LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

---

FEBRUARY, 1875.

Vol. XV, No. 86

---

 

---

 

class="c1">THE CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO.
ISLAND OF THE TIBER.
CUPOLA OF ST. PETER'S.
THE PINCIO, FROM THE VILLA BORGHESE.
SORACTE.
VEII, FROM THE CAMPAGNA.
TIVOLI.
CASTLE AT OSTIA.
HEAD OF THE TRAJAN CANAL, NEAR OSTIA.
A HALT IN THE BRUSH.
IARAT, DAUGHTER OF THE CHIEF OUNDO.
A KANACKA FAMILY TRAVELING.

 

---

FOLLOWING THE TIBER.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

One branch of the little river which encompasses Assisi is the Clitumnus, the delight of philosophers and poets in the Augustan age. Near its source stands a beautiful little temple to the divinity of the stream. Although the ancients resorted hither for the loveliness of the spot, they did not bathe in the springs, a gentle superstition holding it sacrilege for the human body to lave itself in a stream near its source.

They came by the Via Flaminia, the old high-road from Rome to Florence, which crosses the modern railroad hard by. Following its course, which takes a more direct line than the devious Tiber, past Spoleto on its woody castellated height, the traveler reaches Terni on the tumultuous Nar, the wildest and most rebellious of all the tributaries. It was to save the surrounding country from its outbreaks that the channel was made by the Romans B.C. 271, the first of several experiments which resulted in these cascades, which have been more sung and oftener painted than any other in the world. The beauty of Terni is so hackneyed that enthusiasm over it becomes cockney, yet the beauty of hackneyed things is as eternal as the verity of truisms, and no more loses its charm than the other its point. But one must not talk about it. The foaming torrent rages along between its rocky walls until spanned by the bridge of Augustus at Narni, a magnificent viaduct sixty feet high, thrown from ridge to ridge across the ravine for the passage of the Flaminian Way—a wreck now, for two of the arches have fallen, but through the last there is a glimpse of the rugged hillsides with their thick forests and the turbulent waters rushing through the chasm. Higher still is Narni, looking over her embattled walls. It is one of the most striking positions on the way from Florence to Rome, and the next half hour, through savage gorges and black tunnels, ever beside the tormented waters of the Nar until they meet the Tiber, swollen by the tributes of the Paglia and Chiana, is singularly fine.

Where the Paglia and Chiana flow together, at the issue of the charming Val di Chiana, stands Orvieto on its steep and sudden rock, crowned with one of the triumphs of Italian Gothic, the glorious cathedral. After toiling up the ladder-like paths which lead from the plain to the summit of the bluff, and passing through the grand mediæval gateway along the slanting streets, where even the peasants dismount and walk beside their donkeys, seeing nothing within the whole small compass of the walls save what speaks of the narrowest and humblest life in the most remote of hill-fastnesses,a few deserted and dilapidated palaces alone telling of a period of importance long past, nothing can describe the effect of coming out of this indigence and insignificance upon the silent, solitary piazza where the incomparable cathedral rears its front, covered from base to pinnacle with the richest sculpture and most brilliant mosaic.

The volcanic mass on which the town is built is over seven hundred feet high, and nearly half as much in circumference: it would be a fitting pedestal for this gorgeous duomo if it stood there alone. But it is almost wedged in among the crooked streets, a few paces of grass-grown stones allowing less than space enough to embrace the whole result of proportion and color: one cannot go far enough off to escape details. An account of those details would require a volume, and one has already been written which leaves no more to be said;[1] yet fain would we take the reader with us into that noble nave, where the "glorious company of the apostles" stands colossal in marble beside the pillars whose sculptured capitals are like leafy branches blown by the wind; where the light comes rich and mellow through stained glass and semilucent alabaster, like Indian-summer sunshine in autumn woods; where Fra Angelico's and Benozzo Gozzoli's angelic host smile upon us with ineffable mildness from above the struggle and strife of Luca Signorelli's "Last Judgment," the great forerunner of Michael Angelo's. It added greatly to the impressiveness that there was never a single human being in the cathedral: except one afternoon at vespers we had it all to ourselves. There is little else to see in the place, although it is highly picturesque and the inhabitants wear a more complete costume than any other I saw in Italy—the women, bright bodices, striped skirts and red stockings; the men, jaunty jackets and breeches,

peaked hats and splendid sashes.

