Chapter VII: Conclusion (2)

In some of the districts where game is yet plentiful, and where the maskinonge--prince of the pike tribe--reigns supreme in the woodland lakes, and the speckled trout haunts the eddies of the clear streams, men who cannot be called settlers, in the proper sense of the word, are often to be met with. They have been attracted thither by the free, wild romance of the forester's life, the Bohemianism of which is a kind by itself, although based, like other phases of that philosophy, upon impatience of the formalities by which society is cramped. On one of these lakes, in a picturesque and not very remote part of Upper Canada, there was generally a little knot of such men to be found,--men who had forsworn the gay world, and come from beyond the sea to live among Indians and make havoc of the wild beasts and birds that still abounded in the region. Sometimes they would come to the cities, and return for a brief time to the usages of civilized life. After their arrival, their affectation was to despise such luxuries as chairs and beds. Of an evening they spread blankets on the floor, and sat there with their pipes and "fire-water," like gentle savages as they were. I have met with several who, for the first few nights, declined to avail themselves of either house or bed, resorting in preference to some open shed or garden, where they wrapped themselves in their inevitable blankets, and slept the sleep of wild men upon the hard ground, with their knives and rifles at hand, ready to resist any attack that might be made upon them by hostile tribes during the night. Once in the streets of a city I remarked a couple of Indian stragglers, such as are common in Canadian towns. They were dressed in blanket coats, handsomely ornamented, and bound at the waist with sashes of gay colors, in which long knives and tobacco-pouches of marten fur were stuck, and they smoked black pipes as they strolled leisurely along. One of them was a Chippewa of the half-breed stamp, and rather a good specimen of his caste. His companion, who wore a Scotch bonnet, was far too light in complexion to be an Indian, for, though his face was tanned to a healthy brown by exposure to the weather, his hair, which fell down in long ringlets to his shoulders, was of a fair, yellowish hue, and I observed, besides, that he did not turn his toes inward when walking, as Indians invariably do. On inquiry I found that this romantic young man was an English baronet of moderate fortune, who had been living among the Indians at the lake for two or three years. He had been a Guardsman in his time, and a man about the clubs, and, having drained society to the dregs, had taken to Canadian woods and waters as a change from the comforts and inconveniences of too much civilization. Some time afterwards I saw him again, but in far different guise. He was once more a swell, and was driving a smart English "trap," with a handsome team, in the streets of the same town. Not long after this he returned to England, I believe, and is none the worse, probably, for his adventures by the shores of the pleasant lake of the woods.

Farther down the St. Lawrence, where Lower Canada stretches away to the northeast until it reaches melancholy Labrador, lies an immense field of exploration. More picturesque in its features than the upper or western province, this offshoot of old France offers peculiar attractions to persons who would escape, for a while, from the turmoils and cares of the too-busy world. On the south side of the river, within thirty or forty miles of the picturesque fortress of Quebec, moose are still plentiful, and during the winter months their venison is always to be found in the markets of the old town. The caribou haunts the wildernesses of timbered mountains that rise away back from the north shore. Parties of hardy sportsmen set out every winter from Quebec for the chase of these noble deer. It is only upon snow-shoes, the _raquettes_ of the French Canadians, that this sport can be pursued; the snow generally lying to the depth of three or four feet on the level in the woods. The practice of walking upon these contrivances is general throughout Lower Canada. On fine afternoons, when the snow is well packed, hundreds of young men, and not unfrequently young ladies, may be seen scudding across the country, in every direction, outside the walls of Quebec. The fences are covered by the snow, so that no obstacles are offered to pedestrians unless they are bold enough to enter the woods. Walking upon snow-shoes is a regular part of the training of soldiers in garrison here and at Montreal. There are snow-shoe clubs, which have races during the season, sometimes over hurdles three feet high. I have seen a good performer jump higher than that upon his snow-shoes. This training enables the sportsman to range the forest with ease, and to follow the tracks of the moose until he brings it to bay,--for the animal is heavy, and sinks deep into the snow at every plunge. With the caribou it is not so easy to come up, the hoofs of that animal being so arranged as to spread out and offer some resistance to the snow. When the hunter goes about his work in earnest, the hardship and fatigue attending this kind of sport are very great. In the little churchyard at Rivière-du-Loup, one hundred and twenty miles below Quebec, there is a tombstone to the memory of Captain Turner, an English officer who went there many years ago to hunt moose. I made inquiries about him from the people of the village, who told me that his death was caused by over-fatigue in running down moose, and afterwards conveying the venison, together with the immense heads and horns, on _trebogans_ through miles of the wild bush. One of two Indians whom he had with him as guides died from the same cause. Sometimes hunters are seized with what is called by Canadians the _mal-aux-raquettes_, which is a kind of cramp caused by the pressure of the snow-shoe thongs near the instep, not unfrequently obliging the sufferer to set up camp and rest for several days before resuming his journey.

