My arrangements were quickly and quietly made,—my equipments secretly completed. On pretense of visiting business acquaintances, I requested my wife to accompany me on a journey to St. Louis. With her usual passiveness, she consented. In a few days we were on our way. After our arrival, we made trips into the interior. Gradually, I diverged from civilization. Professing to find an unexpected charm in the novelty of this, I led the way still onward. We traveled on horseback,—often amid solitudes. I first astonished my wife by occasionally displaying on the game my precision with the rifle. (I had spent scores of hours at a shooting gallery in St. Louis.) I persuaded her to try a few shots. (I had provided a beautiful light rifle for her use.) Ambition to shoot well soon possessed her. By degrees, our open-air life gave her blood a bound which nosecret grief could counteract. The excitement of the chase on our fleet horses, the incidents of our hunting adventures, and the novelty of our associations, created a glow of spirit which burst forth in unrestrained conversation, mirth, and song. Now, then, I began to display my literary acquisitions. During the long evenings in our tent, or the wigwam of an Indian, or the log cabin of a backwoods settler, we alternated in reading aloud from an excellent collection of books I had prepared. Reading introduced topics of conversation, in which I employed all that I had in memory, and all that had been created in myself by the electric collision of great authors. Never did a professional wit more ingeniously produce as sudden coruscations thebon motstediously studied; never did a philosophical conversationalist use to more advantage the wisdom conned over in the closet. I talked eloquently, profoundly. I rattled forth witticisms and poetical quotations. I amazed her. The man whom she thought incapable of any ideas beyond his ledger, and the stock market, and the cotton warehouse, was revealed as a person of taste and reading. Instead of appearing to her merely an indifferent person, to whom her fate had been chained, and whom she regarded in somewhat the same manner as Prometheus did his rock, I had become a pleasant companion,—a being of more vitality than she had perhaps ever met.
Still, I had not excited the emotion of love. I did not expect it at this stage of the treatment, but I observed its absence with a pang.
For woman's love is not a slowly extorted tribute to excellence, but a spontaneous bestowal. Unlike evil spirits, which, according to popular superstition, need urging over the threshold before they can enter and possess the hearthstone. Love leaps in unsolicited at any unguarded aperture, and becomes master of the household.
Only genius could command her homage, and to this I could make no pretension.
Love is oftener a response to appreciation, than a concession granted upon a rational estimate of him who seeks it. She did not yet know that I appreciated her. The time for her to learn it had not come.
The casket of a woman's heart is oftener forced than opened with a key.
Love had once entered my wife's soul, and, after accomplishing his mischief, left demons in possession. I could not exorcise—only charm them. For the present,—perhaps for years,—I must be content with this. In the distant future, which had a dim horizon of hope, I expected to make some final stroke by which to expel them. What it should be, I could scarcely anticipate. Necessarily, I foresaw, it must be like the highwayman's challenge, 'Money or life.' After becoming endurable to her, in fact, inveigling her into unforeseen familiarity, I must suddenly throw off the mask, and demand the love for which I had waited and plotted. Either she would surrender, or there would be a tragedy.
The denouement came in a way of which I had no prescience. You will learn it in the due course of my narrative.
But she charmed me, fearfully, when she appeared, after a morning's chase, resplendent in the fullness of her healthful beauty, beaming with excitement, her superb figure undulating gracefully to the restive movements of her horse. I could have prostrated myself before her, in a wild worship of her beauty. She had that quality which is so rare in woman, but so admirable where it exists,—entire fearlessness; for it is a most absurd mistake to suppose that masculinevirtuescan not co-exist in woman with the most lovable, feminine delicacy. Partly her unblenching courage was the product of a strong will in a splendid physical organization; partly, alas! it arose from a disregard of life, which she felt was worthless.
One morning, as we turned our faces homeward, our Indian escort and baggage having preceded us, we were riding quietly along, with no intention of hunting, but accidentally coming on a fewbuffaloes separated from their herd, the temptation to attack them was too strong to be resisted. We both urged our horses in pursuit, and, overtaking them, fired simultaneously at different animals. My wife's quarry—a stout bull—continued his flight, not being fatally wounded. Suddenly, some of our Indians who had heard the shot, and started to return, came into view over the brow of a hill, and the buffalo, thinking himself surrounded, turned and rushed at my wife. She avoided the onset by a quick whirl of her horse. The buffalo gathered himself and returned to the charge with a roar of rage. Not having reloaded my rifle, I spurred forward, and leaped my steed full upon his massy form. We all fell together, and when, after several seconds, I extricated myself, my wife was standing on the buffalo's neck to prevent him from rising. I plunged my knife into his chest, but in the mad struggle of death he partially rose, throwing her to the ground, while one of his horns entered her side. Never before, since I commenced my system, had I lost my studied calmness. But the sight of her blood, dyeing her garments and the grass, made me frantic. I tore away her vestments from the wound, pressed my lips in an agony to the gash, and then, hastily stanching the blood, bore her, nearly senseless as she was, in an embrace, the thrilling energy of which can not be told, to a rivulet in the vicinity. Happily the wound was but a lesion of the flesh, for which my surgery was sufficient, and by the aid of stimulants she revived, subsequently recovering without injury.
