Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851», sayfa 12
"Many days elapsed before we again beheld the tall giraffe, nor were our eyes gladdened with his sight until, after we had crossed the Cashan Mountains to the country of the Baquaina, for the express purpose of seeking for him. After the many contretemps, how shall I describe the sensations I experienced as, on a cool November evening, after rapidly following some fresh traces in profound silence, for several miles, I at length counted from the back of Breslau, my most trusty steed, no fewer than thirty-two of various sizes, industriously stretching their peacock necks to crop the tiny leaves that fluttered above their heads, in a flowering mimosa grove which beautified the scenery. My heart leapt within me, and my blood coursed like quicksilver through my veins, for, with a firm wooded plain before me, I knew they were mine; but, although they stood within a hundred yards of me, having previously determined to try the boarding system, I reserved my fire.
"Notwithstanding that I had taken the field expressly to look for giraffes, and in consequence of several of the remarkable spoors of these animals having been seen the evening before, had taken four mounted Hottentots in my suite, all excepting Piet had, as usual, slipped off unperceived in pursuit of a troop of koodoos. Our stealthy approach was soon opposed by an ill-tempered rhinoceros, which, with her ugly old-fashioned calf, stood directly in the path, and the twinkling of her bright little eyes, accompanied by a restless rolling of the body, giving earnest of her mischievous intentions, I directed Piet to salute her with a broadside, at the same time putting spurs to my horse. At the report of the gun, and sudden clattering of the hoofs, away bounded the herd in grotesque confusion, clearing the ground by a succession of frog-like leaps, and leaving me far in their rear. Twice were their towering forms concealed from view by a park of trees, which we entered almost at the same instant, and twice, on emerging from the labyrinth, did I perceive them tilting over an eminence far in advance, their sloping backs reddening in the sunshine, as with giant port they topped the ridges in right gallant style. A white turban that I wore round my hunting-cap, being dragged off by a projecting bough, was instantly charged and trampled under foot by three rhinoceroses, and long afterward, looking over my shoulder, I could perceive the ungainly brutes in the rear fagging themselves to overtake me. In the course of five minutes the fugitives arrived at a small river, the treacherous sands of which receiving their spider-legs, their flight was greatly retarded, and by the time they had floundered to the opposite side and scrambled to the top of the bank, I could perceive that their race was run. Patting the steaming neck of my good steed, I urged him again to his utmost, and instantly found myself by the side of the herd. The lordly chief being readily distinguishable from the rest by his dark chestnut robe, and superior stature, I applied the muzzle of my rifle behind his dappled shoulder with my right hand, and drew both triggers; but he still continued to shuffle along, and being afraid of losing him should I dismount, among the extensive mimosa groves with which the landscape was now obscured, I sat in my saddle, loading and firing behind the elbow, and then placing myself across his path to obstruct his progress. Mute, dignified, and majestic stood the unfortunate victim, occasionally stooping his elastic neck toward his persecutor, the tears trickling from the lashes of his dark humid eye, as broadside after broadside was poured into his brawny front.
'His drooping head sinks gradually low,
And through his side the last drops ebbing slow
From the red gash fall heavy one by one,
Like the first of a thunder shower.'
"Presently a convulsive shivering seized his limbs, his coat stood on end, his lofty frame began to totter, and at the seventeenth discharge from the deadly grooved bore, like a falling minaret bowing his graceful head from the skies, his proud form was prostrate in the dust. Never shall I forget the intoxicating excitement of that moment! At last, then, the summit of my ambition was actually attained, and the towering giraffe laid low! Tossing my turban-less cap into the air, alone in the wild wood, I hurraed with bursting exultation, and unsaddling my steed, sank, exhausted with delight, beside the noble prize that I had won.
"While I leisurely contemplated the massive form before me, seeming as though it had been cast in a mould of brass, and wrapped in a hide an inch and a half in thickness, it was no longer matter of astonishment that a bullet discharged from a distance of eighty or ninety yards should have been attended with little effect upon such amazing strength.
