Chapter 7

But the bargemen dared not go on up the river. Against the stream they would have to go slowly, and there would be danger from the robbers remaining at Cottonwood Creek: so they kept on down the river to New Orleans.

The next year ten boats left New Orleans in company. These barges carried small cannons, and their crew were all armed. When they reached Cottonwood Creek, men were seen on shore; but when an armed force was landed, the robbers had fled. The long, low hut which had been their dwelling remained. There were also several flatboats loaded with valuable goods taken from captured barges. This plunder was carried to St. Louis, and restored to the rightful owners. For fifty years afterwards this was known as "The Year of the Ten Boats." Cacasotte's brave victory was not soon forgotten.

OLD-FASHIONED TELEGRAPHS.

THE MUSKET TELEGRAPH.

There are many people living who can remember when there were no telegraphs such as we have now. The telephone is still younger. Railroads are not much older than telegraphs. Horses and stagecoaches were slow. How did people send messages quickly when there were no telegraph wires?

When colonies in America were first settled by white people, there were wars with the Indians. The Indians would creep into a neighborhood and kill all the people they could, and then they would get away before the soldiers could overtake them. But the white people made a plan to catch them.

Whenever the Indians attacked a settlement, the settler who saw them first took his gun and fired it three times. Bang, bang, bang! went the gun. The settlers who lived near the man who fired the gun heard the sound. They knew that three shots following one another quickly, meant that the Indians had come.

Every settler who heard the three shots took his gun and fired three times. It was bang, bang, bang! again. Then, as soon as he had fired, he went in the direction of the first shots. Every man who had heard three shots, fired three more, and went toward the shots he had heard. Farther and farther away the settlers heard the news, and sent it along by firing so that others might hear. Soon little companies of men were coming swiftly in every direction. The Indians were sure to be beaten off or killed.

This was a kind of telegraph. But there were no wires; there was no electricity; only one flint-lock musket waking up another flintlock musket, till a hundred guns had been fired, and a hundred men were marching to the battle.

TELEGRAPHING BY FIRE.

The firing of signal guns was telegraphing by sound. It used only the hearing. But there were other ways of telegraphing that used the sight. These have been known for thousands of years. They were known even to savage people.

The Indians on the plains use fires to telegraph to one another. Sometimes they build one fire, sometimes they build many. When a war party, coming back from battle, builds five fires on a hill, the Indians who see it know that the party has killed five enemies.

But the Indians have also what are known as smoke signals. An Indian who wishes to send a message to a party of his friends a long way off, builds a fire. When it blazes, he throws an armful of green grass on it. This causes the fire to send up a stream of white smoke hundreds of feet high, which can be seen fifty miles away in clear weather. Among the Apaches, one column of smoke is to call attention; two columns say, "All is well, and we are going to remain in this camp;" three columns or more are a sign of danger, and ask for help.

Sometimes longer messages are sent. After building a fire and putting green grass upon it, the Indian spread his blanket over it. He holds down the edges, to shut the smoke in. After a few moments he takes his blanket off; and when he does this, a great puff of smoke, like a balloon, shoots up into the air. This the Indian does over and over. One puff of smoke chases another upward. By the number of these puffs, and the length of the spaces between them, he makes his meaning understood by his friends many miles away.

At night the Indians smear their arrows with something that will burn easily. One of them draws his bow. Just as he is about to let his arrow fly, another one touches it with fire. The arrow blazes as it shoots through the air, like a fiery dragon fly. One burning arrow follows another; and those who see them read these telegraph signals, and know what is meant.

TELEGRAPHS IN THE REVOLUTION.

Our forefathers sometimes used fire to telegraph with in the Revolution. Whenever the British troops started on a raid into New Jersey, the watchmen on the hilltops lighted great beacon fires. Those who saw the fires lighted other fires farther away. These fires let the people know that the enemy was coming, for light can travel much faster than men on horseback.

Have you heard the story of Paul Revere? When the British were about to send troops from Boston to Lexington, Revere and his friends had an understanding with the people in Charlestown. Revere was to let them know when the troops should march. They were to watch a certain church steeple. If one lantern were hung in the steeple, it would mean that the British were marching by land. If two lanterns were seen, the Charlestown people would know that the troops were leaving Boston by water. Revere was sent as a messenger to Lexington. He sent a friend of his to hang up the lanterns in the church steeple.

"Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, To the belfry chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perch On the somber rafters, that round him made Masses and moving shapes of shade,-- By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, To the highest window in the wall, Where he paused to listen and look down A moment on the roofs of the town, And the moonlight flowing over all."

