Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

But in India, diamonds are dug out of the earth, precious stones filtered from streams, and pearls fished from the seas. Every thought of nature is a jewel, and glitters in the sunshine. The beetles are living gems; the orange lizards that peep from under the stones show neck-laces of brilliants. It is the land of peacocks, whose gorgeous eyes repeat in the sunlight all the wonders under ground. No goldsmith can make such dazzling colors as the butterflies carry through the air. So when the Emperor would build a mausoleum to the Pearl of Women, he adorned it with the most splendid gems that ever shone even in that Land of Jewels.

Shah-Jehan had been collecting precious stones all his life; but though he already had a greater number than any one else in the world, he ransacked all countries for more and finer gems to adorn his work.

He brought the most skillful architects from France and Italy. The chief of them was Austin de Bordeaux, named the Jewel-handed.

Seeds planted in the garden round the edifice grew to be tall trees, and children who had watched the levelling of the great platform became middle-aged men and women before the dome was finished. Twenty thousand workmen went home every night, year after year, always telling their families how particular the Emperor was that every stone should be placed right, till at last they grew grey-headed—for it took twenty-two years of hard work to build the tomb.

I cannot tell you how many millions it cost—there are so many different estimates given—it were as easy to tell the majorities on election night. But all agree that it cost an enormous sum.

Nothing interested Shah-Jehan but this tomb of his beautiful wife. It stood on the river Jumna in a garden two-thirds as large as Boston Common, and was surrounded by a red sand-stone wall high as the roof of most houses. The Emperor used to sit in one of the arcades on the inner side of this wall and watch the progress of the building. Careless of the terraced garden with its paths of variegated marble and its eighty fountains throwing diamonds into the air, regardless of the two mosques where Mussulmen go to pray, his eye was always fastened upon the dazzling structure which rose above all and gleamed like a mountain of snow against the blue sky.

At length the Taje Mahal, the “Crown of Edifices,” was completed. Let us visit it. On the side opposite the river we pass the wall through the grand red gate-way. It seems to be ornamented with garlands, but looking closer you observe that what we mistook for flowers are texts from the Koran, the Bible of the Mahommedans. These texts are inlaid in the stone, arranged in graceful lines, and illuminated with colored marbles.

Passing through the garden, an avenue of Italian cypresses shuts us in like a pall, while a voice from the attendant comes out of the darkness, saying: “Close your eyes for a moment; you will not die, but you shall see Heaven.” Emerging from between the trees, we mount to the platform which is raised eighteen feet above the highest garden terrace, and is a square of over three hundred feet, glittering and polished as ice. At each corner and separate from the main building rises a tall slender minaret, through whose open carving appears the circular stairs leading to the top. In the midst we behold the octagonal mausoleum, surmounted by four small cupolas around the central dome, which towers as high as Bunker Hill monument.

Where we stand above the world, everything beneath our feet and around us is made of white marble. There is no tinge of color on the four minarets, but within them the central pile is covered with delicate traceries that look like flowering vines. They are verses from the Koran; every letter is black marble inlaid in the white, and ornamented with jasper, agate, cornelian and lapis-lazuli. When we are told that the whole sacred book is written in this way upon the Taje Mahal, we understand why the work took twenty years.

There is an entrance north, south, east and west. Crossing the threshold of either, we see that the vast interior is divided into several apartments. Beneath each of the four small domes is a separate enclosure. Under the central dome an octagonal space is shut in by colonades roofed with arches. High above you, in the very centre of this great dome, flashes a golden ornament like a constellation of stars. The floor, the walls, the columns, the ceiling, all are of glistening white marble. About seventy-five feet from the floor a carved trellis-work around the base of the dome lights the place, and shows the whole interior to be a mosaic of texts. They are made of black letters; not straight like those in a printed book, but twisted like the tendrils of a vine; and in this central and more sacred chamber, precious stones of every color gleam and sparkle around the words as if from a thorny stem gay flowers had sprung on every side. The buds and leaves look so natural as to deceive the eye. You wonder if the whole building has been decorated for a victory; if those are garlands of evergreens and flowers that cross the arches, drip over the freizes, interlace each other and almost wave in the breeze—and if they are for a Christmas festival?

The great Mogul placed them on these walls, and they are enduring as his love.

You seem to look at banks of snow overspread with wreaths of flowers which the sun, streaming through the high trellised windows, transforms into foaming cataracts falling from the sky, while braided rainbows flash and dance on their waves.

On the floor, under the dome, is an octagonal screen, higher than a tall man, and made of marble as delicately wrought as a veil of lace. It is bordered with lilies, tulips and roses, made of precious stones. Within this screen, beneath the centre of the dome, is a slab of marble six feet in length.

The poor mother covers her darling’s grave with flowers—all she can give; they fade, and she still keeps fresh tokens there. The flowers the great Mogul placed on the grave of his Queen were made of the most costly jewels. The finest rubies that he had searched the world to procure, glowed in a rose near the head, close by an emerald lotus leaf covered with diamond spray. Texts from the Koran, always in black letters, form an inlaid back ground of thorns for the flowers. Mahometans believe these texts make the grave more sacred, and are a charm to preserve it from injury. On the end of the slab next the door are conspicuous the words, “Deliver us from the tribe of unbelievers.”

