Project Gutenberg's Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4, by Various

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Title: Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4

Author: Various

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THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

VOL. V.--APRIL, 1864.--No. IV.




SIR CHARLES LYELL ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.[1]


When Thomas Chalmers, sixty years ago, lecturing at St. Andrews,
ventured to announce his conviction that 'the writings of Moses do not
fix the antiquity of the globe,' he startled and alarmed, to no small
degree, the orthodoxy of the day. It was a statement far in advance of
the religious thinking of the time. That massive breadth and
comprehensiveness of intellect which soon placed him, _facile princeps_,
at the head of the clergy of Scotland, joined with a candor, and
ingenuous honesty, which made him admired and beloved by all, could not
fail to perceive, and would not hesitate to acknowledge, the force of
the evidence then for some time slowly but steadily and surely
accumulating from the investigations and discoveries of geological
science, which has forced back the origin of the earth to a vast and
undated antiquity. But nothing could have been farther from the
imagination of the great majority of evangelical, unscientific clergymen
of his day. They held that the writings of Moses fixed the antiquity of
the globe as surely as they fixed anything else. And it required no
little boldness in the lecturer to announce a doctrine which was likely
to raise about his ears the hue and cry of heresy. But fortunately for
the rising Boanerges of the Scottish pulpit, whatever questions might
arise in philology and criticism as to the meaning of the writings of
Moses, the evidence adduced in behalf of _the fact_ of the earth's
antiquity was of such a nature that it could not be resisted, and he not
only escaped a prosecution for heresy, but lived to see the doctrine he
had broached almost universally accepted by the religious world.

If now some divine of acknowledged power and position in any branch of
the Christian Church were to put forth the statement that 'the writings
of Moses do not fix the antiquity of man,' he would startle the ear of
orthodoxy quite as much, but no more than did Chalmers in the early
years of the present century. And if he would fare more hardly than the
Scottish divine, and fall under the ban of church censure, which is not
unlikely, it would be because the evidence for the fact is still
inchoate and resistible by the force of established opinion. But it is
quite within the range of possible things that before the close of the
present century two things may happen: first, that the evidence for a
high antiquity of the human race may accumulate to such an extent as to
carry with it involuntarily the consent of mankind; and second, that the
sacred writings may be found to adjust themselves as easily to this new
finding in the sphere of induction, as they have already done, in the
general mind of the Church, to the doctrine of the great age of the
earth. The two statements are indeed very much akin in several respects.
They both traverse the accepted meaning of the sacred writings at the
time of their announcement. Both are considered, when first promulged,
as irreconcilable with the plain teaching and consequent inspiration of
the Scriptures. Both rest solely, as to their evidence, in the sphere of
inductive science, and are determinable wholly by the finding of facts
accumulated and compared by the processes of inductive reasoning. And
both, if thus established, are destined to be accepted by the general
mind of the age, without actual harm to the real interests of
civilization and religion. No _fact_, which is a fact and not an
illusion, can do harm to any of the vital interests of mankind. No truth
can stand in hopeless antagonism to any other truth. To suppose
otherwise would be to resolve the moral government of God into a
hopeless enigma, or enthrone a perpetual and hostile dualism, resigning
the universe to the rival and contending sway of Ormuzd and Ahriman.

Before proceeding to the merits of Sir Charles Lyell's discussion, we
wish to glance at some preliminary matters touching the great debate now
pending between science and theology. We wish to review the posture and
temper of the parties; and particularly to refer to the tone and spirit
of the religious press and the pulpit, respecting the alleged
discoveries and claims of science, and their bearing upon the religious
opinion of the time.

Moreover, in passing, the present writer begs permission to say that he
speaks from the orthodox side of this question; he hails from the
orthodox camp; he wears the clerical vesture of the Scottish worthies;
and is affiliated theologically with Knox and Chalmers, with Edwards and
Alexander, with the New York _Observer_ and the Princeton _Review_. This
much we beg to say, that what follows in these pages may be fully
understood.

No one who has been attending to the subject with any degree of interest
can have failed to observe that science, in her investigations upon the
grand and momentous themes which have absorbed her attention in these
latter years, has exhibited, and does still exhibit, a steady and
well-defined purpose, and has pursued it with a singularly calm, sober,
unimpassioned, yet resolute temper. Its posture is firm, steady,
self-poised, conscious of rectitude, and anticipative of veritable and
valuable results. Its spirit, though eager, is quiet; though
enthusiastic, is cautious; though ardent, is sceptical; though flushed
with success, is trained to the discipline of disappointment. Its object
is to interrogate nature. It stands at the shrine and awaits the
response of the oracle. It would fain interpret and make intelligible
the wondrous hieroglyphics of this universe, and specially the mystic
characters traced by the long-revolving ages upon the stony tablets of
this planet Earth. It has in the first instance no creed to support, no
dogmas to verify, no meaning to foist upon nature; its sole and single
query is, What does nature teach? What _is_ fact? What _is_ truth? What
_has_ occurred in the past annals of this planet? What _is_ the actual
and true history of its bygone ages, and of the dwellers therein? These
are its questions, addressed to nature by such methods as experience has
taught will reach her ear, and it does not hesitate to take nature's
answer. It does not shrink, and quake, and grow pale lest the response
should overturn some ancient notion. It does not dread to hear the
response, lest morals or religion should be thereby imperilled. It
boldly and resolutely takes the teaching of nature, whatever it may be.
Its conviction is that truth never can be anything else than truth; that
fact can never be anything else than fact; and that no two truths or two
facts in God's universe can be in hopeless and irreconcilable
contradiction.

In this spirit the genuine sons of science have exhibited, what has
seemed to some, a heartless indifference whether their discoveries or
theories harmonized with the Scriptures or not, or affected the received
opinions of Christendom on subjects pertaining to religion or morals.
They have been sublimely unconcerned as to results in any such
direction. They have investigated, examined, compared, collated, with
long-continued and patient toil, to gather from the buried past the
actual story of its departed cycles; they have not been troubled lest
they should impinge on the creeds of the religious world, or compel
important modifications in the lectures of learned Professors. This was
no care of theirs. They discovered facts, they did not make them.

Now with all due respect for the opinions and feelings of religious
people, we hesitate not to affirm that this spirit is the only true one
in scientific men. Conceding, as we must, the supremacy of facts in
their own sphere, and granting that, as mundane and human affairs now
stand, the evidence of the senses, purged from fraud and illusion, must
be held to be conclusive, we cheerfully award to scientific men the
largest liberty to pursue their inquiries in matters of fact, utterly
regardless of the havoc which may be thereby wrought among the
traditional, beliefs of men. In no other way can science be true to
herself. She is the child of induction. She can acknowledge no authority
but what has been enthroned by inductive reasoning; and were she to
adjust her conclusions, and garble her facts, to suit the faiths,
beliefs, prejudices, or traditions of men, she would thereby falsify her
inmost life, and stultify herself before the world. And in this
connection we may premise that we regard as worthy of all commendation
the straightforward and unembarrassed manner in which Sir Charles Lyell
pursues his inquiries into the geological evidences of the antiquity of
man. He could not have been unaware that he was striking a ponderous
blow at one of the main traditions of Christendom; nay, that if
successful in establishing his conclusions, he must revolutionize, to a
large extent, the religious thinking of the civilization amid which he
moves; and yet he moves steadily and quietly forward, calm as Marius
amid the ruins of Carthage, not stopping to consider what Biblical men
will do with his facts; never more than touching upon their religious
bearings; intent only on ascertaining what the facts are, and what they
teach. This, we say, is the spirit and temper of the true
philosopher--this betokens the genuine son of science. As well might we
demand of Watt, or Fulton, or Davy, or Brewster, or Faraday, in pursuing
their inquiries into the nature and laws of steam, electricity,
galvanism, or light, to be careful that their discoveries impinge not on
the teachings of religion or the creed of orthodoxy, as to demand of
Lyell to investigate the antiquity of man in humble deference to the
well-established belief of the whole Christian world that he has no such
antiquity. Not a bitter thing is said in the whole book against any
traditional belief; the Scriptures are scarcely more than alluded to; he
seems scarcely conscious that he is attempting to establish conclusions
at variance with the cherished creeds of vast multitudes of men. To some
this may seem the callousness of infidelity; to us it seems the sublime
composure of science. To him, the fact in the case is everything; and he
is content to leave it to work its own results.

What now, on the other hand, have been the spirit and temper of the
religious press and the pulpit touching the progress of science, and
especially its encroachments upon the ancient landmarks of traditional
belief? We are sorry to be compelled to say that, with some honorable
exceptions, the spirit manifested by religious journals and clergymen
generally, has not been worthy of unqualified admiration. In many
instances they have shown a dogged determination to hear nothing on the
subject. Assuming, with absolute confidence, not only that the
Scriptures are what the Church claims them to be, but that their
interpretation of them is infallible, they have affected to ignore all
the findings of science, and to treat them, in their bearing on Biblical
interpretation, as profane intermeddling with divine things. They seem
to imagine that their safety consists in not seeing danger, like the
ostrich hiding its head in the sand, and supposing that thereby its
whole body is protected. In other instances, while professing a
willingness to hear--to seek truth--to not be afraid of the light--to
boast of science even as the handmaid of religion--they have shown a
disposition to decry the alleged discoveries of science, to ridicule its
supposed facts, to make light of a whole concatenation of evidence, to
prate of the uncertainties and vacillations of science, to sneer at
'sciolists,' or 'mere men of science,' to warn against the 'babblings of
science' and 'philosophy falsely so called,' and meantime they have
betrayed a nervous sensitiveness with regard to certain alleged
discoveries and facts coming to the popular ear. They affect to sneer at
the 'wise week' of the meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, and to turn the proceedings of that body into
ridicule, by caricaturing the importance attached to some minor organ of
the human or animal frame, in the determination of specific identity or
difference. While absolutely ignorant of the true state of the case as
it stands in the scientific world, they thunder from the pulpit in the
ears of their people--a position where they are safe from
reply--crudities and monstrosities of science at which the humblest
member of the aforesaid Association would smile. In other instances,
with a most unfortunate or misguided zeal, they would fain compel
Christian faith to override and traverse all those great laws of
evidence which regulate human belief in other matters. They do not
dispute the facts of science when clearly established--they will concede
to them an existence as facts in their own sphere--but they hold the
Scriptures, as being inspired and infallible, to be transcendent and
paramount, and not to be affected by any possible combination of facts.
That is to say, if the Scriptures teach the unity of the race, or the
universality of the deluge, or the modern origin of man--and if they
understand them to teach these things, they do teach them for them--they
hold that no amount of evidence which science may adduce can be of any
avail, even though it might amount to absolute certainty, did not the
Scriptures stand in the way. You may believe the facts of science, if
you choose, but the Scriptures must be believed to the contrary
notwithstanding. If science does not agree with the Scriptures, so much
the worse for science--that is its own affair. This is the sentiment,
distinctly uttered not long since by a learned American Professor.
Consistently with this view, they maintain that the Scriptures are to be
held as an _authority_ in scientific matters; that science must order
its conclusions in accordance with them; and that any facts are to be
distrusted which conflict with the declarations of the Bible. They would
thus place the Scriptures and nature in a posture of antagonism; and
require Christian faith to trample upon and triumph over the evidence
of the senses, as it is required to triumph over the world, the flesh,
and the devil. What must be thought of an otherwise educated body of men
who would willingly reduce the faith of the Christian world to such a
posture as that?

Furthermore, in the general spirit and temper of the religious press
with reference to science and scientific men, there is much to criticize
and condemn. It is often snappish, petulant, ill-humored, unfair, and
sometimes malicious in the extreme. Such opprobrious terms as
infidelity, irreligion, rationalizing tendencies, naturalism, contempt
for the Scriptures, etc., are freely used. Scientific men are called
infidel pretenders, and are charged with a secret conspiracy to
overthrow the faith of the Christian world. A respectable religious
weekly paper in this country, in noticing Sir Charles Lyell's work,
while carefully withholding from its readers the slightest notion of the
array of evidence adduced in the book, is prompt to inform them that the
learned author shows his want of respect for the Word of God. Another,
in noticing the account of the last hours of Mr. Buckle, is almost ready
to exult in the fact that in the wreck and prostration of his great
powers he whined out piteously: 'I am going mad!' and intimates that his
mental sufferings are to be attributed to the judicial visitation of
God, inflicted as a punishment for the employment of those powers in the
service of infidelity. An able, though generally absurd quarterly
journal, in reviewing Hugh Miller's 'Testimony of the Rocks,' finds in
some of his gorgeous speculations premonitions of that mental aberration
which ended his life, and does not hesitate to attribute the final
catastrophe to the overworking of his powers in the service of
pretentious and unsanctified science. Noble and true-hearted son of the
Church though he was, and though laboring with herculean strength to set
the Bible and science in harmony, he has not escaped the envenomed
shafts of a portion of the religious press. By some he has been openly
branded as a traitor in the camp.

