Chapter IX: Part 9

We left two sloops full of pirates mourning over the total depravity of Captain Avery. Sorely repenting his sins, they resolved to amend their lives, and see what they could steal in Madagascar. Landing on that great island they dismantled their sloops, taking their plentiful supply of guns and powder ashore, where they camped, making their sails into tents. Here they met with another party of English pirates who were also penitent, having just plundered a large and richly-laden ship at the mouth of the Red Sea. Their dividend was three thousand pounds a man, and they were resolved to settle in Madagascar instead of going home to be hanged. The two parties, both in search of a peaceful and simple life, made friends with the various native princes, who were glad of white men to assist in the butchering of adjacent tribes. Two or three pirates at the head of an attacking force would put the boldest tribes to flight. Each pirate acquired his own harem of wives, his own horde of black slaves, his own plantations, fishery and hunting grounds, his kingdom wherein he reigned an absolute monarch. If a native said impudent words he was promptly shot, and any attack of the tribes on a white man was resented by the whole community of pirate kings. Once the negroes conspired for a general rising to wipe out their oppressors at one fell swoop, but the wife of a white man getting wind of the plot, ran twenty miles in three hours to alarm her lord. When the native forces arrived they were warmly received. After that each of their lordships built a fortress for his resting place with rampart and ditch set round with a labyrinth of thorny entanglements, so that the barefoot native coming as a stranger by night, trod on spikes, and sounded a loud alarm which roused the garrison.

Long years went by. Their majesties grew stout from high feeding and lack of exercise, hairy, dressed in skins of wild beasts, reigning each in his kingdom with a deal of dirty state and royalty.

So Captain Woods found them when he went in the ship _Delicia_, to buy slaves. At the sight of his forty-gun ship they hid themselves in the woods, very suspicious, but presently learned his business, and came out of the woods, offering to sell their loyal negro subjects by hundreds in exchange for tobacco and suits of sailor clothes, tools, powder, and ball. They had now been twenty-five years in Madagascar, and, what with wars, accidents, sickness, there remained eleven sailor kings, all heartily bored with their royalty. Despite the attachments of their harems, children and swarms of grandchildren and dependents, they were sick for blue water, hungry for a cruise. Captain Woods observed that they got very friendly with his seamen, and learned that they were plotting to seize the ship, hoist the black flag, and betake themselves once more to piracy on the high seas.

After that he kept their majesties at a distance, sending officers ashore to trade with them until he had completed his cargo of slaves. So he sailed, leaving eleven disconsolate pirate kings in a mournful row on the tropic beach, and no more has ever transpired as to them or the fate of their kingdoms. Still, they had fared much better than Captain Avery with his treasure of royal diamonds.

XL

A. D. 1776

DANIEL BOONE

As a matter of unnatural history the British lion is really and truly a lioness with a large and respectable family. When only a cub she sharpened her teeth on Spain, in her youth crushed Holland, and in her prime fought France, wresting from each in turn the command of the sea.

She was nearing her full strength when France with a chain of forts along the Saint Lawrence and the Mississippi attempted to strangle the thirteen British cubs in America. By the storming of Quebec the lion smashed that chain; but the long and world-wide wars with France had bled her dry, and unless she could keep the sea her cubs were doomed, so bluntly she told them they must help.

The cubs had troubles of their own and could not help. Theirs was the legal, hers the moral right, but both sides fell in the wrong when they lost their tempers. Since then the mother of nations has reared her second litter with some of that gentleness which comes of sorrow.

So far the French in Canada were not settlers so much as gay adventurers for the Christ, or for beaver skins, living among the Indians, or in a holiday mood leading the tribes against the surly British.

So far the British overseas were not adventurers so much as dour fugitives from injustice at home, or from justice, or merely deported as a general nuisance, to join in one common claim to liberty, the fanatics of freedom.

Unlike the French and Spaniards, the northern folk--British or Dutch, German or Scandinavian--had no mission, except by smallpox to convert the heathen. Nothing cared they for glory or adventure, but only for homes and farms. Like a hive of bees they filled the Atlantic coast lands with tireless industry until they began to feel crowded; then like a hive they swarmed, over the Appalachian ranges, across the Mississippi, over the Rocky Mountains, and now in our own time to lands beyond the sea.

Among the hard fierce colonists a very few loved nature and in childhood took to the wilds. Such was the son of a tame Devon Quaker, young Daniel Boone, a natural marksman, axman, bushman, tracker and scout of the backwoods who grew to be a freckled ruddy man, gaunt as a wolf, and subtle as a snake from his hard training in the Indian wars.

When first he crossed the mountains on the old warrior trail into Kentucky, hunting and trapping paid well in that paradise of noble timber and white clover meadows. The country swarmed with game, a merry hunting ground and battle-field of rival Indian tribes.

There Boone and his wife’s brother Stuart were captured by Shawnees, who forced the prisoners to lead the way to their camp where the other four hunters were taken. The Indians took their horses, rifles, powder, traps and furs, all lawful plunder, but gave them food to carry them to the settlements with a warning for the whites that trespassers would be prosecuted. That was enough for four of the white hunters, but Boone and Stuart tracked the Indians and stole back some of their plunder, only to be trailed in their turn and recaptured. The Shawnees were annoyed, and would have taken these trespassers home to be burned alive, but for Boone’s queer charm of manner which won their liking, and his ghostlike vanishing with Stuart into the cane brakes. The white men got away with rifles, bullets and powder, and they were wise enough not to be caught again. Still it needed some courage to stay in Kentucky, and after Stuart got scalped Boone said he felt unutterably lonely. Yet he remained, dodging so many and such varied perils that his loneliness must really have been a comfort, for it is better to be dull in solitude than scalped in company. He owed money for his outfit, and would not return to the settlements until he had earned the skins that paid his debt.

