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LIVRO I

 

 

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            ‘EACH man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in the river – he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over God’s depths into the infinite sea. This talent and this call depend on his own organisation, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself in him.’ – R. W. EMERSON, ‘Spiritual Laws.’

 

 

            ‘Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.’ – GEN. XII, 1.

 

 

 

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THE

 

PILGRIM AND THE SHRINE

 

____________________

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

THE DILEMMA

 

            ‘SURELY if there be any merit in self-sacrifice, mine will not be overlooked. My motive is no mean one; for is it not the desire of sparing pain to those I love? So good as they are, too, in all amenities and duties of life, could only this perpetual jar be removed, we should indeed be a happy family. In fact, as far as they are concerned there is but little alloy; for it is little they dream of the gap that actually separates us. Happy in their ignorance, but at what cost to myself is it maintained! And every week the task grows harder. I shrink from all in which they find delight. Their Sun-, day services and week-day devotions are alike painful to me, till I feel constrained to declare that I will never go to church again.

 

            ‘I should like to have some of the details of the early Christian life: to know how one of them, a member of some devout pagan family, comported himself, when the light of a higher faith dawned upon him, and the joy of

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it was succeeded by revulsion, on thinking of the grief his apostasy would cause his good pious old parents.

 

            ‘To be of any use to me, I must know how one organised like myself would act in such circumstances. I think I can guess. Having a faculty of reticence and self-control, he would carefully avoid betraying himself until he had sounded them at home; listening to their remarks on the new religion in reference to any of their acquaintances who have joined it, or in answer to his observations. If he found interest excited, and a tone of moderation used in reference to the subject, he would be led on by degrees to lay before them one grand doctrine after another, until their own old creed had, unawares, withered up into nothingness for them, as it had done for him.

 

            ‘But if he found scorn and anger lavished upon those who were so presumptuous as to forsake, or even to strive to obtain more comprehensive views of, the gods of their fathers, and an utter unwillingness, if not incapacity, to comprehend the spirit and meaning of the new doctrine, – then, indeed, would he either do as I am doing, or would break away to more congenial associations. For to continue to abide together after having broken silence, to feel himself followed by looks of grief and displeasure as a renegade and an infidel, – this, indeed, would be an impossibility. In either case it would be hard to remain. To stay and be silent, – filled with pity for the errors of those who would so regard him if they knew what was in his mind; and forced to keep within his own bosom the new and glorious hopes that were glowing in him, locked most carefully from those to whom he most longs to declare them. To stay and

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speak, regardless of the consequences: to speak and then depart: or, best of all, perhaps, to go in silence and peace, without leaving behind him bitterness and sorrow.

 

            ‘But I meant to describe good pious people; would such reduce a son to these straits? How is this? In what have I misrepresented? It must be that goodness of heart and natural disposition are not incompatible with religious intolerance and narrowness. Perhaps people may be better than their religion; nay, may be morally good in spite of it. Yet it is very curious that the condemnation which Christ would not pronounce on the grossest sinner, should be by his followers so readily inflicted on the honest inquirer.’

 

            To this half soliloquy, half address, of Herbert Ainslie, as he lay stretched on a certain lawn, in a certain midland county, in the long vacation of 1846, his friend Charles Arnold replied,

 

            ‘A man filled with burning faith in a new religion which opened heaven to the believer, and reserved hell for its opponents, would not hesitate between the brief gain of a hollow peace and the possibility, however remote, of achieving the conversion of those he loved. All considerations would be minor to this, and would be lost sight of.’

 

            ‘Yes,’ answered Herbert, ‘if he admitted the possibility of their conversion. But convinced by an irresistible instinct, backed by both reason and experience, that this cannot be, he would act as I have supposed. Indeed, he could not do otherwise; for men cannot act without motives, and the motive which would be supplied by a chance of success would be absent.’

 

            ‘Why so impossible in your particular case?’

 

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            ‘Nature and habit are too strong. A certain versatility of mind and habit of abstract thought are absolutely necessary to enable any one to detach himself from the opinions of a lifetime, and to see things from a different point of view. The belief which comes with the mother’s milk, and is so sedulously clung to ever after, not only without the smallest misgiving, but with a conviction that doubt (which may be an inspiration from above) is only the unmistakable whisper of the fiend, – few, indeed, are they who can struggle out of fetters so riveted.’

 

            ‘It certainly is the commonest kind of faith,’ observed Arnold; ‘a belief not in truth, but in that particular statement of it which happens to have been made to one-self?

 

            ‘And the effect,’ said Herbert, ‘of long years of undeviating habit, ploughing over and over again in the same furrow, fixing the bias beyond all possibility of change, and closing the soul to all influences save those that come through the customary channel. Many avenues have been provided whereby knowledge may come to us; a multiplicity of senses, with reason and imagination superadded, through which, when kept open to the influences everywhere abounding, may stream in the sympathetic wisdom of the universe, disclosing to us innumerable pathways to God. All these we are too often taught to keep fast dosed, leaving but a little chink in the shutters through which the light can reach us. And having thus manufactured for themselves the gloom in which they live, men loudly praise the tiny streak of light which they suffer to relieve it.’

 

            ‘Let us return to yourself,’ said Arnold. ‘You are prevented from declaring yourself by the conviction that

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it will cause unqualified pain: that is, you regard those with whom you have to do as so pre-occupied with one idea as to be incapable of admitting another. You know, I suppose, in what condition of mind people are considered to be whom it is necessary for their own welfare, or that of others, to deceive or keep in ignorance?’

 

            ‘It is said,’ replied Herbert, ‘that most people are of unsound mind upon one subject or another. Am I act-ting as if those with whom I have to do were no exceptions to this rule? Let me think out my thought. There are countless rills from the hills of God, but of one only will they drink. It is one that flows hard by their cottage, through their own little valley, from which they never stir. They love this little stream, but need they hate others? Alas! they also condemn all others, together with those who drink at them. I love to stray far away upon the mountains, and slake my thirst at every stream that flows. They would weep and pray for me if they knew that I tasted of any other waters than those which flow to them. Alas! alas! could I but get them to the hill-tops, to enjoy with me the boundless glories of the uplands! but too long disuse has paralysed both will and power. The conclusion is unavoidable. The tear of hell, that is, the fear of God – of the God of the Evangelicals – makes men monomaniacs.’

 

            ‘The claim of that sect to inspiration,’ said Arnold, ‘does certainly seem to indicate a kind of madness; and it is not easy to see how to acquit people of it who so firmly believe in their own infallibility.’

 

            ‘No,’ said Herbert; ‘for holding it to be of infinite ignorance what men believe, instead of hesitating long and balancing evidence with the most anxious care, lest

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anything should be received that ought to be rejected, their fear is all on one side. So far from fearing to hold dishonourable notions of God by believing too much, their only anxiety is lest they should not believe enough. In short, their most fortunate frame of mind is unlimited credence. “Only believe,” no matter what. Yet it is not fair to refuse the same credit to the holders of the other faiths all over the world.’

 

            ‘Of course not,’ added Arnold. ‘The child trained in a Christian nursery must receive what is taught it with unquestioning reverence. But the Mohamedans and Hindoos are to see at once the absurdity of their religion, and take the first opportunity of turning Christian. And they refuse to themselves the right to exercise that scepticism and investigation which they regard as the first duty of those who differ from them.’

 

            ‘Clearly an assumption of infallibility,’ observed Herbert; ‘and one that arises from that very disposition which would have made these unquestioning Christians equally unquestioning idolaters and cannibals, had they chanced to be born such.’

 

            ‘Yet,’ observed Arnold, ‘this disposition to hold un-questioned what they have early received, is not an unmixed evil. A certain amount of vis inertiæ is absolutely necessary for the general stability.’

 

            ‘In every instance that I can think of,’ continued Herbert, ‘the undoubting Christian is exactly the person that would have been the undoubting pagan. Such an one can I fancy – a humble and devout worshipper of the gods, and even finding a blessing in an uncavilling attendance on the ordinances of religion. One in whom imagination has the requisite predominance over reason

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to enable him to see a resemblance in things which have no real likeness or relation to each other. A native of ancient Greece, entering the temple of Pallas, he bows in reverence to the authorised symbol of divine wisdom, and implores the boon of wisdom for himself, accompanying his prayers with gifts and sacrifices on the altar. Say to him, “Fool! this is an idol of stone, and no deity, which you adore.” He replies with humility,’ This is the mode of worshipping God revealed to my fathers, and handed down to me by them; and if He will be pleased to accept my prayers and my praises, and the tithes of my wealth, offered in the appointed way, and to grant me a blessing withal, it is not for me to play the infidel and question the divine decrees. Rather should I pity you who prefer the treacherous lights of reason to the divine confidence of faith.” ’

 

            ‘Minds,’ observed Arnold, ‘are so infinitely various in their disposition, that it is as impossible for one to doubt as it is for another to take things for granted. On one is bestowed the faculty of trusting, on another that of inquiring. Each must be himself and act out his own character, for all things, however various, have a place and a purpose in the system of the universe. I grant, however, that each ought to cultivate charity with regard to the other; not merely to tolerate that which has at least an equal right to exist, but to try to understand and appreciate it. Because men differ, it does not necessarily follow that either is wrong. One plant is right to be a rose, but another is not therefore wrong in being a cabbage. Each serves its proper end in the general economy.’

 

            ‘My keeping silence, then,’ said Herbert, ‘is quite

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consistent with my belief. I do not hold it to be of infinite importance to agree with me. But that if any-thing be important it is the keeping that frame of mind, that openness of soul, in which one is ever free to receive truth come from where it may; – instead of fancying we have got it fast in an iron chest, and fearing to lose it by allowing it to be seen, or to dim its lustre by letting in the light of day upon it. Even truth is no self-luminous crystal retaining its brilliancy when cut off from surrounding light. I suppose, however, that there is some of that same diversity of nature between me and my kindred. I can still appreciate and love them, while they would condemn me, not so much for having brought my reason to bear on these things, as for having been led to different conclusions. So go on in peace, dear ones of the home, for the remainder of your earthly course. No matter how we diverge here, we shall all meet in heaven at last, and then how some of us will rub our eyes as we look round and exclaim, “How different from what we expected! This is not the heaven we had imagined!” ’

 

            ‘It is curious,’ said Arnold, ‘to see how these ancient difficulties reappear in our modern life. Thousands of years do not change human nature. This very doubt of yours as to how far you are justified in complying with forms which have for you ceased to represent truths, out of regard to the feelings of those who still believe in them, finds an exact counterpart in the case of the Syrian warrior of old. Persecution puts on many forms, – violence, deprivation, social and political. To us it comes in the shape, not less hard to bear, of coldness and reproach from those we love; well-meaning and sincere, no

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doubt, but no less a persecution for conscience’ sake. But your reserve hitherto has kept you from this sad experience.’

 

            ‘Hardly,’ answered Herbert; ‘for it is the consciousness of these feelings of theirs that compels my silence.’

 

            ‘What think you,’ asked Arnold, ‘would be the effect of your putting before them the Syrian’s dilemma as your own; if you were to ask them, “would you continue to go to church if you recoiled from the doctrines you heard there, and felt like Naaman in the temple of his abjured gods?” ’

 

            ‘And suggest,’ cried Herbert, ‘that they to me are as pagans to a Christian? No, no; that would be to destroy the very edifice I am labouring to build, to give the very pain I am suppressing myself to spare them.’

 

            ‘Even,’ said Arnold, ‘if you and yours are of two different natures; if to them is given the cultivation of the affections and the decencies of daily life, and to you the investigation of truth, – there can be no real necessity for your clashing, or even for each failing to comprehend the other. The evil must be traceable to the defective education which limits and contracts, instead of enlarging and expanding, our nature. The “anything for a quiet life” doctrine is a great mitigator of differences, and is as often a symptom of moral strength as of the reverse, though in the case of conscience it is not so easy to say how far truth ought to be paramount to all other considerations. At any rate you have decided that the force which enables you to fight your way out is not sufficient to enable you to carry others with you, or at least to moderate if not destroy their opposition.

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Outwardly quiet and inwardly chafing is no wholesome condition of mind; nor can it be a permanent one. Is it not possible to find more harmonious surroundings?’

 

            ‘I have thought of this,’ replied Herbert, ‘and am inclined to think flight the better part of valour in my case.’

 

            ‘And escape,’ said Arnold, ‘from the tyranny of affection. Well, in our present social development it is oftener those whom we love that bring us grief, than our enemies, as of old. A man’s foes are of his own house-hold, even the sensibilities of his own heart.’

 

            ‘There may be weakness on my part,’ said Herbert, ‘but remember it is not for myself I am seeking to secure the “quiet life” you speak of. It may be a weakness to be dependent on circumstances and to be modifiable by the accidents of position. Yet I can scarcely imagine any one so self-enfolded as to be the same always, equally ice to the north wind and the south. Rather are people like plants, more or less sensitive, and incapable of development unless in favourable conditions.’

 

            ‘I spoke not reproachfully,’ answered Arnold, ‘but merely descriptively, and perhaps hardly correctly, for the weakness, if such it be, would arise from extra strength in another direction; and after all there is but a temporary suppression of conviction in deference to the dictates of affection.’

 

            ‘The one thing needful to me,’ said Herbert, ‘is sympathy, to enable me to fight the battle of life against all comers, be they world, flesh, or devil. Without this I am weak as water; with it I feel as if I could do many mighty works; for sympathy is faith. Only let me get into favourable conditions of existence, that like the oak

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on the mountain I may freely respond to every influence, and expand with all the capacity of my nature.’

 

            ‘Instead of feeling like the clipped shrub in the cit’s garden,’ said Arnold. ‘Though such blasphemy against nature is often regarded as the highest virtue; the whole duty of a man being to suppress himself and be some one else.’

 

            ‘Once,’ observed Herbert, ‘I should have made the conventional reply, “Alas, that nature should have so fallen!” and thought with conventional complacency that I had settled the matter; forgetting that the artist’s work, in whatever stage of its progress, must thus far be a faithful index to the artist’s mind and skill. And this reminds me that a greater difficulty is beginning to loom before me. I fear that I am likely to pass the limits not only of family but of national orthodoxy: and destined as I am for the ministry, and eager to occupy the post in which I can do the most good, I fear lest, when the time comes, I may find myself excluded by inability to conform.’

