Part 19

The moment that the snow disappeared vegetation sprang up as if by magic, and the birds made preparations for breeding. As we passed through Yen-e-saisk I bought a schooner off a ship-builder of the name of Boiling, a Heligolander. I christened it the _Ibis_; and on the 29th of June we left the Koo-ray-i-ka with this little craft in tow. Our progress down the river, however, was one catalogue of disasters, ending in our leaving the _Thames_ on the 9th of July a hopeless wreck, lying high and dry on a sand-bank, in latitude 67°. As we sailed northwards in the _Ibis_, the forests became smaller and smaller, and disappeared altogether about latitude 70°. The highest point we reached was latitude 71½°, where I sold the _Ibis_ to the captain of a Russian schooner, which had been totally wrecked during the break-up of the ice.

On the 23rd of July I left Gol-chee-ka in the last Russian steamer up the river; and reached Yen-e-saisk on the 14th of August. After a few days’ delay I drove across country to Tomsk, stopping a day or two in Kras-no-yarsk. In Tomsk I found an excellent iron steamer, in which I sailed down the river Tom into the Obb, down which we steamed to its junction with the Eer-tish, up which we proceeded until we entered the Tob-ol, and afterwards steamed up the Too-ra to Tyu-main, a distance by water of 2,200 miles. From the Tyu-main I drove through Ekatereenburg across the Urals to Perm, where I took my passage on board the _Sam-o-lot_, or self-flyer, down the Kama, and up the Volga, to Nishni Novgorod.

THE YARROW

JOHN MACWHIRTER

Yarrow and its vale form one of the high places of the earth. In this age of cheap trips it is easy to get there, and perhaps you don’t think much of it as you rattle through on the coach. There is many a Highland scene incomparably grander. After all

“What’s Yarrow, but a river bare, That glides the dark hills under? There are a thousand such elsewhere, As worthy of your wonder.”

A word of dry description must commence. The Yarrow Water is in Yarrow and Selkirk parishes of the country of Selkirk. It rises in St. Mary’s Loch, it courses therefrom to its junction with Ettrick Water fourteen and a half miles, when the latter gives its name to the united currents. They are soon lost in the Tweed. Beyond St. Mary’s Loch, and separated from it by a narrow strip of land, is the Loch o’ the Lowes (or Lochs). It is about two miles in length, and is fed by the Yarrow, which rises some two miles higher up, though it is usually taken as beginning in the large lake. In the lower reach the banks are wooded; farther up the hills are bare, soft, rounded, the stream is clear and swift-flowing, with a musical note on its large and small stones; there is no growth of sedge or underwood, but the fresh green grass stretches up the slope till it is lost in the heather. Between the hills are glens down which wind greater or smaller tributaries to the Yarrow. Each has its legend and its ruin. Dim, romantic, enticing, these glens stretch away into the mysterious mountain solitude. You begin your excursion from Selkirk, which is on Ettrick Water, ten miles down stream from its junction with the Yarrow, and two places soon take your attention, Carterhaugh and Philiphaugh. There is a farm “toun,” as they name a steading in the north, that is called Carterhaugh; but what is meant here is a charming piece of greensward and wood, that lies almost encircled by the two streams at and near their meeting place. A very Faeryland! and here is laid the scene of the faery ballad of “The Young Tamlane.” The song is very old; it was well known in 1549, as we learn from a chance mention in a work of the period. It is a delicious poem, pure phantasy; a very Mid-summer Night’s Dream, scarcely of the earth at all, far less dealing with historical incident. The forgotten poet, lest he should be all in the air, makes the young Tamlane son to Randolph, Earl Murray, and Fair Janet, daughter to Dunbar, Earl March, but this is only because these were the noblest names in Scotland, and he chooses Carterhaugh for his stage; as like as not he lived somewhere on the Yarrow, and the stream sang in his ears as he built the song. Tamlane is nine when his uncle sends for him “to hunt and hawk and ride,” and on the way--

“There came a wind out o’ the north, A sharp wind and a snell, And a dead sleep came over me, And frae my horse I fell. The Queen of the Fairies she was there, And took me to herself.”

