In the immediate vicinity of the cured article (I say "cured," though the process is a mere drying without smoke or salt) maybe seen the apparatus contrived for getting it in the fresh state. This is the scaffolding from which the salmon are caught. It is a horizontal platform shaped like a capital A, erected upon a similarly framed, but perpendicular set of braces, with a projection of several feet over the river-brink at a place where the water runs rapidly close in-shore. If practicable, the constructor modifies his current artificially, banking it inward with large stones, so as to form a sort of sluice in which passing fish will be more completely at his mercy. At the season of their periodic ascent, salmon swarm in all the rivers of our Pacific coast; the Columbia and Willamette are alive with them for a long distance above the cascades of the one and the Oregon-City fall of the other. The fisherman stands, nearly or quite naked, at the edge of his scaffolding, armed with a net extended at the end of a long pole, and so ingeniously contrived that the weight of the salmon and a little dexterous management draw its mouth shut on the captive like a purse as soon as he has entered. A helper stands behind the fisherman to assist in raising the haul,—to give the fish a tap on the nose, which kills him instantly,—and finally to carry him ashore to be split and dried, without any danger of his throwing himself back into the water from the hands of his captors, as might easily happen by omitting thecoup-de-grace. Another method of catching salmon, much in vogue among the Sacramento and Pitt-River tribes, but apparentlyless employed by the Indians of the Columbia, is harpooning with a very clever instrument constructed after this wise. A hard-wood shaft is neatly, but not tightly, fitted into the socket of a sharp-barbed spear-head carved from bone. Through a hole drilled in the spear-head a stout cord of deer-sinew is fastened by one end, its other being secured to the shaft near its insertion. The salmon is struck by this weapon in the manner of the ordinary fish-spear; the head slips off the shaft as soon as the barbs lodge, and the harpoon virtually becomes a fishing-rod, with the sinew for a line. This arrangement is much more manageable than the common spear, as it greatly diminishes the chances of losing fish and breaking shafts.
There can scarcely be a more sculpturesque sight than that of a finely formed, well-grown young Indian struggling on his scaffold with an unusually powerful fish. Every muscle of his wiry frame stands out in its turn in unveiled relief, and you see in him attitudes of grace and power which will not let you regret the Apollo Belvedere or the Gladiator. The only pity is that this ideal Indian is a rare being. The Indians of this coast and river are divided into two broad classes,—the Fish Indians, and the Meat Indians. The latter,ceteris paribus, are much the finer race, derive the greater portion of their subsistence from the chase, and possess the athletic mind and body which result from active methods of winning a livelihood. The former are, to a great extent, victims of that generic and hereditarytabes mesentericawhich produces the peculiar pot-bellied and spindle-shanked type of savage; their manners are milder; their virtues and vices are done in water-color, as comports with their source of supply. There are some tribes which partake of the habits of both classes, living in mountain-fastnesses part of the year by the bow and arrow, but coming down to the river in the salmon-season for an addition to their winter bill-of-fare. Anywhere rather than among the pure Fish Indians is the place to look for savage beauty. Still these tribes have fortified their feebleness by such a cultivation of their ingenuity as surprises one seeing for the first time their well-adapted tools, comfortable lodges, and, in some cases, really beautiful canoes. In the last respect, however, the Indians nearer the coast surpass those up the Columbia,—some of their carved and painted canoes equalling the "crackest" of shell-boats in elegance of line and beauty of ornament.
In a former article devoted to the Great Yo-Semite I had occasion to remark that Indian legend, like all ancient poetry, often contains a scientific truth embalmed in the spices of metaphor,—or, to vary the figure, that Mudjekeewis stands holding the lantern for Agassiz and Dana to dig by.
Coming to the Falls of the Columbia, we find a case in point. Nearly equidistant from the longitudes of Fort Vancouver and Mount Hood, the entire Columbia River falls twenty feet over a perpendicular wall of basalt, extending, with minor deviations from the right angle, entirely between-shores, a breadth of about a mile. The height of Niagara and the close compression of its vast volume make it a grander sight than the Falls of the Columbia,—but no other cataract known to me on this continent rivals it for an instant. The great American Falls of Snake are much loftier and more savage than either, but their volume is so much less as to counterbalance those advantages. Taking the Falls of the Columbia all in all,—including their upper and lower rapids,—it must be confessed that they exhibit every phase of tormented water in its beauty of color or grace of form, its wrath or its whim.
The Indians have a tradition that the river once followed a uniform level from the Dalles to the sea. This tradition states that Mounts Hood and St. Helen's are husband and wife,—whereby is intended that their tutelar divinities stand in that mutual relation; that in comparatively recent times there existed a rocky bridge across the Columbia at thepresent site of the cataract, and that across this bridge Hood and St. Helen's were wont to pass for interchange of visits; that, while this bridge existed, there was a free subterraneous passage under it for the river and the canoes of the tribes (indeed, this tradition is so universally credited as to stagger the skeptic by a mere calculation of chances); that, on a certain occasion, the mountainous pair, like others not mountainous, came to high words, and during their altercation broke the bridge down; falling into the river, this colossal Rialto became a dam, and ever since that day the upper river has been backed to its present level, submerging vast tracts of country far above its original bed.
