The Boy Slaves. Майн Рид

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СКАЧАТЬ concerning whom years after, when he was dead, he wrote with loving tenderness.

      The next episode in the career of Mayne Reid was not what one would expect from a man of letters, though it was just what might have been expected from a man of his temperament and antecedents. It grew out of the time, which was warlike, and it drove him into the army with which the United States speedily crushed the forces of the sister Republic—Mexico. He obtained a commission, and served throughout the war with great bravery and distinction. This stormy episode ended with a severe wound, which he received in storming the heights of Chapultepec—a terrible battle which practically ended the war.

      A second episode of a similar character, but with a more fortunate conclusion, occurred about four years later. It grew out of another war, which, happily for us, was not on our borders, but in the heart of Europe, where the Hungarian race had risen in insurrection against the hated power of Austria. Their desperate valor in the face of tremendous odds excited the sympathy of the American people, and fired the heart of Captain Mayne Reid, who buckled on his sword once more, and sailed from New York with a body of volunteers to aid the Hungarians in their struggles for independence. They were too late, for hardly had they reached Paris before they learned that all was over: Görgey had surrendered at Arad, and Hungary was crushed. They were at once dismissed, and Captain Reid betook himself to London.

      The life of the Mayne Reid in whom we are most interested—Mayne Reid, the author—began at this time, when he was in his thirty-first year, and ended only on the day of his death, October 21, 1883. It covered one-third of a century, and was, when compared with that which had preceded it, uneventful, if not devoid of incident. There is not much that needs be told—not much, indeed, that can be told—in the life of a man of letters like Captain Mayne Reid. It is written in his books. Mayne Reid was one of the best known authors of his time—differing in this from many authors who are popular without being known—and in the walk of fiction which he discovered for himself he is an acknowledged master. His reputation did not depend upon the admiration of the millions of young people who read his books, but upon the judgment of mature critics, to whom his delineations of adventurous life were literature of no common order. His reputation as a story-teller was widely recognized on the Continent, where he was accepted as an authority in regard to the customs of the pioneers and the guerilla warfare of the Indian tribes, and was warmly praised for his freshness, his novelty, and his hardy originality. The people of France and Germany delighted in this soldier-writer. "There was not a word in his books which a school-boy could not safely read aloud to his mother and sisters." So says a late English critic, to which another adds, that if he has somewhat gone out of fashion of late years, the more's the pity for the school-boy of the period. What Defoe is in Robinson Crusoe—realistic idyl of island solitude—that, in his romantic stories of wilderness life, is his great scholar, Captain Mayne Reid.

      R. H. Stoddard.

THE BOY SLAVES.

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CHAPTER I.

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THE LAND OF THE SLAVE.

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      Land of Ethiope! whose burning centre seems unapproachable as the frozen Pole!

      Land of the unicorn and the lion—of the crouching panther and the stately elephant—of the camel, the camelopard, and the camel-bird! land of the antelopes—of the wild gemsbok, and the gentle gazelle—land of the gigantic crocodile and huge river-horse—land teeming with animal life, and last in the list of my apostrophic appellations—last, and that which must grieve the heart to pronounce it—land of the slave!

      Ah! little do men think while thus hailing thee, how near may be the dread doom to their own hearths and homes! Little dream they, while expressing their sympathy—alas! too often, as of late shown in England, a hypocritical utterance—little do they suspect, while glibly commiserating the lot of thy sable-skinned children, that hundreds—aye, thousands—of their own color and kindred are held within thy confines, subject to a lot even lowlier than these—a fate far more fearful.

      Alas! it is even so. While I write, the proud Caucasian—despite his boasted superiority of intellect—despite the whiteness of his skin—may be found by hundreds in the unknown interior, wretchedly toiling, the slave not only of thy oppressors, but the slave of thy slaves!

      Let us lift that curtain, which shrouds thy great Saära, and look upon some pictures that should teach the son of Shem, while despising his brothers Ham and Japhet, that he is not yet master of the world.

      Dread is that shore between Susa and Senegal, on the western edge of Africa—by mariners most dreaded of any other in the world. The very thought of it causes the sailor to shiver with affright. And no wonder: on that inhospitable seaboard thousands of his fellows have found a watery grave; and thousands of others a doom far more deplorable than death!

      There are two great deserts: one of land, the other of water—the Saära and the Atlantic—their contiguity extending through ten degrees of the earth's latitude—an enormous distance. Nothing separates them, save a line existing only in the imagination. The dreary and dangerous wilderness of water kisses the wilderness of sand—not less dreary or dangerous to those whose misfortune it may be to become castaways on this dreaded shore.

      Alas! it has been the misfortune of many—not hundreds, but thousands. Hundreds of ships, rather than hundreds of men, have suffered wreck and ruin between Susa and Senegal. Perhaps were we to include Roman, Ph[oe]nician, and Carthaginian, we might say thousands of ships also.

      More noted, however, have been the disasters of modern times, during what may be termed the epoch of modern navigation. Within the period of the last three centuries, sailors of almost every maritime nation—at least all whose errand has led them along the eastern edge of the Atlantic—have had reason to regret approximation to those shores, known in ship parlance as the Barbary coast; but which, with a slight alteration in the orthography, might be appropriately styled "Barbarian."

      A chapter might be written in explanation of this peculiarity of expression—a chapter which would comprise many parts of two sciences, both but little understood—ethnology and meteorology.

      Of the former we may have a good deal to tell before the ending of this narrative. Of the latter it must suffice to say: that the frequent wrecks occurring on the Barbary coast—or, more properly, on that of the Saära south of it—are the result of an Atlantic current setting eastwards against that shore.

      The cause of this current is simple enough, though it requires explanation: since it seems to contradict not only the theory of the "trade" winds, but of the centrifugal inclination attributed to the waters of the ocean.

      I have room only for the theory in its simplest form. The heating of the Saära under a tropical sun; the absence of those influences—moisture and verdure—which repel the heat and retain its opposite; the ascension of the heated air that hangs over this vast tract of desert; the colder atmosphere rushing in from the Atlantic Ocean; the consequent eastward tendency of the waters of the sea.

      These facts will account for that current which has proved a deadly maelstrom to hundreds—aye, thousands—of ships, in all ages, whose misfortune it has been to sail unsuspectingly along СКАЧАТЬ