CHAPTER II.

In an instant the mountaineers had sprung from their seats, and, seizing the ever-ready rifle, each one had thrown himself on the ground a few paces beyond the light of the fire, (for it was now nightfall;) but not a word escaped them, as, lying close, with their keen eyes directed towards the gloom of the thicket, near which the camp was placed, with rifles cocked, they waited a renewal of the attack. Presently the leader of the band, no other than Killbuck, who had so lately been recounting some of his experiences across the plains, and than whom no more crafty woodsman or more expert trapper ever tracked a deer or grained a beaverskin, raised his tall, leather-clad form, and, placing his hand over his mouth, made the prairie ring with the wild protracted note of an Indian war-whoop. This was instantly repeated from the direction where the animals belonging to the camp were grazing, under the charge of the horse-guard, and three shrill whoops answered the warning of the leader, and showed that the guard was on the alert, and understood the signal. However, with this manifestation of their presence, the Indians appeared to be satisfied; or, what is more probable, the act of aggression had been committed by some daring young warrior, who, being out on his first expedition, desired to strike the first _coup_, and thus signalise himself at the outset of the campaign. After waiting some few minutes, expecting a renewal of the attack, the mountaineers in a body rose from the ground and made towards the animals, with which they presently returned to the camp; and, after carefully hobbling and securing them to pickets firmly driven into the ground, and mounting an additional guard, they once more assembled round the fire, after examining the neighbouring thicket, relit their pipes, and puffed away the cheering weed as composedly as if no such being as a Redskin, thirsting for their lives, was within a thousand miles of their perilous encampment.

"If ever thar was bad Injuns on these plains," at last growled Killbuck, biting hard the pipe-stem between his teeth, "it's these Rapahos, and the meanest kind at that."

"Can't beat the Blackfeet any how," chimed in one La Bonté, from the Yellow Stone country, and a fine, handsome specimen of a mountaineer. "However, one of you quit this arrow out of my hump," he continued, bending forwards to the fire, and exhibiting an arrow sticking out under his right shoulder-blade, and a stream of blood trickling down his buckskin coat from the wound.

This his nearest neighbour essayed to do; but finding, after a tug, that it "would not come," expressed his opinion that the offending weapon would have to be "butchered" out. This was accordingly effected with the ready blade of a scalp-knife; and a handful of beaver-fur being placed on the wound, and secured by a strap of buckskin round the body, the wounded man donned his hunting-shirt once more, and coolly set about lighting his pipe, his rifle lying across his lap, cocked and ready for use.

It was now near midnight--dark and misty; and the clouds, rolling away to the eastward from the lofty ridges of the Rocky Mountains, were gradually obscuring the little light which was afforded by the dim stars. As the lighter vapours faded from the mountains, a thick black cloud succeeded them, and settled over the loftier peaks of the chain, which were faintly visible through the gloom of night, whilst a mass of fleecy scud soon overspread the whole sky. A hollow moaning sound crept through the valley, and the upper branches of the cotton woods, with their withered leaves, began to rustle with the first breath of the coming storm. Huge drops of rain fell at intervals, hissing as they fell on the blazing fires, and pattered on the skins which the hunters were hurriedly laying on their exposed baggage. The mules near the camp cropped the grass with quick and greedy bites round the circuit of their pickets, as if conscious that the storm would soon prevent their feeding, and were already humping their backs as the chilling rain fell upon their flanks. The prairie wolves crept closer to the camp, and in the confusion that ensued from the hurry of the trappers to cover the perishable portions of their equipment, contrived more than once to dart off with a piece of meat, when their peculiar and mournful chiding would be heard as they fought for the possession of the ravished morsel.

As soon as every thing was duly protected, the men set to work to spread their beds, those who had not troubled themselves to erect a shelter getting under the lee of the piles of packs and saddles; while Killbuck, disdaining even such care of his carcass, threw his buffalo robe on the bare ground, declaring his intention to "take" what was coming at all hazards, and "any how." Selecting a high spot, he drew his knife and proceeded to cut drains round it, to prevent the water running into him as he lay; then taking a single robe he carefully spread it, placing under the end farthest from the fire a large stone brought from the creek. Having satisfactorily adjusted this pillow, he adds another robe to the one already laid, and places over all a Navajo blanket, supposed to be impervious to rain. Then he divests himself of his pouch and powder-horn, which, with his rifle, he places inside his bed, and quickly covers up lest the wet reach them. Having performed these operations to his satisfaction, he lighted his pipe by the hissing embers of the half-extinguished fire (for by this time the rain was pouring in torrents,) and going the rounds of the picketed animals, and cautioning the guard round the camp to keep their "eyes skinned, for there would be 'powder burned' before morning," he returned to the fire, and kicking with his mocassined foot the slumbering ashes, squats down before it, and thus soliloquises:--

"Thirty year have I been knocking about these mountains from Missoura's head as far sothe as the starving Gila. I've trapped a 'heap,'[24] and many a hundred pack of beaver I've traded in my time, wagh! What has come of it, and whar's the dollars as ought to be in my possibles? Whar's the ind of this, I say? Is a man to be hunted by Injuns all his days? Many's the time I've said I'd strike for Taos, and trap a squaw, for this child's getting old, and feels like wanting a woman's face about his lodge for the balance of his days; but when it comes to caching of the old traps, I've the smallest kind of heart, I have. Certain, the old state comes across my mind now and again, but who's thar to remember my old body? But them diggings gets too over crowded now-a-days, and its hard to fetch breath amongst them big bands of corncrackers to Missoura. Beside, it goes against natur to leave bufler meat and feed on hog; and them white gals are too much like picturs, and a deal too 'fofarraw' (fanfaron.) No; darn the settlements, I say. It won't shine, and whar's the dollars? Howsever, beaver's 'bound to rise;' human natur can't go on selling beaver a dollar a pound; no, no, that arn't a going to shine much longer, I know. Them was the times when this child first went to the mountains: six dollars the plew--old 'un or kitten. Wagh! but it's bound to rise, I says agin; and hyar's a coon knows whar to lay his hand on a dozen pack right handy, and then he'll take the Taos trail, wagh!"

[24] An Indian is always a "heap" hungry or thirsty--loves a "heap"--is a "heap" brave--in fact, "heap" is tantamount to very much.

Thus soliloquising, Killbuck knocked the ashes from his pipe, and placed it in the gaily ornamented case which hung round his neck, drew his knife-belt a couple of holes tighter, and once more donned his pouch and powder-horn, took his rifle, which he carefully covered with the folds of his Navajo blanket, and striding into the darkness, cautiously reconnoitred the vicinity of the camp. When he returned to the fire he sat himself down as before, but this time with his rifle across his lap; and at intervals his keen gray eye glanced piercingly around, particularly towards an old, weatherbeaten, and grizzled mule, who now, old stager as she was, having filled her belly, was standing lazily over her picket pin, with head bent down and her long ears flapping over her face, her limbs gathered under her, and with back arched to throw off the rain, tottering from side to side as she rests and sleeps.

"Yep, old gal!" cried Killbuck to the animal, at the same time picking a piece of burnt wood from the fire and throwing it at her, at which the mule gathered itself up and cocked her ears as she recognised her master's voice. "Yep, old gal! and keep your nose open; thar's brown skin about, I'm thinkin', and maybe you'll get 'roped' (lasso'd) by a Rapaho afore mornin." Again the old trapper settled himself before the fire; and soon his head began to nod, as drowsiness stole over him. Already he was in the land of dreams; revelling amongst bands of "fat cow," or hunting along a stream well peopled with beaver; with no Indian "sign" to disturb him, and the merry rendezvous in close perspective, and his peltry selling briskly at six dollars the plew, and galore of alcohol to ratify the trade. Or, perhaps, threading the back trail of his memory, he passed rapidly through the perilous vicissitudes of his hard, hard life--starving one day, revelling in abundance the next; now beset by whooping savages thirsting for his blood, baying his enemies like the hunted deer, but with the unflinching courage of a man; now, all care thrown aside, secure and forgetful of the past, a welcome guest in the hospitable trading fort; or back, as the trail gets fainter, to his childhood's home in the brown forests of old Kentuck, tended and cared for--no thought his, but to enjoy the homminy and johnny cakes of his thrifty mother. Once more, in warm and well remembered homespun, he sits on the snake fence round the old clearing, and munching his hoe-cake at set of sun, listens to the mournful note of the whip-poor-will, or the harsh cry of the noisy catbird, or watches the agile gambols of the squirrels as they chase each other, chattering the while, from branch to branch of the lofty tameracks, wondering how long it will be before he will be able to lift his father's heavy rifle, and use it against the tempting game. Sleep, however, sat lightly on the eyes of the wary mountaineer, and a snort from the old mule in an instant stretched his every nerve; and, without a movement of his body, the keen eye fixed itself upon the mule, which now was standing with head bent round, and eyes and ears pointed in one direction, snuffing the night air and snorting with apparent fear. A low sound from the wakeful hunter roused the others from their sleep; and raising their bodies from their well-soaked beds, a single word apprised them of their danger.

"Injuns!"

Scarcely was the word out of Killbuck's lips, when, above the howling of the furious wind, and the pattering of the rain, a hundred savage yells broke suddenly upon their ears from all directions round the camp; a score of rifle-shots rattled from the thicket, and a cloud of arrows whistled through the air, at the same time that a crowd of Indians charged upon the picketed animals. "Owgh, owgh--owgh--owgh--g-h-h." "A foot, by gor!" shouted Killbuck, "and the old mule gone at that. On 'em, boys, for old Kentuck!" and rushed towards his mule, which was jumping and snorting mad with fright, as a naked Indian strove to fasten a lariat round her nose, having already cut the rope which fastened her to the plcket-pin.

"Quit that, you cussed devil!" roared the trapper, as he jumped upon the savage, and without raising his rifle to his shoulder, made a deliberate thrust with the muzzle at his naked breast, striking him full, and at the same time pulling the trigger, actually driving the Indian two paces backwards with the shock, when he fell in a heap and dead. But at the same moment, an Indian, sweeping his club round his head, brought it with fatal force down upon Killbuck's skull, and staggering for a moment, he threw out his arms wildly into the air, and fell headlong to the ground.

"Owgh! owgh, owgh-h-h!" cried the Rapaho as the white fell, and, striding over the prostrate body, seized with his left hand the middle lock of the trapper's long hair, and drew his knife round the head to separate the scalp from the skull. As he bent over to his work, the trapper named La Bonté caught sight of the strait his companion was in, and quick as thought rushed at the Indian, burying his knife to the hilt between his shoulders, and with a gasping shudder, the Rapaho fell dead upon the prostrate body of his foe.

The attack, however, lasted but a few seconds. The dash at the animals had been entirely successful, and, driving them before them, with loud cries, the Indians disappeared quickly in the darkness. Without waiting for daylight, two of the three trappers who alone were to be seen, and who had been within the shanties at the time of attack, without a moment's delay commenced packing two horses, which having been fastened to the shanties had escaped the Indians, and placing their squaws upon them, showering curses and imprecations on their enemies, left the camp, fearful of another onset, and resolved to retreat and câche themselves until the danger was over. Not so La Bonté, who, stout and true, had done his best in the fight, and now sought the body of his old comrade, from which, before he could examine the wounds, he had first to remove the corpse of the Indian he had slain. Killbuck still breathed. He had been stunned; but, revived by the cold rain beating upon his face, he soon opened his eyes, recognising his trusty friend, who, sitting down, lifted his head into his lap, and wiped away the blood which streamed from the wounded scalp.

"Is the top-knot gone, boy?" asked Killbuck; "for my head feels queersome, I tell you."

"Thar's the Injun as felt like lifting it," answered the other, kicking the dead body with his foot.

"Wagh! boy, you've struck a coup; so scalp the nigger right off, and then fetch me a drink."

The morning broke clear and cold. With the exception of a light cloud which hung over Pike's Peak, the sky was spotless; and a perfect calm had succeeded the boisterous winds of the previous night. The creek was swollen and turbid with the rains; and as La Bonté proceeded a little distance down the bank to find a passage to the water, he suddenly stopped short, and an involuntary cry escaped him. Within a few feet of the bank lay the body of one of his companions who had formed the guard at the time of the Indians' attack. It was lying on the face, pierced through the chest with an arrow which was buried to the very feathers, and the scalp torn from the bloody skull. Beyond, and all within a hundred yards, lay the three others, dead and similarly mutilated. So certain had been the aim, and so close the enemy, that each had died without a struggle, and consequently had been unable to alarm the camp. La Bonté, with a glance at the bank, saw at once that the wily Indians had crept along the creek, the noise of the storm facilitating their approach undiscovered, and crawling up the bank, had watched their opportunity to shoot simultaneously the four hunters who were standing guard.

Returning to Killbuck, he apprised him of the melancholy fate of their companions, and held a council of war as to their proceedings. The old hunter's mind was soon made up. "First," said he, "I get back my old mule; she's carried me and my traps these twelve years, and I aint a goin' to lose her yet. Second, I feel like taking hair, and some Rapahós has to 'go under' for this night's work. Third, We have got to câche the beaver. Fourth, We take the Injun trail, wharever it leads."

No more daring mountaineer than La Bonté ever trapped a beaver, and no counsel could have more exactly tallied with his own inclination than the law laid down by old Killbuck.

"Agreed," was his answer, and forthwith he set about forming a câche. In this instance they had not sufficient time to construct a regular one, so contented themselves with securing their packs of beaver in buffalo robes, and tying them in the forks of several cotton-woods, under which the camp had been made. This done, they lit a fire, and cooked some buffalo meat; and, whilst smoking a pipe, carefully cleaned their rifles, and filled their horns and pouches with good store of ammunition.

