Part 13

"The place wasn't clear then. It was filled with straw and rubbish. The Yankees covered the opening with it, and hid away among it when any one was coming. I caught two of them down here one day, but they pulled the wool over my eyes, and I let them off with a few days in a dungeon. But that fellow Streight would outwit the Devil. He was the most unruly customer I've had in the twenty months I've been here. I put him in keep, time and again, but I never could cool him down."

"Whar' is the keeps?" I asked. "Ye's got lots o' them, ha'n't ye?"

"No,--only six. Step this way, and I'll show you."

"Talk better English," said the Judge, as we fell a few paces behind Turner on our way to the front of the building. "There are some schoolmasters in Georgia."

"Wal, thar' ha'n't,--not in the part I come from."

The dungeons were low, close, dismal apartments, about twelve feet square, boarded off from the remainder of the cellar, and lighted only by a narrow grating under the sidewalk. Their floors were incrusted with filth, and their walls stained and damp with the rain, which, in wet weather, had dripped down from the street.

"And how many does ye commonly lodge yere, when yer hotel's full?" I asked.

"I have had twenty in each, but fifteen is about as many as they comfortably hold."

"I reckon! And then the comfut moughtn't be much ter brag on."

The keeper soon invited us to walk into the adjoining basement. I was a few steps in advance of him, taking a straight course to the entrance, when a sentinel, pacing to and fro in the middle of the apartment, levelled his musket so as to bar my way, saying, as he did so,--

"Ye carn't pass yere, Sir. Ye must gwo round by the wall."

This drew my attention to the spot, and I noticed that a space, about fifteen feet square, in the centre of the room, and directly in front of the sentinel, had been recently dug up with a spade. While in all other places the ground was trodden to the hardness and color of granite, this spot seemed to be soft, and had the reddish-yellow hue of the "sacred soil." Another sentry was pacing to and fro on its other side, so that the place was completely surrounded! Why were they guarding it so closely? The reason flashed upon me, and I said to Turner;--

"I say, how many barr'ls hes ye in thar'?"

"Enough to blow this shanty to ----," he answered, curtly.

"I reckon! Put 'em thar' when thet feller Dahlgreen wus a-gwine ter rescue 'em,--the Yankees?"

"I reckon."

He said no more, but that was enough to reveal the black, seething hell the Rebellion has brewed. Can there be any peace with miscreants who thus deliberately plan the murder, at one swoop, of hundreds of unarmed and innocent men?

In this room, seated on the ground, or leaning idly against the walls, were about a dozen poor fellows who the Judge told me were hostages, held for a similar number under sentence of death by our Government. Their dejected, homesick look, and weary, listless manner disclosed some of the horrors of imprisonment.

"Let us go," I said to the Colonel; "I have had enough of this."

"No,--you must see the up-stairs," said Turner. "It a'n't so gloomy up there."

It was not so gloomy, for some little sunlight did come in through the dingy windows; but the few prisoners in the upper rooms wore the same sad, disconsolate look as those in the lower story.

"It is not hard fare, or close quarters, that kills men," said Judge Ould to me; "it is homesickness; and the strongest and the bravest succumb to it first."

In the sill of an attic-window I found a Minié-ball. Prying it out with my knife, and holding it up to Turner, I said,--

"So ye keeps this room fur a shootin'-gallery, does ye?"

"Yes," he replied, laughing. "The boys practise once in a while on the Yankees. You see, the rules forbid their coming within three feet of the windows. Sometimes they do, and then the boys take a pop at them."

"And sometimes hit 'em? Hit many on 'em?"

"Yes, a heap."

We passed a long hour in the Libby, and then visited Castle Thunder and the hospitals for our wounded. I should be glad to describe what I saw in those "institutions," but the limits of my paper forbid it.

It was five o'clock when we bade the Judge a friendly good-bye, and took our seats in the ambulance. As we did so, he said to us,--

"I have not taken your parole, Gentlemen. I shall trust to your honor not to disclose anything you have seen or heard that might operate against us in a military way."

