Chapter 4

OTHER TALES OF ADVENTURE

I

The Yarn of the _Essex_, Whaler

Among marine disasters there is none more extraordinary in character or more appalling in consequence, than the loss of the whaleship _Essex_.

The _Essex_ was a well-found whaler of two hundred and thirty-eight tons. James Pollard was her captain, with Owen Chase and Matthew Joy as mates. Six of her complement of twenty were Negroes. Thoroughly overhauled and provisioned for two and one-half years, on the 17th of August, 1819, she took her departure from Nantucket. On the 17th of January, 1820, she reached St. Mary's Island, off the coast of Chili, near Conception, a noted whaling ground.

They cruised off these coasts for some time, being lucky enough to take several large whales, and finally, the season being over, having about one thousand barrels of oil in the hold, they struck boldly westward. On the 16th of November, being a few minutes south of the line in Long. 118 degrees W., a school of sperm whales was sighted, and three boats were lowered in chase.

Chase, the mate--the first mate is always the mate _par excellence_--soon got fast to a huge bull-whale who, when he felt the deadly harpoon in his vitals, swiftly turned and struck the whale-boat a terrific blow with his tail, smashing it into kindling wood and hurling the men in every direction. After that {232} splendid exhibition of power, he got away scot-free save for the rankling iron and the dangling line which he took with him. The boat's crew were picked up, no one being much the worse for the encounter, strange to say, and were brought back to the ship by the other boats.

On the 20th of November, being then just about 40 minutes south of the equator, and in Long. 119 degrees W., at eight o'clock in the morning the lookout at the masthead shouted the welcome signal:

"There she blows!"

It was evident that they were in the presence of a large school. The ship was headed toward them, and when within half a mile the mainyard was backed, and three boats, under the charge of the captain and the first and second mates, respectively, were lowered. Their only other boat was a spare one, lashed amidships on chocks.

Arriving at the spot where they had been sighted at the ship, the men discovered that the whales had sounded and vanished. The boats, thereupon, separated widely, and the men lay on their oars and waited. Presently a great bull rose lazily, spouting in front of the mate's boat, and lay idly wallowing in the tumbling sea. Approaching cautiously, the harpooneer drove in the terrible weapon.

In his agony, the great cetacean, instead of sounding, threw himself blindly toward the boat. So close were they, and so unexpected was the whale's movement in spite of his vast bulk, that, although the order, "Stern all!" had been promptly given, they were unable to win clear of him. The tip of his massive tail, as he thrashed about in his rage, struck the side of the light, clinker-built boat and smashed a hole in it. Then the whale started to run, towing the boat, which {233} immediately began to fill with water under the terrible drag to which it was subjected. There was nothing to do but cut the line. Two or three jackets were stuffed into the aperture, and while some bailed, the others rowed back to the ship. The captain's and second mate's boats, meanwhile, were seeking the school, which had risen and was swimming away from the ship.

As soon as the wrecked boat was run up to the davits, the mate swung the mainyard and got under way, following the other boats. He first determined to break out the spare boat, but after investigating the damaged boat, he concluded that he could save time by nailing a patch of canvas over the broken place, which would serve temporarily to keep out the water, in case they went in search of another whale in her. While he was about this, an immense sperm-whale, about eighty-five feet long, "breached"--that is, coming from a great depth, he shot out of the water his whole length and then fell back with a tremendous splash--about fifty fathoms from the ship. After he fell back, he spouted three or four times, sounded, and once more appeared, this time about a ship's length off the weather bow of the Essex. Evidently, it was the whale they had just struck. He was angry, and he meant business, for as soon as he came to the surface he started for the ship.

Under the light air the vessel was making about three knots. The whale was going at the same speed. The mate saw at once that if he did not change his course, the whale would strike his ship. Dropping the hammer, he shouted to the boy at the helm to put it hard up, and himself sprang across the deck to reënforce his order. The unwieldy ship paid off slowly, {234} and before her head had been fairly turned to leeward the whale deliberately rammed her right under the forechains.

The concussion was terrible. The ship came to a dead stop, as if she had run upon a rock, while the whale bumped along under the keel. Some of those aboard were thrown to the deck. The masts quivered and buckled under the shock, but fortunately nothing was carried away. The onset was so unexpected that the men were dazed for a moment. When the mate recovered his wits, he immediately sounded the well, and found that the ship was leaking badly. He then ordered the men to the pumps, and set signals for the recall of the boats, each of which had got fast to a whale.

In spite of all they could do, the ship began settling rapidly by the head. She was badly stove in, and making water fast. While some of the men toiled at the pumps, others cleared away the extra boat. There was no longer time to repair the other. At this juncture one of the men discovered the same whale about two hundred and fifty fathoms to leeward. He was in a fit of convulsive rage terrible to look upon; leaping, turning, writhing, threshing about in the water, beating it with his mighty tail and great flukes, thundering upon it with all his force, and all the while opening and shutting his enormous jaws, "smiting them together," in the words of the mate, as if distracted with wrath and fury.

There was no time to watch the whale in the exigency of their peril, and observing him start out with great velocity to cross the bows of the ship to leeward, the men turned their attention to the more serious duty at the pumps and the boat. But a few moments had {235} elapsed, when another man forward observed the whale again.

"Here he is!" he shouted. "He's making for us again."

The great cachalot was now directly ahead, about two hundred fathoms away, and coming down upon them with twice his ordinary speed. The surf flew in all directions about him. "His course was marked by a white foam a rod in width which he made with the continual thrashing of this tail." His huge head, boneless but almost as solid and as hard as the inside of a horse's hoof, most admirably designed for a battering-ram, was almost half out of the water. The mate made one desperate attempt to get out of his way. Again the helm was put up and the men ran to the braces, but the water-laden ship, already well down by the head, and more sluggish than ever, had fallen off only one point when the whale leaped upon her with demoniac energy, and--so it appeared to the seamen--rammed her with maleficent passion.

This time he struck the ship just under the weather cathead. He was going not less than six knots an hour to the ship's three, and the force of the blow completely stove in the bows of the _Essex_. Those on board could feel the huge bulk scraping along beneath the keel a second time, and then, having done all the damage he could, he went hurtling off to windward. He had exacted a complete revenge for their attack upon him.

Working with the energy of despair, for the ship seemed literally sinking under their feet, the men succeeded in clearing away the spare boat and launching it. The steward saved two quadrants, two Bowditch's "Practical Navigators," the captain's chest and that {236} of the first mate, with two compasses which the mate had snatched from the binnacle. They shoved off, but had scarcely made two lengths from the ship when she fell over to windward and settled low in the water on her beam-ends, a total wreck.

The captain and second mate, seeing the signal for the recall of the boats flying, had cut loose from their whales and were rowing toward the ship. They knew something had happened, but what it was, they could not tell. The captain's boat was the first to reach the mate's. He stopped close by, so completely overpowered that for a space he could not utter a syllable.

"My God! Mr. Chase," he gasped out at last; "what is the matter?"

"We have been stove in by a whale, sir," said the mate, telling the whole appalling story.

By the captain's direction, the boats rowed to the sinking ship, and with their hatchets the men managed to cut away the masts, whereupon she rose two-thirds of the way to an even keel. They scuttled the deck--chopped holes through her, that is--and succeeded in coming at some six hundred pounds of unspoiled hard bread, which they divided among the three boats, and sufficient fresh water to give each boat sixty-five gallons in small breakers--being all they dared to take in each one. They also procured a musket, two pistols, some powder and bullets, some tools and six live turtles. From the light spars of the ship they rigged two masts for each boat and with the light canvas provided each one with two spritsails and a jib. They also got some light cedar planking used to repair the boats, and with it built the gunwales up six inches all around.

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On the 22nd of November, being then in 120 W. Long., and just north of the equator, the officers took counsel together as to what to do. The nearest lands were the Marquesas Islands, fifteen hundred miles away; the Society Islands, twenty-four hundred miles away, and the Sandwich Islands, three thousand miles away. They knew little about the first two groups, save that they were inhabited by fierce and treacherous savages from whom they had as much to fear as from the perils of the sea. The Sandwich Islands were too far away, and they would be apt to meet hurricanes, prevalent at that season, should they attempt to reach them. After a long deliberation they decided to take advantage of the southeast trades by sailing by the wind until they reached the twenty-fifth parallel of south latitude. Then falling in with westerly and variable winds, they could turn east and run for the coast of Chili or Peru. This course involved the longest voyage, but it also promised the greatest chance for success.

Sometimes they made good progress with favorable winds. At other times they lay immobile in the blazing tropic sunlight which was almost unbearable. Often they were buffeted by fierce squalls or wild storms, especially as they left the equator. Only the important incidents of their unparalleled voyage can be dwelt upon. Most of the events mentioned happened in the mate's boat, but the experience of the boat epitomes that of the others.

The mate's boat was the smallest. He was allotted five men. The other two boats each contained one more man. The men were put on an allowance of one sea-biscuit, weighing about one pound and a quarter, and a pint of water a day. In the mate's boat the provisions were kept in his chest, which he {238} locked. The men behaved in the most exemplary manner. In only one instance did any one ever attempt to steal provisions. They ran into a storm on the 24th, which wet some of their biscuit, and as it was necessary to get rid of the damaged bread as soon as possible, the daily allowance was taken from the spoiled portion exclusively. The soaked biscuit were very salt and greatly increased their thirst.

During the long and exhausting voyage, a plank started in the mate's boat, and it was with difficulty that they heeled it over in the water, at the risk of their lives, to get to the place and nail it up. One night the captain's boat was attacked by a species of fish known as a "killer" (Orca), and its bows were stove in. This also they managed to patch up. On December 3rd, they ate the last of the spoiled salt bread, and their relief when they began on the other was amazing. Their thirst was terrible, especially as it became necessary to cut the allowance of food and water in half. They tried from time to time to catch rain water by means of the sails, but the canvas had been so often drenched by the spray that the water they caught was as salt as the sea.

One day they caught half a dozen flying fish, which they ate raw. Mr. Chase remarks on the delicacy and daintiness of the mouthfuls which these little fish afforded the starving mariners. They fished for dolphins and porpoises, but they never caught any, perhaps because they had nothing with which to bait the hooks. One day, seeking to alleviate the pangs of thirst by wetting their bodies, three of the men dropped into the water alongside and clung to the gunwale. One of them discovered that the boat's bottom was covered with barnacles. They were {239} ravenously devoured, but proved of little value as food. The men in the water were so weak that had it not been for the efforts of three who had remained in the boat, sceptical as to the utility of the bath, they would never have been able to regain their positions. During all these experiences, discipline was maintained--indeed, it was maintained to the very last.

On the 15th of December, they reached Ducie Island, in Long. 124 degrees 40 minutes W., Lat. 24 degrees 40 minutes S., having come some seventeen hundred miles in twenty-three days in these open boats. They landed on the island and found a few shell-fish, birds, and a species of pepper-grass, but no water. The famished men soon consumed everything eatable they could come at on the island. They hunted high and low, but it was not until the 22nd that they found a spring of water. The island was almost desolate. Nothing was to be gained by remaining there, so the majority concluded to sail for Easter Island, some nine hundred miles southward. Three men decided to stay on the island. They all spent a melancholy Christmas there, repairing their boats and filling their water-breakers, and on the 27th the others took their departure.

On the 14th of January, 1821, they found that they had been driven to the south of Easter Island, and that it was not practicable to beat up to it. They therefore determined to head for Juan Fernandez--Robinson Crusoe's Island--some two thousand miles southeastward. On the 10th, the second mate, Matthew Joy, died from exposure, and was buried the next morning. On the 12th in the midst of a terrible storm, the boats separated.

First we will follow the course of the mate's boat. {240} On the 20th, Peterson, a black man, died and was buried. On the 8th of February, Isaac Cole, a white seaman, died. The men on the boat were by this time in a frightful condition, weak and emaciated to the last degree. Their provisions were almost gone. But two biscuit to a man remained. They were still over a thousand miles from land. They came to a fearful determination. The body of Cole was not buried. They lived on him from the 9th to the 14th. On the 15th and 16th, they consumed the last vestige of their biscuit.

On the 17th, driving along at the mercy of wind and wave, for there was not a man strong enough to do anything, they caught sight of the Island of Massafuera. They were helpless to bring the boat near to the Island. Whale-boats were steered by an oar. There was not a single man able to lift an oar. In addition to starvation, thirst, weakness, mental anguish, their legs began to swell with a sort of scurvy, giving them excessive pain. Their condition can scarcely be imagined. The breath of life was there, nothing more.

However, they had at last reached the end of their sufferings, for on the morning of the 19th of February, 1821, in Lat. 35 degrees 45 minutes S., Long. 81 degrees 03 minutes W., the three surviving men were picked up by the brig _Indian_, of London, Captain William Crozier. On the 25th of February, they arrived at Valparaiso, ninety-six days and nearly four thousand miles from the sinking of the ship!

The other two boats managed to keep together for a little while after they lost sight of the mate's boat. On the 14th of February, provisions in the second mate's boat gave out entirely. On the 15th, Lawson Thomas, a black man, died in that boat and was eaten. {241} The captain's boat ran out of provisions on the 21st. On the 23rd Charles Shorter, another Negro, died in the second mate's boat and was shared between the two boats. On the 27th another black man died from the same boat, furnishing a further meal for the survivors. On the 28th, Samuel Reed, the last black man, died in the captain's boat and was eaten like the rest. Singular that all the Negroes died first!

On the 29th, in a storm, these two boats separated. When they parted the second mate's boat had three living white men in her. Nothing was ever heard of her.

It might be inferred from the fact that the surviving men had had something to eat, that they were in fair physical condition. That is far from the truth. The men who had died were nothing but skin and bone, and all that the survivors got from their ghastly meals was the bare prolongation of a life which sank steadily to a lower and lower ebb. We may not judge these people too harshly. Hunger and thirst make men mad. They scarcely realized what they did.

There was worse to come. On the 1st of February, 1821, being without food or drink of any sort, the four men in the captain's boat cast lots as to which should die for the others. There is something significant of a spirit of fair play and discipline, not without its admirable quality, that under such circumstances, the weaker were not overpowered by the stronger, but that each man had an equal chance for life. The lot fell upon Owen Coffin,[1] the captain's nephew. He did not repine. He expressed his willingness to abide {242} by the decision. No man desired to be his executioner. They cast lots, as before, to determine who should kill him, and the lot fell upon Charles Ramsdale. By him Coffin was shot.

Thus they eked out a miserable existence until the 11th of February, when Barzilla Ray died. On the 23rd of February, the two remaining men, the captain and Ramsdale, just on the point of casting lots as to which should have the last poor chance for life, were picked up by the Nantucket whaler, _Dauphin_, Captain Zimri Coffin. They had almost reached St. Mary's Island, ten miles from the coast of Chili. On the 17th of March, these two survivors joined the three from the mate's boat in Valparaiso.

In the harbor was the United States frigate, _Constellation_, Captain Charles G. Ridgeley, U. S. N. As soon as her commander heard of the three left on Ducie Island, he arranged with Captain Thomas Raines, of the British merchant ship, _Surrey_, to touch at the island on his voyage to Australia and take off the men. Captain Raines found them still alive, but reduced to the last gasp.

Thus of the twenty men, five reached Valparaiso; three were saved on the island, three were lost in the second mate's boat, two died and were buried; six died and were eaten, and one was shot and eaten.

So ends this strange tragedy of the sea.

[1] A tradition still current in Nantucket has it that the lot fell to the captain, whereupon his nephew, already near death, feeling that he could not survive the afternoon, offered and insisted upon taking his uncle's place. I doubt this.

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II

Some Famous American Duels

We are accustomed to regard our country as peculiarly law-abiding and peaceful. This, in spite of the fact that three presidents have been murdered within the last forty-five years, a record of assassination of chief magistrates surpassed in no other land, not even in Russia. We need not be surprised to learn that in no country was the serious duel, the _combat à l'outrance_, so prevalent as in the United States at one period of our national development. The code of honor, so-called, was most profoundly respected by our ancestors; and the number of eminent men who engaged in duelling--and of whom many lost their lives on the field--is astonishing. Scarce any meeting was without its fatal termination, perhaps owing to the fact that pistols and rifles were generally used, and Americans are noted for their marksmanship.

