Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Part 20

... The great Western Republic, therefore--in whose ... veins flows much of that ancient and kindred blood received from the nation once ruling a n.o.ble portion of its territory, and tracking its own political existence to the same parent spring of temperate human liberty--must look with affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth.

... The lessons of history and the fate of free states can never be sufficiently pondered by those upon whom so large and heavy a responsibility for the maintenance of rational human freedom rests.

=_Alexander B. Meek,[42] 1814-1865._= (Manual, p. 523.)

From "Romantic Pa.s.sages in Southwestern History."

=_142._= EXILED FRENCH OFFICERS IN ALABAMA.

Upon the colony they bestowed the name of Marengo, which is still preserved in the county. Other relics of their nomenclature, drawn similarly from battles in which some of them had been distinguished, are to be found in the villages of Linden and Arcola....

Who that would have looked upon Marshal Grouchy or General Lefebvre, as, dressed in their plain, rustic habiliments,--the straw hat, the homespun coat, the brogan shoes,--they drove the plough in the open field, or wielded the axe in the new-ground clearing, would, if unacquainted with their history, have dreamed that those farmer-looking men had sat in the councils of monarchs, and had headed mighty armies in the fields of the sternest strife the world has ever seen? "Do you know, sir," said a citizen to a traveller, who, in 1819, was pa.s.sing the road from Arcola to Eaglesville,--"do you know, sir, who is that fine-looking man who has just ferried you across the creek?" "No. Who is he?" was the reply.

"That," said the citizen, "is the officer who commanded Napoleon's advanced guard when he returned from Elba." This was Colonel Raoul, now a general in France.

[Footnote 42: One of the few writers of Alabama. The "Romantic pa.s.sages"

is a book of great interest.]

=_143._= THE YOUTH OF THE INDIAN CHIEF WEATHERFORD.

But the mind of the young Indian, though grasping with singular readiness the knowledge thus imparted, was subject to stronger tastes and propensities; and he indulged in all the wild pursuits and amus.e.m.e.nts of the youth of his nation with an alacrity and spirit which won their approval and admiration. He became one of the most active, athletic, and swift-footed partic.i.p.ants in their various games and dances, and was particularly expert and successful, as a hunter, in the use of the rifle and the bow. He was also noted, even in his youth, for his reckless daring as a rider, and his graceful feats of horsemanship, which the fine stables of his father enabled him to indulge. To use the words of an old Indian woman who knew him at this period, "The squaws would quit hoeing corn, and smile and gaze upon him as he rode by the corn-patch."

=_Abel Stevens,[43] 1815-._=

From "The History of Methodism."

=_144._= THE EARLY METHODIST CLERGY IN AMERICA.

They composed a cla.s.s which, perhaps, will never be seen again. They were distinguished by native mental vigor, shrewdness, extraordinary knowledge of human nature, many of them by overwhelming natural eloquence, the effects of which on popular a.s.semblies are scarcely paralleled in the history of ancient or modern oratory, and not a few by powers of satire and wit which made the gainsayer cower before them. To these intellectual attributes they added great excellences of the heart, a zeal which only burned more fervently where that of ordinary men would have grown faint, a courage that exulted in perils, a generosity which knew no bounds, and left most of them in want in their latter days, a forbearance and co-operation with each other which are seldom found in large bodies, an entire devotion to one work, and, withal, a simplicity of character which extended even to their manners and their apparel.

They were likewise characterized by rare physical abilities. They were mostly robust. The feats of labor and endurance which they performed, in incessantly preaching in villages and cities, among slave huts and Indian wigwams, in journeyings seldom interrupted by stress of weather, in fording creeks, swimming rivers, sleeping in forests,--these, with the novel circ.u.mstances with which such a career frequently brought them into contact, afford examples of life and character which, in the hands of genius, might be the materials for a new department of romantic literature. They were men who labored as if the judgment fires were about to break out on the world, and time to end with their day. They were precisely the men whom the moral wants of the new world at the time demanded.

[Footnote 43: A prominent clergyman of the Methodist church. His History of Methodism is a work of great research and value. A native of Pennsylvania.]