I notice that excellent geological authorities are willing to treat this legend respectfully, as containing in symbols the probable key to the natural phenomena. Whether the original course of the Columbia at this place was through a narrowcañonor under an actual roof of rock, the adjacent material has been at no very remote date toppled into it to make the cataract and alter the bed to its present level. Both Hood and St. Helen's are volcanic cones. The latter has been seen to smoke within the last twelve years. It is not unlikely that during the last few centuries some intestine disturbance may have occurred along the axis between the two, sufficient to account for the precipitation of that mass of rock which now forms the dam. That we cannot refer the cataclysm to a very ancient date seems to be argued by the state of preservation in which we still find the stumps of the celebrated "submerged forest," extending a long distance up the river above the Falls.
At the foot of the cataract we landed from the steamer on the Washington side of the river, and found a railroad-train waiting to do our portage. It was a strange feeling, that of whirling along by steam where so few years before the Indian and the trader had toiled through the virgin forest, bending under the weight of their canoes. And this is one of the characteristic surprises of American scenery everywhere. You cannot isolate yourself from the national civilization. In a Swisschâletyou may escape from all memories of Geneva; among the Grampians you find an entirely different set of ideas from those of Edinburgh: but the same enterprise which makes itself felt in New York and Boston starts up for your astonishment out of all the fastnesses of the continent. Virgin Nature wooes our civilization to wed her, and no obstacles can conquer the American fascination. In our journey through the wildest parts of this country, we were perpetually finding patent washing-machines among thechaparral,—canned fruit in the desert,—Voigtlander's field-glasses on the snow-peak,—lemon-soda in thecañon,—men who were sure a railroad would be run by their cabin within ten years, in every spot where such a surprise was most remarkable.
The portage-road is six miles in length, leading nearly all the way close along the edge of the North Bluff, which, owing to a recession of the mountains, seems here only from fifty to eighty feet in height. From the windows of the train we enjoyed an almost uninterrupted view of the rapids, which are only less grand and forceful in their impression than those above Niagara. They are broken up into narrow channels by numerous bold and naked islands of trap. Through these the water roars, boils, and, striking projections, spouts upward in jets whose plumy top blows off in sheets of spray. It is tormented into whirlpools; it is combed into fine threads, and strays whitely over a rugged ledge like old men's hair; it takes all curves of grace and arrow-flights of force; it is water doing all that water can do or be made to do. The painter who spent a year in making studies of it would not throw his time away; when he had finished, he could not misrepresent water under any phases.
At the upper end of the portage-road we found another and smaller steamer awaiting us, with equally kind provision for our comfort made by the Companyand the captain. In both steamers we were accorded excellent opportunities for drawing and observation, getting seats in the pilot-house.
Above the rapids the river-banks were bold and rocky. The stream changed from its recent Niagara green to a brown like that of the Hudson; and under its waters, as we hugged the Oregon side, could be seen a submerged alluvial plateau, studded thick with drowned stumps, here and there lifting their splintered tops above the water, and measuring from the diameter of a sapling to that of a trunk which might once have been one hundred feet high.
Between Fort Vancouver and the cataract the banks of the river seem nearly as wild as on the day they were discovered by the whites. On neither the Oregon nor the Washington side is there any settlement visible,—a small wood-wharf, or the temporary hut of a salmon-fisher, being the only sign of human possession. At the Falls we noticed a single white house standing in a commanding position high up on the wooded ledges of the Oregon shore; and the taste shown in placing and constructing it was worthy of a Hudson-River landholder. This is, perhaps, the first attempt at a distinct country-residence made in Oregon, and belongs to a Mr. Olmstead, who was one of the earliest settlers and projectors of public improvements in the State. He was actively engaged in the building of the first portage-railroad, which ran on the Oregon side. The entire interests of both have, I believe, been concentrated in the newer one, and the Oregon road, after building itself by feats of business-energy and ingenuity known only to American pioneer enterprise, has fallen into entire or comparative disuse.
Above the Falls we found as unsettled a river-margin as below. Occasionally, some bright spot of color attracted us, relieved against the walls of trap or glacis of evergreen, and this upon nearer approach or by the glass was resolved into a group of river Indians,—part with the curiously compressed foreheads of the Flat-head tribe, their serene nakedness draped with blankets of every variety of hue, from fresh flaming red to weather-beaten army-blue, and adorned as to their cheeks with smutches of the cinnabar-rouge which from time immemorial has been a prime article of import among the fashionable native circles of the Columbia,—the other part round-headed, and (I have no doubt it appears a perfectsequiturto the Flat-head conservatives) therefore slaves. The captive in battle seems more economically treated among these savages than is common anywhere else in the Indian regions we traversed, (though I suppose slavery is to some extent universal throughout the tribes,)—the captors properly arguing, that, so long as they can make a man fish and boil pot for them, it is a very foolish waste of material to kill him.
At intervals above the Falls we passed several small islands of especial interest as being the cemeteries of river-tribes. The principal, called "Mimitus," was sacred as the resting-place of a very noted chief. I have forgotten his name, but I doubt whether his friends see the "Atlantic" regularly; so that oversight is of less consequence. The deceased is entombed like a person of quality, in a wooden mausoleum having something the appearance of a log-cabin upon which pains have been expended, and containing, with the human remains, robes, weapons, baskets, canoes, and all the furniture of Indianménage, to an extent which among the tribes amounts to a fortune. This sepulchral idea is a clear-headed one, and worthy of Eastern adoption. Old ladies with lace and nieces, old gentlemen with cellars and nephews, might be certain that the solace which they received in life's decline was purely disinterested, if about middle age they should announce that their Point and their Port were going to Mount Auburn with them.
