CHAPTER XXXIII
DOWN "THE COAST"
The moon was gibbous in its approach to the full when the boat leftVicksburg. So all the way to their journey's end the boys had moonlightof evenings except when fog obscured it briefly, and that was not often.
As they floated down the river, with subtropical scenery on either hand,with palms and live-oaks and other perennial trees giving greenery ofthe greenest possible kind at a season of the year when at their homenot a leaf remained alive and all the trees were gaunt skeletons, theboys lived in something like a dream. And at night the moonlight,immeasurably more brilliant than any they had ever seen, additionallystimulated their imaginations and captivated their fancy.
"That is Baton Rouge," said Ed, as they came within sight of a city onthe left side of the river. "It means 'red stick.'"
"Why in the world did anybody ever name a town 'red stick'?" asked Irv.
"Why, because when Tecumseh came down this way to persuade all theIndians to join in a war upon the whites, as I told you up in New MadridBend, he offered red sticks to the warriors. All that accepted them werethereby pledged to join in the war. It was here that the first redsticks were distributed, and so this spot was called 'Baton Rouge.'"
"But why didn't they call it 'Red Sticks' and have done with it?" askedWill. "Why did they translate it into French?"
"The Indians didn't know English," answered Ed. "The French firstexplored the Mississippi, and they not only gave French names toeverything, but they taught a rude sort of French to the Indians. Thereis a town on the upper Mississippi called 'Prairie du Chien.' That means'the prairie of the dog.' Then there is 'Marquette' in Wisconsin, namedafter a great French missionary and explorer. And there is Dubuque, andthere are half a dozen other places with old French names. In Arkansasthere is a river called the 'St. Francois.' And the name Arkansas itselfwas originally a French effort to spell the Indian word 'Arkansaw.' Bythe way, the Legislature of that state has passed a law declaring thatthe proper pronunciation of the state's name is 'Arkansaw.' It is saidthat when James K. Polk, afterward President, was speaker of the Houseof Representatives, there were two congressmen there from Arkansas. Oneof them always pronounced his state's name 'Arkansas,' as if it wereEnglish, and with the accent on the second syllable, while the otheralways called it 'Arkansaw.' Polk was so excessively polite that wheneither of the two arose to speak, he recognized him as 'the gentlemanfrom Arkansas' or as 'the gentleman from Arkansaw,' accordingly as thegentleman recognized was in the habit of pronouncing the word."
"That's interesting," said Phil. "And I suppose the same thing is trueabout the 'Tensaw' country in Alabama. I see that it is spelled on mostmaps 'Tensas,' but on some it is spelled 'Tensaw,' and I suppose that isthe right pronunciation."
"It is," said Ed. "And then there is the Ouachita River. Its name ispronounced 'Washitaw,' but spelled in the French way. I once heard of aman who stayed in New Orleans for six weeks, looking every day forthe advertisement of some steamboat going up that river. He sawannouncements of boats for the Ouachita River, of course, but none forthe 'Washitaw.' Finally, somebody enlightened him. You see these Frenchnames were bestowed when French was the only language of this region,and they have survived."
The boys were studying the map by the almost superfluous light of alantern. Presently one of them said:--
"A little way down the river, on the western bank, is a place calledPlaquemine. That also is French, I suppose?"
"Certainly," answered Ed, "and it is a region with an interestinghistory. It was there that the Acadians went when they were driven outof their home in British America. Longfellow tells all about it in thepoem 'Evangeline.' I'll read some of it," he added, rising to go belowfor the book.
"No, don't," pleaded Irv. "That poem gives me 'that tired feeling.' Itsstory is beautiful. Its sentiment is all that could be desired. But itsmetre makes me feel as if I were stumbling over stones in the dark."
"I'll bet your favorite wager, a brass button, Irv, that you can't quotea single line of the poem you are so ready to criticise," said WillMoreraud, who was Longfellow mad, as his comrades said.
"Well, I'll take that bet," said Irv. "And I'll give you odds. I'll betseven brass buttons to your one that I can, off hand, repeat the worstand clumsiest four lines in the whole poem."
"Go ahead," said Will. "I'll buy a glittering brass button in NewOrleans, 'scalloped all the way round and halfway back,' as the boy saidof his ginger cakes, and pay the bet if I lose."
"All right," said Irv. "Here goes:--
'Every house was an inn, where all were welcomed and feasted; For with this simple people, who lived like brothers together, All things were held in common, and what one had was another's. Yet under Benedict's roof hospitality seemed more abundant.'"
"It really doesn't sound like poetry," said Phil. "But then, I'm nojudge. All the same, Irv wins the bet, and I'll exercise my authority ascommander of this craft and company to compel you, Will, to buy anddeliver that brass button."
