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All othor original coplaa ara filmad baglnning on tha firat paga with a printod or llluatratad Impraa- alon. and anding on tha laat paga with a printad or llluatratad impraaakin. Laa axamplairaa originaux dont la couvartura an papiar aat ImprimAa aont fllmto on commandant par la pramiar plat at an tarmlnant lolt par la darnltra paga qui comporta una ampralnta d'lmpraaalon ou d'llluatratlon, salt par la lacond plat, aalon la caa. Toua laa autraa axamplairaa originaux aont fllmta an commandant par la pramMra paga qui comporta una ampralnta d'lmpraaalon ou d'llluatratlon at an tarmlnant par la darnMra paga qui comporta una tallo ampralnta. Tha laat raeordad frama on aach microfieha ahall contain tha aymbol ^v- (moaning "CON- TINUED "I, or tha aymbol ▼ (moaning "END"), whichavar appliaa. Un daa aymbolaa auivanta apparaltra aur la darniira Imaga da chaqua microfiche, aalon la caa: la aymbola -» algnlfia "A SUIVRE ". la aymbola ▼ algnlfia "FIN". Mapa. plataa, charta. ate, may ba filmad at diffarant raduction ratloa. Thoaa too larga to ba antlraly includad in ono axpoaura ara filmad baglnning In tha uppar laft hand cornar, laft to right and top to bottom, aa many framaa aa raqulrad. Tha following diagrama llluatrata tha mathod: Laa carvaa, planchaa, tablaaux. ate. pauvant ttra filmta i daa taux da reduction diffiranta. Loraqua la documant aat trop grand pour ttra raproduit an un aaul cllchi, 11 aat filmt A partir da I'angia aupAriaur gaucha. da gaucha i droita. at da haut an baa, an pranant la nombra d'Imagaa nteaaaaira. l-aa diagrammoa auivanta llluatrant la mithoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 "KaoeOW MSOUiTION TIST CHART (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) _A /APPLIED IIVHGE In SSTm 1653 East Main Sir**) S'-a Roch«t«r, N«« York U609 US* "■^ (716) 482 - 0300 - Phon« ^S (^'6) 2Se - 5989 - Kgx CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Napoleon Boxaparte BfTSIBa- JPt_3i!-!JEiB, 3 ■^''.Sti CAPTAINS '>!' ADVENTURE F. R I' O C C) C K K-XXtU -^ ■ ".^TH i-'jr , -RAITS rNDI.\N.\POUS TMi: BOBBS-MT-RRH I ;::)Mt'ANy N'- WLtU-N J3i>\APAKlt CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE ROGER POCOCK Aiaher of A Man in the Open, etc lUUSTKATEO WITH PORTRAITS INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS €79970 ' Ty CoprwGHT 1913 The Bobbs-Muull CoMFAinr MMINWOHTH k eo. ■•OKMNDCRt ANr raiHTIM ADVENTURERS What is an adventurer? One who has adventures? Surely not. A person charged by a virild rhinoceros is having an adventure, yet however wild the animal, however wild the person, he is only somebody wish- ing himself at home, not an adventurer. In diction- aries the adventurer is "one who seeks his fortune in new ard hazardous or perilous enterprises." But outside th.; pages of a dictionary, the man who seeks his fortune, who really cares for money and his own advantage, sits at some desk deriding the fools who take thousand-to-one chances in a gamble with Death. Did the patron saint of adventurers. Saint Paul, or did Saint Louis, or Francis Drake, or Livingstone, or Gor- don seek their own fortune, think you ? In real life the adventurer is one who seeks, not his fortune, but the new and hazardous or perilous enterprises. There are holy saints and scoundrels among advei:turers, but all the thousands I have known were fools of the romantic temperament, dealing with life as an artist does with canvas, to color it with fierce and vivid feelmg, deep shade and radiant light, exulting in the passions of the sea, the terrors of the wilderness, the splendors of sunshine and starlight, the exaltation of battle, fire and hurricane. All nations have bred great adventurers, but the living nation remembers them sending the boys out 188123 ADVENTURERS into the world enriched with memories of valor, a heritage of national honor, an inspiration to ennoble their manhood. That is the only real wealth of men and of peoples. For such purposes this book is written, but so vast is the theme that this volume would outgrow all reasonable size unless we set some limit. A man in the regular standing forces of his native state is not dubbed adventurer. When, for example, the immortal heroes Trorap and De Ruyter fought the British generals at sea, Blake and Monk, they were no more adventurers than are the police constables who guard our homes at night. Were Clive and Warren Hastings adventurers? They would turn in their graves if one brought such a charge. The true type of adventurer is the lone- hand pioneer. It is not from any bias of mine that the worthies of Switzeriand, the Teutonic empires and Russia, are shut out of this poor little record ; but because it seems that the lone-hand oversea and overiand pioneers cwne mainly from nations directly fronting upon the open sea. As far as I am prejudiced, it is in favor of old Norway, whose heroes have en- tranced IT- with the sheer glory of their perfect man- hood. For the rest, our own English-speaking folk are easier for us to understand than any foreigners. As to the manner of record, we must follow the stream of history if we would shoot the rapids of adventure. Now as to the point of view: My literary pre- tensions are small and humble, but I claim the right of an adventurer, trained in thirty-three trades of the Lost Region, to absolute freedom of speech concern- ADVENTURERS 'fag frontiersmen. Let history bow down before Columbus, but as a foremast seaman, I hold he was not fit to command a ship. Let history ignore Cap- torn John Smith, but as an ex-trooper, I worship him for a leader, the paladin of Anglo-Saxon chivalry, and very father of the United States. Literature admires the well advertised Stanley, but we frontiersmen prefer Commander Cameron, who walked across Africa without blaming others for his own defects, or losing his temper, or shedding need- less blood. All the celebrities may go hang, but when we take the field, send us leaders like Patrick Forbes, who conquered Rhodesia without journalists in attendance to write puflfs, or any actual deluge of public gratitude. The historic and literary points of view are widely different from that of our dusty rankers. When the Dutchmen were fighting Spain, they in- vented and built the first iron-clad war-ship — all honor to their seamanship for that I But when the winter came, a Spanish cavalry charge across the ice raptured the ship -and there was fine adventure. Both sides had practical men. In the same wars, a Spanish man-at-arms in the plundering of a city, took more gold than he could carry, so he had the metal beaten into a suit of armor, and painted black to hide its worth from thieves. From a literary standpoint, that was all very fine, but from our adventurer point of view the man was a fool for wearing armor useless for de- tense, and so heavy he could not run. He was killed, and a good riddance. We value most the man who knows his business. ADVENTURERS and the more practical the adventurer, the fewer his misadventures. From that point of view, the book is fttempted with all earnestness; and if the results appear bizarre, let the shocked reader turn to better written works, mention of which is made in notes. As to the truthfulness of adventurers, perhaps we are all more or less truthful when we try to be good. But there are two kinds of adventurers who need sharply watching. The worst is F. C. Selous. Once he lectured to amuse the children at the Foundling Hospital, and when he came to single combats with a wounded lion, or a mad elephant he was forced to mention himself as one of the persons present. He blushed. Then he would race through a hair-lifting story of the fight, and in an apologetic manner, give all the praise to the elephant, or the lion lately de- ceased. Surely nobody could suspect him of any merit, ."-t all the children saw through him for a transparent fraud, and even we grown-ups felt the better for meeting so grand a gentleman. The other sort of liar, who does not understate his own merits, is Jim Beckwourth. He told his story, quite truthfully at first, to a journalist who took it down in shorthand. But when the man gaped witB admiration at the merest trifles, Jim was on his mettle, testing this person's powers of belief, which were absolutely boundless. After that, of course he hit the high places, striking the facts about once in twenty-four hours, and as one reads the book, one can catch the thud whenever he hit the truth. Let no man dream that adventure is a thing of the past or that adventurers are growing scarce. The ADVENTURERS only difficulty of this book was to squeeze the past in order to make space for living men worthy as their forerunners. The list is enormous, and I only dared to estimate such men of our own time as I have known by correspondence, acquaintance, friendship, enmity, or by serving under their leadership. Here again, I could only speak safely in cases where there were records, as with Lord Strathcona, Colonel S. B. Steele, Colonel Cody, Major Forbes, Captain Grogan, Captain Amundsen, Captain Hansen, Mr. John Boyes. Left out, among Americans, are M. H. de Hora 'rho, in a Chilian campaign, with only a boat's crew, cut out the battle-ship Huascar, plundered a British tramp of her bunker coal, and fought H. M. S. Shah on the high seas. Another American, Doc- tor Bodkin, was for some years prime minister of Makualand, an Arab sultanate. Among British ad- venturers, Caid Belton, is one of four successive British commanders-in-chief to the Moorish sultans. Colonel Tompkins was commander-in-chief to Johore. C. W. Mason was captured with a ship-load of arms in an attempt to make himself emperor of China. Charies Rose rode from Mazatlan in Mexico to Corrientes in Paraguay. A. W. V. Crawley, a chief of scouts to Lord Roberts in South Africa, rode out of action after being seven times shot, and he rides now a little askew in consequence. To sum up, if one circle of acquaintances includes such a group to-day, the adventurer is not quite an extinct species, and indeed, wc seem not at the end, but at the beginning of the greatest of all adventurous eras, that of the adventurers of the air. CONTENTS I II in IV V VI VII vni K X XI XII XUI XIV XV XVI xvn xvni XIX XX XXI XXII XXIU XXIV XXV XXVI xxvn xxvin XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV THtVixnioinAMnuc* i THiCtUMDiai J THi Miodu Aon m Ama • ... II Thi Maiviloui Aornn-vin or 8n lorn MAUMDiriLU 2S CoLinmn ]2 Thi CoKgvuT or Muico .... 17 Thi CoNQum' or Pnv 44 ThiCokiaiu ]( POKTVOAt M THI I«Din 55 RaiahBkoou ' . ception. The rival armies had a battle on the beach, after which Saint Louis sat down in front of Damietta, where he found time to muddle his com- missariat On the other hand, the soldan was not at all well, having been poisoned by a rival prince, and paid no heed to the carrier pigeons with their despairing messages from the front. This discouraged the Moslems, who abandoned Damietta and fled inland, hotly pursued by the French. As a precaution, how- ever, they sent round their ships, which collected the French supplies proceeding to the front. The Chris- tians had plenty of fighting and a deal of starving to do, not to mention pestilence in their ill-managed camps. So they came to a canal which had to be bridged, but the artful paynim cut away the land in THE CRUSADERS 9 front of the bridge head, so that there was no ground on which the French could arrive. In the end the Christians had to swim and, as they were heavily armored, many were drowned in the mud. Join- ville's party found a dry crossing upstream, and their troubles began at the enemy's camp whence the Turks were flying. " While we were driving them through their camp, I perceived a Saracen who was mounting his horse one of his knights holding the bridle. At the mo- ment he had his two hands on the saddle to mount, I gave him of my lance under the armpit, and laid hun dead. When his knight saw that, he left his lord and the horse, and struck me with his lance as I passed, between the two shoulders, holding me so pressed down that I could not draw the sword at my belt. I had, therefore, to draw th-.- sword attached to my horse, and when he saw that he withdrew his lance and left me." Here in the camp Joinville's detachment was rushed by six thousand Turks, "who pressed upon me with their lances. My horse kneh under the weight, and I fell forward over the horse's ears. I got up as soon as ever I could with my shield at my neck, and my sword in my hand. "Again a great rout of Turks came rushing upon us, and bore me to the ground and went over me, and caused my shield to fly from my neck." So the little party gained the wall of a ruined house, where they were sorely beset: Lord Hugh, of Ecot, with three lance wounds in the face. Lord Frederick, of Loupey, with a lance wound between the shoulders, so large that the Wood flowed from his 10 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE body as from the bung hole of a catk, and my Lord of Sivery with a sword-stroke in the face, so that his nose fell over his lips. Joinville, too badly wounded to fight, was holding horses, while Turks who had climbed to the roof were prodding from above with their lances. Then came Anjou to the rescue, and presently the king with his main army. The fight became a general engagement, while slowly the Christian force' was driven backward upon the river. The day had become very hot, and the stream was covered with lances and shields, and with horses and men drowning and perishing. Near by De Joinville's position, a streamlet entered the river, and across that ran a bridge by which the Turks attempted to cut the king's retreat. This bridge the little hero, well mounted now, held for hours, covering the flight of French detachments. At the head of one such party rode Count Peter, of Brittany, spitting the blood from his mouth and shouting "Hal by God's head, have you ever seen such riffraff?" " In front of us were two of the king's sergeants ; . . . and the Turks . . . brought a large number of churls afoot, who pelted them with lumps of earth, but were never able to force them back upon us. At last they brought a churl on foot, who thrice threw Greek fire at them. Once William of Boon received the pot of Greek fire on his target, for if the fire had caught any of his garments he must have been burnt alive. We were all covered with the darts that failed to hit the sergeants. Now, it chanced that I found a Saracen's quilted tunic lined with tow; I turned the open side towards me, and made a shield , . , THE CRUSADERS II if S.i'^ Z' ^ •*'^'""' *°' I *«• """y wounded ^ ^ '^«» « five places, and my horse in fifteen. ii."-- • **^ S°""* «•* Soissons. in that point of "«« *e inner prvaces of that ancient ship. After seven hundred years the gossip ,s fresh and vivid as this morning's news. " ,II?\'^'"!,'"'°"^''* P*'"'*' P'-°'P«"'ty and content to all his kmgdom, and De Joinville was very angry when in failing health Saint Louis was persl^aded to a" tempt another crusade in Africa. "So great was his weakness that he suffered me to carry him m my arms from the mansion of the Count of Auxerre to the abbey of the Franciscans." So went the king to his death in Tunis, a bungling soldier, but a saint on a throne, the noble.t of aH k^own '"' ^''""' ""^""'^ ^^""« ^' ^^' Long afterward the king came in a dream to see ^J°ZT- ^^^'^^'''"''y i°y°"^ and glad of I will lodge you m a house of mine, that is in a city Wh-"' "^^"^''.F''-"-' And he answered m^ laughing, and said to me, 'Lord of Joinville, by the faith I owe you, I have no wish so soon to go hence ' " It was at the age of eighty-five De Joinville wrote XnT"' " ' "^^ '"""^ '^ ''''' °°* doS^.„J^S?joS"-Dl'|'co':^'"'"^"' "^ Villd.«. Ill A. D. 1260 THE MIDDLE AGES IN ASIA 1 THE year 1260 found Saint Louis of France busy reforming his kingdom, while over the way the English barons were reforming King Henry III on the eve of the founding of parliament, and the Spaniards were inventing the bull fight by way of a national sport. Our own national pastime then was baiting Jews. They got twopence per week in the pound for the use of their money, but next year one of them was caught in the act of cheating, a little error which led to the massacre of sever hundred. That year the great Khan Kublai came to the throne of the Mongol Empire, a pastoral realm of the grass lands extendii^g from the edge of Europe to the Pacific Ocean. Kublai began to build his capital, the city of Pekin, and in all directions his people ex- tended their conquests. The looting and burning of Bagdad took them seven days and the resistless pres- sure of their hordes was forcing the Turks upoq Europe. Meanwhile in the dying Chriscian empire of the East, the Latins held Constantinople witli Beldwin on the throne, but next year the Greek army led by Michael Paleolofus crept through a tunnel and managed to capture the city. THE MIDDLE AGES IN ASIA 19 wei^Tthf f* T.''""*' »* Constantinople m 1260 certain Mon^I ento' wJ^ ! '■°*'"^" ""^^ ^'■"' court of thel E::ZrK:iZr--T"''"'.'^ *•"= said the envovs " Ti? '. *-°"'* ^"^ «s," a EuropeanTnd wij e'S t ^ '" "^^" ^^- jruests " <;« tv. D ■ ^ '^ *<* ''^^e yo« as his She envo;' a yisT '^' ""'^^ ^'^"^ -"''-' the court ofTh; ^re^t.^ ™'^A""'" ^^^ ««<^hed ceived Withers ,S4/^'^-n^ -e re- and'^rs'U^iTetitrof cf ^""^^* ^- '^'---'^ Ta^I^ES-?---- the envoys upo^ttH^wtf f^d^St^ *° "^"^ that tin^eZ :n;° cl^L-fn^ ^ "' ^^^^^ "'^'''^ "^ ^ tH'*^t^r%:?£;^^^^-ers..ound a.ed sixteen. ,,„„, Marco p1;:X\^:u.S: ao CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE ous, hardy lad, it seems, and very truthful, without the slightest symptoms of any sense of humor. The schoolboy who defined the Vatican as a great empty space without air, was perfectly correct, for when the Polos arrived there was a sort of vacuum in Rome, the pope being dead and no new appoint- ment made because the electors were squabbling. Two years the envoys waited, and when at last a ne\y pope was elected, he proved to be a friend of theirs, the legate Theobald on whom they waited at the Christian fortress of Acre in Palestine. But instead of sending a hundred clergymen to convert the Mongol empire, the new pope had only one priest to spare, who proved to be a coward, and deserted. Empty handed, their mission a failure, the Polos went back, a three and one-half years' journey to Pekin, taking with them young Marco Polo, a hand- some gallant, who at once found favor with old Ku- blai Khan. Marco " sped wondrously in learning the customs of the Tartars, as well as their language, their manner of writing, and their practise of war . . . insomuch that the emperor held him in great esteem. And so when he discerned Mark to have so much sense, and to conduct himself so well and beseemingly, he sent him on an embassage of his, to a country which was a good six months' journey distant. The young gallant executed his commission well and with dis- cretion." The fact is that Kublai's ambassadors, re- turning from different parts of the world, " were able to tell him nothing except the business on which they had gone, and that the prince in consequence held them for no better than dolts and fools." Mark THE MIDDLE AGES IN ASIA 21 brought back plenty of gossip, and was a great suc- cess, for seventeen years being employed by the emperor on all sorts of missions. "And thus it came about that Messer Marco Polo had knowledge of or had actually visited a greater number of the different countries of the world than any other man " In the Chinese annals of the Mongol dynasty there is record in 1277 of one Polo nominated a sec- ond-class commissioner or agent attached to the privy council. Marco had become a civil servant, and his father and uncle were both rich men, but as the years went on, and the aged emperor began to fail they feared as to their fate after his death. Yet when they wanted to go home old Kublai growled at them. ' Now it came to pass in those days that the Queen Bolgana, wife of Argon, lord of the Levant (court of Persia), departed this life. And in her will she had desired that no lady should take her place, or succeed her as Argon's wife except one of her own family (in Cathay). Argon therefore despatched three of his barons ... as ambassa- dors to the great khan, attended by a very gallant company, in order to bring back as his bride a lady of the family of Queen Bolgana, his late wife. " When these three barons had reached the court of the great khan, they delivered their message explain- ing wherefore they were come. The khan received them with all honor and hospitality, and then sent for a lady whose name was Cocachin, who was of the family of the deceased Queen Bolgana. She was a maiden of seventeen, a very beautiful and charming person, and on her arrival at court she was presented to the three barons as the lady chosen in compliance 33 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE with their demand. They declared that the ladx pleased them well. " Meanwhile Messer Marco chanced to return from India, whither he had gone as the lord's ambassador, and made his report of all the different things that he had seen in his travels, and of the sundry seas over which he had voyaged. And the three barons, having seen that Messer Nicolo, Messer Matteo and Messer Marco were not only Latins but men of mar- velous good sense 'withal, took thought among themselves to get the three to travel to Persia with them, their intention being to return to their country by sea, on account of the great fatigue of that long land journey for a lady. So they went to the great khan, and begged as a favor that he would send the three Latins with them, as it was their desire to re- turn home by sea. " The lord, having that great regard that I have mentioned for those three Latins, was very loath to do so. But at last he did give them permission to depart, enjoining them to accompany the three barons and the lady." In the fleet that sailed on the two years' voyage to Persia there were six hundred persons, not count- ing mariners; but what with sickness and little ac- cidents of travel, storms for instance and sharks, only eight persons arrived, including the lady, one of the Persian barons, and the three Italians. They found the handsome King Argon dead, so the lady had to B.ut up with his insignificant son Casan, who turned out to be a first-rate king. The lady wept sore at parting with the Italians. They set out for THE vflDDLE AGES IN ASIA 23 Venice, arriving in 1235 after an absence of twenty- seven yeais, ' There is a legend that two aged men, and one of middle age m ragged clothes, of very strange device, came Icnoclcng at the door of the Polo's toln hous^ 1^'Z'' '? J'"' ''""'''' '"^'^''°" ^y the family who did not know them. It was only when the travelers had unpacked their luggage, and given a banquet, that the family and th^'giests bS to respect these vagrants. Three times during dinner oLsTor .V""'V' "^'^"^"^ *"^ gorgeous oriental tw i , '? '*'" ""'^ 'P^^'"^'^- Was it possible that the long dead Polos had returned alive? Then the tables bemg cleared. Marco brought forth the toy ragged clothes in which they had come to s^amr'an^H ^'u ''"''^ ''"'^" ^^^ ">?*«' °P«" *« seams and welts, pourmg out vast numbers of rub.es sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds and emeralds, gems to the value of a million ducats. The family was entirely convinced, the public nicknamed the travelers as the millionaires, the city conferred dig- nities, and the two elder gentlemen spent their ri hoTs' o'f S;" '"" '"' ^•"^"''°' ^"--"^-^ ^y thItZ'Tr ''*'' ' r^'"'"'* ''^^ ^'^"eht between tte fleets of Genoa and Venice, and in the Venetian mo. There Venice was totally defeated, and Marco was one of the seven thousand prisoners carried home to grace the triumph of the Genoese. It was in he dictated his book, not of travel, not of adventure. 94 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE but a geography, a deKription of all Asia, its coun- tries, peoples and wonders. Sometimes he got ex- cited and would draw the long bow, expanding the numbers of the great khan's armies. Sometimes his marvels were such as nobody in his senses could be expected to swallow, as for instance, when he spoke of the Tartars as burning black stones to keep them warm in winter. Yet on the whole this book, of the greatest traveler that ever lived, awakened Europe of the Dtrk Ages to the knowledge of that vast outer world thai has mainly become the heritage of the Christian Powers. See die Book of Sir Marco Polo, tranilated and edited bjr Colonel Sir Henry Yule. John Murray. IV A. D. 1333 THE MARVELOUS ADVENTURES OF SIR JOHN MAUNDEVILLE «T JOHN MAUNDEVILLE, Knight, all be it I ■»» am not worthy, that was born in England, in the town of St. Allans, passed the sea in the year of our L^rd 1322 . and hitherto have been long time on the sea, and have seen and gone through many diverse SrLkf^ir "^ "'"•"'"^ **' '"''"^ ""'"^ "^^ So wrote a very gentle and pious knight. His book of travels begins with the journey to Con- stantmople, which in his day was the seat of a Chris- tian emperor. Beyond was the Saracen empire whose sultans reigned in the name of the Prophet' Mahomet over Asia Minor, Syria, the Holy Land and Egypt. For three hundred years aristian and Saracen had fought for the possession of Jerusalem, but now the Moslem power was stronger than ever. Sir John Maundeville found the sultan of Babylon the Less at his capital city in Egypt, and there entered m his service as a soldier for wars against the Arab tribes of the desert. The sultan grew to love this Englishman, talked with him of aflfairs in Europe urged hmi to turn Moslem, and offered to him the »5 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE hand of a princess in marriage. But when Maunde- ville insisted on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, his master let him go, and granted him letters with the great seal, before which even generals and governors were obliged to prostrate themselves. Sir John went all over Palestine, devoutly believing everything he was told. Here is his story of the Field Beflowered. " For a fair maiden was blamed with wrong, and slandered ... for which cause she was condemned to death, and to be burnt in that place, to the which she was led. And as the fire began to burn about her, she made her prayers to our Lord, that as certainly as she was not guilty of that sin, that he would help her, and make it to be known to all men of his merciful grace. And when she had thus said she entered into the fire, and anon was the fire quenched and out ; and the brands which were burning became red rose trees, and the brands that were not kindled became white rose trees full of roses. And these were the first rose trees and roses, both white and red, which ever any man saw." All this part of his book is very beautiful concern- ing the holy places, and there are nice bits about incu- bators for chickens and the use of carrier pigeons. But it is in the regions beyond the Holy Land that Sir John's wonderful power of believing everything that he had heard makes his chapters more and more exciting. " In Ethiopia . . . there be folk that have but one foot and they go so fast that it is a marvel. And the foot is so large that it shadoweth all the body against the sun when they will lie and rest them." Beyond that was the isle of Nacumera, where all ADVENTURES OF MAUNDEVILLE ds, being reasonable *7 the people have hounds' for their god. And they all go naked save a litUe eat him. The dog-headed king of that land is most Sc7^t '""''*' "'''"' "^ *'^ °^ «?'»'=« Next he came to Ceylon. "In that land is full of cockodr.ll,. ,0 that no man may dwell there. rants And they be hideous to look upon. And they have but one eye. and that is in the middle of the «w fish a1 •"'" ''' "°"""« •""' -- ««h\nd' dwel, i „1"? '," ''"°"'" "'« t°*-ds the south dwell folk of foul stature and of cursed nature that have no heads. And their eyes be in their shoulders ^IdstTheT?' T ^r/"'''^"' '"'« »" "--h- am dst their breasts. And in another isle he n, J without heads, and their eyes and mouths S beHnd " their shoulders. And in another isle be folk that have the face all flat, all plain, without nose a^d whh ou mouth But they have two small holes aU round IS 1*1 r • ^"' *''' '"-»" ^^ ^^'^i without hps. And m another isle be folk of foul fashion and shape that have the lip above the Louth so great that when they sleep in the sun thereover I! the face with that lip." JJ f" J°''" ''*<* ^^" untruthful he might have been theHn V Q • . ' '" P"''''"^ ^'■"' "^ f«^ t«ts from 5is^hlnf"'P'"''' "^ '^''P'""^ ''•^ «"'i'« disapprova? His chapters on : ^hinese empire are a perfect i' a8 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE model of veracity, and he merely cocks on a few noughts to the statistics. In outlying parts of Cathay he feels once more the need of a little self-indulgence. One province is covered with total and everlasting darkness, enlivened by the neighing of unseen horses and the crowing of mysterious cocks. In the next province he fotmd a fruit, which, when ripe, is cut open, disclosing " a little beast in flesh and bone and blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool. And men eat both the fruit and the beast. And that is a great marvel. O^ that fruit have I eaten, al- though it were wonderful, but that I know well that God is marvelous in all his works. And neverthe- less I told them of as great a marvel to them, that is amongst us, and that was of the barnacle geese: for I told them that in our country were trees that bear a fruit that become birds flying, and those that fall on the water live, and they that fall on the earth die anon, and they be right good to man's meat, and thereof had they so great marvel that some of them trowed it were an impossible thing to be." This mean doubt as to his veracity must have cut poor Maundeville to the quick. In his earnest way he goes on to describe the people who live entirely on the smell of wild apples, to the Amazon nation con- sisting solely of women warriors, and so on past many griffins, popinjays, dragons und other wild fowl to the Adamant Rocks of loads'ione which draw all the iron nails out of a .'hip to her great inconvenience. " I myself, have seen afar off in that sea, as though it had been a great isle full of trees and bush, full of thorns and briers great plenty. And the ship- men told us that all that was of ships that were ADVENTURES OF MAUNDEVILLE 29 drawn thither by the Adamants, for the iron that was in them." Beyond that Sir John reports a sea consisting of gravel, ebbing and flowing in great waves, but containing no drop of water, a most awk- ward place for shipping. So far is Sir John moderate in his statements, but when he gets to the Vale Perilous at last he turns him- self loose. That vale is disturbed by thunders and tempests, murmurs and noises, a great noise of " ta- bors, drums and trumps." This vale is all full of devils, and hath been alway. In that vale is great plenty of gold and silver. "Wherefore many misbelieving men and many Christian men also go in oftentime to have of the treasure that there is; but few come back again, and especially of the misbelieving men, nor of the Chris- tian men either, for they be anon strangled of devils. And in the mid place of that vale, under a rock, is an head and the visage of a devil bodily, full horrible and dreadful to see . . . for he beholdeth every man so sharply with dreadful eyes, that be evermore moving and sparkling like fire, and changeth and stareth so often in diverse manner, with so horrible countenance that no man dare draw nigh towards him. And from him Cometh sraoke and stink and fire, and so much abwnination, that scarcely any man may there endure. "And ye shall understand that when my fellows and 1 were in that vale we were in great thought whether we durst put our bodies in adventure to go in or not. ... So there were with us two worthy men, friars minors, that were of Lombardy, that said that if any man would enter they would go in with us. And when they had said so upon the gracious 30 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE trust of God and of them, we made sing mass, and made every man to be shriven and houseled. And then we entered fourteen persons; but at our going out we were only nine. . . . And Uius we passed that perilous vale, and found therein gold and silver and precious stones, and rich jewels great plenty ... but whether it was as it seemed to us I wot never. For I touched none. . . . For I was more devout then, than ever I was before or after, and all for the dread of fiends, that I saw in diverse figures, and also for the great multitude of dead budies, that I saw there lying by the way . . . and therefore were we more devout a great deal, and yet we were cast down and beaten many times to the hard earth by winds, thunder and tempests . . . and so we passed that perilous vale. . . . Thanked be Almighty God I " After this beyond the vale is a great isle where the folk be great giants . . . and in an isle beyond that were giants of greater stature, some of forty- five foot or fifty foot long, and as some men say of fifty cubits long. But I saw none of these, for I had no lust to go to those parts, because no man Cometh neither into that isle nor into the other but he be devoured anon. And among these giants be sheep as great as oxen here, and they bear great wool and rough. Of the sheep I have seen many times . . . those giants take men in the sea out of their ships and bring them to land, two in one hand and two in another, eating them going, all raw and all alive. " Of paradise can not I speak properly, for I was not there. It is far beyond. And that grieveth me. And also I was not worthy." ADVENTURES OF MAUNDEVILLE 3, where he claims OiatthTL I ''°'°«^afd to Rome, sins, and ^aT £'^eeSt°tS\''^^u^" ''•' proved for true in ev,rv ^- . *' ""^ ^^ol^ was »>en list no To rive cr^He ?'"■■• """^■^ "«* "a-y that they have sf e^ S T '"^.'"■"«^ •""' '<> "-at the person neve so ^*. ''^^.7; ^.^ *\« author or doubts as to its veSL M f'f " *"* ""^'"^^ after five hundred yLrf ;nfr""f '"'"=' ^"^ «^« Pendous «aste^ieceTi:"it7f'j^;.^^ --' ^'- 'A. D. 1492 COLUMBUS COLUMBUS wai blue-eyed, red-haired and tall, of a sunny honesty, humane and panic-proof. In other words he came of the Baltic and not of the Mediterranean stock, although his people lived in Italy and he was bom in the suburbs of Genoa. By caste he was a peasant, and by trade, up to the age of twenty-eight, a weaver, except at times when his Northern blood broke loose and drove Jiiui to sea for a voyage. He made himself a scholar and a drafts- man, and when at last he escaped from ai. exacting family, he earned his living by copying charts at Lis- bon. A year later, as a navigating officer, he found his way, via the wine trade, to Bristol. There he slouched dreaming about the slums, dressed like a foreign monk. He must needs pose to himself in some ideal character, and was bound to dress the part. The artistic temperament is the mainspring of ad- venture. In our own day we may compare Boston, that grand old home of the dying sailing ship, with New York, a bustling metropolis for the steam liners. In the days of Columbus Genoa was an old-fashioned, declining, 3» COLUMBUS Middle Ages, of the slot th^' ,°^ ^"«'*"'^' '" *e English. Th^y were h«,T;- ^'^' '"^^^^' '^*'^y Saint Ma^ RTdcSa^weTff tLKd ^" ''^^ Tile (STiiri"/';; V *' ^^'-'^ of this island which L:f,L«ar?nlHr."' ^""^ '«> in?ir!4?',^,*'J-;; «^ "-elf that Atlantic, he aL^Iy vi'^T *« refe.ons beyond the •elf. he was aWe 1 ^"^^'^^^ ^ ^^olar him- Janders in Ut^thl tZT "'*, *' '''^^^^ !<=- them he sure y 'm„st w ^^ °' *'* ««»• ^rom thirty years iX last it""". ■''7 °"^ '"««'"'' from Nova Scotia L^ '""P- '""' '°'"' ^°^^ Within his 0^ EfrtW /^^'l^-^-'e years since, dosed. TheZsofr' *•!% ^/eenland trade had coast as far^th * r"' ^'r "^ '''' ^"'--" ^e^^Phy boo. wt ^J.; C'"^-*"' -ent a. fa^'^th':Te:en'rS"''>,^ ^°"""^ ^'-'^"es land begins Fr^ ,^ "? '"*''" °°«'' ""til Green- 34 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE (Nova Scotia) ; thence it is not far from Vinland (New England), which some believe goes out from Africa. England and Scotland are one island, yet each country is a kingdom by itself. Ireland is a large island, Iceland is also a large island north of Ireland." Indeed Columbus seems almost to be quoting this from memory when he says of Iceland, "this island, which is as large as England." I strongly suspect that Columbus when in Iceland, took a solemn oath not to* " discover " America. The writers of books have spent four centuries in whitew,:shing, retouching, dressing up and posing this figure of Columbus. The navigator was indeed a man of powerful intellect and of noble character, but they have made him seem a monumental prig as well as an insufferable bore. He is the dead and helpless victim, dehumanized by literary art until we feel that we really ought to pray for him on All Prigs' Day in the churches. Columbus came home from his Icelandic and Guinea expeditions with two perfectly sound ideas. " The world is a globe, so if I sail westerly I shall find Japan and the Indies." For fifteen bitter years he be- came the laughing-stock of Europe. Now note how the historians, the biographers and the commentators, the ponderous and the mawkish, the smug and the pedar.tic alike all fail to see why their hero was laughed at. His name was Cristo-fero Colombo, to us a good enough label for tying to any man, but to the Italians and all educated persons of that age, a joke. The words mean literal!, the Christ- Carrying Dove. Suppose a modern man with some invention or a great idea, called himself Mr. Christ- COLUMBUS 35 Carrying Dove, and tried to get capitalists in New York or London to finance his enterprise I In the end he changed his name to Cristoval Colon and got him- self financed, but by that time his hair was white, and his nerve was gone, and his health failing. In the ninth century the vikings sailed from Nor- way by the great circle course north of the gulf stream. They had no compass or any instruments of navigation, and they braved the unknown currents, the uncharted reefs, the unspeakable terrors of pack-ice, berg-streams and fog on Greenland's awful coast. They made no fuss. But Columbus sailing in search of Japan, had one Englishman and one Irishman, the rest of the people being a pack of dagoes. In lovely weather they were ready to run away from their own shadows. From here onward throughout the four voyages which disclosed the West Indies and the Spanish Main, Columbus allowed his men to shirk their duties, to disobey his orders, to mutiny, to desert and even to make war upon him. Between voyages he permitted everybody from the mean king downward, to snub, swindle, plunder and defame himself and all who were loyal to him in mis- fortune. Because Columbus behaved like an old woman, his swindling pork contractor, Amerigo Ves- pucci, was allowed to give his name to the Americas. Because he had not the manhood to command, the hap- less red Indians were outraged, enslaved and driven to wholesale suicide, leaping in thousands from the cliffs. For lack of a master the Spaniards performed such prodigies of cowardice and cruelty as the world has never known before or since, the native races were ''W\ 3fi CAPTAINS OF ADVENTXmE swept out of existence, and Spain set out upon a down- ward path, a moral lapse beyond all human power to arrest. Yet looking back, how wonderful is the prophecy in that name, Christ-Carrying Dove, borne by a saintly and heroic seaman whose mission, in the end, added two continents to Christianity. ThU text mainly contradicU a Life of Cohmbut. bj Qeroenta R. Markham, C J. Phillip & Son, iSgs. Ambkici's Vesplxcjus VI A. D. 1519 THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO "LJERNANDO CORTES .pent «, idle «,d un- * ■■■ profitable youth." iJH^ I- And every other duffer U with me in W^ not the good boys, need a little encouragement. Indie*. That wa. a time when boys hurried to get vZh 11 ^'^J"^ ** '*"* **" »»'« Fountain of Youth the tnul to Eldorado. AH who had time to weep dreamed tremendous dreams. Cortes became a colonist in Cuba, a sore puzzle to tf« ra^ in command When he dapped Cortes in "*M the youngster slipped free and defied him. When he gave Cortes command of an expedition the SL?^'^'""; When he tried to arr^ him the bird had flown, and was declared an outlaw hor^iln't"*^? "!^ '**"•" °* ** "P**''*^' ^«« horrified by this adventurer who landed them in newly wish to go home. They stood in the deadly mists of Ae ^opic plains, ,«d far above them glow^ the Star of the Sea. white Orizaba crowned with polar snows. Tliey marched up a hill a mile and a hklf i„ ^ee^ 37 38 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE height through many zones of climate, and every cir- cumstance of pam and famine to the edge of a plateau cn>wned by immense volcanoes, a land of XT t^^i!- ^'"'^' '"" °' °P"'*"' "«"• They found that this realm was ruled by an emperor, famous for h>s victorious wars, able, it seemed, to place a mill on wamors m «,e field, and hung:^ for captives to be first sacrificed to the gods, and afterward eaten at the banquets of the nobility and gentry. The temp « were actually fed with twenty thousand victims a^ The S^msh mvading force of four hundred men be- gan to feel uncomfortable. hoSeH 'u-' ^°"" P""'''d *e governor of Cuba, and Eo from t? "T" '^ " ''''"^' ^'^'^ ^"'^ to taught the people the arts of civilized life Then Sfulld't^ '"' 'r "^ "°^"'"''*' *« fields we" fruitful and the sun shone in glory upon that plateau of eternal sprmg. The hero. Bird-Serpent was re membered, loved and worshiped as aTod It w s' etr «"" T* "'^* ^^ '' "^^ «-« «'-'> •" o ^ eastern sea so he would return again in later aees Now he prophecy was fulfilled. He had come v^th his followers, all bearded white men out of the eastet sea m mysterious winged vessels. Bird-Serpem ^™ h.s people were dressed in gleaming armo" S t"rX"l f "^'u'" "^''^'"^- -e« counted on terrible beasts - where steel and guns and horses were unloiown; and Montezuma felt as we should do f our and were invaded by winged men riding dragons To the supernatural visitors the emperor' sent^^bas^ THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 39 after embassy, loaded with treasure, begging the hero not to approach his capital. '=Sgmg the htro Set in the midst of Montezuma's empire was the poor vahant republic of Tlascala, at eveXt^war they were hult,\ J"S^^^^^^^^^^^ -^ -"en grander than Venice n^th^ '!' / T' ""^'P' *^"" and numberless moun^ * . ^"^^^ ""'' S^"^^'' lighted thet:„Tnir?hrer °" ''™"^ ^'*»" the lake and met fust as hev So ^ T"^''' ""''^'^ square Her^ nn T •! !^ ° *°"^*y ^t the central -e of the JeTtes^oTth ''' T"' '•"'"^' ^^"^ .e 1 1 40 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE tained the Spaniards. The white men were astonished at the zoological gardens, the aviary, the floating market gardens on the lake, the cleanliness of the streets, kept by a thousand sweepers, and a metro- politan police which numbered ten thousand men, arrangements far in advance of any city of Europe. Then, as now, the place was a great and brilliant capital Yet from the Spanish point of view these Aztecs were only barbarians to be conquered, and heathen cannibals doomed to hell unless they accepted the faith. To them the Cholula massacre was only a mili- tary precaution. They thought it right to seize their generous host the emperor, to hold him as a prisoner under guard, and one day even to put him in irons. For six months Montezuma reigned under Spanish orders, overwhelmed with shame. He loved his cap- tors because they were gallant gentlemen, he freely gave them his royal treasure of gems, and gold, and brilliant feather robes. Over the plunder— a million and a half sterling in gold alone — they squabbled; clear proof to Montezuma that they were not all di- vine. Yet still they were friends, so he gave them all the spears and bows from his arsenal as fuel to bum some of his nobles who had affronted them. It was at this time that the hostile governor of Cuba sent Narvaes with seventeen ships and a strong force to arrest the conqueror for rebellion. The odds were only three to one, instead of the usual hundred to one against him, so Cortes went down to the coast, gave Narvaes a thrashing, captured him, enrolled his men by way of reinforcements, and returned with a force of eleven hundred troops. THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 41 He had left his friend, Alvarado, with a hundred men to hold the capital and guard the emperor. This Alvarado, so fair that the natives called him Child of the Sun, was such a fool that he massacred six hundred unarmed nobles and gentlefolk for being pagans, violated the great temple, and so aroused the whole power of the fiercest nation on earth to a war of vengeance. Barely in time to save Alvarado, COrtes reentered the city to be besieged. Again and again the Aztecs attempted to storm the palace. The em- peror in his robes of state addressed them from the ramparts, and they shot him. They seized the great temple which overlooked the palace, and this the Spaniards stormed. In face of awful losses day by day the Spaniards, starving and desperate, cleared a road through the city, and on the night of Monte- zuma's death they attempted to retreat by one of the causeways leading to the mainland. Three canals cut this road, and the drawbridges had been taken away, but Cortes brought a portable bridge to span them. They crossed the first as the gigantic sobbing gong upon the heights of the temple aroused the entire city Heavily beset from the rear, and by thousands of men m canoes, they found that the weight of their transport had jammed the bridge which could not be removed. They filled the second gap with rocks, with thetr artillery and transport, with chests of gold horses and dead men. So they came to the third gap. no' longer an army but as a flying mob of Spaniards and Tlascalan warriors bewildered in the rain and the dark- ness by the headlong desperation of the attacking host They were compelled to swim, and at least fifty of the recrujts were drowned by the weight of gold they re- 42 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE fused to leave, while many were captured to be sacri- ficed upon the Aztec altars. Montezuma's children were drowned, and hundreds more, while Cortes and his cavaliers, swimming their horses back and forth convoyed the column, and Alvarado with his rear guard held the causeway. Last in the retreat, grounding his spear butt, he leaped the chasm, a feat of daring which has given a name forever to this place as Alvarado's I^eap. And just beyond, upon I he mainland there is an ancient tree beneath which Cortes, a» the dawn broke out, sat on the ground and cried. He had lost four hundred fifty Spaniards, and thousands of Tlascalans, his records, artillery, muskets, stores and treasure in that lost battle of the Dreadful Night. A week later the starved and wounded force was beset by an army of two hundred thousand Aztecs. They had only their swords now, but, after kmg hours of fighting, Cortes himself killed the Aztec general, so by his matchless valor and leadership gaining a vic- tory. The rest is a talc of horror beyond telling, for, rested and reinforced, the Spaniards went back. They invested, besiq^ed, stormed and burned the famine- stricken, pestilence-ridden capital, a dly choked and heaped with the unburied dead of a most valiant nation. Afterward, under the Spanish viceroys, Mexico was extended and enlarged to the edge of Alaska, a Christian civilized state renowned for mighty works of engineering, the splendor of her architecture, and for such inventions as the national pawn-shop, as a bank to help the poor. One of the so-called native THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO 43 slaves" of the mines once wrote to the king of Spain, begging his majesty to visit Mexico and oflFer- ing to make a royal road for him, paving the two hundred fifty miles from Vera Cruz to the capital with ingots of pure silver as a gift to Spain. k^i VII A. D. »532 THE CONQUEST OF PERU piZARRO was reared for a swineherd ; long years * of soldiering mad^ him no more than a captain, and when at the age of fifty he turned explorer, he discovered nothing but failure. For seven years he and his followers suffered on trails beset by snakes and alligators, in feverish jungles haunted by man-eating savages, to be thrown at last battered, ragged and starving on the Isle of Hell. Then a ship offered them passage, but old Pirarro drew a line in the dust with his sword. " Friends," said he, " and comrades, on that side are toil, hunger, naked- ness, the drenching storm, desertion and death ; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here Panama and its poverty. Choose each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south." Thirteen of all his people crossed the line with Pizarro, the rest deserting him, and he was seven months marooned on his desert isle in the Pacific When the explorer's partners at last were able to send a ship from Panama, it brought him orders to return, a failure. He did not return but took the ship to the 44 THE CONQUEST OF PERU 4$ southward, his guide the great white Andes, along a coast no longer of horrible swamps but now more populous, more civilized than Spain, by hundreds of miles on end of well-tilled farms, fair villages and rich cities where the temples were sheathed with plates of pure red gold. As in the Mexico of eight years ago, the Spaniards were welcomed as superhuman, their ship, their battered armor and their muskets accounted as possessions of strayed gods. They dined in the palaces of courtly nobles, rested in gardens curiously enriched with foliage and flowers of beaten gold and silver, and found native gentlemen eager to join them in tlieir ship as guests. So with a shipload of wonders to illustrate this discovery they went back to Panama, and Pizarro r<:tumed home to seek in Spain the help of Charles V. There, at the emper- or's court, he met Cortes, who came to lay the wealth of conquered Mexico at his sovereign's feet, and Charles, with a lively sense of more to come, despatched Pizarro to overthrow Peru. Between the Eastern and the Western Andes lies a series of lofty plains and valleys, in those days irri- gated and farmed by an immense civilized population. A highway, in length 1,100 miles, threaded the settle- ments together. The whole empire was ruled by a foreign dynasty, called the Incas, a race of fighting despots by whom the people had been more or less enslaved. The last Inca had left the northern king- dom of Quito to his younger son, the ferocious Ata- huallpa, and the southern realm of Cuzco to his heir, the gentle Huascar. These brothers fought until Atahuallpa subdued the southern kingdom, imprisoned Huascar, and reigned ■' i.* ifi CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE so far as he knew over the whole world. It was then that from outside the world came one hundred sixty- eight men of an unknown race possessed of ships, horses, armor and muskets — things very marvelous, and useful to have. The emperor invited these strangers to cross the Andes, intending, when they came, to take such blessings as the Sun might send him. The city of Caxamalca was cleared of its people, and the buildings enclosing the market place were furnished for the reception of the Spaniards. The emperor's main army was seven hundred miles to the southward, but the white men were appalled by the enormous host attending him in his camp, where he had hahed to bathe at the hot springs, three miles from their new quarters. The Peruvian watch fires on the mountain sides were as thick as the stars of heaven. The sun was setting next day when a procession entered the Plaza of Caxamalca, a retinue of six thou- sand guards, nobles, courtiers, dignitaries, surround- ing the litter on which was placed the gently swaying golden throne of the young emperor. Of all the Spaniards, only one came forward, a priest who, through an interpreter, preached, explain- ing from the ccmmiencement of the world the story of his faith, Saint Peter's sovereignty, the papal office, and Pizarro's mission to receive the homage of this barbarian. The emperor listened, amused at first, then bored, at lr-.,t affronted, throwing down the book he was asked to kiss. On that a scarf waved and the Spaniards swept from their ambush, blocking the exits, charging as a wolf-pack on a sheepfold, riding the people down while they slaughtered. So great was THE CONQUEST OF PERU 47 the pressure that a wall of the courtyard fell, releasing thousands whose panic flight stampeded the Incas' army. But the nobles had rallied about their sov- ereign, unarmed but with desperate valor clinging to the legs of the horses and breaking the charge of cavalry. They threw themselves in the way of the fusillades, their bodies piled in mounds, their blood flooding the pavement Then, as the bearers fell, tjie golden throne was overturned, and the emperor hur- ried away a prisoner. Two thousand people had perished in the attempt to save him. The history of the Mexican conquest was repeated here, and once more a captive emperor reigned under Spanish dictation. This Atahuallpa was made of sterner stuff than Montezuma, and had his defeated brother Huascar drowned, lest the Spaniards should make use of his rival claim to the throne. The Peruvian prince had no illusions as to the divinity of the white men, saw clearly that their real religion was the adoration of gold, and in contempt offered a bribe for his freedom. Reaching the full extent of his arm to a height of nine feet, he boasted that to that level he would fill the throne room with gold as the price of his liberty, and twice he would fill the anteroom with silver. So he sent orders to every city of his empire commanding that the shrines, the temples, palaces and gardens be stripped of their gold and silver ornaments, save only the bodies of the dead kings, his fathers. Of course, the priests made haste to bury their treasures, but the Spaniards went to see the plunder coUected and when they had finished no treasures were left in sight save « course of solid golden ingots in the walls of the t' '''A 4* CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, and certain nutwive beams of sflver too heavy for shipment. Still the plunder of an empire failed to reach the nine-foot line on the walls of the throne room at Caxamalca, but the soldiers were tired of waiting, especially when the gtJdsmiths to<* a month to melt the gold into ingots. So the royal fifth was shipped to the king of Spain, KauTo's share was set apart, a tithe was dedicated to the Church, and the remainder divided among th* soldiers according to their rank, in all three and a half millions sterling by modem measurement, the greatest king's ransom known to history. Then the emperor was tried by a mock court-martial, sentenced to death and murdered. It is comforting to note that of all who took part in that infamy not one escaped an early and a violent death. Piarro had been in a business partnership with the schoohnaster Luque of Panama cathedral, and with Almagro, a little fat, one-eyed adventurer, who now arrived on the scene with reinforcements. Pizarro's brothers also came from Spain. So when the em- peror's death lashed the Peruvians to desperation, there were Spaniards enough to face odds of a hundred to one in a long series of battles, en^ng with the siege of the adventurers who held Cuzco against the Inca Manco for five months. The city, vast in extent, was thatched, and burned for seven days with the Span- iards in the midst. They fought in sheer despair, and the Indians with heroism, their best weapon the lasso, their main hope that of starving the garrison to death. No vator could possibly save these heroic robbers, shut off from escape or from rescue by the impen- etrate rampart of the Andes. They owed their sal- THE CONQUEST OF PERU 49 vatfon to the fact that the !