Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847
That very evening, however, he was waited on by the same old gentleman in brown coat and gray hairs, who was seen speaking to her at the lottery. He came with a rueful face, requesting him to visit immediately Madame – , giving the Countess her right name, which it is now too late in our story to introduce. Whatever may have been the case at some previous time, the wheel of Fortune had that day bitterly disappointed her hopes. She had been carried home insensible. The Doctor hastened to her. It was too late. She had been again attacked by a congestion of the brain, which this time had proved fatal.
There appeared no hopes of a complete solution of the enigma.
"Ah!" said the same old gentleman, as he stood moralising by his side, "the same luck never comes twice– she should have tried other numbers."
The Doctor saw immediately that the old gentleman had been in the confidence of the deceased. He questioned him. There was a look of significance, which betrayed plainly that he knew all. He was in fact one of those who earn their subsistence by writing letters for those who are deficient in the skill of penmanship or epistolary composition. He had written the very letter itself; to his pen was owing that sort of copy-book phrase, "May the gifts of Fortune conduct to the Temple of Happiness!" The Doctor had in truth, as he often said when alluding to the subject, made his fortune in the lottery.
We wish we could leave the story here, and let the reader suppose that gratitude alone had induced the old woman to act so generous a part. But the whole truth should be honestly told. There was a mixture of superstition in the case. It was his number that had won the prize, and she considered it, as expressed in the letter which accompanied the notes, in the light of his property. In all countries where a lottery has been long established, the strangest superstitions grow up concerning what are called lucky numbers. In Italy, where this manner of increasing the public revenue is still resorted to, not only is any number which has presented itself under peculiar circumstances sure to be propitious, but there is a well-known book, of acknowledged authority we believe, containing a list of words, with a special number attached to each word, by the aid of which you can convert into a lucky number any extraordinary event which has occurred to you. Let any thing happen of public or private interest – let any thing have been dreamt, or even talked of that was at all surprising, you have only to look in this dictionary for the word which may be supposed to contain the essence of the matter; as, for instance, fire, death, birth – and the number that is opposite that word will assuredly win your fortune. When the Countess first saw the prescription of the young Doctor, she was going to throw it angrily on the floor; but her eye was suddenly riveted by the numbers in it – the numbers of the grains and ozs. in the cabalistic writing – and she felt assured that in these lucky numbers her fortune was made. The first stake she played she played for him; and, singularly enough, she won! But, as the old gentleman in the brown coat observed, the virtue of the prescription was exhausted. She should have sought for numbers from some other quarter; the second trial she made ended in a severe loss, and was the immediate occasion of her death.
COULTER'S CRUISE. 14
Another book of adventure in the island-studded Pacific. The vast tract of water that rolls its billows from Australia to America, from Japan to Peru, offers a wide field to the wanderer; and a library might be written, free from repetition and monotony, concerning the lands it washes, and the countless nations dwelling upon its shores. Nevertheless, we should have had more relish for this book had it reached us a few months earlier. Dr Coulter, who returned from ploughing the ocean so far back as 1836, would have done wisely to have published the record of his cruise somewhat sooner than in July 1847. A short half-year would have made all the difference, by giving him the start in point of time of a dangerous competitor, recently and laudatorily noticed in the pages of Maga. After the pungent and admirably written narrative of that accomplished able seaman, Herman Melville, few books of the same class but must appear flat and unprofitable. The order of things should have been reversed. Omoo would have found readers at any time, and although twenty publishers had combined with fifty authors to deluge the public with the Pacific Ocean during the five previous years. We are not quite so sure that Dr Coulter's book will be largely perused, treading thus closely upon the heels of Mr Melville. Not that the ground gone over is the same, or the book without interest. On