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THEODORE PARKER
11081
neglect to mention the phylacteries and the shew-bread, and the
Levite and the priest, and the tithes, and the other great essen-
tials of religion; what "infidelity" must these pious souls have
detected! How must they have classed him with Korah, Dathan,
and Abiram, the mythological Tom Paines of old time; with
the men of Sodom and Gomorrah! The popular praise of the
young Nazarene, with his divine life and lip of fire; the popu
lar shout, "Hosannah to the Son of David! " was no doubt "a
stench in the nostrils of the righteous. " "When the Son of
Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? " Find faith?
He comes to bring it. It is only by crucified redeemers that
the world is saved. Prophets are doomed to be stoned; apostles
to be sawn asunder. The world knoweth its own, and loveth
them. Even so let it be; the stoned prophet is not without his
reward. The balance of God is even.
Yet there were men who heard the new word. Truth never
yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul
of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere, and
produce its hundred fold. Some kept his sayings and pondered
them in their heart. Others heard them gladly. Did priests
and Levites stop their ears? Publicans and harlots went into
the kingdom of God before them. Those blessed women whose
hearts God has sown deepest with the Orient pearl of faith;
they who ministered to him in his wants, washed his feet with
tears of penitence, and wiped them with the hairs of their head,
was it in vain he spoke to them? Alas for the anointed priest,
the child of Levi, the son of Aaron,- men who shut up inspira-
tion in old books, and believed God was asleep,-they stumbled
in darkness, and fell into the ditch. But doubtless there was
many a tear-stained face that brightened like fires new stirred as
Truth spoke out of Jesus's lips. His word swayed the multitude
as pendent vines swing in the summer wind; as the Spirit of
God moved on the waters of chaos, and said, Let there be light,
and there was light. No doubt many a rude fisherman of Gen-
nesareth heard his words with a heart bounding and scarce able
to keep in his bosom, went home a new man with a legion of
angels in his breast, and from that day lived a life divine and
beautiful.
No doubt, on the other hand, Rabbi Kozeb Ben Shatan,
when he heard of this eloquent Nazarene and his Sermon on
the Mount, said to his disciples in private at Jerusalem:- This


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11082
THEODORE PARKER
new doctrine will not injure us, prudent and educated men: we
know that men may worship as well out of the Temple as in it;
a burnt-offering is nothing; the ritual of no value; the Sabbath
like any other day; the Law faulty in many things, offensive in
some, and no more from God than other laws equally good. We
know that the priesthood is a human affair, originated and man-
aged like other human affairs. We may confess all this to our-
selves, but what is the use of telling it? The people wish to
be deceived: let them. The Pharisee will conduct wisely like a
Pharisee - for he sees the eternal fitness of things-even if these
doctrines should be proclaimed. But this people who know not
the law, what will become of them? Simon Peter, James, and
John, those poor unlettered fishermen on the lake of Galilee, to
whom we gave a farthing and a priestly blessing in our sum-
mer excursion,- what will become of them when told that every
word of the Law did not come straight out of the mouth of Jeho-
vah, and the ritual is nothing! They will go over to the flesh
and the Devil, and be lost. It is true that the Law and the
Prophets are well summed up in one word, Love God and man.
But never let us sanction the saying: it would ruin the seed of
Abraham, keep back the kingdom of God, and "destroy our use-
fulness. " Thus went it at Jerusalem. The new word was "blas-
phemy," the new prophet an "infidel," "beside himself,» « "had a
devil. " But at Galilee things took a shape somewhat different;
one which blind guides could not foresee. The common people,
not knowing the Law, counted him a prophet come up from the
dead, and heard him gladly. Yes, thousands of men, and women
also, with hearts in their bosoms, gathered in the field and
pressed about him in the city and the desert place, forgetful of
hunger and thirst, and were fed to the full with his words, so
deep a child could understand them; James and John leave all
to follow him who had the word of eternal life; and when that
young carpenter asks Peter, Whom sayest thou that I am? it
has been revealed to that poor unlettered fisherman, not by
flesh and blood, but by the word of the Lord; and he can say,
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. The Pharisee
went his way, and preached a doctrine that he knew was false;
the fisherman also went his way, but which to the flesh and the
Devil?
We cannot tell, no man can tell, the feelings which the large
free doctrines of absolute religion awakened when heard for the