 

            ‘There are many most useful clergymen,’ said Arnold, ‘who by no means coincide with the popular interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles.’

 

            ‘Possibly,’ returned Herbert, ‘but I think you will find that their change has taken place after and not before they were irrevocably committed to their profession. No honest man would, with his eyes open, enter on a career requiring a life-long hypocrisy.’

 

            ‘Really the matter is so important,’ said Arnold, ‘to all your future prospects that I feel disposed to turn Don at once, and question you in loco parentis. Does it never occur to you that you are expecting too much in a profession,

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pursuing the phantom of an impossible ideal at the risk of allowing the living reality to escape? Why should a clergyman be entitled to the luxury of a career according with every peculiarity of his nature any more than one who becomes soldier, lawyer, or doctor? The bitter and the sweet must be taken together. Some degree of self-sacrifice is required of all of us, as you said. And nothing seems more likely than that the active realities of a useful career will soon eclipse those abstractions which the world is disposed to regard as mere crotchets. Forgive me for saying this, but unless you have strayed very far beyond what I have any reason to suppose, I do not think that any difficulties you may have are such as ever to obtrude themselves when once you get to work, or that your doubts are upon subjects which it would be edifying to bring forward.’

 

            ‘Truly not a “spiritual father,” but one of the earthliest, have you constituted yourself. My own dear theologically-minded parent would settle my doubts by calling them “wicked;” there may be more of the wisdom of the serpent in your mode of treating the question, but I confess it is a far more practical one than the other.’

 

            ‘I think, moreover,’ added Arnold, ‘that the fact of our Church being a national one, provided (in theory at least) by all, and for all, its formularies are intended to include rather than to exclude, so that the greatest latitude of interpretation should be given both to its tenets and to those of its individual members, cleric as well as lay. “Give and take” is the fundamental condition of all human association. Were people to refuse assent to everything on account of their objection to certain petty details, cooperation and even civilisation itself would be

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impossible. Only suppose the Church required the same perfection in its members that you look for in it, how many would be suffered to enter the ministry? The setoff is mutual.’

 

            ‘I can imagine,’ said Herbert, ‘people for whom such arguments would be supreme. I feel, however, that they neither do nor ought to weigh with me.’

 

            ‘Of course the same motives cannot sway every one,’ continued Arnold. ‘The remedy must be adapted to the individual constitution. But let us suppose you are so consistent as to carry your scruples into other relations of life, – into marriage, for instance, which certainly ranks next in importance to that of occupation, whether above or below it. Does it not look as if you ran a great risk of going through life in single harness, unless you succeed in deceiving yourself into a belief that you have found a perfect woman, – a goddess, rather?’

 

            ‘I, an imperfect individual, having no right to such a luxury? Not a perfect woman, however, but one that perfectly harmonises with myself, is what I shall hope for in that remote contingency.’

 

            ‘You have formed an idea of your destined calling which does not please you. How would you act if the question, be it of work or of wife, were no longer an open one, and you were fast bound when these doubts make their appearance?’

 

            ‘I should probably consider that as I had engaged myself for better or for worse, I must make the best of it. It might then be the business of conscience to oppose and stifle feeling.’

 

            ‘I am not clear,’ returned Arnold, ‘that there is any fundamental difference. It is a question of self-indulgence

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in either case. You are betrothed to your profession, if not actually wedded. At least, so you are supposed to be by those who have thus far guided your life. The disappointment would be a terrible blow for them after all the sacrifices they have made to fit you for a career of your own choosing.’

 

            ‘And thus will the tyranny of affection doom my whole life to the jarring of a perpetual discord. No, I would rather lead a solitary life with my dreams for my companions, than marry to find them false, and my ideas destroyed by an uncongenial reality.’

 

            ‘Possibly, so far as a wife is concerned: but work means bread. How about that?’

 

            ‘I can teach. I can write. Anything rather than be fettered and bound to abandon the search for truth with liberty to follow wherever it may lead me.’

 

            ‘To teach, you must have scholars, and to obtain them you must be of unimpeached orthodoxy. As for writing, I think you will allow that the best thing a sceptical unsettled man can do is to be silent.’

 

            ‘You certainly drive me into a comer in a truly parental way. But I know that you feel with me that the search for truth is man’s highest duty and privilege, and that there must be a fatal defect I n any system that prohibits that search?’

 

            ‘The Church prohibits the search for truth, – the Church of England?’ exclaimed Arnold.

 

            ‘Not for the truth of its own tenets, but for truth independently of them.’

 

            ‘Believing its own doctrines to be true, is it to be blamed? ‘

 

            ‘Surely, because the search it allows is not for truth,

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but for proof of its own doctrines. Suppose the same limitation imposed upon the students of any science: – the Astronomer Royal, for instance, retaining his appointment on condition of his maintaining certain stated doctrines, as that of the earth’s immobility, so long firmly believed in. Even now that we are so sure the earth does move, it is the duty of astronomers to prove that it does not if they can, and all honour will be done the man who shall succeed in doing so. Similarly I conceive it to be the duty of students in every science to uphold nothing dogmatically, but simply to find out what is true, no matter what existing theory they may demolish. For so only can science be built up on a firm foundation, and truth be glorified.’

 

            ‘Scientific truths; not religious. Would you apply the same method to the truths of reason and revelation?’ asked Arnold.

 

            ‘We don’t know that they are truths of revelation,’ answered Herbert, ‘until we have applied this method to them. We must treat them as in the first category, before we can assign them a place in the second. Not to do this is to proceed upon assumption, which, if I remember aright, you said most people do; and means nothing less than an assertion of infallibility.’

 

            ‘Yes, but I was not speaking in loco parentis then.’

 

            ‘Without enlarging the theme,’ resumed Herbert, ‘by discussing the propriety of severing the unity of God’s universe, and parcelling out his truth into antagonistic divisions, I must confess that what I feel to be a necessity of my nature is freedom: even though I might not dissent from the matter of the dogma, I do object to the dogma as such; in exactly the same way as I should

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object to the study of astronomy being shackled by any necessity of squaring its conclusions by some received opinions that might or might not be correct. Vast room as there is for advance of religious truth, I see but little hope of progress and agreement until the same method is applied to this as to other branches of knowledge.’

 

            ‘Do you find these ideas in vogue in your university?’ asked Arnold.

 

            ‘No. There, as at Oxford, vested interests reign supreme. There, all teaching tends, not to actual investigation and real progress, but to building up the existing state of things and opinions. In the spirit of the Koran they exclaim, There is no Church but the Church of England, and no truth but in her 39 Articles.’

 

            ‘And all examination is forbidden?’

 

            ‘No, only the conclusions are forecast. It is as in the puffing advertisements of the travelling show-woman, the Archbishop may hold dialogue with the Dissenter about church-rates, and the Emperor of China discuss ethics with the oyster, but all end in urging the reader to lose no time in seeing Mrs. Jarley’s wax-work.’

 

            ‘May you not over-estimate the consequences of these restrictions?’ suggested Arnold. ‘Bandages are necessary for weak limbs, though the strong may dispense with them.’

 

            ‘But in this case,’ returned Herbert, ‘the multitude of weaklings appoint limits for the strong. One day at divinity lecture, I was tempted by a remark of the Professor to put a question respecting the nature of the Trinity. The only satisfaction I got was an admonition to accept things as I found them, and not trouble myself with trying to understand them. And this is the system

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for training the men of England, for producing master-minds! Say slaves rather! The children of love may wander at will through all their Father’s garden. From menials only is any part reserved and shut up. Slaves themselves, they would make all souls as abject as their own. Fencing in a tiny comer with a quick set hedge of thorny dogmas and sharp definitions, they call this God’s universe, and proclaim that beyond are man-traps of the evil one: stray not there: – as if, in the spirit of the Manichæns of old, they believed in two Gods – a good and a bad, and in terror do their homage to the latter.’

 

            ‘I see how it is,’ said Arnold; ‘Insight versus Authority. Pity you have not five thousand a year,’

 

            ‘I am not so sure of that,’ replied Herbert; ‘my speculations about things in general have sometimes led me to ascribe the origin of thought to an irritation of surfaces, as if there were certain tissues capable of secreting and evolving ideas, giving them out, as the gymnotus its electricity, in proportion to its excitement. So it seems to me possible that in the absence of all exciting causes the mind might be still and stagnant. Indignation is a powerful stimulant, though not the healthiest; and hitherto I have found my perception the clearest and my ideas most vivid when listening to a sermon that shocks and angers me, as most sermons do in some degree.’

 

            ‘The irritation gives intensity of feeling to the mind, as the acid which the dishonest gambler applies to his finger to increase its sensitiveness so as to be able to detect the minute punctures with which he has marked the cards. In your case, however, one function of the sermon is to supply material for thought. But are you not abandoning your advocacy of sympathy, and favouring the

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claim of opposition as the favourable condition of development?’

 

            ‘One does not care to live in close contact with one’s irritant,’ answered Herbert; ‘but l think the contradiction is only apparent. They areas the two opposing poles of the magnet; the effect of one is healthy, and of the other unhealthy. What is unpleasant cannot be good, unless nature is an unintelligible mass of contradictions. And I am sure we make more progress in our search after truth when you enact your own natural part, than when you put yourself in loco parentis, no matter how shrewdly you may play the character.’

 

            ‘In another year you will take your degree, and be called on to sign the Articles.’

 

            ‘Ah, yes; but at present I do not allow myself to think of it. All seems so dark and doubtful when I at-tempt to pry into the future, that I find myself utterly unable to foresee how l shall act when the time comes for decision. This long talk has been a great help to me; relieving feelings long pent up, and giving me a clearer view of my own mind and position. You live so far off that it may be long before we meet again. I shall not hesitate to trouble you when I want to disburden myself, and hope you will find time to answer my letters.’

 

 

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CHAPTER II

 

THE ESCAPE

 

            NEARLY two years passed without any communication between the two friends, beyond an exchange of letters on the occasion of Herbert’s taking his degree. Little or no change had taken place in his mind in respect to the great difficulty that confronted him. He shrank equally from his intended profession, and from revealing to his parents the real state of his mind.

 

            But it was impossible to conceal from them that something was not well with him. The variableness of his manner, between long fits of moody silence and an almost spasmodic cheerfulness, gave rise to surmises that his mind had received a strain from hard study and late hours, which would only yield to rest and the regular habits of home.

 

            Of calm and equable temperament, and unexercised in mental conflicts about religious matters, Herbert’s parents could little comprehend the severity or even the nature of those struggles which harass so many of our generation, concerning questions which it was the fashion of all respectable contemporaries of their own to take for granted, or to consider that, like the Ark of the Covenant, it was sacrilege to touch them.

 

            He plunged with apparent eagerness into those amusements and gaieties of society which are so often resorted to as a drug to banish reflection or deaden pain. His parents observed this with grief, fearing their son

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was forsaking religion for ‘the world.’ Herbert saw their regret, and at once gave up all his social excitements for solitary exercises of the most muscular kind. whereupon they comforted themselves with the thought that he had only been sowing his few wild oats – a necessary part of his great preparation for the ministry – and that he would be all the more exemplary in his calling from having had some personal experience of pomps and vanities. He had graduated nearly a year when Arnold received the following letter:

 

                                                                       ‘Steamship Great Western,

                                                                                  off Barbadoes, Nov. 1848.

 

            ‘You will hardly be surprised, dear friend, at the solution of my difficulty which the above date will at once have suggested to you. The result thus far has entirely justified my somewhat hasty resolution. The clouds and thick darkness that well nigh overwhelmed me while in England have all cleared away, and here, on the broad bosom of the Atlantic, have I first seen the clear sky above and around me, and felt myself no alien but a very part of this glorious universe.

 

            ‘Though agonised beyond all previous conception for the first week by sea-sickness, the throes of which were as those of birth into a new life, I could not but rejoice in the beauty of the big, bounding, blue billows of Biscay, as they raced along shaking their snowy crests as for very wantonness. There was a strange phenomenon for me (I don’t know if others have experienced it) in the intense feeling of exaltation which followed the paroxysms of the malady. The mind seemed to grow vast and luminous in proportion as the body sank in weakness and lassitude. That whole week I was in ecstasy. As if

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quite independent of the senses, I seemed possessed of universal intuition, and could jump at a bound over all ordinary steps of reasoning to the just conclusion beyond. Past and future were as near to me as the present. At once prophet, poet, and clairvoyant, and gifted with tongues to boot, all thought expressed itself for me in perfectly rhythmical verse; and in this state of mind I read for the first time Carlyle’s Hero-worship.

 

            ‘I know now what is meant by “revelation.” In addition to the wondrous power of the book, there was that in myself that made each sentence spread out into a whole chapter, each page into a volume.

 

            ‘The book was the book of truth, and the finite contained the infinite.

 

            ‘My feeling to the author himself was that of a rescued patient to the physician. No fee seemed too large for gratitude. And indeed I have found here not only medicine but food, such as my nature craved. Now I have nourishment that I can digest and assimilate; and now methinks I can grow to the stature of a man! Hail! happy release from those weary years of mental dyspepsia, when growth was arrested, and life kept down at zero, and the whole system crammed and choked with the forced meat of dogmatic theology.

 

            ‘Never more let me be told that there are good people, much less happy ones, who hold the notions instilled into me. They. don’t believe them. I did. Not that they are hypocrites. But by belief I don’t mean mere assent through habit. and early education, and the going on indifferently through life, much as they would if they did not believe. No; for me there was a God who made devils as well as men; a hell as well as the fair earth and

(p. 24)

heaven; and who required a sacrifice of blood and agony, ay, even that of the innocent, before he could receive and pardon the poor straying babes of his own begetting. And it was even such a Being as this who made the rainbow and the flowers, and music and laughter. (No, no; there is no real belief until one discerns the necessary harmony between every part of the divine whole.)

 

            ‘I think I can tell you, in a few words, the condition of mind that I have been so long craving. I want to get out of the strife – away from the noise, and dust, and confusion of the combatants upon the plain, and to over-look, as from an eminence, the conduct of the whole battle. I want to get away from the atmosphere redolent of opinions, and doctrines, and authority, and technicality, – to breathe the pure air that blows on the old silent hills of God.

