Chapter LXII: Part IV: The Immolation (7)

The Holy Father, wishing to pay his tribute to the general testimony of love and admiration, commanded that the child of S. Dominic should be carried to her grave with a pomp and splendor befitting the holiness of her life and the heroic character of her death. The remains were conveyed accordingly first to the Basilica of the Apostles in solemn state, escorted by a vast concourse of people, priests and religious, and exposed there throughout the morning to public veneration; a requiem Mass and the office of the dead were chanted; in the afternoon, the body, followed by all that Rome held of greatest and best, was transported to the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Cœli. The Zouaves claimed the privilege of bearing the precious remains upon their shoulders, and it was granted them. By special permission of His Holiness, Amélie was interred in Santa Maria; but her death was no sooner known at Marseilles than the townspeople spontaneously demanded that the body should be returned to them. But Pius IX. replied that Rome had now a prior claim to its guardianship; Amélie had made the sacrifice of her life at Rome and for Rome; it was fitting that the ashes should remain where the holocaust had been offered and consumed. Marseilles yielded to the decision of the Sovereign Pontiff, and the daughter of S. Dominic was left to sleep on under the august dome of the Ara Cœli, there to await the angel of the resurrection, whose trumpet shall awake the dead and bid them come forth and clothe themselves with immortality.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

The following is the authentic record of this miraculous death, as copied from the original, legalized by Cardinal Patrizi, Vicar of His Holiness:

“Je soussigné, curé de la trèssainte basilique constantinienne des douze saints apôtres de Rome, certifie que dans le registre XII. des défunts, lettre N, page 283, se trouve l’acte dont l’extrait mot à mot suit:

“Le vingt‐deux décembre mil‐huit cent soixante six.—Mademoiselle Claire‐ Françoise‐Amélie Lautard de Marseille, fille de M. Jean Baptiste Lautard, vierge très pieuse, pendant quelle offrait Dimanche dernier à Dieu sa propre vie pour le salut du souverain Pontife, Pie IX. de Rome et de la sainte église, a été saisie sur le champ par la maladie, et ayant reçu très pieusement les sacraments de l’église, jouissant de la plenitude de ses facultés, en prière, entourée de plusieurs prêtres et vierges, a rendu son âme a Jésus Christ son époux, avec la plus grande sérénité, le Mercredi dix‐neuf à neuf heures et demie du matin dans la maison Rue Ripresa dei Barberi 175, l’âge de cinquante neuf ans; son corps, le lendemain vingt, après le completuum a été conduit accompagné par un grand nombre de religieuse en cette basilique et y a été exposé pendant la matinée suivant l’usage des nobles, l’office et la Messe ont été dit, dans l’après‐midi le corps a été transporté à l’église de Sainte Marie in Ara‐ Cœli, òu il a été enseveli dans le tombeau des Sœurs de St. Joseph de l’Apparition.

“Donné à Rome,” etc.(274)

The International Congress Of Prehistoric Anthropology And Archæology.

From La Revue Generale De Bruxelles

Concluded.

The sessions of August 25 began with fresh discussions concerning the troglodytes of Menton and the so‐called tertiary skull from California already spoken of. M. Desor entered into extensive details concerning the hatchets of nephrite and jade found in the Alps, and apparently of Oriental origin. “I do not believe,” said he, as he ended, “that these hatchets were utensils, but merely objects of display, like the dolmens(!)—precious memorials and relics of the first ages of humanity.” M. de Quatrefages thought these hatchets a proof of ancient commercial relations with the East. A great deal was said in this discussion of the use of stone knives by the Egyptians in embalming the dead, and among the Jews for circumcising. Only one thing was forgotten—neither the Egyptians nor the Jews ever attached any religious importance to the use of stone, and they likewise made use of bronze and iron knives in these operations. The instrument of circumcision at the present day is a steel blade.(275) M. Leemans, director of the museum at Leyden, thought these hatchets came from Java. He reminded us that there has always been constant intercourse between Switzerland and that island, and that the majority of the soldiers of the East India Company were traditionally recruited in Switzerland. The Abbé Delaunay refuted M. Desor’s opinion by merely referring to the collection at Pont‐Levoy, where there are fourteen hatchets of jade found in that vicinity. It was thought desirable to ascertain the as yet unknown source of jade. They now returned to the _hiatus_ mentioned by M. de Mortillet at the previous session, in order to oppose it by bringing forward an intermediary race, for whom M. Broca was the sponsor, though without flattering it much. He engaged in a long, subtile argument on the way tertiary flints were introduced into the valleys and caverns. They were not agreed on this question, which is one we can only regard with speculative interest.

