Part 8 (1/2)
”A company of thirty was soon raised.” They were to receive two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence per day each, ”out of which he was to maintain himself”;--very little to risk one's life for; but in those days it was no concern with a man whether he was killed or not. Besides, it was worth something to get killed and have Francis Parkman write about you more than a century later. Perhaps they antic.i.p.ated this perpetuation of their names and deeds.
However, ”Lovewell was chosen captain; Farwell lieutenant, and Robbins, ensign. They set out towards the end of November, and reappeared at Dunstable early in January, bringing one prisoner and one scalp.” It does not seem to us to have paid the interest on the investment of two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence per day, ”out of which he was to maintain himself,” and, for anything we know to the contrary, perhaps the captain was getting more than this--it has not been recorded. ”Towards the end of the month Lovewell set out again, this time with eighty-seven men.
They ascended the frozen Merrimac, pa.s.sed Lake Winnepesaukee, pushed nearly to the White Mountains, and encamped on a branch of the upper Saco. Here they killed a moose--a timely piece of luck, for they were in danger of starvation, and Lovewell had been compelled by want of food to send back a good number of his men. The rest held their way, filing on snowshoes through the deathlike solitude that gave no sign of life except the light track of some squirrel on the snow, and the brisk note of the hardy little chickadee, or black-capped t.i.tmouse, so familiar in the winter woods.”
Now here is where the foolhardiness of the expedition begins to appeal to us. Supposing just here they had met five hundred crazy Indians with five hundred crazy bows and arrows? And they must have expected it. They were searching for Indians. Perhaps they were seeking martyrdom? But the New Englander of the frontier was nothing if not foolhardy. They mistook it for bravery, and there must have been some bravery amalgamated with it, because a man must have a certain quant.i.ty of that rarity before he can lend himself out as a target at two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence a day, ”out of which he was to maintain himself.”
Now, if you have patience to follow you will learn that they ultimately met the very thing which you expect--which they must have expected.
”Thus far the scouts had seen no human footprints; but on the twentieth of February they found a lately abandoned wigwam, and following the snowshoe tracks that led from it--” Right into the lion's jaw, as it were. Perhaps they were anxious to be shot to get out of their misery--”at length saw smoke rising at a distance out of the gray forest.” They saw their finish, and their hearts were filled with joy.
”The party lay close till two o'clock in the morning; then, cautiously approaching, found one or more wigwams, surrounded them, and killed all the inmates, ten in number.” They were to pay dear for this, as anyone could have told them. ”They brought home the scalps in triumph, ... and Lovewell began at once to gather men for another hunt.... At the middle of April he had raised a band of forty-six.” One of the number was Seth Wyman, ... a youth of twenty-one, graduated at Harvard College, in 1723, and now a student of theology. Chaplain though he was, he carried a gun, knife and hatchet like the others, and not one of the party was more prompt to use them.... They began their march on April 15th.” After leaving several of their number by the way for various causes, we find thirty-seven of them on the night of May 7th near Fryeburg lying in the woods near the northeast end of Lovewell's pond.
”At daybreak the next morning, as they stood bareheaded, listening to a prayer from the young chaplain, they heard the report of a gun, and soon after an Indian.... Lovewell ordered his men to lay down their packs and advance with extreme caution.” Why this caution? ”They met an Indian coming towards them through the dense trees and bushes. He no sooner saw them than he fired at the leading men.” Naturally. We should have said ”leading targets.” ”His gun was charged with beaver shot and he severely wounded Lovewell and young Whiting; on which Seth Wyman shot him dead, and the chaplain and another man scalped him.” As yet they had only entered the lion's den. ”And now follows one of the most obstinate and deadly bush-fights in the annals of New England.... The Indians howled like wolves, yelled like enraged cougars, and made the forest ring with their whoops.... The slaughter became terrible. Men fell like wheat before the scythe. At one time the Indians ceased firing; ... they seemed to be holding a 'pow-wow'; but the keen and fearless Wyman crept up among the bushes, shot the chief conjurer, and broke up the meeting.
About the middle of the afternoon young Fry received a mortal wound.
