The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 152

The thick crisp wool is woven with fine twine, formed from the bark of a tree, until it presents a thick network of felt. As the hair grows through this matted substance it is subjected to the same process, until, in the course of years, a compact substance is formed, like a strong felt, about an inch and a half thick, that has been trained into the shape of a helmet. A strong rim of about two inches deep is formed by drawing it together with thread, and the front part of the helmet is protected by a piece of polished copper, while a piece of the same metal, shaped like the half of a bishop's mitre, and about a foot in length, forms the crest. The framework of the helmet being at length completed, it must be perfected by an arrangement of beads, should the owner of the head be sufficiently rich to indulge in the coveted distinction. The beads most in fashion are the red and the blue porcelain, about the size of small peas. These are sewn on the surface of the felt, and so beautifully arranged in sections of blue and red, that the entire helmet appears to be formed of beads, and the handsome crest of polished copper, surmounted by ostrich plumes, gives a most dignified and martial appearance to this elaborate head-dress."

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With Commoro, chief of the Latookas, Mr. Baker had a religious conversation. The savage was clever, even subtile. He does not appear, however to have shaken the faith of the traveller. Probably had Mr.

Baker been a Bishop (Colenso) trained in the theology of the schools, he might have been driven crazy by this mid-African counterpart of the famous Zulu. The natives exhume the bones of their dead, and celebrate a sort of dance round them; and Mr. Baker asked his Latookan friend--

"Have you no belief in a future existence after death? Is not some idea expressed in the act of exhuming the bones after the flesh is decayed?"

_Commoro (loq.)_--"Existence after death! How can that be? Can a dead man get out of his grave unless we dig him out?"

"Do you think a man is like a beast that dies and is ended?"

_Commoro._--"Certainly. An ox is stronger than a man, but he dies, and his bones last longer; they are bigger. A man's bones break quickly; he is weak."

"Is not a man superior in sense to an ox? Has he not a mind to direct his actions?"

_Commoro._--"Some men are not so clever as an ox. Men must sow corn to obtain food, but the ox and wild animals can procure it without sowing."

"Do you not know that there is a spirit within you more than flesh?

Do you not dream and wander in thought to distant places in your sleep? Nevertheless, your body rests in one spot. How do you account for this?"

_Commoro_ (laughing.)--"Well, how do you account for it?"

"If you have no belief in a future state, why should a man be good?

Why should he not be bad, if he can prosper by wickedness?"

_Commoro_.--"Most people are bad; if they are strong, they take from the weak. The good people are all weak; they are good because they are not strong enough to be bad."

Extremes meet; there are sages of modern days whose much learning has brought them up to the intellectual pitch of the savage's materialism.

They might, ingenious as they are, even take a lesson in sophistry from the Latookan. When driven into a corner by the use of St. Paul's metaphor, the astute Commoro answered:

"Exactly so; that I understand. But the original grain does not rise again; it rots, like the dead man, and is ended. The fruit produced is not the same grain that was buried, but the _production_ of that grain. So it is with man. I die, and decay, and am ended; but my children grow up, like the fruit of the grain. Some men have no children, and some grains perish without fruit; then all are ended."

Nevertheless, the Latookans continue to dig out the bones of their kindred, and to perform a rite around them which is manifestly a tradition from the time when a belief in the immortality of the soul existed among them.

