were

KATE'S PASSAGE OVER THE ANDES.

tervals; and then I think with indulgence period. According to the custom, the of the many circumstances that plead for monks carried Kate, insensible with anguish this poor girl. The Spanish armies of that of mind, to the sanctuary of their chapel. day inherited, from the days of Cortez and There for some days they detained her; Pizarro, shining remembrances of martial but then, having furnished her with a horse prowess, and the very worst of ethics. To and some provisions, they turned her think little of bloodshed, to quarrel, to adrift. Which way should the unhappy fight, to gamble, to plunder, belonged to fugitive turn? In blindness of heart, she the very atmosphere of a camp, to its indo- turned towards the sea. It was the sea lence, to its ancient traditions. In your that had brought her to Peru; it was the own defence, you were obliged to do such sea that would perhaps carry her away. things. Besides all these grounds of evil, It was the sea that had first showed her this the Spanish army had just then an extra land and its golden hopes; it was the sea demoralization from a war with savages- that ought to hide from her its fearful refaithless and bloody. Do not think, I be- membrances. The sea it was that had seech you, too much, reader, of killing a twice spared her life in extremities; the man. That word "kill" is sprinkled over sea it was that might now, if it chose, take every page of Kate's own autobiography. back the bauble that it had spared in vain. It ought not to be read by the light of these days. Yet, how if a man that she killed ? Hush! It was sad; but it is better hurried over in a few words. Three days our poor heroine followed Years after this period, a young officer one the coast. Her horse was then almost unaday dining with Kate, entreated her to ble to move; and, on his account, she turned become his second in a duel. Such things inland to a thicket for grass and shelter. were every-day affairs. However, Kate had As she drew near to it, a voice challengedreasons for declining the service, and did "Who goes there?" Kate answered, But the officer, as he was sullenly de-" Spain." "What people ?” “A friend.” parting, said that, if he were killed (as he It was two soldiers, deserters, and almost thought he should be), his death would lie starving. Kate shared her provisions with at Kate's door. I do not take his view of these men: and, on hearing their plan, the case, and am not moved by his rhetoric which was to go over the Cordilleras, she or his logic. Kate was, and relented. agreed to join the party. Their object was The duel was fixed for eleven at night, un- the wild one of seeking the river Dorado, der the walls of a monastery. Unhappily whose waters rolled along golden sands, and the night proved unusually dark, so that whose pebbles were emeralds. Hers was the two principals had to tie white hand- to throw herself upon a line the least liable kerchiefs round their elbows in order to to pursuit, and the readiest for a new chapdescry each other. In the confusion they ter of life in which oblivion might be found wounded each other mortally. Upon that, for the past. After a few days of incesaccording to a usage not peculiar to Span- sant climbing and fatigue, they found themiards, but extending (as doubtless the read-selves in the regions of perpetual snow. er knows) for a century longer to our own countrymen, the two seconds were obliged in honor to do something towards avenging their principals. Kate had her usual fatal luck. Her sword passed sheer through the body of her opponent: this unknown opponent falling dead, had just breath left to cry out, "Ah, villain, you have killed me," in a voice of horrific reproach; and the voice was the voice of her brother.

So.

The monks of the monastery, under whose shadows this murderous duel had taken place, roused by the clashing of swords and the angry shouts of combatants, issued out with torches to find one only of the four officers surviving. Every convent and altar had a right of asylum for a short

