe as at the presence of an
uncontrollable force; the meal forever pouring, pouring; the fine white
powder softening all surfaces, and making the very spider-nets look like a
fairy lace-work; the sweet, pure scent of the meal,—all helped to make
Maggie feel that the mill was a little world apart from her outside everyday
life. She was in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with
Luke, to whom she was very communicative, wishing him to think well of
her understanding, as her father did.
Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with him on the
present occasion, for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near which he
was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was requisite in
mill-society,—

“I think you never read any book but the Bible, did you, Luke?”
“Nay, Miss, an’ not much o’ that,” said Luke, with great frankness. “I’m
no reader, I aren’t.”
“But if I lent you one of my books, Luke? I’ve got many very pretty
books that would be easy for you to read; but there’s ‘Pug’s Tour of
Europe,’—that would tell you all about the different sorts of people in the
world, and if you didn’t understand the reading, the pictures would help
you; they show the looks and ways of the people and what they do. There
are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you know, and one sitting on a
barrel.”
“Nay, Miss, I’n no opinion o’ Dutchmen. There ben’t much good i’
knowin’ about them.”
“But they’re our fellow-creatures, Luke; we ought to know about our
fellow-creatures.”
“Not much o’ fellow-creatures, I think, Miss; all I know—my old master,
as war a knowin’ man, used to say, says he, ‘If e’er I sow my wheat wi’out
brinin’, I’m a Dutchman,’ says he; an’ that war as much as to say a
Dutchman war a fool, or next door.
“Nay, nay, I aren’t goin’ to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There’s fools
enoo, an’ rogues enoo, wi’out lookin’ i’ books for ’em.”
“Oh, well,” said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke’s unexpectedly decided
views about Dutchmen, “perhaps you would like ‘Animated Nature’ better;
that’s not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants and kangaroos, and the civet
cat, and the sunfish, and a bird sitting on its tail,—I forgot its name. There
are countries full of those creatures, instead of horses and cows, you know.
Shouldn’t you like to know about them, Luke?”
“Nay, Miss, I’n got to keep count o’ the flour an’ corn; I can’t do wi’
knowin’ so many things beside my work. That’s what brings folks to the
gallows,—knowin’ everything but what they’n got to get their bread by. An’
they’re mostly lies, I think, what’s printed i’ the books: them printed sheets
are, anyhow, as the men cry i’ the streets.”

“Why, you’re like my brother Tom, Luke,” said Maggie, wishing to turn
the conversation agreeably; “Tom’s not fond of reading. I love Tom so
dearly, Luke,—better than anybody else in the world. When he grows up I
shall keep his house, and we shall always live together. I can tell him
everything he doesn’t know. But I think Tom’s clever, for all he doesn’t like
books; he makes beautiful whipcord and rabbit pens.”
“Ah,” said Luke, “but he’ll be fine an’ vexed, as the rabbits are all dead.”
“Dead!” screamed Maggie, jumping up from her sliding seat on the corn.
“Oh dear, Luke! What! the lop-eared one, and the spotted doe that Tom
spent all his money to buy?”
“As dead as moles,” said Luke, fetching his comparison from the
unmistakable corpses nailed to the stable wall.
“Oh, Luke,” said Maggie in a piteous tone, “Tom told me to be sure and
remember the rabbits every day; but how could I, when they didn’t come
into my head, you know? Oh, he will be so angry with me, I know he will,
and so sorry about his rabbits, and so am I sorry. Oh, what shall I do?”
“Don’t you fret, Miss,” said Luke, soothingly; “they’re nash things, them
lop-eared rabbits; they’d happen ha’ died, if they’d been fed. Things out o’
natur niver thrive: God A’mighty doesn’t like ’em. He made the rabbits’
ears to lie back, an’ it’s nothin’ but contrairiness to make ’em hing down
like a mastiff dog’s. Master Tom ’ull know better nor buy such things
another time. Don’t you fret, Miss. Will you come along home wi’ me, and
see my wife? I’m a-goin’ this minute.”
The invitation offered an agreeable distraction to Maggie’s grief, and her
tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by Luke’s side to his pleasant
cottage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and with the added
dignity of a lean-to pigsty, at the other end of the Mill fields.

II

OM was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another
fluttering heart besides Maggie’s when it was late enough for the

sound of the gig wheels to be expected; for if Mrs. Tulliver had a
strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound
came,—that quick light bowling of the gig wheels,—and in spite
of the wind, which was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to
respect Mrs. Tulliver’s curls and cap-strings, she came outside the door and
even held her hand on Maggie’s offending head, forgetting all the griefs of
the morning.
“There he is, my sweet lad! But, Lord ha’ mercy! he’s got never a collar
on; it’s been lost on the road, I’ll be bound, and spoilt the set.”
Mrs. Tulliver stood with her arms open; Maggie jumped first on one leg
and then on the other; while Tom descended from the gig, and said, with
masculine reticence as to the tender emotions. “Hallo! Yap—what! are you
there?”
Nevertheless he submitted to be kissed willingly enough, though Maggie
hung on his neck in rather a strangling fashion, while his blue-gray eyes
wandered toward the croft and the lambs and the river, where he promised
himself that he would begin to fish the first thing tomorrow morning. He
was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and at twelve or
thirteen years of age look as much alike as goslings,—a lad with light-
brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and
eyebrows,—face in which it seems impossible to see anything but boyhood;
as different as possible from poor Maggie’s phiz, which Nature seemed to
have moulded and colored with the most decided intention. But that same
Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of
openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well,
and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident
prophecies. Under these average boyish physiognomies that she seems to
turn off by the gross, she conceals some of her most unmodified characters;
and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after all turn out to be
a passive being compared with this pink-and-white bit of masculinity with
the indeterminate features.
“Maggie,” said Tom, confidentially, taking her into a corner, as soon as
his mother was gone out to examine his box, and the warm parlor had taken
off the chill he had felt from the long drive, “you don’t know what I’ve got

in my pockets,” nodding his head up and down as a means of rousing her
sense of mystery.
“No,” said Maggie. “How stodgy they look, Tom! Is it marls (marbles) or
cobnuts?” Maggie’s heart sank a little, because Tom always said it was “no
good” playing with her at those games, she played so badly.
“Marls! no; I’ve swopped all my marls with the little fellows, and
cobnuts are no fun, you silly, only when the nuts are green. But see here!”
He drew something half out of his righthand pocket.
“What is it?” said Maggie, in a whisper. “I can see nothing but a bit of
yellow.”
“Why, it’s—a—new—guess, Maggie!”
“Oh, I can’t guess, Tom,” said Maggie, impatiently.
“Don’t be a spitfire, else I won’t tell you,” said Tom, thrusting his hand
back into his pocket and looking determined.
“No, Tom,” said Maggie, imploringly, laying hold of the arm that was
held stiffly in the pocket. “I’m not cross, Tom; it was only because I can’t
bear guessing. Please be good to me.”
Tom’s arm slowly relaxed, and he said, “Well, then, it’s a new fish line—
two new uns,—one for you, Maggie, all to yourself. And here’s hooks; see
here—I say, won’t we go and fish to-morrow down by the Round Pool? And
you shall catch your own fish, Maggie, and put the worms on, and
everything; won’t it be fun?”
Maggie’s answer was to throw her arms round Tom’s neck and hug him,
and hold her cheek against his without speaking, while he slowly unwound
some of the line, saying, after a pause,—
“Wasn’t I a good brother, now, to buy you a line all to yourself? You
know, I needn’t have bought it, if I hadn’t liked.”
“Yes, very, very good—I do love you, Tom.” Tom had put the line back
in his pocket, and was looking at the hooks one by one, before he spoke
again.

“And the fellows fought me, because I wouldn’t give in about the toffee.”
“Oh, dear! I wish they wouldn’t fight at your school, Tom. Didn’t it hurt
you?”
“Hurt me? no,” said Tom, putting up the hooks again, taking out a large
pocketknife, and slowly opening the largest blade, which he looked at
meditatively as he rubbed his finger along it. Then he added,—
“I gave Spouncer a black eye, I know; that’s what he got by wanting to
leather me; I wasn’t going to go halves because anybody leathered me.”
“Oh, how brave you are, Tom! I think you’re like Samson. If there came
a lion roaring at me, I think you’d fight him, wouldn’t you, Tom?”
“How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly thing? There’s no lions,
only in the shows.”
“No, but if we were in the lion countries—I mean Africa, where it’s very
hot; the lions eat people there. I can show it you in the book where I read
it.”
“Well, I should get a gun and shoot him.”
“But if you hadn’t got a gun,—we might have gone out, you know, not
thinking, just as we go fishing; and then a great lion might run toward us
roaring, and we couldn’t get away from him. What should you do, Tom?”
Tom paused, and at last turned away contemptuously, saying, “But the
lion isn’t coming. What’s the use of talking?”
“But I like to fancy how it would be,” said Maggie, following him, “Just
think what you would do, Tom.”
“Oh, don’t bother, Maggie! you’re such a silly. I shall go and see my
rabbits.”
Maggie’s heart began to flutter with fear. She dared not tell the sad truth
at once, but she walked after Tom in trembling silence as he went out,
thinking how she could tell him the news so as to soften at once his sorrow

and his anger; for Maggie dreaded Tom’s anger of all things; it was quite
different anger from her own.
“Tom,” she said, timidly, when they were out of doors, “how much
money did you give for your rabbits?”
“Two half-crowns and a sixpence,” said Tom, promptly.
“I think I’ve got a great deal more than that in my steel purse upstairs. I’ll
ask mother to give it you.”
“What for?” said Tom. “I don’t want your money, you silly thing. I’ve
got a great deal more money than you, because I’m a boy. I always have
half-sovereigns and sovereigns for my Christmas boxes because I shall be a
man, and you have only five-shilling pieces, because you’re only a girl.”
“Well, but, Tom—if mother would let me give you two half-crowns and a
sixpence out of my purse to put into your pocket and spend, you know, and
buy some more rabbits with it?”
“More rabbits? I don’t want any more.”
“Oh, but, Tom, they’re all dead.”
Tom stopped in his walk and turned round toward Maggie. “You forgot to
feed ’em, then?” he said, his color heightening for a moment, but soon
subsiding. “I don’t love you, Maggie. You shan’t go fishing with me
tomorrow. I told you to go and see the rabbits every day.” He walked on
again.
“Yes, but I forgot—and I couldn’t help it, indeed, Tom. I’m so very
sorry,” said Maggie, while the tears rushed fast.
“You’re a naughty girl,” said Tom, severely, “and I’m sorry I bought you
the fish line. I don’t love you.”
“Oh, Tom, it’s very cruel,” sobbed Maggie. “I’d forgive you, if you forgot
anything—I wouldn’t mind what you did—I’d forgive you and love you.”
“Yes, you’re a silly; but I never do forget things, I don’t.”

“Oh, please forgive me, Tom; my heart will break,” said Maggie, shaking
with sobs, clinging to Tom’s arm, and laying her wet cheek on his shoulder.
Tom shook her off, and stopped again, saying in a peremptory tone,
“Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren’t I a good brother to you?”
“Ye-ye-es,” sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling convulsedly.
“Didn’t I think about your fish line all this quarter, and mean to buy it,
and saved my money o’ purpose, and wouldn’t go halves in the toffee, and
Spouncer fought me because I wouldn’t?”
“Ye-ye-es—and I—lo-lo-love you so, Tom.”
“But you’re a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my
lozenge box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag my fish line
down when I’d set you to watch it, and you pushed your head through my
kite, all for nothing.”
“But I didn’t mean,” said Maggie; “I couldn’t help it.”
“Yes, you could,” said Tom, “if you’d minded what you were doing. And
you’re a naughty girl, and you sha’n’t go fishing with me to-morrow.”
With this terrible conclusion, Tom ran away from Maggie toward the
mill. Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two;
then she turned round and ran into the house, and up to her attic, where she
sat on the floor and laid her head against the worm-eaten shelf, with a
crushing sense of misery. Tom was come home, and she had thought how
happy she should be; and now he was cruel to her. What use was anything if
Tom didn’t love her? Oh, he was very cruel! Hadn’t she wanted to give him
the money, and said how very sorry she was? She knew she was naughty to
her mother, but she had never been naughty to Tom—had never meant to be
naughty to him.

“OH, HE IS CRUEL!”

“Oh, he is cruel!” Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure in
the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of the attic.
She never thought of beating or grinding her Fetish; she was too miserable
to be angry.
These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange,
when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the
space from summer to summer seems measureless.
Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must be tea
time, and they were all having their tea, and not thinking of her. Well, then,
she would stay up there and starve herself,—hide herself behind the tub,
and stay there all night,—and then they would all be frightened, and Tom
would be sorry. Thus Maggie thought in the pride of her heart, as she crept
behind the tub; but presently she began to cry again at the idea that they
didn’t mind her being there. If she went down again to Tom now—would he
forgive her? Perhaps her father would be there, and he would take her part.
But then she wanted Tom to forgive her because he loved her, not because
his father told him. No, she would never go down if Tom didn’t come to
fetch her. This resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes
behind the tub; but then the need of being loved—the strongest need in poor
Maggie’s nature—began to wrestle with her pride, and soon threw it. She
crept from behind the tub into the twilight of the long attic, but just then she
heard a quick footstep on the stairs.
Tom had been too much interested in his talk with Luke, in going the
round of the premises, walking in and out where he pleased, and whittling

sticks without any particular reason,—except that he didn’t whittle sticks at
school,—to think of Maggie and the effect his anger had produced on her.
He meant to punish her, and that business having been performed, he
occupied himself with other matters, like a practical person. But when he
had been called in to tea, his father said, “Why, where’s the little wench?”
and Mrs. Tulliver, almost at the same moment, said, “Where’s your little
sister?”—both of them having supposed that Maggie and Tom had been
together all the afternoon.
“I don’t know,” said Tom. He didn’t want to “tell” of Maggie, though he
was angry with her; for Tom Tulliver was a lad of honor.
“What! hasn’t she been playing with you all this while?” said the father.
“She’d been thinking o’ nothing but your coming home.”
“I haven’t seen her this two hours,” says Tom, commencing on the
plumcake.
“Goodness heart! she’s got drownded!” exclaimed Mrs. Tulliver, rising
from her seat and running to the window. “How could you let her do so?”
she added, as became a fearful woman, accusing she didn’t know whom of
she didn’t know what.
“Nay, nay, she’s none drownded,” said Mr. Tulliver. “You’ve been
naughty to her, I doubt, Tom?”
“I’m sure I haven’t, father,” said Tom indignantly. “I think she’s in the
house.”
“Perhaps up in that attic,” said Mrs. Tulliver, “a-singing and talking to
herself, and forgetting all about meal times.”
“You go and fetch her down, Tom,” said Mr. Tulliver, rather sharply,—his
perspicacity or his fatherly fondness for Maggie making him suspect that
the lad had been hard upon “the little un,” else she would never have left his
side. “And be good to her, do you hear? Else I’ll let you know better.”
Tom never disobeyed his father, for Mr. Tulliver was a peremptory man,
and, as he said, would never let anybody get hold of his whip hand; but he
went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of plumcake, and not intending