A prominent feature in the character of the hunters of the far west is their quick determination and resolve in cases of extreme difficulty and peril, and their fixedness of purpose, when any plan of operations has been laid requiring bold and instant action in carrying out. It is here that they so infinitely surpass the savage Indian, in bringing to a successful issue their numerous hostile expeditions against the natural foe of the white man in the wild and barbarous regions of the west. Ready to resolve as they are prompt to execute, and with the advantage of far greater dash and daring with equal subtlety and caution, they possess great advantage over the vacillating Indian, whose superstitious mind in a great degree paralyses the physical energy of his active body; and in waiting for propitious signs and seasons before he undertakes an enterprise, he loses the opportunity which his white and more civilised enemy knows so well to profit by.

Killbuck and La Bonté were no exceptions to this characteristic rule, and, before the sun was a hand's-breadth above the eastern horizon, the two hunters were running on the trail of the victorious Indians. Striking from the creek where the night attack was made, they crossed to another known as Kioway, running parallel to Bijou, a few hours' journey westward, and likewise heading in the "divide." Following this to its forks, they struck into the upland prairies lying at the foot of the mountains; and crossing to the numerous water-courses which feed the creek called "Vermillion" or "Cherry," they pursued the trail over the mountain-spurs until it reached a fork of the Boiling Spring. Here the war-party had halted and held a consultation, for from this point the trail turned at a tangent to the westward, and entered the rugged gorges of the mountains. It was now evident to the two trappers that their destination was the Bayou Salade,--a mountain valley which is a favourite resort of the buffalo in the winter season, and also, and for this reason, often frequented by the Yuta Indians as their wintering ground. That the Rapahos were on a war expedition against the Yutas, there was little doubt; and Killbuck, who knew every inch of the ground, saw at once, by the direction the trail had taken, that they were making for the Bayou in order to surprise their enemies, and, therefore, were not following the usual Indian trail up the cañon of the Boiling Spring River. Having made up his mind to this, he at once struck across the broken ground lying at the foot of the mountains, steering a course a little to the eastward of north, or almost in the direction whence he had come: and then, pointing westward, about noon he crossed a mountain chain, and descending into a ravine through which a little rivulet tumbled over its rocky bed, he at once proved the correctness of his judgment by striking the Indian trail, now quite fresh, as it wound through the cañon along the bank of the stream. The route he had followed, which would have been impracticable to pack animals, had saved at least half-a-day's journey, and brought them within a short distance of the object of their pursuit; for, at the head of the gorge, a lofty bluff presenting itself, the hunters ascended to the summit, and, looking down, descried at their very feet the Indian camp, with their own stolen cavallada feeding quietly round.

"Wagh!" exclaimed both the hunters in a breath. "And thar's the old ga'l at that," chuckled Killbuck, as he recognised his old grizzled mule making good play at the rich buffalo grass with which these mountain valleys abound.

"If we don't make 'a raise' afore long, I wouldn't say so. Thar plans is plain to this child as beaver sign. They're after Yute hair, as certain as this gun has got hind-sights; but they ar'nt agoin' to pack them animals after 'em, and have crawled like 'rattlers' along this bottom to câche 'em, till they come back from the Bayou,--and maybe they'll leave half a dozen 'soldiers'[25] with 'em."

[25] The young untried warriors of the Indians are thus called.

How right the wily trapper was in his conjectures will be shortly proved. Meanwhile, with his companion, he descended the bluff, and pushing his way into a thicket of dwarf pine and cedar, sat down on a log, and drew from an end of the blanket, which was strapped on his shoulder, a portion of a buffalo's liver, which they both discussed with infinite relish--and _raw_; eating in lieu of bread (an unknown luxury in these parts) sundry strips of dried fat. To have kindled a fire would have been dangerous, since it was not impossible that some of the Indians might leave their camp to hunt, when the smoke would at once have discovered the presence of enemies. A light was struck, however, for their pipes, and after enjoying this true consolation for some time, they laid a blanket on the ground, and, side by side, soon fell asleep.

If Killbuck had been a prophet, or the most prescient of "medicine men," he could not have more exactly predicted the movements in the Indian camp. About three hours before "sun-down," he rose and shook himself, which movement was sufficient to awaken his companion. Telling La Bonté to lie down again and rest, he gave him to understand that he was about to reconnoitre the enemy's camp; and after examining carefully his rifle, and drawing his knife-belt a hole or two tighter, he proceeded on his dangerous errand. Ascending the same bluff from whence he had first discovered the Indian camp, he glanced rapidly round, and made himself master of the features of the ground--choosing a ravine by which he might approach the camp more closely, and without danger of being discovered. This was soon effected; and in half an hour the trapper was lying on his belly on the summit of a pine-covered bluff, which overlooked the Indians within easy rifle-shot, and so perfectly concealed by the low spreading branches of the cedar and arbor-vitæ, that not a particle of his person could be detected; unless, indeed, his sharp, twinkling gray eye contrasted too strongly with the green boughs that covered the rest of his face. Moreover, there was no danger of their hitting upon his trail, for he had been careful to pick his steps on the rock-covered ground, so that not a track of his mocassin was visible. Here he lay, still as a carcagien in wait for a deer, only now and then shaking the boughs as his body quivered with a suppressed chuckle, when any movement in the Indian camp caused him to laugh inwardly at his (if they had known it) unwelcome propinquity. He was not a little surprised, however, to discover that the party was much smaller than he had imagined, counting only forty warriors; and this assured him that the band had divided, one half taking the Yute trail by the Boiling Spring, the other (the one before him) taking a longer circuit in order to reach the Bayou, and make the attack on the Yutas, in a different direction.

At this moment the Indians were in deliberation. Seated in a large circle round a very small fire,[26] the smoke from which ascended in a thin straight column, they each in turn puffed a huge cloud of smoke from three or four long cherry-stemmed pipes, which went the round of the party; each warrior touching the ground with the heel of the pipe-bowl, and turning the stem upwards and away from him, as "medicine" to the Great Spirit, before he himself inhaled the fragrant kinnik-kinnik. The council, however, was not general, for no more than fifteen of the older warriors took part in it, the others sitting outside and at some little distance from the circle. Behind each were his arms--bow and quiver, and shield hanging from a spear stuck in the ground, and a few guns in ornamented covers of buckskin were added to some of the equipments.

[26] There is a great difference between an Indian's fire and a white's. The former places, the ends of logs to burn gradually; the latter, the centre, besides making such a bonfire that the Indians truly say, that "The white makes a fire so hot that he cannot approach to warm himself by it."

Near the fire, and in the centre of the inner circle, a spear was fixed upright in the ground, and on this dangled the four scalps of the trappers killed the preceding night; and underneath them, affixed to the same spear, was the mystic "medicine bag," by which Killbuck knew that the band before him was under the command of the head chief of the tribe.

Towards the grim trophies on the spear, the warriors, who in turn addressed the council, frequently pointed--more than one, as he did so, making the gyratory motion of the right hand and arm, which the Indians use in describing that they have gained an advantage by skill or cunning. Then pointing westward, the speaker would thrust out his arm, extending his fingers at the same time, and closing and reopening them several times, meaning, that although four scalps already ornamented the "medicine" pole, they were as nothing compared to the numerous trophies they would bring from the Salt Valley, where they expected to find their hereditary enemies the Yutes. "That now was not the time to count their coups," (for at this moment one of the warriors rose from his seat, and, swelling with pride, advanced towards the spear, pointing to one of the scalps, and then striking his open hand on his naked breast, jumped into the air, as if about to go through the ceremony.) "That before many suns all their spears together would not hold the scalps they had taken, and that then they would return to their village, and spend a moon in relating their achievements, and counting coups."

All this Killbuck learned: thanks to his knowledge of the language of signs--a master of which, if even he have no ears or tongue, never fails to understand, and be understood by, any of the hundred tribes whose languages are perfectly distinct and different. He learned, moreover, that at sundown the greater part of the band would resume the trail, in order to reach the Bayou by the earliest dawn; and also, that no more than four or five of the younger warriors would remain with the captured animals. Still the hunter remained in his position until the sun had disappeared behind the ridge; when, taking up their arms, and throwing their buffalo robes on their shoulders, the war party of Rapahos, one behind the other, with noiseless step, and silent as the dumb, moved away from the camp; and, when the last dusky form had disappeared behind a point of rocks which shut in the northern end of the little valley or ravine, Killbuck withdrew his head from its screen, crawled backwards on his stomach from the edge of the bluff, and, rising from the ground, shook and stretched himself; then gave one cautious look around, and immediately proceeded to rejoin his companion.

"_Lave_, (get up,) boy," said Killbuck, as soon as he reached him. "Hyar's grainin' to do afore long,--and sun's about down, I'm thinking."

"Ready, old hos," answered La Bonté, giving himself a shake. "What's the sign like, and how many's the lodge?"

"Fresh, and five, boy. How do you feel?"

"_Half froze for hair._ Wagh!"

"We'll have moon to-night, and as soon as _she_ gets up, we'll make 'em 'come.'"

Killbuck then described to his companion what he had seen, and detailed his plan--which was simply to wait until the moon afforded sufficient light, approach the Indian camp and charge into it,--"lift" as much "hair" as they could, recover their animals, and start at once to the Bayou and join the friendly Yutes, warning them of the coming danger. The risk of falling in with either of the Rapaho bands was hardly considered; to avoid this, they trusted to their own foresight, and the legs of their mules, should they encounter them.

Between sundown and the rising of the moon, they had leisure to eat their supper, which, as before, consisted of raw buffalo-liver; after discussing which, Killbuck pronounced himself "a 'heap' better," and ready for "huggin."

In the short interval of almost perfect darkness which preceded the moonlight, and taking advantage of one of the frequent squalls of wind which howl down the narrow gorges of the mountains, these two determined men, with footsteps noiseless as the panther's, crawled to the edge of the little plateau of some hundred yards' square, where the five Indians in charge of the animals were seated round the fire, perfectly unconscious of the vicinity of danger. Several clumps of cedar bushes dotted the small prairie, and amongst these the well-hobbled mules and horses were feeding. These animals, accustomed to the presence of whites, would not notice the two hunters as they crept from clump to clump nearer to the fire, and also served, even if the Indians should be on the watch, to conceal their movements from them.

This the two men at once perceived; but old Killbuck knew that if he passed within sight or smell of his mule, he would be received with a hinny of recognition, which would at once alarm the enemy. He therefore first ascertained where his own animal was feeding, which luckily was at the farther side of the prairie, and would not interfere with his proceedings.

Threading their way amongst the feeding mules, they approached a clump of bushes about forty yards from the spot where the unconscious savages were seated smoking round the fire; and here they awaited, scarcely drawing breath the while, the moment when the moon rose above the mountain into the clear cold sky, and gave them light sufficient to make sure their work of bloody retribution. Not a pulsation in the hearts of these stern determined men beat higher than its wont; not the tremour of a nerve disturbed their frame. With lips compressed, they stood with ready rifles, the pistols loosened in their belts, and scalp-knives handy to their gripe. The lurid glow of the coming moon already shot into the sky above the ridge, which stood out in bolder relief against the light; and the luminary herself was just peering over the mountain, illuminating its pine-clad summit, and throwing its beams on an opposite peak, when Killbuck touched his companion's arm, and whispered, "Wait for the full light, boy."

At this moment, however, unseen by the trapper, the old and grizzled mule had gradually approached, as it fed along the plateau; and, when within a few paces of their retreat, a gleam of moonshine revealed to the animal the erect forms of the two whites. Suddenly she stood still and pricked her ears, and stretching out her neck and nose, snuffed the air. Well she knew her old master.

Killbuck, with eyes fixed upon the Indians, was on the point of giving the signal of attack to his comrade, when the shrill hinny of his mule reverberated through the gorge. The next instant the Indians were jumping to their feet and seizing their arms, when, with a loud shout, Killbuck, crying, "At 'em boy; give the niggurs h----!" rushed from his concealment, and with La Bonté by his side, yelling a fierce war-whoop, sprang upon the startled savages.

Panic-struck with the suddenness of the attack, the Indians scarcely knew where to run, and for a moment stood huddled together like sheep. Down dropped Killbuck on his knee, and stretching out his wiping stick, planted it on the ground to the extreme length of his arm. As methodically and as coolly as if about to aim at a deer, he raised his rifle to this rest and pulled the trigger. At the report an Indian fell forward on his face, at the same moment that La Bonté, with equal certainty of aim and like effect, discharged his own rifle.

The three surviving Indians, seeing that their assailants were but two, and knowing that their guns were empty, came on with loud yells. With the left hand grasping a bunch of arrows, and holding the bow already bent and arrow fixed, they steadily advanced, bending low to the ground to get their objects between them and the light, and thus render their aim more certain. The trappers, however, did not care to wait for them. Drawing their pistols, they charged at once; and although the bows twanged, and the three arrows struck their mark, on they rushed, discharging their pistols at close quarters; La Bonté throwing his empty one at the head of an Indian who was pulling his second arrow to its head at a yard distance, and drawing his knife at the same moment, made at him.

But the Indian broke and ran, followed by his living companion; and as soon as Killbuck could ram home another ball, he sent a shot flying after them as they scrambled up the mountain side, leaving in their fright and hurry their bows and shields on the ground.

The fight was over, and the two trappers confronted each other: "We've given 'em h--!" laughed Killbuck.

"_Well_, we have," answered the other, pulling an arrow out of his arm.--"Wagh!"

"We'll lift the hair, any how," continued the first, "afore the scalp's cold."