At the moment when the big colonial hive began to swarm Boone led a party of thirty frontiersmen to cut a pack-trail over the mountains into the plains of Kentucky. This wilderness trail--some two hundred miles of mud-holes, rocks and stumps--opened the way for settlement in Kentucky, a dark and bloody ground, for white invaders. At a cost of two or three scalps Boone’s outfit reached this land, to build a stockaded village named for the leader, Boonesborough, and afterward he was very proud that his wife and daughters were the first women to brave the perils of that new settlement.

Under a giant elm the settlers, being British, had church and parliament, but only on one Sunday did the parson pray for King George before the news came that congress needed prayers for the new republic at war with the motherland.

Far to the northwest of Kentucky the forts of Illinois were held by a British officer named Hamilton. He had with him a handful of American Tories loyal to the king, some newly conquered French Canadians not much in love with British government, and savage Indian tribes. All these he sent to strike the revolting colonies in their rear, but the whole brunt of the horror fell upon poor Kentucky. The settlements were wrecked, the log cabins burned, and the Indians got out of hand, committing crimes; but the settlers held four forts and cursed King George through seven years of war.

It was in a lull of this long storm that Boone led a force of thirty men to get salt from the salt-licks frequented by the buffalo and deer, on the banks of Licking River. One day while he was scouting ten miles from camp, and had just loaded his horse with meat to feed his men, he was caught, in a snow-storm, by four Shawnees. They led him to their camp where some of the hundred warriors had helped to capture Boone eight years before. These, with much ceremony and mock politeness, introduced him to two American Tories, a brace of French Canadians, and their Shawnee chiefs. Then Boone found out that this war party was marching on Fort Boonesborough where lived his own wife and children and many women, but scarcely any men. But knowing the ways of the redskins Boone saw that if he let them capture his own men in camp at the salt-licks they would go home without attacking Boonesborough. He must risk the fighting men to save the fort; he must guide the enemy to his own camp and order his men to surrender; and if they laid down all their lives for the sake of their women and children--well, they must take their chance. Boone’s men laid down their arms.

A council followed at which fifty-nine Indians voted to burn these Americans at the stake against sixty-one who preferred to sell them to Hamilton as prisoners of war. Saved by two votes, they marched on a winter journey dreadful to the Indians as well as to the prisoners; but all shared alike when dogs and horses had to be killed for food. Moreover the savages became so fond of Boone that they resolved to make an Indian of him. Not wanting to be an Indian he pleaded with Hamilton the Hair Buyer, promising to turn loyalist and fight the rebels, but when the British officer offered a hundred pounds for this one captive it was not enough for these loving savages. They took Boone home, pulled out his hair, leaving only a fine scalp-lock adorned with feathers, bathed him in the river to wash all his white blood out, painted him, and named him Big Turtle. As the adopted son of the chief, Black Fish, Boone pretended to be happy, and in four months had become a popular chief, rather closely watched, but allowed to go out hunting. Then a large Indian force assembled to march against Fort Boonesborough.

Boone easily got leave to go out hunting, and a whole day passed before his flight was known. Doubling on his course, setting blind trails, wading along the streams to hide his tracks, sleeping in thickets or in hollow logs, starving because he dared not fire a gun to get food, his clothes in rags, his feet bloody, he made his way across country, and on the fifth day staggered into Fort Boonesborough.

The enemy were long on the way. There was time to send riders for succor and scouts to watch, to repair the fort, even to raid the Shawnee country before the invaders arrived--one hundred Canadians and four hundred Indians, while Boone’s garrison numbered fifty men and boys, with twenty-five brave women.

By Hamilton’s orders there must be no bloodshed, and he sent forty horses for the old folks, the women and children to ride on their way northward as prisoners of war.

Very solemn was Boone, full of negotiations for surrender, gaining day after day with talk, waiting in a fever for expected succor from the colonies. Nine commissioners on either side were to sign the treaty, but the Indians--for good measure--sent eighteen envoys to clasp the hands of their nine white brothers, and drag them into the bush for execution. The white commissioners broke loose, gained the fort, slammed the gates and fired from the ramparts.

Long, bitter and vindictive was the siege. A pretended retreat failed to lure Boone’s men into ambush. The Indians dug a mine under the walls, but threw the dirt from the tunnel into the river where a streak of muddy water gave their game away. Torches were thrown on the roofs, but women put out the flames. When at last the siege was raised and the Indians retreated, twenty-four hours lapsed before the famished garrison dared to throw open their gates.

In these days a Kentucky force, led by the hero George Rogers Clark, captured the French forts on the Illinois, won over their garrisons, and marched on the fortress of Vincennes through flooded lands, up to their necks in water, starving, half drowned. They captured the wicked Hamilton and led him away in chains.