to reprieve Maggie’s punishment, which was no more than she deserved.
Tom was only thirteen, and had no decided views in grammar and
arithmetic, regarding them for the most part as open questions, but he was
particularly clear and positive on one point,—namely, that he would punish
everybody who deserved it. Why, he wouldn’t have minded being punished
himself if he deserved it; but, then, he never did deserve it.
It was Tom’s step, then, that Maggie heard on the stairs, when her need of
love had triumphed over her pride, and she was going down with her
swollen eyes and dishevelled hair to beg for pity. At least her father would
stroke her head and say, “Never mind, my wench.” It is a wonderful
subduer, this need of love,—this hunger of the heart,—as peremptory as
that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and
change the face of the world.
But she knew Tom’s step, and her heart began to beat violently with the
sudden shock of hope. He only stood still at the top of the stairs and said,
“Maggie, you’re to come down.” But she rushed to him and clung around
his neck, sobbing, “Oh, Tom, please forgive me—I can’t bear it—I will
always be good—always remember things—do love me—please, dear
Tom!”
We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we
have quarreled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way
preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and
swallowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our
behavior to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct
ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilized society.
Maggie and Tom were still very much like young animals, and so she could
rub her cheek against his, and kiss his ear in a random sobbing way; and
there were tender fibres in the lad that had been used to answer to Maggie’s
fondling, so that he behaved with a weakness quite inconsistent with his
resolution to punish her as much as she deserved. He actually began to kiss
her in return, and say,—
“Don’t cry, then, Magsie; here, eat a bit o’ cake.”
Maggie’s sobs began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake
and bit a piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company, and they ate

together and rubbed each other’s cheeks and brows and noses together,
while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two friendly ponies.
“Come along, Magsie, and have tea,” said Tom at last, when there was no
more cake except what was downstairs.
So ended the sorrows of this day, and the next morning Maggie was
trotting with her own fishing rod in one hand and a handle of the basket in
the other, stepping always, by a peculiar gift, in the muddiest places, and
looking darkly radiant from under her beaver-bonnet because Tom was
good to her. She had told Tom, however, that she should like him to put the
worms on the hook for her, although she accepted his word when he assured
her that worms couldn’t feel (it was Tom’s private opinion that it didn’t
much matter if they did). He knew all about worms, and fish, and those
things; and what birds were mischievous, and how padlocks opened, and
which way the handles of the gates were to be lifted. Maggie thought this
sort of knowledge was very wonderful,—much more difficult than
remembering what was in the books; and she was rather in awe of Tom’s
superiority, for he was the only person who called her knowledge “stuff,”
and did not feel surprised at her cleverness. Tom, indeed, was of opinion
that Maggie was a silly little thing; all girls were silly,—they couldn’t throw
a stone so as to hit anything, couldn’t do anything with a pocketknife, and
were frightened at frogs. Still, he was very fond of his sister, and meant
always to take care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her when
she did wrong.
They were on their way to the Round Pool,—that wonderful pool, which
the floods had made a long while ago. No one knew how deep it was; and it
was mysterious, too, that it should be almost a perfect round, framed in with
willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when you got
close to the brink. The sight of the old favorite spot always heightened
Tom’s good humor, and he spoke to Maggie in the most amicable whispers,
as he opened the precious basket and prepared their tackle. He threw her
line for her, and put the rod into her hand. Maggie thought it probable that
the small fish would come to her hook, and the large ones to Tom’s. But she
had forgotten all about the fish, and was looking dreamily at the glassy
water, when Tom said, in a loud whisper, “Look, look, Maggie!” and came
running to prevent her from snatching her line away.

Maggie was frightened lest she had been doing something wrong, as
usual, but presently Tom drew out her line and brought a large tench
bouncing on the grass.
Tom was excited.
“O Maggie, you little duck! Empty the basket.”
Maggie was not conscious of unusual merit, but it was enough that Tom
called her Magsie, and was pleased with her. There was nothing to mar her
delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences, when she listened to the
light dipping sounds of the rising fish, and the gentle rustling, as if the
willows and the reeds and the water had their happy whispering also.
Maggie thought it would make a very nice heaven to sit by the pool in that
way, and never be scolded. She never knew she had a bite till Tom told her;
but she liked fishing very much.

III

N Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming,
there were such various and suggestive scents, as of plumcakes in
the oven and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of
gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether gloomy; there was
hope in the air. Tom and Maggie made several inroads into the
kitchen, and, like other marauders, were induced to keep aloof for a time
only by being allowed to carry away a sufficient load of booty.
“Tom,” said Maggie, as they sat on the boughs of the elder-tree, eating
their jam-puffs, “shall you run away to-morrow?”
“No,” said Tom, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eyeing
the third, which was to be divided between them,—“no, I sha’n’t.”
“Why, Tom? Because Lucy’s coming?”

“IS IT THE TIPSY-CAKE, THEN?”

“No,” said Tom, opening his pocketknife and holding it over the puff,
with his head on one side in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult problem
to divide that very irregular polygon into two equal parts.) “What do I care
about Lucy? She’s only a girl,—she can’t play at bandy.”
“Is it the tipsy-cake, then?” said Maggie, exerting her hypothetic powers,
while she leaned forward toward Tom with her eyes fixed on the hovering
knife. “No, you silly, that’ll be good the day after. It’s the pudden. I know
what’s the pudden’s to be,—apricot roll-up—O my buttons!”
With this interjection, the knife descended on the puff, and it was in two,
but the result was not satisfactory to Tom, for he still eyed the halves
doubtfully. At last he said,—
“Shut your eyes, Maggie.”
“What for?”
“You never mind what for. Shut ’em when I tell you.”
Maggie obeyed.
“Now, which’ll you have, Maggie,—right hand or left?
“I’ll have that with the jam run out,” said Maggie, keeping her eyes shut
to please Tom.
“Why, you don’t like that, you silly. You may have it if it comes to you
fair, but I sha’n’t give it you without. Right or left,—you choose, now. Ha-

a-a!” said Tom, in a tone of exasperation, as Maggie peeped. “You keep
your eyes shut, now, else you sha’n’t have any.”
Maggie’s power of sacrifice did not extend so far; indeed, I fear she cared
less that Tom should enjoy the utmost possible amount of puff, than that he
should be pleased with her for giving him the best bit. So she shut her eyes
close, till Tom told her to “say which,” and then she said, “Left hand.”
“You’ve got it,” said Tom, in rather a bitter tone.
“What! the bit with the jam run out?”
“No; here, take it,” said Tom, firmly, handing decidedly the best piece to
Maggie.
“Oh, please, Tom, have it; I don’t mind—I like the other; please take
this.”
“No, I sha’n’t,” said Tom, almost crossly, beginning on his own inferior
piece.
Maggie, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate up
her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Tom had
finished first, and had to look on while Maggie ate her last morsel or two,
feeling in himself a capacity for more. Maggie didn’t know Tom was
looking at her; she was see-sawing on the elder bough, lost to almost
everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness.
“Oh, you greedy thing!” said Tom, when she had swallowed the last
morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she
ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it. He would have
refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different point of
view before and after one’s own share of puff is swallowed.
Maggie turned quite pale. “Oh, Tom, why didn’t you ask me?”
“I wasn’t going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You might have thought
of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit.”
“But I wanted you to have it; you know I did,” said Maggie, in an injured
tone.

“Yes, but I wasn’t going to do what wasn’t fair. If I go halves, I’ll go ’em
fair; only I wouldn’t be a greedy.”
With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his bough, and threw
a stone with a “hoigh!” as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been
looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears and
feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent
dog accepted Tom’s attention with as much alacrity as if he had been treated
quite generously.
But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of misery which
distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from the
most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself up to
the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not
to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for Tom. Not but
that the puff was very nice, for Maggie’s palate was not at all obtuse, but
she would have gone without it many times over, sooner than Tom should
call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldn’t have it,
and she ate it without thinking; how could she help it? The tears flowed so
plentifully that Maggie saw nothing around her for the next ten minutes; but
by that time resentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation,
and she jumped from her bough to look for Tom. He was no longer in the
paddock behind the rickyard; where was he likely to be gone, and Yap with
him? Maggie ran to the high bank against the great holly tree, where she
could see far away toward the Floss.
There was Tom; but her heart sank again as she saw how far he was on
his way to the great river, and that he had another companion besides Yap,
—naughty Bob Jakin, whose official, if not natural, function of frightening
the birds was just now at a standstill.
Well! there was no hope for it; he was gone now, and Maggie could think
of no comfort but to sit down by the hollow, or wander by the hedgerow,
and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just what she
should like it to be.

IV

AGGIE had thrown her bonnet off very carelessly, and coming in
with her hair rough as well as out of curl, rushed at once to Lucy,
who was standing by her mother’s knee. Certainly the contrast
between the cousins was conspicuous. It was like the contrast
between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten.
Lucy put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about
her was neat—her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her little
straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows, rather darker than
her curls, to match her hazel eyes, which looked up with shy pleasure at
Maggie, taller by the head, though scarcely a year older. Maggie always
looked at Lucy with delight. She was fond of fancying a world where the
people never got any larger than children of their own age, and she made
the queen of it just like Lucy, with a little crown on her head, and a little
sceptre in her hand—only the queen was Maggie herself in Lucy’s form.
“Oh, Lucy,” she burst out, after kissing her, “you’ll stay with Tom and
me, won’t you? Oh, kiss her, Tom.”
Tom, too, had come up to Lucy, but he was not going to kiss her—no; he
came up to her with Maggie, because it seemed easier, on the whole, than
saying, “How do you do?” to all those aunts and uncles. He stood looking at
nothing in particular, with the blushing, awkward air and semi-smile which
are common to shy boys when in company,—very much as if they had
come into the world by mistake, and found it in a degree of undress that
was quite embarrassing.
“Maggie,” said Mrs. Tulliver, beckoning Maggie to her, and whispering
in her ear, as soon as this point of Lucy’s staying was settled, “go and get
your hair brushed. I told you not to come in without going to Martha first;
you know I did.”
“Tom, come out with me,” whispered Maggie, pulling his sleeve as she
passed him; and Tom followed willingly enough.
“Come upstairs with me, Tom,” she whispered, when they were outside
the door. “There’s something I want to do before dinner.”
“There’s no time to play at anything before dinner,” said Tom, whose
imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.

“Oh yes, there is time for this; do come, Tom.”
Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother’s room, and saw her go at
once to a drawer, from which she took out a large pair of scissors.
“What are they for, Maggie?” said Tom, feeling his curiosity awakened.
Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight
across the middle of her forehead.
“Oh, my buttons! Maggie, you’ll catch it!” exclaimed Tom; “you’d better
not cut any more off.”
Snip! went the great scissors again while Tom was speaking, and he
couldn’t help feeling it was rather good fun; Maggie would look so queer.
“Here, Tom, cut it behind for me,” said Maggie, excited by her own
daring, and anxious to finish the deed.
“You’ll catch it, you know,” said Tom, nodding his head in an
admonitory manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors.
“Never mind, make haste!” said Maggie, giving a little stamp with her
foot. Her cheeks were quite flushed.
The black locks were so thick, nothing could be more tempting to a lad
who had already tasted the forbidden pleasure of cutting the pony’s mane. I
speak to those who know the satisfaction of making a pair of shears meet
through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious grinding snip, and then
another and another, and the hinder locks fell heavily on the floor, and
Maggie stood cropped in a jagged, uneven manner, but with a sense of
clearness and freedom, as if she had emerged from a wood into the open
plain.
“Oh, Maggie,” said Tom, jumping round her, and slapping his knees as he
laughed, “Oh, my buttons! what a queer thing you look! Look at yourself in
the glass; you look like the idiot we throw out nutshells to at school.”
Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly of
her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and
something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and her

aunts by this very decided course of action; she didn’t want her hair to look
pretty,—that was out of the question,—she only wanted people to think her
a clever little girl, and not to find fault with her. But now, when Tom began
to laugh at her, and say she was like the idiot, the affair had quite a new
aspect. She looked in the glass, and still Tom laughed and clapped his
hands, and Maggie’s flushed cheeks began to pale, and her lips to tremble a
little.
“Oh, Maggie, you’ll have to go down to dinner directly,” said Tom. “Oh,
my!”
“Don’t laugh at me, Tom,” said Maggie, in a passionate tone, with an
outburst of angry tears, stamping, and giving him a push.
“Now, then, spitfire!” said Tom. “What did you cut it off for, then? I shall
go down: I can smell the dinner going in.”
He hurried downstairs and left poor Maggie to that bitter sense of the
irrevocable which was almost an everyday experience of her small soul.
She could see clearly enough, now the thing was done, that it was very
foolish, and that she should have to hear and think more about her hair than
ever; for Maggie rushed to her deeds with passionate impulse, and then saw
not only their consequences, but what would have happened if they had not
been done, with all the detail and exaggerated circumstances of an active
imagination.
“Miss Maggie, you’re to come down this minute,” said Kezia, entering
the room hurriedly. “Lawks! what have you been a-doing? I niver see such
a fright!”
“Don’t, Kezia,” said Maggie, angrily. “Go away!”
“But I tell you you’re to come down, Miss, this minute; your mother says
so,” said Kezia, going up to Maggie and taking her by the hand to raise her
from the floor.
“Get away, Kezia; I don’t want any dinner,” said Maggie, resisting
Kezia’s arm. “I sha’n’t come.”

