It was "blowing great guns," and the sea was white with foam, when on the ninety-eighth anniversary of Washington's birthday into another world, December 14th, 1867, the steamerEuphrates, of the M. I. Company, left Marseilles. The iron ship was staunch, though not overclean. On the deck were boxed up eight carriages for Turks who had been visiting Paris. The captain amused himself, in hours which ought not to have been those of leisure, with embroidery. After a run through the Sardinian straits, they had clear sea room to Sicily. Stromboli was quiet, but Vesuvius was lively. At Messina they took on coal, oranges, five Americans, and one Englishman. On learning Carleton's plan to travel eastward to San Francisco, the Queen's subject remarked, with surprise:
"There was a time when we Englishmen had the routes of travel pretty much all to ourselves, but I'll be hanged if you Americans haven't crowded us completely off the sidewalk. We can't tie your shoe-strings."
Greece was sighted at sunrise. With Carleton's mental picture of the great naval victory of Navarino, by which the murderous Turk was driven off the sea, rose boyhood's remembrances of the fashionable "Navarino bonnets," with their colossal flaring fronts, with beds of artificial flowers set between brims and cheeks, making rivalry of color amid vast ostentation of bows and ribbon. With his glass, he could discern, at one point upon the hillside, the hut of a hermit, who had discovered that man cannot live upon history alone, but that beans and potatoes are desirable. The practical hermit cultivated a garden.
Arrival at Piræus was at 2A. M.The party of passengers descended the ladder into a boat, and there sat shivering in their shawls, where they were likely to be left to historic meditation until the custom-house opened, except for the well-known fact that silver often conquers steel. One franc, held up before thegaze of a highly important personage possessed of a sword and much atmosphere of authority, secured smiles and welcome to the sacred soil of Greece, immunity from search, and direction to a café where all was warm and comfortable, and from which, in due time, hotel accommodations were secured.
In the city of Pericles, they saw the play of "Antigone" in the theatre of Herod Atticus. On visiting the Parthenon, with its marvellous sculpture, which Turkish soldiers had so often used as a target, they found that the chief inhabitants of the ruin were crows. They met the missionaries who were influential in the making of the new Grecian nation. From Athens they went to Constantinople, whereDr.Cyrus Hamlin, in Robert College, was lighting the beacon of hope for the Christians in the Turkish empire.
Leaving Europe at that end of it on which the Turks have encamped during four centuries, and where they are still blasting and devouring, Carleton visited Africa, the old house of bondage. At Alexandria his first greeting was a cry for bakshish. Within half an hour after landing, most of his childhood'sillusions were dispelled. A drenching rain fell. The delta of the Nile had been turned into one vast cotton field which looked like a mass of snow. The clover was in bloom along the railway to Cairo. In this land of the donkey and of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, he received several practical lessons in the art of comparative swindling, soon learning that in roguery both Christians and the followers of the prophet are one.
In studying his Bible amid the lands which are its best commentary, Carleton concluded that the crossing of the Red Sea by the fugitive slaves from Egypt, over an "underground railway made by the order of God himself," "instead of being in the domain of the miraculous, is under natural law." At Suez, one of the half-way houses of the world, he was amused at the jollity of the Mohammedans, who had just broken their long lenten fast from tobacco and smoke, and who were very happy in their own way.
In thirty hours after leaving Alexandria, the party, now joined byRev.E. B. Webb, had its first view of Palestine,—a sandy shore, low, level as a Western prairie, tufted with palms,green with olives, golden with orange orchards, and away in the distance an outline of gray mountains. Soon, in Jerusalem, he was among the donkeys, dogs, pilgrims, and muleteers. Out on the Mount of Olives and in starlit Bethlehem, by ancient Hebron, and then down to low-lying Jericho and at the Dead Sea, he was refreshing memory and imagination, shedding old fancies and traditions, discriminating as never before between figures of rhetoric and figures of rock and reality, while feeding his faith and cheering his spirit. Then from Jerusalem, after a twenty days' stay, the party rode northward to Shechem, the home of the Samaritan, and over the plain of Esdraelon. There Carleton's military eye revelled in the scene, and he made mind-pictures of the battles fought there during all the centuries. Then, after tarrying at Nazareth and Beyrout, we find him, April 11th, at Suez, on board a steamer for the East.
At Paris he had seen De Lesseps, amid tumultuous applause, receive from NapoleonIII.a gold medal.
Now Carleton was on the steamshipBaroda, moving down the Red Sea, once thought to bean arm of the Indian Ocean, but which we now know to be only a portion of "the great rift valley,"—the longest and deepest and widest trough on the earth's surface, which extends from the base of Mount Lebanon and the Sea of Galilee, through the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, the dried up wadies, the Red Sea, and the chain of lakes and Nyanzas discovered in recent years in the heart of Africa, and extending nearly to Zanzibar. Passing by Great Britain's garrisons, lighthouses, and coaling stations, which guard her pathway to India, Bombay was reached April 27th.
In the interior, in the distressing hot weather of India, Carleton found this the land of punkas, tatties, and odors both sweet and otherwise. He was impressed with the amount of jewelry seen, not in the bazaars, but on the persons of the women. "Through all ages India has swallowed up silver, and the absorption is as great as ever to-day." He was amused at the little men's big heads, covered with a hundred and fifty feet, or more, of turban material, which made so many of them look like exaggerated tulips. He noticed the phenomena of religion, the trees smearedwith paint, the Buddhist caves, the Parsee Towers of Silence, the phallic emblems of nature-worship. Evidently he was not converted to cremation, for he wrote, "The earth is our mother, and it is sweeter to lie on her bosom amid blooming flowers or beneath bending elms and sighing pines in God's Acre." He noticed how rapidly the railways were breaking down caste. "The locomotive, like a ploughshare turning the sward of the prairies, is cutting up a faith whose roots run down deep into bygone ages.... The engine does not turn out for obstructions, such as in former days impeded the car of progress."