The excursions to the _ateliers_ of Spiennes and Mesvin were not as pleasant as the one to the Lesse. For that, the country around Mons should be as charming as that of the Meuse—and the people likewise. There is a very complete work by M. Dupont concerning these excavations, in which have been found millions of rough flints, to which he does not hesitate to assign a quaternary origin of the mammoth period. When one has a taste of the mammoth, he cannot get too much of it. I know of sceptics and controversialists who through speculations of another kind are plunged into foolish incredulity. Here is an instance: from time immemorial our forefathers made use of flints for striking fire, and many of us can still remember the custom, which may not have wholly disappeared. For centuries, households had to be supplied with flints for the tinder‐box, and in abundance, for this stone is soon worn out by iron; it becomes furred and smooth, and is soon unfit for use. If we compare the considerable traffic in flints that must have been carried on with the enormous consumption that supports the fabrication of chemical matches, we can easily see that the sites of the workshops where flints for striking fire were cut must have been heaped with millions of rough ones—nodules, chips, and _débris_ of all kinds; that excavations must have been made by pits, which necessarily extended to considerable depth, and crossed very old geologic strata, for silex is found imbedded in chalk at a depth of thirty or forty metres in some places; that to argue from the stratification of surrounding formations, in order to decide on the synchronism of the excavations, would expose us to conclude _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_. And I have not mentioned all the common uses made of flints in a household. For many years they were used for firearms, and silex is still used in ceramic manufactures, the origin of which is lost in the darkness of ages. A great many of the flints that appear cut are only fragments that may have been owing to spontaneous fracture. Now, whence came all the flints used for striking fire during the historic periods that go back from our time to the middle ages and to antiquity? Has it been proved that these remains, so‐called prehistoric, do not come within the domain of history; nay, even of modern history? At all events, the age of the quaternary deposits is by no means established, and it is on the mere presence of human remains, or of the productions of human labor among these deposits, that certain anthropologists found the millions of ages they attribute to our species. These remains do not indicate the site of ancient settlements; they have been washed away from those settlements by currents of water, and the question is, What epoch produced these changes?—a question not solved, and perhaps never will be.

Besides, the primary defect of the whole prehistoric system is the indissolubly confounding of two orders of very evident facts, but which may by no means have any correlation as to time. Wrought flints show evident traces of human labor, and there is no unprejudiced person who cherishes the least doubt about it. The evidence of design shown by the examination of two or three specimens is in itself a proof of some value, but this proof makes an irresistible impression on the mind when, in addition, we see an accumulation of specimens. It is, then, no longer possible to attribute the uniform shape of the flints to a mere accident. But were they fashioned at the time of the formation of the _terrains_ in which they are embedded? That is another problem, the solution of which is liable to controversy. Mr. Taylor, who is very respectable authority in such matters, declares, after much conscientious research, that the gravel‐beds of St. Acheul were deposited in the earlier part of the Christian era. People of the historic period, such as the first inhabitants of Umbria and the Egyptians, made flints precisely like those of St. Acheul. The prodigious antiquity of man must be greatly shaken by these observations. At Sinai, flint has been used to effect immense excavations in the rock; it is again utilized under the form of hammers and chisels in the ancient copper mines of the Aztecs, in Canada, Spain, Wady‐Maghara, and Bethlehem, as well as on Lake Superior, in Tuscany, and in Brittany. The Bedouins of Africa and the Indians of Texas still make use of them; and M. Reboux, who gave the Congress a practical demonstration of the mounting and use of the utensils of the stone age, received his inspiration from those savages. They make the handles out of the sinews of the bison, covered with a wide strip of the animal’s skin recently taken off. This band is wound around grooves made in the middle of the hammer. The skin, as it dries, contracts, and the stone, the extremities of which alone are uncovered, is enclosed in a sheath so tight that it cannot be drawn out.(276) It must be acknowledged, then, that the authenticity of these beds at Spiennes, as prehistoric _ateliers_, appears exceedingly doubtful, and there is a tinge of similar incredulity in the behavior of the people around the _Camp des Cayaux_: “Countrymen, and even little peasant girls,” says a reporter of one of our principal journals, “were selling the finest stones to the travellers, making superhuman efforts to repress smiles that threatened to explode into loud laughter. A singularly ironic expression was legible in the large eyes of these _fillettes_ and broke through their pretended seriousness. It was very evident that the benighted villagers in the vicinity of Mons were not sufficiently initiated into the new gospel of science, and by no means had implicit faith in it. The irreverence of the population was still more evident at the entrance of the hamlet, where a group of young women manifested quite an uncivil merriment at the sight of some of the princes of science who were toiling along under the heavy burden of quaternary flint.” As an example of moral contrasts, I will merely allude to Hennuyer and the peasant of Furfooz, one sceptical and contemptuous of everything, and the other with genuine respect for the traditions of his beloved valleys.

The morning of the twenty‐seventh was mostly taken up with a report from General Faid’herbe on the dolmens of Algeria. A burst of applause greeted the illustrious and genial hero of Lille. Popular sentiment seemed an embodiment of the

“_Placuit victrix causa diis, sed victa Catoni_”

in the very teeth of the Borussians.(277)

General Faid’herbe assigned a historic epoch to the origin of the dolmens. These monuments, which are tombs, were the work of one race found on every shore from Pomerania to Tunis, and which, according to him, proceeded from the north to the south. The dolmens of Africa are like those of Europe. But what race was this? A blonde race from the shores of the Baltic, as the speaker proved by three facts: 1. Blondes are still to be found in Barbary. 2. Ancient historians speak of the blonde people who lived there before the Christian era. 3. Fifteen centuries before Christ the blonde inhabitants of that country attacked Lower Egypt. M. Faid’herbe stated that when he lived in Senegal there were two powerful negro tribes in the countries on the upper Niger having a political organization of relative advancement. The complexion of the royal family was somewhat clear, and they prided themselves on their descent from white ancestors. Etymological indices lead us to believe that this dynasty descended from the blonde race of the dolmens.

