The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862

Now comes "the great spring drive." Maine waters in spring flow under an illimitable raft. Every camp contributes its myriads of brown cylinders to the millions that go bobbing down rivers with jaw-breaking names. And when the river broadens to a lake, where these impetuous voyagers might be stranded or miss their way and linger, they are herded into vast rafts, and towed down by boats, or by steam-tugs, if the lake is large as Moosehead. At the lake-foot the rafts break up and the logs travel again dispersedly down stream, or through the "thoro'fare" connecting the members of a chain of lakes. The hero of this epoch is the Head-Driver. The head-driver of a timber-drive leads a disorderly army, that will not obey the word of command. Every log acts as an individual, according to certain imperious laws of matter, and every log is therefore at loggerheads with every other log. The marshal must be in the thick of the fight, keeping his forces well in hand, hurrying stragglers, thrusting off the stranded, leading his phalanxes wisely round curves and angles, lest they be jammed and fill the river with a solid mass. As the great sticks come dashing along, turning porpoise-like somersets or leaping up twice their length in the air, he must be everywhere, livelier than a monkey in a mimosa, a wonder of acrobatic agility in biggest boots. He made the proverb, "As easy as falling off a log."

Hardly less important is the Damster. To him it falls to conserve the waters at a proper level. At his dam, generally below a lake, the logs collect and lie crowded. The river, with its obstacles of rock and rapid, would anticipate wreck for these timbers of future ships. Therefore, when the spring drive is ready, and the head-driver is armed with his jackboots and his iron-pointed sceptre, the damster opens his sluices and lets another river flow through atop of the rock-shattered river below. The logs of each proprietor, detected by their marks, pay toll as they pass the gates and rush bumptiously down the flood.

Far down, at some water-power nearest the reach of tide, a boom checks the march of this formidable body. The owners step forward and claim their slicks. Dowse takes all marked with three crosses and a dash. Sowse selects whatever bears two crescents and a star. Rowse pokes about for his stock, inscribed clip, dash, star, dash, clip. Nobody has counterfeited these hieroglyphs. The tale is complete. The logs go to the saw-mill. Sawdust floats seaward. The lumbermen junket. So ends the log-book.

"Maine," said our host, the Damster of Umbagog, "was made for lumbering-work. We never could have got the trees out, without these lakes and dams."

[To be continued.]

TO WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM, AFTER SEEING TWO PHOTOGRAPHS OF HIM

The trumpet, now on every gale,
For triumph or in funeral-wail,
One lesson bloweth loud and clear
Above war's clangor to my ear.

The blood that flows in bounding veins,
The blood that ebbs with lingering pains,
Springs living from the self-same heart:
Courage and patience act one part.

Doers and sufferers of God's will
Tread in each other's footprints still;
Soldier or saint hath equal mind,
When vows of truth the spirit bind.

Two portraits light my chamber-wall,
Hero and martyr to recall;
Lines of a single face they keep,
To make beholders glow or weep.

With gleaming hilt, girt for the fray
Freedom demands, he cannot stay:
Forward his motion, keen his glance:
'Tis victory painted in a trance.

But, lo! he turns, he folds his hands;
With farther, softening gaze he stands;
His sword is hidden from his eyes;
His head is bent for sacrifice.

Through looks that match each varied thought
Of holy work or offering brought,
Upon the sunbeam's shifting scroll
Shines out alike the steady soul.

Young leader! quick to win a name
Coeval with thy country's fame,
For either fortune thou wast born,–
The crown of laurel or of thorn.

THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO

CHAPTER III

CARIB SLAVES–INTRODUCTION OF NEGROES–LAS CASAS–DECAY OF SAN DOMINGO

Among the natives captured by the Spaniards in the neighboring islands and upon the Terra Firma, as the South-American coast was called,–were numerous representatives of Carib tribes, who had been released by Papal dispensation from the difficulties and anxieties of freedom in consequence of their reputation for cannibalism. This vicious taste was held to absolve the Spaniards from all the considerations of policy and mercy which the Dominicans pressed upon them in the case of the more graceful and amiable Haitians. But we do not find that Las Casas himself made any exception of them in his pleadings for the Indians;[1 - Herrera says, however, that Las Casas declared them to be legitimately enslaved, the natives of Trinity Island in particular. Schoelcher (Colonies Étrangèrés et Haiti, Tom. II. p. 59) notices that all the royal edicts in favor of the people of America, miserably obeyed as they were, related only to Indians who were supposed to be in a state of peace with Spain; the Caribs were distinctly excepted. It was convenient to call a great many Indians Caribs; numerous tribes who were peaceful enough when let alone, and victims rather than perpetrators of cannibalism, became slaves by scientific adjudication. "These races," said Cardinal Ximenes, "are fit for nothing but labor."] for, though he does not mention cannibalism in the list of imputed crimes which the Spaniards held as justification in making war upon the natives to enslave them, he vindicates them from other charges, such as that of sacrificing infants to their idols. The Spaniards were touched with compassion at seeing so many innocent beings perish before arriving at years of discretion, and without having received baptism. They argued that such a practice, which was worse than a crime, because it was a theological blunder, could not be carried on in a state of slavery. "This style of reasoning," says Las Casas, "proves absolutely nothing; for God knows better than men what ought to be the future destiny of children who die in the immense countries where the Christian religion is unknown. His mercy is infinitely greater than the collective charity of mankind; and in the interim He permits things to follow their ordinary course, without charging anybody to interfere and prevent their consequences by means of war."[2 - Fifth Memoir: Upon the Liberty of the Indians. Llorente, Tom. II. p. 11.]

The first possessors of Hayti were startled at the multitude of human bones which were found in some of the caverns of the island, for they were considered as confirming the reports of cannibalism which had reached them. These ossuaries were accidental; perhaps natives seeking shelter from the hurricane or earthquake were overwhelmed in these retreats, or blocked up and left to perish. We have no reason to believe that the caves had been used for centuries. And even the Caribs did not keep the bones which they picked, to rise up in judgment against them at last, clattering indictments of the number of their feasts. Nor do they seem to have shared the taste of the old Scandinavian and the modern Georgian or Alabamian, who have been known to turn drinking-cups and carve ornaments out of the skeletons of their enemies.

But they liked the taste of human flesh. The difference between them and the Spaniard was merely that the latter devoured men's flesh in the shape of cotton, sugar, gold. And the native discrimination was not altogether unpraiseworthy, if the later French missionaries can be exonerated from national prejudice, when they declare that the Caribs said Spaniards were meagre and indigestible, while a Frenchman made a succulent and peptic meal. But if he was a person of a religious habit, priest or monk, woe to the incautious Carib who might dine upon him! a mistake in the article of mushrooms were not more fatal. Du Tertre relates that a French priest was killed and smoke-dried by the Caribs, and then devoured with satisfaction. But many who dined upon the unfortunate man, whom the Church had ordained to feed her sheep less literally, died suddenly: others were afflicted with extraordinary diseases. Afterwards they avoided Christians as an article of food, being content with slaying them as often as possible, but leaving them untouched.

The Caribs were very impracticable in a state of slavery. Their stubborn and rigid nature could not become accommodated to a routine of labor. They fled to the mountains, and began marooning;[3 - Cimarron was Spanish, meaning wild: applied to animals, and subsequently to escaped slaves, who lived by hunting and stealing.] but they carried with them the scar of the hot iron upon the thigh, which labelled them as natives in a state of war, and therefore reclaimable as slaves. The Dominicans made a vain attempt to limit this branding to the few genuine Caribs who were reduced to slavery; but the custom was universal of marking Indians to compel them to pass for Caribs, after which they were sold and transferred with avidity, the authorities having no power to enforce the legal discrimination. The very existence of this custom offered a premium to cruelty, by furnishing the colonists with a technical permission to enslave.

But the supply could not keep up with the insatiable demand. The great expeditions which were organized to sweep the Terra Firma and the adjacent islands of their population found the warlike Caribs difficult to procure.[4 - "Gimlamo Benzoni, of Milan, who, at the age of twenty-two, visited Terra Firma, took part in some expeditions in 1542 to the coasts of Bordones, Cariaco, and Paria, to carry off the unfortunate natives. He relates with simplicity, and often with a sensibility not common in the historians of that time, the examples of cruelty of which he was a witness. He saw the slaves dragged to New Cadiz, to be marked on the forehead and on the arms, and for the payment of the quint to the officers of the crown. From this port the Indians were sent to the island of Hayti, after having often changed masters, not by way of sale, but because the soldiers played for them at dice."–Humboldt, Personal Narrative, Vol. I. p. 176.] The supply of laborers was failing just at the period when the colonists began to see that the gold of Hayti was scattered broadcast through her fertile soil, which became transmuted into crops at the touch of the spade and hoe. Plantations of cacao, ginger, cotton, indigo, and tobacco were established; and in 1506 the sugar-cane, which was not indigenous, as some have affirmed, was introduced from the Canaries. Vellosa, a physician in the town of San Domingo, was the first to cultivate it on a large scale, and to express the juice by means of the cylinder-mill, which he invented.[5 - Schoelcher, Hayti, Vol. II. p.78. The Arabs introduced the cane, which had been cultivated in the East from the remotest times, into Sicily in the ninth century, whence it found its way into Spain, and was taken to the Canaries: Madeira sent sugar to Antwerp in 1500. See Bridge, Annals of Jamaica, Vol.I. p.594, who, however, makes the mistake of saying that a variety of the sugar-cane was indigenous to the Antilles. See Humboldt, Personal Narrative, Vol. II. p.28, who says that negroes were employed in the cultivation of the sugar-cane in the Canaries from its introduction.] The Government, seeing the advantages to be derived from this single article, offered to lend five hundred gold piastres to every colonist who would fit up a sugar-plantation. Thus stimulated, the cultivation of the cane throve so, that as early as 1518 the island possessed forty sugar-works with mills worked by horse-power or water. But the plantations were less merciful to the Indians than the mines, and in 1503 there began to be a scarcity of human labor.

