The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860

I have alluded to the oysters of La Union; but I should prove ungrateful indeed, after the manifold delicious repasts which they afforded us, were I to deny them the tribute of a paragraph. It is generally believed that the true oyster of our shores is found nowhere else, or at least only in northern latitudes. But an exception must be made in favor of the waters of the Bay of Fonseca. Here they are found in vast beds, in all the subordinate bays where the streams deposit their sediment, and where, with the rise and fall of the tide, they obtain that alternation of salt and brackish water which seems to be necessary to their perfection. They are the same rough-coated, delicious mollusks as those of our own coasts, and by no means to be degraded by a comparison with the muddy, long-bearded, and, to Christian palates, coppery abominations of the British Islands, which in their flattened shape and scalloped edges seem to betray an impure ancestry,—in point of fact, to be a bad cross between the scallop and the oyster.

At low tide some of the beds are nearly bare, and then the Indians take them up readily with their hands. The ease with which they may be got will appear from the circumstance, that for some time after our arrival we paid but a real (twelve and a half cents) for each canoe-load, of from five to six bushels. The people of La Union seldom use them, and we were therefore able to establish the "ruling rates." They continued at a real a load, until H., with reckless generosity, one day paid our improvised oyster-man two reals for his cargo, who thereupon, appealing to this bad precedent, refused to go out, unless previously assured of receiving the advanced rate. This led to the immediate arrest of H., on an indictment charging him with "wilfully and maliciously combining and conniving with one Juan Sanchez, (colored,) to put up the price of the necessaries of life in La Union, in respect of the indispensable article vulgarly known as ostrea Virginiana, but in the language of the law and of science designated as oysters." On this indictment he was summarily tried, and, in consequence of aggravating his offence by an attempt at exculpation, was condemned to suffer the full penalties of the law, in such cases provided, namely, "to pay the entire cost of all the oysters that might thenceforth be consumed by the prosecuting parties and the court, and, at eleven o'clock, past meridian, to be taken from his bed, thence to the extremity of the mole, and there inducted." Which sentence was carried into rigorous execution. Nor was he allowed to resume his former rank in the party, until, by a masterly piece of diplomacy, he organized an opposition oyster-boat, and a consequent competition, which soon brought Juan Sanchez to terms, and oysters to their just market-value.

That the aboriginal dwellers around the Bay of Fonseca appreciated its conchological treasures, we had afterwards ample evidence; for at many places on its islands and shores we found vast heaps of oyster-shells, which seemed to have been piled up as reverent reminiscences of the satisfaction which their contents had afforded.

During my previous visit to La Union, in March, 1850, I had observed that the north winds, which prevail during that month in the Bay of Honduras, sometimes sweep entirely across the continent with such force as to raise a considerable sea in the Bay of Fonseca. I thence inferred that there must exist a pass or break in the great mountain-range of the Cordilleras, through which the wind could have an uninterrupted or but partially interrupted sweep. This was confirmed by the fact that the current of air which reached the bay was narrow, affecting only a width of about ten or twelve miles. This circumstance impressed me at that time only as indicating a remarkable topographical feature of the country; but afterwards, when the impracticability of a canal at Nicaragua and the deficiencies in respect of ports for a railway at Tehuantepec had become established, I was led to reflect upon it in connection with a plan for inter-oceanic communication by railway through Honduras; and, as explained in the introduction, we were now here to test the accuracy of my previous conclusions. Our observations at the top of Conchagua had signally confirmed them.

We could distinctly make out the existence of a great valley extending due north, and our glasses revealed a marked depression in the Cordilleras, which in all the maps were represented as maintaining here the character of a high, unbroken range. Of course no such valley as opened before us could exist without a considerable stream flowing through it. But the maps showed neither valley nor river. This circumstance did not, however, discourage us; for my former travels and explorations in Nicaragua had shown me, that, notwithstanding the country had occupied the attention of geographers for more than three centuries, in connection with a project for a canal between the oceans, its leading and most obvious physical features were still either grossly misconceived or utterly unknown.