But summer is, after all, the season in which to enjoy best the wild scenery and sports of the Lower St. Lawrence. On the north shore, especially, rivers of wondrous grandeur succeed each other at intervals all along the rock-bound coast. About one hundred and thirty miles below Quebec the savage, gloomy Saguenay rolls between its walls of rock into the St. Lawrence, which here is nearly twenty miles in width. A wild and beautiful spot is the little bay of Tadousac at the mouth of the Saguenay, with its curved beach of white sand. When I last visited the place there was a post of the Hudson's Bay Company there, established chiefly for the purpose of the salmon fishery. Since that time, however, all these rivers have been taken under the immediate protection of the government. Laws have been passed for the protection of the fish, and they are rigidly enforced, too, under the direction of a Superintendent of Fisheries. The result of this is, that within a few years the salmon have gradually returned to many splendid rivers from which they had been driven. The system of netting has been regulated so as to favor the fish, although, as I am informed, there is much room for improvement in this respect yet. It is incumbent upon owners of saw-mills now to furnish their dams with "passes" of peculiar construction, up which the fish can travel by a succession of leaps. The Indians are forbidden to devastate the waters with the destructive _negogue_, or fish-spear; with which weapon they used to mutilate more fish than they killed. One dark night, as I lay on the bank of the Escoumain, one of the most beautiful of these rivers, I was surprised to see a number of lights flashing out suddenly over the dark pool below the lower fall. A horde of Milicete Indians had silently paddled their canoes past us under cover of night, and were now busily engaged in spearing the salmon. It was a curious and beautiful sight to see these ragged savages, by the light of their torches, darting their long spears into the water with wonderful quickness and precision, bringing up every now and then a bright-sided salmon, and knocking it off the barbs into the canoe. The perfect wildness and remoteness of the place added much to the impressive character of the scene. But it was mortifying to think of the wholesale slaughter that was going on, and of our incapacity to put a stop to it, for our party consisted of but four, and would have been of no avail against twenty red savages armed with rifles and spears. It is true that we had brought with us a letter from the agent of the Hudson's Bay Company at Tadousac to the net-keeper at the Escoumain, enjoining that functionary to give us every assistance and information in his power. One of the instructions contained in that missive ran, as I remember, "_chasses les sauvages_"; but the chase of twenty armed savages by one small and smoke-dried old Canadian, like the net-keeper, would have been a futile, not to say ridiculous, proceeding. And so the Indians had the pool to themselves on that dark July night, and at gray dawn they drifted past us down the stream, their canoes loaded with salmon, to which we had fondly, though delusively, fancied that we had an exclusive right.

One of the "gamest" and most beautiful fish for which angler ever busked artificial fly is the sea-trout that comes up with the summer tides into all these tributaries of the Lower St. Lawrence. Seldom under one pound in weight, and often weighing as much as four pounds, these fish are so similar in appearance to the common brook-trout, that many experienced fishermen declare them to be one and the same species, the slight difference between the two being accounted for by the influence of the salt water and the peculiar feeding to be found in it. In color they are rather more silvery than the brook-trout, but they are marked, like that fish, with brilliant spots of red and blue along the sides. The best place to fish for them is where the sea-tide meets the clear, fresh water of the river, near its mouth. There are times when the salmon becomes unaccountably reserved, and will not condescend to reply to the line of invitation wafted to him by the angler across the eddies of the pool. It is then that the sea-trout is found to be a valuable substitute for his larger congener of the river, to whom he is only second in affording excellent sport. In casting for the trout it is advisable to use but one fly. Once, in the Saguenay, I used a casting-line with three flies attached to it, as for ordinary trout-fishing. At the first cast three sea-trout, each apparently over a pound in weight, were upon my tackle at once, and the consequence was a tangle which resulted in the loss of my casting-line and flies.

But for the mosquitoes and black-flies, which are very troublesome in all this region, there can be no pleasanter summer resort for the angler and the overworked city man. In winter there must be an awful, arctic dreariness upon the place, and I can hardly imagine any person not a French Canadian or an Esquimau taking up his abode there. And yet upon one of the most savage of these rivers--the Mingan, I think--an angler with whom I am acquainted fell in with a man of ancient Scottish family. He bore a distinguished name, and had probably once been an ornament to the social circles in which he moved. When my informant saw him, he had ceased to be ornamental in any sense of the word, and had long been a dweller in the wilderness. In appearance he differed but little from the dirty half-breeds of the coast. Like them, he lived in a wigwam, with a squaw, and had around him a family of children so numerous and dirty that they were a wonder to see. He had been there for many years, and did not seem to think that he should ever go back to England again. Society had galled him with its harness, and the "raw" was visible yet. He was in occasional communication with his relatives at home, had a small, but independent income, and was heir, I think, to a much larger one. Occasionally he would make his way to the nearest settlement or Hudson's Bay post, where he sometimes found letters and newspapers awaiting him; so that, although a little backward as to dates, he had still some general idea of how matters were going on in the great world. Strong indeed must be the fascination of the free Indian life, thus to work its spells upon a man of education and refinement like this eccentric dweller by the waters of the rugged Mingan.

