Here, certainly, was pretty strong confirmation; and yet on this very evening, my wife, who sat where she could see all the changes of his countenance while I was writing the memoir and occasionally asking a question without looking up, saw enough to satisfy her that Bratish was making a fool of her husband, and, the moment his back was turned, expressed her astonishment that a man of sense—meaning me—could be so easily imposed upon. So much for the instinct of a woman; but more of this hereafter.

Not long after this, the General rushed into my office in a paroxysm of rage,—the only time I ever saw him disturbed. His honor had been questioned, and by whom, of all the world? Why,—would I believe it?—by his friend, Colonel Bouchette! Upon further inquiry, I found that he had received a draft from his sister, which had to pass through a secret channel to him, lest their estates should be confiscated in Hungary; that, after two or three disappointments, he had succeeded in getting it cashed here without endangering a certain friend in New York; that on mentioning the circumstance to Colonel Bouchette, who had counselled him not to attempt the negotiation here, that gentleman had laughed in his face; whereupon the General turned his back on him, and hurried off to my office. A friend was with me at the time. "Ach, mein Freund!" said the General, as he finished the story, "he doubted my word, he questioned my honor, he asked to see the money; but I refused to show him the money,—I was indignant, outraged; but I have it here,—here!" slapping his breast-pocket, "and I am ready to show it to you." I declined; he persisted; until at last, afraid of the impression he might make upon my friend Winslow, who was present, I consented. But he only talked the louder and the faster, without producing the money; and when I grew serious, and insisted on seeing it, he acknowledged that he hadn't it with him!

"Where is it, sir?" said I.

"At my lodgings."

"And how long will it take you to produce it?"

"Ten minutes."

"Very well,"—taking out my watch,—"I will wait fifteen, and my friend here will stay with me, and be a witness."

Away went the General, and, to my amazement, I must acknowledge, within the fifteen minutes he returned, bringing with him a cigar-box containing about five hundred dollars in bills and specie, which I counted.

Here was a narrow escape,—a matter of life or death to him, certainly, if not to me. But where had he got the money? He was very poor, judging by appearances. The lecturing was over for a time, and there was no field for conjecture. To this hour the whole affair is a mystery. Unlikely as it was that he should have obtained it from his sister, there seemed to be no other explanation possible.

Other perplexing and contradictory evidence for and against the General began to appear. I never saw him on horseback but once, and then I was frightened for him. As a general, he ought, of course, to know how to ride. As a native Hungarian, he must have been born to the saddle, if not in it. Nevertheless, I trembled for him, though the creature he had mounted was far from being either vicious or spirited; and then, too, when he tried waltzing, he reminded me, and others I am afraid, of "the man a-mowing."

On the other hand, he was well-bred and self-possessed, full of accurate information, and never obtrusive. And here I am reminded of another singular circumstance, which went far in confirmation of the story he told. He gave J. S. Buckingham, Esq., M. P., whom I had known in London as the Oriental traveller, a letter to me, in which he speaks of him as a member of the British-Polish Committee in London,—thereby endangering the whole superstructure he had been rearing with so much care. Mr. Buckingham wrote me from New York, but failed to see me.

Worn out and wellnigh discouraged by these persecutions, the General now left us, and went to New York, from which place he wrote me, under date of October 9, 1840, as follows. I give his own orthography, to show that, although acquainted with our language to such a degree that he was able to lecture in it, as Kossuth did, and to speak it with uncommon readiness, he must have learnt it by ear, like many others with which he was familiar enough for ordinary purposes.

"One of my last occupation upon American soil is one of a painful, and at the same times pleasant nature, to wit, to address you, my noble, my chivalerouse, my excellent friend. My God revard you and may he for the benefit of mankind scater many such persons trought the world—it would prevent misantropy and it would serve as the best antidote against crimes and deceptions, persecutions and sufferings. O could you know all what I suffered in my eventful life, you would indead belive that no romance is equal to reality. But—basta—God is great and merciful, and I never yit and I hope never will find occassion to doubt the wundaful ways of his mercy.... Perhaps no times since I cam to America, I had occassion for more patience than during the first days of my arrival in N. Y. Harshed by law, cut by some friends, findig once more by European new a change in Greece, with my funds low, I began indeed to feel bitterly my sad fate—when by one of this suden fricks which I offen prouve that man must never despair all changed quit casualy it was raported to the German Association that I am her—immediately I was invited to ther mittings, the French Lafayette Club followed suit, and yesterday evning your humble servant was by acclamation apointed Vice-President of the General Union of all the forign assotiations of the city of New York (the German Tepcanoe Club 30 pers. excepted)....

"I am very sorry that I cannot tell you where I go—I sail in the cliper armed brig Fairfield for the West India unter very avantageouse circumstances a eccelent pay rang and emoluments you may guess the rest be assured it is a honorable a very honorable employment. My next for the South wia Havanna or New York or New Orleans will inform you of the rest."

Accompanying this letter was a slip from one of the large New York dailies confirming his story, and reporting the resolutions passed at a great public meeting, of which A. Sarony was President and Chairman, John Bratish, Vice-President, and George Sonne, Secretary. "The call of the meeting was read and adopted," says the report, "when General Bratish addressed the assemblage in the English, French, and German languages, in the most patriotic and eloquent manner. His speech was received with enthusiastic and repeated applause."

And here for a long season we lost sight of the General, though two or three circumstances occurred, each trivial in itself, but all tending to give a new aspect to the affair, just before he left us, we had a small party at our house, where, among other amusements, a game called "The Four Elements" was introduced. When it was all over, and our visitors were gone, a costly handkerchief, with a lace border, was not to be found. It had been last seen in the hands of General Bratish. Having no idea that, if he had pocketed it by mistake, it would not be returned, we waited patiently,—very patiently,—supposing he might have thrown aside his company dress-coat without examining the pockets, and that when he put it on again the handkerchief would be forthcoming, of course. But no,—nothing was heard of it, until one evening at a lecture my wife suddenly caught my arm, and, pointing to a white handkerchief the General was flourishing within reach, said, "There's Aunt Mary's handkerchief, now!"—"Nonsense, my dear!"—"It is, I tell you; I can see where he has ripped off the lace." I thought her beside herself; but still—why the sudden substitution of a large red Spitalfields for the white handkerchief? "Perhaps," said I to my wife,—"perhaps the handkerchief was not marked, and he did not know where to find the owner."—"But it was marked, and he knows the owner as well as you do," was the reply. Of course, I had nothing more to say; and so I laughed the exhibition off, as a sort of pas de mouchoir, like that which brought Forrest into a controversy with Macready.

And then something else happened. I missed the only copy I had in the world of "Niagara and Goldau," which he had borrowed of me and returned, with emphasis; and many months after he had disappeared, I received a volume of poems from the heart of Germany, entitled, "Der Heimathgruss, Eine Pfingstgabe von Mathilde von Tabouillot, geborene Giester," published at Wesel, 1840, with a letter from the lady herself, thanking me with great warmth and earnestness for my pamphlet in defence of General Bratish. Putting that and that together, I began to have a suspicion that my copy of "Niagara and Goldau" had been presented to the authoress by my friend, the General,—perhaps in the name of the author.

Yet more. While these little incidents were accumulating and seething and simmering, I received a letter from Louis Bratish, in beautiful French, dated Birmingham, 7th October, 1841, in which he thanked me most heartily for what I had done as the friend of his brother, "John Bratish,"—withholding the "General,"—and begging me to consider it as coming from the family; and about the same time, another letter, and the last I ever received, from the General himself. It was dated "Torrington House, near London, 12th October, 1841," and contained the following passages:—

"I cannot account for the very extraordinary silence in speite of all my request that you would at leas be so kind as to inform me if you realy don't wish to hear more from me. I know your Hart too well not to be persuaded that it must be some mistake or some intrigue.

"At last my family begin to understand how much they did wrong me and I have the pleasure to enclose you a letter of my yungest brother, which is now at the house of Messrs. Toniola brothers, a volunteer partner, to learn the english....

"Mr. Josua Dodge, late Special Agent of the U. S. in Germany, is returning in one or two days to America; this gentleman in consequence of his mission crossed and recrossed all Germany and Belgium. I met him in Germany; he was present at Stuttgard in a most critical moment, when, denunced by the Germanic Federation (in the name of Austria) I was in iminent peril. He acted as a true American, boldly stepped forward, asked the way and the werfore and united with my firmness, the American passports where respected, and Mr. Dodge succeded to get an official acknowledgment that nothing was known against my moral character, and they took refuge upon some little irregularity in the passport.... He, my friends and my family wished very much that I should at lease for some times rethurn to America (pour reson bien juste) but the recollection is too bitter yet.... Several Americans are now visiting my sister and her husband in Belgium—among them Mr. Bishop of Cont. and Mr. Rowly, C. S. of N. Y.—What would I give to see J. N and his amable family!...

"My address is Monsieur Le General Bratish (Eliovich), raccommande a Mons. Latard, Vervois Belgique.

