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On the Line Jake Maddox Sports Stories Jake Maddox
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Jake Maddox
ISBN(s): 9781598892406, 1598892401
Edition: Illustrated
File Details: PDF, 22.30 MB
Year: 2006
Language: english
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
his firm was very celebrated. Mr. Drew was a rapid, bold, and
successful operator. His connection with the Erie Railroad,
guaranteeing the paper of that company to the amount of a million
and a-half of dollars, showed the magnitude of his transactions. In
1857, as treasurer of the company, his own paper, endorsed by
Vanderbilt to the amount of a million and a-half of dollars saved the
Erie from bankruptcy. During that year, amidst universal ruin, Mr.
Drew’s losses were immense; but he never flinched, met his paper
promptly, and said that, during all that crisis, he had not lost one
hour’s sleep. In conjunction with Vanderbilt, he relieved the Harlem
Road from its floating debt, and replaced it in a prosperous
condition.
“It would be unpardonable to forget the great Barnum,” says a New
York writer, “one of our most remarkable men. He lives among the
millionaires in a costly brown-stone house in Fifth Avenue, corner of
Thirty-ninth Street, and is a millionaire himself. He has retired from
the details of actual life, though he has the controlling interest of the
Barnum and Van Amburgh Museum. He has made and lost several
fortunes; but, in the evening of life, he is in possession of wealth,
which he expends with great liberality and a genial hospitality. He
was born at Bethel, Connecticut, and was trained in a village tavern
kept by his father. He had a hopeful buoyant disposition, and was
distinguished by his irrepressible love of fun. At the age of fifteen he
began life for himself, and married when he was nineteen. As editor
of the Herald of Freedom, he obtained an American notoriety. The
paper was distinguished for its pith and vigour. Owing to sharp
comments on officials, Mr. Barnum was shut up in gaol. On the day
of his liberation his friends assembled in great force, with carriages,
bands of music, and flags, and carried him home. His first
appearance as an exhibitor was in connection with an old negress,
Joyce Heth, the reputed nurse of Washington. His next attempt was
to obtain possession of Scudder’s American Museum. Barnum had
not five dollars in the world, nor did he pay any down. The concern
was little better than a corpse ready for burial, yet he bound himself
down by terms fearfully stringent, and met all the conditions as they
matured. He secured the person of Charles S. Stretton, the
celebrated dwarf, and exhibited him. He also secured the services of
Jenny land, binding himself to pay her 1,000 dollars a-night for 150
nights, assuming all expenses of every kind. The contract proved an
immense pecuniary success. From the days of Joyce Heth, to the
present time, Mr. Barnum has always had some speciality connected
with his show, which the world pronounces humbug; and Mr.
Barnum does not deny that they are so. Among these are the
Woolly Horse, the Buffalo Hunt, the Ploughing Elephant, the Segal
Mermaid, the What-is-it, and the Gorilla. But Mr. Barnum claims
that, while these special features may not be all that the public
expect, every visitor to the exhibition gets the worth of his money
ten times over; that his million curiosities and monstrosities, giants,
and dwarfs, his menagerie and dramatic entertainments, present a
diversified and immense amount of entertainment that cannot be
secured anywhere else. A large or red baboon, upon a recent
occasion, was exhibited at the Museum. It was advertised as a
living gorilla, the only one ever exhibited in America. Mr. Barnum’s
agents succeeded in hoodwinking the press to such a degree, that
the respectable dailies described the ferocity of this formidable
gorilla, whose rage was represented to be so intense, and his
strength so fearful, that he was very near tearing to pieces the
persons who had brought him from the ship to the Museum.
Barnum had not seen the animal; and when he read the account in
the Post, he was very much excited, and sent immediately to the
men to be careful that no one was harmed. The baboon was about
as furious as a small-sized kitten. The story did its work, and crowds
came to see the wonderful beast. Among others a professor came
from the Smithsonian Institute; he examined the animal, and then
desired to see Mr. Barnum. He informed the proprietor that he had
read the wonderful accounts of the gorilla, and had come to see
him. ‘He is a very fine specimen of the baboon,’ said the professor;
‘but he is no gorilla.’ ‘What’s the reason that he is not a gorilla?’ said
Barnum. The professor replied, that ‘ordinary gorillas had no tails.’
‘I own,’ said the showman, ‘that ordinary gorillas have no tails; but
mine has, and that makes the specimen the more remarkable.’ The
audacity of the reply completely overwhelmed the professor, and he
retired, leaving Mr. Barnum in possession of the field. Mr. Barnum’s
rule has been to give all who patronise him the worth of their
money, without being particular as to the means by which he
attracts the crowds to his exhibitions. His aim has been notoriety.
He offered the Atlantic Telegraph Company 5,000 dollars for the
privilege of first sending twenty words over the wires. It has not
been all sunshine with Mr. Barnum. His imposing villa at Bridgeport
was burned to the ground. Anxious to build up East Bridgeport, he
became responsible to a manufacturing company, and his fortune
was swept away in an hour; but with wonderful sagacity he relieved
himself. As a business man, he has singular executive force, and
great capacity. Men who regard Mr. Barnum as a charlatan, who
attribute his success to what he calls humbug, clap-trap,
exaggerated pictures, and puffing advertisements, will find that the
secret of his success did not lie in that direction. Under all his
eccentricity, there was a business energy, tact, perseverance,
shrewdness, and industry, without which, all his humbugging would
have been exerted in vain. From distributing Sear’s Bible, he
became lessee of the Vauxhall Saloon; thence a writer of
advertisements for an amphitheatre at four dollars a-week; then
negotiating, without a dollar, for the Museum, which was utterly
worthless; outwitting a corporation who intended to outwit him on
the purchase of the Museum over his head; exhibiting a
manufactured mermaid which he had bought of a Boston showman;
palming off Tom Thumb as eleven years of age when he was but
five; showing his woolly horse, and exhibiting his wild buffaloes at
Holcken—these, and other small things that Barnum did, are known
to the public; but there are other things which the public did not
know. Barnum was thoroughly honest, and he kept his business
engagements to the letter. He adopted the most rigid economy.
Finding a hearty coadjutor in his wife, he put his family on a short
allowance, and shared himself in the economy of the household. Six
hundred dollars a-year he allowed for the expenses of his family, and
his wife resolutely resolved to reduce that sum to 400 dollars. Six
months after the purchase of the Museum, the owner came into the
ticket-office at noon; Barnum was eating his frugal dinner, which was
spread before him. ‘Is this the way you eat your dinner?’ the
proprietor inquired. Barnum said, ‘I have not eaten a warm dinner
since I bought the Museum, except on the Sabbath, and I intend
never to eat another on a week-day till I am out of debt.’ ‘Ah, you
are safe, and will pay for the Museum before the year is out,’ replied
the owner. In less than a year the Museum was paid for out of the
profits of the establishment.”
There are no better rules for business success than those laid down
by Mr. Barnum, and which have guided his course. Among them are
these—“Select the kind of business suited to your temperament and
inclination; let your pledged word ever be sacred; whatever you do,
do with all your might; use no description of intoxicating drinks; let
hope predominate, but do not be visionary; pursue one thing at a
time; do not scatter your powers; engage proper assistance; live
within your income, if you almost starve; depend upon yourself, and
not upon others.”
Perhaps one of the men who made most money by advertising, was
Mr. Barnes, the proprietor of the New York Ledger. The manner was
entirely his own. When he startled the public by taking columns of a
daily journal, or one entire side, he secured the end he had in view.
His method of repeating three or four lines—such as, “Jenny Jones
writes only for the Ledger!” or “Read Mrs. Southwort’s new story in
the Ledger!”—and this repeated over and over again, till men turned
from it in disgust, and did not conceal their ill-temper—was a system
of itself. “What is the use,” said a man to Mr. Barnes, “of your taking
the whole side of the Herald, and repeating that statement a