Though caste was stronger than the instincts of humanity, this relic of the brutishness of conquest was not allowed to have sway in railway carriages.
Carleton sums up his impressions of the religions of India in this sentence: "The world by wisdom knew not God." He found his preconceived ideas of central India all wrong. Instead of jungles, were plateaus, forest-covered mountains, groves, and bamboo. With the thermometer at 105° in the shade, the woodworkshrunk so that the drivers of the dak or ox-cart wound the spokes of the wheels with straw and kept them wet, so that Carleton noticed them "watering their carriage as well as horses." Whether it was his head that swelled or his hat which shrunk, he found the latter two sizes too small at night. In India, between June and October, little business is done. The demand for cotton, caused by the American war, had set India farmers to growing the bolls over vast areas, but the cost of carriage to the seaboard was so great that new roads had to be built.
"Sahib Coffin" at the garrison towns was amused at both the young British officers, with their airs, and at the old veterans, who were as dignified as mastiffs. Living in the central land of the world's fairy tales, he enjoyed these legends which "give perfume to literature, science, and art." At Allahabad, in the middle of the fort, he saw a pillar forty-two feet high, erected by King Asoka, 250 B. C., bearing an inscription commanding kindness to animals. In one part of India, at the golden pagoda of Benares, he found the monkeys worshipped as gods, or at least honored asdivine servants, while in the North they were pests and thieves, the enemy of the farmer.
Among other hospitalities enjoyed, was a dinner with an American, Mr. C. L. Brown, who represented the Tudor Ice Company, of Boston, and who sold solidified water from Wenham Lake. The piece that clinked in the glass of Carleton, "sparkling and bright in its liquid light," had been harvested in 1865, three years before. He described it as a "piece of imprisoned cold, fragment of a bygone winter," which called up "bright pictures of boys and girls with their rosy cheeks and flashing skates,—a breeze of old associations." At Benares, various root ideas of Hindoo holiness were illustrated, including the linga worship and the passion for motherhood in that strange phallic cult which, from India to Japan, has survived all later forms of religion. In Calcutta, Old India had already been forgotten in the newer and more Christian India. He visited especially the American Union Mission Home, where Miss Louise Hook and Miss Britton were training the girls of India to nobler ideals and possibilities of life. After seeing the school, Carleton wrote: "Theirs is agreat work. Educate the women of India, and we withdraw two hundred millions from gross idolatry. This mighty moral leverage obtained, the whole substratum of society will be raised to a higher level. The mothers of America fought the late war through to its glorious end. They sustained the army by their labor, their sympathy, their heroic devotion. The mothers of India are keeping the idols on their pedestals."
Personal accidents in India were minor and amusing, mostly. Crossing the Bay of Bengal on theClan Alpine, one of England's opium steamers bound to China, a boiler blew up. The "priming" of the iron, the life of the metal, having been burned out in passing from fresh to salt water, was the cause of the trouble. Nineteen persons, eighteen natives and a Scotsman, were killed or badly scalded. Carleton rushed out from his stateroom, amid clouds of steam that made his path nearly invisible, and was happy in finding his wife safe on deck at the stern. At sunset the Christian was given the rites of burial. The dead Hindoos, not being used to religious attentions paid to corpses, were heaved into the sea, and thevoyage continued. This was not the first or the last time that Carleton experienced the sensation of being blown up while on a steamboat.[Back to Content]
At Penang, in the Spice Islands, the verge of the Flowery Kingdom seemed to have been reached. "We might say that that land had bloomed over its own borders, and its blossoms had fallen here.... Nearly the entire population of this island, 125,000 in all, are Chinese." At Singapore, the town of lions, he met an American hunter named Carroll, who lived with the natives and had won fame as a dead shot. Fortunately for humanity, that contests with the aboriginal beasts a possession of this part of the earth, the leonine fathers frequently devour their cubs, else the earth would be overrun with the lions.
Seventeen days on theClan Alpinepassed by, and then, on the 10th of June, the captain pointed out the "Asses' Ears," two black specks on the distant horizon, which gave them theirfirst glimpse of China. On Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Coffin had the pleasure of being told, by the healthy-looking captain of the sampan or boat by which they were to get ashore, that she was "a red-faced foreign devil." This was a Chinese woman, of thirty-five or forty, who commanded the craft. The next day, Sunday, they went to church in sedan-chairs, and sat under the punkas or swinging-fans, which cooled the air. On Monday, while going around with, or calling upon, the missionaries Preston, Kerr, and Parker, the Americans who had a sense of the value of minutes found that the "Chinese are an old people. Their empire is finished, their civilization complete, and time is a drug." The walls of the great Roman Catholic Cathedral, costing over four million dollars, were then but half-way up.