It was impossible for Mr. Baker to reach the Lake toward which he pressed without appeasing Kamrasi, King of the Unyoros. But to do this was not easy when his stock of presents was getting low, and his men were so few and weak as to inspire no barbarian prince with the slightest fear. Yet, though debilitated with fever, his quinine exhausted, and Mrs. Baker stricken down in the disease, he pressed on with an unquenchable zeal--one would almost write worthy of a better cause. Finally, he was abundantly rewarded. Hurrying on in advance of his escort he reached at last, ere the sun had risen on what proved afterward a brilliant day, the summit of the hills that hem the great valley occupied by the vast Nile Source. There it lay "a sea of quicksilver" far beneath, stretching boundlessly off to the vast Blue Mountains which, on the opposite side towered upward from its bosom, and over whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s cascades could be discerned by the telescope tumbling down in numerous torrents. Standing 1500 feet above the level of the Lake, Mr. Baker shouted for joy that "England had won the Sources of the Nile!" and called the gigantic reservoir the Albert N'Yanza. The Victoria and Albert Lakes, then, are the {833} Nile Sources. Clambering down the steep--his wife, just recovered from fever, and intensely weak, leaning upon him--Mr. Baker reached the sh.o.r.e at length of the great expanse of water, and rushing into it, drank eagerly, with an enthusiasm almost reaching the ancient Egyptian point of Nile-worship.

Mr. Baker describes the Albert Lake as the grand reservoir, and the Victoria as the Eastern source.

"The Nile, cleared of its mystery, resolves itself into comparative simplicity. The actual basin of the Nile is included between about the 22 and 39 east longitude, and from 3 south to 18 north lat.i.tude. The drainage of that vast area is monopolized by the Egyptian river... The Albert N'Yanza is the great basin of the Nile: the distinction between it and the Victoria N'Yanza is, that the Victoria is a reservoir receiving the eastern affluents, and it becomes the starting-point or the most elevated _source_ at the point where the river issues from it at the Ripon Falls; the Albert is a reservoir not only receiving the western and southern affluents direct from the Blue Mountains, but it also receives the supply from the Victoria and from the entire equatorial Nile basin. The Nile, as it issues from the Albert N'Yanza is the entire Nile; prior to its birth from the Albert Lake it is _not_ the entire Nile."

"... Ptolemy had described the Nile sources as emanating from two great lakes that received the snows of the mountains in Ethiopia.

There are many ancient maps existing upon which these lakes are marked as positive. There can be little doubt that trade had been carried on between the Arabs from the Red Sea and the coast opposite Zanzitan in ancient times, and that the people engaged in such enterprises had penetrated so far as to have gained a knowledge of the existence of the two reservoirs."

The interest of Mr. Baker's volumes of course culminates with his account of the Great Lake. He embarked in a canoe of the country, and with his party in another, navigated it for a long distance, encountering storms and weathering them with a skill and courage which show him as cool and experienced a traveller on _sea_ as on land. On his return overland he was again in perils oft. But the same undying spirit which supported him through a dozen fevers carried him through every danger triumphantly. The English nation has reason to be proud of such men, and of such women as Mrs. Baker still more. Devotion like hers honors the s.e.x. There is an end, however, of Nile voyaging with the old object. If the Victoria and Albert Lakes are revisited it will be in pursuit of other ends than mere geographical inquiry or curiosity. Mr. Baker seems to think that missionaries may be the first to follow in the track he has made, and it is a fact that next to professional explorers (if even second to them) those influenced by religious zeal have made the most daring expeditions into unknown regions. Livingstone has done even more in another part of Africa than Baker did on the great level, which, as he thinks, from its alt.i.tude, escaped being submerged at any previous part of the world's history, and may contain at this moment the descendants of a pre-Adamite race.

On the ethnology of the central Africans he can throw no light, and his mere speculations are worthless, but he is doubtless right in considering that commerce must precede religious propagandism among those races, if anything is really to be done for their benefit. For commerce there are large opportunities, if only the abominable slave-trade, which makes fiends of the natives, were effectually suppressed. Mr. Baker writes warmly on this point, and none knows better the character and extent of the evil. A more interesting book of travel was never written than his Albert N'Yanza: in every page there is fresh and vivid interest. The author, who is admirable in many things, is a model narrator, and there is no romance at all equal in attraction to the simple and unvarnished, but full and picturesque, account of his protracted and exciting travels.

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Translated from the French.

THREE WOMEN OF OUR TIME.

