Chapter L: C. Bryan (2)

The River Menam (mother of waters) is the central attraction of all life and trade; it is the great highway for traffic and the great cleanser and purifier of the cities; its tide sweeps out to the sea all the dirt and refuse accumulating therein; it is the universal bath for all the Siamese. The children paddle and play their games in it; it is the scene of their frolics in infancy, their means of livelihood in manhood, and to many of them their grave in death. At sunset, when work is suspended, there is a great splashing and plunging going on all along the river banks, everybody taking a bath or amusing themselves in the water. The river bar is a great trouble to navigators. The king will not have it dredged, as he, in his ignorance, thinks it a natural protection to his country, as only ships of a shallow draft can cross. Trading ships have to be built specially constructed for that purpose. No large man-of-war can cross, but the king did not take into consideration the small torpedo boats that can do so much mischief; recent events, however, must have opened his eyes. We cannot rush into Siam at railway speed; the ship must be lightened as much as possible, and we must wait until the tide is at its highest--it may be two hours, or it may be twenty-two--and even then the channel is so narrow that if we go a little to the right or to the left we run aground. Many times there are two ships fast aground; once or twice there have been four and five. Some have had to stay seven and eight days, and have every movable thing taken out before they could rise. Nothing can exceed the monotony of lying aground there; there is nothing to see, only in the distance some low-lying ground covered with a scrub, no sign of habitations, no cliffs or green hills rising out of the sea--nothing but water, water all around, and a glimpse of flat low-lying ground with wild shrubs on it.

After crossing this vexatious river bar, we proceed up the river eight miles with nothing to see but low banks until we come to the forts at Paknam. The river banks are very low, and fringed at the water’s edge with palms and huge tree ferns; the mango and tamarind trees hang over and the banyan tree, with its branches hanging down and taking root again, makes quite an entanglement of roots and branches. At night these trees are lit up with thousands of fire flies; on a dark night they glisten and sparkle like the firmament. But in the morning the river is alive with buyers and sellers. We very soon come to a market lying in the river--all kinds of Eastern fruits and vegetables and crockeryware are piled up on floating rafts, the sellers sitting cross-legged beside their wares, and the buyers rushing about in small canoes propelled with one oar.

If the officers in charge of steamships like to be mischievous and go full speed, leaving a big swell in their track, they have the fun of seeing the floating stalls swaying up and down, banging against one another fruit and vegetables, rolling off into the water, with the stall-holders shouting and plunging into the river to save their wares!

We then come to more floating houses and houses on piles. Europeans find the advantage of living on the river to be that they get more breeze and fewer mosquitoes; so here and there, among the floating mat-shed erections, we see a neat painted wooden house on piles; it has to be approached by a boat, and you enter up a staircase on to a wide verandah. The sitting-rooms and bedrooms all open out of this verandah. No windows, no fireplaces are needed in this country--very strange un-home-like residences they are to any one coming fresh from England, yet they are suitable for the climate.

Here and there amongst the palm trees, and under wide-spreading tamarind trees we see white-washed temples, with fantastically-shaped gilded roofs; they look very picturesque amongst the trees; they have a style of architecture peculiar to the country, which is more prominent in the shape of the roof, which is a sloping Gothic roof, with all the corners branching out and turning up; one roof is surmounted with another smaller, and then a smaller one still. These buildings give quite a character to the country and are very numerous. It makes Siamese architecture quite distinctive from that of other countries.

As we get to the city of Bangkok, the sides of the river are lined with timber and saw-mills and rice-mills, with tall chimneys, and black smoke oozing out. This is European enterprise; they quite spoil the scenic effect on the river, but not any more than the mean, dirty bamboo huts that line the riversides. The Siamese have no medium respectability; it is all either gorgeously gilded palaces, and fantastically-adorned temples, or filthy-looking huts. A great many of the shopkeepers have their shops right on the river. Some of them are neatly arranged, with a platform in front, on which you land from your boat. All the family are lounging about this platform, the wife carrying on her domestic duties, washing up the cooking utensils by dipping them into the river; the clothes (what few they wear) go through the same process; and the children, naked, are sporting about this narrow platform, or sitting on the edge with their feet in the water.

It is very convenient for a shopkeeper who wishes to change his place of business; if he thinks there is a more desirable and more frequented spot, he just unmoors his floating shop and has it towed to the place he wants, without disarranging his wares.

Branching off from the river are innumerable canals, or creeks--the Siamese call them klongs--the banks of which are lined with houses and shops; they make a canal where we would make a road or a street. Up some of these klongs there are pretty views, especially at sunset. Graceful ferns and palms, bamboo trees, with their branches dipping into the water and reflected therein, and between the branches the sloping roof of some house or temple is visible. But many of these klongs or canals, in the most frequented part of the city, are the reverse of pretty. They are just like a large open sewer running down to the river, full of filthy garbage. When the tide is low there are the black slime, the naked children playing in it, and the dirty huts on rickety piles leaning forward as if they wanted to slide down into the mud; sometimes a dead body comes floating down, and plenty of dead animals.

