Chapter XII: Introduction: By W. P. Trent (10)

As the visitor approaches over any one of the railroads leading into Louisville and looks upon the charming scene just outlined, he may recall the historic associations connected with it. Here, in the long ago, Daniel Boone loved to linger and hunt. It was here that George Rogers Clark, the famous Indian fighter and leader of western civilization, first won renown. Here John Fitch studied the problem of steamboat navigation, anticipating Robert Fulton many years, and so far succeeded that Fulton acknowledged him the original inventor of steam craft. Here the fathers of ornithology in the new world, Alexander Wilson and John J. Audubon, resided and labored, the latter first awaking to a realization of his marvellous genius in the Kentucky wilds. In this vicinity Zachary Taylor spent his childhood, learned the art of war, and returned at intervals of peace to reside, after achieving notable triumphs for the Republic on the hard-fought fields of Mexico and elsewhere. It was here that George Keats, favorite brother of the poet, John Keats, came to live, bringing with him from old England an atmosphere of classic culture and refinement which influenced the development of intellectual Louisville. It was here, also, that Henry Clay often came to confer with his political colleagues, and to charm the people with his superb oratory. Here George D. Prentice, whose witty, trenchant paragraphs on the editorial page of _The Louisville Journal_ made it the most widely quoted American paper in foreign realms, wielded his wonderful influence as the champion of the great Pacificator of Ashland. Near this city General Robert Anderson, the fearless hero of Fort Sumter in 1861, was reared, and hither he returned after its surrender and received the welcome plaudits of all parties for his memorable loyalty to the Stars and Stripes. In this city many of the ablest Federal commanders first came into national notice during the Civil War; and here resides now Henry Watterson, whose patriotic pen and eloquent lips in recent years have dispelled the last feeling of prejudice between the once estranged sections of the Union, and who, speaking for his fellow citizens, cordially received the Grand Army of the Republic into the South on their first visit since they left its soil as conquerors.

FROM AN OLD PAINTING OWNED BY THE POLYTECHNIC SOCIETY OF KENTUCKY.]

In the evolution of nations struggle is unavoidable, but higher results ensue: and it is the peculiar pride of the State of Kentucky that though Lincoln and Davis, the two leaders of the Federal and Confederate governments while the fate of the Union was being decided on the bloody field, were her sons, nevertheless her conservatism, wise counsel and gentle forbearance--beginning in the speeches of Henry Clay long previous to the late unpleasantness, and continuing in the admirable efforts of Henry Watterson afterward--indicated the path to peace and prosperity. The motto of the Republic is “Many in one”; that of Kentucky, “United we stand, divided we fall”; and it has been the mission of our State to emphasize the vital political truth that many commonwealths with widely diverse institutions may safely unite in the formation of one strong central government; that a multiplicity of peoples with entirely different interests and pursuits may still be one in sympathy, purpose and hope. Situated midway between the North and the South, not only is her climate a delightful mingling of both extremes, but the temper of her inhabitants is a dignified reserve and a spontaneous fervor of feeling happily proportioned. Able, on the one hand, to appreciate the spirit of progress which makes the North impatient of those conditions and tendencies which the South has wisely altered with caution; and, on the other hand, apprehending the principle of personal independence which causes the South to suspect Northern counsel as impelled by a desire to interfere with individual liberty, she has long occupied a position similar to that of Tennyson’s sweet little heroine, Annie, who, sitting between Enoch and Philip, with a hand of each in her own, would weep,

“And pray them not to quarrel for her sake.”

Scarcely less sublime than Columbus pacing the deck of his ship at sea and looking wistfully westward in search of the new world he so faithfully sought, seems Daniel Boone, in 1769, venturing forth from the quiet valleys of the Yadkin in response to the promptings of his restless spirit, unconsciously going to prepare the way for the millions that were subsequently to follow him, and as if by magic to transform into fertile fields the pathless forests beyond the Alleghanies which he was the first to penetrate and explore.

FROM A PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF COL. R. T. DURRETT, LOUISVILLE, KY.]

Dauntless, noble souls they were who created our commonwealth; and Byron, fascinated with the refreshing fame of Daniel Boone, which extended throughout Europe as well as America, celebrated him and his fellow Kentuckians in a number of fine stanzas in the eighth canto of _Don Juan_. Henry James, in his life of Hawthorne, laments the lack of historic inspiration for prose and verse in this country; yet Byron, sadly turning from the shams and hypocrisies of the Old World, which he scathingly satirized in his great production, burst into a beautiful strain of hope as he contemplated the uncorrupted heroes of the new world beyond the Atlantic. The description begins half humorously with the sixty-first stanza:

“Of all men saving Sylla the man-slayer,
Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
The General Boon, backwoodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest among mortals anywhere;
For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoyed the lonely, vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.”

The reader cannot help smiling at the poet’s mistake in leaving off the final letter of Boone’s name and calling him “General,” when all Kentuckians, even including the illustrious pioneer, are “Colonels”; but the spirit of a master interpreter of Nature is in the stanzas that follow.

FROM A PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF COL. R. T. DURRETT, LOUISVILLE, KY.]