thousand times?” “Would you have asked me that question,” replied
Mr. Barnes, “if I had inserted it but once? I put it in to attract your
attention, and to make you ask that question.” This mode of
advertising was new, and it excited both astonishment and ridicule.
His ruin was predicted over and over again; and when he had thus
amassed a fine fortune, it was felt that the position he had secured
was the one he aimed at when he was a mere printer’s lad. He
sought for no short paths to success; he mastered his trade as a
printer patiently and perfectly; he earned his money before he spent
it; in New York he was preferred because he did his work better than
others; he was truthful, sober, honest, and industrious; if he took a
job, he finished it at the time and in the manner agreed upon. He
borrowed no money, incurred no debts, and suffered no
embarrassments. He was born in the north of Ireland, not far from
Londonderry, and was true to the Scotch Presbyterian blood in his
veins.
I now come to the most illustrious name, as regards money-getters,
either in England or America. Mr. George Peabody was something
more than a money-hunter, and, in the history of money-making
men, deserves the post of honour for his philanthropy. He was born
in Massachusetts, and was, essentially, a self-taught and self-made
man. After he had learnt, in the district school, how to read and
write, having been four years in a grocer’s score, and having spent
another year with his grandfather in rustic life in Vermont, he went
to join his brother David, who had set up a drapery or dry-goods
store at Newburyport. This was stopped, a few months after, by a
fire, which destroyed Peabody’s shop and most of the other houses
in the town. Fortunately, at this juncture, an uncle, who had settled
in George Town, in the district of Columbia, invited young George to
become his commercial assistant; and he stayed with him a couple
of years, managing the most part of the business. In May, 1812,
during the unhappy war between Great Britain and America, when a
British fleet came up the Potomac, this young merchant’s clerk, with
others of his time, volunteered into the patriot army, and served a
few months in the defence of Port Warburton, as a true citizen
soldier. The short war being over, his proved skill and diligence
brought him the offer of a partnership in a new concern—it was that
of Elisha Riggs, who was about to commence the sale of dry goods
throughout the middle States of the Union. Riggs found the capital,
while Peabody did the work, and the firm at once achieved immense
success. Peabody acted as bagsman, and often travelled alone, on
horseback, through the western wilds of New York and Pennsylvania,
or the plantations of Maryland and Virginia, if not farther, lodging
with farmers or gentlemen slave-owners, and so becoming
acquainted with every class of people, and every way of living:
indeed, so fast did the Southern connection increase, that the house
was removed to Baltimore, though its branches were established,
seven years later, at Philadelphia and New York. About the year
1830, Mr. Riggs having retired from business, Mr. Peabody found
himself at the head of one of the largest mercantile firms in the
home-trade of America. But Mr. Peabody had also, by this time,
distinguished himself as a man of superior integrity, discretion, and
public spirit. “He coveted no political office; he courted the votes of
no party; he waited upon no caucus; put his foot down,” says the
writer of the account of his life in the “Annual Register,” “upon no
platform; but held aloof from the strife of American factions.” His
first visit to London was in 1827, whole he was still chief partner in
the Baltimore firm. In 1843, he fixed himself here, as merchant and
money-broker, with others, by the style of “George Peabody and Co.,
of Warnford Court, City.” As one of the three commissioners
appointed by the State of Maryland to obtain means for restoring its
credit, he refused to be paid for his services; but the State could not
do less than vote him their special thanks. To the last he retained
his fondness for his native land, and used to celebrate the
anniversary of American Independence, on the 4th of July, with a
kind of public dinner at the Crystal Palace.
It is as a magnificent giver as well as getter of money that Mr.
Peabody has become famous. He knew perfectly well what he was
about. He had seen as much of the world as most elderly men of
business accustomed to society and travel, and he had come to the
conclusion that a man was not made happy by fine houses, and
grand equipages, and stately parks, and galleries filled with the
choicest productions of art in ancient or modern times, or by the
social status which assuredly the possession of money gives. None
of these things, he found, made a man happy; though if he had
them, and were deprived of them, the loss would make him truly
unhappy indeed. Mr. Peabody thought he knew a surer way to the
possession of happiness; and that was, by dedicating the wealth he
had honourably acquired, to the promotion of the well-being of his
less fortunate fellow-men.
Some of his first acts of pecuniary munificence, as was to be
expected, had an American bearing. At the time of the Great
Exhibition of 1851, he promptly supplied the sum needed to pay for
the arrangements of the United States contributions. In the
following year he joined Mr. Henry Grinnell, of New York, shipowner,
in fitting out the expedition to the Arctic Sea in search of Sir John
Franklin. In the same year he bestowed a large donation, since
augmented to £100,000, to found a free library and educational
institute at Danvers, his native place. In 1857, he revisited his
native land, after an absence of twenty years. On this occasion he
gave £100,000 to form, at Baltimore, a noble institute devoted to
science and art, in conjunction with a free public library. The corner-
stone of this building was laid in 1858, and the structure was then
completed; but its opening was delayed by the civil war which at
that time prevailed. It was not till after the conclusion of the war
that it was finally dedicated to the purposes for which it was
founded. Mr. Peabody afterwards gave a second £100,000 to the
institute.
In 1862, Mr. Peabody made the magnificent donation of £150,000
for the amelioration of the condition of the poor of London, and the
trustees, who were men of mark and position, immediately
employed the money in accordance with the noble donor’s wishes, in
the erection of model dwellings for working-men. In 1866, he added
another £100,000 to the fund; and in 1868, he made a further
donation of about fifteen acres of land at Brixton, 5,642 shares in
the Hudson’s Bay Company, and £5,405 in cash (altogether another
£100,000); thus making the value of his gifts to the poor of London
as much as £350,000. By the last will and testament of Mr. Peabody,
opened on the day of his funeral, his executors, Sir Curtis Sampson
and Sir Charles Reed, were directed to apply a further sum of
£150,000 to the Peabody Fund, thus making a sum of half a million
sterling so employed.
This extraordinary beneficence, on the part of a private citizen, was
acknowledged in Great Britain. The freedom of the City of London
was conferred on Mr. Peabody by the corporation. The Queen, not
content with offering him either a baronetcy or the Grand Cross of
the Bath, which he respectfully declined, wrote him a grateful letter,
and invited him to visit her at Windsor. In 1866, just before his
second visit to his native country, he received from her the gift of a
beautiful miniature portrait of herself, framed in the most costly
style, which he deposited in the Peabody Institute at Danvers. The
last token of public honour which was rendered to Mr. Peabody
before his death, was the uncovering, by the Prince of Wales, of
Storey’s fine bronze statue of himself behind the Royal Exchange.
Mr. Peabody remained in his native land three years, during which
time he largely increased the amount of his donations, and founded
more than one or two important institutions. He gave 2,000,000
dollars for the education of the blacks and whites in the South;
300,000 dollars for museums of American relics at Yale and Harvard
Colleges; 50,000 dollars for a free museum at Salem; 25,000 dollars
to Bishop McIlxame for Kenyon College; and presented a sum of
230,000 dollars to the State of Maryland. He also expended 100,000
dollars on a memorial church to his mother, and distributed among
the members of his family 2,000,000 dollars. In recognition of his
many large gifts to public institutions in America, Mr. Peabody
received, in March 1867, a special vote of thanks from the United
States. He died in London, at the house of his friend, Six Curtis
Sampson, at Eaton Square, in the seventy-filth year of his age. The
funeral took place in Westminster Abbey though, in accordance with
the wishes of the deceased, the body was afterwards conveyed to
America. The coffin-lid bore the following inscription:—

