Parkman; prose passages from the works of Francis Parkman, for homes, libraries, and schools ..

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PARKMAN

PROSE PASSAGES FROM THE WORKS

OF

FOR HOMES, LIBRARIES, AND SCHOOLS
COMPILED BY

JOSEPHINE E. HODGDON

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

47285

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1893

Copyright, 1892,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

2135

JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE

03 O

CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION vii

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH : FRANCIS PARKMAN ... 1

WINTER LIFE AT PORT ROYAL 9

DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES 21

SUCCESS OP LA SALLE 37

CHARACTER OF LA SALLE 47

THE SEARCH FOR THE PACIFIC 51

THE PORTRAIT OF WOLFE 77.

THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM 79

RESULTS OF THE SEVEN YEARS WAR 99

THE INDIAN CHARACTER . 101

DEATH OF PONTIAC 107

THE BLACK HILLS . 119

INTRODUCTION.

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A com-
pany of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil
countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their
learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible,
solitary, impatient of interruptions, fenced by etiquette ; but the thought
which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in
transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. — RALPH WALDO
EMERSON.

How can our young; people be led to take pleasure in
the writings of our best authors ? An attempt to answer
this important inquiry is the aim of these Leaflets. It is
proposed, by their use in the school and in the family, to
develop a love for the beautiful thoughts, the noble and
elevating sentiments, that pervade the choicest literature,
and thus to turn aside that flood of pernicious reading
which is deluging the children of our beloved country.
It is hoped that they will prove effective instruments in
securing the desired end, and an aid in the attainment of
a higher mental and moral culture.

Our best writers, intelligent teachers, and lecturers on
literary subjects have given selections and material for
this work, and rendered its realization possible. Those
who, knowing the power of a good thought well expressed,
have endeavored to popularize works of acknowledged

Vlll INTRODUCTION.

merit by means of copied extracts, marked passages,
leaves torn from books, and other expensive and time-
consuming expedients, will gladly welcome this new,
convenient, and inexpensive arrangement of appropriate
selections, as helps to the progress they are attempting
to secure. This plan and the selections used are the
outgrowth of experience in the schoolroom; and their
utility and adaptation to the proposed aims have been
proved.

By means of these sheets each teacher can have at
command a larger range of authors than is otherwise
possible. A few suggestions in regard to these Leaflets
may not be amiss.

1. They may be used for reading at sight and for
silent reading.

2. They may be employed for analysis of the author's
meaning and language, which may well be made a promi-
nent feature of the reading-lesson, as it is the best prepa-
ration for the proper rendering of the passages given.

8. They may be distributed, and each pupil allowed to
choose his own favorite selection. These may afterwards
be used, as its character or the pupil's inclination
suggests, for sentiment, for an essay, for reading, reci-
tation, or declamation.

4. Mr. Longfellow's method — as mentioned in the
sketch accompanying his poems, in this series of Leaflets
— may be profitably followed, as it will promote a helpful
interplay of thought between teacher and pupils, and
lead unconsciously to a love and understanding of good
authors.

INTRODUCTION. ix

5. Short quotations may be given in answer to the
daily roll-call.

6. Some of the selections are adapted to responsive
and chorus class-reading.

7. The lyrical poems can be sung to some familiar
tunes.

8. The sketch which will be found with each series
may serve as the foundation for essays on the author's
life and works.

9. The illustrations may be employed as subjects for
language lessons, thus cultivating the powers of obser-
vation and expression.

All these methods combined may be made to give
pleasure to the pupil's friends, and to entertain them
oftener than is now the custom This will create at the
same time an interest in the school and a sympathy with
the author whose works are the subjects of study.

The foregoing is by no means a necessary order ; and
teachers will vary from it as their own appreciation of
the intelligence of their pupils and the interest of the
exercise shall suggest. The object to be kept in view is,
pleasantly to introduce the works of our best authors to
LTowing minds, and thus to develop a taste for the best
in literature, so that the world of books may become an
unfailing source of inspiration and delight.

FRANCIS PARKMAN.

IN the last year of his long and eventful life, the illus-
trious Warren Hastings loved to tell of the bright
summer day when, as an orphan of seven years, meanly
clad and scantily fed, he lay on the banks of a rivulet
which flowed through his ancestral home, and there re-
volved plans which seemed only idle dreams. He vowed
that he would one day recover the estate which had be-
longed to his ancient and illustrious family, and had been
lost through deplorable ill-fortune.

Macaulay tells us that this purpose of young Hastings,
formed in boyhood and poverty, grew stronger as his in-
tellect expanded and his fortune rose. He pursued his
plan with calm but indomitable force of will. Truth is
often stranger than the most romantic dreams of youth.
The slight, feeble man who ruled fifty millions of Asiatics
with a rod of iron, and preserved and extended an empire
for England, outlived all his rivals and enemies, and died
peacefully at Daylesford, — his ancestral home, — at the
age of eighty-six. He not only had retrieved the fallen
fortunes of his family, but had made for himself a great
name in English annals.

In another sphere of life-work, this year has seen rea-
lized, after the long labor of half a century, what seemed

i

2 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

to be the wild fancy and project of a boy. Nearly sixty
years ago a lad who lived in the old Bay State formed the
design of writing the history of the rise and fall of the
French domain in America. The older he grew, the more
he thought about it. It finally became the aim of the young
man's life to collect material and to prepare himself to
write the history of the efforts of France to occupy and
to control the American continent. This year, 1892, the
ambitious lad, grown to be a sedate man and known as
Francis Parkman, — one of the foremost of living histo-
rians,— has lived to see the fulfilment of his boyhood
dream and the completion of his life-work. This series
of great historical pictures is now finished by the recent
publication of " A Half Century of Conflict." This work
is in two volumes, and covers the first half of the eigh-
teenth century, following "Count Frontonac," and preced-
ing " Montcalm and Wolfe." It is nearly half a century
ago since Mr. Parkman began his great literary undertak-
ing. The twelve volumes form a series of the gravest and
most romantic historical value, accomplished under diffi-
culties which no one but a student whose heart was wholly
in a work for which he is specially competent could have
conquered.

FRANCIS PARKMAN was born in Boston, Sept. 16, 1828.
His father was an eminent Unitarian clergyman. During
his boyhood, the future historian spent several years on
his grandfather's farm in Middlesex County. There were
in those days in this region immense tracts of dense
forests. The boy spent much of his time in rambles
through the woods. It was in this fascinating occupation
that he began to be inspired with that love for the forest
and the frontier which became the passion of his after
life. Young Parkman was sent to Harvard College in
1840, and graduated in 1844. His love for life in the
forest grew as he became older. His long summer vaca-

PARKMAN. 3

tions were spent in the forests of Canada or on the Great
Lakes. During one summer he passed many weeks in a
boat on Lake George, and there became familiar with that
romantic region, so memorable in the French and Indian
wars. During his last year in college the young student
travelled in Europe, but returned in time to graduate with
his class. For a graduation theme he chose as his topic,
"The French and Indian War." It was even then his
favorite subject.

After leaving college, Mr. Parkman found himself af-
flicted with a painful disease of the eyes, which prevented
him from doing much literary work. As it was now evi-
dent that he would not be able to collect and utilize the
vast material necessary for his proposed history, he con-
cluded to take up as a preliminary work the history of
the conspiracy of Pontiac. To study the Indian life, the
future historian travelled in the Far West and lived with
the Indians themselves. In 1846 he went to the then re-
mote regions of the Rocky Mountains, and lived for some
time with the Dakota Indians, and visited still wilder and
more remote tribes. Thus he became very familiar with
the manners, customs, and traditions of these children
of the forest. He endured many privations and much
suffering. He learned much of savage life, but he paid
a dear price for it. Once he was stricken with an acute
disease, and, T>efng far remote from medical care, his
health was badly undermined, and his eyesight still more
impaired. To the hardships and privations of this life
among the Indians must be attributed much of the ill
health from which Mr. Parkman has suffered for many
years. On his return home he wrote, by the help of an
amanuensis, an interesting account of his travels and
adventures. This work was published in 1847 under the
title of " The" Oregon Trail : Sketches of Prairie and
Rocky Mountain Life."

4 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

Not at all discouraged by the magnitude of the under-
taking, the young historian, with shattered health and
impaired vision, began to develop the idea which had ab-
sorbed his best thought since boyhood. This was, as we
know, to write the history of the rise and fall of the
French dominion on this continent. At the beginning of
the eighteenth century, the French held the St. Lawrence
and the Mississippi, — the two great waterways of the
continent. They controlled most of the Indian tribes by
the aid of traders and missionaries. It was the proud
hope of the French to establish and maintain an empire
for France in the heart of North America larger than
France itself. The long and bitter struggle for supre-
macy is Mr. Parkman's subject. Wolfe took Quebec,
and the fate of Canada was sealed. The capture of
Montreal, in 1760, completed the conquest of Canada.
By the treaty of 1763, France finally surrendered all its
vast possessions from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf to the
English, except a district around New Orleans. The end
was not yet. The jealousy and rage of the Western
Indians was aroused when the English came to occupy
the old French forts. A great conspiracy was formed in
1763, under the head of Pontiac, a sagacious chief of the
Ottawa tribe. The garrisons were surprised and mas-
sacred ; thousands of the settlers were driven from their
homes. The Indians were at last defeated in a des-
perate battle ; Pontiac's war, as it was called, was
brought to an end, and the wily chieftain himself was
soon after assassinated.

Such was the canvas selected by Parkman on which
to portray his great historical scenes. The^ historical
field thus chosen was of momentous n
senting fts it~did l.thfi-political ^ destinyjofa continent,
was a history replete with events of the most tragic in-
terest and the most heroic suffering. Brave men and

PARKMAN. 5

saintly women endured marvels of sufferings and vicis-
situdes in those perilous times. The interest and impor-
tance of great public events were only surpassed by heroic
deeds and thrilling private adventures. The picturesque
and romantic aspect of the contest surpassed in vivid in-
terest anything that fiction could delineate.

Mr. Farkman was well prepared for his chosen work.
He heartily loved his subject. He had diligently col-
lected and sifted the material. He was thoroughly
familiar with the Indian character. He knew the cus-
toms of many of their tribes, having lived with them and
shared their privations. He was familiar with the routes
and exploits .of the early explorers, and the heroic labors
of the Jesuit missionaries.

In taking up the various subjects of his great historical
series, Mr. Parkman did not follow the chronological or-
der. The first work of the series, published in 1851, was
" The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after
the Conquest of Canada," — a sequel, in point of time, to
"France and England in North America." This work
was received with high favor both at home and abroad.
The great historical writer, John Piske, tells us that
" Pontiac " is " one of the most brilliant and fascinating
books that has ever been written by any historian since
the days of Herodotus."

JDji(tep-&frre<Qnnihonsive title^of " France and England jk^
in North America^ Mr. PaTTonan published "The Pio-
neers of France in the New World," in 1865; "The
Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century," in
1867; and "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great
Wost," in 1869. These volumes were followed by "The
Old Regime in Canada," in 1874 ; " Count Frontenac and
New France under Louis XTV." in 1877 ; " Montcalm and
Wolfe," in 1884; and "A Half Century of Conflict," in

6 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

1892. The publication of the last-named work, upon
which Mr. Parkman has been engaged for the past eight
years, makes the series complete, and affords a continuous
narrative of the efforts of France to occupy and control
this continent. " The series has been retarded," says
the author in the preface, "• by difficulties which seemed
insurmountable, and for years were so in fact." Each
work of the series has been received with unqualified
favor both in this country and in Europe. No historian
of our times has received higher praise than Mr. Parkman,
— praise which a reading of his works amply confirms.

The story of Prescott's partial blindness has always
invested him and his writings with a touching interest.
Such a misfortune did not deter a man of wealth and
social position from prolonged and profound historical
research. We are told that the scholarly impulse is irre-
sistible, and the literary instinct surmounts appalling ob-
stacles. It was certainly true of Mr. Parkman as well as
of Mr. Prescott. Inbp.th instances it was a triumph of
character which arojises our admiration quite as much as
the skill with which their literary labors were wrought out.
A well-known writer in a sketch of Mr. Parkman says :

" He has gathered the materials for his works, not only
by personal observation of the scenes of his history, but
by costly and laborious researches in the manuscript
archives of France and Canada. The difficulties of his
task would have been immense to any one, even with per-
fect health and the use of all his bodily faculties; but
during the greater part of the time Mr. Parkman has
been an invalid, to whom mental exertion was forbidden
by his physicians, and whose eyesight was so seriously
impaired that for three years the light of day was insup-
portable, and every attempt at reading or writing com-
pletely debarred. He has written his works by the aid of
an amanuensis, and, by patience and energy of the most

PARKMAN. 7

admirable order, has overcome obstacles far greater than
those which impeded the labors of the historian Prescott,
whose eyesight, though impaired, was still serviceable to
him, and whose bodily health, in other respects, was
better than that of most literary men." ^-

Mr. Park man was married in 1850 to a daughter of Dr.
Jacob Bigelow, a celebrated Boston physician. She died
a few years later, leaving two children. Nearly forty
years ago Mr. Parkman bought an extensive property in
Jamaica Plain, — a beautiful suburb of Boston, — and there
has spent his summers ever since. Outside of his literary
work his one absorbing pursuit is the study of horticul-
ture. He has been a professor at the Bussey Institution,
— the horticultural school connected with Harvard College.
In 1866 he published a book on one of his favorite sub-
jects, called " A Book of Roses." The historian has de-
voted much study to the hybridization of flowers. One
c*£"His most noted floral creations is named for him.
What a source of health and happiness must it be to one
whose unfailing love of Nature leads him to take up and
diligently pursue such a hobby ! '

Mr. Parkman's winter home, and where he does most
of his literary work, is at his residence on Chestnut Street,
in Boston. It is in this congenial home that the historian
may be found every winter busy in his library, surrounded
by his books and huge volumes of manuscript copies of
both public and private documents. Most men of ample
means and feeble health are little inclined to devote their
lives to an arduous literary occupation. /Mr. Parkman's
life shows how much a man of indomitable will and am-
bition may do for himself and for mankind, " retarded
by difficulties which seemed insurmountable, and for
years were so in fact." *

M r^Parkman is an uncommonly v'flnrn/a f|nd intercst-
ing writer. His style is full of strength and grace. His

8 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

pages^jglow with brilliant descriptions, romantic adven-
tures, and thrilling incidents. His narratives have all
the animation, variety, and fascination of one of Scott's
novels. One secret of Parkman's success is due, per-
haps, to his deep sympathy with his subject. " Each
actor in the scen£," savs a criticr " is his friend or foe ;
he has taken musty records, skeletons of facts, dry bones
of, barest history, and breathed on them that they_ might
live." His histories read like romances of a high order,
and yet their author is as careful of truth as the most
prosaic and exact chronicler of olden times. What more
gracious tribute could Mr. Parkman have to his success
as an impartial and accurate historian than that every
one of his works is acknowledged to be the highest
authority on the subject of which it treats?

WINTER LIFE AT PORT ROYAL.

T T was noon on the twenty-seventh when the " Jonas ' '
passed the rocky gateway of Port Royal Basin, and
Lescarbot gazed with delight and wonder on the calm ex-
panse of sunny waters, with its amphitheatre of woody
hills, wherein he saw the future asylum of distressed
merit and impoverished industry. Slowly, before a favor-
ing breeze, they held their course towards the head of
the harbor, which narrowed as they advanced ; but all
was solitude: no moving sail, no sign of human presence.
At length, on their left, nestling in deep forests, they saw
the 'wooden walls and roofs of the infant colony. Then
appeared a birch canoe cautiously coming towards them,
guided by an old Indian. Then a Frenchman, arquebuse
in hand, came down to the shore; and then, from the
wooden bastion, sprang the smoke of a saluting shot.
The ship replied ; the trumpets lent their voices to the
din, and the forests and the hills gave back unwonted
echoes. The voyagers landed, and found the colony of
Port Royal dwindled to two solitary Frenchmen.

These soon told their story. The preceding winter
had been one of much suffering, though by no means the
counterpart of the woful experience of St. Croix. But
when the spring had passed, the summer far advanced,
and still no tidings of De Monts had come, Pontgravd
grew deeply anxious. To maintain themselves without
supplies and succor was impossible. He caused two

10 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

small vessels to be built, and set forth in search of
some of the French vessels on the fishing stations.
This was but twelve days before the arrival of the
ship " Jonas." Two men had bravely offered them-
selves to stay behind and guard the buildings, guns,
and munitions, and an old Indian chief named Mein-
bertou — a fast friend of the French, and still, we are
told, a redoubted warrior, though reputed to number
more than a hundred years — proved a stanch ally.
When the ship approached, the two guardians were at
dinner in their room at the fort. Membertou, always
on the watch, saw the advancing sail, and shouting
from the gate, roused them from their repast. In
doubt who the new-comers might be, one ran to the
shore with his gun, while the other repaired to the
platform where four cannon were mounted, in the val-
orous resolve to show fight, should the strangers prove
to be enemies. Happily this redundancy of mettle
proved needless. He saw the white flag fluttering at
the mast-head, and joyfully fired his pieces as a
salute.

The voyagers landed and eagerly surveyed their new
home. Some wandered through the buildings ; some
visited the cluster of Indian wigwams hard by ; some
roamed in the forest and over the meadows that bor-
dered the neighboring river. The deserted fort now
swarmed with life ; and, the better to celebrate their
prosperous arrival, Poutrincourt placed a hogshead of
wine in the courtyard at the discretion of his followers,
whose hilarity in consequence became exuberant. Nor
was it diminished when Pontgrave*'s vessels were seen
entering the harbor. A boat, sent by Poutrincourt, more
than a week before, to explore the coasts, had met them
among the adjacent islands, and they had joyfully re-
turned to Port Royal.

PARKMAN. 11

Pontgrave*, however, soon sailed for France in the
" Jonas," hoping on his way to seize certain contraband
fur-traders reported to be at Canseau and Cape Breton.
Poutrincourt and Champlain set forth on a voyage of dis-
covery, in an ill-built vessel of eighteen tons, while Les-
carbot remained in charge of Port Royal. They had little
for their pains but danger, hardship, and mishap. The
autumn gales cut short their exploration ; and, after ad-
vancing as far as the neighborhood of Hyannis, on the
southeast coast of Massachusetts, they turned back some-
what disgusted with their errand. Along the eastern
verge of Cape Cod they found the shore thickly studded
with the wigwams of a race who were less hunters than
tillers of the soil. At Chatham harbor — called by
them Port Fortune*, — five of the company, who, contrary
to orders, had remained on shore all night, were assailed,
as they slept around their fire, by a shower of arrows
from four hundred Indians. Two were killed outright,
while the survivors fled for their boat, bristled like por-
cupines,— a scene oddly portrayed by the untutored pen-
cil of Champlain. He, with Poutrincourt and eight men,
hearing the war-whoops and the cries for aid, sprang up
from sleep, snatched their weapons, pulled ashore in their
shirts, and charged the yelling multitude, who fled be-
fore their spectral assailants, and vanished in the woods.
" Thus," observes Lescarbot, " did thirty-five thousand
Midianites fly before Gideon and his three hundred."
The French buried their dead comrades ; but as they
chanted their funeral hymn, the Indians, at a safe dis-
tance on a neighboring hill, were dancing in glee and
triumph, and mocking them with unseemly gestures; and
no sooner had the party re-embarked than they dug up
the dead bodies, burned them, and arrayed themselves
in their shirts. Little pleased with the country or its
inhabitants, the voyagers turned their prow towards Port

12 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

Royal. Near Mount Desert, on a stormy night, their rudder
broke, and they had a hairbreadth escape from destruction.
The chief object of their voyage, — that of discovering a site
for their colony under a more southern sky, — had failed.
Pontgravd's son had his hand blown off by the bursting
of his gun ; several of their number had been killed ;
others were sick or wounded ; and thus, on the four-
teenth of November, with somewhat downcast visages,
they guided their helpless vessel with a pair of oars to
the landing at Port Royal.

" I will not," says Lescarbot, " compare their perils to
those of Ulysses, nor yet of ./Eneas, lest thereby I should
sully our holy enterprise with things impure."

He and his followers had been expecting them with
great anxiety. His alert and buoyant spirit had con-
ceived a plan for enlivening the courage of the company,
a little dashed of late with misgivings and forebodings.
Accordingly, as Poutrincourt, Champlain, and their
weather-beaten crew approached the wooden gateway
of Port Royal, Neptune issued forth, followed by his
tritons, who greeted the voyagers in good French verse,
written in all haste for the occasion by Lescarbot. And
as they entered, they beheld, blazoned over the arch, the
arms of France, circled with laurels, and flanked by the
scutcheons of De Monts and Poutrincourt.

The ingenious author of these devices had busied him-
self, during the absence of his associates, in more serious
labors for the welfare of the colony. He explored the low
borders of the river Equille, or Annapolis. Here, in the
solitude, he saw great meadows, where the moose, with
their young, were grazing, and where at times the rank
grass was beaten to a pulp by the trampling of their hoofs.
He burned the grass, and sowed crops of wheat, rye, and
barley in its stead. He made gardens near the fort,
where, in his zeal, he plied the hoe with his own hands,

PARKMAN. 13

late into the moonlight evenings. The priests, of whom in
the outset there had been no lack, had all succumbed to
the scurvy at St. Croix ; and Lescarbot, so far as a lay-
man might, essayed to supply their place, reading on
Sundays from the Scriptures, and adding expositions of
his own after a fashion which may cast a shade of doubt
on the rigor of his catholicity. Of an evening, when not
engrossed with his garden, he was reading or writing in
his room, perhaps preparing the material of that History
of New France in which, despite the versatility of his busy
brain, his excellent good sense and true capacity are
clearly made manifest.