M. Worsaae opposed the general’s opinion, and maintained that the builders of the dolmens, on the contrary, proceeded from the south to the north, where they attained the height of their civilization. M. Cartailhac, however, stated an important fact that weakens this objection: the dolmens of the South of France contain metallic objects whose place of fabrication could not have been far off; those of the interior and the North only contained articles of polished stone.

A small man now sprang into the tribune, fierce as Orestes tormented by the Eumenides, with black eyes, long streaming hair, and a person of incessant mobility. It is one of the princes of oriental philology—M. Oppert, who began a demonstration of the chronology of remote historical times, which he continued in the afternoon session. He assured us, as he began, that he did not intend to offend any one’s religious convictions, or to discuss the chronology of the Bible, which, in his eyes, is eminently respectable. In his opinion, the difference of the dates pointed out in different chronological tables can be explained without any difficulty. M. Oppert showed us how the chronologies of Egypt and Chaldea, which were calculated by cycles of unequal length, begin with the same date—the 19th of January, Gregorian (the 27th of April, Julian), of the year 11542 B.C.!

He therefore concluded that the people of those regions must have observed the important astronomical phenomena of that time, the risings of Sirius perhaps, which would indicate a degree of civilization somewhat advanced for a period _still ante‐historic_. I like to recall the very words he used; they are full of meaning.

M. Ribeiro had made researches in Portugal that appeared to him conclusive as to the existence of pliocene man, and he produced tertiary flints which he believed to be cut. The Abbé Bourgeois, who could not remain indifferent to any proof of tertiary man, allowed an unexpected declaration to escape his lips. “I should like,” said he, “to consider these fragments as authentic proofs of the truth of my theory, but the truth obliges me to declare that I cannot discover any evidence of human labor in them.” M. Ribeiro sank into his seat under this _coup de hache‐ polie_, and tertiary man was properly buried, after a later correction from M. Bourgeois, who admitted that one of M. Ribeiro’s flints bore marks of human labor, but he had doubts as to its bed.

Anthropology and ethnography had the honors during the greater part of this session.

M. Lagneau said the researches made in Belgium showed there were three perfectly distinct species of men in this country, and he opposed M. Dupont’s opinion that the skulls of Furfooz belong to the Mongoloid race. M. Hamy demonstrated anatomically that a particular race, the Australioid, is spread throughout Europe. The jaw from Naulette appears to belong to this race; the skull from Engis belongs to another. M. Hamy thought he discovered some of the characteristics of the Australioid race in certain inferior types in Belgium and France. These primitive races are not extinct. They still peep out in isolated cases of atavism, and he exhibited a curious instance—the hideous portrait of a boat‐woman of the neighborhood of Mons, with all the characteristics of the Australioid race of the mammoth period. In this selection of a Montois type there was a spice of revenge evident to every one. M. Virchow found a manifest difference between the skulls at the British Museum and those of criminals in the collection at the university. The Flemish skulls present the same prognathism as those of Furfooz, and certain types have characteristics that might cause them to be classed with the Mongoloid race.

As to the size of the skull, it is not owing to the development of the psychical faculties, and we should be cautious about drawing premature conclusions concerning the primitive races of this country. M. Virchow cited the example of the two skulls found in a Greek tomb of the Macedonian epoch, the form and size of which induced him to class them unhesitatingly with the Mongoloids of the caverns of the Lesse. Now, one of these skulls was that of a Greek woman of great distinction, both as to her social condition and intellectual culture. The learned professor from Berlin expressed a doubt as to the Germanic origin of the Flemings. M. Lagneau also thought we should not decide too hastily about the races that first inhabited Belgium. He could not see why the Flemings and Germans should have the same origin. In Germany, Belgium, and France the races are excessively mixed up. Germany was repeatedly invaded by people from Gaul. Prognathism alone is not typical any more than the temperament, color of the hair, etc.

M. Vanderkindere thought the Flemish of Germanic origin, and the Walloon of Celtic. Blondes do not belong to the Aryan races. Prognathism is more common in them than in the dark people of the country, in which the speaker finds Ligurian traces, as in the basin of the Loire (Liger‐ Liguria). Now, the blonde race, has always thought itself superior, and this belief was so strong in Flanders in the heart of the middle ages that the mother of Berthulphe de Ghistelles, displeased at the alliance her son had contracted with the beautiful Godelive, a native of Boulonnais, whom her contemporaries reproached solely on account of her black hair and eyebrows, expressed her contempt in these significant terms: “_Cur, inquit, cornicem de terra aliena eduxisti?_” She thought it disgraceful to defile the pure blood of her antique Germanic race (_alti tui sanguinis_) by such an alliance.

