The Bay State Monthly. Volume 2, No. 1, October, 1884

From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,
Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;
On its margin the great forest
Stood reflected in the water,
Every treetop had its shadow
Motionless beneath the water."

"Thank you, Miss," said Hugh, gallantly. "We only need a wigwam with smoke curling from it under these trees, and a 'birch canoe with paddles, rising, sinking on the water, dripping, flashing in the sunshine,' to complete the picture. It's a pity the Indians ever left this shore."

"So the settlers of Minnesota thought in '62," observed Vincent, ironically.

"The Indians would have been all right if the white man had stayed away," replied the Historian, hotly.

"In that case we should not be here now, and, consequently"—

What promised to be quite a warm discussion was killed in the embryo by the captain's clear cry, "All aboard!"

Once more we were steaming westward toward the land of the Dacotahs. That night we all sat up till after midnight to see the last of our lake, for in the morning Duluth would be in sight. It was a night never to be forgotten. The idle words and deeds of my companions have faded from my mind, but never will the memory of the bright lake rippling under that moonlit sky.

A city picturesquely situated on the side of a hill which overlooks the lake and rises gradually toward the northwest, reaching the height of six hundred feet a mile from the shore, with a river on one side. That is Duluth. The city takes its name from Juan du Luth, a French officer, who visited the region in 1679. In 1860 there were only seventy white inhabitants in the place, and in 1869 the number had not much increased. The selection of the village as the eastern terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad gave it an impetus, and now Duluth is a city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, and rapidly growing. The harbor is a good one, and is open about two hundred days in the year. Six regular lines of steamers run to Chicago, Cleveland, Canadian ports, and ports on the south shore of Lake Superior. The commerce of Duluth, situated as it is in the vicinity of the mineral districts on both shores of the lake, surrounded by a well-timbered country, and offering the most convenient outlet for the products of the wheat region further west, is of growing importance. In half a century Duluth will be outranked in wealth and population by no more than a dozen cities in America.

Our stay at Duluth was protracted many days. One finds himself at home in this new Western city, and there are a thousand ways in which to amuse yourself. If you are disposed for a walk, there are any number of delightful woodpaths leading to famous bits of beach where you may sit and dream the livelong day without fear of interruption or notice. If you would try camping-out, there are guides and canoes right at your hand, and the choice of scores of beautiful and delightful spots within easy reach of your hotel or along the shore of the lake and its numerous beautiful islands, or as far away into the forest as you care to penetrate. Lastly, if piscatorially inclined, here is a boathouse with every kind of boat from the steam-yacht down to the birch canoe, and there is the lake, full of "lakers," sturgeon, whitefish, and speckled trout, some of the latter weighing from thirty to forty pounds apiece,—a condition of things alike satisfactory and tempting to every owner of a rod and line.

The guides, of whom there are large numbers to be found at Duluth, as indeed at all of the northern border towns, are a class of men too interesting and peculiar to be passed over without more than a cursory notice. These men are mostly French-Canadians and Indians, with now and then a native, and for hardihood, skill, and reliability, cannot be surpassed by any other similar class of men the world over. They are usually men of many parts, can act equally well as guide, boatman, baggage-carrier, purveyor, and cook. They are respectful and chivalrous: no woman, be she old or young, fair or faded, fails to receive the most polite and courteous treatment at their hands, and with these qualities they possess a manly independence that is as far removed from servility as forwardness. Some of these men are strikingly handsome, with shapely statuesque figures that recall the Antinous and the Apollo Belvidere. Their life is necessarily a hard one, exposed as they are to all sorts of weather and the dangers incidental to their profession. At a comparatively early age they break down, and extended excursions are left to the younger and more active members of the fraternity.

Camping-out, provided the weather is reasonably agreeable, is one of the most delightful and healthful ways to spend vacation. It is a sort of woodman's or frontier life. It means living in a tent, sleeping on boughs or leaves, cooking your own meals, washing your own dishes and clothes perhaps, getting up your own fuel, making your own fire, and foraging for your own provender. It means activity, variety, novelty, and fun alive; and the more you have of it the more you like it; and the longer you stay the less willing you are to give it up. There is a freedom in it that you do not get elsewhere. All the stiff formalties of conventional life are put aside: you are left free to enjoy yourself as you choose. All in all, it is the very best way we know to enjoy a "glorious vacation."