It was not until 1778 that LouisVille, as it was then called, was founded, George Rogers Clarke being a resident of Harrodsburg, Ky., during the years 1776 and 1777. The incidents connected with the settlement he established at the Falls are memorable in the annals of the West. The British leaders were seeking to strike an effectual blow at all the American frontier fortresses, and with this end in view were enlisting the sympathies and co-operation of the Indian tribes. Detroit, Vincennes, Kaskaskia and similar British stations were well fortified, and plans were speedily forming for a descent on the unprepared and unsuspecting pioneers in the Ohio Valley. Clark instinctively discerned this scheme and secretly but courageously determined to thwart it. He accordingly went to Williamsburg, Va., in November, 1777. The news of Burgoyne’s surrender had inspired the Virginia authorities with patriotic enthusiasm, and Governor Henry sanctioned Clark’s proposal to raise a sufficient force to proceed against the British in the Northwest. Orders were issued and Clark was put in command of the expedition. Six thousand dollars in colonial currency were voted him, and with the rank of Colonel he set out for Pittsburg. After much discouragement he secured three companies of volunteers and a number of adventurers and continued his journey down the river to the Falls. The fort that he built on his arrival furnished a nucleus around which the village subsequently sprang up.

Thirteen families remained at the Falls while Clark and his men went on against Kaskaskia. The campaign was a brilliant success. One post after another fell into the hands of the fearless Kentuckians, and the whole of the Northwest Territory was opened to emigration. It is said that when Clark and his followers appeared before the astonished garrisons during these operations, the red-coats almost imagined a force had dropped from the skies, so inaccessible had they deemed their strongholds to be, and so suddenly had their conquerors come upon them. It was not strange, therefore, that the eloquent John Randolph of Roanoke spoke of Clark in after years as the “American Hannibal, who, by the reduction of those military posts in the wilderness, obtained the Lakes for the northern boundary of our Union at the peace in 1783.”

If the visitor desires to see the location of the first settlement at the Falls let him stand upon the Fourteenth Street Bridge and look down the river. To the right is the main current of the Ohio as it plunges roaring over the Falls, and to the left is the island on which Colonel Clark and his men built a fort when they arrived in the spring of 1778. This was called “Corn Island,” from the fact that a crop of corn was planted by the risky pioneers around the fortress, and carefully cultivated, notwithstanding they were hourly exposed to Indian attacks.

Either in the autumn of 1778 or the spring of 1779 (history is not certain which), the garrison on Corn Island went ashore and laid the foundation of the future city of Louisville. Huts, blockhouses and stockades were erected, and the Indians saw that the intruders had come to stay. During the year 1779, Colonel Clark directed his energies against the British post Vincennes, and easily captured it.

FIRST SETTLEMENT OF LOUISVILLE, KY.

_From an old print in the possession of Col. R. T. Durrett, Louisville, Ky._]

In May, 1780, the Virginia Legislature passed an “Act for Establishing the Town of Louisville at the Falls of Ohio.” The population of the place had increased to six hundred; but the increase of strength rendered the pioneers careless, and as a consequence the Indians on several occasions surprised and captured parties beyond the protection of the fort and escaped with them across the river, or into the wilderness to the south, almost before an alarm could be given. Colonel Clark, in order to ward off the attacks of the red men, constructed a unique sort of gunboat supplied with four-pound cannon. It was the first actual vessel of war ever seen on the Ohio, and though some chroniclers are disposed to make light of its actual utility as a means of defence, it kept the insidious savages from crossing the river in its vicinity.

This period in the history of Kentucky (1780-1800) was admirably portrayed by the facile pen of Washington Irving after his literary tour of the West in 1834, when he visited Louisville and took notes for future sketches. An eccentric though shrewd character of the day, William P. Duval, whose career as a pioneer lawyer, and whose adventures as an Indian commissioner under Monroe gave him fame scarcely second to that of George Rogers Clark, inspired those two narratives in _Crayon Papers_, called “The Early Experiences of Ralph Ringwood,” and “The Conspiracy of Neamathla.” Mr. Irving’s humor is at its best in the first of these and his picture of primitive people is unsurpassed. James K. Paulding likewise wrote of Governor Duval in a novel called _Nimrod Wildfire_.

FROM AN OLD PRINT IN THE POSSESSION OF COL. R. T. DURRETT, LOUISVILLE, KY.]

With the old-style method of travel by keel-boat and barges (1780-1810), going down the river was easy enough, but ascending stream was indeed difficult. A mile an hour was the maximum rate of progress, and if the wind and tide chanced to be unfavorable, many days were lost in waiting. Then, again, the craft was likely to strike a snag or run aground, and the strength and patience of the crew would be completely exhausted ere another start could be effected. Sometimes the men became so exasperated that they would leave the boat or barge _en masse_ and return afoot whence they had started. It required three and often four months to come up to Louisville from New Orleans. Nor was this all. Bands of desperadoes infested the forest on either shore, and would hold up a boat or barge,--prototypes of the notorious train robbers of later days. The records of river navigation are filled with thrilling incidents and studies of unique character.

But notwithstanding these difficulties European tourists ventured into the wilds in search of novelty or on business speculations. One of these came to the Falls city as early as 1806, and afterwards, in writing his impressions of the place, said: “I had thought Cincinnati one of the most beautiful towns I had seen in America, but Louisville, which is almost as large, equals it in beauty and in the opinion of many exceeds it.”

Robert Fulton and Daniel French went into the steamboat-building business at Pittsburg, after the trip of the _Orleans_ in 1811; and a few years later better facilities were afforded for travel on the Ohio. The Eastern visitor to Louisville should by all means come from Cincinnati, or even Pittsburg, by boat in order to study the historic scenes and associations of the “Rhine of America.” Distinct epochs in American literature have arisen from the inspiration and suggestion given by this celebrated stream and life along its course to the various writers who travelled its waters.

