Boys of Other Countries

II The Pasha’s Son

A good many years ago I spent a winter in Africa. I had intended to go up the Nile only as far as Nubia, visiting the great temples and tombs of Thebes on the way; but when I had done all this, and passed beyond the cataracts at the southern boundary of Egypt, I found the journey so agreeable, so full of interest, and attended with so much less danger than I had supposed, that I determined to go on for a month or two longer, and penetrate as far as possible into the interior. Everything was favorable to my plan. I crossed the great Nubian Desert without accident or adventure, reached the ancient region of Ethiopia, and continued my journey until I had advanced 26beyond all the cataracts of the Nile, to the point where the two great branches of the river flow together.

This point, which you will find on your maps in the country called Sennaar, bordering Abyssinia on the northwestern side, has become very important within the last twenty or thirty years. The Egyptians, after conquering the country, established there their seat of government for all that part of Africa, and very soon a large and busy town arose where formerly there had only been a few mud huts of the natives. The town is called Khartoum, and I suppose it must contain, by this time, forty or fifty thousand inhabitants. It is built on a sandy plain, studded here and there with clumps of thorny trees. On the east side the Blue Nile, the source of which was discovered by the Scotch traveller, Bruce, in the last century, comes down clear and swift from the mountains of Abyssinia; on the west, the broad, shallow, muddy current of 27the White Nile, which rises in the great lakes discovered by Speke and Baker within the last twenty years, makes its appearance. The two rivers meet just below the town, and flow as a single stream to the Mediterranean, a distance of fifteen hundred miles.

Formerly all this part of Africa was considered very wild, barbarous, and dangerous to the traveller. But since it has been brought under the rule of the Egyptian government, the people have been forced to respect the lives and property of strangers, and travelling has become comparatively safe. I soon grew so accustomed to the ways of the inhabitants that by the time I reached Khartoum I felt quite at home among them. My experience had already taught me that, where a traveller was badly treated, it was generally his own fault. You must not despise a people because they are ignorant, because their habits are different, or because they sometimes annoy you by a natural curiosity. I found that 28by acting in a kind yet firm manner towards them, and preserving my patience and good-nature, even when it was tried by their slow and careless ways, I avoided all trouble, and even acquired their friendly good-will.

When I reached Khartoum, the Austrian Consul invited me to his house; and there I spent three or four weeks in that strange town, making acquaintance with the Egyptian officers, the chiefs of the desert tribes, and the former kings of the different countries of Ethiopia. When I left my boat, on arriving, and walked through the narrow streets of Khartoum, between mud walls, very few of which were even whitewashed, I thought it a miserable place, and began to look out for some garden where I might pitch my tent, rather than live in one of those dirty-looking habitations. The wall around the Consul’s house was of mud like the others; but when I entered I found clean, handsome rooms which furnished delightful shade and coolness 29during the heat of the day. The roof was of palm-logs, covered with mud, which the sun baked into a hard mass, so that the house was in reality as good as a brick dwelling. It was a great deal more comfortable than it appeared from the outside.

There were other features of the place, however, which it would be difficult to find anywhere except in Central Africa. After I had taken possession of my room, and eaten breakfast with my host, I went out to look at the garden. On each side of the steps leading down from the door sat two apes, who barked and snapped at me. The next thing I saw was a leopard tied to the trunk of an orange-tree. I did not dare to go within reach of his rope, although I afterwards became well acquainted with him. A little farther, there was a pen full of gazelles and an antelope with immense horns; then two fierce, bristling hyenas; and at last, under a shed beside the stable, a full-grown lioness, sleeping in 30the shade. I was greatly surprised when the Consul went up to her, lifted up her head, opened her jaws so as to show the shining white tusks, and finally sat down upon her back.

She accepted these familiarities so good-naturedly that I made bold to pat her head also. In a day or two we were great friends; she would spring about with delight whenever she saw me, and would purr like a cat whenever I sat down upon her back. I spent an hour or two every day among the animals, and found them all easy to tame except the hyenas, which would gladly have bitten me if I had allowed them a chance. The leopard, one day, bit me slightly in the hand; but I punished him by pouring several buckets of water over him, and he was always very amiable after that. The beautiful little gazelles would cluster around me, thrusting up their noses into my hand, and saying, “Wow! wow!” as plainly as I write it. But none of 31these animals attracted me so much as the big lioness. She was always good-humored, though occasionally so lazy that she would not even open her eyes when I sat down on her shoulder. She would sometimes catch my foot in her paws as a kitten catches a ball, and try to make a plaything of it,—yet always without thrusting out her claws. Once she opened her mouth and gently took one of my legs in her jaws for a moment; and the very next instant she put out her tongue and licked my hand. There seemed to be almost as much of the dog as of the cat in her nature. We all know, however, that there are differences of character among animals, as there are among men; and my favorite probably belonged to a virtuous and respectable family of lions.

The day after my arrival I went with the Consul to visit the Pasha, who lived in a large mud palace on the bank of the Blue Nile. He received us very pleasantly, and invited us 32to take seats in the shady courtyard. Here there was a huge panther tied to one of the pillars, while a little lion, about eight months old, ran about perfectly loose. The Pasha called the latter, which came springing and frisking towards him. “Now,” said he, “we will have some fun.” He then made the lion lie down behind one of the pillars, and called to one of the black boys to go across the courtyard on some errand. The lion lay quite still until the boy came opposite to the pillar, when he sprang out and after him. The boy ran, terribly frightened; but the lion reached him in five or six leaps, sprang upon his back and threw him down, and then went back to the pillar as if quite satisfied with his exploit. Although the boy was not hurt in the least, it seemed to me like a cruel piece of fun. The Pasha, nevertheless, laughed very heartily, and told us that he had himself trained the lion to frighten the boys.

Presently the little lion went away, and 33when we came to look for him, we found him lying on one of the tables in the kitchen of the palace, apparently very much interested in watching the cook. The latter told us that the animal sometimes took small pieces of meat, but seemed to know that it was not permitted, for he would run away afterwards in great haste. What I saw of lions during my residence in Khartoum satisfied me that they are not very difficult to tame,—only, as they belong to the cat family, no dependence can be placed on their continued good behavior.

Among the Egyptian officers in the city was a Pasha named Rufah, who had been banished from Egypt by the Viceroy. He was a man of considerable education and intelligence, and was very unhappy at being sent away from his home and family. The climate of Khartoum is very unhealthy, and this unfortunate Pasha had suffered greatly from fever. He was uncertain how long his exile would continue; he had been there already two years, and as all 34the letters directed to him passed through the hands of the officers of government, he was quite at a loss how to get any help from his friends. What he had done to cause his banishment, I could not ascertain; probably he did not know himself. There are no elections in those Eastern countries; the people have nothing to do with the choice of their own rulers. The latter are appointed by the Viceroy at his pleasure, and hold office only so long as he allows them. The envy or jealousy of one Pasha may lead to the ruin of another, without any fault on the part of the latter. Probably somebody else wanted Rufah Pasha’s place, and slandered him to the Viceroy for the sake of getting him removed and exiled.

The unhappy man inspired my profound sympathy. Sometimes he would spend the evening with the Consul and myself, because he felt safe in our presence, to complain of the tyranny under which he suffered. When we met him at the houses of the other Egyptian 35officers, he was very careful not to talk on the subject, lest they should report the fact to the government.

Being a foreigner and a stranger, I never imagined that I could be of any service to Rufah Pasha. I did not speak the language well, I knew very little of the laws and regulations of the country, and moreover, I intended simply to pass through Egypt on my return. Nevertheless, one night, when we happened to be walking the streets together, he whispered that he had something special to say to me. Although it was bright moonlight, we had a native servant with us, to carry a lantern. The Pasha ordered the servant to walk on in advance; and a turn of the narrow, crooked streets soon hid him from our sight. Everything was quiet, except the rustling of the wind in the palm-trees which rose above the garden-walls.

“Now,” said the Pasha, taking my hand, “now we can talk for a few minutes, without 36being overheard. I want you to do me a favor.”

“Willingly,” I answered, “if it is in my power.”

“It will not give you much trouble,” he said, “and may be of great service to me. I want you to take two letters to Egypt,—one to my son, who lives in the town of Tahtah, and one to Mr. Murray, the English Consul-General, whom you know. I cannot trust the Egyptian merchants, because, if these letters were opened and read, I might be kept here many years longer. If you deliver them safely, my friends will know how to assist me, and perhaps I may soon be allowed to return home.”

I promised to deliver both letters with my own hands, and the Pasha parted from me in more cheerful spirits at the door of the Consul’s house. After a few days I was ready to set out on the return journey; but, according to custom, I was first obliged to make farewell 37visits to all the officers of the government. It was very easy to apprise Rufah Pasha beforehand of my intention, and he had no difficulty in slipping the letters into my hand without the action being observed by any one. I put them into my portfolio, with my own letters and papers, where they were entirely safe, and said nothing about the matter to any one in Khartoum.

Although I was glad to leave that wild town, with its burning climate, and retrace the long way back to Egypt, across the Desert and down the Nile, I felt very sorry at being obliged to take leave forever of all my pets. The little gazelles said, “Wow! Wow!” in answer to my “Good-bye”; the hyenas howled and tried to bite, just as much as ever; but the dear old lioness I know would have been sorry if she could have understood that I was going. She frisked around me, licked my hand, and I took her great tawny head into my arms, and gave her a kiss. Since then I 38have never had a lion for a pet, and may never have one again. I must confess, I am sorry for it; for I still retain my love for lions (four-footed ones, I mean) to this day.

Well, it was a long journey, and I should have to write many days in order to describe it. I should have to tell of fierce sand-storms in the Desert; of resting in palm-groves near the old capital of Ethiopia; of plodding day after day, through desolate landscapes, on the back of a camel, crossing stony ranges of mountains, to reach the Nile again, and then floating down with the current in an open boat. It was nearly two months before I could deliver the first of the Pasha’s letters,—that which he had written to his son. The town of Tahtah is in Upper Egypt, near Siout; you will hardly find it on the maps. It stands on a little mound, several miles from the Nile, and is surrounded by the rich and beautiful plain which is every year overflowed by the river.

39There was a head wind, and my boat could not proceed very fast; so I took my faithful servant, Achmet, and set out on foot, taking a path which led over the plain between beautiful wheat-fields and orchards of lemon-trees. In an hour or two we reached Tahtah,—a queer, dark old town, with high houses and narrow streets. The doors and balconies were of carved wood, and the windows were covered with lattices, so that no one could look in, although those inside could easily look out. There were a few sleepy merchants in the bazaar, smoking their pipes and enjoying the odors of cinnamon and dried roses which floated in the air.

After some little inquiry, I found Rufah Pasha’s house, but was not admitted, because the Egyptian women are not allowed to receive the visits of strangers. There was a shaded entrance-hall, open to the street, where I was requested to sit, while the black serving-woman went to the school to bring the Pasha’s 40son. She first borrowed a pipe from one of the merchants in the bazaar, and brought it to me. Achmet and I sat there, while the people of the town, who had heard that we came from Khartoum and knew the Pasha, gathered around to ask questions.

They were all very polite and friendly, and seemed as glad to hear about the Pasha as if they belonged to his family. In a quarter of an hour the woman came back, followed by the Pasha’s son and the schoolmaster, who had dismissed his school in order to hear the news. The boy was about eleven years old, but tall for his age. He had a fair face, and large dark eyes, and smiled pleasantly when he saw me. If I had not known something of the customs of the people, I should have given him my hand, perhaps drawn him between my knees, put an arm around his waist and talked familiarly; but I thought it best to wait and see how he would behave towards me.

He first made me a graceful salutation, just 41as a man would have done, then took my hand and gently touched it to his heart, lips, and forehead, after which he took his seat on the high divan, or bench, by my side. Here he again made a salutation, clapped his hands thrice, to summon the woman, and ordered coffee to be brought.

“Is your Excellency in good health?” he asked.

“Very well, praised be Allah!” I answered.

“Has your Excellency any commands for me? You have but to speak; you shall be obeyed.”

“You are very kind,” said I; “but I have need of nothing. I bring you greetings from the Pasha, your father, and this letter, which I promised him to deliver into your own hands.”

Thereupon I handed him the letter, which he laid to his heart and lips before opening. As he found it a little difficult to read, he summoned the schoolmaster, and they read it together in a whisper.

42In the meantime coffee was served in little cups, and a very handsome pipe was brought by somebody for my use. After he had read the letter, the boy turned to me with his face a little flushed, and his eyes sparkling, and said, “Will your Excellency permit me to ask whether you have another letter?”

“Yes,” I answered; “but it is not to be delivered here.”

“That is right,” said he. “When will you reach Cairo?”

“It depends on the wind; but I hope in seven days from now.”

The boy again whispered to the schoolmaster, but presently they both nodded, as if satisfied, and nothing more was said on the subject.

Some sherbet (which is nothing but lemonade flavored with rose-water) and pomegranates were then brought to me, and the boy asked whether I would not honor him by remaining during the rest of the day. If I 43had not seen his face, I should have supposed I was visiting a man,—so dignified and self-possessed and graceful was the little fellow. The people looked on as if they were quite accustomed to such mature manners in children. I was obliged to use as much ceremony with the child as if he had been the governor of the town. But he interested me, nevertheless, and I felt curious to know the subject of his consultation with the schoolmaster. I was sure they were forming some plan to have the Pasha recalled from exile.

After two or three hours I left, in order to overtake my boat, which was slowly working its way down the Nile. The boy arose, and walked by my side to the end of the town, the other people following us. When we came out upon the plain, he took leave of me with the same salutations, and the words, “May God grant your Excellency a prosperous journey!”

“May God grant it!” I responded; and 44all the people repeated, “May God grant it!”

The whole interview seemed to me like a scene out of the Arabian Nights. To me it was a pretty, picturesque experience, which cannot be forgotten; to the people, no doubt, it was an every day matter.

When I reached Cairo, I delivered the other letter, and in a fortnight afterwards left Egypt; so that I could not ascertain, at the time, whether anything had been done to forward the Pasha’s hopes. Some months afterwards, however, I read in a European newspaper, quite accidentally, that Rufah Pasha had returned to Egypt from Khartoum. I was delighted with the news; and I shall always believe, and insist upon it, that the Pasha’s wise and dignified little son had a hand in bringing about the fortunate result.

III Jon of Iceland — I — II — III — IV — V — VI — VII — VIII

The boys of Iceland must be content with very few acquaintances and playmates. The valleys which produce grass enough for the farmer’s ponies, cattle, and sheep are generally scattered widely apart, divided by ridges of lava so hard and cold that only a few wild flowers succeed in growing in their cracks and hollows. Then, since the farms must be all the larger, because the grass is short and grows slowly in such a severe northern climate, the dwellings are rarely nearer than four or five miles apart; and were it not for their swift and nimble ponies, the people would see very little of each 48other except on Sundays, when they ride long distances to attend worship in their little wooden churches.

But of all boys in the island, not one was so lonely in his situation as Jon Sigurdson. His father lived many miles beyond that broad, grassy plain which stretches from the Geysers to the sea, on the banks of the swift river Thiörvǎ. On each side there were mountains so black and bare that they looked like gigantic piles of coal; but the valley opened to the southward as if to let the sun in, and far away, when the weather was clear, the snowy top of Mount Hecla shone against the sky. The farmer Sigurd, Jon’s father, was a poor man, or he would not have settled so far away from any neighbors; for he was of a cheerful and social nature, and there were few at Kyrkedal who could vie with him in knowledge of the ancient history and literature of Iceland.

The house was built on a knoll, under a cliff 49which sheltered it from the violent west and northwest winds. The walls, of lava stones and turf, were low and broad; and the roofs over dwelling, storehouses, and stables were covered deep with earth, upon which grew such excellent grass that the ponies were fond of climbing up the sloping corners of the wall in order to get at it. Sometimes they might be seen, cunningly balanced on the steep sides of the roof, grazing along the very ridge-poles, or looking over the end of the gable when some member of the family came out of the door, as much as to say, “Get me down if you can!” Around the buildings there was a square wall of enclosure, giving the place the appearance of a little fortress.

On one side of the knoll a hot spring bubbled up. In the morning or evening, when the air was cool, quite a little column of steam arose from it, whirling and broadening as it melted away; but the water was pure and wholesome as soon as it became cold enough 50for use. In front of the house, where the sun shone warmest, Sigurd had laid out a small garden. It was a great labor for him to remove the huge stones and roll them into a protecting wall, to carry good soil from the places where the mountain rills had gradually washed it down from above, and to arrange it so that frosts and cold rains should do the least harm; and the whole family thought themselves suddenly rich, one summer, when they pulled their first radishes, saw the little bed of potatoes coming into blossom, and the cabbages rolling up their leaves in order to make, at least, baby-heads before the winter came.

Within the house, all was low and dark and dismal. The air was very close and bad, for the stables were only separated from the dwelling-room by a narrow passage, and bunches of dry salt fish hung on the walls. Besides, it was usually full of smoke from the fire of peat, and, after a rain, of steam from Sigurd’s 51and Jon’s heavy woollen coats. But to the boy it was a delightful, a comfortable home, for within it he found shelter, warmth, food, and instruction. The room for visitors seemed to him the most splendid place in the world, because it had a wooden floor, a window with six panes of glass, a colored print of the King of Denmark, and a geranium in a pot. This was so precious a plant that Jon and his sister Gudrid hardly dared to touch its leaves. They were almost afraid to smell it, for fear of sniffing away some of its life; and Gudrid, after seeing a leaf of it laid on her dead sister’s bosom, insisted that some angel, many hundred years ago, had brought the seed straight down from heaven.

These were Sigurd’s only children. There had been several more, but they had died in infancy, from the want of light and pure air, and the great distance from help when sickness came. Gudrid was still pale and slender, except in summer, when her mild, friendly 52face took color from the sun; but Jon, who was now fourteen, was a sturdy, broad-breasted boy, who promised to be as strong as his father in a few years more. He had thick yellow hair, curling a little around his forehead; large bright blue eyes; and a mouth rather too broad for beauty, if the lips had not been so rosy and the teeth so white and firm. He had a serious look, but it was only because he smiled with his eyes oftener than with his mouth. He was naturally true and good, for he hardly knew what evil was. Except his parents and his sister he saw no one for weeks at a time; and when he met other boys after church at Kyrkedal, so much time was always lost in shyly looking at each other and shrinking from the talk which each wanted to begin, that no very intimate acquaintance followed.

But in spite of his lonely life, Jon was far from being ignorant. There were the long winter months, when the ponies—and sometimes the sheep—pawed holes in the snow in 53order to reach the grass on the bottoms beside the river; when the cows were warmly stabled and content with their meals of boiled hay; when the needful work of the day could be done in an hour or two, and then Sigurd sat down to teach his children, while their mother spun or knit beside them, and from time to time took part in the instruction. Jon could already read and write so well that the pastor at Kyrkedal lent him many an old Icelandic legend to copy; he knew the history of the island, as well as that of Norway and Denmark, and could answer (with a good deal of blushing) when he was addressed in Latin. He also knew something of the world, and its different countries and climates; but this knowledge seemed to him like a strange dream, or like something that happened long ago and never could happen again. He was accustomed to hear a little birch-bush, four or five feet high, called “a tree,” and he could not imagine how any tree could be a hundred 54feet high, or bear flowers and fruit. Once, a trader from Rejkiavik—the chief seaport of Iceland—brought a few oranges to Kyrkedal, and Sigurd purchased one for Jon and Gudrid. The children kept it day after day, never tired of enjoying the splendid color and strange, delightful perfume; so when they decided to cut the rind at last the pulp was dried up and tasteless. A city was something of which Jon could form no conception, for he had never even seen Rejkiavik; he imagined that palaces and cathedrals were like large Icelandic farm-houses, with very few windows and turf growing on the roofs.

