ページの画像
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

effable good-humour, Go to the devil, but has, on the contrary, wrought little, my fine fellow.""

I would now observe, that of the conclusions to which I have been led

to come, from a diligent perusal of Mr. Ritchie's book, one is, that in no part of the empire are the population quite civilised; and that a long period of years must elapse before there can be a prospect of the Russians being raised to the rank of any of the wellordered communities of Europe. The nature of their religion, of their clergy, and of the administration of their laws, are sad obstacles in the way of improvement. Their religious faith is defiled by the admixture of the grossest superstitions, and, in many districts, has only been engrafted upon paganism not yet extinct. The higher ecclesiastics are all monks, bound by a vow of celibacy, living apart from, and holding little converse with, the people. The lower class of their clergy-the working clergy—are all, like the Irish popish priests, taken from the dregs of the peasantry; and are, accordingly, never admitted into the company of the gentry. They are ignorant, drunken, and debauched; they are not respected in their own persons, and fail not to draw down upon the religion they profess, and the church whose servants they are, that shame which should be peculiarly their own. Nicholas has recently promulgated a code of laws, which he was at great trouble to collect, but nothing can well be worse than the administration of justice. The Russians are very litigious, and every free man in the empire may practise as a lawyer. The result of this system of free trade has not been such as should induce us to introduce it into this country, even although it be patronised by that distinguished patriot, Mr. O'Connell. Another conclusion at which I have arrived is, that if there be blame to be attributed to the Russian emperors, and especially to Nicholas and his predecessor, it is for the generous error of pressing on too speedily in the attempt to reform the institutions of the country, general and local- to raise the standard of civilisation - to ameliorate the condition of the humbler classes and to confer rank and privileges upon all men. We have already seen, that the benevolent act of Alexander has not, as as yet, brought forth

save unmixed evil. And in the course of Mr. Ritchie's remarks upon Moscow I find the following judicious observations, which it would be well for that nasty set of people, the philanthropy-mongers, to consider:

"The public of England, perhaps, will be surprised to learn, that, independently of the opposition such a measure would receive from some of the landholders, it would be opposed by a great body of the peasants themselves." The Russian peasant, generally speaking, has no idea of liberty in the abstract he does not wish to be free, merely for the sake of freedom. If a noble give his serf liberty, he, of course, resumes his land. But the land is mine,' cries the serf; it has come down to me from my ancestors; it is there where my father was buried, and where my young ones were born!' To become a tenant, liable to be turned off at legal warning, instead of a feudal vassal, bolding his lands on the bond of fidelity, does not appear liberty to him. If he forms an idea of the word at all, it is that he may still retain his land, and yet not pay the landlord. Again, when the Russian landlord resumes his land, he will of course rescind all the privileges which time and custom have secured to the peasants; and I should like to see the stare of the latter when told, for the first time, that they were henceforth to have no property in the fish of the sea and fowl of the air."

[ocr errors]

All improvement of a country and its inhabitants all civilisation, must originate in the labours of the civil engineer. How fully sensible of this the Romans were, is grandly attested by the works they have left in each and every one of their provinces; but, independently of the lack of treasure, Nature herself has laid obstacles, of the most appalling description, in the way of interpenetrating, with lines of communication, deserts and forests under a Russian sky. The great marvel is, that so much has been done under such circumstances, and in so short a time. For all this, Russia has been almost exclusively indebted to the zeal, the energy, and the patriotism of her rulers. To none, I do believe, has she more reason to be grateful, for the most affectionate dispositions, than to the present tzar; and when I awhile ago alluded to the appearance of exaggeration in the praise conferred

1 be sunnosed that I

for a moment wished to speak, or could think, slightingly of him. I believe there are few more noble-hearted men, few who more justly, and generously, and kindly, and honourably discharge all the duties of life, publicly and privately, in that exalted station" into which it has pleased God to call him." I cannot see that his undisputed attachment to his wife and children is a fitting subject for ribald jest, or for the declamatory multiplication of truisms, as stupid as they are inapplicable.

