Page images
PDF
EPUB

was thrown across his left arm; in his right hand he held a long, slender sword. At the blast of the trumpet, he stepped forth, and having passed before and saluted the Governor, addressed himself to his task. Approaching the bull, with a deliberate yet firm step, and a watchful but determined eye, he so placed himself as to be able, by a slight movement to the right, to receive the thrust of his horns on the cloak, and having levelled the point of his sword at a part of the neck just forward of the right shoulder, resolutely awaited the shock. It came; the weapon failed to take effect, and was hurled, as the bull sprang past him, into the air. A murmur of displeasure ran through the assembly, and cries were heard of 'fool! coward!' ' away with him!' He seemed not to heed them, but with a composed, resolute look, resumed his position, and presented his sword. The bull rushed on, the blade was buried to the hilt in his vitals, and having staggered toward the door, he fell, with the blood spouting from his mouth and nostrils, and was instantly despatched by the stroke of a knife in the neck.

The trumpets now sounded, the door at the opposite extremity of the list was thrown open, and four spirited horses, richly caparisoned, sprang in abreast, and were lashed, tossing their heads and jangling their bells, at full speed across the arena. The shaft of their traces was then made fast to the horns and head of the bull, and he was dragged out at a gallop.

The dead horses having in like manner been removed, others were brought in; and notwithstanding the crippled state of the Picadores, most of whom had been repeatedly thrown,they were instantly mounted and galloped to their stations. The trumpets once more sounded, thedoor opened, and in bounded the second bull. As if apprized of the fate of his fellow, and determined, without loss of time, to avenge it, he did not wait for the attack of the Chulos, but sprang furiously at the horse of the nearest Picadore, gored him under the right flank, tore out his entrails, and threw him with such violence against the barrier, that he fell and expired without a struggle. His rider, covered with blood and dust, his pike-staff broken and sombrero crushed, was dragged out from under him, and borne off; whether dead or alive, I was unable to learn. A second and third horse were in quick succession, and in like manner, despatched; their riders grasping their pike-staves with both hands, driving the points of them into the breast or shoulders of the bull, and struggling with all their might to repel or turn him, till hurled headlong from their seats, or with violence against the barrier.

A few of the women now retired, and one fainted. They were, I observed, ladies of a certain age, and not remarkable for their good looks. The young and handsome kept their color and their places.

From the total overthrow or dispersion of the combatants on this side of the arena, the bull now crossed to the other, a frightful yet pitiable object; his nostrils spread, his eyes flashing, his horns dyed, and his forehead, breast, and sides, bathed in blood. Nothing daunted, however, one of the Picadores on that side rode up and presented the point of his pike. His horse was instantly gored, lifted from his feet, thrown with his rider across the back of the bull, and thence headlong to the ground, Of the five horses which he afterward attacked,

three were killed on the spot. Assailed by the dartmen till his shoulders bristled like a quiver-head with their shafts, he was at length encountered by the sword of the Matadore, who, at the first trial, drove it to his heart. Even after receiving his death-blow, he neither quailed nor retreated, but fell with his eye confronting, and his horns. levelled at, his antagonist, as if bent on collecting all his remaining energies for a last desperate assault.

Six bulls were afterward let in, and in like manner encountered and killed. The number of horses killed was eighteen, and of twenty more, the greater part were led off more dead than alive. The courage and strength of the fifth bull seeming to flag, the nettings of the darts were charged with fire-works, and he bounded madly about the arena, astounded and tormented by their exploding contents, and enveloped in a cloud of flame, sparkles, and smoke.

[blocks in formation]

'SHE is buried in that part of the court-yard facing the sea, close by the ramparts: no stone marks her grave; it is not even raised above the level of the yard; and were it not for the few recently placed bricks, it would be difficult to find the spot.'

I COME to thee a stranger,

O England!-Fatherland!
There's a cypress garland o'er the lyre
I am holding in my hand;
And I will strike to thee, to-night,
The mighty chords of soul,

Till the swelling tide of long pent thought
Triumphantly shall roll!

There is joy in all your palaces,
There is feasting in your halls,
Where the noble and the beautiful
Are gathered mid the walls;
And ever on the midnight air
Glad music pours along,

Where the hundred harps of England
Lift high the voice of song.

Mid festive lamps and garlands,
I wander sad and slow,
And I list in vain the lay I loved,
In the days of long ago;
While aye yon laurel'd lyre
Seems mournfully to swell,
Moans low beneath its veiling leaves,
Like the wailing ocean shell.