 

            ‘It seems that if I can get away from all mention of religion, and pass months without seeing even a Bible, I shall come to understand far more than ever. It is the reverse of faith that has come to me by hearing.

 

            ‘The constant repetition has utterly darkened the meaning of words for me. Some time ago I tried the effect of frequently repeating to myself one of the commonest words, until I became convinced that no such term existed, so entirely did it cease to convey any idea to my mind. It is the same with the technical phrases which so abound in the pulpit, and in the private life of the somewhat narrow circle in which I have lived.

 

            ‘I know your large sympathy will read kindly all the crude jottings I hope to send you from time to time. You will not brand me with the harsh names so freely bestowed by “good Christian folk” on all whose intellectual

(p. 25)

conclusions diverge from their own. Often have I thought how little people can know the full value of words, when they give so much pain by their reckless use of hard names. You, on the contrary, can comprehend how scepticism itself may be but a name for a higher faith.

 

            ‘But I must not close this letter without telling you of the immediate cause of my departure from England. The year after I took my degree was passed apparently in reading for orders, but really in seeking for a way of escape from the necessity of taking them. Not that I no longer felt the Church to be my truest vocation; but because the Church itself was fitted with such narrow doors that I felt there was no room for me to enter without leaving outside the views which were expanding them-selves before me; or, if I entered, to abide there in peace, content with seeing God and nature through a chapel window.

 

            ‘And so, after much disquietude to my own mind, and some puzzlement to parents and guardians, from whom I concealed the real state of the case, allowing them to place my restlessness to the score of natural love of adventure and desire to see more of the world, before settling down in one spot probably for life, I have obtained a year’s grace with means to do as I like. So here I am, resolved to enjoy the present and ignore the future. I have undertaken, too, a sort of mission to one of the West India islands, to see what has become of some estates that are, or rather were, in the family; for some years have elapsed since they have been heard of. We are approaching the first land that we have seen for a month. Barbadoes its name; a place associated in my mind with sugar and sharks, yellow fever and dignity

(p. 26)

balls. I shall post this letter there, and look for one from you in the post-office at Kingston, Jamaica; at which place, though devoid of any definite plans, I have a strong conviction I shall find myself before many weeks are over.’

 

 

CHAPTER III

 

THE ISLANDS

 

                                                                                  ‘Jamaica, February, 1849.

 

            ‘MY DEAR ARNOLD,

 

            ‘These West Indies are glorious. Their beauty is beyond anything I had imagined of scenery. All my prejudices against them have vanished. So grossly have they been calumniated, that I am perhaps only too ready now to believe all that is here said in their favour. I have visited nearly every island between Barbadoes and Jamaica. A climax of beauty. The former, plainest of all, yet made the deepest impression upon me. It was my first experience of tropical scenery. An unexpected chance, too, was in my favour. Instead of finding myself a stranger on a foreign strand, the very first person who came on board when the steamer dropped anchor was a friend whom I supposed to be far away in England. I was at once “in town,” to use the phrase of a Yankee fellow-passenger. Dinner ashore and a bachelors’ ball that very evening l Here was good fortune; at once to

(p. 27)

see all the youth and beauty of the place in their best clothes. Everything was done in English fashion, with the addition of a general yellowness of complexion, and a tremendous over-dressing on the part of the men.

 

            ‘The affairs of the island had long been in a depressed state, Wilberforce and weather having combined to ruin the planters. Years had passed without any heart for gaiety. Now there was an improvement. Prosperity was dawning again, in token whereof the bachelors of the island projected a ball, and with so much spirit did they go into it that an extra allowance of wax was bestowed on the floor of the dancing-room, and several days were spent by the committee in sliding upon it. The result was that several couples tumbled down in the quadrilles, and few had the hardihood to waltz at all.

 

            ‘I accepted an invitation to visit a plantation some miles away. The night was far spent when I started with my new friend in an open carriage. The road ran, for some distance near the shore, over the hollow coral, which resounded thunderously beneath the wheels. And the passage through fields of sugar-cane, guinea-corn, orange, tamarind, banana, and manchineel trees, was to me one of perpetual strangeness.

 

            ‘The low booming of the waves against the reef, the peculiar balminess of the tropical night with its clear starry sky, and the silent rule over all of the moon, now near its full, made the scene one of such enchantment that l shall never forget that drive.

 

            ‘By-and-by the silver light began gradually to with-draw from overspreading the whole heavens, and to concentrate itself in the west, as the glow in the east increased. We had reached a part where the island was

(p. 28)

so narrow as to allow the sea to be visible on either hand. And the eastern waves still reposed in darkness as the empire of day dawned above them. There was something almost touching in the gentle dignity with which the moon abdicated her soft sway in favour of the kinglier orb. She vanished below the horizon. And presently, as with a jump, the sun revealed himself, for a moment pillowing his chin upon the edge, and flinging out long golden streamers towards us on the dancing waters, and then bounding upwards on his career of victory.

 

            ‘I enjoyed immensely my few days at the plantation. The kindness of the owners and the novelty of the whole scene made it full of delight. One never appreciates the land so much, I fancy, as after a first voyage. The intense pleasure of being still, of lying on the grass, by turns dozing and gazing up into the boundless blue, or watching the blacks at work, – a happy, chattering race, described exactly in some of Captain Marryat’s novels. One day I found myself drawn into a reverie about the “vestiges of creation,” and the development theory, by seeing a monkey rolling a bottle within the limits of his tether, in imitation of the black gardener who was rolling the garden walk. An ascending series indeed, – the monkey, the negro, and myself, – and complacently enough did I speculate as to where was the greatest interval, between the two former or the two latter. If absence of pain be the criterion, thought I, surely the monkey has the best of it. If capacity for pleasure, surely myself. But then, this involved the greatest capacity for pain. And so my thoughts ran on until it appeared to me that the mean or starting-point of all our natures is much the same, only that the higher organisation

(p. 29)

extends to a greater distance in all directions, involving greater capacity. We are all concentric circles, ellipses rather, but some are larger than others. But I could not solve the question for the developmentalists. Can the small circle grow into the large one? Can monkey become man? Neither did I take him by the hand, and say, “Hail, brother (or father) monkey!” for I might have got bitten in return. It does not matter though, for, distant as any relationship may be now, trace our pedigrees far enough and we surely have a common ancestor in – God. Moreover, despite the monkey’s imitativeness, it does not appear that he is so nearly allied to man in his moral and intellectual faculties as other animals that have less outward resemblance. I was told some extraordinary stories about the force of the wind in the great hurricane of 1831. The loss of life is computed at two thousand, and of property at a million and a half. But when one hears of a woman being cut in two by a piece of board, of pebbles embedded in rock and hard wood, and of a twelve-pound carronade carried a hundred yards by the wind, it is difficult to reconcile these things with our temperate experience of atmospheric pressure. Add to such a scene the dashing down of meteors like red-hot masses of molten metal, and it is little wonder that the affrighted people fancied the end of the world, or at least of their little portion of it, had indeed come. What tremendous fellows must the indigenous deities of these regions have been!

 

            ‘I must refer you to my general epistles home for full accounts of the merely objective parts of my progress. Those that I send to yourself are rather as pictures for you to copy on your canvas. Would that I could send you

(p. 30)

sketches of the many scenes that strike me as well worth taking likenesses of, which you, with your artistic skill, might develop into real pictures. But, alas! words, words, are all that are at my command.

 

            ‘Should you ever need change of air and scene, you cannot do better than take a winter’s cruise in these seas. You would return to the old world, its toils and its troubles, cheered and invigorated by your glimpse of a beauty before unknown, like one who has dreamt of heaven and woke smiling, or the Peri, whose peep into Paradise changed her sadness into joy and hope – (not always the result of looking behind the scenes).

 

            ‘The only other picture I shall paint for you this time is of San Domingo. This immense island, as we steamed towards it, was entirely wrapped in clouds, massive, black, and impenetrable, and such rain I Towards noon the veil was slowly lifted, disclosing lovely valleys in among hills covered with perpetual verdure, with innumerable waterfalls tumbling down the sides and glistening like silver threads amid the dark foliage. And then the sun comes out behind us, and beats upon the huge cloud as it still rests upon the hills, and it straight-way responds with a rainbow, nay, two, which thread the dark mass, seeming to arch over the entire island, and rest on the sea beyond; and not a momentary glory either, but lasting nearly all the afternoon, moving as we moved, and ever crowning the beautiful isle with more beauty, making a frame and a picture worthy of each other.

 

            ‘Nor is San Domingo less lovely in detail. Fancy a narrow valley running for miles between two lines of hills cultivated with all art along its whole length, and for

(p. 31)

some little way up the slopes on either side, and immediately above this concession to mortal needs, nature resuming her sway and rioting in all tropical profusion, – flinging, as in playful affection, an abundance of wild tendrils over the farthest tops of the rugged hills.

 

            ‘Can it be to the influence of such surroundings that the prevailing lightheartedness is owing?

 

            ‘Dwelling in a little village among a black chattering population, I came across a French marquis of the old school. Long ago despoiled of all inheritance at home, he lives by keeping a little shop, and supplying the negroes with needles and thread, and tape, and such small deer. A man of courtly manners, evidently a gentleman; there he lives among these people, as one of themselves, loquacious and happy, and without a shade of discontent, serving out his wares, and receiving tiny copper coins in exchange with as much apparent satisfaction as if he were at the head-quarters of life and could imagine no superior fate.

 

            ‘I wonder if he is always so. There may be natures so equable as never to have a moment of depression or reaction. I cannot help having a theory on the subject: self-consciousness must involve intervals of unhappiness: not to be self-conscious is to be as bird or beast, living without knowing it, having no remembrance or anticipation of joy or sorrow. Self-consciousness, too, must involve the consciousness of an ideal or type; a sense of that which nature intended us to be, and how far we fall short of it. To finish my homily, if man be the highest result of Nature’s long effort to become self-conscious, to “know herself;” not to be self-conscious, that is, to be always happy, is to be not one of

(p. 32)

Nature’s highest results. The “perfect man,” then, must be one “acquainted with grief.” My French friend may have been “acquainted” with it, but he certainly has long since dropped all knowledge of it; yet does being thoughtful necessarily involve a degree of morbidness?

 

            ‘Many, many thanks for the letter that awaited me here. I trust to receive many such from you. Truly like the face of a friend in a strange land was it. Your criticisms upon what you are pleased to call my sea-sick theory of Inspiration had already occurred to me. No doubt the spirit is most willing when the flesh is most weak, in matters which require Will rather than deed; or rather not Will, which is the power of Willing, but Fancy. There is a greater power of imagining, or perhaps less power of controlling the imagination, at such times. Music, and other delicate delights, require a light diet. But still I do not see that we need call in the aid of any extraordinary, unnatural faculty to enable man to hold converse with his Maker, or to rise to that height of spiritual intensity which is the necessary condition of inspiration. Are not all who love truth in a like attitude? Each one reaching toward heaven brings down all that comes within his grasp, and he who reaches farthest brings down most.

 

            ‘The difference is rather one of degree and condition. The same man can at one time rise in the loftiest aspirations towards the invisible, and at another time is so utterly dull and depressed, as to easily believe that it was not himself, but something superadded that was operating in him.

 

            ‘I regard the infinite and eternal as the constant,

(p. 33)

always there, and always ready. Man, the inferior, is the variable, only occasionally rising into divine contact. If we must admit caprice (or, as the Calvinists call it, grace); making right the consequence of will, instead of will the consequence of right; let it be on the part of man rather than of God.

 

            ‘So you still think that I ought to have made a clean breast of it before leaving England.

 

            ‘Vary the phrase, and say that things ought to have been such as to enable me to do so, and I agree with you. But as they were I could not do it. There are moral impossibilities as well as physical. The stream cannot flow when chilled into ice. Neither can the sorrow-stricken or the criminal pour his grief or his confession into an ear that he knows to be utterly cold and unsympathising.

 

            ‘You cannot realise what it is to encounter the coldness, and the sneer, and the charge of “spiritual pride,” ay, and even of impertinence at presuming to doubt the truth of what has been taught one from childhood. And when on the one side where one has most right to look for help, the cautious suggestion of any difficulty is met with advice to thrust all such thoughts aside as a “temptation of the devil; “and to the simple and implicit faith of the other, the very idea of doubt causes acute pain and dread; surely silence becomes not only excusable, but inevitable. I have not forgotten your ascription of the phenomena to the too common habit people indulge of assuming themselves to be infallible, instead of regarding the world. as a school, in which none have finished their education.

 

            ‘Besides, how could I be certain that all difficulty would not vanish with time, so that I might return to

(p. 34)

fill my post untainted with the charge of youthful “free-thinking.”

 

            ‘I cannot help fancying that you speak more dogmatically than of old about “right” and “wrong,” and the danger of individuals judging for themselves when the broad paths of truth and frankness are open to them. I am greatly pleased to hear that you have succeeded to the deanery of your college: but am I wrong in attributing the change I have noted to the influence of your new occupation of lecturing transgressing under-graduates? It must be more “dangerous” not to judge for ourselves, and the position of the sharp boundary dividing right and wrong must vary with circumstances. We cannot be wrong in trusting to the analogy between, or rather the unity of, the moral and physical universe here. We find no absolute in nature, but only order or adaptation. “Dirt” in the house, is not “dirt” in the garden. It is only something out of its place. And so no action can be judged by itself, any more than the meaning of a word or a sentence apart from its context.

 

            ‘And so with everything in life; until we possess all knowledge of a circumstance, “judge not” seems by far the wisest frame of mind. It ought to be the only practicable one. All other is prejudgment, prejudice.

 

            ‘But I don’t apply this sermon to you and your most friendly letter. My usual “subjectivity” has drawn me into a train of thought that hardly grows out of the occasion. Indeed I have rather needed the admonition for myself, for I found it no easy matter to reserve judgment until I had thoroughly completed the task which I had undertaken in this part of the world. The estates have too surely gone out of the family for ever. At first irritated

(p. 35)

by the huge neglect of which the plantations everywhere bore evidence, and the indifference with which I and my credentials were received, it was with much distaste that I brought myself to make personally the investigation that is usually entrusted to a local agent.