Now, however, when the whole company were reas-
sembled, Lescarbot found associates more congenial than
the rude soldiers, mechanics, and laborers who gathered
at night around the blazing logs in their rude hall. Port
Royal was a quadrangle of wooden buildings enclosing a
spacious court. At the southeast corner was the arched
gateway, whence a path, a few paces in length, led to the
water. It was flanked by a sort of bastion of palisades,
while at the southwest corner was another bastion, on
which four cannon were mounted. On the east side of
the quadrangle was a range of magazines and storehouses ;
on the west were quarters for the men ; on the north, a
dining-hall and lodgings for the principal persons of the
company ; while on the south, or water side, were the
kitchen, the forge, and the oven. Except the garden-
patches and the cemetery, the adjacent ground was thickly
studded with the stumps of the newly felled trees.

Most bountiful provision had been made for the tem-
poral wants of the colonists, and Lescarbot is profuse in
praise of the liberality of De Monts and two merchants of
Rochelle, who had freighted the ship "Jonas." Of wine,
in particular, the supply was so generous that every man
in Port Royal was served with three pints daily.

14 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

The principal persons of the colony sat, fifteen in num-
ber, at Poutrincourt's table, which, by an ingenious device
of Champlain, was always well furnished. He formed
the fifteen into a new order, christened " L'Ordre de Bon-
Temps." Each was Grand Master in turn, holding office
for one day. It was his function to cater for the com-
pany ; and as it became a point of honor to fill the post
with credit, the prospective Grand Master was usually
busy, for several days before coming to his dignity, in
hunting, fishing, or bartering provisions with the Indians.
Thus did Poutrincourt's table groan beneath all the lux-
uries of the winter forest, — flesh of moose, caribou, and
deer, beaver, otter, and hare, bears, and wild-cats ; with
ducks, geese, grouse, and plover ; sturgeon, too, and trout,
and fish innumerable, speared through the ice of the Equille,
or drawn from the depths of the neighboring sea. " And,"
says Lescarbot, in closing his bill of fare, " whatever our
gourmands at home may think, we found as good cheer at
Port Royal as they at their Rue aux Ours in Paris, and
that, too, at a cheaper rate." As for the preparation of
this manifold provision, for that too was the Grand
Master answerable ; since, during his day of office, he was
autocrat of the kitchen.

Nor did bounteous repast lack a solemn and befitting
ceremonial. When the hour had struck, — after the
manner of our fathers, they dined at noon, — the Grand
Master entered the hall, a napkin on his shoulder, his staff
of office in his hand, and the collar of the order — of
which the chronicler fails not to commemorate the costli-
ness — about his neck. The brotherhood followed, each
bearing a dish. The invited guests were Indian chiefs, of
whom old Membertou was daily present, seated at table
with the' French, who took pleasure in this red-skin com-
panionship. Those of humbler degree, warriors, squaws,
and children, sat on the floor or crouched together in the

PARKMAN. 15

corners of the hall, eagerly waiting their portion of biscuit
or of bread, — a novel and much coveted luxury. Treated
always with kindness, they became fond of the French,
who often followed them on their moose-hunts, and shared
their winter bivouac.

At their evening meal there was less of form and cir-
cumstance ; and when the winter night closed in, when
the flame crackled and the sparks streamed up the wide-
throated chimney, when the founders of New France and
their tawny allies were gathered around the blaze, then
did the Grand Master resign the collar and the staff to
the successor of his honors, and, with jovial courtesy,
pledge him in a cup of wine. Thus did these ingenious
Frenchmen beguile the winter of their exile.

It was a winter unusually benignant. Until January,
they wore no warmer garment than their doublets. They
made hunting and fishing parties, in which the Indians,
whose lodges were always to be seen under the friendly
shelter of the buildings, failed not to bear a part. " I re-
member," says Lescarbot, " that on the fourteenth of
January, of a Sunday afternoon, we amused ourselves
with singing and music on the river Equille, and that in
the same month we went to see the wheat-fields two
leagues from the fort, and dined merrily in the sunshine."

Good spirits and good cheer saved them in great meas-
from the scurvy, and though, towards the end of winter,
severe cold set in, yet only four men died. The snow
thawed at last, and as patches of the black and oozy soil
began to appear, they saw the grain of their last autumn's
sowing already piercing the mould. The forced inaction
of the winter was over. The carpenters built a water-
mill ; others enclosed fields and laid out gardens ; others,
again, with scoop-nets and baskets, caught the herrings
and alowives as they ran up the innumerable rivulets.
The leaders of the colony set a contagious example of

16 LEAFLETS FEOM STANDARD AUTHORS.

activity. Poutrincourt forgot the prejudices of his noble
birth, and went himself into the woods to gather turpen-
tine from the pines, which he converted into tar by a pro-
cess of his own invention ; while Lescarbot, eager to test
the qualities of the soil, was again, hoe in hand, at work
all day in his garden. All seemed full of promise ; but
alas for the bright hope that kindled the manly heart of
Champlain and the earnest spirit of the vivacious advocate !
A. sudden blight fell on them, and their rising prosperity
withered to the ground. On a morning, late in spring,
as the French were at breakfast, the ever-watchful Mem-
bertou came in with news of an approaching sail. They
hastened to the shore ; but the vision of the centenarian
sagamore put them all to shame. They could see nothing.
At length their doubts were resolved. In full view a small
vessel stood on towards them, and anchored before the
fort. She was commanded by one Chevalier, a young
man from St. Malo, and was freighted with disastrous
tidings. De Monts's monopoly was rescinded. The life
of the enterprise was stopped, and the establishment of
Port Royal could no longer be supported ; for its expense
was great, the body of the colony being laborers in the pay
of the company. Nor was the annulling of the patent the
full extent of the disaster ; for during the last summer
the Dutch had found their way to the St. Lawrence, and
carried away a rich harvest of furs, while other inter-
loping traders had plied a busy traffic along the coasts,
and, in the excess of their avidity, dug up the bodies of
buried Indians to rob them of their funeral robes.

It was to the merchants and fishermen of the Norman,
Breton, and Biscayan ports, exasperated at their exclusion
from a lucrative trade, and at the confiscations which had
sometimes followed their attempts to engage in it, that
this sudden blow was due. Money had been used freely
at court, and the monopoly, unjustly granted, had been

PARKMAN. 17

more unjustly withdrawn. De Monts and his company,
who had spent a hundred thousand livres, were allowed
six thousand in requital, to be collected from the fur-
traders in the form of a tax.

Chevalier, captain of the ill-omened bark, was enter-
tained with a hospitality little deserved, since, having
been intrusted with sundry hams, fruits, spices, sweet-
meats, jellies, and other dainties, sent by the generous De
Monts to his friends of New France, he with his crew had
devoured them on the voyage, alleging, in justification,
that, in their belief, the inmates of Port Royal would all
be dead before their arrival.

Choice there was none, and Port Royal must be aban-
doned. Built on a false basis, sustained only by the
fleeting favor of a government, the generous enterprise
had come to naught. Yet Poutrincourt, who in virtue
of his grant from De Monts owned the locality, bravely
resolved that, come what might, he would see the adven-
ture to an end, even should it involve emigration with
his- family to the wilderness. Meanwhile, he began the
dreary task of abandonment, sending boat-loads of men
and stores to Canseau, where lay the ship " Jonas," eking
out her diminished profits by fishing for cod.

Membertou was full of grief at the departure of his
friends. He had built a palisaded village not far from
Port Royal, and here were mustered some four hundred
of his warriors for a foray into the country of the Arinou-
chiquois, dwellers along the coasts of Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, and western Maine. In behalf of this
martial concourse he had proved himself a sturdy beggar,
pursuing Poutrincourt with daily petitions, now for a
bushel of beans, now for a basket of bread, and now for
a barrel of wine to regale his greasy crew. Membertou's
long life had not been one of repose. In deeds of blood
and treachery he had no rival in the Acadian forest ; and

8

18 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

as his old age was beset with enemies, his alliance with
the French had a foundation of policy no less than of
affection. For the rest, in right of his quality of Saga-
more he claimed perfect equality both with Poutrincourt
and with the King, laying his shrivelled forefingers side
by side in token of friendship between peers. Calumny
did not spare him ; and a rival chief intimated to the
French that, under cover of a war with the Armouchi-
quois, the crafty veteran meant to seize and plunder Port
Royal. Precautions, therefore, were taken ; but they
were seemingly needless, for, their feasts and dances
over, the warriors launched their birchen flotilla and
set forth. After an absence of six weeks they reappeared
with howls of victory, and their exploits were commemo-
rated in French verse by the muse of the indefatigable
Lescarbot.

With a heavy heart the latter bade farewell to the
dwellings, the cornfields, the gardens, and all the dawn-
ing prosperity of Port Royal, and sailed for Canseau in a
small vessel on the thirtieth of July. Poutrincourt and
Champlain remained behind, for the former was resolved
to learn before his departure the results of his agricul-
tural labors. Reaching a harbor on the southern coast
of Nova Scotia, six leagues west of Canseau, Lescarbot
found a fishing-vessel commanded and owned by an old
Basque named Savalet, who for forty-two successive
years had carried to France his annual cargo of codfish.
He was in great glee at the success of his present venture,
reckoning his profits at ten thousand francs. The In-
dians, however, annoyed him beyond measure, boarding
him from their canoes as his fishing-boats came along-
side, and helping themselves at will to his halibut and
cod. At Canseau — a harbor near the cape now bearing
the name — the ship " Jonas " still lay, her hold well stored
with fish ; and here, on the twenty-seventh of August,

PARKMAN. 19

Lescarbot was rejoined by Poutrincourt and Champlain,
who had come from Port Royal in an open boat. For a
few days, they amused themselves with gathering rasp-
berries on the islands ; then they spread their sails for
France, and early in October, 1607, anchored in the
harbor of St. Malo.

First of Europeans, they had essayed to found an agri-
cultural colony in the New World. The leaders of the
enterprise had acted less as merchants than as citizens ;
and the fur-trading monopoly, odious in itself, had been
used as the instrument of a large and generous design.
There was a radical defect, however, in their scheme of
settlement. Excepting a few of the leaders, those en-
gaged in it had not chosen a home in the wilderness of
New France, but were mere hirelings, careless of the
welfare of the colony. The life which should have per-
vaded all the members was confined to the heads alone.

Towards the fickle and bloodthirsty race who claimed
the lordship of the forests these colonists bore themselves
in a spirit of kindness contrasting brightly with the ra-
pacious cruelty of the Spaniards and the harshness of
the English settlers. When the last boat-load left Port
Royal, the shore resounded with lamentation ; and noth-
ing could console the afflicted savages but reiterated
promises of a speedy return. — From "Pioneers of France
in the New World" Part Second, chap. iv.

DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES.

r I ""HERE was a gentleman of Mont-de-Marsan, Doini-
-*• nique de Gourgues, a soldier of ancient birth and
high renown. He hated the Spaniards with a mortal
hate. Fighting in the Italian wars, — for from boyhood
he was \vedded to the sword, — he had been taken pris-
oner by them near Siena, where he had signalized himself
by a fiery and determined bravery. With brutal insult,
they chained him to the oar as a galley-slave. After he
had long endured this ignominy, the Turks had captured
the vessel and carried her to Constantinople. It was but
a change of tyrants ; but, soon after, while she was on a
cruise, Gourgues still at the oar, a galley of the Maltese
knights hove in sight, bore down on her, recaptured her,
and set the prisoner free. For several years after, his
restless spirit found employment in voyages to Africa,
Brazil, and regions yet more remote. His naval repute
rose high, but his grudge against the Spaniards still
rankled within him ; and when, returned from his rov-
ings, he learned the tidings from Florida, his hot
Gascon blood boiled with fury.

The honor of France had been foully stained, and there
was none to wipe away the shame. The faction-ridden
King was dumb. The nobles who surrounded him were
in the Spanish interest. Then, since they proved rec-
reant, he, Dominique de Gourgues, a simple gentleman,
would take upon him to avenge the wrong, and restore
the dimmed lustre of the French name. He sold his

22 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

inheritance, borrowed money from his brother, who held
a high post in Guienne, and equipped three small vessels,
navigable by sail or oar. On board he placed a hundred
arquebusiers and eighty sailors, prepared to fight on land,
if need were. The noted Blaise de Montluc, then lieuten-
ant for the King in Guienne, gave him a commission to
make war on the negroes of Benin, — that is, to kidnap
them as slaves, an adventure then held honorable.

His true design was locked within his own breast. He
mustered his followers, feasted them, — not a few were
of rank equal to his own, — and, on the twenty-second of
August, 1567, sailed from the mouth of the Charente.
Off Cape Finisterre, so violent a storm buffeted his ships
that his men clamored to return ; but Gourgues's spirit
prevailed. He bore away for Africa, and, landing at the
Rio del Oro, refreshed and cheered them as he best might.
Thence he sailed for Cape Blanco, where the jealous
Portuguese, who had a fort in the neighborhood, set upon
him three negro chiefs. Gourgues beat them off, and re-
mained master of the harbor ; whence, however, he soon
voyaged onward to Cape Verd, and, steering westward,
made for the West Indies. Here, advancing from island
to island, he came to Hispaniola, where, between the fury
of a hurricane at sea and the jealousy of the Spaniards on
shore, he was in no small jeopardy, — "the Spaniards,"
exclaims the indignant journalist, " who think that this
New World was made for nobody but them, and that no
other man living has a right to move or breathe here ! "
Gourgues landed, however, obtained the water of which
he was in need, and steered for Cape San Antonio, in
Cuba. There he gathered his followers about him,
and addressed them with his fiery Gascon eloquence.
For the first time, he told them his true purpose. He
inveighed against Spanish cruelty. He painted, with
angry rhetoric, the butcheries of Fort Caroline and
St. Augustine.

PARKMAN. 23

" What disgrace," he cried, " if such an insult should
pass unpunished ! What glory to us, if we avenge it !
To this I have devoted my fortune. I relied on you. I
thought you jealous enough of your country's glory to
sacrifice life itself in a cause like this. Was I deceived ?
I will show you the way ; I will be always at your head ;
I will bear the brunt of the danger. Will you refuse to
follow me ? "

At first his startled hearers listened in silence ; but
soon the passions of that adventurous age rose responsive
to his words. The sparks fell among gunpowder. The
combustible French nature burst into flame. The enthu-
siasm of the soldiers rose to such a pitch that Gourgues
had much ado to make them wait till the moon was full
before tempting the perils of the Bahama Channel. His
time came at length. The moon rode high above the
lonely sea, and, silvered in its light, the ships of the
avenger held their course.

But how meanwhile, had it fared with the Spaniards
in Florida ? The good-will of the Indians had vanished.
The French had been obtrusive and vexatious guests,
but their worst trespasses had been mercy and tender-
ness, to the daily outrage of the new-comers. Friendship
had changed to aversion, aversion to hatred, hatred to
open war. The forest-paths were beset ; stragglers were
cut off ; and woe to the Spaniard who should venture
after nightfall beyond call of the outposts.

Menendez, however, had strengthened himself in his
new conquest. St. Augustine was well fortified ; Fort
Caroline, now Fort San Mateo, was repaired ; and two
redoubts were thrown up to guard tho mouth of the River
of May. Thence, on an afternoon in early spring, the
Spaniards saw three sail steering northward. They
suspected no enemy, and their batteries boomed a salute.
Gourgues's ships replied, then stood out to sea, and were
lost in the shades of cveninjr.

24 LEAFLETS FEOM STANDARD AUTHORS.

They kept their course all night, and, as day broke,
anchored at the inouth of a river, the St. Mary's or the
Santilla, by their reckoning fifteen leagues north of the
River of May. Here, as it grew light, Gourgues saw
the borders of the sea thronged with savages armed and
plumed for war. They too had mistaken the strangers
for Spaniards, and mustered to meet their tyrants at the
landing. But in the French ships there was a trumpeter
who had been long in Florida, and knew the Indians well.
He went towards them in a boat, with many gestures of
friendship ; and no sooner was he recognized than the
naked crowd, with yelps of delight, danced for joy along
the sands. Why had he ever left them ? they asked ; and
Avhy had he not returned before ? The intercourse thus
auspiciously begun was actively kept up. Gourgues told
the principal chief — who was no other than Satouriona,
of old the ally of the French — that he had come to visit
them, make friendship with them, and bring them pres-
ents. At this last announcement, so grateful to Indian
ears, the dancing was renewed with double zeal. The
next morning was named for a grand council. Satouriona
sent runners to summon all Indians within call ; while
Gourgues, for safety, brought his vessels within the
mouth of the river.

Morning came, and the woods were thronged with con-
gregated warriors. Gourgues and his soldiers landed with
martial pomp. In token of mutual confidence, the French
laid aside their arquebuses, the Indians their bows and
arrows. Satouriona came to meet the strangers, and
seated their commander at his side on a wooden stool
draped arid cushioned with the gray Spanish moss. Two
old Indians cleared the spot of brambles, weeds, and
grass ; and, their task finished, the tribesmen took their
places, ring within ring, standing, sitting, and crouching
on the ground, a dusky concourse, plumed in festal array,

PARKMAN. 25

waiting with grave visages and eyes intent. Gourgues
was about to speak, when the chief, who, says the narra-
tor, had not learned French manners, rose and antici-
pated him. He broke into a vehement harangue, and
the cruelty of the Spaniards was the burden of his words.

Since the French fort was taken, he said, the Indians
had not had one happy day. The Spaniards drove them
from their cabins, stole their corn, ravished their wives
and daughters, and killed their children ; and all this
they had endured because they loved the French. There
was a French boy who had escaped from the massacre at
the fort. They had found him in the woods ; and though
the Spaniards, who wished to kill him, demanded that
they should give him up, they had kept him for his
friends.

" Look ! " pursued the chief, " here he is ! " — and he
brought forward a youth of sixteen, named Pierre Debre',
who became at once of the greatest service to the French,
his knowledge of the Indian language making him an
excellent interpreter.

Delighted as he was at this outburst against the Span-
iards, Gourgues by no means saw fit to display the full
extent of his satisfaction. He thanked the Indians for
their good-will, exhorted them to continue in it, and
pronounced an ill-merited eulogy on the greatness and
goodness of his King. As for the Spaniards, he said,
their day of reckoning was at hand ; and if the Indians
had been abused for their love of the French, the French
would be their avengers. Here Satouriona forgot his
dignity, and leaped up for joy.

" What ! " he cried, " will you fight the Spaniards ?"

" I came here," replied Gourgues, " only to reconnoitre
the country and make friends with you, then to go back
and bring more soldiers ; but when I hear what you are
suffering from them, I wish to fall upon them this very

l>t> LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

day, and rescue you from their tyranny." And, all
around the ring, a clamor of applauding voices greeted
his words.

" But you will do your part," pursued the Frenchman ;
" you will not leave us all the honor."

"We will go," replied Satouriona, "and die with you,
if need be."

"Then, if we fight, we ought to fight at once. How
soon can you have your warriors ready to march ? "

The chief asked three days for preparation. Gourgues
cautioned him to secrecy, lest the Spaniards should take
alarm.

" Never fear," was the answer ; " we hate them more
than you do."

Then came a distribution of gifts, — knives, hatchets,
mirrors, bells, and beads, — while the warrior-rabble
crowded to receive them, with eager faces, and tawny
outstretched arms. The distribution over, Gourgues
asked the chiefs if there was any other matter in which
he could serve them. On this, pointing to his shirt, they
expressed a peculiar admiration for that garment, and
begged each to have one, to be worn at feasts and
councils during life, and in their graves after death.
Gourgues complied ; and his grateful confederates were
soon stalking about him, fluttering in the spoils of his'
wardrobe.

To learn the strength and position of the Spaniards,
Gourgues now sent out three scouts ; and with them
went Olotoraca, Satouriona's nephew, a young brave of
great renown.

The chief, eager to prove his great faith, gave as
hostages his only son and his favorite wife. They were
sent on board the ships, while the savage concourse dis-
persed to their encampments, with leaping, stamping,
dancing, and whoops of jubilation.

PARKMAN. 27

The day appointed came, and with it the savage army,
hideous in war-paint and plumed for battle. Their cere-
monies began. The woods rang back their songs and
yells as with frantic gesticulations they brandished their
war-clubs and vaunted their deeds of prowess. Then
they drank the black drink endowed with mystic virtues
against hardship and danger, and Gourgues himself pre-
tended to swallow the nauseous decoction.

These ceremonies consumed the day. It was evening
before the allies filed off into their forests, and took the
path for the Spanish forts. The French, on their part,
were to repair by sea to the rendezvous. Gourgues
mustered and addressed his men. It was needless : their
ardor was at fever-height. They broke in upon his words,
and demanded to be led at once against the enemy.
Francois Bourdelais, with twenty sailors, was left with
the ships. Gourgues affectionately bade him farewell.

" If I am slain in this most just enterprise," he said,
" 1 leave all in your charge, and pray you to carry back
my soldiers to France."

There were many embracings among the excited
Frenchmen, many sympathetic tears from those who
were to stay behind, many messages left with them
for wives, children, friends, and mistresses ; and then this
valiant band pushed their boats from shore. It was a
harebrained venture, for, as young Debre* had assured
them, the Spaniards on the River of May were four
hundred in number, secure behind their ramparts.