Toward the end of the war once more a British force of Frenchmen and Indians raided Kentucky, besieging Logan’s fort, and but for the valor of the women, that sorely stricken garrison would have perished. For when the tanks were empty the women took their buckets and marched out of the gates, laughing and singing, right among the ambushed Indians, got their supply of water from the spring, and returned unhurt because they showed no fear.

With the reliefs to the rescue rode Daniel Boone and his son Israel, then aged twenty-three. At sight of reinforcements the enemy bolted, hotly pursued to the banks of Licking River. Boone implored his people not to cross into the certainty of an ambush, but the Kentuckians took no notice, charging through the river and up a ridge between two bushed ravines.

From both flanks the Wyandots charged with tomahawks, while the Shawnees raked the horsemen with a galling fire, and there was pitiless hewing down of the broken flying settlers. Last in that flight came Boone, bearing in his arms his mortally wounded son, overtaken, cut off, almost surrounded before he struck off from the path, leaping from rock to rock. As he swam the river Israel died, but the father carried his body on into the shelter of the forest.

With the ending of the war of the Revolution, the United States spread gradually westward, and to the close of his long life old Daniel Boone was ever at the front of their advance, taking his rest at last beyond the Mississippi. To-day his patient and heroic spirit inspires all boys, leads every frontiersman, commands the pioneers upon the warrior trails, the ax-hewn paths, the wilderness roads of marching empire.

XLI

A. D. 1813

ANDREW JACKSON

The Nations were playing a ball game: “Catch!” said France, throwing the ball to Spain, who muffed it. “Quick!” cried Napoleon, “or England will get it--catch!” “Caught!” said the first American republic, and her prize was the valley of the Mississippi.

Soon afterward the United States in the name of freedom joined Napoleon the Despot at war with Great Britain; and the old lion had a wild beast fight against a world-at-arms. In our search for great adventure let us turn to the warmest corner of that world-wide struggle, poor Spanish Florida.

Here a large Indian nation, once civilized, but now reduced to savagery, had taken refuge from the Americans; and these people, the Creeks and Seminoles, fighting for freedom themselves, gave shelter to runaway slaves from the United States. A few pirates are said to have lurked there, and some Scottish gentlemen lived with the tribes as traders. Thanks perhaps to them, Great Britain armed the Creeks, who ravaged American settlements to the north, and at Fort Minns butchered four hundred men.

Northward in Tennessee the militia were commanded by Andrew Jackson, born a frontiersman, but by trade a lawyer, a very valiant man of high renown, truculent as a bantam.

Without orders he led two thousand, five hundred frontiersmen to avenge Fort Minns by chasing the Spanish governor (in time of peace) out of Pensacola, and a British garrison from Fort Barrancas, and then (after peace was signed) expelled the British from New Orleans, while his detachment in Florida blew up a fort with two hundred seventy-five refugees, including the women and children. Such was the auspicious prelude to Jackson’s war with the Creeks, who were crushed forever at the battle of Horseshoe Bend.

XLII

A. D. 1836

SAM HOUSTON

Serving in Jackson’s force was young Sam Houston, a hunter and a pioneer from childhood. Rather than be apprenticed to a trade he ran away and joined the Cherokees, and as the adopted son of the head chief became an Indian, except of course during the holidays, when he went to see his very respectable mother. On one of these visits home he met a recruiting sergeant, and enlisted for the year of 1812. At the age of twenty-one he had fought his way up to the rank of ensign, serving with General Andrew Jackson at the battle of Horseshoe Bend.

The Creeks held a line of breastworks, and the Americans were charging these works when an arrow struck deep into young Houston’s thigh. He tried to wrench it out but the barb held, and twice his lieutenant failed. “Try again,” said Houston, “and if you fail I’ll knock you down.” The lieutenant pulled out the arrow, and streaming with blood, the youngster went to a surgeon who dressed his wound. General Jackson told him not to return to the front, but the lad must needs be at the head of his men, no matter what the orders.

Hundreds of Creeks had fallen, multitudes were shot or drowned attempting to swim the river, but still a large party of them held a part of the breastwork, a sort of roof spanning a gully, from which, through narrow port-holes, they kept up a murderous fire. Guns could not be placed to bear on this position, the warriors flatly refused all terms of surrender, and when Jackson called for a forlorn hope Houston alone responded. Calling his platoon to follow him he scrambled down the steep side of the gully, but his men hesitated, and from one of them he seized a musket with which he led the way. Within five yards of the Creeks he had turned to rally his platoon for a direct charge through the port-holes, when two bullets struck his right shoulder. For the last time he implored his men to charge, then in despair walked out of range. Many months went by before the three wounds were healed, but from that time, through very stormy years he had the constant friendship of his old leader, Andrew Jackson, president of the United States.

Houston went back to the West and ten years after the battle was elected general of the Tennessee militia. Indeed there seemed no limit to his future, and at thirty-five he was governor of the state, when his wife deserted him, and ugly rumors touched his private life. Throwing his whole career to the winds he turned Indian, not as a chief, but as Drunken Sam, the butt of the Cherokees.

