‘Ethereal air, and ye swift-winged winds,Ye rivers springing from fresh founts, ye wavesThat o’er the interminable ocean wreatheYour crisped smiles, thou all-producing Earth,And thee, bright Sun, I call, whose flaming orbViews the wide world beneath. See!’
Nearly got a stroke of the sun, Tom—what Whiffle would call a cul de sac by taking off my chapeau in my poetical frenzy so shove on.
We continued our journey through most magnificent defiles, and under long avenues of the most superb trees, until, deeply embosomed in the very heart of the eternal forest, we came to a shady clump of bamboos, overhanging, with their ostrich-feather-like plumes, a round pool of water, mantled or creamed over with a bright green coating, as if it had been vegetable velvet, but nothing akin to the noisome scum that ferments on a stagnant pool in England. It was about the time we had promised ourselves dinner, and in fact our black guide and Pegtop had dismounted, to make their preparations.
“Why, we surely cannot dine here? you don’t mean to drink of that stagnant pool, my dear sir?”
“Siste paulisper, my boy,” said Mr Bang, as he stooped down, and skimmed off the green covering with his hand, disclosing the water below, pure and limpid as a crystal-clear fountain. We dined on the brink, and discussed a bottle of vin-de-grave a-piece, and then had a small pull at brandy and water; but we ate very little, although I was very hungry, but Mr Bang would not let me feed largely.
“Now, Tom, you really do not understand things. When one rides a goodish journey on end—say seventy miles or so—on the same horse, one never feeds the trusty creature with half a bushel of oats; at least if any wooden spoon does, the chances are he knocks him up. No, no—you give him a mouthful of corn, but plenty to drink, little meal and water here, and a bottle of porter in water there, and he brings you in handsomely. Zounds! how would you yourself, Tom, like to dine on turtle soup and venison, in the middle of a hissing hot ride of sixty miles, thirty of them to be covered after the feed? Lord! what between the rich food and the punch, you would have fermented like a brewer’s vat before you reached the end of the journey; and if you had not a boll imperial measure of carbonate of soda with you, the chances are you would explode like a catamaran, your head flying through some old woman’s window, and capsizing her teapot on the one hand, while on the other your four quarters are scattered north, south, east, and west. But Gaudeamus, sweet is pleasure after pains Tom, and all you sailors and tailors—I love to class you together—are tender—not hearted creatures. Strange now that there should be three classes of his Majesty’s subjects, who never can be taught to ride,—to whom riding is, in fact, a physical impossibility; and these three are the aforesaid sailors and tailors, and dragoon officers. However, hand me the brandy bottle; and, Pegtop, spate me that black jack that you are rinsing—so. Useful commodity, a cup of this kind.” here our friend dashed in a large qualifier of cognac, “it not only conceals the quality of the water, for you can sometimes perceive the animalculae hereabouts without a microscope, but also the strength of the libation. So—a piece of biscuit now, and the smallest morsel of that cold tongue—your health, Thomas”—a long pull—“speedy promotion to you, Thomas.” Here our friend rested the jug on his knee. “Were you ever at a Gaudeamus of Presbyterian clergymen on the Monday after the Sacrament Sunday, Tom, that is, at the dinner at the manse?”
“No, my dear sir; you know I am an Episcopalian.”
“And I am a Roman Catholic. What then? I have been at a Gaudeamus, and why might not you have been at one too? Oh the fun of such a meeting! the feast of reason, and the flow of Ferintosh, I and the rich stories, ay, fatter than ever I would venture on, and the cricket-like chirps of laughter of the probationer, and the loud independent guffaw of the placed minister, and the sly innuendos about the land round the Jordan, when our freens get half foo. Oh how I honour a Gaudeamus! And why,” he continued, “should the excellent men not rejoice, Tom? Are they not the very men who should be happy? Is a minister to be for ever boxed up in his pulpit—for ever to be wagging his pow, bald, black, or grizzled as it may be, beneath his sounding board, like a bullfrog below a toadstool. And like the aforesaid respectable quadruped or biped (it has always puzzled me which to call it), is he never to drink any thing stronger than water? Hath not a minister eyes? hath not a minister hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, that another man is? If you prick them, do they not bleed? If you tickle them, do they not laugh? And shall we grudge them a Caudeamus now and then? Shall opera peracta ludemus be in the mouths of an mankind, from the dirty little greasy-faced schoolboy, who wears a red gown and learns the Humanities and Whiggery in the Nineveh of the West, I as the Bailie glories to call it, to the King upon his throne, and a dead letter, as well as a dead language, to them, and them only? Forbid it, the Honourable the Lord Provost—forbid it, the Honourable the Lord Provost and all the Bailies, and those who sit in Council with them! Forbid it,—the whole august aggregate of terror to evildoers, and praise of them who do well! Forbid it, the Devil and Dr Faustus!”
By this time I had smuggled the jug out of our amigo’s claw, and had done honour to his pledge. “Do you know, my dear Mr Bang, I have always been surprised that a man of your strong intellect, and clear views of most matters, should continue, in profession at least, a Roman Catholic?”
Aaron looked at me with a seriousness, an unaffected seriousness in his manner, that possessed me with the notion that I had taken an unwarrantable liberty. “Profession,” at length said he, slowly and deliberately, apparently weighing every word carefully as it fell from him, as one is apt to do when approaching an interesting subject, on which you desire not to be misunderstood—“Profession—what right have you to assume this of me or any man, that my mode of faith is but profession?” and then the kind-hearted fellow, perceiving that his rebuke had mortified me, altering his tone, continued, but still with a strong tinge of melancholy in his manner—“Alas! Tom, how often will weak man, in his great arrogance, assume the prerogative of his Maker, and attempt to judge—honestly, we will even allow, according to his conception—of the heart and secret things of another, but too often, in reality, by the evil scale of his own! Shall the potsherd say to his frail fellow, Thou art weak, but I am strong? Shall the moudiewort say to his brother mole—(I say, Quashie, mind that mule of yours don’t snort in the water, will ye?)—Blind art thou, but lo, I see? Ah, Tom, I am a Roman Catholic; but is it thou who shalt venture down into the depths of my heart, and then say, whether I be so in profession only, or in stern unswerving sincerity?”
I found I had unwittingly touched a string that vibrated to his heart. “I am a Roman Catholic, but, I humbly trust, not a bigoted one; for were it not against the canons of both our churches, I fear I should incline to the doctrine of Pope.”
‘He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.’
“My fathers, Tom, were all Catholics before me; they may have been wrong; but I am only my father’s son—not a better, and, I fear, I fear, not so wise a man.—Pray, Tom, did you ever hear of even a good Jew, who, being converted, did not become a bad Christian? Have you not all your life had a repugnance to consort with a sinner converted from the faith of his fathers, whether they were Jews or Gentiles, Hindoos or Mahomedans, dwellers in Mesopotamia, or beyond Jordan? You have such a repugnance, Tom, I know; and I have it too.”
“Well,” I proceeded, on the strength of the brandy grog, “in the case of an unenlightened, or ignorant, or half-educated man, I might indeed suspect duplicity, or even hypocrisy, at the bottom of the abjuration of his fathers creed; but in a gentleman of your acquirements and knowledge....”