Hour after hour the sailors pulled at the oar. They
glided slowly by the sombre shores in the shimmering
moonlight, to the sound of the murmuring surf and the
moaning pine-trees. In the gray of the morning they
came to the mouth of a river, probably the Nassau ; and
here a northeast wind set in with a violence that almost
wrecked their boats. Their Indian allies were waiting

28 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

on the bank, but for a while the gale delayed their cross-
ing. The bolder French would lose no time, rowed
through the tossing waves, and, landing safely, left their
boats and pushed into the forest. Gourgues took the
lead, in breastplate and back-piece. At his side marched
the young chief Olotoraca, a French pike in his hand ;
and the files of arquebuse-men and armed soldiers fol-
lowed close behind. They plunged through swamps,
hewed their way through brambly thickets and the
matted intricacies of the forests, and, at five in the
afternoon, wellnigh spent with fatigue and hunger,
came to a river or inlet of the sea not far from the
first Spanish fort. Here they found three hundred
Indians waiting for them.

Tired as he was, Gourgues would not rest. He would
fain attack at daybreak, and with ten arquebusiers and
his Indian guide he set forth to reconnoitre. Night
closed upon him. It was a vain task to struggle on, in
pitchy darkness, among trunks of trees, fallen logs, tan-
gled vines, and swollen streams. Gourgues returned,
anxious and gloomy. An Indian chief approached him,
read through the darkness his perturbed look, and offered
to lead him by a better path along the margin of the sea.
Gourgues joyfully assented, and ordered all his men to
march. The Indians, better skilled in woodcraft, chose
the shorter course through the forest.

The French forgot their weariness, and pressed on
with speed. At dawn they and their allies met on the
bank of a stream, beyond which, and very near, was the
fort. But the tide was in. They essayed to cross in
vain. Greatly vexed, — for he had hoped to take the
enemy asleep, — Gourgues withdrew his soldiers into the
forest, where they were no sooner ensconced than a
drenching rain fell, and they had much ado to keep their
gun-matches burning. The light grew fast. Gourgues

PARKMAN. 29

plainly saw the fort, whose defences seemed slight and
unfinished. He even saw the Spaniards at work within.
A feverish interval elapsed. At length the tide was out,
— so far, at least, that the stream was fordable. A little
higher up, a clump of trees lay between it and the fort.
Behind this friendly screen the passage was begun. Each
man tied his powder-flask to his steel cap, held his arque-
buse above his head with one hand, and grasped his
sword with the other. The channel was a bed of oysters.
The sharp shells cut their feet as they waded through.
But the further bank was gained. They emerged from
the water drenched, lacerated, bleeding, but with un-
abated mettle. Under cover of the trees Gourgues set
them in array. They stood with kindling eyes, and
hearts throbbing, but not with fear. Gourgues pointed
to the Spanish fort, seen by glimpses through the trees.
" Look ! " he said, " there are the robbers who have stolen
this land from our King ; there are the murderers who
have butchered our countrymen ! " With voices eager,
fierce, but half suppressed, they demanded to be led on.

Gourgues gave the word. Cazenove, his lieutenant,
with thirty men, pushed for the fort-gate ; he himself,
with the main body, for the glacis. It was near noon ;
the Spaniards had just finished their meal, and, says the
narrative," were still picking their teeth," when a startled
cry rang in their ears.

" To arms ! to arms ! The French are coming ! the
French are coming ! "

It was the voice of a cannoneer who had that moment
mounted the rampart and seen the assailants advancing in
unbroken ranks, with heads lowered and weapons at the
charge. He fired his cannon among them. He even had
time to load and fire again, when the light-limbed Oloto-
raca bounded forward, ran up the glacis, leaped the un-
finished ditch, and drove his pike through the Spaniard

30 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

from breast to back. Gourgues was now on the glacis,
when he heard Cazenove shouting from the gate that the
Spaniards were escaping on that side. He turned and led
his men thither at a run. In a moment the fugitives,
sixty in all, were enclosed between his party and that of
his lieutenant. The Indians, too, came leaping to the spot.
Not a Spaniard escaped. All were cut down but a few,
reserved by Gourgues for a more inglorious end.

Meanwhile the Spaniards in the other fort, on the
opposite shore, cannonaded the victors without ceasing.
The latter turned four captured guns against them. One
of Gourgues's boats, a very large one, had been brought
along shore. He entered it, with eighty soldiers, and
pushed for the further bank. With loud yells, the Indians
leaped into the water. From shore to shore, the St. John's
was alive with them. Each held his bow and arrows aloft
in one hand, while he swam with the other. A panic
seized the garrison as they saw the savage multitude.
They broke out of the fort and fled into the forest. But
the French had already landed ; and throwing themselves
in the path of the fugitives, they greeted them with a
storm of lead. The terrified wretches recoiled, but flight

' ~

was vain. The Indian whoop rang behind them ; war-
clubs and arrows finished the work. Gourgues's utmost
efforts saved but fifteen, — saved them, not out of mercy,
but from a refinement of vengeance.

The next day was Quasimodo Sunday, or the Sunday
after Easter. Gourgues and his men remained quiet,
making ladders for the assault on Fort S,an Mateo. Mean-
while the whole forest was in arms, and, far and near, the
Indians were wild with excitement. They beset the Span-
ish fort till not a soldier could venture out. The garri-
son, aware of their danger, though ignorant of its extent,
devised an expedient to gain information ; and one of
them, painted and feathered like an Indian, ventured

PARKMAN. 31

within Gourgues's outposts. He himself chanced to be at
hand, and by his side walked his constant attendant, Olo-
toraca. The keen-eyed young savage pierced the cheat at
a glance. The spy was seized, and, being examined, de-
clared that there were two hundred and sixty Spaniards
in San Mateo, and that they believed the French to be two
thousand, and were so frightened that they did not know
what they were doing.

Gourgues, well pleased, pushed on to attack them. On
Monday evening he sent forward the Indians to ambush
themselves on both sides of the fort. In the morning he
followed with his Frenchmen ; and as the glittering ranks
came into view, defiling between the forest and the river,
the Spaniards opened on them with culverins from a pro-
jecting basin. The French took cover in the forest with
which the hills below and behind the fort were densely
overgrown. Here, ensconced in the edge of the woods,
where, himself unseen, he could survey the whole extent
of the defences, Gourgues presently descried a strong party
of Spaniards issuing from their works, crossing the ditch,
and advancing to reconnoitre. On this, returning to
his men, he sent Cazenove, with a detachment, to station
hi nisei f at a point well hidden by trees on the flank of
the Spaniards. The latter, with strange infatuation, con-
tinued their advance. Gourgues and his followers pushed
on through the thickets to meet them. As the Spaniards
reached the edge of the clearing, a deadly fire blazed in
their faces, and, before the smoke cleared, the French
were among them, sword in hand. The survivors would
have fled ; but Cazenove's detachment fell upon their rear,
and all were killed or taken.

When their comrades in the fort beheld their fate, a
panic seized them. Conscious of their own deeds, per-
petrated on this very spot, they could hope no mercy.
Their terror multiplied immeasurably the numbers of their

32 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

enemy. They deserted the fort in a body, and fled into
the woods most remote from the French. But here a
deadlier foe awaited them ; for a host of Indians leaped
up from ambush. Then rose those hideous war-cries
which have curdled the boldest blood and blanched the
manliest cheek. Then the forest-warriors, with savage
ecstasy, wreaked their long arrears of vengeance. The
French, too, hastened to the spot, and lent their swords to
the slaughter. A few prisoners were saved alive ; the
rest were slain; and thus did the Spaniards make bloody
atonement for the butchery of Fort Caroline.1

But Gourgues's vengeance was not yet appeased. Hard
by the fort, the trees were pointed out to him on which
Menendez had hanged his captives, and placed over them
the inscription: "Not as to Frenchmen, but as to
Lutherans."

Gourgues ordered the Spanish prisoners to be led
thither.

" Did you think," he sternly said, as the pallid wretches
stood ranged before him, " that so vile a treachery, so
detestable a cruelty, against a King so potent and a nation
so generous, would go unpunished ? I, one of the hum-
blest gentlemen among my King's subjects, have charged
myself with avenging it. Even if the Most Christian and
the Most Catholic Kings had been enemies, at deadly war,
such perfidy and extreme cruelty would still have been
unpardonable. Now that they are friends and close allies,
there is no name vile enough to brand your deeds, no
punishment sharp enough to requite them. But though
you cannot suffer as you deserve, you shall suffer all that

1 This is the French account. The Spaniard, Barcia, with greater prob-
ability, says that some of the Spaniards escaped to the hills. With this
exception, the Frencli and Spanish accounts agree. Barcia ascribes the
defeat of his countrymen to an exaggerated idea of the enemy's force.
The governor, Gonzalo de Villaroil, was, he says, among those who
escaped.

PARKMAN. 33

an enemy can honorably inflict, that your example may
teach others to observe the peace and alliance which you
have so perfidiously violated."

They were hanged where the French had hung before
them ; and over them was nailed the inscription, burned
with a hot iron on a tablet of pine : " Not as to Span-
iards, but as to Traitors, Robbers, and Murderers."

Gourgues's mission was fulfilled. To occupy the coun-
try had never been his intention ; nor was it possible,
for the Spaniards were still in force at St. Augustine.
His was a whirlwind visitation, — to ravage, ruin, and
vanish. He harangued the Indians, and exorted them to
demolish the fort. They fell to the work with keen alac-
rity > and in less than a day not one stone was left on
another.

Gourgues returned to the forts at the mouth of the river,
destroyed them also, and took up his march for his ships.
It was a triumphal procession. The Indians thronged
around the victors with gifts of fish and game ; and an
old woman declared that she was now ready to die, since
she had seen the French once more.

The ships were ready for sea. Gourgues bade his dis-
consolate allies farewell, and nothing would content them
but a promise to return soon. Before embarking, he
addressed his own men,—

"My friends, let us give thanks to God for the success
He has granted us. It is He who saved us from tempests ;
it is He who inclined the hearts of the Indians towards
us; it is He who blinded the understanding of the Span-
iards. They were four to one, in forts well armed and
provisioned. Our right was our only strength ; and yet
we have conquered. Not to our own swords, but to God
only, we owe our victory. Then let us thank Him, my
friends ; let us never forgot His favors ; and let us pray
that He may continue them, saving us from dangers, and

a

34 LEAFLETS PROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

guiding us safely home. Let us pray, too, that He may
so dispose the hearts of men that our perils and toils may
find favor in the eyes of our King and of all France, since
all we have done was done for the King's service and for
the honor of our country."

Thus Spaniards and Frenchmen alike laid their reeking
swords on God's altar.

Gourgues sailed on the third of May, and, gazing back
along their foaming wake, the adventurers looked their
last on the scene of their exploits. Their success had
cost its price. A few of their number had fallen, and
hardships still awaited the survivors. Gourgues, however,
reached Rochelle on the day of Pentecost, and the Hugue-
not citizens greeted him with all honor. At court it fared
worse with him. The King, still obsequious to Spain,
looked on him coldly and askance. The Spanish minister
demanded his head. It was hinted to him that he was
not safe, and he withdrew to Rouen, where he found
asylum among his friends. His fortune was gone ; debts
contracted for his expedition weighed heavily on him ;
and for years he lived in obscurity, almost in misery. At
length his prospects brightened. Elizabeth of England
learned his merits and his misfortunes, and invited him
to enter her service. The King, who, says the Jesuit
historian, had always at heart been delighted with his
achievement, openly restored him to favor ; while, some
years later, Don Antonio tendered him command of his
fleet, to defend his right to the crown of Portugal against
Philip the Second. Gourgues, happy once more to cross
swords with the Spaniards, gladly embraced this offer;
but, on his way to join the Portuguese prince, he died at
Tours of a sudden illness. The French mourned the loss
of the man who had wiped a blot from the national
scutcheon, and respected his memory as that of one of the
best captains of his time. And, in truth, if a zealous

PARKMAN. 35

patriotism, a fiery valor, and skilful leadership are worthy
of honor, then is such a tribute due to Dominique de
Gourgues, despite the shadowing vices which even the
spirit of that wild age can only palliate, the personal hate
that aided the impulse of his patriotism, and the implac-
able cruelty that sullied his courage. — From "Pioneers
of France in the New World" Part First, chap. x.

SUCCESS OF LA SALLE.

" I ^HE season was far advanced. On the bare limbs of
•*• the forest hung a few withered remnants of its
gay autumnal livery ; and the smoke crept upward
through the sullen November air from the squalid wig-
wams of La Salle's Abenaki and Mohegan allies. These,
his new friends, were savages whose midnight yells had
startled the border hamlets of New England ; who had
danced around Puritan scalps, and whom Puritan imagi-
nations painted as incarnate fiends. La Salle chose
eighteen of them, whom he added to the twenty-three
Frenchmen who remained with him, some of the rest
having deserted and others lagged behind. The Indians
insisted on taking their squaws with them. These were
ten in number, besides three children ; and thus the expe-
dition included fifty-four persons, of whom some were
useless, and others a burden.

On the 21st of December. Tonty and Membre* set 'out
from Fort Miami with some of the party in six canoes,
and crossed to the little river Chicago. La Salle, with
the rest of the men, joined them a few days later. It
was the dead of winter, and the streams were frozen.
They made sledges, placed on them the canoes, the bag-
gage, and a disabled Frenchman ; crossed from the Chi-
cago to the northern branch of the Illinois, and filed in
a long procession down its frozen course. They reached
the site of the great Illinois village, found it tenantless,

4 7 2 S ,")

38 LEAFLETS FROM STANDAED AUTHORS.

and continued their journey, still dragging their canoes,
till at length they reached open water below Lake Peoria.
La Salle had abandoned for a time his original plan of
building a vessel for the navigation of the Mississippi.
Bitter experience had taught him the difficulty of the
attempt, and he resolved to trust to his canoes alone.
They embarked again, floating prosperously down between
the leafless forests that flanked the tranquil river ; till,
on the sixth of February, they issued upon the majestic
bosom of the Mississippi. Here, for the time, their prog-
ress was stopped ; for the river was full of floating ice.
La Salle's Indians, too, had lagged behind ; but, within a
week, all had arrived, the navigation was once more free,
and they resumed their course. Towards evening, they
saw on their right the mouth of a great river ; and the
clear current was invaded by the headlong torrent of the
Missouri, opaque with mud. They built their camp-fires
in the neighboring forest ; and at daylight, embarking
anew on the dark and mighty stream, drifted swiftly
down towards unknown destinies. They passed a deserted
town of the Tamaroas ; saw, three days after, the mouth
of the Ohio ; and, gliding by the wastes of bordering
swamp, landed on the twenty-fourth of February near
the Third Chickasaw Bluffs. They encamped, and the
hunters went out for game. All returned, excepting
Pierre Prudhomme ; and, as the others had seen fresh
tracks of Indians, La Salle feared that he was killed.
While some of his followers built a small stockade fort
on a high bluff by the river, others ranged the woods in
pursuit of the missing hunter. After six days of cease-
less and fruitless search, they met two Chickasaw Indians
in the forest ; and, through them, La Salle sent presents
and peace-messages to that warlike people, whose vil-
lages were a few days' journey distant. Several days
later, Prudhomme was found, and brought in to the

PARKMAN. 39

camp, half-dead. He had lost his way while hunting;
and, to console him for his woes, La Salle christened the
newly built fort with his name, and left him, with a few
others, in charge of it.

Again they embarked ; and, with every stage of their
adventurous progress, the mystery of this vast New
World was more and more unveiled. More and more
they entered the realms of spring. The hazy sunlight,
the warm and drowsy air, the tender foliage, the opening
flowers, betokened the reviving life of Nature. For
several days more they followed the writhings of the
great river, on its tortuous course through wastes of
swamp and canebrake, till on the thirteenth of March
they found themselves wrapped in a thick fog. Neither
shore was visible ; but they heard on the right the boom-
ing of an Indian drum and the shrill outcries of the war-
dance. La Salle at once crossed to the opposite side,
where, in less than an hour, his men threw up a rude
fort of felled trees. Meanwhile, the fog cleared ; and,
from the farther bank, the astonished Indians saw the
strange visitors at their work. Some of the French
advanced to the edge of the water, and beckoned them to
come over. Several of them approached, in a wooden
canoe, to within the distance of a gun-shot. La Salle
displayed the calumet, and sent a Frenchman to meet
them. He was well received ; and, the friendly mood of
the Indians being now apparent, the whole party crossed
the river.

On landing, they found themselves at a town of the
Kappa band of the Arkansas, a people dwelling near the
mouth of the river which bears their name. " The whole
village," writes Membre' to his superior, " came down to
the shore to meet us. except the women, who had run off.
I cannot tell you the civility and kindness we received
from these barbarians, who brought us poles to make

40 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

huts, supplied us with firewood during the three days we
were among them, and took turns in feasting us. But,
my Reverend Father, this gives no idea of the good qual-
ities of these savages, who are gay, civil, and free-hearted.
The young men, though the most alert and spirited we
had seen, are nevertheless so modest that not one of them
would take the liberty to enter our hut, but all stood
quietly at the door. They are so well formed that we
were in admiration at their beauty. We did not lose the
value of a pin while we were among them."

Various were the dances and ceremonies with which
they entertained the strangers, who, on their part, re-
sponded with a solemnity which their hosts would have
liked less if they had understood it better. La Salle and
Tonty, at the head of their followers, marched to the
open area in the midst of the village. Here, to the ad-
miration of the gazing crowd of warriors, women, and
children, a cross was raised bearing the arms of France.
Membre', in canonicals, sang a hymn ; the men shouted
Vive le Roi ; and La Salle, in the king's name, took
formal possession of the country. The friar, not, he
flatters himself, without success, labored to expound by
signs the mysteries of the Faith ; while La Salle, by
methods equally satisfactory, drew from the chief an
acknowledgment of fealty to Louis XIV.1

After touching at several other towns of this people,
the voyagers resumed their course, guided by two of the

1 The nation of the Akanseas, Alkansas. or Arkansas, dwelt on the west
bank of the Mississippi, near the mouth of the Arkansas. They were di-
vided into four tribes, living for the most part in separate villages. Those
first visited by La Salle were the Kappas, or Quapaws.a remnant of whom
still subsists. The others were the Topingas, or Tongengas ; the Tori-
mans ; and the Osotouoy, or Sauthouis. According to Cliarlevoix, who
saw them in 1721, they were regarded as the tallest and best-formed In-
dians in America, and were known as les Beaux Homines. Gravier says
that they once lived on the Ohio.

PARKMAN. 41

Arkansas ; passed the sites, since become historic, of
Vicksburg and Grand Gulf; and, about three hundred
miles below the Arkansas, stopped by the edge of a
swamp on the western side of the river.1 Here, as
their two guides told them, was the path to the great
town of the Taensas. Tonty and Membre* were sent to
visit it. They and their men shouldered their birch canoe
through the swamp, and launched it on a lake which
had once formed a portion of the channel of the river.
In two hours, they reached the town ; and Tonty gazed
at it with astonishment. He had seen nothing like it
in America : large square dwellings, built of sun-baked
mud mixed with straw, arched over with a dome-shaped
roof of canes, and placed in regular order around an open
area. Two of them were larger and better than the rest.
One was the lodge of the chief ; the other was the temple,
or house, of the Sun. They entered the former, and found
a single room, forty feet square, where, in the dim light,
— for there was no opening but the door, — the chief sat
awaiting them on a sort of bedstead, three of his wives at
his side, while sixty old men, wrapped in white cloaks
woven of mulberry-bark, formed his divan. When he
spoke, his wives howled to do him honor ; and the as-
sembled councillors listened with the reverence due to a
potentate for whom, at his death, a hundred victims were
to be sacrificed. He received the visitors graciously, and
joyfully accepted the gifts which Tonty laid before him.
This interview over, the Frenchmen repaired to the tem-
ple, wherein were kept the bones of the departed chiefs.

1 In Tensas County, Louisiana. Tonty's estimates of distance are here
much too low. They seem to be founded on observations of latitude,
without reckoning the windings of the river. It may interest sportsmen
to know that the party killed several large alligators on their way.
Membre is much astonished that such monsters should be born of eggs,
like chickens.

42 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

Ill construction, it was much like the royal dwelling.
Over it were rude wooden figures, representing three
eagles turned towards the east. A strong mud wall
surrounded it, planted with stakes, on which were stuck
the skulls of enemies sacrificed to the Sun ; while before
the door was a block of wood, on which lay a large shell,
surrounded with the braided hair of the victims. The in-
terior was rude as a barn, dimly lighted from the door-
way, and full of smoke. There was a structure in the
middle which Membre thinks was a kind of altar ; and
before it burned a perpetual fire, fed with three logs laid
end to end, and watched by two old men devoted to this
sacred office. There was a mysterious recess, too, which
the strangers were forbidden to explore, but which, as
Tonty was told, contained the riches of the nation, con-
sisting of pearls from the Gulf, and trinkets obtained,
probably through other tribes, from the Spaniards and
other Europeans.

The chief condescended to visit La Salle at his camp,
— a favor which he would by no means have granted had
the visitors been Indians. A master of ceremonies and
six attendants preceded him, to clear the path and pre-
pare the place of meeting. When all was ready, he was
seen advancing, clothed in a white robe, and preceded
by two men bearing white fans, while a third displayed
a disk of burnished copper, — doubtless to represent the
Sun, his ancestor, or, as others will have it, his elder
brother. His aspect was marvellously grave, and he and
La Salle met with gestures of ceremonious courtesy, The
interview was very friendly ; and the chief returned well
pleased with the gifts which his entertainer bestowed on
him, and which, indeed, had been the principal motive of
h?s visit.

On the next morning, as they descended the river, they
saw a wooden canoe full of Indians ; and Tonty gave

PARKMAN. 43

chase. He had nearly overtaken it, when more than a
hundred men appeared suddenly on the shore, with bows
bent to defend their countrymen. La Salle called out to
Tonty to withdraw. He obeyed ; and the whole party en-
camped on the opposite bank. Tonty offered to cross the
river with a peace-pipe, and set out accordingly with a
small party of men. When he landed, the Indians made
signs of friendship by joining their hands, — a proceeding
by which Tonty, having but one hand, was somewhat em-
barrassed ; but he directed his men to respond in his stead.
La Salle and Meinbre' now joined him, and went with the
Indians to their village, three leagues distant. Here they
spent the night. " The Sieur de la Salle," writes Membre',
" whose very air, engaging manners, tact, and address
attract love and respect alike, produced such an effect on
the hearts of these people that they did not know how to
treat us well enough."