Since my fatal discovery in the conservatory, I had not before touched her person, except for such courtesies as any gentleman may render a lady of his acquaintance. Now, with my arms clasping her, my veins throbbed as in a delirium. The tender light of her eyes, as she revived, resulting partially from weakness and partially from a natural thankfulness, moved me to the very point of prematurely throwing myself at her feet and disclosing all. By a great throe I controlled myself. As she resumed her natural condition, I fell back into that most ordinary and common-place character,—a self-satisfied husband,—qualified somewhat by sympathy and attention, of course, but without the least infusion of sentiment.
Oh, if she had known of the volcano under this exterior! If she had known how, at that moment, I could have exclaimed, 'Give me your love, or here let us die!'
So, after various desultory wanderings, we returned home. Home! how I dreaded it, for I knew the power of association—the effect of localities and customary external habits on the feelings. You may take a careworn, dyspeptic, melancholy man out for a week's excursion, and he will show himself preëminent in all good fellowship. But as the familiar sights gradually open on him at returning, you may see the shadows flitting down upon his brow and entering his soul. How many good resolutions of change and reform—of breaking old associations and forming new ones—we make when absent from our usual haunts! How impossible it becomes to realize them when we re-occupy the familiar places!
But so it was, we reached home. All my anticipations were realized. The old spirit, the old manner, were revived in my wife. At this time an installment of pictures and statues from Italy came to hand. I welcomed them as angels of mercy. When I announced the arrival to my wife, a flush struggled to her cheek, and a radiance to her eye. 'Ha! you think,' said I in my communings, 'that Frank is to be present with you in his works, and that through them you may be in his presence. So you shall, but they shall become only an annoyance and a weariness,—for themselves and for him.'
The statues and pictures were brought to the house and unpacked. My wife was almost tremulous with eagerness to behold them. I had taken care, however, to have a number of acquaintances present,—some of genuine artistic taste,some of only pretensions, and others utterly ignorant. As the various works were displayed, my artistic friends, as in courtesy bound, and as their merit really deserved, duly eulogized them, and the praises were echoed by the rest. Finally we came to a box which contained a label marked 'The statue of Hope Downcast.' 'Aha! master Frank,' thought I, 'so I have you at last.' I could see my wife quivering with the contest of feeling,—between her annoyance at the presence of visitors, and the necessity of controlling herself and uniting in their commendations.
'Hope Downcast' was raised to the perpendicular, and proved to be a beautiful life-size statue, representing a female figure standing on a rock, in a most dejected attitude, one foot unsandaled, her raiment torn, her hair loose, the fillet which confined it lying parted at her feet, the star upon the fillet deprived of some of its points, and the ordinary emblem of Hope, the anchor, broken at her side. The applicability of the conception to the history of Frank and my wife, I readily understood. My guests broke out into raptures, in which I joined, and, by continual appeals to my wife, constrained her to do the same. I also took the opportunity of inquiring the name of the artist, and requested my wife to express to him the entire satisfaction he had given in the execution of his commission.
The ordeal closed, but was renewed and repeated day after day, till all the poetry and romance connected with our artistic acquisitions was thoroughly destroyed in my wife's mind. They became, as I could easily observe, positively odious to her, and, doubtless, could she have obeyed the promptings of her feelings, she would have trampled on them, and cast them into the street.
But in this disappointment she became so forlorn, so passively desperate, that my heart almost burst at beholding her.
Since my discovery in the conservatory I had often used it for watching my wife,—not of course with any miserable design of playing the spy upon, her,—but to observe her various moods, in order to adapt, my own conduct and the progress of my system to them. One night, after we had entertained a party of visitors, whom I had made instruments of torture to my wife by their common-place eulogies of Frank's contributions, I ascended my perch in the conservatory. She was sitting in her apartment, her hands, listlessly clasped, resting on her knees, her form bowed with the most profound dejection, coupled with that indescribable aspect of cold, desperate defiance which I have previously noticed, exhibited in her countenance and position. 'Oh! Frank, Frank!' she seemed to say, 'would that I had forsaken all and fled to Italy with you. There, the creations of your taste and genius would have afforded a solace. Here they are but torments.'
'You shall go to Italy, Evelyn, and have your fill of Frank's society,' said I in my imaginary comment. 'But not yet; the time has not yet come.'
Having permitted her to learn the disappointment derived from the works of art associated with Frank's memory, I now brought into action a scheme for teaching her the pleasure which I could afford. Before our hunting expedition I had purchased a spacious and beautiful mansion, and engaged upholsterers from New York to decorate it, during our absence, in the most elegant style their taste could design. A large apartment had been constructed by my order for the purpose of a private theatre.