No royal lady’s brooch was ever of more delicate workmanship than this casket of jewels. It glitters in the marble hall like a clustre of diamonds on a robe of white satin. Sparks of light dart on the screen, kindle the tracery into fire; tongues of flame speak on the floor; points of vivid light live all over the building and transfigure it into glory.

In a vault below this great hall, and just under the precious slab, Queen Moomtazee is buried. A lamp is always burning over her tomb, and a priest, whose white beard falls below his waist, chants from the Koran. A strange echo repeats his voice back and forth in the church above, till it seems to linger in the lofty dome, where an invisible choir whisper his words before they take flight to Heaven.

Shah-Jehan never married again. The tomb for his wife so occupied his thoughts that he did not know that the greatest empire in the world was slipping away from him. The Princess Jehanara kept her promise to her mother. Father and daughter daily laid fresh flowers on the jewelled slab in the Taje Mahal, and the starry roses watched the frail, living ones close their eyes and droop, while their own petals never faded.

The kingly mourner was dethroned by his crafty, cruel son, Aurengzebe, who became Emperor, and imprisoned his father in the very palace from which he used to watch the elephant fights. He had no solace in confinement but his faithful daughter. Every day he looked with infinite longing at the minarets of the mausoleum. He could see the dome which rose high above the grave of his Queen, but he could never lay a flower there. For eight years he could see the outside of his master-piece of architecture, but never again did his eyes behold the jewelled grave, which is the central thought, the heart of the Taje Mahal.

The Moguls no longer rule in the East. The Koh-i-noor, the ransom of a royal captive, belongs to Queen Victoria—the Empress of India.

The different conquerors of that country have destroyed many a marble palace, burnt many a beautiful city; but all of them, even the furious Sepoys, have left unharmed the Taje Mahal—the jewelled wonder, and it stands to-day in its perfect glory—the monument raised by the love of an Eastern despot to his beautiful wife.

A NIGHT WITH PAUL BOYTON.

“TELL me, what was the oddest experience you ever had?” said a friend of mine one day, upon the cars going West.

I had been “spinning yarns” to him, as the sailors say, for the last hundred miles of our journey, concerning a variety of queer happenings met with in the life of a journalistic Free-lance during the past ten years.

“Well, now, that’s a hard question to answer,” said I: “give me five minutes to think. Let’s see—did I ever tell you about my cruise with Paul Boyton?”

Paul Boyton is the man, you know, with the rubber life-saving rig; has rescued lots of people from drowning; floated down most of the rivers of Europe and a good many in this country. My night’s trip with him was about the strangest adventure that I could recall.

I first met Boyton at one of the towns upon the St. John’s river in Florida. We were having a game of billiards together, when some whim prompted me to say:

“Mr. Boyton, I’d like to take a cruise with you sometime.”

To my surprise, and perhaps not exactly to my liking, he at once assented.

“Why, that’s easily done. I always have a spare suit along. We can go to-morrow, if you like.”

Several of my acquaintances were within hearing, and I saw they would have a laugh at my expense if I backed down; so I responded with equal promptitude:

“All right, just count me in; but say, I don’t want to leave from here. The whole town will be down at the wharf watching me floating about like a sick turtle. That would never do.”

“Oh,” said the jolly captain, “I’ll fix that. You shall have a paddle, and when you are tired I’ll tow you; besides, we will start after dark if you want to; we can go down with the tide. It will be running out at a lively rate about then.”

Now I had no notion I would be taken up so suddenly by Captain Boyton; and although I did my best to look happy at the prospect, I am afraid it was a sorry effort.

A man in Texas described to me, once, his feelings after engaging to fight a duel; and I suppose that my sensations and reflections were, during the succeeding twenty-four hours, not unlike his. I lay in bed that night and thought of the watery couch that had been chosen for my next resting-place.

It was a long, very long night, full of forebodings and regrets. In the morning the clerk of the hotel kindly inquired if I wished my effects sent home by express, or detained until my friends could arrive “for the body;” the folks at the breakfast-table rallied me about it; and some of my acquaintances made bets that I would back out. When I went down the main street it seemed as though every one was pointing a finger at me, with a look that said plainly:

“That’s the fellow that’s going to commit suicide to-night!”

It was about half-past six in the evening when we emerged from a building close beside the water, the captain leading, and his victim, as he humorously called me, following close behind, escorted by a single lantern and a group of friends. The lantern cast a gloomy ray out upon the black surface of the river, and gave the two principal figures in their rubber disguises the aspect of some fabled amphibious monsters.

The suits were made in two parts, joined at the waist by a round iron band, over which the rubber-cloth was so well secured as to be quite water-tight. The head was covered by a hood, concealing all but the eyes, mouth, and nose. In the back of the head-piece there was an air-chamber, which, when filled, gave the voyager a very comfortable pillow. Along the sides were two more large air-chambers, and still a couple below, to support the legs.

Just as soon as we were in, or rather _upon_, the water, all sense of trepidation vanished. As the tide drifted us away from the noisy group upon the wharf and into the darkness, I was able to wave my paddle and reply to their repartee right heartily. I felt quite happy at the novelty of the thing; but wait—one of the boys shouts:

“Look out as you pass the point. I saw a big ‘’gator’ there yesterday. Keep towards the middle!”