"You may rely upon us, Judge; and, some day, give us a chance to return the courtesy and kindness you have shown to us. We shall not forget it."

We arrived near the Union lines just as the sun was going down. Captain Hatch, who had accompanied us, waved his flag as we halted near a grove of trees, and a young officer rode over to us from the nearest picket-station. We despatched him to General Foster for a pair of horses, and in half an hour entered the General's tent. He pressed us to remain to dinner, proposing to kill the fatted calf,--"for these my sons were dead and are alive again, were lost and are found."

We let him kill it, (it tasted wonderfully like salt pork,) and in half an hour were on our way to General Butler's head-quarters.

* * * * *

Here ended our last day in Dixie, and here, perhaps, should end this article; but the time has come when I can disclose my real purpose in seeking an audience of the Rebel leader; and as such a disclosure may relieve me, in the minds of candid men, from some of the aspersions cast upon my motives by Rebel sympathizers, I willingly make it. In making it, however, I wish to be understood as speaking only for myself. My companion, Colonel Jaquess, while he fully shared in my motives, and rightly estimated the objects I sought to accomplish, had other, and, it may be, higher aims. And I wish also to say, that to him attaches whatever credit is due to any one for the conception and execution of this "mission." While I love my country as well as any man, and in this enterprise cheerfully perilled my life to serve it, I was only his co-worker: I should not have undertaken it alone.

No reader of this magazine is so young as not to remember, that, between the first of June and the first of August last, a Peace simoom swept over the country, throwing dust into the people's eyes, and threatening to bury the nation in disunion. All at once the North grew tired of the war. It began to count the money and the blood it had cost, and to overlook the great principles for which it was waged. Men of all shades of political opinion--radical Republicans, as well as honest Democrats--cried out for concession, compromise, armistice,--for anything to end the war,--anything but disunion. To that the North would not consent, and peace I knew could not be had without it, I knew that, because on the sixteenth of June, Jeff. Davis had said to a prominent Southerner that he would negotiate only on the basis of Southern Independence, and that declaration had come to me only five days after it was made.

The people, therefore, were under a delusion. They were crying out for peace when there was no peace,--when there _could_ be no peace consistent with the interest and security of the country. The result of this delusion, were it not dispelled, would be that the Chicago Convention, or some other convention, would nominate a man pledged to peace, but willing to concede Southern independence, and on that tide of popular frenzy he would sail into the Presidency. Then the deluded people would learn, too late, that peace meant only disunion. They would learn it too late, because power would then be in the hands of a Peace Congress and a Peace President, and it required no spirit of prophecy to predict what such an Administration would do. It would make peace on the best terms it could get; and the best terms it could get were Disunion and Southern Independence.

The Peace epidemic could be stayed, and the consequent danger to the country averted, it seemed to me, only by securing in a tangible form, and before a trustworthy witness, the ultimatum of the Rebel President. That ultimatum, spread far and wide, would convince every honest Northern man that war was the only road to lasting peace.

To get that ultimatum, and to give it to the four winds of heaven, were my real objects in going to Richmond.

I did not shut my eyes to the possibility of our paving the way for negotiations that might end in peace, nor my ears to the blessings a grateful nation would shower on us, if our visit had such a result; but I did not _expect_ these things. I expected to be smeared from head to foot with Copperhead slime, to be called a knight-errant, a seeker after notoriety, an abortive negotiator, and a meddlesome volunteer diplomatist; but I expected also, if a good Providence spared our lives, and my pen did not forget the English language, to be able to tell the North the truth; and I knew that the _Truth_ would stay the Peace epidemic, and kill the Peace party. And by the blessing of God, and the help of the Devil, it did do that. The Devil helped, for he inspired Mr. Benjamin's circular, and that forced home the bolt we had driven, and shivered the Peace party into a million of fragments, every fragment now a good War man until the old flag shall float again all over the country.

If we accomplished this, "the scoffer need not laugh, nor the judicious grieve," for our mountain did not bring forth a mouse,--our "mission to Richmond" was not a failure.