George Peabody,
Born at Danvers, Massachusetts, February 18th, 1795;
 Died in London, England, November 4th, 1869.
The remains were taken over to America in her Majesty’s turret-
ship, the Monarch.

The late Mr. A. T. Stewart, dry-goods merchant of New York, has left
a curious monument of his administrative skill in the great Working
Women’s Hotel, recently completed in that city. As a large employer
of labour, male as well as female, Mr. Stewart became impressed
with the difficulty that working-folk have in finding lodgings even in
comparatively new cities. In swiftly-growing New York, the
constantly increasing demand for business premises has pushed the
population higher and higher up the island, until one fashionable
street after another has been converted into stores and offices, and
people fairly well off have built themselves handsome dwellings
further afield. This has been by no means an unprofitable change
for house-owners; for the compensation received for a house “down
town,” more than suffices to build and furnish a handsome dwelling
in that part of the city still devoted to private residences; but to the
poorer classes of inhabitants, rapid change and development of this
kind have been not a little oppressive. Far more swiftly and
suddenly than in London, the working-people have found themselves
thrust from the space previously occupied by them, but grown too
valuable to be covered by their humble homes. Like their brethren
in London, they have either retired to the suburbs and find a
tiresome morning and evening journey added to the miseries of life,
or have taken refuge in large houses let out in tenements and built
expressly for the accommodation of artisan families. Both English
and American experiments in this latter direction have been very
successful. Practice has taught the proper principle of constructing
large tenement houses as well as artisans’ and labourers’ cottages,
and the working family is probably not less commodiously, and is
certainly more healthily, lodged than it has been at any preceding
period. The single man, too, is cared for; but the single woman has
hitherto been under certain disadvantages. It is obvious that a
house almost always contains more space than she wants, and costs
more money than she can afford; and it is equally clear that in
cooking her own meals separately she is wasting time, food, and
fuel. Some of these objections might, perhaps, be got over by four
or five women clubbing together; but their general feeling has never
been strongly manifested in favour of divided rule or responsibility.
It is subjecting human nature to a severe test to ask people to
“room together,” as it is called in America, the ordinary result being
that the temporary “chums” never speak again to each other for the
rest of their lives. It was to obviate this strain on human sympathy
that Mr. Stewart projected the Working Women’s Hotel, the
completion of which he did not live to see.
“Judging from the prices charged,” says a writer in the Daily News,
“and the regulations enforced, the working women for whom the
great hotel at New York has been constructed, are of a class
somewhat above that of the factory or work-girl proper. Seven
dollars a-week for board and a separate room, or six dollars a-head
if two persons occupy the same room, is a price that would absorb
an ordinary workwoman’s entire earnings. When it is recollected
that the value of a paper dollar is now within a fraction of that of a
gold one, and that wages and other things have fallen in price with
the contraction of the currency since the civil war, it is not easy to
see from what class of actual workwomen the hotel is to draw its
customers. Women working at trades clearly cannot aspire to the
comforts provided for seven dollars a-week, and it is doubtful
whether those in a position to pay that sum will submit to the
restrictions imposed upon boarders. For the sum asked they can, at
the present moment, obtain board easily elsewhere, and enjoy
perfect liberty. It is very likely that the food and accommodation
provided at the hotel are much superior to those offered at the
smaller boarding-houses with which the outer edges of New York,
Brooklyn, and Jersey City are thickly studded; but mere eating and
sleeping seem to be regarded by women, in America at least, in a
far less serious light than by men. The code of regulations at the
Working Women’s Hotel affords an amusing instance of the severity
which comes over the American when called to the lofty and
important position of keeping an hotel. In other walks of life he is
easy and good-natured, but when impelled by destiny to ‘run’ an
hotel, he undergoes a sudden transformation into a despot. The
guests at the new hotel are informed that eight large parlours have
been provided for the reception of visitors, who will not be allowed
in other rooms or parlours except by express permission of the
manager. The eight parlours specified correspond, in fact, to the
strangers’ rooms at a club. It is furthermore provided that no
visiting to a room will be allowed except by consent of all the
occupants; that no washing of clothes will be permitted in the
rooms, and that no sewing-machines or working apparatus shall be
brought into them. This last regulation may appear severe, but it is
probably intended to protect those who do not sew from
annoyance. A sewing-machine is an unpleasant neighbour, it is true;
but so is a rocking-chair; yet it may be doubted whether even the
despot who reigns over this last new ‘institution’ will prove equal to
the task of tabooing that pestilent article of furniture. Animals will
be rigidly excluded. No dogs, cats, birds, or other pet creatures will
be suffered; meals will be served at fixed hours; the gas will be
turned off and the hotel closed at half-past eleven. Whether this
code will be submitted to by American working-women capable of
paying from 24s. to 28s. weekly for board and lodging remains to be
seen. The upper lady-clerk in a store is, as a rule, gifted with great
strength of character, and as a fairly educated, self-reliant, and
hardworking member of society, is perfectly entitled to display her
sense of independence. She will be quick to perceive the
advantages offered by the new hotel, but it is at least probable that