His conduct to his loyal subjects has always been paternal and kindly in the highest degree. Where he has erred, it has only been from an over-eager desire to confer benefits upon classes not yet competent to appreciate and enjoy them. And as to his bearing and proceedings towards the Poles, I for one cannot join in the yelp of condemnation against them. If a cur- snap at your heels, shall you not be justified in spurning him, and lashing him till he roar again? In history, the Poles are remembered as the "blackguards of Europe." They were styled a nation, but they never were a people; they were never more than a foul congeries of the most paltry tyrants and

the most abject slaves. And what are they now? A pack of rebels-a set of disloyal, false, treacherous menmad with hatred of their conquerors and masters, and the idle dream of a nationality which never did in truth exist. They are to Russia what the Irish rabble are to England,-an irreclaimable caste of unmitigated fanatics, whom no benefits can bind-whose hatred nothing can appease or avert. And they too, forsooth, wish for a repeal of the union-they wish to dismember the empire, and lay bare its frontier to the enemy; and knowing this (as every body must in his heart know it), was it not straightforward and manly in Nicholas to tell the cringing traitors so-I mean those who came as a deputation to himand to warn them that the only remedies which could avail, the bayonet and the knout, would be effectively applied to the next outbreak of their misproud treason?

I shall conclude by observing, that when Mr. Ritchie's volume shall have served out the time which fashion may allot to it upon the drawing-room table, it is well worthy of being placed in a man's library.

HENRY MILDMAY.

SKETCHES OF SAVAGE LIFE.

No. I.

KONDIARONK, CHIEF OF THE HURONS.

EVENTS which, in the history of Europe, appear as of an age little older than that in which we live, are, in point of time, coequal with those in the annals of America, which, from the atrocity of their character, and the terrific wildness of the whole western world, we read of as if belonging to ages remote, and, in respect to America, certainly as that of man in the first state of society. We refer to a period when the vast regions of the new world were covered with those boundless, dense, and splendid forests, which still, with the exception of trifling patches cleared by Europeans, and the savannahs and buffalo prairies of the far west, commence at the shores of the Atlantic, and from thence continue branching luxuriantly over the banks of rivers and lakes, and extending in stately grandeur over the plains, and stretching proudly up to

the summits of the mountains, until these magnificent sylvan regions terminate only where the surges of the Pacific bound their limits.

Notwithstanding the reckless advances of the pale-faced Europeans on the waters and hunting grounds of the red-skins of America, we do not yet, in many of the most extensive regions, observe the progress of improvement, or any sign of what we consider civilisation. There the sublime landscape, reigning in its natural luxuriance, in its primeval wildness, exhibits the same scenery as prevailed over all North America two centuries ago, when none but the swift hunter traversed its solitudes, and no vessel but the white canoe of the savage navigated the waters of its inland seas, rivers, or oceans.

Before, however, we sketch either

the dark atrocities or the noble deeds of the American Indian, let us pause a moment, and ask, whether Europe has been guileless during the period that has elapsed since the year 1604that in which the first permanent European settlement was established by France in North America?

In England, we find Raleigh murdered by order of a base sovereign, to satiate the bloodthirsty court of Spain; then came the civil war; then the debaucheries of Charles II.; then the bloody judgment-halls of James and Jeffreys; and, later still, the treacherous massacre of the hos

pitable Clan Glencoe. Neither can humanity nor Christian charity look over the murderous pages of Irish history without horror. And if we turn to our transactions in the East, avarice, cruelty, and rapine, leave little that shines purely in English conduct.

Without expatiating on the burnings in Smithfield, or the massacre of St. Bartholomew-both for the glory of the benign Deity-if we go to Paris, we read and talk of Richelieu, and saunter in the Palais Royal, which was his dwelling. We include Colbert among modern financiers and commercial politicians. We walk along to the end of the Rue St. Honoré, and halt and sympathise at the very house in front of which the first and the best of the Bourbons was assassinated; and then pass on to the arsenal in which Sully, as master of the ordnance, dwelt and acted. There we may pore over his library, and afterwards call at his palace in the Faubourg St. Antoine, still in admirable and princely repair. There also, as we stand looking at the sculptured figures in the court, or wander from saloon to saloon, we may ruminate in fancy over his wise saws and does. On returning, at every step, whether at the Place des Victoires, at the Place Carousal, at the Place de la Concorde, or on the Boulevards, we tread over ground which has been brutalised by murders, executions, and butcheries, from the earliest days of the Belleville, with little intermission, until the present hour, when a dark atrocity, of infernal conception and execution, has been perpetrated in the open day, and in the full front of sixty thousand "fighting men."

From these scenes, it is true, we

by eating ices at Tortoni's, in revelling amidst the gastronomic creations of modern Epicureanism, or smother time and lose money at the theatres, écarté tables, or royal gambling dens.