The river grew narrower, its banks becoming low, perpendicular walls of basalt, water-worn at the base, squarely cut and castellated at the top, and bare everywhere as any pile of masonry. The hills beyond became naked, or covered onlywith short grass of thegramakind and dusty-gray sage-brush. Simultaneously they lost some of their previous basaltic characteristics, running into more convex outlines, which receded from the river. We could not fail to recognize the fact that we had crossed one of the great thresholds of the continent,—were once more east of the Sierra-Nevada axis, and in the great central plateau which a few months previous, and several hundred miles farther south, we had crossed amid so many pains and perils by the Desert route to Washoe. From the grizzly mountains before us to the sources of the Snake Fork stretched an almost uninterrupted wilderness of sage. The change in passing to this region from the fertile and timbered tracts of the Cascades and the coast is more abrupt than can be imagined by one familiar with our delicately modulated Eastern scenery. This sharpness of definition seems to characterize the entire border of the plateau. Five hours of travel between Washoe and Sacramento carry one out of the nakedest stone heap into the grandest forest of the continent.
As we emerged from the confinement of the nearer ranges, Mount Hood, hitherto visible only through occasional rifts, loomed broadly into sight almost from base to peak, covered with a mantle of perennial snow scarcely less complete to our near inspection than it had seemed from our observatory south of Salem. Only here and there toward its lower rim a tatter in it revealed the giant's rugged brown muscle of volcanic rock. The top of the mountain, like that of Shasta, in direct sunlight is an opal. So far above the line of thaw, the snow seems to have accumulated until by its own weight it has condensed into a more compactly crystalline structure than ice itself, and the reflections from it, as I stated of Shasta, seem rather emanations from some interior source of light. The look is distinctly opaline, or, as a poet has called the opal, like "a pearl with a soul in it."
About five o'clock in the afternoon we reached the Oregon town and mining-depot of Dalles City. A glance at any good War-Department map of Oregon and Washington Territories will explain the importance of this place, where considerably previous to the foundation of the present large and growing settlement there existed a fort and trading-post of the same name. It stands, as we have said, at the entrance to the great pass by which the Columbia breaks through the mountains to the sea. Just west of it occurs an interruption to the navigation of the river, practically as formidable as the first cataract. This is the upper rapids and "the Dalles" proper,—presently to be described in detail. The position of the town, at one end of a principal portage, and at the easiest door to the Pacific, renders it a natural entrepot between the latter and the great central plateau of the continent. This it must have been in any case for fur-traders and emigrants, but its business has been vastly increased by the discovery of that immense mining-area distributed along the Snake River and its tributaries as far east as the Rocky Mountains. The John-Day, Boisé, and numerous other tracts both in Washington and Idaho Territories draw most of their supplies from this entrepot, and their gold comes down to it either for direct use in the outfit-market, or to be passed down the river to Portland and the San-Francisco mint.
In a late article upon the Pacific Railroad, I laid no particular stress upon the mines of Washington and Idaho as sources of profit to the enterprise. This was for the reason that the Snake River seems the proper outlet to much of the auriferous region, and this route may be susceptible of improvement by an alternation of portages, roads, and water-levels, which for a long time to come will form a means of communication more economical and rapid than a branch to the Pacific Road. The northern mines east of the Rocky range will find themselves occupying somewhat similar relations to the Missouri River, which rises,as one might almost say, out of the same spring as the Snake,—certainly out of the same ridge of the Rocky Mountains.
"The Dalles" is a town of one street, built close along the edge of a bluff of trap thirty or forty feet high, perfectly perpendicular, level on the top as if it had been graded for a city, and with depth of water at its base for the heaviest draught boats on the river. In fact, the whole water-front is a natural quay,—which wants nothing but time to make it alive with steam-elevators, warehouses, and derricks. To Portland and the Columbia it stands much as St. Louis to New Orleans and the Mississippi. There is no reason why it should not some day have a corresponding business, for whose wharfage-accommodation it has even greater natural advantages.
Architecturally, the Dalles cannot be said to lean very heavily on the side of beauty. The houses are mostly two-story structures of wood, occupied by all the trades and professions which flock to a new mining-entrepot. Outfit-merchants, blacksmiths, printing-office, (for there is really a very well-conducted daily at the Dalles,) are cheek by jowl with doctors, tailors, and Cheap Johns,—the latter being only less merry and thrifty over their incredible sacrifices in everything, from pins to corduroy, than that predominant class of all, the bar-keepers themselves. The town was in a state of bustle when our steamer touched the wharf; it bustled more and more from there to the Umatilla House, where we stopped; the hotel was one organized bustle in bar and dining-room; and bed-time brought no hush. The Dalles, like the Irishman, seemed sitting up all night to be fresh for an early start in the morning.
We found everybody interested in gold. Crowds of listeners, with looks of incredulity or enthusiasm, were gathered around the party in the bar-room which had last come in from the newest of the new mines, and a man who had seen the late Fort-Hall discoveries was "treated" to that extent that he might have become intoxicated a dozen times without expense to himself. The charms of the interior were still further suggested by placards posted on every wall, offering rewards for the capture of a person who on the great gold route had lately committed some of the grimmest murders and most talented robberies known in any branch of Newgate enterprise. I had for supper a very good omelet, (considering its distance from the culinary centres of the universe,) and a Dalles editorial debating the claims of several noted cut-throats to the credit of the operations ascribed to them,—feeling that in theensembleI was enjoying both the exotic and the indigenous luxuries of our virgin soil.