Long before Paul Revere got across the water in his little boat, the people on the other side had seen the lanterns in the tower. They knew the British were coming, and were all astir when Paul Revere got over. Revere rode on to Lexington and beyond, to alarm the people.

The lines above are from a poem of Longfellow's about this ride. The poem is very interesting, but it does not tell the story quite correctly.

Paul Revere's lanterns were used at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. There is a story of a different sort of telegraph used when the war was near its end. It is told by a British officer who had not the best means of knowing whether it was true or not. But it shows what kind of telegraphs were used in that day. This is the story:--

A British army held New York. Another British army under Cornwallis was at Yorktown in Virginia. General Washington had marched to Yorktown. He was trying to capture the army of General Cornwallis. He was afraid that ships and soldiers would be sent from New York to help Cornwallis. But there were men in New York who were secretly on Washington's side. One of these was to let him know when ships should sail to help Cornwallis.

But Washington was six hundred miles away from New York. How could he get the news before the English ships should get there? There were no telegraphs. The fastest horses ridden one after another could hardly have carried news to him in less than two weeks. But Washington had a plan. One of the men who sent news to Washington was living in New York. When the ships set sail, he went up on the top of his house and hoisted a white flag, or something that looked like a white flag.

On the other side of the Hudson River in a little village a man was watching this very house. As soon as he saw the white flag flapping, he took up his gun and fired it. Farther off there was a man waiting to hear this gun. When he heard it, he fired another gun. Farther on there was the crack of another, and then another gun. By the firing of one gun after another the news went southward. Bang, bang! went gun after gun across the whole State of New Jersey. Then guns in Pennsylvania took it up and sent the news onward. Then on across the State of Maryland the news went from one gun to another, till it reached Virginia, where it passed on from gun to gun till it got to Yorktown. In less than two days Washington knew that ships were coming.

When Washington knew that British ships were coming, he pushed the fighting at Yorktown with all his might. When the English ships got to Chesapeake Bay at last, Cornwallis had already surrendered. The United States was free. The ships had come too late.

A BOY'S TELEGRAPH.

The best telegraph known before the use of electricity, was invented by two schoolboys in France. They were brothers named Chappé (shap-pay). They were in different boarding schools some miles apart, and the rules of their schools did not allow them to write letters to each other. But the two schools were in sight of each other. The brothers invented a telegraph. They put up poles with bars of wood on them. These bars would turn on pegs or pins. The bars were turned up or down, or one up and another down, or two down and one up, and so on. Every movement of the bars meant a letter. In this way the two brothers talked to each other, though they were miles apart. When the boys became men, they sold their plan to the French Government. The money they got made their fortune.

About the time they were selling this plan to the French Government, a boy named Samuel Morse was born in this country. Fifty years later this Samuel Morse set up the first Morse electric telegraph, which is the one we now use.

In the old days before telegraph wires were strung all over the country, it took weeks to carry news to places far away. There were no railroads, and the mails had to travel slowly. A boy on a horse trotted along the road to carry the mail bags to country places. From one large city to another, the mails were carried by stagecoaches.

When the people had voted for President, it was weeks before the news of the election could be gathered in. Then it took other weeks to let the people in distant villages know the name of the new President. Nowadays a great event is known in almost every part of the country on the very day it happens.

A BOY'S FOOLISH ADVENTURE.

The Natural Bridge has long been thought one of the great curiosities of our country. It is in Virginia, and the county in which it is situated is called Rockbridge County.

The traveler is riding in a stage on a wild road in the mountains. The road grows narrow. Soon it is a mere lane, with high board fences and small trees on each side. But the traveler sees nothing to show him that he is on the wonderful Natural Bridge.

The bridge that he is driving over is about forty feet thick, and of solid rock. If he should go to the other side of the board fence, he could look down into a ravine more than two hundred feet deep.

When the traveler goes down into the ravine, he looks up at the beautiful curve of this great bridge of rock. The bridge is nearly one hundred and seventy-five feet above his head.

Many years ago, when the writer of this book was a boy, he stood in the dark chasm underneath this bridge and looked up at the great bridge of rock above. He took a stone, as all other visitors do, and tried to throw it so as to hit the arch of the bridge above. But the stone stopped before it got halfway up, and fell back, resounding on the rocks below. Then he was told the old story, that nobody had ever thrown to the arch except George Washington, who had thrown a silver dollar clear to the center of the bridge.