"Two hours were passed in completing a drawing, and Piet still not making his appearance, I cut off the ample tail, which exceeded five feet in length, and was measureless the most estimable trophy I had ever gained. But on proceeding to saddle my horse, which I had left quietly grazing by the running brook, my chagrin may be conceived when I discovered that he had taken advantage of my occupation to free himself from his halter and abscond. Being ten miles from the wagons, and in a perfectly strange country, I felt convinced that the only chance of saving my pet from the clutches of the lion, was to follow his trail; while doing which with infinite difficulty, the ground scarcely deigning to receive a foot-print, I had the satisfaction of meeting Piet and Mohanycom, who had fortunately seen and recaptured the truant. Returning to the giraffe, we all feasted merrily on the flesh, which, although highly scented with the rank mokaala blossoms, was far from despicable, and losing our way in consequence of the twin-like resemblance of two scarped hills, we did not finally regain the wagons until after the setting sunbeams had ceased to play upon the trembling leaves of the light acacias, and the golden splendor which was sleeping upon the plain had gradually passed away."
Singular and striking as is the form of the giraffe, it only furnishes a proof of the wonderful manner in which an all-wise Creator has adapted means to ends. A vegetable feeder, but an inhabitant of sterile and sandy deserts, its long slender neck and sloping body, enable it to reach with ease its favorite food: leaf by leaf is daintily plucked from the lofty branch by the pliant tongue, and a mouthful of tender and juicy food is speedily accumulated. The oblique and narrow apertures of the nostrils, defended even to their margins by a chevaux de frise of strong hairs, and surrounded by muscular fibres by which they can be hermetically sealed, effectually prevent the entrance of the fine particles of sand which the suffocating storms of the desert raise in fiery clouds, destructive to the lord of the creation. Erect on those stilt-like legs, the giraffe surveys the wide expanse, and feeds at ease, for those mild, large eyes are so placed that it can see not only on all sides, but even behind, rendering it next to impossible for an enemy to approach undiscovered. As we reflect on these and numberless other points for admiration presented by the giraffe, we involuntarily exclaim with the Psalmist, "Oh, Lord! how manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all!"
"Nature to these, without profusion kind,
The proper organs, proper powers assigned;
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the state,
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate."
THE SOLAR SYSTEM
THE earth is a huge oblate or orange-shaped sphere, spinning on its shorter axis like a humming-top, yet at such a rate of speed as to seem standing still; it goes once round in twenty-four hours, its rotation being both the cause and the measure of day and night. The highest mountains range from four to five miles in height; the greatest depth of the ocean is probably little more than five miles, although Ross let down 27,000 feet of sounding-line in vain on one occasion. So that the earth's surface is very irregular; but its mountainous ridges and oceanic valleys are no greater things in proportion to its whole bulk, than the roughness of the rind of the orange it resembles in shape. The geological crust—that is to say, the total depth to which geologists suppose themselves to have reached in the way of observation—is no thicker in proportion than a sheet of thin writing paper pasted on a globe two feet in diameter. The surface of the earth is some 148,500,000 of miles in extent; and only one-fourth of that large space is dry land, the rest being ocean and ice. The atmosphere rises all round to a height between forty-five and fifty miles above the sea-level. The solar radiance sends such heat as it brings no deeper any where than 100 feet into the surface or scurfskin of the dry land—from forty to a hundred feet, one-third of the sun's heat being absorbed by the air. Yet the deeper man digs beyond the hundred feet, the warmer he finds the earth, and that at a somewhat determinable rate of increase. Supposing that rate of increment to go on toward the centre, it is computable that the solid underwork of the world, say granite by way of conjecture, must be in a state of fusion at no vast depth from the ground on which we tread. Let the scientific imagination descend a little lower, and it will find the melted granite in the form of a fiery vapor or gas—the dry steam of a red-hot liquid, in which the rock-built foundations of "the everlasting hills" melt like icebergs. But this is conjectural and probable, not observable and proved.