reading the title-page we were assailed by an idea which we would gladly have seen realised on further perusal. One sometimes – rarely, it is true – meets with characters in works of fiction so skilfully drawn, so true to nature, so impregnated with an odour of reality, as to impress us with the conviction that they have actually lived, moved, and had being, and passed through the adventures set down for them by their creator. It is the case with many of the personages in Scott's novels. We should highly enjoy hearing any one assert, that there never existed such persons as Jeanie Deans and Edie Ochiltree; that Caleb Balderstone was an imaginary servitor, or Dugald Dalgetty the mythical man-at-arms of a poet's fancy. We would pitch the lie into the teeth of the incredulous idiot, and with a single tap on the sconce send him skirling and skeltering down the staircase. And, to pass from great things to small, we avouch that the gaunt and diverting man of medicine of whom frequent and honourable mention is made in the pages of Omoo, did inspire us with a notion of his reality, of which, up to the present time of writing, we have been unable wholly to divest ourselves. When we first took up Dr Coulter's narrative of adventure in America and the Southern Seas, it was with the hope, almost with the expectation, that the original Dr Longghost, encouraged by his former shipmate's example, had temporarily exchanged scalpel for goosequill, and indited an account of the dangers he had run since his affectionate parting with Typee on the pleasant shores of Tahiti. We were disappointed. To say nothing of diversity of dates, and other circumstances, rendering identity improbable, Longghost of the "Julia" would have written, we are well assured, a far quainter and more spicy book than that lately launched by Coulter of the "Stratford." It would have been of fuller flavour, and also more elegant, the result of the goblin mediciner's wild seafaring life, grafted on his old Lucullian reminiscences, on the shadowy souvenir of those happy days when he fed on salmis, and flirted with duchesses, long, long before he dreamed of cruising after whales, and sharing the filthy inconveniences of little Jule's detestable forecastle. It would have been, to the narrative of John Coulter, M.D., as ripe Falernian or racy hock, to ale of some strength but middling flavour, where there is no stint of malt, but which has been somewhat spoiled in the brew. We are quite certain that the tales of Caffrarian lion-hunts, with which Longghost cheered the dull watches of the night, and beguiled the Julia's mariners of their wonder, were of very different kidney to the pig-and-nigger-killing narratives of Mr Coulter. Of this, we repeat, we are morally certain; but as we like, unnecessary though it be, to have our convictions confirmed through the medium of our optics, we now summon Doctor Longghost to commence, the very instant this number of the Magazine reaches his hands – and reach them it assuredly will, though his present abode be in farthest Ind or frozen Greenland – a detailed and bona fide history of his Life and Adventures, from the day he chipped the shell up to that upon which he shall send to press the last sheet of his valuable autobiography. And we pledge ourselves to bestow upon his book what Aaron Bang calls an amber immortalisation, by embalming it in a review; treating him tenderly, as one we dearly cherish.
Neither pleasant recollections of Omoo, nor equally agreeable anticipations of Longghost's lucubrations, shall prevent our doing full justice to Coulter. Mr Melville made a charming book out of most slender materials. What had he to write about? Literally next to nothing. The fag-end of a cruise, and a few weeks' residence on an island, whose aspect, inhabitants, and all pertaining to it, had already been minutely and well described by Kotzebue and other voyagers. But he has found more to say that is worth reading, about what he saw in his very limited sphere of observation, than Dr Coulter has concerning his extensive voyages and travels "on the Western Coast of South America, and the interior of California, including a narrative of incidents at the Kingsmill Islands, New Ireland, New Britain, New Guinea, and other islands in the Pacific Ocean." And with respect to the manner of saying it, the Yankee has it hollow. Dr Coulter's style is careless, often feeble, and defaced by grammatical errors, so glaring that one marvels they escaped correction at the very printers' hands. It says much, therefore, for the fertility of the subject, for the novelty and curiosity of the scenes visited and incidents encountered by the adventurous doctor of medicine, that his book, although devoid of the graces of composition, is upon the whole both instructive and amusing.