Now this unseemly heat and this unbecoming spirit and temper may be
cloaked under a zeal for religion. It may be said that we are to
'contend earnestly for the faith.' We answer, verily, but never with the
weapons of malice and wickedness. This mode of treating science, if
persisted in, must end only in chagrin and defeat to the parties
employing it, for the simple reason that it does violence to reason,
nature, and all the laws of man's being. Science cannot be turned aside
in her strenuous and ever-successful progress by any such impediments
thrown in her way. The clear, calm, cogent facts and inferences of the
philosopher cannot be met successfully by the half-suppressed shriek of
the mere Biblicist. And it must be at once perceived that any such
treatment of science, any such half-concealed fear of the progress of
science, any such unfair and spiteful bearing toward scientific men,
argues a secret distrust of the system or doctrine which is assumed to
be held and professedly defended. These petulant and much disturbed
editors and divines must be really afraid that the ground is being
undermined beneath their feet. If a man _really believes_ the
inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures, he may feel perfectly
at ease as to any facts present or past in the wide universe. But if he
is not so sure of them, and wishes, for some personal or interested
motive, to believe them, he will be easily disturbed by anything which
seems to militate against them. If the Scriptures are true, they can
never be shown to be false--if they are not true, we ought not to wish
to believe them.

The spirit and temper above indicated are wholly out of harmony with the
general spirit of Protestant Christianity. It has ever been the boast of
Protestantism that it seeks the light, that it seeks discussion, that
it asserts the right of private judgment, that it courts investigation,
and is willing to expose all its claims to the broad light of day. It
claims to be an everlasting protest against priestly tyranny, and
monkish authority, and abject spiritual servitude in the laity. Strange,
if in this new phase of its history it should fail to be true to itself!

After the Christian world came generally to accept the statement of
Chalmers that the writings of Moses do not fix the antiquity of the
world, and before science had begun to moot seriously the questions of
the unity of the race, the universality of the Noahian deluge, and the
antiquity of man, it was the custom of clergymen generally to reecho the
true Protestant strain. They claimed science. They expected much of her.
They wished full and free discussion in order that still stronger
ramparts might be erected around the citadel of their faith. Why should
the tone be changed now? In the year 1840, the Rev. Albert Barnes, of
Philadelphia, who has long occupied a highly respectable and influential
position among the clerical body in this country, in an address on the
'Progress and Tendencies of Science,' delivered before the literary
societies of one of the colleges of Pennsylvania, gave utterance to the
following noble sentiments:

     'It has cost much to overcome this'--that is, the panic fears of
     Christian people at the amazing progress and discoveries of
     science--'and to restore confidence to the Christian world that the
     researches of science will never permanently clash with the
     doctrines of revelation. But the Christian world has come to that;
     and science is to receive no more obstruction henceforth from any
     alarm that its discoveries will contravene the revealed truth of
     God. No future Galileo is to be imprisoned because he can look
     farther into the works of nature than other men; and the point
     which we have gained now, is that no obstruction is to be thrown in
     the way of science by any dread that any scientific truth will
     infringe on any theological system. The great truth has gone forth
     at last, not to be recalled, that the astronomer may point his
     glass to the heavens as long and as patiently as he pleases,
     without apprehending opposition from the Christian world; the
     chemist may subject all objects to the action of the crucible and
     the blowpipe, 'with none to molest him or make him afraid;' the
     geologist may penetrate to any part of the earth--may dig as deep
     as he pleases, and no one may be alarmed.'

This exhibits true Christian courage and confidence, and has the genuine
Protestant ring. It is based, however, on the supposition that no
possible conflict can arise between science and his understanding of the
Scriptures, and it is doubtful whether the same equanimity could be
maintained even in the author's mind if the 'progress and tendencies of
science' should take an unexpected direction. Thus, in the same address,
he says:

     'One fact is remarkable. The geologist proves that the world has
     stood many thousands of years, and we cannot deny it. He points to
     fossil remains, and tells us of orders of animals that lived many
     years before the Mosaic period of the creation of man. The Bible
     tells us that MAN was created about six thousand years
     ago. Now, the material fact is, that amid all the fossil remains of
     the geologist, and all the records of past times, there is no proof
     that _man_ has lived longer than that period; but there is abundant
     proof to the contrary. Amid all on which the geologist relies to
     demonstrate the existence of animals prior to the Mosaic account of
     the creation, he has not presented us with _one human bone_, or
     with one indication of the existence of man.'

This is one of the facts, among others, upon which 'the friends of
science and revelation have equal cause to congratulate themselves and
each other.' But what if the fact should change? What if not only one,
but many fossil human bones should be found? How is a divine, who has
already said that the _Bible teaches_ the modern origin of man, to
avoid panic fears? Science is cumulative in its evidences, and it is
somewhat hazardous to undertake to say, at any point, that the _ultima
thule_ of discovery has been reached.

We reiterate now, in the conclusion of these preliminary matters, the
sentiment of Mr. Barnes that science must be free and untrammelled. No
matter what discoveries may be made, what traditions overturned, what
faiths unsettled, science must have a free rein and an open course. It
must be so; unless we return to mediaeval darkness and despotism.
Science, to be science at all, must establish its conclusions by its own
methods, and its methods must be intact and supreme, no matter what
facts they force upon the belief of mankind. It cannot accept any
extraneous authority. It cannot admit any foregone conclusions. It
cannot accept the statements, for instance, of the first chapter of
Genesis as astronomical, meteorological, geological, or ethnological
_facts_, as the able but absurd Review before referred to would insist.
It must verify its own facts. It cannot heed the caveat of any number or
body of clergymen, or orthodox weekly newspapers, who might come forward
and say, respecting the unity of the race, or the antiquity of man:
'Gentlemen, that question is settled. It is put beyond the purview of
your science. An absolute and infallible authority has determined it. To
moot it is profane.' Any such attempt would be both preposterous and
useless. The age will defend the freedom of science; and let all
reasonable and right-thinking men take comfort in the conviction that in
the long run the conclusions reached will be right, in accordance with
fact, in accordance with truth, and that no permanent interest of
religion or morals can suffer.

But we beg pardon for holding the reader so long by the button, while
Sir Charles Lyell and his book have been kept in the background. These
thoughts have been upon our mind for many months, and we have felt
impelled to give utterance to them here.

The publication of this work we regard as an eventful matter in the
history of modern thought. The time could not have been far distant when
what we may call the geological history of man on this planet, must have
come before the popular mind; and it is certainly a matter of
congratulation that one of the most venerable, indefatigable, cautious,
and successful investigators of modern times has undertaken the task of
giving to the public a full and labored _resume_ of the evidence which
has accumulated on the subject. Not unfrequently are the bigotry and
prejudice of well-meaning religious people intensified by the imprudent
zeal of the Hotspurs of science. True science can always afford to bide
its time, and make haste slowly.

Respecting the work itself, we begin by saying that the theme proposed
is a perfectly legitimate one for science. It is entirely pertinent to
science to undertake to search for the hidden traces of man's former
history, if there be any. It is no dreamland or cloudland which it
proposes to explore. It is no Quixotic adventure which it has gotten up
to astonish and alarm the vulgar. If our human ancestors have lived
fifty or one hundred thousand years longer on this planet than was
generally supposed, it is quite likely they have left some traces behind
them. And if so, it is perfectly legitimate for science to gather,
collate, and interpret those traces. And from what we know of her past
achievements, we may assure ourselves that if man has had such a
pre-historic existence, science will most undoubtedly prove it. She has
proved beyond all sane contradiction the great age of the earth. She has
proved in like manner the vast extent of the universe in space. She has
proved the existence of manifold forms of animal life on this planet for
countless ages before the incoming of man, according to the popular
chronology. She has proved, approximately, the order and succession of
animal life as it arose, and the forms it assumed as the long cycles of
ages rolled on. All these were legitimate themes for science; and all of
them were opposed to the popular belief at the time--as much so as is
the antiquity of man now. And further, we say that the mere suspicion
that any such thing may be--the mere surmise of any such fact--the
merest inkling which scientific men may get of a secret yet hidden
beneath the veil, and waiting to be revealed--is a sufficient
justification of those _tentative_ efforts of science which often result
in the attainment of some grand discovery. Let no timid religionist
charge upon scientific men that they are conspiring with malice prepense
to undermine the popular creeds and overthrow the Bible. This is sheer
nonsense. They follow where nature beckons them. If man has had a high
antiquity on this earth, science will find it out and prove it beyond a
doubt. If he has not had such antiquity, science will discover that too,
and prove it. All we have to do is to let science have her way.

Another remark which we make here, is respecting the power which a
_single fact_ may have in this investigation. It is not often that great
questions in history, or social polity, or jurisprudence are determined
by a single fact. The great results of history, economics, and law are
effected by the converging power of many facts. So also in science. Its
great results are determined by the accumulated power of multitudinous
facts. Its final categories are fixed by abundant certainties and
manifold inductions. And yet it may sometimes occur that a single fact
may be of such a nature that there is no escaping the conclusion which
it forces upon the mind. It may concentrate in itself all the elements
of certainty usually obtained from many sources. It may be determinative
in its very nature, and admit of scepticism only at the expense of
rationality. A single human grave, with its entombed skeleton,
discovered in some uninhabited waste, where it was never known the foot
of man had trod, would prove conclusively that human footsteps had once
trod there. The discovery of a single weapon of the quality and temper
of the Damascus blade amid the ruins of a buried city, would prove as
fully as would the discovery of a thousand that the people of that age
of the world understood the methods of working steel. One canoe found
moored to the bank of the Delaware, the Schuylkill, or the Susquehanna,
when the white man began to penetrate this continent, would have been
sufficient to prove that the aborigines understood, to that extent, the
art of navigation. So in science, one fossil of a different species from
any found heretofore in a certain deposit is sufficient to add another
to the forms of life represented by that deposit. One fossil found lower
in the geological scale than life was supposed to have begun on this
planet, is sufficient to prove that it had a still earlier beginning. So
with regard to contemporary forms of life, one fact may be sufficient to
warrant or compel a conclusion. Hugh Miller cites the instance of fossil
dung being found as proving to the anti-geologists that these fossils
were once real living creatures, and not mere freaks of nature. The
instance might not be thought conclusive, for if the Author of nature
saw fit to amuse himself by making the semblances of huge iguanodons,
elephants, and hippopotami, in the solid rocks, it might readily be
supposed that He would extend His amusement to the making of fossil
dung.[2] But now, if in the fossil entrails of the cave hyena the bones
of a hare should be found, it would prove conclusively to any but an
anti-geologist, that the hare lived contemporaneously with the hyena.

These remarks are not thrown in by way of apology for the paucity of
facts adduced by Sir Charles Lyell to prove the antiquity of man, but
merely to illustrate the force which it is possible, in certain
circumstances, for a single fact to have. Thus, for instance, the Scotch
fir is not now, nor ever has been in historic times, a native of the
Danish isles, yet it has been indigenous there in the human period, for
Steenstrup has taken out with his own hands a flint implement from
beneath one the buried trunks of that species in the Danish peat bogs.
Again, if an implement of human workmanship is found in close proximity
to the leg of a bear, or the horn of a reindeer, of extinct species, in
an ancient cavern, and all covered by a floor of stalagmite, we see not
how the conclusion is to be avoided that they were introduced into the
cave before the stalagmite was formed; and in that case the inference
that they were contemporaneous, or nearly so, may well be left to take
care of itself. The attempt has been made to treat with levity the whole
subject of the antiquity of man because of the numerical meagreness of
the facts adduced in support of it. But as to this, it need only be
observed that as a new theme for investigation, its facts must
necessarily be meagre, as must be the facts of any science in its
inchoate condition, and that they are steadily growing in volume, so
that it is not safe to venture a final verdict against it on that score.
The facts in support of the globular form of the earth, or the
Copernican theory of the heavens, or the great age of the earth, were at
one time meagre--they are not so now. Sir Charles Lyell is a pioneer
explorer in a new and mysterious realm: the time may come when, amid the
abundance of the treasure gathered from it, the scanty hoard which he
opens to his reader may seem meagre enough.

Nevertheless, Sir Charles Lyell is fully a believer in the doctrine of
the high antiquity of man. His book is not merely a debating-club
discussion of the pros and cons, the probabilities for and against the
doctrine, but rather the earnest pleading of the advocate fully
persuaded that the truth is on his side. Not that it displays any
forensic heat;--it is calm, cautious, dispassionate; but it has the air
of one governed by conviction, and he often assumes the entire truth of
his conclusions with the quiet _nonchalance_ of a man seemingly
unconscious that what he regards as matters of established certainty
will be viewed by the great majority of his fellow beings as startling
novelties.

The main stream of the geological evidence of the antiquity of man tends
to one point, viz., _that man coexisted with the extinct animals_. There
are collateral branches of proof, but this is the main channel. The
remains of man and of man's works and the remains of extinct races of
animals lie side by side, and claim from the geologist the same meed of
antiquity. This is the burden of the book before us. We offer the reader
a brief outline of this evidence. In doing so, we will follow the order
of Sir Charles Lyell's work, and merely state the leading facts which
geological investigations have brought to light.