In a subsequent session, this question of races came on the carpet again. M. Dupont, combining the observations made in the three excursions (that to Namur had taken place the day before), established a filiation between the different peoples who inhabited Belgium in different periods of the stone age. The people of Mesvin, the Somme, the Tamise, and the Seine were contemporaries. The race of Mesvin inhabited Hainault at the same time as the troglodytes, whom they did not know. It might have been the people of Mesvin and the Somme, who, gradually attaining to polished stone, invaded the country occupied by the less advanced people of the caverns. M. Virchow could not recommend too much prudence to those who are investigating the science of anthropology. In prehistoric times, as in our day, there were variations of the same race, but that is not accounted for by atavism. It must be concluded that men were simultaneously created or born in several places, and different types sprang from the commingling of the actual races. We take pleasure in collecting these indirect acknowledgments from the lips that dared say, “There is no place in the universe for a God, nor in man for a soul.” M. de Quatrefages thought, like M. Virchow, that all the various races cannot be owing to atavism. Crossing has a good deal to do with it. It is allowable to refer the variety of types to the more or less commingling of the ancient races, as they are everywhere mingled now. We can hardly deny, however, that the present population partly descended from the troglodytes. The people of Furfooz must still have some representatives in Belgium, especially among the women. Science proves that woman retains the type of the race to which she belongs longer than man. At a later day we shall doubtless succeed in deciphering the origin of the human races. In these researches we must also consider the action of _les milieux_. Mlle. Royer expressed a disbelief in the unity of the human species. Unfortunately, the inevitable crossing is always obstructing her observations. She absolutely refuses to admit that the white man is Aryan, or at least Asiatic. She hopes, however, some day to obtain a solution of these great problems. How far, madame, your knowledge extends, and how astonishingly you have retained the persistent type of _madame la guenon_ from whom you flatter yourself to have descended! After other discussions concerning the bronze utensils found in various parts of Europe, and the influence of Etruscan art, which extended even to the North, M. Baudre undertook the demonstration of a point singular enough. Primitive man, he said, doubtless possessed the musical faculty, and it is impossible with his knowledge of the flint he daily used that it should not have occurred to him to apply the sonorousness of that stone to some practical use. No one can positively declare this was so, but who can deny it? M. Baudre has constructed an instrument composed of accordant flints—a prehistoric piano—on which he executed a _brabançonne_ that would have excited the envy of the _Moncrabeaux_. It is neither more nor less insupportable than the modern instrument of torture of which some unideal creature, with bent body and a prey to convulsive jerks, strikes the senseless ivory with his skinny phalanges till it shrieks under the touch.

Of the excursion to Namur we will only allude to what bore on the scientific labors of the Congress; that is, the visit to the Camp of Hastedon. The delightful, cordial reception given us in that pleasant town, the banquet and concert which followed, will not soon be effaced from the memory of the excursionists. The plateau of Hastedon, close to Namur, rests on a solid mass of dolomite, and is surrounded by a bastion composed of fagots calcined—it is not known how, huge boulders, and a thick layer of earth and stones. The Romans occupied it for a certain time, but the parapets that surround it are much more ancient. It is an immense plain, eleven hectares in extent, strewed with flints, both wrought and polished, that came from Spiennes, while those of the caverns of the Lesse came from Champagne. The troglodytes of the Lesse and the people of Spiennes were contemporaries in the age of cut stone, but there was no intercourse between them. During the age of polished stone, on the contrary, the importation of flints from Champagne ceased in the region of the caverns, and the flint of Spiennes was diffused among the plateaux of upper Belgium. The inhabitants of Spiennes extended their former bounds, penetrated to that region, and fortified it. According to M. Dupont, the Camp of Hastedon must have been one of their fortresses.

The final _séance_ of the Congress opened with a very interesting and animated discussion as to the first use of bronze and iron. Where did the bronze come from? M. Oppert thought it of European origin. The Phœnicians went to England for tin rather than to the East. M. Worsaae was convinced it came from Asia, and that a bronze age will be discovered in Egypt. M. Leemans was of the opinion that the iron age preceded the bronze in India and Ceylon. M. Conestabile was inclined to think the Phœnicians obtained their tin from the Caucasus rather than England. M. Franks said they might have found it in Spain and Portugal, and M. Waldemar‐Schmidt thought the Egyptians obtained theirs from Africa.

M. de Quatrefages afterwards summed up the character of the Congress of Brussels: it appears from scientific evidence in every direction that certain existing types have an incontestable resemblance to the people of the quaternary period. In the second place, it now seems established that man of the stone age travelled much more than has been supposed.

The close of the session was marked by two occurrences that produced a strong impression on the assembly. The two workmen who so ably assisted M. Dupont in the exploration of the caverns had, at the solicitation of the committee, the _décoration ouvrière_ conferred on them by Messrs. de Quatrefages and Capellini. Then a letter from M. G. Geefs was read, stating that he had made a bust of M. d’Omalius unbeknown to the latter, which he offered as a mark of homage to the Congress. This bust, concealed at the end of the apartment, was uncovered and presented to the venerable president, old in years but youthful in feeling, whose fine noble career M. de Quatrefages retraced in an address sparkling with wit. Then, after some isolated communications, the Congress passed a resolution to hold its seventh meeting at Stockholm, in 1874, under the effective presidency of Prince Oscar of Sweden, and the Congress was declared adjourned.