“There again now, Cringle, you are wrong. The clodhopper might be conscientious in a change of creed, but as to the advantage I have over him from superior knowledge!—Knowledge, Tom! what do I know—what does the greatest and the best of us know—to venture on a saying somewhat of the tritest—but that he knows nothing? Oh, my dear boy, you and I have hitherto consorted together on the deck of life, so to speak, with the bright joyous sun sparkling, and the blue heavens laughing overhead, and the clear green sea dancing under foot, and the merry breeze buzzing past us right cheerily. We have seen but the fair-weather side of each other, Thomas, without considering that all men have their deep feelings, that lie far, far down in the hold of their hearts, were they but stirred up. Ay, you smile at my figures, but I repeat it—in the deep hold of their hearts; and may I not follow out the image with verity and modesty, and say that those feelings, often too deep for tears, are the ballast that keeps the whole ship in trim, and without which we should be every hour of our existence liable to be driven out of our heavenward course, yea, to broach—to and founder, and sink for ever, under one of the many squalls in this world of storms? And here, in this most beautiful spot, with the deep, dark, crystal-clear pool at our feet, fringed with the velvet grass, and the green quivering leaf above flickering between us and the bright blue cloudless sky, and the everlasting rocks, with those diamond-like tears trickling down their rugged cheeks, impending over us,—and those gigantic gnarled trees, with their tracery of black withes fantastically tangled, whose naked roots twist and twine amongst the fissures, like serpents trying to shelter themselves from the scorching rays of the vertical sun, and those feather-like bamboos high arching overhead, and screening us under their noble canopy,—and the cool plantains, their broad ragged leaves bending under the weight of dew-spangles, and the half-opened wild-flowers,—yea, even here, the ardent noontide sleeping on the hill, when even the quickeyed lizard lies still, and no longer rustles through the dry grass, and there is not a breath of air strong enough out of heaven to stir the gossamer that floats before us, or to wave that wild flower on its hair like stem, or to ruffle the fairy plumage of the humming-bird, that, against the custom of its kind, is now quietly perched thereon; and while the bills of the chattering paroquets, that are peering at us from the branches above, are closed, and the woodpecker interrupts his tapping to look down upon us, and the only sound we hear is the moaning of the wood-pigeon, and the lulling buzz of myriads of happy insects booming on the ear, loud as the rushing of a distant waterfall—(Confound these musquittoes, though!)—Even here, on this:”
‘So sweet a spot of earth, you might, I ween, Have guessed some congregation of the elves, To sport by summer moons, had shaped it for themselves.’
Even in such a place could I look forward without a shudder, to set up my everlasting rest, to lay my weary bones in the earth, and to mingle my clay with that whereout it was moulded. No fear of being houcked here, Thomas, and preserved in a glass case, like a stuffed woodcock, in Surgeons Hall. I am a barbarian, Tom, in these respects—I am a barbarian, and nothing of a philosopher. Quiero Paz is to be my epitaph. Quiero Paz—‘Cursed be he who stirs these bones.’ Did not even Shakspeare write it? What poetry in this spot, Thomas! Oh,
‘There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society, where none intrudes,By the deep sea, and music in its roar:I love not man the less, but nature more,From these our interviews, in which I stealFrom all I may be, or have been before,To mingle with the universe, and feelWhat I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.’
“Yes, even here where nature is all beautiful and every thing, and man abject and nothing even here, Tom, amidst the loneliness of earth, rugged and half-mad as you must sometimes have thought me, a fellow wholly made up of quips and jests,—even I at this moment could, like an aboriginal Charibl of the land, ‘lift up my voice to the Great Spirit,’ and kneel, and weep, and pray.”
I was much moved.
“You have spoken of knowledge, Tom. Knowledge—what do I know? Of myself I know as little as I do of any other grub that crawls on the surface of this world of sin and suffering; and what I do know, adds little to my self-esteem, Tom, and affords small encouragement to enquire further.—Knowledge, say you? How is that particle of sand here? I cannot tell. How grew that blade of grass? I do not know. Even when I look into that jug of brandy grog, (I’ll trouble you for it, Thomas,) all that I know is, that if I drink it, it will make me drunk, and a more desperately wicked creature, if that were possible, than I am already. And when I look forth on the higher and more noble objects of the visible creation, abroad on this beautiful earth, above on the glorious universe studded with shining orbs, without number numberless, what can I make of them? Nothing absolutely nothing—yet they are all creatures like myself. But—if I try—audaciously try—to strain my finite faculties, in the futile attempt to take in what is infinite—if I aspiringly, but hopelessly, grapple with the idea of the immensity of space, for instance, which my reason yet tells me must of necessity be boundless—do I not fall fluttering to the earth again, like an owl flying against the noontide sun? Again, when I venture to think of eternity—ay, when, reptile as I feel myself to be, I even look up towards heaven, and bend my erring thoughts towards the Most High, the Maker of all things, who was, and is, and is to come; whose flaming minister, even while I speak, is pouring down a flood of intolerable day on one half of the dry earth, and all that therein is; and when I reflect on what this tremendous, this inscrutable Being has done for me and my sinful race, so beautifully shown forth in both our creeds, what do I know? but that I am a poor miserable worm, crushed before the moth, whose only song should be the miserere, whose only prayer ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!”
There was a long pause, and I began to fear that my friend was shaken in his mind, for he continued to look steadfastly into the clear black water, where he had skimmed off the green velvet coating with his stick.
“Ay, and is it even so? and is it Tom Cringle who thinks and says that I am a man likely to profess to believe what he knows in his heart to be a lie? A Roman Catholic! Had I lived before the Roman Conquest I would have been a Druid, for it is not under the echoing domes of our magnificent cathedrals, with all the grandeur of our ritual, the flaming tapers, and bands of choristers, and the pealing organ, and smoking censers, and silver-toned bells, and white-robed priests, that the depths of my heart are stirred up. It is here, and not in a temple made with hands, however gorgeous—here, in the secret places of the everlasting forest,—it is in such a place as this that I feel the immortal spark within me kindling into a flame, and wavering up heavenward. I am superstitious, Thomas, I am superstitious, when left alone in such a scene as this. I can walk through a country churchyard at midnight, and stumble amongst the rank grass that covers the graves of those I have lived with and loved, even if they be ‘green in death, and festering in their shrouds,’ with the wind moaning amongst the stunted yew-trees, and the rain splashing and scattering on the moss covered tombstones, and the blinding blue lightning flashing, while the headstones glance like an array of sheeted ghosts, and the thunder is grumbling overhead, without a qualm-direness of this kind cannot once daunt me; it is here and now, when all nature sleeps in the ardent noontide, that I become superstitious, and would not willingly be left alone. Thoughts too deep for tears!—ay, indeed, and there be such thoughts, that, long after time has allowed them to subside, and when, to the cold eye of the world, all is clear and smooth above, will, when stirred up, like the sediment of this fountain of the wood, discolour and embitter the whole stream of life once more, even after the lapse of long long years. When my heart crushing loss was recent—when the wound was green, I could not walk abroad at this to me witching time of day, without a stock or a stone, a distant mark on the hill-side, or the outline of the grey cliff above, taking the very fashion of her face, or figure, on which I would gaze, and gaze, as if spell-bound, until I knew not whether to call it a grouping of the imagination, or a reality from without—or her, with whom I fondly hoped to have travelled the weary road of life. Friends approved—fortune smiled—one little month, and we should have been one; but it pleased Him, to whom in my present frame of mind I dare not look up, to blight my beautiful flower, to canker my rose-bud, to change the fair countenance of my Elizabeth, and send her away. She drooped and died, even like that pale flower under the scorching sun; and I was driven forth to worship Mammon, in these sweltering climes; but the sting remains, the barbed arrow sticks fast.”
