Part 16

“Is the poor gentleman much hurt?” asked one of the young ladies in a sweet kind voice. Ichabod, as bold as a lion in general, was awkward and bashful when addressed by a lady, and seemed to be weighing the words of his answer, when I felt it necessary to reply for myself. On discovering that I was a stranger in the land, General Warfield insisted that I should accompany the party to his house, just across the Missouri border, where my injured thumb should receive every attention, and where he and his family would gladly welcome me. Yielding willingly to this hospitable persuasion, I permitted Ichabod and one of the negroes to help me to remount my mustang, and we rode towards the Missouri boundary. The family whose acquaintance I had just made in so singular a way, bore no similarity to the travelling Americans whom it had previously fallen to my lot to encounter. General Warfield, his son, daughters, and nephew, had the well-bred air and unobtrusive demeanour which I had hitherto deemed exclusively insular. They asked me no abrupt questions as to my station or errand: they indulged in no diatribes against my country, nor in any extravagant laudations of their own; and I might have fancied myself the guest of some long-descended family at home, but for the wild scenes and unusual objects that met my eye as we rode along. It turned out that General Warfield, a retired military officer, _not_ a militiaman, was of an old Virginian family, and had migrated to the newer soil of Missouri six years ago. There his children had grown to be men and women, in the hardy habits of that wild country, a mere outpost of civilisation; and indeed they were returning from a hunting expedition into Iowa when they stumbled upon me in my prostrate condition. Three hours’ ride brought us to the General’s house, a large building of mingled wood and stone, with a pretty garden on one hand, and on the other the farm-buildings, the corrals for horses and cattle, and the negro huts. Within I found furniture of old-fashioned dark mahogany, partridge-wood, and bird’s-eye maple, old family pictures, pretty knickknacks picked up during a three years’ residence in Europe, and the massive silver plate which had been handed down from father to son ever since the ancestral Warfield settled in Virginia in the reign of Charles I. I never knew anything so _un_-American, in respect to the usual standard of comparison, as the mode of life, the bearing, and tastes, of General Warfield and his high-spirited and amiable children. Here was no exaggeration of sentiment, no outrageous national vanity, no rude indifference to the feelings of others, no prying, no pretension. I felt, as I conversed with them, how wide was the gulf that severed the North from the South. It was not diversity of interest alone, but diversity of habits, principles, and aspirations. Wide apart in heart and mind as the poles from each other, the citizens of the opposite ends of the Union had but the feeble Federal bond to delay that violent disruption and severance of which, even then, the signs of the times gave fearful warning. But it is not my purpose to linger on the happy days I spent beneath the roof of my kind hosts. Let me rather relate the information I received from General Warfield, when his friendly hospitality had caused me to confide to his ear my errand to America, and the ruin I had too much reason to anticipate.

“My dear sir,” said the General, “I am glad you have told me of this—very glad. I can help you in this matter.”

The General then proceeded to tell me that, in the first year of his residence in Missouri, Harvey, a notorious speculator, had begun the railway whose miserable wreck I had visited. He had given it up for want of funds, had become insolvent, and was reputed to have died in Texas. That he had received a real concession of land and authentic charters from the State legislatures, was undoubted. But the concession had been clogged by the express stipulation, that in two years Harvey should have a hundred and fifty miles in working order, and that the whole should be completed in four years. The condition not having been complied with, the concession was null and void. The Great Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway Company, had no right to a corporate existence.

“But,” said I, “I of course perused the papers. I saw no mention of such a conditional clause.”

The General smiled.

“Depend upon it, Mr Bulkeley,” said he, “that erasure and forgery have been practised to make the old deeds sufficiently tempting to effect the only purpose their present holders have in view—that of raising cash in the London market. Colonel Sling—who, by the way, is no more a colonel, even of militia, than black Cæsar there—is no novice at fraud. He was convicted at Jefferson city of a like offence, and I was present at his trial, and heard some of his antecedents; indeed, I was a witness in the case. But if you will take my advice, you will hasten back to England, and, if possible, save the funds in the hands of this confederate of his, this Bett, before the pair can abscond with their gains. Do not parley, but apply to the police at once, if, indeed, it be not too late.”