In the Danish islands there are deposits of peat from ten to thirty feet
thick, formed in the hollows or depressions of the northern drift or
bowlder formation. These beds of peat have been examined to the bottom,
and they reveal the history of vegetation in those localities, and the
contemporaneous history of human progress. Beginning at the top, the
explorer finds the first layers to contain principally the trunks of the
beech tree, along with implements and tools of wood and iron. Below
these is a deposit of oak trunks, with implements mainly of bronze.
Farther down still he finds the trunks of the _Pinus sylvestris_, or
Scotch fir, together with implements of stone. This clearly indicates
that in the lapse of centuries the pine was supplanted by the oak, and
the oak by the beech, and that man advanced contemporaneously from the
knowledge and use of stone implements to those of bronze and iron. Now
the known fact is that in the time of the Romans, as now, the Danish
isles were covered by magnificent beech forests, and that eighteen
centuries have done little or nothing toward changing the character of
the vegetation. How many centuries must have elapsed to enable the oak
to supplant the pine, and the beech to supplant the oak, can only be
vaguely conjectured. Yet the evidence is clear that man lived in those
old pine forests--leaving his implements of stone behind him, as he did
his tools of bronze and iron in the succeeding periods. Along the coast
of Denmark, also, are found shell mounds mixed with flint knives,
hatchets, etc., but never any tools of bronze or iron, showing that the
rude hunters and fishers who fed on the oyster, cockle, and other
mollusks, lived in the period of the Scotch fir, or, as it has been
called, the 'age of stone.'

In many of the Swiss lakes are found ancient piles driven into the
bottom, on which were once erected huts or villages, the lacustrine
abodes of man. This use of them is proved by the abundance of flint
implements and fragments of rude pottery, together with bones of
animals, which have been dredged up from among the piles. The implements
found belong to the 'age of stone,' or the period of the Scotch fir in
Denmark, and the bones of animals are all, with one exception, those of
living species.

Passing over the fossil human remains and works of art of the 'recent'
period, as found in the delta and alluvial plain of the Nile, in the
ancient mounds of the valley of the Ohio, in the mounds of Santos in
Brazil, in the delta of the Mississippi, in which, at the depth of
sixteen feet from the surface, under four buried forests, superimposed
one upon the other, was found, a few years ago, a human skeleton,
estimated by Dr. B. Dowler to have been buried at least fifty thousand
years--in the coral reefs of Florida, in which fossil human remains were
found, estimated by Professor Agassiz to have an antiquity of ten
thousand years--in the recent deposits of seas and lakes, in the central
district of Scotland, which bears clear traces of an upheaval since the
human period, and in the raised beaches of Norway and Sweden--passing
over these for want of space for minute detail, we go back to the
post-pliocene period, and find the bones of man and works of art in
juxtaposition with the fossil remains of extinct mammalia.

In the cavern of Bize, in the south of France, and in the caves of
Engis, Engihoul, Chokier, and Goffontaine, near Liege, human bones and
teeth, together with fragments of rude pottery, have been found
enveloped in the same mud and breccia, and cemented by stalagmite, in
which are found also the land shells of living species and the bones of
mammalia, some of extinct, and others of recent species. The chemical
condition of all the bones was found to be the same. Quite a full
account is given of the researches of MM. Journal and Christol in the
Bize cavern, and of Dr. Schmerling in the Liege caverns, and every
effort made, apparently, by the author, to weigh candidly and honestly
the evidence for and against the contemporaneous existence and
deposition of the human and mammalian remains. And while he admits that
at one time he was strongly inclined to suspect that they were not
coeval[3], yet he has been compelled by subsequent evidence, especially
in view of the fact that he has had convincing proofs in later years
that the remains of the mammoth and many other extinct species, very
common in caves, occur also in undisturbed alluvium, imbedded in such a
manner with works of art as to leave no room for doubt that man and the
extinct animals coexisted, to reconsider his former opinion, and to
assign to the proofs derived from caves of the high antiquity of man a
much more positive and emphatic character.

In chapter fifth we have a minute and interesting account of such fossil
human skulls and skeletons as have been found in caves and ancient
tumuli, and a careful endeavor made to estimate their approximate age.
In 1857, in a cave situated in that part of the valley of the Duessel,
near Duesseldorf, which is called the Neanderthal, a skull and skeleton
were found, buried beneath five feet of loam, which were pronounced by
Professor Huxley and others to be clearly human, though indicating small
cerebral development and uncommon strength of corporeal frame. In the
Engis caves, near Liege, portions of six or seven human skeletons were
found, imbedded in the same matrix with the remains of the elephant,
rhinoceros, bear, hyena, and other extinct quadrupeds. In an ancient
tumulus near Borrely, in Denmark, a human skull was discovered which was
adjudged by its surroundings to belong to the 'stone period' of Denmark,
or the era of the Scotch fir. The careful anatomical examination and
comparison to which these skulls have been subjected, have led to
important discussions, not only as to their age, but also as to their
relation to existing races.

Next comes an extended account of the flint implements and other works
of art, found so abundantly in juxtaposition with the bones of extinct
mammalia, in various localities--in a cave at Brixham, near Torquay, in
Devonshire; in the alluvium of the Thames valley; in the gravel of the
valley of the Ouse, near Bedford; in a fresh-water deposit at Hoxne in
Suffolk; in the valley of the Lach at Icklingham; in a cavern in
Somersetshire; in the caves of Gomer in Glamorganshire, in South Wales;
and especially in the gravel beds of Abbeville and Amiens, in France,
and various localities of the valley of the Somme. As to these flint
implements, they are chiefly knives, hatchets, and instruments of that
sort, and they have been found in such large numbers, and such diverse
localities, and so uniformly in close proximity with the remains of the
same species of extinct mammalia, that the evidence derived from them
is, to say the least, of a very weighty character, and in the opinion of
Sir Charles Lyell clearly establishes the fact that _Elephas
primigenius_, _Elephas antiquus_, _Rhinoceros tichorrhinus_, _Ursus
speloeus_, and other extinct species of the post-pliocene alluvium,
_coexisted with man_.

Attempts have been made to throw doubt upon these implements, first upon
their nature, and next upon their genuineness; but we think no one who
weighs the evidence candidly and carefully, can award to these doubts
the merit of respectability. That they are works of art and not native
forms, is, we think, as fully established as human observation can
establish anything; and though frauds have been recently detected, it
would be no more absurd to attribute the whole phenomena of fossil
remains to fraudulent manufacture, than to refer to the same source the
whole series of flint implements. In many cases the flint tools were
taken out of their position by the hands of scientific men themselves,
and in others the excavations were made under their immediate
supervision. M. Gandry, in giving an account of his researches at St.
Acheul, in 1859, to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, says: 'The
great point was not to leave the workmen for a single instant.'

But the most remarkable, not to say startling revelations of the whole
book, are those pertaining to the discovery of an ancient place of
sepulture at Auvignac, in the south of France. Here we seem to be
brought, as it were, face to face with the denizens of the departed
ages, and to have them start up from their ancient tombs to tell the
story of their death and sepulture. We enter this old burial place with
feelings of more strange and solemn awe than we could have in threading
the catacombs of Rome. An obscure village at the foot of the Pyrenees
reveals in its precincts a more astounding history than all the
monuments and mausoleums of the 'eternal' city.

In the year 1852, a laborer named Bonnemaison, employed in repairing
roads, observed that rabbits, when hotly pursued by the sportsman, ran
into a hole which they had burrowed in a talus of small fragments of
limestone and earthy matter lodged in a depression on the face of a
steep escarpment of nummulitic limestone which forms the bank of a small
brook near the town of Auvignac. On reaching as far into the opening as
the length of his arm, he drew out to his surprise one of the long bones
of the human skeleton; and his curiosity being excited, and having a
suspicion that the hole communicated with a subterranean cavity, he
commenced digging a trench through the middle of the talus, and in a few
hours found himself opposite a heavy slab of rock, placed vertically
against the entrance. Having removed this, he discovered on the other
side of it an arched cavity, seven or eight feet in its greatest height,
ten in width, and seven in horizontal depth. It was almost filled with
bones, among which were two entire skulls, which he recognized at once
as human. The people of Auvignac flocked in astonishment to the spot,
and Dr. Amiel, the mayor, having first ascertained as a medical man and
anatomist that the relics contained the bones of seventeen human
skeletons of both sexes and all ages, ordered them all to be reinterred
in the parish cemetery.

In 1860, M. Lartet, a distinguished French savan, examined thoroughly
the remaining contents of the cavern and its surroundings and
approaches. He found, on removing the talus which filled up the
depression on the face of the rock, a level terrace leading to the mouth
of the cave. On this terrace was a layer of charcoal and ashes, eight
inches thick, containing fragments of broken, burnt, and gnawed bones of
_extinct and recent mammalia_, in all some nineteen species, and some
seventy or eighty individuals. Also in the same deposit were
hearthstones, and works of art, flint knives, projectiles, sling-stones,
and chips. Many of the bones of the extinct herbivora were streaked, as
if the flesh had been scraped off them by a flint instrument, and others
were split open, as if for the purpose of extracting the marrow. Inside
the grotto were two or three feet of made earth mixed with human and a
few animal bones of extinct and recent species. None of them, however,
burnt or gnawed; and numerous small flat plates of a white shelly
substance made of some species of cockle, perforated in the middle as if
for the purpose of being strung into a bracelet; also some mementos and
memorials of the chase and the sepulture. Did no opposing traditions
stand in the way, we are quite sure the evidence elicited from this
examination would at once fix its character as a burial place, of an
antiquity coeval with the existence of the great extinct mammalia of the
post-pliocene period. It, however, contains some features of special
interest. In the words of Sir Charles Lyell:

     'The Auvignac cave adds no new species to the list of extinct
     quadrupeds, which we have elsewhere, and by independent evidence,
     ascertained to have once flourished contemporaneously with man. But
     if the fossil memorials have been correctly interpreted--if we have
     here before us at the northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral
     vault with skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and
     relatives to their last resting place--if we have also at the
     portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it
     indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on their
     way to the land of spirits; while among the funeral gifts are
     weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the
     cave lion, the cave bear, and woolly rhinoceros--we have at last
     succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and, more
     interesting still, a belief in a future state, to times long
     anterior to those of history and tradition. Rude and superstitious
     as may have been the savage of that remote era, he still deserved,
     by cherishing the hopes of a hereafter, the epithet of 'noble,'
     which Dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as
     the primitive condition of our race:

                 'As Nature first made man,
       When wild in woods the noble savage ran.'

The remainder of the book, so far as it relates to the evidences of
man's antiquity, is mainly occupied with the consideration of the
glacial period, in its relation to the indications of man's first
appearance in Europe. It bears evidence throughout of the hand of a
master. The gigantic phenomena and wonderful agencies of that marvellous
period in geological history--its vast icefields and glaciers, with
their movements, drifts, and denudations--its coast ice and glacial
lakes and rivers--the risings and sinkings of level of islands and
continents, are all considered and discussed in a thoroughly intelligent
and scholarly manner. And here, also, amid the debris of this
far-distant and inhospitable era, has man left the traces of his
existence, as indubitably, according to Sir Charles Lyell, as the great
icebergs themselves. Not only is it proven that man coexisted with the
extinct animals, but also that he coexisted with the extinct glaciers.
We have not space, however, to follow out in detail this evidence.

The last five chapters of the book are devoted to the discussion of
certain subjects of vital interest and great moment just now in the
scientific world--the theories of progression, development,
transmutation, and variation of species. It seems, however, to be the
intention of the author to give us, not so much his own views as a
general resume or outline of the tendencies and conclusions of the
scientific world upon these subjects. This he does with his usual
fulness, candor, and impartiality; and the reader at the same time
gathers from him that he is strongly inclined to accept the doctrine of
the origin of species by 'variation and natural selection,' and to
accord vast periods of time for the workings of that law of development
and transmutation which he believes to pervade all mundane affairs.
Considerable space is devoted to the consideration of man's place in
nature, and especially to the discussions arising out of the comparison
of the human and simian brain; and while the author fully admits the
vast gulf placed between man and the animal creation below him--a gulf
which science cannot bridge--by virtue of the moral and religious nature
of man, yet he pointedly protests against confounding distinct orders of
ideas, and insists that man as a physical being is clearly of the same
order as the gorilla and ape; and he does not shrink from accepting the
possibility that they all may have sprung by successive stages or
'leaps' from the same primordial form. His concluding words are, that
'so far from having a materialistic tendency, the supposed introduction
into the earth at successive periods of life--sensation, instinct, the
intelligence of the higher mammalia, bordering on reason--and lastly the
improvable reason of man himself, presents us with a picture of the
ever-increasing dominion of mind over matter.'