she will be equally quick to resent the restrictions which it is sought
to impose upon her sovereign will and pleasure.”
A poor rich man, not long since, died at Cincinnati, leaving property
worth considerably more than half a million sterling. He lived up an
alley in one small room, dressed in rags, and looked like a penniless
tramp, and yet he owned more than 100,000 acres of land. Another
citizen of Cincinnati also offered to present to the city his valuable
art-collection, worth £40,000, on condition that a fire-proof building
should be erected in which to store it.
It is said that Peter Cooper, of New York, who has now (1878)
entered his eighty-eighth year, is worth £2,000,000. He began life
as a coachmaker’s apprentice; but having invented a superior kind of
glue, which came into general use, he rapidly made an immense
fortune.
The last illustration of getting on in America may be found in the
case of Carl Schurz, now (1878) one of the Secretaries of State in
America.
The history of Carl Schurz reads like a romance, for the wandering
Ulysses himself, restricted to narrower limits by the imperfect
geographical knowledge of his day, never had a tenth part of his
modern imitator’s advantages in “observant straying” over different
lands, and amidst diverse languages, nor “noting the manners and
their climes” of widely separated races. Born near Cologne in 1829,
and educated first at its gymnasium, and subsequently at the
University of Bonn, Carl Schurz enjoyed superior educational
advantages, by which, naturally studious, he greatly profited. When
but nineteen years of age, under the influence of his professor,
Kinkel, he became a Revolutionist in his sentiments; and in the year
1848, memorable for the revolutionary tide that swept over Europe,
established, in conjunction with his professor, a journal to advocate
those principles. Of this journal he was for a time sole editor.
When, in, the spring of 1849, the abortive insurrectionary effort was
made at Bonn, in which both he and the professor took a part, they
fled together to the Palatinate. Here our young student joined the
revolutionary army as adjutant, and aided in the defence of Rastadt
against the government troops. On the surrender of that place he
escaped to Switzerland, but soon returned to deliver his friend
Professor Kinkel from the fortress of Spandau. In this effort he was
successful. In 1851, we find the young revolutionist at Paris, as
correspondent of German journals, and a little later at London, for a
year giving lessons in German. But the exile wearied of Europe, and
his fancy drove him to America, where he arrived ignorant of the
language, and, it is to be presumed, short of cash. But he
proceeded to grapple resolutely with both difficulties. Three years
he spent in the quiet Quaker city of Philadelphia, teaching, and
learning, and writing—for there is a large German population In
Pennsylvania. Then he drifted westwards; first to Wisconsin, where
he commenced his career as a political partisan making speeches in
German, during the presidential canvass of 1856, on the Republican
side. He was also an unsuccessful candidate for the lieutenant-
governorship of Wisconsin that year—fast work for one but four
years in the country. The first public speech he delivered in the
English language was in 1858, about which time he commenced the
practice of law. In 1859, he made a lecture tour through the New
England States, speaking English, as I have been informed by an
auditor, very imperfectly. Now he speaks the language with perfect
purity, and a scarcely perceptible accent. In 1860, he was an
influential member of the National Republican Convention, and one
of the chief speakers during the canvass that resulted in the election
of Lincoln to the presidency. Appointed by Mr. Lincoln minister to
Spain, he soon resigned that office to return home and take part in
the civil war—the Germans forming a large portion of the military
contingent in the Federal army, the great bulk of the German
immigration having settled in the North and North-western States;
very few indeed at the South. It was a curious sequel to a
revolutionary career at home that Mr. Schurz should have been so
soon engaged in suppressing a rebellion in his adopted country. He
rose to the rank of major-general in the Federal service, and took
part in the battle of the second Bull Run, and where Stonewall
Jackson defeated the Federals at Chancellorsville. He was also at
Chattanooga and Gettysburg fights. At the close of the war he
returned to the practice of the law, and connected himself with the
newspaper press in different parts of the country as a Washington
correspondent.
When, in 1866, after the assassination of President Lincoln, Andrew
Johnson was acting President of the United States, he appointed Carl
Schurz as special commissioner to visit and report on the actual
condition of the southern country, then under process of
reconstruction. On his return from this mission our German Ulysses
migrated to Detroit in Michigan, where he founded a newspaper.
The ensuing year he moved again to the city of St. Louis, in
Missouri, where he founded a German newspaper, took an active
part for General Grant in both languages in 1868, and in 1869 was
elected United States senator for six years’ term from Missouri.
Disagreeing with General Grant’s policy and mode of conducting
public affairs, Mr. Schurz passed over to the Opposition to his
administration, and, in conjunction with Horace Greeley—like himself
an Abolitionist and Republican—sought to establish a reform party of
Liberal Republicans, as opposed to the Spoils party of Grant. Mr.
Schurz was the presiding officer in the Cincinnati Republican
Convention, which nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency, and
since then his career has been one of unmitigated success.
In the new States, as well as in the old, these American money-
makers flourish. As I write, I hear that Mark Hopkins, the great
Californian railway millionaire, has died with upwards of £3,000,000,
and his will cannot be found. In the absence of a will his widow
takes two-thirds of the fortune, and his two brothers the remainder.
Money-making, it may be said, is the chief characteristic of Brother
Jonathan and his numerous and pushing tribe.
 CHAPTER III.
CHARLES BIANCONI, THE IRISH CAR-MAN .