“Oh, well, I can’t stay. I’ve got to wait at dinner,” said Kezia, going out
again.
“Maggie, you little silly,” said Tom, peeping into the room ten minutes
after, “why don’t you come and have your dinner? There’s lots o’ goodies,
and mother says you’re to come. What are you crying for, you little
spooney?”
Oh, it was dreadful! Tom was so hard and unconcerned; if he had been
crying on the floor, Maggie would have cried, too. And there was the
dinner, so nice; and she was so hungry. It was very bitter.
But Tom was not altogether hard. He was not inclined to cry, and did not
feel that Maggie’s grief spoiled his prospect of the sweets; but he went and
put his head near her, and said in a lower, comforting tone,—
“Won’t you come, then, Magsie? Shall I bring you a bit o’ pudding when
I’ve had mine, and a custard and things?”
“Ye-e-es,” said Maggie, beginning to feel life a little more tolerable.
“Very well,” said Tom, going away. But he turned again at the door and
said, “But you’d better come, you know. There’s the dessert,—nuts, you
know, and cowslip wine.”
Maggie’s tears had ceased, and she looked reflective as Tom left her. His
good nature had taken off the keenest edge of her sufferings, and nuts with
cowslip wine began to assert their legitimate influence.
Slowly she rose from amongst her scattered locks, and slowly she made
her way downstairs. Then she stood leaning with one shoulder against the
frame of the dining-parlor door, peeping in when it was ajar. She saw Tom
and Lucy with an empty chair between them, and there were the custards on
a side table; it was too much. She slipped in and went toward the empty
chair. But she had no sooner sat down than she repented and wished herself
back again.
Mrs. Tulliver gave a little scream as she saw her, and felt such a “turn”
that she dropped the large gravy-spoon into the dish, with the most serious
results to the tablecloth. For Kezia had not betrayed the reason of Maggie’s

refusal to come down, not liking to give her mistress a shock in the moment
of carving, and Mrs. Tulliver thought there was nothing worse in question
than a fit of perverseness, which was inflicting its own punishment by
depriving Maggie of half her dinner.
Mrs. Tulliver’s scream made all eyes turn toward the same point as her
own, and Maggie’s cheeks and ears began to burn, while uncle Glegg, a
kind-looking, white-haired old gentleman, said,—
“Heyday! what little gell’s this? Why, I don’t know her. Is it some little
gell you’ve picked up in the road, Kezia?”
“Why, she’s gone and cut her hair herself,” said Mr. Tulliver in an
undertone to Mr. Deane, laughing with much enjoyment. “Did you ever
know such a little hussy as it is?”
“Why, little miss, you’ve made yourself look very funny,” said uncle
Pullet, and perhaps he never in his life made an observation which was felt
to be so lacerating.
“Fie, for shame!” said aunt Glegg, in her loudest, severest tone of
reproof. “Little gells as cut their own hair should be whipped and fed on
bread and water,—not come and sit down with their aunts and uncles.”
“Ay, ay,” said uncle Glegg, meaning to give a playful turn to this
denunciation, “she must be sent to jail, I think, and they’ll cut the rest of her
hair off there, and make it all even.”
“She’s more like a gypsy nor ever,” said aunt Pullet, in a pitying tone;
“it’s very bad luck, sister, as the gell should be so brown; the boy’s fair
enough. I doubt it’ll stand in her way i’ life to be so brown.”
“She’s a naughty child, as’ll break her mother’s heart,” said Mrs.
Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.
Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of reproach and derision. Her
first flush came from anger, which gave her a transient power of defiance,
and Tom thought she was braving it out, supported by the recent appearance
of the pudding and custard. Under this impression, he whispered, “Oh, my!
Maggie, I told you you’d catch it.” He meant to be friendly, but Maggie felt

convinced that Tom was rejoicing in her ignominy. Her feeble power of
defiance left her in an instant, her heart swelled, and getting up from her
chair, she ran to her father, hid her face on his shoulder, and burst out into
loud sobbing.
“Come, come, my wench,” said her father, soothingly, putting his arm
round her, “never mind; you was i’ the right to cut it off if it plagued you;
give over crying; father’ll take your part.”
Delicious words of tenderness! Maggie never forgot any of these
moments when her father “took her part”; she kept them in her heart, and
thought of them long years after, when every one else said that her father
had done very ill by his children.
With the dessert there came entire deliverance for Maggie, for the
children were told they might have their nuts and wine in the summerhouse,
since the day was so mild; and they scampered out among the building
bushes of the garden with the alacrity of small animals getting from under a
burning glass.

V

HILE the possible troubles of Maggie’s future were occupying
her father’s mind, she herself was tasting only bitterness of the
present. Childhood has not forebodings; but then, it is soothed by
no memories of out-lived sorrow.
The fact was, the day had begun ill with Maggie. The pleasure
of having Lucy to look at, and the prospect of the afternoon visit to Garum
Firs, where she would hear uncle Pullet’s musical box, had been marred as
early as eleven o’clock by the advent of the hairdresser from Saint Ogg’s,
who had spoken in the severest terms of the condition in which he had
found her hair, holding up one jagged lock after another and saying, “see
here! tut, tut, tut!” in a tone of mingled disgust and pity, which to Maggie’s
imagination was equivalent to the strongest expression of public opinion.
Mr. Rappit, the hairdresser, with his well-anointed coronal locks tending
wavily upward, like the simulated pyramid of flame on a monumental urn,

seemed to her at that moment the most formidable of her contemporaries,
into whose street at Saint Ogg’s she would carefully refrain from entering
through the rest of her life.
Already, at twelve o’clock, Mrs. Tulliver had on her visiting costume,
with a protective apparatus of brown holland, as if she had been a piece of
satin furniture in danger of flies; Maggie was frowning and twisting her
shoulders, that she might if possible shrink away from the prickliest of
tuckers, while her mother was remonstrating, “Don’t, Maggie, my dear;
don’t make yourself so ugly!” and Tom’s cheeks were looking particularly
brilliant as a relief to his best blue suit, which he wore with becoming
calmness, having, after a little wrangling, effected what was always the one
point of interest to him in his toilet: he had transferred all the contents of his
everyday pockets to those actually in wear.
As for Lucy, she was just as pretty and neat as she had been yesterday; no
accidents ever happened to her clothes, and she was never uncomfortable in
them, so that she looked with wondering pity at Maggie, pouting and
writhing under the exasperating tucker. Maggie would certainly have torn it
off, if she had not been checked by the remembrance of her recent
humiliation about her hair; as it was, she confined herself to fretting and
twisting, and behaving peevishly about the card houses which they were
allowed to build till dinner, as a suitable amusement for boys and girls in
their best clothes. Tom could build perfect pyramids of houses; but
Maggie’s would never bear the laying on the roof. It was always so with the
things that Maggie made; and Tom had deduced the conclusion that no girls
could ever make anything. But it happened that Lucy proved wonderfully
clever at building; she handled the cards so lightly, and moved so gently,
that Tom condescended to admire her houses as well as his own, the more
readily because she had asked him to teach her. Maggie, too, would have
admired Lucy’s houses, and would have given up her own unsuccessful
building to contemplate them, without ill temper, if her tucker had not made
her peevish, and if Tom had not inconsiderately laughed when her houses
fell, and told her she was “a stupid.”
“Don’t laugh at me, Tom!” she burst out angrily; “I’m not a stupid. I
know a great many things you don’t.”

“Oh, I dare say, Miss Spitfire! I’d never be such a cross thing as you,
making faces like that. Lucy doesn’t do so. I like Lucy better than you; I
wish Lucy was my sister.”
“Then it’s very wicked and cruel of you to wish so,” said Maggie,
starting up hurriedly from her place on the floor, and upsetting Tom’s
wonderful pagoda.
She really did not mean it, but the circumstantial evidence was against
her, and Tom turned white with anger, but said nothing; he would have
struck her, only he knew it was cowardly to strike a girl, and Tom Tulliver
was quite determined he would never do anything cowardly.
Maggie stood in dismay and terror, while Tom got up from the floor and
walked away, pale, from the scattered ruins of his pagoda, and Lucy looked
on mutely, like a kitten pausing from its lapping.
“Oh, Tom,” said Maggie, at last, going halfway toward him, “I didn’t
mean to knock it down,—indeed, indeed I didn’t.”
Tom took no notice of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas out of
his pocket, and shot them with his thumb-nail against the window, vaguely
at first, but presently with the distinct aim of hitting a superannuated blue
bottle which was exposing its imbecility in the spring sunshine, clearly
against the views of Nature, who had provided Tom and the peas for the
speedy destruction of this weak individual.
Thus the morning had been made heavy to Maggie, and Tom’s persistent
coldness to her all through their walk spoiled the fresh air and sunshine for
her. He called Lucy to look at the half-built bird’s nest without caring to
show it to Maggie, and peeled a willow switch for Lucy and himself,
without offering one to Maggie. Lucy had said, “Maggie, shouldn’t you like
one?” but Tom was deaf.
Still, the sight of the peacock opportunely spreading his tail on the
stackyard wall, just as they reached Garum Firs, was enough to divert the
mind temporarily from personal grievances. And this was only the
beginning of beautiful sights at Garum Firs. All the farmyard life was
wonderful there,—bantams, speckled and topknotted; Friesland hens, with
their feathers all turned the wrong way; Guinea fowls that flew and

screamed and dropped their pretty spotted feathers; pouter pigeons and a
tame magpie; nay, a goat, and a wonderful brindled dog, half mastiff, half
bulldog, as large as a lion. Then there were white railings and white gates
all about, and glittering weathercocks of various design, and garden walks
paved with pebbles in beautiful patterns,—nothing was quite common at
Garum Firs; and Tom thought that the unusual size of the toads there was
simply due to the general unusualness which characterized uncle Pullet’s
possessions as a gentleman farmer. Toads who paid rent were naturally
leaner. As for the house, it was not less remarkable; it had a receding centre,
and two wings with battlemented turrets, and was covered with glittering
white stucco.
The small demons who had taken possession of Maggie’s soul at an
earlier period of the day had returned in all the greater force after a
temporary absence. All the disagreeable recollections of the morning were
thick upon her, when Tom said, “Here, Lucy, you come along with me,” and
walked off to the area where the toads were, as if there were no Maggie in
existence. Seeing this, Maggie lingered at a distance, looking like a small
Medusa with her snakes cropped. Lucy was naturally pleased that cousin
Tom was so good to her, and it was very amusing to see him tickling a fat
toad with a piece of string when the toad was safe down the area, with an
iron grating over him. Still Lucy wished Maggie to enjoy the spectacle also,
especially as she would doubtless find a name for the toad, and say what
had been his past history; for Lucy had a delighted semi-belief in Maggie’s
stories about the live things they came upon by accident,—how Mrs.
Earwig had a wash at home, and one of her children had fallen into the hot
copper, for which reason she was running so fast to fetch the doctor. Tom
had a profound contempt for this nonsense of Maggie’s, smashing the
earwig at once as a superfluous yet easy means of proving the entire
unreality of such a story; but Lucy, for the life of her, could not help
fancying there was something in it, and at all events thought it was very
pretty make-believe. So now the desire to know the history of a very portly
toad, added to her habitual affectionateness, made her run to Maggie and
say, “Oh, there is such a big, funny toad, Maggie! Do come and see!”
Maggie said nothing, but turned away from her with a deeper frown. As
long as Tom seemed to prefer Lucy to her, Lucy made part of his
unkindness. Maggie would have thought a little while ago that she could

never be cross with pretty little Lucy, any more than she could be cruel to a
little white mouse; but then, Tom had always been quite indifferent to Lucy
before, and it had been left to Maggie to pet and make much of her. As it
was, she was actually beginning to think that she should like to make Lucy
cry by slapping or pinching her, especially as it might vex Tom, whom it
was of no use to slap, even if she dared, because he didn’t mind it. And if
Lucy hadn’t been there, Maggie was sure he would have got friends with
her sooner.
Tickling a fat toad who is not highly sensitive is an amusement that it is
possible to exhaust, and Tom by and by began to look round for some other
mode of passing the time. But in so prim a garden, where they were not to
go off the paved walks, there was not a great choice of sport. The only great
pleasure such a restriction suggested was the pleasure of breaking it, and
Tom began to meditate an insurrectionary visit to the pond, about a field’s
length beyond the garden.
“I say, Lucy,” he began, nodding his head up and down with great
significance, as he coiled up his string again, “what do you think I mean to
do?”
“What, Tom?” said Lucy, with curiosity.
“I mean to go to the pond and look at the pike. You may go with me if
you like,” said the young sultan.
“Oh, Tom, dare you?” said Lucy. “Aunt said we mustn’t go out of the
garden.”
“Oh, I shall go out at the other end of the garden,” said Tom. “Nobody
’ull see us. Besides, I don’t care if they do,—I’ll run off home.”
“But I couldn’t run,” said Lucy, who had never before been exposed to
such severe temptation.
“Oh, never mind; they won’t be cross with you,” said Tom. “You say I
took you.”
Tom walked along, and Lucy trotted by his side, timidly enjoying the rare
treat of doing something naughty,—excited also by the mention of that

celebrity, the pike, about which she was quite uncertain whether it was a
fish or a fowl. Maggie saw them leaving the garden, and could not resist the
impulse to follow. Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of
their objects than love, and that Tom and Lucy should do or see anything of
which she was ignorant would have been an intolerable idea to Maggie. So
she kept a few yards behind them, unobserved by Tom, who was presently
absorbed in watching for the pike,—a highly interesting monster; he was
said to be so very old, so very large, and to have such a remarkable appetite.
The pike, like other celebrities, did not show when he was watched for, but
Tom caught sight of something in rapid movement in the water, which
attracted him to another spot on the brink of the pond.

“HERE, LUCY!”

“Here, Lucy!” he said in a loud whisper, “come here! take care! keep on
the grass!—don’t step where the cows have been!” he added, pointing to a
peninsula of dry grass, with trodden mud on each side of it; for Tom’s
contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to
walk in dirty places.
Lucy came carefully as she was bidden, and bent down to look at what
seemed a golden arrowhead darting through the water. It was a water snake,
Tom told her; and Lucy at last could see the serpentine wave of its body,

very much wondering that a snake could swim. Maggie had drawn nearer
and nearer; she must see it too, though it was bitter to her, like everything
else, since Tom did not care about her seeing it. At last she was close by
Lucy; and Tom, who had been aware of her approach, but would not notice
it till he was obliged, turned round and said,—
“Now, get away, Maggie; there’s no room for you on the grass here.
Nobody asked you to come.”
There were passions at war in Maggie at that moment to have made a
tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only; the utmost Maggie could
do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm, was to push poor little pink-
and-white Lucy into the cow-trodden mud.
Then Tom could not restrain himself, and gave Maggie two smart slaps
on the arm as he ran to pick up Lucy, who lay crying helplessly. Maggie
retreated to the roots of a tree a few yards off, and looked on impenitently.
Usually her repentance came quickly after one rash deed, but now Tom and
Lucy had made her so miserable, she was glad to spoil their happiness,—
glad to make everybody uncomfortable. Why should she be sorry? Tom was
very slow to forgive her, however sorry she might have been.
“I shall tell mother, you know, Miss Mag,” said Tom, loudly and
emphatically, as soon as Lucy was up and ready to walk away. Lucy was
too entirely absorbed by the evil that had befallen her,—the spoiling of her
pretty best clothes, and the discomfort of being wet and dirty,—to think
much of the cause, which was entirely mysterious to her. She could never
have guessed what she had done to make Maggie angry with her; but she
felt that Maggie was very unkind and disagreeable, and made no
magnanimous entreaties to Tom that he would not “tell,” only running along
by his side and crying piteously, while Maggie sat on the roots of the tree
and looked after them with her small Medusa face.
“Sally,” said Tom, when they reached the kitchen door, and Sally looked
at them in speechless amaze, with a piece of bread-and-butter in her mouth
and a toasting-fork in her hand,—“Sally, tell mother it was Maggie pushed
Lucy into the mud.”