To our mind one thing is certain. The whole scientific world is drifting
slowly, but steadily and surely, to the verification and
acceptance--with certain and in some cases important modifications--of
the development hypothesis of Maillet, Lamarck, La Place, Owen, and the
author of the 'Vestiges[4] of Creation.' The movement reminds one of
the motion of one of the great Greenland glaciers, so slow, quiet,
almost imperceptible, yet inexorable as fate--heedless of all obstacles.
As in the case of all great, genuine revolutionary or formative ideas,
it is curious to watch the incidents of its career--to note the alarm,
indignation, scorn, and holy horror occasioned by its first
announcement--to observe these subsiding gradually into patient
endurance and permissive sufferance, and these again giving place to a
certain curiosity and wakeful interest, culminating at last in downright
advocacy and championship.

We are inclined to think that great injustice has been done the
development theory in the name of morals and religion. There has been no
end to the railing against it on the part of clergymen, Biblical
interpreters, theological Professors, and orthodox editors. It was held
to put infinite dishonor upon the Creator, not only to suppose that He
should take many millions of years to make a world, but that He should
employ the same lengthened period to make man, instead of speaking him
into existence by a word. It was held to put infinite dishonor upon the
Scriptures to suppose that they should be understood in any but the most
literal sense. And it was held to put infinite dishonor upon man to
suppose that he was kith and kin with the monkey--bone of the bone and
flesh of the flesh of the unreasoning quadrupeds, over which in his
god-like royalty he was to sway his imperial sceptre--and this, too, by
a class of teachers who could never have enough of thundering in the
ears of men their degradation, their lost, debased, insensate, and
damnable condition, worse than that of beasts or devils.

Now, with all deference, we beg to say that this development theory does
not strike us as so fraught with dishonor, either to the powers in
heaven or the beings upon earth. It has for many years impressed us with
its grandeur as an intellectual conception. We doubt whether anything so
grand has dawned upon the mind of modern civilization since the days of
Sir Isaac Newton. And we cannot see what dishonor it can work to either
God or man--especially if it be proved to be true. We regard it, so far
as there is truth in it, as one of those great germinant seed-thoughts,
which at long intervals are dropped into the soil of the human mind;
and though the mind of the age, in its first impulses of joy, may play
wild gambols with it, it is destined in the end to mould and control the
thinking of the civilized world. But apart from its truth or falsity, in
whole or in part, regarded simply _as an intellection_, it strikes us as
one of the grandest of modern times. Spreading itself over almost
illimitable space, grasping back through almost illimitable time,
claiming for itself the boundless multiplicity of type, and form, and
life, and law of the organic world, and unfolding to the wondering gaze
the vast prophetic possibilities of the future, it possesses all the
attributes of grandeur, magnificence, sublimity, and mystery. If it is a
phantasm, it is more gorgeous than the most splendid creations of
poetry. If it is a mirage, it is more beautiful than any that ever
bewildered the vision of enchanted traveller. If it is an _ignis
fatuus_, it is more potent than any ever raised by the spell of the
sorcerer. But whether phantasm, mirage, _ignis fatuus_, or sober but
grand reality, will assuredly be found out by science before another
half century. And the ultimate finding of science, whatever it may be,
must and will be believed.

It is, of course, not to be expected that the evidence thus adduced by
Sir Charles Lyell in behalf of the antiquity of man, will be accepted as
conclusive by the religious and thinking world in general without a
thorough sifting and an earnest struggle. It is too novel and
revolutionary in its tendencies. And indeed it ought to be subjected to
the severest ordeal of fact and reason. It is in this way alone that the
golden grains of truth are separated from the dross of crude conjecture
and hasty generalization. We are not prepared ourselves to say that the
evidence itself is final and conclusive. We have sketched it for the
purpose of giving the distinguished author a full hearing, and affording
the reader an opportunity to judge for himself. We await the logical
sequences of time, knowing full well that the laws which regulate the
progress of science are as stable and infallible as the laws which
control the motions of the solar and planetary systems. One thing,
however, we may be excused for saying: All the attempts we have seen to
parry the force of this evidence, and to account for the acknowledged
phenomena and facts within the schedule of the received chronology,
strike us as singularly and painfully feeble. One suggestion is that the
bodies of the extinct mammalia may have been preserved in ice until the
recent period, and their bones deposited contemporaneously with those of
modern species and man. Another is that the geologists may be vastly
mistaken as to the date of the extinction of species, and that in fact
the mastodon, mammoth, and other species found in juxtaposition with
human remains and works of art, have probably survived until a very
recent period. Without entering into detail on these points, we would
venture the prediction that when weighed in the balance they will be
found utterly wanting. One type of discussion will survive, if it
survive at all, as a most curious fossil of the layers of modern
thought. It is that represented by the book referred to in a note on a
former page, by Mr. Davies. Believing that all mineral fossils were
never living animals at all, but the types simply of animals that were
to be, stamped instantaneously upon the rocks as prophetic symbols of a
work of creation to be afterward accomplished, he is prepared to hear
without surprise that man should some day be found as a fossil. We refer
to it as a most curious mental product. If it is not unanswerable, we
presume it will at least remain unanswered.

What now, in conclusion, is to be the effect of this new development of
science on the received and traditionary thinking of the time? What
readjustments will be necessary in case the doctrine of the antiquity of
man comes by and by to take its place, in the creed of science,
alongside of the doctrine of the great age of the earth? Can it be made
to harmonize with what is now known as orthodox and evangelical
Christianity?

That it cannot be made to harmonize with that sort of orthodoxy which
asserts that 'the Bible teaches' that man began to exist upon the earth
about six thousand years ago, we need hardly aver. Eminent theologians
may say, 'if science does not agree with the Scriptures, so much the
worse for science,' but we opine that the minds which will be able to
stand upon this platform in the face of overwhelming evidence will be
few and far between. But it must be remembered that the Scriptures have
adjusted themselves, in the popular and orthodox mind, to several things
which were once considered opposed to their teachings. The Copernican
theory of the solar system was once regarded and treated as a palpable
and dangerous heresy; yet now-a-days the boldest literalist would not
venture to insist that the Bible teaches a system opposed to that.
Within living memory, it is well known that the doctrine of the recent
creation of the earth was regarded as indubitably a part of the teaching
of the first chapter of Genesis, yet it is now fully conceded in high
orthodox quarters that the opposite doctrine does no violence to the
letter or spirit of the Mosaic writings. Here the adjustment has been of
the interpretation to the fact. It is up to this time largely believed
that the Bible teaches the doctrine of a general deluge, yet Hugh Miller
could advocate, with all the elegance of his superb intellect, and all
the power of his unanswerable science, the opposite doctrine of a
partial or limited deluge, without being outlawed for heresy in the Free
Church of Scotland. It is now held almost universally that the doctrine
of the unity of the race is essential to Christianity; and we, for
ourselves, cannot see that it is otherwise than essential to a properly
organic Christianity, and yet we begin to see a blinking in certain
quarters toward the opposite view;--and we may mention that the curious
book of Mr. Davies before mentioned, which is written in the special
interest of the most literal orthodoxy, advocating the doctrine of
immediate creation in six literal days, and other equally indigestible
matters, insists on the doctrine of _diversity of origin_ in the human
race, because it is taught in the Scriptures! And he does not fail to
find proof texts. He rightly avers that several important assumptions
are needed in order to extract the doctrine of unity from the Mosaic
record.

We have not adduced these instances of the variations of orthodoxy for
the purpose of intimating that the Bible is a nose of wax, which can be
twisted into any shape without injury--that it is a book which can be
made to mean anything or nothing, as the circumstances of the case may
require--but that it has a vital elasticity and power of adjustment to
all veritable findings of the human mind in every sphere; as indeed it
must have, if it is in any important respect such a communication to
mankind as it is claimed to be. Whatever may be said of the
infallibility of the Scriptures, it is certain that interpretation is
not infallible--a distinction that is not always kept in mind by those
zealous defenders of the faith who are ready to make the inspiration of
the Scriptures stand or fall with a given interpretation of a particular
passage.

But can the doctrine of man's antiquity be made to harmonize with the
essentials of Christianity and the inspiration of the Scriptures? If
Christianity be a religion for man, as the present writer believes, we
answer emphatically in the affirmative. Not the smallest feature that is
essential to make Christianity a religion for man, if it be such, will
be imperilled by this or any other well-established doctrine of
science. But precisely how much modification of existing opinion, how
much sepulture of traditionary relics, how much clearing away of rubbish
will be indispensable, it is now not easy to say. It is certain that it
must be conceded that we have as yet attained to no infallible
chronology. And it is equally certain that a larger amount of allegory
must be infused into the first chapters of Genesis than would have been
digestible by the theologians of the last generation, if we would ever
have theology and science stand upon the same plane. The question in the
child's catechism, '_Who was the first man?_' will by and by be easier
asked than answered. If, moreover, the narrative in Genesis refers to
some imaginary being supposed to have existed upon the earth about six
thousand years ago, it seems clear that this being cannot be regarded as
the 'federal head' of the human race, from whom 'all mankind have
descended by ordinary generation.' And we strongly suspect that a very
large amount of theological machinery will need to be readjusted; and
amid many pangs and with much tribulation will not a few canons of
orthodoxy pass away to the region of fossil forms.

In conclusion, we take leave of this work of Sir Charles Lyell with the
conviction that however obnoxious it may be to orthodox editors and
superannuated doctors of divinity, it is destined to stimulate greatly
scientific inquiry and active thought. It is impossible that when such a
mine has been sprung, and promises to yield such tangible results, it
should suddenly cease to work, because the note of alarm is raised by
affrighted theologians. We predict for science in this department a rich
and rapid progress of discovery. And we are profoundly gratified that
the subject has been broken to the popular mind in such a cautious and
unexceptionable manner as to the tone and spirit of the work--the author
holding with philosophic steadfastness to the subject matter in hand,
and, in the true scientific spirit, eschewing all side issues, and
exhibiting throughout a candor, impartiality, and honesty, worthy the
well-earned fame of this Nestor of geologists.




AENONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.


CHAPTER III.

The thoughts of AEnone followed her into sleep, and colored her dreams
with pleasant memories of the past; and when the morning sun, pouring
its beams through the window, awakened her, there was a momentary
struggle before she could throw off the fancies of the night and realize
that she was no longer in her cottage home. But distinct perception soon
returned as she glanced around her and recognized the paintings which
adorned her chamber, and the marble goddess still holding forth a
welcoming hand, as though in greeting for the return of another day.

Throwing open the window, she sat down for a moment to enjoy the soft
breeze, which, laden with perfume, came gambolling fresh from the Alban
Hills. The window at which she placed herself looked out upon a central
courtyard, formed by the intersection of the main body of the palace at
right angles with the two wings. This court was paved from one side to
the other with marble flags of different shades, excepting in the
middle, where played the fountain--a circular basin of water, upon a
rock, in the centre of which two bronze satyrs struggled for a tortoise,
from whose mouth the supplying stream poured forth. From the end of each
wing of the palace the line of the sides was continued by a straight
stone wall of considerable height, leading across the whole breadth of
the Caelian Hill to the slope of its farther side, and enclosing an area
thickly planted with such flowers, shrubbery, and trees as the taste of
the period considered most essential to a well-appointed garden.

For the moment the central court was almost deserted, the only
appearance of life being a little Nubian slave, who sat upon the edge of
the fountain, and lazily played with a tame stork. But all at once AEnone
heard mingled voices, and distinguished among them the tones of her
husband--deeper than the others, and marked with that quicker and more
decided accent acquired by a long course of undisputed authority. At
first the sounds seemed stationary, as though the speakers were tarrying
in one place for discussion; but in a moment they approached nearer, and
the disputants stood in full sight upon a balcony which ran around the
interior wall of the palace and overhung the sides of the court.

Foremost and tallest of the group stood Sergius Vanno, recognizable at
once by his athletic and graceful figure, reflective face, commanding
eye, bright with intelligence, and his agreeable, refined, and
attractive presence, as the leading spirit of the group. At his side
leaned the poet Emilius, whose weak and slender figure and mild, girlish
expression would hardly appear to sustain the reputation he enjoyed of
devoting half his time to the invention and elaboration of new forms of
profligacy, and thereby carrying his exploits into realms of vice
hitherto undiscovered even in that age of unbridled indulgence. Behind
these stood three others--a captain of the praetorian guard, a tribune of
the law, and a comedian of the school of Plautus--each probably carrying
the palm of excellence in his especial calling, and all of them
doubtless endowed with superior capacities as boon companions in a
night-long revel. They had evidently but just left the banqueting hall,
and bore indications of having passed a somewhat unquiet night, though
in different degrees; for while the captain and comedian still staggered
confusedly and displayed haggard faces and disordered dresses, the
superior tact, constitutional strength, or recuperative powers of the
others enabled them to maintain such a demeanor of proper sobriety, that
but for a slight flush and the companionship in which they were placed,
their late excesses might have passed unnoticed.

'It was the choice of all the slaves, both male and female, I tell you,'
said the comedian, evidently resuming an unfinished dispute. 'The choice
of all the slaves, Sergius.'