The Indians of this village were the Natchez ; and their
chief was brother of the great chief, or Sun, of the whole
nation. His town was several leagues distant, near the
site of the city of Natchez ; and thither the French re-
paired to visit him. They saw what they had already
seen among the Taensas, — a religious and political des-
potism, a privileged caste descended from the Sun, a
temple, and a sacred fire. La Salle planted a large cross,
with the arms of France attached, in the midst of the
town ; while the inhabitants looked on with a satisfaction
which they would hardly have displayed, had they under-
stood the meaning of the act.

The French next visited the Coroas, at their village,
two leagues below , and here they found a reception no
less auspicious. On the thirty-first of March, as they
approached Red River, they passed in the fog a town of
the Oumas ; and, three days later, discovered a party of
fishermen, in wooden canoes, among the canes along
the margin of the water. They fled at sight of the

44 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

Frenchmen. La Salle sent men to reconnoitre, who, as
they struggled through the marsh, were greeted with a
shower of arrows ; while, from the neighboring village
of the Quinipissas,1 invisible behind the canebrake, they
heard the sound of an Indian drum and the whoops of
the mustering warriors. La Salle, anxious to keep the
peace with all the tribes along the river, recalled his men,
and pursued his voyage. A few leagues below, they saw
a cluster of Indian lodges on the left bank, apparently
void of inhabitants. They landed, and found three of
them filled with corpses. It was a village of the Tan-
gibao, sacked by their enemies only a few days before.2

And now they neared their journey's end. On the
sixth of April, the river divided itself into three broad
channels. La Salle followed that of the west, and
D'Autray that of the east ; while Tonty took the middle
passage. As he drifted down the turbid current, between
the low and marshy shores, the brackish water changed to
brine, and the breeze grew fresh with the salt breath of
the sea. Then the broad bosom of the great Gulf opened
on his sight, tossing its restless billows, limitless, voice-
less, lonely as when born of chaos, without a sail, without
a sign of life.

La Salle, in a canoe, coasted the marshy borders of the
sea ; and then the reunited parties assembled on a spot of
dry ground a short distance above the mouth of the river.
Here a column was made ready, bearing the arms of
France, and inscribed with the words, —

Louis LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE,

REGNE ; LE NEUVIEME AvRIL, 1682.

The Frenchmen were mustered under arms ; and,
while the New England Indians and their squaws looked

1 In St. Charles County, on the left bank, not far above New Orleans.

2 Hennepin uses this incident, as well as most of those which have pre-
ceded it, in making up the story of his pretended voyage to the Gulf.

PARKMAN. 45

on in wondering silence, they chanted the Te Deum, the
Exaudiat, and the Domine salvum fac Regem. Then,
amid volleys of musketry and shouts of Vive le Roi, La
Salle planted the column in its place, and, standing near
it, proclaimed in a loud voice, —

" In the name of the most high, mighty, invincible, and
victorious Prince, Louis the Great, by the grace of God
King of France and of Navarre, Fourteenth of that name,
I, this ninth day of April, one thousand six hundred and
eighty-two, in virtue of the commission of his Majesty,
which I hold in my hand, and which may be seen by all
whom it may concern, have taken, and do now take, in the
name of his Majesty and of his successors to the crown,
possession of this country of Louisiana, the seas, harbors,
ports, bays, adjacent straits, and all the nations, peoples,
provinces, cities, towns, villages, mines, minerals, fish-
eries, streams, and rivers, within the extent of the said
Louisiana, from the mouth of the great river St. Louis,
otherwise called the Ohio, ... as also along the river
Colbert, or Mississippi, and the rivers which discharge
themselves thereinto, from its source beyond the country
of the Nadouessioux ... as far as its mouth at the sea,
or Gulf of Mexico, and also to the mouth of the River
of Palms, upon the assurance we have had from the na-
tives of these countries that we are the first Europeans
who have descended or ascended the said river Colbert ;
hereby protesting against all who may hereafter under-
take to invade any or all of these aforesaid countries,
peoples, or lands, to the prejudice of the rights of his
Majesty, acquired by the consent of the nations dwelling
herein. Of which, and of all else that is needful, I hereby
take to witness those who hear me, and demand an act of
the notary here present."

Shouts of Vive le Roi and volleys of musketry re-
sponded to his words. Then a cross was planted beside

46 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

the column, and a leaden plate buried near it, bearing
the arms of France, with a Latin inscription, Ludovicus
Magnus regnat. The weather-beaten voyagers joined
their voices in the grand hymn of the Vexilla Regis :

" The banners of Heaven's King advance,
The mystery of the Cross shines fortli ; "

and renewed shouts of Vive le Hoi closed the ceremony.

On that day, the realm of France received on parch-
ment a stupendous accession. The fertile plains of Texas ;
the vast basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen northern
springs to the sultry borders of the Gulf ; from the woody
ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky
Mountains, — a region of savannahs and forests, sun-
cracked deserts, and grassy prairies, watered by a thou-
sand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes, passed
beneath the sceptre of the Sultan of Versailles ; and all
by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a
mile. — From " La Salle and the Discovery of the G-reat
West" chap. xx.

THE CHAEACTER OF LA SALLE.

" I M3US in the vigor of his manhood, at the age of forty-
•*• three, died Robert Cavelier de la Salle, " one of the
greatest men," writes Touty, " of this age ; " without
question one of the most remarkable explorers whose
names live in history. His faithful officer Joutel thus
sketches his portrait : " His firmness, his courage, his
great knowledge of the arts and sciences, which made him
equal to every undertaking, and his untiring energy, which
enabled him to surmount every obstacle, would have won
at last a glorious success for his grand enterprise, had not
all his fine qualities been counterbalanced by a haughti-
ness of manner which often made him insupportable, and
by a harshness towards those under his command which
drew upon him an implacable hatred, and was at last the
cause of his death."

The enthusiasm of the disinterested and chivalrous
Champlain was not the enthusiasm of La Salle ; nor had
he any part in the self-devoted zeal of the early Jesuit ex-
plorers. He belonged not to the age of the knight-errant
and the saint, but to the modern world of practical study
and practical action. He was the hero, not of a principle
nor of a faith, but simply of a fixed idea and a determined
purpose. As often happens with concentred and ener-
getic natures, his purpose was to him a passion and an in-
spiration ; and he clung to it with a certain fanaticism of

48 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

devotion. It was the offspring of an ambition vast and
comprehensive, yet acting in the interest both of France
and of civilization.

Serious in all things, incapable of the lighter pleasures,
incapable of repose, finding no joy but in the pursuit of
great designs, too shy for society and too reserved for
popularity, often unsympathetic and always seeming so,
smothering emotions which he could not utter, schooled
to universal distrust, stern to his followers and pitiless to
himself, bearing the brunt of every hardship and every
danger, demanding of others an equal constancy joined to
an implicit deference, heeding no counsel but his own,
attempting the impossible and grasping at what was too
vast to hold, — he contained in his own complex and pain-
ful nature the chief springs of his triumphs, his failures,
and his death, s

It is easy to reckon up his defects, but it is not easy to
hide from sight the Roman virtues that redeemed them.
Beset by a throng of enemies, he stands, like the King of
Israel, head and shoulders above them all. He was a tower
of adamant against whose impregnable front hardship and
danger, the rage of man and of the elements, the southern
sun, the northern blast, fatigue, famine and disease, delay,
disappointment and deferred hope emptied their quivers
in vain. That very pride which, Coriolanus-like, declared
itself most sternly in the thickest press of foes, has in it
something to challenge admiration. Never, under the
impenetrable mail of paladin or crusader, beat a heart of
more intrepid mettle than within the stoic panoply that
armed the breast of La Salle. To estimate aright the
marvels of his patient fortitude, one must follow on his
track through the vast scene of his interminable journey-
ings, those thousands of weary miles of forest, marsh, and
river, where, again and again, in the bitterness of baffled
striving, the untiring pilgrim pushed onward towards the

PARKMAN. 49

goal which he was never to attain. America owes him
an enduring memory ; for, in this masculine figure, she
sees the pioneer who guided her to the possession of her
richest heritage. — From " La Salle and the Discovery of
the Great West" chap, xxvii.

THE SEARCH FOR THE PACIFIC.

T A VERENDRYE, fired with the zeal of discovery,
-*— ' offered to search for the Western Sea if the King
would give him one hundred men and supply canoes, arms,
and provisions. But, as was usual in such cases, the King
would give nothing ; and though the Governor, Beauhar-
nois, did all in his power to promote the enterprise, the
burden and the risk were left to the adventurer himself.
La Ve'rendrye was authorized to find a way to the Pacific
at his own expense, in consideration of a monopoly of the
fur-trade in the regions north and west of Lake Superior.
This vast and remote country was held by tribes who were
doubtful friends of the French, and perpetual enemies of
each other. The risks of the trade were as great as its
possible profits, and to reap these, vast outlays must first
be made: forts must be built, manned, provisioned, and
stocked with goods brought through two thousand miles
of difficult and perilous wilderness. There were other
dangers, more insidious, and perhaps greater. The ex-
clusive privileges granted to La Ve'rendrye would in-
evitably rouse the intensest jealousy of the Canadian
merchants, and they would spare no effort to ruin him.
Intrigue and calumny would be busy in his absence. If,
as was likely, his patron, Beauharnois, should be recalled,
the new governor might be turned against him, his privi-
leges might be suddenly revoked, the forts he had built
passed over to his rivals, and all his outlays turned to their

52 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

profit, as had happened to La Salle on the recall of his
patron, Frontenac. On the other hand, the country was
full of the choicest furs, which the Indians had hitherto
carried to the English at Hudson Bay, but which the pro-
posed trading-posts would secure to the French. La Ve"-
rendrye's enemies pretended that he thought of nothing
but beaver-skins, and slighted the discovery which he had
bound himself to undertake ; but his conduct proves that
<C he was true to his engagements, and that ambition to gain
I honorable distinction in the service of the King had a
large place among the motives that impelled him.

As his own resources were of the smallest, he took a
number of associates on conditions most unfavorable to
himself. Among them they raised money enough to begin
the enterprise, and on the 8th of June, 1731, La Yerendrye
and three of his sons, together with his nephew, La Jeme-
raye, the Jesuit Messager, and a party of Canadians, set
out from Montreal. It was late in August before they
reached the great portage of Lake Superior, which led
across the height of land separating the waters of that
lake from those flowing to Lake Winnipeg. The way was
long and difficult. The men, who had perhaps been tam-
pered with, mutinied, and refused to go farther. Some of
them, with much ado, consented at last to proceed, and,
under the lead of La Jemeraye, made their way by an
intricate and broken chain of lakes and streams to Rainy
Lake, where they built a fort and called it Fort St. Pierre.
La Ve"rendrye was forced to winter with the rest of the
party at the river Kaministiguia, not far from the great
portage. Here months were lost, during which a crew of
useless mutineers had to be fed and paid ; and it was not
till the next June that he could get them again into motion
towards Lake Winnipeg.

This omnious beginning was followed by a train of dis-
asters. His associates abandoned him ; the merchants on

PARKMAN. 53

whom he depended for supplies would not send them ; and
he found himself, in his own words, " destitute of every-
thing." His nephew, La Jemeraye, died. The Jesuit
Auneau, bent on returning to Michillimackinac, set out
with La Ve'rendrye's eldest son and a party of twenty
Canadians. A few days later, they were all found on an
island in the Lake of the Woods, murdered and mangled
by the Sioux. The Assinniboins and Cristineaux, mortal
foes of that fierce people, offered to join the French and
avenge the butchery ; but a war with the Sioux would
have ruined La Ve'rendrye's plans of discovery, and ex-
posed to torture and death the French traders in their
country. Therefore he restrained himself and declined
the proffered aid, at the risk of incurring the contempt of
those who offered it.

Beauharnois twice appealed to the court to give La
VeVendrye some little aid, urging that he was at the end
of his resources, and that a grant of 30,000 francs, or
6,000 dollars, would enable him to find a way to the
Pacific. All help was refused, but La Vdrendrye was told
that he might let out his forts to other traders, and so
raise means to pursue the discovery.

In 1740 he went for the third time to Montreal, where,
instead of aid, he found a lawsuit. " In spite," he says,
" of the derangement of my affairs, the envy and jealousy
of various persons impelled them to write letters to the
court insinuating that I thought of nothing but making my
fortune. If more than forty thousand livrcs of debt which
I have on my shoulders are an advantage, then I can flat-
ter myself that I am very rich. In all my misfortunes, I
have the consolation of seeing that M. de Beauharnois
enters into my views, recognizes the uprightness of my
intentions, and does me justice in spite of opposition."

Meanwhile, under all his difficulties, he had explored a
vast region hitherto unknown, diverted a great and lucra-

54 LEAFLETS PROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

tive fur-trade from the English at Hudson Bay, and se-
cured possession of it by six fortified posts, — Fort St.
Pierre, on Rainy Lake ; Port St. Charles, on the Lake of
the Woods ; Fort Maurepas, at the mouth of the river
Winnipeg; Fort Bourbon, on the eastern side of Lake
Winnipeg ; Fort La Reine, on the Assinniboin ; Fort
Dauphin, on Lake Manitoba. Besides these he built an-
other post, called Fort Rouge, on the site of the city of
Winnipeg; and, some time after, another, at the mouth
of the River Poskoiac, or Saskatchawan, neither of which,
however, was long occupied. These various forts were
only stockade works flanked with block -houses ; but the
difficulty of building and maintaining them in this remote
wilderness was incalulable.

He had inquired on all sides for the Pacific. The As-
sinniboins could tell him nothing. Nor could any infor-
mation be expected from them, since their relatives and
mortal enemies, the Sioux, barred their way to the West.
The Cristineaux were equally ignorant ; but they supplied
the place of knowledge by invention, and drew maps, some
of which seem to have been made with no other intention
than that of amusing themselves by imposing on the in-
quirer. They also declared that some of their number
had gone down a river called White River, or River of the
West, where they found a plant that shed drops like blood,
and saw serpents of prodigious size. They said, furl her
that on the lower part of this river were walled towns,
where dwelt white men who had knives, hatchets, and
cloth, but no firearms.

Both Assinniboins and Cristineaux declared that there
was a distant tribe on the Missouri, called Mantannes
(Mandans), who knew the way to the Western Sea, and
would guide him to it. Lured by this assurance, and
feeling that he had sufficiently secured his position to
enable him to begin his Western exploration, La Ve'ren-

PARKMAN. 55

diye left Fort La Reine in October, 1738, with twenty
men, and pushed up the River Assinniboin till its rapids
and shallows threatened his bark canoes with destruction.
Then, with a band of Assinniboin Indians who had joined
him, he struck across the prairie for the Mandans, his
Indian companions hunting buffalo on the way. They
approached tbe first Mandan village on the afternoon of
the 3d of December, displaying a French flag and firing
three volleys as a salute. The whole population poured
out to see the marvellous visitors, who were conducted
through the staring crowd to the lodge of the principal
chief, — a capacious structure so thronged with the naked
and greasy savages that the Frenchmen were half smoth-
ered. What was worse, they lost the bag that held
all their presents for the Mandans, which was snatched
away in the confusion, and hidden in one of the caches,
called cellars by La Ve>endrye, of which the place was
full. The chief seemed much discomposed at this mishap,
and explained it by saying that there were many rascals
in the village. The loss was serious, since without the
presents nothing could be done. Nor was this all ; for in
the morning La Vdrendrye missed his interpreter, and
was told that he had fallen in love with an Assinniboin
girl, and gone off in pursuit of her. The French were now
without any means of communicating with the Mandans,
from whom, however, before the disappearance of the
interpreter, they had already received a variety of ques-
tionable information, chiefly touching white men cased
in iron who were said to live on the river below at the
distance of a whole summer's journey. As they were im-
pervious to arrows, — so the story ran, — it was necessary
to shoot their horses, after which, being too heavy to run,
they were easily caught. This was probably suggested by
the armor of the Spaniards, who had more than once made
incursions as far as the lower Missouri : but the narra-

56 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

tors drew on their imagination for various additional
particulars.

The Mandans seem to have much declined in numbers
during the century that followed this visit of La Veren-
drye. He says that they had six villages on or near the
Missouri, of whicli the one seen by him was the smallest,
though he thinks that it contained a hundred and thirty
houses. As each of these large structures held a number
of families, the population must have been considerable.
Yet when Prince Maximilian visited the Mandans in 1833,
he found only two villages, containing jointly two hundred
and forty warriors and a total population of about a thou-
sand souls. Without having seen the statements of La
Ve'rendrye, he speaks of the population as greatly reduced
by wars and the small-pox, — a disease which a few years
later nearly exterminated the tribe.1

La Ve'rendrye represents the six villages as surrounded
with ditches and stockades, flanked by a sort of bastion,
— defences which, he says, had nothing savage in their
construction. In later times the fortifications were of a
much ruder kind, though Maximilian represents them as
having pointed salients to serve as bastions. La Veren-
drye mentions some peculiar customs of the Mandans
which answer exactly to those described by more recent
observers.

He had intended to winter with the tribe ; but the loss

1 Le Prince Maximilien cle Wied-Neuwied, Voyage dans I'lnte'rieur de
I'Ame'rique du Nord, II. 371, 372 (Paris, 1843). When Captains Lewis and
Clark visited the Mandans in 1804, they found them in two villages, with
about three hundred and fifty warriors. They report that, about forty
years before, they lived in nine villages, the ruins of which the explorers
saw about eighty miles below the two villages then occupied by the tribe
The Mandans had moved up the river in consequence of the persecutions
of the Sioux and the small-pox, which had made great havoc among them.
Expedition of Lewis and Clark, I. 129 (ed. Philadelphia, 1814). These nine
villages seem to have been above Cannon-ball River, a tributary of the
Missouri.

PARKMAN. 57

of the presents and the interpreter made it useless to stay,
and leaving two men in the village to learn the language,
he began his return to Fort La Reine. " I was very ill,"
he writes, " but hoped to get better on the way. The re-
verse was the case, for it was the depth of winter. It
would be impossible to suffer more than I did. It seemed
that nothing but death could release us from such miser-
ies." He reached Fort La Reine on the llth of February,
1739.

His iron constitution seems to have been severely
shaken ; but he had sons worthy of their father. The
two men left among the Mandans appeared at Fort La
Reine in September. They reported that they had been
well treated, and that their hosts had parted from them
with regret. They also declared that at the end of spring
several Indian tribes, all well supplied with horses, had
come, as was their yearly custom, to the Mandan villages
to barter embroidered buffalo hides and other skins for
corn and beans ; that they had encamped, to the number
of tvo hundred lodges, on the farther side of the Missouri;
and that among them was a band said to have come from
a distant country towards the sunset, where there were
white men who lived in houses built of bricks and stones.

The two Frenchmen crossed over to the camp of these
Western strangers, among whom they found a chief who
spoke, or professed to speak, the language of the myste-
rious white men, which to the two Frenchmen was unin-
telligible. Fortunately, he also spoke the language of the
Mandans, of which the Frenchmen had learned a little
during their stay, and hence were able to gather that the
white men in question had beards, and that they prayed
to the Master of Life in great houses built for the purpose,
holding books, the leaves of which were like husks of
Indian corn, singing together and repeating Jgsus, Marie.
The chief gave many other particulars, which seemed to

58 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

show that he had been in contact with Spaniards, — prob-
ably those of California ; for he described their houses as
standing near the great lake, of which the water rises and
falls and is not fit to drink. He invited the two French-
men to go with him to this strange country, saying that it
could be reached before winter, though a wide circuit must
be made, to avoid a fierce and dangerous tribe called Snake
Indians (G-ens du Serpent).

On hearing this story, La Verendrye sent his eldest son,
Pierre, to pursue the discovery with two men, ordering
him to hire guides among the Mandans and make his way
to the Western Sea. But no guides were to be found,
and in the next summer the young man returned from his
bootless errand.

Undaunted by this failure, Pierre set out again in the
next spring, 1742, with his younger brother, the Chevalier
de la Ve'rendrye. Accompanied only by two Canadians,
they left Fort La Reine on the 29th of April, and following,
no doubt, the route of the Assinniboin and Mouse River,
reached the chief village of the Mandans in about three
weeks.

Here they found themselves the welcome guests of
this singularly interesting tribe, ruined by the small-
pox nearly half a century ago, but preserved to memory
by the skilful pencil of the artist Charles Bodmer, and
the brush of the painter George Catlin, both of whom
saw them at a time when they were little changed in
habits and manners since the visit of the brothers La
Verendrye.1

1 Prince Maximilian spent the winter of 1832-33 near the Mandan
villages. His artist, with the instinct of genius, seized the characteristics
of the wild life before him, and rendered them with admirable vigor and
truth. Catlin spent a considerable time among the Mandans soon after
the visit of Prince Maximilian, and had unusual opportunities of studying
them. He was an indifferent painter, a shallow observer, and a garrulous
and windy writer ; yet his enthusiastic industry is beyond praise, and his

PARKMAN. 59

Thus, though the report of the two brothers is too
concise and brief, we know what they saw when they
entered the central area, or public square, of the village.
Around stood the Mandan lodges, looking like round
flattened hillocks of earth, forty or fifty feet wide. On
examination they proved to be framed of strong posts
and poles, covered with a thick matting of intertwined
willow-branches, over which was laid a bed of well-com-
pacted clay or earth two or three feet thick. This heavy
roof was supported by strong interior posts.1 The open
place which the dwellings enclosed served for games,
dances, and the ghastly religious or magical ceremonies
practised by the tribe. Among the other structures was
the sacred " medicine lodge," distinguished by three or
four tall poles planted before it, each surmounted by an
effigy looking much like a scarecrow, and meant as an
offering to the spirits.

