Chapter III (4)

When the little squad of prisoners submitted to this command, and came to the door, they were stricken with equal astonishment and mortification to find, in place of the detachment of cavalry which they expected to see, nothing but a man, a boy, and a horse. Their first emotions were expressed in curses, which were even succeeded by laughter from one or two of the number. There seemed to be a disposition on the part of some to resist the authority that now controlled them; and sundry glances were exchanged, which indicated a purpose to turn upon their captors. The sergeant no sooner perceived this, than he halted, raised his rifle to his breast, and at the same instant, gave Andrew Ramsay an order to retire a few paces, and to fire one of the captured pieces at the first man who opened his lips.

"By my hand," he said, "if I find any trouble in taking you, all five, safe away from this here house, I will thin your numbers with your own muskets! And that's as good as if I had sworn to it."

"You have my word, sir," said the Ensign. "Lead on."

"By your leave, my pretty gentlemen, you will lead and I'll follow," replied Horse-Shoe. "It may be a new piece of drill to you; but the custom is to give the prisoners the post of honor."

"As you please, sir," answered the Ensign. "Where do you take us to?"

"You will march back by the road you came," said the sergeant.

Finding the conqueror determined to execute summary martial law upon the first who should mutiny, the prisoners submitted, and marched in double file from the hut back towards Ramsay's--Horse-Shoe, with Captain Peter's bridle dangling over his arm, and his gallant young auxiliary Andrew, laden with double the burden of Robinson Crusoe (having all the fire-arms packed upon his shoulders), bringing up the rear. In this order victors and vanquished returned to David Ramsay's.

"Well, I have brought you your ducks and chickens back, mistress," said the sergeant, as he halted the prisoners at the door; "and, what's more, I have brought home a young sodger that's worth his weight in gold."

"Heaven bless my child! my brave boy!" cried the mother, seizing the lad in her arms, and unheeding anything else in the present perturbation of her feelings. "I feared ill would come of it; but Heaven has preserved him. Did he behave handsomely, Mr. Robinson? But I am sure he did."

"A little more venturesome, ma'am, than I wanted him to be," replied Horse-Shoe; "but he did excellent service. These are his prisoners, Mistress Ramsay; I should never have got them if it hadn't been for Andy. In these drumming and fifing times the babies suck in quarrel with their mother's milk. Show me another boy in America that's made more prisoners than there was men to fight them with, that's all!"

FOOTNOTE:

[11] By permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, N. Y.

HUGH SWINTON LEGARÉ.

~1797=1843.~

HUGH SWINTON LEGARÉ (pronounced Le-gr[=e]e´) was born in Charleston, South Carolina, of Huguenot and Scotch descent. He was educated at South Carolina College which he entered at the age of fourteen, and became an excellent scholar, especially in the languages both ancient and modern. He studied law, and then completed his education in the good old way by a course of travel and study in Europe. His learning is said to have been almost phenomenal: he was one of the founders of the "Southern Review."

On his return from Europe, 1820, he was elected to the State Legislature: 1830, he was made Attorney-General of the State; from 1832 to 1836 he was _chargé d'affaires_ at Brussels; in 1836 he was elected to Congress, and in 1841 appointed Attorney-General of the United States. He died in Boston, whither he had gone to take part in the Bunker Hill Celebration.

Chief-Justice Story said of him: "His argumentation was marked by the closest logic; at the same time he had a _presence_ in speaking which I have never seen excelled." See Life, by Paul Hamilton Hayne.

WORKS.

Essays, Addresses, &c.
Journal at Brussels.
Memoir and Writings, (edited by his sister, Mrs. Bullen).

COMMERCE AND WEALTH VS. WAR.

(_From a speech in the House, 1837._)

A people well clad and well housed will be sure to provide themselves with all the other comforts of life; and it is the diffusion of these comforts, and the growing taste for them, among all classes of society in Europe, it is the desire of riches, as it is commonly called, that is gradually putting an end to the destructive and bloody game of war, and reserving all the resources hitherto wasted by it, for enterprises of industry and commerce, prosecuted with the fiery spirit which once vented itself in scenes of peril and carnage.

But, sir, the result of all this is that very inequality of wealth, that accumulation of vast masses of it in a few hands, against which we have heard so much said lately, as if it were something inconsistent with the liberties, the happiness, and the moral and intellectual improvement of mankind. Gigantic fortunes are acquired by a few years of prosperous commerce--mechanics and manufacturers rival and surpass the princes of the earth in opulence and splendor. The face of Europe is changed by this active industry, working with such mighty instruments, on so great a scale.

I have travelled in parts of the continent which the spirit of gain, with its usual concomitants, industry and improvement, has invaded since the peace, at an interval of fifteen years, and been struck with the revolution that is going on. There is a singularly beautiful, though rather barren tract of country between Liege and Spa, where, in 1819, my attention had been principally attracted by the striking features of a mountainous region, with here and there a ruin of the feudal past, and here and there a hovel of some poor hind,--the very haunt of the "Wild Boar of Ardennes" in the good old times of the House of Burgundy.