The life of a self-made man is at all times a deeply interesting study.

We like to see how he mastered surrounding circumstances, with
what bravery he met adverse fate, and how he fared when he had
triumphed and become strong. Such a man is not always a model to
be held up for admiration. Often there is a hardness and coarseness
about him which is undesirable, and an assumption of greatness on
account of pecuniary success, which, in good society at any rate, will
be resented. When the late Mr. Peabody was honoured with a
statue under the shadow of the Royal Exchange, and within the
heart of the City, it was said by some ill-natured Yankee, that if
England wished to erect statues to such men, there were plenty of
rich men America could supply us with for that purpose; and
certainly it is not in the true interests of humanity that we should get
into the habit of paying too much homage to worshippers of the
Golden Calf. Undoubtedly it will be much to be deprecated if that be
the worship of the future; but it is a danger in these levelling days,
when democracy is coming more and more to the front, against
which the preacher and the moralist must ever guard the nation. At
all times the tone of public thought must be pitched low, and when
rank has lost its prestige, the danger of being swamped by vulgar
plutocrats is immensely increased. As was to be expected, Mrs.
O’Connell is very proud of her father, and, as was also to be
expected, the father was very proud of himself. He was a very
illiterate man. He even could not spell the word money properly;
but no man knew better what it meant, and no man could have ever
anticipated that he would have secured so much of it as he did. As
a boy he had the reputation of being stupid, and also wild; and it
seems to have been with the view of getting rid of him that his
father sent him from his home in the Lombard Highlands, in
company with one Andrea Faroni, to England, where he was to learn
to become a dealer in prints, barometers, and eye-glasses. It was a
fortunate thing for Charles Bianconi that Favoni brought him instead
to Ireland. In London—the great cold world of London—it would
have fared hard with the poor Italian lad. In Dublin and the country
round, the good-looking foreigner, with his bright eyes and his civil
tongue, met with a warm reception—a reception all the more warm,
inasmuch as he was of the Irish faith; but even then it is strange
how he prospered as he did. Without knowing a word of the
language, and with fourpence in his pocket to pay expenses, he was
sent out into the country on the Monday morning with two pounds’
worth of prints to sell, and with the understanding that he was to be
back by Saturday night; but the lad had made up his mind to be a
somebody, and he was as good as his word; and he had not been
long in Ireland before he hit on the idea which led him to fame and
fortune.
One of his first lessons in Ireland was, he tells us, the great
difference between the pedlar doomed to tramp on foot, and his
more fortunate fellow who could post or ride on horseback. When
he became a small shopkeeper at Carrick, the need of equestrian
conveyance was brought home to him in a still more forcible
manner. “I supplied,” he writes, “my Carrick shop with gold-leaf
from Waterford, going down in Tom Mahony’s boat to buy it.
Carrick-on-Suir is twelve or thirteen miles from Waterford by land,
but the windings of the river make it twenty-four by water. This
boat, then, was the only public conveyance. The time of its
departure had to depend upon the tide, and it took four or five hours
to make the journey.” One day, going to Waterford by the boat,
Bianconi got sodden with the wet, and was laid up with cold and
pleurisy for a couple of months. This Irish experience was putting
him in the right track; and in 1815, when good horses were to be
had cheap, in consequence of the peace, he had the courage to start
his cars, running at first between Carrick and Clonmel, a distance of
some twelve miles. At first Bianconi only contemplated carrying the
poorer people. There was the aristocratic mail-coach for the people
of quality; but greatness was thrust upon him. In 1830 he carried
the mails direct from the post-office, and had bought up some
leading coaching lines. In his latter years he had 1,400 horses at
work, and daily covered 3,800 miles. Still further, to give the reader
an idea of the extent of his business, we may note there were 140
stations for the change of horses, and that these latter consumed
from 3,000 to 4,000 tons of hay, and from 30,000 to 40,000 barrels
of oats annually. In England Bianconi could never have made his
fortune in this way. In Ireland he appeared at the right time, and
was the right man in the right place.
As a benefactor to Ireland it is almost impossible to overestimate
Bianconi’s usefulness. The farmer who formerly drove spent three
days in making his market; when the cars came into operation one
day was sufficient, thereby saving two clear days and expense of his
horse. Another good object gained was the opening up the
resources of the interior of the country. And lastly, there was the
civilising effects of the intercommunion created among classes of the
country, by means of travelling together on one or other of the
Bianconi cars. The way in which the system was organised ensured
its success, “I take my drivers,” said Mr. Bianconi at the Cork
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
“from the lowest grade of the establishment. They are progressively
advanced, according to their respective merits, as opportunity offers,
and they know that nothing can deprive them of these rewards, and
also of a pension of their full wages in cases of old age or accident,
unless it be their own wilful and improper conduct.” The whole
establishment must have had a beneficial influence over a large
area. Any man found guilty of uttering a falsehood, however venial,
was instantly dismissed, and this consequently insured truth,
accuracy, and punctuality. It must be remembered, too, at the time
in which Mr. Bianconi commenced his career, the county of Tipperary
was much disorganised, owing to the maladministration of the laws,
and to the almost total severance of the bond which ought to have
united the upper and humble classes of society. At that time the
Catholics were generally looked down upon as beings of an inferior
race. A Catholic was not permitted to buy or become possessed of
land. In his very short autobiography, Mr. Bianconi thus describes
the grievances of the Roman Catholics:—

“One of the injustices of which the Catholics used to tell me,

was the unfair way in which the Catholics were treated in
Clonmel. Amongst others, they relate a practice then in
existence. The Protestant shopkeepers, upon a certain day,
used to go about the town levying a tax upon their Catholic
neighbours who attempted to open shops within the town walls
of Clonmel. They used to wring from each individual from two
to four guineas, which they called intrusion money. My
informants especially praised an old Mrs. Ryan, now dead, who
boldly refused to comply with their demands. The tax-makers,
therefore, seized her goods. She afterwards recovered them at
law, and her spirited conduct led to the abolition of this toll. We
Catholics had at one time to pay a tax upon all bought
merchandise, while our more favoured Protestant and
Dissenting fellow-townsmen were saved not only from a
needless expenditure, but from the galling contact with such a
class as the toll-gatherers. In the house, 112, Main Street, was
the news-room, which I joined. I was greatly struck by the loud
and consequential talk constantly going on between a Mr.
Jephson and a Sir Richard Jones, and two more of their set,
whereas I and my fellow-Papists were not allowed to speak
above a whisper. This I resolved not to submit to; for I could
see no reason why, when I had paid my money in a public
place, I should not share all equal rights. Others followed my
example; and as we all, Protestants and Papists, indulged in
equally noisy declamation, a stranger entering our news-room
would have been puzzled to say which party were the privileged
administrators of the penal code.”
Irish like, Mr. Bianconi managed now and then to have his joke. One
day, when he was sending home in a large wooden case a very
superior looking-glass, an old lady asked what was in the box thus
carefully conveyed. “The Repeal of the Union,” was Bianconi’s reply.
The old woman’s delight and astonishment knew no bounds. She
knelt down on her knees in the middle of the road, to thank God for
having preserved her so long, that at last, in her old days, she
should have seen the Repeal of the Union. As another illustration,
we quote the story of the opposition car:—

