Read Ebook: The Atlantic Monthly Volume 05 No. 30 April 1860 A Magazine of Literature Art and Politics by Various

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And thus carelessly was swept into my path, as a stray waif, that man who would in one little moment change my whole life! It is always so. Our life sweeps onward like a river, brushing in here a little sand, there a few rushes, till the accumulated drift-wood chokes the current, or some larger tree falling across it turns it into a new channel.

"'The end of a man is an action, and not a thought, though it be the noblest,' as Carlyle has well written," he triumphantly quoted to me, as, leaning over the little railing of the yacht, watching, at least I was, the smooth, green water gliding under the clean-cutting keel, we had been talking earnestly for some time. "A thought has value only as it is a potential action; if the action be abortive, the thought is as useless as a crank that fails to move an engine-wheel."

"Then, if action is the wheel, and thought only the crank, what does the body of your engine represent? For what purpose are your wheels turning? For the sake of merely moving?"

"Then you leave out of your scheme a real engine, with a journey to accomplish, and an end to arrive at; for so wheels would only move wheels, and there would be an endless chain of machinery, with no plan, no object for its existence. Does not the very necessity we feel of having a reason for the existence, the operation of anything, a large plan in which to gather up all ravelled threads of various objects, proclaim thought as the final end, the real thing, of which action, more especially human action, is but the inadequate visible expression? What kinds of action does Carlyle mean, that are to be the wheels for our obedient thoughts to set in motion? Hand, arm, leg, foot action? These are all our operative machinery. Does he mean that our 'noblest thought' is to be chained as a galley-slave to these, to give them means for working a channel through which motive power may be poured in upon them? Are we to think that our fingers and feet may move and so we live, or they to run for our thought, and we live to think?"

"A somewhat dreary end," I said, half to myself. "The whole world, then, must content itself with spinning one blind action out of another; which means that we must continually alter or displace something, merely to be able to displace and alter something else."

"And what," I said, "when hand-and-foot-action shall have ceased? will you then allow some play for thought-action?"

"We have no time to think of that," he returned, walking away, and thus stopping our conversation.

The man was consistent in his theory, at least. Having exalted physical motion to the place he did, he refused to see that the action he prized was more valuable through the thought it developed; consequently he reduced all actions to the same level, and prided himself upon stripping a deed of all its marvellousness or majesty. He did uncommon things in such a matter-of-fact way that he made them common by the performance. The faint spiritual double which I found lurking behind his steel and iron he either solidified with his metallic touch or pertinaciously denied its existence.

"Plato was a fool," he said, "to talk of an ideal table; for, supposing he could see it, and prove its existence, what good could it do? You can neither eat off it, nor iron on it, nor do anything else with it; so, for all practical purposes, a pine table serves perfectly well without hunting after the ideal. I want something that I can go up to, and know it is there by seeing and touching."

"But," said I, "does not that very susceptibility to bodily contact remove the table to an indefinite distance from you? If we can see and handle a thing, and yet not be able to hold that subtile property of generic existence, by which, one table being made, an infinite class is created, so real that tables may actually be modelled on it, and yet so indefinite that you cannot set your hand on any table or collection of tables and say, 'It is here,'--if we can be absolutely conscious that we see the table, and yet have no idea how its image reflected on our retina can produce that absolute consciousness, does not the table grow dim and misty, and slip far away out of reach, of apprehension, much more of comprehension?"

"Then you see nothing strange and solemn in this wonderful stream? nothing in the weird civilization crouching at the feet, vainly looking to the head of its master hidden in the clouds? nothing in the echoing footsteps of nations passing down its banks to their destiny? nothing in the solemn, unbroken silence brooding over the fountain whence sprang this marvellous river, to bear precious gifts to thousands and millions, and again retreat unknown? Is there no mystery in unsolved questions, no wonder in miracles, no awe in inapproachability?"

"I see," said he, steadily, "that a river of some thousand miles long has run through a country peopled by contented, or ignorant, or barbarous people, none of whom, of course, would take the slightest interest in tracing the river; that the dangers that have guarded the marvellous secret, as you call it, are not intrinsic to the secret itself, but are purely accidental and contingent There is no more reason why the source of the Nile should not be found than that of the Connecticut; so I do not see that it is really at all inapproachable or awful."

"What in the world, Herndon," cried I, in desperation, "what in the name of common sense ever induced you to set out on this expedition? What do you want to discover the source of the Nile for?"