I informed Evelyn of my plan, and conveyed her to our destined residence. She was not at first much moved, but after we had entered on possession, and she was thoroughly engaged in selecting an amateur company from our acquaintances and arranging for our forthcoming exhibitions, the old enthusiasm of her former profession revived, and she appeared for the time transported back to the auspicious hours of her young triumphs. 'The School for Scandal' was chosen for our first performance—I of course taking the part of Sir Peter, and she that of Lady Teazle. I did not allow my feelings once to transcend thepart, and in the conclusion looked completely the happy, good-natured, self-satisfied, old husband. Heaven! had her protestations, where the reconciliation occurred, been genuine, and not mere dramatic fiction! The thought almost overpowered me. I could see the young bucks of the city chuckling over my position, and evidently wishing they were in the place ofthat old fool!
I need not relate the innumerable stratagems I devised to employ the attention and heart of my wife in pleasures emanating from myself. I was continually careful, however, to exhibit no sign of tender appreciation, but allowed her to regard them as the mere ordinary gratification of my own whims and wishes. I had now been for about a year disconnected with my business. I had encouraged Evelyn in every species of extravagance, and expended money lavishly in all methods. I was conscious of living far beyond the ability of even my ample means, but there could not be an hesitation or halting. The city looked on me with wonder; some spoke of me as one whom fortune had crazed; others pitied me as the victim of an extravagant wife. My New York partners expostulated with me, and, when my theatrical exhibition reached their ears, hinted at a dissolution. But I was deaf to rumor and reproof.
The person who took the part of Joseph Surface, in our representation of 'The School for Scandal,' was an unmarried gentleman of high standing, socially and politically, of middle age, fine presence, and superior abilities. Under polished manners and captivating conversational powers, were concealed persistent passions and a conscience of marble. Before even Evelyn suspected it, I was aware that he had resolved on subduing her to his own designs, for I seemed in all things relating to her to be gifted with preternatural intuitions.
Our next representation was to be 'The Fatal Marriage,' in which the person alluded to—whose name was Sefton—was to take the character of the wooer.
The necessary consultations concerning the production of the piece brought him frequently to my house, and both the excuse and the opportunities it gave were diligently improved.
I had a premonition one evening that his intentions toward Evelyn were then to take some decisive expression. I left my solitary study, of which I have before spoken, and, going home, entered the house softly, and directed my steps towards our theatrical apartment. My confidence in Evelyn was unbounded, but I wished to witness the apprehended collision. Stealing behind the scenery, I saw Evelyn sitting on the stage, with cold and erect pride,—which was yet free from affectation,—and Sefton standing before her, having evidently just concluded speaking.
'So, sir,' she said, 'I have heard you without interruption. But the character you rehearse is inappropriate. You forget that we are now concerned with a piece representing the tribulations of a faithful wife, and not a comedy of the school of Charles the Second. I see that you are sincere; but sincerity renders a bad passion the more hateful. Now leave me. For your own contentment crush it. If this is impossible, conceal it. Should you ever again intimate it by even a glance, I will expel you from my society as I would a viper.'
'Madam,' he gasped forth in suppressed rage, 'I understand you. You shall also understand me, if you now do not. I will reduce your haughty pride. Of this be assured. You play well therôleof the faithful wife, but I will not do you the injustice of supposing that it is through any regard for him on whose behalf you assume it.'
He would have said more, but Evelyn sprang up, her eyes flashing, and, seizing a dagger which lay on a table among other 'properties,' exclaimed,—
'Begone, sir, or you shall find me an actress who can perform a terrible reality.'
She advanced toward him, and heturned away, passing out slowly, cowed, but not vanquished. I could see that he was determined to become her master, though it cost him all that he had invested in ambition, honor, and life.
She flung down the dagger, paused till he was out of the house, and then went to her rooms. I emerged from my hiding-place, laughing and sobbing hysterically,—rejoicing over my glorious Evelyn, and bewailing that she was not in truth mine.
A few weeks after this scene, I found on several occasions, when returning home late, that Evelyn was out. I never interfered with her freedom, nor questioned her in regard to any of her proceedings; but, nevertheless, in all cases, as there was no concealment concerning them, I was, by the ordinary channels of social and domestic intercourse, acquainted with them. With regard to the absences alluded to, however, I was at fault. They were not attributable to any of the engagements of society. It became, of course, requisite, as part of my system, to investigate the mystery. So, on a certain evening, after going out apparently as usual, I watched the house, and, shortly after dusk, saw her emerge, clad in plain habiliments, and followed her at a distance through several secluded streets. She stopped at a very ordinary tenement in a remote quarter of the city, and remained till a late hour, when she returned home.
I resolved quietly to take observations, and ascertain the motive for her visit. My intentions were precluded the next morning by the entrance into my place of business of Mr. Sefton, who, after many complimentary and cordial expressions, requested a private conference; which being granted, he said,—
'My dear Mr. Bell, I wish to speak to you concerning a very delicate and painful matter. I am conscious of involving myself in an affair, which may, perhaps, have unpleasant consequences for me, but my friendship and esteem for you will not permit me to remain quiet concerning a matter which is injurious to your honor.'