Sigurd’s wealth, if it could be called so, was in a small flock of sheep, the pasture for which was scattered in patches for miles up and down the river. The care of these sheep had been intrusted chiefly to Jon, ever since he was eight years old, and he had learned their natures and ways—their simple animal virtues and silly animal vices—so thoroughly that they acquired a great respect for him, and very rarely tried to be disobedient. Even Thor, the ram, although he sometimes snorted and tossed his horns in protest, or stamped impatiently with his forefeet, heeded his master’s voice. In fact, the sheep became Jon’s companions, in the absence of human ones; he talked to them so much during the lonely days that it finally seemed 56as if they understood a great deal of his speech.

There was a rough bridle-path leading up the valley of the Thiörvǎ; but it was rarely travelled, for it struck northward into the cold, windy, stony desert which fills all the central part of Iceland. For a hundred and fifty miles there was no dwelling, no shelter from the fierce and sudden storms, and so little grass that the travellers who sometimes crossed the region ran the risk of losing their ponies from starvation. There were lofty plains of black rock, as hard as iron; groups of bare, snowy-headed mountains; and often, at night, you could see a pillar of fire in the distance, showing that one of the many volcanoes was in action. Beyond this terrible wilderness the grassy valleys began again, and there were houses and herds, increasing as you came down to the bright bays along the northern shore of the island.

“In fact the sheep became Jon’s companions in the absence of human ones”

Drawing by F. S. Coburn

57More than once, a trader or government messenger, after crossing the desert, had rested for a night under Sigurd’s roof; and many were the tales of their adventures which Jon had treasured up in his memory. Sometimes they spoke of the trolls or mischievous fairies who came over with the first settlers from Norway, and were still supposed by many persons to lurk among the dark glens of Iceland. Both Sigurd and the pastor at Kyrkedal had declared that there were no such creatures, and Jon believed them faithfully; yet he could not help wondering as he sat upon some rocky knoll overlooking his sheep, whether a strange little figure might not come out of the chasm opposite, and speak to him. The more he heard of the terrors and dangers of the desert to the northward, the more he longed to see them with his own eyes and know them through his own experience. He was not the least afraid; but he knew that his father would never allow him to go alone, and to disobey a father was something of which he had 58never heard, and could not have believed to be possible.

When he was in his fifteenth year, however (it was summer, and he was fourteen in April), there came several weeks when no rain fell in the valley. It was a lovely season for the garden; even the geranium in the window put forth twice as many scarlet blossoms as ever before. Only the sheep began to hunger; for the best patch of grass in front of the house was carefully kept for hay, and the next best, further down the river, for the ponies. So Jon was obliged to lead his flock to a narrow little dell, which came down to the Thiörvǎ, three or four miles to the northward. Here, for a week they nibbled diligently wherever anything green showed itself at the foot of the black rocks; and when the pasture grew scanty again, they began to stare at Jon in a way which many persons might have thought stupid. He understood them; they meant to say: “We’ve nearly finished this; find us something more!”

59That evening, as he was leading his flock into the little enclosure beside the dwelling, he heard his father and mother talking. He thought it no harm to listen, for they had never said anything that was not kind and friendly. It seemed, however, that they were speaking of him, and the very first words he heard made his heart beat more rapidly.

“Two days’ journey away,” said Sigurd, “are excellent pastures that belong to nobody. There is no sign of rain yet, and if we could send Jon with the sheep——”

“Are you sure of it?” his wife asked.

“Eyvindur stopped to talk with me,” he answered; “and he saw the place this morning. He says there were rains in the desert, and, indeed, I’ve thought so myself, because the river has not fallen; and he never knew as pleasant a season to cross the country.”

“Jon might have to stay out a week or two; but, as you say, Sigurd, we should save our flock. The boy may be trusted, 60I’m sure; only, if anything should happen to him?”

“I don’t think he’s fearsome,” said Sigurd; “and what should happen to him there that might not happen near home?”

They moved away, while Jon clasped the palms of his hands hard against each other, and stood still for a minute to repeat to himself all he had heard. He knew Eyvindur, the tall, strong man with the dark, curling hair, who rode the swift, cream-colored pony with black mane and tail. He knew what his father meant—nothing else than that he, Jon, should take the sheep two days’ journey away, to the very edge of the terrible wilderness, and pasture them there, alone, probably for many days! Why, Columbus, when he set sail from Palos, could not have had a brighter dream of unknown lands! Jon went in to supper in such a state of excitement that he hardly touched the dried fish and hard oaten bread; but he drank two huge bowls of 61milk and still felt thirsty. When, at last, Sigurd opened his lips and spake, and the mother sat silent with her eyes fixed upon her son’s face, and Gudrid looked frightened, Jon straightened himself as if he were already a man, and quietly said: “I’ll do it!”

He wanted to shout aloud for joy; but Gudrid began to cry.

However, when a thing had once been decided in the family, that was the end of any question or remonstrance, and even Gudrid forgot her fears in the interest of preparing a supply of food for Jon during his absence. They slept soundly for a few hours; and then, at two o’clock in the morning, when the sun was already shining on the snowy tops of the Arne Mountains, Jon hung the bag of provisions over his shoulder, kissed his parents and sister, and started northward, driving the sheep before him.

In a couple of hours he reached the farthest point of the valley which he had ever visited, and all beyond was an unknown region. But the scenery, as he went onward, was similar in character. The mountains were higher and more abrupt, the river more rapid and foamy, and the patches of grass more scanty—that was all the difference. It was the Arctic summer, and the night brought no darkness; yet he knew when the time for rest came, by watching the direction of the light on the black mountains above. When the sheep lay down, he sought a sheltered place under a rock, and slept also.

Next day the country grew wilder and more forbidding. Sometimes there was hardly a blade of grass to be seen for miles, and he 63drove the sheep at full speed, running and shouting behind them, in his eagerness to reach the distant pasture which Eyvindur had described. In the afternoon, the valley appeared to come suddenly to an end. The river rushed out of a deep cleft between the rocks, only a few feet wide, on the right hand; in front there was a long, stony slope, reaching so high that the clouds brushed along its summit. In the bottom there was some little grass, but hardly enough to feed the flock for two days.

Jon was disappointed, but not much discouraged. He tethered Thor securely to a rock, knowing that the other sheep would remain near him, and set out to climb the slope. Up and up he toiled; the air grew sharp and cold; there was snow and ice in the shaded hollows on either side, and the dark, strange scenery of Iceland grew broader below him. Finally, he gained the top; and now, for the first time, felt that he had found 64a new world. In front, toward the north, there was a plain stretching as far as he could see; on the right and left there were groups of dark, frightful, inaccessible mountains, between the sharp peaks of which sheets of blue ice plunged downward like cataracts, only they were silent and motionless. The valley behind him was a mere cleft in the stony, lifeless world; his sheep were little white dots, no bigger, apparently, than flowers of life-everlasting. He could only guess, beyond the dim ranges in the distance, where his father’s dwelling lay; and, for a single moment, the thought came into his mind and made him tremble,—should he ever see it again?

The pasture, he reflected, must be sought for in the direction from which the river came. Following the ridge to the eastward, it was not long before he saw a deep basin, a mile in diameter, opening among the hills. The bottom was quite green, and there was a sparkle here and there, where the river wound 65its way through it. This was surely the place, and Jon felt proud that he had so readily discovered it. There were several glens which furnished easy paths down from the table-land, and he had no difficulty, the next morning, in leading his flock over the great ridge. In fact, they skipped up the rocks as if they knew what was coming, and did not wait for Jon to show them the way into the valley.

The first thing the boy did, after satisfying himself that the sheep were not likely to stray away from such excellent pasturage, was to seek for a cave or hollow among the rocks, where he could find shelter from storms. There were several such places; he selected the most convenient, which had a natural shelf for his store of provisions, and, having dried enough grass to make a warm, soft bed, he found himself very comfortably established. For three or four days he was too busy to feel his loneliness. The valley belonged to nobody; so he considered it his own property, 66and called it Gudridsdale, after his sister. Then, in order to determine the boundaries of this new estate, he climbed the heights in all directions, and fixed the forms of every crag and hollow firmly in his memory. He was not without the secret hope that he might come upon some strange and remarkable object,—a deserted house, a high tree, or a hot fountain shooting up jets like the Great Geyser,—but there was nothing. Only the black and stony wilderness near at hand, and a multitude of snowy peaks in the distance.

Thus ten days passed. The grass was not yet exhausted, the sheep grew fat and lazy, and Jon had so thoroughly explored the neighborhood of the valley that he could have found his way in the dark. He knew that there were only barren, uninhabitable regions to the right and left; but the great, bare table-land stretching to the northward was a continual temptation, for there were human settlements beyond. As he wandered farther 67and farther in that direction, he found it harder to return; there was always a ridge in advance, the appearance of a mountain pass, the sparkle of a little lake,—some promise of something to be seen by going just a little beyond his turning-point. He was so careful to notice every slight feature of the scenery,—a jutting rock here, a crevice there,—in case mist or rain should overtake him on the way, that the whole region soon became strangely familiar.

Jon’s desire to explore the road leading to the northward grew so strong, that he at last yielded to it. But first he made every arrangement for the safety of the sheep during his absence. He secured the ram Thor by a long tether and an abundance of cut grass, concealed the rest of his diminishing supply of provisions; climbed the nearest heights and overlooked the country on all sides without discovering a sign of life, and then, after a rest which was more like a waking dream 68than a slumber, began his strange and solitary journey.

The sun had just become visible again, low in the northeast, when he reached the level of the table-land. There were few clouds in the sky, and but little wind blowing; yet a singular brownish haze filled the air, and spots of strong light soon appeared on either side of the sun. Jon had often seen these “mock suns” before; they are frequent in northern latitudes, and are supposed to denote a change in the weather. The phenomenon, and the feeling of heaviness in the air, led him to study the landmarks very keenly and cautiously as he advanced. In two or three hours he had passed the limits of his former excursions; and now, if a storm should arise, his very life might depend on his being able to find the way back.

During the day, however, there was no change in the weather. The lonely, rugged mountains, the dark little lakes of melted 69snow lying at their feet, the stony plain, with its great, irregular fissures where the lava had cracked in cooling,—all these features of the great central desert of Iceland lay hard and clear before his eyes. Like all persons who are obliged to measure time without a watch or clock, he had a very correct sense of the hours of the day, and of the distances he walked from point to point. Where there was no large or striking object near at hand, he took the trouble to arrange several stones in a line pointing to the next landmark behind him, as a guide in case of fog.

It was an exciting, a wonderful day in his life, and Jon never forgot it. He never once thought of the certain danger which he incurred. Instead of fear, he was full of a joyous, inspiring courage; he sang and shouted aloud, as some new peak or ridge of hills arose far in front, or some other peak, already familiar, went out of sight far behind him. He scarcely paused to eat or rest, until nearly 70twelve hours had passed, and he had walked fully thirty miles. By that time the sun was low in the west, and barely visible through the gathering haze. The wind moaned around the rocks with a dreary, melancholy sound, and only the cry of a wild swan was heard in the distance. To the north the mountains seemed higher, but they were divided by deep gaps which indicated the commencement of valleys. There, perhaps, there might be running streams, pastures, and the dwellings of men!

“All these features of the great central desert of Iceland lay hard and clean before his eyes”

Drawing by F. S. Coburn

71Jon had intended to return to his flock on the morrow, but now the temptation to press onward for another day became very great. His limbs, however, young and strong as they were, needed some rest; and he speedily decided what to do next. A lighter streak in the rocky floor of the plain led his eye toward a low, broken peak—in reality, the crater of a small extinct volcano—some five miles off, and lying to the right of what he imagined to be the true course. On the left there were other peaks, but immediately in front nothing which would serve as a landmark. The crater, therefore, besides offering him some shelter in its crevices, was decidedly the best starting-point, either for going on or returning. The lighter color of the rock came from some different mixture in the lava of an old eruption, and could easily be traced throughout the whole intervening distance. He followed it rapidly, now that the bearings were laid down, and reached the ruins of the volcano a little after sunset.

There was no better bed to be found than the bottom of a narrow cleft, where the winds, after blowing for many centuries, had deposited a thin layer of sand. Before he lay down, Jon arranged a line of stones, pointing toward the light streak across the plain, and another line giving the direction of the valleys to the northward. To the latter he added two short, slanting lines at the end, forming a 72figure like an arrow-head, and then, highly satisfied with his ingenuity, lay down in the crevice to sleep. But his brain was so excited that for a long time he could do nothing else than go over, in memory, the day’s journey. The wind seemed to be rising, for it whistled like a tremendous fife through the rocky crevice; father and mother and Gudrid seemed to be far, far away, in a different land; he wondered at last whether he was the same Jon Sigurdson who drove the flock of sheep up the valley of the Thiörvǎ—and then, all at once, he stopped wondering and thinking, for he was too soundly asleep to dream even of a roasted potato.

How much time passed in the sleep he could never exactly learn; probably six to seven hours. He was aroused by what seemed to be icy-cold rats’ feet scampering over his face, and as he started and brushed them away with his hand, his ears became alive to a terrible, roaring sound. He started up, alarmed, at first bewildered, then suddenly wide awake. The cold feet upon his face were little threads of water trickling from above; the fearful roaring came from a storm—a hurricane of mixed rain, wind, cloud, and snow. It was day, yet still darker than the Arctic summer night, so dense and black was the tempest. When Jon crept out of the crevice, he was nearly thrown down by the force of the wind. The first thing he did was 74to seek the two lines of stones he had arranged for his guidance. They had not been blown away as he feared; and the sight of the arrow-head made his heart leap with gratitude to the Providence which had led him, for without that sign he would have been bewildered at the very start. Returning to the cleft, which gave a partial shelter, he ate the greater part of his remaining store of food, fastening his thick coat tightly around his breast and throat, and set out on the desperate homeward journey, carefully following the lighter streak of rock across the plain.

He had not gone more than a hundred yards when he fancied he heard a sharp, hammering sound through the roar of the tempest, and paused to listen. The sound came rapidly nearer; it was certainly the hoofs of many horses. Nothing could be seen; the noise came from the west, passed in front of Jon, and began to die away to the eastward. His blood grew chilled for a moment. It was all 75so sudden and strange and ghostly that he knew not what to think; and he was about to push forward and get out of the region where such things happened, when he heard, very faintly, the cry which the Icelanders use in driving their baggage-ponies. Then he remembered the deep gorge he had seen to the eastward, before reaching the crater; the invisible travellers were riding toward it, probably lost, and unaware of their danger.

This thought passed through Jon’s mind like a flash of lightning; he shouted with all the strength of his voice.

He waited, but there was no answer. Then he shouted again, while the wind seemed to tear the sound from his lips and fling it away—but on the course the hoofs had taken.

This time a cry came in return; it seemed far off, because the storm beat against the sound. Jon shouted a third time, and the answer was now more distinct. Presently he distinguished words:

76“Come here to us!”

“I cannot!” he cried.

In a few minutes more he heard the hoofs returning, and then the forms of ponies became visible through the driving snow-clouds. They halted, forming a semicircle in front of him; and then one of three dim, spectral riders leaning forward again called: “Come here!”

“I cannot!” Jon answered again.

Thereupon, another of the horsemen rode close to him, and stared down upon him. He said something which Jon understood to be: “Erik, it is a little boy!”—but he was not quite sure, for the man’s way of talking was strange. He put the words in the wrong places, and pronounced them curiously.

The man who had first spoken jumped off his horse. Holding the bridle, he came forward and said, in good, plain Icelandic:

“Why couldn’t you come when I called you?”

“Jon’s meeting with the horsemen”

77“I am keeping the road back,” replied Jon; “if I move, I might lose it.”

“Then why did you call us?”

“I was afraid you had lost your way, and might get into the chasm; the storm is so bad you could not see it.”

“What’s that?” exclaimed the first who had spoken.

Jon described the situation as well as he could, and the stranger at last said, in his queer, broken speech: “Lost way—we; can guide—you—know how?”

The storm raged so furiously that it was with great difficulty that Jon heard the words at all; but he thought he understood the meaning. So he looked the man in the face, and nodded, silently.

“Erik—pony!” cried the latter.

Erik caught one of the loose ponies, drew it forward, and said to Jon:

“Now mount and show us the way!”

“I cannot!” Jon repeated. “I will guide 78you: I was on my way already, but I must walk back just as I came, so as to find the places and know the distances.”

“Sir,” said Erik, turning to the other traveller, “we must let him have his will. It is our only chance of safety. The boy is strong and fearless, and we can surely follow where he was willing to go alone.”

“Take the lead, boy!” the other said; “more quick, more money!”

Jon walked rapidly in advance, keeping his eyes on the lighter colored streak in the plain. He saw nothing, but every little sign and landmark was fixed so clearly in his mind that he did not feel the least fear or confusion. He could hardly see, in fact, the foremost of the ponies behind him, but he caught now and then a word, as the men talked with each other. They had come from the northern shore of the island; they were lost, they were chilled, weary; their ponies were growing weak from hunger and 79exposure to the terrible weather; and they followed him, not so much because they trusted his guidance, as because there was really nothing else left for them to do.

In an hour and a half they reached the first landmark; and when the men saw Jon examining the line of stones he had laid, and then striking boldly off through the whirling clouds, they asked no questions, but urged their ponies after him. Thus several hours went by. Point after point was discovered, although no object could be seen until it was reached; but Jon’s strength, which had been kept up by his pride and his anxiety, at last began to fail. The poor boy had been so long exposed to the wind, snow, and icy rain, that his teeth chattered in his head, and his legs trembled as he walked. About noon, fortunately, there was a lull in the storm; the rain slackened, and the clouds lifted themselves so that one might see for a mile or more. He caught sight of the rocky corner 80for which he was steering, stopped and pointed toward one of the loose ponies.

Erik jumped from the saddle, and threw his arms around Jon, whose senses were fast vanishing. He felt that something was put to his lips, that he was swallowing fire, and that his icy hands were wrapped in a soft, delicious warmth. In a minute he found that Erik had thrust them under his jacket, while the other two were bending over him with anxious faces. The stranger who spoke so curiously held a cake to his mouth, saying: “Eat—eat!” It was wonderful how his strength came back!

Very soon he was able to mount the pony and take the lead. Sometimes the clouds fell dense and dark around them; but when they lifted only for a second, it was enough for Jon. Men and beasts suffered alike, and at last Erik said:

“Unless we get out of the desert in three hours, we must all perish!”

81Jon’s face brightened. “In three hours,” he exclaimed, “there will be pasturage and water and shelter.”

He was already approaching the region which he knew thoroughly, and there was scarcely a chance of losing the way. They had more than one furious gust to encounter—more than one moment when the famished and exhausted ponies halted and refused to move; but toward evening the last ridge was reached, and they saw below them, under a dark roof of clouds, the green valley-basin, the gleam of the river, and the scattered white specks of the grazing sheep.

The ram Thor bleated loudly when he saw his master. Jon was almost too weary to move hand or foot, but he first visited every sheep, and examined his rough home under the rock, and his few remaining provisions, before he sat down to rest. By this time, the happy ponies were appeasing their hunger, Erik and his fellow-guide had pitched a white tent, and there was a fire kindled. The owner of the tent said something which Jon could not hear, but Erik presently shouted:

“The English gentleman asks you to come and take supper with us!”

