"^.f 't''i .un'' 1' P','' 4 ""a t. •.1 i[* i>i y > , I M^' m ¦I t f^l^! « r > > *i*l ;:fi fe^^^sftt•^t. k^',Jt '»".«!' I ''i'*^) ' < (1. ivf.xJ' . i< ' ' ' iifJ^iti'Sfl)'- ' > ^- 'll^lS M^.$'? i«-i^ ,» ! M,t.' 'f' ,.!.»f Wmi^' J, 1 ¦',, t r * ' ' s 1 * Tm ''' iJ> * y , ! ! 'tit , ' t i » I > tlK^' feM \n \'\^>. t' ir.-? if 1 r* ' I t ?, . t t ! ' IJ • > I ' 'is ' J'i I ! < ^'k'^J' ftiii % tA I » I .. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY From the Library of William M. Odom TRAVELS AMERICA AND ITALY, EY / VISCOUNT DE CHATEAUBRIAND, AUTHOR OF ATALA, TRAVELS IN GREECE AND PALESTINE, THE BEAUTIES OF CHRISTIANITY, &c. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON : HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1828. CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. Manners of the Savages Page 1 Religion •. 37 Government 47 The Muscogulges 61 The Hurons and Iroquois 73 Present of the Savages of North America ' 85 United States 108 Spanish Republics 123 Conclusion of the Travels in America 143 ^ Natural History 147 -^ TRAVELS IN ITALY. O Turin 171 ^ Milan 186 ^ Rome 190 In Tivoli, and the Village of Hadrian 193 -~ The Vatican 215 "/-^ Capitoline Museum 218 ^ Doria Gallery 221 Q_^ Walk through Rome, by Moonlight 224 O Journey from Naples 227 .«-\ Vesuvius ^ 235 iv Patria, or Liternum 246 £ Baise 248 ~Q Herculaneura, Portici, Pompeii 249 _J Letter to M. de Fontanes 254 . Five Days at Clermont ( .'^uvergne) 289 j^ Journey to Mont Blanc. — Mountain Landscapes 321 '.-> Notes 345 Is VOL. II. b TRAVELS IN AMERICA.. MANNERS OF THE SAVAGES. WAR. Among the Savages all bear arms — men, v/onien, and children ; but the corps of combatants is com posed in general of one fifth of the tribe. Fifteen years is the legal age for military service. War is the chief business of the Savages, and the sole ground of their policy ; it has soraething more legitimate than war between civilized nations, be- cau^ it is almost always declared for the very exist ence ofthe tribe by which it is undertaken ; its object being tbe preservation of hunting grounds, or lands adapted to culture. But, for tbe very reason that the Indian strives to live solely for the art which brings death upon him, there arise from this cause implacable enmities between tribes ; it is the sub- VOL. II. B .6 TRAVELS sistence of the family that is the object of conten tion. Enmities become personal : as the armies are not numerous, and as each individual knows the name and face of his foe, they fight with the greater rancour from antipathies of character and private resentments. These children of the sarae wilder ness carry with them into foreign quarrels some thing of the animosity of civil broils. To this first and general cause of war among the Savages are added other reasons for taking up arms, arising from some superstitious motives, some do mestic dissension, some interest connected with their traffic with Europeans. Thus with the north ern hordes of America the slaughter of female beavers had become a legitimate cause of war. War is proclaimed in an extraordinary and ter rible raanner. Four warriors, painted black from head to foot, steal in the raost profound darkness upon the threatened tribe. On reaching the doors of the huts, they throw upon the floor of these huts a toraahawk painted red, at the end of which the motives of the hostilities are intimated by signs known to the Sachems : the first Romans hurled a javelin on the enemy's territory. These Indian heralds-at-arms iraraediately disappear in the dark' like phantoras, setting up the famous war-whoop. IN AMERICA. 3 This is done by clapping one hand on the mouth and striking the lips so as to give a tremulous in tonation to the sound, which issues from them, sometimes low, sometiraes shrill, and terminates in a sort of bellowing, of which it is impossible to form any conception. War being proclaimed, if the enemy is too weak to meet it, he betakes hiraself to flight: if he has confidence in his strength, he stands his ground : the customary preparations and ceremonies imme diately comraence. A great fire is lighted in the public place, and the cauldron of war set upon it ; this is equivalent to the kettle of the janissaries. Each combatant throws into it soraething belonging to him. Two poles are likewise erected, and from these are sus pended arrows, tomahawks, and feathers. The poles are placed to the north, east, south, or west, of the public place, according to the quarter from which hostilities are expected. This done, the war-physic is administered to the warriors ; this is a strong emetic diluted in two quarts of water, which must be swallowed at one draught. The young men disperse themselves over the environs, but without going to too, great a dis tance. The chief who is to command thera, after B 2 TRAVELS rubbing his face and neck with bear's grease and pounded charcoal, retires to a vapour-bath, where he passes two whole days in sweating, fasting, and taking notice of his dreams. During these two days, woraen are forbidden to approach the war riors ; but they are allowed to speak to the com mander of the expedition, whom they visit, for the purpose of obtaining from him part of the booty that is to be taken from the enemy ; for the Sa vages never doubt the success of their enterprizes. These women carry various presents, which they lay at the feet of the chief. The latter notes the particular requests with beads or shells; a sister claims a prisoner, to be to her in the place of a brother slain in battle : a matron sohcits scalps to console her for the loss of relatives ; a widow re quires a captive for a husband, or a stranger widow for her slave ; a mother demands an orphan, to re place the child whom she has lost. The two days of retirement being past, the young warriors repair in their turn to the war-chief ; they acquaint him with their intention to join the ex pedition ; for, though the council has resolved upon war, this resolution is not binding upon any indi vidual ; the engagement is purely voluntary. All the warriors daub themselves black and red. IN AMERICA. 5 in the manner most likely, in their opinion, to daunt the enemy. Some make longitudinal or transverse stripes, on their cheeks ; others round or triangular marks, and others the figures of serpents. The bare bosoms and arms of a warrior recdrd the his tory of his exploits ; particular ciphers express the number of scalps which he has takeuj the battles in which he has fought> the dangers which he has in curred- These hieroglyphics^ formed in the skin in blue dots, can never be effaced : they are deli cately pricked in and burned with pine-tree gum. The combatants^ stark naked or clad in a tunic without sleeves, adorn with feathers the only tuft of hair which they retain on the top of the head. In their leathern girdle is stuck the scalping-knife, and the tomahawk is suspended from it : in the left hand they hold the bow, or carbine ; on the left shoulder they carry the quiver full of arrows, or the horn containing powder and ball. Thus did the Cimbri, the Teutones, and' the Franks, endeavour to render themselves formidable»in the eyes of the Romans. The War-chief quits the vapour-bath, with a string of red beads in his hand, and harangues his brethren in arms. " The Great Spirit," says he, " opens my lips. The blood of our kinsmen slain in the last TRAVELS war has not been wiped away; their bodies have not been recovered : we raust go and rescue them from the flies. I am resolved to pursue the track of war ; I have seen bears in my dreams ; the good Manitous have proraised to assist me, and the evil ones will not oppose me : I will go then to eat our enemies, to drink their blood, and to make prison ers. If I perish, or if any of those who consent to follow me lose their lives, our souls will be received in the land of spirits, our bodies will not be left lying in the dust or mud, for this red string will belong to him who shall cover the dead." The chief throws the string of beads on the ground; the most renowned warriors rush forward to pick it up : those who have not yet been in battle or have acquired but an ordinary fame dare not dispute the prize. The warrior who wins it becomes lieutenant- general to the chief ; and succeeds to the command if the latter perishes in the expedition. The warrior who has gained possession of the string of beads makes an harangue. Hot water is brought in a vessel. The young men wash the war- chief, and take oif the black colour with which he is covered ; they then paint his cheeks, forehead, and breast, with chalks and clays of different hues, and invest him with his best robe. IN AMERICA. During this ovation the chief sings in a low tone the famous death-song, which is struck up by a per son about to undergo the torture by fire : — " I am brave, I am intrepid, I fear not death ; I laugh at torments : what cowards are they who dread them ! women, nay less than women ! May rage choak my enemies I may I devour them and drink their blood to the very last drop I " When the chief has finished the death-song, his lieutenant-general begins the war-song: — " I will fight for my country ; I will bring home scalps ; I will drink out of the sculls of my foes," &c. Each warrior, according to his character, adds de tails more or less horrible to his song. Some say, " I will bite off^ the fingers of my enemies with my teeth; I will burn their feet and afterwards their legs." Others say, " I will let maggots breed in their wounds ; I will strip off" their scalps, I will tear out their hearts and cram them down their throats." Such infernal songs as these .were almost exclu sively confined to the northern hordes ; the tribes of the south were content to stifle their prisoners with smoke. The warrior, having repeated his war-song, recites his family-song, which consists in a panegyric on his TRAVELS ancestors. The young men who are going for the finst time to fight keep silence. These first ceremonies being over, the chief re pairs to the council of the Sachems, who are seated in a circle, with red pipes in their mouths : he in quires if they persist in lifting the hatchet. The deUberations are renewed, and the original resolu tion is almost always confirmed. The war-chief re turns to the public place, and reports the decision of the elders to the young men, who answer with a shout. The sacred dog which was tied to a post is un bound, and offered to Areskoui, the god of war. Among the Canadian nations this dog is slaughtered and after being boiled in a cauldron, his flesh is divided ainong the men assembled. No woman is allowed to be present at this mysterious feast. When the repast is over, the chief declares that he shall march on such a day at sun-rise or sun-set. The natural indolence of the Savages is all at once succeeded by extraordinary activity ; the gaiety and the martial ardour of the young men are communi cated to the nation. Workshops are erected for the building of sledges and canoes. The sledges employed in the conveyance of the baggage, and of the sick and wounded, are construct- IN AMERICA. 9 ed of two very thin boards, about eighteen inches long and seven broad ; turned up before, they have ledges, to which are attached leathern straps for fas tening the burdens upon them. The Savages draw this carriage without wheels by raeans of a double thong of leather, called rnetump, which they pass over the chest, and the ends of which are attached to the fore-part of the sledge. The canoes are of two sorts, the one larger, the other smaller. They are constructed in the follow ing manner : Curved pieces are joined together at their ends, so as to form an ellipsis of about eight feet and a half in the short diameter, and twenty feet in the long diameter. On these main pieces are fastened thin sides of red cedar, strengthened by a basket- work of osiers. This skeleton of the canoe is cover ed with bark, stripped during the winter from the elm and birch, after boiling water has been thrown on the trunks of those trees. These pieces of bark are bound together with pine-ro(;^s, which are ex tremely supple, and not liable to becorae dry. The seams are paid outside and inside with a sort of rosin, the process of making which is kept secret by the Savages. When the canoe is finished and provided with its paddles 'of maple, it very much 10 TRAVELS resembles a water-spider, a light and elegant insect, which walks with rapidity upon the surface of the lakes and rivers. A warrior is expected to carry with him ten pounds of maize or other grain, his mat, his Manitou, and his bag of physic. The day preceding the departure, which is called the taking-leave day, is devoted to an affecting ce remony by the nations speaking the Huron and Algonquin language. The warriors, who have pre viously encamped in the public place, or in a sort of Campus Martins, disperse in the villages, and go frora hut to hut to take leave. They are welcoraed with demonstrations of the most tender interest; every body wishes to have something that has be longed to them ; one takes away their cloak, and gives them a better ; another exchanges the calu- raet with thera : they are obliged to eat or to take a parting cup. Each hut has a particular wish for thera, and they raust answer it with a similar wish for their entertainers. When the warrior comes to his own hut for the purpose of taking leave, he pauses at the threshold. If he has a mother, she advances first : he kisses her eyes, Ups, and breasts. His sisters come next, and he touches them on the forehead: his wife IN AMERICA. 11 prostrates herself before hira ; he recoraraends her to the good spirits. Of all his children the boys only are brought to hira ; he lays his hatchet or toraahawk upon them, without uttering a word. His father comes last of all. The Sachem, after slapping hira on the shoulder, makes an harangue in which he invites him to do honour to his ances tors. " I am behind thee," says he, " as thou art behind thy son : if they corae to me, they will make broth of my flesh by insulting thy meraory." The day following that of taking leave is the day of departure. With the first ray of dawn jthe war- chief leaves his hut, and sets up the shout of death. If the least cloud appears in the sky, if a sinister dream has been dreamt ; if any bird or beast of bad omen has been seen, the day of departure is deferred. The camp is awakened by the shout of death : the warriors rise and arm. The chiefs of the tribes hoist standards formed of round pieces of bark, fastened to the end of long spears, and on which are rudely dasigned Manitous, a tortoise, a bear, a beaver, &c. The chiefs of the tribes are a sort of brigadiers under the command of the general and his lieutenant. Besides these there are captains not recognized by the main army ; these are partisans, who are followed by adventurers. 12 TRAVELS A census or enumeration of the army is held : each warrior gives to the chief, as he passes before him, a small piece of wood marked with a particular seal. Till the moraent of delivering this symbol the warriors are at liberty to withdraw themselves from the expedition ; but whoever recedes after this engagement is declared infamous. The high-priest presently arrives, followed by the college of sorcerers or physicians. They bring rush baskets in the shape of a funnel, and bags of hide filled with herbs and roots. The warriors squat cross-legged on the ground, forming a circle ; the priests remain standing in the middle. The chief sorcerer calls the warriors by their names : at each call the warrior rises and gives his Manitou to the sorcerer, who puts it into one of the rush baskets, singing these Algonquin words : Ajouh — oyaha — alluya ! The Manitous vary ad infinitum^ because they represent the fancies and dreams of the Savage§ : they consist of skins of mice stuffed with hay or cotton, small white pebbles, stuffed birds, teeth of beasts or fishes, bits of red cloth, sprays of treeSj glass-ware, or European ornaments, in short, every thing the forra of which the good Spirits are sup posed to have assumed in order to manifest them- IN AMERICA. 13 selves to the owners of these Manitous ; happy at least to cheer themselves up at so trifling a cost, and to suppose themselves secured by a straw from the freaks of Fortune ! Under the feudal system our ancestors enrolled a right acquired by the gift of a stick, a straw, a ring, a knife, 3cc. The Manitous, deposited in three baskets, are committed to the care of the war-chief and the chiefs of tribes. From the collection of the Manitous they pro ceed to the benediction of the medicinal plants and the instruments of surgery. The great sorcerer takes them one by one from the bottom of a bag of leather or buffalo hide ; he lays them on the ground, dances round them with the other sorcerers, slaps his thighs, looks confounded, howls, and utters strange wQ?da. He finishes with declaring that he has communicated supernatural virtue to the simples, and that he has the power of restoring dead warriors to life. He bites his lips till they bleed, applies a powder to the wound, from which he has sucked the blood with address, and appears to be suddenly cured. Sometimes a dog reputed to be dead is brought to him ; but, on the application of an instrument, the dog springs upon his legs, and the spectators hail it as a miracle. It is neverthe- 14 TRAVELS less intrepid men who suffer themselves to be bam boozled with such gross deceptions. In the tricks of his priests the Savage perceives nothing but the intervention ofthe Great Spirit; he is not ashamed to call to his aid him who made the wound and who alone is able to heal it. The women have meanwhile been preparing the parting feast: this last repast consists, like the former, of dog's flesh. The chief, before he tastes the sacred dish, thus addresses the assembly : — " My brethren, I am not yet a man, I know ; yet it is well known that I have more than once seen the enemy. We were killed in the last war ; the bones of our companions have not been rescued from the flies ; we must go and cover them up. How could we so long reraain inactive on our raats ? The Manitou of ray courage coraraands rae to avenge raan. Youths, have a good heart ! " The chief coraraences the song of the Manitou of battles,* the burden of which is repeated by the young raen. After the song, the chief retires to the suramit of an erainence, and lies down on a hide, holding in his hand a red caluraet, the bowl of which is turned towards the eneray's country. * See The Natchez. IN AMERICA. 15 The war-dances and pantomimes are performed. The first is called the Dance of Discovery. An Indian advances alone and at a slow pace amid the spectators ; he represents the departure of the warriors : they are exhibited marching, and then encaraping towards the close of day. The enemy is discovered: they creep on all-fours to surprise bim ; the attack, the affray, the capture of one, the death of another, a precipitate or quiet retreat, a doleful or triumphant return succeed. The warrior who perforras this pantorairae terrai- nates it by a song in honour of hiraself and his family : " Twenty snows ago I took twelve prisoners ; ten snows since I saved the chief. My ancestors were brave and renowned. My grandfather was the wisdom of the tribe and the roar of battle ; my father was a pine in his strength. My great-grand mother gave birth to five warriors ; my grandmother alone was equivalent to a council of Sachems ; ray mother makes excellent sagamitd. As for myself, I am stronger and wiser than all my ancestors." It is the song of Sparta : " We were formerly young, valiant, and bold." After this warrior the others rise, and in like manner celebrate their achievements ; the more they boast the more highly they are congratulated ; 16 TRAVELS none is so noble, so handsome as they are ; they possess every good quality, every virtue. He who proclaims himself superior to all the world applauds another who declares that he surpasses him in ment. The Spartans had this custom also ; they thought that the man who commends himself in pubhc thereby engages to deserve commendation. By degrees all the warriors leave their places to join in the dance: marches are executed to the sound of the tambourine, the fife, and the chi- chikoud. The bustle increases : they imitate the labours of a siege, the - attack of a palisade ; some leap as if to clear a ditch, others imitate the action of swimraing, while others hold their hands to their comrades to assist them to mount to the assault. Tomahawk clashes against tomahawk ; the chichi- houd quickens the time ; the warriors draw their daggers ; they begin to turn round, at first slowly, afterwards more rapidly, and at last with such swift ness that the eye cannot foUow them in the circle which they describe : horrid shouts rend the vault of heaven. The dagger, which these ferocious men clap to their throats with an address which makes you shudder, their black or striped faces, their fan tastic dress, their long howls, produce a scene of savage warfare which cannot but appal. IN AMERICA. 17 Exhausted, breathless, covered with perspiration, the actors finish the dance and proceed to the trial of the young men. They are insulted, they are addressed in the most abusive language, hot ashes are sprinkled on their beads, they are lashed with- whips, burning brands are thrown in their faces — and this usage they are expected to bear with the utmost insensibility. Any one who should betray the least sign of impatience would be declared un worthy to lift the hatchet. The third and last banquet on the sacred dog crowns these various cereraonies : it raust not last longer than half an hour. The warriors eat in si lence ; the chief presides ; he presently quits the feast. At this signal the party hasten to the bag gage and seize their arras. The relatives and friends surround them without uttering a word : the mo ther with her eyes follows her son, who is engaged in loading the sledges ; silent tears trickle down her cheeks. Families are seated on the ground ; others are seen standing; but all are att^tive to the ope rations preparatory to departure : in every face is inscribed the same question, asked inwardly by dif ferent afl^ections : " Shall I ever see hira again ?" At length the war-chief coraes forth completely armed from his hut. The troops form in military VOL. II. c 18 TRAVELS order : the great sorcerer, carrying the Manitous, puts himself at their head : the war-chief marches behind him ; then comes the standard-bearer of the first tribe, lifting his banner aloft in the air ; and the men of that tribe follow their symbol. The other tribes file ofi^ after the first, dragging behind them the sledges laden with cauldrons, raats, and bags of maize. Warriors, four and four, or eight and eight, carry upon their shoulders the small and the large canoes : the painted girls, or courtesans, with their children, accompany the army. They too are harnessed to the sledges, but they draw with the metump passing over the forehead and not over the breast. The lieutenant-general marches alone in the flank of the column. The war-chief, after they have proceeded a few steps, halts the warriors and addresses them : " Let us be of good cheer," says he, "when we are marching to die we ought to be content. Be obe dient to ray coramands. Whoever distinguishes himself shall have plenty of tobacco. I give to , a mighty warrior, my mat to carry. He shall lead you if I and my lieutenant are put into the cauldron. Come, let us slap our thighs and give three howls." The chief then delivers his mat and his bag of IN AMERICA. 19 maize to the warrior whom he has named, and this confers on the latter the right to comraand the troops, in case the chief and his lieutenant should be cut off; The raarch is resuraed : the array is usually ac corapanied by all the inhabitants of the villages to the river or lake where the canoes are to be launched. The scene of taking leave is there re peated : the warriors strip theraselves and divide their garraents araong the members of their family. At this last moment they may indulge their sorrow aloud : each warrior is surrounded by his relatives, who load him with caresses, clasp him in their arms, and call him by the most endearing names that exist among men. Before parting, perhaps for ever, they forgive each other all grudges they may mutually owe. Those who are left^ be hind pray to the Manitous to abridge the term of absence ; those who are departing invoke the dew to descend on their natal hut : in their wishes of happiness they do not even forget •the animals do mesticated under the paternal roof. The canoes are launched on the river ; the warriors embark, and the fleet moves off". The women, tarrying on the shore, make the last signs of love to their hus bands, fathers, and sons, as long as they are in sight. c2 20 TRAVELS In proceeding to the enemy's country, the troops do not always pursue the direct route; sometimes the longest way is taken as the safest. The march is regulated by the sorcerer, agreeably to good or bad omens. If he observes an owl, he orders a halt. The fleet enters a creek ; the warriors land and erect a palisade, after which fires are kindled and the cauldrons boiled. Supper being over, the camp is placed under the protection of the Spirits. The chief recommends to the warriors to keep their to mahawks by their sides, and not to snore too loud. They suspend the Manitous, that is to say, the stuffed raice, the white pebbles, the straws, and the bits of red cloth, frora the palisade, and the sor cerer commences this prayer : " Manitous be vigilant : open your eyes and ears. If the warriors were to be surprized, this would be a disgrace to you. What ! the Sachems would say, have the Manitous of our nation suff"ered themselves to be beaten by the Manitous of the eneray ! You raust be sensible how ignorainious that would be : nobody will supply you with food; the warriors would think of procuring other Spirits more power ful than you are. It is your interest to keep careful watch ; if we were to be scalped while asleep, we should not be to blame, but the fault would be yours." IN AMERICA. 21 After this adraonition to the Manitous all re tire to rest in perfect security, convinced that they have nothing whatever to fear. Europeans who have taken the field with the Sa vages, astonished at this strange confidence, have asked their raat-fellows if they were never surprized in their caraps. " Very often," replied they. " In this case," said the strangers, "would it not be better to place sentinels ? " — " No doubt it would be very prudent," answered the Savage, turning and com posing himself to sleep. The Indian makes a virtue of his improvidence and indolence by putting him self under the protection of Heaven alone. There is no fixed time for rest or motion : if the sorcerer but cries out at midnight that he has seen a spider on a willow leaf the army must break up. When the troops happen to be in a country abounding in garae, the warriors disperse ; the baggage and those who carry it are left at the raercy of the first hostile party; but two hours before sunset all the hunters return to ^he carap with a precision of which none but Indians are capable. If they fall in with the hlazed track or track of commerce, the dispersion of the warriors is still more coraplete. This track through the forests is marked by notches cut at the sarae height in the 22 TRAVELS trunks of the trees. It is this track that is followed by the different red nations, to traffic with one ano ther, or with the whites. It is a principle of the law of nations that this road shall reraain neuter; persons found upon it are never raolested. The same neutrality is observed on the road of Mood, which is marked by the traces of the fire that has been set to the bushes. Not a hut is seen on this road, appropriated to the passage of the tribes in their distant expeditions. If even hostile parties meet upon it, they never attack one another there. The violation of the Road of Commerce, or that of blood, is an iraraediate cause of war with the nation guilty of the sacrilege. If one body of troops finds another with which it is in alliance asleep, the forraer reraains standing outside the paUsade of the camp till the warriors awake. When these have risen from their slum bers, their chief approaches the new-comers, pre sents them with several scalps destined for these occasions, and says, " You have move here :" which signifies, "You may pass, you are our brethren; your honour is safe." " We have raove here," re ply the allies, and pursue their route. Whoever should raistake a friendly for a hostile tribe, and IN AMERICA. - 23 awake it, would be liable to the reproach of ignor ance and co.wardice. If they have to traverse the territory of a neutral nation, it is necessary to solicit perraission to pass through it. A deputation proceeds with the calu met to the principal village of that nation. The spokesman declares that the tree of peace has been planted by their ancestors ; that its shade extends over the two tribes ; that the hatchet is buried at the foot of the tree ; that they ought to unroll the chain of friendship, and smoke the sacred pipe to gether. If the chief of the neutral nation accepts the calumet and smokes, the passage is granted. The ambassador returns, dancing all the way, to his own people. In this manner they advance towards the country which is to be the theatre of war, without precau tion as without fear. Chance generally furnishes them with the first intelligence of the enemy; a himter will perhaps return in haste to intimate that he has met with traces of men. ^rders are imme diately issued to suspend all labours, that no noise may be made. The chief sets out with the most experienced warriors to examine the traces. The Savages, who hear sounds at incredible distances, discover prints on dry moors and on bare rocks. 24 TRAVELS where any other eye but their own could discern nothing. Not only do they perceive these marks, but they can tell by what Indian tribe they were made, and of what date they are. If the two feet are wide apart, they were lUinois who passed that way ; if the mark of the heel is deep, and the print of the great toe large, they are known to be long to the Outchipaways ; if the tread is aside, they are sure that the Potowatomies are abroad ; if the grass is scarcely trodden down, and bent near the top of the blade, and not close to the ground, they are known to be fugitive traces of the Hurons ; if the foot-prints are turned outward, and thirty-six inches distant from one another, they are the tracks of Europeans; the Indians walk with the toes turned inward, and both feet in the same line. The age of the warriors is conjectured from the heaviness or lightness of the tread, and from the length or shortness of the print. When the moss or grass is no longer wet, the traces are of the preceding day? these traces are four or five days old when insects are already run ning on the trodden down grass or moss ; and they have been made eight, ten, or twelve days, when the vegetable force of the soil has re-appeared, and fresh blades of grass have shot up : thus a few in- IN AMERICA. 25 sects, a few blades of grass, and a few days, eff'ace the traces of man and of his glory. The foot-prints having been minutely examined, the Indians clap their ears to the ground, and judge, by murmurs inaudible to a European ear, at what distance the enemy is. Having returned to the camp, the chief orders the fires to be extinguished : he forbids his people to speak, and interdicts hunting; the canoes are drawn ashore and hidden in thickets. The party take a general repast in silence, and then lie down to rest. The night following the first discovery of the enemy is called the Night of Dreams. All the warriors are obliged to dream, and to relate next day what they have dreamt, that a judgment may be foKned relative to the success of the expedition. The camp then presents an extraordinary sight : Savages rise and walk about in the darkness, raut- tering their song of death, to which they add such expressions as these": "I will swallow four white shakes, and I will tear off the wings of a red eagle." This is the dreara which the warrior has just had, and which he interweaves into his song. His cora panions are bound to interpret this dreara, or the dreamer is released from the service. In this case, 26 TRAVELS the four white snakes may denote four Europeans whora the drearaer must kill, and the red eagle an Indian that he is to scalp. In the Night of Dreams a warrior lengthened his death-song with the history of a dog which had ears of fire : he could never obtain an explanation of his dreara, and he set out for his but. These usages, which partake of the character of childhood, might favour cowardice in the European ; but in the Savage of America they were never attended with that inconvenience: this procedure was regarded merely as an act of that free and whimsical will of which the Indian never divests himself, be it who it may to whora he subraits for a moment either from reason or caprice. In the Night of Dreams, the young men are ex tremely apprehensive lest the sorcerer should have dreamt ill, or, in other words, been afraid; for the sorcerer can by a single dream cause the army to return, even though it may have raarched two hun dred leagues. If any warrior' fancies that he has seen the spirits of his forefathers, or heard their voices, he can also oblige the troops to retreat. Ab solute independence and unenlighted religion go vern the actions of the Savages. If; however, the expedition is not deranged by IN AMERICA. 27 any dream, the party resume their route. The painted women are left behind with the canoes ; and about twenty warriors, selected from among those who have taken the oath of friends,* are sent on before. The greatest order and tbe most pro found silence prevail among the troops ; the war riors raarch in file, each stepping on the spot where his predecessor had trodden, and thus obviating the raultiplicity of traces. As a further precaution, the warrior who closes the raarch scatters dead leaves and dust behind hira. The chief is at the head of the column ; guided by the vestiges of the enemy, he tracks their windings through the thickets like a sagacious blood-hound. From time to time the party halt and listen attentively. If the chase is an irnage of war among the Europeans, araong the Savages war is an iraage of the chase : by pur suing raen the Indian learns to discover bears. In the state of nature the greatest general is the strong est and most vigorous hunter : in the social state, intellectual qualities, scientific combinations, and a matured judgment, constitute great captains. The scouts who are sent out soraetimes bring back with them bundles of fresh cut reeds : these * See The Natchez. 28 TRAVELS are challenges. The reeds are counted : their num ber indicates that of the enemy. If the tribes which formerly gave these challenges werC known, hke those ofthe Hurons, fortheir raihtary candour, the bundles of reed told the exact truth; if, on the contrary, they were renowned, like those of the Iroquois, for their political genius, the reeds in creased or dirainished the numerical strength of the combatants. Should the site of a camp which the enemy has occupied the preceding night present itself, it is carefully examined : by the construction of the huts the chiefs distinguish the various tribes of the sarae nation and their diff'erent allies. The huts which have but one post at the entrance are those of the Illinois. The addition of a single pole, its greater or less inclination, furnish unerring indications. The circular ajoupas are those of the Ontoways. A hut with a raised flat roof belongs to the white skins. It soraetiraes happens that the enemy, be fore they are fallen in with by the nation that is in quest of them, have beaten an ally of that nation : to intimidate those who are in pursuit of them, they leave behind a record of their victorv. One day a large birch tree was found stripped of its bark. On the bare white alburnum was traced IN AMERICA. 29 an oval, within which were delineated in black and red the following figures : a bear, a birch leaf eaten by a butterfly, ten circles, and four mats, a bird flying, a moon on ears of maize, a canoe and three ajoupas, a man's foot and twenty huts, an owl and a sun setting ; an owl, three circles, and a raan lying down, a tomahawk and thirty heads ranged in a straight line, two men standing on a small circle, three heads in a bow with three lines. The oval with these hieroglyphics denoted an Illinois chief named Atabou : he was known by the particular marks which were those that he had on the face ; the bear was the Manitou of that chief ; the birch leaf eaten by a butterfly represented the national symbol of the Illinois ; the ten circles sig nified a thousand warriors, each circle standing for one hundred; the four mats proclaimed four ad vantages obtained ; the flying bird marked the de parture of the Illinois ; the moon on the ears of maize signified that this departure had taken place in the moon of green corn ; the canoe and the three ajoupas related that the thousand warriors had travelled three days by water; the man's foot and the twenty huts denoted twenty days raarch by land ; the owl was the symbol of the Chickasaws ; the sun setting showed that the Illinois had arrived 30 TRAVELS to the west of the camp of the Chickasaws ; the owl, the three circles, and the man lying down, told that three hundred Chickasaws had been surprised in the night; and the tomahawk and the thirty heads ranged in a straight line declared that the lUinois had killed thirty Chickasaws. The two men standing in a sraall circle stated that they were carrying away twenty prisoners ; the three heads in the bow stood for three killed on the side of the Illinois, and the three lines indicated three wounded, A war-chief ought to be capable of explaining these erableras with readiness and precision : and from his knowledge of the strength and alliances of the enemy he ought to judge of the greater or less historical accuracy of these trophies. If he resolves to advance, in spite of the victories, real or pre tended, of the enemy, he prepares for battle. Fresh scouts are dispatched. They proceed stoop ing along the thickets, arid sometiraes crawling on hands and knees. They climb the loftiest trees ; when they have discovered the hostile huts, they hasten back to the camp to report the position of the eneray to the chief. If this position is strong they endeavour to devise sorae stratagem to induce him to abandon it. One of the most comraon stratageras is to coun- IN AMEKICA. 