Being a true Christian, without cant or guile, Carleton, as a matter of course, was a warm friend of the missionaries, and always sought them out to visit and cheer them. He rarely became their guest, or accepted hospitality under the roofs either of American consuls or missionaries, lest critics might say his views were colored by the glasses of others. Hewould have his own mind and opinions judicial. Nevertheless, he knew that those who knew the language of the people were good guides and helpers to intelligent impressions. In Shanghai he met Messrs. Yates, Wilson, and Thomson, and, in the Sailors' Chapel,Rev.E. W. Syle, afterwards president of the Asiatic Society of Japan. Carleton noticed that when the collection was taken up among the tars present, the plate, when returned, showed several silver dollars. The travellers went up the Yangtse in a New York built Hudson River steamer, commanded by a Yankee captain from Cape Ann. At Wuchang he called on Bishop Williams, whom he had met in London at the Pan-Anglican council, and who afterwards made so noble record of work in the Mikado's empire.
So far from being appalled at what he saw of the Chinese and their civilization, Carleton noted many things to admire,—their democratic spirit, their competitive civil service examinations, and their reverence for age and parental authority. At the dinners occasionally eaten in a Chinese restaurant, he asked no questions as to whether the animal that furnished the meatbarked, mewed, bellowed, or whinnied, but took the mess in all good conscience.
From the middle of the Sunrise Kingdom, the passage was made on the American Pacific mail-steamerCosta Rica, through a great storm. In those days before lighthouses, the harbor of Nagasaki was reached through a narrow inlet, which captains of ships were sometimes puzzled to find. They steamed under and within easy range of the fifty or more bronze cannon, mounted on platforms under sheds along the cliffs. Except at Shimonoséki, in 1863 and 1864, when floating and fast fortresses, steamers and land-batteries exchanged their shots, to the worsting of the Choshiu clansmen, the military powers of the Japanese had not yet been tested. Accepting the local traditions about the Papists' Hill, or Papenberg, from which, in 1637, the insurgent Christians are said to have been hurled into the sea, Carleton wrote, "The gray cliff, wearing its emerald crown, is an everlasting memorial to the martyr dead."
It was in this harbor that the American commander, James Glynn, in 1849, in the little fourteen-gun brigPreble, gave the imperiousand cruel Japanese of Tycoon times a taste of the lesson they were to learn from McDougall and Pearson. Soon they reached Déshima, the little island which, in Japan's modern history, might well be called its leaven; for here, for over two centuries, the Dutch dispensed those ideas, as well as their books and merchandise, which helped to make the Japan of our day. Carleton's impressions of the Japanese were that they had a more manly physique, and were less mildly tempered, but that they were lower in morals, than the Chinese. The women were especially eager to know the mysteries of crinoline, and anxiously inspected the dress of their foreign sisters.
Japan, in 1868, was in the throes of civil war. The lamp of history at that time was set in a dark lantern, and very few of the foreigners, diplomatic, missionary, or mercantile, then in the islands, had any clear idea of what was going on, or why things were moving as they were. It may be safely said that only a handful of students, who had made themselves familiar with the ancient native records, and with that remarkable body of native literature produced in the first half of this century, could seeclearly through the maze, and explain the origin and meaning of the movement of the great, southern clans and daimios against the Tycoon. It was in reality the assertion of the Mikado's imperial and historic claims to complete supremacy against the Shogun's or lieutenant's long usurpation. It was an expression of nationality against sections. The civil war meant "unite or die." Carleton naturally shared in the general wrong impressions and darkness that prevailed, and neither his letters nor his writing give much light upon the political problem, though his descriptions of the scenery and of the people and their ways make pleasing reading. In reality, even as the first gun against Sumter and the resulting civil war were the results of the clash of antagonistic principles which had been working for centuries, so the uprising and war in Japan in 1868-70, which resulted in national unity, one government, one ruler, one flag, the overthrow of feudalism, the abolition of ancient abuses, and the making of new Japan, resulted from agencies set in motion over a century before. Foreign intercourse and the presence of aliens on the soil gave the occasion, but not the cause, of the nation's re-birth.
The new government already in power at Kioto, under pressure of bigoted Shintoists, revamped the ancient cult of Shinto, making it a political engine. Persecution of the native Christians, who had lived, with their faith uneradicated, on the old soil crimsoned by the blood of their martyr ancestors, had already begun. Carleton found on the steamer going North to Nagasaki one of the French missionaries in Japan, who informed him that at least twenty thousand native Christians were in communication with their spiritual advisers. At sea they met the Japanese steamer named after Sir Harry Parkes, the able and energetic British minister, who was one of the first to understand the situation and to recognize the Mikado. This steamer had left Nagasaki three weeks previously, with four hundred native Christians. These had been tied, bundled, and numbered like so many sticks of firewood, and carried northward to the mountain-crater prisons of Kaga.
Many of these prisoners I afterwards saw. When in Boston I used to talk with Mr. Coffin about Japanese history and politics, and of the honored Guido F. Verbeck, one of the finestof scholars, noblest of missionaries, and best friends of Japan. No one was more amused than Carleton over that mistake, in his letter and book, from hearsay, about "Mr. Verbeck, a Dutchman who is trading there" (Nagasaki).
They passed safely through the straits of Shimonoséki, admiring the caves, the surf, the multitudes of sea-fowl, the silver streams falling down from the heights of Kokura, on the opposite side of Choshiu, and from mountains four thousand feet high, and made beautiful with terraces and shrubbery. Through the narrow strait where the water ran like a mill-race, the steamer ploughed her way. They passed heights not then, as a few years before, dotted numerously with the black muzzles of protruding cannon, nor fortified as they are now with steel domes, heavy masonry, and modern artillery. Here in this strait, in 1863, the gallant David McDougall, in the U. S. corvetteWyoming, performed what was perhaps the most gallant act ever wrought by a single commander in a single ship, in the annals of our navy. Here, in 1864, the United States, in alliance with three European Powers, went to war with oneParrott gun under Lieutenant Pierson on theTa-Kiang.
