Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878», sayfa 15
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP
A LOST COLONY
Why does nobody—antiquarian, historian, or even novelist—open again that forgotten page of history, the story of the lost colony of Norwegians who disappeared in the fourteenth century from the shores of Greenland? Doctor Hayes, after he came back, had a good deal to say of them, but he did not gather all the facts, and his book, I believe, is now out of print.
I know no mystery made of such nightmare stuff as this in history; and mysteries are growing scarce now-a-days as eggs of the terrible Dinornis: we cannot afford to lose one of them.
The foremost figure in the story is of course Leif hin-hepna ("the happy"). There is much to be unearthed concerning that famous pioneer in discovery and religion, and we Americans surely ought to have enough interest in him to do it, as Leif unearthed this continent for us out of the hold of the sea and Demigorgon ages ago, while the dust of which Columbus was to be made centuries later was yet blowing loose about the streets of Genoa. Leif, besides discovering new worlds, turned the souls of all his father's subjects from paganism to such Christianity as the times afforded. I protest, this vigorous young Greenlander heads the roll of unrecognized heroes in the world: heathen and Christians have made demigods and saints out of much flimsier stuff than he.
The colony, too, out of which he came, what a spectral shadow it is beside the live flesh-and-blood figures of other nations! At the banquet of the boar-eating Scottish thanes there was one empty chair, and that was filled by a ghost. We hear of the East and West Bygds, settlements with hundreds of farms, churches, cathedrals, monasteries, set on the narrow rim of green coast which edges Greenland, lying between the impenetrable wall of ice inland and the Arctic Sea without. They had their religion, which Leif brought to them; they were busy and prosperous; they married, traded, fought, loved and died; and with a breath they all vanished from off the face of the earth. There is no ghost-story like this in literature.
Where will you find, too, such a delightful flavor of ancient mystery as in the old chronicles which tell of these people? Besides the Sagas there are the voyages of long-ago-forgotten navigators—Arthur himself, the Venetian brothers Nicolo and Antonio Zeni, King Zichmni, divers Frisian fishermen. These old records, coffee-colored with age and frail as skeleton leaves, are yet to be found in certain libraries, and surely would tempt any one with a soul above newspapers. In them you shall hear how these voyagers, in their poor barkentines of from ten to two hundred tons, entered into this region of enormous tides, of floating hordes of mountainous icebergs, of flaming signs in the sky—into all the horrors, in fact, of an Arctic winter and night, darkened still deeper for them by nameless superstitious terrors. They went down to these deeps in very much the temper with which a living man now-a-days would adventure into hell. The icy peaks of the far-off land they knew were glittering silver, and the sea was full of malignant spirits which guarded it. A mountain-magnet lay hid under the sea, dragging the ships down to it (as late, indeed, as 1830 skilled Danish navigators declared that they felt the stress from it, and fled in terror): the unnatural tides were the breathing of angry Demigorgon. There were, however, other sights and sounds not to be explained in even this reasonable fashion. On a fair day and a calm sea panic would seize the soul of every man on board, and the ship would turn and beat homeward, "as one who knows a frightful fiend doth follow him behind."
It is the mystery of the lost colony, however, which ought to be opened by some competent hand. In 1406, Queen Margaret, it will be remembered, laid an interdict upon trade with them: for two centuries afterward not even a passing barkentine touched upon the Greenland shore. At the end of that time, when explorers were sent from the civilized world in search of the long-forgotten colonists, they had utterly vanished. There, to this day, are their dwellings and churches, solidly built of stone in an architectural style which Graah fifty years ago described as simple and elegant: there are even the ruins of the monastery which the Zeni brothers declare was heated by a magical hot sulphurous spring, the waters of which were conveyed through the building by pipes. But the people had absolutely disappeared. Not even a bit of pottery, a grave or a bone was left; which last is a noteworthy circumstance, as portions of the human body are almost indestructible in that climate. Seventeen expeditions have been sent out by the Danish and Norwegian governments in search of this lost colony, the last of which was within the present half century. One of these was headed by Egedi, a poor Norwegian clergyman to whom is owing the civilization of Greenland, and of whose strange heroic life we know too little.
There are two or three conjectures to account for the disappearance of this colony. One is that they were all murdered by the Skröellings. But where are their bones? Besides, the colonists numbered from fifteen to twenty thousand, and were much superior to the natives in size, strength, intelligence and knowledge of war.