"P. S. Great excitement at London. The Morning Chronicle is out upon me for having done I don't know what in North America and Germany. All fidle-stik. I send you the paper to see how eassy John Bull is gulled. I could send you some important news. Attention!!! keep your powder dray!"

Nothing more was heard of our mysterious General until a letter fell into my hands, purporting to be written by his brother Luigi. It was in choice Italian, and dated Birmingham, 16th April, 1842, charging the "Caro Fratello" with having deceived him about Mr. Everett, complaining of his behavior to Dr. Sleigh and others who had befriended him; telling him that Dr. Sleigh, to whom he referred, doubted his Spanish commission, and believed him to have been a member of the "Hunter's Association,"—a band of horse-thieves in Canada,—and signifying, in language not to be misunderstood, that the family had given up all hope of him.

The next information we had was that the General had turned up at Havre, and was about being married to the daughter of a wealthy banker, and carried a commission as Major-General from the Governor of Maine! And then, after a lapse of two years, that he had been travelling with a British nobleman, whose baggage he had run away with,—that he was arrested for the offence, and tried in Malta, I do not know with what result; but I have now before me a supplement of the Malta Times of October 9, 1844, in Italian, Spanish, and English, wherein he refers to the testimonials of my friend, Albert Smith, Ex-M. C, and Levi Cutter, Mayor of Portland; complains bitterly of the late Mr. Carr, Minister of the United States at Constantinople; and says, among other things, what of itself were enough to show that he had claimed to be a General of the State of Maine, and thereby settling the question most conclusively and forever. His language is: "To one charge of Mr. Everett, I plead guilty; to wit, to have usurped, or succeeded to gain the good opinion of respectable people in the United States, and here I am glad, at the same time, to put Mr. Everett's mind at rest; he thinks it possible that I may be a General of the State of Maine, but he admits only the possibility, and expresses the hope that it may not be so,—this, after the pretension to know my birthplace, life, death, and miracles, and an assertion on his part to have had, or seen, a correspondence with the Executive of Maine, in my regard, is very diplomatic—very!—but his Excellency may be easy on this head. I do not share now the military glory and honor of fellowship with that very numerous body of generals of the United States Militia; and if evidence may be produced that I was attended by a staff, I assure his Excellency, that it was only to have my boots cleaned by a captain, to be shaved by a major, to be helped by a colonel, and to get my meals at the private personal head-quarters of a Gineral at one dollar per day."

And here I stop. From that day to this, nothing has been heard of General Bratish; but I should not be surprised to have him reappear, as if he had risen from the dead, in some new character, and so managing as to deceive the very elect. No such pretender has appeared since Cagliostro; and nobody ever succeeded so well in misleading public opinion, and embroiling so many persons of consideration, both in this country and in Europe, not excepting the Chevalier d'Eon, and the Princess Cariboo. Many other strange things might be related of Bratish, as, for example, his great speech in the Hungarian Diet, reported in the Allgemeine Zeitung,—the most impudent forgery of our day. But this paper is already longer than I intended; and I have only to add, that I have reason to believe now that he was indeed a native of Trieste, and that Colonel Stille and Mr. McIlvaine were right in saying what they did of him generally, though wrong in many of the particulars upon which they chiefly relied.



A TOUR IN THE DARK.

One February evening, more than a year ago, after a drive of fourteen miles over a lonely Kentucky road, I drew rein in front of a huge, rambling wooden building, standing solitary in the midst of the forest.

There was no village in sight to account for the presence of so large a structure, no adjacent farms, and, except a little patch in front of the house, no fields,—nothing but the solemn woods which nearly shut it in on every side.

I did not ask if this was the Mammoth Cave Hotel. I knew it without asking.

Here I was, then, at last,—about to see what I had desired to see ever since I was a boy!

But delay frequently comes with the certainty of accomplishing any long-cherished desire; and though I had driven with a hasty whip from the railway station fourteen miles away, and though the hotel proprietor offered to procure me a guide that evening, my haste to see the cave was unaccountably over. I ordered a fire in my room, and concluded to wait until morning.

It was too early in the season for the usual summer visitors, and I found myself the sole guest in this big, lonesome caravansary, that looked as though a dozen old-fashioned Dutch farm-houses had been placed in the midst of a wood-lot, and then connected by the roofs, the whole forming one straggling, weather-stained, labyrinthine building, full of little nests of rooms, high-pitched gables, cumbrous outside chimney-stacks, cavernous fireplaces, and low, wide corridors open at either end, where were uncertain shadows, and draughts of damp air that whispered and moaned all night long.

In the evening, as I sat before the blazing pile of logs in the fireplace, some one knocked at my door, and a negro servant looked in. Would I like to see the guide?

"Certainly. What is his name?"

"Nicholas, sah, Nicholas! But we all calls him Ole Nick."

Rather an ominous name, to be sure! but then, if one goes to the regions below, what guide so appropriate?

On presentation, his Majesty proved to be an interesting black man, considerably past middle age; wrinkled, as none but a genuine negro ever becomes; a short, broad, strong man, with a grizzled beard and mustache, quiet but steady eyes, grave in his demeanor, and concise in his conversation. He tells me of two routes by which I can make a tour through his dominions. The shortest one will require six hours to travel, and at the farthest will take me to the banks of the river Styx, six miles from the entrance to the cave. The other route will take the whole day, and will lead as far as the so-called "Maelstroem,"—a singular pit, a hundred and seventy-five feet deep,—and place nine miles of gloom between me and this outer world. And with these facts to be juggled and distorted in ridiculous combinations with remembrances of many persons and places in the vagaries of dreams, I went to bed and to sleep.

As the sun came up, we went down,—my guide and I,—down a rocky path along the side of a ravine that grew narrower and deeper until we came to a dilapidated house where the ravine seemed to end. Stepping upon the rotting piazza of this old house and facing "right about," there opened before us, as broad and lofty as the entrance to some ancient Egyptian temple, the mouth of the cave. From where we stood, a path, as wide as an ordinary city sidewalk and as smooth, sloped gently downward through the portal.

Turning to the right to avoid the drip of a limpid stream,—that falls over the entrance like a perpetual libation to Pluto,—a few minutes' walk places us many hundred feet vertically beneath the surface, and in the "Rotunda," an enlargement of the cave, which looks about as large as the interior of Trinity Church, but is in reality larger; being quite as lofty, and measuring at its greatest diameter a hundred and seventy-five feet.

Here, as we paused to look, with our flaring lamps poised above our heads, a strange squeaking noise was heard, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular. I glanced inquiringly at my guide, in answer to which he simply replied, "Bats," and pointed to the walls, where, on closer inspection, I found these creatures clinging by thousands, literally blackening the wall, and hanging in festoons a foot or two in length. The manner of forming these festoons was curious enough: three or four bats having first taken hold of some sharp projecting ledge with their hindmost claws, and hanging thereby with their heads downward, others had seized their leathery wings at the second joint, and they too, hanging with downward heads, had offered their wings as holding-places for still others; and so the unsightly pendent mass had grown, until in some instances it contained as many as twenty or thirty bats. The wonder seemed that four or five pairs of little claws not so large as those of a mouse could sustain a weight that must have been in some instances as much as three pounds.

The mysterious influence of the approaching spring had penetrated even into these abodes of darkness, and aroused in the bats a little life after their long hibernation; and their weak, plaintive squeak, which had something impish in it withal, came from every shadowy recess, and from the dark vault overhead. This "Rotunda" should have been called the "Bower of Bats."

As they all hung too high to reach by other means, I flung my stick at random upward against the wall, and brought down two of the black masses, that writhed helpless upon the stony floor of the cave. Poor, palpitating things, unable to loose their clutch upon each other's wings, it was hard to say whether they were more disgusting or pitiful. What Eshcol clusters these, to bear back from this Canaan of darkness, saying, "This is the fruit of it!"

Such an immense number of bats had harbored and died here from time immemorial, that more than a hundred acres of the earthy floor of the cave had, from their decomposing remains, become impregnated with nitre; and during the years 1812 to 1814, a party of saltpetre-makers took up their residence here. They made great vats in the cave, in which they lixiviated the impregnated earth, and by wooden pipes conveyed it to a place where they boiled the water drawn from the vats. Their rude mechanical contrivances are standing yet, in the same positions in which they were left so long ago; and so dry and pure is the air of the cave, that, though more than half a century has passed, these wooden pipes and vats show no more indication of decay than they did when first put in. In one place my guide dug up from the clayey floor—where it was their custom to feed the oxen employed in drawing the materials to and fro—some corn-cobs, very dry and light, but as perfect as though they were only a few months old.

The footprints of the oxen, made in the earth that was then moist, are plainly visible in many places; and the clay has since become almost as hard as stone, so that I found it difficult to make any impression in it with the point of my pocket-knife.

A few minutes' walk brought us in front of the "Giant's Coffin," an enormous rock forty feet in length, which has fallen from the ceiling. The resemblance to a coffin is so strangely exact, that, having heard mention of it before coming in, I recognized it at the first glance. The upper part of the rock is composed of a stratum whiter than the rest, and gives it the appearance of having a border of white ornamentation around it, just below the lid. It rests upon a gigantic bier about ten feet high, and a little longer than the coffin, and the effect is as though some kingly son of Anak were lying in state in this huge sepulchral vault.