There has been a revulsion of public sentiment which has brought about the practical abolition of duelling in America. Although the practice still obtains in continental European countries, it is here regarded as immoral, and it is illegal as well. For one reason, in spite of the apparent contradiction above, we are a law-abiding people. The genius of the Anglo-Saxon--I, who am a Celt, admit it--is for the orderly administration of the law, and much of the evil noted comes from the introduction within our borders {246} of an imperfectly assimilated foreign element which cherishes different views on the subject. Another deterrent cause is a cool common sense which has recognized the futility of trying to settle with blade or bullet differences which belong to the courts; to this may be added a keen sense of humor which has seen the absurdity and laughed the practice out of existence. The freedom of the press has also been a contributing factor. Perhaps the greatest deterrent, however, has been the development of a sense of responsibility for life and its uses to a Higher Power.

As General Grant has put it, with the matchless simplicity of greatness: "I do not believe I ever would have the courage to fight a duel. If any man should wrong me to the extent of my being willing to kill him, I should not be willing to give him the choice of weapons with which it should be done, and of the time, place, and distance separating us when I executed him. If I should do any other such a wrong as to justify him in killing me, I would make any reasonable atonement within my power, if convinced of the wrong done."

With this little preliminary, I shall briefly review a few of the most noted duels in our history.

I. A Tragedy of Old New York

On Wednesday, the 11th of July, 1804, at seven o'clock on a bright, sunny, summer morning, two men, pistol in hand, confronted each other on a narrow shelf of rocky ground jutting out from the cliffs that overlook the Hudson at Weehawken, on the Jersey shore. One was a small, slender man, the other taller and more imposing in appearance. Both had been soldiers; each faced the other in grave quietude, {247} without giving outward evidence of any special emotion.

One was at that time the Vice-president of the United States; the other had been Secretary of the Treasury, a general in command of the army, and was the leading lawyer of his time. The Vice-president was brilliantly clever; the ex-Secretary was a genius of the first order.

A political quarrel had brought them to this sorry position. Words uttered in the heat of campaign, conveying not so much a personal attack as a well-merited public censure, had been dwelt upon until the Vice-president had challenged his political antagonist. The great attorney did not believe in duels. He was a Christian, a man of family; he had everything to lose and little to gain from this meeting. Upon his great past he might hope to build an even greater future. He was possessed of sufficient moral courage to refuse the meeting, but had, nevertheless, deliberately accepted the other's challenge. It is believed that he did so from a high and lofty motive; that he felt persuaded of the instability of the Government which he had helped to found, and that he realized that he possessed qualities which in such a crisis would be of rare service to his adopted country. His future usefulness, he thought--erroneously, doubtless, but he believed it--would be impaired if any one could cast a doubt upon his courage by pointing to the fact that he had refused a challenge.

Thirty months before, his son, a bright lad of eighteen, fresh from Columbia College, had been shot dead in a duel which he had brought upon himself by resenting a public criticism of his father. He had fallen on that very spot where his father stood. I think that {248} the tragedy must have been in the great statesman's mind that summer morning.

The word was given. The two pistols were discharged. The Vice-president, taking deliberate aim, fired first. The ex-Secretary of the Treasury, who had previously stated to his second that he did not intend to fire at his adversary, discharged his pistol in the air. He had been hit by the bullet of his enemy, and did not know that as he fell, by a convulsive movement, he had pulled the trigger of the weapon in his hand.

That was the end--for he died the next day after lingering agonies--of Alexander Hamilton, the greatest intellect and one of the greatest personalities associated with the beginning of this Government. It was also the end of his successful antagonist, Aaron Burr, for thereafter he was a marked man, an avoided, a hated man. When abroad in 1808, he gave Jeremy Bentham an account of the duel, and said that he "was sure of being able to kill him." "And so," replied Bentham, "I thought it little better than a murder." "Posterity," the historian adds, "will not be likely to disturb the judgment of the British philosopher."

II. Andrew Jackson as a Duellist

Comparatively speaking, the next great duel on my list attracted little more than local attention at the time. Years after, when one of them who took part in it had risen to national fame, and was a candidate for the Presidency, it was revived and made much of. On Friday, the 30th of May, 1806, Charles Dickinson, a young man of brilliant abilities, born in Maryland and residing in Tennessee, met Andrew Jackson, of the {249} latter state, near the banks of a small stream called the Red River, in a sequestered woodland glade in Logan County, Ky., a day's ride from Nashville.

Unwittingly, and with entire innocence on the part of both parties, Andrew Jackson had placed his wife in an equivocal position by marrying her before a divorce had separated her from her husband[1]. Absolutely no blame, except, perhaps, a censure for carelessness, attaches to Jackson or his wife, and their whole life together was an example of conjugal affection. However, his enemies--and he had many--found it easy to strike at him through this unfortunate episode. There did not live a more implacable and unforgiving man, when his wife was slandered, than Andrew Jackson.

Dickinson, who was a political rival, spoke slurringly of Mrs. Jackson. He apologized for it on the plea that he had been in his cups at the time, but Jackson never forgave him. A political difference as an ostensible cause of quarrel soon developed. Dickinson sent a challenge which was gladly accepted. The resulting duel was probably the most dramatic that ever occurred in the United States. Dickinson was a dead shot. So, for that matter, was Jackson, but Dickinson was remarkable for the quickness of his fire, while Jackson was slower. The arrangements stipulated that the combatants should be placed at the close distance of eight paces; that the word "fire!" should be given, after which each was to fire one shot at will. Rather than be hurried and have his aim disturbed, Jackson determined to sustain Dickinson's fire and then return it at his leisure.

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"What if he kills you or disables you?" asked his second.

"Sir," replied Jackson deliberately, "I shall kill him though he should hit me in the brain!"

This is no gasconade or bravado, but simply an evidence of an intensity of purpose, of which no man ever had a greater supply than Andrew Jackson.

Dickinson fired instantly the word was given. A fleck of dust arose from the loose coat which covered the spare form of the General, but he stood apparently untouched. Dickinson, amazed, shrank back from the peg indicating his position. Old General Overton, Jackson's second, raised his pistol.

"Back to the mark, sir!" he thundered, as the unhappy young man exclaimed in dismay.

"Great God! Have I missed him?"

Dickinson recovered himself immediately, stepped back to the mark, and folded his arms to receive Jackson's fire. The hammer of the Tennesseean's pistol stopped at half-cock. He deliberately re-cocked his weapon, took careful aim again, and shot Dickinson through the body. Seeing his enemy fall, Jackson turned and walked away. It was not until he had gone one hundred yards from the duelling ground and was hidden by the thick poplar trees, that his second noticed that one of his shoes was filled with blood. Dickinson had hit the General in the breast, inflicting a severe wound, and might have killed him had not the bullet glanced on a rib. The iron-nerved Jackson declared that his reason for concealing his wound was that he did not intend to give Dickinson the satisfaction of knowing that he had hit his enemy before he died.

Twenty-two years after, as Jackson stood by his dead wife's body, he "lifted his cane as if appealing to {251} heaven, and by a look commanding silence, said, slowly and painfully, and with a voice full of bitter tears:

"'In the presence of this dear saint I can and do forgive all my enemies. But those vile wretches who have slandered her must look to God for mercy!'"

III. The Killing of Stephen Decatur

The idol of the American Navy was Stephen Decatur. James Barron, a disgraced officer under suspension for his lack of conduct during the famous affair between the British ship _Leopard_ and the American ship _Chesapeake_, had taken no part in the war of 1812, for causes which afforded him sufficient excuse; but subsequently he sought re-employment in the navy. Decatur, who had been one of the court which tried and sentenced him before the war, and who was now a naval commissioner, opposed his plea. The situation brought forth a challenge from Barron. Decatur was under no necessity of meeting it. As commissioner, he was in effect, Barron's superior, and Washington had laid down a rule for General Greene's guidance in a similar case that a superior officer is not amenable to challenge from a junior officer whom he has offended in course of duty. The principle is sound common sense, as everybody, even duellists, will admit. Nevertheless, such was the state of public opinion about questions of "honor" that Decatur felt constrained to accept the challenge.

The two naval officers met on the duelling ground at Bladensburg, "the cockpit of Washington duellists," on the 22nd of March, 1820. Barron was near-sighted, and insisted upon a closer distance than the usual ten paces. They were placed a scant eight {252} paces apart. Decatur, who was a dead shot, did not wish to kill Barron; at the same time he did not deem it safe to stand his adversary's fire without return. Therefore he stated to his second that he would shoot Barron in the hip. Before the duel, Barron expressed the hope that if they met in another world they might be better friends. Decatur replied gravely that he had never been Barron's enemy. Under such circumstances it would appear that the quarrel might have been composed without the shedding of blood.

At the word "two" the men fired together, Decatur's bullet struck Barron in the hip, inflicting a severe but not mortal wound. At the same instant Barron's bullet passed through Decatur's abdomen, inflicting a wound necessarily fatal then, probably so, even now. As he lay on the ground the great commodore said faintly:

"I am mortally wounded--at least, I believe so--and I wish I had fallen in defence of my country."

He died at ten o'clock that night, regretted by all who love brave men the world over.

IV. An Episode in the Life of James Bowie

Of a different character, but equally interesting, was an encounter in August, 1829, which has become famous because of one of the weapons used with deadly effect. On an island in the Mississippi River, opposite Natchez, which was nothing but a sand bar with some undergrowth upon it, a party of men met to witness and second a duel between a Dr. Maddox and one Samuel Wells. The spectators were all interested in one or the other combatant, and had taken part in a neighborhood feud which arose out of a speculation in land.

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The two principals exchanged two shots without injury, whereupon the seconds and spectators, unable to restrain their animosity, started a free fight. Judge Crane, of Mississippi, was the leader on one side; James Bowie, of Georgia, the principal man on the other. Crane was armed with a brace of duelling pistols; Bowie had nothing but a knife. Bowie and a friend of his, named Currey, attacked Crane after the Maddox-Wells duel had been abandoned. Crane was wounded in the left arm by a shot from Currey; he thereupon shot Currey dead and with his remaining pistol he wounded Bowie in the groin. Nevertheless, Bowie resolutely came on. Crane struck him over the head with his pistol, felling him to the ground. Undaunted, Bowie scrambled to his feet and made again for Crane.

Major Wright, a friend of Crane's, now interposed, and thrust at Bowie with a sword cane. The blade tore open Bowie's breast. The terrible Georgian, twice wounded though he was, caught Wright by the neck-cloth, grappled with him, and threw him to the ground, falling upon him.

"Now, Major, you die," said Bowie coolly, wrenching his arm free and plunging his knife into Wright's heart.

The knife had been made by Bowie's brother Rezin out of a blacksmith's rasp. It was shaped in accordance with his own ideas, and James Bowie used it with terrible effect. It was the first of the celebrated "Bowie knives" which played so great a part in frontier quarrels.

In the general _mêlée_ which followed the death of Wright and Currey, six other men were killed and fifteen severely wounded. Bowie was a noted duellist {254} in his day, and died heroically in the famous siege of the Alamo[2].

On one occasion he was a passenger on a Mississippi steamboat with a young man and his bride. The young man had collected a large sum of money for friends and employers, which he gambled away on the boat. Bowie kept him from suicide, took his place at the gaming-table, exposed the cheating of the gamblers, was challenged by one of them, fought him on the hurricane deck of the steamer, shot him into the river, and restored the money to the distracted husband.

Brief reference may be made to an affair between Major Thomas Biddle, of the United States Army, and Congressman Spencer Pettis, of Missouri, on August 27, 1831. The cause of the duel was a political difficulty. The two men stood five feet apart, their pistols overlapping. Both were mortally wounded. This was nothing less than a double murder, and shows to what length men will go under the heat of passion or the stimulus of a false code of honor.

V. A Famous Congressional Duel

On February the 24, 1838, at a quarter after three o'clock on the Marlborough Road in Maryland, just outside the District of Columbia, two members of Congress, Jonathan Cilley of Maine, and William J. Graves of Kentucky, exchanged shots with rifles at a distance of ninety yards three times in succession. At the third exchange, Cilley was shot and died in three minutes. Of all the causes for deadly encounters, that which brought these two men opposite each other was the {255} most foolish. Cilley, on the floor of the House, had reflected upon the character of a newspaper editor in the discussion of charges which had been made against certain Congressmen with whom he had no personal connection. The newspaper editor, whose subsequent conduct showed that he fully merited even more severe strictures than Cilley had passed upon him, sent a challenge to the gentleman from Maine by the hand of Congressman Graves.

Cilley took the justifiable position that his language had been proper and privileged, and that he did not propose to accept a challenge or discuss the matter with any one. He assured Graves that this declination to pursue the matter further was not to be construed as a reflection upon the bearer of the challenge. There was no quarrel whatever between Cilley and Graves. Nevertheless, Graves took the ground that the refusal to accept the challenge which he had brought was a reflection upon him. He thereupon challenged Cilley on his own behalf. Efforts were made to compose the quarrel but Cilley was not willing to go further than he had already done. He positively refused to discuss the editor in question. He would only repeat that he intended no reflection upon Mr. Graves, whom he respected and esteemed, by refusing the editor's challenge. This was not satisfactory to Graves, and the duel was, accordingly, arranged.

During its course, after each fruitless exchange of shots, efforts were made to end the affair, but Graves refused to accept Cilley's statement, again repeated, that he had no reflection to cast upon Mr. Graves, and Cilley refused to abandon the position he had taken with regard to the editor. Never did a more foolish punctilio bring about so terrible a result. Aside from {256} accepting the challenge, Cilley had pursued a dignified and proper course. Graves, to put it mildly, had played the fool. He was practically a disgraced man thereafter. The Congressional committee which investigated the matter censured him in the severest terms, and recommended his expulsion from Congress. Perhaps the public indignation excited by this wretched affair did more to discredit duelling than any previous event.

VI. The Last Notable Duel in America

The last notable American duel was that between United States Senator Broderick, of California, and ex-Chief Justice Terry, of the Supreme Court of the same state, on September 13, 1859. This, too, arose from political differences. Broderick and Terry belonged to different factions of the growing Republican party, each struggling for control in California. Broderick was strongly anti-slavery, and his opponents wanted him removed. Terry was defeated in his campaign for reflection largely, as he supposed, through Broderick's efforts. The two men had been good friends previously. Broderick had stood by Terry on one occasion when everybody else had been against him and his situation had been critical. In his anger over his defeat, Terry accused Broderick of disgraceful and underhand practices. Broderick was provoked into the following rejoinder:

"I see that Terry has been abusing me. I now take back the remark I once made that he is the only honest judge in the Supreme Court. I was his friend when he was in need of friends, for which I am sorry. Had the vigilance committee disposed of him as they did of others, they would have done a righteous act."

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He alluded to Terry's arrest by the Vigilantes in August, 1856, charged with cutting a man named Sterling A. Hopkins, in the attempt to free from arrest one Reuben Maloney. Had Hopkins died, Terry would probably have been hung. As it was, it took the strongest influence--Masonic, press and other--to save him from banishment.

Terry, after some acrimonious correspondence, challenged Broderick. A meeting on the 12th of September was stopped by the Chief of Police of San Francisco. The police magistrate before whom the duellists were arraigned, discharged them on the ground that there had been no actual misdemeanor.

Next day the principals and the seconds met again at the foot of Lake Merced, about twelve miles from San Francisco. About eighty spectators, friends of the participants, were present. The distance was the usual ten paces. Both pistols had hair triggers, but Broderick's was more delicately set than Terry's, so much so that a jar might discharge it. Broderick's seconds were inexperienced men, and no one realized the importance of this difference.

At the word both raised their weapons. Broderick's was discharged before he had elevated it sufficiently, and his bullet struck the ground about six feet in front of Terry. Terry was surer and shot his antagonist through the lung. Terry, who acted throughout with cold-blooded indifference, watched his antagonist fall and remarked that the wound was not mortal, as he had struck two inches to the right. He then left the field.

When Broderick fell, one of the bystanders, named Davis, shouted out:

"That is murder, by God!"

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Drawing his own weapon, he started for Terry, exclaiming: "I am Broderick's friend. I'm not going to see him killed in that way. If you are men you will join me in avenging his death!"