On the left bank of the Yarrow, just across from Carterhaugh, is Philiphaugh. It is a large space of level ground, and here the fortunes of the great Montrose and his Highland army came to hopeless smash in the early morning of 13th September, 1645. Montrose had won six victories in the Highlands, had been appointed Viceroy of Scotland, and full of ill-placed confidence was preparing an invasion of England. He spent the previous evening at ease in Selkirk (they still show you the house) and was writing despatches to the king, when he heard the sound of firing. He galloped to the field and found everything practically over! David Leslie had been seeking him far and near for some time, had found the camp and invaded it in a mist. The Royalists were scattered; Montrose--no one ever counted cowardice among his vices--made a desperate effort to retrieve the fortune of the day, but all in vain. Finally he dashed through the opposing forces, galloped away up the Yarrow, then by a wild mountain path, right over Minchmoor, and drew not bridle till he dashed up to Traquair House, sixteen miles from the battle-field. A number of prisoners were taken. The common lowland Scot has still a certain contempt for the Highlander, whose appreciation in the modern world is due to literature; then he looked upon him as an outcast and outlaw, “a broken man,” in the expressive phrase of an earlier day. The captives were shot in the court-yard of Newark Castle, and buried in a field still called Slain-mans-lee. Celtic troops are very brave, but unless mixed with the steadier Saxon, they don’t seem reliable.

Still keeping on the left bank, follow the road by the riverside and as before you come to two places, each with an interest very different from the others. One is a ruined house, a poor enough building at the best. An inscription tells you that Mungo Park (1771-1805) the African traveller, was born and lived here. He saw Scott a little before his last voyage, told how he dreaded leave-taking (he had been recently married!) and that he meant to leave for Edinburgh on some pretence or other and make his adieux from there. On Williamhope ridge the two parted.

“I stood and looked back, but he did not,” says Scott. He had put his hand to the plough. Poor Mungo Park! his discoveries seem little now-a-days, yet to me, he is always the most attractive of African travellers, his life the most interesting, his end the most melancholy. One thinks how under the hot sun in those fearful swamps he must have often remembered the cool delicious green braes of his native Yarrow. But we turn our eyes to the opposite bank and scarce need be told that the castle we see, majestic, though in ruins, is “Newark’s stately tower.” ’Tis a great weather-beaten square keep, where Anna, relict of the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth, lived for some years of her widowed life. To her Scott’s “Last Minstrel” sings his lay. But the place was already centuries old. It was once a hunting-seat of the Scots kings, when the whole region was the densely wooded Ettrick Forest, and here there was great sport with the wolf, the mountain bear, the wild-cat, and all sorts of other small and large deer. Some place-names still save the old memories, Oxcleugh, Durhame, Hartleap, Hindshope, and so forth.

After Yarrow hamlet the land is more desolate, the stream shrinks to a mountain burn, there are no more clumps of trees, and the hills creep in near the water’s edge, and they are taller and steeper. You pass lofty Mount Benger, near where Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who loved and sang of those sweet vales, had a farm. Farther on the right bank is Altrive, where he afterwards lived, and where he died. Almost opposite, the Douglas Burn flows through a gloomy and solitary glen to Yarrow. Follow this burn and you come to the ruins of Blackhouse Tower. It was from here that Lord William and Lady Margaret fled at midnight from Lord Douglas and his seven sons. These were slain one by one, but it was only when her lover began to press roughly on her father that the lady interposed.

“Oh hold your hand, Lord William, she said, For your strokes they are wondrous sair. True lovers I can get many a one, But a father I can never get mair.”