To understand the desultory to-and-fro nature of Dr Coulter's cruise, it is necessary to read his preface, where he gives some general information concerning the singular and precarious commerce known as the Pacific Trade. This is carried on between the ports on the western coast of North and South America, the Pacific Islands, and the coasts of China, and is very lucrative, but often dangerous. The articles of trade and barter are exceedingly various. Europe contributes wines, brandy, hardware, and sundry manufactured goods; California sends deals, corn, and furs; the various islands furnish arrow-root, oil, pearls, dye-woods, tortoiseshell, &c. The ships engaged in the traffic, and which are of many sizes and countries, are usually owned, wholly or in part, by the captain or supercargo, and consequently, wholly unfettered in their course, they wander from port to port, according to the caprice of the hour, or the chances of an advantageous market. For protection against pirates, and against the attacks of the fierce and savage tribes with whom they frequently come in collision, they are well armed and manned. The precaution is no idle one, nor could it possibly be dispensed with. "Few of these trading vessels ever return with their cargoes to the coast of the Americas, China, the Sandwich Islands, or Australia, without having frequent fights with the savages, and there are some of them, who have reckless captains and crews on board, that never can end a trading transaction with the natives without a row."
Whether reckless or not, fighting appears to be an every-day sport with the warlike pearl-seekers of the Pacific – one which the meekest and most amiable navigators cannot avoid sharing in. We infer this compelled pugnacity from Dr Coulter's adventures when sailing in the Hound, a smart brigantine commanded by the gallant Captain Trainer. For although the doctor started as surgeon to the ship Stratford, and finally returned to England in her, he was long an absentee from her state room, and cruising on board the Hound. It happened thus. With a degree of thoughtlessness hardly pardonable in one of his profession, he made a practice of sleeping on deck, even when season and climate rendered such an exposed bed-place highly insalubrious. The consequence was a severe attack of rheumatism, and on making the coast of California he was fain to land, and take up his abode in a Roman Catholic Mission-house. The ship was ready for sea, bound to the far west for whales but the doctor was by no means in a like state of preparation, and the captain, seeing his crippled condition, urged him to remain on shore. Captain Lock was a sort of amateur medico, who prided himself on his Esculapian skill, and, although sorry to lose his surgeon's society, he evidently rather chuckled at the idea of having an opportunity to exercise his accomplishments. So Doctor Coulter allowed himself to be persuaded, and making an appointment to meet the Stratford, Deo volente, at Tahiti in the month of November, he remained under the care of the Spanish padre at the Mission, much to his own satisfaction, but probably not quite so much to that of any unlucky mariner upon whose fractured limb or diseased body Captain Lock may subsequently have found it necessary to practise. And even the doctor, although the motion of the ship was agony to his aching bones, and the rough service she was proceeding on would hardly have suited one in his crippled state, must surely have experienced some regret in thus deserting the whaler, from whose decks he had witnessed so many gallant contests with the oleaginous monster of the deep. Whaling is indeed a glorious sport, as far superior to your salmon fishing and fox hunting, as those diversions are to bobbing for gudgeon and chasing rats with a terrier. And whilst the excitement it occasions must, we apprehend, be the strongest possible to be known, short of that of the battle-field, it has the advantage of being much less dangerous than it looks. The ideas suggested to a landsman by the description of an attack on a whale, are those of extreme peril to all engaged in it, a peril from which the chances against their escaping alive are at least ten to one. A few hardy fellows pull up to a creature that looks like a small island on the surface of the sea, and one sweep of whose tail or flukes is sufficient to knock their frail bark into splinters; they dash their harpoons into his huge flanks, and submit to be towed through the waves by the maddened monster at a rate that makes the water boil round their bows. Such is the power of the fish, that if he came in contact with a ship, during his headlong course, his weight and impetus would stave in her sides. Sometimes he runs straightforward; at others in circles, with irregular rapidity. Still the boat sticks to him, until the smart of his hurt subsiding, or through fatigue, he slackens his speed, enabling his enemies to approach and to pierce him with fresh wounds. At last, when the waters around are reddened with his blood, comes the death-flurry. "Stern all!" The boats stand clear, and the fish disappears in the cloud of spray that he, dashes up in his dying agonies. His flukes quiver, he plunges heavily, and all is over. Perhaps, and this frequently happens, in the course of the contest a boat has been cut in two, or so far damaged as to fill and sink. But the crew are seldom lost. They support themselves by aid of the oars, until their comrades pick them up. Whaling seamen are paid by shares in the profits of the voyage, which arrangement of course contributes to render them zealous and daring.
