The Best Adventure and Exploration Stories Ever Told

by Stephen Brennan

  Pisa was a republic in the Middle Ages, with a government of her own, armies and navies of her own, and a great commerce. She was a warlike power and inscribed upon her banners many a brilliant fight with Genoese and Turks. It is said that the city once numbered a population of four hundred thousand; but her scepter has passed from her grasp now, her ships and her armies are gone, her commerce is dead. Her battle flags bear the mold and the dust of centuries, her marts are deserted, she has shrunken far within her crumbling walls, and her great population has diminished to twenty thousand souls. She had but one thing left to boast of, and that is not much, viz.: she is the second city of Tuscany.

  We reached Leghorn in time to see all we wished to see of it long before the city gates were closed for the evening, and then came on board the ship.

  We felt as though we had been away from home an age. We never entirely appreciated before what a very pleasant den our stateroom is, nor how jolly it is to sit at dinner in one’s own seat in one’s own cabin and hold familiar conversation with friends in one’s own language. Oh, the rare happiness of comprehending every single word that is said, and knowing that every word one says in return will be understood as well! We would talk ourselves to death now, only there are only about ten passengers out of the sixty-five to talk to. The others are wandering we hardly know where. We shall not go ashore in Leghorn. We are surfeited with Italian cities for the present, and much prefer to walk the familiar quarterdeck and view this one from a distance.

  The stupid magnates of this Leghorn government cannot understand that so large a steamer as ours could cross the broad Atlantic with no other purpose than to indulge a party of ladies and gentlemen in a pleasure excursion. It looks too improbable. It is suspicious, they think. Something more important must be hidden behind it all. They cannot understand it, and they scorn the evidence of the ship’s papers. They have decided at last that we are a battalion of incendiary, bloodthirsty Garibaldians in disguise! And in all seriousness they have set a gunboat to watch the vessel night and day, with orders to close down on any revolutionary movement in a twinkling! Police boats are on patrol duty about us all the time, and it is as much as a sailor’s liberty is worth to show himself in a red shirt. These policemen follow the executive officer’s boat from shore to ship and from ship to shore and watch his dark maneuvers with a vigilant eye. They will arrest him yet unless he assumes an expression of countenance that shall have less of carnage, insurrection, and sedition in it. A visit paid in a friendly way to General Garibaldi yesterday (by cordial invitation) by some of our passengers has gone far to confirm the dread suspicions the government harbors toward us. It is thought the friendly visit was only the cloak of a bloody conspiracy. These people draw near and watch us when we bathe in the sea from the ship’s side. Do they think we are communing with a reserve force of rascals at the bottom?

  It is said that we shall probably be quarantined at Naples. Two or three of us prefer not to run this risk. Therefore, when we are rested, we propose to go in a French steamer to Civitavecchia, and from thence to Rome, and by rail to Naples. They do not quarantine the cars, no matter where they got their passengers from.

  FIGHTING THE ELEPHANT

  GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

  On board of the cholera-infected steamship Normannia, as she lay day after day at quarantine, with her hundreds of aggrieved and impatient cabin passengers who had no cholera and were not likely to have it, we had a philosophic passenger named Stinson, who attempted to divert our minds with a “fad” of his own.

  He was an ardent naturalist and lover of animal life; and he desired to interest the public in an attempt to save from extinction such animals as the moose, the buffalo, the elephant and the beaver, the grizzly bear, the grey wolf and lion. His plan was to establish protected preserves for animals in favourable places, in order that, a century or two hence, these animals may still exist for our descendants to see.

  For these species to perish, Mr. Stinson argued, would be irreparable misfortune. The earth will never produce their like again. There are scores of uninhabited islands and other isolated tracts of country where families of all these vanishing genera could be colonized, as the buffalo is now colonized in the Yellowstone Park.

  He cited Isle Royale, in Lake Superior, as a place which is wholly uninhabited and of no use to man in the agricultural sense, but which would make an excellent preserve, where the moose might be saved from extinction for centuries.

