Chapter 4

The hardy and healthy portion of the emigrants, under the stimulating excitements of the novel circumstances of their situation, seemed to revel in the exuberance of animal spirits. Each seemed to have adopted the rule of the wise man: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, that do with all thy might." They speculated, dug, or gambled, with an almost reckless energy. All old forms of courtesy had given place to hearty, blunt good fellowship in their social intercourse. They reminded our traveler of the Jarls and Norse sea-kings, and in the noisy and almost fierce revelry of these bearded gold-hunters around their mountain tires, he seemed to see the brave and jovial Berseckers of the middle ages.

We cannot forbear quoting a paragraph in relation to the great question of our time, "The Organization of Labor."

"In California, no model phalanxes or national workshops have been necessary. Labor has organized itself, in the best possible way. The dream of attractive industry is realized; all are laborers, and equally respectable; the idler and the gentleman of leisure, to use a phrase of the country, 'can't shine in these diggings.' Rich merchandise lies in the open street; and untold wealth in gold dust is protected only by ragged canvas walls, but thefts and robbery are seldom heard of. The rich returns of honest labor render harmless temptations which would prove an overmatch for the average virtue of New England. The cut-purse and pickpocket in California find their occupation useless, and become chevaliers of industry, in a better sense than the term has ever before admitted of. It will appear natural," says our author, "that California should be the most democratic country in the world. The practical equality of all the members of the community, whatever might be the wealth, intelligence, or profession of each, was never before so thoroughly demonstrated. Dress was no gauge of respectability and no honest occupation, however menial in its character, affected a man's standing. Lawyers, physicians, and ex-professors, dug cellars, drove ox-teams, sawed wood, and carried baggage, while men who had been army privates, sailors, cooks, or day laborers, were at the head of profitable establishments, and not unfrequently assisted in some of the minor details of government. A man who would consider his fellow beneath him, on account of his appearance or occupation, would have had some difficulty in living peaceably in California. The security of the country is owing in no small degree to this plain, practical development of what the French reverence as an abstraction, under the name of _Fraternité_. To sum up all in three words, _Labor is respectable_. May it never be otherwise while a grain of gold is left to glitter in Californian soil!"

Our author returned by way of Mazatlan and the city of Mexico, meeting with a pleasant variety of adventures, robbery included, on his route. In taking leave of his volumes, we cannot forbear venturing a suggestion to the author, that he may find a field of travel, less known, and quite as interesting at the present time, in the vast Territory of New Mexico--the valley of the Del Norte, with its old Castilian and Aztec monuments and associations; the Great Salt Lake, and the unexplored regions of the great valley of the Colorado, between the mountain ranges of the Sierra Madre and the Sierra Nevada. We know of no one better fitted for such an enterprise, or for whom, judging from the spirit of his California narrative, it would present more attractions.

[Footnote 2: Eldorado: Adventures in the Path of Empire. By Bayard Taylor. New York. Putnam. 1850. Two volumes.]

* * * * *

MEYERBEER AND WEBER.--The Berlin papers are reviving the rumor that Meyerbeer is to complete an opera which Weber left unfinished. This time his share is defined to be, a new third act, three numbers in the second, one number in the first, and an overture.