The discomfort of Perugia was luxury to what we found at Orvieto, and it was no longer May but December, when it is nearly as cold north of Rome as with us; and Rome was drawing us with her mighty magnet. So, one wintry morning, soon after daybreak, we set out in a close carriage with four horses, wrapped as if we were going in a sleigh, with a scaldino (or little brazier) under our feet, for the nearest railway station on our route, a nine hours' drive. Our way lay through the snow-covered hills and their leafless forest, and long after we had left Orvieto behind again and again a rise in the road would bring it full in sight on its base of tufa, girt by its walls, the Gothic lines of the cathedral sharp against the clear, brightening sky. At our last look the sun was not up, but broad shafts of light, such as painters throw before the chariot of Phoebus, refracted against the pure æther, spread like a halo round the threefold pinnacles: a moment more and Orvieto was hidden behind a higher hill, not to be seen again. All day we drove among the snow-bound hills and woods, past the Lake of Bolsena in its forbidding beauty; past small valleys full of naked fruit trees and shivering olives, which must be nooks of loveliness in spring; past defiant little towns aloft on their islands of tufa, like Bagnorea with its single slender bell-tower; past Montefiascone with its good old story about Cardinal Fugger and the native wine.

We stopped to lunch at Viterbo, a town more closely connected with the history of the Papacy than any except Rome itself, and full of legends and romantic associations: it is dirty and dilapidated, and has great need of all its memories. Being but eight miles from Montefiascone, we called for a bottle of the fatal Est, which we had tasted once at Augsburg, where the host of the Three Moors has it in his cellar, in honor perhaps of the departed Fugger family, whose palace has become his hotel: there we had found it delicious—a wine as sweet as cordial, with a soul of fire and a penetrating but delicate flavor of its own—how different from the thin, sour stuff they brought us in the long-necked, straw-covered flask, nothing to attest its relationship to the generous juice at the Three Moors except the singular, unique flavor! After this little disappointment we left Viterbo, and drove on through the same sort of scenery, which seemed to grow more and more beautiful in the rosy light of the sinking sun. But it is hard to tell, for nothing makes a journey so beautiful as to know that Rome is the goal.

As the last rays were flushing the hill-tops we came in sight of Orte, with its irregular lines of building clinging to the sides of its precipitous cliff in such eyrie-wise that it is difficult to say what is house and what is rock, and whether the arched passages with which it is pierced are masonry or natural grottoes; and there was the Tiber—already the yellow Tiber—winding through the valley as far as eye could follow. Here we waited for the train, which was ten minutes late, and tried to make up for lost time by leaving our luggage, all duly marked and ready, standing on the track. We soon began to greet familiar sites as we flitted by: the last we made out plainly was Borghetto, a handful of houses, with a ruined castle keeping watch on a hill hard by: then twilight gathered, and we strained our eyes in vain for the earliest glimpse of Mount Soracte, and night came down before we could descry the first landmarks of the Agro Romano, the outposts of our excursions, the farm-towers we knew by name, the farthest fragments of the aqueducts. But it was not so obscure that we could not discern the Tiber between his low banks showing us the way, the lights quivering in the Anio as the train rushed over the bridge; and when at length we saw against the clear night-sky a great dark barrier stretching right and left, we knew that the walls of Rome were once more before us: in a moment we had glided through with slackening speed, and her embrace enfolded us again.

The Tiber, winding as it does like a great artery through the heart of Rome, is seldom long either out of sight or mind. One constantly comes upon it in the most unexpected manner, for there is no river front to the city. There is a wide open space on the Ripetta—a street which runs from the Piazza del Popolo, at the head of the foreign quarter, to remoter parts—where a broad flight of marble steps descends to the level of the flood, and a ferry crosses to the opposite bank: looking over at the trees and fields, it is like the open country, yet beyond are St. Peter's and the Vatican, and the whole of what is known as the Leonine City.

But one cannot follow the Tiber through the streets of Rome as one may the Seine in Paris: in the thickly-built quarters the houses back upon the stream and its yellow waves wash their foundations, working wrath and woe from time to time, as those who were there in the winter of 1870 will recollect. Sometimes it is lost to sight for half a mile together, unless one catches a glimpse of it through the carriage-way of a palace.