It is very lively on the river in the city. Here are ocean-going steamers and sailing vessels moored amid-stream, or tied up to the various wharves, whilst an endless variety of native craft are darting about--narrow boats, like canoes, propelled with one oarsman, hawking fruit and betel; pretty little house boats, fashioned something like the Venetian gondolas, with four, six or more rowers, standing up, dressed in bright uniforms, according to the rank of the family they belong to; the rice boats from far up the country, of very peculiar construction, flat-bottomed, to go through shallow water, and wide bulging out sides, roofed over like houses. In the rainy season, when the river is full, the large teak-wood rafts about 1,000 feet long, come floating down, with huts for the steersman built on them. Small steam launches and ferries, running up and down from various places, all combine to make the river scene pretty and interesting. One enthusiastic newspaper correspondent pronounced Bangkok to be the Venice of the East. It may resemble Venice in the amount of water traffic, but it would require a great stretch of imagination, and the help of some glorifying and transfiguring tints from the setting sun, before we could allow the comparison; but no doubt it bears the same relation to the East, where filth and squalor predominate, as Venice bears to the refined and cultured Europe.

There are a few well-kept houses of business and private residences bordering the river, but not many, and these in no way resemble the marble palaces of European Venice. The general aspect of the river banks is dirty disorder--rotten piles, with untidy-looking floating houses, mat-sheds, and bamboo huts, reaching up to the King’s palace. The palace walls enclose many buildings, offices, temples, private residences, gardens, and residences for the sacred white elephants. The attractive part of these buildings and the great ornamentation are in the roofs, which are very gorgeous. Some have tall pointed pinnacles, all gilded; some are covered with a fantastic pattern in porcelain, with little gilded peaks, which look dazzling in the sun. Viewed from a distance these buildings realize all that has been written in glowing terms of Eastern palaces, but near to the charm is not so vivid, as there is much tawdriness about them. Whilst remaining on the river the filth and refuse are not so prominent; the tide sweeps all away. But leave the river, and take to the woods. Oh! the offensive sights and smells that greet one’s eyes and nose--offal and waste of every description thrown in front of the houses in the public streets. But nature is kind and very luxurious here; in a short time these heaps of rubbish are covered with a growth of grass and creeping plants. The principal shops are like those on the river--one large room open to the street, no doors or windows, the family living there, and the domestic arrangements mixed up with the business of selling.

Bangkok is a modern city. It is not more than 250 years old. It has risen to importance through the ever-increasing exportation of rice and timber. It is not purely Siamese, being a mixture of all Eastern nations, the Chinese being very largely represented; and the European influence is very prominent. The rice-mills for cleaning the rice and the saw-mills are all fitted up with modern machinery and are the outcome of European enterprise. There is a fine naval dockyard entirely managed by English engineers, and the regular lines of steamers running here constantly are all British. I must just mention that fifty years ago the Siamese had a fine fleet of sailing vessels, built in Bangkok of teak-wood; but the steamers have taken away their trade and that industry has died out. The ship-building yards are quite deserted and silent now.

But if we wish to see a real Siamese city, we must leave Bangkok and go to Ayuthia, the old capital, before Bangkok was thought of.

It is sixty miles farther up the river. The scenery going up is monotonous--no variety at all; it is a flat country. In the months of October and November it is all under water; the river rises and floods the country for miles, so we can understand the reason for living in floating houses and on piles. But how can any one describe Ayuthia? It is so different from any other city in the world; and entirely Siamese.

The inhabitants live principally on the river in small houses of bamboo, roofed with Atap palm leaves. In some parts there is only a narrow passage for a small boat, the river is so crowded up with their houses. The trade seems to be buying and selling, and the principal things sold rice and fruit, with a few very simple cooking utensils. There is an old palace here which illustrates how much richer the kings must have grown with the increase of trade.

In the Siamese court there are several very interesting ceremonies, probably unlike anything belonging to any other country, a pageantry peculiar to Siam, and of great magnificence.

One of the principal of these is a royal cremation. Then there is a royal hair-cutting. This is an occasion for very great rejoicing. When a boy attains the age of fourteen or fifteen, his head is shaved, and then he enters the priesthood. When it is one of the royal family, or the Crown Prince, then not many other courts can exceed such a magnificent and gorgeous festival. The ceremony lasts for a week--a continued succession of religious rites, with processions and feasts. One of these is the sacred bath in the river, where the priests dip the young prince.

Another elaborate spectacle is when the king, attended by all his nobles, visits every great temple. This takes some weeks to accomplish, is an annual event, and is another series of grand processions. It is a water procession, and the barges which are kept and only used on this occasion are most sumptuous. They are richly carved and gilded, with silken awnings. They are long, narrow boats about 100 feet long, rowed by over 150 oarsmen with gilded oars. The whole procession is a scene of barbaric splendour, and recalls the stories of Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp.