“But Lors ha’ massy, how did you get near such mud as that?” said Sally,
making a wry face, as she stooped down and examined the corpus delicti.
Tom’s imagination had not been rapid and capacious enough to include
this question among the foreseen consequences, but it was no sooner put
than he foresaw whither it tended, and that Maggie would not be considered
the only culprit in the case. He walked quietly away from the kitchen door,
leaving Sally to that pleasure of guessing which active minds notoriously
prefer to ready-made knowledge.
Sally lost no time in presenting Lucy at the parlor door, for to have so
dirty an object introduced into the house at Garum Firs was too great a
weight to be sustained by a single mind.
“Goodness gracious!” aunt Pullet exclaimed, after preluding by an
inarticulate scream; “keep her at the door, Sally! Don’t bring her off the
oilcloth, whatever you do.”
“Why, she’s tumbled into some nasty mud,” said Mrs. Tulliver, going up
to Lucy to examine into the amount of damage to clothes for which she felt
herself responsible to her sister Deane.
“If you please, ’um, it was Miss Maggie as pushed her in,” said Sally;
“Master Tom’s been and said so, and they must ha’ been to the pond, for it’s
only there they could ha’ got into such dirt.”
“There it is, Bessy; it’s what I’ve been telling you,” said Mrs. Pullet, in a
tone of prophetic sadness; “it’s your children,—there’s no knowing what
they’ll come to.”
Mrs. Tulliver was mute, feeling herself a truly wretched mother. As usual,
the thought pressed upon her that people would think she had done
something wicked to deserve her maternal troubles, while Mrs. Pullet began
to give elaborate directions to Sally how to guard the premises from serious
injury in the course of removing the dirt. Meantime tea was to be brought in
by the cook, and the two naughty children were to have theirs in an
ignominious manner in the kitchen. Mrs. Tulliver went out to speak to these
naughty children, supposing them to be close at hand; but it was not until
after some search that she found Tom leaning with a careless air against the

white paling of the poultry yard, and lowering his piece of string on the
other side as a means of exasperating the turkey cock.
“Tom, you naughty boy, where’s your sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver, in a
distressed voice.
“I don’t know,” said Tom; his eagerness for justice on Maggie had
diminished since he had seen clearly that it could hardly be brought about
without the injustice of some blame on his own conduct.
“Why, where did you leave her?” said the mother, looking round.
“Sitting under the tree, against the pond,” said Tom, apparently
indifferent to everything but the string and the turkey cock.
“Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how could
you think o’ going to the pond, and taking your sister where there was dirt?
You know she’ll do mischief if there’s mischief to be done.”
It was Mrs. Tulliver’s way, if she blamed Tom, to refer his misdemeanor,
somehow or other, to Maggie.
The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond roused an habitual fear in
Mrs. Tulliver’s mind, and she mounted the horse block to satisfy herself by
a sight of that fatal child, while Tom walked—not very quickly—on his
way toward her.
“They’re such children for the water, mine are,” she said aloud, without
reflecting that there was no one to hear her; “they’ll be brought in dead and
drownded some day. I wish that river was far enough.”
But when she not only failed to discern Maggie, but presently saw Tom
returning from the pool alone, this hovering fear entered and took complete
possession of her, and she hurried to meet him.
“Maggie’s nowhere about the pond, mother,” said Tom; “she’s gone
away.”
You may conceive the terrified search for Maggie, and the difficulty of
convincing her mother that she was not in the pond. Mrs. Pullet observed
that the child might come to a worse end if she lived, there was no

knowing; and Mr. Pullet reached down a key to the goose-pen as a likely
place for Maggie to lie concealed in.
Tom, after a while, started the idea that Maggie was gone home, and the
suggestion was seized as a comfort by his mother.
“Sister, for goodness’ sake let ’em put the horse in the carriage and take
me home; we shall perhaps find her on the road. Lucy can’t walk in her
dirty clothes,” she said, looking at that innocent victim, who was wrapped
up in a shawl, and sitting with naked feet on the sofa.
Aunt Pullet was quite willing to take the shortest means of restoring her
premises to order and quiet, and it was not long before Mrs. Tulliver was in
the chaise, looking anxiously at the most distant point before her. What the
father would say if Maggie was lost, was a question that predominated over
every other.

VI

AGGIE’S intentions, as usual, were on a larger scale than Tom
had imagined. The resolution that gathered in her mind, after
Tom and Lucy had walked away, was not so simple as that of
going home. No! she would run away and go to the gypsies, and
Tom should never see her any more. That was by no means a new
idea to Maggie; she had been so often told she was like a gypsy, and “half
wild,” that when she was miserable it seemed to her the only way of
escaping opprobrium, and being entirely in harmony with circumstances,
would be to live in a little brown tent on the commons; the gypsies, she
considered, would gladly receive her and pay her much respect on account
of her superior knowledge. She had once mentioned her views on this point
to Tom, and suggested that he should stain his face brown, and they should
run away together; but Tom rejected the scheme with contempt, observing
that gypsies were thieves, and hardly got anything to eat, and had nothing to
drive but a donkey. To-day, however, Maggie thought her misery had
reached a pitch at which gypsydom was her only refuge, and she rose from
her seat on the roots of the tree with the sense that this was a great crisis in
her life; she would run straight away till she came to Dunlow Common,

where there would certainly be gypsies; and cruel Tom, and the rest of her
relations who found fault with her, should never see her any more. She
thought of her father as she ran along, but she reconciled herself to the idea
of parting with him, by determining that she would secretly send him a
letter by a small gypsy, who would run away without telling where she was,
and just let him know that she was well and happy, and always loved him
very much.
Maggie soon got out of breath with running, but by the time Tom got to
the pond again she was at the distance of three long fields, and was on the
edge of the lane leading to the highroad. She stopped to pant a little,
reflecting that running away was not a pleasant thing until one had got quite
to the common where the gypsies were, but her resolution had not abated;
she presently passed through the gate into the lane, not knowing where it
would lead her; for it was not this way that they came from Dorlcote Mill to
Garum Firs, and she felt all the safer for that, because there was no chance
of her being overtaken. But she was soon aware, not without trembling, that
there were two men coming along the lane in front of her; she had not
thought of meeting strangers, she had been too much occupied with the idea
of her friends coming after her. The formidable strangers were two shabby-
looking men with flushed faces, one of them carrying a bundle on a stick
over his shoulder; but to her surprise, while she was dreading their
disapprobation as a runaway, the man with the bundle stopped, and in a
half-whining, half-coaxing tone asked her if she had a copper to give a poor
man. Maggie had a sixpence in her pocket, which she immediately drew out
and gave this poor man with a polite smile, hoping that he would feel very
kindly toward her as a generous person. “That’s the only money I’ve got,”
she said apologetically. “Thank you, little miss,” said the man, in a less
respectful and grateful tone than Maggie anticipated, and she even observed
that he smiled and winked at his companion. She walked on hurriedly, but
was aware that the two men were standing still, probably to look after her,
and she presently heard them laughing loudly. Suddenly it occurred to her
that they might think she was an idiot; Tom had said that her cropped hair
made her look like an idiot, and it was too painful an idea to be readily
forgotten. Besides, she had no sleeves on—only a cape and a bonnet. It was
clear that she was not likely to make a favorable impression on passengers,
and she thought she would turn into the fields again.

She turned through the first gate that was not locked, and felt a delightful
sense of privacy in creeping along by the hedgerows, after her recent
humiliating encounter. She was used to wandering about the fields by
herself, and was less timid there than on the highroad. Sometimes she had
to climb over high gates, but that was a small evil; she was getting out of
reach very fast, and she would probably soon come within sight of Dunlow
Common, or at least of some other common, for she had heard her father
say that she couldn’t go very far without coming to a common. She hoped
so, for she was getting rather tired and hungry, and until she reached the
gypsies there was no definite prospect of bread and butter. It was still broad
daylight; so though it was nearly an hour since Maggie started, there was no
gathering gloom on the fields to remind her that the night would come. Still,
it seemed to her that she had been walking a very great distance indeed, and
it was really surprising that the common did not come within sight.
At last, however, the green fields came to an end, and Maggie found
herself looking through the bars of a gate into a lane with a wide margin of
grass on each side of it. She had never seen such a wide lane before, and,
without her knowing why, it gave her the impression that the common could
not be far off; perhaps it was because she saw a donkey with a log to his
foot feeding on the grassy margin, for she had seen a donkey with that
pitiable encumbrance on Dunlow Common when she had been across it in
her father’s gig. She crept through the bars of the gate and walked on with
new spirit, though not without haunting images of Apollyon, and a
highwayman with a pistol, and a blinking dwarf in yellow with a mouth
from ear to ear, and other miscellaneous dangers. For poor little Maggie had
at once the timidity of an active imagination, and the daring that comes
from over-mastering impulse. She had rushed into the adventure of seeking
her unknown kindred, the gypsies; and now she was in this strange lane, she
hardly dared look on one side of her, lest she should see the diabolical
blacksmith in his leathern apron grinning at her with arms akimbo. It was
not without a leaping of the heart that she caught sight of a small pair of
bare legs sticking up, feet uppermost, by the side of a hillock; they seemed
something hideously preternatural,—a diabolical kind of fungus; for she
was too much agitated at the first glance to see the ragged clothes and the
dark shaggy head attached to them. It was a boy asleep, and Maggie trotted
along faster and more lightly, lest she should wake him; it did not occur to

her that he was one of her friends the gypsies, who in all probability would
have very genial manners. But the fact was so, for at the next bend in the
lane Maggie actually saw the little semi-circular black tent with the blue
smoke rising before it, which was to be her refuge from all the blighting
obloquy that had pursued her in civilized life. She even saw a tall female
figure by the column of smoke, doubtless the gypsy-mother, who provided
the tea and other groceries; it was astonishing to herself that she did not feel
more delight. But it was startling to find the gypsies in a lane, after all, and
not on a common; indeed, it was rather disappointing; for a mysterious
illimitable common, where there were sand pits to hide in, and one was out
of everybody’s reach, had always made part of Maggie’s picture of gypsy
life. She went on, however, and thought with some comfort that gypsies
most likely knew nothing about idiots, so there was no danger of their
falling into the mistake of setting her down at the first glance as an idiot.
It was plain she had attracted attention; for the tall figure, who proved to
be a young woman with a baby on her arm, walked slowly to meet her.
Maggie looked up in the new face rather tremblingly as it approached, and
was reassured by the thought that her aunt Pullet and the rest were right
when they called her a gypsy; for this face, with the bright dark eyes and
the long hair, was really something like what she used to see in the glass
before she cut her hair off.
“My little lady, where are you going to?” the gypsy said, in a tone of
coaxing deference.
It was delightful, and just what Maggie expected; the gypsies saw at once
that she was a little lady, and were prepared to treat her accordingly.
“Not any farther,” said Maggie, feeling as if she were saying what she
had rehearsed in a dream. “I’m come to stay with you, please.”
“That’s pretty; come, then. Why, what a nice little lady you are, to be
sure!” said the gypsy, taking her by the hand. Maggie thought her very
agreeable, but wished she had not been so dirty.
There was quite a group round the fire when they reached it. An old
gypsy woman was seated on the ground nursing her knees, and occasionally
poking a skewer into the round kettle that sent forth an odorous steam; two

small shock-headed children were lying prone and resting on their elbows
something like small sphinxes; and a placid donkey was bending his head
over a tall girl, who, lying on her back, was scratching his nose and
indulging him with a bite of excellent stolen hay. The slanting sunlight fell
kindly upon them, and the scene was really very pretty and comfortable,
Maggie thought, only she hoped they would soon set out the teacups.
Everything would be quite charming when she had taught the gypsies to use
a washing basin, and to feel an interest in books. It was a little confusing,
though, that the young woman began to speak to the old one in a language
which Maggie did not understand, while the tall girl, who was feeding the
donkey, sat up and stared at her without offering any salutation. At last the
old woman said,—
“What! my pretty lady, are you come to stay with us? Sit ye down and
tell us where you come from.”
It was just like a story; Maggie liked to be called pretty lady and treated
in this way. She sat down and said,—
“I’m come from home because I’m unhappy, and I mean to be a gypsy.
I’ll live with you if you like, and I can teach you a great many things.”
“Such a clever little lady,” said the woman with the baby, sitting down by
Maggie, and allowing baby to crawl; “and such a pretty bonnet and frock,”
she added, taking off Maggie’s bonnet and looking at it while she made an
observation to the old woman, in the unknown language. The tall girl
snatched the bonnet and put it on her own head hind-foremost with a grin;
but Maggie was determined not to show any weakness on this subject, as if
she were susceptible about her bonnet.
“I don’t want to wear a bonnet,” she said; “I’d rather wear a red
handkerchief, like yours” (looking at her friend by her side). “My hair was
quite long till yesterday, when I cut it off; but I dare say it will grow again
very soon,” she added apologetically, thinking it probable the gypsies had a
strong prejudice in favor of long hair. And Maggie had forgotten even her
hunger at that moment in the desire to conciliate gypsy opinion.
“Oh, what a nice little lady!—and rich, I’m sure,” said the old woman.
“Didn’t you live in a beautiful house at home?”