At this date we first hear that negroes had been introduced into the colony. But their introduction into Spain and Europe took place early in the fifteenth century. "Ortiz de Zuñigo, as Humboldt reports, with his usual exactness, says distinctly that 'blacks had been already brought to Seville in the reign of Henry III of Castile,' consequently before 1406. 'The Catalans and the Normans frequented the western coast of Africa as far as the Tropic of Cancer at least forty-five years before the epoch at which Don Henry the Navigator commenced his series of discoveries beyond Cape Nun.'"[6 - Schoelcher, La Traile et son Origine, in Colonies Etrengères, Tom. I. p. 364.]

But the practice of buying and selling slaves in Europe can be traced as far back as the tenth century, when fairs were established in all the great cities. Prisoners of war, representing different nations at different times, according to the direction which the love of piracy and conquest took, were exposed at those great periodical sales of merchandise to the buyers who flocked from every land. The Northern cities around the Baltic have the distinction of displaying these human goods quite as early as Venice or any commercial centre of the South: the municipal privileges and freedom of those famous cities were thus nourished partly by a traffic in mankind, for whose sake privilege and right are alone worth having. Seven thousand Danish slaves were exposed at one fair held in the city of Mecklenburg at the end of the twelfth century. They had the liberty of being ransomed, but only distinguished captives could be saved in that way from being sold. The price ranged from one to three marks. It is difficult to tell from this how valuable a man was considered, for the relation of the mark to other merchandise, or, in other words, the value of the currency, cannot be represented by modern sums, which are only technically equivalent,–as a mark, for instance, was then held equal to eight ounces of silver.[7 - Upon the subject of changes in the value of money, and some comparisons between the past and present, see Hallam's Europe, during the Middle Ages, Vol. II. pp. 427–432, and Supplement, p. 406. Dealing in money, banking, bills of exchange, have a very early date in Europe. The Bank of Venice was founded in 1401. Florentines dealt in money as early as 1251, and their system of exchange was in use throughout the North early in the fifteenth century.–McCullagh's Industrial History of Free Nations Vol. II. p. 94.] That was not exorbitant, however, for those times, and shows that men were frequently exposed for sale. The merchants of Bristol used to sell a great many captives into Ireland; but it is recorded that the Irish were the first Christian people who agreed at length to put a stop to this traffic by refusing to have any more captives brought into their country. The Church had long before forbidden it; and there are no grounds for supposing that any other motive than humanity induced the Irish people to show this superiority to the conventions of the age.[8 - See in Hallam's Supplement to Europe during the Middle Ages, p. l33, and in Motley's Dutch Republic, Vol. I. pp. 32, 33, various causes mentioned for voluntary and compulsory servitude in the early European times. See also Summer's White Slavery, p. 11.]

From the essay by Schoelcher, entitled "The Slave-Trade and its Origin," which has been prepared with considerable research, we gather that the first negroes seen in Portugal were carried there in 1441. Antonio Gonzales was the name of the man who first excited his countrymen by offering for sale this human booty which he had seized. All classes of people felt a mania like that which turns the tides of emigration to Australia and California. Nothing was desired but the means of equipping vessels for the coast of Guinea. Previously to this a few Guanches from the Canaries had been exposed for sale in the markets of Lisbon and Seville, and there were many Moorish slaves in Spain, taken in the wars which preceded the expulsion of that nation. But now there was a rapid accumulation of this species of property, fed by the inexhaustible soil of Africa, whence so many millions of men have been reaped and ploughed into the soils of other lands.