THE MERRIMACK

HENRY D. THOREAU

We were thus entering the state of New Hampshire on the bosom of the flood formed by the tribute of its innumerable valleys. The river was the only key which could unlock its maze, presenting its hills and valleys, its lakes and streams, in their natural order and position. The Merrimack, or sturgeon river, is formed by the confluence of the Pemigewasset, which rises near the notch of the White Mountains, and the Winnipiseogee, which drains the lake of the same name, signifying “The smile of the Great Spirit.” From their junction it runs south seventy-eight miles to Massachusetts, and thence east thirty-five miles to the sea. I have traced its stream from where it bubbles out of rocks of the White Mountains above the clouds, to where it is lost amid the salt billows of the ocean on Plum Island Beach. It was already the water of Squam and Newfound Lake and Winnipiseogee, and White Mountain snow dissolved, on which we were floating, and Smith’s and Baker’s and Mad Rivers, and Nashua and Souhegan and Piscataquong, and Suncook and Soucook and Contoocook, mingled in incalculable proportions, still fluid, yellowish, restless all, with an ancient, ineradicable inclination to the sea.

So it flows by Lowell and Haverhill, at which last place it first suffers a sea change, and a few masts betray the vicinity of the ocean. Between the towns of Amesbury and Newbury it is a broad, commercial river, from a third to half a mile in width, no longer skirted with yellow and crumbling banks, but backed by high green hills and pastures, with frequent white beaches on which fishermen draw up their nets. I have passed down this portion of the river in a steamboat, and it was a pleasant sight to watch from its deck the fishermen dragging their seines on the distant shore, as in pictures of a foreign strand. At intervals you may meet with a schooner laden with lumber, standing up to Haverhill, or else lying at anchor or aground, waiting for wind or tide, until, at last, you glide under the famous Chain Bridge, and are landed at Newburyport. From the steeples of Newburyport you may review this river stretching far up into the country, with many a white sail glancing over it like an island sea, and behold, as one wrote who was born on its head-waters, “Down out at its mouth, the dark inky main blending with the blue above, Plum Island, its sand ridges scalloping along the horizon like the sea-serpent, and the distant outline broken by many a tall ship, leaning, _still_, against the sky.”

Rising at an equal height with the Connecticut, the Merrimack reaches the sea by a course only half as long, and hence has no leisure to form broad and fertile meadows, like the former, but is hurried along rapids, and down numerous falls, without long delay. The banks are generally steep and high, with a narrow interval reaching back to the hills, which is only rarely or partially overflown at present, and is much valued by the farmers. Between Chelmsford and Concord, in New Hampshire, it varies from twenty to seventy-five rods in many places, owing to the trees having been cut down, and the consequent wasting away of its banks. The influence of the Pawtucket Dam is felt as far as Cromwell’s Falls, and many think that the banks are being abraded and the river filled up again by this cause. Like all our rivers, it is liable to freshets, and the Pemigewasset has been known to rise twenty-five feet in a few hours. It is navigable to vessels of burden about twenty miles; for canal-boats, by means of locks, as far as Concord in New Hampshire, about seventy-five miles from its mouth; and for smaller boats to Plymouth, one hundred and thirteen miles. A small steamboat once plied between Lowell and Nashua, before the railroad was built, and one now runs from Newburyport to Haverhill.

Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of commerce by the sand-bar at its mouth, see how this river was devoted to the service of manufactures. Issuing from the iron regions of Franconia, and flowing through still uncut forests, by inexhaustible ledges of granite, with Squam, and Winnipiseogee, and Newfound, and Massabesic Lakes for its mill-ponds, it falls over a succession of natural dams, where it has been offering its _privileges_ in vain for ages, until at last the Yankee race came to _improve_ them. Standing at its mouth, look up its sparkling stream to its source,--a silver cascade which falls all the way from the White Mountains to the sea,--and behold a city of each successive plateau, a busy colony of human beavers around every fall. Not to mention Newburyport and Haverhill, see Lawrence, and Lowell, and Nashua, and Manchester, and Concord, gleaming one above the other. When at length it has escaped from under the last of the factories, it has a level and unmolested passage to the sea, a mere _waste water_, as it were, bearing little with it but its fame; its pleasant course revealed by the morning fog which hangs over it, and the sails of the few small vessels which transact the commerce of Haverhill and Newburyport. But its real vessels are railroad cars, and its true and main stream, flowing by an iron channel farther south, may be traced by a long line of vapour amid the hills, which no morning wind ever disperses to where it empties into the sea at Boston. This river was at length discovered by the white man “trending up into the land,” he knew not how far, possibly an inlet to the South Sea. Its valley, as far as the Winnipiseogee, was surveyed in 1652. The first settlers of Massachusetts supposed that the Connecticut, in one part of its course ran north-west, “so near the great lake as the Indians do pass their canoes into it over-land.” From which lake and the “hideous swamps” about it, as they supposed, came all the beaver that was traded between Virginia and Canada--and the Potomac was thought to come out of or from very near it. Afterwards the Connecticut came so near the course of the Merrimack that, with a little pains they expected to divert the current of the trade into the latter river, and its profits from their Dutch neighbours into their own pockets.

Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes. We looked down into its yellow water with the more curiosity, who were accustomed to the Nile-like blackness of the former river. Shad and alewives are taken here in their season, but salmon, though at one time more numerous than shad, are now more rare. Bass, also, are taken occasionally; but locks and dams have proved more or less destructive to the fisheries. The shad make their appearance early in May, at the same time with the blossoms of the pyrus, one of the most conspicuous early flowers, which is for this reason called the shad-blossom. An insect called the shad-fly also appears at the same time, covering the houses and fences. We are told that “their greatest run is when the apple-trees are in full blossom. The old shad return in August; the young, three or four inches long, in September. These are very fond of flies.” A rather picturesque and luxurious mode of fishing was formerly practised on the Connecticut, at Bellows Falls, where a large rock divides the stream. “On the steep sides of the island rock,” says Belknap, “hang several arm-chairs, fastened to ladders, and secured by a counterpoise, in which fishermen sit to catch salmon and shad with dipping nets.” The remains of Indian weirs, made of large stones, are still to be seen in the Winnipiseogee, one of the head-waters of this river.

It cannot but affect our philosophy favourably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downwards to the sea. “And is it not pretty sport,” wrote Captain John Smith, who was on this coast as early as 1614, “to pull up twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence, as fast as you can haul and veer a line?”--And what sport doth yield a more pleasing content, and less hurt or charge, than angling with a hook, and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea.

THE YEN-E-SAY

HENRY SEEBOHM

We left London on Thursday, the 1st of March, at 8:25 P. M., and reached Nishni Novgorod on Saturday, the 9th inst., at 10 A. M., having travelled by rail a distance of 2,400 miles. We stopped three days in St. Petersburg to present our letters of introduction and to pay some other visits. At Nishni we bought a sledge, and travelled over the snow 3,240 English miles, employing for this purpose about a thousand horses, eighteen dogs, and forty reindeer. We left Nishni on the evening of the 10th of March, and travelled day and night in a generally easterly direction, stopping a couple of days at Tyu-main, and a day at Omsk, and reached Kras-no-yarsk on the morning of the 2d of April, soon after crossing the meridian of Calcutta. We rested a day in Kras-no-yarsk, and sledged thence nearly due north, spending four days in Yen-e-saisk and three days in Toor-o-kansk.

The Yen-e-say is said to be the third largest river in the world, being only exceeded in size by the Amazon and the Mississippi. The principal stream rises in the mountains of Central Mongolia, enters Siberia near the famous town of Kyakh-ta, on the Chinese frontier, and flowing through Lake By-kal, passes Eer-kutsk (Irkutsk) the capital of Siberia, under the name of the An-go-ra or Vairkh-nya, Tun-goosk, and enters the smaller stream, whose name it subsequently bears, a few miles south of Yen-e-saisk. Up to this point its length may be roughly estimated at 2,000 miles, and judging from the time it takes to sledge across the river at Yen-e-saisk, its width must exceed an English mile. Following the windings of the river from the latter town to the Arctic Circle, the road is calculated as a journey of 800 miles, during which the waters are augmented by two important tributaries, the Pod-kah-min-a-Tun-goosk and the Nizh-ni-Tun-goosk, which increase the width of the river to more than three English miles. On the Arctic Circle it receives an important tributary, the Koo-ray-i-ka, about a mile wide, and, somewhat more circuitously than appears on our maps, travels to the islands of the delta, a distance possibly slightly over-estimated, during which the average width may be about four miles. The delta and lagoon of the Yen-e-say are about 400 miles in length, and must average twenty miles in width; making the total length of the river about 4,000 miles.

Throughout the whole extent of the river, from Yen-e-saisk, in latitude 58° to Gol-chee-ka in latitude 71½°, the banks are generally steep and lofty, from sixty to one hundred feet above the water-level, and so far as I could learn, comparatively little land is covered by the summer floods. The villages on the banks are from twenty to thirty versts (fifteen to twenty miles) apart, and are of course built upon high ground. As we sledged down the river, we had always a heavy climb up to the port stations; and in descending again into the bed of the river, it sometimes almost made our hearts jump into our mouths to look down the precipice, which our horses took at a gallop, with half-a-dozen villagers hanging on the sledge to prevent an upset, a feat they performed so cleverly, that although many a peasant got a roll in the snow, we always escaped without any serious accident. We found a good supply of horses as far as Too-ro-kansk. The second stage from this town we travelled by dogs, and completed the rest of the journey by reindeer. Soon after leaving Yen-e-saisk agriculture practically ceases. A few cows graze on the meadows near the villages, and hay is cut for their use during winter, but the villagers are too busy fishing during the short summer to till the land.

The banks of the Yen-e-say are clothed with magnificent forests up to the Arctic Circle, but northwards the trees rapidly diminish in size, and disappear altogether soon after leaving Doo-din-ka, in latitude 69½°. These forests are principally pine of various species. We reached the Koo-ray-i-ka on the 23d of April, and found the crew of the _Thames_ in excellent health.

The winter quarters chosen by Captain Wiggins were very picturesque. Standing at the door of the peasant’s house on the brow of the hill, we looked down on to the “crow’s nest” of the _Thames_. To the left the Koo-ray-i-ka, a mile wide, stretched away some four or five miles, until a sudden bend concealed it from view; whilst to the right the eye wandered across the snow-fields of the Yen-e-say, and by the help of a binocular the little village of Koo-ray-i-ka might be discerned about four miles off, on the opposite bank of the great river. The land was undulating rather than hilly, and everywhere covered with forest, the trees reaching frequently two, and in some rare instances three feet in diameter. The depth of the snow varied from four to six feet; and travelling without snow-shoes, except on the hard-trodden roads, was of course utterly impossible.