“Yes, my home is pretty, and I’m very fond of the river, where we go
fishing, but I’m often very unhappy. I should have liked to bring my books
with me, but I came away in a hurry, you know. But I can tell you almost
everything there is in my books, I’ve read them so many times, and that will
amuse you. And I can tell you something about Geography too—that’s
about the world we live in—very useful and interesting. Did you ever hear
about Columbus?”
Maggie’s eyes had begun to sparkle and her cheeks to flush—she was
really beginning to instruct the gypsies, and gaining great influence over
them. The gypsies themselves were not without amazement at this talk,
though their attention was divided by the contents of Maggie’s pocket,
which the friend at her right hand had by this time emptied without
attracting her notice.
“Is that where you live, my little lady?” said the old woman, at the
mention of Columbus.
“Oh, no!” said Maggie, with some pity; “Columbus was a very wonderful
man, who found out half the world, and they put chains on him and treated
him very badly, you know; it’s in my Catechism of Geography, but perhaps
it’s rather too long to tell before tea—I want my tea so.”
The last words burst from Maggie, in spite of herself, with a sudden drop
from patronizing instruction to simple peevishness.
“Why she’s hungry, poor little lady,” said the younger woman. “Give her
some o’ the cold victual. You’re been walking a good way, I’ll be bound,
my dear. Where’s your home?”
“It’s Dorlcote Mill, a good way off,” said Maggie. “My father is Mr.
Tulliver, but we mustn’t let him know where I am, else he’ll fetch me home
again. Where does the queen of the gypsies live?”
“What! do you want to go to her, my little lady?” said the younger
woman. The tall girl meanwhile was constantly staring at Maggie and
grinning. Her manners were certainly not agreeable.
“No,” said Maggie, “I’m only thinking that if she isn’t a very good queen
you might be glad when she died, and you could choose another. If I was a

queen, I’d be a very good queen, and kind to everybody.”
“Here’s a bit o’ nice victual, then,” said the old woman, handing to
Maggie a lump of dry bread, and a piece of cold bacon.
“Thank you,” said Maggie, looking at the food without taking it; “but
will you give me some bread-and-butter and tea instead? I don’t like
bacon.”
“We’ve got no tea nor butter,” said the old woman, with something like a
scowl, as if she were getting tired of coaxing.
“Oh, a little bread and treacle would do,” said Maggie.
“We han’t got no treacle,” said the old woman, crossly, whereupon there
followed a sharp dialogue between the two women in their unknown
tongue, and one of the small sphinxes snatched at the bread and bacon, and
began to eat it. At this moment the tall girl, who had gone a few yards off,
came back, and said something which produced a strong effect. The old
woman, seeming to forget Maggie’s hunger, poked the skewer into the pot
with new vigor, and the younger crept under the tent, and reached out some
platters and spoons. Maggie trembled a little, and was afraid the tears would
come into her eyes. Meanwhile the tall girl gave a shrill cry, and presently
came running up the boy whom Maggie had passed as he was sleeping,—a
rough urchin about the age of Tom. He stared at Maggie, and there ensued
much incomprehensible chattering. She felt very lonely, and was quite sure
she should begin to cry before long; the gypsies didn’t seem to mind her at
all, and she felt quite weak among them. But the springing tears were
checked by new terror, when two men came up, whose approach had been
the cause of the sudden excitement. The elder of the two carried a bag,
which he flung down, addressing the women in a loud and scolding tone,
which they answered by a shower of treble sauciness; while a black cur ran
barking up to Maggie, and threw her into a tremor that only found a new
cause in the curses with which the younger man called the dog off, and gave
him a rap with a great stick he held in his hand.
Maggie felt that it was impossible she should ever be queen of these
people, or ever communicate to them amusing and useful knowledge.

Both the men now seemed to be inquiring about Maggie, for they looked
at her, and the tone of the conversation became of that pacific kind which
implies curiosity on one side and the power of satisfying it on the other. At
last the younger woman said in her previous deferential, coaxing tone,—
“This nice little lady’s come to live with us; aren’t you glad?”
“Ay, very glad,” said the younger man, who was looking at Maggie’s
silver thimble and other small matters that had been taken from her pocket.
He returned them all except the thimble to the younger woman, with some
observation, and she immediately restored them to Maggie’s pocket, while
the men seated themselves, and began to attack the contents of the kettle,—
a stew of meat and potatoes,—which had been taken off the fire and turned
out into a yellow platter.
Maggie began to think that Tom must be right about the gypsies; they
must certainly be thieves, unless the man meant to return her thimble by
and by. She would willingly have given it to him, for she was not at all
attached to her thimble; but the idea that she was among thieves prevented
her from feeling any comfort in the revival of deference and attention
toward her; all thieves, except Robin Hood, were wicked people. The
women saw she was frightened.
“We’ve got nothing nice for a lady to eat,” said the old woman, in her
coaxing tone. “And she’s so hungry, sweet little lady.”
“Here, my dear, try if you can eat a bit o’ this,” said the younger woman,
handing some of the stew on a brown dish with an iron spoon to Maggie,
who, remembering that the old woman had seemed angry with her for not
liking the bread and bacon, dared not refuse the stew, though fear had
chased away her appetite. If her father would but come by in the gig and
take her up! Or even if Jack the Giantkiller, or Mr. Greatheart, or Saint
George who slew the dragon on the half-pennies, would happen to pass that
way! But Maggie thought with a sinking heart that these heroes were never
seen in the neighborhood of Saint Ogg’s; nothing very wonderful ever came
there.
Maggie Tulliver, you perceive, was by no means that well-trained, well-
informed young person that a small female of eight or nine necessarily is in

these days; she had only been to school a year at Saint Ogg’s, and had so
few books that she sometimes read the dictionary; so that in traveling over
her small mind you would have found the most unexpected ignorance as
well as unexpected knowledge. She could have informed you that there was
such a word as “polygamy,” and being also acquainted with “polysyllable,”
she had deduced the conclusion that “poly” meant “many”; but she had had
no idea that gypsies were not well supplied with groceries, and her thoughts
were the oddest mixture of clear-eyed acumen and blind dreams.
Her ideas about the gypsies had undergone a rapid modification in the
last five minutes. From having considered them very respectful
companions, amenable to instruction, she had begun to think that they
meant perhaps to kill her as soon as it was dark, and cut up her body for
gradual cooking; the suspicion crossed her that the fierce-eyed old man was
in fact the Devil, who might drop that transparent disguise at any moment,
and turn either into a grinning blacksmith, or else a fiery-eyed monster with
dragon’s wings. It was no use trying to eat the stew, and yet the thing she
most dreaded was to offend the gypsies, by betraying her extremely
unfavorable opinion of them; and she wondered, with a keenness of interest
that no theologian could have exceeded, whether, if the Devil were really
present, he would know her thoughts.
“What! you don’t like the smell of it, my dear,” said the young woman,
observing that Maggie did not even take a spoonful of the stew. “Try a bit,
come.”
“No, thank you,” said Maggie, summoning all her force for a desperate
effort, and trying to smile in a friendly way. “I haven’t time, I think; it
seems getting darker. I think I must go home now, and come again another
day, and then I can bring you a basket with some jam-tarts and things.”
Maggie rose from her seat as she threw out this illusory prospect,
devoutly hoping that Apollyon was gullible; but her hope sank when the old
gypsy woman said, “Stop a bit, stop a bit, little lady; we’ll take you home,
all safe, when we’ve done supper; you shall ride home, like a lady.”
Maggie sat down again, with little faith in this promise, though she
presently saw the tall girl putting a bridle on the donkey, and throwing a
couple of bags on his back.

“Now, then, little missis,” said the younger man, rising, and leading the
donkey forward, “tell us where you live; what’s the name of the place?”
“Dorlcote Mill is my home,” said Maggie, eagerly. “My father is Mr.
Tulliver; he lives there.”
“What! a big mill a little way this side o’ Saint Ogg’s?”
“Yes,” said Maggie. “Is it far off? I think I should like to walk there, if
you please.”
“No, no, it’ll be getting dark, we must make haste. And the donkey’ll
carry you as nice as can be; you’ll see.”
He lifted Maggie as he spoke, and set her on the donkey. She felt relieved
that it was not the old man who seemed to be going with her, but she had
only a trembling hope that she was really going home.
“Here’s your pretty bonnet,” said the younger woman, putting that
recently despised but now welcome article of costume on Maggie’s head;
“and you’ll say we’ve been very good to you, won’t you? and what a nice
little lady we said you was.”
“Oh yes, thank you,” said Maggie, “I’m very much obliged to you. But I
wish you’d go with me too.” She thought anything was better than going
with one of the dreadful men alone; it would be more cheerful to be
murdered by a larger party.
“Ah, you’re fondest o’ me, aren’t you?” said the woman. “But I can’t go;
you’ll go too fast for me.”

“AH, YOU’RE FONDEST O’ ME,
AREN’T YOU?”

It now appeared that the man also was to be seated on the donkey,
holding Maggie before him, and she was as incapable of remonstrating
against this arrangement as the donkey himself, though no nightmare had
ever seemed to her more horrible. When the woman had patted her on the
back and said “Good-bye,” the donkey, at a strong hint from the man’s
stick, set off at a rapid walk along the lane toward the point Maggie had
come from an hour ago, while the tall girl and the rough urchin, also
furnished with sticks, obligingly escorted them for the first hundred yards,
with much screaming and thwacking.
Not Leonore, in that preternatural midnight excursion with her phantom
lover, was more terrified than poor Maggie in this entirely natural ride on a
short-paced donkey, with a gypsy behind her, who considered that he was
earning half-a-crown. The red light of the setting sun seemed to have a
portentous meaning, with which the alarming bray of the second donkey
with the log on its foot must surely have some connection. Two low
thatched cottages—the only houses they passed in this lane—seemed to add
to its dreariness; they had no windows to speak of, and the doors were

closed; it was probable that they were inhabited by witches, and it was a
relief to find that the donkey did not stop there.
At last—oh, sight of joy!—this lane, the longest in the world, was
coming to an end, was opening on a broad highroad, where there was
actually a coach passing! And there was a finger-post at the corner,—she
had surely seen that finger-post before,—“To Saint Ogg’s, 2 miles.” The
gypsy really meant to take her home, then; he was probably a good man,
after all, and might have been rather hurt at the thought that she didn’t like
coming with him alone. This idea became stronger as she felt more and
more certain that she knew the road quite well, and she was considering
how she might open a conversation with the injured gypsy, and not only
gratify his feelings, but efface the impression of her cowardice, when, as
they reached a crossroad, Maggie caught sight of some one coming on a
white-faced horse.
“Oh, stop, stop!” she cried out. “There’s my father! Oh, father, father!”
The sudden joy was almost painful, and before her father reached her, she
was sobbing. Great was Mr. Tulliver’s wonder, for he had made a round
from Basset, and had not yet been home.
“Why, what’s the meaning o’ this?” he said, checking his horse, while
Maggie slipped from the donkey and ran to her father’s stirrup.
“The little miss lost herself, I reckon,” said the gypsy. “She’d come to
our tent at the far end o’ Dunlow Lane, and I was bringing her where she
said her home was. It’s a good way to come after being on the tramp all
day.”
“Oh yes, father, he’s been very good to bring me home,” said Maggie,
—“a very kind, good man!”
“Here, then, my man,” said Mr. Tulliver, taking out five shillings. “It’s
the best day’s work you ever did. I couldn’t afford to lose the little wench;
here, lift her up before me.”
“Why, Maggie, how’s this, how’s this?” he said, as they rode along, while
she laid her head against her father and sobbed. “How came you to be
rambling about and lose yourself?”

“Oh, father,” sobbed Maggie, “I ran away because I was so unhappy;
Tom was so angry with me. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Pooh, pooh,” said Mr. Tulliver, soothingly, “you mustn’t think o’
running away from father. What ’ud father do without his little wench?”
“Oh, no, I never will again, father—never.”
Mr. Tulliver spoke his mind very strongly when he reached home that
evening; and the effect was seen in the remarkable fact that Maggie never
heard one reproach from her mother, or one taunt from Tom, about this
foolish business of her running away to the gypsies. Maggie was rather
awe-stricken by this unusual treatment, and sometimes thought that her
conduct had been too wicked to be alluded to.

Of the three children who are presented to us in these chapters, Tom, Maggie and little Lucy,
which is the most attractive to you?
Do you think the author meant us to receive this impression?
Is Maggie proud? Is she impetuous? Is she highly sensitive? Find as many passages as you can
which prove your answers to these questions. Do these qualities usually make a person attractive?
What is the mainspring of Maggie’s character—the motive for most of her actions? Does Tom
seem to you worthy of the intense affection she bestows upon him? Do you think a person with
Maggie’s nature would be likely to live a happy or an unhappy life?
Few writers have ever been able to draw as distinct, lifelike a picture of a child as we have of
Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss. This is to be in part accounted for by the fact that it is
herself as a child that George Eliot is describing.

A GORILLA HUNT
By Paul du Chaillu

HAD not been at the village long before news came that gorillas
had been recently seen in the neighborhood of a plantation only
half a mile distant. Early in the morning of the twenty-fifth of
June, I wended my way thither, accompanied by one of my boys,
named Odanga. The plantation was a large one, and situated on
very broken ground, surrounded by the virgin forest. It was a lovely
morning; the sky was almost cloudless, and all around was still as death,
except the slight rustling of the tree tops moved by the gentle land breeze.
When I reached the place, I had first to pick my way through the maze of
tree stumps and half-burnt logs by the side of a field of cassada. I was going
quietly along the borders of this, when I heard, in the grove of plantain trees
towards which I was walking, a great crashing noise, like the breaking of
trees. I immediately hid myself behind a bush, and was soon gratified with
the sight of a female gorilla; but before I had time to notice its movements,
a second and third emerged from the masses of colossal foliage; at length
no less than four came into view.
They were all busily engaged in tearing down the larger trees. One of the
females had a young one following her. I had an excellent opportunity of
watching the movements of the impish-looking band. The shaggy hides, the
protuberant abdomens, the hideous features of these strange creatures,
whose forms so nearly resemble man, made up a picture like a vision in
some morbid dream. In destroying a tree, they first grasped the base of the
stem with one of their feet, and then with their powerful arms pulled it
down, a matter of not much difficulty with so loosely formed a stem as that
of the plantain. They then set upon the juicy heart of the trees at the bases of
the leaves, and devoured it with great voracity. While eating they made a

kind of clucking noise, expressive of contentment. Many trees they
destroyed apparently out of pure mischief. Now and then they stood still
and looked around. Once or twice they seemed on the point of starting off
in alarm, but recovered themselves and continued their work. Gradually
they got nearer to the edge of the dark forest, and finally disappeared. I was
so intent on watching them, that I let go the last chance of shooting one
almost before I became aware of it.
The next day I went again with Odanga to the same spot. I had no
expectation of seeing gorillas in the same plantation, and was carrying a
light shot gun, having given my heavy double-barreled rifle to the boy to
carry. The plantation extended over two hills, with a deep hollow between,
planted with sugar cane. Before I had crossed the hollow I saw on the
opposite slope a monstrous gorilla, standing erect and looking directly
towards me. Without turning my face I beckoned to the boy to bring me my
rifle, but no rifle came,—the little coward had bolted, and I lost my chance.
The huge beast stared at me for about two minutes, and then, without
uttering any cry, moved off to the shade of the forest, running nimbly on his
hands and feet.
As my readers may easily imagine, I had excellent opportunity of
observing, during these two days, the manner in which the gorillas walked
when in open ground. They move along with great rapidity and on all fours,
that is, with the knuckles of their hands touching the ground. Artists, in
representing the gorilla walking, generally make the arms too much bowed
outwards, and the elbows too much bent; this gives the figures an
appearance of heaviness and awkwardness. When the gorillas that I
watched left their plantain trees, they moved off at a great pace over the
ground, with their arms extended straight forward towards the ground, and
moving rapidly. I may mention also that having now opened the stomachs
of several freshly killed gorillas, I have never found anything but vegetable
matter in them.
When I returned to Nkongon Mboumba I found there my old friend
Akondogo, chief of one of the Commi villages, who had just returned from
the Ngobi country, a little further south. To my great surprise and pleasure,
he had brought for me a living gorilla, a young one, but the largest I had
ever seen captured alive. Like Joe, the young male whose habits in