Among the creatures that visit the Lower St. Lawrence is the white whale,--_beluga_ of the naturalists. On a fine summer's day, when the water is blue and calm, these curious rovers of the deep may be seen basking with their backs just over the surface, looking so like small icebergs that they convey an agreeable sense of coolness to the observer. At other times, and especially just about nightfall, they are very active, tumbling and splashing and spouting in every direction, as if in play. Often have I been startled by one as it rose, suddenly, and with a loud snort, close by the little yacht, while we lay at anchor for the night. I was told here, that the calf, or young, of this whale utters a kind of bleating cry, and that the mother whales frequently carry their young ones upon their backs. Some few years ago I had an opportunity of verifying the truth of these statements by observing the habits of a white whale and her calf that were exhibited by Mr. Cutter, of Boston, at Jones's Wood, near New York. The calf used to throw itself upon the back of its dam, with a peculiar squeal, and remain there till carried several times round the tank. Brush wears are built by the inhabitants of these coasts for the capture of this kind of whale, which is generally called the white porpoise here. These wears are merely hedges of stiff brushwood, arranged so as to enclose a wedge-like space, with its wide end open to the river. The whales wander up into them, when they soon become embarrassed by the obstacles on either side, losing their reckoning at last, and "coming to grief" by being stranded upon the beach when the tide ebbs. They are not uncommonly from sixteen to twenty feet in length, and specimens have occasionally been captured which had attained the great length of forty feet. One of average size will yield about a hundred gallons of oil. A soft and excellent leather, well adapted for shoemakers' and other work, is now manufactured from their skins, which were first discovered to be available for this purpose by an enterprising Canadian named Têtu, residing, I think, at Kamouraska, on the southern bank of the river.

The chase of the _pourcil_--a small species of whale, not often exceeding five or six feet in length, and of a sooty color--affords good sport, hereabouts, to those who are skilful and hardy enough to follow it. In calm, clear weather only the hunter dares to pursue this creature in his frail canoe, and even then he runs the risk of being caught in one of the squalls that arise so suddenly on this part of the St. Lawrence. One hunter sits in the stern of the canoe, and paddles, while the other, armed with a long duck-gun, loaded with buck-shot, kneels in the bow. Now and then the _pourcil_ emerges partly from the water, and the canoe is kept swiftly upon his course until a chance offers for a shot. Sometimes the creature is killed by the shot, but more frequently only stunned, so as to enable the hunters to approach near enough to despatch him with their harpoons.

Seals in great numbers haunt the mouths of the tributaries here, attracted by the travelling salmon, upon which they commit sad depredations, often following them even into the fishermen's nets. The hunting of seals is carried on chiefly in the winter time, when the great river is partially blocked up with ice. About twenty-five years ago, at a place called Trois Pistoles, on the south bank, an immense number of seals made their appearance upon the ice just after it had become fixed along the shore. Seals are reckoned valuable game in those parts, and the inhabitants of the parish, armed with clubs, turned out to chase them, under the direction of six priests. They had killed some four hundred, when suddenly the ice parted from the shore, and went drifting down with the tide, priests, _habitans_, seals, and all. Down they drifted, past dreary shores, the sparse inhabitants of which did all they could to aid them, but succeeded in taking off only a few in their canoes. On, on, still they floated, past other parishes, where people knelt and prayed loudly for them on the shore; then past other parishes, again, where the canoe-men were more adventurous, and picked the poor fellows off the ice in detail, until every one of them was brought safely to land, yet not before they had suffered great hardship from cold and fright. The old French Canadian from whom I heard this was one of the hunters on the occasion; and although he expressed exceeding gratitude to _le bon Dieu_ for the rescue of himself and his companions, yet he had words of lamentation for the loss of the seals, not one of which was recovered.

A primitive and interesting race are the French Canadians of these coasts. Many of their villages, and churches--the latter with very steep roofs, generally painted red--have a quaint, antiquated air, and some of the settlements hereabouts are really of very remote date. Wind-bound for a couple of days at one of the oldest and queerest of these villages, on a forlorn little bay, not far from the Saguenay, I went ashore to observe the manners and customs of the place. By the threshold of every house there lay two or three pair of huge wooden clogs, looking almost like "dug-out" canoes, and into these the people popped their feet when the roads were muddy, and their occupations obliged them to go out of doors. A large wooden crucifix stood by the roadside near the entrance of the village, with a small space around it enclosed by a wooden railing. Young girls in wide-brimmed straw hats were kneeling at the foot of it, and I noticed that they had left their clogs outside the railing. Presently an old woman came along, and she too deposited her dug-outs reverently outside the little sanctuary before she entered. These roadside crosses are to be met with everywhere in the French Canadian settlements, many of them curiously fitted up as shrines, and decorated with votive offerings. The valley in which this little village stood had a pastoral appearance, but the hills to the north of it were of a wild and dreary character, suggesting endless tracts of wilderness beyond their dark ridges.