If the two travellers had been less sparing of words,
they would doubtless have told us that as they entered
the village square the flattened earthen domes that sur-
rounded it were thronged with squaws and children, —
for this was always the case on occasions of public inter-
est, — and that they were forced to undergo a merciless
series of feasts in the lodges of the chiefs. Here, seated
by the sunken hearth in the middle, under the large hole
in the roof that served both for window and chimney,
they could study at their ease the domestic economy of
their entertainers. Each lodge held a yens, or family

pictures are invaluable as faithful reflections of aspects of Indian life
which are pone forever.

Beauharnois calls the Mandans Blancs Borbiis, and says that they have
been hitherto unknown. Beanharnoi* au Ministrc, 14 An\t>, 1739. The
name Mantannes, or Mandans, is that given them by the Agginniboins.

1 The Minnetarees and other tribes of the Missouri built their lodges
in a similar way.

60 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

connection, whose beds of raw buffalo hide, stretched
on poles, were ranged around the circumference of the
building, while by each stood a post on which hung
shields, lances, bows, quivers, inedicine-bags, and masks
formed of the skin of a buffalo's head, with the horns
attached, to be used in the magic buffalo dance.

Every day had its sports to relieve the monotony of
savage existence, the game of the stick and the rolling
ring, the archery practice of boys, horse-racing on the
neighboring prairie, and incessant games of chance ;
while every evening, in contrast to these gayeties, the
long, dismal wail of women rose from the adjacent ceme
tery, where the dead of the village, sewn fast in buffalo
hides, lay on scaffolds above the reach of wolves.

The Mandans did not know the way to the Pacific,
but they told the brothers that they expected a speedy
visit from a tribe or band called Horse Indians, who
could guide them thither. It is impossible to identify
this people with any certainty.1 The two travellers
waited for them in vain till after midsummer, and then,
as the season was too far advanced for longer delay, they
hired two Mandans to conduct them to their customary
haunts.

They set out on horseback, their scanty baggage and
their stock of presents being no doubt carried by pack-
animals. Their general course was west-southwest, with
the Black Hills at a distance on their left, and the upper
Missouri on their right. The country was a rolling
prairie, well covered for the most part with grass, and
watered by small alkaline streams creeping towards the

1 The Clieyennes have a tradition that they were the first tribe of this
region to have horses. This may perhaps justify a conjecture that the
northern division of this brave and warlike people were the Florse Indians
of La Verendrye ; though an Indian tradition, unless backed by well-
established facts, can never be accepted as substantial evidence.

PARKMAN. 61

Missouri with an opaque, whitish current. Except along
the watercourses, there was little or no wood. " I no-
ticed," says the Chevalier de la Ve'rendrye, " earths of
different colors, blue, green, red, or black, white as chalk,
or yellowish like ochre." This was probably in the " bad
lands " of the Little Missouri, where these colored earths
form a conspicuous feature in the bare and barren bluffs,
carved into fantastic shapes by the storms.1

For twenty days the travellers saw no human being, so
scanty was the population of these plains. Game, how-
ever, was abundant. Deer sprang from the tall, reedy
grass of the river bottoms ; buffalo tramped by in ponder-
ous columns, or dotted the swells of the distant prairie
with their grazing thousands ; antelope approached, with
the curiosity of their species, to gaze at the passing horse-
men, then fled like the wind ; and as they neared the broken
uplands towards the Yellowstone, they saw troops of elk
and flocks of mountain-sheep. Sometimes, for miles
together, the dry plain was studded thick with the
earthen mounds that marked the burrows of the curious
marmots, called prairie-dogs, from their squeaking bark.
Wolves, white and gray, howled about the camp at night,
and their cousin, the coyote, seated in the dusk of even-
ing upright on the grass, with nose turned to the sky,
saluted them with a complication of yelpings, as if a
score of petulant voices were pouring together from the
throat of one small beast.

On the llth of August, after a march of about three
weeks, the brothers reached a hill, or group of hills,
apparently west of the Little Missouri, and perhaps a
part of the Powder River Range. It was here that they
hoped to find the Horse Indians, but nobody was to be
seen. Arming themselves with patience, they built a

1 A similar phenomenon occurs farther west on the face of the perpen-
dicular bluffs that, in one place, bonier the valley of the river Rosebud.

62 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

hut, made fires to attract by the smoke any Indians roam-
ing near, and went every day to the tops of the hills to
reconnoitre. At length, on the 14th of September, they
descried a spire of smoke on the distant prairie.

One of their Mandan guides had left them and gone
back to his village. The other, with one of the French-
men, went towards the smoke, and found a camp of
Indians, whom the journal calls Les Beaux Homines,
and who were probably Crows, or Apsaroka, a tribe re-
markable for stature and symmetry, who long claimed that
region as their own. They treated the visitors well, and
sent for the other Frenchmen to come to their lodges, where
they were received with great rejoicing. The remaining
Mandan, however, became frightened, — for the Beaux
Homines were enemies of his tribe, — and he soon fol-
lowed his companion on his solitary march homeward.

The brothers remained twenty-one days in the camp
of the Beaux Honimes, much perplexed for want of an
interpreter. The tribes of the plains have in common a
system of signs by which they communicate with each
other, and it is likely that the brothers had learned it
from the Sioux or Assinniboins, with whom they had
been in familiar intercourse. By this or some other
means they made their hosts understand that they wished
to find the Horse Indians ; and the Beaux Hommes,
being soothed by presents, offered some of their young
men as guides. They set out on the 9th of October,
following a south-southwest course.

In two days they met a band of Indians, called by
them the Little Foxes, and on the 15th and 17th two
villages of another unrecognizable horde, named Pioya.
From La Ve'rendrye's time to our own, this name " vil-
lages " has always been given to the encampments of
the wandering people of the plains. All these nomadic
communities joined them, and they moved together south-

PARKMAN. 63

ward, till they reached at last the lodges of the long-
sought Horse Indians. They found them in the extremity
of distress and terror. Their camp resounded with howls
and wailings ; and not without cause, for the Snakes, or
Shoshones, — a formidable people living farther west-
ward, — had lately destroyed most of their tribe. The
Snakes were the terror of that country. The brothers
were told that the year before they had destroyed seven-
teen villages, killing the . warriors and old women, and
carrying off the young women and children as slaves.

None of the Horse Indians had ever seen the Pacific ;
but they knew a people called Gens de 1'Arc, or Bow
Indians, who, as they said, had traded not far from it.
To the Bow Indians, therefore, the brothers resolved to
go, and by dint of gifts and promises they persuaded
their hosts to show them the way. After marching
southwestward for several days, they saw the distant
prairie covered with the pointed buffalo-skin lodges of a
great Indian camp. It was that of the Bow Indians,
who may have been one of the bands of the western
Sioux, — the predominant race in this region. Few or
none of them could ever have seen a white man, and
we may imagine their amazement at the arrival of the
strangers, who, followed by staring crowds, were con-
ducted to the lodge of the chief. " Thus far," says La
VeVendrye, " we had been well received in all the villages
we had passed ; but this was nothing compared with
the courteous manners of the great chief of the Bow In-
dians, who, unlike the others, was not self-interested in
the least, and who took excellent care of everything
belonging to us."

The first inquiry of the travellers was for the Pacific ;
but neither the chief nor his tribesmen knew anything of
it, except what they had heard from Snake prisoners taken
in war. The Frenchmen were surprised at the extent of

64 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

the camp, which consisted of many separate bands. The
chief explained that they had been summoned from far
and near for a grand war-party against that common foe
of all, — the Snakes.1 In fact, the camp resounded with
war-songs and war-dances. " Come with us," said their
host ; " we are going towards the mountains, where you
can see the great water that you are looking for."

At length the camp broke up. The squaws took down
the lodges, and the march began over prairies dreary and
brown with the withering touch of autumn. The spec-
tacle was such as men still young have seen in these
Western lands, but which no man will see again. The
vast plain swarmed with the moving multitude. The
tribes of the Missouri and the Yellowstone had by this
time abundance of horses, the best of which were used
for war and hunting, and the others as beasts of burden.
These last were equipped in a peculiar manner. Several
of the long poles used to frame the teepees, or lodges,
were secured by one end to each side of a rude saddle,
while the other end trailed on the ground. Crossbars
lashed to the poles just behind the horse kept them three
or four feet apart, and formed a firm support, on which
was laid, compactly folded, the buffalo-skin covering of
the lodge. On this, again, sat a mother with her young
family, sometimes stowed for safety in a large open wil-
low basket, with the occasional addition of some domestic
pet, — such as a tame raven, a puppy, or even a small
bear cub. Other horses were laden in the same manner
with wooden bowls, stone hammers, and other utensils,
along with stores of dried buffalo-meat packed in cases of

1 The enmity between the Sioux and the Snakes lasted to our own time.
When the writer lived among the western Sioux, one of their chiefs organ-
ized a war-party against the Snakes, and numerous bands came to join the
expedition from a distance in some cases of three hundred miles. Quarrels
broke out among them, and the scheme was ruined.

PARKMAN. 65

rawhide whitened and painted. Many of the innumerable
dogs — whose manners and appearance strongly suggested
their relatives the wolves, to whom, however, they bore
a mortal grudge — were equipped in a similar, way, with
shorter poles and lighter loads. Bands of naked boys,
noisy and restless, roamed the prairie, practising their
bows and arrows on any small animal they might find.
Gay young squaws — adorned on each cheek with a spot
of ochre or red clay, and arrayed in tunics of fringed
buckskin embroidered with porcupine quills — were
mounted on ponies, astride like men ; while lean and
tattered hags — the drudges of the tribe, unkempt and
hideous — scolded the lagging horses, or screeched at the
disorderly dogs, with voices not unlike the yell of the
great horned owl. Most of the warriors were on horse-
back, armed with round white shields of bull-hide, feath-
ered lances, war-clubs, bows, and quivers filled with
stone-headed arrows ; while a few of the elders, wrapped
in robes of buffalo-hide, stalked along in groups with
a* stately air, chatting, laughing, and exchanging un-
seemly jokes.1

" We continued our march," says La Ve"rendrye,
" sometimes south-southwest, and now and then north-
west; our numbers constantly increasing by villages of
different tribes which joined us." The variations of
their course were probably due to the difficulties of the
country, which grew more rugged as they advanced,
with broken hills, tracts of dingy green sage-bushes, and
bright, swift streams, edged with cottonwood and willow,
hurrying northward to join the Yellowstone. At length,
on the 1st of January, 1743, they saw what was probably

1 The above descriptive particulars are drawn from repeated observa-
tion of similar scenes at a time when the primitive condition of these tribes
was essentially unchanged, though with the difference that the concourse
of savages counted by hundreds, and not by thousands.

5

66 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

the Bighorn Range of the Rocky Mountains, a hundred
and twenty miles east of the Yellowstone Park.

A council of all the allied bauds was now called, and
the Frenchmen were asked to take part in it. The ques-
tions discussed were how to dispose of the women and
children, and how to attack the enemy. Having settled
their plans, the chiefs begged their white friends not to
abandon them ; and the younger of the two, the Chevalier,
consented to join the warriors, and aid them with advice,
though not with arms.

The tribes of the Western plains rarely go on war-
parties in winter, and this great expedition must have
been the result of unusual exasperation. The object was
to surprise the Snakes in the security of their winter camp,
and strike a deadly blow, which would have been impos-
sible in summer.

On the 8th of January the whole body stopped to en-
camp, choosing, no doubt, after the invariable winter
custom of Western Indians, a place sheltered from wind,
and supplied with water and fuel. Here the squaws and
children were to remain, while most of the warriors ad-
vanced against the enemy. By pegging the lower edge
of the lodge-skin to the ground, and piling a ridge of
stones and earth upon it, to keep out the air, fastening
with wooden skewers the flap of hide that covered the
entrance, and keeping a constant fire, they could pass a
winter endurable to Indians, though smoke, filth, vermin,
bad air, the crowd, and the total absence of privacy,
would make it a purgatory to any civilized white
man.

The Chevalier left his brother to watch over the bag-
gage of the party, which was stored in the lodge of the great
chief, while he himself, with his two Canadians, joined the
advancing warriors. They were on horseback, marching
with a certain order, and sending watchmen to recon-

PAEKMAN. 67

noitre the country from the tops of the hills.1 Their
movements were so slow that it was twelve days before
they reached the foot of the mountains, which, says La
V£ rend rye, " are for the most part well wooded, and
seem very high." 2 He longed to climb their great snow-
encumbered peaks, fancying that he might then see the
Pacific, and never dreaming that more than eight hundred
miles of mountains and forests still lay between him and
his goal.

Through the whole of the present century the villages
of the Snakes were at a considerable distance west of the
Bighorn Range, and some of them were even on the upper
waters of the Pacific slope. It is likely that they were so
in 1743, in which case the war-party would not only have
reached the Bighorn Mountains, but have pushed farther
on to within sight of the great Wind River Range. Be
this as it may, their scouts reached the chief winter camp
of the Snakes, and found it abandoned, with lodges still
standing, and many household possessions left behind.
The enemy had discovered their approach, and fled. In-
stead of encouraging the allies, this news filled them with
terror, for they feared that the Snake warriors might
make a circuit to the rear, and fall upon the camp where
they had left their women and children. The great chief
spent all his eloquence in vain, nobody would listen to
him ; and with characteristic fickleness they gave over the
enterprise, and retreated in a panic. " Our advance was
made in good order, but not so our retreat," says the
Chevalier's journal. " Everybody fled his own way. Our
horses, though good, were very tired, and got little to

1 At least this was done by a band of Sioux with whom the writer once
traversed a part of the country ranged by these same Snakes, who had
lately destroyed an entire Sioux village.

2 The Bighorn Range, below the snow-line, is in the main well timbered
with pine, flr, oak, and juniper.

68 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

eat." The Chevalier was one day riding with his friend,
the great chief, when, looking behind him, he missed his
two French attendants. Hastening back in alarm, he
found them far in the rear, quietly feeding their horses
under the shelter of a clump of trees. He had scarcely
joined them when he saw a party of fifteen hostile In-
dians stealthily creeping forward, covered by their bull-
hide shields. He and his men let them approach, and
then gave them a few shots ; on which they immediately
ran off, firearms being to them an astounding novelty.

The three Frenchmen now tried to rejoin the great
chief and his band, but the task was not easy. The
prairie, bare of snow and hard as flint, showed, no trace
of foot or hoof ; and it was by rare good fortune that they
succeeded, on the second day, not in overtaking the chief,
but in reaching the camp where the women and children
had been left. They found them all in safety ; the Snakes
had not attacked them, and the panic of the warriors was
needless. It was the 9th of February. They were scarcely
housed when a blizzard set in, and on the night of the
10th the plains were buried in snow. The great chief had
not appeared. With such of his warriors as he could per-
suade to follow him, he had made a wide circuit to find
the trail of the lost Frenchmen, but, to his great distress,
had completely failed. It was not till five days after the
arrival of the Chevalier and his men that the chief
reached the camp, " more dead than alive," in the words
of the journal. All his hardships were forgotten when he
found his white friends safe, for he had given them up for
lost. " His sorrow turned to joy, and he could not give
us attention and caresses enough."

The camp broke up, and the allied bands dispersed.
The great chief and his followers moved slowly through
the snowdrifts towards the east-southeast, accompanied by
the Frenchmen. Thus they kept on till the 1st of March,

PARKMAN. 69

when the two brothers, learning that they were approach-
ing the winter village of a people called Gens de la Petite
Cerise, or Choke-Cherry Indians, sent one of their men
with a guide, to visit them. The man returned in ten
days, bringing a message from the Choke-Cherry Indians,
inviting the Frenchmen to their lodges.

The great chief of the Bow Indians, who seems to have
regarded his young friends with mingled affection, respect,
and wonder, was grieved at the thought of losing them,
but took comfort when they promised to visit him again,
provided that he would make his abode near a certain
river which they pointed out. To this he readily agreed,
and then, with mutual regret, they parted. The French-
men repaired to the village of the Choke-Cherry Indians,
who, like the Bow Indians, were probably a band of Sioux.
Hard by their lodges, which stood near the Missouri, the
brothers buried a plate of lead graven with the royal arms,
and raised a pile of stones in honor of the Governor of
Canada. They remained at this place till April ; then,
mounting their horses again, followed the Missouri up-
ward to the village of the Mandans, which they reached
on the 18th of May. After spending a week here, they
joined a party of Assinniboins, journeyed with them to-
wards Fort La Reine, and reached it on the 2d of July,
— to the great relief of their father, who was waiting
in suspense, having heard nothing of them for more
than a year.

Sixty -two years later, when the vast western regions
then called Louisiana had just been ceded to the United
States, Captains Lewis and Clark left the Mandan villages
with thirty-two men, traced the Missouri to the mountains,
penetrated the wastes beyond, and made their way to the
Pacific. The first stages of that remarkable exploration
were anticipated by the brothers La Vdrendrye. They
did not find the Pacific, but they discovered the Rocky

70 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

Mountains, or at least the part of them to which the name
properly belongs ; for the southern continuation of the
great range had long been known to the Spaniards-
Their bold adventure was achieved, not at the charge of
a government, but at their own cost and that of their
father, — not with a band of well-equipped men, but with
only two followers.

The fur-trading privilege which was to have been their
compensation had proved their ruin. They were still
pursued without ceasing by the jealousy of rival traders
and the ire of disappointed partners. " Here in Canada
more than anywhere else," the Chevalier wrote, some
years after his return, " envy is the passion a la mode,
and there is no escaping it." It was the story of La Salle
repeated. Beauharnois, however, still stood by them,
encouraged and defended them, and wrote in their favor
to the colonial minister. It was doubtless through his
efforts that the elder La Verendrye was at last promoted
to a captaincy in the colony troops. Beauharnois was
succeeded in the government by the sagacious and able
Galissoniere, and he too befriended the explorers. " It
seems to me," he wrote to the minister, " that what you
have been told touching the Sieur de la Ve'rendrye, to the
effect that he has been more busy with his own interests
than in making discoveries, is totally false, and, moreover,
that any officers employed in such work will always be
compelled to give some of their attention to trade, so long
as the King allows them no other means of subsistence.
These discoveries are very costly, and more fatiguing and
dangerous than open war." Two years later, the elder La
Ve'rendrye received the cross of the Order of St. Louis,—
an honor much prized in Canada, but which he did not
long enjoy; for he died at Montreal in the following
December, when on the point of again setting out for the
West.

PARKMAN. 71

His intrepid sons survived, and they were not idle.
One of them, the Chevalier, had before discovered the
river Saskatchawan, and ascended it as far as the forks.
His intention was to follow it to the mountains, build a
fort there, and thence push westward in another search
for the Pacific ; but a disastrous event ruined all his
hopes. La Galissouiere returned to France, and the Mar-
quis de la Jonquiere succeeded him, with the notorious
Frangois Bigot as intendant. Both were greedy of money,
— the one to hoard, and the other to dissipate it. Clearly
there was money to be got from the fur-trade of Manitoba,
for La V6 rend rye had made every preparation and in-
curred every expense. It seemed that nothing remained
but to reap where he had sown. His commission to find
the Pacific, with the privileges connected with it, was
refused to his sons, and conferred on a stranger. La Jon-
quiere wrote to the minister : " I have charged M. de
Saint-Pierre with this business. He knows these coun-
tries better than any officer in all the colony." On the
contrary, he had never seen them. It is difficult not to
believe that La Jonquiere, Bigot, and Saint-Pierre were
partners in a speculation of which all three were to share
the profits.

The elder La VeVendrye, not long before his death, had
sent a large quantity of goods to his trading-forts. The
brothers begged leave to return thither and save their
property from destruction. They declared themselves
happy to serve under the orders of Saint-Pierre, and asked
for the use of only a single fort of all those which their
father had built at his own cost. The answer was a flat
refusal. In short, they were shamefully robbed. The
Chevalier writes : " M. le Marquis de la Jonqniere, being
pushed hard, and as I thought even touched, by my repre-
sentations, told me at last that M. de Saint-Pierre wanted
nothing to do with me or my brothers." " I am a ruined

72 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

man," he continues. " I am more than two thousand
livres in debt, and am still only a second ensign. My
elder brother's grade is no better than mine. My younger
brother is only a cadet. This is the fruit of all that my
father, my brothers, and I have done. My other brother,
whom the Sioux murdered some years ago, was not the
most unfortunate among us. We must lose all that has
cost us so much, unless M. de Saint-Pierre should take
juster views, and prevail on the Marquis de la Jouquiere
to share them. To be thus shut out from the West is to
be most cruelly robbed of a sort of inheritance which we
had all the pains of acquiring, and of which others will
get all the profit."

. His elder brother writes in a similar strain : " We spent
our youth and our property in building up establishments
so advantageous to Canada ; and after all, we were doomed
to see a stranger gather the fruit we had taken such pains
to plant." And he complains that their goods left in the
trading-posts were wasted, their provisions consumed, and
the men in their pay used to do the work of others.

They got no redress. Saint-Pierre, backed by the Gov-
ernor and the Intendant, remained master of the position.
The brothers sold a small piece of land, their last remain-
ing property, to appease their most pressing creditors.