 

            ‘The story is, however, simple enough. Absenteeism, followed by emancipation. The manager lived upon the property and devoted himself entirely to it, his remittances on behalf of “profits” becoming small by degrees until they vanished altogether. With his own salary in arrears, he struggled on and worked the estate in hope of preserving it for its owners, and of being repaid when better days should come, receiving no aid from the absent proprietors. And when he at last died, the management naturally fell to his sons, who had no difficulty in proving its indebtedness to their father in more than, in the then depreciated value of property, it would bring in the market. And so it became theirs, and they were soon glad to part with it to the party whom I found in possession.

 

            ‘Matter enough for moralising. Sufferers though I and mine be, it is difficult to quarrel with the justice of the retribution thus inflicted on proprietors who forget that property has its duties as well as its privileges. As for emancipation, it has ruined the negroes as well as the planters.

 

            ‘Well meant, it was badly done; and with about as much wisdom as if in love of liberty we were to set loose all the inmates of Bedlam, or invest the denizens of an infant school with the responsibilities of mature life.

 

            ‘My next letter will be from some part of South America, for I have resolved to wander on to the full length of my tether, and my inclinations are drawn thither by some fellow-travellers with whom I have fraternised.

(p. 36)

So please direct your next letter to – I think Panama will be the best place, as I shall leave instructions there as to my whereabouts. Some of my new friends live there, and I shall be sure to get my letters, so don’t write sparingly, as with an impression that they may not reach me.’

 

 

CHAPTER IV

 

THE ISTHMUS

 

From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal.

 

                                                                                  Panama.

 

            IN curious time have I lit upon this place, when the old Spanish population are roused from their quiet repose of decay by an irruption of gold-hunters from the North American States, bound for that newly acquired territory which rejoices in the pleasant name of California. The accounts that are constantly arriving are truly marvellous, and yet there is a consistency in them that makes them look so like truth that it is difficult to doubt them. It is curious to observe the contrast between the different races now here, the indolent, easy-going, half-caste Indo-Spanish, and the active, enterprising, self-sufficient Anglo-American. One soon understands how the United States have attained their rapid growth. The Spaniards must have once had similar qualities, but their energy has evaporated, and this new incursion from the hardier

(p. 37)

north may be needed to keep the soil from reverting to barbarian hands. Perhaps a succession of races, like a rotation of crops, is part of nature’s method for turning the earth to best account. The currents of population so much resemble those of the atmosphere: rising heated from the earth in the tropics, the vacancy is supplied with cool air from the direction of the poles. The great movements of mankind, too, like the trade-winds, are always westwards, as well as towards the equator, and so a perpetual current is established and stagnation prevented.

 

            It was in the face of innumerable adverse reports that I came here. At St Thomas’s it was asserted that the cholera was raging both at Jamaica and on the Isthmus.

 

            At Jamaica, that the emigrants were dying like rotten sheep at Chagres, that all respectable people had left Panama, and that three thousand men are waiting there for passage to the gold-fields.

 

            At Santa Martha, that throat-cutting is much in fashion at San Francisco. Now that I am here I find but little sickness, yet many hundreds of emigrants, almost all from the United States, rough stalwart fellows, well fitted to cope with the difficulties of the wilderness.

 

            The other night I mingled with a group of them who were eagerly listening to a man who said he had just re-turned from the ‘Placers,’ He gave a glowing account of their wealth, and said that large fortunes were being made in a single season; that spring was the time for working, the summers being hot and sickly. He had gold-dust in his possession which he said he had himself dug and washed. Certainly if he was merely acting a part

(p. 38)

on behalf of the passenger vessels or Californian merchants, he did it admirably. All that he said had an air of veracity about it, and the indifference about trifles with which he exchanged a bag of gold-dust, weighing about three ounces, for a pistol, with one of the crowd, looked natural enough to be genuine. And why should the news be false? I hope, if only for the sake of these poor fellows, many of who in have sold their farms and otherwise mortgaged all their property at home in order to obtain means for the enterprise, that it is true.

 

            The shopkeepers are making the most of the unusual demand for their wares. It is unfortunate for them that their customers are on their way to, instead of from, the gold country. However, they charge all the same as if they were, and take it for granted that every stranger is bound thither. My remonstrances about the enormous price of everything are invariably met with the grinning reply, ‘Mucho oro en California.’

 

            The people here seem to regard their absorption into the United States as inevitable, They are aghast at the overwhelming energy of the new race that is manifestly destined to supersede the Spanish, as the Spanish superseded the aboriginal. And no wonder; for if energy be the proof of life, whatever life these Spanish Americans once had is long ago departed. They are simply cumbering the ground, until, like an old tree, they are grubbed up to make way for something that can make a better use of its advantages.

 

            He who looks upon wheels as almost the soul of civilisation, can hardly credit his senses when he finds the highway of nations between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans a mere trail along which a mule can with difficulty

(p. 39)

pick his way even in the best of seasons. And I am assured that even the great roads leading to the metropolis of Central America, the city of Mexico itself, are not a whit better.

 

            My expeditions are generally made on foot, for then I can carry a gun, and wander away without anxiety on behalf of my quadruped’s rations, in case of being benighted, and unable to make home. For myself, there are native huts to be found almost everywhere, and coffee, eggs, and a sort of insipid pancake called ‘tortillas,’ are always to be had.

 

            I have become quite indifferent to the charms of a bed, rather preferring to sleep in the open air. Doubtless the novelty has something to do with it. But a tropical night (in the fine season) is a glorious thing. Last night there was a degree of ecstasy in it for me. On my way back from Gorgona (a village on the Chagres river, whither I had gone to look after some missing baggage), finding myself benighted, I stopped at a hut which stood alone on the top of a round hill, in a small open space surrounded by a wilderness of trees. The half-dozen inmates were people of uncomfortable, not to say ruffianly, aspect. Neither was the interior of their abode reassuring on the score either of cleanliness or of anything else. So having got what refreshment I needed, I accepted their offer of a bit of canvas, and laid myself down at a little distance, with my gun handy, in case of being visited by any of the wild beasts that infest the forests, over one of which, a jaguar, I had almost stumbled on the previous evening. He did not, however, molest me, but went slowly and sulkily away, and soon disappeared in the thicket.

 

(p. 40)

            After a few hours’ sound sleep I woke, with the stars shining full in my face, brighter it seemed than ever they shone before. The night and stillness were upon me and all this western world; and a wild joy it was to feel one-self detached from all the ties and strivings of life, with no hedge between me and the Universe of reality, holding silent communion with the stars, and returning gaze for gaze.

 

            Again I slept, and woke with a blast of hot air in my face. Starting u p, I found an ox bestriding me, and curiously inspecting the stranger. Huge he looked in the darkness, but a rap on the nose at once sent him scampering. It was no easy matter to get to sleep again, for the howling and chattering of beasts and monkeys in salutation of the expected day.

 

            The third time I woke, and the gentle breath of the early dawn soon fanned away all traces of sleep. The golden light spread along on the hills, and sank in among the dark masses of trees that fringed the horizon; a warning to start without delay, before the heat should become too intense for travelling.

 

            One misses here the sweet country sounds that in England greet one by night and by day.

 

            Resting in the shade of these tall trees covered with luxuriant parasites twining about them in every direction and hanging from the topmost boughs down to the ground, like ship’s cables, so regularly and evenly are they twisted; oppressed with the soft languor of the balmy air and the rich beauty of the strange foliage, how delicious it would be to be sung to sleep by the sweet birds of one’s own land. Noise in abundance there is, but no music. Overhead fly troops of brilliant-plumaged parroquets and

(p. 41)

flamingoes, screaming with harsh discordant voices, and no ear to tell them how harsh. (I wonder if anybody ever finds his own voice disagreable?) No nightingale ever wakes the echoes of these woods with her soft flowing notes. No songster here soars aloft to greet the morning sun. One mute worshipper indeed there is in the magnificent blue butterfly, which, on wings each a hand broad, soars high above the trees, as if to match the azure of heaven with its own. For once I find Samuel Rogers a poet to my mind. Had he ever seen such butterflies when he sang thus?

 

‘Child of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight

Mingling with her thou lov’st in fields of light;

Or where the flowers of Paradise unfold

Quaff radiant nectar in their cups of gold:

There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky,

Expand and close in silent ecstasy.

Yet wert thou once a worm, – a thing that crept

On the bare earth – then wrought a tomb, and slept.

And so shall man rise from his cell of clay,

To burst a seraph on eternal day.’

 

            And all day long, on hill and dale, in sun and shade, the ear is pierced as by innumerable railway whistles by the shrill chicharra, or cicala, of which there may be half a dozen within as many yards, but sought in vain to be seen. Listen; one is beginning. It commences with a low gurgling sound, which gradually increases in rapidity and volume, like the run taken by the bowler before delivering the ball, and now bursts forth into a clear intense whistle, which lasts a minute or two, and may be heard a mile away. Many a fruitless search have I had for them. Fortunate at last, one leaps across my path, and straightway becomes a captive to my stick. It is

(p. 42)

a sort of locust or grasshopper, light green, and about thee inches long.

 

            A rustling in the underwood! What is this gliding along? It looks like the lash of an animated coach-whip of the biggest dimensions and the brightest yellow. An ugly fellow, no doubt, with all his beauty, is that same whip snake. No place this for a noonday nap. Two or three dexterous blows with my trusty stick near the foremost end, at which I suppose the head to be, and all power of mischief is past. He measures eleven feet in length, and is little thicker than my thumb.

 

            And now that I have examined his teeth, I don’t think he is a venomous snake. And even if he were, what right had I to kill him? Exactly the same right he had to kill me – the right of the strongest; and the motive the same – fear. I ought to have known better. He too enjoyed life; and this wilderness, which belonged to him more than to me, is surely wide enough for both. But I did not feel afraid of him. There was another reason; even the antipathy against all the serpent tribe, so early instilled as to be reckoned instinctive. I can fancy the ghost of the dead snake quoting Lucretius against me:

 

‘Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!’

 

            O theology! would that thou hadst no other and worse cruelties to answer for! Be this the last feather on thy camel’s back. Perhaps, however, it is the instinct that has produced the theology.

 

*          *          *          *

 

                                                                                                          Old Panama.

 

            And this is the city of Pizarro. Here were planned

(p. 43)

the expeditions of the robber chieftain, and hence he sailed on his missions of violence and plunder. Silent enough now. But a pleasant seven-miles’ canter by dense wood and palm groves, by open down and sandy shore, from its prosperous supplanter, Old Panama requires a guide to find it. Dead enough, and buried too. Buried so effectually that one may pass within ten paces of its walls and yet discover no city. Fallen, and crumbled, and covered with forest, Old Panama attests Nature’s wondrous power of self-repair from the damage inflicted by man. She buries the. cities of the East in yellowest dust, and of the West in greenest foliage.

 

            If man is ever doomed to revisit the scene of his earthly deeds, what a city of tombs must the ruffian soul of Pizarro find this!

 

            Yet not ruffian now, perchance. Three centuries of meditation, three centuries of silence, and thoughts may have taken root and sprung up, even as yonder noble tree between those four broken walls, to overshadow and hide the ruins, and replace them with something of life and beauty. How strangely jars the voice of man here, like laughter in a graveyard. Well sings Hood –

 

‘Here in green ruins, in the desolate walls

Of antique palaces where man hath been,

Though the dun fox or wild hyæna calls,

And owls, that flit continually between,

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan;

Here the true silence is self-conscious and alone.’

 

*          *          *          *

 

                        Sunday.

 

            Here is a place to spend a Sunday morning. My old college delight again, wandering in the meadows beside

(p. 44)

the lazy river, instead of listening to the harsh polemics of a University sermon.

 

            How delicious is this cool upland air, after the toil of climbing a thousand feet and more. A noble’ reward is this magnificent panorama for one’s patient perseverance in not allowing a single backward glance until the summit was gained. Stretching away to right and left are the indented shores of the bay; on either side are the hills, and the town is just below, while the smooth Pacific holds half the horizon in its embrace. The atmosphere is in that state that the horizon appears inconceivably distant.

 

            Sea and sky spread out like two vast parallel plains, gradually approaching each other in the perspective, yet never meeting until infinity has been spanned in the process.

 

            It was such a view of the Pacific from one of these Isthmian hills that first broke upon the astonished Balboa, an omen to his ardent mind of boundless wealth and honour.

 

            To a more subjective nature, to the man of thought rather than of action, it suggests an oppressive sense of littleness. As wave after wave rolls onward in ceaseless undulation, as if deriving its impetus from the infinite unseen, only to break on the shore below; so man comes, he knows not whence, to work, to wonder, and to vanish. An atom in space, and an atom in time, it is not strange if his wonder culminates in worship. And where better than in such a scene as this can his emotions towards the Infinite find a stimulus and an expression?

 

            How pleasantly does the sound of yonder church bells steal up from below, and fall on the ear, – not as coming

(p. 45)

from a single point, but diffused through the whole air and mingling with the landscape.

 

            I looked in as I came along, and saw the painted images decked in the tawdry finery of dirty white satin, artificial flowers, and tinsel. The music, instrumental and vocal, alike vile; and I thought of Southey’s words –

 

‘Go thou, and seek the house of prayer;

I to the woodlands wend, and there

In lovely nature see the God of prayer:’

 

And of him, too, who denounced church-goers as hypocrites, and went up into a mountain to pray. The Pharisees of old denounced only the plucking the ears of corn on the Sabbath. Those of our day forbid the very walk in the corn-field. Arnold, my friend, would you were here to talk with me. If thy spirit is at my call, I summon thee to my side. Methinks I hear the old well-known tones, with no dean-like twang –

 

            ‘Yet these people must find their devotional feelings excited by their rituals. They must have some kind of faith in them, or why continue them? Man seems to have in his nature a want of something tangible to connect him with the Invisible.’

 

            Myself. ‘The office of symbolism. At first designed to be a sort of half-way house between the finite and the infinite, – a mediator, in fact, invested with its functions by no inherent fitness, but solely by grace of the human imagination, – one has only to look down yonder to see that the symbol has become the slayer and supplanter of the two divine witnesses, Nature and Reason.’