The leading fact of the existence of some kind of a pass having been sufficiently established by our observations from Conchagua, we next set to work to obtain such information from the natives as might assist our further proceedings. This was a tedious task, and called for the exercise of all our patience; for it is impossible to convey in language an adequate idea of the abject ignorance of most of the inhabitants of Central America concerning its geography and topographical features. Those who would naturally be supposed to be best informed, the priests, merchants, and lawyers, are really the most ignorant, and it is only from the arrieros, or muleteers, and the correos, or runners, that any knowledge of this kind can be obtained, and then only in a very confused form, and with most preposterous and contradictory estimates of distances and elevations.

We nevertheless made out that the mouth of a river or estero, laid down in Sir Edward Belcher's chart, on the opposite side of the bay in front of La Union, was really that of the river Goascoran, a considerable stream having its rise at a point due north, and not far from Comayagua, the capital of Honduras, which, we also ascertained, was seated in the midst of a great plain, bearing the same name. A large stream, it was said, flowed past that city,—but whether the Goascoran or some other, or whether it flowed north or south, neither arriero nor correo could tell.

The navigability of the Goascoran was also a doubtful question. According to some, it could be forded everywhere; others declared it impassable for many leagues above its mouth: a discrepancy which we were able to reconcile by reference to its probable state at different seasons of the year.

Fixing an early day for taking the field in earnest, and leaving H. and Don Henrique to make the necessary preparations, I improved the interval, in company with Lieutenant J., in making a boat exploration of the Goascoran. Obtaining a ship's gig, with two oarsmen and a supply of provisions, we left La Union at dawn on the 15th of April. We found that the river enters the bay by a number of channels, through low grounds covered with mangrove-trees. It was at half-tide, and we experienced no difficulty in entering. Our course at first was tortuous, and it seemed as if the river had lost itself in a labyrinth of channels, and we were ourselves much confused with regard to our true direction. Keeping, however, in the strongest current, at the end of half an hour we penetrated beyond the little delta of the river, and the belt of mangroves, to firm ground. Here the stream was confined to a single channel two hundred yards broad, with banks of clay and loam from six to ten feet high. The lands back appeared to be level, and, although well covered with ordinary forest-trees, were apparently subject to overflow. We observed cattle in several grassy openings, and here and there a vaquero's hut of branches; for it is a general practice of the hacienderos to drive down their herds to the low grounds of the coasts and rivers, during the dry season, and as soon as the grass on the hills or highlands begins to grow sere and yellow. We observed also occasional heaps of oyster-shells on the banks, or half washed away by the river; and on the sand-spits at the bends of the stream, and in all the little shady nooks of the shore, we saw thousands of water-fowl, ducks of almost every variety, including the heavy muscovy and the lively teal; and there were flocks of white and crimson ibises, and solitary, long-legged, contemplative cranes, and gluttonous pelicans; while myriads of screaming curlews scampered along the line of the receding tide to snap up imprudent snails and the numerous minute crustaceæ which drift about in these brackish waters. The familiar kingfisher was also there, coming down with an occasional arrowy dash on some unsuspecting minnow, and then flapping away leisurely for a quiet meal in the shady recesses of a neighboring tree.

We fired on a flock of ducks, killing a number and wounding others, all of which we secured except one which struggled away into an eddy under the bank. We pushed in, and my hand was extended to pick him up, when a slimy, corrugated head, with distended jaws and formidable teeth, rose to the surface before me, paused an instant, then shot forward, and, closing on the wounded bird, disappeared. The whole was done so quickly as to escape the notice of my companions, who would hardly believe me when I told them that we had been robbed by an alligator. We lost a duck, but gained an admonition; and I scarcely need add that our half-formed purpose of taking a bath in the next cool bend of the river was abandoned.