When we arrived at the ship, we found that it was still winter, and were told that there had not been a sign of rain since last autumn. April went by and May came in, but still there was no sign of summer, except the arrival of some of the earliest migratory birds. We generally had a cloudless sky; and the sun was often burning hot. On the 9th, 10th, and 11th of May we had rain for the first time, and the prospects of summer looked a little more hopeful. The rest of May, however, was more dreary and wintry than ever, alternations of hard frosts and driving snow-storms; but the river was slowly rising, and outside the thick centre ice was a strip of thin, newly-frozen ice. There was, however, little or no change in the appearance of the snow. Up to the end of May the forces of winter had gallantly withstood the fiercest attacks of the sun, baffled at all points, and entered into an alliance with the south wind, and a combined attack was made upon the winter forces. The battle raged for fourteen days, the battle of the Yen-e-say, the great event of the year in this cold country, and certainly the most stupendous display of the powers of nature that it has ever been my lot to witness. On the morning of the 1st of June the pressure underneath the ice caused a large field, about a mile long and a third of a mile wide, opposite the lower angle of junction of the Koo-ray-i-ka and the Yen-e-say, to break away. About half the mass found a passage down the strip of newly-formed thin ice, leaving open water behind it. The other half rushed headlong on to the steep banks of the river. The result of the collision was a little range of mountains, fifty or sixty feet high, and picturesque in the extreme. Huge blocks of ice, six feet thick and twenty feet long, in many places, were standing perpendicular, whilst others were crushed up into fragments like broken glass; and in many other places the ice was piled up in layers one over the other. The real ice on the river did not appear to have been thicker than two or three feet, clear as a glass, and blue as an Italian sky. Upon the top of this was about four feet of white ice. This was as hard as a rock, and had, no doubt, been caused by the flooding of the snow when the waters of the river had risen, and its subsequent freezing. Upon the top of the white ice was eighteen inches of clean snow, which had evidently never been flooded. When we turned into our berths in the evening the captain thought it best to institute an anchor-watch. We had scarcely been asleep an hour before the watch called us up with the intelligence that the river was rising rapidly, and that the ice was beginning to crack. We immediately dressed and went on deck. We saw at once that the Yen-e-say was rising so rapidly that it was beginning to flow up its tributaries. A strong current was setting up the Koo-ray-i-ka, and small floes were detaching themselves from the main body of the ice and were running up the open water. By and by the whole body of the Koo-ray-i-ka broke up and began to move up stream. Some of the floes struck the ship some very ugly blows on the stern, doing considerable damage to the rudder; but open water was beyond, and we were soon out of the press of ice, with, we hoped, no irretrievable injury. All this time we had been getting steam up as fast as possible, to be ready for any emergency. It was hopeless to attempt to enter the creek opposite which we were moored, and which was now only just beginning to fill with water; but on the other side of the river, across only a mile of open water, was a haven of perfect safety. But, alas! when the ice had passed us, before we could get up sufficient steam, the river suddenly fell three feet, and left aground by the stern, and immovable as a rock. Nor was it possible, with a swift current running up the river at the rate of four knots an hour, to swing the ship round so as to secure the rudder against any further attacks of the ice. Half a mile ahead of us, as we looked down the river, was the edge of the Yen-e-say ice. The river was rising again; but before the stern was afloat we discovered, to our dismay, that another large field of ice had broken up; and the Koo-ray-i-ka was soon full of ice again. In the course of the night the whole of the ice of Yen-e-say, as far as we could see, broke up with a tremendous crash, and a dense mass of ice-floes, pack-ice, and icebergs backed up the Koo-ray-i-ka, and with irresistible force drove the Koo-ray-i-ka ice before it. When it reached the ship, we had but one alternative, to slip the anchor and let her drive with the ice. For about a mile we had an exciting ride, pitching and rolling as the floes of ice squeezed the ship, and tried to lift her bodily out of the water, or crawl up her sides like a snake. The rudder was soon broken to pieces, and finally carried away. Some of the sailors jumped on to the ice and scrambled ashore, whilst others began to throw overboard their goods and chattels. Away we went up the Koo-ray-i-ka, the ice rolling and tumbling and squeezing along side, huge lumps climbing one on the top of another, until we were finally jammed in a slight bay, along with a lot of pack-ice. Early in the morning the stream slackened, the river fell some five or six feet, and the ice stood still. The ship went through the terrible ordeal bravely. She made no water, and there was no evidence of injury beyond the loss of the rudder. In the evening the ship was lying amidst huge hummocks of ice, almost high and dry. The Koo-ray-i-ka, and right across the Yen-e-say, and southwards as far as the eye could reach was one immense field of pack-ice, white, black, brown, blue, green, piled in wild confusion as close as it could be jammed. Northwards the Yen-e-say was not yet broken up. All this time the weather was warm and foggy, with very little wind, and occasional slight rain. There was a perfect Babel of birds as an accompaniment to the crashing of the ice. Gulls, geese, and swans were flying about in all directions; and their wild cries vied with the still wilder screams of the divers. Flocks of red polls and shore larks, and bramblings and wagtails in pairs, arrived, and added to the interest of the scene. On the 2d of June there was little or no movement in the ice until midnight, when an enormous pressure from above came on somewhat suddenly, and broke up the great field of ice to the north of the Koo-ray-i-ka, but not to a sufficient extent to relieve the whole of the pressure. The water in the Koo-ray-i-ka rose rapidly. The immense field of pack-ice began to move up stream at the rate of five or six knots an hour. The poor ship was knocked and bumped along the rocky shore, and a stream of water began to flow into the hold. At nine o’clock all hands left her, and stood upon the snow on the bank, expecting her instant destruction. The stream rose and fell during the day; but the leak, which was apparently caused by the twisting of the stern-post, choked up. Late in the evening an opportunity occurred of a few hours’ open water, during which steam was got up; and by the help of a couple of ropes ashore, the rudderless ship was steered into the little creek opposite to which she had wintered, and run ashore. Here the leak was afterwards repaired and a new rudder made. We calculated that about 50,000 acres of ice passed the ship up stream during these two days; and we afterwards learned that most of this ice got away some miles up the Koo-ray-i-ka, where the banks are low, and was lost in the forest.