He then proceeded to inform me that a certain actor, named Foster, who once had a high reputation, but had become degraded through dissoluteness, recently came to him, apparently in abject poverty and dangerous illness, begging assistance and shelter; that he had placed Foster in a tenement, which he described (the same that I had seen my wife enter), and supplied his wants, but had reason to suppose that Foster was imposing on his charity, having learned from others that, so far from being ill, he was sufficiently able to enjoy his appetites and licentious desires. 'On going,' said Mr. Sefton, 'to reprimand and expel him, he confessed to me that he had taken this method of covering an intrigue with a lady, and assured me he intended to repay all I had advanced him. I became, also,' continued Mr. Sefton, 'a witness of an interview with the lady, as she entered while I was there, and Foster, in the haste of the occasion, was obliged to conceal me in an adjoining room. The lady, I was astonished to perceive, was Mrs. Bell. I then recollected that Foster was formerly intimate with her, and that they performed on the stage together. I have deemed it my duty to relate this astounding development to you.'
I received Mr. Sefton's announcement in all seriousness, and thanked him. What would he have me do? He replied that my own judgment must dictate, but that he supposed it would be best for all parties to remove quietly to another State and apply for a divorce. I promised to consider the matter, and after many mutual compliments he departed.
'What does this mean?' I mused. 'The supposition of an intrigue is preposterous. Probably Foster has merely deceived Evelyn as he did Sefton, in order to obtain her bounty. But why make her visits so secret? That is easily explained;—she does not wish to be connected publicly with any unhappy sequences of her former histrionic career. I will have an interview with Foster before proceeding further.'
I visited him that night, pushing into the house immediately after the black female servant who opened the door, lest I should be refused admittance. I found Foster in a half-intoxicated condition, seated comfortably at a table, with a pipe in his hand, and liquor before him.
'I am Mr. Bell,' said I, 'and had learned from my wife of your destitute condition, which I came to relieve. But you appear in excellent circumstances.'
Through his intoxication there was an evidence of confusion, as he stammered out,—
'Yes, sir; much obliged to you. Take a seat—a seat. Good spell now. Doctor prescribes a little comfort, you know, old boy!'
'A very kind doctor, I should judge, Mr. Foster, and I am glad to find you in such a good condition. Suppose I take a glass with you?'
'Certainly. Very happy—happy. Your health, sir.'
'I hope, sir,' I said, 'that you will soon recover, after the attentions of my wife and Mr. Sefton.'
'Sefton!' he exclaimed. 'Rascal! D—d rascal! sir.' He continued murmuring in his throat, 'Rascal! D—d rascal!'
'I'll take another glass,' said I. 'The liquor is very good—very good, sir. Who furnishes it?'
'Liquor! Yes—very good! Sefton—yes, Sefton sent it. Rascal! D—d rascal!' (in a murmur, as before.)
'Now, Foster,' said I, 'I am rich. There is a purse,—and pretty well filled. I will give it to you, and others like it, if you will tell me why Sefton is a rascal, and how you happen to be connected with him.'
His eyes glistened with greediness, as I anticipated. He grasped the purse and thrust it into his pocket, then immediately pulled it out, tossed it on the table, leaned his head down on his arms and began to sob, all in the most maudlin manner.
Not now, my tongue, to legends old,Or tender lays of sunny clime;A sterner tale must now be told,Deep thoughts must burn in warlike rhyme;For Freedom, with a mighty throe,Rouses from sleep to active life,And loud her clarion trumpets blow,To summonmento join the strife.The seed, which long ago was sownBy free New England's rock-bound rills,At length, in noble vigor grown,Casts branches o'er the Southern hills.Far o'er the prairies of the WestRings Freedom's thrilling battle-cry,Re-echoed where each mountain crestLifts Maine's dark forests to the sky.Go forth, ye warriors for the right!Lift high the banner of the free!Shine far into Oppression's night,Bright oriflamme of Liberty!For, God be praised, the lowering cloudSo long impending overhead,Which nations thought our funeral shroud,Shall prove our victory-robe instead.O maiden, who with tender smile,O wife, who with enslaving kiss,Some dearly loved one would beguileFrom duty in a field like this;Conjure before thy tearful sightThe glories future years shall know,Unclasp thine arms—in Freedom's fight,Bid him be valiant,—bid him, 'go.'Be with him both in camp, in field,With tender thought and earnest prayer;Think, those who Freedom's weapons wield,God makes his own peculiar care.And if he fall,—as chance he may,—Rejoice the glorious boon is thine,To lay thy heart-flowers of a dayOn Freedom's grand, eternal shrine!O warrior, nerve thy courage well!For fierce and stern the strife will be,—Oppression, Wrong, the powers of hell,War against Right and Liberty.Fight, for the victory must be thine;No nobler strife the world has knownSince first the Saviour, all divine,Brought life to man from God's high throne.And ye, who sit in seats of power,The instruments of God's high will,Be ye not wanting in this hourSo big with future good or ill.Fail not, for Freedom's car rolls onResistless in its glorious way;Some shall to honor be upborne,They who oppose be crushed to clay.Hark! from the sunny Southern plainsThere comes a sound still swelling on,The clanking of a million chains,The cry, the groan, the lash, the moan.That sound for years has gone on high;The hour of judgment comes apace,The day of right and liberty,Of freedom for the human race.Speed, speed the day, O righteous God,To break the fetters, dry the tears,To raise the slave, so long downtrod,Through the dark age of by-gone years!Give but to us the sword of power,To work thy ends, in thine own way,To see the promise of the hourOf this the world's most glorious day.