When the tide had run out, we were able to form a better notion of the river. We found, that, although near the end of the dry season, it was still a fine stream, with a large body of water, but spread over so wide a channel as to preclude anything like useful navigation, except with artificial aids. In places it was so shallow that our little boat found difficulty in advancing. But this did not disappoint us; for nothing like a mixed transit with transhipments had ever entered into my plan, which looked only to an unbroken connection by rail from one sea to the other. At four o'clock, satisfied that no useful purpose could be effected by going farther up the stream, we stopped at a collection of huts called Las Sandías,—not inappropriately, for the whole sloping bank of the river, which here appeared to be little better than a barren sand-bed, was covered, for a quarter of a mile, with a luxuriant crop of water- and musk-melons, now in their perfection. We purchased as many as we could carry off for a real. They were full, rich, and juicy, and proved to be a grateful restorative, after our day's exposure to the direct rays of the sun, and their scarcely less supportable reflection from the water. The melon-patch of Las Sandías is overflowed daring the rainy season, and probably the apparently bare, sandy surface hides rich deposits of soil below.

We found the stream here alive with an active and apparently voracious fish, varying in length from fourteen to twenty inches, reddish in color, and closely resembling the Snapper of the Atlantic coast of Central America. The male inhabitants of Las Sandías were occupied in catching these fishes with hand-nets, in the rifts and currents; and the women were busy in cleaning and drying them. Their offal had accumulated around the huts in offensive heaps, and gave out an odor which was almost insupportable, but of which the women appeared to take no notice. We did not, therefore, trespass long on their hospitality, but returned to our boat and started back to La Union. As night came on, the trees along the river's bank were thronged with chachalacas, which almost deafened us with their querulous screams. Two well-directed shots gave us half a dozen,—for the young chachalaca is not to be despised on the table,—and we added them to our stock of water-fowls and melons as tempting trophies to our companions from the new Canaan on which they were venturing.

[To be continued.]

KEPLER

The acceptance of a doctrine is often out of all proportion to the authority that fortifies it. There are sweeps of generalization quite permeable to objection, which yet find metaphysical support; there are irrefragable dogmas which the mind drops as futile and fruitless. It is recorded of Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, that it found reception from no physician then over forty years old. We believe the splendid nebular construction of Laplace has its own difficulties; yet what noble or aspiring mind does not find interior warranties for the truth of that audacious synthesis? Is it that the soul darts responsive impartments to the heavens? that the whirl is elemental in the mind? that baffling intervals stretch deeper within us, and shoals of stars with no parallax appear?

Among the functions of Science, then, may well be included its power as a metre of the intellectual advance of mankind. In these splendid symbols man writes the record of his advancing humanity. How all is interwoven with the All! A petrified national mind will certainly appear in a petrified national Science. And that sublime upsurging from the depths of human nature which came with the last half of the eighteenth century appeared not alone in the new political and social aspirations, but in a fresh insight into Nature. This spirit manifested itself in the new sciences that sprang from the new modes of vision,—Magnetism, Electricity, Chemistry,—the old crystalline spell departing before a dynamical system of Physics, before the thought of the universe as a living organic whole. And what provokers does the discovery of the celestial circles bring to new circles of politics and social life!

The illustrations of Astronomy to this thought are very large. First of the sciences to assume a perfectly rational form, it presents the eternal type of the unfolding of the speculative spirit of man. This springs, no doubt, from the essentially subjective character of astronomy,—more than all the other sciences a construction of the creative reason. From the initiative of scientific astronomy, when the early Greek geometers referred the apparent diurnal movements to geometrical laws, to the creation of the nebular hypothesis, the logical filiation of the leading astronomical conceptions obeys corresponding tidal movements in humanity. Thus it is that

"through the ages one increasing purposerunsAnd the thoughts of men are widened with theprocess of the suns."

It was for reasons the Ptolemaic system so long held its sway. It was for reasons it went, too, when it did, hideous and oppressive nightmare! The celestial revelations of the sixteenth century came as the necessary complement of the new mental firmaments then dawning on the thought of man. The intellectual revolution caused by the discovery of the double motion of our planet was undoubtedly the mightiest that man had ever experienced, and its effect was to change the entire aspect of his speculative and practical activity. What a proof that ideas rule the world! Two hundred and fifty years ago, certain new sidereal conceptions arose in the minds of half a dozen philosophers, (isolated and utterly destitute of political or social influence, powerful only in the possession of a sublime and seminal thought,)—conceptions which, during these two centuries, have succeeded in overthrowing a doctrine as old as the human mind, closely interknit with the entire texture of opinions, authority, politics, and religion, and establishing a theory flatly contradicted by the universal dictates of experience and common sense, and true only to the transcendental and interpretative Reason!