Here the cleared surface of the water, into which he was steadfastly looking, was gradually contracted into a small round spot about a foot in diameter, by the settling back of the green floating matter that he had skimmed aside. His countenance became very pale; he appeared even more excited than he had hitherto been.
“By heavens! look in that water, if the green covering of it has not arranged itself round the clear spot into the shape of a medallion into her features! I had dreamed of such things before, but now it is a palpable reality—it is her face—her straight nose—her Grecian upper lip—her beautiful forehead, and her very bust!—even,”
‘As when years apace had bound her lovely waist with woman’s zone.’
“Oh, Elizabeth—Elizabeth!”
Here his whole frame shook with the most intense emotion, but at length, tears, unwonted tears, did come to his relief, and he hid his face in his hands, and wept bitterly. I was now convinced he was mad, but I durst not interrupt him. At length he slowly removed his hands, by which time, however, a beautiful small black diver, the most minute species of duck that I ever saw—it was not so big as my fist—but which is common in woodland ponds in the West Indies, had risen in the centre of the eye of the fountain, while all was so still that it floated quietly like a leaf on the water, apparently without the least fear of us.
“The devil appeared in Paradise under the shape of a cormorant,” said Mr Bang, half angrily, as he gazed sternly at the unlooked for visitor; “what imp art thou?”
Tip—the little fellow dived; presently it rose again in the same place, and lifting up its little foot, scratched the side of its tiny yellow bill and little red-spotted head, shook its small wings, bright and changeable as shot silk, with a snow-white pen-feather in each, and then tipped up its little purple tail, and once more disappeared.
Aaron’s features were gradually relaxing; a change was coming over the spirit of his dream. The bird appeared for the third time, looked him in the face, first turning up one little sparkling eye, and then another, with its neck changing its hues like a pigeon’s. Aaron began to smile; he gently raised his stick—“Do you cock your fud at me, you tiny thief, you?”—and thereupon he struck at it with his stick. Tip the duck dived, and did not rise again; and all that he got was a sprinkling shower in the face, from the water flashing up at his blow, and once more the green covering settled back again, and the bust of his dead love, or what he fancied to be so, disappeared. Aaron laughed outright, arose, and began to shout to the black guide, who, along with Pegtop, had taken the beasts into the wood in search of provender. “Ayez le bont de donnez moi mon cheval? Bring us the horsos, Massa Bungo-venga los quadrupedos—make haste, vite, mucho, mucho.”
Come, there is my Massa Aaron once more, at all events, thought I; but oh, how unlike the Aaron of five minutes ago!
“So now let us mount, my boy,” said he, and we shoved along until the evening fell, and the sun bid us good-by very abruptly. “Cheep, Cheep,” sung the lizards—“chirp, chirp,” sung the crickets, “snore, snore,” moaned the tree-toad—and it was night.
“Dame Nature shifts the scene without much warning here, Thomas,” said Massa Aaron; “we must get along, Doechez, mon cher—doechez, diggez votre spurs into the flankibus of votre cheval, mon ami,” shouted Aaron to our guide.
“Oui, monsieur,” replied the man, ‘mais’
I did not like this ominous “but,” nevertheless we rode on. No more did Massa Aaron. The guide repeated his mais again. “Mais, mon filo,” said Bang, “mais—que meanez vous by baaing comme un sheep, eh? Que vizzy vous, eh?”
We were at this time riding in a bridle-road, to which the worst sheep paths in Westmoreland would have been a railway, with our horses every now and then stumbling and coming down on their noses on the deep red earth, while we as often stood a chance of being pitched bodily against some tree on the path-side. But we were by this time all alive again, the dullness of repletion having evaporated; and Mr Bang, I fancied, began to peer anxiously about him, and to fidget a good deal, and to murmur and grumble something in his gizzard about “arms—no arms,” as, feeling in his starboard holster, he detected a regular long cork of claret, where he had hoped to clutch a pistol, while in the larboard, by the praiseworthy forethought of our guide, a good roasted capon was ensconced. “I say, Tom tohoo mind I don’t shoot you,” presenting the bottle of claret. “If it had been soda water, and the wire not all the stronger, I might have had a chance in this climate—but we are somewhat caught here, my dear we have no arms.”
“Poo,” said I, “never mind—no danger at hand, take my word for it.”
“May be not, may be not—but, Pegtop, you scoundrel, why did you not fetch my pistols?”
“Eigh, you go fight, massa?”
“Fight! no, you booby; but could not your own numscull—the fellow’s a fool—so come—ride on, ride on.”
Presently we came to an open space, free of trees, where the moon shone brightly; it was a round precipitous hollow, that had been excavated apparently by the action of a small clear stream or spout of water, that sparkled in the moonbeams like a web of silver tissue, as it leaped in a crystal arch over our heads from the top of a rock about twenty feet high, that rose on our right hand, the summit clearly and sharply defined against the blue firmament, while, on the left, was a small hollow or ravine, down which the rivulet gurgled and vanished; while ahead the same impervious forest prevailed, beneath which we had been travelling for so many hours.
The road led right through this rugged hollow, crossing it about the middle, or, if any thing, nearer the base of the cliff; and the whole clear space between the rock and the branches of the opposite trees might have measured twenty yards. In front of us, the path took a turn to the left, as if again entering below the dark shadow of the wood; but towards the right, with the moon shining brightly on it, there was a most beautiful bank, clear of underwood, and covered with the finest short velvet grass that could be dreamed of as a fitting sward to be pressed by fairy feet. We all halted in the centre of the open space.
“See how the moonlight sleeps on yonder bank!” said I.
“I don’t know what sleeps there, Tom,” said Aaron; “but does that figure sleep, think you?” pointing to the dark crest of the precipitous eminence of the right hand, from which the moonlight rill was gushing, as if it had been smitten by the rod of the Prophet.
I started, and looked—a dark half—naked figure, with an enormous cap of the shaggy skin of some wild creature, was kneeling on one knee, on the very pinnacle with a carabine resting across his thigh. I noticed our guide tremble from head to foot, but he did not speak.
“Vous avez des arms?” said Bang, as he continued with great fluency, but little grammar; “ayez le bonte de cockez votre pistolettes?”
The man gave no answer. We heard the click of the carabine lock.
“Zounds!” said Aaron, with his usual energy when excited, “if you won’t use them, give them to me;” and forthwith he snatched both pistols from our guide’s holsters. “Now, Tom, get on. Shove t’other blackie a-head of you, Pegtop, will you? Confound you for forgetting my Mantons, you villain. I will bring up the rear.”
“Well, I will get on,” said I. “but here, give me a pistol.”
