YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1939

GARNERED SHEAVES

FROM THE WRITINGS OP

COLLECTED AND AEEANGED BT HIS
"^ WIFE ; .
I \ O fc I ^ TO WHICH IS ADDED

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OP THE AUTHOR.

WITH POKTBAIT AiTD EffGKAVINGS.

PUBLISHED BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY.

hautfoud, conn. :
COLUMBIAN BOOK COMPANY.
W. E. BLISS, TOLEDO, OHIO; UNION PUBLISHING CO., CHICAGO, ILL. J
A. L. BANCROFT Si COMPAXT, SAK FRANCISCO, CAL.
1871,

•Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
ABBY SAGE EICHAEDSON,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

TO
MY HUSBAND'S FRIENDS
fl^O/Vl THE ^T]LAJ^TIC TO THE fACIflC,
mils uooit
is most kespbotfully
d:edicated.

A RUDDY drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs,
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
I fancied he was fled,
And after many a year
Glowed unexhausted kindliness
Like daily sunrise there.
My care-full heart was free again j
0 friend, my bosom said,
Through thee alone the sky is arched.
Through thee the rose is red.
All things through thee take nobler form,
And look beyond the earth.
The mill-round of our fate appears
A sun-path to thy worth.
Me, too, thy nobleness has taught
To master my despair ;
The fountains of my hidden life
Are through thy friendship fair. Emerson,

ALBERT D. EICHAEDSON.

[Extract from Obituary in the New York Tribune, December 3, 1869.]

Op all the names which have been written at the head of this sad
memorial column, not one has more surprised and stunned with a sense
of sudden loss, not one has been read by sadder eyes, not one has smit
ten so many loving hearts, as his which to-day gives excuse to these brief
lines. Two things were so remarkable about the man that one might
almost say they were the man — his vitality, and his friendliness.
No man was ever more alive than he. It was not only in that strong
principle of life whicli had carried him safe through peril after peril,
which would have killed any other man, and which kept the calm pulse
beating for days after his physicians had given up all hope of saving
him ; it was not only in that joy of existence which seemed always to
possess him ; it was in his wonderful buoyancy, and brightness, and confi
dence in time and in circumstance, in his tirelessness, his incapability of
discouragement, his endless and delighted labor over whatever work he had
in hand ; in his energetic belief that he could not only conquer the world
for himself, but for everybody he knew, if everybody would but accept hia
way — that this wondrous vitality most displayed itself.
And for his friendliness, what shall be said of that ? Always it went
out to meet you afar off. Always it came with water for your feet and
spikenard for your head. He was not rich, but what he had was his
friend's as fully as it was his own. And greater than the hospitality of
his roof or his board, was the hospitality of his soul to his friend's needs.
And his friend was not alone the man whom he knew and honored. It
was any lonely, or miserable, or neglected, or ill-used soul, who needed
his kindness. There was no sin which his infinite charity could not be-

ALBBKT D. EICHAEDSON.
lieve to have had some palliation that did not come to view ; no error for
which his toleration had not excuse ; no offense against himself which he
did not freely and fully forgive.
Of the terrible circumstances of his death, it is not meet now to speak
at length. But it is meet to say that during that endless week of agony,
of pain, of slow starvation, tljp patience and endurance, and tireless care
for others, which had gone with him always, the serene and sober trust in
the perfect life after this imperfect, which had been the reason of his
cheerful earthy days, grew ever stronger. WbUe he had consciousness
he thought only of others, and the last word he uttered was the name of
a friend. A friend who had been nobly loyal indeed, through good report
and ill report, but of whose kindness in those last days, he was too ill to
know. Loving friends were all about him, loving friends kept the sad
chamber beautiful with flowers, loving friends will lay him down to rest in
the still country-place where he was born. To them his memory needs no
vindication, and they wait sorrowfully, but not hopelessly, for patient Time
to set him right with all the world.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Portrait op Albert D. Richardson, .JVoniispiece.
The Capture while Running the Vicksburg Batteries, 57
Escaping Prisoners Wading a Mountain Stream at Mid
night, ........ 64
A Group of Celestial Bodies, .... 88
A Chinese Barber, . . . . . . ,89
A Young Sucker, . . . . . .157
Our National Capitol, ...... 160
The Hall of Representatives, . . . . 161
The White House, . . . . . . .178
Seal of the Treasury Department, . . . 227
The Strasburg Clock, ...... 233
The Old-Fashioned Clock, . . . . .257
First-Class Hotel on the Plains in 1867, . . . 280
Piest-Class Hotel on the Plains in 186^, . . 281
Going to California in 1867, . . • . .318
Going to California in 1869, .... 319
Building the Mississippi Vallet Railroad in Kansas, . 393

CONTENTS,

A Biographical Sketch of Albert D. Richardson,

TJlOZ, 17

MISCELLANIES.
John, . . .
Free Missouri, (Part L), .
Free Missouri, (Part II.),
Our National Capital.
I. The Capitol, . . . .
In the Hall of Representatives,
At the White House, .
' In the Treasury,
Among the Greenbacks,
The Story of. Clocks and Watches,
Through to the Pacific.
I. From New York to Chicago, .
From Chicago to Omaha, .
From Omaha to Promontory,
From Promontory to Sacramento,
San Francisco, ....
California Industries,
A Breakfast with the Sea-Lions,
Back to Chicago,
The Cast-Iron Plow and Its Inventor,
Two Routes to the Indies.
I. Eastward by the Suez Canal,
n. Westward by the Pacific Railroad,
A Month in Kansas, • . . .

n.
HI.
IV. V.

II.
in.
IV. V.
VI.
vn.
vm.

81
110
133 158
167
174
179 193
228
258 268
278 288
293 804
313
318 323337356
375

A BIOGEAPHIOAL SKETCH

Albert Deane Eichardson.

HAVE never approached any task devolving
upon me, with so much hesitation and mis
giving as the labor of writing a biographical
sketch of the beloved author of the papers which are
collected in this volume. If it were not earnestly felt
that the book would b^ incomplete without such a pref
ace, or if there were any other to whom the work could
be entrusted, I would gladly yield my pen to him.
To those who sympathize with the subject of these
pages I do not need to commend my work, or to ask
charity for its short-comings. I know very well no
,word of mine can aifect the place he holds in their
hearts, and that they will believe that from no lack of
feeling, but from want of ableness my failures hiave
arisen. Those who do not know, and do not sympa
thize with the subject, will of course feel no interest in
what I write, and I shall not try to create it.
The value of any life-history lies not half so much in
any famous deed which the hero of it has done, as in
the lessons the life itself can teach. If there is any
thing in the story of a man who was true and honorable ;
2

18 LIFE OP ALBEET D. EICHAEDSON.
full of charity and sympathy and courage ; ready with
helpful words and deeds for others less hopeful or less
fortunate than he; who surmounted many obstacles
and won well-deserved successes through untiring work
and patience; if there is aught in such a record to help
any man or woman to conquer difl&culties, or to meet
life and death with staunch hearts, then I shall be glad
these pages have been written.
Albert Deane Richardson was of Massachusetts birth
and blood. If not of Mayflower stock, he was the direct
outgrowth of Mayflower principles and sentiments.
His ancestors, for many generations, were born and died
in the town of Franklin, Massachusetts, twenty-seven
miles from Boston, and there he himself was born,
October 6, 1833.
In many respects Franklin is to this day a remarka
ble town. It was named for that radical thinker and
philosopher, Benjamin Franklin. • When some one sug
gested to him that he might give the village church a
bell, in acknowledgment of the compliment they had
paid him, he answered characteristically :
" I think the people of Franklin will care more for
sense than sound," and straightway presented them
with a library, which is still an institution of the town.
At the time Franklin was organized, the struggle in
New England between Calvinism and Armenianism,
afterwards terminating in the schism which divided the
Congregational churches into Unitarian and Trinitarian,
had already begun. That Franklia — which has been
from that day to this, a stronghold of Orthodoxy — did
not follow the Armenian side of the contest, was chiefly
due to the preaching and influence of Dr. Nathaniel
Emmons, one of the most remarkable of all the gifted

LIFE OF ALBERT D. EICHARDSON. 19
divines who have exercised such power over the mind
and character of New England.
The people of Franklin were known from the first
as a hard-headed, thinking people. They seem to have
grafted the theology of Dr. Emmons upon the reasoning
and speculative tendencies of their profound namesake.
In Franklin and its surrounding towns, every man
and woman were so accustomed to discuss the knotty
theology of Edwards, Bellamy, Hopkins, and their fol
lowers, that even the viUage idlers, like Sam Lawson,
became harmless, morally-disposed do-nothings, who sat
in the sun, and speculated on predestination and origi
nal sin. The following are some of the questions
(culled at random from his common-place book) which
Dr. Emmons' had jotted down for serious contempla
tion, and were of the kind that engaged the thoughts
and discussions of the single-minded, hard-working
farmers composing this Puritan community.
"Whether a man is accountable for thoughts in his
sleep ? " " Can a perfectly holy creature be made com
pletely miserable ? " " Whether Saturday night or Sab
bath-day night ought to be kept holy?" "Is there
any explicit and visible intercourse between any wicked
men and the devil, here in this world ? " " Whether an
atonement sufficient for the pardon of one sinner, is
sufficient for the pardon of all ? " " Whether there was
a rainbow before the flood?" etc., etc.
The inhabitants of Franklin also owed to Dr. Emmons'
teachings, as well as to an inflexible sense t)f justice —
one of the strongest features of a Puritan community
— that hatred of slavery which made the town aboli
tionist in sentiment, without identifying it with any of
the un-Orthodox movements of the Garrisonian party.

20 LIFE OF ALBEET D. EICHAEDSON.
"They hated slavery so intensely," Mr. Pdchardson
once said, in describing the feeling of his birthplace,
" that as monstrous as Theodore Parker and his doc
trines were to their souls, I don't believe he was as
odious to the hearts of the people of Franklin, as ' South-.
side Adams' with all his Orthodoxy. Because Parker's -.
anti-slavery utterances were a most powerful offset to
his infidelity."
Of the church of this eminent old divine. Dr. Emmons,
the father and grandfather of Albert D. Richardson
were both members. His father, Elisha Richardson,
was a farmer, frugal, industrious and clear-headed, earn
ing a hard livelihood on the farm, which had for some
generations been held in the Richardson family. Hie'
had married in early life and his wife had borne ,him
six children ; but becoming a widower before forty, he
married Miss Harriet Blake of Franklin, who was the
daughter of Timothy and Julia Deane Blake. Th&
fruits of this union were two children ; Charles Addi
son, editor of the Boston Congregationalist, and Albert
Deane, the subject of my sketch.
There are some sunny and beautiful natures which
grow up in the rigid soil of Calvinism without becom
ing permeated with any of its hardness or severity.
These are the saintly souls to whom God's love is a
reality, and whose own innate beauty and tenderness
of spirit give a grace even to the sternest dogmas.
Nothing can take from them the charity that covers
a multitude of sins in all about them, and no argu
ment can refute their absolute faith that this is God's
world, in which all happens for the best. Just such a
soul dwelt in the bodily temple of the woman who was
the mother of my hero. The marriage relation of which

LIFE OF ALBERT D. EICHARDSON. 21
he was the last-born was a happy and loving one, and
from his mother Albert inherited that faith in God and
man which was the groundwork of his character, and
which enabled him all his life to see all evils in their
most hopeful light, and to find some charitable veil to
cover the worst deeds even of his own worst enemies.
From his father he inherited that indomitable will
which would not easily succumb to difiiculties, alid that
staunch sense of justice which is native to the Puritan
character. Added to the traits inherited from both
parents, he had a very keen sense of humor, not so com
mon in the matter-of-fact, straightforward community
in which he was reared, and which all through life made
him able to see the ludicrous side of everything, and
enabled him to jest even at his heaviest misfortunes.
It is not necessary to give a long-drawn picture of
Mr. Richardson's childhood. He was a genial, merry,
tender-hearted boy, not taking quite kindly to the rigid
notions of the Puritans, but never rebelling against
them. In after years when he had outgrown the opin
ions, but not the virtues of his ancestors, he used to feel
the greatest interest in, and veneration for, the Puritans.
"Whatever the Puritan faith did in its hardness," he
used to say, "it did not develop selfishness or indolence,
or disregard of others' rights."
From earliest boyhood he was an omnivorous reader,
and found it very hard to leave the book that fascin
ated him for the necessary farm labor which fell to his
lot. He carried his books everywhere ; under his arm,
buttoned in the breast of his jacket, or stored conven
iently in some capacious pocket. When he was sent to
split wood, or drive the oxen before the plow, or to do
errands at the viUage store, these familiars went with

22 LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
him, and often made his hour's work spin out to a day s
length, or his errands take an unheard-of time. For
ever and anon, he would drop down under a tree, or on
a stone by the roadside, or in the sandy furrows where
the patient oxen waited his pleasure, while he read
and read, and forgot everything else. He got many
scoldings for his negligence, I doubt not, and many
prophecies that he would never be a good farmer, or
an industrious man. But the Yankee has above all,
a reverence for learning, and a respect for those who
neglect even the necessary work for books and study,
which makes him lenient to the boy who is " crazy for
reading." We can very well surmise what books he read. The
Old Testament, Pilgrim's Progress, Cowper's Poems, a
surreptitious copy of Shakespeare, the weekly religious
newspaper, an occasional story paper from Boston, and
on Sundays when he couldn't get anything else, a
Sabbath-school tract and "Saint's Rest," or a "Call to
the Unconverted."
Up to his sixteenth year he had no other opportuni
ties for education than the district school of his native
village afforded, but in that year he went to the
"Academy" in HoUiston, Mass., where he could have
increased facilities for learning. Here he began the
study of the classics and the higher English branches
and at this time he made his debut in print. The
students of the Academy published a school paper of
which he became one of the editors, and to which he
contributed freely. Very soon he began to extend his
field of literary efibrt, and to send contributions in prose
and verse to the Star Spangled Banner, American Union
Boston Museum, Waverley Magazine, and other Boston

LIFE OF ALBERT D. ElCHAEDSOX. 23
papers, which were the repository of the ofierings of a
good many unfledged authorlings.
After his stay at HoUiston he began to teach school,
and taught one or two terms in Medway adjacent to
Franklin, and also in some of the surrounding towns.
But before he was eighteen he began to develop that
love of adventure and of travel, which led him later in
life to explore the western country, in portions then
almost entirely unvisited by the traveler. The great
West tempted him, and he longed to go to Cincinnati,
which then seemed almost the limit of western civiliza
tion to the New England fancy.
When he began to talk about going "out West,"
there was some opposition in his family, which he had
to combat with a good deal of persistent argument.
He was a boy of only seventeen; his father could not
spare very much money for his outfit; he might be taken
iU among strangers; and — worst of all — he might fall
into bad habits. To all these objections Albert gave
earnest and plausible answers. He replied that he had
taught school one or two terms at home ; he knew how
to do farm work; his health had always been good, and
he was sure of earning a living.
"But Albert," said his mother in one of their many
conversations on the subject, "if you go away from
home you will always have your board to pay at stated
times. You can not live for nothing as you do at home.
Suppose your money gives out, and you can't get a
school or any situation?"
"Well mother," he laughed, "I've got two stout
arms. I would trundle a wheelbarrow in the streets,
or drive a cart, or do anything that was honest, before
I'd give up." And finally his famUy consented to

24 LIFE OF ALBEET D. EICHAEDSON.
what seemed to them almost an incredible journey.
Remember this was twenty years ago, before the coun
try was gridironed with railroads.
In the fall of 1851, a month before his eighteenth
birthday, he started West, intending to make Cincin
nati his ultimate destination, but stopping at Pitts-.
burg to see a cousin engaged there in some mercantUe
business. He writes to his family about Pittsburg : ^ -^
" This is a much larger city than I had supposed. It
contains eighty thousand people, and there are nine
daily newspapers published here ! ! The water is so low
that no boats run down the river, and I think it very
doubtful if I get to Cincinnati this fall."
In two weeks after his arrival in Pittsburg he began
teaching school in a smaU village eight or ten miles
from that city. It was a school which had been for
some time without a teacher on account of a rebellion
among the "big boys," and the school trustees did not
examine the young aspirant for the place as to intel
lectual capacity to teach, but put him in to see if he
could "manage " the school before they asked any other
questions. He writes home: — ^"I am not engaged for a
definite time, but for one month or more, as I succeed.
The large boys, three of them, took a teacher here a
short time ago and carried him out per force of arms,
and jammed his head against the stone door-steps.
Perhaps they wiU try the same game with me ; but if
they do I guess there wiU be more than one head
jammed. The schools are not so far advanced here as
in Massachusetts. I have bought me some books and
am going to study with right good will. I think I can
get several hours study a day and not have it hurt me."
From the first moment he got beyond the Alleghany

LIFE OP ALBERT D. EICHAEDSON. 25
Mountains, Mr. Richardson was charmed and won by
the Western cordiality and hearty good-wUl, which
suited him so much better than the more reserved man
ners of New England. From that time he always loved
the Western country and the Western people, and no
one had a more enthusiastic belief in the great future
of "the West than he did.
After school was over he went back to Pittsburg and
took a place as local reporter on the Pittsburg Journal.
This was his first step in the profession which he loved
and respected all his life.
"I am a born journalist," he used to say, "and I
never ought to do anything but newspaper work.
Every man don't know what niche he ought to fill in
life; but I know that to be at the head of a large news
paper, and make a splendid success of it, would suit
me exactly."
Thus he began on the newspaper to write local items,
give reports of lectures, theaters, and to do all the work
which falls to the attach^ of a small city newspaper.
He also began to learn phonography to aid him in tak
ing down lectures, and he wrote in his leisure hours
several farces, one or two of which he sold to the cele
brated comic actor, Barney Williams, who had come to
Pittsburg to play an engagement there.
"I shall never forget how rich I felt," he said to a
friend, " when I was a boy of eighteen, and had sold a
play to Barney Williams for ten doUars, and got the
money in my pocket."
He played a few nights at the theater, I believe,
in addition to writing his plays, and was ofiered an
engagement with the stock company while he was en
gaged in journalistic work; but he refused it, partly

26 LIFE OP ALBERT D. EICHARDSON.
because he had no inclina,tion to be an afctor, and pamy
because he did not like to hurt the prejudices of his
family by taking up such a profession even temporarily.
In the faU of 1852, with his cousin, he started on a
river steamer for Cincinnati. They both engaged as
clerks on the boat, and so had free passage to the
"Queen City," as he was prone to designate it in those
early days. He writes home again :
" I like Cincinnati thus far best of any place I have
ever seen. Almost ever since I can remember I have
intended one day to locate here. I always expected' to
like it, and at present I do like it. You inquire if I
design taking up a permanent residence ' out West.'
I DO ! "
In a week or two after reaching Cincinnati he was
a local editor on the Cincinnati Sun, and as he had
now become a rapid stenographer, he did some extra
work in reporting speeches and lectures.
In one of his very first reports for the Sun, he made
some severe strictures in giving an account of the ar
rest of an Irishman named Boyle, who had been guilty
of some kind of mock-auction operations not punish
able by the law. In return for this, the fellow dogged
his footsteps for several weeks, threatening to kill him,
and the affair finally got into the papers, and alarmed
his friends at home. He writes to his brother Charles,
regretting that the paper containing the affair had
reached them, and adds :
" I did not want father and mother to hear of it for
fear it might raise in their minds some unnecessary ap
prehensions. Boyle is a six-feet-two Irishman, and a
most unmitigated scoundrel, who, I have not the least
doubt,' would have assassinated me if he had dared.

LIFE OF ALBERT D. EICHARDSON. 27
The matter caused some excitement for a few days,
but everybody supported me, I was so evidently in
the right. I never should have said any more about
it in the newspaper, if he had not tried to bully
and frighten me into a retraction, and that, I never
have, and never wUl, submit to. Finding me not to
be frightened away, Boyle has stopped dogging my
steps." In the spring of 1853 he went on a trip to Niagara
Falls in his journalistic capacity, and there for the first
time he met and formed an acquaintance with his life
long friend, Junius Henri Browne, who had been from
early boyhood a resident of Cincinnati. Mr. Browne,
in a little sketch written since his death, has given this
account of their first acquaintance:
" Richardson and I were about the same age — ^to be exact,
I was eight days his junior — and when we first met, we were,
if I remember, iii our mneteenth year. The meeting was at
Niagara, in the International Hotel, when the house was
crowded to suffocation. I shared a room with a large faction
of the Democratic party, and being a privileged guest, I was
given the table for a couch. Awaking from the only sleep I
had succeeded in securing — ^it was long after sunrise then — I
saw on the floor below me a blonde, pleasant-faced youth who
greeted me with:
" ' We've taken our bed and " board " together; how do you
like it, old fellow? Is it as good as Dante? '
"'Nearly as good as his "Inferno,"' was my reply; 'but
as a general thing I should prefer that to this.'
"The young man on the floor was Albert D. Richardson,
who explained to me afterward that I had attracted his
attention on the cars by my apparent absorption in the
'Divina Commedia' which I had taken with me as a refuge
from myself.

28 LIFE OF ALBEET D. EICHARDSON.
" This peculiar introduction led to a long talk about various
things ; to our breakfasting and dining together, ' doing ' the
cataract in company, and returning in the same train to Cin
cinnati, where both of us at that time happened to be liv
ing. He was then connected with the Daily Sun, a newspaper
since deceased, and I with the Commercial, for which I wrote
sesquipedalian fustian, under the impression that it was
eloquence. "Before the end of the first day of our acquaintance we
felt as if we had 'known each other for years. Each had the
other's antecedents, experiences, and idiosyncrasies as soon as
they could conveniently be related."
Two years passed in Cincinnati, where he had be
come one of the most popular among the young jour
nalists. He was one of a group, all of whom were
ardent, aspiring, and intellectual. They discussed all
topics with freedona and originality, but they were
all singularly pure-minded and clean-hearted, with none
of the low AT-ces which young men who live a free life
in a large city are prone to acquire.
Mr. Richardson began to be known as a hard-work
ing and clever journalist. His memory— always very
remarkable— served him many good turns as reporter.
In a celebrated trial, in which the court had decreed
that no one should be allowed to take notes in the
court room, after one or two of the attaches of his
paper had been arrested for contempt of the court's
orders, Mr. Richardson evaded the decree of the judges
by attending the trial, and giving very full and exact
reports from memory.
In the fall of '53, soon after his twentieth birthday
he went home to Thanksgiving, for his first visit since
he had left Massachusetts for " out West." His familv
of course, were delighted to see him, and could hardlv

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 29
recognize in the strong, self-assured, self-poised, bearded
man, the boy who had left them two years before.
" Have you foUowed our advice and precepts, Albert?"
they asked him.
"Just as nearly as I could," he answered frankly.
" Some things I see in a different light from what you
see them in New England. But the main principles of
virtue and morality I believe in, and have tried to
follow. I don't believe I've done anything you would
be ashamed of."
His mother had let him go away, with many misgiv
ings about trusting her boy to the world and its temp
tations. That night, after he had gone to bed, she sat
in her quiet sitting-room, too excited with her thoughts
and the return of the long absent son to sleep well.
She took up his coat to fasten tighter a button, feeling
that keen pleasure which women feel in being able to
do some little office for the loved one. Out of the
pocket slipped a leather covered book, in which he had
kept his journal for the two years he had been gone.
At first, she questioned if she would best look at the
contents, but, believing that, as he was willing to open
his heart to her, he would gladly have her read the
record of his life, she began the volume. It was the
jotting down of a young man's daUy life, of the places
he had frequented, the temptations he had resisted,
the manner in which his money had been spent, and
descriptions of the characters of the friends he had
made. "I opened it with a good many misgivings," said the
dear mother, " and it was late into the night when I
shut up the book ; but after reading it I felt we could
trust Albert."

30 LIFE OP ALBEET D. EICHAEDSON.
After this visit home, Mr. Richardson returned again
to Cincinnati and to his journalistic pursuits. When
he was about twenty, the celebrated "Matt Ward" trial
took place in Kentucky, and the friends of Ward —
desirous that there should be an exact statement of the
proceedings — decided that they would, at their own
expense, procure a stenographer. They sent to Cin
cinnati, and at the recommendation of some of Mr.
Richardson's friends, employed him to report the trial.
Accordingly, he went to Hardin, Kentucky, and re
mained there during the whole progress of the case.
Pie writes to his mother from Hardin this account of
his object in coming there:
"A very interesting murder trial commences here
to-morrow, which one of the parties desired me to
report, and I finally concluded to do so.
"The trial is that of two young men — twenty and
twenty-five years of age — for murder. A little brother
of theirs had been punished at school; they went to
see the teacher about it; a difficulty ensued, and,
finally, the oldest in the quarrel shot the teacher dead.
The family is one of the oldest, most respectable, and
wealthiest in LouisviUe, and the utmost interest is felt.
It will be the greatest murder trial ever known in the
South or West.
«The young man who shot the teacher possesses fine
talents, and is the author of two popular books. I
have just returned from a visit to him in jail. He is
very calm, and says the facts of the case, when proved
will exonerate him from aU blame. It is generallv
thought, however, that he will be convicted of murder
in the first degree, His wife and mother both look
worn and anxious."

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RljgHARDSON. 31
The report made on this occasion by Mr. Richardson
was printed by the Appletons, in New York, and more
than twenty thousand copies were sold.
During the year 1854 Mr. Richardson had been
employed on the Cincinnati Unionist, which had not a
long life-lease, and from which he went upon the
Columbian. Soon after he had become one of the
editors of the latter paper his twenty-first birthday
came, and after so many years of manly work, and so
many proofs of ihteUectual capacity, he became eligi
ble to vote for the government of his country, and was
made by law the political peer of the Irishman who
has resided five years in our glorious Republic. He
writes to his brother Charles in September, 1854: '
"The election comes on the ninth day of October,
just three days after my birthday, and it is probable.
that I shall be able to cast my maiden vote for a Rep
resentative in favor of repealing the Nebraska bill."
In AprU, 1855, a few months after his twenty-first
birthday, Mr. Richardson married Miss Mary Louise
Pease, of Cincinnati, by whom he had five children,
three of whom survive. The eldest, Leander Pease,
born in 1856, Frederick Loomis, born in 1858, Maude
Louise, born in 1859, Albert Deane, in 1862, and Mary
Louisa, born in 1868. This youngest child he never
beheld. She was born while he was languishing in
Southern prisons, and was buried in the same grave
with her mother, before he could make his escape from
that terrible captivity.
About the time of his marriage, he was ofiered the
management of the Daily Columbian, and thus writes
of the fact to his brother Charles :
"I have been urged, lately, to take the entire charge

32 LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
of the business of this estabUshment, but I have
decidedly declined. However ambitious I may be to
get on, I wiU not wear my life out, whUe still so young,
by assuming such an Atlas load as the duties and re
sponsibilities of manager of a daily newspaper estab
lishment. Still, I love the business, and wasn't made
for any other."
Mr. Richardson's journalistic career in Cincinnati
ended in his labors on the Gazettein 1857. AU through
the year '56 he had been talking of settling further
West, and his irresistible inclination towards the new
country and the new cities of the North-west drew him
towards Kansas, which was then the battle-ground of
our Republic. At the very time of Mr. Richardson's
emigration there, old John Brown was presenting his
breast as a bulwark against slavery in Kansas; Henry
Ward Beecher was sending missionary rifles thither;
from the little square-topped desk in Music Hall, Boston,
Theodore Parker was raising the mighty thunder of his
eloquent earnestness, to defend the rights of the belea
guered territory ; while all over the land was heard the
low undertone of the tide wave of the irrepressible
conflict, as it rolled onward from the blood-wet plains
of Kansas.
In his best known and most widely read book,
"Beyond the Mississippi," Mr. Richardson has recorded
his experiences in the Kansas struggles, and has drawn
many vivid pictures of those times, all of which he
saw, and part of which he was. He settled with his
wife and oldest boy in Sumner, Kansas, not far from
Atchison, but spent much of his time at Leavenworth
Lawrence, Topeka, and wherever the smoke of conflict
showed the fires to rage hottest.

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 33
Through the two years of 1857 and 1858, he was
delegate to unnumbered conventions, made speeches
for the cause of freedom and a free state wherever his '
voice could be heard, always speaking in that calm,
quiet, candid manner of his, which was more con
vincing to the thoughtful, than the loud rant with
which many held their audiences. During all these
troubled Kansas days, he was the constant correspond
ent of the Boston Journal, and few New England
readers have forgotten the famUiar letters, A. D. R.,
attached to the correspondence, which at that time
was one of the most attractive features of that
paper. The stories which he told of border life would, many
of them, furnish material for tales as graphic and as
wonderful as those which Bret Harte relates of pioneer
life on the Pacific border. In one of his letters I find
a description of an old mountaineer and his adven
tures, which I cannot refrain from giving place here,
even at the risk of encroaching on the Hmit of these
pages. "There is a strange fascination about life upon the
mountains and plains of the far West. Men who have
tasted its strong excitement are as discontented in
old, weU-organized communities, as sailors in the quiet
life of landsmen. Hence, even when their wanderings
are ended, they gravitate to new countries in such
numbers as to form a distinct feature of frontier so
ciety. They are sometimes rude and uncultivated,
lacking even the rudiments of education; but their
lives in Western wilds, as trappers, hunters, traders,
or soldiers, have abounded in incidents of wild excite
ment, imminent perU, reckless hardihood, and often
3

34 LIFE OF ALBEET D. EICHAEDSON.
of heroic daring. Without exaggeration, they can
relate experiences ' Of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes,'
hardly paralleled in fiction or the drama.
" I recently encountered one of this class, whose per
sonal appearance absolutely beggars description. His
faithful portrait would make the fortune of any comic
almanac publisher. At least six feet four — so thin that
he appeared to consist only of skin and bone — ^long-
nosed, lantern-jawed, tow-headed, and loose-jointed.
Nature seemed in him to satirize herself, and create a
perpetual burlesque upon tall men. His dress was in
perfect keeping; with a self-sacrificing devotion to har
mony, he had invoked the aid of art to complete the
picture. A little, round fur cap, jauntily incUned at an
angle of forty-five degrees, affectionately hugged his
head. An ancient, closely fitting white overcoat reach
ing below the knees, the sleeves, from the elbows down,
worn in shreds which waved gracefuUy in the breeze 
was buttoned tightly around him.
"Above, at the neck, a red flannel shirt-collar insinu
ated, rather than exposed, itself to view ; whUe be
neath were exhibited the broad nether extremities of
a pair of blue cotton overaUs. The soles of his low,
cowhide shoes were almost detached from the upper
leather; and, despising the occult mysteries of the
cobbler, he had repaired them upon simple first princi
ples, tying them on by cotton strings, now so coated
with mud as to form a tasteful and harmonious fringe.
"Smoking a little clay pipe of two inches stem, there
he stood in unimpeachable patriotism, a living display

LIFE OF ALBEET D. RICHARDSON. 35
of the Red, White and Blue ! I gazed with mingled
wonder and admiration. As there is grief too deep
for tears, so there is mirth too overwhelming for laugh
ter. It was so appaUingly ludicrous as to impart a
species of solemnity. I would as soon have though t-of
laughing at a fiineral; and could hardly restrain my
indignation at an irreverent Young American, who
ejaculated semi-audibly :
"'WeU there, old Shang-hai!'
"In response to 'leading questions,' he was relating
some experiences to the group around him. I took a
mental stenographic report of his language and will
give you a portion of it, omitting many of the interro
gations for the sake of brevity:
"'Yes, I reckon these Kansas troubles are over.
Hope so; if they open up again, count me out. I'll
break for Missouri, and if any quarreling comes on thar,
I'll leave thar too, and go whar it's quiet. Since I left
old Kentucky — ^I was eighteen then, a chunk of a lad —
I've seen aU the fighting I mean to. Besides crossing
the Plains four or five times, I was in the service five
years — a soldier — through the Mexican war ; and that's
enough for one life-time.
"'Injuns? Yes, expect I have seen a heap o' fighting
with them. I have cause to remember them, though
I've had some revenge; my old rifle has done a Uttle
good service, but I've got to kill three more of them
before I die.'
" ' How many have you killed? '
^"Well — some. They killed my brother thirteen
years ago. I've had some scalps for it, but I must
have three more.'
" ' How many will that make ? '

36 LIFE OF ALBEET D. RICHARDSON.
"'An even number;' (reluctantly,) 'it will make
three fours. You can calculate that.
"'In '46, 1 and my brother was in the service, escort
ing a train from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe. There
was seventeen of us. I reckon we was three hundred
miles this side of Fort Union, when the Camanches —
more nor a hundred — came on us. They carried bows
and arrows, and spears ; only a few of the great braves
had guns; but it was a marvel how they could ride
their horses. They hadn't saddles or bridles, but would
dash up to us, and sort o'drap down behind their horses,
resting one elbow in a loop fastened to a strap round
the animal's neck, right agin his breast. Nary a thing
could you see of them, except one foot over the horse's
back to cling by; and they'll let the arrows fiy over
and under the horse's neck like the very devU. You
could hardly draw a hand on them before they were
off; and in a few minutes they'd dash up agin, whoop
ing and yeUing. It was terrifying ; but we gave them
the best we had; fought six hours. Six of us was
kUled, my brother among them ; he dropped right by
my side, shot through the head, and never spoke
again. Seven of us was wounded; but finally by leav
ing the stores, which was all the cusses wanted, aU the
living got away except two of us. We were sur
rounded and taken before we knew it. My comrade
escaped next morning before dayUght; but thar was
no such luck for me. They carried me with them to
their stomping ground in the Camanche nation, away
down below the Arkansas.
"'Yes, I was scared; expected of course they'd scalp
me ; said to myself, now old feUow, your time has come,
sure. Pm no scholar like you are, but I knowed some-

LIFE OP ALBERT D. EICHAEDSON. 37
thing of the Injuns; knowed they hated cowards. I
remember hearing a gentleman say oncet, that you
could only get along with the Camanches by putting
the best foot forward, and appearing brave. So I didn't
let on to be frightened ; tried to act as if I didn't care
a copper; but 'twas hard work, sometimes.
" ' Them Injuns kept me thar eighteen months. Four
or five times they took me out, tied me to a stump,
piled up the brush round about, and made as if they
were going to burn me. I thought they was too, but
knew I could not die but oncet, and made the best I
could of it. After I had been among them about a
year, I was sort o' lying in a lodge door one day, when
a young bully come up with a tomahawk, and lifted
it over me, as if he was going to cleave my head.
" ' I was too mad to be frightened, and I tuk a chaw
of tobaccer out of my mouth, and flung it right in his
face. It struck him plumb in the eye. I reckon it
smarted some, by the way he acted. The other young
men in the nation did not like him much, and it tickled
them stupenjus. They come yelling round me, picked
me up, and ran with me on their backs — well, I reckon
they carried me about three hundred yards. After that
they never tried to scare me any more. The old chief
treated me like a son. I got so I could talk their lan
guage nearly as well as English, and had a tolerably
good time. I pretended to be contented, but always
thought I would give them the slip whenever I got a
chance. They used to kUl a dog at the old chief's
lodge every night, and make a soup of it. At first it
rather went agin me; but I eat it after a while with
tolerable appetite.
" ' When they had been to war, and been successful.

38 LIFE OP ALBEET D. EICHAEDSON.
they would have a long frolic and dance, and sing hijus
around the scalps.
" ' The first day I got to the nation, the old chief put
me on a horse, and told me, by signs, to go out and
hunt buffalo for him.
" ' It was the meanest horse I ever rode — expect he
didn't dare to trust me on a good one. I hadn't any
saddle or bridle, and my, wasn't I sore the next morn
ing ? But I killed a buffalo calf and dressed it nicely,
and the old chap was pleased. Next day, he put me
on a leetle better horse, and sent me out again, and I
killed another buffalo. So he kept on giving me a
leetle better every day, till at last he would let me
have a tolerable beast.
" ' He had two ponies — none of them were American
horses — all little chunked Injun ponies — a black and a
gray, that were the best horses in the whole nation.
I always reckoned if I ever got them two horses I'd
leave, for I knew" thar was no animals in the whole
tribe that could overtake them. I was always think
ing about getting away, and had dried ten pound of
buffalo meat, bound it in a hide, and put it in a little
tree on the prairie.
" ' One morning the old chief was in a particular
good humor, and he pointed to his black horse lariated
off" on the prairie, and told me to get it and go and
hunt buffalo. My heart jumped right up, almost into
my mouth, for I thought good-bye to the tribe.
" ' But I started off quietly, and went down to whar
the horses was grazing, near half a mile away. When
I got thar I loosened both ponies and jumped on the
black, holding the gray's lariat to lead him by. I rode
under the little tree, snatched down the buffalo meat

LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 39
and 'now,' says I, 'it's either life or death.' I turned
round, looked back at the old chief, swung my arm,
and guv a big whoop, and didn't I put the ponies
through? In less than twenty minutes I reckon thar
was two hundred Indians on horseback after me, yell
ing worse nor a pack of hounds you ever heard. I
thought they could not catch me if I could only get
over the Arkansas; but. I didn't exactly know the
crossing, and was a leetle afraid.
"'When I got to the river I could still hear their yells,
and I hadn't time to look for the crossing; thought I'd
better be drowned than tomahawked and scalped. So
I never stopped the pony's gallop, but looked around
and saw the gray had got to following all right, so I
let go his lariat, to have both hands to hold on by.
I reckon the bank was eight feet high, and straight
down, but the pony jumped right off.
" ' Eight feet isn't much, in general, but I tell you,
stranger, it's a good bit of a leap on horseback, and I
wouldn't have taken it for anything but life. But the
pony righted, and so did I, after a ducking, and he
swam with me about a dozen yards, when he got
through the current, and waded in the shallow water
to the shore. The other bank was flat, and in a minute
he was galloping on again, the gray still close behind.
"'Them ponies will go marvelous; I let them feed a
leetle — a few moments at oncet, every few liours, but I
kept them on galloping mostly, till late the second
night. Then I came to two clumps of timber, four or
five hundred yards apart, and put them in one whar
they could pick the buffalo grass. I went and laid
down in the other, for I did not mean to be found if
they was.

40 LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
« ' I don't know how long I'd been asleep, when I heard
the Injuns — forty or fifty I judged from the voices.
They passed right through the timber searching for
me, and though they come very near — I reckon within
ten feet — they didn't find me. But how my heart did.
bound. I tell you, stranger, I didn't sleep any more
that night. I knew if they caught me they'd scalp me,
but thought I was safest thar.
"'In two or three hours they came back, on the same
track. I knew when they passed by that they'd given
up hunting, and I was tolerably safe. I was so glad it
made me feel faint-like; but I said, "heart, you needn't
jump any more ! "
"'About daylight I started on; tried to keep due
south-west, which I knew would briug me to the govern
ment road ; but I had to veer off some for cricks and
ravines. It was late the fourth day and my ponies had
almost guv out, when I seed a government train away
off" on the prairie. I put right for it. When I got
most to it I seed they tuk me for an Injun; I was
coming from their country, on their ponies, and I
looked like one. I tried to let them know by waving
my hand that I was a white man, but they didn't seem
to understand. Finally I tore off my flannel shirt (the
only rag I had on except a pair of .old breeches) and
swung it round and round tUl they seed what I was,
and let me into camp. About a month after, I got back
to Fort Leavenworth."
"Near this point, the narrative of the stranger was
interrupted by some remarks from a slightly inebriated
outsider who was decidedly personal and offensive.
"Almost as quick as thought he jumped out of the
old white coat, very much as a snake leaps out of his

LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 41
old skin, and the author of the impertinence received
a blow which stretched him at full length upon the
ground. The slight excitement which followed put an
end to the narrative, and I have not seen the old soldier
since. He is certainly a rough specimen of humanity,
but if like most men of his class, he would peril his
life to protect that of his comrades, or divide his last
crust with a suffering stranger."
Mr. Richardson held several official positions in this
Territory; was at one time Adjutant General, and at
another. Secretary of the Territorial Legislature. In
this last capacity, he was in the Legislature which re
pealed the border-ruffian statutes, and ordered them
publicly burned. Of this last event he writes to his
brother Charles — no less staunch an advocate of free
dom than he himself was:
"The bogus laws are formaUy repealed, and wiped
from our statute books. Thank God ! At midnight,
on Friday, February 11th, immediately after the ad
journment, a huge bonfire of tar barrels was kindled
in front of the Eldridge House, and a copy of them
was publicly burned amid the jubilant shouts of the
crowd. On the following morning another copy was
sent by express to the Governor of Missouri, with the
message, 'that the people of Kansas had no further
use for them.' "
It will never be possible to give to history all the
romantic and varied features of the lives led by those
who threw their whole souls into the contest between
slavery and freedom, on the soil of Kansas. Events
there were so hurried and so full of change, and those
who alone could'have given a full description were first
and foremost in the struggle, and oftener in the saddle

42 LIFE OP ALBERT D. EICHAEDSON.
or on the field, than in office or study, that the account
of many eventful scenes was delayed, till it was too
late to give any but a sober record from memory, of
deeds which had stirred the blood in the performance.
Such a life of change and adventure Mr. Richardson
constantly led; yet, in these times of hot haste and
unbridled passions, his name stands unstained by any
act which can dishonor his memory. Only a few days
before his mortal wound, a little paragraph appeared
in the New Torh Sun of November 12th, 1869, which
illustrates how strongly all his influence was cast on
the side of justice and humanity. I quote it as it was
printed there:
" The death of the Hon. Robert J. Walker recalls an inci
dent of the Border RufQan War in Kansas. While Walker
was Grovernor of that State he made a tour through the
southern counties, and was not very heartily greeted by the
free state men. At one of the towns where he stopped for
the night, the pro-slavery men held a meeting in his honor,
and wound up the affair with a huge bonfire. While the
embers were yet smoking, a party of free state men de
termined upon treatment of a different sort. Armed with rifles
and revolvers, they procured a stout rope, and started for the
hotel where Governor Walker was staying; but before they
called him out they concluded to consult Mr. Albert D.
Richardson, who was then the Kansas correspondent of the
Boston Journal, and a prominent advocate of the free state
cause. They showed him the rope, and said, 'We have made
up our minds to hang him, and let the administration know
that its governors are not safe here.' Richardson counseled
moderation; told them it could only make matters worse by
killing Walker, and finally persuaded them to give up their
intention, and go quietly to their homes. Governor Walker
left early next morning, httle dreaming how nearly he had
missed an execution."

LIFE OF ALBEET D. EICHAEDSON. 43
In the spring of 1859, the gold excitement at Pike's
Peak began to form one of the principal topics of Mr.
Richardson's letters to the East, and in the summer
of that year, he removed his wife and children to his
family dwelling-place in Franklin, Mass., and made
arrangements for his first journey over the plains to
the Rocky Mountains. In this trip he traveled in
company with Horace Greeley, of the Tribune, and
Henry Villard of the Cincinnati Commercial,
For Mr. Greeley, Mr. Richardson had entertained from
boyhood an enthusiastic admiration as a journalist and
a man, which this journey over the Plains in his com
pany developed into a genuine and hearty affection.
He always spoke of Mr. Greeley and his peculiarities,
with something of the feeling with which a son would
speak of his eccentric but dearly-loved father.
I remember on one occasion, when a group of friends
were childishly discussing, for their own amusement,
what other living person they would be willing to
change heads with, one of the party made us all laugh
by declaring she would like to change heads with Edwin
Booth, which was increased to a deafening roar when
Mr. Richardson gravely said, that the only man he
ever wanted to change off with was Horace Greeley.
His friends all cried out that his passion for journalistic
success bid fair, at this rate, to lead him into absolute
madness. After this first visit to Pike's Peak, he returned to
New England to visit his family, and early in the fall
of 1859 he began a wandering journey, principally on
horseback and muleback over the Western Territories.
He went through Kansas to the Indian Territory,
visited the Cherokees and Choctaws, rode through

44 LIFE OF ALBEET D. EICHAEDSON.
Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and only drew rein
at the borders of the United States, at Old Mexico.
He hobnobbed with the half-breed governor of the
Choctaws; rode horseback for miles and miles with
Kit Carson, for whom he formed a strong liking;
danced fandangoes with the Mexicans at El Paso, and
wrote very interesting descriptions of all he saw and
did, for the Eastern newspapers. At this time this
part of the country was almost unknown to the trav
eler, and Mr. Richardson's descriptions of a phase of
our civilization which was unique, and which is fast
disappearing before railroads, were as valuable as they
are fascinating.
Early in 1850, Mr. Richardson's connection with the
New York Tribune began. He went again to the
Pike's Peak region as its special correspondent. His
old and tried friend. Col. Thomas W. Knox, went with
him, and the two began the publication and editorship
of the " Western Mountaineer,"
These were lawless times, and there were lawless
desperadoes at the Rocky Mountains. To edit a paper
which should speak its own mind bravely, stand fast
by morality, tell the fair truth about the mines, that
should be, in brief, a bold, vigorous, free paper, re
quired much courage. The "Western Mountaineer,"
though a little sheet was an able one, and its editors
never flinched from saying a true thing because it was
dangerous to do so. Colonel Knox, his co-editor, says
of those days:
"There were many desperadoes, gamblers, thieves, and
general disturbers of the peace in the mountains in those
days. We used to recommend their banishment from the
Territory, and were no way friendly to them. They made

LIFE OP ALBEET D. EICHARDSON. 45
many threats, to which we paid no attention. We were
always together, and always armed, and when we passed a
group of them we never hurried. Sometimes, when they
were on one sidewalk, and we were on the other, we crossed
the street, in order to pass close by them. It was Albert's
theory that desperadoes are generally cowards, and that if we
appeared ready to fight, they would never molest us. He
was right. We had no difficulty with them, although one
editor there, who was afraid, was pursued and nearly worried
into insanity."
During this summer of 1860, Mr. Richardson — in
company with two other gentlemen and two ladies —
made the ascent of Pike's Peak, to its very summit.
The ascent was the more remarkable, from the fact
that the ladies of the party were the first women who
were ever known to have climbed the mountain. The
excursionists set out on Wednesday, August 29th, and
they reached the top on Saturday, September 10th, at
11 o'clock, A. M. The following description of the
view from the summit, and the descent is from one of
Mr. Richardson's letters :
"The view which greeted our eyes was indescribably
grand and impressive, repaying tenfold the labors and
hardships of the ascent. To the eastward, for a hun
dred miles, our eyes wandered over the dim, hazy
prairies, — the grandest pastures of the world, — spotted
by the dark shadows of the clouds, and the deep green
of the prairie intersected by the faint, gray hues of
road, and emerald threads of timber which mark the
wanderings of the streams, and banded on the farthest
horizon by a girdle of gold. In the south were the
timbers of the Fontaine qui Bouillfe, the Arkansas,
and the Huerfano, beyond the Spanish peaks of New
Mexico. At a distance of eight or ten miles, two

46 LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
little crystal lakes nestled among the rugged peaks,
reveahng the shadows of the rocks and pines in their
mirror-like surfaces. Far beyond, another group gUt-
tered and sparkled in their dark surroundings, like a
group of stars. To the west, the South Park, forty
mUes in length, the Bayou Salade, and lesser spots of
fioral beauty — gardens of nature amid the desolation
of the mountain tops — were spread below us, and
beyond, peak after peak, untU the pure, white waU of
the Snowy Ranges rose
" From the billowy green beneath us
To the infinite blue above."
To the north, as to the south and west, was a vast
wilderness of mountains, of every form and hue, their
scarred and wrinkled summits draped here and there
with white, fleecy clouds, sailing among them Hke
" Ships, dim discovered, dropping from the sky."
The slight inequalities of the summit are the only
drawbacks to the view. If a tower ten feet high were
erected, one standing upon it could look, at the same
moment, upon four Territories, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah,
and New Mexico, and regions drained by four of the
great rivers of the continent — the Platte, Arkansas,
Rio Grande, and Colorado. At present, to view them
all, he must walk a few hundred yards, from one stand
point to another.
After rolling stones a few minutes down this tre
mendous gulf, and indulging in the school-day pursuit
of snow-balling, we began the descent, having spent
about two hours upon the summit. The descent to our
camp of the night previous occupied about four hours.
After the rest of an hour, ample cups of tea, and a few

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 47
fragments of meat and bread, we hastened down over
the logs and rocks, as existence without eating was
becoming an interesting experiment. At seven, we
kindled a huge fire, and after spreading our blankets
were asleep, instantly.
On Sunday morning we woke late, sore and weary
in every joint. Our last provisions, a morsel of meat
and a table-spoonful of crumbs were eagerly devoured,
and under the infiuence of a friendly cup of tea — the
best stimulant in the world — we soon recovered our
wonted spirits, and resumed our journey. Our route .
was not the same as that by which we ascended, and
the last canon revealed many new cascades and scenes
of picturesque beauty. At one point the hill-side,
composed entirely of sand, was tracked and re-tracked
by the paths of the grizzly bear.
After journeying five or six hours, we began to feel
(not a gnawing Uke ordinary hunger) but an almost
irresistible faintness. Endeavors to think and talk of
other matters were fruitless ; the odorous ghosts of well-
remembered dinners would stalk unbidden through the
halls of memory, and we vainly sought
" To stay the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast."
At noon, we halted by a cascade which had charmed
us on our first day's journey, and, in Ueu of dinner,
slept an hour under the pines. Then, for the last time,
we shouldered our packs, and hobbled down the canon
— a melancholy train. At four, P. M., Mr. B  , a
few rods in advance, shouted :
"Here is the carriage waiting us! "
The welcome and unexpected intelligence revealed
the terrible tension to which the nerves of the ladies

48 LIFE OF ALBERT D.RICHARDSON.
had been subjected. One of them received it with an
outburst of tears, and the other with hysterical shouts
of laughter.
In a moment more we were surrounded by friends
with stimulants and provisions, who, alarmed at our
prolonged absence, had been searching for us several
hours, near the foot of the mountains.
The fatigues of the trip were over, and we soon
reached Colorado, ragged, but rejoicing; dilapidated,
but not downcast. For myself I can not speak, but my
companions, with haggard cheeks, wan faces, and lack
lustre eyes, looked as if they had not loved the world
nor the world them. The ladies, who were weighed
before starting, had each lost eight pounds in less than
five days. One of them, whose shoes were cut through
in several places early in the journey, had been walk
ing for three days with portions of her bare feet striking
rock, gravel, and snow. Our looped and windowed
raggedness was soon cast off, and under the influence of
baths, clean clothing, and the other comforts of civiliza
tion, we were soon refreshed, rejuvenated, and ourselves
again. One of the party was, for a few days, prostrated
by rheumatism, but the other members experienced no
permanent inconvenience, except the most ravenous
and uncompromising hunger, which has hardly ceased
"even to this day."
In the faU of 1860, Mr. Richardson left Pike's Peak
to rejoin his family, still residing in his native town of
Franklin. On his homeward journey he took charge
of a lady and two children who were returning East.
Since his death, I have found some circumstances con
nected with this deed of disinterested kindness recorded
by a correspondent of the Springfield Republican, and

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 49
I reproduce the story in the words of the writer, as an
Ulustration of the many similar deeds of generosity of
which his life was full, and which his chivalrous nature
only reckoned as common offices of charity from one
human being to another, too slight to merit remem
brance. The writer says :
"The husband of a dear friend of ours, was one of the
thousands who sought the Rocky Mountains in the first years
of immigration, in part for health, and in hope of pecuniary
profit. But the severities of the Smoky HUl route were too
much for his already shattered constitution. Arriving at
Denver, he was prostrated by the disease he had hoped to
overcome. His wife had accompanied him. Here, among
strangers, with a child, a sick husband, in dehcate health
herself, and always accustomed to the comforts and refine
ment of an Eastern home, her situation was truly deplorable.
Mr. Richardson was in Denver, and, hearing of the gentle
man's illness, though a stranger to them, came to them. He
at once installed himself the friend, and helped by day and
by night with his younger strength, procuring the delicacies
they could not, cheering and nursing the sick man to the last.
When all was over, the wife's turn came. Slie lay danger
ously ill for long weeks. Mr. Richardson sent the best physi
cian to attend her, and rode for days to procure a female nurse
for her, an almost impossible attendant in that new region..
When danger was passed,, and there was hope of her recovery,
he postponed his own journey to Leavenworth an entire month,
that he might come thus far with her on her return East.
Her oldest child was ill, she convalescing, and heart-broken in
her widowhood, and with a babe of ten weeks in her arms.
Not a gay trio for a man to voluntarily take under his guar
dianship. But, with that unselfishness and irrepressible spirit
of cheeriness which followed him always, he assumed this care
as a pleasure. Nothing was forgotten to insure her comfort,
as far as attainable in the tedious journey. At night, he took
the babe in his own arms, in the crowded, jolting coach, that
4

50 LIFE OP ALBEET D. EICHAEDSON.
the mother might steal a Httle rest and sleep. Over the
dreary stretch of plain, through all the wearisome way, he
seemed never to tire of his self-imposed charge. "I never
felt so desolate in my life," said that woman once, in relating
this, " as when he left me at Leavenworth, to come on the rest
of my way alone." Sometimes the discipline of life makes us
keenly alive to the trying experiences of others. An active
kindness is prompted by the recollection of our own distress.
But when Mr. Richardson did all this he was a young man,
with only twenty-five years of retrospect — ^years full of hope
and health and little trial. Always, to the end of his brave
life, this cultivated Christian woman was like an elder sister,
repaying his kindness by the counsel and advice he prized and
sought. Long years have lapsed since then, so that her esti
mate of him can not be attributable to the fresh enthusiasm of
gratitude alone. Her high standard of morality, her keen
discrimination of any character, her long acquaintance with
Mr. Richardson give force to whatever she may say. A letter
lies before me, written since his death, in which she says; "I
believe a truer, nobler soul never looked out of human eyes.
I believe he was a Christian in the highest meaning of the
word. The last time we talked about those matters, I said to
him, 'Have you decided to be a Christian?' He replied,
' Perhaps not in  's or your way ; but every earnest, faith
ful soul must seek God in its own way.' "
After his return East in the winter of 1860-61, Mr.
Richardson offered himself as a secret correspondent of
the Tribune, to visit the Southern States and describe
the feeling and state of affairs there. In the opening
chapter of his book, " The Field, the Dungeon and the
Escape," he describes the motives which induced him to
undertake a journey so perilous, and so likely to end^
in violent death, in these words:
" Early in 1861, I felt a strong desire to look at the
Secession movement for myself; to learn, by personal

LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 51
observation whether it sprang from the people or not;
what the Revolutionists wanted, what they hoped, and
what they feared.
"But the Southern climate, never propitious to the
longevity of Abolitionists, was now unfavorable to the
health of every Northerner, no matter how strong his
political constitution. I felt the danger of being rec
ognized; for several years of roving journalism, and a
good deal of political speaking on the frontier, had
made my face familiar to persons whom I did not re
member at aU, and given me that large and motley
acquaintance which every half-public life necessitates.
"Moreover, I had passed through the Kansas strug
gles; and many former shining lights of Border Ruf
fianism were now, with perfect fitness, lurid torches in
the early bonfires of Secession. I did not care to meet
their eyes, for I did not remember a man of them who
would be Ukely to love me, either wisely or too well.
" Pondering upon the line of conduct best for the
journey, I remembered the injunction of the immortal
Pickwick, ' It is always best on these occasions to do
what the mob do.' 'But,' suggested Mr. Snodgrass,
' suppose there are two mobs ? ' ' Shout with the largest,'
replied Mr. Pickwick. Volumes could not say more.
Upon this plan I determined to act — concealing my
occupation, political views, and place of residence. It
is not pleasant to wear a padlock on one's tongue for
weeks, nor adopt a course of systematic dupUcity ; but
personal convenience and safety rendered it an inexor
able necessity."
Making arrangements to have a few letters, appar
ently sent from New Orleans, printed in the Tribune
before he could reach that place, he set out for that city

52 LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
via Memphis. His role was, to pass himself off as a
resident of the Territory of New Mexico, who was vis
iting New Orleans, on his way to Vera Cruz and Old
Mexico, before returning home. His familiarity with
the characteristics and customs of the country from
which he professed to hail, served to elude suspicion.
He was quiet and self-contained, and simply acquiesced
in all the opinions he heard expressed.
But, the position was a trying one to ordinary nerves,
and as, day after day, the mails brought to the secession
clubs of the city, its copy of the New York Tribune,
containing a letter "from our New Orleans special cor
respondent," relating the blatant talk of Rebel cir
cles, their plans for immediate war, the animus of the
Southern people, and the outbreak of hatred to the
North, the city began to be an uncomfortable place for
any one who had a prejudice against lynching. One
day, as Mr. Richardson sat smoking with a quondam
friend upon the steps of the St. Charles, his interlocutor
•was telling his apparently innocent listener, that, al
though any quiet, gentlemanly Republican might visit
the South with impunity, yet, there were a few men
whose safety he would not guarantee.
"And the last of them," he wound up, "is some in
fernal scoundrel who is writing letters about us to the
New York Tribune,"
"Ah," said the serene smoker, puffing imperturbably.
"Yes sir, and he has been at it more than a month."
"Can't you find him?"
"Some think it a Kentuckian, pretending to be a
cattle-trader, but really a spy on us. But I suspect it
to be the editor of the Picayune, If he is caught, he
will never write any more letters."

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 63
One day, not long after his return from New Orleans,
some friend laughed at Mr. Richardson for his habit of
using the New England colloquialism, "I guess."
"I always like to use the phrase," he said, "I had
to keep a pretty tight rein on my tongue in New Or
leans in 1861, lest that should slip out inadvertently;
those were the days when "I guess" would have hung
me. If I had said that, they would have been certain
I was the Yankee they were after."
During his stay in the South he attended the Lou
isiana Convention, and also visited the sittings of
the Mississippi Legislature, and reported them for his
newspaper. Of course, it would not have been safe to
have taken notes, so — as in his early reportorial days —
he relied on his memory, and on notes scribbled in his
pockets, while he seemed to be a careless looker-on.
One of his most interesting letters to the Tribune at
this time, contains the full description of a slave auc
tion, which he reported from blank cards, written in his
pockets while an apparently unconcerned spectator.
One day, about the middle of March, just before he
intended to take his departure Northward, he planned
an excursion to Fort Pickens, that he might be able
to take back to the North any procurable information
of the •strength of the place, its reinforcements, and
all facts which might aid the government, in case of
immediate war. He had arrived in Mobile and was
intending to present a letter of introduction to Gen
eral Bragg, given him by some enthusiastic secession
friend whom he had become intimate with in New
Orleans, introducing him as a " gentleman of leisure,
and true sympathy with the Southern character."
But the letter was not presented to General Bragg.

54. LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
On the way up the steamer to Mobile, he had three
traveling companions who regarded him with some in
terest. On landing, they went to the same hotel. As
Mr. Richardson was walking slowly up the stairs of the
hotel, just after he had secured a room, he encountered
this party of three also ascending. As soon as they
saw him, they all began the most vituperative abuse of
the North, the Yankees, and especially of that vile Abo
lition sheet, the Tribune ; all of the party in the mean
time looking fixedly at him.
With that unbroken calmness and sang froid, which
was one of the most marked traits of his external
character, he returned their gaze stolidly, and blandly
approaching one of the trio, said, while he extended an
unlighted cigar, "Please give me a light, sir."
The one addressed rather blankly complied, and aU
looked mystified and inclined to apologize. Mr. Rich
ardson lighted his cigar and went on. But he remem
bered meeting an old border-ruffian acquaintance in
New Orleans the day before he left, by whom he thought
he had been passed unrecognized, who had known
him in the Kansas days. It was quite probable he had
been recognized and tracked. " As Toodles, in the farce,
thinks he won't smoke," he adds in telling the story of
his leaving Mobile, " so I concluded I wouldn't go to
Fort Pickens."
He reached the North not a day too soon, passing
through Baltimore the day after the attack on the
Massachusetts regiment.
From the time of this journalistic trip, Mr. Richard
son took the field as war correspondent of the Tribune.
He has himself given in detaU his experience in camp
and field, in his Personal History of Grant, and his

LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 55
Field, Dungeon and Escape, and it would be unneces
sary, and, perhaps tiresome, for me to recapitulate here.
For nearly two years, he followed the fortunes of our
armies. He was in Missouri with Lyon and Fremont;
at Fort Henry, Donelson, and ShUoh with Grant and
Sherman ; with the army of the Potomac at Antietam
and Fredericksburg. Nearly all the notable generals
of the war, were photographed by his rapid and
feUcitous pen.
In 1863, when our armies entered Memphis, Gen.
Lew. Wallace ordered the Memphis Argus to continue
its daily issue, with a sUght change in its editorial de
partment, Mr. Richardson and Col. Thomas W. Knox
being inducted with military dispatch, into the editorial
chair. The celerity with which the above-named news
paper turned from a rebel organ, thirsting for northern
blood, and predicting the downfall of our republic, into
a sheet immovable in loyalty, and staunch in maintain
ing the honor of a united country, is unequalled in the
history of acrobatics.
On the third of May, 1863, Mr. Richardson and his
friend Junius Henri Browne, both engaged on the
Tribune, together with Mr. Colburn of the New York
World, took passage on a steam tug, rigged to run the
Vicksburg batteries. They had been warned that the
attempt was dangerous, but they were all men accus
tomed to brave danger, and insensible, in an unusual
degree, to any emotion of fear. I can not do better
than to give the account of the undertaking in Mr.
Browne's own words :
" The expedition consisted of two large barges loaded with
forage and provisions, propelled by a little tug lashed between

56 LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
them. Never was an expedition, associated with any danger,
more recklessly fitted out. If our enemies had prepared it
themselves, they could not have added to the probability of
its destruction and that of all on board. The hay from the
bales that were on the upper part of the barges, was loosely
scattered about, so that the explosion of a sheU might ignite
it instantly. There was not a small boat, or even a bucket,
on either of tbe barges or on the tug to aid in escape, or to
extinguish fire, and the whole thing was poorly planned and
miserably managed (except for obituary readers) in every par
ticular. Moreover, the river had fallen a. good deal within a
few days, rendering it very difficult to pass the sand-bar oppo
site Vicksburg, and causing many predictions of old pilots that
we should run upon the bar, and be shot to pieces by the
heavy batteries lining the Mississippi shore for several mUes.
The night, too, was exceedingly bright, and the moon, which
was at the full, would be in the zenith just about the time we
got within range of the hostile guns.
" When we went aboard, a little before midnight of Sunday,
May 3, 1863, the prospect was not particularly inviting to a
man who had any desire to be dragged about in a Fourth-of-
July procession in 1913, as one of the survivors of the Great
American Rebellion.
" ' This is a magnificent man-trap,' I remarked to my com
panions; 'but the greater the risk, the more interesting the
adventure, I suppose. If we don't have a sensation this time,
boys, we might as well despair. '
" Then Colburn : ' We needn't go if we don't want to ; and
we do want to go. Besides,' he added, with his philosophic
tendency, 'by a strict consideration of the doctrine of proba
bilities, our chances of getting through safely are as twenty
to one.'
"Richardson laughed and said: 'I don't know much about
the doctrine of probabflities, Dick; but I know I've set out
to run the batteries, and, by Jove, I am going to do it, always
provided the batteries don't interfere with my purpose.'
"An hour and a half later, we were floating slowly along

THE CAPTURE WHILE RUNNINO THE BATTERIES AT VICKSBURG.

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 57
to the music of the grand gunpowder orchestra which the
' gentlemen from the Confederate States ' were playing for our
reception. It was a superb pyrotechnic display, and we should
have enjoyed it extremely, but for the occasional groan of
some poor fellow wounded by a flying fragment of the shells,
constantly bursting around and above us.
" We had been more than half an hour under the tremendous
fire from the batteries above, batteries below, and batteries in
front of us, when a plunging shot in the shape of a ten-inch
shell crushed through the tug, and, exploding in the furnace,
threw the blazing coals over both barges and set them on fire.
In two minutes our whole expedition was wrapped in flames.
We were hopelessly wrecked, and yet the rebels kept worldng
their guns with incessant fury for fully twenty minutes longer.
" We had had more of an adventure than we had anticipated.
Shot, sheU, steam, fire, and water, giving us an opportunity to
die by balls, burning, scalding, or drowning, were sufficient to
gratify any love of mortuary variety we might own. To that
was added capture — the last thing we should have dreamed
of under the circumstances.
" An ill-fated enterprise was ours truly. Out of thirty-four,
including fourteen picked soldiers, eighteen were killed and
wounded, and the remainder were all taken prisoners. At
Thermopylae one man escaped and bore the news to Sparta.
In our little undertaking the casualties exactly equaled the
number that took part in it.
" I remember how supremely cool Richardson was on that
highly illuminated -occasion; how calmly he smoked his cigar,
and watched the shots from the almost interminable line of
guns, and talked with Colburn and myself about the sMll of
the gunners and the exactness of their range.
" After we had launched the wounded on bales of hay, and
had only a few feet of unbumed space to stand upon, he took
off his coat and gloves and boots, and making a small bundle
of them, said, smilingly:
" ' Well, boys, I'm going to put to sea. You'd better sail
soon, if you are not salamanders.' And so he floated off,

58 LIFE OP ALBEET D. EICHARDSON.
seated on a bale of hay, from which a ten-inch round-shot,
striking very near him, and lifting a column of water at least .
thirty feet in the air, displaced him suddenly, with a serious
loss to his by no means superabundant baggage.
"All who were unharmed and could swim would have
reached the shore in safety, and been back in our camp before
morning, had not the rebels, with the same disregard for our
freedom that they had shown for our lives, come out in armed
boats and interfered permanently with our natatory recreation.
" Colburn and I had arranged our aquatic campaign, when,
hearing the sound of rowlocks on the other side of the still
burning wreck, we kept very quiet, and were floating with our
faces, only, out of water. We had fully convinced ourselves
we should be unnoticed, when a yawl full of gray-uniformed
soldiers darted across us, and we were dragged into the boat,
even whUe we were congratulating ourselves upon being
unseen. "Carried to land, we were glad enough to meet our dear
friend Richardson, who, we feared, might have met "svith an
other round-shot less accommodating than the one that had
contented itself with giving him nothing more serious than a
plunge-bath. He grasped our hands cordially, and said :
^'"Pretty lively night,, boys, isn't it? I wonder what we
are to have next ! Whatever it is, I guess we can stand it.
I thought several times, Junius, that there was a fair prospect
of a couple of vacancies on the Tribune staff ; ' and he laughed
as pleasantly and musically as if we were sitting down to our
own mess-table."
Mr. Colburn was soon after released from his captiv
ity, not because he was less loyal to the government
than his companions, but because he was the corres
pondent of a newspaper with which the Rebels had no
quarrel. But, with a malignity of spite, which has
hardly been equaled in the history of warfare, they
kept the two gentlemen who were the attaches of the

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 59
Tribune — hated to the death by every man who raised
his hand to destroy the Republic — for twenty months, in
a captivity whose wretchedness has hardly a parallel.
From Vicksburg to Jackson, from Jackson to Atlanta,
from Atlanta to Libby Prison, and, finally, from Castle
Thunder to Salisbury, tiU they had been the inmates of
seven prisons, and shared scenes of wretchedness for
which there is no adequate description, the two friends
journeyed together with heroic endurance, and almost
without a word of complaint at their sufferings.
Of this terrible twenty months of Mr. Richardson's
life, I can not trust myself to write. No American
woman, with heart to feel, or brain to remember, who
has read the record of life in Southern prisons, can
think of it without bitterest heart-ache, even when fate
had been so kind as to spare her own beloved the mis
eries which such captivity involved. Those who waited,
day by day, and month after month, for tidings of friends
who were thus shut out from liberty, in the midst of
sufferings worse than death, endured a strain of agoniz
ing anxiety, to which many succumbed, and which
bore many a tender woman to her grave.
In the second year of his imprisonment, the wife of
Mr. Richardson's youth, the mother of his children,
yielded to the weariness of grief and waiting, and died
after a week's illness, crying out in her last hours for
him who would never come back to her agaia. A few
months after, her youngest child — a babe a year old —
upon whose face her father had never looked, was laid
in the sa"me grave with her mother.
Amid all these griefs, which would have crushed a
man less brave, or less trustful in God's benefipence,
Mr. Richardson sought solace in helping and minister-

60 LIFE OF AliBERT D. RICHARDSON.
ing to his feUow-sufferers. That deep reUgious feeling
which was the underlying of his whole nature, made
his words faU potently on many ears deaf to aU earthly
hopes or fears. Self-constituted nurses, he and his
friend Junius, spent their time tending the sick, and
performing for the dead the last offices. Too modest to
recount their own deeds, and accustomed to underrate
their best virtues, no historian can ever tell how much
they did for many a soul which made Salisbury its
portal to a better Ufe. But tidings of their goodness
to those who did not live to tell the story, sometimes
reached the ears of wife, or mother, or sister, and many
a tear-stained letter came to thank the two friends for
what they had done for their beloved dead. And I
know, to-day, that round many a fireside which misses
some dear one, dead in Salisbury Prison-pen, the name
of Albert D. Richardson, is never mentioned, but with
loving tears in eyes that never looked upon his face.
Junius Browne, in his brief sketch of his friend, says :
"Brave men who had stood in the front of battle until
danger had become their familiar, often sent for Richardson
when they knew their end was approaching, that he might
bear some final message to wife or mother, or sweetheart or
sister, and that they might die clasping his friendly hand.
Many a courageous soul went out from that scene of horror
to eternal peace, beseeching God's blessing upon the noble
gentleman who in the sufferings of others forgot his own.
Not one of all the captives of Salisbury that still survive, but
will bear evidence of the generous heart, the pure mind, and
the magnanimous character of him who was, in days of afflic
tion, a balm to their wounds and a comforter in their distress.
" So deeply interested was Richardson in the condition of his
fellow-prisoners, that on more than one occasion he refused to
avail himself of an opportunity to escape— and to no man's

LIFE OP ALBERT D. EICHAEDSON. 61
heart was hberty dearer than to his — ^because he believed he
could still do good to men more imfortunate than himself.
Frequently he said to me : " This is horrible beyond the im
agination to conceive. If anything could shake my faith in
the Love and Wisdom that rule the Universe, my faith would
be shaken here. You are skeptical, I know; but be sure it
wUl aU come right in the end. We see but a part; for we
are human. To see the whole, which we shall some time, is
divine. It may be I can give no reason for my belief ; but
that everything happens for the best, and is guided in some
mysterious way by the all-pervading spirit of Love, I feel as
involuntarily as I think and breathe."
In speaking of their experiences as physicians, Mr.
Richardson used, laughingly, to tell the following anec
dote of Mr. Browne's success :
" I believe every prisoner in the enclosure knew him
as 'Doctor,' and I cheerfully certify to his professional
popularity. One day, in reply to a question about his
degree, he said he was an ' amateur physician,' and the
remark went the rounds, with many queries and com
ments, from one soldier's mouth to another's. It puz
zled them a good deal. The general impression seemed
to be, that it signified something a little ahead of the
regular profession — ^perhaps an additional and higher
grade. One of them asked me :
"At what college do these amateur physicians gradu
ate? I prefer them a good deal to common doctors,
they seem to know so much more about their business."
Many times, Mr. Richardson and his friend attempted
to escape, and were baffled. Once, when they were
discovered in the attempt, they were thrown into a
prison so vile that the imagination recoils from it, in
company with thieves, cut-throats, and wretches of the

62 LIFE OP ALBEET D. RICHARDSON.
most abandoned class, who were waiting there till the
Southern Confederacy had leisure to attend to their
executions. Junius relates of them:
" Few of them could read, not one could write ; yet they
asked me so many questions, that Richardson, always facetious,
took me into a corner, and inquired gravely, ' What do tljese
learned gentlemen think about Dante? Do they hold that
Beatrice was an actual woman, or only a type of the purely
spiritual? I should hke to hear what that feUow with one
eye knocked out had to say about the books of the Vedas.
If he is a little befogged concerning them, that gentleman
with the end of his nose bitten off must have a clear concep
tion of the subject. What the devil is the use of having a
nose like his, Junius, unless it enables h\m to understand the
Hindoo mythology ? ' "
In speaking of this experience afterward, Mr. Rich
ardson said: "I never so much realized the force of
character to command respect, even among desperadoes,
as I did when we were thrown among these men.
Junius and I treated them kindly, but without famU-
iarity, and from the time we entered till we were taken
out thfey showed us the utmost respect, and a great
deal more consideration than we could have expected.
Although we had better food and more of it than they,
and often had a ham and other articles of food hanging
up in our corner of the dungeon, these poor wretches
ate their rude prison fare, and never showed any dis
position to rob us."
One story of their sojourn among these criminals,
Mr. Richardson always told with great gusto.
" One of the younger of these men — a burglar by
profession — approached Junius one day, very respect
fully, and inquired if he would write a letter for him.