Summer would come as vainly to this kingdom of frost as to the grave of her brother. No fire, but the fire of human blood in youthful veins, could ever be kept burning in these aerial solitudes. Fuel was rarely to be found, and kindling a secret hardly known except to Indians. However, our Kate can do everything, and she's the girl, if ever girl did such a thing, or ever did not such a thing, that I back at any odds for crossing the Cordilleras. I would bet you something now, reader, if I thought you would deposit your stakes by return of post (as they play at chess through the post office), that Kate does the trick, that she gets down to the other side: that the soldiers do not: and that the horse, if

preserved at all, is preserved in a way that | mounted to look around her, and she saw will leave him very little to boast of. -oh, rapture at such an hour!-a man The party had gathered wild berries and sitting on a shelf of rock with a gun by his esculent roots at the foot of the mountains, side. She shouted with joy to her comand the horse was of very great use in car-rades, and ran down to communicate the rying them. But this larder was soon joyful news. Here was a sportsman, watchemptied. There was nothing then to car-ing, perhaps, for an eagle; and now they ry; so that the horse's value, as a beast of would have relief. One man's cheek kinburden, fell cent. per cent. In fact, very dled with the hectic of sudden joy, and he soon he could not carry himself, and it be- rose eagerly to march. The other was fast came easy to calculate when he would reach sinking under the fatal sleep that frost sends the bottom on the wrong side of the Cordil- before herself as her merciful minister of leras. He took three steps back for one death; but hearing in his dream the tidings upwards. A council of war being held, of relief, and assisted by his friends, he the small army resolved to slaughter their also staggeringly arose. It could not be horse. He, though a member of the ex-three minutes' walk, Kate thought, to the pedition, had no vote, and if he had the station of the sportsman. That thought votes would have stood three to one-ma-supported them all. Under Kate's guidjority, two against him. He was cut into ance, who had taken a sailor's glance at the quarters; which surprises me; for, unless bearings, they soon unthreaded the labyone quarter was considered his own share, rinth of rocks so far as to bring the man it reminds one too much of this amongst within view. He had not left his restingthe many facetia of English midshipmen, place; their steps on the soundless snow, who ask (on any one of their number look-naturally, he could not hear; and, as their ing sulky) "if it is his intention to marry road brought them upon him from the rear, and retire from the service upon a superannuation of £4 4s. 4 1-2d. a year, paid quarterly by way of bothering the purser." The purser can't do it with the help of farthings. And, as respects aliquot parts, four shares among three persons are as incommensurable as a guinea is against any attempt at giving change in half-crowns. However, this was all the preservation that the horse found. No saltpetre or sugar could be had but the frost was antiseptic. And the horse was preserved in as useful a sense as ever apricots were preserved or strawberries.

On a fire, painfully devised out of broom and withered leaves, a horse-steak was dressed; for drink, snow was allowed à discretion. This ought to have revived the party, and Kate, perhaps, it did. But the poor deserters were thinly clad, and they had not the boiling heart of Catalina. More and more they drooped. Kate did her best to cheer them. But the march was nearly at an end for them, and they were going in one half hour to receive their last billet. Yet, before this consummation, they have a strange spectacle to see; such as few places could show, but the upper chambers of the Cordilleras. They had reached a billowy scene of rocky masses, large and small, looking shockingly black on their perpendicular sides as they rose out of the vast snowy expanse. Upon the highest of these, that was accessible, Kate

still less could he see them. Kate hailed him; but so keenly was he absorbed in some speculation, or in the object of his watching, that he took no notice of them, not even moving his head. Kate began to think there would be another man to rouse from sleep. Coming close behind him she touched his shoulder and said, "My friend, are you sleeping?" Yes, he was sleeping; sleeping the sleep from which there is no awaking; and the slight touch of Kate having disturbed the equilibrium of the corpse, down it rolled on the snow; the frozen body rang like a hollow iron cylinder; the face uppermost and blue with mould, mouth open, teeth ghastly and bleaching in the frost, and a frightful grin upon the lips.