=_Francis Parkman, 1823-._= (Manual, pp. 496, 505.)

From "The Conspiracy of Pontiac."

=_145._= HUNTERS AND TRAPPERS.

These rude and hardy men, hunters and traders, scouts and guides, who ranged the woods beyond the English borders, and formed a connecting link between barbarism and civilization, have been touched upon already.

They were a distinct, peculiar cla.s.s, marked with striking contrasts of good and evil. Many, though by no means all, were coa.r.s.e, audacious, and unscrupulous; yet, even in the worst, one might often have found a vigorous growth of warlike virtues, an iron endurance, an undespairing courage, a wondrous sagacity, and singular fertility of resource. In them was renewed, with all its ancient energy, that wild and daring spirit, that force and hardihood of mind, which marked our barbarous ancestors of Germany and Norway. These sons of the wilderness still survive. We may find them to this day, not in the valley of the Ohio, nor on the sh.o.r.es of the lakes, but far westward on the desert range of the buffalo, and among the solitudes of Oregon. Even now, while I write, some lonely trapper is climbing the perilous defiles of the Rocky Mountains, his strong frame cased in time-worn buck-skin, his rifle griped in his sinewy hand. Keenly he peers from side to side, lest Blackfoot or Arapahoe should ambuscade his path. The rough earth is his bed, a morsel of dried meat and a draught of water are his food and drink, and death and danger his companions. No anchorite could fare worse, no hero could dare more; yet his wild, hard life has resistless charms; and while he can wield a rifle, he will never leave it. Go with him to the rendezvous, and he is a stoic no more. Here, rioting among his comrades, his native appet.i.tes break loose in mad excess, in deep carouse, and desperate gaming. Then follow close the quarrel, the challenge, the fight,--two rusty rifles and fifty yards of prairie.

From "The Discovery of the Great West."

=_146._= EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

The river twisted among the lakes and marshes choked with wild rice; and, but for their guides, they could scarcely have followed the perplexed and narrow channel. It brought them at last to the portage; where, after carrying their canoes a mile and a half over the prairie and through the marsh, they launched them on the Wisconsin, bade farewell to the waters that flowed to the St. Lawrence, and committed themselves to the current that was to bear them they knew not whither,--perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the South Sea or the Gulf of California. They glided calmly down the tranquil stream, by islands choked with trees and matted with entangling grape-vines; by forests, groves, and prairies,--the parks and pleasure-grounds of a prodigal nature; by thickets and marshes and broad bare sand-bars; under the shadowing trees, between whose tops looked down from afar the bold brow of some woody bluff. At night, the bivouac,--the canoes inverted on the bank, the flickering fire, the meal of bison-flesh or venison, the evening pipes and slumber beneath the stars; and when in the morning they embarked again, the mist hung on the river like a bridal veil; then melted before the sun, till the gla.s.sy water and the languid woods basked breathless in the sultry glare.

On the 17th of June, they saw on their right the broad meadows, bounded in the distance by rugged hills, where now stand the town and fort of Prairie du Chien. Before them, a wide and rapid current coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in forests. They had found what they sought, and "with a joy," writes Marquette, "which I cannot express," they steered forth their canoes on the eddies of the Mississippi.

Turning southward, they paddled down the stream, through a solitude unrelieved by the faintest trace of man. A large fish, apparently one of the huge cat-fish of the Mississippi, blundered against Marquette's canoe with a force which seems to have startled him; and once, as they drew in their net, they caught a "spade-fish," whose eccentric appearance greatly astonished them. At length, the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds on the great prairies which then bordered the river; and Marquette describes the fierce and stupid look of the old bulls, as they stared at the intruders through the tangled mane which nearly blinded them.

=_John Gilmary Shea,[44] 1824-. _=

From "The History of Catholic Missions among the Indians."

=_147._= DIFFICULTIES OF THE ENTERPRISE.

The discovery of America, like every other event in the history of the world, had, in the designs of G.o.d, the great object of the salvation of mankind. In that event, more clearly, perhaps, than it is often given to us here below, we can see and adore that Providence which thus gave to millions, long sundered from the rest of man by pathless oceans, the light of the gospel, and the proffered boon of redemption....