* * * * *

FROM UNPUBLISHED BOOKS

* * * * *

FROM MISS FENIMORE COOPER'S "RURAL HOURS," _IN PRESS BY PUTNAM_

A CHASE

Within twenty years from the foundation of the village, the deer had already become rare, and in a brief period later they had fled from the country. One of the last of these beautiful creatures seen in the waters of our lake occasioned a chase of much interest, though under very different circumstances from those of a regular hunt. A pretty little fawn had been brought in very young from the woods, and nursed and petted by a lady in the village until it had become as tame as possible. It was graceful, as these little creatures always are, and so gentle and playful that it became a great favorite, following the different members of the family about, caressed by the neighbors, and welcome everywhere. One morning, after gamboling about as usual until weary, it threw itself down in the sunshine, at the feet of one of its friends, upon the steps of a store. There came along a countryman, who for several years had been a hunter by pursuit, and who kept several dogs: one of his hounds came to the village with him on this occasion. The dog, as it approached the spot where the fawn lay, suddenly stopped; the little animal saw him, and started to its feet. It had lived more than half its life among the village, and had apparently lost all fear of them; but it seemed now to know instinctly that an enemy was at hand. In an instant a change came over it, and the gentleman who related the incident, and who was standing by at the moment, observed that he had never in his life seen a finer sight than the sudden arousing of instinct in that beautiful creature. In a second its whole character and appearance seemed changed, all its past habits were forgotten, every wild impulse was awake; its head erect, its nostrils dilated, its eye flashing. In another instant, before the spectators had thought of the danger, before its friends could secure it, the fawn was leaping wildly through the street, and the hound in full pursuit. The bystanders were eager to save it; several persons instantly followed its track, the friends who had long fed and fondled it, calling the name it had hitherto known, but in vain. The hunter endeavored to whistle back his dog, but with no better success. In half a minute the fawn had turned the first corner, dashed onward toward the lake, and thrown itself into the water. But, if for a moment the startled creature believed itself safe in the cool bosom of the lake, it was soon undeceived; the hound followed in hot and eager chase, while a dozen of the village dogs joined blindly in the pursuit. Quite a crowd collected on the bank, men, women, and children, anxious for the fate of the little animal known to them all: some threw themselves into boats, hoping to intercept the hound before he reached his prey; but the plashing of the oars, the eager voices of the men and boys, and the barking of the dogs, must have filled the beating heart of the poor fawn with terror and anguish, as though every creature on the spot where it had once been caressed and fondled had suddenly turned into a deadly foe. It was soon seen that the little animal was directing its course across a bay toward the nearest borders of the forest, and immediately the owner of the hound crossed the bridge, running at full speed in the same direction, hoping to stop his dog as he landed. On the fawn swam, as it never swam before, its delicate head scarcely seen above the water, but leaving a disturbed track, which betrayed its course alike to anxious friends and fierce enemies. As it approached the land, the exciting interest became intense. The hunter was already on the same line of shore, calling loudly and angrily to his dog, but the animal seemed to have quite forgotten his master's voice in the pitiless pursuit. The fawn touched the land--in one leap it had crossed the narrow line of beach, and in another instant it would reach the cover of the woods. The hound followed, true to the scent, aiming at the same spot on the shore; his master, anxious to meet him, had run at full speed, and was now coming up at the most critical moment; would the dog hearken to his voice, or could the hunter reach him in time to seize and control him? A shout from the village bank proclaimed that the fawn had passed out of sight into the forest; at the same instant, the hound, as he touched the land, felt the hunter's strong arm clutching his neck. The worst was believed to be over; the fawn was leaping up the mountain-side, and its enemy under restraint. The other dogs, seeing their leader cowed, were easily managed. A number of persons, men and boys, dispersed themselves through the woods in search of the little creature, but without success; they all returned to the village, reporting that the animal had not been seen by them. Some persons thought that after its fright had passed over it would return of its own accord. It had worn a pretty collar, with its owner's name engraved upon it, so that it could easily be known from any other fawn that might be straying about the woods. Before many hours had passed a hunter presented himself to the lady whose pet the little creature had been, and showing a collar with her name on it said that he had been out in the woods, and saw a fawn in the distance: the little animal instead of bounding away as he expected, moved toward him; he took aim, fired, and shot it to the heart. When he found the collar about its neck he was very sorry he had killed it. And so the poor little thing died; one would have thought that terrible chase would have made it afraid of man: but no, it forgot the evil and remembered the kindness only, and came to meet as a friend the hunter who shot it. It was long mourned by its best friend.

* * * * *

MISCELLANIES.

CIRCUMNAVIGATING A POPE.--Cardinal Maury did not allow you to advance far. He was fond of telling anecdotes, but he loved to select his subject and to choose his terms. Memory well managed can furnish a tolerable share of the wit and spirit of conversation, and he was, in this respect, the most capital manoeuvrer I ever met with. As he had been absent from Paris for fourteen years he had a great deal to tell. Every one, therefore, listened to his stories with pleasure--himself among the first. Even at the dinner-table he permitted himself the indulgence of a vast quantity of Spanish snuff, which he generally shared with his neighbors, distributing a large portion on their plates, which rather spoiled the pleasure of those who had the good fortune to be seated next to him, as it once happened to me at Madame du Roure's. While singing the praises of his beautiful villa at Monte-Fiascone, he frequently drew from his pocket an enormous snuff-box, the contents of which were most liberally showered down upon the company placed near him, and, between two pinches, he informed us that he had formerly the pretension of taking the very best snuff in France. He prepared it with his own hands, and spared no pains in the important proceeding. When he emigrated to Rome he carried with him two jars of the precious mixture. The future destiny of the Abbe Maury was dependent on the pope, and he was a great snuff-taker! "I presented myself several times (I quote his own expressions) before his holiness, and took great care never to omit displaying my snuff-box, which I opened and shut several times during the interview, making as loud a noise as possible. This was all I dared do,--respect forbade me making any advances toward his holiness by offering directly a taste of the mixture of which I was so justly proud. At length my perseverance met with its reward. One day I managed skillfully to push the snuff-box beneath his hand, and, in the heat of argument, he opened it mechanically, and took a pinch of snuff therefrom. It was an awful moment, as you may imagine. I observed him with the greatest attention, and immediately remarked the expression of satisfaction and surprise which overspread his features as he stretched forth his fingers to take another pinch. "_Donde vi viene questo maraviglioso tobacco?_" I told him that I alone possessed the mixture, and that I had only two jars left, or rather that I had no more, as, of course, they now belonged to his holiness. I am inclined to believe that this present was agreeable to him, as it was useful to me." After the story the cardinal boasted to us of the extraordinary frankness of his character. He had shown more of this than he had intended in the tale he had been telling.