Such are the scenes described in the early part of Dr Coulter's book, some of them with tolerable spirit. The whale captured, next comes the cutting in and boiling out of the blubber – the former a laborious and often a dangerous process, the latter, anything but an odoriferous one. The death of a whale is the signal for the arrival of a host of sharks – blue, brown, and shovel-nosed – all eager to make a meal off the defunct leviathan. "We were all day surrounded with sea-fowl of various kinds – haglets, peterels, &c. – picking up floating particles of blubber as it passed astern, and vast numbers of large blue sharks that kept continually plunging on the fish, and rendered it very unsafe for the man to go down and point the hook into the hole cut for it; indeed we were frequently obliged to jerk him up off the whale out of their way by the aid of the rope round him for that purpose." The carcass and head on board, the fires are lighted, the kettle boils, and the ship speeds merrily on her course – the crew reckoning their share of gain, and listening anxiously for the welcome sound of "There he blows!" – the look-out man's usual cry on sighting a whale.
When he left the Stratford, Dr Coulter bade adieu to the grand seasport of whale-catching, in which he had taken the passive part of a spectator. But his hand, if unskilled to hurl the harpoon, was familiar with rifle and fowling-piece. Both of these, with an ample supply of lead, powder, and shot, his kind friend, Captain Lock, left with him at the mission of Yerba Buena, literally Good Grass, a Californian town in the bay of St Francisco. And as soon as pure air, repose, and the use of the Temescal, or hot-air bath, had restored the doctor's health, he scoured his fire-arms and made ready for the chase. A looker-on at sea, on terra firma he proved himself a perfect Nimrod. From that day forward nothing that wore fur or feather could escape his sure eye and steady hand. From the quail to the swan, from the frightened squirrel to the formidable grisly bear, all birds and beasts felt his power, and fell before his unerring rifle. Nor had he long to wait for opportunities of distributing his bullets with fatal effect amongst foes whose form was human, although in customs and civilisation they were but one degree above the brutes of the forest. After some months' stay in California, taken up chiefly with hunting and fishing excursions, but of which the doctor, anxious to get to sea again, gives but a brief account, he began to consider how he should best reach his rendezvous at Tahiti. He had plenty of time before him; but the whaling season on the west coast of America being at an end, he could hardly expect a westward bound English or American ship to touch at St Francisco for a considerable time to come. He had some notion of proceeding by a coasting vessel to a more southerly port, when one morning a fine brigantine hove in sight under a cloud of snow-white sail, and came to an anchor in the bay. Upon going on board, he recognised all old acquaintance in the captain of the Hound, whom he had formerly met – the doctor has been a great rover – at a seaport in Chili. Captain Trainer was trading along the coast, buying furs; had come into port for fresh water and repairs; was off for a cruise in the Indian archipelago; and calculated on winding it up by a visit to the Society Islands. The prospect of variety and adventure held out by such a voyage exactly chimed in with the doctor's undecided and erratic mood, as its projected termination did with his promise to rejoin his ship at Tahiti; so, without more ado, he made terms with his friend Trainer, and took up a passenger's berth on board the Hound.
