the preposterous memoirs of General James Wilkinson's, whenever he had a worse scrape than usual to explain, he would say that the papers were lost when Mr. Nolan was imprisoned or was killed in Texas. This Mr. Nolan, as Wilkinson generally calls him, had been engaged with Wilkinson in some speculations mostly relating to horses. Remembering this, I took the name Nolan for my hero. I made my man the real man's brother. "He had spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses in Texas." And again:—"he was catching wild horses in Texas with his adventurous cousin." [Note: Young authors may observe that he is called a brother in one place and a cousin in another, because such slips would take place in a real narrative. Proofreaders do not like them, but they give a plausibility to the story.] I had the impression that Wilkinson's partner was named Stephen, and as Philip and Stephen were both evangelists in the Bible, I named my man Philip Nolan, on the supposition that the mother who named one son Stephen would name another Philip. It was not for a year after, that, in looking at Wilkinson's "Memoirs" again, I found to my amazement, not to say my dismay, that Wilkinson's partner was named Philip Nolan. We had, therefore, two Philip Nolans, one a real historical character, who was murdered by the Spaniards on the 21st of March, 1801, at Waco in Texas; the other a purely imaginary character invented by myself, who appears for the first time on the 23d of September, 1807, at a court-martial at Fort Adams.

I supposed nobody but myself in New England had ever heard of Philip Nolan. But in the Southwest, in Texas and Louisiana, it was but sixty-two years since the Spaniards murdered him. In truth, it was the death of Nolan, the real Philip Nolan, killed by one Spanish governor while he held the safe-conduct of another, which roused that wave of indignation in the Southwest which ended in the independence of Texas. I think the State of Texas would do well, to-day, if it placed the statue of the real Phil Nolan in the Capitol at Washington by the side of that of Sam Houston.

In the midst of the war the story was published in the "Atlantic Monthly," of December, 1863. In the Southwest the "Atlantic" at once found its way into regions where the real Phil Nolan was known. A writer in the "New Orleans Picayune," in a careful historical paper, explained at length that I had been mistaken all the way through, that Philip Nolan never went to sea, but to Texas. I received a letter from a lady in Baltimore who told me that two widowed sisters of his lived in that neighborhood. Unfortunately for me, this letter, written in perfectly good faith, was signed E. F. M. Fachtz. I was receiving many letters on the subject daily. I supposed that my correspondent was concealing her name, and was really "Eager for More Facts." When in reality I had the pleasure of meeting her a year or two afterwards, the two widowed sisters of the real Phil Nolan were both dead.

But in 1876 I was fortunate enough, on the kind invitation of Mr. Miner, to visit his family in their beautiful plantation at Terre Bonne. There I saw an old negro who was a boy when Master Phil Nolan left the old plantation on the Mississippi River for the last time. Master Phil Nolan had then married Miss Fanny Lintot, who was, I think, the aunt of my host. He permitted me to copy the miniature of the young adventurer.

I have since done my best to repair the error by which I gave Philip Nolan's name to another person, by telling the story of his fate in a book called "Philip Nolan's Friends." For the purpose of that book, I studied the history of Miranda's attempt against Spain, and of John Adams's preparations for a descent of the Mississippi River. The professional historians of the United States are very reticent in their treatment of these themes. At the time when John Adams had a little army at Cincinnati, ready to go down and take New Orleans, there were no Western correspondents to the Eastern Press.

Within a year after the publication of the "Man without a Country" in the "Atlantic" more than half a million copies of the story had been printed in America and in England. I had curious accounts from the army and navy, of the interest with which it was read by gentlemen on duty. One of our officers in the State of Mississippi lent the "Atlantic" to a lady in the Miner family. She ran into the parlor, crying out, "Here is a man who knows all about uncle Phil Nolan." An Ohio officer, who entered the city of Jackson, in Mississippi, with Grant, told me that he went at once to the State House. Matters were in a good deal of confusion there, and he picked up from the floor a paper containing the examination of Philip Nolan, at Walnut Springs, the old name of Vicksburg. This was before the real Philip's last expedition. The United States authorities, in the execution of the neutrality laws, had called him to account, and had made him show the evidence that he had the permission of the Governor of New Orleans for his expedition.

In 1876 I visited Louisiana and Texas, to obtain material for "Philip Nolan's Friends." I obtained there several autographs of the real Phil Nolan,—and the original Spanish record of one of the trials of the survivors of his party,—a trial which resulted in the cruel execution of Ephraim Blackburn, seven years after he was arrested. That whole transaction, wholly ignored by all historians of the United States known to me, is a sad blot on the American administration of the Spanish kings. Their excuse is the confusion of everything in Madrid between 1801 and 1807. The hatred of the Mexican authorities among our frontiersmen of the Southwest is largely due to the dishonor and cruelty of those transactions.

EDWARD E. HALE.

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

I [Note 1] suppose that very few casual readers of the "New York Herald" of August 13, 1863, observed, [Note 2] in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the announcement,—

"NOLAN. Died, on board U. S. Corvette 'Levant,' [Note 3] Lat. 2° 11' S.,
Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN."

I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old Mission House in Mackinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did not choose to come, and I was devouring to the very stubble all the current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and marriages in the "Herald." My memory for names and people is good, and the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at that announcement, if the officer of the "Levant" who reported it had chosen to make it thus: "Died, May 11, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY." For it was as "The Man without a Country" that poor Philip Nolan had generally been known by the officers who had him in charge during some fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who sailed under them. I dare say there is many a man who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in a three years' cruise, who never knew that his name was "Nolan," or whether the poor wretch had any name at all.

There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story. Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison's [Note 4] administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the esprit de corps of the profession, and the personal honor of its members, that to the press this man's story has been wholly unknown,—and, I think, to the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was burned when Ross burned the public buildings at