I returned to it in 1835, and saw it covered with mills and factories, begrimed with the smoke and soot of steam-engines; its romantic beauty deformed, its sylvan solitudes disturbed and desecrated by the sounds of active industry, and the busy hum of men. I asked what had brought about so great a change, and found that the author of it,--a man having a more numerous band of retainers and dependents than any baron bold of the fourteenth century, and in every respect more important than many of the sovereign princes on the other side of the Rhine--was an English manufacturer, who had established himself there some twenty years ago, without much capital, and had effected all this by his industry and enterprise.

Such, sir, is the spirit of the age; of course, in this young and wonderfully progressive country, it is more eager and ardent--and therefore occasionally extravagant--than anywhere else. But it is in vain to resist it. Nay, I believe it is worse than vain. It is evidently in the order of nature, and we must take it with all its good and all its evils together.

DEMOSTHENES' COURAGE.

[_From the Essay on Demosthenes._]

The charge of effeminacy and want of courage in battle seems to be considered as better founded. Plutarch admits it fully. His foppery is matter of ridicule to Æschines, who, at the same time, in rather a remarkable passage in his speech on the Crown, gives us some clue to the popular report as to his deficiency in the military virtues of antiquity. "Who," says he "will be there to sympathize with him? Not they who have been trained with him in the same gymnasium? No, by Olympian Jove! for, in his youth, instead of hunting the wild boar and addicting himself to exercises which give strength and activity to the body, he was studying the arts that were one day to make him the scourge of the rich." Those exercises were, in the system of the Greeks, . . . considered as absolutely indispensable to a liberal education. That of Demosthenes was certainly neglected by his guardians, and the probability is that the effeminacy with which he was reproached meant nothing more than that he had not frequented in youth the palestra and the gymnasium, and that his bodily training had been sacrificed to his intellectual.

That he possessed moral courage of the most sublime order is passed all question; but his nerves were weak. If the tradition that is come down to us in regard to his natural defects as an orator is not a gross exaggeration, he had enough to occupy him for years in the correction of them. But what an idea does it suggest to us of the mighty will, the indomitable spirit, the decided and unchangeable vocation, that, in spite of so many impediments, his genius fulfilled its destiny, and attained at last to the supremacy at which it aimed from the first! His was that deep love of ideal beauty, that passionate pursuit of eloquence in the abstract, that insatiable thirst after perfection in art for its own sake, without which no man ever produced a masterpiece of genius. Plutarch, in his usual graphic style, places him before us as if he were an acquaintance,--aloof from the world; immersed in the study of his high calling, with his brow never unbent from care and thought; severely abstemious in the midst of dissoluteness and debauchery; a water-drinker among Greeks; like that other Agonistes, elected and ordained to struggle, to suffer, and to perish for a people unworthy of him:--

"His mighty champion, strong above compare,
Whose drink was only from the liquid brook."

Let any one who has considered the state of manners at Athens just at the moment of his appearance upon the stage of public life, imagine what an impression such a phenomenon must have made upon a people so lost in profligacy and sensuality of all sorts. What wonder that the unprincipled though gifted Demades, the very personification of the witty and reckless libertinism of the age, should deride and scoff at this strange man, living as nobody else lived, thinking as nobody else thought; a prophet, crying from his solitude of great troubles at hand; the apostle of the past; the preacher of an impossible restoration; the witness to his contemporaries that their degeneracy was incorrigible and their doom hopeless; and that another seal in the book was broken, and a new era of calamity and downfall opened in the history of nations.

We have said that the character of Demosthenes might be divined from his eloquence; and so the character of his eloquence was a mere emanation of his own. It was the life and soul of the man, the patriot, the statesman. "Its highest attribute of all," says Dionysius, "is the spirit of life--+to pneuma+--that pervades it."

A DUKE'S OPINIONS OF VIRGINIA, NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA, AND GEORGIA.

[_From a Review of "Travels of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar" in 1825-6._]

In his journey through Virginia, our traveller visited Mr. Jefferson, with whom, however, he does not appear to have been as much struck as he had been with the late Mr. Adams. The Natural Bridge he pronounces "one of the greatest wonders of nature he ever beheld," albeit he had seen "Vesuvius and the Phlegrean Fields, the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, the Island of Staffa, and the Falls of Niagara." "Finally" (to use a favorite mode of expression of his own), he is amazed at the profusion of militia titles in Virginia, which almost persuaded him that he was at the headquarters of a grand army, and at the aristocratic notions of some of the gentlemen in the same state, who make no secret of their taste for primogeniture laws and hereditary nobility.

He passed through North Carolina too rapidly to do anything like justice to the many remarkable things which that respectable state has to boast of. Accordingly, his observations are principally confined to the inns where he stopped, the roads over which he travelled, and the mere exterior of the towns and villages which the stage-coach traverses in its route. He is of opinion, from what he saw in that region, that "it would be a good speculation to establish a glass manufactory in a country, where there is such a want of glass, and a superabundance of pine-trees and sand." It had almost escaped us, that he here for the first time made the acquaintance of a "great many large vultures, called buzzards, the shooting of which is prohibited, as they feed upon carrion, and contribute in this manner to the salubrity of the country." This "parlous wild-fowl" has the honor to attract the attention of his Highness again in Charleston, where he informs us that its life is, in like manner, protected by law, and where it is called from its resemblance to another bird, the turkey-buzzard. . . . In Columbia, he became acquainted with most of the distinguished inhabitants, of whose very kind attentions to him he speaks in high terms. The following good-natured hint too may not be altogether useless: "At Professor Henry's a very agreeable society assembled at dinner. At that party I observed a singular manner which is practiced; the ladies sit down by themselves at one of the corners of the table. But I broke the old custom, and glided between them; and no one's appetite was injured thereby." . . . .