Like nearly all other first gazers upon the splendid panorama of the Inland Sea, Carleton was enthralled with the ever changing beauty, while interested in the busy marine life. At one time he counted five hundred white wings of the Old Japan's bird of commerce, the junk. At the new city of Hiogo, with the pretty little settlement of Kobé yet in embryo, they spent a happy day, havingDr.W. A. P. Martin to read for them the inscriptions in the Chinese characters on the Shinto temple stones and tablets.
The ship then moved northward, through that wonder river in the ocean, the Kuro-Shiwo, or Black Current, the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, first discovered and described by the American captain, Silas Bent. The great landmarks were clearly visible,—Idzu, with its mountains and port of Shimoda, where Townsend Harris had won the diplomatic victory which opened Japan to foreign residence and commerce; white-hooded Fuji San, looking as chaste and pure as a nun, with her first dress of summer snow; Vries Island, with its columnof gray smoke. Further to the east were the Bonin Islands, first visited by Captain Reuben Coffin, of Nantucket, in the shipTransit, in 1824. When past Saratoga Spit, Webster Isle, and Mississippi Bay, the party stepped ashore at Yokohama, where on the hill was a British regiment in camp. The redcoats had been ordered from India during the dangers consequent upon civil strife, and belonged to the historic Tenth Regiment, which Carleton's grandfather and his fellow patriots had met on Bunker Hill.
It was a keen disappointment to Carleton not to be able to see Tokio, then forbidden to the tourist, because of war's commotion. A heavy battle had been fought July 4, 1868, at Uyéno, of old the place of temples, and now of parks and exhibitions, in the northern part of the city. The Mikado's forces then moved on the strongholds of the rebels at Aidzu, but foreigners knew very little of what was then going on. After a visit to the mediæval capital of the Shoguns, at Kamakura, he took the steamer southward to Nagasaki, and again set his face eastward. He was again a traveller to the Orient, that is, to America. On the homewardsteamer, theColorado, were forty-one first-class passengers, of whom sixteen were going to Europe, taking this new, as it was the nearest and cheapest, way home. Below deck were one thousand Chinese. Before the steamer got out of the harbor it stopped, at the request of Admiral Rowan, and four unhappy deserters were taken off.
The Pacific Ocean was crossed in calm. It seemed but a very few days of pleasant sailing on the great peaceful ocean,—with the days' gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, which hollowed out of the sky caverns upon caverns of light full of color more wonderful than Ali Baba's treasure-chamber, and nights spiritually lovely with the silvery light of moon and stars. On August 15th, 1868, they passed through the Golden Gate, and "Aladdin's palace of the West," the cosmopolitan city of San Francisco, was before their eyes.
Not more wonderful than the things ephemeral and the strange changes going on in the city, wherein were very few old men, but only the young and strong of many nations, were the stabilities of life. Carleton found time to examine and write about education, the libraries,churches, asylums, charities, and the beginnings of literature, science, and art. In one of the schools he found them debating "whether Congress was right in ordering Major Andre to be executed." Lest some might think Carleton lacking in love to "Our Old Home," we quote, "It is neither politic, wise, nor honest to instill into the youthful mind animosity towards England or any other nation, especially for acts committed nearly a century ago."
In his youth he had played the battles of Bunker Hill and Bennington, in which his living ancestors had fought, and of which they had told him,—using the roadside weeds as British soldiers, and sticks, stones, and a cornstalk knife for weapons. In after-life, he often expressed the emphatic opinion that our school histories were viciously planned and written, preserving a spirit that boded no good for the future of our country and the world. In the nineties, he was asked by the Harpers to write a history of the United States for young people. This he hoped to do, correcting prejudices, and emphasizing the moral union between the two nations using English speech;but all too soon the night came when he could not do the work proposed.
Remaining in California over two months, Carleton started eastward in the late autumn over the Central Pacific railway, writing from Salt Lake City what he saw and knew about Mormonism and the polygamy and concubinage there shamefully prevalent. From the town of Argenti, leaving the iron rails, they enjoyed and suffered seven days and nights of staging until smooth iron was entered upon once more. They passed several specimens of what Carleton called "pandemonium on wheels,"—those temporary settlements swarming with gamblers and the worst sort of human beings, male and female. They abode some time in the city of Latter Day Saints. They saw Chicago. "Home Again" was sung before Christmas day. Once more he breathed the salt air of Boston. Carleton wrote a series of letters on "The Science of Travel," showing where, when, and for how much, one could enjoy himself in the various countries and climates in going around the world.
Carleton summed up his impressions after completing the circuit of the globe in declaringthat three aggressive nations, England, Russia, and the United States, were the chief makers of modern history,—America being the greatest teacher of them all, and "our flag the symbol of the world's best hope."[Back to Content]
It was one of the great disappointments of Carleton's life that, on returning from his journey around the world, he was not made, as he had with good reason fully expected to be made, chief editor of theBoston Journal. We need not go into details of the matter, but suffice it to say, that Carleton was not one to waste time in idle regrets. Indeed, his was a character that could be tested by disappointments, which, in his life, were not a few. Instead of bitterness, came the ripened fruit of patience and mellowness of character.
His renewed acquaintance with the region west of the Mississippi, which he had made during his recent trip across the continent, only whetted his appetite for more seeing and knowing of the future seat of America empire. He accepted with pleasure a commission to explorethe promising regions of Minnesota and Dakota, and to give an account especially of the Red River Valley.