_Alligators!_ I hadn’t, in all my wild forebodings, taken them into consideration. A _creepy_ sensation pervaded my back and travelled down to my toes. “What if—oh! I wish he hadn’t shouted that,” thought I.

“Well, at any rate the captain’s ahead; they’ll get him first, and maybe I’ll have a chance while they are lunching from him!” So I turned around and remarked casually:

“I guess, Cap. you had better keep a little ahead. You know the way better than I do!”

But somehow the captain had disappeared. I shouted, and paddled rapidly in the direction I supposed him to be. No answer!

“I believe the alligators have got him already,” thought I; and you should have seen the way that paddle went through the water, driving me back toward the distant wharf where the lantern still twinkled. My foot encountered something.

Oh, _horrors_! what a yell I gave! You can wager that brief second will never be forgotten. No, sir! But it was only a stray log; and just then the captain’s merry laugh resounded over the water close at hand, as he came floating toward me, delighted with the success of his trick; and he began to sing a song of his own composing, improvising the music and splashing his paddle in time to his melody:

“I’ll take my sleep on the rolling deep,
Your downy couch let others keep;
My paddle true will guide me through,
My life-garb is better than any canoe;—
Whoop! hurrah! yes, than any canoe!”

The echoes of the refrain died away among the woods of the far opposite shore, startling a brood of wild fowl from their rest in the sedge of the bayou.

Now the captain turned and said, “Let’s give ’em a rocket!”

I have forgotten to tell you that the captain had in tow a miniature craft, which he fondly called _Baby Mine_. It was made of tin, and was altogether a miraculous sort of boat, as I soon discovered, for it held all sorts of things one might want for comfort upon or _in_ the water.

_Baby Mine_ was entirely decked in, having a tin “hatch,” into which the captain put his hand and produced a small lamp, which was fitted to a groove in the bows. This was lighted by means of matches, and a rocket next appeared. The latter was fixed in an upright position upon _Baby Mine_. The captain held the boat with one hand and touched off the rocket with the other.

WHIZ-Z-Z-Z-Z!

And away it sped into the black sky above, and then:

_Bang!_

A myriad of tiny sparkles flew outward and then fell slowly, streaking the sky for a moment with a rainbow of fire. We could see in the pallid light the group that still lingered upon the wharf, half a mile away.

“Now,” said Boyton, “let’s have a little stage effect.”

So he took from the interior of _Baby Mine_ a tin saucer and a wooden float, as well as some powder in a small bottle. He poured a little of the latter upon the dish and set it upon the float. A match was applied to a short fuse. As soon as ignited, the powder cast a brilliant lurid glow over the wavelets, and we seemed to be floating in a literal sea of blood. In the midst of this—shall I ever forget that ludicrous sight?—was the captain, grimacing out of his hood like some horrid satyr, and wagging his two black paws like a great pair of ears. I can’t do the subject justice. Perhaps you may have dreamed of some such personage after taking a late and too hearty supper.

All of this time the captain had been standing upright in the water, head and shoulders out, looking as firm as though he was upon the bottom, although I knew the river must be at least forty feet deep where we were.

“Now you must learn how to stand,” said he; and after a few failures I was able to take an upright position or lie down at will.

The tide had soon carried us beyond the point and its fabled alligators, at which the captain laughed with contempt.

“Look at this knife,” cried he. “I’ve killed _sharks_ with this, and wouldn’t be afraid to try it on an alligator.” He produced a long, peculiar Turkish blade from his belt, and made a lunge at an imaginary saurian.

The moon had now cleared the low-hanging mists of the night, and we could see our course fairly well. Ahead of us we noticed a second point, and oh, listen! out of its reeds there came the sound of some heavy body, and something black moved from the shore. It made an ominous splashing as it came towards us. Even the brave captain, forgetful of his knife and boast, eyed it dubiously. I shook all over; the water seemed to have suddenly become as cold as ice. Just then the captain’s cheerful laugh came like music to my ears.

“That isn’t an alligator;” he whispered, “it’s a darkey in a dug-out. Keep quiet, and we’ll have some fun.”

The captain quickly and silently produced his pan and red fire. We floated like logs on the water until the boatman had almost reached us, and then a sudden and unaccountable blaze sprang out of the waters before his horrified gaze, while two undoubted demons emerged and waved their arms towards him with horrid groans.

It was enough—far more than enough. With a screech of terror the black man sprang from his boat and struck out for shore, uttering dismal entreaties to “good Mister Debbil” not to “ketch him yet,” with every plunge; and despite our calls, he broke through the reeds, clambered up the bank, and was soon lost to hearing in the dense forest.

Sometimes, when I think of it, I wonder if that chap is running yet; but I guess he brought up somewhere, for we heard soon afterwards that there was a great gathering of the negroes, and that one of their speakers had seen a couple of monsters rising out of the waters of the St. John’s, commanding him to tell the people the world was coming to an end.

“Now that was rather lively, hey?” mused the captain; “but I’m sorry we scared him so. I wonder what’s in his boat? We’re pirates now, to all intents and purposes, and may as well take our plunder. A bag of potatoes—no, oranges, just what I wanted. No wonder he ran so—he’s been into one of the groves over there. I wonder if it’s stealing to steal from a thief? Let’s have some supper. I nearly forgot about supper.”