Nothing . . . can be a stronger exemplification of the difficulties under which a stranger labors, in his efforts to acquire a knowledge of a country new to him, than the perpetual mistakes which our distinguished traveller commits in his brief notices of Georgia. . . . Even the complexion of the people of Georgia displeased him, and, coming from a Court where French was not only the fashionable but the common language of social intercourse, he considers the education of women neglected, because they are not taught that language in situations where they might never have occasion to use it.

MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE LAMAR.

~1798=1859.~

MIRABEAU BUONAPARTE LAMAR, second president of the Republic of Texas, was born in Louisville, Georgia. In 1835 he emigrated to Texas and took part in the struggle for independence against Mexico, being major-general in the army. He was successively Attorney-General in the cabinet of President Houston, Secretary of War, Vice-president, and in 1838 President of the Republic, the second of the four presidents that Texas had before it became a State in the Union.

In 1857-8 he was United States minister to Central America.

WORKS.

Verse Memorials.

Lamar was rather a man of action than of letters; but the following verses speak for him as having true poetic appreciation of beauty and power to express it.

THE DAUGHTER OF MENDOZA.

O lend to me, sweet nightingale,
Your music by the fountain,
And lend to me your cadences,
O rivers of the mountain!
That I may sing my gay brunette,
A diamond spark in coral set,
Gem for a prince's coronet--
The daughter of Mendoza.

How brilliant is the evening star,
The evening light how tender,--
The light of both is in her eyes,
Their softness and their splendor.
But for the lash that shades their light
They were too dazzling for the sight,
And when she shuts them, all is night,--
The daughter of Mendoza.

O ever bright and beauteous one,
Bewildering and beguiling,
The lute is in thy silvery tones,
The rainbow in thy smiling;
And thine is, too, o'er hill and dell,
The bounding of the young gazelle,
The arrow's flight and ocean's swell--
Sweet daughter of Mendoza!

What though, perchance, we no more meet,--
What though too soon we sever?
Thy form will float like emerald light
Before my vision ever.
For who can see and then forget
The glories of my gay brunette--
Thou art too bright a star to set,
Sweet daughter of Mendoza!

FRANCIS LISTER HAWKS.

~1798=1866.~

FRANCIS LISTER HAWKS was born at New Berne, North Carolina, and educated at the State University. He became a clergyman of the Episcopal Church in 1827 and was rector of parishes in New York, New Orleans, and Baltimore. He was the first president of the University of Louisiana, and declined three elections to the bishopric. See Life by Rev. N. L. Richardson.

WORKS.

History of North Carolina.
History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.
History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland.
Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church.
Auricular Confession in the Episcopal Church.
Egypt and Its Monuments.
Romance of Biography.
Cyclopædia of Biography.
Perry's Expedition to Japan.

Dr. Hawks was a distinguished pulpit orator as well as an able and untiring writer. His ecclesiastical works are considered a valuable contribution to the history of the church in the United States.

The book from which we quote, "History of North Carolina," was undertaken as a labor of love for his native State, prepared in the intervals of time allowed by "a laborious and responsible profession in a large city: . . . he frankly confesses that he would undergo such toil for no country but North Carolina. She has a claim upon his filial duty. In her bosom his infancy found protection and his childhood was nourished. He here lays his humble offering in her lap."

The story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke has been called "the tragedy of American colonization."

THE FIRST INDIAN BAPTISM IN AMERICA.

(_From History of North Carolina._)

The colony [1587] was probably not without its clergyman, and the faithful Manteo, who was among them, had by this time become in heart an Englishmen. . .

The mother and kindred of Manteo lived on the island of Croatan, and thither, very soon, a visit was made by the faithful Indian and a party of the English, who endeavored, through the instrumentality of the islanders, to establish friendly relations with the inhabitants on the main land; but the effort was in vain. In truth, the greater portion of the Indians around, manifested implacable ill-will, and had already murdered one of the assistants, who had incautiously strayed alone from the settlement on Roanoke island.

On the 13th of August, by direction of Raleigh, given before leaving England, Manteo was baptized, (being probably the first native of this continent who ever received this sacrament at the hands of the English) and was also called Lord of Roanoke and of Dasamonguepeuk, as the reward of his fidelity.

VIRGINIA DARE, THE FIRST ENGLISH CHILD BORN IN AMERICA.

A few days after, another event, not without interest in the little colony, occupied the attention of all; and doubtless in no small degree enlisted the sympathies of the female portion of the adventurers. On the 18th of August, Eleanor, the daughter of Governor White, and wife of Mr. Dare, one of the assistants, gave birth to a daughter, the first child born of English parents upon the soil of the United States. On the Sunday following, in commemoration of her birth-place, she was baptized by the name of VIRGINIA.

THE LOST COLONY OF ROANOKE.