“His first attempt he thought was going to be a failure; scarcely

anybody went by car. People were used to trudging along on
foot, and they continued to do, thus saving their money, which
was more valuable than their time. Another man would have
abandoned the speculation; but Mr. Bianconi did nothing of the
kind. He started an opposition car, at a cheaper rate, which was
not known to be his—not even by the rival drivers, who raced
against each other for the foremost place. The excitement of
the contest, the cheapness of the fare, the occasional free lifts
given to passengers, soon began to attract a paying public, and
before very long both the cars every day came in full. He had
bought a great, strong, yellow horse, as he called him, to run in
the opposition car; he gave, he said, £20 for the animal. One
evening his own recognised driver came to him in great pride
and excitement. ‘You know the great, big, yallah horse under
the opposition car? Well, sir, he’ll never run another yard. I
broke his heart this night. I raced him from beyant Moore-o’-
Barns, and he’ll never thravel agin.’ Mr. Bianconi told me he was
obliged to show the greatest gratification at the loss of his
beast; but it gave him enough of the opposition car, which there
and then came to an end, like the poor horse. The habit of
travelling on a car increased among a people when they had
become alive to its advantage.”

The main principle on which Bianconi acted was never to despise

poor people, or apparently small interests. “His great enterprise,”
wrote Dr. Cook Taylor, “arose from the problems, how to make a
two-wheeled car pay while running for the accommodation of poor
districts and poor people, as regularly as the mail-coaches did for
the rich; and when that was solved, how to regulate a system of
traffic by a network of cars, the cars increasing in size as the traffic
required, from the short one-horse car, holding six people, to the
long four-horse car, holding twenty people.” One extract more will
give the reader Mr. Bianconi’s secret of money-making:—

“I remember when I was earning a shilling a day in Clonmel, I

used to live upon eightpence, and that did not prevent the
people from making me their mayor. I did the same at Cashel
and at Thurles, and that does not prevent me from at present
living between the towns, on a property of seven miles
circumference, and on which I pay her Majesty £7 2s. 6d. per
year, or from being a J.P. or a D.L.
“It gives me sincere pleasure in seeing you follow the sound
principle of having your wants within your means. Don’t be
fond of changes. It is better for you to be at the head of a
small republic than at the foot of a great one.”

Mrs. O’Connell writes:—

“I may add, as a postscript, what my father once said to a

young Yorkshireman, ‘Keep before the wheels, young man, or
they will run over you. Always keep before the wheels.’”

In his way, Mr. Bianconi was a religious man. He and his priest were
always on good terms. He did not run his cars on a Sunday,
because the Irish, being a religious people, will not travel for
business on that day. He also found his horses worked better for
one day’s rest in seven. With Daniel O’Connell he was on the most
intimate terms, and Sheil was often a guest at his house. He was an
out-and-out Liberal, and always maintained that when the Tory
landlords saw that they would fail to get one of their own party into
parliament, they encouraged their tenants to vote for the Home Rule
nominee, in the hope of balking the steady-going Liberal who could
afford to be honest. “I have known,” writes Mrs. O’Connell, “a great
Protestant land-owner boast of having given tacit support to the
ultra-Liberal candidate, in the pious hope that he could thereby
cause mischief in the Liberal benches.”
It is not pleasant to read that Bianconi, true friend to Ireland as he
was, narrowly escaped the penalty too generally attached to
ownership of land in Ireland. It was said that he was marked out to
be shot!—it was even thought that the deed had been planned and
attempted, and frustrated only by the parish priest, who asked him
to take a seat in his gig on his way home from Cashel. Bianconi had
driven in from Longfield in his own carriage, but he accepted the
priest’s invitation and went back with him. It seems there are two
roads leading from Cashel towards Longfield House, and the priest
chose the longer of the two. “Why do you take this road?” said
Bianconi. “I prefer it,” replied the priest, and nothing more was said
about it then; but it was suspected that the old priest had heard
something, or got some warning, for it afterwards became known
that a party of men had that night been watching on the other
road. Happily for the credit of Ireland, Bianconi expired peacefully in
1873, at a ripe old age, as is manifest when we state that he was
born in 1786. One of his last acts was characteristic. Struck with
paralysis, he discovered, about a week before his death an error of
eightpence in the deduction for poor-rates out of a large rent
cheque. Verily, of such is the kingdom of Mammon. Mrs. O’Connell,
however, has done her best to make her father’s memory fragrant;
but she is a novice in the art of book-making, and we must take the
will for the deed. Let us hope her countrymen will study the
example she holds out to them of a man industrious, and careful,
and economical, and eager for the main chance. It is such men
Ireland needs far more than agitators for Home Rule. In the
colonies no one learns more readily the value of thrift than the
Irishman, or gives us a finer example of how to reap the golden
harvest which it ensures; but in his native land the Irishman loves
more to spend money than earn it. Sir Thomas Dargan, the great
railway contractor, was, however, one of those exceptions which
teach us how, even in his native land, the poorest Irishman may
amass a fortune. Young Dargan received a good education, and
after leaving school was placed in a surveyor’s office. With little
beyond this training, and a character for the strictest integrity, he left
Ireland to push his fortunes. His first employment was under
Telford, who was then engaged in constructing the Holyhead Road.
When this was completed Dargan returned to Ireland, and embarked
in several minor undertakings, in which he was fortunate enough to
gain sufficient to form the nucleus of that princely fortune which
entitled him to the appellation of a millionaire. After the highly
successful result of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Mr. Dargan, with
the view of developing the industrial resources of his native country,
and with a munificence certainly without parallel in one who had
been “the architect of his own fortune,” resolved on founding an
Industrial Exhibition in Dublin, and placed £20,000 in the hands of a
committee, consisting of the leading citizens, and empowered them
to erect a building, and to defray all the necessary expenses
connected with the undertaking, on the sole condition that no
begging-box should be handed found for further contributions. He
undertook, moreover, to advance whatever additional sums might be
required to carry the enterprise to a successful issue. In fact, before
the Exhibition opened (May 12, 1853), Mr. Dargan’s advances are
said not to have fallen far short of £100,000.
 CHAPTER IV.
A FORTUNE MADE BY A VEGETARIAN.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable cases of success in life is the

following, as described by Mr. Napier, of Merchiston, in a paper in
“Fraser’s Magazine.” He says:—