Already, in 1858, he had written and published, at his own expense, a pamphlet of twenty-three pages, entitled "The Great Commercial Prize," Boston, A. Williams &Co.It cost him fifty dollars, then a large sum for him, from which the advantage accrued to the nation at large. It was addressed to every American who values the prosperity of his country. It was "An inquiry into the present and prospective commercial position of the United States, and a plea for the immediate construction of a railroad from Missouri River to Puget Sound." It opens with a review of the great events in the world which have had a direct and all-important bearing upon the United States. Hitherto, since the modern mastery of the ocean through the mariner's compass and the science of navigation, the Atlantic had been the domain of sea power. The Pacific was in future to be the scene of greater opportunities and grander commercial developments. With China and Japan entering the brotherhood of nations, and Russia extendingits power towards the Pacific, "five hundred millions of human beings were henceforth to be reached by the hand of civilization." The countries and continents bordering the greatest of oceans were animated with new ideas of progress. On our own western shores, California, Oregon, and Washington were awaiting the touch of industry to yield their riches.
As a reader of the signs of the times, Carleton pointed out the great changes which were to take place in the thoroughfares of trade and travel. Instead of civilization depending for its communication with India, China, and Japan, by passages around the southern capes of the two continents, the paths of water and land traffic were to be directly from China, Russia, and Japan to northern America. Noticing that England had made herself the world's banking-house, he saw that the time had come when the United States (which he believed to be potentially, at least, a larger and a nobler England) must stretch out her left hand, as well as her right, for the grasping of the world's prizes. He pointed out the wonderful openings along the shore, providing harbors at the mouths of the two great river systemson the Pacific Coast, those of the Sacramento and the Columbia.
Carleton urged that "A railroad to Puget Sound, constructed immediately, alone will take the key of the Northwest from the hands of the nations which stand with us in the front rank of power." Important as the railway to San Francisco was, it would not yield the prize. To his vision it was even then perfectly clear, as to all the world it has been since the Chino-Japanese war of 1894-95, that the chief American staple which China and Japan needs is cotton, though machinery, petroleum, and flour are in demand. After giving facts, statistics, and well-wrought arguments, he wrote: "Again we say it is easy for America to lay its hand upon the greatest prize of all times, to make herself the world's workshop,—the world's banker. Shall England or the United States control the northwestern section of the continent and the trade of the Pacific?"
Over a decade later on, in 1869, Carleton revelled in the opportunity of being once more the herald and informer concerning regions ready to welcome the plough, the machine-shop, the home, the church, the school, and the gloriesof civilization. He spent several months mostly in the open air and chiefly on horseback, though often on foot and in vehicles of various descriptions, camping out under the stars, or accepting such rough accommodation as was then afforded in regions where palace cars, elegant hotels, and comfortable homes are now commonplaces. His letters to theJournalwere breezy and sparkling. They diffused the aroma of the Western forests and prairies, while marked with that same wealth of graphic detail, spice of anecdote, lambent humor, and garnish of a conversation which delighted the readers of his correspondence from the army and from the older seats of empire in Asia and in Europe. Carleton's literary photographs were the means of moving many a young and adventurous couple from their homes in the East to the frontier, and of firing the ambition of many a lad and lass to seek their fortune west of the Mississippi. Since California was settled and the Pacific Coast occupied even at scattered points, our frontiers, strange as it may seem, have not been at the eastern or western ends, but on the middle of the country.
After this campaign of correspondence, Carleton returned home and wrote that little book which has been so widely read, both in the East and in the West, entitled "The Seat of Empire." It was published in 1870 by Fields &Co., of Boston. It had eight pages of introduction, with a map of the territory yet to be settled. It was a volume of 232 pages, 16mo, and was illustrated. For many years afterwards, amid the hundreds of letters received from grateful readers of his books, none seemed to give Carleton more pleasure than those from readers who had become settlers. This little book had indeed come to many as a revelation of the promised land. The contagion reached even to Mrs. Coffin's brothers, one of whom, with a nephew of Carleton, became a pioneer farmer in the Red River Valley in Dakota.
Another pathfinder, a literary as well as military pioneer in opening this noble region to civilization, was the warm friend of Carleton and of the writer, General Henry B. Carrington, of the United States regular army, and author of that standard authority, "Battles of the American Revolution." During the CivilWar, General Carrington had been stationed in Indiana, where he was the potent agent in spoiling the treasonable schemes of the Knights of the Golden Circle, and in nobly seconding Governor Morton in holding the State true to the Union. The war over, he served on the Western plains until 1868, and then wrote "Absaraka, the Home of the Crows," which was a score of years afterwards republished under the title of "Absaraka, the Land of Massacre." General Carrington was afterwards one of the active members of Shawmut Church. With his fine scholarly and literary tastes, he made a delightful companion.
Any well-told narrative of the exploration, conquest, and civilization of a country, with a history which has helped to make the pageant and procession of human achievement so rich, is, when fully known, of thrilling interest. How grand is the story of the Aryans in India, of the first historic invaders of Japan, of the Roman advance into northern Europe, of the making of Africa and of western America in our own times! Even the culture-epoch of the North American Indians, as written byLongfellow, in his "Song of Hiawatha," is as fascinating as a fairy tale.