31 terfeit the cries of animals. Young men disperse themselves in the copses, imitating the braying of stags, the lowing of buffaloes, and the yelping of foxes. The Savages are accustomed to this trick ; but such is their passion for the chase, and so per fect the imitation of the voices of the animals, that they are very frequently caught by this lure. They sally frora their camp, and fall into ambuscades. They rally if they can on a spot defended by na tural obstacles, such as a causey in a swamp, or a neck of land between two lakes. Surrounded in this post, instead of attempting to force a passage they quietly amuse themselves with diff'erent games, as ifthey were in their own villages. It is never but in the last extremity that two bodies of Indians determine on an attack with open strength : they prefer a contest of patience and stratagem, and as neither of them has provisions, either those who are blockading a defile are forced to retreat, or those who are pent up in it must open themselves a passage through their^oes. The conflict is horrible ; it is a great duel, as in the combats of the ancients : each singles out his antagonist. In the human visage, when animated by rage, there is something contagious, something terrible, which is communicated. The field of 32 TRAVELS battle rings with cries of death, war-songs, and mu tual insult: the warriors abuse each other like Horaer's heroes; they all know one another by name. " Hast thou forgotten," they cry, " the day when thou wishedst that thy feet possessed the swift ness of the wind, that thou mightst escape my ar row ? Old woman! shall I send thee sorae fresh saga^ mitd, and boiUng cassina, in the hollow of a reed ? " — " Wide-raouthed chattering chief!" reply the others ; " 'tis plain that thou art accustoraed to wear the petticoat ; thy tongue is like the aspen-leaf, in cessantly wagging ! " The combatants also reproach each other for their natural imperfections : they call one another hraper, squint-eyed, dwarf ; and these wounds to their self- love increase their rage. The barbarous practiceof scalping the enemy aggravates the ferocity of the combat. The victor claps his foot on the neck of the vanquished ; with his left hand he seizes the tuft of hair left by the Indians on the crown of the head ; with the right he cuts with a sharp knife a circle in the skull round the hair; and this trophy is often torn off" with such address, that the brain is left bare without having been touched by the point of the in strument. When two hostile parties meet in the open coun- IN AMERICA. 33 try, and one is weaker than the other, the latter digs holes in the ground ; into these he descends and fights, as in those fortresses, the works of which, being nearly on a level with the soil, present very little surface to the ball. The besiegers send their arrows, like bombs, with such precision that they fall on the head of the besieged. Military honours are awarded to those who have slain the greatest nuraber of eneraies ; they are per mitted to wear killiou-feathers. To obviate injustice, the arrows of each warrior bear a particular mark ; so that when they are drawn out of the body of the victim, it is known at once by whose hand he fell. ¦Fire-arms cannot bear testimony to the glory of their owner. When the slain are killed with ball, the tomahawk, or the hatchet, it is by the number of scalps that exploits are counted. During the combat it is rarely that obedience is paid to the war-chief, who, on his part, strives only to distinguish himself individually. It is seldom the case that the victors pursue tke vanquished; they remain on the field of battle stripping the dead, binding the prisoners, celebrating their tri umph by dances and songs, and deploring the friends whom they have lost. The bodies of the latter are exposed with great lamentations, on the VOL. II. D 34 TRAVELS boughs of trees ; while those of their enemies are left lying in the dust. A warrior is dispatched from the camp, to carry to the nation the news of the victory and the re turn of the array.* The elders asserable ; the war- chief makes his report of the expedition to the council : and according to this report they deter mine either to continue the war or to treat for peace. If peace is decided on, the prisoners are preserved as the medium of concluding it ; but if war is per sisted in, they are put to death. For the details of the cruelties practised on these occasions I shall re- . fer the reader to Atala and The Natchez. The woraen generally raanifest great ferocity ; they la cerate the prisoners with their nails, pierce them with the instruments of domestic labour, and cook their flesh, which is eaten either broiled or boiled ; and the canibals know which are the most juicy parts of the victim. Those who do not devour their enemies, at least drink their blood, and be smear their breasts and faces with it. But the women have also a most important pri vilege ; they are allowed to save the prisoners, by * This return is described in the eleventh book of The Natchez. IN AMERICA. 35 adopting them for brothers and husbands, especially if they have lost brothers or husbands in battle. This adoption confers all the rights of nature ; there is no instance of a prisoner so adopted having be trayed the family of which he has become a mera ber, and he manifests not less ardour than his new countryman in bearing arms against his former na tion ; hence arise the most pathetic adventures. A father frequently finds hiraself opposed to a son : if the son gets the better of the father, he lets hira go the first time, but he says to him, " Thou gavest me life, I give thee thine : we are now quits. Keep out of my way for the future, or I shall scalp thee," It is true, however, that the adopted prisoners are not quite safe. If the tribe in which they are serving happens to sustain any loss, they are slaugh tered ; a woman for example, who has taken a boy into her family, will then cut him in two with a hatchet. The Iroquois, who were otherwise remarkable for cruelty towards their prisoners of war, had a custom which one might fancy to have been bor rowed from the Roraans, and which bespoke the genius of a great people ; they incorporated the vanquished nation into their own, without reducing D 2 36 TRAVELS it to slavery ; they did not even force it to adopt their laws ; they raerely subjected it to their man ners. All the tribes did not burn their prisoners; some contented themselves with making slaves of them. The Sachems, vehement partisans of old customs, deplored this humanity, or, according to them, this degeneracy from ancient virtue. Christianityj by spreading itself araong the Indians, has tended to soften ferocious characters. It was in the name of a God sacrificed by men that the Missionaries ob tained the abolition of human sacrifices ; they planted the cross instead of the stake of torture, and the blood of Jesus Christ redeeraed the blood of the prisoner. IN AMERICA. 37 RELIGION. When the Europeans first landed in America, they found among the Savages, religious creeds which are now nearly extinct. Almost all the tribes of Florida and Louisiana adored the sun, like the Peruvians and the Mexicans. They had temples, priests or sor cerers, and sacrifices : only they blended with this worship of the south the worship and traditions of sorae divinity of the north. The public sacrifices took place on the banks of rivers ; they were held at the changes of the sea.- sons, or on occasion of peace or war. Private sacri fices were off'ered within doors. The profane ashes were cast to the winds, and a fresh fire was lighted. The oblations to the good and evil Spirits consisted of the skins of beasts, household utensils, arms, strings of beads, all of little value. But a superstition common to all the Indians, and we may say the only one whioh they have re tained, was that of the Manitous, Every Savage has his Manitou, as every Negro has his fetish : it is either a bird, a fish, a quadruped, a reptile, a stone, a piece of wood, a bit of cloth, any coloured object, or a European or American ornament. The 38 TRAVELS hunter takes care never to kill or hurt the animal which he has chosen for his Manitou : should this misfortune befal him, he endeavours by all possible means to appease the manes of the deceased deity ; but he is not perfectly easy again till he has dreamt of another Manitou. Dreams act an important part in the religion of the Savage ; the interpretation of them is a science, and their illusions are regarded as realities. Among civilized nations it is frequently the reverse : reali ties are illusions. Among the native tribes of the New World, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is not dis tinctly expressed, but they have all a confused idea of it, as is attested by their customs, their fables, their funeral ceremonies, and their piety towards the dead. So far from denying the immortality of the soul, the Savages multiply it ; they seem to grant it to the souls of brute animals from the insect, the rep tile, the fish, and the bird, to the largest quadruped. In fact, people who every where see and hear spirits must naturally suppose that they are themselves en dowed with one, and that the animated beings, who are the corapanions of their solitude, have also their divine intelligences. Araong the nations of Canada there existed a IN AMERICA. 39 complete system of religious fables, and in these fables Europeans perceived, not without astonish ment, traces of the Grecian fictions and of scriptu ral truths. The Great Hare one day called together upon the waters his court, coraposed of the elk, the roebuck, the bear, and the other quadrupeds. He took from the bottora of the lake a grain of sand, out of which he made the earth. He then created men Out of the dead bodies of different animals. Another tradition makes Areskoui or Agresgou^* the god of war, the Supreme Being or the Great Spirit. The Great Hare was thwarted in his designs ; Michabou, god of the waters, surnamed the Great Tiger-Cat, opposed the undertaking of the Great Hare ; the latter, having to corabat Michabou, could not create more than six men ; one of these persons ascended to heaven where he had connection with the beautiful Athaensic, the goddess of revenge. The Great Hare, perceiving that she was pregnant, gave her a kick, which precipitated her to the earth. She fell on the back of a tortoise. Some sorcerers assert that Athaensic had two sons, one of whom slew the other ; but it is gene rally belieyed that she only gave birth to a daughter, 40 TRAVELS who becarae the mother of Tahouet-Saron and Jouskeka. Jouskeka was killed by Tahouet-Saron, Athaensic is sometimes taken for the moon, and Jouskeka for the sun. Areskoui, the god of war, is also regarded as the sun. Among the Natchez, Athaensic, the goddess of revenge, was the female chief of the evil Manitous, as Jouskeka was the female chief of the good ones. The race of Jouskeka became almost wholly ex tinct in the third generation : the Great Spirit sent a deluge. Messou, otherwise Laketchak, alarmed at the inundation, dispatched a raven to investigate the state of affairs ; but the raven perforraed his errand very ill ; Messou then sent out the musk-rat, which brought back to him a small quantity of mud. Messou restored the earth to its former state ; he shot arrows against the trunks of the trees which still remained standing, and these arrows became branches. Out of gratitude he afterwards married a female musk-rat : from this union sprang all the human beings by whora the earth is now peopled. There are variations to these fables : according to some authorities, it was not Messou who put an end to the inundation, but the tortoise on which Atha ensic ahghted when she fell 'from heaven : this tor toise, in swimming, parted the waters with its feet, IN AMERICA. 41 and cleared the earth of them. Thus revenge is the mother of the new race of mankind. Next to the Great Hare, the Great Beaver is the most powerful of the Manitous : it was he who form ed Lake Nipissing. The cataracts in tbe Ontaway River, which issue from the Nipissing, are the re lics of dykes thrown up by the Great Beaver to form that lake ; but he died in the raidst of his under taking. He is buried at the top of a raountain, to which he has given his forra. No nation passes the foot of his tomb without sraoking in honour of hira. Michabou, god of the water, was born at Michil- liraakinnac, on the channel which unites Liake Huron with Lake Michigan. He removed thence to Detroit, threw up a dyke at the fall of St. Mary, and damming the waters of Lake AUinipigon, he made Lake Superior for the purpose of catching beavers. Michabou learned to make nets of the spider, and he afterwards instructed men in that art. There are places in which the Spirits take parti cular dehght. Two days' journey Hbelow the fall of St. Anthony, is the great Wakon-Teebe, the cavern of the Great Spirit : it contains a subterraneous lake of unknown depth ; when a stone is thrown into this lake, the Great Hare raises his awful voice. 42 TRAVELS Characters are engraven by the Spirits on the stone of the vault. To the west of Lake Superior are mountains com posed of stones, which glisten like the ice of the cataracts in winter. Beyond these mountains ex tends a rauch larger lake than Lake Superior: Mi chabou is particularly fond of this lake and these mountains.* But it is at Lake Superior that the Great Spirit has fixed his residence ; there he raay be seen walking in the raoonlight: he delights also to gather the fruit of a species of currant-bush, which covers the south shore of the lake. There, seated on the point of a rock, he often lets loose the terapests. He dwells on an island in the lake which bears his name : thither the spirits of the warriors who fall in battle repair to enjoy the plea sures of the chace. From the middle of the sacred lake formerly emerged a mountain of copper, which the Great Spirit long ago took away and carried to some other place : but he has sprinkled the shore with stones containing the same metal, which possess a singular * The ancient tradition of a chain of mountains, and an im mense lake, situated to the north-west of Lake Superior, refers clearly to the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. IN AMERICA. 43 property: they render those who carry them invi sible. The Great Spirit does not wish these stones to be touched. Some Algonquins were one day rash enough to take away one of them: no sooner had they returned to their canoes, than a Manitou, more than sixty cubits in height, issuing from the recesses of a forest, pursued them : the water scarce ly reached to his waist ; he obliged the Algonquins to throw into the lake the treasure which they had carried off". On the banks of Lake Huron the Great Spirit has made the white hare sing like a bird, and the blue-bird mew like a cat. Athaensic has planted the flea-bane in the islands of Lake Erie : if a warrior looks at that herb he is seized with a fever ; and if he touches it a subtile fire runs upon his skin. Athaensic also planted on the shore of Lake Erie the white cedar, for the purpose of destroying the human race : the vapour of the tree carries death to the infant in the womb of the young mother, as rain blights the embryo grapes upon the vine. The Great Hare has conferred wisdom on the owl of Lake Erie. This bird hunts the raice in suraraer : he disables them and carries them alive to his abode, where he takes care to fatten them 44 TRAVELS against winter — no bad picture this of the rulers of nations. The awful Spirit of the Iroquois dwells at the cataract of Niagara. Near Lake Ontario, male wood-pigeons throw theraselves in the morning into the river Genessee ; in the evening they are followed by a like number of females : they go thither in quest of the fair En- da^, who was drawn frora the region of souls by the songs of her husband. The little bird of Lake Ontario raakes war on the black snake. The cause of this enmity was as follows : Hondioun was a famous chief of the Iroquois, builders of huts. He beheld the young Almilao, and was astonished. He danced three times with anger, for Almilao was a girl of the nation of the Hurons, the eneraies of the Iroquois. Hondioun returned to his hut, saying, "What care I for her?" but such was not the language of the soul of the warrior. For two suns he reraained lying on his raat, and could not sleep : in the third sun he closed his eyes, and saw a bear in his dreams. He prepared for death. He rose, took his arms, traversed the forests, and IN AMERICA. 45 arrived at the hut of Almilao, in the country of his enemies. It was dark. Almilao heard steps in her cabin. " Akouessan," said she, "sit down on mv mat." Hondioun sat down on the mat without speaking. Athaensic and his rage were in his heart. Almilao threw one arm around the Iroquois warrior, not knowing him, and sought his hps. Hondioun loved her as the raoon. Akouessan, the Abenaquis, an ally of the Hurons, arrived : he approached in the dark ; the lovers were aslefep. He crept beside Almilao, without perceiving Hondioun, who was rolled in the skins of the bed. Akouessan enchanted the sleep of his mistress. Hondioun awoke, stretched out his hand, and touched the hair of a warrior. The war-whoop shook the hut. The Sachems of the Hurons has tened to the spot. Akouessan, the Abenaquis, was no more. Hondioun, the Iroquois chief, was bound to the stake of the prisoners ; he sang his death-song : from the midst of the fire he called Almilao, and desired the Huron girl to devour his heart. Almi lao wept and smiled : life and death were on her lips. The Great Hare caused the soul of Hondioun to 46 TRAVELS enter into the black snake, and that of Almilao into the little bird of Lake Ontario. The little bird attacks the black snake, and kills it on the spot with one stroke of its bill. Akouessan was changed into a merman. The Great Hare made a grotto of black and green marble in the country of the Abenaquis ; he planted a tree in the salt lake (the sea), at the en trance of the grotto. In spite of all the efforts of the white-skins, they have not been able to pull up this tree. When the terapest rages on the shoreless lake, the Great Hare descends frora the blue rock, and coraes beneath the tree to weep for Hondioun, Alrailao, and Akouessan. In this raanner the fables of the Savages bring the traveller from the farthest extremity of the Lakes of Canada to thfe shores of the Atlantic. Moses, Lucretius, and Ovid, seera to have be queathed to these people, the first his tradition, the second his erroneous philosophy, and the third his metamorphoses. In all this there was not enough of religion, falsehood, and poetry, to inform, to mislead, and to console. IN AMERICA, 47 GOVERNMENT. THE NATCHEZ. Despotis-m in the State qf Nature, The state of nature has almost always been con founded with the savage state. Owing to this mis take, people have imagined that the Savages had no government ; that each family was merely ruled by its chief or father ; that a hunting expedition or war occasionally united farailies in one common in terest ; but that, when this interest was satisfied, the farailies returned to their isolation and their in dependence. These are egregious errors. We find among the Savages the type of all the governments known to civilized nations, from the despotic to the republi can, passing through monarchy, limited or absolute, elective or hereditary. The Indians of North America are acquainted with representative monarchies an^ republics. Fe deration was one of the most common political forms employed by them. The extent of their wilds had done for the science of their governments what excessive population has produced for ours. The error into which people have fallen relative 48 TRAVELS to the political existence of the Savage government, is the more extraordinary, inasmuch as they ought to have been enhghtened by the history of the Greeks and Romans : in the origin of their erapire, they had very coraplicated institutions. Political laws spring up among raen before civil laws ; which ought nevertheless, one would think, to precede the forraer: but it is a fact that power was established before law, because raen have need to defend theraselves against despotism before they fix the relations which they have to each other. The political laws spring up spontaneously with raan and establish theraselves without antecedents ; they are met with among the raost barbarous hordes. The civil laws, on the contrary, are forraed by customs : what was a religious custora for the mar riage of a youth and maiden, for the birth of ti child, for the death of the head of a family, is transformed by the lapse of tirae into a law. Pri vate property, unknown to nations of hunters, is hkewise a source of civil laws that is wanting in a state of nature. Accordingly there was no code of crimes and punishraents among the Indians of North America. Crimes against things and persons were punished by tbe faraily, not by the law. Revenge was justice: the natural right prosecuted, uith the IN AMERICA. 49 savage man, what the public right punishes, with the civilized man. Let us first sketch the features comraon to all the governments of the Savages ; we will then enter into the details of each of those governments. The Indian nations are divided into tribes ; each tribe has an hereditary chief diff'erent from the mi litary chief, who derives his right frora election, as araong the ancient Germans. * The tribes bear a particular name, as, the tribe of the Eagle, the Bear, the Beaver, &c. The embleras which serve to distinguish the tribes become stand ards in war, and seals underneath treaties. The chiefs of the tribes and of the divisions of tribes derive their names from sorae quality, sorae defect of raind or person, or sorae circurastance of their lives. Thus one is called the white bison, another broken leg, flat lips, dark day, the shooter, fine voice, beaver-slayer, fire-heart, &c. It was the sarae in Greece. ' At Rorae, Codes was thus named from the closeness of his eyes, or from the loss of one of them, and'Cicero from the wart or the industry of his ancestor. Modern his tory surnames its kings and its warriors the Bald, the Stamraerer, the Red, the Larae, Martel or the Hararaer, Capet or Big-head, &c. VOL. II. E 50 TRAVELS The councils of the Indian nations are composed of the chiefs of the tribes, the raihtary chiefs, the raatrons, the orators, the prophets or sorcerers, and the physicians : but these councils vary according to the constitution ofthe tribes. A council of Savages is a very picturesque scene. When the ceremony of the calumet is over, an orator addresses the assembly. The members of the counctt sit or lie on the ground in various atti tudes : some stark-naked have merely a buff'alo's hide thrown about thera, others tattowed from head to foot, look like Egyptian statues ; others inter mingle with savage ornaments, feathers, birds' beaks, bears' claws, buff'aloes' horns, beavers' bones, fish's teeth — intermingle with these, I say, European or naments. Their faces are streaked with diff'erent colours, or painted black or white. They listen at tentively to the speaker : each of his pauses is hailed with the cry of applause, Oah ! oah ! Nations so simple raight be supposed to have no thing political to discuss ; but the truth is that no civiUzed state has so rauch business on its hands at once. There is an erabassy to be sent to a tribe to congratulate it on its victories, a treaty of alliance .to be concluded or renewed, an explanation respect ing the violation of a territory to be demanded a IN AMERICA. 51 deputation to be dispatched to' mourn over the death of a chief, a vote to be given at a diet, a chief to be elected, a competitor to be removed, a media tion to be off'ered or accepted to make two tribes lay down their arms, a balance to be preserved, lest this or that nation should become too strong and endanger the liberty of the others. All these aff"airs are regularly debated ; and the arguments pro and con are clearly stated. There have been Sachems who were thoroughly acquainted with all these mat ters, and who spoke on them with a depth of pene tration and judgment of which few statesmen in • Europe would be capable. The deliberations of the council are marked in strings of beads of diff'erent colours — archives ofthe sta,te, comprizing the treaties of war, peace, and al liance, with all the conditions and clauses of those treaties. Other strings contain the speeches made in the different councils. I have elsewhere made mention of the artificial memory employed by the Iroquois to retain a long harangue. * The task was divided among a number of warriors, who, by means of a few small bones, learned by heart, or rather wrote in their meraory, that part of the speech which they were directed to retain,* * The reader is referred to The Natchez for the description E 2 52 TRAVELS The ordinances of the Sachems are sometimes carved upon trees in enigmatical signs. Time, which corrodes our ancient chronicles, destroys also those of the Savages, but in a different manner, it spreads a new bark over the papyrus which records the history of the Indians ; and after the lapse of a small number of years, the Indian and his history have disappeared frora beneath the shade of the sarae tree. Let us now proceed to the history of the parti cular institutions of the Indian governments, begin ning with despotism. It ought first to be observed, that wherever des potism is established, there prevails a sort oi physi cal civilization, such as is found araong raost of the Asiatic nations, and such as existed in Peru and Mexico. The raan who is not allowed to interfere in public affairs, and who gives up his life to a raaster, like a brute or like a child, has nothing to do but to study his raaterial well-being. The sys- tera of slavery placing at the disposal of this man other arms than his own, these raachines till his land, erabellish his habitation, raake his apparel, of a Council of Savages held on the Rock of the Lake : the de- tails are strictly historical. IN AMERICA. 53 and prepare his food. But on attaining a certain degree, this civilization of despotism becomes sta tionary ; for the supreme tyrant who is pleased to perrait certain particular tyrannies, always retains thie right of life and death over his subjects, and these take good care to confine themselves to a mediocrity which excites neither the cupidity nor the jealousy of power. Under the empire of despotism there is therefore a commencement of luxury and administration, but in a measure which neither permits industry to develop itself, nor the genius of man to arrive at Jiiberty through knowledge. Ferdinand de Soto found tribes of this nature in the Floridas, and went to die on the bank of the Mississipi. Along that mighty river extended the territory of the Natchez. These were aborigines of Mexico, which they did not leave till after the downfall of the throne of Montezuma. The epoch of the emigration of the Natchez is contemporane ous with that of the Chickasaws, .who came from Peru, likewise expelled from their native land by the invasion of the Spaniards. The Natchez were governed by a chief surnamed The Sun : this chief claimed his descent from the luminary of day. The succession to the throne 54 TRAVELS passed through the females : thus, it was not the son of the chief who succeeded him, but the son of his sister or nearest kinswoman. This Female Chief, as she was called, had with the Sun a guard of young men called Allouez. The dignitaries under the Sun were the two war- chiefs, the two priests, the two officers for treaties, the inspector of the pubhc works and granaries, the powerful person called the Chief of Flour, and the four masters of the ceremonies. The harvest, reaped in coraraon, and placed under the care of the Sun, was originally the principal cause of the establishment of tyranny. The sole keeper of the public wealth, the monarch availed hiraself of it to raake hiraself creatures : he gave to some at the expense of others ; he invented that hierarchy of places which renders a great nuraber of persons interested in power, by their being accom plices in oppression. The Sun surrounded hiraself with satellites ready to execute his commands. In a few generations, classes were formed in the state : the descendants of the generals or the officers of the Allouez pretended to be nobles : the public adrait ted their claira. A multitude of laws were then invented : each individual was obliged to carry to the Sun part of the produce of his hunting and IN AMERICA. 55 •fishery. If the Sun issued orders for such or such a work, people were obliged to perform it without pay. In imposing the task the Sun arrogated to hiraself the right of judging, " Rid rae of that dog ! " he would cry, and his guards obeyed hira. The despotism of the Sun gave rise to that of the Female Chief, and afterwards to that of the nobles. When a nation becoraes enslaved, there is forraed a chain of tyrants, frora the highest class to the low est. The arbitrary power of the Female Chief assumed the character of the sex of that person age; it displayed itself on the score of manners. The Female Chief conceived that she had a right to take as many husbands and lovers as she pleased: she afterwards caused the objects of her caprices to be strangled. In a short tirae it was adraitted that the young Sun, on his accession to the supreme power, might cause his father to be strangled when the latter was not noble. This corruption of the mother of the heir to the throne descended to the other females. The nobles might violate virgins, and even young wives, through out the whole nation. The Sun indeed went so far as to give orders for a general prostitution of the women, ss was practised at certain Babylonian ini tiations. 56 TRAVELS To complete the nuraber of evils only one raore was wanting— superstition : the Natchez were crush ed by it. The priests studied to fortify tyranny by degrading the understandings of the people. It be came a signal honour, a meritorious action in the sight of heaven, for a raan to kill hiraself on the grave of a noble : there were chiefs whose funerals were attended with the slaughter of raore than a hundred victims. These oppressors seemed to relin quish absolute power in life only to inherit the tyranny of death : people obeyed a corpse, so com pletely were they moulded to slavery ! Nay more — they solicited, sometimes ten years beforehand, the honour of accompanying the Sun to the realm of souls. Heaven perraitted one piece of justice : those same Allouez, who were the founders of slavery, reaped the fruit of their works: pubhc opinion obliged them to plunge their daggers into their own bosoms at the obsequies of their master— a suicide worthy ofthe funeral pomp of despotism. But of what benefit was it to the sovereign of the Natchez to take his guards along with him to the other world? Were they able to defend him against the Eternal Avenger of the oppressed ? At the death of a Female Chief, her husband, if not noble, was stifled. The eldest daughter of the IN AMERICA. 57 Female Chief, who succeeded to her dignity, or dered twelve children to be strangled : these twelve bodies were ranged round those of the deceased Female Chief and her husband. These fourteen corpses were then laid on a bier gorgeously deco rated. Fourteen Allouez carried the funeral couch. The procession set out, headed by the parents of the strangled children, walking slowly two and two, and carrying their murdered infants in their arms. Four teen feraales, who had devoted theraselves to death, followed the bier, holding the fatal cord which they had made with their own hands. These victiras were surrounded by their nearest relatives. The family of the Female Chief closed the procession. Every ten paces the parents preceding the bier dropped the bodies of their children, which were trodden upon by the ihen who bore the funeral couch, so that by the time they reached the temple the flesh fell in lumps from the mangled bodies of the little victims. • At the place of sepulture the procession halted. The fourteen self-devoted females were stripped of their garments : they seated themselves on the sround : an Allouez sat down on the knees of each of them, while another held their hands behind : 58 TRAVELS they were made to swallow three bits of tobacco, and a little water ; the cord was put round their necks, and the kinsmen pulled the two ends of it, singing all the while. It is scarcely to be donceived how people, among whom private property was unknown, and who were strangers to most of the wants of society, could have fallen under such a yoke. On the one hand naked men, the liberty of nature ; on the other, ex actions without a parallel, a despotism which sur passes the most formidable that was ever witnessed among civilized nations ; the primitive innocence and virtues of a pohtical state in its infancy, the corruption and the crimes of a decrepid government — what a monstrous assemblage ! A revolution, siraple, natural, almost without ef fort, delivered the Natchez in part from their chains. Crushed by the yoke of the nobles and the Sun, they merely retired into the forests; solitude re stored them to liberty. The Swi, left behind at the great village, having no longer anything to give to the Allouez, since the common fields had ceased to be cultivated, was abandoned by those mercenaries. This Sun had a reasonable prince for bis successor. The latter did not re-establish the guards ; he abo lished the tyrannical practices, recalled his subjects. IN AMERICA. 59 and won their love by his government. A council of elders formed by him destroyed the principle of tyranny by a new regulation of the public property, The savage nations, under the erapire of prirai- tive ideas, have an invincible aversion to private property, the foundation of social order. Hence, among some Indians, that public property, those comraon fields, those crops stored in granaries from which each is supplied according to his wants ; but hence too the power of the chiefs, who have the custody of these treasures, and who ultimately dis tribute them for the interest of their ambition. The regenerated Natchez devised an expedient for securing the advantages of private property with out incurring the inconvenience of coraraon pro perty. The public field was divided into as many lots as there were families. Each family carried to its own horae the produce of one of these lots. Thus the public granary was abolished, at the same time that the coraraon field ceased to exist ; and as each faraily did not gather precisely the produce of the plot which it had tilled and sown, it could not assert that it had a particular right to the posses sion of what it had received. It was no longer the community of land, but the community of labour, which constituted the common property. 60 TRAVELS The Natchez retained the exterior and the forms of their ancient institutions : they ceased not to have an absolute monarchy, a Sun, a Female Chief, and different orders, or different classes of men: but these were no more than meraorials of the past, memorials useful to nations, for which it is never beneficial to destroy the authority of their ancestors. The perpetual fire was still kept up in the temple ; nor were the ashes of the ancient chiefs deposited in that edifice even touched, because it is a crime to violate the asylum of the dead, and after all the dust of tyrants furnishes lessons as impressive as that of other men. IN AMERICA. 