“Ridez vous en avant, blackimoribus ambos—en avant, you black rascals laissez le Capitan and me pour fightez”—shouted Bang, as the black guide, guessing his meaning, spurred his horse against the moonlight bank.
“Ah—ah!” exclaimed the man, as he wheeled about after he had ridden a pace or two under the shadow of the trees—“Voila ces autres brigands la.”
“Where?” said I.
“There,” said the man in an ecstasy of fear—“there”—and peering up into the forest, where the checkering dancing moonlight was flickering on the dun, herbless soil, as the gentle night-breeze made the leaves of the trees twinkle to and fro, I saw three dark figures advancing upon us.
“Here’s a catastrophe, Tom, my boy” quoth Aaron, who, now that he had satisfied himself that the pistols were properly loaded and primed, had resumed all his wonted coolness in danger. “Ask that fellow who is enacting the statue on the top of the rock what he wants. I am a tolerable shot, you know; and if he means evil, I shall nick him before he can carry his carabine to his shoulder, take my word for it.”
“Who is there, and what do you want?” No answer, the man above us continued as still as if he had actually been a statue of bronze. Presently one of the three men in the wood sounded a short snorting note on a bullock’s horn.
It would seem that until this moment their comrade above us had not been aware of their vicinity, for he immediately called out in the patois of St Domingo, “advance, and seize the travellers;” and thereupon was in the act of raising his piece to his shoulder, when crack—Bang tired his pistol. The man uttered a loud hah, but did not fall.
“Missed him, by all that is wonderful!” said my companion. “Now, Tom, it is your turn.”
I levelled, and was in the very act of pulling the trigger, when the dark figure fell over slowly and stiffly on his back, and then began to struggle violently, and to cough loudly, as if he were suffocating. At length he rolled over and down the face of the rock, where he was caught by a strong clump of brushwood, and there he hung, while the coughing and crowing increased, and I felt a warm shower, as of heated water, sputter over my face. It was hot hot and salt—God of my fathers! it was blood. But there was no time for consideration; the three figures by this had been reinforced by six more, and they now, with a most fiendish yell, jumped down into the hollow basin, and surrounded us.
“Lay down your arms,” one of them shouted.
“No,” I exclaimed; “we are British officers, and armed, and determined to sell our lives dearly; and if you do succeed in murdering us, you may rest assured you shall be hunted down by bloodhounds.”
I thought the game was up, and little dreamed that the name of Briton would, amongst the fastnesses of Haiti, have proved a talisman; but it did so. “We have no wish to injure you, but you must follow us, and see our general,” said the man who appeared to take the lead amongst them. Here two of the men scrambled up the face of the rock, and brought their wounded comrade down from where he hung, and laid him on the bank; he had been shot through the lungs, and could not speak. After a minute’s conversation, they lifted him on their shoulders; and as our guide and Monsieur Pegtop had been instantly bound, we were only two to nine armed men, and accordingly had nothing for it but to follow the bearers of the wounded man, with our horses tumbling and scrambling up the river course, into which, by their order, we had now turned.
We proceeded in this way for about half a mile, when it was evident that the jaded beasts could not travel farther amongst the twisted trunks of trees and fragments of rock with which the river-course was now strewed. We therefore dismounted, and were compelled to leave them in charge of two of the brigands, and immediately began to scramble up the hill-side, through a narrow footpath, in one of the otherwise most impervious thickets that I had ever seen. Presently a black savage, half-naked like his companions, hailed, and told us to stand. Some password that we could not understand was given by our captors, and we proceeded, still ascending, until, turning sharp off to the left, we came suddenly round a pinnacle of rock, and looked down into a deep dell, with a winding path leading to the brink of it. It was a round cockpit of a place, surrounded with precipitous limestone-rocks on all sides, from the fissures of which large trees and bushes sprung, while the bottom was a level piece of ground, covered with long hay-like grass, evidently much trodden down. Close to the high bank, right opposite, and about thirty yards from us, a wood-fire was sparkling cheerily against the grey rock; while, on the side next us, the roofs of several huts were visible, but there was no one moving about that we could see. The moment, however, that the man with the horn sounded a rough and most unmelodious blast, there was a buzz and a stir below, and many a short grunt arose out of the pit, and long yawns, and eigh, eighs! while a dozen splinters of resinous wood were instantly lit, and held aloft, by whose light I saw fifty or sixty half-naked, but well armed blacks, gazing up at us from beneath, their white eyes and whiter teeth glancing. Most of them had muskets and long knives, and several wore the military shake, while others had their heads bound round with the never-failing handkerchief. At length a fierce-looking fellow, dressed in short drawers, a round blue jacket, a pair of epaulets, and a most enormous cocked hat, placed a sort of rough ladder, a prank with notches cut in it with a hatchet, against the bank next us, and in a loud voice desired us to descend. I did so with fear and trembling, but Mr Bang never lost his presence of mind for a moment; and, in answer to the black chief’s questions, I again rested our plea on our being British officers, despatched on service from a squadron (and as I used the word, the poor little Wave and solitary corvette rose up before me) across the island to Jacmel, to communicate with another British force lying there. The man heard me with great patience; but when I looked round the circle of tatterdemalions, for there was ne’er a shirt in the whole company—Falstaff’s men were a joke to them—with their bright arms sparkling to the red glare of the torches, that flared like tongues of flame overhead, while they grinned with their ivory teeth, and glared fiercely with their white eyeballs on us—I felt that our lives were not worth an hour’s purchase.
At length the leader spoke—“I am General Sanchez, driven to dispute President Petion’s sway by his injustice to me—but I trust our quarrel is not hopeless; will you, gentlemen, on your return to Port-au-Prince, use your influence with him to withdraw his decree against me?”
This was so much out of the way the idea of our being deputed to mediate between such great personages as President Petion and one of his rebel generals, was altogether so absurd, that, under other circumstances, I would have laughed in the black fellow’s face. However, a jest here might have cost us our lives; so we looked serious, and promised.
“Upon your honours”—said the poor fellow.
“Upon our words of honour”—we rejoined.
“Then embrace me”—and the savage thereupon, stinking of tobacco and cocoa-nut oil, hugged me, and kissed me on both cheeks, and then did the agreeable in a similar way to Mr Bang. Here the coughing and moaning of the wounded man broke in upon the conference.
“What is that?” said Sanchez. One of his people told him. “Ah!” said he, with a good deal of savageness in his tone—“A—ha! blood?”
We promptly explained how it happened;—for a few moments, I did not know how he might take it.
“But I forgive you,” at length said he—“however, my men may revenge their comrade. You must drink and eat with them.”
This was said aside to us, as it were. He ordered some roasted plantains to be brought, and mixed some cruel bad tafia with water in an enormous gourd. He ate, and then took a pull himself we followed,—and he then walked round the circle, and carefully observed that every one had tasted also. Being satisfied on this head, he abruptly ordered us to ascend the ladder, and to pass on our way.
The poor fellow was mad, I believe. However, some time afterwards, the President hunted him down, and got hold of him, but I believe he never punished him. As for the wounded man, whether he did live or die, Tom Cringle does not know.