Carleton, believing himself and his country to be "in the foremost files of time" and "the heirs of all the ages," came, saw, and wrote of our empire in the Northwest, with an intoxication of delight. Furthermore, he believed that those who came after him would see vastly more of this part of the earth replenished and subdued. Yet the conquest for which he longed was not to be with blood. His hope and his purpose were intensely ethical and spiritual. His vision was of the triumph of peace, law, order, religion. He urged emigrants looking beyond the Mississippi, or the Rockies, to go in groups, and take with them "the moral atmosphere of their old homes." He advocated the opening of a school the first week and a Sunday school the first Sunday following the arrival of such a colony at its destination. Even a bare, new home, cramped and poor, he suggested, might be to them the type of a better one in more prosperous years, and of the Home beyond, so that, from the beginning, "on Sabbath morning, swelling upward on the air, sweeter than the lay of thelark among the flowers, will ascend the songs of the Sunday school established in their new home. Looking forward with ardent hope of the earthly prosperous years, they would look still beyond to the heavenly, and sing:
'My heavenly home is bright and fair;Nor pain nor death can enter there.'"
In Japan's long and brilliant roll of benefactors and civilizers, no names shine more gloriously than those of the Openers of Mountain paths,—of men, priests or laymen, who, by showing the way, surmounting the dangers and difficulties, revealed and made accessible great spaces of land for home and harvest field. The Hebrew prophet speaks eloquently of those who "raise up the foundation of many generations," and of those called "the restorer of the paths to dwell in." In this glorious company of the world's benefactors, Carleton's name is written indelibly. Even "far-sighted" men deemed the project of a railway to Puget Sound "visionary," when Carleton's pamphlet was published. He lived to see it a reality.[Back to Content]
Steeped in the ancestral lore of New England, a student of the origins of this country, a reader of, and thinker upon, the records of the past, having seen history in its making, and, as it were, in the very furnace and crucibles of war, having traversed the globe along the line of its highest civilizations, having watched at the cradle of our own nobler empire in the great West, Carleton determined to write for the young people of this nation the story of liberty, and of liberty's highest expression, "The American People and Their Government."
It was not a sudden impulse that came to him, it was no accident, but the result of a deliberate purpose. Opportunity and leisure now made the way perfectly clear. He had long been of the opinion that the events of history might be presented vividly to theyouthful mind in a series of pictures. He would portray the experiences of individuals whom the reader has been led to regard as persons, and not merely parts of an army, a church, and a government. He believed this was a better method, with young readers at least, than that usually followed by the majority of writers of history. To form his style, he read and re-read the very best English authors. He studied Burke especially, and ascribed to him the strongest single literary influence he had known. Years afterwards, when (like the swords of the Japanese steel-smiths, Muramasa and Sanémori, which never would rest quietly in their scabbards, but always kept flying out) Carleton's books were nearly always usefully absent from the shelves, the librarian at Dover, New Hampshire, in surprise made criticism to his face of Carleton's own statement about Burke. She remarked to him that she had not thought of Burke as a model for a person intending to write fiction,—referring, doubtless, to "Winning His Way," and "Caleb Krinkle."
Carleton replied that the strong, fine style of the British author gave him the best possiblelesson in presenting a subject. "Whether writing fiction or fact, if the author wished to make and retain an impression on the mind of his reader, let him study Burke." At a particular time, as the chief librarian of a large public library told him, Carleton's books were more largely read than those of any living writer in the world.
"Caleb Krinkle" is a story of American life in which the characters, the habits of thought, and the rich details of daily routine are given with minuteness, accuracy of observation, and genuine sympathy. The landscape is that of New Hampshire, but the outlook is far beyond, for the author's purpose is to sow broadcast the seeds of true dignity, manliness, and republicanism. The hero is a good one, but of no uncommon type.
The young Yankee finds the battle of life hard, but also fights it bravely, and, in good time, conquers. The secondary actor, Dan Dishaway, is a wholly original character, a tin peddler with little education and unpolished manners, but with a loyal heart, and a simple, unconscious character that impressed and influenced the whole village. The teacher ofteachers, to him, was his mother. The very foundation of the story is the value of human character, apart from the accidents of birth or position. The plot develops rapidly, and is illustrated by exciting incidents of river freshets, shipwreck on one of the great lakes, and a prairie fire. Love is shown to be no respecter of persons, but is found faithful, pure, and delicate, in people who never heard of cosmic philosophy, or the term "altruism," who knew not the classics, who went sadly astray in grammar. Without direct preaching, the story shows that the way of the transgressor is hard, and that the hardness is not lessened by worldly prosperity.
The critic quickly notices, however, that Carleton is not so successful in his pictures of city life as those of the country. Nevertheless, in modern days, when the population of Boston consists not of people born there, but chiefly of newcomers from the country, from Canada, or from Europe, Carleton was all the more a helper. An American who has mastered French, even though not perfect in pronunciation, may be a better teacher of it than a native.
Bertha Wayland's success in society, and her Boston life, made a very attractive portion of the book to a large number of readers at rural firesides. For who in New England, and still young, does not hope some day to live in sight of the golden dome? In later years, "Caleb Krinkle" was republished, with some revision and in much handsomer form, as "Dan of Millbrook," by Estes and Lauriat, of Boston.
His next work, which still remains the most popular of all, the one least likely to suffer by the lapse of time, and the last probably to reach oblivion, because it appeals to young Americans in the whole nation, is his "Boys of '76." The first lore to which Carleton listened after his infant lips had learned prayer, and "line upon line, and precept upon precept," from the Bible, was from his soldier grandfathers. These around the open fireplace told the story of Revolutionary marches, and camps, and battles. Nothing could be more real to the open-eyed little boy than the narratives related by the actors themselves, especially when he could ask questions, and get full light and explanation.