Saint-Pierre set out for Manitoba on the 5th of June,
1750. Though he had lived more or less in the woods for
thirty-six years, and though La Jonquiere had told the
minister that he knew the countries to which he was
bound better than anybody else, it is clear from his own
journal that he was now visiting them for the first time.
They did not please him. " I was told," he says, " that
the way would grow harder and more dangerous as we
advanced, and I found, in fact, that one must risk life and
property every moment." Finding himself and his men
likely to starve, he sent some of them, under an ensign

PARKMAN. 73

named Niverville, to the Saskatchawan. They could not
reach it, and nearly perished on the way. " I myself was
no more fortunate," says Saint-Pierre. " Food was so
scarce that I sent some of my people into the woods
among the Indians, — which did not save me from a fast
so rigorous that it deranged my health and put it out of
my power to do anything towards accomplishing my mis-
sion. Even if I had had strength enough, the war that
broke out among the Indians would have made it impos-
sible to proceed."

Niverville, after a winter of misery, tried to fulfil an
order which he had received from his commander. When
the Indians guided the two brothers La Verendrye to the
Rocky Mountains, the course they took tended so far
southward that the Chevalier greatly feared it might lead
to Spanish settlements ; and he gave it as his opinion that
the next attempt to find the Pacific should be made farther
towards the north. Saint-Pierre had agreed with him,
and had directed Niverville to build a fort on the Sas-
katchawan three hundred leagues above its mouth.
Therefore, at the end of May, 1751, Niverville sent ten
men in two canoes on this errand, and they ascended the
Saskatchawan to what Saint-Pierre calls the " Rock Moun-
tain." Here they built a small stockade fort and called it
Fort La Jonquiere. Niverville was to have followed them;
but he fell ill, and lay helpless at the mouth of the river
in such a condition that he could not even write to his
commander.

Saint-Pierre set out in person from Fort La Reine for
Fort La Jonquiere, over ice and snow, for it was late in
November. Two Frenchmen from Niverville met him on
the way, and reported that the Assinniboins had slaugh-
tered an entire band of friendly Indians on whom Saint-
Pierre had relied to guide him. On hearing this he gave
up the enterprise, and returned to Fort La Reine. Here

74 LEAFLETS FEOM STANDARD AUTHORS.

the Indians told him idle stories about white men and
a fort in some remote place towards the west; but, he
observes, "nobody could reach it without encountering
an infinity of tribes more savage than it is possible to
imagine."

He spent most of the winter at Fort La Reine. Here,
vtowards the end of February, 1752, he had with him only
five men, having sent out the rest in search of food. Sud-
denly, as he sat in his chamber, he saw the fort full of
armed Assinniboins, extremely noisy and insolent. He
tried in vain to quiet them, and they presently broke into
the guard-house and seized the arms. A massacre would
have followed, had not Saint-Pierre, who was far from
wanting courage, resorted to an expedient which has
more than once proved effective on such occasions. He
knocked out the heads of two barrels of gunpowder,
snatched a firebrand, and told the yelping crowd that he
would blow up them and himself together. At this they
all rushed in fright out of the gate, while Saint-Pierre ran
after them and bolted it fast. There was great anxiety
for the hunters, but they all came back in the evening,
without having met the enemy. The men, however, were
so terrified by the adventure that Saint-Pierre was com-
pelled to abandon the fort, after recommending it to the
care of another band of Assinniboins, who had professed
great friendship. Four days after he was gone they
burned it to the ground.

He soon came to the conclusion that farther discovery
was impossible, because the English of Hudson Bay had
stirred up the Western tribes to oppose it. Therefore he
set out for the settlements, and, reaching Quebec in the
autumn of 1753, placed the journal of his futile enterprise
in the hands of Duquesne, the new governor.

Canada was approaching her last agony. In the death-
struggle of the Seven Years' War there was no time for

PARKMAN. 75

schemes of Western discovery. The brothers La Ve"ren-
drye sank into poverty and neglect. A little before the
war broke out, we find the eldest at the obscure Acadian
post of Beause"jour, where he wrote to the colonial min-
ister a statement of his services, which appears to have
received no attention. After the fall of Canada, the Che-
valier de la Vdrendrye, he whose eyes first beheld the
snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, perished in the
wreck of the ship " Auguste," on the coast of Cape Breton,
in November, 1761. — From "A Half Century of Conflict"
vol. ii. chap._xvL_

MONTCALM.

A<;KI> 29.

THE POKTRAIT OF WOLFE.

r I ""HE portrait of Wolfe in the present edition of this
book was never before made known to the public.
The picture from which it is taken was painted from life
by Highmore, an English artist well known in the last
century. When Wolfe, then a mere boy, received his
first commission and was about to join the army, he
caused his likeness to be painted in uniform, and gave
it, as a token of attachment, to Reverend Samuel Francis
Swinden, Vicar of Greenwich, whose pupil he had been,
and whose friend he remained for life. The descendants
of this gentleman still possess it ; and it is to their kind-
ness, and especially to that of his great-great-grand-
daughter, Miss Florence Armstrong, that I owe the
photograph which is here reproduced. It is believed
that Wolfe never again sat for his portrait. After his
death his mother caused a miniature to be taken from
the Highmore picture, and from this several enlarged
copies were afterwards made.

The portrait in possession of Admiral Warde, hitherto
supposed to be an original, now seems to be one of these
copies. It appeared first in Wright's "Life of Wolfe,"
and is the same that was engraved for the early editions
of " Montcalm and Wolfe." The existence of the present
more trustworthy and interesting picture has been known
to few besides its fortunate possessors. — From " Montcalm
and Wolfe" vol. ii.

•J

WOLFE.
AGED 32.

THE HEIGHTS OF ABKAHAM.

WOLFE'S first move towards executing his plan was
the critical one of evacuating the camp at Mont-
morenci. This was accomplished on the third of Septem-
ber. Montcalm sent a strong force to fall on the rear
of the retiring English. Monckton saw the movement
from Point Levi, embarked two battalions in the boats
of the fleet, and made a feint of landing at Beauport.
Montcalm recalled his troops to repulse the threatened
attack ; and the English withdrew from Montmorenci
unmolested, some to the Point of Orleans, others to Point
Levi. On the night of the fourth a fleet of flat-boats
passed above the town with the baggage and stores. On
the fifth, Murray, with four battalions, marched up to
the River Etechemin, and forded it under a hot fire from
the French batteries at Sillery. Monckton and Towns-
hend followed with three more battalions, and the united
force, of about thirty-six hundred men, was embarked on
board the ships of Holmes, where Wolfe joined them on
the same evening.

These movements of the English filled the French com-
manders with mingled perplexity, anxiety, and hope.
A deserter told them that Admiral Saunders was impa-
tient to be gone. Vaudreuil grew confident. " The
breaking up of the camp at Montmorenci," he says, " and
the abandonment of the intrenchments there, the reim-
barkation on board the vessels above Quebec of the troops

80 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

who had encamped on the south bank, the movements of
these vessels, the removal of the heaviest pieces of artil-
lery from the batteries of Point Levi, — these and the
lateness of the season all combined to announce the
speedy departure of the fleet, several vessels of which
had even sailed down the river already. The prisoners
and the deserters who daily came in told us that this was
the common report in their army." He wrote to Bourla-
maque on the first of September : " Everything proves
that the grand design of the English has failed."

Yet he was ceaselessly watchful. So was Montcalm ;
and he, too, on the night of the second, snatched a mo-
ment to write to Bourlamaque from his headquarters in
the stone house, by the river of Beauport : " The night is
dark ; it rains ; our troops are in. their tents, with clothes
on, ready for an alarm ; I in my boots ; my horses saddled.
In fact, this is my usual way. I wish you were here ;
for I cannot be everywhere, though I multiply myself,
and have not taken off my clothes since the twenty-third
of June." On the eleventh of September he wrote his
last letter to Bourlamaque, and probably the last that his
pen ever traced. " I am overwhelmed with work, and
should often lose temper, like you, if I did not remember
that I am paid by Europe for not losing it. Nothing new
since my last. I give the enemy another month, or
something less, to stay here." The more sanguine Vau-
dreuil would hardly give them a week.

Meanwhile, no precaution was spared. The force under
Bougainville above Quebec was raised to three thousand
men. He was ordered to watch the shore as far as
Jacques-Cartier, and follow with his main body every
movement of Holmes's squadron. There was little fear
for the heights near the town ; they were thought inacces-
sible. Even Montcalm believed them safe, and had ex-
pressed himself to that effect some time before. " We

PARKMAN. 81

need not suppose," he wrote to Vaudreuil, " that the
enemy have wings ; " and again, speaking of the very
place where Wolfe afterwards landed, " I swear to you
that a hundred men posted there would stop their whole
army." He was right. A hundred watchful and deter-
mined men could have held the position long enough for
reinforcements to come up.

The hundred men were there. Captain de Vergor, of
the colony troops, commanded them, and reinforcements
were within his call ; for the battalion of Guienne had
been ordered to encamp close at hand on the Plains of
Abraham. Vergor's post, called Ause du Foulon, was
a mile and a half from Quebec. A little beyond it, by
the brink of the cliffs, was another post, called Sanios,
held by seventy men with four cannon ; and, beyond this
again, the heights of Sillery were guarded by a hundred
and thirty men, also with cannon. These were outposts
of Bougainville, whose headquarters were at Cap-Rouge,
six miles above Sillery, and whose troops were in con-
tinual movement along the intervening shore. Thus all
was vigilance ; for while the French were strong in the hope
of speedy delivery, they felt that there was no safety till
the tents of the invader had vanished from their shores
and his ships from their river. " What we knew," says
one of them, " of the character of M. Wolfe, that impetu-
ous, bold, and intrepid warrior, prepared us for a last
attack before he left us."

Wolfe had been very ill on the evening of the fourth.
The troops knew it, and their spirits sank ; but, after a
night of torment, he grew better, and was soon among
them again, rekindling their ardor, and imparting a cheer
that he could not share. For himself he had no pity ;
but when he heard of the illness of two officers in one
of the ships, he sent them a message of warm sympathy,
advised them to return to Point Levi, and offered them

fi

82 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

his own barge and an escort. They thanked him, but
replied that, come what might, they would see the enter-
prise to an end. Another officer remarked in his hearing
that one of the invalids had a very delicate constitution.
"Don't tell me of constitution," said Wolfe; "he has
good spirit, and good spirit will carry a man through
everything." An immense moral force bore up his own
frail body and forced it to its work.

Major Robert Stobo, who, five years before, had been
given as a hostage to the French at the capture of Fort
Necessity, arrived about this time in a vessel from Hali-
fax. He had long been a prisoner at Quebec, not always
in close custody, and had used his opportunities to ac-
quaint himself with the neighborhood. In the spring of
this year he and an officer of rangers named Stevens had
made their escape with extraordinary skill and daring;
and he now returned to give his countrymen the benefit
of his local knowledge. His biographer says that it was
he who directed Wolfe in the choice of a landing-place.
Be this as it may, Wolfe in person examined the river
and the shores as far as Pointe-aux-Trembles ; till at
length, landing on the south side a little above Quebec,
and looking across the water with a telescope, he de-
scried a path that ran with a long slope up the face of
the woody precipice, and saw at the top a cluster of tents.
They were those of Vergor's guard at the Anse duFoulon,
now called Wolfe's Cove. As he could see but ten or
twelve of them, he thought that the guard could not be
numerous, and might be overpowered. His hope would
have been stronger if he had known that Vergor had once
been tried for misconduct and cowardice in the surrender
of Beausdjour, and saved from merited disgrace by the
friendship of Bigot and the protection of Vaudreuil.

The morning of the seventh was fair and warm, and
the vessels of Holmes, their crowded decks gay with

PARKMAN. 83

scarlet uniforms, sailed up the river to Cap-Rouge. A
lively scene awaited them ; for here were the headquarters
of Bougainville, and here lay his principal force, while
the rest watched the banks above and below. The cove
into which the little river runs was guarded by floating
batteries ; the surrounding shore was defended by breast-
works ; and a large body of regulars, militia, and mounted
Canadians in blue uniforms moved to and fro, with rest-
less activity, on the hills behind. When the vessels came
to anchor, the horsemen dismounted and formed in line
with the infantry ; then, with loud shouts, the whole
rushed down the heights to man their works at the shore.
That true Briton, Captain Knox, looked on with a critical
eye from the gangway of his ship, and wrote that night
in his Diary that they had made a ridiculous noise.
"How different!" he exclaims, "how nobly awful and
expressive of true valor is the customary silence of the
British troops ! "

In the afternoon the ships opened fire, while the troops
entered the boats and rowed up and down as if looking
for a landing-place. It was but a feint of Wolfe to de-
ceive Bougainville as to his real design. A heavy east-
erly rain set in on the next morning, and lasted two days
without respite. All operations were suspended, and the
men suffered greatly in the crowded transports. Half of
them were therefore landed on the south shore, where
they made their quarters in the village of St. Nicolas,
refreshed themselves, and dried their wet clothing, knap-
sacks, and blankets.

For several successive days the squadron of Holmes
was allowed to drift up the river with the flood tide and
down with the ebb, thus passing and repassing incessantly
between the neighborhood of Quebec on one hand, and a
point high above Cap-Rouge on the other ; while Bougain-
ville, perplexed, and always expecting an attack, followed

84 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

the ships to and fro along the shore, by day and by
night, till his men were exhausted with ceaseless forced
marches.

At last the time for action came. On Wednesday, the
twelfth, the troops at St. Nicolas were embarked again,
and all were told to hold themselves in readiness. Wolfe,
from the flagship " Sutherland," issued his last general
orders. " The enemy's force is now divided, great scar-
city of provisions in their camp, and universal discontent
among the Canadians. Our troops below are in readiness
to join us ; all the light artillery and tools are embarked
at the Point of Levi ; and the troops will land where the
French seem least to expect it. The first body that gets
on shore is to march directly to the enemy and drive
them from any little post they may occupy ; the officers
must be careful that the succeeding bodies do not by any
mistake fire on those who go before them. The battalions
must form on the upper ground with expedition, and be
ready to charge whatever presents itself. When the
artillery and troops are landed, a corps will be left to
secure the landing-place, while the rest march on and
endeavor to bring the Canadians and French to a battle.
The officers and men will remember what their country
expects from them, and what a determined body of sol-
diers inured to war is capable of doing against five weak
French battalions mingled with a disorderly peasantry."

The spirit of the army answered to that of its chief.
The troops loved and admired their general, trusted their
officers, and were ready for any attempt. " Nay, how
could it be otherwise," quaintly asks honest Sergeant
John Johnson, of the fifty-eighth regiment, " being at
the heels of gentlemen whose whole thirst, equal with
their general, was for glory ? We had seen them tried,
and always found them sterling. We knew that they
would stand by us to the last extremity."

PARKMAN. 85

Wolfe had thirty-six hundred men and officers with
him on board the vessels of Holmes ; and he now sent
orders to Colonel Burton at Point Levi to bring to his
aid all who could be spared from that place and the
Point of Orleans. They were to march along the south
bank, after nightfall, and wait further orders at a desig-
nated spot convenient for embarkation. Their number
was about twelve hundred, so that the entire force des-
tined for the enterprise was at the utmost forty-eight
hundred. With these, Wolfe meant to climb the heights
of Abraham in the teeth of an enemy who, though much
reduced, were still twice as numerous as their assailants.1

Admiral Saunders lay with the main fleet in the Basin
of Quebec. This excellent officer, whatever may have
been his views as to the necessity of a speedy departure,
aided Wolfe to the last with unfailing energy and zeal.
It was agreed between them that while the General made
the real attack, the Admiral should engage Montcalm's
attention by a pretended one. As night approached, the
fleet ranged itself along the Beauport shore ; the boats
were lowered and filled with sailors, marines, and the
few troops that had been left behind ; while ship signalled
to ship, cannon flashed and thundered, and shot ploughed
the beach, as if to clear a way for assailants to land. In
the gloom of the evening the effect was imposing. Mont-
cairn, who thought that the movements of the English
above the town were only a feint, that their main force
was still below it, and that their real attack would be
made there, was completely deceived, and massed his

1 Including Bougainville's command. An escaped prisoner told Wolfe,
a few days before, that Montcalm still had fourteen thousand men.
Journal of an Expedition on (he River St. Lawrence. This meant only
those in the town and the camps of Beauport. " I don't believe their
whole army amounts to that number," wrote Wolfe to Colonel Burton on
the tenth. He knew, however, that if Montcalm could bring all his
troops together, the French would outnumber him more than two to one.

86 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

troops in front of Beauport to repel the expected landing.
But while in the fleet of Saunders all was uproar and
ostentatious menace, the danger was ten miles away,
where the squadron of Holmes lay tranquil and silent at
its anchorage off Cap-Rouge.

It was less tranquil than it seemed. All on board
knew that a blow would be struck that night, though only
a few high officers knew where. Colonel Howe, of the
light infantry, called for volunteers to lead the unknown
and desperate venture, promising, in the words of one
of them, " that if any of us survived we might depend
on being recommended to the General." As many as
were wanted — twenty-four in all — soon came forward.
Thirty large bateaux and some boats belonging to the
squadron lay moored alongside the vessels ; and late in
the evening the troops were ordered into them, the
twenty-four volunteers taking their place in the foremost.
They held in all about seventeen hundred men. The rest
remained on board.

Bougainville could discern the movement, and mis-
judged it, thinking that he himself was to be attacked.
The tide was still flowing ; and, the better to deceive
him, the vessels and boats were allowed to drift up-
ward with it for a little distance, as if to land above
Cap-Rouge.

The day had been fortunate for Wolfe. Two deserters
came from the camp of Bougainville with intelligence
that, at ebb tide on the next night, he was to send down
a convoy of provisions to Montcalm. The necessities of
the camp at Beauport, and the difficulties of transporta-
tion by land, had before compelled the French to resort
to this perilous means of conveying supplies ; and their
boats, drifting in darkness under the shadows of the
northern shore, had commonly passed in safety. Wolfe
saw at once that, if his own boats went down in advance

PARKMAN. 87

of the convoy, he could turn the intelligence of the
deserters to good account.

"* He was still on board the " Sutherland." Every pre-
paration was made, and every order given ; it only
remained to wait the turning of the tide. Seated with
him in the cabin was the commander of the sloop-of-
war " Porcupine," his former schoolfellow, John Jervis,
afterwards Earl St. Vincent. Wolfe told him that he
expected to die in the battle of the next day ; and tak-
ing from his bosom a miniature of Miss Lowther, his
betrothed, he gave it to him with a request that he
would return it to her if the presentiment should
prove true.

Towards two o'clock the tide began to ebb, and a
fresh wind blew down the river. Two lanterns were
raised into the maintop shrouds of the " Sutherland."
It was the appointed signal ; the boats cast off and
fell down with the current, those of the light infantry
leading the way. The vessels with the rest of the
troops had orders to follow a little later.
"*" To look for a moment at the chances on which this
bold adventure hung. First, the deserters told Wolfe
that provision-boats were ordered to go down to Quebec
that night ; secondly, Bougainville countermanded them ;
thirdly, the sentries posted along the heights were told
of the order, but not of the countermand ; fourthly,
Vergor at the Anse du Foulon had permitted most of
his men, chiefly Canadians from Lorette, to go home for
a time and work at their harvesting, on condition, it is
said, that they should afterwards work in a neighboring
field of his own ; fifthly, he kept careless watch, and went
quietly to bed ; sixthly, the battalion of Guienne, ordered
to take post on the Plains of Abraham, had, for reasons
unexplained, remained encamped by the St. Charles ;
and lastly, when Bougainville saw Holmes's vessels drift

88 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

down the stream, he did not tax his weary troops to fol-
low them, thinking that they would return as usual with
the flood tide. But for these conspiring circumstances
New France might have lived a little longer, and the
fruitless heroism of Wolfe would have passed, with
countless other heroisms, into oblivion.
4 For full two hours the procession of boats, borne on
the current, steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The
stars were visible, but the night was moonless and suffi-
ciently dark. The General was in one of the foremost
boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John
Robison, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in
the University of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his
later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray's
Elegy in a Country Churchyard to the officers about
him. Probably it was to relieve the intense strain of his
thoughts. Among the rest was the verse which his own
fate was soon to illustrate, —

" The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

" Gentlemen," he said, as his recital ended, " I would
rather have written those lines than take Quebec." None
were there to tell him that the hero is greater than the
poet.

As they neared their destination, the tide bore them in
towards the shore, and the mighty wall of rock and forest
towered in darkness on their left. The dead stillness was
suddenly broken by the sharp Qui vive ! of a French sen-
try, invisible in the thick gloom. France! answered a
Highland officer of Fraser's regiment from one of the boats
of the light infantry. He had served in Holland, and spoke
French fluently.

A quel rfyiment ?

De la Heine, replied the Highlander. He knew that
a part of that corps was with Bougainville. The sentry,

PARKMAN. 89

expecting the convoy of provisions, was satisfied, and did
not ask for the password.

Soon after, the foremost boats were passing the heights
of Samos, when another sentry challenged them, and they
could see him through the darkness running down to the
edge of the water, within range of a pistol-shot. In an-
swer to his questions, the same officer replied, in French :
** Provision-boats. Don't make a noise ; the English will
hear us." In fact, the sloop-of-war "Hunter" was an-
chored in the stream not far off. This time, again, the
sentry let them pass. In a few moments they rounded
the headland above the Anse du Foulon. There was no
sentry there. The strong current swept the boats of the
light infantry a little below the intended landing-place.
They disembarked on a narrow strand at the foot of
heights as steep as a hill covered with trees can be. The
twenty-four volunteers led the way, climbing with what
silence they might, closely followed by a much larger
body. When they reached the top they saw in the dim
light a cluster of tents at a short distance, and immediately
made a dash at them. Vergor leaped from bed and tried
to run off, but was shot in the heel and captured. His
men, taken by surprise, made little resistance. One or
two were caught, and the rest fled.

