The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

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One Gilson is said to have died of the bite of a rattlesnake in this
town early in the present century. After this there was a great
snake-hunt, in which very many of these venomous beasts were
killed,--one in particular, said to have been as big round as a stout
man's arm, and to have had no less than _forty_ joints to his
rattle,--indicating, according to some, that he had lived forty years,
but, if we might put any faith in the Indian tradition, that he had
killed forty human beings,--an idle fancy, clearly. This hunt, however,
had no permanent effect in keeping down the serpent population.
Viviparous creatures are a kind of specie-paying lot, but oviparous ones
only give their notes, as it were, for a future brood,--an egg being, so
to speak, a promise to pay a young one by-and-by, if nothing happen. Now
the domestic habits of the rattlesnake are not studied very closely, for
obvious reasons; but it is, no doubt, to all intents and purposes
oviparous. Consequently it has large families, and is not easy to kill
out.

In the year 184-, a melancholy proof was afforded to the inhabitants of
Rockland, that the brood which infested The Mountain was not extirpated.
A very interesting young married woman, detained at home at the time by
the state of her health, was bitten in the entry of her own house by a
rattlesnake which had found its way down from The Mountain. Owing to the
almost instant employment of powerful remedies, the bite did not prove
immediately fatal; but she died within a few months of the time when she
was bitten.

All this seemed to throw a lurid kind of shadow over The Mountain. Yet,
as many years passed without any accident, people grew comparatively
careless, and it might rather be said to add a fearful kind of interest
to the romantic hillside, that the banded reptiles, which had been the
terror of the red men for nobody knows how many thousand years, were
there still, with the same poison-bags and spring-teeth at the white
men's service, if they meddled with them.

The other natural features of Rockland were such as many of our pleasant
country-towns can boast of. A brook came tumbling down the mountain-side
and skirted the most thickly settled portion of the village. In the
parts of its course where it ran through the woods, the water looked
almost as brown as coffee flowing from its urn,--to say like _smoky
quartz_ would perhaps give a better idea,--but in the open plain it
sparkled over the pebbles white as a queen's diamonds. There were
huckleberry-pastures on the lower flanks of The Mountain, with plenty of
the sweet-scented bayberry mingled with the other bushes. In other
fields grew great store of high-bush blackberries. Along the road-side
were barberry-bushes, hung all over with bright red coral pendants in
autumn and far into the winter. Then there were swamps set thick with
dingy-leaved alders, where the three-leaved arum and the skunk's-cabbage
grew broad and succulent,--shelving down into black boggy pools here and
there, at the edge of which the green frog, stupidest of his tribe, sat
waiting to be victimized by boy or snapping-turtle long after the shy
and agile leopard-frog had taken the six-foot spring that plumped him
into the middle of the pool. And on the neighboring banks the
maiden-hair spread its flat disk of embroidered fronds on the wire-like
stem that glistened brown and polished as the darkest tortoise-shell,
and pale violets, cheated by the cold skies of their hues and perfume,
sunned themselves like white-cheeked invalids. Over these rose the old
forest-trees,--the maple, scarred with the wounds that had drained away
its sweet life-blood,--the beech, its smooth gray bark mottled so as to
look like the body of one of those great snakes of old that used to
frighten armies,--always the mark of lovers' knives, as in the days of
Musidora and her swain,--the yellow birch, rough as the breast of
Silenus in old marbles,--the wild cherry, its little bitter fruit lying
unheeded at its foot,--and, soaring over all, the huge, coarse-barked,
splintery-limbed, dark-mantled hemlock, in the depths of whose aerial
solitudes the crow brooded on her nest unscared, and the gray squirrel
lived unharmed till his incisors grew to look like ram's-horns.

Rockland would have been but half a town without its pond; Quinnepeg
Pond was the name of it, but the young ladies of the Apollinean
Institute were very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake.
It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in
winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented, good-for-nothing,
lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, that sawed a little wood or dug a
few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their
living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter.
And here those three young people were drowned, a few summers ago, by
the upsetting of a sail-boat in a sudden flaw of wind. There is not one
of these smiling ponds that has not devoured more youths and maidens
than any of those monsters the ancients used to tell such lies about.
But it was a pretty pond, and never looked more innocent--so the native
"bard" of Rockland said in his elegy--than on the morning when they
found Sarah Jane and Ellen Maria floating among the lily-pads.