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THEODORE PARKER
11083
first time. There must have been many a Simeon waiting for
the consolation; many a Mary longing for the better part; many
a soul in cabins and cottages and stately dwellings, that caught
glimpses of the same truth, as God's light shone through some
crevice which Piety made in that wall Prejudice and Superstition
had built up betwixt man and God; men who scarce dared to
trust that revelation,- "too good to be true,"—such was their
awe of Moses, their reverence for the priest. To them the word
of Jesus must have sounded divine; like the music of their home.
sung out in the sky, and heard in a distant land: beguiling toil
of its weariness, pain of its sting, affliction of despair. There
must have been men sick of forms which had lost their mean-
ing, pained with the open secret of sacerdotal hypocrisy, hunger-
ing and thirsting after the truth, yet whom error and prejudice
and priestcraft had blinded so that they dared not think as men,
nor look on the sunlight God shed upon the mind.
But see what a work it has wrought. Men could not hold
the word in their bosoms; it would not be still. No doubt
they sought, those rude disciples, after their teacher's death, to
quiet the matter and say nothing about it: they had nerves.
that quivered at the touch of steel; wives and children whom
it was hard to leave behind to the world's uncertain sympathy;
respectable friends it may be, who said the old Law did very
well. Let well enough alone. The people must be deceived a
little. The world can never be much mended. No doubt Truth
stood on one side, and Ease on the other; it has often been so.
Perhaps the disciples went to the old synagogue more sedulous
than before; paid tithes; kept the new-moons; were sprinkled
with the blood of the sacrifice; made low bows to the Levite,
sought his savory conversation, and kept the rules a priest gave
George Fox. But it would not do. There was too much truth
to be hid. Even selfish Simon Peter has a cloven tongue of
fire in his mouth, and he and the disciples go to their work, the
new word swelling in their laboring heart.
Then came the strangest contest the world ever saw. On the
one side is all the strength of the world, the Jews with their
records from the hand of Moses, David, and Esaias; supernatural
records that go back to the birth of time; their Law derived
from Jehovah, attested by miracles, upheld by prophets, defended
by priests, children of Levi, sons of Aaron, the Law which was
to last forever; the Temple, forty and seven years in being built,
-
-
―――――


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THEODORE PARKER
its splendid ceremonies, its beautiful gate and golden porch; there
was the wealth of the powerful; the pride, the self-interest, the
prejudice of the priestly class; the indifference of the worldly;
the hatred of the wicked; the scorn of the learned; the contempt
of the great.
On the same side were the Greeks, with their
chaos of religion, full of mingled beauty and ugliness, virtue and
vice, piety and lust, still more confounded by the deep mysteries
of the priest, the cunning speculations of the sophist, the awful
sublimity of the sage, by the sweet music of the philosopher
and moralist and poet, who spoke and sung of man and God in
strains so sweet and touching; there were rites in public; solemn
and pompous ceremonies, processions, festivals, temples, games to
captivate that wondrous people; there were secret mysteries, to
charm the curious and attract the thoughtful; Greece, with her
arts, her science, her heroes and her gods, her Muse voluptuous
and sweet. There too was Rome, the queen of nations, and con-
queror of the world, who sat on her seven-hilled throne, and
cast her net eastward and southward and northward and west-
ward, over tower and city and realm and empire, and drew them
to herself, a giant's spoil; with a religion haughty and inso-
lent, that looked down on the divinities of Greece and Egypt, of
"Ormus and the Ind," and gave them a shelter in her capacious
robe; Rome, with her practiced skill; Rome, with her eloquence;
Rome, with her pride; Rome, with her arms, hot from the con-
quest of a thousand kings. On the same side are all the institu-
tions of all the world: its fables, wealth, armies, pride, its folly
and its sin.
On the other hand are a few Jewish fishermen, untaught, rude,
and vulgar; not free from gross errors; despised at home, and
not known abroad; collected together in the name of a young
carpenter, who died on the gallows, and whom they declared to
be risen from the dead; men with no ritual, no learning, no
books, no brass in their purse, no philosophy in their mind,
no eloquence on their tongue. A Roman skeptic might tell how
soon these fanatics would fall out and destroy themselves, after
serving as a terror to the maids and sport to the boys of a
Jewish hamlet; and so that "detestable superstition" come to an
end! A priest of Jerusalem, with his oracular gossip, could tell
how long the Sanhedrim would suffer them to go at large, in
the name of "that deceiver," whose body "they stole away by
night"! Alas for what man calls great; the pride of prejudice;