Far away from this spinning and perilous globe of ours, at the distance of some 95,000,000 miles, stands the sun. A ray of light, starting from his surface at any given moment, takes eight minutes to reach us, although light runs at the speed of 195,000 miles in a second. The sun is 1,380,000 times as large as the earth, and 355,000 times as heavy; but the stuff of which he is made is just about a fourth part as dense as the average matter of this world. The sun is of as light a substance, taking his whole body, as coal; whereas the earth is twice as heavy as brimstone, striking the mean between the air, the ocean, the dry land, and the internal vapor. The sun has an atmosphere like the earth, or rather he has two. One of them, close upon his solid surface, seems to resemble our own; it bears cloudy bodies in its upper levels. The other is a sort of fiery gas, surrounding the former, kindled and sustained in the calorific and luminous state, no man knows or can conjecture how. Storms in the lower atmosphere are constantly blowing this phosphorescent airy envelope aside, so as to afford us glimpses down into the (comparatively) dark and black recesses beneath. These are the spots on the sun. Galileo inferred the rotation of the sun on his axis from the motions of those spots. The explanation of those spots, afforded by the discoveries of Wilson and Herschel, diminishes the value of the inference; but no Copernican can doubt that the sun is forever turning, and that with unimaginable swiftness and impetuosity.
At the distance, then, of more than ninety-five millions of miles, this dim spot which men call earth, this great globe and all its dwellers, this ever-spinning planet, revolves around the sun once every year, that revolution being both the cause and the measure of that space of time. Its orbit is not a circle; it is an ellipse, but not very far removed from the circular path. The terrestrial axis is not at right angles to that ellipse, else there were no seasons; it is somewhat inclined. The earth, once regarded as the fixed and solid centre of creation, is now to be conceived of as a globular sphere of some fire-blown stream, bounded by a film of rock like a soap-bubble, carrying an unresting sea in the hollows of its rind, swathed in a soft gauze of air, going round upon itself every day, running round the sun every year; and all that with so much silence, security, and stillness of speed that nobody ever suspects the dread predicament of physical circumstance in which he wakes and sleeps, lives and dies, does good or evil, and passes away to judgment. It is difficult to realize the truth, now that it is told; for the knowledge of the intellect is one thing, and the consent of the whole man is quite another.
Precisely as the earth goes round the sun from year to year, the moon goes round the earth from month to month, and that at a distance of some 240,000 miles; the same lunar side or hemisphere being always turned toward us, although that satellite turns upon her own axis as well as the earth and the sun. The earth is in repose so far as the moon is concerned; it is her sun. The two combined, being as true a unity as any chemical molecule which is composed of two atoms, go round the sun as if they were one; the earth carries her moon with her. So that it is possible, if not probable in the first instance, that the sun, though in repose as to the earth and her moon (and, indeed, to all the planets yet to be mentioned) may be in motion on some vast orbit of his own; an orbit along which he carries all his planetary adherents with him, just as the earth takes her moon round the sun. It is curious to perceive how, not only in the case of our own moon, but in the cases of the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, and actually in those of all the planets considered as the moons of the sun, the Platonic epicycle really holds good. The earth turns on her heel, with the moon held out at arm's length, while she goes round the amphitheatre before the solar eye; so do the other moon-bearers. So does the sun himself upon a vaster arena and before a greater spectator, like another Briareus; holding out his seventeen planets, and nobody knows how many comets, in his hundred hands. The moons, of those solar planets which have them, represent the epi-epicyclical orbits of the Ptolemaic theory. It is curious, and also touching, to notice how often the errors of man are thus the shadows of truth. Were it not for the preceding shadows, indeed, the substance would never arrive; and therefore the Ptolemaics of the world are second, in value and in merit, only to epochal discoverers like Copernicus.
Suppose the sun to be represented by a radiant little orb two feet in diameter, in order to bring it within the measure of our eye; then this great globe of ours, with all its stupendous histories, is no bigger than a full-sized pea in proportion, revolving at the distance of 215 feet. Neptune, the outermost and last discovered of the planets, would stand at the distance of a mile and a quarter from a sun of that imaginary size, and it would be no larger than a cherry. Another cherry at the distance of three-quarters of a mile would stand for Uranus. Saturn would be a small orange at two-fifths of a mile from our two-feet solar body. A middle-sized orange, at the distance of a quarter of a mile, would be his Jupiter. At some 500 feet the nine little planets, commonly called asteroids, probably enough the fragments of an exploded orb, and now moving in a sort of group, would be represented by as many grains of sand. A pin-head, at 327 feet, would do for Mars. Then comes the earth. Still nearer the sun, namely at 142 feet from our present model, revolves Venus, of the dimensions of a pea. And finally little Mercury wheels along his orbit, with a radius of 82 feet, and the dimensions of a mustard seed.