Some cool heads in the multitude restrained him, pointing out that if he attacked Terry there would be a general _mêlée_, from which few on the ground would escape, and they finally succeeded in getting him away.

Broderick lingered for three days.

"They have killed me," he said, "because I was opposed to slavery and a corrupt administration."

Colonel Edward D. Baker, who was killed at Ball's Bluff in the Civil War, received his friend's last words.

"I tried to stand firm when I was wounded, but I could not. The blow blinded me."

Terry was tried for murder, but by influence and other means he was never convicted, and escaped all punishment save that inflicted by his conscience.

In judging these affairs, it must be remembered that many of the most prominent Americans of the past--Benton, Clay, Calhoun and Houston among them--fought duels. And it is well known that only Abraham Lincoln's wit and humor saved him from a deadly encounter with General James Shields, whose challenge he accepted.

[1] The reader may consult my book "The True Andrew Jackson" for a detailed account of this interesting transaction.

[2] See my "Border Fights and Fighters" in this series for an account of this dramatic and heroic adventure.

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III

The Cruise of the _Tonquin_

A Forgotten Tragedy in Early American History

On the morning of the 8th of September, 1810, two ships were running side by side before a fresh southwesterly breeze off Sandy Hook, New York. One was the great United States ship _Constitution_, Captain Isaac Hull; the other was the little full-rigged ship _Tonquin_, of two hundred and ninety tons burden.

This little vessel was captained by one Jonathan Thorn, who was at the time a lieutenant in the United States Navy. He had obtained leave of absence for the purpose of making a cruise in the _Tonquin_. Thorn was a thoroughly experienced seaman and a skilled and practised navigator. He was a man of magnificent physique, with a fine war record.

He was with Decatur in the _Intrepid_ when he put the captured _Philadelphia_ to flames six years before. In the subsequent desperate gunboat fighting at Tripoli, Midshipman Thorn had borne so distinguished a part that he received special commendation by Commodore Preble. As to his other qualities, Washington Irving, who knew him from infancy, wrote of him to the last with a warm affection which nothing could diminish.

Mr. John Jacob Astor, merchant, fur-trader, financier, had pitched upon Thorn as the best man to take {262} the ship bearing the first representatives of the Pacific Fur Company around the Horn and up to the far northwestern American coast to make the first settlement at Astoria, whose history is so interwoven with that of our country.

Mr. Astor already monopolized the fur trade of the Far West south of the Great Lakes. His present plan was to form a fur company and establish a series of trading posts along the Missouri River, reaching overland across the Rocky Mountains until they joined the posts on the Pacific. The place he selected for his Pacific depot was the mouth of the Columbia River.

The principal rival of the Astor Fur Trading Company was the Northwest Company. Astor tried to persuade the company to join him in his new venture. When it refused to do so as an organization, he approached individual employees of the Company, and in 1810 formed the Pacific Fur Company. Among the incorporators were four Scottish Canadians, Messrs. McKay, McDougall, David Stuart, and Robert, his nephew. There were several other partners, including Wilson Price Hunt, of New Jersey.

It was planned that Hunt should lead an overland expedition from St. Louis, while the four Scotsmen mentioned went around the Horn, and that they should meet at the mouth of the Columbia River, where the trading post was to be situated. Most of the employees of the company were Canadians who had enjoyed large experience in the fur business. Among these were included a large number of French _voyageurs_.

Thus the _Tonquin_, owned by a German, captained by an American, with a crew including Swedes, French, English, Negroes, and Americans, carrying out a party of Scottish and French Canadians and one Russian, {263} started on her memorable voyage to establish a trading post under the American flag! The crew of the _Tonquin_ numbered twenty-three men. The number of passengers was thirty-three.

The story of her voyage is related in the letters of the captain to Mr. Astor, and more fully in a quaint and curious French journal published at Montreal in 1819, by M. Gabriel Franchere, one of the Canadian clerks who made the voyage.

The _Tonquin_ was pierced for twenty guns, only ten small ones being mounted. The other ports were provided with imposing wooden dummies. She had a high poop and a topgallant forecastle. The four partners, with James Lewis, acting captain's clerk, and one other, with the two mates, slept in the cabin or wardroom below the poop. Forward of this main cabin was a large room extending across the ship, called the steerage, in which the rest of the clerks, the mechanics, and the Canadian boatmen were quartered.

Thorn seems to have felt to the full all the early naval officer's utterly unmerited contempt for the merchant service. It is also the habit of the Anglo-Saxon to hold the French in slight esteem on the sea. The Canadians were wretched sailors, and Thorn despised them. Thorn also cherished a natural hatred against the English, who were carrying things with a high hand on our coast. He began the voyage with a violent prejudice against the four partners on his ship. Indeed, the _Constitution_ had convoyed the _Tonquin_ to sea because it was rumored that a British brig-o'-war intended to swoop down upon her and take off the English subjects on board. It was quite evident that war would shortly break out between England {264} and the United States, and the Scottish partners had surreptitiously consulted the English consul as to what they should do if hostilities began. They were informed that in that case they would be treated as British subjects--a fine situation for an American expedition!

With such a spirit in the captain, and such a feeling on the part of the passengers, the relations between them were bound to become strained. Hostilities began at once. The first night out Thorn ordered all lights out at eight bells. This in spite of all the remonstrances of the four partners, who, as representing Mr. Astor, considered themselves, properly enough, as owners of the ship. These gentlemen did not wish to retire at so early an hour, nor did they desire to spend the intervening time in darkness. They remonstrated with Thorn, and he told them, in the terse, blunt language of a seaman, to keep quiet or he would put them in irons. In case he attempted that, they threatened to resort to firearms for protection. Finally, however, the captain allowed them a little longer use of their lights. Thus was inaugurated a long, disgraceful wrangle that did not cease while life lasted.

There was doubtless much fault on both sides, but, in spite of the brilliant advocate who has pleaded Thorn's cause, I cannot but admit that he was decidedly the more to blame. He carried things with a high hand, indeed, treating the partners as he might a graceless lot of undisciplined midshipmen.

A voyage around the Horn in those days was no slight matter. The _Tonquin_ was a remarkably good sailer, but it was not until the 5th of October that they sighted the Cape Verde Islands. There they struck the Trades, and went booming down the African coast {265} at a great rate. There, also, they were pursued by a large man-o'-war brig. On the third day she drew so near that Thorn prepared for action, whereupon the brig sheered off, and left them.

On the 11th of October they ran into a terrific storm, which prevailed until the 21st, when they found themselves off the River Plate. While the storm was at its height the man at the wheel was thrown across the deck by a sudden jump of the wheel and severely injured, breaking three of his ribs and fracturing his collar-bone[1]. Thorn's seamanship during the trying period was first class. After the gale blew itself out, a fresh breeze succeeded, which enabled them rapidly to run down their southing. The water supply had grown very low, and it was determined to run in to the Falkland Islands to fill the casks.

They made a landfall on the 3rd of December, got on shore on one of the smaller islets on the 4th, found no water, and were driven to sea to seek an offing on the 5th by a gale. On the 6th they landed at Point Egmont on the West Falkland, and found a fine spring of fresh water. As it would take several days to fill the casks, all the passengers went ashore and camped on the deserted island. They amused themselves by fishing, shooting and rambling about. On the 11th of the month the captain, having filled his water-casks, signalled for every man to come aboard, by firing a gun. Eight passengers, including McDougall and Stuart, happened to be on shore at the time. They had wandered around to the other side of the island, and did not hear the report of the gun. Thorn, after waiting a short time, weighed anchor and filled away from {266} the island, firmly resolved to leave the men ashore, marooned and destitute of supplies on that desolate and uninhabited spot, where they must inevitably perish of starvation and exposure.

Some of the abandoned passengers happened to see the _Tonquin_ fast leaving the island. In great alarm they hastily summoned all the other wanderers, and the eight got into a small boat twenty feet long, which had been left with them, and rowed after the rapidly receding ship. They had not the slightest hope of catching her unless she waited for them, but they pulled for her with furious energy, nevertheless. As the _Tonquin_ got from under the lee of the land the breeze freshened and she drew away from them with every passing moment in spite of their manful work at the oars. When they had about given up in exhaustion and despair, the ship suddenly changed her course and stood toward them.

Franchere says that it was because young Stuart put a pistol to the captain's head and swore that he would blow out his brains unless he went back for the boat. The captain's account to Mr. Astor is that a sudden shift of wind compelled him to come about and this gave the boat an opportunity to overhaul him. There was a scene of wild recrimination when the boat reached the ship, shortly after six bells (3 P. M.), but it did not seem to bother Thorn in the least.

On the 18th of December, they were south and east of Cape Horn. The weather was mild and pleasant, but before they could make headway enough against the swift easterly current to round that most dangerous point it came on to blow a regular Cape Horn gale. After seven days of hard beating they celebrated Christmas under pleasanter auspices in the southern Pacific.

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Their run northward was uneventful, and on the 11th of February, 1811, they sighted the volcano of Mauna Loa in the Sandwich Islands. They landed on the 12th and spent sixteen days among the different islands, visiting, filling the water-casks, and buying fresh meat, vegetables, and live-stock from Kamehameha I.

While Captain Thorn was hated by the passengers, he was not loved by his officers. Singularly enough, he seems to have been well liked by the crew, although there were some exceptions even there. Anderson, the boatswain, left the ship at Hawaii. There had been difficulties between them, and the captain was glad to see him go. A sample of Thorn's method of administering discipline is interesting.

The day they sailed a seaman named Aymes strayed from the boat party, and was left behind when the boat returned to the ship. In great terror Aymes had some natives bring him aboard in a canoe. A longboat loaded with fodder for the live-stock lay alongside. As Aymes clambered into the long-boat, the captain, who was furiously angry, sprang down into the boat, seized Aymes with one hand and a stout piece of sugar-cane with the other. With this formidable weapon the unfortunate sailor was beaten until he screamed for mercy. After wearing out the sugarcane upon him, with the remark that if he ever saw him on the sloop again, he would kill him, the captain pitched him into the water. Aymes, who was a good swimmer, made the best of his way to the shore, and stayed there with Anderson. Twenty-four natives were shipped at Hawaii, twelve for the crew and twelve for the new settlement.

On the 16th of March they ran into another storm, of such violence that they were forced to strike their {268} topgallant masts and scud under double-reefed foresail. As they were nearing the coast, the ship was hove to at night. Early on the morning of the 22nd of March, they sighted land, one hundred and ninety-five days and twenty thousand miles from Sandy Hook. The weather was still very severe, the wind blowing in heavy squalls and the sea running high, and the captain did not think it prudent to approach the shore nearer than three miles. His navigation had been excellent, however, for before them lay the mouth of the Columbia River, the object of their long voyage. They could see the waves breaking over the bar with tremendous force as they beat to and fro along the coast.

Thorn, ignorant of the channel, did not dare take the ship in under such conditions. He therefore ordered First-Mate Ebenezer Fox to take Sailmaker Martin and three Canadians into a boat and find the channel. It was a hazardous undertaking, and the despatch of the small boat under such circumstances was a serious error in judgment.

There had been bad blood between the captain and the mate, and Fox did not wish to go. If he had to go, he begged that his boat might be manned with seamen instead of Canadians. The captain refused to change his orders. Fox appealed to the partners. They remonstrated with the captain, but they could not alter his determination. The boat was pulled away and was lost to sight in the breakers. Neither the boat nor any member of the crew was ever seen or heard of again. The boat was ill-found and ill-manned. She was undoubtedly caught in the breakers and foundered.

The next day the wind increased in violence, and they cruised off the shore looking for the boat. Every one on board, including the captain, stern and {269} ruthless though he was, was very much disturbed at her loss.

On the 24th the weather moderated somewhat, and running nearer to the shore, they anchored just outside Cape Disappointment, near the north shore of the river mouth. The wind subsiding, Mumford, the second mate, with another boat, was sent to search for the passage, but finding the surf still too heavy, he returned about noon, after a terrible struggle with the breakers.

In the afternoon McKay and Stuart offered to take a boat and try to get ashore to seek for Fox and the missing men. They made the endeavor, but did not succeed in passing the breakers, and returned to the ship. Later in the afternoon a gentle breeze sprang up from the west, blowing into the mouth of the river, and Thorn determined to try and cross the bar. He weighed anchor, therefore, and bore down under easy sail for the entrance of the river. As he came close to the breakers he hove to and sent out another boat, in charge of Aitkin, a Scottish seaman, accompanied by Sailmaker Coles, Armorer Weeks and two Sandwich Islanders.

The breakers were not quite so rough as they had been, and Aitkin proceeded cautiously some distance in front of the ship, making soundings and finding no depth less than four fathoms. In obedience to his signals, the ship came bowling on, and the fitful breeze suddenly freshening, she ran through the breakers, passing Aitkin's boat to starboard in pistol-shot distance. Signals were made for the boat to return, but the tide had turned, and the strong ebb, with the current of the river, bore the boat into the breakers in spite of all her crew could do. While they were watching the boat, over which the waves were seen breaking furiously, {270} the ship, the wind failing, was driven seaward by the tide, and struck six or seven times on the bar. The breakers, running frightfully high, swept over her decks again and again. Nothing could be done for the boat by the ship, their own condition being so serious as to demand all their efforts.

Thorn at last extricated the _Tonquin_ from her predicament. The wind favored her again, and she got over the bar and through the breakers, anchoring at nightfall in seven fathoms of water. The night was very dark. The ebb and current threatened to sweep the ship on the shore. Both anchors were carried out. Still the holding was inadequate and the ship's position grew more dangerous. They passed some anxious hours until the turn of the tide, when in spite of the fact that it was pitch dark, they weighed anchor, made sail, and succeeded in finding a safe haven under the lee of Cape Disappointment, in a place called Baker's Bay. The next day the captain and some of the partners landed in the morning to see if they could find the missing party. As they were wandering aimlessly upon the shore, they came across Weeks, exhausted and almost naked.

He had a sad story to tell. The boat had capsized in the breakers and his two white companions had been drowned. He and the Kanakas had succeeded in righting the boat and clambering into her. By some fortunate chance they were tossed outside the breakers and into calmer waters. The boat was bailed out, and the next morning Weeks sculled her ashore with the one remaining oar. One of the Sandwich Islanders was so severely injured that he died in the boat, and the other was probably dying from exposure. The relief party prosecuted their {271} search for the Kanaka and found him the next day almost dead.

The loss of these eight men and these two boats was a serious blow to so small an expedition, but there was nothing to be done about it, and the work of selecting a permanent location for the trading-post on the south shore, unloading the cargo, and building the fort was rapidly carried on, although not without the usual quarrels between captain and men. After landing the company, Thorn had been directed by Mr. Astor to take the _Tonquin_ up the coast to gather a load of furs. He was to touch at the settlement which they had named Astoria, on his way back, and take on board what furs the partners had been able to procure and bring them back to New York. Thorn was anxious to get away, and on the 1st of June, having finished the unloading of the ship, and having seen the buildings approaching completion, accompanied by McKay as supercargo, and James Lewis of New York, as clerk, he started on his trading voyage.

That was the last that anybody ever saw of Thorn or the _Tonquin_ and her men. Several months after her departure a Chehalis Indian, named Lamanse, wandered into Astoria with a terrible story of an appalling disaster. The _Tonquin_ made her way up the coast, Thorn buying furs as he could. At one of her stops at Gray's Harbour, this Indian was engaged as interpreter. About the middle of June, the _Tonquin_ entered Nootka Sound, an ocean estuary between Nootka and Vancouver Islands, about midway of the western shore of the latter. There she anchored before a large Nootka Indian village, called Newity.

The place was even then not unknown to history. The Nootkas were a fierce and savage race. A few {272} years before the advent of the _Tonquin_, the American ship _Boston_, Captain Slater, was trading in Nootka Sound. The captain had grievously insulted a native chieftain. The ship had been surprised, every member of her crew except two murdered, and the ship burned. These two had been wounded and captured, but when it was learned that one was a gunsmith and armorer, their lives were preserved and they had been made slaves, escaping long after.

