But the thought comes upon us, that herein is revealed a curious defect of the American mind. It lacks, we contend, the fine perceptive power which belongs to the poet. It can imitate, but cannot make. It does not seize hold upon the distinctive fact of what it looks at, and appropriate that. Our countrymen once could do it. The stern Puritan of New England looked upon the grassy meadows beside the Connecticut, and found them all bubbling with fountains, and called his settlement "Springfield." But the American has lost the elementary uses of his mother tongue. He is perpetually inventing new abstract terms, generalizing with boldness and power and utter contempt of usage. But the rich idiomatic sources of his speech lie too deep for him. They are the glory and the joy of our motherland. You may take up "Bradshaw" and amuse yourself on the wettest day at the dullest inn, nay, even amid the horrors of the railway station, with deciphering the hidden meanings of its lists of names, and form for yourself the gliding panorama of its changing scenery and historic renown. But blank, indeed, is the American transit through Rome, Marcellus, Carthage, Athens, Palmyra, and Geneva; and blessed the relief when the Indian tongue comes musically in to "heal the blows of sound"! And whatever the expectations of the "Great American Poem," the Transatlantic "Divina Commedia" or "Iliad," which the public may entertain, we feel certain they will not be fulfilled in our day. Take Tennyson's "Idyls of the King," and see what beautiful beadrolls of names he can string together from the rough Cornish and Devon coasts. Only out of a poetic-hearted people are poets born. The peasant writes ballads, though scholars and antiquaries collect them. The Hebrew lyric fire blazed in myriad beacons from every landmark. The soil of Palestine is trodden, as it were, with the footsteps of God, so eloquent are its mountains and hamlets with these records of a nation's faith.
But into how much of the love of home do its familiar names enter! And we appeal to the common sense of everybody, whether those we have quoted above are not enough to make a man ashamed of his birthplace. They are the ear-mark of a roving, careless, selfish population, which thinks only of mill-privileges, and never of pleasant meadows,—which has built the ugliest dwellings and the biggest hotels of any nation, save the Calmucks, over whom reigns the Czar. Upon the American soil seem destined to meet and fuse the two great elements of European civilization,—the Latin and the Saxon,—and of these two is our nation blent. But just at present it exhibits the love of glare and finery of the one, without its true and tender taste,—and the sturdy, practical utilitarianism of the other, without its simple-hearted, home-loving poetry. The boy is a great boy,—awkward, ungainly, and in the way; but he has eyes, tongue, feet, and hands to some (future) purpose. And that in good taste, good sense, refinement, and hopeful culture, our big boy has been growing, we hope will be apparent, even in the matter of "calling names," from the pages of the next census.
We have but a word more, in the way of finale. We have not been romancing. Everything we have set down here we have truly looked up there, in the volume furnished by Mr. De Bow. He, not we, must be held answerable for any and all scarce credible names which are found wanting in a local habitation. We have counted duly and truly the fine-printed pages, from which task we pray that the kind Fates may keep the reader.
Yet, if he doubt, and care to explore the original mine whence our specimen petrifactions have been dug, he will find that we have by no means exhausted the supply; and that there are many most curious and suggestive facts, not contained in the statistics or intended by the compiler, which are embraced in the CENSUS REPORTS.
Elemental drifts! Oh, I wish I could impress others as you and the waves have just been impressing me!
As I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life,As I wended the shores I know,As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok,Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,Alone, held by the eternal self of me that threatens to get the betterof me and stifle me,Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,In the ruin, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all theland of the globe.
Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow thoseslender windrows,Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide.
Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me,Paumanok, there and then as I thought the old thought of likenesses,These you presented to me, you fish-shaped island,As I wended the shores I know,As I walked with that eternal self of me, seeking types.
As I wend the shores I know not,As I listen to the dirge, the voices of men and women wrecked,As I inhale the impalpable breezes that set in upon me,As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer,At once I find, the least thing that belongs to me, or that I see ortouch, I know not;I, too, but signify a little washed-up drift,—a few sands and deadleaves to gather,Gather, and merge myself as part of the leaves and drift.
Oh, baffled, lost,Bent to the very earth, here preceding what follows,Terrified with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,Aware now, that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have notonce had the least idea who or what I am,But that before all my insolent poems the real me still standsuntouched, untold, altogether unreached,Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written orshall write,Striking me with insults, till I fall helpless upon the sand!
Oh, I think I have not understood anything,—not a single object,—and that no man ever can!
I think Nature here, in sight of the sea, is taking advantage of me tooppress me,Because I was assuming so much,And because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
You oceans both! You tangible land! Nature!Be not too stern with me,—I submit,—I close with you,—These little shreds shall, indeed, stand for all.
You friable shore, with trails of debris!You fish-shaped island! I take what is underfoot:What is yours is mine, my father!
I, too, Paumanok, I, too, have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been washed on your shores.
I, too, am but a trail of drift and debris,—I, too, leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island!
I throw myself upon your breast, my father!I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,—I hold you so firm, till you answer me something.
Kiss me, my father!Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love!Breathe to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the wondrousmurmuring I envy!For I fear I shall become crazed, if I cannot emulate it, and uttermyself as well as it.
Sea-raff! Torn leaves!Oh, I sing, some day, what you have certainly said to me!
Ebb, ocean of life! (the flow will return,)—Cease not your moaning, you fierce old mother!Endlessly cry for your castaways! Yet fear not, deny not me,—Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I touch you,or gather from you.
I mean tenderly by you,— I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking down where we lead, and following me and mine.
Me and mine!We, loose windrows, little corpses,Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another,From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating,drifted at random,Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the cloud-trumpets,—We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence, spread out beforeyou,—you, up there, walking or sitting,Whoever you are,—we, too, lie in drifts at your feet.
Reader, take down your map, and, starting at the now well-known Isthmus of Panama, run your finger northward along the coast of the Pacific, until, in latitude 13° north, it shall rest on a fine body of water, or rather the "counterfeit presentment" thereof, which projects far into the land, and is designated as the Bay of Fonseca. If your map be of sufficient scale and moderately exact, you will find represented there two gigantic volcanoes, standing like warders at the entrance of this magnificent bay. That on the south is called Coseguina, memorable for its fearful eruption in 1835; that on the north is named Conchagua or Amapala, taller than Coseguina, but long extinct, and covered to its top with verdure. It is remarkable for its regularity of outline and the narrowness of its apex. On this apex, a mere sugar-loaf crown, are avigíaor look-out station, and a signal-staff, whence the approach of vessels is telegraphed to the port of La Union, at the base of the volcano. A rude hut, half-buried in the earth, and loaded down with heavy stones, to prevent it from being blown clean away, or sent rattling down the slopes of the mountain, is occupied by the look-out man,—an old Indian muffled up to his nose; for it is often bitter cold at this elevation, and there is no wood wherewith to make a fire. Were it not for that jar ortinajaofaguardientewhich the old man keeps so snugly in the corner of his burrow, he would have withered up long ago, like the mummies of the Great Saint Bernard.