This dreadful spectacle finished the struggles of the weaker man, who sank and died at once. The other made an effort with so much spirit, that, in Kate's opinion, horror had acted upon him beneficially as a stimulant. But it was not really so. It was a spasm of morbid strength; a collapse succeeded; his blood began to freeze; he sat down in spite of Kate, and he also died without further struggle. Gone are the poor suffering deserters; stretched and bleaching upon the snow; and insulted discipline is avenged. Great kings have long arms; and sycophants are ever at hand for the errand of the potent. What had frost and snow to do with the quarrel? Yet they made

:

themselves sycophantic servants of the ner ?""* That craziness, as the third reader King of Spain; and they dogged his de- deciphers, rose out of a deeper soil than serters up to the summit of the Cordilleras, any bodily affection. It had its root in more surely than any Spanish bloodhound, penitential sorrow. Oh, bitter is the soror any Spanish tirailleur's bullet. row to a conscientious heart, when, too Now is our Kate standing alone on the late, it discovers the depth of a love that summit of the Andes, in solitude that is has been trampled under foot! This marishocking, for she is alone with her own af- ner had slain the creature that, on all the flicted conscience. Twice before she had earth, loved him best. In the darkness of stood in solitude as deep upon the wild- his cruel superstition he had done it, to wild waters of the Pacific; but her con- save his human brothers from a fancied inscience had been then untroubled. Now convenience; and yet, by that very act of is there nobody left that can help her cruelty, he had himself called destruction horse is dead-the soldiers are dead. upon their heads. The Nemesis that folThere is nobody that she can speak to lowed punished him through them-him, except God; and very soon you will find that wronged, through those that wrongfully that she does speak to him; for already on he sought to benefit. That spirit who these vast aerial deserts He has been whis-watches over the sanctities of love is a pering to her. The condition of Kate is strong angel-is a jealous angel; and this exactly that of Coleridge's "Ancient Mari- angel it was But possibly, reader, you may be amongst the many careless readers that have never fully understood what that condition was. Suffer me to enlighten you, else you ruin the story of the mariner; and by losing all its pathos, lose half the jewels of its beauty.

ner."

There are three readers of the "Ancient Mariner." The first is gross enough to fancy all the imagery of the mariner's visions delivered by the poet for actual facts of experience; which being impossible, the whole pulverises, for that reader, into a baseless fairy tale. The second reader is wiser than that; he knows that the imagery is not baseless; it is the imagery of febrile delirium; really seen, but not seen as an external reality. The mariner had caught the pestilential fever, which carried off all his mates; he only had survived the delirium had vanished; but the visions that had haunted the delirium remained. "Yes," says the third reader, "they remained; naturally they did, being scorched by fever into his brain; but how did they happen to remain on his belief as gospel truths? The delirium had vanished; why had not the painted scenery of the delirium vanished, except as visionary memorials of a sorrow that was cancelled? Why was it that craziness settled upon this mariner's brain, driving him, as if he were a Cain, or another Wandering Jew, to " pass like night-from land to land ;" and, at uncertain intervals, wrenching him until he made rehearsal of his errors, even at the hard price of "holding children from their play, and old men from the chimney cor

"That lov'd the bird, that lov'd the man,
That shot him with his bow."

He it was that followed the cruel archer
into silent and slumbering seas :—

"Nine fathom deep he had follow'd him
Through the realms of mist and snow."

This jealous angel it was that pursued the
man into noon-day darkness, and the vision
of dying oceans, into delirium, and finally
(when recovered from disease), into an un-
settled mind.

Such, also, had been the offence of Kate; such, also, was the punishment that now is dogging her steps. She, like the mariner, had slain the one sole creature that loved

her upon the whole wide earth; she, like the mariner, for this offence, had been hunted into frost and snow-very soon will be hunted into delirium; and from that (if she escapes with life) will be hunted into the trouble of a heart that cannot rest. her; there was the excuse of another darkness for the mariner. But, with all the excuses that earth, and the darkness of earth, can furnish, bitter it would be for you or me, reader, through every hour of life, waking or dreaming, to look back upon one fatal moment when we had pierced the heart that would have died for us. In this only the darkness had been merciful to Kate-that it had hidden for ever from her victim the hand that slew him. But now