(_From the Same._)

Governor White remained but thirty-six days in North Carolina. . . . Before he left, however, it seems to have been understood that the colony should remove from Roanoke Island and settle on the main land: and as, at his return, he might be at some loss to find them, it was further agreed that in the event of their departure during his absence, they should carve on some post or tree the name of the place whither they had gone; and if in distress they were to carve above it a cross, . . . [This was in 1587.]

It was not till the 20th of March, 1590, that Governor White embarked [at London] in three ships to seek his colony and his children. . . White found the island of Roanoke a desert. As he approached he sounded a signal trumpet, but no answer was heard to disturb the melancholy stillness that brooded over the deserted spot. What had become of the wretched colonists? No man may with certainty say: for all that White found to indicate their fate was a high post bearing on it the letters CRO, and at the former site of their village he found a tree which had been deprived of its bark and bore in well cut characters the word CROATAN. There was some comfort in finding no cross carved above the word, but this was all the comfort the unhappy father and grandfather could find. He of course hastened back to the fleet, determined instantly to go to Croatan, but a combination of unpropitious events defeated his anxious wishes; storms and a deficiency of food forced the vessels to run for the West Indies for the purpose of refitting, wintering and returning; but even in this plan White was disappointed and found himself reluctantly compelled to run for the western islands and thence for England. Thus ended the effort to find the lost colony; they were never heard of. That they went to Croatan, where the natives were friendly, is almost certain; that they became gradually incorporated with them is probable from the testimony of a historian [John Lawson] who lived in North Carolina and wrote [published] in 1714: "The Hatteras Indians who lived on Roanoke Island or much frequented it, tell us," (says he) "that several of their ancestors were white people and could talk in a book, as we do; the truth of which is confirmed by gray eyes being found frequently amongst these Indians and no others."

GEORGE DENISON PRENTICE.

~1802=1870.~

GEORGE DENISON PRENTICE was born in Preston, Connecticut, and was a teacher and lawyer in early life. In 1830 he went to Kentucky, and a year afterward became editor of the Louisville "Journal," which position he held and made illustrious during the remainder of his life. His wit and humor gave him great influence, and his paper, afterwards consolidated with the "Courier" and known as the "Courier-Journal," became a power in politics, commerce, and society. A fine statue of him adorns the Courier-Journal building in Louisville, and his fame is by no means forgotten. "Prenticeana" is a collection of his witty and pungent paragraphs. See Memorial address by his successor, Henry Watterson.

WORKS.

Life of Henry Clay.
Poems, edited by John James Piatt.
Prenticeana, [with life-sketch.]

Mr. Prentice's best known poem is the "Closing Year," which elocutionists have kept before the public and which has often inspired young poets to sad verses on the passing of time.

THE CLOSING YEAR.

(_From Poems._[12])

'Tis midnight's holy hour--and silence now
Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er
The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds,
The bell's deep-notes are swelling. 'Tis the knell
Of the departed year.

No funeral train
Is sweeping past; yet on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest,
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred,
As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud,
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand--
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form,
And Winter, with his aged locks--and breathe
In mournful cadences, that come abroad
Like the far wind harp's wild and touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o'er the dead Year,
Gone from the earth forever.

'Tis a time
For memory and for tears. Within the deep,
Still chambers of the heart a spectre dim,
Whose tones are like the wizard voice of Time,
Heard from the tomb of ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions that have passed away
And left no shadow of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life. That spectre lifts
The coffin-lid of hope, and joy, and love,
And, bending mournfully above the pale,
Sweet forms that slumber there, scatters dead flowers
O'er what has passed to nothingness.

The year
Has gone, and, with it, many a glorious throng
Of happy dreams. Its mark is on each brow,
Its shadow on each heart. In its swift course
It waved its scepter o'er the beautiful,
And they are not. It laid its pallid hand
Upon the strong man, and the haughty form
Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim.
It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged
The bright and joyous, and the tearful wail
Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song
And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er
The battle plain, where sword, and spear, and shield
Flashed in the light of midday--and the strength
Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass,
Green from the soil of carnage, waves above
The crushed and mouldering skeleton. It came
And faded like a wreath of mist at eve;
Yet, ere it melted in the viewless air,
It heralded its millions to their home
In the dim land of dreams.

Remorseless Time!--
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! what power
Can stay him in his silent course, or melt
His iron heart to pity? On, still on
He presses and forever. The proud bird,
The condor of the Andes, that can soar
Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave
The fury of the Northern hurricane
And bathe his plumage in the thunder's home,
Furls his broad wings at nightfall and sinks down
To rest upon his mountain crag--but Time
Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness,
And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind
His rushing pinion. Revolutions sweep
O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast
Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink,
Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles
Spring, blazing, from the ocean, and go back
To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear
To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow
Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise,
Gathering the strength of hoary centuries,
And rush down like the Alpine avalanche,
Startling the nations; and the very stars,
Yon bright and burning blazonry of God,
Glitter awhile in their eternal depths,
And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train,
Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away,
To darkle in the trackless void; yet Time,
Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career,
Dark, stern, all pitiless, and pauses not
Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path,
To sit and muse, like other conquerors,
Upon the fearful ruin he has wrought.

PARAGRAPHS.

(_From Prenticeana._)

A pin has as much head as a good many authors, and a good deal more point.