From the wharf of the Ripetta it disappears until you come upon it again at the bridge of St. Angelo, the Ælian bridge of ancient Rome, which is the most direct passage from the fashionable and foreign quarter to the Trastevere. It must be confessed that the idle sense of mere pleasure generally supersedes recollection and association after one's first astonishment to find one's self among the historic places subsides; yet how often, as our horses' hoofs rang on the slippery stones, my thoughts went suddenly back to the scene when Saint Gregory passed over, chanting litanies, at the head of the whole populace, who formed one vast penitential procession, and saw the avenging angel alight on the mausoleum of Adrian and sheath his sword in sign that the plague was stayed; or to that terrible day when the ferocious mercenaries of the Constable de Bourbon and the wretched inhabitants given over to sack and slaughter swarmed across together, butchering and butchered, while the troops in the castle hurled down what was left of its classic statues upon the heads of friend and foe, and the Tiber was turned to blood!

From the bridge of St. Angelo the river is lost again for a

long distance, although one can make one's way to it at various points—where at low water the submerged piers of the Pons Triumphalis are to be seen, where the Ponte Sisto leads to the foot of the Janiculum Hill, and on the opposite bank the orange-groves of the Farnesina palace hang their golden fruit and dusky foliage over the long garden-wall upon the river—until we come to the Ponte Quatro Capi (Bridge of the Four Heads) and the island of the Tiber.This is said to have been formed in the kingly period by the accumulation of a harvest cast into the stream a little way above, which the current could not sweep away: it made a nucleus for alluvial deposit, and the island gradually arose. Several hundred years afterward it was built into the form of a ship, as bridges and wharves are built, with a temple in the midst, and a tall obelisk set up in guise of its mast. In mediæval days a church replaced the heathen fane, and now it stands between its two bridges, a huddle of houses, terraces and gardens, whence one looks down on the fine mass of the Ponte Rotto (Broken Bridge), whose shattered arches pause in mid-stream, and across to the low arch of the Cloaca Maxima and the exquisite little circular temple of Vesta. From here down, the river is in full view from either side until it passes beyond the walls near the Monte Testaccio—on one side the Ripa Grande (Great Bank or Wharf), a long series of quays, on the other the Marmorata or marble landing, where the ships from the quarries unload. Here, on each side, all sorts of small craft lie moored, not betokening a very extensive commerce from their size and shape, but quaint and oddly rigged, making a very good fore-or back-ground, according as one looks at the picture. The Marmorata is at the foot of the Aventine, the most lonely and unvisited of the Seven Hills. From among the vegetable-gardens and cypress-groves which clothe its long flank rise large, formless piles, whose foundations are as old as the Eternal City, and whose superstructures are the wreck of temples of the kingly and republican periods, and palaces and villas of imperial times, and haughty feudal abodes, only to be distinguished from one another by the antiquary amid their indiscriminate ruin and the tangle of wild-briers and fern, ivy and trailers with which they are overgrown. On the summit no trace of ancient Rome is to be seen. There are no dwellings of men on this deserted ground: a few small and very early Christian churches have replaced the temples which once stood here, to be in their turn neglected and forsaken: they stand forlornly apart, separated by vineyards and high blank walls. On the brow of the hill is the esplanade of a modern fort, and within its quiet precincts are the church and priory of the Knights of Malta—nothing but a chapel and small villa as abandoned as the rest. After toiling up a steep and narrow lane between two walls, our carriage stopped at a solid wooden gateway, and the coachman told us to get out and look through the keyhole. We were aghast, but he insisted, laughing and nodding; so we pocketed our pride and peeped.

Through an overarching vista of dark foliage was seen, white and golden in a blaze of sunshine, the cupola of St. Peter's, which is at the farthest end of the city, two miles at the least as the crow flies. When the gate was opened we entered a sweet little garden full of violets, traversed by an alley of old ilex trees, through which appeared the noble dome, and which led from the gate to a terrace overhanging the Tiber—I will not venture to guess how far below—more like two than one hundred feet; perhaps still farther. On the edge of the terrace was an arbor, and here we sank down enchanted, to drink in the view of the city, which spread out under our eyes as we had never seen it from any other point. But the custodino's wife urged us to come into the Priorato and see the view from the upper story. We followed her, reluctant to leave the sunshine and soft air, up a stiff winding staircase, through large, dark, chilly, long-closed apartments, until we reached the top, where there was a great square room occupying the whole floor. She flung open the windows, and never did such a panorama meet my eyes. There were windows on every side: to the north, one looked across the city to St. Peter's, the Vatican, the Castle of St. Angelo, the Tiber with its great bends and many bridges, and to lonely, far-away Soracte; westward, on the other side of the river, rose the Janiculum with its close-wedged houses, grade on grade, and on its summit the church of San Pietro in Montorio and the flashing cataract of the Acqua Paola fountain, the stone-pines of the Villa Dolia cresting the ridge above; eastward, the Palatine, a world of ruins in a world of gardens, lay between us and the Coliseum, and over them and the wall, the aqueducts, the plain, the eye ranged to the snow-capped Sabine Hills, on whose many-colored declivities tiny white towns were dotted like browsing sheep; southward, we gazed down upon the Pyramid of Cestius, upon the beautiful Protestant cemetery with its white monuments and dark cypresses where lie Shelley and Keats, upon the stately Porta San Paolo, a great mediæval gateway flanked with towers, and beyond, the Campagna, purple, violet, ultramarine, oceanic, rolling out toward the Alban Hills, which glittered with snow, rising sharply like island-peaks and sloping down like promontories into the plain; and over all the sun and sky and shadows of Italy.