confinement I described in ‘Equatorial Africa,’ this one showed the most
violent and ungovernable disposition. He tried to bite every one who came
near him, and was obliged to be secured by a forked stick closely applied to
the back of his neck. This mode of imprisoning these animals is a very
improper one if the object be to keep them alive and to tame them, but,
unfortunately, in this barbarous country, we had not the materials requisite
to build a strong cage. The injury caused to this one by the forked stick
eventually caused his death. As I had some more hunting to do, I left the
animal in charge of Akondogo until he should have an opportunity of
sending it to me on the Fernand Vaz.
The natives of all the neighboring country were now so well aware that I
wanted live gorillas, and was willing to give a high price for them, that
many were stimulated to search with great perseverance; the good effects of
this were soon made evident.
One day as I was quietly dining with Captain Holder, of the Cambria (a
vessel just arrived from England), one of my men came in with the startling
news that three live gorillas had been brought, one of them full grown. I had
not long to wait; in they came. First, a very large adult female, bound hand
and foot; then her female child, screaming terribly; and lastly, a vigorous
young male, also tightly bound. The female had been ingeniously secured
by the negroes to a strong stick, the wrists bound to the upper part and the
ankles to the lower, so that she could not reach to tear the cords with her
teeth. It was dark, and the scene was one so wild and strange that I shall
never forget it. The fiendish countenances of the Calibanish trio, one of
them distorted by pain, for the mother gorilla was severely wounded, were
lit up by the ruddy glare of native torches. The thought struck me, what
would I not give to have the group in London for a few days!

GORILLA WITH HER YOUNG

The young male I secured by a chain which I had in readiness, and gave
him henceforth the name of Tom. We untied his hands and feet; to show his
gratitude for this act of kindness he immediately made a rush at me,
screaming with all his might; happily the chain was made fast, and I took
care afterwards to keep out of his way. The old mother gorilla was in an
unfortunate plight. She had an arm broken and a wound in the chest, besides
being dreadfully beaten on the head. She groaned and roared many times
during the night, probably from pain.
I noticed next day, and on many occasions, that the vigorous young male
whenever he made a rush at any one and missed his aim, immediately ran
back. This corresponds with what is known of the habits of the large males
in their native woods; when attacked they make a furious rush at their
enemy, break an arm or tear his bowels open, and then beat a retreat,
leaving their victim to shift for himself.
The wounded female died in the course of the next day; her moanings
were more frequent in the morning, and they gradually became weaker as
her life ebbed out. Her death was like that of a human being, and afflicted
me more than I could have thought possible. Her child clung to her to the
last, and tried to obtain milk from her breast after she was dead. I
photographed them both when the young one was resting in its dead

mother’s lap. I kept the young one alive for three days after its mother’s
death. It moaned at night most piteously. I fed it on goat’s milk, for it was
too young to eat berries. It died the fourth day, having taken an
unconquerable dislike to the milk. It had, I think, begun to know me a little.
As to the male, I made at least a dozen attempts to photograph the irascible
little demon, but all in vain. The pointing of the camera towards him threw
him into a perfect rage, and I was almost provoked to give him a sound
thrashing. The day after, however, I succeeded with him, taking two views,
not very perfect, but sufficient for my object.
I must now relate how these three animals were caught, premising that
the capture of the female was the first instance of an adult gorilla being
taken alive. The place where they were found was on the left bank of the
Fernand Vaz, about thirty miles above my village. At this part a narrow
promontory projects into the river. It was the place where I had intended to
take the distinguished traveler, Captain Burton, to show him a live gorilla, if
he had paid me a visit, as I had expected, for I had written to invite him
whilst he was on a tour from his consulate at Fernando Po to several points
on the West African coast.
A woman, belonging to a neighboring village, had told her people that
she had seen two squads of female gorillas, some of them accompanied by
their young ones, in her plantain field. The men resolved to go in chase of
them, so they armed themselves with guns, axes, and spears, and sallied
forth.
The situation was very favorable for the hunters; they formed a line
across the narrow strip of land and pressed forward, driving the animals to
the edge of the water. When they came in sight of them, they made all the
noise in their power, and thus bewildered the gorillas, who were shot or
beaten down in their endeavors to escape. There were eight adult females
altogether, but not a single male. The negroes thought the males were in
concealment in the adjoining woods, having probably been frightened away
by the noise.
This incident led me to modify somewhat the opinions I had expressed,
in ‘Adventures in Equatorial Africa,’ regarding some of the habits of the
gorilla. I there said I believed it impossible to capture an adult female alive,

but I ought to have added, unless wounded. I have also satisfied myself that
the gorilla is more gregarious than I formerly considered it to be; at least it
is now clear that, at certain times of the year, it goes in bands more
numerous than those I saw in my former journey. Then I never saw more
than five together. I have myself seen, on my present expedition, two of
these bands of gorillas, numbering eight or ten, and have had authentic
accounts from the natives of other similar bands. It is true that, when
gorillas become aged, they seem to be more solitary, and to live in pairs, or,
as in the case of old males, quite alone. I have been assured by the negroes
that solitary and aged gorillas are sometimes seen almost white; the hair
becomes grizzled with age, and I have no doubt that the statement of their
becoming occasionally white with extreme old age is quite correct.
The gorilla is of migratory habits at some seasons of the year. He is then
not found in the districts usually resorted to by him when the berries, fruits,
and nuts are in season.
Besides my other collections I embarked a live gorilla, our little friend
Tom, and had full hopes that he would arrive safely and gratify the world of
London with a sight of this rare and wonderful ape in the living state;
unfortunately, he died on the passage. He did very well for a few weeks, I
am told, as long as the supply of bananas lasted which I placed on board for
his sustenance. The repugnance of the gorilla to cooked food, or any sort of
food except the fruits and juicy plants he obtains in his own wilds, will
always be a difficulty in the way of bringing him to Europe alive. I had sent
him consigned to Messrs. Baring, who, I am sure, never had any such
consignment before. I promised the Captain that he should receive one
hundred pounds if he succeeded in taking the animal alive to London.
During the few days Tom was in my possession he remained, like all the
others of his species that I had seen, utterly untractable. The food that was
offered to him he would come and snatch from the hand, and then bolt with
it to the length of his tether. If I looked at him he would make a feint of
darting at me, and in giving him water I had to push the bowl towards him
with a stick, for fear of his biting me. When he was angry I saw him often
beat the ground and his legs with his fists, thus showing a similar habit to
that of the adult gorillas, which I described as beating their breasts with
their fists when confronting an enemy. Before lying down to rest he used to

pack his straw very carefully as a bed to lie on. Tom used to wake me in the
night by screaming suddenly, and in the morning I more than once detected
him in the attempt to strangle himself with his chain, no doubt through rage
at being kept prisoner. He used to twist the chain round and round the post,
to which it was attached until it became quite short and then pressed with
his feet the lower part of the post until he had nearly done the business.
As I have before related, I took photographs of Tom, and succeeded very
well. These photographs I was unwilling to send home, and kept them until
I should have completed my whole series of photographs of African
subjects. They are now, unfortunately, lost forever; for they were left behind
in the bush during my hurried retreat from Ashango-land, as will be related
in the sequel.
When the last boat which took on board the Captain and the live animals
left the shore for the vessel, I trembled for the safety of the cargo, for the
surf was very rough. The negroes, however, could have managed to get her
safely through if they had not been too careful. They were nervous at
having a white man on board, and did not seize the proper moment to pass
the breakers; their hesitation was very near proving fatal, for a huge billow
broke over them and filled the boat. It did not, happily, upset, but they had
to return. Captain Berridge thus escaped with a wetting, and the
Potamochoerus and eagles were half drowned. As to poor Tom, the bath,
instead of cooling his courage, made him more violent than ever. He
shouted furiously, and as soon as I opened the door of his cage he pounced
on the bystanders, clinging to them and screaming. A present of a banana,
which he ate voraciously, quieted him down, and the passage was again
tried in the afternoon with a better result.

THE CLOUD
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ’tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers
Lightning, my pilot, sits,
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder;
It struggles and howls by fits.
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills and the crags and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead.
As, on the jag of a mountain crag
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle, alit, one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings;
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea
beneath,
Its ardors of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the moon’s with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch, through which I march,
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-colored bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when, with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex
gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,—
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the
tomb,
I rise and upbuild it again.

BRUTE NEIGHBORS
By Henry David Thoreau
Note.—The author of this sketch, Henry David Thoreau, who lived from 1817 to 1862, was one of
the oddest of American men of genius. He was educated at Harvard University, but he did not care, in
the common phrase, to “turn his learning to practical account;” that is, save for a short time when he
taught school, he did not make it earn his living for him. His theory was that life and energy were
being wasted when a man spent in working more time than he absolutely needed to in order to
provide himself with necessities; and this theory he carried out in his own life. While he lived in
Concord, he did odd jobs at carpentering, surveying, and gardening, and worked for a time at his
father’s trade of pencil making. However, he contended that a man was doing himself an injustice if
he kept on at that work after he had reached the point where he could make no further improvement
in his pencils.
From 1845 to 1847 Thoreau lived as a hermit in a hut which he had built on the shore of Walden
Pond, and the simple life he led there gave him plenty of leisure for the things he liked best—the
study of nature, the grappling with philosophical problems, and the society of friends. The result of
the two years at Walden Pond was his best book, Walden, or Life in the Woods, a work which is
distinguished for its peculiarly truthful and sympathetic studies of nature.
Thoreau refused to perform any of the ordinary duties of a citizen; he never voted, he never paid
taxes. Once he was arrested because he refused to pay his taxes, and was thrown into jail; his friends
remonstrated with him, but still he refused to pay. However, when his friends paid the sum he made
no objections to accepting his release, nor did he in the future make any objections when his friends
quietly paid his taxes.
The Pond in Winter and Winter Animals, which are contained in this volume, are also from
Thoreau.

HY do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?
Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors; as if
nothing but a mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect that
Pilpay & Co. have put animals to their best use, for they are all
beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our
thoughts.
The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are
said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not

found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested
him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the
house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings,
would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet.
It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar,
and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the
sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in
its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it
ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper
which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and played
at bo-peep with it; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my
thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward
cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.
A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine
which grew against the house. In June the partridge (Tetrao umbellus),
which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in
the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen,
and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young
suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a
whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the dried
leaves and twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a
brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious
calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without
suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin
round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments,
detect what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often
running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother’s directions
given from a distance, nor will your approach make them run again and
betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them
for a minute, without discovering them. I have held them in my open hand
at such a time, and still their only care, obedient to their mother and their
instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this
instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one
accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same
position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most
birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The

remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is
very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not
merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an
eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects.
The woods do not yield another such gem. The traveler does not often look
into such a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman often shoots the
parent at such a time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some
prowling beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which
they so much resemble. It is said that when hatched by a hen they will
directly disperse on some alarm, and are so lost, for they never hear the
mother’s call which gathers them again. These were my hens and chickens.
It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in
the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of towns,
suspected by hunters only. How retired the otter manages to live there! He
grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any
human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the
woods behind where my house is built, and probably still heard their
whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade at
noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring which
was the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under Brister’s Hill,
half a mile from my field. The approach to this was through a succession of
descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch pines, into a larger wood
about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a
spreading white pine, there was yet a clean firm sward to sit on. I had dug
out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip up a
pailful without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every
day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the woodcock
led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them
down the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she
would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till
within four or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, to attract my
attention, and get off her young, who would already have taken up their
march, with faint wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she directed.
Or I heard the peep of the young when I could not see the parent bird. There
too the turtledoves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of
the soft white pines over my head; or the red squirrel, coursing down the

nearest bough, was particularly familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit
still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants
may exhibit themselves to you by turns.

BATTLE OF THE ANTS

I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went
out to my wood pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants,
the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black,
fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let
go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking
further, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such
combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two
races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red
ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and
vales in my wood yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead
and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever
witnessed, the only battlefield I ever trod while the battle was raging;
internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black
imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly
combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never
fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each
other’s embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday
prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red
champion had fastened himself like a vise to his adversary’s front, and
through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at
one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the
board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I
saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members.
They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither manifested the

least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was “Conquer
or die.” In the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on the hillside
of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his
foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had
lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his
shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished
his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He
saw this unequal combat from afar—for the blacks were nearly twice the
size of the red—he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard
within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he
sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root
of his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and
so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been
invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have
wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands
stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to
excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited
somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less
the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord
history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s
comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the
patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an
Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots’ side, and
Luther Blanchard wounded! Why, here every ant was a Butterick—“Fire!
for God’s sake, fire!”—and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer.
There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle
they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny
tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and
memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill,
at least.
I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were
struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my
window sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-
mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the
near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own
breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of

the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to
pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer’s eyes shone with ferocity
such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the
tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of
his foes from their bodies, and still living heads were hanging on either side
of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly
fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being
without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how
many other wounds, to divest himself of them; which at length, after half an
hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the
window sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat,
and spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not
know; but I thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I
never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt
for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by
witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before
my door.
Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated
and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber is the only
modern author who appears to have witnessed them. “Æneas Sylvius,” say
they, “after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with great
obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree,” adds that
“‘This action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the
presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole
history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.’ A similar engagement
between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the
small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own
soldiers, and left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event
happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from
Sweden.” The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk,
five years before the passage of Webster’s Fugitive-Slave Bill.
Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling
cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without the knowledge of
his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks’
holes; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood,
and might still inspire a natural terror in its denizens; now far behind his

guide, barking like a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had
treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with his
weight, imagining that he is on the track of some stray member of the
jerbilla family. Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony
shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far from home. The surprise
was mutual. Nevertheless the most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all
her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy
behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants.
Once, when berrying, I met with a cat with young kittens in the woods,
quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had their backs up and were
fiercely spitting at me. A few years before I lived in the woods there was
what was called a “winged cat” in one of the farmhouses in Lincoln nearest
the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker’s. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she
was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am not sure whether it
was a male or female, and so use the more common pronoun), but her
mistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a
year before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; that she was of
a dark brownish gray color, with a white spot on her throat, and white feet,
and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick
and flatted out along her sides, forming strips ten or twelve inches long by
two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose,
the under matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off.
They gave me a pair of her “wings,” which I keep still. There is no
appearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it was part flying-
squirrel or some other wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according
to naturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of the
marten and domestic cat. This would have been the right kind of cat for me
to keep, if I had kept any; for why should not a poet’s cat be winged as well
as his horse?
In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, to moult and
bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I
had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Milldam sportsmen are on the alert,
in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent rifles and
conical balls and spyglasses. They come rustling through the woods like
autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves on
this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent;

if he dive here he must come up there. But now the kind October wind rises,
rustling the leaves and rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon can
be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spyglasses, and make
the woods resound with their discharges. The waves generally rise and dash
angrily, taking sides with all waterfowl, and our sportsmen must beat a
retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. But they were too often
successful. When I went to get a pail of water early in the morning I
frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. If I
endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to see how he would
manœuvre, he would dive and be completely lost, so that I did not discover
him again sometimes till the latter part of the day. But I was more than a
match for him on the surface. He commonly went off in a rain.
As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm October
afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes, like the
milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly
one, sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me,
set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and he
dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I
miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart
when he came to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen the
interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than
before.