Jon obeyed, even more from curiosity than hunger. The stranger had a bright, friendly face, and stretched out his hand as the boy entered the tent. “Good guide—eat!” was 83all he was able to say in Icelandic, but the tone of his voice meant a great deal more. There was a lamp hung to the tent-pole, an india-rubber blanket spread on the ground, and cups and plates, which shone like silver, in readiness for the meal. Jon was amazed to see Erik boiling three or four tin boxes in the kettle of water; but when they had been opened, and the contents poured into basins, such a fragrant steam rose as he had never smelled in his life. There was pea-soup, and Irish stew, and minced collops and beef, and tea, with no limit to the lumps of sugar, and sweet biscuits, and currant jelly! Never had he sat down to such a rich, such a wonderful banquet. He was almost afraid to take enough of the dishes, but the English traveller filled his plate as fast as it was emptied, patted him on the back, and repeated the words: “Good guide—eat!” Then he lighted a cigar, while Erik and the other Icelander pulled out their horns of snuff, threw back their heads, 84and each poured nearly a teaspoonful into his nostrils. They offered the snuff to Jon, but he refused both that and a cigar. He was warm and comfortable, to the ends of his toes, and his eyelids began to fall, in spite of all efforts to hold them up, after so much fatigue and exposure as he had endured.

In fact, his senses left him suddenly, although he seemed to be aware that somebody lifted and laid him down again—that something soft came under his head, and something warm over his body—that he was safe, and sheltered, and happy.

When he awoke it was bright day. He started up, striking his head against a white, wet canvas, and sat a moment, bewildered, trying to recall what had happened. He could scarcely believe that he had slept all night in a tent, beside the friendly Englishman; but he heard Erik talking outside, and the crackling of a fire, and the shouting of some one at a distance. The sky was clear 85and blue; the sheep and ponies were nibbling sociably together, and the Englishman, standing on a rock beside the river, was calling attention to a big salmon which he had just caught. Gudridsdale, just then, seemed the brightest and liveliest place in Iceland.

Jon knew that he had probably saved the party from death; but he thought nothing of that, for he had saved himself along with them. He was simply proud and overjoyed at the chance of seeing something new—of meeting with a real Englishman, and eating (as he supposed) the foreign, English food. He felt no longer shy, since he had slept a whole night beside the traveller. The two Icelandic guides were already like old friends; even the pony he had ridden seemed to recognize him. His father had told him that Latin was the language by which all educated men were able to communicate their ideas; so as the Englishman came up with his salmon for their breakfast, he said, in Latin:

86“To-day is better than yesterday, sir.”

The traveller laughed, shook hands heartily, and answered in Latin, with—to Jon’s great surprise—two wrong cases in the nouns:

“Both days are better for you than for me. I have learned less at Oxford.”

But the Latin and Icelandic together were a great help to conversation, and almost before he knew what he was doing, Jon had told Mr. Lorne—so the traveller was named—all the simple story of his life, even his claim to the little valley-basin wherein they were encamped, and the giving it his sister’s name. Mr. Lorne had crossed from the little town of Akureyri, on the northern shore of Iceland, and was bound down the valley of Thiörvǎ to the Geysers, thence to Hekla, and finally to Rejkiavik, where he intended to embark for England. As Jon’s time of absence had expired, his provisions being nearly consumed, and as it was also necessary to rest a day for the sake of the traveller’s ponies, it was arranged 87so that all should return in company to Sigurd’s farm.

That last day in Gudridsdale was the most delightful of all. They feasted sumptuously on the traveller’s stores, and when night came the dried grass from Jon’s hollow under the rock was spread within the tent, making a soft and pleasant bed for the whole party.

Mounted on one of the ponies, Jon led the way up the long ravine, cheerily singing as he drove the full-fed sheep before him. They reached the level of the desert table-land, and he gave one more glance at the black, scattered mountains to the northward where he had passed two such adventurous days. In spite of all that he had seen and learned in that time, he felt a little sad that he had not succeeded in crossing the wilderness. When they reached the point where their way descended by a long, deep slope to the valley of the Thiörvǎ, he turned for yet another farewell view. Far off, between him and the 88nearest peak, there seemed to be a moving speck. He pointed it out to Erik, who, after gazing steadily a moment, said, “It is a man on horseback.”

“Perhaps another lost traveller!” exclaimed Mr. Lorne; “let us wait for him.”

It was quite safe to let the sheep and loose ponies take their way in advance; for they saw the pasture below them. In a quarter of an hour the man and horse could be clearly distinguished. The former had evidently seen them also, for he approached much more rapidly than at first.

All at once Jon cried out: “It is our pony, Heimdal! It must be my father!”

He sprang from the saddle as he spoke, and ran towards the strange horseman. The latter presently galloped up, dismounted, walked a few steps, and sat down upon a stone. But Jon’s arms were around him, and as they kissed each other, the father burst into tears.

89“I thought thou wert lost, my boy,” was all he could say.

“But here I am, father!” Jon proudly exclaimed.

“And the sheep?”

“Fat and sound, every one of them.”

Sigurd rose and mounted his horse, and as they all descended the slope together Jon and Erik told him all that had happened. Mr. Lome, to whom the occurrence was explained, shook hands with him, and, pointing to Jon, said in his broken way: “Good son—little man!” Whereupon they all laughed, and Jon could not help noticing the proud and happy expression of his father’s face.

On the afternoon of the second day they reached Sigurd’s farmhouse; but the mother and Gudrid, who had kept up an anxious lookout, met them nearly a mile away. After the first joyous embrace of welcome, Sigurd whispered a few words to his wife, and she hastened back to put the guest-room in order. 90Mr. Lorne found it so pleasant to get under a roof again, that he ordered another halt of two days before going on to the Geysers and Hekla. No beverage ever tasted so sweet to him as the great bowl of milk which Gudrid brought as soon as he had taken his seat, and the radishes from the garden seemed a great deal better than the little jar of orange marmalade which he insisted on giving in exchange for them.

“Oh, is it indeed orange?” cried Gudrid. “Jon, Jon, now we shall know what the taste is!”

Their mother gave them a spoonful apiece, and Mr. Lorne smiled as he saw their wondering, delighted faces.

“Does it really grow on a tree?—and how high is the tree?—and what does it look like?—like a birch?—or a potato-plant?” Jon asked, in his eagerness, without waiting for the answers. It was very difficult for him to imagine what he had never seen, even in pictures, 91or anything resembling it. Mr. Lorne tried to explain how different are the productions of nature in warmer climates, and the children listened as if they could never hear enough of the wonderful story. At last Jon said, in his firm, quiet way, “Some day I’ll go there!”

“You will, my boy,” Mr. Lorne replied; “you have strength and courage to carry out your will.”

Jon never imagined that he had more strength or courage than any other boy, but he knew that the Englishman meant to praise him, so he shook hands as he had been taught to do on receiving a gift.

The two days went by only too quickly. The guest furnished food both for himself and the family, for he shot a score of plovers and caught half a dozen fine salmon. He was so frank and cheerful that they soon became accustomed to his presence, and were heartily sorry when Erik and the other Icelandic guide 92went out to drive the ponies together, and load them for the journey. Mr. Lorne called Sigurd and Jon into the guest-room, untied a buckskin pouch, and counted out fifty silver rix-dollars upon the table. “For my little guide!” he said, putting his hand on Jon’s thick curls. Father and son, in their astonishment, uttered a cry at the same time, and neither knew what to say. But, brokenly as Mr. Lorne talked, they understood him when he said that Jon had probably saved his life, that he was a brave boy and would make a good, brave man, and that if the father did not need the money for his farm expenses, he should apply it to his son’s education.

The tears were running down Sigurd’s cheeks. He took the Englishman’s hand, gave it a powerful grip, and simply said, “It shall be used for his benefit.”

Jon was so strongly moved that, without stopping to think, he did the one thing which his heart suggested. He walked up to Mr. 93Lorne, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him very tenderly.

“All is ready, sir!” cried Erik, at the door. The last packages were carried out and tied upon the baggage-ponies, farewells were said once more, and the little caravan took its way down the valley. The family stood in front of the house, and watched until the ponies turned around the first cape of the hills and disappeared; then they could only sit down and talk of all the unexpected things that had happened. There was no work done upon the farm that day.

The unusual warmth of the summer, which was so injurious to the pastures lying near the southern coast, brought fortune to Sigurd’s farm. The price of wool was much higher than usual, and owing to Jon’s excursion into the mountains, the sheep were in the best possible condition. They had never raised such a crop of potatoes, nor such firm, thick-headed cabbages, and by great care and industry a sufficient supply of hay had been secured for the winter.

“I am afraid something will happen to us,” said Sigurd one day to his wife; “the good luck comes too fast.”

“Don’t say that!” she exclaimed. “If we were to lose Jon——”

“Jon!” interrupted Sigurd. “Oh, no; look 95at his eyes, his breast, his arms, and his legs—there are a great many years of life in them! He ought to have a chance at the school in Rejkiavik, but we can hardly do without him this year.”

“Perhaps brother Magnus would take him,” she said.

“Not while I live,” Sigurd replied, as he left the room, while his wife turned with a sigh to her household duties. Her family, and especially her elder brother, Magnus, who was a man of wealth and influence, had bitterly opposed her marriage with Sigurd, on account of the latter’s poverty, and she had seen none of them since she came to live on the lonely farm. Through great industry and frugality they had gradually prospered; and now she began to long for a reconciliation, chiefly for her husband’s and children’s sake. It would be much better for Jon if he could find a home in his uncle’s house when they were able to send him to school.

96So, when they next rode over to Kyrkedal on a Sabbath day in the late autumn, she took with her a letter to Magnus, which she had written without her husband’s knowledge, for she wished to save him the pain of the slight, in case her brother should refuse to answer or should answer in an unfriendly way. It was a pleasant day for all of them, for Mr. Lorne had stopped a night at Kyrkedal, and Erik had told the story of Jon’s piloting them through the wilderness; so the pastor, after service, came up at once to them and patted Jon on the head, saying; “Bene fecisti, fili!” And the other boys, forgetting their usual shyness, crowded around and said: “Tell us all about it!” Everything was as wonderful to them as it still seemed to Jon in his memory, and when each one said: “If I had gone there I should have done the same thing!” Jon wondered that he and the boys should ever have felt so awkward and bashful when they came together. Now it was all changed; 97they talked and joked like old companions, and cordially promised to visit each other during the winter, if their parents were willing.

On the way home Sigurd found that he had dropped his whip, and sent Jon back to look for it, leaving his wife and Gudrid to ride onward up the valley. Jon rode at least half a mile before he found it, and then came galloping back, cracking it joyously. But Sigurd’s face was graver and wearier than usual.

“Ride a little while with me,” he said; “I want to ask thee something.” Then, as Jon rode beside him in the narrow tracks which the ponies’ hoofs had cut through the turf, he added: “The boys at Kyrkedal seemed to make much of thee; I hope thy head is not turned by what they said.”

“Oh, father!” Jon cried; “they were so kind, so friendly!”

“I don’t doubt it,” his father answered. “Thou hast done well, my son, and I see that thou art older than thy years. But suppose 98there were a heavier task in store for thee,—suppose that I should be called away,—couldst thou do a man’s part, and care properly for thy mother and thy little sister?”

Jon’s eyes filled with tears, and he knew not what to say.

“Answer me,” Sigurd commanded.

“I never thought of that,” Jon answered, in a trembling voice; “but if I were to do my best, would not God help me?”

“He would!” Sigurd exclaimed with energy. “All strength comes from Him, and all fortune. Enough—I can trust thee, my son; ride on to Gudrid, and tell her not to twist herself in the saddle, looking back!”

Sigurd attended to his farm for several days longer, but in a silent, dreamy way, as if his mind were busy with other thoughts. His wife was so anxiously waiting the result of her letter to Magnus, that she paid less attention to his condition than she otherwise would have done.

99But one evening, on returning from the stables, he passed by the table where their frugal supper was waiting, entered the bedroom, and sank down, saying:

“All my strength has left me; I feel as if I should never rise again.”

They then saw that he had been attacked by a dangerous fever, for his head was hot, his eyes glassy, and he began to talk in a wild, incoherent way. They could only do what the neighbors were accustomed to do in similar cases,—which really was worse than doing nothing at all would have been. Jon was despatched next morning, on the best pony, to summon the physician from Skalholt; but, even with the best luck, three days must elapse before the latter could arrive. The good pastor of Kyrkedal came the next day and bled Sigurd, which gave him a little temporary quiet, while it reduced his vital force. The physician was absent, visiting some farms to the eastward,—in fact, it was 100a full week before he made his appearance. During this time Sigurd wasted away, his fits of delirium became more frequent, and the chances of his recovery grew less and less. Jon recalled, now, his father’s last conversation, and it gave him both fear and comfort. He prayed, with all the fervor of his boyish nature, that his father’s life might be spared; yet he determined to do his whole duty, if the prayer should not be granted.

At the end of two weeks, Sigurd’s wife received a letter from her brother, and it was better than she had dared to hope. Magnus wrote that his wife was dead, his son was a student in Copenhagen, and he was all alone in the big house at Rejkiavik. He was ready to give Jon a home, even to take herself and her husband, provided the latter could sell his farm to good advantage and find some employment which would add to his means. “He must neither live an idle life nor depend on my help,” Magnus said; and his sister felt that he was right, although he told the truth in rather a hard, unfriendly way.

She read the letter to Sigurd the next morning, as he was lying very weak and quiet, but in his right mind. His eyes slowly 102brightened, and he murmured, at last, with difficulty:

“Sell the farm to Thorsten, for his eldest son, and go to Magnus. Jon will take my place.”

Jon, who had entered the room in time to hear these words, sat down on the bed and held his father’s hand in both his own. The latter smiled faintly, opened his lips to speak again, and then a sudden quivering passed over his face, and he lay strangely still. It was a long time before the widow and children could believe he was dead. They said to each other, over and over again, amid their tears: “He was happy; the trouble for our sakes was taken away from his heart;”—and Jon thought to himself: “If I do my best, as I promised, he will be still happier in heaven.”

When Sigurd’s death was known, the neighbors came and helped them until the funeral was over, and the sad little household resumed, 103as far as possible, its former way of life. Thorsten, a rich farmer of Kyrkedal, whose son was to be married in the spring, came, a few weeks later, to make an offer for the farm. No doubt he hoped to get it at a low price; for money has a greater value in Iceland, where there is so little of it. But the widow said at once, “I shall make no bargain unless Jon agrees with me;” and then Jon spoke up, looking a great deal more like a full-grown, honest man than he supposed:

“We only want the fair value of the farm, neighbor Thorsten. We want it because we need it, and everybody will say it is just and right that we should have it. If we cannot get that, I shall try to go on and do my father’s work. I am only a boy now, but I shall get bigger and stronger every year.”

“Thy father could not have spoken better words,” said Thorsten.

He made what he considered a fair offer, and it was very nearly as much as Jon and his 104mother had reckoned upon; the latter, however, insisted on waiting until she had consulted with her brother Magnus.

Not many days after that, Magnus himself arrived at the farm. He was a tall man, with dark hair, large gray eyes, a thin, hard mouth, and an important, commanding air. It was a little hard for Jon to say “uncle” to this man, whom he had never seen, and of whom he had heard so little. Magnus, although stern, was not unfriendly, and when he had heard of all that had been said and done, he nodded his head and said:

“Very prudent; very well, so far!”

It was, perhaps, as well that the final settlement of affairs was left to Uncle Magnus, for he not only obtained an honest price for the farm, but sold the ponies, cows, and sheep to much better advantage than the family could have done. He had them driven to Kyrkedal, and sent messengers to Skalholt and Myrdal, and even to Thingvalla, so that quite a number 105of farmers came together, and they had dinner in the church. Some of the women and children also came, to say “good-bye” to the family; but when the former whispered to Jon, “You’ll come back to us some day, as a pastor or a skald” (author), Magnus frowned and shook his head.

“The boy is in a fair way to make an honest, sensible man,” he said. “Don’t you spoil him with your nonsense!”

When they all set out together for Rejkiavik, Jon reproached himself for feeling so light-hearted, while his mother and Gudrid wept for miles of the way. He was going to see a real town, to enter school, to begin a new and wonderful life; and just beyond Kyrkedal there came the first strange sight. They rode over the grassy plain toward the Geysers, the white steam of which they had often seen in the distance; but now, as they drew near a gray cone, which rose at the foot of the hill on the west, a violent thumping 106began in the earth under their feet. “He is going to spout!” cried the guide, and he had hardly spoken when the basin in the top of the cone boiled over furiously, throwing huge volumes of steam into the air. Then there was a sudden, terrible jar, and a pillar of water, six feet in diameter, shot up to the height of nearly a hundred feet, sparkling like liquid gold in the low, pale, sunshine. It rose again and again, until the subterranean force was exhausted; then the water fell back into the basin with a dull sound, and all was over.

They could think or talk of nothing else for a time, and when they once more looked about them the landscape had changed. All was new to the children, and only dimly remembered by their mother. The days were very short and dark, for winter was fast coming on; it was often difficult to make the distance from one farmhouse to another, and they twice slept in the little churches, which are always hospitably opened for travellers 107because there are no inns in Iceland. After leaving the valley, they had a bitterly cold and stormy journey over a high field of lava, where little piles of stones, a few yards apart, are erected to guide the traveller. Beyond this, they crossed the Raven’s Cleft, a deep, narrow chasm, with a natural bridge in one place, where the rocks have fallen together from either side; then, at the bottom of the last slope of the lava-plains, they entered the Thingvalla Forest.

Jon was a little disappointed; still he had never seen anything like it. There were willow and birch bushes, three or four feet high, growing here and there out of the cracks among the rocks. He could look over the tops of them from his pony, as he rode along, and the largest trunk was only big enough to make a club. But there is no other “forest” in Iceland; and the people must have something to represent a forest, or they would have no use for the word!

108It was fast growing dark when they reached Thingvalla, and the great, shattered walls of rock which inclose the valley appeared much loftier than by day. On the right, a glimmering waterfall plunged from the top of the cliff, and its roar filled the air. Magnus pointed out, on the left, the famous “Hill of the Law,” where for nearly nine hundred years the people of Iceland had assembled together to discuss their political matters. Jon knew all about the spot, from the many historical legends and poems he had read, and there was scarcely another place in the whole world which he could have had greater interest in seeing. The next morning, when it was barely light enough to travel, they rode up a kind of rocky ladder, through a great fissure called the Almannagjá, or “People’s Chasm,” and then pushed on more rapidly across the barren table-land. It was still forty miles to Rejkiavik,—a good two days’ journey at that season,—and the snows, which already covered 109the mountains, were beginning to fall on the lower country.

On the afternoon of the second day, after they had crossed the Salmon River, Magnus said:

“In an hour we shall see the town!”

But the first thing that came in sight was only a stone tower or beacon, which the students had built upon a hill.

“Is that a town?” asked Gudrid; whereupon the others laughed heartily.

Jon discreetly kept silent, and waited until they had reached the foot of the beacon, when—all at once—Rejkiavik lay below them. Its two or three hundred houses stretched for half a mile over a belt of land between the sea and a large lake. There was the prison, built all of cut stone; the old wooden cathedral, with its square spire; the large, snow-white governor’s house, and the long row of stores and warehouses, fronting the harbor—all visible at once! To a boy who had never before seen 110a comfortable dwelling, nor more than five houses near together, the little town was a grand, magnificent capital. Each house they passed was a new surprise to him; the doors, windows, chimneys, and roofs were all so different, so large and fine. And there were more people in the streets than he had ever before seen together.

At last Magnus stopped before one of the handsomest dwellings, and helped his sister down from her pony. The door opened, and an old servant came forth. Jon and Gudrid, hand in hand, followed them into a room which seemed to them larger and handsomer than the church at Kyrkedal, with still other rooms opening out of it, with wonderful chairs, and pictures, and carpets upon which they were afraid to walk. This was their new home.