We cannot better end this report, which I should have liked to make more complete, than by quoting M. Dupont’s _résumé_ (a little indefinite, in my opinion) of the labor of the Sixth International Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archæology:

“After the weighty discussions that have taken place at the Congress of Brussels,” says M. le Secrétaire Général, “it is proper to lay before the public the chief problems discussed by the learned assembly. These problems have not all been definitely solved. That was not to be expected, for the result of such scientific meetings is seldom the decision of questions, but rather stating them with clearness and precision. The discussions at such meetings lead to the opening of new paths, and preparing the way, by throwing new light on it, for calm and persevering labor in the study. There alone is it possible to weigh the value of arguments, elucidate obscure points, and arrive at conclusions. In this spirit six principal points have been drawn up:

“1. Did man really exist in the middle of the tertiary period? Several of the specialists present at the Congress declared in the affirmative. But it appeared, especially from the flints discovered by the Abbé Bourgeois, that further researches should be undertaken before science can decide on a point so important in the history of mankind. The bed of the flints in question was ultimately regarded as incontestable.

“2. The formation of the valleys and the filling of the caverns were regarded as the result of fluvial action. The study of these phenomena may be considered as the fundamental point of research respecting man of the quaternary epoch.

“3. The bones of goats, sheep, and oxen, discovered in the deposits of the mammoth age in the Belgian caverns, were acknowledged to be similar to our goats, sheep, and certain species of our domestic cattle. An opinion was advanced that perhaps they originated these domestic species, whose origin has often been sought in vain.

“4. Communications between different tribes of the stone age in Western Europe were for the first time distinctly stated. The people of the quaternary epoch were divided into two classes, one of which, by the regular development of its industrial pursuits, arrived at such a degree of progress that it was thought they must have invaded the region of the Belgian caverns in the age of polished stone, and subjugated our troglodytes.

“5. The discovery at Eygenbilsen gave occasion for recognizing the Etruscan influence in our region previous to the Roman conquest. There was a disposition to admit that the intercourse between Italy and the Scandinavian countries must have been much later.

“6. The opinion that the anthropological types of the quaternary epoch have survived, and constitute an essential element of existing European nations, was admitted in principle by all the anthropologists who expressed any opinion on the subject. The problem of the origin of European races is thus placed in an entirely new light.”

Atlantic Drift—Gathered In The Steerage.

By An Emigrant.

Concluded.

The generally fortunate voyage of our vessel was varied by two or three days of very rough weather, and the miseries of our first night at sea were intensified by a violent gale. The fast steamer, built with lines calculated for excessive speed, cut through rather than breasted the waves. Tons of clear water washed over the whaleback, knocking over one or two hapless wights, and drenching many others. Her wind‐ward side was incessantly swept by blinding showers of heavy spray. To pass from the shelter of the main deck to the entrance of our steerage was a veritable running the gauntlet. You watched till the ship rose, and then ran at full speed for the shelter of the whaleback, happy if you reached it without being rolled by a sudden lurch into the scuppers, or losing your balance and clinging to the nearest rope or stanchion, being soused by the spray from the next wave that struck her.

The storm raged more fiercely as the evening advanced, and from timid lips came stories of the lost _City of Boston_ and the hapless _London_, while more experienced hands regretted their precipitancy in selecting a vessel of a line in which every other quality was said to have been sacrificed to that of excessive speed, and indulged in uncomfortable surmises as to the consequences of the shaft snapping or the engines breaking down. When the damp and chill of the advancing night drove us to our bunks, we clambered down‐stairs, and, staggering away into our respective streets, crawled in. To realize my first impression of the steerage of our vessel at night, when its cavernous space was lit, or rather its grim darkness made visible, by a single lantern, would require the pen of Dickens or the graphic pencil of Gustave Doré. Crouching between those bunks and the roof grotesque forms, dimly seen in the obscure light, threw weird shadows on the cabin sides. Here one busily engaged, under innumerable difficulties, in making up a neat bed of sheets and blankets, into which he afterwards burrows by an ingenious backward movement, like a shore crab hiding himself in the sand left uncovered by the receding tide; while his next neighbor retires to rest by the simple process of kicking off his boots, pulling his battered night‐cap over his eyes, and stretching himself on the bare boards, with a muttered string of curses on the ship, the weather, and the world in general, for his evening orisons. At a corner of one of the tables appear a group of players poring over their cards in a _chiaro‐oscuro_ that recalls a scene of Teniers or Van Ostade, while at another a group are gathered round a young vocalist who quavers out in a dull monotone a curious medley of sentimental ditties and music‐hall vulgarities. Gradually all drop away into their bunks, and everything is still, save the deep breathing of some hundred souls, and the groans of the sufferers from the malady of the sea. Occasionally the heavy plunge of the ship, as she dashes into some mountainous wave, extinguishes the lamp with the shock, and buries the little windows under water, leaving the cabin for a few seconds in profound darkness. In the gale during the first night of our voyage, one tremendous billow struck the ship, burying us in black night, and rolling trunks, tins, and clothes cluttering to leeward with the lurch of the vessel, and awakening all in a moment from their slumbers. A general consternation prevailed, and while some called in angry tones for the lamp to be relighted, others could be heard muttering the unfamiliar words of a half‐forgotten prayer. As the great ship shook in her conflict with the raging sea, and we heard overhead the rush of many feet and the swash on deck of a heavy mass of water, I felt nervous enough till she rose again and, creeping to the little window, I could see the cold moon throwing a silvery track across the waste of raging, wind‐ lashed surges.

