THE BAY STATE MONTHLY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by John N. McClintock and
Company, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

G.H. Perkins

CAPTAIN GEORGE HAMILTON PERKINS, U.S.N.

In passing up the Concord and Claremont Railroad from Concord, the observant
traveler has doubtless noticed the substantial and comfortable-looking homestead with
large and trim front yard, shaded by thickly planted and generous topped maples, on
the right-hand side of the road after crossing the bridge that spans

at the pleasant-looking village of Contoocookville in the northern part of
Hopkinton.

There, under that inviting roof, the subject of this sketch, GEORGE HAMILTON
PERKINS, the eldest son in a family of eight children, was born, October 20,
1836.

His father, the Honorable Hamilton Eliot Perkins, inherited all the land in that
part of the town, and, in early life, in addition to professional work as a
counsellor-at-law and member of the Merrimack County bar, built the mills at
Contoocookville, and was, in fact, the founder of the thriving settlement at that
point.

His paternal grandfather, Roger Eliot Perkins, came to Hopkinton from the vicinity
of Salem, Massachusetts, when a young man, and by his energy, enterprise, and public
spirit, soon impressed his individuality upon the community, and became one of the
leading citizens of the town.

His mother was Miss Clara Bartlett George, daughter of the late John George,
Esquire, of Concord, whose ancestors were among the early settlers of Watertown,
Massachusetts. He is said to have been a man of active temperament, prompt in
business, stout in heart, bluff of speech, honest in purpose, and never failing in
any way those who had dealings with him.

As “the child is father of the man,” so the boyhood and youth of Captain Perkins
gave earnest of those qualities which in his young manhood the rude tests of the sea
and the grim crises of war developed to the full. “No matter” was his first plainly
spoken phrase, a hint of childish obstinacy that foreshadowed the persistence of
maturer years. Among other feats of his boyish daring, it is told that when a mere
child, hardly into his first trousers, he went one day to catch a colt in one of his
father’s fields bordering on the Contoocook. The colt declined to be caught and after
a sharp scamper took to the river and swam across. Nothing daunted, the plucky little
urchin threw off his jacket, plunged into the swift current, and safely breasting it,
was soon in hot pursuit on the other side; and after a long chase and hard tussle
made out to catch the spirited animal and bring him home in triumph. Always
passionately fond of animals and prematurely expert in all out- door sports, he thus
early began to master that noblest of beasts, the horse.

When eight years old, his father removed with his family to Boston, and, investing
his means in shipping, engaged for a time in trade with the west coast of Africa. The
son was apt to run about the wharves with his father, and the sight of the ships and
contact with “Jack” doubtless awoke the taste for the sea, that was to be gratified
later on.

Returning to the old homestead on the Contoocook after the lapse of two years or
more, the old, quiet, yet for young boyhood, frolicsome out-door life was resumed,
and the lad grew apace amid the rural scenes and ample belongings of that generous
home; not over studious, perhaps, and chafing, as boys will, at the restraint imposed
by the study of daily lessons and their recital to his mother.

At twelve years of age, he was sent to the Hopkinton Academy, and afterwards to
the academy at Gilmanton. While at Gilmanton, General Charles H. Peaslee, then member
of Congress from the Concord congressional district, offered him the appointment of
acting midshipman to fill a vacancy at the Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, which,
after some hesitation, his parents permitted him to accept, and he was withdrawn from
Gilmanton and sent to Concord to prepare for entrance at Annapolis, under a private
tutor. He remained under such pupilage until the age of fifteen, when the beginning
of the academic year, October, 1851, saw him installed in “Middy’s” uniform at that
institution, and the business of life for him had begun in earnest.

To a young and restless lad, used to being afield at all times and hours with
horse, dog, and gun, and fresh from a country home where the “pomp and circumstance”
of military life had had no other illustration than occasional glimpses of the old
“training and muster days” so dear to New Hampshire boys forty years ago, the change
to the restraint and discipline; the inflexible routine and stern command; the bright
uniforms and novel ways; the sight of the ships and the use of a vocabulary that ever
smacks of the sea; the call by drum and trumpet to every act of the day, from
bed-rising, prayers, and breakfast, through study, recitation, drill, and recreation
hours, to tattoo and taps, when every student is expected to be in bed,–was a
transformation wonderful indeed; but the flow of discipline and routine are so
regular and imperative that their currents are imperceptibly impressed upon the
youthful mind and soon become a part of his nature, as it were, unawares. So we may
conclude that our young aspirant for naval honors proved no exception to the rule,
and soon settled into these new grooves of life as quietly as his ardent temperament
would permit.

The discipline at the Academy, in those days, was harsher and more exacting, and
the officers of the institution of a sterner and more experienced sea-school, than
now; and the three months’ practice cruises across the Atlantic, which the different
classes made on alternate summers, when the “young gentlemen” were trained to do all
the work of seamen, both alow and aloft, and lived on the old navy ration of salt
junk, pork and beans, and hardtack, with no extras, were anything but a joke. The
Academy, too, was in a transition state from the system in vogue, up to 1850
inclusive, prior to which period the midshipmen went to sea immediately after
appointment, pretty much after the fashion of Peter Simple and Jack Easy, and after a
lapse of five years came to the school for a year’s cramming and coaching before
graduating as passed midshipmen. The last of such appointees was graduated in 1856,
and the sometime hinted contaminating influence of the “oldsters” upon the
“youngsters” was a thing to be known no more forever, albeit the hint of
contamination always seemed, to the writer, questionable, as, in his experience, the
habit and propensity of the youngsters for mischief appeared to require neither
promotion nor encouragement. Indeed, their methods and ingenuity in evading rules and
regulations and defying discipline were as original as they were persevering, and
could the third-story room of the building occupied by the subject of this sketch be
given tongue, it would tell a tale of frolic and drollery that would only find
parallel in the inimitable pages of Marryatt. Convenient apparatus for the stewing or
roasting of oysters, poaching of eggs, or the mixing of refreshing drinks, could be
readily stowed away from the inspecting officer, or a roast goose or turkey be
smuggled by a trusty darkey from some restaurant outside; and it was but the work of
a moment after taps to tack a blanket over the window, light the gas, and bring out a
dilapidated pack of cards for a game of California Jack or draw-poker; or to convert
the prim pine table into a billiard- table, with marbles for balls, with which the
ownership of many a collar, neckerchief, shirt, and other articles of none too
plentiful wardrobes, were decided in a twinkling, while the air of the crowded room
grew thick and stifling from the smoke of the forbidden tobacco. One of the company
would keep a sharp lookout for the possible advent of the sometimes rubber-shod
passed midshipman doing police duty, and, if necessary, danger signals would be made
from the basement story, by tapping on the steam-pipes, which signal would be
repeated from room to room, and from floor to floor, generally in ample time for the
young bacchanalians to disperse in safety. If, perchance, the revelers got caught,
they would stand up at the next evening’s parade and hear the offence and demerits
accorded, read out in presence of the battalion, with an easy sang-froid that
piqued the sea-worn experience of the oldsters while they marveled. Let no one judge
these lads too harshly, for the day came, all too soon, when they were to stand up in
face of the enemy, and, with equally nonchalant but sterner courage, go into battle
in defence of the flag they were being trained to defend, many winning undying honor
and fame, some meeting untimely but heroic graves, in “the war that kept the Union
whole.”

Our midshipmite soon became a favorite with all, from the gruff old superintendent
down to the littlest new-comer at the school. His bright, cheery, and genial
disposition, and frank, hearty ways, were very winning, and if, in his studies, he
did not take leading rank, nor become enraptured over analytics, calculus, and
binomials, he was esteemed a spirited, heartsome lad of good stock and promise, bred
to honorable purpose and aspiration, with seemingly marked aptitude for the noble
profession, which, more than any other, calls for a heroism that never hesitates, a
courage that never falters; for, aside from its special work of upholding and
defending the flag, and all it symbolizes, on the high seas to the uttermost parts of
the globe, “they that go down to sea in ships” come closer to the manifestations of
the unspeakable might and majesty of Almighty Power than any other. The seaman, with
but a plank separating him from eternity, never knows at what moment he may be called
upon to put forth all the skill and resource, the unflinching effort and sacrifice,
that his calling ever, in emergency, unstintedly requires.

Of medium height, slight and trim of figure, clear complexion and piercing gray
eyes of peculiar brilliancy, softened by a merry twinkle betokening latent mischief,
young Perkins was a youth fair and interesting to look upon. He walked with quick,
elastic step, carried his head a little on one side, and had a habit, when anything
struck his fancy pleasantly, of shrugging his shoulders and rubbing his hands
together in a vigorous way, that seemed to declare in unmistakable terms that he was
glad all over!

During one of the wonted summer cruises, he made himself somewhat famous at
great-gun practice, the details of which are given in one of his home letters, as
follows:–

“We had target practice one day, and it came my turn to shoot. There was quite a
swell on, which made it very difficult to get any kind of a shot, but when I fired
I hit the target, which was a barrel with a small flag on it, set up about three
quarters of a mile distant. Such a thing as hitting a small target at sea, with the
ship in motion, and a swell on, is considered almost out of the question, so they
all said it was ‘luck.’ But another target was put out, and I fired again and stove
it all to pieces. Then the crew all cheered, and made quite a hero of me. Still
some said it must be luck, and another target was put out in exactly the same
manner. This one I did not quite hit, but the shot fell so near, that all gave it
up it was not luck, and that I was a first-rate shot with broadside guns.”

After such demonstration, it is not strange that he was looked upon as having a
very correct eye for distances, and was ever afterward called upon to fire whenever
experiments were wanted. Naval gunnery, be it remarked in passing, is quite a
different matter from army practice: in the former, with its platform never at rest,
it is like shooting a bird on the wing, when distance and motion must be accurately
gauged and allowed for; in the latter, from its gun on a fixed platform, it is but a
question of measurement from the object, by means of instruments if need be, and of
good pointing. The seaman stands immediately in rear of the gun, with eye along the
sight directing its train, now right, now left, now well, and with taut lock-string
in hand in readiness to pull the moment the object is on, and on the alert to jump
clear of the recoil. The soldier handles his piece with greater deliberation, sights
it leisurely on its immovable platform, and, if mounted en barbette, retires
behind a traverse before firing.

Graduating in June, 1856, the now full-fledged Midshipman Perkins could look back
upon his five years’ probationary experience with many pleasant recollections, though
doubtless thanking his stars that his pupilage was over.

During his time there had been two superintendents at the academy. The first was
Captain C.K. Stribling, a fine seaman of the old school, of rigid Presbyterian stock,
stern, grim, and precise, with curt manners, sharp and incisive voice that seemed to
know no softening, and whose methods of duty and conception of discipline smacked of
the “true blue” ideal of the Covenanters of old in their enforcement of obedience and
conservation of morals. The second was Captain L.M. Goldsborough, a man of stalwart
height and proportions and a presence that ennobled command; learned and
accomplished, yet gruff and overwhelming in speech and brusque and impatient in
manner, but possessing, withal, a kindly nature, and a keen sense of humor that took
in a joke enjoyably, however practical; and a sympathetic discrimination that often
led him to condone moral offences at which some of the straight-laced professors
stood aghast. His responses at church-service resounded like the growl of a bear, and
when reprimanding the assembled midshipmen, drawn up in battalion, for some grave
breach of discipline, he would stride up and down the line with the tread of an
elephant, and expound the Articles of War in stentorian tones that equaled the roar
of a bull! But if, perchance, in the awesome precincts of his office, he afterwards
got hold of a piece of doggerel some witty midshipman had written descriptive of such
a scene, none would enjoy it more than he!

After an enjoyment of a three months’ leave of absence at home. Midshipman Perkins
was ordered to join the sloop-of-war Cyane, Captain Robb. That ship was one of the
home squadron, and in November, 1856, sailed for Aspinwall, to give protection to our
citizens, mails, and freight, in the transit across the Isthmus of Panama to
California, back and forth. At that period safe and rapid transit in that region of
riots and revolution was much more important than now,–the Pacific Railroad existing
only in the brains of a few sagacious men,–and the maintenance of the thoroughfare
across the pestilential isthmus was a national necessity. For years our naval force
on either side had had frequent occasion to land expeditions to protect the life and
property of our citizens, and a frightful massacre of passengers had but lately
occurred at the hands of a mongrel mob at Panama. The situation was critical, and for
a time it looked as though the United States would be obliged to seize and hold that
part of Colombian territory. But time wore on without outbreak on the part of the
fiery freemen of that so- called republic, the continued presence of ships, both at
Panama and Aspinwall, doubtless convincing them of the folly of further attempts to
molest the hated Yankees.

Meanwhile the notorious Walker had been making a filibustering raid in Central
America, which ended in failure, and the Cyane went over to Greytown to bring the
sick and wounded of his deluded followers to Aspinwall for passage to New York. Some
hundred and twenty officers and men found in the hands of the Costa Ricans were taken
on board, most of them in a deplorable condition. Some died before weighing anchor
for Aspinwall, and as midshipmen have no definable duties except to obey orders,
whatever they may be, Midshipman Perkins was sent in a boat one day to take a
chaplain’s part in the burial of one of the victims. “When we got out to sea,” he
wrote, “I read some prayers over him, and then he was thrown over the side, the
sailors saying ‘God bless you!’ as the body sunk.” This sad duty made him feel solemn
and reflective, but more than likely as not he was called upon immediately on arrival
on board, as “master’s mate of the spirit-room,” to attend the serving out of grog to
the ship’s company! Extremes meet on board a man-of-war, and the times for moralizing
are short and scant.

So time sped, Midshipman Perkins performing his multifarious duties with alacrity
and approval, and having some perilous adventures by flood and field in pursuit of
wild game, until July, 1857, when the monotony of the cruise was broken by a trip to
the banks of Newfoundland for the protection of our fishing interests, and including
visits at Boston, St. John’s, and Halifax.

The people of the Provinces were very hospitable, and the contrast between the
dusky damsels of the isthmus and the ruddy-cheeked belles of St. John’s and Halifax
was brightening in the extreme; and young Perkins, ever gallant in his intercourse
with the sex, and a good dancer, found much favor with the Provincial beauties, and
doubtless made up for past deprivations, in the alluring contact with their
charms.

Returning southward in the fall, the ship cruised among the West Indies, visiting,
among other ports, Cape Haytien, the old capital of the island of Hayti, to inquire
into the imprisonment of an American merchant captain. This place, before the French
Revolution, had been a city of great magnificence and beauty–the Paris of the Isles;
and the old French nobility, possessing enormous landed estates and large numbers of
slaves, lived in a state of almost fabled grandeur and luxury; but negro rule, the
removal of the seat of government to Port-au-Prince, and the great earthquake of
1842, have destroyed all but a semblance of its former glory and importance.

Among other sights visited by the officers was the old home of Count Cristoff, a
castle of great size and strength, built on one of the highest hills, some twelve
miles back of the town. It was told of the old Count that he used every year to bury
large sums of money from his revenues, and then shoot the slave who did the work,
that the secret of the spot might be known only to himself.

In January, 1858, Midshipman Perkins was detached from the Cyane, and he bade
adieu forever to her dark, cramped-up, tallow-candle lighted steerage, baggy hammock,
and hard fare, where the occasional dessert to a salt dinner had been dried apples,
mixed with bread and flavored with whiskey! There were no eleven-o’clock breakfasts
for midshipmen in those days, and canned meats, condensed milk, preserved fruits, and
other luxuries now common on shipboard, were almost unknown.

A few brief days at home and orders came to join the storeship Release, which
vessel after a three months’ cruise in the Mediterranean returned to New York to fill
up with stores and provisions for the Paraguay expedition. That expedition had for
its object the chastisement of the Dictator Lopez for certain dastardly acts
committed against our flag on the River Parana.

Owing to the paucity of officers, so many being absent on other foreign service,
Midshipman Perkins was appointed acting sailing-master, a very responsible position
for so young an officer, which, with the added comforts of a stateroom and
well-ordered table in the wardroom, was almost royal in its contrast with the duty,
the darksome steerage, and hard fare on board the Cyane. It would be difficult to
make a landsman take in the scope of the change implied, but let him in imagination
start across the continent in an old-fashioned, cramped-up stage- coach, full of
passengers, with such coarse fare as could be picked up from day to day, and return
in a Pullman car with well-stocked larder and restaurant attached, and he will get a
glimmering as to the difference between steerage and wardroom life on board a
man-of-war.

The Release was somewhat of a tub, and what with light and contrary winds and
calms took sixty-two days to reach the rendezvous, Montevideo, arriving there in
January, 1858. She found the whole fleet at anchor there, and officers and men soon
forgot the weariness of the long passage in the receipt of letters from home, and in
the joyous meetings with old friends. All admired the fine climate, and, as that part
of South America is the greatest country in the world for horses, the young
sailing-master rejoiced in the opportunity offered to indulge in his favorite pastime
of riding. He also showed his prowess as a devotee of the chase in the fine sport
afforded on the pampas that enabled him to run down and shoot a South American
tiger.

Meanwhile Commodore Shubrick, in command of the expedition, had completed his
preparations for ascending the Parana, and the fleet soon moved up to a convenient
point, the Commodore himself continuing on up the river in a small vessel to
Corrientes to meet Lopez and convey to him the ultimatum of the United States. After
some “backing and filling,” as an old salt would characterize diplomacy, Lopez
concluded “discretion to be the better part of valor,” and making a satisfactory
amende, the Paraguayan war came to a bloodless end, and the hopes of expectant
heroes with visions of promotion dissolved like summer clouds.