A loose plank was taken from the dug-out, and out of the wonderful depths of _Baby Mine_ emerged the following items:

A quart bottle of cold coffee,
A can of condensed milk,
Some loaf-sugar,
A tin box of cheese,
Four biscuits,
A pot of marmalade,
Some chipped beef,
A half-dozen boiled eggs,
Pickles, pepper and salt,
Spoons,
Knives,
Tin cups,
Etc.

“The company will please sit down, and excuse the holes in the cloth, and not put their elbows on the table,” said the jolly captain, as he held the coffee over the lamp while I ‘set’ the table.

“Now, here we go! What an appetite I’ve got! Don’t lean back in your chair, my boy, one of the legs is gone; you might upset. I wish that chap had stayed. He might have taken tea with us, at least. Halloo! I’ve struck bottom. We’re right in shore. I guess the tide’s about ebb!” and so the merry fellow rattled on, taking a look at his watch, which hung upon some peg in the cabin of _Baby Mine_.

What a surpassingly beautiful place we had drifted into! A cove, surrounded upon three sides by great water oaks that bent their long arms down towards the tide, draped in sad but rich festoons of gray Spanish moss. The pale forms of dead cypress trees, swathed in wild grape-vines, leaned over, and fragrant magnolia branches mingled their dark and glossy leaves through all the fairy tracery of branch and palm, displayed like dark embroidery against the moonlit heavens. How I wished the boys could be there to see us now!

It was altogether the queerest supper I ever swallowed. From the still well-stored depths of the tin boat the captain produced a cigar-case, and presently we reclined at ease upon our aqueous couch, waiting for the tide to run in again. What tales the captain told that night, as we lay there! what recitals of his adventures in other lands; of receptions by monarchs; of his famous voyage down the terrible and mysterious Tagus; of the queer people he met in the Spanish provinces; of his feats in Russia—why! I could fill a book with them.

About two o’clock we found ourselves drifting out into the river again, and were soon making good headway towards home. For an hour we paddled side by side, but my unaccustomed arms began to fail, and then the captain unwound a blue-fish line from a reel and tied it to my foot, so he towed me along; and released from the need of action, I lay upon my snug air-pillow and watched the waning moon.

Just as the early tints began to paint the eastern sky, foretelling the coming of sunrise (will you believe me?), I actually fell asleep.

When I aroused myself it was quite light and we were passing the last point; and there, upon a log, lay stretched out my friend’s alligator, gazing sleepily at us, but never deigning to move.

I wonder if he realized what a dainty meal he might have had!

BOY-DIVERS IN THE RED SEA.

“HERE we are at last, Mr. Ker,” says the captain, as we cast anchor off the coast of Arabia, a little after sunset, about two-thirds down the Red Sea. “It’s too dark to make out much to-night, but you’ll see a rare sight when you come on deck to-morrow morning.”

The worthy captain’s mention of “coming on deck” is doubtless from force of habit, for neither he nor I have been anywhere _but_ on deck for more than a week, except perhaps to look for something which we have left below. Most of my time is spent in the rigging, where what little wind there is may generally be met with; and our table-cloth is spread on the “after-hatch,” while our arrangements for going to bed consist merely of throwing a blanket on the deck, and stretching ourselves upon it, undisturbed save by an occasional scamper of two or three frolicsome rats over our faces.

When I awake the next morning, I find the captain’s promise amply made good. The sun is just rising, and under its golden splendor the broad blue sea stretches westward as far as eye can reach, every ripple tipped with living fire. On the other side extends a sea of another kind—the gray, unending level of the great Arabian desert, melting dimly into the warm dreamy sky. In front, the low white wall of a Turkish fort stands out like an ivory carving against the hot brassy yellow of the sand-hills that line the shore; while all around it are the little cabins of mud-plastered wickerwork that compose the Arab village, looking very much like hampers left behind by some monster picnic. Here and there, through the light green of the shallower water along the shore, a flash of dazzling white, keen and narrow as the edge of a sword, marks the presence of the dangerous coral-reefs among which we have been picking our way for the last three days, with the chance of running aground at any moment.

“You were right, captain,” say I, as the burly skipper rises and stretches his brawny arms, like a bear awaking from its winter nap. “This is a sight worth seeing, indeed.”

“Ah, _this_ ain’t what I meant,” chuckles the captain; “the best o’ the show’s to come yet. Look over yonder—there, just ’twixt the reef and the shore. D’ye see anything in the water?”

“Well, I think I see something swimming—sharks, I suppose.”

“Sharks, eh? Well, _land_-sharks you might call ’em, p’raps. Take my glass and try again.”

The first look through the glass works a startling change. In a moment the swarm of round black spots which I have ignorantly taken for the backs of sharks, are turned into _faces_—the faces of Arab children, and (as I perceive with no little amazement) of very young children too, some of the smallest being apparently not more than five or six years old! Our vessel is certainly not less than a mile from the shore, and the water, shallow as it is, is deep enough at any point to drown the very tallest of these adventurous little “water-babies;” yet they are evidently making for the ship, and that, too, at a speed that will soon bring them alongside of her.