At this place, near the margin of the little bay, there stood a frame house of better appearance than the ordinary dwellings of the village. It had a weird and weather-stained look, nevertheless, which was in keeping with the clump of stunted and sea-blighted pines by which it was partially sheltered. The garden belonging to it appeared to have been once well stocked, but it had run much to weeds and tangle now, and the fence had rotted away in places, and left it open to the road. From this house there came, as I strolled past, an old man, whose appearance was at once so singular, and so different from, that of the ordinary inhabitants of the place, that my curiosity impelled me to stop and speak to him as he saluted me in passing. He was tall and very thin, and, though apparently between seventy and eighty years of age, walked with an erect carriage, leaning but slightly upon the cane he carried. His face, which was remarkably small, looked like shrivelled parchment, and his iron-gray hair hung straight down to his shoulders, like that of an Indian. He was dressed, not in the gray cloth of the country, but in an old-fashioned suit, which might once have been black, but was now faded to a dingy greenish hue, and there was about him a decided air of tarnished gentility very much out of character with the place and its inhabitants. Speaking excellent English, he invited me to accompany him to his house; and as dinner was nearly ready when we entered, he pressed me to remain and partake of it. The table was spread by an old lady quite as faded and decayed as himself. She was his sister, he told me; adding that she was very deaf, and so nervous that he hoped I would excuse her for not joining us at the repast. And so we two sat down quite companionably together to a dinner consisting of boiled pork and excellent potatoes and milk, with wild strawberries for a dessert.

The record of this old man's life was a strange one. He was born at Quebec, of Swiss parents, who took him with them, while he was yet a child, to Switzerland, in which country and in France he received his education and passed the earlier years of his life. Returning to Canada when a grown-up young man, he became a trader among the Indians, and was for some time in charge of a frontier post hard by where the city of Detroit now stands. After various ups and downs in life, he joined his brothers at this old settlement, where they had a mill and a country store. That was nearly fifty years before, and he had never been out of the place since. His brothers were all dead, and the sister to whom I have referred was the only one of the family besides himself now left. Another sister had died only two months previously, and this accounted for the bit of black crape twisted round the old gentleman's little gallipot-shaped glazed hat, which he had lifted so politely when I met him on the road. One of his brothers was drowned by accident, and another had committed suicide,--a fact which he communicated to me in a hollow whisper, as we sat there in the dim old room. Fourteen members of his family were buried, he told me, under the shade of the pine-trees near the house. Two more graves must have been added to the row long since; and that is the end of a family which evidently had once enjoyed good social position, judging from the cultivated manners and conversation of the strange old man, who had been fossilizing for nearly half a century in this remote place.

Among the reminiscences imparted to me by the old man of the bay, I have note of the following.

While he was at the frontier post near Detroit, engaged in commerce with the savage tribes and pioneering trappers, there was a gathering of warriors at the place,--a sort of carnival in celebration of some event interesting to the red men. One day the Indians got drunker than usual, and, having exhausted their stock of liquor, a deputation of them entered the store of the trader, and demanded a fresh supply on credit, which was refused. Upon this the savages became insolent and abusive, and the trader's partner, a man of great determination and personal strength, struck down the leader of them with an axe-handle, just as the tomahawks began to gleam. The savages were now leaping forward to cut down the white man, who had intrenched himself among some barrels, when a fiendish yell rang through the building, seeming to paralyze them like an electric shock, and a short, thickset Indian, of very dark complexion, suddenly made his appearance in the midst of them. Raising his tomahawk aloft, and uttering a few words in his native tongue, the dark-faced warrior pointed to the door, through which the cowed savages filed sullenly away and sought their wigwams. This was the renowned Tecumseh, and such was the influence he exercised over his people, even when they were maddened by drink.

From the rough and sterile nature of the country through which many of these north-shore Canadian rivers run, it seems unlikely that their solitudes will ever be converted into fields for the permanent civilization that agriculture alone can establish. Lumbering operations and the fisheries constitute their only inducements for settlers, and these branches of industry are chiefly carried on by a nomadic population, nearly as wild in their ways of life as the aborigines of the region. Sportsmen will be glad to know, however, that of late years the facilities for reaching these rivers have been much improved. Steamers now ply regularly upon the St. Lawrence, at least as far down as the Saguenay. Landing-piers have been built at many points where it was necessary, not many years ago, for passengers to wade ashore from their boats; and the roads over the capes and highlands--where any roads have yet been made--are of a less impracticable and aggravating character than formerly. The right of leasing the rivers for fly-fishing is vested in the government, from whose Superintendent of Fisheries at Quebec all desired information on the subject can be obtained.