Every ship which entered the Sound thereafter did so with the full knowledge of the savage and treacherous nature of the Indians, and the trading was carried on with the utmost circumspection. There had been no violent catastrophes for several years, until another ship _Boston_ made further trouble. Her captain had shipped twelve Indian hunters, promising to return them to their people on Nootka Sound when he was finished with them. Instead of bringing them back, he marooned them on a barren coast hundreds of miles away from their destination. When they heard of his cruel action, the Nootkas swore to be revenged on the next ship that entered the Sound. The next ship happened to be the ill-fated _Tonquin_.

Now, no Indians that ever lived could seize a ship like the _Tonquin_ if proper precautions were taken by her crew. Mr. Astor, knowing the record of the bleak north-western shores, had especially cautioned Thorn that constant watchfulness should be exercised in trading. Thorn felt the serenest contempt for the Indians, and took no precautions of any sort. Indeed, the demeanor of the savages lulled even the suspicions of McKay, who had had a wide experience with the aborigines. McKay even went ashore at the invitation of one of the chiefs and spent the first night of his arrival in his lodge.

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The next day the Indians came aboard to trade. They asked exorbitant prices for their skins, and conducted themselves in a very obnoxious way. Thorn was not a trader; he was a sailor. He offered them what he considered a fair price, and if that was not satisfactory, why, the vendor could go hang, for all he cared. One old chief was especially persistent and offensive in his bargaining for a high price. He followed Thorn back and forth on the deck, thrusting a roll of skins in front of him, until the irascible captain at last lost the little control of his temper he ordinarily retained. He suddenly grabbed the skins and shoved them--not to say rubbed them--in the face of the indignant and astonished Indian. Then he took the Indian by the back of the neck and summarily rushed him along the deck to the gangway. It is more than likely that he assisted him in his progress by kicking him overboard.

The other Indians left the ship immediately. The interpreter warned McKay that they would never forgive such an insult, and McKay remonstrated with the captain. His remonstrances were laughed to scorn, as usual. Not a precaution was taken. Ships trading in these latitudes usually triced up boarding nettings fore and aft to prevent savages from swarming over the bulwarks without warning. Thorn refused to order these nettings put in position. McKay did not think it prudent to go on shore that night.

Early the next morning a large canoe containing some twenty Indians, all unarmed, came off to the ship. Each Indian held up a bundle of furs and signified his desire to trade. Thorn in great triumph admitted them to the ship, the furs were brought on deck, and bargaining began. There was no evidence of {274} resentment about any of them. Their demeanor was entirely different from what it had been the night before. On this occasion the Indians were willing to let the white men put any value they pleased on the furs.

While they were busily buying and selling, another party of unarmed Indians made their appearance alongside. They were succeeded by a second, a third, a fourth, and others, all of whom were welcome to the ship. Soon the deck was crowded with Indians eager to barter. Most of them wanted hunting or butcher knives in return, and by this means, no one suspecting anything, nearly every one of the savages became possessed of a formidable weapon for close-quarter fighting. McKay and Thorn appeared to have gone below temporarily, perhaps to break out more goods to exchange for furs, when the Indian interpreter became convinced that treachery was intended. Whoever was in charge at the time--perhaps Lewis--at the interpreter's instance [Transcriber's note: insistence?], sent word to the captain, and he and McKay came on deck at once.

The ship was filled with a mob of Indians, whose gentle and pleasant aspect had given way to one of scowling displeasure and menace. The situation was serious. McKay suggested that the ship be got under way at once. The captain for the first time agreed with him. Orders were given to man the capstan, and five of the seamen were sent aloft to loose sail. The wind was strong, and happened to be blowing in the right direction. With singular fatuity none of the officers or seamen were armed, although the ship was well provided with weapons. As the cable slowly came in through the hawse-pipe, and the loosed sails fell from the yards, Thorn, through the interpreter, told the Indians that he was about to sail away, and {275} peremptorily directed them to leave the ship. Indeed, the movements of the sailors made his intentions plain.

It was too late. There was a sharp cry--a signal--from the chief, and without a moment's hesitation the Indians fell upon the unprepared and astonished crew. Some of the savages hauled out war-clubs and tomahawks which had been concealed in bundles of fur; others made use of the knives just purchased. Lewis was the first man struck down. He was mortally wounded, but succeeded in the subsequent confusion, in gaining the steerage. McKay was seriously injured and thrown overboard. In the boats surrounding the ships were a number of women, and they despatched the unfortunate partner with their paddles. The captain whipped out a sailor's sheath knife which he wore, and made a desperate fight for his life. The sailors also drew their knives or caught up belaying-pins or handspikes, and laid about them with the energy of despair, but to no avail. They were cut down in spite of every endeavor. The captain killed several of the Indians with his knife, and was the last to fall, overborne in the end by numbers. He was hacked and stabbed to death on his own deck.

The five sailors aloft had been terrified and helpless witnesses to the massacre beneath them. That they must do something for their own lives they now realized. Making their way aft by means of the rigging, they swung themselves to the deck and dashed for the steerage hatch. The attention of the savages had been diverted from them by the mêlée on deck. The five men gained the hatch, the last man down, Weeks the armorer being stabbed and mortally wounded, although he, too, gained the hatch. At this juncture the Indian interpreter, who had not been molested, sprang {276} overboard, and was taken into one of the canoes and concealed by the women. His life was spared, and he was afterward made a slave, and eventually escaped. The four unhurt men who had gained the steerage, broke through into the cabin, armed themselves, and made their way to the captain's cabin, whence they opened fire upon the savages on deck. The Indians fled instantly, leaving many of their dead aboard the ship. The decks of the _Tonquin_ had been turned into shambles.

The next morning the natives saw a boat with four sailors in it pulling away from the ship. They cautiously approached the _Tonquin_ thereupon, and discovered one man, evidently badly wounded, leaning over the rail. When they gained the deck, he was no longer visible. No immediate search appears to have been made for him, but finding the ship practically deserted, a great number of Indians came off in their canoes and got aboard. They were making preparations to search and pillage the ship, when there was a terrific explosion, and the ill-fated _Tonquin_ blew up with all on board. In her ending she carried sudden destruction to over two hundred of the Indians.

It is surmised that the four unwounded men left on the ship realized their inability to carry the _Tonquin_ to sea, and determined to take to the boat in the hope of reaching Astoria by coasting down the shore. It is possible that they may have laid a train to the magazine--the _Tonquin_ carried four and a half tons of powder--but it is generally believed, as a more probable story, on account of the time that elapsed between their departure and the blowing up of the ship, that Lewis, who was yet alive in spite of his mortal wounds, and who was a man of splendid resolution and courage as well, {277} realizing that he could not escape death, remained on board; and when the vessel was crowded with Indians had revenged himself for the loss of his comrades by firing the magazine and blowing up the ship. Again, it is possible that Lewis may have died, and that Weeks, the armorer, the other wounded man, made himself the instrument of his own and the Indians' destruction. To complete the story, the four men who had escaped in the boats were pursued, driven ashore, and fell into the hands of the implacable Indians. They were tortured to death.

Such was the melancholy fate which attended some of the participants in the first settlement of what is now one of the greatest and most populous sections of the Union.

[1] I have seen a man at the wheel of the old _Constellation_ on one of my own cruises similarly injured.

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IV

John Paul Jones

Being Further Light on His Strange Career[1]

One hundred and eighteen years ago a little man who had attracted the attention of two continents, and who, in his comparatively brief career of forty-five years, had won eternal fame for himself among the heroes of the world, died in Paris, alone in his room. He had been ill for some time, and his physician, calling late in the evening, found him prone upon his bed, sleeping a sleep from which no call to battle would ever arouse him. Like Warren Hastings, John Paul Jones was at rest at last; "in peace after so many storms, in honor after so much obliquy."

He was buried in a Protestant cemetery in Paris, which was officially closed in January, 1793. The exact location of his grave there was forgotten. For many years even the fact that he was buried there was forgotten. The other day the cable flashed a message which gladdened every American heart. Under the inspiration, and at the personal charges, of General Horace Porter, United States Ambassador to France, {282} a search had been instigated and the body was found and completely identified. It is a service of sentiment that General Porter has rendered us, but not the less valuable on that account. To love the hero, to recall the heroic past, is good for the future. The remains of the great captain came back to the United States. On the decks of such a battleship as even his genius never dreamed of, surrounded by a squadron that could have put to flight all the sea-fighters of the world before the age of steam and steel, the body of the little commodore was brought back to his adopted country to repose on the soil of the land he loved, for whose liberty he fought, whose honor he maintained in battle; and a suitable monument is to be raised by our people to commemorate his services, to inspire like conduct in years to come.

Commodore John Paul Jones, the first of the great American fighters, and not the least splendid in the long line, was born of humble origin in a southern county of Scotland. His family was obscure, his circumstances narrow, his advantages meagre, his opportunities limited. At the age of twelve he became a sailor. Genius rose, superior to adverse circumstances, however, and before he died he was one of the most accomplished officers who ever served the United States. The greatest men of America and France took pleasure in his society and were proud of his friendship.

He progressed rapidly in his chosen career. At nineteen he was chief mate of a slaver, a legitimate occupation in his day but one that filled him with disgust. At twenty-one he was captain of a trader. In 1773 he came to America, forsook the sea and settled in Virginia.

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I. The Birth of the American Navy

He was still poor and still obscure when on December 7, 1775, he was appointed a lieutenant in the new Continental Navy, In that capacity he was ordered to the _Alfred_, a small converted merchantman, the flagship of Commodore Hopkins. He joined the ship immediately, and in the latter part of December he had the honor of hoisting with his own hands the first naval flag of an American squadron. This was the famous yellow silk banner with a rattlesnake and perhaps a pine tree emblazoned upon it, and with the significant legend, "Don't tread on me!"

Hopkins made an abortive expedition to New Providence, in which Jones had but one opportunity to distinguish himself. At the peril of his commission, when the regular pilots refused to do so, he volunteered to take the _Alfred_ through a difficult and dangerous channel. Needless to say, he succeeded--he always succeeded!

His first independent command was the little schooner _Providence_, of seventy men and twelve four-pound guns. In the Fall of 1775 he made a notable cruise in this schooner; he skirmished with, and escaped from, by seamanship and daring, two heavy frigates, the _Solebay_ and the _Milford_; in four months he captured sixteen vessels, eight of which were sent in as prizes, five burned, three returned to certain poor fishermen; and he destroyed property aggregating a million dollars.

Later, in command of the _Alfred_, with a short crew of one hundred and fifty, when he should have had three hundred, he made another brilliant cruise in {284} which he burned several British transports, captured one store-ship, laden to the gunwales with priceless munitions of war and supplies, cut out three of the supply fleet from under the guns of the _Flora_ frigate, and had another smart brush with the _Milford_.

II. Jones First Hoists the Stars and Stripes

Commissioned captain on the 14th of June, 1777, in the same resolution which established an American flag, he was ordered to the _Ranger_, a little ship-rigged corvette of three hundred tons. In her, on the 4th of July of the same year, he hoisted the first stars and stripes that had ever waved over a ship-of-war. In Quiberon Bay--famous as one of the battle-grounds of the world--on the evening of the 14th of February, 1778, in the _Ranger_, he received the first formal recognition ever given by a foreign fleet to the United States in a salute to the American flag. As it was after sunset when the salutes were exchanged, and in order that there should be no mistake about it, the next morning, the 15th of February, Jones transferred his flag to the _Independence_, a small privateer, and deliberately sailed through La Motte Picquet's great fleet of towering line-of-battle-ships, saluting and receiving salutes again.

Still on the _Ranger_, on the 24th of April, he fought the British sloop-of-war _Drake_, of equal force and larger crew, to a standstill in an hour and five minutes. When the _Drake_ struck her flag, her rigging, sails and spars were cut to pieces. She had forty-two killed and wounded--more than one-fifth of her crew--and was completely helpless. The _Ranger_ lost two killed and six wounded.

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In 1779 Jones hoisted his flag on the _Duc de Duras_, a condemned East Indiaman, which would have been broken up had he not turned her into a makeshift frigate by mounting forty guns in her batteries--fourteen twelve-pounders, twenty nines and six eighteens. This, in honor of Franklin, he named the _Bonhomme Richard_. Accompanied by the fine little American-built frigate _Alliance_ and the French ship _Pallas_, with the brig _Vengeance_, and the cutter _Cerf_, he cruised around England, taking several prizes, and striking terror all along the shore.

III. The Battle With the _Serapis_

On the evening of the 23rd of September he fell in with the Baltic convoy. He was accompanied at the time by the _Alliance_ and the _Pallas_. The Baltic convoy was protected by the _Serapis_ and the _Scarborough_. The _Serapis_ was a brand-new, double-banked frigate of eight hundred tons, carrying twenty eighteen-pounders, twenty nines and ten sixes. Inasmuch as the eighteen-pounders on the _Richard_ burst and were abandoned after the first fire, the _Serapis_ could and did discharge nearly twice as many pounds' weight of broadside as the _Richard_, say three hundred pounds to one hundred and seventy-five. The _Pallas_ grappled with the _Scarborough_--a more equal match--and Jones attacked the _Serapis_, which was not unwilling--quite the contrary--for the fight.

The battle was one of the most memorable and desperate ever fought upon the ocean. The _Richard_ was riddled like a sieve. Her rotten sides were literally blown out to starboard and port by the heavy batteries of the _Serapis_. Jones had several hundred English {286} prisoners on board. The master-at-arms released them, but, with great readiness and presence of mind, Jones sent them to the pumps, while he continued to fight the English frigate, his own ship kept afloat by their efforts.

Captain Pearson, of the _Serapis_, was as brave a man as ever drew a sword, but he was no match for the indomitable personality of the American commander. After several hours of such fighting as had scarcely been seen before on the narrow seas, he struck his flag. The _Alliance_, accompanied by a jealous and incapable Frenchman, had contributed nothing to Jones's success. Indeed, she had twice poured her broadsides into the _Richard_. The American vessel was so wrecked below and aloft that she sank alongside, and Jones had to transfer the survivors of his crew to the English frigate. The aggregate of the two crews was nearly seven hundred, of which about three hundred and fifty were killed or wounded.

It is the greatest pity that the poverty of America did not permit Jones to get to sea in a proper frigate, or in a ship of the line, before the close of the war. After the Revolution, in which he had borne so conspicuous a part, so much so that his exploits had electrified both continents, he took service under Catherine of Russia, carefully reserving his American citizenship. In her service he fought four brilliant actions in the Black Sea, in which he had to contend with the usual discouragement of indifferent personnel and wretched material, and in which he displayed all his old-time qualities, winning his usual successes, too.

Worn out in unrequited service, disgusted with Russian court intrigues of which he was the victim, resentful of the infamous Potemkin's brutal attempts {287} at coercion, he asked leave of absence from Catherine's service and went to Paris, where, in the companionship of his friends, and in the society of the beautiful Aimèe de Telison, the one woman he loved, he lived two years and died at the age of forty-five.

IV. A Hero's Famous Sayings

Besides the memory of his battles, Paul Jones left a collection of immortal sayings, which are the heritage of the American Navy and the admiration of brave men the world over. When the monument which is to be erected shall be ready for inscriptions, these may with propriety be carved upon it:

"_I do not wish to have command of any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm's way!_" Brave little captain.

"_I have ever looked out for the honor of the American flag!_" It is the truth itself.

"_I can never renounce the glorious title of a citizen of the United States!_" The title was one which Paul Jones signally honored.

Last, but not least, that curt phrase which comes ringing through the centuries like a trumpet call to battle; the words with which he replied to the demand of the astonished Pearson, who saw his enemy's ship beaten to a pulp, and wondered why he did not yield:

"_I have not yet begun to fight!_"

That was the finest phrase, under the circumstances, that ever came from the lips of an American sailor. "It was no new message. The British had heard it as they tramped again and again up the bullet-swept slopes of Bunker Hill; Washington rang it in the ears of the Hessians on the snowy Christmas morning at {288} Trenton; the hoof-beats of Arnold's horse kept time to it in the wild charge at Saratoga; it cracked with the whip of the old wagoner Morgan at the Cowpens; the Maryland troops drove it home in the hearts of their enemies with Greene at Guilford Court House; and the drums of France and America beat it into Cornwallis's ears when the end came at Yorktown. There, that night, in that darkness, in that still moment of battle, Paul Jones declared the determination of a great people. His was the expression of an inspiration on the part of a new nation. From this man came a statement of our unshakeable determination, at whatever cost, to be free! A new Declaration of Independence, this famous word of warning to the brave sailor of the British king."