At Duluth, at Sault de Ste. Marie, at Mackinaw, at Saginaw, we wandered away days at a time, with nothing but our birch canoe, rifles, and fishing-rods, and for provisions, hard bread, pork, potatoes, coffee, tea, rice, butter, and sugar, closely packed. Any camper-out can make himself comfortable with an outfit as simple as the one named. How memory clings around some of those bright spots we visited! I pass over them again, in thought, as I write these lines, longing to nestle amid them forever.

Following along the coast, now in small yachts hired for the occasion, now in a birch canoe of our own, we passed from one village to another. Wherever we happened to be at night, we encamped. Many a time it was on a lonely shore. Standing at sunset on a pleasant strand, more than once we saw the glow of the vanished sun behind the western mountains or the western waves, darkly piled in mist and shadow along the sky; near at hand, the dead pine, mighty in decay, stretching its ragged arms athwart the burning heavens, the crow perched on its top like an image carved in jet; and aloft, the night-hawk, circling in his flight, and, with a strange whining sound, diving through the air each moment for the insects he makes his prey.

But all good things, as well as others, have an end. The season drew to a close at last. August nights are chilly for sleeping in tents. Our flitting must cease, and our thoughts and steps turn homeward. But a few days are still left us. At Buffalo once more we go to see the Falls. Then by boat to Hamilton, thence to Kingston at the foot of the lake, and so on through the Thousand Isles to Montreal, and finally to Quebec,—a tour as fascinating in its innumerable and singularly wild and beautiful "sights" as heart could desire.

OUR NATIONAL CEMETERIES

By Charles Cowley, LL.D

There are circumstances generally attending the death of the soldier or the sailor, whether on battle-field or gun-deck, whether in the captives' prison, the cockpit, or the field-hospital, which touch our sensibilities far more deeply than any circumstances which usually attend the death of men of any other class; moving within us mingled emotions of pathos and pity, of mystery and awe.

"There is a tear for all that die,
A mourner o'er the humblest grave;
But nations swell the funeral cry,
And freedom weeps above the brave;

"For them is sorrow's purest sigh,
O'er ocean's heaving bosom sent;
In vain their bones unburied lie,—
All earth becomes their monument.

"A tomb is their's on every page;
An epitaph on every tongue;
The present hours, the future age,
Nor them bewail, to them belong.

"A theme to crowds that knew them not,
Lamented by admiring foes,
Who would not share their glorious lot?
Who would not die the death they chose?"

A similar halo invests our National Cemeteries—which are the most permanent mementos of our sanguinary Civil War.

Nature labors diligently to cover up her scars. Most of the battle-fields of the Rebellion now show growths of use and beauty. Many of the structures of that great conflict have already ceased to be. Some of them have been swept away by the winds or overgrown with weeds; others, like Fort Wagner, have been washed away by the waves. But neither winds nor waves are likely to disturb the monuments or the cemeteries of our soldiers and sailors. Where they were placed, there they remain; "and there they will remain forever."

The seventy-eight National Cemeteries distributed over the country contain the remains of three hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty-five men, classed as follows: known, 170,960; unknown, 147,495; total, 318,455. And these are not half of those whose deaths are attributable to their service in the armies and navies of the United States and the Confederate States, who are buried in all sections of the Union and in foreign lands.

In some of these cemeteries, as at Gettysburg, Antietam, City Point, Winchester, Marietta, Woodlawn, Hampton, and Beaufort, by means of public appropriations and private subscriptions, statues and other monuments have at different times been erected; and many others doubtless will be erected in them hereafter. Some of them are in secluded situations, where for many mites the population is sparse, and the few people that live near them cherish tenderer recollections of the "Lost Cause" than of that which finally won. But such of them as are contiguous to cities are places of interest to more or less of the neighboring population; and, in some of them, there are commemorative services upon Memorial Days.

These cemeteries have many features in common; and much that may be said of one of them may also be said of the others—merely changing the names.

It happened to the present writer to visit the National Cemetery at Beaufort, South Carolina, to deliver an oration on Memorial Day, 1881, in the midst of ten thousand graves of the soldiers and sailors of the department of the South and South Atlantic blockading squadron. The dead interred in these thirty acres of graves are: known, 4,748, unknown, 4,493; total, 9,241. Among the trees planted in this cemetery is a willow, grown from a branch of the historic tree which once overshadowed the grave of Napoleon at St. Helena.