For an author who would write on the beginningsof the Revolution, no part of our country is so rich in historic sites, and so superbly equipped with libraries, museums, relics, and memorials, as the valley of the Charles River, in Massachusetts. In this region lies Boston, where not the first, though nearly the first, blood of the Revolution was shed; where were hung for Paul Revere the lantern-beacons; which was first the base of operations against Bunker Hill; and which afterward suffered siege, and served as the outlet for the Tories to Canada, when Howe and his fleet sailed away. Across the river is the battle-road to Lexington, now nobly marked with monumental stones and tablets, and, further on, Lexington itself, with its blood-consecrated green and inscribed boulder, its museum, and its well-marked historic spots. Beyond is Concord, with its bridge, well-site, and bronze minuteman. From the crest of the green mound on Bunker Hill, at Charlestown, rises the granite monument seen from all the country round. Near to Boston, is Cambridge with its university, Washington's elm, and manifold Revolutionary memories; while on the southeast, on the rising ground close athand, and now part of the municipality itself, are Dorchester Heights, once fortified and bristling with cannon. Within easy reach by rail, water, or wheel, are places already magnetic to the tourist and traveller, because their reputations have been richly enlarged by poet, artist, romancer, and historian. Along the coast, or slightly inland, stood the humble homes of the ancestors of Grant and Lincoln, and but a little further to the southeast is the "holy ground" of Plymouth.
Even more important to the historiographer are the amazing treasures of books and records gathered in the twin cities on the Charles, making a wealth of material for American history, unique in the United States. What wonder, then, that the overwhelming majority of American writers of history have wrought here? Nor need we be surprised that, both in their general tone and in the bulk of their writing, they have portrayed less the real history of the United States than the history of New England,—with a glance at parts adjacent and an occasional distant view of regions beyond.
Graphic, powerful, and popular as are Carleton's books, he does not wholly escape thelimitations of his heredity and environment. Generous as he is, and means to be, to other States, nationalities, and sections in the United States, beyond those in the six Eastern States, the student more familiar with the great constructive forces of the Middle, the Southern, and the Western States, who knows the power of Princeton as well as of Harvard, of Dutch as well as of Yankee, without necessarily contesting Carleton's statements of fact, is inclined to discern larger streams of influence, and to give greater credit to sources and developments of power, and to men and institutions west and south of the Hudson River, than does Carleton in his books.
Yet to the millions of his readers, history seemed to be written in a new way. It was different from anything to which they had been accustomed. Peter Parley had, indeed, in his time, created a fresh style of historical narration, which captivated unnumbered readers by its simple and direct method of presenting subjects known in their general outline, but not made of sufficient human or present interest. These works had suited exactly the stage of culture which the majority of young peoplein our country had reached when the Parley books were written. It is doubtful, however, whether those same works would have achieved a like success in the last three decades of this century. Education had been so much improved, schools were so much more general, the development of the press and cheap reading matter was so great, that in the enlargement of view consequent upon the successful issue of the great civil war, a higher order of historical narration was a necessity. He who would win the new generation needed to be neither a professional scholar, a man of research, nor a genius, but he must know human nature well, and be familiar with great national movements, the causes and the channels of power. This equipment, together with a style fashioned, indeed, in the newspaper office, but deepened and enriched by the study of language, of rhetoric, and of masterly literary methods, as seen in the best English prose, made Carleton the elect historian for the new generation, and the educator of the youth of our own and the coming century.
Carleton is a maker of pictures. He turns types into prismatics, and paragraphs into paintings.He lifts the past into the present. The event is seen as though it happened yesterday, and the persons, be they kings or plough-boys, appear as if living to-day. Their hearts, affections, motives, thoughts, are just like those of men and women in our time. Their clothing and way of living may be different, but they are the sort of human beings with which we are acquainted. Better yet, it is not only the men with crowns on their heads, or the women who wear jewelled and embroidered robes, or riders locked up in steel, or men under tonsure or tiara, that did great things and made the world move. Carleton shows how the milk-maid, the wagoner, the blacksmith, the spinster with the distaff, the rower of the boat, the common soldier on foot, the student in his cell, and the peddler with his pack, all had a part in working out the wonderful story.
Had a part, did I say? No, in Carleton's story hehasa part. No writer more frequently and with keener effect uses the historical present. Compare Carleton's straightforward narration and marching chapters with the average British writer of history, and at oncewe see the difference between chroniclers,—who give such enormous space to kings, queens and ecclesiastical and military figureheads, almost to the extent (in the eye of the philosophic student, at least) of caricature,—and this modern scribe, to whom every true man is a sovereign, while a king is no more than a man. While well able to measure personalities and forces, to divine causes, and to discern and emphasize in the foreground of his pictures, even as an artist does, the important figure, yet Carleton is never at a loss to do this because the real hero may be of humble birth or in modest apparel.
In travelling, the little child from the car window will notice many things in the landscape and about the houses passed, belonging to his lowly world of experience, no higher than the top of a yardstick, to which the average adult is blind. Carleton looked with the child's eye over history's field. He brings before the front lights of his stage what will at once catch the attention of the young people, to whom the deeper things of life may be invisible mystery. Yet, Carleton's books are always enjoyable to the mature man, for hediscerns beneath the vivid picturing and simple rhetoric, so pleasing to the child, a practical knowledge and a philosophic depth which shows that the writer is a master of the art of reading men and events as well as of interpreting history.