“Are they really coming all this way out without resting?” ask I.

“Bless you, that’s nothing to an Arab!” laughs the captain; “these little darkies are as much at home in the water as on land. I’ve heard folks talk a good deal of the way the South Sea Islanders can swim; but I’ve seen as good swimming here as ever I saw there.”

And now, as the Lilliputian swimmers draw nearer, we begin to hear their shrill cries and elfish laughter; and now they are close enough for their little brown faces, and glittering teeth, and beady black eyes, to be easily distinguished; and now one final stroke of their lean sinewy arms carries them alongside, and the blue water swarms with tiny figures, looking up and waving their hands so eagerly that one might almost expect to hear them call out, “Shine, boss?” and see them produce a brush and a pot of blacking. But instead of that, there is a universal chorus of “_Piastre, Howadji!_” (a penny, my lord!)

“Chuck ’em a copper, and you’ll see something good!” says the captain.

I rummage the few remaining pockets of my tattered white jacket, and at last unearth a Turkish piastre (5 cts.) which I toss into the water. Instantly the smooth bright surface is dappled with a forest of tiny brown toes, all turning upward at once, and down plunge the boy-divers, their supple limbs glancing through the clear water like a shoal of fish.

By this time nearly all the crew are looking over the side, and encouraging the swimmers with lusty shouts; for, used as Jack is to all sorts of queer spectacles, this is one of which he seems never to tire.

“There’s one of ’em got it!”

“No, he ain’t!”

“Yes, he has—I see him a-comin’ up with it!”

“And there’s the others a-tryin’ to take it from him—hold tight, Sambo!”

Sure enough, the successful diver is surrounded by three or four piratical comrades, who are doing their best to snatch away the hard-won coin; but he sticks to it like a man, and as he reaches the surface, holds it up to us triumphantly, and then pops it into his mouth—the only pocket he has got.

But this is a sad mistake on his part. In a moment a crafty companion swims up behind him, and tickles him under the chin. As his mouth opens, out drops the coin into his assailant’s hand, from whom it is instantly snatched by some one else; and a regular bear-fight ensues in the water, which splashes up all around them like a fountain-jet, while their shouts and laughter make the air ring.

“Aren’t they afraid of sharks?” ask I of the captain, who has just increased the confusion tenfold by throwing another copper into the very midst of the screaming throng.

“Not they—they make too much row for any shark to come near _them_. Sharks are mighty easy scared, for all they’re so savage. You’ll never catch ’em coming too near a steamer when she’s goin’—the flappin’ of the screw frightens ’em away. See, there’s two of ’em comin’ along now, and you’ll just see how much the boys’ll care for ’em.”

And, indeed, the sudden uprising of those gaunt black fins, piercing the smooth water as with an unexpected stab, seems to produce no effect whatever upon these fearless urchins, who paddle about as unconcerned the sharks themselves have other business to attend to. A shoal of flying-fish come driving past, glistening like rainbows in the dazzling sunshine as they leap out of the water and fall back again. Instantly one of the “sea-lawyers” dashes at the rear of the column, while the other, wheeling around its front, heads back the fugitives into his comrade’s open jaws; and in this way the two partners contrive to make a very respectable “haul.”

But at this moment the garrison-boat is seen putting off from the shore, with one of the Pasha’s officers in the stern-sheets. At sight of the well-known official flag, our water-babies scatter like wild-fowl, and the next moment all the little black heads are seen bobbing over the shining ripples on their way back to the shore.

ST. BOTOLPH’S TOWN.

LONG time ago, there were in England, as well as in many other countries, certain pious men and women who, for their eminent wisdom, charitable works, or lives of purity and usefulness, came to be called Saints.

Among these was a Saxon monk, the Abbot of Ikanho, St. Botolph by name, who lived about the middle of the seventh century.

Botolph belonged to a noble English family. After having been educated at one of the religious houses in what was then called Belgic Gaul, he came back to England, and begged of King Ethelmund a barren spot on which to build a monastery; and here, on the Witham River, near the eastern coast of England, in what is now called Lincolnshire, he built his priory, and founded a town to which was given the name, St. Botolph’s Town.

Here is what an unknown poet says of it in Longfellow’s _Poems of Places_:

“St. Botolph’s Town!—Hither across the plains
And fens of Lincolnshire, in garb austere,
There came a Saxon monk, and founded here
A priory, pillaged by marauding Danes,
So that thereof no vestige now remains;
Only a name, that spoken loud and clear,
And echoed in another hemisphere,
Survives the sculptured walls and painted panes.
St. Botolph’s Town!—Far over leagues of land
And leagues of sea looks forth its noble tower,
And far around the chiming bells are heard.”

Now as the English people have a queer way of shortening names, as the years go on, that reminds one of the riddle:

“Little Nan Etticoat has a white petticoat
And a red nose.
The longer she stands the shorter she grows.”

In process of time old St. Botolph’s Town became reduced to simply _Boston_.[A]

So now you see that that “echo in another hemisphere” of St. Botolph’s Town is, of course, the name of our own Boston, so called by its early English settlers in memory of the English Boston they had left behind them; though, as those of you who have read Higginson’s History know, it had at first borne the name of Trimountain, because of its three hills; its Indian name having been Mushauwomuck, shortened, English fashion, to Shawmut. Boston school-boys, never forget that the original Indian name meant Free-country, or Free-land!