First and foremost among these was John J. Audubon who came in 1809, previous to the opening of navigation by steamboat. Reports of the happy wilds of Kentucky had reached him in his Pennsylvania home subsequent to his return from Paris, where he had been sojourning as an art student. His passion for ornithology drove him to the West, and the hour he left Pittsburg marked the beginning of a new era in his wonderful career as a naturalist. The Ohio charmed him, and, locating at Louisville, he collected specimens of every bird that could be found in forest or field. In 1810, Alexander Wilson, the distinguished Scotch-American ornithologist, traversed the Ohio and Mississippi valleys on a mission similar to Audubon’s. Stopping for a season at the Falls city he chanced to become acquainted with Audubon, and in the course of conversation the two exchanged ideas and were astonished to discover that they were pursuing the same line of work. This meeting was memorable, for it awakened Audubon to a full realization of his genius and helped Wilson unspeakably. Indeed, so far-reaching were its results that in order to appreciate them one has first to familiarize himself with some of the subtlest tendencies and movements of the nineteenth century.

When steamboat navigation began on the Ohio (1812-16) the rush of emigration commenced anew. Thirty-nine English families sent Henry Bradshaw Fearon over in 1816 to make a careful study of places and people in the Ohio Valley. He was an intelligent, practical observer, and his descriptions of the inhabitants and social conditions of Louisville are strikingly suggestive of Dickens. There is a vein of sarcasm in his observations, due to the fact that he has little sympathy with the commercial ambition that seemed to possess the people to the exclusion of higher pursuits. Every one seemed self-absorbed and bent on money-making; even the best hotels were conducted on the crowding policy. The people had unparalleled appetites, according to Mr. Fearon, for his description of a tavern meal in Louisville is similar to Dickens’s report of the fast-eating Americans he met while among us.

The tide of emigration from England swelled enormously in the decades succeeding 1820-40, and swindlers reaped so rich a harvest by selling imaginary land bargains in imaginary towns of the Ohio Valley that an investigation became necessary. A leading purpose with Charles Dickens in coming to America on his first tour in 1842 was to examine into and expose these frauds, which he did with fearless sarcasm and irresistible irony. The whole plot of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ hinges on real-estate speculations at Cairo, Ill., at the mouth of the Ohio, the original of the city of “Eden,” which Scadder, the real-estate agent, so eulogistically described to Martin that the credulous young Englishman forthwith invested all his funds in the hope of reaping an ample fortune by the day he set foot in the place. Pittsburg, Cincinnati and Louisville are realistically, and in some respects ridiculously, portrayed in chapters xxi.-xxiii., and if the reader will compare these with Dickens’s _American Notes_, the actual scenes and experiences that suggested the story may be found.

As an offset to the severity of this inimitable satire, the reader should peruse the article “English Writers on America” in Washington Irving’s _Sketch Book_, which was called forth by exaggerated stories propagated by the pens of early British travellers in this country after their return home. Dickens came to Louisville in 1842, and when he had gone up to his room at the Galt House, Major Throckmorton, the proprietor, who was as high-spirited as he was polite, appeared at the novelist’s door and said, “Sir, I am proud to extend you the hospitality of the house; and shall be delighted to serve you to the best of my ability.” “Boz,” in spite of his alertness, was not aware of the vast difference there is between the social standing of an American hotel proprietor and that of an English innkeeper. Glancing at the Major he replied, “All right, sir; all right; if I want anything I’ll ring for you.” Throckmorton’s eyes flashed with anger as he exclaimed, “What do you mean by such impudence to me? You don’t know whom you are talking to; I’ll throw you out of the window.” The Major was a powerful man and would doubtless have made good his threat had not Dickens speedily apologized for his mistake.

Among the Englishmen induced to emigrate to Kentucky by Mr. Fearon’s book in 1818, was George Keats, brother of the poet, John Keats. The circumstances of his coming and his career after arriving form one of the interesting chapters in the early history of the State.

George returned to England in the autumn of 1819, leaving his wife in Louisville. Securing the remainder of the family estate which fell to him, he invested in the lumber trade at the Falls city and made a fortune. His mills were located on First Street, between Washington Street and the river, and in 1835 he built an elegant residence on what is now Walnut Street, between Third and Fourth. The square on which this mansion still stands was then the aristocratic section of the city, and while the house was in course of construction people would stroll along and speak admiringly of it as “The Englishman’s Palace.” With the exception of the roof, which was altered, and the present portico, which was added by a subsequent purchaser, the residence is in no wise changed since George Keats occupied it. Lavish was the hospitality dispensed by the poet’s brother, and he will always rank among the noblest citizens Louisville has ever had. Though the happiness of helping John was not, as he had hoped, permitted him, his house became the center of a circle of warm admirers of the author of _Endymion_, and for a long time the culture of the city and State found in him a leader both liberal and inspiring. James Freeman Clarke was for seven or eight years pastor of the Unitarian Church in Louisville, and George Keats was a member of his congregation. The two became intimate friends, and Mr. Clarke afterward wrote entertainingly of him. He served in the city council and aided in the establishment of the Louisville school system.