 

            A. ‘Idolatry being defined as being not the use but the worship of symbols.’

 

(p. 46)

            Myself. ‘Unless there be an identity between the thing symbolised, that is, the Actual, and the Symbol.’

 

                A. ‘Hardly possible for the middleman to be the principal; or, as you have just put it, for the half-way station to be the terminus.’

 

            Myself. ‘Yet you and all Christians hold that only God is to be worshipped?’

 

            A. ‘Of course, the worshippers of a mere mediator cannot escape the charge of idolatry.’

 

            Myself. ‘And does the circumstance of Christians calling their symbol God, clear them of the charge? They would not allow the plea to others.’

 

            A. ‘You want a theology without mysteries! But to worship, often means only to pay reverence; a homage such as the ambassador may receive on behalf of his master.’

 

            Myself. ‘Then, either there is no such thing as idolatry; or else all worshippers, no matter of what, are idolaters.’

 

            A. ‘You mean that the difference is in degree and not in kind.’

 

            Myself. ‘Yes, and the degree varies with the nature of each individual worshipper; from the rude savage, with his uncouth image symbolising to him all physical energy, even up to the Christian who accepts the Perfectest Man as the express image of the Universal Father.’

 

            A. ‘Of course the finite can in no degree represent the Infinite; but having this Unsurpassable One, can we do better than accept Him as our Mediator with God?’

 

            Myself. ‘Not only can we not do better, but we cannot do otherwise, so long as we conceive God to be

(p. 47)

but the ultimate product of our own faculties: a projection of ourselves, as I think some one has put it, like the image of the wayfarer reflected from the mist upon the Brocken, himself, only huge and indefinite. But surely a still higher reach is possible to us, one in which all personification serves only to obscure our perception of Deity.’

 

            A. ‘Until at last it comes to be regarded as a mere abstraction; an Intelligence, an Energy, but no Person. This was the character of poor Shelley’s atheism, as people call it. His conception of Deity was so far removed beyond all power of representation, that it ceased for him to be a person: it was the Pervading Influence, the Spirit or Disposition of Nature, viewed through the medium of his own loving temperament. But how many men can thus gaze out into the infinite? Men must have a back-ground to their view on which the eye can rest.’

 

            Myself. ‘To reflect back their own image, and they call that God?’

 

            A. ‘Rather, like the clouds which reflect back the earth’s heat, to prevent the warmth of the venerational part of their nature from radiating into space and being lost. But you are the same as ever, rejecting the possible Relative, to grasp at the shadow of the impossible Absolute. As I said long ago, you will never marry till you discover or invent a goddess.’

 

            And with this characteristic argumentum ad homimem the Shade of my friend departs, and I descend the mountain alone.

 

*          *          *          *

 

(p. 48)

From a letter to Arnold.

 

            ‘I have caught the infection and my plans are laid. It only remains to succeed, and the thorn is extracted from my life.

 

“I am going to California

A digger for to be.”

 

            ‘I defy any one to be here without sharing the general enthusiasm. We quite lookdown upon the Crusaders of old, whose success could do no one any good, and involved misery and death to myriads, and we run far greater risks in getting to our coveted destination. You see I speak of myself already as one of the noble army of diggers. Fancy six men starting yesterday in a whale boat, hoping, by coasting three or four thousand miles along an unknown shore, some day to reach San Francisco: and not one of the crowd that watched their departure but longed to change places with them. The impatience to be off and at work is almost unbearable, but there are no means of going, everything that can float being taken up. The only possibility of getting on-wards is in the chance of trading vessels in the southern ports hearing of the demand and hastening hither for passengers. As I write I hear a shout and a rush to the beach. A ship is in sight, and with English colours. Later, when I finish this, it may be in the capacity of a booked passenger.

 

            ‘It is all right. The consul has secured me a passage – I was going to write berth, but as the vessel is a barque of some 300 tons, and it is intended to fit her with accommodation for about 200 men, who will have to be packed as close as slaves on the “middle passage,” anything

(p. 49)

like a berth is obviously out of the question. A rough lot I shall have for associates, judging by the agglomeration here, and I must expect to rough it in more ways than one, but I never was a slave to personal comfort, and with the hope of winning an independence and getting free from all obligation to take orders, I have a hope before me attractive enough to lure me through uglier experiences than ever will-of-the-wisp did unwary follower. In another week I hope to be off, and in the mean time I have to equip myself with all things needful for the wilderness: implements for cooking and digging, physic for probable fevers (which I am assured are the rule in Western America), and materials for a tent which I have to sew together myself. This will be a good ship task; we may be several weeks on the voyage. Pray don’t think from my observations above that I have be-come a bit more “practicable” than of old. I don’t shrink from any amount of physical discomfort for a time, though it may far exceed any I might have found in an uncongenial profession. I am by no means inclined to confound conscience and comfort, as you seemed to do long ago in our memorable talk; of which, by the way, I afterwards attempted to make some notes. They were unsatisfactory ones, however.’

 

 

(p. 50)

 

CHAPTER V

 

SEAWEED

 

From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal.

 

            ON board at last, and well away from port. I begin to shake down tolerably into my place. If I can only retain the privilege of my hammock slung up in the rigging, I shall escape the discomfort of the crowded cabin below. Really this floating box ‘Killooney’ is as complete a Noah’s ark of incongruities as ever swam. We have lawyers from ‘down-east,’ hunters from the west, farmers from the north, and slave-owners from the south; Texan rangers, Mexican volunteers, doctors and traders, distressed politicians and professed gamblers, both of which occupations seem to be a regular business in the States: two or three English merchants,, and a couple of English brothers not very long from school, who have turned their patrimony into cash, and started on venturous quest for the newest part of the New World, like a couple of sheep seeking their fortune among a pack of wolves. Really one must have a wooden head and an impervious heart if one fails to find infinite instruction and amusement amid this varied association.

 

            The history of ‘a day on board the Killooney’ would make as spicy a volume as any of Murray’s half-crown library. Joining a knot of eager listeners, I have the benefit of the yarn that holds them breathless. An old Texan ranger is telling of his own hair-breadth chances among the warlike Indian tribes. ‘We knew nothing,’

(p. 51)

he continues after I have joined his audience, ‘of the hostility of the Cherokees to the whites. One evening our guide, an old trapper, said he was sure we were being followed; and if two of us would go back a mile he would undertake to show us Indiana. So, after pursuing our trail through the dense wood until we reached a convenient spot for halting, I and another accompanied the guide into the prairie, crawling among the grass for nearly the distance he had named, when two dark forms appeared about half a mile from our hiding-place, reconnoitring the plain. They soon discovered the smoke rising from our camp, upon which they vanished, as if satisfied with the knowledge of our locality. On rejoining our party, we found them waiting our assistance to devour some squirrels which they had shot and cooked in our absence. We then remounted and rode on lei-surely in a straight line by the compass, having no fear of being overtaken by the Indians, as they would be obliged to make a circuit of several miles in order to reach us unobserved. Besides, it wasn’t likely they would follow us, as they would know from our quitting camp so late that we were on the alarm, and not to be taken by surprise. But I should like to have seen their faces when they found we had gone. Right mad they were, I guess. Well, next evening we arrived at a log-house, the only tenants of which were, to our surprise, an American woman and two children. The Indians had, some few years back, attacked the house; and when she saw her husband and brother lying dead outside, she hastily closed and fastened the door, and seizing the only remaining gun fired through the window upon her savage foes. There she was all that night, with but a plank between

(p. 52)

her children and the murderers of her husband and brother, in horrid suspense as to their intentions. At daylight, apparently content with their devastations, they departed; and she remained, supporting her family by cultivating a small piece of ground, assisted occasionally by wayfaring hunters. She took a great fancy to a short pipe I was smoking, and inquired if I had another which I would part with. I replied that it was the only one I had, but that it was at her service. She accepted it joy-fully, and next morning sent us away with a loaf of bread apiece, refusing any payment, saying that the pipe was ample compensation.’

 

            Here a knot of young fellows are roaring with laughter, as they try to ‘cap’ each other’s stories. One or two of them are worth ‘making a note’ of.

 

            The renowned Davy Crockett is the theme of one. ‘Davy was sauntering in the forest near his clearing one day, when he fell in with a bear climbing a tree; his paws embracing the trunk appeared on the side towards Davy. So, coming up cautiously, keeping the tree between the bear and himself, he caught hold of the animal’s feet, and held them there for an hour or so; until his brother coming along, he desired him to run home for his gun. After an unreasonably long absence, the brother returned, observing that as dinner was just ready he had waited for it.

 

            ‘ “Well, then,” said Davy, “hurry now, and kill this beast, for my arms are aching the worst kind: or, per-haps, I reckon you had better catch hold here, and let me shoot.”

 

            ‘So the brother seized the bear’s paws, just as Davy had done.

 

(p. 53)

            ‘ “Hold fast!” says Davy. “If you let him get loose it’s all up with you!” And then, instead of shooting the bear, he shoulders the gun and walks off, saying, “Now, I guess, I’ll go home and get my dinner.”

 

            The story was inimitably told, and the laughter having subsided, another follows suit, and relates how that, at a ball in Kentucky, a well-known bully placed his hat upon the floor, declaring he would punish any one who should dare to touch it. One who entered the room after this happened to kick it over in dancing. His partner told him of the threatened penalty, upon which he at once kicked it across the room, and then placed it on the blazing fire. The owner, coming up, inquired fiercely, ‘Did you put my hat there?’

 

            ‘Yes, I did,’ was the reply, in a still fiercer tone; ‘and if you come bothering me about your hat I’ll put you there too!’

 

            ‘Ah! that’s your temper, is it?’

 

            ‘Yes, that just is my temper.’

 

            ‘In that case then I’ll have nothing to do with you.’

 

            But my young countryman yonder seems to be in a scrape. One of the passengers is making a list of the names and occupations of all on board, and this youth has described himself as a ‘gentleman-farmer.’

 

            ‘What, in the name of thunder, do you mean by that?’ inquires a big-bearded Yankee of the cowering lad. ‘Do you go for to assert that a farmer isn’t a gentleman? ’Cos if you do –’ I whispered to the fellow, upon which he said, ‘Ah, I can guess what he means; but I’m giving him a lesson, or he’ll find himself insulting some one who won’t treat him so gently.’

 

(p. 54)

            It has been remarked that if any number of persons were to given description of the same occurrence, no two of their accounts would exactly coincide. This seems to be a necessity from the infinite variety of the human mind, which causes each individual to see things from a different point of view. Each lays a stress on some particular item according to his own bias, unconsciously magnifying or diminishing, and therefore distorting certain facts in their proper relation to other facts. I have not the slightest doubt that both my fellow-journalists, who have just favoured me with a view of their notes, firmly believe they have written only the exact truth, when one describes the weather during the voyage as consisting of fresh breezes with but one calm day, while the other (an Irishman, by-the-by), maintains that we have been becalmed all the way.

 

            There has been a discussion about having a religious service 011 Sundays, but as the company appears to consist of persons of every variety of faith, there is little united interest in the movement, and it has been dropped. Rather curiously, I, the most isolated stranger of the party, have been asked to ‘do chaplain,’ which, considering that not a soul on board has any idea that I was specially brought up for that very purpose, seems to indicate a natural fitness for the office, at least as far as appearance and demeanour go. I refused decidedly, though not quite clear as to my reasons; perhaps I shall discover them by-and-by. My instinct was strong enough to make all search for reasons quite superfluous. I shrink from all verbal religion, perhaps because I have never known it except as associated with dogma. Could l join and assist these men in simple worship, which is all they want, I would do what they wish; but I don’t

(p. 55)

know how. There is a marked difference between Sunday and other days, however. We are somewhat more lazy on Sunday. There is less card-playing. Here and there one may be seen reading a Bible instead of a novel. The negro melodies, which seem to form the national music of the United States, are hushed, and a small band of singers supplies the void by hymns and sacred choruses. Neither are we quite without ministrations, for one of the passengers turns out to be a Mormon preacher, who loves to hold forth for the general edification. He is a man of strong character, of a general illiteratism, yet possessing a considerable aptitude for quoting Scripture. Of a passionate and intolerant disposition, he loves to descant on the beauty of goodwill to all men. He enforces his admonitions with ‘my brethren, the Bible says so, and I am very glad it does say so, because I a in sure it is the truth,’ and winds up with ‘and that you may all be for ever happy, is the prayer of your humble servant,’ He seems careful not to touch upon any of the peculiar tenets of his sect, but deals in such general moralities as are of common acceptance.

 

            Strange and exceptional as are the position and aim of us all, one cannot be here without feeling that one is doing the thing that is fashionable and right. The furor in the States must be of extraordinary intensity. One poor fellow here struck me at once by the profound melancholy which marked him as one apart. He had been married just one week when he was seduced by the equivocal attractions of California. He soon found relief, for he encountered one whose fate is similar, only that ne had been married but four and twenty hours before leaving home. The misery of the first paled before that

(p. 56)

of the second, and since the hour of his discovery his melancholy has vanished.

 

            A man was asked to take a hand at whist last Sunday, and refused, saying he wouldn’t play cards on Sunday, but he didn’t mind laying a dollar on the game. A conscientious Scotchman, I imagine. Not a bad subject for a book would be ‘Lines: If, why, how, when, and where they should be drawn.’ I suppose they are indispensable for people who have no principles to guide them; but it must require vast ingenuity to define them. I have heard of a Jew banker, who on the Sabbath never opened a letter, or signed his name, but made the postman break the seal and unfold the letter for him to read. He would pay away money too, if it involved no writing. I wonder if we owe this hair-splitting formalism to the Jews, and whether the Scotch inherit it by virtue of any blood descent. I have Scotch blood in me, and my parents are deeply imbued with Jewish theology. Perhaps the ten lost tribes found their way to Scotland and settled there. In my own evangelically nurtured youth, I was allowed to go to the circus, but not to the theatre; to play bagatelle, but not billiards; to eat hot potatoes on Sunday, but not hot meat. And one of our neighbours rebuked his children for going up-stairs two steps at once on that terribly sacred day; and refused to drink milk with his tea be-cause it involved the labour of milking on Sundays: – a proper protest against the negligence of Providence in omitting to create Sabbatical cows to give a double supply on Saturdays: while another, who was regarded as a very pillar of the faith, forbade the opening of the letter which arrived on Sunday morning to announce the result of a son’s university degree examination, until after service,

(p. 57)

and so kept the poor mother in an agony of anxiety, in-stead of sending her to church with a heart overflowing with joy and thankfulness for the capital place her son had taken.