The prospect from the Priorato surpasses anything in Rome—even the wonderful view from the Janiculum, even the enchanting outlook from the Pincian Hill. But the last was at our very doors: we could go thither in the morning to watch the white mist curl up from the valleys and hang about the mountain-brows, and at noon, when even in January the cool avenues and splashing fountains were grateful, and at sunset, when the city lay before us steeped in splendor. That was the view of our daily walks—the beloved view of which one thinks most often and fondly in remembering Rome.

But it is in riding that one grows to feel most familiar with the Tiber and all his Roman children, whether it be strolling somewhat sulkily in a line with his banks by the Via Flaminia or the Via Cassia, impatient to get away from their stones and dust to the soft, springing turf; or hailing him from afar as a guide after losing one's self in the endless undulations of the open country; or cantering over daffodil-sheeted meadows beside the Anio at the foot of the grassy heights on which Antemnæ stood; or threading one's way doubtfully among the ravines which intersect the course of the little Cremera as one goes to Veii.

The last is a most beautiful and interesting expedition, for, what with the distance—more than twelve miles—and the difficulty of finding the way, it is quite an enterprise. As one turns his horse's head away from the river, off the high-road, to the

high grassy flats, the whole Campagna seems to lie before one like a vast table-land, with nothing between one's self and Soracte as he lifts his heavy shoulder from the plain—not half hidden by intervening mountains, as from some points of view, but majestic and isolated, thirty miles away to the north. But here, as in every other part of the Campagna, one cannot go far without finding hillocks and hollows, long steep slopes and sudden little dells, and, stranger still, unsuspected tracts of woodland, for the general effect of the Roman landscape is quite treeless. So there is a few miles' gallop across the trackless turf, sometimes asking the way of a solitary shepherd, who looms up against the sky like a tower, sometimes following it by faint landmarks, few and far between, of which we have been told, and hard to find in that waste, until we pass a curious little patriarchal abode shaped like a wigwam, where, in the midst of these wide pastures dwells a herdsman surrounded by his family, his cattle, his dogs, his goats and his fowls—the beautiful animals of the Campagna, long-haired, soft-eyed, rich-colored, like the human children of the soil. Then we strike the Cremera, and exploring begins among its rocky gullies, up and down which the spirited, sure-footed horses scramble like chamois. Thick woods of cork-oak clothe their sides, and copses of a deciduous tree which I never saw in its summer dress of green, but which keeps its dead leaves all through the winter, a full suit of soft, pale brown contrasting with the dark evergreens. Among these woods grow all the wild-flowers of the long Roman spring from January to May—flowers that I never saw in bloom at the same time anywhere else. On banks overcanopied by faded boughs nodded myriads of snowdrops; farther on we held our horses' heads well up as they slipped, almost sitting, down the damp rocky clefts of a gorge whose sides were purple with violets, mingling their delicious odor, the sweetest and most sentimental of perfumes, with the fresh, geranium-like scent of the cyclamen, which here and there flung back its delicate pinkish petals like one amazed: then came acres of anemones—not our pale wind-shaken flower, but brave asters of half a dozen superb kinds. Up and down these passes we forced our way through interlacing branches, which drooped too low, until we had crossed the ridges on either side the Cremera, and gained the valley at the head of which is Isola Farnese, the rock-fortress supposed to occupy the site of the citadel of Etruscan Veii. It is not really an island, in spite of its name; only a bold peninsula, round whose base two rivulets flow and nearly meet. It is called a village, and so it is, with quite a population, but the great courtyard of the fifteenth-century castle contains them all, and the huts, pig-pens, kennels and coops which they seem to inhabit indiscriminately. Except where the bluff overlooks the valley, everything is closed and shut in by rocks and gorges, through one of which a lovely waterfall drips from a covert of boughs and shrubbery and wreathing ferns and creepers into a little stream, which with musical clamor rushes at a picturesque old mill: through another the road from the castle passes through a narrow issue to the outer world. And this stranded and shipwrecked fortress in the midst of so wild a scene is all that exists to mark where Veii stood, the powerful city which kept Rome at bay for ten years, and fell at length by stratagem! Its site was forgotten for nearly two thousand years, but in this century the discovery of some tombs revealed the secret.