The correspondence between George and John includes some of the poet’s finest letters. These descended to one of George’s daughters. About the year 1873 her son, John Gilmer Speed, the well-known writer, now of New York, chanced to be looking over these priceless papers and noticed that they had not been published in Lord Houghton’s life of Keats. He accordingly collected them, and from one of the volumes we select a few brief sentences pertinent to the purpose of the present sketch.

One letter from John tells George to take financial reverses as coolly as possible, considering he had done his best. Another, declining an invitation to come to Kentucky, says, “You will perceive that it is quite out of my interest to come to America. What could I do there? How could I employ myself, out of the reach of libraries?” And thus he counsels George: “Be careful of those Americans. I could almost advise you to come, whenever you have the sum of five hundred pounds, to England. Those Americans will, I am afraid, still fleece you.” In a letter to George’s wife in January, 1820, he speaks of his wish to cross the sea with his brother: “I could almost promise you that if I had the means I would accompany George back to America, and pay you a visit of a few months.” Had he made the trip and beheld with his own eyes the loveliness of the Ohio Valley, and met the kindly people of Kentucky, he would not have been so inclined to disparage Louisville society: “I was surprised to hear of the state of society at Louisville: it seems you are just as ridiculous there as we are here--threepenny parties, halfpenny dances. The best thing I have heard of is your shooting, for it seems you follow the gun.”

A terrible tragedy occurred at the Keats mansion, back in the forties, about which there is a pathetic tradition. Isabella, the beautiful young daughter of George Keats, according to tradition, killed herself in a fit of despondency at the unhappy termination of a love-affair. A circumstance said to have taken place in 1890 seemed to substantiate the tradition. An elderly, refined-looking and quiet stranger appeared repeatedly at the Keats house and requested to be left alone in the library, where the girl was shot. At first he offered no explanation of his unusual request, but when finally leaving he said to the lady who had admitted him, “I parted from her in there, and have returned from California to visit the scene once more.” The rumor was soon circulated that the mysterious stranger was the lover whose unfaithfulness had robbed the unhappy girl of the desire to live.

The descendants of George Keats still living in Louisville deny the pathetic story throughout. They affirm that the girl was heartwhole and free from any morbid tendencies. Their version of the tragedy is substantially as follows: Isabella’s brother Clarence had been out hunting in the vicinity of the city, and, returning home, carelessly left his gun on a sofa in the darkened library. Isabella shortly afterward went into the room to lie down, and, not seeing the loaded weapon, struck the trigger in such a way with her foot that the contents were discharged, mortally wounding her.

Edward Eggleston’s inimitable Hoosier Tales portray the next period in the history of the Ohio Valley (1840-60), immortalizing those pedagogues of the Ichabod Crane type who came swarming from New England when the tide of emigration first set westward. Mr. Eggleston spent his childhood on the river between Cincinnati and Louisville, and his pictures of primitive social life in Kentucky and southern Indiana are in the style of Irving’s sketch already mentioned. Zachary Taylor went to school, not far from the Falls fort, to one of these Yankee teachers, a native of Connecticut by the name of Ayers, who was a sagacious fellow, able to watch the Indians and urchins simultaneously. The South and West owe these wandering educators a debt of gratitude that can hardly be overestimated.

It was from the Falls city that Aaron Burr planned to make his treasonable descent upon the South in November, 1805, and there is still current in the State much interesting tradition concerning him. The court-house in Louisville contains the noble statue of Henry Clay by Joel T. Hart. At the Polytechnic Society on Fourth Avenue are Hart’s other pieces of statuary; and on Third Avenue, at the residence of Mrs. Elizabeth Menefee, are many of those superb portraits painted by Matthew H. Jouett, Gilbert Stuart’s favorite pupil, and a master American artist. His genius and that of Hart developed beyond the confines of classic civilization, and though subsequently aided and directed by the best instruction of conventional schools retained an individuality and conformity to nature all their own.

Just across the court-house square, and within a stone’s throw of the imposing figure of the sage of Ashland is the site of the old Pope residence where Worden Pope and his sons entertained James Monroe and Andrew Jackson during their tour through the South in 1819. The Popes held a high position of political influence in the State, and at a conference called on this occasion the name of Andrew Jackson was first proposed to the Southern people as Monroe’s successor.

The home of Zachary Taylor, five miles from the city, is well worth visiting. Near it is the house in which Jefferson Davis was married to his first wife, the daughter of General Taylor.

On August 6, 1855, occurred the terrible political riot precipitated by the Know-nothings. A mob with a cannon at their head went murdering and burning through the streets of Louisville. The day is known in history as “Bloody Monday.”

Louisville was decidedly Union in its sympathies during the Civil War, though many of its inhabitants inclined to support the Southern cause. George D. Prentice, though just and kindly to the South, was always loyal to the national government, and his paper, the _Journal_, was notably influential on that side. The Falls city as a recruiting station at the beginning of the struggle between the States was fully as important in the West as was Washington in the East. It was the basis of numerous military movements that turned the tide of fortune against the Confederates, and in this city some of the most eminent Federal commanders were at different times located.