'Hear you now this man!' exclaimed Sergius, turning toward his friend
Emilius with a quiet smile. 'Thrice already have I told him the truth of
the matter, and still he persists; well knowing that, if now he can
scarcely sustain himself from falling over into the area below, he
certainly could not, three hours ago, have been able to tell what play
he made, or whether he made any play at all. Nay, Bassus, it was only of
the male slaves that I spoke.'

'Yet listen to me,' insisted the comedian, placing his hand upon the
other's shoulder and leaning heavily upon him, 'You do not deny that we
gamed?'

'Of a surety I do not.'

'Nor that I won money of you?'

'Ten sestertia. I acknowledge it.'

'Nay, twenty sestertia, was it not?'

'Twenty sestertia be it, then. What matters the amount, when I paid you
upon the moment, and you now have the sum, whatever it may be, in your
own purse?'

'True, true,' rejoined the other, nodding his head with an air of sage
gravity; 'whatever it was, of a certainty I now have it. And then,
Sergius, you offered against the ten--no, the twenty sestertia--to play
the choice of all your new slaves.'

'Of my new male slaves, certainly.'

'No, of the slaves both male and female. I will tell you how it is that
I so especially recollect. It was because I had heard from our lawgiver
here about the beautiful Samian girl you have borne home among your
share of the spoils. You did not think, perhaps, that I knew of her; but
when I offered to throw the dice, I held her in my mind. And then, when
I had won, and told you that I would select her, you said--'

'Exactly what I had said to you before, that you could take your choice
from the male slaves,' interrupted the other impatiently. 'And I have
brought you directly hither to make your selection, for fear that when
you became sober you would forget the matter altogether, and thereby
cheat yourself out of a fairly won prize. Am I not right, comrades? Was
not the play as I have stated it?'

'Neither more nor less,' the poet answered; and the tribune and the
praetorian captain spoke to the same effect. The comedian still looked
unconvinced, and, for the moment, gazed inquiringly from one to the
other, in the hope that some newer recollection would come to the mind
of either of them and lead to a recantation. But in that desire he was
disappointed, and at last he reluctantly gave up the contest, not daring
to protract it longer for fear of provoking a quarrel, and thereby being
thrust out of the society to which he was aware his social talents,
counteracting his low birth and calling, were his sole passport. And
after all, though he had too carelessly made his wager, he had won
twenty sestertia and a male slave, and that was something.

'Well, be it so,' he assented, with a sigh. 'A male slave, since you say
it. I had supposed I had spoken more particularly, but it seems that my
poor brain was careless and at fault. Only bring the slaves hither
quickly, that I may choose and go home, for I must play Castorex this
morning, and this head of mine seems likely to split.'

'Let it split, then,' retorted Sergius with a laugh. 'It may save our
cracking it some day with a goblet. Ho, there, Drumo!'

He was not obliged to call a second time, for, at the first ring of his
voice, the obedient armor bearer emerged from one of the lower entrances
into the court. He also, as well as his master, had been convivially
celebrating his return, and now bore the evidences of his frolic in a
sad combination of inflamed features, tangled hair, and disordered
clothing.

'What ho, master?' he cried, stretching his huge limbs in a yawn and
looking up. 'Am I wanted?'

'You have been drinking,' said Sergius; 'go to the fountain basin there
and cleanse yourself. If there were fish in it, I would feel half
inclined to cast you in to feed them. After that, come back to me.'

The giant grinned, knowing that his master placed too high a value upon
him ever to make a dinner of him for the carp, though he might now and
then inflict a stripe or two in anger upon his broad shoulders. Then
kneeling down at the fountain, he quickly splashed the water into his
face and eyes, ran one finger from his forehead to the crown of his head
in order to part his disordered locks, pulled away a loose straw from
behind his neck, gave his tumbled tunic one jerk to straighten it, and,
with the air of a person who had made an elaborate toilet, and could
afford to be well satisfied with the result, presented himself for
inspection.

'So! Were my new slaves sent in last night?'

The armor bearer nodded.

'The whole allotment?'

'I suppose so, master. Fifty there should have been, the lictor said,
when he brought them, but one had died, and they had thrown him into the
Tiber to the fishes. Ho, ho, master, we shall all go one day to feed the
fishes or the dogs or the worms, both you and I alike.'

'Silence, you hound!' said Sergius, more by way of habit than because he
really minded a familiarity to which he had gradually grown accustomed.

'The others came a little before midnight, and I locked them up below,'
the Gaul added, pointing to a low range of buildings at the foot of the
garden. 'They are a well-looking lot, master, but among them all you
will not find one to take my place; so, for this time, I am safe, and
can yet say and do what I please. Ho, ho! And here is the list of them
which the messenger brought.'

'Never mind the list. It is doubtless all correct,' said Sergius, waving
the papyrus aside. 'Go, now, and bring the slaves hither.'

The man nodded, and taking a large key from a nail over his head,
disappeared down the garden walk, and in a few moments returned, driving
before him the whole body of captives which had fallen to the share of
his master. As he had reported, they were of good quality, the best of
the prisoners of war having naturally been reserved for the commander of
the expedition. The men were mostly stout and athletic, while the women
were of healthy and properly agreeable appearance. Of the whole number
there were none who seemed to be at all sickly or ill favored; while the
only one who exhibited any signs of deformity was a dwarf, whose
withered and twisted figure imparted to him that peculiar grotesque and
ape-like appearance which, at that period, was certain to commend him to
the taste of wealthy purchasers, and render him of more value than a man
of correct proportions. Moreover, as a general thing, the captives
seemed more cheerful than they had been the day before, having had the
advantage of several hours' rest and of better food than had fallen to
their lot at any time during the journey. There were a few who
manifested sorrow at having been separated from relatives or friends
with whom they had succeeded in travelling to the very gates of the
city; and some others, as yet unbroken to misfortune, maintained a
rebellious and intractable demeanor. But the majority had already made
up their minds that slavery was henceforth their inevitable fate, and
that their highest future happiness must be looked for in its
alleviation rather than in its abolition; and they now appeared to take
pleasure in the thought that their fortune had led them to a wealthy
household, where they would probably experience kind treatment and have
easy tasks allotted to them.

Now, having reached the paved court, the captives rested and awaited the
inspection of their owner--some sitting upon the marble border of the
fountain, some standing by in groups, and through a sort of sympathy
holding each others' hands, as though that would give protection. A few
gazed moodily upon the ground; and one or two, oppressed with sorrow or
nervous apprehension, quietly wept. But the greater portion, impressed
with a dim consciousness that their future lot might depend upon their
present conduct and appearance, endeavored to assume an air of pleased
satisfaction, and thereby possibly win the favorable notice of the group
which stood surveying them from the balcony, or at the least the
friendly compassion of the older slaves of the household, who began to
pour forth from the different doors upon the ground floor of the palace,
and join unbidden in the inspection. Most of these, in the early days of
their captivity, had stood up in the centre of similar gaping and
curious crowds, and now in their turn they sated their curiosity upon
the new comers. A few, remembering their own sorrows of those former
times, seemed compassionate; others manifested careless indifference;
some wondered whether enough of the present reinforcement would be
retained to materially lighten their own labors; and others, who had
been known to fail in attention to their peculiar departments of
industry, trembled lest their places might now be supplied by the new
comers, and themselves be again driven off to market. Whatever their
thoughts and feelings, however, no one ventured to approach too near or
speak aloud, excepting the armor bearer, who, as the privileged slave of
the household as well as the marshal of the occasion, moved hither and
thither among the captives, encouraging some with rude jokes, shoving
others back or forward into suitable positions, and generally
endeavoring to set forth the merits of the whole mass in as favorable a
light as possible.

'Now stand forward where the noble imperator and his friends can see
you,' was his command to a well-featured, strong-limbed Rhodian. 'Do you
think to better your lot by slinking out of sight among the women, and
so perhaps be sent off unnoticed to the market, and there be purchased
for hard labor in the quarry pits? Who knows but that if my master sees
you, he may make a gladiator of you; and then you can fight before
emperors and consuls.'

'What care I for your master?' retorted the man. 'Let him give me back
my wife and my child, whom I yesterday had, and who now are gone.'

The armor bearer shrugged his shoulders.

'Is that all?' he said. 'Wives are plenty in this city of Rome. When I
first came from Gaul, I too had a wife, and, like you, lost her. What
then? I suppose that she is happy, wherever she may be; and I--I have
not allowed myself to be lonely since. But neither did I let myself
slink behind, when I stood in the market; but I pressed forward and
struck upon my chest, and called to the highborn and the rich to look
upon me, and see how a man could be made, and what he could be good for.
And here am I now, a slave, indeed--that cannot be helped--but for all
that, a ruler over the other slaves, and my master's favorite and
companion. By the immortal gods! there is more manliness in yonder
dwarf, with his open face, than in you, with your whimpering and your
tears. I will call him forward to teach you a lesson how to act.'

At the first beck the dwarf pressed forward with a smile, alternately
stretching up to make the most of his diminutive proportions, and then
bowing low to crave the good will of the spectators. His appearance
brought him instant commendation; and more particularly did the
praetorian captain break forth into expressions of appreciation.

'A proper dwarf! a most excellent dwarf! Smaller and more ugly by a
quarter than one which I have known to be sold for forty sestertia! And
see, Bassus, how he bows and rubs his hands and shows his teeth at
yourself. He has perhaps been the buffoon in a Grecian theatre, and in
you now recognizes a brother in the art. Take him, therefore, for your
choice. At the very least, he will be of value to carry your bag of
plays before you, and he may even help you act.'

The comedian forced a sickly smile upon his features, not daring to
quarrel with his companion, yet not insensible to the sneering tone with
which he was addressed. He had, at the first, been struck with the
dwarf, and half inclined to choose him. But now the mocking speech
deterred him.

'You are disposed to be merry,' he said; 'nor do you reason well. It is
not an ape that an actor wants to carry his plays. There are enough such
to listen to them. I will leave the dwarf, therefore, for you to
purchase. Perhaps, after all, there may be a place found for him
somewhere in your own household. I will make another selection for
myself.'

And descending from the piazza, he moved in among the captives for the
purpose of entering upon a more careful inspection. Eager as he was at
all times to make the best of a bargain, he was the more especially
anxious now; for the contemptuous tones of his companions rankled in his
heart, and he felt that the more he evinced a capacity to benefit
himself, the more he would be likely to disappoint them. Passing
deliberately about the slaves, therefore, he scrutinized each face and
form before him with the most exact attention; carefully lifting the
eyelid of one, and examining the teeth of another--now pressing his
knuckles into an expanded chest, then twisting a muscular arm--causing
some to stoop, and others to bend back--and generally practising all
those arts and expedients which a professional slave dealer would employ
to guard himself against imposition. Nor was it until the lapse of many
minutes that he settled upon his prize.

'I will take this man,' he said, dragging the Rhodian forth by the
shoulder. 'He shall be my slave.'

'It is well; take him,' responded Sergius, in his most courtly tone. And
for the moment or two, during which his companions yet tarried, he
maintained a demeanor so studied and controlled that it would have
required a keen glance to detect in his face his bitter sense of
disappointment at the selection which the comedian had made.


CHAPTER IV.

As Sergius turned and entered the house, those who had seen him saluted
as the favorite of the emperor and the idol of the crowd, and thence had
believed unbounded happiness must be his never-varying lot, would have
been astonished to know how many things there were which rankled
painfully in his heart, and, for the moment, made him discontented and
fretful.

Thoroughly jealous in respect to his military fame, he was suspicious
that the cheers of the crowd upon his ovation had been elicited more by
the perfection of the pageantry than by a proper appreciation of his own
merits; while it was certain that the Senate, though meeting him with
the customary congratulations, had delivered them with more form than
enthusiasm. And though the emperor had given audience, he had bestowed
no new honors upon him. To these disappointments was added the unhappy,
self-accusing consciousness of having failed in duty to his own dignity,
by having passed the night in wild revelry and among companions, many of
whom were beneath him in every quality except their talent for ribald
jesting and buffoonery. Moreover, though reputed wealthy, he was at
present pressed for money, and had added to his embarrassments by losing
at the gaming table during the past night more than he could well afford
to part with; while, to add to all other vexations, the comedian Bassus
had not only increased the loss by selecting the most valuable slave,
but had performed the action in a cool and calculating manner, which was
particularly exasperating.

'The low buffoon!' Sergius muttered to himself. 'Who would have thought
that, half drunken as he was, he would have had the wit to select a
slave worth double the sum which had been staked against him, and one
whom I had obtained with such trouble, and for my own purposes? Can it
be that he pretended his intoxication the more easily to outwit me? I
had no fear, but believed that he would be sure to select some slim
youth who could be taught to play the flute before him or act as
cupbearer. What demon put it into his head so suddenly to look for bone
and muscle rather than for girlish graces?'

