The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 56, June, 1862

1

Newspapers proper appeared as early as 1615 in Germany. But these rhymed gazettes were very numerous. They were more or less bulky pamphlets, with pithy sarcastic programmes for titles, and sometimes a wood or copper cut prefixed. A few of them were of Catholic origin, and one, entitled Post-Bole, (The Express,) is quite as good as anything issued by the opposite party.

2

Some cultivated Bohemians who can recall the glories of Ziska and his chiefs, and who comprehend the value of the tendency which they strove to represent, think that there would have grown a Bohemian people, a great centre of Protestant and Slavonic influence, if it had not been for the Battle of Weissenberg in 1620, when the Catholic Imperialists defeated their King Frederic. A verse of a popular song, The Patriot's Lament, runs thus, in Wratislaw's translation:—

"Cursed mountain, mountain white!Upon thee was crushed our might;What in thee lies covered o'erAges cannot back restore."

If there had been a Bohemian people, preserving a real vital tendency, the Battle of the White Mountain would have resulted differently, even had it been a defeat.

Other patriots, cultivated enough to be Panslavists, indulge a more cheerful vein. They see a good time coming, and raise the cry of Hej Slované!

"Hey, Slavonians! our Slavonic language still is living,Long as our true loyal heart is for our nation striving;Lives, lives the Slavonic spirit, and 't will live forever:Hell and thunder! vain against us all your rage shall shiver."

This is nothing but a frontier feeling. The true Slavonic centre is at St. Petersburg; thence will roll a people and a language over all kindred ground.

3

This monograph, has been prepared almost entirely from original authorities. Citations will be found in it from letters written by General Gage, Governor Bernard, John Pownall, Lord Barrington, and Lord Hillsborough, which have not been heretofore printed or used. They are from the rich historical collections of JARED SPARKS,—who has liberally permitted the writer to use original papers as freely as though they were his own. Among other sources from which the narrative has been drawn is an unfinished Life of Samuel Adams, in manuscript, by Samuel Adams Wells, for the liberal use of which, and for other papers, the writer is indebted to GEORGE BANCROFT. The materials have been mostly taken, however, from a compilation which the writer has had for several years in manuscript, entitled, "The Life and Times of Joseph Warren."

4

Savanna was a Haytian word spelt and pronounced by Spaniards. It is a plain of grass, affording pasturage in the rainy season; but a few shrubs also grow upon it. Pampas are vast plains without vegetation except during three months of the rainy season, when they yield fine grass. The word is Peruvian; was originally applied to the plains at the mouth of the La Plata. But the plains of Guiana and tropical America, which the Spaniards called Llanos, are also pampas. The Hungarian pasture-lands, called Puszta, are savannas. A Steppe is properly a vast extent of country, slightly rolling, without woods, but not without large plants and herbs. In Russia there are sometimes thickets eight or ten feet high. The salt deserts in Russia are not called steppes, but Solniye. Pampas and deserts are found alternating with steppes. A Desert may have a sparing vegetation, and so differ from pampas: if it has any plants, they are scrubby and fibrous, with few leaves, and of a grayish color, and so it differs from steppes and savannas. But there are rocky and gravelly, sandy and salt deserts: gravelly, for instance, in Asia Minor, principally in the district known to the ancients as the [Greek: katakekaumegae]. A Heath is a level covered with the plants to which that name has been applied. Finally, a Prairie differs from a savanna only in being under a zone where the seasons are not marked as wet and dry, but where the herbage corresponds to a variable moisture.

5

Hura crepitans, one of the handsomest trees in the West Indies, called sablier because its fruit makes a very convenient sandbox, when not fully ripe, by removing the seeds. It is of a horn-color, about three and a half inches wide and two high, and looks like a little striped melon. The ripe fruit, on taking out one of the twelve woody cells which compose it, will explode with a noise like a pistol, each cell giving a double report. This sometimes takes place while the fruit is hanging on the tree, and sometimes when it stands upon the table filled with sand. To prevent this, it is prettily hooped with gold, silver, or ivory.

6

When the English were meditating a descent upon the coast of Gonaive, a negro happened to see a prodigious number of these red-coated birds ranked on the savanna near the sea, as their habit is, in companies. He rushed into the town, shouting, "Z'Anglais, yo après veni, yo en pile dans savanne l'Hôpital!" "The English, they are after coming, they are drawn up on l'Hôpital savanna!" The générale was beaten, the posts doubled, and a strong party was sent out to reconnoitre.