„<««„ „„« dl.per« to reap their crop. lest the entire nation perish otZn^ and the last of the Incas ended hi. mTt^^ m the recesses of the mountains. ^ ^ , AhZl "T " f^ *"■ "***•«" *« K'arros. and III fill VIII A. D. 1534 THE CORSAIRS IN 1453 Qtnstantinople was beseiged end ktormed by the Turks, the Christian emperor tell with sixty thousand of his men in battle, and the Caliph Mahomet U raised the standard of Islam over the last ruins of the Roman empire. Four years later a sailorman, a Christian from the Balkan States, turned Moslem and was banished from the city. He married a Christian widow in Mitylene and raised two sons to his trade. At a very tender age, Uruj, the elder son, went into business as a pirate, and on his maiden cruise was chased and captured by a galley of the Knights of Saint John who threw him into the hold to be a slave at the oars. That night a slave upon the nearest oar- bench disturbed the (crew by groaning, and to keep him quiet was thrown overboard. Not liking his situation or prospects, Uruj slipped his shackles, crept out and swam ashore. On his next voyage, be- ing still extremely young, he was captured and swam ashore again. Then the sultan's brother fitted him out as a corsair at the cost of five thousand ducats, to be paid by the basha of Egypt, and so, thanks to this act of princely generosity, Uruj was able to open 50 THE CORSAIRS St t general pnctbe. Hi» young brother Khiir, alio a pirate, joined him; the firm wa« protected t^ the •ulun of Tunis who got a commiision of twenty per cent, on the loot; and l.ting tteady, indu»- trious and thrifty, by strict apr licjtlofi to Kusiness, they made a reputation thto.:gl,r,'it th» i\'n:i'ie Sea. Indeed the Grand Turk b.;ior among man and the Indians are themselves black, they est^ The^ rWack..""' ''"''■ •"'^ '"'' ''^' '^- ^"^^ - He does not say how he answered, indeed it was -ardly by words that tl.is hidalgo of Spain preacid .n the many languages he could never learn Once ^hen I,„ converts were threatened by a hostile army he went alon. to challenge the invaders, and with u7 fron^t ranks wavered and halted. Their comrade. ,nd — = vusmy prcssca tiiem to advance, but no man ^'^P^f^ 5« CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE dared pass the black-robed figure which barred the way, and presently the whole force retreated. Once in the Spice Islands while he was saying mass on the feast of the Archangel Saint Michael a tremen- dous earthquake scattered the congregation. The priest held up the shaking altar and went on with mass, while, as he says, " Perhaps Saint Michael, by his heavenly power, was driving into the depths of hell all the wicked spirits of the country who were opposing the worship of the true God." Such was the apostle of the Indies, and it is a pleas- ant thing to trace the story of his mission in Japan in the Peregrination, a book by a thorough rogue. Fernao Mendes Pinto was a distant relative of Ana- nias. He sailed for India in 1537 " meanly accommo- dated." At Diu he joined an expedition to watch the Turkish fleet in the Red Sea, and from Massawa was sent with letters to the king of Abyssinia. That was great luck, because the very black and more or less Christian kingdom was supposed to be the seat of the legendary, immortal, shadowy, Prester John. On his way back to Massawa the adventurer was wrecked, captured by Arabs, sold into slavery, bought by a Jew, and resold in the commercial city of Ormus where there were Christian buyers. He found his way to Goa, the capital of the Portuguese Indies, thence to Malacca, where he got a job as political a^ -nt in Su- matra. With this ended the dull period of his travels. In those days there were ships manned by Portu- guese rogues very good in port, but unpleasant to meet with at sea. They were armed with caimon, pots of wild fire, unslaked lime to be fiung in the Chinese manner, stones, javelins, arrows, half-pikes, axes and FuAN-rrs Xahfr PORTUGAL IN THE INDIES 59 grappling irons, all used to collect toll from Chinese, Malay, or even Arab merchants. Pinto found that this life suited him, and long afterward, writing as a penitent sinner, described the fun of torturing old men and children : " Made their brains fly out of their heads with a cord " or looked on while the victims died raving " like mad dogs." It was great sport to sur- prise some junk at anchor, and fling pots of gunpowder among thr sleeping crew, tlien watch them dive and^ drown. "The captain of one such junk was 'a no- torious Pyrat,' and Pinto comptactntly draws the moral ' Thus you see how it pleased God, out of His Divine justice to make the arrogant confidence of this cursed dog a means to chastise him for his cruelties.' " So Christians set an example to the heathen. Antonio de Faria, Pinto's captain, had vowed to wipe out Kwaja Hussain, a Moslem corsair from Gujerat in Western India. In search of Hussain he had many adventures in the China seas, capturing pirate crews, dashing out their brains, and collecting amber, gold and pearls. Off Hainan he so frightened the local buccaneers that they proclaimed him their king and arranged to pay him tribute. Luckily for them Faria's ship was cast away upon a desert island. The crew found a deer which had beeq left by a tiger, half eaten; their shouts would scare the gulls as they flew overhead, so that the birds dropped such fish as they had captured; and then by good luck they discovered a Chinese junk whose peo- ple, going ashore, h?/? left her in charge of an old man and a child. Amid the clamors of the Chinese own- ers Faria made off with this junk. He was soon at the head of a new expedition in quest of that wicked *> CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE p5«te. Kw.ja Hussain. Thi. tmbition wai fulfilled. «nd with holds full of plunder the virtuou. Faria put into Liampo. Back among the aristians he had a royal welcome, but actually bluAed when a sermon was preached in his honor. The preacher waxed too eloquent, whereupon some of his friends plucked h.m three or four times by the surplice, for to make hun give over." It seems that even godly Christian pirates have some sense of humor Once in the Malay states. Pinto and a friend of his, a Mosl»,. were asked to dine with a bigwig, also a True Believer At d.pner they spoke evil about the f V'!^^ 'u*^ «°' *'"^ °^ ♦•'« ^'a"der. Pinto watched both of these Moslem gentlemen having their feet sawn off, then their hands, and finally their heads. As for hunself, he talked about his rich relations, cla-mmg Dom Pedro de Faria, a very powerful noble as h>s uncle. He said the factor had embezzled his uncle s money and fully deserved his fate. " AH this " says Pmto, "was extemporized on the spur of the moment, not knowing well what I said." The liar got off. Pinto's career as a pirate ended in shipwreck, cai^ ture, slavery and a journey in China where he was pu[ to work on the repairing of the Great Wall. He was III ""'T^^t ^T^ '" '544 when Altan Khan, kmg of the lumeds-a Mongolian horde -swept down out of the deserts. ^ The Mongols sacked Quinsay, and Pinto as a pris- oner was brought before Altan Khan who was be- s.egmg Pekm. When the siege was raised he accom- panied the Mongol army on its retreat into the heart of Asia. In time he found favor with his masters TORTOGAL IN THE INDIES 8, covy (Russia), and ha7^„ k*"". ?™« «>« of Mu.- of Denmark. Then col.^" »^"'"'"' ^^ *^« ««« of Lha«.. and thread r ° * •'~""' °^ ^ib^T China, and the *?^ inf:^' «"'' •<> »« Cochin great journev anH t,. -i • ' '"*"* *"«<>< a very With XavierV Jair''^"'' '« "-'^n afterward Lisbon after twen^one ytrs of T.^ '' '*'""«^ *<> h« was five times shipwr^". ^'""*"'* '" ^^ich WW as a slave. "'P*'***««"' »"d seventeen times It is disheartening to have .n i.Vfi great world of Porfug^ese !h! * •*"""' ^°' ">« Where Camoens, one Tthe ^o'Sr. '" *** ^"'''«' the immortal Liuiads. ^'" P°*'*' wrote However ferocious, these Pn^. were loyal, brave and strode ^T^'« adventurers of Europe to the East S tZ'^cT""' "" ^'y civilized Brazil. Once at A^ O-nstianized and spoke to me of Enriand's J^n't." ^°'^"P'«e lady *"•" toward her ^^^ r?t^^°%^ «"""«? ''«■ cried. •' What you^ewe w.« ^°" .^"«''''' ' " "he you wfll be I " *'" °"« ' what we are, Mfe "" '^'-- -"^ »" W«.„, b. ic G. J^ MIOOCOPY «ESOlUTK]N TEST CHAIT (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) IM |2J 12.2 1« |70 A /APPLIED IM/1GE In 1653 Easl Main SlrMt Rochntar. Naw York 14eC (716) 482-0300- Phona (716) 288-5989 -Fox A. D. 1841 RAJAH BROOKE BORNEO is a hot forest about five hundred miles long, and as wide, inhabited by connoisseurs called Dyaks, keen cojlectors. They collect human heads and some of their pieces are said to be very valuable. They are a happy little folk with most amusing manners and customs. Here is their ritual for burial of the dead : " When a man dies his friends and relations meet in the house and take their usual seats around the room. The deceased is then brought in attired in his best clothes, with a cigar fixed in his mouth ; and, being placed on the mat in the same manner as when alive, his betel box is set by his side. The friends go through the form of conversing with him, and offer him the best advice concerning his future proceedings, and then, having feasted, the body is deposited' in a large coffin and kept in the house for several months." The habits of the natives have been interfered with by the Malays, who conquered most of them and carved their island up into kingdoms more or less civilized, but not managed at all in the interests of the Dyaks. These kingdoms were decayed and tumbling to pieces when the Dutch came in to help, 6a RAJAH BROOKE 63 and helped themselves to the whole of Borneo except the northwestern part. They pressingly invited them- selves there also, but the Malay rajah kept putting them off \.ith all sorts of polite excuses. While the rajah's minister was running short of excuses to delay the Dutch an English yacht arrived in Sarawak. The owner was Mr. James Brooke, who had been an officer in the East India Company, but bemg hit with a slug in the lungs during the first Burma war, was retired with a pension of seventy pounds for wounds. Afterward he came into a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, took to yachting traveled a great deal in search of adventure, and so in 1839 arrived m Sarawak on the lookout for trouble An Englishman of gentle birth is naturally expected to tell the truth, to be clean in all his dealings, to keep his temper, and not to show his fears. Not being a beastly cad, Brooke as a matter of course conformed to the ordinary standards and, having no worries, was able to do so cheerfully. One may meet men of this stock, size and pattern by thousands the world over but in a decayed Malay state, at war with the Dyaks ashore and the pirates afloat, Brooke was a phenome- non just as astonishing as a first-class comet, an earth- quake eruption, or a cyclone. His arrival was the only important event in the whole history of North Borneo. The rajah sought his advice in dealing with the Dutch, the Dyaks and the pirates. The Malays Dyaks. pirates and everybody else consulted him as to their dealings with the rajah. On his second visit he took a boat s crew from his yacht and went to the seat of war There he tried to the verge of tears to per- suade the hostile forces either to fight or make friends ft 'I III Si' 64 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE and when nobody could be induced to do anything at all, he, with his boat's crew and one native warrior, stormed the Dya). position, putting the enemy to total rout and ilight. Luckily, nobody was hurt, for even a cut finger would have spoiled the perfect bloodless- ness of Brooke's victorj-. Then the Dyaks surren- dered to Brooke. Afterward the pirate fleet ap- peared at the capital, not to attack the rajah, but to be inspected by Brooke, and when he had patted the pirates they went away to purr. Moreover the rajah o£Fered to hand over his kingdom to Brooke as man- ager, and the Englishman expected him to keep his word. Brooke brought a shipload of stores in pay- ment for a cargo of manganese, but the rajah was so contented with that windfall that he forgot to send to his mines for the ore. Further up the coast a British ship was destroyed by lightning, and her crew got ashore where they were held as captives pending a large ransom. Even when the captain's wife had a baby the local bigwig thereabouts saw a new chance of plunder, and stole the baby-clothes. Then the shipwrecked mariners sent a letter to Brooke appealing for his help; but nothing on earth could induce the spineless boneless rajah to send the relief he had promised. Then Brooke wrote to Singapore whence the East India Company despatched a war-ship which rescued the forty castaways. The rajah's next performance was to urange for a percentage with two thousand, five hundred robbers who proposed to plunder and massacre his own sub- jects. Brooke from his yacht stampeded the raiders with a few rounds from the big guns — Uank of RAJAH BROOKE 6S and course. Brooke was getting rather hard up, could not spare ball ammunition on week-days. So King Muda Hassim lied, cheated, stole, be- trayed, and occasionally murdered — a mean rogue, abject, cringing to Brooke, weeping at the English- man's threats to depart, holding his throne so long as the white yacht gave him prestige; but all this with pomp and circumstance, display of gems and gold, a gorgeous retinue, plenty of music, and royal salutes on the very slightest pretext. But all the population was given over to rapine and slaughter, and the forest was closing in on ruined farms. The last and only hope of the nation was in Brooke. Behind every evil in the state was Makota, ths prime minister, a polite and gentlemanly rascal, and at the end of two years he annoyed Brooke quite seri- ously by putting arsenic in the interpreter's r ce. Brooke cleared his ship for action, and with a land- ing party under arms marched to the palac "s. In a few well-chosen words he explained Ivi ^ta's vil- lainy, showed that neither the rajah's life nor his own was safe, and that the only course was to proclaim Brooke as governor. No shot was fired, no blow was struck, but Makota's party vanished, the villain fled, the rajah began to be- have, the government of the country was handed over to the Englishman amid great popular rejoicmgs. " My darling mother," he wrote, " I am very poor, but I want some things from home very much ; so I must trust to your being rich enough to aflford them to me. Imprimis, a circle for taking the latitude; secondly, an electrifying machine of good power ; thirdly, a large magic lantern; fourthly, a rifle which carries fifty "il 66 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE balls; and last, a peep-show. The circle and rifle I want very much; and the others are all for political purposes." Did ever king begin his reign with such an act as that letter? But then, look at the government he replaced: " The sultan and his chiefs rob all classes of Malays to the utmost of their power; the Malays rob the Dyaks, and the Dyaks hide their goods as much as they dare, consistent with the safety of their wives and children." Brooke found his private income a very slender fund when he had to pay the whole ex- pense of governing a' kingdom until the people re- covered from their ruin. February the first, 1842, a pirate chief called to make treaty with the new king. " He inquired, if a tribe pirated on my territory what I intended to do. My answer was 'to enter their country and lay it waste.' ' But,' he asked me again, ' you will give me — your friend — leave to steal a few heads occasion- ally?' 'No,' I replied, 'I shiU have a hundred Sakarran heads for" every one you take here I ' He recurred to this request several times — 'just to steal one or two I ' — as a schoolboy asks for apples." Brooke used to give the pirates his laughing per- mission to go to Singapore and attack the English. " The Santah River," he wrote, " is famous for its diamonds. The workers seem jealous and supersti- tious, disliking noise, particularly laughter, as it is highly offensive to the spirit who presides over the diamonds. ... A Chinese Mohammedan with the most solemn face requested me to give him an old letter; and be engraved some Chinese characters, which, being transited signify ' Rajah Muda Hassim, I Sir Jaxiks ilKcHiKE RAJAH BROOKE <^ James Brooke, and Hadju Ibrahim present their cMm ptmients to the spirit and request his pennission to work at the mine.' " There were great doings when the sultan of Bor- .neo had Mr. Brooke proclaimed king in Sarawak Then he went oflF to the Straits Settlements, where he made friends with Henry Keppel, captain of H. M. S. Dido, a sportsman who delighted in hlint- ing pirates, and accepted Brooke's invitation to a few days' shooting. Keppel describes the scene of Brooke's return to his kingdom, received by all the chiefs with undisguised delight, mingled with grati- tnde and respect for their newly-elected ruler. " The scene was both novel and exciting, presenting to us — just anchored in a large fresh water river, and sur- rounded by a densely wooded jungle — the whole sur- face of the water covered with canoes and boato dressed with colored silken flags, filled with natives beating their tom-twns, and playing on wind instru- ment^ with the occasbnal discharge of firearms. To them it must have been equally striking to witness the Dido anchored almost in the center of their town, her mastheads towering above the highest trees of that jungle, the loud report of her heavy thirty-two- pounder guns, the manning aloft to furi sails of one hundred fifty seamen in their clean white dresses, and with the band playing. I was anxious that Mr. Brooke should land with all the honors due to so im- portant a personage, which he accordingly did, under a salute." It was a little awkward that the Dido struck a rock and sank, but she chose a convenient spot just op- posite Mr. Brooke's house, so that Brooke's offi- 68 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE cers and those of the ship formed one mess there, a band of brothers, while the damage was being re- paired. Then came the promised sport, a joint boat expedition up all sorts of queer back channels and rivers fculed by the pirates with stakes and booms under fire of the artillery in their hill fortresses. The sportsmen burst the booms, charged the hills, stormed the forts, burned out the pirates and obtained their complete submission. Brooke invited them all to a pirate conference at his house and, just as with the land rogues, charmed them out of their skins. He fought like a man, but his greatest victories were scored by perfect manners. The next adventure was a visit from the Arctic explorer, Sir Edward Belcher, sent by the British gov- ernment to inspect Brooke's kingdom, now a peaceful and happy country. Later came Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane with a s»,. I/on to smash up a few more pirates, and the smashing of pirates continued for many years a pop- ular sport for the navy. The pirate states to the northward became in time the British colonies of Labuan, and North Borneo, but Sarawak is still a protected Malay state, the hereditary kingdom of Sir James Brooke and his descendants. May that dynasty reign so long as the sun shines. XI A. D. 1S43 THE SPIES pROM earliest childhood Eldred Pottinger was ottt * of place m crowded England. Gunpowder » good excting stuff to play with, and there ,^md ^ brother because that was all in the family but when he m„ed the garden waU and it fell on'a'^re ^f neighbors, they highly took offense; and when hi finely invented bomb went off at Addiscomb^ Colle« he ,x,se to the level of a public nuisance. On the wK Scmde. a shrewd man who shipped young Pottin«r M^ZZT '-'"' "''"'- '" ^'^'^^^ P-" hoIilL^'f '' '^'^'' ^ Afghanistan was the usual howlwg chaos of oriental kingdoms, ,nd the fuH Zt S "" ^°"'"«'''' ^"''""* *» fi«d out Ld r^ white man visiting the country was guaranteed if «.d when found, to have his thr..«t cut B^g SveV at native languages, with a very foxy shrewdi^X 69 70 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE young spy set off, disguised as a native horse dealer, and reached Cabul, the Afghan capital. The reigning ameer was Dost Mahomet, who was not on spealr^nr;ai-^~^^ ctilties past all parallel °* ''''''- New Mexico was ve,^ like .1', r\""'=''° '" Ages. The dinner le^ice wa! of"! °' *", ''''''^''= united^^:^;^,^ srSwe^a-r "^ *" volts, when Kit settleH A^ Mexican re- words settled rwn1^:f„ IT, "' ' ''"'^''"- Th.' of volunteers alLrr ^f •' '^"^"^ "' * ^°'°"«' rest of ti^"n:'^Sn^l^^:^'^^- ^"^ ?» ' ""'^ of all savages ^ '^ "' "" ""'** f"°cw"s fcifrd'r,e'':v'2r''^- r'^ ^-^ ^'^ - -'•o Apaches, whn^tht j;:;„ri,itrofl?h''"' hold «et with a much worse fate tJrt^Ltf S^^' i ' '^1 96 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE The settlers refused to march in pursuit until Carson arrived, but by mistake he was not given command, a Frenchman having been chosen as leader. The retreat of the savages was far away in the nountains, and well fortified. The only chance of laving the women and children was to rush this place before there was time to kill them, and Carson dashed in with a yell, expecting all hands to follow. So he found himself alone, surrounded by the Apaches, and as they Vushed, he rode, throwing him- self on the off side of his horse, almost concealed behind its neck. Six arrows struck his horse, and one bullet lodged in his coat before he was out of range. He cursed his Mexicans, he put them to shame, he persuaded them to fight, then led a gallant charge, killing five Indians as they fled. The delay had given them time to murder the women and children. Once, after his camp had been attacked by Indians, Carson discovered that the sentry failed to give an alarm because he was asleep. The Indian punish- ment followed, and the soldier was made for one day to wear the dress of a squaw. We must pass by Kit's capture of a gang of thirty- five desperadoes for the sake of a better story. The officer, commanding a detachment of troops on the march, flogged an Indian chief, the result being war. Carson was the first white man to pass, and while the chiefs were deciding how to attack his caravan, he walked alone into the council lodge. So many years were passed since the Che; -^nnes had seen him that he was not recognized, and nobody suspected that he knew their language, until he made a speech Kit Cars(ix 11 m KIT CARSON » In Gieyenne, introducing himself, recalling ancient friendships, offering all courtesies. As to their special plan for killing the leader of the caravan, and taking his Kalp, he claimed that he might have some- thing to say on the point. They parted. Kit to en- courage his men, the Indians to v/aylay the caravan; but from the night camp he despatched a Mexican boy to ride three hundred miles for succor. When the Cheyennes charged the camp at dawn, he ordered them to halt, and walked into the midst of them, ex- plaining the message he had sent, and what their fate would be if the troops found they had molested them. When the Indians found the tracks that proved Kit's words, they knew they had business elsewhere. In 1863 Carson was sent with a strong military ^orce to chasten the hearts of the Navajo nation. 1 hey had never been conquered, and the flood of Spanish invasion split when it rolled against their terrific sand-rock desert. The land is one of un- earthly grandeur where natural rocks take the shapes of towers, temples, palaces and fortresses of moun- tainous height blazing scarlet in color. In one part a wav- of rock like a sea breaker one hundred fifty feet high and one hundred miles in length curls over- hanging as though the rushing gray waters had been suddenly struck into ice. On one side lies the hollow Painted Desert, where the sands refract prismatic light like a colossal rainbow, and to the west the walls of the Navajo country drop a sheer mile into the stupendous labyrinth of the Grand Canon. Such is the country of a race of warriors who ride naked, still armed with bow and arrows, their harness of silver and tur- quoise. . . . 93 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE They are handsome, cleanly, proud and dignified. They till their fields beside the desert springs, and their villages are set in native orchards, while beyond their settlements graze the flocks and herds tended by women herders. The conquest was a necessity, and it was well that' this was entrusted to gentle, just, wise, heroic Carson. He was obliged to destroy their homes, to fell their peach trees, lay waste their crops, and sweep away their stock, starving ihem to surrender. He herded eleven thousand prisoners down to the lower deserts, where the chiefs crawled to him on their bellies for mercy, but the governor had no mercy, and long after Carson's death, the hapless people were held in the Boique Redondo. A fourth part of them died of want, and their spirit was utterly broken before they were given back their lands. It is well for them that the Navajo desert is too terrible a region for the white men, and nobody tries to rob their new pros- perity. In one more campaign Colonel Carson was officer commanding and gave a terrible thrashing to the Chey- ennes, Kiowas and Comanches. Then came the end, during a visit to a son of his who lived in Colorado. Early in the morning of May twenty-third, 1868, he was mounting his horse when an artery broke in his neck, and within a few moments he was dead. But before we part with the frontier hero, it is pleasant to think of him still as a living man whose life is an inspiration and his manhood an example. Colonel Inman tells of nights at Maxwell's ranch. "I have sat there," he writes, "in the long winter KIT CARSON pg crackhng logs, roaring up the huge throats of itTtwo SadV • ■ rf '"f ''"""'"' ^'* Carson and wo„der?°,T 1"^' ""'^""y interchange ideas in the wonderful s>gn language, until the glimmer of Aurora announced the advent of another day. But noTa s"ve an occ T"' ''"""^ '""^ P^'-^ed hots! save an occasional grunt of satisfaction on the part o he I„d.ans, or when we white men exchanged'a sen- !i •; Is ■' XIV A. D. 1845 THE MAN WHO WAS A GOD I JOHN NICHOLSON was a captain in the twenty- seventh native infantry of India. He was very tall, gaunt, haggard, with a long black beard, a pale face, lips that never smiled, eyes which burnefl flame and green like those of a tiger when he was angry. He rarely spoke. Once in a frontier action he was entirely sur- rounded ty the enemy when one of his Afghans saw him in peril from a descending sword. The Pathan sprang forward, received the blow, and died. In a later fight Nicholson saw that warrior's only son taken prisoner, and carried off by the enemy. Charging alone, cutting a lane with his sword, the officer rescued his man, hoisted him across the saddle, and fought his way back. Ever afterward the young Pathan, whose father had died for Nicholson, rode at the captain's side, served him at table with a cocked pistol on one hand, slept across the door of his tent. By the time Nicholson's special service began he had a personal following of two hundred and fifty wild riders who refused either to take any pay or to leave his service. So was he guarded, but also a sword must be found fit for the hand of the greatest swordsman in India. THE MAN WHO WAS A GOD loi The Sikh leaders sent out word to their whole nation for such a blade as Nicholson might wear HLrfr.H^ were offered and after long and intrica e te"ts three were found equally perfect' two of the bl 2 S curved, one straight. Captain Nicholson chose hf s'^o/rri^r '' --''-' - ^ ^"'^- a This man was only a most humble Christian, but the S^khs, observmg the perfection of his manhood sun! posed hnn to be divine, and offered that if he woX accept the.r religion they would raise such a temple " h.s honor as India had never seen. Many a ta" papers a dozen Sikh warriors would squat in the door way silent, watching their god. He to^k no notL but sometimes a worshiper, overcome with the conviction of sin would prostrate himself i„ adoration For this offense the punishment was three dozen I.. h with the cat. but the victims liked it "Our L^ that wc had been doing wrong, alV^hereS^'^S ^^■"u " r "^^^ *° "'P'^'" *e Indian mutiny to thafi? ;«,?"• ''}' ''"™^^ ''-P -t° our mi; that in 1857 our native army, revolting, seized Delhi GrearMo ,"'"''• '"" ''' "P ^ clesLdant omS Great Mogul as emperor of India. The children thl women, the men who were tortured to dea h ot bm fh unde fl^'f' ""' °' .°"^ -" ''--holds. Your terf ttnSeJ Th"''*": "'^^' '"^ '"*''^' ''''<' '"e let- 102 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE raents swore to the loyalty of their men, but Nicholson dealt out his packages of letters to them all, saying, " Perhaps these will interest you." The colonels read, and were chilled with horror at finding in their trusted regiments an abyss of treach- ery. Their troops were disarmed and disbanded. To disarm and disperse the native army through- out Northwestern India a flying column was formed of British troops, and Nicholson, although he was only a captain, was sent \o take command of the whole force with the rank of brigadier-general. There were old officers under him, yet never a murmur rose from them at that strange promotion. Presently Sir John Lawrence wrote to Nicholson a fierce official letter, demanding, " Where are you ? What are you doing? Send instantly a return of court-martial held upon insurgent natives, with a list of the various punishments inflicted." Nicholson's reply was a sheet of paper bearing his present address, the date, and the words, " The punish- ment of mutiny is death." He wanted another regi- ment to strengthen his column, and demanded the eighty-seventh, which was guarding our women and children in the hills. Lawrence said these men could not be spared. Nicholson wrote back, " When an empire is at stake, women and children cease to be of any consideration whatever." What chance had they if he failed to hold this district? Nicholson's column on the march was surrounded by his own wild guards riding in couples, so that he, their god, searched the whole country with five hun- dred eyes. After one heart-breaking night march he drew up his infantry and guns, then rode along the ..F.VI-Rlf. >, H Hul.SK.N 11 V, h THE MAN WHO WAS A GOD 103 line giving his orders: "In a few minutes you will see two native regiments come round that little temple If they brmg their muskets to the ' ready.' fire a volley into them without further orders." As the native regiments appeared from b«;hind the little temple, Nicholson rode to meet them. He was seen to speak to them and then they grounded their arms. Two thousand men had surrendered to seven hundred, but had the mutineers resisted Nicholson himself must have perished between two fires. He cared nothing for his life. Only once did this leader blow mutineers from the guns, and then it was to fire the flesh and blood of nine conspirators into the faces of a doubtful reci- ment. For the rest he had no powder to waste, but no mercy, and from his awful executions of rebels he would go away to hide in his tent and weep He had given orders that no native should be al- lowed to ride past a white man. One morning before dawn the orderly officer, a lad of nineteen, seeing na- tives passing him on an elephant, ordered them sharply to dismount and make their salaam. They obeyed - an Afghan prince and his servant, sent by the king of Cabul as an embassy to Captain Nicholson. Next day the ambassador spoke of this humiliation. " No won- der, he said " you English conquer India when mere boys obey orders as this one did " wiJU'oni""!" °"«Wht a Bengal tiger, and slew it r^H 1- T .' " •"' '^°"^' ''"* "^""W the English subdue this India in revolt? The mutineers held the .mprepiable capital old Delhi -and under the red ^' \-T' "'""''"'^ men -England's forlorn hope — which must storm that giant fortress. If they I04 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE failed the whole population would rise. " If ordained to fail," said Nicholson, " I hope the British will drag down with them in flames and blood as many of the queen's enemies as possible." If they had failed not one man of our race would have escaped to the sea. Nicholson brought his force to aid in the siege of Delhi, and now he was only a captain under the im- potent and hopeless General Wilson. "I have strength yet," said Nicholson when he was dying, " to shoot him if necessary." The batteries of the city walls from the Lahore Gate to the Cashmere Gate were manned by Sikh gunners, loyal to the English, but detained against their will by the mutineers. One night they saw Nich- olson without any disguise walk in at the Lahore Gate, and through battery after battery along the walls he went in silence to the Cashmere Gate, by which he left the city. At the sight of that gaunt giant, the man they believed to be an incarnate god, they fell upon their faces. So Captain Nicholson studied the de- fenses of a besieged stronghold as no man on earth had ever dared before. To him was given command of the assault which blew up the Cashmere Gate, and stormed the Cashmere breach. More than half his men perished, but an entry was made, and in six days the British fought their way through the houses, breaching walls as they went until they stormed the palace, hoisted the flag above the citadel, and proved with the sword who shall be masters of India. But Nicholson had fallen. Mortally wounded he was carried to his tent, and there lay through the hot days watching the blood-red towers and walls of Delhi. THE MAN WHO WA£ A GOD ,05 listening to the sounds of the loni, fi„ht . he miglu see the end MorXr/J^' ' ""' ""* Outside the tent waited his worshjers, clutching at the doctors as they passed to beg for ne;s o hi™ end. .hen his J^T.tV:^, Ehe^el^inlL^ lirchildre. "' '"""''" "P^" '•'^ «-""''. -bbing Far off in the hills the Nicholson fakirs- a trih. who had made hin, their only god - heard of hi pa s ng. Two chiefs killed themselves that they mfeh serve h.m ,„ another world; but the third h 'f "oke to the people: " Nickelseyn alwavs said that he was a man hke as we are. and that he worshiped a God whom he could not see. but who was alway's „ear us L t us learn to worship Nickelseyn's Go/" So "he tr^e came dow-. from their hills to the ChrStian tea £ ers at Peshawur. and there were baptized XV A. D. 1853 THE GREAT FILIBISTER IX^ILLIAM WALKER, son of a Scotch banker. " " was born in Tennessee, cantankerous from the time he was whelped. He never swore or drank, or loved anybody, but was rigidly respectable and pure, believed in negro slavery, bristled with points of eti- quette and formality, liked squabbling, had a nasty sharp tongue, and a taste for dueling. The little dry man was by turns a doctor, editor and lawyer, and when he wanted to do anything very outrageous, al- ways began by taking counsel's opinion. He wore a black tail-coat, and a black wisp of necktie even when in 1853 he landed an army of forty-five men to con- quer Mexico. His followers were California gold miners dressed in blue shirts, duck trousers, long boots, bowie knives, revolvers and rifles. After he had taken the city of La Paz by assault, called an election and proclaimed himself president of Sonora, he was joined by two or three hundred more of the same breed from San Francisco. These did not think very much of a leader twenty-eight years old, standing five feet six, and weighing only nine stone four, so they merrily conspired to blow him up with gunpow- k6 THE GREAT FILIBUSTER 107 der. and disperse with what plunder they could grab. r«^" Z^ f ' '"'°' ""^^'^ " ™"P'*' d»an„ed%he rest without showing any sign of emotion. He could thh n^ ""f """"]';!' ''"P""''" '"'" ^''J^^t obedience wuh one glance of his cool gray eye. and never al- lowed his men to drmk. play cards, or swear. "Our government." he wrote, "has been formed upon a firm and sure basis." ^ while' th^e'n""' ^"V"**'""' *'"*"^' °*''«"^'«. for while the new president of Sonora marched north- the rear of the column, cutting off stragglers, who were slowly tortured to death. Twice thfy dared an awful rifles of despairing men. cut them to pieces. So the march went on through hundreds of miles of blanng hot desert, where the filibusters dropped" ift thirst, and blew their own brains out rather than be captured. Only thirty-four men were left when they Sonora. in a boot and a shoe, his cabinet in rags his amiy and navy bloody, with dried wounds. Sun nioest. The filibusters surrendered to the United States garrison as prisoners of war Just a year later, with six of these veterans and forty-eight othe. Californians, Walker landed »; the aTthele wK ™,^ """'' ^^P""''^ ^^ «"«-d tXl ^u , ° """' presidents, and the one who got Walkers help vety soon had possession of the WalkeT wt 7 °' """' '""'^"' engagements Walker was made commander-in-chief, and at the next election chosen by the people themsdves as presi! io8 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE dent. He had now a thousand Americans in his fol- lowing, and when the native statci^men and generals proved treacherous, they were promptly shot. Wal- ker's camp of wild desperadoes was like a Sunday- school, his government the cleanest ever known in Central America, and his dignity all prickles, hard to approach. He depended for existence on the services of Vanderbilt's steamship lines, but seized their ware- house for cheating. He was surrounded by four hos- tile republics, Costa Rica, San Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, and insulted them all. He suspended diplomatic relations with the United States, demanded for his one schooner-of-war salutes from the British navy, and had no sense of humor whatsoever. Thousands of brave men died for this prim little law- yer, and tens of thousands fell by pestilence and battle in his wars, but with all his sweet unselfishness, his purity, and his valor, poor Walker was a prig. So the malcontents of Nicaragua, and the republics from Mexico to Peru, joined the steamship company, the United States and Great Britain to wipe out his hap- less government. The armies of four republics were closing in on Walker's capital, the city of Granada. He marched out to storm the allies perched on an impregnable vol- cano, and was carrying his last charge to a victorious issue, when news reached him that Zavala with eight hundred men had jumped on Granada. He forsook his victor/ and rushed for the capital city. There were only one hundred and fifty invalids and sick in the Granada garrison to man the church, ar- mory and hospital against Zavala, but the women loaded rifles for the wounded and after twenty-two THE GREAT FILIBUSTER ,09 hours of ghastly carnage, the enemy were thrown out of the city. They fell back to li, in Walker's path as he came to the rescue. Walker saw the trap, carried It with a charge, drove Zavala back into the city, broke him between two fires, then sent a detachment to inter- cept his flight. In this double battle, fighting eight times his own force, Walker killed half the allied army. But the pressure of several invasions at once was making ,t impossible for Walker to keep his communi- cation open with the sea while he held his capital. Granada, the most beautiful of all Central American cities, must be abandoned, and, lest the enemy win the place, It must be destroyed. So Walker withdrew his sick men to an island in the big Lake Nicaragua; while Hennmgsen, an Englishman, his second in com- mand, burned and abandoned the capital But now, while the city burst into flames, and the smoke went up as from a volcano, the American garri- son broke loose, rifled the liquor stores and lay drunk m the blazing streets, so the allied army swooped down cutting off the retreat to the lake. Henningsen, vet- eran of the Carlist and Hungarian revolts, a knight errant of lost causes, took three weeks to fight his way three miles, before Walker could cover his embark- ment on the lake. There had been four hundred men m the garrison, but only one hundred and fifty answered the roll-call in their refuge on the Isle of Omotepe. In the plaza of the capital city they had planted a spear, and on the spear hung a rawhide with this inscription: "Here wr.s Granada!" In taking that heap of blacker-. ,•„ four thou- no CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE sand out of six thousand of the allies had perished; but even they were more fortunate than a Costa Rican army of invasion, which killed fifty of the filibusters, at a cost of ten thousand men slain by war and pesti- lence. It always worked out that the killing of one filibuster cost on the average eight of his adversaries. Four months followed of confused fighting, in which the Americans slowly lost ground, until at last they were besieged in the town of Rivas, melting the church bells for cannon-balls, dying at their posts of starva- tion. The neighboring town of San Jorge was held by two thousand Costa Ricans, and these Walker at- tempted to dislodge. His final charge was made with fifteen men into the heart of the town. No valor could win against such odds, and the orderly retreat began on Rivas. Two hundred men lay in ambush to take Walker at a planter's house by the wayside, and as he rode wearily at the head of his men they opened fire from cover at a range of fifteen yards. Walker reined in his horse, fired six revolver-shots into the windows, then rode on quietly erect while the storm of lead raged about him, and saddle after saddle was emptied. A week afterward the allies assaulted Rivas, but left six hundred men dead in the field, so terrific was the fire from the ramparts. It was in these days that a British naval oflicer came under flag of truce from the coast to treat for V.'alkar's surrender. " I presume, sir," was the filibuster's greeting, " that you have come to apologize for the outrage offered to my flag, and to the commander of the Nicaraguan schooner-of-war Granada." " If they had another schooner," said the English- THE GREAT FILIBUSTER m man afterward, " I believe they would have declared war on Great Britain." Then the United States navy treated with this pep- pery httle lawyer, and on the first of May, 1857, he grudgingly consented to being rescued. During his four years' fight for empire, Walker had enlisted three thousand five hundred Americans — Md the proportion of wounds was one hundred and thirty-seven for every hundred men. A thousand fell. The allied republics had twenty-one thousand soldiers and ten thousand Indians -and lost fifteen thousand Two years later, Walker set out again with a hun- fh nT..'° T"''"" ^'"*''*' ^'"""'^^ « defiance of tiie British and United States squadrons, sent to catch hmi, and m the teeth of five armed republics He was captured by the British', shot by Spanish Ameri- cans upon a sea beach in Honduras, and so perished, fearless to the end. XVI A. D. 1857 BUFFALO BILL THE Mormons are a sect of Christians with some queer ideas, for they drink no liquor, hold all their property in common, stamp out any member who dares to think or work for himself, and believe that the more wives a man has the merrier he will be. The women, so far as I met them are like fat cows, the men a slovenly lot, and not too honest, but they are hard workers and iirst-rate pioneers. Because they made themselves unpopular they were persecuted, and fled from the United States into the desert beside the Great Salt Lake. There they got water from the mountain streams and made their land a garden. They only wanted to be left alone in peace, but that was a poor excuse for slaughtering emigrants. Murdering women and children is not in good taste. The government sent an army to attend to these saints, but the soldiers wanted food to eat, and the Mormons would not sell, so provisions had to be sent a thousand miles across the wilderness to save the starving troops. So we come to the herd of beef cattle which in May, 1857, was drifting from the Mis- souri River, and to the drovers' camp beside the banks of the Platte. BUFFALO BILL jij A party of red Indians on the war-path found that herd and camp; they scalped the herders on guard stampeded the cattle and rushed the camp, sftha the white men were driven to cover under the river bank. Keepmg the Indians at bay with their rifles he party marched for the settlements wading. sclS t.mes sw.mmmg, while they pushed a raft that car, IndianT" '"'"• ^'^"^^ " '^' ^uard kept the Indians from commg too near. And so the night fell .u « u"! *, y°""g«t and smallest," says one of them, "had fallen behind the others. . . When I happened to look up to the moonlit sky, and saw the plumed head of an Indian peeping over the bank 1 mstantly aimed my gun at his head, and fired. The report rang out sharp and loud in the night air, and was .mmed.ately followed by an Indian whoop- and the next moment about six feet of dead Indian came tumbhng mto the river. I was not only overcome with astonishment but was badly scared, as I could hardly realize what I had done." me!''''" wT ^'■""''McCarthy, the leader, with all his men. Who fired that shot ' " " I did." "Yes, and little Billy has killed an Indian stone-dead — too dead to skin I " patt! '''* '^^ °^ "'"' °'"^ ^"^^ ^""^ **'«='' ""^ *"- In those days the army had no luck. When the eov- emment sent a herd of cattle the Indians got the l^f and the great big train of seventy-five w!gons mthi burled Tf r '*'" ""'"'''"' '° *"« Morons, who turned the teamsters, including little Billy loose in 114 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE the mountains, where they came nigh starving. The boy was too thin to cast a shadow when in the spring he set out homeward across the plains with two re- turning trains. One day these trains were fifteen miles apart when Simpson, the wagon boss, with George Woods, a teamster, and Billy Cody, set off riding mules from the rear outfit to catch up the teams in front. They were midway when a war party of Indians charged at full gallop, surround'ng them, but Simpson shot the three mules and vs " their carcasses to make a tri- angular fort. The three whites, each with a rifle and a brace of revolvers were more than a match for men with bows and arrows, and the Indians lost so heavily that they retreated out of range. That gave the fort time to reload, but the Indians charged again, and this time Woods got an arrow in the shoulder. Once more the Indians retired to consult, while Simpson drew the arrow from Woods' shoulder, plugging the hole with a quid of chewing tobacco. A third time the Indians charged, trying to ride down the stockade, but they lost a man and a horse. Four warriors had fallen now in this battle with two men and a little boy, but the Indians are a painstaking, persevering race, so they waited until nightfall and set the grass on fire. But the whites had been busy with knives scooping a hole from whence the loose earth made a breastwork over the dead mules, so that the flames could not reach them, and they had good cover to shoot from when the Indians charged through the smoke. After that both sides had a sleep, and at dawn they were fresh for a grand charge, handsomely repulsed. The red- BUFFALO BILL "5 skins sat down in a ring to starve the white men out, and great was their disappointment when Simpson's rear train of wagons marched to the rescue. The red men did not stay to pick flowers. It seems like lying to state that at the age of twelve Billy Cody began to take rank among the world's great horsemen, and yet he -ode on the pony express, which closed in 1861, his fourteenth year. The trail from the Missouri over the plains, the deserts and the mountains into California was about two thousand miles through a country infested with gangs of professional robbers and hostile Indian tribes. The gait of the riders averaged twelve miles an hour, which means a gallop, to allow for the slow work in mountain passes. There were one hundred ninety stations at which the riders changed ponies without breaking their run, and each must be fit and able for one hundred miles a day in time of need. Pony Bob afterward had contracts by which he rode one hundred miles a day for a year. Now, none of the famous riders of history, like Charles XII, of Sweden; Dick, King of Natal, or Dick Turpin, of England, made records to beat the men of the pony express, and in that service Billy was counted a hero. He is outclassed by the Cossack Lieu- tenant Peschkov, who rode one pony at twenty-eight n-iles a day the length of the Russian em .nc from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg, and by Kit Carsjn who with one horse rode six hundred miles in six days. There are branches of horsemanship, too, in which he would have been proud to take lessons from Lord Lonsdale, or Evelyn French, but Cody is, as far as I « Ii6 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE have seen, of all white men incomparable for grace, for beauty of movement, among the horsemen of the modem world. But to turn back to the days of the boy rider. " One day," he writes, " when I galloped into my home station I found that the rider who was expected to take the trip out on my arrival had gotten into a drunken row the night before, and had been killed. ... I pushed on . J , entering every relay station on time, and accomplished the round trip of three hundred twenty-two miles back to Red Buttes with- out a single mishap, and on time. This stands on the record as being the longest pony express journey ever made." One of the station agents has a story to tell of this ride, made without sleep, and with halts of only a few minutes for meals. News had leaked out of a large sum of money to be shipped by the express, and Cody, expecting robbers, rolled the treasure in his saddle blanket, filling the official pouches with rubbish. At the best place for an ambush two men stepped out on to the trail, halting him with their muskets. As he explained, the pouches were full of rubbish, but the road agents knew better. " Mark my words," he said as he unstrapped, " you'll hang for this." " We'll take chances on that. Bill." " If you will have them, take them I " With that he hurled the pouches, and as robber number one turned to pick them up, robber number two had his gun-arm shattered with the boy's revolver-shot. Then with a yell he rode down the stooping man, and spurring hard, got out of range unhurt. He had saved the BUFFALO BILL "7 treasure, and afterward both robbers were hanged by vigilantes. Once far down a valley ahead Cody saw a dark object above a boulder directly on his trail, and when it disappeared he knew he was caught in an, ambush. Just as he came into range he swerved wide to the right, and at once a rifle smoked from behind the rock. Two Indians afoot ran for their ponies while a dozen mounted warriors broke from the timbered edge of the valley, racing to cut him off. One of these had a war bonnet of eagle plumes, the badge of a chief, and his horse, being the swiftest, drew ahead. All the In- dians were firing, but the chief raced Cody to head him off at a narrow pass of the valley. The boy was slightly ahead, and when the chief saw that the white rider would have about thirty yards to spare he fitted an arrow, drawing for the shot. But Cody, swinging rotmd in the saddle, lashed out his revolver, and the chief, clutching at the air, fell, rolling over like a ball as he struck the ground. At the chief's death-cry a shower of arrows from the rear whizzed round the boy, one slightly wounding his pony who, spurred by the pain, galloped clear, leaving the Indians astern in a ten mile race to the next relay. After what seems to the reader a long life of ad- venture, Mr. Cody had just reached the age of twenty- two when a series of wars broke out with the Indian tribes, and he was attached to the troops as a scout. A number of Pawnee Indians who thought nothing of this white man, were also serving. They were better trackers, better interpreters and thought themselves better hunters. One day a party of twenty had been "8 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE mming buffalo, and made a bag of thirty-two head when Cody got leave to attack a herd by hmwelf. Mounted on his famous pony Buckskin Joe he made a bag of thirty-six head on a half-mile run, and his name was Buffalo Bill from that time onward. That summer he led a squadron of cavalry that at- tacked six hundred Sioux, and in that fight against overwhekning odds he brought down a chief at a range of four hundred yards, in those days a very long shot. His victim proved to be Tall Bull, one of the great war leaders of the Sioux. The widow of Tall Bull was proud that her husband had been killed by so famous a warrior as Prairie Chief, for that was Cody's name among the Indians. There is one very nice story about the Pawnee scouts. A new general had taken command who must have all sorts of etiquette proper to soldiers. It was all very well for the white sentries to call at intervals of the night from post to post : " Post Number One nine o'dock, aU's well I " " Post Number Two, etc." But when the Pawnee sentries called, "Go to heU, I don't care I" well, the practise had to be stopped. Of Buffalo Bill's adventures in these wars the plain record would only take one large volume, but he was scouting in company with Texas Jack, John Nelson, Belden, the White Chief, and so many other famous frontier heroes, each needing at least one book volume, that I must give the story up as a bad job. At the end of the Sioux campaign Buffalo Bill was chief of scouts with the rank of colonel. In 1876, General Custer, with a force of ntarly fonr hundred cavalry, perished in an attack on the Sk>ux. Colonel Cody ("Buffalo Bill") I BUFFALO BILL 119 and the only survivor was his pet boy scout, Billy Jackson, who got away at night disguised as an Indian. Long afterward Billy, who was one of God's own gentlemen, told me that story while we sat on a grassy hillside watching a great festival of the Blackfeet nation. After the battle in which Custer — the Sun Child — fell, the big Sioux army scattered, but a section of it was rounded up by a force under the guidance of Buf- falo Bill. " One of the Indians," he says, " who was hand- somely decorated with all the ornaments usually worn by a war chief . . . sang out to me ' I know you, Prairie Chief; if you want to fight come ahead and fight me I' " The chief was riding his horse back and forth in front of his men, as if to banter me, and I accepted the challenge. I galloped toward him for fifty yards and he advanced toward me about the same distance, both of us riding at full speed, and then when we were only about thirty yards apart I rslsed my rifle and fired. His horse fell to the ground, having been killed by my bullet. Ahnost at the same instant my horse went down, having stepped in a gopher-hole. The fall did not hurt me much, and I instantly sprang to my feet. The Indian had also recovered himself, and we were now both on foot, and not more than twenty paces apart. We fired at each other simul- taneously. My usual luck did not desert me on this occasion, for his bullet missed me, while mine struck him in the breast. He reeled and fell, but be- fore he had fairly touched the ground I was upon him, knife in hand, and had driven the keen-edged weapon !:» lao CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE to iu hilt in his heart. Jerking hit war-bonnet off, I Kientifically Kalped him in about five seconds. . . . " The Indians came charging down upon me from a hill in hopes of cutting me off. General Merritt . . . ordered . . . Company K to hurty to my rescue. The order came none too soon. ... As the soldiers came up I swung the Indian chieftain's topknot and bonnet in the air, and shouted: 'The first scalp for Cus- ter! "' I Far up to the northward, Sitting Bull, with the war chief Spotted Tail and about three thousand warriors fled from the scene of the Custer massacre. And as they traveled on the lonely plains they came to a little fort with the gates closed. "Open your gates and hand out your grub," said the Indians. " Come and get the grub," answered the fort. So the gates were thrown open and the three thou- sand warriors stormed in to loot the fort. They found only two white m<'n standing outside a door, but all round the square the log buildings were loopholed and from every hole stuck out the muzzle of a rifle. The Indians were caught in such a deadly trap that they ran for their lives back to camp. Very soon news reached the Blackfeet that their enemies the Sioux were camped by the new fort at Wood Mountain, so the whole nation marched to wipe them out, and Sitting Bull appealed for help to the white men. " Be good," said the fort, " and nobody shall hurt you." So the hostile armies camped on either side, and the thirty white men kept the peace between them. One day the Sioux complained that the Blackfeet had stolen fifty horses. So six of the white men were BUFFALO BILL 131 sent to the Blackfoot herd to bring the horses back. They did rot know which horses to select so they drove off one h .idred fifty for good measure straight at a gallop through the Blackfoot camp, closely pursued by that indignant nation. Barely in time they ran the stock within the fort, and slammed the gates home in the face of the raging Blackfeet. They were delighted with themselves until the officer commanding fined them a month's pay each for insulting the Blackfoot nation. The winter came, the spring and then the summer, when those thirty white men arrived at the Canada- United States boundary where they handed over three thousand Sioux prisoners to the American troops. From that time the redcoats of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police of Canada have been respected on the frontier. And now came a very wonderful adventure. Sitting Bull, the leader of the Sioux nation who had defeated General Custer's division and surrendered his army to thirty Canadian soldiers, went to Europe to take part m a circus personally conducted by the chief of scouts of the United States Army, BuflFalo BOl. Poor Sitting Bull was afterward murdered by United States troops m the piteous massacre of Wounded Knee. Buffata Bill for twenty-six years paraded Europe and America with his gorgeous Wild West show, slowly earning the wealth which he lavished in the founding of Cody City Wyoming. ■" Toward the end of these tours I used to frequent the show camp much like a stray dog expecting to be kicked, would spend hours swapping lies with the cowboys in the old Deadwood Coach, or sit at meat "3 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE with the colonel and his six hundred followers. On the last tour the old man was thrown by a bad horse at Bristol and afterward rode with two broken bones in splints. Only the cowboys knew, who told me, as day by day I watched him back his horse from the ring with all the old incomparable grace. He went back to build a million dollar irrigation ditch for his little city on the frontier, and shortly afterward the newsp^rs reported that my friends — the Buffalo Creek Gang of robbers — attacked his bank, and shot the cashier. May civilization never shut out the free air of the frontier while the old hero lives, in peace and honor, loved to the end and wor- shiped by all real frontiersmen. XVII A. D. i860 THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT ■^^HEN the Eternal Father was making the earth, ▼'at one time He filled the sea with swimming dragons, the air with flying dragons, and the land with hoppmg dragons big as elephants ; but they were not a success, and so He swept them all away. After that he filled the southern continents with a small improved hoppmg dragon, that laid no eggs, but carried the baby in a pouch. There were queer half-invented fish, shadeless trees, and furry running birds like the emu and the moa. Then He swamped that southern world under the sea, and moved the workshop to our north- ern continems. But He left New Zealand and Austra- lia just as they were, a scrap of the half-finished world with furry running birds, the hopping kangaroo, the shadeless trees, and half-invented fish. So when the English went to Australia it was not an ordinary voyage, but a journey backward through the ages, through goodness only knows how many millions of years to the fifth day of creation. It was like visiting the moon or Mars. To live and travel in such a strange land a man must be native bom, bush raised, and cunnmg at that, on pain of death by famine. 