We were reconducted by our former escort to where we left our horses, remounted, and without farther let or hinderance arrived by day dawn at the straggling town of Jacmel. The situation is very beautiful, the town being built on the hillside, looking out seaward on a very safe roadstead, the anchorage being defended to the southward by bright blue shoals, and white breakers, that curl and roar over the coral reefs and ledges. As we rode up to Mr S——‘s, the principal merchant in the place, and a Frenchman, we were again struck with the dilapidated condition of the houses, and the generally ruinous state of the town. The brown and black population appeared to be lounging about in the most absolute idleness; and here, as at Port-au-Prince, every second man you met was a soldier. The women sitting in their little shops, nicely set out with a variety of gay printed goods, and the crews of the English vessels loading coffee, were the only individuals who seemed to be capable of any exertion.
“I say, Tom,” quoth Massa Aaron, “do you see that old fellow there?”
“What? that old grey-headed negro sitting in the arbour there?”
“Yes—the patriarch is sitting under the shadow of his own Lima bean.”
And so in very truth he was. The stem was three inches in diameter, and the branches had been trained along and over a sparred arch, and were loaded with pods.
“I shall believe in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, henceforth and for ever,” said I.
We were most kindly entertained by Mr S——, and spent two or three days very happily. The evening of the day on which we arrived, we had strolled out about nine o’clock to take the air—our host and his clerks being busy in the counting-house—and were on our way home, when we looked in on them at their desks, before ascending to the apartments above. There were five clerks and Mr S——, all working away on the top of their tall mahogany tripods, by the light of their brown home-made wax candles, while three masters of merchantmen were sitting in a corner, comparing bills of lading, making up manifests, and I do not know what beside.
“It is now about time to close,” said Mr S——; “have you any objection to a little music, gentlemen? or are you too much fatigued?”
“Music—music,” said Mr Bang, “I delight in good music, but”—He was cut short by the whole bunch, the clerks and their master, closing their ledgers, and journals, and day-books, and cashbooks with a bang, while one hooked up a fiddle, another a clarionet, another a flute, &c, while Mr S——offered, with a smile, his own clarionet to Massa Aaron, and holding out at the same time, with the true good-breeding of a Frenchman, a span-new reed. To my unutterable surprise he took it sucked in his lips—wet the reed in his mouth; then passing his hand across his muzzle, coolly asked Mr S——what the piece was to be? “Adeste fideles, if you please,” said S——, rather taken aback. Mr Bang nodded—sounded a bar or two gave another very scientific flourish, and then calmly awaited the opening. He then tendered a fiddle to me altogether beyond my compass—but I offered to officiate on the kettledrum, the drummer being competent to something else. At a signal from our host away they all launched in full crash, and very melodious it was too, let me tell you, Aaron’s instrument telling most famously.
The next day we went to visit a tafia property in the neighbourhood. On our way we passed a dozen miserable-looking blacks, cleaning canes, followed by an ugly Turk of a brown man, almost naked, with the omnipresent glazed cocked-hat, and a drawn cutlass in his hand. He was abusing the poor devils most lustily as we rode along, and stood so pertinaciously in the path, that I could not for the life of me pass without jostling him. “Le vous demands pardon,” said I, with a most abject salaam to my saddle-bow. He knit his brows and shut his teeth hard, as he ground out between the glancing ivory, “Sacre!—voila ces foutres blancs la,”—clutching the hilt of his couteau firmly all the while. I thought he would have struck me. But Mr S——coming up, mollified the savage, and we rode on.
The tafia estate was a sore affair. It had once been a prosperous sugar plantation, as the broken panes and ruined houses, blackened by fire, were melancholy vouchers for; but now the whole cultivation was reduced to about a couple of acres of wiry sugar canes, and the boiling and distilling was carried on in a small unroofed nook of the original works.
Two days after this we returned to Port-au-Prince, and I could not help admiring the justness of Aaron’s former description; for noisome exhalations were rising thick, as the evening sun shone hot and sickly on the long bank of fat black mud that covers the beach beneath the town. We found Captain Transom at Mr S——‘s. I made my report of the state of the merchantmen loading on the south side of the island, and returned to rest, deucedly tired and stiff with my ride. Next morning Bang entered my room.
“Hillo, Tom—the skipper has been shouting for you this half hour—get up, man—get up.”
“My dear sir, I am awfully tired.”
“Oh!” sung Bang—“‘I have a silent sorrow here’ eh?”
It was true enough; no sailor rides seventy miles on end with impunity. That same evening we bid adieu to our excellent host Mr S——, and the rising moon shone on us under weigh for Kingston, where two days after we safely anchored with the homeward bound trade. “The roaring seas Is not a place of ease,” says a Point ditty. No more is the command of a small schooner in the West Indies. We had scarcely anchored, when the boarding officer from the flag-ship brought me a message to repair thither immediately. I did so. As I stepped on deck, the lieutenant was leaning on the drumhead of the capstan, with the signal-book open before him, while the signal-man was telling off the semaphore, which was rattling away at the Admiral’s pen, situated about five miles off.
“Ah! Cringle,” said he, without turning his head, “how are you? glad to see you—wish you joy, my lad. Here, lend me a hand, will you? it concerns you.” I took the book, and as the man reported, I pieced the following comfortable sentence together.
“Desire—Wave—fit—wood—water—instantly—to take convoy to Spanish Main—to-morrow morning—Mr Cringle—remain on board—orders will be sent—evening.”
“Heigh ho, says Rowley,” sang I Thomas, in great wrath and bitterness of spirit. “D——d hard—am I a duck, to live in the water altogether, entirely?”
“Tom, my boy,” sung out a voice from the water. It was Aaron Bang’s, who, along with Transom, had seen me go on board the receiving ship. “Come along, man—come along—Transom is going to make interest to get you a furlough on shore; so come along, and dine with us in Kingston.”
“I am ordered to sea to-morrow morning, my dear sir,” said I, like to cry.—“No!”—“Too true, too true.” So no help for it, I took a sad farewell of my friends, received my orders, laid in my provisions and water, hauled out into the fairway, and sailed for Santa Martha next morning at daybreak, with three merchant schooners under convoy one for Santa Martha—another for Carthagena—and the third for Porto-Bello.
We sailed on the 24th of such a month, and, after a pleasant passage, anchored at Santa Martha, at 8 AM, on the 31st. When we came to anchor, we saluted, which seemed to have been a somewhat unexpected honour, as the return was fired from the fort after a most primitive fashion. A black fellow appeared with a shovel of live embers, one of which another sans culotte caught up in his hand, chucking it from one palm to another, until he ran to the breech of the first gun, where, clapping it on the touch-hole, he fired it off, and so on seriatim, through the whole battery, until the required number of guns were given, several of which, by the by, were shotted, as we could hear the balls whiz overhead. The town lies on a small plain, at the foot of very high mountains, or rather on a sand-bank, formed from the washings from these mountains. The summit of the highest of them, we could see from the deck, was covered with snow, which at sunrise, in the clear light of the cool grey dawn, shone, when struck by the first rays of the sun, like one entire amethyst. Oh, how often I longed for the wings of the eagle, to waft me from the hot deck of the little vessel, where the thermometer in the shade stood at 95, far up amongst the shining glaciers, to be comforted with cold!