There were names scribbled all over the rocks. People are always trying to write their own names in such strange places as this. Above all the other names were two rows of mere scratches. If they had ever been names, they were too much dimmed to be read by a person standing on the rocks below. The lower of these two high names, the people said, was the name of Washington. It was said that when he was a young man, he climbed higher than any one else to scratch his name on the rock. And the name above his, they said, was the name of a young man who had had a strange adventure in trying to write his name above that of the father of his country.

The story of this young man's climbing up the rocks used to appear in the old schoolbooks. It was told with so many romantic additions, that it was hard to believe.

The writer afterwards learned that the main fact of the story was true, and, that the hero of the story was still living in Virginia.

This foolhardy boy, whose name was Pepper, climbed up the rock to write his name above the rest. Pepper climbed up by holding to little broken places in the rocks till he had got above the names of all the other climbers. He ventured to climb till he had passed the marks which people say are part of Washington's name. Here Pepper held fast with one hand, while he scratched his name in the rock.

His companions were far below him. He could not get down again. The rock face was too smooth. He could not stoop to put his hands down into the cracks where his feet were. If he had tried to, he would have lost his hold, and been dashed to pieces on the rocks below.

There was nothing to do now but to climb out from under the bridge, and so up the face of the rock to the top of the gorge. He must do this or die.

Painfully clinging to the rock with his toes and his fingers, he worked his way up. Sometimes a crevice in the rock helped him. Sometimes he had to dig a place with his knife in order to get a hold. It seemed that each step would be his last.

The few people living in the neighborhood heard of his situation, and gathered below and above to look at him. They watched him with breathless anxiety. His friends expected to see him dashed to pieces at any moment.

As the time wore on, he worked his way up. He also got farther out from under the bridge. He held on like a cat. He hooked his fingers into every crack he could find. He dug holes with his dull knife. When he could find a little bush in the rocks, he thought himself lucky.

Men let down ropes to him, but the ropes did not reach him. They tied one rope to another so as to reach farther down, but he was too far under the bridge. The people hardly dared to speak or to breathe.

At last he began to get out at the side of the bridge where he could be seen from above. His strength was almost gone. His knife was too much worn to be of any use. He could not cling to the rock much longer.

A rope with a noose in it was swung close to him. He let go his grip on the rock, and threw his arms and body into the noose. In a moment he swung clear of the rock, and dangled in the air. The rope drew tight about his body and held him. Young Pepper knew no more. He was drawn up over the rocks to the summit quite unconscious.

Years afterward he became a man of distinction in his State. But when any of his friends asked Colonel Pepper about his climbing out from under the Natural Bridge, he would say, "Yes; I did that when I was a foolish boy, but I don't like to think about it."

A FOOT RACE FOR LIFE.

In 1803 that part of our country which lies west of the Mississippi was almost unknown to the white men. In that year the President sent Captain Lewis and Captain Clark to see what the country was like. They went up the Missouri River and across the Rocky Mountains. Then they went down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. It took them more than two years to make the trip there and back.

Lewis and Clark had about forty-five men with them. One of these men was named Colter. In the very heart of the wild country he left the party, and set up as a trapper. A trapper is a man who catches animals in traps in order to get their skins to sell. The Blackfoot Indians made Colter a prisoner. Colter knew a little of their language. He heard them talking of how they should kill their prisoner. They thought it would be fun to set him up and shoot at him with their arrows until he was dead. At this time the Indians on the western plains had no guns. But the Indian chief thought he knew a better way. He laid hold of Colter's shoulder, and said,--

"Can you run fast?"

Colter could run very swiftly, but he pretended to the chief that he was a bad runner. So they took him out on the prairie about four hundred yards away from the Indians. There he was turned loose, and told to run.

The whole band of Indians ran after him, yelling like wild beasts. Colter did not look back. He had to run through thorns that hurt his bare feet. But he was running for his life. Six miles away there was a river. If he could get to that, he might escape.

He almost flew over the ground. At first he did not turn his head round. When he had run about three miles, he glanced back. Most of the Indians had lost ground. The best runners were ahead of the others. One Indian, swifter than all the rest, was only about a hundred yards behind him. This man had a spear in his hand to kill Colter as soon as he should be near enough.

Poor Colter now ran harder than ever to get away from this Indian. At last he was only about a mile from the river. He looked back, and saw the swift Indian only twenty yards away, with his spear ready to throw.

It was of no use for Colter to keep on running. He turned round and faced the swift runner, who was about to throw his spear. Colter spread his arms wide, and stood still.

The Indian was surprised at this. He tried to stop running, so as to kill the white man with his spear. But he had already run himself nearly to death, and, when he tried to stop quickly, he lost his balance, and fell forward to the ground. His lance stuck in the earth, and broke in two.