It is from Upper Canada that the curious old-time features of the country are passing rapidly away with the grand old woods. Within the present century the celebrated Joseph Brant, called Thayendenegea by the red men, held his half-barbaric court, as Chief of the Six Nations, at the very spot on the Grand River where the thriving town of Brantford now stands. Brant had seen European civilization, and was the friend and companion of English statesmen; and he curiously grafted that civilization upon the Six Nations' manners and customs when he returned to his strong-hold on the Grand River. Old men in Upper Canada yet spin yarns about the entertainments given by this chief at his hospitable mansion, where the guests were waited on by negro servants dressed in liveries of green and gold, and a gigantic Indian with a barrel-organ used to be stationed in the hall, to enhance the pleasures of the banquet with sweet music. This condition of things can never exist again, for which people have reason to be thankful, perhaps; but away into the past with the Indian and his gauds are vanishing the deer, and the wild-turkeys, and the creatures that men covet for their fur. Many of the deep, cold brooks, in which the speckled trout used to abound, are evaporating to mere threads as the country is cleared. Others have been poisoned by manufactures or choked up with the _débris_ of saw-mills, to the extinction of the fish; and Upper Canada, on the whole, offers but a cheerless prospect now to the blighted young man of leisure who would forswear society and seek to live primitively in backwoods solitudes on the produce of his rod and gun.

THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY.

"Come forth!" my cat-bird calls to me,
"And hear me sing a cavatina,
That, in this old familiar tree,
Shall hang a garden of Alcina.

"These buttercups shall brim with wine
Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic;
May not New England be divine?
My ode to ripening Summer, classic?

"Or, if to me you will not hark,
By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing,
Till all the alder-coverts dark
Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.

"Come out beneath the unmastered sky,
With its emancipating spaces,
And learn to sing as well as I,
Unspoiled by meditated graces.

"What boot your many-volumed gains,
Those withered leaves forever turning,
To win, at best, for all your pains,
A nature mummy-wrapped in learning?

"The leaves wherein true wisdom lies
On living trees the sun are drinking,
Those white clouds drowsing through the skies
Grew not so beautiful by thinking.

"Come out! with me the oriole cries,
Escape the demon that pursues you!
And, hark, the cuckoo weather wise,
Still hiding, further onward wooes you."

"Ah, dear old friend, that, all my days,
Hast poured from that syringa thicket
The quaintly discontinuous lays
To which I hold a season ticket,--

"A season ticket cheaply bought
With a dessert of pilfered berries,--
And who so oft my soul hast caught,
With morn and evening voluntaries,--

"Deem me not faithless, if all day
Among my dusty books I linger,
Nor am, like thee, June's pipe to play
With fancy-led, half-conscious finger.

"A bird is singing in my brain,
And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies,
Gay, tragic, rapt,--right heart of Spain
Fed with the sap of old romances.

"I ask no ampler skies than those
His magic music vaults above me,
No falser friends, no truer foes,--
And does not Doña Clara love me?

"Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars,
A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing,
Then silence deep with breathless stars,
And overhead a white hand flashing.

"O, music of all moods and climes,
Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly,
Where still between the Christian chimes
The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly!

"Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale
To his, my singer of all weathers,
My Calderon, my nightingale,
My Arab soul in Spanish feathers.

"Yes, friend, these singers dead so long,
And still, perhaps, in purgatory,
Give its best sweetness to all song,
To Nature's self her better glory."

HOSPITAL MEMORIES.

II.

In March, the first fresh fragrance of the Southern spring, and the merry songs of birds in the evergreen-trees, filled the soft air with a delusive promise that summer was near at hand. But cold, stormy weather tediously delayed its coming, and resulted calamitously for the soldiers of the Ninth Army Corps, who came from the bravely borne hardships and well-earned honors of the siege of Knoxville, as well as for many other regiments that joined them at Annapolis before starting on the last campaign of the war. Indeed, throughout the war, it seemed as if the inception of an expedition was a signal for the elements to lash themselves into a fury in some remarkable manner. Sleet, snow, and bitter blasts did their worst for many weeks at this time; and pneumonia in its most fearful forms, and rheumatism, attacked hundreds in their unavoidable exposure.

About seventy colored men, many Indians, and scores of others were brought into the hospital. I think that no one regiment sent more patients than the First Michigan Sharpshooters, who had come from Chicago in a violent storm in partially open cars. Their lieutenant-colonel lay in a critical state for several days with typhoid pneumonia. The officers and men of the regiment were continually coming in to inquire for him, and their words of interest and esteem bore witness to the beauty of a character of which his noble face was alone sufficient assurance. The disease of which he was apparently dying needs, perhaps more than any other, the closest watchfulness and good judgment. The doctors were indefatigable in their consultations. Ice held constantly in the mouth was the only nourishment he could take. When medicine had done its utmost, Dr. Vanderkeift sadly said, he feared that he must die. During five days and nights sleep had not at all calmed his delirious ravings, and nature seemed exhausted. "But you are determined that he shall not die," said one of the doctors to the lady in charge of the ward. "Not if good care can save his life," she answered. (And here let me record the uniform courtesy and respect with which suggestions from the ladies were received by the doctors. Their wishes were always acceded to, if possible, with a gentlemanly deference which showed they were not considered intrusive.) Life, however, seemed almost gone, and hope at an end for our patient, when at nightfall a group of doctors whispered together that there was no use in doing anything more,--that he could not live till morning. Then, with a pertinacity which could not yield, the lady in charge requested that a blister might be applied to the back of his neck. "It will do no harm, and, if it will be the slightest gratification to you, it shall be put on; but," added the doctors, "you had better make up your mind to lose him, for he must die." With what intense satisfaction, at five o'clock the next morning, was the doctor welcomed in the ward, and told that four hours of refreshing sleep had followed the application of the blister! He was surprised even to find the patient alive, and with joy pronounced him much better. He ordered the strongest beef essence, with a fresh egg lightly beaten mixed with it, to be given by the teaspoonful every twenty minutes, alternating it with brandy and water. There was a wonderful improvement that day, and before his friends arrived on the next, the sick man was quite out of danger.