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 63
Junius complied, and began to ask him to dictate what
he wanted written. The fellow informed him, he was
entirely indifferent as to the style or matter of the con
tents, except, ' as it was to his girl, it must be a love-
letter.' On this, Junius gave loose reins to his im
agination. He wrote a glowing letter, stuffed with
classic allusions, with quotations in all languages living
or dead, likening the fair recipient to every goddess,
and endowing her with every grace in the category.
This done, he read the letter to the enamored burglar,
who listened with •wide-mouthed wonder, ' the very top
of admiration,' pronounced the letter his own unex
pressed thought, and itwas sent to its destination."
The exit from these miseries came at last. On the
18th of December, 1864, Mr. Richardson and his fellow-
captives, Junius Browne, and Mr. Davis of Cincinnati,
escaped from Salisbury, and, four weeks later, arrived
on the Union lines in Knoxville, Tenn. Mr. Richardson
has given in detaU all the incidents of his escape in his
book. The FifHd, the Dungeon and the Escape^ and they
are too weU kno-wn to be repeated here. All the actual
horrors of that dreadful winter's journey, over swamps,
rivers, and mountains, in which they were half-naked
and half-starved, burning with fever and freezing with
cold, no one can ever narrate fully. But they came
safely out at length, under the shadow of the old flag,
that to them, was "like the shadow of a great rock in
a weary land," and from Knoxville, Mr. Richardson sent
his telegram which was blazoned all over the loyal North :
" Out of the jaws of death ;
Out of the mouth of hell."
As soon as he was fairly breathing the air of free
dom, and strong enough to carry out any purpose, Mr.

64 LIFE OP ALBERT D. EICHARDSON.
Richardson made it his unceasing endeavor to effect an
exchange of rebel prisoners for our own men in the
South. He went to Washington, and in the presence
of the President, or wherever he had influence or could
be heard, he earnestly urged upon the government not
to let any more of our brave fellows die in the slaugh
ter-pens in which he had so miraculously escaped death.
Fortunately, the close of the war came, not much later,
to make his efforts unnecessary ; but he always remem
bered with some bitterness, how fruitless all his efforts
had been to the end for which his sympathies were so
deeply enlisted.
His own suffering, however, left no anger or bitter
ness in his nature against those who had thus abused
the rights of war, and I never knew a man — so in
tensely loyal — ^who could speak so candidly and justly
of the Rebels, as he. In only one letter written during
his confinement in Salisbury and sent to his brother
Charles in Boston, does he utter any complaint, or speak
with anything but his usual calmness of the facts of
his detention, and the injustice of his being held so long.
This letter was as follows :
THIS LETTER MUST NOT BE PUBLISHED.
Military Prison, Salisbuet, N. C, J
Saturday, August 27, 1864. )
CHAS. A. RICHARDSON, CongregationaUst Office, 15 CoENHin, Boston, Mass.
My Dear Brother : — I am glad to be able by private
hand to write you frankly concerning Junius and my
self We have been longer in confinement than any
other Northerner now held by the Rebels. Of course
we are more obnoxious to them than any of the other

THE ESCAPED PRISONERS WADING A MOUNTAIN STREA.M AT MIDNIGHT.

LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 65
citizen prisoners. We expected nothing else from
them; but we did expect justice from our own Gov
ernment. " When the Rebels get Northern citizens they hold
them, — not under any criminal charge for violating
laws of war — but simply as Northern citizens. They
have adhered to this policy with rigid stedfastness ever
since our capture. Of course, our Government could
have forced them to abandon it, any time, in a few
months, by arresting and keeping all the Southern citi
zens it could get — ^for it would soon hold twenty to one.
So far from this, from time to time, during our whole
confinement, it has sent home by truce boat, or other
wise, large numbers of Southern citizens, apparently
without any equivalent whatever.
"Whenever citizens of West Virginia fall into rebel
hands, they are soon released. Several of them, much
more obnoxious to the enemy than any Northerner,
have been sent home after a very short captivity; they
are seldom kept long.- Why is this? Simply because
the authorities of that little State have more sense than
our whole War Department, except Dana, and the Ex
change Bureau besides. Whenever their citizens are
captured, they seize and hold prominent influential
Rebels for them — often three or four for one — and it
accomplishes the object, while Northerners lie here
months and years — often sicken and die here — from
mere neglect.
" So inuch for our Government's treatment of its citi
zens generally. Now for our personal experience.
" Last winter, our people captured two Richmond
Enquirer men— McFarland and Steadman. The rebels
at once proposed to exchange them for two Herald cor-
5

66 LIFE OF -ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
respondents — Hendrick and Hart. These Herald men
had been prisoners two months, we seven. They be
longed to an opposition, we to an Administration jour
nal. Of course, we expected our Commissioner would
reply, 'You can't have your Enquirer men for the
Herald correspondents, because you hold two Tribune
correspondents, who have been prisoners five months
longer; we will make the proposed exchange only for
them.' The Rebels would doubtless have acceded.
But our Government did no such thing; it sent them
at once the men they wanted.
"Next, Dr. Ritchie, a prominent and wealthy rebel
living near Richmond, was captured by a raid. Of
course we were pleased; he was a good man to hold.
What do you suppose our authorities did with him?
Sent him and his two overseers home by an early flag
of truce, so far as we could learn, unconditionally re
leased ! When Bulkley went North, (February 26th,)
he carried a statement of these facts in detail to Mr.
Greeley, and supposed he would prevent their recur
rence. But during the spring campaign. Grant cap
tured several prominent citizens of Petersburg. Among
them was one 'Tim Rives,' a leading influential poli
tician. The rebels wanted him. One of them who
could speak by authority said, 'We would give any
dozen Yankee citizens for him.' It was not two weeks
before we read that he was also released!
"Last of all, Edward A. PoUard was captured. He
was an editor of the Richmond Examiner, the most
able and virulent rebel journal in the whole South.
Look into his ' Second Year of the War,' and you will
see that he is as bitter against our cause and people as
any man living ! The rebels wanted him. They would

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 67
sacrifice a good deal to get him. Well, the last news
from the North states that he is paroled to the limits-
of Brooklyn, and soon to be exchanged !
"Now is not this infamous? He free in one of the
pleasantest cities in the world; we shut up ia a foul,
loathsome prison ! He about to be sent home after a
month's nominal confinement; we entering upon our
seventeenth month, of captivity, with no prospect of
release, after having suffered that which rather than
endure again, we would unhesitatingly choose imme
diate death.
"Is it the indifference and neglect of our own friends,
or the obstinacy and stupidity of the authorities that
has caused this ? We were once written to, that if we
ever were released it would be no thanks to the Tribune
people, as they made no effort for us; but we have
been very slow to believe it of Mr. Greeley, especially,
as we are held solely on account of our journalistic
connection with the Tribune. Somebody is criminal,
and ought to be worried, publicly, or privately, or
both. Three of us, attaches of loyal journals — Mr.
William E. Davis of the Cincinnati Gazette, and our
selves — are here, and it does seem to me that a pressure
might easily be brought upon any one in authority
who is responsible for this neglect. If necessary why
not use the press through Dix, Gay, Bartlett, Coffin,
Knox, etc.?
"The North to us is like the grave; no voice ever
comes back to us from it. Even our friend Bulkley was
never able to get a letter to us after he passed Fortress
Monroe. My latest letter from you is AprU 30th.
" Understand our feelings clearly. It is not suffering
we complain of Our lives and liberty are nothing, if

68 LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
their sacrifice can do any good to the cause. You cer
tainly know that we have never whimpered in the
past, and that whatever the future has in store for us
we shall bear with dignity and fortitude. But we
don't want to be murdered in the house of our friends,
or left to rot through their neglect, or the indifference
and blundering of our own Government.
"If you get this letter, write to me in your next
that you have sent my books home, and get Knox to
do the same — in token of its reception. Please send
copies of this letter at once to Mr. Gay, Knox and
Colburn, (jointly,) S. T. Bulkley, care H. F. Buell,
Albany, and Charles A. Dana; mark Dana's, ' Confiden
tial.' Use the facts as you please, but don't print it as
coming from me. Health good.
" Affectionately your brother,
"Albert D. Richardson."
In his captivity, Mr. Richardson had had a severe
attack of prison pneunionia, which left its trace on his
constitution — naturally a splendid one — for several
years. In spite of the debility, however, which seized
on him soon after his escape, he wrote and lectured on
the condition of his fellow-prisoners, till his vojce gave '
way, and a severe cough seemed to threaten consump
tion. Even then, he did not cease to answer the
numberless letters of inquiry which poured in upon
him from every part of the North, from friends of those
who were imprisoned in the South.
In an article written by one of his friends since his
death, she gives the following account of his unweary
ing labors :
" As he has told us in his book, in anticipation of his escape

LIFE OF ALBEET D. RICHARDSON. 69
from Salisbury and the opportunity of bringing away tidings
of his fellow-prisoners, he began to take the names of those
who had died, escaped, or whom he might leave behind him.
Hunger, thirst and suffering, almost to madness, did not hin
der him in his thoughtful work. He brought away fourteen
hundred names, and was compelled to leave behind a book
containing a stUl larger number. Reaching New York, he
published a card in the Tribune, the substance of which was
that he could give information of many prisoners, and that he
would gladly do so. Letters from every part of the North
poured in upon him. We spent a day with him at this time.
He had lectured the evening before, and was exhausted, as
he was still weak from the hardships of his imprisonment and
escape. But he brought out a mass of these letters to an
swer. We remonstrated with him for making the effort. He
replied, .'I know their anxiety. There are fathers and moth
ers and wives here, looking to my answer for a ray of hope.
To some I must teU the worst, but that is better than sus
pense.' He read a short, touching letter from an old father
whose only son and his support had been imprisoned at Salis
bury. Mr. Richardson reinembered the boy very distinctly.
'He escaped,' said he, 'three months before we did; if not
heard from yet he must have perished in the mountains. It
is hard to teU it, but it is best for the father to know it.' He
would -write until too weary to hold the pen, and then dictate
to another. Thirty-four letters were written that day to
strangers." After Mr. Richardson's health forbade public speak
ing, he put into a volume the record of his adventures
by field and fiood, in his . first published book, ',' The
Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Es
cape," a book more full of romance and daring adven
ture, told in his simple, truthful manner, than many a
sensational romance, whose author revels in the wildest
of fiction.

70 LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
About this time he was offered the editorial man
agership of tbe New York Tribune, which was a posi
tion which would have suited him admirably. But in
taking it, he would have been obliged to succeed Mr.
Gay, the former managing editor, for whom he felt a
tender, almost brotherly, friendship; and he believed,
that the circumstances of Mr. Gay's resignation would
not justify him in becoming his successor.
" I confess, I should quite like to try my hand at
managing the Tribune," he said to a confidential friend
at the time of Mr. Gay's resignation, " but I feel that
loyalty to Gay demands, in this case, that no friend of
his should take the position, and so I should not
accept it."
In the spring of 1865, Mr. Richardson went to Cali^
fornia with his friends, Schuyler Colfax, Governor
Bross of Illinois, and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield
Republican, and after this journey, from which he re
turned much improved in health, he wrote his second,
and most widely read book, " Beyond the Mississippi."
In this volume, which gives an account of what he
himself had seen and experienced in the vast territory
which lies on the other side of our great dividing river,
Mr. Richardson — as he declares — strove to give a faith
ful picture of a "fleeting phase of our national . life."
Already, many of the traits which he has depicted are
effaced from the reality, and the scenes which he has
so truthfully painted, at some day — not far distant —
will not be believed ever to have existed.
As soon as his "Beyond the Mississippi" was in
press, Mr. Richardson gathered his little family to
gether, and began keeping house in Fordham, a place
about ten miles from New York, and within easy access

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 71
of the city. For the first time since the death of his
wife and his return from prison, he endeavored to sat
isfy, by the society of his three motherless chUdren,
who had been during the interim residing in Massachu
setts, the domestic instincts which were so strong a
feature of his charactet'.
Soon after this, in the winter of '67 and '68, he under
took to write a "Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant,"
whose career as a soldier he had always followed during
the Civil Conflict, with enthusiastic interest.
He wrote this Biography of the successful General
of our armies, with the same care and earnest desire to
be truthful, which he brought to all his work. , No
trouble was ever too great for him to take, to verify a
fact, or to be sure that what he stated was exactly true.
During the coldest and severest weather, he journeyed
from Washington to Ohio, then through Illinois, Mis
souri, and back through Michigan and northern New
York, visiting Grant's birthplace, his places of residence
and business, — seeing with his own eyes all the locali
ties of which he wished to write, and hearing from the
lips of Grant's friends and acquaintances, the facts
which he needed for the book.
In writing for the great public he had two rules. 1st,
" Make what you write faithful to truth. 2d, Make it
interesting to the average reader." To these two ends
he was indefatigable in his labors. Sometimes his
friends rallied him on his devotion to the average reader.
"Laugh away," he said, "I am a democrat by tem-
peranient, and I have a profound respect for the average
reader, the average man, and the average common
sense of humanity."
In this -winter of 1868 he went, on his return from

72 LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
the West, to Sackett's Harbor, where Grant had at one
time been stationed when a subaltern iu our armies, in
order that he might not miss one or two little points of
interest which the place promised to yield him. In a
private letter he says :
" Just after mailing my last, I started for Sackett's
Harbor with one horse, sleigh, and 'driver. The drifts
were so bad the livery man didn't believe I could get
through ; nothing had come since the day before. But
I insisted, as I always do, that I wouldn't stop tUl I had
to — this talking of stopping because difficulty is ex
pected, and not reached, doesn't please me.
" Well, we started. The drifts were fearful. The air
so full of snow, we couldn't see many yards ahead.
We plowed on — stopped to warm — ^went on again, and
I often thought we should have to turn back. The
driver's face was bundled up in furs, but I had only my
gloves. We tipped over only once — then into a snow
bank, pell-mell.
"At last after two and one-half hours we made the
ten miles. Got to Sackett's. The driver's face, eyes,
beard, and hair, were a "mask of ice," and so were
mine. One of my ears was frozen stiff as a shingle;
but I thawed it out with snow, saw my mian, got my
notes, rode back, bolted supper, and, as the clown in
the circus says, "here I am" in the 30th street depot,
writing this to mail you before I go out of town again."
In this way he worked to gain the slightest informa
tion needed for accuracy in all that he wrote and did.
In writing and gathering material for his life of Gen
eral Grant, he conceived a high and most genuine
respect for the character of our chief magistrate and
in all that he wrote of him was governed by his most

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 73
earnest conviction. General Rawlins rendered him
much assistance in getting facts relative to the General's
military career, and for him Mr. Richardson formed a
most hearty friendship. He believed Rawlins to be one
of the most genuine and modest of men who ever got
any share of his deserts from the American people. In
one of his private letters, written a few days before
the life of Grant appeared, he teUs this anecdote of
Rawlins :
"Yesterday, RawUns telegraphed me suddenly to
come on to Washington, and I came straightway. He
had told me that he should want to see me before the
book went to press, to make some slight changes in it.
I expected that, as inaccuracies can not be avoided
altogether. But I found, that his chief fear had been
that he was made too prominent in the book, and he
feared I had said something which might look like puff
ing him ! Before I got here, several friends had read
the advance sheets, and assured him, strenuously, that it
was not so. So he only suggested three or four slight
changes, and we are now through -with it."
His life of Grant appeared in the faU of 1868, and
during the ensuing winter he spent his time with his
children at Fordham, writing magazine articles, letters,
and in other congenial pursuits. In the spring of
1869, he made a journey by railway to California,
writing his letters " Through to the Pacific," to the
New York Tribune. In mid-summer he returned, and,
in less than two weeks, started for Kansas, and went
on various hunts and excursions, the accounts of which
I have gathered from his note books to form the article
in this volume entitled "A Month in Kansas." When
the time-honored festival of Thanksgiving approached.

74 LIFE OF ALBERT D. BICHARDSON.
he hastened back to spend the day with aU his dearest
friends in New England.
From the time of his Ulness in SaUsbury he had al
ways been conscious of a sUght weakness in the chest,
which had sometimes made him fear that he had. a
chronic affection of the lungs. But this last journey to
Kansas seemed to have carried away the last lingering
trace of weakness, and on his return he was fuU of
the most superb and vigorous health, and almost boy
ish spirits. One of his frie;ids said :
"Why Albert, how well you are. I never saw you
so fuU of Ufe."
" Well ! " he exclaimed,,"! should think so. I feel as
if I could leap a five-barred gate at one bound. I have
never felt like this since the days in prison."
His brain was teeming with plans for future work
and usefulness. At length, it seemed probable that
he was to have a newspaper of his own.
" I think now, I am going to have what I have always
wanted," he said in talking of his future prospects, "a
newspaper which will be virtually mine. A paper in
which I can say what I think. How I should like to
own a newspaper as large as the New York Independent,
in which I could advocate just what I believe in — the
best possible freedom for women, the best possible fi:ee-
dom in trade, my highest convictions- in regard to
religion, politics, trade and society."
"Then," he went on earnestly, "if I could go on till
I had had my fill of newspaper work, I should like to
write a History of the United States, which should, as
nearly as possible, embody my idea of what a National
History should be. Not merely a record of wars, and
state poUtics, but a picture of society and social changes

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 75
— of the employments of a growing people — of the way
they lived, and talked, and what manner of men and
women they were — of the growth and history of all the
great inventions which have helped or -wrought upon
our national prosperity and growth. If I can live to
do this thing I shall die content."
This last was his dearest project. Of all persons
whom I have ever known, Mr. Richardson was the most
intensely American, and the most truly patriotic.
Without being in the sUghtest degree a politician,
always refusing to enter political strifes, without being
bigoted or narrow toward other countries and races, his
beUef in his own country, herinstitutions, her resources,
and her future, was most enthusiastic, and a very part
of his own being. For years, he had been engaged in
filling one volume after another with scraps cut from
newspapers, books, pamphlets, everything met with in
his immense field of reading, which could add anything
to his stores of information about this country, and
her past or present history. His books, desks, drawers,
and even his pockets, constantly overflowed Avith scraps
containing facts about early settlements, ancient houses,
anecdotes and descriptions of distinguished men — any
thing which swelled the material for such a history as
he wished to write. If he had lived to carry out his
design, with the industry and the enthusiasm which
characterized his other works, I believe he would have
written a work which would have been a fitting monu
ment to his memory.
For he was eminently a man of growth, and his
powers were by no means at their full. He had ma
tured by degrees from the promise of his early youth,
adding year by year a strength and ripeness to his men-

76 LIFE OP ALBEET D. EICHARDSON.
tal powers, which made him always fresh and interest
ing to his friends. None of them could fail to discover,
after a brief separation from him, what strides he had
made in absence, and how certainly he grew, on and on,
to a fuller and grander intellectual stature. What he
might have done, if fate had spared him, can only be
measured by the ratio of his constant growth.
But his powers were destined not to reach their fuU
fruition here. Just one week after the Thanksgi-ving
day which he' spent with his nearest relations, his
mother, his brother Charles, and their united families —
he received his death-wound. After a week's illness, a
week of agonizing suspense to the friends who hung
upon his last moments, in which the wonderful vitahty
of his mental and physical constitution contended with
death in an almost unparalleled struggle, he breathed
his last earthly breath.
The same attributes of charity, patience, sweetness
and courage, the same deep-rooted belief in the provi
dence of God, which had been the chief feiatures of his
character in life, were the ruling features in death.
Neither reproaches, nor complainings, nor repining,
met the ear of his attendants. For death he had ab
solutely no fears ; and when those around were some
times unable to repress their grief, even with all possi
ble self-control, he would say, with his old sereneness
and his old smUe, " Whatever happens, try and remem
ber it is all for the best."
At last, when it was too late to hope, and he himself
forbade his friends to hope longer, he called those who
were nearest and dearest to his bedside to say " Good
bye," before he went away. Up to that time, all visi
tors, except the necessary physicians and attendants,

LIFE OP ALBERT D. RICHARDSON. 77
were excluded, but in the corridors to his room waited
crowds of anxious friends to hear either the best or the
worst that could be told. Now, they entered, one after
another, to say their word of parting, to the dear
friend, so loyal and generous and tender always. In
the same strong, calm voice which was natural to him,
and which even death did not weaken, he bade each
"Good-bye," as one who only says farewell while he
shall go upon a little journey. His beloved brother,
his old friend Junius, Knox, the companions of many
dangers, could not keep back the hot tears that fell upon
his clasping hand. But he alone looked serenely for
ward, to a parting which held- for him no terrors. When
a woman-friend, to whom he had been more like a cher
ished son than one of alien blood, said through her tears :
"Good-bye, dear, with us the parting will not be
long." He answered cheerily, " Not long, dear friend,
not long," as if he went only on such a journey as those
for which he had often bidden her "Good-bye."
' Then, his last tender fareweUs said to his beloved
brother and his oldest son, his last loving messages sent
to his mother and his little children, he resigned him
self to the death struggle.
"I do not fear death at all; not in the least," he
said, "but I confess I dread pain greatly."
Just as St. Paul's clock struck 'five, on Thursday
morning, December 2d — the very day made sacred by
the death of slavery's martyr, old John Brown — the
spirit of a true Christian gentleman left the earth.
"I have seen many death-beds," said one of his
physicians, himself a man of great nerve and self-
poise^ " but never, in my life, did I see a man of such
sublime courage as this."

78 LIFE OF ALBERT D. RICHARDSON.
" What high qualities his death-bed showed," wrote
another acquaintance ; " what patience, gentleness, for
giveness ! A man has not lived in vain who has ma
tured such fruit."
Thus went out, after thirty-six years, the light of
one of the noblest lives I ever knew. No one ever
knew him weU, but has felt himself better and nobler^.
more charitable and more gentle in his judgment of
others, more trustful in God's love, for having known
him. And his memory is deep-rooted in the hearts
of those who knew him thus. Many men and women
have clasped my hand to say through tears, " He was
the best friend I ever had." Many, with lips tremb
ling with emotion, have said to me, "He helped me
when I was discouraged. I owe more than I can say
to his encouraging word and his friendly aid." Many
men and women, with tongue and pen, have said, " I
feel myself better, more loving to man, more trustful
in God, for having known this man."
So even out of his grave rise many acts and words
of his that keep his memory green in myriad hearts.
From the Atlantic to the Pacific, hundreds of voices are
glad to say, " He was my friend and he of all men knew
the meaning of that word." And those who miss the
clasping of that outstretched hand — always out
stretched to help those weaker and more helpless —
ca.nnot fail to thank God for his friendship, and to say
in his own cheerful words :
"Whatever happens, it is all for the best. Remem
ber that. In our little circle we must do the best we
can. Outside of us is infinite love and perfect benefi
cence." Amen. A. g^ u.
WooDSiDE, N. J., January, 1871.

GARNERED SHEAVES.

John.

>HOULD he be encouraged to come ? The Irish
of California — ^in 1860 one-tenth of the entire
population — think not. So does Senator Cas-
serly, himself of Irish blood ; and the fact that he is a
man of thoughtfulness, culttire, and generally liberal
views makes his intense feeling on this subject all the
more striking and Ulustrative. Last summer the mer
chants of San Francisco welcomed a large number of
I'epresentative men from Chicago in a banquet at which
the Governor of CaUfornia, several United States Sena
tors, and two hundred gentlemen prominent in the
professions and in business, were present. But when
six leading Chinese merchants entered the hall, habited
in rich, elaborately ornamented native costumes, and
Mr. Casserly saw that they were to participate in the
festivities, he seized his hat and abruptly disappeared !
The contractor, or manufacturer who wants ten, or
ten hundred, or ten thousand Chinese laborers, orders
them through a San Francisco firm exactly as he would
order an invoice of cotton or sugar. If the number is
too large to be obtained in California, the firm in turn
makes- a requisition for them upon its agents in China,
and in due time they are delivered. The firm pays
their passage, taking a lien upon their labor to reim-
6

82 JOHN.
burse itself When set to work on raUroads or kindred
enterprises, they organize into gangs of about thirty,
each of which selects a head man. He purchases sup
plies for them from the house which brought them into
the country, and through these sales the house obtains
its profits. Mr. Casserly denounces this system as im
portation, not immigration, and as ruinous to the in
terests of white workmen. " John Chinaman," argues
the senator, in effect, " is a most frugal man, a most
patient laborer, often a most cunningly skilled me
chanic, and therefore — ^we do not want him ! This, too,
in a country whose supreme need is labor, both skilled
and unskilled, — a country with only half a million of
inhabitants now, but with resources waiting to be de
veloped which would easUy support fifty millions. In
deed, it must contain eighty-three millions before its
population to the square mUe will equal that of little
Belgium. Encountering Mr. Casserly on a Pacific raUway train
last summer, I asked him, " How can you stop the Chi
nese immigration ? " He replied, " By legal prohibi
tion." In spite of the great difficulties which have
hitherto existed in the way of leaving China, and in
spite of the gross and cruel abuse encountered after
reaching California, more than a hundried thousand of
these people have already come; but not even this
glaring fact seems to have suggested to the senator
that the inexorable law of demand and supply has
something to do with the matter ! He is a melancholy
example of the effect of even a short residence in the
official atmosphere of Washington. The average con
gressional naind entertains no doubt that if an act re
quiring the Mississippi to turn and run up hiU were

POSSIBILITIES OP CHINESE EMIGRATION. 83
passed by both Houses and signed by the President,
the Mississippi would do it. Legislation against this
immigration would be like making it a penal offence
for the winds to blow on Telegraph Hill, or the tides to
rise and fall at the Golden Gate, and it would be quite
as effective as such an enactment. •
The thing lies in a nutshell. Yonder stretches a
vast country which has men and don't want them ; here
lies a vast country which wants men and has not got
them. Twenty-nine days and forty dollars will bring
an immigrant from one to the other; and capitalists
always stand ready to pay his passage and take the
chances of getting their money back. Already the
monthly ships of the Pacific MaU Company ordinarily
bring one thousand two hundred Chinamen, and single
sailing-vessels often half as many more. It only re
mains for us to accept John as destiny and make the
best of him. He has come, thus far, only ip the form
of a scout to spy out the land, but close behind follow
his serried columns, —
"A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen loins."
During the next five years the Chinese Empire can
send us as many people as all who live to-day under
the American flag, -without missing them more than the
North missed the boys who went South to fight for the
Union. Within ten years it can send us' fifty mUlions,
and even then not spare so large a percentage of its
population as Ireland has given us during an equal
period ?
What is he doing ? John began as a house-servant,
and still finds most of his employment in that capacity.
As a natural cook he has no equal, except in the

84 JOHN.
Frenchman. His person he keeps religiously clean,
washing himself aU over every day in the year. At
first, housekeepers say, he may mix his bread by filUng-.
his mouth with water, and then blowing it out over the
flour ; but a little training soon cures him of this. He
is ready to sweep, to make beds, and to walk of errands,
— for John is deliberate, and seldom runs. Entrust
children to his care, and he will dandle them in his
arms, or trundle them in their carriages, or amuse them
with playthings, with the same calmness, sobriety, and
patience which he would bring to the buUding of the
Great Wall. Labor is so abundant in his native coun
try that he has been taught to do everything with the
nicest carefulness, -with the most absolute thoroughness.
He is mighty in the laundry. He does up shirts like
an artist, and never forgets to sew on the buttons. In.
Sacramento, night after night, I heard at short intervals,
from my hotel windows, a peculiar "whir — whir — whir,"
in the street below. At first I fancied that it must be
"de crim night-waechter " of Hans Breitmann, giving
the all's-weU signal to his comrades. But finally I dis
covered that the sound came from a Chinese laundry
just across the street, where John was sprinkling clothes
by blowing water upon them through a hollow reed.
Usually he sprinkles them directly from his mouth, — a
process better adapted to linen than to bread. That
laundry, I believe, was never closed, by day, by night,
or on Sunday.
John has always taken kindly to mining. In vain
did the State impose an extra and unjust tax upon him;
he paid it, — when he was obliged to, — and continued
to work like a beaver. In vain did white men drive
him out when he found a rich lead. He only feU back

THE BUILDER OF THE PACIFIC RAILROAD. 85
to delve away in some abandoned placer; and if he
earned one dollar a day he would save more money in
the course of a year than the American who took out
five dollars from richer diggings.
But he could not be exclusively house-servant, wash
erman, and miner. Gradually he took up other pur
suits. He proved extremely useful as a farm-hand;
and he has pressed more and more into that employ
ment. Just now, the democratic politician of California,
a little be-wUdered to find his ancient cry of "nigger"
no longer effective, is lustUy shouting "Chinaman"
instead; but he employs Johnny on his ranch, in his
vineyard, his dwelling, his store, and his factory, just as
his republican neighbor does. Diligent inquiry has not
brought to my knowledge a single instance of his dis
criminating in favor of. "the interests of white labor,"
where it has involved the expenditure of one additional
dollar per month.
In the remote antiquity of five years ago, half a dozen
Sacramento gentlemen began to build the Pacific RaU-
road. White labor was not merely costly; it was abso
lutely unattainable. Chinamen therefore were brought
in, and in the spring of 1865 they began to swarm upon
the Sierras like files upon a honey-comb. So deep was
the hostility against them that it was found necessary
to give them military protection untU their growing
numbers enabled them to defend themselves. At last
twelve thousand were working upon the road. But for
them the locomotive would not have rolled across the
continent for two years yet. The company, after four
years of trial, reported that they had proved nearly as
efficient as Irish laborers for the hardest kind of work,
and far more tractable and trustworthy. Strikes,

86 JOHN.
drunken brawls, bloody riots, were all unknown among
them. They did, without question, murmur, or delay,
whatever they were told to do. They did not stop for
Sunday — nor did any one else employed on the road ;
but about once in ten days John would take a holiday.
He received from $30 to $35 per month' in gold. Of
this he would save from |20 to |23, and send the most
of it home to China. The company are so well satis
fied with his work that they no longer confine him to
construction and repairs, but are introducing him into
their operating-force. He begins to find employment,
too, upon the Union Pacific line, — from Omaha to Utah,
— which at one time was paying ^4 per day, currency,
to Pat, while the Central obtained John for $1 in gold.
He is working upon the new roads which are building
in California, and ultimately he wiU be engaged upon
all our great public works.
Simultaneously with his appearance upon the Central
Pacific Railroad another great avenue was opened to
him. An enormous woolen-mUl had been erected in
San Francisco, at a cost of three-quarters of a million
of dollars. Its products were exceedingly popular:
for California woolen goods then, as now, were the
best made in the United States ; but financially it was
a failure. Louis McLane, one of the most sagacious
business-men on the coast, was induced to make a
searching examination into its affairs. He reported to
the stockholders : " Dear labor is the obstacle to your
success. Stop paying American workmen three dollars
a day, and substitute Chinamen at a dollar and a quar
ter, and then you will make money." The suggestion
was adopted — of course, against the fiercest opposition.
Were not the yellow men taking the bread out of the

HIS EXACTNESS AND VERSATILITY. 87
mouths of the white men? Now, that company em
ploys lour' hundred and fifty Chinamen, at one dollar
per day, the workmen boarding themselves. Some do
not earn more than fifty cents, and others are worth
two dollars ; but they are paid through their agent at
the rate of one dollar for each, and left to distribute
the compensation among themselves. After five years'
experience, they are found perfectly satisfactory as
operatives, and they are now employed in nearly or
qjiiite every one of the dozen woolen-factories on the
coast. John makes boots, and shoes, and clothing, and all
the cigars that are manufactured in California. He
peddles fish, fi:uit, and vegetables. He finds abundant
employment in the great vineyards and orchards.
Give him a cluster of grapes or a pear for a sample,
and he wiU pluck from trees or vines all fruit at the
same stage of ripeness, with the greatest precision.
Occasionally he appears in the character of a mer
chant. He is at the head of some very heavy San
Francisco firms, which are branches of old houses in
China. Here he is noted for exactness and fair deal
ing, and often for high cominercial ability. Many Ameri
can houses, both city and country, deal with him, partic
ularly in teas and rice, and accord to him that hearty
respect which brains and success usually command. A
dozen of the Chinese merchants of San Francisco are
men of great wealth ; some are partners in Hong-Kong
firms which are reputed to possess a capital of fifty mil
lion dollars. The six who assisted at the Lick House
banquet are men conspicuous for culture, character, and
capacity. One of them, Fung-Tang, speaks Chinese,
Japanese, French, and German with fiuency, and re-

88 JOHN.
pUed to a toast in EngUsh, in one of the most pointed,
sensible, and compact dinner-speeches that the Eastern
guests had ever heard. It wOuld be difficult to find an
other spectacle at once so melancholy and so ludicrous,
as that of a senator of the United States resenting the
presence of such men at a public banquet, as an indig
nity to himself and his race.
John presides over several large establishments fiUed
with knick-knacks from Japan and China, which visit
ors from the East purchase to take home as curiosities.
Most of these articles illustrate his ingenuity and mar
velous patience. There are tables and work-boxes,
each composed of thousands of bits of highly-polished,
many-colored woods; glove-boxes of lacquered ware,
resembling papier machi, which seU for two dollars and
a half and three dollars, gold; handkerchiefs of grass-
cloth, embroidered by hand with infinite pains; count
less varieties of children's toys, including many curious
and intricate puzzles ; sleeve-buttons and breast-pins ;
card-racks of various material; wooden and metallic
counterfeits of insects and reptiles, so perfect that one
half fears to handle them lest they should bite his fin
gers ; gay Chinese lanterns covered with painted paper
and as large as market-baskets ; fire-crackers; torpedoes
which explode with a report like that of a twelve-
pounder ; chop-sticks ; writing-desks ; and- a thousand
other things to please the fancy. In waiting upon
American customers, Johnny shows himself the model
merchant. He is an adept in the simple art of not too
much. He proffers a Chinese cigar (execrable in flavor),
and is grieved if his visitor does not take at least a few
whiffs from it. If the purchases are liberal in amount,
he makes a judicious discount in the prices, and perhaps

A GROUP OF CELESTIALS.

A CHINESE BAUBEE.

CALIFORNIA OPPOSITION TO CHEAP LABOR. 89
throws in some trifling gifts. He is attentive, but not
over-pressing ; cordial, but never impertineilt ; and he
speeds the parting guest with a good-by so polite and
friendly that it leaves a pleasant flavor in the memory.
His advance into the highly-skUled industries is
sharply contested, but his sure progress demonstrates
that all 'things are his who has patience. Thus far, in
the anomalous life of CaUfornia, labor has been stronger
than capital, and has had things much in its own way.
In hand or placer mining John has been graciously al
lowed the gleanings ; but quartz-mining has been closed
to him. Not only has he been kept from digging ore
in the shafts and reducing it under the stamps, but even
when owners have employed him to cut and haul wood
for the mills he has been driven away with riot and
blood-shed. California working-men are in many re
spects the most inteUigent in the world; but they
sometimes show a narrowness and ignorance worthy of
the dark ages. More than once they have presented
the astonishing spectacle of skilled laborers, in a coun
try of free schools and cheap newspapers, resisting with
violence the introduction of a new invention, on the
ground that it diminished the necessity for hand labor !
A hundred years ago there might have been some ex-.
cuse; but at this day every American ought to know
that any ingenious contrivance which makes iron, or
steel, or steam, or chemical combinations do the work
of human muscles, tends to his ultimate benefit and
that of his children. Recently California miners united
in a strike against the use of a new powder in the quartz-
veins, because it is so much more powerful than the old
that it renders less drilling necessary. No wonder that
such men should resist the cheap labor of an alien race.

90 JOHN.
But almost every strike enlarges the field that is open
to John Chinaman. He is not yet in the quartz-mines
— unless in a few rare instances, where he has bought
mines himself— but he is certain to be there ; for the
law of trade, which impels capital to employ the
cheapest obtainable labor, is as irresistible as the law
of gra-sdtation. Last July, the working quartz-miners
in our newest El Dorado, the White Pine district of
Nevada, struck for five dollars per day. One com
pany — one of the many on the Pacific coast which em
ploy over a hundred miners — closed up its works, and
kept a capital of a million of dollars lying idle, for the
simple reason that it could not pay expenses at that
price. At the same moment it could have hired a hun
dred Chinese laborers, just as efficient as the strikers,
at one dollar and a half per day. The matter was
finally compromised by paying the old miners four dol
lars ; but even upon that rate the company could have
saved two hundred and fifty dollars per day, or almost
eighty, thousand dollars a year, by the substitution of
Chinamen. No labor combinations or fear of blood
shed can make such a condition of things permanent.
It is only a question of time. Whenever the change
comes the present miners will suffer seriously at first ;
but at the end of five years they will be better off, and
a much larger proportion of them will have become
employers. '
The same is true of the machinists, and other leading
and influential mechanical workmen among whom John
has not yet found his way. His path has been smoother
toward the raising of silk-worms and of olives, the cul
ture of the tea-plant, the making of wine, and the other
new and peculiar industries of the coast, which seem

WHAT MANNER OF MAN IS HE ? 91
capable of boundless expansion, and are weU adapted
to his training and capacity. He has pushed his way
into many paths which are not noted here. He begins
to buy land, instead of leasing it, for the production of
fruits and vegetables. Negro minstrelsy, which, like so
many other things, grows more luxuriantly in Cali
fornia than in the East, and is more an abstract and
brief chronicle of the time, already makes him the cen
tral figure in its broadest burlesques, the putative father
of its most atrocious jokes. He has become a part of
the warp and woof of life on the Pacific coast.
What manner of man is he? Very black of hair,
very low of stature, and not a thing of beauty. In
laughter he shows his gums horribly. But he is seldom
The Man Who Laughs, except among his own mates.
With Americans, when he is not addressed, he is im
movably serene, silent, and serious.
He is a bom gambler. Whatever his age or condi
tion, games of chance — ^with ludicrously trifling stakes
— possess a wUd fascination for him. Every California
town has its Chinese quarter; every Chinese quarter
abounds in gambling-houses. On the subject of opium,
too, the variance between his theory and his practice
reveals the human nature strong within him. Opium-
smoking, he invariably avers, is bad, very bad; and yet,
six out of every seven idlers whom one meets on an
evening walk through the Chinese quarter, bear indeli
ble evidence of the habit written on their jaded, ghastly
faces. He is gregarious. He must have, not one, but several
friends, to whom to whisper, "Solitilde is sweet." No
practicable pecuniary temptation will induce him to
come to the Eastern States, unless half a dozen or a

92 JOHN.
dozen of his comrades are to accompany him and to
Uve with him. He loves to dwell in towns. Even as
a house-servant, he does not sleep under his master's,
roof, if he can possibly avoid it, but goes to the Chinese
quarter to spend every night with his comrades. He
will work as late as he is wanted, however, without
complaint, and he will be on hand at any required hour
in the morning. He is a great night-bird, and his turn
is convivial. He and his mates join in frequent little
suppers, which they keep up until nearly daylight.
The materials for these nocturnal banquets are believed
to be contributed, unwittingly, by John's employer, and
brought away surreptitiously in John's basket. His
mistress often keeps her most valuable stores locked up,
and issues only a week's supply to him at a time ; but
he is frugality embodied, and can make gleanings;
enough for the midnight suppers, and sometimes,, per
haps, for supplying himself with pocket-money besides.
Ask him why he will not lodge in his employer's
house, and he replies that he and his friends like to
meet at night, and tell each other what they have
learned during the day. It is doubtless their custom to
instruct newly arrived servants in household matters.
Just as he is going away at night, John will often
question his mistress as to how she compounds a par
ticular kind of cake, or accomplishes some other tri
umph of cookery, and, in answer to her inquiring look,
will explain that he -wishes to tell a friend who has not
been here long.
John prizes the pennies. An offer of half a doUar
more per month may take him away from a household
to which he seemed warmly attached. But his people
are so numerous in California that it is easy to fill his

IS HE HONEST? 93
place. Agents, 'Or the Chinese Companies, on furnish
ing a servant, warrant him for one year, and, it' he runs
away or proves dishonest, send a substitute instead.
StUl, ladies who wish to avoid changes often keep
John's pay half a doUar or a dollar in arrears to make
sure that he will not leave without fair notice. Girls
in California, for general housework, receive, in gold,
|20 per month and upward. Chinamen obtain about
the same prices; though some skUled cooks command
from $25 to |40, and boys are hired as low as $10.
Governor Blaisdel, of Nevada, tells me that he leaves
his house for weeks and sometimes for months in the
sole charge of his Chinese steward, without the least
apprehension. Such trust is not uncommon, though, of
course, it is sometimes abused. A firm in San Fran
cisco lately found that a Chinaman, who had been with
them for years and was trusted as fully as the partners
themselves, had stolen several thousand dollars' worth
of goods Uttle by Uttle. StiU, on the whole, the Chi
nese compare favorably in point of honesty with house-
servants of any other nationality obtainable in America. '
In general morality they seem to be superior to every
other class of masculine servants. Some ladies fear to
trust them -with their little daughters ; yet, with their
almost universal employment, I have only heard of a
single instance in which any impropriety was attempted
by them. In quietness, tractableness, teachableness,
and imitativeness they are certainly unequaUed.
Ford's history of Illinois relates that in the early days
of Galena the only question the settlers asked about a
new-comer was, "WiU he steal?" If that could be
answered in the negative, they regarded him as an
eminently desirable acquisition, an eminently respecta-

94 JOHN.
ble man. John can stand the same test, his enemies to
the contrary notwithstanding. Many of our Chinese
immigrants came from the coast; their lives at home
were chiefly spent on the water, and they belonged to
the poorest, most ignorant and degraded class. Their
treatment in CaUfornia, too, has given them unusual
provocations to crime ; and the cruel laws which forbid
their testifying against white men in the courts have
greatly aggravated the disadvantage at which their
ignorance of our language alone would be sufficient to
place them. Some of them now confined in the Cali
fornia and Nevada penitentiaries are believed to be
wholly innocent of the offences for which they were
sentenced. And yet, notwithstanding all these draw
backs, the public records of both States show that the
percentage of Chinamen convicted of crime is much
smaller than that of foreigners in general, and but a
trifle larger than that of our native-born population.
Furthermore, the Six Companies, to some one of which
John always belongs, exercise such paternal care that
no Chinese beggar is ever seen in the streets of San
Francisco, and no Chinese patient in the public hos
pitals. And the flrst Chinaman unable to read his own
language has yet to make his appearance in California !
John has the true Oriental tendency to mysticism,
and the Oriental vein of poetry cropping out in the
most prosaic places. At home he has proverbs and ex
hortations to virtue written on his tea-cups, fans, chairs,
and the walls of his inns. In San Francisco his sign
board literature is a study. "Virtue and Felicity,"
"Sincerity and Faith," are common inscriptions over
his shop-doors. A recent writer in "The Overland
Monthly " introduces us to a meat-market bearing the

HOW DO WE TREAT HIM? 95
label "Virtue abounding"; a drug-store named "Be-
nevolence-and-Longevity-HaU," and a restaurant styled
"The Garden of the Golden Valley."
He is quick and eager to learn. He reckons nimbly
and accurately, not -with the pencil and paper, but with
marbles strung upon wires, as in the abacus used for
teaching arithmetic to young learners. He does not
readily catch our idioms or pronunciations, but soon
learns to make himself intelligible in his jaw-wrenching
pigeon-English, — "Me washe beUy [very] muchee."
He shows the same hunger for knowledge which was
such a marked and touching trait in the contrabands
during the war. Wherever night and Sunday schools
are established for teaching him English he is prompt
to attend. A Sacramento lady of my acquaintance has
been compelled at different times to discharge two
young Chinese servants, solely because, the moment
her back was turned, they would devote themselves to
the speUing-book, to the neglect of the wash-tub.
How do we treat him? Outrageously. So long as
he stays at home we send missionaries to convert him ;
but when he throws himself upon our hospitality, we
meet him -with cruelty and oppression. And even
whUe doing this we have been building chapels for
him, and making incoherent attempts to Christianize ^
him. What a fascinating idea of the Christian reUgion
our laws and practice, until very recently, must have
given him ! We do our best to make the witty proverb
of his native country true here, at least in its applica
tion to him : " The temples are kept open, but they
are always empty; the prisons are locked, but they
are always fuU." In California, as elsewhere, nine
people out of ten mean to be just and considerate ;

'96 JOHN.
the trouble is in leaving John at the mercy of the brutal
and cowardly tenth. One hears sickening stories of
this everywhere. Even boys in the streets take the
cue, and kick and cuff the Uttle yeUow faces. When
a new cargo of Chinamen arrives, there is a strong dis
position to mob them; and the police of San Francisco,
in bad emulation of the police of New Orleans in the
negro massacre of 1866, have aided and participated
m the diabolical work. John's advance into each new
pursuit has been resisted, step by step, with assault,
riot, arson, and murder. Not only have factories been
destroyed for gi-ving him employment, but school-houses .
and churches have actually been burned because they
afforded him opportunity for learning to read.
The excuse urged for excluding his testimony from
the courts is, that he is an untrustworthy witness, and
has no idea of the solemnity of an oath. This is un
worthy of the nineteenth century. The tendency,
more and more, the world over, is to let anybody,
even an interested party, without regard to his re
ligious belief or his character, go upon the witness-
stand and tell his story, leaving the jurors to judge of
its credibility. But as the laws now stand, any ruffian
may shoot down one Chinaman in cold blood, in the
presence of a thousand others, and if no white man
witnesses the crime the assassin will go scot-free, so far
as the courts are concerned. This is a burning shame
to California, — a State generally characterized by love
of justice and fair play, — and especially to the Repub
lican party, which has controUed it for so many years.
But a portion of the press begins to assaU the abuse
with denunciation and satire, and to give voice and
impetus to a more worthy and generous public opinion.

THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS IS ABROAD. 97
And the leading citizens of San Francisco are affording
a fresh example of their readiness to go outside of the
law to reform intolerable abuses, and are intimating
their willingness to visit sharp and memorable punish
ment upon brutal officers and corrupt judges, — a course
into which the people of New York City wiU be
goaded sooner or later. They have formed a Chinese
Protective Association, with officers who make it their
business to shield new-comers from ruffianism, and to
see that every outrage upon a Chinaman is promptly
and vigorously prosecuted. Now, when a maU-steamer
from China arrives, the municipal authorities, shamed
or terrified into doing their duty by the knowledge
that the vigUant eye of this Association is upon them,
station files of specially-instructed policemen along the
street ; and John, with his earthly effects neatly wrap
ped in two bundles which are suspended from the ends
of a pole borne on his shoulder, steps lightly ashore,
sure of protection, and looking as tidy and shining as a
newly painted house after a rain.
Religion, too, has made the discovery that the
Greeks are at our doors, and is taking them in hand
very practically and efficiently. The leading churches
of San Francisco, of the various denominations, have
established Chinese Sunday-schools, which open every
Sunday at noon and continue in session for two hours.
Woman, of course, takes the brunt of this, as of most
good works. A large proportion of the teachers are
young girls and young married women. Blackboards
and simple atlases, the primer, the spelling-book, and
the New Testament as a reading-book, are in ilse.
Here, for the first time John encounters woman in a
higher character than that of a slave, and acquires for
7

98 JOHN.
her a new and affectionate respect. After she has
taught him one Sunday, he looks eagerly for her com
ing, and wUl not be put off with a stranger, even of
the lordly sex. A friend of mine, -visiting one of
these schools, found one hundred and seventy pupils
present. He was given a class of two, — the usual
number. One was a Chinese youth who had arrived
in this country only three days before, and had never
seen an English book. In one hour by the watch, this
lad learned the alphabet so perfectly that he coxfld go
through it glibly, either way, and could name any in-
di-vidual letter the moment the pencil pointed to it.
The other had been here for six months, and could read
a little. He spelled out slowly, "The horse will kick
the man," but the meaning of the verb puzzled him,
and he inquired : "Kickee? What kickee?" A ges
ture of the foot sent a smile of comprehension rippling
over his face. My friend then showed him the picture
of a boy kneeling at prayer, with eyes closed, and
asked, " What is the boy doing ? " John's only idea of
prayer is that of a priest dropping a written petition
into a furnace as if I;ie were mailing a letter ; and this
baffled him. He studied it long with a blank look ; but
at last broke out with a chuckle of discovery, "Me tink
he catchee fly ! "
The special tax of from two dollars to five dollars
per month exacted of John in the mines is an unquali
fied outrage. There is no adequate check upon the
coUectors, and they sometimes take it three or four
times over. And, as if its authoritative imposition
were not enough, reckless white miners, when hard up,
go among the Chinamen, pretending to be officers, and
demanding the money. If John demurs, they knock

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM? 99
him down and take it. "CoUecting the tax" is a po-
Ute phrase for robbing him. United States Marshal
Moulton, of Idaho, has very properly enjoined the of
ficers of that Territory from collecting this tax, though
the customary threats of violence were used to intimi
date him. The ground of his action is the unquestion
ably correct one, that it is in violation of the Constitu
tion of the United States ; and it wiU be tested before
the Supreme Court if the local authorities persist.
Equally unjust, if not equaUy illegal, is the fee of five
dollars which the State of California collects from
every arri-ving Chinaman, ostensibly for the support of
hospitals, though, as we have seen, the hospitals are of
no benefit to him.
' Everywhere upon the Pacific slope John encounters
the same disabUities as in California, in greater or less
degree. Everywhere the laws discriminate against
him, until he reaches Montana, upon waters flowing to
the Atlantic. In that fair young Territory he first finds
himself the peer of the native-born or the adopted
citizen. There he already musters a thousand strong.
Ere long the stream -wUl pour down the eastern sbpe of
the Rocky Mountains, and spread through the Missis
sippi Valley, and overfiow toward the Atlantic coast.
What shall we do with him? This is the sphinx-rid
dle which we must solve if we would not be eaten. It
concerns also his half-brother, the "Jap." The old re
striction against emigration has been removed in Japan
as well as in China. WhUe I was in California last
June, fifty Japanese famiUes arrived to settle in one
colony, and engage in silk and tea culture ; and a Pa
cific maU steamer found two hundred and fifty Japanese
at Yokohama, waiting to embark for San Francisco, but

loo JOHN.
was unable to take them, as she was already loaded
down with twelve hundred Chinamen.
The problem is too large and serious to dogmatize
upon. The sigiuficant fact about John, after his nu
merical strength, is, that he never lets go. There are
Yankees, it is said, so thrifty and tenacious that they
would take root and grow upon a marble slab. The
same is true of this strange yellow man. We may ex
tort tribute from him, and revile him, and smite him on
both cheeks; but wherever his feet are once planted,
there he stays. Into every industry he slowly works his
way. In persistence, thoroughness and precision, he is
more than a match for us. Put him in a factory, and
he works as systematicaUy as the looms and spindles,
every day in the year. He is a one-day clock, and
when the dollar has wound him up he keeps perfect
time. But it is only the time of the machine. He
reads literally the old saw; we render it, "Whatever
man has not done, man may do." He wUl stand beside
the loom from chUdhood to old age, but his ears will
never catch any whispered hint from its buzzing lips
how to make it do its work quicker or better. There
in seems to lie our chief advantage over him. There
are exceptional cases, — a Chinese servant in San Fran
cisco lately assisted his mistress to perfect a great im
provement in the sewing-machine, by which the needle
can be threaded while running at full speed, — ^but in
general John's ingenuity is imitative, not inventive.
Still he is an appalling problem. He has no radical
objection to menial pursuits, but it is folly to expect
that he -will be permanently confined to them. He
wUl swarm in all the avenues of our industrial life.
California to-day is a faint prophecy of the whole

AN APPALLING PROBLEM. 101
country a few years hence. One can not descend the
broad stairway of the Lick House, or walk Montgom
ery Street, or enter a store or a factory, or penetrate
the remotest mining-camp of the mountains, or land
from steamboat or raU way-train, but right at one's el
bow stands Uke a fate this silent man, in his basket
hat, blue tunic, and cloth shoes with wooden soles, —
this man of the long pigtail and bare neck, the re
strained, eager eyes, and the yeUow, serene, impassive
face. The only public appeal for justice to him which I
heard in California came from an unexpected source.
One evening I went to the Metropolitan theatre to hear
George Francis Train on " Things in General." It was
his twenty-second lecture, but the house was full. (I
wonder how many men there are in America — not
"fools" or "buffoons" — who, merely as lecturers, can
crowd the largest theatre in a metropolitan city every
night for four weeks ! ) Train — the excitement of the
hour — ^was anathematizing the British lion, urging the
substitution of greenbacks for specie, denouncing the
Bank of California, — the overshado-wing money power
of the coast, — burlesquing some pet pretensions of the
Golden State, and satirizing the local newspapers, with
his usual queer dovetailing of shrewd sense and wild
extravagance. The audience was a peculiar one. Three-fourths of
the people, perhaps, were Irish, — many of them raw
and ignorant, — and the other one-fourth the most
thoughtful and cultivated men and women of the city,
who had gone to study the speaker as an inteUectual
plienomenon. Train appeared in his familiar white
kids and blue dress-coat with brass buttons. He

102 JOHN.
began -with the usual announcement that he was on his
way to the White House, {does he really beUeve it?)
and certain to arrive there in the year of grace 1872.
At hand stood his favorite blackboard, upon which he
iUustrated everything with fearful and wonderful dia
grams. He spoke for two hours and a half The phrase,
"as good as a play," would fall far short of describing
the performance. I was never present at any enter
tainment so interesting and exciting. I never saw any
man hold an audience so perfectly, or handle it with so
little apparent effort. His rambling, free-and-easy talk
contained many time-honored jokes, some outbursts of
impassioned rhetoric, and a good deal of spontaneous
wit. The audience acted promptly upon his invitation
to ask questions or reply to any of his points, and in
every case he had a ready and ingenious answer.
But when he came to the Chinese question, he was
on dangerous ground with three-fourths of his hearers.
Five minutes' talk from him, in the wrong direction,
would have stimulated those Irishmen into an armed
attack upon the Chinese quarter, and the bloodiest riot
ever seen in the United States. But he took a high,
manly stand, defending the Chinese, and denouncing
vehemently the wrongs and outrages to which they are
subjected. This kindled the fiercest excitement; the
audience would not have borne it from any one else
than the great apostle of Fenianism. As it was, we
seemed to be two or three times on the perilous point
of transformation into a maddened and blood-thirsty
mob. There were amusing episodes, but the hearers
were too much wrought up to appreciate them. Once,
WhUe speaking very fast. Train said : " It is useless to
talk of keeping the Chinamen away. Here they are !

GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN ON THE CHINESE. ,103
Twelve hundred arrived this very afternoon upon a
single ship. You can't send them back. WiU you shoot
them ? What will you do with them ? " " Vaccinate
them ! " shouted a wag from one of the galleries ; a
witticism which was altogether lost upon the heated
crowd, but which I here record to show that good seed
is never wasted.
At last Train, warm with his subject, and fairly
angered by the hootings of dissent, exclaimed, with
great emphasis, whUe the house was so still that a pin
might have been heard to drop : " I don't care whether
you Uke it or not, I am for the Chinese. I am in favor
of inviting them here ; I am in favor of protecting
them when they get here ; I am in favor of giving
them the baUot ! " When the storm of hisses had lulled,
he continued : " Look here, Irishmen of San Francisco.
See how you are destroying all the power of your
friends by this wretched bigotry! Do you want to
rekindle the old Know-Nothing spirit ? You came to
this country. You accepted its hospitalities. What
ever you are, it has made you. Is there any Irishman
in this' house so narrow, so mean, so utterly contempti
ble, that he would deny to any other man seeking our
shores the same welcome, the same opportunities which
he has enjoyed? If so, let him stand forth; we all
want to see his face ! "
No one had the hardihood to stand up on this invi
tation. But the auditors did not at any time applaud
the suggestion that we should give John the baUot.
To every other plea of Train's, after some mitigating
hisses, they were beguiled into expressing their appro
bation. How quickly men answer appeals to their
better nature ! Many of those upturned faces bore

104 JOHN-
lines of ignorance, prejudice, brutality ; but their own
ers responded promptly to almost every invocation
of their manUer instincts. And in talking thus to them
and to Irishmen aU over the Pacific coast. Train did
a praiseworthy and invaluable work.
The general problem as. to how we should deal with
this coming man is CaUfornia's to-day, butit wiU be ours
to-morrow. Its full solution we can reach only through
the slow teachings of experience. But is there any
American with so little faith in himself and his stock as
to' fear competition, on his own soil, with another man
of another race ? If there is, as Train adjures his
Fenians, let him stand up so that we can all see his
face ! The English in India are but a handful, and yet
they rule. The whites in our own territory of New
Mexico are a very smaU percentage of the voters, but
they dictate the laws.
The only safe principle unquestionably is, to give
John a fair chance. To this end are offered a few sug
gestions, which are based upon observation necessarily
brief and superficial, but are yet specific enough for
consideration and discussion.
I. Remove the Chinaman's disability to testify in the
courts, and throw around him the fuU protection of the
civil law.
n. Encourage him to bring his women. No body.
of men permanently separated from their families can
retain their moral or physical health. All our new
territories from California to Wyoming, have sho-wn
what a wretched condition of society that is in which
there are few women and children. They have shown,
too, the pernicious effect of men's going to a new
country with the expectation, not of staying, but of

HIS REVERENCE FOR THE DEAD. 105
accumulating a competence, and then returning home
to enjoy it. Thus far the Chinese women are to the
men only as one to twenty ; and until lately even
these have been nearly aU professional prostitutes. Of
late> too, we have seen whole cargoes of young girls
from China imported by men who, a generation earlier,
would have been iu the African slave-trade. Upon
reaching San Francisco, they have commanded a pre
mium of so much a head ; and so eager has been the
strife for them that it has kindled wide-spread, and
bloody riots. Ultimately, many of them are honorably
married; but the shameful and humiliating scenes
which have attended their arrival, and which none
deprecate more earnestly than the better classes of
their own countrymen, can be prevented only by
encouraging the general unmigration of Chinese wives
and children.
Now, John seldom or never comes expecting to stay.
He proposes to accumulate two hundred or three hun
dred dollars, — sums which in his eyes constitute wealth,
— and then to return home. It is a fundamental point
in his reUgion to worship his dead ancestors, and to
hold sacred every particle of their dust. As authentic
history of them is supposed to run back for more than
five thousand years, this necessarily includes the entire
soU of the Chinese empire. And John's radical and
hitherto insuperable objection to the introduction of
railways at home is that they would disturb this hal
lowed dust. He brings to California a pious horror
of ha-nng his bones rest anywhere save with the
bones of his fathers ; and when he dies on our soU his
remains (sometimes his embalmed body, but usually
his bones, boUed, and stripped of flesh, that they may

106 JOHN.
be packed compactly in boxes, to reduce the cost
of transportation) are always sent home, five thousand
miles, for burial by the company to which he belongs.
This leaves him essentiaUy an alien, — ^^among us but
not of us. Should this continue ? Do we want an
element which will soon be mUlions strong, without one
interest or feeling in common with ours ? Our only
safety with John is, to assimilate him, to Americanize
him. Induce him to bring his family, and he will out
grow the old superstition about burials ; he wUl take
root, and will have no interest that is not identical
with ours.
III. Educate his children. This, the most import
ant point of all, is recei-\dng the least attention. Few
as the Chinese women now are, Chinese children, with
their bright eyes and their notably " cunning " faces,
begin to be seen on the streets of every California
town. Whether the adults will Americanize, may be a
question ; but these boys and girls are American by
right of birth. Let us see to it that they are educated
in fi-ee schools and in the English language. With other
new comers we have pursued this policy so successfully
that our trouble has always been confined to the first
generation ; and that trouble we have long ago accepted
as more than counter-balanced by corresponding advan
tages. Pat, and even Hans, have sometimes been very
ugly customers ; but who would advocate a new Know-
Nothing party since their blood mmgled with ours to
crimson the pure snow of the bights at Donelson, and
to stain the clear waters of the creek at Antietam ?
Experience is universal not only that the chUdren of
European immigrants born upon our soil, and educated
in our schools, make some of our very best citiizens, but

HIS GENEALOGY. 107
that their patriotism is rather more intense and fiery
than ours, though we look back on Plymouth or
Jamestown through a geometrical series of grandfath
ers. Johnny is not likely to prove an exception. And
at least we wUl not mention the grandfathers to him,
lest he remind us that whUe our ancestors were living
in caves, or in pile houses upon lakes, wearing raw
skins and subsisting upon raw flesh, his were raising
grain and making silk, and beguUing their leisure with
the printing-press. Choy Chew, one of the San Fran
cisco merchants who returned East -with the Chicago
party, traces his genealogy back in an unbroken Une
for nineteen hundred years ! With what overshadow
ing complacency mnst he look down npon the nine-
tenths of us who do not know the names of our great
grandfathers, and even upon the one one-thousandth,
who — through patient and painful study of genealogi
cal dictionaries, family bibles, mossy, sunken tomb
stones, probate records, county and church registries,
and crumpled deeds and bonds, brought forth fi:'om
unused garrets, their ink faded and their paper yellow
•with time — ^have been able to establish seven or eight
generations of ancestry !
IV. Wherever he is or is likely to be, let the Chi
nese and Japanese languages be taught in our higher
public schools, as German and French are taught where
German and French immigrants abound. This will be
of the greatest political, social, and commercial value.
It will give our boys who are growing up, abundant
means of reaching the Oriental immigrants by tongue
and pen. It wiU diffuse through China and Japan the
same mimite knowledge of and sympathy with America
which now exists in Germany, and wUl give us an in-

108 JOHN.
fluence in Eastern Asia more commanding than that of
all the other great powers combined.
V. Let us not be frightened at the thought of giv
ing John the sufirage. It is that alone which staggers
many liberal and thoughtful Californians. They urge :
" The Chinese are Uke no other immigrants. They ap
pear among us as masses, not as individuals. As the
manufacturer or contractor can now hire ten thousand
of them from one firm, and pay for their mouthy labor
with one check, so the political candidate or executive
committee could buy ten thousand votes at a single
transaction and in open market." If John held the
franchise to-day, perhaps this might be true. But as
yet he does not wish to vote ; he never seeks to be
naturalized; and the question is. merely one of a re
mote future. Why imitate Mrs. Toodles, and pro-vide
a door-plate for the conjectural husband of the hypo
thetical daughter ? If John never wants the suffrage,
he wUl never have it. If a time comes when he does
want it, the chances are that he wiU have risen to fit
ness for it. Nearly all experience teaches that when
ever any class are persistently eager for the voting-
privilege, they are competent to exercise it. Children
of a larger growth, like our prattling little ones, are wont
to prove equal to each new responsibUity that is placed
upon them. Witness the enfranchised negroes. In
spite of the Cassandra prophecies that were dinned in
our ears, are they not, on the whole, using the fran
chise as discriminatingly and uncorruptly as the rest of
us ? Even if this case proves exceptional, and practi
cal difficulty arises, will not the forty millions of us
have strength enough and wit enough to provide some
practical remedy ?

THE LESSON OF THE WAR. 109
The most touching story told of Abraham Lincoln re
lates how, a few months after his death, negroes in Cuba,
recently kidnapped from Africa and unable to speak
either English or Spanish, were found wearing photo
graphs of the dead President upon their bosoms. They
worshiped his memory, they held the confident belief
that he would, erelong, rise from the dead, and come to
free them. In some sense, the weary and the troubled
of every European nation cherish the same idea of the
United States. Shall we not extend it to the swarming
Orient ? Let us teach the poorest and humblest man
in that cradle and hive of the rac'e likewise to regard our
soil as a waiting refuge, and our flag as a talisman which,
the moment his feet are planted under it, will send all
his burdens of slavery and caste and want crumbling
to the ground, as the load of, sin rolled from the shoul
ders of Christian when first he stood before the cross.
If the sharp experiences of the war have taught us
anything, it is that democratic institutions, based upon
free schools and free suffrage, can stand any strain.
Edmund Quincy, after hinting at the high ability, char
acter, and culture of the old Federalists, adds, in a re
mark of profound truth and significance : " It was
their little faith in ideas that caused their disappear
ance from the world of American politics ; and it was
his unbounded faith in ideas that gave to Thomas
Jefferson, in spite of all his faults of character, and his
inconsistencies, and errors of public conduct, that con
trolling power over the minds of men which has not died
-with him, but is gi-ving direction and shape to the history,
not only of his own country, but of all Christendom."
Let us have faith in ideas, in human nature, and in the
American system.

Free Missouri.

PART I.

, ISSOURI is the stone which the builders re»
jected. Under early Spanish rule, Florida,
the Land of Flowers, was a vast, indefinite
region, stretching north to the Canadian lakes, and
westward to the "Mother Mountains." Travelers de
scribed the portion of it bordering the " great Yellow
River of the Massorites " as barren and inhospitable.
When it passed under French domination, all Paris,
headed by famous John Law, went mad over the fan
cied gold and silver of " Upper Louisiana," but held it
worthless for culture and habitation.
Seventy years ago, sanguine, warm-hearted, red-
haired Thomas Jefferson filled our executive chair. He
was sixty ; he was in power ; but he reversed the ordi
nary rule. Neither age nor official responsibility could
make him timid or conservative. Indeed, they in
creased his daring. As a candidate, he had been the
narrowest of strict constructionists. As President, he
became the broadest of latitudinarians. Alexander
Hamilton was the bugbear of his life. Until the great
FederaUst lay dying on Weehawken Heights, with
Burr's buUet in his breast, the great Democrat always
believed with horror that Hamilton meant to turn our

MISSOURI SEVENTY YEARS AGO. Ill
government into a monarchy. Yet Jefferson himself
did an act which few constitutional kings would have
attempted. He deliberately and confessedly went out
side of his legal powers ; purchased Louisiana of Na
poleon for fifteen million doUars, and more than doub
led the area of the young Republic.
Real estate has advanced in price and receded in
quality since then. Jefferson was lampooned merci
lessly for buying worthless regions which we did not
want, and had not the money to pay for, and nobody
knew the boundaries of. But the people acquiesced in
manifest destiny, as they always wiU untU the tricol-
ored flag shaU stream Over every acre from the North
Pole to the Isthmus of Darien.
Men and women still under forty remember how
their school geographies included much of Missouri in
the Great American Desert,— just as Plutarch relates
that map-makers of his day depicted the regions they
knew nothing about as "sand wastes, full of wild
beasts and unapproachable bogs." In 1819 Thomas H.
Benton was editing The St. Louis Intelligencer. The
struggle for the admission of Missouri to the Union
had already begun. Young Benton was on the
ground. He was destined to become the champion of
this embryo State, and of all Western interests. Yet
even he wrote : —
" After you get forty or fifty mUes from the Missis
sippi, arid plains set in, and the country is unin
habitable except upon the borders of the rivers and
creeks!" • ,. Uninhabitable ! We shall see. But first a glance
at the geology and history of Missouri.
The ancient convulsions which moulded and modified

112 FREE MISSOURI.
our great vaUey are Nature's romance, — her very Ara
bian Nights' Entertainment. With unerring pen their
history is written ; but where the unerring linguist to
read it ? Who can surely decipher the testimony of
the rocks, the hills, and the prairies ?
Relatively, the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevadas
are of recent origin. Ere yet they had risen from the
deep, waves of the Pacific, roUing in from the far Ori
ent, broke on the western foot-hills of the AUeghanies.
How immeasurable the power which, upheaving the
spinal column of the continent, drove back the great
ocean for twenty-five hundred miles !
Later in the slow years, while the largest coal basin
in the world, and the prairies of Illinois, Iowa, Kansas,
and Missouri were forming, the vast valley was again
submerged. This time with fresh water. Where St.
Louis now displays her linear mUes of steamboats, and
her square miles of brick blocks, huge monsters, scaly
and finny, disported in dark, profound depths. A hun
dred miles further south, the mighty torrent poured in
a cataract, far exceeding Niagara. The width of the
upper Mississippi covered several degrees of longi
tude, and its surface was two hundred feet above the
present level.
Now the shrunken stream is but a mUe wide. Along
Missouri and Iowa its channel has greatly deepened.
Beside Mississippi, and through Louisiana, mud-deposits
have steadily raised its bed, until now, like the Nile, it
is far higher than the adjacent land. But for artificial
levees, aU the river counties would be under water.
Steamboat passengers look down into the chimneys of
dwelling-houses, and into great fields of cotton, sugar,
and rice.

THE GREAT EARTHQUAKES OP 1811-12. 113
The Iron Mountain country, one hundred miles south
of St. Louis, was thrown up to its present height by an
ancient earthquake. The same convulsion depressed a
long strip of land from the mouth of the Ohio to the
mouth of the White River, forming the endless swamps
and submerged counties of South-eastern Missouri' and
North-eastern Arkansas.
That was in a dim, far-off past. But old settlers
stUl remember the earthquakes of 1811-12, — the most
violent on our continent within ,the historic period.
Pioneers thought the end of the world had come. It
was an era of wonders, natural and mechanical. The
great comet had just disappeared. The first steamer
of the West was on her way from Pittsburg to New Or
leans. The heat was intense ; the air close and sti-
fiing. Noonday was as twilight ; and the lurid sun hung
in the heavens like a globe of copper.
The country pitched and tossed like a raging sea.
The pilot found the river's bed strangely altered, and
its shores unrecognizable. Large islands in mid-channel
had sunk out of sight. Acres of trees, with roots up
ward, were fioating down the stream. No breeze
stirred the air ; but whole forests were waving and
trembUng like tall wheat in a strolig wind. Great
banks came tumbling into the river, overwhelming fiat-
boats and rafts, whose terrified crews had landed and
escaped. The Mississippi gurgled and roared ; and
finaUy its torrent turned and fiowed up stream for ten
mUes, swallowing keel-boats and arks, ingulfing houses
and farms, and drowning men, women, and children.
New Madrid was the center of the convulsion.
Some of the dismayed inhabitants fled back to the
higher lands. Others stood palsied iipon the shore.

114 FREE MISSOURI.
watching their tumbling houses, and praying to be
taken on board the, passing steamer. The earth opened
in long flssures, from which jets of water and mud,
and sheets of sand, streamed up into the air. Even
the resting-place of the dead was invaded ; the church
yard, with its grassy graves, parted from the shore, and
went down into the turbid river. Bones of the gigan
tic mastodon and icthyosaurus, buried for ages, protru
ded from the banks of naked loam.
The whole face of the country was changed. West
ward for miles the land sank many feet. Hills and
plains of gigantic oaks, cypresses two hundred feet
high, gum-trees, walnuts, hickories, and dense canes
instantaneously dropped out of sight, as a magic forest
goes down through the trap-door of a theatre. They
have been submerged ever since, without branch or
twig breaking the surface of the dull, stagnant waters.
Even when unconvulsed, our great rivers cut like
knives through the soft alluvium of their banks. They
roam their broad valleys almost as unrestrained as the
sluggish catfish swim their muddy depths. They are
here to-day, and there to-morrow, — always forming new
channels, always filling up the old.
In 1853 a Missouri River steamer ran upon a sand
bar. The land was increasing so fast that she could
not be got off. Night and day it grew apace, untU the
luckless vessel, a hundred yards from the water, perched
high and dry,^a modern ark upon a modern Ararat.
In two or three years a thick forest of willows or cot-
tonwoods would have hidden her. But suddenly the
river changed its mind a second time, returned to its
old channel, cutting away the new-formed soU, released
the imprisoned steamer, and bore her safe to the St.

STRANGE FREAKS OP THE MISSISSIPPI. 115
Louis levee, after a delay of only a few weeks. The
same stream has cut away half of St. Joseph, Mo., de
posited a broad sand-bar in front of Weston, and, by
finding a new channel, transformed a river town of
Nebraska into an interior village of Iowa.
Hardly less erratic is the Mississippi. New Madrid
seems to be the favorite neighborhood for the display
of its eccentricities. One morning during the late
war, the rebels of that ancient village were startled to
find four of General Pope's steam-transports lying
at their landing. Beauregard's army blockaded the
river above ; but Pope's Illinois Yankees, by turning a
portion of the water into a new channel, which they
had cut for sixteen miles through bayous, swamps, and
cornfields, floated their transports around, took the
enemy in the rear, captured Island No. Ten, -with its
one hundred and twenty-flve guns, half a dozen steam
ers, valuable suppUes, and three thousand prisoners,
and sent the rebel lines "whirling" down to Fort
PUlow. That was the Mississippi plus man's ingenuity. But
on the same spot the unaided stream has performed
exploits almost as wonderful. New Madrid, founded
by early Spanish settlers, and named in honor of
their stately capital at home, was laid out for a mag
nificent city. A mile from the river its site embraced
a pretty lake, which they designed enclosing to beautify
the pleasure-grounds of their future metropolis. But
the stream has encroached so ravenously upon its
Missouri shore, that the original seat of the town^ lake
and all, is not only removed into Kentucky, but is
nearly two miles back from the Mississippi. At Ran
dolph, Fort PUlow, and other points below, the river

116 FREE MISSOURI.
has swaUowed extensive earth- works, and obliterated
every trace of the great Rebellion.
Missouri has fewer antiquities than Ohio or Kentucky.
On the Gasconade are caves of singularly pure salt
petre, which settlers have frequently used for the manu
facture of gunpowder. But the caves had earUer work
ers. In their ancient rooms, with arched roofs and
white Umestone waUs, have been found many rude
^xes and hammers. In the same vicinity are remains
of stone towns, and of buUdings which seem to have
been religious temples.
There are other foot-prints of the Mound-Builders, —
that mysterious race, just as distinct from the red men
as the red men from the whites, — ^which swarmed in
our great valley before the Indians, which worked oil-
wells in Pennsylvania, and copper-mines on Lake
Superior. They were unable to melt the copper, and
therefore used it only for ornaments. One of their
earth monuments, near New Madrid, was forty feet
high, a quarter of a mile in circumference, perfectly
level on the top, and surrounded by a deep ditch. St.
Louis stands upon the former site of several ; hence it
is caUed the Mound City. Cincinnati, too, occupies
the ancient seat of an interesting cluster of them.
Dr. Franklin, at eighty, talked of the Mound-Build
ers with great zest, and declared that if he were
younger he would go and study their works for himself
Fascinating as the subject is, modern investigation has
barely noticed it, and thrown little light upon it.
These artificial mounds, often surrounded by curiously
complicated earth-works, appear to have been used as
fortifications, as temples for worship, and as the tombs
of illustrious persons. Some bear the form of enor-

THE MOUND-BUILDERS. 117
mous .Serpents. Others, with their outworks, gateways,
and covered passages to the water, embrace many
acres. Excavations have revealed in them gigantic
human skeletons, battle-axes, bucklers of copper thickly
overlaid with sUver, polished bracelets and rings of
silver and brass, many curious utensils of pottery,
pipes and money of terra-cotta and slate, and rude
sciflptures in wood and stone.
Missouri boasts several of these mounds, but none so
extensive and striking as those which have given name
and interest to Circleville, Ohio. The Buckeye State
is full of them ; and Kentucky alone is said to have
more than five hundred stUl unexplored. Originally
they cost labor as vast and intelligent as the building
of the pyramids. Yet the very name of the nation
which reared them has passed from human knowledge as
utterly as that of an unknown soldier dead on the field,
or an unknown passenger swept from the deck of
an emigrant ship.
The bluff formations of Missouri contain fossil
remains of the mastodon, the American elephant, and
other primeval monsters. Even now, according to
Draper, we might be enjoying their cheerful company
but for the extreme rigor of modern winters. Let
churls complain. I remember the fossil skeleton of an
Alabama zeuglodon. The reptUe was ninety feet long,
and in the largest place twice as thick as a sugar-
hogshead. He was as recklessly adapted to all circum
stances- as a Yankee invention. He was water-proof,
with a taU horridly useful for flapping or swimming.
He had more legs, and ugUer ones, than the most elab
orate spider. Into his open jaws a small man might
have walked, standing upright, and wearing a stove-

118 FREE MISSOURL
pipe hat. Since that enlivening spectacle, I have
regarded cold winters and the deprivation they bring
with Christian resignation.
Song and story have done Uttle justice to the
patience, persistency, and daring of our early explorers.
Their journeys were as romantic as that of Jason the
Argonaut, — almost as incredible as those of Sinbad the
Sailor. Three hundred and twenty-seven years ago,
near the present site of Helena, Arkansas, Hernando
de Soto reached the Mississippi, the first white man
who ever looked upon its waters. Powell's delineation
of the discovery covers many square yards of canvas
in the great Rotunda of the National Capitol. As
a princess of shoddy once described a stjong, dingy,
hideous old battle-piece in her own parlor: "It is
called the handsomest picture of the whole collection ! "
A copy of Powell's group adorns the backs of our ten-
dollar national bank-notes. It is a wonderful^ but,
alas! a fair specimen of American historical painting.
De Soto and his comrades are the prettiest of men.
In personal comeliness they are only exceeded by the
amiable savages standing about them. True to nature,
—for everybody knows what a thing of beauty the
American Indian is. The Portuguese and Spanish
explorers appear in all the unsulUed feathers and gold
of a dress parade. They seem to have been kept in
bandboxes. They are gloved, ruffled and laced, ready
to caper nimbly in a lady's chamber, to the lascivious
pleasing of a lute. Of course, they looked exactly
thus after wandering three years in the wUderness hav
ing their camps and baggage burned months before, and
losing half their numbers in the flames, in deadly Indian
battle, and by low fevers caught inpestUential swamps.