134 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE The first British settlers, too, were convicts. The laws were so bad in England that a fellow might be deported merely for giving cheek to a judge; and the convicts on the whole were very decent people, brutally treated in the penal settlements. They used to escape to the bush, and runaway convicts explored Australia mainly in search of food. One of them, in Tasmania, used, whenever he escaped, to take a party with him and eat them one by one, until he ran short of food and had to surrender. Later on gold was discovered, and free settlers drifted in, filling the country, but the miners and the farmers were too busy earning a living to do much ex- ploration. So the exploring fell to English gentlemen, brave men, but hopeless tenderfeet, who knew noth- ing of bushcraft and generally died of hunger or thirst in districts where the native-bom colonial grows rich to-day. Edgar John Eyre, for instance, a Yorkshireman, landed in Sydney at the age of sixteen, and at twenty- five was a rich sheep-farmer, appointed by government protector of the black fellows. In 1840 the colonists of South Australia wanted a trail for drifting sheep into Western Australia, and young Eyre, from what he had learned among the savages, said the scheme was all bosh, in which he was perfectly right. He thought that the best line for exploring was north- ward, and set out to prove his words, but got tangled up in the salt bogs surrounding Torrens, and very nearly lost his whole party in an attempt to wade across. After that failure he feU that he had wasted the money subscribed in a wildcat project, so to make good set out again to find a route for sheep alcmg the THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT 125 waterless south coast of the continent. He knew the route was impossible, but it is a poor sort of cour- age that has to feed on hope, and the men worth having are those who leave their hopes behind to march light while they do their duty. Eyre's party consisted of himself and his ranch foreman Baxter, a favorite black boy Wylie, who was his servant, and two other natives who had been on the northward trip. They had nine horses, a pony, six sheep, and nine weeks' rations on the pack ani- mals. The first really dry stage was one hundred twenty- eight miles without a drop of water, and it was not the black fellows, but Eyre, the tenderfoot, who went ahead and found tlie well that saved them. The ani- mals died off one by one, so that the stores had to be left behind, and there was no food but rotten horse- flesh which caused dysentery, no water save dew col- lected with a sponge from the bushes after the cold nights. The two black fellows deserted, but after three days came back penitent and starving, thankful to be reinstated. These black fellows did not believe the trip was possible, they wanted to go home, they thought the expedition well worth plundering, and so one morning while Eyre was rounding up the horses they shot Bax- ter, plundered the camp and bolted. 'Only Eyre and his boy Wylie were left, but if they lived the deserters might be punished. So the two black fellows, armed with Baxter's gun, tried to hunt down Eyre and his boy with a view to murder. They came so near at night that Eyre once heard them shout to Wylie to desert. Eyre and the boy stole off, marching so 126 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE rapidly that the murderers were left behind and perished. p•1..^^t,•'"!i■' "'" *°"°"'"g the coast of the Great and the Enghsh skipper fed the explorers for a fort- night until they were well enough to go on. Twenty- three more days of terrible suffering brought Eyre and his boy looking like a brace of scarecrows, to a hilltop overlooking the town of Albany. Th.y had reached Western Australia, the first travelers (o cross from the eastern to the fljestem colonies. In after years Eyre was governor of Jamaica. II Australia being the harshest country on earth, breeds the hardiest pioneers, horsemen, bushmen trackers, hunters, scouts, who find the worst African or Amencan travel a sort of picnic. The bushie is disappointing to town Australians because he has no swaric, and nothing of the brilliant picturesqueness of «^e American frontiersman. He is only a tall, gaunt man. lithe as a whip, with a tongue like a whiH^sh and It IS on bad trips or in battle that one findrwhat vl J ? '' " •""'* ^'^^'^^ gentleman with a vein of poetry. wlirT'' "'^ Melbourne people were cracked in i860 l.rL 1 ^T^ "" expedition to cross Australia job^elected tenderfeet. Burke was an Irishman, late of the Hungarun cavalry, and the Royal Irish Con- stabulary, serving as an officer in the Victorian police. Wills was a Devon man, with some frontier training on the sheep runs, but had taken to astronomy and THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT 127 surveying. There were several other white men, and three Afghans with a train of camels. They left Melbourne with pomp and circumstance, crossed Victoria through civilized country, and made a base camp on the Darling River at Menindie. There Burke sacked two mutinous followers and his doctor scuttled in a funk, so he took on Wright, an old settler who knew the way to Cooper's Creek four hundred miles farther on. Two hundred miles out Wright was sent back to bring up stores from Menindie, while the expedition went on to make an advanced base at Cooper's Creek. Everything was to depend on the storage of food at that base. While they were waiting for Wright to come up with their stores. Wills and another man prospected ninety miles north from Cooper's Creek to the Stony Desert, a land of white quartz pebbles and polished red sandstone chips. The explorer Sturt had been there, and come back blind. No man had been beyond. Wills, having mislaid his three camels, came back ninety miles afoot without water, to find the whole expedition stuck at Cooper's Creek, waiting for stores. Mr. Wright at Menindie burned time, wasting six weeks before he attempted to start with the stores, and Burke at last could bear the delay no longer. There were thunder-storms giving promise of abundant water for once in the northern desert, so Burke marched with Wills, King and Gray, taking a horse and six camels. William Brahe was left in charge at the camp at Cooper's Creek, to remain with ample provisions until Wright turned up, but not to leave except in dire extremity. 128 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Burke's party crossed the glittering Stony Desert, and watching the birds who always know the way to water, they came to a fine lake, where they spent Christmas day. Beyond that they came to the Dia- mantina and again there was water. The country im- proved, there were northward flowing streams to cheer thru on their way, and at last they came to salt water at the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria. They had crossed the continent from south to north. With blithe hearts they set out on their return, and if they had to kill tjie camels for food, then to eat snakes, which disagreed with them, still there would be plenty when they reached Cooper's Creek. Gray complained of being ill, but pilfering stores is not a proper symptom of any disease, so Burke gave him a thrashing by way of medicine. When he died, they delayed one day for his burial ; one day too much, for when they reached Cooper's Creek they were just nine hours late. Thirty-one miles they made in the last march and reeled exhausted into an empty camp ground. Cut in the bark of a tree were the words "Dig, 31 April 1861." They dug a few inches into the earth where they found a box of provisions, and a bottle containing a letter. " The depot party of the V. E. E. leave this camp to-day to return to the Darling. I intend to go S. E. from camp sixty miles to get into our old track near BuIIoo. Two of my companions and myself are quite well ; the third. Patten, has been unable to walk for the last eighteen days, as his leg has been severely hurt when thrown from one of the horses. No person has been up here from Darling. We have six camels and THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT 139 twelve horses in good working condition. William Brahe." It would be hopeless with two exhausted camels to try and catch up with that march. Down Cooper's Creek one hundred fifty miles the South Australian Mounted Police had an outpost, and the box of pro- visions would last out that short journey. They were too heart-sick to make an inscription on the tree, but left a letter in the bottle, buried. A few days later Brahe returned with the industrious Mr. Wright and his supply train. Here is the note in Wright's diary: — " May eighth. This morning I reached the Cooper's Creek depot and found no sign of Mr. Burke's having visited the creek, or the natives having disturbed the stores." Only a few miles away the creek ran out into chan- nels of dry sand where Burke, Wills and King were starving, ragged beggars fed by the charitable black fellows on fish and a seed called nardoo, of which they made their bread. There were nice fat rats also, delicious baked in their skins, and the natives brought them fire-wood for the camp. Again they attempted to reach the Mounted Police outpost, but the camels died, the water failed, and they starved. Burke sent Wills back to Cooper's Creek. " No trace," wrote Wills in his journal, " of any one except the blacks having been here since we left." Brahe and Wright had left no stores at the camp ground. Had they only been bushmen the tracks would have told Wills of help within his reach, the fish hooks 130 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE would have won them food in plenty. It is curious, too, that Burke died after a meal of crow and nardoo, there being neither sugar uor fat in these foods, with- out which they can not sustain a man's life. Then King left Burke's body, shot three crows and brought them to Wills, who was lying dead in camp. Three months afterward a relief party found King living among the natives " wasted to a shadow, and hardly to be distinguished as a civilized being but by the remnants of the clothes upon him." " They should not have gone," said one pioneer of these lost explorers. "They weren't bushmen." Afterward a Mr. Collis and his wife lived four years in plenty upon the game and fish at the Innaminka water-hole where poor Burke died of hunger. Such were the first crossings from east to west, and from south to north of the Australian continent XVIII A. D. 1867 THE HERO-STATESMAN ' I ""HERE is no greater man now living in the -■■ world than Diaz the hero-statesman, father of Mexico. What other soldier has scored fourteen sieges and fifty victorious battles? What other statesman, having fought his way to the throne, has built a civilized nation out of chaos? This Spanish-red Indian half-breed began work at the age of seven as errand boy in a shop. At four- teen he was earning his living as a private tutor while he worked through college for the priesthood. At seventeen he was a soldier in the local militia and saw his country overthrown by the United States, which seized three-fourths of all her territories. At the age of twenty-one. Professor Diaz, in the chair of Roman law at Oaxaca, was working double tides as a law- yer's clerk. In the Mexican "republic" it is a very serious offense to vote for the Party-out-of-office, and the only way to support the opposition is to get out with a rifle and fight. So when Professor Diaz voted at the next general election he had to fly for his life. After several months of hard fighting he emerged from his first revolution as mayor of a village. 131 133 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE The villagers were naked Indians, and found their new mayor an unexpected terror. He drUled them mto soldiers, marched them to his native city Oaxaca, captured the place by assault, drove out a local usurper who was making things too hot for the citi- zens, and then amid the wild rejoicings that fol- lowed, was promoted to a capuincy in the national guards. Captain Diai explained to his national guards that they were fine men, but needed a little tactical exer- cise. So he took them out for a gentle course of maneuvers, to try their teeth on a rebellion which hap- pened to be camped conveniently in the neighborhood. When he had finished exercising his men, there was no rebellion left, o he marched them home. He had to come home because he was dangerously wounded. It must be explained that there were two big polit- ical parties, the clericals, and the liberals— both pledged to steal everything in sight Diaz was scarcely healed of his wound, when a clerical excur- sion came down to steal the city. He thrashed them SKk. he chased them until they dropped, and thrashed them agam until they scattered in helpless panic. The liberal president rewarded Colonel Diaz with a post of such eminent danger, that he had to fight for h.s life through two whole years before he could eet a vacation. Then Oaxaca, to procure him a holi up in a tower, and his dungeon had but a little iron-barred window far up in the walls. Diaz got through those bars, escaped, rallied a handful of Mex- icans, armed them hy oijituring a French coovoy camp. »M CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE raised the southern states of Mexico, and for two years held his own against the armies of France President Juarez had been driven away into the northern desert, a fugitive, the Emperor Maximilian reigned m the capital, and Marshal Bazaine com- manded the French forces that tried to conquer Diaz w the south. The Mexican hero had three thousand men and a chain of forts. Behind that chain of forts he was busy reorganizing the government of the south- em states, and among other details, founding a school lor girls m his native city. Marshal Bazaine,' the traitor, who afterward sold France to the Germans, attempted to bribe Diaz, but. failing m that, brought nearly iifty thousand men to attack three thousand. Slowly he drove the unfortu- nate nationalists to Oaxaca and there Diaz made one of the most glorious defenses in the annals of war. He melted the cathedral bells for cannon-balls, he mounted a gun in the empty belfry, where he and his starving fo lowers fought their last great fight, until he stood alone among the dead, firing charge after charge into the siege lines. » 6 « Once more he was cast into prison, only to make ouch frantic attempts at escape that in the end he suc- ceeded in scaling an impossible wall. He was an out- law now, Iivmg by robbery, hunted like a wolf, and yet on the second day after that escape, he commanded Hf,iK rf"" ""'' '^P*""'^ '^ French garrison. He ambuscaded an expedition sent against him, raised an army, and reconquered Southern Mexico. JLZ" ^'"" ^'^^^ *''"' *•'* United States com- rcHcd the French to retire. President Juarez marched irom the northern ^gserts, gathering the people as be THE HERO-STATESMAN I3S came, besieged Queretaro, captured and shot the Em- peror Maximilian. Diaz marched from the south, en- tered the City of Mexico, handed over the capital to his triumphant president, resigned his commission as commander-in-chief, and retired in deep contentment to manufacture sugar in Oaxaca. For nine years the hero made sugar. Over an area in the north as large as France, the Apache Indians butchered every man, woman and child with fiendish tortures. The whole distracted nation cried in its agony for a leader, but every respectable man who tried to help was promptly denounced by the gov- ernment, stripped of his possessions and driven into exile. At last General Diaz could bear it no longer, made a few remarks and was prosecuted. He fled, and there began a period of the wildest adventures conceivable, while the government attempted to hunt him down. He raised an insurrection in the north, but after a series of extraordinary victories, found the southward march impossible. When next he en- tered the republic of Mexico, he came disguised as a laborer by sea to the port of Tampico. At Vera Cruz he landed, and after a series of almost miraculous escapes from capture, succeeded in walk- ing to Oaxaca. There he raised his last rebellion, and with four thousand followers ambuscaded a govern- ment aitny, taking three thousand prisoners, the guns and all the transport. President Lerdo heard the news, and bolted with all the cash. General Diaz took the City of Mexico and declared himself presi- dent of the republic. Whether as bandit or king, Diaz has always been the handsomest man in Mexico, the most courteous, 136 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE the most charming, and terrific as lightning when in action. The country suffered from a very plague of politicians until one day he dropped in as a visitor, quite unexpected, at Vera Cruz, selected the eleven leading politicians without the slightest bias as to their views, put them up against the city wall and shot them. Politics was abated. The leading industry of the country was highway robbery, until the president, exquisitely sympathetic, invited all ihe principal robbers to consult with him as to details of government. He formed them into a body of mounted pol|ice, which swept like a whirl- wind through the republic and put a sudden end to brigandage. Capital punishment not being permitted by the humane government, the robbers were all shot for " attempting to escape." Next in importance was the mining of silver, and the recent decline in its value threatened to ruin Mex- ico. By the magic of his finance, Diaz used that crushing reverse to lace the country with railroads, equip the cities with electric lights and traction power far in advance of any appliances we have in Englsmd, open great seaports, and litter all the states of Mexico with prosperous factories. Meanwhile he paid off the national debt, and made his coinage sound. He never managed himself to speak any other lan- guage than his own majestic, slow Castilian, but he knew that English is to be the tongue of mankind. Every child in Mexico bad to go to school to learn English. And this greatest of modem sovereigns went about among his people the simplest, most accessible of men. "They may kill me if they want to," he said once. THE HERO-STATESMAN 137 " but they don't want to. They rather like me." So one might see him taking his morning ride, wearing the beautiful leather dress of the Mexican horsemen, or later in the day, in a tweed suit going down to the office by tram car, or on his holidays hunting the nine- foot cats which we call cougar, or of a Sunday going to church with his wife and children. On duty he was an absolute monarch, off duty a kindly citizen, and it seemed to all of us who knew the country that he would die as he had lived, still in harness. One did not expect too much — the so-called elections were a pleasant farce, but the country was a deal better governed than the western iialf of the United States. Any felknv entitled to a linen collar in Europe wore a revolver in Mexico, as part of the dress of a gentle- man, but in the wildest districts I never carried a cartridge. Diaz had made his country a land of peace and order, strong, respected, prosperous, witij every outward sign of coming greatness. Exceptiag only Napcdeon and the late Japanese emperor, he was boft in war a»id peace the greatest leader our world has e»er known. But the people proved un- worthy of tlKJr chief; to-day he is a broken exile, ami .DtexKD hats lapsed back into anardiy. XIX A. D. 1870 THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT A LADY who renjembers John Rowlands at the ■« *■ workhouse school in Denbigh tells me that he was a lazy disagreeable boy. He is also described as a " full-faced, stubborn, self-willed, round-headed uncompromising, deep fellow. He was particularly strong m the trunk, but not very smart or elegant about the legs, which were disproportionately short. His temperament was unusually secretive; he could stand no chaff nor the least bit of humor." Perhaps that is why he ran away to sea ; but any- way a sailing ship landed him in New Orleans, where a rich merchant adopted him as a son. Of course a workhouse boy has nothing to be patriotic about, so It was quite natural that this Welsh youth should be- come a good American, also that he should give up the name his mother bore, taking that of his bene- factor, Henry M. Stanley. The old man died, leav- ing him nothing, and for two years there is no record until the American Civil War gave him a chance of proving his patriotism to his adopted country. He was so tremendously patriotic that he served on both sides, first in the confederate army, then in the fed- eral navy. He proved a very brave man, and after THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 139 the war, distinguished himself as a special corre- spondent during an Indian campaign in the West Then he joined the staff of the New York Herdd serving m the Abyssinian War, and the civil war in Spam. He allowed the Herald to contradict a rumor that he was a Welshman. " Mr. Stanley," said the paper, "is neither an Ap-Jones, nor an Ap-Thomas. Missouri and not Wales is his birthplace." Privatdy he spent his holidays with hi. mother and family m Wait., leaking W«!Wi no doubt with a strong Awericafi aecent. The wSirtew-aAed American has always a piercing twang, even if he has adopted as his "native" land, soft-voiced Missouri, or polished Louisiana. In those days Doctor Livingstone was missing. The gentle daring explorer had found Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika, and to the westward of them, a mile wide river, the Lualaba, which he supposed to be headwaters of the Nile. He was slowh dying of lever, almost penniless, and always when he reached the verge of some new discovery, his cowardly negro carriers revolted, or ran away, leaving him to his fate No word of him had reached the world for years fcngland was anxious as to the fate of one of her greatest men, so there were various attempts to send relief, delayed by the e.xpense, and not perhaps handled by really first-rate men. To fi„d Livingstone would be a most tremendous world-wide advertise- ment, say for a patent-pill man, a soap manufacturer or a newspaper. Ail lliat uas needed was un- hmited cash, and the services of a first rate practical traveler, vulgar enough to use the lost hero as so much copy" for his newspaper. The New York 140 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Herald had the money, and in Stanley, the very man for the job. Not that the Herald, or Stanley cared twopence about the fate of Livingstone. The journal sent the man to make a big journey through Asia Minor and Persia on his way to Zanzibar. T,:o more Living, stones rescue was delayed the better the "ad" for Stanley and the Herald. As to the journey, Stanley's story has been amply advertised and we have no other version because his white followers died. He found Livingstone at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, and had the grace to reverence, comfort and succor a dying man. As to Stanley's magnificent feat of exploring the great lakes, and descending Livingstone's river to the mouth of the Congo, again his story is well exploited while the version of his white followers is missing because they gave their lives. In Stanley's expedition which founded the Congo State, and m his relief of Emin Pasha, the white men were more fortunate, and some lived. It is rumored hat they did not like .Mr. Stanley, but his negro fol- lowers most certainly adored him, serving in one jour- ney after another. There can be no doubt too, that with the unlimited funds that financed and his own fine merits as a traveler, SUnley did more than any other explorer to open up the dark continent, and to solve Its age-long mysteries. It was not his fault that Livingstom: stayed on in the wilderness to die, that «ie Congo Free State became the biggest scandal of modern times, or that Emin Pasha flatly refused to be rescued from governing the Soudan. Stanley lived to reap the rewards of his great deeds THE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT 141 to iixget that he was a native of Missouri and a free- born American citizen, to accept the honor of ^iighAood and to sit in the Britiri. parliament. Whether as a Welshman, or an American, a confed- «»te. or a federal, a Belgian subject or a Britisher, he always knew on which side bis bread was buttered. XX A.D. 1871 LORD STRATHCONA ¥T is nearly a century now since Lord Strathcona ■I was born in a Highland cottage. His father, Alexander Smith, kept a little shop at Forres, in Elgin; his mother, Barbara Stewart, knew while she reared the lad that the world would hear of him. His school, founded by a returned adventurer, was one which sent out settlers for the colonies, soldiers for the army, miners for the gold-fields, bankers for England, men to every comer of the world. As the lad grew, he saw the soldiers, the sailors, the adven- turers, who from time to time came tired home to Forres, and among these was his uncle, John Stewart, famous in the annals of the Canadian frontier, rich, distinguished, commending all youngsters to do as he had done. When Donald Smith was in his eighteenth year, this uncle procured him a clerkship in the Hud- son's Bay Company. Canada was in revolt when in 1837 the youngster reached Montreal, for Robert Nelson had proclaimed a Canadian republic and the British troops were busy driving the republicans into the United States. So there was bloodshed, the burning of houses, the filling of the jails with rebels to be convicted presently and 143 LORD STRATHCONA '43 hanged. Out of all this noi« and confusion. Donald Smith was sent into the silence of Ubrador, the un- known wUdemess of the Northeast Territor^, where Ae first explorer. McLean, was searching for tribes of Eskunos hat might be induced to trade with (1838) wrote McLean. "I was gratified by the ar- rival of despatches from Canada by a young derk .ppomted to the district. By him we r'eceHy he first mtelhgence of the stirring events which had taken ^ vu'"u ^' '°'°"'" *•"""« *•>« preceding year." So Sm.th had taken a year to carry the news of th^ Canad.a„ revolt to that remote camp of the explorers. Henceforward, for many years there exists no pub- he record of Donald Smith's career, and he has flath^ refused to tell the stoiy lest he should appear to 2 adverfsmg. His work consisted of tradinrw tJ the ^vages for skms. of commanding small out^sts. heal! mg the s.ck, admm.stering justice, bookkeeping, and of immense journeys by canoe in summer, or wrfole drawn by a team of dogs in winter. ^ winf^ s arctic m that Northeast Territoiy. and a ve^X - ant season between blizzards, but the summer s cursed with a plague of insects, black flier^ day mosquitoes by night almost beyond endurance. Like hlX""" '",*! ""''"^ °^ *^' =°«P="y' Mr. Smith of the snow-storms, the wrecking of canoes. There is but one story extant. His eyesight seemed to be fail- mg, and after much pain he ventured on a journey of many months to seek the help of a doctor in Montreal. Sir George Simpson, governor of thj company, met hrni in the outskirts of the city. »«c»ocorr (tsoiuTioN ibt cha>t (ANSI and ISO TEST CHAUT No. 2) 1^ . |2£ \Si ■ 2.2 g6 ■^ 4.0 ti& IZ mii^tjL >^PPLIED IN/MGE In T653 Eatt Main Street RochMttr. Htm Yorh 14609 USA (716) 482 - 0300 - Phon« (716) 2B8 - 5989 - Fox 144 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE " Well, young man," he said, " why are you not at your post?" " My eyes, sir; they got so bad, I've come to see a doctor." "And who gave you permission to leave your post?" " No one, sir." It would have taken a year to get permission, and his need was urgent. "Then, sir," answered the governor, "if it's a question between your eyes, and your service in the Hudson's Bay Company, you'll take my advice, and return this instant t^ your post." Without another word, without a glance toward the city this man turned on his tracks, and set oflf to tramp a thousand miles back to his duty. The man who has learned to obey has learned to command, and wherever Smith was stationed, the books were accurate, the trade was profitable. He was not heard of save in the return of profits, while step by step he rose to higher and higher command, until at the age of forty-eight he was appointed gov- ernor of the Hudson's Bay Company, sovereign from the Atlantic to the Pacific, reigning over a country nearly as large as Europe. To his predecessors this had been the crowning of an ambitious life; to him, it was only the beginning of his great career. The Canadian colonies were then being welded into a nation and the first act of the new Dominion govern- ment was to buy from the Hudson's Bay Company the whole of its enormous empire, two thouMnd miles wide and nearly five thousand miles long. Never was there such a sale of tand, at such a price, for the cash payment worked out at about two LORD STRATHCCNA 145 shillings per square mile. Two-thirds of the money Went to the sleeping partners of the company in Eng- land; one-third — thanks to Mr. Smith's persuasion — was granted to the working officers in Rupert's Land. Mr. Smith's own share seems to have been the little nest egg from which his fortune has hatched. When the news of the great land sale reached the Red River of the north, the people there broke oul in revolt, set up a republic, and installed Louis Riel as president at Fort Garry. Naturally this did not meet the views of the Canadian government, which had bought the country, or of the Hudson's Bay Company, which owned the stolen fort. Mr. Smith, governor of the company, was sent at once as commissioner for the Canadian government to restore the settlement to order. On his arrival the rebel president promptly put him in jail, and openly threatened his life. In this awkward situation, Mr. Smith contrived not only to stay alive, but to conduct a public meeting, with President Riel acting as his interpreter to the French half-breed rebels. The temperature at this outdoor meeting was twenty degrees below zero, with a keen wind, but in course of five hours' debating, Mr. Smith so under- mined the rebel authority that from that time it began to collapse. Afterward, although the rebels murdered one prisoner, and times were more than ex- citing, Mr. Smith's policy gradually sapped the re- bellion, until, when the present Lord Wolseley arrived with British troops, Riel and his deluded half-breeds bolted. So, thanks to Mr. Smith, Fort Garry is now Winnipeg, the central city of Canada, capital of her central province, Manitoba. 146 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE But when Sir Donald Smith had resigned from the Hudson's Bay Company's service, and became a poli- tician, he schemed, with unheard-of daring, for even Sreater ends. At his suggestion, the Northwest Mounted Police was formed and sent out to take pos- session of the Great Plains. That added a wheat field to Canada which will very soon be able to feed the British empire. Next he speculated with every dollar he could raise, on a rusty railway track, which some American huijders had abandoned because they were bankrupt. He got the rail head into Winnipeg, and a large trade opened with the United States. So began the boom that turned Manitoba into a populous country, where the buffalo had ranged be- fore his coming. Now he was able to startle the Canadian government with the warning that unless they hurried up with a railway, binding the whole Dominion from ocean to ocean, all this rich western country would drift into the United States. When the government had failed in an attempt to build the impossible railway, Sir Donald got Montreal financiers together, cousins and friends of his own, staked every dollar he had, made them gamble as heavily, and set to work on the biggest road ever constructed. The country to be traversed was almost unexplored, almost uninhabited except by savages, fourteen hundred miles of rock and forest, a thousand miles of plains, six hundred miles of high alps. The syndicate building the road consisted of merchants in a provincial town not bigger then than Bristol, and when they met for business it was to wonder vaguely where the month's pay was to come from for their men. They would part for the night LORD STRATHCONA 147 to think, and by morning, Donald Smith would say, "Well, here's another million — that ought to do for a bit" On November seven, 1885, he drove the last spike, the golden spike, that completed the Canadian Pacific railway, and welded Canada into a Uving nation. Since then Lord Strathcona has endowed a uni- versity and given a big hospital to Montreal. At a cost of three hundred thousand pounds he presented the famous regiment known as Strathcona's Horse, to the service of his country, and to-day, in his ninety- third year is working hard as Canadian high commis- sioner in London. H XXI A.D. 1872 THE SEA HUNTERS THE Japanese have heroes and adventurers just as fine as our own, most valiant and worthy knights. Unhappily I am too stupid to remember their honorable names, to understand their mo- tives, or to make out exactly what they were playing at. It is rather a pity they have to be left out, but at least we can deal with one very odd phase of adven- ture in the Japan seas. The daring seamen of old Japan used to think nothing of crossing the Pacific to raid the American coast for slaves. But two or three hundred years ago the reigning shogun made up his mind that slav- ing was immoral. So he pronounced an edict by which the builders of junks were forbidden to fill in their stern frame with the usual panels. The junks were still good enough for coastwise trade at home, but if they dared the swell of the outer ocean a fol- lowing sea would poop them and send them to the bottom. That put a stop to the slave trade; but no king can prevent storms, and law or no law, disabled juntcs were sometimes swept by the big black current and the westerly gales right across the Pacific Ocean. THE SEA HUNTERS 149 The law made only one diflFerence, that the crippled junks never got back to Japan ; and if their castaway seamen reached America the native tribes enslaved them. I find that during the first half of the nine- teenth century the average was one junk in forty-two months cast away on the coasts of America. Now let us turn to another eflfect of this strange law that disabled Japanese shipping. Northward o' Tapan are the Kuril Islands in a region of almost pe. actual fog, bad storms and bitter cold, ice pack, strong currents and tide rips, combed by the fanged reefs, with plenty of earthquakes and eruptions to allay any sense of monotony. The large and hairy natives are called the Ainu, who live by fishing, and used to catch sea otter and fur seal. These furs found their way via Japan to China, where sea-otter fur was part of the costly official winter dress of the Chinese mandarins. As to the seal, their whiskers are worth two shillings a set for cleaning opium pipes, and one part of the carcass sells at a shilling a time for medicine, apart from the worth of the fur. Now the law that disabled the junks made it im- possible for Japan to do much trade in the Kurils, so that the Russians actually got there first as colonists. But no law disabled the Americans, and when the supply of sea otter failed on the Califomian coast in 1872 a schooner called the Cypnet crossed the Pacific to the Kuril Islands. There the sea-otters were plen- tiful in the kelp beds, tame as cats and eager to in- spect the hunters' boats. Their skins fetched from eighty to ninety dollars. When news came to Japan of this new way of get- ting rich, a young Englishman, Mr. H. J. Snow, ISO CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE bought a schooner, a hog-backed relic called the Swallow in which he set out for the hunting. Three days out, a gale dismasted her, and putting in for shelter she was cast away in the Kuriles. Mr. Snow's second venture was likewise cast away on a desert isle, where the crew wintered. " My vessels," he says, "were appropriately named. The Swallow swallowed up part of my finances, and the Snowdrop caused me to drop the rest." During the winter another crew of white men were in quarters on a distant headland of the same Island Yeturup, and were cooking their Christmas dinner when they met with an accident. A dispute had arisen between two rival cooks as to how to fry frit- ters, and during the argument a pan of boiling fat capsized into the stove and caught alight. The men escaped through the flames half dressed, their clothes on fire, into the snow-dad wilderness and a shrewd wind. Then they set up a shelter of driftwood with the burning ruin in front to keep them warm, while they gravely debated as to -vhether they ought to cremate the cooks upon the ashes of their home and of their Christmas dinner. To understand the adventures of the sea hunters we must follow the story of the leased islands. The Alaska Commercial Company, of San Francisco, leased the best islands for seal and otter fishing. From the United States the company leased the Pribilof Islands in Bering Sea, a great fur-seal me- tropolis with a population of nearly four millwns. They had armed native gamekeepers and the help of an American gunboat. From Russia the company leased Bering and Ccqjper Islands off Kamchatka, THE SEA HUNTERS 'SI ^r S^/''-^"' °", ^'"^!""*" *'"' •»» »««««• Rob- ber Island There also they had native gamekeep- gunboats. The company had likewise tame news- papers to preach about the wickedness oTthe !« hunters anxl call them bad names. As a rule 7he se^ hunters d.d their hunting far out at sea whe« it was forS '^'"i ^' "^^ *°"' '"'^ landed^iTh Sal thir- V If",'"!: **" *"* ♦"« «« hunters Isli^Niirr,,"".^' l!?" ''"' "'«' °" Bering island. Night fell while his crew were busy clul^ bmg seals, and they had killed about six hunted when the garrison rushed them. Of course the hit ers made haste to the boaU. but Sn S^^^ n..ssed h>s men who should have follow^ him and as hundreds of seals were taking to the Sr he S tr """i"^ r^'"« '"^"^ «»- shelterthind which he squatted down, waist-deep. When fte landscape became more peaceful he seToff^Z tl shore of boulders^ stumbling, falling and molested! yappi^ foxes. He had to throw rocks to keep Aem MU W \' ^""""^ **" «°'"« "^ "»<» he took t^t^ hills but sea boots reaching to the hips are not comfy for long walks, and when he pulled them off he found how surprisingly sharp are the stones in an Arrtic undra. He pulled them on again, and after a ^ tune came abreast of his schooner, where he found onf of the seamen. They hailed and a boat took thel " bc«rd where the shipkeeper was fouS to be d^nT and the Japanese bos'n much in need of a thrasW J; iSa CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Captain Snow supplied what was needed to the bos'n and had a big su()per, but could not sail as the second mate was still missing. He turned in for a night's rest. Next morning bright and early came a company's steamer with a Russian officer and two soldiers who searched the schooner. There was not a trace of evi- dence on board, but on general principles the vessel was seized and condemned, all her people suffering some months of imprisonment at Vladivostok. In 1888, somewhat' prejudiced against the virtuous company, Captain Snow came with the famous schooner Nemo, back to the scene of h's misadventure. One morning with three boats he went prospecting for otter close along shore, shot four, and his hunters one, then gave the signal of return to the schooner. At that moment two shots rang out from behind the boulders ashore, and a third, which peeled some skin from his hand, followed by a fusillade like a hail storm. Of the Japanese seamen in Snow's boat the boat steerer was shot through the backbone. A sec- ond man was hit first in one leg, then in the other, but went on pulling. The stroke oar, shot in the calf, fell and lay, seemingly dead, but really cautious. Then the other two men bent down and Snow was shot in the kg. So rapid was the firing that the guns ashore must have heated partly melting the leaden bullets, for on board the boat there was a distinct perfume of molten lead. Three of the bullets which struck the captain seem to have been deflected by his woolen jersey, and one which got through happened to strike a fold. It had been noted in the Franco-Prussian War that THE SEA HUNTERS 153 woolen underdothc, will sometimes turn leaden bullets. " I remember," says Captain Snow, " weighing the chances ... of swimming beside the boat, but decided that we should be just as liable to be drowned as shot, as no one could stand the cold water for long. For the greater part of the time I was vigorously ply^ ing my paddle ... and only presenting the edge of my body, the left side, to the enemy. This is how it was that the bullets which struck me all entered my clothing on the left side. I expected every moment to be shot through the body, and I could not help wondering how it would feel.'' With three dying men, and three wounded, he got the sinking boat under sail and brought her alongside the schooner. Of course it was very good of the Alaska Com- mercial Company to preserve the wild game of the islands, but even gamekeepers may show excess of 2eal when it comes to wholesale mur ler. To all of us who were in that trade it is a matter of keen regret that the officers ashore took such good cover. Their guards, and the Cossacks, were kindly souls enough, ready and willing — in the absence of the officers — to sell skins to the raiders or even, after some refresh- ments, to helj- in clubbing a few hundred seals. It was rather awkward, though, for one of .he schooners at Cape Patience when in the midst of these festivi- ties a gunboat came round the comer. Tiie American and the Japanese schooners weie not always quite good friends, and there is a queer story of a triangular duel between ihree vessels, fought in a fog. Mr. Kipling had the Rhyme of the Three 154 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Stdtrs, he told me, from Captain Lake in Yoko- hama. I had it from the mate of one of the three ichoonert, Tki SttUa, She changed her name to Ad*l*, and the mate became master, a little, round, fox-faced Norseman, Hans Hansen, of Christiania. In 1884 the Add* was captured by an American gun- boat and taken to San Francisco. Hansen said that he and his men were marched through the streets shackled, and great was the howl about pirates, but when the case came up for trial the court had no jurisdiction, and the 'ship was released. From that event dates the name " Yokohama Pirates," and Han- sen's nickname as the Flying Dutchman. Because at the time of capture he had for once been a perfectly innocent deep sea sealer, he swore everlasting war against the United State;, transferred his ship to the port of Victoria, British Columbia, and would hoist by turns the British, Japanese, German, Norwegian or even American flag, as suited his convenience. Once when T asked him why not the Black Flag, he grinned, remarking that them old-fashioned pirates had no business sense. Year after year he raided the forbidden islands to subvert the garri- sons, rob warehouses, or plunder the rookeries, while gunboats of four nations failed to effect his capture. In port he was a pattern of innocent virtue, at sea his superb seamanship made him as hard to catch as a ghost, and his adventures beat the Arabian Nights. I was with him as an ordinary seaman in the voyage of 1889, a winter raid upon the Pribibf Islands. At the first attempt we clawed off > lee shore in a hurricane, the second resulted in a mutiny, and the third landing was not very success- THE SEA HUNTERS 155 ful, because the boats were swamped, and the garri- son a little too prevalent ashore. On the voyage of 1890 the Adelt took four hundred skins, but in 1891 was cast away on the North Island of the Queen parlotte group, without any loss of life. The Fly- ing Dutchman took to mining on the outer coast of Vancouver, where he rescued a shipwrecked crew, but afterward perished in the attempt to save a drowning Indian. Quite apart from the so-called Yokohama pirates, a large fleet of law-abiding Canadian schooners hunted the fur seal at sea, r natter which led to some slight unpleasantness betw .. the American and the British governments. There was hunting also in the seas about Cape Horn; but the Yoko- hama schooners have left behind them i y far the finest memories. Captain Snow says th?' -rom first to last some fifty white men's schooners sailed out of Yokohama. Of five there is no record, two took to sealing when the sea otter no longer paid, and four were sold out of the business. The Russians sank one, captured and lost two, captured and condemned three, all six being a dead loss to their owners. For the rest, twenty-two were cast away, and twelve foundered with all hands at sea, so that the total loss was forty ships out of fifty. For daring seamanship and gallant adventure sea hunting made a school of manhood hard to match in this tame modem world, and war is a very tame aflfair to those who shared the fun. XXII A. D. 1879 THE BUSHRANGERS IT is a merit to love dumb animals, but to steal them is an excess of virtue that is sure to cause trouble with the police. All Australians have a pas- sion for horses, but thirty years ago, the Australian bushmen developed such a mania for horse-stealing, that the mounted police were fairly run off their legs. The feeling between bushmen and police became so exceedingly bitter that in 1878 a constable, attempting to make arrests, was beset and wounded. The fight took place in the house of a Mrs. Kelly, who got penal servitude, whereas her sons, Ned and Dan, who did the actual shooting, escaped to the hills. A hun- dred pounds were offered for their arrest. Both of Mrs. Kelly's sons were tainted, bom and raised thieves. At the age of sixteen Ned had served an apprenticeship in robbery under arms with Power the bushranger, who described him as a cowardly young brute. Now, in his twenty-fifth year he was far from brave. Dan, aged seventeen, was a ferocious young wolf, but manly. As the brothers lurked in hiding they were joined by Joe Byrne, aged twenty- one, a gallant and sweet-tempered lad gone wrong, and by Steve Hart, a despicable little cur. All four .56 THE BUSHRANGERS IS? were superb as riders, scouts and bushmen, fairly good shots, intimate with every inch of the country, supported by hundreds of kinsmen and the sympathy of the people generally in the war they had declared against the police. In October, Sergeant Kennedy and three constables patroling in search of the gang, were surprised by the outlaws in camp, and, as they showed fight, Ned and Dan Kelly attacked them. Only one trooper escaped. At this outrage, Byrne was horrified, Hart scared, but the Kellys forced them to fire into Sergeant Kennedy's corpse that they might share the guilt. Then Ned Kelly, touched by the gallantry with which the sergeant had fought, brought a cloak and reverently covered his body. In December, the outlaws stuck up a sheep station, and robbed the bank at Euroa. In February, 1879, they surprised the police station at Jerilderie, locked two policemen in the cells, dis- guised themselves as constables, captured the town, imprisoning a crowd of people in the hotel, then sacked the bank, and rode away shouting and singing with their plunder. By this time the rewards offered for their capture amounted to eight thousand pounds, and the whole strength of the Victoria police was engaged, with native trackers, in hunting them. Had these wicked robbers ever showed rudeness to a woman, or plun- dered a poor man, or behaved meanly with their stolen wealth, they would have been betrayed at once to the police, but the Australians are sportsmen, and there is a gallantry in robbery under arms that appeals to misguided hearts. I »S8 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE The four bad men were so polite to all women, so kindly to unarmed citizens, so humorous in their methods, so generous with their gold, so daring in making war against a powerful British state, that they were esteemed as heroes. Even bad heroes are better than none at all, and they were not be- trayed even by poor folk to whom the rewards would have been a fortune. For two years they outwitted the whole force of police, scouts and trackers at a cost to the state of one hundred fifteen thousand pounds. , But with all this the best of Australian manhood was engaged in the hunt, and the real heroes of this adventure were the police, who made no moan through months of outrageous labor and suffering in the mountains. Superintendent Hare, in charge of the hunt, made friends with a kinsman of the outlaws, a young horse- thief, named Aaron Sherritt. This lad knew all the secrets of the outlaws, was like a brother to them, and yet, so worshiped Mr. Hare that he served with the police as a spy. In treachery to his kinsmen, he was at least faithful to his master, knowing that he went to his own death. He expected the outlaws to come by night to the house of Joe Byrne's mother, and led Mr. Hare's patrol, which lay for the next month in hiding upon a hill overlooking the homestead. Aaron was en- gaged to Byrne's sister, was daily at the house and slowly a dim suspicion dawned on the outlaw's mother. Then the old woman, uneasily searching the hills, stumbled into the police bivouac, and saw Aaron Sherritt, the spy, asleep in that company. His dress THE BUSHRANGERS 159 betrayed him to her, a white shirt, breeches and long boots, impossible to mistake. And when he knew what had happened, the lad turned white. " Now," he muttered, "I am a dead man." Mrs. Byrne sent the news of Aaron's treachery to her outlawed son in the hills. On June twenty-sixth, the spy was called out of his mother's cabin by some one who cried that he had lost his way. Aaron opened the door, and Joe Byrne shot him through the heart. So the outlaws had broken cover after months of hiding, and at once Superintendent Hare brought police and trackers by a special train that they might take up the trail of their retreat back to the moun- tains. The outlaws, foreseeing this movement, tore up the railway track, so that the train, with its load of police, might be thrown into a gully, and all who survived the wreck were to be shot down without mercy. This snare which they set for their enemies was badly planned. Instead of tearing up the tracks themselves, they brought men for the job from Glen- rowan station close by; and then, to prevent their presence from being reported, they had to hold the village instead of mounting guard upon the trap. Thqr cut the wires, secured the station and herded all the villagers into the Glenrowan hotel some two hundred yards from the railway. Then they had to wait for the train from three o'clock on Monday morning all through the long day, and the dreary night, guarding sixty prisoners and watching for the police. They amused the prisoners, men, women and children with an impron^u dance in which they i6o CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE shared by turns, then with raids upon outlying houses, and with athletic feats, but always on the alert lest any man escape to give the alarm, or the police arrive unobserved. The strain was beyond human en- durance. So Byrne, fresh from the murder of his chum Aaron Sherritt, relieved his mind by getting drunk, Ned Kelly kept up his courage by bragging of the death prepared for his enemies, and, worst of all, the local schoolmaster, was allowed to take his sick wife home. The schoolmaster had been most sympathetic all day long, helping the outlaws until he won their con- fidence; but now, escaped to his house, he made haste to prepare a lantern covered with a red shawl with which to signal the train. He stood upon the track waving the red light, when in the pitchy darkness be- fore dawn, the train-load of police came blindly straight for the death-trap. The train slowed, stopped and was saved. Out of plowshares and scrap iron, a blacksmith had forged for each of the outlaws a cuirass and helmet of plate armor, and now at the sound of the approaching train they dressed in this bullet-proof harness. Ned Kelly's suit weighed ninety-seven pounds, and the others were simik , so clumsy that the wearer could neither run to attack nor mount a horse to escape. Moreover, with a rifle at the shoulder, it was impossible to see for taking aim. So armed, the robbers had got no farther than the hotel veranda when the police charged, and a fierce engage- ment began. The prisoners huddled within the house had no shelter from its frail board walls, and two of the children w.ere wounded.. . THE BUSHRANGERS i6i Byrne was drinking at the bar when a bullet struck him dead. Ned Kelly, attempting to desert his com- rades, made for the yard, but finding that all the horses had been shot, strolled back laughing amid a storm of lead. Every bullet striking his armor made him reel, and he had been five times wounded, but now he began to walk about the yard emptying his revolvers into the police. Then a sergeant fired at his legs and the outlaw dropped, appealing abjectly for his life. The escape of the panic-stricken prisoners had been arrange*^, but for hours the fight went on until toward noon the house stood a riddled and ghastly shell, with no sign of life. A bundle of straw was lighted against the gable end, and the building was soon ablaze. Rumors now spread that an old man lay wounded in the house, and a priest gallantly led in a rush of police to the rescue. The old man was saved, and under the thick smoke, Dan Kelly and Hart were seen lying dead upon the floor in their armor. Ned Kelly died as he had lived, a coward, being almost carried to the gallows, and that evening his sister Kate exhibited herself as a show in a music- hall at Melbourne. So ended this bloody tragedy in hideous farce, and with the destruction of the outlaws closed a long period of disorder. Except in remote regions of the frontier, robbery under arms has ceased forever in the Australasian states. XXIII A.D. i883 i THE PASSING OF THE BISON MAY I recommend a better book than this? If anybody wants to feel the veritable spirit of adventure, let him read My Life as an Indian, by F. W. Schultz. His life is an example in manliness, his record the best we have of a red Indian tribe, his book the most spacious and lovely in frontier literature. The Blackfeet got their name from the oil-dressed, arrow-proof 'eather of their moccasins (skin shoes) which were dark in color. They were profoundly religious, scrupulously clean — bathing daily, even through thick ice, fastidiously moral, a gay light- hearted people of a temper like the French, and even among Indians, the most generous race in the world, they were famed for their hospitality. The savage is to the white man, what the child is to the grown-up, of lesser intellect, but much nearer to God. When the white men reached the plains, the Black- feet mustered about forty thousand mounted men, hunters. The national sport was stealing horses and scalps, but there was lo organized war until the pressure of the whites, drove the tribes westward, 163 THE PASSING OF THE BISON 163 crowding them together, so that they had to fight for the good hunting grounds. Then there were wars in which the Blackfeet more than held their own. Next came the smallpox, and afterward the West was not so crowded. Whole nations were swept away, and those that lived were sorely reduced in numbers. After that came white frontiersmen to trade, to hunt, or as missionaries. The Indians called them Hat- wearers, but the Blackfeet had another name — the Stone-hearts. The whites were nearly always wel- comed, but presently they came in larger numbers, claiming the land for mining camps and ranching, which drove away the game. The Indians fought the whites, fought for their land and their food, their liberty; but a savage with bow and arrows has no chance against a soldier with a rifle. For every white man killed a hundred would come to the funeral, so the Blackfeet saw that it was no use fighting. In 1853 they made a treaty that secured them their hunting ground, forever free. The Great Father at Washington pledged his honor, and they were quite content It was the same with every western tribe that the United States was pledged by solemn treaty which the Indians kept, and the white men always broke. Troops drove the settlers off, but went away and the settlers came back. So young warriors broke loose from the chiefs to scalp those settlers and bum their homes; and the army would break