In the tense, absorbing excitement of our life-and-death-struggle for national existence, events which in calmer times would quicken every pulse, and arrest universal attention, pass all but unnoticed; as historians record that during the battle between Hannibal and the Romans by the Lake Thrasymene, the earth was shaken and upheaved by a great natural convulsion, without attracting the observation of the fierce, eager combatants; or, as Byron tersely phrases it,
'An earthquake rolled unheededly away,'
being regarded, if regarded at all, as one of the incidents of the tremendous collision of Europe with Africa.
When, early in March, 1844, John C. Fremont, with thirty or forty followers, astonished Captain Sutter by dropping down from the Sierra Nevada upon hisrancheon the Sacramento, the old Switzer could not have been more completely dumbfounded had he been told that his visitors had just descended from the clouds, than he was by the truthful assurance that they were an exploring party, who had left the United States only ten months before, and had since made their way across the continent. To pass the Sierra in winter had hitherto been deemed an impossibility, and, indeed, the condition of Fremont's surviving beasts of burden—thirty-three out of the sixty-seven with which he started—proved the presumption not far out of the way. To traverse the continent at all, even in summer, on a line stretching due west from the Hudson, the Delaware, or the Potomac, to the Pacific Ocean, was an unattempted feat, whereof the hardships, the dangers, were certain, and the success exceedingly doubtful. A very few parties of daring adventurers had, during several of the six or eight preceding summers, pushed up the Platte from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains, followed the Sweetwater from the point where the North Platte emerges from the heart of those mountains, running to the northward, and having thus passed through the great central chain of North America (for the Sweetwater heads on the west side of the mountain range, and the South Pass, through which it seeks the Platte, is a broad elevated gap, wherein the face of the country is but moderately rolling, and the trail better than almost any where else), turned abruptly to the north-west, crossed the Green River source of the Colorado, which leads a hundred milesfarther north, and soon struck across a mountainous water-shed to the Lewis or Snake branch of the Columbia, which they followed down to the great river of the west, and thus reached the coveted shore of the Pacific,—that Oregon which they had chosen as their future home, mainly because it was, of all possible Eldorados, the farthest and the least accessible. Trappers, hunters, and Indian traders, few in numbers, and generally men of desperate fortunes, who realized that
'The world was not their friend, nor the world's law,'
had, for several decades, penetrated every glen of the Rocky Mountains, and traced every affluent of the great river in quest of their respective prey; but the wild, desolate region watered by the Colorado, the Humboldt, or the streams that are lost in the Great Salt Lake, or some smaller absorbent of the scanty waters of the Great Basin, had never proved attractive to our borderers, and for excellent reasons. It is, as a whole, so arid, so sterile (though its valleys do not lack fertility wherever their latent capacities can be developed by irrigation), and its game is so scanty and worthless, that old Bridger (pioneer of settlers at the military post in northern Utah, now known as Fort Bridger) was probably the only American who had made his home in the Great Basin when Fremont's exploring party first pitched their tents by the border of Great Salt Lake, in September, 1843.
The discovery of gold in California, in the summer of 1847, closely following the military occupation and conquest of that country by the United States, wrought a great and sudden revolution. Of the few Americans in that region prior to 1846, probably nine tenths had rounded Cape Horn to reach it, while the residue had made their way across Mexico or the Isthmus of Darien. It was 'a far coy' at best, and very tedious as well as difficult of attainment. We have in mind an American of decided energy, who, starting from Illinois in May or June, 1840, with a party of adventurers, mainly mounted, reached the mouth of the Columbia, overland, in December, and California, by water, in the course of the winter; and who, starting again for California, via Panama, in the summer of 1847, was nine months in reaching his destination. But the tidings that the shining dross was being and to be picked up by the handful on the tributaries of the Sacramento wrought like magic. Early in 1849, steam-ships were dispatched from New York for Chagres, at the mouth of the river of like name on the Isthmus of Darien, whence crowds of eager gold-seekers made their way across, as they best might, to Panama, being taken in small, worthless boats up the river, so far as its navigation was practicable,—say sixty miles,—and thence, mounted on donkeys or mules, for the residue of the distance, which was perhaps half as far. Short as this portage was, it soon came to be regarded with a terror by no means unjustified. The ascent of the rapid, shallow, tortuous stream was at once difficult and dangerous; the boats were of the rudest construction; the boatmen little better than savages; rains fell incessantly for a good part of each year; the warm, moist, relaxing climate bred fevers in the blood of a considerable percentage of those so suddenly and so utterly exposed to its malarious influences; while the road from Cruces, at the head of navigation, being but a rugged bridle-path at best, was soon worn by incessant travel into the most detestable compound of rock and mire that ever aggravated the miseries of human life. Arrived at quaint, dull old Panama, the early adventurers long awaited with fierce impatience the steamers which were to have anticipated their coming, and been ready to speed them on their way; and many were goaded into taking passage on sailing vessels, which were months in beating up to the Golden Gate against the gentle but persistent breezes from the west and north-west which mainly prevail on that coast. Rarely has human endurance been put to severer tests than in the earlier years ofgold-seeking travel by the Isthmus route to California.