SPANISH AND FRENCH EXPLORERS. 119
De Soto and his men — the flower of the Peninsular
chivalry— braved everything, suffered everything, in
their search for El Dorado. The hot springs of Arkan
sas they thought the fabled fountain of perpetual
youth. They penetrated Missouri from the south;;
twice crossed the Ozark HUls, and spent the winter of
1541-42 among them. They found the region swarm
ing with fierce Indians. They fought the Pawnees,
who stUl do a thriving business at scalping surveyors
and throwing trains off the track along the Union
Pacific RaUway in Nebraska ; and the Kaws, of whom
a miserable remnant yet survive, to raise ponies, and
beg tobacco and whiskey, on the fertUe bottoms of the
Kansas River. They smelted ore, and were disgusted
to find it lead instead of sUver. Vernon County, Mis
souri, still contains ruins of old fortifications and fur
naces, believed to mark the -winter camp of those gal
lant, iU-starred soldiers of fortune.
Their fate served as a warning. For one hundred
and thirty years the great river was left undisturbed,
unseen, by civUized man. Then Marquette the mis
sionary, with Joliet the explorer, starting from Canada,
floated down its silent current to the mouth of the
Arkansas. Like later travelers, they were surprised to
find the stream, so clear and blue above the mouth of
the Missouri, so muddy and turbid below.
Before reaching the Gulf, they turned back, from
dread of the Spaniards. But after them, also from the
north, came La SaUe, the fearless. He rode the muddy
current until he had planted the lilies of France at the
mouth of the Mississippi. Louis XIV. was at the
zenith of his glory. In the name of the Great King,
the bold explorer took possession of the entire coun-

120 FREE MISSOURI.
try, baptizing the river "St. Louis," and its valley,
"Louisiana." Poor La Salle ! He hoped for wealth, fame, and
honor from his discoveries. They brought hardship,
heart-sickness, and death. For years he faced appalling
disasters with unshaken soul. At last, after long, fruit
less endeavors to find again the banks of the Mississippi,
a bewUdered wanderer in Northern Texas, he fell,
assassinated by one of his own soldiers. How great
explorers, like great orators, have suffered the most
cruel mockery of destiny ! They form the saddest
pictures in aU history, — Columbus, of the broad brow
and majestic frame, in an old age of poverty and
chains ; Ponce de Leon, feeble and gray-haired, shot to
death by savages, even while seeking the immortal
fountain ; La Salle, the dauntless and tireless, with his
thin arms folded, and his tattered cloak wrapped about
him, cradled in an unknown grave, among the barren
hUls of Trinity River ; Raleigh, the early darling of
fortune, his narrow, bald head under the shining axe,
his calm lips murmuring, " This is sharp medicine, but
it cures the worst disease ; " De Soto, lowered at mid
night to the bottom of the Mississippi, with no audible
prayer from his heart-broken comrades, lest the lurking
red man learn that the bold leader was at rest after aU
his wanderings, in peace after all his troubles !
The llUni Indians greeted Father Marquette : "Fair
is the sun, 0 Frenchman ! when thou comest among
us." To Marquette's countrymen the Illinois prairie
ever stretched under a fair sun. They held it a ter
restrial paradise. The Missouri hiUs and valleys they
believed uninhabitable, but filled with exhaustless
mines of silver and gold. In .1700 there was not a

LA MOTTE S GOVERNMENT. 121
white settlement west of the Mississippi. But Louis
XIV. granted to Anthony Crozat, a wealthy French
merchant, a monopoly of the trade of the entire valley
for sixteen years. Crozat introduced the statutes and
usages of France, copied chiefly from Roman civil law.
These were the earliest canons of civilization between
the Great Lakes and the Gulf.
The first royal governor was Crozat's business part
ner, La Motte. His first observations disgusted him
with the province, and especiaUy with the project for
the establishment of trading posts. He wrote back to
the ministry :
" What ! Is it expected that for any commercial or
profitable purposes boats wUl ever be able to run up
the Mississippi into the Wabash, the Missouri, or the
Red River ? One might as well try to bite a slice off the
moon! Not only are these rivers as rapid as the
Rhone, but in their crooked course they imitate to per
fection a snake's undulations. Hence, for instance, on
every turn of the Mississippi it would be necessary to
wait for a change of -wind, if wind, could be had,
because this river is so lined up with thick woods that
very little wind has access to its bed."
Wise La Motte ! Just as wise as Jefferson, who
beUeved the Erie Canal built fifty years too soon ; as
Franklin, who thought steamboats impracticable ; as we,
who a few months ago shook our sage heads pityingly
at Cyrus Field !
Under La Motte no mines were found, no agriculture
was begun; and in five years Crozat's monopoly had
cost him so much more than it brought, that he
returned to Paris, and gave up his charter as worthless.
The region was next granted to the Mississippi

122 FREE MISSOUEI.
Company. "Corporations," says the proverb, "hkve
no bodies to be kicked, and no souls to be damned."
This famous company brUliantly exemplified the great
truth. But at least it owned a head to lead, in the
person of John Law, — gambler, rake, duellist, and specu
lator though he was. It is the fashion to decry him ; but
our own finances' have sometimes been directed by
quite as much charlatanry, and a great deal less brains.
His energy endeavored well for " Upper Louisiana."
He sent out two hundred miners to find gold or sUver^
The Mississippi Bubble sweUed until shares rose to forty
times their original value. Then it burst. Law, who
had begun it -with a fortune of five hundred thousand
dollars, counted himself lucky to save his neck, and
escape from Paris with eight hundred Louis d'or in
his pocket. His miners in the New World found no
precious metals., But, with a wisdom miraculous in
gold-seekers, they worked the rich veins of lead still
existing near Fredericksburg and Potosi, Missouri, and
shipped large quantities of the product home to Europe,
For fifty years France had now held the valley. By
the customs of that day, it was time for bloodshed
about it, particularly as it was deemed almost worth
less. So the Spaniards determined to capture and
recolonize it.
The French settiers were few and weak ; but the
Missouri or Mud Indians, who have given name to the
river and the State, were their' stanch allies. Like aU
our aboriginals they took kindly to the easy, gay,
music-loving Frenchman, but not to the cruel Spaniard
or grasping Saxon.
The Osages^ also a powerful nation, were traditional
enemies of the Missouris. The Spaniards decided to

THE SPANISH EXPEDITION. , 123
join them in a war upon their ancient foes. The Mis
souris once destroyed, the conquest of the feeble white
settlements would be sure and easy.
The expedition started from New Mexico in 1720.
It was a strange caravan of Spaniards and natives,
horses and miUes, droves of cattle, sheep, and swine,
with women and children, to form new colonies after
the armed men should conquer the old.
The crusaders turned their backs upon Santa F^, in
its mountain aerie — even yet the highest city of North
America. They left behind snowy peak and delusive
mirage, roUing wastes of sand and grazing herds of
spotted antelopes. Down the shining Arkansas, to
where its fair valley broadens into the magnificent
prairies of Southern Kansas. Thence eastward through
a swelling ocean of grass, its billowy green foamy with
daisy and phlox, or gorgeous with golden-rod and sun
flower. Then northward over rugged hUls of gray
rock, shaded with groves of chincapin and stunted
oak, where, in the world's morning twUight, the Mound-
BuUders had toUed, — where, two centuries before these
soldiers, De Soto had marched and fought, — where, on a
summer day, a hundred and forty years later, Nathaniel
Lyon and a thousand of his young comrades should
fall for their country and for freedom.
After . a weary march of a thousand miles, these
pioneer filibusters approached the Great Yellow River.
In its rich valley they found noble elms, black-walnuts,
and sycamores', their trunks wreathed and their
branches weighed down with luxuriant parasites.
Bushes, vines, and trees bent under enormous clusters
of black, shining elderberries, snow-white pigeon-ber
ries, purpling grapes, and luscious straw-colored plums.

124 FEEE MISSOUEI.
But the invaders had Uttie time to wonder at the
bountifulness of nature. Their ignorant guides led
them, not among the Osages whom they sought, but
right into the chief viUage of the Missouris, whom
they had come to destroy. Both tribes spoke the
same language, and the Spaniards were completely
deceived. They told their purpose freely, and distrib
uted arms and ammunition to their wUy enemies. The
Missouris fooled them to the top of their bent, profess
ing to acquiesce gladly in all their plans. But just at
dawn on the third morning the Indians fell upon their
deluded visitors, and killed and scalped every man,
woman and chUd, except the solitary priest. Him
they kept prisoner ; but in a few weeks he escaped.
With wonderful endurance and good fortune, aU alone
he trod the obscure, dangerous trail back to Santa Fe,
and told th6 fate of the would-be pirates, hoist upon
their own petard.
The first settlement upon the Missouri was begun in
1762, and named Village du C6t6. It is now St.
Charles, a pleasant town of four thousand people,
at the crossing of the North Missouri Railway. The
next year a party of French trappers and traders
ascended the Mississippi, designing to found a post
at the mouth of the Missouri. It took them five
months to come from New Orleans to the present site
of Alton. The same trip by raU now consumes about
two days. Not liking the ground afthe junction, they
dropped down twenty miles, and in the deep wilder
ness, by the great river, raised their first cabin of poles,
bark and skins.
That was the beginning of" St. Louis. The city was
founded twenty-four years earlier than Cincinnati,

THE PIONEEES OP ST. LOUIS. 125
.'iixty-six earUer than Chicago, and forty-seven later
than New Orleans. The pioneers adopted many Indian
habits. They strapped their infants to boards Uke
pa,pooses. After they began to raise swine, the mother
would leave her baby alone in the cabin for hours ;
but, to alleviate his solitude, she gave him a huge piece
of raw pork to suck, first tying it to his foot by a
string, so that whenever he attempted to swallow it
the natural impulse to kick would save him from
choking. Perhaps it was from this custom, extended
across the 'river, that IlUnoisans were first called
"Suckers." Of course, the babies thrived. That was the golden
age of the little folks. Shower-baths were rare,
dietetics unkno-wn. Modern hygiene, like Falstaff's
instinct, may be "a great matter;" but somehow, to
our children of model rearing, death gives but little
of his hour-glass and a great deal of his scythe. And
if little tombstones told the truth, I suspect many
would proclaim, " Died of unmitigated carefulness and
endless washing." Our Uly-cheeked darlings, kept
ever tidy in person, spotless in dress, prudent in diet,
-safe from all exposure, are as fair as young willows,
but also as fraU. And the tow-headed youngster of
the prairie cabin, soaked in the rain, barefoot on the
frost, always munching his pork, corn-bread and mo
lasses, but always in the blessed open air, is a sap
ling of oak. Happily unconscious of nerves, he is
¦ ready to go through life on his muscle, as all of us
must in one way or another.
Forty years passed. Louisiana was held of so little
worth that she flew like a shuttlecock between the
battledores of France and Spain, belonging now to one

126 FEEE MISSOURI.
power, and now to the other. Her settlers increased
but slowly. They were isolated from all mankind.
They were almost as secluded from the outside world
as the dwellers in the Happy Valley of Rasselas.
Children born in St. Louis began to find wrinkles in
their faces, and sUver in their hair ; yet the town con
tained less than a thousand people. It was essentiaUy
French, and rigidly Catholic. It had no post-office ;
but priests were abundant. No Protestant could own
a lot, or even enjoy public religious worship. There
were one hundred and eighty dweUiings, — straw-
thatched cabins, built of hewn cedar and cotton-wood
logs, standing upright. Barns of the same material
stood thick among them, filled with wheat from the
common field, and hay from the open prairie beyond.
Back of 'the town, a brief circle of small round towers
of 'sod extended from the river above to the river
below ; within this enclosure also were two higher
towers for observation, — all defenses against Indians.
The people crossed the river by canoes, or " dug-outs,"
lashing two large ones together, and covering them
with split planks, when horses and wagons were to be
ferried over.
But the little city was neither prosaic nor unimpor
tant. The mercurial Frenchman and his Creole descend
ants observed frequent holidays ; the cedar floors creaked
with merry dancing to the violin, and the Mississippi
learned by heart the old home songs of the Seine and
the Rhone. The public records and judicial proceed
ings were in French. It was almost the only language
spoken on the streets. The citizen wore buckskin moc
casins in winter, and often went barefoot in summer.
He was averse to hats ; a gay cotton kerchief usually

TRAPPERS AND PUR-TRADERS. 127
enveloped his head. His loose shirt was of bright
red flannel, his pantaloons of fringed buckskin, or col
ored cotton. He was an inveterate smoker. From his
leathern belt hung a seal-skin pouch of tobacco, a clay
pipe, — ^when it was not in his mouth, — a little tinder-
box with flint and steel, a butcher-knife, and a small
hatchet. He looked picturesque and half barbaric ; but
his heart was light, kindly and honest.
like modern frontier towns, St. Louis had a trade
quite disproportionate to its population. It bought
lead from whites and Indians. It shipped venison, buf
falo meat, and bear meat to New Orleans. It consumed
the surplus wheat of contiguous Illinois. Every yedr
it sent sixty thousand dollars' worth of Indian goods
up the Missouri, and received two hundred thousand
dollars' worth of deer and bear skins, buffalo robes,
and furs of beaver and otter. The deer skins alone
brought to this straggling- log vUlage in the wilderness,
numbered one hundred and fifty thousand annually.
Already trappers and fur-traders had begun to pen
etrate the Rocky Mountains. Some were murdered by
Indians, some were drowned in the Missouri, some were
eaten by grizzly bears. But they loved their hard life
with the strange love which pursuits involving adven
ture and privation always inspire. Their furs were
carried to Canada, and thence to Europe ; and it took
four years to get returns.
So the last century went out. Then on a May morn
ing, sixty-four years ago, three fi^aU boats bearing fifty
men sailed away from St. Louis up toward the mouth
of the Missouri. That little expedition represented
the new-born Nineteenth Century. It bore the Stars
and Stripes, and the advance guard of the coming

128 I FREE MISSOURI,
Yankee nation. Captains Lewis and Clark, with a vol
unteer band of sturdy United States soldiers, sent by
President Jefferson, under sanction of Congress, had
started to explore the vast region stretching to the
Pacific, and to learn whether a route for travel and
commerce could be opened across the American con
tinent. The country was as little known as the trackless
ocean when Columbus dared it. Trappers and traders
could only tell that, as far as they had ventured, it
swarmed with fierce Indians and ferocious beasts. The
bold voyagers, starting to face its unknown dangers,
had the sympathy and prayers of the frontier popula
tion. At long intervals, after they passed out of sight,
returning trappers brought tidings of them. At the
end of a year came a boat with their messengers and
letters, stating that they had passed the first winter
two thousand miles up the Missouri, and were just en
tering the deeper wilderness beyond. Then weeks,
months, a year elapsed, and no word from the daring
travelers. Hope turned to despair. Friends and rela
tives mourned them as dead. And, as usual, wise after^
prophets shook their heads and averred that the attempt
had been fool-hardy and mad.
But on a September day, when the explorers had
been gone two years and four months, the people of
St. Louis heard a discharge of musketry. Looking up
the river, they saw a Uttle fleet of canoes and pirogues
just in sight, and rapidly nearing their village. The
boatmen were tawny, and clothed in skins. The cry,
"Indians! Indians!" ran from cabin to cabin, and the
alert Frenchmen ran for their muskets. But a few
minutes more showed that the -visitors were not sav-

RETURN OP LEWIS AND CLARK. 129
ages, only sun-browned, bearded white rien. Lewis
and Clark had returned! All the party were back
again safe and sound, except one man, who died of
disease early on the way out. In their journey of eight
thousand mUes, through half a hundred savage nations,
they had had only one Indian fight, and that a slight
skirmish. They came loaded with curiosities, and full
of enthusiasm about the wealth of the prairies, the sub
limity of the mountains, and the beauty of the great
Oregon River, rolling brokenly over many rapids to
the far western ocean. They had opened communica
tion from the Mississippi to the Pacific ! .
St. Louis welcomed them with fiying fiags and boom
ing guns, and as the pews spread by the slow vehicles
of that day, the whole country was swift to do- them
honor. For now Jefferson had bought Louisiana, Con
gress had paid the bill, and the Stars and Stripes floated
over the new domain. It was no longer France or
Spain which these pioneers had been exploring, but
the United States of America.
The Louisiana purchase revolutionized St. Louis;
The French language and modes went out, and the
post-office came in. The newspaper followed. In 1808
appeared The Louisiana Gazette, the first journal ever
printed west of the Mississippi. It stiU fiourishes as
The St. Louis Republican, and the changes in our party
names have produced a curious paradox. For years
The Republican has been a zealous Democratic organ,
and its neighbor. The Missouri Democrat, a cogent
apostle of Republicanism.
Like his good friend the Frenchman, the Indian also
went to the waU before the post-office and the news
paper. The once potent Missouris occupied the beau-
9

130 , FREE ¦ MISSOURI.
tiful valleys of the Grand and the Chariton. In 1810
they fought their last battle with the whites. All were
exterminated except a few stragglers, who found homes
among the Osages, their ancient foes.
The French had little taste for farming in the wUder
ness; they adhered mainly to trading, boating, and
trapping. But the Daniel Boone race of American
pioneers began to come in, — men who loved the forest^
and were cramped for elbow-room if they had a neigh
bor within a day's journey. They were long, gaunt
settlers from Kentucky, Illinois, Virginia, and Ohio,
with a few restless Yankees from the hUls of New Eng
land. Avoiding towns, they pushed back into the in
terior. They found the valleys and prairies — reputed
worthless and uninhabitable — all ready to yield bound
less crops of corn and wheat, fruits and the root vege
tables. Forests teemed with game, rivers were choked
with fish. By the Missouri, the Osage, and the Gas
conade the immigrant from Massachusetts stared at the
little horn-pout of his native streams, here developed
into the enormous catfish of a hundred or a hundred
and fifty pounds. A pioneer of Cole County relates"
that fish so abounded in Moreau Creek as frequently to
clog the wheels and stop the machinery of his saw-mUl.
Then he used to shut the gate, and beat the water
¦with poles to drive them away !
Another settler, Elisha Ford, is the hero of a story
even more fishy. It avers that, finding a young
panther asleep, he bent a sapling over the animal's
back, holding him down untU he could muzzle him and
tie his feet together. Thus secured. Ford bore the
amiable whelp home in triumph to his wondering
family.

FIRST STEAMBOATS ON THE MISSOURI, 131
A third, Thomas Stanley, herding cattle and hogs on
Grand River, lived in a huge, hollow sycamore log,
which lay upon the ground. Here he ate and slept,
and through long winter evenings smoked his clay
pipe, reading such books and stray newspapers as he
could get from the nearest settlement. Sycamore
splinters, dipped in raccoon oU, served for candles.
Just outside burned' his ruddy fire of logs. When the
smoke blew into his eyes, — as it usually does in camp,
— ^he would get up and roll his unique dwelling around
on the other side of the- blaze. This voluntary Crusoe,
tanned, bearded, clothed in fiir«i, smoking his dingy
pipe and reading his ragged newspaper, with shining
rifle close by, all ready to grasp, — Eastman Johnson
should put him on canvas, to delight our eyes, and
Ulustrate an essential page in American history.
The Boone race is extinct, or has migrated to Wal-
russia, where alone we have room for it still. But the
big trees survive. Parker's "Missouri in 1867" — a
valuable gazetteer, though without a map of the State,
and ten years behind in its statistics of railways and
leading towns — describes a standing hollow sycamore,
whose chamber is fifteen feet across ; a grape-vine,
three feet in circumference ; tupelos, oaks, and cy
presses ten feet in diameter, and beeches and elms
seven feet.
The earliest steamer upon our Western rivers was
launched in the Ohio, at Pittsburg, in 1811. The first
to ascend the Missouri were three little government
'boats, in 1819. A party of engineers and naturalists
kept along near them on the shore. The Pawnees,
who can yet almost steal the boots from a man's feet
without his knowing it, pilfered the horses, pro-visions.

132 FREE MISSOUEI.
and apparatus- of the unfortunate so'uaMS, r.nd left them
to wander, hungry and half naked, till they found
refuge among the friendly Kaws. These early steam
ers stemmed the current with difficulty, and were
greatly delayed by sand-bars; for this was before
steamboats were educated up to walking off on their
spars, as a boy walks on his stilts. And they dropped
down the river stern foremost, as they were more man
ageable in that position.
Even in civilized communities, the introduction of
the steamboat excited superstitious dread. When
Robert Fulton's Clermont appeared on the Hudson,
ship's crews who saw her approaching at night against
wind and tide, with machinery clanking, paddles clat
tering, and showers of sparks and volumes of flame
streaming from her chimneys, jumped overboard, and
swam ashore in terror. Three years later, when
Nicholas Rosevelt's "Orleans" first descended the Ohio,
she approached Louisville at midnight. Hundreds of
Kentuckians, awakened by her demoniac screechings,
rushed down to the bank, and at first believed that the
great comet of that year had fallen into the Ohio !
One of the first boats to ascend the Missouri, as if her
normal terrors were not enough, carried a figure-head
at her prow in the form of a huge serpent. Through
this reptile's mouth steam escaped, and the savages
who saw it fled in wildest alarm, fancjdng that the
Spirit of EvU was coming bodily to devour them.

Free Missouri.

PAET II.
IHE Missouri Legislature sat in the rude vUlage
of 'Jefferson. One day a street fight was going
on in front of the Governor's house, and His
ExceUency stepped up to the combatants to separate
them and command the peace. But Martin Palmer, a
brawny Representative, who stood watching the con
flict, thought the Chief Magistrate was taking one side ;
so he threw off -his coat, and sprang forward -with
doubled fists, shouting : " Hold up. Governor ! When
it comes to a squar' fight, you're no bigger nor any
other man. If you mix in yer, I reckon I'll take a
small hand myself! "
That was characteristic of the backwoodsman. He
was rough, but his sense of fair play was very strong
— on every subject except one. For now, after a fierce
two years' struggle, Missouri had been admitted, — the
twenty-third State of the American Union. Of her
seventy thousand inhabitants, eleven thousand were
slaves. The long contest ending in the Compromise
had fanned the hottest fiames of partisanship. Mis
souri deUberately saddled herself with the political
Old Man of the Sea. She adopted a Constitution
which forbade the abolition of slavery, and prohibited

134 FREE MISSOURI.
free negroes from " coming into and settling in this
State, under any pretext whatever."
This seed of barbarism bore fruit after its kind. In
1835, in the streets of St. Louis, two white men sus
pected — only suspected — of decoying away slaves into
Illinois received nearly two hundred - lashes. They
were administered by wealthy and leading citizens,
who had first decided, by a vote of only forty-two to
twenty, to whip the offenders instead of hanging them.
The same year, more leading citizens of the utmost
" respectability " warned Elijah P. Lovejoy, a young
clergyman from Maine, that the prtblic temper would
not permit him to continue his temperate discussions
of slavery through his reUgious weekly. The St. Louis
Observer. But young Lovejoy's blood was up, and he
stood on his rights as an American citizen.
Twelve months later a mulatto desperado fatally
stabbed one officer who was taking him to prison, and
severely wounded another. A mob tore him from
jail; burned him alive, and left his charred corpse
chained to a tree, with boys throwing stones at it;
and a <St. Louis judge, who bore the appropriate name
of Lawless, charged the grand jury that this horrible
outrage, being the involuntary act of a frenzied multi
tude, was beyond the jurisdiction of human law. Was
it here the eminent New England divine learned his
theory that slavery is an " organic sin " which involves
no individual responsibUity ?
Lovejoy's comments on this atrocious doctrine pro
voked another " frenzied " mob to tear down his print
ing-office. , He removed his newspaper to Alton ; but
neighboring HUnois, too, — settled largely from Mis
souri, — ^was ruled by the devUish spirit of slavery.

HORACE GREELEY ON THE LOVEJOY MURDER, l35
Twice his establishment was destroyed by Alton mobs,
and t-wice he replaced it. The municipal authorities
sjTnpathized with the rioters. Prudent friends expos
tulated with Lovejoy. His editorials had been very
moderate and courteous ; but in this hour of danger
he was immovable. In a public meeting, modestly,
calmly, inflexibly he proclaimed his determination, liv
ing or dying, to -vindicate the constitutional guaranty
that freedom of speech and of the press shall in no
wise be abridged. Once only, when he alluded to his
sick wife and helpless chUdren, his voice broke ; and
there were few dry eyes in the hall. And yet, in free
Illinois, there was no public sentiment to sustain such
a man ! Finally his third printing-press arrived. A
handful of friends banded with him to defend it. At
midnight, an armed attack was made ; one of the riot
ers was killed by the party on guard, and then, with
the mayor of the city looking on, in sight of his own
home, and while protecting his own property, Elijah
Lovejoy was shot dead. He fell in his thirty-flfth year.
His was the first blood shed in our great struggle.
Freedom has had few abler champions, no nobler mar
tyr. A monument to his memory is now rising in
Alton. The murder stirred the hot indignation of a young
New York journalist, then unkno-wn to fame. He
wrote : —
" We dare not trust ourselves to speak of this shock
ing affair in the language which our indignation would
dictate, ¦ It forms one of the foulest blots on the pages
of American history  Every single participant,
howeyer passive, in, this execrable attempt to prevent
by violence the expression of a freeman's opinions, is, in

136 FREE MISSOURL
the eye of God and of justice, a murderous felon, and
his hands are reeking with the blood of a martyr to the
cause of liberty of speech and of the press  We
loathe and abhor the miserable cant of those that talk
of Mr. Lovejoy as guilty of resisting public opinion!
Public opinion, forsooth ! . . . , To talk of resisting
what is called public opinion, as a crime, is to make
Socrates an anarchist and Jesus Christ a felon 
This tragedy, if its effects be not thus counteracted, is
calculated to give a fearful impetus to the cause of
abolition. It wiU immediately add thousands to the
unwelcome petitions with which the halls of Congress
are now crowded. We ask the South, then, to come
forward, and declare that she asks nobody in other
States to enter upon an unsolicited defense of her pe
culiar institutions, by means of burglary, robbery, arson
and murder."
These extracts are from the New Yorker. They
were Horace Greeley's first public words even of indi
rect sympathy for the anti-slavery cause. And their
closing appeal to the South was made in entire sin
cerity. Boston itself was in the mobbing, but not in the
murdering line. The venerable William Ellery Chan-
ning called a meeting in Faneuil Hall to consider the
outrage ; but the respectability of the city had not yet
determined whether it was an outrage. Dr. Chaii-
ning read a temperate, well-considered address. Then
James T. Austin, Attorney-General of the Common
wealth, arose in the gallery, opposed any public action,
insisted that Lovejoy had died as the fool dieth, and
poured forth a flood of invective upon the anti-slavery
agitators, appealing to prejudice against color, and the

FIRST ANTI-SLAVERY SPEECH OF PHILLIPS. 137
baser passions. After he ceased, and before the storm
of stamping, clapping, and hissing had died away, a
young lawyer, slender, erect, and graceful, sprang
upon the platform. His father had been the first mayor
of Boston. He himself had won some distinction at
Harvard as a debater ; but he had no popular fame, and
was not known by sight to a hundred men in the audi
ence. When the tumult subsided, his clear, sUyery
tones rang through the old hall : —
"Mr. President, I wonder that this fioor does not
open, and the earth yawn under our feet, to swallow
up the recreant son of Massachusetts who has just
taken his seat."
The style has become so familiar during thirty inter
vening years, that we instinctively recognize it as an
old friend. Need the reader be told that this was the
first bugle-call of Wendell PhUlips to the American
people ?
As time passed on, the St. Louis cruelties were re
peated in remoter districts. At Springfield, in South
western Missouri, I once saw a half-witted negro taken
from prison, and hanged by a mob, for an outrage upon
a lady. Probably a white' man would have met the
same fate for the same crime. But I heard members
of the crowd propose collecting all the negroes of the
vicinity, and burning them on the public square ; and
a citizen told me that he had seen two slaves burned at
the stake in the neighboring county of Jasper for a like
offense, aggravated. by the murder of their victims.
Now the Great Conflict was at hand. Missouri re
members its preliminary skirmish, all of which she
saw, and a part of which she was. The admission of
Texas, and the passage cff the Fugitive Slave Law, had

138 FREE MISSOURI.
left smouldering embers; the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,
opening to slavery a region which has since been di
vided into five great States and Territories, fanned
them into a consuming fiame. The North was in a
blaze. Three thousand clergymen of New England
joined in one protest against it. The Tribune Mvg&A.
upon Northern members of Congress resistance to the
last. It said : " Better that confusion should ensue, —
better that discord should reign in the national coun
cils, — better that Congress should break up in wUd dis
order, — nay, better that the Capitol itself should blaze
by the torch of the incendiary, or fall and bury aU its
inmates beneath its crumbling ruins, — than that this
perfidy and wrong should be finally accomplished 
Should success attend the movement, it is tantamount
to a civil revolution, and an open declaration of war
between freedom and slavery on the North American
Continent, to be ceaselessly waged till one or the other
party finally and absolutely triumphs."
Prophetic words ! And from his place in the Sen
ate, on the eve of its passage, Mr. Seward spoke the
sentiment of the Free States : " The sun has set for
the last time upon the guaranteed and certain liberties'
of all the unsettled and unorganized portions of the
American Continent that lie within the jurisdiction of
the United States. To-morrow's sun will rise in dim
eclipse over them  The da-y of compromises has
passed forever  Come on, then, gentlemen of the
Slave States ! Since there is no escaping your chal
lenge, I accept it in behalf of freedom. We will en
gage in competition for the virgin soU of Kansas ; and
God give the victory to the side that is stronger in
numbers, as it- is in right 1 "

BORDER-RUFFIAN VS. YANKEE. 139
The act became a law May 30, 1854. The South
greeted it with bonfires and triumphal guns ; the North
-with tolling bells, and flags at half-mast. The Mis-
sourians were thoroughly wrought up. They had been
educated to hold any tampering with their slaves wor
thy only of the nOose or the fagot. In the Mexican
war they had fought zealously for slavery in general.
Now they could strengthen slavery at home. It -R'ould
never do to permit a Free State just across the imagi
nary line, upon their long, western border. Beside,
those neighboring prairies, thirty years before so
parched as to appear utterly worthless, now, blessed
with abundant rains, were a blooming paradise for the
farmer. Fanaticism, seeming self-interest, and the
American lust for territory, all beckoned them in the
same direction. They knew no fine-spun distinctions.
They thought "Popular Sovereignty" meant slavery
in Kansas. So they went in to possess their promised
land. But just over its threshold they were amaze^ to find
the Massachusetts Yankee there before them, with his
family Bible and patent apple-parer, his Weekly Tri
bune and Sharpe's rifle. At first they regarded him
with a curiosity as keen, if not as inteUigent, as that
which a new bird excited in Audubon, or a new fish
kindles in Agassiz. What strange fellow was this, with
his "idear" and " guess," who did not drink buttermilk,
nor build his chimneys on the outside of his house ?
And their leading oracles, — all the St. Louis newspapers
except the Democrat, echoed by the whole border
press, — their trusted Senators and Representatives,
and their lesser politicians of the counties and the cross
roads, chimed in reply, "He is the abolitionist, here to

140 FREE MISSOUEI.
make Kansas free, and steal your negroes. Defend your
property and your rights ! "
Western Missouri held the richest counties and the
heaviest slave interests of the State. Its inhabitants
had the leading frontier -virtues, — they were honest,
impetuous, brave, and hospitable ; but they were not a
reading nor an intelligent people. Like most South
ern communities, they followed blindly their public
men. These influenced and stimulated them to the
grossest violations of law. At a mass meeting in St.
Joseph, General B. F. Stringfellow counselled them:
" I advise you, one and all, to enter every election dis
trict in Kansas, in defiance of Reeder and his vile myr
midons, and vote at the point of the bowie-knife and
revolver. Neither give nor take quarter. It is enough
that the slaveholding interest wills it, from which there
is no appeal."
Reeder was the Governor of Kansas. His "-vile
myrmidons " were the settlers from the North.
The Missourians obeyed. At the first election, sev
enteen hundred of them, with their rifles, blankets, and
a few days' provisions, marched into the Territory.
Among their leaders were David R. Atchison, in his
third temi as a Senator, and Acting Vice-President of
the United States; Benjamin Stringfellow; Claiborne
F. Jackson, afterward Governor; and M. W. Oliver, a
Representative in Congress.
Under the Organic Act, every white male "actual
resident," over twenty-one, was a voter. These inter
lopers claimed to be actual residents — while they
stayed. They took possession of the polls, chose their
own judges and .clerks,, deposited such baUots and
made such returns as suited them, and, having played

THE BOGUS KANSAS LAWS. 141
their farce, went back, one to his farm and another to
his merchandise.
Thus, through two years, invaders did the voting for •
Kansas. They chose Legislatures composed largely of
Missourians, who had never crossed into the Territory
except on election days. These alien legislators set up
in business as law-makers, wholesale and retaU. With
no delay, they extended over the conquered soil the
entire civil and criminal code of Missouri. They added
an act of greater stringency than any Southern State
had yet ventured upon "for the protection of slave
property." They bestowed charters upon a hundred
and fifty town, bridges, ferry, turnpike, and railway
companies, in which they themselves were chief cor
porators. In a few days they enacted laws which fill
more than one thousand closely printed large octavo
pages. Then they adjourned, and went home to their
Missouri law offices and plantations.
A volume of their ponderous statutes now lies before
me. . Turning its ample pages, I find provisions which
might be edicts of Herod or of Nero. But first comes
the novel enactment, that, wherever "State" occurs
in any clause, aU courts shall construe it to mean, — ^not
the State of Missouri, but the Territory of Kansas !
These imported legislators and legislative importers
did not break packages. They received and issued
their wares in bulk. Adopting en masse the laws of
Missouri, they did not even stop to make the needful
clerical changes.
I read further: Any negro attempting violence
upon a white woman shall suffer bodily mutilation ; but
" homicide shall be deemed excusable when committed
by accident ox misfortune in lawfully correcting a child,

142 FREE MISSOUEI.
apprentice, servant, or slave." . Any person aiding to
entice or persuade a slave away from his master, or
harboring or concealing a slave who has escaped from
another State, may be punished with death; but he
who kidnaps and^ sells into slavery a free person is sub
ject only to imprisonment " not exceeding ten years."
No negro or mulatto, bond or free, is a competent wit
ness against a white man. Any person who shall print,
write, publish, circulate, or bring into the Territory
any paper whatever containing " statements, opinions,
or innuendoes calculated to produce dangerous disaf
fection among slaves," or to induce them to run away,
" ghall be punished by imprisonment and hard labor
foT a term of not less than five years." And finaUy,
any free person who shall, by speaking or writing,
deny the right to hold. slaves in Kansas, or shaU bring
into the Territory any written or printed paper con
taining such denial, shall be imprisoned at hard labor
for not less than two years !
Only ten years ago, these enactmentSj so infamous
in origin, so atrocious in character, were the laws of
Kansas. The Supreme Court of the Territory declared
them constitutional. Two successive presidents of the
United States sustained them, and the national army
stood ready to enforce them.
The Free-State settlers offered to these "bogus
laws " a negative resistance more potent than arms.
They held them up to ridicule and scorn. They utterly
denied their validity. They would vote at no elections,
obey no legal processes, pay no taxes. When the first
assessor appeared at Topeka, they prepared to hang
him on the spot, He vanished, and never troubled
them more. They would not even bring a civil suit

FREE-STATE LEGISLATURE DISPERSED. 143
before a magistrate claiming authority under this legis
lative farce. They adjusted pecuniary " misunder
standings " by arbitration, and personal ones by fisti
cuffs, and hanged horse-thieves on the most modern
principles of mob-law. They treated the Missouri
code as a dead letter, but seldom resisted it with vio
lence. In a few cases, however, the hot blood of their
young men found vent in rescuing a prisoner, or emp
tying a revolver at some peculiarly obnoxious marshal
or sheriff.
The scurvy office-holders, who represented the in
vaders, and the administrations of Pierce and Bu
chanan, were at their wits' end. They were like pugil
ists striking out at a feather-bed. They had at their
call government dragoons from Fort Leavenworth and
Fort Riley ; but what were dragoons against a thing
so shadowy and yet. so terrible as public opinion ?
Once, indeed, the soldiers broke up a Free-State Legis
lature which had assembled at Topeka. They were
commanded by Edwin V. Sumner, then Colonel of the
First United States Cavalry. The gallant old soldier
was acting under orders, and as he announced, from
the Speaker's stand, that the members must disperse,
he declared that he was performing the most painful
act of his life.
At last violence begot violence. Lecompte, Chief
Justice of the Territory, charged a grand jury that
resistance to the bogus laws was high treason against
the United States, And that jury, impanelled at the
territorial capital, Lecompton, — ^which, like Atchison,
Kickapoo, and Leavenworth, had a majority of pro-
slavery settlers, — ^indicted as " nuisances " a Lawrence
hotel and printing-press. These the sheriff and his

144 FREE MISSOURI.
posse destroyed, together with a considerable portion
of the young city. Two other newspaper offices were
demolished. Leading Free-State men were held as
treason prisoners in foul quarters, swarming with ver
min. These commotions attracted desperadoes into
the Territory, who murdered inoffensive Northern set
tlers, until the long-suffering inhabitants shouldered
their fire-arms. Then the outrages were not all on one
side. The border blazed with guerrilla warfare. Missou
rians began to hear the name of Jim Lane with terror.
Discomfited invaders returned home with startling
tales about the wonderful Sharpe's rifle, whose whirl
ing ball would bring down a man at half a mile, and
bore a hole through hig body as large as one's wrist.
They told also of an old man with a long beard, — the.
father of twenty children, — who wore sober, , Quaker^-
like garments ; drank nothing but water and mUk ;
prayed, and read the Bible in camp every night and
morning; exhorted about the sword of the Lord, and
of Gideon, and made bloody reprisals upon the public
enemy. For old John Brown was in the field, urging
his neighbors to fight more and talk less, and practising
what he preached. Already he began to gather the
young enthusiasts who finally followed him to Harper's
Ferry. Henry Clay Pate, editor and postmaster of
Westport, Missouri, led a band to arrest him. They
met on the open prairie, and when,. after a skirmish,
John Brown captured the entire invading force, — more
than twice as large as his own,^— his fame was estab
lished among the border-ruffians. Pate was a young
Virginian of education and gentlemanly manners.
Three years after John Brown achieved immortality

THE CALL TO ARMS. 145
on the Charlestown scaffold, he, too, fell, leading a
regiment of Rebel ca-valry in his native State.
In- 1857 the tide turned. Even bona fide settlers
from the South, who had welcomed the first invasions,
began to feel sensitive about having their own soil
longer outraged, and to become first-class Abolitionists.
The South had proved utterly unable to compete
with' the North in colonizing. Outside of Missouri
there was no organized emigration from any Slave
State, except Georgia, which sent two feeble com
panies. Ohio alone had furnished more settlers to the
Territory than Missouri, its next-door neighbor, and
more than aU the other Slave States combined. She
had contributed one-tenth of its entire population,
Missouri almost another tenth. New York nearly the
same fraction, Massachusetts about one-twentieth, and
the North-west eight or nine-twentieths.
The Free-State settlers made their first stand in
Leavenworth at a municipal election. It was won, but
not without bloodshed. I shall never forget the ghastly,
upturned face of the City Recorder, — a young Geor
gian, — ^who, whUe attempting to intimidate a Free-Soil
voter with a drawn weapon, was stabbed to the heart,
and fell dead upon the sidewalk. There was civil war
enough afterward. A year later I saw the whole south
eastern border under arms, and stood upon the spot
where, one week before my visit, eleven inoffensive
settlers, torn from their ploughs and workshops, were
wantonly shot down by Missouri murderers. Even af
ter this it was six or eight months before the last blood
was shed. But there were no formidable invasions
subsequent to that Leavenworth election.
For the Missouri propagandists now had their hands
10

146 FREE MISSOURI.
full at home. A great reaction had set in. The masses
saw the hopelessness of fixing slavery in Kansas, and
the madness of invasion, — that two-edged sword which
cut both ways. The Atchisons, Stringfellows, and Oli
vers had fallen, never to rise again. St. Louis, thanks
to her Northern element, and the ever-true Germans
who constituted half of her voters, had wheeled into
the anti-slavery line ; and from that day — though for
years later on slave soil^ — she was the only great city
in the Union always sure for a Republican majority.
She elected Frank Blair to Congress, and Gratz
Brown, with a full delegation of other Free-Soilers, to
the Legislature. The late invaders of Kansas were as
tounded to hear Abolition doctrines boldly proclaimed
in their own capitol, — by men, too, who wore revol
vers, resented the least personal indignity, and, if chal
lenged, fought duels with the most cheerful alacrity.
The old spirit which had murdered Lovejoy and
burned Lawrence was stUl rife; but these ugly cus
tomers, — backed by a great constituency, — ^who brought
Southern tactics to the Northern side, were not good
subjects for lynching. They advocated gradual eman
cipation in Missouri, only on the low ground that free
labor would develop and enrich the State. Careful to
disown the least sympathy for the negro, they even
styled themselves "The White Man's Party." But they
inaugurated free speech, and that settled the question.
The gubernatorial canvass of 1857 exhibited curious
paradoxes. Rollins, the Emancipation candidate, was
a Kentuckian by birth, and the owner of one hundred
slaves. Stewart, the anti-Emancipationist, was a na
tive of Massachusetts, and had only half a dozen
slaves: It was a hot campaign with both rank and file.

DR. DOY RESCUED BY JOHN BROWN, 147
The two eandidates stumped the State together, after
the wholesome Western fashion. At one of their pub
lic discussions, one aspirant charged the other with
falsehood. The other responded by knocking him off
the platform. Like candidate like voter. Stewart was
elected by a bare majority of three hundred. A few
years later, and the rivals had changed partners.
Stewart, the propagandist, led a Union regiment in the
field ; RoUins, the Emancipationist, was a Representa
tive of the "Peace Democracy" in Congress.
As the invaders had adopted the "bogus laws" by
one sweeping act, the first genuine Kansas Legislature
abrogated them by another equally sweeping. Then,
in the streets of Lawrence, with loud huzzas, the peo
ple made a public bonfire of the huge volume of obso
lete statutes. Another copy they forwarded to the
Governor of Missouri, -with the message, that, having
no farther use for the property, they took pleasure in
sending it home.
Some paid off old scores by aiding negroes to escape
to Iowa. Dr. John Doy was escorting thirteen of
these fugitives, when a Missouri band, without any
legal process, captured him in Kansas, fifty miles from
the line. He was hurried to St. Joseph, and tried for
enticing away slaves, — a felony whose extreme penalty
was death. The indictment charged that the offense
was committed in Missouri. The prosecution faUed to
prove that he had ever been within thirty mUes of that
State, yet the jury found him guilty. But one dark
night, before he could bb taken to the penitentiary,
John Brown, with a few trusty comrades, crossed the
river in a skiff, broke open the jaU, re-kidnapped Doy
from his kidnappers, and bore him home in triumph.

148 FREE MISSOURI,
In 1860, out of one hundred and sixty-five thousand
votes, Missouri gave only seventeen thousand for Lin
coln, and of these more than two-thirds were polled
in St. Louis County.
Then came the drum-beat of battle. Relatively the
Unionists were no stronger than in Tennessee or
North Carolina; but they had organization and lead
ers. There were eighty-eight thousand Germans in
the State, — nearly one-tenth of the free population, —
and they were loyal almost to a man. When Presi
dent Lincoln first called for Union troops, Claiborne
F. Jackson, thcold Kansas invader, now Governor of
the State, and leader of the Secessionists, replied that
Missouri would not furnish a man. But within two
weeks from that day, — thanks to the Germans again,
— ten regiments of loyal soldiers were organized,
equipped, and under arms in St. Louis.
Captain Nathaniel Lyon, commanding the Union
forces, was a quiet, slender, stooping, red-haired, mild-
visaged officer of the Regular Army. He looked more
like a student than a soldier. But he was thoroughly
earnest. By the prompt capture of Camp Jackson, a
thinly disguised organization of Rebels, he took the
initiative. Union troops, attacked in St. Louis, fired
back upon their assailants with deadly results. WUd-
est excitement followed. A mob started to attack the
Democrat office, but found it ^o well manned by reso
lute Unionists, leaning upon rifles, with piles of hand-
grenades beside them, that it prudently desisted.
The city was terror-stricken. Thousands of famUies
thronged eastern raUway trains, and steamers at the
landing, to fly from the bloody conflict which they be
lieved impending.

time's re-v'enges. 149
War began in earnest. The Governor called for fifty
thousand troops to " rise and drive out ignominiously
the invaders," as he styled Union citizens who had
sprung to arms to defend their own homes. In the
frenzy caused by the first bloodshed. Sterling Price
went oyer to the Rebels, taking with him about one-
third of the State Convention, over which he was pre
siding, and to which he had been elected as an uncon
ditional Unionist. He was a plain, elderly planter,
from one of the interior counties. Though he had
been Governor of the State, and led a small brigade
in the Mexican war, he was believed to possess Uttle
capacity. But he proved a tower of strength to the
Rebels, — by aU odds their ablest general except Lee,
¦with whom he had many qualities in common. For
two years he kept Union armies greatly outnumbering
his own very busy indeed. He inspired in his unpaid,
ill-fed, barefooted soldiers the most enthusiastic devo
tion ; no Americans ever fought better than they. But
he took the road to ruin. Only a few months ago he
died, a broken-hearted old man, and was followed to
the grave by the largest funeral procession ever wit
nessed in St. Louis.
Now the whirligig of time brought in his revenges.
The bloody Kansas drama was re-enacted, on a tenfold
larger scale, at the hearths of the very men who had
performed it. The Rebel authorities were driven from
the State. Claiborne Jackson himself, a hunted fugi
tive from his home and chair of office, died in the
wilds of Arkansas. Newspapers were suppressed,
towns were burned, the civil law was supplanted by
the bayonet. Owen Lovejoy, in a Federal uniform,
was leading soldiers who avenged many times over the

150 FREE MISSOURI.
murder of his brother, a quarter of a century before.
On the western border. Lane and his Kansans ravaged
with fire and sword the very counties which, six years
earlier, had sent invading hordes to oppress them.
This was long before the Emancipation Proclamation;
but they made a clean sweep of the negroes who
. sought their protection. On their first march, they
. sent back two thousand slaves into Kansas. When
ever a loyal master came to their camp in pursuit of
his human property, with grim humor wpuld they ap
praise the missing negro, give a certificate that 
had " lost one able-bodied slave," valued at  , by
the march of the Kansas brigade, and counsel him to
keep the receipt untU government should begin to pay
for that class of property ! In due time the negroes,
too, reappeared in regiments, carrying muskets, at their
old homes, — bloody instructions, returned to plague
the inventors.
Missouri was under the harrow. She contributed
thirty-five thousand men to the Rebel armies, and
nearly a hundred thousand to the armies of the Union.
For two years she suffered more on her own soil than
any other Southern State.
At last the tide of war swept southward to return
no more. She emerged, educated and purified by her
experience. On the 11th of January, 1865, in Con
stitutional Convention, by a vote of sixty to four she
solemnly ordained : —
" Hereafter, in this State, there shall be neither slav
ery nor involuntary servitude, except in punishment
of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly con
victed; and all persons held to service or labor as
slaves are hereby declared free."

COMPARATIVE INCREASE. 151
So she threw off her Old Man of the Sea. Though
too young and vigorous to be crushed altogether under
his weight, she had fallen behind her less strong, but
unburdened, sisters. The census reports show how
much : —
INCEBASE IN POPULATION FROM 1850 TO 1'860.
Iowa,  251 pes cent.
Wisconsin,  154 " "
Blinois,  101 " "
Missouri,,  73 " "
WHOLE NUMBER OP INHABITANTS, 1820. 1860.
• Elinois, .... 55,161 1,711,951
Missouri, .... 66,557 1,182,012
MILES OF RAILWAY IN 1867.
Elinois,  3,250
Missouri,  938
In comparing the increase of Missouri with her
• neighbors, it is only fair to notice the peculiar restless
ness of her population. Though less than half her
white inhabitants were born upon her own soil, she has
sent forth relatively more emigrants than any other
Commonwealth of the Union, She has contributed to
Oregon more settlers than did any other State, to Cali
fornia more than any other State except New York,
to Kansas more than any except Ohio, to Colorado
more than any except New York and Ohio. And in
every younger Territory, from Dakota and Montana to
Texas and Arizona, the traveler is surprised to find
whole counties peopled from prolific Missouri,
St. Louis has long enjoyed admirable public schools ;

152 FREE MISSOURI.
but in the interior education has languished. The
census returns of 1860 exhibit this sharp contrast : —
Inhabitants. Teachers.
Massachusetts, . . . 1,231,066 6,398
Missouri, . . . ' . 1,182,012 3,008
But when the slave-holder went out, liis old enemy,
the school-master, came in. The army of freedom car
ries in its baggage-train the spelling-book and the bal
lot. The new Constitution prescribes that after 1870
no man shall vote who can not read and write. An
excellent system of schools has been inaugurated.'
The Superintendent of Public Instruction, by adding
to his report the vote of the two parties at the last
election, shows how much more largely they are at
tended in Radical than in Conservative neighborhoodsr
A few counties, taken quite at random, will illus
trate : —
County.
Clark,
Mercer,
I Howard,
Boone, In mineral wealth Missouri is incomparable. The
Granby Mines, in the south-west corner of the State,
are very inaccessible, — supplies are hauled in and lead
hauled out in wagons, two hundred miles to the nearest
raUway, — but last year- they yielded 2,500,000 pounds.
About seventy-six per cent, of metal is extracted from
the ore. A single pure block, weighing two thousand
pounds, has been taken out. The ore is all found near
the surface. One of the richest veins was struck by
a squatter whUe digging a weU. The region yields
more lead upon the capital and labor employed than

Pop.

Whole No.

No. in

Radical

Conserr'e

Children.

Schools.

Voters.

Voters.

11,216

4,819

1,939

1,032

193

9,274

3,838

2,117

886

195

9,986

3,847

429

204

1,011

14,399

4,522

188

178

686

WONDERFUL MINERAL -WEALTH. 153
any other mines in the world. Lead crops Out in
more than five hundred distinct places through the
State, The deposits already successfully worked un
derlie six thousand three hundred square miles, and
lead-bearing rock is found over sixteen thousand more.
More wonderful yet are the deposits of iron. Iron
Mountain, Pilot Knob, and Shepherd's Mountain, one
hundred mUes south of St. Louis, are among the world's
rare curiosities. They are all of volcanic origin, — Chills
of solid metal. The first is the largest and richest mass
yet found upon the globe. It covers five hundred
acres. The ore, containing seventy per cent, of pure
iron, has been penetrated for four hundred feet below
the surface, with no diminution of its richness even at
that depth. Pilot Knob, a conical hUl, six hundred
feet high, and at the base covering three hundred and
twenty acres, is also pure ore, containing sixty per
cent, of iron. Shepherd's Mountain is equally rich.
E. C. SwaUow, the State Geologist, asserts that enough
ore of the very best quality exists above the surface of
the valleys, within a radius of a few miles, " to furnish
one mUlion tons per annum of manufactured iron for
the next two hundred years," Much more satisfactory
than this sweeping estimate is the statement, that al
ready, before the smoke of battle has fairly cleared
away, the Missouri furnaces are turning out twenty-
five thousand tons per annum of domestic iron.
The "portable climate of our civilization" is even
more abundant. The coal measures underUe twenty-
six thousand square mUes, or more than one-third
of the entire State. The average workable thickness
of the beds is estimated at five feet. The enthusias
tic SwaUow assures us that they " can furnish one hun-

154 FREE MISSOURI.
dred miUion tons per annum for the next thirteen
hundred years, and then have enough left for a few
succeeding generations." At least, enough for practi
cal purposes!
Nine south-eastern counties, covering two millions of
acres, are known as the "submerged lands." These
swamps, chiefly formed by the great earthquake, are
of rich alluvium, often covered with stagnant water,
which poisons the summer air with miasma. They are
uninhabitable except upon the islands, which furnish
homes for hunters and trappers. Some, dry a part of
the year, are studded with enormous cypresses, which
rise sixty or seventy feet without a branch. The
islands produce noble oaks and hickories. It is be
Ueved that, by a system of levees on the Mississippi,
White, and St. Francis Rivers, this whole region could
be drained and reclaimed for less than half a miUion
of dollars. That would make it one of the most valu
able portions of the State.
Valleys subject to overflow, and uplands where the
rich soil is first opened to the air, generate chills and
fever, — always prevalent in new countries, since it
shook Julius Caesar out of Gaul. Typhoid fevers, too,
abound in some regions during early autumn ; but in
general the State is healthful.
Three mUlion acres of public lands are stUl open to
entry at $1.25 to $2.50 per acre. But they are the
leavings of forty years, and their quality is poor. The
vaUey of the Missouri, opposite Kansas, and several
other sections, produce tobacco and hemp abundantly;
and there is a well-founded saying among the farmers,
that land which wiU raise hemp -vsdll raise any other
crop. Flax, wheat, corn, oats, grasses, and, in southern

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIONS. 155
counties, cotton, all flourish. Most of the prairies are
in the northern half of the State; though a belt two
or three counties wide, leaving the Missouri near Boone
ville, and running south-west through Missouri, Kansas,
and the Indian Territory, is the fairest and richest body
of prairie land in the world.
Every variety of northern fruit thrives. Grape-^cul-
ture, begun in 1849, has become a prominent industrial
interest. Missouri wines, improving year by year, are al
ready favorably known throughout America and Europe.
The principal difficulties are rot and mUdew, — both pre
vented by proper drainage and selection of soil. Thus
far, the Catawba and Norton'.s Seedling are the most
successful grapes. Two hundred and flfty gallons of wine
per acre is given as the average yield ; but single acres
have produced one thousand ga,llons. As yet the
principal -vineyards are on the Missouri ; but the grape
thrives in every portion of the State. Even on the
flint ridges of the Ozark Hills it produces luxuriaintly.
Missouri is beUeved to contain five mUlions of acres
adapted to its culture, — an area equal to all the vine
yards of France, and capable of employing remunera
tively two mUlions of people.
Hitherto St. Louis has kept five or six years behind
Chicago in reaching out raUway arms to regions nat-
uraUy tributary to her; but now she seems to be rous
ing. She is pushing her locomotives south toward
Memphis, and west far toward the Rocky Mountains.
One raUway bridge is springing across the Missouri at
St. Charies, and another at Kansas City; and St. Louis
is bridging the Mississippi with a structure which wiU
cost five miUions of dollars. She is waxing mighty in
manufactures; the smoke of her foundries and ma-

156 FREE MISSOURI.
chine-shops ascendeth for ever and ever. Coming from
bituminous coal, it makes St. Louis the dirtiest city
upon our continent, with the single exception of Pitts
burg. Relics of early French days exist, in the nar
row streets, and quaint brick and frame houses ; and
even one or two of the pioneer log-cabins are stiE
standing. Every section of the State is favorable to stock-
growing, and contains abundant water-power for man
ufacturing. Rich deposits of tin are found in the
south-east ; some day they may cut off our importa
tions from Cornwall. The forests abound in black-
walnut and other valuable timber. Every variety of
buUding-stone exists, from solid granite to fine-grained
marble, white and variegated. ,
Such is Missouri, the "uninhabitable" of early ex
plorers and settlers, from De Soto to Benton. It cov
ers four parallels of latitude and five meridians of
longitude, with a land area of sixty-seven thousand
square miles. It is one-third as large as France, half as
large as the United Kingdom of Great .Britain and Ire
land. It is an empire in itself, bisected by the second
river .of the globe, watered upon its whole eastern
border by the third, and threaded by other important
streams. It has a genial climate, boundless agricul
tural, horticultural, mineral, and manufactural re
sources, and a pleasantly diversified surface, risino- from
Ohio City, — three hundred feet above tide-water, — to
the summit of the Ozark HUls, twelve hundred feet
higher. In 1860 it contained ninety-three thousand culti
vated farms and plantations, and three thousand manu
facturing establishments, employing a capital of twenty

POPULATION AND PROSPECTS.

157

million dollars. In 1870 its inhabitants will fall little
short of two millions. It is by all odds the richest in
terior State of our whole Union. May the ideas
that mould its future be as generous as its material
resources !

A TOUUa SUCKEK.

Our ISTational Capital
IN THE SUMMER OF 1867.

I.
THE CAPITOL.
>ASHINGTON is no longer the city of magnifi
cent distances. Horse -railroads have; abol-
)Jl^^ ished aU that. Instead, it should be called
the City of Arrested Development. Everjnvhere, you
see workmen leisurely chipping away at unfinished
blocks of stone, or polishing fluted columns, in the
manner characteristic of artisans employed on the
public works. There are always broken pUlars lying
round loose for the enterprising New Zealander to
stand upon. Up to the time when the seat of Govern
ment is moved west, there -wUl still be no lack of un
finished public buildings.
The site of Washington was selected by him whose
name it bears. Until after his death, it -<vas called the
Federal City. Antiquarians are fond of showing from
the old records that its streams used to be the Tiber,-
and that the place was caUed Rome, long before it was
thought of for the Capital. Its splendid position and
fine -views might have suggested the seven-hUled city

THE OLD CAPITOL, 159
to a Roman pioneer. But to the American citizen the
power of association is not binding, and the fact that
Washington selected the site, and that his name honors
it, ought to preserve it from our iconoclastic tenden
cies hereafter. I fancy, however, it will not be many
generations, before the National Capital will be re
moved beyond the Mississippi River. For a time, the
jealousy of the rival cities of St. Louis, Chicaigo, and
Cincinnati may defer the change, and the fact that we
have already expended twenty-five millions in public
buildings, may make our thrifty tax-payers hold out a
vigorous opposition ; but, for all that, it is sure to come
one day.
With aU new-comers the first thing to be visited is
the New Capitol. Like the Patent Office^ and a por
tion of the Treasury, the " Old Capitol "—the dome-
crowned center with its two -wings — is built of Acquia
Creek sandstone. Exposed to the elements, it must
be kept thoroughly painted, or it will crumble to pieces.
The group in alto relievo on the east pediment, de
signed by John Quincy Adams, is of the same fragile
material. It represents America pointing Hope to
Justice, who holds the constellation in her right and
the scales in her left hand. Years ago, a part of the
right arm of the figure gave way, fell to the portico
floor, and was dashed to fragments. That was in the
old slave-holding days. The breakage is now repaired,
but the incident was suggestive to rhetoricians, and so
is the fact, that, whUe the old edifice was of crumbling
Virginia sandstone, th^. new extensions are of enduring
Vermont marble.
Under the great rotunda is a solemn crypt with
groined arches and Doric piUars. Here it was designed

160 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL,
to place statues of Revolutionary generals. Here, in
tiieir hallowed alcoves, was Washington to be interred,
beginning with his sacred ashes the Westminster Abbey
of America. But Virginia claimed his dust, and so the
whole plan was abandoned.
The corner-stone of the old North Wing, was laid
by Washington himself, in 1793. The South Wing
was not begun for some years later. When the British
burned out the interior, in 1814, the Capitol consisted
only of these two wings, with a hollow space between,
where the Rotunda now stands. Until the damages
were repaired. Congress met in the old Post-Office De
partment, then the only building large enough to con
tain both branches. The middle portion was not begun
tiU 1818.
The basement fioor of the old buUding is very plain,
with low, narrow passages, and curiously worn, old, stone
steps. One of these aisles leads to a sort of donjon-
keep, where there is an ancient, moss-covered pump.
Here, one can look up and see the full dioiensions of
the honest old dome, which has been stripped out on
every side, to accord increased light, and to harmonize
with the dimensions of the enlarged building. ¦
Quaint enough is the interior of the old place, with
its imitations of Grecian temples,, and its attempts to
Americanize the symbolisms of architecture by sub
stituting maize, cotton and tobacco for the classical
acanthus on the capitals of the columns. But the
buUding interiorly and exteriorly, though plain, was
pleasant and not unsymmetrical.
In 1850, the extension was authorized by the Gov
ernment. Of course it is not yet completed  ^I sup
pose it never will be. The same thing is true of the

I IIIMll

•^^

-lb

THE NATIONAL CAPITOL.

THE HALL OF EEPRESENTATIVES

THE NEW CAPITOL. ' l61
Treasury Department at the other end of the avenue,
as it is true of thei whole city. The plan of the en
larged Capitol covers four or five acres. Its length is
780 feet, its greatest depth, including portico and steps,
324 feet. It has cost, already, about fifteen mUlions of
doUars. Its noble site is well adapted to show off the edifice.
The land slopes down fi^om the high hill which it
crowns, on every side except the east. Seen from be
low, miles away on the south, north and west, over the
tops of the grand old trees that shade its beautiful
grounds, it is imposing and handsome.
But this is because the whole of it can not be seen.
On the level frontage to the east where the eye takes
in its whole front, it looks squat, sprawling, incongru
ous. The attempt to make the new wings comport
with the old, is a miserable failure. The honest old
homespun, pieced out with French broadcloth, looks
unhappy and inharmonious. It has exactly the same
effect as in the interior, where one suddenly finds the
plaster and brick of the old passages changed to tessel
lated marble, and gorgeous fresco for the new corri
dors.. The building will always be a disappointment
tUl the old part is torn away and rebuUt, and the exe
crable half-windows of the upper story are reformed
altogether. The view from the summit of the great dome is fine
beyond description. The allegorical pictures on its
ceiling, seen from the basement, three hundred feet
below, are, to my mind, the most successful works of
art in the Capitol. In painting them Brumidi hung
himself up aloft there, as did Michael Angelo when he
frescoed the waUs of the Sistine chapel. They repre-
11

162 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL,
sent the thirteen colonial sisters, with star-crowned
heads, in company -with the great patriots of the coun
try. In a strange jumble of mythology with history,
Ceres is depicted as gazing complacently on a modern
reaper; Vulcan forging — not thunderbolts — but mor
tars and cannon-balls; Mercury carrying a bag of
bank-notes; Aphodite rising from the sea — with the
Atlantic cable.
As I belong to the plain folk who don't assume to
know anything about a painting save whether it
pleases one or not, and am usually a good deal bewU
dered, not to say stunned, by the popular art critiques,
I shall not say much of the Rotunda paintings, which
has been be-written and berated ever since they were
placed there, only, that Weir's Embarkation at Delft
Haven seems to me incomparably the finest picture
there. It is claimed that the faces are portraits. If so,
the picture is of great historic value.
In Chapman's " Baptism of Pocahontas," the face of
the Indian maiden is not quite so Circassian as the one
in the Philadelphia Historical Rooms. That is copied
from the original in the British Museum. I utterly dis
believe in either as an example of Indian femininity,
perhaps because like Coleridge with his ghosts, "I
have seen too many of them." In the sculptures of
the Rotunda, most of the Indians have Grecian faces.
Surely, the Indian is not so difficult a subject for the
artist. And it is a sorry commentary on American art,
that there is not one characteristic aborigine in all the
attempts at the Capitol.
If the noble savage baffles the brush and chisel,
surely we might fall back on Brady or Gurney.
I confess I am old-fashioned enough to enjoy Trum-

THE OLD REPRESENTATIVE HALL. .163
buU's four, sober historic pictures, in spite of all the
abuse they have received. Somebody says that their
only value is that they contain so many portraits. It
seems to me, that it ought to give them inestimable
value, as national heir-looms.
The old Representative Hall is now a receptacle for
miscellaneous statuary. Washington, Kosciusko, Lin
coln, Colfax, Tecumseh, in sandstone and marble, plas
ter and bronze, stare at the wondering visitor. The
chamber, modeled upon a Grecian theater, is half cir
cular, one hundred feet long, sixty-five high to the top of
its bowl-like dome, surrounded by twenty-six columns
of dark Potomac marble, with a strip of gaUery behind
them barely large enough for two hundred visitors.
Gone are the hospitable stone fire-places at the
south end. Darkened are those pleasant windows
where the fresh . Potomac breeze fiowed in. The old
halls were far better ventilated than the new, which
are interior on aU sides, and look out of doors only
through the roof. The ancient hair-cloth chairs are
here. The old stone eagle is stiU taking fiight from
the wall. It is better than most sculpture about the
Capitol; but just after it was. put up fifty years ago,
some newspaper critic Ukened it to a hawk naUed to a
barn-door. What artist could ever bear the reviling
of his offepring ? The young Italian who had chiseled
it drowned himself in the Potomac.
The ancient lobbies and staircases we should call
very narrow, even for a private house. Here is the old
room of the Speaker, now turned into a post-office,
where John Quincy Adams was brought to die. It is
plain and narrow as a hermit's cell. Now, we give the
very door-keeper an office with the dimensions of a

164 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
lecture-hall, and the upholstery of a palace. Opposite,
in the Uttle room then used for the mails, Abraham
Lincoln, representative from UUnois, delighted to sit,
telling stories, whUe the member from Buncombe was
making his speech. In those days, nobody listened
to congressional bores. The whole story below this
was cut into committee-rooms, each with its plain
walls, brick-paved passages, and comfortable fire-place.
There, members wrote and talked, while the orator
above addressed empty benches, content to know that
the speech would be printed for his constituents! When
a vote was to be taken, the Speaker's page touched a
brass knob; "tinkle," "tinkle," sounded a dozen bells
through the long passages, and members came troop
ing up the narrow stairs to record their names. Gas
then was not. Night sessions were illuminated by oil
lamps from reflectors and chandeliers.
Here, sat our grandfathers in knee-breeches, silk
stockings, sUver shoe-buckles, and powdered hair.
Here, for twelve years> from the Speaker's chair Henry
Clay pronounced decisions in his richly modulated
voice, and emphasized them with his long, waving arm.
Here, in presence of the Senate, half a century after
the Revolution, he welcomed the aged Lafayette in the
name of the American people, already great, prosper
ous, and happy. It was a rare pageant. " Sir," said
the young orator to the illustrious guest, "you stand
in the midst of posterity." The same Congress voted
to Lafayette twenty-four thousand acres of public land,
and two hundred thousand dollars. In the new Hall
his fuU length portrait, by a French artist, hangs on
the Speaker's left, corresponding with Vanderlym's
Washington on his right.

REMINISCENCES. 165
Here, for sixteen years, sat John Randolph, -with
great, dark eyes, smooth, brown hair, parting in the
middle, girlish forehead, gaunt form, shrill voice, and
long, eloquent forefinger — full of bitter speeches, and
"bearing a life-long hunger in his heart." Here came
the aged Benton, after thirty continuous years in the
Senate ; Corwin and Crittenden, also from the higher
chamber ; and John Quincy Adams for nine terms,
after he had occupied the White House. When a re
fractory Clerk kept the House disorganized for four
days, by refusing to call the New Jersey delegation,
in one indignant speech the " old man eloquent " car
ried all members- with him, and thundering, "/propose
to put the question myself," brought order out of chaos.
Here, for long years, facing every obloquy and dan
ger, he fought for the Right of Petition ; and when
the House proposed to censure him, simply, grandly
demanded that the Clerk should read the Declaration
of Independence for his defense. Here, in his last
years, members used to throng about that bald head
to Usten for every word from that tremulous voice ;
and once, when he entered, after Ulness, the whole
House stood up as one man to greet him. Here,
finally, at eighty-eight, just by that figure of the dying
Tecumseh, he rose to address the Chair, staggered, fell,
gasped out, "This is the end of earth — I am content"
— and then, like Nicanor, lay dead in his harness. For
him this chapel was all draped in sable, save the muse
of history' still poised so gracefuUy over the door, with
the clock-face for her chariot-wheel, and the recording
pen in her hand. She stood, looking upon the coffined
face, white as her own marble arm, till that honored
form was carried out.

166 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
Here, for twenty-one years, Giddings — large, daunt
less, with snowy hair and scowling brow — denied that
man could hold property in man. When the House
censured him, he resigned. His constituents sent him
back, and kept him here till his strong voice made it
self audible. He lived to hear the Proclamation of
Freedom ; and his portrait — the only one of a recent
American — now hangs in the Rotunda.
Here the Kansas-Nebraska battle was fought. Who
has forgotten the tolling bells, and flags at half-mast
throughout the North, when the bill was finaUy passed ?
Somebody -wittUy characterized the strife as all about
" an ideal Territory for a hypothetical negro ; " but
popular instinct already felt the air heavy with coming
battle. Here, too, after a nine weeks' struggle, Aiken
of South Carolina conducted Banks of Massachusetts
to the Speaker's chair. It was the first -victory the
North won.