One striking natural phenomenon is exhibited here, arising out of the vicinity of this stupendous prong of the Cordilleras. The sea breeze blows into the harbour all day, but in the night, or rather towards morning, the cold air from the high regions rushes down, and blows with such violence off the land, that my convoy and myself were nearly blown out to sea the first night after we arrived; and it was only by following the practice of the native craft, and anchoring close under the lee of the beach—in fact, by having an anchor high and dry on the shore itself—the player, as the Spaniards call it—that we could count on riding through the night with security or comfort.
There are several small islands at the entrance of the harbour, on the highest of which is a fort, that might easily be rendered impregnable; it commands both the town and harbour. The place itself deserves little notice; the houses are mean, and interspersed with negro huts, but there is one fine church, with several tolerable paintings in it. One struck me as especially grotesque, although I had often seen queer things in Roman Catholic churches in Europe. It was a representation of Hell, with Old Nicholas, under the guise of a dragon, entertaining himself with the soul of an unfortunate heretic in his claws, who certainly appeared far from comfortable; while a lot of his angels were washing the sins off a set of fine young men, as you would the dirt off scabbit potatoes, in a sea of liquid fire. But their saints!—I often rejoiced that Aaron Bang was not with me; we should unquestionably have quarrelled; for as to the manner in which they were dressed and decorated, the most fantastic mode a girl ever did up her doll in, was a joke to it. Still these wooden deities are treated with such veneration; that I do believe their ornaments, which are of massive gold and silver, are never, or very rarely, stolen.
On the evening of the 2nd of the following month we sailed again, but having been baffled by calms and light winds, it was the 4th before we anchored off the St Domingo gate at Carthagena, and next morning we dropped down to Boca Chica, and saw our charge, a fine dashing schooner of 150 tons, safe into the harbour. About 9 AM, we had weighed, but we had scarcely got the anchor catted, when it came on to blow great guns from the northwester most unusual thing hereabouts—so it was down anchor again; and as I had made up my mind not to attempt it again before morning, I got the gig in the water with all convenient speed; and that same forenoon I reached the town, and immediately called on the Viceroy, but under very different circumstances from the time Mr Splinter and I had entered it along with the conquering army.
We dined with the magnate, and found a very large party assembled. Amongst others, I especially recollect that the Inquisidor—General was conspicuous; but every one, with the exception of the Captain General and his immediate staff, was arrayed in gingham jackets; so there was not much style in the affair.
I had before dinner an opportunity to inspect the works of Carthagena at my leisure. It is unquestionably a very strong place, the walls, which are built of solid masonry, being armed with at least three hundred pieces of brass cannon, while the continued ebb and flow of the tide in the ditch creates a current so strong, that it would be next to impossible to fill it up, as fascines would be carried away by the current—so that, were the walls even breached, it would be impracticable to storm them. The appearance of Carthagena from the sea, that is, from a vessel anchored off the St Domingo gate, is very beautiful, and picturesque. It is situated on a sandy island, or rather a group of islands; and the beach here shoals so gradually, that boats of even very small draught of water cannot approach within musket-shot. The walls and numerous batteries have a very commanding appearance. The spires and towers on the churches are numerous, and many of them were decorated with flags when we were there; and the green trees shooting up amidst the red-tiled houses afforded a beautiful relief to the prospect. A little behind the town, on a gentle acclivity, is the citadel, or fort San Felipe, whose appearance conveys an idea of impregnable strength; (but all this sort of thing, is it not written in Roderick Random?) and on the ship like hill beyond it, the only other eminence in the neighbourhood, stands the convent of the Popa, like a poop lantern on the high stern of a ship, from which indeed it takes its name. This convent had been strongly fortified; and, commanding San Felipe, was of great use to Morillo, who carried it by assault during the siege, and held it until the insurgents shelled him out from the citadel. The effect, when I first saw it, was increased by the whole scene—city, and batteries, and Popa—being reflected in the calm smooth sea, as distinctly as if it had been glass; so clear, in fact, was the reflection, that you could scarcely distinguish the shadow from the reality. We weighed next morning—that is on the sixth of the month, and arrived safe at Porto-Bello on the 11th, after a tedious passage, during which we had continual rains, accompanied with vivid lightning and tremendous thunder. I had expected to have fallen in with one of our frigates here; but I afterwards learned that, although I had slid down cheerily along shore, the weather current that prevailed farther out at sea had swept her away to the eastward; so I ran in and anchored, and immediately waited on the Governor, who received me in what might once have been a barn, although it did not now deserve the name.
Porto—Bello was originally called Nombre de Dios, having received the former name from the English when we took it. It is a miserable, dirty, damp hole, surrounded by high forest-clad hills, round which everlasting mists curl and obscure the sun, whose rays, at any chance moment when they do reach the steamy swamp on which it is built or the waters of the lead-coloured, land-locked cove that constitutes the harbour, immediately exhale the thick sickly moisture, in clouds of sluggish white vapours, smelling diabolically of decayed vegetables, and slime, and mud. I will venture a remark that will be found, I am persuaded, pretty near the truth, that there were twenty carrion crows to be seen in the streets for every inhabitant—the people seem every way worthy of such an abode, saffron, dingy, miserable, emaciated looking devils. As for the place itself, it appeared to my eyes one large hospital, inhabited by patients in the yellow fever. During the whole of the following day, there was still no appearance of the frigate, and I had in consequence now to execute the ulterior part of my orders, which were, that if I did not find her at anchor when I arrived, or if she did not make her appearance within forty eight hours thereafter, I was myself to leave the Wave in Porto—Bello, and proceed overland across the isthmus to Panama, and to deliver, on board of H. M. S. Bandera, into the Captain’s own hands, a large packet with despatches from the Government at home, as I understood, of great importance, touching the conduct of our squadron, with reference to the vagaries of some of the mushroom American Republics on the Pacific. But if I fell in with the frigate, then I was to deliver the said packet to the Captain, and return immediately in the Wave to Port Royal.
Having, therefore, obtained letters from the Governor of Porto—Bello to the Commandant at Chagres, I chartered a canoe with four stout canoemen and a steersman, or patron, as he is called, to convey me to Cruzes; and having laid in a good stock of eatables and drinkables, and selected the black pilot, Peter Mangrove, to go as my servant, accompanied by his never-failing companion, Sneezer, and taking my hammock and double barrelled gun, and a brace of pistols with me, we shoved off at Six A.M. on the morning of the 14th.
It was a rum sort of conveyance this said canoe of mine. In the first place, it was near forty feet long, and only five broad at the broadest, being hollowed out of one single wild cotton-tree; how this was to be pulled through the sea on the coast, by four men, I could not divine. However, I was assured by the old thief who chartered it to me, that it would be all right; whereas, had my innocence not been imposed on, I might, in a caiuco, or smaller canoe, have made the passage in one half the time it took me.
About ten feet of the after part was thatched with palm leaves, over a framework of broad ash hoops; which awning, called the toldo, was open both towards the steersman that guided us with a long broad-bladed paddle in the stern, and in the direction of the men forward, who, on starting, stripped themselves stark naked, and, giving a loud yell every now and then, began to pull their oars, or long paddles, after a most extraordinary fashion. First, when they lay back to the strain, they jumped backwards and upwards on to the thwart with their feet, and then, as they once more feathered their paddles again, they came crack down on their bottoms with a loud skelp on the seats, upon which they again mounted at the next stroke, and so on.