After supper and a stroll I returned to the ladies' parlor of the Umatilla House, rubbed my eyes in vain to dispel the illusion of a piano and a carpet at this jumping-off place of civilization, and sat down at a handsome centre-table to write up my journal. I had reviewed my way from Portland as far as Fort Vancouver, when another illusion happened to me in the shape of a party of gentlemen and ladies, in ball-dresses, dress-coats, white kids, and elaborate hair, who entered the parlor to wait for further accessions from the hotel. They were on their way with a band of music to give some popular citizen a surprise-party. The popular citizen never got the fine edge of that surprise. I took it off for him. If it were not too much like a little Cockney on Vancouver's Island who used the phrase on all occasions, from stubbing his toe to the death of a Cabinet Lord, I should say, "I never was more astonished in me life!"
None of them had ever seen me before,—and with my books and maps about me, I may have looked like some public, yet mysterious character. I felt a pleasant sensation of having interest taken in me, and, wishing to make an ingenuous return, looked up with a casual smile at one of the party. Again to my surprise, this proved to be a very charming young lady, and I timidly became aware thatthe others were equally pretty in their several styles. Not knowing what else to do under the circumstances, I smiled again, still more casually. An equal uncertainty as to alternative set the ladies smiling quite across the row, and then, to my relief, the gentlemen joined them, making it pleasant for us all. A moment later we were engaged in general conversation,—starting from the bold hypothesis, thrown out by one of the gentlemen, that perhaps I was going to Boisé, and proceeding, by a process of elimination, to the accurate knowledge of what I was going to do, if it wasn't that. I enjoyed one of the most cheerful bits of social relaxation I had found since crossing the Missouri, and nothing but my duty to my journal prevented me, when my surprise-party left, from accompanying them, by invitation, under the brevet title of Professor, to the house of the popular citizen, who, I was assured, would be glad to see me. I certainly should have been glad to see him, if he was anything like those guests of his who had so ingenuously cultivated me in a far land of strangers, where a man might have been glad to form the acquaintance of his mother-in-law. This is not the way people form acquaintances in New York; but if I had wanted that, why not have stayed there? As a cosmopolite, and on general principles of being, I prefer the Dalles way. I have no doubt I should have found in that circle of spontaneous recognitions quite as many people who stood wear and improved on intimacy as were ever vouchsafed to me by social indorsement from somebody else. We are perpetually blaming our heads of Government Bureaus for their poor knowledge of character,—their subordinates, we say, are never pegs in the right holes. If we understood our civilized system of introductions, we could not rationally expect anything else. The great mass of polite mankind are trainednotto know character, but to take somebody else's voucher for it. Their acquaintances, most of their friendships, come to them through a succession of indorsers, none of whom may have known anything of the goodness of the paper. A sensible man, conventionally introduced to his fellow, must always wonder why the latter does not turn him around to look for signatures in chalk down the back of his coat; for he knows that Brown indorsed him over to Jones, and Jones negotiated him with Robinson, through a succession in which perhaps two out of a hundred took pains to know whether he represented metal. You do not find the people of new countries making mistakes in character. Every man is his own guaranty,—and if he has no just cause to suspect himself bogus, there will be true pleasure in a frank opening of himself to the examination and his eyes for the study of others. Not to be accused of intruding radical reform under the guise of belles-lettres, let me say that I have no intention of introducing this innovation at the East.
After a night's rest, Bierstadt spent nearly the entire morning in making studies of Hood from an admirable post of observation at the top of one of the highest foot-hills,—a point several miles southwest of the town, which he reached under guidance of an old Indian interpreter and trapper. His work upon this mountain was in some respects the best he ever accomplished, being done with a loving faithfulness hardly called out by Hood's only rival, the Peak of Shasta. The result of his Hood studies, as seen in the nearly completed painting, has a superiority corresponding to that of the studies themselves, possessing excellences not included even in the well-known "Lander's Peak."
In the afternoon, we were provided, by the courtesy of the Company, with a special train on the portage-railroad connecting Dalles City with a station known as Celilo. This road had but recently come into full operation, and was now doing an immense freight-business between the two river-levels separated by the intervening "Dalles." It seemed somewhat longer than the road around theFalls. Its exact length has escaped me, but I think it about eight or nine miles.
With several officers of the road, who vied in giving us opportunities of comfort and information, we set out, about threep.m., from a station on the water-front below the town, whence we trundled through the long main street, and were presently shot forth upon a wilderness of sand. An occasional trap uplift rose on our right, but, as we were on the same bluff-level as Dalles City, we met no lofty precipices. We were constantly in view of the river, separated from its Oregon brink at the farthest by about half a mile of the dreariest dunes of shifting sand ever seen by an amateur in deserts. The most arid tracts along the Platte could not rival this. The wind was violent when we left Dalles City, and possessed the novel faculty of blowing simultaneously from all points of the compass. It increased with every mile of advance, both in force and faculty, until at Celilo we found it a hurricane. The gentlemen of the Company who attended us told us, as seemed very credible, that the highest winds blowing here (compared with which the present might be styled a zephyr) banked the track so completely out of sight with sand that a large force of men had to be steadily employed in shovelling out trains that had been brought to a dead halt, and clearing a way for the slow advance of others. I observed that the sides of some of the worst sand-cuts had been planked over to prevent their sliding down upon the road. Occasionally, the sand blew in such tempests as to sift through every cranny of the cars, and hide the river-glimpses like a momentary fog. But this discomfort was abundantly compensated by the wonderfully interesting scenery on the Columbia side of our train.