vengeance. Such were the conditions when Schultz, a green New England boy of nineteen, came by steamer up the Missouri to Fort Benton. The truly respectable reader will be shocked to learn that this misguided youth went into partnership with i64 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE a half-breed trader, selling water with a flavoring of whisky at very high prices to the Indians. In other words, he earned his living at a very risky trade. He married a Blackfoot girl, becoming a squaw-man, which, as everybody knows, is beneath contempt. In other words, he was honest enough to marry a most charming woman instead of betraying her to ruin. He went on guilty expeditions to snatch scalps and steal horses. He shared the national sports and so learned the inmost heart of a brave people. When our own countrymen get too self-righteous, bigoted, priggish, smug and generally beyond beai^ ing, what a blessing it would be if we had a few wild Indians to col';ct their scalps I Schultz had a chum, a Blackfoot warrior called Wolverine, who taught him the sign language and a deal of bush craft. At times this Wolverine was un- happy, and once the white man asked him what was wrong. " There is nothing troubling me," answered the Indian, then after a long pause : " I lied. I am in great trouble. I love Piks-ah'-ki, and she loves me, but I can not have her ; her father will not give her to me. The father. Bull's Head, was a Gros Ventre, and hated Wolverine for being a Blackfoot. " I am going," said Wolverine, " to steal the girl. Will you go with me?" So one evening the pair stole away from the Black- foot camp, rode eastward across the plains, marching by night, hiding by day. Once, at a river crossing they discovered the trails of a large war party of Crees on the way to the Gros Ventre camp. " I knew," said Wolverine, laughing happily, "that my THE PASSING OF THE BISON 165 medicint would not desert me. and see, the way is d«,r before us. We will ride boldly into camp. ,0 the lodge of the great chief. Three Bears. I will say that our chief sent me to warn him of a war party workmg this way. I will say that we ourselves have seen their tracks along the bars of the river. Then the Gros V.ntres wUl guard their horses; they will ambush the enemy; there will be a big fight, bie ex- citement. All the men will rush to the fight, and that will be my time. I will call Piks-ah'-ki. we will mount our horses and fly." So riding hard, they came m sight of the Gros Ventre camp. " Ah I " said Wolverine, "there is the camp. Now for the big he^ Then more seriously, " Pity mt. great Sun! i;ity me, you under water creatures of my dream! Help me to obtain that which I seek here " So they came to the lodge of Three Bears, presented tobacco as a present from the chief Big Lake and wWhTrr^ ""'* * 'P'^"*' ^^'' °f boiled dog. which had to be eaten, no matter how sick they felt Gros Ventres believed the enemy were coming and kept dose watch on their herd, but Bull's Head sat n>ght. he said. "I shall sit in my lodge and watch for women stealers, and my gun will be loaded." So he got up, and flounced out of the lodge Ihat night all happened as Wolverine had said, for i^d arthrr ""Tr "''"^^''^ *° "^^P'-^' *e herd, and all the Gros Ventres, induding Bull's Head ran out of camp for the battle. Wolverine Ld iLu^ found BuU's Head's daughter readyTt c^/^J^ the^r thought they were dear of the battle-fieldf when 166 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTXJRE suddenly a gun exploded in front of Wolverine, and down he went with his horse. Then the girl screamed, " They have killed him I Help, white man, they have killed him I " But Wolverine fired his gun at something that moved in the sage brush, and a deep groan followed. Wolverine clubbed something three of four times with his rifle. Then stooping, he picked up the gun which had been fired at him. " I count a coup," he laughed, and handed the enemy's weapon to Schultz. At that moment Bull's Heai appeared, and in a frightful passion seized his daughter's horse by the head attempting to drag her from the saddle. She shrieked, while Wolverine sprang at her father, threw him, disarmed him and flung away his gun. Then the young lover leaped lightly behind the girl upon her pony, and the father raged astern while they fled. Four days' ride brought them home to the Black- foot camp, but Bull's Head got there first, and whined about his poverty until Wolverine gave him ten ponies, also the captured gun. It was not much to pay for a beautiful woman who became a faithful and loving wife. One day news reached the three main camps of the Blackfoot nation that a white buffalo had been sighted in the herds. Midwinter as it was, the hunters turned out, for the man who killed a white buffalo was held to have the especial favor of the Sun, and not only he, but his tribe. The head chief of a na- tion has been known to use the robe for a seat, but it could never be sold, and at the next building of a temple to the Sun it was offered up as a national sacrifice. THE PASSING OF THE BISON 16;; Great was the nunting tbrr gh many days of bitter cold, until at last the white juSalo was fotmd by a lone horseman who brought it down with his arrows "When we rode up," says Schulti, "the hunter was sUnding over it, hands raised, fervently praying, promising the Sun the robe and tongue of the animal. . . . Medicine Weasel was so excited, he trembled 80 that he could not use his knife ... and some of our party to<* off the hide for him, and cut out the tongue, he standing over them all the time and beg- ging them to be careful, to make no gashes, for they were doing the work for the Sun. None of the meat was taken. It was considered a sacrilege to eat it; the tongue was to be dried and given to the Sun with the robe." Only one more white buffato was ever taken, in 1881, two years before the last herds were destroyed. Heavy Breast and Schultz were once out hunting, and the chief's saddle was newly loaded with moun- tain sheep meat, when the hunfers met a first-class grizzly bear. He sat up, fifty yards distant and wriggled his nose as he sniffed the air. Both men fired and with a hair-lifting roar old sticky mouth rolled over, biting and clawing his wound, then sprang up and charged, open mouthed. The hunters rode hard, Schultz firing backward a couple of shots while the bear with long bounds, closed upon the Indian. I fired again, and made another miss and just then Heavy Breast, his saddle and his sheep meat parted company with the fleeing pony. The dnch, an old worn rawhide band, had broken. "'Hai Ya, my friend.' he cried pleadingly, as he soared up in the air, still astride the saddle. Down i68 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE they came with a loud thud not two itride* ir. front of the onrushing bear. And that animal, with a dis- mayed and frightened 'woof,' turned sharply about and fled back toward the timber, I after him. I kept firing and firing, and finally a lucky shot broke hii backbone. "'Do not laugh, my friend,' said Heavy Breast; 'surely the Sun listened to my prayer. I promised to sacrifice to him, intending to hang up that fine white blanket I have just bought. I will hang up the blanket and my otter-skin cap.' " There was no end of trouble about that bear, for Mrs. Schultz dared not skin a sacred animal until she had sacrificed her best blue frock, also one of her husband's revolvers — the same being out of order. And wKen the skin was dressed, nobody dared to visit the lodge until it had been hidden. I want to copy out the whole book, for every para- graph contains some fresh delight, but these two or three stories must have shown something at least of Blackfoot character. I knew, and loved these people. It was in January, 1870, that Colone'. Baker was sent with a force of United States regular troops to chasten a band of Blackfeet who had killed a trader. The band accused of the crime, belonged to the Northern Blackfeet of Canada, who- :; camp at the time was on Belly River, two hundred .niles north of the boundary. The band found by Baker belonged to the Piegans, a southern tribe camped on their own lands in Montana. There were eighty families in camp, but th? men were nearly all away hunting buffalo when Baker's force attacked at the break of dawn. The chief, Bear's Head, ran toward the white men, THE PASSING OF THE BISON 169 waving a paper, a certificate of good character. He fell. Then the slaughter began in cold blood: Fif- teen lighting men, eighteen elder men, ninety women, fifty-five little children, and when the last wotmded mothers and their babies had been put out of their misery, the soldiers piled the corpses upon the wreck- age before they burned the camp. The whisky traders, tike Schultz, have been blamed for the ruin of the Blackfeet ; but since they had to die, it seems to me that the liquor gave them a certain amount of fun and excitement not so bad for them as Baker, or smallpox, or their Indian agent, or the white robbers who slaughtered their herds of buflEalo, and stole their treaty lands. In 1874, Schultz was one of fifty-seven white men hunting or trading with the Canadian or Northe.-n Blackfeet They h.r' trading forts at Whoop-up, Standoff, Sl'Heout, tl.e Leavings, all in Canada. But the Hudson's Bay Company and the Canadian wolfers made complaint against these American rivals; and so the Canadian government raised the Northwest Mounted Police. Three hun- dred mm were sent across the plains to take possession and run the American traders out of the country. But the police were only tenderfeet in those days, eastern Canadians unused to the western ways, who came hungry through the countless herds of the bison. A band of hunters brought news to the Blackfeet. " Some men are coming," they said, " who wear red coats, and they are drawing a cannon." " Oh," said the Blackfeet, " these must be Hudson's Bay." For in old times the company's officers are said to have worn »ed coats when they administered justice, so that the color was a sign of honest dealing. 170 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE So the police were not attacked by the Bbckfeet, and they were welcomed by the American traders, who sold them food in abundance. The liquor trade ceased altogether but the police and the traders became fast friends, while the police and the Northern Blackfeet have been loyal allies ever since. After the buffalo vanished, the tribes were fed by the Canadian government and not lavishly, perhaps rather stingily, helped to learn the important arts of ranching. , Meanwhile far away to the southward, the white men were slaughtering buffalo for their hides, and in Kansas alone during ten years, thirty-five million car- casses were left to rot on the plains. The bison herds still seemed as large as ever, the country black with them as far as the eye could reach. But men like Schultz who had brains, had news that away from these last migrating herds, the plains were empty for thousands of miles. I remember the northern plains like a vast graveyard, reaching in all directions to the sky-line, bare save for its tombstones, the bleached skulls of millions of bison. Afterward the sugar re- finers sent wagons and took them all away. In 1880, the whole of the prairie nations surrounded the last herds, and white men took a hundred thousand robes leaving the carcasses to rot as usual. The In- dians slaughtered also but sold the robes for groceries, and dried the whole of the meat for winter food. " We are near the end of it," said Red Bird's Tail. " I fear that this is our last buffalo hunt. Are you sure," he asked Schultz, "that the white men have seen all the land between the two salt waters ? " " There is no place," answered the trader, " where THE PASSING OF THE BISON 171 the white men have not traveled, and none of them can find buffalo." " That being the case," said the chief with a deep sigh, " misery and death are at hand for me and mine." The Indians were compelled to strip the plains of every living creature, the Blackfeet, despite their re- ligion, to eat fish and birds. Then came the winter; Schultz and his wife rode at dusk to the camp of Lodge-Pole chief. " Hurry," he commanded his women, " cook a meal for our friends. They must be hungry after their long ride." His wives brought out three small potatoes and two little trout, which they boiled. " 'Tis all we have," said one of them, brushing the tears from her eyes, and then the chief broke down. " We have nothing," he said haltingly. " There are no more buffalo. The Great Father sends us but a little food, gone in a day. We are very hungry. There are fish, to be sure, forbidden by the Gods, un- clean. We eat them, but they do not give us any strength, and I doubt not we will be punished for eat- ing them. It seems as if our gods had forsaken us." Mrs. Schultz went out and brought back a sack of food, and they made a feast, merry as in the days of plenty, which were gone forever. Schultz came from the starving camps to write a let- ter to a New York paper, but it was never printed — a matter of politics. Then he advised the Indians to kill their agent, but they remembered Colonel Baker's visit. In his next annual report the agent wrote much about the Blackfeet, whose "heathenish rites were 172 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE most deplorable." And then came the Winter of Death, when a chief, Almost-a-dog, checked off daily the fate of a starving people. Women crowded round the windows of the agent's office, holding out skinny children. " Go," he would say ; " go away ! I have nothing for you 1 " The thirty thousand di'Iars provided for their fooc had all been stolen, but there was plenty of corn to fatten fifty chickens, some geese and ducks. Wolf Head, once known as Wolverine, rode south to Schultz's trading post where he and his partner were feeding hosts of people, but when they heard his story of death after death, one by one they stole away out into the darkness, sitting upon the frozen ground where they wailed for their dead. That night Schultz wrote to a friend of his in New York, known to the Indians as Fisher Cap. Then he rode hard and far to consult with Father Prando, a Jesuit priest, who had also been writing letters. Thanks to Fisher Cap, perhaps, or to Father Prando, the government sent an inspector, and one day he drove into the agency. " Where is that chicken house?" he yelled, and when he found the place, kicked it open. " Here you ! " he called to the Indians, and tht/ did the rest. Next, he kicked open the agent's office. " You ," said he. Since then some agents have been honest, but the Piegan tribe has never recovered from the Winter of Death, for in their weakness, they fell a prey to dis- ease, and only a remnant is left of that ruined people. But for Schultz, the despised squaw-man, not one would be left alive, XXIV A. D. 1885 GORDON ■p\URING the Crimean war, when our men in the ■■-' trenches before Sebastopol crowded under their earthworks to escape the Russian fire, one of the sub- alterns showed fear unbecoming an officer. The young chap meant no harm, but as he had to be taught manners, a lieutenant slightly his senior, invited him up upon the ramparts. There, arm in arm, *he two walked up and down, the senior making amusing re- marks about the weather, while the storm of lead swept round them, and the Tommies watched horror- struck, expecting both to fall. That officer who gave lessons in courage, was Charles George Gordon. After eight years of varied service in many lands. Major Gordon came to Shanghai, where the British officer commanding had need of such a man. The Taiping rebels at war with the Chinese government numbered one million five hundred thousand, holding impregnable cities, and threatening the British mer- chants of Shanghai. These had raised a force of four thousand Chinese with white officers, known as the Ever Victorious Army because they were always thrashed, and Gordon took over the command. He «73 in!| 174 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE was helped by Li Hung Chang, commander-in-chief of the Chinese airaies, but no great impression had as yet been made upon fifteen hundred thousand rebels, trenched in the impregnable rock cities, which stood as islands over flat lands laced with canals. Those chan- nels made the land impassable for troops, but Gordon brought steamers, and where a city fronted him with hundreds of guns and tier upon tier of unscalable walls, he steamed round the canals, cut off the line of communications, then dropped in, tmexpected, in the rear. His attack was always a most unpleasant sur- prise to the rebels, beginning with gunnery that bat- tered down the walls, until up a slope of ruins the storming party charged. The Taipings, led by white adventurers, defended the breach with desperation, and Gordon would weep because of the slaughter, his gentle spirit shocked at the streams of blood. " Two men," he says, "of the Thirty-first Regiment were on the breach at Fort San, as Taiping leaders for the defense. One was killed, the other, struck by a shell splinter, was taken prisoner. ' Mr. Gordon, Mr. Gor- don, you will not let me be killed I ' " ' Take him down to the river and shoot him 1 ' And aside : ' ?ut him in my boat, let the doctor at- tend him, and send him down to Shankhai.' " Gordon not only saved the poor adventurers, but where he captured garrisons of Taipings, he would arm his prisoners, drill them, and lead them on to attack fresh cities in the march of the Ever Victorious Army. The odds weie slightly against him, three hundred and seventj'five to one — an army against three hundred and seventy-five armies — but his third siege reduced the rebel capital, which he starved into GORDON m surrender. The Taiping generals laid dovra their arms to Gordon because he gave them their lives. Then Li Hung Chang jumped in and murdered the whole gang of generals, and Gordon, sorely annoyed, for the only time in his life carried a gun. For a whole day, re- volver in hand, he hunted the Chinese commander-in- chief through the streets of Soo Chow, but Li was too sly for him, and hid under some matting in a boat until Gordon's rage cooled down. This Scotchman who, with forty men in a steamer, destroyed a Taiping army near Qum San, had only one weapon for his personal use — a little bamboo swagger cane, such as Tommy carries in the street. It was known to the Chinese as his Magic Wand of Vic- tory, with which he had overthrown an army seven times as big as that of Great Britain. The Chinese emperor sent an imperial decree con- ferring four thousand pounds and all sorts of honors. Gordon wrote on the back of the parchment: " Re- gret that owing to the circumstances which occurred since the capture of Soo Chow, I am unable to re- ceive any mark of his majesty the emperor's recogni- tion." So he sent the thing back— a slap in the face for China. The emperor sent a gold medal, but Gor- don, scratching out the inscription, gave it to a charity bazaar. The emperor made him a prince of the Chi- nese empire, and with the u iform of that rank as a curio in his trunk, he returned to England. In China he was prince and conqueror; in Graves- end Major Gordon did garrison duty and kept ducks, which he delighted to squirt with the garden syringe. He was a Sunday-school teacher, and reared slum boys to manhood, he was lady bountiful in the parish. 176 CAPTAINS OF ADVENiURE he was cranky as an old maid, full of odd whims, a little man, with tender gray eyes, and a voice like a peal of bells. For six years he rotted in Gravesend, then served a couple of years as British commissioner on the Danube, and then in 1874 was borrowed by Egypt to be viceroy of the equatorial provinces. There he made history. The Turkish empire got its supply of slaves from this big Soudan, a tract the size of Europe, whose only trade was the sale of human flesh. If Gordon stopped the selling of slaves, the savages ate them. But the Egyptian government wanted money, so Gor- don's work was to stop the slave trade, get the people prosperous, and tax them. To aid him he had Egyptian officials, whose only interest in the job was the collecting of bribes, plunder and slaves for their private use; also a staff of Europeans, all of whom died of fever within the first few months. Moreover, the whole native population was, more or less, at war with the Egyptian government Gordon had a swift camel, and a reputation for sor- cery, because leaving his escort days astern in the desert, he would ride alone into the midst of a hostile nation, dressed in a diplomatic uniform consisting of gold lace and trousers, quite unarmed, but compelling everybody to obey his orders. He was so tired that he wanted to die, and when the tribes disobeyed he merely cut off their whole supply of water until they learned to behave. So for five years, the only honest man in all that region fought the Soudanese, the Egyptian government and the British ministry, to put an end to slavery. He failed. Long chapters would be required for the story of Charles George Gordon Go Ai W! Ai M at It ' er w dj tt S( tl t( tl c GORDON 177 Gordon's work in Bessarabia, Armenia, India, South Africa, or the second period in China. In 1884, England, having taken charge of Egypt, was responsible for the peace of Soudan. But the Arabs, united for once, and led by their prophet — the Mahdi — had declared a holy war against everybody, and wiped out an Egyptian army. So England said, "This is very awkward; let us pray"; and the gov- ernment made up its mind to scuttle, to abandon the whole Soudan. Of course the Egyptians in the Sou- dan, officials, troops and people, would all get their throats cut, so our government had a qualm of con- science. Instead of sending an army to their rescue, they sent Gordon, with orders to bring the Egyptians to the coast. With a view to further economies they then let the Arabs cut off Gordon's retreat to the coast. England folded her hands and left him to "erish. As soon as Gordon reached Khartoum, he began to send away the more helpless of the Egyptian people, and before the siege closed down some two thousand five hundred women, children and servants escaped from thfi coming death. At the last moment he man- aged to send the iinglishmen, the European, and forty-five soldiers down the Nile. They were saved, and he remained to die with his soldiers. " May our Lord," he wrote, "not visit us as a nation for our sins ; but may His wrath fall on me." He could not believe in England's cowardice, but walled his city with ramp and bastion, planned mines and raids, kept discipline while his troops were starv- ing to death, and the Union Jack afloat above the palace, praying for his country in abasement, waiting 178 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE for the army which had been sent tuo late. So for nine months the greatest of all England's engineers held at bay an army of seventy-five thousand fighting Arabs. And when the dty fell, rallying the last fifty men of his garrison, he went to his death, glad that he was not doomed to outlive England's honor. Year after year our army fought through the burn- ing deserts, to win back England's honor, to make amends for the death of her hero-saint, the knightliest of modem men, the very pattern of all chivalry. And then his grave was founcl, a heap of blood-stained ashes, which once had been Khartoum. Now, in Trafalgar Square, men lay wreaths at the base of his statue, where with his Magic Wand of Victory, that Prince of the Chinese Empire and Vice- roy of the African Equatorial Provinces, stands look- ing sorrowfully on a people who were not worthy to be his countrymen. But there is a greater monu- ment to Gordon, a new Soudan, where men live at peace under the Union Jack, and slavery is at an end forever. Hi XXV A. D. 1896 THE OUTLAW , T^AWN was breaking of a summer's day in 1896, •■-' when Green-Grass-growing-in-the-water, a red Indian scout, came trotting into Fort MacLeod with a despatch from Standoff for Superintendent Steele, of the Mounted Police. He brought news that the body of a Blood warrior. Medicine-Pipe-Stem, shot through the skull, and three weeks dead, had been found in an empty cabin. The Blood tribe knew how Bad-Young-Jtan. known to the whites as Charcoal, had three weeks before come home from a hunting trip to his little cabin where his wife, the Marmot, lived. He had found his wife in the arms of Medicine-Pipe-Stem, and by his warrior's right to defend his own honor, had shot the intruder down. Charcoal had done justice, and the tribe was ready to take his part, whatever the agent might say or the Mounted Police might do for the white man's law. A week had passed of close inquiry, when one of the scouts rode up to the ration house, where the people we' . drawing their supplies of beef, and gave wammg that aarcoal was betrayed to the Mounted i8o CAPTAINS OF ADVEN fURE Police. Charcoal demanded the name of his betrayer, and learned that Mr. Wilson, the agent, was his enemy. That evening Charcoal waited outside the agent's house, watching the lighted windows, where, on the yellow blinds there were passing shadows cast by the lamp within, as various members of the household went about their business. At last he saw Mr. Wil- son's shadow on the blind, fired and shot the agent through the thigh. The household covered the lamps, closed the shutters, sent for help and hid the wounded man on a couch behind the front door, well out of range from the windows. Next morning, in broad daylight, Charcoal went up to the house with a rifle to finish Wilson, walked in and looked about him, but failed to discover his victim behind the oper drc He turned away and rode for the hills. The Mounted Police, turned out for the pursuit, were misled by a hundred rumors. D Troop at the time numbered one hundred seventy men, the pick of the regiment, including some of the greatest riders and teamsters in Nth America, and led by Colonel S. B. Steele, the most distinguished of all Canadian frontiersmen. After he had posted men to guard all passes through the Rocky Moun- tains, he had a district about ninety miles square combed over incessantly by strong patrols, so that Charcoal's escape seemed nearly impossible. The dis- trict however, was one of foothills, bush, winding gorges, tracts of boulders, and to the eastward prairie, where the whole Blood and Piegan tribes were using every subtlety of Indian craft to hide the fugitive. Inspector Jervis, with twenty police and some scouts, had been seventy hours in the saddle, and camped at ( THE OUTLAW i8i Big Bend exhausted, when a rider came flying in re- porting Charcoal as seen at Kootenai. The white men rallied for the twenty-eight-mile march, but the Indians lay, and were kicked, done for, refusing to move. The white men scrambled to their saddles, and reeled oflf on the trail, unconquerable. One day a Mormon settler brought news to Mr. Jervis that while cutting fence rails, he had seen Char- coal creep out from the bush and make off with his coat. So this Mormon led them to a little meadow, where they found and surrounded a tent. Then Mr. Jervis took two men and pulled aside the door, while they covered the place with their revolvers. Two Mormons were brought out, shaking with fright, from the tent. Further on in the gray dawn, they came to another dearmg, and a second tent, which they surrounded. Some noise disturbed the Marmot, who crept sleepily to the door, looked out, then with a scream, warned her husband. Charcoal slashed with his knife through the back of the tent, crept into the bush, and thence fired, his bullet knocking the cap from the officer's head; but a volley failed to reach the Indian. The tent was Charcoal's winter quarters, stored with a car- cass of beef, five sacks of flour, bacon, sugar and deer- skm for his shoes, and there the Marmot was taken with a grown daughter, and a little son called Runnine Bear, aged eight. So far, in many weeks of the great hunt aarcoal had his loyal wife to ride with him. and they used to follow the police patrols in order to be sure of rest when the pursuers camped. Two police horses, left half dead, were taken up and ridden by this couple an H'll I83 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE extra forty miles. An officer and a buck were feeding at Boundary Creek detachment when Mr. and Mrs. Charcoal stole their chargers out of the stable. But now Charcoal had to face the prospect of a lone fight, and with the loss of his family, fell into blind despair. Then all his kinsfolk to the number of thirty-seven, were arrested and lodged in prison. Since his raid on the horses at Boundary Creek, all police stables were locked, and visited frequently at night. Corporal Armour, at Lee's Creek came out swinging his lantern, sniffing at the night, bound for the stable, when he saw a sudden blaze revealing an Indian face behind the horse trough, while a bullet whisked through his sleeve. He bolted for the house, grabbed his gun and returned, only to hear a horse galloping away into the night. Charcoal for once, had failed to get a remount. Sergeant Wilde was uni- versally loved by the tribes. The same feeling caused his old regiment, the Blues, at Windsor, to beg for Black Prince, his charger, after his death, and sent the whole body of the Northwest Mounted Police into mourning when he fell. Tradition made him a great aristocrat under an assumed name, and I remem- bier well how we recruits, in the olden times, were im- pressed by his unusual physical beauty, his stature, horsemanship and singular personal distinction. Am- brose attended him when he rode out for the last time on Black Prince, followed by an interpreter and a body of Indian scouts. They were in deep snow on a plain where there stands a line of boulders, gigantic rocks, the subject of weird legends among the tribes. Far off against the sky was seen riding fast, an Indian who swerved at the nght of the pursuit and was neoog- THE Ofl'^I^W »83 nized for Qian oai, Wilde ordered Ambrose to gal- lop the twenty miiei, is i inf her Creek, turn the people out in the queen's name, send a despatch to Fort Mac- leod, and return at once. The Indians tried for Char- coal at long range, but their new rifles were clogged with factory grease hard frozen, so that the pin failed of its impact, and they all missed fire. Wilde's great horse was drawing ahead of the ponies, and he called back: — " Don't fire, or you'll hit me by mistake I " As he overtook Charcoal he drew his revolver, the orders being to fire at sight, then laid the weapon be- fore him, wanting for the sake of a great tradition, to make the usual arrest — the taking of live outlaws by hand. Charcoal's rifle lay across the saddle, and he held the reins Indian fashion with the right hand, but when Wilde grabbed at his shoulder, he swerved, touching ihe trigger with his left. The bullet went through Wilde's body, then deflecting on the bone of the right arm, traversed the forearm, came out of the palm, and dropped into his gauntlet where it was found. Wilde rolled slowly from the saddle while Black Prince went on and Charcoal also, but then the outlaw turned, galloped back and fired straight downward into the dying man. Black Prince had stopped at a little distance snorting, and when the Indian came grabbing at his loose rein, he struck with his forefeet in rage at his master's murderer. Charcoal had fired to disable Wilde as the only way left him of escaping "slavery"; now he had to conquer the dead man's horse to make his escape from the trackers. Some three weeks ago. Charcoal's brothers, Left 184 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Hand and Bear Paw, had been released from jail, with the offer of forty pounds from the government and ten pounds from the officer commarding, if they could capture the outlaw. The tribes had decided that Char- coal's body belonged of right to the police, and after Wilde's death he could expect no mercy on earth, no help or succor from any living man. From the slaying, like a wounded beast to his lair, he rode direct for home, came to the little cabin, tied Black Prince to a' bush and staggered toward the door. Out of the house came Left Hand, who ran tpward him, while the out- law, moved by some brute instinct, fled for the horse. But Left Hand, overtaking his brother, threw his arms about him, kissing him upon both cheeks, and Bear Paw, following, cast h's rope over the helpless man, throwing him down, a prisoner. The brothers carried Charcoal into the cabin, pitched him down in a corner, then Left Hand rode for the police while Bear Paw stayed on guard. It was Sergeant Macleod who came first to the cabin where Bear Paw squatted waiting, and Charcoal lay to all appearance dead in a great pool of blood upon the earthen floor. He had found a cobbler's awl used in mending skin shoes, and opened the arter- ies of his arm, that he might take refuge from treach- ery in death. From ankle to groin his legs were skinned with incessant riding, and never again was he able to stand upon his feet. For four months Charcoal had been hunted as an enemy by D Troop, now for a like time he was nursed in the guard-room at Fort Macleod, and, though he lay chained to the floor in mortal pain, his brothers of the guard did their best. As he had been terrible in the w THE OUTLAW I8S field, so this poor hero was brave in suffering — hum- ble, and of so sweet a disposition that he won all men's hearts. Once he choked himself with a blanket ; once poisoned himself with a month's collection of cigarette stubs; each time nearly achieving his pur- pose, but he never flinched, never gave utterance even to a sigh, except for the moaning in his sleep. At the trial his counsel called no witnesses, but read the man's own defense, a document so sad, so wonderfully beautiful in expression, that the court appealed to the crown for mercy, where mercy had become impossible. When he was taken out to die, the troop was on guard surrounding the barracks, the whole of the tribes being assembled outside the fence. The pris- oner sat in a wagon face to face with the execute ner, who wore a mask of black silk, and beside him was the priest. Charcoal began to sing his death song. " Stay," said the priest, " make no cry. You're far too brave a man for that." The song ceased, and Charcoal died as he had lived. XXVI A. D. 1898 'A KING AT TWENTY-FIVE XT THEN a boy has the sea in his blood, when he V V prays in church for plague, pestilence and famine, for battle and murder and sudden death, his parents will do well to thrash him tame. For then if he can be tamed he may turn out well as a respectable clerk ; but if he has the force of character to get what he wants he will prove himself and be, perhaps, like John Boyes, of Hull, a king at twenty-five. Boyes ran away to sea, and out of the tame hum- drum iife of the modem merchant service made for himself a world of high adventure. As a seaman he landed at Durban, then earned his way up-country in all sorts of trades until he enlisted in the Matabeleland Mounted Police, then fought his way through the second Matabele war. Afterward he was a trader, then an actor, next at sea again, and at Zanzibar joined an Arab trading dhow. When ths dhow was wrecked, and the crew appealed to Allah. Boyes took command, so coming to Mombasa. From here the crown colony was building a railway to Uganda, a difficult job because the lions ate all the laborers they could catch, and had even ttie cheek to gobble up white 186 A KING AT TWENTY-FIVE 187 officials. Up-country, the black troops were enjoying a mutiny, the native tribes were prickly, the roads were impossible and there was no food to be had. Boyes was very soon at the head of a big transport company, working with donkey carts and native carriers to carry food for the authorities. Northward of the reilway was Mount Kenia, a lofty snow-clad volcano; and round his foot-hills covering a tract the size of Yorkshire or of Massachu- setts lived the Kikuyu, a negro people numbering half a million, who always made a point of besieging Brit- ish camps, treating our caravans to volleys of poisoned darts, and murdering every visitor who came within their borders. Boyes went into that country to buy food to supply to the railway workers (1898). He went with an old Martini-Henry rifle, and seven carriers, over a twelve thousand foot pass of the hills, and down through bamboo forest into a popu- lous country, where at sight of him the war cry went from hill to hill, and five hundred warriors assembled for their first look at a white man. Through his interpreter he explained that he came to trade for food. Presently he showed what his old rifle could do, and v/hen the bullet bored a hole through a tree he told them that it had gone through the moun- tain beyond and out at the other side. A man with such a gun was worthy of respect, especially when his drugs worked miracles among the sick. Next day the neighbors attacked this tribe which had re- ceived a white man instead of killing him, but Boyes with his rifle turned defeat to victory, and with iodoform treated the wounded. The stuff smelt so strong that tnere could be no doubt of its magic, i88 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE The white man made a friend of the Chief Karuri, and through the adventures which followed they were loyal allies. Little by little he taught the tribesmen to hold themselves in check, to act together. He began to drill them in military formation, a front rank of spear- men with shields touching, a rear rank of bowmen with poisoned arrows. So when they were next at- tacked they captured the enemy's chief, and here again the white man's magic was ivery powerful — " Don't waste him," said Boyes. The captive leader was put to ransom, released, and made an ally, a goat being clubbed to death in token that the tribes were friends. Then a night raid obtained thirty rifles and plenty of ammunition, and a squad of picked men with modern arms soon formed the nucleus of the white man's growing army. When the Masai came up against him Boyes caught them in ambush, cut their line of retreat, killed fifty, took hundreds of prisoners and proved that raiding his district was an error. He was a great man now, and crowds would assemble when he re- freshed himself with a dose of fruit salts that looked like boiling water. His district was at peace, and soon made prosperous with a carrier trade supplying food to the white men. Many attempts were made by the witch doctors against his life, but he seemed to thrive on all the native poisons. It was part of his clever policy to take his people by rail drawn by a railway engine, which they supposed to be alive, in a fever, and most frightfully thirsty. He took them down to the sea at Mombasa, even on board a ship, and on his return from all these wonders he rode a mule into the Kikuyu country — "Some sort of lion," the natives A KING AT TWENTY-FIVE 189 thought. It impressed the whole nation when they heard of the white man riding a lion. He had a kettle too, with a cup and saucer to brew tea for the chiefs, and a Union Jack at the head of his marching column, and his riflemen in khaki uniform. All that was good stage management, but Boyes had other tricks beyond mere bluff. A native chief defied him and had five hundred warriors in line of battle; but Boyes, with ten followers only, marched up, clubbed him over the head, and ordered the warriors to lay down their arms on pain of massacre. The five hundred supposed themselves to be ambushed, and obeyed. It was really a great joke. So far the adventurer had met only with little chiefs, but now at the head of a fairly strong caravan he set forth on a tour of the whole country, sending presents to the great Qiiefs Karkerrie and Wagomba, and word that he wanted to trade for ivory. Kar- kerrie came to call and was much excited over a little clock that played tunes to order, especially when a few drops of rain seemed to follow the music. " Does it make rain? " asked Karkerrie. ^ " Certainly, it makes rain all right," answered Boyes. But it so happened that rain was very badly needed, and when Boyes failed to produce a proper downpour the folk got tired of hearing his excuses. They blamed him for the drought, refused lO trade and con- spired with one of his men to murder him. Boyes' camp became a fort, surrounded by several thousands of hostile savages. One pitch-dark evening the war cry of the tribe ran from village to village and there was wailing among the women and children. The hyenas, knowing the signs of a coming feast, howled, ij,:i 190 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE and all through the neighborhood of the camp the warriors were shouting, " Kill the white man I " As hour by hour went by the sounds and the silences got on the white man's nerves. It was always very difficult to keep Kikuyu sentries awake, and as he kept on his rounds, waiting the inevitable storming of his camp at dawn, Boyes felt the suspense become intoler- able. At last, hearing from one of his spies that Kar- kerrie was close at hand dis|X)sing his men for the as- sault, Boyes stole out with a couple of men, and by a miracle of luck kidnaped the hostile chief, whom he brought back into the fort a prisoner. Great was the amazement of the natives when at the gray of dawn, the very moment fixed for their attack, they heard Karkerrie shouting from the midst of the fort orders to retreat, and to disperse. A revolver screwed into his ear hole had converted the Chief Karkerrie. Within a few days more came the copious rains brought by the white chief's clock, and he became more popular than ever. Boyes made his next journey to visit Wakamba, biggest of all the chiefs, whose seat was on the foot- hills of the great snow mountain. This chief was quite friendly, and delightfully frank, describing the foolishness of Arabs, Swahili and that class of travel- ers who neglected to take proper precautions and deserved their fate. He was making quite a nice col- lection of their rifles. With his camp constantly sur- rounded and infested by thousands of savages, Boyes complained to Wakamba about the cold weather, said he would like to put up a warm house, and got plenty of help in building a fort. The chief thought this two- storied tower with its outlying breastworks was quite A KING Af TWENTY-FIVE 191 a good idea. "What a good thing," said he, "to keep a rush of salvages out." After long negotiations, Boyes managed to bring the whole of the leading chiefs of the nation together in friendly conference. The fact that they all hated one another like poison may explain some slight delay, for the white man's purpose was nothing less than a solemn treaty of blood-brotherhood with them all. The ceremony began with the cutting into small pieces of a sheep's heart and liver, these being toasted upon a skewer, making a mutton Kabob. Olomondo, chief of the Wanderobo, a nation of hunters, then took a sharp arrow with which he cut into the flesh of each Blood-Brother just above the heart. The Kabob was then passed round, and each chief, taking a piece of meat, rubbed it in his own blood and gave it to his neighbor to be eater. When Boyes had eaten blood of all the chiefs, and all had eaten his, the peace was sealed which made him in practise king of the Kikuyu. He was able at last to take a holiday, and spent some months out hunting among the Wanderobo. While the Kikuyu nation as a whole fed out of the white chief's hand, he still had the witch doctors for his enemies, and one very powerful sorcerer caused the Chinga tribes to murder three Goa Portuguese. These Eurasian traders, wearing European dress, were mistaken for white men, and their death showed the natives that it would be quite possible to kill Boyes. who was now returning toward civilization with an mimense load of ivory. Boyes came along in a hurry, riding ahead of his slow caravan with only four at- tendants and these he presently distanced, galloping akwg a path between two hedges among the field} of 193 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE a friendly tribe — straight into a deadly native ambush. Then the mule shied out of the path, bolted across the fields and saved his life. Of the four attendants be- hind, two were speared. Moreover the whole country was wild with excitement, and five thousand fighting men were marching against Boyes. He camped, fenced his position and stood to arms all night, short of ammunition, put to the last, the greatest of many tests. Once more his nerves were overstrung, the de- lay terrified hin , the silence appalled him waiting for dawn, and dcth. And as usual he treated the natives to a new kind of surprise, taking his tiny force against the enemy's camp : " They had not thought it neces- sary to put any sentries out." " Here," says Boyes, " we found the warriors still drinking and feasting, sitting round their fires, so en- grossed in their plans for my downfall tliat they en- tirely failed to notice our approach; so, stealthily creeping up till we were close behind them, we pre- pared to complete our surprise. . . . Not a sound had betrayed our advance, and they were still quite ignorant of our presence almost in the midst of them. The echoing crack of my rifle, which was to be the signal for the general attack, was immediately drowned in the roar of the other guns as my men poured in a volley that could not fail to be effective at that short range, while accompanying the leaden missiles was a cloud of arrows sent by that part of my force which was not armed with rifles. The effect of this unexpected onslaught was electrical, the savages start- ing up with yells of terror in a state of utter panic. Being taken so completely by surprise, they could not at first realize what had happened, and the place was A KING AT TWENTY-FIVE •93 for a few minutes a pandemonium of howling niggers, who rushed about in the faint light of the camp-fires, jostling each other and stumbling over the bodies of those who had fallen at the first volley, but quite un- able to see who had attacked them ; while, before they had recovered from the first shock of surprise, my men had reloaded, and again a shower of bullets and arrows carried death into the seething, disorganized mass. This volley completed the rout, and without waiting a moment longer the whole crowd rushed pell-mell into the bush, not a savage who could get away, remaining in the clearing, and the victory was complete." It had taken Boyes a year to fight his way to that kingdom which had no throne, and for another eight- een months of a thankless reign he dealt with famine, smallpox and other worries until one day there came two Englishmen, official tenderfeet, into that big wild land which Boyes had tamed. They came to take pos- session, but instead of bringing Boyes an appointment as commissioner for King Edward they made him prisoner in presence of his retinue of a thousand fol- lowers, and sent him to escort himself down-country charged with " dacoity," murder, flying the Union Jack, cheeking officials, and being a commercial bounder. At Mombasa there was a comedy of imprisonment, a farce of trial, an apology from the judge, but never a word of thanks to the boyish adventurer who had tamed half a million savages until they were prepared to enter the British Peace. XXVII A. D. 1898 JOURNEY OF.EWART GROGAN FROM the Right Honorable Cecil Rhodes to Ewart S. Grogan in the year 1900: — " I must say I envy you, for you have done that which has been for centuries the ambition of every explorer, namely, to walk through Africa from South to North. The amusement of the whole thing is that a youth from Cambridge during his vacation should have succeeded in doing that which the ponderous ex- plorers of the world have failed to accomplish. There is a distinct humor in the whole thing. It makes me the more certain that we shall complete the telegraph and railway, for surely I am not going to be beaten by the legs of a Cambridge undergraduate." It took death himself to beat Rhodes. Two years after that letter was written news went out through the army in South Africa that he was dead. We were stunned ; we felt too sick to fight. For a moment the guns were hushed, and silence fell on the veldt after years of war. That silence was the herald of lastmg peace for British Africa, united by Stronger bond* than rail or telegraph. Grogan was an undergraduate not only of Cam- 194 JOURNEY OF EWART GROGAN 195 bridge, but alto of the bigger schooli called War and Adventure, for he had traveled in the South Seal, climbed in the Alps, and fought in the Matabele cam- paigns, before he made his holiday walking tour from the Cape to Cairo. He was not the usual penniless adventurer, but, reckoned by frontier standards, a man of means, with the good manners that ease the way for any traveler. From the Cape to the Zambesi he had no need to tread old trails again, and far into the heart of Africa there were already colonies with steamers to speed the journey up to Lake Tanganyika, where his troubles really began. Through two-thirds of the journey Grogan had a partner, Mr. A. H. Sharp, but they were seldom in company, for one would ex- plore ahead while the other handled their caravan of one hundred fifty negro carriers, or one or both went hunting, or lay at the verge of death with a dose of fever. Their route lay along the floor of a gash in the con- tinent, a deep abyss called the Great Rift, in which lies a chain of lakes: Nyassa, Tanganyika, Kevu, Al- bert Edward, and Albert, whence the Nile flows down into distant Egypt. This rift is walled and sometimes blocked by live volcanoes, fouled with swamps, gigantic forests and new lava floods, reeking with fever, and at the time of the journey was beset by tribes of hostile cannibals. This pleasant path led to Khartoum, held in those days by the Khalifa with his dervish army. The odds were about a thousand to one that these two British adventurers were march- ing straight to death or slavery. Their attempt was madness — that divine madness that inspires all pio- neers. 