It is quite natural for a man to have two characters, the one commanding while the other rests. Within a few months the eyes of Houston the American statesman looked out from the painted face of Drunken Sam, the savage Cherokee. From Arkansas he looked southward and saw the American frontiersmen, the Texas pioneers, trying to earn a living under the comic opera government of the Mexicans. They would soon sweep away that anarchy if only they found a leader, and perhaps Drunken Sam in his dreams saw Samuel Houston leading the Texas cowboys. Still dressed as a Cherokee warrior he went to Washington, called on his old friend President Jackson, begged for a job, talked of the liberation of Texas--as if the yankees of the North would ever allow another slave state of the South to enter the Union!

Houston went back to the West and preached the revolt against Mexico. There we will leave him for a while, to take up the story of old Davy Crockett.

XLIII

A. D. 1836

DAVY CROCKETT

Far off on his farm in Tennessee, old Davy Crockett heard of the war for freedom. Fifty years of hunting, trapping and Indian warfare had not quenched his thirst for adventure, or dulled his love of fun; but the man had been sent to Washington as a member of congress, and came home horrified by the corruption of political life. He was angry and in his wrath took his gun from over the fireplace. He must kill something, so he went for those Mexicans in the West.

His journey to the seat of war began by steamer down the Mississippi River, and he took a sudden fancy to a sharper who was cheating the passengers. He converted Thimblerig to manhood, and the poor fellow, like a lost dog, followed Davy. So the pair were riding through Texas when they met a bee hunter, riding in search of wild honey--a gallant lad in a splendid deerskin dress, who led them to his home. The bee hunter must join Davy too, but his heart was torn at parting with Kate, the girl he loved, and he turned in the saddle to cheer her with a scrap of song for farewell:

“Saddled and bridled, and booted rode he,
A plume in his helmet, a sword at his knee.”

But the girl took up the verse, her song broken with sobbing:

“But toom’ cam’ the saddle, all bluidy to see,
And hame cam’ the steed, but hame never cam’ he.”

There were adventures on the way, for Davy hunted buffalo, fought a cougar--knife to teeth--and pacified an Indian tribe to get passage. Then they were joined by a pirate from Lafitte’s wicked crew, and a young Indian warrior. So, after thrashing a Mexican patrol, the party galloped into the Alamo, a Texan fortress at San Antonio.

One thousand seven hundred Mexicans had been holding that fort, until after a hundred and twenty hours fighting, they were captured by two hundred and sixteen Americans. The Lone Star flag on the Alamo was defended now by one hundred and fifty white men.

Colonel Travis commanded, and with him was Colonel Bowie, whose broken sword, used as a dagger, had given the name to the “bowie knife.” Crockett, with his followers, Thimblerig, the bee hunter, the pirate and the Indian, were warmly welcomed by the garrison.

February twenty-third, 1836, the Mexican president, Santa Anna, brought up seventeen hundred men to besiege the Alamo, and Travis sent off the pirate to ride to Goliad for help.

On the twenty-fourth the bombardment commenced, and thirty cowboys broke in through the Mexican lines to aid the garrison.

On the twenty-eighth, here is a scrap from Davy’s private diary: “The settlers are flying ... leaving their possessions to the mercy of the ruthless invader ... slaughter is indiscriminate, sparing neither age, sex, nor condition. Buildings have been burned down, farms laid waste ... the enemy draws nigher to the fort.”

On the twenty-ninth: “This business of being shut up makes a man wolfish--I had a little sport this morning before breakfast. The enemy had planted a piece of ordnance within gunshot of the fort during the night, and the first thing in the morning they commenced a brisk cannonade pointblank against the spot where I was snoring. I turned out pretty smart and mounted the rampart. The gun was charged again, a fellow stepped forth to touch her off, but before he could apply the match I let him have it, and he keeled over. A second stepped up, snatched the match from the hand of the dying man, but Thimblerig, who had followed me, handed me his rifle, and the next instant the Mexican was stretched upon the earth beside the first. A third came up to the cannon, my companion handed me another gun, and I fixed him off in like manner. A fourth, then a fifth seized the match, but both met with the same fate, and then the whole party gave it up as a bad job, and hurried off to the camp, leaving the cannon ready charged where they had planted it. I came down, took my bitters and went to breakfast. Thimblerig told me the place from which I had been firing was one of the snuggest stands in the whole fort, for he never failed picking off two or three stragglers before breakfast.”

March third.--“We have given over all hope.”

March fourth.--“Shells have been falling into the fort like hail during the day, but without effect. About dusk in the evening we observed a man running toward the fort, pursued by about a dozen Mexican cavalry. The bee hunter immediately knew him to be the old hunter who had gone to Goliad, and calling to the two hunters, he sallied out to the relief of the old man, who was hard pressed. I followed close after. Before we reached the spot the Mexicans were close on the heels of the old man who stopped suddenly, turned short upon his pursuers, discharged his rifle, and one of the enemy fell from his horse. The chase was renewed, but finding that he would be overtaken and cut to pieces, he now turned again, and to the amazement of the enemy became the assailant in turn. He clubbed his gun, and dashed among them like a wounded tiger, and they fled like sparrows. By this time we reached the spot, and in the ardor of the moment followed some distance before we saw that our retreat to the fort was cut off by another detachment of cavalry. Nothing was to be done but to fight our way through. We were all of the same mind. ‘Go ahead!’ cried I; and they shouted, ‘Go ahead, Colonel!’ We dashed among them, and a bloody conflict ensued. They were about twenty in number, and they stood their ground. After the fight had continued about five minutes a detachment was seen issuing from the fort to our relief, and the Mexicans scampered off, leaving eight of their comrades dead upon the field. But we did not escape unscathed, for both the pirate and the bee hunter were mortally wounded, and I received a saber cut across the forehead. The old man died without speaking, as soon as we entered the fort. We bore my young friend to his bed, dressed his wounds, and I watched beside him. He lay without complaint or manifesting pain until about midnight, when he spoke, and I asked him if he wanted anything.

“‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Poor Kate!’ His eyes filled with tears as he continued: ‘Her words were prophetic, Colonel,’ and then he sang in a low voice.

“‘But toom’ cam’ the saddle, all bluidy to see,
And hame cam’ the steed, but hame never cam’ he.’

“He spoke no more, and a few minutes after, died. Poor Kate! who will tell this to thee?”

March fifth: “Pop, pop, pop! Bom, bom, bom! throughout the day--no time for memorandums now--go ahead. Liberty and independence forever!”

* * * * *

So ends Davy’s journal. Before dawn of the sixth a final assault of the Mexican force carried the lost Alamo, and at sunrise there were only six of the defenders left alive. Colonel Crockett was found with his back to the wall, with his broken rifle and his bloody knife. Before him lay Thimblerig, his dagger to the hilt in a Mexican’s throat, his death grip fastened in the dead man’s hair.

The six prisoners were brought before Santa Anna, who stood surrounded by his staff amid the ruins. General Castrillon saluted the president. “Sir, here are six prisoners I have taken alive; how shall I dispose to them?”

“Have I not told you before how to dispose of them--why do you bring them to me?”

The officers of the staff fell upon the prisoners with their swords, but like a tiger Davy sprang at Santa Anna’s throat. Then he fell with a dozen swords through his body.

Up with your banner, Freedom.
Thy champions cling to thee.
They’ll follow where’er you lead ’em--
To death or victory.
Up with your banner, Freedom!

Tyrants and slaves are rushing
To tread thee in the dust;
Their blood will soon be gushing
And stain our knives with rust,
But not thy banner, Freedom!

While Stars and Stripes are flying
Our blood we’ll freely shed;
No groan will ’scape the dying,
Seeing thee o’er his head.
Up with your banner, Freedom!

Let us return to Sam Houston. His life of cyclone passions and whirling change--a white boy turned Indian, then hero of a war against the redskins; lawyer, commander-in-chief and governor of a state, a drunken savage, a broken man begging a job at Washington, an obscure conspirator in Texas--had made him leader of the liberators.

The fall of the Alamo filled the Texans with fury, but when that was followed by the awful massacre of Goliad they went raving mad. Houston, their leader, waited for reinforcements until his men wanted to murder him, but when he marched it was to San Jacinto where, with eight hundred Texans, he scattered one thousand six hundred Mexicans, and captured Santa Anna. He was proclaimed president of the Lone Star republic, which is now the largest star in the American constellation.

XLIV

A. D. 1793

ALEXANDER MACKENZIE

The very greatest events in human annals are those which the historian forgets to mention. Now for example, in 1638 Louis XIV was born; the Scots set up their solemn league and covenant; the Turks romped into poor old Bagdad and wiped out thirty thousand Persians; Van Tromp, the Dutchman, whopped a Spanish fleet; the English founded Madras, the corner-stone of our Indian empire; but the real event of the year, the greatest event of the seventeenth century, was the hat act passed by the British parliament. Hatters were forbidden to make any hats except of beaver felt. Henceforth, for two centuries, slouch hats, cocked hats, top hats, all sorts of hats, were to be made of beaver fur felt, down to the flat brimmed Stetson hat, which was borrowed from the cowboys by the Northwest Mounted Police, adopted by the Irregular Horse of the Empire, and finally copied in rabbit for the Boy Scouts. The hatter must buy beaver, no matter what the cost, so Europe was stripped to the last pelt. Then far away to east and west the hunters and trappers explored from valley to valley. The traders followed, building forts where they dealt with the hunters and trappers, exchanging powder and shot, traps and provisions, for furs at so much a “castor” or beaver skin, and skins were used for money, instead of gold. Then came the settlers to fill the discovered lands, soldiers to guard them from attack by savages, judges and hangmen, flag and empire.

The Russian fur trade passed the Ural Hills, explored Siberia and crossed to Russian America.

Westward the French and British fur trade opened up the length and breadth of North America.

By the time the hatter invented the imitation “beaver,” our silk hat, this mad hat trade had pioneered the Russian empire, the United States and the Dominion of Canada, belting the planet with the white man’s power.

Now in this monstrous adventure the finest of all the adventurers were Scotch, and the greatest Scot of them all was Alexander MacKenzie, of Stornoway, in the Scotch Hebrides. At the age of seventeen he landed in Montreal, soon after Canada was taken by the British, and he grew up in the growing fur trade. In those days the Hudson’s Bay Company was a sleepy old corporation with four forts, but the Nor’westers of Montreal had the aid of the valiant French Canadian voyageurs as guides and canoe men in the far wilderness.

Their trade route crossed the upper lakes to Thunder Bay in Lake Superior, where they built Fort William; thence by Rainy River to the Lake of the Woods, and Rat Portage; thence up Lake Winnipeg to the Grand Saskatchewan. There were the forts where buffalo hunters boiled down pemmican, a sort of pressed beef spiced with service berries, to feed the northern posts. Northward the long trail, by lake and river, reached à la Crosse, which gave its name to a famous Indian ball game, and so to the source of the Churchill River at Lac la Loche, from whence the Methye portage opened the way into the Great Unknown.