But I am not going to work up the old man of thevigía; for he was of little consequence on the 10th day of April, 1853, except as a wondering spectator on the top of Conchagua, in a group consisting of an ex-minister of the United States, an officer of the American navy, and an artist from the good city of New York, to whose ready pencil a grateful country owes many of the illustrations of tropical scenery which have of late years lent their interest to popular periodicals and books of adventure. I might have added to this enumeration the tall, dark figure of Dolores, servant and guide; but Dolores, with a good sense which never deserted him, had no sooner disencumbered his shoulders of his load of provisions, than he bestowed himself in the burrow, out of the wind, and possibly not far from theaguardiente.
The utilitarian reader will ask, at once, the motive of this gathering on the top of the volcano of Conchagua, five thousand feet above the sea, wearily attained at no small expenditure of effort and perspiration. Was it love of adventure merely? ambition to do something whereof to brag about to admiring aunts or country cousins? Hardly. The beauty of the wonderful panorama which spreads before the group of strangers is too much neglected, their instruments are too carefully adjusted and noted, and their consultations are far too earnest and protracted, to admit of either supposition. The old man of thevigía, as I have said, was a wondering spectator. He wondered why the eyes of the strangers, glasses as well as eyes, and theodolites as well as glasses, should all be directed across the bay, across the level grounds beyond it, far away to the blue line of the Cordilleras, cutting the clear sky with their serrated outline. He does not observe that deep notch in the great backbone of the continent, as regular as the cleft which the pioneer makes in felling a forest-tree; nor does he observe that the breeze which ripples the waters at the foot of the volcano is the north wind sweeping all the way from the Bay of Honduras through that break in the mountain range, which everywhere else, as far as the eye can reach, presents a high, unbroken barrier to its passage to the Pacific. Yet it is simply to determine the bearings of that notch in the Cordilleras, to fix the positions of the leading features of the intervening country, and to verify the latitude and longitude of the old man's flag-staff itself, as a point of departure for future explorations, that the group of strangers is gathered on the top of Conchagua.
And now, O reader, run your finger due north from the Bay of Fonseca, straight to the Bay of Honduras, and it will pass, in a figurative way, through the notch I have described, and through the pass of which we were in search. You will see, if your map be accurate, that in or near that pass two large rivers have their rise; one, the Humuya, flows almost due north into the Atlantic, and the other, the Goascoran, nearly due south into the Pacific,—together constituting, with the plain of Comayagua, a great transverse valley extending across the continent from sea to sea. Through this valley, commencing at Port Cortés, on the north, and terminating on the Bay of Fonseca on the south, American enterprise and English capital have combined to construct a railway, designed to afford a new, if not a shorter and better route of transit across the continent, between New York and San Francisco, and between Great Britain and Australia.
But when we stood on the top of Conchagua, on the 10th day of April, 1853, the existence of a pass through the mountains, as well as of that great transverse valley of which I have spoken, was only inferentially known. In fact, the whole interior of Honduras was unexplored; its geography was not understood; its scenery had never been described; its towns and cities were scarcely known even by name; and its people lived in almost as profound a seclusion from the world at large as the dwellers on the banks of the Niger and the Zambezi. It is not, however, to bore you, O reader, with all the details of our surveys, nor to bother you with statistics, that I write; for, verily, are not these all set down in a book? But it is rather to amuse you with the incidents of our explorations, our quaint encounters with a quaint people of still quainter manners and habits and with ideas quainter than all, and to present you with a picture of a country and a society interesting equally in themselves and from their strong contrasts with our own,—I say, it is rather with these objects that I invite you, O reader, to join our little party, and participate in the manifold adventures of "HUNTING A PASS."
The port of La Union, our point of departure, is in the little Republic of San Salvador, which, in common with Nicaragua and Honduras, touches on the Bay of Fonseca. It is built near the head of a subordinate bay, of the same name with itself, at the foot of the volcano of Conchagua, which rises between it and the sea, cutting it off from the ocean-breezes, and rendering it, in consequence, comparatively hot and unhealthy. It is a small town, with a population scarcely exceeding fifteen hundred souls; but it is, nevertheless, the most important port of San Salvador. Here, during the season of the great fairs of San Miguel, may be seen vessels of nearly all the maritime nations, —broad-hulled and sleepy-looking ships from the German free-cities, taut American clippers, sturdy English brigs, and even Peruvian and Genoese nondescripts, with crews in red nightcaps.
At this time La Union holds high holiday; itsComandante, content at other times to lounge about in the luxury of a real undress uniform, now puts on his broadcloth and sash, and sustains a sweltering dignity; while all the brown girls of the place, arrayed in their gayest apparel, wage no timorous war on the hearts and pockets of too susceptible skippers. "Ah, me!" exclaimed our landlady, "is it not terrible? Excepting the Señora D. and myself, there is not a married woman in La Union!" "One wouldn't think so," soliloquized theTeniente, as he gazed reflectively into the street, where a dozen naked children, squatting in the sand, disputed the freedom of the highway with a score of lean dogs and bow-backed pigs of voracious appetites.
To me there was nothing specially new in La Union. The three years which had elapsed since my previous visit had not been marked by any great architectural achievement, and although the same effective chain-gang of two convicts seemed still to be occupied with the mole, the advance in that great public work was not perceptible to the eye. My old host and hostess were also the same,—a shade older in appearance, perhaps, but with hearts as warm and hospitalities as lavish as before. Only "La Gringita" had changed from the doe-eyed child of easy confidences into a quiet and somewhat distant girl, full in figure, and with a glance which sometimes betrayed the glow of latent, but as yet unconscious passion. In these sunny climes the bud blossoms and the young fruit ripens in a single day.
With my companions, however, the case was different. TheTenientecould never cease being surprised that the commercial and naval facilities of the splendid bay before us had been so long overlooked. "What a place for a naval station, with its spacious and secure anchorages, abundant water, and facilities for making repairs and obtaining supplies! Why, all the fleets of the globe might assemble here, and never foul spars or come across each other's hawsers! What a site, just in that little bay, for a ship-yard! The bottom is pure sand, and there are full ten fathoms of water within a hundred yards of the shore! And then those high islands protecting the entrance! A fort on that point and a battery over yonder would close in the whole bay, with its five hundred square miles of area, against every invader, and make it as safe as Cronstadt!" But what astonished theTenientemore than anything else was, not that the English had seized the bay in 1849, but that they had ever given it up afterwards. "Bull should certainly abandon his filibustering habits, or else stick to his plunder; the example was a bad one for his offspring!"
And as for H., our artist, he, too, was surprised at all times and about everything. It surprised him "to hear mere children talk Spanish!" To be able to help himself to oranges from the tree without paying for them surprised him; so did the habit of sleeping in hammocks, and the practice of dressing children in the cheap and airy garb of a straw hat and cigar! He was surprised that he should come to see "a real volcano, like that of San Miguel, with real smoke rolling up from its mysterious depths; but what surprised him most was, that they should give him pieces of soap by way of making change in the market, and that he could buy a boat-load of oysters for a shilling!"
As for Don Henrique, who had resided twenty years in Nicaragua, he was only surprised at the surprise of others. He had a quiet, imperturbable contempt for the country and everything in it, was satisfied with a cool corridor and cigar, and had no ambition beyond that of some day returning to Paris. Above all, he was a foe to unnecessary exertion.