In 1443, an expedition of six caravels, commanded by a gentleman of the Portuguese court, went down the coast on one of these ventures, ostensibly geographical, but really mercenary, which then excited the popular enterprise. It managed to attack some island and to make a great number of prisoners. The same year a citizen of Lisbon fitted out a vessel at his own expense, went beyond the Senegal, where he seized a great many natives, discovered Cape Verde, and was driven back to Lisbon by a storm.

Prince Henry built the fort of Mina upon the Gold Coast, and made it a depot for articles of Spanish use, which he bartered for slaves. He introduced there, and upon the island of Arguin, near Cape Blanco, the cultivation of corn and sugar; the whole coast was formally occupied by the Portuguese, whose king took the title of Lord of Guinea. Sugar went successively to Spain, Madeira, the Azores, and the West Indies, in the company of negro slaves. It was carried to Hayti just as the colonists discovered that negroes were unfit for mining. Charlevoix says that the magnificent palaces of Madrid and Toledo, the work of Charles V., were entirely built by the revenue from the entry-tax on sugar from Hayti.

At first, all prisoners taken in war, or in attacks deliberately made to bring on fighting, were sold, whatever their nation or color. This was due to the Catholic theory that all unbaptized people were infidels. But gradually the same religious influence, moved by some scruples of humanity, made a distinction between negroes and all other people, allowing only the former to become objects of traffic, because they were black as well as heathen. Thus early did physiology come to the aid of religion, notifying the Church of certain physical peculiarities which seemed to be the trade-marks of the Creator, and perpetual guaranties, like the color of woods, the odor of gums, the breadth and bone of draught-cattle, of their availability for the market. What renown has graced the names of Portuguese adventurers, and how illustrious does this epoch of the little country's life appear in history! Rivers, bays, and stormy headlands, long reaches of gold coast and ivory coast, and countries of palm-oil, and strange interiors stocked with new forms of existence, and the great route to India itself, became the charter to a brilliant fame of this mercenary heroism. Man went as far as he was impelled to go. While the stimulus continued, and the outlay was more than equalled by the income and the glory, unexplored regions yielded up their secrets, and the Continent of Africa was established by this insignificant nation to be for centuries the vast slave-nursery of the world.

When the habit of selling men began to be restricted to the selling of negroes, companies were formed to organize this business and to have it carried on with economy. The Portuguese had a monopoly of the trade for a long time. They went up and down the African coast, picking quarrels with the natives when the latter did not quarrel enough among themselves to create a suitable supply of captives. Slaves were in great demand in Spain, and quite numerous at Seville. The percentage which the Portuguese exacted induced the Spaniards at length to enter into the traffic, which they did, according to Zuñigo, in 1474.

At that time negroes were confined, like Jews, to a particular quarter of a Spanish city. They had their places of worship, their own regulations and police. "A Cédula [order] of November 8, 1474, appoints a negro named Juan de Valladolid mayoral of the blacks and mulattoes, free and slaves, in Seville. He had authority to decide in quarrels and regular processes of law, and also to legalize marriages, because, says the Cédula, 'it is within our knowledge that you are acquainted with the laws and ordinances.' He became so famous that people called him El Conde Negro, The Black Count, and his name was bestowed upon one of the streets of the negro quarter."

Thus men were born in Europe into a condition of slavery before 1500. In that year the introduction of negroes into Hayti was authorized, provided they were born in Spain in the houses of Christian masters. Negroes who had been bred in Morisco[9 - Moors, living In Spain as subjects, and nominally Christianized.] families were not allowed to be carried thither, from a well-grounded fear that the Moorish hatred had sunk too deeply into a kindred blood.

A great many slaves were immediately transported to Hayti; for in 1503, "Ovando, the Governor-General of the Indies, who had received the instructions of 1500, asked the court 'not to send any more negroes to Española, because they often escaped to the Indians, taught them bad habits, and could never be retaken.'"

Schoelcher seems to think that these first slaves were so difficult to manage because they had been reared in a civilized country; and he notices that Cardinal Ximenes, who was well acquainted with the Spanish negro, constantly refused to authorize a direct slave-trade with Hayti, because it would introduce into the colony so many enterprising and prolific people, who would revolt when they became too numerous, and bring the Spaniards themselves under the yoke. This was an early presentiment of the fortune of Hayti, but it was not justly derived from an acquaintance with the Spanish-bred negro alone; for the negroes who were afterwards transported to the colony directly from Africa had the same unaccommodating temper, which frequently disconcerted the Cardinal's theory that an African should be born and bred in a Christian city to render him unfit for slavery. This unclerical native prejudice against working for white men is so universal, and has been so consistently maintained for three hundred years, as to present a queer contradiction to those divine marks which set him apart for that condition. The Cardinal attributed, in fact, to intercourse with the spirit of his countrymen that disposition of the negro which seems to be derived from intercourse with the spirit of his Creator.