The scenery differs entirely on different sides of Rome. Here there is not a ruin, not a vestige, except a few low heaps of stone-or brickwork hidden by weeds: on the other, toward Tivoli, much of the beauty is due to the work of man—the stately remnants of ancient aqueduct, temple and tomb; the tall square towers of feudal barons, round which cluster low farm-buildings scarcely less old and solid; the vast, gloomy grottoes of Cerbara, which look like the underground palace of a bygone race, but which are the tufa-quarries of classic times; the ruined baths of Zenobia, where the rushing milky waters of the Aquæ Albulæ fill the air with sulphurous fumes; and, as a climax, the Villa of Hadrian, less a country-place than a whole region, a town-in-country, with palace, temples, circus, theatres, baths amidst a tract of garden and pleasure-ground ten miles in circumference. Even when one is familiar with the enormous height and bulk of the Coliseum or the Baths of Caracalla, the extent of the ruins of Hadrian's Villa is overwhelming. Numerous fragments are still standing, graceful and elegant, but a vast many more are buried deep under turf and violets and fern: large cypresses and ilexes have struck root among their stones, and they form artificial hills and vales and great wide plateaus covered with herbage and shrubbery, hardly to be distinguished from the natural accidents of the land. The solitude is as immense as the space. After leaving our carriage we wandered about for hours, sometimes lying in the sunshine at the edge of a great grassy terrace which commands the Campagna and the Agro Romano—beyond whose limits we had come—to where, like a little bell, St. Peter's dome hung faint and blue upon the horizon; sometimes exploring the innumerable porticoes and galleries, and replacing in fancy the Venus de Medici, the Dancing Faun, and all the other shapes of beauty which once occupied these ravished pedestals and niches; sometimes rambling about the flowery fields, and up and down among the hillocks and dells, meeting no one, until at length, when completely bewildered and lost, we fell in with a rustic belonging to the estate, who guided us back. We left the place with the sense of having been in a separate realm, another country, belonging to another age. The whole of that visit to Tivoli was like a dream. The sun was sinking when we left the precincts of the villa, and twilight stole upon us, wrapping all the landscape on which we looked back in softer folds of shade, and resolving its features into large, calm masses, as the horses labored up the narrow, stony road into a mysterious wood of gigantic olives, gnarled, twisted and rent as no other tree could be and live. The scene was wild and weird in the dying light, and it grew almost savage as we wound upward among the robber-haunted hills. Night had fallen before we reached the mountain-town. Our coachman dashed through the dark slits of streets, where it seemed as if our wheels must strike the houses on each side, cracking his whip and jingling the bells of the harness. Under black archways sat groups of peasants, their swart visages lit up from below by the glow of a brazier, while a flaring torch stuck through a ring overhead threw fierce lights and shadows across the scene. Sharp cries and shouts like maledictions rose as we passed, and as we turned into the little square on which the inn stands we wondered in what sort of den we should have to lodge. We followed our host of the little Albergo della Regnia up the steep stone staircase with many misgivings: he flung open a door, and we beheld a carpeted room, all furnished and hung with pink chintz covered with cupids and garlands. There were sofas, low arm-chairs, a writing-table with appurtenances, a tea-table with snowy linen and a hissing brass tea-kettle. Opening from this were two little white nests of bed-rooms, with tin bath-tubs and an abundance of towels. We could not believe our eyes: here were English comfort and French taste. Were we in May Fair or the Rue de Rivoli? Or was it a fairy-tale?

id="image015_jpg"/>

CASTLE AT OSTIA.