The battle of the Yen-e-say raged for about a fortnight. The sun was generally burning hot in the daytime; but every night there was more or less frost. The ice came down the Yen-e-say at various speeds. Sometimes we could see gigantic masses of pack-ice, estimated at twenty to thirty feet in height, driven down the river at an incredible pace, not less than twenty miles an hour. In the Koo-ray-i-ka the scene was constantly changing. The river rose and fell. Sometimes the pack-ice and floes were jammed so tight together that it looked as if one might scramble across the river without difficulty. At other times there was a good deal of open water, and the icebergs “calved” as they went along with much commotion and splashing, that could be heard half a mile off. Underlayers of the iceberg ground; and after the velocity of the enormous mass has caused it to pass on, the pieces left behind rise to the surface, like a whale coming up to breathe. Some of these “calves” must come up from a considerable depth. They rise up out of the water with a great splash, and rock about for some time before they settle down to their floating level. At last the final march past of the beaten winter-forces in this great fourteen days’ battle took place and for seven days more the rag, tag, and bob-tail of the great Arctic army come straggling down--warm and weather-beaten little icebergs, dirty ice-floes that looked like mud-banks floating down, and straggling pack-ice in the last stages of consumption. The total rise of the river was upwards of seventy feet.

The moment that the snow disappeared vegetation sprang up as if by magic, and the birds made preparations for breeding. As we passed through Yen-e-saisk I bought a schooner off a ship-builder of the name of Boiling, a Heligolander. I christened it the _Ibis_; and on the 29th of June we left the Koo-ray-i-ka with this little craft in tow. Our progress down the river, however, was one catalogue of disasters, ending in our leaving the _Thames_ on the 9th of July a hopeless wreck, lying high and dry on a sand-bank, in latitude 67°. As we sailed northwards in the _Ibis_, the forests became smaller and smaller, and disappeared altogether about latitude 70°. The highest point we reached was latitude 71½°, where I sold the _Ibis_ to the captain of a Russian schooner, which had been totally wrecked during the break-up of the ice.

On the 23rd of July I left Gol-chee-ka in the last Russian steamer up the river; and reached Yen-e-saisk on the 14th of August. After a few days’ delay I drove across country to Tomsk, stopping a day or two in Kras-no-yarsk. In Tomsk I found an excellent iron steamer, in which I sailed down the river Tom into the Obb, down which we steamed to its junction with the Eer-tish, up which we proceeded until we entered the Tob-ol, and afterwards steamed up the Too-ra to Tyu-main, a distance by water of 2,200 miles. From the Tyu-main I drove through Ekatereenburg across the Urals to Perm, where I took my passage on board the _Sam-o-lot_, or self-flyer, down the Kama, and up the Volga, to Nishni Novgorod.

THE YARROW

JOHN MACWHIRTER

Yarrow and its vale form one of the high places of the earth. In this age of cheap trips it is easy to get there, and perhaps you don’t think much of it as you rattle through on the coach. There is many a Highland scene incomparably grander. After all

“What’s Yarrow, but a river bare,
That glides the dark hills under?
There are a thousand such elsewhere,
As worthy of your wonder.”