The Turkish men hold that women have no souls, and prove by their treatment of them that they have none themselves.

A writer in the "American Agriculturist" insists that farmers ought to learn to make better fences. Why not establish a fencing-school for their benefit?

The thumb is a useful member, but, because you have one, you needn't necessarily try to keep your neighbors under it.

The greatest truths are the simplest; the greatest man and women are sometimes so, too.

A New Orleans poet calls the Mississippi the most eloquent of rivers. It ought to be eloquent; it has a dozen mouths.

FOOTNOTE:

[12] By permission of Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati.

EDWARD COATE PINKNEY.

~1802=1828.~

EDWARD COATE[13] PINKNEY was the son of the distinguished orator and statesman, William Pinkney, of Maryland, and was born in London while his father was minister to England. After attending the College of Baltimore, he entered the Navy at fourteen years of age and spent much of his time of service in the Mediterranean. On his father's death, 1822, he returned to Baltimore and engaged in the practice of law, at the same time making some reputation by his poems. "A Health" and "Picture Song" are considered his best--their beauty makes us mourn his early death. At the time he was numbered one of the "five greatest poets of the country." On his return from a journey to Mexico, taken for his health, he was elected, in 1826, professor of Belles-lettres in the University of Maryland, formerly called the College of Baltimore.

WORKS.

Poems: Rodolph, a Fragment, and other Poems.

A HEALTH.

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone;
A woman of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
'Tis less of earth than heaven.

Her every tone is music's own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burdened bee
Forth issue from the rose.

Affections are as thoughts to her,
The measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy,
The freshness of young flowers;
And lovely passions, changing oft,
So fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns,--
The idol of past years.

Of her bright face, one glance will trace
A picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts
A sound must long remain;
But memory such as mine of her
So very much endears,
When death is nigh my latest sigh
Will not be life's, but hers.

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon--
Her health! and would on earth there stood
Some more of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry,
And weariness a name.

SONG.

We break the glass, whose sacred wine,
To some beloved health we drain,
Lest future pledges, less divine,
Should e'er the hallowed toy profane:
And thus I broke a heart that poured
Its tide of feelings out for thee,
In draughts, by after times deplored,
Yet dear to memory.

But still the old empassioned ways
And habits of my mind remain,
And still unhappy light displays
Thine image chambered in my brain;
And still it looks as when the hours
Went by like flights of living birds,
Or that soft chain of spoken flowers
And airy gems, thy words.

FOOTNOTE:

[13] Mr. Charles Weathers Bump, Ph. D. (Johns-Hopkins), says this name should be _Coote_, as it so stands in the register of Pinkney's baptism, which he has seen.

CHARLES ÉTIENNE ARTHUR GAYARRÉ.

~1805=----.~

CHARLES ÉTIENNE ARTHUR GAYARRÉ, descended from a family which was among the early settlers of Louisiana, was born in New Orleans. He was educated at the College of New Orleans, studied law in Philadelphia, and served in the State Legislature. In 1835, he was elected to the United States Senate, but ill-health prevented his taking the seat, and he spent the eight succeeding years in Europe. He was afterwards Secretary of State of Louisiana, and in the seven years of his service he did much to promote an interest in letters and history, and to establish the State Library on a firm basis.

He sided with his State in secession, and in 1863 recommended the emancipation and arming of the slaves. Since the war, he has spent his time in literary work, and has written both in English and French, gaining a distinguished place especially as a historian.

WORKS.

Histoire de la Louisiane.
Romance of the History of Louisiana.
Louisiana: Colonial History.
Louisiana, as a French Colony.
History of the Spanish Dominion in Louisiana.
History of Louisiana, to 1861.
Phillip II. of Spain.
Fernando de Lemos.
Aubert Dubayet.
School for Politics, [drama].
Dr. Bluff, comedy in 2 Acts.
Addresses.

Judge Gayarré has been an able and tireless worker in the history and literature of his native state. His works are admirable, full of life and color, although his style is lacking in terseness and strength. "He has indicated in the first volume of his 'History of Louisiana' what might be done by a gifted fiction-writer with the picturesque legends and traditions therein heaped together in luxuriant confusion. One feels while reading, that the writer has been hampered here and there by the temptation to be a romancer rather than remain a historian, and one does not experience any surprise at this in view of the profusion of startling and strange incidents."--Maurice Thompson.

LOUISIANA IN 1750-1770.

(_From History of Louisiana, French Domination._)

It was in this year, 1751, that two ships, which were transporting two hundred regulars to Louisiana, stopped at Hispaniola. The Jesuits of that island obtained permission to put on board of those ships, and to send to the Jesuits of Louisiana, some sugar canes, and some negroes who were used to the cultivation of this plant. The canes were put under ground, according to the directions given, on the plantation of the reverend fathers, which was immediately above Canal street, on a portion of the space now occupied by the Second Municipality of the city of New Orleans. But it seems that the experiment proved abortive, and it was only in 1796 that the cultivation of the cane, and the manufacturing of sugar, was successfully introduced in Louisiana, and demonstrated to be practicable. It was then that this precious reed was really naturalized in the colony, and began to be a source of ever-growing wealth, [owing to the enterprise of Jean Étienne de Boré].