The name Botolph means “_Boat-help_;” and so, in those old times St. Botolph came to be deemed the patron saint of mariners; and as both Bostons are commercial cities by the sea, it is eminently appropriate that they should bear the old Boat-helper’s name. Perhaps, too, that is why “Simon Kempthorn, Mariner,” in Longfellow’s _New England Tragedy_ of _John Endicott_, cries out, when a fire is kindled in Boston’s Market Place, in the year 1656, to burn the religious books of the persecuted Quakers:

“Rain, rain, rain,
Bones of St. Botolph, and put out this fire!”

(Would not that quotation make a capital motto for a Boston Fire Company!)

The English Boston has a high church-tower, one of the most beautiful in England,

“The loftiest tower of Britain’s isle,
In valley or on steep.”

It resembles the tower of Antwerp Cathedral, and is crowned by a beautiful octagonal lantern, that can be seen forty miles off. It serves, therefore, as a landmark for seamen.

Another poet in _Poems of Places_ says:

“Beneath that lordly tower
A simple chapel stands,
In days long gone it caught the sound
Of Cotton’s earnest tongue.”

For the Reverend John Cotton, one of Boston’s earliest ministers, came from Boston, England; and it is of him that “Norton” says, in the _Tragedy of John Endicott_:

“The lantern of St. Botolph’s ceased to burn
When from the portals of that church he came
To be a burning and a shining light
Here in the wilderness.”

And now I have to tell you of what seems to me a pleasing and surprising coincidence:

In the Catholic calendar each saint has his special day; thus, you know we have St. Valentine’s Day, on Feb. 14th, when you send the pretty valentines; St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th, when our Irish citizens march in processions, “wearing of the green;” St. John’s Day, June 24th, when the Canadians among us make wreaths and garlands of the fresh young maple-leaves, because the maple is the Canadian emblem. Now it so happens that St. Botolph’s Day is, of all days in the year for the American Boston’s patron saint—what do you think? _The Seventeenth of June!_

That Seventeenth of June, when Boston puts on her very best gala dress, when the bells all ring, and the Fire Companies form into processions, and the Military march, and the orators make speeches, and the children sing, and the great organ makes grand patriotic music, and the stars and stripes are flung to the “Boston east-winds,” and the holiday is a jolly day!

Now do not you agree with me that we have found a delightful triple coincidence, in that Boston’s great holiday is Bunker Hill Day; and Bunker Hill Day is the Seventeenth of June; and the Seventeenth of June is old St. Botolph’s Day?

FOOTNOTE:

[A] St. Botolph’s Bridge in Huntingdonshire is now called Bottle-Bride!

SOME QUEER AMERICANS.

THE queerest people in this country, I fancy, live down in the southern part of the Blue Ridge where that magnificent range of mountains passes through the northern parts of both Carolinas and of Georgia. Even their houses are small and queer, and all their tools and machinery of the most primitive description.

The farm-houses through the mountains are made of logs, and, as the weather is not usually very cold, the chinking of mud and chips between the logs is very likely to fall out and be only half replaced, so that in the storms of winter, they must be comfortless abodes; but, as I said, the cold comes mainly in the shape of sudden storms after which there is a warm spell. You remember, that when the stranger asked Kit, the famous “Arkansas Traveller,” why he didn’t patch the hole in his roof, he answered “that it had been so all-fired rainy he couldn’t.”

“But why don’t you now that it doesn’t rain?”

“Because now it don’t leak!” cried Kit triumphantly, and went on with his fiddling.

Well, that is a very good example of the spirit which builds these houses and tries to keep them—not in repair exactly, but at least upright. I am speaking of the ordinary farm-houses in the mountains. Now and then you will see more snug and pretentious ones, but not often even among men who own several hundred acres of land and a large number of cows, horses and sheep. Sometimes they build two log huts pretty close together, and roof over the space between, making an open hall-way or store-shed, where saddles, and dried fruit are hung, and where all sorts of things are placed out of the rain or sun. In nearly every case, too, the roof of the front side of the house is continued out into a broad shed, where benches are placed, and half the household work is done I have often seen the loom upon which they wove their homespun clothes filling up half the space in this broad porch, and shaded by masses of morning glory, Virginia creeper or columbine. A low log house with one of these long-roofed porches reminds one of a man with a slouched hat pulled down over his eyes.

Whether the house is large or small; such as I have described or better than that; you will be sure to see the chimney wholly on the outside. It stands at the end of the house, and is a huge pile of stone set in mortar or perhaps only a conglomerate of sticks and stones and mud, half as wide as the house itself at the base, and then narrowing somewhat to the summit six or eight feet above the gable. The great summer house of Mr. John C. Calhoun, the famous senator who died about twenty years ago, has two of these big outside chimneys made of brick; and this mansion was considered a very grand one in its day.