Let us vary the scene of action, and traverse the Atlantic to the shores of the savage world, and glance at the deeds of the red heathens, while the civilised whites have been massacring, drowning, burning, and assassinating each other in the land of Christianity, learning, and politeness.

On the discovery of America, and on the exploring of the country by the several navigators who succeeded Columbus, all those regions, from Hudson Bay to Patagonia, were found to be inhabited by a people who, with the exception of the Esquimaux, were evidently of the same race. Under the torrid zones and the northern regions, the features, forms, and shining olive complexions of the aborigines are the same. Their origin is enveloped in mysterious darkness; and we know only the fact, that there is no portion of the earth, which affords even the barest sustenance for supporting life, on which man is not found.

Columbus, in describing the native Americans to Ferdinand and Isabella, says, "I swear to your majesties that there is not a better people in the world than these-more affectionate, affable, or mild. They love their neighbours as themselves. Their language is the sweetest, the softest, and most cheerful, for they always speak smiling; and although they go naked, let your majesties believe me they are very becoming."

Whatever was the condition and character of the Indians three centuries ago, when the whole western world was theirs, and when they formed patriarchal tribes or families of hunters, it must have been happy, in comparison with the state of deplorable wretchedness to which European civilisation has subjected them.

To assert, as some American journalists have done, that the Indians of America are incapable of civilisation, would be uttering the most gross absurdity ever advanced.

Unless he be maddened or besotted by the intoxicating fluids introduced from Europe, the Indian of North America is a truly dignified and majestic personage. The graceful, the

mallu taciturn. but on

[blocks in formation]

whom Europeans, and especially the English, have not only wronged, but to injustice added that galling, disdainful contempt, which hath festered in his proud soul, and, with the repeated aggressions that deprive him of his beautiful country, the forests of which once afforded him abundant game, and in the rivers of which he alone fished, nurtured eternal, unforgiving hatred in his heart towards the white man. No wonder that he pines away in silent anguish, while he beholds his tribe melting away before the advancing encroachments and prosperity of Europeans.

The right of the Indians to their country was founded in nature and immemorial occupancy-the free and bounteous Gift of Heaven was their tenure. But the dark superstition of the times claimed the Deity as the God only of Christians; and the Spaniards, and even our Elizabeth and James, made this monstrous doctrine their measure of right, in wresting all the territories discovered by their subjects from" the infidels."

Tribes, however numerous, who were unacquainted with the use or power of fire-arms, and who looked upon these invaders as spirits sent forth by the gods of thunder, were suddenly terrified, and subdued with feeble resistance.

The cruelty and treachery of the Spaniards, in Cuba and in South America, admit of no parallel in the annals of perfidy, and redeem the savage state of man from the charge of being more cruel, base, and unprincipled than that of the refined European.

The French and English, by their avarice in trade, drove the Indians to butcher each other; and introduced among them terrible exterminators, in the form of gunpowder, brandy, and small-pox.

In

In Canada, the Indian tribes received the French navigators without suspicion, and with hospitality. exchange for fine furs, Champlain gave brandy and fire-arms; both of which he first taught the Algonquins, and afterwards other tribes, the use of. Calvinists and Catholics were equally engaged in this avaricious and destructive traffic.

The Dutch, and afterwards the En

glish at New York, in order to monopolise the fur trade, formed an alliance with the warlike Six Nations, who were the hereditary and sworn enemies of the Hurons and Algonquins, both warrior nations, at this time in terms of peace, and trading with the French. The scruples of honour were little regarded by the European traders; and hostilities were frequently renewed by the Iroquois against the French. In 1683, the whole population of the Canadas scarcely exceeded eight thousand in number. The Marquis de Nonville at this period, by an act of the basest perfidy, stamped eternal dishonour on the French name, by seizing, under the treacherous decoy of two Jesuit priests (sent to convert them), the chiefs of the Iroquois, whom he loaded with chains; and, under the pretence of Christianising them, they were carried to France, and there condemned to the galleys.

The Abenaquis, allies of the French, were at the same time urged to attack the Iroquois at Sorell; and although, in Europe, the English and French were at peace, the latter, in Canada, managed to have the settlements of the former laid waste by the Abenaquis, who plundered the property and scalped the inhabitants.