Taking his whetstone from the little sheath on his knife-belt, the trapper proceeded to "edge" his knife, and then stepping to the first prostrate body, he turned it over to examine if any symptom of vitality remained. "Thrown cold," he exclaimed, as he dropped the lifeless arm he had lifted. "I sighted him about the long ribs, but the light was bad, and I could'nt get a 'bead' 'off hand,' any how."

Seizing with his left hand the long and braided lock on the centre of the Indian's head, he passed the point edge of his keen butcher-knife round the parting, turning it at the same time under the skin to separate the scalp from the skull; then, with a quick and sudden jerk of his hand, he removed it entirely from the head, and giving the reeking trophy a wring upon the grass to free it from the blood, he coolly hitched it under his belt, and proceeded to the next; but seeing La Bonté operating upon this, he sought the third, who lay some little distance from the others. This one was still alive, a pistol-ball having passed through his body, without touching a vital spot.

"Gut-shot is this niggur," exclaimed the trapper; "them pistols never throws 'em in their tracks;" and thrusting his knife, for mercy's sake, into the bosom of the Indian, he likewise tore the scalp-lock from his head, and placed it with the other.

La Bonté had received two trivial wounds, and Killbuck till now had been walking about with an arrow sticking through the fleshy part of his thigh, the point being perceptible near the surface of the other side. To free his leg from the painful encumbrance, he thrust the weapon completely through, and then, cutting off the arrow-head below the barb, he drew it out, the blood flowing freely from the wound. A tourniquet of buckskin soon stopped this, and, heedless of the pain, the hardy mountaineer sought for his old mule, and quickly brought it to the fire (which La Bonté had rekindled,) lavishing many a caress, and most comical terms of endearment, upon the faithful companion of his wanderings. They found all the animals safe and well, and after eating heartily of some venison which the Indians had been cooking at the moment of the attack, made instant preparations to quit the scene of their exploit, not wishing to trust to the chance of the Rapahos being too frightened to again molest them.

Having no saddles, they secured buffalo robes on the backs of two mules--Killbuck, of course, riding his own--and lost no time in proceeding on their way. They followed the course of the Indians up the stream, and found that it kept the cañons and gorges of the mountains where the road was better; but it was with no little difficulty that they made their way, the ground being much broken and covered with rocks. Killbuck's wound became very painful, and his leg stiffened and swelled distressingly, but he still pushed on all night, and, at daybreak, recognising their position, he left the Indian trail, and followed a little creek which rose in a mountain chain of moderate elevation, and above which, and to the south, Pike's Peak towered high into the clouds. With great difficulty they crossed this ridge, and ascending and descending several smaller ones which gradually smoothed away as they met the valley, about three hours after sunrise they found themselves in the south-east corner of the Bayou Salade.

The Bayou Salade, or Salt Valley, is the most southern of three very extensive valleys, forming a series of table-lands in the very centre of the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, known to the trappers by the name of the "Parks". The numerous streams by which they are watered abound in the valuable fur-bearing beaver, whilst every species of game common to the west is found here in great abundance. The Bayou Salade especially, owing to the salitrose nature of the soil and springs, is the favourite resort of all the larger animals common to the mountains; and, in the sheltered prairies of the Bayou, the buffalo, forsaking the barren and inclement regions of the exposed plains, frequent these upland valleys in the winter months; and feeding upon the rich and nutritious buffalo grass which, on the bare prairies, at that season, is either dry and rotten or entirely exhausted, not only are enabled to sustain life, but retain a great portion of the "condition" that the abundant fall and summer pasture of the lowlands has laid upon their bones. Therefore is this valley sought by the Indians as a wintering ground; and its occupancy has been disputed by most of the mountain tribes, and long and bloody wars have been waged to make good the claims set forth by Yuta, Rapaho, Sioux, and Shians. However, to the first of these it may be said now to belong, since their "big village" has wintered there for many successive years; whilst the Rapahos seldom visit it unless on war expeditions, against the Yutas.

Judging, from the direction the Rapahos were taking, that the friendly tribe of Yutas were there already, the trappers had resolved to join them as soon as possible; and therefore, without resting, pushed on through the uplands, and, towards the middle of the day, had the satisfaction of descrying the conical lodges of the village, situated on a large level plateau, through which ran a mountain stream. A numerous band of mules and horses was scattered over the pasture, and round them several mounted Indians were keeping guard. As the trappers descended the bluffs into the plain, some straggling Indians caught sight of them; and instantly one of them, lassoing a horse from the herd, mounted it, barebacked, and flew like wind to the village to spread the news. Soon the lodges disgorged their inmates; first the women and children rushed to that side where the strangers were approaching; then the younger Indians, hardly able to restrain their curiosity, mounted their horses, and some galloped forth to meet them. The old chiefs, enveloped in buffalo robes, (soft and delicately dressed as the Yutes alone know how,) and with tomahawk held in one hand and resting in hollow of the other arm, sallied last of all from their lodges, and, squatting in a row on a sunny bank outside the village, awaited, with dignified composure, the arrival of the whites. Killbuck was well known to most of them, having trapped in their country and traded with them years before at Roubideau's fort at the head waters of the Rio Grande. After shaking hands with all who presented themselves, he at once gave them to understand that their enemies, the Rapahos, were at hand, with a hundred warriors at least, elated by the coup they had just struck the whites, bringing, moreover, four white scalps to incite them to brave deeds.

At this news the whole village was speedily in commotion: the war-shout was taken up from lodge to lodge; the squaws began to lament and tear their hair; the warriors to paint and arm themselves. The elder chiefs immediately met in council, and, over the medicine-pipe, debated as to the best course to pursue,--whether to wait the attack, or sally out and meet the enemy. In the meantime, the braves were collected together by the chiefs of their respective bands, and scouts, mounted on the fastest horses, despatched in every direction to procure intelligence of the enemy.

The two whites, after watering their mules and picketing them in some good grass near the village, drew near the council fire, without, however, joining in the "talk," until they were invited to take their seats by the eldest chief. Then Killbuck was called upon to give his opinion as to the direction in which he judged the Rapahos to be approaching, which he delivered in their own language, with which he was well acquainted. In a short time the council broke up, and, without noise or confusion, a band of one hundred chosen warriors left the village, immediately after one of the scouts had galloped in and communicated some intelligence to the chiefs. Killbuck and La Bonté volunteered to accompany the war-party, weak and exhausted as they were; but this was negatived by the chiefs, who left their white brothers to the care of the women, who tended their wounds, now stiff and painful; and spreading their buffalo robes in a warm and roomy lodge, left them to the repose they so much needed.

The next morning, Killbuck's leg was greatly inflamed, and he was unable to leave the lodge; but he made his companion bring the old mule to the door, when he gave her a couple of ears of Indian corn, the last remains of the slender store brought by the Indians from the Navajo country. The day passed, and with sundown came no tidings of the war-party, which caused no little wailing on the part of the squaws, but which the whites interpreted as a favourable augury. A little after sunrise, on the second morning, the long line of the returning warriors was discerned winding over the prairie, and a scout having galloped in to bring the news of a great victory, the whole village was soon in a ferment of paint and drumming. A short distance from the lodges, the warriors halted to await the approach of the people. Old men, children, and squaws, sitting astride their horses, sallied out to escort the victorious party in triumph to the village. With loud shouts and, songs, and drums beating the monotonous Indian time, they advanced and encircled the returning braves, one of whom, with his face covered with black paint, carried a pole on which dangled thirteen scalps, the trophies of the expedition. As he lifted these on high, they were saluted with deafening whoops and cries of exultation and savage joy. In this manner they entered the village, almost before the friends of those fallen in the fight had ascertained their losses. Then the shouts of delight were converted into yells of grief; the mothers and wives of those braves who had been killed, (and seven had "gone under,") presently returned with their faces, necks, and hands blackened, and danced and howled round the scalp pole, which had been deposited in the centre of the village, in front of the lodge of the great chief.

Killbuck now learned that a scout having brought intelligence that the two bands of Rapahos were hastening to form a junction, as soon as they learned that their approach was discovered, the Yutas had successfully prevented it; and attacking one party, had entirely defeated it, killing thirteen of the Rapaho braves. The other party had fled on seeing the issue of the fight, and a few of the Yuta warriors were now pursuing them.

To celebrate so signal a victory great preparations sounded their notes through the village. Paints,--vermilion and ochres--red and yellow,--were in great request; whilst the scrapings of charred wood, mixed with gunpowder, were used as substitute for black, the medicine colour.

The lodges of the village, numbering some two hundred or more, were erected in parallel lines, and covered a large space of the level prairie in shape of a parallelogram. In the centre, however, the space which half a dozen lodges in length would have taken up was left unoccupied, save by one large one, of red-painted buffalo skins, tatooed with the mystic totems of the "medicine" peculiar to the nation. In front of this stood the grim scalp-pole, like a decayed tree trunk, its bloody fruit tossing in the wind; and on another, at a few feet distance, was hung the "bag" with its mysterious contents. Before each lodge a tripod of spears supported the arms and shields of the Yuta chivalry, and on many of them, smoke-dried scalps rattled in the wind, former trophies of the dusky knights who were arming themselves within. Heraldic devices were not wanting,--not, however, graved upon the shield, but hanging from the spear-head, the actual "totem" of the warrior it distinguished. The rattlesnake, the otter, the carcagien, the mountain badger, the war-eagle, the kon-qua-kish, the porcupine, the fox, &c., dangled their well-stuffed skins, and displayed the guardian "medicine" of the warrior it pertained to, and represented the mental and corporeal qualities which were supposed to characterise the brave to whom it belonged.

From the centre lodge, two or three "medicine men," fantastically attired in the skins of wolves and bears, and bearing long peeled wands of cherry in their hands, occasionally emerged to tend a very small fire which they had kindled in the centre of the open space; and, when a thin column of smoke rose from it, one of them transferred the scalp-pole, planting it obliquely across the fire. Squaws in robes of whitely dressed buckskins, garnished with beads and porcupines' quills, and their faces painted bright red and black, then appeared. These ranged themselves round the outside of the square, the boys and children of all ages, mounted on bare-backed horses, galloping and screaming round and round, with all the eagerness of excitement and curiosity.

Presently the braves and warriors made their appearance, and squatted round the fire in two circles, those who had been engaged on the expedition being in the first or smaller one. One medicine man sat under the scalp-pole, having a drum between his knees, which he tapped at intervals with his hand, eliciting from the instrument a hollow monotonous sound. A bevy of women, shoulder to shoulder, then advanced from the four sides of the square, and some shaking a rattle-drum in time with their steps, commenced a jumping jerking dance, now lifting one foot from the ground, and now rising with both, accompanying the dance with a low chant, which swelled from a low whisper to the utmost extent of their voices--now dying away, and again bursting into vociferous measure. Thus they advanced to the centre and retreated to their former positions; when six squaws, with their faces painted a deadened black, made their appearance from the crowd, and, in a soft and sweet measure, chanted a lament for the braves the nation had lost in the late battle: but soon as they drew near the scalp-pole, their melancholy note changed to the music (to them) of gratified revenge. In a succession of jumps, raising the feet alternately but a little distance from the ground, they made their way, through an interval left in the circle of warriors, to the grim pole, and encircling it, danced in perfect silence round it for a few moments. Then they burst forth with an extemporary song, laudatory of the achievements of their victorious braves. They addressed the scalps as "sisters," (to be called a squaw is the greatest insult that can be offered to an Indian,) and, spitting at them, upbraided them with their rashness in leaving their lodges to seek for Yuta husbands; "that the Yuta warriors and young men despised them, and chastised them for their forwardness and presumption, bringing back their scalps to their own women."

After sufficiently proving that they had any thing but lost the use of their tongues, but possessed as fair a length of that formidable weapon as any of their sex, they withdrew, and left the field in undisputed possession of the men: who, accompanied by taps of the drum, and the noise of many rattles, broke out into a war-song, in which the valour of themselves was not hidden in a bushel, nor modestly refused the light of day. After this came the more interesting ceremony of a warrior "counting his coups."

A young brave, with his face painted black, mounted on a white horse mysteriously marked with red clay, and naked to the breech clout, holding in his hand a long taper lance, rode into the circle, and paced slowly round it; then, flourishing his spear on high, he darted to the scalp-pole, round which the warriors were now sitting in a semicircle; and in a loud voice, and with furious gesticulations, related his exploits, the drums tapping at the conclusion of each. On his spear hung seven scalps, and holding it vertically above his head, and commencing with the top one, he narrated the feats in which he had raised the trophy hair. When he had run through these, the drums tapped loudly, and several of the old chiefs shook their rattles, in corroboration of the truth of his achievements. The brave, swelling with pride, then pointed to the fresh and bloody scalps hanging on the pole. Two of these had been torn from the heads of Rapahos struck by his own hand, and this feat, _the_ exploit of the day, had entitled him to the honour of counting his coups. Then, sticking his spear into the ground by the side of the pole, he struck his hand twice on his brawny and naked chest, turned short round, and, swift as the antelope, galloped into the plain: as if overcome by the shock his modesty had received in being obliged to recount his own high-sounding deeds.

"Wagh!" exclaimed old Killbuck, as he left the circle, and pointed his pipe-stem towards the fast-fading figure of the brave, "that Injun's heart's about as big as ever it will be, I'm thinking."