WATCHING FOR THE LOON

He manœuvred so cunningly that I could not get within half a dozen rods
of him. Each time, when he came to the surface, turning his head this way
and that, he coolly surveyed the water and the land, and apparently chose
his course so that he might come up where there was the widest expanse of
water, and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was surprising how
quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me
at once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from it.
While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine
his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of
the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your adversary’s checker
disappears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to
where his will appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on
the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat.
So long-winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had swum
furthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit
could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might
be speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit the
bottom of the pond in its deepest part.
It is said that loons have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet
beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout—though Walden is deeper than

that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from
another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to
know his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swam much
faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface,
just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I found that it
was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to
endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and again, when I was
straining my eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by
his unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning,
did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh?
Did not his white breast enough betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I
thought. I could commonly hear the splash of the water when he came up,
and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever,
dived as willingly and swam yet further than at first. It was surprising to see
how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the
surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note
was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a waterfowl; but
occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long
way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of
a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and
deliberately howls. This was his looming—perhaps the wildest sound that is
ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he
laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though
the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see
where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the
stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At
length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged
howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there
came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air
with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon
answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far
away on the tumultuous surface.

ODE TO A SKYLARK
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
Note.—There are a few places in the United States where the skylark has been naturalized, but
most of us have never heard it sing. In Europe, however, and especially in Great Britain, it is very
common; and despite the fact that it is dull of plumage, there are few birds which are more
universally loved. For the song which it pours forth as it soars upward in spiral curves and floats in
the air is wonderfully sweet and cheerful. Strangely enough, this bird, which seems to like best to
sing when far, far above the earth, does not refuse to sing when confined in a cage.

H AIL to thee,Birdblithe spirit!—
thou never wert—
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O’er which clouds are brightening,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

THE SKYLARK

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven
In the broad day-light,
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is
overflowed.
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see.
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her
bower:
Like a glowworm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aërial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from
the view:
Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-
winged thieves.
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard

Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus Hymenæal,
Or triumphal chaunt,
Matched with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of
pain?
With thy clear, keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety.
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal
stream!
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest
thought.
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now!

THE POND IN WINTER
By Henry David Thoreau

FTER a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some
question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in
vain to answer in my sleep, as what—how—when—where? But
there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in
at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no
question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and
daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the
very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward!
Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has
long ago taken her resolution. “O Prince, our eyes contemplate with
admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of
this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation;
but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth
even into the plains of the ether.”

KNEELING TO DRINK

Then to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of
water if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed a
divining rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the
pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and
shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it
will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an
equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the
marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant
for three months or more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a
pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a
foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I
look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as
through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as
in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber
twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the
inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men come with
fishing reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine lines through the
snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men, who instinctively follow
other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their

goings and comings stitch towns together in parts where else they would be
ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fearnaughts on the dry oak
leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial. They
never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less than they
have done. The things which they practice are said not yet to be known.
Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch for bait. You look into his
pail with wonder as into a summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at
home, or knew where she had retreated. How, pray, did he get these in mid-
winter? Oh, he got worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so
he caught them. His life itself passes deeper in Nature than the studies of
naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the
moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays
open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He
gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I
love to see Nature carried out in him. The perch swallows the grubworm,
the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel;
and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.
When I strolled around the pond in misty weather I was sometimes
amused by the primitive mode which some ruder fisherman had adopted.
He would perhaps have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the
ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore,
and having fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being pulled
through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or more
above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, would
show when he had a bite. These alders loomed through the mist at regular
intervals as you walked halfway round the pond.
Ah, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the
well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit the
water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous
fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as
Arabia to our Concord life. They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent
beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod
and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like
the pines, nor any gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have,
to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as
if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden

water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all through; are themselves
small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they
are caught here—that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the
rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road,
this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind in
any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Easily, with a few
conclusive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated
before his time to the thin air of heaven.

SALMON FISHING
By Rudyard Kipling

ALIFORNIA and I, crying for salmon, reached Portland, and the
real-estate man to whom I had been intrusted by “Portland” the
insurance man, met us in the street saying that fifteen miles away,
across country, we should come upon a place called Clackamas
where we might perchance find what we desired. And California,
his coat-tails flying in the wind, ran to a livery stable and chartered a wagon
and team forthwith. I could push the wagon about with one hand, so light
was its structure. The team was purely American—that is to say, almost
human in its intelligence and docility. Some one said that the roads were not
good on the way to Clackamas and warned us against smashing the springs.
“Portland,” who had watched the preparations, finally reckoned “he’d come
along, too,” and under heavenly skies we three companions of a day set
forth; California carefully lashing our rods into the carriage, and the
bystanders overwhelming us with directions as to the sawmills we were to
pass, the ferries we were to cross, and the signposts we were to seek signs
from. Half a mile from this city of fifty thousand souls we struck (and this
must be taken literally), a plank road that would have been a disgrace to an
Irish village.
Then six miles of macadamized road showed us that the team could
move. A railway ran between us and the banks of the Willamette, and
another above us through the mountains. All the land was dotted with small
townships, and the roads were full of farmers in their town wagons,
bunches of tow-haired, boggle-eyed urchins sitting in the hay behind. The
men generally looked like loafers, but their women were all well dressed.
Brown hussar braiding on a tailor-made jacket does not, however, consort
with hay wagons. Then we struck into the woods along what California

called a “camina reale,”—a good road,—and Portland a “fair track.” It
wound in and out among fire-blackened stumps, under pine trees, along the
corners of log-fences, through hollows which must be hopeless marsh in
winter, and up absurd gradients. But nowhere throughout its length did I see
any evidence of road-making. There was a track,—you couldn’t well get off
it,—and it was all you could do to stay on it. The dust lay a foot thick in the
blind ruts, and under the dust we found bits of planking and bundles of
brushwood that sent the wagon bounding into the air. Sometimes we
crashed through bracken; anon where the blackberries grew rankest we
found a lonely little cemetery, the wooden rails all awry, and the pitiful
stumpy headstones nodding drunkenly at the soft green mulleins. Then with
oaths and the sound of rent underwood a yoke of mighty bulls would swing
down a “skid” road, hauling a forty-foot log along a ready made slide.

Salmon Fishing

A valley full of wheat and cherry trees succeeded, and halting at a house
we bought ten pound weight of luscious black cherries for something less

than a rupee and got a drink of icy-cold water for nothing, while the
untended team browsed sagaciously by the roadside. Once we found a
wayside camp of horse dealers lounging by a pool, ready for a sale or a
swap, and once two sun-tanned youngsters shot down a hill on Indian
ponies, their full creels banging from their high-pommeled saddles. They
had been fishing, and were our brethren therefore. We shouted aloud in
chorus to scare a wild cat; we squabbled over the reasons that had led a
snake to cross a road; we heaved bits of bark at a venturesome chipmunk,
who was really the little gray squirrel of India and had come to call on me;
we lost our way and got the wagon so beautifully fixed on a steep road that
we had to tie the two hind-wheels to get it down. Above all, California told
tales of Nevada and Arizona, of lonely nights spent out prospecting, of the
slaughter of deer and the chase of men; of woman, lovely woman, who is a
firebrand in a western city, and leads to the popping of pistols, and of the
sudden changes and chances of fortune, who delights in making the miner
or the lumberman a quadruplicate millionaire, and in “busting” the railroad
king. That was a day to be remembered, and it had only begun when we
drew rein at a tiny farmhouse on the banks of the Clackamas and sought
horse-feed and lodging ere we hastened to the river that broke over a weir
not over a quarter of a mile away.
Imagine a stream seventy yards broad divided by a pebbly island,
running over seductive riffles and swirling into deep, quiet pools where the
good salmon goes to smoke his pipe after meals. Set such a stream amid
fields of breast-high crops surrounded by hills of pine, throw in where you
please quiet water, log-fenced meadows, and a hundred foot bluff to keep
the scenery from growing too monotonous, and you will get some faint
notion of the Clackamas.
Portland had no rod. He held the gaff and the whiskey. California sniffed,
upstream and downstream across the racing water, chose his ground, and let
the gaudy spoon drop in the tail of a riffle. I was getting my rod together
when I heard the joyous shriek of the reel and the yells of California, and
three feet of shining silver leaped into the air far across the water. The
forces were engaged. The salmon tore up-stream, the tense line cutting the
water like a tide-rip behind him, and the light bamboo bowed to breaking.
What happened after I cannot tell. California swore and prayed, and
Portland shouted advice, and I did all three for what appeared to be half a

day, but was in reality a little over a quarter of an hour, and sullenly our fish
came home with spurts of temper, dashes head-on, and sarabands in the air;
but home to the bank came he, and the remorseless reel gathered up the
thread of his life inch by inch. We landed him in a little bay, and the spring
weight checked him at eleven and a half pounds. Eleven and a half pounds
of fighting salmon! We danced a war dance on the pebbles, and California
caught me around the waist in a hug that went near to breaking my ribs,
while he shouted: “Partner! Partner! This is glory! Now you catch your fish!
Twenty-four years I’ve waited for this!”
I went into that icy-cold river and made my cast just above a weir, and all
but foul-hooked a blue and black water-snake with a coral mouth who
coiled herself on a stone and hissed maledictions. The next cast—ah, the
pride of it, the regal splendor of it! the thrill that ran down from finger-tip to
toe! The water boiled. He broke for the fly and got it! There remained
enough sense in me to give him all he wanted when he jumped not once but
twenty times before the upstream flight that ran my line out to the last half-
dozen turns, and I saw the nickeled reelbar glitter under the thinning green
coils. My thumb was burned deep when I strove to stopper the line, but I
did not feel it till later, for my soul was out in the dancing water praying for
him to turn ere he took my tackle away. The prayer was heard. As I bowed
back, the butt of the rod on my left hip-bone and the top joint dipping like
unto a weeping willow, he turned, and I accepted each inch of slack that I
could by any means get in as a favor from on high. There be several sorts of
success in this world that taste well in the moment of enjoyment, but I
question whether the stealthy theft of line from an able-bodied salmon who
knows exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it is not sweeter
than any other victory within human scope. Like California’s fish, he ran at
me head-on and leaped against the line, but the Lord gave me two hundred
and fifty pairs of fingers in that hour. The banks and the pine trees danced
dizzily around me, but I only reeled as for life—reeled for hours, and at the
end of the reeling continued to give him the butt while he sulked in a pool.
California was farther up the reach, and with the corner of my eye I could
see him casting with long casts and much skill. Then he struck, and my fish
broke for the weir at the same instant, and down the reach went California
and I, reel answering reel, even as the morning stars sung together.

The first wild enthusiasm of capture had died away. We were both at
work now in deadly earnest to prevent the lines fouling, to stall off a
downstream rush for deep water just above the weir, and at the same time to
get the fish into the shallow bay downstream that gave the best practicable
landing. Portland bade us both be of good heart, and volunteered to take the
rod from my hands. I would rather have died among the pebbles than
surrender the right to play and land my first salmon, weight unknown, on an
eight-ounce rod. I heard California, at my ear it seemed, gasping: “He’s a
fighter from Fightersville, sure!” as his fish made a fresh break across the
stream. I saw Portland fall off a log fence, break the overhanging bank, and
clatter down to the pebbles all sand and landing net, and I dropped on a log
to rest for a moment.
As I drew breath the weary hands slackened their hold, and I forgot to
give him the butt. A wild scutter in the water, a plunge and a break for the
head-waters of the Clackamas was my reward, and the hot toil of reeling-in
with one eye under the water and the other on the top joint of the rod, was
renewed. Worst of all, I was blocking California’s path to the little landing
bay aforesaid, and he had to halt and tire his prize where he was. “The
father of all salmon!” he shouted. “For the love of heaven, get your trout to
bank, Johnny Bull.” But I could do no more. Even the insult failed to move
me. The rest of the game was with the salmon. He suffered himself to be
drawn, skipping with pretended delight at getting to the haven where I fain
would have him. Yet no sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous
belly than he backed like a torpedo boat, and the snarl of the reel told me
that my labor was in vain. A dozen times at least this happened ere the line
hinted that he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He was
towed. The landing net was useless for one of his size, and I would not have
him gaffed. I stepped into the shallows and heaved him out with a respectful
hand under the gill, for which kindness he battered me about the legs with
his tail, and I felt the strength of him and was proud. California had taken
my place in the shallows, his fish hard held. I was up on the bank lying full
length on the sweet-scented grass, gasping in company with my first salmon
caught, played, and landed on an eight-ounce rod. My hands were cut and
bleeding. I was dripping with sweat, spangled like harlequin with scales,
wet from the waist down, nose peeled by the sun, but utterly, supremely,
and consummately happy. He, the beauty, the daisy, the darling, my Salmon

Bahadur, weighed twelve pounds, and I had been seven and thirty minutes
bringing him to bank! He had been lightly hooked on the angle of the right
jaw, and the hook had not wearied him. That hour I sat among princes and
crowned heads—greater than them all. Below the bank we heard California
scuffling with his salmon, and swearing Spanish oaths. Portland and I
assisted at the capture, and the fish dragged the spring-balance out by the
roots. It was only constructed to weigh up to fifteen pounds. We stretched
the three fish on the grass,—the eleven-and-a-half, the twelve, and the
fifteen-pounder, and we swore an oath that all who came after should
merely be weighed and put back again.
How shall I tell the glories of that day so that you may be interested?
Again and again did California and I prance down that little reach to the
little bay, each with a salmon in tow, and land him in the shallows. Then
Portland took my rod, and caught some ten-pounders, and my spoon was
carried away by an unknown leviathan. Each fish, for the merits of the three
that had died so gamely, was hastily hooked on the balance and flung back,
Portland recording the weight in a pocketbook, for he was a real-estate man.
Each fish fought for all he was worth, and none more savagely than the
smallest—a game little six-pounder. At the end of six hours we added up
the list. Total: 16 fish, aggregate weight, 142 lbs. The score in detail runs
something like this—it is only interesting to those concerned: 15, 111/2, 12,
10, 93/4, 8, and so forth; as I have said, nothing under six pounds, and three
ten-pounders.
Very solemnly and thankfully we put up our rods—it was glory enough
for all time—and returned weeping in each other’s arms—weeping tears of
pure joy—to that simple, barelegged family in the packing-case house by
the waterside.