The ascent of Conchagua was the most important incident of our stay in La Union, both in the excitements of the scramble and in the satisfactory nature of our observations from its summit. We left the port in the afternoon, with the view of passing the night in the highest hut on the mountain-side, so as to reach the summit early in the morning, and thus secure time for our observations. Doña Maria had given us her own well-trained servant, Dolores, who afterwards became a most important member of our little party; and he was now loaded down with baskets and bottles, while theTeniente, H., and myself undertook the responsible charge of the instruments.
Our path was one seldom travelled, and was exceedingly rough and narrow. Here it would wind down into one of the deep ravines which seam the mountain near its base, and, after following the little stream which trickled at its bottom for a short distance, turn abruptly up the opposite side, and run for a while along a crest or ridge ofscoriæor disintegrated lava, only, however, to plunge into another ravine beyond. And thus alternately scrambling up and down, yet gradually ascending diagonally, we worked our way towards the hut where we were to pass the night. The slopes of the mountain were already in shadow, and the gloom of the dense forests and of the deep ravines was so profound, that we might have persuaded ourselves that night had fallen, had we not heard the cheerful notes of unseen birds that were nestling among the tree-tops. After two hours of ascent, the slope of the mountain became more abrupt and decided, the ravines shallower, and the intervening ridges less elevated. The forest, too, became more open, and the trees smaller and less encumbered with vines, and between them we could catch occasional glimpses of the bay, with its waters golden under the slant rays of the declining sun. Finally we came to a kind of terrace or shelf of the mountain, with here and there little patches of ground, newly cleared, and black from the recent burning of the undergrowth,—the only preparation made by the Indian cultivator for planting his annual maize-crop. He has never heard of a plough; a staff shod with iron, with which he pries a hole in the earth for the reception of the seed, is the only agricultural implement with which he is acquainted. When the young blade appears, he may possibly lop away the tree-sprouts and rank weeds with hismachete: but all the rest he leaves to Nature, and the care of those unseen protectors of the harvest whom he propitiates in the little church of Conehagua by the offering of a candle, and in the depth of the forest, in some secluded spot of ancient sanctity, by libations ofchicha, poured out, with strange dances, at the feet of some rudely sculptured idol which his fathers venerated before him, and which he inwardly believes will come out "all right" in the end, notwithstanding its present disgrace and the Padre's denunciations.
The mountain terrace which we had now reached is three thousand feet above the sea, half a mile long, of varying width, and seems to be the top of some great bed ofscoriæwhich long ago slipped down on an inclined plane of lava to its present level. Whatever its origin, it is certainly a beautiful spot, thinly covered with trees, and carpeted with grass, on which, at the time of our visit, a few cows were grazing, while half a dozen goats gazed at us in motionless surprise from the gray rocks to which they had retreated on our approach. We found the hut in which we were to rest for the night perched on the very edge of the terrace, where it overlooked the whole expanse of the bay, with its high islands and purple shores. At this airy height, and open to every breeze, its inhabitants enjoy a delicious temperature; and I could well understand how it was that Doña Maria, notwithstanding the difficulties of the ascent, often came up here to escape the debilitating heats of the port, and enjoy the magnificent prospect. The dwellers on this mountain-perch consisted of an old man with his two sons and their wives, and a consequent round dozen of children, all of whom gave Dolores the cordial welcome of an old friend, which was reflected on his companions with equal warmth. Our mules were quickly unsaddled and cared for, and our instruments carefully suspended beneath a rough shed of poles covered with branches of trees, which stood before the hut, and answered the purpose of a corridor in keeping off the sun. Here also we chose to swing our hammocks; for the hut itself was none of the largest, and, having but a single room, would require packing more closely than suited our tastes, in order to afford us the narrowest accommodation. It is true, the two Benedicts volunteered to sleep outside with Dolores, and resign the interior to the old man, the women, the children, and the strangers. But theTenientethought there would be scant room, even if we had the whole to ourselves; while H. was overcome by "the indelicacy of the suggestion."
The sunset that evening was one of transcendent beauty, heightened by the thousand-hued reflections from the masses of clouds which had been piling up, all the afternoon, around the distant mountains of Honduras, and which Dolores told us betokened the approach of the rainy season. Bathed in crimson and gold, they shed a glowing haze over the intervening country, and were reproduced in the broad mirror of the bay below us, so that we seemed to be suspended and floating in an Iris-like sea of light and beauty. But night falls rapidly under the tropics; the sunsets are as brief as they are brilliant; and as soon as the sun had sunk below the horizon, the gorgeous colors rapidly faded away, leaving only leaden clouds on the horizon and a sullen body of water at our feet.
A love of music seems to be universal among all classes in Central America, especially among theLadinosor mixed population. And it is scarcely possible to find a house, down to the meanest hut, that does not possess a violin or guitar, or, in default of these, a mandolin, on which one or more of its inmates are able to perform with considerable skill, and often with taste and feeling. The violin, however, is esteemed most highly, and its fortunate possessor cherishes it above wife or children, he keeps it with his white buckskin shoes, red sash, and only embroidered shirt, in the solitary trunk with cyclopean lock and antediluvian key, which goes so far, in Central American economy, to make up the scanty list of domestic furniture. The youngest of our hosts was the owner of one of these instruments, of European manufacture, which had cost him, I dare say, many a load of maize, wearily carried on his naked back down to the port. As the evening advanced, he produced it, with an air of satisfaction, from its secure depository, and, leaning against a friendly tree, gave us a specimen of his skill. It is true, we did not expect much from our swarthy friend, whose only garment was his trousers of cotton cloth, tucked up above his knees; and we were therefore all the more surprised, when, after some preliminary tuning of the instrument, he pressed the bow on its strings with a firm and practised hand, and led us, with masterly touch, through some of the finest melodies of our best operas. Very few amateurs of any country, with all their advantages of instruction, could equal the skill of that poor dweller on the flank of the volcano of Conchagua; none certainly could surpass him in the delicacy and feeling of his execution. H., on whom, as an artist, and himself no mean musician, we had already devolved the task of being enthusiastic and demonstrative over matters of this kind, applauded vehemently, and cried, "Bravo!" and "Encore!" and ended in convincing us of the reality of his delight, by pressing his brandy-flask into the hands of the performer, and urging him to "drink it all, every drop, and then give us another!" Our mountain Paganini, I fear, interpreted the behest too literally; or else H.'s enthusiasm never afterwards rose to so high a pitch; at any rate, he was never known to manifest it in so expansive a manner.
"And where did your friend learn his music?"
He had caught it up, he said, from time to time, as he had floated, with his canoe-load of plantains, chickens, and yucas, around the vessels-of-war that occasionally visit the port; neglecting his traffic, no doubt, in eagerly listening to the music of the bands or the individual performances of the officers. He had had no instructor, except "un pobre Italiano," who came to La Union with an exhibition offantoccini, died there of fever, and was buried like a Christian in the Campo Santo adjoining the church: and Paganini removed his hat reverentially, and made the sign of the cross on his swarthy bosom. And now, most incredulous of readers, are you answered?
During the night we were visited by the first storm of the season, and it opened the flood-gates of the skies right grandly, with booming thunders and blinding lightning, and a dash of rain that came through our imperfect shelter as through a sieve. Driven inside the hut, where we contested the few square feet of bare earthen floor with the pigs and pups of the establishment, we passed a most miserable night, and were glad to rise with the earliest dawn,—ourselves to continue our ascent of the mountain, and our hosts to plant their mountainmilpas, while the ground was yet moist from the midnight rain. They told us that the maize, if put into the earth immediately after the first rain of the season, was always more vigorous and productive than that planted afterwards; why they knew not; but "so it had been told them by their fathers."
