Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 by Various

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Outina was nowhere to be seen. At length they learned that he was in one
of the small huts adjacent. Several of the officers went to him,
complaining of the slow payment of his ransom. The kindness of his
captors at Fort Caroline seemed to have won his heart. He replied, that
such was the rage of his subjects that he could no longer control
them,--that the French were in danger,--and that he had seen arrows
stuck in the ground by the side of the path, in token that war was
declared. Their peril was thickening hourly, and Ottigny resolved to
regain the boats while there was yet time.

On the twenty-seventh of July, at nine in the morning, he set his men in
order. Each shouldering a sack of corn, they marched through the rows of
squalid huts that surrounded the great lodge, and out betwixt the
interfolding extremities of the palisade that encircled the town. Before
them stretched a wide avenue, three or four hundred paces long, flanked
by a natural growth of trees,--one of those curious monuments of native
industry to which allusion has been already made. Here Ottigny halted
and formed his line of march. Arlac with eight matchlockmen was sent in
advance, and flanking parties thrown into the woods on either side.
Ottigny told his soldiers, that, if the Indians meant to attack them,
they were probably in ambush at the other end of the avenue. He was
right. As Arlac's party reached the spot, the whole pack gave tongue at
once. The war-whoop quavered through the startled air, and a tempest of
stone-headed arrows clattered against the breastplates of the French, or
tore, scorching like fire, through their unprotected limbs. They stood
firm, and sent back their shot so steadily that several of the
assailants were laid dead, and the rest, two or three hundred in number,
gave way as Ottigny came up with his men.

They moved on for a quarter of a mile through a country, as it seems,
comparatively open; when again the war-cry pealed in front, and three
hundred savages came bounding to the assault. Their whoops were echoed
from the rear. It was the party whom Arlac had just repulsed, who,
leaping and showering their arrows, were rushing on with a ferocity
restrained only by their lack of courage. There was no panic. The men
threw down their corn-bags, and took to their weapons. They blew their
matches, and, under two excellent officers, stood well to their work.
The Indians, on their part, showed a good discipline, after their
fashion, and were perfectly under the control of their chiefs. With
cries that imitated the yell of owls, the scream of cougars, and the
howl of wolves, they ran up in successive bands, let fly their arrows,
and instantly fell back, giving place to others. At the sight of the
levelled arquebuse, they dropped flat on the earth. Whenever, sword in
hand, the French charged upon them, they fled like foxes through the
woods; and whenever the march was resumed, the arrows were showering
again upon the flanks and rear of the retiring band. The soldiers coolly
picked them up and broke them as they fell. Thus, beset with swarming
savages, the handful of Frenchmen pushed their march till nightfall,
fighting as they went.

The Indians gradually drew off, and the forest was silent again. Two of
the French had been killed and twenty-two wounded, several so severely
that they were supported to the boats with the utmost difficulty. Of the
corn, two bags only had been brought off.

Famine and desperation now reigned at Fort Caroline. The Indians had
killed two of the carpenters; hence long delay in the finishing of the
new ship. They would not wait, but resolved to put to sea in the Breton
and the brigantine. The problem was to find food for the voyage; for
now, in their extremity, they roasted and ate snakes, a delicacy in
which the neighborhood abounded.

On the third of August, Laudonniere, perturbed and oppressed, was
walking on the hill, when, looking seaward, he saw a sight that shot a
thrill through his exhausted frame. A great ship was standing towards
the river's mouth. Then another came in sight, and another, and another.
He called the tidings to the fort below. Then languid forms rose and
danced for joy, and voices, shrill with weakness, joined in wild
laughter and acclamation.

A doubt soon mingled with their joy. Who were the strangers? Were they
the succors so long hoped in vain? or were they Spaniards bringing steel
and fire? They were neither. The foremost was a stately ship, of seven
hundred tons, a mighty burden at that day. She was named the Jesus; and
with her were three smaller vessels, the Solomon, the Tiger, and the
Swallow. Their commander was "a right worshipful and valiant
knight,"--for so the record styles him,--a pious man and a prudent, to
judge him by the orders he gave his crew, when, ten months before, he
sailed out of Plymouth:--"Serve God daily, love one another, preserve
your victuals, beware of fire, and keepe good companie." Nor were the
crew unworthy the graces of their chief; for the devout chronicler of
the voyage ascribes their deliverance from the perils of the seas to
"the Almightie God, who never suffereth his Elect to perish."