With the Yutes, Killbuck and La Bonté remained during the winter; and when the spring sun had opened the ice-bound creeks, and melted the snow on the mountains; and its genial warmth had expanded the earth and permitted the roots of the grass to "live" once more, and throw out green and tender shoots, the two trappers bade adieu to the hospitable Indians, who were breaking up their village in order to start for the valleys of the Del Norte. As they followed the trail from the bayou, at sundown, just as they were thinking of camping, they observed ahead of them a solitary horseman riding along, followed by three mules. His hunting-frock of fringed buckskin, and rifle resting across the horn of his saddle, at once proclaimed him white; but as he saw the mountaineers winding through the cañon, driving before them half a dozen horses, _he_ judged they might possibly be Indians and enemies, the more so as their dress was not the usual costume of the whites. The trappers, therefore, saw the stranger raise the rifle in the hollow of his arm, and, gathering up his horse, ride steadily to meet them, as soon as he observed they were but two; and two to one in mountain calculation are scarcely considered odds, if red skin to white.

However, on nearing them, the stranger discovered his mistake; and, throwing his rifle across the saddle once more, reined in his horse and waited their approach; for the spot where he then stood presented an excellent camping-ground, with abundance of dry wood and convenient water.

"Where from, stranger?"

"The divide, and to the bayou for meat; and you are from there, I see. Any buffalo come in yet?"

"Heap, and seal-fat at that. What's the sign out on the plains?"

"War-party of Rapahos passed Squirrel at sundown yesterday, and nearly raised my animals. Sign, too, of more on left fork of Boiling Spring. No buffalo between this and Bijou. Do you feel like camping?"

"_Well_, we do. But whar's your companyeros?"

"I'm alone."

"Alone! Wagh! how do you get your animals along?"

"I go ahead, and they follow the horse."

"Well, that beats all! That's a smart-looking hos now; and runs some, I'm thinking."

"Well, it does."

"Whar's them mules from? They look like Californy."

"Mexican country--away down south."

"H----! Whar's yourself from?"

"There away, too."

"What's beaver worth in Taos?"

"Dollar."

"In Saint Louiy?"

"Same."

"H----! Any call for buckskin?"

"A heap! The soldiers in Santa Fé are half froze for leather; and mocassins fetch two dollars, easy."

"Wagh! How's trade on Arkansa, and what's doin to the Fort?"

"Shians at Big Timber, and Bent's people trading smart. On North Fork, Jim Waters got a hundred pack right off, and Sioux making more."

"Whar's Bill Williams?"

"Gone under they say: the Diggers took his hair."

"How's powder goin?"

"Two dollars a pint."

"Bacca?"

"A plew a plug."

"Got any about you?"

"Have _so_."

"Give us a chaw; and now let's camp."

Whilst unpacking their own animals, the two trappers could not refrain from glancing, every now and then, with no little astonishment, at the solitary stranger they had so unexpectedly encountered. If truth be told, his appearance not a little perplexed them. His hunting frock of buckskin, shining with grease, and fringed pantaloons, over which the well-greased butcher-knife had evidently been often wiped after cutting his food, or butchering the carcass of deer and buffalo, were of genuine mountain make. His face, clean shaved, exhibited in its well-tanned and weather-beaten complexion, the effects of such natural cosmetics as sun and wind; and under the mountain hat of felt which covered his head, long uncut hair hung in Indian fashion on his shoulders. All this would have passed muster, had it not been for the most extraordinary equipment of a double-barrelled rifle; which, when it had attracted the eyes of the mountaineers, elicited no little astonishment, not to say derision. But, perhaps, nothing excited their admiration so much as the perfect docility of the stranger's animals; which, almost like dogs, obeyed his voice and call; and albeit that one, in a small sharp head and pointed ears, expanded nostrils, and eye twinkling and malicious, exhibited the personification of a "lurking devil," yet they could not but admire the perfect ease which this one even, in common with the rest, permitted herself to be handled.

Dismounting from his horse, and unhitching from the horn of his saddle the coil of skin rope, one end of which was secured round the neck of the horse, he proceeded to unsaddle; and whilst so engaged, the three mules, two of which were packed, one with the unbutchered carcass of a deer, the other with a pack of skins, &c., followed leisurely into the space chosen for the camp, and, cropping the grass at their ease, waited until a whistle called them to be unpacked.

The horse was a strong square-built bay; and, although the severities of a prolonged winter, with scanty pasture and long and trying travel, had robbed his bones of fat and flesh, tucked up his flank, and "ewed" his neck; still his clean and well-set legs, oblique shoulder, and withers fine as a deer's, in spite of his gaunt half-starved appearance, bore ample testimony as to what he _had_ been; while his clear cheerful eye, and the hearty appetite with which he fell to work on the coarse grass of the bottom, proved that he had something in him still, and was game as ever. His tail, ate by the mules in days of strait, attracted the observant mountaineers.

"Hard doins when it come to that," remarked La Bonté.

Between the horse and two of the mules a mutual and great affection appeared to subsist, which was no more than natural, when their master observed to his companions that they had travelled together upwards of two thousand miles.

One of these mules was a short, thick-set, stumpy animal, with an enormous head surmounted by proportionable ears, and a pair of unusually large eyes, beaming the most perfect good temper and docility (most uncommon qualities in a mule.) Her neck was thick, and rendered more so in appearance by reason of her mane not being roached, (or in English, hogged,) which privilege she alone enjoyed of the trio; and her short, strong legs, ending in small, round, cat-like hoofs, were feathered with profusion of dark brown hair.

As she stood stock-still, while the stranger removed the awkwardly packed deer from her back, she flapped backward and forward her huge ears, occasionally turning her head, and laying her cold nose against her master's cheek. When the pack was removed, he advanced to her head, and, resting it on his shoulder, rubbed her broad and grizzled cheeks with both his hands for several minutes, the old mule laying her ears, like a rabbit, back upon her neck, and with half-closed eyes enjoyed mightily the manipulation. Then, giving her a smack upon the haunch, and a "hep-a" well-known to mule kind, the old favourite threw up her heels and cantered off to the horse, who was busily cropping the buffalo grass on the bluff above the stream.

Great was the contrast between the one just described and the next which came up to be divested of her pack. She, a tall beautifully shaped Mexican mule, of a light mouse colour, with a head like a deer's, and long springy legs, trotted up obedient to the call, but with ears bent back and curled up nose, and tail compressed between her legs. As her pack was being removed, she groaned and whined like a dog, as a thong or loosened strap touched her ticklish body, lifting her hind-quarters in a succession of jumps or preparatory kicks, and looking wicked as a panther. When nothing but the fore pack-saddle remained, she had worked herself into the last stage; and as the stranger cast loose the girth of buffalo hide, and was about to lift the saddle and draw the crupper from the tail, she drew her hind legs under her, more tightly compressed her tail, and almost shrieked with rage.

"Stand clear," he roared, (knowing what was coming,) and raised the saddle, when out went her hind legs, up went the pack into the air, and, with it dangling at her heels, away she tore, kicking the offending saddle as she ran. Her master, however, took this as matter of course, followed her and brought back the saddle, which he piled on the others to windward of the fire one of the trappers was kindling. Fire-making is a simple process with the mountaineers. Their bullet-pouches always contain a flint and steel, and sundry pieces of "punk"[27] or tinder; and pulling a handful of dry grass, which they screw into a nest, they place the lighted punk in this, and, closing the grass over it, wave it in the air, when it soon ignites, and readily kindles the dry sticks forming the foundation of the fire.

[27] A pithy substance found in dead pine-trees.

The tit-bits of the deer the stranger had brought in were soon roasting over the fire; whilst, as soon as the burning logs had deposited a sufficiency of ashes, a hole was raked in them, and the head of the deer, skin, hair, and all, placed in this primitive oven, and carefully covered with the hot ashes.

A "heap" of "fat meat" in perspective, our mountaineers enjoyed their ante-prandial pipes, recounting the news of the respective regions whence they came; and so well did they like each other's company, so sweet the "honey-dew" tobacco of which the strange hunter had good store, so plentiful the game about the creek, and so abundant the pasture for their winter-starved animals, that before the carcass of the "two-year" buck had been more than four-fifths consumed; and, although rib after rib had been picked and chucked over their shoulders to the wolves, and one fore leg, and _the_ "bit" of all, the head, still cooked before them, the three had come to the resolution to join company and hunt in their present locality for a few days at least,--the owner of the "two-shoot" gun volunteering to fill their horns with powder, and find tobacco for their pipes.

Here, on plenty of meat, of venison, bear, and antelope, they merrily luxuriated; returning after their daily hunts to the brightly burning camp-fire, where one always remained to guard the animals, and unloading their packs of meat,--all choicest portions, ate late into the night, and, smoking, wiled away the time in narrating scenes in their hard-spent lives, and fighting their battles o'er again.

The younger of the trappers, he who has figured under the name of La Bonté, in scraps and patches from his history, had excited no little curiosity in the stranger's mind to learn the ups and downs of his career; and one night, when they assembled earlier than usual at the fire, he prevailed upon the modest trapper to "unpack" some passages in his wild adventurous life.

"Maybe," commenced the mountaineer, "you both remember when old Ashley went out with the biggest kind of band to trap the Columbia, and head-waters of Missoura and Yellow Stone. Well, that was the time this niggur first felt like taking to the mountains."

This brings us back to the year of our Lord 1825; and perhaps it will be as well, to render La Bonté's mountain language intelligible, to translate it at once to tolerable English, and tell in the third person, but from his lips, the scrapes which him befell in a sojourn of more than twenty years in the Far West, and the causes which impelled him to quit the comfort and civilisation of his home, and seek the perilous but engaging life of a trapper of the Rocky Mountains.

La Bonté was raised in the state of Mississippi, not far from Memphis, on the left bank of that huge and snag-filled river. His father was a Saint Louis Frenchman, his mother a native of Tennessee. When a boy, our trapper was "some," he said, with the rifle, and always had a hankering for the west; particularly when, on accompanying his father to Saint Louis every spring, he saw the different bands of traders and hunters start upon their annual expeditions to the mountains; and envied the independent, _insouciant_ trappers, as, in all the glory of beads and buckskin, they shouldered their rifles at Jake Hawkin's door, (the rifle-maker of St Louis,) and bade adieu to the cares and trammels of civilised life.

However, like a thoughtless beaver-kitten, he put his foot into a trap one fine day, set by Mary Brand, a neighbour's daughter, and esteemed "some punkins," or in other words toasted as the beauty of Memphis County, by the susceptible Mississippians. From that moment he was "gone beaver;" "he felt queer," he said, "all over, like a buffalo shot in the lights; he had no relish for mush and molasses; homminy and johnny cakes failed to excite his appetite. Deer and turkeys ran by him unscathed; he didn't know, he said, whether his rifle had hind-sights or not. He felt bad, that was a fact; but what ailed him he didn't know."

Mary Brand--Mary Brand--Mary Brand! the old Dutch clock ticked it. Mary Brand! his head throbbed it when he lay down to sleep. Mary Brand! his rifle-lock spoke it plainly when he cocked it, to raise a shaking sight at a deer. Mary Brand, Mary Brand! the whip-poor-will sung it, instead of her own well-known note; the bull-frogs croaked it in the swamp, and mosquitos droned it in his ear as he tossed about his bed at night, wakeful, and striving to think what ailed him.

Who could that strapping young fellow, who passed the door just now, be going to see? Mary Brand: Mary Brand. And who can Big Pete Herring be dressing that silver fox-skin so carefully for? For whom but Mary Brand? And who is it that jokes, and laughs, and dances with all the 'boys' but him; and why?

Who but Mary Brand: and because the love-sick booby carefully avoids her.

LOMBARDY AND THE ITALIAN WAR.

To what is the difference of national character due? Is it to climate? Is the Negro a barbarian by a law of nature? Do his fiery sunshine and his luxuriant soil, his magnificent forest shades, or his mighty rivers, hiding their heads in inaccessible solitudes, and winding for thousands of miles through fields of the plantain and the sugar-cane, condemn him to perpetual inferiority of intellect? Was the brilliancy of the ancient Greek only an emanation from the land of bright skies and balmy airs?--was it the spirit of the sounding cataracts, and the impulse of the vine-covered hills? Was the northern tempest the creator of the northern character? and the perpetual dash of the ocean on the Scandinavian shore, or the roar of the thunder and the sweep of the whirlwind over the Tartar steppe, the training of the tribes which burst in upon the iron frontier of the Great Empire, and left it clay?

The controversy has never yet been settled. Yet, on the whole, we are strongly inclined to think that the mightier impression is due to the operation of man on the mind of man. To our idea, "the globe, with all that it inherits," is but a vast school-room, with its scholars. The nations may enter with different propensities and capacities, but the purpose of the discipline is, to train all in the use of their original powers, to modify the rougher faculties, to invigorate the weaker; and perhaps, in some remoter period of the world and its completion, to educate a universal mind for the duties of a universal family.

What education is to the individual, institutions are to the nation. Why was it that the ancient Roman was the conqueror, the legislator, the man of stern determination, and the example of patriot virtue? Why was he the man of an ambition to be satisfied with nothing narrower than the supremacy of the globe--the defier of the desert, the master of the ocean, the ruler of all the diadems of all mankind?

Yet what is the contrast in the history of his successors,--millions living under the same sky, with the same landscape of hill and dale before them--even with the bold recollections of their ancestry to inspire them, and with frames as athletic, and intellects as vivid as those of the days when every nation brought tribute to the feet of the Cæsars? Why is it that the man of Thermopylæ and Platæa has now no representative but the "cunning Greek," and the land, once covered with trophies, is now only the soil of the trafficker and the tomb? Why has even our own island, so memorable and so admirable, exhibited a contrast to the early terrors and capricious bravery of the Briton in the time of the Roman? For the charioteers and spearmen who fought Cæsar on the shore were chiefly foreigners from Gaul and Germany, defending their own beeves and merchandise, while the natives fled into the forest, and submitted, wherever they were pursued. Why was Russia, for a thousand years, the constant prey of the "riders of the wilderness," who now offer so feeble a resistance to her firm sovereignty? Or, to come to the immediate instance, why have the fiercest tribe of Scandinavia, perhaps the most warlike of mankind in their day, sunk into the feeble flexibility of the Italian, in whom resistance is scarcely more than the work of exasperation, and the boldest hostilities probably deserve no more than the name of a paroxysm?