The air was deliciously fresh and cool, and the foliage of the trees seemed almost pulsating with life and light under the morning sun, as we bade our hosts "Á Dios!" and resumed our course up the mountain. There was no longer any path, and we had to pick our way as we were able, among blocks of blistered rocks, over fallen trunks of trees, and among gnarled oaks, which soon began to replace the more luxuriant vegetation of the lower slopes. H., dragged from his mule by a scraggy limb, was shocked to find that the first inquiry of his companions was not about the safety of his neck, but of the barometer. At the end of an hour, the ascent becoming every moment more abrupt, we had passed the belt of trees and bushes, and reached the smooth and scoriaceous cone, which, during the rainy season, appears from the bay to be covered with a velvety mantle of green. It was now black and forbidding, from the recent burning of the dry grass orsacate, and so steep as to render direct ascent impossible. I proposed to leave the mules and proceed on foot, but theTenienteentered a solemn protest against anything of the sort:—"If the mules couldn't carry him up, he couldn't go; his family was affected with hereditary palpitation of the heart, and if any one of them suffered more from it than the others, he was the unfortunate victim! Climbing elevations of any kind, and mountains in particular, brought on severe attacks; and we might as well understand, at once, that, if in 'Hunting a Pass' there was any climbing to be done, some one else must do it!" And here I may mention a curious fact, probably hitherto unknown to the faculty, which was developed in our subsequent explorations, namely, that palpitation of the heart is contagious. H. was attacked with it on our third day out, and Don Henrique had formidable symptoms at sight of the merest hillock.
Under the lead of Dolores, by judicious zig-zagging, and by glow and painful advances, we finally reached thevigía,—the mules thoroughly blown, but theTenienteand the instruments safe. The latter were speedily set up, and the observations, which were to exercise so important an influence as a basis for our future operations, satisfactorily made. We found the mountain to be 4860 feet above the sea, barometrical admeasurement, and the flagstaff itself in latitude 13° 18' N. and longitude 87° 45' W. We obtained bearings on nearly all the volcanic cones on the plain of Leon, as also on many of the detached mountain-peaks of Honduras and San Salvador, as the commencement of a system of triangulations which subsequently enabled us to construct the first map of the country at all approximating to accuracy. At noon on the day of our visit, the thermometer marked a temperature of 16° of Fahrenheit below that of the port.
It is a singular circumstance, that Captain Sir Edward Belcher, who surveyed the Bay of Fonseca in 1838, speaks of Conchagua as a mountain exhibiting no evidences of volcanic origin. Apart from its form, which is itself conclusive on that point, its lower slopes are ridged all over with dikes of lava, some of which come down to the water's edge, in rugged, black escarpments. The mountain had two summits: one comparatively broad and rugged, with a huge crater, and a number of smaller vents; and a second and higher one, nearest the bay,—theash-heapof the volcano proper, on which thevigíais erected, and whence our observations were made. This is a sugar-loaf in form, with steep sides, and at its summit scarcely affording standing-room for a dozen horsemen. It is connected with the main part of the mountain by a narrow ridge, barely broad enough for a mule-path, with treeless slopes on either hand, so steep, that, on our return, theTenientepreferred risking an attack of "palpitation" to riding along its crest.
After loosening several large stones from the side of the cone, and watching them bound down the steep declivity, dashing thescoriælike spray before them, and bearing down the dwarf trees in their path like grass beneath the mower's scythe, until they rumbled away with many a crash in the depths of the forest at the base of the mountain, and after making over to the grateful old man of thevigíathe remnants of Doña Maria's profusion in the shape of sandwiches and cold chicken, we commenced our descent, taking the shorter path by which I had descended three years before. It conducted us past the great spring of Yololtoca, to which the Indian girls of thepuebloof Conchagua, three miles distant, still come to get their water, and down the ancient path and over the rocks worn smooth by the naked feet of their mothers and their mothers' mothers, until, at six o'clock in the afternoon, we defiled, tired and hungry, into the sweltering streets of La Union. Oystersad libitum, (which, being translated, means as fast as three men could open them,) one of Doña Maria's best dinners, and a bath in the bay at bedtime calmed our appetites and restored our energies, and we went to sleep with the gratified consciousness that we had successfully taken the first step in the prosecution of our great enterprise.
I have alluded to the oysters of La Union; but I should prove ungrateful indeed, after the manifold delicious repasts which they afforded us, were I to deny them the tribute of a paragraph. It is generally believed that the true oyster of our shores is found nowhere else, or at least only in northern latitudes. But an exception must be made in favor of the waters of the Bay of Fonseca. Here they are found in vast beds, in all the subordinate bays where the streams deposit their sediment, and where, with the rise and fall of the tide, they obtain that alternation of salt and brackish water which seems to be necessary to their perfection. They are the same rough-coated, delicious mollusks as those of our own coasts, and by no means to be degraded by a comparison with the muddy, long-bearded, and, to Christian palates, coppery abominations of the British Islands, which in their flattened shape and scalloped edges seem to betray an impure ancestry,—in point of fact, to be a bad cross between the scallop and the oyster.
At low tide some of the beds are nearly bare, and then the Indians take them up readily with their hands. The ease with which they may be got will appear from the circumstance, that for some time after our arrival we paid but a real (twelve and a half cents) for each canoe-load, of from five to six bushels. The people of La Union seldom use them, and we were therefore able to establish the "ruling rates." They continued at a real a load, until H., with reckless generosity, one day paid our improvised oyster-man two reals for his cargo, who thereupon, appealing to this bad precedent, refused to go out, unless previously assured of receiving the advanced rate. This led to the immediate arrest of H., on an indictment charging him with "wilfully and maliciously combining and conniving with one Juan Sanchez, (colored,) to put up the price of the necessaries of life in La Union, in respect of the indispensable article vulgarly known asostrea Virginiana, but in the language of the law and of science designated as oysters." On this indictment he was summarily tried, and, in consequence of aggravating his offence by an attempt at exculpation, was condemned to suffer the full penalties of the law, in such cases provided, namely, "to pay the entire cost of all the oysters that might thenceforth be consumed by the prosecuting parties and the court, and, at eleven o'clock, past meridian, to be taken from his bed, thence to the extremity of the mole, and thereinducted." Which sentence was carried into rigorous execution. Nor was he allowed to resume his former rank in the party, until, by a masterly piece of diplomacy, he organized an opposition oyster-boat, and a consequent competition, which soon brought Juan Sanchez to terms, and oysters to their just market-value.
That the aboriginal dwellers around the Bay of Fonseca appreciated its conchological treasures, we had afterwards ample evidence; for at many places on its islands and shores we found vast heaps of oyster-shells, which seemed to have been piled up as reverent reminiscences of the satisfaction which their contents had afforded.