--Souvenirs de France et d'Italie dans les Années 1830, 1831 et 1832.

* * * * *

The _Deutsche Reform_ publishes as a curiosity a selection, though an imperfect one, from the catalogue of the flying leaves and small cheap journals, political and satirical, that sprung into existence after the revolution, mostly in Berlin and Vienna; not more than three or four of them now exist. The insect world was a favorite source of names for the satirist, the sting of whose production was frequently only in the title: every week produced the _Hornet_, the _Wasp_, the _Gadfly_, and their plurals, the _Wasps_ and the _Gadflies_; there was also an _Imperial Gadfly_, and one _Wasp's Nest_. The necessity of enlightenment exhausted the means of doing it through the _Torch_, the _Taper_, the _Jet of Gas_, the _Lamp_, the _Everburning Lamp_ (the last flickers still at uncertain intervals, the extinguisher of the Berlin police coming down on it whenever it appears), the _Lantern_ and the _White Lamp_, the _Snuffers_ followed the list of lights, and the whole category concluded in an _Egyptian Darkness_, to which most of them have descended. The other titles are not so well classified: there was a _Democratic Reasoner_, a _Shrieker_ (or _Shouter_), and the _Berlin Widemouth_, the _Barricade Journal_, the _Street Journal_, the _Cat's Music_, the _Red Cap_, the _Sansculottes_ (_Ohne-Hosen_), the _Tower of Fools_, are miscellaneous: there was a variety of devils--the _Travelling Devil_, the _Devil Untied_, the _Church Devil_, the _Revolutionary Devil_. Some of the titles were cant words, quite untranslatable, as _Kladderadatsch_ (the Berlin _Punch_, still existing), the _Klitsch-Klatsch_, and the _Pumpernickel_ (a kind of black bread); the three last were--_The Prussians Have Come_, the _General Wash_, and the _Political Ass_. In the provincial towns all the flying leaves were something for the people--_Volks-boten, Volks-freunde, Volks-zeitung_--in a list that would be too long to repeat.

* * * * *

TRUE PROGRESS.--The civilization of antiquity was the advancement of the few and the slavery of the many--in Greece 30,000 freemen and 300,000 slaves--and it passed away. True civilization must be measured by the progress, not of a class or nation, but of all men. God admits none to advance alone. Individuals in advance become martyrs--nations in advance the prey of the barbarian. Only as one family of man can we progress. But man must exist as an animal before he can exist as a man: his physical requirements must be satisfied before those of mind; and hitherto it has taken the whole time and energies of the many to provide for their physical wants. Such wants have spread mankind over the whole globe--the brute and the savage have disappeared before the superior race--the black blood of the torrid zone has been mixed with the white of the temperate, and a superior race, capable of living and laboring under a zenith sun, has been formed, and we seem to be preparing for a united movement onward. The elements have been pressed into our service, the powers of steam and electricity would appear boundless, and science has given man an almost unlimited control over nature. The trammels which despotisms have hitherto imposed on body and mind have been thrown off, and constitutional liberty has rapidly and widely spread. The steamship and railway, and mutual interests in trade and commerce, have united nation to nation, and the press has given one mind and simultaneous thoughts to the whole community. Power there is in plenty for the emancipation of the whole race; since the steam engine and machinery may be to the working-classes what they have hitherto been to those classes above them. All that is wanted is to know how to use these forces for the general good. The powers of production are inexhaustible; we have but to _organize them_, and justly to distribute the produce.--_Charles Bray_.

* * * * *

COFFEE AND THE SAVANS.--In a letter from Paris it is said: "Some of our eminent scientific men are again squabbling on the vexed question as to whether coffee does or does not afford nourishment. One of them has laid down what seems a paradox, viz., that coffee contains fewer nutritive properties than the ordinary food of man, and yet that the man who makes it his principal food is stronger than one who feeds on meat and wine. In support of this paradox, our _savant_ calls the example of the miners of the coal-pits of Charleroi, who never eat meat except a very small quantity on Sundays, and whose daily meals consist exclusively of bread and butter and coffee. These men, he says, are strong, muscular, and able to do, and actually perform, more hard work than the miners of the coal-pits of Onzin, in France, who feed largely on the more nutritive articles, meat and vegetables, and drink wine or beer. Another _savant_, taking nearly the same views, insists that the Arabs are able to live moderately, and to make long abstinences, as they do, entirely on account of their extensive use of coffee. But this last assertion is demolished, by the declaration of M. d'Abbadie, who has just returned from Abyssinia, that certain tribes of Arabs and Abyssinians who do _not_ use coffee can support greater fatigue than those who do. In presence of such very contradictory facts, who shall say which of the learned doctors is in the right?"