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THEODORE PARKER
11085
the boast of power! These fishermen of Galilee have a truth
the world has not, so they are stronger than the world. Ten
weak men may chain down a giant: but no combination of errors
can make a truth or put it down; no army of the ignorant equal
one man that has the Word of Life. Besides, all the truth in
Judea, Greece, Rome, was an auxiliary to favor the new doc-
trine.
The first preachers of Christianity had false notions on many
points; they were full of Jewish fables and technicalities; thought
the world would soon end, and Jesus come back "with power
and great glory. " Peter would now and then lie to serve his
turn; Paul was passionate, often one-sided; Barnabas and Mark
could not agree.
There was something of furious enthusiasm in
all these come-outers. James roars like a fanatic radical at the
rich man. But spite of the follies or limitations of these earnest
and manly Jews, a religious fire burned in their hearts; the
Word of God grew and prevailed. The new doctrine passes from
its low beginnings on the Galilean lake, step by step, through
Jerusalem, Ephesus, Antioch, Alexandria, Corinth, Rome, till it
ascends the throne of the world, and kings and empires lie
prostrate at its feet. But alas, as it spreads, it is corrupted also.
Judaism, paganism, idolatry, mingle their feculent scum with the
living stream, and trouble the water of life.
Christianity came to the world in the darkness of the nations;
they had outgrown their old form, and looked for a new. They
stood in the shadow of darkness, fearing to look back nor dar-
ing to look forward; they groped after God. Christianity came
to the nations as a beam of light shot into chaos; a strain of
sweet music-so silvery and soft we know not we are listening
to him who wanders on amid the uncertain gloom, and charms
him to the light, to the River of God and Tree of Life.
It was
the fulfillment of the prophecy of holy hearts. It is human
religion, human morality, and above all things reveals the great-
ness of man.
It is sometimes feared that Christianity is in danger; that its
days are numbered. Of the Christianity of the church, no doubt
it is true. That child of many fathers cannot die too soon. It
cumbers the ground. But the Christianity of Christ, absolute
religion, absolute morality, cannot perish: never till love, good-
ness, devotion, faith, reason, fail from the heart of man; never
till God melts away and vanishes, and nothing takes the place


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11086
THEODORE PARKER
of the All-in-All. Religion can no more be separated from the
race than thought and feeling; nor absolute religion die out
more than wisdom perish from among men. Man's words,
thoughts, churches, fail and pass off like clouds from the sky
that leave no track behind. But God's word can never change.
It shines perennial like the stars. Its testimony is in man's
heart. None can outgrow it; none destroy. For eighteen hun-
dred years the Christianity of Christ has been in the world to
warn and encourage. Violence and cunning, allies of sin, have
opposed it. Every weapon learning could snatch from the ar-
senals of the past, or science devise anew, or pride and cruelty
and wit invent, has been used by mistaken man to destroy this
fabric. Not a stone has fallen from the heavenly arch of real
religion; not a loop-hole been found where a shot could enter.
But alas, vain doctrines, follies, absurdities without count, have
been plied against the temple of God, marring its beauteous
shape. That Christianity continues to live-spite of the tradi-
tions, fables, doctrines wrapped about it is proof enough of
its truth. Reason never warred against love of God and man,
never with the Christianity of Christ, but always with that of
the church. There is much destructive work still to be done,
which scoffers will attempt.
-
Can man destroy absolute religion? He cannot with all the
arts and armies of the world destroy the pigment that colors an
emmet's eye.
He may obscure the truth to his own mind. But
it shines forever unchanged. So boys of a summer's day throw
dust above their heads to blind the sun; they only hide it from
their blinded eyes.


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11087
FRANCIS PARKMAN
―――
(1823-1893)
BY CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
RANCIS PARKMAN was born in Boston, on what is now Alls-
ton Street, then called Somerset Place, on September 16th,
1823. His father, the Rev. Francis Parkman, was a mem-
ber of an old colonial family that came from Sidmouth in Devonshire,
England. His mother was a direct descendant of John Cotton of
Plymouth. At Chauncey Hall School, in Boston, he was prepared
for college; and in 1840 he entered Harvard as a freshman. In 1844
he took his degree of B. A. , after a course of some distinction, par-
ticularly in history. His first book, The Oregon Trail,' appeared in
1849. In 1851 he issued 'The Conspiracy of Pontiac. ' His one work
of fiction, Vassall Morton, was published in 1856. In 1865 came
< The Pioneers of France in the New World,' the first of the series
'France and England in North America. ' The rest of the series
appeared as follows: The Jesuits in North America,' in 1867; 'La
Salle and the Discovery of the Great West,' in 1869; 'The Old
Régime in Canada,' in 1874; Count Frontenac and New France
under Louis XIV. ,' in 1877; Montcalm and Wolfe,' in 1884, conclud-
ing the series, but leaving an important period untreated.
This gap
was filled by 'A Half-Century of Conflict,' issued in 1892.
In 1866 his hobby of horticulture, which made beautiful his home
at Jamaica Plain, had found expression in a practical little work
called The Book of Roses. ' He died on the 8th of November, 1893.
In Parkman's life the great events are the choice of his life work,
the preparation for it, its execution, and its triumphant accomplish-
ment. In spite of obstacles which would have daunted any one less
than heroic in resolution, the career of Francis Parkman may be
regarded as an ideal type of what a man of letters should aspire to.
Singularly fortunate in finding a theme exactly fitted to his genius,
yet so vast as to require a lifetime for its treatment, he was given
length of days in which to see the triumphant completion of his task.
The story of the struggle of France and England in the New
World was when as a youth Parkman discerned its importance and
marked it for his pen - perhaps the one theme of truly epic propor-
tions then remaining untouched by the historian. It is no wonder