II.
IN" THE HALL OF EEPEESEE"TATIYES.
, OING from the old Representative Hall to the
new is like passing from a Quaker meeting
house to a scene in the Black Crook. Beauti
ful beyond dispute ; but gaudy with gilt and bronze,
fresco and stained glass, marble and mosaic. The God
dess of Liberty has a fair dowry; give her robes of
state and crown jewels; but she is not a ballet girl to
bespangle with brass, nor yet an Arapahoe squaw that
we should stain her cheeks -with vermilion.
The new Hall, too, has its memories. Here the long
Lecompton battle was fought and won. Here, in 1858,
when Keitt threatened to dissolve the Union, Burlin
game answered, pointing his finger at the Carolinian's
sallow face, and lifting his voice till bronzed roof and
niched walls rang with the climax: "It would not be
right to do it; it would not be honest to do it; it
would not be safe to do it! " Keitt fell on a so.uthem
battle-field. A stone in yonder congressional cemetery
commemorates Brooks.
Here were the old, barbaric encounters — where Keitt
sprang at Grow, and the Pennsylvanian knocked him
down ; where Barksdale lost his wig ; where an excited
reporter, seeing a rough-and-tumble fight below, dropped
his huge bowie-knife on the fioor, sprang over the railing

168 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
to "go in" — and was there suspended by his coat-skirts
from the press gallery till his restraining brethren drew
him back. Here, after the 'John Brown raid, was the
long contest about the Helper book, in which so many
Republicans who had indorsed it ate humble pie ; but
Owen Lovejoy, in fierce, fiery speech from the Clerk's
desk, said to the Slave propagandists : "You murdered
my brother in Alton, twenty-five years ago, because
you dared not hear him ; now you shall hear me."
The present Representatives of the 40th Congress—
the mob of gentlemen who talk with ease — sit, chiefly,
in national black, but a few in white linen, for three
or four hours daily. Some limp from Rebel bullets.
Some, their political hopes blasted, bear in sad faces
the marks of deeper wounds. One, under a great do
mestic grief, went into hermitage for twenty years, and
has again come back to the busy arena. While most
members are speaking, the rest write, talk, read news
papers, or clap their hands to call pages for letters and
messages. A man who can debate in such a. pan
demonium must possess great self-control. But there
are half a dozen whom the House hears with close
attention. Thaddeus Stevens is the first. Now, at seventy-four,
his weak voice is almost inaudible to the reporters.
The instant he rises, all sounds are hushed ; all distant
members crowd around his desk, with heads bent for
ward to catch every word from his trembling lips. In
tellectually, his speeches are the best in the House ;
clear, compact, direct, logical ; but his power does not
lie whoUy in this ; nor yet in his sagacity, for he is
out-voted half the time; nor in his wisdom, for he
makes preposterous statements, like his late assertion

PROMINENT EEPUBLICANS, 169
that the country is almost unanimous for immediate
impeachment. What is the spell of this worn, wife
less, childless old man, with his intense Puritan face,
hoUow cheeks, deep-set eyes, and black wig, who tot
ters along the aisles with cane and deformed foot ? It
is his steadfast sincerity and devotion to principle.
He is the same who, thirty years ago, in the Pennsyl
vania Constitutional Convention, advocated impartial
suffrage ; and who flung up his title to lots in a ceme
tery because, even there, at the portal of the. next
world, a black man's dust was not admitted, Thad,
Stevens beUeves in something, and an ounce of con
viction outweighs a ton of sagacity, Dawes insists
that a translation of his confiscation speech was found
among the papers of Juarez, after the death of Maxi-
mUian! but at this session he has expressed few ex
treme views. And his declaration on the floor that he
feared to go near our modern, false philanthropy, lest
he should catch it himself, was exquisite.
BoutweU of Massachusetts, tall, slender, with large,
dark eyes, and black beard just frosting with age, is
the most impressive speaker. Everybody listens to
him. Shellabarger of Ohio always commands atten
tion, and has eminent abiUty, John A. Bingham —
with scowling brow, and sUvering hair thinly plastered
over crown and forehead, and fringe of gray whiskers
around his lower face — ^when he rises, in suit of gray,
holds the House, but through earnestness, and mag
netic force, as well as intellectual power. His colleague,
Gen. Schenck-:— stout, thick-set, with plump, compressed
¦German face, and heavy auburn hair and moustache —
is a model of parliamentary speech. He never de-
©laims ; talks right to the point ; is not the victnn of

170 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
rhetoric, and can go into a long parenthesis, come out,
and resume the main thread exactly where he dropped
it. Few extempore speakers can do that ; parenthesis
hath slain its thousands.
WUson of Iowa, Chairman of the Judiciary Com
mittee, talks little, but earnestly, forcibly, command-
ingly. Kelley of Pennsylvania, tall, slender, -with
narrow brow half hidden by hair, is deep-voiced,
dramatic, speaks with dexter finger pointing at the
Speaker, and quivering to his cadences. He delights
to quench a Democratic orator with a question, or ex
tinguish him with a fact. Garfield of Ohio, large-
browed, of generous culture and good presence, holds
the House well. Banks, perhaps the ablest man on
ihe whole fioor, has not opened his lips this session.
Hayes of Ohio, about to be elected Governor, has
been here three years without making a speech, though
he has few superiors, or, indeed, equals. Rare, shining
examples! Butler of Massachusetts, restless, bold, al
ways hither and thither, now speaks but little. John
A. Logan of Illinois, slender, lithe, small, with coal-
black hair, long, jet moustache, and tawny face, has
a voice like a sledge-hammer, and roars like a boUer
factory. He is the same gentleman who lately an
nounced on the floor, that if he had captured Jefferson
Davis he would have murdered him; and who eight
years ago, in the same hall, proclaimed his eagerness to
hunt and return runaway negroes.
The Democratic side is weak, in numbers and in
quality. James Brooks of New York is most noticea
ble. He is flfty-seven, of fine presence, ample fore
head, long, iron-gray hair, and shrill voice. He is the
Jeremiah of the Capitol. Every session he hammers

DEMOCRATIC ORATORS. 171
on his chest, declares that we are in the midst of a rev
olution, and that opposing this measure is the proudest
act of his Ufe, and goes through history with a horse-
rake, from Marathon to Magna Charta. But, despite
this turgid illustration, he is effective and able,
Fernando Wood — two years his junior — is slender,
erect, gracefiU, with smaU head, Grecian face, and
short, heavy, snowy mustache. His speeches are di
rect, compact and logical, but cold as marble. Brooks
declaims. Wood reasons ; one is rhetorical, the other
incisive ; one a gong, his colleague a bugle. The other
day, -with a curl of the lip. Wood observed : " Mr.
Speaker, in my judgment, the President of the United
States is a little more meek and docile than the public
interests require !" Again, in a fair hit, he urged the
Republicans to pass no bUl curtaUing the judicial power
of their eminent jurist ^^^ Ulustrious soldier. Gen.
Dick Busteed. He indulged in a little bitterness ; the
South had erred grievously, but grievously had she
answered it; now the wounds should be healed, and
these vacant seats filled again. Robinson of Brooklyn,
with curling locks, and Scotch-Irish face, has made but
one set speech, extravagant, violent, witty, with ram
bling to every topic under the sun. At last, having
said all the irrelevant things he desired, after being
caUed to order for the dozenth time by the good-
humored House, he perpetrated a bull which set
benches and galleries in a roar: "Mr. Speaker, you
rule me out of order ; I acquiesce, and will go on ! '.'
Massachusetts has the ablest delegation; Ohio the
next. New York and Pennsylvania vie with each
other in weakness. Thomas of Maryland is the senior
member ; he first came to the House in '31, while one

172 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
or two elders still wore the knee-breeches and cocked
hats. Schuyler Colfax is oldest in continuous service.
He entered in '54, and has missed no sessi<on since. No
abler presiding officer ever sat in the chair of the
House. He carries forward business with wonderful
rapidity ; decides intricate questions on the instant ;
is never perplexed, and never overruled.
Thomas Jefferson's Manual is still the basis of aU
our parliamentary rules; though the present com
mittee, Colfax, Banks, and Washburn, have introduced
material modifications. AU the changes tend to expe
dite business, to limit the power of a minority in ob
structing the majority.^ Now, on Mondays, and on the
last ten days of a session, "filibustering" is practically
impossible. Any decision of a Speaker, appealed from
by a member, and sustained by the House, becomes
parliamentary law, unless it was obviously a political
' " dodge." A case of the latter was on the Kansas-
Nebraska act. The Committee of the Whole had the
biU. On motion of Alexander H. Stephens, leader of
the Democracy, the Committee reported it back to the
House, with its enacting clause stricken out. The House
voted to non-concur with the report. The Chair de
cided that this brought the bill again immediately up
in its original form, with every amendment offered in
the Committee cut off. A strict party majority sus
tained this ruling ; and thus the act passed under the
previous question. But as a parliamentary precedent, -
that ruling has always been held null and void.
Of the Senate, little is to be said. Here, with no
check to debate, no previous question, the stream of
rhetoric is perennial. I heard the Senate talk five
hours last week on the questions whether the caucus

THE FORTIETH CONGRESS. 173
decision not to consider anything but reconstruction
was binding upon Republicans, and if not, whether
the Indian troubles required legislation.
Wade of Ohio, who has been here seventeen years,
exerts by far the most influence. He is simple, direct,
logical, and carries great weight through his abound
ing humanity and his spotless integrity. Trumbull of
Illinois, compact, clear, incisive, enforces attention.
Henry Wilson, earnest, indefatigable, always at the la
boring oar, true as steel to the good cause, is one of
the most useful members. Old Massachusetts, with all
her illustrious names, has had few sons who have done
her more credit than the unpretending Natick Senator.
Sumner and Fessenden, always able, are both stronger
in minority than with a majority, Drake of Missouri
is a logician, and talkative, Yates of Illinois, and Nye
of Nevada are boundless rhetoricians. On the Demo
cratic side, Hendricks of Indiana, an able lawyer and
a strong speaker, is acknowledged leader, Reverdy
Johnson of Maryland, a walking legal cyclopedia, is
listened to with attention, and appears in some doubt
about his own political status.
The House, though not equal to its predecessor in
the 39th Congress, has many able men, and is much the
more interesting branch to a visitor, because it is the
working body — the arena of debate. Still, it lacks the
one great element of excitement, a strong, belligerent
minority. The Senate is indisputably a weak body.
By-and-by, when we rise to a larger tolerance in non
essentials, and States grow proud of their Strong, inde
pendent thinkers, perhaps pliant mediocrity may be
displaced at the Capitol by our Ralph Waldo Emersons,
and Henry Ward Beechers, and Robert CoUyers,

III.
AT THE WHITE HOUSE.
iHE Presidential Mansion is of white freestone,
one hundred and seventy feet by eighty-six.
It was originally modeled after a house in
Dublin. The foundations were laid in 1792. When
the Government was removed here in 1800, it and
the north wing of the Capitol were the only public
buildings completed. Washington then consisted of
irregular hills, covered with scrub oaks. The city had
but two comfortable dwellings. The only road upon
the site. New Jersey Avenue, boasted two buUdings.
Pennsylvania Avenue was a morass of alder bushes,
without even a path cut through them.
Stout, honest, obstinate John Adams was the first
occupant. The closing months of his administration
were very unhappy. Was he not misunderstood and
maligned ? Had not Jefferson triumphed, and was not
the country ruined? Fortunately, the letters of Mrs,
Adams are preserved. That era did not believe in
educating women. Most of her feminine cotemporaries
were iUiterate, but she had much culture, excellent
capacity, and large experience. In Paris, twenty years
before, had she described with minute and amusing
ingenuousness the fireedom and demonstrativeness of
Dr. FrankUn's briUiant friend, Madame Helvetius. " I
own," wrote the decorous Quincy matron, " that I was

AT THE WHITE HOUSE. 175
highly disgusted, and never wish for an acquaintance
with any ladies of this cast."
Coming here in November, 1800, her letters were
feminine and charming — full of those trifles which the
masculine eye overlooks, the masculine pen omits. On
the way from Baltimore she found nothing but woods.
Here and there was a log cabin in the forest, with a
single glass window; but she traveled miles without
seeing a human being. Washington she describes as
" a wilderness city," The vessel bearing her wardrobe
had not yet arrived up the Potomac, and, like the
modern Mrs, Wragge, she wanted her "things." She
had not even a looking-glass. The barn-Uke White
House was unfinished, and had no bells. She used the
East Room for drying linen after the family washing.
Twelve fires were to be kept up. Labor was high and
very scarce. To her great relief, a Department clerk
procured a wagon, and hauled a load of logs for her
huge fire-places.
The British, during their brief, unceremonious call in
1814, burned the whole interior of the mansion. That
was in Madison's day. During Jackson's occupancy,
the north portico was erected.
The White House grounds embrace twenty acres,
beautifully shaded -with grand old trees. The gates to
the front carriage-way are of iron. In the rear, a
pleasant path leads out, under arching, drooping wil
lows. One mistress of the mansion, congratulated upon
occupying it, replied, pithily :
" It is not a happy dwelling. Always, a President
comes in by the iron gate ; often, he goes out under
the weeping-willows."
Harrison, Taylor, Lincoln !

176 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
Half a dozen guards are stUl here, reminiscences Of
the war. During the day they are usually invisible.
After the gas is lighted the visitor finds them on duty
inside, with muskets and bayonets. By day the doors
stand open. At night they are closed, and callers must
ring. Morning and afternoon are devoted mainly to
business. Calls of ceremony or pleasure are chiefly
in the evening, during summer, whUe there are no
receptions. The President seldom escapes from his last
visitor until an hour before midnight. Any one may
see him by sending in his card and waiting his turn.
Last year the White House was refurnished through
out. The ample East Room, eighty feet by forty, has
less crimson than of yore. It is rich, tawdy, and gaudy
in fresco and gilt. The small Green Room, leading
from it, is in better taste. The oval Blue Room,
beyond, where President and mistress of the mansion
stand for three mortal hours during winter receptions,
tries the eye by its brightness. The Red Room, still
beyond, is quiet and pleasant. The elaborate furniture
in each apartment (now covered for the summer) cor
responds in color with the walls. The ceilings are very
high for so old a building — I think twenty-two feet —
and make the rooms pleasant and airy.
There are few works of art — all personal memorials.
In the Waiting-Room, up stairs, a bronze medallion of
Lincoln, and a small photograph of Johnson. In the
rich State Dining-Room, which has a long table always
spread, and high-backed mahogany chairs, an old por
trait of Washington. In the main inner hall, a plaster
bust of Lincoln, by Jones, and marble heads of MiUard
FiUmore and John Bright. In the entrance hall, mar
ble heads of Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci.

AT THE WHITE HOUSE. ' 177
By far the most interesting relic is a sandstone slab
from the tomb of Servius TuUius, presented by citizens
of Rome, and dedicated to the memory of Abraham
Lincoln. Under a recent resolution of Congress, it will
be removed to the Capitol. It is two feet long, by
some eighteen inches wide, and nine in thickness.
Three sides are rough, and spotted with the moss of
twenty-four centuries. On the face is chiseled a Latin
inscription, briefly indicating its history, and a wish that
the memories of the two " brave defenders of liberty "
may be joined and blended.
The story of "Servius TulUus" is "universally fa-
miUar," as writers say, after carefully refreshing their
own memories from the Cyclopaedia. He was that sixth
King of Rome, humbly born, who introduced a new
Constitution so favorable to the people that his son-in-
law (afterward Tarquin the Proud) assassinated him in
the interest of the nobles. Several former Roman
legends are of this immediate era — that TuUia drove
her chariot over the body of her father, Servius, whom
her husband had murdered ; that Tarquin, the assassin,
after succeeding to the kingdom, was banished for the
outrage on Lucretia, committed by one of his family;
that Brutus, finding his own two sons ina conspiracy
to reinstate the King, had them beheaded without
shedding a tear, or even turning his face from the
horrid sight (lovable Brutus ! ) ; that the banished Tar
quin, with Lord Porsena and his Etruscan army,
marched back on Rome, to be checked at the Yellow
Tiber, and enable Macaulay to tell us, in the best of all
his ringing ballads,
" How -well Horatius kfept the bridge
In the brave days of old."
12

178

OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.

These are musty traditions. But the Romans, for
many generations, did speak of "Good King Servius
and his just laws," as two races, long ages hence, will
talk of Abraham Lincoln and his great Proclamation.
And this memorial of antiquity from over the sea, called
out by a historic parallel so striking that it moved
another people, speaking another language, is one of
the most touching tributes yet paid to the memory of
our great martyr.
The up-stairs room, where the late President used to
receive -visitors, is now occupied by the private secre
taries. Here, nearly five years ago, I once had the
good fortune to hear Mr. Lincoln talk with great free
dom and ingenuousness for two hours. His themes
were McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, Antietam,
and Emancipation. How long ago it seems !

THE WHITE HOTJSE.

' lY.
m THE TEEASHET.
IWO hundred years ago, WiUiam Penn and the
Leni Lenape Sachems made the Elm Tree
Treaty, "never sworn to and never broken."
Ah ! if the stout old founder of Pennsylvania, with his
plump face and curling locks, could only come back to
manage our Indian affairs !
The wampum which the painted chiefs then gave to
the powdered Quaker is stUl preserved in the quiet
Historical Rooms of quiet PhUadelphia. Beads like
little sections of slender pipe-stem, strung upon buck
skin thongs, form a belt three or four inches wide by
two feet in length. They are of clam and muscle-sheU,
white in the ground-work, blue and red in the three
diagonal cross-bars, and in the angular effigies of an
Indian and an European, who stand clasping hands in
amity. Either from satire, or through ignorance of the
white human form divine, the savage artist placed the
head of the pale-face, not over his neck, but upon his
left shoulder.
That wampum band is a rare specimen of earliest
known American money — a currency long used between
colonists and Indians. Intrinsically, perhaps, muscle-
shells are quite as valuable as paper promises to pay in
paper; but how vast the difference between those rude
beads, made laboriously with tools of stone, and our

180 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
half-eagles and Treasury-notes, produced by self-acting
machinery, which beats man at everything but think
ing! It is the measure of the Long Bridge from bar
barism to civilization.
All the thirteen Colonies sooner or later issued bills
of credit, which passed as money. Early South Caro
lina notes were four inches wide and half a foot in
length! New York bills of a century ago bore the
warning, " 'Tis death to counterfeit." Curious devices,
difficult of imitation, were printed on separate paper
and pasted on their backs, making the notes as thick
as playing-cards. Some of these exhibited, as further
terrors, the All-Seeing Eye, the hangman's cart, a coffin
and a gibbet. But counterfeiters, who ever abound in
new countries, laughed at these admonitions, and repro
duced coffin, gallows, and all the other grim horrors,
with marvelous exactness.
Continental money began in 1775. Our patriot sires
sighed and swore over its " shin-plasters," each repre
senting one-sixth, one-third, or one-half of a dollar.
The larger issues were in twenty-five denominations,
ranging from |1 to |50, and each bearing its own
patriotic vignette. The lettering was in common,
movable type ; the coarse, ornamental devices were
traced upon and printed from ordinary type metal. A
clever boy of our day would whittle out with his jack-
knife quite as choice a -vignette. Engravers were few.
One was gallant Paul Revere, just as eager to serve the
good cause at engraving money, or making powder, or
printing caricatures, as by his immortal midnight ride.
Thanks to LongfeUow, we yet hear his clattering hoof
in Charlestown streets, and see his streaming hair on
Medford hiUs.

CONTINENTAL MONEY, * 181
The square, dingy Continental note certified its
bearer entitled to so many " Spanish milled dollars,"
But war is a voracious monster; and by 1780 enough
had been put forth to call for over two hundred millions
of "Spanish milled dollars," or nearly $70 for every
man, woman and child in the thirteen Colonies. Beside
this genuine issue, an enormous amount of counterfeit
had been placed in circulation by British and tories.
In vain legislators sought to limit prices ; and patriots
exchanged silver for paper at par, |1,000 at a time ;
and Congress made it a penal offense to depreciate the
currency. The laws of demand and supply proved un
sentimental and inexorable. In 1781, boots sold for
$600 a pair, and $1 ii;i gold was worth |75 in paper.
Dtiring the late Rebellion, up to Lee's surrender, gold
never rose above f 40 in Confederate currency, within
the insurgent Unes. The Continental money fell of its
own weight. It was never redeemed. But it enabled
the country to carry on the War for Independence
through its darkest years.
Hogarth, the inimitable, depicts a poor fellow, whUe
detained in prison because he cannot settle a demand
of £20, elaborating a rare scheme for paying .the debt
of Great Britain. The sketch has been much praised
for its fine satire. But Robert Morris — the great mer
chant, the Napoleonic fiscal director of the allied Colo
nies — ^he who raised millions for Congress, which never
turned to bim in vain — he whose financiering aided the
struggling patriots as much as the diplomacy of Frank
lin or the leadership of Washington — spent his bitter
old age in a debtor's prison. Our own day, too, has
seen great national financiers, whose personal creditors
sued in vain, and whose family expenses were too much

182 • OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
for them. Hogarth caricatured, not the poor debtor,
but poor human nature. And, really, because one can
conduct the Bank of England, must he necessarUy shine
in a corner grocery ?
By his personal credit, Morris obtained the £500 in
specie which enabled Washington to pay his spies, leam
the strength of the advancing enemy, fight the battie
of Trenton, and lighten up the very gloomiest hour of
the war, But it was with great difficulty, and the
cause of Independence was well nigh lost for want of
that petty $2,500. Morris, too, supplied means for the
campaign which ended in the capture of Cornwallis. >
Biography delights to record how Rothschilds once
drew a check for |6,000,000, and again how he made
$1,000,000 in one forenoon by hearing the result of
Waterloo eight hours ahead of the Government, and
then circulating lies about it! But Robert Morris,
when all other resources failed, upon his personal credit
and integrity raised $1,400,000 at once for the poverty-
stricken Colonies.' After the war, urging the speedy
fulfillment of the Government obligations, he uttered
the golden words: "To pay debts may be expensive,
but not to pay them is infinitely more expensive. The
first only costs money ; the second destroys the source
of all money — the public credit."
Washington, elected President, offered Morris the
charge of the disordered finances, and when he declined
it, begged him to designate a substitute. He named
the young man whose praise was in every mouth ; so
Alexander HamUton became our first Secretary of the
Treasury. Finances had always charmed him. When
a boy of nineteen, commanding his artillery company,
by the bivouac fires he fiUed his note-book, not with

FIRST SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY. , 183
records of forage, rations, or topography, nor yet refiec-
tions on the girl he left behind him, but with elabo
rate calculations upon commerce, currency, and taxes.
Slender and graceful, with musical voice, ruddy cheek,
light, waving hair, and clear blue eye — friend and
favorite of Washington — chief author of the Constitu
tion — strong alike with pen, tongue, and sword, he was
the foremost man of all his time. He resigned during
Washington's second term, to faU, nine years later, by
the pistol of Burr. But his fair, winning, young face
will live always in our national galleries and memories.
With Jefferson came Albert Gallatin to administer
the finances for twelve years. Hamilton, . the great
Federalist, was born in the West Indies. Gallatin, the
great Democrat, first saw the light among the moun
tains of Switzerland. A blood relative of Necker and of
Madame de Stael, he had something of the abilities and
accomplishments of both. After the war, Pennsylvania
sent him to the Senate; but the Federal majority,
dreading the logic and hating the foreign accent of the
young orator, on a very doubtful assumption that he
had not yet acquired citizenship, rejected him by a
strict party vote. Next elected to the House, without
his own knowledge, he entered upon a long career as
a legislator, diplomat, financier. His able writings em
braced a -wide range, from political economy to Indian
laiiguages. Eating the lotus of office never made him
forget self-respect. He decUned seats in two Cabinets,
and the Vice-Presidency of the United States. Rare
record for a politician and statesman ! And when
Baring offered him a fortune for helping to negotiate
successfully a great French loan, he replied : ,
" I thank you, but I cannot accept it. A man who

184 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
has directed the finances of his country as long as I,
should not die rich !"
After fifty years of honorable public service, without
bitterness, without uneasy ambitions, Gallatin volun
tarily retired, to spend a calm, wise old age, in the
pleasant paths of literature. His face is the most
noticeable of all our historic portraits. Gilbert Stuart
could not soften nor idealize it to prettiness. Even
Charles Wilson Peale failed to harden it into common
place. A great, noble head, massive, Shakespearean
forehead, coarse black hair hanging straight down to
the coat-collar from each side, and back of the bald crown,
deep-set eyes, with brows like coal, large, pointed Ro
man nose, broad, firm mouth, immense ears, every Jine
full of poise, sagacity, craggy strength, it is the face of
an ideal Cromwell. One can hardly imagine him a man
only of the pen, though he did make it mightier than
the sword. A broad river in far Montana — one of the
three forks of the Missouri — still bears his name.
In '33 came Roger B. Taney, of whom the record
significantly adds, "Not confirmed by the Senate."
But he stayed long enough to obey Jackson and remove
the deposits from the National Bank; then went to his
reward on the Supreme bench. Twenty-five years
later, with still more servUity to a still harder master,
he pronounced the Dred Scott decision. Is any young
American ambitious for his fame?
After Taney, for seven years, served Levi Woodbury,
the veteran Democrat of New Hampshire, always in
office, but finally overtaken by the Pale Horseman just
as his hopes for the White House were highest.
Harrison brought in the herculean frame and laugh
ing face of Thomas Ewing. Born in Virginia, he was

THOMAS_ EWING AND TOM CORWIN. 185
, transplanted to Ohio while she was yet a territory less
populous, more remote, more devastated by Indians,
than the Idaho of to-day. Toiling in the Kanawha
Salt Works to pay off the mortgage on his father's farm
and meet his own expenses at college, fighting Jackson
on the National Bank, fighting Slavery aggression years
later, he rose to prominence among American states
men, and to eminence among American lawyers. In
1828 he first came East, to prosecute his initial case in
the Supreme Court. On the way he spent six days and
nights in the jostling "spanker" or mail wagon, between
Pittsburgh and Washington. Every -winter since, for
thirty-nine years, has he repeated that pilgrimage
hither from his Ohio home. Now, at seventy-eight, in
a green old age, he remains a connecting link between
three generations of men.
Under Polk, Robert J. Walker conducted the finances.
His voice was squeaking, his frame was little, but his
pen was great. Greybeards of the Treasury aver that
of all the Secretaries in our day. Walker was the
greatest writer, Guthrie the greatest executive officer,
and Chase the greatest financier.
PUlmore gave us Tom Corwin, "the Ohio wagon-
boy," of wit so matchless, of voice so mellow and organ
like, of cheek swarthy as if smitten by the fiery Orient ;
most American of men — at fireside the greatest conver
sationist of his day — on the stump he was a series
of transitions between Demosthenes and old Burton.
What a "storm he invoked in the Senate during the
Mexican war ! A Democratic member asserted that the
natives ought to welcome our troops. Corwin replied :
" K I were a Mexican as I am an American, / would
welcome them with bloody hands to hospitable graves !"

186 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
Not Seward's " Irrepressible Confiict," nor Banks's
" Let the Union sUde," ever caUed forth such sweeping
maledictions. The " wagon-boy ' ' sleeps now, with that
white hand upon his lips which hushes aU passion, and
makes successive partisans wonder at the bitterness of
every generation but their own.
With Pierce came James Guthrie, the Kentucky
Anak, with leviathan shoulders, and six feet and a half
qf .height. Son of a famed Indian fighter, himself a
fiatboat hand and cattle-drover in youth. Once, in a
characteristic Kentucky affray, he received a shot from
a political opponent which confined him to his bed for
three years. He brought to the Treasury boldness,
sagacity, and a handwriting which no man could deci
pher. One day he sent a letter to a friend in Balti
more. The next morning its recipient appeared in the
Department, and handed back the missive.
"Mr. Guthrie," said he, "I can't make out one word
of your letter but the signature, so I have brought it
for you to translate."
The Secretary knitted his brows, and puzzled over it '
for some minutes. " At last he gave it up.
" Hang me if / can read it either ! I have forgotten
its exact contents, but I know what I wanted to see
you about. Sit down and I'll tell you."
Guthrie was a walking cyclopedia of the Treasury.
He knew more details in each branch than the subordi
nate specially charged with them. His intuitions were
like lightning. Old clerks insist that after hearing the
first sentence he foresaw all that a man was going to
say to him, and tell droll stories of his sleeping through
long conversations and then waking up and answering
each point exactly as if he had heard it. They av6r

ANECDOTE OP JAMES GUTHRIE. 187
that he would run over a hundred letters awaiting his
signature, and throw aside each one containing a mis
take of phrase or figure, just as the cashier goes through
a pile of bank-notes and ffings out counterfeits.
The moldy archives contain two bits of paper which
iUustrate not only Guthrie's character, but the contrast
between two Presidents. While Jackson was in the
White House, he requested that the account of one of
his special friends might be paid. The Fourth Auditor
refilsed to pass it, insisting that as a sworn accounting
officer he could not overlook its irregularity and illegal
ity. When that answer was reported to him. Old Hick
ory instantly sent back the original document, with this
indorsement on the back :
"Let the President's fiat be obeyed I — Andrew
Jackson." The account was paid forthwith:
During Pierce's administration. Congress passed a
law increasing twenty per cent, the salaries of Govern
ment employes. Nicholson, the Public Printer, pre
sented his account, with this additional percentage.
Guthrie rejected it on the ground that he was a con
tractor, not an employ^. Nicholson went for help to
his fi'iend the President. He indorsed the paper :
" This account seems to me correct, and, in my judg
ment, it ought to be paid. — Franklin Pierce."
Then it was handed back to the Secretary. Guthrie,
in a rage, replied :
" Tell the President it is not correct, and I'll be d — n
if I pay it."
Nicholson, fancying he foresaw the Cabinet officer
beheaded, reported this rash response to the Executive.
But that amiable chief only answered :

188 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
" Did Guthrie say that ? Then I do n't think he will
pay it. I never knew him to give up after putting his
foot down ! "
Now, at seventy-four, James Guthrie is a Senator of
the United States, who has not appeared in his seat for
two sessions, and a millionaire, who carries in his
pocket the LouisvUle and Nashville Railroad.
To Buchanan were we debtors for Howell Cobb, the
heavy Georgian, who "went with his State" to ruin;
and finally for John A. Dix, usual embodiment of safe
respectability, and in one inspired moment spokesman
of the national determination :
" If any man attempts to haul down the American
Flag, shoot him on the spot ! "
Salmon P. Chase, of Baconian forehead and majestic
presence, met the sorest exigency since Robert Morris.
Now wears he uneasily the great ermine. Is it be
cause there is one yet higher mantle of Republican
purple, or that this man, born to make precedents,
chafes in a position where he can only follow them ?
Next WUliam Pitt Fessenden — always an invalid,
but always a worker — cold, tenacious, remorseless in
debate — ^who has gone back to the Senate to admonish
Sumner, and instruct the other Conscript Fathers.
And finally, Hugh McCuUoch of Indiana.
The first Treasury here — a little brick building —
was burned by the British in 1814. No subsequent
national disaster — not even Bull Run — ever so morti
fied and exasperated the people as that invasion. Poor
Mr. Madison and his Cabinet were unsparingly de
nounced for their inefficiency. It was even proposed
to remove the capital, as if this luckless, sprawling city
of eight thousand people were to blame for being cap-

THE TREASURY BUILDINGS, 189
tured. The damage to public property was about
$2,000,000. The office of The National Intelligencer
was " cleaned out," because it supported the war. A
sheet of that venerable journal, about one-eighth its then
usual size, printed on wrapping paper, two days after the
enemy left, now lies before me. It looks marvelously
like the Vicksburg issues bom while " the man with the
cigar" was starving out that obstinate stronghold.
The Treasury archives — taken to a Virginia farm
house a few hours before the British arrived-— were all
preserved. A new building, erected at once, was oc
cupied until 1833, when it caught fire and burned to
the ground. Then the present edifice was designed by
Robert Mills. Official science exhausted itself to find
a buUding material which could endure. At last, after
elaborate investigations and reports, the new Dumfries
quarry, a few miles from Washington, was pronounced
just the thing. It exhibited sand on top ; then shale ;
then the firm stone which was supposed of recent for
mation. So the blocks were quarried out, and piled up
here in an imposing structure shaped like a capital T.
The savans were mistaken. The Dumfries stone was
not forming, but disintegrating. The surface sand was
not turning to rock — ^it was old rock, already powdered.
Now, some of the exposed mouldings and little columns
would break of their own weight, but for the paint
which holds them together.
The extensions completed on the south end, and now
buUding on the north, have converted the original T
into an elongated H. The old stem of the T is now
the middle cross-stroke of the H, which has also an
additional cross-stroke at each end. Thus the double
building, surrounding two square, open courts, has two

190 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL,
long wings and three short ones. It is our most sym
metrical public office, except the Department of Pat
ents, or, technicaUy, of the Interior. The architecture
is Grecian Ionic — with bold projecting porticoes at each
end, and a noble colonnade extending the entire length
— almost five hundred feet.
On the west, the Treasury fronts upon the fountain,
the elms, poplars, walnuts, and cool, green grass of the
White House grounds. The south end overlooks a
sickly, unshaded garden, inclosed with iron fence ; be
yond, the unfinished, abortive Washington Monument;
and then the bright mirror-like Potomac. From the
east corner of this portico, which cuts off the great
Washington thoroughfare from its original intent of
extending to the White House, points broad Pennsyl
vania avenue for a mile and a half, straight up to the
sprawling, squat, top-heavy National Capitol.
Off the coast of Maine, an island of solid rock rises
sheer from the sea, until a ship drawing forty feet of
water can lie along-side to load. The stone is fine,
firm, even, and taken out in larger masses than from
any other quarry in the world. Of this beautiful Dix
Island granite the enlarged Treasury is built. It
stretches afar on each side from the sandstone of the
primeval T,like new silk facing out old cambric; The
south portico columns are five feet in diameter by
thirty-two in length; yet shafts have been taken out
long enough to cut into two columns and a half. One
slab of granite — a buttress cap — is nineteen feet long,
seventeen wide, by twenty inches in thickness, suffi
ciently large for the wall of a good-sized room. By
their shrewdly-worded contract, after a stone was three
inches wider than three times its thickness the builders

INTERIOR DECORATIONS. 191
were entitled to 25 per cent, extra on its price for each
additional three inches of width. Thus, by measurement,
the stone would have cost $35,000. It was so nomi
nated in the bond ; but Mr. S. M. Clark, who had been
appointed Superintendent of Constructing the Treasury
buUdings since the egregious contract was made, com-
peUed a compromise, cutting the price down to $5,500
—still enormous pay for a single piece of unhewn
granite. Turning this slab once over, after its deliv
ery, cost the Government $200 !
Within, the Treasury is cool as a penitentiary. Its
three stories are cut into small, high, sober-walled of
fices, like the rooms of an immense hotel. There are
several hundred apartments, holding an army of two
thousand occupants. After the Baltimore riots of April
19, 1861, the building was hastily fortified by Captain
(afterwards General) Franklin, against Rebel attack.
What columbiads or chevaux-de-frise shall ever turn
back the civic raiders and cormorants ?
Thus far the building has cost about $4,000,000.
The interior decorations are very elaborate. As in the
Capitol, an attempt is made to Americanize the orna
mentation, without -violating the general effect of clas- -
sic architecture. Thus the columns in relief, in lieu of
the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian capital, present
an oft-inverted eagle, with his wings spread in much
the same form. And t-wined in the iron stair-railings
are leaves of oak and chestnut, corn and vine.
Mr. Chase's former room, now occupied by Register
Colby, is a marvel of frescoes. Three shields upon
every panel, and a fourth on the ceiling-arch imme
diately above, each bearing the seal of a State, with its
distinctive trees and fruits and grains ^wreathed and

192 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
grouped below. The Italian artists executing the work
could only be taught to render American products faith-
fuUy, by bringing the specimens of each, fresh from
field and forest. In most cases they have succeeded
admirably, down to the worm-eaten leaves of tobacco,
and the shining vesture of the currants. In some of the
Southern p.anels — painted during the war — rattlesnakes
and moccasins lurk among the fruits, in emblem of se
cession. All were so left as to be easily effaced, by the
extending of flower, leaf or vine. Now they wUl be
obliterated, like the baleful memories which the great
conflict has left.
The walls of one room bear the portraits of three
Sac and Fox Indians. Two are in all the colors dear
to the aboriginal heart — brave in paints and beads,
feathers and buckskin. The third Na-da-we-qui-tah,.
head chief of the band, was delineated only in light
and shade. He regarded this poverty of colors in his
picture as a special affront, but finally assented to it on
condition that tlje artist should paint beneath: "Na-
da-we-qui-tah has taken seven Pawnee scalps, and is
seven times brave ! " Singularly enough, those braves
are true to nature in feature and in expression.
In the long-arched Treasury halls, policemen study
high art in the frescoes, door-keepers stare fixedly at
visitors, and clerks in white briskly walk the tessellated
pavements, with bunches of rustling papers which await
the sixteenth signature or the final seal.
In seventy-four of the rooms nearly six hundred men
and women are employed in making revenue stamps,
bonds, coupons, gold notes, and fractional currency, and
in giving the final touches to greenbacks and national
bank-notes before their issue.

Y.
AMONG THE GEEEIi5"BA0KS.
, ONEY — who will write its history ? It em
braces in hundreds of forms the product of
mine, forest, field and factory. It is compre
hensive as a cyclopedia and fascinating as a romance.
The currency of Barbarism is rude and various. We
know next to nothing of that early, semi-civUized
American race, whose very name has perished, though
our valleys and prairies once teemed with its living mil
lions. Their stone cities in Arizona and New Mexico,
their ten thousand earth monuments in the Mississippi
Valley, crumble daUy under the tooth of Time and
razure of Oblivion. But their money, and that of the
Indians who succeeded them, usually in rudely orna
mented disks shaped like our coin, comprised bone,
shell, coal, terra cotta, mica, lead, iron, copper, gold,
agate, pearl, jasper, chalcedony, and cornelian.
Our great New- Almaden quicksilver mine was kno-wn
to Aboriginals as " the Cave of Red Earth." The crude
cinnebar (of which vermillion is made) passed among
them as currency, and was precious for painting their
dusky cheeks.
On the Pacific, red men bartered their choicest otter
robes for a string of blue beads ; on the Atlantic, they
sold half a State for a belt of wampum. They dro-ve
out the mound-builders to the South*west. Now, in
13

194 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
turn, we exterminate them as the whirligig of Time
brings in his revenges.
The wealth of earUest ci-vUization is flocks and herds;
hence our adjective " pecuniary," from pecus — " cattle."
Homer mentions that the armor of Diomed cost but
nine oxen, while the lavish Glaucus paid a hundred for
his. Britons, at the Norman invasion, had two kinds
of money, which they classed as " dead " and " living."
The first comprised gold, brass, tin and iron ; the sec
ond, cattle and slaves. Our Southrons thrived upon
"living" currency till they fired upon Sumter and
broke their bank.
One step in advance was leather, the money of the
Carthagenians. A few thousands in one-dollar notes of
sole-leather, must have required a warehouse for stor
age, and a ship for transportation. Was the office-
seeker of Carthage as eager to become Superintendent
of the Public Tannery, as ours is to be Director of the
National Mint ? Nails passed as money in Scotland ;
salt, in Abyssinia ; dried flesh, in Iceland ; and mulberry
bark, in " the far Cathay." The latter, in circular pieces,
bore the stamp of the sovereign ; to counterfeit or re
fuse it was death.
On the Pacific coast, thirty years ago, hides were
cash, and known as " California bank-notes." In Ore
gon, wheat was legal-tender at one dollar per bushel.
New settiements grow so fast that the little money
brought by immigrants is soon exhausted, compelling
the use of some local substitute. In Massachusetts,
untU 1648, corn, live stock, wampum and musket-baUs
were aU legalized currency. The buUets were required
to be " full-bore/' and passed for one penny each. Of
wampum, four beads were a penny. No one was com-

EARLY SUBSTITUTES FOR MONEY. 195
polled to receive either in sums exceeding twelve-pence.
California, Oregon, Utah, and Colorado had their native
gold, coined for convenience in private mints. Cincin
nati adopted raccoon skins; St. Louis, furs; other
Western colonies, land-warrants ; and old Virginia, to
bacco, which pioneer planters wisely invested in the
purchase of -wives.
Indian traders, at their forts in the Far West, used
to buy the best buffalo robes for two cups of sugar.
Now, robes are cheaper in New York than on the great
plains. Texan traders afforded a striking illustration
of the way Civilization traffics with Barbarism. They
put the firs and skins of the savage into one scale, and
their own muscle into the other, asserting that the white
man's hand weighs half a pound and his foot a pound !
They exchanged, ounce for ounce, those strips of shin
ing copper, with which the Indian delights to encircle
-wrist and ankle, for gold, silver, and emerald ornaments
and sacred vessels, of which Mexican churches, had
been despoiled! But in the long run the Comanche
usually avenged with the scalping-knife his wrongs at
the weighing-beam.
Precious metals as money are older than history.
Two thousand years before Christ, Abraham, the Chal
dean shepherd, whose children have never lost his faith
nor his thrift through a hundred and fourteen genera
tions, returned from Egypt, " very rich in cattle, in sU
ver, and in gold." Afterward, says the biblical record,
he bought the cave of Machpelah — where his bones
were to rest beside those of Sarah, the wife of his youth
— for "four hundred shekels of sUver, current m,oney
with the merchant." The Catholic version has it, "com
mon, current money." The shekel was about sixty

196 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
cents of our gold. It was weighed, not counted; for
there were no mints in those days.
Herodotus asserts that coinage originated -with the
Lydians. The world's coins, since, have been like leaves
of Autumn. Most are extinct; but the British Museum
preserves more than a hundred and twenty thousand
varieties. The Paris collection is still greater, and in
creased by two or three thousand every year. Our
country has no large public accumulation; but the
Cabinet of the Philadelphia Mint contains many worth
studying. Its medallion memorials of Washington
number 216; though not one, I believe, representing
him in battle. It embraces many antique specimens,
Here are self-same coins which pious ancients placed
between the cold lips of their dead to pay old Charon
for ferriage over the Styx. Here is that very image
and superscription of Caesar which the Judean Car
penter pointed out to the fishermen and tent-makers
following him. Here are faces of rulers and captains
down to our own day from Alexander of Macedon, and
the mightiest Julius who bestrode this narrow world
like a Colossus.
The courteous officer now at the head of the Mint,
in response to my questions, states the interesting fea
tures of this collection so clearly and succinctly, that I
take the liberty of giving his entire letter :
Mint of the United States, )
Philadelphia, July 23, 1867. 1
SlE: Your iaquiries have given occasion to a fresh enu
meration of our cabinet coins with the foUowing results :
Amekican — Regular U. S. coinage,  657
Colonial, experimental, and gold-region issues, . . 180
Amount carried forward,  837

CABINET COINS AND MEDALS. 197
Amount brought forward,  837
Foreign — Modem : Coins in the Roman character,
including Mexico, Central and South America,
and Europe (except Turkey), and West Indies, 2,408 •
Oeiental — Coins of Asia and European Turkey,
in Arabic and other characters, including China
and Japan, and the mediseval Cufle and Cali-
' phate, also Northern Africa,  420
Antique — Roman, down to the end of the Byzan
tine Empire,  823
Antique — Greek, including Syriac, Egyptian, Bac-
trian and Sassanian,  290
MlSCEItfANEOUS,  122
Total of coins,  4,900
Medals — United States, National (bronze), . . 149
Medals and Medalets of Washington, . . . 216
Miscellaneous (gold, silver, bronze), .... 419 — 784
Whole number of pieces,  5,684
It should be observed that we do not collect the petty
medalets known as "store-cards, political tokens," etc. We'
aim not at numbers but worth; and especially to give the ob
server an idea of the currency of all nations, in all ages.
One item of inquiry is as to "the supposed dates of some
of the oldest."
Tliis collection ascends as high into antiquity as any other.
We may mention three pieces, dating quite back to the origin
of the practice of coining in their respective countries.
1. The sflver coin of ^gina, a Greek island, is generally
estimated as having been coined seven centuries before the
Christian era. We caU ours 2,500 years old. The tetradrachm
of Athens is farther down, perhaps two centuries.
2. The golden daric of Persia, coined by Darius, but whicli
one of that name is imcertain. Its age is doubtless 2,350
years. 3. The bronze triens (one-third of the as or Roman pound)

198 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
of the young repubhc of Rome, is about the same age as the,
daric. A couple of centuries farther down the dates become more
definite. Generally a scope of a few years must be allowed;
but in some cases the exact year of coinage can be ascertained.
The question,. " How many varieties, coimting the different
dies, of American public corns, have circulated?" — ^probably
can not be answered by anybody; certainly no two answers
would be anywhere near alike. The subject has been faith
fully studied and largely written upon, and yet much remains
uncertain. Collectors often make a trivial variation the
ground of adding to the number. We are entirely unable to
give an answer on this point. .,:
RespectfuUy yours, etc.,
H. R. LiNDERMAN,
Director of the Mint,
American money-coins must have numbered nearly
one thousand. The earliest was a brass penny, struck
in the Bermudas in 1612 for the Virginia colony. In
WiUiam and Mary's reign, copper pennies made in Lon
don for our Northern and Southern settlements, bore
the mottoes : "God preserve New England ! " " God pre
serve Carolina and the Lords Proprietors ! " Massachu
setts authorized silver coinage in 1652 ; and other
colonies soon after.
In 1786 Congress adopted our present system, from
the $10 piece down. It originated with Thomas Jef
ferson, that many-sided man — born of aristocracy, yet
an incarnate Democrat— reared in the wilderness, yet
graced with every accomplishment—interested alike in
natural science, farming, music, architecture, and gov
ernment — designing the Capitol of his native State,
adding half our present territory to the Union, and
leaving for his monument the proud record : " Founder

'THE EAGLE AND THE RATTLESNAKE. 199
of the University of Virginia, author of the statute of
Religious Freedom, and the Declaration of Independ
ence." "liill " was from the Latin mille — one-thousandth of
a dollar; " ceui" ixom. centum — one-hundredth; "dime"
( formerly written disme ) from decern — one-tenth ;
"dollar" from the German dahler, or thaler; and "ea
gle" from our chosen bird. We selected an American
species; but the eagle had already figured in old my
thologies, Roman, Greek, Hindoo, and Scandinavian,
and on many a martial standard from the Etruscans to
the Poles. Franklin always cavUed at it as our Na
tional emblem, on the ground that this thief and pirate
of the air subsists by preying upon the defenseless.
The fathers long debated whether to adopt the eagle
or the rattlesnake. In favor of the latter, they plaus
ibly urged that he never attacks until molested, and
never strikes without giving his enemy fair warning.
Upon early devices he occupies the place of honor,
sometimes with the significant inscription: "Don't
tread on me!" A Continental note even represents
him as giving the death-stroke to an attacking eagle.
Modern days reverse the picture. Now, the official
seals of Mexico and New Mexico both exhibit the dis
honored reptile in the clutches of the victorious bird.
Our first Federal coin — one cent, struck in New Ha- ,
ven — bore the wholesome injunction: " Mind your own
business!" There is a legend, "interesting if true,"
that when Washington saw his face upon the earliest
silver dollar, he peremptorily ordered- the dies to be de
stroyed. , Cents and half-dollars of 1791-2 still bear
his profile. The first head of Liberty on our coin bore
the features of Martha Washington.

200 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
"Bank" we get from banco, a. bench; because in
Italian towns, Jewish money-lenders, in the yellow bon
nets which law compelled them to wear, used to drive
their hard bargains upon long, wooden seats in the mar
ket-places. The Bank of Venice, the first in Europe,
was established in 1171, t-o aid Governments in raising
funds for the Crusades. It was a monetary Methuselah,
and flourished for more than six hundred years. Its ear
liest paying-teller, perhaps, counted out shining florins to
Richard the Lion-Hearted. Its latest may have cashed
a draft for John Quincy Adams. There, Seignior An
tonio must have kept his account ; and the bank's re
fusal to discount his little note — the mere bagatelle of
three thousand ducats for ninety days — is shrouded in
mystery. Possibly Shylock, and old Tubal, that wealthy
Hebrew of his tribe, had been fomenting a panic about
him. Shakespeare avers that the merchant was good;
but then the poet was. no money-lender. In Hamlet he
even offers to advance a thousand pounds to the ghost,
without an indorser — a security unknown to Wall
Street, and doubtless to the Rialto.
At last the Bank of Venice fitly fell, with the hun-
dred-isled city. It was overthrown when that gorgeous
Queen of the Adriatic yielded her crown to the revolu
tionary armies of France.
The Bank of England was founded during a French
war in 1694 to aid William and Mary, who had been
paying forty per cent, a year for loans. Both our
old United States Banks — Uke our present National
system — were also born of disorders which war had
produced in Government finances.
It required a cart and a yoke of oxen to haul $100
of the iron money of Lycurgus. Now, the boyish mes-

ANTIQUE PAPER CURRENCY. 201
senger of a N.ational Bank skips down Broadway with
a miUion of currency in his little sack. And Samuel
Rogers, banker and poet, had a note for one million
pounds sterling framed and hung in his parlor. Why
did he not sing the Pleasures of Possession rather than
the "Pleasures of Memory?"
In the Congressional Library is a rare old scrap-book,
fiUed -with antique specimens of American paper cur
rency. They number two hundred and sixty, though
few of the early issues are there, and none come down
to the adoption of the Constitution. A full collection
untU now, would probably reach ten thousand notes,
public and private. The earliest, simply bears the
words: "One Penny. Massachusetts. June, 1722."
It has no signature, and its execution would not serve
us for the label of a match-box. Then follow issues
of the other colonies. New Jersey notes, authorized in
1728, were engraved by one Benjamin Franklin, then
a journeyman printer of twenty-two. He also fashioned
a hand-press for striking them off That runaway Bos
ton apprentice — that leather-aproned Philadelphia ed
itor — ^mechanic and diplomat — jester and statesman —
trader, inventor, patriot, phUosopher, philanthropist —
how his name is written all over our colonial and revo
lutionary history !
The rude devices of that era represent shaky crowns ;
ships, building upon stocks infirm of purpose; white
men and Indians, cheated of feature by dissembling
engraver, sent into this printing world scarce half made
up. In '76 the name of "His Gracious Majesty King
George the Third" suddenly disappears, and pounds
and shillings change to dollars and cents. A Georgia
note promises to pay $30 dollars within twelve months,

202 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
out of "moneys arising from the sale of forfeited es
tates." Does that mean confiscation ?
Continental bills bear sundry intimations that the
Mother Country wages a hopeless war: a wUd boar
running at the point of a spear ; a hand grasping bram
bles, and the like. Some are ingeniously printed in
colors. A few are counterfeits, and altered. Dingy old
notes, creased, mutilated, soUed, they are stUl "filthy,"
but no longer "lucre," Bits of coarse, worthless paper
now! Yet men schemed, and toiled, and wore out
lives, and committed crimes to get them ! And others
endured, and suffered, and died for want of them.
Similar •reflections wiU move the long-prophesied
New Zealand archaeologist. All day shall he stand on
the never-finished Washington Monument, to sketch
the ruins of Willard's Hotel. But at night, by his
camp-fire on Pennsylvania Avenue, he wUl scan with
sentimental eye, his great scrap-book of our paper cur
rency. Remembering the gorgeous notes of the One-
hundred-and-fifteenth National Bank of Auckland that
line his pocket-book, he will wonder at the rude art
which stamped the heads of Chase and Fessenden,
M'CuUoch and Spinner, on these plain, tattered, an
tique bUls and bonds of the year of grace 1867. And
on getting home from his explorations he will rush to
the library of the New Zealand Antiquarian Society,
and hunt the well-thumbed files of The Tribune for
the only authentic record of their history. It runs in
this wise :
In 1861 our first Greenbacks were printed by the
New York Bank Note Companies ; and Treasurer and
Register signed them here with their own proper hands.
But the infant army, that financial Oliver Twist, was

OUR FIRST GREENBACKS. 203
always clamoring for "more." Spinner was no Bria-
reus the hundred-handed; and Chittenden could not
devote more than twenty-four hours a day to his own
autographs. So Congress authorized them to sign by
proxy. Then the issue grew till seventy clerks, at
$1,200 a year, were kept busy in writing their own in
lieu of these officers' names. But so many different
hands destroyed all the value of signatures. They
were no more protection against fraud than the type
in which these lines are printed ; and the Secretary knit
ted his broad brow in sore perplexity.
There was a keen-eyed Superintendent of Construct
ing the Public Buildings, named S. M. Clark. A Ver
mont Yankee, and true to his nativity, he had done a
little of everything, and could make anything. Just
now he was at leisure ; the Nation needed no new edi
fices till arms should decide whether it was a Nation.
He proposed facsimiles of the signatures, and also of
the Treasury seal, to be engraved and printed on the
notes in peculiar ink, and by a peculiar process. Chase,
under sanction of Congress, adopted the suggestion.
Then Spinner was the hundred-handed. He could
sign with a rapidity limited only by the capacity of
lightning presses.
Notes came to the Department in sheets of four each.
Seventy-five girls, every one armed with her shears,
trimmed and separated them by hand. Clark, the rev
olutionist, declared this ought to be done by machinery,
and, more to the point, that he could make the ma
chines himself Fogies pooh-poohed. Cut bank' notes
apart, and trim their edges by steam? Utterly im
possible! Beside, it would be too expensive, and
would take bread from these worthy women. But the

204 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
Secretary said "go ahead;" so the Yankee coaxed his
brains, and burned the midnight oil. In two months
he brought in two trial machines, worked by a crank.
The clerk, to whom they were referred, inspected, and '
reported them failures. So Chase ordered them re
moved from the buUding. But what inventor ever
acquiesced in the slaughter of his own progeny? This
one implored the Secretary: "Come and examine for
yourself!" Chase did examine, and found that these marvelous
automata, with cunning fingers of steel, not only did
the work perfectly, but reduced its cost more than
four-fifths. He instantly rescinded the order, placed
Clark in charge of the cutting and trimming, and as
signed him rooms for the purpose. That was the origin
of the Printing and Engra-ving Bureau of the Treasury-
Department. On the 29th of August, 1862, Mr. Clark
began, assisted by one man and four women. Now his
Bureau has twenty-one subordinate superintendents,
nearly six hundred employes, occupies seventy-four
rooms, and has turned out sixty millions of dollars in
a single day.
But it has fought for every step. It would have
perished long ago, had it not adopted the principles of
the prize ring, and struck out vigorously from the
shoulder. Its very existence is a vindication of the
noble art of self-defense. It had to encounter the
prejudice against Government's engaging in any sort
of manufactures — usually just, for the more employes],
jobs, patronage, the more corruption. This case was
exceptional. The Treasurer could not go into open
market for his engraving and printing. The bank-note
companies — then but two, now three — ^were gigantic

THE BANK NOTE COMPANIES. 205
monopolies. They made the paper money of North
and South America. They offered no competition.
There was work for both; they charged their own
prices, and would not underbid each other.
Greenbacks proved a Golconda to them. Shares,
below par, rose to high premiums. One made divi
dends of thirty per cent, a year, on its immense nom-
mal capital of $1,250,000. In all. Government has
paid these three companies over $3,000,000. But
every piece of work done in Washington was so much
taken from their receipts. Hence, arrayed against the
Bureau was this gigantic money-power, working in a
hundred ways — on the floor of Congress, in the Depart
ments, on Wall street, and through the printing press.
In its favor was only the less zealous aid springing from
the belief that it served the public interest.
The currency required the very choicest execution.
Tolerable bank-note engravers abound ; but of first-
class workmen there are less than twenty in the United
States. The companies employed them all, binding
them by long contracts, and the moment a new one
Arrived from abroad, pouncing on him like a hawk.
Once Clark posted over to New York, to see a skillful
designer from England by special appointment. He
found that officers of the leading bank-note company
had preceded him by a few minutes at the place of
meeting, and with an unusual salary had secured his
man. The president of another corporation brought writ
ten charges against Clark's character. A congressional
committee investigated, and declared them wholly un
supported by proof The companies refused to give up
the dies and plates, for printing here. Once, this contro-

206 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
versy waxed so warm that they packed them for sending
abroad, lest the Secretary should obtain them by pro
cess of law.
The New York companies stiU print the greenbacks
and the issues of the National banks. But this com
petition has brought down their charges for engraving
seventy-five per cent., and for printing, fifty per cent,
below what Government paid them in 1862. The work
could readily be done here; but there are one thou
sand seven hundred National banks. Were the print
ing transferred now, if any spurious notes from the
genuine plates should get in circulation, a question
might arise as to whether they were tampered with
while in the custody of the companies or of the De
partment. The Comptroller of the Currency decUnes
that responsibility. So they are printed in New York,
and expressed here to be separated, trimmed, numbered,
and stamped with the Treasury seal. One package
upon arrival proved to contain $8,000 more than itwas
marked and invoiced. Long the company stoutly de
nied the mistake, but at last owned up. Another pack
age contained an excess of $100,000, but that error
was speedUy acknowledged.
Clark's Bureau, beside finishing these notes, engraves
and prints all our bonds, coupons, fractional currency,
and internal revenue stamps for cigars and beer bar
rels ; does the general printing of the Treasury Depart
ment, and manufactures its wrapping paper and envel
opes. It is in contemplation to make bank-note paper
also. For this purpose the lightest, finest fabric is best
— just as a silk handkerchief wUl stand more wear and
tear than a coarse napkin.
The Post-Office Department (chief, Alexander W,

COUNTERFEIT MONEY, 207
Randall of Wisconsin), contains a room boldly labeled :
"Depkedation Office." It is devoted, not to com
mitting depredations, as the inscription might signify,
but to investigating them. So the Treasury has one
branch over which might be written : " Counterfeiting
Office." Most spurious plates, sooner or later, find
their way here. A large detective force is employed
in ferreting out counterfeiters. These have ramifica
tions all over the Union. They are chiefly ensnared
through their own confederates, ever ready, for a con
sideration, to betray them, and falsify the proverb of
honor among thieves. » Hundreds are sent to peni
tentiaries yearly; but they find it easy to get par
doned out.
When a counterfeit is presented at the Bank of
England, the gold is instantly paid for it. If it comes
from some known person, he is only asked where he
got it. K from a stranger, the cashier signals to his ,
detective, always in waiting, and the officer foUows
secretly. Before many hours the bank is in possession
of the stranger's biography. The offender once ar
rested is likely to be tried, convicted, and sentenced
within two days; wherefore Great Britain is not an in-
¦ viting field for that branch of industry.
American counterfeiters are thoroughly organized,
and adopt the great national principle — division of
labor. They have classes quite separate and distinct,
for engraving, printing, signing, and putting in circu
lation. The latter issue circulars to known dealers, all
over the country, offering the "queer" (their flash
term for counterfeit money) usuaUy at about thirty
cents on the dollar. They have their spy system, too,
and look out sharply for officers. Lately a detective

208 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
maUed $10 to the address given in one of these circu
lars, asking the return of its value in "queer." The
vigUant counterfeiter penetrating the disguise replied
that he did not seU to stool-pigeons, but yet felt bound
in common courtesy to retain the officer's little contri
bution to his exchequer! The discomfited detective
now shakes his head and sighs -with Juliet :
"Too early seen unknown and kno-wn too late."
But the facetious scoundrel gleefully apostrophizes his
unlooked for "Ten:" "Green be the back upon thee.
Friend of my better days ! "
The Treasury Engraving and Printing Bureau pre
serves every known counterfeit thus far. There are
thirty on greenbacks; fifty on fractional currency;
none on gold notes or bonds. Most are wretched ; but
two or three so perfect that they deceive the very
eleci; — if heedless cashiers come within that category.
The ingenious fabricators make their new notes look
soiled, worn and old, before circulating them.
It is easy to protect experts against counterfeits.
The masses find no safeguards infallible, simply because
they will not study them. The finest, most elaborate
engraving, and many difficult processes of printing on
each note are chief. The former requires time and
skill ; the latter, costly machinery, ample room, and
therefore publicity. The minute little Treasury seal
upon our currency, with its key, scales, and mason's
square, has never been successfully imitated.
The most dangerous means of counterfeiting is pho
tography. It reproduces every line with absolute ex-

DR. GWYNN AND HIS INVENTION. 209
actness. lA the early days of the Bureau, Dr. Gwynn,
an old, ingenious inventor, originated an exceedingly
valuable paper to obviate this difficulty. In the midst
of his experimenting he was suddenly arrested by Ba
ker, and thrown into Old Capitol Prison. He was kept
there thirty days, without being allowed to see his ac
cusers, or know the charges against him ; and then un
conditionally released. He never obtained any redress.
• Afterwards, James Brooks, on the fioor of the House,
aUeged that the Treasury of the United States had be
come " a house for orgies and bacchanals." A con
gressional committee, after two months' investigation,
reported explicitly that the charge was utterly false ;
that it originated partly in the desire of " some " to
break up the Bureau ; and partly in a conspiracy be
tween Baker and " the female prostitutes associated
with him " to destroy Clark's character, and thus shield
Baker from the odium of Gwynn's arrest.
Gwynn's paper was a sure protection against pho
tography. Its water-mark of faint, spra-wling lines,
known as " spider-leg," nobody else had the secret of
making. No known chemical substance obliterated it
without destroying the paper; One could barely de
tect its dim, yellow Unes by holding the genuine note up
to a strong light. But aU over the photographed coun
terfeit they stood boldly out, a coarse, Revealing, jet-
black net-work of spider-legs.
Moreoyer, the paper would wash ! Scrubbing one
of those fifty-cent pieces with soap and water, and then
drying it with a towel, did not injure it in the least.
Its body remained firm, its print clear, its bronze un-
dimmed. Hence B. F. Taylor's extravagantly droll
conceit of a man putting off a dun with the excuse
14

210 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
that his money had not come back from the laundry,
or making out a list for his washer-woman thus :
Shirts,  3
Handkerchiefs,  2
Teu-doflar bills,  , 7
Five-dollar bills,  10
Fractional currency — pieces,  40
Return on Friday,
For six months our small change was printed on this
wonderful paper. McCuUoch, on taking the hehn, dis
continued it, holding, somewhat obscurely, that to
make its use the. test of genuineness discredited the
millions of former issue, upon ordinary paper, already
in circulation. The inventor aUeges that he has lost
$150,000 upon it; but sooner or later it must be
adopted. The last novelty proposed is to print notes
upon a peculiar linen, bearing a new and indelible mark,
corresponding to the water-mark of paper. It can
only be woven upon a Jacquard loom, which costs
$20,000. It would puzzle counterfeiters either to
imitate the mark or make the fabric; for inventing
brains and timid capital comprehend that, in the long
run, dishonesty pays poor dividends.
Altered notes, more common than counterfeits, are
readily detected by looking through them at a bright
light. Adepts are incredibly skillful at producing them.
In Salisbury prison, with nothing but pen, ink, muci
lage, knife, and bits of old notes, captives altered $2
greenbacks, and passed them to Rebel guards as $20s
and $50s. In Charleston, with only -writing-materials
and blank paper, a Yankee officer imitated Confederate
fractional currency so cleverly that its genuineness was

"old GREENBACKS," 211
not questioned. He had only coarse models to copy.
But our $5 greenback, with all its delicate shades and
involved ornamentation, was similarly duplicated by an
officer in Libby Prison with so much exactness that at
first glance it was difficult to distinguish the spurious
from the original.
According to Frank Moore's "War Anecdotes," early
during the Rebellion, notes of a Pennsylvania bank
bearing Buchanan's likeness became so disfigured by
"Traitor" and other epithets written under the por
trait, that the bank was compelled to call them all in
and make a new issue, omitting the obnoxious head.
Uhase gleefully relates, that in the ranks of a long
unpaid regiment in the field he found an old acquaint
ance, who did not recognize him untU he introduced
himself. Then the -vritty soldier responded :
"0, yes — Mr. Chase. It is so long since we have
seen your picture that I had nearly forgotten you ! "
Better stiU was the exclamation of the old darkey at
Key West. After studying long and perplexedly the
features of the great Ohioan, a sudden inteUigence
gleamed over his sooty face, and he ejaculated-:
" Lor ! mas'r, I knows you ; you's old Greenbacks ! "
Clark suggested the engra-vings on the backs of our
National Bank notes. " Ones " exhibit the landing of
the PUgrims, from an original drawing by White.
"Twos " show Sir Walter Raleigh introducing tobacco,
from an engraving owned by the Bank Note Compa
nies. The rest are from historical paintings in the
great rotunda of the Capitol. "Fives" — Landing of
Columbus, by Vanderlyn. " Tens " — De Soto Discov
ering the Mississippi, by Powell. " Twenties " — -Bap
tism of Pocahontas, by Chapman. "Fifties"-

212 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
barkation of the PUgrims, by Weir. " Hundreds "—
Signing of the Declaration of Independence. "Five
Hundreds " — Surrender of Cornwalls. " One Thou
sands" — Washington Resigning his Commission — aU
by TrumbuU. These illustrations increase famUiar-
ity with our national history, guard against counter
feiting through their fineness of execution, and against
-altering, because every note of the same denomination,
upon whichever of the one thousand seven hundred
banks, always bears the same picture.
Now for a glance through the Bureau, at its curious
processes which we have been so long in reaching. Its
various machinery is driven by thirteen steam engines
of three-hundred aggregate horse-power. Some are
marvels of mechanism, running with perfect smooth
ness and perfect silence — giants that walk with muffled.
feet, but strike with iron hands.
In the cool vaults of the lower story, is the forge
room, where crude iron and steel come in. Next, the
great machine shops, where each powerful, intricate
apparatus is fashioned and repaired. This is thor
oughly, distinctly American — to invent, construct and
run the machinery, all under one roof
Near by, the ink factory, which turns out a tun a
week, in a dozen colors and shades. Busy, humming
little steam miUs grind up the ingredients. The work
men who mix and measure them are rudimentary rain
bows; their garments, faces, and bare, brawny arms
shine in black and blue, green and vermilion.
Then the paper-mUl. Clippings of the bindery and
envelope room, and other waste of the Department,
furnish its raw material. The supply always far ex
ceeds the demand. Great vaults are stuffed with

THE TREASURY PAPER-MILL. 213
soiled sheets and strips, waiting to be made over again.
Lives there an official with soul so dead, who never to
himself hath said : " I will expend ungrudgingly the
public supplies?" Here are enormous piles' of new
internal revenue books, each as large as a Tribune
volume, on costly paper and in solid binding. For
slight errors in print or ruling, they are thrown, aside
to make pager of.
Greenbacks destroyed by fire or otherwise have
reached about one-half of one per cent, on the issues
already called in. Of the earliest issue of fractional
currency, twenty-five per cent, is still out; of the
second, seventeen per cent. It is believed that fully
ten per cent, will never return. Of course this is clear
gain to Government. But a great deal of currency
comes in soUed and mutilated. New notes replace it.
The old, -with gold notes, which are never issued twicOj
come to the paper-mill..
In the engine-room is a slowly revolving iron cylin
der, as large as a hogshead, and four times as long. It
has three locks, whose keys are held by custodians ap
pointed by the Secretary. After the old notes have
been cut apart and punched to cancel them, the three
Commissioners see them locked fast into this cylinder.
Here, with water- and chemicals, they are churned for
twenty-four hours. Then the Commissioners (each a
watch upon the other, and all upon the paper-maker)
return with their keys and hold solemn inquest lest
some notes should remain intact, to be patched, reunited,
and again passed for money. But they find them de
composed, and requiring locks no longer.
Next the mass is pumped up into huge tanks in the
room above, the ink washed out, leaving it white like

214 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL,
cheese-curd ; and coloring matter mixed in, until it is
just the hue wanted for the new paper. Afterward the
pulp is strained through holes which fine needles could
barely pass, and next spread thin and even upon a very
close sieve of steel wires.
Now it is in the form of paper, but not strong enough
to bear its own weight. Here a wire frame, pressed
down upon it, leaving it thinner at some points than at
others, stamps it with the " water-mark " — so caUed be
cause impressed while the pulp is wet. This one is a
T inclosed in a little square, and readily seen by hold
ing the finished paper up to the light. The Bank of
England relies solely upon its water-mark for protection
against counterfeits. That is impressed, not with wires,
but with a metallic plate, laboriously filed out by hand,'
— the work of years. A grandfather, father and son,
each bearing the honored name of John Smith, have
done this filing for "the old lady of Threadneedie-
street," through three generations.
The endless sheet of pulp on this endless sieve passes
on, and on, between heated rollers, the water squeezing
out and evaporating, the mass growing firmer and
firmer, until, at the further end of the long room, it
comes out an endless roll of finished paper, six feet
wide, which knives, also running by machinery, clip
into convenient wrapping sheets. The paper-miU is a
noisy monster, and allowed to run only through the
night. By day, its clatter would disturb the general
drowsiness of the Department.
Hard by is the envelope room. Here a steel cutter,
like an inverted tin dish with sharp edges, is placed on
a pUe of paper under a press. One turn at the lever,
and it has cut out five hundred envelopes. Next stUl

THE ENGRAVING DEPARTMENT. 215
open, they are spread one hundred upon a board, each
lapping over the others, so that a strip of one-eighth of
an inch along its upper edge is left exposed. Over
this, a girl, with a brush, spreads the mucilage which
the writer is to moisten at last when ready to seal his
letter. Then the board, with a score of others, is placed
on a frame exposed to the air. After this gum on the
upper flaps grows dry, the envelopes, while yet without
a fold, are laid in thick bunches on a magical, voracious,
impatient little machine. It seizes them with hungry
teeth, instantaneously brushes mucilage upon each end
and the lower flap, folds the four flaps in, tightly seals
the three lower ones, leaving the other unfastened for
the reception of the letter, and there is your envelope !
This cunning, wonderful automaton, no larger than a
sewing machine, thus folds, seals, and flings out two
thousand per hour!
In the engraving room, we find half-a-dozen work
men, each with shade over his eyes, intently peering
through his microscope at a little plate of softened
steel, which shines like a mirror. With the burin (a
delicate pencil of hardened steel point), he is slowly
plowing finest, minutest furrows, which the naked eye
can barely see. We lean Over the shoulder of one, and
find him copying on steel a sketch from the paper be
fore him, with two groups, — one cutting wheat with the
sickle of old; the other, -with our great reaping-ma
chine. A little thing that you could cover with two
silver dollars, yet he may spend a year in engra-ving it.
Each workman does only a small portion of a note.
He is to follow exactly the sketch given him, and yet —
marvelous individuality! — -even in these infinitessimal
fines, an expert will detect their author, just as we rec-

216. OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
ognize handwriting. In both steel and wood engraving
for books, foreign nations excel us. But on this work
we are far in advance of them. American bank notes
shpw the finest steel engraving in the world. The best
workmen in government service are paid about $3,000
a year ; in private employ,' they sometimes earn $10,000.
But a portion of the engraving is mechanical. Fifty
years ago a Yankee, named Asa Spencer, invented a
curious machine, called the geometric lathe. The ap
paratus is intricate — the principle old and simple. The
steel plate is fastened firmly upon a bed. Then the
burin, grasped by strong muscles of steel, is moved over
it by machinery, plowing its little furrow wherever it
goes. This engraves any desired scroll, net-work, or
other regular and intricate devices with an exquisite
fineness, minuteness, and mathematical precision, of
which the human hand is incapable. The elaborate,
involved ornamentation {how elaborate and involved
only the microscope reveals) upon the back, and about
the "counters" of our fractional and greenback cur
rency, is engraved by this process. Hand imitations of
it are most tedious and clumsy. A geometric lathe
costs from three to eight thousand dollars — another
difficulty for counterfeiters.
A copper plate will print eight or ten thousand im
pressions before wearing out ; a steel plate about thirty
thousand. Copper was formerly used, because softer
and cheaper to engrave. But mark the modern im
provement by which the number of impressions we can
get from one steel plate is absolutely limitless. The
single fiat plate, so laboriously cut by the engraver, say
for one $5 greenback, is never used to print from. It '
is called the " bed-piece." After the last touches of the

INGENIOUS TRANSFER PROCESS, 217
burin, it is kept in the fire five or six hours, to gain
adamantine hardness. Then it is laid on the bed of a
press — another giant of iron — and under heavy weight
(only three thousand pounds, but all converging on the
point of contact), a little cylinder of softened steel is
rolled over it backward and forward. After the first
faint impression, the workman takes out the cylinder to
see where harder or lighter pressure is needed. When
he puts it back to roll again, the variation of one hair
breadth from its old track would blur and ruin both die
and plate. But the nicely-adjusted machinery, under
his exact eye, makes no mistakes. In an hour or two
the cylinder, or "die," bears a perfect impression, in
reUef, of the face of a $5 note, down to its finest line
and most delicate shade.
Then the little original plate is locked up in the safe,
to repeat this process whenever wanted. The cylinder,
hardened in the fire, becomes a perfect die. Next a
large, smooth plate of softened steel i^ placed on the
press ; the die is rolled over it again and again, till the
plate bears /owr impressions of the $5 note. Then the
die also is locked up ready for similar use in future.
The new plate is now ready to print the "fives," four
at a time. Plates for the smaller, fractional notes, cou
pons, and 'beer-stamps, each bear from a dozen to forty
impressions. This most ingenious "transfer process,"
by which the original steel plate is multiplied indefi
nitely, was devised early in this century by one Jacob
Perkins, of Newburyport, Mass., the inventor pf steel-
engraving itself.
Now, into one of the printing-rooms. As we open
its door, the clatter of forty-four noisy presses breaks
upon us. Each has three attendants — one man, who

218 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
carefully inks the large, shining plate, and, when its in
terstices are filled, rubs the rest of its surface clean and
dry ; a second, who lays the plate upon the bed, shoves
it under the tympan for its mighty pressure, and then
returns the plate to be inked ; and a girl, who lays on
the blank sheets and removes them after they are
printed, placing a leaf of brown paper between each
two, to keep them from blotting. Each press throws
off about one hundred and fifty sheets per hour, but
in emergencies its product can be largely increased.
From one files a national fiag, in commemoration of
three thousand impressions once obtained from it in
seven and one-half hours.
The plates are artificially heated; the pressman
handles them nimbly, and they would blister unaccus
tomed fingers. In these vernal days the great room
is like an oven. Perspiration streams from workmen,
and the girls keep their large palm fans in motion.
This labor is exceedingly hard and trying. The old
mode of printing was upon wet sheets, which came
out like the damp morning newspaper. Clark, against
strong opposition, has introduced dry printing. It
promotes security; dry sheets are easily kept in the
counted packages of one thousand each. Wet, in large,
unequal masses, they must often be changed from one
pile to another. Dry printing is twenty-five per cent.
cheaper, and its labor is less severe than the old mode,
which often causes rupture in pressmen.
In printing from types, stereotype plates, or wood
engravings, the raised letters and lines stand out so
boldly from the general surface that but slight weight
is needed to stamp their inky faces legibly upon the
paper. But in steel engravings lines are cut into. the.