61 THE MUSCOGULGES. - Limited Monarchy in the State qf Nature. To the east of the country of the Natchez, crushed by despotisra, the Muscogulges exhibited, in the scale of the governments of the Savages, an exaraple of constitutional, or liraited monarchy. The Muscogulges form, with the Sirainoles, the confederation of the Creeks in ancient Florida. They have a chief, called Mico, king, or raagistrate. The Mico, acknowledged as the first personage in the nation, is treated with every mark of respect. When he presides at the council, homage little short of abject is paid to hira : when he is absent his seat is left vacant. The Mico convokes the council to deliberate on peace and war ; to him ambassadors, and strangers cjvming to the country, address themselves. The dignity of the Mico is elective, and he can not be removed from it. The elders choose the Mico ; and the body of warriors confirra their no mination, A man raust have bled in battle, or have distinguished hiraself by understanding, genius, br eloquence, before he can aspire to the post of Mico. 62 TRAVELS This sovereign, who owes his power to raerit alone, rises over the confederation of the Creeks, as the sun over the earth, to vivify and fecundate. The Mico wears no raark of distinction : out of the council he is a raere Sachera, raingling with the crowd, chatting, sraoking, and drinking with the warriors : a stranger would not suspect who he was. At the council itself, where such honours are paid to him, he has but a vote ; all his influence consists in his superior wisdora : his advice is generally followed, because it is alraost always the best. The veneration of the Muscogulges for the Mico is extreme. If a young man is tempted to do a dishonourable act, his corarade says to hira, " Take care, the Mico sees thee" — and the young raan refrains from the deed. Such is the eff'ect of the invisible despotism of virtue. The Mico, however, possesses a dangerous prero gative. Among the Muscogulges the harvest is reaped in coraraon. Each faraily, after receiving -+s lot, is obliged to carry a portion of it to a public granary, which is at the disposal of the Mico, The abuse of a sirailar privilege produced the tyranny of the Suns of the Natchez, as we have just seen. The highest authority in the state, next to that of the Mico, is vested in the council of elders. This IN AMERICA. 63 council decides on peace and war, and carries into eff"ect the orders of the Mico — a singular political institution. In the monarchy of civilized nations? the executive power resides in the king, and the legislative power in the council, or the national as sembly : here the case is reversed ; the monarch makes laws, and the council executes them. These Savages probably conceived that it was less danger ous to invest a council of elders with the executive power, than to entrust that power to the hands of one individual. On the other hand, experience having demonstrated that an individual of mature age and sound judgment elaborates laws better than a deliberative body, the Muscogulges have vested the legislative power in the king. But tbe council of the Muscogulges has one capital defect : it is under the immediate direction of the chief sorcerer, who influences it by the fear of witchcraft and the divination of dreams. The priests of this nation constitute a forraidable college, which threatens to usurp various powejs. The war-chief, who is independent of the Mico, exercises absolute authority over the arraed youth. If the nation is in imminent danger, the Mico ne vertheless becomes for a limited time general abroad, as he is chief magistrate at home. (54 TRAVELS Such is, or rather was, the Muscogulgian govern ment, considered separately and by itself. As a fe derative government it has other relations. The Muscogulges, a proud and ambitious nation, came from the west and made themselves masters of Florida, after extirpating the Yamases, its former inhabitants.* Soon afterwards the Sirainoles, ar riving frora the east, made an alliance with the Muscogulges. The latter, being the stronger, forced the former to enter into a confederation, by virtue of which the Sirainoles send deputies to the great village of the Muscogulges, and are conse quently governed in part by their Mico and council. The two united nations were called by the Eu ropeans the Nation of the Creeks, and divided by them into Upper Creeks, the Muscogulges, and Lower Creeks, the Sirainoles. The arabition of the Muscogulges not being satisfied, they raade war on the Cherokees and the Chickasaws, and obliged them to enter into the general alliance— a confede- * These traditions of the Indian migrations are obscure and contradictory. Sorae well-informed persons consider the tribes ofthe Floridas as relics ofthe great nation of the AUighanies, who inhabited the valleys of the Mississipi and the Ohio, and who were expelled about the twelfth or thirteenth century by the Lennilenaps (the Iroquois and the Delaware Savages), a nomadic and martial horde, which came from the north and the west, that is, from the coasts in the vicinity of Behring's Strait. IN AMERICA. 65 ration as celebrated in the southern parts of North America as that of the Iroquois in the northern. Is it not remarkable that Savages should have at terapted to unite the Indians in a federative repub lic, on the same spot where the Europeans were destined to establish a government of that nature ? The Muscogulges, in the treaties which they made with the Whites, stipulated that the latter should not sell spirituous liquors to the ahied na tions. Only one European trader was suffered to live in the villages of the Creeks : there he resided under the public safeguard. The laws of the strict est honour were never violated in regard to him : he went and came, secure alike of property and life. The Muscogulges are addicted to indolence and festivity: they cultivate the ground; they keep cattle and horses of the Spanish breed ; they have also slaves. The serf tills the fields, rears fruits and flowers in the garden, keeps the hut in order, and dresses the food. He Is lodged, clothed, and fed like his raaster. If he marries, his children are free : they are re-instated by birth in their natural f^ rights. The misfortune of the parents is not en tailed upon their posterity ; the Muscogulges^^ would not make servitude hereditary — a noble lesson given by Savages to civilized men ! VOL. II. F 66 TRAVELS Such is tievertheless the nature of slavery, that, be it as mild as it will, it mars the virtues. The Muscogulge, bold, noisy, irapetuous, scarcely en during the least contradiction, is served by the tiraid, reserved, patient, and abject Yaraase. This Yamase, the ancient possessor of the Floridas, is nevertheless of Indian race : he fought like a hero to save his country from the invasion of the Musco gulges, but fortune deserted hira. What has raade such a difference between the Yaraase of forraer times and the Yamase of the present day ; between the vanquished Yamase and the Muscogulge victor? — Liberty and slavery. The Muscogulge villages are built in a pecuhar manner. Each family has almost always four houses or huts. These four huts, which are all alike, face one another, and forra together a square court of about half an acre, the entrances to which court are at the four angles. The huts, constructed with boards, are plastered inside and out with a red mor tar resembling brick earth. Pieces of cypress bark, laid on like tortoise-shells, form the roofs of these buildings. In the centre of the principal village, and on the- most elevated spot, is a public square surrounded by four long galleries. One of these galleries is the IN AMERICA. 67 hall of the council, which is held every day for the dispatch of business. This hall is divided into two rooms by a longitudinal partition : the further apart ment is consequently deprived of light, and the only entrance into it is a low aperture in the parti tion. In this sanctuary are kept the treasures of religion and of the State: the chaplets of stag's- horn, the cup for medicine, the chickikouds, the calumet of peace, and the national standard formed of an eagle's tail. No person besides the Mico, the war-chief, and the high-priest, is allowed to enter this awful place. Tbe outer chamber ofthe council-house is divided into three parts, by three transverse partitions, breast-high. In these three boxes are placed three ranges of seats, one above another, backed by the partition of the sanctuary. On these benches, which are covered with raats, sit the Sacheras and the warriors. The other three galleries, which, with the coun cil-house, enclose the public square, are in like raanner each divided into three parts ; but they have no longitudinal partition. These galleries are called Banquetting Galleries; and here is always to be found a noisy concourse of persons engaged in various games. F 2 68 TRAVELS The walls, the partitions, the wooden pillars of these galleries, are covered with hieroglyphic orna ments, which comprize the sacerdotal and political secrets of the nation. These paintings represent raen in different attitudes, birds and beasts with hu man heads, and men with the heads of brutes. The designs of these figures are bold, and in the natural proportions : the colours are vivid, but laid on without art. The order of architecture of the columns varies in the villages, according to the tribe inhabiting them : at Otasses tbe columns are twisted in spirals, because the Muscogulges of Otasses be long to the tribe of the Serpent. This nation has a town of peace and a town of blood. The town of peace is the capital of the con federation of the Creeks, and is called Apalachucla. In this town no blood is ever spilt, and when a treaty for a general peace Is on foot, the deputies of the Creeks are suraraoned thither. The town of blood is called Coweta ; it Is about a dozen miles frora Apalachucla, and here the deli berations on war are held. In the confederation of the Creeks, the Savages residing in tbe beautiful village of Uche, which numbers two thousand five hundred inhabitants, and can bring into the field five hundred war- IN AMERICA. 69 riors, are worthy of particular notice. These Sa vages speak tho Savanna or Savantica language — a language radically different frora the Muscogulge. The deputies of the village of Uche generally diff"er in opinion frora the other members of the council, who feel jealous of them, but both parties are dis creet enough to abstain from a rupture. The Sirainoles, less nuraerous than the Musco gulges, have but nine villages, all situated on the Flint river. You cannot stir a step In their country but you meet with savannahs, lakes, springs, and rivers of the finest water. The SIrainole is of a cheer ful, contented, araorous disposition : his step is light, his countenance open and serene ; his motions be speak animation and activity. He talks much, and with volubility; his language is harmonious and fluent. So strongly are these people imbued with this gaiety and vivacity of disposition, that they can scarcely assume a grave deportment In the po litical assemblies of the confederation. The Sirainoles and the Muscogulges are tall in stature, but by an extraordinary contrast, their wo men are of the smallest race of females known in America ; they rai'ely exceed the height of four feet two or three inches ; their hands and feet are like those of a European girl nine or ten years old. 70 TRAVELS But nature has made them amends for this kind of injustice: their figure is elegant and graceful ; their eyes are black, extremely long, full of languor and modesty. They cast them down with a sort of vo luptuous bashfulness ; and if you were not to look at them when they speak, you would imagine you heard children pronouncing but half-articulated words. The Creek women do less hard work than the other Indian woraen : they occupy theraselves with erabroidery, dyeing, and other light eraployraents. The slaves spare them the labour of cultivating the ground : but they, as well as the warriors, assist In reaping the crop. The Muscogulges are renowned for poetry and music. On the third night of the feast of the new maize, they assemble In the council-house, and dis pute the prize of song. This prize is adjudged, ac cording to the plurality of voices, by the Mico ; it is a bough of evergreen oak ; araong the Greeks, an olive-branch was an object of competition. Wo men are frequently candidates for, and obtain, the crown ; one of their odes is still celebrated. Song ofthe White Skin. " The white skin came from Virginia. It was IN AMERICA. 71 rich: it had blue cloths, gunpowder, arras, and French poison.* The white skin saw Tebeima the Ikouessen. -|~ " I love thee, it said to the painted girl : when I approach thee I feel the marrow melt in my bones ; my eyes grow dim ; I seera ready to die. " The painted girl, who coveted the wealth of the white skin, replied, ' Let me imprint my name upon thy lips, press my bosora to thine,' " Tibeiraa and the white skin built a hut. The Ikouessen spent the great riches of the stranger and was inconstant. The white skin knew it, but could not cease to love her. It went frora door to door begging raaize to keep Tibeiraa frora starving. When the white skin could obtain a little liquid fire,:}: it drank it that it raight forget its griefs. " Still loving Tibeiraa, still deceived by her, the white man lost his reason and strolled about in the forests. The father of the painted girl, an illus trious Sachem, reprimanded her ; the heart of a woraan who has ceased to love is harder than the fruit of the papaya. " The white skin returned to its hut. It was naked ; it had a long grisly beard ; its eyes were * Spirituous liquors. f Courtesan. :j; Ardent spirit. 72 TRAVELS hollow, its lips pale ; it sat down on a raat to solicit hospitality in its own hut. The white raan was hungry ; when he had gone raad he fancied hira self a child and took Tibeiraa for his raother. " Tibeiraa, who had again acquired riches with another warrior In the old hut of the white skin, felt abhorrence of hira whora she had once loved. She drove him away. The white skin sat down on a heap of leaves at the door and expired. Tibe'iraa died too. When the SIrainole asks what are the ruins of that hut covered with long grass, he re ceives no answer." The Spaniards placed a spring of youth In the beautiful wilds of Florida. Was I not then autho rized to chuse these wilds for the scene of sorae other illusions ? The reader will presently see what has becorae of the Creeks, and what fate threatens that tribe which was raaking great strides towards civihzatlon. IN AMERICA. 73 THE HURONS AND IROQUOIS. Republic -in a state of nature. If the Natchez furnish the type of despotism in the state of nature, and the Creeks the chief feature of limited monarchy ; the Hurons and the Iroquois exhibited in the same state of nature the republican forra of governraent. Besides the constitution of the nation properly so called, they had, like the Creeks, a general representative asserably and a federative corapact. The government of the Hurons diffiered a little from that of the Iroquois. Along with the council of the tribes there was an hereditary chief, whose succession was continued in the female line, as among the Natchez, If the family of this chief became ex tinct, the noblest matron of the tribe chose a new chief. The influence of women could not fail to be considerable, in a nation in whi^ch policy and nature gave them such prerogatives. To this influ ence historians attribute part of the good and bad qualities of the Huron. Among the Asiatic nations the women are slaves, and have no share in the government : but, being 74 TRAVELS charged with the domestic concerns, they are in ge neral exempted frora the severer labour of cultivat ing the soil. Among the nations of German origin, the women were free, but they were strangers to political trans actions, if not to those of valour and honour. Among the tribes of North America, the women participated in affairs of state, but they were em ployed in those toilsome duties which have devolved upon men in civilized Europe. Slaves and beasts of burden in the fields and In the chace, they be came free and queens in family raeetlngs and In the councils of the nation. We raust go back to the Gauls to find a semblance of this condition of the sex in a nation. The Iroquois, or the Five Nations,* called in the Algonquin language the Agannonsioni, were a co lony of Hurons. They separated from the latter at a period unknown, left the shores of Lake Huron, and settled on the south bank of the river Hoche- laga (the St. Lawrence), not far from Lake Cham- plain. In the sequel they ascended as high as Lake Ontario, and occupied the country situate between Lake Erie and the sources of the river Albany. The Iroquois afford a striking example of the * Six, according to the division of the English. IN AMERICA. 75 change which oppression and independence can pro duce in the character of raen. After they had se ceded frora the Hurons, they addicted theraselves to the cultivation of the soil, and becarae an agri cultural and peaceable nation, whence they derived their name of Agannonsioni. Their neighbours, the Adirondacs, out of which we have made Algonquins, a warrior and hunter tribe, whose domination extended over an imraense tract of country, despised the Huron emigrants, whose crops they purchased. It happened that the Algonquins invited some young Iroquois to a hunt ing party, and the latter distinguished themselves in such a manner, that the jealous Algonquins mur dered their guests. For the first time the Iroquois flew to arms; though beaten at first, they resolved to perish to the last man or to be free. A martial spirit, of which they had not themselves been aware, all at once dis played itself in thera. They in their turn defied the Algonquins, who aUied themselves with the Hurons, from whom the Iroquois derived their ori gin. At the moraent when this quarrel raged with the greatest vehemence, Jacques Cartier, and after wards Charapelain, arrived in Canada. The Algon quins obtained the aid of the strangers, and the Iro- 76 TRAVELS quois had to cope with the French, the Algonquins, and the Hurons. The Dutch soon afterwards arrived at Manhatte (New York). The Iroquois sought the friendship of these new Europeans, procured fire-arms, and in a short time becarae raore expert in the use of those weapons than the whites themselves. There is no example among civlhzed nations of war so long and so implacable as that waged by the Iroquois against the Algonquins and the Hurons. It lasted above three centuries. The Algonquins were extermi nated, and the Hurons reduced to a tribe of fugi tives, seeking protection under the cannon of Que bec. The French colony in Canada, on the point succumbing itself to the attacks of the Iroquois, was saved only by a calculation of the policy of those extraordinary Savages.* It is probable that the Indians of North America were at first governed by kings, like the people of Rome and Athens, and that these monarchies were * Other traditions, as we have seen, make the Iroquois a column of the great migration of the Lennilenaps, who came from the coast of the Pacific Ocean. This column of Iroquois and Hurons is supposed to have expelled the tribes in the north of Canada, and among the rest the Algonquins, whilst the Delaware Indians, more to the south, are conjectured to have descended to the Atlantic, dispersing the primitive nations settled on the east and west of the Alleghany mountains. IN AMERICA. 77 in the sequel transformed into aristocratic republics. In the principal Huron and Iroquois hamlets there were usually found noble families, to the number of three. These families were of the stock of the three chief tribes : one of these tribes enjoyed a sort of pre-eminence ; the raerabers of this first tribe called each other brothers, and the members of the other two tribes cousins. These three tribes bore the names of the Huron tribes : — the tribe of the Roebuck, of the Wolf, and of the Tortoise. The latter was divided Into two branches, the Great and the Little Tortoise. The government, extremely complicated, was composed of three councils, the council of assist ants, the council of elders, and the council of war riors capable of bearing arras, that is to say, of the body of the nation. Each family sent a deputy to the council of as sistants ; this deputy was appointed by the woraen, who frequently chose one of their own sex to re present them. The council of assistants was the supreme council : thus the chief power belonged to the women, whose lieutenants only the men ac knowledged themselves to be : but In the council of elders was vested the right of final decision, and to 78 TRAVELS it were submitted In appeal the deliberations of the council of assistants. The Iroquois were of opinion that they ought not to deprive themselves of the assistance of a sex whose subtile and inventive genius is fertile in re sources, and knows full well how to act on the hu man heart ; but they were also aware that the ordi nances of a council of feraales might be influenced by passion, and they deemed it right that these ordi nances should be terapered, and as It were cooled, by the judgment of the elders. A similar council of women existed among our ancestors, the Gauls. The second council, or the council of elders, was the moderator between the council of assistants and the council coraposed of the body of the young warriors. All the raerabers of these three councils had not a right to speak : spokesraen elected by each tribe discussed the aff'airs of state before the councils. These orators raade politics and eloquence their particular study. This custom, which would be an obstacle to liberty among the civilized nations of Europe, was only a measure of order among the Iroquois. Among these people nothing of particular liberty IN AMERICA. 79 was sacrificed to the general liberty. No raeraber of the three councils deemed himself bound indivi dually by the deliberation of the councils : at the sarae tirae no instance was known of a warrior having refused to submit to them. The Iroquois nation was divided into five can tons : these cantons were not dependent on one ano ther ; they had separately the right of making peace and war. In these cases the neutral cantons prof fered their mediation. The five cantons from time to time appointed de puties, who renewed the general alliance. At this diet, held amid the forests, they discussed any grand enterprizes for the honour and safety of the whole nation. Each deputy raade a report relative to the canton which he represented, and the raeans of pro moting the general prosperity were deliberated upon. The Iroquois were as famous for their policy as for their arras. Placed between the English and the French, they soon perceived the rivalship of those two nations. They were avsjare that they should be courted by both : they made an alliance with the English whora they disliked, against tbe French whom they esteemed, but who had joined the Algonquins and the Hurons, Still they wished not a complete triumph to either of the stranger 80 TRAVELS parties ; accordingly, when the Iroquois were ready to disperse the French colony in Canada, an order from the council of Sacheras stopped the army and obliged it to return ; and again, when the French were on the point of conquering New Jersey and ex- pelhng the English from it, the Iroquois sent the forces of their five nations to the assistance of the English, and saved them. The Iroquois retained nothing in comraon with the Huron but his language. The Huron, lively, witty, fickle, brave even to rashness, tall in stature and elegant In person, seeraed as If born to be the ally of the French. The Iroquois, on the contrary, was of robust make, had a wide chest, muscular legs, and nervous arms. The large round eyes ofthe Iroquois sparkle with independence ; his whole aspect was that of a hero : high combinations of mind and lofty senti ments of soul beamed from bis brow. This intrepid Savage was not daunted by fire-arms, when they were eraployed for the first tirae against hira : he reraained firm amid the whizzing of balls and the roaring of cannon, as if he had been accustoraed to them all his life ; nay, he seeraed to pay no raore attention to thera than he would have done to a thunder-storra. As soon as he could procure a IN AMERICA. 81 miisket, he raade better use of it than a Eu ropean. He did not, however, on that account, relinquish the toraahawk, the knife, and the bow and arrow ; but he added to thera the carbine, the pistol, the dagger, and the hatchet. He seemed never to have weapons enough for his valour. Doubly furnished with the murderous instruments of Europe and America, his head adorned with plumes of feathers, his ears slashed, his face daubed black, his arms stained with blood, this noble champion of the New World became as formidable to look at as to combat, on the shore which he defended foot by foot against the foreigner. It was in education that the Iroquois placed the source of their virtue, A young man never sat in the presence of his senior : the respect paid to age was like that which Lycurgus introduced at Lace- dsemon. Youth were habituated to endure the greatest privations, as well as to brave the greatest dangers. Long fasts, coraraanded^ by pohcy in the narae of religion, dangerous bunting expedi tions, continual exercise in arms, and manly and athletic sports, had imparted something indomitable to the character of the Iroquois, Little urchins would frequently tie their arms together, lay burn- VOL, II, G 82 TRAVELS ing charcoal upon them, and thus try which would support the pain longest. If a young girl had com mitted a fault and her mother threw water in her face, this reprimand alone would soraetiraes cause the girl to hang herself. The Iroquois cared as little for pain as life: a Sa chem a hundred years old defied the flames of the pile : he urged his eneraies to redouble their cru elty; he challenged them to wring frora him a single groan. This magnaniralty.of age had no other object than to set an exaraple to the young warriors, and to teach thera to becorae worthy of their fkthers. Every thing belonging to these people partook of this grandeur ; their language, almost all aspirated, astonished the ear. When an Iroquois spoke, you would have imagined that you heard a man, who, expressing himself with effort, passed successively from the lowest intonations to the highest. Such was the Iroquois before the shade and de struction of European civilization had extended theraselves to hira. Though I have said that the civil law and the criminal law are nearly unknown among the In dians, custom has in sorae parts supphed their place. Murder, which among the Franks raight be ex- IN AMERICA, 83 piated by a pecuniary composition proportionate to the rank of the parties, cannot be atoned for among the Savages but by the death of tbe murderer. In Italy, in the middle ages, each faraily made common cause in every tiling that concerned any of its mem bers : hence those bereditary feuds, which divided the nation wben hostile families were possessed of power. Among the tribes of the north of America, the relatives of the homicide afford hira no assistance, but the faraily of the murdered person make a point of revenging bis death, Tbe criminal whora the law does not threaten, whom Nature does not defend, finding no asylum either in the woods, whither he is pursued by the kinsmen of tbe deceased, or araong strange tribes who would deliver hira up, or at his own hearth which would not save him, be comes so wretched that an avenging tribunal would be to him a raercy. There at least he would have a forra of trial, sorae sort of condemnation or ac quittal : for if the law strikes, it preserves also, like time, which both sows and reaps. The Indian raur- derer, weary of a wandering life, finding no public faraily to punish, surrenders hiraself to a private fa mily, which immolates him : for want of an armed g2 84 TRAVELS force, guilt itself conducts the criralnal to the feet of the judge and of the executioner. Involuntary horaiclde was sometiraes expiated by presents, Araong the Abenaquis, the law pro nounced sentence : the body of the raurdered man was exposed on a kind of hurdle in the open air ; the raurderer, bound to a post, was dooraed to take bis food and to pass several days in this pillory of death. IN AMERICA. 85 PRESENT STATE OF THE SAVAGES OF NORTH AMERICA, Were I to present this sketch of Savage Ame rica as a faithful picture of what exists at this day, I should deceive tbe reader : I have delineated v/hat was rather than what is. Several traits of the In dian character may no doubt still be found in the wandering tribes of the New World, but the totality of the manners, the originality of the customs, the primitive form of the governments, in a word, the American genius has disappeared. After describing the past, it remains for me to coraplete my task by depicting the present, ., If we take away from the accounts of the first navigators, and the first colonists who explored and cleared Louisiana, — if, I say, we take away Florida, Georgia, the two Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, 86 TRAVELS and all that is called New England, Acadia, and Canada, we cannot estimate the savage population comprized between the Mississipi and the river St, Lawrence, at the moment of the discovery of those countries, at more than three millions of souls. At present the Indian population of all North America, not including either the Mexicans or the Esquimaux, scarcely amounts to four hundred thou sand persons. No census of the aboriginal tribes of this part of tbe New World has ever been taken : I will make the attempt. Many raen, many tribes, will fall to appear at the suramons : th'e last histo rian of these people, it is the register of their deaths that I am about to open. In 1534, on the arrival of Jacques Cartier in Canada, and at the epoch of the foundation of Que bec by Charapelain, in 1608, the Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Hurons, with their allied or subject tribes, namely, the Etcherains, the Souriq\iois, the Bersiaraites, the Papinaclets, the Montaguays, the Artlkamegues, the Nipisisslngs, the Temiscamings, the Amikoways, the Cnistinaux, the Assiniboils, the Potowatomies, the Nokais, the Otchagras, and the Miamis, arraed nearly fifty thousand warriors; whence we may infer that these Savages- constituted a population of about two hundred and fifty thou- IN AMERICA, 87 sand souls. According to Lahontan, each of the five great Iroquois villages contained fourteen thou sand Inhabitants, At the present day, we find in Lower Canada only six hamlets of Savages, who have embraced Christianity: tbe Hurons of Co- rette, the Abenaquis of St, Francis, the Algonquins, the Nipisisslngs, the Iroquois of the Lake of the Two Mountains, and the Osouekatchis — scant re lics of several races which no longer exist, and which, collected by religion, furnish a two-fold evi dence of its power to preserve and of that of raan to destroy. The reranant of the five Iroquois nations is in closed in the English and Araerican possessions, and the number of all the Savages just mentioned amounts, at the utmost, to between two thousand ' five hundred and three thousand souls. The Abenaquis, who, in 1587, occupied Acadia, (now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia,) the Savages of Maine, who destroyed all tbe settlements of the Whites in 1675, and continued thgir ravages till 1748; the hordes which inflicted the same calami ties on New Hampshire; the Wampanoags, the Nipraucks, who fought a sort of pitched battles with the English, besieged Hadley, and assaulted Brookfield in Massachusets ; the Indians who in 88 TRAVELS the same years, 1673 and 1675, corabated the Europeans; the Pequots of Connecticut; the In dians who negociated the cession of part of their lands with the States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; the Piscataways of Maryland ; the tribes subject to Powhattan in Vir ginia ; the Parloustees in Carolina — all these tribes have disappeared.* Of the nuraerous nations found by Ferdinand de Soto In the Floridas, (and under this narae raust be understood all that now forras the States of Georgia, Alabaraa, Mississipi, and Tenessee,) none are now left but the Creeks, the Cherokees, and tbe Chicka saws.'^ The Creeks, whose ancient raanners I have de scribed, could not furnish at this present time two thousand warriors. Of the vast countries which belonged to them, they now possess no more than * Most of these tribes belonged to the great nation of the Lennilenaps, the two principal branches of which were the Iroquois and the Hurons in the north, and the Delaware Indians in the south. t On the subject of Florida the following work may be con sulted with advantage : Survey qf West Florida, containing its Geography, its Topogra-phy, 8fc. to luhich is added an Appendix relative to its Antiquities, Grants qf Lands, and Canals, and ac companied with a Map of the Coast and Plans of Pensacola, and the Entrance of the Harbour. Philadelphia, 1817. IN AMERICA, 89 about eight thousand square miles in the State of Georgia, and a tract of nearly the same extent in Alabaraa, The Cherokees and the Chickasaws, re duced to a handful of men, live in a corner of the States of Georgia and Tenessee ; the latter on the two banks of the river Hiwassee, Weak as they are, the Creeks bravely fought the Americans in the years 1813 and 1814, From the troops under Generals Jackson, White, Clay- borne, and Floyd, they sustained great losses at Tal ladega, Hillabes, Autossee, Benachaca, and espe cially at Entonopeka, These Savages had made considerable progress in civilization, and particu larly in the art of war, employing and directing artillery with great skill. Some years since they tried and put to death orie of their Micoes, or kings, for having sold lands to the Whites without the par ticipation of the national council. The Americans, who covet the rich tract still oc cupied by tbe Muscogulges and the Sirainoles, have endeavoured to induce them to cede it for a sura of raoney, proposing to reraove thera afterwards to the west side of tbe Missouri, The State of Geor gia has pretended to have purchased this territory ; but the Araerican Congress has thrown some ob stacle in the way of this claim ; sooner or later 90 TRAVELS however, the Creeks, Cherokees, and Chickasaws, cooped up between the white population of the Mississipi, Tenessee, and Alabama, will be obhged to submit to exile or extermination. All the Savages who inhabited both banks of the Mississipi, from Its mouth to its conflux with the Ohio, the Blloxis, the Torimas, the Kappas, the Sotowees, the Bayagoulas, the Colapissas, the Tan- sas, the Natchez, and the Yazous, have disappeared. In the valley of the Ohio, the tribes which still roved along that river and its branches rose against the Americans in 1810. They placed at their head a sorcerer, or prophet, who assured thera of victory, while his brother, the faraous Thecumseh, took the field. Three thousand Savages assembled for the purpose of recovering their independence. The American General Harrison marched against them with a body of troops ; he met them on the 6th of November, 1811, at the conflux of the Tippacanoe and the Wabash. The Indians manifested the greatest courage, and their chief, Thecumseh, dis played extraordinary talent: he was nevertheless defeated. The war in 1812 between the Americans and the English renewed the hostilities on tbe frontiers of the desert ; almost all the Savages ranged themselves IN AMERICA. 91 on the side of the Enghsh; Thecumseh had en tered into their service : Colonel Proctor, an English officer, directed the operations. Scenes of barbarity took place at Cikago, and at Forts Meigs and Milden ; the heart of Captain Wells was devoured in a feast on human flesh. General Harrison has tened to the spot, and again' beat the Savages, in the action on the Thames. Thecumseh was killed, and Colonel Proctor owed his safety to the fleetness of his horse. Qn the conclusion of peace between the United States and England in 1814, the boundaries of the two empires were definitively regulated, and the Americans have ensured their domination over the Savages by a chain of military posts. From the mouth of the Ohio to fhe fall of St. Anthony on the Mississipi, we find on the left bank of the latter river the Saukees, whose population amounts to four thousand eight hundred souls, the Foxes to one thousand six hundred, the Winebe- gos to one thousand six hundred, and the Meno- menes to one thousand two hundred. The Illinois are the stock of these tribes. Then come the Sioux, of Mexican race, divided into six nations : the first dwells in part on the Up per Mississipi ; the second, third, fourth, and fifth, 92 TRAVELS inhabited the banks of the river St, Pierre; the sixth extends towards the Missouri, These six Sioux nations are computed at about forty-five thousand souls. Beyond the Sioux, towards New Mexico, are found sorae rehcs of the Osages, the Cansas, the Octotatas, the Mactotatas, the Ajouways, and the Pawnees. The Assiboins rove, under different names, from the northern sources of the Missouri to the great Red River, which falls into Hudson's Bay: their population is about twenty-five thousand souls. The Chipaways, of Algonquin race, and enemies to the Sioux, hunt to tbe number of three or four thousand warriors in the deserts which separate the great lakes of Canada from Lake Winnepic. This Is all that we know most positive respecting the population of the Savages of North America, If we add to these known tribes the less frequented tribes dwelling beyond the Rocky Mountains, we shall still find it difficult to make up the number of four hundred thousand souls mentioned at the com- raencement of this enuraeration. There are travel lers who estiraate the Indian population on this side of the Rocky Mountains at no raore than one hun dred thousand, and that beyond those mountains, IN AMERICA, 93 including the Savages of California, at no more than fifty thousand. Driven by the European populations towards the north-west of North America, the Savage tribes are returning by a singular destiny, to expire on the same shore where they landed, in unknown ages, to take possession of Araerica, In the Iroquois language the Indians gave theraselves the appellation of men of always, ongoueonoue : these men of always have passed away, and the stranger will soon have left to the lawful heirs of a whole world nothing but the mould of their graves. The causes of this depopulation are well known : the use of strong liquors, and the vices, diseases, wars, which we have multiplied among the Indians, have brought destruction upon these tribes ; but it is not absolutely true that the social state, by its es tablishment in their forests, has been an efficient cause of this destruction. The Indian was not savage ; European civiliza tion has not acted on the pure state*of nature ; it has acted on the incipient American civilization ; had it not met with any thing, it would have cre ated something ; but it found manners and has de stroyed them, because it was the stronger, and it did not deem it right to mix itself up with tb-ese manners. 