Even before their arrival, Jon discovered that his Uncle Magnus was a man who said little, but took good notice of what others did. The way to gain his favor, therefore, was to accept and discharge the duties of the new life as they should arise. Having adopted the resolution to do this, it was surprising how soon these duties became familiar and easy. He entered the school, where he was by no means the lowest or least promising scholar, assisted his mother and Gudrid wherever it was possible, and was so careful a messenger that Magnus by degrees intrusted him with matters of some importance. The household, in a little while, became well-ordered and harmonious, and although it lacked the freedom and homelike feeling of the lonely 112farm on the Thiörvǎ, all were contented and happy.

Jon had a great deal to learn, but his eagerness helped him. His memory was naturally excellent, and he had been obliged to exercise it so constantly—having so few books, and those mostly his own written copies—that he was able to repeat, correctly, large portions of the native sagas, or poetical histories. He was so well advanced in Latin that the continuance of the study became simply a delight; he learned Danish, almost without an effort, from his uncle’s commercial partner and the Danish clerk in the warehouse; and he took up the study of English with a zeal that was heightened by his memories of Mr. Lorne.

We cannot follow him, step by step, during this period, although many things in his life might instruct and encourage other earnest, struggling boys. It is enough to say that he was always patient and cheerful, always grateful for his opportunity of education, and never 113neglectful of his proper duties to his uncle, mother, and sister. Sometimes, it is true, he was called upon to give up hours of sport, days of recreation, desires which were right in themselves but could not be gratified,—and it might have gone harder with him to do so, if he had not constantly thought: “How would my father have acted in such a case?” And had he not promised to take the place of his father?

So three years passed away. Jon was eighteen, and had his full stature. He was strong and healthy, and almost handsome; and he had seen so much of the many strangers who every summer come to Rejkiavik—French fishermen, Spanish and German sailors, English travellers and Danish traders—that all his old shyness had disappeared. He was able to look any man in the eyes, and ask or answer a question.

It was the beginning of summer, and the school had just closed. Jon had been assisting 114the Danish clerk in the warehouse; but toward noon, when they had an idle hour, a sailor announced that there was a new arrival in the harbor; so he walked down the beach of sharp lava-sand to the wooden jetty where strangers landed. A little distance off shore a yacht was moored; the English flag was flying at the stern, and a boat was already pulling toward the landing-place. Jon rubbed his eyes, to be sure that he saw clearly; but no! the figure remained the same; and now, as the stranger leaped ashore, he could no longer contain himself. He rushed across the beach, threw his arms around the man, and cried out, “Lorne! Lorne!”

The latter was too astonished to recognize him immediately.

“Don’t you know me?” Jon asked; and then, half laughing, half crying, said in Latin, “To-day is better than yesterday.”

“Why, can this be my little guide?” exclaimed Mr. Lorne. “But to be sure it is! 115There are no such wise eyes in so young a head anywhere else in the world.”

Before night the traveller was installed in the guest-room in Uncle Magnus’s house; and then they truly found that he had not forgotten them. After supper he opened a box, and out there came a silver watch for Jon; a necklace, that could not be told from real pearls, for Gudrid; and what a shawl for the mother! Even Uncle Magnus was touched, for he brought up a very old, dusty bottle of Portugal wine, which he had never been known to do before, except one day when the Governor came to see him.

“And now,” said Mr. Lorne, when he was a little tired of being thanked so much, “I want something in return. I am going, by way of the Broad Fiord, to the northern shore of Iceland, and back through the desert; and I shall not feel safe unless Jon goes with me.”

“Oh!” cried Jon.

“I am not afraid this time,” said Gudrid.

116Magnus looked at his sister, and then nodded. “Take the boy!” he said. “He can get back before school commences again; and we are as ready to trust him with you as you are to trust yourself with him.”

What a journey that was! They had plenty of ponies, and a tent, and provisions in tin cans. Sometimes it rained or snowed, and they were wet and chilly enough at the end of the day, but then the sun shone again, and the black mountains became purple and violet and their snows and ice-fields sparkled in the blue of the air. They saw many a wild and desolate landscape, but also many a soft green plain and hay-meadow along the inlets of the northern shore; and in the little town of Akureyri Jon at last found a tree—the only tree in Iceland! It is a mountain-ash, about twenty feet high, and the people are so proud of it that every autumn they wrap the trunk and boughs, and even the smallest twigs, in woollen cloth, lest the severity of the winter should kill it.

117They visited the Myvatn (Mosquito Lake) in the northeastern part of the island, saw the volcanoes which in 1875 occasioned such terrible devastation, and then crossed the great central desert to the valley of the Thiörvǎ. So it happened that Jon saw Gudridsdale again, but under pleasanter aspects than before, for it was a calm, sunny day when they reached the edge of the table-land and descended into the lovely green valley. It gave him a feeling of pain to find strangers in his father’s house, and perhaps Mr. Lorne suspected this, for he did not stop at the farm, but pushed on to Kyrkedal, where the good old pastor entertained them both as welcome guests. At the end of six weeks they were back in Rejkiavik, hale and ruddy after their rough journey, and closer friends than ever.

Each brought back his own gain—Mr. Lorne was able to speak Icelandic tolerably well, and Jon was quite proficient in English. The former had made the trip to Iceland 118especially to collect old historical legends and acquire new information concerning them. To his great surprise, he found Jon so familiar with the subject, that, during the journey, he conceived the idea of taking him to Scotland for a year, as an assistant in his studies; but he said nothing of this until after their return. Then, first, he proposed the plan to Magnus and Jon’s mother, and prudently gave them time to consider it. It was hard for both to consent, but the advantages were too evident to be rejected. To Jon, when he heard it, it seemed simply impossible; yet the preparations went on,—his mother and Gudrid wept as they helped, Uncle Magnus looked grave,—and at last the morning came when he had to say farewell.

The yacht had favorable winds at first. They ran along the southern shore to Ingolf’s Head, saw the high, inaccessible summits of the Skaptar Jökull fade behind them, and then Iceland dropped below the sea. A misty 119gale began to blow from the southwest, forcing them to pass the Faroe Islands on the east, and afterward the Shetland Isles; but, after nearly coming in sight of Norway, the wind changed to the opposite quarter, and the yacht spread her sails directly for Leith. One night, when Jon awoke in his berth, he missed the usual sound of waves against the vessel’s side and the cries of the sailors on deck—everything seemed strangely quiet; but he was too good a sleeper to puzzle his head about it, so merely turned over on his pillow. When he arose the quiet was still there. He dressed in haste and went on deck. The yacht lay at anchor in front of buildings larger than a hundred Rejkiaviks put together.

“This is Leith,” said Mr. Lorne, coming up to him.

“Leith?” Jon exclaimed; “it seems like Rome or Jerusalem! Those must be the King’s palaces.”

120“No, my boy,” Mr. Lorne answered, “they are only warehouses.”

“But what are those queer green hills behind the houses? They are so steep and round that I don’t see how anybody could climb up.”

“Hills?” exclaimed Mr. Lorne. “Oh, I see now! Why, Jon, those are trees.”

Jon was silent. He dared not doubt his friend’s word, but he could not yet wholly believe it. When they had landed, and he saw the great trunks, the spreading boughs, and the millions of green leaves, such a feeling of awe and admiration came over him that he began to tremble. A wind was blowing, and the long, flexible boughs of the elms swayed up and down.

“Oh, Mr. Lorne!” he cried. “See! they are praying! Let us wait a while; they are saying something—I hear their voices. Is it English?—can you understand it?”

“The halt on the journey”

121Mr. Lorne took him by the hand and said: “It is praise, not prayer. They speak the same language all over the world, but no one can understand all they say.”

There is one rough little cart in Rejkiavik, and this is the only vehicle in Iceland. What then, must have been Jon’s feelings when he saw hundreds of elegant carriages dashing to and fro, and great wagons drawn by giant horses? When they got into a cab, it seemed to him like sitting on a moving throne. He had read and heard of all these things, and thought he had a clear idea of what they were; but he was not prepared for the reality. He was so excited, as they drove up the street to Edinburgh, that Mr. Lorne, sitting beside him, could feel the beating of his heart. The new wonders never ceased: there was an apple tree with fruit; rose bushes in bloom; whole beds of geraniums in the little gardens; windows filled with fruit or brilliant silks or silver-ware; towers that seemed to touch the clouds, and endless multitudes of 122people! As they reached the hotel, all he could say, in a faltering voice, was, “Poor old Iceland!”

The next day they took the train for Lanark, in the neighborhood of which Mr. Lorne had an estate. When Jon saw the bare, heather-covered mountains, and the swift brooks that came leaping down their glens, he laughed and said:

“Oh, you have a little of Iceland even here! If there were trees along the Thiörvǎ, it would look like yonder valley.”

“I have some moorland of my own,” Mr. Lorne remarked; “and if you ever get to be homesick, I’ll send you out upon it to recover.”

But when Jon reached the house, and was so cordially welcomed by Mrs. Lorne, and saw the park and gardens where he hoped to become familiar with trees and flowers, he thought there would be as much likelihood of being homesick in heaven as in such a place.

123Everything he saw tempted him to visit and examine it. During the first few days he could scarcely sit still in the library and take part in Mr. Lorne’s studies. But his strong sense of duty, his long habits of patience and self-denial soon made the task easy, and even enabled him to take a few more hours daily for his own improvement. His delight in all strange and beautiful natural objects was greatly prolonged by this course. He enjoyed everything far more than if he had rapidly exhausted its novelty. Mr. Lorne saw this quality of Jon’s nature with great satisfaction, and was very ready to give advice and information which he knew would be earnestly heeded.

It was a very happy year; but I do not believe that it was the happiest of Jon’s life. Having learned to overcome the restlessness and impatience which are natural to boyhood, he laid the basis for greater content in life as a man. When he returned to Rejkiavik, in 124his twentieth year, with a hundred pounds in his pocket and a rich store of knowledge in his head, all other tasks seemed easy. It was a great triumph for his mother, and especially for Gudrid, now a bright, blooming maiden of sixteen. Uncle Magnus brought up another dusty bottle to welcome him, although there were only six more left; and all the neighbors came around in the evening. Even the Governor stopped and shook hands, the next day, when Jon met him in the street. His mother, who was with him, said, after the Governor had passed: “I hope thy father sees thee now.” The same thought was in Jon’s heart.

And now, as he is no longer a boy, we must say good-bye to him. We have no fears for his future life; he will always be brave and manly and truthful. But, if some of my readers are still curious to know more of him, I may add that he is a very successful teacher in the school at Rejkiavik; that he hopes to 125visit Mr. Lorne, in Scotland, very soon; and I should not be in the least surprised if he were to join good old Dr. Hjaltalin, and pay a visit to the United States.

IV The Two Herd-Boys

When I was in Germany, several years ago, I spent a few weeks of the summer-time in a small town among the Thuringian Mountains. This is a range on the borders of Saxony, something like our Green Mountains in height and form, but much darker in color, on account of the thick forests of fir which cover them. I had visited this region several times before, and knew not only the roads but most of the footpaths, and had made some acquaintance with the people; so I felt quite at home among them, and was fond of taking long walks up to the ruins of castles on the peaks, or down into the wild, rocky dells between them.

The people are mostly poor, and very laborious; 130yet all their labor barely produces enough to keep them from want. There is not much farming land, as you may suppose. The men cut wood, the women spin flax and bleach linen, and the children gather berries, tend cattle on the high mountain pastures, or act as guides to the summer travellers. A great many find employment in the manufacture of toys, of which there are several establishments in this region, producing annually many thousands of crying and speaking dolls, bleating lambs, barking dogs, and roaring lions.

Behind the town where I lived, there was a spur of the mountains, crowned by the walls of a castle built by one of the dukes who ruled over that part of Saxony eight or nine hundred years ago. Beyond this ruin, the mountain rose more gradually, until it reached the highest ridge, about three miles distant. In many places the forest had been cut away, leaving open tracts where the sweet mountain grass grew thick and strong, and where there 131were always masses of heather, harebells, foxgloves, and wild pinks. Every morning all the cattle of the town were driven up to these pastures, each animal with a bell hanging to its neck, and the sound of so many hundred bells tinkling all at once made a chime which could be heard at a long distance.

One of my favorite walks was to mount to the ruined castle, and pass beyond it to the flowery pasture-slopes, from which I had a wide view of the level country to the north and the mountain-ridges on both sides. Here it was very pleasant to sit on a rock, in the sunny afternoon, and listen to the continual sound of bells which filled the air. Sometimes one of the herd-boys would sing, or shout to the others across the intervening glens, while the village girls, with baskets of bark, hunted for berries along the edges of the forests. Although so high on the mountain, the landscape was never lonely.

One day, during my ramble, I came upon 132two smaller herds of cattle, each tended by a single boy. They were near each other, but not on the same pasture, for there was a deep hollow, or dell, between. Nevertheless they could plainly see each other, and even talk whenever they liked, by shouting a little. As I came out of a thicket upon the clearing, on one side of the hollow, the herd-boy tending the cattle nearest to me was sitting among the grass, and singing with all his might the German song commencing,

His back was towards me, but I noticed that his elbows were moving very rapidly. Curious to learn what he was doing, I slipped quietly around some bushes to a point where I could see him distinctly, and found that he was knitting a woollen stocking. Presently he lifted his head, looked across to the opposite pasture and cried out, “Hans! the cows!”

133I looked also, and saw another boy of about the same age start up and run after his cattle, the last one of which was entering the forests. Then the boy near me gave a glance at his own cattle, which were quietly grazing on the slope, a little below him, and went on with his knitting. As I approached, he heard my steps and turned towards me, a little startled at first; but he was probably accustomed to seeing strangers, for I soon prevailed upon him to tell me his name and age. He was called Otto, and was twelve years old; his father was a wood-cutter, and his mother spun and bleached linen.

“And how much”, I asked him, “do you get for taking care of the cattle?”

“I am to have five thalers” (about four dollars), he answered, “for the whole summer; but it doesn’t go to me—it’s for father. But then I make a good many groschen by knitting, and that’s for my winter clothes. Last year I could buy a coat, and this year I want to get 134enough for trousers and new shoes. Since the cattle know me so well, I have only to talk and they mind me; and that, you see, gives me plenty of time to knit.”

“I see,” I said; “it’s a very good arrangement. I suppose the cattle over on the other pasture don’t know their boy? He has not got them all out of the woods yet.”

“Yes, they know him,” said Otto, “and that’s the reason they slip away. But the cattle mind some persons better than others; I’ve seen that much.”

Here he stopped talking, and commenced knitting again. I watched him awhile, as he rapidly and evenly rattled off the stitches. He evidently wanted to make the most of his time. Then I again looked across the hollow, where Hans—the other boy—had at last collected his cows. He stood on the top of a rock, flinging stones down the steep slope. When he had no more, he stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled loudly, to draw Otto’s attention; but 135the latter pretended not to hear. Then I left them; for the shadow of the mountain behind me was beginning to creep up the other side of the valley.

A few days afterwards I went up to the pasture again, and came, by chance, to the head of the little dell dividing the two herds. I had been wandering in the fir-forest, and reached the place unexpectedly. There was a pleasant view from the spot, and I seated myself in the shade, to rest and enjoy it. The first object which attracted my attention was Otto, knitting as usual, beside his herd of cows. Then I turned to the other side to discover what Hans was doing. His cattle, this time, were not straying; but neither did he appear to be minding them in the least. He was walking backwards and forwards on the mountainside, with his eyes fixed upon the ground. Sometimes, where the top of a rock projected from the soil, he would lean over it, and look along it from one end to the other, 136as if he were trying to measure its size; then he would walk on, pull a blue flower, and then a yellow one, look at them sharply, and throw them away. “What is he after?” I said to myself. “Has he lost something, and is he trying to find it? or are his thoughts so busy with something else that he doesn’t really know what he is about?”

I watched him for nearly half an hour, at the end of which time he seemed to get tired, for he gave up looking about and sat down in the grass. The cattle were no doubt acquainted with his ways—(It is astonishing how much intelligence they have!)—and they immediately began to move towards the forest, and would soon have wandered away, if I had not headed them off and driven them back. Then I followed them, much to the surprise of Hans, who had been aroused by the noise of their bells as they ran from me.

“You don’t keep a very good watch, my boy!” I said.

137As he made no answer, I asked, “Have you lost anything?”

“No,” he then said.

“What have you been hunting so long?”

He looked confused, turned away his head, and muttered, “Nothing.”

This made me sure he had been hunting something, and I felt a little curiosity to know what it was. But although I asked him again, and offered to help him hunt it, he would tell me nothing. He had a restless and rather unhappy look, quite different from the bright, cheerful eyes and pleasant countenance of Otto.

His father, he said, worked in a mill below the town, and got good wages; so he was allowed half the pay for tending the cattle during the summer.

“What will you do with the money?” I asked.

“Oh, I’ll soon spend it,” he said. “I could spend a hundred times that much, if I had it.”

138“Indeed!” I exclaimed. “No doubt it’s all the better that you haven’t it.”

He did not seem to like this remark, and was afterwards disinclined to talk; so I left him and went over to Otto, who was as busy and cheerful as ever.

“Otto,” said I, “do you know what Hans is hunting all over the pasture? Has he lost anything?”

“No,” Otto answered; “he has not lost anything, and I don’t believe he will find anything, either. Because, even if it is all true, they say you never come across it when you look for it, but it just shows itself all at once, when you’re not expecting.”

“What is it, then?” I asked.

Otto looked at me a moment, and seemed to hesitate. He appeared also to be a little surprised; but probably he reflected that I was a stranger, and could not be expected to know everything, for he finally asked, “Don’t you know, sir, what the shepherd found, somewhere 139about here, a great many hundred years ago?”

“No,” I answered.

“Not the key-flower?”

Then I did know what he meant, and understood the whole matter in a moment. But I wanted to know what Otto had heard of the story, and therefore said to him, “I wish you would tell me.”

“Well,” he began, “some say it was true, and some that it wasn’t. At any rate, it was a long, long while ago, and there’s no telling how much to believe. My grandmother told me; but then she didn’t know the man; she only heard about him from her grandmother. He was a shepherd, and used to tend his sheep on the mountain,—or maybe it was cows, I’m not sure,—in some place where there were a great many kobolds and fairies. And so it went on from year to year. He was a poor man, but very cheerful, and always singing and making merry; but sometimes 140he would wish to have a little more money, so that he need not be obliged to go up to the pastures in the cold foggy weather. That wasn’t much wonder, sir, for it’s cold enough up here, some days.

“It was in summer, and the flowers were all in blossom, and he was walking along after his sheep, when all at once he saw a wonderful sky-blue flower of a kind he had never seen before in all his life. Some people say it was sky-blue, and some that it was golden-yellow; I don’t know which is right. Well, however it was, there was the wonderful flower, as large as your hand, growing in the grass. The shepherd stooped down and broke the stem; but just as he was lifting up the flower to examine it, he saw that there was a door in the side of the mountain. Now he had been over the ground a hundred times before, and had never seen anything of the kind. Yet it was a real door, and it was open, and there was a passage into the earth. He looked into 141it for a long time, and at last plucked up heart and in he went. After forty or fifty steps, he found himself in a large hall, full of chests of gold and diamonds. There was an old kobold, with a white beard, sitting in a chair beside a large table in the middle of the hall. The shepherd was at first frightened, but the kobold looked at him with a friendly face, and said, ‘Take what you want, and don’t forget the best!’