Young Perkins was now, August, 1858, transferred to the frigate Sabine for passage
home to his examination for the grade of passed midshipman. Passing that ordeal
satisfactorily, aided by handsome commendatory letters from his commanding officers,
he spent three happy months at home, and then received orders for duty on board the
steamer Sumter, as acting master, the destination of that vessel being the west coast
of Africa, where, in accordance with the provisions of Article 8 of the
Webster-Ashburton treaty (1842), the United States maintained a squadron, carrying
not less than eighty guns, in co-operation with the British government, for the
suppression of the slave trade. That article continued in active observance nineteen
years, when the United States, having a little question of slavery to settle at home,
gave the stipulated preliminary notice and recalled the ships.

The Sumter arrived on the coast in October, 1859, making her first anchorage in
the lovely harbor on the west side of Prince’s Island. That island, in about 1°
30′ north latitude, covered with all the luxuriance of tropical growth and verdure,
and broken into every conceivable shape of pinnacle, castellated rock and chasm, and
frowning precipice, streaked with silvery threads of leaping streams in their dash to
the sea, is indeed one of the most enchanting spots the eye ever rested on. The chief
inhabitant of the lovely isle was Madame Ferrara, a woman of French extraction, who
lived alone in a big, rambling house, surrounded by slaves, who cultivated her
plantations and prepared the cocoa, palm oil, yams, and cocoanuts, for the trade that
sought her doors.

Filling up with water, the Sumter proceeded to the island of Fernando Po, a
Spanish possession close in to the mainland, in the Bight of Biafra, where she met
several English and French men-of-war, and received orders for her future
movements.

The first thing to do, in accordance with the custom of the squadron, was the
enlisting of fifteen or twenty negroes, known as Kroomen, whose home is in the Kroo
country in upper Guinea, just south of Liberia. They did all the heavy boat-work of
the ship, thus lightening the work of the crew, and saving them as much as possible
from exposure to the effects of the deadly climate. Great, strapping, muscular
fellows, many of them, with forms that an Apollo might envy, they were trained from
infancy to be as much at home in the water as upon the land, and could swim a dozen
leagues at sea or pull at the oar all day long without seeming fatigue. Wonderfully
expert in their handling of boats, especially in the heavy surf that rolls in upon
the coast with ceaseless volume and resistless power, its perilous line almost
unbroken by a good harbor, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Gibraltar,
their services in communicating with the shore were simply invaluable. The head
Kroomen exercised despotic power over their respective gangs, and the men were given
fanciful names, and so entered on the purser’s books. Bottle-o’-Beer, Jack
Frying-Pan, Tom Bobstay, Upside Down, and the like, were favorite names; and our
fun-loving young sailing-master hints, in his letters of the time, that the archives
of the fourth auditor’s office at Washington may possibly embalm the names of certain
Annapolis belles that had been borne by some of these sable folk!

The cruising ground embraced the coasts of Upper and Lower Guinea, and the coast
of Biafra, with occasional visits of recruit and recreation to Cape Town and St.
Helena. The work was arduous, monotonous, and exhausting, especially during the rainy
season, when the decks were continually deluged with water, and dry clothing was the
exception, not the rule. The weather was always hot, often damp and sultry, and the
atmosphere on shore so pestilential, that no one was permitted to remain there after
sundown. But that rule was no deprivation, as the dangers of the passage through the
relentless breakers, alive with sharks, were so great, that few cared to visit the
shore except when absolutely necessary. The vessels cruised mostly in sight of the
coast to watch the movements of the merchantmen, all more or less under suspicion as
slavers, watching their chances to get off with a cargo. On one hand was the rounded
horizon dipping into the broad Atlantic; on the other, the angry line of rollers with
their thunderous roar, backed by white beach and dense forest, with occasional
glimpses of blue hills in the distant interior. This and nothing more, from day to
day, save when a small village of thatched huts came into view, adding a scant
feature to the landscape; or a solitary canoe outside the line of breakers; or
strange sail to seaward; or school of porpoises, leaping and blowing, windward bound;
or hungry shark prowling round the ship, lent momentary interest to the watery
solitude. It was a privilege to fall in with another cruiser, whether of our own or
of the English flag. On such occasions, down would go the boats for the exchange of
visits, the comparison of notes, and sometimes the discussion of a dinner. The
English officers had numerous captures and handsome sums of prize- money to tell of,
while our people, as a rule, could only talk of hopes and possibilities. Our laws
regulating captures were as inflexible as the Westminster Catechism, and a captain
could not detain a vessel without great risk of civil damages, unless slaves were
actually on board. Suspected ships might have all the fittings and infamous equipage
for the slave traffic on board, but if their masters produced correct papers the
vessels could not be touched; and our officers not infrequently had the mortification
of learning that ships they had overhauled, and believed to be slavers, but could not
seize under their instructions, got off the coast eventually with large cargoes of
ebon humanity on board.

Not so with the English commanders, whose instructions enabled them to take and
send to their prize-courts all vessels, except those under the American flag, under
the slightest showing of nefarious character; and their hauls of prize-money were
rich and frequent.

The intercourse with the English officers, notes Master Perkins, at first cordial
and agreeable, became, after a few months, cold and indifferent. Her Majesty’s
officers no longer cared to show politeness or friendly feeling. The first
premonitions of the Rebellion in the John Brown raid, the break-up of the democracy
at Charleston, and the violence of the Southern press concerning the probable results
of the pending presidential election, convincing them that the long- predicted and
wished-for day–the breaking up of the Republic–was nigh at hand, and their real
feelings as Englishmen cropped out but too plainly; but of this, more anon.

Despite the perils of the surf, the dangers of the inhospitable climate, and the
unfriendly character of some of the savage tribes to be met with, the adventurous
spirit and dauntless courage of Master Perkins was not to be balked. Volunteering for
every duty, no matter how dangerous, hardly a boat ever left the ship that he was not
in it. The life of the mess through his unfailing good humor and exuberant flow of
spirits, he was the soul of every expedition, whether of service or pleasure; and
before the cruise of some twenty-two months was up, he came to know almost every
prominent tribe, chief, and king on the coast. Now dining with a king off the
strangest of viands; now holding “palaver” with another; now spending a day with a
chief and his numerous wives; now visiting a French barracoon, where, under a fiction
of law, the victims were collected to be shipped as unwilling apprentices, not
slaves, to be returned to their native wilds, if they lived long enough; now
ascending a river dangerous for boats, where, if the boat had capsized, himself and
crew would but have served a morning’s meal to the hungry sharks held as fetich by
the natives along the stream, who yearly sacrifice young girls reared for the purpose
to their propitiation; now scouring the bush in pursuit of the gorilla or shooting
hippopotami by the half-dozen, and other adventures and exploits wherein duty,
excitement, and gratified curiosity were intermingled with danger and hairbreadth
escape that few would care to tempt.

On one occasion, he volunteered to go with a boat’s crew and find the mouth of the
Settee River, not dreaming of landing through the unusually heavy surf. “But,” said
he, “in pulling along about half a mile from shore, a roller struck the boat and
capsized it. Of course we were obliged to swim for shore; in fact, we had little to
do with it, for the moment the boat was upset we were driven into the surf, and not
one of us thought we should ever reach the shore, for if we were not lost in the
surf, the sharks would eat us up. As I rose on the top of a wave I could look ahead
and see the stretch of wild, tossing surf, which it seemed impossible for any one to
live in; but when I looked back I could count all my men striking out, which was very
encouraging, as I feared one or two might be under the boat. I thought for a moment
of you all at home, and wondered if mother would not feel a little frightened if she
knew how strong the chances were against her son’s receiving any more letters from
home. Just then a roller struck me and carried me down so deep I was caught by the
undertow and carried toward the sea, instead of the land. When I came to the surface
I tried to look out for the next roller, but it was no use; the first one
half-drowned me, and the next kept me down so long that when I rose I was in the
wildest of the surf, which tumbled and rolled me about in a way I did not like at
all. My eyes, nose, and mouth were full of sand, and, in fact, I thought my time had
come. Just then I looked on shore, and saw two of my men dragging some one from the
water, and at that sight I struck out with one despairing kick, and managed to get
near enough for two of the men to reach me; but that was all I knew of the affair
until a little after sunset, when I became conscious of the fact that I was being
well shaken, and I heard one of the men say, ‘Cheer up, Mr. Perkins! Your boat and
all the men are on shore.’ This was such good news that I did not much mind the
uncomfortable position in which I found myself. I was covered with sand and stretched
across a log about two feet high, my head on one side and my feet on the other. The
men had worked a long while to bring me to. Three of the men were half-drowned and
one injured. We managed to get the boat in the river, but suffered awfully from
thirst. The next morning we lost our way, and, after pulling around till
mid-afternoon, we stumbled on some natives fishing. We followed them home, but found
them such a miserable, bad-looking lot of negroes that we expected trouble. Knowing
that the native villages in the daytime are left in charge of the old men and women,
and not knowing what might happen when the men came back, we killed some chickens,
and, with some sweet potatoes, made quite a meal. The strongest of us, myself and
three others, got ready for a fight, while the rest manned the boat ready for our
retreat. Shortly after this the chief came back, and about a hundred men with him. I
told the chief I had come to pay him a visit, and we had a great palaver; but he
would not give us anything to eat, and we made up our minds that it was a dangerous
neighborhood; so we moved down on a sand-spit in sight of the ship, and there we
stayed three days and nights. We built a tent and fortification, traded off most of
our clothes for something to eat, and slept unpleasantly near several hundred yelling
savages. All this while the ship could render no assistance; but on the third day the
Kroomen came on shore with some oars, and, after trying all one day, we managed, just
at night, to get through the surf and back to the ship. It was a happy time for us,
and I may say for all on board, as they had been very anxious about us. Not far north
of this, if you happen to get cast ashore, they kill and eat you at once, for
cannibalism is by no means extinct among the negroes.”

The sequel of this perilous experience was that all of them were stricken down
with the dread African fever which, if it does not at all times kill, but too often
shatters the constitution beyond remedy; and the fact that five officers, including
one commanding officer, and a proportionate number of men, had been invalided home,
and another commanding officer had died, all due to climatic causes, attests the
general unhealthfulness of the coast. Other interesting incidents and narrow escapes,
in which Master Perkins had part, might be told, did not lack of space forbid; but
enough has been shown to impress the fact that African cruising, even in a well-found
man-of-war, is not altogether the work and pleasure of a holiday; yet, in looking
over young Perkins’s letters, we cannot forbear this description of the expertness of
the Kroomen in landing through the surf.

“When the boat shoves off from the ship, the Kroomen, entirely naked with
exception of breech-clout, strike up a song, and pulling grandly to its rhythmic
time, soon reach the edge of the surf, and lie on their oars. All eyes are now cast
seaward, looking for a big roller, on the top of which we shall be carried on shore,
and there is a general feeling of excitement. In a short time, the looked-for roller
comes; the Kroomen spring to their oars with a shout, the natives on shore yell with
all their might, the boat shoots forward on top of the wave at incredible speed, the
surf thunders like the roar of a battery, and altogether it seems as if the world had
come to an end and all those fellows in the infernal regions were let loose. Now we
must trust to luck wholly; there is no retreat and no help, for the boat is beyond
the power of any human management, and go on shore you must, either in the boat or
under it. The moment the boat strikes the beach, the Kroomen jump overboard, and you
spring on the back of one of them, and he runs with you up on the beach out of the
way of the next roller, which immediately follows, breaking over the boat, often
upsetting it and always wetting everything inside. If you have escaped without a good
soaking, you may consider yourself a lucky fellow.”

In the midst of this work came the startling news of the portentous events at
home. The infrequent mails began to bring the angry mutterings, the fateful tidings,
that preluded the Rebellion. Every fresh arrival but added to the excitement and
increased the bewilderment that had so unexpectedly come upon the squadron; for, far
removed from the scene, and not daily witnesses of the overt acts of the maddened
South, they had mostly believed that the threatened conflict would be tided over, and
the government be enabled to continue on in its wonted peaceful course. Now a wall,
as of fire, rose up between the officers; every mess in every ship was divided
against itself; brothers-in- arms of yesterday were enemies of to-day; and no one
spoke of the outlook at home except in bated breath and measured speech, from fear
that the bitter cup would overflow then and there, and water turn to blood. Many
Southern officers sent in their resignations at once, and all, both from North and
South, were anxious to get home to do their part on one side or the other.

“For some time past,” wrote Master Perkins, “the foreigners here have shown us but
little respect, and seem to regard us as a broken power; and this has been very
provoking, for in my opinion it will be a long time before any power can afford to
despise the United States.” And he notes the fact that no more money could be
had,–that the credit of the government was gone! Ah! how happy the day to loyal but
wearied hearts on that inhospitable shore, when the news came of the President’s call
for seventy-five thousand men, giving assurance that we still had a government, and
meant to preserve it through the valor, the blood, the treasure of the nation, if
need be!

After unaccountable and vexatious delay, the Sumter received orders, July, 1861,
to proceed to New York; meanwhile she had captured the slave brig Falmouth, a welcome
finale to the cruise, and what with the officers transferred to her and the
resignations that had taken place, Mr. Perkins now became executive officer, a fine
position at that day for one of his years.

Making the homeward run in thirty-six days, the officers and men dispersed to
their homes for a brief respite before entering upon the stern duties that awaited
them, and Mr. Perkins had the satisfaction of receiving his commission as master.

Recruiting his shattered health for a short time at his welcoming home, he was
ordered as executive officer of the Cayuga, one of the so- called ninety-day
gunboats, carrying a battery of one eleven-inch Dahlgren gun, a twenty pounder
Parrott rifle, and two twenty-four pounder howitzers, and commanded by
Lieutenant-Commanding N.B. Harrison, a loyal Virginian, who had wavered never a
moment as to his duty when his State threw down the gauntlet of rebellion.

The exigencies of the war had soon exhausted the lists of regular officers and the
few thousand seamen that had been trained in the service, and large drafts of
officers and men were made upon the merchant marine as well as big hauls of green
landsmen who had never dreamt of salt water; and First Lieutenant Perkins, as the
only regular officer on board except the captain, soon found himself an exceeding
busy man in organizing, disciplining, drilling, and shaping into place and routine,
some ninety officers and men, all equally new to man- of-war life and methods, and
requiring the necessary time and instruction to fit them for their new duties. A fair
soldier may be made in three months–a good seaman not in three years.

The vessel was ordered to join Farragut’s fleet in the Gulf, but, with the usual
delays incident to new ships, did not get off from New York until the first week in
March, arriving at Ship Island on the thirty-first, by way of Key West, and having
made a prize on the way. As the young executive had been promoted to a lieutenancy on
the eve of departure from New York his visions of prize-money were doubtless
proportionately enhanced by the capture!

The Cayuga.

The next day she sailed for the mouth of the Mississippi, where, and at the head
of the passes, the rest of the fleet was assembled, and Flag-Officer Farragut busily
engaged in completing the preparations for the attack on New Orleans.

The fleet consisted of four heavy sloops-of-war of the Hartford class; three
corvettes of the Iroquois class; nine gunboats of the Cayuga class, and the large
side-wheel steamer Mississippi, carrying in the aggregate one hundred and fifty-four
guns, principally of nine- inch and eleven-inch calibre; but as the large ships
carried their batteries mostly in broadside, the actual number that could be brought
to bear, under the most favorable conditions, on every given point, would be cut down
to the neighborhood of ninety guns.

Supporting this force as auxiliary to it, for the bombardment of Forts Jackson and
St. Philip, was Porter’s mortar fleet of twenty schooners, each mounting a
thirteen-inch mortar, and a flotilla of five side- wheel steamers, and the gunboat
Owasco, carrying, in all, thirty guns.

Map of the Mississippi River Showing Forts Jackson and St. Philip.
From the U.S. Coast Survey. Surveyed in 1870 by John N. McClintock.

The forts in question, forming the principal defences of New Orleans, were heavy
casemated works with traverses on top for barbette guns, some ninety miles below the
city at a point where the river makes a sharp bend to the southeast. Fort St. Philip,
on the left bank, mounted forty-two guns, and Fort Jackson, including its water
battery, had sixty-seven guns in position, all of calibre from the long twenty- four
pounder to the heavy ten-inch Columbiad, and including several six- inch and
seven-inch rifles.

Stretching across the river from bank to bank to bar the channel, nearly opposite
Fort Jackson and exposed to the perpendicular fire of St. Philip, were heavy ship’s
chains, supported and buoyed by hulks, rafts, and logs, and half a dozen large
schooners. The rebels had also established some works on the banks of the river about
four miles from town, known as the McGehee and Chalmette batteries, the latter being
located at the point ever memorable in American history as the scene of General
Jackson’s overwhelming defeat of the British in 1815.

Their reliance afloat was in the Louisiana, an ironclad, carrying nine rifles and
seven smooth bores of heavy calibre; the ram Manassas, one gun; the McRae, seven
guns; the Moore and Quitman with two guns each; six river steamers with their stems
shod with iron to act as rams, and several iron-protected tugs.

Assembling the fleet at the head of the passes, after much difficulty in getting
the heavy ships over the bar, Farragut ordered the ships to strip like athletes for
battle. Down came mast and spar till nothing was left standing but lower masts,–and
even those were taken out of some of the gunboats,–and soon everything best out of
reach of shot was landed, leaving clear decks, and no top hamper to be cut away by
the enemy’s projectiles, and come tumbling down about the heads of guns’ crews.

About this time the English and French men-of-war that had lain before New
Orleans, giving aid and comfort to the enemy and making merry in singing rebel songs
on board, especially on board the English vessels, left the river, their officers
declaring it an impossibility for the fleet to pass the forts and obstructions.