Finally, General Warfield was so good as to accompany me to the chief town of Iowa State, where he introduced me to the legal authorities, by whom his statements were fully confirmed, and the Nauvoo and Nebraska declared a transparent swindle. In this town we suddenly came on “Colonel” Sling, who had come out by the next packet, and was tracking me, no doubt in the hope of hoodwinking or silencing me in some mode or other. But when he saw the General, his swaggering air collapsed, a guilty crimson suffused his yellow cheeks, and he slunk away and entered a tavern without accosting us. And yet when, after giving hearty thanks to my kindly Virginian friend, I hurried to embark at New York, I had the honour of finding Colonel Coriolanus Sling, my fellow-passenger. He now ventured to address me, but by this time I was on my guard against his specious eloquence, and he retired with an air of mingled effrontery and shame. At Liverpool, as I took my seat in the train, which I did without the loss of a moment, I saw Colonel Sling dart into the telegraph office. So busy was my brain with what was before me, that I did not, during the principal part of the journey, attach any particular meaning to this proceeding of my treacherous ally. When I _did_ think of its probable object, I struck my forehead, and could have cursed my blind stupidity, my dulness of conception. After all my haste, scampering as quickly as possible to the station at Liverpool, was I to be too late, after all? Was this Yankee rascal to be permitted to warn his brother knave in London through my inattention, and was the paid-up capital to fatten the two harpies whose tools we had been? Heavy misgivings filled my heart as I arrived in London, hurried to Scotland Yard, and requested that a detective policeman might at once be ordered to accompany me to the residence of Dr Titus A. C. Bett, cashier to the Nauvoo and Nebraska Company. Luckily I was a man of credit and character in the city; my request was granted instantly, and off whirled the hansom cab, as fast as hansom cab could be impelled by the most lavish bribe, on its way to Piccadilly, bearing me and a quiet man with a resolute, thoughtful face, in plain clothes. Ha! there is a cab waiting at the door as we jump out—I hot and breathless, the policeman cool and steady. The gaping servant-girl belonging to the lodgings comes quickly at our knock. It is morning yet, early morning, from a London point of view—not much after nine.

“Is Dr Bett in?”

“Yes, sir,” replies the girl, “but he’s just a-going. He sent me out for the cab five minutes ago, and he’s called away so sudden he won’t take breakfast.”

“Ah, indeed!” says the detective; “telegram, I suppose, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the maid, “and he swore hawful because I hadn’t woke him up directly it came, two hour ago, along with the milk, but I didn’t dare, ’cause he always stops out late, and always swears and scolds if I bring up his hot water before nine o’clock.”

I could have hugged that maid, Mary Ann, Eliza, or Susan, no matter what, for she was my preserver—a most valuable but unwitting ally. I did give her a sovereign as I bade her show us up. We found the Doctor, unshaved, half dressed, tugging at his boots, and with a leather dressing-case weighty with gold and notes lying on the table at his elbow. We rushed in with scant ceremony. The detective tapped him on the shoulder and took him into custody with the magic formula of uttering her Majesty’s name. The bubble burst, but the funds were saved; and after some expense, ridicule, and trouble, we were able to return their money to the shareholders, and I washed my hands most gladly of my American investment.

THE LANDSCAPE OF ANCIENT ITALY, AS DELINEATED IN THE POMPEIAN PAINTINGS.

“Und aber nach zweitausend Jahren Kam ich desselbigen Wegs gefahren.”

“Et puis nous irons voir, car décadence et deuil Viennent toujours après la puissance et l’orgueil, Nous irons voir....”