The Apollinean Institute, or Institoot, as it was more commonly called,
was, in the language of its Prospectus, a "first-class Educational
Establishment." It employed a considerable corps of instructors to rough
out and finish the hundred young lady scholars it sheltered beneath its
roof. First, Mr. and Mrs. Peckham, the Principal and the Matron of the
school. Silas Peckham was a thorough Yankee, born on a windy part of the
coast, and reared chiefly on salt-fish. Everybody knows the type of
Yankee produced by this climate and diet: thin, as if he had been split
and dried; with an ashen kind of complexion, like the tint of the food
he is made of; and about as sharp, tough, juiceless, and biting to deal
with as the other is to the taste. Silas Peckham kept a young ladies'
school exactly as he would have kept a hundred head of cattle,--for the
simple, unadorned purpose of making just as much money in just as few
years as could be safely done. Of course the great problem was, to feed
these hundred hungry misses at the cheapest practicable rate, precisely
as it would be with the cattle. So that Mr. Peckham gave very little
personal attention to the department of instruction, but was always busy
with contracts for flour and potatoes, beef and pork, and other
nutritive staples, the amount of which required for such an
establishment was enough to frighten a quartermaster. Mrs. Peckham was
from the West, raised on Indian corn and pork, which give a fuller
outline and a more humid temperament, but may perhaps be thought to
render people a little coarse-fibred. Her speciality was to look after
the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and general behavior of
these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman, she could not have
passed an examination in the youngest class. So this distinguished
institution was under the charge of a commissary and a housekeeper, and
its real business was feeding girls to grain, roots, and meats, under
cover, and making money by it.

Connected with this, however, was the incidental fact, which the public
took for the principal one, namely, the business of instruction. Mr.
Peckham knew well enough that it was just as well to have good
instructors as bad ones, so far as cost was concerned, and a great deal
better for the reputation of his feeding-establishment. So he tried to
get the best he could without paying too much, and, having got them, to
screw all the work out of them that could possibly be extracted.

There was a master for the English branches, with a young lady
assistant. There was another young lady who taught French, of the
_ahvahng_ and _pahndahng_ style, which does not exactly smack of the
_asphalte_ of the Boulevard _trottoirs_. There was also a German teacher
of music, who sometimes helped in French of the _ahfaung_ and
_bauntaung_ style,--so that, between the two, the young ladies could
hardly have been mistaken for Parisians, by a Committee of the French
Academy. The German teacher also taught a Latin class after his
fashion,--_benna_, a ben, _gahboot_, a head, and so forth.

The master for the English branches had lately left the school for
private reasons, which need not be here mentioned,--but he had gone, at
any rate, and it was his place which had been offered to Mr. Bernard
Langdon. The offer came just in season,--as, for various causes, he was
willing to leave the place where he had begun his new experience.

It was on a fine morning, that Mr. Bernard, ushered in by Mr. Peckham,
made his appearance in the great schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute.
A general rustle ran all round the seats when the handsome young man was
introduced. The principal carried him to the desk of the young lady
English assistant, Miss Darley by name, and introduced him to her.

There was not a great deal of study done that day. The young lady
assistant had to point out to the new master the whole routine in which
the classes were engaged when their late teacher left, and which had
gone on as well as it could since. Then Master Langdon had a great many
questions to ask, some relating to his new duties, and some, perhaps,
implying a degree of curiosity not very unnatural under the
circumstances. The truth is, the general effect of the schoolroom, with
its scores of young girls, all their eyes naturally centring on him with
fixed or furtive glances, was enough to bewilder and confuse a young man
like Master Langdon, though he was not destitute of self-possession, as
we have already seen.

You cannot get together a hundred girls, taking them as they come, from
the comfortable and affluent classes, probably anywhere, certainly not
in New England, without seeing a good deal of beauty. In fact, we very
commonly mean by _beauty_ the way young girls look when there is nothing
to hinder their looking as Nature meant them to. And the great
schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute did really make so pretty a show
on the morning when Master Langdon entered it, that he might be pardoned
for asking Miss Darley more questions about his scholars than about
their lessons.