In this connection, it may be mentioned that the cruisers of John Bull prowled
along the coast during the entire war, with sometimes permission to enter the
blockaded ports, conveying information and lending encouragement to the enemy, and
rejoicing at every disaster that befell the Union arms, which, together with the
tacit connivance of the British government in letting out the Alabama, and other
hostile acts, ought to be treasured against Great Britain so long as the Republic
endures.

On the sixteenth of April, Farragut moved up to a point just below the forts, and
on the eighteenth, having established the vessels of the mortar fleet at distances
ranging from twenty-nine hundred and fifty yards to four thousand yards, from
Jackson, and partially hidden by trees on one side the river, and disguised with
bushes on the other, opened the bombardment, which was kept up with little
interruption for six days and nights; the corvettes and gunboats taking part by turns
in running up, delivering their fire, and dropping down with the current out of range
again. The forts replied vigorously, and every night the enemy sent down fire-rafts,
but to little purpose.

Meanwhile, under cover of the night and the fire of the fleet, Fleet-Captain Bell,
and Lieutenants-Commanding Crosby and Caldwell of the gunboats Pinola and Itasca, had
succeeded in forcing a channel through the obstructions, a piece of duty that had
required the most robust and dauntless courage, and in which Caldwell–a son of
Massachusetts–shone pre-eminent by the coolness of his methods and thoroughness of
his work. And now, on the night of the twenty- third, after a last examination by
Caldwell in a twelve-oared boat, all was pronounced clear, and the fleet was to weigh
at two o’clock in the morning.

The fleet was formed in three divisions, the first comprising the Hartford,
flagship, the Brooklyn, and Richmond; the second composed of eight vessels with the
divisional flag of Captain Bailey on board the Cayuga; and the third of six vessels,
with Fleet-Captain Bell’s flag flying from the Sciota; but was ordered to pass
through the obstructions in one column or single line ahead, the Cayuga leading.
Farragut had intended to lead himself, but at Bailey’s urgent request yielded that
honor to him.

The letters of Lieutenant Perkins, ever glowing with ardor for the good cause,
were, at this time, full of patriotic fervor and aspiration, and when he said: “I
hope the Cayuga will go down before she ever gives up, and ‘I guess’ she will,” he
certainly meant it! And the supreme moment had now come for him to inform this hope
by valorous deeds, and all unfalteringly did he walk in the blazing light of heroism
that none but the brave may dare to tread.

The signal to weigh was promptly made at two o’clock, A.M., but work at night is
always behind, and it was half-past three o’clock before the little Cayuga, leading
the line, pressed gallantly through the obstructions at full speed, eager for the
fray, closely followed by the heavy Pensacola, and ship after ship in the order
assigned; but lack of space forbids a general description of the battle, and we
propose to do hardly more than to follow the fortunes of the Cayuga.

Lieutenant-Commanding Harrison had paid his executive the high compliment of
allowing him to pilot the vessel, and Perkins took position in the eyes of her, on
the topgallant forecastle, while Lieutenant-Commanding Harrison and Captain Bailey
stood aft, near the wheel, and all the men except the helmsmen were made to lie flat
on the deck until the time came for them to serve the battery. Prone on the deck at
Perkins’s feet, and with his head close down over the bow, was the captain of the
forecastle, to watch the channel and give timely warning of anything barring the way
that might escape the wider- ranging eye of the intrepid young pilot; and as the
Cayuga pressed on, receiving the first shock of the outburst from the forts, what
finer subject for the painter, than that lithe young figure standing up in bold and
unflinching relief, at the extreme bow of the ship, peering ahead in the morning
starlight to pilot her safely on her way, amid the blinding flame and screaming
bolts, the hurtle of shot and crash of shell, the explosion and deafening roar of a
hundred shotted guns, as the vessel steamed into the jaws of death, leading the fleet
into one of the most momentous and memorable conflicts in naval annals. Nor should
cool and phlegmatic Harrison nor grand old Bailey be overlooked, as the constant
flashes of the thick exploding shells revealed them standing, calm and grim, at their
posts, in readiness to direct the movements of vessel and column, and engage the foe,
ashore and afloat; nor the impatient officers and crew, who eagerly waited the order
to spring to their guns and make reply to the withering fire pouring in upon them as
yet unavenged.

“Noticing,” said Perkins, “that the enemy’s guns were all aimed for midstream, I
steered right close under the walls of St. Philip, and although our masts and rigging
were badly shot through, the hull was hardly damaged. After passing the last battery,
I looked back for some of our vessels, and my heart jumped into my mouth, when I
found I could not see a single one. I thought they must all have been sunk by the
forts. Looking ahead, I saw eleven of the enemy’s gunboats coming down, upon us, and
I supposed we were gone. Three made a dash to board us, but a charge from our
eleven-inch settled one, the Governor Moore. The ram Manassas just missed us astern,
and we soon disposed of the other. Just then, some of our gunboats came to the
assistance of the Cayuga, and all sorts of things happened; it was the wildest
excitement all round. The Varuna fired a broadside into us instead of the enemy.
Another attacked one of our prizes; three had struck to us before any of our ships
came up, but when they did come up we all pitched in and sunk eleven vessels in about
twenty minutes.”

The brief encounter with the Moore had been very exciting. The vessels were
alongside each other, and both were reloading,–the guns muzzle to muzzle, and but a
few feet apart. The gun that could fire first would decide the fate of one or the
other. Perkins sprang down, and, taking personal charge of the smoking eleven-inch,
put fresh vigor into its loading, and firing the instant the rammer was withdrawn,
swept the Moore’s gun from its carriage, and killed or disabled thirteen of its
crew.

The Cayuga still leading the way up the river came upon a regiment at daylight
encamped close to the bank, and Perkins, as the mouthpiece of the captain, hailed
them and ordered them to come on board and deliver up their arms or he would “blow
them to pieces.”

It proved to be the Chalmette regiment, and, surrendering, the officers and men
were paroled and the former allowed to retain their side- arms, “except,” said
Perkins, “one captain, whom I discovered was from New Hampshire. I took his sword
away from him and have kept it!”

Now Farragut came up in the Hartford and signalled the fleet to anchor. This was
near Quarantine, some five miles above the forts. All the vessels had succeeded in
running the gauntlet of their fire except three gunboats, and New Orleans was now
practically at the mercy of the fleet; but the Varuna had been rammed and sunk in the
hot fight with the enemy’s flotilla just above St. Philip.

The Cayuga had received forty-two hits in mast and hull, and six men had been
wounded.

The hurricane of projectiles had passed mostly too high to do mortal harm to her
crew, due in part to the skilful manner in which Perkins had sheered in toward the
bank from midstream so early in the fight.

Resting until the next morning to care for the dead and wounded, and the repair of
damages, the fleet again weighed, the Cayuga still in advance; and when the spires of
the city hove in sight from her deck, “three rousing cheers and a tiger” went up from
her gallant crew. But the plucky little gunboat was getting ahead too fast, for
arriving close abreast the Chalmette battery, which seemed to be deserted, she
suddenly received a fire that compelled a halt. Over-matched five to one, and having
been struck fourteen times, with shot and shells dropping thick and fast about her,
she slowed and dropped back a little with the current, until the Hartford and
Brooklyn coming up quickly silenced the enemy with their heavy broadsides, while the
Pensacola cared for the hostile works on the opposite bank in like manner. The fleet
then kept on without further obstruction, and arrived and anchored off the city about
noon; finding the levee along its entire length aflame with burning cotton, coal,
ships, steamboats, and other property the infuriated enemy had devoted to
destruction.

The loss to the fleet in this daring and brilliant feat had been thirty-seven
killed and one hundred and thirty-seven wounded.

It is needless to say that Lieutenant Perkins not only received high commendation
from Captain Bailey and Lieutenant-Commanding Harrison, but won the praise and
admiration of all on board and in the fleet, by the coolness and intrepidity shown by
him in every emergency of the fight and passage up the river.

The first tidings received in Washington foreshadowing the success of the attack
was through rebel telegrams announcing, “one of the enemy’s gunboats”–the
Cayuga–“above the forts.” Some question subsequently arose between Bailey and
Farragut as to the Cayuga’s position in the passage, which in the diagrams
accompanying the official reports contradicted the text, putting the Cayuga third
instead of first in the van. Farragut cheerfully made the correction.

Soon after anchoring, Bailey was ordered to go on shore and demand the
unconditional surrender of the city, and he asked Lieutenant Perkins to accompany
him. This duty was almost as dangerous and conspicuous as the passage of the forts
had been, for an infuriated and insolent mob followed them from the landing to the
mayor’s office, and while there with the mayor and General Lovell, besieged the
doors, demanding the “Yankee officers” to be given up to them to be hung. The
demonstration at last became so threatening, that the mayor drew off the attention of
the mob by a speech to them in front of the building, while the Union officers took a
close carriage in its rear and driving rapidly down to their boat, reached the ship
in safety.

Bailey had managed to hoist the flag over the mint, which a party of rebels tore
down the next day, but the authorities refused to surrender the city or to haul down
the insignia of rebellion. Then ensued a correspondence which, to read at this day,
makes the blood boil at rebel insolence, and the wonder grow at Farragut’s
forbearance; but on the twenty-ninth of April, he sent Fleet-Captain Bell on shore
with two howitzers manned by sailors and a battalion of two hundred and fifty marines
and took possession of the city. Meanwhile the forts had surrendered to Porter of the
mortar fleet, and General Butler, arriving on the first of May, relieved Farragut of
further responsibility as to the city.

GOING ASHORE TO DEMAND THE SURRENDER OF NEW ORLEANS.

The Cayuga had been so badly cut up by shot and shell that she was selected to
take Captain Bailey north as bearer of dispatches, and landing him at Fortress
Monroe, proceeded on to New York to be refitted. This enabled Lieutenant Perkins to
make a short visit to Concord, where his father, now become judge of probate of
Merrimack County, had removed, and both himself and the family received many
congratulations, personal and written, at the brilliant record he had made in the
recent memorable operations on the Mississippi.

Modest and unassuming, with a genial frankness of manner that told pleasantly
alike on quarter-deck or street, in family-circle or drawing-room, he wore his honors
in the quietest way possible, never speaking of his own part in the brave deeds of
the time, except when pressed to do so, and then with a reticence all too provoking,
from the well-grounded suspicion that he kept back the pith of the real story of
personal participation he might tell without tinge of exaggeration or
boastfulness.

Returning to the Cayuga he found a new commanding officer, Lieutenant-Commanding
D. McN. Fairfax, another loyal Virginian, who not only stood faithful to the flag
under all circumstances, but had, as the officer from the San Jacinto, boarded the
Trent and taken from her the arch-conspirators, Mason and Slidell, suffering the
contumely of rebel womanhood in the reception accorded him by Mr. Commissioner
Slidell’s daughter.

Fairfax and Perkins had known each other on the coast of Africa, and it was the
meeting of old friends made doubly pleasant by the senior’s hearty appreciation of
the laurels so gallantly won by the junior, and self-congratulation in the promised
comfort of retaining an executive of so much energy, ability, and reputation.

Rejoining Farragut’s squadron, Perkins saw other gallant and varied service in the
Cayuga until November, 1862, when he was transferred to the Pensacola, and the
following month commissioned lieutenant-commander, a new grade created by Congress to
correspond with that of major in the army.

In June, 1863, General Banks, then besieging Port Hudson, sent word to the now
Rear-Admiral Farragut, that he must have more powder or give up the siege, wherefore
the Admiral ordered the gunboat New London on the important service of powder
transportation and convoy, and assigning Perkins to the command until the officer
ordered from the North by the department should arrive. The enemy had possession at
that time of some three hundred miles of the river below Port Hudson, with batteries
established at various points and sharpshooters distributed along the banks.

Five times Perkins ran the fiery gauntlet successfully, but on the sixth his
vessel was disabled in a sharp fight at Whitehall’s Point. One shot from the enemy
exploded the New London’s boiler, and another disabled her steam chest. In that
critical condition, directly under the guns of the hostile battery, and exposed to
the fire of sharpshooters on the bank, and deserted by his consort, the Winona, his
position seemed desperate almost beyond remedy; but fertile in expedients and daring
to rashness in their execution, he finally succeeded, after almost incredible
exertion and perilous personal adventure, in communicating with the fleet below, and
the vessel was saved.

Now the commanding officer from the North having arrived, Perkins was transferred
to the command of the ninety-day gunboat Sciota, the best command at that time, in
the squadron, for an officer of his years, and assigned to duty on the blockade off
the coast of Texas. To one of his social disposition and active temperament, the
blockade, ever harassing and monotonous, was, as he wrote, a “living death,” adding
that “we are all talked out, and sometimes a week passes and I hardly speak more than
a necessary word.” Venturing ashore several times on hunting excursions, he at last
came near being captured by the enemy, and held after that, that “cabin’d confinement
was preferable to a rebel prison,” and so kept on board. Once during that weary nine
months, the tedium was broken by the capture of a fat prize–a schooner loaded with
cotton. Let us hope that the prize-court and its attendant officials did not absorb
too big a share of the proceeds!

THE CHICKASAW.

Relieved from that command late in May, 1864, with leave to proceed home, he
arrived at New Orleans in June, to find active preparations for the Mobile fight
going on, and though he had not been at home for two years, he could not stand it to
let slip so glorious an opportunity for stirring service, and so volunteered to
remain. Farragut, delighted at such determination, quite different from the
experience he had had with some officers, assigned to Perkins a command above his
rank–the Chickasaw,–a double-turretted monitor, carrying four eleven-inch guns and
a crew of one hundred and forty-five men and twenty-five officers. She had been
built, together with the Winnebago, a sister vessel, at St. Louis, by Mr. Joseph B.
Eads, the eminent engineer, on plans of his own. Of light draught and frame, and
peculiar construction, some officers distrusted her strength and sea-going qualities.
The Chickasaw, too, was not yet completed, the mechanics being still at work on her
machinery and fittings, and her crew, with exception of a half- dozen
men-of-war’s-men, were river-men and landsmen, knowing nothing of salt-water sailing
or of naval discipline. But time pressed: every moment was of priceless value; and
Perkins, declining all social invitations, set about with characteristic energy to
prepare his ship for the coming conflict. Nor did his work of preparation and drill
cease, either in the river or outside, until well into the night preceding the
eventful day in Mobile Bay that was to add another brilliant page to the annals of
the navy.

On the twenty-eighth of July, he left New Orleans to join the fleet off Mobile,
and on the way down the river an episode occurred that came nigh settling the fate of
the Chickasaw without risk or chance of battle; for on nearing the bar, Perkins left
the pilot-house a moment to look after some matters requiring attention outside. He
had hardly reached the spot he sought, when, turning round, he saw that the pilot had
changed the ship’s course and was heading directly for a wreck close aboard, which to
strike would end the career of the Chickasaw then and there. Springing back into the
pilot-house, he seized the wheel and brought the ship back on her course, then
snatching a pistol from his belt, said to the traitorous fellow: “You are here to
take this ship over the bar, and if she touches ground or anything else, I’ll blow
your d—-d brains out!” Pale with suppressed rage, and trembling with fear, the
pilot expostulated that “the bottom was lumpy, and the best pilot in the river could
not help touching at times.”

“No matter,” rejoined Perkins, “if you love the Confederacy better than your life,
take your choice; but if you touch a single lump, I’ll shoot you!” Needless to say,
no lumps were found, nor that the pilot made haste to get out of such company the
moment he was permitted to do so; neither may we doubt that the recording angel
traced, with lightest hand, the strong language used by the nearly betrayed
captain!

The Chickasaw arrived off Mobile bar August 1, where all was expectancy and
preparation for the coming fight, a fight which perhaps had more in it of dramatic
interest than any other naval battle of the war. The wooden ships pushing into the
bay through the torpedo-strewn channel and under the fierce storm of shot and shell
from Fort Morgan, lashed together in pairs for mutual support in case of disaster;
the sudden and tragic sinking of the Tecumseh by torpedo stroke, with the loss of the
heroic Craven and most of his brave officers and men; the halt of the Brooklyn in
mid-channel in face of that dire disaster, which, with the threatened huddling of the
ships together by the inward sweep of the tide, portended swift discomfiture and
possible defeat; the intuitive perception and quick decision that literally enabled
Farragut to take the flood that led to fortune, in the instant ordering of the
Hartford to push ahead with his flag and assume the lead he had relinquished only at
the urgent request of the Brooklyn’s commander; the restored order and prompt
following of the fleet, regardless of torpedoes, on the new course blazed out by the
eagle eye and emphatic tongue of the fearless old admiral as he grappled with the
emergency from the futtock- shrouds of the flagship; the little boat putting off from
the Metacomet, suddenly lighted up by its saucy ensign, in the midst of the fiery
chaos and thunderous roar of battle, to save the few souls struggling in the water
from the ill-fated Tecumseh, calling forth admiration, alike from friend and foe, at
the intrepidity of its mission; the dash of the enemy’s powerful ram Tennessee, clad
in heaviest armor, down the Union line, endeavoring to strike each vessel in turn;
the separation of the coupled ships when beyond the reach of Morgan’s guns, and the
dash of the gunboats led by Jouett, of the Metacomet, like hounds released from the
leash, at the enemy’s flotilla; the reappearance of leviathan Tennessee and the
fierce tournament that ensued, with turtle- backed Chickasaw following close under
her stern with bulldog grip that knew no release; the intrepid skill and desperate
valor never surpassed, with which the ram manoeuvred and withstood the hammering and
ramming of the wooden ships, the pounding and shattering of the ironclads, before she
yielded to the inevitable fate that awaited her,–all conspired to form a scene of
grand and dramatic circumstance almost without parallel in naval warfare.