  “Why preserve all these beasts? They are of no use,” one passenger argued. “It would be a waste of time and money. The brutes would soon be breaking out of the preserves, too, and make trouble for everybody living near.”

  “That is an argument from a bald, utilitarian point of view,” replied the “moose-preserver” as he had been dubbed. “Think how our descendants, a hundred years hence, will despise us if we exterminate all these interesting and wonderful species!”

  “I draw the line at grizzly bears,” remarked a facetious young gentleman from Tacoma.

  “And I draw the line at elephants,” cried and Englishman who hailed from Cape Town. “We tried preserving those brutes down in South Africa. The government, some years ago, had the same idea as our friend here. There was but one wild herd of elephants left in Cape Colony, and that was out near the Knysna. Many well-meaning persons were so much alarmed lest the noble animals should die out, and they said so much about it, that the government at length passed an act, protecting elephants and giving them liberty to range where they pleased. It was made a misdemeanour for any one to hunt or otherwise harass them.

  “The consequence was that in seven or eight years that herd of elephants became the greatest nuisance ever inflicted on the people of that quarter of the world.

  “My brother and I owned a sheep-run in Zondag river country. Those elephants persecuted us for several years. The silence of their movements was such that they often came into mealy fields without arousing the neighbouring watchdogs. Or it may have been that the dogs were terrified into quiet by the elephants’ approach. One night the herd took the sacks of wool off one of our ‘trek’ wagons which stood out loaded to go to Cape Town, and scattered them about.

  “At another time they came to a hut, in the night, where one of our shepherds was asleep. An elephant thrust his trunk in at the open window-hole, felt about the interior with it, got hold of the shepherd’s foot and pulled him out of his bunk! When the man awoke to find himself thus hauled off his couch, he was frightened almost to death.

  “His tired dog, which had also been asleep inside, now N. H. rushed out, barking furiously; whereupon the elephant let go the man, caught up the dog, and threw him a hundred feet, into a rocky kloof, or gully. The fall broke the dog’s back.

  “For his life the shepherd durst not stir out of his hut. He at first believed that a serpent had seized him. The elephants amused themselves by breaking down the sheep corral, for a time, and at last sauntered away.

  “This shepherd, by-the-bye, was an American, named Dryfield, who had been a gunner on board the Confederate privateer Shenandoah, which was cruising for whale-ships in the North pacific, and continued at sea for two months or more after Lee’s surrender. When the crew learned that they had been privateering after the war had ceased, they did not dare to surrender themselves lest they might be hanged as pirates. At last they were turned adrift in a foreign port, and Dryfield came to Cape Colony, where he took service as a shepherd.

  “Those Cape elephants were great travelers. Often they came a distance of twenty miles in a single night, to break into the mealy field of some unsuspecting settler who awoke next morning to find his crop destroyed. By this time the herd was many miles away.

  “Garden raiding became a pastime with this herd, and as there were more than twenty of the big brutes, a farmer’s efforts for the season were frequently cancelled in a few hours.

  “Not content with eating fresh vegetables, the beasts would break down fruit trees and small shade trees, somet
imes stripping off every branch and leaving only the bare trunk of the tree.

  “One night while passing a sheep-rancher’s place, the rogues, apparently for a practical joke, took the thatched roof off a small barn and lifted out a mule. The poor beast was found lying in a pool near the barn, next morning, with most of his bones broken.

  “The herd was often fired at by angry settlers, but the law protecting elephants restrained us from organising a regular hunt. My brother and I lost several plats of ‘mealies’ or Indian corn. We obeyed the law, but we deemed its operation unjust, and thought we had a right to make a vigorous effort to drive away the marauders from our own property.

  “During one of the early wars with the Boers and Kaffirs, a column of British troops, retreating from the Conna Dragga, had left a six-pound brass howitzer behind them. For many years the piece had remained in possession of a settler named Dromgole. While we were casting about us for some expedient to save our mealie crop, Dryfield thought of this old howitzer.