The schooner answering to this canine appellation was a rakish, fast-sailing craft of two hundred tons burden, fitted out expressly for the Pacific trade. She carried four small carronades and a long nine-pounder, a sufficiency of small arms, and a smart crew of sixteen hands. Boarding-nettings she had, too, ready to be triced up in case of need; and altogether she had no occasion to dread any enemy she was at all likely to meet. Her captain was an Englishman born, frank and fearless, and a thorough sailor. Dr Coulter represents him as a kind-hearted and humane man, desirous to trade fairly and amicably with the savages, and not, after the fashion of many desperado skippers in those latitudes, to clench his bargains by blows and bloodshed. This admitted, it must be confessed that the captain was unfortunate; for during the time Dr Coulter sailed with him, we find him continually at loggerheads with the natives. For the most part, however, the strife was brought on by the treachery and robber-like propensities of the latter, who, whilst trading with their European customers, seldom neglect an opportunity of boarding their ships and cutting their throats. As soon as a vessel comes to anchor they surround it with their canoes, and show great anxiety to get on board, especially the women, whom many vessels admit, but whom Captain Trainer managed to keep off by tabooing his ship. The vice and immorality prevalent in most of the Pacific Islands is carried to a frightful pitch, doubtless greatly encouraged by the example of the reckless and dissolute mariners. Any stimulus of that kind was unnecessary to barbarians originally cruel, treacherous, and licentious in a very high degree. Cannibalism is prevalent amongst them. At Drummond's Island, one of the Kingsmill group, the first land where the Hound made any stay after leaving St Francisco, Dr Coulter had abundant proof of this. Except upon the coast, where the disgust shown by Europeans had rendered them ashamed of it, or at least anxious to conceal it, the natives did not deny the practice. Some of the men wore necklaces composed of the bones of human feet and hands, which clattered at each motion of the body. And other human bones were to be seen in their houses. They eat only strangers and enemies taken in battle; and as the occasional cutting off of a boats' crew or straggling watering party from a European ship is insufficient to keep their larders supplied, they get up constant wars with the natives of other islands. Amongst themselves, too, they are very quarrelsome. Dr Coulter, when at Drummond's Island, was present at a grand council, where, after a certain amount of singing, stamping, and speech-making, the warriors came from words to blows, and one of them was killed by a spear-thrust. To satisfy the honour and appease the wrath of his followers and partisans, a peace-offering was necessary. It consisted of six fighting cocks, with which and with the corpse of their chief the warriors took their departure, perfectly satisfied. Cock-fighting is a sport to which most of the Pacific tribes are passionately addicted.
When the Kingsmill savages had got all they could out of Captain Trainer, and trade was over, and the ship about to depart, they came out in their true colours. Previously they had been amiable and affable enough, contenting themselves with small pilferings, and with robbing Dr Coulter, whose curiosity took him on shore, of his clothes, which they replaced with a fish-skin cap and a war-mat. They now showed hostile intentions – attacked a boat, killed one of the crew, and then made an open attack on the schooner with a whole fleet of armed canoes. A shower of grape played havoc amongst them, and sank or capsized several of their craft; but they still persevered in their advance, and clung to the vessel's sides and to the boarding-nettings until repelled by cutlass and pistol. Thus began and ended most of the quarrels with the natives, who, usually the aggressors, were invariably defeated, but not without hard fighting and some loss on the part of the assailed. Captain Trainer, however, was not always quite blameless in the provocation of quarrels, which always terminated in heavy loss to the misguided savages. At New Hanover a foolish jest, which his experience of the people he had to deal with ought to have prevented him from indulging in, was cause of much bloodshed, and nearly occasioned the loss of the vessel, and destruction of the crew. Trade had gone on merrily and amicably for several days, when Trainer expressed a desire for a remarkable necklace of shells and teeth worn by one of the chiefs. The wearer was willing, and a bargain struck. The necklace was tightly knotted, and the purchaser propose to cut it. By way of a joke, "instead of cutting the cord, which he held in one hand, he raised the knife in a threatening manner as if about to stab the man." Practical jokes are always foolish and in bad taste, —jeu de mains, jeu de vilains, as the French proverb says; – and the results of this one were very serious. "The native took instant alarm, thought the captain was in earnest, made a spring clear of him, which broke his necklace, and plunged overboard. A few natives on deck at the time followed his example." A fierce fight, in which several of the schooner's crew were wounded, and a large number of the islanders killed, was the consequence of this thoughtless act. And scarcely had the assailants been repelled when the vessel was found to be on fire, ignited gun and pistol wadding having fallen through an open hatch amongst inflammable dunnage. By great exertion the flames were overcome, and the Hound sailed from the inlet where these unpleasant occurrences had taken place.
