etc., etc., howsoever ‘unfairly followed’
will be likely to ’worm him from his folly’—if
being dead and a ghost is ‘folly.’
Your closing remark is as unkind as it was uncalled
for; and if report says true you might have
applied it to yourself, sir, with more point
and less impropriety.
Very
Truly Yours, simon Erickson.
“In the course of a few days, Mr. Greely did
what would have saved a world of trouble, and much
mental and bodily suffering and misunderstanding,
if he had done it sooner. To wit, he sent an
intelligible rescript or translation of his original
note, made in a plain hand by his clerk. Then
the mystery cleared, and I saw that his heart had
been right, all the time. I will recite the note
in its clarified form:
[Translation.]
’Potatoes do sometimes make vines; turnips
remain passive: cause
unnecessary to state. Inform the poor
widow her lad’s efforts will
be vain. But diet, bathing, etc.
etc., followed uniformly, will
wean him from his folly—so fear not.
Yours,
Horace Greeley.’
“But alas, it was too late, gentlemen—too
late. The criminal delay had done its work—young
Beazely was no more. His spirit had taken its
flight to a land where all anxieties shall be charmed
away, all desires gratified, all ambitions realized.
Poor lad, they laid him to his rest with a turnip
in each hand.”
So ended Erickson, and lapsed again into nodding,
mumbling, and abstraction. The company broke
up, and left him so.... But they did not say
what drove him crazy. In the momentary confusion,
I forgot to ask.
At four o’clock in the afternoon we were winding
down a mountain of dreary and desolate lava to the
sea, and closing our pleasant land journey.
This lava is the accumulation of ages; one torrent
of fire after another has rolled down here in old
times, and built up the island structure higher and
higher. Underneath, it is honey-combed with caves;
it would be of no use to dig wells in such a place;
they would not hold water—you would not
find any for them to hold, for that matter. Consequently,
the planters depend upon cisterns.
The last lava flow occurred here so long ago that
there are none now living who witnessed it.
In one place it enclosed and burned down a grove of
cocoa-nut trees, and the holes in the lava where the
trunks stood are still visible; their sides retain
the impression of the bark; the trees fell upon the
burning river, and becoming partly submerged, left
in it the perfect counterpart of every knot and branch
and leaf, and even nut, for curiosity seekers of a
long distant day to gaze upon and wonder at.
There were doubtless plenty of Kanaka sentinels on
guard hereabouts at that time, but they did not leave
casts of their figures in the lava as the Roman sentinels
at Herculaneum and Pompeii did. It is a pity
it is so, because such things are so interesting;
but so it is. They probably went away.
They went away early, perhaps. However, they
had their merits; the Romans exhibited the higher
pluck, but the Kanakas showed the sounder judgment.