The Panama Railroad—commenced in 1850, and finished in 1855, at a total cost of $7,500,000, for a length of forty-seven and a half miles—very considerably reduced the expense, whether in time or money, of the Isthmus transit, diminishing its miseries and perils in still greater proportion. It is one of the noblest achievements, whereof our countrymen are fairly entitled to the full credit. A ship-canal or railroad across the Isthmus had been proposed, and commended, and surveyed for and estimated upon, by French, South American, and other officials and engineers; but the execution of the work was left to our countrymen, and not in vain. Contractor after contractor abandoned the undertaking in despair; hundreds, if not thousands, of laborers—Irish, Chinese, and others—were sacrificed to the deadly miasma of the swamps and tropical jungle which thickly stud the route. But the work was at last completed, and the railroad has now been some six years in constant operation, reducing the average length of the actual transit from a week to two hours, and its expense and peril to an inappreciable quantity. It is a cheering fact that the capitalists who invested their faith and their means in this beneficent enterprise have already had returned to them in dividends the full amount of their outlay, and are now receiving twenty per cent. per annum. Their road has shortened the average Isthmus passage to and from California by at least a full week, and immensely diminished the danger of loss by robbery, accident, or exposure, beside building up a large trade which but for it would have had no existence.
Yet the Isthmus route to California is only by comparison acceptable, even for passengers and goods, while for mails it was at best but endurable. It is nearly twice the length of the direct route from the Atlantic seaboard, while for the residents of the Evart Valley it is intolerably circuitous. A letter mailed at St. Paul for Astoria or Oregon City, or at Omaha for Sacramento, must, under the regimen of the last ten years, be conveyed overland to New York, or by steamboat to New Orleans, where it might have to wait ten or twelve days for an Isthmus steam-ship, making a circuit of twice to thrice the distance by a direct route to its destination. There has been, indeed, for some four years past, a tri-weekly overland mail from St. Louis via New Mexico and Arizona to San Diego, in the extreme south of California,—a route nearly a thousand miles longer than it need or should have been, and evincing a perverse ingenuity in the avoidance not only of Salt Lake and Carson Valley, but even of Santa Fe. This long and mischievous detour—one of the latest of our wholesale sacrifices to Southern jealousy and greed—has at length been definitely abandoned, and, instead of a tri-weekly mail via Elposo and the Gila, together with a weekly by Salt Lake, and a fortnightly or tri-monthly by the Isthmus, we have now one daily mail on the direct overland route from the Missouri, at St. Joseph or Omaha, via the Platte, North Platte, Sweetwater, South Pass, Fort Bridger, Salt Lake, Simpson's route, Carson Valley, and thence across the Sierra Nevada to Placerville and San Francisco, in shorter time than was usually made by way of the Isthmus, at less cost than that of the three mails which it replaces, while the immense advantage of a daily mail each way, over a tri-monthly or even weekly, needs no elucidation. The territories of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, are thus brought into intimate and constant communication with the loyal States, and made to feel the mighty pulsations of the National heart, in this heroic and eventful crisis of the Republic's history.
But this not all, nor the best. The old Congress, among its many wise and beneficent measures, enacted that the government should aid whatever company would for the lowest annual stipend establish and maintain a line of Electric Telegraph from Missouri or Iowa to California. A contract was accordinglymade with the Western Union Telegraph Company, under which active operations were commenced last spring, under surveys previously made. The grand train of four hundred men, one hundred great prairie wagons, and six or eight hundred mules or oxen,—a portion of the cattle for the subsistence of the party,—started westward from Omaha, Nebraska, in June last, and on the 4th of July commenced pushing on the construction at the point which it had already reached, some two or three hundred miles further west in the valley of the Platte. It may give to some an idea of the destitution of timber on the great American Desert, to know that the greatest distance over which poles had to be drawn for the elevation of the wires of this telegraph wasonly240 miles! Fresh teams were from time to time dispatched on the track of the working carts with additional supplies, and the line was pushed through to Salt Lake City by the 18th of October. Six days afterward, that point was reached by a like party, working eastward from Carson Valley, on behalf of the United Telegraph Companies of California, and the young Hercules by the Pacific vied with the infantile but vigorous territories this side of her in flashing to Washington and New York assurances of their invincible devotion to the indivisible American Union. So great and difficult an enterprise was probably never before so expeditiously and happily achieved in the experience of mankind.