Add the terrestrial moon, the four moons of Jupiter, the ring within ring that whirls round Saturn like an endless moon, the eight ordinary moons of that extraordinary planet, the moons of Uranus and Neptune (yet uncertain in their number), and it is impossible to say how many comets, not to forget the enormous groups or hosts of comparatively small stones or meteors, which are believed to be revolving round the solar centre like pigmy asteroids; and the Copernican conception of the mere constitution of the solar system, as developed by time and toil, is completed. The sun is 882,000 miles in diameter; the earth is 7926; Juno is 79; Saturn, 79,160, and so forth. The earth is more than five times as heavy as water; Saturn is as light as cork. The earth rotates in twenty-four hours; Jupiter in ten. The earth revolves in a year; Mars in a year and ten months; Mercury in about three months; Venus in seven and a half months; Jupiter in eleven years; Saturn in twenty-nine; Uranus in eighty-four; Neptune in a hundred and sixty-four. A summer in Mercury lasts some three weeks; in Neptune forty-one years. Light leaps from the sun to the earth in eight minutes; to Neptune in four hours. In short, the reader has to consider thousands of discovered facts, to carry with him a whole world of indubitable inference, and to study a truly wonderful bringing of the whole machinery, or rather organization, to geometrical law, before he can apprehend how glorious a whole the Copernican astronomy has become.
THE CONVICT'S TALE
IN the gloomy cell of the condemned were two persons. A muscular and powerfully-made man, heavily ironed, sat on a low bench placed in one corner. At a glance an observer would have pronounced him a native of Ireland. His head was well-formed, and covered with a thick mass of curling hair, of a light-brown color. The form of his mouth indicated courage and decision, and in the large blue eyes there was a thrilling expression of suffering and despair, which is never seen among the hardened in crime. It seemed as if the over-burdened spirit looked forth from those mirrors of the soul, and in his extremity asked sympathy and consolation from those among whom his fearful lot was cast.
His companion was a Catholic priest, the tones of whose voice, as he spoke in soothing accents to the condemned, were soft and clear as those of a woman.
The prisoner spoke, and his voice sounded dull and hollow. Hope was extinguished in his soul, and all the lighter inflections which express the varied emotions stirring within us, had ceased to vary the monotonous sounds which issued from his lips. A few more hours, and for him Time would have ceased to revolve. What then had he to do with human aspirations—with human joys? Nothing: his fate on earth was known—an outlaw's life, a felon's death!
The prisoner folded his manacled hands over his breast, and said:
"Why should I seek to prolong my wretched existence by asking such a commutation of my sentence? Death is but one pang, whereas solitary confinement for life, to which I should probably be doomed, would be a living torture. To live forever alone! Think what that must be even to a man innocent of crime, and feel how far worse than the bed of Procrustes it must be to one like me. No, holy father, let me die before the time appointed by Nature. Thus let the tender mercies of my race toward me be consummated."
"You are reckless, my son," said the priest, mildly. "Think how far worse it will be to face an offended Judge in your present mood, than to live for repentance."
"Repentance!" repeated the prisoner, in the same passionless manner; "that is ever the jargon of your cloth, father: you condemn a man without adverting to the motives, which, in his view, often sanctify the act."
The priest looked at him rebukingly. As if the slumbering energies of his impetuous nature were suddenly aroused by that look, the prisoner started from his seat; his pale features glowed; his eyes sparkled with fury, as he exclaimed: "Yes, I would again trample the life out of the wretch who murdered my love by deception and ill-treatment with as little, ay, with less compunction than if he had planted his dagger in her heart."