“So the shepherd laid the flower on the table, and went to work and filled his pockets with the gold and diamonds. When he had as much as he could carry, the kobold said again, ‘Don’t forget the best!’ ‘That I won’t,’ the shepherd thought to himself, and took more gold and the biggest diamonds he could find, and filled his hat, so that he could scarcely stagger under the load. He was leaving the hall, when the kobold cried out, ‘Don’t forget the best!’ But he couldn’t carry any more, and went on, never minding. 142When he reached the door in the mountainside, he heard the voice again, for the last time, ‘Don’t forget the best!’

“The next minute he was out on the pasture. When he looked around, the door had disappeared: his pockets and hat grew light all at once, and instead of gold and diamonds he found nothing but dry leaves and pebbles. He was as poor as ever, and all because he had forgotten the best. Now, sir, do you know what the best was? Why, it was the flower, which he had left on the table in the kobold’s hall. That was the key-flower. When you find it and pull it, the door is opened to all the treasures under ground. If the shepherd had kept it, the gold and diamonds would have stayed so; and, besides, the door would have been always opened to him, and he could then help himself whenever he wanted.”

Otto had told the story very correctly, just as I had heard it told by some of the people 143before. “Did you ever look for the key-flower?” I asked him.

He grew a little red in the face, then laughed, and answered: “Oh, that was the first summer I tended the cattle, and I soon got tired of it. But I guess the flower doesn’t grow any more, now.”

“How long has Hans been looking for it?”

“He looks every day,” said Otto, “when he gets tired doing nothing. But I shouldn’t wonder if he was thinking about it all the time, or he’d look after his cattle better than he does.”

As I walked down the mountain that afternoon I thought a great deal about these two herd-boys and the story of the key-flower. Up to this time the story had only seemed to me to be a curious and beautiful fairy-tale; but now I began to think it might mean something more. Here was Hans, neglecting his cows, and making himself restless and 144unhappy, in the hope of some day finding the key-flower; while Otto, who remembered that it can’t be found by hunting for it, was attentive to his task, always earning a little, and always contented.

Therefore, the next time I walked up to the pastures, I went straight to Hans. “Have you found the key-flower yet?” I asked.

There was a curious expression upon his face. He appeared to be partly ashamed of what he must now and then have suspected to be a folly, and partly anxious to know if I could tell him where the flower grew.

“See here, Hans,” said I, seating myself upon a rock. “Don’t you know that those who hunt for it never find it. Of course you have not found it, and you never will, in this way. But even if you should, you are so anxious for the gold and diamonds that you would be sure to forget the best, just as the shepherd did, and would find nothing but leaves and pebbles in your pockets.”

145“Oh, no!” he exclaimed; “that’s just what I wouldn’t do.”

“Why, don’t you forget your work every day?” I asked. “You are forgetting the best all the time,—I mean the best that you have at present. Now, I believe there is a key-flower growing on these very mountains; and, what is more, Otto has found it!”

He looked at me in astonishment.

“Don’t you see,” I continued, “how happy and contented he is all the day long? He does not work as hard at his knitting as you do in hunting for the flower; and although you get half your summer’s wages, and he nothing, he will be richer than you in the fall. He will have a small piece of gold, and it won’t change into a leaf. Besides, when a boy is contented and happy he has gold and diamonds. Would you rather be rich and miserable, or poor and happy?”

This was a subject upon which Hans had evidently not reflected. He looked puzzled. 146He was so accustomed to think that money embraced everything else that was desirable, that he could not imagine it possible for a rich man to be miserable. But I told him of some rich men whom I knew, and of others of whom I had heard, and at last bade him think of the prosperous brewer in the town below, who had so much trouble in his family, and who walked the streets with his head hanging down.

I saw that Hans was not a bad boy; he was simply restless, impatient, and perhaps a little inclined to envy those in better circumstances. This lonely life on the mountains was not good for a boy of his nature, and I knew it would be difficult for him to change his habits of thinking and wishing. But, after a long talk, he promised me he would try, and that was as much as I expected.

Now, you may want to know whether he did try; and I am sorry that I cannot tell 147you. I left the place soon afterwards, and have never been there since. Let us all hope, however, that he found the real key-flower.

V The Young Serf — I — II — III — IV — V

It was towards the close of a September day. Old Gregor and his grandson Sasha were returning home through the forest with their bundles of wood, the old man stooping low under the weight of the heavier sticks he carried, while the boy dragged his great bunch of twigs and splints by a rope drawn over his shoulder. Where the trees grew thick, the air was already quite gloomy, but in the open spaces they could see the sky and tell how near it was to sunset.

Both were silent, for they were tired, and it is not easy to talk and carry a heavy load at 152the same time. But presently something gray appeared through the trees, at the foot of a low hill; it was the rock where they always rested on the way home. Old Gregor laid down his bundle there, and wiped his face on the sleeve of his brown jacket, but Sasha sprang upon the rock and began to balance himself upon one foot, as was his habit whenever he tried to think about anything.

“Grandfather,” he said, at last, “why should all the forest belong to the Baron, and none of it to you?”

Gregor looked at him sharply for a moment before he answered.

“It was his father’s and his grandfather’s; it has been the property of the family for many a hundred years, and we have never had any.”

“I know that,” said Sasha. “But why did it come so first?”

Gregor shook his head. “You might as well ask how the world was made.” Then, 153seeing that the boy looked troubled, he added in a kinder tone, “What put such a thought in your head?”

“Why, the forest itself!” Sasha cried. “The Baron lets us have the top branches and little twigs, but he always takes the logs and sells them for money. I know all the trees, and he doesn’t; I can find my way in the woods anywhere, and there’s many a tree that would say to me, if it could talk, ‘I’d rather belong to you, Sasha, because I know you.’”

“Aye, and the moon would say the same to you, boy, and the sun and stars, maybe. You might as well want to own them,—and you don’t even belong to yourself.”

Gregor’s words seemed harsh and fierce, but his voice was very sad. Sasha looked at him and knew not what to say, but he felt that his heart was beating violently. All at once he heard a rustling among the dead leaves, and a sound like steps approaching. 154The old man took hold of his grandson’s arm and made a sign to him to be silent. The sound came nearer, and nearer, and presently they could distinguish some dusky object moving towards them through the trees.

“Is it a robber?” whispered Sasha.

“It is not a man unless he uses his knees for hind feet. I see his head; it is a bear. Keep quiet, boy! make no noise; take this tough stick, but hold it at your side, as I do with mine. Look him in the face, if he comes close; and if I tell you to strike, hit him on the end of the nose!”

It was, indeed a full-grown bear, marching slowly on his great flat feet. He was not more than thirty yards distant, when he saw them, and stopped. Both kept their eyes fixed upon his head, but did not move. Then he came a few paces nearer, and Sasha tried hard not to show that he was trembling inwardly, more from excitement than fear. The bear gazed steadily at them for what 155seemed a long time: there was an expression of anger, but also of stupid bewilderment, in his eyes. Finally he gave a sniff and a grunt, tossed up his nose, and slowly walked on, stopping once or twice to turn and look back, before he disappeared from view. Sasha lifted his stick and shook it towards him; he felt that he should never again be much afraid of bears.

“Now, boy,” said Gregor, “you have learned how to face danger. I have been as near to a loaded cannon as to that bear, and the wind of the ball threw me on my face; but I was up the next minute, and then the gunner went down! Our colonel saw it, and I remember what he said—ay, every word! He would have kept his promise, but we carried him from the field the next day, and that was the end of the matter. It was in France.”

“Grandfather,” Sasha suddenly asked, “are there forests in France?—and do they belong to the barons?”

156“Pick up your fagot, boy, and come along! It will be dark before we get to the village and the potatoes are cooked by this time.”

The mention of the potatoes revived all Sasha’s forgotten hunger, and he obeyed in silence. After walking for a mile as rapidly as their loads would permit, they issued from the forest, and saw the wooden houses of the village on a green knoll, in the last gleams of sunset. The church, with its three little copper-covered domes, stood on the highest point; next to it the priest’s house and garden; then began the broad street, lined with square log-cabins and adjoining stables, sloping down to a large pond, at the foot of which was a mill. Beyond the water there was a great stretch of grazing meadow, then long, rolling fields of rye and barley, extending to the woods which bounded the view in every direction. The village was situated within a few miles of the great main highway running from Warsaw to 157Moscow, and the waters of the pond fed the stream which flowed into one of the branches of the river Dnieper.

The whole region including the village and nearly all the people in it, belonged to the estate of Baron Popoff, the roofs of whose residence were just visible to the southward, on a hill overlooking the road to Moscow. The former castle had been entirely destroyed during the retreat of Napoleon’s army, and the Baron’s grandfather suffered so many losses at the time that he was only able to build a large and very plain modern house; but the people always called it “the Castle,” or “the Palace,” just as before. Although the Baron sold every year great quantities of timber, grain, hemp, and wool from his estates, he always seemed to be in want of money. The servants who went with him every winter to St. Petersburg were very discreet, and said little about their master’s habits of life; but the people understood, somehow, that he often 158lost large sums by gambling. This gave them a good deal of uneasiness, for if he should be obliged to part with the estate, they would all be transferred with it to a new owner—and this might be one who had other estates in other parts of Russia, to which he could send them if he were so minded.

At the time of which I am writing, twenty-two millions of the Russian people were serfs. Their labor, even their property, belonged to the owner of the land upon which they lived. The latter had not the power to sell them to another, as was formerly the case with slaves in the South, but he could remove them from one estate to another if he had several. Baron Popoff was a haughty and indifferent master, but not a cruel one; the people of the village had belonged to his family for several generations, and were accustomed to their condition. At least, they saw no way of changing it, except by a change of masters, which was more likely to be a misfortune than a benefit.

159It was nearly dark when old Gregor and Sasha threw down their loads, and entered the house. Their supper was already waiting, for Sasha’s sister, little Minka, had been up to the church door to see whether they were coming. In one corner of the room a tiny lamp was burning before a picture of the Virgin Mary and Child Jesus, all covered with gilded brass except the hands and faces, which were nearly black, partly from the smoke, and partly because the common Russian people imagine that the Hebrews were a very dark-skinned race. Sasha’s father, Ivan, had also lighted a long pine-splint, and the room looked very cheerful. The boiled potatoes were smoking in a great wooden bowl, beside which stood a dish of salt, another of melted fat, and a loaf of black bread. They had neither plates, knives nor forks; only some coarse wooden spoons, and all ate out of the bowl, after the salt had been sprinkled and the fat poured over the potatoes. For drink there 160was an earthen pitcher of quass, a kind of thin and rather sour beer.

Old Gregor sat on one side of the table, and his son Ivan with Anna, his wife, opposite. There were five children, the oldest being Alexander (whom we know by his nickname “Sasha,” which is the Russian for “Aleck” or “Sandy”), then Minka, Peter, Waska, and Sergius. Sasha was about thirteen years old, rather small for his age, and hardly to be called a handsome boy. Only there was something very pleasant in his large gray eyes, and his long, thick, flaxen hair shone almost like silver when the sun fell upon it. However, he never thought about his looks. When he went to the village bath-house, on a Saturday evening, to take his steam-bath with the rest, the men would sometimes say, after examining his joints and muscles, “You are going to be strong, Sasha!”—and that was as much as he cared to know about himself.

The boy was burning with desire to tell the 161adventure with the bear, but he did not like to speak before his grandfather, and there was something in the latter’s eye which made him feel that he was watching him. Gregor first lighted his pipe, and then, in the coolest possible manner—as if it were something that happened every day—related the story. “Pity I hadn’t your gun with me, Ivan,” he said at the close; “what with the meat, the fat and the skin, we should have had thirty roubles.”

The children were quite noisy with excitement. Little Peter said: “What for did you let him go, Sasha? I’d have killed him and carried him home!” Then all laughed so heartily that Peter began to cry and was soon packed into a box in the corner, where he slept with Waska and Sergius.

“Take the gun with you to-morrow, father,” said Ivan.

“It’s too much, with my load of wood,” Gregor answered; “the old hunting-knife is 162all I want. Sasha will stand by me with a club; he’ll not be afraid, the next time.”

Sasha was about to exclaim: “I wasn’t afraid the first time!” but before he spoke, it flashed across his mind that he did tremble a little—just a very little.

By this time it was dark outside. Two pine-splints had burned out, one after the other, and only the little lamp before the shrine enabled them dimly to see each other. The older people went to bed in their narrow rooms, which were hardly better than closets; and Sasha, spreading a coarse sack of straw on the floor, lay down, covered himself with his sheep-skin coat, and in five minutes was so sound asleep that he might have been dragged about by the heels without being awakened.

The next day, in the forest, old Gregor worked more rapidly than usual. He spoke very little, in spite of Sasha’s eagerness to talk, and kept the boy so busy that all the wood was gathered together and the bundles made up two or three hours before the usual time.

They were in a partially cleared spot, near the top of some rising ground. The old man looked at the sky, nodded his head, and said with a satisfied air: “We have plenty of time left for ourselves, Sasha; come with me, and I’ll show you something.”

He set out in a direction opposite from home, and the boy, who expected nothing less than the finding of another bear, seized a tough, straight club, and followed him. They 164went for nearly a mile over rolling ground, through the forest, and then descended into a narrow glen, at the foot of which ran a rapid stream. Very soon, rocks began to appear on either side, and the glen became a chasm where there was barely room to walk. It was a cold, gloomy, strange place; Sasha had never seen anything like it. He felt a singular creeping of the flesh, but not for the world would he have turned back.

The path ceased, and there was a waterfall in front, filling up the whole chasm. Gregor pulled off his boots and stepped into the stream, which reached nearly to his knees: he gave his hand to Sasha, who could hardly have walked alone against the force of the current. They reached the foot of the fall, the spray of which was whirled into their faces. Then Gregor turned suddenly to the left, passed through the thin edge of the falling water, and Sasha, pulled after him, found himself in a low, arched vault of rock, into 165which the light shone down from another opening. They crawled upwards on hands and feet, and came out into a great, circular hole, like a kettle, through the middle of which ran the stream. There was no other way of getting into it, for the rocks leaned inward as they rose, making the bottom considerably broader than the top.

On one side, under the middle of the rocky arch, stood a square black stone, about five feet high, with a circle of seven smaller stones resembling seats around it. Sasha was dumb with surprise at finding himself in such a wonderful spot.

But old Gregor made the sign of the cross, and muttered something which seemed to be a prayer. Then he went to the black stone, and put his hand upon it.

“Sasha,” he said, “this is one of the places where the old Russian people came, many thousand years ago, before ever the name of Christ was heard of. They were dreadful 166heathen in those days, and this was what they had in place of a church. A black stone had to be the altar, because they had a black god, who was never satisfied unless they fed him with human blood.”

“Where is he now?” Sasha asked.

“They say he turned into an evil spirit, and is hiding somewhere in the wilderness; but I don’t know whether it’s true. His name was Perun. Most men do not dare to say it, but I have the courage, because I’ve been a soldier and have an honest conscience. Are you afraid to stand here?”

“Not if you are not, grandfather,” said Sasha.

“If your heart were bad and false, you might well be afraid. Come here to me.”

Sasha obeyed. The old man opened the boy’s coarse shirt and laid his hand upon his heart; then he made him do the same to himself, so that the heart of each beat directly against the hand of the other.

167“Now, boy,” he then said, “I am going to trust you, and if you say a word you do not mean, or think otherwise than you speak, I shall feel it in the motion of your heart. Do you know the difference between a serf and a free man? Would you rather live like your father, without anything he can call his own, or like the Baron, with houses and forests that nobody could take away from you—unless it might be the Emperor?”

Sasha’s heart gave a great thump, before he opened his mouth. The old man smiled, and he said to himself: “I was right.” Then he continued: “I should be a free man now, if our colonel had lived. Your father had not wit and courage enough to try, but you can do it, Sasha, if you think of nothing else and work for nothing else. I will help you all I can; but you must begin at once. Will you?”

“Yes! yes!” cried Sasha, eagerly.

“Promise me that you will say nothing to any living soul; that you will obey me and 168remember all I say to you while I live, and be none the less faithful to the purpose when I am dead!”

Sasha promised everything, at once. After a moment’s silence, Gregor took his hand from the boy’s breast, and said: “Yes, you truly mean it. The old people used to say that if anybody broke a promise made before this stone, the black heathen god would have power over him.”

“Perhaps the bear was the black god,” Sasha suggested.

“Perhaps he was. Look him in the face, as you did yesterday, remember your promise, and he can’t harm you.”

As they walked slowly back through the forest, Gregor began to talk, and the boy kept close beside him, listening eagerly to every word.

“The first thing,” he said, “is to get knowledge. You must learn, somehow, to read and write, and count figures. I must tell you 169all I know, about everything in the world, but that’s very little; and it’s so mixed up in my head, that I don’t rightly know where to begin. It’s a blessing that I’ve not forgotten much; what I picked up I held on to, and now I see the reason why. There’s nothing you can’t use, if you wait long enough.”

“Tell me about France!” Sasha cried.

“France and Germany, too! I was two or three years, off and on, in those foreign parts, and I could talk smartly in the speech of both—Allez! Sortez! Donnez-moi du vin!”

Gregor stopped and straightened his bent back, his eyes flashed, and he laughed long and heartily.

“Allez! Sortez! Donnez-moi du vin!” repeated Sasha.

Gregor caught up the boy in his arms, and kissed him. “The very thing!” he cried: “I’ll teach you both tongues,—and all about the strange habits of the people, and their houses and churches, and which way the battle 170went, and what queer harness they have on their horses, and a talking bird I once saw, and a man that kept a bottle full of lightning in his room——.”

So his tongue ran on. It was a great delight to him to recall his memories of more than thirty years and he was constantly surprised to find how many little things that seemed forgotten came back to his mind. Sasha’s breath came quick, as he listened; his whole body felt warm and nimble, and it suddenly seemed to him possible to learn anything and everything. Before reaching home, he had fixed twenty or thirty French words in his memory. There they were, hard and tight; he knew he should never forget them.

From that day began a new life for both. Old Gregor’s method of instruction would simply have confused a pupil less ignorant and less eager to be taught; but Sasha was so sure that knowledge would in some way help him to become a free man that he seized 171upon everything he heard. In a few months he knew as much German and French as his grandfather, and when they were alone they always spoke, as much as possible, in one or the other language. But the boy’s greatest desire was to learn how to read. During the following winter he made himself useful to the priest in various ways, and finally succeeded in getting from him the letters of the alphabet and learning how to put them together. Of course, he could not keep secret all that he did; it was enough that no one guessed his object in doing it.

One day, in the spring, just after the Baron had returned with his wife from St. Petersburg, Sasha was sent on an errand to the castle. He was bareheaded and barefooted; his shirt and wide trousers were very coarse, but clean, and his hair floated over his shoulders like a mass of shining silk. When he reached the castle, the Baron and Baroness, with a strange lady, were sitting on the balcony. The latter 172said, in French, “There’s a nice-looking boy!”

Sasha was so glad to find that he understood, and so delighted with the remark, that he looked up suddenly and blushed.

“I really believe he understands what I said,” the lady exclaimed.

The Baron laughed. “Do you suppose my young serfs are educated like princes?” he asked. “If he were so intelligent as that, how long could I keep him?”

Sasha bent down his head, and kicked the loose pebbles with his feet, to hide his excitement. The blood was humming in his ears; the Baron had said the same thing as his grandfather—to get knowledge was the only way to get freedom!

The summer passed away, and the second autumn came. Gregor had told all he knew; told it twice, three times; and Sasha, more eager than ever, began to grow impatient for something more. He had secured a little reading-book, such as is used for children, and studied it until he knew the exact place of every letter in it, but there was none to give the poor boy another volume, or to teach him anything further.