The name of the Lombards was famous as far back as the sixth century and the reign of Justinian. The camp of Attila had collected the chieftains of the barbarian tribes on the northern bank of the Danube, and his death had left them to divide the vast inheritance which had been won in the briefest period, and by the most remorseless slaughter, in the memory of the world. Hungary and Transylvania were seized by the roving warriors of the Gepidæ. The fears or the policy of Justinian contracted the boundaries of the empire; and whether despising the power, or relying on the indolence, of the barbarians, he stripped the southern bank of its garrisons, for the defence of Italy. The Gepidæ were instantly in arms, the river was crossed in contempt or defiance of the imperial revenge; and this daring act was not less daringly followed by a message to Constantinople, that "as the emperor possessed territories more than he knew how to govern, or could desire to retain, his faithful allies merely anticipated his bounty in taking their share." The emperor suffered the insult in silence, but resolved on revenge. With the artificial policy which always increases the evils of an unprepared government, he invited a new race of barbarians to act as the antagonists of the invader.

In the country between the Elbe and the Oder, about the time of Augustus, a tribe had settled, of a singularly savage aspect, and, by the exaggerations of national terror, described as having the "heads of dogs," as lapping the blood of the slain in battle, and exhibiting at once the ferocity of the animal and the daring of the man. On the summons of Justinian, they instantly plucked up their spears and standards from the graves of the Heruli, whom they had slaughtered in Poland, crossed the Danube with the whole force of their warriors, and finally, after a long and bloody war, extinguished the Gepidæ in a battle in which forty thousand of the enemy were slain round their king. The conqueror, with characteristic savageness, made a drinking-cup of the skull of the fallen monarch, and in it pledged his chieftains to their future fame.

This victory at last had taught the imperial court the hazards of its policy; but the deed was done, and Italy lay open to a race whose strange aspect, ferocity of habit, and invincible courage, had already wrought the Italians to the highest pitch of terror.

Among the effeminacies of Italy, the classic arrangement of the hair and beard seem to have held a foremost place. But, in their new invaders, the nation saw a host of athletic warriors, indifferent to every thing but arms, wearing their locks wild as nature had made them, and with visages and manners which almost justified the popular report, that they had the heads of dogs, and lapped up the blood of their enemies. From this length and looseness of hair they had their name. Savage as they were, they exhibited something of that spirit which from time to time tinges barbarism with romance. Alboin, the prince of the Longobards, young, handsome, and a hero, resolved to possess at once the two great objects of the passions, love and glory. To accomplish the first, he seized on Rosamunda, the beautiful daughter of the fallen monarch; and for the second he made a royal banquet, and, covering the tables with the fruits and wines of Italy, demanded of his chieftains whether the land which produced such things was not worth their swords? We may justly conceive that he was answered with acclamation. Their trumpets were heard through every tribe of the North, and the multitude were instantly in arms under a leader whose name was a pledge of possession. His vanguard scaled the Julian Alps. All the roving warriors of Gaul and Germany, with a column of twenty thousand Saxons, instantly joined the Lombard banner. Italy, exhausted by a long continuance of disease and famine, and now accustomed to yield, had lain at the mercy of the first invader, and Alboin, with his sword in the sheath, marched through a fugitive population, and finished his bloodless triumph within the impregnable ramparts and patrician palaces of Verona. From the Trentine hills to the gates of Ravenna and Rome, all was the easy prize of Lombard victory.

It is singular to hear, at the interval of more than a thousand years, the same names of the cities which then became the possession of the invaders, and to see the warlike movements of the present hour following the track of the warriors of the sixth century. Alboin conquered Milan by fear, and Pavia by famine; but the bold barbarian disdained to reside in a city, however splendid, which had yielded without a battle, and he fixed the Lombard throne in Pavia, which had earned his respect by a siege of three years.

It is a striking illustration of the superiority of institutions to climate, that the Lombard, even in Italy, continued the same bold, restless, and resistless man of iron, which he had been in the barren plains of Prussia, or on the stormy shores of the Baltic. With all the luxuries of Italy to soften him, and even with all the fervours of an Italian sun to subdue him into indolence, he was still the warrior, the hunter, and the falconer. Leaving tillage to the degraded caste of the Italian, he trained horses for war and the chase, in the famous pastures bordering the Adriatic. He sent to his native Scandinavia for the most powerful falcons; he trained the hound, that could tear down alike the stag and the wolf; and prepared himself hourly by the chase through the forests, which were now rapidly covering the depopulated plains of Italy, for the hardships and enterprises of actual war. The favourite distinctions of the Lombard noble were the hawk on the wrist and the falchion by the side.

We now give a rapid sketch of the subsequent periods.

From the tenth century, when Germany assumed the form of a settled state, its connexion with Italy was always exhibited in the shape of mastery. The modern Italian character is evidently not made for eminence in war. The hardships of German life, contrasted with the easy indolence of Italy, have always given the Northern ploughman the superiority over the vine-dresser of the South; and from the time when Charlemagne first moved his men of mail over the Alps, Italy has been a fair and feeble prize for German vigour and German intrepidity.

On the general dissolution of the empire of Charlemagne, Italy naturally followed the fate of all vassal kingdoms. At the close of the ninth century its provinces had been made a common field of battle to the multitude of dukes, counts, and captains of banditti, who suddenly started into a brief celebrity as spoilers of the great German empire. A terrible period of almost a century of intestine war followed, which covered the land with corpses, and made Northern Italy but one capacious scene of blood and desolation. At length, a German conqueror, Otho of Saxony, fortunately came, as of old, crushed all rivalry, drove the peasantry from the field, commanded the nobles to do him homage, and by the combined operation of the sceptre and the sword, partially compelled his fierce feudatories to learn the arts of peace. Still, perhaps, there was not upon the earth a more disturbed district than Lombardy. In the lapse of centuries, it had grown opulent, notwithstanding its spoilers. The native talent of the Italian, his commercial connexion with Egypt and the East, and his literary intercourse with the fugitives from Constantinople, and the eagerness of the Western nations, even at that early period, to obtain the produce of Italian looms and pencils, gave the nation wealth, and with it constitutional power. This power resulted in the formation of small commonwealths, which, though frequently at war with each other, often exhibited a lustre and spirit worthy of the vivid days of antique Italy.

The feudal system, the natural product of barbarian victory, by which the land had been divided among the conquerors, was strongly opposed by the commercial cities; and the most successful of all resistance, that of popular interests, rapidly broke down the system. The first struggle was by the class of the inferior nobles against the great proprietors. The close of the eleventh century found the principle of resistance advancing, and the populace now mingled in the contest.

The dissension was increased by the papal violences against the married clergy in the middle of the century. This dispute gave rise to one of the most important changes in the Romish discipline, and one of the longest contests between the Pope and the people. The Church of Milan, dating its liturgy from the times of the memorable Bishop Ambrose, had continued almost wholly independent of the discipline and the authority of Rome. By its especial rule, the priest who was married before his ordination retained his wife; but, if unmarried, he was not suffered to marry afterwards. This unfortunate compromise with superstition naturally produced the loss of the original right. The Jewish priesthood had been married under the direct sanction of a code confessedly divine. Peter, and apparently others of the apostles, were married; and there is no mention of any remonstrance on the part of our Lord against this most essential of all relationships. St Paul's wish "that the disciples should remain unmarried" in the time of a threatened persecution, was evidently limited to the persecution; and instead of denying the common right of the Christian clergy to marry, he expressly insists on his personal _right_ to marry if he should so please, as well as any other of the brethren. The recommendation _not_ to marry at the time was also addressed _not_ to the peculiar _teachers_ of Christianity, but to the whole body of the Christians--a generalisation which of itself shows that it was merely for the period; as it must be wholly irrational to suppose that the gospel desired the final extinction of marriage _among all mankind_.

The contest continued with great violence until the accession of the well-known Gregory VII., who, finding it impossible to overcome the resistance of the clergy, while they were sustained by their archbishop, dexterously dismantled the See, by annexing its suffragans gradually to Rome. The power of the archbishops of Milan thus sank, until they condescended to receive investiture from the Bishop of Rome. The See lost its independence; and the law of celibacy--one of the most corrupting to the morals of the priesthood, but one of the most effective to establish the domination of the papacy throughout Europe--became the law of Christendom.

The history of the Italian republics is an unhappy record for the advocates of republicanism. It was a history of perpetual feuds among the higher ranks, and perpetual misery among the people. The mediæval annals of Italy, with all their activity and lustre, might be wisely exchanged by any nation on earth for the quiet obscurity of a German marsh, or the remote safety of an island in the heart of the ocean. The only palliation was in the stimulus which all republics give to human energy, by relaxing all impediments to the exertion of the individual. But this good is strangely counteracted by the habitual uncertainty of republics. No man's fortune _can_ be safe while it remains under a popular government. A decree of the party in power may strip him of his property in a day. The general object of the rule of the rabble is the seizure of property, and the man of wealth to-day may be the beggar to-morrow. The most despotic monarchy seldom preys on the individual, and still seldomer takes him by surprise. For the long period of five hundred years, Lombardy was one of the most unfortunate countries in the world, from its republican propensities. Factions, of every degree of tyranny and vice, tore it asunder. The names of the Torriani, the Visconti, and the Sforze, are seen successively floating on the tide of blood and misery which covered this noblest of the Italian provinces; and each faction, at its sinking, left little more than a new evidence of the guilt of profligate governments, each exceeding the other in professions of public virtue. A single, vigorous sceptre--a settled constitution, however stern--a dynasty even of despots, which had the simple merit of stability, would have rescued Lombardy from a condition scarcely to be envied by a galley-slave. The historians of Italy recur to this period in words of horror. The romancers find in it an exhaustless fund of their darkest scenes. The poets revert to it for their deepest-coloured images of national destruction. What must be the condition of a country, when a military despotism, and that too the despotism of a foreign power, was a desirable change?

In the middle of the sixteenth century this change occurred, in the transfer of Lombardy to Charles V. After a century and a half of subjection to the Spanish dynasty, it again passed, by the failure of the line, into the hands of Austria. But at length, under the well-intentioned government of the Empress Maria Theresa, property became secure, the factions were suppressed by the strong hand of authority, commerce felt new confidence, and the natural advantages of climate, soil, and talent suddenly raised the country into a new and vigorous prosperity; within a quarter of a century, its population rose from less than a million to nearly a million and a quarter; and the produce of the soil not only fed its population, but was largely exported.

The French Revolution of 1789, which startled every kingdom of Europe, shook Italy to its centre. The religion of Rome, while it fills the eye with ceremonies, and the ear with dogmas, makes but little impression on the heart, and none on the understanding. The boundless profligacy of Italian manners had long corrupted public life. The opera and the billiard-table were the only resources of an overgrown nobility, pauperised by their numbers, and despised for their pauperism. The facility of dispensing with oaths, in a religion which gives absolution for every crime, and repeats it on every repetition of the crime, practically extinguishes all sense of allegiance; and, at the first offer of what the French pronounced liberty, every province was ready to rush into republicanism.

The campaigns of Napoleon, in 1796 and 1797, incomparably conducted by the genius of the French general, and wretchedly mismanaged by the inveterate somnolency of the councils of Austria, gave a new stimulus to the frenzy of revolution. Lombardy, already resolved on self-government, was constituted a republic by the treaty of Campo Formio in 1797--Austria receiving Venice as a compensation for Milan, Mantua, and Belgium. The Venetian outcry against this compact was bitter, but it was helpless. Napoleon had the sword which settled all diplomatic difficulties; and she had good reason to rejoice in her release from the perpetual robbery of her republican masters. The coronation of Napoleon in 1804, followed by the memorable Austrian campaign, which ended with the fatal fight of Austerlitz, again changed the destinies of the north of Italy. By the treaty of Vienna, Venice and Lombardy were united under France, and Napoleon assumed the crown of Charlemagne, as King of Italy!

On the exile of Napoleon to Elba, the Austrian Emperor again became master of Milan, Mantua, and Venice, combined under the name of the Lombardo-Veneto kingdom, which was annexed to the imperial crown--the whole being divided into nine Lombard provinces, and eight Venetian; and the population of the entire, by the census of 1833, being somewhat more than four millions and a half.

It cannot now be necessary to enter into the detail of the national government; but it was of a much more popular order than might be conceived from the formalities of Austria. Each of the great provinces--Lombardy and Venice--had a species of administrative council, consisting of deputies from the minor provinces, each returning two, the one a noble and the other a plebeian, with a deputy from each of the royal towns, the whole being elected for six years. Those bodies, though not entitled to make laws, had yet important functions. They settled the proportion of the taxes, superintended the disbursements for roads, and had the especial care of the charitable establishments. Nor were these all. In every chief town there was a local administration, especially superintending the finance of their respective districts; and the general taxation seemed to have been light, and but little felt, and scarcely complained of.

Burke, in one of his prophetic anticipations, pronounced that the first ruin of Europe would be in its finance, and that every kingdom was, even in his day, wading into a boundless ocean of debt. Austria, of course, had felt its share; and after the desperate wars of 1805 and 1809, nothing is more wonderful in the history of finance, or more honourable to the great statesman who for forty years presided over her fate, than that she should have escaped bankruptcy.