 

            This Central American coast is very striking in its abrupt changes from richly cultivated valleys to rugged volcanic peaks. Many of the passengers are trying to sketch the curious outlines, or cut them out on paper. One suggests that the creation of this country must have been begun at half-past eleven on a Saturday night, when there were neither time nor materials for finishing it.

 

 

(p. 58)

CHAPTER VI

 

AN EXCURSION

 

From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal.

 

            AT sea again, after a delightful week ashore. We put into Realejo, a port of Nicaragua, for water and provisions not a moment too soon. May our fresh supply of the former turn out better than the first. Whether it was the fault of the water itself, or of the new casks in which it was stored, I know not; but its odour was such that a bucket of it brought into the cabin was the signal for every one to rush out upon deck. The captain has a theory of fermentation to account for it, which I don’t understand, and says it was wholesome though so nasty. Certainly his own way of mixing was calculated to avert any ill effects from that source; – half rum, half lime juice, and the rest water. Judging by the change these few clays ashore have made in us all, I think we must have been undergoing a process of poisoning by it. I don’t see why the supply from the broiling harbour of Realejo, with its deadly-looking mangrove swamps and profuse tropical vegetation, should be any better. At first it seemed as if we should not get anything there, for they took us for ‘Filibusteros,’ and forbade our landi g, and even marched a file of soldiers down to the beach; but the idea of citizens of the United States not being able to get what they wanted from these half-caste Nicaraguans, and being opposed by half-naked negro troops,

(p. 59)

was too much of a joke. On a couple of boats, filled with passengers well armed with rifles and revolvers, pulling to the beach, the blacks ran away, and the commandant came down and said that if it was quite true there was no cholera on board he would let us have supplies. Some half-dozen of us engage horses and gallop through forty miles of such dust as I never imagined before to the capital, San Leon. 11 is holy week, and the religious pastimes of a population that is more Indian than Spanish, and more pagan than Christian, though called Catholic, afford both amusement and instruction. The various scenes of the last days of Christ are enacted in the streets, much, I suppose, in the way of the old miracle plays at home, so that one seems simply to have stepped back five hundred years. Going out early on the Thursday morning, I find, hanging by the neck from a pole thrust out of the belfry of the churches, and variously dressed according to the taste of the devout, the figure of a man, who is evidently the equivalent of our Guy Fawkes. Asking a woman what Hombre Santo that is, I learn that it is Saint Judas, who thus yearly repeats his fate. Judging from his costume, one is led to suppose that it was a passion for fine clothes that prompted his treachery, for he is here represented in a cocked hat and feathers, blue velvet mantle, red satin jacket, yellow trowsers, and patent leather boots. Mounting the tower of the cathedral, which, like all the buildings in the city, is low and massive, so as to be earth-quake proof, I saw in a little chamber huddled together in a heap a pile of dolls of various sizes and degrees of tawdry finery. These, my guide told me, were the images of the saints, waiting the recurrence of their respective

(p. 60)

anniversaries to be brought out for the adoration of the faithful.

 

            I expressed some surprise at the images being treated as sacred only on their birthdays, and learnt that there is a mystery about such things which the priests only understand. Not long ago, he said, a man had died very suddenly and been buried without receiving the last rites of the Church. The priests thereupon assured the son that his father had no chance of happiness, unless a wax image of him was made, and the extreme unction administered to it as it ought to have been to the father. It was a costly operation, but the priests had their way, and there was u o longer any obstacle to the dead man’s eternal blessedness. The story may be true or false, but I see nothing here to make it improbable. It is easy to see how the original theory of vicarious atonement can be extended to all the minutiae of religion. For a priesthood in the least given to priestcraft it would bean invaluable means of extorting gain. To be able to sun oneself and repent by proxy must for many people impart a vast charm to religion. It is so much easier for the rich to pay than to pray. Such a representative system, too, creates a general reciprocity between clergy and laity, whereby each becomes necessary to the other, and secures the Church being duly honoured. Mounting to the flat roof of the cathedral, the man directed my attention to a neighbouring church. having a stone crucifixion over the gateway. In the recent revolution, he said, cannon were planted by the opposing parties on the roofs of the two churches, and a French artilleryman on the cathedral made a bet that he would hit the good thief on the other church, and won it.

 

(p. 61)

            I wonder why the good thief. Perhaps he thought the other has been punished enough; perhaps for the same reason that increased the majority against Aristides by one – he was tired of hearing him called ‘good.’

 

            I found in Nicaragua a Scotchman who has lived there many years, and is engaged in gold-washing. It does not seem to be a very thriving business there, the gold being exceedingly fine and scarce. He took me by a picturesque road among volcanic hills to a region of earlier formation, where he has a rancho and a number of Indians working for him. He does not seem to think much of our chances in California, but I suspect there are other reasons for his not going there. In the huts around his own many of the younger generation are of a lighter complexion than is common to the country, and he is evidently looked up to with a sort of patriarchal respect. A pretty picture would one fair girl make whom I found swinging in a grass hammock slung between two shady trees, her long black hair hanging over one end almost to the ground, and her tiny whity-brown feet hanging bare over the other, while she was intent upon the wreaths of smoke rising from her cigarette. Women have no education here beyond that of nature, as they are believed capable of but one idea – that of love. She took delight in questioning me about my own home and my travels, and wished she could see the world if it could be done without leaving her own country; for that is a thing the women here never do; even if married to foreigners the laws make it very difficult for the husband to take his wife away.

 

            I was surprised to learn from a simple-hearted old Padre who took the rancho in his rounds, that the ancient

(p. 62)

paganism is still maintained by the Indians of Central America, with idols and sacrifices as of old, though they take care that no white man shall see them. ‘I talk to my Indians about it,’ he said, ‘and tell them how superior our religion is to theirs, but they seem to treat religion as a matter of constitution or race, for they say ours may be the best for us, but theirs is the best for them. And when I thought I had persuaded one of the best of them to come into the Church, and was telling him how little change he need really make, just to give up those nasty ugly idols and worship the blessed saints and so on, he said, “If the difference be so slight, Padre mio, it is hardly worth while to make the change.”‘

 

            From the little I have seen I should judge the Spanish part of the population to be rather the lower in intelligence of the two races. l wonder if Englishmen could ever sink so low. Perhaps if they were cut off from all connection with the mother country, and associated only with an inferior race, they would gradually descend to their level. It may thus be the very independence of these republics that has ruined them, and the same thing might befall the United States if the supply of fresh blood was stopped, especially if the white and black races became blended. Here the very climate tends to encourage laziness of mind and body: there is no literature, and little stimulus to physical exertion. If a tree falls across the high-road it is left there till it rots away, and in the mean time all vehicles have to go round it. Indeed I am inclined to think that half the power of the priests is derived from the people being too indolent to resist, and so allowing themselves to be plundered freely. My host in the capital had a notice of

(p. 63)

indulgence posted on his door, promising the remittance of a third part of his sins to the purchaser. I asked why, if he believed in the promise, he did not get three and so have all his sins remitted. He answered with a shrug that every good Christian is expected to buy one – it costs little and does no harm. A sharp Yankee fellow-traveller, hearing this conversation, observed that there would still remain a residuum of sin no matter how many indulgences were bought, for that each remits only a third of the remainder. I had to tell the host, therefore, that to get rid of all his sins it was necessary to buy the three indulgences all exactly at the same moment. But, alas! this emergency also has been foreseen and guarded against. The sinner can buy indulgences as often as he pleases, but only one at a time! His liabilities may by repeated purchases become ‘small by degrees and beautifully fine,’ but there is no place here below for one altogether sinless.

 

            The night before we left San Leon there was a shock of an earthquake, slight but yet sufficient to send the women out into the streets, where they fell on their knees and told their beads, and cried ‘Ave Maria purissima,’ which was no doubt a great comfort to them under the circumstances. It suggested to me a new view of the proverb that says ‘A drowning man will catch at a straw.’ It is true that the straw cannot help him, but it may comfort him to catch at it. At any rate he has the satisfaction of feeling that he is doing his best: he is acting up to the light that is in him.

 

            And now that we are on board once more, with a stock of water, provisions, and health, which ought to be ample for the rest of the voyage to the Golden Gate of

(p. 64)

the New Dorado, the captain is no longer creeping along the coast, but has put out to sea in search of fair and steady winds. One character that I have fallen in with interests me much. He is known only as ‘The Major.’ His reserved and melancholy disposition has kept him during the earlier part of the voyage so much in the fore part of the ship, near his own berth, that I should not have observed him but for his magnificent height and build, and his dark gipsy-like eyes. Just before re-embarking at Realejo I saw him kick oil his shoes and give them to a sailor who had got tipsy and lost his own, saying he was used to going barefoot on his own Welsh hills. Finding another sailor in the boat without a hat he insisted on giving him his own during the nine miles heavy pull under that frightful sun, making only the same observation that he was ‘used to it.’ And when I had twisted into a turban, and dipped into the water, and clapped upon his head a towel that I have learnt always to carry with me when journeying in these regions, he looked at me with a gleam of strange tenderness in his eyes, and asked why I should take any trouble about him. To which I replied by asking why he should risk his life for those sailors. ‘Oh, my life is of no consequence,’ he said, ‘I should be rather glad to be rid of it than otherwise.’ ‘That may be,’ I answered, ‘but I have no wish to nurse you through a brain fever on board.’ He again darted on me a singular look, and presently murmured to himself, ‘You’ll do.’

 

            He is by no means a man of ungenial temperament, but seems to have some secret over which he broods.

 

 

(p. 65)

CHAPTER VII

 

MORE SEAWEED

 

From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal.

 

            APRIL has nearly passed, and we are entangled in the calm latitudes that lie some six hundred miles south of Mazatlan. All the books are read to pieces, all the stories are past further repetition, all the cards are worn out, energy is wanting for learning Spanish, and no wood ‘remains for whittling.

 

            There is something very beautiful in a calm at sea; one of these perfect and thorough cal in s that are so frequent of late. Entirely isolated from any care and responsibility, the state must very nearly resemble that of a disembodied spirit in the interval before commencing its new career, resting from the toils of life and quietly awaiting its next development. Asleep, and conscious of it. There is absolutely nothing to be done but to wait. indolence and languor rule the day, as stretched beneath the awning we doze the hours away, or gaze listlessly over the side, watching the gambols of the strange monsters that come up to visit us; a whale up blowing his fountain, or a huge blackfish snorting and plunging by; now a shoal of porpoises leaping along preceded by myriads of flying-fish; then the sea-birds swooping to their roost on the motionless rigging. Sometimes when gazing into the translucent depths spread below, one is seized with an irresistible impulse to plunge into them.

(p. 66)

Off with shirt and shoes, and down, down, till the back ship is dimly visible overhead. Down, down,

 

‘To the blue depth of waters

            Where the wave hath no strife;

Where the wind is a stranger,

            And the sea-snake hath life.’

 

Down, down, till the waters around grow dark, and fresh breath becomes necessary, and then with a bound shoot rapidly to the surface, rising half out of the water with the impetus, taking care to be well clear of the vessel. What can be more delicious? Then the reaction that comes when on board again, sometimes almost to swooning, and one feels as if a fever were for ever impossible. How easy would death thus be, melting out of life! Evening comes. What gorgeous sunsets are in this torrid zone! No twilight here; the nightly sky shines out at once in all its wondrous brilliancy, girdled with the via lactea as with a rainbow of constellations. Each star is clearly mirrored in the deep: no undulations break the long lines of light reflected from the water. So entire is the calm that the sails have ceased to flap.

 

‘No stir in the air; no stir in the sea;

The ship is still as it can be:

Her sails from heaven receive no motion;

Her keel is steady in the ocean.’

 

            And then the moon glides slowly upwards above the clear horizon. It is a little past the full, and yellow as any harvest-moon. The least possible undulation in the water changes her wake from an unbroken line like the outpouring of molten gold, to a succession of regular bars of the same rich appearance, such as fancy might

(p. 67)

depict for the visionary ladder of the sleeping patriarch; – although a golden ladder to heaven is among the declared impossibilities, and

 

‘We must not own a notion so unholy

As thinking that the rich by easy trips

May go to heaven, – whereas the poor and lowly

            Must work their passage, as we do in ships.’

 

            The murmur of many voices has ceased, and the deck is strewn with the slumbering forms of my fellow-voyagers. Mounting to my favourite station in the maintop, there to watch the stars and muse, one seems to dilate, and become transfused into the infinite expanse spread above and around. I wonder not at the enthusiastic vagaries of the astrolaters of old. How they would sit. alone and vigilant when the world was asleep, and, forgetful of the strivings of the outward life, hold communion with the stars until they felt their souls detached from the organism and were able to realise the idea of a distinct spirituality. A daily connection with the world and its engrossments; a constant implication in the acts and relations of mankind, creates a tendency to materialism which here finds an antidote. For here the soul makes itself felt in its entire individuality. Freely expanding to the farthest range of its capacity, and placing itself en rapport with all spiritual existences,

 

‘It hears a voice we cannot hear,

It sees a hand we cannot see,’

 

while we remain in contact with mere temporalities. In this state of exaltation the unseen becomes the seen, the impossible becomes the necessary. Man approaches so near to God that he becomes one with him: the part is

(p. 68)

in harmony with the whole. Who shall say how many of its religious faiths the work-a-day world owes to the ecstatic dreamer?

 

            May 2nd. Airs light and variable. Signs of wind every evening and at day-break; but all signs fail. We have crept on till our position is 13°30’ north, 104° west. For the last few days there has been much discussion forward about the ship’s course and the supplies: we being 400 miles from the nearest land, still steering west, with 15 days’ water on board (reduced allowance), in a latitude liable to calms for an indefinite period. At last the other passengers request us of the cabin to demand the Captain’s intentions, adding that such is the character of many forward, that if they are placed upon a short allowance of water, they will force open the spirit casks, get drunk, and fire the ship. The result is an explosion in the cabin. The Captain offers the command of the ship to any one who can manage her better, and states his intention of making Cape San Lucas as soon as possible. A breeze springing up, the dispute terminates.