196 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Now for a glimpse into this great adventure : " I had shot a zebra . . . and turning out at five- thirty A. M. crept up within sixty yards. ... I saw in the middle of a circle of some two hundred vultures a grand old Hon, leisurely gnawing the ribs, and behind, four little jackals sitting in a row. . . . Behind stretched the limitless plain, streaked with mists shim- mering in the growing light of the rising sun, clumps of graceful palms fenced) in a sandy arena where the zebra had fallen and round his attenuated remains, and just out of reach of the swish of the monarch's tail, the solid circle of waiting vultures, craning their bald necks, chattering and hustling one another, and the more daring quartette within the magic circle like four little images of patience, while the lion in all his might and matchless grandeur of form, leisurely chewed and scrunched the titbits, magnificently re- gardless of the watchful eyes of the encircling ca- naille. ... I watched the scene for fully ten minutes, then as he showed signs of moving I took the chance afforded of a broadside shot and bowled him over with the .500 magnum. In inserting another cartridge the gun jammed, and he rose, but after looking round for the cause of the interruption, without success, started off at a gallop. With a desperate effort I closed the gun and knocked him over again. He was a fine black-maned lion and as lie lay in a straight line from tip to top ten feet, four inches, a very unusual length." Among the volcanoes near Lake Kivo, Grogan dis- covered a big one that had been thrown up within the last two years, and there were vast new floods of lava, hard to cross. One day, while searching out a route for the expedition, he had just camped at a JOURNEY OF EWART GROGAN 197 height of nine thousand feet in the forest when he found the fresh tracks of a bull elephant, and the spoor was much larger than he had ever seen. When he overtook this giant the jungle was so dense that only the ridge of his back was visible, and for some time he watched the animal picking the leaves off a tree " When fodder ran short he tore down a tree whose trunk was two feet thick, and fearing he might move on, Grogan fired. The elephant fell, but recovered and dashed away, so that there were some hours of track- mg before the hunter could catch up again. And now on a flaw of wind the giant scented him. "The noise was terrific, and it suddenly dawned upon me that so far from moving off he was coming on. I was powerless to move — a fall would have been fatal — so I waited; but the forest was so dense that I never saw him till his head was literally above me, when I fired both barrels of the .500 magnum in his face. The whole forest seemed to crumple up, and a second later I found myself ten feet above the ground, well home in a thorn bush, while my gun was lying in yards away in the opposite direction ; and I heard a roar as of thunder disappearing into the distance. A few seconds later the most daring of my boys, Zowanji, came hurrying along with that sickly green hue that a nigger's face assumes in mo- ments of fear, and with his assistance I descended from my spiky perch. I was drenched with blood, which fortunately proved to be not mine, but that of the el^hant; my gun, which I recovered, was also covered with blood, even to the inside of the barrels. The only damage I susUined was a slightly twisted knee. I can not say whether the eleifcant i 198 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE r actually struck me, or whether I was carried there by the rush of the country." Following up, Grogan found enormous pools of blood, and half a mile farther on heard grunts that showed that the elephant had scented him. The ani- mal rushed about with terrifying shrieks, devastated half an acre of forest, and then moved on again. Several times the hunter caught up, but the elephant moved on at an increasing pace, until sunset put an end to Grogan's hopes. This part of the Rift has belts of forest, and close beside them are patches of rich populous country where black nations live in fat contentment. But for five years there had been trouble to the westward where the Congo army had chased out the Belgian ofii- cials and run the country to suit themselves. Still worse, there were certain cannibal tribes moving like a swarm of locusts through Central Africa, eating the settled nations. Lately the swarm had broken into the Rift, and as Grogan explored northward he found the forest full of corpses. Here and there lurked starving fugitives, but despite their frantic warnings he moved on until he came to a wide province of deso- lated farms and ruined villages. Seeing that he had but a dozen followers a mob of cannibals attacked at night; but as they rushed, six fell to the white man's rifle, and when the rest fled he picked them off at the range of a mile, as long as he could find victims. Then he entered a house where they had been feast- ing. "A cloud of vultures hovering ove? the spot gave me an inkling of what I was about to see; but the realization defies description; it haunts me in my dreams, at dinner it jit? on my leg-of-mutton, it bub- JOURNEY OF EWART GROGAN 199 bles in my soup, in fine, Watonga (the negro gun bearer) would not eat the potatoes that grew in the same country." Grogan fled, and starved, for the mountain streams were choked with corpses, the woods were a nightmare horror, to eat and sleep were alike impossible. He warned his partner and the expedition marched by another route. Two very queer kinds of folk he met in tl , forests : the pygmies and the ape-men. The pygmies are little hunters and not more than three feet tall, but sturdy and compact, immensely strong, able to travel through the pig-runs of the jungle, and brave enough to kill elephants with their tiny poisoned arrows. He found them kindly, clever little folk, though all the other explorers have disliked them. The ape-men were tall, with hanging paunch and short legs, a small skull and huge jaws, face, body and legs covered with wiry hair. The hang of the long powerful arms, the slight stoop of the trunk, and the hunted vacant expression of the face were marked. The twenty or thirty of them Grogan met were frightened at first but afterward became very friendly, proud to show him their skill in making fire with their fire sticks. Once in the forest he found the skeleton of an ape of gigantic size. The natives explained Ihat such apes were plentiful, although no white man has ever seen one. They have a bad habit of stealing negro women. At the northern end of the Rift, where the country flattens out toward the Nile, Grogan and Sharp met with the officials of British Uganda, which was then in a shocking muddle of mutinous black troops, raids N 20O CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE from the Congo, drought and famine. There Mr. Sharp left the expedition, making his way to Mom- basa ; the carriers were sent back home as a good rid- dance, and Mr. Grogan, with only five faithful attend- ants, pushed on down the Nile Valley. The river was blocked with a weed called the sudd, which a British expedition was trying to clear away, and Grogan was forced to the eastward through horrible marshlands. He had in all only fourteen men when he came to the Dinka country, and met thit queer race of swamp folk. '"hey are very tall, some even gigantic, beautifully uuilt, but broad-footed, walking with feet picked up high and thrust far forward — the gait of a pelican. At rest they stand on one leg like a wading bird, the loose leg akimbo with its foot on the straight leg's knee. They are fierce, too, and one tribe made an at- tack on Grogan's party. His men threw down their loads, screaming that they were lost, and the best Congo soldier fell stabbed to the heart, while t\.o others went down with cracked skulls. " I took the chief," says Grogan, " and his right- hand man with the double barrtl, then, turning round, found that my boy had bolted with my revolver. At the same moment a Dinka hurled his spear at me; I dodged it, but he rushed in and dealt me a swinging blow with his club, which I fortunately warded with my arm, receiving no more damage than a wholesome bruise. I poked my empty gun at his stomach, and he turned, receiving a second afterwards a dum-dum in the small of his back. Then they broke and ran, my army with eight guns having suc- ceeded in firing two shots. I climbed up an ant hill that was close by, and could ste them watching at JOURNEY OF EWART GROGAN 201 about three hundred yards for our next move, which was an unexpected one, for I planted a dum-dum apparently in the stomach of one of the most obtrusive ruffians, whom I recognized by his great height. They then hurried off and bunched at about seven hundred yards, and another shot, whether fatal or not I could not see, sent them off in all' directions." The battle was finished, and Grogan toiled on with his wounded men, famished, desperate, almost hope- less. One day in desert country he came to the camp of Captain Dunn, a British officer. " Captain Dunn : 'How do you do?' " I : ' Oh, very fit, thanks ; how are you ? Had any sport?' "Dunn: 'Oh, pretty fair, but there is nothing here. Have a drink?' "Then wc washed, lunched, discusset" the war, (South Africa), and eventually Dunn asked where the devil I had come from." The battle of Omdurman had destroyed the dervish power, and opened the Nile so that Grogan went on in ease and comfort by steamer to Khartoum, to Cairo, and home. Still he heard in his sleep the night melody of the lions — " The usual cry is a sort of vast sigh, taken up by the chorus with a deep sob, sob, sob, or a curious rumbling noise. But the pukka roar is indescribable ... it seems tc :'^: leate the whole uni- verse, thundering, rumbling, majestic: there is no music in the world so sweet." It is hard to part with this Irish gentleman, whose fourteen months' traverse of the Dark Continent is the finest deed in the history of African exploration. XXVIII A. D. 1900 THE COWBOY PRESIDENT LET others appraise the merits of this great Ameri- can gentleman as governor of New York, secre- tary of the United States Navy, colonel of the Rough Riders, historian of his pet hero, Oliver Cromwell, and, finally, president of the republic. He had spent half his life as an adventurer on the wild frontier breaking horses, punching cows, fighting grizzly bears, before he ever tackled the politicians, and he had much more fun by the camp-fire than he got in his marble palace. Here is his memory of a prairie fire: — "As I gal- loped by I saw that the fire had struck the trees a quarter of a mile below me, in the dried timber it instantly sprang aloft like a giant, and roared in a thunderous monotone as it swept up the coulee. I galloped to the hill ridge ahead, saw that the fire line had already reached the divide, ?r.d turned my horse sharp on his haunches. As I again passed under the trees the fire, running like a race horse in the bush, had reached the road ; its breath was hot in my face ; tongues of quivering flame leaped over my head, L..d kindled the grass on the hillside fifty yards away." Thus having prospected the ground he discovered THE COWBOY PRESIDENT 303 means of saving himself, his companions, and his camp from the rushing flames. It is an old artifice of the frontier to start a fresh fire, burn a few acres, and take refuge on the charred ground while the storm of flame sweeps by on either hand. But this was not enough. The fire was burning the good pasture of his cattle and, unless stayed, might sweep away not only leagues of grass, but ricks and houses. " Before dark," he continues, " we drove to camp and shot a stray steer, and then split its carcass in two length ways with an ax. After sundown the wind lulled— two of us on horseback dragging a half carcass bloody side down, by means of ropes leading from our saddle- horns to the fore and hind legs, the other two follow- mg on foot with slickers and wet blankets. There was a reddish glow in the night air, and the waving bend- mg Imes of flame showed in great bright curves against the hillside ahead of us. The flames stood upright two or three feet high. Lengthening the ropes, one of us spurred his horse across the fire line, and then wheehng, we dragged the carcass along it, one horse- man bemg on the burnt ground, the other on the un- bumt grass, while the body of the steer lay lengthwise across the line. The weight and the blood smothered the fire as we twitched the carcass over the burning grass, and the two men following behind with thtir blankets and slickers (oilskins) readily beat out any isolated tufts of flame. Sometimes there would be a slight puff of wind, and then the man on the grass side of the line ran the risk of a scorching. " We were blackened with smoke, and the taut ropes hurt our thighs, while at times the plunging horses tned to break or bolt. It was worse when we came Hi 304 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE to some deep gully or ravine — we could see nothing, and simply spurred our horses into it anywhere, tak- ing our chances. Down we would go, stumbling, sliding and pitching, over cut banks and into holes and bushes, while the carcass bounded behind, now catching on a stump, and now fetching loose with a ' pluck ' that brought it full on the horses' haunches, driving them nearly crazy with fright. By midnight the half carcass was worn through, but we had stifled the fire in the comparatively level country to the east- wards. Back we went to camp, drank huge drafts of muddy water, devoured roast ox-ribs, and dragged c"t the other half carcass to fight the fire in the west. There was some little risk to us who were on horse- back, dragging the carcass; we had to feel our way along knife-like ridges in the dark, one ahead and the other behind while the steer dangled over the preci- pice on one side, and in going down the buttes and into the canons only by extreme care could we avoid getting tangled in the ropes and rolling down in a heap." So at last the gallant fight was abandoned, and looking back upon the fire which they had failed to conquer : " In the darkness it looked like the rush of a mighty army." Short of cowboys and lunatics, nobody could have imagined such a feat of horsemanship. Of that pat- tern is frontier adventure — daring gone mad; and yet it is very rarely that the frontiersman finds the day's work worth recording, or takes the trouble to set down on paper the stark naked facts of an in- cident more exciting than a shipwreck, more danger- ous than a battle, and far transcending the common experience of men. THE COWBOY PRESIDENT 205 Traveling alone in the Rockies, Colonel Roosevelt came at sundown to a little ridge whence he could look into the hollow beyond — and there he saw a big grizzly walking thoughtfully home to bed. At the first shot, " he uttered a loud moaning grunt and plunged forward at a heavy gallop, while I raced obliquely down the hill to cut him oflf. After going a few hundred feet he reached a laurel thicket . . . which he did not leave. ... As I halted I heard a peculiar savage whine from the heart of the brush. Accordingly I began to skirt the edge standing on tip- toe, and gazing earnestly in to see if I could not get a glimpse of his hide. When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket he suddenly left it directly oppo- site, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on the hillside a little above. He turned his head stiffly toward me, scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips, his eyes burned like embers in the gloom. I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shat- tered the point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the grtat bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding through the laurel bushes so that it was hard to aim. "I waited until he came to a fallen tree, rak- ing him as he topped it with a ball which en- tered his chest and went through the cavity of his body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did not know that I had struck him. He came unsteadily on, and in another moment was close upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet 9g6 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTXJRE went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw, and going into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled trigger, and through the hang- ing smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as he made a vicious side blow at me. The rest of his charge carried him past. As he struck he lurched for- ward, leaving a pool of bright blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and made two or three jumps onward, while I hurriedly jammed a couple of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle only holding four, all of which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his muscles seemed to give way, his head drooped, and he rolled over — each of my first three bullets had inflicted a mortal wound." This man who had fought grizzly bears came rather as a surprise among the politicians in silk hats who run the United Sutes. He had all the gentry at his back because he is the first man of unquestioned birth and breeding who has entered the political bear- pit since the country squires who followed George Washington. He had all the army at his back because he had charged the heights at Santiago de Cuba with conspicuous valor 't the head of his own regiment of cowboys. He hat ihe navy at his back because as secretary for the navy he had successfully governed the fleet. But he was no politician when he came for- ward to claim the presidency of the United States. Seeing that he could not be ignored the wire-puller set a trap for this innocent and gave him the place of vice-president. The vice-president has little to do, can only succeed to the throne in the event of the president's death, and is, after a brief term, barred THE COWBOY PRESIDENT xtj for life from any further progress. "Teddy" walked into the trap and sat down. But when President McKinley was murdered the politicians found that they had made a most surpri»- ing and gigantic blunder. By their own act the cow- boy bear tighter must succeed to the vacant seat as chief magistrate of the republic. President Roose- velt happened to be away at the time, hunting bears in the Adirondack wilderness, and there began a frantic search of mountain peaks and forest solitudes for the missing ruler of seventy million people. \yhen he was found, and had paid the last honors to his dead friend, William McKinley, he was obliged to proceed to Washington, and there take the oaths. His women folk had a terrible time before they could persuade him to wear the silk hat and frock coat which there serve in lieu of coronation robes, but he consented even to that for the sake of the gorgeous time he was to have with the politicians afterward. XXIX A.D. igos THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE ONCE upon a time the Foul Fiend wanted a death- trap that would pick out all the bravest men and destroy them, so he invented the Northwest Passage. So when Europe needed a short route to China round the north end of the Americas our seamen set out to find a channel, and even when they knew that any route must lie through the high Arctic, still they were not going to be beaten. Our white men rule the world because we refuse to be beaten. The seamen died of scurvy, and it was two hundred years before they found out how to stay alive on salted food, by drinking lime juice. Safe from scurvy, they reached the gate of the passage at Lan- caster Sound, but there the winter caught them, so that their ships were squashed in driving ice, and the men died of cold and hunger. Then the explorers got ships too strong to be crushed; they copied the dress of the Eskimo to keep them warm ; and they carried food enough to last for years. Deeper and deeper they forced their way into the Arctic, but now they neared the magnetic pole where the compass is use- m8 THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 209 less, in belts of drifting fog darker tlian midnight. Still they dared to go on, but the inner channels of the Arctic were found to be frozen until the autumn gales broke up the ice-fields, leaving barely six weeks for navigation before the winter frosts. At that rate the tbree-thousand-mile passage would take three years. Besides, the ship must carry a deck load of sledge dogs with their food, so that the men might escape overland in case they were cast away. Only a big ship could carry the supplies, but once again the seamen dared to try. And now came the last test to break men's hearts — the sea lane proved to be so foul with shoals and rocks that no large vessel could possi- bly squeeze through. At last, after three hundred years, the British seamen had to own defeat. Our explorers had mapped the entire route, but no ship could make the passage because it was impossible to raise money for the venture. Why should we want to get through this useless channel? Because it was the test for perfect man- hood free from all care for money, utterly unselfish, of the highest intellect, patience, endurance and the last possible extremity of valor. And where the English failed a Norseman, Norden- skjold made the Northeast passage round the coast of Asia. Still nobody dared to broach the North- west passage round America, until a young Norse seaman solved the riddle. Where no ship could cross the shoals it might be possible with a fishing boat drawing only six feet of water. But she could not carry five years' supplies for men and dogs. Science came to the rescue with foods that would pack into a tenth part of their proper bulk, and as to the dog food, 210 CAPTAINS OF ADVENVURE one might risk a deck load big as a haystack, to be thrown off if the weather got too heavy. Still, how could a fishing boat carry twenty men for the different expert jobs? Seven men might be discovered each an expert in three or four different trades; the captain serving as the astronomer and doctor, the cook as a naturalist and seaman. So Roald Amundsen got Doctor Nansen's help, and that great explorer was backed by the king. Help, came from all parts of Scandinavia, and a little from Great Britain. The Gjoa was a forty-seven ton herri:ig boat with a thirteen horse-power motor for ship's pet, loaded with five years' stores for a crew of seven men, who off duty were comrades as in a yachting cruise. Ill 1903 she sailed from Christiania and spent July climbing the north current in full view of the Greenland coast, the Arctic wonderland. At Godhaven she picked up stores, bidding farewell to civilization, passed Upemivik the last village, and Tas- sinssak, the last house on earth, then entered Melville Bay with its three-hundred-mile frontage of glacier, the most dangerous place in the Arctic. Beyond, near Cape York, she found a deck load of stores left for her by one of the Dundee whalers. There the people met the last white men, three Danish explorers whose leader, Mylius Erichsen, was making his way to deatli on the north coast of Greenland. So, like a barge with a hayrick, the overload Joy crossed from the Greenland coast to Lancaster Sound, the gate of the Northwest passage, whose gatepost is Beechey Island, sacred to the memory of Sir John Franklin, and the dead of the Franklin search. The Joy found some sole leather better than her own, a heap of use- THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 211 ful coal and an anvil, among the litter of old ex- peditions; made the graves tidy; left a message at Franklin's monument, and went on. For three hun- dred years the channels ahead were known to have been blocked ; only by a miracle of good fortune could they be free from ice; and this miracle happened, for the way was clear. " I was sitting," writes Amundsen on August thir- ty-first, "entc'^ng the day's events in my journal, when I heard a shriek — a terrific shriek, which thrilled me to the very marrow? It takes something to make a Norseman shriek, but a mighty flame with thick suffocating smoke was leaping up from the en- gine room skylight. There the tanks held two thou- sand two hundred gallons of petroleum, and close be- side them a pile of soaked cotton waste had burst with a loud explosion. If the tanks got heated the ship would be blown into chips, but after a hard fight the fire was got under. All hands owed their livea to their fine discipline." A few days later the Joy grounded in a labyrinth of shoals, and was caught aground by a storm which lifted and bumped her until the false keel was torn off. The whole of the deck load had to be thrown overboard. The only hope was to sail over the rocks, and with all her canvas set she charged, smashing from rock to rock until she reached the farther edge of the reef which was nearly dry. "The spray and sleet were washing over the vessel, the mast trembled, and the GjoiiL seemed to pull herself together for a last final leap. She was lifted up and flung bodily on the bare rocks, bump, bump, with terrific 212 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE force. ... In my distress I sent up (I honestly con- fess it) an ardent prayer to the Almighty. Yet an- other bump worse than ever, then one more, and we slid off." The shock had lifted the rudder so that it rested with the pintles on the mountings, and she would not steer ; then somehow the pins dropped back into their sockets, the steersmen regained control and the Joy was saved, after a journey across dry rocks which ought to have smashed anyi ship afloat. She did not even leak. Near the south end of King William's Land a pocket harbor was found, and named Joy Haven. There the stores were landed, cabins were built, the ship turned into a winter house, and the crew became men of science. For two years they were haro at work studying the magnetism of the earth beside the Magnetic Pole. They collected fossils and natural history specimens, surveyed the district, studied the heavens and the weather, hunted reindeer for their meat and clothing, fished, and made friends with the scented, brave and merry Eskimos. During the first winter the thermometer dropped to seventy-nine de- grees below zero, which is pretty near the world record for cold, but as long as one is well fed, with bowels in working order, and has Eskimo clothes to wear, the temperature feels much the same after forty below zero. Below that point the wind fails to a breath- less calm, the keen dry air is refreshing as champagne, and one can keep up a dog-trot for miles without be- ing winded. It is not the winter night that people dread, but the summer day with its horrible torment of mosquitoes. Then there is in spring and autumn, THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE 213 a hot misty glare upon the snow-fields which causes blindness with a deal of pain. The Arctic has its drawbacks, but one remembers afterward the fields of flowers, the unearthly beauty of the northern lights, the teeming game, and those long summer nights when the sun is low, filling the whole sky with sunset colors. The greatest event of the first year was the finding of an Eskimo hunter to carry letters, who came back in the second summer, having found in Hudson's Bay an exploring vessel of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police of Canada. Major Moody, also the captain of the Arctic, and the Master of an American whaler, sent their greetings, news of the outer world, some useful charts, and a present of husky dogs. The second summer was over. The weather had begun to turn cold before a northerly gale smashed the ice, and sea lanes opened along the Northwest passage. On August thirteenth the Joy left her anchorage, under sail and steam, to pick her way without compass through blinding fog, charging and butting through fields of ice, dodging zigzag through shoals, or squeezing between ice-fields and the shore. There was no sleep for anybody during the first three nights, but racking anxiety and tearing overstrain until they reached known waters, a channel charted by the old explorers. They met an American whaler, and afterward had clear open water as far as the mouths of the Mackenzie River. A few miles beyond that the ice closed in from the north and piled up- shore so that the passage was blocked and once more the Joy went into winter quarters. But not alone. Ladies must have corsets ribbed with whalebone from :i 214 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE the bowhead whale. Each whale head is worth two thousand pounds, so a fleet of American whalers goes hunting in the Arctic. Their only port of refuge is Herschel Island oflf the Canadian coast, so there is an outpost of the Northwest Mounted Police, a mission station and a village of Eskimos. The Joy came to anchor thirty-six miles to the east of Herschel Island, beside a stranded ship in charge of her Norse mate, and daily came passengers to and fro on the Fort Macpherson trail. From that post runs a dog-train service lof mails connecting the forts of the Hudson's Bay Company all the way up the Mackenzie Valley to Edmonton on the railway within two thousand miles. The crew of the Joy had com- pany news, letters from home, and Captain Amund- sen went by dc^-train to the mining camps on the Yukon where at Eagle City he sent telegrams. At last in the summer of 1906 the Joy sailed on tiie final run of her great voyage, but her crew of seven was now reduced to six, and at parting she dipped her colors to the cross on a lone grave. The ice barred her passage, but she charged, smashing her engines, and charged again, losing her peak which left the mainsail useless. So she won past Cape Prince of Wales, completing the Northwest passage, and en- tering Bering Sea called at Cape Nome for repairs. There a thousand American gold miners welcomed the sons of the vikings with an uproarious triumph, and greeted Captain Amundsen with the Norse natkmal antfaem. XXX- A.D. 1588 JOHN HAWKINS ■]\/r ASTER JOHN HAWKINS, mariner, was a •»^»->- trader's son, familiar from childhood with the Guinea coast of Africa. Worshipful merchants of London trusted him with three ridiculously small ships, the size of our fishing smacks, but manned by a hundred men. With these, in 1562 — the " spacious times " of great Elizabeth — he swooped down on the West African coast, and horribly scared were his people when they saw the crocodiles. The nature of this animal " is ever when he would have his prey, to sob and cry like a Christian bodie, to provoke them to come to him, and then he snatcheth at them." In spite of the reptiles. Master Hawkins "got into his possession, partly by the sword, and partiy by other means." three hundred wretched negroes. The king of Spain had a law that no Protestant heretic might trade with his Spanish colonies of the West Indies, so Master Hawkins, by way of spitting in his majesty's eye, went straight to Hispaniola, where he exchanged his slaves with the settlers for a shipload of hides, ginger, sugar and pearls. On his second voyage Master Hawkins attempted to enslave a whole city, hard by Sierra Leone, but the Almighty, " who worketh all things for the best, would ais 2l6 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE not have it so, and by Him we escaped without danger, His name be prsised for it." Hawkins had nearly been captured by the negroes, and was com- pelled to make his pious raids elsewhere. Moreover, when he came with a fleet loMed wjfh slaves to Venezuela, the Spanish merchants were scared to trade with him. Of course, for the sake of his negroes, he had to get them landed somehow, so he went ashore, " having in his greate boate two falcons of brasse, and in the other boates double bases in their noses." Such artillery backed by a hundred men in plate armor, convinced the Spaniards that it would be wise to trade. On his third voyage. Master Hawkins found the Spaniards his friends along the Spanish main, but the weather, a deadly enemy, drove him for refuge and repair to San Juan d'Ullua, the port of Mexico. Here was an islet, the only shelter on that coast from the northerly gales. He sent a letter to the capital for leave to hold that islet with man and guns while he bought provisions and repaired his ships. But as it happened, a new viceroy came with a fleet of thirteen great ships to claim that narrow anchorage, and Hawkins must let them in or fight. "On the faith of a viceroy " Don Martin de Henriquez pledged his honor before Hawkins let him in, then set his ships close aboard those of England, trained guns to bear upon them, secretly filled them with troops hid below hatches, and when his treason was found out, sounded a trumpet, the signal for attack. The Eng- lishmen on the isle were massacred except three, the queen's ship Jestu, of Lubeck, was so sorely hurt that she had to be abandoned, and only two small barks, JOHN HAWKINS 217 the Minion and the Judith, escaped to sea The Spaniards lost four galleons in that battle As to the English, they were in great peril, and parted by a storm. The Judith fared best, com- manded by a man from before the mast, one Francis Drake, who brought the news to England that Haw- kins had more than two hundred people crowded upon the Minwn without food or water. "With manr sorrowful hearts," says Hawkins, "we wandered in an unknown sea by the span of fourteen dayes, till hunger forced us to seeke the lande, for birdes were thought very goode meate, rattes, cattes, mise and dogges. It was then that one hundred fou.teen men volun- teered to go ashore and the ship continued a very pamful voyage. ' These men were landed on the coast of Mexico unarmed, to be stripped naked presently by r^' Indians, and by the Spaniards marched as slaves to thL?.. ,^*"''°' *•"='' ^^"=^ '""K imprisonment Aose left al.ve were sold. The Spanish gentlemen the clergy and the monks were kind to thesf servTm"; who eanied posjtions of trust on mines and ranches «^ough st.ll rated as slaves. Then came the "Hoi? He ihsh Inqu.s.t.on " to inquire into the safety of their rS ^''""=^«, ^Prisoned, nearly all were tortured hshes' T' "^u '°'^'' •" P"''"'^ -'th five hund S lashes. Even the ten gentlemen landed by HawkinI as hostages for his good faith shared the fate of he shipwrecked mariners who. some in Mexico and some m Spam, were in the end condemned to the S^s And those who kept the faith were ted' j^e ai6 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE From that tunc onward, whatever treaties there might be in Europe, there was never a moment's peace for the Spanish Indies. All honest Englishmen were at war with Spain witil the Inquisition was stamped out, and the British liberators had helped to drive the Spaniards ttom the last acre of their American empire. When Hawkins returned to England, Maty, Queen of Scots, was there a prisoner. The sailor went to Elizabeth's minister. Lord Burleigh, and proposed a plot. By this plot he entereil into a treaty with the queen of Scots to set her on the throne. He was to join the Duke of Alva for the invasion and overthrow of England. So pleased was the Spanish king that he paid compensation to Hawkins for his losses at San Juan d'Ullua and restored to freedom such of the English prisoners as could be discovered. Then Haw- kins turned loyal again, and Queen Elizabeth knighted him for fooling her enemies. \ XXXI A. D. 1573 FRANCIS DRAKE THE Judith had escaped from San Juan d'Ullua and her master. Francis Drake, of Devon, was now a bitter vengeful adversary, from that time on- ward living to be the scourge of Spain. Four years he raided, plundered, burned along the Spanish main, until the name Drake was changed to Dragon in the language of the dons. Then in 1573 he sailed from Plymouth with five little ships to carry fire and sword into the South Seas, where the flag of England had never been before. When he had captured some ships near the Cape de Verde Islands, he was fifty-four days in unknown waters before he sighted the Brazils, then after a long time came to Magellan's Straits, where he put in to refresh his men. One of the captains had been un- faithful and was now tried by a court-martial, which found him guilty of mutiny and treason against the admiral. Drake offered him a ship to return to Eng- land and throw himself on the queen's mercy, or he might land and take his chance among the savages, or he could have his death, and carry his case to the Ahnighty. The prisoner would not rob the expedi- tion of a ship, nor would he consort with the degraded tribes of that wild Land of Fire, but asked that he might die at the hands of his countrymen because of 319 m aao CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE ti«e wrong he had done them. So the date was ,et for J« execufon when all the officer, received "fhS communion, the prisoner kneeling beside the adn,i™i After that they dined together L the L t ti^t S when they had risen from table, shook hand Tt':^^ £ F T^" ''" '''''"'• '*'« °*ers to their voya« May England ever breed such gentlemen I ^ *^- «Sd 2Ti"^.''"L^''^^ «°* ^'«'' "^ 'he straits and all the ships. Drake went on alone, and on the coast ot a galleon at Santiago, laden with gold from Peru jJrakes feather on the South Seas, so that when h. t7Zi:;X '''"''^° ''-^ -e'e^uanrsi'L^" The galleon's crew were ashore save for six Spaniards and three negroes, so bored with [he^ selves that they welcomed the visitors by Satnga drum and setting out ailian wine. But wh^„ Ma^ ter Moon arrived on board with a boat's crrwL^!; a^t^him outrageously with a la^ swo^' ^y g sHS^^rsr^taS" deal of g-ood cheer besides, Master Fletcher the nt < i Sir Fhaxcis Drake FRANCIS DRAKE aai ing Spaniard wai found on the beach with thirteen bars of lilver. " We took the silver and left the man." Another place yielded a pr.c !nin of llamas, the local beast of burden, with leaii er \. aUcts .outlin- ing eight hundred pounds' weiv;ni of .^ii.-r, 'ihr. ,; small barks were searched ni.xf. one ci tH»ir lei;,- laden with silver; then twelv., /;ip-i nt aich. ih were cut adrift; and a bar; v itli v'.gUt, pjunJs' weight of gold, and a golden crucifix st< vith emer- alds. But best of alt was the galkoi-. c"'^ '^fiiego, overtaken at sea, and disabled at the t'.,- 1 shot, which brought down her mizzenmast. Her cargo consisted of "great riches, as jewels and precious stones, thir- teen chests full of royals of plate, four score pounds weight of golde, and six and twentie tunne of silver." The pilot being the possessor of two nice silver cups, had to give one to Master Drake, and the other to the steward, "because hee could not otherwise chuse." Every town, every ship was rifled along that coast. There was neither fighting nor killing, but much politeness, until at last the ship had a full cargo of silver, gold and gems, with which she reached England, having made a voyage round the world. When^ Queen Elizabeth dined in state on board Drake's ship at Greenwich, she struck him with a sword and dubbed him knight. Of course he must have armorial bearings now, but when he adopted the three wiverns — black fowl of sorts — of the Drake family, there were angry protests against his insolence. So the queen made him a coat-of-arms, a terrestrial ^obe, and a ship thereon led with a string by a hand that reached out of a cloud, and in the rigging of the said ship, a wivem hanged by the neck. 222 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE It was Parson Fletcher who wrote the story of that illustrious voyage, but he does not say how he himself fell afterward from grace, being solemnly consigned by Drake to the " devil and all his angells," threatened with a hanging at the yard-arm, and made to bear a posy on his breast with these frank words, " Francis Fletcher, ye falsest knave that liveth." Drake always kept his chaplain, and dined " alone with musick," did all his public actions with large piety and gallant courtesy, while he led English fleets on insolent piracies against the Spaniards. From his next voyage he returned leaving the Indies in flames, loaded with plunder, and smoking the new herb tobacco to the amazement of his country- men. Philip II was preparing a vast a.v.iada against Eng- land, when Drake appeared with thirty sail on the Spanish coast, destroyed a hundred ships, swept like a hurricane from port to port, took a galleon laden with treasure off the western islands, and returned to Ply- mouth with his enormous plunder. Next year Drake was vice-admiral to Lord Howard in the destruction of the Spanish armada. In 1589 he led a fleet to deliver Portugal from the Spaniards, wherein he failed. Then came his last voyage in company with his first commander. Sir John Hawkins. Once more the West Indies felt the awful weight of his arm, but now there were varying fortunes of defeat, of re- prisals, and at the end, pestilence, which struck the fleet at Nombre de Dios, and felled this mighty sea- man. His body was committed to the sea, his memory to the hearts of all brave men. XXXII A. D. 1587 THE FOUR ARMADAS H^Jil '** ^* ?" * ''^"- We have come to the ** chmax of the great century, the age of the Rena>ss.„ce. when Europe was'^born %.to tf the Reformation, when the Protestants of tfe Baltfc Wh the Catholics of the Mediterr Jarfoflhe right to worship in freedom; and of the sea kin« who Ia.d the foundations of our modern woHd ^ Islam l»d reached her fullest flood of glory with the ' fleets of Barbarossa. the armies of theSn Sul^T bTforetrlh'Lt" '"'' "' ^'^^ ^e^a^S^i'- i Detore her ebb set downward into ruin Portugal and Spain, under one crown shared th. Here opened broad fields of adventure Ther, men of all these nafons « slaves in Turkish pl^. m.m'^ w 324 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE or in Spanish mines; everywhere sea fights, ship- wrecks 7ails of lost men wandering m unknown Tandt -tters of desert islands, and wrecked treasures with all the usual routine of Pl-^<=. Pf »^"=?. ="''' famine, of battle, of murder and of ''"dden death In all this ungle we must take one thread, with most to learn, I think, from a Hollander, Mynheer, J. r an Li"schoten, who was clerk to the Portuguese archbishop of the Indies and afterward m busmess at Terceira in the Azores,, where he wrote a famous book on pilotage. He tells us about the ^-^^^ of Portuguese and Spaniards m terms of w.thenng contempt as a mixture of incompetence and coward.ce enough to explain the downfall and rum of their 'ThT worst ships, he says, which cleaml from Cochin were worth, with their cargo, one million, eight hundred thousand pounds of our modern money^ Not content with that, the swindlers m charge re- moved the ballast to make room for more cinnamon, whereby the Arreliquias capsized and sank The San logo, having her bottom ripped out by a coral reef, her admiral, pilot, master and a dozen others entered into a boat, keeping it w-th ".ked rapiers until they got clear, and deserted. Left with- out any officers, the people on Oie wreck were ad^ dressed by an Italian seaman who cried. Why are we thus abashed?' So ninety valiant manners took The longboat and cleared, hacking off the fingers hands and arms of the drowning women who held on to her gunwale. . ,. , -j * i,. As to the pilot who caused this little acc.den he afterward had charge of the San Thomdi full of THE FOUR ARMADAS 22s people, and most of the gentility of India," and lost with all hands. But if the seamanship of the Portuguese made it a miracle if they escaped destruction, that of the Spaniards was on a much larger scale. Where Portu- gal lost a ship Spain bungled away a fleet, and never was incompetence more frightfully punished than in the doom of the four armadas. Philip II wa* busy converting Protestant Holland, ^ m i^ he resolved to send a Catholic mission to England also, bat wbite he was preparing the first armada Drake came and burned his hundred ships under the guns of Cadiz. A year later the secwid, Ihe great armada, was ready, one hundred thirty ships in line of battle which was to embark the army in Holland, and invade Eng- land with a field force of fifty-three thousand men, the finest troops in Europe. Were the British fleet of to-day to attack the Dutch the situation would be much the same. It was a com- fort to the English that they had given most ample provocation and to spare, but still they felt it was ver.- awkward. They had five million people, only the nmth part of their present strength; no battle-ships, and only thirty cruisers. The merchant service rallied a hundred vessels, the size of the fishing smacks, the Flemings lent forty, and nobody in Ene- land dared to hope. To do Spain justice she made plenty of noise giving ample warning. Her fleet was made invincible by the pope's blessing, the sacred banners and the holy relrcs, while for England's spiritual comfort there was a vicar of the inquisition with his racks and thumb- I ^ ^*f^tc:,*" 226 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE screws. Only the minor details were overlooked: that the cordage was rotten, the powder damp, the wine sour, the water putrid, the biscuits and the beef a mass of maggots, while the ship's drainage into the ballast turned every galleon into a floating pest-house. The admiral was a fool, the captains were land- lubbers, the ships would not steer, and the guns could not be fought. The soldiers, navigators, boatswains and quartermasters were alike too proud to help the short-handed, overworked seamen, while two thou- sand of the people were galley slaves waiting to turn on their masters. Worst of all, this sacred, fantastic, doomed armada was to attack from Holland, without pilotage to turn our terrific fortifications of shoals and quicksands. Small were our ships and woefully short of powder, but they served the wicked valiant queen who pawned her soul for England. Her admiral was Lord Howard the Catholic, whose squadron leaders were Drake, Hawkins and Frobiaher. The leaders were practical seamen who led, not drove, the Eng- lish. The Spanish line of battle was seven miles across, but when the armada was sighted, Drake on Plymouth Hoe had time to finish his game of bowls before he put to sea. From hill to hill through England the beacon fires roused the men, the church bells called tli ti to prayer, and all along the southern coast fort echoed fort while guns and trumpets announced the armada's coming. The English fleet, too weak to attack, but fearfully swift to eat up stragglers, snapped like a wolf-pack at the heels of Spain. Four days and nights on end the armada was goaded and torn in THE FOUR ARMADAS 237 sleepless misery, no longer in line of battle, but hud- dled and flying. At the Straits they turned at bay with thirty-five hundred guns, but eight ships bore dowm on fire, stampeding the broken fleet to be slaughtered, foundered, burned or cast away, strewing the coast with wreckage from Dover to Cape Wrath and down the Western Isles. Fifty-three ruined ships got back to Spain with a tale of storms and the English which Europe has never forgotten, insuring the peace of EngUsh homes for three whole centuries. A year passed, and the largest of all the armadas ventured to sea, this time from the West Indies, a treasure fleet for Spain. Of two hundred twenty ships clearing not more than fifteen arrived, the rest being " drowned, burst, or taken." Storms and the English destroyed that third armada. The fourth year passed, marked by a hurricane in the Western Isles, and a great increase of England's reckoning, but the climax of Spaii's tmdcing was still to come m 1591, the year of the fourth armada. To meet and convoy her treasure fleet of one hun- dred ten sail from the Imfas, Spain sent out thirty battle-ships to the Azores. There lay an English squadron of sixteen vessels, also in waiting for the treasure fleet, whose policy was not to attack the escort, which carried no plunder worth taking Lord Howard's vice-admiral was Sir Richard Grenville commanding Drake's old flagship, the Revenge of seven hundred tons. This Grenville, says Linschoten, was a wealthy man, a little eccentric also, for dining once with some Spanish officers he must needs play the trick of crunching wine-glasses, and making believe to swallow the glass while blood ran from his lips He 2a8 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE was " very unquiet in his mind, and greatly affected to war," dreaded bv the Spaniards, detested by his men. On sighting t"; ■ Spanish squadron of escort, Howard put to S' . n„i Grenville had a hundred sick men to bring on K>ai d the Revenge ; his hale men were skylarking ashore. He stayed behind, when he at- tempted to rejoin the squadron the Spanish fleet of escort was in his way. On board the Revenge the master gave orders to alter course for flight until Grenville threatened to hang him. It was Grenville's sole fault that he was presently beset by eight ships, each of them double the size of the Revenge. So one small cruiser for the rest of the day and all night fought a whole fleet, engag- ing ircxa first to last thirteen ships of the line. She sank two ships and well-nigh wrecked five more, the Spaniards losing four hundred men in a fight with seventy. Only when their admiral lay shot through the head, and their last gun was silenced, their last boarding pike broken, the sixty wounded men who were left alive, made terms with the Spaniards and laid down their arms. Grenville was carried on board the Flagship, where the officers of the Spanish fleet assembled to do 'lim honor, and in their own language he spoke that night his last words: "Here die I, Richard Grenville. with a joyful and quiet mind, for I have ended my Kfe as a true soldier ought to do, that hath fought for his cotintry, qoren, religion and honor; whereby my soul most joyfully departeth out of this body ; and diall leave behind it an everlasting fame of a valiant and true scddier that hath done hit duty as he was bouod to do." ■'^"< I'iKiiAKii (Ikk.vm: THE FOUR ARMADAS aa9 With that he died, and his body wai committed to the lea. As to those who survived of his ship's com- pany, the Spaniards treated them with honor ; send- ing them as free men home to England. But they believed that the body of Grenville being in the sea raised that appalling cyclone that presently destroyed the treasure fleet and its escort, in all one hundred seven ships, including the Revenge. So perished the fourth armada, making withm five years a total loss of four hundred eighty-nine capiUl ships, in all the greatest sea calamity that ever befell a nation. Hear then the comment of Linschoten the Dutchman. The Spaniards thought that " Fortune, or rather God, was wholly against them. Which is a sufficient cause to make the Spaniards out of heart; and on the contrary to give the Englishmen more cour- age, and to make them bolder. For they are victorious, stout and valiant; and all their enterprises do take so good an effect that they are, hereby, become the lords and masters of the sea." The Portuguese were by no means the first seamen to round the Cape of Good Hope. About six hundred years B. C. the Pharaoh of Egypt, Niko, sent a Phoenician squadron from the Red Sea, to find their way round Africa and through Gibraltar Strait, back to the Nile. " When autumn came they went ashore, wherever they might happen to be, and having sown a tract of land with com, waited till the grain was fit to eat Having reaped it, they again set sail; and thus it came to pass that two whole years went by. and it was not until the third year that they doubled the Pillars of Hercules, and made good their voyage •"OOCOTY (KOWTION TBt CHAn (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) IM at 1 1.8 1:25 i 1.4 1^ i^ 1^ -APPLIED IM/CE In 1653 East Main StrMi RochMttf. N«« York 14609 US* (716) 482 - 0300 - Phorw (716) 2B8-5989-Fg» CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE home. On their return, they declared — for my part, do not believe them, but perhaps others may — that in saihng round Lybia (Africa), they had the sun on their right hand" (i. e. in the northern sky). Herodotus. " XXXIII A. D. 1583 SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT <'LTE is not worthy to live at all, that for any fear •^ ■■■ of danger of death, shunneth his countrey's service and his own honor." This message to all men of every English nation was written by a man who once with his lone sword covered a retreat, defending a bridge against twenty horsemen, of whom he killed one, dismounted two and wounded six. In all his wars and voyages Sir Humphrey Gilbert won the respect of his enemies, and even of his friends, while in his writings one finds the first idea of British colonies overseas. At the end of his life's endeavor he commanded a squadron that set out to found a first British colony in Virginia, and on the way he called at the port of Saint Johns in New- foundland. Six years after the first voyage of Co- lumbus, John Cabot had rediscovered the American mainland, naming and claiming this New-found Land and its port for Henry VII of England. Since then for nearly a hundred years the fishermen of Europe had come to this coast for cod, but the Englishmen clamied and held the ports where the fish were smoked. Now in 1583 Gilbert met the fishermen, English and strangers alike, who delivered to him a 331 232 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE stick of the timber and a turf of the soil in token of his possession of the land, while he hoisted the flag of England over her first colony, by this act founding the British empire. When Gilbert left Saint Johns, he had a secret that made him beam with joy and hint at mysterious wealth. Perhaps his mining expert had found pyrites and reported the stuflF as gold, or glittering crystals that looked like precious stones. Maybe it was the parcel of specimens for which he sent his page boy on board the Delight, who, failing to bring them, got a terrific thrashing. When the Delight, his flagship, was cast away on Sable Island, with a hundred men drowned and the sixteen survivors missing, Gilbert mourned, it was thought, more for his secret than for ship or people. From that time the wretchedness of his men aboard the ten-ton frigate, the Squirrel, weighed upon him. They were in rags, hungry and frightened, so to cheer them up he left his great ship and joined them. The Virginia voyage was abandoned, they squared away for England, horrified by a walrus passing be- tween the ships, which the mariners took for a demon jeering at their misfortunes. They crossed the Atlantic in foul weather, with great seas running, so that the people implored their admiral no longer to risk his life in the half-swamped Squirrel. " I will not forsake my little company," was all his answer. The seas became terrific and the weird corposants, Saint Elmo's electric fires " flamed amaze- ment," from masts and spars, sure harbinger of still more dreadful weather. SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT 233 A green sea filled the Squirrel and she was near sinking, but as she shook the water off, Sir Humphrey Gilbert waved his hand to the Golden Hind " Fear not, my masters!" he shouted, "we are as near to Heaven by sea as by land." As the night fell, he was still seen sitting abaft with a book in his hand. Then at midnight all of a sudden the frigate's lights were out, " for in that moment she was de- voured, and swallowed up by the sea," and the soul of Humphrey GUbert passed out of the great unrest XXXIV A. D. 1603 SIR WALTER RALEIGH TO its nether depths of shfeme and topmost heights of glory, the sixteenth century is summed up in Sir Walter Raleigh. He was Gilbert's young half- brother, thirteen years his junior, and a kinsman of Drake, Hawkins and Grenville, all men of Devon. He played the dashing young gallant, butchering Irish prisoners of war; he played the leader in the second sack of Cadiz; he played the knight errant in the Azores, when all alone he stormed the breached walls of a fort; he played the hero of romance in a wild quest up the Orinoco for the dream king El Dorado, and the mythical golden city of Manoa. Al- ways he played to the gallery, and when he must dress the part of Queen Elizabeth's adoring lover, he let it be known that his jeweled shoes had cost six thou- sand pieces of gold. He wrote some of the noblest prose in our language besides most exquisite verse, in- vented distilling of fresh water from the sea, and paid for the expeditions which founded Virginia. So many and varied parts this mighty actor played supremely weli, holding the center of the stage as long as there was an audience to hiss, or to applaud him. Only in private he shirked heights of manliness 834 Sir Walter Rai.f.tgh SIR WALTER RALEIGH 335 that he saw but dared not climb and was by turns a sneak, a toady, a whining hypocrite whose public life is one of England's greatest memories, and his death of almost superhuman grandeur. \Vhen James the Cur sat on the throne of great Elizabeth, his courtiers had Raleigh tried and con- demned to death. The charge was treason in taking Spanish bribes, not a likely act of Spain's great enemy, one of the few items omitted from Sir Walter's menu of little peccadillos. James as lick-spittle and flunkey- in-chief to the king of Spain, kept Raleigh for fifteen years awaiting execution in the tower of London. Then Raleigh appealed to the avarice of the court, talked of Manoa and King El Dorado, offered to fetch gold from the Orinoco, and got leave, a prisoner on parole, to sail once more for the Indies. They say that the myth of El Dorado is based on the curious mirage of a city which in some kinds of weather may sti'J be seen across Lake Maracaibo. Raleigh and his people found nothing but mosquitoes, fever and hostile Spaniards ; the voyage was a failure, and he came home, true to his honor, to have his head chopped off. " I have," he said on the scaffold, " a long journey to take, and must bid the company farewell." The headsman knelt to receive his pardon. Testing with his finger the edge of the ax, Raleigh lifted and kissed the blade. " It is a sharp and fair med- icine," he said smiling, "to cure me of all my diseases." Then the executioner lost his nerve altogether, "What dost thou fear?" asked Raleigh. "Strike, man, strike 1" 336 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE "Oh eloquent, just, and mighty Death! Whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou hast cast out of the world and despised : " Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words. Hie jacet. 1 James [ XXXV A. D. 1608 CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH THE sentence just quoted, the most beautiful per- haps in English prose, is copied from the Hu- tory of the World, which Raleigh wrote when a prisoner in the tower, while wee James sat on the throne. It was then that a gentleman and adventurer, Captain John Smith, came home from foreign parts. At the age of seventeen Mr. Smith was a trooper serving with the Dutch in their war with Spain. As a mariner and gunner he fought in a little Breton ship which captured one of the great galleons of Venice. As an engineer, his inventions of "flying dragons" saved a Hungarian town besieged by the Turks, then captured from the infidel the impregnable city of Stuhlweissenburg. So he became a captain, serving Prince Sigismund at the siege of Reigall. Heie the attack was difficult and the assault so long delayed " that the Turks complained they were getting quite fat for want of exercise." So the Lord Turbishaw, their commander, sent word that the ladies of Reigall longed to see some courtly feat of arms, and asked if any Christian officer would fight him for his head, in single combat. The lot fell to CapUin Smith. In presence of the ladies and both armies. Lord Turbishaw entered the lists on a prancing Arab, in asr 238 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE shining armor, and from his shoulders rose great •wings of eagle feathers spangled with gold and gems. Perhaps these fine ornaments marred the Turk's steering, for at the first onset Smith's lance entered the eye-slit of his visor, piercing between the eyes and through the skull. Smith took the head to his gen- eral and kept the charger. Next morning a challenge came to Smith from the dead man's greatest friend, t^ name Grualgo. This time the weapons were lances, and these being shat- tered, pistols, the fighting being prolonged, and both men wounded, but Smith took Grualgo's head, his horse and armor. As soon as his wound was healed, at the request of his officer commanding, Smith sent a letter to the ladies of Reigall, saying he did not wish to keep the heads of their two servants. Would they please send another champion to take the heads and his own? They sent an officer of high rank named Bonni Mul- gro. This third fight began with pistols, followed by a prolonged and well-matched duel with battle-axes. f?Ach man in turn reeled senseless in the saddle, but the fight was renewed without gain to either, until the Englishman, letting his weapon slip, made a dive to catch it, and was dragged from his horse by the Turk. Then Smith's horse, grabbed by the bridle, reared, compelling the Turk to let go, and giving the Christian time to regain his saddle. As Mulgro charged. Smith's falchion caught him between the plates of his armor, and with a howl of anguish the third cham- pion fell. So it was that Smith won for his coat of arms the three Turks' heads erased. After the taking and massacre of Reigall, Smith CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 239 with his nine English comrades, and his fine squadron of cavalry, joined an army, which was presently caught in the pass of Rothenthurm between a Turk- ish force and a big Tartar horde. By Smith's advice, the Christian cavalry got branches of trees soaked in pitch and ablaze, with which they made a night charge stampeding the Turkish army. Next day the eleven thousand Christians were enclosed by the Tartars, the pass was heaped with thirty thousand dead 'and wounded men, and with the remnant only two Eng- lishmen escaped. The pillagers found Smith wounded but still alive, and by his jeweled armor, supposed him to be some very wealthy noble, worth holding for ransom. So he was sold into slavery, and sent as a gift by a Turkish chief to his lady in Constantinople. This lady fell in love with her slave, and sent him to her brother, a pasha in the lands north of the Cau- casus, begging for kindness to the prisoner until he should be converted to the Moslem faith. But the pasha, furious at his sister's kindness to a dog of a Christian, had him stripped, flogged, ancV with a spiked collar of iron riveted on his neck, made serv- ant to wait upon four hundred slaves. On day the pasha found Smith threshing corn, in a bam some three miles distant from his castle. For some time he amused himself flogging this starved and naked wretch who had once been the champion of a Christian army ; but Smith presently caught him a clip behmd the ear with his threshing bat, beat his brains ou^ put on his clothes, mounted his Arab horse Md flrf across the steppes into Christian Russia.' Through Russia and Poland he made his way to the nun of Prince Sigismund, who gave him a purse of 340 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE fifteen thousand ducats. As a rich man he traveled in Germany, Spain and Morocco, and there made friends with Captain Merstham, whose ship lay at Saffee. He was dining on board one day when a gale drove the ship to sea, and there fell in with two Span- ish battle-ships. From noon to dusk they fought, and in the morning Captain Merstham said, "The dons mean to chase us again to-day. They shall have some good sport for their pains.