When MacKenzie reached Clear-water River, Mr. Peter Pond of the Nor’westers had just shot Mr. Ross of the X. Y. Company. MacKenzie took charge, and he and his cousin moved the trade down to the meeting of the Athabasca and the Peace, at an inland sea, the Athabasca Lake, where they built the future capital of the North, Fort Chipewyan. From here the Slave River ran down to Great Slave Lake, a second inland sea whose outlet was unknown. MacKenzie found that outlet six miles wide. The waters teemed with wild fowl, the bush with deer, and the plains on either side had herds of bison.

MacKenzie took with him four French voyageurs, a German and some Indians, working them as a rule from three A. M. till dusk, while they all with one accord shied at the terrors ahead, the cataracts, the savage tribes, the certainty of starvation. The days lengthened until there was no night, they passed coal fields on fire which a hundred years later were still burning, then frozen ground covered with grass and flowers, where the river parted into three main branches opening on the coast of an ice-clad sea. The water was still fresh, but there were seaweeds, they saw whales, the tides would wash the people out of camp, for this was the Arctic Ocean. So they turned back up that great river which bears MacKenzie’s name, six thousand miles of navigable waters draining a land so warm that wheat will ripen on the Arctic circle, a home for millions of healthy prosperous people in the days to come.

MacKenzie’s second journey was much more difficult, up the Peace River through the Rocky Mountains, then by a portage to the Fraser Valley, and down Bad River. All the rivers were bad, but the birch bark canoe, however much it smashes, can be repaired with fresh sheets of bark, stuck on with gum from the pine trees. Still, after their canoe was totally destroyed in Bad River and the stock of bullets went to the bottom, the Indians sat down and wept, while the Frenchmen, after a square meal with a lot of rum, patched up the wreck to go on. Far down the Fraser Valley there is a meadow of tall grass and flowers with clumps of wild fruit orchard and brier rose, gardens of tiger lilies and goldenrod. Nobody lived there in my time, but the place is known as Alexandria in memory of Alexander Mackenzie and of the only moment in his life when he turned back, beaten. Below Alexandria the Fraser plunges for two hundred miles through a range of mountains in one long roaring swoop.

So the explorers, warned by friendly Indians, climbed back up-stream to the Blackwater River; and if any big game hunter wants to shoot mosquitoes for their hides that valley would make a first-class hunting ground. The journey from here to the coast was made afoot with heavy loads by a broad Indian trail across the coast range to the Bilthqula River, and here the explorers were the guests of rich powerful tribes. One young chief unclasped a splendid robe of sea-otter skins, and threw it around MacKenzie, such a gift as no king could offer now. They feasted on salmon, service berries in grease, and cakes of inner hemlock bark sprinkled with oil of salmon, a three-hour banquet, followed by sleep in beds of furs, and blankets woven from wool of the mountain sheep. The houses were low-pitched barns of cedar, each large enough to seat several hundred people, and at the gable end rose a cedar pole carved in heraldic sculpture gaily painted, with a little round hole cut through for the front door.

Each canoe was a cedar log hollowed with fire, then spread with boiling water, a vessel not unlike a gondola. One such canoe, the _Tillicum_, has made a voyage round the world, but she is small compared with the larger dugouts up to seven tons burden. An old chief showed MacKenzie a canoe forty-five feet in length, of four foot beam painted with white animals on a black hull, and set with ivory of otter teeth. In this he had made a voyage some years before, when he met white men and saw ships, most likely those of the great Captain Cook. MacKenzie’s account of the native doctors describes them to the life as they are to-day. “They blew on the patient, and then whistled; they rubbed him violently on the stomach; they thrust their forefingers into his mouth, and spouted water into his face.” MacKenzie, had he only waited, would have seen them jump on the patient’s stomach to drive the devils out.

He borrowed canoes for the run down the Bilthqula to Salt Water at the head of one of British Columbia’s giant fiords. There the explorer heard that only two moons ago Captain Vancouver’s boats had been in the inlet. An Indian chief must have been rude, for one officer fired upon him, while another struck him with the flat of a sword. For this the chief must needs get even with Alexander MacKenzie as he wandered about the channels in search of the open sea. He never found the actual Pacific, but made his final camp upon a rock at the entrance of Cascada inlet. Here is Vancouver’s description of the place. “The width of the channel did not anywhere exceed three-quarters of a mile; its shores were bounded by precipices much more perpendicular than any we had yet seen during this excursion; and from the summits of the mountains that overlooked it ... there fell several large cascades. These were extremely grand, and by much the most tremendous of any we had ever beheld.”

Those cataracts, like lace, fell from the cornice glaciers through belt after belt of clouds, to crash through the lower gloom in deafening thunder upon black abysmal channels. The eagles swirl and circle far above, the schools of porpoises are cleaving and gleaming through the white-maned tide. In such a place, beset by hostile Indians, as the dawn broke the great explorer mixed vermilion and grease to paint upon the precipice above him:

“Alexander MacKenzie, from Canada by land 22nd July, 1793.”

He had discovered one of the world’s great rivers, and made the first crossing of North America.