When we cleared the harbour it was fine and serene, but about noon it came on to blow violently from the northeast. All this while we were coasting it along about pistol-shot from the white coral beach, with the clear light green swell on our right hand, and beyond it the dark and stormy waters of the blue rolling ocean; and the snow-white roaring surf on our left. By the time I speak of, the swell had been lashed up into breaking waves, and after shipping more salt water than I had bargained for, we were obliged, about four PM, to shove into a cove within the reef, called Naranja.
Along this part of the coast there is a chain of salt-water lagoons, divided from the sea by the coral beach, the crest of which is covered here and there with clumps of stunted mangroves.
This beach, strangely enough, is higher than the land immediately behind it, as if it had been a dike, or natural breakwater, thrown up by the sea. Every here and there, there were gaps in this natural dike, and it was through one of these we shoved, and soon swung to our grapnel in perfect security, but in a most outlandish situation certainly.
As we rode to the easterly breeze, there was the beach as described, almost level with the water, on our left hand, the land or lee side of it covered with most beautiful white sand and shells, with whole warrens of land-crabs running out and in their holes like little rabbits, their tiny green bodies seeming to roll up and down, for I was not near enough to see their feet, or the mode of their locomotion, like bushels of grapeshot trundling all about on the shining white shore. Beyond, the roaring surf was flashing up over the clumps of green bushes, and thundering on the seaward face. On the right hand, ahead of us, and astern of us, the prospect was shut in by impervious thickets of mangroves, while in the distance the blue hills rose glimmering and indistinct, as seen through the steamy atmosphere. We were anchored in a stripe of clear water, about three hundred yards long by fifty broad. There, was a clear space abeam of us landward, of about half an acre in extent, on which was built a solitary Indian hut close to the water’s edge, with a small canoe drawn up close to the door. We had not been long at anchor when the canoe was launched, and a monkey—looking naked old man paddled off, and brought us a most beautiful chicken turtle, some yams, and a few oranges. I asked him his price. He rejoined, “Por amor de Dios”—that it was his saint’s day, and he meant it as a gift. However, he did not refuse a dollar when tendered to him before he paddled away.
That night, when we were all at supper, master and men, I heard and felt a sharp crack against the side of the canoe. “Hillo, Peter, what is that?” said I.
“Nothing, sir,” quoth Peter, who was enjoying his scraps abaft, with the headman, patron, or whatever you may call him, of my crew. There was a blazing fire kindled on a bed of white sand, forward in the bow of the canoe, round which the four bogas, or canoemen, were seated, with three sticks stuck up triangularly over the fire, from which depended an earthen pot, in which they were cooking their suppers.
I had rigged my hammock between the foremost and aftermost hoops of the toldo, and as I was fatigued and sleepy, and it was now getting late, I desired to betake myself to rest; so I was just flirting with a piece of ham, preparatory to the cold grog, when I again felt a similar thump and rattle against the side of the canoe. There was a small aperture in the palm thatch, right opposite to where I was sitting, on the outside of which I now heard a rustling noise, and presently a long snout was thrust through, and into the canoe, which kept opening and shutting with a sharp rattling noise. It was more like two long splinters of mud covered and half-decayed timber, than any thing I can compare it to; but as the lower jaw was opened, like a pair of Brobdignag scissors, a formidable row of teeth was unmasked, the snout from the tip to the eyes being nearly three feet long. The scene at this moment was exceedingly good, as seen by the light of a small, bright, silver lamp, fed with spirits of wine, that I always travelled with, which hung from one of the hoops of the toldo. First, there was our friend Peter Mangrove, cowering in a corner under the after part of the awning, covered up with a blanket, and shaken as if with an ague-fit, with the patron peering over his shoulder, no less alarmed. Sneezer, the dog, was sitting on end, with his black nose resting on the table, waiting patiently for his crumbs; and the black boatmen were forward in the bow of the canoe, jabbering, and laughing, and munching, as they clustered round a sparkling fire. When I first saw the apparition of the diabolical looking snout, I was in a manner fascinated, and could neither speak nor move. Mangrove and the patron were also paralysed with fear, and the others did not see it; so Sneezer was the only creature amongst us, aware of the danger, who seemed to have his wits about him, for the instant he noticed it, he calmly lifted his nose off the table, and gave a short startled bark, and then crouched and drew himself back as if in the act to spring, glancing his eyes from the monstrous jaws to my face, and nuzzling and whining with a laughing expression, and giving a small yelp now and then, and again riveting his eyes with intense earnestness on the alligator, telling me as plainly as if he had spoken it—“If you choose, master, I will attack it, as in duty bound, but really such a customer is not at all in my way.” And not only did he say this, but he shewed his intellect was clear, and no way warped through fear, for he now stood on his hind legs, and holding on the hammock with his fore paws, he thrust his snout below the pillow, and pulled out one of my pistols, which always garnished the head of my bed, on such expeditions as the present.
My presence of mind returned at witnessing the courage and sagacity of my noble dog. I seized the loaded pistol, and as by this time the eyes of the alligator were inside of the toldo, I clapped the muzzle to the larboard one, and fired. The creature jerked back so suddenly and convulsively, that part of the toldo was tom away: and as the dead monster fell off, the canoe rolled as if in a seaway. My crew shouted “Que es esto?” Peter Mangrove cheered—Sneezer barked and yelled at a glorious rate, and could scarcely be held in the canoe—and looking overboard, we saw the monster, twelve feet long at least, upturn his white belly to the rising moon, struggle for a moment with his short paws, and after a solitary heavy lash of his scaly tale, he floated away astern of us, dead and still. To proceed poor Peter Mangrove, whose nerves were consumedly shaken by this interlude, was seized during the night with a roasting fever, brought on in a great measure, I believe, by fear, at finding himself so far out of his latitude; and that he had grievous doubts as to the issue of our voyage, and as to where we were bound for, was abundantly evident. I dosed him most copiously with salt water, a very cooling medicine, and no lack of it at hand.
We weighed at grey dawn, on the morning of the 15th, and at 11 o’clock, AM arrived at Chagres, a more miserable place, were that credible, even than Porto—Bello. The eastern side of the harbour is formed by a small promontory that runs out into the sea about five hundred yards, with a bright little bay to windward; while a long muddy mangrove-covered spit forms the right hand bank as you enter the mouth or estuary of the river Chagres on the west. The easternmost bluff is a narrow saddle, with a fort erected on the extreme point facing the sea, which, so far as situation is concerned, is, or ought to be, impregnable, the rock being precipitous on three faces, while it is cut off to landward by a deep dry ditch, about thirty feet wide, across which a movable drawbridge is let down, and this compartment of the defences is all very regular, with scarp and counterscarp, covered—way and glacis. The brass guns mounted on the castle were numerous and beautiful, but every thing was in miserable disrepair; several of the guns, for instance, had settled down bodily on the platform, having fallen through the crushed rotten carriages. I found an efficient garrison in this stronghold of three old negroes, who had not even a musket of any kind, but the commandant was not in the castle when I paid my visit; however, one of the invincibles undertook to pilot me to El Senor Torre’s house, where his honour was dining. The best house in the place this was, by the by, although only a thatched hut; and here I found his Excellency the Commandant, a little shrivelled insignificant-looking creature. He was about sitting down to his dinner, of which he invited me to partake, and as I was very hungry, I contrived to do justice to the first dish, but my stomach was grievously offended at the second, which seemed to me to be a compound of garlic, brick dust, and train oil, so that I was glad to hurry on board of my canoe, to settle all with a little good Madeira.