This last suspicion of having been made the victim of artful
dissimulation added fuel to his vexation, more especially as, turning
his head and glancing into the courtyard, he saw the comedian slipping
through a side passage, and the Rhodian obediently following at his
heels. This filled up the measure of Sergius's wrath. To his excited
fancy the actor bore upon his face an insultingly satisfied smirk of
triumph, while the Rhodian appeared larger and stronger than ever. With
an exclamation of unavailing anger, Sergius pushed open the door, and
stood in the presence of his wife.

It was into the dining hall that he had plunged. Upon a small table was
placed the wine and bread and fruits which formed the customary morning
meal among the richer Romans; and beside the table stood AEnone, in an
attitude in which hope and fear and surprise and disappointment were
equally blended.

Clad in the manner which she knew had always best pleased his fancy,
wearing the adornments which, as his gifts, he would most naturally
prefer to see upon her, with her curling locks parted as in former days
he had liked her to dress them, even striving to impart to her features
the peculiar radiant expression which, in other times, had most won his
heart--she had impatiently awaited his approach, with a vague fear
whispering poisonous surmises to her soul, but yet with a joyful and
hopeful assurance of good predominating over all. As soon as these
friends of his had departed--she had said to herself--he would no longer
delay coming to her. He would meet her with extended arms and the same
joyous welcome as of old. He would utter kind and pleasant words
expressive of his happiness, and would fold her to his heart. There
would she nestle and forget her foolish fears and suspicions of the past
night, and would only remember that she was loved. As, however, she now
saw the frown upon his face, her heart and courage failed her; and in
proportion as she had previously fortified her mind with hopeful
confidence, a terrible reaction of apprehension overcame her. Could it
be that the angry look was for her, and that it could be justified by
any word that she had ever spoken or any duty that she had neglected?
With one hand lightly resting upon the table, her right foot thrown
forward in impulsive readiness to spring into his extended arms, but her
whole form drooping and shrinking with dismay, her face pale, and the
smile which she had called upon it now faintly and painfully flickering
in a deathlike manner about her whitened lips, as it glided from her
control and began to give place to an utter and undisguised fear, she
stood awaiting his first word or action.

'Ha, AEnone!'

'My lord--'

Then remembering what was due to her upon their first meeting, he
smoothed the frown from off his face, held out his arms, and tenderly
embraced her, uttering kind and loving words. It was the same gesture
with which he had parted from her when, six months before, the state had
called upon him to arouse from the ease and tranquility of his wedded
life and do new service upon the field. Those were the same gentle and
affectionate words which he had been wont to utter. And yet to her
quickened apprehension, urged on by some secret instinct, it seemed as
though the soul of the tender greeting was gone, leaving but the mere
form behind. Could it be that during those few months of absence he had
learned to think less dearly of her? At the thought, the last faint
gleams of the flickering smile died away from her face; while he,
unobservant of her distress, and still goaded by the remembrance of his
losses, released her from his embrace and threw himself heavily down
upon the nearest lounge.

'I am thirsty,' he said. 'Give me some drink.'

She poured some wine into a goblet, and timidly presented it to his
lips. The liquid, cooled with snow from the mountains, was refreshing to
his palate, and he drank it to the last drop. As he parted with the
goblet--rather tossing it away than setting it down--he noticed how she
stood before him with whitened face and frightened features, and with
the attitude of a shrinking slave rather than of a wife joyous to be of
service. His heart smote him for his negligent greeting, and he rose up
from the lounge and placed his arm about her.

'Not with you, AEnone, am I vexed,' he said, partly comprehending the
cause of her emotion. And drawing her nearer, he commenced toying with
her waving locks, telling her how for months he had been longing to meet
her, and how her looks more than ever delighted him, and otherwise
uttering such pleasant and reassuring words as soonest came into his
mind. As she began to perceive that it was not for any fault of hers
that he had displayed anger, her face gradually lost its expression of
dread. But still she could not fail to notice that the words which he
spoke were not such as are commonly prompted by a true and
unpremeditated affection; but were rather the labored and soulless
result of a mere good-natured desire to make atonement for a neglect,
and were uttered in all the careless spirit with which one tries to
soothe an improperly aggrieved child; and the old smile but feebly
played upon her features, struggle with it as earnestly as she would.

'Nay, not at your sweet face is my anger excited, AEnone,' he said; 'but
at that scurvy dog, Bassus. He should himself be a slave and the
companion of slaves, were his true station meted out to him.'

'He with whom you passed the night?' suggested AEnone.

'Ay, he was one of us,' Sergius answered, taking a position nearer the
table, and commencing to pick off a crumb of bread as the incentive to a
more extended repast. 'He was with us, as there always will be some rude
and unmannerly intruder in every company; but there were also others,
the associates of Emilius. There was Sotus, the Egyptian, a learned
astronomer, and Cyope, the renowned Greek dramatist, and Spoletius, who
is now writing a history of the empire, and, if what he says is true,
has already brought his work down to the time of the Emperor Nero--'

'And will carry it on until he reaches the present day! And will then,
in their proper place, tell about your achievements, my lord!' exclaimed
AEnone, a flush of expectation glowing upon her face, as she thought that
here were her conjectures of the preceding evening about to be realized.

'Ay!' responded Sergius; 'I presume that he will speak of me and of what
you dignify as my achievements, foolishly fond child; and therefore it
was meet that I should not neglect the opportunity of being in his
presence, in order that he might speak well of me rather than the
reverse. Otherwise, you well know that I would have preferred to let
revelling have the go-by, and to have come at once to gather you to my
heart. But we men, whom the world calls celebrated, must be watchful,
and learn to resign pleasure to duty, and guard our fame, or else it may
go out like a wasted lamp, and leave it in the darkness of oblivion. We
cannot spare our time to give free scope to our love, as though we were
poor and unknown.'

AEnone reproached herself for her suspicions. Surely she had done wrong
in distrusting him for the coldness of his greeting. He may have meant
nothing but love and kindness, and have been weighed down by cares and
anxieties which she could not comprehend. Had he not said that something
had made him angry? He, the great imperator, to have been ruffled by the
conduct of a low comedian, whose company his interest obliged him to
tolerate! She would yet be patient and wait.

'And not only Spoletius, the historian, but also others, poets and
philosophers, whose good will it is proper to secure, and whose
conversation would be improving to the gods themselves,' continued
Sergius, almost blushing as he remembered how little philosophy had been
spoken during the past night, excepting that shallow doctrine which
inculcates full enjoyment of the passing pleasure of the world, lest
death might come and too suddenly end them; and how little poetry had
been recited, except as roared forth in the form of bacchanalian
choruses. 'And even this Bassus it were worth my while to condescend to,
lest the notion might seize him to satirize me upon the public stage.
And it was to conciliate him that I lost to him twenty sestertia and a
well-favored slave. May it not be that I paid too high a price for his
friendship, and hence have a right to be angry?'

'But let my lord reflect that he has many slaves--more than he well can
find use for; and that, therefore, one less may not be of great
consequence to him.'

'Nay, but such a slave!' responded Sergius; 'tall, almost, as my armor
bearer, and strong as an elephant! A man who was worth to me all those
others, thrice over, for the use to which I could have put him. The rest
will doubtless be of good account in their way. Some of them will go and
dig in my quarries, and a few will be exposed in the market, and will
bring their proper price. But this Rhodian--listen! You know that in a
few weeks the new amphitheatre of our emperor will be opened with grand
spectacles lasting many days. At my audience with him last evening he
spoke thereupon, and of the wild beasts he had sent for to give dignity
to the occasion; but of this anon. You know that for months all Rome has
been preparing for that time?'

AEnone nodded assent. Even had she desired, she could not have remained
ignorant that the great colossus of all amphitheatres was approaching
completion, since, from her window, she could look down the Appian Way
and watch every stone being laid, while, in all societies, the magnitude
and magnificence of the approaching games were the theme of universal
conversation.

'Well,' continued Sergius, 'months ago--I hardly remember how many--I
wagered with the proconsul Sardesus that I would furnish for the games
the superior gladiator of the two. Fifteen purses of a hundred sestertia
each; a large sum, but the larger the better, since I had my armor
bearer in my mind, and felt certain to win. But since then I have become
attached to this Drumo. The dog has twice saved my life, and hence has
become too precious to be risked; for though he would most likely win
the day, yet a chance thrust might destroy him at the end. I therefore
looked around for a substitute, and found him--this Rhodian slave. Day
after day I marked him in the opposite ranks, fighting against us, and I
gave orders to capture him alive. Twice we thought we had secured him,
and as often did he break away, killing many of our men. But at last the
commander of one of my cohorts obtained possession of his wife and five
children, and sent him word that each day, until he delivered himself
up, one of them should be put to death.'

'Surely that thing was not done?' exclaimed AEnone, horror struck.

'As I live, it was not ordered by me, nor did I learn of the scheme
until it was too late to arrest it,' responded Sergius; 'else would I
have forbidden it. But what would you expect? War has its practices, and
mercy is not exactly one of them. And cruelties will happen, do what we
may. Whatever transpired, therefore, was the work of the commander of my
first cohort, to whom I had given directions to take the man alive, and
who knew that it must be done, and without troubling me about the
process. Perhaps you do not care to hear the rest?'

'Go on,' said AEnone, shuddering with a sickening apprehension of what
was to come.

'Well, the first day his oldest child was slain, and the body sent to
him; and the next day the second one slain, and in like manner sent to
him; and so on until but his wife and one child were left. Then he came
in and gave himself up.'

'And this brave man--fighting for his country--you have made a slave
of!' exclaimed AEnone, impetuously. 'He has been stripped of his family
one by one, and now you would place him in the arena, to be the victim
of wild beasts, or at the best, of other slaves!'

'What else would you wish? The man is of a warlike nature; and it were
better for him to bravely contend for his life in the presence of the
emperor himself, than ignominiously to wear it out in the base labor of
the quarries. And I will tell you what I meant to have done. I know
where are his wife and remaining child, with whom he yesterday entered
Rome; and if in the amphitheatre he had won the victory for me, I would
have restored them to him and given him his freedom besides. But all
that is past now. In the heat of the moment I forgot him, and suffered
this drunken dog, Bassus, to take his choice; and he has had too good an
eye for what is valuable not to select the Rhodian. Strange, indeed,
that I should have been so careless. But throughout all, I never dreamed
that his taste would lead him to do more than choose some slight-built
boy, who could assist him in his trade. Once, indeed, I feared for the
moment that he would select amiss, and take a rarely precious dwarf,
whom, both for his appearance and for his knowledge of armor, I had
reserved as a gift for your father; and when that danger was past, I
breathed freer, not calculating upon any further mischance.'

AEnone remained silent. Ready as she was at all times to give her utmost
sympathy to her husband for the slightest annoyance which he might
experience, it seemed to her now that his complaining was puerile and
unjust, so utterly had the sense of his disappointment been swallowed
up, in her thoughts, by the real and tragic woe of the Rhodian captive.
Finding day after day his dead children laid at his very door--then
separated rudely from all who were left--and in the end brought chained
into the arena, and obliged to fight to the death for the pleasure of
his conquerors, and perhaps against his own countrymen: why should such
things be? AEnone was no nerveless creature to faint at the sight of
blood. The education of all Romans of that day was adapted to a far
different result, and she could look with enjoyment upon the contests of
wild beasts, or even view without disapprobation the struggles of
gladiators trained to their work as to a profession, and, of their own
free will and with full knowledge, taking its risks upon themselves. And
yet, for all that, she could not but feel that every hour there were
being enacted around her, and as a part of the daily workings of the
social system, abuses of power, which, like the present, nothing could
justify; and she wondered whether it would last forever, or whether, on
the contrary, the outraged gods would not some day arise and pour down
upon this imperial Rome the vengeance due to the oppressed.

Sergius partially read her thoughts, and set himself to work to reverse
their current and turn it into a more cheerful channel. Drawing his seat
closer to her, he began to speak to her of more pleasant topics, telling
of the enlivening incidents of his campaign, rehearsing the exploits of
those about him, and dwelling upon the few occasions in which, by some
unusual departure from martial customs, mercy had been shown to the
weak and helpless, and captives who were not fit for slaves had not been
crucified. The gift of fascination was one of his distinguishing traits;
and when he chose, he could charm, with his winning speech, the most
obdurate and unloving. Therefore, as he now softly whispered these
narrations into AEnone's ears, mingling gentle words of endearment with
them, it was not long before she began to yield to the pleasant
influence, and was almost ready to believe that she had judged rashly,
and that everything upon earth was not so very wrong. Why, after all,
should she presume to criticize matters which did not arouse the
discontent of the wisest of men? And if the gods felt really outraged,
why did they let their thunders sleep so long? At the least, it was not
the duty of herself, a weak girl, to strive to right the world. Her only
domain must be her lord's heart--her only rule of life, his will.

Leaning upon his shoulder, and looking up into his face as she listened,
she thought upon the old times, when she had first met him, and how he
had then, as now, so successfully exerted his powers of charming, that
it had seemed as though no mere earthly love could be good enough reward
for him. Could it be that in her distrust she had been the victim of a
momentary delusion, and that he would always exert himself hereafter, as
now, to please her? Might it not be, after all, that this great
happiness, with its tender whisperings and caresses, would ever continue
unbroken, as in past times?