He answered with the ready air of one who has long ago made up his mind confidently on the subject he is going to speak about.

"And call it," I added, "Herndonville."

"Perhaps," he said, gravely. "At all events, my name will be inseparably connected with the enterprise; and if I can get the steamboat started during my lifetime, I shall make a comfortable fortune from the speculation."

"What a gigantic scheme!" I exclaimed.

"Ah," he said, complacently, "we Americans don't stick at trifles."

"Oh, marvellous practical genius of America!" I cried, "to eclipse Herodotus and Diodorus, not to mention Bruce and Cailliaud, and inscribe Herndonville on the arcanum of the Innermost! If the Americans should discover the origin of evil, they would run up penitentiaries all over the country, modelled to suit 'practical purposes.'"

"I think that would pay," said Herndon, reflectively.

After some days' pushing in this way, now driven by a strong head wind almost back from our course, again, by a sudden change, carried rapidly many miles on our journey,--after some days of this sailing, we arrived at a long, low reef of rocks. The water here became so shallow and boisterous that further attempt at sailing was impossible, and we determined to take our boat to pieces as much as we could, and carry it with us, while we walked along the shore of the river. I concluded, from the marked depression in the ground we had just passed, that there must be a corresponding elevation about here, to give the water a sufficient head to pass over the high ground below; and the almost cataract appearance of the river added strength to my hypothesis. We were all four armed to the teeth, and the natives had shown themselves, hitherto, either so friendly or so indifferent that we did not have much apprehension on account of personal safety. So we set out with beating hearts. Our path was exceedingly difficult to traverse, leading chiefly among low trees and over the sharp stones that had rolled from the river,--now close by the noisy stream, which babbled and foamed as if it had gone mad,--now creeping on our knees through bushes, matted with thick, twining vines,--now wading across an open morass,--now in mimosa woods, or slipping in and out of the feathery dhelb-palms.

Since our conversation spoken of above, Herndon and I had talked little with each other, and now usually spoke merely of the incidents of the journey, the obstacles, etc.; we scarcely mentioned that for which we were both longing with intense desire, and the very thoughts of which made my heart beat quicker and the blood rush to my face. One day we came to a place where the river made a bend of about two miles and then passed almost parallel to our point of view. I proposed to Herndon that he should pursue the course of the river, and that I would strike a little way back into the country, and make a short cut across to the other side of the bend, where he and the men would stop, pitch our night-tent, and wait for me. Herndon assented, and we parted. The low fields around us changed, as I went on, to firm, hard, rising ground, that gradually became sandy and arid. The luxuriant vegetation that clung around the banks of the river seemed to be dried up little by little, until only a few dusty bushes and thorn-acacias studded in clumps a great, sandy, and rocky tract of country, which rolled monotonously back from the river border with a steadily increasing elevation. A sandy plain never gives me a sense of real substance; it always seems as if it must be merely a covering for something,--a sheet thrown over the bed where a dead man is lying. And especially here did this broad, trackless, seemingly boundless desert face me with its blank negation, like the old obstinate "No" which Nature always returns at first to your eager questioning. It provoked me, this staring reticence of the scenery, and stimulated me to a sort of dogged exertion. I think I walked steadily for about three hours over the jagged rocks and burning sands, interspersed with a few patches of straggling grass,--all the time up hill, with never a valley to vary the monotonous climbing,--until the bushes began to thicken in about the same manner as they had thinned into the desert, the grass and herbage herded closer together under my feet, and, beating off the ravenous sand, gradually expelled the last trace of it, a few tall trees strayed timidly among the lower shrubbery, growing more and more thickly, till I found myself at the border of an apparently extensive forest. The contrast was great between the view before and behind me. Behind lay the road I had achieved, the monotonous, toilsome, wearisome desert, the dry, formal introduction, as it were, to my coming journey. Before, long, cool vistas opened green through delicious shades,--a track seemed to be almost made over the soft grass, that wound in and out among the trees, and lost itself in interminable mazes. I plunged into the profound depths of the still forest, and confidently followed for path the first open space in which I found myself.