At the home of Col. Reuben T. Durrett on East Chestnut Street are relics innumerable, and the scholarly host, who knows every fact of the city’s history, is ever ready to show them to the visitor. Louisville is not only a lively commercial center, but is also the home of culture and art. The brain and beauty of which she boasts can be found throughout the Blue Grass region, and the hospitality she dispenses is characteristic of the whole commonwealth. Mary Anderson de Navarro first won fame in this city, her girlhood home, and has never ceased to love it. Henry Watterson and his able young lieutenant, Harrison Robertson, still keep the _Courier-Journal_ to the front; and James Lane Allen, though not a native nor a resident of the Falls city, portrays the traits of her people upon his inimitable pages when he writes of all Kentuckians. Madison Cawein, the Keats of America, is here; and Charles J. O’Malley, who voices the sentiment of every Kentuckian when he sings:

“My own Kentucky, sweet is fame,
And other suns sink down in flame;
And other skies bend over blue;
And other lands have hearts as true;
And other mornings break as clear;
And God keeps love-watch everywhere--
But O, my mother, on thy breast
Alone my head may find full rest,--
My heart to thy heart as of yore,--
Asleep within thy arms once more,
O my Kentucky!”

LITTLE ROCK

“THE CITY OF ROSES”

BY GEORGE B. ROSE

There are spots marked out by nature for the sites of cities, where they must spring up as soon as civilization is established and remain as long as it endures. Such a spot is Little Rock.

The southeastern half of Arkansas is low and flat, composed chiefly of alluvial plains; the northwestern half rugged and broken, rising toward the western border into the mountains, some three thousand feet in elevation, which gradually drop away toward the east till they disappear altogether. At the point, almost the exact center of the State, where the last foothills form the south bank of the principal river, it was inevitable that a city should be built and that that city should become the State’s capital. Indeed, so manifest was the destiny of the position that it was made the seat of government before it had become a town, and when it was far beyond the limits of actual settlement.

Nor would it be easy to find a more desirable spot not beside the sea. The foundation is a rock bluff of slight elevation, but sufficient to lift the city above the danger of overflow. On this there rests a bed of gravelly clay, covered with a thin vegetable mould, and rising to the south and west in a succession of gently swelling eminences, presenting innumerable building sites of the most attractive character, and draining in every direction; equally free from steep acclivities and unwholesome flatness, and clothed by nature with a magnificent forest of wide-spreading oaks and lofty pines. Far out into the river there projects a rocky peninsula, against whose adamantine sides the stream has dashed its ineffectual fury for countless ages; and this, in contrast to the bold precipice upon the other bank, which was called the Big Rock, gave to the place its name.

This promontory is now used as the abutment of one of the three bridges that span the river, and its beauty has been destroyed; but in the old days, when it was clothed with trees and ferns clinging to its rocky sides and reflected in the waters below, it was a charming sight, and must have been hailed with joy by the early travelers after their weary journey from the distant sea through the monotony of the low-lying wilderness.

The original inhabitants of the region were the Quapaw or Arkansas Indians, a race much superior to the surrounding savages, and who dwelt not in scattered wigwams but in walled villages, and seem always to have lived in amity with the whites. Father Pierre François de Charlevoix, an early French missionary, says of them, “The Arkansas are reckoned to be the tallest and best-shaped of all the savages on this continent,” and he speaks at length of their kindness to the French, and their fidelity to their engagements. So Du Pratz, an early _voyageur_, says: “I am so prepossessed in favor of this country that I persuade myself that the beauty of the climate has a great influence on the character of the inhabitants, who are at the same time very gentle and very brave.”

In the days when Little Rock was a part of the favorite hunting-ground of the Quapaws it must have been a lovely spot. Then the tall trees grew untouched upon its rolling hills, and its numerous little streams, now converted into sewers, flowed murmuring beneath overhanging ferns to mingle with the river.

When it was first visited by white men no one knows. During 1541 and 1542 De Soto marched back and forth through the region, seeking for gold with a Spaniard’s hunger; but the accounts of his wanderings are uncertain and confused, and the blood of the unhappy natives which once marked out his pathway has long since mingled with the dust.

Then for almost two hundred years the solitude of the wilderness remained unbroken. At rare intervals the French _voyageurs_ went up and down the Mississippi, establishing forts and trading-posts; but the great river so engrossed their attention that they left its tributaries unexplored. At length, in 1722, a French officer, Bernard de la Harpe, ascended the Arkansas, and on April 9th reached the picturesque heights of Big Rock, where the army post is now located. Standing upon the brink of its lofty precipice he watched the river winding far away in the distance between the mountains of the West, and dreamed of the mighty empire that France should build up where lay the untrodden beauty of the woods. The whole site of Little Rock was spread out beneath him, clothed in verdure, and he mentions the slate bluffs which it presents to the stream.

Then again the curtain is drawn over the scene. Doubtless from time to time French _voyageurs_ ascended the river to barter with the Indians for their furs, but they left no mark. In 1803, the country passed to the United States as a part of the Louisiana purchase, and the hardy Anglo-Saxon pioneer began to penetrate the wilderness, his Bible in one hand and in the other his long, death-dealing rifle. As early as 1814 three or four squatters were dwelling at Little Rock or in its vicinity, subsisting chiefly by the chase; and even then the importance of the site was so conspicuous that strong men dwelling in St. Louis and other places began to struggle for possession of the title with a pertinacity rarely equalled.

At this period it escaped a great danger. An effort was made to christen it Arkopolis, and deeds were executed with that designation; but better counsels prevailed, and it retained its old name, “The Little Rock,” the article then being an inseparable portion of the title.