Who, then, were they, this chosen band, serenely conscious of a special
Providential care? Apostles of the cross, bearing the word of peace to
benighted heathendom? They were the pioneers of that detested traffic
destined to inoculate with its black infection nations yet unborn,
parent of discord and death, with the furies in their train, filling
half a continent with the tramp of armies and the clash of fratricidal
swords. Their chief was Sir John Hawkins, father of the English
slave-trade.

He had been to the coast of Guinea, where he bought and kidnapped a
cargo of slaves. These he had sold to the jealous Spaniards of
Hispaniola, forcing them, with sword, matchlock, and culverin, to grant
him free trade, and then to sign testimonials that he had borne himself
as became a peaceful merchant. Prospering greatly by this summary
commerce, but distressed by the want of water, he had put into the River
of May to obtain a supply.

Among the rugged heroes of the British marine, Sir John stood in the
front rank, and along with Drake, his relative, is extolled as "a man
borne for the honour of the English name.... Neither did the West of
England yeeld such an Indian Neptunian paire as were these two Ocean
peeres, Hawkins and Drake." So writes the old chronicler, Purchas, and
all England was of his thinking. A hardy seaman, a bold fighter,
overbearing towards equals, but kind, in his bluff way, to those beneath
him, rude in speech, somewhat crafty withal, and avaricious, he buffeted
his way to riches and fame, and died at last full of years and honor. As
for the abject humanity stowed between the reeking decks of the ship
Jesus, they were merely in his eyes so many black cattle tethered for
the market. Queen Elizabeth had an interest in the venture, and received
her share of the sugar, pearls, ginger, and hides which the vigorous
measures of Sir John gained from his Spanish customers.

Hawkins came up the river in a pinnace, and landed at Fort Caroline,
"accompanied," says Laudonniere, "with gentlemen honorably apparelled,
yet unarmed." Between the Huguenots and the English there was a double
tie of sympathy. Both hated priests, and both hated Spaniards. Wakening
from their apathetic misery, the starveling garrison hailed him as a
deliverer. Yet Hawkins secretly rejoiced, when he learned their purpose
to abandon Florida; for, though, not to tempt his cupidity, they hid
from him the secret of their Appalachian gold-mine, he coveted for his
royal mistress the possession of this rich domain. He shook his head,
however, when he saw the vessels in which they proposed to embark, and
offered them all a free passage to France in his own ships. This, from
obvious motives of honor and prudence, Laudonniere declined, upon which
Hawkins offered to lend or sell to him one of his smaller vessels.

Hereupon arose a great clamor. A mob of soldiers and artisans beset
Laudonniere's chamber, threatening loudly to desert him, and take
passage with Hawkins, unless the offer of the latter were accepted. The
commandant accordingly resolved to buy the vessel. The generous slaver,
whose reputed avarice nowise appears in the transaction, desired him to
set his own price; and, in place of money, took the cannon of the fort,
with other articles now useless to their late owners. He sent them, too,
a gift of wine and biscuit, and supplied them with provision for the
voyage, receiving in payment Laudonniere's note,--"for which," adds the
latter, "I am until this present indebted to him." With a friendly
leave-taking he returned to his ships and stood out to sea, leaving
golden opinions among the grateful inmates of Fort Caroline.

Before the English top-sails had sunk beneath the horizon, the colonists
bestirred themselves to depart. In a few days their preparations were
made. They waited only for a fair wind. It was long in coming, and
meanwhile their troubled fortunes assumed a new phase.

On the twenty-eighth of August, the two captains, Vasseur and Verdier,
came in with tidings of an approaching squadron. Again the fort was wild
with excitement. Friends or foes, French or Spaniards, succor or death:
betwixt these were their hopes and fears divided. With the following
morning, they saw seven barges rowing up the river, bristling with
weapons and crowded with men in armor. The sentries on the bluff
challenged, and received no answer. One of them fired at the advancing
boats. Still no response. Laudonniere was almost defenceless. He had
given his heavier cannon to Hawkins, and only two field-pieces were
left. They were levelled at the foremost boats, and the word was about
to be given, when a voice from among the strangers called that they were
French, commanded by John Ribaut.

At the eleventh hour, the long-looked-for succors were come. Ribaut had
been commissioned to sail with seven ships for Florida. A disorderly
concourse of disbanded soldiers, mixed with artisans and their families,
and young nobles weary of a two-years' peace, were mustered at the port
of Dieppe, and embarked, to the number of three hundred men, bearing
with them all things thought necessary to a prosperous colony.