At four P.m. I proceeded up the river, which is here about a hundred yards across, and very deep; it rolls sluggishly along through a low swampy country, covered to the water’s edge with thick sedges and underwood, below which the water stagnates, and generates myriads of musquittoes, and other troublesome insects, and sends up whole clouds of noxious vapours, redolent of yellow fever, and ague, and cramps, and all manner of comfortable things.
At ten P.M. we anchored by a grapnel in the stream, and I set Peter Mangrove forthwith to officiate in his new capacity of cook, and really he made a deuced good one. I then slung my hammock under the toldo, and lighting a slow match, at the end of it forwards, to smoke away the musquittoes, having previously covered the aftermost end with a mat, I wrapped myself in my cloak, and turned in to take my snooze. We weighed again about two in the morning. As the day dawned the dull grey steamy clouds settled down on us once more, while the rain fell in a regular waterspout. It was anything but a cheering prospect to look along the dreary vistas of the dull brimful Lethe-like stream, with nothing to be seen but the heavy lowering sky above, the red swollen water beneath, and the gigantic trees high towering overhead, and growing close to the water’s edge, laced together with black snake-like withes, while the jungle was thick and impervious, and actually grew down into the water, for beach, or shore, or cleared bank, there was none,—all water and underwood, except where a heavy soft slimy steaming black bank of mud hove its shining back from out the dead waters near the shore, with one or more monstrous alligators sleeping on it, like dirty rotten logs of wood, scarcely deigning to lift their abominable long snouts to look at us as we passed, or to raise their long scaly tails, with the black mud sticking to the scales in great lumps—oh—horrible—most horrible! But the creatures, although no beauties certainly, are harmless after all. For instance, I never heard a well-authenticated case of their attacking a human being hereabouts; pigs and fowls they do tithe, however, like any parson. I don’t mean to say that they would not make free with a little fat dumpling of a piccaniny, if he were thrown to them, but they seem to have no ferocious propensities. I shot one of them; he was about twelve feet long; the bullet entered in the joints of the mail, below the shoulder of the fore paw, where the hide was tender; but if you fire at them with the scale, that is, with the monster looking at you, a musket ball will glance. I have often in this my log spoken of the Brobdignag lizards, the guanas. I brought down one this day, about three feet long, and found it, notwithstanding its dragon like appearance, very good eating. At eleven AM on the 18th, we arrived at the village of Cruzes, the point where the river ceases to be navigable for canoes, and from whence you take horse, or rather mule, for Panama. For about fifteen or twenty miles below Cruzes, the river becomes rapid, and full of shoals, when the oars are laid aside, and the canoes are propelled by long poles.
The Town, as it is called, is a poor miserable place, composed chiefly of negro huts; however, a Spanish trader of the name of Villaverde, who had come over in the Wave as a passenger, and had preceded me in a lighter canoe, and to whom I had shown some kindness, now repaid it, as far as lay in his power.
He lodged me for the night, and hired mules for me to proceed to Panama in the morning; so I slung my hammock in an old Spanish soldier’s house, who keeps a kind of posada, and was called by my friend Villaverde at daydawn, whose object was, not to tell me to get ready for my journey, but to ask me if I would go and bathe before starting. Rather a rum sort of request, it struck me; nevertheless, a purification, after the many disagreeables I had endured, could not come amiss; and slipping on my trowsers, and casting my cloak on my shoulders, away we trudged to a very beautiful spot, about a mile above Cruzes, where, to my surprise, I found a score of Crusafios, all Altering in the water, puffing and blowing and shouting. Now an alligator might pick and choose, thought I; however, no one seemed in the least afraid, so I dashed amongst them. Presently, about pistol-shot from us, a group of females appeared. Come, thought I, rather too much for a modest young man this too; and deuce take me, as I am a gentleman, if the whole bevy did not disrobe in cold blood, and squatter, naked as their mother Eve was in the garden of Eden, before she took to the herbage, right into the middle of the stream, skirting and laughing, as if not even a male musquitto had been within twenty miles. However, my neighbour took no notice of them; it seemed all a matter of course. But let that pass. About eight o’clock A.M. I got under weigh, with Peter Mangrove, on two good stout mules, and a black guide running before me with a long stick, with which he sprung over the sloughs and stones in the road with great agility; I would have backed him against many a passable hunter, to do four miles over a close country in a steeple-chase.
Panama is distant from Cruzes about seven leagues. The road is somewhat like what the Highland ones must have been before General Wade took them in hand, and only passable for mules; indeed, in many places where it had been hewn out of the rock in zigzags on the face of the hill, it is scarcely passable for two persons meeting. But the scenery on each side is very beautiful, as it winds, for the most part, amongst steep rocks, over shadowed by magnificent trees, amongst which birds of all sizes, and of the most beautiful plumage, are perpetually glancing, while a monkey, every here and there, would sit grimacing, and chattering, and scratching himself in the cleft of a tree.
I should think, judging from my barometer—but I may have made an inaccurate calculation, and I have not Humboldt by me—that the ridge of the highest is fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, so that it would be next to impossible to join the two seas at this point by a canal with water in it. However, I expect to see a joint Stock Company set a-going some fine day yet for the purpose of cutting it, that is, when the national capital next accumulates (and Lord knows when that will be) to a plethora, and people’s purses become so distended that they require bleeding.
After travelling about twenty miles, the scene gradually opens, and one begins to dream about Vasco Nunez and the enthusiastic first explorers of the Isthmus; but my first view of the Pacific was through a drenching shower of rain, that wet me to the skin, and rather kept my imagination under, for this said imagination of mine is like a barn-door chuckey brisk and crouse enough when the sun shines, and the sky is blue, and plenty of grub at hand, but I can’t write poetry when I am could, and hungry, and drooked. Still, when I caught my first glimpse of the distant Pacific, I felt that, even through a miserable drizzle, it was a noble prospect.
As you proceed, you occasionally pass through small open savannahs, which become larger, and the clear spaces wider, until the forest you have been travelling under gradually breaks into beautiful clumps of trees, like those in a gentleman’s park, and every here and there a placid clear piece of water spreads out, full of pond turtle, which I believe to be one and the same with the tortoise, and eels; the latter of which, by the by, are very sociable creatures, for in the clear moonlight nights, with the bright sparkling dew on the short moist grass, they frequently travel from one pond to another, wriggling along the grass like snakes. I have myself found them fifty yards from the water; but whether the errand was love or war, or merely to drink tea with some of the slippery young females in the next pool, and then return again, the deponent sayeth not.
As you approach the town, the open spaces before-mentioned become more frequent, until at length you gain a rising ground, about three miles from Panama, where, as the sun again shone out, the view became truly enchanting.