V. What Jones Did for His Country

Never in his long career did Jones have a decent ship or a respectable crew. His materials were always of the very poorest. His officers, with the exception of Richard Dale, were but little to boast of. What he accomplished, he accomplished by the exercise of his own indomitable will, his serene courage, his matchless skill as a sailor, and his devotion to the cause he had espoused. After his death, among his papers, the following little memorandum, written in his own hand, was found:

"In 1775, J. Paul Jones armed and embarked in the first American ship of war. In the Revolution he had twenty-three battles and solemn _rencontres_ by sea; made seven descents in Britain, and her colonies; took of her navy two ships of equal, and two of superior force, many store-ships, and others; constrained her to {289} fortify her ports; suffer the Irish Volunteers; desist from her cruel burnings in America and exchange, as prisoners of war, the American citizens taken on the ocean, and cast into prisons of England, as 'traitors, pirates, and felons!'"

Indeed a truthful and a brilliant record. Paul Jones was accused of being a pirate. The charge was a long time dying, but it is to-day generally disavowed. When recently his bones were returned to American shores, may we not believe that from some valhalla of the heroes, where the mighty men of the past mingle in peace and amity, he saw and took pride in the great if tardy outpouring of our fellow citizens to greet this first sea-king of our flag?

Now, this story of the magnificent career of John Paul Jones, so briefly summarized, has been often told, and its details are familiar to every schoolboy. There is one mystery connected with his life, however, which has not yet been solved. I purpose to make here an original contribution toward its solution. No one knows positively--it is probable that no one ever will know, why John Paul assumed the name of Jones. Of course the question is not vital to Jones's fame, for from whatever reason he assumed the name by which he is remembered, he certainly honored it most signally; but the reason for the assumption is nevertheless of deep interest to all lovers of history. There have been two explanations of this action.

VI. Why Did He Take the Name of Jones?

Five years ago two biographies of Jones appeared simultaneously. One I had the honor of writing myself. The other was from the pen of that gifted {290} and able author, the late Colonel Augustus C. Buell. Our accounts were in singular agreement, save in one or two points, and our conclusions as to the character of Jones in absolute harmony. In Colonel Buell's book he put forth the theory--which, so far as I know, had not before been formulated--that John Paul assumed the name of Jones in testamentary succession to his brother William Paul, who had preceded him to America; and that William Paul had himself taken the name in testamentary succession to one William Jones, a childless old planter of Middlesex County, Virginia, who bequeathed to the said William Paul an extensive plantation on the Rappahannock, some nine miles below Urbana, at a place called Jones's Wharf, on condition that he call himself Jones. In 1805 this Jones property was owned by members of the Taliaferro family, who had received it from Archibald Frazier, who claimed to have received it from John Paul Jones, although there are no records of transfer extant.

My theory, which Colonel Buell facetiously characterized--doubtless in all good humor--as "Tar-heel mythology," stated that John Paul assumed the name of Jones out of friendship and regard for the justly celebrated Jones family of North Carolina, and especially for Mrs. Willie Jones, who is not unknown in history, and who was one of the most brilliant and charming women of the colonies. Members of this family had befriended him and assisted him pecuniarily, and had extended to him the bounteous hospitality of the famous plantations, Mount Gallant and The Groves, near Halifax. It was through their influence with Congressman Hewes that Jones received his commission as a lieutenant in the Continental Navy. {291} In further explanation it was suggested that on casting his lot with the rebellious colonies John Paul, who was somewhat erratic as well as romantic and impulsive, determined to take a new name and begin life over again.

Here are two utterly irreconcilable theories. I at once wrote to Colonel Buell asking him to inform me what was his authority for his statement. I quote, with his permission given me before his lamented death, from several letters that he wrote me:

"My first authentic information on the subject was from a gentleman named William Louden, whom I met in St. Louis in 1873, when I was attached to the _Missouri Republican_. Mr. Louden was a great-grandson of Mary Paul Louden, sister of John Paul Jones. He was the only surviving blood-relative of Paul Jones in this country, being his great-grandnephew. He told me substantially the history of the change of names as related in my first volume.

"Two years later I met the late General Taliaferro of Virginia in Washington, and he corroborated the version, together with the history of the Jones plantation.[2]

"One would naturally judge that the great-grandnephew of the man himself, and the gentleman who had subsequently owned the property, ought to know something about the antecedents of both the man and the land. . . . I doubt whether documentary evidence--such as would be admitted in court--can ever be found."

Colonel Buell also called my attention to the fact {292} that in none of Paul Jones's letters to Joseph Hewes is there any reference to the North Carolina Jones family; and further, that Jones and Hewes became acquainted in commercial transactions before Jones settled in America.

VII. Search for Historical Evidence

In an attempt to settle the matter I wrote to all the Virginia county clerks on both sides of the Rappahannock River, asking them if any copy of the will of William Paul, or that of William Paul Jones, could be found in their records. Most of these Virginia county records were destroyed during the Civil War. By great good fortune, however, those of Spottsylvania County, in which the city of Fredericksburg is situated, were preserved, and I herewith append a copy of the will of William Paul, in which he bequeathes his property, making no mention of any plantation and no mention of the name of William Jones, to his sister, Mary Young, who afterward married Louden.

"In the name of God, Amen; I, William Paul, of the town of Fredericksburg and County of Spottsylvania in Virginia--being in perfect sound memory, thanks be to Almighty God, and knowing it is appointed unto all men to die, do make and ordain this my last Will and Testament in manner and form revoking all former will or wills by me herebefore made.

"Principally and first of all, I recommend my soul to Almighty God who gave it, hoping through the merits of my blessed Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ to find Redemption, and as to touching and concerning {293} what worldly estate it has pleased God to bless me with, I dispose of it in the following manner:

"_Item_--It is my will and desire that all my just debts and funeral expenses be first paid by my Executors hereafter named, who are desired to bury my body in a decent, Christian-like manner.

"_Item_--It is my will and desire that my Lots and Houses in this Town be sold and converted into money for as much as they will bring, that with all my other estate being sold and what of my out-standing debts that can be collected, I give and bequeath unto my beloved sister Mary Young, and her two eldest children and their heirs in Arbiglon in Parish of Kirkbeen in Stewartry of Galloway, North Brittain, forever. I do hereby empower my Executors to sell and convey the said land, lots and houses and make a fee simple therein, as I could or might do in my proper person, and I do appoint my friends Mr. William Templeman and Isaac Heislop my Executors to see this my will executed, confirming this to be my last will and testament. In Witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and fixed my seal as my last act and deed this 22nd day of March, 1772.

"WILLIAM PAUL (Seal)."

"William Paul having heard the above will distinctly read, declared the same to be his last will and testament in the presence of us:

"JOHN ATKINSON,

"THOMAS HOLMES,

"B. JOHNSTON."

William Paul evidently died in 1774, instead of 1773, as all the biographers of his famous brother {294} have it, and the will was accordingly probated, as will be seen from the following transcript of the court records:

"At a Court continued and held for Spottsylvania County, December the 16th, 1774.

"The Last Will and Testament of William Paul, deceased, was proved by the oaths of John Atkinson, a witness thereto, and ordered to be certified, and the Executors therein named refusing to take upon themselves the burden of the execution thereof, on the motion of John Atkinson who made oath and together with John Walker, Jr., his security, entered into and acknowledged their bond in the Penalty of Five hundred Pounds as the law directs. Certificate is granted him for obtaining letter of administration on the said decedent's estate with his will aforesaid annexed in due form."

In further support of these facts, the grave of William Paul was recently discovered in St. George's churchyard, Fredericksburg, and his tombstone bears the date of 1774. This effectually disposes of Colonel Buell's contention. For whatever reason John Paul assumed the name of Jones it was not in testamentary succession to William Paul; for William Paul kept his inherited surname to the last.

It occurred to me that John Paul might have been empowered to represent his sister in the settlement of his brother's estate. A power-of-attorney which would have enabled him to attend to her affairs would not necessarily have been registered in the Scottish or American courts; yet, knowing the methodical habit of the Scottish bar, I caused search to be made in the {295} private papers and records of those local advocates who might possibly have handled the business in Scotland; but with no results so far.

I also had search made for any conveyance of the property mentioned in the will by William Paul's administrators. I append a copy of a letter from Mr. J. P. H. Crismund, a county clerk of Spottsylvania County.

"SPOTTSYLVANIA, VA., June 7, 1901.

"I have made the matter of John Paul Jones and William Paul and William Jones a matter of most careful study and search, but have not been able to find anything beyond the last will and testament of William Paul, a copy of which I send you. My first search was made to find the conveyance from William Paul's administration, with will annexed, conveying the houses and lots in Fredericksburg which are directed in William Paul's will to be sold, but the records nowhere show this. This seems and is strange, because some disposition must have been made of this property in some way, but I cannot find this here. I then followed the fiduciary indexes to see if I could find anything about the enlistment and service of John Paul to John Paul Jones--but this also was fruitless. William Paul could not have assumed the name of Jones, as he leaves his last will and testament in the name of Paul, nor is there any will of record in the name of Paul, nor is there any will of record in the name of John Paul Jones. I have given this matter such thought and attention and work, but I cannot find a clue to anything named in your letter to me and concerning which you make inquiry.

"As William Paul's property was in Fredericksburg, it may be that the settlement of his estate and the {296} account of the sale of his effects is of record there. If you desire to write to the clerk of corporation court of that city as to that, he will courteously attend to your matter of inquiry.

"Yours sincerely,

"J. P. H. CRISMUND."

I wrote as Mr. Crismund suggested, but could get no further information.

VIII. The Joneses of North Carolina

Now to revert to the North Carolina account. It comes down as straight as such a story could. Colonel Cadwallader Jones of North Carolina, in a privately printed genealogical history of his family, states that he was born in 1812. His grandmother, Mrs. Willie Jones, died in 1828. He lived with her for the first fifteen years of his life. He declares positively that she told him that John Paul had taken the name for the reasons mentioned. The matter was generally so stated and accepted in the family. Mrs. Willie Jones was a woman of unusual mental force and character, and preserved the full use of her faculties until her death.

The same statement is made independently by descendants of other branches of the Jones family. For instance, Mr. Armistead Churchill Gordon, of Staunton, Va., had it direct from his great-aunt, who was a kinswoman of Mrs. Jones, and who heard from her the circumstances referred to. And there are still other lines of tradition which create a strong probability in favor of the credibility of the theory.

For one thing, if Jones did represent his sister in the {297} settlement of his brother's estate, it is probable that he would have to give bond for the proper performance of his trust, and it is sometimes stated that Willie and Allen Jones went on his bond for five hundred pounds--just the sum required of the Executors, by the way. It is also singular, in view of this will leaving property to his grandmother, that the Louden whom Mr. Buell knew--and who is said to have died in New Orleans 1887--should have been so mistaken in his statements; but on this point the evidence of the will is absolutely conclusive.

IX. Paul Jones Never a Man of Wealth

Colonel Buell claims that John Paul Jones had riches and influence in Virginia after the death of his brother, but the claim is not tenable according to an exhaustive review of his book in the _Virginia Historical Magazine_. In the face of the present exhibit, and in the view of the fact that Jones himself spoke of living for two years in Virginia on fifty pounds, the story of his wealth cannot be credited. It is therefore entirely in harmony with the facts to accept the North Carolina tradition, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary. The direct statement coming to us in one instance through but one generation is entitled to respect. As a matter of fact both Colonel Buell's version of the matter and my own story rest upon tradition alone, with this difference--the evidence submitted absolutely excluded one of the accounts; the other, therefore, logically comes to the fore.

And thus, I think, I have contributed to clear up one mooted point in American history.

[1] My reason for including in this volume a paper on this great sailor whose career has already been discussed in "Revolutionary Fights and Fighters" (q. v.) is because this present article contains a new and original contribution to history, never before published in book form, which absolutely and finally settles one phase of the much mooted question as to why John Paul assumed the surname Jones, as will be seen hereafter.

[2] Of which he (General Taliaferro) had become the owner.

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V

In the Caverns of the Pitt

A Story of a Forgotten Fight with the Indians

One of the most distinguished of the minor soldiers of the Civil War, minor in the sense of being surpassed only by men of the stature of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas, was George Crook. His exploits in the valley of the Shenandoah were brilliant, and his whole career was replete with instances of ability and courage which stamped him as a soldier of the first grade. A major-general of volunteers and a brevet major-general in the regular army, the year 1868 found him a colonel of infantry commanding the military district of Owyhee, a section of the country which included the southeastern part of Oregon and the northeastern part of California.

In the adaptation of means to ends, so far as Indian affairs are concerned, the United States has usually been woefully lacking. With a few companies of cavalry and infantry not aggregating a full regiment, this eminent soldier was directed to hold the various scattered garrison points throughout a large extent of territory, and also to settle the Indians, who for some time had been indulging their propensities for savage slaughter almost unchecked, save for a few sporadic and ineffective efforts by volunteers and irregulars.

The far western representatives of the great {302} Shoshone nation are among the meanest, most degraded, most despicable Indians on the continent. This did not hinder them from being among the most brutal and ferocious. They made the tenure of life and property more than precarious in that far-off section during and after the Civil War. They were not very numerous, nor were they a great race of fighters, except when cornered. The character of the country to the eastward of their ravaging ground, abounding in lava beds, desolate plains, inaccessible valleys and impassable mountain ranges, to which they could fly when they were hard pressed, rendered it difficult to bring any considerable number of them to action, and they enjoyed a certain immunity from punishment on that account.

The most important engagement between them and the troops, before the patience and perseverance of Crook and his handful, finally wore out the Indians, presents, perhaps, the one instance where they were brought fairly to bay and the soldiers had an opportunity to give them a thorough beating. This unique battle demonstrated also how desperately even a coward will fight when his back is against a wall. And it showed, as few other frontier fights have shown, the splendid courage of the regular American soldier in this arduous, unheeded service.

Early on the 26th of September, 1868, General Crook, with a small troop of cavalry, H of the First, numbering less than thirty men, together with about a score of mounted infantrymen from the Twenty-third Regiment, and perhaps as many Warm Spring Indian scouts under a leader named Donald Macintosh, with a small pack train, found himself on the south fork of Pitt River, in Modoc County, Cal., a few miles below its junction with the main stream. The {303} country is wild, unsettled, largely unexplored to this day. There is no railroad even now nearer than one hundred and twenty-five miles. General Crook had been hunting and trailing Indians in the Warmer Mountains without success for several days. On this morning the Warm Spring Indian scouts reported that a large body of Indians was encamped in the valley upon which he was just entering.

The general direction of the river here was due north and south. Perhaps a mile from the bank of the river to the west, rose a high tableland which terminated in precipitous and generally insurmountable bluffs of black basalt, extending above the general level of the valley about twelve hundred feet. Projecting eastward from the side of these lofty cliffs was a singular rocky plateau, the outer lines of which roughly formed a half circle. This elevation was bordered on the south by a deep and broken cañon, on the north by a creek which ran through a forest of scattered juniper trees. The plateau rose in two gentle slopes to a height of about five or six hundred feet above the valley level, and was thus half as high as the bluff to the westward, which formed the base of the semi-circle. Near the northern part of the plateau the rocks were elevated in a series of irregular broken peaks, like the jagged ice hummocks of the higher latitudes. The whole plateau was covered with enormous boulders, over which it was impossible even to lead a horse. On the lower reaches plots of grass, dotted with junipers, abounded. The valley of the river proper below the cliffs and the projecting plateau was a good place for a camp, although the ground near the banks was swampy and impassable.

The peaks mentioned, it was afterward learned, {304} abounded with hidden caves and underground passages. By some curious freak of nature, the volcanic hummocks contained no less than four natural fortifications of varying sizes, which, supplemented by very slight efforts on the part of the Indians, had been turned into defensive works of the most formidable character.

They were connected by a perfect labyrinth of crevasses and underground passages and caves, so that the defenders could easily pass from one to the other. The northeast fort, which was the principal one of the chain, was surrounded by a natural gorge some fifty feet deep and twenty-five feet wide at the top. A sort of banquette, or balcony, making a practicable path several feet wide, extended around the fort between the wall and the edge of the ravine. The fort proper was enclosed by a wall of rock, partly natural, partly artificial, about eight feet high. An assailant crossing the ravine and gaining the crest of the peak would have ample standing ground between the edge and the wall. The broken ground around these forts on the plateau formed a series of natural rifle pits.