94 TRAVELS To ask what the inhabitants of America would have been, had America escaped the search of our navigators, would certainly be a very useless ques tion, but nevertheless a very curious one to investi gate. Would they have perished in silence, like those nations farther advanced in the arts, which in all probability once flourished in the regions watered by the Ohio, the Muskingum, the Tenessee, the Lower Mississipi and the Tumbecbee ? Setting aside for a moraent the great principles of Christianity and the interests of Europe, a philo sophic mind would feel disposed to wish that the people of the New World had had time to develop themselves out of the circle of our institutions. By this we are every where confined to the worn-out forms of an antiquated civilization. I am not speaking of the populations of Asia, held for four. thousand years in a despotisra which savoiu-s of childhood — among the Savages of Canada, New England, and the Floridas, were found commence- raents of all the customs and all the laws of the Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews. A civihzationof a diff'erent nature from ours might have reprodmced the men of antiquity, or have ehcited unknown light from a source with which we are not yet ac- qtiainted. Who knows but we should have seen IN AMERICA. 95 sorae Araerican Columbus coming and landing upon our shores to discover the Old World ? The corruption of Indian manners has kept pace with the depopulation of the tribes. The religious traditions are become much raore confused; the instruction first imparted by the missionaries of Canada has mingled foreign ideas with the native ideas of the aborigines : and at the present day we perceive through gross fables distorted Christian doctrines. Most of the Savages wear crosses for ornaments, and the Protestant traders sell them what was given to them by the Catholic missiona ries. To the honour of our country and the glory of our religion be it said, that the Indians were strongly attached to the French ; they have never ceased to regret them; and a black robe (a missionary) is still held in veneration in the American forests. If the Enghsh, in their wars with the United States, have seen almost all the Savages enrol themselves under the British banner, the reason is because the English of .Quebec have still descendants of the French among them, and because they occupy the country which was go verned by Ononthio.* The Savage continues to love * The Great Mountain— the narae given by the Savages to the French governors of Canada. 96 TRAVELS US in the soil which we have trodden, in the land where we were his first guests, and where we have left graves ; in serving the new possessors of Ca nada, the enemies of the French, be reraains faithful to France. In a recent book of travels to the sources of the Mississipi we find the following passage. The au thority of this passage is the stronger because the author. In another part of bis work, pauses to con demn the Jesuits of the present day. " To do justice to truth, the French missionaries, in general, have invariably distinguished themselves everywhere by an exemplary life, befitting their pro fession. Their religious sincerity, their apostolic cha rity, their insinuating kindness, their heroic pati ence, their remoteness from austerity and fanati cism, fix in these countries raeraorable epochs in the annals of Christianity ; and while the memory of a Del Vilde, a VodlUa, &c. will be held in ever lasting execration by all truly Christian hearts, that of a Daniel, a Brebceuf, &c. will never lose any of that veneration which the history of discoveries and missions has so justly conferred on them. Hence that predilection which the Savages manifest for the French ; a predilection which they naturally find in the recesses of their souls, cherished bv the tradi- IN AMERICA. 97 tions which their fathers have left in favour of the first apostles of Canada, then called New France." * This confirms what I have elsewhere written re specting the missions of Canada. The brilliant character of French valour, our disinterestedness, our gaiety, our adventurous spirit, sympathized with the genius of the Indians ; but it must also be conceded that the Catholic religion is better suited to the education of the Savage than the Protestant. When Christianity sprung up amidst a civilized world and spectacles of Paganism, it was simple in its exterior, rigid in its morality, metaphysical in its arguments, because it aimed at drawing from error people seduced by tbe senses or misled by sys- teiris of philosophy. When Christianity passed from the delights of Rome and of the schools of Athens to the forests of Germany, It surrounded itself with pomp and images, for the purpose of enchanting the simplicity of the barbarian. The Protestant governments of America have bestowed little attention on the civilization of *the Savages ; they have thought of nothing but trafficking with them ; now, commerce which heightens civihzatlon araong nations already civilized, and in which knowledge has gained the ascendancy over raan- *¦ Beltrami's Travels, 1823. VOL. II. H 98 TRAVELS ners, produces nothing but corruption in people among whom raanners are superior to knowledge. Religion is evidently the priraltive law: Fathers Jogues, Lalleraent, and Brebceuf, were legislators of a very diff'erent kind frora the Enghsh and Ame rican traders. As the religious notions ofthe Savages have been confused, so the political institutions of those peo ple have been deranged, by tbe invasion of the Europeans. The springs of Indian governraent were subtle and delicate ; they had not been sea soned by time; and foreign policy, by touching, easily broke them. Those various councils balan cing their respective authorities, those counterpoises forraed by the assistants, the Sacheras, the matrons, the young warriors ; this whole machine, has been deranged ; our presents, our vices, our arms, have bought, corrupted, or slain, the persons of whom these diff'erent powers were coraposed. At the present day the Indian tribes are raerely led by a chief; such as have confederated raeet to gether occasionally in general diets ; but as these asserablies are not regulated by any law, they alraost always separate without coraing to any decision. They have a sense of their own insignificance and the discouragement which accompanies weakness. IN AMERICA, 99 Another cause has contributed to impair the go vernment of the Savages ; the establishment of English and American railitary posts in the midst of the forests. There a commandant constitutes himself the protector of tbe Indians In the wilder ness ; by raeans of a few presents he induces the tribes to appear before him ; he declares himself their father, and the envoy of one of the three white moons — so the Savages call the Spaniards, the French, and the English. The comraandant in forms his red children, that he is going to fix such and such boundaries, to clear such and such lands, &c. The Savage begins at last to believe that he is not the real owner of the soil which is appropriated without bis consent; he becoraes accustoraed to consider himself as a being of an inferior species to the white : he submits to receive orders to hunt, to fight, for his raasters. What need have they to govern theraselves who have nothing to do but obey? It is natural that raanners and dtistoras should have deterloriated with religion and policy, that every thing should have been swept away at once. When the Europeans penetrated into America, the Savages derived food and clothing from the produce of the chace, and carried on no kind of H 2 100 TRAVELS traffic with It among theraselves. The strangers soon taught thera to barter It for arras, strong liquors, various household utensils, coarse cloths, and per sonal ornaments. Some Frenchmen, who were called wood-rangers, at first accorapanied the Indians in their excursions. By and by there were formed cora panies of traders, which pushed forward advanced posts, and established factories In the midst of tbe deserts. Pursued by European rapacity and by the corruption of the civilized nations into the re cesses of their forests, the Indians exchange In these magazines rich furs for articles of little value, but which are become with them objects of priraary necessity. Not only do they traffic with the pro duce of the chace in hand, but even dispose of the proceeds of future expeditions, just as we should sell a growing crop. These advances granted by the traders plunge the Indians Into an abyss of debt : they are then exposed to aU the calamities Incident to the lowest classes of our cities and to all the distresses of tbe Savage. Anxious to augment the quantity of their booty, they transform their hunting excursions Into a .most severe toil ; they take their wives along with them ; these wretched creatures, on whom are iraposed all the labours of the carap, drag the sledges, fetch the IN AMiyilCA. 101 game when it is killed, tan the hides, and dry the flesh. They are seen laden with the heaviest bur dens, besides carrying their children at the breast or at their backs. When pregnant and near their tirae, in order to accelerate their delivery and their return to work, they lean with tbe abdomen upon a wooden bar elevated sorae feet above the ground, and, with their head and legs thus hanging down, they give birth to a miserable being. In all the seve rity of the malediction — In dolore paries Jilios ! Civilization, therefore, introduced by comraerce among the Araerican tribes, instead of developing their intelligence, has brutalized thera. The Indian is becorae treacherous, selfish, dissolute, and a liar : his hut Is a receptacle of filth and ordure. When he was naked, or covered with the skins of beasts, he had about hira soraething proud and grand: now, European rags, without covering his nudity, raerely attest bis Indigence : he is no longer a Sa vage in his forests ; he is a beggar at the door of a factory. • Lastly, there has arisen a sort of cross-breed, the off"sprIng of European adventurers and feraale Sa vages. These men, who are called burnt wood, from the colour of their complexion, are the agents or brokers between the nations from which they de- 102 TRAVELS rive their double origin; speaking the language both of their fathers and their mothers, interpreters for the traders with the Indians and with the In dians for the traders, they have the vices of both races. These bastards of civlhzed nature and of savage nature sell themselves sometiraes to the Arae- ricans, at others to the English, who strive through thera to secure the monopoly ofthe fur-trade; they keep up the rivalry between tbe English Hudson's Bay and North- West Corapanies, and the Araeri can Columbian Fur, and Missouri Fur Companies and others ; and they themselves hunt on account of the traders and with hunters paid by the Com panies. The scene is then totally different from that ex hibited by Indian hunting expeditions. The men are on horseback ; they have covered waggons for the conveyance of the dried flesh and furs ; and the women and children are drawn In small carts by dogs. These dogs, so useful in the northern re gions, are an additional charge to their raasters ; for the latter, unable to feed them during summer, put them out to board with keepers on credit, and thus contract fresh debts. The famished dogs some tiraes escape frora the kennel ; as they are prevent ed from hunting they go a-fishing, and may be IN AMERICA. 103 seen plunging into the rivers and seizing the fish at tbe very bottora of the water. In Europe people know but of that Araerican war which gave a free nation to the world. They are not aware that blood has been spilt for the petty interests of a few fur-dealers. In 1811 the Hud son's Bay Corapany sold to Lord Selkirk a large tract of land on the banks of the Red River, where a settleraent was forraed In 1812. Tbe North-West or Canada Company took urabrage at this : the two Corapanies, with various Indian tribes, their allies, and seconded by burnt woods, carae to blows. This petty civil warfare, which was terrible, took place in the frozen deserts of Hudson's Bay : Lord Sel kirk's colony was destroyed in the month of June 1815, precisely at the moraent when the battle of Waterloo was fought. On these two theatres, so diff'erent for brilliancy and for obscurity, the suff"er- ings of the human species were the same. The two Companies, having exhausted their strength, felt that it would be more advantageous to both to unite than to tear each other in pieces : they are now pushing their operations in concert westward as far as the Colombia, and northward to the rivers which run into the Polar sea. 104 TRAVELS In short, the proudest nations of North America have retained nothing of their race but the language and the garb; even this latter is altered: they have learned somewhat of the art of cultivating the soil and rearing cattle. Instead of tbe faraous warrior that he was, the Savage of Canada Is becorae an ob scure herdsman — an extraordinary sort of swain, driving bis raares with a toraahawk, and his sheep with arrows, Philip, successor to Alexander, died a clerk at Rome ; an Iroquois sings and dances for a few pieces of money at Paris : one ought not to see the raorrow of glory. In sketching this picture of a savage world, In referring incessantly to Canada and Louisiana, in observing on the old raaps the extent of the ancient French colonies in America, I was haunted by one painful idea : I asked rayself how the government of my country could -have left colonies to perish which would now be to us a source of inexhaustible prosperity. Frora Acadia and Canada to Louisiana, from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to that of the Mississipi, the territories of New France surrounded what originally formed the confederation of the thirteen United States. The eleven other States, the district of Colombia, the Michigan, North-West, Missouri, IN AMERICA, 105 Oregon, and Arkansa, territories, belonged, or would have belonged to us, as they now belong to tbe United States, by the cession of the Enghsh and Spaniards, our first heirs in Canada and in Louisiana. Take your point of departure between the 43d and 44th degree of north latitude, on the Atlantic, at Sandy Cape In Nova Scotia, formerly Acadia ; from this point draw a line at the back of the first United States, Maine, Vernon, New York, Pennsyl vania, Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia ; let this line run by the Tennessee to tbe Mississipi and New Orleans: then carry it up frora the 29th degree (the latitude of the mouths of the Mississipi), by the Arkansa territory to that of Oregon ; let it cross the Rocky Mountains, and terminate at Point St. George, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, in the 42d degree ,of north latitude ; the imraense region comprized between this line, the Atlantic Ocean to the north-east, the Polar Sea to the north, the Russian possessions to the north-\sjpst, and the gulph of Mexico to the south, that is to say, more than t^V^o thirds of North America, would acknow ledge the sovereignty of France. How would it have been, bad we still retained possession of such colonies, at the moment of the 106 TRAVELS emancipation of the United States? would this emancipation have taken place ? would our presence on the soil of America have hastened or retarded it? would New France itself have becorae free ? why not ? What misfortune could it have been to the mother-country to see an imraense empire, sprung from Its own bosora, free and flourishing — an erapire which would spread the glory of our name and language throughout another heraisphere ? We possessed beyond sea vast countries which might have offered a home to the excess of our population, an important market to our comraerce, a nursery to our navy : now, we are forced to confine in our prisons culprits condemned by the tribunals, for want of a spot of ground whereon to place these wretched creatures. We are excluded from the new world, where the human race is re-commencing. Tbe English and Spanish lan guages serve to express the thoughts of many millions of men in Africa, In Asia, in the South Sea islands, on tbe continent of the two Americas ; and we, disinherited of the conquests of our courage and our genius, bear the language of Racine, of Colbert, and of Louis XIV. spoken merely in a few hamlets of Louisiana and Canada, under a foreign sway : there it remains, as though IN AMERICA. 107 but for an evidence of the reverses of our fortune and the errors of our policy. Thus then has France disappeared frorn North Araerica, like those Indian tribes with which she sympathized, and some of the wrecks of which I have beheld. What has happened in this North America since the tirae when I travelled in it ? this is tbe proper place for relating that. To cheer the reader, I will at the conclusion of this work, spread before bis eyes a raarvellous picture : he shall learn what liberty can accoraplish for the happiness and the dignity of man, when it does not separate itself frora religious ideas, when it is both wise and holy. 108 TRAVELS UNITED STATES. Were I to revisit the United States, I should not know tbem again ; where I left forests, I should find cultivated lands ; where I had to clear myself a way through thickets, I should now travel upon high roads. The Mississipi, the Missouri, the Ohio, no longer flow through a wilderness ; large three-masted ships sail up thera, and raore than two hundred steara-vessels enliven their banks. At Natchez, instead of the cabin of Celuta there is now a charming town of about five thousand inha bitants. Chactas might now be , a member of Congress, and travel to Atala's residence by two roads, one of which leads to St. Stephen's on the Tumbecbee, and the other to Natchicotches : a road book would specify tbe stages, el even in number : Washington, Franklin, Homochitt, &c. The Alabaraa and Tennessee are divided, the former into thirty-three counties, containing twenty- one towns: the latter Into fifty-one counties, com prising forty-eight towns. Some of these towns, such as Catawba, the capital of Alabama, retain IN AMERICA. 109 their savage name, but they are surrounded by other places with a diffierent sort of denorainations : among the Muscogulges, the Sirainoles, the Chero kees, and the Chickasaws, we meet with a city of Athens, a Marathon, a Carthage, a Meraphls, a Sparta, a Florence, a Hampden, and counties of Colombia and Marengo. The glory of all countries has placed a narae in these sarae wilds where I raet with Father Aubry and the obscure Atala. Kentucky exhibits a Versailles ; a county called Bourbon has a Paris for its capital. All the exiles, all the oppressed, who have retired to Araerica, have carried with thera the reraerabrance of their own country. Falsi Simoentis ad undam Libabat cineri Andromache. Thus the United States cherish within their bosora, under the protection of liberty, an iraage and a raeraorial of raost of the celebrated places of ancient and modern Europe — like that garden in the Campagna of Rorae, in which Adrian had models ofthe different monuments of his erapire erected. It should be observed that there is scarcely a county but has a town, village, or hamlet, called Washington — touching unanimity of the gratitude of a nation. The Ohio now waters four States : Kentucky, no TRAVELS Ohio properly so called, Indiana, and Illinois. These four States send thirty deputies atnd eight senators to Congress : Virginia and Tennessee border upon the Ohio at two points ; it nurabers on its banks one hundred and ninety-one counties, and two hundred and eighty towns. A canal which is digging at the portage of its rapids, and which will be finished in three years, will render the river navi gable for large vessels as high as Pittsburg. Thirty high-roads raeet at Washington, as the Roman roads met at ancient Rorae, and diverging frora that point, run to the circuraference of the United States. Thus you raay go from Washington to Dover, in Delaware ; from Washington to Provi dence, Rhode Island ; frora Washington to Robins- town, in the district of Maine, the boundary to the British dorainions northward ; frora Washington to Concord ; frora Washington to Montpellier, in Con necticut ; from Washington to Albany, and thence to Montreal and Quebec; frora Washington to Sackett's Harbour, on Lake Ontario ; frora Wash ington to the fall and fort of Niagara ; frora Wash ington, .through Pittsburg to Detroit and to MachiUImackinac, on Lake Erie ; from Washington, through St. Louis on the Mississipi, to Council Bluffs, in Missouri; from Washington to New IN AMERICA. Ill Orleans and the mouth of the Mississipi; from Washington to Natchez;- from Washington to Charlestown, Savannah, and St. Augustin — the whole forming an interior circulation of roads of 25,747 miles. Frora the points to which these roads tend it is obvious that they traverse tracts formerly wild, but now cultivated and inhabited. On a great number of these roads you may travel post, or public stage coaches carry you from place to place at a moderate price. You raay now take the diligence for the Ohio or the fall of Niagara, as in ray tirae you en gaged an Indian guide or interpreter. Cross-roads branch off^ from the principal roads and are equally provided with the means of conveyance. These means are almost always of two kinds, for as there are every where lakes and rivers, you may travel either in row-boats, sailing-boats, or steam-vessels. Vessels of the latter class raake regular trips from Boston and New York to New Orleans : they are likewise established on the lakes of Canada, the Ontario, the Erie, tbe Michigan, the Champlain, on those lakes where thirty years ago scarcely the ca noes of Savages were to be seen, and where ships of the line now engage one another. The steam-vessels of the United States are not 112 TRAVELS only subservient to the wants of commerce and of travellers, but are also employed for the defence of the country : sorae of them, of immense size, placed at tbe mouths of rivers, armed with cannon and boil ing water, resemble at one and the same time mo dern citadels and fortresses of the middle ages. To tbe twenty-five thousand seven hundred and forty-seven miles of general roads raust be added the extent of four hundred and nineteen district roads, and of fifty-eight thousand one hundred and thirty-seven miles of water-ways. The canals in crease tbe number of tbe latter : tbe Middlesex ca nal joins the harbour of Boston with the river Mer rimack ; the Champlain canal forms a communica tion between that lake and the Canadian seas ; the famous Erie or New York Canal now unites Lake Erie and the Atlantic ; tbe Sautee, Chesapeake, and Albemarle Canals were constructed by the States of Carolina and Virginia ; and as broad rivers running in different directions approach towards their sources, nothing was easier than to connect them together. Five roads to the Pacific Ocean are al ready known; one only of these roads passes through the Spanish territory. A law of Congress, passed in the session of 1824-5, directs the estabhshment of a military post IN AMERICA. 113 at Oregon. The Americans, who have a settlement on the Colombia, can thus penetrate to the great ocean by a zone of land nearly six degrees in breadth, between English, Russian, and Spanish America, There are nevertheless natural limits to coloniza tion. The forests to the west and north of the Missouri are bounded by immense steppes, where not a tree is to be seen, and which seera to be un susceptible of culture," though grass grows abun dantly upon them. This verdant Arabia affords a passage to tbe colonists who repair in caravans to the Rocky Mountains and to New Mexico ; it sepa rates the United States of the Atlantic from the United States of the South Sea, like those deserts which, in the Old World, are interposed between fertile regions. An Araerican has off"ered to con struct at his own expense a solid high road frora St. Louis on the Mississipi to the mouth of the Colom bia, if the Congress will grant him a tract ten miles in depth on either side of the road, .This gigantic proposal has not been accepted. In the year 1789 there were oiily seventy-five post-offices in the United States : there are now up wards of five thousand. From 1790 to 1795, these offices increased from seventy-five to four hundred VOL. II. I 1 14 TRAVELS and fifty-three; in 1800 their number was nine hundred and three ; in 1805 they amounted to fif teen hundred and fifty-eight; in 1810 to two thou sand three hundred; in 1817 to three' thousand three hundred and fifty-nine ; in 1820 to four thousand and thirty : In 1825 to nearly five thousand five hundred. Letters and packets are conveyed by raail-coaches which travel about one hundred and fifty thousand miles a day, and by couriers on horseback and on foot. One great mail-coach Hue extends from Anson, In the state of Maine, through Washington, to Nash ville, in the state of Tennessee, a distance of fourteen hundred and forty-eight railes. Another line con nects Highgate, in the state of Verraont, with St. Mary in Georgia, a distance of thirteen hundred and sixty-nine railes. Relays for mail-coaches are sta-" tioned from Washington to Pittsburg, a distance of two hundred and twenty-six railes : they will soon be established as far as St. Louis on the Mississipi, by way of Vincennes, and as far as Nashville, through Lexington, In Kentucky. The inns are good and clean, and sometiraes excellent. Offices for the sale of the public lands are opened In the states of Ohio and Indiana, in the territory of IN AMERICA. 115 Michigan, Missouri, and Arkansas, and in the States of Louisiana, Mississipi, and Alabama. It is com puted that one hundred and fifty raillions of acres of land fit for cultivation, exclusively of the soil of vast forests, yet remain to be disposed of. These hun dred and fifty millions of acres are estimated to be worth fifteen hundred raillions of dollars, at the ave rage rate of ten dollars per acre, and reckoning tbe dollar at no more three francs — a very low calcula tion in every respect. We find- twenty-five railitary posts in the North ern States and twenty-two in the Southern States. In 1790 the population ofthe United States was 3,929,326 souls; in 1800, it was 5,305,666; in 1810, 7,239,300; in 1820, 9,609,827. This last nuraber included 1,531,436 slaves. In 1790, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Alabaraa, Mis sissipi, and Missouri, had not inhabitants enough to be worth nurabering. In 1800 Kentucky alone contained 73,677, and Tennessee 35,691. Ohio, without inhabitants in 1790, had 45' 365 in 1800; 230,760 in 1810 ; and 581,434 in 1820. Between 1810 and 1820, Alabaraa increased from 10,000 in habitants to 120,901. Thus the population of the United States has in creased every ten years, from 1790 to 1820, at the I 2 116 TRAVELS rate of thirty-five per cent. Six years have already elapsed of the ten which will be completed in 1830, when, it is presumed, the population of the United States will be little short of 1 2,875,000 souls ; and the State of Ohio will have 850,000 inhabitants, and that of Kentucky 750,000, If the population were to go on doubling every twenty-five years, the United States would have in 1855 a population of 25,750,000 souls ; and in twenty-five years raore, that is to say, in 1880, that population would exceed fifty raillions. . In 1821, tbe value of native and foreign produc tions exported frora the United States araounted to the sura of 64,974,382 dollars. In the sarae year, the public revenue was 14,264,000 dollars; the ex cess of the receipts beyond the expenditure was 3,334,826 dollars. In the same year, also, the na tional debt was reduced to 89,204,236 dollars. The army has sometiraes beeii raised to a hun dred thousand men : and the navy of the United States is composed of eleven sail of the line, nine frigates, and fifty other ships of war of various sizes. It IS superfluous to say any thing concerning the constitutions of the different States ; it is sufficient to know that they are all free. IN AMERICA, 117 There is no predominant religion, but every citi zen is expected to conform to sorae raode of Chris tian worship. The Catholic rehgion is making con siderable progress in the western States, Supposing, which I beheve to be the case, that the statistical summaries published by the United States are exaggerated by the national vanity, still there will be left a total of prosperity well worthy of our highest admiration. To complete this astonishing picture, we must figure to ourselves cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Savannah, New Orleans, lighted at night, filled with horses and carriages, offering all the gratifications of luxury, brought to their ports by thousands of ships ; we must figure to ourselves the Lakes of Canada, formerly so soli tary, now covered with frigates, brigs, cutters, boats, steam-vessels, intermixed with the canoes of the In dians, as the large ships and galleys are with pinks, sloops, and caiques, in the waters of the Bosphorus. Churches and houses, embellished with columns of Grecian architecture, rise frora araidst these forestsj and on the banks of these rivers, the ancient orna ments of the wilderness. Add to these, spacious colleges, observatories, erected for science in the abode of savage ignorance, all religions, all opinions. 118 TRAVELS dwelling together in peace, labouring in concert for the melioration of the human race and the deve lopment of the human understanding. Such are the prodigies of liberty. The Abb6 Raynal offiered a prize for a solution of the question : " What influence will the discovery of the New World have upon the Old World ? " Writers lost themselves in calculations relative to the exportation and importation of the precious metals, the depopulation of Spain, the increase of coraraerce, the iraproveraent of the navy : nobody, as far as I know, sought the influence of the dis covery of Araerica upon Europe In the estabhsh ment of the American Republics. They figured to themselves tbe old monarchies continuing in much the same state as they then were, society stationary, the human raind neither advancing nor retrograd ing ; they had not the least idea of the revolution which in the space of twenty years has taken place In opinions. The raost valuable of the treasures which Araerica contained within her bosora was liberty ; every na tion is called to work this inexhanstible mine. The discovery of the representative repubhc by the United States is one of the greatest political events that ever occurred. This event proves, as I have IN AMERICA. 119 elsewhere observed, that there are two practicable kinds of liberty ; the one belonging to the infancy of nations, the offspring of manners and of virtue, the liberty of tbe first Greeks and of the first Ro mans, and the liberty of the Savages of America ; the other born in the old age of nations, the off spring of knowledge and reason, the liberty of the United States, which has superseded the liberty of the Indian. Happy country, which in less than three centries has passed from one liberty to the other, almost without effort, and by means of a con test which lasted only eight years ! Will America preserve its last kind of liberty? Will there not be a division of the United States ? May we not already perceive the gerras of these divisions? Has not a representative of Virginia already supported the thesis of the ancient Greek and Roraan liberty with the system of slavery against a deputy of Massachusets, who advocated the cause of modern liberty without slaves, such as Christian ity has raade it ? Will not the Western States, extending them selves farther and farther, and being too remote from the Atlantic States, be desirous of having a government to theraselves ? Lastly, are the Americans a perfect people ? have 120 TRAVELS they not their vices like other men ? are they mo rally superior to the English, from whom they derive their origin? Wiil not the tide of foreign eraigration, incessantly pouring upon them from all parts of Europe, eventually destroy the homogeneousness of their race? Will not the mercantile spirit gain the ascendancy ? Is not self-interest beginning to be a predominant national defect araong thera ? We are also obliged to confess with pain, that the establishment of the republics of Mexico, Co- lorabla, Peru, Chili, and Buenos Ayres, is pregnant with danger to the United States. While the lat ter had about thera nothing but the colonies of a Transatlantic kingdora, war was not probable. May not rivalshlps now spring up between the old re publics of North Araerica and the new republics of Spanish America? Will not tbe latter interdict alhances with European powers ? If both sides should have recourse to arms ; if tbe raihtary spirit should take possession of the United States; a great captain raight arise : glory . loves crowns ; soldiers are but brilliant forgers of chains, and liberty is not sure of preserving its patriraony under the guardianship of victory. Let what will happen, liberty will never be en tirely banished from Araerica ; and here it is right IN AMERICA. 121 to specify one of the great advantages possessed by liberty the offspring of knowledge over hberty the offspring of manners. Liberty, the offspring of manners, perishes when its principle deteriorates, and it Is in the nature of manners to deteriorate with time. Liberty, the offspring of manners, begins before despotism in the days of poverty and obscurity ; it is lost in despotism, and in ages of glory and luxury. Liberty, the offspring of knowledge, shines after ages of oppression and corruption ; it advances with tbe principle which preserves and renews it ; the knowledge of which it is the effect, instead of becoming feeble with time, like tbe manners which give birth to the first liberty — knowledge, I say, grows stronger on the contrary with time : thus it forsakes not the liberty which it has produced; constantly about that liberty, it is at once its gene rative virtue and its inexhaustible source. To conclude; the United States have one safe guard raore : their population does jiot occupy an eighteenth part of their territory, Araerica still dwells in the wilderness ; for a long tirae to corae her deserts will be her raanners and knowledge her liberty, I wish I could say as much of the Spanish repub- 122 TRAVELS lies in America. They enjoy independence ; they are separated from Europe : it is a coraplete event, an immense event, undoubtedly, in its results, but of which liberty is not the necessary and iraraediate consequence. IN AMERICA. 123 SPANISH REPUBLICS, When English America rose against Great Bri tain, its position was v§ry different from the posi tion in which Spanish America now is. The colo nies which have since formed the United States had been peopled at different periods by English, dissa tisfied with their native country, and who removed from it that they might enjoy civil and religious liberty. Those who settled principally in New England belonged to that republican sect faraous under the second ofthe Stuarts. ¦* The hatred of monarchy was kept up in the cold climate of Massachuset, New Hampshire, and Maine. When the revolution broke out at Boston, it was not, we may say, a new revolution, but the revolu tion of 1649 re-appearing after an adjournment of soraewhat more than a century, and about to b^ prosecuted by the descendants of Cromwell's Puri tans. If Cromwell himself, who had embarked for New England, and who was compelled by an order of Charles the First's to land again ; if Cromwell, I say, bad gone to Araerica, he would have remained 124 TRAVELS obscure, but his sons would have enjoyed that re- pubhcan liberty which he sought in a crirae, and which gave hira nothing but a throne. Royalist soldiers, taken prisoners on the field of battle, sold for slaves by the parliamentary faction, and not recalled by Charles the Second, also left in North America children indifferent to the cause of kings. As Englishmen, the colonists ofthe United States were already accustomed to the public discussion of the interests of the people, to the rights of citizens, to the language and forra of constitutional government. They were conversant with the arts, sciences, and literature ; they partook ofall the knowledge ofthe mother-country. They enjoyed the institution of the jury ; they had raoreover in each of their colonies charters, by virtue of which they governed them selves, and managed their own affairs. These char ters were founded on principles so generous that they still serve for constitutions to the different United States. Frora these circurastances it fol lows, that the United States did not change their existence. If I may be allowed the expression, at the moment of their revolution ; an American con gress was substituted for an English pariiament ; a president for a king ; the bond of federalism super- IN AMERICA. 