Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Part 35

From "The Luck of Roaring Camp," &c.

=_246._= BIRTH OF A CHILD IN A MINER'S CAMP.

... The camp lay in a triangular valley, between two hills and a river.

The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,--seen it winding like a silver thread until it was lost in the stars above.

A fire of withered pine-boughs added sociability to the gathering. By degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that "Sal would get through with it," even, that the child would survive; side bets as to the s.e.x and complexion of the coming stranger....

In the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.

The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a barrel of gunpowder; but, in consideration of the situation of the mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were discharged; for, whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had climbed, as it were, the rugged road that led to the stars, and so pa.s.sed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever....

I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as to the fate of the child, "Can he live now?" was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's s.e.x and maternal condition in the settlement, was an a.s.s. There was some conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and apparently as successful.

Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for maternal deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills--that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating--he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that trans.m.u.ted a.s.ses' milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing, "Me and that a.s.s," he would say, "has been father and mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the helpless bundle before him, "never go back on us."

[Footnote 59: Prominent among the more recent American writers; a native of New York, but long resident in California; noted for his vivid portraiture of the early life, and remarkable scenery of that State, in a style uncommonly suggestive.]

=_William Dean Howells, 1837-._= (Manual, p. 531.)

From "Venetian Life."

=_247._= SNOW IN VENICE.

... The lofty crest of the bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling snow, and I could no longer see the golden angel upon its summit. But looked at across the Piazza, the beautiful outline of St. Mark's Church was perfectly penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the snow-fall were woven into a spell of novel enchantment around a structure that always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic loveliness to be anything but the creation of magic. The tender snow had compa.s.sionated the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the hands of the builder--or, better said, just from the brain of the architect. There was marvellous freshness in the colors of the mosaics in the great arches of the facade; and all that glorious harmony into which the temple rises, of marble scrolls and leafy exuberance airily supporting the statues of the saints, was a hundred times etherialized by the purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly on the golden globes that tremble like peac.o.c.k-crests above the vast domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in ermine; and it danced over all its work as if exulting in its beauty....

Through the wavering snow-fall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the granite pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is, and the winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so mild and gentle he looked by the tender light of the storm. The towers of the island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin, wrought like phantoms among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance, more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence almost palpable, lay upon the mutest city in the world.

=_Mary Abigail Dodge,[60] 1838-._=

From "Wool Gathering."

=_248._= SCENERY OF THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI.

Up the broad, cold, steel-blue river we wind steadily to its Northern home. No flutter of its orange groves, no fragrance of its Southern roses, no echo of its summer lands, can penetrate these distances. Only prophecies of the st.u.r.dy North are here,--the glitter of the Polar sea, the majesty of Arctic solitudes. The imagination is touched. The eye looks out upon a hemisphere. Vast s.p.a.ces, lost ages, the unsealed mysteries of cold and darkness and eternal silence, sweep around the central thought, and people the wilderness with their solemn symbolism, Prettiness of gentle slope, wealth, and splendor of hue, are not wanting, but they shine with veiled light. Mountains come down to meet the Great River. The mists of the night lift slowly away, and we are brought suddenly into the presence-chamber. One by one they stand out in all their rugged might, only softened here and there by fleecy clouds still clinging to their sides, and shining pink in the ruddy dawn. Bold bluffs that have come hundreds of miles from their inland home guard the river. They rise on both sides, fronting us, bare and black, layer of solid rock piled on solid rock, defiant fortifications of some giant race, crowned here and there with frowning tower; here and there overborne and overgrown with wild-wood beauty, vine and moss and manifold leaf.a.ge, gorgeous now with the glory of the vanishing summer.

It is as if the everlasting hills had parted to give the Great River entrance to the hidden places of the world. And then the bold bluffs break into sharp cones, lonely mountains rising head and shoulders above their brethren, and keeping watch over the whole country; groups of mountains standing sentinels on the sh.o.r.es, almost leaning over the river, and hushing us to breathless silence as we sail through their awful shadow. And then the earth smiles again, the beetling cliffs recede into distances, and we glide through a pleasant valley. Green levels stretch away to the foot of the far cliffs, level with the river's blue, and as smooth,--sheltered and fertile, and fit for future homes. Nay, already the pioneer has found them, and many a hut and cottage and huddle of houses show whence art and science and all the amenities of human life, shall one day radiate. And even as we greet them we have left them, and the heights clasp us again, the hills overshadow us, the solitude closes around us.

[Footnote 60: Born in Ma.s.sachusetts, author of numerous magazine articles of merit and earnestness, afterwards republished as books; known to her readers as Gail Hamilton.]

LATER MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.

=_George Washington[61], 1732-1799._=

From a Letter to Sir John Sinclair.

=_249._= NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF VIRGINIA.

The United States, as you well know, are very extensive, more than fifteen hundred miles between the northeastern and southwestern extremities; all parts of which, from the seaboard to the Appalachian Mountains, which divide the eastern from the western waters, are entirely settled; though not as compactly as they are susceptible of; and settlements are progressing rapidly beyond them.

Within so great a s.p.a.ce, you are not to be told, that there is a great variety of climates, and you will readily suppose, too, that there are all sorts of land, differently improved, and of various prices, according to the quality of the soil, its contiguity to, or remoteness from, navigation, the nature of the improvements, and other local circ.u.mstances....