The fairy-tale went on next day, when, after wending our way through the dirty, crooked little streets, we crossed a courtyard and descended a long subterranean stairway to emerge on a magnificent terrace with a heavy marble balustrade, whence flights of steps led down to lower grades, amid statues, urns, vases, fountains, reservoirs, camellias in bloom mingled with laurel and myrtle and laurustinums covered with creamy flowers, cypresses tall as cathedral spires, ilex avenues, and broad straight walks between huge walls of box: the whole space was filled with the song of nightingales, the tinkle of falling water, with whiffs of aromatic shrubs and the breath of hidden roses and violets;—a princely garden, a royal pleasaunce, but in exquisite disorder and neglect; the shrubbery too thick and straggling, the flowers straying beyond their rightful boundaries, the statues stained and moss-grown, the balusters entangled in clinging luxuriance, the fountains dripping through fern and maiden-hair—Nature supreme, as one always sees her in this land of Art. It was the Villa d'Este, famous these three hundred years for its fountains and cypresses. Nor did the wonder cease when we forsook this enchanting spot for the mountain-road which overhangs the great ravine. Opposite, backed by mountains, rose the crags topped by the clustering town and all its towers, arches, niches, battlements, bridges, long lines of classic ruins, and on the edge of the abyss the perfect little temple of the Sibyl; rushing down from everywhere the waterfalls, one great column plunging at the head of the gorge, and countless frolic streams, the cascatelle, leaping and dancing from rock to rock through mist and rainbow and extravagance of emerald moss and herbage, down among sea-green, silvery olives, finally sliding away, between softer foliage and verdure, through the valley into the plain—the immense azure plain, with its grand symphonic harmonies of form and color. O land of dreams fulfilled, of satisfied longing! when across these thousands of miles I recall your entrancing charm, your unimaginable beauty, I sometimes wonder if you were not a dream, if you have any place in this real existence, this lower earth: are you still delighting other eyes with the rapture of your loveliness, or were you only an illusion, a vision, which vanishes like the glow of sunset or "golden exhalations of the dawn "?

The Campagna has one more aspect, different from all the rest, where the Tiber, weary with his long wanderings, rolls lazily to the sea. It is a dreary waste of swamp and sandhill and scrub growth, but with a forlorn beauty of its own, and the beauty of color, never absent in Italy. The tall, coarse grass and reeds pass through a series of vivid tones, culminating in tawny gold and deep orange, against which the silver-fretted violet blue-green of the Mediterranean assumes a magical splendor. Small, shaggy buffaloes with ferocious eyes, and sometimes a peasant as wild-looking as they, are the only inhabitants of this wilderness. The machicolated towers of Castel Fusano among its grand stone-pines stand up from the marshes, and farther seaward another castle with a single pine; but they only enhance the surrounding loneliness. Ostia, the ancient port, which sea and river have both deserted, is now a city of the dead, a Pompeii above ground, whose avenues of tombs lead to streets of human dwellings more desolate still. It is no longer by Ostia, nor even by the Tiber, that one can reach the sea: the way was choked by sand and silt seventeen centuries ago, and Trajan caused the canal to be made which bears his name; and this is still the outlet from Rome to the Mediterranean, while the river expires among the pestilential marshes.

SIX MONTHS AMONG CANNIBALS.

Perhaps as good an illustration of the purely absurd (according to civilized notions) as can be imagined is a congregation of cannibals in a missionary church weeping bitterly over the story of Calvary. Fresh from their revolting feasts upon the flesh of their conquered enemies, these gentle savages weep over the sufferings of One separated from them by race, by distance, by almost every conceivable lack of the conditions for natural sympathy, and by over eighteen hundred years of time! Surely there must be hope for people who manifest such sensibility, and we may fairly question whether cannibalism be necessarily the sign of the lowest human degradation. A good deal of light is thrown upon the subject by the writings of the young engineer, Jules Garnier, who was lately charged by the French minister of the interior with a mission of exploration in New Caledonia, the Pacific island discovered by Captain Cook just one hundred years ago, and ceded to the French in 1853.

It is about three hundred and sixty miles from Sydney to New Caledonia, a long, narrow island lying just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and completely surrounded by belts of coral reef crenellated here and there, and forming channels or passes where ships may enter. Navigation through these channels is, however, exceedingly hazardous in any but calm weather; and it was formerly thought that the island was on this account practically valueless for colonization. Once inside them, however, vessels may anchor safely anywhere, for there is in effect a continuous roadstead all around the island. The passage through the narrow pass of Dumbea, just outside of Noumea, affords a striking spectacle. On each side of the ship is a wall of foam, and the reverberating thunder of the waves dashing and breaking upon the jagged reefs keeps the mind in breathless suspense.