We are so much accustomed to depend on the four great literary languages for the whole body of our information and amusement, that it occurs to few to consider that ignorance of other European dialects involves any inconvenience at all, except to those who have occasion to visit the countries in which they are spoken. Yet there is much of really valuable matter which sees the light only in the minor tongues, especially those of the industrious North, and with which the world has never been made familiar through translation. Joachim Frederic Schouw, the Danish botanist, is one of the writers of our day who has suffered most prejudicially both to his own fame and to the public from having employed only his native language. For his writings are not only valuable in a scientific point of view, but belong to the most popular order of scientific writing, and would assuredly have been general favourites, had not the bulk of them remained untranslated. His ‘Tableau du Climat de l’Italie’ has, however, appeared in French, and is a standard work. A little collection of very brief and popular essays, entitled ‘The Earth, Plants, and Man,’ has been translated both into German and English. One of these, styled ‘The Plants of Pompeii,’ is founded on a rather novel idea. The paintings on the walls of the disinterred houses of that city contain (among other things) many landscape compositions. Sometimes these are accessory to historical representations. But they often merely portray the scenery of ordinary out-door life. The old decorators of the Pompeian chambers had indeed an evident taste for those trivial tricks of theatrical deception, which are still very popular in Italy. Their verdure, sky, and so forth, seem often as if meant to impose on the spectator for a moment as realities; and are, therefore, executed in a “realistic” though sketchy style. “Consequently,” says Schouw, “the observation of the plants which are represented in these paintings will give, as far as they go, the measure of those which were familiar to the ancient eye, and will help to show the identities and the differences between the vegetation of the Campanian plains a hundred years after Christ, and that which adorns them now.”

We propose to follow the Professor through this confined but elegant little chapter of his investigations. But by restraining ourselves to this alone, we should be dealing with only part of a subject. In most regions, two thousand years have made considerable changes in the appearance of the vegetable covering of the earth; but in that land of volcanic influences in which Pompeii stood, great revolutions have taken place, during that time, in the structure of the ground itself. Sea and land have changed places; mountains have risen and sunk; the very outlines and main landmarks of the scene are other than what they were. Let us for a moment imagine ourselves gazing with Emperor Tiberius from his “specular height” on precipitous Capri, at that unequalled panorama of sea and land formed by the Gulf of Naples, as thence descried, and note in what respects the visible face of things has changed since he beheld it.

The central object in his view, as in that of the modern observer, was Vesuvius, standing out a huge insulated mountain mass, unconformable with the other outlines of the landscape, and covered then, as now, with its broad mantle of dusky green. Then, as now, its volcanic soil was devoted to the cultivation of the vine. But in other respects its appearance was widely different. No slender, menacing column of smoke rose perpetually from its summit. Nor was it lurid, at night, with that red gleam of the slow river of fire,

“A cui riluce Di Capri la marina E di Napoli il porto e Mergellina.”

It was an extinct volcano, and had been so for unknown ages. Nor did it exhibit its present characteristic cone, nor probably its double top; Vesuvius and Somma were most likely one; and the deep half-moon-shaped ravine of the Atrio del Cavallo, which now divides them, is thought to be a relic of the ancient crater. That crater was a huge amphitheatrical depression, several miles in circuit, filled with pasture-lands and tangled woods. Spartacus and his servile army had used it not long before as a natural fortress. But this feature was scarcely visible to the spectator at Capri, opposite the mountain, to whom the summit must have appeared as a broad flat-topped ridge, in shape and height very similar to the Table Mountain at the Cape of Good Hope.