But her liberality to her Italian provinces never failed. Some of the details, which have already reached the public, give an extraordinary conception of the almost prodigality with which Austria has lavished her means upon the bridges, roads, and general public communications of Lombardy.

We give those items in francs.

Five millions spent in repairing and constructing dikes in the Mantuan province.

Four millions in completing the canal of the Naviglio.

A million and a half for roads in the mountains of the Bergamesque.

A million and a half for the great commercial road of the Splugen.

Two millions and a half for the road over the Hiffer Jock.

Three millions for continuing it along the shore of the lake Como.

Three millions and a quarter for completing the cathedral of Milan.

A million for improvements in the city.

Half a million for the fine bridge over the Ticino.

Twenty-four millions for cross-roads, between 1814 and 1831, besides miscellaneous expenditure;--the whole being not less than sixty-six millions in the fifteen years preceding 1834, in the mere matter of keeping up the means of intercourse in a country where, half a century ago, the cross-roads were little more than goat-tracks; besides the annual expense of about a million and a quarter on the repair of the roads since. And this munificent liberality was expended in Lombardy alone. The expenditure in Venice in the latter period of its possession has been nearly equal. The first French conquest had given it the name of a constitution, and nothing else. The famous republic was plundered to the last coin. On its second seizure its treasury was again emptied by its French emancipators; and when it was restored to Austria in 1814, its population presented a pauper list of fifty-four thousand individuals. Its commerce was in a state of ruin; its palaces and public buildings were in a state of decay; its charitable establishments were without funds; and a few years more must have filled its canals with the wrecks of its houses. Within the next twenty years the reparations cost the Austrian treasury not less than fifty-three millions of francs! Thus Venice rose from a condition which all our travellers, immediately after the peace of 1815, pronounced to be irreparable ruin, and is now one of the first commercial cities of Italy.

But the Austrian government had not been contented with a mere improvement of the soil or of the modes of communication--it had employed extraordinary efforts in giving education to the people. We are to remember the difficulties which impede all such efforts in Romish countries. Where the priest regulates the faith, he must always be jealous of the education. But the German habits of the government predominated over the superstition of Rome, and a species of military discipline was introduced, to compel the young Italians to learn the use of their indolent understandings. Within a few years after the peace of 1815 a national school system was put in action in Lombardy. Within a few more years it had spread over the whole country, with such effect, that there was scarcely a commune without its public place of education. The schools for boys amounted to upwards of two thousand three hundred, and for girls to upwards of twelve hundred. Nearly a hundred of the schools for boys taught a very extensive course of practical knowledge. The higher classes learned architecture, mechanics, geography, drawing, and natural history, in the vigorous, useful way for which German education is distinguished. Still higher schools, or portions of the former, were placed in the chief towns, for the practical acquirement of the known ledge most important for servants of public offices. There the chief studies were history, commerce, mathematics, chemistry, and French, German, and Italian. Under this system, it is evident that very solid and valuable acquirements might be made; and those were solely the work of the Austrian sovereignty.

We give a slight abstract of the plan of education in the female schools, because it is on this point that England is still most deficient.

The female elementary schools had three classes.

In the youngest were taught spelling and writing, mental and written arithmetic, needlework, and the Catechism.

In the second were taught the elements of grammar, the four rules of arithmetic, and needlework, consisting of marking and embroidery, with religious instruction.

In the third were taught religion, sacred history, geography, Italian grammar, letter-writing, weights and measures, and the nature and history of coin.

All those acquirements were, of course, dictated by the necessities and habits of native life; but they compose a scale of practical knowledge which, while useful in their humblest capacity, would form an admirable ground-work for every attainment of the female mind. It is probably from some sense of hazard that we do not observe music among the objects of education: for doubtless singing must have been one of the habits of schools taught by a German system. We should also have desired to see some knowledge of domestic arrangements, of the culinary arts, and of making their own dress. However, it is probable that these obvious advantages, especially for the life of the peasantry, may have been added subsequently to the period from which our information is derived.

We should rejoice to see in England national institutions of this order established for the education of young females of every rank, thus withdrawing the daughters of the peasantry from those coarse drudgeries of the field which were never intended for them, relieving the female population of the manufacturing towns alike from the factory labour and the town habits, and training for the labouring population honest, useful, and moral partners of their lives. In the higher ranks, the activity, regularity, and practical use of all their occupations would be scarcely less essential; and we should see in the rising generation a race of accomplished women who had learned every thing that was of importance to make them the intellectual associates of the intelligent world, while they had acquired those domestic habits, and were entitled to avail themselves of those graceful and useful arts, which make home pleasing without feeble indulgence, hospitality cheerful without extravagance, and even time itself pass without leaving behind a regret for wasted hours.

The Lombard system had been subsequently applied to the Venetian provinces; where, twenty years ago, the number of schools had risen to between fourteen and fifteen hundred. The number of boys then attending the schools was upwards of sixty thousand. Higher still, there were eighty-six gymnasia or colleges, with three hundred professors, and attended by upwards of seven thousand students, with thirty-four colleges for females. Higher still were the twelve Lyceums, for philosophical studies; and, at the summit of all, the two universities of Padua and Pavia. The whole system being superintended by the general boards at Milan and Venice.

Whether all those regulations are applicable to our own country, may be a matter of question. But the grand difficulty experienced here, the power of making the parents avail themselves of those admirable opportunities, is easily solved by the German discipline. A register is kept in every commune, of all the children from six to twelve years old; and they are all _compelled_ to attend the schools, except in case of illness, or some other sufficient cause. But the tuition is gratuitous, the expense and the schoolmaster being paid by the commune. Corporal punishment is wholly forbidden.

Such were the benefits lavished by Austria upon her Italian subjects; benefits which they never would have dreamed of if left to themselves; and which, in all probability, the pauperised exchequer of the revolt will never be able to sustain. Under this government, too, Lombardy had become the most fertile province of Italy, the most densely peopled, and the most opulent, of the south of Europe. Venice, too, which had been crushed almost into ruins by the French, rose again into a resemblance of that commercial power, and civil splendour, which once made her famous throughout the Mediterranean; and Milan, though characterised in the Italian annals as the most luckless of all the cities of earth, having been besieged forty times, taken twenty times, and almost levelled with the ground by the conqueror four times,--yet, when the late Emperor Francis visited her about twenty years ago, exhibited a pomp of private wealth, and a magnificence of public festivity, which astonished Europe, and was the most eloquent refutation of the declamatory ravings of the mob of patriotism.

That Austria should be unwilling to give up so fine a possession is perfectly natural; constituting, as it does, the noblest portion of the Italian peninsula; or, in the striking language of the historian Alison,--

"A plain, three hundred miles in length, by a hundred and twenty in breadth, and in the greatest portion of its length exhibiting an alluvial soil watered by the Ticino, the Adda, the Adige, the Tagliamento, and the Piave, falling from the Alps, with the Taro and other streams falling from the Apennines, and the whole plain traversed through its centre by the Po, affording the amplest means of irrigation, the only requisite in this favoured region for the production of the richest pastures and the most luxuriant harvests."

"On the west," says this master of picturesque description, "it is sheltered by a vast semicircle of mountains, which there unite the Alps and the Apennines, and are surmounted by glittering piles of ice and snow, forming the majestic barrier between France and Italy. In those inexhaustible reservoirs, which the heat of summer converts into perennial fountains of living water, the Po takes its rise; and that classic stream, rapidly fed by the confluence of the torrents which descend through every cleft and valley in the vast circumference, is already a great river when it sweeps under the ramparts of Turin."

The description of its agriculture is equally glowing with that of its mountain boundaries. "A system of agriculture, from which every nation in Europe might take a lesson, has been long established over its whole surface, and two, sometimes three, successive crops annually reward the labours of the husbandman. Indian corn is produced in abundance, and by its return, quadruple that of wheat, affords subsistence for a numerous and dense population. An incomparable system of irrigation, diffused over the whole, conveys the waters of the Alps into a series of little canals, like the veins and arteries in the human body, to every field, and in some places to every ridge, in the grass lands. The vine and the olive thrive on the sunny slopes which ascend from this plain to the ridges of the Alps, and a woody zone of never-failing beauty lies between the desolation of the mountain and the fertility of the plain. The produce of this region, which most intimately combines its interests with those of the great European marts, is silk. Italy now settles the market of silk over all Europe. Since the beginning of the present century, it has grown into an annual produce of the value of ten millions sterling! Within the last twenty years the export from the Lombardo-Venetian States has trebled." All those details give an impression of the security of property, which is the first effect of a paternal government. They fully answer all the absurd charges of impoverishment by Austria, of barbarism in its laws, or of severity in its institutions. Lombardy, independent, will soon have reason to lament the change from Austrian protection.

We come to other things. Italy is now in the condition of a man who thinks to get rid of all his troubles by committing suicide. Every kingdom, princedom, duchy, and village has successively rebelled, and proclaimed a constitution; and before that constitution was a month old, has forgotten what it was. A flying duke, a plundered palace, a barricade, and a national guard, are all that the philosopher can detect, or the historian has to record, in the Revolution of Italy. How could it be otherwise? Can the man who bows down to an image, and listens to the fictions of a priest, exercise a rational understanding upon any other subject? Can the slave of superstition be the champion of true freedom? or can the man, forced to doubt the virtue of his wife and the parentage of his children, which is the notorious condition of all the higher circles of Italian society, ever find fortitude enough to make the sacrifices essential to the purchase of true liberty? If all Italy were republicanised to-day, there would be nothing in its character to make liberty worth an effort,--nothing to prevent its putting its neck under the feet of the first despot who condescended to demand its vassalage.

The war of Piedmont and Austria is another chapter, written in another language than the feeble squabbles of the little sovereignties. There, steel and gunpowder will be the elements; here, the convulsion finishes in a harangue and the coffee-house. Charles Albert has passed the Mincio, but shall he ever repass it? Certainly not, if the Austrian general knows his trade. If ever king was in a military trap, if ever army was in a pitfall, the Piedmontese passage of the Mincio has done the deed. But, this must lie in the book of casualties. Austria is renowned for military blunders. In the Italian campaigns of Napoleon, her reinforcements came up only in time to see the ruin of the army in the field. Successive generals followed, only to relieve each other's reputation by sharing a common defeat; until Italy was torn by 50,000 Frenchmen from the hands of 100,000 Austrians. Yet the Germans have been always brave; their national calamity was tardiness. It clings to them still. They have now been gazing for a month at the army of Charles Albert; they ought to have driven it into the Mincio within twenty-four hours.

The Italian spirit of hatred to the German has exhibited itself in a thousand forms for a thousand years. It has murmured, conspired, and made vows of vengeance, since the days of Charlemagne. It has sentenced the "Teuton" in remorseless sonnets, has fought him in sinfonias, and slaughtered him in ballets and burlesques. But the German returned, chained the poets to the wall of a cell, and sent the writers to row in the galleys. For the last hundred years, Italy has implored all the furies in operas, and paid homage to Nemesis by the help of the orchestra--all in vain. At length, the French Revolution, by sweeping the Austrian armies out of Italy, gave the chance of realising the long dream. The "Cisalpine Republic" flourished on paper, and every Italian talked of Brutus, and the revival of the Consulate, and the Capitol. But the French price of liberty was too high for Italian purchase; the liberators robbed the liberated of every coin in their possession, and shot them when they refused to give it up. Even the "Teuton" was welcome, after this experience of the Gaul; and Italy found the advantage of a government which, though it exhibited neither triumphal chariots nor civic festivities, yet suffered the land to give its harvests to the right owners.

But even this feeling was to have a new temptation. About fifteen years ago, one of the chaplains of the King of Sardinia was struck off the court list, for uttering opinions which, touched with the old romance of Italian liberation, struck the whole court of Turin with horror. Charles Albert was then at the head of the Jesuits, and the Jesuits demanded the criminal Gioberti. Italy was no longer safe for him: he fled across the Alps, and took refuge in Belgium. There he wrote, through necessity. But he had something to revenge, and he wrote with the vigour of revenge. But he was an enthusiast, and he indulged in the reveries of enthusiasm. The double charm was irresistible to the dreamy spirit of a nation which loves to imagine impossible retribution, and achieve heroism in the clouds. His writings crossed the Alps. No obstacle could stop them; they wound their way through _douanes_; they insinuated themselves through the backstairs of palaces; they even penetrated into the cells of monks;--and his treatise "Del Primato Civile e Morale degl' Italiani," which appeared in 1843, was hailed with universal rapture. The literature of modern Italy seldom rises into that region of publicity which carries a work beyond seas and mountains. She has not yet attained the great art of common sense--the only art which furnishes the works of man with wings. Her poetry is local and trifling: her prose is loose, feeble, and rambling. Her best writers seem to the European eye what the wanderers through Soirees and Conversaziones are to the well-informed ear,--men of words living on borrowed notions, and, after the first half-dozen sentences, intolerably tiresome.

But the work of Gioberti was a panegyric on Italy, a universal laudation of the Italian genius, the Italian spirit, the Italian language, every thing that bore the name of Italian! Its very title, "The _Pre-eminence_, Civil and Moral, of the Italians," was irresistible.

The monster-folly of all foreigners is a passion for praise; and the unpopularity of the Englishman on the Continent chiefly arises from his tardiness in gorging this rapacious appetite. Gioberti, with evident consciousness of the offence, labours to justify the assumption. "Individuals may be modest, but modesty degrades nations," is his preliminary maxim. "A nation to have claims must have merits; and who is to believe in her merits, unless she believes in them herself?" This curious logic, which would make vanity only the more ridiculous by the openness of its display, is the grand argument of the book. It has made Italy suddenly imagine herself a nation of heroes.