It was a strangely still wood for the tropics,--no chattering parroquets, no screaming magpies, none of the sneering, gibing dissonances that I had been accustomed to,--all was silent, and yet intensely living. I fancied that the noble trees took pleasure in growing, they were so energized with life in every leaf. I noticed another peculiarity,--there was little underbrush, little of the luxuriance of vines and creepers, which is so striking in an African forest. Parasitic life, luxurious idleness, seemed impossible here; the atmosphere was too sacred, too solemn, for the fantastic ribaldry of scarlet runners, of flaunting yellow streamers. The lofty boughs interlaced in arches overhead, and the vast dim aisles opened far down in the tender gloom of the wood and faded slowly away in the distance. And every little spray of leaves that tossed airily in the pleasant breeze, every slender branch swaying gently in the wind, every young sapling pushing its childish head panting for light through the mass of greenery and quivering with golden sunbeams, every trunk of aged tree gray with moss and lichens, every tuft of flowers, seemed thrilled and vivified by some wonderful knowledge which it held secret, some consciousness of boundless, inexhaustible existence, some music of infinite unexplored thought concealing treasures of unlimited action. And it was the knowledge, the consciousness, that it was unlimited which seemed to give such elastic energy to this strange forest. But at all events, it was such a relief to find the everlasting negation of the desert nullified, that my dogged resolution insensibly changed to an irrepressible enthusiasm, which bore me lightly along, scarcely sensible of fatigue.

The ascent had become so much steeper, and parts of the forest seemed to slope off into such sudden declivities and even precipices, that I concluded I was ascending a mountain, and, from the length of time I had been in the forest, I judged that it must be of considerable height. The wood suddenly broke off as it had begun, and, emerging from the cool shade, I found myself in a complete wilderness of rock. Rocks of enormous size were thrown about in apparently the wildest confusion, on the side of what I now perceived to be a high mountain. How near the summit I was I had no means of determining, as huge boulders blocked up the view at a few paces ahead. I had had about eight hours' tramp, with scarcely any cessation; yet now my excitement was too great to allow me to pause to eat or rest. I was anxious to press on, and determine that day the secret which I was convinced lay entombed in this sepulchre. So again I pressed onward,--this time more slowly,--having to pick my way among the bits of jagged granite filling up terraces sliced out of the mountain, around enormous rocks projecting across my path,--overhanging precipices that sheered straight down into dark abysses, --creeping through narrow passages formed by the junction of two immense boulders. Tearing my hands with the sharp corners of the rocks, I climbed in vain hope of at last seeing the summit. Still rocks piled on rocks faced my wearied eyes, vainly striving to pierce through some chink or cranny into the space behind them. Still rocks, rocks, rocks, against whose adamantine sides my feeble will dashed restlessly and impotently. My eyeballs almost burst, as it seemed, in the intense effort to strain through those stone prison-walls. And by one of those curious links of association by which two distant scenes are united as one, I seemed again to be sitting in my garret, striving to pierce the darkness for an answer to the question then raised, and at the same moment passed over me, like the sweep of angels' wings, the consciousness of that Presence which had there infolded me. And with that consciousness, the eager, irritated waves of excitement died away, and there was a calm, in which I no longer beat like a caged beast against the never-ending rocks, but, borne irresistibly along in the strong current of a mighty, still emotion, pressed on with a certainty that left no room for excitement, because none for doubt. And so I came upon it. Swinging round one more rock, hanging over a breathless precipice, and landing upon the summit of the mountain, I beheld it stretched at my feet: a lake about five miles in circumference, bedded like an eye in the naked, bony rock surrounding it, with quiet rippling waters placidly smiling in the level rays of the afternoon sun,--the Unfathomable Secret, the Mystery of Ages, the long sought for, the Source of the Nile.

For, from a broad cleft in the rocks, the water hurled itself out of its hiding-place, and, dashing down over its rocky bed, rushed impetuous over the sloping country, till, its force being spent, it waded tediously through the slushing reeds of the hill-land again, and so rolled down to sea. For, while I stood there, it seemed as if my vision were preternaturally sharpened, and I followed the bright river in its course, through the alternating marsh and desert,--through the land where Zeus went banqueting among the blameless Ethiopians, --through the land where the African princes watched from afar the destruction of Cambyses's army,--past Mero?, Thebes, Cairo; bearing upon its heaving bosom anon the cradle of Moses, the gay vessels of the inundation festivals, the stately processions of the mystic priesthood, the gorgeous barge of Cleopatra, the victorious trireme of Antony, the screaming vessels of fighting soldiers, the stealthy boats of Christian monks, the glittering, changing, flashing tumult of thousands of years of life,--ever flowing, ever ebbing, with the mystic river, on whose surface it seethed and bubbled. And the germ of all this vast varying scene lay quietly hidden in the wonderful lake at my feet. But human life is always composed of inverted cones, whose bases, upturned to the eye, present a vast area, diversified with countless phenomena; but when the screen that closes upon them a little below the surface is removed, we shall be able to trace the many-lined figures, each to its simple apex,--one little point containing the essence and secret of the whole. Once or twice in the course of a lifetime are a few men permitted to catch a glimpse of these awful Beginnings,--to touch for a minute the knot where all the tangled threads ravel themselves out smoothly. I had found such a place,--had had such an ineffable vision,--and, overwhelmed with tremendous awe, I sank on my knees, lost in GOD.