At the time in question, scarcely a few vague traditions remained to record the fact that the mountain had once “burnt.” The fiery legends of Magna Græcia related to the country west of Naples, where volcanic action had been more recent: the Phlegræan fields, the Market-place of Vulcan (Solfatara), the cone of Gnarime (Ischia), through which the imprisoned Typhœus breathed flame, from whence he has been since transferred to Vesuvius, as a Genoese monk informed us when we and he first looked on that volcano together. Vesuvius awoke from his sleep of unknown length, as every one knows, in A.D. 79, when he celebrated his resumption of authority by that grand “extra night” of the 24th August, which has had no rival since, in the way of pyrotechnical entertainment, except on the distant shores of Iceland, the West Indies, and the Moluccas. His period of activity lasted nearly a thousand years. Then he relapsed into lethargy for six hundred. In 1631, he had resumed (as old prints show), something nearly resembling the form which we have attributed to him in classical times. His top, of great height, swollen up by the slow accumulation of burning matter, without a vent, was a level plateau, with a pit-like crater, filled with a forest of secular oaks and ilexes: only a few “fumaroles,” or smoke-holes, remained here and there to attest his real character. Even the legends of his conflagrations had become out of date. The old “Orearch” or mountain-spirit, Vesevus, is portrayed by the local poet Pontanus in the fifteenth century, as a rustic figure, with a bald head, hump back, and cincture of brushwood—all fiery attributes omitted. Even his terrible name was only known to the learned: the people called him the “Monte di Somma.” The suburban features of a great luxurious city, convents, gardens, vineyards, hunting-grounds, and parks of the nobility, had crept again up the sides of the mountain, until they almost mingled with the trees on the summit. The approaching hour was not without its premonitory signs, many and strange. The phenomena which Bulwer makes his witch of Vesuvius recount, by way of warning, to Arbaces, are very closely borrowed from contemporary narratives of the eruption of 1631. Nor were the omens of superstition wanting, accommodated to the altered feelings of the times. At the Plinian eruption, the people imagined that the old giants buried in the Phlegræan fields had risen again, and renewed their battle with the gods: “for many phantoms of them,” says Dio Cassius, “were seen in the smoke, and a blast, as of trumpets, was heard.” In 1631, carriages full of devils were seen to drive, and battalions of diabolical soldiers to gather in marching array along the precipitous flanks of the mountain. The footsteps of unearthly animals were tracked on the roads. “A peasant of the name of Giovanni Camillo” (so we are informed by the Jesuit Giulio Cesare Recupito, a contemporary), “had passed Easter Eve at a farm-house of his own on the mountain. There, without having taken a mouthful of anything, he was overtaken by a profound slumber, from which awakening suddenly, he saw no longer before his eyes the likeness of the place where he had fallen asleep, but a new heaven, a new soil, a new landscape: instead of a hill-side covered with wood, there appeared a wall crossing the road, and extending on each side for a great distance, with a very lofty gate. Astonished at this new scene, he went to the gate to inquire where he was. There he found a porter of the order of St Francis, a young man in appearance. Many conjecture that this was St Antony of Padua. The porter at first seemed to repulse him, but afterwards admitted him into the courtyard, and guided him about. After a long circuit they arrived at a great range of buildings breathing fire from every window.” In short, the poor peasant was conducted, after the fashion of such visions, through the mansions of hell and purgatory, where he saw, of course, many of his acquaintance variously tormented. “At last, on the following day, he was restored to himself, and to Vesuvius: and was ordered to inform his countrymen that a great ruin was impending over them from that mountain: wherefore they should address their vows and prayers to God. On Easter Day, at noon, he came home, and was observed of many with his dress sprinkled with ashes, his face burnt black, as if escaped from a fire.” This was two years before the eruption, and during the interval Camillo always told the same story; wherefore, after passing a long time for either mad or drunk, he was finally raised to the dignity of a prophet. At last, on the night of the 15th December, the ancient volcano signalised his awakening by a feat of unrivalled grandeur. In forty-eight hours of terrific struggles, he blew away the whole cap of the mountain; so that, on the morning of the 18th, when the smoke at last subsided, the Neapolitans beheld their familiar summit a thousand feet lower than it had been before; while its southern face was seamed by seven distinct rivers of fire, slowly rolling at several points into the sea.

Since 1631, the frequency, if not the violence, of the eruptions seems to have gradually increased, and Vesuvius is probably more “active” now, in local language, than at any former time in his annals, having made the fortunes of an infinity of guides and miscellaneous waiters on Providence within the last twelve years, besides burning a forest or two, and expelling the peasantry of some villages. But his performances on a grand scale seem for the present suspended. Frequent eruptions prevent that accumulation of matter which produces great ones. Indeed, the late Mr Laing, whose ‘Notes of a Traveller’ show him to have been that identical “sturdy Scotch Presbyterian whig” who visited Oxford in company with Lockhart’s Reginald Dalton, “reviling all things, despising all things, and puffing himself up with all things,” deliberately pronounced the volcano a humbug, and believed the depth of its subterranean magazines to be extremely trifling. Still, the curious traveller, like that fabulous Englishman who visited the lion-tamer every night for the chance of seeing him devoured, cannot help looking with a certain eagerness for the occurrence of those two interesting catastrophes, of which the day and hour are written down in the book of the Fates—that combination of high tide, west wind, and land-flood, which is to drown St Petersburg; that combination of south-east wind and first-class eruption which is to bury Naples in ashes. This finale seemed nearer in that recent eruption of December 1860, which spent its fury on Torre del Greco, than perhaps on any former occasion; but once more the danger passed away.