EUGeNIE DE GUeRIN--CHARLOTTE BRONTe--RAHEL LEVIN.

BY GABRIEL CERNY.

It is now quite a number of years since it became the fashion to study women, and writers of note have called to life more than one who would have preferred being left to oblivion under her cold tombstone. Is it not enough to have lived once even if we have lived wisely? "No one would accept an existence that was to last forever," said a philosopher who had suffered from the injustice of mankind.

It seems, for example, as if the heroines of the seventeenth century must smile in pity to see the pettiest actions of their lives as well as the deepest inspirations of their hearts given up for food to the indiscreet curiosity and vivid imagination of the eminent philosopher who had so lovingly resuscitated them. And the intellectual women who came after them, are not they not often wounded by the judgments pa.s.sed upon them by the most inquisitive and fertile of critics?

In two works entirely devoted to woman, a _fantaisiste_ who was once an historian, has tried to explain the best means to insure happiness to the fairer half of the human race, with a minuteness very tender in intention but often quite repugnant to our taste. He states in detail the hygienic care indispensable to creatures weak in body, feeble in mind, and so helpless when left to themselves that in truth there are but two conditions in the world suitable for them--to be courtesans if they are beautiful, and maid-servants if they are dest.i.tute of physical charms; nay, such is the arrogance of this literary _Celadon_ that he would a.s.sign to the wife an inferior position and leave the husband to superintend not only business affairs but household matters. In short, when we read these books we seem to be attending a session of the Naturalization Society, teaching the public to rear and domesticate some valuable animal much to be distrusted.

Not even the toilettes of the eighteenth century have failed to arouse the interest of two authors of our day, who, displeased perhaps with the slight success of their book, have now abandoned the range of realities for the dreary delusions of a lawless realism. In a work as long as it is tiresome, they have described with feminine lucidity the various costumes of the ladies of the court of Louis XV., of the Revolution, and the Empire.

A book has now appeared which, according to its t.i.tle, promises to show us the "Intellect of Women of our own Time," but in reality confines itself to giving three interesting biographies. The author was already known to the public through a romance which reveals true talent "Daniel Blady," the story of a musician, is written in the German style, and shows an elevation of sentiment, a straightforward honesty of principle, and above all a simplicity of devotion rarely to be met with in the world. M. Camille Selden admires modest women, incapable of personal ambition or vanity, who consecrate all the tender and enlivening faculties of soul and reason to the service of a husband, father, or brother, and such a woman he portrays in "Daniel Blady."

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In order to represent fairly the women of our day M. Selden has selected three different characters; three names worn modestly, usefully, and honorably; three contrasts of position, race, doctrine, and education: a French Catholic, an English Protestant, a German Jewess: Eugenie de Guerin, Charlotte Bronte, and Rachel Varnhagen von Ense. They were all affectionate, devoted, and self-forgetful; two of them married, and the French-woman alone had the happy privilege of restoring to G.o.d a heart and soul that had belonged to no one.

I.

Eugenie de Guerin du Cayla was born and bred _en province_, although of a truly n.o.ble family, of Venetian origin it is said. Her mode of life was that of a woman of the middle cla.s.s (_bourgeoise_) enjoying that comparative ease which we see in the country; a large house scantily furnished, a garden less cultivated than the fields, and servants of little or no training, who seem to form a part of the family.

Mlle. de Guerin lost her mother early, and having two brothers and a sister younger than herself, became burthened with the care of a household and family. Her letters and journal show her to us as she was at twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age, not one of those persons of morose and frigid virtue who are good for nothing but to mend linen and take care of birds, but a woman of intelligent and unembarra.s.sed activity. She made fires, visited the poultry-yard, prepared breakfast for the reapers, and when her work was done, betook herself in all haste to a little retreat which she dignified with the name of _study_, where she ran through some book or wrote a few pages--always charming, always strong--of a sort of journal of the actions of her life. Eugenie's especial favorite was her brother Maurice, who was five years younger than herself, and it would be impossible to speak of her without recalling the pa.s.sionate maternal tenderness with which from her earliest youth she regarded this brother whom she had loved to rock and nurse in infancy.