** " Oh, thou old foxl " cried Smith, slapping him on the shoulders. So after prayers and breakfast the battle began again, Smith in command of the guns, and Merstham pledging the Spaniards in a silver cup of wine, then giving a dram to the men. Once the enemy managed to board the little merchantman, but Merst- ham and Smith touched off a few bags of powder, blowing away the forecastle with thirty or forty Span- iards. That set the ship on fire, but the English put out the flames and still refused to parley. So after- noon wore into evening and evening into night, when the riddled battle-ships sheered off at last, their scup- pers running with blood. When Captain Smith reached England he was twenty-five years old, of singular strength and beauty, a learned and most rarely accomplished soldier, a man of saintly life with a boy's heart. I doubt if in the long anrials of our people, there is one hero who left so sweet a memory. Sir Walter Raleigh's settlement in Virginia had been wiped out by the red Indians, so the second expedition to that country had an adventurous flavor that ap- pealed to Captain Smith. He gave all that he had to the venture, but b«ng s«newhat masterful, was put in CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 241 irons during the voyage to America, and landed in deep disgrace, when every man was needed to work in the founding of the colony. Had all the officers of the expedition been drowned, and most of the mem- bers left behind, the enterprise would have had som* chance of success, for it was mainly an expedition of wasters led by idiots. The few real workers followed Captam Smith in the digging and the building, the hunting and trading; while the idlers gave advice, and the leaders obstructed the proceedings. The summer was one of varied interest, attacks by the Indians, pestilence, famine and squabbles, so that the colony would have come to a miserable end but that Captain Smith contrived to make friends with the tribes, and induced them to sell him a supply of maize. He was up-country in December when the savages managed to scalp his followers and to take him prisoner. When they tried to kill him he seemed only amused, whereas they were terrified by feats of magic that made him seem a god. He was taken to the king — Powhatan -who received the prisoner in state, gave him a din- ner, then ordered his head to be laid on a block and u Tf ''*'''"' *'"*• ^"* ^^°"^ the first club crashed down a little Indian maid ran forward, pushed the executioners aside, taking his head in her arms, and holding on so tightly that she could not be pulled Z^l ^ Pocahontas, the king's daughter, pleaded for the Englishman and saved him > r u King Powhatan, with an eye to business, would now give the prisoner his liberty, provided that he mieht send two messengers with Smith for a brace of the fended the bastions of their fort. So the captain m s\ 242 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE returned in triumph to his own people, and gladly pre- sented the demi-culverins. At this the king's messen- gers were embarrassed, because the pair of guns weighed four and a half tons. Moreover, when the weapons were fired to show their good condition, the Indians were quite cured of any wish for culvenns, and departed with glass toys for the kmg and his family. In return came Pocahontas with her attend- ants laden with provisions for the starving garrison. The English leaders were so grateful for succor that they charged Captain Smith with the first thmg that entered their heads, condemned him on general principles, and would have hanged him, but that he asked what they would do for food when he was gone, then cheered the whole community by putting the prominent men in irons and taking -.ole command. Every five days came the Indian princess and her fol- lowers with a load of provisions for Captain Smith. The people called her the Blessed Pocahontas, for she saved them all from dying of starvation. DurJxig the five weeks of his captivity, Smith had told che Indians fairy tales about Captain Newport, whose ship was expected soon with supphes for the colony. Newport was the great Merowames, king of *e sea. , , „ , j .» When Newport arrived he was fearfully pleased at being the great Merowames, but shared the disgust of the officials at Captain Smith's importance. When he went to trade with the tribes he traveled in state, with Smith for interpreter, and began by presenting to Powhatan a red suit, a hat, and a white dog — gifts from the king of England. Then to show his own importance he heaped up all his trading goods, and CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 243 offered them for such maize as Powhatan cared to sell expecting tons and getting exactly four bushels! Smith, seeing that the colony would starve, produced some bright blue beads, " very precious jewels," he told Powhatan, 'composed of a most rare substance, and of the color of the skies, of a sort, indeed, only to be worn by the greatest, kings of the world." After hard bargaining Powhatan managed to get a very few beads for a hundred bushels of grain. The Virginia Company sent out more idlers from England, and some industrious I>'.tchmen who stole most of their weapons from the English to arm the Indian tribes; James I had Powhatan treated as a brother sovereign, and crowned with all solemnity, so that he got a swollen head and tried to starve the settle- ment. The colonists swaggered, squabbled and loafed mstead of storing granaries; but all parties were united m one ambition — planning unpleasant sur- prises for Captain Smith. Once his trading party was trapped for slaughter in a house at Powhatan's camp, but Pocahontas, at the risk of her life, warned her hero, so that all escaped Another ti.be caught Smith in a house where he had called to buy grain of their chief. Smith led the chief outside, with a pistol at his ear-hole, paraded his fifteen musketeers, and frightened seven hundred warriors mto laying down their arms. And then he made them load his ship with corn. This food he served out in daily rations to working colonists only. After the next Indian attempt on his life, Smith laid the whole country waste until the tribes were reduced to sub- mission. So his loafers reported him to the company for bemg cruel to the Indians, and seven shiploads of m 244 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE officials and wasters were sent out from England to suppress the captain. This was in September of the third year of the col- ony, and Smith, as it happened, was returning to Jamestown from work up-country. He lay asleep in the boat against a bag of powder, on which one of the sailors was pleased to knock out the ashes of his pipe. The explosion failed to kill, but almost moruUy wounded Captain Smith, who was obliged to return to England in search of a doctor's aid. After his de- parture, the colony fell into its customary ways, help- less for lack of leadership, butchered by the Indians, starved, until, when relief ships arrived, there were only sixty survivors living on the bodies of the dead. The relieving ships brought Lord Delaware to com- mand, and with him, the beginnings of prosperity. When the great captain was recovered, his next ex- pedition explored the coast farther north, which he named New England. His third voyage was to have planted a colony, but for Smith's capture, charged with piracy, by a French squadron. His escape in a dingey seems ataiost miraculous, for it was on that night that the flagship which had been his prison foundered in a storm, and the squadron was cast away on the coast of France. Meanwhile, the Princess Pocahontas, had been treacherously captured as a hostage by the Virginian colonists, which led to a sweet love story, and her marriage with Master John Rolfe. With him she presently came on a visit to England, and everywhere the Lady Rebecca Rolfe was received with royal hon- ors as a king's daughter, winning all hearts '>y her beauty, her gentleness and dignity. In England she CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH MS again met Captain Smith, whom she had ever rever- enced as a god. But then the bitter English winter struck her down, and she died before a ship could take her home, being buried in the churchyard in Gravesend. The captain never again was able to adventure his life overseas, but for sixteen years, broken with his wounds and disappointment, wrote books commending America to his countrymen. To the New England which he explored and named, went the Pilgrim Fathers, inspired by his works to sail with the May- Aower, that they might found the colony which he pro- jected. Virginia and New England were called his children, those English colonies which since have grown into the giant republic. So the old captain finished such a task as " God, after His manner, as- signs to His Englishmen." I XXXVI A. D. 1670 THE BUCCANEERS IT is only a couple of centuries since Spain was the greatest nation on earth, with the Atlantic for her duck pond, the American continents for her back yard, and a notice up to warn away the English, " No dogs admitted." England was a little power then Charles II had to come running when the French king whistled, and we were so weak that the Dutch burned our fleet in London River. Every year a Spanish fleet came from the West Indies to Cadiz, laden deep with gold, silver, gems, spices and all sorts of precious merchandise. Much as our sailors hated to see all that treasure wasted on Spaniards, England had to keep the peace with Spain, because Charles II had his crown jewels in pawn ard no money for such luxuries as war. The Spanish envoy would come to him making doleful lamentations about our naughty sailors, who, in the far Indies, had insolently stolen a galleon or sacked a own. Charles, with his mouth watering at such a tale of loot, would be inexpressibly shocked. The " lewd French " must have done this, or the " perni- cious Dutch," but not our woolly lambs — our innocent mariners. The buccaneers of the West Indies were af many 346 THE BUCCANEERS »« naticms besides the British, and they were not quite pirates. For instance, they would scorn to seize a good Protestant shipload of salt fish, but always at- tacked the papist who flaunted golden galleons before the nose of the poor. They were serious-minded Protestants with strong views on doctrine, and only made their pious excursions to seize the goods of the unrighteous. Their opinions were sj sound on alt really important points of dogmatic theology that they could allow themselves a little indulgence in mere rape, sacrilege, arson, robbery and murder, or fry Spaniards in olive oil for concealing the cash box. Then, en- riched by such pious exercises, they devoutly spent the whole of their savings on staying drunk for a month. The first buccaneers sallied out in a small boat and captured a war-ship. From such small beginnings arose a pirate fleet, which, under various leaders, French, Dutch, Portuguese, became a scourge to the Spanish empire overseas. When they had wiped out Spain's merchant shipping and were short of plunder, they attacked fortified cities, held them to ransom, and burned them for fun, then in chase of the fugitive citizens, put whole colonies to an end by sword and fire. Naturally only the choicest scoundrels rose to cap- taincies, and the worst of the lot became admiral. It should thrill the souls of all Welshmen to learn that Henry Morgan gained that bad eminence. He had risen to the command of five hundred cutthroats when he pounced down on Maracaibo Bay in Venezuela. At the entrance stood Fort San Carlos, the place which has lately resisted the attack of a German squadron. Morgan was made of sterner stuff than these Germans, 248 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTORE for when the garrison saw him coming, they took to the woods, leaving behind them a lighted fuse at the door of the magazine. Captain Morgan grabbed that fuse himself in time to save hU men from a disagree- able hereafter. ^ r- i A Beyond its narrow entrance at Fort San Carlos, the inlet widens to an inland sea, surrounded in those days by Spanish settlements, with the two cities of GibralUr and Maracaibo. Morgan sacked these towns and chased their flying inhabitants into the mountams. His prisoners, even women and children, were tonured on the rack until they revealed all that they knew of hidden money, and some were burned by mches, starved to death, or crucified. These pleasures had been continued for five weeks, when a squadron of three heavy war-ships arrived from Spain, and blocked the pirates' only line of retreat to the sea at Fort San Carlos. Morgan prepared a fire ship, with which he grappled and burned the Spanish admiral. The second ship was wrecked, the third captured by the pirates, and the sailors of the whole squadron were butchered while they drowned. Still Fort San Carlos, now bristling with new guns, had to be dealt with before the pirates could make their escape to the sea. Morgan pretended to attack from the land, so that all the guns were shifted to that side of the fort ready to wipe out his forces. This being done, he got his men on board, and sailed through the channel in perfect safety. And yet attacks upon such places as Maracaibo were mere trifling, for the Spaniards held all the wealth of their golden Indies at Panama. This gorgeous city was on the Pacific Ocean, and to reach it, one must n Sir HfiNRV MoKci. THE BUCCANEERS 349 CTMi the Itthmtu of Darien by the route in later times of the Panama railway and the Panama Canal, through the most unwholesome swamps, where to sleep at night in the open was almost sure death from fever. Moreover, the landing place at Chagres was covered by a strong fortress, the route was swarming with Spanish troops and wild savages in their pay, and their destination was a walled city esteemed impregnable. By way of p'^paring for his raid, Morgan sent four hundred men who stormed the castle of Chagres, com- pelling the wretched garrison to jump off a cliff to de- struction. The English flag shone from the citadel when Morgan's fleet arrived. The captain landed one thousand two hundred men and set off up the Chagres River with five boats loaded with artillery, thirty-two canoes and no food. This was a mistake, because the Spaniards had cleared the whole isthmus, driving off the cattle, rooting out the ^ops, carting away the grain, burning every roof, and leaving nothing for the pirates to live on except the microbes of fever. As the pirates adva.iced they retreated, luring them on day by d,/ into the heart of the wilderness. The pirates broiled and ate their sea boots, their bandoleers, and certain leather bags. The river being foul with fallen timber, they took to marching. On the sixth day they found a bam fuU of maize and ate it up, but only on the ninth day had they a decent meal, when, sweating, gasping and swearing, they pounced upon a herd of asses and cows, and fell to roasting flesh on the points of their swords. On the tenth day they debouched upon a plain be- fore the City of Panama, where the governor awaited with his troops. There were two squadrons of cav- aSo CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE airy and four regiments of foot, besides guns, and the pirates heartily wished themselves at home with their mothers. Happily the Spanish governor was too sly, for he had prepared a herd of wild bulls with Indian herders to drive into the pirate ranks, which bulls, ii. sheer stupidity, rushed his own battalions. Such bulls as tried to fly through the pirate lines were readily shot down, but the re* brought dire confusion. Then began a fierce battle, in which the Spaniards lost six hundred men before they bolted. Afterward through a fearful storm of fire from great artillery, the pirates stormed the city and took possession. Of course, by this time, the rich galleons had made away to -ea with their treasure, and the citizens had carried off everything worth moving, to the woods. Moreover, the pirates were hasty in burning the town, so that the treasures which had been buried in wells or cellars were lost beyond all finding. During four weeks, this splendid capital of the Indies burned, while the people hid in the woods ; and the pirates tortured everybody they could lay hands on with fiendish cruelty. Morgan himself, caught a beautiful lady and threw her into a cellar full of filth because she would not love him. Even in their retreat to the Atlantic, the pirates carried oflf six hundred prisoners, who rent the air with their lamt.itations, and were not even fed until their ransoms arrived. Before reaching Chagres, Morgan had every pirate stripped to make sure that all loot was fairly divided. The common pirates were bitterly offended at the divi- dend of only two hundred pieces of eight per man, but Morgan stole the bulk of the plunder for himself, and returned a millionaire to Jamaica. THE BUCCANEERS 251 Charles II knighted him and made him governor of Jamaica as a reward for robbing the Spaniards. Afterwards his majesty changed his mind, and Mor- gan died a prisoner in the tower of London as a punishment for the very crime which had been re- warded with a title and a vice-royalty. Ill XXXVII A. D. 1682 THE VOYAGEURS THIS chapter must begin with a very queer tale of rivers as adventurers exploring for new channels. Millions of years ago the inland seas — Superior, Michigan and Huron — had their overflow down the Ottawa Valley, reaching the Saint Lawrence at the Island of Montreal. But, when the glaciers of the great ice age blocked the Ottawa Valley, the three seas had to find another outlet, so they made a channel through the Chicago River, down the Des Plaines, and the Illinois, into the Mississippi. And when the glaciers ma-'e, across that channel, an eml^ankment which is now the town site of Chicago, the three seas had to explore for a new outlet. So they filled the basin of Lake Erie, and poured over the edge of Queenstown Heights into Lake Ontario. The Iroquois called that fall the " Thunder of Wa- ters," which in their language is Niagara. All the vast region which was flooded by the ice-field of the great ice age became a forest, and every river turned by the ice out of its ancient channel became a string of lakes and waterfalls. This beautiful wilder- 352 THE VOYAGEURS 2S3 ness was the scene of tremendous adventures, where the red Indians fought the white men, and the English fought the French, and the Americans fought the Canadians, until the continent was cut into equal halves, and there ..as peace. Now let us see what manner of men were the In- dians. At the summit of that age of glory — the six- teenth century — the world was ruled by the despot Akbar the Magnificent at Delhi, the despot Ivan the Terrible at Moscow, the despot Phillip 11 at Madrid, and a little lady despot, Elizabeth of the sea. Yet at that time the people in the Saint Lawrence Valley, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, Cayugas and, in the middle, the Onondagas, were free republics with female suffrage and women as members of parlia- ment. Moreover the president of the Onondagas, Hiawatha, formed these five nations into the federal republic of the Iroquois, and they admitted the Tus- caroras into that United States which was created to put an end to war. In the art of government we have not yet caught up with the Iroquois. They were farmers, with rich fisheries, had com- fortable houses, and fortified towns. In color they were like outdoor Spaniards, a tall, very handsome race, and every bit as able as the whites. Given horses, hard metals for their tools, and some channel or mountain range to keep off savage raiders, and they might well have become more civilized than the French, with fleets to attack old Europe, and missionaries to teach us their religion. Their first visitor from Europe was Jacques Cartier and they gave him a hearty welcome at Quebec. When his men were dying of scurvy an Indian doctor 254 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE i cured them. But to show his gratitude Cartier kid- naped the five principal chiefs, and ever after that, with very brief intervals, the French had reason to fear the Iroquois. Like many another Indian nation, driven away from its farms and fisheries, the six na- tion republic lapsed to savagery, lived by hunting and robbery, ravaged the white men's settlements and the neighbor tribes for food, outraged and scalped the dead, burned or even ate their prisoners. The French colonies were rather over-governed. There was too much parson and a great deal too much squire to suit the average peasant, so all the best of the men took to the fur trade. They wore the Indian dress of long fringed deerskin, coon cap, embroidered moccasins, and a French sash like a rainbow. They lived like Indians, married among the tribes, fought in their wars ; lawless, gay, gallant, fierce adventurers, the voyageurs of the rivers, the runners of the woods. With them went monks into the wilderness, heroic, saintly Jesuits and Franciscans, and some of the quaint- est rogues in holy orders. And there were gentle- men, reckless explorers, seeking a way to China. Of this breed came La Salle, whose folk were merchant- princes at Rouen, and himself pupil and enemy of the Jesuits. At the time of the plague and burning of London he founded a little settlement on the island of Mount Royal, just by the head of the Rc'pids. His dream was the opening of trade with China by way of the western rivers, so the colonists, chafSng him, gave the name La Chine to his settlement and the rapids. To-day the railway trains come swirling by, with loads of tea from China to ship from Montreal, but not to France. THE VOYAGEURS ass During La Salle's first five years in the wilderness he discovered the Ohio and the Illinois, two of the head waters of the Mississippi. The Indians told him of that big river, supposed to be the way to the Pacific. A year later the trader Joliet, and the Jesuit Saint Marcjotte descended the Mississippi as far as the Arkansas. So La Salle dreamed of a French empire in the west, shutting the English between the Appa- lachians and the Atlantic, with a base at the mouth of the Mississippi for raiding the Spanish Indies, and a trade route across the western sea to China. All this he told to Count Frontenac, the new governor general, a man of business who saw the worth of the adventure. Frontenac sent La Salle to talk peace with the Iroquois, while he himself founded Fort Frontenac at the outlet of Lake Ontario. From here he cut the trade routes of the west, so that no furs would ever reach the French traders of Montreal or the English of New York. The governor had not come to Canada for his health. La Salle was penniless, but his mind went far beyond this petty trading; he charmed away the dangers from hostile tribes; his heroic record won him help from France. Within a year he began his adventure of the Mississippi by buying out Fort Frontenac ; i his base camp. Here he built a ship, and though she was wrecked he saved stores enough to cross the Niagara heights, and build a second vessel on Lake Erie. With the GrUHn he came to the meeting place of the three upper seas — Machilli-Mackinac — the Jesuit headquarters. Being a good-natured man bearing no malice it was with a certain pomp of drums, flags and guns that he saluted the fort, quite forgetting that he :| 256 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE came as a trespasser into the Jesuit mission. A Jesuit in those days was a person with a halo at one end and a tail at the other, a saint with modest black draperies to hide cloven hoofs, who would fast all the week, and poison a guest on Saturday, who sought the glory of martyrdom not always for the faith, but sometimes to serve a devilish wicked political secret society. Leaving the Jesuit mission an enemy in his rear, La Salle built a fort at the southern end of Lake Michigan, sent off his ship for supplies, and entered the unknown wilderness. As winter closed down he came with thirty-three men in eight birchbark canoes to the Illinois nation on the river Illinois. Meanwhile the Jesuits sent Indian messengers to raise the Illinois tribes for war against La Salle, to kill him by poison, and to persuade his men to desert. La Salle put a rising of the Illinois to shame, ate three dishes of poison without impairing his very sound digestion, and made his men too busy for revolt ; build- ing Fort Brokenheart, and a third ship for the voyage down the Mississippi to the Spanish Indies. Then came the second storm of trouble, news that his relief ship from France was cast away, his fort at Frontenac was seized for debt, and his supply vessel on the upper lakes was lost. He must go to Canada. The third storm was still to come, the revenge of the English for the cutting of their fur trade at Fort Frontenac. They armed five hundred Iroquois to mas- sacre the Illinois who had befriended him in the wilder- At Fort Brokenheart La Salle had a valiant priest named Hennepin, a disloyal rogue and a quite notable liar. With two voyageurs Fere Hennepin was sent to KoiiKKT (■.\>,M.ii,u IIE i,.v S.M.I.K THE VOYAGEURS »57 explore the river down to the Mississippi, and there the three Frenchmen were captured by the Sioux. Their captors took them by canoe up the Mississippi to the Falls of Saint Anthony, so named by Hennepin. Thence they were driven afoot to the winter villages of the tribe. The poor unholy father being slow afoot, they mended his pace by setting the prairie afire be- hind him. Likewise they anointed him with wildcat fat to give him the agility of that animal. Still he was never popular, and in the end the three wanderers were turned loose. Many were their vagabond ad- ventures before they met the explorer Greysolon Du Luth, who took them back with him to Canada. They left La Salle to his fate. Meanwhile La Salle set out from Fort Brokenheart in March, attended by a Mohegan hunter who loved him, and by four gallant Frenchmen. Their journey was fi miracle of courage across the unexplored woods to ljdk< Erie, and on to Frontenac. There La Salle hfard that the moment his back was turned his garri- son had looted and burned Fort Brokenheart ; but he caught these deserters as they attempted to pass Fort Frontenac, and left them there in irons. Every man has power to make of his mind an em- pire or a desert. At this time Louis the Great was master of Europe, La Salle a broken adventurer, but it was the king's mind which was a desert, compared with the imperial brain of this haughty, silent, manful pioneer. The creditors forgot that he owed them money, the governor caught fire from his enthusiasm, and La Salle went back equipped for his gigantic ven- ture in the west. The officer he had left in charge at Fort Brokenheart as8 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE was an Italian gentleman by the name of Tonty, son of the man who invented the tontine life insurance. He was a veteran soldier whose left hand, blown oil, had been replaced with an iron fist, which the Indians found to be strong medicine. One clout on the head sufficed for the fiercest warrior. When his garri- son sacked the fort and bolted, he had two fighting men left, and a brace of priests. They all sought refuge in the camp of the lUinois. Presently this pack of curs had news that La Salle was leading an army of Iroquois to their destruction, so instead of preparing for defense they proposed to murder Tonty and !;is Frenchmen, until the magic of his iron fist quite altered their point of view. Sure enough the Iroquois arrived in force, and the cur pack, three times as strong, went out to fight. Then through the midst of the battle Tonty walked into the enemy's lines. He ordered the Iroquois to go home and behave themselves, and told such fairy tales about the strength of his curs that these ferocious warriors were fright- ened. Back walked Tonty to find his cur pack on their knees in tears of gratitude. Again he went to the Iroquois, this time with stiff terms if they wanted peace, but an Illinois envoy gave his game away, with such extravagant bribes and pleas for mercy that the Iroquois laughed at Tonty. They burned the Illinois town, dug up their graveyard, chased the flying nation, butchered the abandoned women and children, and hunted the cur pack across the Mississippi. Tonty and his Frenchmen made their way to their nearest friends, the Pottawattomies, to await La Salle's return. And La Salle returned. He found the Illinois town in ashes, littered with human bones. He found an THE VOYAGEURS 359 iiland of the river where women and children by hun- dred* had been outraged, torfred and burned. Hit fort was a weed-grown ruin. In all the length of the valley there was no vestige of human life, or any clue as to the fate of Tonty and his men. For the third time La Salle made that immense journey to the settle- ments, wrung blood from stones to equip an expedi- tion, and coming to Lake Michigan rallied the whole of the native tribes in one strong league, a red Indian colony with himself as chief, for defense from the Iroquois. The scattered Illinois returned to their abandoned homes, tribes came from far and wide to join the colony and in the midst, upon Starved Rock, La Salle built Fort Saint Louis as their stronghold.' When Tonty joined him, for once this iron man showed he had a heart. So, after all, La Salle led an expedition down the whole length of the Mississippi. He won the friend- ship of every tribe he met. bound them to French al- legiance, and at the end erected the standard of France on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. " In the name of the most high, mighty, invincible and victorious Pnnce, Louis the Great, by the Grace of God, King of France and of Navarre," on the nineteenth of April, 1682. La Salle annexed the valley of the Mississippi from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, from the lakes to the gulf, and named that empire Loui- siana. As to the fate of this great explorer, murdered in the wilderness by followers '.e disdained to treat as cwnrades, "his enemies were more in earnest than his friends." XXXVIII A. D. 1741 THE EXPLORERS FROM the time of Htnty VII of England down to the present day, the nations of Europe have been busy with one enormous adventure, the search for the best trade route to India and the China seas. For four whole centuries this quest for a trade route has been the main current of the history of the world. Look what the nations have done in that long fight for trade. Port igal found the sea route by Magellan's Strait, and occupied Brazil ; the Cape route, and colonized the coasts of Africa. She built an empire. Spain mistook the West Indies for the real Indies, and the red men for the real Indians, found the Pan- ama route, and occupied the new world from Cape Horn up to the southern edge of Alaska. She built an empire. France, in the search of a route across North Amer- ica, occupied Canada and the Mississippi Valley. She built an empire. That lost, she attempted under Na- poleon to occupy Egypt, Palestine and the whole over- land road to India. That failing, she has dug the Suez Canal and attempted the Panama, both sea routes to the Indies. ate THE EXPLORERS j6i Holland, searching for a route across North Amer- ica, found Hudson's Bay and occupied Hudson River (New York). On the South Sea route she built her rich empire in the East Indian Islands. BriUin, searching eastward first, opened up Russia to civilization, then explored the sea passage north of Asia. Searching westward, she settled Newfound- land, founded the United States, built Canada, which created the Canadian Pacific route to the Indies, and traversed the sea passage north of America. On the Panama route, she built a West Indian empire; on the Mediterranean route, her fortress line of Gibraltar, Malta. Cyprus, Egypt, Adon. By holding all routes, she liolds her Indian empire. Is not this the history of the world? ' But there remains to be told the story of Russia's search for routes to India and China. That story begms with Martha Rabe, the Swedish nursery gov- erness, who married a dragoon, left him to be mistress of a Russian general, became servant to the Princess Menchikoflf, next the lover, then the wife of Peter the Great, and finally succeeded him as empress of all ttie Russias. To the dazzling court of this Empress Cathenne came learned men and travelers who talked about the search of all the nations for a route through North America to the Indies. Long ago, they said, an old Greek mariner, one Juan de Fuca, had bragged on the quays of Venice, of his voyages. He claimed to have rounded Cape Horn, and thence beat up the west coast of America, until he came far north to a strait which entered the land. Through this sea channel he had sailed for many weeks, until it brought him out agam mto the ocean. One glance at the map wiU I I a62 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE show these straits of Juan de Fuca, and how the otd Greek, sailing for many weeks, came out again into the ocean, having rounded the back of Vancouver's Islmd. But the legend as told to Catherine the Great of Russia, made these mysterious straits of Anian lead from tlie Pacific right across North Amer- ica to the Atlantic Ocean. Here was a sea route from Russia across ihe Atlantic, across North America, across the Pacific, direct to the gorgeous Indies. With such a possession as this channel Russia could dominate the world. Catherine set her soothsayers and wiseacres to make a chart, displaying these straits of Anian which Juan de Fuca had found, and they marked the place accord- ingly at forty-eight degrees of north latitude on the west coast of America. But there were also rumors and legends in those days of a great land beyond the uttermost coasts of Siberia, an island that was called Aliaska, rilling the North Pacific. All such legends and rumors the astrologers marked faithfully upon their map until the thing was of no more use than a dose of smallpox. Then Catherine gave the precious chart to two of her naval officers, Vitus Bering, the Dane — a mighty man in the late wars with Sweden — and a Russian lieutenant — TschirikoflE — and bade them go find the straits of Anian. The expedition set out overland across the Russian and Siberian plains, attended by hunters who kept the people alive on fish and game until they reached the coasts of the North Pacific. There they built two ships, the Stv Petr and the Stv Pavl, and launched tliem, two years from the time of their outsetting from Saint Petersbuif • Thirteen years they spent in ex- THE EXPLORE i?S 263 ploring the Siberian coast, northward iu ibp Arctic, southward to the borders of China, then in 1741 set out into the unknown to search for the Island of AUaska, and the Straits of Anian so plainly marked upon their chart. Long months they cruised about in quest of that island, finding nothing, while the crews sickened of scurvy, and man after man died in misery, until only a few were left. The world had not been laid out correctly, but Bering held with fervor to his faith in that official chart for which his men were dying. At last Tschiri- koff, unable to bear it any longer, deserted Bering, and sailing eastward many days, came at last to land at the mouth of Cross Straits in Southern Alaska. Beyond a rocky foreshore and white surf, forests of pine went up to mountains lost in trailing clouds. Behind a little point rose a film of smoke from some savage camp-fire. Tschirikoflf landed a boat's crew in search of provisions and water, which vanished be- hind the point and was seen no more. Heart-sick, he sent a second boat, which vanished behind the point and was seen no more, but the fire of the savages blazed high. Two days he waited, watching that pillar of smoke, and listened to a far-off muttering of drums, then with the despairing remnant of his crew, turned back to the lesser perils of the sea, and fled to Siberia. Farther to the northward, some three hundred miles, was Bering in the Stv Petr, driving his mutinous people in a last search for land. It was the day after Tschirikoff's discovery, and the ship, flying winged out before the southwest wind, came to green shallows of the sea, and fogs that lay in violet gloom ahead, like I! 264 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE some mysterious coast crowned with white cloud heights towering up the sky. At sunset, when these clouds had changed to flame color, they parted, sud- denly revealing high above the mastheads the most tremendous mountain in the world. The sailors were terrified, and Bering, called suddenly to the tall after- castle of the ship, went down on his knees in awestruck wonder. By the Russian calendar, the day was that of the dread Elijah, who had been taken up from the earth drawn by winged horses of flame in a chariot of fire, and to these lost mariners it seemed that this was no mere mountain of ice walls glowing rose and azure through a rift of the purple clouds, but a vision of the translation of the prophet. Bering named the mountain Saint Elias. There is no space here for the detail of Bering's wanderings thereafter through those bewildering laby- rinths of islands which skirt the Alps of Saint Elias westward, and reach out as the Aleutian Archipelago the whole way across the Pacific Ocean. The region is an awful sub-arctic wilderness of rock-set gaps be- tween bleak arctic islands crowned by flaming vol- canoes, lost in eternal fog. It has been my fate to see the wonders and the terrors of that coast, which Be- ring's seamen mistook for the vestibule of the infernal regions. Scurvy and hunger made them more like ghosts of the condemned than living men, until their nightmare voyage ended in wreck on the last of the islands, within two hundred miles of the Siberian coast. Stellar, the German naturalist, who survived the winter, has left record of Bering laid between two rocks for shelter, where the sand drift covered his THE EXPLORERS 26s legs and kept him warm through the last days, then made him a grave afterward. The island was fre- quented by sea-cows, creatures until then unknown, and since wholly extinct, Stellar's being the only ac- count of them. There were thousands of sea otter, another species that will soon become extinct, and the shipwrecked men had plenty of wild meat to feed on while they passed the winter building from the timbers of the wreck, a boat to carry them home. In the spring they sailed with a load of sea-otter skins and gained the Chinese coast, where their cargo fetched a fortune for all hands, the furs being valued for the official robes of mandarins. At the news of this new trade in sea-otter skins, the hunters of Siberia went wild with excitement, so that the survivors of Bering's crew led expeditions of their own to Alaska. By them a colony was founded, and though the Straits of Anian were never discovered, because they did not exist, the czars added to their dominions a new empire called Russian America. This Alaska was sold in 1867 to the United States for one million, five hundred thousand pounds, enough money to build such a work as London Bridge, and the territory yields more than that by far in annual profits from fisheries, timber and gold. XXXIX A. D. 1750 THE PIRATES 'TpHERE are very f^w pirates left. The Riff ^ Moors of Gibraltar Straits will grab a wind- bound ship when they get the chance ; the Arabs of the Red Sea take stranded steamers ; Chinese practitioners shipped as passengers on a liner, will rise in the night, cut throats, and steal the vessel ; moreover some little retail business is done by the Malays round Singapore, but trade as a whole is slack, and sea thieves are apt to get themselves disliked by the British gunboats. This is a respectablT world, my masters, but it is getting dull. It was very different in the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries when the Sallee rovers, the Algerian corsairs, buccaneers of the West Indies, the Malays and the Chinese put pirate fleets to sea to prey on great commerce, when Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Bartholo- mew, Roberts, Lafitte, Avery and a hundred other corsairs under the Jolly Roger could seize tall ships and make their unwilling seamen walk the plant. They and their merry men went mostly to the gallows, richly deserved the same, and yet — well, nobody need complain that times were dull. There were so many pirates one hardly knows which 266 THE PIRATES ^ to deal wrth. but Avery was such a mean rogue, and there is such a nice confused story — well, here goes I He was mate of the ship Duke, forty-four guns, a merchant cruiser chartered from Bristol for the Span- isu service. His skipper was mightily addicted to punch, and too drunk to object when Avery, conspir- mg with the men, made bold to seize the ship. Then he went down-stairs to wake the captain, who, in a sudden fright, asked, "What's the matter?" "Oh nothing," said Avery. The skipper gobbled at him,' But something's the matter," he cried. " Does she drive? What weather is it?" " No, no," answered Avery, "we're at sea." "At seal How can that be?" " Come," says Avery, " don't be in a fright, but put on your clothes, and I'll let you into the secret — and if you'll turn sober and mind your business perhaps, in time, I may make you one of my lieutenants, if not here's a boat alongside, and you shall be set ashore '' The skipper, still in a fright, was set ashore, together with such of the men as were honest. Then Avery sailed away to seek his fortune. On the coast of Madagascar, lying in a bay two sloops were found, whose seamen supposed the Duke to be a ship of war and being rogues, having stolen these vessels to go pirating, they fled with rueful faces mlo the woods. Of course they were frightfully pleased when they found out that they were not going to be hanged just yet, and delighted when Captain Avery asked them to sail in his company. They could fly at big game liow, with this big ship for a consort Now, as It happened, the G.eat Mogul, emperor of iimdustaii, was sending his daughter with a splendid 268 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE retinue to make pilgrimage to Mecca and worship at the holy places of Mahomet. The lady sailed in a ship with chests of gold to pay the expenses of the journey, golden vessels for the table, gifts for the shrines, an escort of princes covered with jewels, troops, servants, slaves and a band to play tunes with no music, after the eastern manner. And it was their serious rrisfortune to meet with Captain Avery outside the mouth of the Indus. 'Avery's sloops, being very swift, got the prize, and stripped her of everything worth taking, before they let her go. It shocked Avery to think of all that treasure in the sloops where it might get lost; so presently, as they sailed in consort, lie invited the captains of the sloops to use the big ship as their strong room. They put their treasure on board the Duke, and watched close, for fear of accidents. Then came a dark night when Captain Avery mislaid both sloops, and bolted with all the plunder, leaving two crews of simple mariners to wonder where he had gone. Avery made off to the New England colonies, where he made a division of the plunder, handing the gold to the men, but privily keeping all the diamonds for him- self. The sailors scattered out through the American settlements and the British Isles, modestly changing their names. Mr. Avery went home to Bristol, where he found some honest merchants to sell his diamonds, and lend him a small sum on account. When, how- ever, he called on them for the rest of the money, he met with a most shocking repulse, because the mer- chants had never heard, they said, of him or his dia- monds, but would give him to the justices as a pirate unless he shut his mouth. Ke went away and died THE PIRATES a69 of grief at Bideford in Devon, leaving no money even to pay for his coffin. Meanwhile the Great Mogul at Delhi was making such dismal lamentations about the robbery of his daughter's diamonds that the news of Avery's riches spread to England. Rumor made him husband to the princess, a reigning sovereign, with a pirate fleet of his own — at the very time he was dying of want at Bide- ford. We left two sloops full of pirates mourning over the total depravity of Captain Avery. Sorely repenting his sins, they resolved to amend their lives, and see what they could steal in Madagascar. Landing on that great island they dismantled their sloops, taking their plentiful supply of guns and powder ashore, where they camped, making their sails into tents. Here they met with another party of English pirates who were also penitent, having just plundered a large and richly- laden ship at the mouth of the Red Sea. Their divi- dend was three thousand pounds a man, and they were resolved to settle in Madagascar instead of going home to be hanged. The two parties, both in search of a peaceful and simple life, made friends with the various native princes, who were glad of white men to assist in the butchering of adjacent tribes. Two or three pirates at the head of an attacking force would put the boldest tribes to flight. Each pirate acquired his own harem of wives, his own horde of black slaves, his own plantations, fishery and hunting grounds, his kingdom wherera he reigned an absolute monarch. If a native said impudent words he was promptly shot, and any attack of the tribes on a white man was resented by the whole community of pirate kings. Once the ne- 270 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE groes conspired for a general rising to wipe out their oppressors at one fell swoop, but the wife of a whrte man getting wind of the plot, ran twenty miles in three hours to alarm her lord. When the native forces ar- rived they were warmly received. After that each of their lordships built a fortress for his resting place with rampart and ditch sef round with a labyrinth of thorny entanglements, so that the barefoot native com- ing as a stranger by night, trod on spikes, and sounded a loud alarm which roused the garrison. Long years went by. Their majesties grew stout from high feeding and lack of exercise, hairy, dressed in skins of wUd beasts, reigning each in his kingdom with a deal of dirty state and royalty. So Captain Woods found them when he went in the ship Delicia, to buy slaves. At the sight of his forty- gun ship they hid themselves in the woods, very suspi- cious, but presently learned his business, and came out of the woods, ofifering to sell their loyal negro subjects by hundreds in exchange for tobacco and suits of sailor clothes, tools, powder, and ball. They had now been twenty-five years in Madagascar, and, what with wars, accidents, sickness, there remained eleven saUor kings, all heartily bored with their royalty. Despite the at- tachments of their harems, chUdren and swarms of grandchildren and dependents, they were sick for blue water, hungry for a cruise. Captain Woods observed that they got very friendly with his seamen, and learned t.iat they were plotting to seize the ship, hoist the black flag, and betake themselves once more to piracy on the high seas. After that he kept their majesties at a distance, sending officers ashore to trade with them until he had THE PIRATES m completed his cargo of slaves. So he safled, leaving eleven disconsolate pirate kings in a mournful row on the tropic beach, and no more has ever transpired as to them or the fate of their kingdoms. Still, they had fared much better than Captain Avery with his treasure of royal diamonds. XL A. D. 1776 DANIEL BOONE AS a matter of unnatural hi-to'y the British lion is really and truly a lioness with a large and respectable family. When only a cub she sharpened her teeth on Spain, in her youth crushed Holland, and in her prime fought France, wresting from each in turn the command of the sea. She was nearing her full strength when France with a chain of forts along the Saint Lawrence and the Mis- sissippi attempted to strangle the thirteen British cubs in America. By the storming of Quebec the lion smashed that chain ; but the long and world-wide wars with France had bled her dry, and unless she could keep the sea her cubs were doomed, so bluntly she told them they must help. The cubs had troubles of their own and could not help. Theirs was the legal, hers the moral right, but botii sides fell in the wrong when they lost their tem- pers. Since then the mother of nations has reared her second litter with some of that gentleness which comes of sorrow. So far the French in Canada were not settlers so much as gay adventurers for the Christ, or for beaver skins, living among the Indians, or in a holiday mood leading the tribes against the surly British. 37a DANIEL BOONE 273 So far the British overseas were not adventurers so much as dour fugitives from injustice at home, or from justice, or merely deported as a general nuisance, to join in one common claim to liberty, the fanatics of freedom. Unlike the French and Spaniards, the northern folk — British or Dutch, German or Scandinavian — had no mission, except by smallpox to convert the heathen. Nothing cared they for glory or adventure, but only for homes and farms. Like a hive of bees they filled the Atlantic coast lands with tireless in- dustry until they began to feel crowded ; then like a hive they swarmed, over the Appalachian ranges, across the Mississippi, over the Rocky Mountains, and now in our own time to lands beyond the sea. Among the hard fierce colonists a very few loved nature and in childhood took to the wilds. Such was the son of a tame Devon Quaker, young Daniel Boone, a natural marksman, axman, bushman, tracker and scout of the backwoods who grew to be a freckled ruddy man, gaunt as a wolf, and subtle as a snake from his hard training in the Indian wars. When first he crossed the mountains on the old war- rior trail into Kentucky, hunting and trapping paid well in that paradise of noble timber and white clover meadows. The country swarmed with game, a merry hunting ground and battle-field of rival Indian tribes. There Boone and his wife's brother Stuart were captured by Shawnees, who forced the prisoners to lead the way to their camp where the other four hunt- ers were taken. The Indians took their horses, rifles, powder, traps and furs, all lawful plunder, but gave them food to carry them to the settlements with a 374 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE warning for the whites that trespassers would be prosecuted. That was enough for four of the white hunters, but Boone and Stuart tracked the Indians and stole back some of their plunder, only to be trailed in their turn and recaptured. The Shawnees were annoyed, and would have taken these trespassers home to be burned alive, but for Boone's queer charm of manner which won tlieir liking, and his ghostlike vanishing with Stuart into the cane brakes. The white men got away with rifles, bullets and powder, and they were wise enough not to be caught again. Still it needed some courage to stay in Kentucky, and after Stuart got scalped Boone said he felt unutterably lonely. Yet he remained, dodging so many and such varied perils that his loneliness must really have been a comfort, for it is better to be dull in solitude than scalped in company. He owed money for his outfit, and would not return to the settlements until he had earned the skins that paid his debt. At the moment when the big colonial hive began to swarm Boone led a party of thirty frontiersmen to cut a pack-trail over the mountains into the plains of Kentucky. This wilderness trail — some two hun- dred miles of mud-holes, rocks and stumps — opened the way for settlement in Kentucky, a dark and bloody ground, for white invaders. At a cost of two or three scalps Boone's outfit reached this land, to build a stockaded village named for the leader, Boones- borough, and afterward he was very proud that his wife and daughters were the first women to brave the perils of that new settlement. Under a giant elm the settlers, being British, had church and parliament, but only on one Stuiday did DANIEL BOONE 37$ the pinon pray for King George before the news came that congreu needed prayers for the new re- public at war with the motherland. Far to the northwest of Kentucky the forts of Illinois were held by a British officer named Hamil- ton. He had with him a handful of American Tories loyal to the king, some newly con- quered French Canadians not much in love with British government, and savage Indian tribes. All these he sent to strike the revolting colonies in their rear, but the whole brunt of the horror fell upon poor Kentucky. The settlements were wrecked, the log cabins burned, and the Indians got out of hand, com- mitting crimes; but the settlers held four forts and cursed King George through seven years of war. It was in a lull of this long storm that Boone led a force of thirty men to get salt from the salt-licks frequented by the buffalo and deer, on the banks of Licking River. One day while he was scouting ten miles from camp, and had just loaded his horse with meat to feed his men, he was caught, in a snow-storm, by four Shawnees. They led him to their camp where some of the hundred warriors had helped to capture Boone eight years before. These, with much ceremony and mock politeness, introduced him to two American Tories, a brace of French Canadians, and their Shawnee chiefs. Then Boone found out that this war party was marching on Fort Bcones- borough where lived his own wife and children and many women, but scarcely any men. But knowing the ways of the redskins Boone sav that if he let them capture his own men in cairr le salt-licks they would go home withoc ai.:^. .. ig Boones- 2^6 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE borough. He must risk the fighting men to save the fort; he must guide the enemy to his own cai^p and order his men to surrender; and if they laid down all their lives for the sake of their women and chil- dren—well, they must take their chance. Boone's men laid down their arms. A council followed at which fifty-nine Indians voted to burn these Americans at the stake against sixty-one who preferred to sell them' to Hamilton as prisoners of war. Saved by two votes, they marched on a winter journey dreadful to the Indians as well as to the prisoners; but all shared alike when dogs and horses had to be killed for food. Moreover the savages be- came so fond of Boone that they resolved to make an Indian of him. Not wanting to be an Indian he pleaded with Hamilton the Hair Buyer, promising to turn loyalist and fight the rebels, but when the British officer offered a hundred pounds for this one captive it was not enough for these loving savages. They took Boone home, pulled out his hair, leaving only a fine scalp-lock adorned with feathers, bathed him in the river to wash all his white blood out, painted him, and named him Big Turtle. As the adopted son of the chief, Black Fish, Boone pretended to hn happy, and in four months had become a popular chief, rather closely watched, but allowed to go out hunting. Then a large Indian force assembled to march against Fort Boonesborough. Boone easily got leave to go out hunting, and a whole day passed before his flight was known. Doubling on his course, setting blind trails, wading along the streams to hide his tracks, sleeping in Daniel Boone DANIEL BOONE *n thicket* or in hollow logs, starving because he dared rrfire a gun to get food, his clothes m rags h.s f<*t b^y. he made his way across country, and on the fifth day suggered into Fort B«>nesborough. The enemy were long on the way. There was tJe to s«d riders for succor and scouts to watch. ! LL Ae fort even to raid the Shawnee country £frS.ei^vaSsIrrived-one hundred Canadians aTd four hundred Indians, while Boone's garrison Tulbered fifty men and boys, with twenty-five brave "r Hamilton's orders there must be no bloodshed, anfhe ^" forty horses for the old ^olk^he women and chUdren to ride on their way northward as %Tr;"s:/emTwas Boone, full of negotiations for surrender, gaining day after day wUh talk, -a^ng m , fever for expected succor from the colonies. Nine Lmissio^s on either side were to sign the trLtv but the Indians -for good measure -sent eS>?e^-voys to clasp the hands of their nme v.h.te Sers. and'drag them into the ^-h f or «-uUon. The white commissioners broke loose, gamed the fort, dammed the gates and fired from the ramparts Long, bitter and vindictive was the siege. A pre- tend^ retreat failed to lure Boone's nien mto SbSh. Ihe Indians dug a mine under the walls wl«w the dirt from the tunnel into the nver where TSZoi muddy water gave their game away. To^t^were thrown on the roofs, but women put out J^ ftwnes. When at last the siege was raised .^ 2e Sans retreated, twenty-four hours lapsed b^ CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE fore the famished garrison dared to throw open their gates. In these days a Kentucky force, led by the hero George Rogers Oark, captured the French forts on the Illinois, won over their garrisons, and marched on the fortress of Vincennes through flooded lands, up to their necks in water, starving, half drowned. They captured the wicked Hamilton and led him away in diains. > Toward the - m of the war once more a British force of Frenchmen and Indians raided Kentucky, besieging Logan's fort, and but for the valor of the women, that sorely stricken garrison would have perished. For when the tanks were empty the women took their buckets and marched out of the gates, laughing and singing, right among the ambushed Indians, got their supply of water from the spring, and returned unhurt because they showed no fear. With the reliefs to the rescue rode Daniel Boone and his son Israel, then aged twenty-three. At sight of reinforcements the enemy bdted, hotly pursued to the banks of Licking River. Boone implored his people not to cross into the certainty of an ambush, but the Kentuckians took no notice, charging through the river and up a ridge between two bushed ravines. From both flanks the Wyandots charg^ wi^ toma- hawks, while the Shawnees raked the horsemen with a galling fire, and there was pitiless hewing down of the broken flying settlers. Last in Aat flight came Boone, bearing in his arms his mortally wounded son, overtaken, cut off, almost surrounded before he struck off from the path, leaping from rock to rock. DANIEL BOONE 279 As he swam the river Israel died, but the fathe" carried his body on into the shelter of the forest. With the ending of the war of the Revolution, the United States spread gradually westward, and to the close of his long life old Daniel Boone was ever at the front of their advance, taking his rest at last be- yond the Mississippi. Ta-day his patient and heroic spirit inspires all boys, leads every frontiersman, com- mands the pioneers upon the warrior trails, the ax- hewn paths, the wilderness roads of marching empire. XLI A. D. 1813 ANDREW JACKSON THE Nations wert playing a ball game: " Catch 1" said France, throwing the ball to Spain, who muffed it. "Qui>;k!" cried Napoleon, "or England will get it- catch 1" "Caught! said the first American republic, and her prize was the valley of the Mississippi. Soon afterward the United States in the name of freedom joined Napoleon the Despot at war with Great Britain; and the old lion had a wild beast fight against a world-at-arms. In our search for great ad- venture let us turn to the warmest corner of that world-wide struggle, poor Spanish Florida. Here a large Indian nation, once civilized, but now reduced to savagery, had taken refuge from the Americans; and these people, the Creeks and S«n- inoles, fighting for freedom themselves, gave shelter to runaway slaves from the United States. A few pirates are said to have lurked there, and sonic Scot- tish gentlemen lived with the tribes as traders. Thanks perhaps to them. Great Britain armed the Creeks, who ravaged American settlements to the north, and at Fort Minns butchered four hundred xavo. ANDREW JACKSON aSi Northward in Tennessee the militia were com- manded by Andrew Jackson, born a frontiersman, but by trade a lawyer, a very valiant man of high renown, truculent as a bantam. Without orders he led two thousand, five hundred frontiersmen to avenge Fort Minns by chasing the Spanish governor (in time of peace) out of Pensacola, and a British garrison from Fort Barrancas, and then (after peace was signed) expelled the British from New Orleans, while his detachment in Florida ble^ up a fort with two hundred seventy-five refugees, in- cluding the women and children. Such was the auspicious prelude to Jackson's war with the Creeks, who were crushed forever at the battle of Horseshoe Bend. XUI A. D. 1836 SAM h6uST0N SERVING in Jackson's force was young Sam Hous- ton, a hunter and a pioneer from childhood. Rather than be apprenticed to a trade he ran away and joined the Cherokees, and as the adopted son of the head chief became an Indian, except of course during the holidays, when he went to see his vtry respectable mother. On one of these visits home he met a recruiting sergeant, and enlisted for the y«ir of 1812 At the age of twenty-one he had fought his way up to the rank of ensign, serving with General Andrew Jackson at the battle of Horseshoe Bend. The Creeks held a line of breastworks, and the Americans were charging these works when an arrow struck deep into young Houston's thigh. He tried to wrench it out but the barb held, and twice his lieutenant failed. " Try again." said Houston, and if you fail ni knock you down." The lieutenant pulled out the arrow, and streaming with blood, the youngster went to a surgeon who dressed his wound. General Jackson told him not to return to the front, but the lad must needs be at the head of his men, no matter what the orders. 