125 seded the feudatory chain, and it accidentally hap pened that there was a great raan to tighten that bond. Have the heirs of Pizarro and of Fernando Cortez any reserablance to the children of Penn's brethren and to the sons of the Independents ? Have they been educated in Old Spain in the school of liberty ? Have they found in their old country the institu tions, the inforraation, the exaraples, the knowledge, which raould a people to a constitutional govern ment ? Had they charters in those colonies subject to military authority, where poverty and rags cow ered upon mines of gold? Has not Spain carried to the New World her religion, her raanners, her custoras, ber ideas, her principles, and her very pre judices ? Was a Catholic population swayed by a numerous, wealthy, and powerful clergy ; a mixed population of 293,700 whites, 5,518,000 black and mulattoes, free or slaves, and 7,530,000 Indians ; a population divided into nobles and commonalty ; a population scattered in imraense forests, through an infinite variety of chraates, over two Araericas, and along the coasts of two Oceans ; a population al most without national relations and without com mon interest — was such a population as well fitted for democratic institutions, as the homogeneous po- 126 TRAVELS pulation, without distinction of ranks, and seven- eighths Protestant, of the ten millions of citizens of the United States ? In the United States instruction is general; in the Spanish republics nearly the whole of the population cannot so much as read: the priest is the only scholar in the villages ; these villages are rare, and the towns so wide apart that it takes three or four months to travel frora one to another. Towns and villages have been destroyed by war : there are no roads, no canals ; the immense rivers, which will some day carry civilization into the most secret recesses of those countries, still wa ter nothing but deserts. From these Negroes, these Indians, these Euro peans, is sprung a mixed population, vegetating in that very mild slavery which is established by the Spanish manners wherever they bear sway. In Co- lurabia there exists a race, the offspring of the African and the Indian, which has no other instinct but to live and to serve. The principle of the libert of slaves has been proclalraed, and yet all the slaves have chosen to stay with their former masters. In some of these colonies, forgotten even by Spain herself, and which were oppressed by petty despots, called governors, great corruption of manners pre vailed: nothing was raore coramon than to see ecclesi- IN AMERICA. 127 astics surrounded by a faraily whose origin they took no pains to conceal. Persons have been known to raake a speculation of their Intercourse with ne- gresses, and to enrich theraselves by selling the chil dren borne to thera by those slaves. The democratic forras were so utterly unknown, the very narae of a republic was so strange In those countries, that, but for a volurae of Rollln's His tory, they could not have told in Paraguay what was the raeaning of a dictator, consuls, and a senate. At Guatiraala It was two or three young foreigners who digested the constitution. Nations araong which political education is so backward always leave room to fears for liberty. The upper classes in Mexico are polished and well-informed ; but, as Mexico is destitute of ports, the general population has not been in contact with the intelligence of Europe. Columbia, on the contrary, from the favourable disposition of its coast, has raore coraraunication with abroad, and a reraarkable personage has arisen from its bosora. But is it certain that a generous soldier can succeed as easily in the atterapt to esta- bhsb liberty as to impose slavery ? Force cannot compensate for time ; when a people is deficient in the rudiments of political education, that education 128 TRAVELS must be the work of years. Thus hberty would thrive III under the shade of the dictatorship, and there is always cause to apprehend lest a prolonged dictatorship should eventually give him who is in vested with it a fondness for perpetual arbitrary rule. This is turning in a vicious circle. A civil war exists in the republic of central America. The Bolivian republic, and that of Chili, have been convulsed by revolutions : placed on the Paci fic Ocean, they seera to be cut off from tbe most civilized part of the world.* Buenos Ayres has the inconveniences of its lati tude : it is but too true that the temperature of many a region may be an obstacle to tbe action and progress of tbe popular government. A country, where the physical strength of man is raelted down by the heat of the sun, where he raust shut himself up all day, and lie stretched almost motionless on a raat — a country of this nature is not favourable to the deliberations of the forum. We ought certainly to beware of exaggerating, in any respect, the influ ence of climates : in tbe temperate zones free people arid enslaved people have been seen alternately on * At the moment I am writing, the public papers of all opi nions announce the commotions, divLsions, and bankruptcies of these different republics. IN AMERICA. 129 the same spot ; but, within the polar circle, and un der the line, there are incontestably exigences of climate which must produce permanent effects. The negroes, frora this necessity alone, will always be powerful, if they should not become masters in South Araerica. The United States rose of their own accord, frora weariness of the yoke and love of independence : when they had broken their fetters they found in themselves intelligence sufficient for their own go vernment. A high state of civilization, a political education of old date, and a proficiency in arts and manufactures, raised them to that degree of prospe rity at which we now behold them, without their having ever been obliged to resort to the money and the intelligence of foreigners. The Spanish republics are in a very different pre dicament. Though miserably administered by the mother country, the first raoveraent of these colonies was rather the effect of a foreign impulsion than the in stinct of liberty. It was produced by the war of the French revolution. The English who, ever since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, had not ceased to turn their eyes to the Spanish Americas, sent out, in 1 806, an expedition against Buenos Ayres, vol.,. II. K 130 TRAVELS —an expedition which was foiled by the bravery of a single Frenchman, Captain Liniers. It then becarae a question with the Spanish colo nies, whether they should follow the policy of the Spanish cabinet, at that titfie in alliance with Buo naparte ; or whether, regarding this alliance as com pulsory and unnatural, they should shake off" the Spanish government to preserve theraselves for the king of Spain. So far back as the year 1790, Miranda had begun to negociate with England the business of emanci pation. This negociation was resumed In 1797, 1801, 1804, and 1807, at which latter date a consi derable expedition was fitting out at Cork for Terra FIrma. At length, in 1809, Miranda was thrown Into the Spanish colonies ; his atterapt proved dis astrous, but the Insurrection of Venezuela acquired consistence, and it was extended by Bolivar. The question had raeanwhile changed both for the colonies and for England. Spain had risen against Buonaparte ; the constitutional systera had been set a-going at Cadiz, under the direction of the Cortes; these Ideas of liberty were necessarily carried to America by the authority of the Cortes themselves. England, on her part, could no longer ostensibly attack the Spanish colonies, since the king of IN AMERICA. 131 Spain, then a prisoner in France, had become her ally. She therefore passed acts forbidding the sub jects of bis Britannic Majesty to afford assistance to the Americans ; but at the sarae tirae six or seven thousand raen, enrolled in spite of these diploraatic .^ acts, went to support the insurrection in Colurabla. Spain, returning to her former governraent, after the restoration of Ferdinand, committed great errors : the constitutional government re-established by the insurrection of the troops In the Isla de Leon dis played no greater ability ; and the Cortes were still . less favourable to the emancipation of tbe Spanish colonies than the absolute governraent bad been. Bolivar, by his activity and his victories, completely dissolved those ties which there was at first no in tention of breaking. The English, who were every where, in Mexico, in Columbia, In Peru, in Chili with Lord Cochrane, at length publicly avowed what had been in a great raeasure their secret work. It is obvious therefore that the Spanish colonies have not, like the United States, b^en urged to eraancipatlon by a powerful principle of liberty; that this principle had not, at the coramencement of the troubles, that vitality, that strength, which indicates firraness of will in nations. An impulsion communicated from without, extremely complicated k2 132 TRAVELS interests and events — these are what we perceive at the first glance. The colonies separated themselves frora Spain, because Spain was invaded ; they then gave theraselves constitutions, as the Cortes did to the raother-country ; reasonable propositions were not made to them, and they would not resume the yoke. This is not all : the money and the specula tions of foreigners tended to rob thera of every thing native and national that was yet left to their liberty. Frora 1822 to 1826 ten loans, amounting to the sum of ^20,978,000 sterling, were raised in Eng land for the Spanish colonies. These loans were contracted upon an average at 75. A deduction was raade frora them of two years' interest at six per cent, and the sum of seven millions sterling was retained for supplies furnished. The amount really disbursed by England Is estimated at seven millions sterling ; but the Spanish republics are nevertheless saddled with a debt of ^20,978,000. To these loans, of themselves excessive, were added that multitude of associations or corapanies, formed to work the mines, to fish for the pearls, to dig the canals, to construct the roads, to clear the lands, of this new world, which seemed to have been but just discovered. These companies were twenty- IN AMERICA. 133 nine in nuraber, and the nominal capital to be era ployed by thera araounted to ^14,767,500. The subscribers paid up only about a fourth of this sura, which raakes three millions sterling to be added to tbe seven millions in loans ; being a total of ten millions advanced by England to the Spanish colo nies, and and for which she charges a nominal sum of s^'35,745,500 to the governments and to indivi duals. England has vice-consuls in the smallest bays, consuls In tbe ports of any Importance, consuls-ge neral and rainisters plenlpotentary in Colurabla and Mexico. The whole country is covered with Eng lish coraraercial houses and English coramercial travellers, agents of English raining companies, English mineralogists, English military raen, Eng lish contractors, English settlers, to whora land which cost the shareholder one shilling an acre has been sold at the rate of three shillings. The Eng lish flag flies on all the coasts of the Atlantic and the South Sea ; vessels ascend and descend all the navigable rivers laden with the produce ofthe Eng.- lish manufactories, or goods exchanged for them : packets equipped by the Admiralty sail regularly every month from Great Britain for the different points of the Spanish colonies. 134 TRAVELS Numerous failures have been the consequence of these Immoderate speculations : the populace in many places have destroyed the machinery for work ng the mines : mines sold could not^be found ; law-suits have commenced between the Spanish American merchants and the English merchants, and discussions relative to the loans have arisen between the governments. From these facts it follows, that the late colonies of Spain became at the moraent of their emancipa tion a sort of English colonies. The new masters are not loved, for people do not love masters ; in general, British pride humbles even those whom It protects : but It is not the less true that this kind of foreign supremacy damps tbe ardour of the na tional genius in the Spanish republics. The independence of the United States was not combined with so raany different interests: Eng land had not suffered, like Spain, an invasion and a political revolution, while her colonies were sepa rating theraselves from her. Tbe United States received military succour from France, who treated them as alhes ; they did not becorae, by means of a multitude of wars, speculations, and Intrigues, the debtors and tbe market of foreigners. Besides, the independence of the Spanish colo- IN AMERICA. 135 nies is not yet acknowledged by the mother-coun try. This passive resistance of the cabinet of Madrid has much raore weight and is produc tive of more inconvenience than raay be imagined. Right is a power which Tong balances fact, even wben events are not favourable to right ; this was proved by our restoration. Had England, without making war upon the United States, con tented herself with refusing to acknowledge their independence, would the United States be what they now are ? The more obstacles the Spanish republics have met with and shall encounter in their new career, tbe more merit they will have In surmounting them. They contain within their vast territories all the elements of prosperity — variety of climate and soil, forests for the navy, ports for shipping, a double ocean which opens to thera the commerce of the world. Nature has lavished every thing on these republics : tbe soil is rich above and below Its sur face, and gold fertilizes its bosom. Spanish Ame rica has therefore a propitious futurity before her; but to tell her that she can arrive at it without efforts would be to deceive her, to lull her into a fallacious security; the flatterers of nations are as dangerous as the flatterers of kings. When we J 36 TRAVELS create a Utopia for 'ourselves we pay no regard either to tbe past or to the earth upon which we place it ; the rivers fertilize not the history either of facts, or of manners, or of character, or of pre judices, or of passions ; enchanted with our own dreams, we provide not against contingencies, and thus mar the brightest destinies. I have candidly set forth the difficulties which may clog the liberty of the Spanish republics ; I ought In like manner to point out the guarantees of their Independence. In the first place, the Influence of the climate, and the want of roads and of cjilture, would frustrate any efforts that might be made to conquer these repub lics. The coast might be occupied for a moment, but It would be Impossible for an enemy to advance into the interior. Columbia has no longer any Spaniards, properly so called, within its territory ; they were denomi nated the Goths, and they have either perished or been expelled. In Mexico measures have just been taken against the natives of the late raother-country. The whole ofthe clergy of Columbia is American : many of tbe priests, by a culpable infringement of the discipline of the churcb, are fathers of families like any other citizens, and do not even wear the IN AMERICA. 137 habit of their order. This state of things is no doubt prejudicial to morals : but, on the other hand, it has the effect of rendering the clergy, though Catholic, favourable to the emancipation, from the dread of more intiraatc relations with the church of Rorae. During the troubles, the monks were rather soldiers than churchmen. Twenty years of revo lution have created rights, properties, places, which would not easily be destroyed ; and tbe new gene ration, born during the course of the revolution of the colonies, is full of ardour for independence. Spain formerly boasted that the sun never set upon ber dominions : let us hope that liberty will never cease to enlighten raankind. But, might not this liberty have been established in Spanish America, in an easier and safer raode than that which has been pursued, a raode which, if adopted at a seasonable tirae, before events had pro duced any thing decisive, would have obviated a raultitude of obstacles ? I think it raight. In my opinion the Spanish colonies would have been great gainers if they bad formed themselves into constitutional monarchies. Representative mo narchy is, according to my notions, a government far superior to the republican government, because 138 TRAVELS it bars individual pretensions to the executive power, and combines order and liberty. It seems to me too that representative monarchy would have been better suited to the Spanish cha racter, and to the state of persons and things in a country where extensive landed property gives the lead, where the nuraber of Europeans is sraall, and that of the Negroes and Indians considerable, where slavery is a universal usage, where the religion of the state is the Catholic religion, and above all, where the inferior classes are totally destitute of In struction. The Spanish colonies, Independent of tbe raother country, formed into great representative monarchies, would have completed their political education, se cure from the storms which may still overthrow the infant republics. A people suddenly starting out of slavery is liable, while hurrying Into freedora, to fall into anarchy, and anarchy alraost invariably begets despotisra. But, if there existed a system calculated to prevent these divisions, I may probably be ad dressed in such langiiage as this : " You have been in power: were you content with merely wishing peace, prosperity, and liberty to Spanish IN AMERICA. 139 America ? Did you confine yourself to erapty as pirations ? " Here I will anticipate ray Memoirs, and make a confession. When Ferdinand was delivered at Cadiz, arid Louis XVIII. had written to the Spanish monarch to persuade him to give a free government to his sub jects, my mission seemed to rae to be at an end. I had the idea of resigning to the king the portfolio of foreign affairs, and supplicating his raajesty to transfer it to the virtuous duke de Montraorency. What anxiety I should then have spared rayself I what divisions I should perhaps have spared the public opinion ! friendship and power would not have furnished a raelancholy exaraple. Crowned with success, I should have gone out of adrainistra tion in the most brilliant manner, to devote tbe re mainder of my life to repose. It was the interests of the Spanish colonies, of which my subject has led me to treat, that occa sioned the last freak of ray skittish fortune. I may assert that I sacrificed myself to the hope of ensur ing the peace and independence of a great people. At the time when I thought of resigning, im portant negociations had been carried very far; I had commenced others, the threads of which I held 140 TRAVELS in my bands: I flattered myself that I had laid down a basis, where there would be room at once for the rights of nations, the interest of my own country, and that of other countries. I cannot en ter into the details of this plan, for reasons which will be sufficiently obvious. In diplomacy, a project conceived is not a project executed : governments have their routine and their pace: one must have patience; one cannot take foreign cabinets by assault as the Dauphin took towns; policy cannot proceed as rapidly as glory did at the head of our troops. Unfortunately relin quishing my first intention, I remained with a view to coraplete my work. I fancied that, having pre pared It, I should know more about it than ray suc cessor ; I was afraid too that the portfolio raight not be delivered to M. de Montmorency, and that another minister might adopt a superannuated systera in re gard to the Spanish colonies. I yielded to the se ducing idea of attaching ray narae to the liberty of the second Araerica, without corapromising that liberty in the eraancipated colonies, and without exposing the monarchical principle of the European states. Assured of the friendly sentiments of the vari ous cabinets of the continent, one alone excepted. IN AMERICA. 141 I did not despair of overcoming the resistance op posed to me in England by a statesman recently deceased — a resistance owing much less to himself than to the mistaken mercantile policy of his na tion. The private correspondence which took place between rae and my illustrious friend on this im portant subject will some day perhaps be raade public. As all things are linked together in the destinies of raan, so it is possible that Mr. Canning, by joining In plans which, raoreover, differed but little frora his own, might have found raore peace, and have avoided the political disquietudes which harassed his latter days. Talents are fast disappear ing : a very petty Europe is arraying itself in the garb of mediocrity : a desert must be traversed to arrive at new generations. Be this as it raay, I thought that the adrainistra tion of which I was a raeraber would suffer rae to finish an edifice which could not fail to be an ho nour to it. I had the siraphclty to believe that the affairs of my office, carrying me wi^ them abroad, could not throw me in any person's way : like the star-gazer, I kept ray eye fixed on the sky and turabled into a well. England exulted at ray fall : it Is true that we had a garrison in Cadiz, under the white flag, and that the monarchical emancipa- 142 TRAVELS tion of tbe Spanish colonies, through the generous influence of the eldest son of the Bourbons, would have raised France to the highest degree of prospe rity and glory. Such has been the last dream of my raature age : I fancied myself in America, and I awoke in Eu rope. It yet reraains for rae to relate bow I for merly returned from that same America, after the first dream of my youth had been in like manner dispelled. IN AMERICA. 143 CONCLUSION OF THE TRAVELS IN AMERICA. Wandering from forest to forest, I had ap proached the American settlements. One evening I descried on the brink of a streara a farm-house built of trunks of trees. I solicited hospitality and it was granted. Night carae on : the dwelling was lighted only by the flame of the fire ; I seated myself in the chim ney-corner. While my hostess prepared supper, I amused myself with reading, by the fire-light, with my head bent down, an English newspaper which I picked up on the floor. I saw In large letters these words : Flight of the King. It was the account of tbe flight of Louis XVI. and the apprehension of the unfortunate monarch at Varennes. The paper also contained a statement of the progress of the emigration and the rallying of almost all the officers ofthe array under the banners of the French princes. I fancied that I heard the call of honour, and relin quished my plans. 144 travels Returning to Philadelphia, I there erabarked. A terapest drove rae in nlijeteen days to the coast of France, where I was half shipwrecked between the islands of Guernsey and Orlgny. I landed at Havre. In the raouth of July, 1792, I eraigrated with ray brother. The army of tbe Princes was already in the field, and but for the intercession of my unfor tunate cousin, Armand de Chateaubriand, I should not have been adraitted. In vain did I allege that I had corae on purpose frora the Fall of Niagara ; no attention was paid to ray excuse, and I was on the point of fighting to obtain tbe honour of carry ing a knapsack. My comrades, the officers of the regiment of Navarre, formed a company in the camp of the Princes, but I entered into one of the Breton companies. In ray History of Revolutions the reader will see wbat afterwards becarae of me. Thus what I considered my duty overthrew the first plans that I had conceived, and led to the first of those peregrinations which have marked my ca reer. The Bourbons, it is true, had no need of the junior of a Bretagne faraily returning frora beyond sea, to offer them his obscure devotion, any more than they needed bis services after he had eraerged frora his obscurity. If, continuing my travels, I had lighted the lamp of my hostess with the paper IN AMERICA. 145 which changed tbe course of my life, nobody would have been aware of ray absence, for nobody knew that I existed. A mere debate between me and ray conscience brought rae back to the theatre of the world : I raight have done as I pleased, since I alone was witness to this debate : but of all witnesses it is this before whora I should raost fear to have rea son to blush. Why is it that tbe wilds of the Erie and the On tario appear at this day more charming to my iraa- gination than the brilliant scenery of the Bosphorus ? It is because at the period of ray tour in the United States I was full of illusion ; the troubles of France began at the same time with ray life ; no thing was finished, either in me or in my country. It is a pleasure to me to call to mind those days, because they re-produce in my memory nothing but the innocence of feelings inspired by f*nily affec tions and by the pleasures of youth. Fifteen or sixteen years later, after my second tour, the revolution had already passed away : I lulled myself no longer with chimeras : my recollec tions, which then took their source In society, had lost their candour. Disappointed In my two pilgrim ages, I had not discovered the north-west passage ; I bad not carried off glory from the depths of the VOL. II. L 146 TRAVELS forests whither I went in quest of her, and I had left her sitting on the ruins of Athens. Having set out to be a traveller in America, having returned to be a soldier in Europe, I did not follow up either of these careers : an evil genius wrested from me the staff and the sword, and put the pen into my hand. At Sparta, while contemplating the heavens during the night, I called to mind tbe coun tries which had already witnessed my peaceful or agitated slurabers: on the roads of Gerraany, on the raoors of England, in the plains of Italy, in the raidst of Ocean, in the forests of Canada, I had hailed the same stars which I saw glistening over the country of Helen and Menelaus. But what availed it to complain to the stars, iraraoveable wit nesses of ray vagrant destinies ! Sorae day their look will no longer be tired of following me ; they will b^ fixed upon my grave. At present, my self indifferent to ray lot, I shall not solicit those malignant stars to change it by a kindher influence, nor to restore to me what the traveller leaves pf his hfe in the regions which he traverses. IN AMERICA. 147 NATURAL HISTORY. the beaver. On beholding for the first time the works of the beavers, we cannot forbeaj admiring Him who taught a poor little brute the art of the architects of Babylon, and who frequently sends man, so proud of his genius, to school to an insect. These astonishing creatures, wben they have met with a valley having a rivulet running through it, throw a dam across the stream ; the water rises and soon fills the space between the two hills: in this reservoir the beavers build their dwellings. The dam is constructed in the following manner : From the two opposite slopes of the hills which form the valley coraraences a row of stakes, inter laced with branches and plastered with mud. This first row is strengthened by a second, placed about fifteen feet in the rear of the former. The space between these two fences is filled with earth. l2 148 travels The fence is continued in this manner from both sides ofthe valley, till an aperture of no raore than twenty feet is left in the centre ; but, at this centre, the action of the current operating with aU its force, 4he engineers change their materials : they strength en the middle of their hydraulic substructures by trunks of trees, piled one upon another and united together by a cement sirailar to that used for the fence. The whole dyke Is about a hundred feet long, fifteen high, and twelve deep at the base; dirainishing in thickness in matheraatlcal propor tion, it is but three feet broad at the horizontal plane in which it terminates. The side of the dam opposed to the water is a gradual slope ; the outer side absolutely perpendicular. A provision is made for every contingency : the beaver knows by the height of the dam bow many stories he ought to allot to bis future habitation ; he knows that beyond a certain nuraber of feet he has no inundation to fear, because tbe water would then pass over the dyke ; of course an apartment built above that dyke affords him a retreat In great floods ; and soraetiraes he introduces in the dam a safety sluice, v/hich he can open and shut at pleasure. The raanner In which the beavers fell trees is very curious : they always select such as stand on the IN AMERICA. 149 bank of a river. A nuraber of labourers propor tionate to the urgency of the occasion, keep gnaw ing incessantly at the root : they cut into the tree on the side next to the water, not on the land-side, that it raay fall over the current. A beaver sta tioned at sorae distance apprises the wood-cutters by a whistle, when he sees the top of the tree upon which they are at work beginning to incline, that they may guard themselves against its fall. The artisans drag the fallen trunk, by the aid of floatage to their towns, as the Egyptians of old conveyed upon the Nile the obelisks cut in the quarries of Elephantina for the erabellishraent of their cities. The palaces of the Venice of the wilderness, erected in the artificial lake, have two, three, four, or five stories, according to the depth of the lake. The edifice built on piles is for about two-thirds of its height above water: the piles are six in number; they support the ground-floor made of birch sprays laid across. On this floor is the vestibule to the building : the walls of this vestibul* are curved and rounded into a vault plastered with a smooth clay- like stucco. In the floor of the portico is contrived a hatchway, by which the beavers go down to bathe or to fetch aspen boughs for food: these boughs are heaped up in a general magazine under water 150 TRAVELS between the piles ofthe different habitations. Above the ground-floor of this palace are three other floors, constructed in the same manner, but divided into as many apartments as there are beavers. Their number Is in general ten or twelve, divided into three farailies : these famihes asserable in the vesti bule already described, and there take their raeals together : the utmost cleanliness every where pre vails. Besides the passage to the bath, there are outlets for the different occasions of the Inhabitants; each apartment is strewed with young pine twigs, and no filth of any kind is suffered in it. When the owners go to their country-house, built on the banks of the lake, and constructed In the sarae man ner as the town-houses here described, no other is perraitted to take their places, but their apartraents remain unoccupied till their return. On the melt ing of the snow the citizens retire to the woods. As there is a sluice for surplus water, so there is also a secret way for the evacuation of the city : in Gothic castles, a subterraneous passage dug under the towers led to the fields. There are infirmaries for the sick. And it is a weak and unsightly animal which raises all these structures, which makes all these calculations ! About tbe month of July the beavers hold a ge- IN AMERICA, 151 neral council : they exaraine whether it is expedient to repair the old town and the old dara, or whether it will be better to build a new town and a new dyke. If provisions are scarce In that part, if the water or the hunters have daraaged their works too much, they decide on forming another settlement. If, on the contrary, they judge that the first raay stand, they repair the former habitations, and lay in provisions for the winter. The beavers have a regular governraent : ediles are elected to superintend the police of the repub lic. During the time of general labour, sentinels are posted to prevent surprise. If any citizen re fuses to bear his share of the public burdens, he Is banished, and obliged to live by himself in his hole in disgrace. The Indians allege that this idle cul prit is quite lean, and that his back is stripped of tbe fur as a raark of infaray. Of what benefit is all this intelhgence to these ingenious animals ? Man allows the ferocious beasts to live and exterminates the beavers, as he endures tyrants and persecutes innocence and genius. War unfortunately Is not unknown to the beavers : besides the foreign quarrels which they have with the musk-rats, civil discord soraetimes springs up among themselves. The Indians relate that if a 152 TRAVELS beaver is caught marauding on the territory of a tribe to which he does not belong, he is conducted before tbe chief of that tribe, and receives corporal punishraent ; for the second offence, that useful tail, which serves at once for cart and trowel, is cut off: thus mutilated he returns to bis friends, who assem ble to revenge the Injury. Soraetiraes the dispute is settled by a duel between the two chiefs of the two armies, or by a single corabat of three against three, thirty against thirty, like the corabat of the Curiatii and tbe Horatil, or that of the thirty Bre tons with the thirty English. The general engage ments are sanguinary : the Savages who corae up to strip the dead have often found raore than fifteen extended on the bed of honour. The victors take possession of the town of the vanquished beavers, aud settle a colony or keep a garrison in it accord ing to circurastances. The female beaver produces two, three, and some times four young ; she suckles and instructs them for the space of a year. When the population be comes too numerous, the young beavers go and forra a new settleraent, like a swarra of bees which quits the hive. The beaver lives chastely with a single feraale ; he is jealous and soraetimes kills his mate, if she has been guilty of infidelity, or he sus pects her of it. IN AMERICA. 153 The average length of the beaver is frora two feet and a half to three feet ; his breadth frora flank to flank about fourteen inches ; and be weighs about forty-five pounds ; bis head reserables that of a rat ; his eyes are sraall, bis ears short, bare within, hairy without ; bis fore-legs are but about three inches long, and arraed with hollow, crooked nails ; his hinder legs, webbed like those of a swan, serve hira for swiraraing. The tail is flat, an inch thick, co vered with hexagonal scales, arranged tile-fashion like those of fish ; this tail he uses for a trowel and a sledge. His jaw^s, which are exceedingly strong, cross one another like tbe two lirabs of a pair of scissors : each jaw is furnished with ten teeth, of which tbe two incisors are two inches long ; it is with these impleraents that tbe beaver fells trees, squares their trunks, strips off their bark, and mas ticates the young twigs on which he feeds. The animal is black, rarely white or brown ; he has two furs, the first long, hollow, and shining, the second a sort of down, which grcwvs beneath the former, and is alone used by the hatter. The beaver lives twenty years. The female is larger than the male, and his coat is of a hghter gray on the befly. It is not true that the beaver mutilates himself when he falls alive into the hands 154 TRAVELS of the hunters, that he raay not leave his offspring in slavery. Another etymology for bis narae should be sought. The flesh of the beaver is good for nothing, cook it how you will : the Savages, nevertheless, sraoke and eat it when provisions run short with them. The fur of the beaver is fine without being warm : in consequence, beaver-hunting was not formerly rauch in vogue among the Indians : bear-hunting, which was attended with greater peril and advan tage, was the more honourable of the two. They were satisfied with killing a few beavers to obtain their skins as articles of dress ; but they did not immolate whole tribes. The value which the Eu ropeans have set on this fur has alone occasioned the extermination in Canada of these quadrupeds, which held by their instinct the first rank among the brutes. You must now travel very far to wards Hudson's Bay to meet with beavers ; and these no longer display the same ingenuity, because the climate is too cold : diminished In number they have declined in intelligence, and have ceased to de velop the faculties which spring from association,* * Beavers have been found between the Missouri and the Mississipi, they are particularly numerous beyond the Rocky Mountains, on the branches of the Columbia j but as the IN AMERICA, 155 These republics formerly numbered a hundred or a hundred and fifty citizens ; some were still more populous. Near Quebec there was a pond forraed by beavers, which was sufficient to turn a saw-raill. The reservoirs of these animals were frequently ser viceable in furnishing water for the canoes which ascended the rivers during tbe sumraer. Thus beavers did for the Savages in New France what an ingenious mind, a great king, and a great minister, eff'ected in the old for civilized men, THE BEAR, There are three species of bears in Araerica ; the brown or yellow, the black, and the white bear. The brown bear is small and frugivorous ; be climbs trees. The black bear is larger ; be feeds on flesh, fish, and fruit. In fishing he displays singular dexterity. Seated on the brink of a river, he catches the fish with his right paw as he sees it passing in the water, and throws it on the shore, if, after appeas- Europeans have penetrated into these regions, the beavers will soon be exterminated. Last year (1826) there were sold at St. Louis on the Mississipi one hundred bundles of beaver skins, each bundle weighing one hundred pounds, and - each pound of this valuable commodity was sold at the rate of five calebashes. 