One of the most highly prized of all the various gifts which were offered in grateful remembrance to the ladies in the hospital was a volume of Autograph Leaves of American Authors from this patient. On the blank page was written:--

"---- ---- ----:--I owe you a better memento, but here is
one that I know your good taste will appreciate.

"I met you first in my delirium; and knew you only in the
purest and sweetest character a woman can exhibit,--a true
and faithful Florence Nightingale, supporting and
encouraging the weary, bathing the feverish brow of the
brave soldier dying far from other friends.

"I never can forget, and I trust you never will, how you
night and day kept watch over me when wife and father were
yet far away, when fever and delirium were racking my brain
and sapping life from my lungs,--how you bore with every
impatience of mine, or kindly answered every severe word.

"Please accept this book from

"Your devoted friend,

"---- ---- ---- ----."

There was a general commotion and eager haste in the hospital the day before the Ninth Army Corps left. The convalescents assured the doctors of their ability to go, but the doctors, differing in opinion, made many a brave man unhappy. One old soldier, John Paul, chief saddler of the Third Division of the Corps, insisted stoutly on the necessity of his joining his command. If the whole success of the undertaking had rested upon his shoulders, he could not have felt the responsibility more. At the last moment he was allowed to go.

All were ambitious to share the glory of the coming triumph, little dreaming of the terrible cost of life and limb with which it was to be achieved. Of those who went from the hospital, numbers were stricken down, never to need care again. How sadly the words "Shot through the head" looked opposite the name of Frank Wagner, in the first lists which came from the front! He was a spirited boy of seventeen, who by great care had been raised from a dangerous illness. But almost sadder than the death-lists were the names of those taken prisoners. We had learned but too well that it would be death in the end to most; to very few life worth having.

Back to the hospital, too, came letters, telling of long marches and hard fighting; and of the amount of sickness which would be kept off, and pain and misery saved, if there were two or three hundred Miss ----s down there. The wounded might be counted, the letters said, by tens of thousands; the Ninth Army Corps had earned imperishable laurels, but they had lost heavily. The Michigan regiment from which we had had so many patients suffered severely; of the company of Indians, which started one hundred and ten in number, only six remained; and the other companies were hardly more fortunate. Dismay and anguish filled the land at the tidings of the desolation which was the price of victory.

Early in the spring another exchange of paroled prisoners was made. The New York came several times, bringing hundreds of starved men. Death had released many from their sufferings during the winter. The men had had no meat since New-Year's, and their tortures on Belle Isle and in Libby Prison had been excruciating. Smallpox had broken out among them. The dead had lain by the side of the living for days without burial.

Among the prisoners who came were twenty-five little drummer-boys. They had endured the hardships of exile better than the men, and were in the best of spirits. A little flaxen-haired boy of about thirteen years of age, on being asked if he were not rather young to come to the war, answered, "O no, and there are plenty more just as able as I to come and help put down this Rebellion." There was a man by the name of Schwarz, who unfurled the flag of his regiment on landing. He was the color-bearer of the First Maryland, and had succeeded in concealing the flag, until now, with proud joy, he held it high once more in free air. His brother was the first man wounded in the war, at Fort Sumter.

General Neal Dow came at this time, having passed nearly a year in Libby Prison. He was able to come in and take tea with the ladies on his arrival, and to start for home the next day. He gave a graphic account of his prison-life in Virginia. The colored people he had always found good friends. Being without the news of the day was among the deprivations of Libby, and the prisoners were indebted to the colored attendants in the prison for an occasional newspaper. When any great victory had taken place on the Union side, there was always a stricter watch kept over our men, lest even this gleam of joy should brighten their dull life; and particular care was taken constantly to inform them that great battles had been fought, that the South had gained immense advantages, and that the North would soon be forced to give up the war. One morning a colored man came to General Dow and told him that there was a "mighty big piece of news," but that he was afraid to tell, lest he should be detected in giving information. But after the General had promised that he should not be betrayed, "Vicksburg is taken!" resounded in a loud whisper through the room. It was too good a secret to be kept in silence, and inspired their hearts with fresh courage to bear their hard lot.