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11088
FRANCIS PARKMAN
It
that the eager and ambitious boy was possessed by it from the
moment when it presented itself to his imagination. It is no wonder
that he jealously kept his design a secret, lest others should awake
to its fascination and forestall him. The subject had many advan-
tages besides that of sheer greatness. Its setting was one reason-
ably accessible to a New-Englander, and he could therefore resolve
to know his landscapes and his backgrounds all at first hand.
afforded an endlessly shifting succession of adventure and incident,
whence he could count upon making his narrative interesting from
page to page. The material from which to spin the story existed
in peculiar abundance: its period being one when the pen was busy,
when annals and chronicles were much in vogue, and when men of
action often found time to keep voluminous records. Parkman knew
that in libraries of Rome, Paris, Quebec, Boston, Halifax, in archive
offices and cloistered corners, lurked manuscripts innumerable, from
which the tale he planned to tell might be patiently unraveled. He
knew that inexhaustible treasure-house of North American history,
the Jesuit Relations.
The magnitude and significance of the subject which he chose
can hardly be exaggerated. That struggle which ended upon the
Plains of Abraham was going on all over the world. It was to
decide a vaster question than the dominance of the New World, that
France and England throughout the course of two centuries were
ever at each other's throats. The question at issue, fought out upon
the Ganges as well as upon the St. Lawrence, was whether the
English or the French stock should replenish the waste places of the
earth. The subject to which Parkman set himself was the duel for
world-empire. The result of this duel not only secured the suprem-
acy of English institutions, ideals, and speech on this continent, but
established beyond cavil England's place as the colonizer of the
world.
Born with a passion for adventure, for the life of the wilderness,
for the companionship of wild nature and half-wild man, Parkman
thus found awaiting him a great historical subject for the sympathetic
handling of which this passion was essential. History as a rule is
largely a matter of courts, and cities, and action working at the
centres of civilization. But the history of the struggle of France and
England in North America is a tale of elemental impulses, of forests
and frontiers, of adventurous rivalries on the shadowy outskirts of
life. It moved in primitive conditions, such as the academic stu-
dent is apt to look upon with the cool eyes of the observer, rather
than with the vital comprehension of one who has played his part
among them. In his delighted wanderings as a boy over the Middle-
sex Fells, in the long backwoods excursions with canoeing, fishing,


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FRANCIS PARKMAN
11089
shooting, that occupied his college vacations, Parkman was fitting him-
self, at first unconsciously and afterwards doubtless of set purpose, for
one side of his great enterprise. In the vehement delight, moreover,
which he took in action, in feats of athletics, and in all strenuous
outdoor effort, he still further widened his sympathies for the com-
prehension of a story of incessant effort of the same description.
His tastes as a student at college led his reading in the direction
best fitted to further his own aim. Romance and history appealed to
him with almost equal force; and the task on which he was soon
to enter was one which required for its execution a right blending of
imagination with exact observation and severe deduction. The inci-
dents of the story whose magic was to be revealed by his pen were
full of romantic color, and of appeal to the heroic emotions. No one
could write of them adequately who was not himself thrilled by them.
At the same time the broad view was necessary, that events might
be seen and set down in their just proportions; the analytic sense
was necessary, that relevant might be separated from irrelevant de-
tails; the philosophic temper was necessary, that the torrential flow
of the story might not carry the narrator off his feet; and above all,
the capacious grasp was necessary, that an Indian raid on the Riche-
lieu, or a brush between rival traders on the St. Clair, might be duly
related to the great world-drama in which Indian and fur-trader alike
were unconscious players. Not only had Parkman these qualities by
native endowment, but his studies and discipline were such as to
develop them. Yet other gifts were needed, to make his equipment
complete. The command of an adequate prose style was indispensa-
ble if he would have his work fit to endure. And for prose expres-
sion he had a natural aptitude, which he cultivated assiduously by
composition, and by study of the masters of English. An unrestricted
catholicity of sympathy and judgment was equally indispensable, if
he would do even justice between mutually destructive ideals, warring
creeds, and races grappling for life and death. He could see the man
behind all accidents of color, creed, or speech; and so his characters
live. The savage from his wigwam, the black-robed scholar from his
cloister, the cavalier from the salons of Versailles, the soldier from
camp or foray,—each has some point of contact with Parkman's sym-
pathies, and is therefore presented from within, is recreated rather
than depicted on his page.
After Parkman had finished his arts course at Harvard, he stud-
ied law purely as a means of fitting himself for dealing with the
constitutional questions which, as he realized, would confront him in
the course of his proposed work. After two years of the law, his
next step was to study the Indians as they were before the contact
with civilization changed them. To find such Indians, in 1846, it was
XIX-694


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11090
FRANCIS PARKMAN
necessary to seek the Dakota and other wild tribes of the Far West.
In that year he set out from St. Louis, with his cousin and comrade
Quincy Shaw, and followed the track of the great migration then
setting toward the Pacific coast. For some weeks he lived in the
lodge of a Dakota chief. His hosts were exactly suited to his pur-
pose. As he wrote afterwards:-"Neither their manners nor their
ideas were in the slightest degree modified by contact with civiliza-
tion.
They fought with the weapons that their fathers fought
with, and wore the same garments of skins. " This trip, which lasted
five months, gave him just that kind of first-hand knowledge which
he desired. It bore immediate fruit in that fascinating book of travel,
'The Oregon Trail. ' But the hardships and exposure which he en-
dured on the expedition undermined a constitution never robust; and
from this period date the beginnings of that ill-health with which the
whole of his after life was to be a heroic struggle.
It is one of the marvels of Parkman's career that he was able to
make so light of obstacles which most men would have accounted
insurmountable. Works requiring the most prolonged, arduous, and
minute research for their preparation, he wrote when his eyes were
almost useless. Works requiring continuously sustained thought, he
wrought to completion when often unable to work in any way for
more than fifteen minutes at a time. During these long years of
almost incessant ill-health, his achievements were just of the kind
that fate seemed most determined to forbid.
When three fourths of his great task was done, Parkman began to
fear that he might not live to complete it. After finishing the story
of Frontenac, therefore, he passed over a period of fifty years and
entered upon the composition of those volumes which were to sum
up and crown the whole, - the volumes dealing with Montcalm and
Wolfe. With the completion of these, however, and under the stimu-
lus of the acclaim which greeted them, he entered on a new lease of
productive vigor; and with the two volumes called 'A Half-Century
of Conflict' he filled in the perfect outline of his life's work. This
was in 1892, just long enough before his death to let the chorus of
the world's praise come to his ears, and assure him of the fullness
of his triumph.
Parkman's style shows a steady growth in mastery from the 'Con-
spiracy of Pontiac' to the 'Montcalm and Wolfe,' which latter work
marks the zenith of his powers. Vividness and clarity are qualities
of his writing from the first.
But the picturesque affluence which
characterizes his earlier volumes sometimes lacks that simplicity
which is the final touch of power.
The prose style in which his later volumes are written is per-
haps, taking it all in all, the most admirable medium that has been


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FRANCIS PARKMAN
11091
employed by any English-speaking historian. If to have treated a
great theme with absolutely competent scholarship, as well as in a
style of positive and essential beauty, constitutes a claim to rank
among the world's masters of history, then Parkman's claim is beyond
the reach of question.
Charles G. & Robert
DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES
From The Pioneers of France in the New World. ' Copyright 1865, 1885, by
Francis Parkman. Reprinted by permission of the Parkman Estate, and
of Little, Brown & Co. , publishers.
HERE was a gentleman of Mont-de-Marsan, Dominique de
Gourgues, a soldier of ancient birth and high renown.
It
is not certain that he was a Huguenot. The Spanish
annalist calls him a "terrible heretic "; but the French Jesuit,
Charlevoix, anxious that the faithful should share the glory of
his exploits, affirms that like his ancestors before him, he was a
good Catholic. If so, his faith sat lightly upon him; and Catholic
or heretic, he hated the Spaniards with a mortal hate. Fight-
ing in the Italian wars,- for from boyhood he was wedded to the
sword,— he had been taken prisoner by them near Siena, where
he had signalized himself by a fiery and determined bravery.
With brutal insult, they chained him to the oar as a galley-slave.
After he had long endured this ignominy, the Turks captured the
vessel and carried her to Constantinople. It was but a change
of tyrants; but soon after, while she was on a cruise, Gourgues
still at the oar, a galley of the Knights of Malta hove in sight,
bore down on her, recaptured her, and set the prisoner free. For
several years after, his restless spirit found employment in voy-
ages to Africa, Brazil, and regions yet more remote. His naval
repute rose high, but his grudge against the Spaniards still ran-
kled within him; and when, returned from his rovings, he learned
the tidings from Florida, his hot Gascon blood boiled with fury.
The honor of France had been foully stained, and there was
none to wipe away the shame. The faction-ridden King was