156 TRAVELS ing his hunger, he has any thing over from his meal, he hides it. He sleeps part of the winter in dens or In hollow trees to which he retires. On recovering from bis torpor in the first days of March, the first thing he does is to seek certain herbs which serve hira for cathartics. The white or sea-bear frequents the coasts of North Araerica from the latitude of Newfoundland to Baffin's Bay, the ferocious guardian of those icy deserts. THE STAG. The stag of Canada Is a species of rein-deer which raay be tamed. The female, which has no antlers, is remarkably handsome; and if she had shorter ears she would very closely resemble a light English mare. the elk. The elk has tbe muzzle of the camel, the flat horns of the fallow-deer, and the legs of the stag. His colour is a ralxture of gray, white, red, and black : he runs very swiftly. According to the Savages, the elks have a king naraed the great elk : his subjects pay hira every sort of horaage. This great elk has legs of such length, that snow eight feet deep is no impediraent to him. His hide is invulnerable : he has an arm, IN AMERICA. 157 which issues from his shoulder, and which he uses in the same raanner as raen use their arms. The sorcerers assert that there is in the heart of the elk a sraall bone, which, reduced to powder, mitigates the pains of childbirth ; they also say that the hoof ofthe left foot of this aniraal, applied to the region of the heart of an epileptic patient, effects a radical cure. The elk, they add, is hiraself subject to epilepsy ; when he feels the attack coming on, he draws blood from his left ear with tbe hoof of bis left foot, and is relieved. THE BISON. Tbe bison carries his black, short horns low : be has a long beard, and a tuft of loose hair hangs be tween his horns down to his eyes. His chest is wide, bis crupper sraall, and his tail thick and short : his legs are clurasy and turned outward. A bunch of long reddish hair rises frora his shoulders like the first bunch of the dromedary. The rest of his body is covered with a black wool, which the Indian women spin for raaking corn-sacks and blankets. This aniraal has a ferocious look, but Is very gentle. There are varieties in the bisons, or if you please buffaloes, an anglicized Spanish word. The largest are met with between the Missouri and the Missis- 158 TRAVELS sipi : they approach the average height of the ele phant. They resemble the lion in the mane, the camel in tbe hump, the hippopotaraus or the rhino ceros in the tail and the hide of their bind quarters, and the bull in their horns and legs. In this species the nuraber of the feraales far sur passes that of the males. The male pays court to the female by gallopping in a circle round her. Motionless in the centre of this circle, she lows gently. The Savages, in their propitiatory garaes, iraitate this movement, which they call the Bisons Dance. Tbe bison has irregular seasons of migration : it is not known precisely whither he goes, but it ap pears that he travels far to the north In suraraer, since he is found on tbe banks of the Slave Lake, and has even been raet with in the islands of the Polar Sea. Perhaps too he reaches the valleys of the Rocky Mountains to the west, and the plains of New Mexico to the south. The bisons are so nu raerous In the verdant steppes of the Missouri, that when they eraigrate the herd is sometiraes several days in passing, like an iramense army : you hear their march at the distance of several miles and feel the grourid shake. The Indians tan the hide of the bison in a supe- IN AMERICA. 159 rior manner with birch bark : the shoulder-blade of the beast serves thera for a scraping-knife. The flesh of the bison, cut into large thin slices and dried in the sun or sraoke, is very savoury : it will keep several years like ham : the huirips and tongues of the females are the most delicate parts to eat fresh. The dung of the bison when burned raakes a hot fire : it is found extreraely useful in the savannahs, where wood is scarce. Thus this useful aniraal furnishes both the raeat and the fire for the banquet. The Sioux raake their beds and garments of its hide. The bison and the Savage, placed on the same soil, are the bull and the man in a state of nature : both appear to be waiting but for the first furrow, the one to become domestic, the other civilized. THE POLE-CAT. The American pole-cat has near the bladder a sraall bag filled with a reddish liquor : when pur sued the aniraal expels this liquor^s it runs ; the sraell from it is such that the hunters and the very dogs abandon the chace : it adheres to apparel and extinguishes sight. This smell is a sort of powerful musk, which turns one dizzy : the Savages assert that it is a specific for head-ache. 160 TRAVELS THE FOX. The foxes of Canada are of the common species, only the extremity of their hair is of a shining black. The way in which they catch water-fowl is well known. La Fontaine, the first of naturalists, has not forgotten it in his imraortal delineations. The Canadian fox raakes a thousand capers and gambols on the brink of a lake or river. The geese and ducks, charmed as they are, approach to have a closer view of him. He then claps himself down on his rump, and gently wags his tail. The birds, more and more delighted, land on the bank, and waddle towards the wily animal, who affects to be as stupid as themselves. The silly fowl, at length be comes so bold as to peck at the tail of the arch- knave, who darts upon his prey. THE WOLF. There are several species of wolves in America ; that called the lynx comes at night and barks about the houses. He never howls more than once in the same place ; and such is bis swiftness that In a few rainutes you hear bis voice at a prodigious distance from tbe spot where he set up his first cry. m AMERICA. 161 THE MUSK-RAT. The rausk-rat subsists in spring on the young shoots of shrubs, and in suraraer on strawberries or raspberries: in auturan he eats bilberries, and he lives in winter on nettle-roots; he builds and works hke the beaver. When the Savages have killed a musk-rat, they appear extremely sorrowful : they smoke around its body, which they encompass with Manitous, at the same time deploring the parricide. It is well known that the musk-rat was the mother of the human race. THE CARCAJOU. The carcajou is a species of tiger or large cat. The manner in which he kills the elk, with the aid of bis allies, the foxes, is remarkable. He climbs a tree, couches on a low branch, and wraps himself in his thick tail, which twists three times round his body. Distant yelpings are soon heard, and an elk appears, baited by three foxes, wMch contrive to drive him towards the carcajou's arabuscade. At tbe moment when the persecuted aniraal is passing under the fatal tree, the carcajou drops upon him, twists its tail round his neck, and strives to sever the jugular vein with its teeth. The elk bounds, VOL. II. M 162 TRAVELS tosses his antlers in the air, and kicks up the snow with his feet : he crawls upon his knees, runs on in a straight line, backs, squats on his haunches, ad vances by leaps, shakes his head. His strength be comes exhausted ; his flanks work ; the blood trickles down bis neck ; his legs tremble ; he falls. The three foxes are in at the death ; tbe carcajou, an equitable tyrant, divides the prey equally between himself and his satellites. The Savages never attack the carcajou and the foxes while thus engaged: it would be unjust, they say, to rob the four hunters of the fruit of their toils. BIRDS. Tbe birds of Araerica are raore diversified and raore nuraerous than they were at first supposed to be : it was the sarae In regard to those of Asia and Africa. The first travellers, on their arrival, were struck only by those large and brilliant species which look like flowers upon the trees ; but a mul titude of small singing-birds have since been disco vered, the notes of which are as sweet as those of our linnets. FISH. The fish In the lakes of Canada, and particularly In the lakes of Florida, are admirably beautiful and brilliant. IN AMERICA. 163 SERPENTS. America may be called the native country of ser pents. The water-snake resembles the rattle-snake, but it has neither rattle nor venora. It is raet with every where. I have raade frequent raention of the rattle-snake in ray works : it is well known that the teeth which it uses to introduce its poison are not the sarae with which it eats. The forraer raay be pulled out, and it is then nothing raore than a handsorae serpent, full of intelligence and passionately fond of music. In the heat of noon, in tbe most profound silence of the forests, it sounds its rattle as a call to the fe male : this love-signal is the only noise that then strikes the ear of the traveller. The female sometiraes produces twenty young ones : when the latter are pursued, they seek refuge in the throat of the raother, as if they were return ing Into the raaternal bosora. • Serpents in general, and the rattle-snake in parti cular, are held in great veneration by the natives of Araerica, who attribute to them a divine spirit : they render them so tame, as to make them lie in winter in boxes placed for them by tbe side of the fire in m2 164 TRAVELS the hut. These singular Penates issue in spring from those receptacles and return to the woods. A black snake, with a yellow ring round its neck, is extremely mischievous : another snake, all over black, without poison, climbs up trees and pursues the birds and squirrels. It charms, that is to say, it terrifies the bird by Its looks. This effect of fear, which some have pretended to deny, is now placed beyond doubt : fear paralyzes a raan's legs, and why should it not operate in the sarae manner on a bird's wings ? The ribbon snake, the green snake, tbe spotted snake, take their names from their colours and from the patterns of their skin : they are perfectly Inno cent and remarkably beautiful. But the raost ad mirable of all Is that called the glass snake, on ac count of tbe frailty of its body, which breaks at the slightest touch. This reptile Is almost transparent and reflects colours like a prisra. It lives upon in sects and is not noxious : it is of the length of a sraall viper. The prickly snake is short and thick. It has a sting in Its tail, the wound of which is mortal. The two-headed snake Is not coramon : it nearly resembles the viper, only Its heads are not flat tened. IN AMERICA. 165 The hissing snake is very nuraerous in Georgia and the Floridas. It is eighteen inches long ; its skin is green, sprinkled with black. When ap proached, it becoraes flat, appears of different co lours, and opens its raouth hissing. Great caution is necessary not to enter the atraosphere which surrounds it ; for this serpent has the property of decoraposing the air about it, and this air, Irapru- dently inhaled, induces languor. The person so at tacked wastes away ; his lungs are affected, and in the course of a few months he dies of consuraption — at least, so say the inhabitants of the country. TREES AND PLANTS. The trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers, introduced into our woods, fields, and gardens, proclaira the variety and wealth of tbe vegetable kingdom in Araerica. Who is there now-a-days but knows the laurel crowned with roses called magnolia, the ches- nut-tree which bears a real hyacinth, the catalpa which re-produces the flower of the^ orange, the tu lip-tree, thus naraed frora its blossora, the sugar- raaple, the purple beech, the sassafras ; and among the resinous evergreens, the Weymouth pine, the Virginia cedar, the balm of Gilead, and that cy press of Louisiana, with knotty roots and enormous 166 TRAVELS trunk, the foliage of which resembles a lace-work of raoss ? The lllacbs, the azaleas, the porapadouras, have enriched our springs ; and the hart-wort, the usteria, the bignonia, the decumaria, and tbe celus- tris, have blended their fruit and their perfumes with the verdure of our ivy. The flowering plants are Innumerable : the Vir ginia ephemeris, the helonia, the Canada lily, the lily called superb, the variegated tiger-lily, the rose achillea, the dahlia, the autumnal hellenia, and all the species of phlox, are now mingled with our na tive flowers. Lastly, we have almost everywhere exterrainated tbe Savage population ; and Araerica has given to us the potato, which has for ever secured from fa mine the nations that have destroyed the Americans. BEES. All these plants support brilliant insects. These have admitted araong their tribes our bee, which has corae to explore those erabalraed savannahs and forests, of which so many wonderful things were re lated. It has been remarked that the colonists are frequently preceded In the woods of Kentucky and Tenessee by bees : the advanced-guard of the la bourers, they are the emblem of the industry and IN AMERICA. 167 the civilization which they announce. Strangers to America, whither they have come in the suite of tbe vessels of Colurabus, these pacific conquerors have robbed a new world of flowers of such treasures only as the natives knew not the use of; and these treasures they have employed solely to enrich the soil whence they derived them. What cause should we have to congratulate ourselves, if all invasions and all conquests resembled those of these children of the sky ! The bees have, however, had to encounter my riads of musquitoes, which attacked their swarras In the trunks of trees : their genius has triumphed over these envious, malicious, and ugly foes. The bees have been acknowledged queens of the desert, and they have established their representative mo narchy in tbe forests beside the republic founded by Washington. TRAVELS IN ITALY. TRAVELS IN ITALY, TO M, JOUBERT,* LETTER I. Turin, June 17, 1803. I COULD not write to you frora Lyons, ray dear friend, as I had promised. You know how fond I ara of that beautiful city, in which I was so well entertained last year, and still better this. I have retraced the old walls of the Roraans, defended by ' the brave Lyonese of our days, wben the borabs of * M. Joubert (eldest brother ofthe Advocate-general ofthe Court of Cassation), a man of rare parts, with a lofty and bene volent mind, and powers of conversation at once fascinating and piquant ; gifted with talents, indeed which could not have failed to procure him merited reputation, had he not preferred a life of retirement ; a man too early snatched from his family, and from that select circle of which he was the connecting link ; a man whose death has left in my existence one of those voids which years create, but which they fill up no more ! See for the rest respecting these Travels in Italy, the Adver tisement at the commencement of these two volumes. 172 TRAVELS the conventionists obhged, our friend Fontanes to reraove the cradle of his daughter. I have re-visited the abbey of tbe Two Lovers, and the fountain of Jean Jacques Rousseau. The uplands of the Saone are raore sralling and picturesque than ever; the barks which glide along that sweet river, mitis Arar, covered with linen, illuralnated at night, and conducted by young feraales, delight the eye. You love the sound of bells ; repair, then, to Lyons ! all the convents spread over its hills, appear to have recovered their inmates. You already know that the academy of Lyons has done me the honour of admitting me among its members. Here is a confession : — If the Evil Spirit have any hand in this raatter, pray recognise not bis agency in ray sentiraent of pride ; you know one would look even upon bell on the bright side. The greatest satisfaction I have experienced in my life arises frora having been honoured, both in France and foreign countries, with demonstrations of interest that I had by no raeans anticipated. It has soraetimes happened, while I was resting myself In a wretched village inn, that a father and mother have entered with their son ; they had brought their, child, they said, to thank me. Is it from mere self-love that the pleasure springs wherewith IN ITALY. 173 I have been thrilled at such raoraents ? What could it import to my vanity, that these obscure though worthy people should testify to rae their gratifica tion, upon a high road, in a place where no indivi dual, save rayself, could hear thera ? That which has touched rae so sensibly has been, — at least, I will venture to believe so, — the consciousness of having produced sorae good ; of having given consolation to sorae afflicted hearts ; of having rekindled in the depth of sorae mother's bosom the hope of rearing a Christian son — in other words, a son submissive, respectful, devoted to his parents. I know not what degree of value ray work * raay possess ; but should I have tasted this pure delight, had I written a book which, even though displaying the utmost imagina ble talent, had tended to wound either morals or re ligion ? Pray express to our little circle, my dear friend, how much I miss and regret it. It has an inex pressible charm, because one feels and knows, that the persons who enter so readily into coraraon con versation are at the same time capable of discussing tbe highest subjects, and that this simplicity of dis course is not indigence but choice. I quitted Lyons the at five o'clock a. m. I * The Spirit qf Christianity. 174 TRAVELS will not endeavour to give you a eulogy upon this city : its ruins are to be seen ; they will speak to posterity ; and whilst courage, loyalty, and religion, shall be held in honour amongst men, Lyons will never be forgotten.* Our friends have made me promise to write to them as I proceed ; ray progress, however, has been too swift, and I have had no tirae to keep my word. I have only scribbled with a pencil in a pocket-book tbe little journal which I send to you. You will be able to find in the road-book, the names of the un known countries I have discovered ; as, for instance, Pont-de-Beauvoisin and Charabery; but you have so often repeated to me the necessity of keeping notes — constantly notes — that our friends will have no reason to complain if I follow your advice. * It is delightful to me to retrace, after an interval of twenty- four years, in an unpublished manuscript, an expression of the sarae sentiments which I now profess in a higher degree than ever for the inhabitants of Lyons : and it is still more delightful, to have received latterly from these worthy people the same marks of esteem with which they favoured me almost a quarter of a century ago. IN ITALY. 175 JOURNAL. The road is gloomy enough on quitting Lyons. From Tour-du-Pin as far as Pont-de-Beauvoisin the country is cold and woody. In approaching Savoy the traveller perceives three ranges of mountains, nearly parallel, and rising one above another. The plain at the foot of these mountains is watered by the little river called Le Gu6 (the Ford), and when seen at sorae distance appears quite undivided ; but on nearer approach, it is found to be strewed with irre gular hillocks, and its compass encloses several woods, with fields of corn and vineyards. The ma jestic heights which bound it are either verdant and mossy, or crowned with rocks in the forra of crys tals. The Gu^ flows through so deep a channel that one raight term its bed a valley ; indeed, its extreme brink is shaded by trees ; a peculiarity that I have only remarked in certain rivers of America, particularly at Niagara, . In one place, the road runs extreraely near to this river, whose opposite bank is formed of a barrier of stones resembling high Roman walls, and whose construction is like that of the arenas of Nismes,* * I had not then seen the Coliseum. 176 TRAVELS On reaching EcheUes the country becoraes njiore wild. You pursue, in order to obtain egress, tor tuous defiles araong rocks raore or less horizontal, shelving, or perpendicular. Upon these rocks sail white raasses of cloud, like the ralsts that rise, at day-break, frora the earth, in low places. These clouds either lift theraselves above, or sink below, the huge blocks of granite, as if to display the crests of the mountains, or to occupy the space between those crests and the sky. The whole pre sents a chaos whose undefined boundaries seera re ferable to no specific element. On the highest sumrait of these mountains is situated the great Chartreuse, or Carthusian mo nastery, while at their feet runs the road of Ema nuel. Religion dispenses its benefits frora a point approaching Hira who is in the heavens: the prince approxiraates his to the dwellings of men. There had formerly been an inscription here, an nouncing that Emanuel, for the good of the people, had caused the bill to be cut through. During the revolutionary epoch, this inscription was effaced ; Buonaparte restored it, only adding bis name : — would that he had always acted with equal dignity ! In olden time, the traveller penetrated even into the heart of the rock, by a subterraneous passage. IN ITALY. 177 which is now closed. I have met, in this region, only with small raountain birds, who float silently at the raouth of the cavern, like the shadows placed by Virgil before the entrance of hell — Foliisque sub omnibus haerent. Chamb^ry is situated in a hollow, whose elevated boundaries are naked enough: but it is approached through a charming defile, and quitted by way of a lovely valley. The mountains which shut in this valley were partly clothed with snow. They hid and developed theraselves in ceaseless alternation, beneath the influence of an ever-changing sky, ira- pregnated with vapours and clouds. It is at Charabery that a man was entertained by a female, and that, as a recompence for the hospitality he had received at her hands, and for the friendship which she expressed toward hira, he believed him self philosophically bound to dishonour her. Either Jean Jacques Rousseau looked upon the conduct of Madame de Warens as a mere ordinary affair — and then, wbat becorae of the pretensIoBs of the citizen of Geneva to virtue ? — or he was of opinion, that her conduct was [reprehensible — in which case he has sacrificed the memory of his benefactress to the vanity of writing a few eloquent pages : — or, finally, Rousseau persuaded himself that his eulogies, and VOL. II. N 178 TRAVELS the charms of his composition, might throw a glare over the evils he imputes to Madame de Warens — and this is the raost odious species of self-love. Such is the danger of letters : the desire of obtaining ce lebrity soraetiraes casts into the shade noble and ffenerous sentiraents. Had Rousseau never become a distinguished person, he would have buried in the valleys of Savoy the frailties of the woman who had cherished him — he would have sacrificed himself rather than have exposed his friend — he would have solaced and protected her in her declining years, in stead of giving her a gold snuff-box, and then de serting her. But as all Is now finished for Rous seau, what imports it to the author of the " Confes sions " that his dust should be either faraous or un known ? Oh ! may the voice of betrayed friendship never be heard to lift itself over my torab ! Historical recollections constitute rauch either of the pleasure or disappolntraent of the traveller. The princes of the House of Savoy, chlvalric and adven turous, have successfully wedded their raeraory to the raountains that cover their little erapire. After having passed Charabery, the current of the Is^re merits observation from the bridge of Montmellan. The Savoyards are active, pretty well made, of pale coraplexion, and regular shape ; they IN ITALY. 179 have soraething both of the Italian and the French- raan ; and exhibit, like their valleys, tbe air of po verty without destitution. Throughout their entire country, the traveller encounters crosses erected on tbe roads, and Madonnas carved in the trunks of pines and walnut-trees — indications of a devout character araong the people. Their little churches, enveloped in trees, form a touching contrast with their huge mountains. When the whirlwinds of winter descend from tbe summits of the latter, charged 'with eternal ice, the Savoyard seeks an asylum in the temple which stands among the fields, and lifts his prayers, under its thatched roof, to Him who commands the elements. The valleys upon which we enter above Mont mellan are bounded by heights of various form, sometimes half-naked, sometiraes covered with wood. The bottoras of these valleys, which are under cul tivation, nearly reserable tbe varieties of ground and the anfractuOsitles of Marly, and there are, besides, abundant pools and a river. The highway has less thc air of a public road than of a path through a park. The walnut-trees wherewith this path is umbrageous, reminded me of those we used to admire in our pro menades at Savigny. Shall those trees again behold n2 180 TRAVELS us in company beneath their shade?* The poet cries, in a melancholy moraent — Beaux arbres qui m'avez vu naitre, Bient6t vous me verrez m.ourir !f Those who die within the shadow of tbe trees which witnessed their birth, have they rauch ground of complaint ? The valleys of which I have spoken terminate at a village bearing the pretty narae of Aigue-belle. When I entered this village, the heights which over look it were covered with snow, which, yielding to the influence of the sun, had. descended In long tortuous radii into the black and green cavities of the rock — reserabhng, in its descent, a flight of rockets, or a swarm of beautiful white serpents issuing forth from the top of the mountain into the dale. Aigue-Belle looks as if quite close to the Alps : but shortly, in turning a large isolated rock, fallen into the road, you perceive new valleys which lose themselves in the chain of bills following the course of the Arche. These fresh valleys assume a cha racter of greater sterility and savageness. * They have not so beheld us. t Beauteous trees, which witnessed my birth. Soon shall you see me die ! IN ITALY. 181 The hills rise on either hand : their sides be come perpendicular ; and their rude summits begin to display sorae glaciers. Torrents, precipitating theraselves in every direction, tend to swell the current of the Arche, which itself flows heavily. In the midst of this tumult of waters I remarked a light and tranquil cascade, which falls with infi nite grace beneath a screen of willows, whose moist drapery, when agitated by the wind, might have originated, in the poet's fancy, the waving robe of the Naiad, seated on a lofty precipice. The ancients would not have failed to dedicate in this spot an altar to the Nymphs. Speedily, tbe country assumed all its magnificence: the forests of pine-trees, which up to that point had looked sufficiently young, now wore the garb of age; the road grew steep, hovering here and there on the verge of an abyss : bridges of wood seryed whereby to cross the gulfs, where one might see the water bubbling up, or hear its hoarse roar. Having passed St, John de Maurienne, and ar rived toward sunset at Saint Andr^, I could obtain no horses, and was therefore obliged to stop, I went to take a walk beyond the viUage, The air becarae clear at the top of the raountains, whose outlines were relieved with extraordinary strength 182 TRAVELS against the sky, while deep night spread by degrees at the foot of those hills, and rose slowly toward their crests, I heard the voice of the nightingale and the cry of the eagle ; I saw the nettle-trees blooraing in tbe valley, and the snows reigning on the heights : a castle, built, according to popular tradition by the Carthaginians, displayed its ruins on a point of rock. All the work of raan's hands in these regions is pitiful and transitory : there were sheepfolds, forraed of interlaced rushes — houses of clay, built in a couple of days — as if the goatherd of Savoy, in the face of the eternal raasses that surround him, had not thought it necessary to trouble himself with making any provision for his own brief career! as if the demolished tower of Hannibal had warned him of the vanity and perishableness of huraan labour ! I could not, however, whilst conteraplating this desert, avoid thinking, with a kind of dread, of the hostihty of a raan raore powerful than all obstacles —of a raan who, from the Straits of Cadiz, opened a road across the Pyrenees and the Alps, in order that he might reach the Romans ! That the rela tions of antiquity do not indicate to us the precise course of Hannibal's passage matters little: it is IN ITALY. 183 beyond doubt that this great captain traversed these heights then unexplored, and whose inhabitants were still raore savage than their torrents, their rocks, and their forests. They say that I shall understand better at Rome the extent of that furious hatred, which the battles of the Trebia, of Thrasi- mene, and of Cannae, could not satiate: I ara assured that, at the baths of Caracalla, the walls, up to the natural height of a man, are pierced with the blows of pikes. Was it the German, the Gaul, the Goth, tbe Vandal, or tbe Lombard, whose hand was thus furiously uplifted against these walls ? It was right that the vengeance of the huraan race should fall heavily upon a people who, esteeraing theraselves free, could only build their greatness upon the slavery and with the blood of the rest of the world. I departed at day-break from St. Andr^, and ar rived about two o'clock, p. m. at Lans-le-Bourg, at the foot of Mount C^nis. On entering the village, I saw a peasant holding by its legs a young eagle, whilst a pitiless mob were aiming blows at the youthful monarch of the air. Insulting Its fallen ma jesty and the weakness of its age : the parent birds had both been killed. They proposed to seU this noble orphan to rae ; but it died of the ill treat ment it had received, before I could liberate it. Do 184 TRAVELS not these birds reraind one of the little Louis XVII. and his father and raother ? Here we began to ascend Mount Cenis,* leaving the little river Arche, which conducts you to the foot of the raountain : on the other side of Mount C^nis, the Doria opens to you the entrance of Italy. I have often had occasion, in the course of my travels, to observe the Utility of strearas. Not only are they (as Pascal says) great high roads which themselves travel, but they Indicate the route to raen, and render raore accessible tbe passage of the mountains. It is in coasting their shores that nations have been discovered; and the primeval dwellers upon earth penetrated, by aid of their cur rents, into depths and solitudes hitherto unexplored. The Greeks and Romans offered sacrifices to run ning strearas, which fable raakes the offspring of Neptune, because they are forraed by the vapours of the Ocean, and lead to the discovery of lakes and seas — wandering children are they, which fail not, however, to creep back into the paternal bosora. Mount Cenis presents, on the side of France, no thing deserving of notice. The " lake" on the level part seeraed to me no better than a pond. I w^as * The high-road, although in use, was not at that time finished, they were still employed in forming it. IN ITALY. 185 disagreeably surprised, also, at the commenceraent of tbe descent toward La Novalaise : I expected, though I scarcely know why, to see the plains of Italy ; but nothing presented itself save a black and deep gulf — save a very chaos of torrents and preci pices. In general, the Alps, although higher than the mountains of North America, have not struck me as possessing that original character, that extrerae pe culiarity of site observable in the Apalacbianes, and even in the highlands of Canada : the but of a SI rainole under a raagnolia, or of a Chipaway under a pine, wears altogether a different aspect from the cabin of a Savoyard beneath a walnut-tree. 1 86 TRAVELS TO M. JOUBERT. LETTER II. Milan, Monday Morning, June 21, 1803. I ALWAYS begin ray letter, ray dear friend, with out knowing when I shall have tirae to finish it. Let complete reparation be made to Italy ! You will have seen, by my little journal, dated from Tu rin, that I bad contracted no love for it at first sight. The effect of the environs of that city is fine ; but they still speak of Gaul : — one raight fancy oneself in Norraandy, close to the mountains. Turin is, in itself, a new town, convenient, regular, well adorned with palaces, but amidst all presenting an aspect soraewhat dull. My opinions have undergone a revolution in tra versing Lombardy. This result, however, is only produced in the traveller by degrees. You see at first, it is true, a country very rich in the aggregate, and you speak of it, accordingly, in general terras of commendation ; but it is when you proceed to view the objects in detail, that the enchantment begins to operate. Meadows, whose verdure surpasses the freshness and delicacy of English turf, are inter- IN ITALY. 187 mingled with fields of raaize, rice, and wheat, surmounted by vines spreading from one prop to another, and thus forming garlands above the corn; the whole studded with mulberry-trees, walnuts, young elms, willows, and poplars, and intersected by rivers and canals. Dispersed over the landscape, may be seen tbe country-raen and women, with naked feet, and a large straw hat upon the head, singing whilst they raow the fields or reap the corn, or drive the teams of oxen, or steer up and down the courses of the streams. This scene prolongs itself during forty leagues, still increasing in fertility as you approach Milan, the centre of the picture : on the right the Appennines uplift themselves — on the left the Alps soar into heaven. The mode of travelling is very swift, the roads excellent, the inns superior to those of France, and almost equal to English taverns. I really begin to think that this sarae France, well-ordered as it is, is a little barbarous or so.* • * It is necessary to advert to the epocli at which this letter was written (1803), If travelling was even then so convenient a thing in Italy, being, as it was, nothing more than a camp of France, how much more so must it be now, in profound peace, when a multitude of new roads have be^n opened in that beau tiful country. We are called thither by every species of invo cation ! The Frenchman is a singular enemy : he is at first 188 TRAVELS I ara no longer astonished at the contempt which the Itahans have always entertained for us Trans- Alpine tribes — Vingoths, Gauls, Germans, Scandi navians, Sclavonians, Anglo-Normans ; — our leaden skies, smoky cities, and muddy villages, may well in spire them with horror ! The towns and hamlets here have quite another-guess aspect : the houses are large and their exterior of shining whiteness ; the streets are wide, and frequently intersected by sparkling rivulets wherein the woraen wash their linen and bathe their children. Both Turin and Milan have the coramodiousness, the regularity, and the pavements of London, together with the archi tecture of the finest quarters of Paris: they possess even peculiar refinements ; in the raiddle of the streets (in order that the raotion of the carriage may be gentler) two rows of flat stones are placed, upon which the wheels glide, and thus avoid any shock from inequality of surface, found to be somewhat restless and insolent — perhaps a little too gay and active : — but he is no sooner gone than he is regretted. The French soldier takes a part in the labours of the host un der whose roof he is lodged: — his good-humour gives life and interest to every thing ; and he is at length regarded as a sort of conscript belonging to the family. With regard to the roads and inns of France, they are even much worse now than in 1803. We are in truth, in this respect, behind all the other countries of Europe, Spain excepted. IN ITALY. 