THE PRINTING AND BRONZING ROOMS. 219
plates ; then filled with ink, and an immense pressure
is required to stretch and drive the paper down into
all these fine interstices. Each press here is a monster
of muscle. The hug of a grizzly bear is not the touch
of a fly's foot in comparison. Put an inked plate and
sheet into its mouth, then move a little spring, and the
steel jaw comes down with the weight of eight hundred
tons. The power is pumped up from the Potomac. It
is on the simple principle that if you apply a pressure
of one ton to a Uttle column of water one inch square,
and then connect that column by pipe, with the water
of a tank whose surface is eight hundred times as
large, you impart the one ton to each of the eight
hundred square inches, and can then bring the whole
amount to bear upon one point no larger than the end
of your flnger. Mighty is the giant Cold Water when
clad in hydrostatic armor.
Into a bronzing-room. We should have glanced here
earlier, for here bonds and fractional notes are first
treated. The blank paper is passed through a Hoe
cylinder press, where it receives in ink the figures and
rings which are to glitter on back and face of the
finished note. Then it goes through a second steam
press, where brushes put on yellow, shining powder in
the places where the bronze ought to go. This adheres
to the wet ink; then, in the same machine, other
brushes cleanse off all bits of metal from the rest of
the paper ; and an iron frame throws out and piles up
the sheets. Bronze is made of copper and zinc. It
dries itself, and can not be obliterated without destroy
ing the paper. Girls, who tend the presses, wear caps
of white paper to protect their hair against minute
particles fioating about like flour in a grist-mill.

220 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL,
The walls, as in all other rooms where machinery is
running by steam, exhibit placards : " LadIes must
NOT WEAR FULL Skirts IN THIS RooM." The order
originated in the serious injury of one, through her
dress catching in a wheel. So through working hours
limp skirts hang upon forlorn figures. But in passing
the dressing-rooms and alcoves we notice that each,
with its long rows of nails, is a museum of hoops, all
waiting to be donned at the close of the day when the
Bureau is still. If every private household is entitled
to one skeleton in its closet, two or three hundred is
not more than a fair allowance for the Treasury De
partment. Here is a numbering-room. A dozen girls sit at tiny
machines worked by treadles. One takes a bond — ^you
see it moving hither and thither in her swift hand under
the swift stamp — " click — click — click " — and quicker
than the ticking of a watch, the number " 194,642 "
is printed in vermilion successively upon it, and on all
_ its forty coupons. She touches a spring ; the final type
" 2 " changes to a " 3," and again the busy little press
clicks over another. The girl by' her side has a sheet
of $10's on the First National Bank of Portiand.
Down on the lower left hand corner of the first note
is the bank number "39." On the upper right hand cor
ner she impresses the Department number " 200,242,"
So the busy steel workers click on, numbering miUions
of dollars daUy.
The separating room is, perhaps, most interesting of
all. Here are Clark's cutting and trimming machines^ ,¦
in which the Bureau had its origin. A sheet of frac
tional currency contains from twenty to fifty notes.
These cutters separate and trim the notes, count them.

THE MONEY COUNTERS. 221
and lay them out in piles of $5, $10, or $20 as re
quired. 'When each of the first six piles contains $20, .
the machine, if set to that figure, rings a little bell to
call attention to the fact, moves a hand on a dial-plate,
to record the count, and goes right on, slicing up, count
ing, and recording fresh sheets. It is a wonder of
wonders. Fed by two girls, it does the work of forty.
It separates, trims, and bunches one thousand sheets
per hour. To the precision of machinery it almost
unites human intelligence. It makes no mistakes.
The packages of Uttle notes, right from it, with no
other count, are banded and packed in pasteboard
boxes, containing $1,000 to $3,000, and sent to the
Treasurer ready for issue.
Everywhere on our rounds have we passed girls
counting, by hand, uncut sheets of notes, bonds, and
stamps — usually in packages of one thousand. With
long practice, they grow singularly expert. You see
only a confused fluttering of leaves, while they count
one thousand sheets in four minutes.
Upon the separated notes they carry on swiftly a
curious, double mental operation. Every sheet of
greenbacks originally contains four bills. After cut
ting apart, Clark's machine drops them into four boxes.
Being numbered consecutively, their order, in any one
of these boxes wiU "skip four." If the top note is
102,640, the second will be 102,644, and so on to the
end. The girl takes up a handful of these notes. By
one process, she must count them off into packages of
one hundred, and also' make sure that the Department
numbers come in proper sequence. To repeat, at
every note, the long 102,640, etc., would be endless.
So, while running her fingers over each note, she gives,

222 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
simultaneously -with its count, only the final figure of
its Department nuinber, thus : " 1 — 0, 2 — 4, 3 — 8, 4 — 2
5 — 6, 6 — 0," on through the whole hundred. Your eye
can barely follow her lightning speed, checked here and
there for a second, as she whisks into its proper order
a note whose number tells her it is in the wrong place.
She grows so used to this singular double enumeration,
that she can not possibly count a single hundred rapidly,
without carrying this attendant sequence along with it
in her mind.
Bonds, when completed, are delivered to the Regis
ter; National Banknotes to the Controller; greenbacks
and fractional currency to the Treasurer. We have in
circulation $28,000,000 of fractional currency. It
wears so rapidly that we re-issue $400,000 weekly, to
take the place of spoiled notes, called in and canceled.
The Printing and Engraving Bureau handles daily
from $2,000,000 to $60,000,000 of our various public
securities. It has manufactured, in whole or in part,
more than $7,000,000,000 ! And yet the Government
has never lost one dollar of it, except a single defi
ciency of $1,100 which occurred before the Bureau
was fairly organized. It is an unexampled chapter in
financial history.
Like that cylinder where old notes are thrown, to be
transformed into new paper, the safe where dies and
bed-pieces are deposited, and the other safe, large
as a parlor, which contains finished notes and bonds,
have each two or three locks, whose several keys are
kept by separate custodians. They are never opened
save in presence of two or more persons. No die or
bed-piece in a workman's hand ever goes out of sight
of the officer responsible for it. Otherwise, with a

guards against DISHONESTY. 223
dishonest artisan, it might be duplicated, whereby the
counterfeiters would triumph.
The checks and balances, which protect these im
mense amounts, passing through hundreds of hands,
against carelessness and dishonesty, are very perfect
and wonderful. They rest on these simple principles :
1. Every package and sheet of paper designed to make
money of is treated as money from the moment it
comes, blank, into the Bureau. No sheet, nor single
note, defective or spoiled at any stage, is thrown away.
Each bit of paper, once received, is duly delivered in
some form to the higher officers of the Treasury. 2,
No package passes from one department to another, or
from one hand to another, "without a count and a re
ceipt, recorded for preservation in a well-bound book.
The counter, too, puts her initials on the band of the
package. Therefore, if a package or a single sheet be
lost, it can be traced to the very hand which received
it last, but faUed to deliver it. A package is counted
thirty-three times in passing through the various opera
tions. Not a dollar would be delivered even to the
Secretary of the Treasury without his written order
and receipt. 3. Any mistake or discrepancy is traced
out and rectified the instant it becomes known. The
books are balanced every night. No operative or su
perintendent is allowed to leave until all the accounts
are reported correct.
Last January, in the midst of a day's work, and -with
out previous warning, the Secretary ordered all opera
tions stopped, to test the accuracy of this system. The
accounts were taken, just as they stood, and an inquest
held on the Bureau. On that day it contained over
1700,000,000. Not only was the aggregate found

224 OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL.
right, but the amount in each of the threescore rooms
agreed with the books to the last cent.
Only the following instances of " missing " have oc
curred from the beginning :
In 1864 a scrubbing woman stole a sheet of $20
greenbacks from the plate-printing room. The next
day, offering one on Pennsylvania avenue, she was ap
prehended- at once. But the unfinished notes were not
legally money, so no charge could be maintained
against her, except that of stealing the trivial value of
the paper on which they were printed.
Once $40 and afterward $100 of fractional currency
were missed from the drying-rooms. All the occupants
were searched by committees of their own number, but
unsuccessfully. So the losses were assessed upon them,
and two or three suspected persons discharged.
Forty dollars of compohnd interest Treasury notes
disappeared from the sealing division. Diligent search
proving fruitless, the employes paid for it, and con
cluded that it had been caught in the machinery and
cut to pieces. But no other sheet of that number has
been issued, so if there was a theft, it will one day ap
pear, when the notes return.
Two hundred sheets of 25-cent stamps, amounting to
$1,100 could not be found. Through the negligence
of a superintendent in not reporting the loss promptly
it was impossible to trace it. But a few weeks later it
appeared that one of the girls was spending money in
sums suspiciously large — not for herself, but, woman
like, for the comfort of her father, paying his board at
a costly hotel. Charged with the theft she at once
confessed. She had carried the notes out under her
skirts. Had the superintendent done his duty and

THEFTS PROM THE TREASURY. 225
made the loss known at once, she could not have got
away with them. The girls in the division would have
chosen a committee to search rigidly the clothing of all.
This money never was refunded. It is the solitary loss
that has not been made good.
Last May the wet printing-room showed a deficit of
nmety-nine unfinished $1,000 bonds. As soon as the
superintendent was sure of this (it is difficult to keep
minute account of the wet paper) search was instituted.
They were traced into a counting-room, and there in
vestigation was baffled. Six weeks later, they turned
up in one of the safes. A girl, in giving the last count to
one thousand sheets of "beer stamps" had laid them down
upon a pUe of bonds. The stamp-sheets are a trifle the
larger ; and in picking them up, she took also ninety-
nine sheets from the top of the bonds. Put in the safe
together, they were not found until the beer stamps
were taken out for delivery to the Commissioner of
Internal Revenue.
A few weeks ago a girl in the separating-room stole
|30. Through the exactness of the system, it was
traced directly to her, out of all the twenty or thirty
employes in that branch, within two hours after the
search began.
The most considerable theft from the Treasury thus
far was of securities which the Bureau had delivered
up and obtained the Register's receipt for. A clerk in
the Loan Branch abstracted $100,000 in six per cent.
coupon bonds. The loss was not discovered for weeks.
Meanwhile, reporting that his grandfather had died
leaving him a fortune, he resigned, removed to New
York, took a brown-stone-front, and lived luxuriously.
He did not try to negotiate the bonds ; only presented
15

226 OUR NATIONAL' CAPITAL,
the semi-annual coupons for interest, as they became
due. But each coilpon bears the number of its bond,
and a list of the missing numbers had now been sent to
all Government agents. Therefore, with a stamp and
red ink, he added one figure to the number of each
coupon, changing 46,918 to 469,181, and so on. But
suspicion fell upon him for fast living ; the grandfather^
proved a hoax; he was arrested; confessed; declared
that he had burned the bonds, but pointed out the cou
pons, hidden in his house ; was selit to the penitentiary ;
pardoned out ; and finally died. Now, in numbering
coupons, precaution is taken against alteration. What
ever the number, whether 1 or 100,000, it is made to
cover the back, so that no other figure can be added.
Bonds cost the Government six and one-half cents
apiece ; fractional currency about one mill per stamp.
The machinery of the Bureau has involved an expendi
ture of $250,000. It is claimed that it has saved the
country over $3,000,000.
Work commences at nine o'clock, and, except half an
hour for luncheon, continues until four. Much of it is
so severe that this day is quite long enough. Men earn
daily from $2.50 to $5; women, $1.50 to $2.40. A
few girls look worn and ill ; but most appear healthful
and cheerful. Nearly all dress neatly and tastefiiUy
For those having homes here, the work is good and
pleasant. For those who are strangers, Washington is
the most disagreeable and dangerous of American
cities. Few men familiar with it wpuld leave a sister
or daughter to the tender mercies of its boarding-housel
lUe. • ?
The Pacific RaUway is to make new financial centers.
Paper, redeemable in New York and San Francisco, will

NEW FINANCIAL CENTERS.

227

be current all over the globe. Monetary Congresses
sit in Paris ; a few years hence will doubtless see among
all the nations, a uniform metaUic currency. American
telegraph lines and newspapers start in China; the
Japanese Government orders primary school-books,
printed in English, from New York. How long before
our own tongue wUl be the language of finance news
and commerce in every meridian and imder every
paraUel ?

^OocooooDOOO*"
SEAL OP THE TBBASTJRT DBPABTMENT.

THE STOET OF
Clocks and "Watclies.

>HAT o'clock is it?" asked Emanuel Swe-
denborg upon his death-bed. Being told,
he answered: "It is well; I thank you;
may God bless you," and the pure spirit of the ven
erable teacher gently passed away.
"What o'clock is it?" ask little chUdren as they
blow off the feathered seed-vessels of the dandeUon,
and tell the hour by the number that remain upon the
stalk. Civilized man everywhere, from the cradle to
the grave, repeats this question oftener than any
other. The sun, great central clock of our planetary
system, with untiring motion and without winding up,
keeps time for all its satellites. Yet man, "the tool-
making animal," never asks "whato'sun?" but instead,
"what o'clock?" He has brought artificial time-keep
ers to such perfection that they are the most wonder
ful of all his achievements, the things most alive and
companionable in the entire range of his handiwork.
A clock would have made Robinson Crusoe less lonely
upon his desert island. Children, lunatics, and poets, of
imagination all compact, translate its ticking into artic
ulate speech. To little Paul Dombey, the great clock
in Dr. Blimber's hall repeated so distinctly " How-is-

EARLY TIME-KEEPERS. 229
my-lit-tle-friend?" that he replied to it, rather than to
the doctor, "Very well, I thank you. Sir." Only the
other evening I saw Young America of six, holding
papa's watch to his ear, and keeping time with tongue
and nodding head, as he chanted, "Al-most-time-to-go-
to-bed," over and over again. And one of our poets has
made the wonderful monotone of the old "Clock on
the Stair" ring in our ears, till every time-piece seems
to repeat over and over the refrain,
" Forever, never, never, forever!"
Primitive man had little need of clocks and watches.
The opening and closing of fiowers ; the voices of birds,
beasts and insects; the positions of sun, moon and
stars, told the passage of time with accuracy enough
for his simple life. Mariners, hunters, shepherds, and
all other men much alone with nature, still keep fa
miliar with her habits and her moods. The Iijdian
says : "Four moons have passed," or "Itwas ten sleeps
ago," and the farmer, "Itwas between day and sun
rise," or "It was half an hour by sun."
Job's expression :
" As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow,"
Points to the earlier artificial time-keeper. The sun
dial originated, nobody knows when, with some of the
Eastern nations. Isaiah wrote eight hundred years
before Christ :
"I will bring back the shadow of the degrees which is gone down in
the sun-dial of Ahaz ten degrees backward."
Dials were common among the Romans. One still
preserved in Italy perpetuates the pleasing fiction that
it was used by Cicero in his villa at Tusculum, and we

230 THE STORY OP CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
find them mentioned in prose and verse, from the time
of Plautus and Terence to that of Wordsworth and Sir
Walter Scott.
A dial, usually standing upon a stone post or a
sunny knoll, is still preserved as a relic of the past^ in
almost every English country church-yard. Around it
on Sunday mornings, an hour or two before service,
were wont to gather the rustics, discussing crops, the
weather, and politics, while matrons gossiped soberly,
and children tumbled in leap-frog over mossy tomb
stones, or played ball against the tower till the parson's
tinkling bell summoned all to worship.
In clear weather the dial showed the hour by day,
as the stars did by night; but when clouds came,
something more was needed. Hence, centuries ago,
the , East originated the clepsydra, (Water-Stealer,) a
transparent, graduated vase filled -with liquid, which
slowly trickled or stole away through a little -aperture
in the bottom. The receding height marked the pass
age of the hours, It was exceedingly inaccurate,
but improvements were constantly added. Sometimes
water flowed in tears from the eyes of automata, and
sometimes a floating statue rising and falling with the
liquid pointed to the passing hours engraved on an up
right scale. The clepsydra was a sort of household
tide, and by its ebb and flow regulated business and
pleasure. To the question "How late is it?" fancy
the answer, "Four o' the clepsydra."
Chaldea, India, China, used if as their time-keeper.
Plato found it in Egypt — perhaps upon one of his oU-
peddling expeditions — and carried it home with him.
Greeks and Romans employed it in courts to Umit
their voluble lawyers. Like his cotemporaries, Aris-

AN EASTERN LEGEND. 231
totle mentions it. If he did keep the drug store in
Athens, doubtless one stood upon his counter and told
him when to go to dinner, and when to shut up shop.
Julius Caesar found it among the rude Britons. And
Cailph Haroun al Raschid, he of the Arabian Nights,
sent to the great Charlemagne gifts of a tent, an ele^
phant, a clepsydra, and the keys of the Holy Sepulcher
— just as Mr. Seward, by the Japanese Commissioners,
wiU send to the Tycoon an omnibus, a buffalo, an
American watch, and a combination safe.
There is a story that Liliwati, the only daughter of a
learned Hindoo, being destined to die unmarried, her
father endeavored to avert the fulfillment of the or
acle which had announced this fate. Having made
choice of a husband and drawn her horoscope to find
the lucky hour in which she might wed, he placed the
maiden in her bridal robes, close to the clepsydra, to
wait the auspicious hour. But, alas for those who
struggle against destiny, it passed unheeded, and on look
ing to the time-keeper which should have averted such
a mischance, the maiden found that a pearl from her
dress had fallen into the water and closed the slender
neck of the vase through which the drops trickled.
To console her, her father promised, "I will write a
book in your name which shall remain till the latest
time." And thus " Liliwati " is yet known to Hindoo
scholars. The clepsydra was a great advance on the sun-dial,
because it enabled men to determine the hour in the
absence of the sun, when they had once got a starting-
point of time. At first, it was simply a glass vessel
from which water ran out through a little aperture at
the bottom. Next, a wheel was introduced upon which

232 THE STORY OP CLOCKS AND WATCHES,
the water fell, drop by drop, turning it around, and
thus communicating motion to hands upon a dial-plate.
In time machinery was added to tell not only the hours
of the day, but the age of the moon, and the motions
of other heavenly bodies ; and finally, the clepsydra
grew into an ingenious and complicated water-clock,
A thousand years ago a Persian monarch sent one to
a French emperor, which had a striking ¦ apparatus.
When the twelve hours were completed, twelve doors
opened in its face, an automaton horseman rode from
each, waited till the striking was over, and then rode
back again, closing the door after him.
Under the colder skies of the British Islands the
water-clock was an uncertain guide in winter, from an
occasional habit it had of freezing up in its crystal case,
and Good King Alfred of England, so the story goes,
impressed a rival element into the service of the hours.
He burned six wax candles every day, each a foot long,
and marked with inch divisions. To prevent waste and
to protect them from the rude draughts which whistled
through the huge cracks in the palaces of the early
Britons, shaking the hangings of cloth or tapestry, and
often putting out lights and fires, these candle-clocks
were encased in horn lanterns which the clever king
also invented.
These methods of marking time by water or fire,
were ingenious and odd, but it is said that in recent
times, Linnaeus had a more royal luxury than king or
caliph. The great botanist wooed Nature till she whis
pered him her closest secrets, and showed him her shyest
habits. He so arranged a circle of fiowers that one
opened every hour. He could always tell the time by
fresh blossoms ! Rare fioral clock ! If the Connecticut

THJi STRASBURG CLUCK.

THE HOUR-GLASS. 233
factories could only give us that ! It was like a perfect
human life — every new hour marked by new bloom and
beauty. To fire and water succeeded sand. The hour-glass
was only a modification of the clepsydra, substituting
fine sand for water, as something which would neither
freeze nor evaporate. It originated before the Chris
tian era, and has been used by nearly all nations. It
was so common among our ancestors a hundred years
ago, that the illustration of the primer was drawn from
one of the most familiar objects in their daUy life :
" As runs the glass,
Our life doth pass."
In the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, an hour-glass
stood before the Puritan preacher, and was turned by a
tithing man when he began his sermon. If he stopped
long before the sand ran out, his hearers were dissatis
fied ; if he continued long after, they grew impatient.
Long before the American colonies, clocks had made
their appearance in Europe, but like many European
luxuries, as mirrors, windo-w glass, and even planed
boards, our EngUsh ancestors only saw them in the
palaces of the rich and the nobility.
" Clock," Uke " telegraph," is a word much older than
the invention for which it stands. It originally signi
fied "bell," and the French cloch^ still retains that
meaning. Up to Elizabeth's day ^1 instruments for
measuring time were known as horologes (" to call the
hour,") and at a later period as chronometers.
The invention of clocks is claimed for many different
peoples arid eras, from the Chinese, two thousand years
before Christ, down to the Germans of eight centuries

234 THE STORY OF CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
ago. One of the earUest aUusions to them occurs in a
French poem of 1305 :
" And then he made his clocks strike
In his halls and in his chambers,
With wheels very subtilely contrived.
With a continuing movement."
Their first general use was in monasteries during the
eleventh century. The Monks attributed their inven
tion to the Saracens ; the people to the doAdl. Before
their introduction the sacristan sat up in his bell-
tower to watch the stars, that he might arouse the
Monks at the hours of prayer. In the latter part of
the thirteenth century, almost every church and mon
astery had its clock. Dante mentions the striking of
one, and likens its movements to the sweet accord of a
circling dance of rejoicing spirits, and both Chaucer
and Froissart speak of the horologe of cathedral and
abbey. Human ingenuity seems to have outdone itself in
the mechanism of some of the clocks of the middle
ages. For many centuries, public clocks upon churches
and market-houses usually had an automaton which
stepped out of the face to strike the hour, and then
disappeared. The Strasburg Cathedral contained the
great wonder of the age. It was a combination of an
astronomical and a terrestrial clock, with a perpetual
almanac, and had moving figures of a golden clock,
children, men, angels, and the Virgin Mary:
" And we saw St. Peter clasp his hands,
And the cock crow hoarsely to all the lands ;
And the twelve Apostles come and go.
And the solemn Christ pass sadly and slow,
As the crowd beneath in silence pressing,
Bent to that cold mechanic blessing."

INGENIOUS MECHANISM OF EARLY CLOCKS. 235
We read in Hyperion of a Coblentz clock in the
form of a gigantic human head, whose jaws open and
smite together at each striking, as if to cry with the
brazen head of Friar Bacon,
" Time was, Time is, Time is past."
The East India Company once presented to the Em
peror of China two clocks in the form of chariots, their
golden cases studded with diamonds, rubies, and pearls.
Upon each sat a lady with a bird upon her finger. By
a secret motion its wings fiuttered, and the chariot
moved in any direction, in seeming obedience to an
automaton boy pushing it from behind.
But notwithstanding all these ingenious devices of
machinery, the clocks themselves were often but un
trustworthy time-keepers. They were very imper
fectly regulated by a fan-fly, which, through the resist
ance of the air, made their motion steadier and slower.
But not long after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth,
GalUeo, while noticing the -vibrations of a hanging
lamp, discovered the great principle of the pendulum
— ^that when a suspended body is swinging, any in
crease or decrease of its speed will not change the
number of vibrations it makes in a given time, but
only the length of the arc it describes. The pendulum
was soon applied to the clock, and greatly increased
its accuracy. But the proverb, " As untrustworthy as
a town clock," still continues in vogue; and there is a
-witty saying in Peterborough, England, that if the
clock of the Cathedral and that of the Parish Church
ever strike simultaneously, there wiU be a death in the
minster yard.
To authors, clocks have been good for instruction,
for admonition, and for reproof All literature is full

236 THE STORY OF CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
of proverbs, witticisms, and allusions in poetry and
prose, for which the clock has furnished material.
Numbers of romantic stories are based on some eccen
tricities recounted of them. The clock which has
saved somebody by striking thirteen at the quiet hour
of midnight, has long been part of the stock in trade
of the sensation novelist. Perhaps its foundation was
a story which claims to be a historical fact, that in the
time of William IH., a sentinel of the palace was con
demned to death for sleeping on duty. The soldier
insisted that at midnight — the hour of his alleged
dereliction — he heard the enormous clock of St. Paul's
Cathedral (twenty-flve miles distant, as the bird flies)
strike thirteen. Investigation proving that-it did strike
thirteen on that night, the King pardoned him.
Until after the Revolution there were few clocks of
any kind in this country. Occasionally one might see
in parlor or hall the old-fashioned Dutch clock, stuck
up against the wall like a swallow's nest, with weights
and pendulum hanging exposed below. But, for the
most part, sun-dials and hour-glasses sufficed for those '
days. Why is it that the more we multiply invention^
for sa-ving time and labor, the more we are pressed for
minutes, and the harder we have to work ?
Successor to the Dutch time-piece came "the var
nished clock that clicked behind the door." Who has
forgotten its monotonous " click-clack," or its quaint,
upright case, taller than a man ? What true Yankee
boy ever failed, sooner or later, to take it to pieces, and
see how it was made ? Ah ! the kitchen bellows cut
open to learn what was inside, was very disappointing,
but the old family clock, surreptitiously dissected, was
its own exceeding great reward.

CONNECTICUT CLOCKS, 237
By 1790, Connecticut was making a few wooden
clocks, which cost the purchasers from $18 to $60 each.
Three or four were a stock in trade for the dealer. Eli
Terry was the pioneer in the manufacture. At flrst he
made the wheels by hand, with square and compass,
saw and jack-knife. When he introduced water-power
his neighbors thought him mad. Who in the world
would ever buy so many clocks ? • He used to go on
horseback, peddling them through "the new country "
(just west of the Hudson) at $25 each, often taking his
pay in salt pork or other barter. Now, Connecticut
clocks tell the time at Jerusalem, at Calcutta, at Pekin,
and at Irkoutsk, At the factories, a fair little clock,
neatly cased, can be afforded for eighty cents gold!
Behold the fruits of Yankee inventiveness !
Now, our town clocks and chronometers are regu
lated from the observatories nearest. But by and by
the electrical clock will do away with that. One at
some central point will serve for a city as large as New
York. Wires connecting with dials on all the church
towers, and indeed -with all the dwellings, may regu
late the hands of every clock in the metropolis to per
fect uniformity. When the telegraph nerves run into
every house we shaU all get the time of day from a com
mon source, as we do gas and water. And as the cul
mination of our tiriie-keeping, we must have a national
clock which will strike the hours -with its electrical bell
simultaneously in New York and San Francisco. To
day, in England, Greenwich Observatory sends the
time by telegraph, at one P. M. daily, to every point
of the British Islands, But that system would never do
for us.
The greatest variation between any two points in

238 THE STORY OF CLOCKS AND WATCHES,
England is only twenty minutes; but the difference
between Bangor and San Francisco is three hours and
a half Some new GalUeo must invent for us a na
tional system of time-keeping.
The WATCH is a lineal descendant of the clock, and
like most sons a trifle more flippant and pretentious
than its honest father. Perhaps with cause, for it is a
wonder of wonders, a pocket planetary system. It was
born in Nuremburg four hundred years ago. Henry
VIII., of wife-killing memory, carried one. So did his
cotemporary, Charles V., who
"Cast crowns for rosaries away.
An empire for a cell."
These first watches, as large as dessert plates, -with
weights and pulleys, were only clocks in miniature, and
were at first known simply as " pocket clocks." The
first use I can find of the modern name " watch " in
history, is in a chronicle of 1542, which records that
Edward VI. had " onne larum or watch of iron, the
case being likewise of iron-gilt, with two plumettes of
lead." Of course they were very rude and imperfect.
They had only one hand, and required winding twice
a day. The dials were of sUver or brass; the cases
had no crystals, but opened at back or front, and were
four or five inches in diameter, A plain watch cost
the equivalent of $1,500 in our currency. And after
one was ordered it took a year to make it. It is evi
dent that at such a cost they must have been worn
by the aristocratic few. The poems of Elizabeth's age,
those best abstracts and chronicles of the manners and
customs of their times, mention them rarely. Shake
speare speaks of clocks over forty times, dials eleven

CURIOUS OLD WATCHES. 239
times, of watches only three or four. Says Malvolio,
in Twelfth Night :
" I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch or play with some
rich jewel."
As with clock and clepsydra, there were in its early
days, many ingenious and odd devices and adornments
for this new plaything of the old Mower, whose scythe
never is dull, and whose barns never are full. Watches
were set in brooches, finger-rings and shirt studs.
They were oval, octangular, and cruciform, in the
shape of pears, melons, tulips, and even of coffins.
Mary, Queen of Scots, had one in shape of a skull,
which, like the skeleton at the feast, may have served
her as a ghostly reminder of her mortality. It is very
curious, and is preserved in Edinburgh to this day.
Charles V. of Germany, was a great watch-fancier.
There is a pretty story that he tried long and patiently
to induce all his watches to accord, but finally, giving
up in despair, exclaimed :
"What an egregious fool I must have been to squan
der so much blood and treasure in an absurd attempt
to make all men think alike, when I can not even
make a few watches keep time together ! "
There are many curious, old watches in England, and
on the continent. Few of American manufacture are
over fifty years old, but there are some collections of
foreign watches in this country which are of no mean
value. A gentleman of Boston has upwards of two
hundred, much the largest and rarest collection on our
continent. Among these is an English verge over two
centuries old, with three cases, the outside case of
shell, and the two inner ones of silver, and the barrel
and fusee connected by the strip of catgut in use be-

240 THE STORY OP CLOCKS AND WATCHES,
fore the introduction of the chain. One would like to
see a photograph of the man it was made for, knee-
breeches, horse-hair wig, and all. It keeps excellent
time, not varying two minutes a week. Its little heart
has throbbed on whUe six generations of owners have
wound it, and carried it, and left it at the jewelers for
cleaning — have been born by it, and lived by it, and
died by it.
Another of the treasures of this collection, which
the owner carries in his pocket, is a French gold
watch, about 125 years old, quite thin, but two and
three-eighths inches in diameter. The dial, of blue
enamel, with twelve pearls set at the hours, is open
Uke a wheel,' and one can look in, as between the
spokes, and see the complicated works. It strikes au
tomatically on the full hours, repeats automaticaUy at
each quarter, and plays a lively little air at every half
hour. It has four main-springs, one for the movement,
one for the striking, one for the repeating, and one for ^
the music. It is so nicely made that after aU these
years, the works, scrutinized by a microscope, look as
if they had run only a few months.
The first great improvement in watches, the substi
tution of the spring for weights, was made about 1550.
The earliest springs were not coiled, but only straight
pieces of steel. The watch ran with these a hundred
years longer, but very irregularly. It usually required
winding twice a day, and was less accurate, even, than
the rudely made clocks of its period.
The first great step towards regular time was the in
troduction of the balance-spring. The balance is the
pendulum of a watch. It gets its impulse from the
scape-wheel, first in one direction, then in the other.

INTRODUCTION OP THE HAIR-SPRING. 241
Left to itself, it would swing one way till the opposite
impulse stopped it short, and sent it flying back like a
ball from a bat, causing great friction, and consequent
wearing. But the hair-spring slowly coUing with one
movement of the balance, and then uncoiling with
the other, makes its motion elastic, like that of a boy
Jumping upon a spring-board. Moving the regulator
one way makes the hair-spring shorter, and there
fore stiffer, and so retards the watch ; moving it the
other way lengthens the hair-spring and makes the
watch go faster. The extreme variation which the
regulator can produce is eight minutes per day. The
main-spring is the locomotive, the wheels are the train,
and the balance and hair-spring the brakes. When
the main-spring is first wound up, its force is much
greater than when it is nearly run down. The old
barrel and fusee watch equalized this by making the
fiisee spiral. When the main-spring was fully coiled
and puUed hardest, it acted upon the small end of the
fusee, where more power was required. As the spring
grew weaker the chain descended to where the fusee
was larger, and required less force to turn it.
The English yet retain the spiral fu§ee, on their na
tional theory that whatever is old ought to continue. The
American watch dispenses with the fusee altogether,
perhaps on the national theory that whatever is old
ought to be abolished. Its main-spring instead commu
nicates motion directly to the train, and its nice adjust
ment of hair-spring and balance-spring insures equal
time through the twenty-four hours. When a watch
is first wound up the balance may make one revolu
tion and a half at each impulse from the scape-wheel,
and when it is nearly run down, only half a revolution.
16

242 THE STORY OF CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
But the former wiU consume as much time as the latter,
and so the watch goes uniformly through the twenty-
four hours.
But the most difficult puzzle which inventors had yet
to solve, was how to make a watch run uniformly in
winter and in summer ; to keep the same time in a hot
temperature as in a cold one. A steel rod may be fitted
into a hollow steel cylinder so perfectly that it will not
drop out of its own weight, and yet can be turned or
pulled out by the thumb and finger, moving -with the
softness of velvet rolling on velvet. Hold the same rod
in the shut hand for five minutes, and the warmth of
the flesh will expand it so that one can not drive it in
with a sledge-hammer. Then put it in a refrigerator,
and it will contract till it rattles in the cylinder. If
of brass, temperature -will affect it still more. Winter
will so contract the balance-wheel of a. watch that it
may gain two minutes in a day ; or a watch may be
thrown two minutes out of time by a few hours' sleigh-
^ding, or by being left hanging all night against a cold
wall. Changing temperature is the deadly foe of uni
form time-keeping.
In 1767 John Harrison was awarded a premium of
£20,000 under an offer of the British Parliament —
which had been standing fifty-three years — for any in
vention which should so far overcome this difficulty as
to enable shipmasters at sea to determine longitude,
within thirty miles of accuracy. He gained it by ap
plying to ships' chronometers the principle of the com
pensation-balance, now used in all fine watches. It is
simply a balance-wheel, with outer rim, or tire of brass,
and inner rim and cross-arm of steel. They are so ar
ranged that the cold, which would contract steel alone

THE COMPENSATION-BALANCE. 243
and make the circumference of the wheel less, equal
izes that by contracting the brass stUl more, the brass
being so confined that its contraction enlarges the
wheeh Under the infiuence of heat the steel's expan
sion would enlarge the wheel, but then the contraction
of the brass contracts it. When these two influences
are so nicely adjusted that the one exactly counterbal
ances the other, the watch will keep equal time whether
in Alaska or Havana. And learning to adjust them is
one of the most wonderful of human achievements —
the whole solution of the mystery of perfect watch
making. Before the great era in watch-manufacture which in
troduced the compensation-balance, the curious adorn
ments and automatic embeUishments of clocks and
watches made them interesting chiefly, as clever works
of art. But modern ingenuity is utilitarian. Men
began to carry watches to regulate business, and as
aids to punctuality in practical affairs, rather than as
ornaments. So, musical repeaters and fanciful shapes
went out of fashion, and the object of the modern watch
is to be convenient and trustworthy. All the improve
ments in the shapes or casing of the watch have been
to this end. The hunting-case was first introduced in
English fox-hunting, after pitching over fences and un
der falling horses had long proved destructive to crys
tals. Thirty years ago they constituted half of all the
watches made ; now they are three-fourths. Railway
engineers prefer the open face^ as it shows the time
more quickly and readUy. Physicians, also, should
always use the open face, to spare the patient the shock
which is often caused by the click of an opening and
shutting case.

244 THE STORY OF CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
Stem-winding watches are growing steadily in favor,
and wiU soon displace aU others, as they require no
key, admit little dirt, and can be wound in the dark.
Napoleon had a watch which was kept wound by the
motion of his body in walking. There is a new Ameri
can watch which winds by opening its hunting-case,
and will keep wound up if the owner looks to see the
time as often as four times in every twenty-four hours.
Besides these there is the "Diplomatic Watch,"
which will serve equally well for a blind owner. These
are noiseless, with raised figures on the dial, and strong
iron hands ; so that by carelessly thrusting a thumb or
finger into the most convenient pocket, the owner of
one can learn the hour, without outraging the etiquette
of diplomatic society which forbids him to take out his
watch. The great watch-making point of the world is Geneva,
perched above the arrowy Rhone and the blue lake,
and looking up at the ghostly figure of Mont Blanc ;
Geneva, where John Calvin defied Rome and burned
Servetus ; where Jean Jaques Rousseau, son of a watch
maker, was born, and where his works were finally
burned by the public hangman, as he would have been,
too, if the Council had caught him. Geneva produces
100,000 watches annually, and sells 500,000 more, made
in the interior canton of Neufchatel. Their best cus
tomers have always been found in the United States,
and untU a few years ago, they exported more watches
annually to this country than to any other in the world.
The English were their only rivals in our markets.
But, although the English made good honest watches,
in soUd cases, irreproachable as time-keepers, they could
not compete with Switzerland, where women and chil-

FIRST AMERICAN WATCHES. 245
dren took part in the manufacture, and where the
prices of labor and living were so low, that they could
undersell all others.
During the war of 1812, while our foreign trade was
stopped, a few excellent watches were made at Wor
cester and Hartford. No others were ever manufac
tured in America, until within the last dozen years.
We could not compete with the low prices of European
labor. So we kept on importing our watches, some
times to the amount of $5,000,000 a year.
Since that time, until very lately, the American jew
eler who manufactured watches has imported wheels,
balances, and other material ready made from Switzer
land, fitted the various parts together by hand, put his
stamp upon them, and called that watch-making. Its
art and mystery was acquired in an apprenticeship of
from three to five years. In Switzerland, division of
labor had been introduced long before. Each work
man performed some one process of shaping, cutting,
or finishing parts of the watch in his own little shop at
home, and returned the parts to the manufacturer, as
boot-making is done in New England. And for many
processes, labor-sa-ving machines, run by foot-lathes, had
come to be used.
But the germs of a revolution had long been planted.
A hundred years ago, in Westboro, Massachusetts, a
boy was born, to modify the industry, commerce, and
politics of his country more than any other American
who has yet lived. Eli Whitney, son of a poor farmer
and mechanic, like the traditional Yankee, could make
anything he ever saw, with a pocket-knife and a post-
axe. Given these two implements, he constructed all
other needed tools as fast as he required them. At

246 THE STORY OP CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
fifteen he made wrought-iron naUs (scarce and high
during the Revolution) ; then the pins with which our
grandmothers fastened their bonnets. He worked his
way through Yale, repairing its philosophical apparatus
which professors believed could not be mended on this
side of the Atlantic ; found his habitual recreation in
working with carpenter's tools ; graduated at twenty-
seven, and soon after, while in Georgia, studying law,
invented the cotton-gin. That made cotton one of our
great staples ; rendered slave labor profitable ; and in
two generations so changed the industry and sentiment
of the South as to bring on the great Rebellion.
The inventor's experience — it is the old, sad story !
If a fiying-machine were to start from the Central Park
to-morrow and make a successful trip to the moon, a
score of men would instantly claim, with some show
of proof, that they constructed the same vehicle ten
years ago. Eli Whitney had the inevitable, long, hard
struggle. Courts refused to protect him against in
fringements ; States, growing rich from his ingenious
contrivance, treated him with niggardliness and bad
faith. His partner died; his manufactory burned
down ; and in fifteen years his patent expired, to leave
him a poorer man for having originated the greatest
invention since the steam-engine.
But the Westboro boy was born to success. He
foresaw this failure ; and years before, he had found
another channel. In 1798, he contracted to supply
the Government, from his new manufactory near New
Haven, with ten thousand muskets in two years. The
undertaking was stupendous; and eight years passed
before the last gun was delivered. But then he had
overcome all difficulties. He fiUed a new contract for

ELI WHITNEY. 247
thirty thousand more, and the man who had starved
on the cotton-gin, which was to render the South pow
erful and defiant, grew rich on the musket, by which the
same South was to be subdued. It was a curious pros-.
pective revenge.
The great achievement of Eli Whitney was the in
auguration of a new method. He first employed each
workman, not to make a gun, but to perform by ma
chinery one operation upon some one part of the gun.
With untiring zeal, year after year, he invented and
perfected the needful machines. He first made 10,000
muskets exactly alike, so that a given screw, or spring,
or pivot, from any one of them would fit any other
equally well. Dividing and systematizing labor ; ma
chinery for every process ; absolute uniformity in each
detail — this was the revolutionary idea which pioneer
EU Whitney pat in practice. It has proved the char
acteristic, distinctive American principle in manufac
tures. We apply it to everything; comparatively,
foreigners apply it to nothing.
The inventor of the ingenious automaton chess
player exhibited it to an Englishman, and he pro
nounced it "Wonderful!" to a German, and he ex
claimed "Impossible ! " to a Frenchman, and he cried
"Superbe! Magnifique!" theu to a Yankee, and he
asked: "What'U you bet I can't make one like it?"
That was not the representative Yankee. Imitative
ness is not genius. Japanese and Chinamen can
copy any machine whatever. And are we not of more
value than many PigtaUs? The genuine American
would wager, not that he could make one like it, but
that he could make a miUion. By the application of
Whitney's idea, the creation of machines, and perfect

248 THE STORY OP CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
uniformity of parts, could he reproduce and multiply
it indefinitely. Thus we make our steam-engine, which doubles our
laboring population; our great printing-press, upon
which even The London Times (of course it " can not
understand the Americans") is worked; our little sew
ing-machine; our piano, which, after all, does take
premiums in Paris ; our reapers, which cut the world's
wheat ; our quartz mills, which supply the world's gold
and silver.
This principle, long applied to the clock, had driven
out foreign competition. The watch, so minute and so
delicate, seemed to offer insuperable obstacles. But
fifteen years ago, two sanguine, plucky Bostonians,
who made watches by hand, originated a project for
making them by machinery. Infusing their own zeal
into neighbors, they formed a stock company, obtained
$100,000 in subscriptions, and, in 1854, the daring en
terprise practically began. It was up-hill work ; little
capital ; no experience ; no protection ; everything to
learn ; every slave of steel and iron to be created and
fashioned before it could do their bidding. They toiled
on till 1857, and failed; their establishment was sold
under the hammer. But they had solved the problem;
they were making watches by machinery.
From that beginning have sprung aU our watch fac
tories, now situated, respectively, in Elgin, 111, Newark
and Marion, N. J., and Waltham, Roxbury, and Spring
field, Mass. A seventh, which was in Melrose, Mass., is
now being removed to S-witzerland, with the aid of S-wiss
capitalists, who welcome American machinery as the
only means of retaining their national preeminence in
this art. The factory is to be established a hundred miles

AMERICAN INGENUITY. 249
from the present watch-making canton^, that the hos
tility of Swiss workmen to labor-saving machines may
not prove embarrassing. The Company take Ameri
can artisans to start with. At present, watch-makers
in Switzerland only receive from two and a half to ten
francs per day, and in some cantons one and a half
francs a day will support a family. Whenever the
Company can avaU themselves of this cheap labor, they
beUeve that they can pay the duty and undersell
American factories in American markets. Our import
duty on watches is twenty-five per cent.; on parts of
watches twenty per cent. The keen Swiss manufac
turers take twenty finished watches to pieces, and im
port them in parts, thus over-reaching our astute tariff-
makers, and saving the five per cent.
Foreign watches are made by hand, no two exactly
alike; each an individual; each subject to the nerves,
caprice, idiosyncrasies of the maker. But our manu
facturers began by making a watch like a steam-en
gine^ — solely by machinery, and with exact uniformity
of parts. They have advanced steadily, learning, im
proving, perfecting, year by year. Their idea was
purely American; their machines have all been inven
ted, made, and run by Americans. All have originated
with their own employes, just as the most ingenious
improvements in California and Idaho quartz-mills,
spring from the working mechanics and miners. In
deed, some metaphysical manufacturer declares that
the reason why we can make watches by machinery
while no other nation can, lies in the average native in
genuity of the American mind.
No longer are manufactories the filthy prisons of
twenty years ago. Our watch manufactories, above all

250 THE STORY OP CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
others, seem tq remove that curse from labor, which
vile, stifling atmospheres and grimy surroundings had
thrown over it. Well lighted and well ventUated, the
pleasant rooms are parlors rather than prisons. Its
great work-palaces are rarely built in large cities, but
in some suburban village, among green fields, not too
remote from a great market.
In place of the little foot-lathes and hand-power ma
chinery of the Swiss artisan, the American mechanic has
introduced great engines worked by steam. Steam is
mighty and must prevail ; but alas, that in abolishing the
use of human muscle, it has abolished also the songs of
labor ! What ballad now can carry with it the history ?
" I never learned it ; the spinners and the weavers
did sing it at their wheels."
True labor songs lend their music to aid muscle or to
cheer it ; but when some great, silent monster of steel
does the work the human throat is dumb. Or who
could sing to a buzzing, whizzing, remorseless little
machine, ten thousand times too swift to keep time to ?
Moral : Every great manufactory should have its great
organ of as many horse-power as its steam-engine.
In our watch factories, one-third of the laborers are
women. They do the work requiring lightness of
touch, quickness, patience. In these qualities they
excel the men. In accuracy and precision they equal
them. In ingenuity they fall below. When, out of
routine, one is " posed " by some new mechanical ob
stacle, her tendency is, not to overcome it by herseff,
but to take the refractory bit of steel or brass, or jewel,
to the bench of her nearest masculine neighbor, and ask
his help.
The nice minuteness of the machines is incredible.

SAW-MILLS FOR JEWELS. 251
It is the crowning miracle of modern mechanism. The
little scales in our national mints will weigh l-5,000th
part of an ounce of gold ; but these automaton watch
makers are greater marvels. Here are instruments
cutting threads, invisible to the naked eye, in screws of
which three hundred thousand weigh only a pound !
Here are exquisite sapphire knives, cutting metallic
shavings, of which five thousand are required to make
one inch in thickness ! Here are microscopic diamond
drills, boring into jewels, holes like a needle point!
Here are inventions for measuring as well — machines
which determine the 'l-10,000th part of an inch, in
pivot or jewel-hole, as easily and unerringly as the
carpenter's riUe measures one foot on a stick of timber !
The jeweling department is the most wonderful of
all. The best watch has fifteen jewels. Garnet, aqua
marina, and ruby are chiefiy used. They come from
Persia, famous for rubies, jasper and chalcedony these
many thousand years. But since the development of
California we no longer despoil the gorgeous East of
her gold; and before many years our barbaric pearl,
too, will come from the Rocky Mountains, where many
a, settler's wife can pick up a tumbler-full of garnets
within a dozen yards of her door.
First, these precious stones are cut into thin plates.
Here are miniature saw-mUls, which convert logs of
ruby and garnet into planks exactly as the giant saw-
miUs of Puget Sound make huge pines and redwoods
into boards. This atom of a circular saw, no larger
than a pearl shirt-button, though less terrible, is just as
relentless as the giant circular saw of our great lumber
regions, eight feet in diameter, which has brought in
stant and horrible death to many a heedless workman

252 THE STORY OF CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
venturing within reach of its two-inch teeth. These
tiny cutters, like most Uttle people, are very exact.
They know just where to stop. They are wise saws
and modern instances.
The jewel planks are sawed again, into long, square,
slender joists, which are afterward broken into cubes.
One of these cubes is placed in a turning lathe, the
workman presses the whirling stone with a diamond
chisel, when, presto ! it is smoothly turned out, exactly
as a hub or spoke is turned in a wagon factory. Then
a revolving microscopic drill bores the hole into it.
This is polished by a steel wire charged with diamond
dust, which revolves one way while the jewel whirls
the other. The two combined make 15,000 revolu
tions a minute ! Job mourned that his days were swift
as a weaver's shuttle, but if they were s-wift as this
watch-maker's jewel, his life must have been very fast
indeed. After the jewel is set, its hole is measured by a regis
ter so minute that it will give the diameter of any hair
of your head, or even the infinitesimal thread of a
spider-web, if it is not less than the one-twenty-five-
hundredth of an inch ! Here are delicate sapphire
knives, used for cutting brass because they leave a
polished surface. Here are pinions of axles barely
visible to the naked eye, which the workman only
handles with pincers and examines through a magnify
ing glass. They are* made of wire, first fed to a hun
gry little wolf with muscles of iron and teeth of steel
which ravenously bites them off at proper lengths, and
then turned in ridiculously tiny lathes. All the ma
chines seem to do their work with human intelligence
— when one process is completed suddenly shifting to

WORK FOR LILIPUTIANS. 253
another quite opposite in nature. Some are actually
startling, as if . a new Frankenstein had produced a
sentient being whom he could neither escape nor
control. Indeed, the watch factory is bewildering. It is like
an extravagant dream. The watch has a hundred
parts. Its manufacture involves a thousand processes.
Absolute exactness is indispensable. "The Emperor
of Liliput," says Gulliver, with a fine touch of humor,
"is taller by the breadth of my nail than any of his
court, which is enough to strike an awe. into the be
holder." In one of these minute wheels or pinions a
variation of the hundredth part of a nail's breadth
will " strike an awe " into the owner, if not in the
beholder. Putting the watch together and enameling and
painting the dial are the only work done by hand.
Even the fine figures and second lines are painted on
by hand with a tiny brush. These delicate traceries
seem to be work for a Liliputian, or the dainty fingers
of Queen Mab herself,
" In shape no bigger than an agate stone,
On the forefinger of an alderman."
but they are executed by brawny hands, overlooked by
bearded faces.
Adjusting to temperature (performed only upon those
which have the compensation-balance) is done in a
quiet little room, where the adjuster keeps the Equa
tor and the North Pole always on hand and ready for
use in large or small quantities. First he runs the
watch eight hours in a little box heated by a spirits
lamp to 110 degrees Fahr, Then he runs it eight hours

254 THE STORY OF CLOCKS AND WATCHES,
in another compartment, a refrigerator, where the tem
perature is nearly at zero. It must keep time exactly
alike under these two conditions. If he finds any vari
ation he gives one of the gold screws in the rim of the
balance a turn in or out to make the balance swing
lighter or heavier. One turn will change the speed
three or four seconds an hour. Or he may shift the
screw to a different hole to make the balance s-wing
perfectly level; or take it out altogether, and substitute
another screw, which he selects by weighing it in a pair
of tiny scales of his own contriving. When we ask
him to show us the minutest weight they -will indicate,
he places a bit of whisker upon one end, and adjusts the
weight. The speck of hair weighs — not to put too
fine a point upon it — a trifle over the l-57,000,000th
of a pound Troy. The Inspector is the highest tri
bunal of the factory, the court of absolute and final
jurisdiction. Let him enjoy the court's privUege of
hair-splitting to his heart's content. If it ever be
comes desirable to count the hairs upon human heads,
or weigh, grain by grain, the sands of the shore; or
measure, one by one, the finest animalculae and record
the diameter of each, I fancy machines for the purpose
could be made here to order.
There are now almost every variety of watches
made in the United States by machinery, from the great
solid hunting-case to the most exquisite and dainty lit
tle ornament worn by a lady. "Ornament," because,
did anybody ever know a lady's watch to be right? It
is always too fast, or too slow; or the key was lost last
week; or that bungling jeweler spoUed it in repairing.
It has not pleased Heaven to endow lovely woman -with
genius for keeping a watch in order.

SUPERIORITY OP THE AMERICAN WATCH. 255
Well, we have made our watch by machinery. It is
ready for the pocket, and it remains to be seen if it
has no advantages over its foreign rival.
Hand-work implies variety. Machinery implies uni
formity. It is mathematical, precise, like the opera
tions of Nature. In a bushel of these most delicate
pmions or wheels, for any given size of the machine-
made watch, each is exactly like aU the rest. That is
the theory. It proves strictly true with this qualifica
tion : In polishing an infinitesimal pivot, a tool may
be slightly worn, or other cause imperceptible to the
senses, may cause a microscopic variation in the cun
ning mechanism which your waistcoat pocket is to carry
— a variation very shadowy, but still enough to make
you just too late for the Washington train, or for pay
ing your note at the Eighty-se-venth National Bank.
Therefore, each pivot is not only carefully fitted and
adjusted in its place, but accurately measured by these
miraculous machines, and a record made of its dimen
sions. So, when, in any part of the world, a pinion or
jewel breaks, by sending the number of your watch to
the manufacturers you receive through return mail a
new wheel to replace the old, with absolute certainty
that it will fit. And so with any piece.
An American -watch, then, has some undeniable ad
vantages among our own people. It is American, from
Alpha to Omega. It is cheaper at first cost than for
eign competitors. It is simpler ; it contains less than
half as many pieces, and every new piece involves a
new liability to break. It is easier of repair. Beside,
the higher grades are warranted, perpetually, against
all mishaps arising from any original defect or weak
ness. And it bids fair to be more durable.

256 THE STORY OF CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
But how does it keep time? That, after all, is the
only question. Its success must be the best answer.
The character of a watch is self-revealing. This, on its
intrinsic merits, had to fight old prejudice, trade-com
binations, established reputations. In ten years it has
practically driven out of our markets the JEnghsh
watch, which was our staple importation, and in most
common use among laboring men, and largely taken
the place of other less costly foreign watches. After
careful testing it has been adopted as the standard on
leading railways where correct time is an absolute ne
cessity. Tbe demand for it has rapidly increased.
This tells the story. The laws of demand and sup
ply are unfailing registers. Other watch factories are
beginning to spring up east and west. Their history
marks the origin and growth of an interesting and im"-
portant branch of our national manufactures. It not
only proves that Americans alone can make watches by
machinery; but watches which are cheaper, simpler,
more durable, and keep better time, than the same
foreign grades. It is American skilled industry, work
ing by machinery and well paid, steadily displacing
European skilled industry, working by hand, and ill
paid. The London Rlustrated News insists that watches can
not be made successfully by machinery. The best an
swer to that theory lies in the fact that a hundred thou
sand watches are made annually in the United States,
simply to supply the demand which their superiority
and cheapness have created. They are rapidly driving
all grades of foreign watches from our markets. At
the beginning of this century there were few watches
or clocks in America, and those were imported. Now

YANKEE MACHINERY VS, EUROPEAN HAND-LABOR, 257
we supply the whole world with clocks, even to the
Islands of the Sea, and the farthest Indies, Ultimately
we shaU supply it with watches. In the long run, Eu
ropean hand-labor has no sort of chance against Yan
kee machinery, directed by Yankee brains.

^^— .ayriEv

OLD-FASHIOITED CLOCK.

17

Througli to the Pacific.

I.
FEOM NEW TOEK TO CHIOAGO.
^ALLOA!" exclaimed a friend as he ran against
me the other evening at the Chambers Street
Ferry: "Where are you going so fast?"
" Out West."
"How far?"
"To San Francisco."
"Well, good-bye. Give my love to Fred and Evans;
and when you get back come around and dine with me
and we'U talk over the trip." All in the same tone as
if "the trip" had been to PhUadelphia or Boston; for
he accepts the new situation with genuine American
readiness, and already regards San Francisco as a sub
urb of New York. Meanwhile, I -wiU wager that
Evans and C  , true blue Califbrnians, already look
upon New York as a lesser San Francisco.
Through Bergen Tunnel, and past Jersey villas and
villages I study The Evening Gossip and The Evening
Bed-Blanket till they excite sufficient drowsiness, and
then go to bed in the Erie sleeping-car. It is broad,
roomy, and well-ventilated, as sleeping-cars ought to

OUR PASSENGERS. 259
be; but its beds are old, uneven, and -half exposed, as
beds ought not to be. It was up to the times five
years ago; but we must do better than this, Messrs.
Gould & Fisk, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It
runs evenly, however, upon a delightfully smooth
track. I wake at sunrise, three hundred mUes from
New York, among the summits of one of our three
great mountain ranges — summits which now only skirt
our eastern border, but which were so central a hun
dred years ago that it was proposed to name the whole
Continent AUeghania.
Our coach has the regular complement of characters.
The man who blundered into the wrong car and has to
leave it; the man who left his shawl in the ticket-
office, and has to telegraph back for it ; the man who
wants an extra blanket for his bed and can't get it;
the baby that cries; the -wife who declares that she has
not slept a wink, and -wUl never enter a sleeping-car
again as long as she Uves; the "lone woman," who,
with her back turned, keeps the conductor waiting for
five minutes whUe she fishes out her ticket from Some
where (where do women keep their porte-monnaies,
and why don't they carry them in their pockets like
other people?); the old stager, with his own blanket,
slippers, soap, towels, brushes, note-paper, pencils, paid
envelopes ready addressed to his wife at home, and
vial of laudanum and fiask of whisky for emergencies ;
and the satirist who solemnly assures the conductor
that the Company •will break in six months if it runs
such costiy sleeping-cars, and who implores the eating-
house keeper to explain how he can afford such a
breakfast for a dollar.
The breakfast bolted at Hornellsville, and our train

260 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
di-vided, the head glides off one way and the taU an
other, as bad boys say snakes will do when they are
cut in two. The head disappears Dunkirk-ward ; the
taU whisks us toward Buffalo. All around us are cold
hills, whose bold sweeps remind one a little of the
Rocky Mountains ; miles of mountain side and crest,
with great expanses of dark pine and spruce, broken
here by a few hundred acres blackened and charred by
fire — ^mottled there with the cheerier hues of poplar
and maple; streaked do-wnward with narrow pave
ments of peeled logs lying lengthwise — ways upon
which little streams of water are turned, and huge tree
trunks, stripped of bark, come shooting down Uke light
ning to gray saw-mills and shining ponds in, the valleys ;
sloping cleared fields with stumps waist high, and white
trunks, some erect and ghostly, others prone and shat
tered, memorial stones and bleaching bones of old
battles between man and nature ; other fields with the
stumps extracted, and lying roots upward, like Titanic
teeth, or gathered into fences, where they seem assem
bled in mass meetings, or drawn up in line of battle
for a last charge ; herds of sheep, dingy and shaggy,
and scattering horses and cattle, all browsing on the
cold hill-sides ; farm-houses of unpainted clapboards, or
of bold, staring white, with here and there an old log
cabin; villages, too, of staring white, looking as cold
and bare as the tombstones on the hill-side graves that
overlook them ; farmers just beginning to plow ; apple
and cherry blossoms in the orchards, violets and hep-
aticas in the woods, yellow cowslips in the meadows and
dandelions in the pastures, all peeping out timidly to
inquire into the rumor whispered to them by the winds
that Spring is cUmbing toward their mountain retreat.

THE GENESEE FALLS AT PORTAGE. 261
At Portage we cross the highest wooden bridge on
the Continent, and look down from the car-window
three hundred feet, to see the Genesee take a leap of
seventy feet — one glittering sheet of snow, and dia-
inond, and topaz. A mile further down it leaps again,
a hundred and ten feet, and yet a mile further, ninety
feet. The two lower cascades are not seen from the-
train, but only hinted at by the yawning chasm and
rock walls of the winding river. If the Portage Falls
were in Yosemite Valley, or among the Alps, instead
of twelve hours from the metropolis, they would be
visited, and painted, and photographed, and written of,
a great deal more. ^
At Buffalo — the only change between New York and
Chicago — we take a sleeping-car of the Lake Shore
and Southern Michigan, convenient, smooth-running,
and tastefully finished in black walnut. Leaving the
station by the same end at which I entered it, turns
me around hopelessly; thenceforth, reason as I may,
I can not throw off the feeling that we are going
wrong, that New York is before and not behind us.
Even the suggestion of Euclid street, Cleveland, of
which we get a glimpse from the window, is not mathe
matical enough to correct my bewildered senses, un
til the spires of- Chicago suddenly twist them around
right again.
After a second night among the smooth fields, noble
forests, broad apple orchards and generous farm-houses
of the lake shore, morning finds us on the level, grassy,
Umitless prairies. Suddenly another parallel train ap
pears on the horizon, and comes nearer and nearer to
us. How like a bird it skims the prairie ! How grace
ful the ribbon of light smoke that unwinds and streams

262 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
above it! How perfectly in the morning sunlight, a
sheet of clear water between us mirrors every face at
the windows, every roUing wheel under the coaches,
every shining rod of the locomotive ! The shadow
train underneath, all wrong side up, looks more real
than the actual one above.
Thirty-nine hours out, we reach Chicago. Not, how
ever, until our train has grown very long, and every
car is crowded : for we are on the high tide of the Spring
travel. Into our omnibus from the station to the hotel,
twenty-three hopeless mortals are packed. There are
several emigrant families — the worn parents all with
their flocks of serious, earnest-eyed little girls , and
plump, careless, brown-faced boj'^s, for the wife of the
period who comes West, even from Massachusetts, has
increased, and multiplied, and replenished the earth.
"I don't like this country so much myself," said an
old Eastern friend to me to-day, " but I love to live in
it because it is full of such splendid opportunities for
my boys and girls."
Let them come ; the prairies are broad and there is
room enough.
The great halls and parlors of this crowded hotel are
a Continental exchange. Here are trunks and valises
piled up like cord-wood, and variously labeled " San
Francisco," "Salt Lake," "New York," and "Bangor."
Here, in the evening, every chair and sofa is flUed,
and arm in arm through the long passages, throngs of
men go and corne in our eager national way, smoking
and talking. Talking of all things under the heavens,
but every man of them, sooner or later, touching upon
the theme of the hour.
" Going through, eh ? I wish I was going with you."

SKETCH OF THOMAS C, DURANT, 263
" Only five days and a half, they say, to San Fran
cisco." "Big thing, isn't it?"
"What sort of a road is it, anyhow?"
"Do you think it's going to pay?"
"Why, General Dodge tells me that the Omaha office
alone took $8,000 from passengers yesterday."
" How do you suppose it'll affect Chicago ? " Such
are the fragments one hears, hour after hour.
Meanwhile, one of the most marked, original charac
ters of all this throng is one of the quietest and least
noticeable. There he sits, chatting carelessly in low
tones, a rather tall man, in middle life, his hair and
whiskers beginning to show streaks of gray, and his
worn, mild, thoughtful face shaded by the limp brim of
a low-crowned brown hat. It is Thomas C. Durant,
manager and builder of the Union Pacific Railroad.
In the Central Pacific Company — covering the Califor
nia end of the line — three officers, Stanford, Crocker
and Huntington, have shared the responsibility and
work ; in the Union Pacific, Durant had energetic, per
severing associates, but he has been the motive power
— has borne the brunt of everything.
He was born among the Berkshire hills of Massachu
setts. He studied medicine and graduated at Albany,
and tried to content himself as a practicing physician ;
but with no other vent than feeling pulses and writing
prescriptions, his inborn, restless energy would have
left him no peace. He became the head of a heavy
iirm for transporting freight from New York to the
West. It often carried supplies for new railway com
panies, taking their securities in payment. Negotia
ting these bonds familiarized him -with the stock market.

264 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC,
Then he got to buUding roads himself, taking enormous
contracts, pushing forward the work and seUing the
bonds — making fast friends and bitter enemies — and
becoming widely known as a contractor and operator.
In the early doubtfiU years of the war, he went into
the Union Pacific Company. His first step was to spend
several months in inducing Congress to change the law,
and make the Government lien only a second mortgage
upon the road, that the Company might issue its own
bonds as a first mortgage. Even after this was done,
his Eastern associates lacked faith in the enterprise.
But his whole soul was thrown into it ; and he furnished
from his private ineans, a large portion of the first re
sources. He believed in the Nation, in the West, in a
Pacific Railway.
" The fact was," he explains when asked about it,
" I had built roads before over the prairies in advance
of settlements, and I knew how they bring population
and make business from the very outset."
It was hard study. Even after the money was raised,
labor could hardly be found. "The boys" were all in
the war. But men were gathered up, in Canada, in
New England, in Pennsylvania, and sent forward fifteen
hundred miles at the Company's expense. And the
number kept increasing till at one time 18,000 laborers
were employed.
After two or three hundred miles were finished, Du-
rant's associates began to see that there were great
profits, both in the construction and in the traffic.
Fierce struggles arose in the Company — regular WUder
ness battles, all of which he saw and part of which he
was. There were men who declared his recklessness -
and extravagance would ruin everything — that he was

THE UNION PACIFIC COMPANY. 265
unfit to manage a ward corporation — but I never heard
of one, who, after a confiict with him, disparaged his
ability. Things were upon a grand scale. Enormous excur
sions were sent out on a grand scale from the East,
over the line in palace cars, with a sumptuous regard-
. lessness of expense. The offices of the Company were
among the most elegant in New York. Brussels car
pets, and black walnut and marble counters in the
rooms of the managers, rare statuary and choice paint
ings surprised the eyes of visitors. Dr. Durant's horses
were the envy of Central Park, and his yacht was the
admiration of the New York Yacht Club. I have seen
him entertain a party of ladies and gentlemen upon it,
down the bay, through an entire forenoon, as if he had
not a care in the world beyond the comfort of his
guests; and at one o'clock say nonchalantly, "Well,
good-bye, I must go ashore ; I have a million of dol
lars to pay before three o'clock. Have your sail out,
and don't return till you get ready."
Meanwhile, he was working like a galley slave. Some
times he was hardly in bed for a week ; again he would
spend nights and Sundays upon the yacht for the quiet
and the cool air. Narcotics and stimulants were avoi-
(Jed that he might keep his brain clear. He plunged
into the controversies in the Company with character
istic energy; and I fancy there were times when he
could not have told whether the next turn of the wheel
would leave him worth a few millions, or a few millions
worse than nothing. But the great work never flagged.
The expenses were enormous. Laborers were paid as
high as three dollars per day and board. As the road
pushed on, everything, workmen, food, iron, timber, fuel,

266 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
had to go forward upon the single track. It was like
buUding a road from Chicago to New Orleans, and car
rying all the supplies, even coal and bridge timber, from
Boston. The telegraph bills alone amounted to a smaU
fortune. Sometimes, in an emergency, ties, which had
been transported eight hundred miles, were burned for
fuel. "I never saw such a man as Durant," exclaims an
old Western steamboat captain, as three of us stroll the
hall together. "Year before last he made a contract
with me for transporting supplies to Omaha, amounting
to a million and a half dollars ; and he actually signed
that contract -without ever reading it. He just glanced
at it and said : ' Well, captain, I suppose this is all
right,' and wrote his name at the bottom."
"AndhefulfiUedit?" "Oh, yes; he paid me to the last dollar. "
"I never saw him excited but once," observes our
companion. Dr. Ray of The Chicago Post," and that was
at Bull Run. He had started out with a good many
of us, to go to Richmond. When the stampede be
gan, he was the angriest man I ever saw. He picked
up a stake and sprang right in front of the running
soldiers, and in spite of their muskets and fixed bay
onets, hit right and left, shouting : ' Go back you d 
cowards — go back ! ' And a good many of them ac
tually did turn back."
At last, after his every nerve has been strained for
four years, he is foot-loose once more. "The raUs are
laid," he says, with a quiet smUe, "and now I don't
care whether school keeps or not." As he gets up for
a stroU, we see the chief mark that his terrible labor
has left on him ; his frame is bowed, and he looks like

THE OLD, OLD STORY^ 267
a modem Atlas, a little surprised to find that his heavy
burden has rolled off. He has done the work ; let him
have the credit of it. He is said to own one-fourth of
the entire road. Now he will devote himself to his
private affairs, which have taken care of themselves
during three busy years. Perhaps, for this summer's
recreation, he will build the plaything of a railway to
the Adirondacks, in which he has a controlling inter
est, and where he owns half a mUlion acres of land
more or less.
Where wUl his indomitable energy next find vent ?
His rnainspring seems to be, not love of money for it-
seff, or of notoriety in any sense, but a love for large op
erations— a resistless desire to be "swinging" great en
terprises, and doing everything on a magnificent scale.
And yet, this man, who has chosen such a stormy
career, and who while yet under fifty has carried for
ward such a stupendous and historic work to comple
tion, half considers his life a faUure, because it has not
been devoted to Natural Science, the subject of all
others which fascinates him, and in which he always
finds rest and recreation. It is the old, old story, for
ever repeated, from the vanitas vanitatum of the wise
king to the " philosopede " soliloquy of Hans Breitman :
" Oh, vot ish all dis earthly pliss ?
Oh, vot ish man's soocksess ?
Oh, vot ish various kinds of dings ?
Und vot ish habUness ?"