I thought of the great ships that had gone down, crowded with hundreds of unprepared and unthinking souls, into the cruel bosom of the great ocean; perhaps their unknown fate was to sink in the darkness of the night, crushed in a moment by an iceberg, or, maimed and helpless, battered to pieces and submerged by the angry waves. What a horrible death‐agony must be that of the doomed, who, after the sudden crash of a collision, or battened down in their dark prison in a raging storm, heard the cataract of water roar down the hatchway, greedy to engulf them! For a few moments what fearful struggles would take place in the crowded cabin to mount the bunks and gain the last mouthful of the retiring air, until the flood buried all in the bosom of the deep, in a silence to be broken only by the trumpet of the Judgment Day! Should I, I pondered, in such a dark hour, have the strength of mind or grace of God to lie still on my bed and let the rising water cut short the prayer on my lips, or, hoping against hope, with angrily raging heart die fighting to breathe a few seconds longer the vital air? Of a truth, to die suffocated in the darkness, without a last look at the great vault of heaven, a last breath of the pure air, seemed to me to be to doubly die.

If I suffered some discomfort and perhaps a little anxiety from the occasional anger of the mighty main, it was far more than compensated for by its aspect in its calmer and more peaceful moods. I cannot understand how in a few days voyagers can learn to complain of the monotony of the sea; to me, its different moods in calm and storm, the snowy crests of the dancing waves, the foaming and often phosphorescent wake of the great steamer, and the ever‐changing aspects of the cloud‐laden heavens, were objects of untiring interest. If I had the magic pen of the author of the _Queen of the Air_, I would write a book on the cloud‐scenery of the Atlantic. Never, even in the purest Italian sky or the cloudless heavens above the vast expanse of a Western prairie, have I seen Diana so purely fair, Lucifer so bright, or Aurora clad in such varied garments of purple and rose; such a wonderful vault lined with innumerable flakes of spotless wool left by the dying wind; such masses of cumulus, sometimes as solidly white as Alpine summits, sometimes before the rain‐storm luridly gray‐ black with the gathered water, like the massive bulk of Snowdon seen through a driving rain; and, once or twice, the pall of the thunder‐storm rising over the leeward heaven and advancing towards us, its ragged edge momentarily lit up with the blazing tongues of the lightning, until it rolled over, deafening with its dread artillery and hiding all around in mist and blinding rain. The grandeur of sunset and of sunrise, when not obscured by the mistiness of a moist atmosphere, was indescribable. Every night, with renewed pleasure, we watched the god of day sink beneath the western horizon. Turner, in his wildest dreams of those gorgeous heaven‐ pictures that he had not seen on earth but felt that he would love to see, imagined no greater luxury of gold, carmine, purple, crimson, rose, and rose‐tinged snow, than was afforded by some of the spectacles of the setting sun. One evening still holds my memory entranced: the heavy curtain of dull gray mist that all day had lain low over the sea rolled eastward before the evening breeze; the emerging sun, low on the horizon, dyed the receding masses of cloud with a thousand shades of livid purple; the peaks and shoulders of the eastern range of mountains of dark vapor caught the light, while between them sank valleys and depths more sombre by the contrast. Westward, below the rosy, almost blood‐red sun, ran two long narrow filaments of purple cloud, dark across the glow of the heavens, like bars across a furnace. A few moments, and the shining orb sinks beneath them, fringing their edges with refulgent gold, then falls into a sea of liquid fire. A little longer the crimson hues linger on the eastern curtain of clouds, then grow fainter and fainter, and die away into the gray hues of a moonless night.

Among the five hundred emigrants our good ship carried there were, it is needless to say, many men of different speech, and almost every diversity of occupation and character. Besides the four nations of Great Britain, we had Germans, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians in considerable numbers, a few French, Poles, and Russians, a Levantine Jewess and her children, and a solitary American. With the Teutons my ignorance of their language prevented me holding further converse than to learn their nationality and their destination—generally Illinois, Minnesota, or Wisconsin. Unlike the Irish, with whom New York seemed to fulfil all their notions of America, the Germans and Scandinavians appeared all westward bound, in large parties, organized for agricultural life; and while they were in a considerable minority on the vessel, they formed much the larger proportion of the passengers in the emigrant cars. The amount of their baggage was something prodigious. Nearly all apparently peasants in their native land, they seemed on leaving it to transport everything they possessed except the roof over their heads to their adopted country. What would not break they enclosed in immense bags of ticking and rough canvas, and the residue of their property in arklike chests, the immense weight and sharp iron‐bound corners of which moved the sailors to multiform blasphemy. For my part, I had read so much of the contented prosperity of the peasantry in Norway and Sweden that I speculated not a little as to what cause could lead them to make the long and expensive migration from Christiania or Gottenburg to the so far off shores of the Mississippi.