'But, aha!' he suddenly exclaimed, in the tone of one newly awakened to
the existence of a fact whose comparative unimportance had led to its
forgetfulness by him. 'Let not my own losses make me indifferent to your
pleasure, love, for I have not been so. For you, and you alone, I have
reserved a gift fit for the palace of the Caesars.'

'A gift, my lord? And for me?'

'Yes; but ask me no questions now. You shall see it to-morrow. A few
hours only of mystery and waiting must yet elapse before I will bring it
to you. Until then you can enjoy a woman's pleasure and nurse your
greedy curiosity--hopeless of solving the enigma until I myself choose
to give the clew.'




THE YOUNG AUTHOR'S DREAM.

  '_One more Unfortunate._'

  Alone in a garret where cobwebs hang thick
  Over walls that display the bare mortar and brick,
  Whose windows look down on the roofs of back sheds,
  From a height that would dizzy the coolest of heads,
  A young author sits by a rickety stand,
  In a broken-backed chair, with a pen in his hand,
  And patiently toils ere the sunlight shall fade
  To black the last quire of a ream of 'white laid.'
  The shadows have deepened that hang on the wall;
  But the Finis is written, the pen is let fall;
  And, glad of a respite from labors complete,
  His hands and his head press the last written sheet.
  Sleep comes not alone; for the goddess of dreams
  Is accustomed to visit this blacker of reams.
  Like the man that sits under a monster balloon,
  And soars o'er the earth halfway up to the moon,
  Now stepping at once into Fancy's fair car,
  He sails from the dusky old garret afar;
  And, leaving the world with its practical crowds,
  Such visions as these meet his gaze in the clouds:

  THE DREAM.

  Forty large editions
  Of the 'thrilling tale;'
  Forty thousand dollars,
  Net proceeds of sale.
  Forty smiling critics
  Lavishing their praise;
  Forty famous florists
  Bidding for the bays.

  Forty thousand maidens
  Sitting up at night,
  Poring o'er the volume
  With intense delight.

  Forty thousand letters
  From the country sent,
  Blurred by frequent teardrops,
  Filled with sentiment.

  Forty scheming mothers
  Anxious for a match;
  Forty blushing daughters,
  Each a glorious catch.

  Forty generations
  Reverence his name;
  Forty future ages
  Fortify his fame.


  THE REALITY.

  Forty dunning letters
  Coming every day;
  Forty cents for washing,
  Which he cannot pay.

  Forty jokes malicious
  Cracked by forty wags;
  Forty pert young misses
  Sneering at his rags.

  Forty old companions
  Wondering at his mood;
  Forty friends officious
  Preaching fortitude.

  Forty days of sadness;
  Forty nights of sorrow;
  Forty dark forebodings
  Hanging o'er the morrow.

  Forty hempen inches
  Borrowed from a friend;
  Rafter at the upper,
  Neck at lower, end.

  Forty earthy spadefuls
  On the green hillside;
  Forty lines of 'local,'
  Telling now he died.




THE GREAT LAKES TO ST. PAUL.


Toward the close of July, 1860, our party gathered at Canaudaigua, that
beautiful piece of Swiss overland scenery, transported to Western New
York. Its Indian name, signifying 'the chosen place,' was not inapt for
our meeting ground.

By the 31st of July we were at Cleveland, Ohio, over the Buffalo and
Lake Shore Railway and New York Central. It was a beautiful day's ride,
the most of the way skirting the lake, whose broad expanse gleamed in
the sunshine, and bore many a sail and propeller to the great havens of
its commerce. The railway borders fine towns and farms, formed by the
dense settlement of the oak openings and groves of the Western Reserve
of Ohio, which was purchased from the Holland Land Company, by a company
from Connecticut, of whom General Cleveland, who names the present city,
was the agent.

Cleveland city, with about forty thousand population, lies on Lake Erie,
at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, which forms its harbor. It is well
built, chiefly of the light graystone of the vicinity, upon a declivity
shaded with trees, among which the buckeye hickory abounds, has many
fine dwellings, and presents a fair front to the lake view.

On the evening of the 31st July we embarked on the North Star for
Superior City. She is of first class, eleven hundred and six tons, and
bore an immense freight from the East to the remote peninsula, in
exchange for its precious minerals. The entire sail from Cleveland to
Superior is nine hundred and sixty-four miles.

As these boats are the only means of commerce and intercourse for the
dwellers on the upper lakes above Detroit, very frequent are their stops
and calls, taking and leaving much freight, consuming much time on their
way. However, our voyage was speedy: we arrived at our distant terminus,
Superior City, very early on the morning of the 5th of August, making
the running time about seventy-five hours.

Leaving Ohio, one of the earliest settled States of the Western Valley,
and organized sixty years since, our course from Cleveland stretched
northwesterly across the wide lake, passing the island scene of Perry's
splendid triumph, and thence northerly, by its river, to Detroit, a sail
of one hundred and twenty miles, arriving early on the 1st of August.

The city lies extended along its beautiful river, at one extremity
guarded by its old fort, and at the other are the extensive
copper-smelting furnaces, where the ore from the Superior mines, brought
by the steamers, flows in liquid copper. It is comparatively an ancient
town, settled as early as 1701 as a French frontier post; and some of
its land titles, always protected at each national change, with some of
its old families, derive their origin from these early French pioneers.

Our afternoon sail was up Detroit River and the St. Clair, threading our
way among its many verdant islands and rich shores graced with numerous
pretty villages. At 9 p.m. we reached Port Huron and its Canadian
opposite neighbor, Sarnia. At this point is the southern outlet of Lake
Huron, distant seventy-three miles from Detroit. Sarnia is also the
western depot of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, while Windsor,
facing Detroit, terminates the Canadian Great Western. From Sarnia,
passing old Fort Gratiot, over to Port Huron, the railway ferry boat,
propelled by the current only, transfers its passengers to the cars of
the Grand Trunk line, on Michigan soil, and by a short branch
intersects the Michigan Central Railroad, a few miles west of Detroit.
For over twelve hundred miles this iron road, fitly named the Grand
Trunk, transports our Western products. Entering Lake Huron, with its
innumerable islands and almost wilderness shores, our sail through it,
of two hundred and seventy-five miles in all, brought us early, on the
2d of August, off Saginaw and Thunder Bays, its western arms, with
Presque Isle, the Great Manitoulin Island, bearing north by east; and by
noon, we reached Point de Tour, at the outlet of St. Mary's River, three
hundred miles from Detroit, lying opposite to Drummond's Island.

Point de Tour has but a solitary dwelling, from whose roof rises the
light tower. Its inmates are said to have preferred this solitude to the
crowded refinement of a New England city. Shortly after, and still
coasting the western side, we stopped at Church's Landing, where an
enterprising New Englander has built his log houses in the forest, amid
the Indians, and drives an active commerce in _raspberry jam_. His trade
has prospered, and he had just completed a new and handsome dwelling.
Fourteen miles farther brought us to Saut Sainte Marie, or the rapids of
the eastern outlet of Lake Superior.

Lake Huron is at an average height of five hundred and seventy-five feet
above the sea level, and one hundred feet in depth below Lake Superior,
with a length in direct line of two hundred and seventy-five miles, from
Port Huron to Saut Sainte Marie. Georgian Bay, to the east of the Great
Manitoulin Island, is its broad eastern expansion; while, on the west,
the Straits of Mackinaw open into the vast expanse of Lake Michigan,
extending a length of four hundred and forty-six miles to Chicago. The
borders of Lake Huron are sparsely peopled. The primitive forest bends
over the lake's clear waters, and surrounds the log cabin or infant
settlement with the wigwam and canoe of the Indian half breeds, who are
still fishing and hunting round the graves of their ancestors-once the
fiercest of all the warrior races that scarce forty years ago as
sovereigns roamed its wilds.

The majestic solitudes of these lakes first received the white man in
1679, when the discoverers La Salle and Hennepin, in the vessel of sixty
tons, which they had built with their Indians at Cayuga Creek, sailed up
Niagara River, Lakes Erie, St. Clair, and Huron, to Mackinaw, and thence
through Lake Michigan to the mouth of Green Bay. Entering Lake Erie on
the 7th of August, 1691, they arrived at Green Bay on the 2d of
September following, encountering many storms and cautiously seeking
their untried way. After gathering a rich cargo of furs, the vessel, in
charge of the pilot and five men, started to return, and was heard of no
more. She doubtless perished with her crew in a gale on Lake Huron. She
carried seven cannon, was well manned and armed, adorned with carved
griffin and eagle heads, and bore the banner and religion of France amid
all the border tribes.

Surely the voyage of Columbus, discovering Hispaniola, while sailing
before and obeying the trade winds, did not surpass in real adventure
this simple expedition of those half-warrior pioneer voyageurs, Fathers
Hennepin and La Salle. The memory of their visit is yet immortal in the
local names given by them and still cherished; while the influence of
France still lingers at Detroit and many other prominent points in this
wide region, once the empire of Louis XIV.

We reached the Saut Sainte Marie about 4 P. M. of the 2d of August. Here
the River St. Mary, or the eastern outlet of Lake Superior, after a wide
course of fifty miles, gathers the multitude of its waters into a narrow
channel of less than a mile in width and length, of swift and impassable
rapids.

The grand Ship Canal, with its stone banks of about eighty feet width
and three locks, transports the largest tonnage around these rapids.
This great work was completed in 1857 by the contractors, Erastus
Corning, of New York, Fairbanks, and others, for a contract price of
seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, chiefly mineral, in the
State of Michigan. During our steamer's canal passage of about two
hours, we were interested by the picturesque scenery, untenanted save by
the wigwam and the bark canoe. As usual, upon the arrival of the
steamer, the long canoe, steadily held by a single boy and paddle, in a
current swift as the Niagara, shoots out into the Saut, while the
Indian, standing erect in the canoe, poising his harpoon and scrap net,
strikes or swoops in the large and delicious white fish, assured of a
capacious basketful and more, before the steamer leaves the canal.

And thus we floated onward to the bosom of great Superior.

Our course was along the St. Mary outlet, northwesterly toward White
Fish Point, on the main south shore, projecting far out into the lake.
We were hence carried miles away from sight of the famed-pictured rocks
or of any land. Tending southerly and still westward, we steamed on over
the dark waters, during a serene night, until daylight showed us the
beautiful town of Marquette. Scarce seven years old, the fruit of the
iron mining in its vicinity, it spreads its neat white cottages around
the crescent of its bay and river on an amphitheatre of hills. The rail
train destined to Bai de Noc, on Green Bay, and finished to Marquette
Mines, in all some eighteen miles, was starting upon our arrival.
Marquette, though so young, a mere group of cottages, fronting a
wilderness, from its rich mines of the best iron, has become at once a
scene of industry and large outlay of capital; while the beauty of its
position and its unrivalled climate, surpassing all others on Lake
Superior, have already made it the most attractive summer resort, as
well for the pleasure traveller as the pulmonary invalid. Its climate,
without the sea air, has a cool, silken softness, reminding one of
Newport, Rhode Island. It is more equable and certain; the summer
average is 66 deg., and the winter 41 deg.; while the lake wind and evaporation
secure it from the rapid changes of the sea shores.

Marquette is the lake port and entrepot of the short range of iron
mountains which adjoin their sisters, known as the Porcupine Mountains,
in whose depths lies the famous copper ore, not unmixed with silver and
other precious deposits. This great mountain fortress extends from
Marquette to Montreal River, beyond Ontonagon, the western boundary of
the State of Michigan, in a line of about twelve to eighteen miles south
of the lake, and often approaches two thousand feet in height, lifting
its forest sides in constant view for more than two hundred miles.
Leaving Marquette and the iron range at 7 A.M., on the 3d of
August, we sailed for Portage, the first harbor in the copper mountains,
arriving about noon.

Portage is a shallow bay or mouth of the river of the same name, on the
east shore of Keewaiwonah Promontory, or, as it is commonly called,
Keweenaw Point. The mines and town of Portage lie at the mountains,
about sixteen miles inland. A few huts were the only signs of settlement
at the bay. Tugs landed the freight and passengers, and we soon left the
wooded bank for the broad expanse of the lake, turning the head of the
promontory, and at 5 P.M. reaching Copper Harbor on its
northwest shore. Here we lay till morning. The village is small, at the
base of a lower range of mineral mountains, spurs of the main chain.

The Clarke Copper Mine is within two miles of the wharf. This mine, like
many others, has had many owners. It had just gone through the
experiments of a French company, which expended its capital, as
alleged, in building fine roads, bridges, and residences for its agents,
while the mining had scarcely reached one hundred and twenty feet deep,
and then employed only six Frenchmen as its miners, whose ore product
was little over three per cent. of copper. In other hands, perhaps, it
may now yield a better reward.