382 SAM HOUSTON 383 Hundreds of Creeki had fallen, multitudes were •hot or drowned attempting to swim the river, but stiU a large party of them held a part of the breast- work, a sort of roof spanning a guUy, from which, through narrow port-holes, they kept up a murderous fire. Guns could not be placed to bear on this posi- tion, the warriors flatly refused all terms of sur- render, and when Jackson called for a forlorn hope Houston alone responded. Calling his platoon to follow him he scrambled down the steep side of the gully, but his men hesitated, and from one of them he seized a musket with which he led the way. With- in five yards of the Creeks he had turned to rally his platoon for a direct charge through the port-holes, when two bullets struck his right shoulder. For the last time he implored his men to charge, then in despair walked out of range. Many months went by before the three wounds were healed, but from that time, through very stormy years he had the constant friendship of his old leader, Andrew Jackson, presi- dent of the United States. Houston went back to the West and ten years after the battfe was elected general of the Tennessee militia. Indeed there seemed no limit to his future, and at thirty-five he was governor of the state, when his wife deserted him, and ugly rumors touched his private life. Throwing his whole career to the winds he turned Indian, not as a chief, but as Drunken Sam, the butt of the Cherokees. It is quite natural for a man to have two characters, the one commanding while the other rests. Within a few months the eyes of Houston the American statesman looked out from the painted face of 384 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Drunken Sam, the savage Cherokee. From Arkansas he looked southward and saw the American fron- tiersmen, the Texas pioneers, trying to earn a living under the comic opera government of the Mexicans. They would soon sweep away that anarchy if only they found a leader, and perhaps Drunken Sam in his dreams saw Samuel Houston leading the Texas cow- boys. Still dressed as a (Cherokee warrior be went to Washington, called on his old friend President Jackson, begged for a job, talked of the liberation of Texas — as if the yankees of the North would ever allow another slave state of the South to enter the Union! Houston went back to the West and preached the revolt against Mexico. There we will leave him for a while, to take up the story of old Davy Crockett XUII A. D. 1836 DAVY CROCKETT P»AR oflF on his farm in Tennessee, old Davy •■• Crodcett heard of the war for freedom. Fifty years of hunting, trapping and Indian warfare had not quenched his thirst for adventure, or dulled his love of fun; but the man had been sent to Washing- ton as a member of congress, and came home horri- fied by the corruption of political life. He was angry and in his wrath took his gun from over the iireplace. He must kill something, so he v/ert for those Mexi- cans in the West. His journey to the seat of war began by steamer down the Mississippi River, and he took a sudden fancy to a sharper who was cheating the passengers. He converted Thimblerig to manhood, and the poor fellow, like a lost dog, followed Davy. So the pair were riding through Texas vvhtn they met a bee hunter, riding in search of wild honey — a gallant lad in a splendid deerskin dress, who led them to his home. The bee hunter must join Davy too, but his heart was torn at parting with Kate, the girl he loved, and he turned in the saddle to cheer her with a scrap of song for farewell : a8s I el Iri' 106 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE " Stddled and bridled, uid booted rode he, A phime in hit helmet, • iword «t hit knee." But the girl took up the verie, her tong broken with lobbing: " But toom' c«n' the itddle, ill bluidy to tee, And hune cam' the iteed, but hame never cam he. There were adventurek on the way, for Davy hunted buffalo, fought a cougar — knife to teeth — and pacified an Indian tribe to get passage. Then they were joined by a pirate from Lafitte's wicked crew, and a young Indian warrter. So, after thrash- ing a Mexican patrol, the party galloped into the Alamo, a Texan fortress at San Antonb. One thousand seven hundred Mexicans had been holding that fort, until after a hundred and twenty hours fighting, they were captured by two hundred and sixteen Americans. The Lone Star flag on the Alamo was defended now by one hundred and fifty white men. Colonel Travis commanded, and with him was Colonel Bowie, whose broken sword, used as a dagger, had given the name to the " bowie knife." Crockett, with his followers, Thimblerig, the bee hunter, the pirate and the Indian, were warmly welcomed by the garrison. February twenty-third, 1836, the Mexican president, Santa Anna, brought up seventeen hundred men to besiege the Alamo, and Travis sent off the pirate to ride to Goliad for help. On the twenty-fourth the bombardment commenced, and thirty cowboys broke in through the Mexican lines to aid the garrison. DAVY CROCKETT 387 On the f enty-eighth, here i. a scrap from Davy'i private dmy: "The settler, are flying . . . Sg their pos«.SK,„, to the mercy of the ruthlew invader ... slaughter i. mdiKriminate, sparing neither age, ^ nor condition. Buildings have been bum^ down, farms la.d waste ... the enemy draws nigher On the twenty-ninth : " This business of being shut up make, a man wolfish -I had a little sport this monimg before breakfast. The enemy had planted a piece of ordnance withm gunshot of the fort during the night and the first thing in the morning they L,- menced a bnsk cannonade pointblank against the spot Mounted the rempart. The gun was charged again, a fellow stepped forth to touch her off, but before he could apply the match I let him have it, and he keeled ttri; ^ "TT !*?^'^ "P- '"'"^''•^ the match from the hand of the dying man. but Thimblerig. who had followed me, h«,ded me his rifle, and the next instant ?«♦ T'^J"" "'"'•'"^ "P"" *h* «'"'' «««de the first A third came up to the cannon, my companion handed me another gun, and I fixed him off fa like - inanner^ A fourth, then a fifth seized the match, but ^th met with the same fate, and then the whole ^ pve rt up as a bad job, and hurri«l off to the ^. is V t'*""°" "^^ '*»'«"^ ^l-^" they had fo hrll! ■ / "^- *"^' "^ ™y hitters and went m the whole fort, for he never failed picking off two or three stra^ters before breakfast " March third.-" We have given over dl hope." a88 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTtJRE March fourth.—" Shells have been falling into the fort like hail during the day, but without effect. About dusk in the evening v»e observed a man running toward the fort, pursued by about a dozen Mexican cavalry. The bee hunter immediately knew hun to be the old hunter who had gone to Goliad, and call- ing to the two hunters, he sallied out to the relief of the old man, who was 'hard pressed. I followed dose after. Before we reached the spot the Mexi- cans were close on the heels of the old man who stopped suddenly, turned short upon his pursuers, dis- charged his rifle, and one of the enemy fell from his horse. The chase was renewed, but finding that he would be overtaken and cut to pieces, he now turned again, and to the amazement of the enemy became the assaUant in turn. He clubbed his gun, and dashed among them like a wounded tiger, and they fled like sparrows. By this time we reached the spot, and in the ardor of the moment followed some distance be- fore we saw that our retreat to the fort was cut off by another detachment of cavalry. Nothing was to be done but to fight our way through. We were all of the same mind. 'Go ahead!' cried I; and they shouted, 'Go ahead. Colonel 1' We dashed among them, and a bloody conflict ensued. They were about twenty in number, and they stood their ground. After the fight had continued about five minutes a deUchment was seen issuing from the fort to our re- lief and the Mexicans scampered off, leaving eight of their comrades dead upon the field. But we did not escape unscathed, for both the pirate and the bee hunter were mortally wounded, and I received a saber cut across the forehead. The Old roan died DAVY CROCKETT 289 without speaking, as soon as we entered the fort. We bore my young friend to his bed, dressed his wounds, and I watched beside him. He lay without complaint or manifesting pain until about midnight, when he spoke, and I asked him if he wanted any- thing. "'Nothing,' he replied. 'Poor Kate I' His eyes filled with tears as he continued : ' Her words were prophetic, Colonel,' and then he sang in a low voice. " ' But toom' cam' the saddle, all bluidy to see, And hame cam' the steed, but hame never cam' he.' "He spoke no more, and a few minutes after, died. Poor Kate I who will tell this to thee?" March fifth : " Pop, pop, pop I Bom, bom, bom ! throughout the day — no time for memorandums now — go ahead. Liberty and independence forever I" So ends Davy's journal. Before dawn of the sixth a final assault of the Mexican force carried the lost Alamo, and at sunrise there were only six of the de- fenders left alive. Colonel Crockett was found with his back to the wall, with his broken rifle and his bloody knife. Before him lay Thiniblerig, his dag- ger to the hilt in a Mexican's throat, his death grip fastened in the dead man's hair. The six prisoners were brought before Santa Anna, who stood surrounded by his staff amid the ruins. General Castrillon saluted the president. " Sir, here are six prisoners I have taken alive ; how shall I dis- pose to them ? " " Have I not told you before how to dispose of them — why do you bring them to me ? " 290 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE The officers of the staff fell upon the prisoners with their swords, but like a tiger Davy sprang at Santa Anna's throat. Then he fell with a dozen swords through his body. Up with your banner, Freedom. Thy champions cling to thee. Tbeyll foUow where'er you lead 'em — To death or victory. Up with your bai^ner, Freedom I Tyrants and slaves are rushing To tread thee in the dust ; Their blood will soon be gushing And stain our knives with rust. But not thy banner. Freedom I While Stars and Stripes are flying Our blood we'll freely shed; No groan will 'scape the dying. Seeing thee o'er his head. Up with your banner, Freedom 1 Let US return to Sam Houston. His life of cyclone passions and whirling change — a white boy turned Indian, then hero of a war against the redskins; lawyer, commander-in-chief and governor of a state, a drunken savage, a broken man begging a job at Washington, an obscure conspirator in Texas — had made him leader of the liberators. Th<- fan of the Alamo filled the Texans wjth fury, but when that was followed by the awful massacre of Goliad they went raving mad. Houston, their leader, waited for reinforcements until his men wanted to murder him, but when he marched it was to San Ja- cinto where, with eight hundred Texans, he scattered DAVY CROCKETT 291 one thousand six hundred Mexicans, and captured Santa Anna. He was proclaimed president of the Lone Star republic, which is now the largest star in the American constellation. XLIV A.D. 1793 ALEXANDER MACKENZIE THE very greatest events in huinan annals are those which the historian forgets to mention Now for example, in 1638 U)uis XIV was born; he Scots set up their solemn league and covenant the T^ks romped into poor old Bagdad and w.ped out S t^^and Persians; Van Tromp the Dutchman v^hopped a Spanish fleet ; the English founded Madras The 'rmer-stone of our Indian empire; but the r^l event of the year, the greatest event of he seven- teenth century, was the hat act passed by the Brrtish parliament. Hatters were forbidden to make any hats 'except of beaver felt. Henceforth, for two c«>tunes sloud. hats, cocked hats, top hats all sorts of^haU were to be made of beaver fur felt, down to the flat brimmed Stetson hat. which was borrowed fr<»n the cowboys by the Northwest Mounted Po'-.-'loP^jJ by the Irregular Horse of the Emp«e. and fina y copied in rabbit for the Boy Scouts. The hatter r^u^bJy beaver, no matter what the cost, so Europe was stripped to the last pelt. Then far away to eas^ and west the hunters and ^'^^^^'^jf^fjl^^, valley to valley. The traders followed, buildmg forts 39a ALEXANDER MACKENZIE *93 where they dealt with the hunters and trappers, ex- changing powder and shot, traps and provisions, for furs at so much a " castor " or beaver skin, and skins were used for money, instead of gold. Then came the settlers to fill the discovered lands, soldiers to guard them from attack by savages, judges and hang- men, flag and empire. The Russian fur trade passed the Ural Hills, ex- plored Siberia and crossed to Russian America. Westward the French and British fur trade opened up the length and breadth of North America. By the time the hatter invented the imitation "beaver," our silk hat, this mad hat trade had pioneered the Russian empire, the United States and the Dominion of Canada, belting the planet with the white man's power. Now in this monstrous adventure the finest of all the adventurers were Scotch, and the greatest Scot of them all was Alexander MacKenzie, of Stomoway, in the Scotch Hebrides. At the age of seventeen he landed in Montreal, soon after Canada was taken by the British, and he grew up in the growing fur trade. In those days the Hudson's Bay Company was a sleepy old corporation with four forts, but the Nor*- westers of Montreal had the aid of the valiant French Canadian voyageurs as guides and canoe men in the far wilderness. Their trade route crossed the upper lakes to Thunder Bay in Lake Superior, where they built Fort William; thence by Rainy River to the Lake of the Woods, and Rat Portage; thence up Lake Winnipeg to the Grand Saskatchewan. There were the forts where buffalo hunters boiled down pemmican, a sort 294 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE of pressed beef spiced with service berries, to feed the northern posts. Northward the long trail, by lake and river, reached i la Crosse, which gave its name to a famous Indian ball game, and so to the source of the Churchill River at Lac la Loche, from whence the Methye portage opened the way into the Great Unknown. When MacKenzie reached Qear-water River, Mr. Peter Pond of the Nor'westers had just shot Mr. Ross of the X. Y. Company. MacKenzie took charge, and he and his cousin moved the trade down to the meet- ting of the Athabasca and the Peace, at an inland sea, the Athabasca Lake, where they built the future capital of the North, Fort Chipewyan. From here the Slave River ran down to Great Slave Lake, a second inland sea whose outlet was unknown. MacKenzie found that outlet six miles wide. The waters teemed with wild fowl, the bush with deer, and the plains on either side had herds of bison. MacKenzie took with him four French vayagear*, • German and some Indians, working them as a rule from three a. m. till dusk, while they all with one ac- cord shied at the terrors ahead, the cataracts, the savage tribes, the certainty of ."itarvation. The days lengthened until there was no night, they passed coal fields on fire which a hundred years later were still burning, then frozen ground covered with grass and flowers, where the river parted into three main branches c^>emng on the coast of an ice-dad sea. The water was still fresh, but there were seaweeds, they saw whales, the tides would wash the people out of camp, for ftis was the Arctic Ocean. So they turned bade up that great river which bears MacKenzie's ALEXANDER MACKENZIE 295 name, six thousand miles of navigable waters drain- ing a land so warm that wheat wiU ripen on the Arctic circle, a home for millions of healthy prosperous people in the days to come. MacKenzie's second journey was much more diffi- cult, up the Peace River through the Rocky Moun- tama, then by a portage to the Eraser Valley, and down Bad River. AU the rivers were bad, but the bu-ch bark canoe, however much it smashes, can be repaired with fresh sheets of bark, stuck on with gum from the pine trees. Still, after their canoe was totally destroyed in Bad River and the stock of bul- lets went to the bottom, the Indians sat down and wept, while the Frenchmen, after a square meal with a lot of rum, patched up the wreck to go on. Far down the Fraser Valley there is a meadow of tall grass and flowers with clumps of wild fruit orchard and brier rose, gardens of tiger lilies and goldenrod. Nobody lived there in my time, but the place is known as Alexandria in memory of Alexander Mackenzie and of the only moment in his life when he turned back, beaten. Below Alexandria the Fraser plunges for two hundred miles through a range of moun- tains in one long roaring swoop. So the explorers, warned by friendly Indians, climbed back up-stream to the Blackwater River; and if any big game hunter wants to shoot mos- quitoes for their hides that valley would make a first-class hunting ground. The journey from here to the coast was made afoot with heavy loads by a broad Indian trail across the coast range to the Bilthqula River, and here the explorers were the guests of rich powerful tribes. One young chief 396 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE unclasped a splendid robe of sea-oUer skins, and threw it around MacKenzie, such a gift as no king could offer now. They feasted on salmon, service berries in grease, and cakes of inner hemlock bark sprinkled with oil of salmon, a three-hour banquet, followed by sleep in beds of furs, and blankets woven from wool of the mountain sheep. The houses were low-pitched bams of cedar, each large enough to seat several hun- dred people, and at the gable end rose a cedar pole carved in heraldic sculpture gaily painted, with a little round hole cut through for the front door. Each canoe was a cedar log hollowed with fire, then spread with boiling water, a vessel not unlike a gon- dola. One such canoe, the Tillicum, has made a voy- age round the world, but she is small compared with the larger dugouts up to seven tons burden. An old chief showed MacKenzie a canoe forty-five feet in length, of four foot beam painted with white animals on a black hull, and set with ivory of otter teeth. In this he had made a voyage some years before, when he met white men and saw ships, most likely those of the great Captain Cook. MacKenzie's account of the na- tive doctors describes them to the life as they are to- day. "They blew on the patient, and then whistled; they rubbed him vfelently on the stomach ; they thrust their forefingers into his mouth, and spouted water into his face." MacKenzie, had he only waited, would have seen them jump on the patient's stomach to drive the devils out. He borrowed canoes for the run down the Bilthqula to Salt Water at the head of one of British Columbia's giant fiords. There the explorer heard that only two moons ago Captain Vancouver's boats had been ALEXANDER MACKENZIE 397 in the inlet. An Indian chief must have been rude, for one officer fired upon him, while another struck him with the flat of a sword. For this the chief must needs get even with Alexander MacKenae as he wandered about the channels in search of the open sea. He never found the actual Pacific, but made his final camp upon a rock at the entrance of Cascada inlet Here is Vancouver's description of the place. " The width of the channel did not anywhere exceed three-quarters of a mile ; its shores were bounded by precipices much more perpendicular than any we had yet seen during this excursion ; and from the summits of the mountains that overlooked it . . . there fell several large cascades. These were extremely grand, and by much the most tremendous of any we had ever beheld." Those cataracts, like lace, fell from the cornice glaciers through belt after belt of clouds, to crash through the lower gloom in deafening thunder upon black abysmal channels. The eagles swirl and circle far above, the schools of porpoises are cleaving and gleaming through the white-maned tide. In such a place, beset by hostile Indians, as the dawn broke the great explorer mixed vermilion and grease to paint upon the precipice above him: " Alexander MacKenzie, from Canada by land sand July. I793-" He had discovered one of the world's great rivers, and made the first crossing of North America. XLV THE WHITE MAN'S COMING IT is our plain duty here to Uke up the story of Vancouver, an English merchant seaman from be- fore the mast, who rose to a captaincy in the royal navy, and was sent to explore the British Columbian coast. He was to find " the StraiU of Anian leadmg through Meta Incognita to the Atlantic," the famous Northwest passage for which so many hundreds of explorers gave their lives. His careful survey proved there was no such strait. Of course it is our duty to follow Vancouver s dull and pompous log book, and show what savage tribes he met with in the wUds. But it will be much more fun to give the other side, the story of Vancouver* visit as told by the Indians whose awful fate it was to be " discovered " by the white man with his measles, his liquor and his smallpox. In the winter of 1887-8 I was traveling on snow- shoes down the Skeena Valley from Gaat-a-maksk to Gaet-wan-gak, which must be railway stations now on the Grand Trunk Pacific. My packer was Wilhe-the- Bear, so named because a grizzly had eaten off half his face, the side of his face, in fact, which had to be covered with a black veil. We were crossing some low hills when I asked him about the cMnmg of the THE WHITE MAN'S COMING agg white men. Promptly he told me of the iirtt «h^- a Spaniard; the second — Vancouver's ; and the thira — an American, all in correct order after a hrnin ■^d years. Who told him? His mother. And who .old her? Her mother, of course. So, living as I was among the Indians. an<1 seeiii,» no white man's face for months on end, I gathered up the various memories of the people. At Massett, on the north coast of the Quc<-.n Charlotte Islands, the Haidas were e mazed by a great bird which came to rest in front of the village. When she had folded her wings a lot of little birds shot out from under her, which came to the beach and turned out to be full of men. They were as fair of color as the Haidas, some even more so, and some red as the meat of salmon. The people went out in their dugouts to board the bird, which was a vast canoe. All of them got presents, but there was one, a person of no account, who got the finest gift, better than anything received by the highest chiefs, an iron cooking-pot. In those days the food was put with water into a wooden trough and red-hot stones thrown in until it boiled. The people had copper, but that was worth many times the present price of gold, not to be wasted on mere cooking pots. So the man with the iron pot, in his joy, called aU the people to a feast, and gave away the whole of his property, which of course was the right thing to do. The chiefs were in a rage at his new importance, but they came, as did every one else. And at the feast the man of no account climbed the tell pole in front of his house, the totem pole carved with the arms of his ancestors, passing a rop. 300 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE over the top by which he hauled up the iron pot so that it might be seen by the whole tribe. " See," he said, "what the great chief has given me, the Big Spirit whose people have toils sti«E as a beaver tail behind their heads, whose canoe is loaded with thunder and lightning, the mother of all canoes, with six young canoes growing up, whose medicine is so strong that one dose makes you sick, for three days, whose war- riors are so brave that one got two black eyes and did not run away, who have a little dog which scratches and says meaoul " This great chief has given us presents according to our rank, little no-account presents to the common people; but when I came he knew I was his brother, his equal, and to me, to me alone, he gave this pot which sits upon the fire and does not bum, this pot which boils the water, and will not break!" But as the man bragged he kept twitching the rope, and down fell the pot, smash on the ground, and broken all to pieces. Now as to the first white man who came up Skeena ^i^^f- . , . . . A very old man of Kitzelash remembered that when he was a boy he stood on the banks of the canon and there came a canoe with a white man, a big chief called Manson, a Spaniard, and a black man, all searching for gold. He remembered that first one man sang a queer song and then they all took it up and sang, laughing together. A middle-aged man of Gaet-wan-gak remembered that in his childhood a canoe came up the river full of Indians, and v/ith two white men. Nobody had ever seen the like, and they took the strangers for ghosts, THE WHITE MAN'S COMING 301 «o that the women ran away and hid. The ghosts gave them bread, but they spat it out because it was ghost food and had no taste. They oflfered tea, but the people spat it out, because it was like earth water out of graves. Rice, too, they would not touch, for it was like — perhaps one should not say what that was like. XLVI THE BEAVER TN the heart of the city of Victoria 1 once found an 1 old log bam, the last remnant of Fort Camosun, and clin.bing into the loft, kicked about m a h^p of rubbish from which emerged some damp rat-gnawed manuscript books. From morning to evenmg, and far into the dusk, I sat reading there the story of a great adventuress, a heroine of tonnage and dis^ace- ment, the first steamer which ever plied on the Pacrfic H^' builders were Messrs. Boulton and Watt, and Watt was the father of steam navigation. She was built at Blackwall on London River in the days of Georee IV. She was launched by a duchess m a poke bonnet and shawl, who broke a bottle of wme ^inst the ship's nose and christened her he Beaver. Then the merchant adventurers of the Hudson's Bay Company, in bell toppers, Hessian boots and white chokers, gave three hearty cheers. The Bewer was as ugly as it was safe to make her but built of honest oak, and copper bolted, her en^nes packed in the hold, and her masts brigantme- rigged for the sailing voyage round Cape Horn. ^: went under convoy of the barque ColumUa a slow and rather helpless chaperon, who fouled and 30a THE BEAVER 303 nearly wrecked her at Robinson Crusoe's Island. Her master, to judge by the shqj's books, was a peppery little beast, who logged the mate for a liar: "Not correct D. Home ;" drove his officers until they went sick, quarreled with the Columbia's doctor, found his chief engineer "in a beastly state of intoxica- tion," and finally, at the Columbia River, hounded his crew into mutiny. " Mr. Phillips and Mr. Wilson behaved," says the mate, " in a most mutinous manne/." So the cap- Utn had all hands aft to witness their punidunent with the cat-o'-nine-tails. Phillips called on the crew to rescue him, and they went for the c^)Uin. Calling for bis sword, the skipper defended himself like a man, wounding one seaman in the head. Then he " succeeded in tying up Phillips, and punishmg hira with two dozen lashes with a rope's end over his clothes," whereupon William Wilson denanded eleven strokes for himself, so sharing the fun, for better or worse, with a shipmate. Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River, an old stockade of the Nor'westers, was at Ais time the Hudswi's Bay Company's capital on the Pacific coast, where reigned the great Doctor McLauchlan, founder of Oregon. Here the Beaver shipped her paddles, started up her engines, and gave an excursion trip for the ladies. So came her voyage under steam out in the open Pacific of eight hundred miles to her station on the British Columbian coast. She sailed on the last day of May In 1836, two years before the Atlantic was crossed under steam. On the Vancouver coast she discovered an outcrop of steam coal, still the best to be had on the Pacific Ocean. ji« CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE In her days of g^ofy, Ae Beaver was a smart little war-ship trading with the savages, or branbard- ing their villages, all the way from Puget Sound to Alaska. In her middle age she was a survey vessd exploring Wonderland. In her old age the boiler leaked, so that the engineer had to plug the h«P^-^»-'l2 m,!^"!'. ^°' '■ "^''* °^ '" "O"**. the pole star S t tl rr """' "•■'"* ^''^ coJ:.atiS swing their endless race; then for six m«mths the low sun rolls along the sky-line on his le^^^ound*- and each day and night are one year * oiilT^^u'^T^ *''"* P"'"' ^e^^ i" the reign of Henry VIII of England, when Master John dS sailed up the Greenland coast to a big cliff whiS. he named after his becker. Sanderson's Hoje t£ deH f '. v'.^'"" '"' ^^^ ""-^^ "^"-^nd four hun! to l,mm>''''T' """ °"^ ^'-''^ ''-^'^ °f '« from base to summit. It towers above Upernivik the mn« northerly village in the world, and i "ne thournd one hundred tw.nty-eight miles from thT Pole am 3oB CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE In ,504 Barenti carried the Dutch flag a IMe farther north but soon Hudso>. gave the lead back to Gr«t Britain, and after that, for V, . hundred sev«^ six years the British flag ""*=" "'^r^^.^^Cj^j'Tt victory to victory in the conq,'.. °t '^'/.^T c,,i Sin .882 Lieutenant Greely of the United States ArLi beat us by four miles at a cost of nearly h.s i™le «pedition. which was destroyed by fan,.ne Ln Doctor Nansen br6ke the American record or ^^ay to be beaten in turn by an Italian prmce. the Duke d'Abruzii. But meanwhile Peary, an Amer- Lt naval oflicer, had commenced bis wonderful course of twenty-three years' specif tram.ng; and m 1^,6 he broke the Italian record. H.s way was afoot IS dog-trains across the ice of the Polar sea. ^d he would have reached the Nojth Pole. "; fo. wide lanes of open sea. completely barrmg the wav At two hundred twenty-seven miles from the Pole he was forced to retreat, and camp very near to death before he won back to his base camp. Pe«y's ship was American to the last detail of «edle7and thread, but the vessel was bis own inv«i- tion. built for ramming ice-pack. The f^rf*"" and crew were all Newfoundlanders, trained from Sh^ in the seal fishery of the Labrador ice-pack^ T^v were alasl British, but that could not be S^. To make amends the exploring officers were >^cans. but they were specially trained by Peary r^e^d travel as Eskimo using the native dress, the doe-trans and the snow houses. (Sr exptorers had don. the same, but Peary wen ft^her. for he hired the most "ortheriy of the Eddmo tribes, and from 7^ *« y^ «*«^»**^ "** THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES 309 ?i^!! °V'"u'^^t'. '*'"' «"** "P '° '■'«'"-d him as a tather, to obey hn orders exactly, and to adopt his improvements -. their native methods. So he had hunting parties to store up vast supplies of meat, and wa rus, each for some specul need in the way of clothmg. He had women to make the clothes. He had two hundred fifty huskie dogs, sleds of his own device, and Esk.mo working parties under his white officers. In twenty-three years he found out how to boU tea m ten minutes, and that one detail saved nmety mmutes a day for actual marching -a margin .n case of accident. Add to all that Peary'Tow" mg, ust at the prmie of life. He was so hardened with one Idea, one motive in life, one hope J hat of reachmg the Pole. U,ng hou« before any- tnng went wrong an mstinct would awaken him out of Sai^ty * *° '°°'' °"' ^"^ *'°""' *"'• »^«rt th.\f!T *\u' f^P ^"' '''°* ''°* Greenland, and the islands nortfi of Canada, reach to within four hun nl th^ .1''' °''''*' ' P^"^'' *™"Kh that chan- nel, then turned to the left, creeping and dodging be- ween the ice-field and the coast of Grant Land Cat Urn Bartlett was in the crow's-nest, piloting, a„^ 2^\t°'"^'°: ''•"' «='""« *« '''^ "''"ding riggbg through the floes. Bartlett would coax and wheedle or shout at the ship to encourage her, "Rip -^^ 3X0 CAFTAINS OF ADVENTURE Tedur"ed tack. With the Stores at Camp ^ Peary had his *1<^ fully loaded, with a selection, besides, of the fittest m J and dogs for the last lap of the journey, and above all not too many mouths to feed. It was a clever scheme, and in theory the officers, turned back with their Eskimo parties, were needed to THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES 311 pUot them to the coast. All the natives got back •afely, but Professor Marvin was drowned. If Peary had not sent all his officers back, would he have been playing the game in leaving his Eskimo parties without navigating officers to guide them in the event of a storm ? There is no doubt that his conduct was that of a wise and honorable man. But the feeling re- mains — was it sportsman-like to send Captain Bartlett back — the one man who had done most for his suc- cess, denied any share in the great final triumph? Bartlett made no complaint, and in his cheery accept- ance of the facts cut a better figure than even Com- mander Peary. With his negro servant and four Eskimos, the leader set forth on the last one hundred thirty-three miles across the ice. It was not plain level ice like that of a pond, but heaved into sharp hills caused by the pressure, with broken cliflfs and labyrinthine reefs. The whole pack was drifting southward be- fore the wind, here breaking into mile-wide lanes of black and foggy sea, there newly frozen and utterly unsafe. Although the sun did not set, the frost was sharp, at times twenty and thirty degrees below zero, while for the most part a cloudy sky made it impossible to take observations. Here great good fortune awaited Peary, for as he neared the Pole, the sky cleared, giving him brilliant sunlight. By observ- ing the sun at frequent intervals he was able to reckon with his instruments until at last he found himself within five miles of ninety degrees north — the Pole. A ten-mile tramp proved he had passed the apex of the earth, and five miles back he made the final tests. MKtOCOrr MSOUITION TBI CHAIT (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) |2£ lii Li ■ 22 .6 A APPLIED irvHGE Ine a^^ 1653 Eo»t Main Street ^.a Ri>ch«t«r, Naw York 14609 USA ■^= {'16) *82 - 0300 - Phon* ^S (^'B) 266- 5989 -Fm 313 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Somewhere within a mile of where he stood wa? the exact point, the north end of the axis on which the earth revolves. As nearly as he could reckon, the very point was marked for that moment upon the drifting ice-field by a berg-like hiU of ice, and on this summit he hoisted the flag, a gift from his wife which he had carried for fifteen years, a tattered silken rem- nant of Old Glory. "Perhaps," he writes, "it ought not to have been so, but when I jcnew for a certaiiity that I had reached the goal, there was not a thing in the world I wanted but sleep. But after I had a few hours of it, there succeeded a condition of mental exaltation which made further rest impossible. For more than a score of years that point on the earth's surface had been the object of my every effort. To obtain it my whole being, physical, mental and moral, had been dedicated. The determination to reach th* Pole had become so much a part of my being that, strange as it may seem, I long ago ceased to think of myself save as an instrument for the attainment of that end. . . . But now I had at last succeeded in planting the flag of my country at the goal of the world's desire. It is not easy to write about such a thing, but I knew that we were going back to civiliza- tion with the last of the great adventure stories — a story the world had been waiting to hear for nearly four hundred years, a story which was to be told at last under the folds of the Stars and Stripes, the flag that during a lonely and isolated life had CMne to be for me the symbol of home and everything I loved— and might never see again." Here is the record left at the North Pole: — THE CONQUEST OF THE POLES 313 "90N. Lat., North Pole, «T 1. . ^ . . "April 6th, 1909. I have to-day hoisted the national ensign of the United States of America at this place, which my ob- serrations mdicate to be the North Polar axis of the earth, and have formally taken possession of the en- tire region, and adjacent, for and in the name of the president of the United States of America. "I leave this record and United States flag in posses- sion. '^ "Robert E. Peary, "United States Navy." Before the hero of this very grand adventure re- turned to the worW. there also an-ived from the Arctic a certain Doctor Cook, an American traveler who claimed to have reached the Pole. The Danish Colony in Greenland received him with joy the Danish Geographical Society welcomed him with a banquet of honor, and the world rang with his triumph. Then came Commander Peary out of the North, pro- claiming that this rival was a liar. So Doctor Cook was able to strike an attitude of injured innocence, hmtmg that poor old Peary was a fraud; and the world rocked with laughter. In England we may have envied the glory that Peary had so bravely won for his flag and country, but knew his record too well to doubt his honor, and welcomed his triumph with no ungenerous thoughts. The other claimant had a record of impudent and amusmg frauds, but still he was entitled to a hearine and fair judgment of hU claim from men of science Among sportsmen we do not expect the runners, after Hi 314 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE a race, to call one another liars, and were sorry that Peary should for a moment lapse from the dignity expected of brave men. It is perhaps ungenerous to mention such trifling points of conduct, and yet we worship heroes only when we are quite sure that our homage is not a folly. And so we measure Peary with the standard set by his one rival, Roald Amundsen, who conquered the North- west passage, then addend to that immortal triumph the conquest of the South Pole. In that Antarctic adventure Amundsen challenged a fine British ex- plorer. Captain Scott. The British expedition was equipped with every costly appliance wealth could fur- nish, and local knowledge of the actual route. The Norseman ventured into an unknown route, scantily equipped, facing the handicap of poverty. He won by sheer merit, by his greatness as a man, and by the loyal devotion he earned at the hands of his comrades. Then he returned to Norway, they say, disguised under an assumed name to escape a public triumph, and his one message to the worid was a generous tribute to his defeated rival. The modern world has no greater hero, no more perfect gentleman, .10 finer adventurer than Roald Amundsen. XLVIII WOMEN npWO centuries ago Miss Mary Read, aged J- thirteen, entered the Royal Navy as a boy. A little later she deserted, and still disguised as a boy, went soldiering, first in a line regiment, afterward as a trooper. She was very brave. On the peace of Ryswick, seeing that there was to be no more fighting, she went into the merchant service for a change and was bound for the W-st Indies when the ship' was gathered in by pirates. Rather than walk the ^Unk she became a pirate herself and rose from rank ,ik' until she hoisted the black flag with the grade o. .;ap- tain. So she fell in with Mrs. Bonny, widow of a pirste captain. The two amiable ladies, commanding each her own vessel, went into a business partnership scuttling ships and cutting throats for years with marked success. In the seventeenth century an escaped nun did well as a seafaring man under the Spanish colors, ruffled as a gallant in Chili, and led a gang of brigands in the Andes. On her return to Spain as a lady, she was very much petted at the court of Madrid. The last of many female bandits was Miss Peari Hart, who, in 1890, robbed a stage-coach in Arizona. Mr. Murray Hall, a well-known Tammany politician and a successful business man. died in New York, and was found to be a woman. 31S Sl'^ 3i6 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE But of women who, without disguise, have excelled in adventurous trades, I have known in Western Can- ada two who are gold miners and two who are cow- boys. Mrs. Ungdon, of California, drove a stage- coach for years. Miss Calamity Jane was a noted Montana bull-whacker. Miss Minnie Hill and Miss Collie French are licensed American pilots. Miss Evelyn Smith, of Nova Scotia, was a jailer. Lady Clifford holds Board of Trade certificates as an officer in our n.ercantile marine. A distinguished French explorer, Madame Dieulafoy, is an officer of the Le- gion of Honor, entitled to a military salute from all sentries, and has the singular right by law of wearmK the dress of a man. Several English ladies have been explorers. Miss Bird explored Japan, conquered Long's PfAk, and was once captured by Mountain Jim, the Colorado robber. Lady Florence Dixie explored Patagonia, Miss Gordon-Cumming explored a hundred of the South Sea Isles, put an end to a civil war m Sa- moa and was one of the first travelers on the Pamirs. Mrs Mulhall has traced the sources of the Amazons. Lady Baker, Mrs. Jane Moir, and Miss Kingsley rank among the great pioneers of Africa. Lady Hester Stonhope, traveling in the Levant, the ship being loaded with treasure, her own property, was cast away on a desert island near Rhodes. Escapmg thence she Uaversed the Arabian deserts, and by a gathering of forty thousands of Arabs was proclaimed queen of Palmyra. This beautiful and gifted woman reigned through the first decades of the nineteenth century from her palace on the slopes of Mount Lebanon. Two other British princesses in wild lands were Her Highness Florence, Maharanee of Patiala, and the WOMEN 3*7 tZ ■ ^.^^' *''°'" «"» » reverenced by the Moslems m North Africa as a sacred personam Among women who have been warriors the greatest perhaps, were the British Queen Boadicea !^d S samtly and heroic Joan of Arc, burned, to o'; everl^! .ng shame, at Rouen. Frances Sca;agatti, a noWe Itahan g,rl. fought with distinction as an offi er in te Aus nan army, once led the storming of a redoubt" and af^r three years in the field against Napoleon, Went home, a young lady again, of sweet and mild disposi- Doctor James Barry, M.D.. inspector-general of hospitals m the British Army, a duelist a mart neV and a hopelessly insubordinate WeHedin Sri fh^T u °'*' °^ adventurous camp followers tunes m nearly every army. Loreta Velasquez of took command, was commissioned in the Confederate Army during the Civil War of ,861-5 and fought « tSra'so""'".H'"^^- '"^ "^'^ --rdta" work as a spy m the northern army. After the war Mrs. Christian Davies, bom in 1667 in Dublin was a happy and respectable married wo^an with a Tar« «y, lor her husband was seized by a press wn? an,? dragged away to serve in the fleet. Mrs ^a'b bors. and set off m sea«h of the man she lovll. 't'l 3i8 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE When she returned two years later as a soldier, she found her children happy, the neighbors kind, and herself utterly unknown. She went away contented. She served under the Duke of Marlborough through- out his campaigns in Europe, first as an infantry sol- dier, but later as a dragoon, for at the batUes of Blm- heim and Fontenoy she was a sqjadron leader of the Scots Grays. The second dragoon guards have many curious traditions of "Mother Ross." When after twelve years military service, she ultimately found her husband, he was busy flirting with a waitress m a Dutch inn, and she passed by, saying nothmg. In her capacity as a soldier she was a flirt herself, makmg love to every girl she met, a gallant, a duehst, and notably brave. At last, after a severe wound, her sex was discovered and she forgave her husband. She died in Chelsea Hospital at the age of one hun- dred eight, and her monument may be seen m the Hannah" Snell left her home because her husband had bolted with another woman, and she wanted to find and kill him. In course of her search, she en- listed, served as a soldier against the Scots rebellion of 1745, and on" received a punishment of five hun- dred lashes. A series of wonderful adventures led her into service as a marine on board H. M. S. Swal- low After a narrow escape from foundtring, this vessel joined Admiral Boscawen's fleet in the Kast Indies. She showed such extreme gallantry m the attack on Mauritius and in the siege of Areacopong, that she was chosen for special work in a forlorn hope. In this fight she avenged the death of a comrade by killing the author of it with her own hands. At the WOMEN 319 siege of Pondicherry she received eleven wounds in the legs, and a ball in the body which she extracted herself for fear of revealine the secret of her sex. On her return voyage to England she heard that she need not bother about killing her husband, because he had been decently hanged for murder. So on landing at Portsmouth she revealed herself to her messmates as a woman, and one of them promptly proposed to her. She declined and went on the stage, but ulti- mately received a pension of thirty pounds a year, and set up as a publican at the sign of the Women in Mas- querade. Anna Mills, able seaman on board the Maidstone frigate in 1740, made herself famous for desperate valor. Mary Ann, youngest of Lord Talbot's sixteen nat- ural children, was the victim of a wicked guardian who took her to the wars as his foot-boy. As a drummer boy she served through the campaigns in Flanders, dressing two severe wounds herself. Her subse- quent masquerade as a sailor led to countless adven- tures. She was a seaman on a French lugger, powder monkey on a British ship of the line, fought in Lord Howe's great victory and was crippled for life. Later she was a merchant seaman, after that a jeweler in London, pensioned for military service, and was last heard of as a bookseller's housemaid in 1807. Mary Dixon did sixteen years' service, and fought at Waterloo. She was still living fifty years after- ward, " a strong, powerful, old woman." Phoebe Hessel fought in the fifth regiment of foot, and was wounded in the arm ai Fontenoy. After many years of soldiering she retired from service and iJO CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE was pensioned by the prince regent, George IV. A tombstone is inscribed to her memory in the old church- yard at Brighton. In this bald record there is no room for the ad- ventures of such military and naval heroines as prison- ers of war, as leaders in battle, as victims of ship- wreck, or as partakers in some of the most extraor- dinary love-affairs ever heard of. Hundreds of stories might be told of women con- spicuous for valor, meeting hazards as great as ever have fallen to the tot of men. In one case, the casting away of the French frigate Medusa, the men, almost without exception, performed prodigies of cowardice, while two or three of the women made a wonderful journey across the Sahara Desert to Senegambia, which is the one bright episode in the most disgraceful dis- aster on record. In the defenses of Leyden and Haar- lem, besieged by Spanish armies, the Dutch women manned the ramparts with the men, inspired them throughout the hopeless months, and shared the gen- eral fate when all the survivors were butchered. And the valor of Englishwomen during the sieges of our strongholds in India, China and South Africa, has made some of the brightest pages of our history. XLIX THE CONQUERORS OF INDIA QNLY the other day. the king of England was pro- "^ claimed emperor of India, and all the princes m homage This homage was rendered at Delhi the anc^nt capital of Hindustan; and it is only one i, fn! dred and ten years since Delhi fell, and Hindustan surrendered to the British arms. We have to dS V VT" ""f* '*'' "P *•* *« ^°"« Delhi, while he fought the whole nobility and gentry „f India, and 321 333 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE kept one eye cocked for British invasions from the seaboard. The British held the ocean, surrounded India, and were advancing inland. Madhoji Scindhia was a very busy man. He had never heard of tourists, and when De Boigne, an Italian gentleman, came up-country to see the sights, his highness, scenting a spy, stole the poor man's luggage. De Boigne, veteran of the French and Russian armies, aiid lately retired from the British service, was annoyed at the loss of his luggage, and having nothing left but his sword, offered the use of that to Scindhia's nearest enemy. In those days scores of Europeans, mostly French, and scandalous rogues as a rule, were serving in native arm'es. Though they liked a fight, they so loved money that they would sell their masters to the highest bidder. Scindhia observed that De Boigne was a pretty good man, and the Savoyard adventurer was asked to enter his service. De Boigne proved honest, faithful to his prince, a tireless worker, a glorious leader, the very pattern of manliness. The battalions which he raised for Scind- hia were taught the art of war as known in Europe, they were well armed, fed, disciplined, and paid their wages; they were led by capable white men, and al- ways victorious in the field. At Scindhia's death, De Boigne handed over to the young prince Daulat Rao, his heir, an army of forty thousand men, which had never known defeat, together with the sovereignty of India. The new Scindhia was rotten, and now the Italian, broken down with twenty years of service, longed for his home among the Italian vineyards. Before part- THE CONQUERORS OF INDIA 333 mg with hi. highne.,. he warned him rather to di.- Mnd the whole army than ever h« ».mo.-j • / flict with «,e E„,H j;. Soir^i^eCTn^h" burde., of the Indian empire, and Sired ,0^7 vil iSr;eranTht'or'"'"''' '"^'"^' •»«' - «>*««• While De Boigne was still fighting for Scindhia . runaway Irish sailor had drifted *„p^ouil,'„d* ^.W ^^ °"*» *»• " chivalrous as De Boigne, w.th a great big heart, a clear head a terrffi! sword, and a reckless delight in war. S^ y^^ w. Junta"' -T^ ''^'"'"« "« ^""S*" w"-y ^ he fa;adJ, f "" °''" '""^ °* fi^« thousand m^ iie invaded and conquered the Hariana. This distri^ Se^IrisS ' •"' *^^ •"" "*^" '^" ""Wued. but «i«r Insh king won all their hearts, and they settled down quite peacefully under his ^venuneL His At Hansi, h.s cap.tal town, he coined hiV^own mo,*^ «« h.s own cannon, made muskets and powdeTaSi' »rt up a pension fund for widows and orphans of W. iXied tr Ste if h '°"'"'"'' " '^'*'^°™ «' «>' ««d wTrthS, f%h """ *""* ''""P7, he starved witn them ; if they were weary, he marched afoot • th. army worshiped him. and the very rr^orofhrnaL, r„ 7 !!f '• ^" '^•"«^ ''««"«d possible to such a •nan. even the conquest of great Hindustan. i^ Boigne had been succeeded as commander-in- if! 324 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE cliief under Scindhia by Perron, a runaway sailor, a Frenchman, able and strong. De Boigne's power had been a little thing compared with the might and splen- dor of Perron, who actually reigned over Hindustan, stole the revenues, and treated Scindhia's orders with contempt. Perron feared only one man on earth, this rival adventurer, this Irish rajah of the Hariana, and seiit an expedition to destroy him. The new master of Hindustan detested the English, and degrading the capable British officers who had served De Boigne, procured Frenchmen to take their place, hairdressers, waiters, scalawags, all utterly use- less. Major Bourguien, the worst of the lot, was sent against Thomas and got a thrashing. But Thomas, poor soul, had a deadlier enemy than this coward, and now lay drunk in camp for a week celebrating his victory instead of attending to busi- ness. He awakened to find his force of five thousand men besieged by thirty thousand veterans. There was no water, spies burned his stacks of forage, his bat- talions were bribed to desert, or lost all hope. Fmally with three English officers and two hundred cavalry, Thomas cut his way through the investing army and fled to his capital. The coward Bourguien had charge of the pursuing force that now invested Hanei. Bourguien's officers breached the walls and took the town by storm, but Thomas fell back upon the citadel. Then Bourguien sent spies to bribe the garrison that Thomas might be murdered, but his officers went straight to warn the fallen king. To them he surrendered. That night Thomas dined with the officers, and all were merry when Bourguien proposed a toast insulting THE CONQUERORS OF INDIA 3^5 SuSno'drm?' Thomas's™'.' *'" ''"^'^ ^°- he drew upon BouS^^^^ ■"•" '''''• ""' *«« Wade. "OnV Irish Sd"' h? T!f? ** «''«'ri"« for a hundred FrenZenl" 'S ' '• ''*'" ^"'«"«=« Loyal in the days of hU ^°"'"^'«" »»lted. was received 4h Tono„ It ^r TV*' ^^'- «»« the Ganges. There T "^^^'''''''h outposts upon Before hi.„, the Ssh n„, "?'" °* ^"*'''' ^''^ '^'d -ept his hand ac rinT^^.TnT'''' "''• «» red." *"*• All this ought to be against Genera, pton ruTe^ o'fH ." '^"' "'"^ "'^o who had h-fted Perron ^omt^fT''- ^'^'^^'^^ comander-i„-chief of h Tr^' *'"'*' ^""^ «='''«= h™ peril on the Deccan beset hT^' T' "°^ '" ^^^^^ princes. In his b?tL need hi ^^^ °' ^^^tt'' cor. Perron, busy aS h! '*="* *^ ^"°n for sue- left Scindhia to his ff'e '"^ '" *''« H^^^na, >eaSrwi?h NlCt^H^f*''' "-• "« wa, Pire to France, grtrl/h' °'" "" ^"'^^ ««' Now Srinrfi,! ""=_°*f"y«a his roaster. ha^ ^LSt M^attTr """"•-'" '^^'^^ ^""^ °f hand, and one oTrtem ^0^".^ ""' *«* ^' <^ «nperor, the peshwa of PoI"l'' '^'°^^ «" ^ahratta Peshwa fled trSorob^J ^^1 f °" f "'~"«- The a^y under Sir A^'w J, J"™^ "'" ' u^"^'* -^-usan^Jen— tratJfel— -I if 326 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE won Poona, the capiul of the South. Meanwhile for fear of Napoleon's coming, Perron, his servant, had to be overthrown. A British army under General Lake swept Perron's army out of existence and captured Delhi, the capital of the North. Both the capital cities of India fell to English arms, both em- perors came under British protection, and that vast empire was founded wherein King George now reigns. As to Perron, his fall .was pitiful, a freak of coward- ice. He betrayed everybody, and sneaked away to France with a large fortune. And Arthur Wellesley, victor in that stupendous triumph of Assaye, became the Iron Duke of Welling- ton, destined to liberate Europe at Waterloo. A. D. 1805 THE MAN WHO SHOT LORD NELSON 'TpHIS story is from the memoirs of Robert Guille- * nwfd, a conscript in the Grand Army of France and to h« horror drafted for a marine on board the' tetde-ship Redoubtable. The Franc(^Spanish fleet of thirty-three battle-ships lay in Cadiz, and ViUeneuve, the n.ce old gentleman in command, was still breathless after bemg chased by Ix>rd Nelson across the Atlantic and back agam. Now. having given Nelson the slip, he had fiwce orders from the Emperor Napoleon to jom the French channel fleet, for the invasion of imgland. The mce old gentleman knew that his fleet was manned largely with helpless recruits, ill-paid ill- found, most scandalously fed, sick with a righteous ten-or lest Nelson cwne and bum them in their har- Then Nelson came, with twenty-seven battle-ships, raging for a fig^t, and Villeneuve had to oblige for fear of Napoleon's anger. The fleets met off the sand-dunes of Cape Trafalgar drawn up in opposing lines for battle, and when they dosed, young GuiUemard's ship, the Redoubtable en- gaged Lord Nelson's Victory, losing thirty men to her nrst discharge. 