The distance—some 1,500 miles—over which a working line of electric telegraph has thus been constructed and put in operation in the course of a single season is one of the minor obstacles surmounted. The want of timber is far more serious. From the sink of Carson River, less than one hundred miles this side of the Sierra, to the point at which the construction of the line was commenced on the Platte as aforesaid, there is no place at which a tree can fall across the fragile wires; there is probably less timber in sight on that whole sixteen hundred miles than is to-day standing in some single county of New York, Pennsylvania, or Ohio. From the forks of the Platte to the valley of the Sacramento, there is not a stick of growing timber that would make a decent axe-helve, much less a substantial axletree. The Sierra Nevada are heavily though not densely wooded nearly to their summits, but mainly with stately evergreens, including a brittle and worthless live oak; but the tough, enduring hickory, the lithe and springy white ash, the ironwood, beech, and sugar maple, are nowhere to be seen. A low, scrubby cedar and a small, scraggy white pine thinly cover a portion of the hills and low mountains of Utah; the former is shorter than it should be for telegraph poles, but stanch and durable, and is made to do. The detestable cotton-wood, most worthless of trees, yet a great deal better than none, thinly skirts the banks of the Platte and its affluents, in patches that grow more and more scarce as you travel westward, until you only see them 'afar off' on the sides of some of the mountains that enclose the South Pass. The Colorado has a still scantier allowance of this miserable wood; but the cedars meet you as you ascend from its valley to the hills that surround Fort Bridger. Where cotton-wood is used for poles,—and there are hundreds of miles where no other tree is found,—it will have to be replaced very frequently; for it decays rapidly, and has a fancy for twisting itself into all manner of ungainly shapes when cut and exposed to the sun and parching winds of the plains.
Water, next to wood, is the great want of the plains and of the Great Basin. Travel along either base of the Rocky Mountains, and you are constantly meeting joyous, bounding streams, flowing rapidly forth from each ravine and coursing to the arid plain; but follow them a few miles and they begin to diminish in volume, and, unless intercepted by a copious river, often dwindle to nothing. The Republican fork of the Kansas or Kaw River, after a course of some thirty to fifty miles, sinks suddenly into its bed, which thence for twenty miles exhibitsnothing but a waste of yellow sand. Of course there are seasons when this bed is covered with water throughout; but I describe what I saw early in June, when a teamster dug eight feet into that sand without finding a drop of the coveted liquid for his thirst-maddened oxen. Two months later, I observed the dry bed stretched several miles farther up and down what in winter is the river. Passing over to Big Sandy, the most northerly tributary of the Arkansas, I found dry sand (often incrusted with some white alkaline deposit) the rule; water the rare exception throughout the twenty or thirty miles of its course nearest its source. At Denver, on the 6th of June, Cherry Creek contributed to the South Platte a volume amply sufficient to run an ordinary grist-mill; ten days afterwards its bed was dry as a doctrinal sermon. My first encampment on the North Platte above Laramie was by a sparkling, dancing stream a yard wide, which could hardly have been forced through a nine-inch ring; but though its current was rapid and the Platte but three miles off, the thirsty earth and air drank up every drop by the way. Big Sandy, Little Sandy andDrySandy are the three tributaries to be crossed between South Pass and the Colorado, and the latter justifies its name through the better part of each year. Golden River runs through too deep a narrow valley and bears too strong a current from the snowy peaks in which it heads to be thus dried up; so with Bear, Welso, and the Timpanagos or Jordan, the principal affluents of Salt Lake, which tumble and roar between lofty peaks the greater part of their respective courses; but when you have crossed the Jordan, moving California-ward, you will not find another decent mill-stream for the five hundred miles that you traverse on your direct (Simpson's) route to the sink of the Carson. At intervals which seem very long, you find a spring, a scanty but welcome stream rushing down between two mountains, to be speedily drunk up by the thirsty plain and valley at their base; but you will oftener pass some 'sink' or depression below the general level of the valley you are traversing, where a shrewd guess has led to brackish or sulphurous water by digging two or three feet. A mail station-keeper lost his oxen, at a point a hundred miles south-west of Salt Lake; they had wandered southward on the desert, and he followed their trail for (as he estimated) a hundred miles, without finding a drop of water, when he gave them up, still a day's tramp ahead of him, and turned back to save his own life and that of his suffering horse. He might, I presume, have gone a hundred miles further without finding aught to drink but their blood.
