BOOKS •

MR. STANLEY'S EARLY TRAVELS.*

WE are so accustomed to think of Mr. Stanley as an African explorer that it is almost with a start of incredulity that one learns from these new volumes full of old adventures that he was once quite as much at home in the camps of Red Indians as he has since been in the heart of the "Dark Continent." The surprise, let us say at once, is an exceedingly pleasant one. Of the two volumes, now published by Messrs. Sampson Low and Marston, the first and smallest is incomparably the most interesting. But it deserves higher praise than that ; it is, without any question of comparison, an absolutely delightful book.

• MV Early Treeete end Adosntures in America and Asia. By Henry M. Stanley, D.C.L. 2 vole. London: Sacapaon Low and Co.

It consists of a series of letters communicated in the autumn of 1867 to the Missouri Democrat and a New York paper in the course of two Indian campaigns, in which Mr.

Stanley took part as a Press correspondent. The date 1867 does not seem so very long ago to many of us, even when measured by the events of our domestic histories. And in the story of any European State, though it may cover many momentous political changes, a period of less than thirty years makes but little visible mark on the growth of civilisation. But in the wild west of North America it means all the difference between prairies trodden by herds of buffalo and bunted over by the red man, and a mapped-out land intersected by railways and bristling with cities, prosperous, civilised, and up-to-date. Cheyenne city, now numbering twelve thousand inhabitants, was a village of wigwams when General Hancock's expedition came to Fort Dodge, eight-and-twenty years ago, to urge upon the Indian chiefs assembled in council the necessity of submitting ultimately to the superior numbers and civilisation of the white man—and the wisdom of doing it at once. When the expedition started from Missouri, it was expected that a good deal of fighting would take place. But the wise tactics of Generals Hancock and Sherman—tactics of frankness and

firmness, responded to by the Indians with confidence and

loyalty—made it a mission of peace. There were some wild raids of Indians calling for prompt and stern punishment, some skirmishes in which a few white men were killed and scalped, but no general engagement. There is enough of the active excitement and adventure of the wild man's life to make the letters very lively and stimulating reading. But more interesting than any descriptions of fighting or pictures of scenery or manners, are the very full reports of the speeches made on both sides in the great Council at North Platte, in which the white man and the red man met. These, given not quite verbatim, but at very liberal length, make the most fascinating reading, and the volume that contains them deserves to take a lasting place among the chronicles of the nations. Mr. Stanley has no illusions about the red man, and no sentimental remorse for his disappearance. He does not slur over his cruelty or his filthiness, or make an idyll of his domestic life. The dusky beauties of Longfellow's " Hiawatha" he confesses that he never saw, only-

" Matter-of-fact and most unromantic Indian girls handling dextrously the axe, cutting wood for their liege lord's supper, who were remarkable for coarse black hair, low foreheads, blazing coal-black eyes, faces of a dirty greasy colour, who were not over modestly dressed, and who sometimes carried staring, round-eyed, and grinning papooses, on whom they seemed to scorn to bestow the maternal endearments so natural to a mother's heart."

Nor does he forget to remind us that the "brave " who scalps his vanquished enemy in war, is equally ready to cut off the nose of his squaw if she proves unfaithful to him, though he has won her by no romantic snit, but simply by laying the amount of her worth at her father's feet. The wigwam in which the squaw serves her master, is filthy within, though picturesque without. And so is the cybole village of wig- wams :— " The Cheyenne village is located in the centre of a grove of noble elms, which covers a square area of three hundred paces along the banks of the Pawnee River. From our tent door the white tops of the Indian wigwams may be seen, gleaming through the trees. The aborigines undoubtedly display great taste in the selection of their camping grounds. Water and wood are indis- pensable necessities to the Indian, as well as to the white settler. But the savages, roaming at large over the whole country, can select, of all the thousand and one lovely spots which Nature has so bountifully provided, the loveliest of all. And it is without exaggeration we style the spot on which the Indians pitched their village as scenically pretty. But within, the village is foul, so foul, indeed, as to defy description."

Mr. Stanley does, however, describe it all very graphically..

And he also gives a very thrilling and realistic description of the wrecking of a train by a band of Indians with the usual accompaniments of scalping and outrage, which made it necessary for General Hancock to order the village of Cheyenne, with its two hundred and fifty-one wigwams—not to be replaced without the slaughter of thousands of buffaloes —to be burnt to the ground.

Still, with all these things fresh in our minds, when we come to the great Council where the chiefs rise one after the other to state their grievances, it is impossible not to be touched by the pathos and dignity of their plea. There is a witchery for

the adventurous spirit in the very names of the chiefs. Man-

that-walks-under-the-Ground, Spotted-Tail, Swift Bear, Big Mouth, Standing Elk, Pawnee Killer, Turkey Foot, Man-af raid- of-his-Horses, &c. The speeches of the white generals and peace Commissioners are full of friendly wisdom and kindness ; patriarchal both in substance and language. One feels that the messages and the offers of the President, are, indeed, the words of a " Great Father," or, as he is sometimes called, " Great Grandfather,"full of benevolence and wise forethought for beloved but wilful children. It seems so reasonable that the red men should do as they are expected to do, accept the lands reserved for them by the mountains, choose the best sites for their homesteads, and, settling upon them, turn into peaceful farmers, who will first send their children to the schools the white men build for them, and by-and-by worship with their children in the white men's churches. There is a ring of full sincerity and sympathy in Senator Henderson's opening address at the great gathering, of which we quote the conclusion. And yet we do not wonder at the reluctance of the chiefs to accept its terms. The wild man wants, above all, to be wild, and extermination is more congenial to him than transformation :—