327 338 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Guillemard had never been in action, and as the diunders broke from the gun tiers below, he watched with mingled fear and rage the rush of seamen at their work on deck, and his brothers of the marines at their musketry, until everything was hidden in trailing wreaths of smoke, from which came the screams of the woimded, the groans of the dying. S<»ne seventy feet ovvhead, at the caps of the lower masts, were widespread platforms, the fighting tops on which the best marksmen were always posted. " All our topmen," says Guillemard, " had been killed, when two sailors and four soldiers, of whom I was one, were ordered to occupy their post in the tops. While we were going aloft, the balls and grapeshot showered around us, struck the masts 'nd yards, knocked large splinters from them, and cut the rigging h) pieces. One of my companions was wounded be- side me, and fell from a height of thirty feet to the d -k, where he broke his neck. When I reached the top my first movement was to take a view of th» pros- pect presented by the hostile fleets. For more than a league extended a thick cloud of smoke, above which were discernible a forest of masts and rigging, and the flags, the pendants and the fire of the three nations. Thousands of flashes, more or less near, continually penetrated this cloud, and a rolling noise pretty similar to the sound of thunder, but much stronger, arose from its bosom." Guillemard goes on to describe a duel between the topmen of the Redoubtable and those of the Victory only a few yards distant, and when it was finished he lay alone among the dead who crowded the swaying platform. THE MAN WHO SHOT LORD NELSON 329 cJj^^ir*/* ** ^"«"* '*»«' *»" «" officer TTTl*.'? *".''*" '°'* *•* ""'y o»« «™- From what I had heard of Nelson I had no doubt that it ^ he. He was surrounded by several oflScers, to whom b. seemed to be giving orders. At the moment 1 first perceived hmi several of his sailors were wounded be- side him by the fire of the Redoubtable. As I had re- T^ZTil' *° 5°.''°'^"' «"• '^^ "y«>f forgotten in the tops. I thought it my duty to fire on the poop of the English vessel, which I saw quite cle-;ly exposed and dose to me. I could even have taken aim at the men I saw. but I fired at hazard among the groups of Milors and officers. All at once I saw great ^fusion oa board the Victory; the men crowded round the officer whom I had taken for Nelson. He had just fallen, and was taken below covered with a cloak. The agitation shown at this moment left me no doubt ftat I had judged rightly, and that it really was the English admu-al. An instant afterward the Victorv ceased from firing, the deck was abandoned. . I hurried below to inform the captain He be- lieved me the more readily as the slackening of the fire indicated that an event of the highest im^rtance occupied the attention of the English ship^ crew ... He gave immediate orders for boarding, and everything was prepared for it in a moment It is even said that young Fontaine, a midshipman . passed by the ports into the lower deck of the English vessd, found ,t abandoned, and returned to notify that the ship had surrendered. . . . However, as a part of our crew, commanded by two officers, were r«dy to SfTV!!*^'"'"^'!'''*' *« fi^ recommenced With a fury it had never had from the beginning of the 330 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE action. ... In less than half an hour our vessel, witb^ out having hauled down her colors, had in fact, sur- rendered. Her fire had gradually slackened and then had ceased altogether. . . . Not more than one hun- dred fifty men survived out of a crew of about eight hundred, and almost all those were more or less severely wounded." When these were taken on board the Victory, Guille- mard learned how the bullet which struck down through Lord Nelson's shoulder and shattered the spine below, had come from the fighting tops of the Redoubtttble, where he had been the only living soul. He speaks of his grief as a man, his triumph as a sol- dier of France, who had delivered his country from her great enemy. What it meant for England judge now after nearly one hundred years, when one meets a bluejacket in the street with tiie three white lines of braid upon his collar in memory of Nelson's victories at Copenhagen, the Nile and Trafal(,ar and the blade neckcloth worn in mourning for his death. It seemed at the time that the very winds sang Nel- son's requiem, for with the night came a storm putting the English shattered fleet m mortal peril, while of the nineteen captured battle-ships not one was fit to brave the elements. For, save some few vessels that basely ran away before the action, both French and Spaniards had fought with sublime desperation, and when the English prize-crews took possession, they and iheir prisoners were together drowned. The Aigte was cast away, and not one man escaped ; the Santissima Trini- dad, the largest ship in the world, foundered ; the Itt- domitabk sank with fifteen hundred wounded; "« the French pri«J!!fr' *" '^**' ««« Mnt <«er who could wSrS^^? '*'^ ""Injured^. A>«e.ford. i„ ^f;^*? "^ *«> residence at •yn^thy. ^' *'*■'««' wth respect and Prisoners of war am .^ « ^^ ^^Z'^l'^ ^ fcHange but after five months vlnZ, ^*' «»»> for man • tan. to France 'TpllS'v ^ '"'^«» *^e. ^"1^ coast at the «.rfT* .""tender again on the byGuinemardldJ^S*^^ ^•'- '«"«'^ "d fr«n the town of R^l"* ^T^" ^ chann.,, fM had his trial not loT^ ». P'"^' ''''*'« Drey- *o the govermnent in ^s rT '"^' despatches « a private letter, to ar«i« IT !T'"«' •■* «'«« «P^»s on the ch;^ ^cSaS: ^ ^"^-^vin* appeared-men in d^t, dr^"''\*^ '*«^ »«ny questions about Vil^Seutr'TT^ "**^ ''^ ™^*- The secreterv wa. 33a CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE pnwd of hU niMter, glad to talk about to distfaguUhed a man, and thought no evil when he gave his antwen. The leader of the five wa» a southern Frenchman, the others foreigners, deeply Unned, who wore mustaches in those days an unusual ornament That night the admiral had gone to bed in his room on the first floor of the inn, and the secreUry was asleep wi the floor above. A cry disturbed him, and taking his sword and candle, he ran down-stoirs in time to see the five strangers sneak by him hurriedly. Guillemard rushed to the admiral's room " and saw the unfortunate man, whom the balls of Trafalgar had respected, stretched pale and bloody on his bed. He . , . breathed hard, and struggled with the agonies of death. . . . Five deep wounds pierced his breast." So it was the fate of the slayer of Nelson to be alone with Villeneuve at his death. When he reached Paris the youngster was sum- moned to the Tuaeries, and the Emperor Napoleon made him tell the whole story of the admiral's assas- sination. Yet oflRcially the death was announced as suicide, and Guillemard met the leader of the five assassins walking in broad daylight on the boulevards. The lad kept his mouth shut Guillemard lived to fight in many of the emperor's battles, to be one of the ten thousand prisoners of the Spaniards on the desert island of the Cabrera, whence he made a gallant escape ; to be a prisoner of the Rus- sians in Siberia; to assist in King Murat's flight from France; and, finally, after twenty years of adventure, to return with many wounds and few honors to his native village, Lr A. D. i8ia THE FALL OF NAPOLEON man. . perwn of TearS^ """' °* « ««"«- b-uty of face, charm that KIh In ^^u*! ^''»"'*= ro« to be captain, colonr^e^f"""'"!'^' f" chief, consul of Ftaice «„nL*^!^' "^""""""der-in- of Europe. LST^^^^:;'^' P'f"ch. master w«» still only thirty-th?^^L« J ''"rid -and he height of hi, glor/he i^^tTp ?«*' *••*" « *« invasion was «th^«, r "f. ?""'«• ^is army of Geman.. Swa^S. rp^t^Vt^ "»«°«- >n«r more than half a m/n ' '^''''"«». ""niber- overwhelming force hi""'"' "" ^'*"''""' «^ heart of Rufsia ''^ ''''' " ''♦'*" «'«o the iJi!' wl^Tt^^^ri"*** '^"'.'^ '^'^^ Nap. check his advMce ^ • ^'" ^ attempting to m3 Id SS4 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Uttle, wreckage of men left with untended woundi, honors of starvation, and wolf-like hordes of Cos- sacks who cut off all the stragglers, the legions were kwept away. In Lithuania alone Napoleon tost a hun- dred thousand men, and that only a fourth part of those who perished before the army reached the gates of Moscow. Thai old city, hallowed by centuries of brave en- deavor, stored with the spoils of countless victories, that holy place at the very sight of which th». Russian traveler prostrated himself in prayer, had been made ready for Napoleon's coming. Nevtr has any nation prepared so awful a sacrifice as that which wrenched a million people from their homes. The empty capiul was left in charge of a few officers, then all the con- victs were released and provided with torches. Every vestige of food had been taken away, but the gold, the gems, the silver, the precious things of treasuries, diurches and palaces, remained as bait. Despite the horrors of the march. Napoleon's entry was attended by all the gorgeous pageantry of the Grand Army, a blaze of gold and color, conquered Europe at the heels of the little Corsican adventurer with waving flags and triumphal music. The cavalry found cathedrals for sUbling, the guard had palaces for barracks, where they could lie at ease through the winter; but night after night the great buildings burst into flames, day after day the foraging parties were caught in labyrinths of blazing streets, and the army staled on a diet of wine and gold in the burning cap- ital. In mortal fear the emperor attempted to treat for peace, but Russia kept him waiting for a month, while THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 335 horses for 4rbu7;h« thtLr'' *';! *' ''^'"« fuel to cook the fro^TLea' aLdt^"' r" '""' "° b.e«, wh« «,., ,Hed to StraJr sX^J strip the lJd.ZZZ7:''° ""'"'" *' ''y''*' the swords, the Jold lace tl iT'"' -f ^'^''^' J^ were i -gSd ';%h'^'cS^^r'S "*" ill, 11 33.6 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE ing to God's mercy, taking care to avoid the dead bodies. " I noticed something I took for a wagon. It was a broken canteen cart, the horses which had drawn it not only dead, but partly cut to pieces for eating. Around the cart were seven dead bodies almost naked, and half covered with snow ; one of them still covered with a cloak and a sheepskin. On stooping to look at the oody I saw that it was a woman. I approached the dead woman to take the sheepskin for a covering, but it was impossible' to move it. A piercing cry came from the cart. ' Marie! Marie! I am dying! ' " Mounting on the body of the horse in the shafts I steadied myself by the top of the cart. I asked what was the matter. A feeble voice answered, ' Some- thing to drink I ' " I the ight at once of the frozen blood in my pouch, and tried to get down to fetch it, but the moon sud- denly disappeared behind a great black cloud, and I as suddenly fell on top of three dead bodies. My head was down lower than my legs, and my face resting on one of the dead hands. I had been accustomed for long enough to this sort of company, but now — I sup- pose because I was alone — an awful feeling of terror came over me — I could not move, and I began scream- ing like a madman — I tried to help myself up by my arm, but fotmd my hand on a face, and my thumb went into its mouth. At that moment the moon came out " But a change came over me now. I felt ashamed of my weakness, and a wild sort of frenry instead of terror took possession of me. I got up raving and swearing, and trod on anything, that came near me THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 337 »~l.^» .. tl, poo, d^u „j„ ,^.''l«l' I Ihis was November twentv-five t«i, ^ u about seven o'cloct in tt. • ' *' P^'haps hardly uZ ill ■ '"°™""^' '""' *^ ^^ '* was u'> iignr. 1 was musing on all that T u^a «n,d o«c.„ ,o.o„^ .*"; «"'.,n7;';: at seeing the emperor on foot " passU" Uhe'Zr R ''•?' '^''■-P'-. and at the 1- sage of the River Bererma the engineers contrived 338 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE to build a bridge. But while the troops were crossing, the Russians began to drive the rear guard, and the whole herd broke into panic. "The confusion and disorder went on increasing, and reached their full height when Marshal Victor was attacked by the Rus- sians, and shells and bullets showered thickl;- apon us. To complete our misery, snow began to fall, and a cold wind blew. This dreadful state of things lasted all day and through the next night, and all this time the Berezina became gradually filled with ice, dead bodies of men and horses, while the bridge got blocked up with carts full of wounded men, some of which rolled over the edge into the water. Between eight and nine o'clock that evening. Marshal Victor began his retreat. He and his men had to cross the bridge over a perfect mountain of corpses." Still thousands of stragglers had stayed to bum abandoned wagons, and make fires to warm them be- fore they attempted the bridge. On these the Rus- sians descended, but it was too late for flight, and oS the hundreds who attempted to swim the river, not one reached the farther bank. To prevent the Russians from crossing, the bridge was set on fire, and so horror was piled on horror that it would be gross offense to acM another word. Of half a million men who had entered Russia, there were only twenty-five thousand left after that crossing of the Berezina. These were veterans for the most part, skilled plunderers, who foraged for themselves, gleaning a few potatoes from stripped fields, shooting stray Oissacks for the food they had in their wallets, trading with the Jews who lurked in ruined towns, or falling back at the worst on frozen horse-flesh. Gar- THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 339 the new con^ilt^t ZT^^^S' Se"""^'' '° found their horses useful for foof an^l "'*?"' they perished. ' *"° '^*- afoot. Mttle clusters of m^„o7"'''T '''"'^'''^' ""' t^ese they marched h~gS S'h ^t."""^' '°' ''^ often comrades wouM L u "" '^ *"= ^*»''' ^^ All were froze^ rSint ..,T^'' ""'*^ *»" ?»«• those who lived to the ^7^ k f "'^'^''tion. and never again couMVette^Cr^ "^'^^'''' '^"^ n.P^rt'TeTtre^S'oTsS'^'-r?^^^^^^^^^ met the survivors on the GeLttX 'Se "'f went on to Paris to rai... = „ DO™er. Thence he was conspiracy in F^alr^r'"^; ^°' "«"' there despot, and Eurl ^ ' "' °."'*'""°" "* '"e field of Leipsic, k he Tattle ofl^ ^'™- ^'^ °" *« was overwhelmed *" "'"°"''' ^apoleon against armed Eurow An7 ""^ """'^ed that last h.„ishmenMo sinj 21^' Y"'"''^' *'* adventurer fretted out hU * ^' '"''"''' *•"« S'eat of glories nev:;'t be re ivi'anTthi'r '''^'"« which was forever lost *^*** *"P^« A. D. 1813 RISING WOLF THIS is the story of Rising Wolf, condensed from the beautiful narrative in My Life as an In- dian, by J. B. Schultz. " I had heard much of a certain white man named Hugh Monroe, and in Blackfoot, Rising Wolf. One afternoon I was told that he had arrived in camp with his numerous family, and a little later met hmi at a feast given by Big Lake. In the evening I invited hira over to my lodge and had a long talk with him while he ate bread and meat and beans, and smoked numer- ous pipefuls of tobacco." White man's food is -yjod after years without any. " We eventually became firm friends. Even in his old age Rising Wolf was the quickest, most active man I ever saw. He was about five feet six in height, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and his firm square chin and rather prominent nose betokened what he was, a man of courage and de- termination. His father, Hugh Monroe, was a col- onel in the British army, his mother a member of the La Roches, a noble family of French emigres, bankers of Montreal and large land owners in that vicmity. "Hugh, junior, was bom on the family estate at Three Fivers (Quebec) and attended the parish school RISING WOLF 34, iaclttn! rnr" '° '"™ *° ^''''^ ""«* ""*«• All his were snenMn i^"'' '"^T "'^^ ^^°" *« ^'"^ ^«"n were spent m the great forest surrounding his home The love of nature, of adventure and wild life wTre bom m h.m. He first saw the light in July jtS i^ parents to allow h.m to enter the service of the Hud- tmaof that r '""^'"'' '''''"' "«'"-'l -i'h - flo- Sve him a fin ?-'"r\'"'"^' "'^^ ^P""S- "'^ f="her gave h™ a fine English smoothbore, his mother a pair book. The family priest gave him a rosary and cross summer they arrived at Lake Winnipeg in the autumn I sSHhe " ^' '^" " ^•'^ ^'^ ^-* - "" the spring he journey was continued and one after- noon m July, Monroe beheld Mountain Fort, a new M the company's not far from the Rocky Mo„„ Bll'^f^'' v^"' '* '^"■* *"=^'"P«'' thousands of broiSf . 7^. '"r."' '°' ^^ «°°«^^ *' flotilla had fS J ?V° °*"*'" °" "^'^'' ammunition, fukes (trade pms). traps and tobacco. As yet the com! pany had no Blackfoot interpreter. The factor «" nao^ mtelhgence at once detailed him to live and travel with the Piegans (a Blackfoot tribe) and learn thlfa snTtii tir'v" r '''' ^""™'<' *° ^-"*^n h^TiJl ' **"* ** succeeding summer. Word tarther and farther westward and had even reached the mouth of the YeUowstone. The compa^/ w1 34a CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE their competition. Monroe was to do his best to pre- vent it " ' At last,' Monroe told me, ' the day came for our departure, and I set out with the chiefs and medicine men at the head of the long procession. There were eight hundred lodges of the Fiegans there, about eight thousand souls. They owned thousands of horses. Oh, but it was a grand sight to see that long column of riders and pack animals, and loose horses trooping over the plains. We traveled on south- ward all the long day, and about an hour or two before sundown we came to the rim of a valley through which flowed a cotton wood-bordered stream. We dismounted at the top of the hill, and spread our robes intending to sit there until the procession passed by into the bottom and put up the lodges. A medicine man produced a large stone pips, filled it and attempted to light it with flint and steel and a bit of punk (rotten wood), but somehow he could get no spark. I mo- tioned him to hand it to me, and drawing my sun- glass from my pocket, 1 got the proper focus and set the tobacco afire, drawing several mouthfuls of smoke through the long stem. "'As one man all those round about sprang to their feet and rushed toward me, shouting and gestkulating as if they had gone crazy. I also jumped up, terribly frightened, for I thought they were going to do me harm, perhaps kill me. The pipe was wrenched out of my grasp by the chief himself, who eagerly began to smoke and pray. He had drawn but a whiff or two when another seized it, and f«wi him it was taken by still another. Others RISING WOLF 3^ turned and harangued the passing column- men and women sprang from their hor4s and jotae^ t^ grou,^ mothers pressing close and rubbing SLt :h"firW Th' Tr *." ^'•^ - -pScalont if^h-vT:, J'^'^^'^'^P"*"'?'' not noticed the glass or 'f they had, had thought it some secret charm or i^ulet At all events I had suddenly become a ^e^ p^^^^ -;::^:t^S^;:£^?t^:;:^t5 a^. as if abi^ut^:: S^^'^z^r^'zz^i ^ood quue still, but I believe that my haJ'^s ris- mg; I know that my flesh felt to be shriricing j wa\ not kept m suspense. Lone Walker spoke to his Jts Ss aTdTr^r^ '''' "^°^"' -- "etwee^thdr the fir,f ^ r ."" *° ** P'''^^ P°'"ted out to me tte be w t t *^ •='^''=^'^ '<=^* "and. It was some wT finalv ^ ! ' ^^'^"^to'ned to the bears, but another Th ".'°'* °^ understanding with one nro::^oJSrdSfrrn-;-c^^^ appeared one night and were neverTeen agf in • ' '''" 344 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE "Think how the youth, Rising Wolf, must have felt as he journeyed southward over the vast plains, and under the shadow of the giant mountains which lie between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri, for he knew that he was the first of his race to behold them." We were bom a little too late ! " Monroe often referred to that first trip with the Piegans as the happiest time of his life." In the moon of falling leaves they came to Pile of Rocks River, and after three months went on to winter on Yellow River, isext summer they wan- dered down the Musselshell, crossed the Big River and thence westward by way of the Little Rockies and the Bear Paw Mountains to the Marias. Even paradise has its geography. "Rifle and pistol were now useless as the last rounds of powder and ball had been fired. But what mattered that? Had they not their bows and great sheaves of arrows? In the spring they had planted on the banks of the Judith a large patch of their own tobacco which they would harvest in due time. " One b^ one young Rising Wolf's garments were worn out and Coot aside. The women of the lodge tanned deerskins and bighorn (sheep) and from them Lone Walker himself cut and sewed shirts and leggings, which he wore in their place. It was not permitted for women to make mens clothing. So ere long he was dressed in full Indian costume, even to the belt and breech-clout, and his hair grew so that it fell in rippling waves down over his shoulders." A warrior never cut his hair, so white men living with Indians followed their fashion, else they were not admitted to rank as warriors. "He began to RISING WOLF 3^, colored porcupine quilir Side so^ "• *'*'* buffalo robe for wime" ' ' *'™ »"" *>^ '"I could iiot help but notice h»r' u. . -j . said, "that all you £spo£"j°V •""''" ''^ daughter." ""'"** ^ «n not give hrni my "'Again I looked at Ao-ah' W ,^a i. 34« Mountains. '^""'''''y ^'"'"bs the Rocky 348 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE " One winter after hU »on« John and Francoii had married they were camping there for the leaion, the three lodges of the family, when one night a large war party of Assiniboinf attacked them. The daugh- ters Lizzie, Amelia and Mary had been Uught to shoot, and together they mude a brave resistance, driving the Indians away just before daylight, with the loss of five of their number, Lizzie killing one of them as he was about to let down the bars of the horse corral. "Besides other furs, beaver, fisher, marten and wdverine, they killed more than three hundred wolves that winter by a device so unique, yet simple, that it is well worth recording. By the banks of the outlet of the lakes they built a long pen twelve by sixteen feet at the base, and sloping sharply inward and up- ward to a height of seven feet. The top of the pyra- mid was an opening about two feet six inches wide by eight feet in length. Whole deer, quarters of buf- falo, any kind of meat handy was thrown into the pen, and the wolves, scenting the flesh and blood, seeing it plainly through the four to six inch spaces between the logs would eventually climb to the top and jump down through the opening. But they could not jump out, and there morning would find them uneasily pacing around and around in utter bewilder- ment. "You will remember that the old man was a Catholic, yet I know that he had much faith in the Blackfoot religion, and believed in the efficiency of the medicine-man's prayers and mysteries. He used often to speak of the terrible power possessed by a man named Old Sun. 'There was one,' he would RISING WOLF <«f k night he would invite Ti^'.t ,T* **^ « when ,11 w., cahn .„d i',,* ''^ "^ "• 'o "« lodge, hi* wives would bank th. «« -f "" **'* •«««'« w" as dark within .Twhho 7 "^f. "''" «> *at it pray. First to he Sun chL'"^.''' *°"" »*^" to "»ker. the thunder .ndth^r. I •""" *° "'* *ind entreating them to oo^' nd K'^, «' "' P"^*<'' ears would begin to "uiver whh L"fi ' JT """ ''^^^ «ming breeze, which gradSv tl ."'■""' °^ '^ wronger till the lodge bem to S^f ""'"^'' ""'» poles strained and creTked S 'f* *"'' ""« '°^ee boom, faint and far^tat and'".-''.""'*'" ■*«"" '«> -zc, and they came „«r' ^"''J'S''f"'"S dimly to «emed to be jL omhrd ' '"'' "'"" ""«' W the flashes blind d„;:'„'.^ H' "«''" ''"fened us! Then this wonderful In m "'"* terror-stricken, the wind would dedrn ^^'^ ^'^ '° ^°' «"" "ing go on rumbling Tndfla,h- • "'""'''' '""^ "^ht- "ntil we heard anS s^" tJ^ ^^ '"*° *"' ^'^ «''^'«'« """ *"W tJiem no more,'" -ii 'I? i LIII A.D. 1819 SIMON BOLIVAR ONCE at the stilted court of Spain young Ferdi- nand, Prince of the Asturias, had the condescen- sion to play at tennis with a mere colonial; and the bounder won. Long afterward, when Don Ferdinand was king, the colonial challenged him to another ball game, one played with cannon-balls. This time the stake was the Spanish American empire, but Ferdinand played Bolivar, and again the bounder won. "Now tell me," a lady said once, "what animal reminds one most of the Seiior Bolivar?" And Bolivar thought he heard some one say "monkey," whereat he flew into an awful passion, until the offender claimed that the word was " spar- row." He stood five feet six inches, with a bird-like quickness, and a puckered face with an odd tang of monkey. Rich, lavish, gaudy, talking mock heroics, vain as a peacock, always on the strut unless he was on the run, there is no more pathetically funny figure in history than tragical Bolivar; who heard liberty, as he thought, knocking at the door of South America, and opened — to let in chaos. 350 \ SIMON BOLIVAR 35, '•1 don't know." drawled a Spaniard ot that time, ^o^what class of beasts these South Americans They were dogs, these Spanish colonials, treated as dogs, behaving as dogs. When they wanted a university Spain said they were only provided by Providence to labor in the mines. li they had opmions the Inquisition cured them of their errors They were not allowed to hold any office or learn the ease them of their surplus cash, and keep them out of public affairs than a lot of Bengali baboos. stole LT 'T' "' ^^**" *'°«^ ""«• Napoleon su?H K """".P'f «"aded all over Spain closely pur- bu the cl •"!"''■ '^''' "^^ "° Spain left to love, but the colonials were not Napoleon's dogs. Napo- leon s envoys to Venezuela were nearly torn to pie«s toX^^V"^ f ''"''^ ^""^ "P- The sea belonged Bo ittr f ?• '"\'** *''' '°'°"''''=' *"' ambassadors! Bohvar and another gentleman, to King Geoi^e. Please would he help them to gain their libeT? ITL ' M ?"t' ''*P°'«'° -* °^ Spain. ^d Sliards.'^""'' "^^ ''' ^^' -•"• ''^ »«-: the I«i!!, ^''°° ^""^ unearthed a countryman who lov^ liberty and had fought for Napol™ Sd Snrri^f T '^'"' Miranda^rabfe S wming to lead the armies of freedom, until he i^rd. He really must draw the line K«,ewhere. .353 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE :| Yes, he would take command of the rabble on one condition, that he got rid of Bolivar. To get away from Bolivar he would go anywhere and do anything. So he led his rabble and found them stout fighters, and drove the Spaniards out of the central provinces. The politicians were sitting down to draft the first of many comic-opera constitutions when an awful sound, louder than any thunder, swept out of the eastern Andes, the earth rolled like a sea in a storm, and the five cities of the new republic crashed down in heaps of ruin. The barracks buried the garrisons, the marching troops were totally destroyed, the poli- ticians were killed, and in all one hundred twenty thousand people perished. The only thing left stand- ing in one church was a pillar bearing the arms of Spain; the only districts not wrecked were those still loyal to the Spanish government. The clergy pointed the moral, the ruined people repented their rebellion, and the Spanish forces took heart and closed in from every side upon the lost republic. Simon Bolivar generously surrendered General Miranda in chains to the victorious Spaniards. So far one sees only, as poor Miranda did, that this man was a sickening cad. But he was something more. He stuck to the cause for which he had given his life, joined the rebels in what is now Colombia, was given a small garrison command and ordered to stay in his fort In defiance of orders, he swept the Spaniards out of the Magdalena Valley, raised a large force, liberated the country, then marched into Ven- ezjiela, defeated the Spanish forces in a score of brilliant actions, and was proclaimed liberator with absolute power in both Colombia and Venezuda. SIMON BOUVAR he wrote, "reckon ord at e'en •r'^ '^'^"''^"'" culpable." * *^*'" '^ you are con^iti mit^rlf ^J:?;;^^^^^^^^^ Proclamations; the governor of La Guavra" to !LT'„ . '^'°"' '" in those dungeons ,n7^' ,«. f * ^" *^ prisoners exception whfS'' " '*' '""^"''' -■">-* any a fune*:, 'p^^hlnThis""' '"^ T "°* """''■"S of them w7re brolht „n • T u"^^ '=''^'" ''""''■•^d axes, bayonets a7k„iv^s and the' k"'^''"'" "''^'^ on the flames. Meanwh ,e BoL r L hf V'""" freshed himself by writing T^r' ■ °'^"' "=- lev^pScldV"""^" ^■- «>- -e vast by wi^ horseL n'k^^T;; -f^,--tr^. h-dled Avar's time their leader called hlseirr'- ^" ^°'- had as second in command Mora's B^r"' 'f,^^ ^Tt mr r""'""^-" ^°s::\afdTat^f.i*s r^fofsS'sr^"*^--^^^^^^^^ and spared iS te ''''' '''"^ ""'"^ ''"P^«'«' 354 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Then Bovss reported to the Spanish general, " I have recovered the arms, ammunition, and the honor of the Spanish flag, which your excellency lost at Cara- bobo." From this time onward the situation was rather like a dog fight, with the republican dog somewhere underneath in the middle. At times Bolivar ran like a rabbit, at times he was granted a triumph, but when- ever he had time to come up and breathe he fired off volleys of proclamations. In sixteen years a pains- taking Colombian counted six hundred ninety-six battles, which makes an average of one every ninth day, not to mention massacres; but for all his puny body and feeble health Bolivar was always to be found in the very thick of the scrimmage. Europe had entered on the peace of Waterloo, but the ghouls who stripped the dead after Napoleon's battles had uniforms to sell which went to clothe the fantastic mobs, republican and royalist, who drenched all Spanish /jnerica with blood. There were soldiers, too, whos'j trade of war was at an end in Europe, who gladly listened to Bolivar's agents, who offered gorgeous uniforms and promised splendid wages — never paid — and who came to join -.n the war for "liberty." Three hundred Germans and nearly six thousand British veterans joined Bolivar's colors to fight for the freedom of America, and nearly all of them perished in battle or by disease. Bolivar was never without British officers, prefeirec: British troops to all others, and in his later years really earned the loyal love they gave him, while they taught the liberator how to behave like a white maa It was in 1819 that Bolivar led a force of two thou- SIMON BOUVAR 353 sand five hundred men across a flooded prairie For a week they were up to their knees, at times To thel tiecks m water under a tropic deluge of T-f„ i" mmg a dozen rivers beset by alSs The ~ and starvation bore very heavily upon th. B Sh troops. Beyond the flood they dimW the eastern Andes and crossed the Paramo at a height of thS -hard, '''/"'^f' 'y "' ''^ -'"'» •" blLnrf" — hard going for Venezuelans. ^ ^ BrJkh ^"'^'"'"• ^°'°""' ^°°^' commanded the w withT"^'"' " u"'" *"= ^'=P°«^'l' "--3 quite well w th his corps, which had had quite a pleasant march" through the awful gorges and over ^hefrez ■ng Paramo. A Venezuelan officer re.^arked h.r that one-fourth of the men had perTsheT '" .nnJ .r' ^T'" '^''^ ^°°^' " •'"t '' '••^ally was a very good thmg for the men who had dropped out w^ all the wastrels and weaklings of the force " BohW r' .' ^''^"■■^'^•"ent of the royalists when Bolivar dropped on them out of the cloud, ^n^ • ZcT ri^?""'' '''' wer^^ut to "otr Nex" day Colonel Rook had his arm cut off hv *uT chaflin tH ^^, ,,^ bea'::;if:NSf ^asS went on frL • .°^"'"°"' ''"' '^' ^''''^h legion went on from victory to victory, melting away like snow until at the end negroes and Indians Med £ ^lustrious companies. Colombia, Venezuela and Equador. Peru and Bolivia were freed from the S^n:sh yoke and, in the main, released by BoLJs tireless, unfailing and undaunted courage Bu Iw couM n_^ stand his braggart proclamation:; w!uM S Jwve mm or any man for master, beeji a <.rU, I squabbles and revolutions that 'ha^^astrd "v:r I •i»\ 3S6 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE since, and proved themselves unfit for the freedom BoHvar gave. He knew at the end that he had given his life for a myth. On the eighth December, 1830, he dictated his final proclamation and on the tenth re- ceived the last rites of the church, being still his old braggart self. " Colcanbians ! my last wishes are for the welfare of the fatherland. If my death contrib- utes to the cessation of party strife, and to the con- solidation of the Union, I shall descend in peace to the grave.' On the seventeenth his troubled spirit passed. LIV A.D. 1812 THE ALMIRANTE COCHRANE lyHEN Lieutenant Lord Thomas Toot,, ^y manded the brig of war T/L? ^ ' """- carry about a whole broad ide of ^er^' ' l""^ *° his pocket. He had fiffv f cannon-balls in toy boat alonglel ^S:£^iZ:^lJr ^^^ heavy guns and three hundred nf thirty-two Spaniard could not fire Ho ■ '='" ""="■ •»« the he blasted her with hfstreh.u"'" ^" '^"=^'' ^'^"«'' -■ng only the doSl on C'he r'.T^"^' L^^ got more than he bargained for ■;, '"^ ".'' ^^''"'"''' wiped out, but that a d! r^h ' "J*^ '^°"''' ''*^« heen to resemble blal d2.o^' . '" ""°" ''^"^^'^ the forecastle hi Trsli?/''' '°"" ^^"^ that they surrendered ^ '*' ^"= '° ^^ocked caXtTu ™f?;thipfo/r^. ^-P'-^ ^'^"t, two guns, five yZSr.rZ^''^,^',^"^^- chase to three P™»-i. . *^ , "ers. men she gave -t with a ^rLd^^Tt ''"'"'''^ ""' ""■'*^'' «<1 «rt:?r;S?„r;asXe5V^ \'*-"'^*' -'^ « hulks loaded 5 ^W "^ "^' A^works- '"th explosives -with which he at- 357 !«■'! I M 3S8 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE tacked a French fleet in the anchorage at Aix. The fleet got into a panic and destroyed itself. And all his battles read like fairy tales, for this long- legged, red-haired Scot, rivaled Lord Nelson him- self in genius and daring. At war he was the hero and idol of the fleet, but in peace a demon, restless, fractious, fiendish in humor, deadly in rage, playing schoolboy jokes on the admiralty and the parliament. He could not be happy without making swarms of powerful enemies, 'and those enemies waited their chance. In February, 1814, a French officer landed at Dover with tidings that the Emperor Napoleon had been slain by Cossacks. The messenger's progress became a triumphal procession, and amid public rejoicings he entered London to deliver his papers at the admiralty. Bells pealed, cannon thundered, the stock exchange went mad with the rise of prices, while the messenger — a Mr. Berenger — sneaked to the lodgings of an acquaintance. Lord Cochrane, and borrowed civilian clothes. His news was false, his despatch a forgery, he had been hired by Cochrane's uncle, a stock-exchange speculator, to contrive the whole blackguardly hoax. Cochrane knew nothing of the plot, but for the mere lending of that suit of clothes, he was sentenced to the pillory, a year's imprisonment, and a fine of a thousand pounds. He was struck from the rolls of the navy, expelled from the house of commons, his banner as a Knight of the Bath torn down and thrown from the doors of Henry VII's Chapel at West- minster. In the end he was driven to disgraceful exile and hopeless ruin. THEALMIRANTECOCHR^.^E 359 na?"S" iZ ^^i"'"":' ^""""^""'"^ "- Chilian was spattered with the blood and brains off ^r „*' toucher t"".' "'"'•" '^'^ ""^ ^P' " '^' ^hot didn'i touch me. Jack says that the ball is not made that W.1 hnrt mama's boy." Jack proved to be right i?iStir-K:r¥hSr^-^!^ When he went below for a nap, the lieutenant left a A I ■" .•^°"""="d, but the middy went to "eeo and the ship was cast away. ^ Cochrane got her afloat; then, with all his irun- fift^n fort? '^^'' *'l' ^P""'^'' ^^™"ghold with fifteen forts and one hundred and fifteen eun, Cochrane, preferring to depend on cold s eeMeft he muskets behind, wrecked his boats in the su o^ed":;: 'r ■ ■'' *'^"" ^'"■■s*'* ^^ *e spani'd ; stormed the battenes, and seized the city So he found some n.ce new ships, and an arsenS[ to equ^ them, for his next attack on Callao lay"!n'canao'"TH'°V''\'"^''^' '^^"^^"^"^ -h'-^h cruiser She h" ',''* 'v' ^""'"^ ^"'' ''™ f°^ » fle^ and Sh •^^"''^ ^'^ ^"^ P^''*^^"^ V => Spanish fleet and battenes mounting three hundred guns but Cochrane d.d not mind. EI Diablo first eased tte 360 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE minds of the Spaniards by sending away two out of his three small vessels, but kept the bulk of their men, and all their boats, a detail not observed by the weary enemy. His boarding party, two hundred and forty strong, stole into the anchorage at midnight, and sorely surprised the Esmeralda. Cochrane, first on board, was felled with the butt end of a musket, and thrown back into his boat grievously hurt, in addition to which he had a bullet through his thigh before he took possession of the frigate. The fleet and batter- ies had opened fire, but El Diablo noticed that two neutral ships protedted themselves with a display of lanterns arranged as a signal, "Pkase don't hit me." " That's good enough for me,' f ..id Cochrane and copied those lights which protected the neutrals. When the bfewildered Spaniards saw his lanterns also, they promptly attacked the neutrals. So Coch- rane stole awEy with his prize. Although the great sailor delivered Chili and Peru from the Spaniards, the patriots ungratefully de- spoiled him of all his pay and rewards. Cochrane has been described as " a destroying angel with a limited income and a turn for politics." Anyway he was mis- understood, and left Chili disgusted, to attend to the liberation of Brazil from the Portuguese. But if the Chilians were thieves, the Brazilians proved to be both thieves and cowards. Reporting to the Brazilian government that all their cartridges, fuses, guns, powder, spars and sails, were alike rotten, and all their men an encumbrance, he dismantled a squadron to find equipment for a single ship, the Pedro Primeiro. This he manned with British and Yankee adventurers. He had two other small but fairly THE ALMIRANTE COCHRANE 361 ^ectiv- -Mp. when he commenced to threaten Bahia. four hu^d "'*'!r •r«"*»* ^'''-""'P'- """""t'i ,h,n. A -" ""^ "«•'*''" K""'- «^«"ty merchant Dublos blockade reduced the whole to starvation tt.e threat of hi, fireworks sent them into convSns' and the.r leaders resolved on flight to Portugal. So the troops were embarked, the rich people t^k shb ro"whrr;"' *•" ^''"'''^°" «cort:^'£ fifte,n 7 .f u"" ""' «""""* '" 'he Offing. For fifteen days he hung in the rear of that fleet, cutting off sh,ps as they straggled. He had not a man to spare for charge of his prizes, but when he caught a sh,p he ^aved her water casks, disabled her rifgW lu^ :r''^ °"'^ '"" ^'°'' '"e wind back tf Bahia, and threw every weapon overboard. He ca^ tured seventy odd ships, half the troops, all the trea^ hi; 7f\^f out-maneuvered the war fleet so tha^ he could not be caught, and only let thirteen wretched vessels escape to Lisbon. Such a deed of war h« never been matched in the world's annals, and Coch! «ne followed it by forcing the whole of NorSm Brazil to an abject surrender. Like the patriots of Chili and Peru, the Brazilians p-atefuny rewarded their liberator by cheating Wm out of h>s pay; so next he turned to deliver Gree™ Jom the Turks. Ve^ soon he found that even he Brazilians were perfect gentlemen compared with the Greek patriots, and the heart-sick man went home England was sorry for the way she had treated her he o, gave back his naval rank and made him admiral stor .hTT"''"'""''""^ °^ " S""^'' fl«=^t at sea. re- stored his banner as a Knight of the Bath in Henry II 36a C.NPTAlNS OF ADVENTURE VII's chapel, granted a pension, and at the end, found him a resting-place in the Abbey. On hit father's death, he succeeded to the earldom of Dun- donald, and down to i860, when the old man went to his rest, his life was devoted to untiring service. He was among the first inventors to apply coal gas to light English streets and homes ; he designed the boilers long in use by the English navy ; made a bitumen con- crete for paving; and offered plans for the reduction of Sebastopol which would have averted all the horrors of the siege. Yet eVen to his eightieth year he was apt to shock and terrify all official persons, and when he was buried in the nave of the Abbey, Lord Brough- am pronounced his strange obituary. " What," he exclaimed at the grave side, " no cabinet minister, no officer of state to grace this great man's funeral ! " Perhaps they were still scared of the poor old hero. LV A.D. 1823 THE SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS pAR back in the long ago time New Zealand was * a crowded happy land. Big Maori fortress v.nagej, crowned the hilltop,, broad farms covered •eason the people feasted between sleeps, or should prov.s,ons fail, sacked the next parish 'fir a lHjpy Th,*- ;,, """"^ P""'*'" *«^« "<=k«d and eaten that w the course of time the chiefs led their Ss edible village, but still the individual citizen fd crowded after meals, and all was well Then came the Pakehas, the white men. trading with muskets for sale, and the tribe that failed to Till" ? '"' *'■*•' "" ^'^ «-" -Ped out A musket cost a ton of flax, and to pile up enough to cZn""" " "'."'? '""^ '""'' '«'^« ''^ hill fortre^; to camp m unwholesome flax swamps. The peoDle woriced themselves thin to buy guns, ^wder :n5Tron tooU for farmmg. but they cherished their Pakeha and ifr KV *''"'"'" '■" 'P"""' =''"e« oi Ae chief, and >f a white man was eaten, it was clear proof tha ?ha«:ter T? "til'?' °' ' «>-'« 'detestlbte cnaracter. The good Pakehas became Maori war- 36J 3^4 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE riors, a little particular as to their meat being really pig, but otherwise well mannered and popular. Now of these Pakeha Maoris, one has left a book. He omitted his name from the book of Old New Zea- land, and never mentioned dates, but tradition says he was Mr. F. C. Maning, and that he lived as a Maori and trader for forty years, from 1823 to 1863 when the work was published. In the days when Mr. Maning reached the North Island a trader waS valued at twenty times his weight in muskets, equivalent say, to the sum total of the British National Debt. Runaway sailors however, were quite cheap. "Two men of this description were hospitably entertained one night by a chief, a very particular friend of mine, who, to pay himself for his trouble and outlay, ate one of them next morning." Maning came ashore on the back of a warrior by the name of Melons, who capsized in an ebb tide run- ning like a sluice, at which the white man, displeased, held the native's head under water by way of punish- ment When they got ashore Melons wanted to get even, so challenged the Pakeha to a wrestling match. Both were in the pink of condition, the Maori, twenty- five years of age, and a heavy-weight, the other a boy full of animal spirits and tough as leather. After the battle Melons sat up rather dazed, offered his hand, and venting his entire stock of English, said " How do you do?" But then came a powerful chief, by name Relation- eater. "Pretty work this," he began, "good work. I won't stand this not at all! not at all! not at all! " (Tlie last sentence took three jumps, a step and a THE SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS 365 pZ^TV° ''^ T""' *'■•"«=•) "Who killed the ine mf pi T' ^"°"'- ^°" *■■* » "'« «"-". bill- ing mj- Pakeha ... we shall be called the ' pkeha k>nk>llers '; I shall be sick with shame; the plkehf^H n^ bones . (Here poor Melones burst out cryine shoes" ThrpM'^i"" '' ""= ^''' Wher?tf,f Shoes? The Pakeha ,s robbed! he is murdered!" Here a wild howl from Melons ""J^aered! The local trader took Mr. Maning to live with him really and truly belonged to Relation-eater. Not long had he been settled when there occurred a meetW between his tribe and another, a game of bluff when mostT'T °'.^°"' '''''' ''^""d^he splendid Haka Sw"" oldt?/"""'*'"^ °' alf ceremonfal : Atterward old Relat.on-eater singled out the horri- ble savage who had begun the wfr-dance. and these rted ™ *;"'"=' T'^"'""'"' '°' '^ full half-Jour! seated on the ground hanging on each other's necks gave vent to a chorus of skilfully modulated howHn'' So there was peace," and during the ceremoZ Manmg came upon a circle of wh^at seemed to ^ Maon chiefs, until drawing near he found that thei^ noddmg heads had nobody underneath. R w heal carty the robes, Lookmg at the 'eds, sir?" asked an English sailor. "'Eds was ^c.rry scarce- W had to tatt a slave a bit ago. and'the" , al^ t^ away, tattooin' and all! " "° "What!" " Bolted before he was fit tr> till " c,:j .u ■, mournful to think how disL^'^.TcoS ^""' 366 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Once the head chief, having need to punish a rebellious vassal, sent Relation-eater, who plundered and burned the offending village. The vassal de- camped with his tribe. "Well, about three months after this, about day- light I was aroused by a great uproar .... Out I ran at once and perceived that M — 's premises were being sacked by the rebellious vassal who . . . was taking this means of revenging himself for the rough handling he had received from our chief. Men were rushing in mad haste through the smashed windows and doors, loadec^ with everything they could lay hands upon .... A large canoe was floating near to the house, and was being rapidly filled with plunder. I saw a fat old Maori woman who was washerwoman, being dragged along the ground by a huge fellow who was trying to tear from her grasp one of my shirts, to which she clung with perfect desperation. I per- ceived at a glance that the faithful old creature would probably save a sleeve. "An old man-of-war's man defending his washing, called out, ' Hit out, sir I . . . our mob will be here in five minutes I ' " The odds were terrible, but ... I at once floored a native who was rushing by me .... I then per- ceived that he was one of our own people ... so to balance things I knocked down another ! and then felt myself seized round the waist from behind. "The old sailor was down now but fighting three men at once, while his striped shirt and canvas trousers still hung proudly on the fence. " Then came our mob to the rescue and the assail- ants fled. THE SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS 367 i.If^""' *'T* ""*'■ "''^ '^ '■"'«= i"«dent worth „ot- mg happened at „,y friend M_'s place. Our £i hadior sonae t>me back a sort of dispute with anoth m^te. . . The question was at last brought to a fair hearmg at my friend's house. The arX„2 the ^ "^^ T' ^"^ '"^""'^^ - -"ch soTat S the course of the arbitration our chief and thirtj of h« prmcpal witnesses were shot dead in a hea^^ fore my friend's door, and sixty others badiv j<}£fr, stress s.r.is hmi and who. as was quite correct in such ca^es sho and ate all his stock, sheep, pigs, ducks «eL owls. etc.. all^. hig, compliment fo\'imse^J;'hS honors-,<;„g:.."' ' "°'' '°*^^''-' ^"-'- *«« Mr Maning took this poor gentleman's place as trader, and earnestly studied native etiquette on which his comments are always deliciousV funn? IZn T'""''"^ "r« ''" P*"*^ -h'en t"« Ss^ ^d*^^/ ^r* ^P'^''*'*' ^''^ ^^^ W^li'w,. *° "P'*" '••* ^"'S more clearly S^'hit. V?- ^"^'^ *'^' *^«t=ned to k n th«a both with his tomahawk, then rushed into the b^^m, dr^d out all the bedclothes, and bu™ them on the kitchen fire." S^^'/^?'' .Sydney paper, the desperado M Friend,' said I ;• my advice to you is to be " He made no answer but a scowl of defiance. ' I 368 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE V am thinking, friend, that this is my house,' said I, and springing upon him I placed my foot to his shoulder, and gave him a shove which would have sent most people heels over head. . . . But quick as lightning ... he bounded from the ground, flung his mat away over his head, and struck a furious blow at my head with his tomahawk. I caught the tomahawk in full descent; the edge grazed my hand; but my arm, stiffened like a bar of iron, arrested the blow. He made one furious, but ineffectual attempt to wrest the tomahawk from my grasp; and then we seized one another roun i the middle, and struggled like maniacs in the eu>-eavor to dash each other against the boarded floor; I holding on for dear life to the tomahawk . . . fastened to his wrist by a strong thong of leather. ... At last he got a lock round my leg; and had it not been for the table on which we both fell, and which in smashing to pieces, broke our fall, I might have been disabled. . . . We now rolled over and over on the floor like two mad bull- dogs; he trying to bite, and I trying to stun him by dashing his bullet head against the floor. Up again I another furious struggle in course of which both our heads and half our bodies were dashed through the two glass windows, and every single article of furni- ture was reduced to atoms. Down again, rolling like made, and dancing about among the rubbish — wreck of the house. Such a battle it was that I can hardly describe it. " By this time we were both covered with blood from various wounds. . . . My friend was trying to kill me, and I was only trying to disarm and tie him up ... as there were no wtnesses. If I THE SOUTH SEA CANNIBALS 369 kaied him, r might have serious difficulties with his "Up again; another terrific tussle for the tnm=. S'baZ '^'" *'* " ^"^"^ --^ so thif^if Tnd h^H !r r"* °" • • • for a full hour . we friend h.gh m my arms, and dashed him pantin; ;, g^°""°- His God has deserted him. beate"; rmeS..''*''"'*^^' '="-«'" ^- i;I/'- '"^t"*'°"''^' '"=* 8° ^'^ 'eft ann. Quick as lightnmg he snatched at a large carvine fork Th tn^i:SirTr^ •^^'^^''^ '^ ^^^^ tne Handle and it rolled away out of his reach- mv We was «ved. He then struck me wS This 71 b~fo r °" '!"';''' ^' *•"' head, cauling t"^ Wood to flow out of my mouth. One more sho,+ struggle and he was conquered ^ " But now I had at last got angry ... j „^,t tj., fold "him t: T" °^ '"''' "^ "-'0 '^■« «"" fold him to get up and die standing. I clutched th^ fomahawk for the coup de grace At th!. • ! thundering sound of feet . T a whtL friL " ' . . mv f ripn,i= I « * "'■'* coming toading the canoe with my goods and chattels These were now brought back " 370 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE hand the first man in a native battle . . . which I witnessed .... At last having attempted to murder another native, he was shot through the heart ... so there died." Mr. Maning was never again molested, and mak- ing full allowance for their foibles, speaks with a very tender love for that race of warriors. LVI A.D. 1840 A TALE OF VENGEANCE I^».?'..^''^l °^ •*' «^''»''f''thers, say ninety years to the M.ss>ss.pp,. and that river was their frontier The great plains and deserts beyond, all specWed to the red Indian tribes, who hunted the buffalo ^Lt^f^ Sp.nt and stole one another's hor^s, without raymg any heed to the white men. For the Rismg Sun Land in search of beaver skins. The These white men had strange and potent magic, hnd Ae fire-water and the firearms which made them «t^'.r^l*' f^'- ^°""*^« * *hite man «tered the tnbes and became an Indian, winning his ^ as warrior, marrying, setting up his lodge, and ^J"^,*°*««^»<»<=of<*«f. OfsuchTa^S Bedcwourth. part white, part negro, a great war- rto , captain of the Dog Soldier regiment in the 371 373 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE Crow nation. His lodge was full of robes ; his wives, by whom he allied himself to the leading families, were always well fed, well dressed, and well behaved. When he came home with his Dog Soldiers he always returned in triumph, with ban'^s of stolen horses, scalps in plenty. Long afterward, when he was an old man, Jim told his adventures to a writer, who made them into a book, and in this volume he tells the story of Fine Leaf, an Indian girl. She was little more than a child, when, in an attack of the Cheyennes upon the village, her twin brother was killed. Then, in a passion of rage and grief, she cut off one of her fingers as a sacrifice to the Great Spirit, and took oath that she would avenge her brother's death, never giving herself in marriage until she had taken a hun- dred trophies in battle. The warriors laughed when she asked leave to join them on the war-path, but Jim let her come with the Dog Soldiers. Kapidly che learned the trade of war, able as most of the men with bow, spear and ^un, running like an antdope, riding gloriously; and yet withal a woman, modest and gentle except in battle, famed for lithe grace and unusual beauty. " Flease many me," said Jim, as she rode beside him. "Yes, when the pine leaves turn yellow." Jim IliOught this over, ahd complained that pine leaves do not tum-yellttw. "Fliiasel" he said. " Y*s," answered Fine Leaf, " when you ste s rtd- IfeaAd liidibi." A TALE OF VENGEANCE ... — 373 the animal in its de=,fh7 i°^' P'""'"K •••"• »<> the lance^Tret^dTllL'- .f;- ^^^ "au.ed out horse," says Tim "„f . P'^"« "P"" *e «lashed into i co^«r HeThor' •"•"' ""^ '^^ after killed, and Tf^.^d ler LThT'^'^ enough of the usual kinrf Vf' "^"^ ''*'' *'^e» me usual kind, whereas now this girl's 374 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE presence at his side in battle gave him increased strength and courage, while daily his love for her flamed higher. At times the girl vras sulky because she was denied the rank of warrior, shut out from the war-path secret, the hidden matters known only to fighting men. This secret was that the warriors shared all knowl- edge in common as to the frailties of women who erred, but Pine Leaf was barred out. There is no space here for a tithe of her battles, while that great vengeance for her brother piled up the tale of scalps. In one victorious action, charging at Jim's side, she Was struck by a buUfet which broke her left arm. With the wounded arm nursed in her bosom she grew desperate, and three warriors fell to her a:: before she fainted from loss of blood. Before she was well recovered from this wound, she was afield again, despite Jim's pleading and in defiance of his orders, and in an invasion of the Cheyenne country, was shot through the body. " Well," she said afterward, as she lay at the point of death, " I'm sorry that I did not listen to my chief, but I gained two trophies." The very rescue of her had cost the lives of four warriors. While she lay through many months of pain, tended by Jim's head wife, her bosom friend, and by Black Panther, Jim's little son, the chief was away fighting the great campaigns, whi made him famous through all the Indian tribes. Medicine Calf was his title now, and his rank, head chief, for he was one of two sovereigns of equal standing, who reigned over the two tribes of the Crow nation. While Pine Leaf sat in the lodge, her heart was A TALE OF VENGEANCE 375 oying, but at last she was able to ride again to war So came a disastrous expedition, in which Medicine Calf and Pme Leaf, with fifty Crow warriors and an American gentleman named Hunter, their guest were caught in a pit on a hillside, hemmed round by several hundred Blackfeet. They had to cut their way through the enemy's force, and when Hunter fell, the chief stayed behind to die with him. Half the Crows were slain, and still the Blackfeet pressed hardly upon them. Medicine Calf was at the rear Jl !m.^'??. ^* ^'°'""' ^''^- " ^^y ^° yo" ««t to be killed ? she asked. " If you wish to die, let us re- turn together. I will die with you." They escaped, most of them wounded who sur- vived, and almost d>ing of cold and hunger before they came to the distant village of their tribe. Jim's next adventure was a horse-stealing raid into Canada, when he was absent fourteen months, and the Crows mourned Medicine Calf for dead. On his triumphant return, mounted on a piebald chaiger the chief had presented to her. Pine Leaf rode with him once more in his campaigns. During one uf these raids, being afoot, she pursued and caught a young aackfoot warrior, then made him her prisoner. He became her slave, her brother by tribal law. and rose to eminence as her private warrior. Jim had founded a trading post for the white men, and the United States paid him four hundred pounds a year for keeping his oeople from slaughtering pio- neers. So growing rich, he tired o' Indian warfare, and left his tribe for a long journey. As a white man he came to the house of his own sisters m the city of Saint Louis, but they seemed 376 CAPTAINS OF ADVENTURE ftranccrt now, and hit heart began to cry for the wild life. Then news came that hit Crows were slaying white men, and in haste he rode to the rescue, to find his warriors besieging Fort Cass. He came among them, their head chief, Medicine Calf, black with fury at their misdeeds, so that the council sat bewQdered, wondering how to sue for his forgiveness. Into that council came Pine Leaf. "Warriors," she cried, "I make sacrifice for ray people!" She told them of her brother's death and of her great vengeance, now completed in that she had slain a hundred meli to be his servants in the other world. So she laid down her arms. " I have hurled my last lance; I am a warrior no more. To-day Medicine Calf has returned. He has returned angry at the follies of his people, and they fear that he will again leave them. They believe that he loves me, and that my devotion to him will attach him to the nation. I, therefore, bestow myself upon him ; per- haps he will be contented with me and will leave us no more. Warriors, farewell I" So Jim Beckwourth, who was Medicine Calf, head chief of the Crow nation, was wedded to Pine Leaf, their great heroine. Alas for Jim's morab, they did not live happily ever after, for the scalawag deserted all his wives, titles and honors, to become a mean trader, selling that fire- water which sapped the manhood of the warrior tribes, and left them naked in the bitter days to come. Pine Leaf and her kindred are gone away into the shadows, and over their wide lands spread green fields, now glittering cities of the great republic. THB END