These works were held by no less than one hundred and twenty Shoshones belonging to the Piutes, Pitt Rivers, Modocs and Snakes. Their chief was Sa-hei-ta, one of the bravest and most brutal of the marauders. When they saw Crook's little force of fifty white soldiers and a score of Warm Spring Indians descending the bluff into the valley south of the rocky cañon, they laughed them to scorn. They were confident in the strength of their position and in their numbers, and they resolved to hold their ground. Indeed, after the first few moments there was nothing else for them to do, for Crook distributed his cavalry {305} and infantry around the northern and southern sides, put his pack mules in camp in the valley on the east with a small guard, and threw the Warm Spring Indian scouts back of the forts between them and the cliffs. Thus he had the Indians surrounded, so far as seventy men could surround nearly twice their number in chosen fortifications. The whole place was popularly known as the Hell Caves of the Pitt River, although in the War Department and official records it is described more politely as the Infernal Caverns of the Pitt River.

Getting his men in position, Crook acted promptly. In long thin lines on the north and south, taking advantage of the abundant cover, the soldiers cautiously advanced, clearing out the rifle pits and driving the Indians back toward their stronghold. There was severe fighting all during the afternoon, in which First Sergeant Charles Brackett and Private James Lyons were killed and a number were wounded. The Warm Spring Indians, who were good scouts, did not fancy this sort of warfare, and they took practically no part in the battle. They were useful enough in one way, as they checked any retreat toward the bluffs, although as it turned out the Indians had no intention of leaving.

Finally, toward evening, the plateau was entirely cleared of Indians, who had all been forced back into the forts. Crook had sent a picket of soldiers to the edge of the basalt cliffs and these men, with long-range rifles, did some little execution on the defenders of the forts, although the distance was so great that their fire was largely ineffectual. Night found the soldiers ensconced behind boulders on the very rim of the ravine, the Indians in the forts. In little squads the {306} soldiers were withdrawn from the battlefield and sent down to the camp in the valley to get something to eat. They had been without food or water since morning, and fighting is about the hottest, thirstiest work that a man can engage in. After they had refreshed themselves, they went back to the plateau to keep watch over the fort. Desultory firing took place all night long, the Indians blazing away indiscriminately--they had plenty of ammunition, it appeared--and the soldiers firing at the flashes of the guns. The voices of the medicine men and the chiefs could be heard exhorting them and promising victory.

Crook determined to storm the place at break of day. The darkness rendered it impossible to attempt the broken, precipitous descent and ascent of the ravine in the night. Light was needed for that. He had fought valiantly throughout the day, this major-general, as a common soldier in the ranks. He was a dead shot, and had used his Spencer carbine with effect whenever opportunity presented. He could assemble for the assault but forty men, twenty-two of the First Cavalry and eighteen of the Twenty-third Infantry. The Warm Spring auxiliaries refused to assault, such close work not being to their taste. There were several wounded men in the camp, and a small guard had to be kept there to protect them and the horses from the attacks of some of the Indians who had taken advantage of the night to escape from the stronghold to endeavor to stampede the herd, and who from various covers kept up a constant fire on the camp, so that Lieutenant Eskridge, quartermaster, had his hands full in holding his ground.

First Lieutenant W. R. Parnell, now of San Francisco, who commanded the cavalry, was directed to {307} lead the assault. Second Lieutenant John Madigan, also of the cavalry, who had charge of the infantry, was ordered to support. The troops were directed to creep to the brink of the crevasses surrounding the fort and drop down it as quickly as possible. Arrived at the bottom, they were to scale the rocky counter-scarp, and when they got to the platform they were to keep moving while they attempted to break the wall of the fort proper. Crook, who believed in intimidation, advised them to yell and cheer as much as possible. The general crawled around during the night from man to man, acquainting every soldier with his ideas and "talking to them as a father." He reminds me a little of Henry V. before the battle of Agincourt.

The task he had set his soldiers was desperate in the extreme. It speaks well not only for the general's reliance upon them, but for the quality of the men also, that he conceived it possible and that they carried it out effectively. So soon as it was fairly dawn the soldiers at a given signal dashed at the crest. So suddenly did they appear that, although the Indians in the fort across the ravine opened a terrific rifle and arrow fire upon them, not one was injured. Without a moment's hesitation, the men plunged down the walls, and sliding, falling, any way, they reached the bottom. There they were safe from the fire of the Indians, for the platform around the wall of the fort prevented the Indians from shooting into the ravine.

Parnell's company immediately began the escalade of the cliffs. Madigan had not been so fortunate. Where he struck the ravine the wall happened to be absolutely sheer. Descent was not practicable. His men therefore stopped on the brink until he directed his infantrymen to circle the ravine until they found a {308} practicable descent and there join Parnell's men. He had scarcely given the order when a bullet pierced his brain. Some of his men were also struck down, others retired behind the rocks, made a detour and followed Parnell.

The sides of the ravine were so precipitous that no man could scale them unaided. Two or three would lift up a fellow-soldier. After gaining a foothold he in turn would pull others up, and thus they slowly made their way to the edge of the cliffs, Crook climbing with the rest. They finally gained the banquette, or platform, after a difficult and exhausting climb. The Indians were behind the walls of the fort, the soldiers outside. Sergeant Michael Meara, leading the advance, peeped through a loop-hole, and was shot dead. Private Willoughby Sawyer, happening to pass by another orifice, was killed in the same way. In both cases the Indians were so close that the faces of both men were badly powder burned. A slug struck the wrist and an arrow pierced the body of Private Shea, hurling him to the bottom of the ravine.

But the soldiers were not idle. Guns from each side were thrust through every loophole or crevice and discharged blindly. In this desperate method of fighting, the Indians, being contracted within the circle, suffered the more. While some were fighting thus, others were tearing down the rocky wall with hands and bayonets. A breach was soon made, and through it the soldiers streamed. The Indians, after one hasty volley, fled precipitately. The last man to leave the fort was the chief, Sa-hei-ta. As he leaped over the wall Crook's unerring Spencer sent a bullet into his spine, and he fell dead at the bottom of the ravine. The fort had been defended by at least fifty {309} Indians, and there were fifteen dead bodies in it. Among these was that of the chief medicine man.

The soldiers ran to the western wall, and through loopholes opened a fire upon the Indians, who had joined their fellows in the other forts. The fire was fiercely returned. About nine in the morning one of the infantrymen, peering through a small crevice in the rock, found his view obstructed by a small weed. In spite of Parnell's caution, he uprooted it, leaving quite an opening, in which he was completely exposed. He was shot through the head instantly and fell unconscious.[1]

The wounded, of which there were a number, were now taken to the camp about 11 A. M. The fire of the Indians having slackened, Crook, leaving a detachment in the fort, withdrew the rest of the men to the camp for breakfast. The Indians took advantage of this opportunity to charge the fort. The few defenders were driven out of the fortification and Sergeant Russler was killed, the third sergeant to lose his life that day! Rallying on the banquette, upon the return of the others, they in turn drove the Indians out of the fort. Neither party could occupy it all day long. The soldiers clung to the platform covering their dead in the fort on one side, while the Indians from the forts on the other side prevented the soldiers from re-entering.

It was not until nightfall that the dead could be withdrawn. The soldiers re-occupied the fort at night, and although the Indians sent frequent volleys of arrows, which they shot into the air, hoping they would {310} fall upon the soldiers, and kept up an irregular fire, culminating in a sustained discharge about midnight, they made no attempt seriously to take the fort, although the soldiers, confidently expecting an attack, lay on their arms all night. During the last half of it not a sound came from the Indians.

The next morning Crook prepared to resume the attack by assaulting the other forts, when his suspicions were awakened by a strange quiet, which continued in spite of several efforts to draw the Indian fire. Fearing some stratagem, he delayed until he could have speech with the interior forts by means of a wounded Indian squaw, whom they captured after cautious scouting. From this woman, whom they forced to speak by threatening to hang her, it was learned that the Indians had decamped during the night. The warriors had taken advantage of a long underground passage which led south and opened in a cave in the side of the cañon. This concealed way actually took them under the feet of Crook's soldiers, and sufficiently far from his camp and scouts to enable them, so quietly had they moved, to steal away undetected. They left their women and children in the caves. These caves were a perfect maze. To attempt to search them would have been impossible. Indeed, one soldier, Private James Carey, who saw the body of a dead Indian near the mouth of one of them, and who sought a scalp as a trophy, descended to the cave mouth and was shot dead by some one, probably a wounded brave, within the dark recesses.

The Indians' loss was about forty killed. Crook had lost nearly a moiety--50 per cent.--of his entire force, an appalling proportion! One officer, six soldiers, one civilian had been killed, twelve soldiers, {311} including three corporals,[2] seriously wounded, two of them afterward died; and almost every survivor in the party had received some slight wound or had been badly bruised by falls in climbing over the broken rocks. Their clothing and shoes were cut to pieces, they were utterly worn out by two sleepless nights and two days' desperate fighting. They buried the brave soldiers in the valley, concealing their graves so that the Indians could not discover them and ravage them. Carrying their wounded in rude travels slung between horses and mules, and taking the body of brave young Madigan, who was buried in a lonely forgotten grave, one day's march from the battlefield, they returned to Camp Warner.

With a greatly inferior force Crook had assailed the Indians on ground of their own choosing, which they believed to be impregnable, and had administered a crushing defeat. The escalade of the wall of the ravine, the breaching of the rampart, the storming of the fort, its defence, its abandonment and recapture, was one of the most gallant and heroic exploits ever performed in American history. Although he had paid dearly for his victory, the lesson Crook had inflicted upon the savages was a salutary one, and the disastrous defeat of the Indians in the Infernal Caverns of the Pitt River was a great factor in bringing about the subsequent pacification of that section.

To-day the exploit is forgotten. All the officers, save one, and I presume most of the men, who participated, are dead. It is from the papers of the surviving officer, Colonel Parnell, and from official reports and a few meagre published accounts in newspapers and books that this story of American heroism has been prepared.

[1] He lived three weeks without regaining his senses, and eventually died at Camp Warner, Ore., over one hundred and fifty miles away, whither he was carried with the other wounded, after the battle.

[2] The loss among non-commissioned officers was especially heavy, showing how well these brave men did their duty.

{315}

VI

Being a Boy Out West

I am in some doubt as to whether to call this particular reminiscence "Pants That I Have Worn" or "Trousers Like Those Mother Used to Make." For either name seems admirably suitable to the situation.

I was the oldest son in a numerous family, and therefore had the heritage of my father's clothes. He was an exceedingly neat and careful man, and never--to my sorrow be it said--did he ever wear out anything, unless it were an apple switch on me or my brothers. I had to wear out all his old clothes, it seemed to me. It was not a matter of choice but of necessity with me. My younger brother always escaped. By the time I had finished anything, there was no more of it. It went perforce to the ragman, if he would condescend to accept it.

There was a certain sad, plum-colored, shad-bellied coat that flashes athwart my memory in hideous recollection, which wrapped itself portentiously about my slim figure, to the great delectation of my young friends and companions, and to my corresponding misery. I can recall their satirical criticisms vividly even now. They enjoyed it hugely, especially the little girls. Think of a small--say "skinny"--little boy, about nine or ten years old, in a purple shad-bellied coat which had been made to fit (?) him by cutting off the sleeves, also the voluminous tails just below the back buttons!

{316} I could never understand the peculiar taste my father manifested in his younger days, for when I recall the age which permitted me to wear cut-down clothing (and that age arrived at an extraordinary early period in my existence, it appeared to me), such a fearful and wonderful assortment of miscellaneous garments of all colors, shapes and sizes as were resurrected from the old chests in the garret, where they had reposed in peaceful neglect for half a generation, the uninitiated can scarcely believe.

The shad-bellied coat was bad enough--you could take that off, though--but there was something worse that stayed on. Fortunately there is one season in the year when coats in the small Western village, in which I lived, were at a discount, especially on small boys, and that was summer. But on the warmest of summer days the most recklessly audacious youngster has to wear trousers even in the most sequestered village.

One pair rises before me among the images of many and will not down. The fabric of which this particular garment was made was colored a light cream, not to say yellow. There was a black stripe, a piece of round black braid down each leg, too, and the garment was as heavy as broadcloth and as stiff as a board. Nothing could have been more unsuitable for a boy to wear than that was. I rebelled and protested with all the strength of my infantile nature, but it was needs must--I had either to wear them or to remain in bed indefinitely. Swallowing my pride, in spite of my mortification, I put them on and sallied forth, but little consoled by the approving words and glances of my mother, who took what I childishly believed to be an utterly unwarranted pride in her--shall I say--adaptation or reduction? Those trousers had a {317} sentimental value for her, too, as I was to learn later. As for me, I fairly loathed them.

Many times since then, I have been the possessor of a "best and only pair," but never a pair of such color, quality and shape. They were originally of the wide-seated, peg-top variety, quite like the fashion of to-day, by the way--or is it yesterday, in these times of sudden changes?--and when they were cut off square at the knee and shirred or gathered or reefed in at the waist, they looked singularly like the typical "Dutchman's breeches." I might have worn them as one of Hendrik Hudson's crew in "Rip Van Winkle"--which was, even in those days, the most popular play in which Joseph Jefferson appeared. You can see how long ago it was from that.

Well, I put them on in bitterness of heart. How the other boys greeted me until they got used to them--which it seemed to me they never would! Unfortunately for them, anyway, they had only one day, one brief day, in which to make game of me; for the first time I wore them something happened.

There was a pond on a farm near our house called, from its owner, "Duffy's Pond." The water drained into a shallow low depression in a large meadow, and made a mudhole, a cattle wallow. Little boys have a fondness for water, when it is exposed to the air--that is, when it is muddy, when it is dirty--which is in adverse ratio to their zest for nice, clean water in a nice clean tub. To bathe and be clean does not seem instinctive with boys. And how careful we were not to wet the backs of our hands and our wrists except when in swimming! And how hard did our parents strive to teach us to distribute our ablutions more generally!

{318} Well, Mr. Duffy did not allow boys to swim in his pond, which made it all the more inviting. It was a hot August day when I first put on those cream-colored pants. Naturally, we went in swimming. Having divested ourselves of our clothing--and with what joy I cast off the hideous garment!--we had to wade through twenty or thirty yards of mud growing deeper and more liquid with every step, until we reached the water. We were having a great time playing in the ooze when Mr. Duffy appeared in sight. He was an irascible old man, and did not love his neighbors' children! He had no sympathy at all with us in our sports; he actually begrudged us the few apples we stole when they were unripe and scarce, and as for watermelons--ah, but he was an unfeeling farmer!

Fortunately, he had no dog with him that morning, nothing but a gun--an old shotgun with the barrels sawed off at half their length, loaded with beans or bacon, or pepper or sand, I don't remember which--they were all bad enough if they hit you. The alarm was given instantly, and we made a wild rush for the tall grass through that mud. You can fancy how dirty we became, splashing, stumbling, wallowing in it. Mr. Duffy, firing beans at us from the rear, accelerated our pace to a frightful degree. Fortunately again, like Hamlet, he was "fat and scant o' breath," and we could run like deer, which we did. _En route_ I grabbed my shirt with one hand and those cream-colored pants with the other.

The mud of that pond was the thick, black, sticky kind. It stained hideously anything light that it touched, as irrevocably as sin. Those trousers had been clasped against my boyish muddy breast or flapped against my muddy, skinny legs, and they were {319} a sight to behold! There was no water available for miles where we stopped. We rubbed ourselves off with the burnt grass of August and dusty leaves as well as we could, dressed ourselves and repaired home.

I was a melancholy picture. The leopard could have changed his spots as easily as I. Yet I well remember the mixture of fierce joy and terrified apprehension that pervaded me. I arrived home about dinner-time. Father was there. "Wh--what!" he cried in astonishment. "Where have you been, sir?"

"Those," sobbed my mother in anguished tones, "were your father's wedding trousers! I gave them to you with reluctance and as a great favor, you wretched boy, and--and--you have ruined them."