There was the excuse of one darkness for

The beautiful words of Sir Philip Sydney, in his "Defence of Poesie,”

in such utter solitude, her thoughts ran through a Parisian opera-glass, gives it as back to their earliest interview. She re- his opinion-that, because Kate first remembered with anguish, how, on first touch- cords her prayer on this occasion, therefore, ing the shores of America, almost the very now first of all she prayed. I think not first word that met her ear had been from so. I love this Kate, blood-stained as she him, the brother whom she had killed, is; and I could not love a woman that about the "Pussy" of times long past; never bent her knee in thankfulness or in how the gallant young man had hung upon supplication. However, we have all a right her words, as in her native Basque she de- to our own little opinion; and it is not you, scribed her own mischievous little self, of "mon cher," you, Frenchman, that I am twelve years back; how his color went and angry with, but somebody else that stands came, whilst his loving memory of the little behind you. You, Frenchman, and your sister was revived by her own descriptive compatriots, I love sometimes for your festraits, giving back, as in a mirror, the fawn- tal gaiety of heart; and I quarrel only with like grace, the squirrel-like restlessness, your levity and that eternal worldliness that once had kindled his own delighted that freezes too fiercely-that absolutely laughter; how he would take no denial, blisters with its frost-like the upper air of but showed on the spot, that, simply to the Andes. You speak of Kate only as too have touched-to have kissed-to have readily you speak of all women; the inplayed with the little wild thing, that glo- stinct of a natural scepticism being to scoff rified, by her innocence, the gloom of St. at all hidden depths of truth. Else you Sebastian's cloisters, gave a right to his are civil enough to Kate; and "homyour hospitality; how, through him only, she mage" (such as it may happen to be) is had found a welcome in camps; how, always at the service of a woman on the through him, she had found the avenue to shortest notice. But behind you, I see a honor and distinction. And yet this bro- worse fellow; a gloomy fanatic; a religious ther, so loving and generous, it was that sycophant that seeks to propitiate his cirshe had dismissed from life. She paused; cle by bitterness against the offences that she turned round, as if looking back for his are most unlike his own. And against grave; she saw the dreadful wildernesses of him, I must say one word for Kate to the snow which already she had traversed. too hasty reader. This villain whom I Silent they were at this season, even as in mark for a shot if he does not get out of the panting heats of noon, the Zaarahs of the way, opens his fire on our Kate under the torrid zone are oftentimes silent. shelter of a lie. For there is a standing lie Dreadful was the silence; it was the near- in the very constitution of civil society, est thing to the silence of the grave. a necessity of error, misleading us as to Graves were at the foot of the Andes, that the proportions of crime. Mere necesshe knew too well; graves were at the sity obliges man to create many acts into summit of the Andes, that she saw too felonies, and to punish them as the heaviwell. And, as she gazed, a sudden thought est offences, which his better sense teaches flashed upon her, when her eyes settled him secretly to regard as perhaps among upon the corpses of the poor deserters the lightest. Those poor deserters, for incould she, like them, have been all this stance, were they necessarily without excuse? while unconsciously executing judgment They might have been oppressively used; upon herself? Running from a wrath that but in critical times of war, no matter for was doubtful, into the very jaws of a wrath the individual palliations, the deserter from that was inexorable? Flying in panic- his colors must be shot: there is no help and behold! there was no man that pur- for it: as in extremities of general famine, sued? For the first time in her life Kate we shoot the man (alas! we are obliged to trembled. Not for the first time, Kate shoot him) that is found robbing the comwept. Far less for the first time was it, mon stores in order to feed his own perishthat Kate bent her knee--that Kate clasping children, though the offence is hardly ed her hands-that Kate prayed. But it was the first time that she prayed as they pray, for whom no more hope is left but in

visible in the sight of God. Only blockheads adjust their scale of guilt to the scale of human punishments. Now, our wicked friend the fanatic, who calumniates Kate, abuses the advantage which, for such a purpose, he derives from the exaggerated social estimate of all violence. Personal