One afternoon, as he was returning alone from a neighboring village by a country road which branched off from the main highway, he saw three men sitting on the bank, under the edge of a thicket. They were strangers, and they seemed to him to be foreigners. Two were of middle age, with harsh, evil 174faces; the third was young, and had an anxious, frightened look. They were talking earnestly, but before he could distinguish the words, one of them saw him, made a sign to the others, and then he was very sure that they suddenly changed their language; for it was German he now heard.

He felt proud of his own knowledge, and his first thought was to say “Good-day!” in German. Then he remembered his grandfather’s command, “Never show your knowledge until there’s good reason for it!” and gave his greeting in Russian. The young man nodded in return; the others took no notice of him. But in passing he understood these sentences:

“He will bring a great deal of money.... There’s no danger—he will be alone.... Grain and hemp both sold to-day.... It will be already dark.”

“Sasha never afterwards could explain the impulse which led him to dart under the trees as soon as he was out of sight, to get in the rear of the thicket, crawl silently nearer on his hands and knees, and then lie down flat within hearing of the men’s voices.”

Drawing by F. S. Coburn

175Just beyond the thicket the road made a sharp turn and entered the woods. Sasha never afterwards could explain the impulse which led him to dart under the trees as soon as he was out of sight, to get in the rear of the thicket, crawl silently nearer on his hands and knees, and then lie down flat within hearing of the men’s voices. For a moment, he was overcome with a horrible fear. They were silent, and his heart beat so loudly that he thought they could no more help noticing it than a blacksmith’s hammer.

Presently one of them spoke,—this time in Russian. “There’s a hill from which you can see both roads,” he said; “but he’ll hardly take the highway.”

“Are you sure his groom was not in the town?” asked another.

“It’s all as I say—rely upon that!” was the answer. “For all his title he’s no more than another man, and we are three!”

In talking further, they mentioned the name of the town; it was the place only a few miles distant, where the grain, hemp, and other products 176of the estate were sold to traders—and this was the day of the sale! The plot of the robbers flashed into Sasha’s mind; and if he had had any remaining doubts they were soon dissipated by his hearing the Baron’s name. The latter was to be waylaid—plundered—killed, if he resisted. Then the oldest of the three men said, as he got up from the bank where they were sitting:

“We must be on our way. Better be too early than too late.”

“But it’s a terrible thing,” the youngest remarked.

“You can’t turn back now!” the other cried.

Sasha waited until he could no longer hear their footsteps. Then he started up, and keeping away from the road they had taken, ran through the woods and thicket in the direction of the town. His only thought was to reach the hill the robbers had mentioned, from which both roads could be seen. He knew it well; there was a bridle-path, shorter 177than the main highway, and the Baron would probably take it, as he was on horseback. The hill divided the two roads; it was covered with young birch trees, which grew very thickly on the summit and almost choked up the path. But there was a long spur of thicket, he remembered, running out on the ridge, and whoever stood at the end of it could almost look into the town.

Sasha was so excited that he took a track almost as short as a bird flies. He tore through bushes and brambles without thinking of the scratches they gave him; he jumped across gullies and ran at full speed over open fields; he was faint, and bruised, and breathless, but he never paused until the farthest point of the thicket on the hill was reached. It was then about an hour before sunset, and only one or two foot-travellers were to be seen upon the highway. The town was half a mile off, but he could plainly see where the bridle-path issued from a little lane between 178the houses. Carefully concealing himself under a thick alder-bush, he kept his eyes fixed upon that point.

He was obliged to wait for what seemed a long, long while. The sun was just setting when, finally, a horseman made his appearance, and Sasha knew by the large white horse that it must be the Baron. The rider looked at his watch, and then began to canter along the level towards the hill. There was no time to lose; so, without pausing a moment to think, Sasha sprang out of his hiding-place, and darted down the grassy slope at full speed, crying “Lord Baron! Lord Baron!”

The rider, at first, did not seem to heed. He cantered on, and it required all Sasha’s remaining strength to reach the path in advance of him. Then he dropped upon his knees, lifted up his hands, and cried once more, “Stop, Lord Baron!”

The Baron reined up his horse just in time to avoid trampling on the boy. Sasha sprang 179to his feet, seized the bridle, and gasped, “The robbers!”

“Who are you?—and what does this mean?” the Baron asked in a stern voice.

But Sasha was too much in earnest to feel afraid of the great lord. “I am Sasha, the son of Ivan, the son of Gregor,” he said; and then related, as rapidly as he could, all that he had seen and heard.

The Baron looked at his pistols. “Ha!” he cried, “the caps are taken off! You may have done me good service, boy. Wait here; it’s not enough to escape the rascals; we must capture them!”

He turned his horse, and galloped back at full speed towards the town. Sasha watched him, thinking only that he was saved at last. It was growing dark, when the boy’s quick ear caught the sound of steps in the opposite direction. He turned and saw the three men approaching rapidly. With a deadly sense of terror he started and ran towards the town.

180“Kill the little spy!” shouted, behind him, a voice which he well knew.

Sasha cried aloud for help as he ran; but no help came. He was already weak and exhausted from the exertion he had made, and he heard the robbers coming nearer and nearer. All at once it seemed to him that his cries were answered; but at the same moment a heavy blow came down upon his head and shoulder. He fell to the ground and knew no more.

When Sasha came to his senses, it seemed to him that he must have been dead for a long time. First of all, he had to think who he was; and this was not so easy as you may suppose, for he found himself lying in a bed, in a room he had never seen before. It was broad daylight, and the sun shone upon one of his hands, which was so white and thin that it did not seem to belong to him. Then he lifted it, and was amazed to find how little strength there was in his arm. But he brought it to his head at last,—and there was another surprise. All his long, silken hair was gone! He was so weak and bewildered that he groaned aloud, and the tears ran down his cheeks.

There was a noise in the room, and presently old Gregor bent over the bed.

182“Grandad,” said the boy—and how feeble his voice sounded!—“am I your Sasha still?”

The old man, crying for joy, dropped on his knees and said a prayer. “Now you will get well!” he cried; “but you mustn’t talk; the doctor said you were not to talk!”

“Where am I?” Sasha asked.

“At the palace! And the Baron’s own doctor comes every day to see you; and they let me stay here to nurse you—it will be a week to-morrow!”

“What’s the matter?”—“what has happened?”

“Don’t talk, for the love of Heaven,” said Gregor; “you saved the Baron from being robbed and killed; and the head robber struck your head and broke your arm; and the Baron and the people came just at the right time; and one of them was shot, and the other two are in jail. O my boy, remember the altar of the black god, Perun; be obedient to me; shut your eyes and keep quiet!”

“The old man, crying for joy, dropped on his knees and said a prayer.”

Drawing by F. S. Coburn

183But Sasha could not shut his eyes. Little by little his memory came back, and a sense of what he had done filled his mind and made him happy. He felt a dull ache in his left arm, and found that it was so tightly bandaged he could not move it; so he lay quite still, while Gregor sat and watched him with sparkling eyes. After a time the door opened, and a strange gentleman came in; it was the physician. The old man rose and conversed with him in whispers. Then Sasha found that a spoon was held to his lips; he mechanically swallowed something that had a strange, pleasant taste, and almost immediately fell asleep.

In a day or two he was strong enough to sit up in bed, and was allowed to talk. Then the Baron and Baroness came, with the lady who was their guest, to see him. They were all eager to learn the particulars of the occurrence, especially how Sasha had discovered the plot of the robbers. He began at the 184beginning, and had got as far as the latter’s change of language on seeing him, when he stopped in great confusion and looked at his grandfather.

Gregor neither spoke nor moved, but his eyes seemed to say plainly, “Tell everything.”

Sasha then related the whole story to the end. The Baroness came to the bedside, stooped down, kissed him, and said, “You have saved your lord!”

But the other lady, who had been watching him very curiously, suddenly exclaimed: “Why, it’s the same nice-looking little serf I saw before; and when I spoke of him in French he blushed. I’m sure he understood me! Don’t you understand me now, my boy?”

She asked the question in French, and Sasha answered in the same language, “Yes, madam.”

The lady clapped her hands in delight; but 185the Baron asked very sternly, “Where did you learn so many languages?”

“From me!” Gregor answered. “The boy likes to know things, and I’ve always thought—saving your opinion, my good lord—that when God gives any one a strong wish for knowledge He means it to be answered. So I opened to him all there is in this foolish old head of mine, while we were together in the forest; and it was such a pleasure for him to take that it came to be a pleasure for me to give. You understand, my lady?”

“Yes,” said the Baroness, “I understand that without Sasha’s knowledge of German, my husband would probably have been murdered.”

“That’s not so certain,” the Baron replied. “But some celebrated man has said ‘All’s well that ends well,’ The fellow did his duty like a full-grown man, and I’ll take care of him.”

Therewith they went out of the room, and 186Sasha immediately asked, in some anxiety, “Grandfather, you meant I should tell?”

“Yes,” Gregor answered; “for the youngest robber has already confessed that they spoke in German, and thought themselves safe, while you were passing. They are vagabonds from the borders of Poland, and knew a little of three or four tongues. It is all right, my boy; the Baron is satisfied, and means to help you. Your chance has come sooner than I expected. I must have a little time to think about it; my head is like a stiff joint, hard to bend when I want to use it. It’s good luck to me that you can’t get out of bed for a week to come!”

He laughed as he left the bedside, and took his seat on the broad stone bench beside the stove. Sasha kept silent, for he knew that the old man’s brain was hard at work. He tried to do a little thinking himself, but it made him feel weak and giddy; in fact, the blow upon his head would have killed a more delicate boy.

187His strength came back so rapidly, however, that in a week he was able to walk out, with his arm in a sling. He was still pale, and looked so strange in his short hair that on his first visit home his mother burst into tears on seeing him. Then Minka, Peter, Sergius, and Waska lifted up their voices and cried; and Ivan, who was at first angry with them, finally cried also, without knowing why he did it. All this made Sasha feel very uncomfortable, and he was on the point of saying “I won’t do it again!” when old Gregor made silence in the house. He had looked through the window and seen some of the neighbors coming; so the whole family became cheerful again as rapidly as they could.

By this time, Gregor had made up his mind. Sasha knew that he could not change it if he would, and he was therefore very glad to find how well his grandfather’s notions agreed with his own. While he was waiting for the Baron to speak again, he was not losing time; for 188the strange lady who was visiting at the castle took quite a friendly interest in teaching him French and German, and giving him Russian books which were not too difficult to read. He was so eager to satisfy her, that he really made astonishing progress.

When the robbers were tried before the judge, he was called upon to give testimony against them. One of the three having been killed, the youngest one was not afraid to confess, and his story and Sasha’s agreed perfectly. The boy described the unwillingness of the former to undertake the crime; even the Baron said a word in his favor; and the judge, at last, sentenced him to be banished to Siberia for only ten years, while the older robber was sent there for life.

That evening, the Baron asked Sasha, “Would you like to be one of my house-servants, boy?”

Just as his grandfather had advised him, Sasha answered: “It is not for me to choose 189my lord; but I think I can serve you much more to your profit if you will let me try to become a merchant.”

“A merchant!” the Baron exclaimed.

“Not all at once,” said Sasha; “I could be of use now, as a boy to help carry and sell things, because I can count and speak a little in other tongues. I should make myself so useful to some merchant that he would give me a chance to learn the whole business in time. Then I should earn money, and could pay you for the privilege.”

The Baron had often envied noblemen of his acquaintance, some of whose serfs were rich manufacturers or merchants, and paid them large annual sums for the privilege of living for themselves. Here seemed to be a chance for him to gain something in the same way. The boy spoke so confidently, and looked in his face with such straightforward eyes, that he felt obliged to consider the proposition seriously.

190“How will you get to St. Petersburg?” he asked.

“When you go, my lord,” said Sasha, “I could sit on the box at the coachman’s feet. I will help him with the horses, and it shall cost you nothing. When I get there, I know I shall find a place.”

The Baron then said, “You may go.”

Here, as a boy not yet fifteen, Sasha begins his career as a man. The task he has undertaken demands the industry, the patience, and the devotion of his life, but he has been prepared for it by a sound, if a somewhat hard, experience. I hope the boys who read this feel satisfied already that he is going to succeed; yet I know, also, that they like to be certain, and to have some little information as to how it came about. So I will let fifteen years pass, and we will now look upon Sasha, for the last time, as a man of thirty.

He has a store and warehouse on the great main street of St. Petersburg, which is called the Nevsky Prospekt,—that is the Perspective of the Neva, because when you look down it you see the blue waters of the Neva at the 192end. Over the door there is a large sign, with the name, “Alexander Ivanovitch.” (Ivanovitch means “the son of Ivan”; Russian family names are formed in this manner, and therefore the son has a different name from the father, unless their baptismal names are the same.) He employs a number of clerks and salesmen, and has a servant who would go through fire and water to help him. I must relate how he found this man, and why the latter is so faithful.

On one of his journeys of business, five years before, Sasha visited the town of Perm, on the western side of the Ural Mountains. It is on the main highway to Siberia, and criminals are continually passing, either on the way thither in chains, or returning in rags when their time of banishment has expired. One evening Sasha found by the roadside, in the outskirts of the town, a miserable-looking wretch who seemed to be at the point of death. He felt the man’s pulse, lifted up his 193head, and looked in his face, and was startled at recognizing the younger of the three robbers. He had him taken to the inn, tended and restored, and, after being convinced of his earnest desire to lead a better life, gave him employment. The robber was not naturally a bad man, but very ignorant and superstitious. It seemed to him both a miracle and a warning that he should have been saved by Sasha, and he fully believed that his soul would be lost if he should ever act dishonestly towards him.

Keeping his heart steadily upon the great purpose of his life, Sasha rose from one step to another until he became an independent and wealthy merchant,—far wealthier, indeed, than the Baron supposed. He paid the latter a handsome annual sum for his time, and sent only small presents of money to his parents, for he knew how few and simple their needs were. He felt a thousand times more keenly than old Gregor what it was to be a serf. The old man was still living, but very feeble and helpless, 194and Sasha often grew wild at the thought that he might die before knowing freedom.

His plan of action had long been fixed, and now the hour had come when he determined to try it. He had for years kept a strict watch over the Baron’s life in St. Petersburg, knew the amount of his increasing debts and the embarrassment they occasioned him, and could very nearly calculate the moment when ruin would come. He was not disappointed therefore, at receiving an urgent summons from his master.

“Sasha,” said the latter, laying his hand upon the serf’s shoulder with a familiarity he had never displayed before, “you are an honest, faithful fellow. I need a few thousand roubles for a month or two; can you get the money for me?”

“I have heard, my lord,” Sasha answered, “that you are in difficulty. I knew why you sent for me; and I come to offer you a way out of all your troubles. Your debts amount 195to more than a hundred thousand roubles; would you like to be relieved of them?”

“Would I not!—but how?” the Baron cried.

“I will pay them, my lord; but you will do one thing for me in return.”

“You?—You?”

“I,” Sasha quietly answered; “I will free you, and you will free me.”

“Ha!” the Baron cried, springing to his feet. His pride was touched. He was fond of boasting that he also had a serf who was a rich merchant, and the fact had many a time helped his credit when he wanted to borrow money. Unconsciously, he shook his head.

“You have not the money,” he said.

Sasha, who understood what was passing through the Baron’s mind, suffered so much from his cruel uncertainty that he turned deadly pale.

“I am well known,” he answered, “and can procure the money in an hour. How much is 196my serfdom worth to you? My annual payment is hardly one tenth of the usurious interest which your debt wrings from you. I offer to release you from all trouble and thus add not less than eight thousand roubles a year to your income. And my freedom, which you can now sell back to me at such a price, may be mine without buying in a few years more.”

The Emperor, Alexander II., had at that time just succeeded to the throne, and his intention to emancipate the serfs was already suspected by the people. Sasha knew that he was running a great risk in what he said; but his clasped hands, his trembling voice, his eyes filled with tears, affected the Baron more powerfully than his words.

There was a long silence. The master turned away to the window, and weighed the offer rapidly in his mind; the serf waited, in breathless anxiety, in the centre of the room.

Suddenly the Baron turned and struck his clenched fist on the table. Then he stretched 197out his hand, and said: “Alexander Ivanovitch I am glad to make your acquaintance as a friend. I am no longer your master.”

Sasha took the hand, kissed it, and his tears fell fast. “Dear lord Baron!” he cried; “give also the freedom of my father and grandfather and I will add a payment of five thousand roubles a year, for ten years to come!”

“And your ancestors for five hundred years back,” the Baron answered laughing. “I don’t know their names, but they can be all thrown into the deed, in one lump.”

Before another day it was done. Sasha and the living members of his family were free, and his ancestors would also have been free if they had not been dead. With the parchment, signed and sealed, in his pocket, he took a carriage and post-horses and travelled day and night until he reached his native village. No one knew the stranger in his rich merchant’s dress; his father and 198brothers were in the fields at work, and his mother had stepped out to see a neighbor; old Gregor was alone in the house. He was leaning back in a rude arm-chair with a sheep-skin over his knees; his eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, and his face so haggard and sunken that Sasha thought him dead.

He kneeled down beside the chair, and placed his hand on the old man’s heart, to see if it still beat. Presently came a broken voice: “The black god—the truth, my boy!” and Gregor feebly stretched a hand toward Sasha’s breast. The latter tore open his dress, and spread the cold, horny fingers over his own heart, the warmth of which seemed to kindle a fresh life in the old man. He at last opened his eyes. “Little Sasha,” he said, “little Sasha will keep his word.”

“I have kept it, grandfather!” Sasha cried.

“Old Gregor was alone in the house.”

Drawing by F. S. Coburn

199“It’s a man, a brave-looking man,” said Gregor; “but he has the boy’s voice—and I know the boy’s hand is on my heart.”

Sasha could no longer restrain himself. “And the boy is a free man, grandfather!” he exclaimed; “we are all free; here is the Baron’s deed, which says so, with the seal of the Empire upon it. Look, grandfather!—do you understand?—you are free!”

Gregor was lifted to his feet, as if by an unseen hand. At that moment Sasha’s parents and brothers entered the house. The old man did not heed their cries of astonishment; clasping the parchment to his breast, he looked upward and exclaimed in a piercing voice: “Free at last,—all free! I’ll carry the news to God!” Then, with a single gasp, he reeled, and, before any one could reach him, fell at full length on the floor, dead.

VI Studies of Animal Nature

I have always had a great respect for animals, and have endeavored to treat them with the consideration which I think they deserve. They have quick perceptions and know when to be confiding or reticent. I have learned no better way to gain their confidence than to ask myself, “If I were such or such an animal, how should I wish to be treated by man?” and to act upon that suggestion. The finest and deepest parts of their natures can be reached only by an intercourse which is purely kind and sympathetic.

In the first place, animals have much more capacity to understand human speech than is 204generally supposed. The Hindoos invariably talk to their elephants, and it is amazing how much the latter comprehend. The Arabs govern their camels with a few cries, and my associates in the African desert were always amused whenever I addressed a remark to the big dromedary who was my property for two months; yet, at the end of that time, the beast evidently knew the meaning of a number of simple sentences. Some years ago, seeing the hippopotamus in Barnum’s Museum looking very stolid and dejected, I spoke to him in English, but he did not even move his eyes. Then I went to the opposite corner of the cage, and said in Arabic, “I know you; come here to me!” He instantly turned his head towards me; I repeated the words, and thereupon he came to the corner where I was standing, pressed his huge, ungainly head against the bars of the cage, and looked in my face with a touching delight while I stroked his muzzle. I have two or three times found 205a lion who recognized the same language, and the expression of his eyes, for an instant, seemed positively human.