Major Calhoun came too at this time. He was from Kentucky, a man of marked character and superior education. He had made an attempt to escape, and, being caught, was taken back and confined in a cell, in which he Could neither lie down nor stand up. For six weeks he was kept there, and then taken out with a brain-fever settled upon him, from which he had not fully recovered when brought to us. As his pale, thin face looked forth from the coarse brown blanket in which he was wrapped, it was as pitiable a sight as can be imagined. It was enough to melt the stoutest heart to hear him relate his woful experiences, and tell how many comrades he had left in misery. "Good by, Cap',--we're glad you are going to God's land; but tell them at home how we fare here, and see if they can't get us away." These were the parting words from his sorrowful comrades.

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?"

was often the piteous appeal of countenances among the returned prisoners, betraying a brain disturbed by depressing fancies or harrowing imaginations. In some cases the malady amounted to insanity, and then the patients were removed to an asylum. Homesickness was frequently the cause of the most unmanageable of cases. No medicine was effectual in giving an appetite or producing sound sleep. All attempts to cheer or amuse these childish patients were regarded by them as the evidence of a heartless want of sympathy. "Just think, I have been out four months, and not had a furlough yet!" said an officer one day at the conclusion of an hour's effort to divert his mind; and, with violent sobbings, he buried his face in the pillow. A leave of absence proved his cure.

There was a Pennsylvania man who had never before he became a soldier left his native farm,--a vigorous-looking youth, hearty and robust in stature. At night he would awake from dreams of haying-scenes or apple-gatherings, shouting out the names of his brothers; and when he found himself so far away, and in the hospital, he would break into the most grievous wails and lamentations. This of course disturbed the other sick men seriously, and night after night the poor nurse strove in vain to soothe him. In the daytime a quieter kind of crying would satisfy him. There was nothing but talking about his home that would bring a gleam of gladness to his disconsolate countenance. Every time that the lady in charge of the ward left him was the occasion of a trembling lip and tearful eyes. At last it was proposed to treat him as if he were a child. "Now you must try and be a good boy, Joseph, and when you wake up not make such a noise and disturb the men; if you are quiet, you shall have something nice given you in the morning." This was a good-night promise. The experiment succeeded; for on our going into the ward in the morning, he said, "I have been real good, and only woke the men up once." And then he wondered what he should get. An orange satisfied his most ardent expectations; and then a promise of something more at noon, and again at night, if he continued his improved behavior, kept him happier through the day. This system was followed up for a few days, when he recovered his spirits, and was able to rejoin his regiment in a short time.

Where nostalgia was the only complaint, it would yield, but was almost hopeless if disease had undermined the constitution. There were two boys about seventeen years old in one ward, both dolefully sad, and pining continually for home and familiar faces. One was from Tennessee, the other from Connecticut. They were equally low, being among the worst cases from prison life. The father of one came to him; the sister whom the other talked constantly about could not even hear from him, the Rebels cutting off postal communication. The evening West's father came, he seemed nearer death than the little Tennesseean, but his father's presence saved his life; he quickly rallied, the pressure of his melancholy was removed by hearing a home voice, his appetite returned, his strength was restored. But the other boy sank lower and lower in despondency for which there was no remedy; and the last words he spoke were of his sister,--he would be content to die if he could only see her once more.

The enlivening music of a fine band was added this spring to the hospital organization. For an hour every morning and evening its animating strains stirred the martial spirit in the worn-out and suffering, and brought cheer and courage to hours of loneliness. The little "Knapsack," too, was merged into a printed sheet called "The Crutch," the weekly publication of which furnished an occasion for the patients to amuse themselves in writing articles in prose or verse.

A complete photographic establishment appeared in one corner of the hospital grounds at this time, and became the resort of hundreds of officers and men in their leisure hours of convalescence. The instrument was used in taking pictures of uncommon cases in surgery, and in faithfully delineating the spectral features of the returned prisoners.

The month of June found our hospital comparatively deserted: all the men who were able had left for their regiments, and all but two or three prisoners had gone to Camp Parole to await exchange, or had been laid beneath the sods of Maryland. In the wards were to be found patients who had been there for months, prostrated either by chronic illness or stubborn wounds,--mere human wrecks, bones and breath alone remaining of once rugged frames and constitutions.

Gently the balmy summer breezes creep into the tent wards, laden with the rich fragrance of roses, violets, and jasmine, offering their mute sympathy to those who shall never more walk forth to behold them growing in luxuriant beauty. William Miller, a boy of fifteen, is one of these. He is an orphan, and was the pet of fond grandparents, who consented to let him join the Union army to escape Rebel conscription. He is a mere child; his dark, deep, expressive eyes, shaded by long, drooping lashes, light up with happiness his face of marble paleness, as he receives the comforts of life and the kindness of friends once more, after long months of homesickness and starvation. His spirit is buoyant with the anticipation of seeing his native State of Tennessee entirely rescued from the destroying hand of treason, and he is proud of having suffered for the flag of freedom. But at times those bright eyes are clouded; not that he for one moment regrets his experiences, bitter as they have been, in contrast with the doting care in which he was reared; yet he talks a good deal about that little home in the far-off mountains, and it is easy to discern that the tidings which cannot come from those he so dearly loves there would bring him great happiness. He is too manly in his patriotism, however, to give way to these restless longings, and stifles the secret unquiet of his heart by a bravely forced cheerfulness. The doctor is sure that he cannot live much longer, and thinks best that he should be told. It is a painful duty thus to blight all the hopes which cling to earth.