The youngest officer in command on that day,–the fifth of August,–so fateful to
the fading fortunes of the Confederacy, so glorious to the reascendant star of Union,
no one contributed more to its glories and success than Perkins of the Chickasaw; and
in any other service under the sun he would have received immediate promotion for
what he did on that day. Had he been an Englishman, the honors of knighthood would
have been conferred on him, as well as promotion, but as an American he still waits
adequate recognition for deeds as brave as they were conspicuous and telling.

Said Mr. Eads, the builder, when he heard the results of the battle and the
surpassing part of the Chickasaw in it: “I would walk fifty miles to shake hands with
the young man who commanded her!” And remembering the disparagement that had been put
on the vessel and her sister ship, the Winnebago, his enthusiasm knew no bounds, and
he took pains to gather all the details of the Chickasaw’s brilliant work.

With the loss of the Tecumseh, the ironclad portion of the fleet was reduced to
the Manhattan, armed with two fifteen-inch guns, and the Chickasaw and Winnebago of
two eleven-inch guns each; but one of the Manhattan’s guns became disabled early in
the action, by a bit of iron lodging in the vent, and the Winnebago’s turrets would
not turn, so that her guns could be pointed only by manoeuvring the vessel. But the
Chickasaw, owing to Perkins’s foresight and hard work, was in perfect condition, as
illustrated in all her service on that eventful day, as well as on all subsequent
occasions, until the capitulation of Mobile ended the drama of rebellion on the
Southern seaboard.

The wooden ships, stripped as at New Orleans for the stern work in hand, numbered
fourteen, and the number of guns carried by the fleet was one hundred and fifty-five,
throwing, by added facility of pivot and turret, ninety-two hundred and eight pounds
of metal in broadside, from which thirteen hundred and twenty must be deducted
through the early loss of the Tecumseh and the disabled gun of the Manhattan.

The enemy’s defences consisted of Fort Morgan, commanding the channel at Mobile
Point, mounting seventy guns; Fort Gaines, on the eastern point of Dauphin Island,
some three miles northwest of Fort Morgan, armed with thirty guns, and Fort Powell,
about four miles from Gaines northwest, at Grant’s Pass, with four guns.

Across the channel, which runs close to Morgan, several lines of torpedoes were
planted, and just beyond them to the northward of the fort, in line abreast waiting
their opportunity, was the rebel squadron, comprising the Tennessee, flagship of
Admiral Buchanan, and the gunboats Morgan, Gaines, and Selma, carrying in the
aggregate twenty-two guns–eight rifles and fourteen smooth-bores. The Tennessee, the
most powerful ship that ever flew the Confederate flag, was two hundred and nine feet
in length, and forty-eight feet in width, with a heavy iron spur projecting from the
bow some two feet under water. Her sides “tumbled home” at an angle of forty-five
degrees and were clad in armor of five and six inches thickness, over a structure of
oak and pine of twenty-five inches. Her guns, six heavy Brooke’s rifles, were
arranged, by port and pivot, for an effective all-round fire, and her speed was six
knots.

THE TENNESSEE.

All was ready for the attack on the evening of the fourth of August, and at
half-past five the next morning the signal was thrown out to weigh, and fall into the
order prescribed; the wooden ships in couples, and the ironclads in line by
themselves; the Tecumseh in the van and the Chickasaw in rear, according to the rank
of their commanding officers.

At half-past six the fleet was across the bar and in order of battle. No starlight
or favoring clouds now, to partially mask its movements as at the passage of Forts
Jackson and St. Philip, but the joyous sunshine, flooding land and sea with its
brightness, and mirroring its revealing gleams upon fort and ship and pennon, serving
friend and foe alike impartially. Alas! for the brave souls to whom that gracious
morning light was the last of earth, but we may hope they awoke in a light of still
more radiance and glory, and amid paeans of a joyous host, choiring “Well done, thou
good and faithful servants, that didst give thy lives to God and country!”

The soft south wind of that fair morn came like a benediction to the fleet now
sweeping on with the flood tide, and stillness like a sentient presence, only
disturbed by the sound of screw or paddle-wheel as they turned ahead, hung over the
ships till broken by the belching roar of the Tecumseh’s monster guns, as she threw
two fifteen-inch shells into Morgan–her first and last! And now, at seven, “by the
chime,” the action became general, and the Tecumseh, having loaded with heaviest
charge and solid steel shot, steamed on ahead of the Brooklyn to attack the
Tennessee; but Craven, thinking he saw a movement on the part of the ram to get out
of the way, together with the seemingly too narrow space between the fatal buoy and
the shore for manoeuvre in case of need, gave the order to starboard the helm, and
head directly for the watchful Tennessee, waiting with lock-strings in hand to salute
the monitor as she closed–gallant foeman worthy of her steel! So near and yet so
far, for hardly had the Tecumseh gone a length to the westward of the sentinel buoy,
than the fate, already outlined, overwhelmed her, and her iron walls became coffin,
shroud, and winding-sheet to Craven and most of the brave souls with him, and all so
suddenly that those who had seen the disaster could hardly realize what had taken
place.

Ours is not the purpose to follow further the details of the fight, but to go with
Perkins in the Chickasaw and see things as he saw them on that stirring day, as
gathered from his letters and as fortified from other sources. Of tireless energy and
restless activity, and sternly intent upon making the Chickasaw second to none in the
grand work demanded of the fleet, he imparted nerve and enthusiasm throughout the
vessel; now in the pilot-house, looking after the helmsman; then in the forward
turret, personally sighting the guns; anon on top of the turret, taking in the
surroundings.

His fine spirit and high moral courage had characteristic illustration when, the
night before the fight, calling his officers into the cabin, he thus addressed them:
“Gentlemen, by this time to-morrow, the fate of this fleet and of Mobile will be
sealed. We have all a duty to perform and a victory to win. I have sent for you to
say, that not a drop of wine, liquor, or beer, is to be drunk on board of this vessel
from this hour until the battle is over, and the victory won, or death has come to
us. It is my wish that every officer and man shall go into battle with a clear head
and strong nerves. I rely upon you to comply with this requirement, confident that
the Chickasaw and her crew can thus best perform their whole duty.”

An officer, who held high position on board the flagship, writes: “Perkins went
into the fight in his shirt-sleeves and a straw hat, and as he passed the Hartford,
he was on top of the turret waving his hat and dancing around with delight and
excitement.”–“The ironclads,” said Perkins, “were ordered to follow inside the
fleet, between fleet and fort. I had orders to be reserve force and remain with
wooden vessels after passing obstructions. Our course was between a certain buoy and
the shore. This passage was known to be free from torpedoes, and was left for the
blockade runners. All the vessels had orders to keep between that buoy and the shore,
but in other respects the ironclads had separate orders from the wooden vessels. In
the confusion resulting from the destruction of the Tecumseh and the movements of the
Brooklyn, the monitors received no orders and followed in the line of the
other vessels.” Be it said in passing, that Perkins had no pilot, and at sight of the
Tecumseh’s doom, one of the men in the pilot-house fainted, leaving only Perkins and
one man to steer the vessel until the vigorous methods applied brought the man to,
and freshened his pluck! The pilot-house was abaft the forward turret, not on top, as
in the case of the Tecumseh class, and was entered through a trap-door which was kept
open during the fight, for the vessel being unfinished, there was no way of opening
it from inside when closed.

“I pushed forward as rapidly as possible, but my ship anyway was stationed last of
the ironclads, as I was youngest in command. We fired at the fort to keep down its
fire till the wooden ships had passed. When the Tennessee passed, it was on my port
side; she then steamed toward Fort Morgan. Some of our vessels anchored, others kept
under weigh, and when the Tennessee approached the fleet again, she was at once
attacked by the wooden vessels, but they made no impression upon her. An order was
now brought to the ironclads by Fleet-Surgeon Palmer for them to attack the ram, but
as they stood for her, she seemed again to move as if retiring toward the fort, but
the Chickasaw overtook her, and after a short engagement, succeeded in forcing her to
surrender, having shot away her smoke-stack, destroyed her steering gear, and jammed
her afterparts so that her stern guns were rendered useless. As she could not steer
she drifted down the bay, head on, and I followed her close, firing as fast as I
could, my guns and turrets, in spite of the strain upon them, continuing in perfect
order. When Johnston came on the roof of the Tennessee and showed the white flag as
signal of surrender, no vessel of the fleet was as near as a quarter of a mile, but
the Ossipee was approaching, and her captain was much older than myself. I was wet
with perspiration, begrimed with powder, and exhausted by long- continued exertion. I
drew back and allowed Captain Le Roy to receive the surrender, though my first
lieutenant, Hamilton, said to me at the time: ‘Captain, you are making a
mistake.'”

Knowing full well that the Chickasaw’s eleven-inch shot would not penetrate the
stout side-armor of the Tennessee, Perkins made for the weakest part of the
vessel–her stern, and hung there close aboard, pouring solid shot of iron and steel
into that vital part with the accuracy of pistol-shooting, until the ram surrendered;
then taking her in tow, carried her near the flagship. He had fired fifty-two shots,
and, says the officer of the Hartford already quoted: “The guns of the Chickasaw
jammed the steering gear of the ram, also the port stopper of the after port
disabling the after gun, and a shot from the Chickasaw broke Admiral Buchanan’s
leg.”

But said Commander Nicholson of the Manhattan, in his official report: “Of the six
fifteen-inch projectiles fired from this vessel at the rebel ironclad Tennessee, I
claim four as having struck, doing most of the real injuries that she has sustained”;
then enumerating the injuries inflicted, which included most of those claimed for the
Chickasaw. Upon which claim put forth by the Manhattan, the writer ventures the
opinion: First, that four hits out of six shots was poor shooting for a monitor at a
target like the Tennessee, and suggestive of considerable distance between the
vessels; second, that eye-witnesses have affirmed that only one of the Manhattan’s
shot took effect, a solid shot that struck the ram on the port beam, crushing her
armor and splintering the backing, but not entering the casemate, though leaving a
clean hole through; third, that the effect of that one shot showed what the Manhattan
might have accomplished had she taken as favorable a position as that chosen by the
Chickasaw; fourth, that it is believed the report of a board of survey confirmed the
opinion as to that one shot; fifth, that, as between the great difference of sound in
the firing of the fifteen- inch gun and an eleven-inch, and the greater destructive
effect of the larger projectiles which could not but be felt by those receiving it,
the enemy would best be likely to know from what source they sustained the most vital
damage; sixth, that the concurrent opinions of the day, as given by press
correspondents, eye-witnesses to the conflict, magazine summaries, official reports,
the praise of Perkins on every lip, the talk of his promotion by distinguished
officers, and the testimony of the enemy themselves, including Admiral Buchanan and
Captain Johnston, all go to show that the surrender of the Tennessee was due more to
the dogged and unrelenting effort and skilful management of Perkins of the Chickasaw
than from any other cause.

Asked the Tennessee’s pilot of “Metacomet” Jouett: “Who commanded the monitor that
got under our stern?” adding, “D—-n him! he stuck to us like a leech; we could not
get away from him. It was he who cut away the steering gear, jammed the stern port
shutters, and wounded Admiral Buchanan.”

Said Captain Johnston, in the same vein: “If it had not been for that d—-d black
hulk hanging on our stern we would have got along well enough; she did us more damage
than all the rest of the Federal fleet.”

“The praise of Commander Perkins,” wrote a son of Concord, himself an active
participant in the fight, “on the superb management of his command, and the most
admirable and efficient working of his ship, was upon the lips of all.”

Pages of similar commendation might be quoted, but what need multiply testimony so
direct and conclusive as to Perkins’s gallantry and achievement, questioned only in
quarters where the discretion of silence and suggestion of modesty had best been
observed!

It only remains to add, in this connection, that so long as the Tennessee
continued to flaunt her flag in face of the fleet, so long the work of that glorious
day was of naught; that her capture, due in greatest part to the efforts of the
Chickasaw, completed the work and ensured, without embarrassment, the continued
operations against Fort Morgan and other defences in the bay.

Perkins, not content with laurels already won, got under weigh after dinner, and
steamed up to Fort Powell, taking that work in rear. The shots from the Chickasaw
destroyed the water-tanks, and Captain Anderson reported that, believing it to be
impossible to drive the ironclad from its position, and fearing that a shell from the
Chickasaw would explode the magazine, he decided to save his command and blow up the
fort, which was done that night at 10.30. In the afternoon, the Chickasaw had seized
a barge loaded with stores, from under the guns of Fort Powell, and towed it to the
fleet.

The next afternoon, the ever-ready and alert Chickasaw, under her indefatigable
commander, went down to Fort Gaines and shelled that work until dusk with such
telling effect, that, coupled with the fact that the landforce under General Granger,
investing its rear, was now ready to open fire in conjunction with the fleet, the
rebel commander capitulated the next morning.

Morgan was now the only remaining work of the outer line of Mobile’s defences to
be “possessed and occupied,” and General Granger, after throwing a sufficient
garrison into Gaines, transferred his army and siege-train to the other side of the
bay, and landing at Navy Cove, some four miles from Morgan, began its investment.

While this was going on, the Chickasaw was not idle, but continually using her
guns at one point and another, with occasional exchanges of shotted compliments with
the rams and batteries across the obstructions in Dog River, forming the inner line
of defence of the city, some four miles distant.

On the twenty-second of August, the approaches having been completed, the land and
naval forces opened a terrific fire on devoted Morgan, and continued it throughout
the day with such effect that General Page, commanding the garrison, struck his
colors and surrendered the next day.

The Chickasaw was as conspicuous in the bombardment as she had been in all her
work since entering the bay. It was not in Perkins’s temperament to be otherwise, and
said an eye-witness at the time: “It was a glorious sight to see the gallant Perkins
in the Chickasaw, nearly all the morning almost touching the wharf, and pouring in
his terrible missiles, two at a time, making bricks and mortar fly in all directions,
then moving ahead or astern a little to get a fresh place. He stayed there till
nearly noon, when he hauled off to cool his guns and give his men some refreshment.
In the afternoon, he took his ship in again, and turret after turret was emptied at
the poor fort.”

Perkins sent home the flag that had flown over the fort during the bombardment he
obtained it in this wise: “The sailors from this ship,” said he, “hauled down the
flag, and one of them seized it and hid it in his bosom; there was not much left of
it; it was riddled and torn. He brought it to me, declaring that no one had a right
to it but the captain of the Chickasaw. I hardly knew what to do about it, but the
man seemed so earnest I could not refuse to take it from him.”

The bay was now sealed to blockade runners, and Mobile, measured as to its
commercial importance to the Confederacy, might as well have been located among the
mountains of northern Alabama as on the Gulf; and owing to strategic reasons,
operations for its immediate reduction came to a halt. But on the twenty-seventh of
March, 1865, the land and naval forces began a joint movement against the defences
surrounding the city, and on the twelfth of April the Union forces were in full
possession. In these last operations, which cost the loss of two light draught
ironclads, a gunboat, and several other smaller vessels by torpedoes, we may know
that the Chickasaw was never in the background.

In July, Perkins was relieved from the command and ordered home. He had
volunteered for the Mobile fight but had been detained on board the Chickasaw nearly
thirteen months.

On his arrival home, he was overwhelmed with congratulations upon his gallantry
and achievements in Mobile Bay; but his friends felt indignant that no promotion had
followed them, believing that at least the thirty numbers authorized by statute, “for
eminent and conspicuous conduct in battle,” could not be reasonably denied him. But
he would not work personally toward that end, nor pull political wires to attain it.
With him, the promotion must come unasked or not at all. It never came, and others
disputed, with unblushing effrontery, the laurels he had won. Not only that, but he
has seen, as well as others, those who did the least service during the war, given
recognition and place over those who “bore the heat and burden of the day,” during
those four years so momentous in the annals of the Republic.

The following winter he was stationed at New Orleans, in charge of ironclads, and
in May, 1866, was ordered as executive officer of the Lackawanna, for a cruise of
three years in the North Pacific. The “piping times of peace” had come, and officers
who had had important commands, now had to take a step back to the regular duties of
their grade. Returning from the Pacific in the early spring of 1869, he was ordered
to the Boston Navy Yard on ordnance duty, and in March, 1871, received his commission
as commander. Two months later, he was selected to command the storeship Relief, to
carry provisions to the suffering French of the Franco-German war. On his return,
after a lapse of six months, he resumed his duties at the Boston yard, until
appointed lighthouse inspector of the Boston district, which position he held until
January, 1876.

Meanwhile he had taken to himself a wife, having, in 1870, married Miss Anna Minot
Weld, daughter of Mr. William F. Weld, of Boston. The issue of the marriage has been
one child, a daughter, born in 1877.

From March, 1877, until May, 1879, he was in command of the United States steamer
Ashuelot on the Asiatic station, making a most interesting cruise, and having, for a
time, the pleasure of General Grant’s company on board, as a guest.

Since his return from that cruise he has been on “waiting orders,” varied by
occasional duty as member of courts-martial, boards of examination, and the like.

In March, 1882, he was promoted to a post-captaincy, as the grade of captain in
the navy was styled in the olden time, which grade corresponds with that of colonel
in the army.

Captain Perkins has a house in Boston, where he makes his home in winter, but
nothing has ever weakened his affection for the old Granite State, and nothing
delights him more, when possible to do so, than to put behind him the whirl and
distraction of the city for the quiet enjoyment of the fresh, exhilarating air,
unpretentious, wholesome life, and substantial ways that await him among his dear
native hills.