I have flung off the myrtle,

There's a flush upon my cheek,
There are burning words upon my lip,
And thoughts I fain would speak;
I tear the mournful cypress

That enwreathes thee, O! my lyre!
And I strike to England's maiden bard
The glowing chords of fire!

JOURNAL OF CAPT. HERAPATH.

Oh! listen! Harp of England!
There's a dower that to thee clings,
And a fadeless wealth of laurel
Entwining all thy strings; [chords,
And woman's hand hath smote thy
With a stroke all bold and free,
Till the mighty flood of English song
Hath gone o'er every sea!

Long in your noble minsters,

With your dust of heroes kept;

'Neath sculptured urn and cenotaph,
Your nameless dead have slept;
While she who cull'd fresh buds of song,
Your ancient crown to grace,

Rests coldly shrined in stranger earth,
No stone to mark the place!

Far o'er the dark blue waters,

With their measured, onward sweep,
Hymned by the dirge-like voices
Of the melancholy deep;
Trod 'neath the passing footstep
Of the felon, and the slave,
There by the sea-beat ramparts lies
Her lone, unhallowed grave!

Oh! wreathe ye fadeless chaplets
For the earth that shrouds her breast,
And raise the enduring marble

Above her place of rest;
And lift for aye the harp of praise
High o'er her laurel'd head,
Till e'en the Ethiop honor thee,
In thine illustrious dead!

THE ROYAL FAMILY OF STATEN ISLAND.

BY THE AUTHOR OF FOUR-BEARS,' THE MANDAN.

IT has long been the general belief, that the Gipsy race, which is found every where else, has never yet penetrated into America; but the opinion is erroneous. There is a family on Staten-Island, whose history and habits prove their Zingaro descent, despite the counter evidence of their white skins, patches of which may be seen through the rents of their tatters, like intervals of blue sky in a clouded empyrean.

All

The patriarch of the horde was, in his life-time, reputed an Englishman; although upon this point no intelligence exists in any parish register or book of heraldry; a matter the less to be regretted, that his birth is not likely to be disputed by rival nations or cities. that is certainly known of him is, that he made his appearance on the island about forty years ago, an incarnation of laziness and pauperism, accompanied by a biped of the feminine gender, whom, as God made her, we are content to call a woman: they evinced no desire to hold fellowship with their kind; but immediately plunged into the woods, where they pertinaciously hid whatever talents and merits they possessed. Probably the world used them ill, and like Timon, they had left it in disgust. They built themselves a hut of brushwood, and lived, unknowing and unknown, upon the wild products of the soil and the sea-shore, the world forgetting and the world forgot. No one was favored with any notice of their former history; they wrought not for hire, nor did they seek to render themselves in the slightest degree useful to their fellow creatures. They were satisfied with a bare, mysterious existence, the objects of wonder and pity; and only proved themselves human, by increasing the population of Staten Land with ten sons and daughters.

In time the he-patriarch died, and his fame died with him; but not till he had so indoctrinated his hopeful family, that they have ever since followed his praiseworthy example. A short time since we paid these Children of the Mist a visit at their residence, profiting by one of a thousand changes of abode which brought them within an easy walk of the Quarantine-Ground. Others may seek objects of interest abroad; we are content with what may be found near home; and in this singular family we found a happy practical illustration of the Golden Age, which poets so much regret, and agrarian politicians so devoutly hope and expect to restore. By the margin of a stagnant swamp, rife with malaria and intermittent fever, embosomed in thick woods, stood a pen of rough boards, obtained Heaven knows how, about ten feet square, into which about fifty specimens of animal life, human and canine, were crowded. The den was roofed over, and refused entrance to the sun; but was by no means so inhospitable to the rain. The four winds of Heaven sought and found free ingress and egress through the chinks; the floor was not; and altogether we have seen much better appointed pig-styes. We first discovered our proximity to this Temple of the Winds, by the

greeting of a herd of sorry curs, who made a great noise, but retreated snarling, and with averted tails, at the first exhibition of a stone or a stick, as the dogs of the aborigines are wont to do. A shrill, cracked, but clear voice from within, uplifted in energetic objurgation, stilled the clamor, and we entered upon a scene that beggars and defies description. We had seen poverty before; but had never an adequate conception of its extreme until now.

A bundle of rags, endowed with suspicious and alarming powers of locomotion, advanced to do the honors of the mansion. An unearthly squeak, that would have driven a parrot of any ear distracted, proclaimed that the thing was human; and after close inspection, we made out a set of features which we could only have supposed to belong to Calvin Edson, or the Witch of Endor. The head surmounted a withered atomy, from which every muscular fibre seemed to have dried away. There was nothing left for Decay to prey upon: a particle more of waste, and the fabric must have evaporated, or been scattered with the first puff, like a pinch of snuff. This was the worthy mother of the brood. Age could not make her head whiter. She must have been more than a century old, and yet hearing, vision, speech, every faculty, was unimpaired, and she was as brisk as any of the horde. According to all appearances, Time had lost all power over her, and she may yet live longer than the everlasting pyramids. Fancy a mummy stalking from its case, and you have s me idea of this spectral apparition.

Around the den were arranged without arrangement four rude bedsteads, guiltless then and forever of beds, or any succedaneum therefor; these being unnecessary and enervating luxuries, in the opinion of the inmates. Not one of these was born in a bed, or had ever pressed one; and why should they not do as they had ever done? The only purpose of the frames seemed to be to keep them from dying on the bare earth. The whole score and a half of humanities might have possessed some four or five thread-bare and tattered blankets, such a stock of clothing as might have furnished forth one respectable scare-crow, and perhaps half a shirt among them; but of the latter item we are somewhat uncertain, as we considered any particular scrutiny especially indelicate. The hut was literally full of trumpery, the use of most of which it were difficult even to guess. The following, as nearly as memory serves us, is a correct inventory : An old worn-out saddle; three steel-traps; fifteen dogs, bitches, and puppies; about a crate full of damaged crockery and pottery; an iron pot, without a bale or cover, and two legs off; a tin-kettle, with three holes in the bottom; a fish-spear, an axe, a dozen fishingrods and tackle; as many rags as would set up a paper mill; about a peck of clams, a damaged bucket, and a great variety of other things nameless and indescribable.

These true philosophers all appeared to enjoy the most robust health, with one exception, who was shaking with a paroxysm of ague on one of the frames before mentioned. The men were stout, hearty fellows, who might do their country good service at the tail of a plough, or the end of a musket; but their ambition does not soar so high. They literally take no thought for to-morrow, though they

very well know what a day must bring forth. They justly consider themselves

'out of Fortune's power;

He that is down, can fall no lower.'

Once in a great while they may be persuaded to perform a day's labor; but these are rare and painful occasions, always followed by regret and repentance; and when their immediate wants are supplied, they immediately return to the luxurious far niente, which is their second nature, and which they enjoy in a perfection only appreciable by the Neapolitan lazzaroni. When they have thus been compelled to pass a night under a roof, it has been remarked that no human logic can persuade one of them to submit to the abhorred contact of soap and water, or to sleep in a bed; supposing any person could be found willing so to accommodate them. They own no boats, and they neither hire nor borrow them. Such property requires care and trouble, and rowing is laborious. A cow was once the apex of their ambition; but hunger knocks often at their door, and was fatal to poor Brindle. They are not rich enough to buy a gun. The conies, partridges, snapping-tortoises, frogs, squirrels, and such small deer, are their flocks and herds, and the earth produces wild artichokes and other esculent roots. As for their religion, they believe in beef and bread, and go to church, like parasitical insects, as often as they are carried. They believe that the earth is flat, and that the city of NewYork and the Narrows are its limits. To be hung up in a cage in the sunshine, with license to scratch themselves, and to be well fed, constitutes their notion of heaven; and the county alms-house, where able-bodied people are constrained to work, is the purgatory of their imagination, or something worse. They think it is better to sleep than to be awake; to lie than to sit; to sit than to stand; to stand than to walk, and to walk than to run. Dancing is to them an incomprehensible abomination. They own no lord, they heed no law. They have nothing, and they want nothing. To cold, heat, rain, etc., they are pefectly indifferent, and their only known evil is pain, which comes to them only in the shape of hunger and intermittent fever. Nerves and delicacy they never heard of. Thus have they ever lived, and thus they will die.

The women, at the time of our visit, differed from the men only in attire, a superior volubility, a natural, rough-hewn coquetry, and the possession of certain brass trinkets, faded ribbons, and other fantastic fineries. None of them were either young or handsome enough to mark them as victims of man's villany; nor could any injury be done them in that respect, were it otherwise. The smaller fry about their wretched cabin attest that they have not neglected the first command of God to man, though no priest or preacher can say that he has received a wedding fee on account of either of them. Their usual employment is to loll upon fences and gather berries, and they are also said to be skilful in roots and herbs. Some of them sometimes go to service, for a time; but they soon return to their lair, like a sow to her wallowing in the mire. The alms-house has also afforded them an asylum in cases of emergency; but they invariably escape from it as soon as there is any work to be done. They toil not, neither do

« PreviousContinue »