Unable to fight longer, he lay in his blood, praying from time to time for his comrades in a faint but audible voice.” One, Keys, received two wounds, ”but fought on till a third shot struck him.” He declared the Indians would not get his scalp. Creeping along the sandy edge of the pond, he chanced to find a stranded canoe, pushed it afloat, rolled himself into it, and drifted away before the wind. Soon after sunset the Indians drew off.... The surviving white men explored the scene of the fight.... Of the thirty-four men, nine had escaped without serious injury, eleven were badly wounded, and the rest were dead or dying....
Robbins, as he lay helpless, asked one of them to load his gun, saying, 'The Indians will come in the morning to scalp me, and I'll kill another of them if I can.' They loaded the gun and left him.” The expected had occurred. Most of them had been killed. Anyone could have told them this before they set out--they could have made the same prophecy for themselves. And after all they had accomplished nothing but their own deaths. The story of their return rivals that of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Of the whole number eleven ultimately reached home.
We leave it to the reader to determine whether this was an exhibition of bravery or foolhardiness, or a mixture of both.
We congratulate ourselves that we did not live on the frontier of New England in the year 1725.
Of the Laws of Lycurgus
Lycurgus reigned over a place called Lacedaemon, which is a part of Greece, about the year 820 B.C. Now, this is a great many years ago, and is further back into the archives of history than most of us can remember. There is no doubt, however, that this great ruler, Lycurgus, was crazy, or he was one of those persons whose brains cease to develop after they have left their teens. He certainly secures the first prize as a ”whim” strategist. In spite of his insane eccentricities, he was allowed the full exercise of his freedom. Had he flourished in 1915 A.D.
instead of 820 ”B.C.” (which does not mean British Columbia), the asylum for the insane at New Westminster would not have been strong enough to retain him. Lycurgus did one redeeming thing--he founded a Senate; ”which, sharing,”--we are following Plutarch--”as Plato says, in the power of the kings, too imperious and unrestrained before, and having equal authority with them, was the means of keeping them within bounds of moderation, and highly contributed to the preservation of the State.
The establishment of a Senate, an intermediate body, like ballast, kept it in just equilibrium, and put it in a safe posture: the twenty-eight senators adhering to the kings whenever they saw the people too encroaching, and on the other hand, supporting the people, when the kings attempted to make themselves absolute.”
Now, what in the world possessed this despotic imbecile to form a senate? His action in this can only be accounted for in the light that it was one of those unpremeditated whims of a narrow-minded faddist. One naturally wonders what the newly created senators were doing while the king was imposing his insane laws. This body was formed for the ”preservation of the state.” The wonder is that there was any state left, for the king paralyzed commerce, smothered ambition, choked art to death, and placed a ban on modesty. Further than having been ”formed,”
the ”Senate” never again appears on the pages of the ”Lycurgus” book.
Plutarch, who lived in Greece about the year 100 A.D., nine hundred years after the subject of his biography, relates the forming and imposing of those laws with the utmost faith, and the most implicit innocence; which goes to prove that the Grecian idea of government, with all its knowledge, had not advanced much, at least up to the time of Plutarch.
And now for the laws.
”A second and bolder political enterprise of Lycurgus was a new division of the lands. For he found a prodigious inequality; the city overcharged with many indigent persons, who had no land; and the wealth centred in the hands of the few. Determined, therefore, to root out the evils of insolence, envy, avarice, and luxury, and those distempers of a state still more inveterate than fatal--I mean poverty and riches--he persuaded them to cancel all former divisions of land and to make new ones, in such a manner as they might be perfectly equal in their possessions and way of living.
His proposal was put in practice.
”After this he attempted to divide also the movables, in order to take away all appearance of inequality; but he soon perceived that they could not bear to have their goods taken directly from them, and therefore took another method, counterworking their avarice by a stratagem.”
Now, this seems to be the only law to which they made objection; and this proves that the love of personal ”icties” has very deep roots.
Perhaps the influence of the ”senate” sustained them in this, for qualifications for a senator, even in those days, must have called for men of some means, and they, when the shoe began to pinch their own feet, would not care to divide up their sugar and flour with the rank and file. It does not appear, however, that they had any say in the matter, and, beyond the statement that they were formed for a purpose, they seem to have taken no part in the affairs of state; if they had, Lycurgus and his laws would never have been made part of history.