In glancing over the “Portraits for Posterity,” the writer notes the conspicuous
absence of naval representation among the “counterfeit presentments” that adorn the
walls of the Capitol at Concord and the halls of Dartmouth, and ventures to suggest
to Governor Prescott, the distinguished and indefatigable collector of most of the
pictures, that portraits of Thornton of the Kearsarge, and Perkins of the Cayuga and
Chickasaw, might fittingly be given place among those who, in the varied walks of
life, have lent distinction and added lustre to the Province and State of New
Hampshire from Colonial times to this. Let not the men of the sea be forgotten!

FROM THE WHITE HORSE TO LITTLE RHODY.

Were other means lacking, the progress of the human race might be pretty
accurately gauged by its modes of locomotion. On such a basis of classification there
might be a pedestrian period, a pilgrim period, a saddle period, a road-wain period,
a stage-coach period, and a railway period.

Relatively considered, each mode of travel thus indicated would be an index of the
necessities and activity of the times. The nomadic peoples dwelt in a leisurely
world, and were content to go a-foot; their wants were simple, their aspirations
temperate; subsistence for themselves and their flocks was their great care, and only
when the grass withered and the stream dried up did they set forth in quest of fresh
pasturage. At length, however, the dull-thoughted tribular chieftain became curious
to know what lay beyond the narrow horizon of his wilderness, and men bound on the
sandal, girded up their loins, grasped staff, and beat paths up and down the valleys,
trudging behind an ass or a pack-horse that carried their impedimenta. Another
advance, and the man who drove his beast before him found that the creature was able
to carry both his pack and himself; and training soon enabled the animal to mend his
pace and transport his master rapidly across long stretches of waste country. Another
period elapsed, and ambitious man discovered that, by clearing a passage for wheels,
the load could be shifted from the back of the beast to a wagon drawn behind him;
thus carriages came into use, and the race went bowling along the great highway of
progress at a wonderful rate. Then vehicles began to be improved, and the restless
brain of the inventor contrived a stage-coach for the convenience of those who had no
private carriages or did not care to use them; though rude at first, it soon came to
be luxurious, with thorough braces, upholstery, and glass windows. But even this
noisy vehicle, that abridged distance and brought far cities near together, outgrew
its usefulness and gave way to its rival, the steam-car, which could hurry men
through the land as on the wings of a tornado. And now the same race, which in the
morning of the world was content to wander four or five miles between sun and sun,
and had no wish to go faster, can scarcely abide the slowness of a palace-car sliding
over a mile of steel rail each minute, and General Meigs is importuning the
Legislature for leave to construct a railway on which trains shall run at three times
that speed.

It would be too much to ask this hurrying, restless, nineteenth- century world to
retrace its way by rail and turnpike, saddle and sandal, back to the slow patriarch,
who kept his youth a hundred years, and in all that time might not have traveled as
far as a suburban gentleman of to-day does in going once from his home to his place
of business in Boston. It might halt long enough, however, to enjoy a view of the
stage-coach in which its grandfathers got on so rapidly, rumbling before a cloud of
dust over the straight pike that used to connect the metropolis with some lesser
city.

Such a highway was the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike, the grand avenue of public
travel between Boston and Providence, and one link of the continuous thoroughfare
connecting New England with New York and Washington. It was opened during the years
of intense activity that marked the infancy of the nation, and it had a distinct
corporate existence and history, like the railroad that ruined it, and was owned and
operated by a stock company. Though the entire road was not fifty miles in length,
the original enterprise contemplated only a section thereof, which, in accordance
with an act of incorporation passed by the State Legislature in 1802, was built from
the court-house in Dedham, the shire town of Norfolk County, to the north precinct
meeting-house in Attleborough, then a small border town of Bristol County.

The members of the original corporation that held the franchise of the road were
Fisher Ames, James Richardson, and Timothy Gay, Jr., of Dedham; Timothy Whitney and
John Whiting, of Roxbury; Eliphalet Slack, Samuel S. Blackinton, William Blackinton,
Israel Hatch, Elijah Daggett, and Joseph Holmes, of Attleborough; Ephraim
Starkweather, Oliver Wilkinson, and Ozias Wilkinson, of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. They
were all enterprising business men in their day, well known throughout Eastern
Massachusetts, and the undertaking for which they combined seemed as vast to the
rural denizens of the towns through which it passed as did the Pacific Railroad
enterprise to capitalists twenty years ago. To the surprise of the honest farmers,
who considered the crooked county roads good enough for them, it made almost a
straight line from one terminus to the other, and was laid out four rods in width–a
reckless waste of land–as a preventive against snow blockades in winter Instead of
following the windings of valley and stream as other roads did, this pike mounted
directly over all interposing hills, in accordance with the most approved theories of
civil engineers of that day; and where sections of those old thoroughfares still
remain intact, it is amusing to observe at what steep, straight grades they were made
to climb the most abrupt ascent, curving neither to the right nor to the left in
merciful consideration for the horses.

But it must not be supposed that public stage-coach travel on the route here
indicated began with the opening of the Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike. The first
conveyance of the kind started on its devious way over the poor county roads from
Boston to Providence in 1767; and the quaint Jedediah Morse records that twelve years
later the “intercourse of the country barely required two stages and twelve horses on
this line”; but the same authority states that in 1797 twenty stages and one hundred
horses were employed, and that the number of different stages leaving Boston during
the week was twenty.

The first stage-coach that passed over this new turnpike was driven by William
Hodges, familiarly called “Bill,” a famous Jehu, whose exploits with rein and whip,
being really of a high order of merit, were graphically set forth to any passenger
who shared the box with him, after Bill’s spirits had been raised and his tongue
limbered with the requisite number of “nippers”; and the increased comfort and
rapidity of the journey were so clearly apparent, that the line was soon after
extended to connect the capitals of the Bay State and Little Rhody.

In those days there was but one way to drive out of Boston, and that a narrow one
known as the “Neck,” beyond which was Roxbury. Across this isthmus all northward,
westward, and southward-bound vehicles must pass, in leaving or entering the city.
The narrowest place was at the present intersection of Dover Street with Washington,
or, as it was then called, Orange, Street. In ante-bellum times this was the
southern limit of the city, and here a gate stood, which opened on to a causeway that
crossed the “salt marish,” which at high tide was covered by the water. To this
gateway, then, the turnpike was extended from Dedham court-house; and when the work
was finished a coach, starting from the White Horse Tavern in Boston, which stood
near the site of the Adams House, just opened by Messrs. Hall and Whipple, bowled
along “a smooth and easy highway” to the bank of the Providence River, making the
long journey within the incredibly short space of six consecutive hours, when the
wheeling was good.

This great work, which was talked about years before it was undertaken, and then
required years to finish, was a triumph of road-building, in which both owners and
contractors took a pardonable pride; and to those familiar with the region through
which it passed, the course will be sufficiently indicated by noting here and there a
way-mark. On leaving Boston Neck it followed the already well-graded road through the
Highlands, to a point near the present station of the Boston and Providence Railroad
corporation in Roxbury, thence through West Roxbury to Dedham, and on through Norwood
to East Walpole; it left the central village of Walpole a mile or so to the west,
keeping near the Sharon line, struck into the westerly edge of Foxborough to a point
called the Four Corners, then through Shepardville in Wrentham to North Attleborough,
Attleborough “City,” Pawtucket, and Providence. A large portion of the road is still
kept in repair, so that one might take a carriage and trace the route through its
entire length.

To support such an expensive turnpike it was necessary to levy a tax on those who
made use of it, and to that end several toll-gates were established, at which
passengers were compelled to halt and pay their lawful reckoning. These gates were
located at Roxbury, Dedham, East Walpole, Foxborough Four Corners, North
Attleborough, and Pawtucket; and so great was the patronage of the road, that the
annual income derived from these sources afforded the stockholders a handsome net
dividend.

With the disuse of stage-coaches has perished that public convenience, the country
tavern, an institution with which the modern hotel has little in common. It was
suited to the needs and tastes of a former generation, and to a time, it may be,

But no hotel of the present day, with its showy furnishings and glitter, its gongs
and bell-calls, its multitude of obsequious waiters, gauging their attention by your
clothes, will bear comparison with the old- time tavern for homelike comfort and
hearty good service. The guest, on his arrival, tired and hungry, was not put off
with the cold recognition of a clerk who simply wrote after his name the number of
his room, and then with averted face said: “Waiter, show this gentleman to number
ninety-seven.” On climbing out of the stage-coach, he was sure to see mine host, a
fat, jolly man, who greeted him, whether friend or stranger, with a bow of genuine
welcome, relieved him of his hand-luggage, ushered him in before the open fire of the
bar-room, and actually asked what he would have for supper. Nor did this personal
interest cease as soon as the guest had been comfortably bestowed; for the landlord
was sure to have some pleasant words with him in the course of the evening, and to
make him feel, ere he went to rest, that, by coming at that particular time, he had
conferred on the host or some other guest a special favor, so that he retired in the
best of humor with himself.

Such inns of entertainment were to be found in every considerable New England town
a hundred years ago, and each bore some special reputation for general hospitality,
the cordiality of its landlord, or the excellence of its table or liquors. Each one
of these ancient hostelries might also be aptly described as

Wherever a stage line was established, a good country tavern, every few miles
along the route, became a necessity. It nourished on the patronage that the coach
brought to its door; its kitchen and barns afforded a ready market for the produce of
the farmers, and it was a grand centre for news and the idlers of the village.

The Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike was fortunate in its taverns, which were
accounted among the best in the State, from the White Horse, whence every stage-coach
took its departure, to the last one met with on the very borders of the land of Roger
Williams. There was the Billings Tavern in Roxbury, where it was considered quite the
proper thing for outward-bound passengers to alight and get something to fortify them
against the fatigues of the journey, especially if the weather were extremely cold or
extremely warm.

The next tavern on the line was widely known as Bride’s, and later as Gay’s, in
Dedham, a place where all who took the early coach out of the city delighted to stop
and breakfast. Here was to be found one of the best tables on the line, and tradition
has it that Bill Hodges, who, by the way, must have been a competent judge,
pronounced Bride’s old Medford rum the finest he had ever tasted. In the palmy days
of stage-coach travel, it was no uncommon thing for a hundred persons to breakfast at
this inn before resuming their journey to Providence. It was here that President John
Adams usually took the coach when he set out for Washington, being first driven to
that point from Quincy in his own private carriage.

There was a small public house at South Dedham, now Norwood, which was but little
patronized, and the next tavern of note was Polley’s, at East Walpole, which had the
name of furnishing the best board to be found between Boston and New York, and there
all the travel on the road stopped to dinner. It was also a convenient point for
taking up passengers from many adjacent towns, whence mail-carriages converged toward
the common centre, and scores of private teams were driven with small parcels or
other commissions for the stage; for it must be borne in mind that the driver
exercised the functions of an expressman, or common carrier, and was entrusted with a
variety of messages and valuables to deliver along the route, the fees for such
service being usually regarded as his rightful perquisites.

Shepard’s Tavern in Foxborough was a customary stopping-place; but the next grand
halt, after leaving Polley’s, was made at Hatch’s, in North Attleborough. Here the
approach of each stage was announced by the winding of a horn, and the driver was
wont to swing his long lash with a flourish around the sweaty flanks of his leaders
in a way to assure them that he meant business, then give his wheel horses an
encouraging cut, and dash up before the famous hostelry at a breakneck speed that
said to the small boys, Get out of the way! and caused the stock loafers, who always
assembled on the piazza at the first blast of the horn, to envy the skill that could
thus handle a whip, and guide, with apparent ease, the most mettlesome
four-in-hand.

Historically considered, no other tavern on the line possessed so much of
antiquarian interest as Hatch’s. It occupied the site of an old garrison built and
occupied by John Woodcock, the famous Indian fighter, as a stronghold against the
attacks of his red foes. He went thither from the Providence Plantation about the
middle of the seventeenth century, when the town was an unbroken wilderness in the
northern part of the Rehoboth North Purchase, so called, took up his abode and reared
his family in lonely solitude within the close stockades he planted around his home.
The first house that went by the name of Hatch’s Tavern was built upon this old
garrison, which, indeed, formed a part of its very walls, and not until the
proprietor found it necessary to erect a new and larger house, when the turnpike was
opened, did the last vestiges of the Woodcock stronghold disappear.

The landlord of this inn, Colonel Israel Hatch, was also a man of importance in
his time, who enjoyed an enviable reputation for military achievements, and was very
prominent in public affairs. At no point on the line was the traveler surer of a
larger hospitality or a heartier welcome than was extended by Colonel Hatch, though
its best room, which was reserved for visitors of note, might not have contained the
veritable inscription ascribed to Major Molineaux:–

On leaving North Attlebourogh, the remaining twelve miles to Providence were
conveniently relieved by short halts at Bishop’s and at Barrow’s Taverns in
Attleborough “City” and West Attleborough, and at one or two places in Pawtucket, so
that no passenger was compelled to go hungry or dry for many miles.

By far the most noted passenger ever conveyed over the Norfolk and Bristol road,
and there were many worthy of mention, is reputed to have been President James
Monroe, who shortly after his inauguration in March, 1817, made a tour through the
New England States, similar to that made by President Hayes in 1877. The occasion was
a great one, for Monroe and his party left Providence in the morning, halted at
Hatch’s for lunch, dined at Polley’s, and were met on their arrival at Dedham by a
delegation from Boston who escorted them to the “Hub of the Universe.” Great was the
curiosity of the country-folk to behold a president, and the streets through which
his barouche was to pass were thronged with an eager, expectant multitude, who
greeted him with cheers, and were rewarded with a gracious bow. And one little boy,
now a venerable and honored member of the Bristol County bar, was standing with his
father in an open farm wagon, when the President alighted at North Attleborough, and
exclaimed with evident disappointment: “Why, father, he’s no bigger than any other
man!”

DUNGEON ROCK, LYNN.

All over the land there are localities to which, in some way or other, have become
attached names that indicate something of the supernatural, or such as are intended
to excite apprehension. What stout heart does not stand dismayed before a real
dungeon? A prison under ground is something awful to contemplate. Whose hair does not
stand on end at the thought of possible confinement in a dark, damp, cold stone
prison-house, with rusty-hinged or even sealed doors, where no window opens to the
light of day; where no friendly voice is ever heard; where liberation is impossible,
and where, cursed with the remainder of life, one is doomed to a miserable existence
till the mortal and the immortal separate? Deliver us from such terrors as these!

In visiting Dungeon Rock, however, like most places of a similar character, we
find there is no especial reason for fear, notwithstanding the indicative name, and
the many blood-curdling traditions connected therewith.

It was a fine autumn day, when, together with some friends, we mustered courage to
pay our respects to this now famous spot. We found our way thither from the city of
Lynn by horse-cars, a part of the way by a barge and on foot. The driver of the
barge, like most drivers of such vehicles, displayed no small amount of scientific
driving. Why it is that almost all scientific driving generally results in some
mishap, we are unable to determine. But we conclude that the particular science to
which we refer is usually engendered by the driver having his elbow crooked at some
bar before the journey commences. On all such occasions stops are quite common;
branches of trees are not avoided, and they threaten to destroy our best suits, or
brush us altogether from our seats; the brakes do not work; the traces get unhitched;
an immense whip is flourished and cracked; the horses become unmanageable; frightened
women in a high key scream “Mercy!” and the ride becomes not only dangerous but
unendurable.

After a ride up hill and down over a winding road skirted by forest trees on
either hand, we were left in the woods at the foot of a steep hill. The remainder of
our way was by a path of the most primitive nature, something, we should judge, like
that of the native Pawtuckets, with the exception of the rapid ascent, for the
natives were wiser than we in laying out their highways, for they avoided both hills
and swamps. Shortly we found ourselves in the immediate vicinity of Dungeon Rock,
which is situated on the summit of a granite-capped eminence overlooking the
surrounding country. Quite a concourse of people had assembled on this occasion,
apparently to spend the day and have a “good time” generally. We should have said
before that this is considered a kind of Mecca for those who hold to the Spiritual
faith. There are several buildings which seem to have been dropped down without much
order, and a large platform furnished with plank seats. An entertainment had been
furnished, though for what purpose or by whom we knew not. There was some fine
singing, in solos, duets, and quartettes, and a slender little girl showed a good
lip, large lungs, and nimble fingers on a silver cornet, out of which she fired
repeated volleys of sputtering jigs at the overelated spectators.

Lynn’s first historian, who dealt somewhat in tradition, among other things, says,
in substance, “early in 1658, on a pleasant evening, a little after sunset, a small
vessel was seen to anchor near the mouth of the Saugus River. A boat was presently
lowered from her side, into which four men descended and moved up the river a
considerable distance, when they landed and proceeded directly into the woods. They
had been noticed by only a few individuals; but in those early times, when the people
were surrounded by danger and easily susceptible of alarm, such an incident was well
calculated to awaken suspicion, and in the course of the evening the intelligence was
conveyed to many houses. In the morning the vessel was gone, and no trace of her or
her crew could be found.” He further states that on going into the foundry connected
with the then existing iron-works, a quantity of shackles, handcuffs, hatchets, and
other articles of iron, were ordered to be made and left at a certain place, for
which a return in silver would be found. “This was done” (so says the historian), and
the mysterious contractors fulfilled their part of the obligation, but were
undiscovered. Some months afterward the four men returned and made their abode in
what has, to this day, been called Pirates’ Glen, where they built a hut and dug a
well. It is supposed that they buried money in this vicinity, but our opinion is that
most of the money then, as now, was kept above ground. Their retreat being
discovered, one of the king’s cruisers appeared on the coast, and three of them were
arrested and carried to England and probably executed. The other, whose name was
Thomas Veal, escaped to a rock in the woods, in which was a spacious cavern, where
the pirates had previously deposited some of their plunder. There the fugitive
practised the trade of shoemaking. He continued his residence here till the great
earthquake of 1658, when the top of the rock was unloosed and crashed down into the
mouth of the cavern, enclosing the unfortunate man in what has been called to this
day Pirates’ Dungeon or Dungeon Rock. We cannot vouch for the complete truthfulness
of this historian’s statements.