During my previous visit to La Union, in March, 1850, I had observed that the north winds, which prevail during that month in the Bay of Honduras, sometimes sweep entirely across the continent with such force as to raise a considerable sea in the Bay of Fonseca. I thence inferred that there must exist a pass or break in the great mountain-range of the Cordilleras, through which the wind could have an uninterrupted or but partially interrupted sweep. This was confirmed by the fact that the current of air which reached the bay was narrow, affecting only a width of about ten or twelve miles. This circumstance impressed me at that time only as indicating a remarkable topographical feature of the country; but afterwards, when the impracticability of a canal at Nicaragua and the deficiencies in respect of ports for a railway at Tehuantepec had become established, I was led to reflect upon it in connection with a plan for inter-oceanic communication by railway through Honduras; and, as explained in the introduction, we were now here to test the accuracy of my previous conclusions. Our observations at the top of Conchagua had signally confirmed them.
We could distinctly make out the existence of a great valley extending due north, and our glasses revealed a marked depression in the Cordilleras, which in all the maps were represented as maintaining here the character of a high, unbroken range. Of course no such valley as opened before us could exist without a considerable stream flowing through it. But the maps showed neither valley nor river. This circumstance did not, however, discourage us; for my former travels and explorations in Nicaragua had shown me, that, notwithstanding the country had occupied the attention of geographers for more than three centuries, in connection with a project for a canal between the oceans, its leading and most obvious physical features were still either grossly misconceived or utterly unknown.
The leading fact of the existence of some kind of a pass having been sufficiently established by our observations from Conchagua, we next set to work to obtain such information from the natives as might assist our further proceedings. This was a tedious task, and called for the exercise of all our patience; for it is impossible to convey in language an adequate idea of the abject ignorance of most of the inhabitants of Central America concerning its geography and topographical features. Those who would naturally be supposed to be best informed, the priests, merchants, and lawyers, are really the most ignorant, and it is only from thearrieros, or muleteers, and thecorreos, or runners, that any knowledge of this kind can be obtained, and then only in a very confused form, and with most preposterous and contradictory estimates of distances and elevations.
We nevertheless made out that the mouth of a river orestero, laid down in Sir Edward Belcher's chart, on the opposite side of the bay in front of La Union, was really that of the river Goascoran, a considerable stream having its rise at a point due north, and not far from Comayagua, the capital of Honduras, which, we also ascertained, was seated in the midst of a great plain, bearing the same name. A large stream, it was said, flowed past that city,—but whether the Goascoran or some other, or whether it flowed north or south, neitherarrieronorcorreocould tell.
The navigability of the Goascoran was also a doubtful question. According to some, it could be forded everywhere; others declared it impassable for many leagues above its mouth: a discrepancy which we were able to reconcile by reference to its probable state at different seasons of the year.
Fixing an early day for taking the field in earnest, and leaving H. and Don Henrique to make the necessary preparations, I improved the interval, in company with Lieutenant J., in making a boat exploration of the Goascoran. Obtaining a ship's gig, with two oarsmen and a supply of provisions, we left La Union at dawn on the 15th of April. We found that the river enters the bay by a number of channels, through low grounds covered with mangrove-trees. It was at half-tide, and we experienced no difficulty in entering. Our course at first was tortuous, and it seemed as if the river had lost itself in a labyrinth of channels, and we were ourselves much confused with regard to our true direction. Keeping, however, in the strongest current, at the end of half an hour we penetrated beyond the little delta of the river, and the belt of mangroves, to firm ground. Here the stream was confined to a single channel two hundred yards broad, with banks of clay and loam from six to ten feet high. The lands back appeared to be level, and, although well covered with ordinary forest-trees, were apparently subject to overflow. We observed cattle in several grassy openings, and here and there avaquero'shut of branches; for it is a general practice of thehacienderosto drive down their herds to the low grounds of the coasts and rivers, during the dry season, and as soon as the grass on the hills or highlands begins to grow sere and yellow. We observed also occasional heaps of oyster-shells on the banks, or half washed away by the river; and on the sand-spits at the bends of the stream, and in all the little shady nooks of the shore, we saw thousands of water-fowl, ducks of almost every variety, including the heavy muscovy and the lively teal; and there were flocks of white and crimson ibises, and solitary, long-legged, contemplative cranes, and gluttonous pelicans; while myriads of screaming curlews scampered along the line of the receding tide to snap up imprudent snails and the numerous minutecrustaceæwhich drift about in these brackish waters. The familiar kingfisher was also there, coming down with an occasional arrowy dash on some unsuspecting minnow, and then flapping away leisurely for a quiet meal in the shady recesses of a neighboring tree.
We fired on a flock of ducks, killing a number and wounding others, all of which we secured except one which struggled away into an eddy under the bank. We pushed in, and my hand was extended to pick him up, when a slimy, corrugated head, with distended jaws and formidable teeth, rose to the surface before me, paused an instant, then shot forward, and, closing on the wounded bird, disappeared. The whole was done so quickly as to escape the notice of my companions, who would hardly believe me when I told them that we had been robbed by an alligator. We lost a duck, but gained an admonition; and I scarcely need add that our half-formed purpose of taking a bath in the next cool bend of the river was abandoned.
When the tide had run out, we were able to form a better notion of the river. We found, that, although near the end of the dry season, it was still a fine stream, with a large body of water, but spread over so wide a channel as to preclude anything like useful navigation, except with artificial aids. In places it was so shallow that our little boat found difficulty in advancing. But this did not disappoint us; for nothing like a mixed transit with transhipments had ever entered into my plan, which looked only to an unbroken connection by rail from one sea to the other. At four o'clock, satisfied that no useful purpose could be effected by going farther up the stream, we stopped at a collection of huts called Las Sandías,—not inappropriately, for the whole sloping bank of the river, which here appeared to be little better than a barren sand-bed, was covered, for a quarter of a mile, with a luxuriant crop of water- and musk-melons, now in their perfection. We purchased as many as we could carry off for areal. They were full, rich, and juicy, and proved to be a grateful restorative, after our day's exposure to the direct rays of the sun, and their scarcely less supportable reflection from the water. The melon-patch of Las Sandías is overflowed daring the rainy season, and probably the apparently bare, sandy surface hides rich deposits of soil below.
We found the stream here alive with an active and apparently voracious fish, varying in length from fourteen to twenty inches, reddish in color, and closely resembling the Snapper of the Atlantic coast of Central America. The male inhabitants of Las Sandías were occupied in catching these fishes with hand-nets, in the rifts and currents; and the women were busy in cleaning and drying them. Their offal had accumulated around the huts in offensive heaps, and gave out an odor which was almost insupportable, but of which the women appeared to take no notice. We did not, therefore, trespass long on their hospitality, but returned to our boat and started back to La Union. As night came on, the trees along the river's bank were thronged withchachalacas, which almost deafened us with their querulous screams. Two well-directed shots gave us half a dozen,—for the youngchachalacais not to be despised on the table,—and we added them to our stock of water-fowls and melons as tempting trophies to our companions from the new Canaan on which they were venturing.
[To be continued.]
The acceptance of a doctrine is often out of all proportion to the authority that fortifies it. There are sweeps of generalization quite permeable to objection, which yet find metaphysical support; there are irrefragable dogmas which the mind drops as futile and fruitless. It is recorded of Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, that it found reception from no physician then over forty years old. We believe the splendid nebular construction of Laplace has its own difficulties; yet what noble or aspiring mind does not find interior warranties for the truth of that audacious synthesis? Is it that the soul darts responsive impartments to the heavens? that the whirl is elemental in the mind? that baffling intervals stretch deeper within us, and shoals of stars with no parallax appear?