There were girls of all ages: little creatures, some pallid and
delicate-looking, the offspring of invalid parents,--much given to
books, not much to mischief, commonly spoken of as particularly good
children, and contrasted with another sort, girls of more vigorous
organization, who were disposed to laughing and play, and required a
strong hand to manage them;--then young growing misses of every shade of
Saxon complexion, and here and there one of more Southern hue: blondes,
some of them so translucent-looking, that it seemed as if you could see
the souls in their bodies, like bubbles in glass, if souls were objects
of sight; brunettes, some with rose-red colors, and some with that
swarthy hue which often carries with it a heavily-shaded lip, and which
with pure outlines and outspoken reliefs gives us some of our handsomest
women,--the women whom ornaments of pure gold adorn more than any other
_parures_; and again, but only here and there, one with dark hair and
gray or blue eyes, a Celtic type, perhaps, but found in our native stock
occasionally; rarest of all, a light-haired girl with dark eyes, hazel,
brown, or of the color of that mountain-brook spoken of in this chapter,
where it ran through shadowy woodlands. With these were to be seen at
intervals some of maturer years, full-blown flowers among the opening
buds, with that conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear
during the period when they never meet a single man without having his
monosyllable ready for him,--tied as they are, poor things! on the rock
of expectation, each of them an Andromeda waiting for her Perseus.

"Who is that girl in ringlets,--the fourth in the third row on the
right?" said Master Langdon.

"Charlotte Ann Wood," said Miss Darley;--"writes very pretty poems."

"Oh!--And the pink one, three seats from her? Looks bright; anything in
her?"

"Emma Dean,--day-scholar,--Squire Dean's daughter,--nice girl,--second
medal last year."

The master asked these two questions in a careless kind of way, and did
not seem to pay any too much attention to the answers.

"And who and what is that," he said,--"sitting a little apart
there,--that strange, wild-looking girl?"

This time he put the real question he wanted answered;--the other two
were asked at random, as masks for the third.

The lady-teacher's face changed;--one would have said she was frightened
or troubled. She looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear the
master's question and its answer. But the girl did not look up;--she was
winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if in a
kind of reverie.

Miss Darley drew close to the master and placed her hand so as to hide
her lips. "Don't look at her as if we were talking about her," she
whispered softly;--"that is Elsie Venner."

MEXICO.

A certain immortal fool, who had, like most admitted fools, great
wisdom, once said, that the number of truces between the Christians and
Saracens in Palestine made an old man of him; for he had known three of
them, so that he must be at least one hundred and fifty years old. The
saying occurs in a romance, to be sure, but one which is not half so
romantic as the best-accredited decade of Titus Livius, and is quite as
authentic as most of what Sir Archibald Alison says, when he writes on
the United States.

What Palestine and the Crusades were to the witty son of Witless, Mexico
and her politics are to moderns, not even excepting the predestined
devourers of the Aztec land, who ought to know something of the country
they purpose bringing within the full light of civilization through the
aid of slaughter and slavery. There are some myriads of "Americans of
the North" yet living, and who entertain not the remotest idea of dying,
who remember Mexico as a Spanish dependency quite as submissive to
Viceroy Iturrigaray as Cuba is now to Captain-General Serrano; and who
have seen her both an Empire and a Republic, and the theatre of more
revolutions than England has known since the days of the Octarchy. The
mere thought of the changes that have occurred there bewilders the mind;
and the inhabitants of orderly countries, whether that order be the
consequence of despotism or of constitutionalism, wonder that society
should continue to exist in a country where government appears to be
unknown.

Less than fifty years cover the time between the appearance of Hidalgo
and that of Miramon; and between the dates of the leaderships of the two
men, Mexico has had an army of generals, of whom little is now known
beyond their names. Hidalgo, Morelos, Mina, Bravo, Iturbide, Guerrero,
Bustamente, Victoria, Pedraza, Gomez Farias, Paredes, and Herrera,--such
are the names that were once familiar to our countrymen in connection
with Mexican affairs. We have now a new race of Mexican
chiefs,--Alvarez, Comonfort, Zuloaga, Uraga, Juarez, Vidaurri, Haro y
Tamariz, Degollado, and Miramon. Some of these last-named chiefs might,
perhaps, be classed with those first named, from years and services; but
whatever of political importance they have belongs to the present time;
and the most important man of them all, Miramon, is said to be very
young, and was not born until many years after the last vestiges of the
vice-regal rule had been removed. Santa Ana, but for his shifting round
so often,--now an absolute ruler, and then an absolute runaway, yet ever
contriving to get the better of his antagonists, whether they happen to
be clever Mexicans or dull Americans,--might be called the isthmus that
connects the first generation of leaders with that which now misleads
his country. Santa Ana's public life synchronizes with the independence
of Mexico of foreign rule, and his career can hardly be pronounced at an
end. It would be of the nature of a newspaper coincidence, were he to
know his "last of earth" at the very time when, by all indications,
Mexico stands in greater danger of losing her national life than she has
known since the day when Barradas was sent to play the part of Cortes,
but proved himself not quite equal to that of Narvaez. Santa Ana owed
much of his power to his victory over the Spaniards in 1830, though
pestilence did half the work to his hand; and perhaps no better evidence
of the hatred of the Mexicans for Spanish rule can be adduced, than the
hold which he has maintained over their minds, in consequence of the
part he took in overthrowing that rule, and in rendering its return
impossible.