At the advent of Modern Astronomy, the apparition of the German, John Kepler, presents itself. Familiarly associated in general apprehension with that inductive triad known as "Kepler's Laws," which form the foundation of Celestial Geometry, it is much less generally known that he was an august and oracular soul, one of those called Mystics and Transcendentalists, perhaps the greatest genius for analogy that ever lived,—that he led a truly epic life, a hero and helper of men, a divine martyr of humanity.

The labors of Kepler were mathematical, optical, cosmographical, and astronomical,—but chiefly astronomical. Two or three of his principal works are the "Cosmographic Mystery," (Mysterium Cosmographicum,) the "New Astronomy," (Astronomia Nova, seu Physica Caelestis,) and the "Harmonies of the World" (Harmonices Mundi). His whole published works comprise some thirty or forty volumes, while twenty folio volumes of manuscript lie in the Library at St. Petersburg. These Euler, Lexell, and Kraft undertook some years ago to examine and publish, but the result of this examination has never appeared. An elegant complete edition of the works of Kepler is at present being issued at Frankfort, under the editorship of Frisch.2 It is to be in sixteen volumes, 8vo, two of which are published. For his biography, the chief source is the folio volume of Correspondence, published in 1718, by Hansch,3 who has prefixed to these letters between Kepler and his contemporaries a Life, in which his German heartiness beats even through the marble encasement of his Latinity.

We have always admired, as a stroke of wit, the way Hansch takes to indicate Kepler's birthplace. Disdaining to use any but mathematical symbols for so great a mathematician, he writes that he was born on the 21st of December, 1571, in longitude 29° 7', latitude 48° 54'! It may be worth mentioning, that on this cryptic spot stood the little town of Weil in the Duchy of Würtemberg. His birth was cast at a time when his parents were reduced to great poverty, and he received very little early schooling. He was, however, sent to Tübingen, and here he pursued the scholastic studies of the age, designing for the Church. But the old eternal creed-questionings arose in his mind. He stumbled at the omnipresence of Christ's body, wrote a Latin poem against it, and, when he had completed his studies, got for a testimonium that he had distinguished himself by his oratorical talents, but was considered unfit to be a fellow-laborer in the Church of Würtemberg. A larger priesthood awaited him.

The astronomical lectureship at the University of Grätz, in Styria, falling vacant, Kepler was in his twenty-third year appointed to fill it. He was, as he tells us, "better furnished with talent than knowledge." But, no doubt, things had conspired to forward him. While at Tübingen, under the mathematician Mästlin, he had eagerly seized all the hints his master threw out of the doctrines of Copernicus, integrating them with interior authorities of his own. "The motion of the earth, which Copernicus had proved by mathematical reasons, I wanted to prove by physical, or, if you prefer it, metaphysical reasons." So he wrote in his "Prodromus Dissertationum Cosmographicarum," which he published two years after going to Grätz, that is, in his twenty-fifth year. In this book his fiery and mystical spirit first found expression, flaming forth in meteoric coruscations. The problem which Kepler attempted to solve in the "Prodromus" was no less than the determination of the harmonic relations of the distances of the planets, which it was given him to solve more than twenty years afterwards. The hypothesis which he adopted proved utterly fallacious; but his primal intuition, that numerical and geometric relations connect the velocities, periods, and distances of the planets, was none the less fruitful and sublime.

Of the facts of Kepler's external life, we may simply say, for the sake of readier apprehension, that, after remaining six years at Grätz, he, in 1600, on the invitation of Tycho Brahe, Astronomer Royal to Rodolph II. of Germany, removed to Prague and associated himself with Tycho, who shortly afterwards dying, Kepler was appointed in his place. The chief work was the construction of the new astronomical tables called the Rodolphine Tables, and on these he was engaged many years. In this situation he continued till 1613, when he left it to assume a professorship at Linz. Here he remained some years, and the latter part of his life was spent as astrologer to Wallenstein. Kepler is described as small and meagre of person, and he speaks of himself as "troublesome and choleric in politics and domestic matters." He was twice married, and left a wife and numerous children ill-provided for.