I know of nothing more moving, indeed, semi-tragic, than the yearning helplessness in the face of a dog who understands what is said to him and cannot answer. We often hear it said that no animal can endure the steady gaze of the human eye; but this is a superstition. An intelligent dog or horse not only endures, but loves it. The eye of a beast is restless from natural habit, but hardly more so than that of savage man. Cats, birds, and many other animals seek, rather than avoid, a friendly human eye. It is possible that tigers may have been turned away by an unflinching gaze, but I suspect the secret lay in the surprise of the beast at so unusual an experience, rather than in direct intimidation. Thieves are said to have the belief that a dog, for the same reason, will not attack a naked man, but I do not remember any 206account of a burglary where they have tried the experiment. Cattle, however, are easily surprised. Once, in 1849, on the Salinas Plains in California, I escaped exactly the same onset of a vast herd of wild cattle as Mr. Harte describes in his Gabriel Conroy, by sitting down upon the ground. They were so unaccustomed to seeing a man except on horseback, that the position was an absolute bewilderment to them. The foremost halted within a hundred feet, formed a line as regular as a file of soldiers, and stared stupidly, until a team, luckily approaching at the right time, released me from my hazardous situation.

Few persons are aware of the great effect which quiet speech exercises upon the most savage dog. A distinguished English poet told me that he was once walking in the country with Canon Kingsley, when they passed a lodge where an immense and fierce mastiff, confined by a long chain, rushed out upon them. They were just beyond his reach, but 207the chain did not seem secure; the poet would have hurried past, but Kingsley, laying a hand upon his arm, said, “Wait a moment, and see me subdue him!” Thereupon he walked up to the dog, who, erect upon his hind feet, with open jaws and glaring eyes, was the embodiment of animal fury. Kingsley lifted his hand, and quietly said, “You are wrong! You have made a mistake; you must go back to your kennel!” The dog sank down upon his fore feet, but still growled angrily; the Canon repeated his words in a firm voice, advancing step by step, as the dog gave way. He continued speaking grave reproof, as to a human being, until he had forced the mastiff back into his kennel, where the latter silently, and perhaps remorsefully, lay down.

I cannot now tell whether I remembered this story, or acted simply from a sudden instinct, in a very similar case. I was in San Francisco, and went to call upon a gentleman of my acquaintance who lived upon Rincon 208Point. The house stood a little distance back from the street, in a beautiful garden. I walked up between clumps of myrtle and fuchsia to the door and rang the bell. Instead of answer, there was a savage bay; a giant dog sprang around the corner of the house, and rushed at me with every sign of furious attack. I faced him, stood still, and said, “I am a friend of Mr. ——, and have come to visit him. You must not suppose that I mean any harm. I shall wait to see if the bell is answered; you may stay and watch me. I am not afraid of you.” The animal paused, listened intently, but was evidently not entirely convinced; he still growled, and showed his teeth in rather an alarming manner. Then I said, “I shall ring once more; if there is no answer, I shall go away.” He followed me up the steps to the door, glared fiercely while I rang, and would undoubtedly have dashed at my throat had I made a suspicious gesture. As no one came to the door 209I finally said, “I see there is nobody at home, so I shall go, as I told you I would.” His growling ceased; side by side we went down the walk and when I had closed the gate he turned away with a single dignified wave of the tail, which I understood as a combined apology and farewell.

Brehm, the German naturalist, gives a very curious account of a chimpanzee at the Zoölogical Garden in Hamburg. He satisfied himself that the animal understood as much human speech as an average child of two and a half years old. For instance, when he asked, “Do you see the ducks?” the chimpanzee would look about the garden, passing over the geese and swans, until he found the birds indicated. At the command, “Go and sit down!” uttered without any inflection of voice or glance towards a chair, he would promptly obey; on being told, “You are naughty,” he would hang his head, with an expression of distress; and he very soon learned to express 210his affection by kisses and caresses, like the children whom he saw.

I presume it is a very common observation of persons who own intelligent dogs, that if they happen to describe to a visitor some fault for which the animal has been scolded or punished, in the latter’s presence, he will exhibit an uneasy consciousness of what is said, even sometimes quietly slink away. But the extent to which a horse, also, may be taught to understand speech, is not so generally known. The simple fact that he likes to be talked to makes him attentive to the sounds, and I am convinced that in a great many cases he has an impression of the meaning. I have at present a horse that served his country during the war, and came to me only after its close. His experience while on scouting service made him very suspicious of any gray object, as I soon discovered; he would shy at a fallen log in a thicket, a glimpse of mossy rock, or a laborer’s coat left in a fence-corner. 211By stopping him whenever this happened, and telling him, in an assuring tone, that there was nothing to fear, he was very soon completely cured of the habit. But he still lifts up his head, and would, if he could, cry “Ha! ha!” when he hears the sound of the trumpet.

The affection and fidelity of the horse have always been admitted. My first acquaintance with these qualities was singular enough to be related. When a boy of fourteen, I was walking along a lonely country road with a companion of the same age, and came upon an old gray horse, standing in the middle of the track, over a man who was lying upon his back. We hastened up to give assistance, but presently saw that the man, instead of being injured, was simply dead drunk. He had tumbled off, on his way home from the tavern, and a full bottle of whiskey, jolted out of his pocket in falling, lay by his side. The forefeet of the horse were firmly planted on each side of his neck, and the hind feet on each 212side of his legs. This position seeming to us dangerous for the man, we took the animal by the bridle and attempted to draw him away; but he resisted with all his strength, snorting, laying back his ears, and giving every other sign of anger. It was apparent that he had carefully planted himself so as completely to protect his master against any passing vehicle. We assisted the faithful creature in the only possible way,—by pouring the whiskey into the dust,—and left him until help could be summoned. His act indicated not only affection involving a sense of duty, but also more than one process of reasoning.

Darwin, as I understand him, is still doubtful whether there is a moral sense in animals. We can judge only from acts, of course, but our interpretation of those acts depends upon our sympathetic power of entering into the feelings of the animal. This is an element which Science will not accept; hence I doubt whether her deductions may not fall as far 213short of the truth as a vivid imagination may go beyond it. To me, it is very clear that there is at least a rudimentary moral sense in animals. I have had two marked evidences thereof, which are the more satisfactory inasmuch as they include a change of conduct which can be explained only by assuming an ever-present memory of the fault committed. If this be not a lower form of conscience in its nature, its practical result is certainly the very same. Were we to judge a strange man by his actions, his speech being wholly unintelligible to us, we should give him the credit of a positive conscience in like circumstances. Why should we withhold it from an animal?

Let the reader decide for himself! I have a horse that is now not less than forty-one years old, and it is possible that he is a year or two older; for thirty-eight years ago he was broken to use. He is at present on the retired list, only occasionally being called upon to lend a helping shoulder to his younger colleague; 214but his intellect is as fresh and as full of expedients as ever. No horse ever knew better how to save himself, to spare effort and prolong his powers; no one was ever so cunning to slip his halter, open the feed-box, and supply the phosphates, the necessity of which to him he knew as well as any “scientist.” I have seen him, through a crack in a board shanty used while the stable was building, lift and lay aside with his teeth six boxes which were piled atop of one another, until he found the oats at the bottom. Then, when my head appeared at the window, he instantly gave up his leisurely, luxurious munching of the grain, opened his jaws to their fullest extent, thrust his muzzle deep into the box, and gravely walked back to his stall with at least a quart of oats in his mouth. This horse had a playful habit of snapping at my arm when he was harnessed for a drive. (I always talk to a horse before starting, as a matter of common politeness.) Of course I never flinched, and 215his teeth often grazed my sleeve as he struck them together. One day, more than a dozen years ago, he was in rather reckless spirits and snapped a little too vigorously, catching my arm actually in his jaws. I scarcely felt the bite, but I was very much surprised. The horse, however, showed such unmistakable signs of regret and distress that I simply said, “Never do that again!” And he never did! From that moment, he gave up the habit of years; he laid back his ears, or feigned anger in other ways, but he never again made believe to bite. This, certainly, goes far beyond the temporary sorrow for an unintentional injury which may be referred to an animal’s affection. What else is conscience than knowledge of wrong made permanent by a memory which forbids the repetition of the wrong?

The other instance was furnished by a creature which is popularly supposed to be as stupid as it is splendid,—a peacock! This, being a long-lived bird, and therefore dowered 216with a richer experience than other domestic fowls, ought to be wiser in proportion; yet I have never heard of the peacock being cited as an example of either intelligence or moral sense. The bird is vain, it is true; but if vanity indicates lack of intelligence, what will become of men and women? I have often watched “John” (the name we gave him and which he always recognized) spreading his tail before a few guinea-fowl, who were so provokingly indifferent to the rayed splendor that he invariably ended by driving them angrily away. On the other hand, can I ever forget the simple, untiring attachment of the gorgeous creature? The table at which I wrote stood near a bay-window, so that I had the true left-hand side-light, with a window at my back. As soon as I took my place there, after breakfast, the peacock flew upon the window-sill, and, whenever I failed to notice him, the sharp taps of his bill upon the glass reminded me of his presence. Then I turned, and, as in duty 217bound, said, “Good morning, John!” after which he continued to sit there, silent and content, for two or three hours longer. The peacock is ordinarily a shy fowl, but John was bold enough to eat out of our hands.

As often as spring came, however, it was impossible to prevent his depredations in the garden. He had a morbid taste for young cabbage and lettuce plants, especially when they were just rooted after being set out, and he would sometimes pick a whole bed to pieces while the gardener’s back was turned. For awhile I amused myself by testing his powers of dissimulation. I waited behind a clump of bushes until he was fairly on his way to the garden, making long, swift strides, with depressed neck and tail, and then I suddenly stepped forth. In the twinkling of an eye John stood upright, walked leisurely in the opposite direction, and seemed quite absorbed in the examination of some trifling object. His air and manner, to the tips of his feathers, 218expressed the completest ignorance of a garden. He would spread his tail, call to the other fowls, peer under the hedge, and in similar ways attempt to beguile me out of sight of his secret aim. If I humored him for a few moments, he was always found a good many yards nearer the garden when I turned again. I have never seen a more hypocritical assumption of innocence and indifference in any human being.

There came a season when even the patience of old friendship was too severely tried. The peacock was presented to a friend, who lived two or three miles away and was the possessor of a couple of hens. I missed the morning tap at my window, the evening perch on the walnut-tree, the unearthly cries which used so to startle guests from the city, but consoled myself with thinking that our loss was his gain, for we had never replaced his lost spouse. He had been gone about a week, when one evening the familiar cry was 219heard from a grove on the farm, nearly half a mile from the house. Next day, John was seen in a weedy field, but slipped out of sight on finding he was detected. We let him alone, and in the course of a fortnight he had advanced as near as the chestnut-tree which I proudly exhibit to strangers as one of the antiquities of America, for it was growing when Charlemagne reigned in Aix-la-Chapelle and Haroun al-Raschid in Bagdad. He now allowed himself to be seen, but utterly refused to recognize any member of the family. When we called him by name, he instantly walked away; when we threw him food, he refused to touch it. Little by little, however, he forgave us the offence; in another fortnight he roosted on the walnut-tree, and at the end of the second month I heard his tap of complete reconciliation on the window. But the exile and mortification had chastened his nature. From that day the young plants were safe from his bill; he lived with us three or four 220years longer, but was never once guilty of the same fault. No one denies that an animal is easily made to understand that certain things are forbidden. Discipline, alone, may accomplish thus much. But when two creatures so far removed as a horse and a peacock assimilate the knowledge to such an extent that the one gives up a habit and the other resists a tempting taste, we must admit either the germ of a moral sense or an intellect capable of positive deduction.

The same horse once revealed to me the latter quality in a surprising way. On telling the story privately, I find that it is sometimes incredulously received; yet I am sure that no one who cherished the proper respect for animals will refuse it credence. In the company of a friend, I was driving along a country road in a light, open buggy. I paid no attention to the horse, for he could turn, back, or execute any other manœuvre in harness, as well without as with a driver. Halting at a house 221where my friend wished to call, I waited for him outside. Presently the horse looked back at me, twisting his body between the thills in a singular fashion. I perceived that he had some communication to make and said, “What is the matter now, Ben?” Thereupon, by twisting a little more, he managed to hold up his right hind foot, and I saw that the shoe had been lost. “That’s right,” said I; “you shall have a new shoe as soon as we get to the village.” He set down his foot, and for a moment seemed satisfied. Then the same turning of the head and twisting of the body were repeated. “What, Ben! is anything else the matter?” I asked. He now lifted up the left hind foot, which was still shod. I was quite at a loss to understand him, and remained silent. He looked back at me, out of the corner of his eye, and evidently saw that I was puzzled, whereupon he set down his foot and seemed to think. Almost immediately he lifted it up again, and shook it 222vigorously. The loose shoe rattled! There was a positive process of reasoning in this act, and it is too simple and clear to be interpreted in any other way.

I have had plenty of opportunity, yet very little time, to study bird nature; but ever since I saw a gentleman, in the park at Munich, entice the birds to come and feed from his hand by standing perfectly still and whistling a few soft, peculiar notes, I have been convinced of the possibility of a much more familiar intercourse. Simply by feeding such birds as remain through the winter, and keeping sportsmen off the place, all varieties of birds soon became half tame. In the summer, when the windows were opened, they entered the house every day, and I frequently found that a bird which had once been caught and released readily allowed itself to be caught a second time. Once a little red-breasted creature, with a black head, lay exhausted in my hand, overcome with the terror and mystery of 223a glass pane. At first I thought it dead; but suddenly it hopped upon its feet, looked in my face with bright, piercing eyes, and chirped a few notes, which distinctly said, “Did you deliver me? Am I really free?” Then, still chirping, it slowly hopped up my arm to the shoulder, sang a snatch of some joyous carol, and flew away, brushing my cheek as it went. Another time, when I picked up some callow cat-birds out of the deep grass and replaced them in the nest, the parents actually dashed against my head in their distress and rage; but after I had retired a few minutes to let them be reassured, they allowed me to approach the nest without interrupting their talk with the young ones. Even a hummingbird, drenched and chilled by a September rain soon learned to be happy in a basket of warm cotton, and to sip sugared water out of a teaspoon.

We had a parrot but once, and that only for a few weeks. The bird was a mystery to 224me, and I found him almost too uncanny to be a pleasant acquaintance. Our parrot came directly from a vessel, but from what port I neglected to learn; he apparently understood the English language, but would not speak it. He preferred toast and coffee to any other diet, and was well-behaved, although tremendously exacting. When he became a little accustomed to us, he would sing the gamut, both upward and downward, in an absent-minded, dreamy way, as if recalling some memory of an opera-singer. He would sit beside me on a perch, seemingly contented, until he saw that I was absorbed in writing. Then he mounted to the table, planted himself on the paper directly in the way of the pen, or managed, by nips of the ears and hair, to get upon the top of my head and make coherent thought impossible. Once, remembering Campbell’s ballad, I ventured—though with some anxiety, for I half expected to see him flap round the room with joyous 225screech, drop down and die—to speak to him in Spanish. He was surprised, interested, and at first seemed inclined to answer in the same tongue; but after reflecting half an hour upon the question he shook his head and kept the secret to himself. No phrase or word of any kind could be drawn from him; yet the same bird, seeing my daughter a week after we had given him away to a friend, suddenly called her by name! The parrot should have been the symbol of the Venetian Council of Ten.

Three weeks after the great fire in Chicago, in 1871, I saw a parrot which had saved itself from the general fate of all household treasures there. It had belonged to my old friend, Mrs. Kirkland, and was doubly cherished by her daughter. When it was evident that the house was doomed, and the red wall of flame, urged by the hurricane, was sweeping towards it with terrific speed, Miss Kirkland saw that she could rescue nothing except what she instantly took in her hands. There were 226two objects, equally dear,—the parrot and the old family Bible; but she was unable to carry more than one of them. After a single moment of choice, she seized the Bible and was hastening away, when the parrot cried out, in a loud and solemn voice, “Good Lord, deliver us!” No human being, I think, could have been deaf to such an appeal; the precious Bible was sacrificed and the parrot saved. The bird really possessed a superior intelligence. I heard him say “Yes” and “No” in answer to questions, the latter being varied so as to admit, alternately, of both replies; and the test of his knowledge was perfect. In the home where he had found a refuge there were many evening visitors, one of whom, a gentleman, was rather noted for his monopoly of the conversation. When the parrot first heard him, it listened in silence for some time; then, to the amazement and perhaps the confusion of all present, it said very emphatically, “You talk altogether too much!” The gentleman, 227at first somewhat embarrassed, presently resumed his interrupted discourse. Thereupon the parrot laid his head on one side, gave an indescribably comical and contemptuous “H’m-m!” and added, “There he goes again!”

If the little brain of a bird contains so much, manifested to us simply because its tongue may be taught to utter articulate sounds, why have we not a right to assume a much greater degree of intelligence in animals to whom articulation is impossible? If dogs or horses were capable of imitating our speech, as well as comprehending it, would they not have a great deal more to say to us? Articulation is a mechanical, not an intellectual peculiarity; but in the case of the parrot, and notably the mino, it is generally so employed as to prove very much more than routine and coincidence. I never saw a mino but once. I entered the vacant reading-room of a hotel early in the morning, took up a paper, and sat down, when suddenly a voice said, “Good morning!” I 228saw nothing but what seemed to be a black bird in a cage, and could not have believed that the perfectly human voice came from it, had it not once more said, in the politest tone, “Good morning!” I walked to the cage, and looked at it. “Open the door and let me out, please!” said the bird. “Why, what are you?” I involuntarily exclaimed. “I’m a mino!” answered the amazing creature. It was the exact voice of a boy of twelve.

When we turn to the lower forms of life, a feeling of repulsion, if not of positive disgust, checks our interest. Very few persons are capable of fairly observing snakes, toads, lizards, and other reptiles which suggest either slime or poison. The instinct must be natural, for it is almost universal. I confess I should never select one of those creatures as a subject of study; but in a single case, where the creature presented itself unsolicited, and became familiar without encouragement, it soon lost its repulsive character. It was a 229huge, venerable toad, which for years haunted the terrace in front of my house. Strict orders had been given, from the first, that he was not to be molested; and he soon ceased to show alarm when any one appeared. During the warm weather of summer, it was our habit to sit upon the terrace and enjoy the sunset and early twilight. From hopping around us at such times, the toad gradually came to take his station near us, as if he craved a higher form of society and was satisfied to be simply tolerated. Finally he seemed to watch for our appearance, and whenever we came out with chairs and camp-stools for the evening he straightway hopped forth from some covert under the box-bushes and took his station beside some one of us. He was very fond of sitting on the edge of my wife’s dress, but his greatest familiarity was to perch on one of my boots, where his profound content at having his back occasionally stroked was shown in the slow, luxurious winking and rolling of his 230bright eyes. His advances to us had been made so gently and timidly that it would have been cruel to repel them; but we ended by heartily liking him and welcoming his visits. For several summers he was our evening companion; even the house-dog, without command, respected his right of place. One May he failed to appear, not from old age, for his term of life was far beyond ours, but probably from having fallen victim to some foe against which we could not guard him.

I found field-tortoises with dates nearly a hundred years old carved on the under shell. Such an aged fellow never shows the same fear of man as those of a later generation. Instead of shutting himself up with an alarmed hiss, he thrusts out his head, peers boldly into your face, and paws impatiently in the air, as much as to say, “Put me down, sir, at once!” I once placed one of them on the terrace, and let him go. Nothing could surpass the prompt business-like way in which he set to work. In 231a few minutes he satisfied himself of the impossibility of squeezing through the box-edgings, and recognized that there was no way of escape except by the steps leading down to the lawn. This was an unknown difficulty; but he was ready to meet it. After a careful inspection, he mused for the space of a minute; then, crawling carefully to the edge, he thrust himself over, quickly closing his shell at the same time, and fell with a thump on the step below. When he reached the lawn, I noticed that he struck an air-line for the spot where I found him.