After a little while, as far as I can recollect, I rose and began to take the customary observations, marked the road by which I had come up the mountain, and planned a route for rejoining Herndon. But ere long all subordinate thoughts and actions seemed to be swallowed up in the great tide of thought and feeling that overmastered me. I scarcely remember anything from the time when the lake first burst upon my view, till I met Herndon again. But I know, that, as the day was nearly spent, I was obliged to give up the attempt to travel back that night, especially as I now began to feel the exhaustion attendant upon my long journey and fasting. I could not have slept among those rocks, eternal guardians of the mighty secret. The absence of all breathing, transitory existence but my own rendered it too solemn for me to dare to intrude there. So I went back to the forest, ate some supper, and, wrapped in a blanket I had brought with me, went to sleep under the arching branches of a tree. I have as little recollection of my next day's journey, except that I defined a diagonal and thus avoided the bend. I found Herndon waiting in front of the tent, rather impatient for my arrival.

"I have found the source of the Nile," I said, simply.

"Why, Zeitzer!" he cried, "you are the lucky man, after all. Why, your fortune's made,--you'll be the greatest man of the age. You must come to America; that is the place for appreciating such things. You'll have a Common-Council dinner in Boston, and a procession in New York. Your book will sell like wildfire. You'll be a lion of the first magnitude. Just think! The Man who discovered the Source of the Nile!"

I stood bewildered, like one suddenly awakened from sleep. The unusual excitement in one generally so self-possessed and indifferent as my companion made me wonder sufficiently; but these allusions to my greatness, my prospects, completely astounded me. What had I done,--I who had been chosen, and led step by step, with little interference of my own, to this end? What did this talk of noise and clamorous notoriety mean?

"To think," Herndon ran on, "that you should have beaten me, after all! that you should have first seen, first drunk of, first bathed in"--

"Drunk of! bathed in!" I repeated, mechanically. "Herndon, are you crazy? Would I dare to profane the sacred fountain?"

He made no reply, unless a quizzical smile might be considered as such,--but drew me within the tent, out of hearing of the two Egyptians, and bade me give an account of my adventures. When I had finished,--

But, ah! how dim became the vision of that quiet lake on the summit of the mountain! How that vivid lightning-revelation faded into obscurity! Was Pharaoh again ascending his fatal chariot?

The next day we started for the ascent. We determined to follow the course of the river backwards around the bend and set out from my former starting-point, as any other course might lead us into a hopeless dilemma. We had no difficulty in finding the sandy plain, and soon reached landmarks which I was sure were on the right road; but a tramp of six or eight hours--still in the road I had passed before--brought us no nearer to our goal. In short, we wandered three days in that desert, utterly in vain. My heart sunk within me at every failure; with sickening anxiety I scanned the horizon at every point, but nothing was visible but stunted bushes and white pebbles glistening in the glaring sand.

The fourth day came,--and Herndon at last stopped short, and said, in his steady, immobile voice,--

"Shade of Cheops, forbid!" I exclaimed.

"Cheops be hanged!" returned my irreverent companion. "The world suffers too much now from overcrowded population to permit a man to claim standing-room three thousand years after his death,--especially when the claim is for some acres apiece, as in the case of these pyramid-builders. Will you go back with me?"