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11092
FRANCIS PARKMAN
dumb. The nobles who surrounded him were in the Spanish
interest. Then, since they proved recreant, he, Dominique de
Gourgues, a simple gentleman, would take upon him to avenge
the wrong, and restore the dimmed lustre of the French name.
He sold his inheritance, borrowed money from his brother, who
held a high post in Guienne, and equipped three small vessels,
navigable by sail or oar. On board he placed a hundred arque-
busiers and eighty sailors, prepared to fight on land if need were.
The noted Blaise de Montluc, then lieutenant for the King in
Guienne, gave him a commission to make war on the negroes of
Benin,—that is, to kidnap them as slaves, an adventure then held
honorable.
His true design was locked within his own breast.
He mus-
tered his followers,-not a few of whom were of rank equal to
his own, feasted them, and on the twenty-second of August,
1567, sailed from the mouth of the Charente. Off Cape Finis-
terre, so violent a storm buffeted his ships that his men clamored
to return; but Gourgues's spirit prevailed. He bore away for
Africa, and landing at the Rio del Oro, refreshed and cheered
them as he best might. Thence he sailed to Cape Blanco, where
the jealous Portuguese, who had a fort in the neighborhood, set
upon him three negro chiefs. Gourgues beat them off, and re-
mained master of the harbor; whence however he soon voyaged
onward to Cape Verd, and steering westward, made for the West
Indies. Here, advancing from island to island, he came to His-
paniola, where, between the fury of a hurricane at sea and the
jealousy of the Spaniards on shore, he was in no small jeopardy;
-"the Spaniards," exclaims the indignant journalist, "who think
that this New World was made for nobody but them, and that
no other living man has a right to move or breathe here! "
Gourgues landed, however, obtained the water of which he was
in need, and steered for Cape San Antonio, at the western end
of Cuba. There he gathered his followers about him, and ad-
dressed them with his fiery Gascon eloquence. For the first
time he told them his true purpose, inveighed against Spanish
cruelty, and painted with angry rhetoric the butcheries of Fort
Caroline and St. Augustine,
"What disgrace," he cried, "if such an insult should pass un-
punished! What glory to us if we avenge it! To this I have
devoted my fortune. I relied on you. I thought you jealous
enough of your country's glory to sacrifice life itself in a cause


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like this.
Was I deceived?
I will show you the way; I will be
always at your head; I will bear the brunt of the danger. Will
you refuse to follow me? "
At first his startled hearers listened in silence; but soon the
passions of that adventurous age rose responsive to his words.
The combustible French nature burst into flame. The enthusi-
asm of the soldiers rose to such a pitch that Gourgues had much
ado to make them wait till the moon was full, before tempting
the perils of the Bahama Channel. His time came at length.
The moon rode high above the lonely sea, and, silvered in its
light, the ships of the avenger held their course.
Meanwhile it had fared ill with the Spaniards in Florida: the
good-will of the Indians had vanished. The French had been
obtrusive and vexatious guests; but their worst trespasses had
been mercy and tenderness compared to the daily outrage of
the new-comers. Friendship had changed to aversion, aversion
to hatred, and hatred to open war. The forest paths were beset;
stragglers were cut off; and woe to the Spaniard who should
venture after nightfall beyond call of the outposts.
Menendez, however, had strengthened himself in his new
conquest. St. Augustine was well fortified; Fort Caroline, now
Fort San Mateo, was repaired; and two redoubts, or small forts,
were thrown up to guard the mouth of the River of May,—one
of them near the present lighthouse at Mayport, and the other
across the river on Fort George Island. Thence, on an afternoon.
in early spring, the Spaniards saw three sail steering northward.
They suspected no enemy, and their batteries boomed a salute.
Gourgues's ships replied, then stood out to sea, and were lost in
the shades of evening.
They kept their course all night, and as day broke, anchored
at the mouth of a river, the St. Mary's or the Santilla, by their
reckoning fifteen leagues north of the River of May. Here, as
it grew light, Gourgues saw the borders of the sea thronged with
savages, armed and plumed for war. They too had mistaken the
strangers for Spaniards, and mustered to meet their tyrants at
the landing. But in the French ships there was a trumpeter who
had been long in Florida, and knew the Indians well. He went
towards them in a boat, with many gestures of friendship; and
no sooner was he recognized than the naked crowd, with yelps
of delight, danced for joy along the sands. Why had he ever
left them? they asked; and why had he not returned before?


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11094
The intercourse thus auspiciously begun was actively kept up.
Gourgues told the principal chief — who was no other than Satou-
riona, once the ally of the French - that he had come to visit
them, make friendship with them, and bring them presents.
this last announcement, so grateful to Indian ears, the dancing
was renewed with double zeal. The next morning was named
for a grand council, and Satouriona sent runners to summon all
Indians within call; while Gourgues, for safety, brought his ves-
sels within the mouth of the river.
Morning came, and the woods were thronged with warriors.
Gourgues and his soldiers landed with martial pomp. In token
of mutual confidence, the French laid aside their arquebuses, and
the Indians their bows and arrows. Satouriona came to meet
the strangers, and seated their commander at his side, on a
wooden stool, draped and cushioned with the gray Spanish moss.
Two old Indians cleared the spot of brambles, weeds, and grass;
and when their task was finished, the tribesmen took their places,
ring within ring, standing, sitting, and crouching on the ground,
-a dusky concourse, plumed in festal array, waiting with grave
visages and intent eyes. Gourgues was about to speak, when
the chief, who, says the narrator, had not learned French man-
ners, anticipated him, and broke into a vehement harangue, de-
nouncing the cruelty of the Spaniards.
Since the French fort was taken, he said, the Indians had
not had one happy day. The Spaniards drove them from their
cabins, stole their corn, ravished their wives and daughters, and
killed their children; and all this they had endured because they
loved the French. There was a French boy who had escaped
from the massacre at the fort: they had found him in the woods;
and though the Spaniards, who wished to kill him, demanded
that they should give him up, they had kept him for his
friends.
"Look! " pursued the chief, "here he is! " and he brought
forward a youth of sixteen, named Pierre Debré, who became at
once of the greatest service to the French, his knowledge of the
Indian language making him an excellent interpreter.
Delighted as he was at this outburst against the Spaniards,
Gourgues did not see fit to display the full extent of his satis-
faction. He thanked the Indians for their good-will, exhorted
them to continue in it, and pronounced an ill-merited eulogy on
the greatness and goodness of his King. As for the Spaniards,