 

            May 9th. About 50 miles from Cloud Island, having passed near Socorro without seeing it. This name indicates that former navigators have here been in like straits and here found succour. There are still about a thousand gallons of water on board. The allowance is further reduced to three pints a day. Half of this is given in the shape of tea and coffee. Each individual receives a pint in a bottle, and the remaining half-pint is used in cooking: The staple of our food consists of rice and beans, which are boiled in sea-water, and the little meat we have being also salt, a thirst is produced which

(p. 69)

requires more water than ever. It is amusing to see the allowance doled out, and how every one watches his neighbour. Thus in the cabin one morning one F. loq.

 

            ‘Captain, you borrowed half-a-tumbler full of me this morning.’

 

            ‘Carlos, give Mr. F. an extra half-tumbler full,’ says the Captain.

 

            ‘And, Carlos, don’t forget to give the Captain so much less!’ cries an old Yankee shipmaster.

 

            ‘Carlos, you have filled my bottle,’ says the Captain; ‘put half-a-glass back again.’

 

            ‘Si Señor.’ So Carlos returns the quantity under discussion from the Captain’s bottle to the ship’s tank.

 

            May 10th. Wind dead against us.

 

            Great excitement this afternoon about a passenger who has been discovered using his allowance for washing instead of drinking, and a court-martial was held to try the offender. At first the irritation was so strong against him that he seemed to have no chance of propitiating the crowd, and escaping whatever penalty they might think. of inflicting, which probably would have been no slight one. The suggestion of a regular trial rather diverted the general feeling from one of anger to one of curiosity, and a judge and jury being appointed, the accused asked me to defend him, a task which I undertook, but rather shrunk from when I found how excited the audience became as the counsel for the prosecution, a practised advocate, described in harrowing terms the horrors of the situation, and the extreme heinousness of wasting a drop of that which was already so scarce and so necessary to support life. ‘If one of us dies for want of water the prisoner at the bar is his murderer, and a wilful murderer

(p. 70)

too,’ was the conclusion to a most vehement harangue. I found myself so interested in the proceedings and so put on my mettle to get the man off, that I was quite indifferent to the many eyes which were then turned upon me, and which at any other time would have called forth all my native shyness. So the cries of ‘Good, good: that’s the talk,’ had not abated when I shouted,

 

            ‘Yes, gentlemen, I too, though on the prisoner’s side, can say “good” also. For most true it is that if the prisoner be the wilful cause of any one’s death he is a murderer. But is any one’s dead? and can we call a man a murderer till he has at least tried to kill some one? In common justice, then, we must wait till the mischief is done before we proceed to punish the author of it. But my eloquent opponent has forgotten that property has its rights as well as its duties, and he has not attempted to show that the pint of water daily doled out to each of us belongs to any but the person who receives it. His position is that that water is given to us either to be drunk or to be returned to the common stock. The prisoner’s defence is that each may do as he likes with his own. Are you prepared to say you may not? We have heard a truthful description of the horrors of thirst, but nothing has been said about the misery of feeling oneself thickly encrusted with a coating of dry and sticky salt, which clings to one’s skin and stiffens all the muscles of one’s face. My client declares that he suffered so much from this hitherto unmentioned annoyance; that from daily washing in sea-water both himself and his towel for so long a period, the brine has so thickly accumulated on both that the one cannot remove it from the other, so that he is made to feel as if rubbed all over with

(p. 71)

tar or molasses: and that in this predicament he resolved to apply a portion of his allowance to removing the coating of brine from his face and hands, even at the risk of suffering additional thirst. Now I assure you that in this resolution ‘myself can deeply sympathise with him, for my greatest discomfort during this voyage has arisen from the very same cause, from feeling perpetually clammy and sticky. Yet bad as it is with me, it is far worse with him, for I happen to have a larger stock of towels with me. I appeal then to all those of you who are in the habit of washing yourselves for a favourable verdict on my client. If condemned, he will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that it is only by the unwashed among you.’ There was some laughing, which I took for a good sign, and the judge observed that the fact being admitted, the only question was as to whether any wrong had been done, and as there was no law bearing on the case for him to expound, he would leave it to the jury to decide if the law had been broken. Here a sudden shift of wind made it necessary to break up the court in order to tack ship, and as we were presently speeding along in the desired direction the case closed without any verdict being recorded.

 

            May 12th. We have made about 150 miles since the last entry. A week’s water is left at the present rate of consumption, which by no means supplies the daily evaporation of each recipient. A dead calm all day makes the people rather savage, and they fight over their rations so as to remind me of feeding-time at the Zoological Gardens. Several have broken out with horrible boils from coarse food and want of fluids. No doubt scurvy will soon make its appearance unless we all die of thirst

(p. 72)

first. If the calm lasts a week we shall be nowhere.

 

            May 13th. Sunday. The Mormon preacher has done the state some service today, for he has given us some-thing to laugh about. It appears that some thirsty soul, finding his own allowance insufficient to satisfy his cravings, and selfish enough to disregard those of others, helped himself in the night to the contents of several bottles of water while their owners were sleeping. One of the individuals thus wronged was the Mormon. When the time for holding forth arrived he delivered a long address inculcating general good humour and resignation, as being great Christian virtues at all times and especially under the present circumstances. After speaking thus in allusion to the quarrelling over the rations of yesterday, he strongly animadverted on the practice of stealing as ‘one of the meanest things a man can do,’ and conduced with the following startling climax: ‘And as for the nasty sneaking thief who goes prowling about the ship at night stealing the drop of water that men have laid by for their necessities, – if such a one as that was in trouble, was sick and afflicted, do you think I would go to him and aid him and comfort him? No, he might die and be damned!’ Tremendous was the emphasis, and tremendous the laughter that followed, as may be readily imagined from the nature of the audience.

 

            These calms, picturesque though they be, are terribly ill-timed just now. A strong faith in one’s destiny is necessary to counteract the prevailing gloomy forebodings. What shall I do for a pastime? How extract sweets from this bitter? The blessed poets! Without denouncing the man who has no ear or soul for music to the same extent as our great high priest of nature, it is

(p. 73)

difficult to give him who has no poetry in his soul credit for possessing a whole one. He is minus one great means of enjoyment; he has, in fact, one sense the less. You were a true prophet, O Author of the ‘Ancient Mariner,’ if, having never experienced such a predicament, you thus exactly described it:

 

‘Down dropped the breeze; the sails dropped down;

            ’Twas sad as sad could be,

And we did speak only to break

            The silence of the sea.

 

All in a hot and copper sky,

            The blood-red sun at noon

Right up above the mast did stand,

            No bigger than the moon.

 

Day after day, day after day,

            We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

            Upon a painted ocean.’

 

Here from my eyrie in the maintop do I invoke thee, bard of the silvery tongue, to minister to my relief, and win me from my woes. Thine is a right royal prerogative, Imagination! for thou hast power to ignore the hunger and thirst of the body, and lap the soul in Elysium. Entranced by thee were martyrs and heroes of old insensible to their sufferings. Ever mayest thou maintain thy sway over the spirits of thy votaries. Yonder poor humanities scattered below, moody, and apart from each other, with tongues too dry and hearts too heavy to converse – tell them that some day they may look back upon their present experiences and even derive pleasure from the reminiscence, and you will be regarded as one that mocks.

 

(p. 74)

‘Day after day, day after day, they, sitting there alone,

Vex the inconstant wave with their perpetual moan.’

 

What can he done for them? come, thou singer of sweet songs, together let us invoke the favouring breeze.

 

                        ‘O southern wind,

Long hast thou lingered midst those islands fair,

That lie like jewels on the Indian deep,

            On green waves all asleep,

Fed by the summer suns and azure air;

            O sweetest southern wind,

            Wilt thou not now unbind

            Thy dark and crowned hair?’

 

            May 14th. Still the inexorable calm. In order to avoid the reproaches of the thirsty ones, the Captain keeps dose in his cabin, visiting the deck only at night. Suddenly he remembers that it is possible to transmute salt-water into fresh. Sending for the carpenter ne gives directions for the construction of a wooden retort. The passengers derive much satisfaction from watching its progress until the question is raised as to where the fuel is to come from, – a question to be asked but not to be answered; for on my suggesting the same to the artisan, he raised his head from his work, looked me in the face for some moments, and, without replying a single word, put down his tools and walked away, the materials upon which he was then employed being the last available for burning left in the ship.

 

            May 16th. A thunderstorm to the rescue! What a change is this fresh, cheerful, sparkling, breezy air, from the heavy, lurid, over-charged, motionless atmosphere of yesterday! The situation, too, how changed! It is like a reprieve after a sentence of death. How

(p. 75)

slowly and silently the cloud gathered over us; not coming up from a distance, but actually forming and taking existence over and among us. There was a singular strangeness in the sensations of all on board during the day, – a consciousness of being in contact with something weird, mysterious, and awful. We were all thrown off our electric equilibrium, and felt it would be a relief when the evidently impending catastrophe should come. Towards evening the gloom thickened into a massive cloud, so black and impenetrable it was impossible to say at what moment night fell. Early in the evening every one was crowding to the side and gazing on the strange freaks of the dolphins darting backwards and forwards under the ship, and drawing after them bright phosphorescent trails. They soon departed, and the blackness grew more and more intense, and not a sound broke the dread silence. Presently some one close beside me said in a subdued but excited voice, ‘Can’t you feel it? I can,’

 

            ‘Feel what?’

 

            ‘The darkness!’

 

            It was the Major; and as he spoke there came a blinding flash, cleaving the massive cloud, and wrapping everything in intensest flame; followed instantaneously by a crash of thunder that seemed an epitome of all the possibilities of sound, and to bring all heaven down upon our devoted heads. The first conscious impulse was to look up at the rigging, thinking the whole of it must have come down; but the lightning, that now played incessantly, showed that to be all right. And then came the rain, as if another sea poised overhead had given way, and was tumbling upon us in solid

(p. 76)

masses of water. A word to the Major, and we both ran to the Captain. The same idea had already struck him, and soon all hands were busy in spreading sails and stopping the scuppers, and filling the casks with the water fresh from heaven’s own manufactory. Now was the time for getting rid of the accumulations of brine; so hastening below I reappeared on deck in my shirt, where, so mercilessly did the rain pelt, that it was almost more than I could bear. The idea spread, and with the enthusiasm of young converts, who always outstrip their leaders, the rest of the voyagers stripped themselves to the skin; and presently a hundred white forms were dancing and rolling on the deck, lit fitfully up by the ceaseless flashes of lightning, mingling their shouts of laughter with the pealing thunder, and altogether forming a picture that would defy the combined efforts of an Etty, a Martin, and a Turner.

 

 

(p. 77)

CHAPTER VIII

 

THE PENINSULA

 

From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal.

 

            AFTER thirty-five days of intense discomfort the barque anchored in the open bay of San Jose, a small town to the eastward of Cape San Lucas, the extreme end of Lower California. By good fortune, close to the landing-place, we found a well which was sunk by the crew of Her Majesty’s frigate ‘Constance’ but a few months ago. The majority of my fellow-voyagers started at once for the town, nine miles off; but as it was a scorching day, I remained on board till the heat was somewhat abated, and then strolled towards a rancho, where, I was told, the luxury of milk might be obtained. The road, a mere mule track, lay sometimes over the sands, sometimes over rugged rocks of trap and quartz, and hills whose surface is broken and crumbled as if by the forcible upheavings that ushered them forth into the light of day. Nature has afforded this portion of her empire but a scanty allotment of vegetation; scarcely a tree is to be seen, unless the cactus be reckoned as such; and I think the tree-like magnitude it attains certainly entitles it to the rank.

 

            Pitched on a little hill, nearly surrounded by bigger hills, and looking towards the bay, I found the most primitive of dwellings, consisting of a single apartment of bamboo rods tied together with twigs; the sole furniture

(p. 78)

being a bed of raw bide, an earthenware jug, and a table. A few steps off stood a shed, which was used as a kitchen, in which an iron pot was suspended over a small fire of sticks. Three or four dusky children were playing about, the eldest, which was about six years old, being in charge. These were the sole occupants when I arrived. At first they were rather shy, but soon became familiar, and laughed heartily on my inspecting the iron pot. They said their mother was washing their clothes at a stream hard by. This accounted for their having none on. But it did not trouble them; they were evidently accustomed to wearing their skins outside.

 

            Soon the mother returned, seeming in no way astonished at finding a stranger stretched upon the bed. She was a fine specimen of the Mexican-Indian race, and manifestly proud of the strapping little fellows that called her ‘Madre.’ She spoke very positively of the suddenly developed wealth of Alta California; said that the whole of this country is deserted by its male inhabitants for the placers of the Sacramento; and that letters have been received from them confirming the most extravagant reports of their success.

 

            The sun sinking behind the hills, I was compelled to hurry away in order to avoid being benighted in those wild uplands. Passing over the summit of the highest hill that lay in my road, my attention was arrested by the scene around, and I could not but pause to contemplate it. Here I was in a country that from my earliest years has attracted me. Its inaccessibility, I believe, has been its principal charm. No one knew anything about it. No one could tell me how to get to it. Even the Cyclopedia confessed its ignorance; and on the admitted

(p. 79)

principle of ‘omme ignotum pro magnifico,’ I have always been imbued with corresponding ideas of its wildness and strangeness. The desire obtained, I have not been disappointed.

 

            Not a breath of air was stirring. The birds, if any there were, had retired to their silent eyries; the shrill chicharra was hushed, and even the restless lizard was still between the clefts of the rocks. My station was on a precipitous hill that overtopped the innumerable other hills which, like itself, rose abruptly from the shore. Nothing was in sight to tell that the region had ever been trodden by man. It was to such a place that Coleridge imagined the first murderer to have wandered. ‘Taking your stand upon any of the rugged volcanic peaks that tower aloft from the sea-shore, the scene around is desolate; as far as the eye can reach it is desolate. The bare rocks face each other, and leave a long, wide interval of thin white sand. One may wander on, and look round and round, and peep into the crevices of the rocks, and discover nothing that acknowledges the influence of the seasons, – no spring, no summer, no autumn; and winter’s snow, that would be lovely, falls not upon these hot rocks and scorching sands. Never has morning lark poised himself over this desert; but here the vulture screams and the serpent hisses.’