Provoked by the anarchy which has so long existed in Mexico, American
writers, and writers of other countries, have sometimes contrasted the
condition of that nation with the order that prevailed there during the
Spanish ascendency, and it is not uncommon to hear Americans say that
the worst thing that ever happened to the Mexicans was the overthrow of
that ascendency. They forget that the causes of Mexican anarchy were of
Spanish creation, and that it must have exhibited itself, all the same,
if Mexico had not achieved her independence. The shock caused by the
seizure of the Spanish throne by Napoleon I. led to that war against the
Spaniards in Mexico which prematurely broke out in 1810, and which was
of the nature of a _Jacquerie_, but which would have been completely
successful, had Hidalgo been equal to his position. It had been intended
that the blow should be struck against the _Gachupines_,--European
Spaniards, or persons of pure Spanish blood,--who were partisans of
Spain, whether Spain were ruled by Bourbons or Bonapartes; and it was to
have been delivered by the Creoles, who remained faithful to the House
of Bourbon. Circumstances caused the Indian races to commence the war,
and this was fatal to the original project, as it led to the union of
both Spaniards and Creoles against the followers of Hidalgo. The army
with which Calleja overthrew the forces of Hidalgo was an army of
Creoles. It was composed of the very men who would have been foremost in
putting down the Spaniards, if the Indians had remained quiet. From that
time dates the disorder of Mexico, which has ever since continued,
though at intervals the country has known short periods of comparative
repose.

In 1811 Morelos was the most conspicuous of the insurgent chiefs, and
the next year he was successful in several engagements; and it was not
until the end of 1815 that he fell into the hands of his enemies, by
whom he was shot, sharing the fate of Hidalgo. During the four years
that he led the people, efforts were made to settle the controversy on
an equitable basis that would have left the King of Spain master of
Mexico; but the pride of the Spaniards would not allow them to listen to
justice. They acted in Mexico as their ancestors had acted in the
Netherlands. It is the chief characteristic of the Spaniard, that, in
dealing with foreigners, he always assumes a Roman-like superiority,
without possessing the Roman's sense and shrewdness. The treatment of
the Capuans by the Romans, as told by Livy in his narrative of the
Hannibalian War, might be read as a history of the manner in which the
Spaniards ever treat "rebels"; and never did they behave more cruelly
than they behaved toward the Mexicans in the last days of the viceroys.
This fact is to be borne in mind, when we think of the sanguinary
character of Mexican contests; for that character originated in the
action of the Spaniards during their struggles with the Patriots. The
latter were not faultless, but they often exhibited a generosity and a
self-denial that promised much for the future of their country, which
promise would have been realized but for the ferocious tone of the
warfare of the old governing race. The Spaniards were ultimately beaten,
but they left behind them an evil that marred the victory of the
Patriots, and which has done much to prevent it from proving useful to
those who obtained it at great cost to themselves and their country.