Indeed, a painful and perturbed life fell to the lot of Kepler. The most crushing poverty all his life oppressed him. For, though his nominal salary as Astronomer Royal was large enough, yet the treasury was so exhausted that it was impossible for him ever to obtain more than a pittance. What a sad tragedy do these words, in a letter to Mästlin, reveal:—"I stand whole days in the antechamber, and am nought for study." And then he adds the sublime compensation: "I keep up my spirits, however, with the thought that I serve, not the Emperor alone, but the whole human race,—that I am laboring not merely for the present generation, but for posterity. If God stand by me and look to the victuals, I hope to perform something yet." Eternal type of the consolation which the consciousness of truth brings with it, his ejaculation on the discovery of his third law remains one of the sublimest utterances of the human mind:—"The die is cast; the book is written,—to be read now or by posterity, I care not which: it may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer!" Cast in a stormy and chaotic age, he was persecuted by both Protestants and Catholics on account of the purity and elevation of his religious ideas; and from the disclosures of Baron von Breitschwert4 it seems, that, in the midst of his sublimest labors, he spent five years in the defence of his poor old mother against a charge of witchcraft. He died in 1630, in his sixtieth year, (with the prospect of starvation before him,) of a fever which he caught when on a journey to Ratisbon, whither he had gone in the attempt to get part of his pay!

In what bewildering and hampering environment he found himself with the "Tübingen doctors" and the "Würtemberg divines," his letters reveal. On the publication of the "Prodromus," Hafenreffer wrote to warn him:—"God forbid you should endeavor to bring your hypothesis openly into argument with the Holy Scriptures! I require of you to treat the subject merely as a mathematician, and to leave the peace of the Church undisturbed." To the Tübingen doctors he replied:—"The Bible speaks to me of things belonging to human life as men are used to speak of them. It is no manual of Optics or of Astronomy; it has a higher object in view. It is a culpable misuse of it to seek in it for answers on worldly things. Joshua wished for the day to be lengthened. God hearkened to his wish. How? This is not to be inquired after." And surely the long-vexed argument has never since unfolded better statement than in the words of Kepler:—"The day will soon break when pious simplicity will be ashamed of its blind superstition,—when men will recognize truth in the book of Nature as well as in the Holy Scriptures, and rejoice in the two revelations."5

On this avowal he was branded as a hypocrite, heretic, and atheist.

To Mästlin he wrote:—"What is to be done? I think we should imitate the Pythagoreans, communicate our discoveries privatim, and be silent in public, that we may not die of hunger. The guardians of the Holy Scriptures make an elephant of a gnat. To avoid the hatred against novelty, I represented my discovery to the Rector of the University as a thing already observed by the ancients; but he made its antiquity a greater charge against it than he could have made of its novelty."

And, indeed, the devotion to truth in that age, as in others, required an heroic heart. Copernicus kept back the publication of his "De Revolutionibus Orbium Caeslestium" for thirty-six years, and received a copy of it only on his death-bed. Galileo tasted the sweets of the Inquisition. Tycho Brahe was exiled. And Kepler himself was persecuted all his life, hounded from city to city. And yet the sixteenth century will ever be memorable in the history of the human mind. The breaking down of external authority, the uprise of the spirit of inquiry, of skepticism, and the splendid scientific conquests that came in consequence, inaugurated a mighty movement which separates the present promises of mankind from all past periods by an interval so vast as to make it not merely a great historical development, but the very birth of humanity. While Tycho Brahe, at the age of fifty-four, was making his memorable observations at Prague, Kepler, at the age of thirty, was applying his fiery mind to the determination of the orbit of Mars, and Galileo, at thirty-six, was bringing his telescope to the revelation of new celestial intervals and orbs. Within the succeeding century Huygens made the application of the pendulum to clocks; Napier invented Logarithms; Descartes and Galileo created the analysis of curves, and the science of Dynamics; Leibnitz brought the Differential Calculus; Newton decomposed a ray of light, and synthesized Kepler's Laws into the theory of Universal Gravitation.