 

            In the west a silvery light, uninterrupted by a cloud, pervaded the whole region of the setting sun. In the opposite half of the heavens, resting upon the horizon and parallel with it, was a broad belt of deep purple, and above it all the colours of the prism in order, imperceptibly melting into each other. From the centre, radiating upwards to the zenith, were innumerable auroral

(p. 80)

streaks of many-coloured light, as if a flight of rainbows were being shot u p from beneath the sea; while a few clouds above, catching the last rays of the departing sun, were glowing like liquid metal in a fierce furnace.

 

            So might the first sunrise have opened upon a hitherto rayless world. So may the sky appear when the earth itself is dissolved and the heavens melt with fervent heat. Such the last sunset, with Campbell’s ‘Last Man’ gazing upon it.

 

            ‘What kept you so long upon the hills? You are very lucky to find your way back in the dark,’ said the Major.

 

            ‘I have been gazing upon a real Turner, my friend, a most magnificent Turner!’

 

            The next day I visited San José, where I found my fellow-voyagers already quite at home, and already showing symptoms of recovery from the effects of their recent privations. There are no inns, as the people are not used to travellers or given to locomotion; but every house was converted into an inn for our benefit; and there is a delightful simplicity in their domestic arrangements. At one end of a large room are three or four stretchers, on which recline the hostesses, while the floor at the other end is covered with the shake-downs of the guests, who care little about sleeping luxuriously, so long as they can run about at liberty, and have plenty to eat and drink. I found quarters in the house of an old Italian who is married to a remarkably handsome Mexican girl. If ever there was a jealous husband, poor Doña Tula, it is thine! Never would the old fellow allow her for one moment to be out of his sight. If he went into an adjoining room, or into the garden, the door must be

(p. 81)

left open, that he may see her; and if she chanced to move away out of his sight, he would call out for her to return. At first I thought it might be only the doting affection of an old man, until I heard him rating her in his vile Spanish-Genoese dialect; ‘Ah, you need not think to make a fool of me. I am an Italian, I am.’

 

            I wandered about, entering into conversation with these dusky daughters of the sun, as they sat at the door of their adobe cottages, smoking cigarettes, or writing letters to the relations who were absent at the placers. Family after family I found to consist entirely of women and children. The shops are entirely closed, and at least one-fourth of the houses are deserted, or left to the sole occupancy of a cat or a pig. I saw several letters from the absentees, confirming and even exceeding the most exorbitant accounts of the wealth of the country to which they have gone. One young damsel told me she is anxiously expecting the return of her brother, who has promised to endow her with ten thousand dollars out of his earnings. They were all eager to avail themselves of the offer to take letters; and it surprised me to find so many able to write, for books and post-offices are little in their way. Every pen in the town was put in requisition, and every here and there might be seen a group of three or four anxiously engaged in concocting a despatch. Curiously enough, they could not do it within doors, but always sat in the verandahs with the paper in their laps. Unaccustomed to strangers, they are quite free from shyness or reserve, and with an engaging artlessness they would request assistance from a passer-by, making no secret of the family affairs on which they were writing. These people, with their

(p. 82)

simple habits and unaspiring ideas, will be quite at a loss how to employ their newly-gotten wealth. Money is a scarce article with them; the little they possess being chiefly derived from occasional trade with whalers, and some three or four hundred ounces of gold annually collected from the neighbouring ravines.

 

            San José is situated in a charming little valley, which is watered by a charming little stream on whose banks are charming gardens and vineyards. Such is the character of this strange peninsula, – a desert of rugged peaks, with here and there, at wide intervals, an oasis down in a cleft, looking exquisitely delightful from the contrast. All the waters here glitter strangely with yellow mica. After such a month at sea, wandering here at will,

 

By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals;’

 

lying down either by the water or in it; letting it run through one’s fingers as a miser his gold, this fresh and sparkling fluid seems to be the real summum bonum, as any one may discover for himself when panting beneath a tropical sun with

 

‘Water, water everywhere,

Yet not a drop to drink.’

 

Here, too, I have learnt how the Mexicans become such excellent horsemen, and acquire their expertness with the lasso. Children of three or four years old gallop about on the sands on bare-backed horses, with a bridle of string, chasing and pulling each other from their seats, yet rarely falling to the ground; and, when they do, climbing up again by the mane or tail. They love to

(p. 83)

practise with lassos of small cord, and soon acquire a wonderful knack of catching the goats, pigs, and even chickens by the leg.

 

            With regret I bade adieu to my fair hostess, hoping her curmudgeon of a spouse may become, if not younger, yet more kind. Adieu also to the fair vale, with thanks for its pleasing addition to the picture-gallery of my remembrances. May I preserve as grateful memories of all other places to which my destiny may lead me.

 

 

CHAPTER IX

 

PACIFIC POLEMICS

 

From Herbert Ainslie’s Journal.

 

            WE have gained an addition to our numbers in a small party of Americans, who came over from Acapulco on hearing there was a vessel off San Jose. They have left their homes in Ohio on the same quest as ourselves, and have walked across Mexico on the chance of finding a ship on this side. Among them is an Episcopalian clergyman named Meade, who is henceforth to exercise his office on Sundays. He is a man of cultivated mind and singularly gentle disposition, and the passengers generally seem to expect better luck with him on board. One thing is certain, we can’t have much worse, and we are getting into latitudes where the wind is pretty sure to blow one way or another. I can’t fancy our new

(p. 84)

chaplain in the diggings, there is such a ‘tea-meeting’ look about him; and he, too, says that I shall never do for a trader if I give away things I might sell, as he saw me doing this morning. One of the passengers having taken a fancy to something of mine asked if I would sell it. I said I would give it to him, as I had another; whereupon he thrust his hands into his pockets, and gave me a long scrutinising look, as if that was quite a new idea to him, and could only be prompted by an intention to get something out of him in return, – a regular ‘timeo-Danaos-et-dona-ferentes’ look, in fact. Seeing that he was rather put out by my unintentional attempt to place him under an obligation to me, I hastened to tell him what it cost, and how much I considered its value enhanced by its transport thus far; upon which he brightened up, and handed me the dollars, saying he was always ready for a trade, but didn’t understand the other thing.

 

            I gather from some conversations with Mr. Meade that he belongs to a party that is modelled after the English Evangelicals, and copies them closely in all things, except, perhaps, their bitterness against Popery; which exception he accounts for naturally by the facts that the population of the States is composed of people of many different religions; that all have an equal right to exercise their religion; and that all are found to be equally good citizens, no matter what their religion. In fact, that no one set of opinions is considered more respectable than another. Ecclesiastical systems are there all internal to the State; as much so as a mutual benefit society or a joint stock company: they are private to the members who compose them. All contribute to the support of

(p. 85)

the State; all are equally citizens; and their respective religions are matters of private concern. Government has no more to do with religious than with scientific or medical differences. And it would be considered as absurd to entrust the selection of a religion for the people to the general government as to a local body, such as a mayor and corporation. He considers the Church of England to be a political body, originally established to form a barrier against Papal domination; but that it has served its time, and must gradually subside into a purely ecclesiastical organisation. Its clergy, as a working and preaching body, he says, are held in the highest respect in America; and in many parts it is as common to hear a British sermon preached as a native one. I certainly might have heard the only sermon he has yet given us without coining all this way from home. I hoped that a denizen of another country, reared among different scenes and associations, and preaching to such a congregation, under such circumstances, would have travelled in a somewhat different track than the one I had been all my life accustomed to; and given me, at least, a fresh argument or a novel illustration. But as it was, the Man vanished in the Parson, and a perfunctory repetition of trite, threadbare Evangelicalisms was all that he could treat us with.

 

            It strikes me as very odd and repulsive that there should be such a total absence of anything like earnestness or enthusiasm in a man who has taken up such a profession by choice. He seems to look upon himself and fellow-clergy as merely a sort of tradesmen to supply a particular sort of article for which there is a demand. He allows that there is more activity in some other sects,

(p. 86)

especially the Baptists and Methodists, and even more than these the Universalists, or people who believe in the ultimate salvation of everybody. It is easy to understand that people who have such really good tidings to tell should be enthusiastic propagators of their faith. The nearest approach to strong feeling shown by my clerical friend is in reference to this party, for he says they are in reality enemies of all religion by teaching that none is necessary, inasmuch as all men will reach heaven at last. The Bible teaches that it is as necessary to believe in the devil and hell as in God and heaven, and the Universalists practically deny the former. I reminded him that even the Bible affords them some ground for their doctrine, when it says, ‘He is the Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe;’ but he said that no one understands that passage, unless it means that there is a hell to be saved from, whereas all the rest are plain enough. He does not seem to care to talk about these matters, and recommends me to read the books of a Universalist preacher, named Theodore Parker, if I want to know more about their tenets. He says that, however wrong he is, his power, eloquence, and originality are wonderful.

 

            June 15. Another tedious calm has been followed by a three days’ gale, during which we drove along under double-reefed topsails at a north-east course. Yesterday at noon the captain reckoned that we were in lat. 34, and about 150 miles from the coast of Upper California, but no observation could be taken. Towards night the wind increased, and a thick fog rendered invisible any object a few yards off. A change of colour in the water made many think we were much nearer

(p. 87)

land than the captain affirmed. It promised to be a thoroughly dirty night, and was pitch-dark but for the luminosity of the sea. The waves were all broken into foam, and each breaker was a billow of light tumbling and tossing about, and ever and again from their breaking crests shot forth brilliant sprays and streams of light like flashes from a luminous snowdrift, the whole scene calling up the idea of the awful lake of the Apocalyptic visions. The cold driving mist soon sent below the few who ventured up to gaze, and soon after nine all were stowed away for the night, but it was impossible to sleep without holding on. About one I saw the mate coming down-stairs, and the captain immediately hurrying trowserless on deck. Then followed rapid orders to tack ship, and a cry of ‘land ahead’ was heard. I hastened up with a few others, and found that the fog had lifted and disclosed the moon just risen over high land right ahead of us, at what distance it was impossible to say, but the guesses varied from two to seven miles, the latter being the captain’s. Anyhow it looked startlingly close. With some difficulty the ship was got round, all on deck lending a hand. I never felt any thing colder than the ropes as I handled them. It was like grasping the open blades of razors, yet I don’t think there was any ice on them. The wind hauling round a little we made a good offing, and were soon back in the thick mist which, had it extended to the shore, would have concealed it from view till too late to escape going on it.

 

            Sunday. Certainly it was not for me that it was said ‘faith cometh by hearing.’ The pleasant feelings induced by the sense of a danger escaped have been

(p. 88)

altogether dissipated since Mr. Meade endeavoured to ‘improve the occasion.’ What an illogical use people make of the term ‘providence.’ As they only apply it to something which they themselves like and approve, I wonder to what they ascribe the disagreeable and calamitous. ‘Man’s carelessness or ignorance brings him into danger, and the hand of Providence is straightway held out to rescue him,’ says the preacher. But are not man’s shortcomings, which lead him into the danger, equally ‘providential’? And what becomes of the hand of Providence in the myriad instances where there is no escape? If one be ‘providentially’ saved, is not the other ‘providentially’ lost?

 

            The whole is a vast riddle, and he does only mischief who attempts to explain it. An all-abiding sense of inexorable law takes possession of one who broadly contemplates the universe, and only the presumptuous will declare that the ‘finger of God’ is anywhere specially present. There must be a kind of double consciousness which enables the class to which the chaplain belongs to exist and enjoy life. I cannot otherwise account for the wide difference in the two characters he has by turns to maintain. As a clergyman he not only holds but teaches a number of tenets which, as an educated thinking man, he utterly repudiates. And all the time he is as clearly unconscious of being open to any charge on the score of dishonesty, or even inconsistency, as if he consisted of two distinct selves of which one slept while the other is vigilant. I had ascribed the existence at home of such a phenomenon to the action of a State-supported Church, but I am now inclined to suppose that the fact that a respectable position and maintenance

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can be derived from teaching any particular set of opinions, induces many to profess those opinions without really holding them. Multi famam, Conscientiam pauci verentur, as Pliny says.

 

            I quite forgot that Mr. M. was an Evangelical parson committed to the Mosaic view of the world’s creation while we were discussing the various geological phenomena and theories one Saturday evening. He spoke with so much knowledge and intelligence of the system apparent in the earth’s construction and gradual development, and quoted Professor Philip’s remark about the folly of people thinking that the eternity of the future is somehow endangered by an admission of the immensity of the past; and was actually delighted with my saying that the old orthodox system represents God not as the ‘Father of Lights’ but as a maker of puzzles; for that if the universe, in spite of its evidences of growth and change lasting through countless ages, ought to be regarded as a sudden creation at a specific moment, we have no proof that this very ship is the slow product of human labour, gradually built up one part after another; and even more, that we cannot be certain that our own individual past has had any actual existence, for that we may all have been this very moment called into existence with the impressions on our minds, which we take for memories of a real history, ready made. And next morning he not only reads us the first chapter of Genesis, but preaches of the six days’ work of creation as if he, or we, had just come out of the nursery. I have a great mind to ask him how he does it.

 

            The advocates of the plenary inspiration of Scripture surely incur the charge of fixing a frightful act of injustice

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on God, when they represent a man’s eternal welfare as depending upon the conclusions he may come to respecting the origin, authenticity, and meaning of a number of ancient manuscripts written no one knows when or by whom.

 

            I got a curious suggestion from the Mormon. Evading all catechizing about their practice of polygamy, he said he didn’t see why Providence shouldn’t provide extraordinary means to attract population to those great central solitudes of North America, for the purpose of connecting the East and West. And he did not see how without Mormonism it could be done.

 

            One hundred days from Panama, and we enter the Golden Gate. The pilot tells us of a schooner which we can charter to take us up the Sacramento. The Major and I have agreed to keep together. Several others wish to join us, so we shall proceed in a large party to the Diggings. The custom-house officer recommends the plan, and says our principal enemies will be Indians and mosquitoes. All are eager to be off. Hope reigns supreme. The promised land lies before us. A few meals of fresh meat and vegetables in yonder city of tents, and then farewell for ever to the Killooney.

 

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