With the Germans, who came principally from the neighborhood of Mannheim, the case was different. Several of them could speak a little French, nor were they reticent as to the principal cause that led them to desert their fatherland: it was the man tax, levied by the empire of blood and iron on their youth and manhood, that drove them from their farms in the sweet Rhine valley to seek abodes in the new and freer world. Several of them had followed the Bavarian standard under Von Tannen through the hardships and carnage of the Franco‐German war; but to the shrewd sense of the peasant the halo of military glory and the pomp of wide empire meant but conscription and taxation, fields untilled, and wife and children starving, while the blood of father and son was poured out to indite a new page in the gory annals of warlike fame.

By the way, one of them assured us that never in the fiercest time of that deadly strife, even when, in long forced marches, driving Bourbaki’s broken bands through the snows of Jura, had they fared so badly as he did then, to which I may add the experience of an Englishman—whose sinister countenance and shabby attire gave increased weight to his testimony—who averred that we fared little better than in a workhouse and worse than in a jail.

Amongst us there were many mechanics, principally Irish, who were returning from visits to their friends; nor can I omit to chronicle their uniform and emphatic testimony as to the benefit they had received from their emigration. In New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Chicago, they were sure of work, could live and dress comfortably, and lay by a large proportion of their earnings, while in England, and still more in Ireland, they were happy when their earnings kept them in lodging, food, and clothing, and saving was neither thought of nor possible. From what I could learn, the position of the unskilled laborer appeared by no means so bright. The different system of hiring in America made the nominally higher wages more precarious than in the old country; and I suspect that everywhere the untaught man, who, ignorant of any distinct branch of industry, brings only his thews and sinews to market, is, and will ever be, but “a hewer of wood and drawer of water”—an ill‐paid and little valued drudge.

For one class of the Irish emigrants, of whom we had a certain number on board, their countrymen entertained a profound and not unfounded contempt. Youths from Cork or Dublin shops or offices, whom dissipation or misconduct had thrown out of place, or the desire of novelty or adventure had attracted to the New World—unfit for manual labor, and without any special qualification for commerce—their heads were turned with tales of the giddy whirl of New York life, in their notions of which gallantry, whiskey, politics, calico balls, and rowdy patriotism made a curious medley. Their general ambition was to be bar‐tenders, and with some exceptions their usual behavior showed them to be little fitted for any better avocation.

One of the characters that most attracted my attention, though I elicited but little response to my advances from his taciturn nature, was a miner from Montana—a man of short stature but powerful build, with, a determined, weather‐beaten face, and a decidedly sinister squint, who had rambled over the greater part of California, Nevada, Utah, Washington, and Montana, and apparently returned no richer from his wanderings. Having been a seaman before he took to a mountain life, his gait had acquired an indescribably curious mixture of the out‐kneed walk of a man constantly on horseback with the roll of a sailor, while he had, too, a curious habit of involuntarily working the fingers of his right hand as if they held a six‐ shooter. He usually restricted himself to the bachelor society under the whaleback, and, chary of his words, amused himself with an amateur surveillance of the operations of the men, or occasionally exchanged reminiscences in brief sentences with two or three other returned Californians: how he and his mates had killed a grizzly at the foot of Mount Helena; how he had made £1,200 in eight months from a claim in Siskiyou County, and lost it all in working another in El Dorado County, at which he persevered fruitlessly for three years, while the claims on each side brought heavy piles to their workers; how he had seen twenty‐six “road agents” hanged together in Montana; and other tales of far West mining, murder, and debauchery. Once only his hard face relaxed into a laugh at a story he told of two men who quarrelled in a California saloon, and, dodging round the table, while the rest of the company made for the door or skulked behind the beer barrels, emptied their revolvers at each other with no worse effect than one slight scratch. That twelve barrels should go off and no one be killed seemed to be too ridiculous, and his risible faculties overcame him accordingly. Strangely enough, while he spoke with the most hearty enthusiasm as to the pleasures of a mountaineering life, which he declared, with a good horse, a trusty rifle, and staunch mates, was the finest in the world, and to judge from appearances had certainly not made his pile, he never intended to return westward, but was bound for some city of the South. Possibly some episodes in his checkered existence had caused him to bear in mind the shortened career of the twenty‐six road agents with a distinctness that determined his preference for this side of the Rocky Mountains.

The most lively time of the day was the evening after the five o’clock tea; the sailors during the dog‐watches—from four to eight—do not turn in, but remain on deck, and they amused or persecuted the female passengers with a coarse gallantry that generally made the more modest women remain below; the cooks, engineers, and firemen stood at their doors in the deck‐ house and greeted with horse‐banter the passers‐by; while on the open space before the wheel‐house a few couples danced to the music of an accordion, or tried to tire each other out to the whistled tune of an Irish jig. A pair of professional singers, husband and wife, to whose retinue I usually attached myself, used to sit at the door of the saloon and favor us with selections from their repertory, often with a success that brought metallic appreciation from the gentlemen in the neighboring smoking‐room; till after sunset—generally interpreted with extreme liberality—one of the stewards of the after‐steerage literally hunted the women down‐stairs; and then often on fine nights the sailors would cluster round the open hatchway and sing for or banter with their favorites below.