No sooner did the negro enter the climate of Hayti, and feel that more truculent and desolating one of the Spanish temper, than he began to revolt, to take to the mountains, to defend his life, to organize leagues with Caribs and other natives. The colonists were often slain in conflicts with them. The first negro insurrection in Hayti occurred in November, 1522. It began with twenty Jolof negroes belonging to Diego Columbus; others joined them; they slew and burned as they went, took negroes and Indians along with them, robbed the houses, and were falling back upon the mountains with the intent to hold them permanently against the colony. Oviedo is enthusiastic over the action of two Spanish cavaliers, who charged the blacks lance in rest, went through them several times with a handful of followers, and broke up their menacing attitude. They were then easily hunted down, and in six or seven days most of them were hanging to the trees as warnings. The rest delivered themselves up. In 1551, Charles V. forbade negroes, both free and slave, from carrying any kind of weapon. It was necessary subsequently to renew this ordinance, because the slaves continued to be as dexterous with the machete or the sabre as with the hoe.

Humboldt and others have alluded to a striking prediction made by Girolamo Benzoni, an Italian traveller who visited the islands and Terra Firma early in the sixteenth century, and witnessed the condition and temper of the blacks. It is of the clearest kind. He says,[10 - La Historia sel Mondo Nuovo, Venetia, 1565, Book II. p.65, a duodecimo filled with curious plates representing the habits of the natives and the Spanish dealings with them. Benozi elsewhere has a good deal to say about the cruelty exercised towards the negroes. For a failure to perform a daily stint in the mines, a negro was usually buried up to his chin, and left to be tormented by the insects. Wire whips were used in flogging, and hot pitch was applied to the wounds.] after speaking of marooning in Hayti,–"Vi sono molti Spagnuoli che tengono per cosa certa che quest' Isola in breve tempo sarà posseduta da questi Mori. Et per tanto gli governatori tengono grandissima vigilanza" etc.: "There are many Spaniards who hold it for certain that in a brief time this island will fall into the hands of the Africans. On this account the governors use the greatest vigilance." He goes on to remark the fewness of the Spaniards, and afterwards gives his own opinion to confirm the Spanish anticipation. Nothing postponed the fulfilment of this natural expectation till the close of the eighteenth century, but the sudden decay into which the island fell under Spanish rule, when it became no longer an object to import the blacks. Many Spaniards left the island before 1550, from an apprehension that the negroes would destroy the colony. Some authorities even place the number of Spaniards remaining at that time as low as eleven hundred.

The common opinion that Las Casas asked permission for the colonists to draw negroes from Africa, in order to assuage the sufferings of the Indians, does not appear to be well-founded. For negroes were drawn from Guinea as early as 1511, and his proposition was made in 1517. The Spaniards were already introducing these substitutes for the native labor, regardless of the ordinance which restricted the possession of negroes in Hayti to those born in Spain. It is not improbable that Las Casas desired to regulate a traffic which had already commenced, by inducing the Government to countenance it. His object was undoubtedly to make it easier for the colonists to procure the blacks; but it must have occurred to him that his plan would diminish, as far as possible, the miseries of an irregular transfer of the unfortunate men from Africa. (See Bridge's Jamaica, Appendix, Historical Notes on Slavery. The Spaniards had even less scruple about their treatment of the negroes than of the Indians, alleging in justification that their own countrymen sold them to the traders on the Guinea coast!)

The horrors of a middle passage in those days of small vessels and tedious voyages would have been great, if the number of slaves to be transported had not been limited by law. There is no direct evidence, however, that Las Casas made his proposition out of any regard for the negro. Charles V. resolved to allow a thousand negroes to each of the four islands, Hayti, Ferdinanda, Cuba, and Jamaica. The privilege of importing them was bestowed upon one of his Flemish favorites; but he soon sold it to some Genoese merchants, who held each negro at such a high price that only the wealthiest colonists could procure them. Herrera regrets that in this way the prudent calculation of Las Casas was defeated.

This was the first license to trade in slaves. It limited the number to four thousand, but it was a fatal precedent, which was followed by French, Spanish, and Dutch, long after the decay of the Spanish part of Hayti, till all the islands, and many parts of Central America, were filled with negroes.