This dearth of wood and water can hardly be realized from any mere description. A life-long denizen of Europe, or of the cis-Alleghany portion of this continent, is so accustomed to the unfailing presence or nearness of trees and springs, or streams, that he naturally supposes them as universal as the air we breathe. In a New Englander's crude conception, trees spring up and grow to stately maturity wherever they are not repressed by constant vigilance and exertion, while brooks and rivers are implied by the existence of hills and valleys, nay, of any land whatever. But as you travel westward with the Missouri, springs, streams, woods, become palpably scarcer and scarcer, until, unless in the immediate valley of the Platte, Arkansas, or some more northerly river that rushes full-fed from a long course among the snow-crowned peaks of the Rocky Mountains, your eye ranges over a vast expanse whereon neither forest, grove, nor even a single tree, is visible. If the country is rolling, springs may at long intervals be found by those who know just where to seek them; but streams are few and scanty, save in winter, and in later summer they disappear almost entirely. Beyond Salt Lake, the destitution of wood in Utah and Nevada is far less than on the Plains, but that of water is even greater. Fifty miles from water to water is the lowest interval in my experience on Simpson's route; but I only traversed the eastern half of it, turning thence abruptly northward to strike the valley of the Humboldt (formerly known as the St. Mary's), which rising in the north-west corner of the new Territory of Nevada, hardly fifty miles from the southern or Lewis branch of the Columbia, flows southward from the Goose Creek Mountains that cradled and nourished it, and thence hardly maintains its volume (which is that of a decent mill stream) in its generally south-west course of three hundred and fifty miles, till it is two thirds lost in a lake and the residue in a reedy slough or sink, a hundred miles from the Sierra Nevada and forty from the similar sink of the Carson, a larger and less impulsive stream which drains a considerable section of the eastern declivity of the Sierra Nevada only to meet this inglorious end. Doubtless, the time has been when a large portion of western Nevada formed one great lake or inland sea, whereof Pyramid and Mud Lakes, and the sinks respectively of the Carson, Walker and Humboldt rivers, are all that the thirsty earth and air have left us. The forty miles of low, flat, naked desert—in part of heavy, wearying sand—that now separates the sink of the Humboldt from that of the Carson, was evidently long under water, and might, to all human perception, have better remained so.
I can not comprehend those who talk of the Plains and the more intensely arid wilds which mainly compose Utah and Nevada becoming a great stock-growing region. Even California, though its climate favors the rapid multiplication and generous growth of cattle and sheep, can never sustain so many animals to the square mile as the colder and more rugged hills of New York and New England, because of the intense protracted drouth of its summers, which suffer no blade of grass to grow throughout the six later months of every year. Animals live and thrive on the dead-ripe herbage of the earlier months; but a large area is soon exhausted by a herd, which must be pastured elsewhere till the winter rains ensure a renewal of vegetation.
But the grasses of the Great Valley and of a large portion of the Plains are exceedingly scanty where they exist at all, so that the teams and herds annually driven across them by emigrants and traders suffer fearfully, and are often decimated by hunger, though they carefully seek out and adhere to the trails whereon feed is least scanty. Many a weary day's journey, even along the valleys of the North Platte and Sweetwater, brings to view too little grass to sustain the life of a moderate herd; those who have traversed the South Pass in June will generally have just escaped starvation, leaving to those that come straggling or tottering after them a very poor feed. The carcasses of dead animals, in every stage of decomposition, thickly stud the great trail from the banks of the Platte westward to the passes of the Sierra Nevada, and, I presume, to the banks of the Columbia, bearing mute but impressive testimony to the chronic inhospitality of the Great American Desert, which is almost everywhere thinly overgrown by worthless shrubs, known to travelers as grease-wood and sage brush;—the former prickly and repellant, but having a waxy or resinous property which renders it useful to emigrants as fuel; the latter affording shelter and subsistence to rabbits and a poor species of grouse known as the 'sage hen,' but utterly worthless to man and to the beasts obedient to his sway.
Yet the daily Overland Mail is an immense, a cheering fact, and the Pacific Telegraph another. A message dispatched from any village blessed with electric wires on poles in the Atlantic States will probably reach its destination in any city or considerable settlement of California or Nevada within a few hours, while every transpiring incident of the war for the Union is directly flashed across the continent to the journals of Sacramento and San Francisco, and will often be devoured by their readers on the evening after its occurrence. The Republic may well be proud of having achieved two such strides in her onward, upward course, in the midst of a great and desolatingwar, and with confidence implore a God of beneficent justice to hasten the auspicious day when we shall be able to telegraph her children by the far Pacific that her enemies are baffled, vanquished, humbled, and that there opens again before her a long vista of unbroken and honorable peace.
There can be no question that the overwhelming difficulty of the present day, is the proper disposal of the Negro.
The writer of these lines takes the liberty of believing that the war is virtually a settled affair. There has been, there is, no diminution of Northern determination to push on and keep pushing until the wings of the eagle again stretch from Maine to the Rio Grande. The administration is sustained, as from the first, by ever increasing majorities. The daily defeats of those politicians who are known to sympathize with secession, the wreck of the peace party, and the growing indignation of the country, as manifested against all halfway men and measures, are becoming what in sober seriousness can not be regarded as other than a tremendous moral spectacle.In medio non tutissimus ibis.
Yet at the bottom of this foaming cup of joy remain the black dregs. I would not invidiously compare the unfortunate black to the 'dregs of the populace,' since labor in any form must not be lightly spoken of. But it would be the weakest of euphuisms to affect ignorance of the social position which he occupies, and which, not to increase the misery of his position, is indubitably 'at the bottom of the ladder.' But that which is at the bottom of the ladder may seriously affect its position and standing. There is a fearful and thrilling illustration of this, to be found in a popular cut graphically described in these words: