The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 33, July, 1860

That he was a man of consideration in the Province, with large experience in its affairs, is shown by the character of the employments that were intrusted to him. He had been, for some years before the departure of Lord Baltimore on his visit to England, a conspicuous member of his Council. He had, for an equal length of time, held the post of Surveyor-General, an office of high responsibility and trust. But his chief employment was of a military nature, in which his discretion, courage, and conduct were in constant requisition. He had the chief command, with the title and commission of Deputy Governor, over the northern border of the Province, a region continually exposed to the inroads of the fierce and warlike tribe of the "Sasquesahannocks."

The country lying between the Susquehanna and the Delaware, that which now coincides with parts of Harford and Cecil Counties in Maryland and the upper portion of the State of Delaware, was known in those days as New Ireland, and was chiefly settled by emigrants from the old kingdom whose name it bore. This region was included within the range of Talbot's command, and was gradually increasing in population and in farms and houses scattered over a line of some seventy or eighty miles from east to west, and slowly encroaching upon the thick wilderness to the north, where surly savages lurked and watched the advance of the white man with jealous anger.

The tenants of this tract held their lands under the Proprietary grants, coupled with a condition, imposed as much by their own necessities as by the law, to render active service in the defence of the frontier as a local militia. They were accordingly organized on a military establishment, and kept in a state of continual preparation to repel the unwelcome visits of their hostile neighbors.

A dispute between Lord Baltimore and William Penn, founded upon the claim of the former to a portion of the territory bounding on the Delaware, had given occasion to border feuds, which had imposed upon our Proprietary the necessity of building and maintaining a fort on Christiana Creek, near the present city of Wilmington; and there were also some few block-houses or smaller fortified strongholds along the line of settlement towards the Susquehanna.

These forts were garrisoned by a small force of musketeers maintained by the government. The Province was also at the charge of a regiment of cavalry, of which Talbot was the Colonel, and parts of which were assigned to the defence of this frontier.

If we add to these a corps of rangers, who were specially employed in watching and arresting all trespassers upon the territory of the Province, it will complete our sketch of the military organization of the frontier over which Talbot had the chief command. The whole or any portion of this force could be assembled in a few hours to meet the emergencies of the time. Signals were established for the muster of the border. Beacon fires on the hills, the blowing of horns, and the despatch of runners were familiar to the tenants, and often called the ploughman away from the furrow to the appointed gathering-place. Three musket-shots fired in succession from a lonely cabin, at dead of night, awakened the sleeper in the next homestead; the three shots, repeated from house to house, across this silent waste of forest and field, carried the alarm onward; and before break of day a hundred stout yeomen, armed with cutlass and carbine, were on foot to check and punish the stealthy foray of the Sasquesahannock against the barred and bolted dwellings where mothers rocked their children to sleep, confident in the protection of this organized and effective system of defence.

In this region Talbot himself held a manor which was called New Connaught, and here he had his family mansion, and kept hospitality in rude woodland state, as a man of rank and command, with his retainers and friends gathered around him. This establishment was seated on Elk River, and was, doubtless, a fortified position. I picture to my mind a capacious dwelling-house built of logs from the surrounding forest; its ample hall furnished with implements of war, pikes, carbines, and basket-hilled swords, mingled with antlers of the buck, skins of wild animals, plumage of birds, and other trophies of the hunter's craft; the large fireplace surrounded with hardy woodsmen, and the tables furnished with venison, wild fowl, and fish, the common luxuries of the region, in that prodigal profusion to which our forefathers were accustomed, and which their descendants still regard as the essential condition of hearty and honest housekeeping. This mansion I fancy surrounded by a spacious picketed rampart, presenting its bristling points to the four quarters of the compass, and accessible only through a gateway of ponderous timber studded thick with nails: the whole offering defiance to the grim savage who might chance to prowl within the frown of its midnight shadow.