XLV

THE WHITE MAN’S COMING

It is our plain duty here to take up the story of Vancouver, an English merchant seaman from before the mast, who rose to a captaincy in the royal navy, and was sent to explore the British Columbian coast. He was to find “the Straits of Anian leading through Meta Incognita to the Atlantic,” the famous Northwest passage for which so many hundreds of explorers gave their lives. His careful survey proved there was no such strait.

Of course it is our duty to follow Vancouver’s dull and pompous log book, and show what savage tribes he met with in the wilds. But it will be much more fun to give the other side, the story of Vancouver’s visit as told by the Indians whose awful fate it was to be “discovered” by the white man with his measles, his liquor and his smallpox.

In the winter of 1887–8 I was traveling on snowshoes down the Skeena Valley from Gaat-a-maksk to Gaet-wan-gak, which must be railway stations now on the Grand Trunk Pacific. My packer was Willie-the-Bear, so named because a grizzly had eaten off half his face, the side of his face, in fact, which had to be covered with a black veil. We were crossing some low hills when I asked him about the coming of the white men. Promptly he told me of the first ship--a Spaniard; the second--Vancouver’s; and the third--an American, all in correct order after a hundred years. Who told him? His mother. And who told her? Her mother, of course.

So, living as I was among the Indians, and seeing no white man’s face for months on end, I gathered up the various memories of the people.

At Massett, on the north coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Haidas were amazed by a great bird which came to rest in front of the village. When she had folded her wings a lot of little birds shot out from under her, which came to the beach and turned out to be full of men. They were as fair of color as the Haidas, some even more so, and some red as the meat of salmon. The people went out in their dugouts to board the bird, which was a vast canoe. All of them got presents, but there was one, a person of no account, who got the finest gift, better than anything received by the highest chiefs, an iron cooking-pot.

In those days the food was put with water into a wooden trough and red-hot stones thrown in until it boiled. The people had copper, but that was worth many times the present price of gold, not to be wasted on mere cooking pots. So the man with the iron pot, in his joy, called all the people to a feast, and gave away the whole of his property, which of course was the right thing to do. The chiefs were in a rage at his new importance, but they came, as did every one else. And at the feast the man of no account climbed the tall pole in front of his house, the totem pole carved with the arms of his ancestors, passing a rope over the top by which he hauled up the iron pot so that it might be seen by the whole tribe. “See,” he said, “what the great chief has given me, the Big Spirit whose people have tails stiff as a beaver tail behind their heads, whose canoe is loaded with thunder and lightning, the mother of all canoes, with six young canoes growing up, whose medicine is so strong that one dose makes you sick for three days, whose warriors are so brave that one got two black eyes and did not run away, who have a little dog which scratches and says meaou!

“This great chief has given us presents according to our rank, little no-account presents to the common people; but when I came he knew I was his brother, his equal, and to me, to me alone, he gave this pot which sits upon the fire and does not burn, this pot which boils the water, and will not break!”

But as the man bragged he kept twitching the rope, and down fell the pot, smash on the ground, and broken all to pieces.

Now as to the first white man who came up Skeena River:

A very old man of Kitzelash remembered that when he was a boy he stood on the banks of the cañon and there came a canoe with a white man, a big chief called Manson, a Spaniard, and a black man, all searching for gold. He remembered that first one man sang a queer song and then they all took it up and sang, laughing together.

A middle-aged man of Gaet-wan-gak remembered that in his childhood a canoe came up the river full of Indians, and with two white men. Nobody had ever seen the like, and they took the strangers for ghosts, so that the women ran away and hid. The ghosts gave them bread, but they spat it out because it was ghost food and had no taste. They offered tea, but the people spat it out, because it was like earth water out of graves. Rice, too, they would not touch, for it was like--perhaps one should not say what that was like.

XLVI

THE BEAVER

In the heart of the city of Victoria I once found an old log barn, the last remnant of Fort Camosun, and climbing into the loft, kicked about in a heap of rubbish from which emerged some damp rat-gnawed manuscript books. From morning to evening, and far into the dusk, I sat reading there the story of a great adventuress, a heroine of tonnage and displacement, the first steamer which ever plied on the Pacific Ocean.

Her builders were Messrs. Boulton and Watt, and Watt was the father of steam navigation. She was built at Blackwall on London River in the days of George IV. She was launched by a duchess in a poke bonnet and shawl, who broke a bottle of wine against the ship’s nose and christened her the _Beaver_. Then the merchant adventurers of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in bell toppers, Hessian boots and white chokers, gave three hearty cheers.

The _Beaver_ was as ugly as it was safe to make her, but built of honest oak, and copper bolted, her engines packed in the hold, and her masts brigantine-rigged for the sailing voyage round Cape Horn. She went under convoy of the barque _Columbia_, a slow and rather helpless chaperon, who fouled and nearly wrecked her at Robinson Crusoe’s Island. Her master, to judge by the ship’s books, was a peppery little beast, who logged the mate for a liar: “Not correct D. Home;” drove his officers until they went sick, quarreled with the _Columbia’s_ doctor, found his chief engineer “in a beastly state of intoxication,” and finally, at the Columbia River, hounded his crew into mutiny.