In 1852, one Hiram Marble purchased from the city of Lynn a lot of woodland in
which Dungeon Rock is situated. He came, as was claimed, influenced by Spiritualistic
revelations.

Directed by the spirit of the departed pirate Tom Veal, Mr. Marble commenced to
excavate from this very hard porphyry rock in search of a subterranean vault, into
which had been poured, as was supposed, the ill-gotten gain of all the pirates, from
Captain Kidd down to the last outlaw of the ocean. Twenty-seven years the sound of
the hammer and the drill and the thud of blasting-powder echoed through the leafy
forests, and then all was hushed.

Hiram Marble died in his lonely residence at Dungeon Rock, November 10, 1868, aged
sixty-five. He was widely known for his perseverence in the work in which he was
engaged. Sixteen years he labored without a realization of his ardent hopes. He
remained a Spiritualist to the last, and those of a like faith were invited to the
funeral services which took place on the day following his death.

“His faith has not been without works, nor his courage barren of results, and
centuries hence, if his name and identity should be lost, the strange labor may be
referred to some recluse Cyclops who had strayed hither from mystic lands.”

“Edwin Marble, who succeeded his father in the strange search for treasure, died
January 16, 1880, aged forty-eight years. He was buried near the foot of the rock on
the southwestern slope, it having been his express desire to be interred near the
scene of his hopeful, though fruitless, labors.”

The broken rock, which they removed solely with their own hands, makes quite a
mountain of itself.

We decided to enter the place where so many years of fruitless toil had been
spent. A wooden gate on rusty hinges opened and we passed in, and the gate closed
behind us.

The excavation is high enough and broad enough for two tall men to walk abreast,
and on its winding way, screw fashion, doubling upon itself, it leads down one
hundred and fifty feet into the bowels of the earth, all the way through solid rock
that had remained undisturbed for centuries on centuries, until the work of this
ill-directed Marble commenced. Down, down we went, out of the warm sunlight into this
cold, damp subterranean passage, winding hither and thither, till we reached an
ice-cold pool of water which is constantly being supplied from some hidden fountain,
and, were it not removed by pumps, would fill the place to the brim.

This rock-hewn passage is lighted with lanterns hung at the various turns, so that
the descent and ascent, notwithstanding the way is rough, can be made with safety.
Though the day was warm outside, we were in a very short time chilled through and
glad to make our escape. How these men could have endured many long years of labor in
this vast refrigerator, and retain any degree of health, is a problem. Faith and zeal
doubtless kept the blood moving through their veins. It is said that a knife, or
dirk, and a pair of scissors of very ancient origin, which we were shown, were found
by Mr. Marble in a fissure of this solid rock. That they were left there by pirates,
years on years ago, no sane man can for a moment believe. The probabilities are that
some one deceived Mr. Marble.

When this misguided adventurer commenced this work, he was possessed of about
fifteen hundred dollars, which he expended long before his death, after which, he
depended upon the charities of those who sympathized with him in his undertaking.

In one of the buildings named above, there are several portraits of pirates and
their wives, drawn, it is said, by some one under the influence of the spirits, in a
marvelously short space of time. Several wives of Captain Kidd are among them.

Captain Kidd must have been a remarkable man, to want more than one such character
for a companion, provided the likenesses are true to nature; at any rate we are not
at all surprised that he was a pirate, under the circumstances.

To illustrate how Mr. Marble professed to have been directed, we give the
following correspondence with the spirits:–

Mr. Marble wrote: “I wish Veal or Harris would tell what move to make next.”

This query was covered by fifteen thicknesses of paper and then the medium was
called in, and, merely feeling of the exterior of the paper, wrote what the spirit of
Veal revealed through him. Captain Harris, named in the communication, is supposed to
have been the leader of the piratical band.

Response of Veal: “My Dear Charge,–You solicit me or Captain Harris to
advise you as to what to next do. Well, as Harris says he has always had the heft of
the load on his shoulders, I will try and respond myself and let Harris rest. Ha! ha!
Well, Marble, we must joke a bit; did we not, we should have the blues, as do you
some of those rainy days when you see no living person at the rock, save your own
dear ones. Not a sound do you hear, save the woodpecker and that little gray bird
[Mr. Marble’s pet canary], that sings all day long, more especially wet days, tittry,
tittry, tittry. But, Marble, as Long [a deceased friend of Marble] says, ‘Don’t be
discouraged.’ We are doing as fast as we can. As to the course, you are in the right
direction at present. You have one more curve to make before you take the course that
leads to the cave. We have a reason for keeping you from entering the cave at once.
Moses was by the Lord kept forty years in his circuitous route, ere he had sight of
that land that flowed with milk and honey. God had his purpose in so doing,
notwithstanding he might have led Moses into the promise, in a very few days from the
start. But no; God wanted to develop a truth, and no faster than the minds of the
people were prepared to receive it. Cheer up, Marble, we are with you and doing all
we can.

“Your guide,

“TOM VEAL.”

Another communication, from C.B. Long, contains the following: “The names of Hiram
and Edwin Marble will live when millions of years shall, from this time, have passed,
and when even kings and statesmen shall have been forgotten.”

And so the man and, after him, his son worked on till, so far as they were
concerned, death closed the scene. Whether any person in the years to come will
follow these misguided laborers, and take up the work where they left it, is a
question.

The legendary lore of Dungeon Rock is eclipsed by the dominant impulse of lives
absorbed in an idea, based upon supernatural agency. While it is an evidence of a
misguided zeal, unequaled by anything the whole world has heretofore probably known,
in and of itself it is no mystery.

The mystery is that there ever lived human beings to undertake such an unpromising
work, where such hardship and perseverance were required, and where the folly of any
hope of success must have been apparent to an intelligent person every day, from the
commencement to the close of the twenty-seven years of servile toil.

LANCASTER IN ACADIE AND THE ACADIENS IN LANCASTER.

It is almost one hundred and thirty years

Of the numerous readers of Evangeline in Lancaster, few now suspect how nearly the
sad tale of wantonly-ravaged Acadie touched their own town history. From the archives
of Nova Scotia all details of that deed of merciless treachery were left out, for
very shame; but upon the crown officials then in authority over the Province, history
and poetry have indelibly branded the stigma of an unnecessary edict of expulsion,
which devastated one of the fairest regions of America, and tore seven thousand
guileless and peaceful people from a scene of rural felicity rarely equaled on earth,
to scatter them in the misery of abject poverty, among strangers speaking a strange
tongue and hating their religion. The agents who faithfully executed the cruel decree
were Massachusetts men, reluctantly obedient to “his Majesty’s orders,” given them
specifically in writing by Charles Lawrence, Governor of Nova Scotia.

On the twentieth of May, 1755, Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow embarked at Boston
with a force of about two thousand men, organized in two battalions. They were
enlisted for the term of one year, unless sooner discharged, for the special service
of dislodging the French from their newly fortified positions along the north side of
the Bay of Fundy, and on the isthmus connecting New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Among
the vessels of the fleet was the sloop Victory, and to this was assigned a company
belonging to the second, or Lieutenant-Colonel Scott’s, battalion, largely composed
of, and officered by, Lancaster men, a list of whose names is subjoined:–

Besides the above forty-five, there were, in other companies, three natives of
Lancaster:–

What special part these men took in the investment and capture of the formidable
fort of Beau Sejour, or in the assaults upon the minor forts, neither record nor
tradition tell, and we are equally uninformed respecting their participation in the
pitiable scenes enacted along the shores of Minas and Chignecto Bays. The
Massachusetts Archives contain no pay-rolls of this expedition, and no papers of
Captain Abijah Willard are known to exist throwing any light upon its history. That
the service was not only inglorious in part, and ungrateful to the truly brave, but
attended with much hardship, is attested by the following documents copied from
Massachusetts Archives, lv, 62 and 63. They are there in the handwriting of Secretary
Josiah Willard:–

“Sir: I have received your Letter giving me an acct. of the Hardships
your poor Soldiers are exposed to. I sincerely Compassionate their unhappy case
& I pray God to find out some Way for their Relief. The Governor is not
expected here till the month of December. When he arrives I shall endeavour to
mention the affair to him. In the mean time, I have written a Letter to Major
General Winslow which I have left open, Leaving it with you to deliver it or not as
you shall judge best, First sealing it before you deliver it The Council being
informed that I had a Letter from you upon the subject of these Hardships of the
Soldiers desired me to communicate it to them, which I did. What they will do upon
it I know not.

“Octob’r 31, 1755.

To ABIJAH WILLARD.”

“BOSTON, Oct. 31, 1755

“Sir: I have lately received a Letter from my Kinsman Cpt. Abijah Willard
expressing his tender concern for his soldiers who are exposed to ly in Tents in
this cold season now coming on and their cloath now worn out. I would fain use any
Interest I could make that may contribute to the Relief of these and other the
Provincial soldiers in Nova Scotia in the like circumstances, but I am a perfect
stranger both to Governor Lawrence & Coll. Monkton. But the acquaintance I have
of you & my knowledge of your compassionate spirit, especially towards the
soldiers under your command in like circumstances, urges me to write to you on this
occasion (not from any Distrust I have of your care in these matters, but possibly
as your Distance from the Place where this Company is quartered may keep you in
some Ignorance of the Difficulties these poor men labour under) to desire you would
interpose your best offices for their Relief. It seems that these men can be of
little service in act of Duty required of them while they are so destitute of the
necessary. Comforts & Refreshments of Life. You will excuse this Freedom. With
my earnest desires of the gracious Presence of God with you & particularly to
prosper your enterprises for the Good of your nation & Countrey I am, Sir, Your
very humble serv’t,

“JOSIAH WILLARD.”

This was not Captain Willard’s first experience of Nova Scotia, nor was it to be
his last. Ten years before he enlisted in the expedition against Louisburg, being
first lieutenant of Captain Joshua Pierce’s company, in the Fourth Massachusetts
Regiment, of which his father, Samuel Willard, was colonel. He was there promoted to
a captaincy, July 31, 1745, three days after his twenty-first birthday. Little more
than twenty years had passed from the time when he had assisted in forcing the
broken-hearted Acadien farmers into exile, and again he sailed for Nova Scotia,
himself a fugitive, proscribed as a Tory, his ample estate confiscated, and his name
a reproach among his life-long neighbors. As thousands of French Neutrals from
Georgia to Massachusetts Bay sighed away their lives with grieving for their lost
Acadie, so we know Abijah Willard, so long as he lived, looked westward with yearning
heart toward that elm-shaded home so familiar to all Lancastrians. On the coast of
the Bay of Fundy, not far west of St. John, is a locality yet called
Lancaster. Colonel Abijah Willard gave it the name. It was his retreat in
exile, and there he died in 1789.

Of the thousand Acadiens apportioned to the Province of Massachusetts, the
committee appointed by General Court for the duty of distributing them among the
several towns, sent three families, consisting of twenty persons, to Lancaster. These
were Benoni Melanson, his wife Mary, and children, Mary, Joseph, Simeon, John,
Bezaleel, “Carre,” and another daughter not named; Geoffroy Benway, Abigail, his
wife, and children, John, Peter, Joseph, and Mary; Theal Forre, his wife Abigail, and
children, Mary, Abigail, Margaret. The Forre family were soon transferred to Harvard.
They arrived in February, 1756, and the accounts of the town’s selectmen for their
support were regularly rendered until February, 1761. They were destitute, sickly,
and apparently utterly unable to support themselves, and were billeted now here, now
there, among the farmers, at a fixed price of two shillings and eight-pence each per
week for their board. Sometimes a house was hired for them, and, in addition to rent
paid, we find in the selectmen’s charges such items as these:–

Direct evidence to the helpless condition of the two families of French Neutrals
in Lancaster is given in a letter from the selectmen, dated January 24, 1757, found
in Massachusetts Archives, xxiii, 330:–

“and here Foloweth an account of the curcumstances, age and sexes of those
people, thare Is two famles Consisting of fifteen In Number, the whole to witt.
Benoni Melanso with his wife of about fourty four or five years of age, and they
have seven children thre Boyes and four Girlls, the Eldest Girl about 17 years old,
the boye Next about 15 years old, Sickly. Can Do Nothing. ye Next Boy 12 years old.
ye Next boy 10 years old, and ye four Girles all under them Down to two years old,
and the woman almost a Criple….

The Name of the others Is Jefray–& his wife, he almost an Idot and aboute
46 years old, … they have four children 3 Boyes & one Girll. ye Eldest Boye
10 yeares old & ye Rest Down to two years old.

“WM. RICHARDSON }
“JOHN CARTER } Selectmen of Lancaster.”
“JOSHUA FAIRBANK}

Shortly after the date of the above, these unhappy people suddenly disappeared
from their habitation. Reckless with homesickness, they had stolen away, and made a
bold push for the sea, in the vain hope that on it they might float back to the Basin
of Minas. This was in the depth of winter, February, 1757. They came to the coast at
Weymouth. There they soon encountered the questioning of local authority, and to
excuse their intrusion Melanson made complaint against his Lancaster guardians, the
history of which is in Massachusetts Archives, xxiii, 356.

“The Committee to whom was referred the Petition of Benoni Melanzan in behalf of
himself and sundrie other French People, Having met and heard the Petition and one
of the Selectmen of Lancaster, relating to the several matters therein Complained
of and also have heard the Representative of Weymouth where the French People
mentioned in s d Petition at present reside: Beg leave to report as follows. Viz:
That it doth not appear that ye Petitioner had any Grounds to complain of the
selectmen of Lancaster or either of them relating the matter complained of, and
therefore Beg leave further Report that the Committee are of oppinion that the said
French People be ordered forthwith to Return to Lancaster from whence they in a
disorderly manner withdrew themselves, all which is Humbly submited.

[pg 242]

“pr order of the Comitte

“SILVANUS BOURN.”

“In Council, February 24, 1757.

“Read and ordered that this Report be so far accepted as relates to the
Petitioners Complaint of his Treatment at Lancaster being without Grounds, but
inasmuch as the Petitioner offers to undertake for the support of himself and the
other French removed from Lancaster except in the article of Firing and House Room,
and is likewise willing that two of his sons be placed out in Families and inasmuch
as the Petitioner is by employment a Fisherman, which cannot be exercised at
Lancaster, therefore, Ordered that he have liberty to reside in the Town of
Weymouth until this Court shall otherwise order, and the Selectmen of said Town are
impowered to place two of his sons in English families for a reasonable term and to
provide House Room for the Rest, & the liberty of cutting as much Firewood as
is necessary in as convenient a Lot as can be procured. The account of the Charge
of House Rent and Firewood to be allowed out of the Province Treasury.

“Sent down for concurrence.

“THOS. CLARKE, Dpty. Secy.

“Feb. 25, 1757.”

“In the House of Representatives.

“Read and unanimously non concurred, and ordered that Report of the Com’tee be
accepted & ye the said French Neutrals so called be directed to return
forthwith to ye Town of Lancaster accordingly.

“Sent up for Concurrence.

“T. HUBBARD, Spk’r.”

“In Council, Feb. 25, 1757.

“Read & Concurred. A. OLIVER, Secy.

“Consented to S. PHIPS.”

They were soon again in the quarters whence they fled. In June, 1760, the Melanson
family were divided between Lunenburg, Leominister, and Hardwick, while the Benways
remained. Among the petitioners for leave to go to “Old France,” a little later,
appear “Benoni Melanson and Marie, with family of seven,” and from that date the
waifs from Acadie appear no more in the annals of Lancaster.

GIFTS TO COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.

The generosity of the American people, in the making of gifts to their
institutions of learning, is munificent. The generosity is keeping pace with the
increase of wealth. In 1847, Abbott Lawrence gave fifty thousand dollars to Harvard
University, to found the school of science which now bears his name. This gift is
declared to be “the largest amount ever given at one time, during the lifetime of the
donor, to any public institution in this country.” But since the year 1847, it is
probable that not less than fifty millions of dollars have been donated by
individuals to educational institutions. In several instances, gifts, each
approaching, or even exceeding, a million of dollars, have been bestowed. The
Baltimore merchant, Johns Hopkins, gave not less than three millions of dollars to a
great university, which, like Harvard, bears the name of its founder. Henry W. Sage
and Ezra Cornell contributed more than a million to the endowment of Cornell
University. The gifts of Amasa Stone to the Adelbert University at Cleveland
aggregate more than half a million. Since 1864, Ario Pardee has given to Lafayette
College more than five hundred thousand dollars; and the donations of John C. Green
to Princeton aggregate toward a million of dollars. Alexander Agassiz, worthy son of
a worthy father, has donated more than a quarter of a million of dollars to the
equipment of the Museum of Comparative Zoology and Anatomy which his father founded.
Joseph E. Sheffield endowed the scientific school at New Haven which bears his name.
The late Nathaniel Thayer, of Boston, contributed about two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars to Harvard. Among various institutions in the West, South, and
North, Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, of Maiden, Massachusetts, has, within the last five
years, distributed more than a million of dollars. George Peabody’s benevolences
amount to eight millions of dollars, about one fourth of which forms the Southern
Educational Fund, and about one eighth endowed the Peabody Institute at Baltimore.
John F. Slater gave a million of dollars to the cause of Southern education. The
amounts contributed to college and university education in the last ten years may be
thus summarized:¹

In the nineteen years since the close of the war, many institutions have been
founded with munificent endowments, as Johns Hopkins, Smith at Northampton,
Wellesley; and many more institutions have vastly increased their resources.
Harvard’s property has perhaps tripled in amount; Princeton’s income, under the
presidency of Dr. McCosh, has greatly enlarged; Yale’s revenue has also received
large additions. Colleges in every State have been the recipients of munificent
gifts. Notwithstanding, however, these benevolences, most colleges are in a constant
state of poverty. Indeed, it may be said that every college ought to be poor; that
is, it ought to have needs far outrunning its immediate means of supplying them.
Harvard is frequently making applications for funds, which appear to be needed quite
as much in Cambridge, as in the new college of a new town of a new State. At the
present time, colleges stand in peculiar need of gifts for general purposes of
administration. Funds are frequently given for a special object, as the foundation of
a professorship. But the amount may be inadequate. It is not expedient to decline the
gift. Properly to endow the new chair, therefore, revenue must be drawn from the
general funds, which thus suffer diminution. Donations are of the greatest advantage
to a college, which are free from conditions relative to their use.