* * * * *

A CURIOUS TRIO.--Mr. Dallas, when Secretary of the Treasury, says Mr. Paulding, told me the following story, which he had from Mr. Breck:--When the Duc de Liancourt was in Philadelphia, sometime after the execution of Louis the Sixteenth, Mr. Breck called to see him at his lodgings, in Strawberry-alley. Knocking at the door of a mean looking house, a little ragged girl came out, who, on being asked for the Duke, pointed to a door, which Mr. B. entered. At a little deal table he found Cobbett, teaching the Duke and Monsieur Talleyrand English!

* * * * *

BAD COOKERY A CAUSE OF DRUNKENKESS.--To what are we to ascribe the prevalence of this detestable vice amongst us! Many causes might be plausibly assigned for it, and one of them is our execrable cookery. The demon of drunkenness inhabits the stomach. From that "vasty deep" it calls for its appropriate offerings. But the demon may be appeased by other agents than alcohol. A well-cooked, warmed, nutritious meal allays the craving quite as effectually as a dram; but cold, crude, indigestible viands, not only do not afford the required _solatium_ to the rebellious organ, but they aggravate the evil, and add intensity to the morbid avidity for stimulants. It is remarked that certain classes are particularly obnoxious to drunkenness, such as sailors, carriers, coachmen, and other wandering tribes whose ventral insurrections are not periodically quelled by regular and comfortable meals. Country doctors, for the same reason, not unfrequently manifest a stronger predilection for their employers' bottles than their patients do for theirs. In the absence of innocuous and benign appliances, the deleterious are had recourse to exorcise the fiend that is raging within them. These views are explicable by the laws of physiology, but this is not the place for such disquisitions. One reason why the temperance movement has been arrested in this country is, that while one sensual gratification was withdrawn, another was not provided. The intellectual excitements which were offered as a substitute have not been found to answer the desired purpose. Our temperance coffee-houses are singularly deficient in gastronomical attractions; and the copious decoctions of coffee and chicory which are there served up, with that nauseous accompaniment, buttered toast, are more calculated to create a craving for stimulants than allay it. The lower classes of Scotland are as deficient in knowledge of cookery as the natives of the Sandwich Islands; and if our apostles of temperance would employ a few clever cooks to go through the country and teach the wives and daughters of the workingmen to dress meat and vegetables, and make soups, and cheap and palatable farinaceous messes, they would do more in one year to advance their cause, than in twenty by means of long winded moral orations, graced with all the flowers of oratory.--_Wilson on the Social Condition of France as compared with that of England_.

* * * * *

THE MONKEY AND THE WATCH.--A distinguished lord, going from home, left his watch hanging beside his bed. A tame monkey, who was in the habit of imitating the actions of his master, took the watch, and with the aid of a band, fastened it to his side. A moment afterward he drew it forth and wound it. Then he looked at it, and said, "This goes too fast." He opened it, put back the hand, and again adjusted it to his side. A few moments passed, and he took it in his hand once more. "Oh!" said the imitator, "now it goes too slow. What a trouble it is! How can it be remedied?" He winds it again with the regulator; then closes it, and applies it gracefully to the ear. "This movement is wrong, still;" and he wound it with the key in another way. Then bent to listen to it. "It does not go well, yet." He opened the case; looked and examined every part; touched this wheel, stopped that, moved another; in short, injured it so much by altering and shaking it in his hand, that it at length ceased all motion. Guard us, O propitious Heaven! from quacks that perform amongst men, as did the monkey with the unfortunate watch.--_From the Italian_.

* * * * *

A SYRIAN CHRISTIAN AND PHILOSOPHER.--When supper was brought in Amu Lyas, or Uncle Lyas, as Iskender always respectfully called him, said a grace of twenty minutes before he sat down, and one of equal duration after he got up. He was perpetually counting his beads and uttering devout sayings--which partly accounted for his influence with the priests. He and I agreed very well at the beginning, although in our very first conversation he forced on a religious discussion, and plainly told me to what place all heretics were irrevocably doomed. On this and other occasions he strictly maintained that the earth is stationary, that it is surrounded by the sea, that the moon rises and sets, and that the stars are no bigger than they seem; and turned pale with indignation at any contrary statements, which he asserted to be direct attacks on the foundation of the Christian religion. Further experience taught me that he was a very fair representative of public opinion among a large class of Syrian Christians. He was an ardent desirer of French domination, and entertained the most stupid prejudices against the English. I generally found that the Levantines preferred the French, whilst we are great favorites with the Arabs.--_Two Years in a Levantine Family_.

* * * * *