I give these detached observations of various features of animal nature for the sake of the interest they may possess for others. The man of science may reject evidence into which the element of sympathy enters so largely; but he may still admit the possibility of more complex intelligence, greater emotional capacity, and the existence of a faculty allied to the moral sense of man. If one should surmise a 232lower form of spiritual being, yet equally indestructible, who need take alarm? “Yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity,” said the Preacher, more than two thousand years ago. But Goethe is more truly in accord with the spirit which came with Christianity, when he put these words in the mouth of Faust:

VII A Robber Region of Southern California [1]

I was lying upon my back, with my handkerchief over my face, trying to imagine that I was asleep, when the welcome voice of the arriero shouted in my ear: “Ho! Placero! up and saddle!—the morning is coming and we must reach Tepic to-day.” We fed our horses and sat on the ground for an hour before the first streak of dawn appeared. Three or four leagues of travel through a rich meadow-land brought us to the foot of the first ascent to the table-land. Our horses were fast failing, and we got off to walk 236up the stony trail. “I think we had better keep very close together,” said my friend; “these woods are full of robbers, and they may attack us.” Our path was fenced in by thorny thickets and tall clumps of cactus, and at every winding we were careful to have our arms in readiness. We walked behind our horses all the afternoon, but as mine held out best, I gradually got ahead of the arriero. I halted several times for him to come up, but as he did not appear, I thought it advisable to push on to a good place of rest. My caminador had touched the bottom of his capability, and another day would have broken him down completely. Nevertheless, he had served me faithfully and performed miracles, considering his wasted condition. I drove him forward up ravines, buried in foliage and fragrant with blossoms. Two leagues from Tepic, I reached the Hacienda of La Meca, and quartered myself for the night. One of the rancheros wished to purchase my horse, and after 237some chaffering, I agreed to deliver him in Tepic for four dollars!

Tepic is built on the first plateau of the table-land.

I had been directed to call at the posada of Doña Petra, but no one seemed to know the lady. Wandering about at random in the streets, I asked a boy to conduct me to some mesón. I followed him into the courtyard of a large building, where I was received by the patron, who gave my done-over horse to the charge of the mozo, telling me I was just in time for breakfast. The purchaser of my horse did not make his appearance, notwithstanding I was ready to fulfil my part of the bargain. I went the round of the different mesóns, to procure another horse, and at last made choice of a little brown mustang that paced admirably, giving my caminador and twenty dollars for him.

Leaving the mesón on a bright Sunday noon, I left the city by the Guadalajara road. The 238plaza was full of people, all in spotless holiday dress; a part of the exercises were performed in the portals of the cathedral, thus turning the whole square into a place of worship. At the tingle of the bell, ten thousand persons dropped on their knees, repeating their aves with a light, murmuring sound, that chimed pleasantly with the bubbling of the fountain. I stopped my horse and took off my sombrero till the prayer was over.

My priéto—the Mexican term for a dark-brown horse—paced finely, and carried me to the village of San Lionel, ten leagues from Tepic, two hours before nightfall. I placed him securely in the corral, deposited my saddle in an empty room, the key of which, weighing about four pounds, was given into my possession for the time being, and entered the kitchen. I found the entire household in a state of pleased anticipation; a little girl, with wings of red and white gauze, and hair very tightly twisted into ropy ringlets, sat on a chair near 239the door. In the middle of the little plaza, three rancheros, with scarfs of crimson and white silk suspended from their shoulders and immense tinsel crowns upon their heads, sat motionless on their horses, whose manes and tails were studded with rosettes of different colored paper and streamers of ribbons. These were, as I soon saw, part of the preparations for a sacred dramatic spectacle—a representation, sanctioned by the religious teachers of the people.

Against the wing-wall of the Hacienda del Mayo, which occupied one end of the plaza, was raised a platform, on which stood a table covered with scarlet cloth. A rude bower of cane-leaves, on one end of the platform, represented the manger of Bethlehem; while a cord, stretched from its top across the plaza to a hole in the front of the church, bore a large tinsel star, suspended by a hole in its centre. There was quite a crowd in the plaza, and very soon a procession appeared, coming up 240from the lower part of the village. The three kings took the lead; the Virgin mounted on an ass that gloried in a gilded saddle and rose-besprinkled mane and tail, followed them, led by the angel; and several women, with curious masks of paper, brought up the rear. Two characters of the harlequin sort—one a dog’s head on his shoulders and the other a bald-headed friar, with a huge hat hanging on his back—played all sorts of antics for the diversion of the crowd. After making the circuit of the plaza, the Virgin was taken to the platform, and entered the manger. King Herod took his seat at the scarlet table, with an attendant in blue coat and red sash, whom I took to be his Prime Minister. The three kings remained on their horses in front of the church; but between them and the platform, under the string on which the star was to slide, walked two men in long white robes and blue hoods, with parchment folios in their hands. These were the Wise Men of the East, as one 241might readily know from their solemn air, and the mysterious glances which they cast towards all quarters of the heavens.

In a little while, a company of women on the platform, concealed behind a curtain, sang an angelic chorus to the tune of “O pescator dell’onda.” At the proper moment, the Magi turned towards the platform, followed by the star, to which a string was conveniently attached, that it might be slid along the line. The three kings followed the star till it reached the manger, when they dismounted, and inquired for the sovereign whom it had led them to visit. They were invited upon the platform and introduced to Herod, as the only king; this did not seem to satisfy them, and, after some conversation, they retired. By this time the star had receded to the other end of the line, and commenced moving forward again, they following. The angel called them into the manger, where, upon their knees, they were shown a small wooden box, supposed 242to contain the sacred infant; they then retired, and the star brought them back no more. After this departure, King Herod declared himself greatly confused by what he had witnessed, and was very much afraid this newly-found king would weaken his power. Upon consultation with his Prime Minister, the Massacre of the Innocents was decided upon, as the only means of security.

The angel, on hearing this, gave warning to the Virgin, who quickly got down from the platform, mounted her bespangled donkey and hurried off. Herod’s Prime Minister directed all the children to be handed up for execution. A boy, in a ragged sarape, was caught and thrust forward; the Minister took him by the heels in spite of his kicking, and held his head on the table. The little brother and sister of the boy, thinking he was really to be decapitated, yelled at the top of their voices, in an agony of terror, which threw the crowd into a roar of laughter. King Herod 243brought down his sword with a whack on the table, and the Prime Minister, dipping his brush into a pot of white paint which stood before him, made a flaring cross on the boy’s face. Several other boys were caught and served likewise; and, finally, the two harlequins, whose kicks and struggles nearly shook down the platform. The procession then went off up the hill, followed by the whole population of the village. All the evening there were fandangos in the mesón, bonfires and rockets on the plaza, ringing of bells, and high mass in the church, with the accompaniment of two guitars, tinkling to lively polkas.

I left San Lionel early in the morning, rode thirty miles, to the village of Santa Ysabel, before breakfasting, and still had twenty-one miles to Ahuacatlan, my stopping-place for the night.

At the mesón of that place I found no one but the hostess and her two little sons; but the latter attended to my wants 244with a childish courtesy, and gravity withal, which were charming. The little fellows gave me the key to a room, saw my priéto properly cared for, and then sat down to entertain me till the tortillas were made and the eggs fried. They talked with much naïveté and a wisdom beyond their years. After supper they escorted me to my room, and took leave of me with “pasa ustê muy buena noche!”

My priéto began to feel the effects of hard travel and I therefore stopped for the night at the inn of Mochitilte, an immense building, sitting alone like a fortress among the hills. The key of a large, cheerless room, daubed with attempts at fresco ornament, was given to me, and a supper served up in a cold and gloomy hall. The wind blew chill from the heights on either side, and I found priéto’s blanket a welcome addition to my own, in the matter of bedding.

I slept soundly in my frescoed chamber, fed 245priéto, and was off by sunrise. In the little town of Magdalena, where I breakfasted, I gave priéto a sheaf of oja and two hours’ rest before starting for the town of Tequila. No quiere ustê tomar ausilio?—hay muchos ladrones en el camino (“Don’t you want a guard?—the road is full of robbers”), asked the vaquero of the house. “Every traveller,” he continued, “takes a guard as far as Tequila, for which he pays each man a dollar.” I told him I had no particular fear of the robbers, and would try it alone. “You are very courageous,” he remarked, “but you will certainly be attacked unless you take me as an ausilio.”

The road now entered a narrow pass, following the dry bed of a stream. Its many abrupt twists and windings afforded unequalled chances for the guerillas, especially as the pass was nearly three leagues in length, without a single habitation on the road.

After riding two hours in the hot afternoon sun, which shone down into the pass, a sudden 246turn disclosed to me a startling change of scenery. At my very feet lay the city of Tequila, so near that it seemed a stone might be thrown upon the square towers of its cathedral.

I rode down into the city where at the Mesón de San José—the only inn in the place—I found a large company of soldiers quartered for the night. The inner patio or courtyard, with its stables, well, and massive trough of hewn stone, was appropriated to their horses, and groups of swarthy privates, in dusty blue uniforms, filled the corridors. I obtained a dark room for myself, and a corner of one of the stalls for priéto, where I was obliged to watch until he had finished his corn, and keep off his military aggressors. The women were all absent, and I procured a few tortillas and a cup of pepper-sauce, with some difficulty. The place looked bleak and cheerless after dark, and for this reason, rather than for its cut-throat reputation, I made but a single stroll 247to the plaza, where a number of rancheros sat beside their piles of fruit and grain, in the light of smoky torches, hoisted on poles.

When I arose, the sun, just above the hills, was shining down the long street that led to Guadalajara. I had a journey of eighteen leagues to make, and it was time to be on the road; so, without feeding my horse, I saddled and rode away. A little more than four leagues across the plain, brought me to the town of Amatitlan; where, at a miserable mud building, dignified by the name of a mesón, I ordered breakfast, and a mano de oja for my horse. There was none in the house, but one of the neighbors began shelling a quantity of the ripe ears. When I came to pay, I gave her a Mexican dollar, which she soon brought back, saying that it had been pronounced counterfeit at a tienda, or shop, across the way. I then gave her another, which she returned, with the same story, after which I gave her a third, saying she must change it, for I would 248give her no more. The affairs of a few hours later caused me to remember and understand the meaning of this little circumstance. At the tienda, a number of fellows in greasy sarapes were grouped, drinking mescal, which they offered me. I refused to join them: “Es la ultima vez” (It is the last time), said one of them, though what he meant, I did not then know.

It was about ten in the forenoon when I left Amatitlan. The road entered on a lonely range of hills. The soil was covered with stunted shrubs and a growth of long yellow grass. I could see the way for half a league before and behind; there was no one in sight. I rode leisurely along, looking down into a deep ravine on my right and thinking to myself, “That is an excellent place for robbers to lie in wait; I think I had better load my pistol”—which I had fired off just before reaching Tequila. Scarcely had this thought passed through my mind, when a little bush beside 249the road seemed to rise up; I turned suddenly, and, in a breath, the two barrels of a musket were before me, so near and surely aimed, that I could almost see the bullets at the bottom. The weapon was held by a ferocious looking native, dressed in a pink calico shirt and white pantaloons; on the other side of me stood a second, covering me with another double-barrelled musket, and a little in the rear appeared a third. I had walked like an unsuspecting mouse, into the very teeth of the trap laid for me.

“Down with your pistols!” cried the first, in a hurried whisper. So silently and suddenly had all this taken place, that I sat still a moment, hardly realizing my situation. “Down with your pistols and dismount!” was repeated, and this time the barrels came a little nearer my breast. Thus solicited, I threw down my single pistol—the more readily because it was harmless—and got off my horse. Having secured the pistol, the robbers 250went to the rear, never for a moment losing their aim. They then ordered me to lead my horse off the road, by a direction which they pointed out. We went down the side of the ravine for about a quarter of a mile to a patch of bushes and tall grass, out of view from the road, where they halted, one of them returning, apparently to keep watch. The others, deliberately levelling their pieces at me, commanded me to lie down on my face—“la boca à tierra!” I cannot say that I felt alarmed: it had always been a part of my belief that the shadow of Death falls before him—that the man doomed to die by violence feels the chill before the blow has been struck. As I never felt more positively alive than at that moment, I judged my time had not yet come. I pulled off my coat and vest, at their command, and threw them on the grass, saying: “Take what you want, but don’t detain me long.” The fellow in a pink calico shirt, who appeared to have some authority over the other two, 251picked up my coat, and, one after the other, turned all the pockets inside out. I felt a secret satisfaction at his blank look when he opened my purse and poured the few dollars it contained into a pouch he carried in his belt. “How is it,” said he, “that you have no more money?” “I don’t own much,” I answered, “but there is quite enough for you.” I had, in fact, barely sufficient in coin for a ride to Mexico, the most of my funds having been invested in a draft on that city. I believe I did not lose more than twenty-five dollars by this attack. “At least,” I said to the robbers, “you’ll not take the papers”—among which was my draft. “No,” he replied—“no me valen nada.” (They are worth nothing to me.)

Having searched my coat, he took a hunting-knife which I carried, examined the blade and point, placed his piece against a bush behind him and came up to me, saying, as he held the knife above my head: “Now put your hands behind you, and don’t move, or I shall 252strike.” The other then laid down his musket and advanced to bind me. They were evidently adepts in the art: all their movements were so carefully timed, that any resistance would have been against dangerous odds. I did not consider my loss sufficient to justify any desperate risk, and did as they commanded. With the end of my horse’s lariat, they bound my wrists firmly together and having me thus secure, sat down to finish their inspection more leisurely. My feelings during this proceeding were oddly heterogeneous—at one moment burning with rage and shame at having neglected the proper means of defence, and the next, ready to burst into a laugh at the decided novelty of my situation. My blanket having been spread on the grass, everything was emptied into it. The robbers had an eye for the curious and incomprehensible, as well as the useful. They spared all my letters, books, and papers, but took my thermometer, compass, and card-case, together with a number 253of drawing-pencils, some soap (a thing the Mexicans never use), and what few little articles of the toilette I carried with me. A bag hanging at my saddle-bow, containing ammunition, went at once, as well as a number of oranges and cigars in my pockets, the robbers leaving me one of the latter, as a sort of consolation for my loss.

Between Mazatlan and Tepic, I had carried a doubloon in the hollow of each foot, covered by the stocking. It was well they had been spent for priéto, for they would else have certainly been discovered. The villains unbuckled my spurs, jerked off my boots and examined the bottoms of my pantaloons, ungirthed the saddle and shook out the blankets, scratched the heavy guard of the bit to see whether it was silver, and then, apparently satisfied that they had made the most of me, tied everything together in a corner of my best blanket. “Now,” said the leader, when this was done, “shall we take your horse?” This 254question was of course a mockery; but I thought I would try an experiment, and so answered in a very decided tone: “No; you shall not. I must have him; I am going to Guadalajara, and I cannot get there without him. Besides, he would not answer at all for your business.” He made no reply, but took up his piece, which I noticed was a splendid article and in perfect order, walked a short distance towards the road, and made a signal to the third robber. Suddenly he came back, saying: “Perhaps you may get hungry before night—here is something to eat;” and with that he placed one of my oranges and half a dozen tortillas on the grass beside me. “Mil gracias,” said I, “but how am I to eat without hands?” The other then coming up, he said, as they all three turned to leave me: “Now we are going; we have more to carry than we had before we met you; adios!” This was insulting—but there are instances under which an insult must be swallowed.

255I waited till no more of them could be seen, and then turned to my horse, who stood quietly at the other end of the lariat: “Now, priéto,” I asked, “how are we to get out of this scrape?” He said nothing, but I fancied I could detect an inclination to laugh in the twitching of his nether lip. However, I went to work at extricating myself—a difficult matter, as the rope was tied in several knots. After tugging a long time, I made a twist which the India-rubber man might have envied, and to the great danger of my spine, succeeded in forcing my body through my arms. Then, loosening the knots with my teeth, in half an hour I was free again. As I rode off, I saw the three robbers at some distance, on the other side of the ravine.

It is astonishing how light one feels after being robbed. A sensation of complete independence came over me; my horse, even, seemed to move more briskly, after being relieved of my blankets. I tried to comfort 256myself with the thought that this was a genuine adventure, worth one experience—that, perhaps, it was better to lose a few dollars than have even a robber’s blood on my head; but it would not do. The sense of the outrage and indignity was strongest, and my single desire was the unchristian one of revenge. In spite of the threats of the robbers, I looked in their faces sufficiently to know them again, in whatever part of the world I might meet them. I recognized the leader—a thick-set, athletic man, with a short, black beard—as one of the persons I had seen lounging about the tienda, in Amatitlan, which explained the artifice that led me to display more money than was prudent. It was evidently a preconceived plan to plunder me at all hazards, since, coming from the Pacific, I might be supposed to carry a booty worth fighting for.

I rode on rapidly, over broad, barren hills, covered with patches of chapparal, and gashed with deep arroyos. These are the usual hiding-places 257of the robbers, and I kept a sharp lookout, inspecting every rock and clump of cactus with a peculiar interest. About three miles from the place of my encounter, I passed a spot where there had been a desperate assault eighteen months previous. The robbers came upon a camp of soldiers and traders in the night, and a fight ensued, in which eleven of the latter were killed. They lie buried by the roadside, with a few black crosses to mark the spot, while directly above them stands a rough gibbet, on which three of the robbers, who were afterwards taken, swing in chains. I confess to a decided feeling of satisfaction, when I saw that three, at least, had obtained their deserts. Their long black hair hung over their faces, their clothes were dropping in tatters, and their skeleton-bones protruded through the dry and shrunken flesh. The thin, pure air of the table-land had prevented decomposition, and the vultures and buzzards had been kept off by the nearness of 258the bodies to the road. It is said, however, that neither wolves nor vultures will touch a dead Mexican, his flesh being always too highly seasoned by the red-pepper he has eaten. A large sign was fastened above this ghastly spectacle, with the words, in large letters: ASI CASTIGA LA LEY LADRON Y EL ASESINO. (“Thus the law punishes the robber and the assassin.”)

I hurried my priéto, now nearly exhausted, over the dusty plain. I had ascended beyond the tropical heats, and, as night drew on, the temperature was fresh almost to chilliness. The robbers had taken my cravat and vest, and the cold wind of the mountains, blowing upon my bare neck gave me a violent nervous pain and toothache, which was worse than the loss of my money. Priéto panted and halted with fatigue, for he had already traveled fifty miles; but I was obliged to reach Guadalajara, and by plying a stick in lieu of the abstracted spur, kept him to his pace. 259An hour and a half brought me to the suburbs of Guadalajara.

I was riding at random among the dark adobe houses, when an old padre, in black cassock and immense shovel-hat, accosted me. “Estrangero?” he inquired; “Si, padre,” said I. “But,” he continued, “do you know that it is very dangerous to be here alone?”—then, dropping his voice to a whisper, he added: “Guadalajara is full of robbers; you must be careful how you wander about after night; do you know where to go?” I answered in the negative. “Then,” said he, “go to the Mesón de la Mercéd; they are honest people there, and you will be perfectly safe; come with me and I’ll show you the way.” I followed him for some distance, till we were near the place, when he put me in the care of “Ave Maria Santissima,” and left. I found the house without difficulty, and rode into the courtyard. The people, who seemed truly honest, sympathized sincerely for my mishap, and 260thought it a great marvel that my life had been spared. For myself, when I lay down on the tiled floor I involuntarily said: “Aye, now I am in Guadalajara; the more fool I; when I was at home I was in a better place; but travelers must be content.”