Mr. Coffin's more serious productions are his arguments before Congressional and State legislative committees; his pamphlets on the labor question, railways, and patents; his addresses before general audiences and gatherings of scientific, commercial, and religiously interested men; his life of Garfield, as well as that of Lincoln; and those voluminous contributions made to the daily or weekly press, and to magazines, and to reviews. Editors often turned to him for that kind of light and knowledge that the public needed when grave issues were before the church, the city, the commonwealth, the nation. In speaking or writing thus, he used a less ornate style, less fervid rhetoric, and spoke or wrote with direct, business-like precision. In a word, he suited his style to the work in hand. But, because he attracted and delighted, while teaching, his young readers, that critic must be blind or unappreciativewho cannot see also the purpose of a master mind. The mature intellect of Carleton which animates and informs the pretty stones, educated also up and on to the nobler heights of historical reading.
Strictly speaking, in the light of the more rigid canons of historical knowledge and the research demanded in our days, and when tested by stern criticism, Mr. Coffin was not a historical scholar of the first order. Nor did he make any such pretension. No one, certainly not himself, would dream of ranging his name in the same line with those of the great masters, Prescott, Motley, Bancroft, or Parkman,—men of wealth and leisure, as well as of ability. He painted his pictures without going into the chemistry of colors, or searching into the mysteries of botany, to be absolutely sure as to the classification of the fibres which made his canvas. His first purpose was to make an impression, and his second, to fix that impression inerasably on the mind. For this, he trusted largely the work of those who had lived before him, and he made diligent and liberal use of materials already accumulated. He would paint his own picture aftermaking the drawings and arranging his tints, perspective, lights, and shadows.
Nevertheless, Mr. Coffin was not a man accustomed to take truth at second hand. His own judgment was singularly sane, and he was not accustomed to receive statements and to devour them unflavored by the salt of criticism. Four years of the pursuit of letters amid arms, while passion was hottest, and men were too excited to care for the exact truth, had trained this cool-headed scribe to critical treatment of rumors and reports. Furthermore, he knew the value of first authorities and of contemporary writers and eye-witnesses. He discounted much of the writing done after the war in controversy, for political ends, for personal vanity, or to cover up damaged reputations. He knew both the heating and the cooling processes of time. I remember when, about 1890, after he had finished making a set of scrap-books of soldiers' letters, reminiscences and newspaper reports of the battles of the war, how heartily he laughed when, with twinkling eyes, he remarked on the tendency of some old soldiers "to remember a good deal that never happened." As his experiencewith the pen deepened, he became more rigid in his requirements as to the quality of the information which his books gave. Those who have read especially his four later volumes on the war, will note that at the end of each chapter he gives the sources of authority for his statements and judgments. In a word, Carleton was a man who, having mapped the irrigated country and the stream's mouth, resolutely set his face towards the fountains to find them. There is an increasing exactness and care in finish, as his works progressed.
The decade from 1870 to 1880 was a busy one for this author, not only in his home study, in the Boston libraries, but also with the pen and with voice. The formation of the Grand Army of the Republic, and the establishments of Posts all over the country, and especially in the Northern States, created a demand for lectures on the war. The soldiers themselves wished to study the great subject as a whole, while their wives and children and friends were only too glad to support the movement for the gathering of Post libraries, or the collection in the town public libraries of books relating to the war. The youngergeneration needed instruction as to causes, as well as to results. Carleton was everywhere a favorite, because of his personality, as well as of his wide and profound acquaintance, from actual observation, of the great movements which consolidated nations.
Years before becoming a war correspondent, Carleton had longed to be an orator who could sway thousands by the magic of his eloquence. More than once, after hearing Edward Everett, Rufus Choate, Wendell Phillips, and such masters of audiences, he would be unable to sleep, so excited was he by what he had heard, and still more by the power evinced in a single mind moving the wills of thousands. In such hours he longed to be a great orator, and thought no sacrifice too great to make in order to achieve success. As his own opportunities for public speaking multiplied, he became a fluent and convincing speaker, with clear ideas, picturesque language, and the power of dramatic antithesis. He had that gift of making pictures to the mind by which a speaker can turn the ears of his auditors into eyes. His tall form, luminous face, impressive sincerity, and contagious earnestness made delighted hearers,especially among the soldiers, who everywhere hailed him as their defender, their faithful historian, and their steadfast friend. To take the hand of Carleton, after his address or lecture, was a privilege for which men and women strove as a high honor, and which children, now grown men and women, remember for a lifetime.
Nevertheless, in the sound judgment of the critic, Carleton would not be reckoned, as he himself knew well, in the front rank of orators. Neither in overmastering grace of person, in power of unction, in magnetic conquest of the mind and will, was he preëminent. When, leaving the flowery meadows of description or rising from the table-land of noble sentiment and inspiring precepts, he attempted to rise in soaring eloquence, his oratorical abilities did not match the grandeur of his thought or the splendor of his diction.
In the course of his career as a speaker, he delivered at least two thousand lectures and addresses on formal occasions, besides unnumbered off hand speeches. Being one of those full men, it was of him that it could be said,Semper paratus. On whatever subject hespoke, he was sure to make it interesting. Besides reports of his addresses and orations in the newspapers, several of the most important have been published in pamphlet form. At the centennial celebration at Boscawen,N. H., on the 4th of July, and at the 45th anniversary of the settlement ofRev.Edward Buxton, at the 50th anniversary of the Historical-Genealogical Society of Boston, and at Nantucket, before the Bostonian Society and at the Congregational Clubs, before Press Associations, Legislative and Congressional Committees, on Social and Labor questions, and at the Congress held in Chicago for the promotion of international commerce between the countries of North and South America, Carleton reached first an audience, and then, through the types, wider circles of readers.[Back to Content]