The river for the whole distance of the portage is a succession of magnificent rapids, low cataracts, and narrow, sinuous channels,—the last known to the old French traders as "Dales" or "Troughs," and to us by the very natural corruption of "Dalles." The alternation between these phases is wonderfully abrupt. At one point, about half-way between Dalles City and Celilo, the entire volume of the Columbia River (and how vast that is may be better understood by following up on the map the river itself and all its tributaries) is crowded over upon the Oregon shore through a passage not more than fifty yards in width, between perfectly naked and perpendicular precipices of basalt. Just beyond this mighty mill-race, where one of the grandest floods of the continent is sliding in olive-green light and umber shadow, smoothly and resistlessly as time, the river is a mile wide, and plunges over a ragged wall of trap blocks, reaching, as at the lower cataract, from shore to shore. In other neighboring places it attains even a greater width, but up to Celilo is never out of torment from the obstructions of its bed. Not even the rapids of Niagara can vie with these in their impression of power, and only the Columbia itself can describe the lines of grace made by its water, rasped to spray, churned to froth, tired into languid sheets that flow like sliding glass, or shot up in fountains frayed away to rainbows on their edges, as it strikes some basalt hexagon rising in mid-stream. The Dalles and the Upper Cataracts are still another region where the artist might stay for a year's University-course in water-painting.
At Celilo we found several steamers, in register resembling our second of the day previous. They measured on the average about three hundred tons. One of them had just got down from Walla Walla, with a large party of miners from gold-tracts still farther off, taking down five hundred thousand dollars in dust to Portland and San Francisco. We were very anxious to accept the Company's extended invitation, and push our investigations to or even up the Snake River. But the expectation that the San-Francisco steamer would reach Portland in a day or two, and that we should immediately return by her toCalifornia, turned us most reluctantly down the river after Bierstadt and I had made the fullest notes and sketches attainable. Bad weather on the coast falsified our expectations. For a week we were rain-bound in Portland, unable to leave our hotel for an hour at a time without being drenched by the floods which just now set in for the winter season, and regretting the lack of that prescience which would have enabled us to accomplish one of the most interesting side-trips in our whole plan of travel. While this pleasure still awaited us, and none in particular of any kind seemed present, save the in-door courtesies of our Portland friends, it was still among the memories of a lifetime to have seen the Columbia in its Cataracts and its Dalles.
It was not far from eleven o'clock at night when we took leave of the Rebel President, and, arm in arm with Judge Ould, made our way through the silent, deserted streets to our elevated quarters in the Spotswood Hotel at Richmond. As we climbed the long, rickety stairs which led to our room in the fourth story, one of us said to our companion,—
"We can accomplish nothing more by remaining here. Suppose we shake the sacred soil from our feet to-morrow?"
"Very well. At what hour will you start?" he replied.
"The earlier, the better. As near daybreak as may be,—to avoid the sun."
"We can't be ready before ten o'clock. The mules are quartered six miles out of town."
That sounded strange, for Jack, our ebony Jehu, had said to me only the day before, "Demismighty foine mules, Massa. I 'tends ter dem mules myself;we keeps 'em right round de corner." Taken together, the statements of the two officials had a bad look; but Mr. Davis had just given me a message to his niece, and Mr. Benjamin had just intrusted Colonel Jaquess with a letter—contraband, because three pages long—for delivery within the limits of the "United States"; therefore the discrepancy did not alarm me, for the latter facts seemed to assure our safe deliverance from Dixie. Merely saying, "Very well,—ten o'clock, then, let it be,—we'll be ready,"—we bade the Judge good-night at the landing, and entered our apartment.
We found the guard, Mr. Javins, stretched at full length on his bed, and snoring like the Seven Sleepers. Day and night, from the moment of our first entrance into the Rebel dominions, that worthy, with a revolver in his sleeve, our door-key in his pocket, and a Yankee in each one of his eyes, had implicitly observed his instructions,—"Keep a constant watch upon them"; but overtasked nature had at last got the better of his vigilance, and he was slumbering at his post. Not caring to disturb him, we bolted the door, slid the key under his pillow, and followed him to the land of dreams.
It was a little after two o'clock, and the round, ruddy moon was looking pleasantly in at my window, when a noise outside awoke me. Lifting the sash, I listened. There was a sound of hurrying feet in the neighboring street, and a prolonged cry of murder! It seemed the wild, strangled shriek of a woman. Springing to the floor, I threw on my clothes, and shook Javins.
"Wake up! Give me the key!They're murdering a woman in the street!" I shouted, loud enough to be heard in the next world.
But he did not wake, and the Colonel, too, slept on, those despairing cries in his ears, as peacefully as if his great dream of peace had been realized. Still those dreadful shrieks, mingled now with curses hot from the bottomless pit, came up through the window. No time was to be lost,—so, giving another and a desperate tug at Javins, I thrust my hand under his pillow, drew out his revolver and the door-key, and, three steps at a time, bounded down the stairways. At the outer entrance a half-drunken barkeeper was rubbing his eyes, and asking, "What's the row?"—but not another soul was stirring. Giving no heed to him, I hurried into the street. I had not gone twenty paces, however, before a gruff voice from the shadow of the building called out,—
"Halt! Who goes thar'?"
"A friend," I answered.
"Advance, friend, and give the countersign."
"I don't know it."
"Then ye carn't pass. Orders is strict."
"What is this disturbance? I heard a woman crying murder."
The stifled shrieks had died away, but low moans, and sounds like hysterical weeping, still came up from around the corner.
"Oh! nothin',—jest some nigger fellers on a time. Thet's all."
"And you stood by and saw it done!" I exclaimed, with mingled contempt and indignation.