II.
FEOM OHIOAGO TO OMAHA.
MONG our passengers from Chicago westward,
was Gen. George H. Thomas, en route for his
new field — the entire Pacific Coast, with head
quarters at San Francisco. We of the East are hardly
aware of the admiration, the enthusiasm, the personal
affection felt for Thomas throughout the West. Every
where one hears him spoken of as " Old Reliable," "Pop
Thomas," " The Rock of Chickamauga," " That splendid
Old Man." In point of fact, his age is only fifty -two ;
but his grave, kindly demeanor does carry a paternal
suggestion. He is certainly one of the finest characters
brought out by the war. President Lincoln, when first
desired to make him a Major General, replied with a
distrust born of many disappointments :
"No; he is from the South ; I will wait till he earns it."
Thomas heard of this — and how gloriously he did
earn the Major-Generalship and every other honor he
has received ! He was always at his post, and for three
years he did not once see his wife. He never got
whipped; he never complained of anything; he never
accepted any promotion until it was fairly thrust upon
him; "he never committed an act that had to be ex
plained or apologized for."
Since the war, his rare qualities have grown steadily

GEN, GEORGE H. THOMAS. 269
upon the people. When he declined the house offered
to him by the Cincinnatians, he did it with perfect
modesty and unostentatiousness.
"The Government," he said, "has always paid me
amply, and all my wants are provided for. To accept
such a present would not be consistent with my sense
of duty."
A few weeks ago some of his old officers in Nashville
— in token of their affection, as he was about leaving.
for the West — proffered him a table-service of silver.
He replied :
"I am greatly touched by this evidence of your re
gard, but I can not accept it. In my judgment it would
be injurious to the discipline of the army for officers to
receive gifts from those who are or have been their
subordinates." General Thomas would attract notice in any crowd.
He is large, broad-shouldered, massive, with hair and
beard brown, but now turning to gray, mild, kindly
eyes, and prominent nose — a strong, marked face. He
inherited no property, but by careful, frugal habits, he
has saved a competence from his salary. He has no
children. This is his second visit to California ; fifteen
years ago, when he was a captain in the Third Artillery,
he was stationed at Fort Yuma for twelve months. He
and his staff are as delighted as school-boys turned
loose, to escape from Kentucky and West Tennessee
into a thoroughly loyal atmosphere.
A. A. Sargeant, the Representative from California
who, in 1862, drafted the bill under which the Pacific
EaUroad has been built, was also upon our train. A
New-Yorker by birth, he went to CaUfornia in 1849, in
a passage of two hundred and twenty days, around the

270 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
Horn, and has been identified with the Pacific Coast
ever since. It is difficult to realize that a man, still so
young that his face retains the freshness of boyhood,
has seen the richest State in the Union grow up from
nothing, to the greatest material enterprise since the
world was, originated and completed. Sargeant, James
H. Campbell of Pennsylvania, and Schuyler Coffax,
were the most efficient and judicious friends of the
measure in the House, as were Wilson of Massachusetts,
Morrill of Maine, and McDougall of CaUfornia in the
Senate. Day after day, for a month, in Committee of
the Whole, Sargeant and Campbell alternately an
swered objections to the bill in five-minute speeches ;
and night after night — with Theodore D. Judah, the
engineer, constantly supplying them with exact infor
mation — they "sat up" -with Eastern Senators and
Representatives. There was hostility to overcome, there was incredu
lity to satisfy. In the House, one day, Owen Lovejoy
asked, with his peculiar satire of tone and shrug of the
shoulders :
"Do I understand the gentleman from California to
say that he actually expects this road to be huilt ? "
"The gentleman from HUnois," replied Sargeant
promptly, "may understand me to predict that if this
bill is passed the road will be finished within ten years."
In his heart of hearts, though, Sargeant feared that
this was a wild prophesy. Only seven years have
passed — three of them years of exhausting ci-vil war —
but over the prairie, over the desert, over the moun
tains to the. waters of the Pacific, long trains are rolling
daily, controUed by brakemen who can't pronounce the
names of the stations, and bearing hundreds of passen-

"home, SWEET HOME," 271
gers who don't know what State they are passing
through ! And it is difficult to tell which regard the
spectacle with the more amazement, the people of our
Atlantic Coast, or the Indians and buffaloes and grizzly
bears of the Far- West,
Within the car there is no speck of dust — recent
rains have settled that — and the cool prairie breeze is
delightful. The ladies are sewing or crocheting, or
reading " Oldtown Folks" and " The Gates Ajar," whUe
the little black-walnut tables in front of each seat are
Uttered with that confusion of spools, worsted, work-
boxes, and books in which the feminine heart delights.
Some are writing letters to the friends at home — in
Boston, in PhUadelphia, in Maine, in Ohio. Some are
leaning back drowsily, with their heads on piUows,
; reveling in the prairie scenery. The gentlemen are
playing whist, or reading, or talking politics, or going
forward to smoke. One lady, returning to her far home
in Puget Sound, has laid her tired baby upon the seat,
and is trying to soothe it. Just here the track is
smooth, and the wheels run quietly. A gentleman be
gins to hum "Home, Sweet Home," his wife joins him;
then the lady on the next seat, and so on, untU, from
every part of the coach, many voices swell the strain,
and give the song with a heartiness of feeling that
moistens some eyelids, and at first startles the tired
baby into open-eyed wonder, but soon lulls it to quiet
slumber. The prairies, perfectly flat in the vicinity of Chicago,
have grown more and more roUing, until here they are
..broken by deep ravines and sweeping hills. At last, a
dark belt of forest marks the western horizon ; it is the
--.j^trip of woods that foUows the Missouri. Then, on the

272 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
distant shore appears Omaha, a city set upon a hiU, a
fair picture, crowned by the white capitol that over
looks the broad, unpaved, busy streets.
At the foot of the bold hiUs of CouncU Bluffs we
leave the passengers and maUs for that growing city;
then gUde along the low prairie for four mUes, and we
have reached the great Muddy River. The Bostonians
draw a long breath to remember how far they are from
home — and then a yet longer one upon being reminded
that they are not half across the continent ; that the
steamer just puffing away from the Omaha landing is
to go two thousand miles further up the river ; that the
locomotive just shrieking its summons from the west
ern bank, can yet roll eighteen hundred miles almost
as fast as the bird files, toward the setting sun.
The train discharges its load into twelve mammoth
omnibuses, and express and baggage wagons. The two
mail wagons are so piled up with sacks of letters and
papers that they look like loads of hay. All these huge
vehicles are crowded upon one ferry boat; we drop
down half a mile, rounding the great, fiat, naked sand
bank; then land, and drive along a plank road, with
water on each side, into the just-now muddy streets of
Omaha, The through passengers are transferred to the
Union Pacific train, and in half an hour are again whirl
ing westward. The rest of us are beset with clamor
ous runners for the several Omaha hotels. One African,
with a droll grin, is so loud in praising the establish
ment he represents, and so fierce in denouncing its ri
vals, that a pompous passenger from the East finally
roars out: " Stop that noise, there ! we've heard enough
of it."
"All right, Sah," repUes Sambo, with a scrape of the

OMAHA AND COUNCIL BLUFFS. 273
foot, and a grotesquely-polite gesture toward the- bat
tered rim of his hat : " All right, Sah. Which road does
you own, Sah, de Union Pacific or de Westun?"
Omaha is metropolitan, at least in its pretensions.
As I strolled out on the evening of my arrival my eyes
were greeted by the huge posters of the "Academy of
Music," and my ears by the clinking lager beer glasses,
in the gas-Ught, under the locust trees of " Tivoli Gar
den." "Where does CoL  live?" I asked of apoliceman.
"On Twenty-second street, near the capitol," he re-
phed. "Take the horse-car to Eighteenth street, and
then it is only four blocks." Distance by the car, one
mile; motive-power, mules; fare, ten cents; or eight
rides for half a dollar.
Omaha claims to have nearly twenty-five thousand
people ; Council Bluffs, Iowa, its twin sister, ten thou
sand. I have not yet met any inhabitant of either who
seems to underrate either its importance or its destiny !
Omaha's advantages are : the west bank of tbe river
— a most important point, as all experience in the Mis
sissippi Valley teaches — and the terminus and machine-
shop of the longest railway in the world. Those of
Council Bluffs are : a well-settled back country, and
the conveyance of a railway from St. Louis ; one from
Sioux City, and two from Chicago, with a third to open
next January.
The unpaved soil of the Omaha streets is jet-black
and would yield splendid corn or wheat. When the
weather — which may change a dozen times a day — is
wet, the mud is incredible in depth and stickiness ; but a
few hours of sunshine dry it up completely. All classes
throng the thoroughfares, from Indians fresh from the
18

274 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
prairies to Bostonians fresh from the bandbox. Land,
a mile from the center of trade, sells for $1,000 per
acre ; resident lots, 66x132, for from $1,000 upward,
and business property at prices not much above those
of New York and Chicago. An Eastern man may form
a fair idea of the trade, by guessing at it after a walk
through the leading streets, and then multiplying his
estimate by ten. There are wooden shanties along
these plank sidewalks, in which the annual sales reach
half a million of dollars, and three-story brick blocks,
covering whole squares, divided into hardware, grocery,
dry goods, and drug stores, all elegantly finished, and
filled with goods from cellar to roof Many of the resi
dences have ample grounds, beautiful in lawns, inflow-'
ers, in shrubbery, and in shading cotton-woods, locusts,
poplars, and maples, though the original prairie was
naked enough.
The railroad bridge over the Missouri is building.
below the Cozzens House, and opposite the port of
Omaha, which is known as Train-town. There was
speculation in the eyes of George Francis four years ago,
when he bought several hundred acres here for a nom
inal price. The bridge structure will be of iron. Post's
patent, half a mile long, with eleven spans of two hun
dred and flfty feet each. It wiU be seventy feet above
the low-water mark, and fifty feet above the high. The
piers, not of masonry, but hollow iron cylinders, filled
in with bowlders and concrete — are simUar to those
which support the raUroad bridges over the Pedee
and Santee in South Carolina, and the new wagon and
foot bridge across the Harlem River at Third-avenue,
New York. They are cast in Chicago, and brought
here in the form of enormous rings of one-and-three-

THE GREAT RAILROAD BRIDGE. 275
quarter inch iron, ten feet high and nine-and-a-half in
diameter. One of these is placed upon the sand and
covered with a cap. The air is pumped out, and the
pressure of the atmosphere drives it down — until the
top is level with the surface of the ground — in about
twenty-four hours. Then a current of condensed air,
let in by a pipe near the bottom, drives out the sand
through a valve in the cap. But if the earth is gravel,
the air is condensed instead of being exhausted, and
men stand inside the great cylinder and throw the dirt
out with spades and buckets by the light of candles.
When one ring is sunk another is bolted upon the
top of it and the operation is repeated. Only one cyl
inder is completed — on the eastern bank — and that
went down seventy-five feet before it rested on the
sohd sandstone. The work, built by the Union Pacific
Company, will cost two millions of dollars, and if the
money is forthcoming, it wUl be completed in twelve
months. Then we can go through from New York to
San Francisco without change, the passenger chartering
a saloon state-room for himself or his family for the
entire trip. Perhaps history will repeat itself, and the
California travel again be divided into first-cabin,
seeond-cabin, and steerage.
The coach which conveyed the remains of President
Lincoln from Washington to Springfield, now owned by
the Union Pacific Company is kept here. It is known
as "the Lincoln Car," and is never run except for offi
cers of the road, or special parties of their inviting.
. The Union 'Pacific car, machine, and repair-shops,
supply-houses, locomotive-houses, iron-sheds, and lum
ber piles, near the river bank, give one more vivid
ideas of the magnitude of this great work than a

276 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
month's reading. They appear to cover fully thirty
acres, perhaps fifty. Here is a single string of empty
freight-cars more than a mUe long. Here are millions
upon mUlions of feet of lumber; acres upon acres of
low sheds, filled up with iron castings for cars and loco
motives; warehouse after warehouse with its stores of
lanterns, shovels, picks, axes, hammers, plows, bars of
steel, rods of copper, pigs of lead and of antimony,
groceries and pro-visions, building hardware, telegraph
material, and so on, ad infinitum.
The purchaser for the Company, G. W. Frost, ex
pended almost six millions of dollars in 1868 for mis
cellaneous supplies, though he had nothing to do with
buying heavy articles like track-iron and locomotives.
Everything was done upon the jump ; no foresight
could cover all contingencies. Down from the end of
the line would fiash a telegram :
"Send us a thousand striking-hammers — a thousand
men are lying idle;" or, "We want a mile of iron
pipe;" and off Frost would post to Chicago to gather
up the articles and hurry them out for twelve or fifteen
hundred miles. Once, he telegraphed to a New York
plow-maker :
" Ship me instantly a hundred iron plows, and three
thousand steel plow-points.
The manufacturer telegraphed back to a friend here,
asking if the purchaser for the Union Pacific had gone
mad. Becoming satisfied, he sent the articles, with a
message to Frost :
"I never was so proud of an order in my life, but in
Heaven's name what do you want of three thousand
plow-points?" They were required for loosening a quaUty of moun-

A NINETEEN-YEAR CONTRAST. 277
tain gravel so hard that it would wear out a dozen
points a day upon a plow, and one driven through it
would leave a mark of steel grains in the furrow like
a charcoal tracing upon a table-cloth. In estimating
the liberality of the Government endowment, it is but
fair to consider the enormously increased expenditures
which remoteness, rapidity of construction, and carry
ing -forward everything fi:om one end of the road
in-volved. In the early rush to California, a poor boy named
€harles Crocker crossed the Missouri with an ox team,
at this point, on his toilsome overland journey to the
new gold regions. Nineteen years afterward — to a day
— he arrived here on his first return visit to his old
Eastern home. He came accompanied by his family, in
his own special car, for he is now Superintendent of the
Central Pacific RaUroad, and every mile of it has beeii
built under his supervision. He may well feel an honor
able pride in the great work with which he has been so
closely identified. His party were four days from
Sacramento to Omaha ; and on arriving here delighted
us with blooming flowers, and feasted us upon strawber
ries, oranges, and luscious cherries from California,
brought upon Alaska ice 1,800 miles through the green
valleys of the Pacific slope, and through the lingering
Snow-drifts of the Rocky Mountains. It seemed like a
story from the Arabian Nights.

III.
FEOM OMAHA TO PEOMOI^TOET.
^ T Council Bluffs, the other evening, three pas
sengers just arrived from the West, covered
with dust and loaded down with baggage, made
an irruption into an extra Pullman coach upon the train
starting for Chicago.
"Take the next car, please," said the conductor;
" this has been chartered by a private party."
" No, Sir. We are all right ; we travel in the sleep
ing-car." " Well, that is a sleeping-car, and exactly like this,
too. This is an extra, put on for some guests of the
Company." But the trio declared themselves Californians, ¦willing
to pay, and not to be put off with any second-class ac
commodations. And they finally left in high dudgeon,
actually refusing even to look into the sleeping-car, but
taking a day coach, to sit up for twenty-four hours, all
the way to Chicago. I wonder if they crossed the
Plains with ox teams when they came out here ! Of
course they are as far from being representative Cali
fornians as the Yankee who blusters through Europe
about our capacity to whip aU creation is far from being
the typical American.
We left Omaha at four o'clock in the afternoon, and

THE VALLEY OP THE PLATTE. 279
traveled until dark among rich prairies of vivid green,
broken by black, plowed fields, little dwellings, and
rows of planted locusts and cotton-woods. An hour
out we struck the broad, blue, shining Platte, to fol
low up its smooth valley for four hundred mUes. It is
a wonderful inclined plane, with a regular ascent of six
feet to the mile, as if Nature had taken a grading con
tract from Durant & Duff No other road was ever
buUt ilpon a route so easy. Practically, there are
neither cuts nor embankments in the Platte Valley;
and for one forty miles the track lies as straight as an
arrow, making the longest tangent in the worid. It
was a hundred miles, but has been broken up to secure
more frequent water stations.
A night in the Pullman car, and morning finds us
crossing the half-mile bridge over the North Platte,
two ];iundred miles out, and two thousand eight hun
dred feet above the sea. " Thirty minutes for break
fast!" Antelope meat for those who like it; beef for
the barbarians who don't. Then on we roU, leaving
the Platte far to our left; on, over the great desert;
never a tree or a patch of green grass in sight; no
birds but woodpeckers, which bore into all the tele
graph-poles, and seem to relish that dry fare; miles
upon miles of prairie-dog towns, the cunning little in
habitants erect upon their hind legs, and winking slyly
at us while we pass -within five yards of them; ante
lopes, by twos, by threes and by tens, grazing half a
mUe away, or galloping over the hills so airUy that
their feet hardly touch the ground. One, affrighted
and bewildered, bounds along only a few yards from us,
in a mad race with the train. ^'Bang!" "bang!" go
half-a-dozen revolvers from our windows ; but the ante-

280 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
lope is nfever struck; and finally, in despair, he faUs
panting back, and abandons the unequal chase.
On, on, past lonely frame section-houses, where the
"track-men" live, past loneUer log ranches, where the
coaches used to stop, past slow-moving emigrants, with
white-covered wagons and herds of cattle, all half-hid
den in clouds of dust. The fine, flying sand, too, sifts
in through our double windows, and penetrates clothing
to the skin. Pullman must add a bath-house to his
hotel-car; then it will leave nothing to be desired. He
will do it, too — he, or some one else — ^before a dozen
years roll round.
As the sun lowers and we weary of these wastes of
sand, some one shouts, " The mountains ! the moun
tains ! " There they are again — on the south. Long's
Peak, dim and white with snow ; on the west, the Black
Hills, dim and dark With pines. And so, in twenty-four
hours we reach Cheyenne, five hundred and sixteen
miles out, and six thousand feet above the sea, but
gained by an ascent so gentle as to be nowhere percep
tible. Here I leave the train, and stop to study the new
city. It has sprung up on the bare desert, and has not
a solitary tree, except half-a-dbzen newly-planted, faint
hearted pines. At mid-day, the- sun scOrches and the
dust chokes ; but on the western horizon lie the moun
tains, forever cool and calm.
Cheyenne is the capital of Wyoming, the dfesert city
of a desert State. It is watered by Crow Creek, a little
stream which feeds the Lodge Pole, and then the Platte.
It boasts a great locomotive-house of sand-stone ; stone
machine-shops just rising for the Railway Company ; a
long, porticoed frame hotel, also belonging to the Union
Pacific, which will dine four hundred people and lodge

^jffr~^.

riKST CLASS HOTEL ON THE PLAINS IN 186-^.

FIRST CLASS HOTEL ON THE PLAINS IN 1869.

A DESERT CITY. 28l
fifty ; a few large warehouses ; three or four blocks of
low, flat-roofed wooden shops, full of goods ; many scat
tering tents and shanties ; two daily newspapers ; two
churches; a score or two of drinking, gambling, and
dance-houses, which are crowded after dark ; and a pop
ulation of flve thousand.
For a wonder, it has neither an Opera House, nor an
Academy of Music ! But I find instead the enormous
tent of a traveling circus from the " States." In the
evening, it is crowded with twelve hundred people, all
eager for the "great moral spectacle," which some
have come forty miles on the railway to enjoy. There
sat the tanned youth, eating molasses candy, with their
"girls," the boys yelling with delight at the little
mule,iand everybody applauding the clown's time-hon
ored jokes, in the good, old-fashioned country way.
Cheyenne is woefully destitute of a " back country."
It borrows leave to be from the Denver trade, the
raUway machine-shops, and the new Sweetwater gold
mines, which, though two or three hundred miles to
the north-west, buy most of their supplies here. Lum-^
ber costs from $60 to $100 per 1,000; wood, $8.75
per cord, and mUk, twenty cents a quart. A few
ranches are opening ; but Wyoming boasts of very lit
tle soil which promises to reward the farmer — less than
any other State or Territory. By way of compensa
tion, though, it has gold mines which are opening well,
and some of the richest coal fields in the world. The
whole of it, too, is excellent grazing range ; the beef
at the Cheyenne Hotel, wintered upon those moun
tain deserts, is as rich and tender as I ever tasted at
Delmonico's. On the train I encountered an old Libby Prison com-

282 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC,
rade. Captain Spalding, now upon the Plains with his
regiment. At Cheyenne I find Church Howe and
Robert Steele, whUom aids to Sedgwick and Howard,
and my tent-mates in the Army of the Potomac in the
days of Antietam and Fredericksburg. The one is now
United States Marshal of Wyoming, the other a prac
ticing attorney, and both are in love with the West,
But so is not a journalist from Boston whom I meet
turning homeward after a year in Colorado. Times
are excessively dull, he says ; there are no chances for
a young man ; and his wife and mother are even more
disgusted than he with the unpleasantness, and hard
ships of frontier life. Well, some brushes will paint
the sky in rose color and others in black; some eyes
see the shield in sUver and others in brass, to the end
of the chapter.
As for me, old memories crowd these new pictures
away, while I sit by my window at Cheyenne, far into
the silent night, looking out upon the quiet mountains;
memories of seven journeys in by-gone years, and from
the Missouri to three mountains — on horseback and in
vehicles — usually occupying a week, and always full of
adventure. The wagon- train, the coach, the pony-ex
presses, the buffalo-hunt, the Indian panic, the camp-
fire, the reading aloud in the tent by flaming candle of
a chilly evening, the sleeping upon the ground under
the blue sky through many a pleasant night — all these
belong to a faded past. Instead, we have the palace
car in its purple and fine linen; the conductor with his
pouch demanding our tickets; the black porter with his
clothes-brush, waiting for our "quarter," the railway
eating-house with its clattering dishes, and the smooth
running train for one night and one day. The gain is

THE BLACK HILLS — EVANS'S PASS, 283
wonderful in time and comfort; the loss irreparable in
romance and picturesqueness.
From Cheyenne I came to Sherman, thirty-three
miles west, up the first heavy grade upon the road —
ninety feet to the mile. All around are bare mountain
tops. The ashen herbage is brightened by blue lung-^
wort and yellow Arkansas waU-flowers, in clusters as
large as the palm of a hand, or the crown of a hat.
Granite bowlders of gray and brown, spotted with yel
low moss, are scattered here and there. One near the
summit is fifty feet high, and shelters the cattle of a
ranchman, who has fenced in a little space beside it.
Double snow fences of stones, or one of stones and
the other of boards, six or eight feet high and a few
yards apart, foUow the north side of the track'. Here
and over the Laramie Plains for two hundred miles
westward, the winter is most troublesome. The Chief
Engineer and Superintendent are sanguine that after
a year or two of experience they can overcome this
enemy, so that no train need ever be delayed more than
twenty-four hOurs. They -will have to build more fences
and roof the cuts, and even then they may find their
task hard. Last winter was unusually mild, but the
drifts proved very difficult to deal with.
Sherman is the highest raUway point in the world —
eight thousand two hundred and forty feet above the
sea. Still, it is not the backbone of the Rocky Moun
tains, but only of the Black Hills, an outlying eastern
range. The continental divide is two hundred miles
further west and one thousand feet lower. Sherman is
in Evans's Pass, which bears the name of its discoverer.
He was one of many martyrs to this great work — a
Union Pacific surveyor, kUled by the Indians. The

284 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
pass is in no sense a gorge or canyon — but looks, topo
graphically, like a vast rolling prairie disfigured by
rocks and reached by a gentle ascent. Nor are the dis
tant ^mountains on the north and south such slender
peaks and pyramids as fanciful artists depict, but only
low, irregular, broken ridges.
Sherman has half-a-dozen dweUings, The landlord
of the little tavern told me that water thrown upon his
porch at midnight, any night in the year, would freeze
before morning. A sign in his bar-room bears the
pleasing legend : " Fresh trout every day ; " but no
trout came when we did call for them. Running snow
water — abhorrent to their good taste — was pleaded in
excuse. They weigh less than half a pound apiece,
but ar^ very savory. The neighborhood also enjoys
the company of beavers, ground-hogs, hares or " jackass^
rabbits," antelopes, a few elk, brown and cinnamon
bears, and a silver-gray bear which is often taken for
the grizzly. The cinnamon bear is the most formida
ble ; sometimes he is eight feet long from his nose to
his little stump tail. _ '
"The other day," quoth mine host, "down toward
the Dale, a man was walking into the valley, jumping
from rock to rock, careless like, when he jumped square
upon a cinnamon bear, lying there to sun himself The
bear caught him by the thigh, so that he still limps a
little, but then ran away as badly frightened as he."
Virginia Dale, fourteen miles to the souths is an old
stage-station, where our party of 1865, stopped by In
dian troubles, spent some pleasant days. It is the
loveliest of villages — a very gem of the mountains.
Within it a disappointed lover once flung himself from
a precipice and was kiUed ; and later, a party of des-

AGRICULTURE UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 285
peradoes who had made it their base for robbing and
murdering expeditions, were captured and hanged.
Sherman, like other desert stations, has a windmill
some twenty feet in diameter, which pumps water up
fi-om a spring into a high tank beside the track. The
tank holds fifty thousand gallons ; the pump will fill it
in ten hours. When it is full, the water lifts a little
float ; that pulls a wire, the wire shuts up the' sails of
the windmill, a dozen yards away, and it instantly stops.
When the tank gets nearly empty, the action of an
other float opens the sails, and the windmill starts again.
The cost of the ingenious apparatus all set up is about
six thousand dollars. It might be used to great advan
tage for irrigating. It is one of a thousand instances
in which modern machinery, not content with merely
utilizing the forces of Nature, disciplines them into
doing their appointed work, without any eye to over
look them or any hand to regulate.
Just below, Uves a German " section-man," who has
fenced off a little patch, set out a few stalks of cactus
and wild flowers, and planted garden seeds. As yet
none have come up,
"The chief trouble,',' he explains, with a perplexed
look, " is that it never rains here except in June,"
"But can't you water your garden ?"
' "Well, yes," (hesitatingly.)
"How far do you have to bring water?"
¦ "Halpamile."
What with desert soU, and rainless climate, and frosts
every month, and no water, even for drinking, within
half a mile, it is a very desperate essay at agriculture !
The road runs ten miles north of Fort Bridger. At
Garter, the station for that beautiful post, we found the

286 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
retiring Judge Carter, of the long, snowy hair and
beard, supplying a band of Shoshones with their an
nual presents. Fifty of the Indians — unusually pictur
esque and tidy — ^were gathered around his warehouse.
The squaws were gay in yellow and scarlet, A lad of
a dozen years, with hair as coarse as a horse's mane,
and hanging down to his shoulders, amused us with his
bow and arrows by knocking a five-cent piece out of
the top of a split stake, at eighty feet. The chief of
the band, Washakie, is that rare spectacle, a fine-look
ing Indian, large, compact, and symmetric of frame,
and with a broad, noble, forehead.
At Wasatch, on the crest, we sup sumptuously upon
trout; then we drop down into the basin by a ninety
feet grade, whooping through tunnels, and screechirtg
through cuts. ' For thirty miles this descent contin
ues. At Echo, the other evening, three freight trains
stood upon the main track, when word came flashing
over the telegraph from the Superintendent :
"A locomotive and tender, without steam up, and
with nobody on board, have broken from a freight train
and started down the grade."
Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and fro ! In a
few minutes came a second message :
" She has just passed Castle Rock Station."
"Never were three trains got off upon a siding with
less delay. Then the workmen pUed sleepers high
upon the track ; lest even that should not stop " her,"
and she should do murder further do-wn the road, they
tore up the raUs below. Just as this was accompUshed
she came in sight. She shot through the sleepers like
a bullet through a pine board, sending them flying in
all directions, and darkening the air with the splinters.

A RUN-AWAY LOCOMOTIVE. 287
But at the broken track she jumped up and down with
vexation, and finally plunged angrily head-foremost
into a hill-side. She had run twentyrsix miles in
twenty-nine minutes — ±he best time yet made upon the
road! Through Echo and Weber canyons by dim starlight,
we' note the inspiring scenery — the grandest between
the AUeghanies and the Sierras. Every train should
pass here by day, that passengers may enjoy it. Slowly
ours crawls on — a huge reptile with eye of fire, now
hesitating tfll the swinging of a red lantern ahead indi
cates that no bowlder has roUed down upon the track ;
now feeling its way over a trestle, or through a Howe
truss, whUe Weber River foams and roars underneath ;
now plunging into a tunnel; now creeping along a nar
row shelf, with a mountain two thousand feet high
upon one side, and a yawning chasm on the other; and
finally emerging into the open plain through the tower-
ing^rock portals of The Devil's Gate.

IV.
FEOM PEOMONTOET TO SACEAMEN'TO.
|ROMONTORY is neither city nor solitude,
neither camp nor settlement. It is bivouac
without comfort, it is delay without rest. It is
sun that scorches, and alkali dust that blinds. It is vile
whiskey, vile cigars, petty gambling, and stale news
papers at twenty-five cents apiece. It would drive a
morbid mind to suicide. It is thirty tents upon the
Great Sahara, sans trees, sans water, sans comfort, sans
everything. As the Central has been completed months earlier
than its owners . expected, its full complement of pas
senger coaches is not yet received. But we had the
good fortune to find a sleeping-car at Promontory, the
second that ever passed over the line. It was. built at
Wilmington, Del., and is owned and run, not by a sepa
rate corporation, but by the Railroad Company. At
nearly every station through to Sacramento the people,
attracted by its novelty, crowded up to its doors and
windows, eager to inspect it, and prompt to exclaim,
" Isn't it gay ? " " That beats the worid ! " We found
it smooth-running and comfortable, a vast improvement
upon day coaches, but far inferior to Pullman's.
We passed hosts of Chinamen, shortening curves and
ballasting the track. Nearly four thousand are still

GREAT SALT LAKE. 289
employed in perfecting the road. They are aU young,
and their faces look singularly quick and intelligent.
A few wear basket hats ; but aU have substituted boots
for their wooden shoes, and adopted pantaloons and
blouses. They receive $35 per month (gold) and board
themselves. Of this they saves from |20 to $23. The
Union Pacific Company, which is paying its laborers
two dollars per day (currency), is about to employ the
Chinese along its entire line. They are tractable, pa
tient, and thorough ; they do not get drunk, nor stir
up fights and riots.
For hours we were in vie-w of Great Salt Lake, now
crossing arms of it upon trestle-work ; now skirting its
northern bank, where thousands of acres are white
-with fine salt deposited by floods ; and now miles away,
but catching, through breaks in the hUls, glimpses of
its deep blue waters, and its mountain islands tipped
with snow. Passengers who would really see it, and
enjoy a delicious bath, should stop for a day in the vi
cinity of Ogden.
Another day upon the desert. It seems to stretch
out to the crack of dooiri. Nobody can realize how
great a work this has been untU he takes the long ride
of four or five days and nights through dreary wastes
and unbroken soUtudes. On this immediate portion
of the road the alkaU water would corrode boilers and
soon destroy them. For a hundred miles, therefore,
water is carried in tanks, upon platform cars, for the
locomotives. A supply will ultimately be brought
fi:om- the Truckee River, thirty-three miles, through
bored tamarack logs. Several stations are already fur
nished in that way, from springs six or eight miles dis
tant. On the Union Pacific, also, through the Bitter
19

290 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
Creek country, water is carried thirty or forty miles
upon trains, to overcome the same difficulty.
For the last night (the fifth since leaving Omaha) we
go to bed in the sleeping-car. At dark the air is sultry;
but we begin to ascend ; before midnight we call for
blankets. At daylight we wake among noble forests,
and grand snow-drifts, with Donner Lake, cool, blue,
and sparkling, on our left. Adieu to the desert ! Hail
to the Sierras! Were ever these pines, and spruces,
and furs, so darkly green before, or the mosses upon
their trunks so brightly yellow, or the tumbling waters
of such foamy whiteness ? Were ever the rocks overhead
so vast and threatening, or the chasms below so deep
to our straining eyes ?
Over the summit we go, and do-wn the western slope
— through sixteen tunnels, through twenty miles of
snow-sheds. At the most exposed points the roofs are
of four-inch planks, firmly bolted into granite. They
have worked so well that nearly twenty miles more
are to be added. In nothing have the Central Pacific
people shown greater energy than in dealing with the
snow, which falls hevei during an average winter, to the
depth of nearly fifty feet. A year ago to-day, there
were eighteen feet of snow upon this track ; hundreds
of Chinamen with shovels were helping a snow-plow
(three times as high as a tall man, and driven by ten
heavy locomotives) to fight its slow way through il.
Avalanches here never sweep the ground clean as
among the Alps. The first snow falls, and a few sunny
days and freezing nights incrust it with ice. Later
snows, melting, begin to slide and roll down upon it.
A baU wiU gather as large as a load of hay, then break
into fifty other balls, each one of which grows and

APPROACH TO SACRAMENTO, 291
breaks in turn. They carry an incredible depth of
bank into the deep, narrow valleys. Economically, the
sheds are a great success. EstheticaUy they are a great
nuisance. Again and again, as one is enjoying the
grandest scenery upon the continent, the train plunges
into a long, dark chamber, and the view is broken. By
direction of Governor Stanford, President of the Com
pany, some of the boards are being removed for the
summer. They should aU be knocked off every spring.
Down, down, down — mountains on one side, nothing
on the other ! From one window we look up a thou
sand feet, to a snowy summit; from the opposite onoi
down a thousand or two thousand feet, into a green
valley, with its swift-running stream thickened and
muddied by the miners. The foliage grows warmer.
The evergreens are interspersed with white dogwood
flowers as large as the palm of one's hand; white
strawberry blossoms, blue larkspurs, blue and white lu-
pipes, and the curling, blood-red leaves of the low,
conical snow-cactus.
The woods open into the broader fields of the foot-
hiUs. Tall pines and firs give way to spreading live-
oaks with glossy leaves. We pass mining towns, scat
tered farm-houses, and grazing horses, sheep, and spot
ted cattle. Thicker and taUer grows the grass, but
always dull and faded; for the vivid green of the East
is never seen in this dry climate. Late in the season
the landscape is straw-colored.
Now we are fairly in the vaUey, among gardens
blooming with rose and oleander, clusters of ripe cur
rants, cherries, and nectarines ; luxuriant fig-trees ; vine
yards of thirty and forty acres; flapping windmills for
pumping water fi:om the wells ; low dwellings with deep

292 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
porticoes, half hidden by vines and shading trees ; fields
nearly a mUe long, in which the silvery barley is up to
a man's waist, and other fields in which the oats haVe
been cut and raked into -winrows. We glide across the
broad American River, and over half a mile of trestle-
work; through the spreading suburbs of Sacramento ;
along the levee, the river on one side and a slough,
with half-submerged roofs and timbers, wrecks from
the flood of 'Sixty-two, on the other; past the Central
Pacific machine and repair-shops, round-houses, and car
sheds; through the Chinese quarter — and here We are
at tide-water from the Pacific, with a steamer on the
river, and a train of ( Vallejo) cars on the opposite bank.
Waiting to take us to San Francisco. Five hours ago
we were among snow-banks: here the mercury stands
at 90° in the shade. It is but a forenoon's journey
from Winter to Summer, and only a twenty hours' ride
from the heart of the desert to the heart of our West
ern Metropolis.

Y.
SAK FEAI^OISOO.
^HEN Omaha celebrated the opening of the
Pacific Railroad, she displayed a banner with
this strange device : " Omaha and San Fran
cisco ; what God hath joined together, let not man put
asunder." In strict exactness, it might have run:
"What man hath joined together, let not God put
asunder;" but who requires mathematical precision in
patriotic eloquence ? For "Omaha," read "New York,"
and the motto wUl do as it stands.
San Francisco contains 160,000 people — -nearly one-
third of all the inhabitants of California, and one-fourth
of the entire population of the Pacific Coast. In num
bers it hardly exceeds Newark, New Jersey; but in
importance it ranks second only to New York. It has
the social and business atmosphere of a great capital.
The stranger is constantly impressed with its breadth,
largeness, cosmopolitanism. He hears conversations in
French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese,
and heaven knows what other tongues. Theodore
Parker, they say, read thirty different languages. If
he had spoken them all as Avell, I think he could have
found men to talk with in every one of them within
five minutes' walk of Montgomery street.
We have our "Western" and "Southern" hotels;

294 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
the San Franciscans their "Occidental," "Oriental,"
and " New Zealand." We are content with a " Metro
politan ;" for them, nothing wUl serve but a " Cosmo
politan." Strolling forth this morning I stumbled upon
a resident friend, who italicized his welcome by an in
vitation to a glass of California wine. We crossed the
street into the " Alhambra," the " Acropolis," the " You
Bet," or whatever the restaurant is called, and there
encountered four acquaintances of his, who had like
wise met by chance. One was from San Francisco, one
from New York, one from New Zealand, and one from
Melbourne !
If they do these things in a green tree, what shall
be done in the dry? This infant queen, looking out
upon' the sunset through her golden gate, and just be
trothed to the Atlantic, not with the ring and formula
and stately pageant, as old Venice wedded the Adriatic,
but with the simple joining of hands and exchange of
gifts, what wUl she be in her ripe estate ? Already the
metropolis of the richest State in our Union, throned
on the chief harbor of a coast-line which stretches
almost from the North Pole to the South Pole, looking
backward upon half of North America and forward
upon all Asia, she holds the most commanding position
on the globe. And one of the most thoughtful of re
cent English writers surmises that she may one day
become " a second, if not a greater, London."
New York is no longer an antipode, but a neighbor.
Wherever men most do congregate, one hears conver
sations :
" Do you go East this summer ? "
" Yes, I start day after to-morrow."
" How long shall you be gone ?"

A RELIC OF OTHER DAYS. 295
"Three weeks; possibly four."
In interior California, Nevada, Oregon and Idaho, the
name "San Francisco" is seldom heard. The usual
phrases are : " When did you leave Friscoe? " or, "Are
you going down to " The Bay f " The latter is a relic
of the old days when ships from " home " came in and
went out. In that primeval era the crude city was a
sluggish creature which breathed just once a month —
on Steamer Day. Who will ever forget the general
bustle, the hurrying caravans of freight, the universal
writing of letters, the great crowds on the wharf, and
the sobs and the broken- voiced " God-bless-yous " at
the boom of the last gun ? Now every afternoon the
eastward pilgrim, with carpet-sack and cherished box
of fruit, which he is taking " to brag on," steps into the
carriage for the Vallejo or Sacramento steamer, with
only a careless hand-shaking and a cheerful " good-bye."
The three leading hotels vie with the New York
houses in size, appointments and fare. The charges
are $3 per day, gold. The " Cosmopolitan " and " Oc
cidental ". are four or five stories high, but the " Lick
House " is only three, so the great earthquake added
to its popularity. The paneled walls of its elaborate
dining-hall are covered with paintings of California,
Oregon and Isthmus scenery. " C. C." might find in
them something to criticise mildly, but their general
effect is novel and pleasing. At breakfast, on the morn
ing after my arrival, as I was scanning them and study
ing the bill of fare, the waiter behind my chair asked :
" When did you leave New York, Mr.  ? "
I turned around, to find there an old, well-known
Astor House servant ; at other well-filled tables I saw
more familiar faces than I ever met at any hotel before.

296 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC,
The city shows great improvement since 1866, espe
cially along California and Kearney streets. But every
one has stories to tell of last year's earthquake, its
frightfulness and havoc. The Associated Press, at the
instance of leading merchants, stated the damages at
$1,000,000, but I hear them estimated as high as
$5,000,000. Even after the lapse of eight months
there are wrecks of buildings not yet cleared away.
The devastation was much greater on the "made"
lands than on natural soU. So grave was the general
apprehension of injury to the credit of the city and
the State, that men of both parties subscribed several
thousand dollars to enable a grand torchlight proces
sion of the Democracy, appointed for several weeks
later, to come off immediately. Perhaps they expected
the world to infer that even Californians would not be
daring enough to vote for Horatio Seymour while the
s-wift judgments of Heaven impended, or they may
have thought that any great political demonstration .
would indicate that public confidence had received no
fatal shock. An auction sale of real estate the day
after the earthquake did show that property had not
depreciated a penny, San Francisco and Oakland are
building more low wooden residences now than before,
but business blocks of brick and stone, four or five
stories high, appear to be rising as fast as ever.
The stranger who has but one day for San Francisco,
should devote an hour of that to the Landscape Photo
graph Gallery of C. E. Watkins, on Montgomery street.
Each of his wonderful Yosemite views is a study in
itself — a complete picture, embracing greensward, fiow
ers, trees, rocks, mountains, and snowy, tumbling water
fall, or bit of clear lake, or fiashing river. Watkins

LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY. 297
has spent several seasons in the matchless Valley, often
studying and experimenting for weeks upon a single
.scene to find the most effective lights and shadows,
positions and distances. It was a rare conjunction —
a born artist, the most favorable climate in the world
for photographing, and the grandest scenery man ever
looked upon. I once saw Mozier, the American sculp
tor, who has lived for twenty years in Rome, look over
these views, one after another, with exclamations of sur
prise and delight. While Ungering over the last he said :
"They think they can take photographs in Rome;
hitherto they have taken the best in the world, but
they never achieved such triumphs as these. I must
carry a set back with me to show them what we can
do in America."
The large series embraces fifty or sixty Yosemite
views, each about sixteen inches by twenty, without
the margins ; and some equally superb photographs of
the Columbia River country have recently been added.
They are sold at five dollars apiece. The fruits of
twenty years of zealous, untiring work, which was in
spired by love of art, not lucre, they have thus far
yielded to the artist nothing but a frugal livelihood.
Now that his hair is growing gray, he ought to reap
more substantial rewards. Builders of Pacific Railroads
receive a golden shower; shall they go athirst who
open new thoroughfares to enjoyment and culture, and
bring back treasures of beauty for all of us ?
California regarded the new Continental line with
great expectations. She discounted the future. In
vestments in real estate have diverted so much capital
from its usual channels, that one hears complaints of
hard times and scarcity of money. A San Francisco

298 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC,
building site, which sold last March for $50,000, now
commands $80,000, The best business lots — along
Montgomery and California streets — are 137 feet deep,
and range in value from $1,000 to $5,000 (gold) per
front foot.
WUd lands in remote counties can still be bought
for $1 and $2 per acre; nearer markets, they com
mand from $5 to $10. Ranches (there are no farms
in California — everything is a ranch) half a mile out
side the City of Sacramento and three miles from the
river, sell for $100 an acre. In one of the best dis
tricts, ten or fifteen miles south of San Francisco, D.
O. Mills has an estate of four thousand acres. Though
it is not distinctively a dairy farm, he keeps four hun
dred milch cows. A railway track, for taking his prod
ucts to market, runs into his barn. The large, highly
improved ranches in that region are held at from $250
to $300 per acre. Farming in California has been
wonderfully lucrative. Hundreds of thousands of acres
are rated at figures which would frighten an Eastern'
man, but upon which wool-growing alone has returned
a clear profit of three per cent, a month for several
years. The same is measurably true of other agricul
tural interests.
Small farms grow in favor ; but the old Spanish sys
tem has left many large land-holders. To belittle
immense tracts is a general affectation, an odd outcrop
ping of local humor. The Californian invites an East
ern visitor: "Come down to San Mataeo and spend
a week with me."
" Have you a ranch there ? "
" Yes, a little place."
"What do you caU a littie place ? "

"A LITTLE PLACE." 299
"WeU, twenty thousand acres " — or thirty thousand,
or forty thousand, as the case may be. Everybody
seems to have a Uttle place. The other evening I met
General Beale, known as an old army officer, who led one
of the Government explorations for a Pacific railroad.
He resides in the south, below Los Angelos, though his
summer home is in Philadelphia.
"Have you a little place, too ?" I asked.
" Yes, two hundred and twenty-five thousand acres
on my home ranch, and twenty-five thousand more in
Nortliern California ! "
That " home ranch " if it were a square tract, would
he nineteen mUes across. It is one- third as large as
the Stute of Rhode Island. There are other men who
own three hundred thousand acres apiece. Beale dis
penses something of old baronial hospitality. Every
wayfarer is welcomed to table and bed -without money
and without price. Some nights, thirty travelers are
there entertained.
There was a prevalent impression, that the moment
the last rail was laid immigrants and speculators with
pockets full of money would pour into California to
buy land. As yet, no such movement has begun, and
disappointment is felt. StUl, though city lots, improved
farms, and wUd lands have advanced from, one hundred
to five hundred per cent within the last two years, the
new values hold their own firmly. And a people can
not be very "hard up" whose smallest coin is ten cents,
and who count that as twelve and a half to save incon
venience in making change. The silver dime here
takes the old Southern and Western name of "the bit,"
and the value of the ancient " ninepence " of New Eng
land and shUling of New York, Eight bits pass for a

300 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC,
dollar. The morning newspaper cost a bit; nothing
seUs for less ; no smaUer coin is ever seen ; change is
very loosely computed. Competition has reduced the
cost of telegraphing between Sacramento and San
Francisco from " two bits " to fifteen cents. In send
ing dispatches from the Sacramento office, when I
gave the clerk two dimes he kept them both withoui
comment; when I gave him only one he made no
complaint. The hostess, at a house where I dined the other day,
came to California when a mere child. She remem
bers absolutely nothing of her old home.
" Do you really use pennies in the States," she asked.
"Yes.""They are made of copper, are they not?"
'"Yes." " Have you any greenbacks with you. I never saw
but one, and I have forgotten how that looked."
I succeeded in fishing up from the bottom of a
pocket one crumpled twenty-five cent note of our
postal currency. She turned it over and over mik
keen curiosity.
"It seems very strange to me that this should be
money," she said. " It don't look like money."
« What does it look like ? "
"Well," (hesitatingly, and with the utmost sincerity,)
"It — looks — ^like — a label for an oyster can!"
Is the climate of San Francisco healthy ? This is a
conundrum, and I give it up. The mean temperature
of December differs little from that of July, Fires are
practically unknown, but thin clothing is never worn.
At Christmas, roses bloom in open air ; in mid-summer^
the man who deliberates about his overcoat is lost.

PECULIARITIES OP CLIMATE. 301
The Sacramento Valley is a supply pipe for the hot
basins of the interior. At its mouth is the Golden
Gate, a gap in the Coast Range, and through it from
noon untU night streams the cool breath of the Pacific,
Sea winds sweeping over the land are always cutting,
but this is a two-edged sword piercing even to the di-
¦dding asunder of the joints and marrow. It is a sure
detective which will find one's weak spot in two min
utes by the watch. A still morning is one in which a
man, galloping over the hills, can hold his hat on with
one hand. And when the winds do not blow, dense
fogs clothe the city as with a garment.
A bit of personal experience : In 1865-6 this cU-
tiiate, acting upon a sensitiveness of the lungs and
throat, cut me down upon the instant. The bleakest
•winds of the Atlantic Coast I bore -without inconven
ience, but here my invariable experience was : first day,
growing weak ; second day, compelled to live on stim
ulants; third day, chest covered with blisters to allay
irritation; fourth day, beginning to cough, and con
fined to my room tUl the steamer left for Sacramento.
A short stay in the interior would restore me ; and
friends would say :
" This is the worst season ; come back in a few weeks
and you -wUl find the winds milder."
I did return four times between July and January,
but always with the same result, until I concluded that
thirty days among these gentle zephyrs would leave
me in Lone Mountain Cemetery. Announce any theory,
no matter what, and somebody will furnish the facts ;
mine was confirmed by divers persons who had a simi
lar experience to relate.
This time I approached with fear and trembling. I

302 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
was not conscious of any change in health, and I took
only the old precaution of doubling my under-clcthing
— one which no stranger should neglect. The fogs
seem just as heavy and the winds just as cutting as
before ; but to my surprise and delight they prove only
a pleasant though very powerful tonic, imparting new
vigor and endurance, and something of that buoyancy
which rarely outlives the exulting vitality of youth.
And I find one acquaintance with infirm lungs who left
New York after two attacks of hemorrhage, and another
who, on account of a bronchial difficulty, was unable
to stay in Chicago, both living here in excellent health.
Even in hot interior towns like Sacramento, the air
is exceedingly bracing. The mid-day sun scalds and
broils, but in the shade one never finds the atmosphere
close and stifling; and at night, in the phraseology of
the country, "He always needs to sleep under a blank
et." Notwithstanding the intense heats no case of sun
stroke has ever been known in CaUfornia, and mad
dogs are unheard of The climate of this city-^and in
less degree that of the interior — ^braces up the nerves
and excites the brain like champagne. It is a potent
stimulant, quickening all human machinery, mental
and physical; kindling unwonted activity, restlessness,
and keenness of perception, and causing, more than any
other influence, the high-pressure life of California. I
doubt if there is any one so sluggish of blood that he
could stay for a week in San Francisco without finding*
his old self strangely vitaUzed and intensified. Observ
ing writers, too, begin to notice the change in physique-
— the universal tendency to ruddiness, corpulence, and
a certain English cast of countenance. What have the
Yankees, who have lived here ten or fifteen years, done

DEGENERATE YANKEES. 303
with their thin faces and narrow chests? Do thiey
mean tamely to yield up their birthright, and suffer a
sea change into something new and strange — beef-
eating Englishmen, for example ? Already the pioneer
is a modified man; the Calif Jrnian of the second gen
eration wUl be a new man.

VI.
OALIFOENLA IKDUSTEIES.
Yesterday I spent two hours in the largest
champagne-making house on the coast. Last
year its product was forty thousand bottles;
this year it is expected to reach one hundred and
twenty thousand. The new wine is put into old bot
tles — which cost here five cents apiece. The superin
tendent, an educated Spaniard, has been familiar from
boyhood with the champagne regions of France, and
he describes the naked workmen there in the wine vats
up to their waists, with vehement gesticulation and un
pleasant vividness and minuteness.
California champagne is made chiefly from the Mis
sion grape, though the Muscat is coming more and
more into use. Each has its own peculiar flavor, but
neither is as pleasant to my palate as the Catawba of
Ohio and Missouri. Here, the Catawba is not used for
-wine, as other varieties yield much more abundantly.
Almost any grape from any part of the world will
thrive, but the California soil and climate modify it
essentially. A wine maker, thoroughly skilled in the
processes of Germany, France, or the Mississippi VaUey,
has to learn a new treatment for the same grape when
it is transplanted here. In Ohio a given variety may
produce wine which contains eight per cent of alcohol;

THE WINES OF CALIFORNIA. 305
here the wine from it will contain twelve or thirteen
per cent.
In making California champagne no alcohol is added.
The crude wine is run into a tank which holds three
thousand bottles, and then sweetened with eighty-two
pounds of sugar. The succeeding processes are nice
and cpmpUcated, and some of them I believe are kept
secret from the public. The solution of the great
problem of childhood — how champagne corks get in
when they are so much larger at the bottom than at
the top — appears in an ingenious machine which com
presses them one-half and then drives them in in a
, twinkling. The newly-filled bottles are laid in frames,
with the necks sloping do-wnward. Here they remain
for some weeks, but are skaken by hand every day.
The pressure on a bottle is ninety pounds to the square
inch, or equal to that of six atmospheres. About one in
ten bursts. The men who shake them wear masks of
wire to protect their faces. The superintendent has a
long scar on hjs right hand where he was once cut by
the glass of an exploding bottle. After the wine has
worked itself clear, the cork is removed for an instant
to let the sediment fly out; then it is replaced, the bot
tle is labeled, wrapped, and cased by Chinamen, and it
is ready for the market.
The production of still wine is much simpler than
that of sparkling, and the consumption of it much
greater. White wine, made from the Mission or native
grape, continues to be the general favorite. In taste
it is almost identical with certain Rhine wines. Con
siderable claret is produced; the best quality is sold by
the manufacturers at four dollars per box, and honestly
labeled; but a great deal of the "French claret" con-
20

306 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
Bumed in our Atiantic States comes from California
grapes. The only vineyard I have visited is that of Wm, C.
Hopping, near Sacramento. It covers thirty acres,
and the labor of three men and two horses suffices for
carrying it on. If all its grapes were turned into wine
they would yield twenty thousand gallons a year; but
some are sold for the table, and many are converted
into brandy. The brandy sells at the still for two
dollars and a half per gallon ; the white wine for about
one doUar. Both -wines and brandy are a little sharp
and fiery from the unusual amount of alcohol they con
tain. The wines in general have a new, raw taste, but
age gives them smoothness.
Of all the California wines, probably fifty per cent.
are consumed on this coast, twenty-five per cent, in
the Atlantic States, and the rest in China, Russia, and
Western Europe. The Russians like to have their
wines sweet and strong ; the Germans, sour and light ;
the English, sour and strong ; and California manufac^
turers begin to vary their product accordingly.
Wine-making, which for a while seemed to be declin
ing, is now largely on the increase. The capital ini
vested in it and in vineyards probably amounts to
twenty million doUars, There is yet a great deal to
learn, but the manufacturers are sanguine that all diffi
culties wiU be overcome, and that this will develop into
one of the leading interests of the state. It is an old
jest that the Californians never drink their own -wines;
but now champagne is growing in favor, and the use
of the white wine is very general. The coming Cali
fornian is to drink wine. Whether it will pay or not
remains to be seen. About the only value thus far of

. A NEW ERA, 307
our practical observations on this point has been to
show what delightfully unprejudiced creatures we are.
One eminent American, who is a teetotaler, visits the
wine districts of Europe, and finds drunkenness there
a great deal more common and disastrous than among
peoples who consume whiskey and brandy. Another,
an anti-teetotaler, following right in his footsteps, re
ports the inhabitants in a state of unequaled temper
ance, innocence, and happiness !
In our own Ohio VaUey, a generation has grown up
since the Catawba and German wines have largely dis
placed distUled Uquors. And if some careful, exact
observer, who has no theory to vindicate, would look
thoroughly into the matter, he might throw much-
needed light upon the two great questions : Does the
use of the mUd wines alone ever degenerate into
drunkenness ? and. Does it cause a taste or distaste for
whiskey and brandy ?
With the opening of the Pacific Railroad a new era
opens in CaUfornia. Her first industries were very
crude. Mining began by hand, with pick, shovel, and
rocker. That has developed into the quarrying and
reduction of quartz -vidth nice, intricate machinery.
Next to agriculture, mining stUl continues the leading
interest ; but other industries, which yield surer if not
larger returns, gain steadUy upon it. Fruit-raising de
velops into wine-making. Wool-growing has brought
manufactures: already there are eight or ten woolen
factories on the coast, and the largest employs three
hundred and fifty men (Chinese). Stock ranches are
turned into grain-fields. Wheat must always be a
leading staple ; but finer branches of agriculture, new
in America, are growing up, and some promise to have

308 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
an enormous future. One is the production of the
olive, which thrives throughout the State, particularly
in the south. Many olives are eaten as fruit, and olive
oil' is a leading article of commerce. With some na
tions it is a substitute for butter; and much is con
sumed in the arts, in medicine, and for machinery,
Tropical peoples, I believe, yet use it for anointing,
and hold it as precious as wine —
" Wine that maketh glad the heart of man. and oil to make his face
to shine." Our national consumption is relatively small; our
importations reach about one-fifth of the value of our
imported wines. The olive tree is of slow growth, and
does not bear until it is ten years old ; but its produce
tiveness is very great. There is a saying in Italy, that
if a father plants an olive on the birth of his son the
son's future is provided for. The tree outlives many
generations of men. There are some in Europe which
still bear fruit, though reputed to be over one thou
sand years old, and others yet standing at the foot of
the Mount of Olives which are believed to have over
hung the Garden of Gethsemane in the Night of Agony.
Another most interesting branch of California indus
tries, is the silk culture. A few evenings ago I rode
out with a friend to see something of it.
Three miles from Sacramento we reached the resi
dence of Capt. W. M. Haynie — a low dark frame house,
hidden in luxuriant foliage which is fragrant with June
roses and oleander blossoms. Hitherto, silk-worm eggs
have come from the East. Italy alone is said to buy
five million dollars' worth annually from Japan. Last
year California began to export eggs to Italy and
France. They were sold at four dollars per ounce for

SILK CULTURE. 309
the sake of introducing them into foreign markets;
but so many people are going into the business that
before the season was over they commanded ten dol
lars at home. It is claimed that the eggs of California
are the healthiest and best in the -v^rld, and that no
other climate is so favorable to their production, except
that of some of the interior districts of India, where the
worms hatch and make sUk without man's super-visiOn.
Haynie's young mulberry trees cover thirteen acres.
Every winter he crops the stems until they are only three
or four feet high, that the spreading branches may be
reached in the feeding season without a ladder. The
leaves are ready for the worms by the middle of April,
and continue good until late in November. Capital in
California has demanded such quick and large returns,
and the memory of the disastrous morus multicaulis
fever which swept the Union thirty years ago has been
so fresh, that few have undertaken silk culture until
within the last two years. Now, Haynie estimates that
a hundred farmers in the State are engaged in it, and
four mUlions of mulberry trees growing. An acre of
trees he thinks, with three careful men to attend to
them and to the worms, should produce five hundred
dozen of eggs in a season. Chinamen require instruc
tion, as those who come here are chiefly of the lowest
classes, from the coast, many of whom have spent their
lives in boats, and know little of the skiUed industries
of their own country. The Japanese immigrants (few,
thus far) have been famUiar with silk culture at home.
Haynie's cocoonery, a wooden building seventy feet by
fifty, is full of frames supporting broad shelves, which
are only a few inches apart and are completely covered
with silk-worms in various stages. There are now four

810 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC,
hundred thousand ; in August it is expected that the
building wiU contain one million. They have become
so far Americanized that they live upon newspapers —
which overspread all the shelves, A uniform tempera
ture of about 80° proves best for them. Some varie
ties breed three times a year, some twice, and some
only once ; and Haynie, in his experimenting, has pro
duced several hybrid varieties which make beautiful
cocoons. According to the authorities it takes nearly seven
hundred thousand newly-hatched worms to weigh a
pound avoirdupois. Those here only one or two days
old are brown, and about one-twentieth of an inch
long. For them, the tenderest leaves are cut up to
present as many edges as possible, and they do not eat
the stems or fibers. The largest worms — thirty days
old and nearly white — are more than three inches long.
They devour fiber and all with rapacity. On a shelf
completely covered with them, Haynie laid a large
bunch of fresh leaves. In a minute they were swarm
ing over the leaves, and in five minutes they had con
sumed everything except the tough main stems. Un
der the microscope they look like antediluvian reptiles,
with formidable horns and frightful claws. The work
men handle them freely and lay them upon the open
palm to exhibit them. They will not leave the shelves
unless they grow hungry ; and all, young and old, are
fed about eight times in twenty-four hours.
At the venerable age of one month they are mature.
Then, after a day or two of voluntary fasting, they
suspend themselves among branches of willow rods,
and from their snouts, just below the mouth, two little
threads of silk as fine as gossamer begin to protrude.

SILK CULTURE. 311
At first these are liquid, but on striking the air they
turn to fiber. The worm spins the two threads into
one, and doubling his body into a coU begins to weave
around him the silken prison which is to inclose him
during his strange transfiguration. In three days the
cocoon is complete, as large as a thimble, and rounded
at both ends. It may be white, straw-colored, buff,
orange, amber, canarj, or of almost any other cheerful
hue. It contains about four hundred yards of silk
fiber, so fine that the eye can hardly detect it and a
baby's hair is coarse beside it.
If the object be to produce spool-silk, the cocoon is
now kept in the sun for one day, and that kills the
worm within. But if only eggs are coveted, the cocoon
is left untouched, and in eight days the worm is a
chrysalis, incased in a little shell inside his prison. In
three or four weeks he is ready to "tunnel" out of his
ceU — a favorite method of escape for captives. With
the only old feature he retains — his sharp snout — he
digs out, cutting the fiber so that it will no longer
make thread, but only floss silk. He emerges in full
glory, a snow-white moth or miller. Two cocoons,
which Haynie gave me as curiosities, I happened to
place on the table in my room at the Sacramento
Hotel The next day the ghostly moths had come
out, and were laying eggs upon my letters and news
papers. A male and a female miller are left together for two
or three days. Next the female fastens herself upon a
piece of paper and deposits some two hundred -and fifty
eggs, white, as large as pin-heads, and lying upon the
paper as close together as paving-stones. Then the
moths both die. Their little life seems like a satire

312 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC,
upon ours. What is it Owen Meredith says of the
midge disappointed in love ?
" His friends would console him ; Ufe yet is before him ;
Many hundred long seconds he still has to liye ;
In the State yet a mighty career spreads before him ;
Let him seek in the great world of action to strive ! "
In two or three days the eggs turn to a bluish color,
and then they are ripe for hatching when the proper
season comes. Rain and lightning are the great ene
mies of silk-worms. Rain, soaking the mulberry leaf
makes it poisonous for them, and a single thunder-
shower may paralyze and kill every worm in a large
cocoonery in ten minutes. But in California, Summer
is rainless, and thunder and lightning are unknown
except among the mountains.
This new industry is so nice and deUcate that it may
take several years' to master its detaUs , but it bids fair
to expand into vast proportions. Besides supplying
the European market -with eggs, I see no reason why
California should not lUtimately manufacture sUk for
the entire country. The duty on imported silks is
sixty per cent., affording room for a fascinating profit.
Here the machinery can easUy be made, the worm
and the mulberry thrive, and skUled oriental labor is
obtainable in limitless quantities. Even if we import
the raw silk (upon which there is no duty), cheap labor
and nearness to China and Japan wUl give the factories
of California great advantages over those of New York,
New Jersey, and Connecticut.

YII.
A BEEAKFAST WITH THE SEA-LIOIifS.
¦ F all the Uons of San Francisco the most unique
are the sea-lions. This morning a party of
friends and myself rode out to breakfast with
them, and if they did not join in the banquet, they at
least countenanced it.
Prom Montgomery street we drove up Bush, an ex
ceedingly sharp hUl, passing residences which are chiefly
of wood, and have large, pleasant gardens. After the
cobble-stones of the old business thoroughfares and the
Nicolson pavement of the resident streets were left be
hind, the blowing sands grew trying to the eyes. In
the beginning these bare sand-hUls must have been
very dreary; but the grass and shrubbery of the yards
is covering their nakedness more and more, and in time
San Francisco will be the most picturesque of aU our
large cities. The view of the water and the shipping,
from hundreds of dwellings, is superb. Past raw out
skirts, past Lone Mountain Cemetery, where sleep Brod-
erick and Baker and Starr King, we reached a splendid
macadamized turnpike, and our horses flew Uke the
wind. The pace into which the noble animal is per
suaded, in this cool, bracing climate, would soon kill
him in an Eastern city, and would set Henry Bergh to
wringing his hands and tearing his hair.

314 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
Rising to the crest of the last hUl we looked out
upon the great Pacific, its green expanse flecked with
snowy foam. I wonder how often one must see it to
destroy the associations of infinite far-off-ness, which
always give it a charm for stranger eyes !
At the water's edge we stop at the Cliff House — a
long, low, pleasant, frame buUding, with a wing of
horse-sheds stretching afar, and deep, hospitable porches
in front and rear. The Cliff is a favorite resort. Omni
buses run constantly from the city — eight miles — and
private parties go out daily, sometimes choosing moon
light nights, but generally breakfasting here, that they
may return by noon, before the -winds grow furious.
The gentlemen of our party all wear overcoats, but ar
rive so chilled that the coal fires prove a strong mag
net for the first few minutes. Then from the rear
porch we gaze out eagerly upon the Pacific.
To the north is the entrance to San Francisco Bay,
with its romantic name and its yet more romantic his
tory. FurthjOr, and just beyond the reach of vision,
lies Drake's Bay, where, three hundred years ago, the
great navigator and captain lay for months and never
found the Golden Gate. To the north-west rise the
Farallones, which supply San Francisco -with the eggs
of the murre or foolish guillemot, a nutritive but un
palatable substitute for hen's eggs. Straight before us,
to the west, stretches the great Ocean, with its new
currents of commerce. How the thoughts crowd upon
one as his straining eyes try to pierce the horizon! The
Sandwich Islands — Japan — China — ^India ! The begin
ning of a new era, which Unks us to " dusky nations
living in strange countries, worshiping strange goda,
and writing strange characters from left to right ! "

VIEW PROM THE CLIFF. 315
But we leave speculations about the distant and the
infinite, to study the wonder which Ues at our feet. A
few yards from the porch are the famous Seal Ro.cks,
two or three huge granite pUes streaked with white from
peUcan deposits, and washed and worn by waves into
picturesque shapes, with a curious arch piercing the
top of one. Here, during the summer months, these
sea-lions or seals congregate as they do nowhere else
in the world. On other coasts, especiaUy on the North
-Pacific, some of them climb ledges, but these isolated
rocks, washed on every side by the sea, are their pet
resort. A wholesome State law forbids the killing of
them; so their numbers do not diminish, and they are
likely to remain permanently the great curiosity of the
city. Some very young ones are not more than two
feet long ; the largest are twenty feet, and weigh four
thousand pounds. They bark like dogs, and on very
dark nights, it is said, their voices enable pilots of in
coming ships to find the entrance to the harbor.
Fully a hundred lie upon the rocks. Through an
opera glass we can study them with the greatest mi
nuteness. Some are sleeping in the sun, some crawling
slowly up froin the, water, some nursing their young,
and some fighting. One leviathan is scratching his
head with his huge flipper, while his moony face con
tracts into a puffy oleaginous scowl. When still fresh
from the water the lions are black, but their coats dry
to a dirty brown, like that of an ordinary buffalo robe.
A few, however, are almost white. One theory is that
some are white at particular seasons ; another that all
grow white with age. They are said to have the
slowest circulation of any warm-blooded animals, and
to stay under water from half to three-quarters of an

316 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
hour at a time. Their eyes are matchless, large, liquid,
and tender. As they sit with heads erect, their necks
and shoulders do have a leonine look. WhUe crawling
up the rocks they suggest primeval monsters or enor
mous blood-suckers. Their heads are wolf-shaped,
hence, I suppose the Spanish name for these rocks —
Lobos Point. Still, a white one swimming in the water
looks quite enough like a human being to have origi
nated the fable of the mermaid among old mariners.
The tail, too, ends in a fin, in orthodox mermaid fash
ion, and the cry of a young one is strangely like the
wail of an infant.
As a general rule sea-lions don't walk about seeking
whom they may devour, but one of our group tells me
that down the coast a lady saw one lying upon the
sand, and, supposing it to be dead, touched it with her
parasol. It proved to be only asleep ; the stroke awoke
it ; she turned to fly, and it went lumbering after her.
While she ran, shrieking with terror, a gentleman of
her party came up and dispatched the animal with his
revolver. Whether this be history, or a " California
yarn," I have not the least idea.
Breakfast interrupts our observations, and we sit
down to it with keen appetites. Profusion and excel
lence are the characteristics of all California meals.
At this, white wine serves instead of coffee, and con
versation flows like a river. Colonel Foster, our host,
recalls the days when he used to go down to the sea
in ships ; Harry Linden lives his adventures in Mexico
over again ; Swinton invokes the ghosts of the Army
of the Potomac ; and, at short intervals Evans blos
soms in some fresh story, always droller and more ex
travagant than the last. The meal ends with a Cal-

ADIEU TO THE LIONS. 317
ifornia fruit'offering — strawberries, raspberries, apri
cots, enormous peaches, fresh flgs, and mangoes, all
produced near San Francisco, and thus early in the
season. The mango, a little larger than a hen's egg,
tastes somewhat like the banana, but has a richer trop
ical flavor.
Breakfast over, we make our adieus to the lions and
turn homeward. Under the irresistible temptation of
a horseback ride, I give up my seat in one of the car
riages, and gallop back with a lady of the party and
her little boy of ten years, who sits his pony like an
old cavalry soldier. Pleasant to see are his glowing
cheeks and the healthful flush on the face of the
mother, who was a confirmed invalid until her physi
cian prescribed this remedy. To it she believes that
she owes her life ; and now she finds a gallop of twenty
miles, before breakfast, a pleasant recreation. Were
we aU to throw physic to the dogs, and take large doses
of the saddle instead, I wonder if anybody would lose
by it except the undertakers. They might " strike,"
and so find themselves in the fashion.
At midday we are in town again, after a very de
lightful morning ; and so ends my sight-seeing for this
journey.

YIII.
BACK TO OHIOAGO.
JROM San Francisco, I started with a party re
solved on making the entire journey to New
York, in one unbroken chain of time and rail
way connection.
We left Sacramento one afternoon at six o'clock, by
special train, and kept fourteen minutes ahead of the
regular express. An hour or two later we were cUmb
ing the mountains. Two heavy locomotives are re
quired to draw up the regular passenger train of seven
cars. In 105 miles, the track rises 7,000 feet. For
three miles and a half the ascent is 116 feet to the mile.
At sharp curves upon these heavy grades the raUs are
already worn smooth, and sand is scattered upon them
to keep the wheels from slipping.
Near the summit I rode for two hours with the en
gineer, to \^ew again the grand scenery. Our locomo
tive, quite out of breath, throbbed and hesitated, and
once or twice stopped altogether; but the engineer
caressed and coaxed it, and averred that it was doing
"her level best" — whatever that may be upon a 116
feet grade.
"She never busted ,me yet," he said, "and I don't
believe she will now." Always "she," never "he" nor
"it;" and always spoken with a sort of affection, as if
the iron horse were a living pet.

GOING TO CALIFORNIA IN 1867.

GOING TO CALIFOUNIA IN 1869

LIFE IN THE CARS, 319
Soon after noon, the American River 2,000 feet be
neath us and yellow from mining, the dizzy trestles,
the endless snow sheds, the dark tunnels, the granite
chffs and deep snow banks of the crest, and Donner
Lake, calm and blue in its perennial beauty, were all
left behind; and we came spinning down the eastern
slope into hot, thick alkali dust, which is irritation to
the eyes, relaxation to the nerves, and weariness to the
flesh in general.
Through Weber and Echo canyons, and other attract
ive regions, we nearly aU rode upon platforms or in the
baggage-cars, to obtain better views. One lady, com
fortably settled in an arm-chair on the platform, with
her parasol shading her face, and a bouquet in her
lap, studied alternately a new novel and the exquisite
scenery of Weber River. The picture she presented
was in striking contrast to the woe-begone looks of her
sisters who crossed the plains years ago in the old way.
Luncheon was served at one, and dinner at seven ;
and at both there were claret and champagne in mod
eration, and California fruit in profusion, and, for the
first two or three days, vases of fresh flowers. After
dinner, if the company was in the vein, there were a
few toasts and a Uttle speaking. The fare was as good
as at the best New York hotels — the variety not so
great, but the articles as well cooked and as tastefiUly
served. The attendance at meals and through the day
was perfect. If one wanted a glass of water or of
lemonade, or would have the dust brushed from his
clothing, a waiter was always ready with salver or -wisp.
In the evening there was singing in some of the groups,
and on Sunday morning the whole party joined in the
service of the Episcopal Church.

320 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
At Utah stations appeared barefooted boys, girls, and
old men, with paUs of buttermUk, offering cup-fulls for
"two bits." Of course the ladies were curious to see
the Saints.
"Do you suppose they are Mormons?" asked one, al
luding to two women who stood in front of a tent. "I
should so like to see some Mormon wives ! "
" Yes, madam," replied a man, in shirt-sleeves and
straw hat, who was just passing through the car, and
who thought the question related to his party — "Yes,
madam, we are Mormons, and these " (nodding toward
two apple-faced women who followed, each with a baby
in her arms) — "are my wives."
One or two commonplaces were exchanged, but the
inexorable whistle cut short the interview.
The trip to Omaha occupied nearly five days. We
were all congratulating ourselves upon the success of
our excursion, when, twenty-four hours west of Omaha,
we came to grief. We were running twenty-five miles
an hour on a straight track, over level prairie, when
there came a sharp whistle for "down brakes " — a trem
bUng — a bumping up and down — a bewildering, terri
fying crash — and then a dead stop. After my soul, like
Hans Breitmann's, came back to me, I found our car
off the track, and poised on the side of a low embank
ment, at an angle of forty-five degrees. I clambered
out and started forward. The next coach was also half
overturned and badly smashed at the forward end.
Flat upon its floor lay a gentleman groaning fearfully,
and wearing the face of one who had just held an in
terview with Death. That he was mortally hurt I could
not doubt, untU he abruptly sprang up, brushed me aside
like a brown paper parcel, and ran -wUdly to the rear.

"down brakes." 321
These two cars had been "telescoped," or driven
into each other. Pinned in between the two as in a
-vise, and unable to move an inch, hung a young in
valid Californian, whose mother was in one of the rear
coaches. "I am killed," he said faintly; "don't teU
my mother." But a saw was brought, and in ten min
utes he was freed by cutting off a sill. Happily no
bones were broken, but one leg was severely bruised,
and his nervous system had received a severe shock.
Still further forward under the wrecks I saw what
had been a man, but now was a shapeless trunk, with
fragments scattered far apart, and so mutilated, that at
first we could not determine whether it was a negro or
a white man. It proved to be the forward brakeman,
killed at his post in the twinkling of an eye. One
moment "he," the next "it ! " The remains were cov
ered with a blanket ; and aU the living drew a sigh of
relief in learning that he left no family. No other
fives were lost, but Pqllman's cook, who had jumped
out of the window, struck upon his head on a sand
bank, where he spun like a top for a few seconds, and
lay for two or three hours before he could fully make up
his mind whether he was dead or alive. Five other
negroes, in a Union Pacific cooking-car, which was now
in the ditch, shattered and wrong side up, came out
through what had lately been the floor, but was now the
roof, almost white with terror, but -without a scratch.
A herd of cattle just from Texas had been grazing
several yards from the road, but at the last moment
they suddenly stampeded and tried to cross in front of
the locomotive. The result was : eleven killed and
wounded cattle ; six out of seven coaches thrown from
the track, and three of them — baggage and express-
21

322 THROUGH TO THE PACIFIC.
cars — upside down in the ditch, utterly wrecked. Un
til then I never comprehended the force of the injunc
tion " Keep off the platform." The platforms of aU
but the Pullman cars — which are unusually strong —
had shattered into fine spUnters. Had the accident
overtaken us while we sat upon them studying the
scenery, it is doubtful whether one of the party would
have escaped death or mutUation.
In ten minutes a locomotive and caboose arrived
from Laramie, four miles distant, and we rode thither,
and took quarters in the large, weU-appointed hotel of
the Railway Company.
By midnight the wrecks had been cleared away, and
our one car which had not left the tracky came forward.
Our demijohns reappeared with their contents at low
tide. The smashed boxes of California fruit, too, had
been a godsend to the Laramites. I wonder when they
had seen fresh apricots, peaches, and cherries before !
This was the end of our ornamental traveling. We
attached our solitary sleeping-car to the rear of a regu
lar train, and came on to Omaha with lowered plumes. -
Friends who went up the road to meet us, afterward
reported that they found the most quiet excursion
party which had ever returned from the Plains. The
next morning I woke with an aching wrist, which I was
unable to use for three days ; and several other gentle
men felt similar indications of premature old age.
The accident ended our ambitious traveUng designs,
and broke up our party. One lingered in Omaha.
Some pushed on as fast as they, could to New York
city. And I, with some others, came on to Chicago, to
loiter a few days in its busy streets, till affairs drew me
East again.

The Cast-iron Plow
AND ITS mYE:N"TOE,

iHE inventions which have lessened the price of
the plow, and the difficulty and expense of run
ning it, and brought the implement to its pres
ent perfection, rank in importance with those which
have given us the steam-engine and the locomotive.
Improve the plow, and we improve the value of every
acre of land in the United States, Reduce the cost of
Working it, and we reduce the cost of every barrel of
flour and every bushel of com between Bangor and
San Francisco.
The plow is older than civUization. Pliny tells us
that "Buzyges the Athenian, or as others would have
it, Triptolemus, first yoked oxen for the tiUage of the
earth, and advisei^ the plow." Plutarch records that
"At the building of Rome, Romulus taketh the plow to
which he fastened a colter or plowshare of brass, and so
yoked in an ox and cow; he himself holding the plow,
did make round about the compass of the city a deep
fiirrow." In English history it is still more important,
and "a plowman" is honorably mentioned in Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, as one of the group of story-teUers
who diverted themselves on their pious pilgrimage.

324 THE CAST-IRON PLOW;
But the ancients and the early English plowmen
tUled the earth with an implement so rude and imper
fect, that we wonder it held its place so long. It was
little more than a crooked stick, shaped like a section
of the trunk of a tree, with a sharp projecting branch
to stir the ground. This wooden plow, exactly as it
was used among the Egyptians and Israelites, is stUl
in vogue, not only in the Republic of Mexico, but also
in our own Territory of New Mexico, where, when
merchants tried to introduce the iron plow, the ignor
ant and superstitious natives inflexibly refused to have
anything to do with it.
The Rotterdam plow, used in England a hundred
and fifty years ago, was a heavy, unwieldy implement
made entirely of wood, except the colter, or knife de
pending from the beam to cut through roots and soil,
and two shoes on the under side of the share, which
were of wrought iron. But in 1740, James Small, a
Scotchman, introduced a revolution in husbandry by
producing a cast-iron mold-board. That was the be
ginning of a new era. Then there was no marked
change till nearly fifty years afterward, when Robert
Ransom of Ipswich, patented an iron plowshare.
Until after the Revolution the history of agricultural
implements in America was nearly the same as in Eng
land. Yankee inventiveness did not assert itself till ,
the colonies threw off the yoke of the mother-country.
' But as the United States struggled out of the gloom in
which the war left them, improvements in agriculture
and manufactures began to occupy the keenest minds
of the country. In 1797, Newbold, of New Jersey,
obtained a patent for some improvement in plow-mak
ing, which was purcliased of him by David Peacock,

AND ITS INVENTOR. 325
who afterward produced a plow having both mold-
board and land-side of cast-iron, with share of sharpened
steel or wrought-iron.
So important were improvements in plows consid
ered, that the versatile and philosophic Jefferson was
greatly interested in them, and in 1798 he wrote a
long, elaborate treatise on the construction of mold-
boards. His theory was, that, as the bottom of the
furrow is, or ought to be flat, the breast of the mold-
board where it comes in direct contact with the soil
should be flat also. But the plow still continued in a
very imperfect state. As late as 1820, according to
the testimony of old farmers now living, the kind best
known and most commonly used, bore the name of the
"Bull-plow." It was made principally of wood and
wrought-iron, and ordinarily cost |40 or |50. The
mold-board was of wood, fitted bunglingly to the irons,
and the action of the rude implement " might be illus
trated by holding a sharp-pointed shovel, back up,
and thrusting it through the ground." The share was
of steel, and frequently had to be sharpened by a
blacksmith at a charge of from ten to twenty shillings.
The plowing season, especially where land was stony,
proved very expensive to the husbandman.
In 1814, Jethro Wood, a farmer of ample means and
large inteUigence, living in Cayuga County, New York,
took out a patent for an improved plow. From early
chUdhood he had shown remarkable ingenuity in the
construction of agricultural implements. When only
a few years old he molded a little plow from metal,
which he obtained by melting a pewter cup. Then,
cutting the buckles from a set of braces, he made a
miniature harness with which he fastened the family

326 THE CAST-IRON PLOW;
cat to his tiny plow, and endeavored to drive her about
the flower-garden. The good old-fashioned whipping
he received for this "mischief" was such as to drive
all desire for repeating the experiment out of his ju
venile head.
But when he grew to manhood the ruling passion
asserted itself, and for years the improvement of the
plow was his darUng project. His chief desire was to
invent a new mold-board, which, from its form should
meet the least resistance from the soil, and which
could be made -with share and standard, entirely of
cast-iron. To hit upon the exact shape for the mold-
board he whittled away, day after day, untU his neigh
bors, who thought him mad on the subject, gave him
the soubriquet of the " whittling Yankee." His cus
tom was to take a large oblong potato which was easy
for the knife, and cut it till he obtained what he fan
cied was the exact curve.
The plow which he patented in 1814 he found de
fective ; and, destroying his flrst patterns, he set to
work again. In 1819 he took out a patent for his per
fected plow. It covered five distinct improvements : 1.
The new shape of the mold-board, to raise and turn
the soil with the least ' resistance. 2. The cast-iron
standard, which is a projection from the mold-board,
connecting it with the beam. 3. The cast-iron edge
or share, and the manner of attaching it to the upper
side of the mold-board. 4. The fastening of the han
dle to the land-side and mold-board by notches or loops,
cast with the land-side and mold-board respectively. 5.
The manner of connecting the land-side and mold-
board without the aid of screw-bolts.
He obtained his patent for a period of fourteen

AND ITS INVENTOR. 32^
years, and his invention received the name of the
',' Cast-iron Plow," from the entire abandonment of
wrought-iron in its construction.
He immediately began to manufacture his plows, and
introduce them to the farmers in his neighborhood.
The di^culties which he now encountered would have
daunted any man without extraordinary perseverance,
and a firm belief in the inestimable benefit to agricul
ture sure to result from his invention. He was obliged
to manufacture all the patterns, and to have the plow
cast under the disadvantages usual with new machin
ery. The nearest furnace was thirty miles from his
home, and, bafiled by the obstacles which unskillful and
disobliging workmen threw in his way, he visited it,
day after day, directing the making of his patterns,
standing by the furnaces while the metal was melting,
and often with his own hands aiding in the casting.
When, at length, samples of his plow were ready for
use, he met with another difficulty in the unwillingness
of farmers to accept them. " What," they cried in
contempt, " a plow made of pot-metal ? You might as
weU attempt to turn up the earth with a glass plow
share. It would hardly be more brittle."
One day he induced one of his most skeptical neigh
bors to make a. public trial of the plow. A large con
course gathered to see how it would work. The field
selected for the test was thickly strewn with stones,
many of them firmly imbedded in the soU, and jutting
up from the surface. ' AU predicted that the plow
would break at the outset. To their astonishment and
Wood's satisfaction it went around the field, running
easUy and smoothly, and turning up the most perfect
fiirrow which had ever been seen. The small stones

328 THE CAST-IRON PLOW;
against which the farmer maliciously guided it, to test
the "brittle" metal, moved out of the way as if they
were grains of sand, and it slid around the immovable
rocks as if they were icebergs. '
Incensed at the non-fulfillment of his prophecy, the
farmer finally drove the plow with all force upon a
large bowlder, and found to his amazement that it was
uninjured by the colUsion. It proved a day of triumph
for Jethro Wood, and from that time he heard few
taunts about the "pot-metal."
It was soon discovered that his plow turned up the
soil with so much ease that two horses could do the
work for which a yoke of oxen and a span of horses
had sometimes been insufficient before ; that it made a
better furrow, and that it could be bought for seven or
eight dollars. No more running to the blacksmith
either to have it sharpened. It was proved a thorough
and valuable success. Thomas Jefferson, from his re
tirement at Monticello, wrote Wood a letter of con
gratulation, and although his theory of the construc
tion of mold-boards had differed entirely from the
inventor's, gave his most hearty appreciation to the
merits' of the new plow. During .the same year, 1820,
Jethro Wood sent one of his plows to Alexander I., Em
peror of Russia, and the peculiar circumstances attend
ing the gift and its reception formed a large part of the
newspaper gossip of the day. Wood, though a man
of cultivation, intellectually as well as agriculturally,
was not famUiar with French, which was then as now
the diplomatic language. So he requested his personal
friend. Dr. Samuel Mitchill, President of the New York
Society of Natural History and Sciences, to write a
letter in French to accompany the gift.