" What has the Government done of which you complain F " (asked the Senator). " If soldiers have done wrong to you, tell us when and where, and who are the guilty parties. If these agents whom we have put here to protect you have cheated and de- frauded you, be not afraid to tell us. We have come to hear all your complaints and to correct all your wrongs. We have full power to do these things, and we pledge you our sacred honour to do so. For anything that you may say in this council you shall not be harmed. Before we proceed to inform you what we are authorised to do for you, we desire to hear fully from your own lips what you have done, what you have suffered, and what you want. We say, however, that we intend to do justice to the red man. If we have harmed him, we will correct it ; if the red man has harmed us, we believe he is brave and generous enough to acknowledge it, and to cease from doing any more wrong. At present we have only to say that we are greatly rejoiced to see our red brethren so well disposed towards peace. We are especially glad because we as individuals would give them all the comforts of civilisation, religion, and wealth, and now we are authorised by the Great Father to provide for them comfortable homes upon our richest agricultural lands. We are authorised to build for the Indian, schoolhouses and churches, and provide teachers to educate his children. We can furnish him with agricultural implements to work, and domestic cattle, sheep, and hogs, to stock his farm. We now cease, and shall wait to hear what you have to say, and after we have heard it, we will tell you the road to go."

To which the great chief, Satanta, makes answer. The com- plaint of the White men is that the Indians have broken the treaty signed two years ago. But Satanta denies the charge, as far as he and his tribe are concerned. He and his have done nothing wrong, and so he was not afraid when, while "the grass was growing this spring," a large body of soldiers came along the Santa Fe. His "heart is glad" to see the white chiefs :—

" All the chiefs of the Kiowas, Comanches, and Arapahoes are here to-day. They have come to listen to the good word. We have been waiting here a long time to see you, and we are getting tired. All the land south of the Arkansas belongs to the Kiowas and Comanches, and I don't want to give away any of it. I love the land and the buffalo, and will not part with any don't want any of these medicine homes [schools and churches] built in the country; I want the papooses brought up just exactly as I am. When I make peace it is a long and lasting one ; there is no end to it. We thank you for your presents. All these chiefs and head men feel happy. They will do what you want. They know that you are doing the best you can When I look upon you I know you are all big chiefs. While you are in the country we go to sleep happy, and are not afraid. I have heard that you intend to settle us on a reservation near the mountains. I don't want to settle there. I love to roam over the wide prairie, and when I,do it I feel free and happy, but when we settle down, we grow pale and die. Hearken well to what I say. I have laid aside my lance, my bow, and my shield, and yet I feel safe in your presence. I have told you the truth. I have no little lies hid about me, but I don't know how it is with the Com- missioners ; are they as clear as I am ? A long time ago this land belonged to our fathers, but when I go up to the river I see a camp of soldiers, and they are cutting my wood down, or killing my buffalo. I don't like that, and when I see it my heart feels

like bursting with sorrow?'

This is the burden of all the speeches of all the chiefs. They do not want to be farmers. Their fathers have eaten wild meat, and they cannot leave the custom of their fathers and live. They want the papooses to be as they are, not as the white men. They have come a long way to see the white chiefs. They mean well by them, but they are tired of waiting. They want presents, chiefly ammunition to kill game with, and to be allowed to go back to the prairie. They do not like the terms of the white man, but they know them after all to

be the terms of the inevitable ; and so the Treaty is signed, and the expedition ends in peace. Mingled with the pictures of the red man's life, are rapid sketches of the new civilisation that is driving him out,—of the gold-fever and the mushroom growth of the gold cities, with the lurid wickedness and brutality of the worst kind of white man. And one of the " plums" of the book for those who do not mind a little of the horrible, is the tale of the white man who was scalped, but not killed, and who, having the luck to pick up his own scalp after the enemy had fled, had it put back in its place by skilful surgeons. The second volume describes travels in Egypt and the East. As the author explains :— "The success of my Indian letters induced Mr. Gordon Bennett., of the New York Herald, to appoint me his special correspondent on the Abyssinian Expedition in 1868. Having by good fortune succeeded in sending news of the fall of Magdala many days in advance of the Government and English correspondents, I was sent on a roving mission to Egypt, Crete, spathe Levant, and finally to Spain—whence in October, 1888, I was summoned to Paris to receive a commission for the finding of Livingstone in Central Africa. But previous to embarking on the last enterprise, which was great for a young journalist, I was instructed to report on the inauguration of the Suez Canal, to write a kind of guide to the Nile, to visit Captain (now Sir Charles) Warren, and give an account of his explorations underneath Jerusalem, and finally I was to proceed through Persia to India, vie. the Caucasus, and send a series of letters upon all subjects that I might find worth describing on the way."

It is this series of letters, beginning in 1869 and continuing to 1870, that fill the second volume. There is much that is interesting in them, but nothing so fresh and dramatic as the incidents of the Indian Campaigns, and they follow a little tamely upon the spirited narrative of the earlier series.

We rather wish that the two volumes had been published independently of one another. The first is a book not only full of life and character and incident, but permeated with the sentiment and the significance of the great drama of savagery and civilisation in close and final conflict ; and it deserves to pass through many editions and become a classic in its kind. The second is but one volume of travels among many, with picturesque passages, instructive statistics, and a great variety of information, all given with Mr. Stanley's well-known vigour and capacity, but wanting distinctive character and the touch of imagination to make it a " book " in the sense in which we claim the name for the first volume.