But we two were not left long alone in the Desert. The next day a party of natives surprised us, and, after some desperate fighting, we were taken prisoners, sold as slaves from tribe to tribe into the interior, and at length fell into the hands of some traders on the western coast, who gave us our freedom. Unwilling, however, to return home without some definite success, I made several voyages in a merchant-vessel. But I was born for one purpose; failing in that, I had nothing further to live for. The core of my life was touched at that fatal river, and a subtile disease has eaten it out till nothing but the rind is left. A wave, gathering to the full its mighty strength, had upreared itself for a moment majestically above its fellows,--falling, its scattered spray can only impotently sprinkle the dull, dreary shore. Broken and nerveless, I can only wait the lifting of the curtain, quietly wondering if a failure be always irretrievable,--if a prize once lost can never again be found.

AN EXPERIENCE.

A common spring of water, sudden welling, Unheralded, from some unseen impelling, Unrecognized, began his life alone. A rare and haughty vine looked down above him, Unclasped her climbing glory, stooped to love him, And wreathed herself about his curb of stone.

Ah, happy fount! content, in upward smiling, To feel no life but in her fond beguiling, To see no world but through her veil of green! And happy vine, secure, in downward gazing, To find one theme his heart forever praising,-- The crystal cup a throne, and she the queen!

I speak, I grew about him, ever dearer; The water rose to meet me, ever nearer; The water passed one day this curb of stone. Was it a weak escape from righteous boundings, Or yet a righteous scorn of false surroundings? I only know I live my life alone.

Alone? The smiling fountain seems to chide me,-- The constant fountain, rooted still beside me, And speaking wistful words I toil to hear: Ah, how alone! The mystic words confound me; And still the awakened fountain yearns beyond me, Streaming to some unknown I may not near.

"Oh, list," he cries, "the wondrous voices calling! I hear a hundred streams in silver falling; I feel the far-off pulses of the sea. Oh, come!" Then all my length beside him faring, I strive and strain for growth, and soon, despairing, I pause and wonder where the wrong can be.

I tend not so; I hear no voices calling; I have no care for rivers silver-falling; I hate the far-off sea that wrought my pain. Oh for some spell of change, my life new-aiming! Or best, by spells his too much life reclaiming, Hold all within the fountain-curb again!

ABOUT THIEVES.

It is recorded in the pages of Diodorus Siculus, that Actisanes, the Ethiopian, who was king of Egypt, caused a general search to be made for all Egyptian thieves, and that all being brought together, and the king having "given them a just hearing," he commanded their noses to be cut off,--and, of course, what a king of Egypt commanded was done; so that all the Egyptian "knucks," "cracksmen," "shoplifters," and pilferers generally, of whatever description known to the slang terras of the time, became marked men.

Inspired, perhaps, with the very idea on which the Ethiopian acted, the police authorities have lately provided, that, in an out-of-the-way room, on a back street, the honest men of New York city may scan the faces of its thieves, and hold silent communion with that interesting part of the population which has agreed to defy the laws and to stand at issue with society. Without disturbing the deep pool of penalogy, or entering at all into the question, as to whether Actisanes was right, or whether the police of New York do not overstep their authority in putting on the walls this terrible bill of attainder against certain citizens of the United States, whom their country's constitution has endeavored to protect from "infamous punishments,"--the student of moral science will certainly be thankful for the faces.

Thieves, like the State of Massachusetts in the great man's oration, "have their history," and it may be safely asserted that they did not steal it. It is dimly hinted in the verse of a certain ancient, that there was a time in a remoter antiquity "ere thieves were feared"; yet even this is cautiously quiet as to their non-existence. Homer, recounting traditions old in his time, chuckles with narrative delight over the boldness, wit, and invention of a great cattle-stealer, and for his genius renders him the ultimatum of Greek tribute, intellectually speaking, by calling him a son of Zeus. Herodotus speaks plainly and tells a story; and the best of all his stories, to our thinking, is a thief's story, which we abridge thus.

"The king Rhampsinitus, the priests informed me, possessed a great quantity of money, such as no succeeding king was able to surpass or nearly come up to, and, wishing to treasure it, he built a chamber of stone, one wall of which was against the palace. But the builder, forming a plan against it, even in building, fitted one of the stones so that it might be easily taken out by two men or even one.

"In course of time, and when the king had laid up his treasures in the chamber, the builder, finding his end approaching, called to him his two sons and described to them how he had contrived, and, having clearly explained everything, he told them, if they would observe his directions closely, they might be stewards of the king's riches. He accordingly died, and the sons were not long in applying themselves to the work; but, having come by night to the palace, and having found the stone as described, they easily removed it, and carried off a great quantity of treasure.

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