It was still a mere spot in the forest marked by a few log huts when, on October 24, 1820, it was made the capital of the territory. On the 4th of July of that year the Rev. Cephas Washburn had preached the first sermon ever heard there, and in the rude cabin there were gathered to listen to him only fourteen men,--no women,--probably all the inhabitants of the place. Yet no one doubted that they were standing upon the site of a future city, or questioned the wisdom of the Legislature when it established the capital in the remote wilderness, far from the Mississippi in whose neighborhood the scanty population of the territory was chiefly gathered.

The town grew slowly. It was far from the centers of population, and the means of travel were slight and precarious. It was made a post office town on April 10, 1820, but the inhabitants in 1830 numbered only four hundred and fifty, and it was not incorporated until Nov. 7, 1831.

In 1860, the population was only about five thousand. Between 1833 and 1846 the State House was built, a handsome edifice for the time and place; but generally the buildings were constructed of wood, not infrequently of logs, and were wholly unpretentious. Yet it is probable that there has never been in the city so much ability, certainly never so many striking personalities, as in those early days. It was a time when the nation was in its lusty youth, when the spirit of adventure and the love of independence were strong in the breasts of men. It was an age of great orators, when men felt strongly and expressed themselves in words that burned. It was an age when the romantic movement in literature was at its best, and when the sad smallness of the realistic school had not cast its blight on every lofty enthusiasm. It was a time of buoyancy, of expansion,--when the love of change and adventure, the weariness of the conventionalities of civilized life, the attractions of a future of unknown possibilities, were drawing many of the ablest and most ambitious of the nation’s youth to the distant West. Their hopes were often chimerical; but of their abilities and their energy there can be no doubt. They sought the West, conscious of their strength, burning with ambition, each dreaming that he would be the master-spirit of the new empire that was springing from the wilderness. When they found that instead of being unquestioned leaders among ignorant frontiersmen they were pitted against foemen worthy of their steel, and equally determined to rule the destinies of the infant commonwealth, the rivalries were fierce, the animosities bitter, the struggle intense. Politics ran high, and conflicting ambitions led to a degree of personal virulence in writing and in speech surpassing anything that we have to-day. When these young men first met, fire flashed as when flint and steel are struck together, and in the territorial days their quarrels were too often solved by the duel. After the admission of the State in 1836 affairs became more tranquil. The strong men gradually learned to dwell together in peace; but their rivalries, though less bloody, were not less strenuous.

All parts of the country contributed their quota. From Massachusetts there came perhaps the two ablest men, Chester Ashley and Albert Pike, men who would have been remarkable in any age or place. Connecticut sent Samuel H. Hempstead; Virginia, Henry W. Conway and Solon Borland; Kentucky, the State’s most accomplished orators, Robert Crittenden and Frederick W. Trapnall, besides William and Ebenezer Cummins and George C. Watkins; North Carolina, Archibald Yell; Tennessee, Absalom Fowler and Ambrose H. Sevier; and there were many others from various sections worthy to enter the same arena.

And not at home alone were the great abilities of these men acknowledged. Arkansas’ first two senators were Ashley and Sevier, and the former was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, while the latter was the chairman of its Committee on Foreign Relations, the only time when the chairmanship of both those great committees has been lodged in the hands of a single State,--and that a State whose population consisted of a few frontiersmen almost lost in the primeval forest.

NOW THE RESIDENCE OF JOHN M. GRACIE.]

And when the Mexican War was over and the time came to reap the fruits of victory, it was Mr. Sevier who, together with Mr. Justice Clifford, negotiated the treaty of peace.

THE FIRST BRICK HOUSE BUILT IN LITTLE ROCK. NOW THE HOME OF GOVERNOR JAMES P. EAGLE.]

The leaders of the infant commonwealth were all lawyers. In the early days of the Republic the position of lawyers was much more commanding than it is at present. Their social influence has waned before the aristocracy of wealth; and their political power has largely passed to the “boss” and the machine, whose authority rests on a more material basis than eloquence and reason. And never was there a city so dominated by its bar as Little Rock in the olden times. Everything circled around the great lawyers. Even the wealth of the community was mostly in their hands. The houses of the citizens were generally of wood, and usually stood upon the street; but scattered about there arose the stately mansions of the leaders of the bar,--of Ashley, Pike, Trapnall, Fowler, Crittenden, Hempstead and others, encircled by extensive grounds and shaded by patriarchal trees, dominating the surrounding dwellings almost like feudal châteaux. In these mansions were concentrated the social and intellectual life of the community, and its history was the story of their daily struggles for pre-eminence.

NOW THE RESIDENCE OF COLONEL JOHN G. FLETCHER.]

So Little Rock grew and flourished, men dwelling in peace beneath their vines and fig trees, until the year 1861 brought up the momentous question of disunion and war. Arkansas was strongly attached to the Union. In its mountainous regions there were no slaves, and three fourths of the people were white. The convention called to determine the course the State should take adjourned without action, declining to enter the confederacy that had been formed at Montgomery, Ala. But when they reassembled the war was already flagrant, and with only a single dissenting vote they cast in their lot with their brethren of the South. The result was hailed by the people of Little Rock with unlimited enthusiasm. Confidence in the success of Southern arms was universal. No grim spectre of invasion and despair haunted their dreams. But the awakening was rude. The Northern armies poured across the border in overwhelming numbers, and soon the people had to fight for their altars and their firesides. Rarely have a people sprung so universally to arms, or defended their homes with such tenacity. Out of a voting population of 61,198, fully fifty thousand were in the ranks. But they fought in vain. On Sept. 10, 1863, Little Rock was captured by the Northern forces under General Steele. They did the place no harm, save that upon one of its highest eminences they constructed a powerful fort, and to hold it in security leveled the forest to a great distance in every direction, destroying many a monarch of the wood which it will require centuries to replace.