Here Talbot spent the greater portion of the year with his wife and children. Here he had his yacht or shallop on the river, and often skimmed this beautiful expanse of water in pursuit of its abundant game,–those hawks of which tradition preserves the memory his companions and auxiliaries in this pastime. Here, too, he had his hounds and other hunting-dogs to beat up the game for which the banks of Elk River are yet famous.

This sylvan lodge was cheered and refined by the presence of his wife and children, whose daily household occupations were assisted by numerous servants chosen from the warm-hearted people who had left their own Green Isle to find a home in this wilderness.

Amidst such scenes and the duties of her station we may suppose that Mrs. Talbot, a lady who could not but have relinquished many comforts in her native land for this rude life of the forest, found sufficient resource to quell the regrets of many fond memories of the home and friends she had left behind, and to reconcile her to the fortunes of her husband, to whom, as we shall see, she was devoted with an ardor that no hardship or danger could abate.

Being the dispenser of her husband's hospitality,–the bread-giver, in the old Saxon phrase,–the frequent companion of his pastime, and the bountiful friend, not only of the families whose cottages threw up their smoke within view of her dwelling, but of all who came and went on the occasions of business or pleasure in the common intercourse of the frontier, we may conceive the sentiment of respect and attachment she inspired in this insulated district, and the service she was thus enabled to command.

This is but a fancy picture, it is true, of the home of Talbot, which, for want of authentic elements of description, I am forced to draw. It is suggested by the few scattered glimpses we get in the records of his position and circumstances, and may, I think, be received at least as near the truth in its general aspect and characteristic features.

He was undoubtedly a bold, enterprising man,–impetuous, passionate, and harsh, as the incidents of his story show. He was, most probably, a soldier trained to the profession, and may have served abroad, as nearly all gentlemen of that period were accustomed to do. That he was an ardent and uncompromising partisan of the Proprietary in the dissensions of the Province seems to be evident. I suppose him, also, to have been warm-hearted, proud in spirit, and hasty in temper,–a man to be loved or hated by friend or foe with equal intensity. It is material to add to this sketch of him, that he was a Roman Catholic,–as we have record proof that all the Deputy Governors named in the recent commission were, I believe, without exception,–and that he was doubtless imbued with the dislike and indignation which naturally fired the gentlemen of his faith against those who were supposed to be plotting the overthrow of the Proprietary government, by exciting religious prejudice against the Baltimore family.

[To be continued.]

HUNTING A PASS

A SKETCH OF TROPICAL ADVENTURE

[Continued.]

CHAPTER II

On the 18th of April, having collected such information bearing on our purposes as it was possible to obtain, we left La Union, and fairly commenced the business of "Hunting a Pass." To reach the valley of the Goascoran, on the extent and character of which so much depended, it was necessary to go round the head of the Bay of La Union. For several miles our route coincided with that of the camino real to San Miguel, and we rode along it gayly, in high and hopeful spirits. The morning was clear and bright, the air cool and exhilarating, and the very sense of existence was itself a luxury. At the end of four miles we struck off from the high road, at right angles, into a narrow path, which conducted us over low grounds, three miles farther, to the Rio Sirama, a small stream, scarcely twenty feet across, the name of which is often erroneously changed in the maps for that of Goascoran or Rio San Miguel. Beyond this stream the path runs over low hills, which, however, subside into plains near the bay, where the low grounds are covered with water at high tide. The natives avail themselves of this circumstance, as did the Indians before them, for the manufacture of salt. They inclose considerable areas with little dikes of mud, leaving openings for the entrance of the water, which are closed as the tide falls. The water thus retained is rapidly evaporated under a tropical sun, leaving the mud crusted over with salt. This is then scraped up, dissolved in water, and strained to separate the impurities, and the saturated brine reduced in earthen pots, set in long ranges of stone and clay. The pots are constantly replenished, until they are filled with a solid mass of salt; they are then removed bodily, packed in dry plantain-leaves, and sent to market on the backs of mules. Sometimes the pots are broken off, to lighten the load, and great piles of their fragments–miniature Monti testacci--are seen around the Salinas, as these works are called, where they will remain long after this rude system of salt-manufacture shall be supplanted by a better, as a puzzle for fledgling antiquaries.