AND ITS INVENTOR. 329
The autocrat of all the Russias received the plow
and the letter, and sent back a diamond ring — which
the newspapers declared to be worth from $7,000 to
$15,000 — ^in token of his appreciation. By some indi
rection, the ring was not delivered to the donor of the
plow, but to the writer of the letter, and Dr. Mitchill
instantly appropriated it to his own use. Wood ap
pealed to the Russian Minister at Washington, for re
dress. The Minister sent to his Emperor and asked to
whom the ring belonged, and Alexander replied that-it
was intended for the inventor of the plow. Armed
with this authority. Wood again demanded the ring of
Dr. Mitchill. But there were no steamships or tele
graphs in those days, and Mitchill declared that in the
long interval in which they had been waiting to hear
from Russia, he had given it to the cause of the Greeks,
who were then rising to throw off the yoke of their
Turkish oppressors. A newspaper of the time calls
Mitchill's course " an ingenious mode of quartering on
the enemy," but the inventor's friends seem to have
beUeved that the ring had been privately sold for his
:benefit. At all events, it never came to light again,
and Wood, a peaceful man, a Quaker by profession,
did not push the matter further.
In truth he had lijitle time to devote to side issues.
His patterns had cost him some thousands of dollars.
For the first year or two he had given away his plows
to the farmers in aU directions, that their value might
be thoroughly tested. Now, when he began to look
around for some benefit to accrue to himself, he found
the plow-makers everywhere manufacturing them, in
defiance of his rights, as patentee and inventor. In
fruitless suits and vain struggles against the ineflflcacy

330 THE CAST-IRON PLOW;
of the laws, the fourteen years for which the first pat
ent was granted, expired.
But, in 1833, he succeeded in getting a renewal for
fourteen years more. In the meantime, however, he
had spent a large private fortune, and became heavily
involved. His invention had brought him, literally,
nothing but a plentiful crop of lawsuits which seemed
to spring up in every furrow his plow had traced. In
1834 he died, pecuniarily ruined.
Notwithstanding all his disappointments, his life was
singularly bright and genial. His serene, equable dis
position was proof against all trials. Many persons yet
living remember him as one whose beautiful sunny na
ture no adversity could cloud, and whose broad, loving
philanthropy no ill-treatment could sour. In the event
of reaping the deserved re-ward for his invention, he
had resolved to establish a fund for a system of public
schools in the State of New York, and he seemed to
feel as much disappointment at the failure of this
scheme as at his own losses. He always wore the garb
and manners of the community of Friends, was of be
nignant and winning presence, courtly grace of man
ner, and a tender, affectionate heart.
After his death his son Benjamin, who received the
invention as a legacy, continued his efforts to wrest
justice from the unwilling hand of the law. Nearly
all his father's failures had proceeded from the inad
equacy of the patent laws, which were almost worth
less to protect the rights of the inventor. Even now
a patent is worth little until it has been fought through
the Supreme Court of the United States. In those
days so many obstacles were thrown in the way of in- .
ventors, and the combinations against them were so

AND ITS INVENTOR. 331
formidable, that Eli Whitney, in trying to establish his
right to the cotton gin in a Georgia court, while his ma
chine was doubUng and ^ trebling the value of lands
through the State, had this experience, which is given
in his own words :
"I had great difficulty in proving that the machine
had been used in Georgia, although at the same moment
there were three separate sets of this machinery in motion
within fifty yards of the building in which the court sat,
and all so near that the rattling of the wheels was dis
tinctly heard on the steps of the Court-House."
Similar 'difficulties had met Jethro Wood in his suits ;
so his son resolved to strike at the root of the evil by
securing a reform in the laws. He accordingly went
to Washington, where he remained through several
seasons, always working to this end. Clay, Webster,
and John Quincy Adams, all of whom had known
Jethro Wood and his invention, aided his son power
fully with their votes and counsel, and he succeeded
in securing several important changes in the patent
law. Then he returned to New York, and commenced suit
to resist encroachment on his right, and the wholesale
manufacture of his plow by those who refused to pay
the premium to the inventor. The " Cast-iron Plow "
was now used all over the country, and formidable com
binations of its manufacturers united thfeir capital and
mfluence against Benjamin Wood. William H, Seward,
then practicing law, was retained as Wood's eounsel,
and the plow-makers engaged aU the talent they could
muster to oppose him.
Heretofore, it had never been contradicted that
Jethro Wood was the originator of the plow in use,

332 THE CAST-IRON PLOW;
but now his right to the invention was denied, and it
was alleged that his improvements had been forestalled
by other makers. Again and again the case was ad
journed, and Europe and America were ransacked for
specimens of the different plows which were declared
to include his patent.
Wood also obtained from England samples of the
plows of James Small and Robert Ransom. He
searched New Jersey to find the Peacock plow which
was said to have a cast-iron mold-board of exactly simi
lar shape to his father's. Everywhere in that State he
found "Wood's plow" in use, but he could hear noth
ing of the one he sought. At length, riding near a
farm-house, he discovered one of the old "Newbold-
Peacock plows" lying under a fence, dilapidated and
rust-eaten. " We don't use it any more," the farmer replied to
his inquiries, "we've got one a good deal better."
" WiU you seU this ? " asked Wood.
" Well, yes." And Wood, glad to get it at almost
any price, paid the keen farmer, who took advantage
of his evident anxiety, two or three times the price of
a new plow, and added the old one to his specimens.
This motley collection of implements was brought
into court and exhibited to the judges. At last, after
the case had dragged its slow length along, through
many terms, and the plaintiff was nearly worn out with
the law's delay, the time for final trial and decision ar
rived. The combination of plow-makers feared that
the case would go in Wood's favor, and made every
effort to keep him out of court, that he might lose it
by default. During his long entanglement in the law
he had contracted many debts, and one of his opponents

AND ITS INVENTOR. 333
had managed to purchase several of these accounts.
Just before the case was to be heard for the last time,
this worthy plow manufacturer, attended by a sheriff,
and armed with a warrant to arrest Wood for debt, ap--
peared at the front door of his house. Fortunately
Wood had had a few minutes' warning, and slipping
out at the back door' he made his way under cover of
approaching darkness to the house of a friendly neigh
bor. There he procured a horse and started for Albany,
one hundred and fifty mUes distant, hearing every mo
ment in fancy the clattering of hoofs at his heels.
As if fortune coiild not be sufficiently ill-natured, his
horse proved vicious and unmanageable, and thrice in
the tedious journey threw the rider from his saddle
upon the frozen earth, so injuring him that he was
barely able to go on.
On arri-ving at Albany he found himself not a mo
ment too soon. The case had an immediate hearing,
and after three days' trial the circuit court decided un
equivocally, that the plow now in general use over the
country was unlike any other which had been produced ;
that the improvements which rendered it so effective
were due to Jethro Wood, and that all manufacturers
must pay his heirs for the privUege of making it.
This was a great triumph, but it was now the late
autumn of 1845, and the last grant of the patent had
httle more than a year to run. Wood again repaired
to Washington to apply for a new extension, but the
excitements of so long a contest had been too much for
him. Just as he had re-commenced his efforts they
were forever ended. While talking with one of his
fiiends, he suddenly feU dead from heart-disease, and
the patent expired without renewal.

334 THE CAST-IRON PLOW;
The last male heir to the invention was no more.
On settling the estate, it was found that while not a
vestige remained of the large fortune owned by Jethro
Wood when he began his career, less than five hundred
and fifty dollars had ever been received from his in-,
vention. The after history of the case is a brief one. Four
daughters of Jethro Wood alone remained to represent
the family. In the -winter of 1848 the two younger
sisters went to Washington to petition Congress that
a bill might be passed for their relief, in view of the
inestimable services of their father to the agricultural
interests of the country. Webster declared that he
regarded their father as a "public benefactor," and
gave them his most efficient aid; Clay warmly es
poused their cause, and the venerable John Quincy
Adams, with his trembling hand — then so enfeebled by
age that he rarely used the pen — wrote them kind
notes heartily sympathizing with them. On one mem
orable day, while they were in the House gallery, Mr.
Adams, at his desk on the floor, wrote them briefly in
relation to their case. A few minutes later he was
struck -with the fatal attack under which he exclaimed,
"This is the last of earth; I am content," and was
borne dying to the Speaker's room. The tremulous
lines, the last his hand ever traced, were found on his
desk and delivered to Miss Wood.
A bill providing that in these four heirs should rest
for seven years the exclusive right of making and
vending the improvements in the construction of the
cast-iron plow; and that twenty-five cents on each
plow might be exacted from all who manufactured it,
passed the Senate unanimously. But Washington al-

AND ITS INVENTOR. 335
ready swarmed with plow manufacturers. The city of
Pittsburgh alone sent five to look after their interest.
Money was freely used, and the members of the House
Committee who were to report on the bill were assured,
that during the twenty-eight years of the patent Wood's
famUy had reaped immense -wealth, and wished to keep
up a monopoly. The two quiet ladies, fresh from the
retirement of a Quaker home, where they had learned
Uttle of the world, were even accused of attempting to
secure its extension through bribery. It was the wolf
charging the lamp with riling the water. So ignorant
were they of such means, that, though the Chairman
of the Committee plainly told the younger lady in a
few words of private conversation that a very few thou
sand doUars would gi-ve her a favorable verdict, she did
not understand the suggestion till after an unfavorable
report was presented, and the bill killed in the House.
When they were about to leave Washington, some
friendly members of Congress advised them to deposit
the valuable documents which had been used in their
suit, including the letter from Thomas Jefferson to
Jethro Wood, in the archives of the House, where they
could only be -withdrawn on the motion of some mem
ber. They did so, and left them for some years un
called for. When at last they applied for them they
could not be found. Nor from that time to the present
has any trace of them been discovered, by any of the
famUy. Thus perished the last vestige of proof relat
ing to this ill-fated invention.
A few futile attempts were made in later years to
obtain redress, but Jethro Wood's cotemporaries -and
fiiends, public and private, were nearly all gone. The
" Cast-iron Plow " was everywhere in use, but the name

336 THE CAST-IRON PLOW.
of its inventor was forgotten. Even the New Ameri
can Cyclopedia, in its history of the plow, does not
mention it. But ancient wooden plows, unused and
falling to decay upon thousands of American farms,
yet remain to show by contrast the exceeding service
which Jethro Wood performed for the country. His
invention is in universal use through the length and
breadth of the land, but his few surviving heirs are
living lives of poverty and struggle.
The United States Agricultural Report for 1866 says
truly, "Although Wood was one of the greatest bene
factors to mankind, by this admirable invention, he
never received, for all his thought, anxiety, and ex
pense, a sum of money sufficient to defray the expenses
of his decent burial."
Mechanical inventions are our national pride. Our
wretched laws for the protection of those who originate
them are our deep national shame. Jethro Wood served
his country more effectually than many a man to whom
we have given wealth and fame, and monuments of
enduring brass.

Two Eontes to the Indies.

PART I.
EASTWAED BT THE SUEZ CANAL.
IHE Unk which binds the civilization of the
most ancient time to the most modern — which
unites the age of Solomon, King of the Jews,
of Hiram, Ruler of the Phoenicians, and of Carthage
in her days of commercial glory, to this living and
breathing century — ^is the trade with the Indies. For
three thousand years the nations have been seeking
the most convenient route to the Orient. East and
West have they sought it. This year of grace beholds
the Eastern quest ended in the opening of the Suez
Canal, and the dream of Western explorers fulfilled in
the completion of the Pacific Railroad.
In the visions of early navigators who looked to the
East as El Dorado, in the wild tales of their child-like
seamen, and in their vague traditions of Eastern lands
to be reached by sailing westward, which floated in to
the main from islands lying far to sea, on the outposts
of discovery, is hidden the romance of history. Thence
came the myths of the Argonauts, of the Fortunate
Islands and the Garden of the Hesperides, of the King
dom of Prester John, and the marvelous Isle of St.
22

338 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
Brandon. Thence came the hope of the Earthly Para
dise, and the dream of the Fountain of Immortal Youth.
Along the route to India and Cathay lay all these won
ders to tempt the daring na-vdgator. Though the
course of Empire moved steadily westward, still on
the Orient his eyes were fixed. The Indies, enriched
by centuries of tradition, and wrapped in mysterious
splendors, were the lodestars which drew the ships of
the explorer eastward and westward, till the girdle of
discovery encircled the globe.
The ancient cities of Jerusalem, of Tyre, and of Sidon,
knew India as the land of gold and spices. Many
writers suppose the rich city of Ophir to have stood at
one of the mouths of the Indus. When the. ships of
Hiram, King of Tyre, then the leader in commerce, set
sail for Tarshish and Ophir, Solomon, King of Israel,
privately sent his own ships in their track to discover
the way thither. And after the two rulers had made
peace, and Hiram had furnished Solomon with fir-wood
and cedar-wood from the mountains of Lebanon for the
sacred temple, he also sent his own pilots to guide the
Hebrew ships to Ophir, that they might bring thence
"gold, and almond-trees, and ivory, and peacocks."
In what direction these ships sailed, and indeed in
what part of the world Tarshish and Ophir were really
situate, is not now certain. Some historians conjecture
that Ophir was merely a synonym for rich countries far
off, as afterward in the days of Columbus, " the land of
Cathay " and "the Indies " were vague, indefinite terms
in geography.
Six centuries after Solomon, when the old glory of
Phoenicia was growing dim, Alexander of Macedon
made his triumphal march to the East. He led his

THE PHARAOHS AS CANAL-BUILDERS. 339
armies from the Hellespont to the Indus, and plundered
scores of rich cities. After he had reeled back with
-rictorious orgies to the borders of Asia Minor, his
Admiral, Nearchus, led his ships from the mouth of the
Indus, up the Persian Gulf to the waters of the Eu
phrates, and gave the world the first survey of any
coast of India recorded in history.
Alexander saw the importance of a close commerce
with the rich East which he had laid waste. After his
conquest of Egypt, he founded the City of Alexandria,
at one of the mouths of the Nile, and on his death, one
of the wisest of his generals, the first of the line of the
Ptdemies, became the ruler there. Ptolemy found in
the sands of Suez, traces of a deserted canal begun by
the Pharaohs, to secure water communication to India
by opening a passage from the Mediterranean to the
Eed Sea. According to Herodotus, 120,000 men had
perished upon this vast work before it was abandoned.
Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy I., and an enthu
siast in the advancement of his empire in learning and
ceinmerce, would fain have continued this canal of the
old Egyptian monarchs. But his engineers shook their
heads, and asserted with one voice :
"The Red Sea is higher by three cubits than the
land of Egypt, If a canal be cut through the Isthmus
of Suez the sea -will flood the country and drown all
your people, as once before it swallowed up the hosts of
Pharaoh." From the time of the Ptolemies, three centuries be
fore Christ, to that of Vasco Da Gama, almost two
thousand years later, Alexandria remained one of the
most famous entrepots for Eastern commerce. Indian
products were brought in the junks and barks of China

340 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
and Hindostan to Aden, on the Arabian Coast. There
the Western merchants, reloading them into their own
ships, conveyed them up the Red Sea to Suez. Thence,
they passed through a canal to the city of Alexandria,
which dispensed the costly gifts of the East to the
ci-vdlized world. This Alexandrian canal, like that of
the Pharaohs, is now choked up with sand and rubbish,
a ruin as complete as the crumbled palaces of the great
city itself.
But Alexandria and Suez were not the only routes to
India known to the middle ages. The costly trade
spread itself by way of famous Samarcand up the river
Oxus, across to the Caspian Sea, thence to the Euxine,
and so into the Mediterranean, and over Europe. The
chief overland route was through the city of Candahar,
by which Indian products passed into Persia. At Can
dahar, the caravans from Ispahan and Agra intersected
those from the Caspian Sea, and the merchants of the
East and the merchants of the West met and ex
changed their wares. There the bowed camels were
unloaded of the spices, perfumes, precious stones, and
rich silks of Hindostan, the muslins of Calicut, and the
shawls of Cashmere. There the corn from Egypt was
poured out beside the dates from Arabia, and the odors
of tbe wines and roses of Damascus mingled with those
of the balm and oil and honey from Palestine. There,
into busy caravanserais, the lithe-limbed Arabian drove
his herds of goats and sheep for the markets on the
Mediterranean. There, in Persian moonlights, the
Western kings. of commerce smoked their pipes and
drank their coffee, while they listened to the Eastern
story-teller who recounted the deeds of the good Ha
roun al Raschid, or applauded the singer who cele-

EARLY OVERLAND ROUTES TO THE EAST. 341
brated the valor of Rustam, and chanted dreamy, pas
sionate odes on the loves of the rose and the night
ingale. For eighteen centuries after the building of Alexan
dria, *these old routes were worn by the foot-prints of
commerce. Before a new era of discovery began, the
day of the destruction of Carthage had risen and set,
the glory of the Greeks had departed, the Roman Em
pire had like an unsubstantial pageant faded, and the
Christian religion was in its fifteenth century.
The desire to reach the Indies by ships had become
the passion of all great navigators. The long wars of
the Crusades had invested the East with additional en
chantment. The wildest tales of travelers were re
ceived with eager credulity. The romantic accounts
of China and Japan brought back by Marco Polo, were
no less marvelous than the stories of Sir John Mande-
viUe who had preceded him by a quarter of a century.
Both confirmed the beUef, that in the most remote
East a great Christian monarch called Prester John,
reigned over an immense country, and received the
tribute of twelve kings. In his domains abounded all
precious stones, streams ran with milk and honey, and
over a whole province the river which encircled Para
dise spread its arms in manifold windings. At the foot
of a mountain bubbled up a living spring which changed
its flow hour by hour, and he who tasted of its waters,
however old and inflrm, should thenceforth be as- a man
of thirty years. In- short, the wonders and riches of
this kingdom could not be recounted, and every sover
eign of Europe yearned, above all things, to seek out
and form an aUiance with this Eastern Monarch, and
so to bring Asia and Europe into Christian brotherhood.

342 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES,
The Hanseatic League, which included all the mari
time powers of Europe, had for two hundred years con
trolled commerce, but its members had made little
progress in discovery. Their efforts were chiefly toward
protecting their ships from pirates and barbarians, and
rendering the sea a safe highway for civilized nations.
But early in the flfteenth century the spirit of discovery
began to overrule even the spirit of commerce, and
from that epoch date the most wonderful achievements
in navigation the world has ever seen.
These achievements are due, in great part, to the
efforts of one man, Prince Henry of Portugal, justly
surnamed the Navigator, The beginning of the cen
tury had seen the good King John placed on the
throne of Portugal. His consort was Phillipa, also
called " the good," a daughter of John of Gaunt, " time-
honored Lancaster." The fourth son of this worthy
pair, was Prince Henry the navigator. From early
manhood he dedicated himself to the cause of discov
ery and the search after a sea way to India. With
drawing himself from the pleasures of the court, taking
a vow of celibacy, and thus cutting himself off from
all hope of princely issue, he retired to a stone-
built castle on a lonely cape reaching far out to Sea,
and there pursued the study of navigation,, and the fit
ting out of ships for the East. It was he who an
nounced and held firm to the belief that a passage
East could be found by sailing around the Conti
nent of Africa, though all the world thought it impos
sible for a ship to cross the torrid zone, and believed
the latitude of the Canary Islands to be the limit of
the habitable globe. To him, also, is ascribed the in
troduction of the mariner's compass into Portuguese

THE ATLANTIC IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 343
navigation, and, in part, the invention of the astrolabe.
To no other single man was that era of discovery so
deeply indebted.
To comprehend the obstacles to navigation in the
Atlantic, we must remember that this great ocean was
still a sea of darkness to the sailor. True, in the fifth
century before Christ, Hanno the Carthagenian had
sailed boldly past the Pillars of Hercules, and braved
. the dangers of the Atlantic, while he sought to estab
lish Phoenician colonies on the western coast of Africa
and Europe. Hanno discovered the Canaries and Ma
deiras, and they became the "Islands of th,e Blessed"
and " Garden of the Hesperides," of which the an
cients spoke when they pointed westward. Aristotle,
too, had placed the Island of Atalantis beyond the Pil
lars of Hercules, and Plutarch in his life of Sertorius
had described the Canaries as the " Fortunate Isles."
But now, for ages the discoveries of Hanno had been
buried in oblivion, and the Atlantic was shrouded in
mystery. As late as the fourteenth century, it was
described as " A vast and boundless ocean, on which
ships durst not venture out of sight of land, for even
if the sailors knew the direction of the winds, they
would not know whither these -winds would carry
them, and as there is no habitable country beyond
they would run great risks of being lost in the mists
and vapors. The limit of the West is t!ie Atlantic
Ocean." To find a crew bold enough to follow their
captain into these trackless waters was no easy task.
Nor was the fear of an untried ocean the only one
which daunted the bravest saUor. Superstition had
invented myriads of tales which were famUiar to every
man who saUed the sea. According to one of these,

344 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES,
the way was blocked up by a mountain, which was a
vast lodestone, attracting men as the magnet attracts
iron. The unconscious victims laughed and shouted
with delight while being drawn toward it, but at length,
sticking fast to its horrible sides, they laughed no more,
but perished miserably. Another told of a mountain
which appeared to be of glittering precious stones, but
was really composed of shining, interwoven serpents
that devoured all who approached. , Then there were
islands peopled with horrid human creatures covered
with hair, and called "gorillas." Of these monsters
the woman were the fiercer, and crushed each white
man to a lifeless jelly in their terrible embrace. There
were other islands of headless men, and others yet of
" men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders."
There were shores where some, sailing further than the
rest, had seen the great roc's egg, as large as a barrel,
and even the bird itself, the flapping of whose wings
in the sky darkened the sunlight.
With such whisperings as these on deck and under
hatches, no wonder mutinies arose among men always
more superstitious than those who tread the sure and
firm-set earth. But the general belief in Prester John
came in here to aid Prince Henry's endeavors. It was
rumored that this priestly ruler held his court in Abys- •
sinia, or near the center of the African Continent. Two
brothers, named Vivaldi, who had saUed southward a
century before and never returned, were reputed to
have been met on the shores of Africa by some subjects
of this great king, and so royally entertained that they
lost all desire to see their native country again. And
it was believed that the meanest subject of Portugal
would be received by Prester John with distinguished

EXPEDITIONS OP HENRY THE, NAVIGATOR. 345
honor for his nation's sake, and, if he deserved it, sent
home laden with gifts.
Henry's first expeditions were made with caution.
The Canary Islands and the Azores had been re-discov
ered in the middle of the fourteenth century. To Porto
Santo, one of the Madeiras, he sent a colony which
should form a convenient port for his outward and
homeward-bound ships. The governor of this oolony
was Senor PerestreUo, a famous geographer of Lisbon,
who had a daughter, afterward married to one Christo
pher Columbus of Genoa.
When his colony was planted on the Madeiras, Hen
ry's ships timidly made their way to the Canaries, and
left another colony there. In 1434 his greatest triumph
was made. He fitted out Gil Eannes, a brave, experi
enced sailor, to go down the African Coast. As soon as
this captain had passed the line which marked the ac
customed turning-point of outward-bound vessels, the
crew began to murmur and rebel. But Gil Eannes was
a resolute man, and had set his heart on achieving
glory. He quieted his mutinous sailors, and led his
ships to Cape Bojador, a point further south on the
African Coast than was known to any civilized man.
It was an immense achievement in navigation, for
it established the possibility of sailing still further
southward. Prince Henry received Gil Eannes with open arms,
and did not lose ground by any hesitancy in prosecu
ting his discoveries. But no great success crowned his
efforts till 1460, when he sent Diego Gomez, who
sailed past Cape Bojador over the Tropic of Cancer,
and touched at the Cape Verde Islands. When he re
turned to claim the gratitude of his patron he found

346 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
that the good Prince Henry had died during his ab
sence. This was twenty-two years before the first voy
age of Columbus, and to no one man prior to him is
the world more indebted than to this princely naviga
tor for the impetus he gave to adventure and the en
thusiasm he kindled in maritime enterprise.
Henry bequeathed all his charts, mathematical in
struments, and plans for new sea routes, as a rich
legacy to his nephew, Alphonso V., who had succeeded
to the throne. This monarch entered with enthusiasm
into his uncle's studies, and on hearing the report of
Diego Gomez that the land trended east beyond Cape
Verde, was confirmed in his idea that the Indies could
be reached by sailing past the coast of Africa. The
new King of Portugal spent most royally for the maps
and charts for which his reign became celebrated. Day
by day learned geographers, under the special patron
age of the court, spent their time in the royal palace
hearing the theories of gray-haired and retired mari
ners, and the narratives of sturdy captains newly come
to port, and constructing improved sea charts and maps
of the world. In 1469 Alphonso rented the commerce
of the African Coast to Fernando Gomez for five years,
only reserving the ivory trade to the crown, and stipu
lating that every year Gomez should explore one hun
dred new leagues to the south.
On the death of Alphonso the kingdom was inherited
by John H., the monarch stained in history by the un
worthy trick he played upon Columbus. While the
Genoese adventurer waited the king's answer to his re
quest for assistance in his enterprise, John himself fitted
out a fleet under pretext of sending provisions to the .
Portuguese colony at the Cape Verdes, but really to

THE DISCOVERIES OF BARTHOLOMEW DIAS. 347
anticipate the voyage for which Columbus was begging
his aid. This unkingly act was quite out of keeping
with the usual wise and generous policy of this mon
arch, and proved deservedly unsuccessful.
It was King John who sent out the expedition of
Bartholomew Dias, the most notable voyage which
preceded the discovery of the New World; for it was
Dias who led the way which Da Gama followed. Step
by step the Portuguese mariners had crept down the
shores of Africa, but none had yet seen the rounded out
line of the Cape, past which they might sail eastward.
Just before Dias was to sail, new rumors arose of the
, wonderful Prester John, who, it was now declared, with
positiveness, had turned up in central Ethiopia, where
dwelt a large nation of advanced civilization, and with
rich and populous cities. This report, which had so
much vitality that it has obtained some credence even
m our own day, was generally accepted. Dias was fur
nished with letters from the crown of Portugal to the
great unknown monarch, and King John flattered him
self -with the hope that he should not only do a service
to commerce by his discoveries, but that by means of
his alUance with Prester John, he should aid in spread
ing the holy religion over the whole world.
The story of the voyage of Dias and his troubles with
his crew resembles that of Columbus, as that of Colum
bus is repeated in the trials of Magellan, of Hudson,
and many other brave men, tormented with the unwil
lingness and faint-heartedness of ignorant and super
stitious crews. Again and again his sailors attempted
to turn back, and threatened to rise against their com
mander and even to murder him if he went on. But
by decision, by persuasion, and by all the power which

348 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
one brave soul exercises over many cowardly spirits,
Dias led them past the Canaries, past the Cape Verdes,
over the mysterious line of the Equator, and away be
yond the southern limit of the Torrid Zone, tUl at length
he stood off the long desired Cape and saw the unim
peded Ocean stretching far to the East. His wildest
hope was realized — the dearest dream of his century
was fulfilled.
The weather was so furious and the point so lashed
with waves that even Dias did not urge his men to go
further, but returned to his king with tidings of the
discovery of the southern extremity of Africa, which
he called the Cape of Storms. For better augury that
monarch re-christened it the Cape of Good Hope.
Ten years after the return of Bartholomew Dias,
Don Manuel, the cousin and successor of John IL, was
on the throne of Portugal. The project of sending an
expedition past the Cape of Good Hope to the Indies,
which now seemed feasible if any captain could be
found bold enough to undertake it, was a favorite de
sign with him, as it had been the darling hope of so
many of his royal predecessors. One afternoon, as he
sat at a window of his palace in deep thought, he saw
a little red-faced man, with a firm step and resolute
bearing, cross the court-yard under his eyes. As if the
marked face and bearing had inspired him with a sud
den determination, the king at once arose and sent for
the passer-by. This was Vasco Da Gama, a gentleman
of the royal household, and a bold and skillful sailor.
The king promptly offered him the command of an
expedition to the Indies, and Da Gama promptly ac
cepted, it.
Never was choice, seemingly so accidental, better

FIRST PASSAGE OP THE CAPE OF STORMS. 349
made. Da Gama possessed the requisite intrepidity,
perseverance, and capacity to command. In a few
months he was fitted out with a fleet of four ships and
one hundred and fifty men. Two of his ships, the San
Gabriel and the San Rafael, were of over one hundred
tuns burden ; the other two were a caravel and a small
store-ship of only about fifty tuns each.
Da Gama bore with him the credentials of his sov
ereign, and letters to the mysterious Prester John, who
had so long eluded the potentates of Europe, but in
whose existence their unwavering faith continued to
be fixed. Then the little fleet, sailing southward, made
its way past the Cape Verdes and across the Equator,
for the Cape of Good Hope. After the fragile ships
had crossed the line, the torments of wind, rain, and
fogs began continually to oppress them. Tossed wildly
upon strange waters and among dark skies, it is no
wonder that the frightened crew besought their cap
tain to take them back. But he was iron to their en
treaties, and his anger was more terrible to them than
the horrors that encompassed them. Of course, men
in such frame of mind could not round the dreaded
point without some supernatural vision. At the prom
ontory of Good Hope, a terrible apparition confronted
them. It was the demon Adamastor, the genius of the
Stormy Cape, who, in appalling form, waved back the
overbold explorers. Camoens, in. the Lusiad, sings
of the direful encounter :
"Eising thro' the darkened air,
Appalled, -we saw a hideous phantom glare ;
* * * His red eyes glowing from their dusky eaves,
Shot li-yid fires ; far echoing o'er the waves.
His voice resounded."

350 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
To their demand to know who he was, the Storm
Fiend answered :
* * * " In me the spirit of the Cape behold :
With wide-stretohed piles I guard the pathless strand,
And Afric's southern mound unmoved I stand.
Nor Roman prow, nor daring Tyrian oar
E'er dashed the white waves foaming to my shore ;
Nor Greece, nor Carthage ever spread the sail
On these my seas to catch the trading gale.
You, you alone, have dared to plow my main,
And with the human voice disturb my lonesome reign ;
Have passed the bounds which jealous nature drew
To vail her secret shrine from mortal view.
Hear from my lips what direful woes attend,
And bursting soon shall o'er your race descend :
With every bounding keel that dares my rage
Eternal war my storms and rocks shall wage.
Each year, thy shipwrecked sons shalt thou deplore,
Each year thy sheeted masts shall strew my shore."
But Da Gama feared failure more than Adamastor or
a whole legion of demons, and right in the teeth of
the tempest he passed on. His bravery was rewarded,
and from the time he rounded the Cape his voyage
seems to have been among favoring gales. He landed
here and there on the east coast of Africa, making small
trades with the natives, and meeting generally with
friendliness and good faith. It was in May, 1498, the
same year in which Columbus first touched the Conti
nent of America, that Vasco Da Gama anchored at CaU-
cut, on the Malabar Coast in Hindostan.
The entrance of European ships in the harbor at
CaUcut created the greatest wonder and excitement.
The natives crowded to the shores to see the Portuguese
disembark. When Da Gama and his officers attempted

DA GAMA AT CALICUT. 351
to pass through the streets on their way to the palace
of the Zamorin the press was so great that many were
crushed to death. The Zamondri-Rajah, (a title which
the Portuguese abbreviated to Zamorin), was a prince
of much dignity and intelligence. He granted to Da
Gama, as an envoy from the Portuguese monarch, a pri
vate audience, which was declared to be an unprece
dented honor.
Reclining on a sofa of white sUk embroidered with
gold, he Ustened whUe Da Gama, by the aid of a Mo
hammedan interpreter, declared to him the glory of
King Manuel, and his desire for an alliance with the
Eastern Monarch. "The Zamorin," says the Portu
guese chronicler, " wore a tunic of white muslin em
broidered with roses and branches of beaten gold. It
was buttoned with large pearls, and the button-holes
were wrought with gold. About his waist was a sash
of white muslin. His head had a mitre studded with
jewels, his toes and his fingers sparkled with diamonds.
His arms and legs were bare, except for the bracelets
which covered them."
But diplomacy even there proved full of pitfalls.
As soon as it became known on what errand the
strange ships had come, and that their captain was an
embassador to establish trade between the East and the
West, a strong faction arose in the Court of the Zam
orin against the Portuguese. The Arab merchants,
who did a large and monopolizing trade with Calicut,
began to fear both for their profits and their religion.
They hated the Christians -with Mohammedan zeal,
stimulated by aU their fear of the rivalry of Euro
pean merchants. Their oily tongues filled the ears of
the Indian monarch with suspicions and fears. They

352 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
assured him that Da Gama was a pirate, who, accidentally
sailing past Africa, sought to impose himself upon the
Zamorin as the embassador of a king ; they threatened
him with a withdrawal of their trade if he encouraged
the foreigners, and altogether, they told him such fear
ful stories of these Christian infidels, that the Zamorin
was pulled this way and that by contrary counsels, un
til at last he gave up in despair, and resolved to let the
Arabs and Da Gama fight it out between themselves.
Finally, an embassador from Da Gama was detained
as a prisoner at the palace of the Zamorin, and Da
Gama himself was obliged to retire to his ships for fear
of capture. But the Portuguese was jshortly released,
and the monarch sent some of his officers to the little
fleet, bearing a letter to the King of Portugal. More
brief and to the point then most communications be
tween sovereigns, it ran thus :
" Vasco Da Gama, a gentleman of thy household,
came to my country, of whose coming I was glad. In
my country there is plenty of cinnamon, cloves, pep
per, and precious stones. The things which I am de
sirous of receiving from thy country are gold, silver,
scarlet, and coral."
Da Gama, rather treacherously, kept as prisoners the
bearers of this letter, and set saU at once for home.
The indignant Zamorin sent a fleet in pursuit, from
which Da Gama escaped -with some difficulty. After
ward he set one of his captives on shore, with a letter
for the Zamorin, assuring him that his designs toward
all the prisoners were friendly, that they were to be
well treated, and that they would shortly discover if
he were the rightful embassador of the King of Portu
gal or no.

CULMINATION OP EASTERN DISCOVERY, 353
He led back his fleet as nearly as possible in the
same trade in which it had come. In two years and
two months from the time of his setting out, he reached
Lisbon. Of his four ships, not one came back to port.
His last — the San Gabriel — ^had proved unseaworthy,
and he had been obliged to finish the voyage in a car-
aval which he chartered at the Cape Verde colony. Of
his one hundred and fifty men only one-third remained.
Bang Manuel received him with open arms. He gave
him princely honors, and entitled him " Lord of the
Conquest of Ethiopia and the Indies."
A plan was immediately formed for the establish
ment of trading-posts aU the way around the Conti
nent of Africa, and Don Pedro Alvarez de Cabral was
sent with thirteen ships. Bartholomew Dias was one
of the Captains. At the Cape of Good Hope they
described, not Adamastor, but a water-spout, a phe
nomenon which none of them had ever before seen.
They hailed it as the sign of fair weather, and sailed
joyfully onward. In a few minutes, however, the fleet
was struck by a hurricane, and five ships went down.
One of them was commanded by Dias, who had first
made the Cape known to, na-vigators. Thus did the
demon, as the saUors thought, -vindicate his threats to
the unhappy son of Portugal who had first fathomed
the " secrets of his awful reign."
The voyage of Da Gama was the culmination of
Eastern discovery. It revolutionized commerce and
brought many changes in navigation. For two cen
turies the track of Da Gama has been the world's
highway to the Indies. Yet commerce has never been
satisfied -with it. The overland route from India and
Eastern Africa which led across the Isthmus of Suez
23

354 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
into the Mediterranean, and out through the old gate-;
way of Hercules into the Atlantic, has been still used
for the passage of much rare and costly merchandise.
Never, for a moment, has trade forgotten the track
across the little strip of land which taunted ancient
mariners, and where the unfinished channel of the
Pharaohs still shows its traces in the heaped-up-sands.
In the time of the first Napoleon the project of the
Suez Canal was talked over. Even while the First
Consul was busy -with the conquest of Egypt, and fol
lowing in Syria the footsteps of the great Alexander,
his quick eye found time to see the value of a passage
for ships between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
But the best engineers, no wiser than those of the
age of Rameses, or that of Necho, still declared that
the Red Sea was higher than the land of Egypt ; and
the scheme was again abandoned.
Ten years ago this belief, which for centuries upon
centuries had been a stumbling-block in the way of
endeavor, was pronounced baseless by the best engi
neers of France, and a Paris company undertook the
opening of a passage from sea to sea. Ever since,
through one hundred miles of sand, vast steam-driven
machines, each as high as a church-steeple, have been
slowly and surely cutting the way. Their powerful
arms scoop up a hogshead full of sand at once, and then,
turning gently, empty it in the desert one hundred and
twenty feet distant. Behind, the canal is being walled
in with an artificial stone made from the very sand
through which the channel is cut. As the vast engines
go on, floating upon the water which they are making
a way for, we can fancy the sad ghosts of the one
hundred and twenty thousand men who perished there

THE SUEZ CANAL.

355

in Pharaoh's day, waiting wonderingly on their prog
ress. Before many weeks, the dream of the Pharaohs, the
Ptolemies, the Bonapartes, will be a reality. Ships
¦wiU sail freely past Egypt and Arabia into the Indian
Ocean, saving many thousands of miles upon the old
voyages from Europe to Asia. This is the culmination
of the world's efforts for a route eastward to the Indies.
The Suez Canal, begun and ended by French enterprise
at a cost of $100,000,000, is characterized even by the
Lm,don Times as "A 'task which has no equal except
in mythology, when Hercules joined the Mediterranean
to the Atlantic."

Two Routes to the Indies.

PART II.
WESTWAED BT PAOIFIO EAILWAT.
5R0M the most ancient times, while na-vdgators
were making their way Eastward, there were
never wanting those who believed it might be
reached by sailing in an opposite direction. The an
cients believed in the existence of rich lands in the
West, and many of their myths and traditions took
color from this belief
Four centuries before Christ, the ships from Carthage
ventured into the Atlantic as far north as the peninsula
of Cornwall, and worked tin mines in the Cassiterides
of the ancients, supposed to be the islands of Sicily,
near the south-western coast of England. Besides
their loads of tin, the Carthagenians also brought back
from Britain the fierce dogs which they used in battle
— ^worthy ancestors of the blood-hounds which in mod
ern times tracked the fugitive slave through the swamps
of Georgia and the Carolinas. They carried, too, sto
ries of islands with rich cities far in the West, and fair
lands, purple with grapes and golden with fiowing
honey. The ancient Greek poets also sang of strange
countries beyond the Mare Tenebrosum, and Aristotle,

CUKISTUI'MEK UOLUMHUS. OO I

Strabo, and Seneca all believed that rich Cathay might
be reached by saiUng straight on from the PiUars of
Hercules. But through the long night of the dark
ages, the myths of history and the theories of geogra
phers were obscured and almost forgotten, and up to
the middle of the fifteenth century few explorers had
been found bold enough to venture far from shore into
the waters of the Atlantic.
In the year 1470, a man of thirty-five, broad-browed
and stalwart-framed, and still young in face, though
his hair and beard were gray, was wont to attend mass
in the Uttle chapel of a convent in the city of Lisbon.
KneeUng daily at the same altar, he watched amid his
prayers the figure of a maiden who came from the
neighboring cloisters to her devotions. The maid was
Donna Felipa de Palestrello, whose father had been
Governor of Porto Santo, the first colony sent to the
islands west of Africa by Henry the Navigator. The
man, gray-haired before his prime, who looked on
her -with growing interest, was Christopher Colon, of
Genoa. From these meetings an acquaintance arose, and be
fore long the maid became his wife. With her love
and her hand 'in marriage, Columbus also received the
rich legacy of Palestrello's maps and books, and all the
traditions of a western route to Asia which had reached
the ears of the Governor of Porto Santo. For as the
daring ships which saUed furthest west had caught on
their keels drifts of foreign sea-weeds, or bits of un
known wood or other waifs which pointed them to
countries beyond, so these groups of little islands seem
to have caught the first rumors and vague signs of the
land across the Atlantic. No other dowry -with a wife

358 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES,
could have borne richer frmts than the maps and papers
of the dead Palestrello brought to the aspiring Genoese,
Donna Felipa had also inherited a small estate in
Porto Santo, and for awhUe the newly married couple
went there to reside. Not an old sailor there with
whom Columbus talked, but coiUd tell him legends of
lands dim descried to the westward, -w^iiich it was be
lieved might be the shores of Cathay. One had seen a
cunningly carved bit of wood drifting past his ship;
another had picked up, far out at sea, a strange boat
floating empty upon the waves, and yet another had
seen in the calm of tropic seas two dead bodies floating
on the water, with unknown features and brown skins,
such as were never native under European skies.
The most famous geographer of that day was Paolo
del Pozzo, known as ToscaneUi, and to him Columbus
wrote his theory that the Indies might be reached by
sailing west. ToscaneUi returned him a map, in which
Asia lay opposite to Africa, separated by a wide stretch
of ocean, and a letter in which he wrote:
" The way is not easy, but the route from the west of
Europe to the Spice Indies is certain if the track I mark
be followed out."
Columbus himself had computed that the circumfer
ence of the round earth was twenty-four hours, of which
fifteen had been explored already, and only nine re
mained to be sailed over. Consequently, he thought
that the Great East could be reached from the Cape
Verdes in a few days, and so he decided to sail west
rather than east.
It is interesting to know that Columbus was a man
of most child-like faith, and not superior to the credulity
of his times. To Mr. Worldly Wiseman of those days

SUPPOSED LOCATION OP EDEN. 359
he was an enthusiast and a fanatic. He had read
Marco Polo attentively. He believed in Prester John
and the rich land of Cathay. All his voyages were a
search after the East, and he died in the conviction
that he had discovered only some large islands near
the coast of Asia. After his return from his first voy
age, he wrote of his discoveries as "Islands of India
recently discovered beyond the Ganges." "Thirty-
three days after my departure," he says, " I reached
the Indian Sea, where I found many islands." And of
Cuba he declares : " I could not bejieve it , to be an
island, but the continental province of Cathay."
According to aU the superstitions of the time — with
which the devout nature of Columbus was profoundly
' imbued — the Eden of our first parents had been in the
land of India. When he touched first the Continent — at
the mouth of the Orinoco — he fancied that he had
reached the Gihon, one of the four rivers which
watered the lost Paradise. Again and again he reiter
ated that belief and argued that, although the earth is
round, there is yet on its crest a little projection or
mount upon which Eden is situated. " The earth," b^e
wrote quaintly, "is shaped as the breast of a woman, on
which the nipple corresponds to the seat of the Earthly
Paradise. * * f * I believe if I could reach the high
est part the temperature would be milder, * * * *
not that I suppose that elevated point to be navigable
— ^indeed I believe it impossible to ascend thither, be
cause I am con-nnced it is the seat of the Earthly
Paradise, whither no one can go but by God's per
mission. * * * * And if the water of which I speak
(the Orinoco) does not flow from the Earthly Para
dise, it appears to be still more marvelous, for I do

360 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
not believe there is any river in the world so large
and deep."
No sooner was it ascertained that the new-found lands
were not a part of the Continent of Asia than the
search for the "true Indies" was resumed with ardor.
All the bold, restless spirits of the age threw them
selves into the adventure. The passion for discovery
possessed all classes. "At first my enterprise was
laughed at as ridiculous," said Columbus, just before
his death, " but now there is no man, down to the very
tailors,, who does not beg to be allowed to be a
discoverer." Henry VH. of England, who now declared he had
already decided to fit out a fleet for Columbus when
Isabella of Castile forestalled him by pledging her crown
jewels, lost no ¦ more time after the great discovery.
The Cabot family were from Venice, and to be a Vene
tian then was to command respect as a navigator.
Sebastian Cabot was only eighteen when the choice of
the king lighted on his father and himself to command
the first English expedition on the Atlantic. For more
than a century afterward, the English covered their
chagrin that they had so narrowly missed the honor of
being the patrons of Columbus, by the boast that their
ships were the first to touch the main land of America.
And from the day when the young Sebastian caught
sight of this Continent he burned -with desire to find
the way onward to Asia. On his second voyage, in
which he was sole commander, he coasted toward the
frozen North, lamenting that Labrador presented a firm
barrier to his ships. " I found the land ranne all aldng
to the North," he -wrote, "which was to mee a great
displeasure." For many years this Continent of Amer-

BALHOA THE DISCOVERER OP THE PACIFIC. 361
ica was little else than a " great displeasure " to mari
ners, eager only to reach India.
Now every year sailed scores of ships, all devoted 'to
this one purpose. All along the borders of the Gulf of
Mexico the explorers heard rumors of a great ocean ly
ing to the south-west. To'reach this unknown sea was
the object of every daring mariner. The search after it
was more romantic than the search of Jason for the
Golden Fleece, and the object seemed hardly less myth
ical. Finally, Vasco Nunez de Balboa brought to the
Isthmus of Darien a handful of shipwrecked men, and
began building the town of Santa Maria de Antigua,
the first permanent white settlement on the Continent.
Balboa treated the natives more kindly than was usual
with Spanish Governors. In return for his forbearance
the caciques were friendly, and sent him presents of
gold and pearls. The son of a Chief, who had brought
a bar of gold to Balboa, watched the Spaniards quarrel
ing with each other about its division. At length — as
the Jesuit historian tells the -story — in disgust at their
greed, the young savage kicked over the scales for
weighing the metal, and asked :
" Is it possible you should value so much a thing
that so little deserves your esteem, that you should
leave the repose of your houses and pass so many seas,
exposed to such dangers, to trouble those who live
quiet in their own lands ? Have some shame. Chris
tians, and do not desire these things. But if you are
resolved to seek gold, I will show you a country where
you can satisfy yourselves."
Balboa listened eagerly to the Indian's story of the
sea on which this land of gold bordered, and then, with
a party of followers, set out to cross the Isthmus. As

362 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
he went on, the different tribes supplied him with
guides from their vUlages, and the rumors of a great
sea to the south waxed stronger and stronger. It was
on a September afternoon when the guides assured
Balboa that he was cUmbing the last ridge which sepa
rated them from this mysterious ocean. Incumbered
by their glittering armor, the Spaniards had moved
slowly and wearily, but now every heart beat quicker
and every foot hastened. Suddenly Balboa stopped,
ordered his followers to halt, that he might first look
all alone upon this long-desired sea. They obeyed him
in silence, and, cUmbing up the last few paces of the
ascent, he stood on the summit.
At his feet the -waves of the vast Pacific stretched
toward the mysterious Indies. Behind him were the
waters of the Atlantic, reaching back to the shores of
Spain. The hardy warrior, scarred in battles, bronzed
in long conflicts with winds and waters, fell prone on
the earth, embracing it with outspread arms and wetting
it with his tears. Finally he rose, and, calling to his
companions to follow, hastened down to the shore and
strode knee-deep into the waves. Then, raising over
them his cross-hilted sword, he took solemn possession
of the " South Sea" and all bordering lands in the name
of the "blessed Sovereignty of Spain."
Columbus had taken the first great step toward the
discovery of a western passage to Asia. Balboa bad-
taken the second. The honor of the third and final
one — the passing of ships into the new-found ocean,
and the sailing over it to the Indies^— was reserved for
Fernando Magalhaens — commonly called Magellan.
He was a penniless Portuguese adventurer, who, limp
ing from a woimd received in fighting for his country.

MAGELLAN S EXPEDITION, 363
and angry at some ingratitude on her part, had ap
peared at the Court of Spain to offer his services to
Charies V.
Pope Leo X. had recently di-vided the two oceans
and all undiscovered lands therein between the two
great powers of Spain and Portugal. An imaginary
line, which ran north and south some two hundred
and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands,
marked the boundary. Spain, by virtue of her west
ern discoveries, was to own all the ocean west of this
line, and Portugal, by right of her eastern explorations,
all to the east of it. But in thus dividing the earth
between the two powers. His Holiness had not pro
vided for the unexpected contingency of their meet
ing on the other side the globe, and already disputes
were arising about the ownership of islands adjoining
Asia, The Portuguese, saUing round the Cape of Good
Hope, were beginning to colonize on the Moluccas,
MageUan shrewdly suggested to Charles that if Spanish
ships could find a passage west to those islands, they
might claim them under the Pope's line of partition.
The Emperor eagerly accepted Magellan's offer to
undertake this expedition, and in 1519 a fleet of four
Uttle ships set out on the voyage. They sailed for the
mouth of the Rio de la Plata, and, falling into the
error which had misled Sebastian Cabot a few years
earlier, MageUan explored the river through a whole
winter, hoping it might prove a channel to the South
Sea. Disappointed in this, he saUed down the bleak
coast of Patagonia.
Searching every opening in the shore and prying
into every arm of the sea which stretched inland, to
miss no chance of finding the desired strait, the little

364 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
expedition crept slowly on. Troops of gigantic na
tives crowded the shores in wonder. Magellan, after
the custom of Spanish explorers, treacherously decoyed
some of these Indians on board his ships, and carried
them away under the eyes of their wives and kinsfolk,
the savages roaring lustily all the time for their god
Stetebos to rescue them. Stetebos is also the god of
Caliban, and Prospero's enchanted island perhaps lay
near the shores of the "New Indies." Very Ukely
Shakespeare had read Pigafetti's account of MageUan's
voyage before he wrote "The Tempest."
Pigafetti also tells us that the sailors were delighted
with a vegetable " which looked like "a turnip and
tasted like a chestnut," and which they caUed " batates."
It is supposed this was the first acquaintance of Euro
peans with the potato. More than a century later, po
tatoes were rare eating in England, although one of
Sir Walter Raleigh's unsuccessful colonies brought
them back from Virginia.
It was late in the FaU when the explorers neared
the straits now called Magellan's. Already they had
lost one ship by storms, and here another, appalled by
the growing horrors of the voyage, deserted and re
turned home. The saUors entered with dread the
waters of the narrow, winding channel. Slowly and
cautiously they felt their way, uncertain whither it
would lead them. Over their heads rose the icy
peaks of Terra del Fuego, glittering and pitiless. Be
fore them lay the black and threatening waters. The
sails were sheeted with ice, and the ropes of the rig
ging frozen stiff. The men began to murmur. The
Spanish sailors hated the Portuguese captain, and the
muttering grew loud enough to reach his ears. Lunp-

FIRST VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD. 365
ing on deck into the nudst of the malcontents, he
cried, fiercely:
" Look at me, saUors ! Am I not also cold and hun
gry, yet do you see me complain ? The first man who
dares so much as speak of his sufferings, I wUl hang at
the yard-arm."
They understood weU that the lame captain meant
what he said. They had seen him queU one mutiny
in short order, and hang the leading conspirators in
sight of his entire command ; and now his brief address
silenced, if it did not con-vince them. His triumph
came when he emerged from the scolding, stormy
straits, which he named (was it in satire ?) the " Straits
of the Eleven Thousand Virgins," into the unruffled
waters of the ocean which Balboa had seen from the
summits of Darien. MageUan was the first who had
ever passed the western gateway to India, which now
bears his name. To this great ocean, so placid in con
trast with the Atlantic, that he saUed upon it for weeks
¦without meeting an adverse breeze, he gave the name
Pacific. Before that time, ajid, indeed, long after, it
was caUed " the South Sea."
When they came out of this narrow way into the
broad, cahn, peaceftU ocean beyond, not a man but for
got his miseries. Though their mouths were so swol
len -with the scurvy that they could not chew their
food, they shouted for joy.
But their sufferings had only just begun. Their pro
visions grew scarce. They ate the leather of their
8hoes and garments; they gnawed wood, arid eagerly
chewed sawdust; they bargained with each other for
rats and mice which a few lucky saUors caught, and
these animals were sold as high as a ducat apiece.

366 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
So they sailed westerly. Only fine winds and
weather saved one of them alive. At length they came
to the Ladrone Islands where they got food and relief
In the Phillipine Islands, Magellan got into trouble
with the natives and was killed there. So the expedi
tion lost its rash, but resolute and brave commander.
At Bohol, they burnt one of the ships, as their force
was too reduced to navigate it easily, and the two re
maining vessels went on alone.
They went past Borneo, down the coast of Africa,
round the Cape of Good Hope, which Vasco Da Gama
had passed for the first time, twenty-five years before.
On the way they lost another ship, and now the Vitoria,
a little bark of ninety tons went on alone to bear to
the civilized world, the great news of the discovery of a
western passage to India,
In September 1522, just three years from the time of
their setting out, this ship saUed into her native port.
Out of two hundred and thirty-four men she brought
back eighteen. They had been aided to navigate the
vessel on her way home by some Indians they had taken
prisoners at the PhiUipines.
This was the first recorded voyage around the world.
Pigafetti, the Spanish chronicler who accompanied the
expedition, ends his account of it in these words :
" These were mariners who surely merited an eternal
memory more justly than the Argonauts of old. The
ship too, undoubtedly deserved far better to be placed
among the stars, than the ship Argo, which from Greece
discovered the great sea ; for this, our wonderful ship,
taking her departure from the Straits of Gibralter,
saUing southward through the great ocean towards the
Atlantic Pole, and then turning west, not by

CONQUEST OP PERU AND MEXICO. 367
back, hut hy constantly keeping forward and encompass
ing the globe, until she marvelously reached her native
country, — Spain."
MageUan's voyage made the third great step in
Western discovery. The waters of the Pacific had
been entered from the Atiantic,' and for the first time
in history Asia had been reached by sailing westward.
And now for a time the tide of adventure stopped con
tent on the shores of the "New Indies." Peru, the
modern Ophir, to which the savages had directed the
eager eyes of Balboa from the summits of Darien, had
yielded to the bold avarice of Pizarro. The luster of
the diamonds of Cathay paled before the abundant gold
of Peru and Mexico ; and the search for Prester John
in his " castle built after the pattern of that which the
Apostle Thomas buUt for the Indian King Gondiforus,"
ended in the shining palaces of the Incas and the gor
geous haUs of the Montezumas.
And now every ambitious adventurer burned with
the desire to repeat the conquests of Pizarro and of
Cortez. The new land of Florida, upon whose shores
Ponce De Leon had stumbled in his search after the
fountain whose waters should restore his lost youth, was
believed to be another rich field for plunder. After De
Leon's death, Pamfilo De Narvaez aspired to become
ruler there. His ships were cast ashore on the coast of
Florida near Pensacola Bay, and his crew — a group of
hungry, fearful men, faced by the cruel sea, hemmed in
by savages, without shelter, almost without food — out
did the labors of Hercules. Almost entirely destitute
of tools, they made five boats from logs hewn out of
the forest, -with cordage woven from the hair cut from
the carcasses of the horses they consumed for food, and

368 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
sails pieced together from the linen stripped from their
backs. Then they embarked upon the Gulf of Mexico. The
boat of Narvaez perished, and only one of their Uttle
barks escaped the waves. This, commanded by Cab'eca
De Vaca, a bold and ready man, went past the mouth
of the Mississippi, and landed somewhere on the coast of
Louisiana or Texas. With his few remaining meh De
Vaca began his overland journey. The history of their
march is full of hair-breadth escapes and perilous ad
ventures, only hinted at in what accounts we can ob
tain. Eight years after his boat was dashed upon the coast
of the Gulf of Mexico, Cabeca De Vaca, with three
companions, appeared on the shores of the Pacific, at
the colony of Culiacan, the most northerly Spanish
settlement in Mexico. Gaunt, savage-looking, long-
bearded, and hardly recognizable by their countrymen,
they had a wonderful tale to tell. Of passage through
tangled wildernesses and Indian villages; over moun
tains and through gorges; of being taken prisoners by
hostile savages, whom De Vaca awed by his superior
knowledge till his captors made him their " medicine
man," and venerated him as, a supernatural being; of
his being constantly drawn forward by rumors of a sea
to the west, which seemed always to recede as they
went on ; above all, of traditions among the natives, of
a rich country to the north--west which would rival
Peru and Mexico in riches, and which boasted a city
more glorious than the wildest dreams had pictured of
the capitals of Prester John. Such were the Indian
rumors of the land of California three centuries ago.
Eager to find this splendid empire and its gorgeous

FAMOUS WESTERN EXPLORERS. 369
capital, scores of explorers started in search of it.
Many a ship bearing the Spanish flag at her mast-head
saUed from the settlements in Mexico up the Pacific
Ocean, looking vainly for its golden walls and marble
palaces. Perchance, on the very site where San Fran
cisco, "Queen of the Western Wave," now stretches
out her arms to the Indies, tawny Spanish adventurers
eagerly questioned the bewUdered natives on the beach
eenceming this fabled City of the West.
A detaUed account of Western explorations in search
of the Indies would fill many volumes. It woiUd in
clude De Soto's long, dreary, tragic march to the Mis
sissippi, Henry Hudson's voyages from the day when
he entered his own lovely river, to the day when he
perished on the frozen waters of Hudson's Bay, the
whole history of Arctic discovery, the arduous labors
of La SaUe, Marquette, Joliet, and Hennepin in the
Mississippi VaUey. It would contain the romantic
wanderings of Jonathan Carver, the gold discoveries
of California, and the growth of the Pacific States.
No other field of historical research is richer in ro
mance, no other subject more absorbing and fascinat
ing. But we must leave them only to glance at the
first official exploration of the United States to the
Western Ocean.
It was in the time of far-sighted Thomas Jefferson
that this great work was achieved. So eager was he
that this continent and its resources should be better
known, that he planned an expedition to the Pacific
before he had bargained with Napoleon for the pur
chase of the great Western territory of Louisiana, — a
territory which reached from the Gulf of Mexico to
Canada, and from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
24

370 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
To Captain Merriwether Lewis, his tried and trusted
private secretary, a man of very gentle spirit and of
warm enthusiasm for natural science, and to Captain
WiUiam Clark of the army, an officer thoroughly fa
mUiar with Indian warfare, Jefferson intrusted the im
portant enterprise. These two leaders arrived at St.
Louis in the December of 1803, and there got together
the supplies and men for the journey. The whole
Winter of 1803-4 they spent on the river just above
St. Louis, and it was the middle of May before they
were ready to set out.
The President had obtained a passport from France
for the Lewis and Clark expedition through Louisiana,
but all the whUe negotiations were pending for the
purchase of that territory. The treaty was actually
signed in Paris on the 30th day of April, 1804, although
the news did not reach Washington till the July fol
lowing, and then Lewis and Clark were far up the Mis
souri. With what eager interest must Jefferson have
watched for the success of his darling project, after the
vast domain had become, through his diplomacy, a
part of the United States.
Up the muddy waters of the Missouri the forty or
fifty explorers made their way upon their little boats,
propelled by oars, by saUs, and by ropes attached to
trees and worked by the capstan; at first, so slowly
that cold weather overtook them by the time they had
reached the territory of the Mandan Indians, some
where in Nortliern Dakota. There, for six weary
months, they were obUged to remain in rude huts
which they had built, passing the time in hunting
and fishing, or studying the habits of their Indian
neighbors.

THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION. 371
In April, 1805, the ice began to break up ; the
canoes were got out and put in order, and they started
off again. Hitherto they had met French traders from
Canada, or British traders from the borders of Hud
son's Bay, seeking furs of the Indians, but now they
began to enter a wilderness which no white man was
ever known to have traversed.
At the fork just below the present site of Fort Ben
ton, in Missouri, they stopped, uncertain which branch
to follow. Lewis, with the sagacity of a sleuth-hound,
decided on the south-western branch. The others in
clined to believe the north branch the right one. Their
plan was to strike the source of the Columbia River,
which they learned from the Indians was only separated
by a low ridge of the Rocky Mountains from the head
waters of the Missouri. Had they missed the path
here, they might have lost months in fruitless search,
and perhaps have abandoned the undertaking alto
gether. Fortunately they became convinced, after
making some short excursions up each branch ,of the
river, that Lewis was right in his conclusion.
On they went, around the Great Falls, through the
bold rock, " Gate of the Mountains," and up the Jef
ferson Fork, tiU the river, growing narrower and nar
rower, would no longer float even their Ught canoes.
One day one of the men put one foot on each side of
the narrow, rippUng stream, and thanked God that he
had lived to bestride the Missouri River. When, a Ut
tle later, they reached the chaste, clear fountain from
which bubbled the first drops of the mighty stream,
every man drank in sUent thankfulness for their success
thus far.
Only a little mountain ridge separated the head-

372 TWO ROUTES TO THE INDIES.
waters of this great River of the East from the source
of the great "River of the West." They could stand
upon the crest and toss a pebble one way into waters
flowing into the Atlantic ¦ and the other into waters
flowing to the Pacific. They reached the Columbia,
and, drinking from its fountain, cried aloud that they
had quaffed the water of the Western Ocean.
As soon as they came to a point navigable for canoes
they embarked on the river, which bore them with al
most breathless rapidity, and over difficult, dangerous
rapids, to its ocean. But their account of the Pacific
is nOt given with enthusiasm. They reached the mouth
of the Columbia in November, 1805, after weeks of ex
posure to a drenching rain, to find the ocean of their
hopes covered with impenetrable clouds. For days and
weeks the rain still fell in steady torrents, till the
leather of their water-proof tent rotted to the consist
ency of brown paper. Their clothes were never dry
for days together. They suffered also for want of food,
but in spite of aU hardships they kept their health and
spirits. As soon as Spring dawned on them they began their
return march. Coming back, their experience helped
them to take a shorter route, which cut off five hundred
and seventy mUes from the distance between St. Louis
and the Pacific. By this time their clothes were little
more than Indian hunting-shirts, leggings, and mocas
sins. They had parted with their military hats to hos
pitable savage chiefs, and had cut the buttons off their
clothing to distribute as presents in the tribes. They
were bronzed almost to the color of the red men.
When Lewis wished to convince any one that he was a
white man he had to strip up his sleeve to show his

SAD FATE OP LE-WIS. 373
original color. In this condition they landed at St.
Louis on a summer day in 1806. Their friends had
long since given them up as dead. They had traveled
nearly eight thousand miles through the wilderness,
among savages and wUd beasts, with only a single skir
mish, and the loss of only one man, who had died from
disease during the first months of this wonderful journey.
"Never did any similar event," writes Jefferson,
"excite more joy in the United States." There was no
telegraph to flash the news of their return over the
country, but as week after week the remote dweller in
the hamlets of New York, New England, and Virginia
heard of the incredible achievement, every citizen felt
a glow of pride in his newly-enlarged country, so rich,
so boundless, and so romantic.
Clark lived to an honored old age, and died in Mis
souri. Poor Lewis, in his young and promising man
hood, grew restless in the quiet routine of ci-vilized Ufe,
after his wUd adventures, and finally feU by his own
hand at a little wayside inn among the mountains of
Tennessee. Not even the place of his burial is kno-wn
to history. A portrait of Lewis, slender, thoughtful,
and tender-eyed, and of Clark, swarthy, broad-shoul
dered and full-faced, both from the pencil of Charles
Wilston Peale, hang in Independence Hall, Philadel
phia; yet how few Americans know even the names of
these two men who deserve such honorable prominence
in our national history. Of the two great streams
which unite to form the Columbia, the southern was
named Lewis' River; but usage in Idaho and Oregon,
through which it flows, has dropped that name, and it
is now called the Snake. The northern branch is yet
known as Clark's Fork.

374 TWO ROUTES TO THE "INDIES.
Once in their slow journey up the Missouri, Lewis
and Clark landed upon some bold ridges on the eastern
bank for a conference with the Indians, and Lewis named
the spot the Council Bluffs. At the foot of these com
manding hills now stands the City of Council Bluffs, .
Iowa. Opposite, on the western bank, is Omaha, Ne
braska. There, every day, throngs of passengers be
tween New York and San Francisco cross the great
river up which these pioneer explorers toiled so pain
fully. There, the enterprise which Jefferson's wisdom
planned and their courage executed, finds its culmina
tion' in our first railroad to the Pacific.
By what certain forces, by what unexpected but
sure growth that has come, the world knows already.
It has taken four centuries to realize the dream which
Columbus — prematurely old from his great projects —
cherished in his gray-haired youth. European mar
iners for twelve centuries have found our Continent
the great stumbling-block to the Orient ; but now Amer
ican enterprise has made it the world's highway to the
Indies. The avenue is open. May the wisdom with
which it is controlled be equal to the daring that con
ceived it, and the energy that buUt it. Then an im
measurable tide of travel and traffic will stream over it
Westward to the Indies.

. A Month in Kansas.

' T is a story of rambling and will be but a ram
bling story. It begins in Chicago. That is
tU^ the new Rome to which all roads lead; the
traveler can not go around it, and he can hardly get
away from it. So it came about that instead of stop
ping there three days, I lingered for three weeks.
The Chicagonese, who claim to number three hun
dred thousand, have pitched their tents for nine miles
along the lake-shore, and for five miles back upon the
prairie. How they must hunger and thirst for the
sight of a hill ! The unbroken flatness is enough to
convert them all into a new race of Mound Builders.
A fe-w do imitate Ex-Governor Wood of Quincy, who,
by cro-wning his house with a cupola nearly one hun
dred feet from the ground, has circumvented Nature
and secured a view not unworthy of his native Ver
mont. They share, I trust, some of his other traits no
less than his love of the hills. He was a passenger
upon the always unlucky Sierra Nevada, wrecked in
October off the coast of Oregon. All on board were
finally saved ; but at first it seemed as if many must
perish. Then the master of the ship consulted Gov
ernor Wood as to the best means for securing his
safety. " Captain," answered the veteran, pointing to

376 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
his white hair and beard which were streaming in the
wind, "I am seventy; save the young!"
Having no hills was ill-fortune for Chicago, but hav
ing no granite proved good fortune for her arid for all
of us. It began a revolution in pavements. At first
she tried limestone, but that soon grew uneven ; tfte
heavy wheels ground it to dust, and a layer of it two
feet thick in a much-used business street, wore away
altogether in five years. As a substitute, small up
right wooden blocks were introduced. Oak, maple,
and other hard woods soon broke to splinters, but pine
and hemlock proved to be just the thing. When well
laid, even in a business thoroughfare, they often lasted
ten years. Thus came in vogue the Nicholson pave
ment. Chicago has laid twenty-six miles of it, and in
forms more or less modified it is adopted in nearly all
our large cities. Its softness, smoothness, and noise-
lessness, make it bear about the same relation to stone,
that a railway track does to a corduroy road.
Chicago is distinctively the child of New York.
Seven years ago more of the pupils in her public
schools were natives of New York 'than of Illinois; to
day more are natives of New York than of Blinois
outside of Chicago, or of all the New England States
combined. Who shall decide how far her distinguish
ing characteristic is due to nativity, and how much to
other causes ? By her distinguishing characteristic, I
mean Faith ; for your Chicagoan has the most auda
cious and- outrageous faith ; first, in himself; second, in
Chicago ; and third, in the North-west. It does not
result merely from the wonderful growth he has seen.
It is in the very atmosphere. It was noticeable forty
years ago, when the infant settlement received a maU

GEN. SHERIDAN IN CHICAGO. 377
only once in two weeks, and that by soldiers who
brought it, on foot, a hundred miles from Fort Niles in
Michigan! It has continued from that day to this,
through all the mutations of fortune. It has been not
only a prophecy, but a creator of success ; for he who
beUeves in anything to the very tips of his fingers,
will make converts wherever he goes by the uncon
scious magnetism of his earnestness.
True to the national instinct to "spread itself," Chi
cago leads all our Eastern cities in availing herself of
the Pacific RaUroad. She has filled California with
rumors of her greatness. Everywhere one hears the
remark, "I should like to see Chicago; it must be a
wonderful city," Does the atmosphere of Lake Michi
gan stimulate all who have breathed it to trumpet-
tongued admiration? On the way to San Francisco
last year, I asked General Sheridan :
"How long have you been here?"
"Two months."
"Have you happened to meet anybody during that
time who under-estimates Chicago ? "
"Not I?" he replied, laughingly. "Why I have
even begun to blow for it myself! " So say we all of us.
At present (1869)General Sheridan's head-quarters are
in Chicago. In hours not devoted to official duties he
leads a quiet bachelor life, with his brother, in a pleas
ant residence on Michigan Avenue. The back windows
of his cosey library command a delightful view of the
lake, and the full enjoyment of its cooling breezes. I
had never chanced to meet him since the campaign
after ShUoh, when he was undistinguished among the
young officers of the regular army, until I had the
pleasure of meeting him here and hearing him chat for

378 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
an hour or two, while he received and parted from a
dozen guests, civil and military.
In looks he has changed little during these seven
eventful years; his frame is something stouter, his face
maturer, and its lines more strongly marked. Most
pictures of him are very poor; they make him look
coarse-featured and hard-featured, and — I really know
of no other fitting adjective — "bullet-headed." Actu
ally, his countenance is very genial and mellow, and
his eyes bright and full of feeling. He has a singularly
sweet voice, low, rich, and well modulated.
Old comrades in arms tell of scenes in which his
eyes fairly lightened, and his voice thundered in strange
oaths; but, as a host, his bearing is the perfection of
breeding. One who met him simply as a private citi
zen and stranger, would say, ''Here is a man of ideal
manners, of the frank simplicity, the heartiness, the
self-forgetfulness, the perfect ease, which, so far as man
ners can, constitute the model gentleman."
He talked much of his old life on the Plains, and at
my request; told me the story of his first fight with the
Indians, at the Lower Cascades of the Columbia River.
He had about fifty men, and after sharp skirmishing
and bold manoeuvering, the Indians were misled into
taking possession of an island. Then, before they
knew what he was about, Lieutenant Sheridan dashed
down and seized their canoes, and there they were,
without an avenue for escape. He secured the whole
party, numbering seventy, and the next day he hung
thirteen of them, who had been murdering settlers and
outraging women.
In nothing does the City of the North-west show its
intellectual promise more than in its pulpits. Those of

ROBERT COLLYER. 379
every denomination contain men of unusual power and
mark. Foremost in fame is Robert CoUyer. He was
born in Yorkshire, England, a few miles from the little
village where Charlotte Bronte lived and died. Among
his most interesting and cherished treasures from his
old home, are stereoscopic views of the quaint, narrow
Haworth street, with the stolid-faced villagers idling
about; the little inn where Branwell used to carouse;
the bleak, barren, far-stretching moors, which seem to
have imparted to the life of Charlotte some of their
own dreariness and desolation.
Robert CoUyer was reared as a working blacksmith.
Coming to this country soon after he was twenty-one,
he worked at the anvU in Pennsylvania for several
years, till friendly eyes saw the rich treasures under
the blacksmith's homely frock, and friendly hands gave
him means and opportunity for study. At first he was
a Methodist. Now the Unitarians claim him; but he
is too large a man for any denomination. It was a
happy fortune which took him to Chicago. The tradi
tions and conventionalities of an older city might have
stifled him, but the free atmosphere of the North-west
gave him vent, inspiration, and growth. He is a mira
cle of labor. With every good endeavor, from the
¦ ministering to our wounded soldiers on the field, to the
establishing of a Magdalen asylum at home, he has
been prominently identified. And, somehow, he has
found time for gaining a very large and ripe intel
lectual culture. Perhaps a capacity like his takes in
knowledge, like breath, from the atmosphere. At all
events, while thoroughly acquainted with the affairs of
the day, and unusually well read in current American
and English literature, few chUdren of the Universities

380 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
have garnered up such ripe treasures from the old cher
ished stores of letters, as this graduate of the Pennsyl
vania blacksmith's shop.
But his abounding vitality and power appear most
in his preaching. That so comes home to men's busi
ness and bosoms, has so touched the deepest fountains
of feeling, and stirred all tender and manly instincts,
is so wholly Christian and so little sectarian, that his
small wooden chapel used to be crowded every Sun
day not only with his own people and strangers in the
city, but also with members of other churches. Now,
his great congregation has overflowed into their new
Church of the Unity, which is one of the largest and
finest in the country. The basement of the church is
divided up into parlors and other rooms for the use
of the society, and a study and library for the pastor.
The old anvil on which the Yorkshire boy had wrought,
has been brought from its native smithy by an enthu
siastic parishioner, and set up in the pastor's room.
Hardly yet in the prime of life, and one of the men
who grow long and mature late, Robert CoUyer already
ranks in power and influence among the three or four
foremost clergymen in the United States. Unspoiled by
success, as simple in his habits as in his early life, and
with the overflowing animal spirits of a school-boy, •
years of large and ever--widening influence seem to
stretch fair before him. This stalwart, life-full man may
yet give to the Yorkshire moors a new interest, as deep,
though not as sad, as that they gained from the
slender, plain, near-sighted girl, who walked them
lonely while the nations praised her afar off, and who
was cut down at last, just as the first sweetness in the
draught of her woman's life, had touchedher eager lips.