On board of the same ships, there came sixty girls, who were transported to Louisiana at the expense of the King. It was the last emigration of the kind. These girls were married to such soldiers as had distinguished themselves for their good conduct, and who, in consideration of their marriage, were discharged from service. Concessions of land were made to each happy pair, with one cow and its calf, one cock and five hens, one gun, one axe, and one spade. During the first three years of their settlement, they were to receive rations of provisions, and a small quantity of powder, shot, grains and seeds of all sorts.

Such is the humble origin of many of our most respectable and wealthy families, and well may they be proud of a social position, which is due to the honest industry and hereditary virtues of several generations. Whilst some of patrician extraction, crushed under the weight of vices, or made inert by sloth, or labor-contemning pride, and degenerating from pure gold into vile dross, have been swept away, and have sunk into the dregs and sewers of the commonwealth. Thus in Louisiana, the high and the low, although the country has never suffered from any political or civil convulsions, seem to have, in the course of one century, frequently exchanged with one another their respective positions, much to the philosopher's edification. . .

On the 23rd of September, the intendant Commissary, Michel de la Rouvillière, made a favorable report on the state of agriculture in Louisiana. "The cultivation of the wax tree," says he, "has succeeded admirably. Mr. Dubreuil, alone, has made six thousand pounds of wax. Others have obtained as handsome results, in proportion to their forces; some went to the seashore, where the wax tree grows wild, in order to use it in its natural state. It is the only luminary used here by the inhabitants, and it is exported to other parts of America and to France. We stand in need of tillers of the ground, and of negroes. The colony prospers rapidly from its own impulse, and requires only gentle stimulation. In the last three years, forty-five brick houses were erected in New Orleans, and several fine new plantations were established." . . . .

The administration of the Marquis of Vaudreuil was long and fondly remembered in Louisiana, as an epoch of unusual brilliancy, but which was followed up by corresponding gloom. His administration, if small things may be compared with great ones, was for Louisiana, with regard to splendor, luxury, military display, and expenses of every kind, what the reign of Louis XIV. had been for France. He was a man of patrician birth and high breeding, who liked to live in a manner worthy of his rank. Remarkable for his personal graces and comeliness, for the dignity of his bearing and the fascination of his address, he was fond of pomp, show, and pleasure; surrounded by a host of brilliant officers, of whom he was the idol, he loved to keep up a miniature court, in distant imitation of that of Versailles; and long after he had departed, old people were fond of talking of the exquisitely refined manners, of the magnificent balls, of the splendidly uniformed troops, of the high-born young officers, and of the many other unparalleled things they had seen in the days of the _Great Marquis_.

. . . . . . .

The inventories made of the property of the twelve gentlemen, whom the decree of the Spanish tribunal had convicted of rebellion, afford interesting proofs of the Spartan simplicity which existed in the colony. Thus the furniture of the bed-room of Madam Villeré, who was the wife of one of the most distinguished citizens of Louisiana, and the grand-daughter of De Lachaise, who came to the colony in 1723 as ordaining commissary, was described as consisting of a cypress bedstead, three feet wide by six in length, with a mattress of corn shucks and one of feathers on the top, a bolster of corn shucks, and a coarse cotton counterpane or quilt, manufactured probably by the lady herself, or by her servants; six chairs of cypress wood, with straw bottoms; some candlesticks with common wax, the candles made in the country, &c., &c.

The rest of the house was not more splendidly furnished, and the house itself, as described in the inventory, must have looked very much like one of those modest and unpainted little wood structures which are, to this day, to be seen in many parts of the banks of the river Mississippi, and in the Attakapas and Opelousas parishes. They are the tenements of our small planters who own only a few slaves, and they retain the appellation of _Maisons d'Acadiens, or Acadian houses_.

Villeré's plantation, situated at the German coast, was not large, and the whole of his slaves, of both sexes and of all ages, did not exceed thirty-two. His friends and brother conspirators, who were among the first gentlemen in the land, did not live with more ostentation. All the sequestrated property being sold, it was found that, after having distributed among the widows and other creditors what they were entitled to, and after paying the costs of the trial and inventories, the royal treasury had little or nothing to receive. . . . . .

There were but humble dwellings in Louisiana in 1769, and he who would have judged of their tenants from their outward appearance would have thought that they were occupied by mere peasants, but had he passed their thresholds he would have been amazed at being welcomed with such manners as were habitual in the most polished court of Europe, and entertained by men and women wearing with the utmost ease and grace the elegant and rich costume of the reign of Louis XV. There, the powdered head, the silk and gold flowered coat, the lace and frills, the red-heeled shoe, the steel handled sword, the silver knee buckles, the high and courteous bearing of the gentleman, the hoop petticoat, the brocaded gown, the rich head dress, the stately bow, the slightly rouged cheeks, the artificially graceful deportment, and the aristocratic features of the lady, formed a strange contrast with the roughness of surrounding objects. It struck one with as much astonishment as if diamonds had been found capriciously set by some unknown hand in one of the wild trees of the forest, or it reminded the imagination of those fairy tales in which a princess is found asleep in a solitude, where none but beasts of prey were expected to roam.

THE TREE OF THE DEAD.