If you should go inside—and the women and children are very hospitable to strangers—you would find little evidence of what we in the north call comfort. There will be one large room, serving as sitting-room, dining-room and kitchen, nearly one whole side of which will be given up to the vast fireplace which is hollowed into the broad chimney. On the opposite side from the fire, perhaps, will be a little bedroom partitioned off, but often not, and the only other room in the house will be the rough boarded attic overhead, reached by a ladder. Lathing and plastering are hardly known outside the few villages, and carpets are still more rare. A bedstead or two, some splint-bottomed home-made chairs, as straight-backed and uncomfortable as possible, a rough table and some benches complete the furniture. Stoves are not yet known to the mountaineers. They cling to the old-fashioned way of cooking at the open fireplace, hanging the iron pot in which they boil their food over the fire upon a swinging iron arm fixed in the side of the chimney and called a “crane;” or if they want to roast a spare-rib of beef or pork, hanging that by a hook upon the crane, and steadily turning it round until it is evenly done.

Another favorite dish is the hoe-cake or corn-dodger, which is a batter-cake of corn-meal baked before the open fire, or in the bottom of the iron pot. Wheat flour is almost unknown in some of these mountain districts, cornmeal and sorghum molasses wholly taking its place. The mills where it is ground are the most picturesque and seemingly useless affairs. Every mile or so through these rough hills there comes tumbling down a clear and rapid stream, so that water-power is plenty enough for each man to have his own mill, and most of them are essentially home-made. I saw one over near the sources of the Chestatee which from the outside looked far more like a heap of old drifted logs than anything else. The man who ran it built the whole affair himself, with only an axe, a saw and a two-inch auger for tools. The entire running-gear was wooden, yet this mill had stood many years and ground all the corn of the neighborhood. Such machinery is slow and weak of course, but the people who use it have plenty of time. They can’t understand the hurry and anxiety to save time which characterize their more thrifty neighbors who live _in_ the world instead of alongside of it.

A boy who was not born in the mountains, and was used to livelier motions, took some corn to one of these Georgia mills to be ground not long ago, succeeded in waking the miller up, getting the wheel in motion and his grist in the hopper. Then, expecting a long delay, he wandered off. But when he came back his meal was not half ready and he became impatient.

“My chickens—and thar ain’t but two of ’em either—would eat meal faster’n yer mill’ll grind it!”

“How long could they keep it up?” asked the miller.

“Until they starved to death,” replied the smart boy.

This is the only boy, however, whom I ever heard complain of the slowness of life there, for none of them are accustomed to anything faster, except when they are on horseback. Then the young chaps make the road fly from under them, and ride their fine horses with great spirit. On horseback is the usual method of travel, indeed, for the roads over the mountains are exceedingly rough, and to many farms there is hardly any road at all for wheels.

One day we were riding gayly along on a couple of the excellent saddle-horses that are so common among these hills, when we came to the banks of the Etowah river. There was no bridge, and the road led right down to the low banks, and through the amber-clear water we could see the tracks of the wagons which had crossed before us. I had heard of the Etowah many times as one of the most beautiful rivers of Georgia, and I am glad to pass the reputation along. I remembered, also, that in place of the beads of wood, soapstone and various sorts of shell which are dug up as the remains of some Indian girl’s necklace, or red man’s earring, on the banks of this river beads of pure gold had been found. The Indians here were rich—they had golden ornaments instead of shell-wampum; but their gold proved their ruin, for the poor Cherokees were driven away as soon as their wealth was discovered and white men hastened to wash the sands of this troubled river. But I did not set out to describe the gold mines, but only to show why the Etowah particularly interested me, and why I was glad to find it equal to its praise.

However, I was not given much time for quiet delight. On the bank, by the side of the road, sat two lank and rough-looking Georgians with scowls on their faces. As we trotted near they rose up and came to meet us, while one sung out:

“Say, mister, can’t yer set weuns acrost tha’? Weem ben waitin’ hyar I reckon about two hours, and them lazy fellars”—pointing over to where half a dozen men lay stretched out in the sun, smoking, with a small boat drawn up on the beach—“wouldn’t pay no ’tention to our yellin’. Just let go o’ your stirrup will you?”

Evidently he did not propose to lose this chance, for before I could move my foot he had pulled away the stirrup, seized the cantle of the saddle and swung himself behind me, astride my surprised horse. The other man did the same thing by my friend, and there we were, captured by the long arms that reached easily all round our waists, and had several inches to spare.

“Get up,” my passenger shouted, digging his heels into my nag’s flanks in a way that started him into the water with a very sudden splash, and on we went. The river was pretty deep in the middle, but we picked up our feet and got safely across to where the smokers grinned at the trouble their lazy discourtesy had forced upon us, as at a good joke. Then my man skipped off to the ground, and sliding his hand into a ragged pocket, asked with a whine:

“What do you charge?”

I doubt if he had a penny about him, for he seemed greatly relieved when I very quickly assured him he was welcome to his ferriage.

“Do you know who those fellows were?” asked my companion, as we cantered up the gravelly hill; “my man told me that they were both preachers.”

“Preachers!” I said. “I took them for moonshiners at the very least.”