"Sor it? How cudIholp it? I hes my orders,—ter keep my eye on thet 'ar' door; 'sides, thar' war' nigh a dozen on 'em, and these Richmond nigs, now thet the white folks is away, is more lawless nor old Bragg himself. My life 'ou'dn't ha' been wuth a hill o' beans among 'em."
By this time I had gradually drawn the sentinel to the corner of the building, and looking down the dimly lighted street whence the sounds proceeded, I saw that it was empty.
"They are gone now," I said, "and the woman may be dying. Come, go down there with me."
"Carn't, Cunnel. I 'ou'dn't do it fur all the women in Richmond."
"Was your mother a woman?"
"I reckon, and a right peart 'un,—ye mought bet yer pile on thet."
"I'll bet my pile she'd disown you, if she knew you turned your back on a woman."
He gave me a wistful, undecided look, and then, muttering something about "orders," which I did not stop to bear, followed me, as I hurried down the street.
Not three hundred yards away, in a narrow recess between two buildings, we found the woman. She lay at full length on the pavement, her neat muslin gown torn to shreds, and her simple lace bonnet crushed into a shapeless mass beside her. Her thick, dishevelled hair only half-concealed her open bosom, and from the corners of her mouth the blood was flowing freely. She was not dead,—for she still moaned pitifully,—but she seemed to be dying. Lifting her head as tenderly as I could, I said to her,—
"Are you much hurt? Can't you speak to me?"
She opened her eyes, and staring at the sentinel with a wild, crazed look, only moaned,—
"Oh! don't! Don't,—any more! Let me die! Oh! let me die!"
"Not yet. You are too young to die yet. Come, see if you can't sit up."
Something, it may have been the tone of my voice, seemed to bring her to her senses, for she again opened her eyes, and, with a sudden effort, rose nearly to her feet. In a moment, however, she staggered back, and would have fallen, had not the sentinel caught her.
"There, don't try again. Rest awhile. Take some of this,—it will give you strength"; and I emptied my brandy-flask into her mouth. "Our General" had filled it the morning we set out from hiscamp; but two days' acquaintance with the Judge, who declared "suchbrandy contraband of war," had reduced its contents to a low ebb. Still, there was enough to do that poor girl a world of good. She shortly revived, and sitting up, her head against the sentinel's shoulder, told us her story. She was a white woman, and served as nursery-maid in a family that lived hard by. All of its male members being away with the array, she had been sent out at that late hour to procure medicine for a sick child, and, waylaid by a gang of black fiends, had been gagged and outraged in the very heart of Richmond! And this is Southern civilization under Jefferson I.!
At the end of a long hour, I returned to the hotel. The sentry was pacing to and fro before it, and, seating myself on the door-step, I drew him into conversation.
"Do such things often happen in Richmond?" I asked him.
"Often! Ye's strange yere, I reckon," he replied.
"No,—I've been here forty times, but not lately. Things must be in a bad way here, now."
"Wai, they is! Thar' 's nary night but thair' 's lots o' sech doin's. Ye see, thar' ha'n't more 'n a corporal's-guard o' white men in the hull place, so the nigs they hes the'r own way, and ye'd better b'lieve they raise the Devil, and break things, ginerally."
"I've seen no other able-bodied soldier about town; how is it that you are here?"
"I ha'n't able-bodied," he replied, holding up the stump of his left arm, from which the sleeve was dangling. "I lost thet more 'n a y'ar ago. I b'long ter the calvary,—Fust Alabama,—and bein' as I carn't manage a nag now, they 's detailed me fur provost-duty."
"First Alabama? I know Captains Webb and Finnan of that regiment."
"Ye does? What! old man Webb, as lives down on Coosa?"
"Yes, at Gadsden, in Cherokee County. Streight burnt his house, and both of his mills', on his big raid, and the old man has lost both of his sons in the war. It has wellnigh done him up."
"I reckon. Stands ter natur' it sh'u'd. The Yankees is all-fired fiends. The old man use' ter hate 'em loike——. I reckon he hates 'em wuss 'n ever now."
"No, he don't. His troubles seem to have softened him. When he told me of them, he cried like a child. He reckoned the Lord had brought them on him because he'd fought against the Union."
"Wal, I doan't know. This war's a bad business, anyhow. When d'ye see old Webb last?"
"About a year ago,—down in Tennessee, nigh to Tullahoma."
"Was he 'long o' the rigiment?"
That was a home question, for I had met Captain Webb while he was a prisoner, in the Court-House at Murfreesboro'. However, I promptly replied,—
"No,—he'd just left it."
"Wal, I doan't blame him. Pears loike, ef sech things sh'u'd come onter me, I'd let the war and the kentry go ter the Devil tergether."
My acquaintance with Captain Webb naturally won me the confidence of the soldier; and for nearly an hour, almost unquestioned, he poured into my ear information that would have been of incalculable value to our generals. Two days later I would have given my right hand for liberty to whisper to General Grant some things that he said; but honor and honesty forbade it.
A neighboring clock struck four when I rose to go. As I did so, I said to the sentinel,—
"I saw no other sentry in the streets; why are you guarding this hotel?"
"Wal, ye knows old Brown's a-raisin' Cain down thar' in Georgy. Two o' his men bes come up yere ter see Jeff, and things ha'n't quite satisfactory, so we's orders ter keep 'em tighter 'n a bull's-eye in fly-time."
So, not content with placing a guard in our very bedchamber, the oily-tongued despot over the way had fastened a padlockover the key-hole of our outside-door! Whatwouldhappen, if he should hear that I had picked the padlock, and prowled about Richmond for an hour after midnight! The very thought gave my throat a preliminary choke, and my neck an uneasy sensation. It was high time I sought the embrace of that hard mattress in the fourth story. But my fears were groundless. When I crept noiselessly to bed, Javins was sleeping as soundly and snoring as sweetly as if his sins were all forgiven.