Generals Thomas W. Sherman and John G. Foster, who commanded that department, and Admirals Dupont and Dahlgren, who commanded that squadron, all died in their Northern homes since the peace, and their graves are not to be looked for here. The same may be said of hundreds of military and naval officers who performed valuable services on these shores and along these coasts, and have since "passed over to the great majority."

That neither General Strong nor General Schimmelfennig is buried here might be accounted for by the fact that, though they died by reason of their having served in this department, they died at the North. But even General Mitchell, whose flag of command was last unfurled in this department, who died in Beaufort, and was originally buried under the sycamores of the Episcopal churchyard, now sleeps in the shades of Greenwood, and not (as he would probably have preferred, could he have foreseen this cemetery) among the brave men whom he commanded.

The best known names among those here buried (to use a pardonable Hibernianism) are among the "unknown." For here, as we may believe, in unknown graves, rest the remains of Colonel Robert G. Shaw, of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts (colored), Colonel Haldimand S. Putnam, of the Seventh New Hampshire, Lieutenant-Colonel James M. Green, of the Forty-eighth New York, and many other gallant officers and men who were killed in the assault on Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, and who were first buried by the Confederates in the sands of Morris Island.

Many a Northern college is represented here. Among those to whom tablets have been erected in the Memorial Hall of Harvard University, who are buried here, besides Colonel Shaw, are Captains Winthrop P. Boynton and William D. Crane, who were killed at Honey Hill, November 30, 1864; and Captain Cabot J. Russell, who fell with Shaw at Fort Wagner. Yet these are but the beginning of the list of the sons of Massachusetts who rest in this "garden of graves."

Among the many gallant men of the navy buried here is Acting-Master Charles W. Howard, of the ironclad steam-frigate New Ironsides, whom Lieutentant Glassell shot during his bold attempt to blow up the New Ironsides with the torpedo steamer David, October 5, 1863. Another is Thomas Jackson, coxswain of the Wabash, the beau ideal of an American sailor, who was killed in the battle of Port Royal, November 7, 1861.

Death, like a true democrat, levels all distinctions. Still, it may be mentioned that Lieutenant-Colonel William N. Reed, who was mortally wounded at Olustee while in command of the Thirty-fifth United States colored troops, February 20, 1864, was, while living, the highest officer in rank, whose grave is known here. Other gallant officers, killed at Olustee, are buried near him. Among these, probably, is Colonel Charles W. Fribley, of the Eighth United States colored troops; though he may be still sleeping beneath the sighing pines of Olustee.

As far as practicable, all Federal soldiers and sailors buried along the seaboard of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, have been removed to Beaufort Cemetery; and, as Governor Alexander H. Bullock said: "Wherever they offered up their lives, amid the thunder of battle, or on the exhausting march, in victory or in defeat, in hospital or in prison, officers and privates, soldiers and sailors, patriots all, they fell like the beauty of Israel on their high places, burying all distinctions of rank in the august equality of death."

One section of the cemetery is devoted to the Confederates. There are more than a hundred of these, including several commissioned officers; and on Memorial Days the same ladies who decorate the graves of the Federals decorate also in the same manner the graves of the Confederates; recognizing that, though in life they were arrayed as mortal enemies, they are now reconciled in "the awful but kindly brotherhood of death." Sir Walter Scott enjoins:—

"Speak not for those a separate doom,
Whom fate made brothers in the tomb."

And One infinitely greater than Sir Walter has inculcated still loftier sentiments.

Among the graves to which the attention of the writer was particularly attracted was that of Charley –, a boy of Colonel Putnam's regiment, who had now been dead more years than he had lived. His parents, living on the shores of Lake Winnipiseogee, and walking daily over the paths which he had often trod, had plucked the earliest flower of their northern clime and sent it to the superintendent of the cemetery, to be planted at Charley's grave. The burning sun of South Carolina had not spared that flower; but something of it still remained. Its mute eloquence spoke to the heart of the tender recollections of a father and of a mother's undying love. How truly does Wordsworth say,—

"The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

For us who have survived the perils of battle and the far more fatal diseases that wasted our forces, and for all who cherish the memory of these dead, it will always be a consoling thought that the Federal government has done so much to provide honorable sepulture for those who fell in defence of the Union. We can all appreciate Lord Byron's lament for the great Florentine poet and patriot;—

"Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,