Graah, a Danish navigator who came in search of them in 1828, believes that they were carried off bodily by the English after the ravages of the "black death" in England, to repair the waste of human life, citing a treaty of 1433 in which England was charged with abducting Danish subjects for that end. Another theory is that the Frisian king Zichmni carried them off captive. Pope Nicholas asserts this outrage as a fact in a bull in 1448. But Zichmni is as uncertain a personage in history as Demigorgon; and the good popes were not so infallible as to matters of general news before the establishment of telegraph and postal service as they are now.
Mr. Dalton Dorr, who accompanied Hayes, tells me that among the Esquimaux there is a tradition that a colony of foreigners once owned the land, and about five centuries ago emigrated in a body northward, crossing the Mer de Glace—that they found an open sea, and somewhere within the eternal rampart of snow and ice now dwell securely by its shores. As early as 1500 the migratory Skröellings told of this colony far to the north-east. These rumors possessed substance enough to warrant the expeditions from Denmark, which have all been directed to the eastern coast. Graah heard from his guides of a strange people with high features, hoarse voices and large stature living beyond the limits passed by Europeans.
Here is a mystery surely worth finding out—a people exiled from their kind for centuries living at the Pole—something better worth search than even Franklin's bones. To give it reality, too, we must remember how many Arctic explorers have caught sight, as they thought, of an open sea near the Pole—a sea with strong, iceless swells, and on whose shores warm rains fell. Nobody need suggest that these people would probably, after our search, not be worth looking for. What shall we do with the North-west Passage when we have found it?
R. H. D.
THE DIFFICULTIES OF BEING AGREEABLE
"A man will please more by never offending than by giving a great deal of delight." In this remark of Doctor Johnson's lies the art of being agreeable. But nothing is more difficult than to avoid offending. Most people are offended by trifles. For instance, persons generally take umbrage at superior brilliance of conversation. "The man who talks for fame will never please." Even he who talks to unburden his mind will please only some old and solitary friend. Large experience and great learning, however quietly carried, are very offensive to those who have them not. Clever things cannot be said unobtrusively enough. A person so brilliant as to make others feel that his efforts are above theirs will be detested. Moreover, one of the difficulties of being agreeable is that the apprehension of offending and the small hope of pleasing destroy all captivation of manner. The confident expectation of pleasing is an infallible means of pleasing. Characters pleased with themselves please others, for they are joyous and natural in mien, and are at liberty from thinking of themselves to pay successful attention to others. Still, the self-conceited and the bragging are never attractive, self being the topic on which all are fluent and none interesting. They who dwell on self in any way—the self-deniers, the self-improvers—are hateful to the heart of civilized man. The Chinese, who knew everything beforehand, are perfect in self-abnegation of manner. "How are your noble and princely son and your beautiful and angelic daughter?" says Mandarin Number One.—"Dog of a son have I none, but my cat of a daughter is well," says Mandarin Number Two.
To set up for an invariably agreeable person you must adjust yourself to the peculiarities of others. You must talk of books to bookworms: you must be musical with musicians, scientific with savants. Furthermore, you have to make believe all the time that you are enjoying yourself. The belle is a lady who has an air of enjoying herself with whomsoever she talks. We like those who seem to delight in our company. You must not overdo it, and thus make yourself suspected of acting; but do not imagine that you will please without trying. Those who are careless of pleasing are never popular. Those who do not care how they look invariably look ugly. You will never please without doing all these things and more.
What a Pecksniffian business it is to go into! Who wants to refrain from smart, spiteful sayings when he happens to think of them, to abjure laughing at friends and ridiculing enemies, to renounce the tart rebuff, the keen riposte? Amazing that any succeed! and many do. There are some gentlemen who are entirely agreeable—"gentlemen all through," like Robert Moore in Shirley. They have order, neatness, delicacy of movement, reticence, incuriosity: their unaffected English has almost the charm of a musical composition. They are generally men whose mothers well nagged them when they were small with perpetual adjurations: "Do not bang the door," "Stop kicking your feet," "Stop clinking your plate with your fork," and so on.
In some inscrutable way, young girls often attain thorough agreeableness. Look at lazy little Jane: she has acquired the highest charm of repose. Look at Sally, who used to be such an angular and hurried little girl: she is all quips and cranks and wreathèd smiles now. And meek, humble-minded Martha, in former days so diffident, blushing and taciturn, has found out the value of a deferential demeanor and the knack of being a good listener, and can sing a ballad with a pathos and dramatic effect that eclipse the highly-embellished performances of other girls.