Near at hand is a cluster of objects, not carved out by the accidents of time or the long attrition of subterranean rivers, as is the case with almost everything else in the cave, but shaped by human hands into a mournful resemblance to cottages; the likeness being all the more pathetic when one learns the fact that for many months a number of benighted human beings made their home here, under the delusion that the air of the cave, which is chemically pure and dry, would cure their pulmonary diseases; and that here, like plants shut out from the generous, fostering sun, they paled and died.

The appearance of those who came out after two or three months' residence in the cave is described as frightful. "Their faces," says one who saw them, "were entirely bloodless, eyes sunken, and pupils dilated to such a degree that the iris ceased to be visible; so that, no matter what the original color of the eye might have been, it appeared entirely black."

These cottages, if by a great stretch of courtesy I may call them such, are very small, consisting each of but one room about ten feet square; they had been built of stones collected in the cave, and laid loosely in the wall without mortar; they had fireplaces and chimneys, good wooden floors, and doors, but no windows, as there was neither light to let in nor prospect to view without. As there was neither rain nor snow fall, neither midday heat nor dew of night, beneath that stony cope, roofs also were useless; so that the structures were only cells that strongly reminded one of sepulchres. I can conceive of nothing more melancholy than the existence of the seven or eight consumptives, who I am told occupied these ante mortem tombs at one time about fifteen years ago. Three died there, and every one of the others who had resided in the cave for a period of two months died within two or three weeks after coming out.

Near to these monuments of ignorance and despair, I noticed a monument of another sort, and of later date,—a tribute to one of the most gallant and genial of men, in whom it was fully demonstrated that "the bravest are the tenderest." It was a pyramidal pile, about eight feet high, of carefully selected stones, laid without mortar, but with mathematical precision; and on one stone near the top was scratched a name dear to every soldier's heart,—"McPherson."

The cells where the living died, and this pile which tells how the memory of the dead yet lives, are the last objects on our route that have any association with the things of this outer world; these are the pillars that mark the beginning of a realm devoid of human association,—its Pillars of Hercules, beyond which is a silent waste whose darkness breeds the wildest mysteries.

Walking continuously through the gloom, one loses to some extent the idea of progression. Here he can get no look ahead, no backward view. He is the centre of a little circle of light, beyond which is immeasurable darkness, whence objects seem to come to him like apparitions, changing form as the first and last rays of light fall upon them, as though the shape in which they appear under the full light of the lamp were only some disguise of assumed innocence, which they cast off as they glide silently into the dark again, to take on some semblance too awful for mortal eyes. Farther and farther we went along these arched, crypt-like ways; passing frequently through lofty chambers where the roof could not be discovered, each with some fanciful and often inappropriate name assigned to it, until we came at length to what looked like a window in the side wall of the cave. Peering through this, and holding my lamp high over my head, I could see neither roof nor sides nor bottom,—only the wall in which was the window through which I looked. Upward it was lost in the darkness, and from my breast it descended, perpendicular as a plummet line, until it vanished in the gulf below, from which arose a sound of dripping water. This, my guide informed me, was "Gorin's Dome." Taking then from his haversack a Bengal light, he ignited it and threw it into the dark void. The sulphurous light shot up and up into a dome unlike anything built by human hands, unless it might be the interior of some tremendous tower, eighty feet in width, and nearly two hundred in height, which the beholder viewed from without, looking inwards through a window placed at two thirds of the entire height from the bottom.

The inaccessible floor of this place is nearly level, and the walls strictly perpendicular from base to summit; the whole cavern having been hollowed out by the constant dripping of water holding carbonic acid in solution, which cuts the rock as ordinary water channels the ice of a glacier or the mural face of an iceberg into a semblance of columns, and sometimes into the folds of an immense curtain.

The brief light fell upon the distant floor; flashed up once, bringing into strong relief every salient angle in the wonderful walls, and then died out; the awful prospect vanishing like a nightmare vision, and leaving nothing to the sense but the sound of the water dripping into the depths below. The light had burned only half a minute; but so strange was the scene, that this glimpse sufficed to photograph it indelibly in my memory.

Gorin's Dome is not the largest of this class of sub-cavities in the cave, being smaller than Mammoth Dome; but it is the first of its class that the tourist sees, and it is viewed from so singular a stand-point that it makes the most startling impression.

Five minutes' farther walk brought us to a wooden footbridge,—a narrow, shaky contrivance, with a treacherous footing and a slender hand-rail. Here the bottom of the cave seemed to have dropped out, and the roof to have gone in search of it; and but for the dim glimpse of the rock on the other side one might have suspected that this bridge would launch him into that ungeographical locality called, in the old Norse mythology, "Ginnunga Gap,"—a place where there was neither side, edge, nor bottom to anything.

The vault overhead is called "Minerva's Dome"; the gulf below is called the "Side-Saddle Pit," though I failed to discover any degree of appropriateness in the odd name.

Standing in the middle of the bridge, my guide flung one of his Bengal lights far upward, in the midst of the slow-falling drops that had already carved out this tremendous well and were still making it larger. The light turned them for an instant into a shower of diamonds; then down it fell, down, down! As in its descent it passed the bridge on which we stood, the shadows of our two figures rushed up the opposite wall, like a pair of demons scared out of their abode by the hissing flame; and Nick, the guide, as he leaned over, looking downward after it,—every one of the innumerable wrinkles in his black face made more distinct, with his white beard and mustache, and the whites of his eyes seeming to glow in the blue elfish light,—was a caricature, half grotesque, almost terrible, of Satan himself.

Minerva's Dome and Side-Saddle Pit, both being one place and formed by the same dripping water, correspond to Gorin's Dome and the pit beneath it; that part which has been hollowed out above the roof of the cave being called the dome, and the part below the floor of the cave the pit. The only difference between the two is that in the case of Gorin's Dome the dripping waters have bored their huge shaft on one side of the track of the cave, only just piercing the wall of it in one spot, to make the window through which it is viewed; while in the case of the Side-Saddle Pit the vertical shaft cuts directly across the track of the cave, or, to speak more correctly, across the tunnel which was once the bed of a subterranean river, but which is now a broad, smooth, dry path.

The topography of this underground realm may be divided into three departments, as follows:—

First,—as being greatest in extent,—the "avenues," or tunnels, which present conclusive evidence of having once been the channels of a subterranean stream, whose waters, having some peculiar solvent property, wore their bed lower and lower in the rock, until they cut through into some lower opening, through which they were drawn off, leaving the old channels dry. Imagine one of the narrow, crooked streets in the old part of Boston, spanned by a continuous stone archway from the summits of the buildings on either hand; then close with solid masonry every window and loop-hole by which a ray of light could struggle in, and you have for proportions and sinuosity not a bad semblance of these tunnels, which constitute four fifths of the extent of the Mammoth Cave.

The second and next largest department is that of the "chambers." These are places in the general course of the former river where the roof fell in before the withdrawal of the waters, opening great spaces upward; the fallen mass forming a sort of island in the centre of the stream, and crowding the waters on either side of it against the walls of the cave, so that they were worn out to twice the average width, and finally itself disappearing under the combined action of the current and the solvent properties of the water.

The air in all these tunnels and chambers is remarkably dry and pure. Wood seems never to decay here; as is instanced in the wooden pipes and vats of the saltpetre-makers, upon which the lapse of a half-century has not had any visible effect.

The general width of the tunnels or avenues is about forty or fifty feet, and the average height about thirty feet; but this uniformity is broken every few hundred yards by chambers, varying in width from eighty to two hundred feet, and in height from seventy to two hundred and fifty feet. The floor is formed in some places of sand, but generally of indurated mud, so hard that it is impossible to make any indentation in it with the heel of the boot, and remarkably even and smooth, so that almost anywhere one can walk with as much ease as on city sidewalks. The walls also are clean and smooth, as in the arched crypts of some mighty cathedral. A cross section of almost any one of these tunnels would show an elliptic outline, the vertical diameter being the shortest, and the bottom being filled with indurated mud or sand to a sufficient depth to make a level floor.

The third division or class of openings is that of the "domes" and "pits." These were formed by the same kind of agency as the tunnels and chambers, namely, by the action of water holding carbonic acid in solution; but acting in a different manner, and at a period long after the subterranean river had ceased to flow through its tunnels.

The solvent acid of the water must be acquired in percolating through the several hundreds of feet of superincumbent earth and sandstone, as there is but one of these domes, "Sandstone Dome," that extends upward to the sandstone. The solvent water then, after finding its way into the vertical crevices of the limestone, gradually rounded them out like wells, until the pieces which occasionally fell from the top formed a sort of floor. Through the interstices of this floor, the dissolved substance of the rock is carried into some deeper and yet undiscovered cavities beneath. The floor itself gradually sinks, the domes grow higher, and the walls recede as long as the water continues to drip into them.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that the substratum of limestone in all the country for many miles in the vicinity is perforated with these tremendous shafts; as those which are seen in the cave are only such as happened to be in the course of the tunnels composing the Mammoth Cave. It is not improbable that there are many others on every side, close to the line of the tunnels, but not yet connected with them.