The site of Noumea seems to be the most unfortunate that could be chosen. It is a barren, rocky spot, divested of all luxuriance of vegetation, and the nearest water, a brook called Pont des Français, is ten miles away. The appearance of the town, which fronts the harbor in the form of an amphitheatre, the houses and gardens rising higher and higher as they recede from the sea, tended somewhat to reassure the explorer, who had been wondering that human stupidity should have been equal to selecting in a tropical country, and in one of the best-watered islands of the world, such a situation for its capital. Wells are of little account, for the water thus obtained is at the level of the sea, and always salt. The population has to depend upon the rain that falls on roofs, and as the cleanliness of these is of prime importance, domesticating pigeons is strictly forbidden. This might not be much of a deprivation in most places, but in New Caledonia, of all the world, there is a kind of giant pigeon as large as a common hen! This is the noton, (sic) the Carpophage Goliath of the naturalist.

The hotel at Noumea was a kind of barracks, with partitions so slight that every guest was forced to hear every sound in his neighbors' rooms. M. Garnier, to escape this inconvenience, purchased a garden-plot, had a cottage built in a few days, and so became a proprietor in Oceanica. Before setting out on his exploring expedition into the interior he tried to interest the government in a plan for

cisterns to supply the city with water—a project easy of execution from the natural conformation of the locality. But his scheme received no encouragement from the old-fogyish authorities. They were at that moment entertaining one which for simplicity reminded Garnier of the egg problem of Columbus. This was to distill the sea-water. He made a calculation of the cost of thus supplying each of the sixteen hundred inhabitants with five quarts of water a day, which showed that the proposition was impracticable under the circumstances.

From the showing of official accounts, this French colony of New Caledonia must be one of the most absurd that exists. The military and naval force far exceeds in number the whole civil population; and this, too, when the natives are quiet and submissive, few in number, and fast dying out through the inordinate use of the worst kind of tobacco, pulmonary consumption and other concomitants of civilization not necessary to enumerate. Contrast this with the rich and populous province of Victoria, which has only three hundred and fifty soldiers; with Brisbane, which has only sixteen to a population of one hundred thousand; and finally Tasmania, which has only seven soldiers for two hundred thousand colonists!

It was believed formerly that New Caledonia was rich in gold-mines, and the principal object of the expedition of M. Garnier was to discover these. After one or two short excursions in the neighborhood of Noumea he set out on an eight months' journey through the entire eastern portion of the island. The plan which he adopted was to double the southern extremity of the island, sail up the eastern coast between the reefs and the mainland, as is the custom, stopping at the principal stations and making long excursions into the interior, accompanied by a guard of seven men. This plan he carried out, though some parts of the country to be explored were inhabited by tribes that had seldom or never seen a European. His testimony as to the almost unexceptionable kindness of the natives, cannibals though they are, must be gratifying to those who accept the doctrine of the brotherhood of man. Of the natives near Balarde he says: "The moment you land all offer to guide your steps, and in every way they can to satisfy your needs. Do you wish to hunt? A native is ever ready to show you the marsh where ducks most abound. Are you hungry or thirsty? They fly to the cocoanut plantation with the agility of monkeys. If a swamp or a brook stops your course, the shoulders of the first comer are ever ready to carry you across. If it rains, they run to bring banana-leaves or make you a shelter of bark. When night comes they light your way with resinous torches, and finally, when you leave them, you read in their faces signs of sincere regret."

Captain Cook, in his eulogies of these gentle savages, probably never dreamed that they were anthropophagi, and if he had known the fact, his kindly nature would have found some extenuation for them. Cannibals, as a rule—certainly those of New Caledonia—do not eat each other indiscriminately. For example, they dispose of their dead with tender care, though they despatch with their clubs even their best friends when dying; but this is with them a religious duty. They only eat their enemies when they have killed them in battle. This also, in their code of morals, appears to be a duty. Toussenel, in his Zoölogie Passionelle, has a kind word even for these savages: "Let us pity the cannibal, and not blame him too severely. We who boast of our refined Christian civilization murder men by tens of thousands from motives less excusable than hunger. The crime lies not in roasting our dead enemy, but in killing him when he wishes to live."