He covered his face with his hands, and large tears fell over them. Passionless as he was, the priest was touched by this overwhelming emotion in one who had hitherto been so passive. He laid his hand on the sufferer's arm, and kindly said: "Tell me, my son, how it was."
Melting beneath the voice of friendly sympathy, the murderer wept like a child. When he became calmer, he said:—
I will give you the history of my life, and you may judge me:
I was born on a wild and rock-bound portion of the coast of Ireland. My father was at the head of a small and wretchedly-built village, whose inhabitants were all, with one exception, wreckers. You have heard of those lawless and hardened men who exist on the spoils of unfortunate mariners, whose destruction is often brought about through means of false lights placed as beacons of safety. Fit parentage, you will say, for the murderer!
My mother died before I can remember her; and the schoolmaster of the parish was the only one who ever spoke to me of higher and nobler pursuits than those followed by my father's adherents. The dominie was a poor creature, whose necessities compelled him to abide in our neighborhood, though his moral sense was greatly shocked at the crimes which were often perpetrated around him. He fancied that he discovered some superiority in me to the other urchins who were taught to read in his turf-built hovel, and many hours did he employ in endeavoring to impress on my young mind the great evil of spending a life in such a pursuit as that to which I seemed destined. The good man died while I was yet a mere child, and I soon forgot his lectures. The schoolroom was abandoned for the ocean, and I grew up a promising pupil of my father's wild occupation. Young, buoyant, full of activity, I was ardently attached to the adventurous life I led. My moral perceptions were not active, and there was a keen delight in dashing through the surf, when the billows threatened each moment to ingulf my boat, in pursuit of the wealth the greedy waves seemed eager to claim as their prey.
I can not deny that in this absorbing object the shrieks of drowning wretches were too often unheeded, while we appropriated their property; but I can truly say that I was never deaf to the voice of entreaty, and frequently drew on myself the anger of my father by saving those whose claims on his spoils sometimes seriously interfered with the profits of the expedition. He never, however, refused to relinquish property thus claimed; for he was exceedingly desirous of allowing no serious cause of complaint to reach the ears of those who might make him feel the strong arm of authority, even in the out-of-the-way place in which he had fixed his residence. At an early age I considered myself as having no superior in my wild occupation. The strong energies of my nature had no other outlet. For days I would remain alone on the ocean, with the storm careering around my frail boat, and at such times my restless soul would look into the Future, and ask of Fate if such was ever to be my lot. My thoughts often soared beyond the limited horizon of my home, and I made several excursions among the cities of my native island; but I was glad to return to my wild retreat. Uncouth in manners and appearance, ignorant of the conventional forms of society, I keenly felt my inferiority to the only class among whom I would have deigned to dwell. After such humiliation I enjoyed a fiercer pleasure in my solitary excursions on the deep.
I can not say that my life was passed without excess. In such a home as mine, that would have been impossible. The frequent brawl, the wassail-bowl and drunken revel were almost of nightly occurrence; and I was fast sinking into the mere robber and inebriate, when an event occurred which rescued me for a time from the abyss on the brink of which I was standing.
He paused, as if nerving himself for what was to follow, and the priest gazed with strong interest on his features, over which swept many wild emotions, occasionally softened by a gleam of tenderer feeling. He at length proceeded:—
One evening, in the stormy month of March, a ship was seen from our look-out, drifting at the mercy of the wind and waves. The sky was a mass of leaden clouds, and the sun as it sank from view, threw a lurid glare over the angry waters, such as one might fancy to arise from the deepest abyss of Hades. My father ordered the false light to be shown, which had already brought swift destruction on many a gallant bark. I knew not why, but my heart was interested in the fate of this vessel, and I opposed his commands.
"Are you mad?" said he, sternly; "do you not see that this is a ship of the largest class, and the spoils must be great?"