An obvious if belated reflection! ’Twas of no avail, the father is left dead and dying, and the lady follows her knight (“For ye’ve left me nae other guide,” she says somewhat bitterly). They light down at “yon wan water” and his “gude heart’s bluid” dyes the stream, though he swears “’Tis naething but the shadow of my scarlet cloak.” However, the lovers die that very night and are buried in St. Marie’s Kirke, and “a bonny red rose” and a briar grew out of the grave and twined together to the admiration of all who saw, but to the great wrath of Black Douglas, who, a sworn foe to sentimentality,

“Pull’d up the bonny briar And flang’d in St. Marie’s Loch.”

The wild path followed by the lovers over the hillside is still to be traced, the place of the combat is marked by seven stones; but again these are of an earlier date, and again it would be useless to criticise the creation of the fancy too curiously.

And now we are at St. Mary’s Loch, a beautiful sheet of water three miles long and half a mile broad. At the head of the loch is a monument to the Ettrick Shepherd. Near the monument is St. Mary’s Cottage, better known as “Tibbie Shiel’s,” and scene of many a gay carouse of Christopher North and his merry men, as you know very well if you have read the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_. The cottage is still kept by a relative of the original Tibbie, as a humble sort of an inn. If you are wise you will prefer it to the large new Rodona hotel not far off. It has a touch of the old times with its huge fireplace and box beds. It is something to hear the local anecdote, how one morning “after” Christopher or the shepherd, being more than ever consumed with the pangs of thirst, in a burst of wild desire, cried “Tibbie, bring ben the Loch.” It is said that Scott was never farther than the door. Scott, Hogg, Wilson were, we all know, great writers, though to-day Wilson is but little read, Hogg popular through one or two lyrics, whilst Scott is more and more known with the years. But each of the three had an impressive and attractive personality--he is more than a writer, he is first of all a man. Superior in interest to monument and cottage is St. Mary’s Kirk, which stands on a height on the left bank of the loch. One should say stood, for nothing of it is left. Here generations of martyrs and freebooters were carried, and the heroes and heroines of so many of the tales and ballads were laid to rest, but--

“St. Mary’s Loch lies slumbering still, But St. Mary’s Kirk-bells lang dune ringing, There’s naething now but the grave-stone hill, To tell o’ a’ their loud Psalm-singing.”

They still bury there, though at rare and distant intervals. Hard by is Dryhope Tower. Here was born Mary Scott, the “Flower of Yarrow.” The romance of the name caused this heroine to be incessantly be-rhymed through all the subsequent centuries, but we don’t know much about her. She was married to Walter Scott of Harden, a gentleman widely and justly renowned for his skill in “lifting” other people’s cattle. As a portion the bride’s father agreed to “find his son-in-law in man’s meat and horse’s meat for a year and a day, five barons becoming bound that, on the expiry of that period, Harden should retire without compulsion.” Not one of the parties to the contract could write. A daughter of the “Flower of Yarrow” was married to another freebooter called “Gilly wi’ the gouden garters.” The bride was to remain at her father’s house for a year and a day, and in return Gilly contracted to hand over the plunder of the first harvest moon. By the way, there is rather a pretty though quite untrustworthy tradition of the origin of the ballads connected with the name of Mary Scott. In the spoils brought home by her husband from one of his forays, was a child. Him she took and reared. Of gentle nature, he delighted to hear of and celebrate in songs the tragedies and romances acted or repeated around him; and so he, “nameless as the race from whence he sprung, saved other names and left his own unsung.” The Meggat Water is one of the many streams that fill the loch. On one of its tributaries called Henderland-burn is a ruined tower, and near it a large stone broken into three parts, on which you may still make out the inscription, “Here lyes Perys of Cockburne and his wyfe Marjory.” Cockburne was in his day a noted freebooter, and secure in his tower defied all attempts to bring him to justice. But James V. in his famous progress through the Border-land, heard of his proceedings, and came right over the hills and down upon Henderland, whose proprietor he found eating his dinner. It was his last meal; he was at once seized and strung up before his own door. His wife fled and concealed herself in a place called the Lady’s seat, and when she recovered the silence of the glen told her that the invaders had departed, and she returned and buried her husband. One of the most pathetic of the old ballads is said to be her lament

“But think na’ ye my heart was sair, When I laid the moul’ on his yellow hair; O think na’ ye my heart was wae, When I turned about, awa’ to gae.”