In any one of the above-mentioned departments, the description of one place answers for most others, except in dimensions. The following are a few out of many hundreds of measurements taken in as many different places:—

The "Rotunda," the first chamber from the entrance of the cave, is about one hundred feet high, and one hundred and seventy-five in diameter.

The "Methodist Church," eighty feet in diameter, and forty in height.

"Wright's Rotunda" is four hundred feet in its shortest diameter, being nearly circular; the roof seems perfectly level, and is about forty-five feet high.

"Kinney's Arena" is a hundred feet in diameter, and is fifty feet high.

"Proctor's Arcade" is one hundred feet in width and three quarters of a mile in length. The walls, which are about forty-five feet high, are nearly perpendicular throughout the whole length of the arcade, joining the roof nearly at right angles, and are so smooth that they look like hammer-dressed stone.

"Silliman's Avenue" is a mile and a half in length and about forty feet in height, its width varying from twenty to two hundred feet.

"Shelby's Dome" and the pit beneath it are two hundred and thirty-five feet in height, and about twenty-five in diameter.

"Mammoth Dome" is two hundred and fifty feet high, and nearly one hundred in diameter.

"Lucy's Dome," the highest in the cave, is sixty feet in diameter, and three hundred in height.

Nine miles from the entrance of the cave is the "Maelstroem," a dry pit or well, one hundred and seventy-five feet deep, and about twenty in diameter; and from the bottom of this shaft may be seen the openings to three other avenues, which lead farther into this Plutonian labyrinth than mortal foot has ever trod.

Although the distance of nine miles is about as far as tourists usually get from the entrance, that is by no means the measure of its extent, but only the extent of the direct route; there being a number of other tunnels branching off from it on either side, some of which connect with it again at a distance of several miles, and some of which have not been explored to their connection, if they have any.

The total length of all the explored avenues is estimated at over one hundred miles. If a single day's experience in the cave were sufficient ground for offering an opinion, I should say that this was a large over-estimate; but I have no doubt that, like all other great works of both art and nature, it grows upon the sense of the beholder. But even setting down its extent at half the foregoing estimate, none can tread these hollow chambers, thinking of others unexplored, and extending not only from that distant nine-mile-station, but on every hand, into the unknown, without a feeling of awe and fear.

Thus on and on through the echoing avenues, where the reverberation of our footsteps seemed to follow stealthily far behind us, through chamber and hall, where my guide in the advance flung up his lights, revealing for an instant the grim and distant vaults,—through "Star Chamber," five hundred feet long, seventy in width, and sixty in height, "Cloud Room," a quarter of a mile in length, sixty feet in height, "Deserted Chamber," "River Hall," "Revellers' Hall," "The Great Walk,"—through all these, and a dozen more, we wandered, until, after two hours' walk, and at a distance of four and a half miles from the entrance to the cave, I paused upon the muddy banks of the "Styx," and, stooping, dipped up in my hands a draught from its cold, sunless waters.

Here my guide would willingly have played Charon to my Ulysses, but as no one had penetrated thus far into the cave for several months, the boat used to carry visitors over, and to voyage up and down the short river (only a hundred and fifty yards in length), had sunk, and we found it impossible to raise it.

The river is about twenty-five feet in width, its course crossing that of the cave at right angles, and its channel being simply another avenue or tunnel on a little lower level than the one by which the visitor approaches it.

In this stream, as well as in "Echo River," are found the famous eyeless fish. We dipped in vain, for a long time, in hopes of capturing some of these. At last I was fortunate enough to secure one tiny specimen, about two inches long, which was shaped like other minnows, but had no eyes, and was perfectly white, there being not the slightest shade of coloring on the back. The upper part of its head was as translucent as agate, through which could be seen opaque spots imbedded in the head where the base of the eye-sockets should have been. The specimen I obtained was one of the smallest, as the guide told me these fishes frequently attained the length of six or seven inches.

I secured also an eyeless crawfish about three inches in length. This forlorn little creature, like the fish, was entirely colorless. It had two slightly protuberant spots in its head where the eyes should be; but they were dull and opaque, and did not seem to differ in texture from the rest of its body, which had not the translucence of that of the fish, but looked as though carved out of white marble.

The fish are found also in "Lake Lethe," a quarter of a mile from the Styx, as well as in "Echo River," the largest and most interesting body of water in the cave. This last flows out of a tunnel which has such a low roof that the volume of water nearly fills it, and from here to where it enters the rocks again is three quarters of a mile. Here the blind white creatures that inhabit its dark, slow-flowing waters are more plentiful, but are as unlike those nimble, glistening fellows which inhabit the streams of the outer world, as the cavern's atmosphere of darkness and death is different from our atmosphere of light and life. They refuse to bite at any bait; they move sluggishly, and, when caught in a net, flop languidly, and die. The only food they are known to have is the smaller ones of their own kind; and, oddest of all, they, as well as the crawfish, give birth to their young alive, instead of spawning the eggs to be hatched by the sun. Last and remotest of these sunless streams is "Roaring River," the margin of whose solemn waters is nine miles from the entrance of the cave. This should be Acheron, which hated the light, and ran sighing down into a cave; for from this stream too comes a perpetual moan.

The region where the several rivers mentioned are grouped is lower than the rest of the cave, and much more gloomy in appearance than the high, dry chambers through which one passes in coming back toward the entrance.

I was somewhat disappointed in the display of stalactites and other similar formations of the protocarbonate of lime found in the cave. For a number of years I had been familiar with mines and mining operations in the lead-mining districts of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri, and had there seen some of the most beautiful, though not the largest, specimens of calcareous spar known to exist. The lime in these localities being in most instances perfectly pure, the stalactites, to the length of three feet sometimes, are as free from coloring as icicles. Sometimes the miners' drift (which compared with the Mammoth Cave is as a rabbit's burrow to a railway tunnel) is opened into small, low-roofed caves; and in these, in addition to the translucent stalactites, there are little hollows in the floor covered with thin sheets of protocarbonate of lime, no thicker than a pane of window-glass, and as white as snow. From beneath these the water has sunk away, leaving a hollow space, and giving the whole precisely the appearance of those little pools which every one has noticed when a muddy road suddenly congeals: the pools of water freeze over, and the water disappears, leaving the ice only a shell over a cavity.

Nothing of this kind, however, is found in the Mammoth Cave. The lime of which the stalactites are formed being mixed with various oxides and other impurities, they are all of a dark brown, or gray, or muddy color. With the exception of some stalactite columns in the "Gothic Arcade," which form a fine alcove called the "Gothic Chapel," there are no stalactites of extraordinary size. There is a stalactite mass (or was some years ago) in "Uhrig's Cave," in the suburbs of the city of St. Louis, about twelve feet in height and four feet in diameter, which exceeds in size anything I saw in the Mammoth Cave.

The gypsum or alabaster flowers are the crowning beauty of the Mammoth Cave. These are an entirely different formation from the stalactites, being formed only in a perfectly dry atmosphere, while the stalactites are necessarily formed in a moist one.

The gypsum is formed by crystallization, and in that process exerts the same expansive force as ice. Wherever it forms in crevices it fractures the rocks that enclose it, and protrudes from the crevice; its own bulk divides, or splits, and curves open, and outward, with much more tenacity than ice. It seems to have a fibrous texture, in the direction of which the split always opens.

I found in the "Snowball Room" and in a large chamber called "Cleveland's Cabinet," a beautiful display of these flowers. In the Snowball Room, the likeness to winter appears again, in the knots strongly resembling snowballs stuck all over the ceiling. And in Cleveland's Cabinet I found some singularly beautiful specimens of alabaster formations. One kind seemed to be literally growing from the ceiling as a vegetable would, and looked more than anything else like short, thick stalks of celery. If an ordinary stalk of celery were split, so that its natural tendency to curl over backward could be freely exercised, it would give a very good idea of the shape of some of the gypsum flowers, except that these are not often longer than four inches, and in that length frequently curl so as to make a complete circle. They have the same fibrous appearance as celery, and are as white as snow.

When five or six of these stalks—if I may call them so—start from one point, and curve outward in different directions from a common centre, they frequently form beautiful rosettes. Imagine one of the common tiger-lilies, which, instead of its thin, red curving petals, has stalks of celery, curving as much, but broken off square at the ends; then imagine the celery to be of the purest conceivable white; and you have a tolerable conception of one of these beautiful alabaster flowers.

This alabaster growth is found only in a few places throughout the cave; when it is in chambers or spaces in which the atmosphere is very dry, it invariably has a beautiful fibrous texture like wood or celery, and the curved form; but if the atmosphere is damp, it forms on the ceiling in round nodules, from two to three inches in diameter, as in the Snowball Room.

In the Gothic Arcade there is a sort of colonnade formed along the side of the tunnel by the meeting of the down-growing stalactites and the upward-growing stalagmites; the two together having formed slender columns of spar, from three to six feet in height. One group of these, about eight feet high, which is the most beautiful in the cave, is called the Gothic Chapel. In many of the formations, it is very difficult to trace even the remotest resemblance to the objects after which they have been named; but in one instance, that of a stalactite called the "Elephant's Head," the resemblance is remarkable.

Ordinarily it is the custom for one guide to conduct a party of four or five persons into the cave. I dislike over-officious guides and the hackneyed comparisons and wordy wonder of gabbling tourists in grand and solemn places like this; therefore, in the morning, before starting, I congratulated myself that I should be alone, with the exception of the guide, who fortunately seemed thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the place in which he had spent the greater portion of his time for seventeen years.

He was as grave and taciturn as some cave-keeping anchorite. During our inward progress, he had carefully pointed out every place and object of interest, and hurled his blue-lights here and there into domes and pits and cavernous retreats of darkness. But now, on our backward course, he stalked silently and abstractedly before, though he seemed to listen to every step of my feet; for, if I paused or made a misstep, he instantly looked round.

At last he turned, and, looking me curiously in the face, asked whether I thought I should be afraid if left in the dark there a little while. Some people could not bear it, he said, and one gentleman who had consented to the ordeal of darkness had been half crazed by it, and when the guide, who had withdrawn and concealed himself, with his light, returned, the traveller tried first to run away into the darkness, and then, under some strange hallucination, fired his pistol in the guide's face.

I had a suspicion that the effect of the obscurity was exaggerated; I was disposed, moreover, to "try the dark," from curiosity. But I must acknowledge that, when the guide, with that doubting look, repeated his inquiry, I hesitated, asking, "Is there any danger? and from what?"

"Nobody knows, massa," said he seriously; "only some people's nerve can't stan' it, dat 's all."

The mention of that odious word, "nerve" sounded so much like the familiar solicitation, "Try your nerves, gentlemen?" from the electrical-machine man,—who is found on the curbstone of some thoroughfare in every city,—that for one brief instant the prestige of the great cave was gone.

Poh! I thought, so it is only claptrap after all? "Here, take the lamps, all of them, matches too, and go away so far that I cannot hear you halloo, even at your loudest. I will sit here until you come back!" So saying, I sat down upon a rock in the Star Chamber; and he, taking the lights, walked away toward the entrance of the cave.

"So then," I thought, "this is the perfect darkness, the total absence of light, which is seldom if ever known above ground; for even in the darkest night and the darkest house there are some wandering rays of light; though they may not be sufficient to enable the eye to distinguish anything, they are there; they penetrate, reflected in a hundred zigzags, into the darkest places of the outer world. But here there are miles between me and the utmost limits of their influence!"

I held my hand before my face, but could not distinguish by sight that it was there. A few pale, phosphorescent gleams, that seemed to be wandering in the air, I was convinced were only the remembrances of the optic nerve,—eidolons of the retina; but they seemed to some extent plastic to my thoughts, and ready to become the subjective creations of the brain, outlined in the dark. I could conceive then how the brain, excited by fear, or stimulated by emotion, might multiply these phantasms, moulding them into the likeness of objects and beings that never had any existence in reality. My sense of hearing, too, seemed preternaturally sharpened; I could hear the ticking of the watch in my pocket, the throbbing of my own heart, the murmur of the air in my lungs. I held my breath so that the slightest sound from any other source than my own organism should not escape me; the ringing vacancy in my ears grew more and more painful. Not the remotest breath of any sound, except a faint dropping of water in some distant place! (I could think of none but in that awful place called Gorin's Dome.) It seemed to whisper, "Hush! hush! hush!" Sometimes I could not hear the dropping; for just the same reason that, if one listens intently to the ticking of a clock for ten minutes, there are intervals when his ear cannot detect it, because of its regular monotonous sound.

In such intervals the tympanum of the ear, aching with the dead collapse of its world, made sounds for itself; and it required the exercise of reason to convince myself, sometimes, that I did not hear distant babbling voices.

But hark! There is a sound! Not distant, but near! Here!—There! A sound like large, soft feet treading cautiously. No, not that, but—something breathing. Pshaw! I believe it was only the sound of my own respiration after all!

I did not exactly "whistle to keep my courage up," but, feeling that I must do something to assert my vitality, my antagonism to this overpowering dark, I cleared my throat vehemently, defiantly,—AHEM! AHEM! AHEM!! But it sounded so incongruous, so impertinent I might say, in the midst of that awful silence! Besides, it woke such queer echoes from unexpected quarters, that I stopped to listen, and heard the water-drops again in Gorin's Dome, whispering, "Hush! hush! hush!" And from all the gloomy chambers and tunnels came the echo, breathing, "Hush! hash! hush!"

It began to be terrifying to think that release from this hell of silence was dependent upon one man's will, and he too a man I had never seen until within a few hours. Where was he now, my dark-faced guide? What if he should not be able to find me again in the midst of this hundred miles of tunnels that look so much alike? What if he should not intend to come? What if—But, thank Heaven! there he is at last! That is the firm, substantial sound of a mortal footstep; not those stealthy, phantom steps I seemed to hear before! There too is the distant glinting of the red lamplight on the sides of the cave! How long it takes him to get here! There he is at last! Blessed be his black face! how unlike the pale, phosphorescent forms I fancied just a little while ago! How foolish seem all those dreadful fancies now, so terribly real then!



AN AUTUMN SONG.

Below the headland with its cedar-plumes A lapse of spacious water twinkles keen, An ever-shifting play of gleams and glooms And flashes of clear green.

The sumac's garnet pennons where I lie Are mingled with the tansy's faded gold; Fleet hawks are screaming in the light-blue sky, And fleet airs rushing cold.

The plump peach steals the dying rose's red; The yellow pippin ripens to its fall; The dusty grapes, to purple fulness fed, Droop from the garden-wall.

And yet, where rainbow foliage crowns the swamp, I hear in dreams an April robin sing, And memory, amid this Autumn pomp, Strays with the ghost of Spring.



BY-WAYS OF EUROPE.

A VISIT TO THE BALEARIC ISLANDS.

I.

As the steamer Mallorca slowly moved out of the harbor of Barcelona, I made a rapid inspection of the passengers gathered on deck, and found that I was the only foreigner among them. Almost without exception they were native Majorcans, returning from trips of business or pleasure to the Continent. They spoke no language except Spanish and Catalan, and held fast to all the little habits and fashions of their insular life. If anything more had been needed to show me that I was entering upon untrodden territory, it was supplied by the joyous surprise of the steward when I gave him a fee. This fact reconciled me to my isolation on board, and its attendant awkwardness.

I knew not why I should have chosen to visit the Balearic Islands, unless for the simple reason that they lie so much aside from the highways of travel, and are not represented in the journals and sketch-books of tourists. If any one had asked me what I expected to see, I should have been obliged to confess my ignorance; for the few dry geographical details which I possessed were like the chemical analysis of a liquor wherefrom no one can reconstruct the taste. The flavor of a land is a thing quite apart from its statistics. There is no special guide-book for the islands, and the slight notices in the works on Spain only betray the haste of the authors to get over a field with which they are unacquainted. But this very circumstance, for me, had grown into a fascination. One gets tired of studying the bill of fare in advance of the repast. When the sun and the Spanish coast had set together behind the placid sea, I went to my berth with the delightful certainty that the sun of the morrow, and of many days thereafter, would rise upon scenes and adventures which could not be anticipated.

The distance from Barcelona to Palma is about a hundred and forty miles; so the morning found us skirting the southwestern extremity of Majorca,—a barren coast, thrusting low headlands, of gray rock into the sea, and hills covered with parched and stunted chaparral in the rear. The twelfth century, in the shape of a crumbling Moorish watch-tower, alone greeted us. As we advanced eastward into the Bay of Palma, however, the wild shrubbery melted into plantations of olive, solitary houses of fishermen nestled in the coves, and finally a village, of those soft ochre-tints which are a little brighter than the soil, appeared on the slope of a hill. In front, through the pale morning mist which still lay upon the sea, I saw the cathedral of Palma, looming grand and large beside the towers of other churches, and presently, gliding past a mile or two of country villas and gardens, we entered the crowded harbor.

Inside the mole there was a multitude of the light craft of the Mediterranean,—xebecs, feluccas, speronaras, or however they may be termed,—with here and there a brigantine which had come from beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Our steamer drew into her berth beside the quay, and after a very deliberate review by the port physician we were allowed to land. I found a porter, Arab in everything but costume, and followed him through the water-gate into the half-awake city. My destination was the Inn of the Four Nations, where I was cordially received, and afterwards roundly swindled, by a French host. My first demand was for a native attendant, not so much from any need of guide as simply to become more familiar with the people through him; but I was told that no such serviceable spirit was to be had in the place. Strangers are so rare that a class of people who live upon them has not yet been created.

"But how shall I find the Palace of the Government, or the monastery of San Domingo, or anything else?" I asked.

"O, we will give you directions, so that you cannot miss them," said the host; but he laid before me such a confusion of right turnings and left turnings, ups and downs, that I became speedily bewildered, and set forth, determined to let the "spirit in my feet" guide me. A labyrinthine place is Palma, and my first walks through the city were so many games of chance. The streets are very narrow, changing their direction, it seemed to me, at every tenth step; and whatever landmark one may select at the start is soon shut from view by the high, dark houses. At first, I was quite astray, but little by little I regained the lost points of the compass.

After having had the Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, and Saracens as masters, Majorca was first made Spanish by King Jaime of Aragon, the Conquistador, in the year 1235. For a century after the conquest it was an independent kingdom, and one of its kings was slain by the English bowmen at the battle of Crecy. The Spanish element has absorbed, but not yet entirely obliterated, the characteristics of the earlier races who inhabited the island. Were ethnology a more positively developed science, we might divide and classify this confused inheritance of character; as it is, we vaguely feel the presence of something quaint, antique, and unusual, in walking the streets of Palma, and mingling with the inhabitants. The traces of Moorish occupation are still noticeable everywhere. Although the Saracenic architecture no longer exists in its original forms, its details may be detected in portals, court-yards, and balconies, in almost every street. The conquerors endeavored to remodel the city, but in doing so they preserved the very spirit which they sought to destroy.

My wanderings, after all, were not wholly undirected. I found an intelligent guide, who was at the same time an old acquaintance. The whirligig of time brings about, not merely its revenges, but also its compensations and coincidences. Twenty-two years ago, when I was studying German as a boy in the old city of Frankfort, guests from the South of France came to visit the amiable family with whom I was residing. There were M. Laurens, a painter and a musical enthusiast, his wife, and Mademoiselle Rosalba, a daughter as fair as her name. Never shall I forget the curious letter which the artist wrote to the manager of the theatre, requesting that Beethoven's Fidelio might be given (and it was!) for his own especial benefit, nor the triumphant air with which he came to us one day, saying, "I have something of most precious," and brought forth, out of a dozen protecting envelopes, a single gray hair from Beethoven's head. Nor shall I forget how Madame Laurens taught us French plays, and how the fair Rosalba declaimed Andre Chenier to redeem her pawns; but I might have forgotten all these things, had it not been for an old volume[A] which turned up at need, and which gave me information, at once clear, precise, and attractive, concerning the streets and edifices of Palma. The round, solid head, earnest eyes, and abstracted air of the painter came forth distinct from the limbo of things overlaid but never lost, and went with me through the checkered blaze and gloom of the city.

The monastery of San Domingo, which was the head-quarters of the Inquisition, was spared by the progressive government of Mendizabal, but destroyed by the people. Its ruins must have been the most picturesque sight of Palma; but since the visit of M. Laurens they have been removed, and their broken vaults and revealed torture-chambers are no longer to be seen. There are, however, two or three buildings of more than ordinary interest. The Casa Consistorial, or City Hall, is a massive Palladian pile of the sixteenth century, resembling the old palaces of Pisa and Florence, except in the circumstance that its roof projects at least ten feet beyond the front, resting on a massive cornice of carved wood with curious horizontal caryatides in the place of brackets. The rich burnt-sienna tint of the carvings contrasts finely with the golden-brown of the massive marble walls,—a combination which is shown in no other building of the Middle Ages. The sunken rosettes, surrounded by raised arabesque borders, between the caryatides, are sculptured with such a careful reference to the distance at which they must be seen, that they appear as firm and delicate as if near the spectator's eye.

The Cathedral, founded by the Conquistador, and built upon, at intervals, for more than three centuries, is not yet finished. It stands upon a natural platform of rock, overhanging the sea, where its grand dimensions produce the greatest possible effect. In every view of Palma, it towers solidly above the houses and bastioned walls, and insists upon having the sky as a background for the light Gothic pinnacles of its flying buttresses. The government has recently undertaken its restoration, and a new front of very admirable and harmonious design is about half completed. The soft amber-colored marble of Majorca is enriched in tint by exposure to the air, and even when built in large, unrelieved masses retains a bright and cheerful character. The new portion of the cathedral, like the old, has but little sculpture, except in the portals; but that little is so elegant that a greater profusion of ornament would seem out of place.

Passing from the clear, dazzling day into the interior, one finds himself, at first, in total darkness; and the dimensions of the nave—nearly three hundred feet in length by one hundred and forty in height—are amplified by the gloom. The wind, I was told, came through the windows on the sea side with such force as to overturn the chalices, and blow out the tapers on the altar, whereupon every opening was walled up, except a rose at the end of the chancel, and a few slits in the nave, above the side-aisles. A sombre twilight, like that of a stormy day, fills the edifice. Here the rustling of stoles and the muttering of prayers suggest incantation rather than worship; the organ has a hollow, sepulchral sound of lamentation; and there is a spirit of mystery and terror in the stale, clammy air. The place resembles an antechamber of Purgatory much more than of Heaven. The mummy of Don Jaime II., son of the Conquistador and first king of Majorca, is preserved in a sarcophagus of black marble. This is the only historic monument in the Cathedral, unless the stranger chooses to study the heraldry of the island families from their shields suspended in the chapels.

When I returned to the Four Nations for breakfast, I found at the table a gentleman of Palma, who invited me to sit down and partake of his meal. For the first time this Spanish custom, which really seems picturesque and fraternal when coming from shepherds or muleteers in a mountain inn, struck me as the hollowest of forms. The gentleman knew that I would not accept his invitation, nor he mine; he knew, moreover, that I knew he did not wish me to accept it. The phrase, under such conditions, becomes a cheat which offends the sacred spirit of hospitality. How far the mere form may go was experienced by George Sand, who, having accepted the use of a carriage most earnestly offered to her by a Majorcan count, found the equipage at her door, it is true, but with it a letter expressing so much vexation, that she was forced to withdraw her acceptance of the favor at once, and to apologize for it! I have always found much hospitality among the common people of Spain, and I doubt not that the spirit exists in all classes; but it requires some practice to distinguish between empty phrase and the courtesy which comes from the heart. A people who boast of some special virtue generally do not possess it.

My own slight intercourse with the Majorcans was very pleasant. On the day of my arrival, I endeavored to procure a map of the island, but none of the bookstores possessed the article. It could be found in one house in a remote street, and one of the shopmen finally sent a boy with me to the very door. When I offered money for the service, my guide smiled, shook his head, and ran away. The map was more than fifty years old, and drawn in the style of two centuries ago, with groups of houses for the villages, and long files of conical peaks for the mountains. The woman brought it down, yellow and dusty, from a dark garret over the shop, and seemed as delighted with the sale as if she had received money for useless stock. In the streets, the people inspected me curiously, as a stranger, but were always ready to go out of their way to guide me. The ground-floor being always open, all the features of domestic life and of mechanical labor are exposed to the public. The housewives, the masters, and apprentices, busy as they seem, manage to keep one eye disengaged, and no one passes before them without notice. Cooking, washing, sewing, tailoring, shoemaking, coopering, rope and basket making, succeed each other, as one passes through the narrow streets. In the afternoon, the mechanics frequently come forth and set up their business in the open air, where they can now and then greet a country acquaintance or a city friend or sweetheart.

When I found that the ruins of San Domingo had been removed, and a statue of Isabella II. erected on the Alameda, I began to suspect that the reign of old things was over in Majorca. A little observation of the people made this fact more evident. The island costume is no longer worn by the young men, even in the country; they have passed into a very comical transition state. Old men, mounted on lean asses or mules, still enter the gates of Palma, with handkerchiefs tied over their shaven crowns, and long gray locks falling on their shoulders,—with short, loose jackets, shawls around the waist, and wide Turkish trousers gathered at the knee. Their gaunt brown legs are bare, and their feet protected by rude sandals. Tall, large-boned, and stern of face, they hint both of Vandal and of Moslem blood. The younger men are of inferior stature, and nearly all bow-legged. They have turned the flowing trousers into modern pantaloons, the legs of which are cut like the old-fashioned gigot sleeve, very big and baggy at the top, and tied with a drawing-string around the waist. My first impression was, that the men had got up in a great hurry, and put on their trousers hinder-end foremost. It would be difficult to invent a costume more awkward and ungraceful than this.

In the city the young girls wear a large triangular piece of white or black lace, which covers the hair, and tightly encloses the face, being fastened under the chin and the ends brought down to a point on the breast. Their almond-shaped eyes are large and fine, but there is very little positive beauty among them. Most of the old country-women are veritable hags, and their appearance is not improved by the broad-brimmed stove-pipe hats which they wear. Seated astride on their donkeys, between panniers of produce, they come in daily from the plains and mountains, and you encounter them on all the roads leading out of Palma. Few of the people speak any other language than the Mallorquin, a variety of the Catalan, which, from the frequency of the terminations in ch and tz, constantly suggests the old Provencal literature. The word vitch (son) is both Celtic and Slavonic. Some Arabic terms are also retained, though fewer, I think, than in Andalusia.

In the afternoon I walked out into the country. The wall, on the land side, which is very high and massive, is pierced by five guarded gates. The dry moat, both wide and deep, is spanned by wooden bridges, after crossing which one has the choice of a dozen highways, all scantily shaded with rows of ragged mulberry-trees, glaring white in the sun and deep in impalpable dry dust. But the sea-breeze blows freshening across the parched land; shadows of light clouds cool the arid mountains in the distance; the olives roll into silvery undulations; a palm in full, rejoicing plumage rustles over your head; and the huge spatulate leaves of a banana in the nearest garden twist and split into fringes. There is no languor in the air, no sleep in the deluge of sunshine; the landscape is active with signs of work and travel. Wheat, wine, olives, almonds, and oranges are produced, not only side by side, but from the same fields, and the painfully thorough system of cultivation leaves not a rood of the soil unused.

I had chosen, at random, a road which led me west toward the nearest mountains, and in the course of an hour I found myself at the entrance of a valley. Solitary farm-houses, each as massive as the tower of a fortress and of the color of sunburnt gold, studded the heights, overlooking the long slopes of almond-orchards. I looked about for water, in order to make a sketch of the scene; but the bed of the brook was as dry as the highway. The nearest house toward the plain had a splendid sentinel palm beside its door,—a dream of Egypt, which beckoned and drew me towards it with a glamour I could not resist. Over the wall of the garden the orange-trees lifted their mounds of impenetrable foliage; and the blossoms of the pomegranates, sprinkled against such a background, were like coals of fire. The fig-bearing cactus grew about the house in clumps twenty feet high, covered with pale-yellow flowers. The building was large and roomy, with a court-yard, around which ran a shaded gallery. The farmer who was issuing therefrom as I approached wore the shawl and Turkish trousers of the old generation, while his two sons, reaping in the adjoining wheat-fields, were hideous in the modern gigots. Although I was manifestly an intruder, the old man greeted me respectfully, and passed on to his work. Three boys tended a drove of black hogs in the stubble, and some women were so industriously weeding and hoeing in the field beyond, that they scarcely stopped to cast a glance upon the stranger. There was a grateful air of peace, order, and contentment about the place; no one seemed to be suspicious, or even surprised, when I seated myself upon a low wall, and watched the laborers.

The knoll upon which the farm-house stood sloped down gently into the broad, rich plain of Palma, extending many a league to the eastward. Its endless orchards made a dim horizon-line, over which rose the solitary double-headed mountain of Felaniche, and the tops of some peaks near Arta. The city wall was visible on my right, and beyond it a bright arc of the Mediterranean. The features of the landscape, in fact, were so simple, that I fear I cannot make its charm evident to the reader. Looking over the nearer fields, I observed two peculiarities of Majorca, upon which depends much of the prosperity of the island. The wheat is certainly, as it is claimed to be, the finest of any Mediterranean land. Its large, perfect grains furnish a flour of such fine quality that the whole produce of the island is sent to Spain for the pastry and confectionery of the cities, while the Majorcans import a cheap, inferior kind in its place. Their fortune depends on their abstinence from the good things which Providence has given them. Their pork is greatly superior to that of Spain, and it leaves them in like manner; their best wines are now bought up by speculators and exported for the fabrication of sherry; and their oil, which might be the finest in the world, is so injured by imperfect methods of preservation that it might pass for the worst. These things, however, give them no annoyance. Southern races are sometimes indolent, but rarely Epicurean in their habits; it is the Northern man who sighs for his flesh-pots.

I walked forward between the fields toward another road, and came upon a tract which had just been ploughed and planted for a new crop. The soil was ridged in a labyrinthine pattern, which appeared to have been drawn with square and rule. But more remarkable than this was the difference of level, so slight that the eye could not possibly detect it, by which the slender irrigating streams were conducted to every square foot of the field, without a drop being needlessly wasted. The system is an inheritance from the Moors, who were the best natural engineers the world has ever known. Water is scarce in Majorca, and thus every stream, spring, rainfall,—even the dew of heaven,—is utilized. Channels of masonry, often covered to prevent evaporation, descend from the mountains, branch into narrower veins, and visit every farm on the plain, whatever may be its level. Where these are not sufficient, the rains are added to the reservoir, or a string of buckets, turned by a mule, lifts the water from a well. But it is in the economy of distributing water to the fields that the most marvellous skill is exhibited. The grade of the surface must not only be preserved, but the subtle, tricksy spirit of water so delicately understood and humored that the streams shall traverse the greatest amount of soil with the least waste or wear. In this respect, the most skilful application of science could not surpass the achievements of the Majorcan farmers.

Working my way homeward through the tangled streets, I was struck with the universal sound of wailing which filled the city. All the tailors, shoemakers, and basket-makers, at work in the open air, were singing, rarely in measured strains, but with wild, irregular, lamentable cries, exactly in the manner of the Arabs. Sometimes the song was antiphonal, flung back and forth from the farthest visible corners of a street; and then it became a contest of lungs, kept up for an hour at a time. While breakfasting, I had heard, as I supposed, a miserere chanted by some procession of monks, and wondered when the doleful strains would cease. I now saw that they came from the mouths of some cheerful coopers, who were heading barrels a little farther down the street. The Majorcans still have their troubadours, who are hired by languishing lovers to improvise strains of longing or reproach under the windows of the fair, and perhaps the latter may listen with delight; but I know of no place where the Enraged Musician would so soon become insane. The isle is full of noises, and a Caliban might say that they hurt not; for me they murdered sleep, both at midnight and at dawn.

I had decided to devote my second day to an excursion to the mountain paradise of Valdemosa, and sallied forth early, to seek the means of conveyance. Up to this time I had been worried—tortured, I may say, without exaggeration—by desperate efforts to recover the Spanish tongue, which I had not spoken for fourteen years. I still had the sense of possessing it, but in some old drawer of memory, the lock of which had rusted and would not obey the key. Like Mrs. Dombey, I felt as if there were Spanish words somewhere in the room, but I could not positively say that I had them,—a sensation which, as everybody knows, is far worse than absolute ignorance. I had taken a carriage for Valdemosa, after a long talk with the proprietor, a most agreeable fellow, when I suddenly stopped, and exclaimed to myself, "You are talking Spanish,—did you know it?" It was even so: as much of the language as I ever knew was suddenly and unaccountably restored to me. On my return to the Four Nations, I was still further surprised to find myself repeating songs, without the failure of a line or word, which I had learned from a Mexican as a school-boy, and had not thought of for twenty years. The unused drawer had somehow been unlocked or broken open while I slept.

Valdemosa is about twelve miles north of Palma, in the heart of the only mountain-chain of the island, which forms its western, or rather northwestern coast. The average altitude of these mountains will not exceed three thousand feet; but the broken, abrupt character of their outlines, and the naked glare of their immense precipitous walls, give them that intrinsic grandeur which does not depend on measurement. In their geological formation they resemble the Pyrenees; the rocks are of that palombino, or dove-colored limestone, so common in Sicily and the Grecian islands,—pale bluish-gray, taking a soft orange tint on the faces most exposed to the weather. Rising directly from the sea on the west, they cease almost as suddenly on the land side, leaving all the central portion of the island a plain, slightly inclined toward the southeast, where occasional peaks or irregular groups of hills interrupt its monotony.

In due time my team made its appearance,—an omnibus of basket-work, with a canvas cover, drawn by two horses. It had space enough for twelve persons, yet was the smallest vehicle I could discover. There appears to be nothing between it and the two-wheeled cart of the peasant, which, on a pinch, carries six or eight. For an hour and a half we traversed the teeming plain, between stacks of wheat worthy to be laid on the altar at Eleusis, carob-trees with their dark, varnished foliage, almond-orchards bending under the weight of their green nuts, and the country-houses with their garden clumps of orange, cactus, and palm. As we drew near the base of the mountains, olive-trees of great size and luxuriance covered the earth with a fine sprinkle of shade. Their gnarled and knotted trunks, a thousand years old, were frequently split into three or four distinct and separate trees, which in the process assumed forms so marvellously human in their distortion, that I could scarcely believe them to be accidental. Dore never drew anything so weird and grotesque. Here were two club-headed individuals righting, with interlocked knees, convulsed shoulders, and fists full of each other's hair; yonder a bully was threatening attack, and three cowards appeared to be running away from him with such speed that they were tumbling over one another's heels. In one place a horrible dragon was devouring a squirming, shapeless animal; in another, a drunken man, with whirling arms and tangled feet, was pitching forward upon his face. The living wood in Dante was tame beside these astonishing trees.

We now entered a wild ravine, where, nevertheless, the mountain-sides, sheer and savage as they were, had succumbed to the rule of man, and nourished an olive or a carob tree on every corner of earth between the rocks. The road was built along the edge of the deep, dry bed of a winter stream, so narrow that a single arch carried it from side to side, as the windings of the glen compelled. After climbing thus for a mile in the shadows of threatening masses of rock, an amphitheatre of gardens, enframed by the spurs of two grand, arid mountains, opened before us. The bed of the valley was filled with vines and orchards, beyond which rose long terraces, dark with orange and citron trees, obelisks of cypress and magnificent groups of palm, with the long white front and shaded balconies of a hacienda between. Far up, on a higher plateau between the peaks, I saw the church-tower of Valdemosa. The sides of the mountains were terraced with almost incredible labor, walls massive as the rock itself being raised to a height of thirty feet, to gain a shelf of soil two or three yards in breadth. Where the olive and the carob ceased, box and ilex took possession of the inaccessible points, carrying up the long waves of vegetation until their foam-sprinkles of silver-gray faded out among the highest clefts. The natural channels of the rock were straightened and made to converge at the base, so that not a wandering cloud could bathe the wild growths of the summit without being caught and hurried into some tank below. The wilderness was forced, by pure toil, to become a Paradise; and each stubborn feature, which toil could not subdue, now takes its place as a contrast and an ornament in the picture. Verily, there is nothing in all Italy so beautiful as Valdemosa!

Lest I should be thought extravagant in my delight, let me give you some words of George Sand, which I have since read. "I have never seen," she says, "anything so bright, and at the same time so melancholy, as these perspectives where the ilex, the carob, pine, olive, poplar, and cypress mingle their various hues in the hollows of the mountain,—abysses of verdure, where the torrent precipitates its course under mounds of sumptuous richness and an inimitable grace.... While you hear the sound of the sea on the northern coast, you perceive it only as a faint shining line beyond the sinking mountains and the great plain which is unrolled to the southward;—a sublime picture, framed in the foreground by dark rocks covered with pines; in the middle distance by mountains of boldest outline, fringed with superb trees; and beyond these by rounded hills which the setting sun gilds with burning colors, where the eye distinguishes, a league away, the microscopic profile of trees, fine as the antennae of butterflies, black and clear as pen-drawings of India-ink on a ground of sparkling gold. It is one of those landscapes which oppress you because they leave nothing to be desired, nothing to be imagined. Nature has here created that which the poet and the painter behold in their dreams. An immense ensemble, infinite details, inexhaustible variety, blended forms, sharp contours, dim, vanishing depths,—all are present, and art can suggest nothing further. Majorca is one of the most beautiful countries of the world for the painter, and one of the least known. It is a green Helvetia under the sky of Calabria, with the solemnity and silence of the Orient."

The village of Valdemosa is a picturesque, rambling place, brown with age, and buried in the foliage of fig and orange trees. The highest part of the narrow plateau where it stands is crowned by the church and monastery of the Trappists (Cartusa), now deserted. My coachman drove under the open roof of a venta, and began to unharness his horses. The family, who were dining at a table so low that they appeared to be sitting on the floor, gave me the customary invitation to join them, and when I asked for a glass of wine brought me one which held nearly a quart. I could not long turn my back on the bright, wonderful landscape without; so, taking books and colors, I entered the lonely cloisters of the monastery. Followed first by one small boy, I had a retinue of at least fifteen children before I had completed the tour of the church, court-yard, and the long-drawn, shady corridors of the silent monks; and when I took my seat on the stones at the foot of the towers, with the very scene described by George Sand before my eyes, a number of older persons added themselves to the group. A woman brought me a chair, and the children then planted themselves in a dense row before me, while I attempted to sketch under such difficulties as I had never known before. Precisely because I am no artist, it makes me nervous to be watched while drawing; and the remarks of the young men on this occasion were not calculated to give me courage.

When I had roughly mapped out the sky with its few floating clouds, some one exclaimed, "He has finished the mountains, there they are!" and they all crowded around me, saying, "Yes, there are the mountains!" While I was really engaged upon the mountains, there was a violent discussion as to what they might be; and I don't know how long it would have lasted, had I not turned to some cypresses nearer the foreground. Then a young man cried out: "O, that's a cypress! I wonder if he will make them all,—how many are there? One, two, three, four, five,—yes, he makes five!" There was an immediate rush, shutting out earth and heaven from my sight, and they all cried in chorus, "One, two, three, four, five,—yes, he has made five!" "Cavaliers and ladies," I said, with solemn politeness, "have the goodness not to stand before me." "To be sure! Santa Maria! How do you think he can see?" yelled an old woman, and the children were hustled away. But I thereby won the ill-will of those garlic-breathing and scratching imps, for very soon a shower of water-drops fell upon my paper. Next a stick, thrown from an upper window, dropped on my head, and more than once my elbow was intentionally jogged from behind. The older people scolded and threatened, but young Majorca was evidently against me. I therefore made haste to finish my impotent mimicry of air and light, and get away from the curious crowd.

Behind the village there is a gleam of the sea, near, yet at an unknown depth. As I threaded the walled lanes, seeking some point of view, a number of lusty young fellows, mounted on unsaddled mules, passed me with a courteous greeting. On one side rose a grand pile of rock, covered with ilex-trees,—a bit of scenery so admirable, that I fell into a new temptation. I climbed a little knoll and looked around me. Far and near no children were to be seen; the portico of an unfinished house offered both shade and seclusion. I concealed myself behind a pillar, and went to work. For half an hour I was happy; then around black head popped up over a garden-wall, a small brown form crept towards me, beckoned, and presently a new multitude had assembled. The noise they made provoked a sound of cursing from the interior of a stable adjoining the house. They only made a louder tumult in answer; the voice became more threatening, and at the end of five minutes the door burst open. An old man, with wrath flashing from his eyes, came forth. The children took to their heels; I greeted the new-comer politely, but he hardly returned the salutation. He was a very fountain of curses, and now hurled stones with them after the fugitives. When they had all disappeared behind the walls, he went back to his den, grumbling and muttering. It was not five minutes, however, before the children were back again, as noisy as before; so, at the first thunder from the stable, I shut up my book, and returned to the inn.

While the horses were being harnessed, I tried to talk with an old native, who wore the island costume, and was as grim and grizzly as Ossawatomie Brown. A party of country people from the plains, who seemed to have come up to Valdemosa on a pleasure trip, clambered into a two-wheeled cart drawn by one mule, and drove away. My old friend gave me the distances of various places, the state of the roads, and the quality of the wine; but he seemed to have no conception of the world outside of the island. Indeed, to a native of the village, whose fortune has simply placed him beyond the reach of want, what is the rest of the world? Around and before him spread one of its loveliest pictures; he breathes its purest air; and he may enjoy its best luxuries, if he heeds or knows how to use them.

Up to this day the proper spice and flavor had been wanting. Palma had only interested me, but in Valdemosa I found the inspiration, the heat and play of vivid, keen sensation, which one (often somewhat unreasonably) expects from a new land. As my carriage descended, winding around the sides of the magnificent mountain amphitheatre, in the alternate shadows of palm and ilex, pine and olive, I looked back, clinging to every marvellous picture, and saying to myself, over and over again, "I have not come hither in vain." When the last shattered gate of rock closed behind me, and the wood of insane olive-trunks was passed, with what other eyes I looked upon the rich orchard-plain! It had now become a part of one superb whole; as the background of my mountain view, it had caught a new glory, and still wore the bloom of the invisible sea.

In the evening I reached the Four Nations, where I was needlessly invited to dinner by certain strangers, and dined alone, on meats cooked in rancid oil. When the cook had dished the last course, he came into a room adjoining the dining apartment, sat down to a piano in his white cap, and played loud, long, and badly. The landlord had papered this room with illustrations from all the periodicals of Europe: dancing-girls pointed their toes under cardinals' hats, and bulls were baited before the shrines of saints. Mixed with the woodcuts were the landlord's own artistic productions, wonderful to behold. All the house was proud of this room, and with reason; for there is assuredly no other room like it in the world. A notice in four languages, written with extraordinary flourishes, announced in the English division that travellers will find "confortation and modest prices." The former advantage, I discovered, consisted in the art of the landlord, the music and oil of the cook, and the attendance of a servant so distant that it was easier to serve myself than seek him; the latter may have been "modest" for Palma, but in any other place they would have been considered brazenly impertinent. I should therefore advise travellers to try the "Three Pigeons," in the same street, rather than the Four Nations.

The next day, under the guidance of my old friend, M. Laurens, I wandered for several hours through the streets, peeping into court-yards, looking over garden-walls, or idling under the trees of the Alameda. There are no pleasant suburban places of resort, such as are to be found in all other Spanish cities; the country commences on the other side of the moat. Three small cafes exist, but cannot be said to flourish, for I never saw more than one table occupied. A theatre has been built, but is only open during the winter, of course. Some placards on the walls, however, announced that the national (that is, Majorcan) diversion of baiting bulls with dogs would be given in a few days.

The noblesse appear to be even haughtier than in Spain, perhaps on account of their greater poverty; and much more of the feudal spirit lingers among them, and gives character to society, than on the main-land. Each family has still a crowd of retainers, who perform a certain amount of service on the estates, and are thenceforth entitled to support. This custom is the reverse of profitable; but it keeps up an air of lordship, and is therefore retained. Late in the afternoon, when the new portion of the Alameda is in shadow, and swept by a delicious breeze from the sea, it begins to be frequented by the people; but I noticed that very few of the upper class made their appearance. So grave and sombre are these latter, that one would fancy them descended from the conquered Moors, rather than the Spanish conquerors.