Six miles beyond the Rio Sirama we came to another stream, called the Siramita or Little Sirama, for the reason, probably, as H. suggested, that it is four times as large as the Sirama. It flows through a bed twenty feet deep and upwards of two hundred feet wide, paved with water-worn stones, ragged with frayed fragments of trees, and affording abundant evidence that during the season of rains it is a rough and powerful torrent. Between this stream and the Goascoran there is a maze of barren hills, relieved by occasional level reaches, covered with acacias and deciduous trees. Through these the road winds in easy gradients, and there are numerous passes perfectly feasible for a railway, in case it should ever be deemed advisable to carry one around the head of the bay to La Union.

The traveller emerges suddenly from among these hills into the valley of the Goascoran, and finds the river a broad and gentle stream flowing at his feet. At the time of our passage, the water at the ford was nowhere more than two feet deep, with gravelly bottom and high and firm banks, without traces of overflow. We had now passed the threshold of the unknown region on which we were venturing, and although we had a moral conviction that the valley before us afforded the requisite facilities for the enterprise which we had in hand, yet it was not without a deep feeling of satisfaction, almost of exultation, that, on riding to the summit of a bare knoll close by, we traced the course of the river, in a graceful curve, along the foot of the green hills on our left, and saw that it soon resumed its general direction north and south, on the precise line most favorable for our purposes. In the distance, rising alone in the very centre of the valley, we discerned the castellated Rock of Goascoran, behind which, we were told, nestled the village of Goascoran, where we intended passing the night. We had taken its bearings from the top of Conchagua, and were glad to find that the intervening country was level and open, chiefly savanna, or covered with scattered trees. There was no need of instrumentation here, and so, ordering Dolores to bring up the baggage as rapidly as possible, we struck across the plain in a right line, in total disregard of roads or pathways, for the Rock of Goascoran. A smart gallop of two hours brought us to its foot, and in a few minutes after we entered the village, and rode straight to the Cabildo, or House of the Municipality, tied our mules to the columns of the corridor, pushed open the door, and made ourselves at home.

And here I may mention that the Cabildo, throughout Honduras, is the stranger's refuge. Its door is never locked, and every traveller, high or low, rich or poor, has a right to enter it unquestioned, and "make it his hotel" for the time being. Its accommodations, it is true, are seldom extensive and never sumptuous. They rarely consist of more than one or two hide-covered chairs, a rickety table, and two or three long benches placed against the wall, with a tinaja or jar for water in the corner, and possibly a clay oven or rude contrivance for cooking under the back corridor. In all the more important villages, which enjoy the luxury of a local court, the end of the Cabildo is usually fenced off with wooden bars, as a prison. Occasionally the traveller finds it occupied by some poor devil of a prisoner, with his feet confined in stocks, to prevent his digging a hole through the mud walls or kicking down his prison-bars, who exhibits his ribs to prove that he is "muy flaco," (very thin,) and solicits, in the name of the Virgin and all the Santos, "algo para comer" (something to eat).

In most of the cabildos there is suspended a rude drum, made by drawing a raw hide over the end of a section of a hollow tree, which is primarily used to call together the municipal wisdom of the place, whenever occasion requires, and secondarily by the traveller, who beats on it as a signal to the alguazils, whose duty it is to repair at once to the Cabildo and supply the stranger with what he requires, if obtainable in the town, at the rates there current. Not an unwise, nor yet an unnecessary regulation this, in a country where nobody thinks of producing more than is just necessary for his wants, and, having no need of money, one does not care to sell, lest his scanty store should run short, and he be compelled to go to work or purchase from his neighbors.