The demand of institutions of learning for endowment receives special emphasis at
the present by the decreasing rate of interest. It is difficult, every college
treasurer knows well, so to invest funds with safety as to cause them to return more
than five per cent, interest. Ten years ago in the East it was as easy to secure
seven, as it is now to secure five, per cent. In one year one college saw its income
decrease many thousand dollars by reason of this decrease in the rate of interest.
Bowdoin College is distinguished for the success with which its funds are
administered. At the present these funds are said to pay about six per cent,
interest, but it is a rate higher than many colleges are able to gain. By this
decrease the salaries of professors, the income of scholarships, and the entire
revenue, suffer.

Many reasons might be urged in behalf of benevolence to institutions of learning.
Funds thus given are as a rule administered with extraordinary financial skill. Their
permanence is greater than the permanence of funds in trust companies and savings
banks. Harvard, the oldest college, Yale, the next to the oldest (with the exception
of William and Mary), have funds still unimpaired, still applied to the designs of
those who gave them in the first years of their incorporation.

Gifts to a college are, moreover, an application of the right principle of
benevolence of helping those who help themselves. The trustees, the professors, are,
in proportion to their income, the most generous. Not seldom do they pledge a year’s
salary for the benefit of the institutions which they officially serve. The first
nineteen donors to Tabor College, Iowa, several of whom were its officers, gave no
less than sixty per cent. of the assessed value of their property. The
efficient president of Colorado College has been engaged in making money for his
college in legitimate business, in preference to making his own fortune. The
students, as well as the officers, of colleges endeavor to help themselves to an
education in all fitting ways. The keeping of school, the doing of chores, the
running of errands, the tutoring of fellow-students, suggest the various ways in
which they endeavor to work their way through college.

Those who thus donate their money, in amounts either large or small, foster the
highest interests of the nation. From institutions of learning flow the best forces
of the national life. Literature, the fine arts, patriotism, philanthrophy, and
religion, thus receive their strongest motives. The higher education in the United
States is most intimately related to the master-minds of American literature.
Longfellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, were in part created by Bowdoin and Harvard.
Among the most efficient officers of the late war were the graduates of the colleges.
Without the college the ministry would become a “sounding brass and a tinkling
cymbal” indeed, and without a learned ministry the church would languish. In the
early years of the century, Mr. John Norris, of Salem, proposed to give a large sum
of money to the cause of foreign missions. He was persuaded, however, to transfer the
gift to the foundation of the Andover Theological Seminary, assured that thus he was
really giving it to the missionary cause. So the event proved. For the first American
missionaries were trained at Andover. Thus, he who gives his money to the college,
gives it to the fostering of the highest and best forces in American thought and
character.

SONG OF THE WINDS.

BRITISH LOSSES IN THE REVOLUTION.

[The following account of the losses of the British in the Revolution, for the
first thirty months of the war, is taken from The London Magazine of February,
1778, and is interesting in that it differs from all the statements that appear in
our United States Histories of that portion of the war.–ED.]

In March, 1776, the Parliament of Great Britain Voted 42,390 Men for the Service
of America; These troops Landed Accordingly, And have Lost agreeable to their Returns
as Followeth:–

THE BOSTON YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION.

In the year of our Lord 1844, a young clerk, named George Williams, consulted with
a few others and determined that something should be done to save the young men, who
came by thousands to London, from the terrible temptations and snares to which they
were exposed. The old times had passed when the young man came to the city
recommended to some friend who would feel a personal interest in him, either take him
into his own house or find some good home for him; who felt responsible for him and
bound to know where he went and with whom he associated; who often had him at his own
board, if not regularly there, and who expected to see him in his family pew on
Sunday.

Old Building.²

Perhaps this state of things had, from necessity, ceased to be; perhaps the
introduction of machinery and the employment of large numbers of young men in the
cities made this personal relation no longer possible. Whether possible or no, the
fact remains that this close relation between employer and employed ceased. There
are, even now, some noble exceptions to this, as in the case of Mr. Williams himself,
and the firm of Samuel Morlay and Company.

The young man to-day comes fresh from the pure air and clear lavish sunshine of
his country home, where summer’s flower-decked green is a continuous feast, and
winter’s glories a delight no less. Whether upon the snow in sleigh, or hillside
coasting, or the swift skate on the frozen river, or at evening’s cozy fireside
before the blazing logs, all rejoice in simple pleasures, and prayer closes the day.
Dear country home, where every sound is ministry; the morning cock and cackling hen,
the birds’ hopeful morning song, the twittering swallow, noon’s rest and healthy
appetite, the lowing cattle, the birds’ thankful evening note, the village bell–old
curfew’s echo, the pattering on the pane, the wind in the treetops, the watchdog’s
distant bark for lullaby, and quiet restful sleep; his greatest sports–those of the
evening village-green–the apple bee, the husking, and the weekly singing-school.

He stands at evening gazing at the splendors of the blacksmith’s glowing forge,
and in the morning says “good-by” to all, and starts upon his journey to the
city.

Arrived, and having found employment, he works from a fixed hour in the morning
till evening, then he goes home–where? ‘T is all the home he has–all he can
afford: a room, or perhaps a part of a room, on the upper floor of a tall house, in a
narrow street–houses all about- -the view all brick and slate,–the sunshine never
penetrates to him– the air is close and heavy; not one attraction is there for him
here. But on his way from work he must perforce pass many a front, where the electric
light casts its brilliant beams quite across the street. Yes, this proprietor can
well afford the costly allurement–it pays–a very wrecker’s light to lure to
destruction. Its baneful brightness makes day of that dark narrow street. Within is
warmth, companionship, music, wine, play,–all that appeals to a young man’s nature.
What wonder that he turns in here rather than go on to his cold, dreary room.

Once in, he is welcomed; hearty good fellows they seem. True, they are very
different from his old friends in appearance, manner, and language, and he at
first shrinks from them, but the wine-cup soon obliterates distinctions, and he feels
that he has never met such choice spirits before. Laughing at their jokes and coarse
stories, he forgets all in the wild excitement of the moment. His voice is now the
loudest. He sings, shouts, and, at length, losing consciousness, only wakes sick and
utterly miserable. He determines it shall be the last. Never will he be seen there
again. But he has entered upon a path of easy descent, and lower and lower he falls.
He is hurrying to death.

His employer cares only that he is at his place in the morning and remains there
at work till the evening. He cannot follow him, and should the young man’s habits
become such that it “no longer pays” to employ him, he is dismissed and another is
quickly found to take his place. Vast numbers of young men were going down to death
in the cities, when George Williams and his friend determined to do something to keep
them from destruction, and thus they formed the first Young Men’s Christian
Association in the world, on the sixth day of June, 1844.

In the autumn of 1851, a correspondent of the Watchman and Reflector, a religious
paper published in Boston, wrote an account of his visit to the London rooms. Captain
Sullivan saw the article, and having himself visited the London Association, he spoke
to others, and the result was a meeting in the vestry of the Central Church, on
December 15, 1851, of thirty-two men, representing twenty congregations of the
different denominations.

This meeting was adjourned to December 22, at the Old South Chapel, in Spring
Lane. A constitution was adopted on December 29. Officers were chosen January 5 and
10, and the work began in earnest.

Mr. Francis O. Watts, of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, was the first president of
this, the first Young Men’s Christian Association of the United States. It is
a strange coincidence, easily understood by the Christian, that on the twenty-fifth
of November, one month previous, without any knowledge on the part of Boston, the
first Young Men’s Christian Association of America had been organized at Montreal, in
Canada.

The constitution adopted was based upon that of the parent Association, and
provided that, while any young man could be a member and enjoy all other privileges
of the Association, only members of evangelical churches could hold office or vote.
The reason for this was clear and right. Those who originated the parent Association,
and those who formed this, believed in the doctrines of the Universal Church of
Christ–in the loss of the soul and its redemption only by the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ; nor could they be satisfied with any work for young men which did not
at least aim at conversion.

The chairman of the international committee thus speaks, in February last: “When
any Association sinks the religious element and the religious object which it
professes to hold high beneath secular agencies and powers, it ceases to deserve the
name of Young Men’s Christian Association. It belongs then to a class of societies of
which we have many, and in which, as Christian young men looking to the conversion of
our fellows as the supreme object, we have no special or peculiar interest.” The
tenth annual report thus speaks upon this point: “The tie which binds us together is
a common faith. We hold this faith most dearly, and believe it to be essential, and
therefore worthy to be protected by every means. We cannot be expected, surely, to do
so suicidal a thing as to admit to the right of equal voice in the government of our
society those who are directly opposed to the very essence of our being.”

NEW BUILDING.

The benefits of the Association are for all–its management alone is
restricted.

There are now nearly twenty-five hundred Associations in the world, all upon what
is called the evangelical basis, and in the United States and British Provinces only
Associations upon this basis have membership or representation in the International
Organization, formulated in Paris, in 1855, thus:–

“The Young Men’s Christian Associations seek to unite those young men who,
regarding Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour according to the Holy Scriptures,
desire to be his disciples in their doctrine and in their life, and to associate
their efforts for the extension of his kingdom among young men.”

It is a fact that whenever the attempt has been made, and it often has, in any
Association, to give an equal right in the management to those who are not of our
faith, that Association has either soon adopted our basis or ceased to exist.

The spiritual benefit of its members having thus always been its ultimate end, the
London Association, during its early years, did no other work; and no sooner was the
Boston Association formed than it, too, took it up. For a while, it carried on a
Bible-class and a weekly prayer-meeting; but in May, 1857, a daily prayer-meeting was
established, and has been continued almost without intermission to the present time.
The visitation of sick members, the distribution of tracts, and the conduct of
general religious meetings, have been the regular work of special committees. These
last have been held when and where they seemed to be called for: on the Common, at
the wharves, on board the ships in the harbor, and, especially during our Civil War,
on board the receiving-ship Ohio; in the theatres, at Tremont Temple, and at the
Meionaon, where, at various times, for weeks, a noon meeting has been held for
business men.

The Association has also been the rallying-point and chief instrumentality in
great revival movements, under the direction of the churches, and especially in that
under Mr. Moody in the great Tabernacle. The Boston Association has never forgotten
the chief object of its existence, nor, though not without some fluctuation, has it
intermitted its religious work.

We have said that in London the work was at first wholly religious. In this
country, however, the social and intellectual element in young men was immediately
recognized and measures taken to satisfy them. Therefore pleasant rooms were at once
secured, carpeted, furnished, hung with pictures, and supplied with papers,
magazines, and books; and, as the work enlarged and additional and more commodious
rooms were obtained, the literary class and the occasional lecture in the room at the
Tremont Temple building, expanded, in its first own building at the corner of Tremont
and Elliot Streets, into evening classes, social gatherings, readings, and concerts;
and here first we were able to give to our members who wished them the advantages of
the gymnasium and bathrooms. And when, through the munificence of the business men,
the Association was enabled to take possession of its present building, certainly
excelled by no other in the world, either in beauty of exterior or accommodation,
every appliance for physical, social, intellectual and spiritual work has been made
possible.

Visit the building with us. There it stands, at the corner of two broad streets,
and in the midst of the finest public and private buildings in the city. Unique in
architecture, simple in design, warm in color, and beautiful in its proportions, it
is a building of which Boston may well be proud, while every Christian man must
rejoice in the thought that it is built for His glory whose blessed emblem crowns its
top-most gable. By its broad stone staircase, under the motto of Associations, “Teneo
et teneor,” and through its vestibule, we enter the great reception- room.
Immediately on the left, a white marble fountain supplies ice-cold water to all who
wish it; beyond, richly carpeted and well furnished, the walls hung with good
paintings, are the two parlors. Here the members have withdrawing-rooms equal to
those even in this favored neighborhood. The few whom we find here certainly
appreciate their comfort. The pleasant room adjoining is that of the general
secretary, where he is usually to be found, and where each member is cordially
welcomed for converse or advice. Beyond, again, is the office, where three men find
it no sinecure to attend to the continuous stream of comers for welcome, membership,
or information. The library is a large, handsome, sunnyroom, well furnished with
shelves, but not these so well with books; and yet, from twenty to fifty men
are here quietly reading. The next room is for general reading. Around the walls on
every side are papers from almost everywhere, and on the tables all the periodicals
of this country, and many from abroad. All about the room sit or stand the readers,
many, for the time, at home again as they gather the local news of their own town or
village. The room beyond is called the “game- room.” At each little table sit the
chess or draught-players, while many interested are looking on.

Here is the lavatory, complete in all its appointments, except, perhaps, that the
long towel on the roller has been already this evening used by too many hands. The
smell of blacking, too, indicates the wearer’s pleasure in his cleaned and polished
boots. In that little hall, which seats about three hundred, a lecture is being given
to young men, on the care of the body, by Dr.—-. This is one of six which are given
gratuitously by Boston physicians.

We mount the stairs to the next story. These two rooms are rented to a commercial
college. This door opposite admits you to the hall, which has seats for nine hundred
persons. It is extremely simple, but the tints of the walls and ceiling are
delightful, and you have only to listen to those members of the —- Club, who have
leased it for their concerts, to realize that its acoustic properties are
perfect.

Still higher, we find the room of the board, where, once at least in each month,
the directors sup at their own expense, and manage the affairs of the Association.
Here, too, its various committees meet. In the room adjoining, a French lesson is
going on; in that, German; in this, penmanship. Still higher up we find the “Tech”
Glee Club practising, and this large room adjoining is filled with those who are
learning vocal music. The building seems a very hive–something going on
everywhere.

Let us now descend to the basement. The gymnasium is here in full blast. Men in
every kind of costume and in every possible and, to many persons, impossible
position, while the superintendent is intently watching each to see that he is
properly developing; every kind of bath and many of them are right at hand,
and dressing-rooms with boxes for eight hundred persons.

And this great building and all these appliances are the gift of the citizens of
Boston to the young men from the country. Many of the donors remember the time when
they came lonely to the city, and determined, if they could prevent it, that no young
man, to-day, in the same position, should be without a place where all of which they
so greatly felt the need is supplied.

These needs are thus supplied. Early in the history of the Association, a circular
was sent to every evangelical pastor in New England, asking him to give information
of each young man coming to the city, that he might be met at the station or received
at the rooms.

Let us sketch a case: We have received word that John —- is to arrive from G—-
by such a train. During the journey, thoughts of the dear ones he has left crowd upon
him. He is already sick for home, as he looks about him and sees no familiar face. He
has left harbor for the first time. All before him is uncertain: all about him
strange. He reaches the city; friends are there at the station to welcome this and
that one of his fellow-travelers. He knows no one. No one cares for his coming. No
one? Yes, there is a young man scanning closely the faces which pass. Suddenly his
eye encounters our traveler, and at once the question: “Are you John —-? ‘Tis well.
I am from the Association. We are expecting you.” Together they go to the building,
and, even before reaching it, our stranger is not quite a stranger. One man at least
is interested in him. “This is the building.” “What, this fine place ready to welcome
me? Why, this is grand!” Here, too, is the electric light, but not baneful this, no
wrecker’s false gleam, but like the light upon the pier, showing safe entrance and
anchorage. “This is our secretary. Mr. D., this is John —-.” “Glad to see you. Had
you a pleasant journey? What can we do for you? You want a boarding-place! Well, here
is the book. What can you pay? Very well, Mrs. B. has a vacancy and it is just the
place you want. I will send some one with you there. Your recommendation was such
that we have found a situation for you, and they will be ready to see you to-morrow.
We have an entertainment this evening, and I shall be glad to introduce you to
several young men.” Imagine, if you can, what such an introduction to city life is to
a young man, and what is his coming to the city without it. He is no stranger now. He
has found comfort, companionship, sympathy, occupation. His heart goes home indeed,
but it is in thankfulness that he writes and describes his surroundings, and glad is
he at the close of the evening to join with others in, prayer and thanksgiving to his
mother’s God, for the blessings of the Association; and later, in the quiet of his
own room, he renews his thanks, sleeps peacefully, and, full of hope, takes hold of
work in the morning. He is directed to the church of his choice and is introduced to
the pastor. Thus, at the very first, he is surrounded by good influences in a city
where thousands are on the watch with every allurement to tempt just such strangers
to destruction of both soul and body. Should John —- be ready, in his turn, to help
others, work enough can be found for him in one of the several departments of social
or spiritual life.

Should he fall sick, a committee of the Association visit and care for him, and,
if necessary, watch with him. There have been many cases where young men have been
carefully tended during a long illness, and a few where even the funeral expenses
have been borne by the Association, and even burial given to the body in the
Association lot at Forest Hills Cemetery. This is no fancy sketch. Many, many actual
Johns are here pictured, and many souls will, by-and-by, be found thanking God that
he put it into the hearts of his servants to establish the Young Men’s Christian
Association.