FASHION IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 381
There are still persons who expect, on reaching the
prairies or the mountains, to leave behind culture and
taste and the quick pulse of fashion. They are just as
intelligent as the not-quite-extinct Englishman who
thinks to encounter buffaloes, you know, in walking up
Broadway, and to be fired on by Indians, my boy, while
saUing down the Hudson, A New Yorker, on a visit to
a mining camp in Colorado, bought a pair of excellent
shoes at a ridiculously low figure. After the purchase,
he asked :
" How in the world can you sell such shoes for one
dollar and fifty cents?"
"Well, sir," replied the dealer, "square-toes went out
of fashion a month ago, and now my customers won't
take them at any price! "
Returning East a few weeks later, the purchaser found
nine-tenths of his city friends still wearing the shape
which was too antiquated for the Rocky Mountains.
Californians, restrained perhaps by their proverbial
.modesty, do not even hint that San Francisco is the
Athens of America: but while yet isolated she produced
The Overland Monthy, conspicuously tbe best of all
magazines ; and The News-Letter, irreverent and some
times coarse, but of all humorous journals in the lan
guage, the keenest, the wittiest, and the most genuinely
American. As for Chicago, the stay-at-home world
knows of her grain elevators and railroads, her pork-
packing establishments, and real estate miracles. Fre
quent visitors may have heard also a feeble and diffident
hint or two that she is a city with a future, and a little
faint and indirect disparagement of St. Louis and Cin
cinnati! Some have even encountered that dreadful,
irrepressible, omnipresent man who, twenty years ago.

382 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
was offered "six hundred and forty acres on the South
Side for two dollars an acre, and, like a fool, didn't take
it; and to-day. Sir, you can't buy a single house lot
there for less than five hundred dollars a front foot!"
But there is quite another aspect with which we
ought to grow familiar, nqw that the fast train can
bring us, as handbills here announce, " From Metropolis
to Metropolis in 30 Hours ! " The people of the North
west — ^largely from New York and New England — are
ravenous readers, and the book-trade of Chicago is ex
ceedingly heavy.
In 1852 there was a single periodical depot in Chi
cago, and it did a business of two thousand dollars per
annum. Several years later an enterprising lad named
Walsh began to sell morning papers on the street cor
ners. His capital lay in the fact that he could "toU
terribly." Now, while yet so youthful-looking that a
stranger instinctively glances around the store to see
whether " the old gentleman" is in, he is the superin
tendent and largest stockholder of the Western News
Company, which is owned half in New York and half
in Chicago; employs fifty men and boys, and distri
butes annually throughout the North-west — clear to
the Sierras and to Northern Texas — about one million
dollars' worth of current literature, from the morning
newspaper to the newest book and the latest quarterly.
Periodical stock is so perishable that, as a rule, it is
not even sold for cash on delivery, but only upon the
safe plan of requiring customers to deposit the money
before it leaves the store. I asked an employe :
" Have St. Louis and Cincinnati any establishments
similar in plan and magnitude ? "
"No," he answered, "Cincinnati is too near New

BOOK-TRADE OF CHICAGO. '383
York, and St. Louis has no back country. This line of
trade is created and sustained only by railroads."
The general book-trade of Chicago began in 1845,
when Mark H. Newman, an old New York publisher,
sent an agent here to estabUsh a branch house. In
four years the agent was up to his eyes in real estate
speculations, and during a little panic he became fright
ened, and took to his heels, closing out his lots for
next to nothing, and abandoning the bookstore alto
gether. The joke of the affair proved to be that he
was right in his original impulse, and the alarmists to
whom he listened were wrong. Had he remained and
sold only enough of his real estate to enable him to
"carry" the rest, he would have become one of the
richest men in the North-west. The Charybdis which
sank him was lack of faith in the future greatness of
the city. Few Chicago ships of the present era seem
to be in danger of going to pieces on that side of the
channel !
From the germ which he left has sprung the leading
house of S. C. Griggs & Company. Mr. Griggs was the
pioneer, and Messrs. Jansen, McClurg (a brigadier-gen
eral of repute in the War for the Union), and Smith,
clerks who have grown into partners. It is not a great
many years since the firm were proud to find that their
annual sales reached twenty-five thousand dollars.
When they first took one thousand copies of the " San
ders Speller " for a winter stock (goods had to be
hauled in wagons one or two hundred miles from the
railway terminus at Ann Arbor, Michigan, while the
lake was frozen) they felt that they were doing an enor
mous business. Now they consider any year in which
•they do not sell one hundred thousand copies of the

384 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
Speller, a dull one ; and their annual trade is not far
from eight hundred thousand dollars.
Two things are noteworthy. 1. The relative demand
for fine bindings, for fiiU and half calf and morocco
editions of all standard works, is apparently greater in
Chicago than in any other book market in the world.
2. So is the special demand for old, rare, and choice
books. It is not uncommon to have twenty thousand
dollars' worth on hand — many of them imported direct
from Europe — and in this line I fancy no other Ameri
can house in the general book-trade does so large a
business. The store is a paradise for bibliomaniacs.
Miss Phelps should provide some such celestial nook
for that large class of enthusiasts in the next edition
of "The Gates Ajar." I note one folio volume of 68
artist's-proof (before letter) engravings from Turner,
with accompanying text, on large paper, marked at
two hundred and fifty dollars ; five folio volumes of the
"Mus^e Royal" and "Muse Fran§ais" at six hundred
dollars; three folio volumes of the "Galerie du Palais
Pitti" at three hundred and fifty dollars, and one large
paper copy of "Irving's Washington," made up into
ten volumes, and with many illustrative engravings in
serted, at one thousand five hundred dollars. Then
there are other treasures, from old missals on vellum to
"Dora's Bible," from black-letter and hand illumina
tions to the latest triumph of chromo-lithography —
treasures of Dibdin, Pickering, Audubon, Rogers, Owen
Jones, and Hogarth — ^hundreds of volumes on India
paper or in Turkey and Levant morocco, and tree and
polished calf, which sell at from fifty to one hundred
and fifty dollars.
Not many persons ask for these works in cold blood;

HUMORS OP BOOK-SELLING. 385
the demand for them is chiefly kindled by the sight of
them ; but it comes not merely from Chicago, but from
Quincy, Keokuk, Springfield, St. Paul, and Omaha ; and
it is already so large that not only this house, which
makes a speciality of pro-viding for it, but all other
book firms have to meet it in some degree.
There are many stories current which illustrate the
humors of book-selUng in the West. Country custom
ers often include other articles in their orders for books,
and the houses here send out and purchase them. One
order for 200 or 300 popular works contained the item
"1 Smoked Glasses." The clerk who filled it bought
and shipped to the customer a pair of colored specta
cles instead of the desired book, with the name of
which he did not happen to be familiar. For months
afterward the reminding jests of his fellow-clerks made
the life of that unfortunate young man a burden to him.
Another order enumerated: "Six Primitive Chris
tianity." It was sent back with the response penciled
opposite that item, and not at all in jest — ^"No Primitive
Christianity to be found in Chicago ! "
"The Impenitent Dead" is a work by a Massachu
setts professor of theology. One morning, visitors in
a leading book house were all startled by the inquiry
which one clerk who was filling an order shouted to
another in a distant part of the store: "Have 'The
Impenitent Dead' come in yet?"
A rather slow boy had been employed in a great es
tabUshment — in which his father also was a clerk— just
long enough to reaUze that he did not know anything,
and look bewUdered whenever, he was asked for an
unfamiUar work. One day a fellow-clerk, wishing to
speak with the elder, asked :
25

386 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
" Bill, where is your paternal ancestor ? "
, " I'm sure / don't know," replied the lad, in a tone
of despair ; " I never know where half the books are ! "
A rather quiet boy, and also a new-comer, had learned
the great lesson of a salesman — always to sell a visitor
something, whether the store contains what he asks for
or not. A dignified gentleman in gold spectacles en
tered and inquired :
" Have you 'Feuchtwanger's Gems ?'" — a large treat
ise on jewels.
The lad had never heard of it, but he instantly pro
duced a little religious volume, and replied :
" No, Sir ; but here is a. book which may answer
your purpose — ' Precious Gems of the Heavenly Foun
dations !'"
The astonished inquirer gave one searching and
perplexed glance over his spectacles, as if in doubt
whether the youth was making game of him or not,
and then, without a word, turned upon his heel and
stalked off reluctant, like an ill-used ghost.
" Every man," as Captain Frederic Ingham approv
ingly quotes, " should know two things — a vocation
and an avocation." The number of Americans who
find their avocation in book-collecting has increased
enormously within the last few years. It has sent
many alert agents abroad to run races with the British
Museum for newly discovered treasures, and to astonish
London dealers by offering reckless and unheard of
prices. It has increased tenfold the value set upon
many old books in our own markets. This advance
has been, and continues to be, so rapid, that a gradu
ally accumulated library, selected -with fair taste and
judgment, is one of the best pecuniary provisions a

VALUABLE PRIVATE LIBRARIES. 387
man can make for his family, though the final break
ing up and disposing of it is like the seUing of heir
looms. Half a dozen New York and Boston dealers in
rare books keep the run of the private libraries of the
country with marvelous minuteness, but they are fre
quently surprised to find twenty or forty or fifty thou
sand dollars' worth of choice and rare works suddenly
thrown upon the market by the death of some country
collector of whom they had never heard.
The private libraries of Chicago, and the demand
here for choice and rare books, are often a revelation
to the Eastern visitor. One of the most valuable book-
collections is that of John A. Rice. Mr. Rice's library
is especially rich in early American imprints, including'
many books printed by Marmaduke Johnson, at Cam
bridge, N. E., years before a printing-press was estab
lished in Boston. His " Smith's History of New York "
is the only known copy in large paper ; and a large
portion of his books have been made unusually inter
esting by the addition of extra plates and autograph
letters. The only private libraries which excel Mr. Rice's in
"Americana," are those of J. Carter Browne of Provi
dence, and James Lenox of New York, and possibly
that of S. L. M. Barlow of New York. Here is the
(comparatively) large-paper copy of " Elliot's Indian
Bible" (which no living man can read except J. Ham
mond Trumbull of Hartford) with the King Charles
dedication, and in the original binding, foj which Mr.
Rice paid $1,156. Its special interest lies in the dedi
cation to the godless Charles. Puritan-like, even the
pure-souled and apostolic Elliot was -wise after the
manner of men. He inserted the address to that "Most

388 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
Dread Sovereign" and exemplary "Defender of the
Faith" in twenty copies, which were sent to England;
but carefully omitted it from the two thousand or three
thousand copies which were circulated in America. By
and by, I suppose, we shall give to EUiot that first place
which he deserves amOng our colonial heroes, not only
for his self-denying life, but for his stupendous literary
achievements — the translation of the entire Scriptures
into a new tongue, and the preparation of an Indian
grammar, and several other works, all done in the midst
of active and absorbing practical duties.
The Indian Bible is not above third or fourth in the
list of rare American books. The first is " Elliot, Welde
and Mather's Version of the Psalms of David" (Cam
bridge, 1640), the earliest book printed in America.
Only two copies are known to exist — one in the Boston
Public Library, the other in the Bodleian. Next comes
"Elliot's Indian Governor," of which there is only one
copy known — owned, I believe, by Mr. TrumbuU of
Hartford. But I will try to stick to my theme. Forty thousand
dollars has been refused for Mr. Rice's collection. It is
rich in tracts and books on our discovery, colonial and
revolutionary periods— books often more fascinating
than the most brilliant novel, and of priceless histori
cal value. With its present fullness in " Americana," and
the unusual advantages enjoyed here for gathering
early works on the West, it ought to grow into the
most valuable of all our private Ubraries in this special
department.* There are several other collections of choice works
of literature, fine engravings, and antique treasures.
* I believe Mr. Rice's collection has since been sold at auction.

RARE BOOKS. 389
Among the owners, one is a hotel proprietor, one a
railroad man — the others lawyers. All know their books,
husk and kernel, skin and core, and would find it hard
to breathe out of their atmosphere. They have the
usual intense delight in choice bindings, large paper
copies and all bibliographic dainties and rarities. All
talk in the usual tongue — unintelligible to ears profane
— of "Caxtons," " Wynken-de-Wordes," " Dibdins,*'
"proofs before all letters," "one of the only four Copies
ever printed." All have purchasers and binders in
London and New York ; are ready to give more than
its weight in gold for any rare little volume which they
chance to want, and which can not be had for less;
and to pay fifty or sixty doUars for the binding of a
•favorite tract of fifty or sixty pages. For three of
them, a company in Boston are now printing on large
India paper a special edition of only three copies of
"Longfellow's Dante," which are to cost, in the sheets,
two hundred and thirty-three dollars apiece. In bind
ing and adding more illustrations the expense of each
will doubtless be doubled or trebled.
Of course these are not our largest or costliest pri
vate libraries. The value of C. W. Griswold's of New
York is stated at one hundred and fifty thousand dol
lars ; and James- Lenox's, which comparatively few per
sons have seen, is vaguely rumored to be worth one
million dollars. Nor do I argue from them that the
herb women of Chicago are all capable of criticising
"Kathrina," — an editorial friend has just shown me a
volume of some bulk and pretensions which he has
just received "With the compliments of the Authoris,"
— but they evidence the growing tastes of the North
west and its demand for the broadest and best culture.

390 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
A well known Boston lawyer and book-collector of
gravity, both general and specific (he weighs two hun
dred pounds) was lately turned loose, without a word
of preparation, in one of these libraries, where a collec
tion of the daintiest and rarest Dibdins had been previ
ously arranged as a bait. At first he was dumb with
incredulous surprise, and then — as the story goes —
hugging the volumes, he leaped upon a table and
danced with delight. Your bibliomaniac, of all men,
feels that pleasure in being mad which only madmen
know.

October 9, 1869. This morning I started on by
the Chicago, Alton and St. Louis Railroad. When we
were fairly under way, a boy passed through all the
coaches giving notice, "Breakfast is ready in the Dining-
car — the last car of the train." Going back I found
one of the large, heavy, familiar Pullman coaches, ele
gantly finished in black-walnut. In the middle, leav
ing just room enough for one to pass by, was parti
tioned off a tiny kitchen, with dust-proof refrigerator
and provision boxes underneath. The rest of the space
was occupied by fourteen little tables, at each of which
four persons could sit. The napkins were fine and
snowy, and the sUver-plated breakfast ware shone Uke
a mirror. I touched the bell-handle over one of the tables, and
at my elbow appeared a ministering angel of Ethiopian
descent, clad in white apron and jacket which bore the
monogram of the Pullman company. He handed me a
printed bill of fare; I invoked his beneficence in the
shape of broiled chicken, rolls, and coffee, and he re-

THE PULLMAN CARS. 391
peated the invocation to another sable ministrant, who,
I confess, looked rather infernal than celestial, as- I
caught a momentary glimpse of him through the slid
ing panel, whUe he bent over his little stove in his tiny
cage of a kitchen.
UnUke the food of raUroad-eating houses, which
seems to have a general flavor of dust and cinders, the
breakfast proved thoroughly palatable; and eking it
out with a second cup of coffee, and a morning news
paper, I lounged at the table for an hour or two, now
glancing at the prairies, groves and farm-houses, which
were flying by at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour,
and now chatting with other passengers, who were
dropping in to breakfast in the same leisurely way.
The Pullman cars for sleeping and dining, are new
wonders of American travel. George Pullman was a
New York boy, left an orphan with two or three
younger sisters dependent upon him. In those days, I
have been told he worked as a driver upon the Erie
Canal. Whether this be true or not, he faced poverty
manfully ; educated himself and the sisters left in his
charge, as best he might, and started West to conquer
fortune. When the entire business portion of Chicago
was elevated five or six feet, to secure a better grade
and drainage, PuUman was engaged in raising some of
the, largest stone blocks, with screws so delicate and
exact that waUs never cracked, and business never
stopped in the fifth and sixth stories.
Ten years ago I met him quartz-mining in Colorado.
When mining stock was highest he sold out clean. I
never happened to know another man who sold at such
a time without buying again before the coUapse; but
PuUman not only sold out; he kept out.

392 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
This left him free to attend to two or three old
coaches fitted up for sleeping-cars, which he was run
ning upon an Illinois road. He soon saw that the
business was capable of boundless expansion. Hitherto,
passengers had slept between blankets, on hard beds.
He introduced sheets and soft mattresses. His rivals
exclaimed :
"The man is mad; he will ruin the sleeping-car
business, the public never will pay for these luxuries!"
But the innovator, who is the most serene and placid
of revolutionists, replied calmly:
"Americans who travel don't care what they are
charged • for comforts, if they can only get their
money's worth."
The old sleeping-cars had cost five thousand dollars
apiece, and Pullman proved his sincerity by building
one at a cost of sixteen thousand dollars. The result
was that he never built a cheap one afterwards. The
charge for a night's lodging in his best coaches is two
dollars. Sometimes when a train is unusually heavy,
the old coaches wUl be put on at a charge of one dol
lar and a half They are thoroughly comfortable —
better than the usual sleeping-coach on Eastern roads
— but not a berth in them is taken till the Pullman car
is fuU !
So has grown up an enormous business interest
which covers three-quarters of the Continent, and
which is said to have made its owner a millionaire. I
only hope that the statement is true, for a man who has
added so much to the comfort of the public, and never
at the expense of good taste, deserves substantial re
ward. The canal-boat boy in these days, travels in
his own family car, with his own servants, and I am

BUILDING THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAILROAD IN KANS.AS.

ENTERING KANSAS. 393
sure Mr. Tupper would conclude that " a family car
in a household is a well-spring of delight"
I write,, altogether without the knowledge of the
inventor, partly because the subject is of general in
terest, and partly because the lesson of such a life is a
¦wholesonie one, and ought to teach something. Would
that railway managers could learn from it. To-day the
sleeping-cars between Boston and New York, and New
York and Washington, are simply abominations. Will
our railway magn,ates never learn that "Americans
don't care what they are charged for comforts, if .they
only get their money's worth."

October 10. We cross the Missouri at Kansas City
on the first bridge completed over the mu.ddy river,
and make our entrance into Kansas. From this last
named new-born city seven lines of railways radiate.
Joy's railway — ambitiously called the Mississippi Val
ley and Gulf of Mexico R. R. — has struck south fifty
miles, on its way to Texas, through the Indian Terri
tory. It has thousands of men employed, and the man
agement is -constantly sending East for reinforcements;
but the laborers go to farming as soon as they get to
Kansas; or, if they can not get lands of their own, hire
out to farmers till they can start on their own account.
Notwithstanding this, the new road, which is planned
in one unbroken line, of uniform gauge from Boston,
Massachusetts, to Galveston, Texas, and is second only
in importance to the Pacific RaUway, goes on speedUy,
and two years may see it open to the traveling public
to its terminus in Texas. " >
The railway ties are thick raUs of black walnut,

394 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
which savor of barbaric lavishness to eyes accustomed
to connect it with fine houses and elegant upholstery.
Here logs of black walnut feed the wide-mouthed
stoves, as readily as the oak and chestnut were swal
lowed up in the open chimney of primitive New Eng-,
land. It is astonishing how railways get a character of their
own, as ships are reputed to be lucky or unlucky from
the start. If a road begins by cheating and corrupt
management, like the Erie, it is pretty sure to keep it
up. If it begins by putting its passengers into mov
able pig-pens, forcing them to gorge themselves with
sole-leather steaks during infinitesimal stops at some
dingy station, it is just as Ukely not to change. Joy's
road has begun in the right way in one respect.
Already it has a fine dining-car with tiny kitchen,
from which issue weU-ordered meals, served with clean
napery and shining ware. One little woman, travel
ing all the way from Maine, with three babies, was
pleased almost to tears at the sight of these home com
forts, the first, she said, she had seen on the route, since
leaving the Atlantic. They order these things better
in the West.
The road is a little rough because of its newness, and
the cars sway perceptibly. After dinner I was chatting
a moment with the youth in charge.
" Do these cars run off the track often?" I asked.
" No, not often."
I walked forward almost instantly, but before I
reached the rear end of the car, we were off the track,
bumping up and down at a furious rate. We were not
running over ten miles an hour, and soon stopped. The
car was full of men, who, at first, showed a disposition

THE FRUIT-MARKETS. 395
to rush -wildly somewhere, but were induced to keep
their seats. The forward truck of the dining-room car
had run off and dragged a few yards over the sleepers
into an open bridge; it was then thrown back till it
was stopped by the third truck, the concussion tearing
up the car floor. Fortunately we were not running
fast, or we should have all been sent to Kingdom
Come. It detained us there a few hours, and then we
were sent back to Kansas City on a baggage car.
The markets of Kansas City were overflowing with
fruits from the great adjoining fruit regions. Apples and
pears of Kansas bore their blushing honors in the shape
of a gold medal just received from the United States
Pomological Fair held in Philadelphia. Purple grapes
and golden plrnns were luscious in their rich bloom and
color. Here, too, were heaped up hampers of pecan
and hickory nuts, gaijhered on the blood-enriched soil
of the Marais du Cygnes.
AU along the Kansas railroad the farmers were gath
ering in the hay, although the first flurry of snow had
told the approach of winter. They often do gather
the hay after quite a severe snow-storm. The huge
hay-cocks built by machinery, stood in the straw-col
ored fields, looking like gigantic Esquimaux huts. In
many counties the cattle graze out-door all winter,
finding food enough without drawing on the store, in
bams and hay-stacks.
A farm of a thousand acres, or a wheat or corn-field
of an hundred acres does not excite the least attention.
Between Lawrence and Wyandotte, the other day, I
think the train ran five miles through an unbroken
corn-field. The farmers simply turn up the earth, drop
the seed between the sods, and the crop grows.

396 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
"Why don't you plough your corn-field?" asked a
traveler in Southern Kansas, "and keep down your
weeds a littie ? " '
"Don't dare to," answered the farmer. "The corn
would grow so large we could not shell it."
For wheat this country cannot be surpassed. Twenty-
eight bushels to the acre is a frequent yield. A shrewd
old Scotchman, who has lived all over Illinois and Kan-
, sas, insists that in all the Western country where the
staple is corn, the farmers remain poor and are coarse
and boorish, while the wheat growing sections produce
wealth and culture as part of the crop.

Ellsworth, Kansas, October 14. Going west from
Topeka to-day I joined a party in special Pullman cars
bound on a buffalo excursion. Half a dozen gentle
men from New York, and two or three from Chicago
were of the party. Several gentlemen had their Wives
with them. We had two Pullman cars, "The city of
Chicago," a sleeping-car, which served as parlor by day,
and " Young America," a dining-car, to which we went
forward at meals.
We stopped on the road to visit St. Mary's Mission,
an old Jesuit school founded twenty years ago, which
'has two or three hundred children in its walls. The
chapel had cheap prints hanging all about. Over the
altar, a painting of the Resurrection, and the letters
1. H. S. in solid black walnut. One of the fathers
sent two pupils up into the gallery to sing a choral,
and their boy-voices, wonderfully sweet and clear,
filled the little chapel with melody. I sat and lis
tened, and watched a willow outside through which

A NIGHT AT ELLSWORTH. 397
the yellow sunlight flickered on the window. How
alike Catholic churches are all over the world. There
was the same air of repose and solitude in this tiny
chapel on the Western prairies that one finds in a Eu
ropean cathedral.
Afterwards the priest, waddling before us, in long
gown and three-cornered hat, showed us through the
fine pear and peach orchards, and then we left this
quaint little place which seemed like a bit of the Old
World dropped down into our new civilization to go
back into the wild prairie again, and the fresh air of
the wilderness.
Last spring the Indians ran the train off the track at
EUsworth and killed the section hands. So the Com
pany had decided to run the train beyond this point
only by daylight, and we were obliged to stay here all
night. It is a prairie-desert town, a few miles from
Fort Harker. Some of the officers of the Fort came
down and invited us there, and as we did not go the
band came down and serenaded the party. Then
speeches, of course. After it was over the band got
very drunk, and one obstreperous musician for whom
his own pipes had not sufficient charm to soothe the
savage in him, threatened to shoot his lieutenant, and
offered to fight the general company. It seems the
fellow had an especial predilection for whisky, and while
the rest of the band were muddling themselves with
lager-beer, he got off by himself and drank half a
pint of the dreadful whisky of this country !
During the evening General P  joined us from
Sheridan, bringing with him the head of a buffalo which
had been killed from the train. He assured us we
should see plenty of game next day, and the sportsmen

398 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
of our party went to bed -with keen appetites for the
morrow's sport. 
Sheridan, October 15. We started before day
Ught this morning, all the party sleeping soundly, and
when I woke in the pale dawn, we were running
thirty miles an hour. On we scudded over the bare
plains, a thousand feet above sea level, the air crisp
and cool, sky cloudless, vegetation faded but profuse.
It was not a morning ,to lie in bed indulging in day
dreams. We were up betimes, eager to meet the
enemy. WhUe I was dressing I saw in the distance,
northward, half a dozen antelopes, their white taUs
fluttering like pennons. Next, somebody in the car
startled us with a shout, " Buffaloes, the buffaloes."
Grazing on the north side of the track we saw three
of the dingy, lumbering, shaggy-fronted, humpbacked
creatures. An hour later, we saw a dozen not more
than a quarter of a mile away, and just as we were
ready to go in to breakfast one gentleman rushed in,
greatly excited, shouting, " Come and see ! come and
see ! Here are ten thousand of them." We all rushed
to look at long, crooked, dark lines on the prairie, but
they proved to be timber, not buffaloes !
After breakfast, however, about ten o'clock, a dozen
or twenty appeared on the south side of the track, not
more than half a mile away. The train was stopped,
and General P-  and two other gentlemen smarted
out. But they were going straight toward the buffa
loes, and the brutes descrying them, fell back gradually.
They went on, and getting a little in the rear, wounded
one or two, but the rest would not be driven down to
wards the train. They were traveling another way, and

ATTACKED BY A BUFFALO. 399
the buffalo will go in the way he sets out. About noon
the gentlemen came back, thoroughly tired out with
their chase, and the ^train started on.
Thirty or forty miles further on, the train was
stopped again at Coyote station. No buffaloes in sight,
but here were three hunters with ponies in readiness to
go out. C-  mounted one pony, I another, and a
hunter, the third. Several others, followed on foot.
The train meanwhUe stood waiting on the bare prairie.
Our guide was dressed in blue army coat and cape,
heavy boots dra-wn up over his trousers, a white plush
hat, his beard long and his face as brown as an Indian's,
To our questions he replied with the deliberation of a
Lord Chancellor:
"There are three pardners of us who hunt together.
We hunt wolves principally, for their fur. One of my
pardners has gone to Hays now with a lot of skins.
He had just been out and shot a buffalo cow and was
skinning her. While he was at it the bull came walk
ing up. But he didn'^t see him, or else thought the
bull wouldn't hurt him, as they don't often make
trouble when they're not wounded. The grass was soft,
and the buU came up very still tUl he got close upon
him. Then Jones sprarig for his gun. He grabbed it,
but the buU was so nigh he couldn't fire. He run a
few steps backward and tumbled flat, and the bull
tramped over him treading on one knee with his hind
hoof He's been lame ever since, and that's why he's
gone to Hays."
" Do you Uke hunting buffaloes ?"
" WeU, its rather a dirty business. A man has to be
in blood aU the time; and when its a regular business
there isn't much excitement about it."

400 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
"The bulls are worst when wounded are they not?"
"They are the easiest to get mad; but when the
cows are mad they are more desperate. Generally we
hunt them on foot. Then when one comes at us we
have to depend on our guns and our nerve to look out
for him. On horseback there is little danger. We just.
ride along on a gallop, within a few feet of the buffalo
who is running too, and fire at him with a revolver,"
"And if he turns to gore you, your horse will turn
too?" "Yes, if he is trained. This pony now is splendidly
trained. But when one isn't, he will sometimes stand
still, trembling, till the buffaloes' horns strike him. I
have seen men tossed up on the buffaloes' horns again
and again. But there are the buffaloes. Let's ride up
this ravine and we shall be right among them."
There they were — half a mile ahead of us. On the
hill on the right, on the hill on the left, and on the hill
in front, where the ravine gave out. Huge, shaggy
creatures, one on the crest of the hill looked as big as
a stage-coach. The top of a bluff greatly magnifies
things here. I saw a gang of railroad hands working
here the other day, the men looking sixteen feet high.
We walked our ponies up through tall grass, and be
tween the high banks of the crooked ravine till within
a quarter Of a mile of the buffaloes. Then we dis
mounted, picketed our animals, and walked cautiously
on. As we picked our way, stooping in the high places,
now and then a shaggy old bull, a sentinel a little out
side the group, would look up and sniff a little. Pres
ently we lay down and began to creep. On hands and
knees we went, within two hundred yards of them.
There we sat down in the grass and took aim.

SHOOTING BUFFALOES FROM THE CARS, 401
We blazed away. Two gave a great'jmnp and began
to limp a Uttle.
"Two wounded," said the hunter sententiously, as
we reloaded.
Bang ! Bang ! No visible result. Again we reloaded.
"Which shaU I fire at?"
"Just wait a minute. You watch that big fellow."
(A bull with his broadside toward us).
I did watch. Bang! went my companion's rifle.
The big fellow gave a stagger and went over upon the
grass. The rest began to sniff, and move slowly away.
Again and again we fired. Every time the hunter-
would assure me that I had hit a buffalo, even when I
was morally certain I had not.
" You hit him that time."
" I guess not ? "
" 0 yes you did, I heard the bullet strike ; / didn't hit
him, I overshot."
This was the acme of politeness !
After a few hours shooting we walked back to the
train four or five miles away, leaving our horses to
bring on the buffaloes' heads — there were two of them
— which the hunters were cutting off. There stood the
train waiting on the bare prairie, and the excursionists
declared they had enjoyed the delay by writing letters
home. Soon we were off again — running slowly. Just be
fore sundown some one came into our car, shouting :
"Here's a buffalo! right ahead! -within three rods of
the track. See! see!"
In a moment we came beside him. He sheered away
a Uttle, but ran right along beside us, say fifty or sixty
yards from the track. On he went with great loping
26

402 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
strides, keeping up with the train, which was running
about ten or twelve miles an hour.
Bang ! bang ! bang ! went shots at him from windows
and platforms of aU the cars. The bull ran on and
seemed to like it. The shots tore up the earth in
front, behind, and on each side of him. Everywhere a
little puff of dust. Every one was alive. The ladies
danced and shouted, in unrestrained excitement — the
men blazed away. It was wonderful shooting; it did
not seem to annoy the bull in the least. I suppose
eighty to one hundred shots were fired at him within
half a mile as he gradually fell behind the train.
Then the ladies, who had cried out " What a shame !
Poor thing ! poor creature ! " whenever a ball seemed
to graze him, began to cry " Why don't they stop the
train." " Can't you get a few more shots at him?"
Here some one raised a shout :
"Hurrah! hurrah! here's another!" And there was
another who, as the first fell back, took his place. At
him, too, we blazed away again and again with the
same result, for another half mile, the beast keeping
pace with us.
Bang! bang! crack! pop! bang! went rifles and
revolvers. "Why don't this train stop," screamed a little lady
fairly dancing on the tips of her toes in wild excite
ment. "There! there! he is hit. He is down."
" Hurrah." " Oh, poor beast." " Stop the train ! "
The great creature sank down on his haunches, his
hind legs qmte given out. The train was stopped and
we went towards him. Two br three well-directed
shots stopped his plunging. His hind-quarters seemed

END OF THE BUFFALO-HUNT, 403
fastened to the ground, his great shoulders and back
swayed and quivered once or twice, and then all was
over. Just as we reached him and the hunter began
cutting off his head to take with us as a trophy, some
one cried:
"Look back! The other one is down too."
Half a mile back the first one was seen to halt, stag
ger, and his hind legs went out from under him. Three
times he rose and fell before he went down finaUy. He
was a huge creature, the monarch of his herd, perhaps,
his horns almost worn close to his ears from frequent
battles. Very soon his head was off also, and we rode
on glorious, with our trophies of the day's hunt.
Then we went to dinner in a Pullman car, and as
some of the party were to leave next day there were
the usual dinner speeches — very spirited and pleasant
ones too — and then we sat chatting and telUng stories
for two hours later. One of the ladies took her seat
at the cabinet organ in the center of the car, and aU
who could, joined in singing "John Brown's Body,"
"Linkum Gunboats," "America," etc. Just as the
strains of "Old Hundred" died away we began to feel
cold — the boys were caUed, beds made, and we turned
in for the night at the close of a wonderful day's sport.

October 16. To-day, our party, ladies and all,
dined at General P  's ranche. His cook, an Eng
lishman by birth, surprised him and the rest of us by
the dessert, which included several elaborate cakes of
architectural pretension and snowy frosting. One of
them had been made in honor of Cyrus W. Field, who
was the " distinguished guest " of the occasion. It was

404 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
a globe, with a section of looking-glass to imitate the
ocean, poles and wire to indicate the telegraph, and the
inscription, "Field and Progress." By common con
sent it was boxed and sent to Mrs. Field, as a remark
able culinary production of the desert.
' We had a very merry dinner, as this was the last be
fore separating. AU told stories, and many times the
table was set in a roar. Mr. Field, who like all clear
headed men of enterprise and practical achievement, was
hungry for facts, and could never be glutted with them,
had asked questions aU the way, and no minute detail
along the route had escaped him. One of his compan
ions insisted that if this went on, the stage by which he
was going into Colorado, would be obliged to take
along an extra wagon to carry Mr. Field's facts.
This afternoon I went riding -with another gentleman
over the prairie. It was so smooth we could drive
everywhere without roads. My companion shot at a
white-breasted eagle but failed to bring it down. He
did hit an owl, however, perched on a prairie-dog hole,
a beautiful little creature — spotted brown and white —
which looked like a partridge. A boy on horseback
just ahead of us, tried to run down a coyote, but the
wolf ran faster than the horse, and getting into a
ravine was lost to sight.
The plain here looks like the ocean petrified. I sup
pose it is the absolute limitlessness of the expanse —
with no tree or shrub to break the horizon, that gives
such a sense of vastness, and makes the skies and sun
sets so beautiful. If the sky everywhere could be seen so
— a perfect dome unbroken by tree or hill — the sunset
effects would be grander; the great elevation and the
purity of the atmosphere, gives them here a peculiar.
charm.

prairie-dogs. 405
October 17, Last evening Mr, Field went on to
Fort Wallace, and this morning General P  and two
or three others followed him. From thence the whole
party were to go on to Denver by stage-coach. After
they had been gone half an hour it was discovered
that they had left their lunch-baskets behind — an im
portant omission to a party traveling in this sharp Oc
tober air. We telegraphed to Wallace for them to stop
for it, and the Colonel and myself started to overtake
them with P  's buggy and two horses — a white and
a brown. We followed the Une of the Pacific RaUroad on the
bare, treeless desert, passing gangs of men laying ties and
track. Through a prairie-dog town where the fat little
fellows sat upright like posts, till we came close upon
them, and then with wriggling tails dove into their
houses, barking "wee! wee! wee!" They are every
where in this desert, and even down in the dry bottom
lands I found their mines. There, where the country
is liable to overfiow, they build a mound two feet round
and sometimes a foot to a foot and a half high. Then
in case of overflow the mounds stand above the water's
surface, and as the ground is porous the water soon
subsides and they are left high and dry again. The
old plainsmen discredit the story of rattlesnakes and
prairie-dogs dwelling together in amity. They declare
that the only bond between them is in the fact that the
snakes eat the dogs. The rattlesnakes have been found
gorged with young dogs. The latter sometimes flU up
their holes and build new ones, perhaps to bury their
enemies alive in the deserted caves'.
While we were driving at our utmost speed, six an
telopes appeared on the left of the road, two small ones

406 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
in the middle, and a buck with huge branching horns
bringing up the rear. They ran to the edge ' of the
road, but just on the point of crossing, ran back, fright
ened. This they did again and again, following on for
eight miles, often within fifty feet. On they came with
graceful airy gallop in which they seemed to skim over
the ground. Their noiseless legs look like shuttles,
they fly with such regularity and ea^e. We were in
too great a hurry to have a shot at them, and they
finally parted company with us unscathed by bullet or
shot. We reached Wallace a few minutes after the coach,
making the thirteen and a half miles from Sheridan in
seventy-two minutes. Mr. Field had come on the night
before in a buggy, and had strapped his portmanteau,
containing all his clothes, to the axle, letting it hang
below. In crossing "Smoky,". one of the head forks of
Smoky Hill river, a series of pools rather than a stream,
the baggage was immersed, and he had spent the night
drying his clothes !
Fort Wallace is on the high bare desert under the
cloudless glowing sky, with barren hills all around it.
General Wood, the commandant, has planted young
cotton-woods all over the parade ground to shield it
from the terrible glare. They aire watered every day,
and thrive amazingly. The fact is interesting as show
ing that with water, all these plains will be covered
with verdure. There are many facts which go to show,
too, that the rain increases every year. Salt Lake has
risen a foot a year for eleven years, and this season
there has been rain enough so that no irrigation was
needed. And in Kansas, old settlers told me that
where constant irrigation was demanded a few years

INCREASE OP RAIN. 407
ago, excellent grain was now raised without it. It has
actually rained five or six times on the desert this sum
mer, sometimes quite copiously. Of course it is not
yet demonstrated that rain follows settlement, but it
probably does. At aU events, ploughing the soil makes
it receive water; before the clods are broken it is so
impervious that the water will evaporate or run ofi^
leaving it as dry as before.
In driving back from Fort Wallace, for want of bet
ter sport we stopped now and then to shoot at the
prairie-dogs. We made good shots but never got our
game. They stood right at the mouth of their holes,
so near the ground it was difficult to hit them, and
if hit, th^y tumbled back into their holes out of
sight. There is a story, about these dogs that a new
comer in the country, in the dusk of evening, started
three times toward what he thought was a stake to
lariat his horse, and it proved to be a prairie-dog.
They do sit wonderfully upright, in front of their
doorways, nibbling their fore paws or polishing off
their smooth coats, in the shining October sunlight.
•Nobody in Broadway has such coats or is so happy !

Sheridan, October 18. Just before dusk last night,
three of us rode out north over the prairie to see
if we could find any antelopes. I was on the Gen
eral's black horse "Moth," which he left behind him in
his journey to Colorado. He was a strong, raw-boned,
spirited fellow, and dreadfully hard on the bit. , Alter
we had ridden a mile or two, Frank P  said :
"Suppose you let him out now."
I did let him out. I never saw an animal run so.

408 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
My hat flew off at the first bound, and I could not even
look back for it. How he did fiy over the ground !
I had only a plain snaffle bit, but fortunately the
lines were strong, and again and again I rose in my
stirrups, flinging my whole weight on the reins, but I
could not check him in the least. The others said
afterwards that he ran so fast he didn't seem to have
any legs. I could manage to turn him, and after he
had gone about a mile at this pace I turned him at a
right angle. Still he tore on. Two coyotes sprung up
almost from under us and ran away in wonder. Away
they raced, their long ears bobbing up and Sown.
The wind whizzed by like the rush on a cow-catchei;.
Bareheaded I went, like John Gilpin. I began to get
nervous. We were in the midst of prairie-dog holes and
wolf and fox holes. It was too dark to see them till I
was close upon them and at that speed the strong-bitted
horse could not be turned at once. Some of these
holes were ten inches in diameter and almost as per
pendicular as a post hole. If Moth ever got a foot in
one of them that would be the end of the ride. A
broken leg for the beast if not a broken neck for the
rider. All I could do was to let him go, and happily he was
sure-footed. It was miraculous how he could get over
aU those pitfalls, but he only got into one of so little
depth that he at once recovered himself It seemed to
me exactly as if a fiend were carrying me. At last we
came to the side of a ravine. There I turned him with
great difficulty, and hardly keeping my seat, up toward
the brow of another hill. By this time I thought he
began to weaken, and I made one more trial. Rising
and throwing my whole weight upon the Unes, I

BACK TO SHERIDAN. 409'
"sawed" them steadily, and in a quarter of a mile, I
suppose, I broke him down and had him in a slow
prancing trot, foaming and panting.
I had gone almost round in a circle, and in a few
moments Frank and J-  came up, bringing my hat.
Then we stopped, tightened my saddle-girth, took the
curb bit off the little gray pony which Frank was rid
ing, and put it on Moth. Even with the curb it was
with difficulty I could hold him in.
As we rode back to Sheridan the moon came up in
the clear, silver sky, a prairie fire came slowly creeping
up through a hollow in the hill-side behind us ; in tbe
distance across the valley a camp, fire glowed to guide
us ; at our left we could see like a great fiery eye, the
light in front of the locomotive coming in at the head
of the one daUy train from the East. " We rode down
past the little graveyard, where a few mounds and rough
fences on the hill-slope showed the burials, down to
the right of the track, past the train to the General's
office. Dreadfully lame arms to-day.

Sheridan, October 19. I have been feeling rather
dull to-day. The weather is too fearfully cold to
hunt, so I have been reading and idling. I picked
up " Vanity Fair," and re-read a part of it. I fairly
shouted at its cleverness two or three times, and yet
on the whole I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I used
to. I fancy it was because I opened it and plunged
into its worldly horrors at once, and didn't get into
them gradually as when I read the book seriatim.
And yet how wonderfully true, and how pathetic
Thackeray is. His musings on death, particularly, al-

410 A MOSTH IS KANSAS.
-trajstoaehine. McnrhecoiKtanflyvBerstotiietiioii^i
tiiat, busy and absorbed ai^ seifimpiKtaiit as we sae^
tiieie win ^nae iiHiiiitiig<nr m^A e<nne when ifc wiU be
nothing at all to iis,how tiie son i^es or sets; or what
hsqipesm in all tiie gceat -vrcnrid, and ivfaen tiie littie
ga^ we leave -will fiQii^t up like rifls in tiie sea ;
^ffaen an tiiat -will be lemembezed of ns, hj tiiose who
Temember i^ at all, win be wfaeti^r we were m^ci-
fol and miselfidi and loving, or tiie zeveise. It seems
quite gbmige to me to tiiink that the great man -irho
wrote an tiiese sweet ai^ dron and teider ^ncies, h^
himself passed to the land of dhadows. I ha^fe beera
tiiiwTkriig to-ni^ht of h^ hmi^ deatii on a CSiiistni^
midwigh^ like Colonel Meweimie the Master caHed
TiTin and he ai^wered '- Adsnm." I don't qnite rdi^
his eynie^m, and jet I tiiink I lose lliaf^^aj' more
tiian any man in aU letters — more even tiian CkMsmitii,
more than Sma^.

(k^roBES 20. Slin st ^endan, ho^ng tiie wea^^r
win moderate so that I c^i lide South -witii a fiiei^ cm
a land-limit. We axe at an altitode of %957 feet above
^a level, -iF^itiier fiseai^y cold, and two inches and
a half of ^low on tiie gromtd. Mot a dharmif^ plaee
to stay in fi>r the winter.
gherid^a has tiie nsoal ^faard'' a^eel^ eiS an ''-^id
town," tents, dismlies, gambling pluses, bad iiquw ai^
sM tiie otiier txineomit^iiB; of fighting and sweaziiig.
Jost oppo^te tiie town there ^ a ^'estI&-i»oi:k, -wh@e
tiie vi^Iaiiee omnniittee have Imng several men Sat
steafing or mardex. One cf tii^ie the otii^ nig^ es
caped witii tiie han^nanfgn^^nfHnid his neck. Tw^itf

DRIVE ON THE SMOKY HILL RIVER. 411
shots were fired after him but he dashed away into the
darkness and was not retaken. When the engineer
on the momiug train goes East he says coolly, " This is
a bad morning for hangings," if he does not see a man
suspended from the trestle-work.
. Just before dusk this afternoon I rode eight or ten
mUes south to the Smoky HUl River. The prairies
were burning everywhere for miles away, and the low
hills were wrapped thick in bluish smoke. The river,
sluggish and slow, crawls through thick beds of tall
reeds. No trees grow on its banks, except a few feeble
scattered cotton-woods. Ducks abound in these streams
or pools ; some are regular Quaker ducks in general
color, a soft sober drab, but streaked on wings with
bright purple fringed -with white.
When we came back we found there had been a
shooting affair in town, an old quarrel broken out
afresh, and one had shot the other in the throat. This,
and the breaking of a man's neck — a reckless rider —
by being thrown from his horse, furnished the proper
excitement for the day in this quiet little hamlet of
four hundred souls. Sensation novels are not very ac
cessible here, so they do the novels themselves.

OoALLAH, October 21. One of the Railroad Com
pany came up last night, and told me that he was go
ing to take a gang of men down into "Paradise Valley"
where plenty of oak and ash were growing, to cut ties
for the track. Two or three parties had attempted
this before and been driven away by Indians, and now
they would make another trial.
I started with the contractor, before dayUght, in a

412 A month in KANSAS.
car filled with laborers. After we had been out less
than an hour, bufialoes began to appear. Often they
got within a hundred yards of the track, and then
from every window of the car on that side, revolvers,
guns, rifles, everything which would hold powder and
ball, was fired at them. It was a wonder nobody was
killed, the arms were handled so carelessly and all were
so excited. A great deal of ammunition was wasted,
but no buffalo brought down. He must be a very good
marksman who can hit a buffalo at the usual distance,
from a train when it is in motion.
Ogallah, where I am writing, is a queer place, flat
on the treeless, faded plain. Right beside the road is
a very tall tank into which the water is pumped by an
old white mule. The station and hotel combined is a
long frame building eked out at the rear and one end
by canvas. The cracks in the frame-work are wide
and numerous, and in spite of enormous stoves, the
landlord told me he thought he should be obliged to
bank up the house to keep warm this winter. Passen
gers stop here for meals, and have antelope and buffalo
meat served up in all forms, with fresh eggs, capital
bread, bitter coffee, and tea without milk.
The soldiers stationed here live in " dug-outs " — ^long
pits dug in the ground and roofed over, just above the
surface, with joists, boards, old coffee-sacks,, and earth.
These quarters are wind and water proof and would be
pretty hard for the Indians to take.
After breakfast we went out with two hunters after
buffaloes. The two were mounted on sorry-looking
Indian ponies and had needle-guns. Many use the
Maynard, Spencer and other breech-loading rifles for
hunting. The Henry rifles and carbines are favorites.

FIKE-ARMS USED BT HUNTERS. 413
They fire fourteen shots, tolerably heavy ones, and are
self-cocking. The motion is very rapid. A single mo
tion loads, caps and leaves them cocked. They are
heavy, but fire with accuracyl There is always some
danger with arms of this sort, however ; danger that
in the excitement of the hunt one may leave them
loaded and capped, and so fire by accident. <
AU the professional hunters I have met have the U.
S. regulation rifle and (on the plains) the old Springfield
musket with the needle-gun arrangement. This needle
simply dispenses with capping. The cap is in the cart
ridge, and when the trigger is pulled and the hammer
goes down, it drives a little needle-like bar of steel into
the cap and explodes it. Its advantages are that no
separate cap is required, and in that way the delay of
reloading is avoided. The day of separate caps is over.
To that fact is owing the growing preference for Rem
ington, Smith & Wesson, and other arms over Colt's
revolvers, which until a few years ago, were the only
ones any old plainsman would use.
We had a merry gallop northward over the black
ened prairie ridges. All the grass for mUes around
Ogallah has been burned off. Its black surface con
trasts sharply with the usual pleasant straw-color of
the prairies. The color of the herbage in the buffalo
region, is about the same in hue as the dried-up grass
of California, but does not leave such a parched im
pression. The antelopes, white and spotted, we could easily see
on the burned surface, but the buffaloes did not show
weU on it. It was too near their own dirty, dark-brown
hue, and we were several mUes out before we saw any.
Then we descried three grouped together on the plain

414 A month IN KANSAS.
away in the distance. They were very shy of us, and
seemed determined to maintain their distance.
Jordan, the foremost rider, rode without spurs,
whacking his raw-boned gray pony over the sides with
his gun which he carried in his hand. It is wonderfiU
how one of these ponies will go over all sorts of rough
ground, jumping ditches, avoiding dog-holes, if you wUl
only give him his head. But this morning, as three of
us were galloping on the edge of a perpendicular bank
twenty feet high, Jordan's pony went into a concealed
hole, and down he went on his rider's leg, almost knock
ing the man next him over the edge of the bank, and
Jordan with difficulty succeeded in keeping himself from
being pitched headfirst into the ravine.
After a brisk ride we got within half a mUe of our
three buffaloes. Then we left our horses and foUowed
them on foot, up a winding ravine through the high
grass, over ditches, under cover of banks, creeping on
our hands and knees, where there was danger of our
being seen, tUl we got near them. They were on a side
hill seventy yards away, we creeping slowly on, when
suddenly they took alarm and galloped away. We fired
a few vain shots after them, but they only jumped or
switched their taUs defiantly as they went off. We
were just preparing to go back to our horses when J 
cried out:
" Here ! look here ! there are four right down in the
valley." We crept cautiously to the brow of the hUl when
Jordan who was "ahead, said :
" They are coming right this way. Drop down and
take aim as they pass us."
Just behind this crest— with hats and coats off, we

DEATH OF THE BUFFALO. 415
lay flat on our bellies and waited. In five minutes
along they came. We fired. They jumped a little,
and as they turned we could see several more beyond
them. We fired again as fast as possible.
" Huzza ! J  , has hit his ! "
J  had been anxious to kill one all by himself,
and it had been agreed that no one should shoot at the
especial beast which his rifie had spotted. Now the one
he had selected went down grandly, his hind legs giving
way. We sprang to our feet, and as they ran madly
over the hUl, all fired. The fallen brute was on his legs
again following the others, but he had to drag all the
hind part of his body after him. How huge he looked
as he panted on, his nostrils smoking, his shaggy head
shaking and his fore paws tearing up the earth.
We all cried to J-  to hurry up and put him out
of his pain. He fired not more than ten feet distant
once ! twice ! thrice ! before the creature went down
again. Then he reeled and fell over, straightened out
like one in mortal agony ; in a moment his huge bulk
(I never realized before how huge) grew rigid — his
great, dark brown eyes dimmed, and all was ended
with him.
The hunters cut out his tongue, and the victor or
dered his head and hide to be preserved for him as
trophies. As we turned we saw hundreds and hun
dreds on the distant hills and slopes. We went on,
and wounded a few of the nearest ones, but they all
gaUoped away apparently unhurt. Then we re
mounted and tried to run them down ; but our horses
were a little blown with some pretty hard riding of
eight or ten mUes, and we could not overtake them.
We would get nearly opposite, and before we could

416 . A MONTH IN KANSAS.
fire, our horses were so restive, they would get ahead
again. I never knew before how fast buffaloes could
run. They seem to get over the ground very slowly,
but their long, steady, loping gaUop is very difficult to
overtake) even with a horse.
On the bank of the Salina River, under a cotton-
wood a foot in diameter, with its leaves yellow with
frost, we found the ashes of a recent fire, a chest, a camp
kettle and a few other articles scattered about. On a
bank a little higher up, were half a dozen wolf-skins
stretched out on the grass, wrong side up, kept smooth
by pegs driven through and holding them firmly down.
Gray wolves are what the hunters chiefiy seek.
They poison buffalo carcasses, with strychnine, cutting
the meat into large mouthfuls so that the wolves are
obliged to chew it, and after leaving their bait a few
hours, they return to find the dead animals stretched
beside it. Eight skins make a fine robe. Here, they
sell at two or three dollars each, but in the East, a robe
will often bring an hundred doUars. The coyote or
prairie wolf of yello-wish gray, is smaller and has finer
fur, but is not so much sought for. In making these
latter skins into robes the taUs and paws are left on.
Just by the deserted camp was a bottle of strychnine,
and near it two dead crows, killed by the bait intended
for the wolves.
Evidently the hunters had just taken their blankets
to another camp. They sleep in the open air just
where they happen to find a good place to leave their
bait. The hunters who were our companions, told us
that these wolves often pursue and capture buffaloes,
jumping upon them and cutting the cords of their legs
tiU they faU.

IN A hunter's DUG-OUT. 417
As we went on, rather tired and sore after our twenty
miles' hard gallop, and carrying our guns, Jordan in
vited us to his " dug out " to spend the night. It was
roofed over with boards even with the ground, and he
led us into it by a subterranean passage. I thought of
the cave into which the robbers ushered Gil Bias, as We
went down the steep torch-lighted descent. When we
were down we found ourselves in a room twenty feet
long with walls and floor of earth, hard and dry. In a
huge fire-place at the farthest end, a cheerful wood fire
blazed to greet us. Piles of soft buffalo skins made
luxurious sofas or divans. We broiled buffalo steaks
on the coals, and ate our supper half-reclining on our
couches like noble Romans at a classic symposium, with
a satisfaction unequaled by the habitues of the Astor
House or the Fifth Avenue.
I had a long talk with Jordan, our host, about the
life of a hunter. I asked if he was not lonely some
times and if he liked the life. " Oh, no, never lonely," he
answered " there is too much excitement. I like hunt
ing and find it profitable, too, much more than any ordi
nary business. It's a pretty bad week for a hunter,-^
I call it, — when he dpn't make an hundred or hundred
and twenty-five dollars."
"Do you shoot many buffaloes?"
"Only when we want them for meat or for bait.
Men who are hunting for a living, keep their game
along with them — don't frighten it — never fire their
guns at a buffalo unless they want one. When we do
-kUl one for the meat we only take the hind-quarters.
They wiU often weigh four hundred pounds and we get
five cents a pound fgr them."
" Did you ever know a man killed by a buffalo ? "
27

418 A MONTH IN KANSAS,
"No, but I've known them badly hurt. Over at
Coyote the other day a man was tossed up, and came
down with his collar-bone broken. I was attacked by
a cow about a year ago. She wasn't more than ten
steps away and was coming for me when I fired. I
shot too high and failed to bring her down. Then she
came at me, and before I knew what she was about, her
horns struck me, and I was sent fiying down a bank ten
feet high. I lay there with the senses knocked out of
me for awhile, and when I came to, she had got away.
I heard of a negro soldier at Hays, tossed thirty feet '
high and his bowels torn out, but I didn't know that of
my own knowledge."
"A school-master fellow came here from the Yankee
States last summer. He was as stiff as a ramrod — wore
green glasses, a stand-up collar and a stove-pipe hat.
He was crS,zy to hunt buffaloes, and one of our men
took him along with him. He was very tall and lank
and rode a frisky little mule which just carried him.
All the arms he had was a small revolver no bigger than
a boy's toy-pistol. But he was very anxious to kill a
buffalo all by himself, and dreadfully eager to see one.
Well, they got a mUe or two out when they came upon
a group of buffaloes, and one mangy old bull made
towards the fellow with green glasses. As soon as he
saw him coming, he threw his revolver as far as he
could throw it, and put back for the settlement as fast
as his mule would carry him. The bull only followed
a few steps and then stood looking after him, but the
.fellow never looked behind nor stopped his speed, till
he rode into town, without his hat, and all the boys
yelling with delight at the sight of him."
Jordan told ihe- also that the buffaloes had been

A NIGHT IN A TELEGRAPH STATION. 419
crossed with our domestic breeds. The heifers looked
like buffalo cows, but gave milk. He also had seen
full-blooded buffalo bulls yoked in a team. They were
tamed when young calves, and the owner always put
a yoke of oxen before them.
"They wouldn't serve for buggy-teams like elk, would
they ? " I asked.
" No, I think not. Elks really do make a very good
team. I know of a pair kept by a livery-stable man, in
St. Jo. We don't have elk just here ; they are found
farther north and west, chiefly in the timbered region."
After our talk we rolled ourselves up in the soft
skins, stretched ourselves out on our couches, and in
less time than I write it we were fast asleep in a dream
less and unbroken slumber.

October 2-3. Last night we slept in the telegraph
station at Ogallah, which for the present is an old
freight-car taken off the track and set on the ground.
It was heated with a large stove, and was warm and com
fortable inside. There were three operators there and it
was amusing to hear them talk up and down the road,
over the wires. Occasionally the operators at different
stations get angry and abuse each other in good set
terms, by telegraph. The other day one fellow came
down the road an hundred miles to horse-whip an oper
ator who had insulted him with some injurious epithet
sent over the wires.
We slept on the floor of the car, four of us, rolled in
our blankets and buffalo-robes. The moment it was a
littie StiU, I asked : " What is that bell ringing ? "
"O, that is only the wind blowing on the wires," re-

420 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
plied one of the operators, " sometimes at mght here
it sounds rather lonely."
It certainly was "lonely." All through the night
whenever I was awake I heard it like the quick tolling
of a bell, sometimes like the ringing of an hundred bells.
To that music we slept. How it will toll ! toll ! toll !
this winter over that lonely plain !
I reached here at seven this morning, and after
breakfast, although it was snowing hard and the wind
was very raw, I drove off in a buggy with three other
gentlemen to look at some land, seventeen miles east
of us.
We crossed Smoky Hill River on a new iron bridge,
passed a few scattering farm-houses, and a few miles
out were on the rolling prairie, with the rich bottom
lands of the " Smoky " a few miles to our left. Nine
miles out we struck and crossed the valley of Gypsum
Creek, a tributary of Smoky — one of the loveliest val
leys I ever saw.
On the bank of the stream was a queer little one-
story house of upright boards, with wide cracks be
tween, a low flat roof resting on enormous timbers,
which was covered thick with soil, and had plants
growing all over it. It is the home of a widow whose
farm is probably worth five thousand dollars or more.
They settled there when there were no neighbors for
miles and the nearest was five miles away. Her husband
died and she had carried on the farm. She declared
there was little if any chills and fever in that region.
We crossed the creek on what they call a "low-
water" bridge; that is, a bridge which in times of
freshet the water covers over. The planks and timbers
are bolted to the stone abutments. We 'had to go

TEXAN CATTLE. 421
down one tremendous hiU and up another. These
streams all rise with great rapidity and fall again in a
few hours.
Crossing Gypsum. Creek we went ten mUes over the
prairie — ^not a house or the faintest sign of civilization
to be seen — till we came to a second stream. Nearly
all these great empty tracks are owned by non-resi
dents and are bought for speculation, to the great
injury of the country. Still there is a good deal of
land to spare yet.
We were driving parallel to the railroad, perhaps
eight miles south of the track. All over these fields we
saw thousands and thousands of Texan cattle, many
pure white, many mottled and spotted. The great
shipping mart for them is Abilene on the raUroad
to the north of us. In the season, fifty car-loads at a
time often start from Abilene. They are driven up
here from Texas, from five hundred to eight hundred
mUes away. They pour into Kansas from May to No
vember. Then they are left to graze awhile on the
prairie and get fat on the herbage, and late in the fall
are shipped to Illinois, for the winter, and are made
into beef in the spring. The law keeps them for a
time in quarantine, before they enter the " States," to
ensure our own cattle against contagion from the fever.
About this fever there seems to be very little known.
Some contend that it don't exist as a distinctive disease
but is only a dry murrain. I believe the Texan cattle do
not have it at home, but it develops among them on
the march, and is communicated by contact. If our
cattle are kept from going among them they do not
take it. Sometimes it rages like a great plague, and
cuts off hundreds. It has sometimes attacked a great

422 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
freight or immigrant train of wagons, and killed off all
the cattle leaving drovers and immigrants with noth
ing but their wagons.
In the dull season Abilene has one store, a closed
hotel, and a few shanties. In the cattle-season, hotels
are crowded, many stores in full tide of operation, gamb
ling-houses driving a brisk business, and a hundred or
two of painted women flaunting their shameful colors
in the streets where the drovers congregate. Long
haired, swarthy fellows are these Texan drovers, gener
ous enough, kind-hearted and hospitable, but with
Southern incapacity to understand a jest, and a huge
revolver swung behind, which is ready to come out on
the smallest provocation. They employ a good many
Mexicans. These watch the cattle on the plains, camp
ing in tents near creeks and riding after the cattle with
long lassos, screaming unearthly yells. AU over South
ern Kansas, — a great Brighton, five hundred miles
square, — gathers every year the great cattle market
of our country.
Before we reached the second creek we were nearly
frozen. We left our mules in a little ravine, sheltered
from wind and storm, and crossed the stream. I was so
numb I could not walk, and got over the log on my
hands and knees, to keep from falling in. But we
found matches, lighted a fire by a dead log, got com
fortable, ate a lunch of sandwiches and apple pie,
and after the mules were thoroughly rested, went on
again. We found a settler who told us what section we were
in, started from his corner and measured the land — one
hundred revolutions of our buggy-wheel with a white
handkerchief tied on to count by, making the distance

LOST IN A SNOW-STORM. 423
— to the line we wanted to find, looked the land all
over, and turned to go back again.
It snowed blindingly. There was not a landmark of
any kind in sight. We struck S. W. as nearly as we
could. The snow pelted us hard on the right; the
mules naturally shrunk .from it, and the first thing we
knew the snow came pelting in on our left. Had the
wind shifted or had we ? It was impossible to tell, and
we could do nothing but drive on and on, until at last
we found a road, but in an entirely different, direction
from the place where we were looking for one. We
had turned completely round, and were traveling in
an exactly opposite direction from home.
We were now a little uncertain what to do. All
thought it probable the dark might overtake us before
we could get back to Salina. In that event we could
only find the line of timber on the creek, light a fire
and sleep out, or rather keep each other awake till
morning. My companions had a few enlivening stories
to teU. How the season before a young man had left
SaUna towards evening on a hunt for a Thanksgiving
turkey. Just such a storm came up and he never re
turned. His body was found, weeks later, by the In
dians, forty mUes away. He had probably got be
numbed and fallen off his horse.
After a little consultation, we turned directly back
again, and after some hard driving reached our road.
We hurried home, only stopping a few minutes at the
widow's Uttle house to warm, and at seven o'clock this
evening reached Salina, so numb that it took an hour
to get warm. Our feet especially, suffered greatly.
The little mules had drawn four of us, since morning,
fifty miles, much of the way over rough roadless prai-

424 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
ries, and the last twenty miles through three inches
of snow. Had not had a drop of water or a mouthful
of provender, and yet came in in good condition. How
hardy they are !

October 24. I came up to-day to spend Sunday
at the house of Col. Phillips, who came out here in
1855, to be resident correspondent of the New York
Tribune. No old reader of the paper can forget his
sharp, short sentences, his clear and strong style. He
was here in the early Kansas days of border-ruffianism,
and once or twice fell into the hands of the enemy.
I met him there in 1857. For two years those were
exciting times in Kansas. Phillips was always in their
midst. There was never trouble on the border, that he
was not first there with saddle and rifle. His eye was
as quick as a deer's; his feet would out-travel any
horse in the territory. It was nothing for him to start
off for a walk of twenty or thirty miles, any morning.
In 1859 times grew dull. The excitement was about
over. Phillips began to feel that these piping times
of peace had no delight for him. He determined to
migrate. The country west of Fort Riley was in those
days held worthless. But PhUlips wanted to found a
colony, and a number of his friends — young journalists
and others of a coterie, of which he was head — wanted
to go with him. He knew the Western country, and
did not make any elaborate arguments about the Great
American Desert being a delusion, but came right out
and settled here -with his own family, and two or three
others. At first, their nearest neighbor was thirty-five
mUes away, and the next nearest fifty miles.

A KANSAS PIONEER. 425
When the war broke out, PhiUips went at once into
the service. He was appointed colonel, and stationed
down in the Indian Territory. His zeal was great, his
abUity unquestioned, yet through aU the war he was
never advanced above a colonelcy. The truth is, Phil-
Ups was fighting with all his aggressiveness and zeal,
one of the boldest ring of thieves ever engaged in
plundering the Government, through supplies for the
army, Indian contracts, and the like, that ever disgraced
this country ; and these thieves had several of the poli
ticians at Washington, who controlled military appoint
ments on their side :
"I don't think Phillips is smart," said an acquaint
ance to me the other day. " I know he came out of
the war not a dollar richer than when he went in, and
he might just as weU come out with one hundred thou
sand dollars and a major-general's commission. Look
at Gen.  ! He never had any money nor any brains
when he entered the army, and to-day he is one of the
richest men in the State."
This same speaker also told me an anecdote which
showed how easy it was to hit a truth without know
ing. Phillips spoke in a letter to The Tribune, of a
high official who had accepted a bribe of twenty thou
sand dollars. The day after it appeared two other
officials, both holding positions of highest trust and
responsibility, asked this friend of Phillips' what he was
attacking them for. In those days one could not shoot
an arrow over the house -without hitting some of the
ring. Colonel Phillips had two regiments of Cherokee
Indians under him, and acquired so thoroughly the
confidence of the civilized Indians in the Territory,

426 A month in KANSAS.
that to-day they regard him with the warmest affec
tion, and whenever there are any questions to be set
tled in protecting their rights to their lands, (the
richest under our flag,) they employ him to defend
them. By .the way, there are about sixty-one thou
sand Cherokees, Choctaws, and parts of other tribes in
Indian Territory, and the Indians in Kansas are rapidly
moving down there,, so that the number will soon be
doubled. It is the last prairie country we have unin
habited. Railways already begin to seek passage
through it, and ere long it will be open to the whites.
But the faith of the Government has been pledged,
again and again, that the Indians should have these
lands forever, and by way of variety, the Government
should keep its word !
Unrelenting warfare was waged agjainst Phillips by
the ring, but there was no mark of fire even on the
hem of his garment, and they could not break him.
He came out of the war as he went in, a simple Colo
nel. But he came out with stainless and pure record,
and at last the whirligig of time brought round its
revenges. General Lane had served the ring in Wash
ington, and belonged to it. Phillips finally obtained
indubitable written evidence of its corruption. He
stated clearly what he could prove and proposed to
prove. That statement found its way into print. East
and West. Lane sought an interview with Phillips,
and begged him to desist ; but he answered :
" I do this from no vindictiveness. But the politics
of Kansas have been ruled by a set of corrupt men,
who have pursued me to the bitter end, because I was
-witness against them. Now, I have final evidence
against them, and I propose to use it. Rise in your

A HISTORY OP THE INDIANS. 427
place in the Senate, and demand a Committee of in
vestigation, and you will either be acquitted, or I shall
vindicate my charges."
This was on a Sunday. That night Lane went to
see some of his old confederates, to try and look up the
matter. But it was too late. He never returned to
his place in the Senate, and a little while after he took
his own life. Poor Lane ! If he was a corrupt poli
tician he at least had the virtue of shame. Some of
his old associates are stUl unblushingly enjoying their
Ul-gotten gains.
Phillips is writing a history of the Indians of North
America, availing himself of long personal observation
of the modern Indians, the Cherokees and kindred
tribes, their traditions and written records, and his work
will fill a gap in our national literature. Some of the
chapters are as interesting as a romance, especially
those which relate to the ancient Mound-buUders of
the Mississippi Valley, the most fascinating and least
known topic in the whole range of historical research.
I spent the entire day with Phillips chatting over old
times and war, fighting over old battles, and recalling
many names "once known but known no more." I am
glad to see he has prospered if he is honest, and his
original farm of some hundred acres is now in sight of
the Kansas Pacific RaUroad and beside a thriving vU
lage of seven hundred people.

October 27. I am writing in the public room of
a little hotel in Emporia, with a bad light, and tobacco
smoke so thick we can hardly see. Outside, the prairies
are on fire in several places, and the whole sky is ruddy

428 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
and aflame with the swift-running conflagration. This
is thirty-five miles from the Pacific Railroad. We made
the journey last night in a coach, with fires blazing all
around us. The night was pleasant ; the company so
ciable. There was an old lady, seventy years old, trav
eling with her daughter, and an old couple of sixty or
seventy who were from Nebraska. All the way from
Boulogne to Emporia and in Southern Kansas gener
ally, we met wagons constantly, with loads of pine
timber, groceries, hardware, stoves, etc., etc., contain
ing winter supplies for new settlers.
An enormous immigration is flowing in from the
Middle States, New England, Canada, Germany and
Sweden. As the new settlers are generally well sup
plied with money, times are flush. Kansas already
contains four himdred thousand people. No other
State in the Union is growing so fast, and none has a
fairer future. The old attempts to fasten slavery upon
her by violence will tell upon her political character for
all coming time. Not Massachusetts is more intense in
her Republicanism. At the last election one entire
county cast every vote for Grant and Colfax.
We met immense numbers of these immigrants
everywhere, with all their worldly possessions in three
or four wagons, sometimes drawn by horses, sometimes
by oxen, often with the women driving, and little chil
dren with hair bleached flaxen-colored by the sun,
sticking their heads from every side of the wagon.
Inside the canvas-covered caravans were chairs, tables,
a cooking-stove with its pipe thrust out through a hole
in the movable tent. Behind trots the family dog, and
in this manner they go on to their new home in the
wUderness, which blossoms at their coming.

PRAIRIES ON FIRE. 429
Everjrwhere I have passed over burned and burning
prairies. I beUeve setting them on fire is a state's prison
offence. It ought to be. Last night as we were riding
they looked like the distant lights of a town, and by
some mirage-like effect there appeared to be a large
body of water near the shadowy city.
A woman at whose house we stopped, was stiff and
sore from fighting fires, she said. Her husband was
sick, the fire came on sooner than they expected, and
so she had been all day contesting her right of posses
sion with the voracious element.
They add wonderfully to the picturesqueness of night-
travel, these fires. They leap up like great licking
tongues of serpents, and then suddenly turn to brown
smoke. In bottoms, where the grass is often eight feet
high, the flames make a noise like discharge of mus
ketry. In a high wind they will sometimes travel one
hundred miles a day. Yesterday I crossed them twice
in a horse and wagoii. After we got across we were
black and grim -with smoke, our eyes sore and smarting,
our lashes and beards singed. My companion's dog,
who had been foUo-wing, did not know how to cross, and
went back disgusted. All night the horizon was ablaze.

November 3. At last I have got back to Topeka
and railroads after a trip of two hundred mUes in
Southern Kansas, a part of the country I had never
traveled over before. I am enchanted with it. It is
the garden of the earth, a region of the loveliest green
slopes, rich dark belts of forest, prairie rolling like the
waves of the sea in a high wind, and beautiful streams,
as clear as those of New England. The lands seU at

430 A MONTH IN KANSAS.
from two to ten dollars an acre. When I got down on
Wolf Creek, one hundred miles south of Raw River, I
found the lands taken up and the country settled fifty
miles further south, and people pressing down to the
Indian Territory. The settlers were charging twenty-
five to thirty-three cents for meals and lodging.
I went to spend the day with some friends who have
been out here three years. I found them on their
" quarter " (the Kansans always speak of a man's
" quarter " rather than his farm), which is fenced in on
all sides and commands a splendid sweep of green, roll
ing prairie, with dark lines of timber which mark the
bed of the streams. The land is so uniformly good,
that there is probably not half a dozen square feet to
gether of unproductive soil. They are living in their
large barn, — more comfortable than many houses in
this new country — until their dwelling shall be com
pleted, and their children were ruddy and robust in the
pure air of the prairies. Breaking the virgin soil costs
three dollars an acre. The ground should be opened
whUe the grass is full of life, as in Spring, and then the
roots -will rot and will not sprout again. If the soil is
ploughed late in Spring, corn may be planted on the
sods the next year. Nowhere are harvests more bounti
ful. There are few harder struggles, say my friends
after three years of trial, than that which opening a
farm involves, but there is no surer road to comfort and
competence, health and a clear conscience.
To-night I go back to St. Louis, then up to Chicago
for a few days, and then home to Thanksgiving.

th:e: ¦wor.kis oit"

THE SECRET SERVICE,
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Embracing the entire narrative of
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