The people of Goascoran stared at us as we rode through their streets, but none came near us until after we had vigorously pounded the magical drum, when the alguazils made their appearance, followed by all the urchins of the place, and by a crowd of lean and hungry curs,–the latter evidently in watery- mouthed anticipation of obtaining from the strangers, what they seldom got at home, a stray crust or a marrow-bone. We informed our alguazils that we had mules coming, and wanted sacate for them. To which they responded,–

"No hay." (There is none.)

"Then let us have some maize."

"Tampoco."

"What! no maize? What do you make your tortillas of?"

"We have no tortillas."

"How, then, do you live?"

"We don't live."

"But we must have something for our animals; they can't be allowed to starve."

To which our alguazil made no reply, but looked at us vacantly.

"Do you hear? we must have some sacate or some maize for the animals."

Still no reply,–only the same vacuous look,–now more stolid, if possible, than before.

I had observed that the Teniente's wrath was rising, and that an explosion was imminent. But I must confess that I was not a little startled, when, drawing his bowie-knife from his belt, he strode slowly up to our impassible friend, and, firmly grasping his right ear, applied the cold edge of the steel close to his head. The supplementary alguazil and the rabble of children took to their heels in affright, followed by the dogs, who seemed to sympathize in their alarm. But, beyond a slight wincing downwards, and a partial contraction of his eyes and lips, the object of the Teniente's wrath made no movement, nor uttered a word of expostulation. He evidently expected to lose his ears, and probably was surprised at nothing except the pause in the operation. My own apprehensions were only for an instant; but, had they been more serious than they were, they must have given way before the extreme ludicrousness of the group. I burst into a roar of laughter, in which the Teniente could not resist joining, but which seemed to be incomprehensible to the alguazil, whose face assumed an expression which I can only describe as that of astonished inanity. I don't think he is quite certain, to this day, that the incident was not altogether an ugly dream. At any rate, he lost no time in obeying my order to go straight to the first alcalde of the village, and tell him that he was wanted at the Cabildo.

Reassured by seeing the alguazil come out alive, the muchachos returned, greatly reinforced, edging up to the open door timidly, ready to retreat on our slightest movement. We had not long to wait for the first alcalde, of whose approach we were warned by a sudden scramble of curs and children, who made a broad lane for his passage. Evidently, our alcalde was a man of might in Goascoran, and he established an immediate hold on our hearts by stopping on the corridor and clearing it of its promiscuous occupants by liberal applications of his official cane. He was a man of fifty, burly in person, and wore his shirt outside of his trousers, but, altogether, carried himself with an air of authority. He was prompt in speech, and, although evidently much surprised to find a party of foreigners in the Cabildo, rapidly followed up his salutation by putting himself and the town and all the people in it "at the disposition of our Worships."

I explained to him how it was that he had been sent for, placing due emphasis on the stupidity of the alguazil. He heard me without interruption, keeping, however, one eye on the alguazil, and handling his cane nervously. By the time I had finished, the cane fairly quivered; and the delinquent himself, who had scarcely flinched under the Teniente's knife, was now uneasily stealing away towards the door. Our alcalde saw the movement, and, with a hurried bow, and "Con permiso, Caballeros" (With your permission, gentlemen,) started after the fugitive, who was saluted with "Que bestia!" (What a beast!) and a staggering blow over his shoulders. He hurried his pace, but the alcalde's cane followed close, and with vigorous application, half-way across the plaza. And when the alcalde returned, out of breath, but full of apologies, he received a welcome such as could be inspired only by a profound faith in his ability and willingness to secure for us not merely sacate and maize, but everything else that we might desire. We told him that he was a model officer and a man after our own hearts, all of which he listened to with dignified modesty, wiping the perspiration from his face, meanwhile, with–well, with the tail of his shirt!

The alcalde was very hard on his constituency, and, from all that we could gather, he seemed to regard them collectively as "bestias," and "hombres sin vergüenza" (men without shame). We concurred with him, and regretted that he had not a wider and more elevated official sphere, and gave him, withal, a trago of brandy, which he seemed greatly to relish, and then again approached the subject of sacate for our mules. To our astonishment, the alcalde suddenly grew grave, and interrupted me with–

"Pero, no hay, Señor." (But there is none, Sir.)