"When a nation," says Gioberti, "has fallen into social degradation, the attempt to revive its courage must be by praise; possibly dangerous at other times, but now a generous art." It is admitted, however, "that the facts ought to be true, and the arguments forcible; and that no good can come from adulation." And in consequence of this wise precaution, the patriotic monk proceeds to inaugurate his country with the precedency in the grand procession of all the kingdoms of the earth! But another striking feature of this work was, that all those changes must emanate from a centre, and that centre the Pope, that Pope being a professor of liberalism, and having for his pupils all the princes of Italy. Whether Gioberti saw futurity with the eye of prophet, or only in the conjecture of a charlatan, there can be no doubt that the coincidence between his theory and the facts is sufficiently curious. We are to remember that book was published in the reign of Gregory XVI.--a genuine monk, hardened in all the old habits of the cell, who thought that a railroad would be the overthrow of the tiara, and the expression of a political opinion would call up the shades of all the past Holinesses from their purgatorial thrones.

The book declared that the Deity being the source of all influence on the civilisation of man, the country which approached nearest to general influence over the world must be the leading nation. It contends that Italy fulfils this condition in three ways. First, that it has created the civilisation of all other nations; second, that it preserves in its bosom, for general use, all the principles of that civilisation; and third, that it has repeatedly shown the power of restoring that civilisation. He further contends that the true principle of Italian power is federation, and the true centre of that federation must be the Pope. He declares that the whole light of Italy, in the eyes of the world, has flashed from the papal throne--that the Roman States are to the rest of Italy what the site of the Temple was to the Jewish people--and seems to regard the whole Italian nation, in reference to Europe, as like the Chosen Land to the rest of the world. Even then, he marked the Piedmontese throne as the chief support of the federation, and Charles Albert as the champion of the great pontifical revolution which, expelling all strangers, and uniting all princes, was to place Italy in secure sovereignty over all the mental and moral influences of the world.

The work is obviously a romance; but it is a romance of genius; it is obviously unsuited to the realities of any nation under the moon, but it touches every weak point of the national character with a new colouring, and persuades the loose and lazy Italian that he has only to start on his feet to be a model for mankind. With him the church of Rome is no longer an antiquated building of the dark ages, full of obscure passages and airless chambers, with modern cobwebs covering its ancient gilding, and, with the very crevices which let in light, exhibiting only its irreparable decay. It is on the contrary a temple full of splendour, and spreading its light through the world, crowded with oracular shrines, and uttering voices of sanctity that are yet destined to give wisdom to the world.

It must be wholly unnecessary for Protestantism to expose the superficial glitter of those views, and the feeble foundations of this visionary empire. The true respondent is the actual condition of Europe. Every Protestant nation has left Italy behind. Even the Romish nations, which have borrowed their vigour from intercourse with Protestantism, have left her behind. Of what great invention for the benefit of man has Italy been the parent during the last three hundred years? What command has she given us over nature? what territory has she added to the civilised world in an age of perpetual discovery? what enlargement of the human mind has she exhibited in her philosophy? what advance in the amelioration of the popular condition signalises her intelligent benevolence? what manly inquiry into any one of the means by which governments or individuals distinguish themselves as benefactors to posterity, and live in the memory of mankind?

It is painful to answer queries like these with a direct negation; but that negation would be truth. Italy has nothing to show for her intellectual products during centuries, but the carnival and the opera; for her gallantry, but the sufferings of French and German invasions; for her political progress, but the indolent submission to generations of petty kings, themselves living in vassalage to France, Austria, and Spain; and for her religion, but the worship of saints, of whom no living man knows any thing--miracles so absurd as to make even the sacristans who narrate them laugh; new legends of every conceivable nonsense, and leases of purgatory shortened according to the pence dropped into the purse of the confessional.

Italy has two evils, either of which would be enough to break down the most vigorous nation--if a vigorous nation would not have broken down both, ages ago. These two are the nobles and the priesthood--both ruinously numberless, both contemptibly idle, and both interested in resisting every useful change, which might shake their supremacy. Every period of Italian convulsion has left a class of men calling themselves nobles, and perpetuating the title to their sons. The Gothic, the Norman, the papal, the "nouveaux riches," every man who buys an estate--in fact, nearly every man who desires a title--all swell the lists of the nobility to an intolerable size. Of course, a noble can never do any thing--his dignity stands in the way.

The ecclesiastics, though a busier race, are still more exhausting. The kingdom of Naples alone has eighty-five prelates, with nearly one hundred thousand priests and persons of religious orders, the monks forming about a fourth of the whole! In this number the priesthood of Sicily is not included, which has to its own share no less than three archbishops and eleven bishops. Even the barren isle of Sardinia has one hundred and seventeen convents! Can any rational mind wonder at the profligacy, the idleness, and the dependence of the Italian peninsula, with such examples before it? The Pope daily has between two and three thousand monks loitering through the streets of Rome. Besides these, he has on his ecclesiastical staff twenty cardinals, four archbishops, ninety-eight bishops, and a clergy amounting to nearly five per cent of his population. With those two millstones round her neck, Italy must remain at the bottom. She may be shaken and tossed by the political surges which roll above her head, but she never can be buoyant. She must cast both away before she can rise. Italy priest-ridden, and noble-ridden, and prince-ridden, must be content with her fate. Her only chance is in the shock, which will break away her encumbrances.

We now come to the Avatar, in which liberty is looked for by all the romancers in Italy. On the 1st of June 1846, Pope Gregory XVI. died, at the age of 81. He was a man of feeble mind, but of rigid habits, willing to live after the manner of his fathers, and, above all things, dreading Italian change. The occasional attempts at introducing European improvements into the Roman territory struck him with undisguised alarm; and even his old age did not prevent his leaving six thousand state prisoners in the Roman dungeons. On the 16th of the same month the Bishop of Imola was chosen Pope. He was of an Italian family, which had occasionally held considerable offices; was a man of intelligence, though tinged with liberalism; and was one of the youngest of the Popes since Innocent III., who took the tiara at the age of 37. The Bishop of Imola was 54.

Adopting the name of Pius IX., his first act was one of clemency. He published an amnesty for political offences, and threw open the prison doors. An act of this order is usual on the accession of a Pope. But the fears of the population had been so much heightened by the singular stubbornness of his predecessor, that the discovery of their having a merciful master produced a universal burst of rejoicing.

But the popular excitement was not to be satisfied with the trumpetings and parades of the returning exiles--it demanded a new tariff, which was granted, of course. Then followed fêtes and illuminations, until the Pope himself grew tired of being blinded by fireworks and deafened by shouts. A succession of acts of civility passed between his Holiness and his people. He talked of railroads, canals, and commerce. He formed a council, which, so far as any practical effect has been produced by the measure, seems to have died in its birth. He cultivated popularity, walked through the streets, occasionally served the mass for a parish priest, and fully gained his object, of astonishing the populace by the condescension of a pontiff. To all this we make no imaginable objection. Pius IX. did but a duty that seldom enters into the contemplation of the prelacy, and which it would be well for their security, and not unwise in their calling, to practise in every province of Christendom.

But it is to be observed that, in all this pageantry of parliaments, and all those provinces of renovation, nothing has been done--that none of the real machinery of the popedom has been broken up--that the monk is still a living being, and the Jesuit, though a little plundered, is still in the world--that every spiritual law which made Rome a terror to the thinking part of mankind is in full vigour at this moment, and that whatever may be thought of the enlightenment of his Holiness, every weapon of spiritual severity remains still bright and burnished, and hung up in the old armoury of faith, ready for the first hand, and for the first occasion.

Lord Brougham, in his late memorable cosmopolite speech, has charged the popedom with being the origin of the European convulsions. There can be no doubt that the popedom, if it did not give birth to the movement, at least set the example. The first actual struggle with Austria was its quarrel about the possession of Ferrara, which was, after all, but a straw thrown up to show the direction of the wind. The call to the Italian states, though not loud, was deep; and an Italian army, for the purpose of forming an Italian confederation, made a part of every dream between the Alps and the sea.

Then came still more showy scenes of the great drama. France had looked on the Ferrarese struggle with the eager interest which inspires that busy nation on every opportunity of European disturbance. But the Parisian revolution suddenly threw the complimentary warfare of German and Italian heroism into burlesque. The extinction of the throne, the flight of a dynasty, the sovereignty of the mob, and the universal frenzy of a nation, were bold sports, of which Italian souls knew nothing. But their effect was soon perilously felt; the populace of Milan determined to rival the populace of Paris--had an _emeute_ of their own, built barricades, fought the Austrian garrison, and made themselves masters of the capital of Lombardy.

But the Italian is essentially a dramatist without the power of tragedy; he turns by nature to farce, and in his boldest affairs does nothing without burlesque. Could it be conceived that a people, resolving on a revolution, should have begun it by a revolt of cigars! In England "sixty years ago," a noble duke exhibited his hostility to the government of Pitt, by ordering his footman to comb the powder out of his locks--this deficiency in the powder tax being regarded by the noble duke as a decisive instrument in the overthrowing the national policy. It must however be said, for the honour of England and the apology of the duke, that he was a Whig,--which accounts for any imbecility in this world.

The Milanese began by a desperate self-denying ordinance against tobacco. No patriot was thenceforward to smoke! What the Italian did with his hands, mouth, or thoughts, when the cigar no longer employed the whole three, is beyond our imagination. His next act of patriotic sacrifice was the theatre--the Austrian government receiving some rent as tax on the performances. The theatre was deserted, and even Fanny Ellsler's pirouettes could not win the rabble back. Even the public promenade, which happened to have some connexion with Austrian memories, was abandoned, and no Italian, man, woman, or child, would exhibit on the Austrian Corso. To our northern fancies, all this seems intolerably infantine; but it is not the less Italian--and it might have gone on in the style of children raising a nursery rebellion to this hour, but for the intervention of another character.

The history of the Sardinian states is as old as the Punic wars. But the glance which we shall give looks only to the events of the last century--excepting the slight mention, that from the period when Italy was separated from the fallen empire of Charlemagne in the ninth century, the command of the passes of Mont Cenis and Mont Genevre, with the countries at the foot of the Cottian and Graian Alps, was put in charge of some distinguished military noble, as the key of Italy, that noble bearing the title of Marquis or Lord of the Marches.

We come, leaving nine centuries of feud and ferocity behind, to the eighteenth century, when the house of Savoy became allied with the royal succession of England, by the marriage of Victor Amadeus with Anne Marie of Orleans, daughter of Philip, brother of Louis XIV., by Henrietta, daughter of Charles I. of England.

There are few historical facts more striking than the effect of position on the character of the princes of Savoy. The life of the Italian sovereigns has generally been proverbial for the feebleness of their capacities, or the waste of their powers; but Savoy exhibited an almost unbroken line of sovereigns remarkable for political sagacity, and for gallantry in the field. This was the result of their location. They were to Italy what the Lords Wardens of the Border were to England and Scotland; forced to be perpetually in the saddle--constantly preparing to repel invasion--their authority dependent from year to year on an outburst from France, or a grasp from the restless ambition and vast power of the German emperors. It is not less remarkable, that from the middle of the century, when the hazards of Savoy were diminished by the general amelioration of European policy, the vigour of the Savoyard princes decayed; and the court of Turin, instead of being a school of diplomacy and war, sank into the feebleness of Italian thrones, and retained its rivalry only in the opera.

But the French Revolution came, sent to try the infirmities of all thrones. It found Victor Amadeus the Third sitting calmly in the seat of his forefathers, and wholly unsuspicious of the barbarian storm which was to sweep through his valleys. The French burst on Nice in 1792, then on Oniglia, and stripped Savoy of all its outworks to the Alps.

But Napoleon came, another shape of evil. While the king was preparing to defend the passes of the mountains, the young French general turned the line of defence by the sea, and poured his army into Piedmont. A succession of rapid battles carried him to the walls of Turin; and the astonished king, in 1796, signed a treaty which left his dominions at the mercy of Republicanism.

On the death of the king in this year of troubles, his son, Charles Emanuel IV., succeeded him. But he was now a vassal of France; he saw his country dismembered, his armies ruined, and his people groaning under the cruel insults and intolerable exactions which have always characterised French conquest. Unable to endure this torture, he retired to Sardinia, and from Sardinia finally went to Rome, and there abdicated in favour of his brother, Victor Emanuel.

The new monarch, whose states were undergoing from year to year all the capricious and agonising vicissitudes of Italian revolution, at length shared in the general European triumph over Napoleon, and at the peace of 1814 returned to his dominions, augmented, by the treaty of Vienna, by the important addition of Genoa.

But his return was scarcely hailed with triumph by his subjects, when the example of Spain was followed in an insurrection demanding a new constitution. The king, wearied of political disturbance, and being without offspring, now determined to follow the example of his predecessor, and gave up the crown to his brother, Charles Felix, appointing, as provisional regent, Prince Charles Albert of Savoy Carignano, a descendant of Victor Amadeus I.

After a reign of ten years, undistinguished by either vices or virtues, but employed in the harmless occupations of making roads and building schools, the king died in 1831, and was succeeded by the Prince of Carignano.

Charles Albert has now been seventeen years upon the throne; yet, to this hour, his character, his policy, and his purposes, are the problems of Italy. His whole course strongly resembles those biographies of studied mystery and sleepless ambition--those serpent obliquities and serpent trails--which marked the career of the mediæval princes of Italy; but which demanded not only a keen head, but a bold resolve,--Castruccio, with a Machiavel, for the twin image of the perfection of an Italian king.