189 The temperature is delightful, yet they tell me that I shall not find the true Italian cUmate until I have passed the Appennines : the height and size of the apartments prevents one's suffering frora the heat. June 23. I have seen General Murat : he received rae with ardour and coraplaisance ; and I have handed him the letter of the amiable Madame Bacchiochi. * I have passed the day amongst aides-du-carap and young officers, than whora nobody could be raore courteous. The French army is ever the same ; honour is there perfect. I dined in great style with M. de Melzi, who took £m active part in a fete given on occasion of the baptism of General Murat's child. M. de Melzi was known to my imfortunate brother, of whom we talked together long. The Vice-President is a man of very dignified manners : his mansion is that of a prince, and of one who has always held that rank. His treatment of me has been raarked by reserved politeness, which on my part I have been equally careful to raanifest. I say nothing, my dear friend, of the works of * Since Princess of Lucca, eldest sister of Buonaparte, who, at that epoch, was only First Consul, 190 TRAVELS art in Milan, and above all, of the cathedral (which they are finishing). The Gothic, even though wrought in raarble, seems to me to clash both with the sun and with the manners of Italy. I am on the raove iraraediately, and will write to you from Florence* and from Rorae. TO M. JOUBERT. LETTER III. Rome, on arrival, the evening of June 27, 1803. ^ Here I ara at last ! all my indifference is va nished. I am overwhelmed, haunted, by what I have witnessed ! I have seen, I believe, wbat none other has seen — what no other traveller has at tempted to paint : the dolts ! the icy-hearted crea tures ! the barbarians ! When they arrive here, have they not traversed Tuscany — that English garden, in the midst whereof rises the temple — Florence ? Have not they passed. In corapany with the eagles and wild boars, the solitudes of this second * The letters written from Florence have not been recovered. IN ITALY. 191 Italy, called the Roman States ? Why do these frigid beings travel at all ? — Arrived as the sun was setting, I have found the whole population about to prome nade in Arabia deserta at the gates of Rorae : what a city ! what recollections 1 June 28, 1 1 o'clock p. m. I have been running about all this day, which is the eve of the festival of St. Peter. I have already seen the Coliseura, the Pantheon, Trajan's pillar, the Castle of St. Angelo, St. Peter's : but what do I know of thera ? I have witnessed the illu mination and fireworks which announce for to morrow the grand rites dedicated to the prince of the apostles. Whilst I pretended to be admiring the fire placed at top of the Vatican, I was in truth watching the effect of the moon upon tbe Tiber, upon the Roman mansions, and upon those illustri ous ruins which are scattered about on every side, June 29, I am just come from divine service at St, Peter's, The Pope has a very interesting person — pale, de vout, and sorrowful of aspect, all tbe tribulations of the Churcb seera written on his brow. The cere mony was superb ; during some few minutes, par ticularly, it was quite overwhelming ; but the sing- 192 TRAVELS ing was raediocre, and the church deserted — nobody there ! July 3, 1803. I really know not whether all these scraps of lines will end by forming a letter, I should, in fact, be ashamed, my dear friend, to talk to you so tri flingly, were I not desirous, before endeavouring to describe objects, to see them a little raore clearly. Unfortunately, I want no further observation to perceive that modern Rome is falling in its turn : all is over ! His Holiness received rae yesterday. He made me sit down beside him In the most affectionate manner, and told me, with an air of complaisance, that he had read the Gdnie du Christianisme, a volume of which, indeed, lay open on his table. There cannot be a better man, a more worthy pre late, or a more unaffected prince ; — take me not for Madame de S6vign6 ! The Secretary of State, Cardinal Gonsalvl, is a man of acute penetration and liberal character. Adieu ! I suppose I must, after all, corarait these odds and ends to the post. IN ITALY. 193 TIVOLI, AND THE VILLA OF HADRIAN. December 10, 1803. I am perhaps the first stranger who has made the excursion to Tivoli in a disposition of mind but little entertained in travelling. Behold me arriving alone at seven, p.m. on the 10th of December, at the inn ofthe Temple ofthe Sybil. I occupy a little room at the extremity of the house, and in front ofthe cas cade, whose roar strikes my ear. I have directed several glances toward it, but have been able to dis tinguish nothing in the depth ofthe obscurity, ex cept some white glimmerings produced by the agi tation of the waters. It seems to me as if I could perceive in the distance an enclosure formed of trees and houses, and around this enclosure a circle of hills. I know not into what definite fea tures the return of day will metamorphose this noc turnal landscape. The spot is calculated for reflection and reverie. I recall the events of my past hfe ; I feel the weight of the present, and seek to penetrate the future. Where shall I be, what shall I be, and in wbat shall I be engaged, twenty years hence ? Whenever we descend into ourselves, to all the vague projects we VOL. II. o 194 TRAVELS may be inclined to form, a gigantic obstacle opposes itself — an uncertainty caused by a certainty — that obstacle, that uncertainty, is death, terrible death, which arrests every thing, and is eternally striking either ourselves or others. Is it a friend that you lose ? In vain have you a thousand things to say to him : — unhappy, isolated, a wanderer on the face of the earth, without an Indi vidual to whora to confide either pains or pleasures, you suraraon your friend to your side, and he coraes no more to solace your cares or partake your joys ! no more does he re-assure you by exclaiming, " You were wrong, you were right In acting as you did." Henceforth you must journey on alone. What imports It, that you are becorae rich, or celebrated, or powerful ? prosperity receives lustre only frora participation. One thing has over turned the whole fabric — death ! Ye waves, which toss and tumble Into yon profound gulph, whence your murmur rises upon ray ear, disappear ye more quickly than the days of man ? or can ye tell me what this man is — ye, who have witnessed so many generations pass upon these shores ? December 11. As soon as daylight appeared I opened my win dows. My first impression of Tivoh in the dark- IN ITALY. 195 ness turns out to have been correct enough ; but the cascade looks small, and the trees which I thought I had seen, exist not. A heap of wretched houses stand on the other side of the river; and the whole Is surrounded by naked hills. A bright dawn, however, rising behind these raoun tains, and the teraple of Vesta four paces frora me, overhanging the grotto of Neptune, have soothed my disappointments. Iraraediately above the fall, a herd of oxen, with horses and asses, extends along a bank of sand: all these beasts have ad vanced one step into the Teverone, and with bowed necks are drinking leisurely frora the cur rent which glances like lightning before thera, being just about to precipitate itself. A Sabine countryraan, clothed in a goat-skin, and wear ing a kind of mantle rolled back over his left arra, is leaning upon his staff, and looking on whilst his cattle drink ; — a scene this, powerfully contrasting itself, in its Iraraobility and silence, with the noise and motion of the -paters. My breakfast ended, they brought me a guide, in whose company I ara about to place myself on the bridge of the cascade (I had seen the cataract of Niagara). From the bridge of tbe cascade we descend to the grotto of Neptune, so called, I be- o 2 196 TRAVELS lieve, by Vernet. The Anio, after its first fall be low the bridge, engulfs itself among rocks, and appears again in this grotto of Neptune, in order to raake a second fall at that of the Syrens. The basin of the grotto of Neptune has the form of a vase, and I have seen pigeons drinking at it. A kind of dove-house excavated in th& rock, but resembling the ayry of an eagle rather than the shelter of a pigeon, presents to these poor birds a deceitful hospitality : thinking themselves per fectly safe In this seemingly inaccessible spot, they hesitate not to construct their nests ; but alas ! a secret passage leads thither ; and during the reign of darkness, a ravlsher snatches away the young birds while sleeping, regardless of the roar of waters, under their mother's wing. Observans nido, implumes detraxit. Returning from the grotto of Neptune to Tivoli, and taking the Angelo gate, or that of Abruzzo, my cicerone has led me into the country of the Sa- hines, pubemque sabellum. I have walked down the course of the Anio as far as a field of olives, where a most picturesque view has opened to me over this celebrated solitude. At the sarae time are per ceived the temple of Vesta, the grottoes of Neptune and of the Syrens, and the little waterfalls which. IN ITALY. 197 issue from one of the porticoes of the villa of Mae cenas. A bluish kind of vapor spreads across the landscape, softening and blending its outlines. We conceive a high idea of Roman architec ture when we think that these structures, raised so many ages ago, have passed from the service of raan to that of the eleraents; that they sus tain to-day the weight and motion of a mass of waters, and are become the iraraoveable rocks of these turaultuous cascades. My walk has lasted six hours ; — and on its con clusion I re-enter ray inn, situate in a dilapidated court, to the walls of which are applied monu mental stones covered with mutilated inscriptions. I have copied several of these inscriptions : DIS. MAN. ULIvE PAULIN VIXIT ANN. X MENSIBUS DIEB. 3. SEI. DECS. SEI. DEA. D. M. VICTORIiE. FILLvE OUM. * VIXIT. AN. XV PEREGRINA, MATER. B. M. F. D. M. LICINIA ASELERIO TENIS. 198 TRAVELS What can possibly be more vain than all this ? I read upon a block of stone the expressions of re gret which some living person bestowed on the dead ; the survivor having perished in his turn, I, one of the barbarous Gauls, come after an interval of two thousand years araongst the ruins of Rorae, and pore over these epitaphs in an abandoned retreat — I, indifferent alike to him who mourns and him who is mourned — I, who to-morrow shall depart for ever from this place, and disappear, ere long, from earth itself! All the poets of Rome who dwelt on the banks of the Tiber wept upon recurring to the brevity of life. Carpe diem, said Horace ; Te spec- tem suprema mihi ciim venerit hora, exclaimed TIbullus. Virgil thus paints this last hour, In- validasque tibi tendens, heu ! non tua palmas. Who has not lost some object of his affections ? Who has not seen faihng arms extended toward hira ? A dying raan often desires that his friend raay grasp his hand, as If the loved pressure might avail to arrest the fleeting breath, while at the mo raent he feels the icy fingers of death upon bis heart. Heu! non tua ! This exclamation of Virgil is admirable for its sorrowful tenderness. Woe be to hira that loves not the poets ! I am almost in- IN ITALY. 199 clined to apply to such individuals what Shakspeare says of the men who are insensible to harmony. On returning to my charaber, I still felt around me the solitude which I had left without. Tbe little terrace belonging to the inn leads to the temple of Vesta. Painters understand well that tint of an tiquity which the hand of Tirae spreads over those raonuraents that survive its devastation, and which varies according to cliraate : it is very perceptible in the teraple of Vesta. The visiter makes the tour of the little building between the peristyle and the cella, in about threescore steps. The true tem ple of the Sybil is contrasted with this by its square shape and the severe style of its architecture. When the fall of tbe Anio took place a little raore to the right (as it is supposed to have done), the teraple raust have hung, as it were, iraraediately over the cascade ; the spot was well calculated to show off the inspiration of tbe priestess, and to excite the religious enthusiasra of the crowd. Having thrown a last glance upon the hills to the north, which the mists of evening had covered with a white veil, upon the valley to the south, and upon the entire landscape, I returned to my solitary apart ment. At one o'clock, the wind blowing most vio lently, I arose, and passed the remainder of the night 200 TRAVELS upon the terrace. The heavens were obscured with clouds : the storra mingled its moanings through the columns of the temple with the noise of the cascade : one raight fancy that one heard sorrowful voices issuing frora the apertures of the cave of the Sybil. Tbe spray of the waterfall dashed toward rae frora the depth of the abyss like a hoary ghost : it was indeed a genuine apparition ! I iraagined rayself standing on the heaths or sandy shores of ray native Arraorica, in the midst of an autumn night ; and the recollections of ray paternal roof effaced those of the dwellings of the Caesars. Every raan bears within himself a little world com posed of all that he has seen and loved, and into tbe sanctuary of which he constantly retires, even then when he is traversing, and seems to inhabit a fo reign world. A few hours hence, I shall start to explore the Villa of Hadrian. December 12th. The grand entrance of Hadrian's Villa was through tbe hippodrome, upon the ancient Tibur- tlne way, and at a little distance from the torab of the Plautll. There reraain no vestiges of this hip podrome, which is converted into a sort of vineyard. On issuing frora a narrow cross-road, an alley IN ITALY. 201 of pollard cypresses led to a miserable farm house, the shattered staircase of which exhibited sundry pieces of porphyry, of verd antique, of granite, and of white marble, together with a number of architectural ornaments. Behind this farra the Roman theatre is discovered. In pretty good preservation, and forming a semicircle com posed of three rows of seats. This semicircle is en closed by a wall stretching in a right line, which serves to raark the diameter : the orchestra and the stage must have faced the box of the emperor. The son of the mistress of the farm, a little fellow about twelve years old, and almost naked, pointed out to rae this box, and also the dressing-rooms of the actors. Underneath the benches for the specta tors, in a place where the farm-labourers now de posit their impleraents of husbandry, I found the torso of a colossal Hercules, buried amidst plough shares, harrows, and rakes : — thus, empires spring from the plough, and disappear beneath it. Tbe interior of the theatre selves for the farm yard, and the garden to the house ; it is planted with plum and pear-trees. Close to the well that has been excavated in its centre, stand two pillars, whereto the buckets are affixed — one of them is composed of dried earth and stones heaped toge ther at random ; the other, of the shaft of a beauti- 202 TRAVELS ful fluted coluran : but, as if to do away with the magnificence of this latter, and assimilate it to the rusticity of its corapanion, nature has spread over it a raantle of ivy. A herd of black swine were raking into and turning up the turf that covered the benches of the theatre. In order to shake and over throw the seats of the raasters of the earth. Provi dence had only to cause a few roots of fennel to spring between their joints, and to deliver up the ancient enclosure dedicated to Roman elegance to the unclean animals of the faithful Euraaeus. From the theatre, ascending the staircase of the farm, I arrived at the palestrina, strewed with sundry relics. The vaulted ceiling of a ball still exhibited ornaraents in exquisite taste. Frora hence coraraences the valley called by Hadrian the f^ale of Tempe. Est nemus .^moniae, praerupta quod undique claudit Sylva. I have seen, at Stowe, in England, a duplicate of this iraperial fantasy : but Hadrian had laid out his English garden as becarae the raan who possessed the world. At the end of a little wood of green elms and oaks, are perceived the ruins which stretch through the whole length of the Vale of Tempe ; double IN ITALY. 203 and triple porticoes, serving to sustain the terraces of Hadrian's buildings. The vale continues to extend itself farther than eye can reach, toward the south ; its bosora is planted with reeds, with olive-trees, and cypresses. The hill to the west of the valley, meant to represent the ridge of Olympus, is deco rated by the raass of the palace, of the Library, of the Hospitia, of the teraples of Hercules and of Jupiter — and by the long arcades, festooned with ivy, which support these structures. A sirailar, but less lofty height, borders the valley to the east ; behind which rise in a kind of araphitheatre the mountains of Tivoli, which were to typify Ossa. In a field of olive-trees, an angle of the wall of the villa of Brutus forms a companion to the ruins of the villa of Caesar. The relics of liberty sleep in peace beside those of despotism : the axe of the one, and the poniard of the other, are now nothing more than pieces of rusty iron burled beneath the sarae heap of rubbish, Frora the iramense building wjiich, according to tradition, was dedicated to the entertainment of strangers, we corae, in traversing the open halls around us, to the site occupied by the library ; and here commences a very labyrinth of ruins, inter sected by young coppices, clumps of pines, patches 204 TRAVELS of olive-trees, and various other plantations, which at once delight the eye and grieve the heart, A fragment, suddenly detached frora the vaulted roof of the library, rolled at my feet, as I passed along. It raised a little dust ; and several plants were broken and borne down with it. These, however, will spring again to-morrow ; whilst the noise and the dust subside immediately : behold this new ruin, henceforth to be bedded, for ages, near those which appeared to be awaiting It ! Empires are, in like manner, plunged into eternity, where they lie silently ; nor are men unlike these ruins which drop, one after another, to encumber the earth ; the only difference among them, as among these frag ments, is, that some fall In the presence of specta tors, and others sink without a witness. I have passed from the library to the circus of the Lyceum : they come here to cut down bushes for firewood. This circus adjoins the temple of the Stoics ; in the passage leading to which, cast ing a glance behind me, I perceived the towering but dilapidated walls of the library, which, half- hidden as they were by the upper branches of wild ohve-trees, overtopped the less elevated ones of the circus, and were themselves overtopped by an enormous umbrella-hke pine; while above the IN ITALY. 205 whole, the last summit of mount Calva uplifted itself, capped with cloud. Never were heaven and earth, the works of nature and those of man, better grouped together in one picture. The temple of the Stoics is not far from tbe Pa rade, Through the opening of a portico we dis covered, as in a glass, at the extremity of an avenue of olives and cypresses, the mountain of Palomba, crowned by the first village of the Sabines. On the left of the Poecile, and under the Pdecile itself, the visitor descends into the Cento-Cellce of the praetorian guards : they are vaulted charabers about eight feet square, of two, three, or four stories, and having no coramunication with each other : the light is admitted through the door. A moat runs the whole length of these military cells, which were most probably entered by means of a drawbridge. When the hundred bridges were let down, when the Pretorians passed and re passed over them, this raust have forraed a curious spectacle in the gardens of the pblJosopbical Erape- ror who placed another god in Olympus. The hus bandman In the patrimony of St. Peter comes to-day to dry his crops in the barracks of the Roraan legionary. When the imperial nation and its masters erected so many proud structures, they little 206 TRAVELS thought that they were building cellars and granaries for a Sabine goatherd, or a farmer of Albano. After having explored a portion of the Cento- Cellce, I had still tirae before rae to visit that part of the gardens attached to the Therraae of the woraen : here, I was overtaken by the rain. * I have frequently asked rayself two questions, when standing in the midst of Roman ruins : the bouses of private men were composed of a multitude of porticoes, of vaulted chambers, of chapels, halls, subterranean galleries, and obscure and secret passages : what was the use of all this display to an individual raaster ? Offices for the slaves, and other domestics and dependents, appear to have been generally built apart. In resolving this first question, I figure to rayself the Roraan citizen in bis bouse, as a sort of raonk, who had erected cloisters for his private use. Might not this recluse life, indicated by the prevailing character of the dwellings, be one of the causes of that calra, so reraarkable in the writings of the ancients ? Cicero recovered. In the long galleries of his abode, in the domestic temples therein enclosed, that tranquillity which he had lost in his coraraerce with raen. The light even which was received Into * See the letter which follows, upon Rome, to M. de Fontanes. IN ITALY, 207 these habitations would seem to tempt their inmates to a state of quietude : it descended alraost always frora the roof, or from windows placed very high up: this perpendicular light, so equal and so tran quil (with which we Illume our picturei-galleries) served the Roraan, if I may so express rayself, to conteraplate the picture of his life. As for us, we must have our windows open upon the streets, the market-places, or cross-ways. Every thing calcu lated to agitate and raake a noise delights us ; re flection, gravity, silence, fill us with ennui. The second question which has occurred to rae, is this : why were so raany edifices dedicated to the same uses ? One sees incessantly halls for the purpose of libraries ; yet there were but few books araong the ancients. We encounter Thermae at every step : the thermae of Nero, of Titus, of Ca racalla, of Diocletian, &c. Even had Rorae been thrice as populous as it ever could have been, the tenth part of these baths would have sufficed for public uses, I answer, it is probable that these monuments were, almost ever since their erection, in a state of dilapidation. One emperor overturned or de spoiled the works of another, with a view of un dertaking similar ones himself, and these were, in 208 TRAVELS turn, speedily abandoned by his successor. The blood and sweat of the people were exhausted upon the useless labours projected by the vanity of an in dividual, up to that hour when the avengers of the world, issuing from the depths of their forests, came to plant the humble standard of the cross upon these monuments of pride. The rain having ceased, I visited the stadium, and took a view of the teraple of Diana, in front of which stands that of Venus ; and I penetrated amongst the rubbish of the Emperor's palace. In the most complete state of preservation araidst this undistinguishing decay, is a sort of cellar or cistern, of square shape, under the court of the palace itself. Its walls are double, each wall two feet and a half thick, and the interval which separates them not ex ceeding two Inches, Issuing from the palace, which I left behind me on the left, I advanced, inclining to the right, to ward the Campagna di Roraa. Passing across a field of corn, sown over vaults, I arrived at the Therraae, still known by the name of Halls of the Philoso phers, or PrtBtorian Halls, — one of the most ira- posing ruins throughout the entire Villa. The beauty, the height, the strength (and at the same time lightness), of the arches, the various effect of IN ITALY. 209 the porticoes which either cross, intersect, or run parallel with it, the landscape spread at the back of this grand architectural relic, all corabine to pro duce a surprising irapression. Hadrian's Villa has furnished several precious reraains of the art of painting : the few arabesques that I have seen are of very skilful coraposition, and of drawing equally delicate and true. The Naiimachia, situated behind the Therrase, is a basin excavated by huraan labour, into which enorraous pipes, yet visible, conducted the water. This basin, now dry, was in the days of antiquity kept full, and on its bosom were represented naval combats. It is known, that, in these exhibitions, one or two thousand raen were soraetimes slaugh tered for the amusement of the Roman populace. Around the Naumachia terraces were raised for the accoraraodation of the spectators. These ter races were supported by piazzas, which served un derneath as places for constructing or harbouring the galleys. « A temple, copied from that of Serapis, in Egypt, adorned this scene : one half of the great dorae of this temple has fallen. At sight of its sombre pil lars, concentric arches, and a sort of funnel (whence the Oracle raight have murmured), one would think VOL. II. P 210 TRAVELS that one no longer stood amongst the works of Italy or Greece, but that tbe genius of some other people had presided here. An old sanctuary presents upon its green and humid walls sorae characters in pen cil. I know not what raourner bad strayed into the abandoned edifice. Frora this place, I proceeded to the temple of Pluto and Proserpine, vulgarly called tbe Entrance of Hell. This structure is now the dwelling of a vine-dresser ; I could not therefore explore it — the master, like the god, being absent. Beneath the Entrance of Hell, runs a valley called the Valley of the Palace: one might take it for the Elysian Fields. Advancing toward the south, and foUowing the line of a wall which supported the terraces at tached to the temple of Pluto, I perceived the last ruins of the Villa, situated at raore than a league's distance. Retracing my steps, I was desirous to see the , Academy, consisting of a garden, a temple of Apollo, and sundry buildings destined for the use of the philosophers, A peasant opened to me a gate leading into the field of sorae other proprietor, and I found myself in the Od^on and tbe Greek thea tre ; pretty weU preserved, as to shape. Some me lodious Genius must surely still hover about and IN ITALY, 211 preside over this spot ; for I heard, even on the 12th of December, the note of tbe blackbird : a troop of children, occupied in gathering ohves made the echoes resound with their songs — echoes which had perhaps repeated the verses of Sophocles and the music of Timotheus, Here terminated my survey ; a much longer one than is generally taken : I owe this compliment to a princely traveller. Further on is to be seen the grand Portico, of which little remains ; and still further, the rehcs of some other buildings, whose uses are not known : finally, the Colle di San Ste- phano, where the Villa terminates, and on which stand the ruins of the Prytaneum, From the Hippodrome to the Prytaneum, the Villa of Hadrian occupies the sites at present known tinder the appellations of Rocca Bruna, Palazza, Aqua Fera, and the Colle di San Stephano. Hadrian was a remarkable prince ; and though not one of the greatest of the Roraan eraperors, his narae is araong the raost lasting,* He has left traces every where ; including a celebrated wall in Great Britain ; in all probability the arena at Nismes and the Pont du Gard, in France ; sundry temples in Egypt ; aqueducts at Troy ; a new city both at Jerusalera * and at Athens ; and in Rome itself a p2 212 TRAVELS bridge still used, with a raultitude of other monu ments : all attesting the good taste, the activity, and the power, of this prince. He was himself at once poet, painter, and architect ; and bis age might be denominated that of the restoration of the arts. The destiny of the Mole of Hadrian is singular. The ornaraents of this sepulchre served for arras against the Goths : civilization thus overthrew and cast columns and statues at the head of barbarism, whose entrance, however, it could not prevent. The mausoleum is now become the fortress of the Popes, and is converted into a prison ; — which, by the bye, is not much belying its primitive destination. These vast piles erected over the ashes of men enlarge not the dimensions of the coffin ! tbe dead. In their se pulchral lodgments, are like that statue seated in too small a temple of Hadrian's ; — if they were to rise, they would strike their heads against the celling. Hadrian, on mounting the throne, said aloud to one of his enemies — "You are saved!" The ex clamation was magnaniraous ; but that clemency was not extended In matters of genius as of pohtics. The jealous emperor, on seeing the chefs-d'oeuvre of Apollodorus, whispered to himself, "He is lost!" and the artist was slain. IN ITALY. 213 I did not quit the Villa of Hadrian without first filling ray pockets with little bits of porphyry, ala baster, verd antique, painted stucco, and raosaic work — all of which I have since thrown away. And now — these ruins exist for me no longer, since it is not likely that I shall be again led to the spot. One laments, at every moment, some period, some thing, sorae person, which one shall behold no raore ! — Life is thus one continuous death. Many travellers who preceded rae have inscribed their naraes upon the raarbles of Hadrian's Villa : they hoped to prolong their existence, by attaching to celebrated places a token of their visit : they are deceived ! Whilst I attempted to read one of these names, newly traced in pencil, and which I thought I recognized, a bird flew off from a tuft of ivy, and in so doing shook dowii a few drops of the past rain : — the name disappeared. To-morrow, to the Villa D'Este.* * See, in a further part of the volume, the letter on Rome. 214 TRAVELS THE VATICAN. December 9.2d, 1803. I visited the Vatican at one o'clock ; — the day has been fine, with a brilliant sun and an extremely mild atmosphere. Solitude reigns among these grand flights of steps, or rather successive terraces, which one raight ascend with raules, and over these galleries adorned with the raaster-pleces of genius, which in other times the Popes traversed in all their pride ; solitude is spread over those works which so raany celebrated artists have studied, so many illustrious men ad mired — Tasso, Arlosto, Montaigne, Milton, Mon tesquieu, together with kings and queens, either powerful or fallen, and pilgrims frora every quarter of the globe. God dispelling Chaos. I have reraarked the angel which followed Lot and his wife. A beautiful view, over Rorae, of Frascati, at a corner or angle of the gallery. Entrance into the Chambers : Battle of Constantine. — The tyrant and his horse are drowning. IN ITALY. 215 St, Leo stopping Attila, — Why has Raphael given a fierce instead of a religious air to the Christian group ? in order to express the sentiment of divine assistance. The Holy Sacrament, the first work of Raphael ; cold, and Inexpressive of piety, but the dispositions and figures admirable, Apollo, the Muses, and the Poets, — The charac ter of the latter i§ very well made out ; but the whole presents a strange medley, Hellodorus chased frora the Temple. — An angel is remarkable in this composition, as is likewise the figure of a celestial feraale, imitated by Girodet, in his Ossian, The Conflagration of the Town, — The woman bearing a vase has been copied eternally. The contrast is remarkable between the man stupi- fied with affright and he who is striving to reach tbe child. Art is too visible here. — The mother and in fant have been a thousand times depicted by Raphael, and always excellently. , The School of Athens. — I like the Cartoon as well. Deliverance of St. Peter. — The effect of the three lights has been cited by every body. Library : an iron gate bristling, with spikes — a 216 TRAVELS true emblem of the gate of science. The arms of a Pope — three bees — a happy syrabol. Magnificent vessel : books invisible. Were they open for exaraination, one raight here find raaterials wholly to reraodel raodern history. Christian Museum. — -Instruraents of raartyrdom : claws of iron, to tear tbe skin ; a scraper to scratch it off; Iron hammers ; small pincers, &c. beautiful Christian antiquities ! How . did raen suffer in former days? Just as at present — witness these in struments. In raatters of suffering, the huraan race is stationary. Lamps found in the Catacombs. — Christianity coraraences at the torab : at the lamp of death that torch was kindled, which has illumined the world. Ancient crosses, ancient chalices, and other articles, wherewith to administer the comraunion. Paint ings brought frora Greece, to preserve thera frora the Iconoclasts. Ancient figure of Jesus Christ, since multiphed by painters. Its execution cannot be raore reraote than the eighth century. Was that divine Being the most comely of men, or was he ill-favoured ? The Greek and Latin fathers are divided in opinion. I incline to the former. Donation to the Church upon papyrus : — the world recommences here. IN ITALY. 217 Antique Museum. — The hair of a female, found in a tomb. — Is it that of the mother of the Gracchi ? — Is it that of Delia, of Cinthia, of Lalage, or of Lycinia, of which Maecenas, if we raay believe Ho race, would not exchange a single fibre for all the wealth of a King of Phrygia ? Aut pinguis Phrygise Mygdonias opes Permutare velis crine Lyciniae ? If any thing carries with it the idea of fragility, it is the hair of a young feraale, which might have been an object of idolatry to the most fleeting of passions, and yet has survived the Roman empire ! Death, which breaks the strongest chains, has not destroyed this light network. Beautiful torso coluran of alabaster. — A winding- sheet of amanthus, taken out of a sarcophagus. Death, however, has not the less consumed his prey. An Etruscan vase. Who drank out of this cup ? One of the departed ! Every thing in this Museum appertains to the grave, whether it once administered to funereal rites, or to the wants and functions of the living. 218 TRAVELS CAPITOLINE MUSEUM. Dec. 2M, 1803. The Milhary Column. — In the Court, the feet and head of a Colossus : to what figure have they belonged ? In the Senate-house ; the names of modem sena tors ; the wolf struck by thunder ; the geese of the Capitol. Tous les sifecles y sont : on y voit tous les temps ; Lk sont les devanciers avec leurs descendans.* Ancient measures of corn, of oil, and of wine, in the shape of altars, decorated with lions' heads. Paintings representing the first events of the Roman Republic. Statue of Virgil: the countenance is rustic and grave, the brow melancholy, the eyes aniraated ; and there are wrinkles which, diverging from the nostrils and terminating at the chin, furrow each cheek, Cicero : a certain regularity of contour, with an expression of airy lightness ; less strength of cha racter intimated, than philosophy — as much wit as eloquence, * All ages — all periods, are mingled around ; And descendants and forefathers strew the same ground ! IN ITALY. 219 The Alcibiades has not struck me with its beauty : it expresses the air of an imbecile. A young Mithridates, resembling an Alexander. Consular regalia, both ancient and raodern. The Sarcophagus of Alexander Severus and his mother. A basso-relievo of the infant Jupiter in the Island of Crete : admirable. A column of oriental alabaster, the most beauti- ful known to be extant. An antique plan of Rome, engraved upon marble ; an emblem of the perpetuity of the Eternal City. Bust of Aristotle : the style of face intelligent and powerful. Bust of Caracalla : eye, nose, and raouth pointed ; the nostrils contracted ; — the air fierce and at the same time foolish. Bust of Domitian: the lips very rigid. Bust of Nero: the visage large and round, sunken about the eyes, sp that both forehead and chin project : the air, that of a debauched Greek slave. Busts of Agrippina and Germanicus : the second long and thin ; the first grave. Bust of Julian : the forehead small and narrow. Bust of Marcus Aurelius : grand forehead, with the eyes and eyebrows hfted toward Heaven. 220 TRAVELS Bust of Vitellius ; a large nose, thin lips, puffed cheeks, little eyes, and the head slightly bent down, like that of a swine. Bust of Caesar : the visage thin ; the wrinkles deep ; tbe air prodigiously intellectual ; the fore head very prominent between the eyes, as if the skin were puckered up and intersected by a perpen dicular wrinkle ; the eyebrows depressed, and sink ing over the eyes ; the mouth fine, and singularly expressive — one might almost fancy it about to speak, so living is the smile ; the nose is certainly prorainent, but not so decidedly aquiline as it is usually, represented ; the teraples are flattened like those of Buonaparte ; scarcely any occiput ; the chin round and double ; the nostrils a little contracted ; the whole head indicative of imagination and genius. A basso-relievo : Endymion sleeping, seated upon a rock : his head is bent down on his chest, and at the sarae time leans slightly against the shaft of his lance, which rests upon his left shoulder. The left hand, thrown neghgentlyupon the lance,holds loosely the string of a dog, which, standing upon its hinder legs, is endeavouring to look over the rock. This is perhaps one of the raost exquisite bassi-rellevi ex isting.* * I have raade use of this attitude in the Martyrs. IN ITALY. 