By the way, gold was found in the glen here; probably a little might be extracted to-day; but then it wouldn’t pay for the washing. Quite a different set of traditions deals with the Covenanting period. Far up in the solitary side glens were favourite meeting-places; here the saints came from far and near with Bible, and sword and gun, ready to offer up their lives if need may be, but quite determined to sell them as dearly as possible. Alas! the minstrels were not on their side, and no contemporary ballads tell the story of the dangers and deaths, though those were dramatic enough. In later times Hogg and Wilson did something to weave them into song and story. It was near the loch of the Lowes that Renwick preached his last sermon. “When he prayed that day few of his hearers’ cheeks were dry.” On the 17th February, 1688, “he glorified God in the grass-market,” as the old phrase ran.

And now one can understand how Yarrow came to its fame. Quieter, sweeter, softer than other vales, its green braes, its delicious streams attracted the old singers who preserved the memories of others’ deeds. But why is this music sad? Well, most border ballads are little tragedies, the strongest emotions are the saddest, and such the singers preferred. And then one or two ballads gave a decided tone to the others. The “Dowie Dens,” in fact, strikes the key-note of them all. William Hamilton, of Bangour, and John Logan have both told a story of love and death in excellent fashion in their poems on “The Braes of Yarrow.” As for the rest, Scott is chiefly descriptive; Wordsworth, in spite of an occasional line or even verse of high excellence, is on the whole very poor; and Alan Ramsay is exceedingly bad.

THE MISSISSIPPI

ALEXANDER D. ANDERSON

In the early days of European discoveries and rivalries in the Mississippi Valley its comprehensive river system played a prominent part on the stage of public affairs. The discovery of the river, in 1541, by De Soto and his Spanish troops, was about a century later followed by explorations by the French under the lead of Marquette, Joliet, La Salle and others, who entered the valley from the north. La Salle, during the years 1679-83, explored the river throughout its whole length, took possession of the great valley in the name of France, and called it Louisiana in honour of his King, Louis XIV. Then resulted grand schemes for developing the resources of the valley, which a French writer characterized as “the regions watered by the Mississippi, immense unknown virgin solitudes which the imagination filled with riches.” One Crozat, in 1712, secured from the King a charter giving him almost imperial control of the commerce of the whole Mississippi Valley. There was at that date no European rival to dispute French domination, for the English of New England and the other Atlantic colonies had not extended their settlements westward across the Alleghanies, and the Spanish inhabitants of New Spain or Mexico had not pushed their conquest farther north than New Mexico. Crozat’s trading privileges covered an area many times as large as all France, and as fertile as any on the face of the earth. But he was equal to the opportunity, and, failing in his efforts, soon surrendered the charter.

John Law, a Scotchman, at first a gambler, and subsequently a bold, visionary, but brilliant financier, succeeded Crozat in the privileges of this grand scheme, and secured from the successor of Louis XIV. a monopoly of the trade and development of the French possessions in the valley. In order to carry out his wild enterprise he organized a colossal stock company, called “The Western Company,” but more generally known in history as the “Mississippi Bubble.” According to the historian Monette “it was vested with the exclusive privilege of the entire commerce of Louisiana and New France, and with authority to enforce its rights. It was authorized to monopolize the trade of all the colonies in the provinces, and of all the Indian tribes within the limits of that extensive region, even to the remotest source of every stream tributary in anywise to the Mississippi.” So skilful and daring were his manipulations that he bewitched the French people with the fascinations of stock gambling. The excitement in Paris is thus described by Thiers:

“It was no longer the professional speculators and creditors of the Government who frequented the rue Quincampoix; all classes of society mingled there, cherishing the same illusions--noblemen famous on the field of battle, distinguished in the Government, churchmen, traders, quiet citizens, and servants whom their suddenly acquired fortune had filled with the hope of rivalling their masters.”