A word of dry description must commence. The Yarrow Water is in Yarrow and Selkirk parishes of the country of Selkirk. It rises in St. Mary’s Loch, it courses therefrom to its junction with Ettrick Water fourteen and a half miles, when the latter gives its name to the united currents. They are soon lost in the Tweed. Beyond St. Mary’s Loch, and separated from it by a narrow strip of land, is the Loch o’ the Lowes (or Lochs). It is about two miles in length, and is fed by the Yarrow, which rises some two miles higher up, though it is usually taken as beginning in the large lake. In the lower reach the banks are wooded; farther up the hills are bare, soft, rounded, the stream is clear and swift-flowing, with a musical note on its large and small stones; there is no growth of sedge or underwood, but the fresh green grass stretches up the slope till it is lost in the heather. Between the hills are glens down which wind greater or smaller tributaries to the Yarrow. Each has its legend and its ruin. Dim, romantic, enticing, these glens stretch away into the mysterious mountain solitude. You begin your excursion from Selkirk, which is on Ettrick Water, ten miles down stream from its junction with the Yarrow, and two places soon take your attention, Carterhaugh and Philiphaugh. There is a farm “toun,” as they name a steading in the north, that is called Carterhaugh; but what is meant here is a charming piece of greensward and wood, that lies almost encircled by the two streams at and near their meeting place. A very Faeryland! and here is laid the scene of the faery ballad of “The Young Tamlane.” The song is very old; it was well known in 1549, as we learn from a chance mention in a work of the period. It is a delicious poem, pure phantasy; a very Mid-summer Night’s Dream, scarcely of the earth at all, far less dealing with historical incident. The forgotten poet, lest he should be all in the air, makes the young Tamlane son to Randolph, Earl Murray, and Fair Janet, daughter to Dunbar, Earl March, but this is only because these were the noblest names in Scotland, and he chooses Carterhaugh for his stage; as like as not he lived somewhere on the Yarrow, and the stream sang in his ears as he built the song. Tamlane is nine when his uncle sends for him “to hunt and hawk and ride,” and on the way--

“There came a wind out o’ the north,
A sharp wind and a snell,
And a dead sleep came over me,
And frae my horse I fell.
The Queen of the Fairies she was there,
And took me to herself.”

On the left bank of the Yarrow, just across from Carterhaugh, is Philiphaugh. It is a large space of level ground, and here the fortunes of the great Montrose and his Highland army came to hopeless smash in the early morning of 13th September, 1645. Montrose had won six victories in the Highlands, had been appointed Viceroy of Scotland, and full of ill-placed confidence was preparing an invasion of England. He spent the previous evening at ease in Selkirk (they still show you the house) and was writing despatches to the king, when he heard the sound of firing. He galloped to the field and found everything practically over! David Leslie had been seeking him far and near for some time, had found the camp and invaded it in a mist. The Royalists were scattered; Montrose--no one ever counted cowardice among his vices--made a desperate effort to retrieve the fortune of the day, but all in vain. Finally he dashed through the opposing forces, galloped away up the Yarrow, then by a wild mountain path, right over Minchmoor, and drew not bridle till he dashed up to Traquair House, sixteen miles from the battle-field. A number of prisoners were taken. The common lowland Scot has still a certain contempt for the Highlander, whose appreciation in the modern world is due to literature; then he looked upon him as an outcast and outlaw, “a broken man,” in the expressive phrase of an earlier day. The captives were shot in the court-yard of Newark Castle, and buried in a field still called Slain-mans-lee. Celtic troops are very brave, but unless mixed with the steadier Saxon, they don’t seem reliable.

Still keeping on the left bank, follow the road by the riverside and as before you come to two places, each with an interest very different from the others. One is a ruined house, a poor enough building at the best. An inscription tells you that Mungo Park (1771-1805) the African traveller, was born and lived here. He saw Scott a little before his last voyage, told how he dreaded leave-taking (he had been recently married!) and that he meant to leave for Edinburgh on some pretence or other and make his adieux from there. On Williamhope ridge the two parted.

“I stood and looked back, but he did not,” says Scott. He had put his hand to the plough. Poor Mungo Park! his discoveries seem little now-a-days, yet to me, he is always the most attractive of African travellers, his life the most interesting, his end the most melancholy. One thinks how under the hot sun in those fearful swamps he must have often remembered the cool delicious green braes of his native Yarrow. But we turn our eyes to the opposite bank and scarce need be told that the castle we see, majestic, though in ruins, is “Newark’s stately tower.” ’Tis a great weather-beaten square keep, where Anna, relict of the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth, lived for some years of her widowed life. To her Scott’s “Last Minstrel” sings his lay. But the place was already centuries old. It was once a hunting-seat of the Scots kings, when the whole region was the densely wooded Ettrick Forest, and here there was great sport with the wolf, the mountain bear, the wild-cat, and all sorts of other small and large deer. Some place-names still save the old memories, Oxcleugh, Durhame, Hartleap, Hindshope, and so forth.

After Yarrow hamlet the land is more desolate, the stream shrinks to a mountain burn, there are no more clumps of trees, and the hills creep in near the water’s edge, and they are taller and steeper. You pass lofty Mount Benger, near where Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who loved and sang of those sweet vales, had a farm. Farther on the right bank is Altrive, where he afterwards lived, and where he died. Almost opposite, the Douglas Burn flows through a gloomy and solitary glen to Yarrow. Follow this burn and you come to the ruins of Blackhouse Tower. It was from here that Lord William and Lady Margaret fled at midnight from Lord Douglas and his seven sons. These were slain one by one, but it was only when her lover began to press roughly on her father that the lady interposed.

“Oh hold your hand, Lord William, she said,
For your strokes they are wondrous sair.
True lovers I can get many a one,
But a father I can never get mair.”