The main body of troops waited in their boats by the
edge of the strand. The heights near by were cleft by a
great ravine choked with forest trees ; and in its depths
ran a little brook called Ruisseau St.-Denis, which, swollen
by the late rains, fell plashing in the stillness over a rock.
Other than this no sound could reach the strained ear of
Wolfe but the gurgle of the tide and the cautious climb-
ing of his advance-parties as they mounted the steeps at
some little distance from where he sat listening. At
length from the top came a sound of musket-shots, fol-
lowed by loud huzzas, and he knew that his men were

90 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

masters of the position. The word was given ; the troops
leaped from the boats and scaled the heights, some here,
some there, clutching at trees and bushes, their muskets
slung at their backs. Tradition still points out the place,
near the mouth of the ravine, where the foremost reached
the top. Wolfe said to an officer near him : " You can
try it, but I don't think you '11 get up." He himself, how-
ever, found strength to drag himself up with the rest.
The narrow slanting path on the face of the heights had
been made impassable by trenches and abattis ; but all
obstructions were soon cleared away, and then the ascent
was easy. In the gray of the morning the long file of
red-coated soldiers moved quickly upward, and formed in
order on the plateau above.

. Before many of them had reached the top, cannon were
heard close on the left. It was the battery at Sainos fir-
ing on the boats in the rear and the vessels descending
from Cap-Rouge. A party was sent to silence it ; this was
soon effected, and the more distant battery at Sillery was
next attacked and taken. As fast as the boats were emp-
tied they returned for the troops left on board the vessels
and for those waiting on the southern shore under Colonel
Burton.

The day broke in clouds and threatening rain. Wolfe's
battalions were drawn up along the crest of the heights, j
No enemy was in sight, though a body of Canadians had
sallied from the town and moved along the strand towards
the landing-place, whence they were quickly driven back.
He had achieved the most critical part of his enterprise ;
yet the success that he coveted placed him in imminent
danger. On one side was the garrison of Quebec and the
army of Beauport, and Bougainville was on the other.
Wolfe's alternative was victory or ruin ; for if he should
be overwhelmed by a combined attack, retreat would be
hopeless. His feelings no man can know ; but it would

PARKMAN. 91

be safe to say that hesitation or doubt had no part in
them.

He went to reconnoitre the ground, and soon came to
the Plains of Abraham, so called from Abraham Martin,
a pilot known as Maitre Abraham, who had owned a piece
of land here in the early times of the colony. The Plains
were a tract of grass, tolerably level in most parts, patched
here and there with cornfields, studded with clumps of
bushes, and forming a part of the high plateau at the
eastern end of which Quebec stood. On the south it was
bounded by the declivities along the St. Lawrence ; on
the north, by those along the St. Charles, or rather along
the meadows through which that lazy stream crawled
like a writhing snake. At the place that Wolfe chose for
his battle-field the plateau was less than a mile wide.

Thither the troops advanced, marched by files till they
reached the ground, and then wheeled to form their line
of battle, which stretched across the plateau and faced
the city. It consisted of six battalions and the detached
grenadiers from Louisbourg, all drawn up in ranks three
deep. Its right wing was near the brink of the heights
along the St. Lawrence ; but the left could not reach
those along the St. Charles. On this side a wide space
was perforce left open, and there was danger of being
outflanked. To prevent this, Brigadier Townshend w;is
stationed here with two battalions, drawn up at right
angles with the rest, and fronting the St. Charles. The
battalion of Webb's regiment, under Colonel Burton,
formed the reserve ; the third battalion of Royal Ameri-
cans was left to guard the landing; and Howe's light
infantry occupied a wood far in the rear. Wolfe, with
Monckton and Murray, commanded the front line, on
which the heavy fighting was to fall, and which, when
all the troops had arrived, numbered less than thirty-
five hundred men.

92 LEAFLETS PROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

Quebec was not a mile distant, but they could not see
it ; for a ridge of broken ground intervened, called Buttes-
a-Neveu, about six hundred paces off. The first division
of troops had scarcely come up when, about six o'clock,
this ridge was suddenly thronged with white uniforms.
It was the battalion of Guienne, arrived at the eleventh
hour from its camp by the St. Charles. Some time after
there was hot firing in the rear. It came from a detach-
ment of Bougainville's command attacking a house where
some of the light infantry were posted. The assailants
were repulsed, and the firing ceased. Light showers fell
at intervals, besprinkling the troops as they stood patiently
waiting the event.

Montcalm had passed a troubled night. > Through all
the evening the cannon bellowed from the ships of Saun-
ders, and the boats of the fleet hovered in the dusk off
the Beauport shore, threatening every moment to land.
Troops lined the intrenchments till day, while ithe Gen-
eral walked the field that adjoined his headquarters till
one in the morning, Accompanied by the Chevalier John-
stone and Colonel Poulariez. (Johnstone says that he was
in great agitation, and took no rest all night. At day-
break he heard the sound of cannon above the town. It
was the battery at Samos firing on the English ships. He
had sent an officer to the quarters of Vaudreuil, which
were much nearer Quebec, with orders to bring him word
at once should anything unusual happen. But no word
came, and about six o'clock he mounted and rode thither
with Johnstone. As they advanced, the country behind
the town opened more and more upon their sight ; till at
length, when opposite Vaudreuil's house, they saw across
the St. Charles, some two miles away, the red ranks of
British soldiers on the heights beyond.

" This is a serious business," Montcalm said ; and sent
off Johnstone at full gallop to bring up the troops from

PARKMAN. 93

the centre and left of the camp. Those of the right were
in motion already, doubtless by the Governor's order.
Vaudreuil came out of the house. Montcalm stopped for
a few words with him ; then set spurs to his horse, and
rode over the bridge of the St. Charles to the scene
of danger. He rode with a fixed look, uttering not a
word.

The army followed in such order as it might, crossed
the bridge in hot haste, passed under the northern ram-
part of Quebec, entered at the Palace Gate, and pressed
on in headlong march along the quaint narrow streets of
the warlike town : troops of Indians in scalplocks and
war-paint, a savage glitter in their deep-set eyes ; bands
of Canadians whose all was at stak3, — faith, country, and
home ; the colony regulars ; the battalions of Old France,
a torrent of white uniforms and gleaming bayonets, La
Sarre, Languedoc, Roussillon, Be'arn, — victors of Oswego,
William Henry, and Ticonderoga. So they swept on,
poured out upon the plain, some by the gate of St.
Louis, and some by that of St. John, and hurried, breath-
less, to where the banners of Guienne still fluttered on
the ridge.

Montcalm was amazed at what he saw. He had ex-
pected a detachment, and he found an army. Full in
sight before him stretched the lines of Wolfe : the close
ranks of the English infantry, a silent wall of red, and
the wild array of the Highlanders, with their waving tar-
tans, and bagpipes screaming defiance. ^Vaudreuil had
not come ; but not the less was felt the evil of a divided
authority and the jealousy of the rival chiefs. Montcalm
waited long for the forces he had ordered to join him from
the left wing of the army. Ho waited in vain. It is said
that the Governor had detained them, lest the English
should attack the Beauport shore. Even if they did so,
and succeeded, the French might defy them, could they

94 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

but put Wolfe to rout on the Plains of Abraham. Neither
did the garrison of Quebec come to the aid of Montcalm.
He sent to Ramesay, its commander, for twenty-five field-
pieces which were on the Palace battery. Ramesay would
give him only three, saying that he wanted them for his
own defence. There were orders and counter-orders ;
misunderstanding, haste, delay, perplexity.

Montcalm and his chief officers held a council of war.
It is said that he and they alike were for immediate attack.
His enemies declare that he was afraid lest Yaudreuil
should arrive and take command ; but the Governor was
not a man to assume responsibility at such a crisis.
Others say that his impetuosity overcame his better judg-
ment ; and of this charge it is hard to acquit him. Bou-
gainville was but a few miles distant, and some of his
troops were much nearer; a messenger sent by way of
Old Lorette could have reached him in an hour and a half
at most, and a combined attack in front and rear might
have been concerted with him. If, moreover, Montcalm
could have come to an understanding with Vaudreuil, his
own force might have been strengthened by two or three
thousand additional men from the town and the camp of
Beauport ; but he felt that there was no time to lose, for
he imagined that Wolfe would soon be reinforced, which
was impossible, and he believed that the English were
fortifying themselves, which was no less an error. He
has been blamed, not only for fighting too soon, but for
fighting at all. In this he could not choose. Fight he
must, for Wolfe was now in a position to cut off all his
supplies. His men were full of ardor, and he resolved to
attack before their ardor cooled. He spoke a few words
to them in his keen, vehement way. " I remember very
well how he looked," one of the Canadians, then a boy of
eighteen, used to say in his old age ; " he rode a black or
dark bay horse along the front of our lines, brandishing

PAEKMAN. 95

his sword, as if to excite us to do our duty. He wore a
coat with wide sleeves, which fell back as he raised his
arm, and showed the white linen of the wristband."

The English waited the result with a composure which,
if not quite real, was at least well feigned. The three
field-pieces sent by Ramesay plied them with canister-
shot, and fifteen hundred Canadians and Indians fusil-
laded them in front and flank. Over all the plain, from
behind bushes and knolls and the edge of cornfields, puffs
of smoke sprang incessantly from the guns of these hid-
den marksmen. Skirmishers were thrown out before the
lines to hold them in check, and the soldiers were ordered
to lie on the grass to avoid the shot. The firing was
liveliest on the English left, where bands of sharpshooters
got under the edge of the declivity, among thickets
and behind scattered houses, whence they killed and
wounded a considerable number of Townshend's men.
The light infantry were called up from the rear. The
houses were taken and retaken, and one or more of them
was burned.

vWolfe was everywhere. How cool he was, and why his
followers loved him, is shown by an incident that hap-
pened in the course of the morning. One of his captains
was shot through the lungs ; and on recovering conscious-
ness he saw the General standing at his side. Wolfe
pressed his hand, told him not to despair, praised his
services, promised him early promotion, and sent an aide-
de-camp to Monckton to beg that officer to keep the prom-
ise if he himself should fall.

It was towards ten o'clock when, from the high ground
on the right of the line, Wolfe saw that the crisis was
near. *The French on the ridge had formed themselves
into three bodies, regulars in the centre, regulars and
Canadians on right and left. Two field-pieces, which had
been dragged up the heights at Anse du Foulon, fired on

96 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

them with grape-shot, and the troops, rising from the
ground, prepared to receive them. In a few moments
more they were in motion. They came on rapidly, utter-
ing loud shouts, and firing as soon as they were within
range. Their ranks, ill ordered at the best, were further
confused by a number of Canadians who had been mixed
among the regulars, and who, after hastily firing, threw
themselves on the ground to reload. The British ad-
vanced a few rods ; then halted and stood still. When
the French were within forty paces the word of command
rang out, and a crash of musketry answered all along the
line. The volley was delivered with remarkable precision.
In the battalions of the centre, which had suffered least
from the enemy's bullets, the simultaneous explosion was
afterwards said by French officers to have sounded like a
cannon-shot. Another volley followed, and then a furious
clattering fire that lasted but a minute or two. When the
smoke rose, a miserable sight was revealed : the ground
cumbered with dead and wounded, the advancing masses
stopped short and turned into a frantic mob, shouting,
cursing, gesticulating. The order was given to charge.
Then over the field rose the British cheer, mixed with the
fierce yell of the Highland slogan. Some of the corps
pushed forward with the bayonet ; some advanced firing.
The clansmen drew their broadswords and dashed on,
keen and swift as bloodhounds. At the English right,
though the attacking column was broken to pieces, a fire
was still kept up, chiefly, it seems, by sharpshooters from
the bushes and cornfields, where they had lain for an hour
or more. Here-Wolfe himself led the charge,vat the head
of the Louisbourg grenadiers. ^A shot shattered his wrist.
He wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on.
Another shot struck him, and he still advanced, when a
third lodged in his breast. He staggered, and sat on the
ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the grenadiers, one Hen-

PARKMAN. 97

derson, a volunteer in the same company, and a private
soldier, aided by an officer of artillery who ran to join
them, carried him in their arms to the rear. He begged
them to lay him down. They did so, and asked if he
would have a surgeon. " There 's no need," he answered;
" it 's all over with me." A moment after, one of them
cried out : " They run ; see how they run ! " " Who run ? "
Wolfe demanded, like a man roused from sleep. " The
enemy, sir. Egad, they give way everywhere ! " " Go,
one of you, to Colonel Burton," returned the dying man ;
" tell him to march Webb's regiment down to Charles
River, to cut off their retreat from the bridge." Then,
turning on his side, he murmured, " Now, God be praised,
I will die in peace ! " and in a few moments his gallant
soul had fled.

Montcalm, still on horseback, was borne with the tide
of fugitives towards the town. As he approached the
walls, a shot passed through his body. He kept his seat ;
two soldiers supported him, one on each side, and led his
horse through the St. Louis Gate. On the open space
within, among the excited crowd, were several women,
drawn, no doubt, by eagerness to know the result of the
fight. One of them recognized him, saw the streaming
blood, and shrieked, " 0 mon Dieu! mon Dieu! le Mar-
quis est tuS ! " " It 's nothing, it 's nothing," replied the
death-stricken man ; " don't be troubled for me, my good1*
friends " ( " Ce n'est rien, ce n'est rien ; ne vous affligez
pas pour moi, mes bonnes amies "). — From "Montcalm
and Wolfe" vol. ii. chap, xxvii.

NOTE. — There are several contemporary versions of the dying words
of Wolfe. The report of Knox, given above, is by far the best attested.
Knox says that he took particular pains at the time to learn them
accurately from those who were with Wolfe when they were uttered.

The anecdote of Montcalm is due to the late Hon. Malcolm Fraser, of
Quebec. He often heard it in his youth from an old woman, who, when
a girl, was one of the group who saw the wounded general led by, and to
whom the words were addressed.

7

KESULTS OF THE SEVEN YEAES WAR.

" HpHIS," said Earl Granville on his death-bed, " has
been the most glorious war and the most trium-
phant peace that England ever knew." Not all were so
well pleased, and many held, with Pitt, that the House of
Bourbon should have been forced to drain the cup of
humiliation to the dregs. Yet the fact remains that the
Peace of Paris marks an epoch than which none in modern
history is more fruitful of grand results. With it began a
new chapter in the annals of the world. To borrow the
words of a late eminent writer, " It is no exaggeration to
say that three of the many victories of the Seven Years
War determined for ages to come the destinies of man-
kind. With that of Rossbach began the re-creation of
Germany ; with that of Plassey the influence of Eu-
rope told for the first time since the days of Alexander
on the nations of the East ; with the triumph of Wolfe
on the Heights of Abraham began the history of the
United States." — From " Montcalm and Wolfe" vol. ii.
chap, xxxii.

THE INDIAN CHARACTER.

the Indian character, much has been written fool-
ishly, and credulously believed. By the rhapsodies
of poets, the cant of sentimentalists, and the extravagance
of some who should have known better, a counterfeit
image has been tricked out, which might seek in vain for
its likeness through every corner of the habitable earth,
— an image bearing no more resemblance to its original
than the monarch of the tragedy and the hero of the epic
poem bear to their living prototypes in the palace and the
camp. The shadows of his wilderness home, and the
darker mantle of his own inscrutable reserve, have made
the Indian warrior a wonder and a mystery. Yet to the
eye of rational observation there is nothing unintelligible
in him. He is full, it is true, of contradiction. He deems
himself the centre of greatness and renown ; his pride is
proof against the fiercest torments of fire and steel ; and
yet the same man would beg for a dram of whiskey, or pick
up a crust of bread thrown to him like a dog from the
tent-door of the traveller. At one moment he is wary
and cautious to the verge of cowardice ; at the next, he
abandons himself to a very insanity of recklessness ; and
the habitual self-restraint which throws an impenetrable
veil over emotion is joined to the unbridled passions of a
madman or a beast.

Such inconsistencies, strange as they seem in our eyes,
when viewed under a novel aspect, are but the ordinary
incidents of humanity. The qualities of the mind are not

102 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

uniform in their action through all the relations of life.
With different men, and different races of men, pride,
valor, prudence, have different forms of manifestation;
and where in one instance they lie dormant, in another
they are keenly awake. The conjunction of greatness
and littleness, meanness and pride, is older than the days
of the patriarchs ; and such antiquated phenomena, dis-
played under a new form in the unreflecting, undisciplined
mind of a savage, call for no special wonder, but should
rather be classed with the other enigmas of the fathom-
less human heart. The dissecting-knife of a Rochefou-
cault might lay bare matters of no less curious obser-
vation in the breast of every man.

Nature has stamped the Indian with a hard and stern
physiognomy. Ambition, revenge, envy, jealousy, are his
ruling passions ; and his cold temperament is little ex-
posed to those effeminate vices which are the bane of
milder races. With him revenge is an overpowering inr
stinct ; nay, more, it is a point of honor and a duty. His
pride sets all language at defiance. He loathes the
thought of coercion : and few of his race have ever
stooped to discharge a menial office. A wild love of lib-
erty, an utter intolerance of control, lie at the basis of his
character, and fire his whole existence. Yet. in spite of
this haughty independence, he is a devout hero-worship-
per ; and high achievement in war or policy touches a
chord to which his nature never fails to respond. He
looks up with admiring reverence to the sages and heroes
of his tribe ; and it is this principle, joined to the respect
for age springing from the patriarchal element in his
social system, which, beyond all others, contributes union
and harmony to the erratic members of an Indian com-
munity. With him the love of glory kindles into a burn-
ing passion ; and to allay its cravings he will dare cold
and famine, fire, tempest, torture, and death itself.

PARKMAN. 103

These generous traits are overcast by much that is dark,
cold, and sinister, by sleepless distrust and rankling jeal-
ousy. Treacherous himself, he is always suspicious of
treachery in others. Brave as he is, — and few of man-
kind are braver, — he will vent his passion by a secret
stab rather than an open blow. His warfare is full of
ambuscade and stratagem ; and he never rushes into
battle with that joyous self-abandonment with which the
warriors of the Gothic races flung themselves into the
ranks of their enemies. In his feasts and his drinking
bouts we find none of that robust and full-toned mirth
which reigned at the rude carousals of our barbaric ances-
try. He is never jovial in his cups, and maudlin sorrow
or maniacal rage is the sole result of his potations.

Over all emotion he throws the veil of an iron self-con-
trol, originating in a peculiar form of pride, and fostered
by rigorous discipline from childhood upward. He is
trained to conceal passion, and not to subdue it. The in-
scrutable warrior is aptly imaged by the hackneyed figure
of a volcano covered with snow; and no man can say
when or where the wild-fire will burst forth. This shal-
low self-mastery serves to give dignity to public delibera-
tion, and harmony to social life. Wrangling and quarrel
are strangers to an Indian dwelling;" and while an assem-
bly of the ancient Gauls was garrulous as a convocation
of magpies, a Roman senate might have taken a lesson
from the grave solemnity of an Indian council. In the
midst of his family and friends he hides affections, by
nature none of the most tender, under a mask of icy cold-
ness ; and in the torturing fires of his enemy, the haughty
sufferer maintains to the last his look of grim defiance.

His intellect is as peculiar as his moral organization.
Among all savages, the powers of perception preponder-
ate over those of reason and analysis ; but this is more
especially the case with the Indian. An acute judge of

104 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

character, at least of such parts of it as his experience
enables him to comprehend, keen to a proverb in all
exercises of war and the chase, he seldom traces effects
to their causes, or follows out actions to their remote
results. Though a close observer of external Nature, he
no sooner attempts to account for her phenomena than
he involves himself in the most ridiculous absurdities ;
and quite content with these puerilities, he has not the
least desire to push his inquiries further. His curiosity,
abundantly active within its own narrow circle, is dead to
all things else ; and to attempt rousing it from its torpor
is but a bootless task. He seldom takes cognizance of
general or abstract ideas ; and his language has scarcely
the power to express them, except through the medium
of figures drawn from the external world, and often
highly picturesque and forcible. The absence of reflec-
tion makes him grossly improvident, and unfits him for
pursuing any complicated scheme of war or policy.

Some races of men seem moulded in wax, soft and
melting, at once plastic and feeble. Some races, like
some metals, combine the greatest flexibility with the
greatest strength. But the Indian is hewn out of a rock.
You can rarely change the form without destruction of
the substance. Races of inferior energy have possessed a
power of expansion and assimilation to which he is a
stranger; and it is this fixed and rigid quality which has
pjoved his ruin. He will not learn the arts of civiliza-
tion, and he and his forest must perish together. The
stern, unchanging features of his mind excite our admira-
tion from their very immutability ; and we look with deep
interest on the fate of this irreclaimable son of the wilder-
ness, the child who will not be weaned from the breast of
his rugged mother. And our interest increases when we
discern in the unhappy wanderer the germs of heroic
virtues mingled among his vices, — a hand bountiful to

PARKMAN. 105

bestow as it is rapacious to seize, and even in extremest
famine imparting its last morsel to a fellow-sufferer ; a
heart which, strong in friendship as in hate, thinks it not
too much to lay down life for its chosen comrade ; a soul
true to its own idea of honor, and burning with an un-
quenchable thirst for greatness and renown.

The imprisoned lion in the showman's cage differs not
more widely from the lord of the desert than the beg-
garly frequenter of frontier garrisons and dramshops
differs from the proud denizen of the woods. It is in his
native wilds alone that the Indian must be seen and
studied. Thus to depict him is the aim of the ensuing
History ; and if, from the shades of rock and forest, the
savage features should look too grimly forth, it is because
the clouds of a tempestuous war have cast upon the pic-
ture their murky shadows and lurid fires. — From " The
Conspiracy of Pontiac" vol. i. chap. i.

DEATH OF PONTIAC.