Ladies who make a profession of pleasing become irresistibly alluring. Actresses have abundant hair, fine teeth, all physical beauty, because they train themselves to beauty, though not originally better endowed than most others. Actresses' voices are set habitually, not in complaining, whining, creaking or vociferating keys, but in chest-tones clear and calm in quality. Actresses do not grow old, partly in consequence of their constant attention to the toilette, partly in consequence of the fact that they have hope and ambition, and enough occupation and enough rest, and do not worry over trifles.
To remain young is one of the difficulties of being agreeable. Whoever does so is obliged to adopt the Aristotelian maxim of moderation, Placidity of temper is necessary to the clear-pencilled eyebrow and the magnolia complexion. Frowns, weeping, excitement, despair and laughter wrinkle the face. Nature keeps women's forms well rounded to extreme old age, and their faces remain agreeable when they take the trouble to keep them so. The brow, the fair front, need never be furrowed. Of all we meet in the street, very few have tranquil, undistorted faces: the old are screwed out of shape, the young are going to be so. A well-preserved beauty is one who neither puckers her face into wrinkles nor mauls it with her hands: she never buries her knuckles in her cheeks, nor rests cheek on palm or chin on hand, nor folds her fingers around her forehead while reading, nor rubs her "argent-lidded eyes." She veils her face from the wind; she does not work with uncovered neck and arms: therefore they do not become tawny. She avoids immoderate toil, which makes the hair to fall, the features sharp, the skin clammy and yellow. She avoids immoderate laziness, as causing obesity and a greasy complexion or pallor, lassitude and loss of vitality. Such are; the difficulties of being agreeable.
M. D.
OUR SUB-GARDENER
He who doubts that civilized progress and industry is beneficial to birds, and promotes their comfort and multiplication, never saw the robin and the purple grakle following the plough on a summer's morning. The ploughman is not more punctually afield than his unbidden but welcome feathered attendants. They are ahead of him, perched patiently in the trees that dot fence or hedgerow. They see the team afar off, and as the gate rattles in opening for its admission the glad tidings is sent down the line in whistle or chirrup, the most musical of breakfast-bells. The worm that but for the intrusive ploughshare would blush unseen beneath the soil, and but for the feathered detective on the lookout for him would regain his subterranean retreat, might take a less cheery view of the philosophy of the matter; but he too is, taken collectively, favored by tillage and fattens on high-farming like an English squire. But we are not at present occupied with his feelings. Somebody must suffer in the battledore game of eat and be eaten, and we shall let the chain of continuous destruction rest here with the grub that reaps where he hath not sown. Horse, man and bird are honestly and harmoniously picking up a living at the expense of a fourth party that also thrives in the long run.
Not many of us get out with the plough at the orthodox hour of sunrise. It is a privilege few, comparatively, possess, and fewer still enjoy. The doctors recommend it warmly, on the ground that, though perhaps productive of rheumatism, it is death to dyspepsia. The faculty have, however, on this point piped to us in vain, and it is not at all in consequence of their advice that those who luxuriate in early agriculture adopt that system of hygiene, any more than the birds, who, as we have remarked, are first up and out, and who, at this season, in flat defiance of all medical rules, adopt a purely animal diet. Later, long after Lent, their food is varied with fruits and seeds, but never to such an extent as to amount to vegetarianism. This carnivorous taste ranks high in the "charm of earliest birds" so interesting to the cultivator. He, as a rule, is not wrapped up in the strawberry or the cherry that in the fulness of time comes to be levied on, in very moderate percentage, by a few of his musical associates. We do not forget that the blackbird has a weakness for planted maize, and that the quota of the cornhill is very truly and safely stated in the doggerel—
One for de blackbird, one for de crow,
Two for de cut-worm, and two for to grow.