From Dr Coulter's account, the islands of the Pacific are the scene of continual acts of injustice, oppression, and insubordination. It constantly happens that seamen, seduced by the prospect of a sensual and idle life, and weary of hard work and uncertain pay on board traders and whalers, desert their ships and settle amongst the savages. Sometimes they are driven to this by ill-usage from their captains, often fierce and hard-hearted men. When a vessel becomes short-handed, it is a common practice to inveigle Indians on board; and if fair promises are insufficient to induce them to serve as sailors, to take them away by force. At Tacames, in Colombia, Dr Coulter fell in with a Californian who had served for some time on board an American ship. Jack, so his Yankee shipmates had christened him, had gone on board, in company with another of his tribe, to sell furs, and had not been allowed to go ashore again. His companion died of grief and ill-treatment on the coast of Japan, and Jack, when his services were no longer needed, was left at Tacames, two or three thousand miles from his native land. He belonged to a wandering tribe who lived by bartering furs for powder, tobacco, and other Indian necessaries, and, as an experienced and intrepid hunter, was invaluable to Dr Coulter. The account of their expeditions in the South American forests is highly interesting, and we are willing to believe unexaggerated, although some portions of the doctor's venatorial adventures and experiences, both in South America and elsewhere, do remind us a little of the marvels recorded in a diverting and apocryphal book put forth a few years ago by all ingenious nautical author. On the first day of their sortie, Jack and his employer, after passing unharmed through jungles peopled by gigantic monkeys of great boldness, who made various attempts to purloin their caps and guns, but did not otherwise molest them, reached a deep ravine, where the barking and howling of beasts were loud and incessant. Presently a wild horse dashed past them, pursued by a brace of tigers. The horse dropped from fatigue, the tigers sprang upon him, the ambushed hunters fired. The doctor's tiger was killed on the spot; "my shot, after passing through him, entered the horse's neck, and killed him also." Jack's aim had been less deadly; his beast was wounded, but still active and dangerous. Dr Coulter proposed giving him the contents of his second barrel, but the guide preferred to use his knife. The account of the hand-to-hand combat that ensued reminds us of those graphic records of bruising matches that occasionally grace the columns of the weekly newspapers. Pierce Egan himself could hardly recount the progress of a "mill" between the "Tipton Slasher and the Paddington Pet" in terser and more knowing style than that employed by John Coulter in narrating the set-to between Jack and the tiger. "Jack went boldly up to him; the infuriated animal grinned horridly and writhed rapidly about, throwing up a good deal of dust from the dry ground. One plunge of the knife – a roar; into him again – a hideous grin and a tumble about, some blood scattered on the ground; at him again – a miss stroke of the knife; try once more – both down and nearly covered with dust." Whereupon the bottle-holder felt strongly inclined to fire, but was deterred by fear of hitting his own man. "The tiger had now hold of either the Indian or his clothes, as both rolled together; yet the knife was busily at work. At last his arm was raised high up with the red dripping instrument; and after one more angry plunge of it, the tiger turned on his back, his paws and whole frame quivering, and with an attempt at a ghastly grin he fell over on his side and died. Jack then stood up, covered with the animal's blood, and his first ejaculation was 'un diablo;' in English, 'one devil.'" A strong term, but scarcely misapplied to this plucky and hilarious tiger, whom we conclude, from his continual grinning, to have been a near relation of the laughing hyena. He died game, with a smile on his lips. Jack escaped punishment, barring "a faint bite on the shoulder, and a few tears of the paws on his arms," of which the hardy fellow made little account, but, after skinning the carrion, proceeded onward in triumph, through forests whose impervious foliage allowed no glimpse of the sky, where the sunbeams came with a mild green tint through the masses of impending leaves; down rivers fringed with lofty trees, whose branches were alive with parrots and kingfishers; where the monkey screamed, the tiger howled, and the disgusting alligator, coated with slime and mud, crawled lazily away at the paddle's splash. In this manner the brace of bold hunters reached the small town of Tolo; and whilst abiding there, intelligence came of one of those petty and partial revolutions so common in South American republics. A malcontent colonel and a few hundred men, unpaid by the needy government, were extorting their arrears by the strong hand from the towns upon the coast. They made a determined attack on Tolo, which had been hastily fortified, and was resolutely defended. The rebels were beaten off; and as they retreated, a party of cavalry came up, killed many, and made prisoners of the rest. Jack, whose shooting iron, as he styled his gun, had made itself heard with great effect during the siege, joined in pursuit, scrutinised the pockets of the fallen, and secured an amount of specie that filled his heart with joy. To complete his contentment, Dr Coulter interceded for him with the captain, who gave the poor fellow a free passage back to his own country.