The pelican is a source of great amusement to the negroes. They call this bird blague à diable, because of the incredible number of fish it can stow away in its pouch. They call the cormorant grand gosier, big gullet; and they make use of the membranous pocket which is found under the lower mandible of its beak to carry their smoking tobacco, fancying that it enhances the quality and keeps it fresh. Among the queer birds is the cra-cra, or crocodile's valet, a bold and restless bird with a harsh cry, represented in its name, which it uses to advertise the dozing crocodile of any hostile approach. It is a great annoyance to the sportsman by mixing with the wild ducks and alarming them with the same nervous cry.

7

Not entirely. The great earthquake of the 7th of May, 1842, was very destructive at Cap Haytien. On this occasion Port-au-Prince escaped with little injury.

8

Great quantities of gold were embezzled by the Spanish officials. Las Casas in his lively arguments with the Council of State in behalf of the Indians, always insisted that his plan for controlling them would be more profitable as well as humane. He promised large increase of treasure, and showed how the royal officers appropriated the gold which they extorted from the natives. Piedro Arias, for instance, spent six years at Castilla-du-Oro, at a cost to the Government of fifty-four thousand ducats, during which time he divided a million's worth of gold with his officers, at the expense of thousands of natives, whose lives were the flux of the metallic ore, while he paid only three thousand pesos for the king's fifth.—Llorente: Oeuvres de Las Casas, Tom. II—p.472.

9

Personal Narrative, Vol. III. p. 163, note. Bohn's Series.

10

Personal Narrative, Vol. III. p. 78, where see the subject discussed at length.

11

Histoire Générale des Antilles, par Du Tertre, Paris, 1667, Tom. II. p. 360.

12

Canoa is Haytian, and is like enough to Kayak, Esquimaux, to Caïque, Turkish and to Kahn, German, to unsettle an etymologist with a theory of origin.

13

In Mr. Irving's Life of Columbus, the characters of the different Indian chieftains are finely drawn, and the history of their intercourse and warfare with the Spaniards admirably told.

14

They even accused the natives of communicating that loathsome disease which results from promiscuous intercourse, when in fact the virus was shipped at Palos, with the other elements of civilization, to give a new world to Castile and Leon! Nations appear to be particularly sensitive upon this point, and accuse each other. But the first time a disorder is observed is not the date of its origin. See the European opinion in the fifteenth century, in Roscoe's Lorenzo de' Medici, p. 350, and note, Bohn's edition. It has probably existed from the earliest times, wherever population was dense and habits depraved. The Romans suffered from it, but, like the Europeans of the Middle Ages, did not always attribute it to its proper source. What did Persius mean in one or two places in his Third Satire, e.g., 113-115? And see also Celaus, Medicina, Lib. V. §3.

When the fighting-man of Europe became a mercenary, (soldier, soldner, paid-man,) he carried this tinder from country to country, and kindled the fire afresh. The Spaniards bore it to Hayti, and it stung like a snake beneath that fervid sky.

15

Consult a curious book, The Ten Tribes of Israel historically identified with the Aborigines of the Western Hemisphere. By Mrs. Simon. 1836.

16

Notes on Cuba, containing an Account of its Discovery and Early History. By Dr. Wurdemann. 1844.

17

The savages of Martinique kept in their caverns idols made of cotton, in the form of a man, with shining black seeds of the soap-berry (Sapindus) for eyes, and a cotton helmet. These were the original deities of the island. It cannot now be decided whether the cotton thus worshipped was long-staple or upland; but the tendency of the savage mind to make a fetich of its chief thing appears to be universal.

18

Histoire d'Hayti, par M. Placide Justin, p. 8.

19

Voyages d'un Naturaliste, etc., par M.E. Descourtilz, Tom. II. p. 19, et seq. 1809.

20

A Haytian word appropriated by the Spaniards, (cocuyos); Elater noctilucus. Their light is brilliant enough to read by.

21

Father Du Tertre enjoys relating, that a Carib orator, wishing to make his speech more impressive, invested his scarlet splendor in a jupe which he had lately taken from an Englishwoman, tying it where persons of the same liturgical tendency tie their cambric. But though his garrulity was thereby increased, the charms of the liquor drew his audience away.

22

Motley's Dutch Republic, Vol. I. p. 20.

23

Llorente's Oeuvres de Las Casas; Première Mémoire, contenant la Relation des Cruautés, etc.

24

Llorente, Tom. I. p. 180.

25

Llorente, Tom. I. p. 28.

26

By "the next month" the writer meant May. It will be observed that his article was finally prepared for the press on the second of April. It has not since been changed. The references to Williamsburg, the Chickahominy, and the "neck between the rivers" are not "prophecies after the fact."