Colter quickly pulled the pointed end of the spear out of the ground and killed the fallen Indian. Then he turned and ran on toward the river.

The other Indians were coming swiftly behind; but, as they passed the place where the first one lay dead, each of them stopped a moment to howl over him, after their custom. This gave Colter a little more time. He reached a patch of woods near the river. He ran through this to the river, and jumped in He swam toward a little island.

Logs and brush had floated down the river, and lodged across the island. This driftwood had formed a great raft. Colter dived under this raft. He swam to a place where he could push his head up to get air, and still be hidden by the brush.

The Indians were already yelling on the bank of the river. A moment later they were swimming toward the island. When they reached the drift pile, they ran this way and that. They looked into all the cracks and tried to find the white man. They ran right over his hiding place. Colter thought they would surely find him.

But after a long time they went away. Colter thought they would set fire to the raft of driftwood, but they did not think of that. Perhaps they thought that Colter had been drowned.

He lay still under the raft till night came. Then he swam down the stream a long distance, left the stream, and went far out on the prairie. Here he felt himself safe from his enemies.

But he had no clothes and no food. He had no gun to shoot animals with. It was several days' journey to the nearest place where there were white men, at a trading house.

Colter had nothing to eat but roots. The sun burned his skin in the daytime. He shivered without a covering at night. The thorns hurt his feet when he walked, but he found his way to the trading house at last.

He used to tell of wonderful things that he saw while traveling to the trading house after he got away from the Indians. He saw springs that were boiling hot and steaming. He saw fountains that would sometimes spout hot water into the air for hundreds of feet.

These and many other wonderful things that he saw at this time he used to tell about. But nobody believed his stories. Nobody had ever seen anything of the kind in this country. When Colter would tell of these things, those who heard him thought that he was making up stories, or that he had been out of his head while traveling and had thought he saw such wonders.

But after many long years the wonderful place which we call Yellowstone Park was found, and in it were boiling and spouting springs. People knew then that Colter had been telling the truth, and that he had traveled through the Yellowstone country.

LORETTO AND HIS WIFE.

In old times white men had not made settlements in the country near the Rocky Mountains. Tribes of Indians fought one another over that whole region. A few bold white men, fond of wild life, lived there, in order to hunt and trap the animals that bear furs. But they themselves were always in danger of being hunted by the Indians.

The Indians called Blackfeet and those called Crows were at war; They stole each other's horses at every chance, and the Indians of each tribe were always seeking to kill those of the other.

In one of their attacks on the Blackfeet, the Crows carried off an Indian girl. One of the bold trappers of the Rocky Mountains was a Mexican. His name was Loretto. He visited a Crow village once, and saw this girl. He fell in love with the captive, and bought her from the Crows. Whether he paid for her in horses or in beaver skins, I do not know. But from a slave of the enemies of her tribe she was changed to the wife of a white man who loved her.

Loretto was hired to trap for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. This company bought furs from the Indians of the Far West. They sent large parties to the mountains every year with guns, knives, hatchets, blankets, and other things, which they traded to the Indians for skins.

Loretto was marching over the plains with a party of trappers belonging to this company. He had his young Blackfoot wife and his baby with him. The white men were much afraid of the Blackfoot Indians. The company that Loretto was with examined every ravine that they passed, for fear that the Indians would surprise them.

One day a band of the Blackfoot tribe appeared on the prairie, but they kept near some rocks to which they could easily retire. They made signs of friendship. The trappers also made friendly signs. Then the Blackfeet sent out a party with a pipe of peace. The white men sent out a party to meet them. They smoked the pipe in the open ground between the two companies. This is the Indian way of making peace.

Of course, Loretto's wife was much interested in the Blackfeet. They were her own people. It had been a long time since she had seen one of them. She looked closely at the company smoking together, and saw that one of them was her brother. She handed the child to Loretto. Then she rushed out to the place where the treaty was going on, and her brother threw his arms about her with the greatest affection.

But just at that moment, Bridger, the captain of the white men, rode out where the pipe was being smoked. He had his rifle across the pommel of his saddle. The chief of the Blackfeet came up to shake hands with him. Bridger was afraid the chief meant to hurt him, so he slyly cocked his rifle. The chief heard the click, and seized the gun. He bent it downwards, and the gun went off, shooting a bullet into the ground. The chief took the gun and knocked Bridger off his horse with it. Then he mounted Bridger's horse and galloped back to his Indians. Indians and white men now got behind the rocks and trees which were not far away, and began to shoot at each other.

Loretto's wife was carried away by her tribe. In vain she struggled to get free, and begged to be allowed to go back to her husband and child. The Indians would not let her go.