An obvious if belated reflection! ’Twas of no avail, the father is left dead and dying, and the lady follows her knight (“For ye’ve left me nae other guide,” she says somewhat bitterly). They light down at “yon wan water” and his “gude heart’s bluid” dyes the stream, though he swears “’Tis naething but the shadow of my scarlet cloak.” However, the lovers die that very night and are buried in St. Marie’s Kirke, and “a bonny red rose” and a briar grew out of the grave and twined together to the admiration of all who saw, but to the great wrath of Black Douglas, who, a sworn foe to sentimentality,

“Pull’d up the bonny briar
And flang’d in St. Marie’s Loch.”

The wild path followed by the lovers over the hillside is still to be traced, the place of the combat is marked by seven stones; but again these are of an earlier date, and again it would be useless to criticise the creation of the fancy too curiously.

And now we are at St. Mary’s Loch, a beautiful sheet of water three miles long and half a mile broad. At the head of the loch is a monument to the Ettrick Shepherd. Near the monument is St. Mary’s Cottage, better known as “Tibbie Shiel’s,” and scene of many a gay carouse of Christopher North and his merry men, as you know very well if you have read the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_. The cottage is still kept by a relative of the original Tibbie, as a humble sort of an inn. If you are wise you will prefer it to the large new Rodona hotel not far off. It has a touch of the old times with its huge fireplace and box beds. It is something to hear the local anecdote, how one morning “after” Christopher or the shepherd, being more than ever consumed with the pangs of thirst, in a burst of wild desire, cried “Tibbie, bring ben the Loch.” It is said that Scott was never farther than the door. Scott, Hogg, Wilson were, we all know, great writers, though to-day Wilson is but little read, Hogg popular through one or two lyrics, whilst Scott is more and more known with the years. But each of the three had an impressive and attractive personality--he is more than a writer, he is first of all a man. Superior in interest to monument and cottage is St. Mary’s Kirk, which stands on a height on the left bank of the loch. One should say stood, for nothing of it is left. Here generations of martyrs and freebooters were carried, and the heroes and heroines of so many of the tales and ballads were laid to rest, but--

“St. Mary’s Loch lies slumbering still,
But St. Mary’s Kirk-bells lang dune ringing,
There’s naething now but the grave-stone hill,
To tell o’ a’ their loud Psalm-singing.”

They still bury there, though at rare and distant intervals. Hard by is Dryhope Tower. Here was born Mary Scott, the “Flower of Yarrow.” The romance of the name caused this heroine to be incessantly be-rhymed through all the subsequent centuries, but we don’t know much about her. She was married to Walter Scott of Harden, a gentleman widely and justly renowned for his skill in “lifting” other people’s cattle. As a portion the bride’s father agreed to “find his son-in-law in man’s meat and horse’s meat for a year and a day, five barons becoming bound that, on the expiry of that period, Harden should retire without compulsion.” Not one of the parties to the contract could write. A daughter of the “Flower of Yarrow” was married to another freebooter called “Gilly wi’ the gouden garters.” The bride was to remain at her father’s house for a year and a day, and in return Gilly contracted to hand over the plunder of the first harvest moon. By the way, there is rather a pretty though quite untrustworthy tradition of the origin of the ballads connected with the name of Mary Scott. In the spoils brought home by her husband from one of his forays, was a child. Him she took and reared. Of gentle nature, he delighted to hear of and celebrate in songs the tragedies and romances acted or repeated around him; and so he, “nameless as the race from whence he sprung, saved other names and left his own unsung.” The Meggat Water is one of the many streams that fill the loch. On one of its tributaries called Henderland-burn is a ruined tower, and near it a large stone broken into three parts, on which you may still make out the inscription, “Here lyes Perys of Cockburne and his wyfe Marjory.” Cockburne was in his day a noted freebooter, and secure in his tower defied all attempts to bring him to justice. But James V. in his famous progress through the Border-land, heard of his proceedings, and came right over the hills and down upon Henderland, whose proprietor he found eating his dinner. It was his last meal; he was at once seized and strung up before his own door. His wife fled and concealed herself in a place called the Lady’s seat, and when she recovered the silence of the glen told her that the invaders had departed, and she returned and buried her husband. One of the most pathetic of the old ballads is said to be her lament

“But think na’ ye my heart was sair,
When I laid the moul’ on his yellow hair;
O think na’ ye my heart was wae,
When I turned about, awa’ to gae.”

By the way, gold was found in the glen here; probably a little might be extracted to-day; but then it wouldn’t pay for the washing. Quite a different set of traditions deals with the Covenanting period. Far up in the solitary side glens were favourite meeting-places; here the saints came from far and near with Bible, and sword and gun, ready to offer up their lives if need may be, but quite determined to sell them as dearly as possible. Alas! the minstrels were not on their side, and no contemporary ballads tell the story of the dangers and deaths, though those were dramatic enough. In later times Hogg and Wilson did something to weave them into song and story. It was near the loch of the Lowes that Renwick preached his last sermon. “When he prayed that day few of his hearers’ cheeks were dry.” On the 17th February, 1688, “he glorified God in the grass-market,” as the old phrase ran.