Since the Civil War the history of Little Rock has been one of continuous development. Even the period of Reconstruction, that strange saturnalia that constitutes one of the darkest spots in the annals of the Anglo-Saxon race, did not retard its growth. It is now a city of some forty thousand inhabitants, and its future has never been so bright. The mildness of its climate and the profusion of its flowers have won for it the name of “The City of Roses.” The charm of its society, where Southern hospitality is so happily blended with Northern thrift and neatness, have made it a favorite place for visitors from every State. Its inhabitants are fond of art and of foreign travel, and few cities of its size send to Europe a larger or more regular contingent, or can show to the visitor more statues and pictures brought home from abroad. A breadth of view unique in the South, which has led it to welcome immigration from the North, has saved it from stagnation, and in all departments of business there are almost as many men from the North as from the South. The Indian Territory, which for years has stood as a Chinese wall upon the State’s western border, cutting it off from all participation in the great movement of transcontinental traffic, and retarding its progress to an extent that is almost inconceivable, is now opening, and railroads are penetrating the new field. Commerce is flourishing, factories springing up, and everywhere the schoolmaster is abroad in the land. The decrees of the future are inscrutable, but, so far as mortal eye can discern, the twentieth century will be for Little Rock one of constant growth and advancement, material and intellectual, and the wisdom of the men who planted the State’s capital upon this rock when it stood alone in the pathless wilderness will be more than justified.

ST. AUGUSTINE

THE OLDEST TOWN IN THE UNITED STATES

BY GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS

Far down on the Atlantic coast lies the old city of St. Augustine. Unlike most of our early towns, which have either been abandoned, like Jamestown, or rebuilt and modernized until their ancient form and fashion are no longer recognizable, St. Augustine has preserved its antiquity. Its newness is placed alongside, but does not overlie and hide, its ancient character. Its old self is still there, always to be felt and seen, and ever about the old city there cling historic associations which throw around it a charm that few can fail to feel.

The aroma of its life is in its past: and when we recall the fact that it is more than forty years older than Jamestown; that it was a comparatively old town when the Puritans landed at Plymouth; that here, for the first time, isolated within the shadows of the primeval forest, the civilization of the old world made its abiding-place, where all was new and wild and strange; that this now so insignificant place was the key to a possible empire; that on its occupation or destruction rested French or Spanish domination; that it was a vice-provincial court, boasted of its Addantados, men of the first mark and note, of its Royal Exchequer, its public functionaries, its brave men-at-arms; that its proud name, _La siempre fiel ciudad de San Agustin_ (“the ever-faithful city of St. Augustine”), was conferred by its monarch; that here the cross was first planted; that from the Papal chair itself rescripts were addressed to its governors; that the first great efforts at Christianizing the fierce native tribes proceeded from this spot; that the martyrs’ blood was first here shed; that around these walls the clash of arms and the battle-cry have been heard, we may well feel a greater interest in this ancient city than is possessed by mere brick and mortar, rapid growth or unwonted prosperity.

The first European who visited this spot, so far as we know, was that sturdy cavalier, Juan Ponce de Leon, who in 1513 came to Florida in search of the fountain of youth, but, failing to find it, gave to Florida its name and perpetuated his own by the romantic quest upon which he came.

More than fifty years afterwards, St. Augustine was visited by Menendez with a Spanish fleet, and a permanent settlement was made. Admiral Coligny, a distinguished leader of the Huguenot party in France, harassed by the religious animosities which prevailed between the Roman Catholics and Protestants, conceived the idea of planting a colony of his co-religionists in America, both for their protection and to extend the possessions of France into the new world. For this purpose a small fleet was equipped in the year 1562, and sent out under the command of Captain Jean Ribaut. The expedition came upon the coast of Florida, near St. Augustine, the harbor of which they named the River of Dolphins, because of the many porpoises they saw there. They then entered the mouth of the River St. John’s, planted a column of stone, and passed on to the coast of South Carolina, where they built a small fort called Charlesfort. Leaving there a small garrison, Ribaut returned to France, intending soon to return with a larger force.

Circumstances prevented his return, and it was not until 1564 that Laudonniere, with three vessels and a larger number of Huguenots, came prepared to make a permanent settlement of the country. He also came first to the River of Dolphins, and thence to the St. John’s, called by them the River May, and after some delay in further explorations of the coast decided to plant his settlement on the St. John’s, where he constructed a fort which he named Fort Caroline, on the south bank of the river, a few miles from its mouth. The colony, however, failed to obtain from the soil or the sea sufficient food, and were about abandoning the country in the following year, when Ribaut arrived with a larger and better class of people, to reinforce Laudonniere’s settlement.

In the meantime, the Spanish sovereign had learned of these Huguenot expeditions, and of their encroachment upon a territory which he claimed for Spain by right of discovery, and at once set on foot an expedition under the command of Pedro Menendez to drive out of Florida the French Huguenots, whose faith he regarded with detestation.

Both the French and Spanish fleets came upon the coast of Florida about the same time. Ribaut passed St. Augustine and anchored off St. John’s bar. Menendez followed and exchanged a few shots with Ribaut’s vessels, and retired to the harbor of St. Augustine, where he landed his forces, occupying an Indian village called Selooe, which seems to have stood about half a mile north of the fort, upon a tidal creek.