We were much amused with the description given by these Frenchmen of the
mishaps of their ill-directed enterprise. Persistent as Chinese,
resembling many others of the French nation in their ignorance of our
country, language, or customs, they had passed through many droll
blunders, which rendered their narrative highly entertaining.

Copper Harbor, although so small, only then claiming about seventy legal
voters in the entire township, including the mines, was promised the
unusual treat of a political address that evening, as duly placarded,
from a gentleman, who was then candidate for Governor of Michigan, and
came in our boat. The apathy and indifference of the free and
enlightened electors of Copper Harbor were remarkable. A small, dingy
room, adjoining the only store, was the destined arena; and therein,
dimly lighted by some tallow candles, long sat the candidate--alone: a
rejected Timon, whose reflections were never published. The only
interest taken in the meeting (that came under my notice) was an anxious
inquiry by the owner of the building for his rent and expense of
candles, etc., payment of which was alleged to have been refused by the
candidate.

Singularly happy Copper Harbor! your contented equanimity is unruffled
by all the stormy strife of politicians.

Its lake front is graced by a fort, now and long since a water-cure
establishment. All these Western forts, erected many years ago, seem not
intended for offence, but rather as stockades or blockhouses of shelter
from the Indians. They are arranged as extensive tenements within,
pierced for musketry, and only in some cases with terraces for cannon.
These frontier forts, long the dwelling of the hunter or his family in
the wilderness, were guarded by the company of troops who protected the
settlers and maintained the sovereignty of our flag and nation over
these remote wilds. They are always placed in the most eligible and
commanding positions, and seem as if by design to have secured the
settlement of these points, which in all cases have become the thronged
cities or favorite towns of the ever-growing West. Thus, in Europe, the
ancient Roman fortified camps on their frontiers founded Cologne,
Chester, Vienna, Milan, Verona, and other cities, once their military
outposts against barbarism.

About 7 A. M. of the 4th August, we left Copper Harbor on our
course, and soon reached Eagle River. This is another copper-mining
settlement, straggling along its poor harbor, somewhat larger than
Copper Harbor, and more picturesque. Landing a few of our company, we
sailed to Ontonagon, the largest of these copper-mine towns (perhaps two
thousand in population), and situated upon a sand reach at the mouth of
its river, which leads to the Great Minnesota Mine, eighteen miles
distant.

Early in the clear morning of the 5th of August, we were moving up
Allouez Bay. Sounding slowly over its bar, and passing Minnesota Point
and Island, between the mouths of the Rivers St. Louis and Nemadji, we
arrived at Superior City, our destined haven.

_Superior City_, by its pretentious name, great distance, and our
expectations, had risen to much importance in our imagination, but the
actual scene presented a wide contrast. A large town--or metropolis--on
a poor harbor, without interior resources or communications, had been
hastily projected. It is called the head of ocean navigation, and the
terminus of many proposed but as yet imaginary railroads. While the
titles to all the land are still in litigation, the wilderness shades
its streets, and, saving the rare arrival of the Indian mail carrier on
snow shoes, during six months of intense cold, they are isolated from
all humanity. Its grand prospectus, some five years before, had drawn
there about three thousand people; and soon afterward, starved and
disappointed, nearly all, save perhaps five hundred, had deserted. About
two miles of streets, planked from the mud, with frame dwellings, had
been constructed, and they had already attained the first municipal
blessing--_taxes-_-to the total of $45,000, payable by this feeble
remnant of a settlement, mainly of abandoned dwellings. Should the
railroads so frequently surveyed and designed to terminate here be
really built, Superior City may see, to some extent, in future years,
somewhat of that prosperity which its projectors, blinded by their
hopes, had thought already realized.

Few positions are more picturesque. In front, the shores of Portland and
Minnesota rise in beautiful grandeur, and the bay and harbor, although
imperfect, are richly wooded and very graceful; while, all the way
thither, from La Pointe, the lake's waters, lying among the mountains,
shadowed by their heavy foliage, remind one much of the scenery of the
Lower Danube. This _ghost of a city_ had not much left of interest, and
we passed our day in arranging for the journey across the country
southward to St. Paul.

And here we found ourselves really _pioneers_. No road or transport was
alleged to exist. We persevered. Indians and trappers beset us with
their projects of tracking and portage by the St. Croix and other
rivers, requiring a camp life with strange companions of nearly a month
to accomplish the distance of only one hundred and sixty-three miles,
equivalent to that of Albany from New York. A military road direct
through the wilderness had been often surveyed, and once cut through, of
about eighty feet width, to near Sunrise City, fifty miles from St.
Paul; at which point the dense forest spreads into oak openings and
beautiful prairies. This single cutting, long overgrown in lofty pines,
with the frequent surveys and contracts, from the year 1852 to 1857, had
cost the United States Government, for this distance of about one
hundred and twelve miles, $150,000; and no actual road had ever yet been
made. Fortunately for our enterprise, we met a gentleman who had just
groped through safely on horseback. We were reassured, and engaged the
only available wagon and team--a small, frail affair, devoid of cover,
seats, or springs; and, with ample provisions, perched upon our luggage,
we rolled out of Superior City that evening, and, passing its
significantly large cemetery, we at once entered the forest. These woods
are chiefly of pine, cedar, tamarack, or hemlock, gigantic in size, a
dreary solitude, unvisited by any bird or game, save an occasional hawk
or owl. They are but the southern outposts of that forest army which
begirds Hudson's Bay, and spreads its gloomy barrier of the same trees
around the dominions of the Ice King, while it is the only forest to be
met with in all the Mississippi Valley.

The width of about eighty feet--that theoretical road for which the
United States had paid so often and so well--was seen between the
mightiest sentinel trees; but in the midst had sprung up a fresh growth,
often nearly one hundred feet high, surrounded by huge stumps, and heavy
undergrowth of the renewing forest, varied with hopeless mudholes and
swamps, and only at intervals of about twenty miles was there any
habitation.

Such was the _great military road_. Perhaps its progress equalled the
actual wants of this region; for population had not yet crowded any of
the forest borders. It was then by the adjoining townships, under State
laws, feebly commencing to be really made as a road; and frequently we
halted at the camps of these hardy sons of toil. Our first twenty-one
miles to Twin Lakes, at the best speed, with good horses, occupied eight
hours, three of which, in the middle of the night, were passed under
deluging rain accompanied by thunder and lightning of the most appalling
grandeur, thumping in the shelterless wagon over stumps and bogholes
through the dreary woods.

Twin Lakes--or the isthmus between two small lakes, in the depths of the
forest--is a solitary log house and stable. Its proprietor and our
landlord for the night's shelter was, I believe, named John Smith. With
his family he had lived there, keeping this _hotel_ for some years,
owning _several lots_ in the paper _City of Twin Lakes_, rich in the
anticipated tide of gain to flow from the crowded thoroughfare of the
great military road.

Happy man! we were the first party _on wheels_ that had yet essayed the
road. Perhaps his posterity, by patience, may win their reward.

Our rain deluge, with sheeted lightning and pealing thunder, was
ceaseless throughout the night. Its echoes amid the forest solitudes
were awful; and our fitful sleep was varied by the rain dripping between
the logs of our shelter.

However, morning came at last, bright, clear, and calm; and early we
resumed our wagon and way-picking among the familiar logs and stumps,
contesting as for life with legions of mosquitoes, sandflies, etc. And
thus we made thirty miles farther (halting at a camp for dinner) to the
_City of Chengwatana_, which is so named on the large and beautiful map
thereof, prepared in New York. It is laid out in Broadways, Fifth
Avenues, Lydig Avenue, and, I believe, Daly Square, so named from J.
Daly, of New York, with parks, colleges, etc., etc., adequate for a
million of inhabitants. This fine imaginary picture proved unavailing to
sell the land. It still remains a swamp bordering Snake River, in the
bosom of the wilderness; and its entire population was only one German
and his family--really indefinite in number of children--and two log
houses, between which he vibrated at pleasure.

Our arrival was in another violent rain, lasting far into the night; but
we considered ourselves, by this time, road and water proof. On the
river shore, by the red glare of the fire light a wigwam and some
Indians were visible; and frequently we heard their rifle shots. To our
surprise, in the morning, instead of deer, they brought in a large
basket of lake trout, each pierced through the head with a bullet when
approaching the fire light.

Morning found us early on our hard way to the famed _City of Fortuna_,
whose picture displayed a similar origin and imagination, and its
reality was even more doleful.

Fortuna City, on Kettle River, in the woods, contained three log cabins,
and no inhabitants. A boy came hither, perhaps from Superior, the day
before, to meet our party. After repelling some furious charges of the
mosquito cavalry, who displayed their vigor after long starving, we gave
up the contest, and attempted sleep.

To our log cabin had come that day several engineers, who formed a
surveying party for another railroad project, passing through this
forest from St. Paul, whence they had started a month before with an
ample wagon train. The Indians had murdered the drivers and captured the
wagons with their entire property; and in their destitution they sought
this only shelter. We took them forward with us into St. Paul, and were
greatly indebted for their intelligent society and kind attentions.

Fortuna City had one peculiar interest to us; it was the _last halt_ and
lodging in the forest. Our next day's ride--if such it may be
called--brought us to the oak openings at Folsom's, a clearing on the
southern skirt of this wilderness, and shortly after to Sunrise City.

Our forest journey to-day was varied by the utter collapse of the wagon
in a vain charge upon an obstinate stump; and perforce we walked for
miles, till reaching a camp of the road workers on the farther bank of
Grindstone River, we joyfully forded and found shelter from the noontide
heat and mosquitoes; while the German sutler, who alone remained, busied
himself in his primitive _al fresco_ cookery, which we enjoyed, and
then, exchanging to another wagon, hastened on to our destination.

The oak openings--those grand parklike expanses and rolls of land, with
stately groups of giant oaks--far surpassing all culture of man, set out
by the Creator on such a noble forest background, never looked more
majestic and beautiful. They were vocal with singing birds, and filled
with life; at their foot thronged the grouse or prairie chicken, darting
through the high flowering grasses (richer than all garden flowers) in
such numbers that but a few feet from our wheels we shot them in great
abundance.

_Sunrise City_--a village but of yesterday (public lands, for sale by
proclamation, adjoining)--is beautifully placed on Sunrise River, and
might have then contained about five hundred inhabitants, whose neat
white cottages and pleasant streets, bordering a romantic river and
bridge, made a picture not unlike the scenery of Warwickshire, England.

We reached here--fifty miles still north of St. Paul--to pass the first
night of our ride in a comfortable dwelling.

Many a fine farm, just cleared and broken, attracted us here, and hence
along the prairie road into St. Paul, where we arrived at the close of
the following day, which proved to be, as we kept no calendar, Thursday,
the 9th of August.

Our drive this last day led past numerous linked lakes, with their
borders of the tall Minnesota rice grass in flower, the home of the
canvas back, pelican, and swan. Passing through the village of Little
Canada, we rode on to Minnehaha Prairie along its gentle, verdant slope,
and lapse of shining waters of Twelve Lakes, graced with the names of
Como, Garda, etc., and adorned with many a pretty boat and sail. A few
miles further brought us to the upper terrace of beautiful St. Paul.

As pioneers of this wilderness route, we met with marked attention from
all, and passed some agreeable days at St. Paul, Fort Snelling,
Minneapolis, St. Anthony, and their numerous points of interest. Our
homeward route was by the Mississippi River to Prairie du Chien, where
old Fort Crawford, then a mere tenement, commands the confluence of the
Wisconsin River with the Father of Waters. This sail of three hundred
miles consumed forty-eight hours.

The river banks recede and advance in lake-like expanses along its
winding course, and their richly wooded heights, crowned with red
sandstone, resemble the ruined Rhine castles. The sail through Lake
Pepin, and between the States of Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, was
varied by frequent and thriving towns and villages.

From Prairie du Chien--a picture of straggling despair--by the Milwaukie
and Prairie du Chien Railroad, and the Northwestern Railroad, two
hundred and twenty-two miles, we reached Chicago, and passed through a
crowd of beautiful towns, in a State scarce a generation since reclaimed
from the Indians. Familiar railroads transported us from Chicago to
Detroit, Niagara, Albany, and New York.

Our whole distance of travel in three weeks was thirty-four hundred and
forty-one miles. It was brief, but spiced with adventure, and over a
field of vast interest, present and future.

Our beautiful country, made one and indivisible by the great and good
Author of its existence, through its mighty natural features, has,
among its chief grandeurs, this water system of the great northern
lakes, the frontier of the ever-progressive and patriotic West and
North. In dimensions, sublimity, and beauty, by the consent of all, it
is without parallel on earth.

A volume of the purest fresh water is gathered in Lake Superior, without
visible, adequate supply, to a depth of one thousand feet, with a length
of near five hundred miles, and average breadth of one hundred and sixty
miles, on a bottom lifted six hundred feet above sea level.

This incalculable mass of water moves its limpid wave through the Saut
Sainte Marie into its twin seas, Lakes Michigan and Huron, then by St.
Clair and Detroit Rivers is poured through L