When I awoke in the morning, breakfast was already laid on the centre-table, and an army of newsboys were shouting under our windows, "'Ere's the 'En'quirer' andthe'Dis'patch.' Great news from the front. Gin'ral Grant mortally killed,—shot with a cannon." Rising, and beginning my toilet, I said to Javins, in a tone of deep concern,—
"When did that happen?"
"Why, o' Saturday. I hearn of it afore we left the lines. 'Twas all over town yesterday," he replied, with infinite composure.
"And you didn't tell us! That was unkind of you, Javins,—very unkind. Howcouldyou do it?"
"It's ag'in' orders to talk news with you;—besides, I thought you knowed it."
"How should we know it?"
"Why, your boat was only just ahead of his'n, comin' up the river. He got shot runnin' that battery. Hit in the arm, and died when they amputated him."
"Amputated him! Did they cut off his head to save his arm?"
Whether he saw a quiet twinkle in my eye, or knew that the news was false, I know not. Whichever it was, he replied,—
"I reckon. Then you don't b'lieve it?"
"Why should I doubt it? Don't your papers always tell the truth?"
"No, they never do; lyin' 's their trade."
"Then you suppose they're whistling now to keep up their courage? But let us see what they say. Oblige me with some of your currency."
He kindly gave me three dollars for one, and ringing the bell, I soon had the five dingy half-sheets which every morning, "Sundays excepted," hold up this busy world, "its fluctuations and its vast concerns," to the wondering view of beleaguered Richmond.
"Dey's fifty cents apiece, Massa," said the darky, handing me the papers, and looking wistfully on the poor specimen of lithography which remained after the purchase; "what shill I do wid dis?"
"Oh! keep it. I'd give you more, but that's all the lawful money I have about me."
He hesitated, as if unwilling to take my last half-dollar; but self soon got the better of him. He pocketed the shin-plaster, and said nothing; but "Poor gentleman! I's sorry foryou! Libin' at do Spotswood, and no money about you!" was legible all over his face.
We opened the papers, and, sure enough, General Grantwasdead, and laid out in dingy sheets, with a big gun firing great volleys over him! The cannon which that morning thundered Glory! Hallelujah! through the columns of the "Whig" and the "Examiner" no doubt brought him to life again. No such jubilation, I believe, disgraced our Northern journals when Stonewall Jackson fell.
Breakfast over, the Colonel and I packed our portmanteaus, and sat down to the intellectual repast. It was a feast, and we enjoyed it. I always have enjoyed the Richmond editorials. If I were a poet, I should study them for epithets. Exhausting the dictionary, their authors ransack heaven, earth, and the other place, and into one expression throw such a concentration of scorn, hate, fury, or exultation as is absolutely stunning to a man of ordinary nerves. Talk of their being bridled! They never had a bit in their mouths. Before the war they ran wild, and now they ride rough-shod over decorum, decency, and Davis himself.But the dictator endures it like a philosopher. "He lets it pass," said Judge Ould to me, "like the idle wind, which it is."
At last, ten o'clock—the hour when we were to set out from Dixie—struck from a neighboring steeple, and I laid down the paper, and listened for the tread of the Judge on the stairs. I had heard it often, and it had always been welcome, for he is a most agreeable companion, but I had notlistenedfor it till then. Then I waited for it as "they that watch for the morning," for he was to deliver us from the "den of lions,"—from "the hold of every foul and unclean thing." Ten, twenty, thirty minutes I waited, but he did not come! Why was he late, that prompt man, who was always "on time,"—who put us through the streets of Richmond the night before on a trot, lest we should be a second late at our appointment? Did he mean to bake us brown with the mid-day sun? or had the mules overslept themselves, or moved their quarters still farther out of town? Well, I didn't know, and it was useless to speculate, so I took up the paper, and went to reading again. But the stinging editorials had lost their sting, and the pointed paragraphs, though sharper than a meat-axe, fell on me as harmless as if I had been encased in a suit of mail.
At length eleven o'clock sounded, and I took out my watch to count the minutes. One, two, three,—how slow they went! Four, five,—ten,—fifteen,—twenty! What was the matter with the watch? Even at this day I could affirm on oath that it took five hours for that hour-hand to get round to twelve. But at last it got there, and then—each second seeming a minute, each minute an hour—it crept slowly on to one; but still no Judge appeared! Why did he not come? The reason was obvious. The mules were "quartered six miles out of town," because he had to see Mr. Davis before letting us go. And Davis had heard of my nocturnal rambling, and concluded we had come as spies. Or he had, from my cross-questioning the night before, detectedmymain object in coming to Dixie. Either waymydoom was sealed. If we were taken as spies, it was hanging. If held on other grounds, it was imprisonment; and ten days of Castle Thunder, in my then state of health, would have ended my mortal career.
I had looked at this alternative before setting out. But then I saw it afar off; now I stood face to face with it, and—I thought of home,—of the brave boy who had said to me, "Father, I think you ought to go. If I was only a man,I'd go. If you never come back,I'll take care of the children."
These thoughts passing in my mind, I rose and paced the room for a few moments,—then, turning to Javins, said,—
"Will you oblige me by stepping into the hall? My friend and I would have a few words together."
As he passed out, I said to the Colonel,—
"Ould is more than three hours late! What does it mean?"