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11095
he said, their day of reckoning was at hand; and if the Indians
had been abused for their love of the French, the French would
be their avengers. Here Satouriona forgot his dignity, and leaped
up for joy.
"What! " he cried, "will you fight the Spaniards? »
"I came here," replied Gourgues, "only to reconnoitre the
country and make friends with you, and then go back to bring
more soldiers; but when I hear what you are suffering from
them, I wish to fall upon them this very day, and rescue you
from their tyranny. " All around the ring a clamor of applaud-
ing voices greeted his words.
"But you will do your part," pursued the Frenchman; "you
will not leave us all the honor. "
"We will go,” replied Satouriona, "and die with you, if need
be. »
"Then, if we fight, we ought to fight at once. How soon can
you have your warriors ready to march? »
The chief asked three days for preparation. Gourgues cau-
tioned him to secrecy, lest the Spaniards should take alarm.
"Never fear," was the answer: "we hate them more than you
do. "
Then came a distribution of gifts,—knives, hatchets, mirrors,
bells, and beads, while the warrior rabble crowded to receive
them, with eager faces and outstretched arms. The distribution
over, Gourgues asked the chiefs if there was any other matter in
which he could serve them. On this, pointing to his shirt, they
expressed a peculiar admiration for that garment, and begged
each to have one, to be worn at feasts and councils during life,
and in their graves after death. Gourgues complied; and his
grateful confederates were soon stalking about him, fluttering in
the spoils of his wardrobe.
To learn the strength and position of the Spaniards, Gourgues
now sent out three scouts; and with them went Olotoraca, Sa-
touriona's nephew, a young brave of great renown.
The chief, eager to prove his good faith, gave as hostages.
his only surviving son and his favorite wife. They were sent
on board the ships, while the Indians dispersed to their encamp-
ments, with leaping, stamping, dancing, and whoops of jubila-
tion.
-
The day appointed came, and with it the savage army, hid-
eous in war-paint, and plumed for battle. The woods rang back


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FRANCIS PARKMAN
their songs and yells, as with frantic gesticulation they brand-
ished their war-clubs and vaunted their deeds of prowess. Then
they drank the black drink, endowed with mystic virtues against
hardship and danger; and Gourgues himself pretended to swallow
the nauseous decoction.
These ceremonies consumed the day. It was evening before
the allies filed off into their forests, and took the path for the
Spanish forts. The French, on their part, were to repair by sea
to the rendezvous. Gourgues mustered and addressed his men.
It was needless: their ardor was at fever height. They broke
in upon his words, and demanded to be led at once against the
enemy. François Bourdelais, with twenty sailors, was left with
the ships, and Gourgues affectionately bade him farewell.
"If I am slain in this most just enterprise," he said, "I leave
all in your charge, and pray you to carry back my soldiers to
France. "
There were many embracings among the excited Frenchmen,
many sympathetic tears from those who were to stay behind,-
many messages left with them for wives, children, friends, and
mistresses; and then this valiant band pushed their boats from
shore. It was a harebrained venture; for as young Debré had
assured them, the Spaniards on the River of May were four hun-
dred in number, secure behind their ramparts.
Hour after hour the sailors pulled at the oar. They glided
slowly by the sombre shores in the shimmering moonlight, to the
sound of the murmuring surf and the moaning pine-trees. In
the gray of the morning they came to the mouth of a river,
probably the Nassau; and here a northeast wind set in with a
violence that almost wrecked their boats. Their Indian allies
were waiting on the bank, but for a while the gale delayed their
crossing. The bolder French would lose no time, rowed through
the tossing waves, and landing safely, left their boats and pushed
into the forest. Gourgues took the lead, in breastplate and back-
piece. At his side marched the young chief Olotoraca, with a
French pike in his hand; and the files of arquebuse-men and
armed sailors followed close behind. They plunged through
swamps, hewed their way through brambly thickets and the mat-
ted intricacies of the forests, and at five in the afternoon, almost
spent with fatigue and hunger, came to a river or inlet of the
sea, not far from the first Spanish fort. Here they found three
hundred Indians waiting for them.
-