The behavior of the sailors towards the women was the subject of constant complaint by the more respectable of the passengers throughout the voyage; in the evening, no woman without her husband was safe from their persecution, and not always with him at her side; as they stood by each other, and always had the sheath‐knife at their side, the men were not very ready to commence a quarrel with them; if their advances were resented, they were apt to change from coarse good‐humor to the most revolting and obscene abuse. Hence, as I have mentioned, many of the women would not return to the deck after the evening meal. In short, if other steamers are like the one in which we made the passage, no young woman could cross in the steerage without her modesty being daily shocked, and, if she was unprotected, running great risk of actual insult. I have mentioned that the deck bar was at the head of our staircase and consequently near the sailors’ cabin; one night it was broken open and cleared of its contents; whether the culprits were either sought for or detected, I never heard; but certainly the seamen next day were in a state of extreme conviviality: and, under the emboldening influence of liquor, one lively young mariner put his arm round the waist of a very handsome young Englishwoman, whose ladylike dress and appearance had so far prevented her from being molested in this way. A fight between her husband and the delinquent was with difficulty prevented by the bystanders, and the former went to complain to the chief officer; he mustered the watch and read them a lecture on their not interfering with the female passengers, and told the culprit he would hand him over to the authorities at Castle Garden on his arrival at New York, who would certainly send him for six months to prison. The latter did not seem much discomposed at the intimation, and the day I landed in the Empire City he appeared at our boardinghouse on Washington Street in a state of great hilarity and beer, and informed us with much blasphemy that he had cut his connection with the ship.

The emigrant passengers on board our ship suffered much annoyance and discomfort; but I do not hesitate to say that most of our troubles arose from the crew and attendants rather than the arrangements of the ship itself. Much of the accommodation provided—for instance, in the case of the wash‐houses and fresh‐water pumps—was made useless by the negligence or surliness of the men by whom they were controlled; the victuals seemed generally to be of good quality, and, except in the case of the fresh bread and sugar, were provided with lavish if not wasteful abundance, but they were usually carelessly cooked, if not actually uneatable, and served in the roughest and most heedless manner. The crew were a most disorderly set—quarrels were of constant occurrence. I saw two fights—one between the interpreter attached to the after‐steerage and one of the stewards; and another, which took place between the head‐cook and the butcher in the saloon galley; and I heard of several others. The cooks and bakers in the steerage galley were changed once or twice during the voyage, but no change for the better resulted. I attribute this want of anything like discipline or attentiveness to their duties to the constant change of the men on board these steamers; they only sign articles for the run out and home, rarely remaining more than one or two voyages in the ship, and many go the westward voyage merely to get to New York and desert the ship the moment they arrive there. I was told the chief officer called the _milors_ together and promised them, as the ship was short‐handed (she had seven less than her complement of 28 seamen), they should receive £5 10_s._ per month instead of the £4 10_s._ for which they had shipped; but in spite of this, nearly half of them would desert when the ship came to her moorings. The cooks, bakers, and stewards are engaged in the same way, and the consequence is, before they can all be got to understand their positions and work well together, they are paid off and a new set come on board. If the companies could form a permanent staff for their vessels, and go to the same care and expense over their organization as they give to the material equipment of their splendid vessels, an immense change for the better would be effected in the comfort and convenience of the emigrant. As to the distribution of provisions, the passengers might be arranged in messes of ten or twenty, some of whose number would fetch their food from the galley for allotment among themselves, and thus give them an opportunity of eating their meals at table in a more Christianlike and less piggish manner than the majority are at present compelled to do. Nor do I see any great difficulty or additional expense in a different arrangement of the bunks, by which, at the sacrifice of the wide space in the middle of the steerage, they could be grouped on each side of a central table, so that each twenty or thereabouts would form a partially separated room, with its own table and its own mess.

At last, early on the second Sunday morning, the thunderlike roll of the cable paid out over our heads awoke us as the ship came to anchor off Staten Island, and later in the day she moored alongside the company’s wharf in New Jersey. In sight of the promised land, the fatigue and annoyance of the voyage were soon forgotten. A liberal meal of fresh and unusually well‐cooked beef and plum‐duff, eaten undisturbed by the vessel’s motion, made the memory of the disgusting messes we had endured or revolted at less poignant. The entire passengers went on shore in the forenoon, but none of the emigrants were allowed to leave, or any one to come on board the ship. Boatfuls of friends of the passengers came alongside, and the word passed along the deck that Mrs. Brady’s husband or Mary Cahill’s brother was seeking her. Numberless inquiries were shouted as to Mike, or Mary, or the children, until the gray twilight hid the spires and streets of the great city across the river. The chief officer came round early with a lantern, and summarily dismissed all the women below, and all went quietly to rest. Often, I believe, the last night on board the emigrant ship is a scene of wild revelry, if not actual debauchery; but the want of liquor—none was sold after the vessel came to her moorings—and the absence of the fairer sex, effectually quenched any convivial tendencies.