Among the functions of Science, then, may well be included its power as a metre of the intellectual advance of mankind. In these splendid symbols man writes the record of his advancing humanity. How all is interwoven with the All! A petrified national mind will certainly appear in a petrified national Science. And that sublime upsurging from the depths of human nature which came with the last half of the eighteenth century appeared not alone in the new political and social aspirations, but in a fresh insight into Nature. This spirit manifested itself in the new sciences that sprang from the new modes of vision,—Magnetism, Electricity, Chemistry,—the old crystalline spell departing before a dynamical system of Physics, before the thought of the universe as a living organic whole. And what provokers does the discovery of the celestial circles bring to new circles of politics and social life!
The illustrations of Astronomy to this thought are very large. First of the sciences to assume a perfectly rational form, it presents the eternal type of the unfolding of the speculative spirit of man. This springs, no doubt, from the essentially subjective character of astronomy,—more than all the other sciences a construction of the creative reason. From the initiative of scientific astronomy, when the early Greek geometers referred the apparent diurnal movements to geometrical laws, to the creation of the nebular hypothesis, the logical filiation of the leading astronomical conceptions obeys corresponding tidal movements in humanity. Thus it is that
"through the ages one increasing purposerunsAnd the thoughts of men are widened with theprocess of the suns."
It was for reasons the Ptolemaic system so long held its sway. It was for reasons it went, too, when it did, hideous and oppressive nightmare! The celestial revelations of the sixteenth century came as the necessary complement of the new mental firmaments then dawning on the thought of man. The intellectual revolution caused by the discovery of the double motion of our planet was undoubtedly the mightiest that man had ever experienced, and its effect was to change the entire aspect of his speculative and practical activity. What a proof that ideas rule the world! Two hundred and fifty years ago, certain new sidereal conceptions arose in the minds of half a dozen philosophers, (isolated and utterly destitute of political or social influence, powerful only in the possession of a sublime and seminal thought,)—conceptions which, during these two centuries, have succeeded in overthrowing a doctrine as old as the human mind, closely interknit with the entire texture of opinions, authority, politics, and religion, and establishing a theory flatly contradicted by the universal dictates of experience and common sense, and true only to the transcendental and interpretative Reason!
At the advent of Modern Astronomy, the apparition of the German, John Kepler, presents itself. Familiarly associated in general apprehension with that inductive triad known as "Kepler's Laws," which form the foundation of Celestial Geometry, it is much less generally known that he was an august and oracular soul, one of those called Mystics and Transcendentalists, perhaps the greatest genius for analogy that ever lived,—that he led a truly epic life, a hero and helper of men, a divine martyr of humanity.
The labors of Kepler were mathematical, optical, cosmographical, and astronomical,—but chiefly astronomical. Two or three of his principal works are the "Cosmographic Mystery," (Mysterium Cosmographicum,) the "New Astronomy," (Astronomia Nova, seu Physica Caelestis,) and the "Harmonies of the World" (Harmonices Mundi). His whole published works comprise some thirty or forty volumes, while twenty folio volumes of manuscript lie in the Library at St. Petersburg. These Euler, Lexell, and Kraft undertook some years ago to examine and publish, but the result of this examination has never appeared. An elegant complete edition of the works of Kepler is at present being issued at Frankfort, under the editorship of Frisch.[1] It is to be in sixteen volumes, 8vo, two of which are published. For his biography, the chief source is the folio volume of Correspondence, published in 1718, by Hansch,[2] who has prefixed to these letters between Kepler and his contemporaries a Life, in which his German heartiness beats even through the marble encasement of his Latinity.
[Footnote 1:Joannis Kepleri Astronomi Opera Omnia.Edidit CH.FRISCH.]
[Footnote 2:Epistolae ad Joannem Keplerum scriptae.MICHAEL GOTTLIEBHANSCHIUS. Lipsiae, 1718.]
We have always admired, as a stroke of wit, the way Hansch takes to indicate Kepler's birthplace. Disdaining to use any but mathematical symbols for so great a mathematician, he writes that he was born on the 21st of December, 1571, in longitude 29° 7', latitude 48° 54'! It may be worth mentioning, that on this cryptic spot stood the little town of Weil in the Duchy of Würtemberg. His birth was cast at a time when his parents were reduced to great poverty, and he received very little early schooling. He was, however, sent to Tübingen, and here he pursued the scholastic studies of the age, designing for the Church. But the old eternal creed-questionings arose in his mind. He stumbled at the omnipresence of Christ's body, wrote a Latin poem against it, and, when he had completed his studies, got for atestimoniumthat he had distinguished himself by his oratorical talents, but was considered unfit to be a fellow-laborer in the Church of Würtemberg. A larger priesthood awaited him.
The astronomical lectureship at the University of Grätz, in Styria, falling vacant, Kepler was in his twenty-third year appointed to fill it. He was, as he tells us, "better furnished with talent than knowledge." But, no doubt, things had conspired to forward him. While at Tübingen, under the mathematician Mästlin, he had eagerly seized all the hints his master threw out of the doctrines of Copernicus, integrating them with interior authorities of his own. "The motion of the earth, which Copernicus had proved by mathematical reasons, I wanted to prove by physical, or, if you prefer it, metaphysical reasons." So he wrote in his "Prodromus Dissertationum Cosmographicarum," which he published two years after going to Grätz, that is, in his twenty-fifth year. In this book his fiery and mystical spirit first found expression, flaming forth in meteoric coruscations. The problem which Kepler attempted to solve in the "Prodromus" was no less than the determination of the harmonic relations of the distances of the planets, which it was given him to solve more than twenty years afterwards. The hypothesis which he adopted proved utterly fallacious; but his primal intuition, that numerical and geometric relations connect the velocities, periods, and distances of the planets, was none the less fruitful and sublime.
Of the facts of Kepler's external life, we may simply say, for the sake of readier apprehension, that, after remaining six years at Grätz, he, in 1600, on the invitation of Tycho Brahe, Astronomer Royal to Rodolph II. of Germany, removed to Prague and associated himself with Tycho, who shortly afterwards dying, Kepler was appointed in his place. The chief work was the construction of the new astronomical tables called the Rodolphine Tables, and on these he was engaged many years. In this situation he continued till 1613, when he left it to assume a professorship at Linz. Here he remained some years, and the latter part of his life was spent as astrologer to Wallenstein. Kepler is described as small and meagre of person, and he speaks of himself as "troublesome and choleric in politics and domestic matters." He was twice married, and left a wife and numerous children ill-provided for.
Indeed, a painful and perturbed life fell to the lot of Kepler. The most crushing poverty all his life oppressed him. For, though his nominal salary as Astronomer Royal was large enough, yet the treasury was so exhausted that it was impossible for him ever to obtain more than a pittance. What a sad tragedy do these words, in a letter to Mästlin, reveal:—"I stand whole days in the antechamber, and am nought for study." And then he adds the sublime compensation: "I keep up my spirits, however, with the thought that I serve, not the Emperor alone, but the whole human race,—that I am laboring not merely for the present generation, but for posterity. If God stand by me and look to the victuals, I hope to perform something yet." Eternal type of the consolation which the consciousness of truth brings with it, his ejaculation on the discovery of his third law remains one of the sublimest utterances of the human mind:—"The die is cast; the book is written,—to be read now or by posterity, I care not which: it may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer!" Cast in a stormy and chaotic age, he was persecuted by both Protestants and Catholics on account of the purity and elevation of his religious ideas; and from the disclosures of Baron von Breitschwert [1] it seems, that, in the midst of his sublimest labors, he spent five years in the defence of his poor old mother against a charge of witchcraft. He died in 1630, in his sixtieth year, (with the prospect of starvation before him,) of a fever which he caught when on a journey to Ratisbon, whither he had gone in the attempt to get part of his pay!