Ribaut, learning of the landing of Menendez’s forces, determined to attack the Spanish vessels, which lay outside because of the low water on the bar, and thus cut off the Spanish force from molesting the French at Fort Caroline. He had hardly put to sea before he encountered a terrible storm, by which his vessels were driven down the coast and cast ashore.

Menendez, being apprised of Ribaut’s movements, and satisfied that the French vessels would be either driven afar or wrecked on the coast, determined to take the initiative, march across the country and surprise Fort Caroline in its weakened condition, during Ribaut’s absence. Guided by natives familiar with the country, he traversed the forty miles of low, flat woods, and reaching his destination in the early morning made a sudden attack upon the French fort and easily captured it. Moved by a morbid hatred of the French Protestants, as intruders on the Spanish territory, and still more as enemies to his faith and hence entitled to neither mercy nor compassion, most of them were slaughtered in the onset, and Menendez caused his prisoners to be hung on the neighboring trees, with an inscription that he did this to them “not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans.” Some twenty or more escaped with Laudonniere to two vessels at the mouth of the river and thence to France.

All of Ribaut’s vessels having been wrecked along the coast between St. Augustine and Canaveral, although most of the people escaped with their lives, they had no means of regaining Fort Caroline or of leaving the coast for any point of refuge. Wrecked and wretched, they moved northward along the coast, and at Matanzas, an inlet twenty miles below St. Augustine, they were met by Menendez, who had returned from Fort Caroline, and was informed of their shipwreck and condition by natives living along the coast. Ribaut asked safe conduct, but Menendez refused all overtures for terms of surrender, requiring unconditional submission to his will or clemency. The result was that, as fast as the French were brought across the inlet in small parties, he directed that they should all be killed. This sad tragedy is commemorated by the name, still borne by the inlet, Matanzas, the place of slaughter.

The French Huguenots thus disposed of, Menendez proceeded to lay out and build his proposed city. A castle and religious house were first constructed, the castle as a protection against the Indians, or the French, should others come. The castle or fort was built of the trunks of trees, in an octagonal shape, near the present fort, and the dwellings were located in the southern portion of the peninsula on which the present city stands. The shoalness of the water on the bar was a protection against an attack by sea, and the bay on one side, and the Maria Sanchez Creek and St. Sebastian River on the other made the town secure against an attack by land.

Menendez, having secured the safety of his settlement, returned to Spain, little dreaming of the retribution soon to fall upon his fortified posts on the St. John’s from the hand of Dominic de Gourgues, who, with a force of some two hundred and fifty men, left France in 1568, with the purpose of avenging the massacre of his countrymen. Arriving on the coast in April, he passed the mouth of the St. John’s and brought his three vessels into Cumberland Sound. Here, communicating with the Indians, whom he found very hostile to the Spaniards, he gathered a large force of Indian allies, attacked the Spanish forts at the mouth of the St. John’s River, captured them after but little resistance, and then marched against Fort Caroline, changed to San Matteo. Although the fort was well garrisoned, the Spanish commander, believing that he was surrounded by a superior force, fled, and De Gourgues captured the fort, meeting with little resistance. In retaliation for the massacre of the Huguenots, he hung his prisoners to the same trees, with the inscription, burned upon a plank, that he did this “not as to Spaniards, but as to traitors, thieves, and murderers.”

No further attempt was made by the French to colonize the southern Atlantic coast, and thus ended the sad beginnings of what, under other circumstances, might have proved the establishment of French colonization along our whole Atlantic coast.

The annals of St. Augustine during the remainder of the life of Menendez present only the usual vicissitudes of new settlements, the alternation of want and supply and occasional disaffections and annoyances by unruly soldiers or hostile Indians.

Unluckily for the little city, Sir Francis Drake, in 1586, returning from the coasts of South America, discovered, in passing, the Spanish lookout on Anastasia Island, at the entrance of the harbor. Having sent some boats in, a town across the bay was discovered. During the night, a fifer came out to the fleet playing the Prince of Orange march, and informed Sir Francis that the Spaniards had abandoned their fort. This report proved to be true, and Sir Francis found that in their haste they had left behind some ten thousand dollars in the treasury chest. Being fired upon by some of the inhabitants, he burned the town.

An engraved plan of Drake’s descent upon St. Augustine, published in England upon his return, represents an octagonal fort between two streams, and at the distance of half a mile another stream, and beyond that the town, with a lookout and church and monastery. The plan shows three squares lengthwise, and four in breadth, with gardens on the west side. The relative position of the town with reference to the entrance to the harbor is correctly shown, and there seems no sufficient ground to doubt the identity of the present city with the original location.

The province was then under the government of Don Pedro Menendez, a nephew of the Adelantado, who, after the departure of the English fleet under Drake, began, with some assistance from Havana, to rebuild the town.

A body of Franciscan missionaries came to Florida in 1592, and established missions among the Indians at various points along the coast and in the interior. For a time considerable apparent success attended these efforts; but a few years later a concerted attack was made by the Indians upon the missionaries, several of whom were massacred at their posts. Hostilities became active in 1638 between the Appalachian Indians and the Spanish settlements upon the coast. The Indians were soon subdued, large numbers were brought to St. Augustine, and as a punishment for their out-break they were forced to labor--it is said for sixty years--upon the public works and the fortifications, in quarrying and transporting the coquina stone from Anastasia Island.