I was taken upstairs, thoroughly washed, scrubbed--in the tub, which was bad enough--and when sufficiently clean to be handed to my father, he and I had an important interview in the wood-shed--our penal institution--over which it were well to draw the curtain. There was a happy result to the adventure, however: I never wore the cream-colored pants again, and hence my joy. The relief was almost worth the licking.

Some of the material, however, was worked up into a patchwork quilt, and of the rest my mother made a jacket for my sister. My mother could not look upon those things without tears; neither could I! Why is it that grown people will be so inconsiderate about a little boy's clothes?

It was the fashion of many years before I was born for people--that is, men and boys--to wear shawls. There was a dearth in the family exchequer on one occasion--on many occasions, I may say, but this {320} was a particular one. I had no overcoat, at least not one suitable for Sunday, and really it would have been preposterous to have attempted to cut down one of father's for me. That feat was beyond even my mother's facile scissors, and she could effect marvels with them, I knew to my cost. It was a bitter cold winter day, I remember, and my mother, in the kindness of her heart, brought to light one of those long, narrow, fringed, brilliantly colored plaided shawls, so that I should not miss Sunday school. I was perfectly willing to miss it, then or any other time, for any excuse was a good one for that. But no, I was wrapped up in it in spite of my frantic protests and despatched with my little sister--she who wore the cream-colored trousers-jacket--to the church. Strange to say, she did not mind at all.

We separated outside the house door, and I ran on alone. I had evolved a deep, dark purpose. I went much more rapidly than she, and as soon as I turned the corner, and was safely out of sight, I tore off that hateful shawl and when I arrived at the meeting-house I ignominiously thrust it into the coal heap in the dilapidated shed in the corner of the lot. I was almost frozen by the time I arrived, but any condition was better than that shawl.

The Sunday school exercises proceeded as usual, but in the middle of them, the janitor who had gone into the coal house for the wherewithal to replenish the fires, came back with the shawl. I had rammed it rather viciously under the coal, and it was a filthy object. The superintendent held it up by finger and thumb and asked to whom it belonged.

"Why, that's our Johnny's" piped up my little sister amid a very disheartening roar of laughter from the {321} school. There was no use in my denying the statement. Her reputation for veracity was much higher than mine, and I recognized the futility of trying to convince any one that she was mistaken. At the close of the session I had to wrap myself in that coal-stained garment and go forth. I was attended by a large delegation of the scholars when the school was over. They did not at all object to going far out of their way to escort me home, and they left me at my own gate.

It was Sunday, and it was against my father's religious principles to lick us on Sunday--that was one of the compensations, youthful compensations of that holy day--but Monday wasn't far off, and father's memory was remarkably acute. Ah, those sad times, but there was fun in them, too, after all.

There was a little boy who lived near us named Henry Smith. He and I were inseparable. He had a brother three years older than himself whose name was Charles. Charles was of course much taller and stronger than Henry and myself, and he could attend to one of us easily. But both of us together made a pretty good match for him. Consequently we hunted in couples, as it were. Charles was unduly sensitive about his Christian name. I think he called it his unchristian name. Not the "Charles" part of it, that was all right, but his parents had inconsiderately saddled him with the hopeless additional name of Peter Van Buskirk Smith! All we had to do to bring about a fight was to approach him and address him as "Peter Van Buskirk." He bitterly resented it, which was most unreasonable of him. I recall times when the three of us struggled in the haymow for hours at a time, Peter Van Buskirk, furiously angry, striving to force an apology or retraction, and Henry and I having a glorious time refusing him.

We were safe enough while we were together, but when he caught us alone--O my! I can remember it yet. He was always Charles, at that time, but it was of no use. Yet notwithstanding the absolute certainty of a severe thrashing when he caught us singly, we never could refrain from calling him "Peter Van Buskirk" when we were together.

Why is it that parents are so thoughtless about the naming of their children? I knew a boy once named Elijah Draco and there was another lad of my acquaintance who struggled under the name of Lord Byron. That wasn't so bad, because we shortened it to "By," but "Elijah Draco" was hopeless, so we called him "Tommy," as a rebuke to his unfeeling parents.

Charles Peter Van Buskirk was a funny boy. He was as brave as a lion. You could pick him up by the ears, which were long--and shall I say handy?--and he never would howl. We knew that was the way to tell a good dog. "Pick him up by the ears; an' if he howls, he'll be no fighter!" And we thought what was a good test for a dog could not be amiss for a boy.

He had a dog once, sold to him for a quarter when it was a pup by a specious individual of the tramp variety, as one of the finest "King-Newf'un'lan'--Bull Breed." His appetite and his vices were in proportion to his descriptions, but he had no virtues that we could discover. With a boy's lack of inventiveness we called him "Tiger" although anything less ferocious than he would be hard to find. He was more like a sheep in spirit than anything else. But Charles thought he saw signs of promise in that pup, and in spite of our disparaging remarks he clung to him. Charles knew a lot about dogs, or thought he did, which was the same thing.

I remember we were trying to teach Tige to "lead" one day. He had no more natural aptitude for leading than an unbroken calf. The perverse dog at last flattened himself down on his stomach, spread-eagled himself on the ground, and stretched his four legs out as stiff as he could. We dragged him over the yard until he raised a pile of dirt and leaves in front of him like a plow in an untilled field. He would not "lead," although we nearly choked him to death trying to teach him. Then we tried picking him up by the ears, applying that test for courage and blood, you know! You might have heard that dog yelp for miles. He had no spirit at all. Charles Peter Van Buskirk was disgusted with him.

We got out a can of wagon-grease and spotted him artistically to make him look like a coach-dog, which was legitimate, as coach-dogs are notoriously remarkable for lack of courage. They are only for ornament. That was a pretty-looking animal when it rained. We changed his name, too, and called him "Kitty," regardless of his sex. It was the last insult to a dog, we thought, but he never seemed to mind it. I feel sorry for that dog as I look back at him now, and it rather provoked Charles when we subsequently asked his opinion of any other dog. This we did as often as there were enough of us together to make it safe.

When we felt very reckless, we used to go in swimming in the river, which was a very dangerous proceeding indeed, for the Missouri is a treacherous, wicked {324} stream, full of "suck-holes" and whirlpools and with a tremendous current, especially during the June "rise." The practice was strictly forbidden by all right-minded parents, including our own. Frequently, however, in compliance with that mysterious sign, the first two fingers of the right hand up-lifted and held wide apart, which all boys over a thousand miles of country knew meant "Will you go swimming?" we would make up a party after school and try the flood.

Father usually inspected us with a rather sharper eye, when we came sneaking in the back way after such exercises. For a busy man, father had a habit, that was positively maddening, of happening upon a boy at the wrong time. We used to think we had no privacy at all.

"Hum!" he was wont to say, looking suspiciously at our wet, sleek heads and general clean appearance--clean for us, that is, for the Missouri River, sandy though it was, was vastly cleaner than Duffy's Pond or puddles of that ilk--"been in swimming again, have you? In the river, I'll be bound."

Two little boys, my brother and I would choke out some sort of a mumbling evasion in lieu of a reply.

"How did you get your hair wet?" the old man would continue, rising and feeling two guilty little heads.

"Per-perspiration, sir," we would gasp out faintly.

"And that vile odor about you? Hey? Is that perspiration, too?" sniffing the air with a grim resolution that made our hearts sink.

We had been smoking drift-wood, the vilest stuff that anybody can put in his mouth. This was enough to betray us.

"It's no use, boys; you needn't say another word," father would add in the face of our desperate and awful {325} attempts at an adequate explanation. "You know what I told you. Go to the wood-shed!"

Oh, that wood-shed! "Abandon ye all hope who enter here" should have been written over its door. Often mother would interfere--bless her tender heart!--but not always. Father was a small man of sedentary habits, not given to athletic exercises. A board across two barrels afforded a convenient resting-place for the arms and breast of the one appointed to receive the corporal punishment, and a barrel stave was an excellent instrument with which to administer it. I said father was a small, weak man. When he got through with us we used to think he would have made a splendid blacksmith. Our muscles were pretty strong, and our skin callous--"the hand of little use hath the daintier touch!"--but they were as nothing to his. We always tired of that game before he did, although we played it often.

Two of us, I recall, have carried large tubs up the steep bank from the river to the train at 4 A. M. on a summer morning, when the circus came to town. We were proud to be privileged to water the elephants, but it killed us to split wood for a day's burning in the kitchen stove. We never were good for anything except assisting the circus people, on circus day. School was torture, and it was generally dismissed.

Our father was mayor of the town, and the mayor's children usually got in free. On one occasion we yielded to the solicitations of our most intimate friends and assembled thirty of them in a body. This group of children of all ages and sizes--and there was even one lone "nigger" in it--we were to pass through the gate by declaring that we were the mayor's children.

"Great heavens!" cried the ticket man, appalled {326} at the sight, "How many blame children has the mayor of the town got? Is he a Mormon, anyway, or what? An' how about that one?" pointing to the darky.

Father was standing near. We had not seen him. He turned and surveyed the multitude, including the black boy, that we had foisted upon him. It was a humorous situation, but father didn't see it that way. He sent all of us home with a few scathing words. My younger brother and I wanted to go to that circus more than we ever wanted to go to any circus before. We slept in a half-story room with windows opening on the porch roof. That night we climbed out on the roof and slid down the porch to the ground at the risk of breaking our necks.

Henry and Charles met us by appointment. We none of us had any money and we resolved to sneak in, our services at watering the elephants not being considered worthy of a ticket. My brother and I got in safely under the canvas in one place. Henry succeeded in effecting an entrance in another, but Charles Peter Van Buskirk got caught. A flat board in the hands of a watchman made a close connection with his anatomy. Charles was hauled back, well paddled and sent home. Circuses were a tabooed subject where he was concerned for some time thereafter.

William, my brother, and I clambered through the legs of the crowd on the seats after we got into the canvas tent. As luck would have it, we ran right into the arms of our father. I was paralyzed, but William burst out with a boldness that savored of an inspiration, "Why father, you here? I thought you were going to prayer-meeting."

Everybody laughed, father said nothing; some one made room for us, and we watched the performance {327} with mingled feelings of delight and apprehension. The wood-shed loomed up awfully black as we passed it that night. We held our breath. However, father never said anything to us but, "Good night, boys. I hope you had a good time."

We certainly had. And we escaped the usual licking, deserved though it was. And it wasn't Sunday, either.

But where was I? O, yes! Charles Peter Van Buskirk one Saturday morning announced his intention of going on an expedition across the river. Over the river from where we lived was "Slab Town," dilapidated little settlement of no social or moral consideration. The old captain, the pilot of the wheezy ferry-boat _Edgar_, was our sworn friend, and allowed us to ride free as often as we could get away. Charles intended crossing the river to get pawpaws. A pawpaw is an easily mashed fruit, three or four inches long, with a tough skin inclosing a very liquid pulp full of seeds, and about as solid as a cream puff, when it is dead ripe. It grows on a low, stunted bush-like tree.

We were mighty fond of pawpaws, but little fellows as we were didn't dare to cross the river and venture into "Slab Town" or its vicinity, for such an excursion within its territory usually provoked a fight with the young ruffians of that hamlet, who hated the village boys as aristocrats.

"You'd better not go over there, Charles," we advised him timorously. "Those Slab Town boys will take your pawpaws away from you."

I can see now the chesty movement with which Charles stuck out his breast, threw back his shoulders, curved inward and swung his arms, and went away basket in hand, remarking in a lordly manner; "Aw, who's goin' to take _my_ pawpaws?"

{328} It was evening when the rash youth returned. He came slinking up the back alley in a vain endeavor to elude observation, but we had a number of his and our friends on the watch for him--to see that he returned safely, of course--and we gave him a royal greeting. We had been true prophets, though without honor in Charles's sight. The Slab Town boys had taken his pawpaws in a spirit of aggressive appropriation, which was bad enough, but with rare and unusual generosity they had afterward returned them to Charles. They had not put them back in his basket, however, but had heaped them indiscriminately upon his person. It appears that he must have run for miles pursued by a howling mob of all the ruffians over there, engaged in the happy pastime of throwing soft, mushy pawpaws at him. Charles could hardly see; in fact he could hardly walk. He was plastered with pawpaws from his head to his feet.

Thereafter when we wanted to provoke a fight, all that was necessary when the unappreciated portion of his name was flung at him and was not sufficient to awaken his ire, was to throw out our chests, hold back our shoulders, curve our arms and say in a throaty voice, "Who's going to take _my_ pawpaws?"

I feel tempted to use the old phrase in certain modern circumstances to-day when it seems to fit some bold and reckless endeavor. I have never forgotten Charles's "who's-goin'-to-take-_my_-pawpaws" air!

We were sometimes able to get a little money together by doing odd jobs--not for our parents, however, but for the neighbors. We had plenty of odd jobs to do at home, but such work was a matter of obligation and not remunerative, nor was it interesting. With this money Henry and I each bought a game-chicken, {329} which we kept cooped up separately in the back lot behind the stable. Neither father nor mother knew anything about it, of course.

We would let these two game-cocks out half a dozen times a day. They would rush at each other fiercely, but before the battle was fairly on, we would summarily part them, and put them back in their coops, which were placed opposite each other, when they would indulge in chicken-swearing and personalities as much as they desired. Their appetites for fighting were whetted indeed. In fact, there was so much animosity engendered between these two birds that they would rush together like two express trains trying to pass each other on the same track whenever they were turned loose. There was no time sparring for time or position. It was fight from the moment they saw each other, although we never let them strike more than one blow or two. A half-minute round was enough for us. I think it really scared us.

Charles, in spirit of revenge, let them out one day during our absence. When we got back from school we had only one chicken between us. It was a wonderful chicken, for it had beaten the other, although the conquered bird had fought until it had been killed. We burned him on a funeral pyre as a dead gladiator, with much ceremony and boyish speaking. We wanted to sacrifice to his _manes_ a hen as his wife, but finally concluded to abandon that part of the ceremony; mother kept count of the hens, you see.

Of course, Julius Caesar (as we named him) had the run of the yard thereafter, there being no one to oppose him. He led a very peaceful life until our next door neighbor bought a large Shanghai rooster. I forgot now what particular breed our rooster was, {330} but he was small, not much larger than a bantam. The Shanghai rooster, which was a huge monster, had the most provoking crow, large, loud and aggressive. An alley intervened between the yard where he held forth and our yard. One day we came home from school and looked for our chicken. He was gone!

We hunted everywhere for him, but could not find him. We missed the crowing of the Shanghai rooster, which had been frequent and exasperating, I have no doubt. The yard was very silent. We pursued our investigations with zeal and finally reached the alley. It had been raining heavily for almost a week, and the alley was a mass of black, sticky mud. Gazing anxiously over the fence, we heard a feeble chirp from a large gob of mud in the alley. It was our rooster!

The Shanghai had rashly ventured into supposed neutral ground in that alley and had crowed once too often. The little game cock had squeezed through the fence and come over to investigate the situation. They had fought there in the mud. The mud was too deep for the Shanghai to run and the bantam killed him. During the battle the victor had become so covered with mud that he could neither move nor crow nor see. He was in a worse state than Charles with the pawpaws, and indifferent to honors.

We took him and washed him. He seemed none the worse for his adventure, but that battle must have been a royal one. It was the second one we had not seen! We felt like the Roman public deprived of its "_Circenses_." We really never did see that chicken fight, for he got the pip or something, a few days after, perhaps from the microbes in the alley, and in spite of our careful nursing, or possibly because of it, he died. He died just in time, too, for after we had put {331} him away with more ceremony than we had used before, father who had got some inkling of the affair, suddenly broke out at supper: "Boys, are you keeping game-cocks in the back lot? Fighting-chickens, eh?"

"No, sir," we both answered meekly, with a clear conscience and a steady eye.

We had lots of pets in those days; some time they may serve for another story.