All this while he had sat, his spectacles on his nose, and his chair canted against the window-sill, absorbed in the newspapers. Occasionally he would look up to comment on something he was reading; but not a movement of his face, nor a glance of his eye, had betrayed that he was conscious of Ould's delay, or of my extreme restlessness. When I said this, he took off his spectacles, and, quietly rubbing the glasses with his handkerchief, replied,—
"It looks badly, but—Iask no odds of them. We may have to show we are men. We have tried to serve the country. That is enough. Let them hang us, if they like."
"Colonel," I exclaimed, with a strong inclination to hug him, "you are a trump! the bravest man I ever knew!"
"I trust in God,—that is all," was his reply.
This was all he said,—but his words convey no idea of the sublime courage which shone in his eye and lighted up hisevery feature. I felt rebuked, and turned away to hide my emotion. As I did so, my attention was arrested by a singular spectacle in a neighboring street. Coming down the hill, hand in hand with a colored woman, were two little boys of about eight or nine years, one white, the other black. As they neared the opposite corner, the white lad drew back and struck the black boy a heavy blow with his foot. The ebony juvenile doubled up his fist, and, planting it behind the other's ear, felled him to the sidewalk. But the white lad was on his feet again in an instant, and showering on the black a perfect storm of kicks and blows. The latter parried the assault coolly, and, watching his opportunity, planted another blow behind the white boy's ear, which sent him reeling to the ground again. Meanwhile the colored nurse stood by, enjoying the scene, and a score or more of negroes of all ages and sizes gathered around, urging the young ebony on with cheers and other expressions of encouragement. I watched the combat till the white lad had gone down a third time, when a rap came at the door, and Judge Ould entered.
"Good evening," he said.
"Good evening," we replied.
"Well, Gentlemen, if you are ready, we'll walk round to the Libby," he added, with a hardness of tone I had not observed in his voice before.
My worst fears were realized! We were prisoners! A cold tremor passed over me, and my tongue refused its office. A drooping plant turns to the sun; so, being just then a drooping plant, I turned to the Colonel. He stood, drawn up to his full height, looking at Ould. Not a feature of his fine face moved, but his large gray eye was beaming with a sort of triumph. I have met brave men,—men who have faced death a hundred times without quailing; but I never met a man who had the moral grandeur of that man. His look inspired me, for I turned to Ould, and, with a coolness that amazed myself, said,—
"Very well. We are ready. But here is an instructive spectacle"; and I pointed to the conflict going on in the street. "That is what you are coming to. Fight us another year, and that scene will be enacted, by larger children, all over the South."
"To prevent that is why we are fighting you at all," he replied, dryly.
We shook Javins by the hand, and took up our portmanteaus to go. Then our hotel-bill occurred to me, and I said to Ould,—
"You cautioned us against offering greenbacks. We have nothing else. Will you give us some Confederate money in exchange?"
"Certainly. But what do you want of money?" he asked, resuming the free and easy manner he had shown in our previous intercourse.
"To pay our hotel-bill."
"You have no bill here. It will be settled by the Confederacy."
"We can't allow that. We are not here as the guests of your Government."
"Yes, you are, and you can't help yourselves," he rejoined, laughing pleasantly. "If you offer the landlord greenbacks, he'll have you jugged, certain,—for it's against the law."
"That's nothing to us. We are jugged already."
"So you are!" and he laughed again, rather boisterously.
His manner half convinced me that he had been playing on our sensibilities; but I said nothing, and we followed him down the stairs.
At the outer door stood Jack and the ambulance! Their presence assured us a safe exit from Dixie, and my feelings found expression somewhat as follows:—
"How are you, Jack? You're the best-looking darky I ever saw."
"I's bery well, Massa, bery well. Hope you's well," replied Jack, grinning until he made himself uglier than Nature intended. "I's glad you tinks I's good-lookin'."
"Good-looking! You're better-lookingthan any man, black or white, I ever met."
"You've odd notions of beauty," said the Judge, smiling. "That accounts for your being an Abolitionist."
"No, it don't." And I added, in a tone too low for Jack to hear, "It only implies, that, until I saw that darky, I doubted our getting out of Dixie."
The Judge gave a low whistle.
"So you smelt a rat?"
"Yes, a very big one. Tell us, why were you so long behind time?"
"I'll tell you when the war is over. Now I'll take you to Libby and the hospitals, if you'd like to go."
We said we would, and, ordering Jack to follow with the ambulance, the Judge led us down the principal thoroughfare. A few shops were open, a few negro women were passing in and out among them, and a few wounded soldiers were limping along the sidewalks; but scarcely an able-bodied man was to be seen anywhere. A poor soldier, who had lost both legs and a hand, was seated at a street-corner, asking alms of the colored women as they passed. Pointing to him, the Judge said,—
"There is one of our arguments against reunion. If you will walk two squares, I'll show you a thousand."
"All asking alms of black women? That is another indication of what you are coming to."
He made no reply. After a while, scanning our faces as if he would detect our hidden thoughts, he said, in an abrupt, pointed way,—
"Grant was to have attacked us yesterday. Why didn't he do it?"
"How should we know?"
"You came from Foster's only the day before. That's where the attack was to have been made."
"Why wasn't it made?"
"Idon't know. Some think it was because you came in, and wereexpected outthat way."
"Oh! That accounts for your being so late! You think we are spies, sent in to survey, and report on the route?"
"No, I do not. I think you are honest men, and I'vesaid so."
And I have no doubt it was because he "said so" that we got out of Richmond.
By this time we had reached a dingy brick building, from one corner of which protruded a small sign, bearing, in black letters on a white ground, the words,—