"But her decks are crowded with human beings," said I, lowering the glass through which I had been surveying her; "and there are many women among them. Put not up the false light, I conjure you. If she founders, the spoils are legitimately yours, but—"
Even as I spoke the baleful light streamed far up into the rapidly darkening air; a private signal had been given to one of his men, and it was now too late to remonstrate. I rushed to my own boat, calling on a boy, who sometimes accompanied me on such occasions, to follow. One glance at the ship assured me that in five minutes she would be on the sunken rock over which the light gleamed, and no human power could prevent her from instantly going to pieces. My boat had weathered many a storm as severe as this threatened to be, and I was fearless as to the result. I resolved to die, or save some of the helpless creatures I had seen on the deck of the doomed ship. A whistle brought a large Newfoundland dog to my side, and in a very short time I was launched on the waves of the heaving ocean. My father nodded approvingly to me, thinking that I had made up my mind to assist as usual in rescuing our game from the waves.
"Right, my boy!" said he, through his speaking trumpet: "all you save to-night shall belong to yourself alone."
I was borne beyond the reach of his voice, and as I turned my face toward the ship, there came a violent burst of thunder which seemed to fill the echoing vault of heaven, attended by a continual flashing of lightning. Mingled with its awful roar was a cry more terrible still, that of human agony uttering its wild appeal to heaven for mercy in the last dire extremity. The ship had struck, and hundreds were cast into the ocean. The struggling wretches vainly raised their arms from the foaming waters, and implored help from those who could have saved them had they so willed it. The boats passed on and left them to their fate.
Having only myself and the boy to propel my boat, we did not reach the scene of action so soon as the rest. As I came within speaking distance, my father shouted to me to save a large box which was in reach of my boat-hooks, but I was deaf to his voice. Also near me were two of the unfortunate persons who had been shipwrecked. A man, with a female form clasped to his breast, was feebly struggling with the waves. I saw that his strength was nearly exhausted, and that before I could reach him both must sink. Then came my noble dog to my assistance. I pointed to the sinking forms: Hector sprang into the water, and swam to the side of the unfortunates; he seized the dress of the lady, made an effort to sustain both against the force of the raging waves, and turned a piteous glance on me as he felt their united weight too much for his strength. "Courage, old fellow!" I shouted, and made a desperate plunge with my boat to reach them. The impetus of the rising billow sent me past them. The father, for such I knew him to be, with sublime self-sacrifice relaxed his hold, and turning his death-pale face toward me, uttered some words which were lost amid the howling of the blast, and sank forever from my sight. Relieved of the double weight, Hector now gallantly struck out for my boat, and in a short space of time I had drawn the senseless girl from the waves. I wrapped her in my sailor's jacket, and used every means in my power to restore her. A few drops of brandy from a small flask I carried in my pocket, brought a faint shade of color to her cheeks and lips, and presently she unclosed her eyes and gazed wildly around. With a shudder she again closed them, and seemed to relapse into insensibility.
"She must have immediate attention, or she will perish!" I exclaimed, and I bent vigorously to the oar. Barney steered, and I never for an instant raised my eyes from the sweet pale face before me until my boat grated on the strand.
Never have I seen so purely beautiful a countenance as was hers. It seemed to me to be the mortal vesture chosen by one of the angels of heaven to express to earthly souls all the attributes of the children of light. She was fair as the lily which has just unfolded its stainless leaves to the kisses of the sun, with hair of a bright golden hue clinging in damp curls around her slender form. Her eyes were of the color of the cloudless summer heaven, and the pale lips were so exquisitely cut that a sculptor might have been proud to copy them for his beau ideal of human loveliness. I gazed, and worshiped this creature rescued by myself from the jaws of destruction. Hitherto I had thought little of love. The specimens of the female sex in our rough settlement were, as may be supposed, not of a very attractive description. Coarse, uneducated, toil-worn women, and girls who promised in a few years to emulate their mothers in homeliness, possessed no charms for me. It is true, that in my occasional visits to the more civilized portions of my country, I saw many of the beautiful and gently nurtured, but they were placed so far above me that it would have seemed as rational to become enamored of the fairest star in heaven, and think to make it mine. But this lovely girl had been rescued by me; her life had been my gift, and she seemed of right to belong to me. All, save herself, had perished in the wreck; she was probably alone in the world, and I hugged to my soul the hope that in me, her preserver, she would find father, brother, lover, all united.