HPHE winter passed quietly away. Already the In-
*- dians began to feel the blessings of returning peace
in the partial reopening of the fur-trade ; and the famine
and nakedness, the misery and death, which through the
previous season had been rife in their encampments, were
exchanged for comparative comfort and abundance. With
many precautions, and in meagre allowances, the traders
had been permitted to throw their goods into the Indian
markets ; and the starving hunters were no longer left,
as many of them had been, to gain precarious sustenance
by 'the bow, the arrow, and the lance, — the half-forgot-
ten weapons of their fathers. Some troubles arose along
the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The reckless
borderers, in contempt of common humanity and pru-
dence, murdered several straggling Indians, and enraged
others by abuse and insult; but these outrages could not
obliterate the remembrance of recent chastisement, and,
for the present at least, the injured warriors forbore to
draw down the fresh vengeance of their destroyers.

Spring returned, and Pontiac remembered the promise
he had made to visit Sir William Johnson at Oswego.
He left his encampment on the Maumee, accompanied by
his chiefs and by an Englishman named Crawford, a man
of vigor and resolution, who had been appointed byihe
superintendent to the troublesome office of attending the
Indian deputation and supplying their wants.

108 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

We may well imagine with what bitterness of mood the
defeated war-chief urged his canoe along the margin of
Lake Erie, and gazed upon the horizon-bounded waters,
and the lofty shores, green with primeval verdure. Little
could he have dreamed, and little could the wisest of that
day have imagined, that, within the space of a single
human life, that lonely lake would be studded with the
sails of commerce; that cities and villages would rise
upon the ruins of the forest ; and that the poor memen-
toes of his lost race — the wampum beads, the rusty
tomahawk, and the arrowhead of stone, turned up by the
ploughshare — would become the wonder of school-boys,
and the prized relics of the antiquary's cabinet. Yet it
needed no prophetic eye to foresee that, sooner or later,
the doom must come. The star of his people's destiny
was fading from the sky ; and, to a mind like his, the
black and withering future must have stood revealed in
all its desolation.

The birchen flotilla gained the outlet of Lake Erie,
and, shooting downwards with the stream, landed be-
neath the palisades of Fort Schlosser. The chiefs passed
the portage, and, once more embarking, pushed out upon
Lake Ontario. Soon their goal was reached, and the
cannon boomed hollow salutation from the batteries of
Oswego.

Here they found Sir William Johnson waiting to re-
ceive them, attended by the chief sachems of the Iro-
quois, whom he had invited to the spot, that their presence
might give additional weight and solemnity to the meet-
ing. As there was no building large enough to receive
so numerous a concourse, a canopy of green boughs was
erected to shade the assembly from the sun ; and thither,
on the twenty-third of July, repaired the chiefs and war-
riors of the several nations. Here stood the tall figure
of Sir William Johnson, surrounded by civil and military

PARKMAN. 109

officers, clerks, and interpreters ; while before him re-
clined the painted sachems of the Iroquois, and the great
Ottawa war-chief, with his dejected followers.

Johnson opened the meeting with the usual formalities,
presenting his auditors with a belt of wampum to wipe
the tears from their eyes, with another to cover the bones
of their relatives, another to open their ears that they
might hear, and another to clear their throats that they
might speak with ease. Then, amid solemn silence,
Pontiac's great peace-pipe was lighted and passed round
the assembly, each man present inhaling a whiff of the
sacred smoke. These tedious forms, together with a few
speeches of compliment, consumed the whole morning ;
for this savage people, on whose supposed simplicity poets
and rhetoricians have lavished their praises, may chal-
lenge the world to outmatch their bigoted adherence to
usage and ceremonial.

On the following day the council began in earnest,
and Sir William Johnson addressed Pontiac and his
attendant chiefs : —

" Children, I bid you heartily welcome to this place ;
and I trust that the Great Spirit will permit us often to
meet together in friendship, for I have now opened the
door and cleared the road, that all nations may come
hither from the sun-setting. This belt of wampum con-
firms my words.

" Children, it gave me much pleasure to find that you
who are present behaved so well last year, and treated in
so friendly a manner Mr. Croghan, one of my deputies ;
and that you expressed such concern for the bad behavior
of those who, in order to obstruct the good work of
peace, assaulted and wounded him, and killed some of
his party, both whites and Indians, — a thing before un-
known, and contrary to the laws and customs of all
nations. This would have drawn down our strongest

110 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

resentment upon those who were guilty of so heinous a
crime, were it not for the great lenity and kindness of
your English father, who does not delight in punishing
those who repent sincerely of their faults.

"Children,! have now, with the approbation of General
Gage (your father's chief warrior in this country), in-
vited you here in order co confirm and strengthen your
proceedings with Mr. Croghan last year. 1 hope that you
will remember all that then passed, and 1 desire that you
will often repeat it to your young people, and keep it
fresh in your minds.

" Children, you begin already to see the fruits of peace,
from the number of traders and plenty of goods at all the
garrisoned posts ; and our enjoying the peaceable posses-
sion of the Illinois will be found of great advantage to the
Indians in that country. You likewise see that proper
officers, men of honor and probity, are appointed to reside
at the posts, to prevent abuses in trade, to hear your com-
plaints, and to lay before me such of them as they cannot
redress. Interpreters are likewise sent for the assistance
of each of them ; and smiths are sent to the posts to re-
pair your arms and implements. All this, which is at-
tended with a great expense, is now done by the great
King, your father, as a proof of his regard ; so that, cast-
ing from you all jealousy and apprehension, you should
now strive with each other who should show the most
gratitude to this best of princes. I do now, therefore,
confirm the assurances which 1 give you of his Majesty's
good will, and do insist on your casting away all evil
thoughts, and shutting your ears against all flying idle
reports of bad people."

The rest of Johnson's speech was occupied in explain-
ing to his hearers the new arrangements for the regula-
tion of the fur-trade ; in exhorting them to forbear from
retaliating the injuries they might receive from reckless

PARKMAN. Ill

white men, who would meet with due punishment from
their own countrymen ; and in urging them to deliver up
to justice those of their people who might be guilty of
crimes against the English. " Children," he concluded,
" I now, by this belt, turn your eyes to the sun-rising,
where you will always find me your sincere friend. From
me you will always hear what is true and good ; and I
charge you never more to listen to those evil birds, who
come, with lying tongues, to lead you astray, and to make
you break the solemn engagements which you have entered
into, in presence of the Great Spirit, with the King your
father and the English people. Be strong, then, and keep
fast hold of the chain of friendship, that your children,
following your example, may live happy and prosperous
lives."

Pontiac made a brief reply, and promised to return
on the morrow an answer in full. The meeting then
broke up.

The council of the next day was opened by the Wyan-
dot chief Teata in a short and formal address, at the
conclusion of which Pontiac himself arose, and addressed
the superintendent in words of which the following is a
translation : -

" Father, we thank the Great Spirit for giving us so
fine a day to meet upon such great affairs. 1 speak in
the name of all the nations to the westward, of whom I
am the master. It is the will of the Great Spirit that we
should meet here to-day ; and before him I now take you
by the hand. I call him to witness that I speak from my
heart; for since I took Colonel Croghan by the hand last
year, I have never let go my hold, for I see that the Great
Spirit will have us friends.

u Father, when our great father of France was in this
country, 1 held him fast by the hand. Now that he is
gone, I take you, my English father, by the hand, in the

112 LEAFLETS PROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

name of all the nations, and promise to keep this covenant
as long as I shall live."

Here he delivered a large belt of wampum.

" Father, when you address me, it is the same as if you
addressed all the nations of the west. Father, this belt
is to cover and strengthen our chain of friendship, and to
show you that, if any nation shall lift the hatchet against
our English brethren, we shall be the first to feel it and
resent it."

Pontiac next took up in succession the various points
touched upon in the speech of the superintendent, expres-
sing in all things a full compliance with his wishes. The
succeeding days of the conference were occupied with
matters of detail relating chiefly to the fur-trade, all of
which were adjusted to the apparent satisfaction of the
Indians, who, on their part, made reiterated professions
of friendship. Pontiac promised to recall the war-belts
which had been sent to the north and west, though, as he
alleged, many of them had proceeded from the Senecas,
and not from him ; adding that, when all were gathered
together, they would be more than a man could carry.
The Iroquois sachems then addressed the western na-
tions, exhorting them to stand true to their engagements,
and hold fast the chain of friendship ; and the councils
closed on the thirty-first, with a bountiful distribution of
presents to Pontiac and his followers.

Thus ended this memorable meeting, in which Pontiac
sealed his submission to the English, and renounced for-
ever the bold design by which he had trusted to avert or
retard the ruin of his race. His hope of seeing the em-
pire of France restored in America was scattered to the
winds, and with it vanished 'every rational scheme of re-
sistance to English encroachment. Nothing now remained
but to stand an idle spectator while, in the north and in
the south, the tide of British power rolled westward in re-

PARKMAN. 113

sistlcss might ; while the fragments of the rival empire,
which he would fain have set up as a barrier against the
flood, lay scattered a miserable wreck ; and while the
remnant of his people melted away or fled for refuge to
remoter. deserts. For them the prospects of the future
were as clear as they were calamitous. Destruction or
civilization, — between these lay their choice ; and few
who knew them could doubt which alternative they
would embrace.

Pontiac, his canoe laden with the gifts of his enemy,
steered homeward for the Maumee ; and in this vicinity
he spent the following winter, pitching his lodge in the
forest with his wives and children, and hunting- like an
ordinary warrior. With the succeeding spring, 1767,
fresh murmurings of discontent arose among the Indian
tribes, from the Lakes to the Potomac, the first precursors
of the disorders which, a few years later, ripened into a
brief but bloody war along the borders of Virginia. These
threatening symptoms might easily be traced to their
source. The incorrigible frontiersmen had again let loose
their murdering propensities; and a multitude of squat-
ters had built their cabins on Indian lands beyond the
limits of Pennsylvania, adding insult to aggression, and
sparing neither oaths, curses, nor any form of abuse and
maltreatment against the rightful owners of the soil.
The new regulations of the fur-trade could not prevent
disorders among the reckless men engaged in it. This was
particularly the case in the region of the Illinois, where
the evil was aggravated by the renewed intrigues of the
French, and especially of those who had fled from the
English side of the Mississippi, and made their abode
around the new settlement of St. Louis. It is difficult
to say how far Pontiac was involved in this agita-
tion. It is certain that some of the English traders
regarded him with jealousy and fear, as prime mover of

8

114 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

the whole, and eagerly watched an opportunity to destroy
him.

The discontent among the tribes did not diminish with
the lapse of time ; yet for many months we can discern
no truce of Pontiac. Records and traditions are silent
concerning him. It is not until April, 1769, that he
appears once more distinctly on the scene. At about
that time he came to the Illinois, with what design does
not appear, though his movements excited much uneasi-
ness among the few English in that quarter. Soon after
his arrival, he repaired to St. Louis, to visit his former
acquaintance, St. Ange, who was then in command at
that post, having offered his services to the Spaniards
after the cession of Louisiana. After leaving the fort,
Pontiac proceeded to the house of which young Pierre
Chouteau was an inmate ; and to the last days of his
protracted life, the latter could vividly recall the cir-
cumstances of the interview. The savage chief was ar-
rayed in the full uniform of a French officer, which had
been presented to him as a special mark of respect and
favor by the Marquis of Montcalm, towards the close of
the French war, and which Pontiac never had the bad
taste to wear, except on occasions when he wished to
appear with unusual dignity. St. Ange, Chouteau, and
the other principal inhabitants of the infant settlement,
whom he visited in turn, all received him cordially, and
did their best to entertain him and his attendant chiefs.
He remained at St. Louis for two or three days, when,
hearing that a large number of Indians were assembled
at Cahokia, on the opposite side of the river, and that
some drinking bout or other social gathering was in prog-
ress, he told St. Ange that he would cross over to see
what was going forward. St. Ange tried to dissuade him,
and urged the risk to which he would expose himself ;
but Pontiac persisted, boasting that he was a match for

PARKMAN. 115

the English, and had no fear for his life. He entered a
canoe with some of his followers, and Chouteau never
saw him again.

He who, at the present day, crosses from the city of St.
Louis to the opposite shore of the Mississippi, and passes
southward through a forest festooned with grape-vines,
and fragrant with the scent of flowers, will soon emerge
upon the ancient hamlet of Cahokia. To one fresh from
the busy suburbs of the American city, the small French
houses, scattered in picturesque disorder, the light-hearted,
thriftless look of their inmates, and the woods which form
the background of the picture, seem like the remnants of
an earlier and simpler world. Strange changes have
passed around that spot. Forests have fallen, cities have
sprung up, and the lonely wilderness is thronged with
human life. Nature herself has taken part in the general
transformation ; and the Mississippi has made a fearful
inroad, robbing from the luckless Creoles a mile of rich
meadow and woodland. Yet, in the midst of all, this relic
of the lost empire of France has preserved its essential
features through the lapse of a century, and offers at this
day an aspect not widely different from that which met
the eye of Pontiac when he and his chiefs landed on its
shore.

The place was full of Illinois Indians ; such a scene as
in our own time may often be met with in some squalid
settlement of the border, where the vagabond guests, be-
dizened with dirty finery, tie their small horses in rows
along the fences, and stroll idly among the houses, or
lounge about the dramshops. A chief so renowned as
Pontiac could not remain long among the friendly Cre-
oles of Cahokia without being summoned to a feast ; and
at such primitive entertainment the whiskey-bottle would
not fail to play its part. This was in truth the case.
Pontiac drank deeply, and, when the carousal was over,

116 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

strode down the village street to the adjacent woods,
where he was heard to sing the medicine songs, in whose
magic power he trusted as the warrant of success in all
hig_undertakings.

r An English trader, named Williamson, was then in
the village. He had looked on the movements of Pontiac
with a jealousy probably not diminished by the visit of
the chief to the French at St. Louis ; and he now re-
solved not to lose so favorable an opportunity to despatch
him. With this view, he gained the ear of a strolling
Indian belonging to the Kaskaskia tribe of the Illinois,
bribed him with a barrel of liquor, and promised him a
farther reward if he would kill the chief. The bargain
was quickly made. When Pontiac entered the forest,
the assassin stole close upon his track ; and, watching
his moment, glided behind him, and buried a tomahawk
in his brain.

The dead body was soon discovered, and startled cries
and wild bowlings announced the event. The word was
caught up from mouth to mouth, and the place resounded
with yifernal yells. The warriors snatched their weapons.
The Illinois took part with their guilty countryman ; and
the few followers of Pontiac, driven from the village, fled
to spread the tidings and call the nations to revenge.
Meanwhile the murdered chief lay on the spot where he
had fallen, until St. Ange, mindful of former friendship,
sent to claim the body, and buried it, with warlike honors,
near his fort of St. Louis.

Thus basely perished this champion of a ruined race.
But could his shade have revisited the scene of murder,
his savage spirit would have exulted in the vengeance
which overwhelmed the abettors of the crime. Whole
tribes were rooted out to expiate it. Chiefs and sachems
whose veins had thrilled with his eloquence, young war-
riors whose aspiring hearts had caught the inspiration

PARKMAN. 117

of his greatness, mustered to revenge his fate ; and, from
the nurth and the east, their united bands descended
on the villages of the Illinois. Tradition has but faintly
preserved the memory of the event ; and its only an-
nalists, men who held the intestine feuds of the savage
tribes in no more account than the quarrels of panthers
or wildcats, have left but a meagre record. Yet enough
remains to tell us that over the grave of Pontiac more
blood was poured out in atonement than flowed from
the veins of the slaughtered heroes on the corpse of
Patroclus ; and the remnant of the Illinois who sur-
vived the carnage remained forever after sunk in utter
insignificance.

Neither mound nor tablet marked the burial-place of
Pontiac. For a mausoleum, a city has risen above the
forest hero ; and the race whom he hated with such burn-
ing rancor trample with unceasing footsteps over his for-
gotten grave. — From " The Conspiracy of Pontiac" vol.
ii. chap. xxxi.

%

THE BLACK HILLS.

AX7E travelled eastward for two days, and then the
gloomy ridges of the Black Hills rose up before us.
The village passed along for some miles beneath their
declivities, trailing out to a great length over the arid
prairie, or winding among small detached hills of dis-
torted shapes. Turning sharply to the left, we entered a
wide defile of the mountains, down the bottom of whicli
a brook came winding, lined with tall grass and dense
copses, amid which were hidden many beaver dams and
lodges. We passed along between two lines of high pre-
cipices and rocks piled in disorder one upon another, with
scarcely a tree, a bush, or a clump of grass. The restless
Indian boys wandered along their edges and clambered
up and down their rugged sides, and sometimes a group
of them would stand on the verge of a cliff and look down
on the procession as it passed beneath. As we advanced,
the passage grew more narrow ; then it suddenly expanded
into a round grassy meadow, completely encompassed by
mountains ; and here the families stopped as they came
up in turn, and the camp rose like magic.

The lodges were hardly pitched when, with their ustinl
precipitation, the Indians set about accomplishing the
object that had brought them there ; that is, obtaining
poles for their new lodges. Half the population, men,
women, and boys, mounted their horses and set out for
the depths of the mountains. It was a strange cavalcade,

120 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

as they rode at full gallop over the shingly rocks and into
the dark opening of the defile beyond. We passed be-
tween precipices, sharp and splintering at the tops, their
sides beetling over the defile or descending in abrupt
declivities bristling with fir-trees. On our left they rose
close to us like a wall, but on the right a winding brook
with a narrow strip of marshy soil intervened. The stream
was clogged with old beaver-dams, and spread frequently
into wide pools. There were thick bushes and many
dead and blasted trees along its course, though frequently
nothing remained but stumps cut close to the ground by
the beaver, and marked with the sharp chisel-like teeth of
those indefatigable laborers. Sometimes we dived among
trees, and then emerged upon open spots, over which,
Tndian-like, all galloped at full speed. As Pauline bound-
ed over the rocks I felt her saddle-girth slipping, and
alighted to draw it tighter ; when the whole cavalcade
swept past me in a moment, the women with their gaudy
ornaments tinkling as they rode, the men whooping, laugh-
ing, and lashing forward their horses. Two black-tailed
deer bounded away among the rocks ; Raymond shot at
them from horseback ; the sharp report of his rifle was
answered by another equally sharp from the opposing cliffs ;
and then the echoes, leaping in rapid succession from side
to side, died away rattling far amid the mountains.

After having ridden in this manner six or eight miles,
the scene changed, and all the declivities were covered
with forests of tall, slender spruce-trees. The Indians
began to fall off to the right and left, dispersing with
their hatchets and knives to cut the poles which they had
come to seek. I was soon left almost alone ; but in the
stillness of those lonely mountains, the stroke of hatchets
and the sound of voices might be heard from far and
near.

Reynal, who imitated the Indians in their habits as well

PARKMAN. 121

as the worst features of their character, had killed buffalo
enough to make a lodge for himself and his squaw, and
now he was eager to get the poles necessary to complete
it. He asked me to let Raymond go with him and assist
in the work. I assented, and the two men immediately
entered the thickest part of the wood. Having left my
horse in Raymond's keeping, I began to climb the moun-
tain. I was weak and weary, and made slow progress,
often pausing to rest ; but after an hour I gained a height
whence the little valley out of which I had climbed seemed
like a deep, dark gulf, though the inaccessible peak of the
mountain was still towering to a much greater distance
above. Objects familiar from childhood surrounded me, —
crags and rocks, a black and sullen brook that gurgled
with a hollow voice deep among the crevices, a wood of
mossy, distorted trees and prostrate trunks flung down by
age and storms, scattered among the rocks, or damming
the foaming waters of the brook.

Wild as they were, these mountains were thickly peo-
'pled. As I climbed farther, I found the broad, dusty paths
made by the elk as they filed across the mountain side.
The grass on all the terraces was trampled down by deer ;
there were numerous tracks of wolves, and in some of the
rougher and more precipitous parts of the ascent I found
footprints different from any that I had ever seen, and
which I took to be those of the Rocky Mountain sheep.
I sat down upon a rock ; there was a perfect stillness.
No wind was stirring, and not even an insect could be
heard. I remembered the danger of becoming lost in
such a place, and fixed my eye upon one of the tallest pin-
nacles of the opposite mountain. It rose sheer upright
from the woods below, and, by an extraordinary freak of
nature, sustained aloft on its very summit a large loose
rock. Such a landmark could never be mistaken, and
feeling once more secure, I began again to move forward.

122 LEAFLETS FROM STANDARD AUTHORS.

A white wolf jumped up from among some bushes, and
leaped clumsily away ; but he stopped for a moment, and
turned back his keen eye and grim, bristling muzzle. I
longed to take his scalp and carry it back with me, as a
trophy of the Black Hills ; but before I could fire, he was
gone among the rocks. Soon after I heard a rustling
sound, with a cracking of twigs at a little distance, and
saw moving above the tall bushes the branching antlers
of an elk. I was in the midst of a hunter's paradise.

Such are the Black Hills as I found them in July ; but
they wear a different garb when winter sets in, when the
broad boughs of the fir-trees are bent to the ground by the
load of snow, and the dark mountains are white with it.
At that season the trappers, returned from their autumn
expeditions, often build their cabins in the midst of these
solitudes, and live in abundance and luxury on the game
that harbors there. I have heard them tell how with
their tawny mistresses, and perhaps a few young Indian
companions, they had spent months in total seclusion.
They would dig pitfalls and set traps for the white
wolves, sables, and martens ; and though through the
whole night the awful chorus of the wolves would resound
from the frozen mountains around them, yet within their
massive walls of logs they would lie in careless ease before
the blazing fire, and in the morning shoot the elk and
deer from their very door. — From " The Oregon Trail"
chap. xvii.

788

m '•Jv'"" "in UNI inn inn inn mi Ill mi