Notwithstanding these abstracts, and although I may incur the charge of partiality in hazarding such an opinion at this time, I do not hesitate to p.r.o.nounce, that the lands on the waters of the Potomac will in a few years be in greater demand and in higher estimation, than in any other part of the United States. But, as I ought not to advance this doctrine without a.s.signing reasons for it, I will request you to examine a general map of the United States; and the following facts will strike you at first view; that they lie in the most temperate lat.i.tude of the United States, that the main river runs in a direct course to the expanded parts of the western country, and approximates nearer to the princ.i.p.al branches of the Ohio, than any other eastern water, and of course must become a great, if not (under all circ.u.mstances), the best highway into that region; that the upper seaport of the Potomac is considerably nearer to a large portion of Pennsylvania, than that portion is to Philadelphia, besides accommodating the settlers thereof with inland navigation for more than two hundred miles; that the amazing extent of tide navigation, afforded by the bay and rivers of the Chesapeake, has scarcely a parallel.

When to these it is added, that a site at the junction of the inland and tide navigations of that river is chosen for the permanent seat of the general government, and is in rapid preparation for its reception; that the inland navigation is nearly completed, to the extent above mentioned; that its lateral branches are capable of great improvement at a small expense, through the most fertile parts of Virginia in a southerly direction, and crossing Maryland and extending into Pennsylvania in a northerly one, through which, independently of what may come from the western country, an immensity of produce will be water-borne, thereby making the Federal City the great emporium of the United States; I say, when these things are taken into consideration, I am under no apprehension of having the opinion I have given, relative to the value of land on the Potomac, controverted by impartial men.

[Footnote 61: Washington's correspondence was voluminous, and on the subjects relating to climate, agriculture, and internal improvements, he wrote with interest and ability. The letter to Sinclair is characteristic.]

=_Matthew F. Maury,[62] 1806-1873._=

From "The Physical Geography of the Sea."

=_250._= THE MARINER'S GUIDE ACROSS THE DEEP.

So to shape the course on voyages as to make the most of the winds and currents at sea, is the perfection of the navigator's art. How the winds blow, and the currents flow, along this route or that, is no longer matter of opinion or subject of speculation, but it is a matter of certainty determined by actual observation.... The winds and the weather daily encountered by hundreds who have sailed on the same voyage before him, and "the distance made good" by each one from day to day, have been tabulated in a work called Sailing Directions, and they are so arranged that he may daily see how much he is ahead of time, or how far he is behind time; nay, his path has been literally blazed through the winds for him on the sea; mile-posts have been set up on the waves, and finger-boards planted, and time-tables furnished for the trackless waste, by which the ship-master, on his first voyage to any port, may know as well as the most experienced trader whether he be in the right road or no.

... The route that affords the bravest winds, the fairest sweep, and the fastest running to be found among ships, is the route to and from Australia. But the route which most tries a ship's prowess is the outward-bound voyage to California. The voyage to Australia and back, carries the clipper ship along a route which, for more than three hundred degrees of longitude, runs with the "brave west winds" of the southern hemisphere. With these winds alone, and with their bounding seas which follow fast, the modern clipper, without auxiliary power, has accomplished a greater distance in a day than any sea-steamer has ever been known to reach. With these fine winds and heaving seas, those ships have performed their voyages of circ.u.mnavigation in sixty days.

[Footnote 62: Formerly an officer of the navy, eminent for his scientific researches and writings on maritime subjects; a native of Virginia.]

=_251._= THE GULF STREAM.

As a rule, the hottest water of the Gulf Stream is at, or near, the surface; and as the deep-sea thermometer is sent down, it shows that these waters, though still far warmer than the waters on either side at corresponding depths, gradually become less and less warm until the bottom of the current is reached. There is reason to believe that the warm waters of the Gulf Stream are nowhere permitted, in the oceanic economy, to touch the bottom of the sea. There is everywhere a cushion of cool water, between them and the solid parts of the earth's crust.

This arrangement is suggestive, and strikingly beautiful. One of the benign offices of the Gulf Stream is to convey heat from the Gulf of Mexico, where otherwise it would become excessive, and to dispense it in regions beyond the Atlantic, or the amelioration of the climates of the British Islands and of all Western Europe. Now cold water is one of the best non-conductors of heat, and if the warm water of the Gulf Stream was sent across the Atlantic in contact with the solid crust of the earth,--comparatively a good conductor of heat,--instead of being sent across, as it is, in contact with a cold non-conducting cushion of cool water to fend it from the bottom, much of its heat would be lost in the first part of the way, and the soft climates of both France and England would be, as that of Labrador, severe In the extreme, icebound, and bitterly cold.

=_Ormsby M. Mitch.e.l.l,[63] 1810-1862._=

=_252._= THE GREAT UNFINISHED PROBLEMS OF THE UNIVERSE.

I do not pretend to indorse the theory of Madler with reference to his central sun. If I did indorse it, it would amount simply to nothing at all, for he needs no indors.e.m.e.nt of mine. But it is one of the great unfinished problems of the universe, which remains yet to be solved.

Future generations yet are to take it up. Materials for its solution are to acc.u.mulate from generation to generation, and possibly from century to century. Nay, I know not but thousands of years will roll away before the slow movements of these far distant orbs shall so acc.u.mulate as to give us the data whereby the resolution may be absolutely accomplished.