221 From the windows of the Capitol may be per ceived the whole of the Forum; the temples of Fortune and of Concord; the two columns of the temple of Jupiter Stator ; the Rostra ; the temple of Faustina ; the teraple of the Sun ; the teraple of Peace ; the ruins of the golden palace of Nero, as well as those of the Cohseura ; the triuraphal arches of Titus, of Septimus Severus, and of Constantine; •^one vast cemetery of ages, with their funereal raonuraents, each bearing tbe date of extinction. DORIA GALLERY. December 24:th 1803. Grand Landscape of Caspar Poussin : Views of Naples : Front of a ruined teraple standing on a plain. Cascade of Tivoli, and teraple of the Sybil. Landscape of Claude Lorraine. .The Flight into Egypt, by the sarae master : — the Virgin is halting on the borders of a wood, with the Child upon her knees ; an angel presents food to the Infant, and St. Joseph is employed in removing the pack-saddle from an ass : a bridge is in the background, over 222 TRAVELS which several camels, with their drivers, are pass ing ; on the horizon are just perceptible the build ings of a great city ; the tranquil character of the light is quite marvellous. Two other little landscapes of Claude Lorraine ; one of which represents a kind of patriarchal raar riage in a wood : — this is perhaps the most finished composition of the illustrious raaster. The Flight into Egypt, by Nicholas Poussin: the Virgin and Infant, riding upon an ass which an angel leads, are descending a hill into a wood ; St. Joseph brings up the rear; the movement of the wind is observable both upon .the vestments and trees. Several landscapes of Doralnlchino : colour lively and brilliant ; tbe subjects cheerful ; but in general a raw tone of verdure, and a light soraewhat va- pourous and ideal : — strange that French eyes should have best caught the true light of an Italian atrao sphere. Landscape of Annibal Caracci : great truth, but not rauch elevation of style. Diana and Endymion, by Rubens : the idea of this picture is happy. Endymion is almost asleep, in the position of the beautlfiil basso-relievo of the Capitol. Diana, hovering in the air, rests one IN ITALY. 223 hand hghtly upon the shoulder of the hunter, as if about to kiss without arousing him. The hand of the goddess of night is white as the silver moon, and her head is scarcely distinguishable frora the azure of the firraament. The whole is well drawn ; but when Rubens drew well he painted ill; the great colourist lost his pallet when he found his pencil. Two heads by Raphael. The Four Misers, by Albert Durer. Time plucking tbe feathers of Love, either by Titian or Alba;no: a picture both cold and affected, but the carnations excellent. The Aldobrandini Nuptials, copied from Nicho las Poussin : ten figures upon the same plane, form ing three group,s, of three, four, and three figures. The ground is a sort of grey screen, breast-high: the attitudes and drawing have all the simplicity of sculpture — one might say of a basso-relievo. There is no richness of ground-colour, no detail, no dra peries, no furniture, no trees, — in short, no acces sories whatever ; nothing but the Ijefore-mentioned individuals naturally grouped. 224 TRAVELS WALK THROUGH ROME, BY MOONLIGHT, Frora the top of the La Trinita da Monte, the steeples, and other edifices afar off, look like first draughts effaced by a painter, or like jagged coasts beheld frora the sea, whilst on board a ship at anchor. The shadow of the Obehsk: how raany men have cast their eyes on this shadow in Egypt and in Rome? La Trinita da Monte Is deserted : a dog is bark ing in this retreat of the French. A sraall light issues from an elevated charaber in the ViUa Medicis. The Corso : calra, and whiteness of the build ings ; depth of the transverse shadows. The Colonna Square. The Antonine Column half illuminated. The Pantheon : extreraely beautiful by moonlight. The Coliseum : Its air of awful grandeur and stillness by this sarae light. St. Peter's : effect of the moon upon the dome ; as also, upon the Vatican, the Obelisk, the two fountains, and the circular colonnade. A young girl asked me for alms — her head IN ITALY. 225 wrapped in her lifted petticoat : la poverina resem bled a Madonna, and had well selected both time and place. Had I been Raphael, I would have made a picture of her. The Roman will beg whert he is dying of hunger, but he is not even then importu nate if refused: like his ancestors, he makes no effort to sustain life — either his senate or his prince must support him, Rorae slurabers araidst her ruins. This luminary of tbe night, this globe which sorae have imagined to be a depopulated and deserted world, moves her pale solitudes over tbe solitudes of Rorae : she lights up streets without inhabitants, enclosures, squares, gardens, which no person enters, monasteries no longer resonant with the voices of recluses, cloisters as deserted as the porticoes of the Cohseum, What was doing here eighteen centuries ago, at a like hour to this ? Not only has ancient Italy vanished, but the Italy of tbe middle ages is also gone. Nevertheless, the traces of both are plainly marked at Rorae, If the raodern city vaunts ber St, Peter's, ancient Rome opposes her Pantheon and all her ruins : if the one marshals from the Capitol her consuls and eraperors, tbe other arrays from tbe Vatican her long succession of pontiffs. The Tiber divides the rival glories: seated in the same dust, VOL. II. a 226 TRAVELS Pagan Rorae sinks faster and faster into decay, and Christian Rorae Is gradually re-descending Into the catacombs whence she Issued. I have in my mind subjects for a score of letters upon Italy, which perhaps raight be read, if I could express my ideas as vividly as they are conceived; but the days are gone by, and I need repose. I feel like a traveller, who, conscious that he raust depart to-morrow, has sent before him his luggage — as we raay denorainate man's illusions and his years : every minute some fresh article is confided to that swift runner (as the Scripture terras hira) Time.* * Of this score of letters which I had in my head, I have written only one — namely, that upon Rome, to M. de Fon tanes. The several fragments that have preceded and follow might have formed materials for other letters ; but I have com pleted a description of Rome and Naples in the fourth and tifth books of the Martyrs. The only addition wanting to what I was desirous to say about Italy is the historical and political part, , IN ITALY. 227 JOURNEY FROM NAPLES. Terracina, December Z\st. Behold the personages, the equipages, the things and objects which one encounters pell-mell upon the roads of Italy : English and Russians, who tra vel at great expence in good berlins, with all tbe customs and all the prejudices of their respective countries ; Italian families, journeying in old ca lashes, in order to repair economically to the vint age ; raonks on foot, leading perhaps by the bridle a restive mule, laden with relics ; labourers driv ing carts drawn by large oxen, and bearing a little image of the Virgin at top of a staff, supported on the pole or beam ; country-women veiled, or with the hair fantastically braided, and wearing a short petticoat of glaring colour, boddlces open at the bosom and laced w;ith ribbons, necklaces and brace lets of shells'; waggons drawn by mules adorned with little bells, feathers, and red cloth ; ferry-boats, bridges, mills ; herds of asses, of ^oats, and sheep ; horse-dealers ; couriers, with heads enveloped in little bags, as in Spain ; children quite naked ; pil grims, mendicants, penitents, both black and white ; soldiers jolting along in wretched tilted carts ; par ties of gendarmerie ; old men mingled with young a2 228 TRAVELS glris. The air of good-humour is prevalent, but that of curiosity equally so. They foUow you with their eyes as long as they can ; they look as if they wished to speak with you, but never utter a syllable. Ten o' clock at night. I have just opened ray window : the waves corae to expire at the base of the walls of the inn, I neyer look on the sea without a glad and almost tender sensation, Gaeta, January 1, 1804. Behold, another year has run out its term ! In coming from Fondi, I have greeted the first orange-orchard. These fine trees were as fully laden with ripe fruit as the most productive ap ple-trees of Normandy. I write these few lines at Gaeta, upon a balcony, at four o'clock p, m. by the light of a brilliant sun, and having the ocean full in view. Here died Cicero, in the country, as he himself said, which he had saved, Moriar in patrid scep^ servatd. Cicero was slain by a man whom he had formerly defended — a degree of in gratitude of which history furnishes abundant ex araples, Antony received at the Forura the head and hands of Cicero : he gave a golden crown and a sura equal to 200,000 livres, to the assassin, and this was not the value of the thing : the head was nailed IN ITALY. 229 up in the public tribune between the two hands of the orator. Under Nero, Cicero was highly lauded ; during the reign of Augustus his name was not mentioned. In Nero's tirae vice was brought to perfection ; the old assassinations of tbe divine Au gustus dwindled into mere trifles, essays, nay almost into innocence itself, when compared with the new crimes. Besides, the people were then far re moved frora any thing like liberty ; they had be corae ignorant even of the raeaning of the word : the slaves who attended the garaes of the Circus, were they susceptible of being inspired by the re veries of a Cato or a Brutus ? The rhetoricians could then in all the safety of servitude, praise the peasant of Arpinura, Nero himself would have been the very person to put forth harangues upon the excellence of liberty ; and if the Roman people had felt oppressed with drowsiness during such ha rangues (as may readily be imagined), their lord and master, according to custom, would have di rected a resort to sharp blows, Ih order to extort the applause of his auditory. Naples, Jan. 2. The Duke of Anjou, king of Naples, brother of St. Louis, caused Conrad, the legitimate heir to the 230 TRAVELS crown of Sicily, to be put to death. Conrad, when upon tbe scaffold, threw his gauntlet among the crowd : who picked it up ? Louis XVL, a descend ant of St. Louis. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies raust be re garded as soraething apart frora Italy. Grecian un der the ancient Roraans, it has been since their tirae alternately Saracen, Norraan, German, French, and Spanish. The Italy of tbe middle ages was the Italy of the two great factions of Guelf and Ghibelline — the Italy of rival republics and petty tyrannies : nothing was spoken of but crime and liberty, and every thing was accomplished by the blow of the poniard. The adventures of this Italy are full of romance : who has not heard of Ugolino, Francesco of Rimini, Romeo and Juliet, Othello ? The Doges of Genoa and of Venice, the princes of Verona, of Ferrara and of Milan, the warriors, navigators, writers, ar tists, and merchants, of this Italy, were all men of genius : Grimaldl, Fregose, Adornl, Dandolo, Marino Zeno, MorosinI, Gradenigo, Scaligierl, Visconti, Doria, Trivulce, Spinola Zeno, PisanI, Christopher Colombus, Araerlgo Vespucci, Gabato, Dante, Pe trarch, Bocchacio, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Cardan, Pomponace, Achellini, Erasmus, Politian, Michael IN ITALY, 231 Angelo, Perugino, Raphael, Giulio Romano, Dorai- nicbino, Titian, Careggio, the Medicis ; but amongst all not a single knight — in fact, nothing of Trans alpine Europe, At Naples, on the contrary, chivalry was engrafted upon the Italian character, and individual prowess threw a grace over popular commotion, Tancred and Tasso, Joan of Naples and the good king R6nd who did not reign ; the Sicilian Vespers, Massa- niello, and the last Duke of Guise — all these figured in the Two Sicilies, The breath of Greece came also to expire at Naples ; Athens pushed its frontiers as far as Paestum : its temples and its tombs forra a line at the utraost, horizon of an enchanted sky, I have not been rauch struck with Naples on ray arrival : frora Capua, and its loveliness, to this place, the country is fertile, but has little of the pictu resque. One enters Naples alraost without seeing it, by a very deep road. * , January 3, 1804. Visited the Museura. Statue of Hercules, of which there are copies * You can no longer, if you would, follow the old route. Under the last French domination, another entrance was opened, and a beautiful road has been traced round the hill of Pausylippo. 232 TRAVELS everywhere. The figure is in repose, resting upon the trunk of a tree ; hghtness of the club. Venus ; beauty of contour ; moist drapery. Bust of Scipio Africanus. "Why should antique sculpture be so superior * to modern, whilst modern painting is apparently superior, or, at all events, equal, to ancient ? With regard to sculpture, I reply : The habits and manners of the ancients were graver than ours — their passions less turbulent. Now sculpture, whieh is unable to raark light and shifting gradations, or playful motion, accommo dates itself admirably to the tranquil gesture and serious physiognomy of the Greek or Roman. Besides, the antique draperies displayed in part the naked figure, which was thus always exposed to the artist's eye, whilst it is but very rarely de veloped to that of the modern sculptor ; and, to * This assertion, however generally true, admits of nurae rous exceptions. Antique statuary has nothing to show which surpasses the Cariatides of the Louvre, by John Goujon. We have these chefs-d'oeuvre daily before our eyes, and yet we no tice thera not. The Apollo has been far too much vaunted : the raetopes of the Parthenon alone exhibit the perfection of the Grecian sculpture. What I said respecting the Arts, in the Spirit of Christianity, is eccentric, and often incorrect. At that tirae I had seen neither Greece, Italy, nor Egypt. IN ITALY. 233 conclude, the huraan forra was then undoubtedly more symraetrical. With regard to painting, I answer : This art adraits of great freedora in the attitudes ; consequently, affectation, when unfortunately it is visible, detracts less from the great effects of the pencil. The rules of perspective, which have little or nothing to do with sculpture, are better understood by the moderns. We are likewise acquainted with a greater variety of colours, although it is yet to be learnt whether they are purer or raore brilliant. In ray review of the Museura, I admired the mo ther of Raphael, painted by her son ; gentle and beautiful, she soraewhat reserables Raphael him self, as the virgins of this divine master reserable angels. Michael Angelo, painted by hiraself. Arraida and Rinaldo ; the scene o,f the magic mirror, PUZZUOLI AND LA SOLFATARA, January ^fh. At Puzzuoll I have exarained the teraple of the Nymphs ; the house of Cicero — that which he called the Puteolana — whence he often wrote to 234 TRAVELS Attlcus, and where he probably composed his se cond Philippic. This villa was built after the plan of the Academy of Athens ; afterwards enriched by Vetus, it was turned into a palace under the emperor Hadrian, who died here, bidding farewell to his soul In the well-known verses : Aniraula vagula, blandula, Hospes comesque corporis, etc. He desired they would Inscribe on his tomb, that he was killed by physicians : Turba medicorum regem interfecit. The science has since made. It should seem, some progress. At that epoch, all men of talent were either Christians or " philosophers." A fine prospect Is commanded from the portico : a little orchard now occupies tbe site of the house of Cicero. The teraple of Neptune, and torabs. La Solfatara, field of sulphur. Noise of tbe springs of boiling water — the sound of Tartarus to the poets. View of the gulf of Naples in returning : cape illurained by tbe hght of the setting sun ; reflexion of this light upon Vesuvius and the Appennine ; IN ITALY, 235 agreeraent or harraony of this radiance and of the sky. Transparent vapour on the surface of the water and raid-way up the raountain. Whiteness of the sails of vessels entering tbe port. The isle of Capri in the distance. The bill of the Ca- raaldules, with its convent and tufts of trees, above Naples. Contrast of all this with La Solfatara. A Frenchraan now inhabits the island whither Brutus retired. Grotto of Esculapius. Tomb of Virgil, whence may be perceived the cradle of Tasso. VESUVIUS. Jan. 5, 1804. I left Naples this 5th of January, at seven o'clock in the morning, and proceeded to Portici. The sun had dispersed the clouds of night, but the top of Vesuvius is always wrapt in mist, I began ray journey up the mountain with .a Cicerone, who provided two mules, -one for rae, and another for hiraself. At first our ascent was by a tolerably wide road, between two plantations of vines, which were trained upon poplars. I soon began to feel the cold wintry 236 TRAVELS air, but kept advancing, and at length perceived, a little below the vapours of the raiddle region, the tops of some trees. They were the elms of the hermitage. The miserable habitations of the vine dressers were now visible on either side, amidst a rich abundance of Lachrymce Christi. In other respects, I observed a parched soil, and naked vines intermixed with pine-trees in the form of an um brella, sorae aloes in the hedge, innuraerable rolling stones, and not a single bird. On reaching the first level ground, a naked plain stretched itself before rae, and I had also in view the two suramlts of Vesuvius — on th.e left the Somma, on the right the present mouth of the volcano. These two heads were enveloped in pale clouds. I proceeded. On one side the Somma falls in, and on the other I could distinguish the hollows made in the cone of the volcano, which I was about to chrab. The lava of 1766 and 1769 covered the plain I was then crossing. It was a frightful smoky desert, where the lava, cast out like dross from a forge, displays its whitish scum upon a black ground, exactly reserabhng dried moss, I left the cone of the volcano to tbe right, and following the road on the left, reached the foot of a hill or rather wall, formed of the lava which over- IN ITALY, 237 whelmed Herculaneura, This species of wall is planted with vines on the borders of the plain, and on the opposite side' is a deep valley, filled by a copse. The air now began to feel extreraely keen. I climbed this bill in order to visit the hermitage, which I perceived from the other side. The heavens lowered ; the clouds descended and swept along the surface of the earth like grey sraoke, or ashes driven before the wind, I began to hear a murmuring sound araong the elras of the her mitage. The hermit came forth to receive me, and held the bridle of ray raule while I alighted. He was a tall man with a frank expression of countenance and good address. He invited me into his cell, and placed upon the table a repast of bread, apples, and eggs. Sitting down opposite me, he rested both elbows on the table, and calmly began to con verse while I ate my breakfast. The clouds were collected all round us, and no object could be dis tinguished through the windows of the hermitage. Nothing was heard in this dreary abyss of vapour but the whistling of the wind, and the distant noise of the waves, as they broke upon the shores of Her culaneura. There was soraething interesting in the situation of this tranquil abode of Christian hospi- 238 TRAVELS tality — a small cell at the foot of a volcano and in the raidst of a terapest. I was presented by the recluse with the book in which strangers who visit Vesuvius are accustomed to raake sorae memorandum. In this volume I did not find one single remark worthy of recollection. The French, indeed, with the good taste natural to our nation, had contented themselves with mentioning the date of their journey, or paying a compliraent to tbe herrait for his hospitality. It would seem that this volcano had no very reraarkable effect upon the visitors ; which confirms me in an idea I sorae tirae since forraed, — naraely, that grand objects and grand subjects are less capable of giving birth to great ideas than is generally supposed ; their sublimity is evident, and all that is added beyond tbe recognition of it becomes merely superfluous. The "nascetur ridiculus mus" is true of all raoun tains. I quitted the herraitage at half-past two o'clock, and continued to ascend the hill of lava, on which I had before proceeded. On my left was the valley which separated me frora the Soraraa ; on ray right the plain of the cone. Not a living creature did I see in this region of desolation but a poor, raeagrc IN ITALY, 239 squalid, half-naked girl, bending under a load of faggots, which she had cut on the mountain. The prospect was now wholly obstructed by the clouds ; the wind blowing thera upward frora the black plain, — of which, if clear, I should have cora raanded a view, — and causing thera to pass over the lava road upon which I was pursuing ray way, I heard nothing but the sound of ray raule's footsteps. Quitting the hill at length, and bending to the right, I re-descended into the plain of lava, which adjoins the cone of the volcano, and which I crossed lower down on my road to the hermitage ; but even when in the midst of these calcined fragments, the mind can hardly forra any idea of tbe appearance which the district raust assurae when covered with fire and raolten raetals by an eruption of Vesuvius, Dante had, perhaps, seen It when he described, in his Hell, those showers of ever-burning fire, which descend slowly and in silence "corae di neve in Alpe saiiza vento," " Arrivammo ad una landa Che dal suo letto ogni pianta rimove Lo spazzo er' un' arena arida e spessa tsovra tutto '1 sabbion d'un cader lento Pioven di fuoco dilatata, e falde. Come di neve in Alpe sanza vento." 240 TRAVELS Snow was here visible in many places, and I sud denly discovered, at intervals, Portici, Capri, Ischia, Pausylippo, the sea, studded with the white sails of fisbing-boats, and the coast of the gulph of Naples, bordered with orange-trees. It was a glimpse of paradise caught frora the infernal regions. On reaching the foot of the cone, we alighted from our mules. My guide gave me a long staff, and we began to climb the huge mass of cinders. The clouds rolled around us, the fog became still denser, and thick darkness hung upon our steps. Behold me now at the top of Vesuvius, where, seating myself at the mouth of the volcano, I wrote down what had hitherto occurred, and prepared for a descent into the crater. The sun appeared from time to tirae through the raass of vapours, which enveloped the whole raountain and concealed from me one of the most beautiful landscapes In the world, while it doubled the horrors of the place I was in, Vesuvius, thus separated by clouds from the enchanting country at Its base, has the appear ance of being placed in the completest desert ; and the terror it Inspires is in no degree diminished by the situation of a flourishing city at its foot. My guide raade sorae objection to ray proposal of descending into the crater, but this was all put IN ITALY. 241 on for the purpose of obtaining a httle more raoney, and we at length agreed upon a sum, which he re ceived on the spot. He then took off his clothes, and we walked some time on the edge of the abyss, in order to find a part which was less perpendicu lar, and raore commodious for our descent. My companion having discovered one, gave the signal for me to follow him, and we plunged down. You must fancy us at the bottom of the gulph,* for I despair of describing the chaos which sur rounded rae. Let the reader figure to himself a basin, a thou sand feet. In circumference and three hundred feet high, which takes the shape of a funnel. Its bor ders, or interior walls, are furrowed by the liquid fire whicb this basin has contained and vomited forth. The projecting parts of these walls resemble those brick pillars with which the Roraans sup ported their enormous masonry. Large rocks hang down in various parts, and their fragments, mixed with a crust of cinders, cover th^ bottom of the abyss. * There is some fatigue, but very Httle danger, attendant on a descent into the crater of Vesuvius, unless the investigator should be surprised by a sudden eruption. The later erup tions have changed the form of the cone. VOL. II. R 242 TRAVELS This bottom of the basin is ploughed and in dented in sundry ways. Near the middle are three vents, or small mouths, recently opened, which dis charged flames during the occupation of Naples by the French in 1798. From different points of the crater sraoke pro- ceeds, especially on that side toward Torre del Greco. On the opposite side, toward Caserta, I perceived flarae. If you plunge your hand into the cinders, you find them of a burning heat several inches under the surface. The prevailing colour of the gulph is jet black ; but Providence, as I have often observed, can impart grace at pleasure even to objects the most revolting. The lava. In some places. Is tinged with azure, ultra marine, yellow, and orange. Rocks of granite are warped and twisted by the action of the fire, and bent to their very extremities, so that they exhibit the semblance of the leaves of palras and acanthus. Tbe volcanic raatter having cooled on tbe rocks over which it flowed, raany figures are thus forraed, such as roses, giran doles, and ribbons. The rocks likewise assurae tbe forras of plants and animals, and iraitate the various figures which are to be seen in agates. I particu larly noticed, on a bluish rock, a white swan, rao- delled so perfectly that I could have alraost sworn I IN ITALY. 243 beheld this beautiful bird sleeping upon a placid lake, its head bent under its wing, and its long neck stretched over its back like a roll of silk. Ad vada Meandri concinit albus olor. Here reigned that perfect silence which 1 for merly met with at noon in the forests of America, when I have held my breath, and heard nothing except the beating of my heart and teraporal artery. It was only at intervals that gusts of wind, descend ing from the cone to the bottom of the crater, rustled through my clothes or whistled round my staff. I also heard the rolling of some stones, which my guide kicked aside as he climbed through the cinders : a confused echo, sirailar to the jarring of metal or glass, prolonged the noise of their fall, and again all was still as death. Compare this gloomy silence with the tremendous explosions which shake these places wben the volcano vomits fire from its entrails, and covers the earth with dark ness ! A philosophical reflection may here be made, tending to excite our contempt for human things. What, in fact, are the famous revolutions of empires, in comjiarlson with those convulsions of nature, that change the face of the earth and of ocean ? It would at least be a happy cir- R 2 244 TRAVELS curastance if men would cease to employ themselves in rendering each other miserable, during the short time that they are permitted to dwell together. Vesuvius has not once opened its abyss to swallow up cities, without its fury surprising raankind in the midst of blood and tears. What are the first signs of civilization, the first marks of the passage of men which have been found, during our own days, under the extinct ashes of the volcano ? Instru ments of suffering and skeletons In chains ! * Times change, and human destinies are liable to sirailar inconstancy. " Life," says a Greek song, " Is hke the wheels of a chariot." Tpo-)(os apfiaros yap nla Bt'orof Tpi')(ei icvXidels. Pliny perished owdng to bis desire to contera plate, at a distance, the volcano, in the centre of which I was now tranquilly seated. I saw the abyss smoking round rae. I reflected that a few fathoras below rae was a gulph of fire. I reflected that the volcano raight at once disgorge its entrails, and launch me into the air amidst the rocky fragments by which I was surrounded. By what Providence was I conducted hither ? By what chance did the tempests of the American * At Pompeii. IN ITALY. 245 ocean cast me on the plains of Lavinia? Lavi- naque venit littora. I cannot refrain from return ing to the agitations of this life, in which, says St. Augustine, things are full of misery, and even hope devoid of happiness : " Rem plenam miseriae, spem beatltudinis inanem." Born on the rocks of Arrao rica, the first sound which struck my ear on enter ing the world was that of the sea; and on how many shores have I seen the sarae waves break, that I here meet with again ! Who would have predicted, a few years since, that I should hear these wanderers moaning at the tonjbs of Scipio and Virgil, after they had rolled at my feet on the coast of England, or upon the strand of Canada ? My name Is in the hut of the savage of Florida, and in the hei'mit's book at Ve suvius. When shall I lay down, at the gate of my fathers, the pilgrim's staff and mantle ? " O patria ! O Divum domus Ilium ! 246 TRAVELS PATRIA, OR LITERNUM. January 6th, 1804. Leaving Naples by way of the grotto of Pausi- llppo, I have jolted a full hour in a calash over the plain ; after traversing several little urabrageous roads, I alighted frora the vehicle to seek, on foot, the place now called Patria, the ancient Liternura. A clurap of poplars was the first object that pre sented itself to ray view, and afterwards vineyards and" a plain sown with corn. Nature was beauti ful around, yet sorrowful. At Naples, as in the Roraan States, the cultivators of the soil are not much in their fields except at seed-time and harvest, after which they repair either into the suburbs of the towns, or into the larger villages. The country, properly speaking, thus wants hamlets, herds, and inhabitants ; and the rustic movements coraraon to Tuscany, the Milanese, and the Transalpine coun tries, are not visible. In the environs of Patria, however, I have met with several neatly-built farm houses ; each having, in its court-yard, a well adorned with flowers, and with two pillars, crowned with aloes in baskets. There is, throughout this country, a kind of natural taste for architecture LV ITALY. 247 illustrative of the ancient seat of civilization and the arts. Swarapy grounds overgrown with fern, and ad joining woody bottoras, have rerainded rae of the aspect of Brittany. How long is it, since I have quitted ray native heaths ? An old wood of oaks and elras, among whicb I was brought up, has just been cut down: I should be tempted to utter lamentations, like those ideal beings whose lives were attached to the trees of the magic forest of Tasso. I perceived afar off, on the borders of the sea, the tower ¦which bears the name of Scipio. At the further end of a great bouse, forming at once a chapel and a sort of inn, was a troop of fisher men, whom I found occupied in mending their nets beside a piece of water. Two of tbem brought a boat, and disembarked me near a bridge, in the vicinity of the tower. I have passed over downs, on which grow laurels, rayrtles, and dwarf olive-trees. Ascending, not withouf sorae difficulty, to the top of tbe tower, which serves as a landmark for vessels at sea, my eyes have wandered over that ocean which Scipio so many tiraes contemplated. Several fragments ofthe ruined vaults, called grottoes of Scipio, presented themselves to my enthusiastic 248 TRAVELS investigation ; and I trod with an eraotion of pro found respect the earth which covers the bones of hira who, in the raidst of glory, preferred solitude. I can have nothing in coraraon with this great citi zen, save that last exile, frora which no raan is recalled. BAI^. January 9th. View frora the top of Monte Nuovo : culture In the very depth of the hollows : rayrtles and elegant heaths. The lake Avernus, of circular forra, and buried araidst the raountains : its shores are decked with vines with long stems. The cave of the Sybil is situ ated toward the south, on the side of a steep bank, near a wood ; I heard the birds sing, and saw them fly around the cave, in spite of the lines of Virgil : Quam super baud ullae poterant impunfe volantes Tendere iter pennis As to the golden bough, had all the doves In the world pointed It out to me, I could not have gathered it The Avernus communicated with another, naraely, the Lucrlne lake, which latter is merged In the sea: the remains of the Julia bridge. IN ITALY. 249 It Is the custom to embark, and follow the dyke as far as the baths of Nero. I have had eggs boiled in the Phlegethon. On leaving the baths, the traveller re-embarks, doubling the promontory. Upon an abandoned coast lie, washed by the waves, the ruins of a multitude of baths and Roman villas : temples of Venus, of Mercury, and Diana : torabs of Agrippina, &c. Baiae was the Elysium of Virgil, and the Hell of Tacitus. HERCULANEUM, PORTICI, POMPEII. January Wth. The lava has filled Herculaneura, as raelted lead fills the cavities of a raould. Portici is a magazine of antiquities. There are four parts of Pompeii discovered: 1st. the temples, the quarters of the soldiers, and the theatres ; 2d. a house recently cleared by the French ; 3d. a division of the town ; and 4th. a house withoutside it. « The circumference of Porapeii is about four miles. The quarters of the soldiers are a sort of cloister, round which forty-two chambers are ranged. Some Latin words, rautilated and badly spelt, are daubed upon the walls. Not far off were 250 TRAVELS discovered the chained skeletons. " Those who were formerly chained together," says Job, " suffer no longer, and no longer hear the voice of the task master." A little theatre ; twenty-one semicircular benches, with corridors behind. A large theatre: three doors serve to give egress from the scenes at the back, and communicate with the rooms of the actors. Three rows are raarked for benches : the lower one largest, and of marble. The visitor enters by a corridor at the upper part of the theatre, and descends into the hall by the vomitoria. Six doors open upon this corridor. At a little distance stands a square portico, of sixty columns ; other pillars run in a right line, from south to north ; dispositions which I do not thoroughly understand. Two teraples have been discovered ; one of which presents three altars and a raised sanctuary. The house discovered by the French is very curi ous: the bed-rooms are extremely sraall, painted with blue or yellow, and decorated with little frescoes, in which one recognizes a Roraan person age, an Apollo playing on his lyre, landscapes, or perspectives of gardens or towns. In the largest apartment of this house, a painting represents IN ITALY. 251 Ulysses fleeing from the Syrens : the son of Laertes, tied to the mast of his ship, listens to three Syrens stationed on the rocks ; the first touches the lyre, the second sounds a kind of trumpet, while the third sings. That part of Pompeii first discovered, is entered by a street about fifteen feet wide, with pavements on either side ; the road in the middle still retains in several places, the marks of wheels. The street is bordered by shops and houses whose first story has fallen. In two of these houses, the following objects are to be seen : A surgery and a dressing-room, with analogous paintings. A corn-mill has been pointed out to rae, as have also the marks of some sharp instruraent upon the walls of a pork-butcher's or baker's shop — I do not recollect which. This street leads to a gate of tbe city, where they have laid bare a portion of the wall that surrounded it. At this gate coraraences the file of sepulchres which borders the high-road. Having passed through the gate, we come upon the country-house so much talked of. The por tico surrounding the garden of this house is com posed of square pillars, grouped three and three. 252 TRAVELS Beneath this first portico there is a second -, and here it was that the young female was suffocated, the impression of whose breast Is raarked on the piece of earth which I saw at Portici. Death, like a sta tuary, raodelled his victim.- In passing frora one excavated part of the city to another, we traverse a rich and cultivated soil, occasionally planted with vines. The heat was con siderable, the earth sralling with verdure, and enaraelled with flowers.* In walking through this city of the dead, one idea has pursued rae. As the labourers clear the different edifices of Porapeii, they reraove what ever they discover, household utensils, iraple- raents of divers trades, pieces of furniture, statrfes, manuscripts, &c. all of which are promiscuously carried to the Portici Museum. In my opinion, people raight have eraployed their tirae better : why not have left these things as they found thera, and where they found thera ? Instead of their reraoval, they should have been preserved on the spot : roofs and ceilings, floors and win dows, should have been carefully restored, in order * I have given at the end of this volurae some curious de tails respecting Pompeii, which must serve to complete my short description. IN ITALY. 253 to prevent the destruction of the walls and paint ings ; the ancient enclosure of the town should be rebuilt, the gates repaired, and a guard of soldiers stationed there, together with sorae individuals well versed in the arts. Would not this have been the raost interesting rauseura in the world ? a Ro raan town preserved quite entire, as if its inhabit ants had issued forth but a quarter of an hour pre vious ! One raight, then, better learn the domestic history ofthe Roman people, and the degree of Roraan civili sation, in a few walks through the restored Pom peii, than by reading all the books of antiquity The whole of Europe would flock hither ; and the cost incurred in the prosecution of tbe scheme would be amply covered by the expenditure of affluent foreigners at Naples. Besides, it would not be necessary to complete such a plan hastily ; the investigation of the spot raight be leisurely but regularly continued ; and nothing would be want ing but a few bricks and slates,