“Mr. Phillips and Mr. Wilson behaved,” says the mate, “in a most mutinous manner.” So the captain had all hands aft to witness their punishment with the cat-o’-nine-tails. Phillips called on the crew to rescue him, and they went for the captain. Calling for his sword, the skipper defended himself like a man, wounding one seaman in the head. Then he “succeeded in tying up Phillips, and punishing him with two dozen lashes with a rope’s end over his clothes,” whereupon William Wilson demanded eleven strokes for himself, so sharing the fun, for better or worse, with a shipmate.

Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, an old stockade of the Nor’westers, was at this time the Hudson’s Bay Company’s capital on the Pacific coast, where reigned the great Doctor McLauchlan, founder of Oregon. Here the _Beaver_ shipped her paddles, started up her engines, and gave an excursion trip for the ladies. So came her voyage under steam out in the open Pacific of eight hundred miles to her station on the British Columbian coast. She sailed on the last day of May in 1836, two years before the Atlantic was crossed under steam. On the Vancouver coast she discovered an outcrop of steam coal, still the best to be had on the Pacific Ocean.

In her days of glory, the _Beaver_ was a smart little war-ship trading with the savages, or bombarding their villages, all the way from Puget Sound to Alaska. In her middle age she was a survey vessel exploring Wonderland. In her old age the boiler leaked, so that the engineer had to plug the holes with a rag on a pointed stick. She was a grimy tug at the last, her story forgotten; and after fifty-two years of gallant service, was allowed to lie a weed-grown wreck within a mile of the new City of Vancouver, until a kindly storm gave her the honor of sea burial.

It was in 1851 that the _Beaver_ brought to the factor at Fort Simpson some nuggets of the newly discovered Californian gold. At first he refused to take the stuff in trade, next bought it in at half its value, and finally showed it to Edenshaw, head chief of the Haida nation. As each little yellow pebble was worth a big pile of blankets, the chief borrowed a specimen and showed it to his tribe in the Queen Charlotte Islands.

There is a legend that in earlier days a trader found the Haidas using golden bullets with their trade guns, which they gladly exchanged for lead. Anyway an old woman told Edenshaw that she knew where to find the stuff, so next day she took him in a small dugout canoe to the outer coast. There she showed him a streak seven inches wide, and eighty feet in length, of quartz and shining gold, which crossed the neck of a headland. They filled a bushel basket with loose bits, and left them in the canoe while they went back for more. But in the stern of the canoe sat Edenshaw’s little son watching the dog fish at play down in the deeps. When the elders came back Charlie had thrown their first load of gold at the dog fish, and later on in life he well remembered the hands of blessing laid on by way of reward.

Still, enough gold was saved to buy many bales of blankets. Edenshaw claimed afterward that, had he only known the value of his find, he would have gone to England and married the queen’s daughter.

News spread along the coast and soon a ship appeared, the H. B. C. brigantine _Una_. Her people blasted the rocks, while the Indians, naked and well oiled, grabbed the plunder. The sailors wrestled, but could not hold those oily rogues. In time the _Una_ sailed with a load of gold, but was cast away with her cargo in the Straits of Fuca.

Next year Gold Harbor was full of little ships, with a gunboat to keep them in order while they reaped a total harvest of two hundred eighty-nine thousand dollars. H. M. S. _Thetis_ had gone away when the schooner _Susan Sturgis_ came back for a second load, the only vessel to brave the winter storms. One day while all hands were in the cabin at dinner the Indians stole on board, clapped on the hatches and made them prisoners. They were marched ashore and stripped in the deep snow, pleading for their drawers, but only Captain Rooney and the mate were allowed that luxury. The seamen were sold to the H. B. Company at Fort Simpson, but the two officers remained in slavery. By day they chopped fire-wood under a guard, at night crouched in a dark corner of a big Indian house, out of sight of the fire in the middle, fed on such scraps of offal as their masters deigned to throw them.

Only one poor old woman pitied the slaves, hiding many a dried clam under the matting within their reach. Also they made a friend of Chief Bearskin’s son; and Bearskin himself was a good-hearted man, though Edenshaw proved a brute. Rooney was an able-bodied Irishman, Lang a tall broad-shouldered Scot, though this business turned his hair gray. For after the schooner was plundered and broken up, a dispute arose between Bearskin and Edenshaw as to their share of the captives. Edenshaw would kill Lang rather than surrender him to Bearskin, and twice the Scotchman had his head on the block to be chopped off before Bearskin gave in to save his life. At last both slaves were sold to Captain McNeill, who gave them each a striped shirt, corduroy trousers and shoes, then shipped them aboard the _Beaver_. Now it so happened that on the passage southward the _Beaver_ met with the only accident in her long life, for during a storm the steering gear was carried away. Lang was a ship’s carpenter, and his craftsmanship saved the little heroine from being lost with all hands that night. This rescued slave became the pioneer ship-builder of Western Canada.

XLVII

A. D. 1911

THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES

The North Pole is only a point on the earth’s surface, a point which in itself has no length, breadth or height, neither has it weight nor any substance, being invisible, impalpable, immovable and entirely useless. The continents of men swing at a thousand miles an hour round that point, which has no motion. Beneath it an eternal ice-field slowly drifts across the unfathomed depths of a sea that knows no light.

Above, for a night of six months, the pole star marks the zenith round which the constellations swing their endless race; then for six months the low sun rolls along the sky-line on his level rounds; and each day and night are one year.