WINTER ANIMALS
By Henry David Thoreau

HEN the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new
and shorter routes to many points, but new views from their
surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed
Flint’s Pond, after it was covered with snow, though I had often
paddled about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and
so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin’s Bay. The Lincoln hills
rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not
remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable
distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed
for sealers or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous
creatures, and I did not know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took
this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, traveling in no
road and passing no house between my hut and the lecture room. In Goose
Pond, which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their
cabins high above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed
it. Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow
and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard, where I could walk freely when
the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers
were confined to their streets. There, far from the village street, and, except
at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh bells, I slid and skated, as in
a vast moose-yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines
bent down with snow or bristling with icicles.
For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the forlorn
but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the
frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua
vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though I never

saw the bird while it was making it. I seldom opened my door in a winter
evening without hearing; Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo, sounded sonorously,
and the first three syllables accented somewhat like how der do; or
sometimes hoo hoo only. One night in the beginning of winter, before the
pond froze over, about nine o’clock, I was startled by the loud honking of a
goose, and, stepping to the door, heard the sound of their wings like a
tempest in the woods as they flew low over my house. They passed over the
pond toward Fair Haven, seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their
commodore honking all the while with a regular beat. Suddenly an
unmistakable cat-owl from very near me, with the most harsh and
tremendous voice I ever heard from any inhabitant of the woods, responded
at regular intervals to the goose, as if determined to expose and disgrace
this intruder from Hudson’s Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and
volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoo him out of Concord horizon.
“What do you mean by alarming the citadel at this time of night consecrated
to me? Do you think I am ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I
have not got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-
hoo!“ It was one of the most thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet, if you
had a discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such as
these plains never saw nor heard.
I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bedfellow in
that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn
over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the
cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team
against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a
quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.
Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow crust, in
moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking raggedly
and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or
seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs outright and run
freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into our account, may there not
be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men? They seemed to me
to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defence, awaiting
their transformation. Sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by
my light, barked a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated.

THE RED SQUIRREL

Usually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked me in the dawn,
coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if sent out
of the woods for this purpose. In the course of the winter I threw out half a
bushel of ears of sweet corn, which had not got ripe, on to the snow crust by
my door, and was amused by watching the motions of the various animals
which were baited by it. In the twilight and the night the rabbits came
regularly and made a hearty meal. All day long the red squirrels came and
went, and afforded me much entertainment by their manoeuvres. One would
approach at first warily through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust
by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way,
with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with
his “trotters,” as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but
never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing
with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in
the universe were fixed on him—for all the motions of a squirrel, even in
the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of
a dancing girl—wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would
have sufficed to walk the whole distance—I never saw one walk—and then
suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a
young pitch-pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary
spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time—
for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect.
At length he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, brisk
about in the same uncertain trigonometrical way to the topmost stick of my
wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and there sit

for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time to time, nibbling at
first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about; till at length he
grew more dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the inside of
the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw,
slipped from his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look
over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it
had life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, or a new one, or
be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in the wind. So
the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in a forenoon; till at
last, seizing some longer and plumper one, considerably bigger than
himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would set out with it to the woods,
like a tiger with a buffalo, by the same zigzag course and frequent pauses,
scratching along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the
while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal,
being determined to put it through at any rate—a singularly frivolous and
whimsical fellow—and so he would get off with it to where he lived,
perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and I
would afterward find the cobs strewed about the woods in various
directions.
At length the jays arrived, whose discordant screams were heard long
before, as they were warily making their approach an eighth of a mile off;
and in a stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree, nearer and
nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels have dropped. Then,
sitting on a pitch-pine bough, they attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel
which is too big for their throats and chokes them; and after great labor they
disgorge it, and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows
with their bills. They were manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect
for them; but the squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if they were
taking what was their own.
Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the
crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig, and, placing
them under their claws, hammered away at them with their little bills, as if
it were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced for their
slender throats. A little flock of these titmice came daily to pick a dinner out
of my wood pile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes,
like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day day day, or

more rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry summery phe-be from the wood-
side. They were so familiar that at length one alighted on an armful of wood
which I was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once had a
sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a
village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance
than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels
also grew at last to be quite familiar and occasionally stepped upon my
shoe, when that was the nearest way.
When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of
winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside and about my
wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to
feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts away
on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs on high,
which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust; for this brave
bird is not to be scared by winter. It is frequently covered up by drifts, and,
it is said, “sometimes plunges from on wing into the soft snow, where it
remains concealed for a day or two.” I used to start them in the open land
also, where they had come out of the woods at sunset to “bud” the wild
apple trees. They will come regularly every evening to particular trees,
where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and the distant orchards
next the woods suffer thus not a little. I am glad that the partridge gets fed
at any rate. It is Nature’s own bird which lives on buds and diet-drink.
In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes heard
a pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry and yelp,
unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting horn at
intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods ring again, and yet
no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the pond, nor following pack
pursuing their Actæon. And perhaps at evening I see the hunters returning
with a single brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn.
They tell me that if the fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth
he would be safe, or if he would run in a straight line away no foxhound
could overtake him; but, having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest
and listen till they come up, and when he runs he circles round to his old
haunts, where the hunters await him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon
a wall many rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know
that water will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a fox

pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was covered with
shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the same shore. Ere
long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. Sometimes a pack
hunting by themselves would pass my door, and circle round my house, and
yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a species of
madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit. Thus they
circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will
forsake everything else for this. One day a man came to my hut from
Lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large track, and had been
hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I
told him, for every time I attempted to answer his questions he interrupted
me by asking, “What do you do here?” He had lost a dog, but found a man.
One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in
Walden once every year when the water was warmest, and at such times
looked in upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one
afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Wood, and as he walked the
Wayland road he heard the cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox
leaped the wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall
out of the road, and his swift bullet had not touched him. Some way behind
came an old hound and her three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own
account, and disappeared again in the woods. Later in the afternoon, as he
was resting in the thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of the
hounds far over toward Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and on they came,
their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sounding nearer and
nearer, now from Well Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. For a long time
he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter’s ear, when
suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles with an easy
coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the
leaves, swift and still, keeping the ground, leaving his pursuers far behind;
and, leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and listening, with his
back to the hunter. For a moment compassion restrained the latter’s arm; but
that was a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his
piece was levelled, and whang!—the fox rolling over the rock lay dead on
the ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds. Still
on they came, and now the near woods resounded through all their aisles
with their demoniac cry. At length the old hound burst into view with

muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly
to the rock; but spying the dead fox she suddenly ceased her hounding, as if
struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round him in silence;
and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother, were sobered into
silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came forward and stood in their
midst, and the mystery was solved. They waited in silence while he skinned
the fox, then followed the brush awhile, and at length turned off into the
woods again. That evening a Weston Squire came to the Concord hunter’s
cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told how for a week they had been
hunting on their own account from Weston woods. The Concord hunter told
him what he knew and offered him the skin; but the other declined it and
departed. He did not find his hounds that night, but the next day learned that
they had crossed the river and put up at a farm-house for the night, whence,
having been well fed, they took their departure early in the morning.
The hunter who told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who used
to hunt bears on Fair-Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum in
Concord village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose there.
Nutting had a famous foxhound named Burgoyne,—he pronounced it
Bugine,—which my informant used to borrow. In the “Wast Book” of an
old trader of this town, who was also a captain, townclerk, and
representative, I find the following entry: Jan. 18th, 1742-3, “John Melven
Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0—2—3;” they are not found here; and in his ledger,
Feb. 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has credit “by 1/2 a Catt skin 0—1—
41/2;” of course a wild cat, for Stratton was a sergeant in the old French war,
and would not have got credit for hunting less noble game. Credit is given
for deerskins also, and they were daily sold. One man still preserves the
horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told me
the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged. The hunters
were formerly a numerous and merry crew here. I remember well one gaunt
Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by the road-side and play a strain on it
wilder and more melodious, if my memory serves me, than any hunting
horn.
At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with hounds in
my path prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my way as if
afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed.

Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. There were scores
of pitch-pines around my house, from one to four inches in diameter, which
had been gnawed by mice the previous winter,—a Norwegian winter for
them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they were obliged to mix a large
proportion of pine bark with their other diet. These trees were alive and
apparently flourishing at midsummer, and many of them had grown a foot,
though completely girdled; but after another winter such were without
exception dead. It is remarkable that a single mouse should thus be allowed
a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and down it;
but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these trees, which are wont to
grow up densely.
The hares (Lepus Americanus) were very familiar. One had her form
under my house all winter, separated from me only by the flooring, and she
startled me each morning by her hasty departure when I began to stir—
thump, thump, thump, striking her head against the floor timbers in her
hurry. They used to come round my door at dusk to nibble the potato
parings which I had thrown out, and were so nearly the color of the ground
that they could hardly be distinguished when still. Sometimes in the twilight
I alternately lost and recovered sight of one sitting motionless under my
window. When I opened my door in the evening, off they would go with a
squeak and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One evening
one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with fear, yet
unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and
sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked as if Nature no longer
contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large
eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo,
away it scudded with an elastic spring over the snow crust, straightening its
body and its limbs into graceful length, and soon put the forest between me
and itself—the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of
Nature. Not without reason was its slenderness. Such then was its nature
(Lepus, levipes, lightfoot, some think).
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the
most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable
families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and
substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground—and to one
another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a

wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as
much to be expected as rustling leaves. The partridge and the rabbit are still
sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. If the
forest is cut off, the sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them
concealment, and they become more numerous than ever. That must be a
poor country indeed that does not support a hare. Our woods teem with
them both, and around every swamp may be seen the partridge or rabbit
walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse-hair snares, which some cow-boy
tends.

TREES AND ANTS THAT HELP EACH
OTHER 306-1
By Thomas Belt

NE low tree, very characteristic of the dry savannahs, is a species
of acacia, belonging to the section Gummiferoe, with bi-pinnate
leaves, growing to a height of fifteen or twenty feet. The branches
and trunk are covered with strong curved spines, set in pairs,
from which it receives the name of the bull’s-horn, they having a
very strong resemblance to the horns of that quadruped. These horns are
hollow, and are tenanted by ants, that make a small hole for their entrance
and exit near one end of the thorn, and also burrow through the partition
that separates the two horns; so that the one entrance serves for both. Here
they rear their young, and in the wet season every one of the thorns is
tenanted, and hundreds of ants are to be seen running about, especially over
the young leaves. If one of these be touched, or a branch shaken, the little
ants swarm out from the hollow thorns, and attack the aggressor with jaws
and sting. They sting severely, raising a little white lump that does not
disappear in less than twenty-four hours.
These ants form a most efficient standing army for the plant, which
prevents not only the mammalia from browsing on the leaves, but delivers it
from the attacks of a much more dangerous enemy—the leaf-cutting ants.
For these services the ants are not only securely housed by the plant, but are
provided with a bountiful supply of food; and to secure their attendance at
the right time and place, this food is so arranged and distributed as to effect
that object with wonderful perfection. The leaves are bi-pinnate. At the base
of each pair of leaflets, on the midrib, is a crater-formed gland, which, when
the leaves are young, secretes a honey-like liquid. Of this the ants are very
fond; they are constantly running about from one gland to another to sip up

the honey as it is secreted. But this is not all; there is a still more wonderful
provision of more solid food. At the end of each of the small divisions of
the compound leaflet there is, when the leaf first unfolds, a little yellow
fruit-like body united by a point at its base to the end of the pinnule.
Examined through a microscope, this little appendage looks like a golden
pear. When the leaf first unfolds, the little pears are not quite ripe, and the
ants are continually employed going from one to another, examining them.
When an ant finds one sufficiently advanced, it bites the small point of
attachment; then, bending down the fruit-like body, it breaks it off and bears
it away in triumph to the nest. All the fruit-like bodies do not ripen at once,
but successively, so that the ants are kept about the young leaf for some
time after it unfolds. Thus the young leaves are always guarded by the ants;
and no caterpillar or large animal could attempt to injure them without
being attacked by the little warriors. The fruit-like bodies are about one-
twelfth of an inch long, and are about one-third of the size of the ants; so
that the ant bearing one away is as heavily laden as a man bearing a large
bunch of plantains. I think these facts show that the ants are really kept by
the acacia as a standing army, to protect its leaves from the attacks of
herbivorous mammals and insects.
The bull’s-horn thorn does not grow at the mines in the forest, nor are the
small ants attending on them found there. They seem specially adapted for
the tree, and I have seen them nowhere else. Besides the little ants, I found
another ant that lives on these acacias, whose habits appear to be rather
different. It makes the holes of entrance to the thorns near the centre of one
of each pair, and not near the end, and it is not so active as the other species.
It is also rather scarce; but when it does occur, it occupies the whole tree, to
the exclusion of the other. The glands on the acacia are also frequented by a
small species of wasp. I sowed the seeds of the acacia in my garden, and
reared some young plants. Ants of many kinds were numerous; but none of
them took to the thorns for shelter, nor the glands and fruit-like bodies for
food; for, as I have already mentioned, the species that attend on the thorns
are not found in the forest. The leaf-cutting ants attacked the young plants,
and defoliated them; but I have never seen any of the trees out on the
savannahs that are guarded touched by them, and have no doubt the acacia
is protected from them by its little warriors. The thorns, when they are first
developed, are soft, and filled with a sweetish, pulpy substance; so that the