The Iroquois, on the other side, advanced in five hundred canoes, burnt all the French habitations and cornstacks in the neighbourhood of Fort Frontenac (now Kingston), and captured a French bark on Lake Ontario

laden with provisions. They then made overtures for negotiating a peace, accompanied with fearful preparations for war. Their deputies arrived, attended by five hundred warriors, to treat with M. de Nonville, the governor, at Montreal. These orators assumed a

lofty tone, and said, as was fully known, that they had twelve hundred warriors at a short distance, who would immediately fall on the French settlements, set fire to the houses and corn-fields, and murder the inhabitants, if the governor did not without delay send for their chiefs to France, and accept the proposed conditions of peace, to be ratified by deputies on an appointed day.

Fear and necessity compelled M. de Nonville to accept the proposals; but the ratification was frustrated by the political management of a young Huron chief, worthy of the most refined disciple of Macchiavelli. The address

and skill of this savage might justly rank him in the annals of political intrigue with the Richelieus, Metternichs, Walpoles, and Talleyrands, of Europe; while his callous indifference to scruples, in seizing the time and materials for accomplishing his purposes, afford examples of deep resolute design and conduct, not surpassed in the whole register of damnable and successful policy. His name was

KONDIARONK.

He was surnamed the Rat; and although under forty years of age, and considered a youth, in comparison with the other chiefs of the ferocious and warlike Hurons, Kondiaronk, by the power of his florid, sonorous eloquence, by his intrepidity and skill in hunting, by his daring bravery in war, and by unprecedented success in the enterprises he planned and conducted, elevated himself to the post of chief in war, and first in council, of his powerful tribe.

-

His father was taken prisoner by the Iroquois, and executed by prolonged and excruciating tortures first cutting off his ears and slitting his nose, as the European autocrat did, after the last fall of Warsaw, to several noble Poles; then extracting all his nails from the roots, blowing out his teeth, and bruising his fingers and toes flat with stones; and then, after cutting off his arms and legs, sticking small splinters of pine knots into his body, much like the bits of bacon in a fricandeau de veau, and smearing his head with turpentine, they set his hair and the pine knots on fire, and thus terminated the life of the father of Kondiaronk.

The journals of the Jesuits in Canada record this event in the same year that one of their order, whom the Pope afterwards canonised, was torn limb from limb, joint from joint, in Paris, for assassinating Henry III. of France.

The bringing up and training of the young Indians devolve altogether on the mothers; and the mother of Kondiaronk might be considered the spirit of revenge personified. She was the proud daughter of one of the boldest warriors and most expert huntsmen of the tribe; and her husband, a warrior of gigantic stature, and a huntsman of the utmost speed and skill, had long been the terror of the Six Nations and of the Abenaquis, as well as the chief

chase. Left a widow when her son was only four years old, she related to him the legends of her tribe, and their victories over the Iroquois, the Autagamis, and the Abenaquis. She invoked the manitous, or spirits - she renewed her vows of hatred and revenge against those tribes. -and she imperiously demanded a limb of each Iroquois victim, which she taught her son from infancy to suck and gnaw as the most delicious and most desirable delicacy and she ceaselessly instilled into his heart and mind the most malignant hatred towards that tribe, whose total extermination became from his youth the cherished passion of his soul. She made him vow everlasting vengeance against them and their alliesmade him invoke the manitous -- and renew his vows and invocations every moon. She had him early exercised in lessons of eloquence, and in feats of activity, strength, and skill. Besides her influence as the eldest daughter of the oldest and most venerated chief, and the widow of the boldest warrior and swiftest hunter, she was considered the most notable chronicler of legends, dreams, visions, and events, of all the women who sat, in their appropriate circle, at the Indian councils.

Such was the mother of Kondiaronk. As he grew up he accompanied the warriors to the fight and the huntsmen to the chase. His bravery in battle, and the trophies he wou in combat — his speed in the forest and prairie, and the furs and the venison he brought back to the rendezvous of Makilinakinak, filled the wigwams of all the Huron villages with the fame of his exploits. His eloquent orations at the council fires, and his daring plans for fresh enterprises, gave him an early ascendancy, to which the old chiefs yielded, and to which the proudest warriors readily agreed.

The daughters of the sachems, the dark-eyed, clear olive skin beauties, with the black flowing ringlets, the pearly teeth, the little feet and pretty hands, languished in love with the young hero of battles. But the heart of Kondiarouk kindled not to love. Yet he had adored a young adopted Autagami; but an English trader enveigled her within the precincts of Corlar, violated her person, and she, in the frenzy of wounded chastity, leaped into the turbulent cataract of

« 前へ次へ »