THE END

{335}

INDEX

A

Abancay, battle of, 102. Acla, Spanish settlement, 45-49 Aguilar, Geronimo de, 122 Alcántara, Martin de, 54, 106, 107 Alderete, the King's Treasurer, 205-212 _Alfred_, the, Jones's first ship, 283 Almagrists, the, 106, 111 Almagro, Diego de, 57-67; 88-93; 101-104; 107 Diego, the son, 104, 108, 109 Alvarado, Pedro de, called Tonatiuh, 102, 109, 174, 184, 186, 187, 194 Amazon River, 105 America, Central, 3 South, 3, 4, 18, 27 Anahuac, Empire of, 125 Andalusia, New, 7 Antigua del Darien, Maria de la, 20, 23-27; 33-41 Arbolancha, 42 Arguello, the notary, 48, 49 Arrows, poisoned, used by Indians, 10, 11, 13, 14 Astor, John Jacob, 261-272 Fur Trading Company, 262 Astoria, 262-276 Atahualpa, 71-92; 108 Avila, Pedro Arias de, called Pedrarias, 32-35; 42-50; 56 Ayxacatl, 169,176 Aztec Empire, 115, 116, 125, 132 Holy of Holies, 134 wealth, 135 last of the Kings, 219 Aztecs, the, 69, 116, 125-130; 133, 176, 182-187; 194-198; 215-219

B

Badajoz, 53 Bahamas, the, 4 Balboa, Vasco Nuñez de, accompanies Encisco to San Sebastian, 19 placed in charge at Antigua, 20 seeks to serve Nicuesa, 25 further adventures, 31-50 referred to, 107 Barron, James, 251, 252 Bastidas, an explorer, 5 "Battery of the Fearless," referred to, 74 (footnote) Bay, Chesapeake, 4 Bentham, Jeremy, 248 Biddle, Major Thomas, 255 Biru, land of, early name of Peru, 56 chieftain named, 56 _Bonhomme Richard_, the, 285, 286 Bowie, James, 252-254 knives, 253 Brackett, Charles, 305 Broderick, Senator, 256-258 Buccaneers, the, 3 Burr, Aaron, 248 C

Cabot, John, 4 Cabral, Portuguese explorer, 5 Caceres, 53 Cacique, Indian, Caonabo, 6 Cemaco, 20 Careta, of Cueva, 36 Comagre, 37, 56 of Tenepal, 115 Monteczuma, so called in Cortes's letter, 156 Quahpopoca, 172 of Tlacuba, 216 Cannibalism universal among Aztecs, 126 Capac, Manco, 68, 85, 92, 93, 95, 111, 112 Huayna, 71, 108 Cape, de la Vela, 7 Gracias á Dios, 7 Careta, Cacique of Cueva, 36 Caribbean Sea, 3, 13 Carrero, Alonzo de Puerto, 123 Cartagena, 10, 18 Carvajal, 109-111 Castile, Golden, 8 King of, 40 Joanna of, 41 Castro, Vaca de, 109 Caverns, Infernal, of Pitt River, 311 Caxamarca, massacre of, 73-85 Cempoalla, town of, 135 Cacique of, 135 people of, 135, 166 Central America, 3 Chalcuchimo, 72, 85, 92 Chapus, field of, 109 Charles V., of Spain, 82, 88, 92, 95, 109, 137, 147, 217, 218, 220 Chase, Owen, mate of the _Essex_, 231 Chaves, Francisco de, 106 Chesapeake, Bay, 4 American ship, 251 Chili, Almagro goes to, 93 Valdivia partially conquers, 109 Men of, 102-107 coast of, 231, 237 Cholula, 140, 145, 146 Cholulans, the, 145, 146, 194 Cilley, Jonathan, 255, 256 Cipango, referred to, 37 Claverhouse, compared with Cortes, 120 Coatzacualco, Province of, 115 Colmenares, Rodrigo de, 23 Columbus, Christopher, 4, 5, 6, 23, 37, 117, 132 Diego, 9, 35 Comagre, Indian chief, 37, 56 Conception, a whaling ground, 231 Cordova, Gonsalvo de, 117 Cortes, Hernando (or Fernando), mentioned, 9, 75, 107; lands at Vera Cruz, 116; story of his birth and early life, 117; voyage to Santo Domingo and Cuba, 118; described by Helps and Diaz, 118-120; expedition to Mexico, 120-125; march to Tenochtitlan, 130; personal character of, 133; describes Tlascala, 138-140; massacres Cholulans, 145, 146; describes Mexico, 147-162; meets Montezuma, 162-167; seizes the Emperor, 171-173; Mexico rebels against, 175; attacks Mexico, 192-218; the end of, 218-223; descriptions of, 223-228 Cosa, Juan de la, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12 Costa Rica, 21 Coya, the Inca's legal wife, 72 Crook, George, 301-311 Crozier, William, captain of the brig _Indian_, 240 Cuba, 3, 16, 55, 120 Cueyabos, 16 Cuitlahua, 136, 176, 191 Cuzco, 75, 85, 87, 92, 93, 102-111

D

Darien, Isthmus of, 5, 26, 32, 37, 55, 109 Maria de la Antigua del, 20, 23-27; 33-41 Quevedo, Bishop of, 33, 44 _Dauphin_, Nantucket Whaler, 242 Davila, another name for Pedrarias, 32 (footnote) De Candia, 66, 73, 79, 104, 109 Decatur, Stephen, 251, 252 De Soto, Hernando, 33, 67, 68; 77-89; 107 Despotism, communistic, form of government on South American coast, 68 Diaz, Bernal, 119, 124, 134, 135, 167, 179 (footnote), 223, 224, 225 Porfirio, 224 Dickinson, Charles, 248-250 Dios, Nombre de, 23, 36 Disappointment, Cape, 269, 270 _Duras, Duc de_, an East Indiaman, 285

E

El Dorado, 9, 57, 59, 93 El Galan, nickname of Pedrarias, 33 El Justador, nickname of Pedrarias, 33 Encisco, 8; 17-20; 31, 32, 42, 66 English, their first appearance on the South American coast, 5 Espinosa, 33, 48, 60 Esquivel, Juan de, 9 _Essex_, the whaleship, 231-242 Estremadura, birthplace of the Pizarros, 53 birthplace of Cortes, 117

F

Felippo, the interpreter, 82, 89, 90 Ferdinand, King, of Spain, 5, 7, 41 Fiske, John, 4, 43, 63 (footnote), 122, 125, 168, 226 Florida, 4 Fonseca, Bishop, 7, 33 Fox, Ebenezer, 268, 269 "Furor Domini," name given to Pedrarias, 43

G

Gallo, Island of, 62 Garavito, Andres, 47 Gasca, 110-112 Golden Castile, 8 Gonzales, Francisca, 54 Gorgona, Island of, 63 Graves, William J., 255, 256 Grijilva, Juan de, 120 Guatemoc (or Guatemotzin), 137, 177, 191, 193, 194, 216, 225 Guatemotzin, popular name for Guatemoc, 191, 216 Guayaquil, Gulf of, 67 Gulf, of Mexico, 3 explorations on, coast, 5 of Darien, 5, 20, 55 of Uraba, 7 of Venezuela, 7 of San Miguel, 56 of Guayaquil, 67 Guzman, Tello de, 50

H

Hamilton, Alexander, 248 Helps, Sir Arthur, the historian, referred to, 63 (footnote), 70, 78, 118, 124, 178, 188, 220, 224 Herrera, referred to, 179 (footnote) Honduras, 4, 5, 8, 13, 219 Hopkins, Sterling A., 257 Horn, Cape, 266 Horses introduced to the natives of South America, 13 Huarina, battlefield of, 110 Huascar, son of Huayna, 72, 85, 108 Huitzilopochtli, Aztec god of war, 126, 127, 184

I

Inca, the young, Manco Capac, 68 the Empire, 69 civilization, 69 "Child of the Sun," 71 Pizarro's capture of the, 75-84 ransom and murder of the, 85-92 and Peruvians strike for freedom, 93-102 Incas, the, 69-112 _Independence_, the, privateer, 284 _Indian_, the brig, of London, 240 Indian wife, Balboa's, 37, 44, 47, 48 Indians, Warm Spring, 302-306 Indies, the, 7, 8, 10 Isabella, Queen, and her court mentioned, 6 Island, of Gallo, the, 62, 63 (foot-note) of Gorgona, the, 63 of Puna, 67 Island, St. Mary's, 231, 242 Ducie, 239, 242 of Massafera, 240 Islands, Society, 237 Sandwich, 237, 267 Cape Verde, 264 Falkland, 265 Vancouver, 271 Isles of Pearls, 59 Isthmus, of Darien, 5, 26, 32, 37, 109, 116 of Panama, 5, 27, 50, 110 Ixlilxochitl, referred to, 179 (footnote) Ixtaccihuatl, 144 Iztatapalan, 195

J

Jackson, Andrew, 248-250 Jamaica, 8, 17 Jones, John Paul, 281-297 William Paul, 290-295 Mrs. Willie, 290, 296 Colonel Cadwallader, 296 Joy, Matthew, mate of the _Essex_, 231, 239 Juarez, Benito, 224

K

King, John II. of France, referred to, 86 (footnote) Kirk, referred to, 63 (footnote)

L

_Leopard_, British ship, 251 Lepe, an explorer, 5 Lewis, James, 263-277 Lima, 93, 98, 101, 105, 111 Lorenzana, Archbishop, referred to, 198 (footnote) Louden, Mary Paul, sister of John Paul Jones, 291 Luque, 60-67 Lyons, James, 305

M

McKay, 262-277 MacNutt, referred to, 128, 225 Maddox, Dr., 252 Madigan, John, 307-311 Magellan, referred to, 39 (footnote), 61 (footnote) Straits of, 109 Main, the Spanish, 3, 5 Malinal (or Marina) 115, 116; 123-125; 135, 145, 219 Malinche, shorter form of Malintzin, 124, 208, 209, 217 Malintzin, Aztec name for Cortes, 124 Marco Polo, referred to, 37 Maria, Donna, daughter of Cortes, 223 Marina, Malinal, baptized as, 124 Markham, referred to, 4, 63 (footnote), 78, 87 Massacre of Caxamarca, 73-85 Maxixcatzin, 141 Mayas, the, 122 Medellin, native city of Cortes, 117 Mexico, the Gulf of, 3, 116 the country of, 53, 127 Aztec Empire of, 115, 125 shores of, 117 City of, 125, 137, 146-162 Republic of, 126, 224 valley of, 144, 218 King of, 217 Mexitl, one of the names of Aztec war god, 126 Montezuma Xocoyotzin, Emperor of Mexico, 115; sends messengers to Cortes, 135, 137; described, 136, 137; and the Tlascalans, 140, 141; agrees to receive Cortes, 143; meeting with Cortes, 162-168; seizure of, 171-173; deposed, 176; end of, 178-180

N

Napoleon at Toulon, referred to, 74 (footnote) Narvaez, Panfilo de, 174, 175 Navigators, the fifteenth-century, 4 New Andalusia, 7 Newity, Nootka village, 271 Nicuesa, Diego de, 3, 5, 8, 20, 27 Nombre de Dios, 23, 36 Nootkas, the, 271

O

Ojeda, Alonza de, 3; heads first important expedition along South American coast, 4; second voyage, 5; arrives at Santo Domingo, 8; adventures of, 10-19; referred to, 55 Olano, Lope de, 21, 22, 24 Ordaz, 144 Orellano, commander under Gonzalo Pizarro, 105 Orgonez, 102, 103 Orinoco, the, 4 Otumba, valley of, 191 Otumies, tribe of, 141 Ovando, an explorer with Nicuesa, 7 Oviedo, quoted, 56, 57, 179 (footnote)

P

Pacific, the, so called by Magellan, 39 (footnote) discovery of, 39-42 Balboa reaches, 45 Painala, town of, 115 Lord of, 115 Panama, Pedrarias dies at, 50 Pedrarias the founder and governor of, 56 Pizarro living in, 57 Pizarro sends ship to, 62 Pedro de los Rios, governor of, 62 referred to, 63, 65, 66 States, 116 Parnell, W. R., 306-311 "Pearl Coast," the, 4 Pedrarias, 32-35; 42-50; 107 Perez, Gomez, 111, 112 Peru, 40, 53, 63, 64, 66, 68, 93, 95, 105, 109, 237 Peruvians, the, 69-102 Pettis, Congressman Spencer, 255 Philip II., 65 Pizarrists, the, 106 Pizarro, Francisco, 9, 16, 18, 38-40; 48, 54, 55-107 Hernando, 54, 55, 67, 79, 93, 96-108 Juan, 54, 96-99 Gonzalo, the father, 53, 54 Gonzalo, the son, 54, 96-101 Pedro, 90 Pizarros, the, 46, 67, 96, 104, 105, 108-110 Pizons, the, explorers, 5 Pollard, James, captain of the _Essex_, 231 Popocatepetl, 144 Popotla, 190 Porto Rico, 5 Potosi, the mines of, 65, 109, 110 Prescott, the historian, referred to, 63 (footnote) reference to account of Inca civilization by, 69 reference to amount of Inca's ransom, according to, 87

Q

Quarequa, Indian chief, 39 Quetzalcoatl, Toltec god, 129, 136 Quevedo, Bishop of Darien, 33 Quichua, the language of Peru, 82 Quinones, Antonio de, 202 Quito, 71, 91, 105, 109 Quiz-Quiz, 72, 85

R

Rada, Juan de, 105-112 _Ranger_, the, one of Jones's ships, 284 Ribero, Diego de, 21, 22 Rios, Pedro de los, 62, 65 Ruiz, 60-63 (and footnote), 65, 66

S

Sacsahuaman, 94, 97-99 Salamanca, University of, 117 Salinas, the plains of, 103 San Mateo, 67 San Miguel, 41, 56, 73 San Sebastian, 14, 16, 17, 19 Santiago River, 66 Santo Domingo, 8, 14, 19, 118 "Scourge of God," the, name given to Pedrarias, 43 Sea, Caribbean, 3 Sea of the South, so called by Balboa, 39 _Serapis_, the battle with the, 285-287 Shoshone nation, 301-304 Slavery, human, introduced into Peru by Christians, 95 South Sea, the, so called by Balboa, 39 voyage, 44 Pizarro's first sight of, 56 Spanish, Main, the, 3, 5 Court, the, 6, 7 rule in Mexico, 226 in Peru, 226 "Starvation Harbor," 58, 59

T

Tabascans, the, 116, 123, 134 Tabasco, 122 Tacuba, 190, 199, 206, 216 Tafur, Pedro, 62-65 Talavera, 16, 17 Temixtitan, name for Mexico, 147, 148, 162 Temple of the Sun, at Cuzco, 87 Tenochtitlan, or City of Mexico, 125 the march to, 130-137 Teocalli, 145 Terry, Ex-chief Justice, 256-258 Teules, Aztec name for Cortes and his followers, 136 Texcoco, 136 Tezcatlipoca, Aztec god, 127 Tezcocans, the, 194 Tezcoco, province of, 194; lake of, 195 Thorn, Jonathan, 261-275 Tianguizco, 199 Tlacopan, 128 Tlaloc, Aztec god of waters, 126 Tlaltelulco, 199 Tlascala, 136, 138-140, 141, 190-192 Tascalans, the, 140-144, 166, 191-219 Toltecs, the, 125, 129, 130 _Tonquin_, the ship, 261-277 Toparca, 92 Torquemada, referred to, 179 (footnote) Totonacs, the, 136 Toulon, Napoleon at, 74 (footnote) Treasure, the, of Peru, 64 Trujillo, 53, 66 Tumbez, town of, 65 Almagro made Governor of, 66 Pizarro lands at, 68

U

Uraba, Gulf of, 7

V

Valdivia, lieutenant of Francisco Pizarro, 31, 109 Valparaiso, 240, 242 Valsa, the river, 45 Valverde, Fra Vincente de, 80-83; 90, 91, 111 Vega, Garcilasso de la, 63 (footnote) Vela, Blasco Nuñez, 109 Velasquez, Diego de, 118-121; 131 Juan, 183-186 Venezuela, Gulf of, 7 Veragua, 5, 13, 27 Vera Cruz, 116, 130, 134, 135 Vespucci, Amerigo, 4

W

Wallace, Lew, quoted, 131, 178 Weeks, Armorer, 269-277 Wells, Samuel, 252 Winsor, 4

X

Xaquixaguana, valley of, 110, 111 Xicalango, traders of, 116 Xicotencatl, 141-143 Xuaca, 85

Y

Yucatan coast, 122 Yucay, mountains of, 100

Z

Zamudio, 20, 31, 32, 35, 38