“After the reading of my paper on the vegetarian core for

intemperance, before the Bristol Meeting of the British
Association in 1875, I was addressed by an elderly gentleman
and his wife, who said my views were strictly in accordance with
theirs. After some conversation, we adjourned to his hotel,
where he hospitably entertained me, and gave me a narrative of
his life, with permission to publish it in the interest of the good
cause, suppressing his name and abode, as he said he was
particularly shy and retired in his habits, and had a great
objection to see his name in print.
“He was born in the north of England in 1811; but although his
hair was grey, he otherwise appeared better preserved by
fifteen years than most persons of his age. His father was a
minister of religion, and he was the eldest of twelve children.
He was of ancient and distinguished lineage; but his father
never having had more than £300 a-year, he was obliged to
send his children out early into the world, and so at fourteen he
was put into a house of business in a great northern town.
“For the first three years he had nothing but his board with one
of the senior clerks; but at the end of that time he got as much
dry bread and water for his lunch as he could take, and ten
shilling a a-week to board and lodge himself. He accidentally
obtained some works on vegetarianism, and was resolved to put
in practice what he had read, as otherwise he found he could
not support and clothe himself decently. I will give now his own
words as nearly as I can recollect.
“‘I was seventeen years of age then, five feet eight inches high,
and strongly built. I had but ten shillings a-week for
everything. How should I best lay it out? The senior clerk took
me as a lodger at eighteenpence a-week, for one good room.
There was a bedstead in it, but no bedding or other furniture. I
was resolved to do what best I could, and owe no man
anything. Some canvas coverings, which my good mother had
put round my packages, served me to make a mattress when
filled with hay. For the first eight weeks I slept in my oldest
clothes on this mattress. My diet was ample and nourishing,
but very cheap. Threepence a-day was the cost. About one
pound of beans, which did not cost more than a penny, half a
pound of bread daily, and two halfpenny cabbages, and three
pounds of potatoes in the week. Two-pennyworth of seed oil,
[76a]
one pound of twopenny rice, and about a farthing’s worth of
tartar [76b] from the wine casks, constituted my very nourishing
diet.
“‘When my parents sent me a basket of fruit, I indulged in it
freely; but I did not care for it unless the carriage was paid,
which was not always the case. Thus 1s. 9d. for my food and
1s. 6d. for my lodging, and 9½d. for my fuel and light, left me
5s. 11½d. for other purposes. At the end of the eight weeks I
have specified, I was in possession of above £2. It took me
nearly this sum to purchase a straw paillasse, blankets, sheets,
and pillows second-hand. I persevered for another year on this
diet, and found myself in possession of about £12. As I had
some respectable acquaintance in the town, I resolved on
spending this sum in furniture, in order that I might have a
decent room into which to ask my visitors. Taking a lesson from
the poet Goldsmith, I had ‘a bed by night—a chest of drawers
by day,’ so that my apartment, alternately sitting-room and
bedroom, was suitable for lady visitors. I often invited the lady
you see sitting opposite to you, to take tea on Sunday with me
and then go to church. She was my own age exactly, and was
the prey of a cruel stepmother; she was, in fact, a sort of
Cinderella in a large family. Her stepmother aimed at marrying
her to a widower of forty-five, with seven children; but this my
young girl of eighteen objected to. Her father at first
sanctioned our engagement; but when a suitor in a good
position came forward for his daughter, he forbade me the
house, and made her walk daily with the gentleman whom we
nick-named ‘number forty-five.’ I resolved to marry her as soon
as I could furnish two more rooms and had laid in a good stock
of clothes.
“‘My young lady studied my vegetarian books, and determined
not to eat any meat at home. All the family laughed at her, but
she was sufficiently resolute to withstand ridicule.
“‘She told her father that, he having once sanctioned her
engagement to me, she must be bound to me, and could not
accept anyone else. Her father remonstrated with her, but it
was of no use. At the end of the two years, when I had just
passed my twentieth birthday, I called on her father and said, ‘I
have now three rooms well furnished, and am able to keep your
daughter; I want you to fix a day for my marrying her.’ He
pressed my hand warmly, and said, ‘Well, I will, and give you
my blessing into the bargain.’ He was a good-hearted man at
bottom, but too much ruled by his wife. He gave my wife a
good large outfit and a purse of £10, and her stepmother even
gave her £2, and her brothers and sisters bought her a family
Bible, and one of them wrote in it, ‘At the end of ten days their
countenances did appear fairer and fatter of flesh than all the
children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat—Daniel i.
15.’
“The old gentleman laughed very much when he told me this,
and said that the vegetarianism of Daniel had been the text of
many a sermon which he had preached to his children, who,
profiting by so good an example, were all vegetarians.
“But to resume. ‘I found myself married and very happy, but
with 10s. a-week only. We laid out our money as follows: We
paid 3s. 6d. for three rooms, 1s. for fuel and light, 3s. 6d. for
food, and had 2s. for other contingencies. Our food consisted
of—Bean stew three times a-week; potatoe pie twice a-week;
puddings without eggs twice a-week; carrots, turnips, or some
green vegetable daily. Our breakfast was porridge, either of
corn or oatmeal. We ate bread with it, thus insuring
mastication, and rendering butter, milk, tea, coffee, or cocoa
unnecessary. We sometimes took tea in the evening, but
oftener cold water. We formed the acquaintance of a fruit-
merchant, who, though laughing at our vegetarianism, often
sent us baskets of fruit. I was married in December, and in the
following November my wife had a son. In a few days the wife
of the head of the firm paid us a visit, and the next day I was
informed that my salary was to be raised to 18s. a-week. I was
before this in great difficulty what to do, as I did not much like
my wife being the sole nurse of her child. Before this she had
attended to all our wants. I now took an Irish servant girl, who
was willing to be a vegetarian and receive 6d. a-week in wages
for the first year.
“‘I was in possession, at the end of my second year of married
life, of £10 sterling. I will now tell you how I invested it. ‘Our
firm’ was both speculative and manufacturing, and employed
some 100 workmen, who purchased the tools they required at
rather high prices in the town. Ascertaining that the tools might
be had cheaper at Birmingham and Sheffield, I went myself and
laid in a small stock, which I sold within a week to the workmen
at 18 per cent. profit, but still full 10 per cent. under what they
were in the habit of paying. Being offered a month’s credit, I
received a consignment of tools from Birmingham and
Sheffield. At the end of a year I found myself in possession of
£150, which I had made by the sale of these tools to our own
hands. My wife kept my books, and this little business
necessitated the hiring of another room. But in other respects
this great increase of income did not induce us to enlarge our
expenses.