  “Our first idea was to fire it in the night during the period of full moon in February, to scare the brutes away. We had powder, but no six-pound balls until Dryfield made a clay mould and ran several leaden balls, which he finished off by paring with a knife. They weighed much more than an iron ball of the same size, and we experimented cautiously with the old gun lest it should burst with the discharge. But it was sound.

  “Dryfield fired three balls at a large rock and hit it twice.

  “A few nights later the elephants visited a plantation across the river. They commonly came up the southerly bank of the Zondag, from the wooded, hilly districts to the east and southeast. An agreement was entered into between Dromgole and ourselves to set a watch on clear nights, while there was moonlight.

  “There are bluffs along the northerly bank of the Zondag, a mile or two south of our sheep sheds. The field-piece was hauled there and masked under a little shed amidst the bush which crowned the bluff. The Zondag is there a hundred yards in width or more, and fordable in some places.

  “Several Kaffirs were hired to watch for the herd. Some time passed before one of the negroes, known as John Fattoo, came over to our place in the night and informed us that the elephants had gone up the river bank.

  “It is one of the characteristics of elephants that, on their night expeditions, they nearly always come and go by the same path, or, in tracking phrase, ‘pick up their own trail.’ Hence we felt pretty sure that they would return that way, after a few hours. We dressed in haste, sent the Kaffir to rouse Dryfield, and set off for the bluffs.

  “The early part of the night had been dark. The moon, now in its last quarter, rose after midnight, and was now looking up over the wooded Knysna mountains. On reaching the bluff where the gun was posted, we found our hired watchman soundly asleep in a blanket. We woke him and sent him up the river to watch.

  “Dryfield loaded the gun, and we waited. It was a chilly night, very dewy and damp, with a slight mist rising from the river below us. After a time the Kaffir crept back, saying that the herd was coming down; and soon we heard one low ‘toot’ from the leader.

  “Then the herd filed in sight, and moved along in the open meadow across the river. Their march was curiously quiet and orderly. They appeared to be in single file; and from where we lay hidden, their pace was as noiseless as if they had been so many ghosts. In the obscurity they resembled a long train of loaded wool wagons.

  “Dryfield brought the gun to bear, and before the herd had come down opposite us, he fired on them. It is likely that the ball passed over the heads of the elephants, probably in advance of them. The leader stopped short.

  “When the report crashed on their ears they wheeled about and ran back to where a group of large melkhout trees afforded a deep shadow. Here they stood as quietly as a party of frightened schoolboys. We had charges of powder made up, and Dryfield, reloading, trained the gun on the timber clump and sent a second ball through the tree-tops.

  “With the second report, the leader of the herd apparently made up his mind that the noise indicated something hostile and dangerous. So he led off trumpeting, at a run, back along their trail, up the river. But they had not gone far when they sighted or scented two or three Kaffirs who had heard the firing and were coming down the bank. Thereupon the whole herd wheeled about and came back at a rapid run.

  “A third ball was fired among them as they rushed along; but this time they did not pause for an instant. We hurriedly recharged the gun, and before they were fairly past, Dryfield sent a fourth missile low over their backs. There were seventeen of the big brutes. Several of them trumpeted from fear, following the last report.

  “Before we could load again they were well past us, but we slung the gun on its wheels and fired a fifth shot after them, at a distance now of probably six or seven hundred yards. Tree-tops on the immediate river-bank in part obstructed Dryfield’s aim, but from what was learned next day, we surmised that this last shot hit an elephant.

  “There was a kloof, or gully, on the farther bank, where a tributary stream flowed down. The elephants had to cross it, and we heard them trumpeting there for some little time, after the fifth shot. They were now entirely out of sight, but we fired the last of our lead balls after them at a venture, and then returned home, thinking we had given the mischievous beasts a great fright, if nothing more.

  “Next day a Kaffir came to tell us that in the kloof down the river lay a disabled elephant. My brother and I took our carbines and bade the man show the way.