(_From History of Louisiana._)

In a lot situated at the corner of Orleans and Dauphine streets, in the city of New Orleans, there is a tree which nobody looks at without curiosity and without wondering how it came there. For a long time it was the only one of its kind known in the state, and from its isolated position it has always been cursed with sterility. It reminds one of the warm climes of Africa or Asia, and wears the aspect of a stranger of distinction driven from his native country. Indeed with its sharp and thin foliage, sighing mournfully under the blast of one of our November northern winds, it looks as sorrowful as an exile. Its enormous trunk is nothing but an agglomeration of knots and bumps, which each passing year seems to have deposited there as a mark of age, and as a protection against the blows of time and of the world.

Inquire for its origin, and every one will tell you that it has stood there from time immemorial. A sort of vague but impressive mystery is attached to it, and it is as superstitiously respected as one of the old oaks of Dodona. Bold would be the axe that would strike the first blow at that foreign patriarch; and if it were prostrated to the ground by a profane hand, what native of the city would not mourn over its fall, and brand the act as an unnatural and criminal deed? So, long live the date-tree of Orleans street--that time-honored descendant of Asiatic ancestors!

In the beginning of 1727, a French vessel of war landed at New Orleans a man of haughty mien, who wore the Turkish dress, and whose whole attendance was a single servant. He was received by the governor with the highest distinction, and was conducted by him to a small but comfortable house with a pretty garden, then existing at the corner of Orleans and Dauphine streets, and which, from the circumstance of its being so distant from other dwellings, might have been called a rural retreat, although situated in the limits of the city. There the stranger, who was understood to be a prisoner of state, lived in the greatest seclusion; and although neither he nor his attendant could be guilty of indiscretion, because none understood their language, and although Governor Périer severely rebuked the slightest inquiry, yet it seemed to be the settled conviction in Louisiana, that the mysterious stranger was a brother of the Sultan, or some great personage of the Ottoman empire, who had fled from the anger of the vicegerent of Mohammed, and who had taken refuge in France.

The Sultan had peremptorily demanded the fugitive, and the French government, thinking it derogatory to its dignity to comply with that request, but at the same time not wishing to expose its friendly relations with the Moslem monarch, and perhaps desiring for political purposes, to keep in hostage the important guest it had in its hands, had recourse to the expedient of answering that he had fled to Louisiana, which was so distant a country, that it might be looked upon as the grave, where, as it was suggested, the fugitive might be suffered to wait in peace for actual death, without danger or offence to the Sultan. Whether this story be true or not is now a manner of so little consequence that it would not repay the trouble of a strict historical investigation.

The year 1727 was drawing to its close, when on a dark stormy night the howling and barking of the numerous dogs in the streets of New Orleans were observed to be fiercer than usual, and some of that class of individuals who pretend to know everything, declared that by the vivid flashes of the lightning, they had seen swiftly and stealthily gliding toward the residence of the _unknown_ a body of men who wore the scowling appearance of malefactors and ministers of blood. There afterwards came also a report that a piratical-looking Turkish vessel had been hovering a few days previous in the bay of Barataria. Be it as it may, on the next morning the house of the stranger was deserted. There were no traces of mortal struggle to be seen; but in the garden the earth had been dug, and _there_ was the unmistakable indication of a recent grave.

Soon, however, all doubts were removed by the finding of an inscription in Arabic characters, engraved on a marble tablet, which was subsequently sent to France. It ran thus: "The justice of heaven is satisfied, and the date-tree shall grow on the traitor's tomb. The sublime Emperor of the faithful, the supporter of the faith, the omnipotent master and Sultan of the world, has redeemed his vow. God is great, and Mohammed is his prophet. Allah!" Some time after this event, a foreign-looking tree was seen to peep out of the spot where a corpse must have been deposited in that stormy night, when the rage of the elements yielded to the pitiless fury of man, and it thus explained in some degree this part of the inscription, "the date-tree shall grow on the traitor's grave."

Who was he, or what had he done, who had provoked such relentless and far-seeking revenge? Ask Nemesis,--or, at that hour when evil spirits are allowed to roam over the earth and magical invocations are made, go and interrogate the tree of the dead.

MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY.

~1806=1873.~

MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY, the "Pathfinder of the Sea," was born in Spottsylvania County, Virginia, reared in Tennessee, and entered the Navy in 1825, rising to be lieutenant in 1837. In 1839 he met with an accident which lamed him for life, and he thenceforward spent his time in study and investigation of naval subjects. Under the pen-name of "Harry Bluff," he wrote some essays for the "Southern Literary Messenger," which produced great reforms in the Navy and led to the establishment of the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

In 1842 he was appointed superintendent of the Hydrographical Office, and in 1844, of the National Observatory, at Washington, the latter position including the former. The observations of winds, currents, and storms, which he caused to be made during nine years, are embodied in his "Wind and Current Charts;" and the system thus begun was adopted by all European countries and has proven of immense benefit both to commerce and science.

To him and to Lieutenant John M. Brooke, afterwards Com. Brooke, C. S. N., belongs the credit of deep-sea soundings; and to him we owe the suggestion of the submarine telegraphic cable across the Atlantic. (_See below, letter to Secretary of the Navy._) Cyrus W. Field said, at a dinner given in 1858 to celebrate the first cable message across the Atlantic,--"Maury furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the work."