It was a difficult enterprise. At the outset it seemed wellnigh impossible to gain access to Mr. Davis; but we finally did gain it, and we gained it without official aid. Mr. Lincoln did not assist us. He gave us a pass through the army-lines, stated on what terms he would grant amnesty to the Rebels, and said, "Good-bye, good luck to you," when we went away; and that is all he did.

It was also a hazardous enterprise,--no holiday adventure, no pastime for boys. It was sober, serious, dangerous _work_,--and work for _men_, for cool, earnest, fearless, determined men, who relied on God, who thought more of their object than of their lives, and who, for truth and their country, were ready to meet the prison or the scaffold.

If any one doubts this, let him call to mind what we had to accomplish. We had to penetrate an enemy's lines, to enter a besieged city, to tell home truths to the desperate, unscrupulous leaders of the foulest rebellion the world has ever known, and to draw from those leaders, deep, adroit, and wary as they are, their real plans and purposes. And all this we had to do without any official safeguard, while entirely in their power, and while known to be their earnest and active enemies. One false step, one unguarded word, one untoward event would have consigned us to Castle Thunder, or the gallows.

Can any one believe that men who undertake such work are mere lovers of adventure, or seekers of notoriety? If any one does believe it, let him pardon me, if I say that he knows little of human nature, and nothing of human history.

I am goaded to these remarks by the strictures of the Copperhead press, but I make them in no spirit of boasting. God forbid that I should boast of anything we did! For _we_ did nothing. Unseen influences prompted us, unseen friends strengthened us, unseen powers were all about our way. We felt their presence as if they had been living men; and had we been atheists, our experience would have convinced us that there is a GOD, and that He means that all men, everywhere, shall be free.

THE VANISHERS.

Sweetest of all childlike dreams In the simple Indian lore Still to me the legend seems Of the Elves who flit before.

Flitting, passing, seen and gone, Never reached nor found at rest, Baffling search, but beckoning on To the Sunset of the Blest.

From the clefts of mountain rocks, Through the dark of lowland firs, Flash the eyes and flow the locks Of the mystic Vanishers!

And the fisher in his skiff, And the hunter on the moss, Hear their call from cape and cliff, See their hands the birch-leaves toss.

Wistful, longing, through the green Twilight of the clustered pines, In their faces rarely seen Beauty more than mortal shines.

Fringed with gold their mantles flow On the slopes of westering knolls; In the wind they whisper low Of the Sunset Land of Souls.

Doubt who may, O friend of mine! Thou and I have seen them too; On before with beck and sign Still they glide, and we pursue.

More than clouds of purple trail In the gold of setting day; More than gleams of wing or sail Beckon from the sea-mist gray.

Glimpses of immortal youth, Gleams and glories seen and lost, Far-heard voices sweet with truth As the tongues of Pentecost,--

Beauty that eludes our grasp, Sweetness that transcends our taste, Loving hands we may not clasp, Shining feet that mock our haste,--

Gentle eyes we closed below, Tender voices heard once more, Smile and call us, as they go On and onward, still before.

Guided thus, O friend of mine! Let us walk our little way, Knowing by each beckoning sign That we are not quite astray.

Chase we still with baffled feet Smiling eye and waving hand, Sought and seeker soon shall meet, Lost and found, in Sunset Land!

ICE AND ESQUIMAUX.

CHAPTER I.

OFF.

Good bye, Boston! Good bye to State-House and Common, to the "Atlantic Monthly" and Governor Andrew, memorable institutions all,--to you also, true Heart of the Commonwealth, and to republican and Saxon America, the land where a man's a man even in the most inconvenient paucity of pounds sterling. Still yours, I am weary of work and of war, weary of spinning out ten yards of strength-fibre to twenty yards' length. And so when an angel in moustache comes to me out of unknown space, with a card from the "Atlantic Monthly," on a corner of which is written a mysterious "Go, if you can," and says, "Come with me to Labrador," what can I do but accept the omen? Therefore, after due delay, and due warning from dear friends, and due consultations of the connubial Delphi, not forgetting to advise with Dr. Oramel, the discreet lip obeys the instant indiscreet wish, and says, "I go."