One day, as he was talking about his grandparents, and how much he should have to tell them when he got home, he was asked, "But suppose, Miller, that it was God's will for you not to get well, but to go to a better world above, how would you feel?" The awful possibility flashed upon him for the first time, and, bursting into tears, he exclaimed, "Must I die, and never see grandpapa and grandmamma again?... I can die for the country, but I do want to see them once more." After a little while, with a maturity and strength of character far beyond his years, he sweetly acquiesced in the will of the wise Disposer of our joys and sorrows, and transferred his thoughts to eternal realities. He was comforted by the thought that he should meet those he loved in the heavenly home. "And perhaps they may be there now," he said, "waiting for me." At another time, on being reminded that his best and most loving Friend was always near him, he said that he wished that he loved him better, and knew how to pray to him aright. "Can't you say, God be merciful to me a sinner?" "O yes, but do you call that praying?" With his thin, white hands meekly clasped upon his breast, he would lie for hours repeating with his slowly moving lips this petition. God heard and answered it A settled peace filled his soul, making those last few days the beginning of immortal glory to him, as he awaited with triumphant faith the hour of transition. To the end his patriotism glowed warmly; he asked, the day before he died, that a little flag which was in the tent might be put up where he could see it: "I would love to have that dear flag the last thing that my eyes shall rest upon on earth." Patiently he suffered until within a few hours of his death, when he sank into a deep sleep, to awake no more here. As we gazed at his little form in the coffin, with the flag he died for laid across his snowy shroud, that impressive, mysterious "Why?" which is so often asked in life, came to our thoughts. Why should one so pure and innocent be called to offer his young life in a struggle for which he was in no manner responsible? Eternity will unfold all the hidden reasons; but cannot we even now catch a glimpse of them, remembering that no devotion is too precious a sacrifice for the principles of truth and liberty, and that the longest life could not be crowned with loftier praise than the death of a child-patriot? A wreath of white rose-buds was woven for the funeral of our little loved one; a single pink rose was laid with tears on the flag-covered coffin by the soldier-nurse who had tenderly cared for him through his illness.

Impelled by an intense feeling of the importance of a speedy exchange of the large number of men who had been taken prisoners since the opening of the spring campaign, two of the ladies in the hospital went to Washington one day. They were kindly received by President Lincoln, and, in the few minutes' interview they had with him, the pictures of some of the released prisoners were shown to him. As he gazed at them, a pitying sadness crossed his brow. He asked if indeed they could be correct, and gave a promise that those who were then in the hands of the enemy should be exchanged as soon as it was in his power to effect it. Could that time have sooner come, what unutterable tortures would have been saved to thousands!

Strawberry festivals were given to the men at this time; gingerbread, and a plentiful supply of fruit, adding a little variety to their every-day fare. The time afforded for such diversions by a less pressing amount of care than usual was cut short by the arrival of the steamer Connecticut, bringing six hundred of those most seriously wounded at the disastrous attack upon Petersburg on the 18th of June. These men were landed at midnight; their wounds had been carefully attended to before their arrival, and were found to be in good order. Yet many were in a dying state, and it was impossible to do for every man all that we desired on the morning that followed, and added by its heat to their weakness, thirst, and discomfort. Hastily the hospital attendants moved from one helpless sufferer to another, in the thickly crowded tent wards. One man would shriek, in frenzied agony, for a drink of water; another would beg to be fanned; while others would ask to be bathed with ice-water.

Among the newly arrived was General Chamberlain, the present Governor of Maine. Supposed to have been "mortally wounded," so terribly had a Minie-rifle-ball shattered his body, he was, after having been borne by painful and exhausting stages from the extreme front, landed in an almost dying condition. Leaving Bowdoin College as Colonel of the Maine Twentieth, he had already distinguished himself by dashing bravery in many of the great battles of the war. At Petersburg he was raised to the rank of General by Grant for gallantry in leading a charge,--the only case of actual promotion on the field during the war. Bravest in battle, his courage was not less evinced during months of intense and tedious suffering. Partially restored to health as by a miracle, he resumed his command five months from the day of his desperate wound. In Grant's last campaign he opened the attack on the left at Quaker Road and White Oak Road, for which he received the brevet of Major-General. Although several times wounded, he valiantly pressed on, fighting through the campaign, and taking a prominent and important part in the battle of Five Forks. His command, the First Division of the Fifth Army Corps, was designated to receive the surrender of the arms and colors of Lee's army; and the flag that waved that day over a conquered rebellion now hangs in his peaceful study at Brunswick.