[Footnote 1:Johann Keppler's Leben und Wirken: nach neuerlich aufgefundenen Manuscripten bearbeitet.Stuttgart, 1813.]
In what bewildering and hampering environment he found himself with the "Tübingen doctors" and the "Würtemberg divines," his letters reveal. On the publication of the "Prodromus," Hafenreffer wrote to warn him:—"God forbid you should endeavor to bring your hypothesis openly into argument with the Holy Scriptures! I require of you to treat the subject merely as a mathematician, and to leave the peace of the Church undisturbed." To the Tübingen doctors he replied:—"The Bible speaks to me of things belonging to human life as men are used to speak of them. It is no manual of Optics or of Astronomy; it has a higher object in view. It is a culpable misuse of it to seek in it for answers on worldly things. Joshua wished for the day to be lengthened. God hearkened to his wish. How? This is not to be inquired after." And surely the long-vexed argument has never since unfolded better statement than in the words of Kepler:—"The day will soon break when pious simplicity will be ashamed of its blind superstition,—when men will recognize truth in the book of Nature as well as in the Holy Scriptures, and rejoice in the two revelations." [1]
[Footnote 1:Harmonices Mundi.]
On this avowal he was branded as a hypocrite, heretic, and atheist.
To Mästlin he wrote:—"What is to be done? I think we should imitate the Pythagoreans, communicate our discoveriesprivatim, and be silent in public, that we may not die of hunger. The guardians of the Holy Scriptures make an elephant of a gnat. To avoid the hatred against novelty, I represented my discovery to the Rector of the University as a thing already observed by the ancients; but he made its antiquity a greater charge against it than he could have made of its novelty."
And, indeed, the devotion to truth in that age, as in others, required an heroic heart. Copernicus kept back the publication of his "De Revolutionibus Orbium Caeslestium" for thirty-six years, and received a copy of it only on his death-bed. Galileo tasted the sweets of the Inquisition. Tycho Brahe was exiled. And Kepler himself was persecuted all his life, hounded from city to city. And yet the sixteenth century will ever be memorable in the history of the human mind. The breaking down of external authority, the uprise of the spirit of inquiry, of skepticism, and the splendid scientific conquests that came in consequence, inaugurated a mighty movement which separates the present promises of mankind from all past periods by an interval so vast as to make it not merely a great historical development, but the very birth of humanity. While Tycho Brahe, at the age of fifty-four, was making his memorable observations at Prague, Kepler, at the age of thirty, was applying his fiery mind to the determination of the orbit of Mars, and Galileo, at thirty-six, was bringing his telescope to the revelation of new celestial intervals and orbs. Within the succeeding century Huygens made the application of the pendulum to clocks; Napier invented Logarithms; Descartes and Galileo created the analysis of curves, and the science of Dynamics; Leibnitz brought the Differential Calculus; Newton decomposed a ray of light, and synthesized Kepler's Laws into the theory of Universal Gravitation.
Into this age, when the Old and New met face to face, came the questioning and quenchless spirit of Kepler. Born into an age of adventure, this new Prometheus, this heaven-scaler, matched it with an audacity to lift it to new reaches of realization.
A singularnaiveté, too, marked this august soul. He has the frankness of Montaigne or Jean Jacques. He used to accuse himself of gabbling in mathematics,—"in re mathematica loquax,"—and claimed to speak with German freedom,—"scripsi haec, homo Germanicus, more et libertate Germanica." He marries far and near, brings planetary eclipses into conjunction with pecuniary penumbras, and his treatise on the perturbations of Mars reveals equal perturbations in his domestic economy. It may be to this candor, thisgemüth, that we are to ascribe the powerful personal magnetism he exercises in common with Rousseau, Rabelais, and other rich and ingenuous natures. Who would be otherwise than frank, when frankness has this power to captivate? The excess of this influence appears in the warmth betrayed by writers over their favorite. The cool-headed Delambre, in his "Histoire de l'Astronomie," speaks of Kepler with the heat of a pamphleteer, and cannot repress a frequent sneer at his contemporary, Galileo. We know the splendor of the Newtonian synthesis; yet we do not find ourselves affected by Newton's character or discoveries. He touches us with the passionless love of a star.
Kepler puts the samenaivetéinto his speculative activity, with a subtile anatomy laying bare themetaphysiqueof his science. It was his habit to illumine his discoveries with an exhibition of the path that led to them, regarding the method as equally important with the result,—a principle that has acquired canonical authority in modern scientific research. "In what follows," writes he, introducing a long string of hypotheses, the fallacy of which he had already discovered, "let the reader pardon my credulity, whilst working out all these matters by my own ingenuity. For it is my opinion that the occasions by which men have acquired a knowledge of celestial phenomena are not less admirable than the discoveries themselves." His tentatives, failures, leadings, his glimpses and his glooms, those aberrations and guesses and gropings generally so scrupulously concealed, he exposes them all. From the first flashing of a discovery, through years of tireless toil, to when the glorious apparition emerges full-orbed and resplendent, we follow him, becoming party to the process, and sharing the ejaculations of exultation that leap to his lips. Seventeen years were required for the discovery of the harmonic law, that the squares of the times of the planetary revolutions are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances; and no tragedy ever equalled in affecting intensity the account he has written of those Promethean years. What rays does he let into the subtile paths where the spirit travels in its interrogations of Nature! We should say there was more of what there is of essential in metaphysics, more of the structural action of the human mind, in his books, than in the concerted introspection of all the psychologists. One sees very well that a new astronomy was predicted in the build of that sky-confronting mind; for harmonic ratios, laws, and rhymes played in his spheral soul, galaxies and gravitations stretched deeper within, and systems climbed their flaming ecliptic.
The highest problem of Science is the problem of Method. Hitherto man has worked on Nature only piecemeal. The understanding and the logic-faculty are allowed to usurp the rational and creative powers. One would say that scientists systematically shut themselves out of three-fourths of their minds, and the English have been insane on Induction these two hundred years. This unholy divorce has, as it always must do, brought poverty and impotence into the sciences, many of which stand apart, stand haggard and hostile, accumulations of incoherent facts, inhospitable, dead.
It is when contemplated in its historic bearings, as an education of the faculties of man, that the emphasis that has been placed on special scientific methods discloses its significance. The speculative synthesis of Greek and Alexandrine Science was a superb training in Deduction,—in the descent from consciousness to Nature. Abstracted from its relations with reality, the scholasticism of the Middle Ages pushed Deduction to mania and moonshine. Then it was, that, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Occidental mind, astir under the oceanic movements of the modern, arose to break the spell of scholasticism that had fettered and frozen the intellect of man. An all-invading spirit of inquiry, analysis, skepticism, became rife. An unappeasable hunger for facts, facts, facts, took possession of the general intellect. It was felt that abstraction was disease, was death,—that speculation had to be vitalized and enriched from experience and experiment. This tendency was inevitable and sublime, no doubt. But it remains for modern times to emulate Nature and carry on analysis and synthesis at once. A great discovery is the birth of the whole soul in its creative activity. Induction becomes fruitful only when married to Deduction. It is those luminous intuitions that light along the path of discovery that give the eye and animus to generalization. Science must be open to influx and new beneficent affections and powers, and so add fleet wings to the mind in its exploration of Nature.