But now and then a vehicle so strange as to bring a laugh upon the faces of even the neighbors will come down from the backwoods. The cart will have only two large heavy wheels, and these alone of all its parts will be shop-made. The massive axle-tree, and pole or shafts and the rough box were made at home—perhaps wholly chopped out with an axe and fastened together with wooden pins. You must not expect to see a horse or a span of horses drawing this odd, unpainted cart—if the owner has horses, he probably considers them worthy of the saddle only—but oxen, or an ox and cow, or only one of either sex; I heard, indeed, of one case where a cow and a donkey were hitched up together, but that was certainly extraordinary. A single cow in the traces makes the funniest picture, I think. The harness will be partly leather, partly rope, perhaps eked out with twisted bark, and from the horns a single thin rope goes back to the driver, who can thus keep his beast awake by frequent jerks. Sometimes when the mountaineer and his wife go to market they place a couple of splint chairs in the cart to sit on, like a small edition of the celebrated Florida “gondola,” but as a rule there is no seat—to make one permanently would be altogether too much trouble,—and the man and his family all huddle together in the bottom of the jolting box.

Until lately these mountain people made nearly all the clothes they wore. They had hand-looms which they built themselves, and it was the occupation of the women at all spare moments to spin the flax or the wool, to dye the yarn and weave the cloth. These looms are just the same rough picturesque old machines that used to be seen all over the country before the Revolution, but which now exist only in some out of the way corners, like this Blue Ridge region. Before the year’s weaving begins the whole house presents a gay appearance, for from every peg and place where they can be hung depend brightly colored hanks of yarn ready for the loom.

The ordinary dress of the men now is this tough homespun dyed butternut color; nearly all the bed-linen and under-clothing, also, of the mountain people, is still made by them. But the women’s calico dresses are bought at the village store and made after very wonderful patterns. The only head dress is the universal Shaker sun-bonnet. On Sundays, however, if some travelling preacher happens along and holds service in the tumble down meeting-house at the four corners, you will see black store clothes of ancient make, while the gayest of ribbons and flaunting feathers bedeck the red-cheeked and happy-hearted lassies. But this happens only once in four weeks or so, for the neighborhoods are too thinly settled and poor to support a steady minister.

Though so far behind the times in all that seems civilized and comfortable, though so ignorant of what is going on in the great world outside of their blue, beautiful mountains, and so utterly unlearned, these mountain people are warm-hearted, generous, independent in thought and faithful to a friend. They know that they are strong of frame, and have a profound contempt for those who live outside in the lowlands, even for those who live anywhere in towns, of the ways of which they know and care nothing at all. What is a man good for, they wonder, who can’t ride a wild colt, or follow easily the trail of a wolf, or even track a bee to its tree? Even the women regard the men of the lower country as effeminate. A hunting party from South Carolina were up at Mt. Jonah one day, when they found themselves being greatly laughed at by a young woman there, who proposed to take the largest of them on her shoulders and then run a foot-race; she said she could beat them all, thus weighted. On another occasion this same girl was seen coming out of a gorge with a rifle in her hand, her sleeves rolled up and her arms covered with blood. Upon being questioned she carelessly replied that she’d “killed a bar jest beyant the Terapin!”

Their ignorance of town ways has been the source of much amusement to city people when occasionally some of the mountain folks stray down to Atlanta or Greenville. There never were any rustics so rural, I believe. It is laughable merely to look at them. What would excite our respect for its strength and honesty on some wild hill-top, only makes them doubly ridiculous in the city’s strange streets. A good story has come down from the old days before railroads, on this point.

A large party of “Hard-shell Baptists” from the Blue Ridge went down to Augusta, in wagons, one August, to buy supplies. While there, one of the brethren lost his head through drinking a glass of brandy which had been mixed with ice and sugar until it was very delicious. On his return home he was dealt with by the church. He freely acknowledged the fault, but said that he had been deceived by the “sweetnin’.” The church council thereupon forgave him easily the wrong of being drunk, but expelled him for the lie he told about having _ice_ in his tumbler, in midsummer, when everybody knew it was colder upon the mountains than down at Augusta, yet there was no ice!

But little by little this old, charmingly ignorant and simple mountain people, are being modernized by the running of railways past, if not through, their mountains, and the increased number of visitors that go to see their bold crags and lovely valleys. The old men and women still cling to their old ways. “’Pars like ’twould take a power to change me,” one dear old lady said to me. But the boys and girls are getting more “peart,” are anxious to learn and see, and are not afraid of a little change. When the Piedmont Air Line proposed to put a branch back into the hills toward the gold diggings around Dahlonega, I heard a mountain family discussing it. The daughter and pride of the household, a gushing damsel of seventeen, put in her opinion:

“Uncle Jim saays if he was to see one of them railroads a cummin’ he’d leave the world and take a saplin’. Dad saays he’d just lie right down flat on the yearth. But I want ’em to come. I’d just set right down on a basket of cohn turned ovah, and clap my hands. I ain’t afraid.”

Then she caught me making a note, as she thought, and instantly begged me to stop.

“Some of these yere folks are right foolish,” she said, half ashamed, “and maybe you’ll make a heap of fun outen ’em; but you must brush ’em up a powerful lot. You musn’t give ’em too much of their nat’l appearance.”

Well, I hope I haven’t!

THE BOY KING OF EGYPT.

YOU have all heard of Rameses the Great, whose noble presence looms up from the black night of ages, majestic, gracious, clear cut, and real almost as the monarchs of to-day.