The defeat and death of Morelos proved fatal, for the time, to regular
opposition on the part of the Patriots, and it was not until the arrival
of Mina in Mexico that they renewed the war in force. This was in April,
1817; and Mina was defeated and put to death in seven months after he
landed. At the beginning of 1818, the viceroy Apodaca announced to the
home government, "that he would be answerable for the safety of Mexico
without a single additional soldier being sent out to reinforce the
armies that were in the field." Had he been a wise man, the event might
have justified this boast; but as he was neither wise nor honest, and as
he sought to restore the old state of things in all its impurity, his
confidence was fatal to the Spanish cause. The Spanish Constitution of
1812 had been proclaimed in Mexico in the autumn of that year, and its
existence kept the Liberal cause alive. So long as the Patriots had any
power in the field, Apodaca, though an enemy of the Constitution, dared
not seek its destruction; but after the overthrow of Mina, when he
believed the Patriot party was "crushed out," he plotted against the
Constitution, and resolved to restore the system that had existed down
to 1812. Not a vestige of Liberalism was to remain. He selected for his
chief tool the once famous Agustin de Iturbide, who turned out an edged
tool, so sharp, indeed, that he not only cut the viceroy's fingers, but
severed forever the connection between Mexico and Spain. Iturbide had
eminently distinguished himself in the royal army, and to him it was
owing that Morelos had been defeated. He was brave, ambitious, and able,
and he possessed a handsome person and elegant manners. He was appointed
to head an army in Western Mexico, on condition that he should
"pronounce" in favor of the restoration of absolute royal authority. He
accepted the command; but on the 24th of February, 1821, he astonished
his employer by proclaiming, not the plan upon which they had agreed,
but what is known as the _Plan of Iguala_, from the town where the
proclamation was made. This plan provided that Mexico should be
independent of Spain, and for the erection of the country into a
constitutional monarchy, the throne of which should be filled by
Ferdinand VII., or by one of his brothers,--or by some person chosen
from among reigning families, should the Spanish Bourbons decline the
invitation. The monarch was to be called _Emperor_, a title made
fashionable and cheap by Bonaparte's example. Perfect equality was
established, and all distinction of castes was abolished. Saving that
the Catholic religion was declared the national religion, the
twenty-four articles of this Plan were of a liberal character, and leave
an impression on the mind highly favorable to their author. Viewing it
in the light of thirty-nine years, and seeing that republicanism has not
succeeded in Mexico, even a democrat may regret that the Plan of Iguala
did not become the constitution of that country.

The simple abolition of Spanish rule would have satisfied the mass of
the inhabitants, who cared little for political institutions, but who
knew the evils they suffered from the tyranny of a class that did not
number above one-eightieth part of the population. For the time, the
Plan was successful: the clergy, the military, the people, and the old
partisans of independence all supported it; and O'Donoju, who had
arrived as successor to Apodaca, recognized Mexican independence. The
victors entered the capital September 27, 1821, and established a
provisional Junta, which created a regency, with Iturbide for President.
On the 24th of February, 1822, a Congress assembled, which contained
three parties, the representatives of those which existed in the
country:--1. The Bourbonists, who desired that the Plan of Iguala should
be adhered to in all its details; 2. The Iturbideans, who wished for a
monarchy, with their chief as Emperor; and, 3. The Republicans, who were
hostile to monarchical institutions as well as to Spanish rule. It is
possible that the first party might have triumphed, had Spain been under
the dominion of sagacious men; for the clergy must have preferred it,
not only because it was that polity under which they were sure to have
most consideration, but because the whole power of Rome might have been
brought to bear in its behalf, and that the clergy never would have
seriously thought of resisting;--and the influence of the clergy was
great over the mass of the people. But the Spanish government would not
ratify the treaty made by O'Donoju, or abandon its claim on Mexico. This
left but two factions in the Congress, and their quarrel had a sudden
termination, for the moment, in the elevation of Iturbide to the
imperial throne, May 18th, 1822. This was the work of a handful of the
lowest rabble of the capital, the select few of a vagabondage compared
with whom the inhabitants of the Five Points may be counted grave
constitutional politicians. The legislature went through the farce of
approval, and the people acquiesced,--as they would have done, had he
been proclaimed Cham. Had Iturbide understood his trade, he might have
reigned long, perhaps have established a dynasty; but he did what nearly
every Mexican chief since his time has done, and what, to be just,
nearly every revolutionary government has sought to do: he endeavored to
establish a tyranny. He dissolved the Congress, substituting a Junta for
it, composed of his own adherents. The consequence was revolt in various
parts of the empire. Santa Ana, then Governor of Vera Cruz, "pronounced"
against the Emperor; and Echavari, who was sent to punish him, played
the same part toward Iturbide that Iturbide had played toward Apodaca:
he joined the enemies of the imperial government. As Iturbide had
triumphed over the viceroy by the aid of men of all parties but that of
the old Spaniards, so was he overthrown by a coalition of an equally
various character. He gave up the crown, after having worn it not quite
ten months, and was allowed to depart, with the promise of an annual
pension of twenty-five thousand dollars. Seeking to recover the crown in
1824, he was seized and shot,--a fate of which he could not complain, as
he was a man of bloody hand, and, as a royalist leader, had caused
prisoners to be butchered by the hundred.

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