In Kepler was the perfect realization of the highest mission of Method. Powerfully deductive in the structure of his intellect, nourished on the divine bread of Plato and the Mystics, he yet united to these a Baconian breadth of practical power. Years before the publication of the "Novum Organum," he gave, in his "Commentaries on the Motions of Mars," a specimen of the logic of Induction whose circular sweep has never been matched. Prolific in the generation of hypotheses, he was yet remorseless in bringing them to the test of experiment. "Hypotheses which are not founded in Nature please me not," wrote he,—as Newton inscribed "Hypotheses non fingo" on the "Principia." Surely never was such heroic self-denial. Centurial vigils of baffling calculations —(remember, there was then little Algebra, and neither Calculus nor Logarithms)—were sacrificed without a regret except for the time expended, his tireless intellect pressing on to new heights of effort. His first work, the "Mysterium Cosmographicum," is the record of a splendid blunder that cost him five years' toil, and he spent ten years of fruitless and baffled effort in the deduction of the laws of areas and orbital ellipticity.
But this audacious diviner knew well the use of Hypothesis, and he applied it as an instrument of investigation as it had never been applied before. The vast significance of Hypothesis in the theory of Scientific Method has never been recognized. It would be a good piece of psychology to explore the principles of this subtile mental power, and might go far to give us a philosophy of Anticipation. The men of facts, men of the understanding, observers,—as we might suppose,—universally show a disposition to shun theorizing, as opposed to the exactness of demonstrative science. And yet it is quite certain, that, in proportion as one rises to a more liberal apprehension, the immense provisional power of speculative ideas becomes apparent. Laplace asserted that no great discovery was ever made without a great guess; and long before, Plato had intimated of these "sacred suspicions of truth," that descend dawn-like on the mind, sublime premonitions of beautiful gates of laws. It is these launching tentatives which bring phenomena to interior and metaphysical tests and bear the mind swift-winged to Nature. Of course, there are various kinds of conjecture, and its value will depend on the brain from which it departs. But a powerful spirit will justify Hypothesis by the high functions to which he puts it. His guesses are not for nothing. Many and long processes go to them.—The inexhaustible fertility displayed by Kepler is a psychologic marvel. He had that subtile chemistry that turns even failures to account, consumes them in its flaming ascent to new reaches. After years of labor on his theory of Mars, he found it failed in application to latitudes and longitudes "out of opposition." Remorselessly he let his hypothesis go, and drew from his failure an important inference, the first step towards emancipation from the ancient prejudice of uniform, circular motion.
Such a genius for Analogy the world never before saw. The perception of similitude, of correspondence, shot perpetual and prophetic in this man's glances. To him had been opened the subtile secret, key to Nature, that Man and the Universe are built after one pattern, and he had faith to believe that the laws of his mind would unlock the phenomena of the world.
The law of Analogy flows from the inherent harmonies of Nature. Of this wise men have ever been intuitive. The eldest Scriptures express it. It is in the Zend-Avesta, primal Japhetic utterance. It vivified that subtile Egyptian symbolism. The early Greeks and the Mystics of Alexandria knew it. Jamblicus reports of Pythagoras, that "he did not procure for himself a thing of this kind through instruments or the voice, but, by employing a certain inevitable divinity, and which it is difficult to apprehend, he extended his ears and fixed his intellect in the sublime symphonies of the world,—he alone hearing and understanding, as it appears, the universal harmony and consonance of the spheres and the stars that are moved through them, and which produce a fuller and more intense melody than anything effected by mortal sounds."
From the sublime intuitions of the harmonies of Nature and the unity of the Universe unfold the bright doctrines of Series and Degrees, of Correspondence, of Similitude. On these thoughts all wise spirits have fed. Indeed, you can hardly say they were ever absent. They are of those flaming thoughts the soul projects, splendid prophecies that become the light of all our science and all our day. Plato formulated these laws. Two thousand years after him, the cosmic brain of Swedenborg traced their working throughout the universal economies of matter and spirit, and Fourier endeavored to translate them into axioms of a new social organization.
These doctrines were ever present to the mind of Kepler; and to what fruitful account he turned Analogy as a means of inductive speculation his wonderful anatomy of his discoveries reveals. He fed on the harmonies of the universe. He has it, that "harmony is the perfection of relations." The work of his mature intellect was the "Harmonices Mundi," (Harmonies of the World,) in which many of the sublime leadings of Modern Science, as the Correlation of Sounds and Colors, the Significance of Musical Chords, the Undulatory Theory, etc., are prefigured. We must account him one of the chief of those prophetic spirits who, by attempting to give phenomena a necessary root in ideas, have breathed into Science a living soul. The new Transcendental Anatomy,—the doctrine of Homologies,—the Embryologic scheme, revealing that all animate forms are developed after one archetype,—the splendid Nebular guess of Laplace,—the thought of the Metamorphosis of Plants,—the attempts at profounder explanations of Light and Colors,—the rising transcendentalism of Chemistry,—the magnificent intuition of Correspondence, showing a grand unity of design in the nodes of shells, the phyllotaxism of plants, and the serialization of planets,—are all signs of the presence of a spirit that is to usher in a new dispensation of Science, fraught with divinest messages to the head and heart of man.
Kepler regarded Analogy as the soul of Science, and he has made it an instrument of prophecy and power. Thus, he inferred from Analogy that the sun turned on its axis, long before Galileo was able to direct his telescope to the solar spots and so determine this rotation as an actual fact. He anticipated a planet between Mars and Jupiter too small to be seen; and his inference that the obliquity of the ecliptic was decreasing, but would, after a long-continued diminution, stop, and then increase again, afterwards acquired the sanction of demonstration. A like instance of anticipation is afforded in the beautiful experiment of the freely-suspended ball revolving in an ellipse under the combined influence of the central and tangential forces, which Jeremiah Horrocks devised, when pursuing Kepler's theory of planetary motion,—his intuition being, that the motions of the spheres might be represented by terrestrial movements. We may mention the observation which the ill-starred Horrocks makes, in a letter,[1] on the occasion of this experiment, as one of the sublimities of Science:—"It appears to me, however, that I have fallen upon the true theory, and that it admits of being illustrated by natural movements on the surface of the earth; for Nature everywhere acts according to a uniform plan, and the harmony of creation is such that small things constitute a faithful type of greater things." Another instance is afforded in the grand intuition of Oken, who, when rambling in the Hartz Mountains, lit upon the skull of a deer, and saw that the cranium was but an expansion of vertebrae, and that the vertebra is the theoretical archetype of the entire osseous framework,—the foundation of modern Osteology. And still another is the well-known instance of the change in polarization predicted by Fresnel from the mere interpretation of an algebraic symbol. This prophetic insight is very sublime, and opens up new spaces in man.