The field was one as yet unmatched for extent and difficulty. That region now studded with cities and towns, traversed in every direction by the panting steam-car or lightning telegraph, was then an almost unbroken forest, save where the wide prairie rolled its billows of gra.s.s towards the western mountains, or was lost in the sterile, salt, and sandy plains of the southwest. No city raised to heaven spire, dome, or minaret; no plough turned up the rich, alluvial soil; no metal dug from the bowels of the earth had been fashioned into instruments to aid man in the arts of peace and war....

The simplest arts of civilized life were unknown. In one little section of the Gila and Rio Grande, the people spun and wove a native cotton, manufactured a rude pottery, and lived in houses or castle-towns of unburnt bricks. Elsewhere the canoe or cabin of bark or hides, and the arabesque mat, denoted the highest point of social progress.

Elsewhere the whole country was inhabited by tribes of a nomadic character, rarely collected in villages except at particular seasons, or for specific objects, though here and there were found more sedentary tribes in villages of bark, encircled by walls of earth, or palisades of wood, whose inst.i.tutions, commercial spirit, and agriculture, superior to that of the wild rovers, seemed to show the remnant of some more civilized tribe in a state of decadence. Around each isolated tribe lay an unbroken wilderness extending for miles on every side, where the braves roamed, hunters alike of beasts and men. So little intercourse or knowledge of each other existed, so desolate was the wilderness that a vagabond tribe might wander from one extreme of the continent to another, and language alone could tell the nation to which they belonged.

The whole country was thus occupied by comparatively small, but hostile tribes, so numerous, that almost every river and every lake has handed down the name of a distinct nation. In form, in manners, and in habits, these tribes presented an almost uniform appearance: language formed the great distinctive mark to the European, though the absence of a feather or a line of paint disclosed to the native the tribe of the wanderer whom he met.

The country itself presented a thousand obstacles: there was danger from flood, danger from wild beasts, danger from the roving savage, danger from false friends, danger from the furious rapids on rivers, danger of loss of sight, of health, of use of motion and of limbs, in the new, strange life of an Indian wigwam....

Once established in a tribe, the difficulties were increased. After months, nay, years, of teaching, the missionaries found that the fickle savage was easily led astray; never could they form pupils to our life and manners. The nineteenth century failed, as the seventeenth failed, in raising up priests from among the Iroquois or the Algonquins; and at this day a pupil of the Propaganda, who disputed in Latin on theses of Peter Lombard, roams at the head of a half-naked band in the billowy plains of Nebraska.

[Footnote 44: This writer is much distinguished for his numerous works, most of which relate to the early missions of the Roman Catholic church in America. He is a native of New York.]

From "Introduction to Early Voyages," etc.

=_148._= EXPLORATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

Many a river lives embalmed in history and in historic verse. The Euphrates, the Nile, the Jordan, the Tiber, and the Rhine typify the course of empires and dynasties. Countries have been described _per flumina_, but these streams possess renown rather from some city that frowned on their currents, or some battle fought and won on their banks.

The great River of our West, from its immense length and the still increasing importance of its valley, possesses a history of its own. Its discovery by the Spanish adventurers, a Cabeza de Vaca, a De Soto, a Tristan, who reached, crossed, or followed it, is its period of early romance, brilliant, brief, and tragic. Its exploration by Marquette and La Salle follows,--work of patient endurance and investigation, still tinged with that light of heroism that hovers around all who struggle with difficulty and adversity to attain a great and useful end. Then come the early voyages depicting the successive stages of its banks from a wilderness to civilization.

The death of La Salle in Texas in his attempt to reach Illinois closes the chapter of exploration. Iberville opens a new period by his voyage to the mouth of the Mississippi, which crowning the previous efforts, gave the valley of the great river to civilization, Christianity, and progress. The river had become an object of rivalry. English, French, and Spanish at the same moment sought to secure its mouth, but fortune favored the bold Canadian, and the white flag reared by La Salle was planted anew.