But whence this well-appointed building? Within the first year of its life, a
building fund was projected, and, as far as we know, this was absolutely the first
step in this direction taken by any Association, either in this country or elsewhere.
A library fund was also started at the same time.

We have mentioned “Fairs.” These have been three in number; each being held in the
Music Hall, and owed their success, not only to the energy of the young men, but to
the hearty sympathy and untiring exertions of the ladies of the Boston churches.

It is certainly to the credit of the Association that up to 1882, when the large
subscription of $200,000 was secured, the amount raised through the exertions of the
young men and the ladies exceeded by more than $10,000 all moneys subscribed.

The influence of the Boston Association has not been merely local. Through Mr.
L.P. Rowland, long its general secretary, and now the veteran secretary of the United
States, in his capacity of corresponding secretary of the international committee,
the first State work was done and Associations formed in all parts of Massachusetts.
The present Boston building is now the headquarters of the Massachusetts committee,
where the State secretary may always be reached. The secretary of the Association is
a member of the State committee, a present member of the board, and an ex-president
is now chairman of the same. In national matters, also, the Boston Association has
responded to every call. In the early days of the war a drill-club was organized by
one of its board, and he, as well as a large number of his men, went into service.
And at the call of Mr. Stuart, of Philadelphia, the committee of the Christian
Commission was represented by an ex-president and an army committee formed in the
Association, which sent the large sum in money of $333,237.49, and immense stores of
all kinds to the field.

The same committee acted as almoners at the time of Chicago’s great fire, and also
when the Western woods fires caused such suffering.

Without boasting, for much more might have been done, the Boston Association has
no cause to be ashamed of its history. Beginning with all ready to criticize, and
many disapproving, the Association has worked itself into the confidence of the
community; and the Reverend Joseph Cook, who was introduced as a lecturer to Boston
under its auspices, thus speaks of the Association at the close of its
quarter-century. He says:–

“First, That there is a vast amount of work which should be done for young men in
cities, and that, as the proportion of the American population living in cities had
increased since the opening of this century from one twenty-fifth to one fifth, the
importance is great and growing.

“Second, That neither individual churches taken separately, nor individual
denominations taken separately, can do this work easily or adequately.

“Third, That all the evangelical denominations united in a city can do this work
easily by the organization of a Young Men’s Christian Association as their
representative.”

A short time ago a committee of conference, made up of eight leading city
clergymen and as many laymen, two of each denomination, unanimously passed the
following resolutions:–

“Resolved, That the great and peculiar dangers to which young men are
exposed in this, as in other cities, clearly calls, for the work of the Young Men’s
Christian Association.

“Resolved, That the Association represents the Church working through its
young men for the redemption of young men, and, therefore, it is entitled to the
continued confidence, support, and co-operation of the churches.”

After long years of patient and steady work, the Boston Young Men’s Christian
Association has secured the confidence of the Christian community to the extent of
more than $300,000, in the palpable form of stone and brick, which beautifies one of
the finest sites in our city. It stands also as a monument of the liberality of
Christian Boston and her appreciation of this great work for young men in the
Master’s name.

THE OHIO FLOODS.

Several causes are assigned for the excessive rise of water in the Ohio valley.
This water-shed is accredited with an area of two hundred thousand square miles, and
it lies upon the border-line of hot and cold temperatures. It is subject to heavy
storms, and sometimes, in winter, to large accumulations of snow. It is presumable
also, the rainfall is greater than the average of the country. When, following great
deposits of snow, warm, heavy, and prolonged rains occur, excessive floods must be
the result. Add to these coincidents the fact that forests, once existing, are now so
nearly annihilated that little protection is offered against a rapid dissolution of
the snow, and the sudden freezing of the earth in an interval of the late storm
preventing absorption of rain falling thereafter. The waters thus produced fall into
the main streams without hindrance, like rain from roofs of buildings. An aggregation
of waters in this valley, rising from fifty to seventy- one feet, is of annual
occurrence, intensified according to excesses and completeness of coincidents.

The damage arising from the Ohio flood of 1882 has been estimated at twelve
millions of dollars; that of 1883 at thirty-five to forty millions of dollars. If
these estimates are approximately correct, what must have been the damage from the
flood of 1884!

There are other causes for the floods in the Ohio valley, and in all Southern
streams, that have been but little considered, which exercise undoubted and immense
influence in solving the peculiarities of the question under consideration, and
afford striking contrasts in different sections of this country.

There are two water systems presented in North America. North of about the
forty-first degree of latitude probably the southern limit of the once glacial
region–a reservoir system prevails toward the headwaters of all the streams.
It includes New England, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Dakota, and to the
Rocky Mountains divide, and all of the British Provinces to the Arctic Circle. It
also somewhat occurs on the western slope of the Rockies. This region is notable for
the great lake system, and the immense number of smaller lakes and ponds–natural
inland reservoirs, supposed to be largely of glacial formation to hold back
considerable portions of the cumulative waters upon any given water-shed, and serving
to restrain the outflow, even after they are filled. These basins exercise a happy
and protective influence in many ways.

South of the forty-first parallel, the rivers have no reservoirs to hold
any part of the flow from their water-shed. Within this vast area few lakes or ponds
exist. The superabundance of water has no restraint, but at once takes to the bottom
lands. To this southern system the Ohio River notably belongs, with all its
tributaries. Within its two hundred thousand square miles of area, scarcely a natural
reservoir is to be found. No other part of the country is so devoid of basins. Its
feeders drain the western slopes of the Alleghany and Cumberland Mountains–Western
Pennsylvania and West Virginia, representing sixty thousand square miles, the
southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and most of Kentucky and Tennessee.
These States are without lakes or ponds. Nothing intervenes to hold back any portion
of the vast flow from these coincidents of nature before spoken of, and therefore the
excessive floods of last year and this. Such results must continue to follow.

During the summer droughts the other extreme prevails. For lack of a reservoir
system to withhold and control the flow of water, the river falls from
flood-tide–seventy-one feet–to points so low as to seriously impede or prevent
navigation. Sometimes even the smallest steamers and barges fail to pass between
Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, and coal famines have not been unfrequent, resulting from
difficult navigation. An equable flow of this stream is impossible. It will always be
subject to these extremes. Nothing but an extensive method of filling or diking is
likely to prevent the inundation of cities and villages that are not seventy feet
above low-water mark, with attending suffering and destruction of life and property.
All Southern rivers are liable to like extremes.

In contrast, it may be noted that the St. Lawrence River but slightly varies its
flow, above Montreal, because of the restraining power of the Great Lakes, its
feeders. The upper Mississippi rises not to excess because of the thousands of lakes
and lakelets in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Dakota, its sources. The floods occur in
its southern portion, chiefly below St. Louis. But for this reservoir system its
navigation in the upper portion would be seriously impeded in summer seasons.

Disastrous floods can scarcely occur on the St. John’s, St. Croix, Penobscot,
Kennebec, Androscoggin, Saco, Piscataqua, Merrimack, Connecticut, or Hudson Rivers,
except from damming of the ice in winter or springtime (and that cause is of rare
occurrence), such is the elaborate system of reservoirs about the headwaters of these
streams. This northern country is greatly benefited by these excavations occurring
from geological causes.

The Merrimack River has a water-shed of about four thousand square miles
miles–one fiftieth part of that of the Ohio. It has the Winnipiseogee, Squam, and
Newfound Lakes, and hundreds of ponds to fill, that store a large amount of water,
before any considerable rise can take place in the river, and then they restrain the
flow. No excess of water comes through the Winnipiseogee River, though it is the
outlet of a water-shed nearly as great as of the Pemigewasset. The freshets of the
Merrimack come chiefly from the last-named stream and minor tributaries. Without
these reservoirs, the manufacturing establishments at Lawrence, Lowell, and
Manchester, would cease to be operated by water-power during the summer droughts. The
highest flow of water in the Merrimack known in forty-six years, as measured at the
Lowell dam, was thirteen and seven-twelfths feet. This occurred in 1852. Only a few
times have freshets exceeded ten feet rise over that dam.

The greatest fall of water and rise of the freshet, in this valley, known at
Concord, New Hampshire, occurred in August, 1826. This storm notably caused the
land-slide in the Saco valley, which buried the Willey family. The next was in early
October, 1869, which caused the slide of seventy-five acres of land on the western
side of Tri- Pyramid Mountain into Mad River, in Waterville.

Messrs. Rand, McNally, and Company, of Chicago, in their Atlas of the World, give
data to illustrate the two river systems of the country spoken of. Names of
sixty-seven lakes are given in Maine, and beside these are ponds almost innumerable.
By census statistics given, her reservoir and land areas are as 1 to 13. New
Hampshire is accredited with three hundred and sixty-two lakes and ponds, being as 1
acre to 41 of land. Vermont has forty-one lakes and ponds, including Lake Champlain,
being as 1 acre to 24 of land. Massachusetts, forty- seven lakes and ponds; Rhode
Island, forty-seven; Connecticut, eighteen; New York, two hundred and sixty, beside
her great lakes; New Jersey, ten; Pennsylvania (chiefly northeastern portion),
fifty-eight; Michigan, ninety-eight lakes, and ponds in great number; Wisconsin,
seventy- two lakes, and a large number of ponds; Minnesota, one hundred and forty-two
lakes, and ponds innumerable; Dakota, fifteen lakes, and a great number of ponds; and
Iowa, forty-eight lakes.

In contrast, Virginia has only Lake Drummond–really a part of the Dismal Swamp;
West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, none; Indiana, eleven lakes, and
Illinois, eight,–all on northern water- shed. The Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama
have no reservoirs. Lagoons exist in the States bordering the Mississippi River and
the Gulf, which are filled by the overflow of the rivers.

A consultation of any good atlas of our country will confirm these statements.

The two sections are thus contrasted. The Northern States have reason to be very
thankful for their more equable system, for the motive power its reservoirs furnish,
and for exemption from disastrous floods, as well as from cyclones and tornadoes.

THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY.

[This account of the Boston Tea-Party is taken, verbatim, from “The Boston
Evening Post, Monday, December 20, 1773. Thomas and John Fleet, at the Heart and
Crown, in Cornhill, Messi’rs Printers.” It adds another link in the chain of
evidence to prove that the patriots were disguised as Indians.–ED.]

Having accidentally arrived at Boston upon a visit to a Friend the evening before
the meeting of the Body of the People on the 29th of November, curiosity, and the
pressing invitations of my most kind host, induced me to attend the Meeting. I must
confess that I was most agreeably, and I hope that I shall be forgiven by the People
if I say so unexpectedly, entertained and instructed by the regular, reasonable and
sensible conduct and expression of the People there collected, that I should rather
have entertained an idea of being transported to the British senate than to an
adventurous and promiscuous assembly of People of a remote Colony, were I not
convinced by the genuine and uncorrupted integrity and manly hardihood of the
Rhetoricians of that assembly that they were not yet corrupted by venality or
debauched by luxury.

The conduct of that wise and considerate body, in their several transactions,
evidently tended to preserve the property of the East India Company. I must confess I
was very disagreeably affected with the conduct of Mr. Hutchinson, their pensioned
Governor, on the succeeding day, who very unseasonably, and, as I am informed, very
arbitrarily (not having the sanction of law), framed and executed a mandate to
disperse the People, which, in my oppinion, with a people less prudent and temperate
would have cost him his head. The Force of that body was directed to effect the
return of the Teas to Great Briton; much argument was expended. Much entreaty was
made use of to effect this desirable purpose. Mr. Rotch behaved, in my estimation,
very unexceptionably; his disposition was seemingly to comport with the desires of
the People to convey the Teas to the original proprietors. The Consignees have
behaved like Scoundrels in refusing to take the consignment, or indemnify the owner
of the ship which conveyed this detestable commodity to this port. Every possible
step was taken to preserve this property. The People being exasperated with the
conduct of the administration in this affair, great pains were taken and much policy
exerted to procure a stated watch for this purpose.³

The body of the People determined the Tea should not be landed; the determination
was deliberate, was judicious; the sacrifice of their Rights, of the Union of all the
Colonies, would have been the effect had they conducted with less resolution: On the
Committee of Correspondence they devolved the care of seeing their resolutions
seasonably executed; that body, as I have been informed by one of their members, had
taken every step prudence and patriotism could suggest, to effect the desirable
purpose, but were defeated. The Body once more assembled, I was again present; such a
collection of the people was to me a novelty; near seven thousand persons from
several towns, Gentlemen, Merchants, Yeomen, and others, respectable for their rank
and abilities, and venerable for their age and character, constituted the assembly;
they decently, unanimously and firmly adhered to their former resolution, that the
baleful commodity which was to rivet and establish the duty should never be landed;
to prevent the mischief they repeated the desires of the Committee of the Towns, that
the owner of the ship should apply for a clearance; it appeared that Mr. Rotch had
been managed and was still under the influence of the opposite party; he resisted the
request of the people to apply for a clearance for his ship with an obstinacy which,
in my opinion, bordered on stubbornness–subdued at length by the peremptory demand
of the Body, he consented to apply, a committee of ten respectable gentlemen were
appointed to attend him to the collector; the Body meeting the same morning by
adjournment, Mr. Rotch was directed to protest in form, and then apply to the
Governor for a Pass by the Castle; Mr. Rotch executed his commission with fidelity,
but a pass could not be obtained, his Excellency excusing himself in his refusal that
he should not make the precedent of granting a pass till a clearance was obtained,
which was indeed a fallacy, as it had been usual with him in ordinary cases,–Mr.
Rotch returning in the evening reported as above; the Body then voted his conduct to
be satisfactory, and recommending order and regularity to the People, dissolved.
Previous to the dissolution, a number of Persons, supposed to be the Aboriginal
Natives from their complection, approaching near the door of the assembly, gave the
War Whoop, which was answered by a few in the galleries of the house where the
assembly was convened; silence was commanded, and prudent and peaceable deportment
again enjoined. The Savages repaired to the ships which entertained the pestilential
Teas, and had began their ravage previous to the dissolution of the meeting–they
apply themselves to the destruction of the commodity in earnest, and in the space of
about two hours broke up 342 chests and discharged their contents into the sea. A
watch, as I am informed, was stationed to prevent embezzlement and not a single ounce
of Teas was suffered to be purloined by the populace. One or two persons being
detected in endeavouring to pocket a small quantity were stripped of their
acquisitions and very roughly handled. It is worthy remark that, although a
considerable quantity of goods of different kinds were still remaining on board the
vessels, no injury was sustained; such attention to private property was observed
that a small padlock belonging to the Captain of one of the ships being broke another
was procured and sent to [pg
263] him. I cannot but express my admiration of the conduct of this People.
Uninfluenced by party or any other attachment, I presume I shall not be suspected of
misrepresentation. The East India Company must console themselves with this
reflection, that if they have suffered, the prejudice they sustaine does not arise
from enmity to them. A fatal necessity has rendered this catstrophe inevitable–the
landing the tea would have been fatal, as it would have saddled the colonies with a
duty imposed without their consent, and which no power on earth can effect. Their
strength and numbers, spirit and illumination, render the experiment dangerous, the
defeat certain: The Consignees must attribute to themselves the loss of the property
of the East India Company: had they seasonably quieted the minds of the people by a
resignation, all had been well; the customhouse, and the man who disgraces Majesty by
representing him, acting in confederacy with the inveterate enemies of America,
stupidly opposed every measure concerted to return the Teas.–That Americans may
defeat every attempt to enslave them, is the warmest wish of my heart. I shall return
home doubly fortified in my resolution to prevent that deprecrated calamity, the
landing the teas in Rhode Island, and console myself with the happiest assurance that
my brethren have not less virtue, less resolution, than their neighbours.

AN IMPARTIAL OBSERVER.

PUBLISHERS’ DEPARTMENT.

We give with this number of the Bay State a fac-simile reproduction, from a rare
copy in our possession, of “An Oration, pronounced at Hanover, New Hampshire, the
Fourth Day of July, 1800,” by Daniel Webster. This oration was delivered when the
future statesman was in his eighteenth year. It cannot fail to interest every reader
of the Magazine, and will be a treat to every collector of Americana.

Our Lowell article in the March number of The Bay State Monthly has been severely
criticized–especially the cuts. To the older residents of that city each picture was
of interest from association. We should have given credit to the excellent History of
Lowell, written by Charles Cowley, LL.D., and to the Year Book, published by the
Mail.

A System of Rhetoric is the title of a book by C.W. Bardeen, published in 1884 by
A.S. Barnes and Company, of New York.

The subject is divided into sentence-making, conversation, letter-writing, the
essay, oratory, and poetry. The book under consideration is an able and exhaustive
treatise and must become highly prized as a textbook.

A Brief History of Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern Peoples, with some account of
their monuments, institutions, arts; manners, and customs, is the title of a book of
six hundred pages, with two hundred and forty illustrations, issued by the same
publishers.

There is a large amount of information crowded within its covers, made available
by a thorough index.

ORNAMENTAL FIREPLACE. (Magee Fine-Art Castings.)⁴

The unique designs, massive beauty, and artistic grace of Magee’s fine-art
castings place them in competition with the finest work in brass and bronze. From the
antique suit of armor, platinum plated, to the light and graceful leaf, for holding
the quill and pencil, their designs include a great variety of ornamental articles:
tiles, shields, panels, sconces, brackets, plaques, arms, trays, fireplaces, and
jewelry-boxes.

Their reproduction of the strange and fantastic hand-made studies of Chinese and
Japanese artists would puzzle the Celestials, especially in the coloring and finish.
Professional critics are often deceived as to the materials employed, so fine a
finish will iron receive.

This class of work is in its infancy–its possibilities are very numerous.