No longer in dread of the Spaniards, the colonists saluted the
new-comers with the cannon by which a moment before they had hoped to
blow them out of the water. Laudonniere issued from his stronghold to
welcome them, and regaled them with what cheer he might. Ribaut was
present, conspicuous by his long beard, the astonishment of the Indians;
and here, too, were officers, old friends of Laudonniere. Why, then, had
they approached in the attitude of enemies? The mystery was soon
explained; for they expressed to the commandant their pleasure at
finding that the charges made against him had proved false. He begged to
know more, on which Ribaut, taking him aside, told him that the
returning ships had brought home letters filled with accusations of
arrogance, tyranny, cruelty, and a purpose of establishing an
independent command: accusations which he now saw to be unfounded, but
which had been the occasion of his unusual and startling precaution. He
gave him, too, a letter from the Admiral Coligny. In brief, but
courteous terms, it required him to resign his command, and invited his
return to France to clear his name from the imputations cast upon it.
Ribaut warmly urged him to remain; but Laudonniere declined his friendly
proposals.

Worn in body and mind, mortified and wounded, he soon fell ill again. A
peasant-woman attended him, brought over, he says, to nurse the sick and
take charge of the poultry, and of whom Le Moyne also speaks as a
servant, but who had been made the occasion of additional charges
against him, most offensive to the austere Admiral.

Stores were landed, tents were pitched, women and children were sent on
shore, feathered Indians mingled in the throng, and the sunny borders of
the River of May swarmed with busy life. "But, lo, how oftentimes
misfortune doth search and pursue us, even then when we thinke to be at
rest!" exclaims the unhappy Laudonniere. Behind the light and cheer of
renovated hope, a cloud of blackest omen was gathering in the east.

At half-past eleven on the night of Tuesday, the fourth of September,
the crew of Ribaut's flag-ship, anchored on the still sea outside the
bar, saw a huge hulk, grim with the throats of cannon, drifting towards
them through the gloom; and from its stern rolled on the sluggish air
the portentous banner of Spain.

Here opens a wilder act of this eventful drama. At another day we shall
lift the curtain on its fierce and bloody scenes.

* * * * *

SEAWARD.

TO ----.

How long it seems since that mild April night,
When, leaning from the window, you and I
Heard, clearly ringing from the shadowy bight,
The loon's unearthly cry!

Southwest the wind blew; million little waves
Ran rippling round the point in mellow tune;
But mournful, like the voice of one who raves,
That laughter of the loon.

We called to him, while blindly through the haze
Upclimbed the meagre moon behind us, slow,
So dim, the fleet of boats we scarce could trace,
Moored lightly, just below.

We called, and, lo, he answered! Half in fear,
I sent the note back. Echoing rock and bay
Made melancholy music far and near;
Slowly it died away.

That schooner, you remember? Flying ghost!
Her canvas catching every wandering beam,
Aerial, noiseless, past the glimmering coast
She glided like a dream.

Would we were leaning from your window now,
Together calling to the eerie loon,
The fresh wind blowing care from either brow,
This sumptuous night of June!

So many sighs load this sweet inland air,
'T is hard to breathe, nor can we find relief;
However lightly touched, we all must share
The nobleness of grief.

But sighs are spent before they reach your ear,
Vaguely they mingle with the water's rune;
No sadder sound salutes you than the clear,
Wild laughter of the loon.

* * * * *

SIDE-GLANCES AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY.

It happened to me once to "assist" at the celebration of Class-Day at
Harvard University. Class-Day is the peculiar institution of the Senior
Class, and marks its completion of college study and release from
college rules. It is also an institution peculiar, I believe, to
Harvard, and I was somewhat curious to observe its ceremonials, besides
feeling a not entirely _unawful_ interest in being introduced for the
first time to the _arcana_ of that renowned Alma Mater.