The cut-worm is here correctly defined as the enemy, while the excise claimed by the birds is head-money for his extirpation. An adaptation of this instructive couplet to gardening for the guidance of those of us who do not farm, but garden in a small way, would naturally enlarge the allowance of the cut-worm. From the more limited demesne the crow and the grakle are generally excluded. What is their loss is the cut-worm's gain. Nowhere does he run (or burrow) riot more successfully than in old gardens. Living in darkness, from an apparent consciousness that his deeds are evil, he seems to be fully advised of all that goes on above ground. One would fancy that he has a complete system of subterranean telegraphs, like those coming into vogue in Europe. He learns within a few hours or minutes of every new lot of plants sprouting from the seed or set out from the hotbed. Upon both he sets systematically to work, following his row with a precision and thoroughness at once admirable and exasperating. You go out of a May afternoon, and with the tenderest care establish in their summer homes your very choicest plants. Reverse "One counted them at break of day, and when the sun set where were they?" and the tale that greets you the next morning is told. Did the spoiler need them for food, you would be partly reconciled to his proceedings, or at least would know how to frame some sort of an excuse for them. But he merely divides the succulent stem close to the surface of the ground, above or below, and leaves the wreck unutilized even by him. A comfort is that flight is not his forte. He is generally to be found by the exploring penknife or trowel close by the scene of his crime, and is thus easily subjected to condign punishment. But his wife, family and friends survive in different spots of the adjacent underworld, to give evidence of their existence only in subsequent havoc. The titillative rake or the peremptory hoe does not help you much in their discovery; for their color is that of the soil, their size as various as that of bits of gravel, and they are not easily perceptible to a cursory glance from the ordinary height of the eye. Here is where keener optics than yours, sharpened perhaps by a keener impulse—that of the stomach—come to the rescue. The catbird, whose imploring mew you listened to from your bed some time before thinking proper to respond to it, is intently watching operations from the other end of the border or the square. His lusty youngsters have been trained, after the good old fashion, to early hours, and they are impatient for breakfast. Their parent sees what you do not, and astonishes you by suddenly pouncing upon a bit of earth you have just broken and seizing a stout worm. This stranger, if presentable to the family circle, he is at once off with, his spouse taking his place in the field. Or the youngsters may still be in futuro. All the same: whatever turns up is welcome to him. His appetite seems as insatiable as that of half a dozen nestlings: they, you know, will eat three or four times their own weight in twelve hours. He is thus immensely useful to you, but your appreciation of that fact is as nothing to his estimate of your value to him. He accepts you as a being sent for his benefit. You are a part of his scheme of providence. True, he pities while he rejoices over you. Your blindness and stupidity in not seeing the fat and luscious tidbits he snaps up from almost beneath your feet is of course a subject of wonder and disdain. But he learns to make allowances for you, and comes to view your failings charitably, especially as they enure to his benefit, and so lean to Virtue's side. Fear of you he has none. Indeed, you inspire in him a certain sense of protection, for in your presence his habitual vigilance is lulled, and his apprehensive glances over his right and left shoulders fall to a lower figure per minute. He has learned there to feel safe from hawk and cat, and knows enough of other birds to be sure that none of them will "jump" his little claim of fifty feet square whereof you are the moving centre. His individual audacity gives him the sway of that small empire, and he doubts not that you will support him in acting up to the motto of the Iron Crown of the Lombards. His cousin the robin may, and very probably does, hover on the outskirts, but an exact distance measures the comparative boldness and familiarity of the two species. The catbird is, say, ten yards more companionable than his red-vested relative in the latter's most genial and trustful mood; and his faith is of a more robust type and less easily and permanently weakened by rebuffs. The robin rarely hovers round you, but likes to have the whole premises quietly to himself. His attachment does not take a personal hue, but is rather to locality. His acquaintanceship with you is never so intimate as that of the catbird, who soon recognizes your step, your dress and the peculiar touch and cadence of your hoe, even as a college oarsman will identify the stroke of a chum or a rival a quarter of a mile off. If the robin does fix your individuality in his mind, he deigns to make no sign thereof. At most he accepts you as part of the mechanism of creation. You make no draft upon his bump of reverence. He does not set you on his Olympus. This mark of the spirit which makes him, on the whole, a more respectable and dignified character than his less gayly-dressed cousin tends in some sense to commend him the less to you, since we all like the homage of the "inferior animals," birds or voters. You half dislike the independence of the robin, who is equally at home in the parterre or the forest, on the gravel-walk or in the upper air. On the other you have more hold. He is rarely seen higher than twenty feet above ground, and is strictly an appendage of the shrubbery and the orchard. Even in his unhappy voice there is a domestic tone, closely imitated as it is from Grimalkin. Imitated, we say, for we have never been able fully to believe that this mew is the bird's original note. We shall ever incline to the impression that it is an acquired dialect, picked up in the mere wantonness born of a conscious and exceptional power of mimicry.
E. C. B.