“‘A foreman lost his hand through an accident, and was
incapacitated for work; I made him my traveller, to call at other
workshops and sell tools to workmen.
“‘The firms at Birmingham and Sheffield had confidence in me.
I obtained credit more largely. I engaged a warehouse and a
clerk. At the end of my fourth year of marriage I was in
possession of £1,500 by the sale of these tools. I now thought
of a bold project, since I was a capitalist. I went to the head of
our firm, and I said, ‘My wife is carrying on a business which
seems likely to produce us £1,500 a-year clear profit; I have no
wish to leave your service, but I shall certainly do so, unless my
salary is raised to £250 a-year.’ This sum being agreed on, I
was contented for the present.
“‘We now kept two servants, and lived in two floors over our
warehouse, and had two children.
“‘I had been married about six years, and had three children,’
continued the old vegetarian, ‘when my warehouse and all my
furniture were totally destroyed by fire; fortunately they were
insured for about £5,000. As this was another crisis in my
career, I went to ‘the firm,’ and said, ‘I now know about as
much of my business as I can learn, and have a large
connection. I am offered credit if I will embark my capital—
£8,000—to open a business in opposition to yours. But I do not
want to do this if you will only give me a liberal salary. I want
£450 a-year, and I will carry on my business in tools in my
leisure hours as before.’ My terms were accepted; I was
assigned a separate office, and five clerks were at my
command. Every letter to me was now addressed Esquire;
formerly I was only Mr., at least to the firm. I got my family
arms engraved on a seal. I began to dress better. I kept three
maid-servants and a page, and lived in a house out of the town
—a road-side villa, with vegetable garden—bringing my
expenses within the £450 a-year; reserving the profits of my
business for the increase of my capital.
“‘The heads of the firm—two brothers—paid a visit to Ireland,
and, coming back, a terrific storm arose; they were washed off
the deck of the steamer and drowned, leaving in the firm only
the junior, the son of the elder brother, a young man of twenty
years of age. As his capacity was moderate, and his habits not
very regular, the trustees of the two deceased partners, of their
own accord, proposed that I should receive £750 per annum,
take the entire charge of the business, and stay an hour longer
than hitherto. But after six months, finding that I lost rather
than gained by the arrangement, as it encroached on the time I
had hitherto devoted to my private business, I plainly told the
trustees that I must be taken into partnership, or I would
abandon the concern and establish a rival business, which might
very seriously damage theirs. They proposed that I should be
partner for life, with £1,500 a-year as a first charge on the
profits of the business, but should have no right to leave any
part of it to my family, but should have two-thirds of the profits
as surviving partner in case of the death of the present head of
the firm without children. A deed was executed to embrace
these provisions, and I bound myself not to enter into any other
business which would aim to rival that of the firm. On this I
took a superior house, kept a horse and open carriage, two
gardeners, and otherwise lived at the rate of about £1,200 a-
year. My wife now retired entirely from business, which she had
seen after for about the half of three days in the week.
“‘About four years after this, to my sorrow, but at the same time
pecuniary advantage, the young man, my senior partner, died,
after a few days’ illness, from pleurisy, brought on by bathing.
His constitution was mainly built up on beer, beef, and tobacco.
I, a vegetarian, was never ill after bathing. This young man
was a martyr to the abuse of stimulants, who his foolish doctor
encouraged in their use. I have made my will, and none of my
children shall inherit a penny if they are not at the time of my
death vegetarians and total abstainers.
“‘We had been so absorbed in business since we were married,
that we had not for ten years taken a sea-side holiday; so in the
summer of 1846 we determined on a yacht voyage to last two
months, from May 1st till July 1st, round the coast of Ireland.
We hired a yacht of fourteen tons, four men, and a boy. My
wife and three eldest children and self went on board at
Liverpool, and we had a most enjoyable sail until we reached
the north-west coast of Ireland. We landed and explored many
rocky bays, and I collected many beautiful sea-birds’ eggs, and
shot many of the more uncommon of the sea-fowl, of which I
have at present a trophy of stuffed birds, nine feet long, in my
hall.
“‘Wishing to see the wildest part of the Irish coast, we sailed for
the Arran Isles, and, landing there, spent some days in
examining the curious stones for which these islands are
famous. Some fishermen there spoke of an isolated rock in the
sea, about a quarter of a mile long, very high, with a cavern in
it, as the haunt of myriads of sea-fowl, some of species found
nowhere else in the same abundance. With one of these
fishermen as our pilot we reached the spot. There was a heavy
swell round this island-rook, and we had great difficulty in
landing. We determined to anchor the yacht about half a mile
off, and proceed to the island in the boat with two of our men.
Thinking we might like to spend the day there, we took with us
two bags of rice, a basket of oranges, some loaves of bread,
some peas and beans for soup, and utensils and wood for
cooking. In order to afford a seat for the children, a tin chest
from the cabin, full of a variety of provisions, was put in the
boat’s stern, and we embarked, my wife expressing a regret
that the provisions had not been emptied out lest they should
make the boat too heavy. With great difficulty we managed to
run the boat into a chasm about twenty feet wide and one
hundred feet long in the cliff, which was high and very
precipitous. This chasm formed a miniature harbour, where the
boat could lie without any danger of being swamped, in deep
water close to the cliff, against which it was moored to a
projecting rock, as to an artificial quay. It was a considerable
scramble to get out of the boat and up the cliff; we just
managed it, and landing our provisions, one of our men made a
fire and acted as cook, while we wandered over the island, and
explored the cave. It was, in fact, a sort of twin cavern, two
branches having one entrance; that on the right-hand side was
about 150 feet deep, and was not tenanted, as it had no exit;
that on the left hand was a tunnel of even greater length, and
about forty feet high; it was the nesting-place of many sea-
birds; cormorants, puffins, guillemots, razorbills, several species
of seagulls, the arctic tern and gannet very abundant, and a few
pairs of the shearwater; of some sort we took a good many
eggs. We packed baskets with at least 100 dozen. I did not
shoot, as I did not like disturbing the birds, they were so tame,
being but little accustomed to the visits of man. There were
some goats on the island, which we conjectured had swum
ashore from a shipwrecked vessel.
“‘This plateau, which was the highest part of the island, was
reached by a path ascending about 200 feet. It was a beautiful
emerald meadow, bounded by almost precipitous cliffs, which
my eldest boy and I climbed up, but my wife declined the
ascent. At about five we sat down to our dinner of pea-soup,
boiled cabbage, bread, haricot beans, batter-pudding, and fruit.
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