During M. Garnier's expedition he met the chief Onime, once the head of a powerful tribe, now old and dispossessed of his power through the revolt of his tribe some years previous. At that time a price had been put upon his head, and he took refuge in the mountains. There was no sign of discouragement or cruelty in his manners, but his face expressed a bitter and profound sorrow. There was not a pig or a chicken on his place—for he would have nothing imported by the papalés, or Europeans—but he gave his guests a large quantity of yams, for which he would accept no return except a little tobacco. When, however, Garnier tied a pretty crimson handkerchief about the head of Onime's child, who danced for joy at the possession of such a treasure, the old chief was visibly moved, and gave his hand to the stranger. Two years later this old man, being suspected of complicity in the assassination of a colonist, was arrested, bound in chains and thrown into a dungeon. Three times he broke his chains and escaped, and each time was recaptured. He was then transported to Noumea. M. Garnier happened to be on the same ship. The condition of the old man was pitiful. Deep wounds, exposing the bones, were worn into his wrists and ankles in his attempts to free himself from his chains. Three days later he died, and on a subsequent examination of facts M. Garnier became convinced that Onime was innocent of the crime charged against him. On the ship he recognized Garnier, and accepted from him a little tobacco. Tobacco is more coveted by these people than anything else in the world, and the stronger it is the better. The child almost as soon as he can walk will smoke in an old pipe the poisonous tobacco furnished specially for the natives, which is so strong that it makes the most inveterate European smoker ill. "Gin and brandy have been introduced successfully," but the natives as a rule make horrible grimaces in drinking them, and invariably drink two or three cups of water immediately to put out the fire, as they say.

These natives speak a kind of "pigeon English." It would be pigeon French, doubtless, had their first relations been with the French instead of the English. The government has now stopped the sale of spirituous liquors to the natives, and recommended the chiefs to forbid their subjects smoking until a certain age, but no precautions yet taken have had much influence upon their physical condition. They are rapidly dying out. The most prevalent disease is pulmonary consumption, which they declare has been given them by the Europeans. Fewer and fewer children are born every year, and in the tribes about Poöbo and some others these are almost all males. Here is a curious fact for scientists. Is not the cause to be found in the deteriorated physical condition of the women? Mary Trist, in her careful and extensive experimentation with butterfly grubs, has shown that by generous feeding these all develop into females, while by starving males only appear.

M. Garnier believes that the principal cause of the deterioration and decay of the natives in New Caledonia is the terrible tobacco that is furnished to them. "Everybody pays for any service from the natives in this poison." A missionary once asked a native convert why he had not attended mass. "Because you don't give me any tobacco," replied this hopeful Christian. To him, as to many others, says M. Garnier, going to church means working for the missionary, just as much as digging in his garden, and he therefore expects remuneration. The young girls in regions where there are missions established all wear chaplets, for they are good Catholics after a fashion, and generally refuse to marry pagans. This operates to bring the young men under the religious yoke. Self-interest is their strong motive generally. The missionary makes them understand the value of his counsel in their tribes. It means their raising cocoanuts for their oil, flocks of chickens and droves of hogs, for all of which they can obtain pipes, quantities of tobacco, a gun, and gaudy-colored cottons. When the chiefs find that their power is gradually passing from them into the hands of the missionaries, they only smoke more poisonous tobacco, expose

themselves all the more to the weather through the cheap fragmentary dress they have adopted, and so the ravages of consumption are accelerated. Pious Christian women, who have always given freely of their store to missionary causes, begin to see that the results are not commensurate with their sacrifices—that their charity, even their personal work among heathens, teaching them to read and write and study the catechism, to cover their bodies with dress and to love the arts of civilization, can avail little against the rum, tobacco and nameless maladies legally or illegally introduced with Christianity.

During one of M. Garnier's excursions into the interior he came across one of the sacred groves where the natives bury their dead, if hanging them up in trees can be so designated. His guides all refused to accompany him, fearing to excite the anger of the manes of their ancestors. He therefore entered the high grove alone. Numerous corpses, enveloped in carefully-woven mats and then bound in a kind of basket, were suspended from the branches of the trees. Some of these were falling in pieces, and the ground was strewn with whitened bones. It seems strange that this form of burial should be chosen in a country where at least once a year there occurs a terrible cyclone that destroys crops, unroofs houses, uproots trees, and often sends these basket-caskets flying with the cocoanuts through the air.

In New Caledonia there are no ferocious beasts, and the largest animal is a very rare bird which the natives call the kagon. When, therefore, they saw the English eating the meat from beef bones they inferred that these were the bones of giants, and naïvely inquired how they were captured and what weapons of war they used. The confidence and admiration of these children of Nature are easily gained, and under such circumstances they talk freely and delight in imparting all the information they possess. Among one of the tribes near Balarde, M. Garnier noticed a young woman of superior beauty, and made inquiries about her. This was Iarat, daughter of the chief Oundo. The hornlike protuberances on her head were two "scarlet flowers, which were very becoming in her dark hair."