She has set up her Lares and Penates in a fine old grove, or a fine old
grove and green have sprouted up around her, as the case may be. At all
events, there is sufficient groundwork for any quantity of euphuism
about "classic shades," "groves of Academe," _et cetera_. Trollope had
his fling at the square brick buildings; but it was a fling that they
richly deserved, for they are in very deed as ugly as it is possible to
conceive,--angular, formal, stiff, windowy, bricky,--and the farther in
you go, the worse it grows. Why, I pray to know, as the first inquiry
suggested by Class-Day, is it necessary for boys' schools to be placed
without the pale of civilization? Do boys take so naturally to the
amenities of life that they can safely dispense with the conditions of
amenity? When I entered those brick boxes, I felt as if I were going
into a stable. Wood-work dingy, unpainted, gashed, scratched; windows
dingy and dim; walls dingy and gray and smoked; everything unhomelike,
unattractive, narrow, and rickety. Think, now, of taking a boy away from
his home, from his mother and sisters, from carpets and curtains and all
the softening influences of cultivated taste, and turning him loose with
dozens of other boys into a congeries of pens like this! Who wonders
that he comes out a boor? I felt a sinking at the heart in climbing up
those narrow, uncouth staircases. We talk about education. We boast of
having the finest system in the world. Harvard is, if not the most
distinguished, certainly among the first institutions in the country;
but, in my opinion, formed in the entry of the first Harvard house I
entered, Harvard has not begun to hit the nail on the head. Education!
Do you call it education, to put a boy into a hole, and work out of him
a certain amount of mathematics, and work into him a certain number of
languages? Is a man dressed, because one arm has a spotless wristband,
unquestionable sleeve-buttons, a handsome sleeve, and a well-fitting
glove at the end, while the man is out at the other elbow, patched on
both knees, and down at the heels? Should we consider Nature a success,
if she concerned herself only with carrying nutriment to the stomach,
and left the heart and the lungs and the liver and the nerves to shift
for themselves? Yet so do we, educating boys in these dens called
colleges. We educate the mind, the memory, the intellectual faculties;
but the manners, the courtesies, the social tastes, the greater part of
what goes to make life happy and genial, not to say good, we leave out
of view. People talk about the "awkward age" of boys,--the age in which
their hands and feet trouble them, and in which they are a social burden
to themselves and their friends. But one age need be no more awkward
than another. I have seen boys that were gentlemen from the cradle to
the grave,--almost; certainly from the time they ceased to be babies
till they passed altogether out of my sight. Let boys have the
associations, the culture, the training, and the treatment of gentlemen,
and I do not believe there will be a single moment of their lives in
which they will be clowns.

And among the first necessities are the surroundings of a gentleman.
When a man is grown up, he can live in a sty and not be a pig; but turn
a horde of boys in, and when they come out they will root out. A man is
strong and stiff. His inward, inherent power, toughened by exposure and
fortified by knowledge, overmasters opposing circumstances. He can
neglect the prickles and assume the rose of his position. He stands
scornfully erect amid the grovelling influences that would pull him
down. It may perhaps be, also, that here and there a boy, with a strong
native predilection to refinement, shall be eclectic, and, with the
water-lily's instinct, select from coarse contiguities only that which
will nourish a delicate soul. But human nature in its infancy is usually
a very susceptible material. It grows as it is trained. It will be rude,
if it is left rude, and fine only as it is wrought finely. Educate a boy
to tumbled hair and grimy hands, and he will go tumbled and grimy to his
grave. Put a hundred boys together where they will have the
appurtenances of a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of
the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am
not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I
would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot
into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the
heights of true manhood than the clumsiness of the clod, but I think it
is just as near. I would have college rooms, college entrances, and all
college domains cleanly and attractive. I would, in the first place,
have every rough board planed, and painted in soft and cheerful tints. I
would have the walls pleasantly colored, or covered with delicate, or
bright, or warm-hued paper. The floor should be either tiled, or hidden
under carpets, durable, if possible, at any rate, decent. Straw or rope
matting is better than brown, yawning boards. There you have things put
upon an entirely new basis. At no immoderate expense there is a new sky,
a new earth, a new horizon. If a boy is rich and can furnish his room
handsomely, the furnishings will not shame the room and its vicinity. If
he is poor and can provide but cheaply, he will still have a comely home
provided for him by the Mater who then will be Alma to some purpose.

Do you laugh at all this? So did Sarah laugh at the angels, but the
angels had the right of it for all that.

I am told that it would all be useless,--that the boys would deface and
destroy, till the last state of the buildings would be worse than the
first. I do not believe one word of it. It is inferred that they would
deface, because they deface now. But what is it that they deface?
Deformity. And who blames them? You see a rough board, and, by natural
instinct, you dive into it with your jackknife. A base bare wall is a
standing invitation to energetic and unruly pencils. Give the boys a
little elegance and the tutors a little tact, and I do not believe there
would be any trouble. If I had a thousand dollars,--as I did have once,
but it is gone: shall I ever look upon its like again?--I would not be
afraid to stake the whole of it upon the good behavior of college
students,--that is, if I could have the managing of them. I would make
them "a speech," when they came back at the end of one of their long
vacations, telling them what had been done, why it had been done, and
the objections that had been urged against doing it. Then I would put
the matter entirely into their hands. I would appeal solely to their
honor. I would repose in them so much confidence that they could by no
possibility betray it. We don't trust people half enough. We hedge
ourselves about with laws and locks and deeds and bonds, and neglect the
weightier matters of inherent right and justice that lie in every bosom.