"I remember that you sometimes made me jealous," she wrote to him one day, "it was because I was a little older than you, and I did not know that tenderness and caresses, _the hearts milk_, are lavished on the little ones."

Devotion was the principle motive-power of Eugenie's actions; ardent prayer and charity profoundly moved her; wind, snow, rain-storms, nothing checked her when she knew that in some corner of the village there were miseries to be relieved, tears to be wiped away. She felt sympathy with all living creatures, even if they were inanimate like trees and flowers; she sighed when the wind bowed them down; "she pitied them, comparing them to unhappy human beings bending beneath misfortune," and imitating the example of the great saint, Francis of a.s.sisi, she would gladly have conversed with lambs and turtle-doves.

Mlle. de Guerin pitied the educated peasants who knew how to read and yet could not pray. "Prayer to G.o.d," she said, "is the only fit manner to celebrate any thing in this world." And again, "Nothing is easier than to speak to the neglected ones of this world; they are not like us, full of tumultuous or perverse thoughts that prevent them from hearing."

She loved religion with its festivals and splendors; and breathed in G.o.d with the incense and flowers on the altar, nor could she ever have understood an invisible, abstract G.o.d, a G.o.d simply the guardian of morality as Protestants believe him to be.

Most women become useful only through some being whom they love and to whom they refer the actions of their lives; it is their n.o.blest and most natural instinct to efface and lose themselves in another's glory. Having no husband or children, Mlle. de Guerin attached herself to her brother Maurice, a delicate nature, a sad {836} and suffering soul, destined to self-destruction, a lofty but unquiet spirit that was never to find on earth the satisfaction and realization of his hopes. "You are the one of all the family," he wrote to her, "whose disposition is most in sympathy with my own, so far as I can judge by the verses that you send me, in all of which there is a gentle reverie, a tinge of melancholy, in short, which forms, I believe, the basis of my character." Mlle. de Guerin's letters to her brother were not only tender and consoling, but strong and healthy in their tone.

Indeed, he needed them, for terrible were his sufferings from the ill-will and indifference of others. He wrote and tried to establish himself as a critic; but some publishers rejected him and others evaded his proposals with vague promises, until with despair he saw every issue closed to him, and knew not what answer to make to his father, who grew impatient at the constant failure of his expectations.

Though ignorant of the world, Mlle, de Guerin did not the less suspect the dangers that Christian faith may encounter. One day, a voice that seemed to come from heaven told her that Maurice no longer prayed; and then we find her trembling and uneasy. "I have received your letter,"

she says, "and I see you in it, but I do not recognize you; for you only open your mind to me, and it is your heart, your soul, your inmost being that I long to see. Return to prayer, your soul is full of love and craves expansion; believe, hope, love, and all the rest shall be added. If I could only see you a Christian! Oh! I would give my life and everything else for that." ... Like all persons who try to dispense with the divine restraints of the precepts of the gospel, poor Maurice struggled in a dreary world; his sensitive and poetic soul saw G.o.d everywhere except in his own heart; he longed sometimes to be a flower, or a bird, or verdure; his brain and imagination ran away with him, and his soul poured itself forth without restraint, and lost its way through wandering from the veritable Source of life.

This pa.s.sion for nature led him to write a work which shows genuine power even if it be unproductive; a prose poem in which Christianity is forgotten for the sake of fable and antiquity. But thanks to his sister's prayers, Maurice was one of those who return to G.o.d. He pa.s.sed away without agitation or suffering, smiling on all, and begging his sister Eugenie to read him some spiritual book. At the bottom of his heart he had never ceased to love G.o.d, and he returned to him as a little child returns to its mother.