_June 5, 1864._ Provincetown. Came in here to get cheated in buying a boat, and succeeded admirably! It was taken on board, not quite breaking beneath its own weight; the anchor soon followed; we were away. Past the long spit of sand on the north and west; past the new batteries, over which floated the flag that for months would not again gladden our eyes, save at the mast-head of some wandering ship; then, with change of course, past the long curving neck of the desert cape; and so out upon the open ocean we sped, with a free wind, a crested wave, and a white wake. The land grew a low, blue cloud in the west, then melted into the horizon. But before it faded, the heart of one man clung to it, regretful, penitent, saying, "It was not well to go; it were better to have stayed and suffered, as you, O Land, must suffer."

But when it was gone; then the Before built to itself also a cloudland and drew me on. The mystic North reached forth the wand by which it had fascinated me so often, and renewed its spell. Who has not felt it? Thoreau wrote of "The Wild" as he alone could write; but only in the North do you find it,--unless you make it, as he did, by your imagination. And even he could in this but partially succeed. Talk of finding it in a ten-acre swamp! Why, man, you are just from a cornfield, the echoes of your sister's piano are still in your ears, and you called at the post-office for a letter as you came! Verdure and a mild heaven are above; _clunking_ frogs and plants that keep company with man are beneath. But in the North Nature herself is wild. Of man she has never so much as heard. She has seen, perchance, a biped atomy creeping through her snows; but he is not Man, lording it in power of thought and performance; he is a muffled imbecility, that can do nothing but hug and hide its existence, lest some careless breath of hers should blow it out; his pin-head taper must be kept under a bushel, or cease to be even the covert pettiness it is. The wildness of the North is not scenic and pictorial merely, but goes to the very heart of things, immeasurable, immitigable, infinite; deaf and blind to all but itself and its own, it prevails, it is, and it is all.

The desert and the sea are indeed untamable, but the North is more. They hold their own, and Civilization is but a Mrs. Partington, trying to sweep _in_ at their doors. But Commerce, though it cannot subdue, stretches its arms across them; while Culture and Travel go and come, still wearing their plumes, still redolent with odors of civilized lands. The North reigns more absolutely. Commerce is but a surf on its shores. Travel creeps guardedly, fearfully in, only to turn and creep still more fearfully out.

We, indeed, are feeble even in our purposes of travel. Not Kanes, Parrys, Franklins, not intrepid to brave the presence of the Arctic Czar, and look on his very face, with its half-year lights and shades,--we go only to see the skirts of his robe, blown southward by summer-seeking winds. But even the hope of this fills the Before with enchantment, and lures us like a charm.

Lures the ship, too, one would think: for how she flies! Fair wind and fog we had, where clear skies were looked for,--fair wind and clear skies, where we had expected to plough fog; Cape Sable forbears for once to hide itself; the shores of Nova Scotia are seen through an atmosphere of crystal and under an azure without stain, and on the third day the Gut of Canso is reached, and anchor cast in the little harbor of a little, dirty, bluenose villagette, ycleped "Port Mulgrave."

Port Mulgrave? Port Filth, Port Rum, Port Dirk-Knife, Port Prostitution, Port Fish-Gurry, Port everything unsavory and unconscionable!

"What news from the war?" asks Bradford of the first man, on landing.

Answer prompt. "Good news! Grant has been beaten, lost seventeen thousand men, and is making for Washington as fast as he can run!"

Respondent's visage questionable, however,--too dirty, and too happy. Hence further researches; and at last a man is found who (under prospects of trade) can contrive to tell the truth; and he acknowledges that even the Canadian telegraph has told no such story.