  “In the kloof we found and elephant, lying in the bed of the gully and groaning dolefully. One of its large ears was nearly torn away, and one of its fore-legs was injured.

  “It was evident from the tracks that the other members of the herd had sought to give aid to their unfortunate companion, and that they had gone away only after finding their efforts vain.

  “We shot and killed the poor beast. Whether our six-pound balls had had anything to do with disabling him, or whether he had received his injury from falling accidentally into the kloof, was not wholly clear.

  “Lest we might all three be informed on and fined, our neighbour Dromgole united with us in a report to the authorities at Cape Town, to the effect that we had found an elephant lying disabled in a kloof, and had dispatched it. I must confess it was a somewhat one-sided report, since we omitted all mention of the howitzer.

  “So far as we were able to learn these elephants did not come up the Zondag again for three years. There is no doubt that the creatures are very intelligent and have good memories, but I have no wish to have a colony of them for my neighbours.”

  “Ah, but preserves might easily be located where no one need suffer from them,” interposed the “moose-preserver,” earnestly. “Think of the thousand uninhabited islands of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. Safe preserves might be located there for every species of animal life.”

  The facetious young gentleman had been watching his chance. He smiled.

  “Would you have preserve for that enterprising species, the cholera microbe?” he asked.

  The moose-preserver frowned at the perpetrator of the weak witticism.

  CAVELIER DE LA SALLE

  FRANCIS PARKMAN

  Among the burghers of Rouen was the old and rich family of the Caveliers. Though citizens and not nobles, some of their connections held high diplomatic posts and honorable employments at Court. They were destined to find a better claim to distinction. In 1643 was born at Rouen Robert Cavelier, better known by the designation of La Salle. His father Jean and his uncle Henri were wealthy merchants, living more like nobles than like burghers; and the boy received an education answering to the marked traits of intellect and character which he soon began to display. He showed an inclination for the exact sciences, and especially for the mathematics, in which he made great proficiency. At an early age, it is said, he became connected with the Jesuits; and, though doubt has been expressed of the statement, it is probably true.

 
; La Salle was always an earnest Catholic; and yet judging by the qualities which his after life evinced, he was not very liable to religious enthusiasm. It is nevertheless clear that the Society of Jesus may have had a powerful attraction for his youthful imagination. This great organization , so complicated yet so harmonious, a mighty machine moved from the centre by a single hand, was an image of regulated power, full of fascination for a mind like his. But, if it was likely that he would be drawn into it, it was no less likely that he would soon wish to escape. To find himself not at the centre of power, but at the circumference; not the mover, but the moved; the passive instrument of another’s will taught to walk in prescribed paths, to renounce his individuality and become a component atom of a vast whole,—would have been intolerable to him. Nature had shaped him for other uses than to teach a class of boys on the benches of a Jesuit school. Nor, on his part, was he likely to please his directors; for self-controlled and self-contained as he was, he was far too intractable a subject to serve their turn. A youth whose calm exterior hid an inexhaustible fund of pride; whose inflexible purposes, nursed in secret, the confessional and the “manifestation of conscience” could hardly drag to the light; whose strong personality would not yield to the shaping hand; and who, by a necessity of his nature, could obey no initiative but his own,—was not after the model that Loyola had commended to his followers.

  La Salle left the Jesuits, parting with them, it is said, on good terms, and with a reputation of excellent acquirement and unimpeachable morals. This last is very credible. The cravings of a deep ambition, the hunger of an insatiable intellect, the intense longing for action and achievement, subdued in him all other passions; and in his faults the love of pleasure had no part. He had an elder brother in Canada, the Abbé Jean Cavelier, a priest of St. Sulpice. Apparently, it was this that shaped his destinies. His connection with the Jesuits had deprived him, under the French law, of the inheritance of his father, who had died not long before. An allowance was made to him of three or, as is elsewhere stated, four hundred livres a year, the capital of which was paid over to him; and with this pittance he sailed for Canada, to seek his fortune, in the spring of 1666.