The object of universal outcry for his original abandonment of "Young Italy,"--an abandonment which may find its natural excuse in the discovery that Young Italy was digging up the foundations of the throne, on whose first step his foot was already placed, and to which within a few years he actually ascended;--from that period he has fixed the eyes of all Italy upon his movements, as those of the only possible antagonist who can shake the power of Austria. He has at least the externals of a power to which Italy can show no rival: 50,000 of the best troops south of the Alps, which a blast of the trumpet from Turin can raise to 100,000; a country which is almost a continued fortress, and a position which, being in the command of the passes of Italy, can meet invasion with the singular probability of making his mountains the grave of the invader, or open Italy to the march of an auxiliary force, which would at once turn the scale. His government has exhibited that cool calculation of popular impulse and royal rights, by which, without a total prohibition of change, he has contrived to keep the whole power of government in his hands. Long watched by Austria, he had never given it an opportunity of direct offence; and if he has at length declared war, his whole past conduct justifies the belief, that he has either been driven to the conflict by some imperious necessity, or that he has assured himself, on deliberate grounds, of the triumph of his enterprise.

He has now taken the first step, and he has taken it with a daring which must either make him the master of Italy, or make him a beggar and an exile. By rushing into war with Austria, he has begun the game in which he must gain all or lose all. Yet we doubt that, for final success, far as he has gone, he has gone far enough. On the day when he unfurled the standard against Austria, he should have proclaimed Italian independence. We look upon the aggression on Austria as a violation of alliance which must bring evil. But that violation being once resolved on, the scabbard should have been thrown away, and the determination published to the world, that the foreign soldier should no longer tread the Italian soil. This declaration would have had the boldness which adds enthusiasm to interest. It would have had the clearness which suffers no equivocation; and it would have had the comprehensiveness which would include every man of Italian birth, and not a few in other countries, to whom unlicensed boldness is the first of virtues.

The private habits of this prince are said to be singularly adapted to the leader of a national war. His frame is hardy, his manner of living is abstemious, and his few recreations are manly and active. He has already seen war, and commanded a column of the French army in the campaign of 1823, which broke up the Spanish liberals, and reinstated the king upon the throne. But, with all those daring qualities, he never forgets that the Italian is by nature a superstitious being; that he is, at best, a compound of the mime and the monk--with the monk three-fourths predominating; and that no man can hope to be master of the national mind who does not take his share in the priestly slavery of the people. This accounts for the extraordinary reverence which from time to time he displays in the ceremonials of the church, for his sufferance of the monkish thousands which blacken the soil of his dominions, and for his tolerance of the Jesuits, whom he, as well as probably every other sovereign of Europe, dreads, and whom every other sovereign of Europe seems, by common consent, to be fixed on expelling from his dominions.

What the ulterior views of the King may be, of course, it would require a prophet to tell. Whether the crown of Lombardy is among the dreams of his ambition, whether the Italian hatred of Austria stimulates his councils, or whether the mere Italian passion for freedom urges him to stake his own diadem on the chances of the field for the liberation of the peninsula, are questions which can be answered only by the event; but he has at last advanced,--has menaced the Austrian possession of Italy; has pressed upon the Austrian army in its retreat; has reduced it to the defensive; and has brought the great question of Austrian dominion to the simple arbitration of the sword.

The history of the Sardinian campaign has been hitherto a history of skirmishes. The Piedmontese troops have advanced, and Radetski has retired. The Austrian position is memorable for its strength, and has been successively adopted by every defender of the Austro-Italian provinces. Peschiera, Verona, and Mantua form the three angles of an irregular triangle, of which the line of the Mincio forms the base. Charles Albert, by crossing the Mincio at Goito, is now _within_ the triangle. The three fortresses are strong, and he has already made some attempts on Peschiera, which commands the head of the Lake of Garda. Those attempts have failed, and Verona is now his object; and there too he appears to have already undergone some failures. The true wonder is, that he has been suffered to remain a moment making these experiments, and that Austria, with 300,000 men under arms, should allow an Italian army, of 50,000 men at the most, to shut up her general, and lord it over half of her Italian territory. All this is an enigma. It is equally an enigma, that the Austrian commander-in-chief should have allowed himself to be driven out of the capital of Lombardy by the rabble of the streets, and have marched out with a garrison of 15,000 men, before a mob of half their number. He ought to have fought in Milan to his last battalion. If he had been embarrassed by orders from home, he ought to have resigned at once. A heavy blow at the insurrection in Milan would have extinguished Italian rebellion.

He has now a position in which he might fight with perfect security for his flanks and rear; with the strongest fortress in Italy, Mantua, for his place of refuge, if defeated; and, if successful, with the certainty of ruin to his adversary;--yet he stands still. It was by a brilliant movement in this position that the Austrian Kray gave the French that tremendous defeat which ultimately drove them over the Alps.

The surrounding country is of the most intricate kind--a perpetual intersection of large rivers, guarded at every passage by _têtes de pont_, and all the means known to military science. A war of this order may be carried on for years; and, unless the Italian population shall rise _en masse_, it must be a mere waste of blood and time.

The true tactique of an Italian invasion is a succession of rapid, daring, and _hazardous_ attacks. This is the dictate of experience in every example of Italian conquest. A bold rush into the interior, leaving all fortresses behind, despising the obstacles of rivers, lakes, and mountains, and only hurrying on to meet the enemy in line, has been the principle of success from the first days of the French assaults on Italy to the last. _Their_ war was an incursion, their marches were a headlong charge, their battles were outbursts of furious force; and, if their triumphs were transient, they failed merely from the national caprice which tires of every thing, and from the exhaustion of an ill-regulated finance. The French, even under the old Bourbons, never descended the Alps without sweeping all resistance before them. The campaigns of Napoleon in 1796, and the following year, were on the same principle. He plunged into Italy at the head of 50,000 troops, ragged, hungry, and in beggary, but the first robbers in Europe. He told them that, by beating the Italians, they should get clothes, food, and money. As a strategist, he probably committed a thousand faults, but he did not commit the grand fault of all, that of giving the enemy time to recover his senses. He fought every day,--he fought by night as well as by day. At Montenotte, he fought for twelve hours, and was beaten; he again mounted his horse at midnight, attacked the victor in his first sleep, and, before morning, was master of the mountains, with the Austrian army in full flight, and the gates of Turin open before him. The Russian campaign in Italy was on the same principle. "When you are not fighting, march; when you are not marching, fight." When the Austrian generals advised Suwarrow to manœuvre, he laughed, and told them that tactics were only trifling. "Make reconnoissances," said the greybeard pupils of the Aulic Council. "My reconnoissances," said the great Russian, "are of 10,000 men. Form column, charge bayonet, plunge into the enemy's centre. These are my only reconnoissances." In three months he drove the French, under their two best officers, Macdonald and Moreau, across the Alps, and cleared Italy. A lingering Italian campaign is always a campaign thrown away, or a country lost. It is the work of a military gambler. Napoleon's invasion of Italy, in his consulate, was one of the most desperate hazards ever ventured in war. He might have been defeated, and, if defeated, he must have been utterly ruined. But he attacked the Austrians, was repulsed, renewed the attack in desperation, repulsed the enemy in turn, and next day saw all Italy capitulate to him.

What a month may bring forth is beyond our calculation; but while we were writing those pages, there had been a general movement of the Piedmontese troops on Verona, probably with the intention of aiding some insurrectionary movement in the city. The Piedmontese artillery speedily demolished the field-works in the approaches to the city. A general advance was ordered, and the Austrian troops continued to retreat, still turning on the advancing line, and fighting, through a country the greater part of which is a low shrubby forest. At length, however, a Piedmontese division was vigorously attacked, taken by surprise, and broken with a loss so heavy, as to determine the retreat of the army to its position of the morning. Still, this was but an affair of posts; and, in the mean time, General Nugent, with an army of 30,000 men, is putting down the insurgents in the Venetian provinces, and is marching towards the flank of the Piedmontese.

One fact is evident, that Italy has _not_ risen in a body, and that, with all the harangues of her revolutionary orators, and all the promises of what those orators call "her heroic youth, burning to extinguish the abomination of the Teutons," very few of them have stirred from their coffee-houses. Italy, with her twenty millions of men, has probably not furnished to the field twenty thousand volunteers. Yet this is the time for which they have been all panting in all kinds of sonnets; when the "new spirit of political regeneration" has full range for its flight, when the Austrian police are a dead letter, and when Spielberg and its bastions are a bugbear no more.

But the movements of the Roman populace are matters of more rapid execution. What the Pope was a month since, every one knows;--Pius the powerful, Pius the popular, Pius the restorer of liberty to all the aggrieved nations of Italy, with a slight appendix, including the aggrieved nations of Europe. But the populace, which gave him his titles, have now changed them, and he is "Pius the Monk."

In a year whose every week produces a revolution, who can predict the events of a month? In the middle of this month of May, Pope Pius is virtually a prisoner in his palace; within a week he may be transferred to the castle of St Angelo; within a fortnight he may be an exile, an outlaw, or a refugee in England.

The intelligence from Rome at the commencement of the month was simply, that he was a cipher. The people, in their eagerness for Austrian overthrow, demanded a declaration of war. But the German bishops are said to have informed the Court of Cardinals, that a measure of that order would instantly produce a renouncement of their allegiance to the Roman See. A council of cardinals was now summoned, before whom the Pope laid a recapitulation of his policy, which may be considered in the light of a penitential speech. In the mean time, all his ministers tendered their resignations, probably hoping to lay the _onus_ of things on the shoulders of Pius himself, and glad to escape from being massacred by the mob, or hanged by the Austrians.

But the Pope wisely determined, that whatever happened to one, should happen to all, and refused to let them resign. The general staff then held a "sitting," and the municipality marched in procession, to give their opinion at the Vatican on matters of government, and recommend "_abdication_!" Such are the benefits of telling the rabble that they are the true depositaries of the national wisdom. In other and better days, the Pope would have sent those volunteer privy-councillors to the galleys, as their impudence richly deserved. But he may now thank his own political visions.

The affair was not yet over. The civic guard, that darling creation of regenerate freedom, took up its muskets, planted themselves at the gates, and declared that no one, priest, bishop, or pope, should stir from Rome. A kind of rabble proclamation was next made, that "no ecclesiastic should hold any civil office." If this be persisted in, there is an end of "Our Sovereign Lord the Pope." He may possibly be allowed to say mass, hear confessions, and work miracles in the old monkish fashion. But his tiara must pass away, his sceptre will be a staff, and his toe will be kissed no more. The mob say that as they do not wish to take him by surprise, they have allowed him some days to settle the question of private life with himself. But the declaration of war is the _sine quâ non_, and if he refuses, there is to be a "provisional government."

"By six o'clock, on the 1st instant, no answer had been received." Such is the new punctuality of popular dealings with princes and popes; and such was the announcement of the mob leaders to all those political reformers, the loungers of Rome. But at last the old expedient of startled sovereignty has been adopted. The ministry, by intelligence on the 5th, had been suffered to retire, and their successors, more liberal than ever, were received with popular acclamation.

The senate of Rome, probably to soften this measure to the Papal feelings, presented Pius with a long address, which, however, contains a repetition of the demand for war at any price. It says, "The people do not expect _you_, a messenger of peace, to declare war. But they only desire that you _should not prevent_ those to whom you have confided the direction of temporal affairs _to undertake and conduct it_." Thus the division is complete. The Pope is to be two distinct personages--the messenger of peace, and the maker of war; unless, in the latter instance, he is to be responsible for acts which he does not guide, and to acknowledge his ministers to be "viceroys over him." Of all the acts of sovereignty, the most inalienable is the making of peace and war. But the sovereign of Rome is to have nothing of the kind. He is to be a puppet in the hands of a Board. We may well believe the accounts which represent him as "_in deep dejection_" at these manifestations of popular dealings with princes and popes. If his "Holiness" is not expeditious in his decision to obey his Sansculotte statesmen, the conclusion will be as rapid as the conception.

In all this chapter of change, whatever may be the coolness of our respect for the Papacy, we feel for the Pope, as we should feel for any man intolerably insulted by a conspiracy of wretches pampered into gross arrogance by sudden power. His personal character is unimpeachable; and if his vanity has met with a sudden and bitter reproof, it is only the vanity of an Italian.

Even of the people of Italy we speak only with regret. If these pages contain contemptuous expressions, wrung from us by the truth of things, we are not the less ready to acknowledge the original merits of a people spoiled only by their institutions. We admit every instance which their panegyrists adduce of their natural ability, of their kindliness of disposition, of their ancient intrepidity in the field, and of their brilliancy in the arts. We impute all their waste of those gifts to the fiction which they call their religion. We lament over the hopelessness of Italian restoration while the nation sees the melting of St Januarius's blood as a work of heaven; expects the remission of sins from looking at the napkin of St Veronica; bows down to an image of the Virgin as the worker of miracles, and as an object of divine worship. While this lasts, the mind of Italy must remain in the darkness of that of its fathers, it may have wars, but it will have no advance in liberty; it may have revolutions, but it will have no national vigour; it may have a thousand depositions of sovereigns, but it will only be a change of masters, and every change only leaving it the more a slave. Italy can have but one charter--the Bible.

But now the world is in confusion. War in the north--war in the south--war gathering in the east of Europe. Russia, with 120,000 men, marching on Poland, to be followed by 300,000 more. France, with half a million of men in arms, waiting but the blast of the revolutionary trumpet to pour down on Italy. Can these things be by accident? Universal convulsion after a tranquillity of thirty years! And are these but the beginning of sorrows?

THE INCA AND HIS BRIDE.--A MEDLEY.