It may be thought hardly polite to accept hospitality and then go away
and inveigh against the hospital; but my animadversions, you will do me
the justice to observe, are not aimed at my entertainers. I am marauding
for, not against them.

* * * * *

The Oration and Poem form the first public features of Class-Day, but,
arriving late, I could only eddy on the surge that swept around the
door. Strains of distant eloquence would occasionally float musically to
my ear; now and then a single word would steer clear of the thousands of
heads and come into my port unharmed. Frequent waves of laughter beat
and broke into the vestibule; but what is more "trying" to a frail
temper than laughter in which one cannot join? So we tarried long enough
to mark the fair faces and fine dresses, and then rambled under the old
trees till the hour for the "collation" came; and this is the second
point on which I purpose to dwell.

Each member of the Senior Class prepares a banquet,--sometimes
separately and sometimes in clubs, at an expense varying from fifty to
five hundred dollars,--to which he invites as many friends as he
chooses, or as are available. The banquet is quite as rich, varied, and
elegant as you find at ordinary evening parties, and the occasion is a
merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there may be
unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of
seventy-five, in a country like America, it is quite probable that a
certain proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such a custom
necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some must
have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think this
elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible inconvenience.
The mere expense of books and board, tuition and clothing, cannot be met
without strict economy and much parental and family sacrifice. And at
the end of it all, when every nerve has been strained, and must be
strained harder still before the man can be considered fairly on his
feet and able to run his own race in life, comes this new call for
entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a custom.
There is no college by-law, I suppose, which prescribes a valedictory
_symposium_. Probably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream
beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a custom is as
rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character of the young
men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in their fourth
collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the custom, if it
involved personal sacrifice at home,--whether there was generally
sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the class, whether
there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry, high-breeding, to make the
omission of this party-giving unnoticeable or not unpleasant. I by no
means say that the inability of a portion of the students to entertain
their friends sumptuously should prevent those who are able from doing
so. As the world is, some will be rich and some will be poor. This is a
fact which they have to face the moment they go out into the world; and
the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its real bearings and
worth or worthlessness, the better. Boys are usually old enough by the
time they are graduated to understand and take philosophically such a
distinction. Nor do I admit that poor people have any right to be sore
on the subject of their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot
comprehend, with which I have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and
of which I have no tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. I think it
is an essentially vulgar feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has
any exaltation of life, any real elevation of character, any
self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a shame. One may be
annoyed at the inconveniences and impatient of the restraints of
poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be thought poor, to
resort to shifts, not for the sake of being comfortable or elegant, but
of seeming to be above the necessity of shifts, is an indication of an
inferior mind, whether it dwell in prince or in peasant. The man who
does it shows that he has not in his own opinion character enough to
stand alone. He must be supported by adventitious circumstances, or he
must fall. Nobody, therefore, need ever expect to receive sympathy from
me in recounting the social pangs or slights of poverty. You never can
be slighted, if you do not slight yourself. People may attempt to do
it, but their shafts have no barb. You turn it all into natural history.
It is a psychological phenomenon, a study, something to be analyzed,
classified, reasoned from, and bent to your own convenience, but not to
be taken to heart. It amuses you; it interests you; it adds to your
stock of facts; it makes life curious and valuable: but if you suffer
from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you
deserve to be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have
become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live
chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach
maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding and depend upon their
own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and
prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of
attainments and abilities. If I live a thousand years, I do not believe
I shall ever do a more virtuous deed than I did long ago in staying at
home for the sake of a quarter of a dollar when the rest of the school
went to see Tom Thumb, the late bewritten bridegroom. I call it
virtuous, because I had the quarter and could have gone, and could not
explain the reason why I did not go. And though a senior class in
Harvard College may reasonably be supposed to be beyond the eminent
domain of Tom Thumb and quarter-dollars, the principle is precisely the
same,--only the temptation, I suppose, is much stronger, as the stake is
larger. Have they self-poise enough to refrain from these festive
expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to
refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have
they nobility and generosity and largeness of soul enough, while
abstaining themselves for conscience sake, to share in the plans and
sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to
look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at
the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to
selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence,
and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there
such a state of public opinion and usage in college that this custom is
equally honored in the breach and in the observance?

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