"Well, maize will answer."

"Tampoco."

"What! no maize? What do you make your tortillas of?"

"We have no tortillas."

"How, then, do you live?"

"We don't live."

A general shout of laughter greeted this last reply, in which, after a moment of puzzled hesitation, the alcalde himself joined.

"So, you don't live?"

"Absolutely, no!"

"But you eat?"

"Very little. We are very poor."

"Well, what do you eat?"

"Cheese, frijoles, and an egg now and then."

"But, no tortillas?"

"No. We planted the last kernel of maize two days ago." And so it was. The little stock of dried grass and maize-stalks stored up from the present rainy season had long ago been consumed, and the maize itself, which is here the real staff of life, had run short,–and that, too, in a country where three crops a year might easily be produced by a very moderate expenditure of labor in the way of tillage and irrigation.

Fortunately for our poor animals, Dolores had provided against contingencies like this, and taken in a supply of maize at La Union. As for ourselves, what with a few eggs and frijoles, furnished by the alcalde, in addition to the stock of edibles, pickled oysters and other luxuries, prepared for us by Doña Maria, we contrived to fare right sumptuously in Goascoran. We afterwards found out, experimentally, what it was not to live, in the sense intended to be conveyed by the unfortunate alguazil and the impetuous alcalde, and which H. declared logically meant to be without tortillas--But we could never make out why the alcalde should call the alguazil "a beast," and beat him over his shoulders with a cane, withal.

Goascoran is a small town, of about four hundred inhabitants, and boasts a tolerably genteel church and a comfortable cabildo. It is situated on the left bank of the river to which it gives its name, and which here still maintains its character of a broad and beautiful stream. On the opposite side from the town rises a high, picturesque bluff, at the foot of which the river gathers its waters in deep, dark pools with mirror-like surfaces, disturbed only by the splash of fishes springing at their prey, or by the sudden dash of water- fowls settling from their arrowy flight in a little cloud of spray.

I have alluded to the castellated Rock of Goascoran, which, however, is only a type of the general features of the surrounding country. The prevailing rock is sandstone, and it is broken up in fantastic peaks, or great cubical blocks with flat tops and vertical walls, resembling the mesas of New Mexico. At night, their dark masses, rising on every hand, might be mistaken for frowning fortresses or massive strongholds of the Middle Ages. They seem to mark the line where the volcanic forces which raised the high islands in the Bay of Fonseca had their first conflict with the sedimentary and primitive rocks of the interior. The river is full of boulders of quartz and granite reddened by fire, resembling jasper, and alternating with worn blocks of lava,–further evidences of volcanic action. Altogether, the country, in its natural aspects, reminds the traveller of the district lying between Pompeii and Sorrento, in Italy, and probably owes its essential features to the same causes.

From Goascoran to Aramacina, a distance of twelve miles, the road traverses a slightly broken country, while the river pursues its course, as before, through a picturesque valley, narrowed in places by outlying mesas, but still regular, and throughout perfectly feasible for a railway. Aramacina itself is prettily situated, in a bend of one of the tributaries of the Goascoran, the Rio Aramacina, and numbers perhaps three hundred inhabitants. Immediately in front rises a broad sandstone table or mesa, at the foot of which there are some trickling springs of salt water, much frequented by cattle, and corresponding to the saltlicks of our Western States.

Behind the town is a high spur of the mountain range of Lepaterique, covered with pines, and veined with silver-bearing quartz. We visited the abandoned mines of Marqueliso and Potosí, but the shafts were filled with water, and only faint traces remained of the ancient establishments. Extravagant traditions are current of the wealth of these mines, and of the amounts of treasure which were taken from them in the days of the Viceroys. A few specimens of the refuse ore, which we picked up at the mouth of the principal shaft, proved, on analysis, to be exceedingly rich, and gave some color to the local traditions.