His "Physical Geography of the Sea" has been translated into all the languages of Europe, and caused Humboldt to say that Maury had founded a new science. His researches and scientific labors gained him honors and medals from all scientific societies. His "Navigation" and "Geographies" are in popular use in our schools. His style is irresistibly attractive, being clear, strong, elegant, and indicative of truth in the man behind it.

He entered the Confederate service in 1861, and was employed at first at Richmond and later as naval agent in Europe. When Lee surrendered, he was in the West Indies on his way to put in use against Federal vessels in Southern ports a method of arranging torpedo mines which he had invented.

He then went to Mexico (1865) and took a position in the Cabinet of the Emperor Maximilian; but the revolution there (1866) terminated his relations with that government. After two years in England, he returned to Virginia and in 1868 became professor of Physics in the Virginia Military Institute. At this time the University of Cambridge conferred upon him the degree of LL. D., and the Emperor of the French invited him to Paris as superintendent of the Imperial Observatory.

His life has been written in a most engaging style by his daughter, Mrs. Diana Fontaine Maury Corbin.

WORKS.

Navigation.
Scraps from the Lucky Bay, by Harry Bluff.
Rebuilding Southern Commerce.
Wind and Current Charts.
Sailing Directions.
Physical Geography of the Sea.
Series of Geographies.
Physical Survey of Virginia.
Resources of West Virginia (with Wm. M. Fontaine).
Lanes for Steamers Crossing the Atlantic.
Amazon and Atlantic Slopes.
Magnetism and the Circulation of the Atmosphere.

THE GULF STREAM.

(_From Sailing Directions._)

It is not necessary to associate with oceanic currents the idea that they must of necessity, as on land, run from a higher to a lower level. So far from this being the case, some currents of the sea actually run up-hill, while others run on a level. The Gulf Stream is of the first class. In a paper read before the National Institute in 1844, I showed why the bottom of the Gulf Stream ought, theoretically, to be an inclined plane, running _upwards_. If the Gulf Stream be 200 fathoms deep in the Florida Pass, and but 100 fathoms off Hatteras, it is evident that the bottom would be lifted 100 fathoms within that distance; and therefore, while the bottom of the Gulf Stream runs up-hill, the top preserves the water-level, or nearly so; for its banks are of sea-water, and being in the ocean, are themselves on a water-level. . .

. . . . . . .

I have also, on a former occasion, pointed out the fact, that, inasmuch as the Gulf Stream is a bed of warm water, lying between banks of cold water--that as warm water is lighter than cold--therefore, the surface of the Gulf Stream ought, theoretically, to be in the shape of a double inclined plane, like the roof a house, down which we may expect to find a shallow surface or roof current, running from the middle towards either edge of the stream.

The fact that this roof-current does exist has been fully established . . . . . . by officers of the navy. Thus, in lowering a boat to try a current, they found that the boat would invariably be drifted towards one side or other of the stream, while the vessel herself was drifted along in the direction of it. . .

This feature of the Gulf Stream throws a gleam of light upon the _locus_ of the Gulf weed, by proving that its place of growth cannot be on this side (west) of that stream. No Gulf weed is ever found west of the axis of the Gulf Stream; and, if we admit the top of the stream to be higher in the middle than at the edges, it would be difficult to imagine how the Gulf weed should cross it, or get from one side of it to the other.

The inference, therefore, would be, that as all the Gulf weed which is seen about this stream is on its eastern declivity, the _locus_ of the weed must be somewhere within or near the borders of the stream, and to the east of the middle. And this idea is strengthened by the report of Captain Scott, a most intelligent ship-master, who informs me that he has seen the Gulf weed growing on the Bahama Banks.

DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS.

(_From a Letter to the Secretary of the Navy, 1854, given in Mrs. Corbin's Life of Maury._[14])

The U. S. brig "Dolphin," lieutenant commanding O. H. Berryman, was employed last summer upon special services connected with this office. . . . He was directed also to carry along a line of deep-sea soundings from the shores of Newfoundland to those of Ireland. The result is highly interesting upon the question of a submarine telegraph across the Atlantic, and I therefore beg leave to make it the subject of a special report.

This line of deep-sea sounding seems to be DECISIVE of the question as to the practicability of a submarine telegraph between the two continents _in so far as the bottom of the deep sea is concerned_. From Newfoundland to Ireland the distance between the nearest points is about 1600 miles, and the bottom of the sea between the two places is a plateau which seems to have been placed there especially for the purpose of holding the wires of the submarine telegraph, and of keeping them out of harm's way. It is neither too deep nor too shallow; yet it is so deep that the wires but once landed will remain forever beyond the reach of the anchors of vessels, icebergs, and drifts of any kind, and so shallow, that they may be readily lodged upon the bottom. . . . . . .

A wire laid across from either of the above-named places on this side to the north of the Grand Banks, will rest on that beautiful plateau to which I have alluded, and where the waters of the sea appear to be as quiet and as completely at rest as it is at the bottom of a mill-pond. It is proper that the reasons should be stated for the inference that there are no perceptible currents and no abrading agents at work at the bottom of the sea upon this telegraphic plateau. I derive this inference from the study of a physical fact, which I little deemed, when I sought it, had any such bearings.