The rue Quincampoix was called the Mississippi. The month of December was the time of the greatest infatuation. The shares ended by rising to eighteen and twenty thousand francs--thirty-six and forty times the first price. At the price which they had attained, the six hundred thousand shares represented a capital of ten or twelve billions of francs.

But the bubble soon burst; and its explosion upset the finances of this whole kingdom. Some years later, in 1745, a French engineer named Deverges made a report to his Government in favour of improving the mouth of the Mississippi, and stated that the bars there existing were a serious injury to commerce.

But France met with too powerful rivalry in the valley, and in 1762 and 1763, after a supremacy of nearly a hundred years, was crowded out by the English from the Atlantic colonies and the Spaniards from the south-west, the Mississippi River forming the dividing line between the regions acquired by those two nations. The Spanish officials, for the purpose of promoting colonization, and to aid in establishing trading-posts on the Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, Red, and other rivers in the western half of the valley, granted to certain individuals, pioneers, and settlers, large tracts of land. They made little progress, however, in peopling their new territory.

But whatever progress was made under the successive supremacies of France and Spain, the Mississippi and its navigable tributaries supplied the only highways of communication and commerce.

In the year 1800, soon after Napoleon I. became the civil ruler of France, he sought to add to the commercial glory of his country by re-acquiring the territory resting upon the Mississippi which his predecessors had parted with in 1763.

To quote the language of a French historian: “The cession that France made of Louisiana to Spain in 1763 had been considered in all our maritime and commercial cities as impolitic and injurious to the interests of our navigation, as well as to the French West Indies, and it was very generally wished that an opportunity might occur of recovering that colony. One of the first cares of Bonaparte was to renew with the court of Madrid a negotiation on that subject.”

He succeeded in these negotiations, and by secret treaty of St. Ildefonso, in 1800, French domination was once more established over the great river.

Two years later, the commerce of the river had grown to large proportions. Says Marbois, of that period: “No rivers of Europe are more frequented than the Mississippi and tributaries.” A substantially correct idea of their patronage may be obtained from the record of the foreign commerce from the mouth of the Mississippi, for nearly all of the commodities collected there for export had first floated down the river.

Marbois well illustrates the intense indignation at this order on the part of the Western people by attributing to them the following language: “The Mississippi is ours by the law of nature; it belongs to us by our numbers, and by the labour which we have bestowed on those spots which before our arrival were desert and barren. Our innumerable rivers swell it and flow with it into the Gulf Sea. Its mouth is the only issue which nature has given to our waters, and we wish to use it for our vessels. No power in the world shall deprive us of this right.”

Of Morales’s order James Madison, then Secretary of State, wrote the official representative of the United States at the court of Spain:

“You are aware of the sensibility of our Western citizens to such an occurrence. This sensibility is justified by the interest they have at stake. The Mississippi to them is everything. It is the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers of the Atlantic States formed into one stream.”

At this time Thomas Jefferson was President, and in view of the uneasiness of the Western settlers, he hastened to send to France a special ambassador to negotiate for the purchase of the Louisiana Territory. The opportunity was a favourable one, for France was then in danger of a conflict with Great Britain. The latter country had become alarmed at and jealous of Bonaparte’s commercial conquests, and he, apprehending war and fearing that he could not hold Louisiana, had about determined to do the next best thing--dispose of it to one of England’s rivals.

Marbois, the historian of Louisiana, from whom we have above quoted, was chosen by Napoleon to represent France in the negotiations with the representative of the United States sent by Jefferson. His account of the cession--the consultation between Napoleon and his ministers--and of his remarks and motives, forms one of the most instructive and interesting chapters of modern history. Napoleon foreshadowed his action by the following remark to one of his counsellors:

“To emancipate nations from the commercial tyranny of England it is necessary to balance her influence by a maritime power that may one day become her rival; that power is the United States. The English aspire to dispose of all the riches of the world. I shall be useful to the whole universe if I can prevent their ruling America as they rule Asia.”