In the evening, as some of us go on shore, there is a drunken fight. Knives are drawn, great gashes given, blood runs like rain; the combatants tumble together into a shallow dock, stab in the mud and water, creep out and clench and roll over and over in the ooze, stabbing still, with beast-like, unintelligible yells, and half-intelligible curses. A great, nasty mob huddles round,--doing what, think you? Roaring with laughter, and hooting their fish-gurry happiness up to the welkin! Suddenly there is a surging among them; then Smith, our young parson, ploughs through, springs upon the fighters, who owe to nothing but extreme drunkenness their escape from the crime of murder. He clutches them,--jerks one this way, the other that, heedless of the still plunging knives,--fastens upon the worst hurt of the two, and drags him off. Are the lookers-on abashed? Never think it! They remonstrate! Smith jets at them fine sentences of fiery, rebuking eloquence. "Bah!" they say, "this is nothing; we are used to it!" It was their customary theatricals, their Spanish bull-fight; and they were little inclined to be robbed of their show.

"Smith, you ran great risk of your life," said one, as the intrepid man stepped on board, with a great gout of blood on his sleeve; "and your life is surely worth more by many times than that of the creatures you rescued."

"I know nothing about that; I only know that they have immortal souls, and are not fit to die."

"Nor to live either, unhappily," said another.

There was cod- and cunner-fishing while here. Trout, also, were caught in a pond a little inland,--good trout, too, though nothing, of course, to what we shall find in Labrador! Enjoy, while ye may, short pleasures, O trouters! for long tramps--and faces--are to succeed!

_June 11._ After prolonged northeast rain a bright day, and with it the setting of sail, a many-handed seesaw at the windlass, and departure.

"Well rid of that vile hole!" says one and another.

"Oh, but you'll be glad enough to see it three months hence," answers the experienced Bradford.

And we were!

The wind blew briskly down the Gut; the tide also, which, especially on the ebb, runs with force, helping to carry off the waters of the St. Lawrence, was against us; and the deer-footed schooner made haste slowly toward the west. Slower vessels failed, and were swept down by the tide; we crept on, crept past the noble Porcupine Head, which rises abruptly six hundred and forty feet from the sea, and at last, ceasing to tack, made a straight line out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, beautiful, most beautiful, this day, if never before. It was a sweet sail we had across that gulf, well-named and ill-reputed. The sun shone like southern summer; the summer breeze blew mild; the rising shores and rich red soil of Cape-Breton Isle, patched here and there with dark evergreen-forests, and elsewhere by the lighter green of deciduous woods, lay on the starboard side, warm-looking and welcome to the eyes. This shore, as then seen, reminded me more than any other ever did of the Spanish coast on the approach to Gibraltar,--the spruce woods answering in hue to olive-groves, the other to the green of vines. Meanwhile, the palpitating sheen on the land, the star-sprinkled blueness of the sea, together with the softness of the delicious day, brought vividly to mind those days in the Aegean when not even the disabilities of an invalid could prevent his leaping over and swimming along by the ship's side.

It was a great surprise, this climate and scene. I had expected chill skies and bleak shores: I found the perfect pleasantness of summer in the air, and a coast-scenery with which that of New England in general cannot vie.

Cape-Breton Isle is worthy of respect. With a population, if I remember rightly, of some thirty thousand, and an area of more than three thousand square miles, embracing an inland sea, or salt lake, deep enough for ships-of-the-line, it has, in addition to its great mineral wealth, a soil capable of large crops. Wheat and corn do not thrive, but barley, oats, potatoes, and many root-crops grow abundantly. And I may add, in passing, that Nova Scotia, over which I travelled on my return, is worthy of a better repute. On the ocean side there is, indeed, a strip from twenty to forty miles wide which is barren as the "Secesh" heart of Halifax. The rock here is metamorphic, the soil worthless, the scenery rugged, yet mean. Gold is found,--in such quantities that the labor of each man yields a _gross_ result of two hundred and fifty-six dollars a year! Deduct the cost of crushing the quartz, (for it is found only in quartz,) and there is left--how much? But the Gulf-coast, and the side of the province next the Bay of Fundy, have a carboniferous and red-sandstone formation, with a soil often deep and rich, faultless meads and river-intervals, and a tender shore-scenery, relieved by ruddy cliffs, and high, broken, burnt-umber islands.