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Tired as he was, Gourgues would not rest. He wished to at-
tack at daybreak, and with ten arquebusiers and his Indian guide
he set out to reconnoitre. Night closed upon him. It was a
vain task to struggle on, in pitchy darkness, among trunks of
trees, fallen logs, tangled vines, and swollen streams. Gourgues
returned, anxious and gloomy. An Indian chief approached him,
read through the darkness his perturbed look, and offered to lead
him by a better path along the margin of the sea. Gourgues
joyfully assented, and ordered all his men to march. The In-
dians, better skilled in woodcraft, chose the shorter course through
the forest.
—
The French forgot their weariness, and pressed on with speed.
At dawn they and their allies met on the bank of a stream, prob-
ably Sister Creek, beyond which, and very near, was the fort.
But the tide was in, and they tried in vain to cross. Greatly
vexed, for he had hoped to take the enemy asleep,- Gourgues
withdrew his soldiers into the forest, where they were no sooner
ensconced than a drenching rain fell, and they had much ado to
keep their gun-matches burning. The light grew fast. Gourgues
plainly saw the fort, the defenses of which seemed slight and un-
finished. He even saw the Spaniards at work within. A feverish
interval elapsed, till at length the tide was out,- so far at least
that the stream was fordable. A little higher up, a clump of
trees lay between it and the fort. Behind this friendly screen
the passage was begun. Each man tied his powder-flask to his
steel cap, held his arquebuse above his head with one hand, and
grasped his sword with the other. The channel was a bed of
oysters. The sharp shells cut their feet as they waded through.
But the farther bank was gained. They emerged from the
water drenched, lacerated, and bleeding, but with unabated met-
tle. Gourgues set them in array under cover of the trees. They
stood with kindling eyes, and hearts throbbing, but not with fear.
Gourgues pointed to the Spanish fort, seen by glimpses through
the boughs. "Look! " he said, "there are the robbers who have
stolen this land from our King; there are the murderers who
have butchered our countrymen! " With voices eager, fierce, but
half suppressed, they demanded to be led on.
--
Gourgues gave the word. Cazenove, his lieutenant, with thirty
men, pushed for the fort gate; he himself, with the main body,
for the glacis. It was near noon; the Spaniards had just finished


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FRANCIS PARKMAN
their meal, and, says the narrative, "were still picking their
teeth," when a startled cry rang in their ears:-
"To arms! to arms! The French are coming! the French
are coming! "
It was the voice of a cannoneer who had that moment
mounted the rampart, and seen the assailants advancing in un-
broken ranks, with heads lowered and weapons at the charge.
He fired his cannon among them. He even had time to load
and fire again, when the light-limbed Olotoraca bounded forward,
ran up the glacis, leaped the unfinished ditch, and drove his pike
through the Spaniard from breast to back. Gourgues was now
on the glacis, when he heard Cazenove shouting from the gate
that the Spaniards were escaping on that side. He turned and
led his men thither at a run. In a moment the fugitives, sixty
in all, were inclosed between his party and that of his lieuten-
ant. The Indians too came leaping to the spot. Not a Spaniard
escaped. All were cut down but a few, reserved by Gourgues
for a more inglorious end.
Meanwhile the Spaniards in the other fort, on the opposite
shore, cannonaded the victors without ceasing. The latter turned
four captured guns against them. One of Gourgues's boats, a
very large one, had been brought along-shore, and entering it
with eighty soldiers, he pushed for the farther bank. With loud
yells the Indians leaped into the river, which is here about
three fourths of a mile wide. Each held his bow and arrows
aloft in one hand, while he swam with the other. A panic seized
the garrison as they saw the savage multitude. They broke out
of the fort and fled into the forest. But the French had already
landed; and throwing themselves in the path of the fugitives,
they greeted them with a storm of lead. The terrified wretches
recoiled; but flight was vain. The Indian whoop rang behind
them, and war-clubs and arrows finished the work. Gourgues's
utmost efforts saved but fifteen, not out of mercy, but from a
refinement of vengeance.
The next day was Quasimodo Sunday, or the Sunday after
Easter. Gourgues and his men remained quiet, making ladders
for the assault on Fort San Mateo. Meanwhile the whole forest
was in arms, and far and near the Indians were wild with excite-
ment. They beset the Spanish fort till not a soldier could vent-
ure out. The garrison, aware of their danger, though ignorant


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FRANCIS PARKMAN
11099
of its extent, devised an expedient to gain information; and
one of them, painted and feathered like an Indian, ventured
within Gourgues's outposts.
He himself chanced to be at hand,
and by his side walked his constant attendant, Olotoraca. The
keen-eyed young savage pierced the cheat at a glance. The
spy was seized, and being examined, declared that there were
two hundred and sixty Spaniards in San Mateo, and that they
believed the French to be two thousand, and were so frightened
that they did not know what they were doing.
Gourgues, well pleased, pushed on to attack them.