"But how do you know that those four lines are the worst in the poem?"asked Will.
"Because there simply couldn't be worse ones," said Phil, "and unlessyou produce some others equally bad, I shall hold these to be theworst."
"Now," said Ed, "you fellows are very free with your criticisms. Butperhaps you don't know as much as you might. Longfellow undertook towrite in hexameters. We all know what hexameters are, because we haveall read some Latin poetry. But there is this difficulty: a hexameterline must end in a spondee--or a foot of two long or equally accentedsyllables. Now there is only here and there a word in the whole Englishlanguage that is a spondee. The only spondees available in English aremade up of two long, or two equally accented monosyllables. That is whythe metre of Evangeline is so hard to read with ease, or at any rate itis one of the reasons. Longfellow uses trochees--that is to say, feetcomposed of one long and one short syllable, instead. In one case heuses the word 'baptism' as a spondee, but in fact it is a dactyl,consisting of one long and two short syllables. Edgar Allan Poe pointedthat out."
"Why did he write in that metre, then," asked Will, "if it is impossiblein English?"
"Because he was a Greek and Latin scholar, and was so enamored of thehexameter verse that he tried to reproduce it in English. He didn'taccomplish the purpose, but he wrote some mighty good things in tryingto do it."
"But tell us, Ed," said Constant, "why did Evangeline's people come allthe way down here?"
"They were French, and they naturally sought for a country where theFrench constituted the greater part of the population. This wasn'tEnglish territory then. By the way, that reminds me of a good Vevaystory. When I was a very little boy, I used to go occasionally to pay myrespects to the oldest lady in town--'Grandmother Grisard,' as we allreverently called her. She was a lovely old lady, and she once told mehow she came to Vevay. She set out from Switzerland very early in thiscentury, being then a young girl, to come to this French-settled RedRiver country, where her people had friends. But there are two RedRivers in America, this one and the Red River of the North, which runsfrom Minnesota northward into Manitoba. Europeans were rather weak onAmerican geography in those days, so instead of bringing this young girlto the Red River of Louisiana, the transportation people took her to theRed River of the North. That region was then entirely wild. Indians andCanadian half-breeds were practically its only inhabitants, and so theyoung Swiss girl was in the greatest peril.
"She learned, after a while, that some Swiss people had settled atVevay, in what was then the wild, uninhabited Northwest Territory. Soshe set out to find Vevay, and to find people that could talk her ownmother tongue. It was an awful journey across the wild, savage-hauntedprairie region that now constitutes Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, andIndiana, but she made it. It required months of time. It involvedterrible hardships and fearful dangers from the Indians. But after thelong struggle the young Swiss girl reached Vevay and was again amongpeople of her own race, who spoke her own langua
ge. She soon aftermarried the most prosperous man in the village, Mr. Grisard, and, as youall know, her sons and her grandsons have ever since been men of mark inthe town."[3]
[3] This story is true in every particular.--_Author._
"Good for you, Ed!" said Will Moreraud. "We fellows of Swiss descentthank you. We are all more or less akin to Grandmother Grisard, aftertwo or three generations of intermarriages, and now that we know herstory we shall cherish it as a family legend of our own. In fact, Isuspect that our Swiss forefathers and foremothers made a pretty goodplace out of Vevay before the Virginians and Yankees and Scotch-Irishfrom whom you fellows sprang ever thought of settling there."
"Of course they did," said Ed; "that's why our people settled there.The Swiss settlers must have been people of the highest character, ortheir descendants wouldn't be the foremost citizens of the town, as theyare to-day. It is a curious fact, by the way, that when they settledat Vevay they tried to do precisely what they and their ancestors hadalways done in their own country,--they planted vineyards, and setout to make wine. My father, before he died, told me that in hisboyhood four-fifths of the lands cultivated by the Swiss were plantedin vineyards. Henry Clay was greatly interested in their work, andtried hard to introduce Vevay wine in Washington, and to secure tariffprotection for it."
"What became of the vineyards?" asked Constant.
"Why, the temperance wave destroyed them. It came to be thought wrong,and even disreputable, to make or sell wine, or anything else that hadalcohol in it. So, little by little, the Swiss people, who were always,above all things, reputable and moral, dug up their vineyards, andplanted corn instead."
"Yes," said Will Moreraud. "I remember hearing a rather pretty story onthat subject concerning a kinsman of my own. He had his dear oldgrandmother--or great-grandmother, I forget which--as an inmate of hishouse, and when the movement to convert the vineyards into cornfieldswas at its height, the old lady strenuously objected. She said that shehad been born in a vineyard, and had all her life looked out uponvineyards through every window. My kinsman was very tender of hisgrandmother's feelings. But at the same time he was resolved to changehis vineyards into cornfields. He knew that the old lady could neverleave the house, owing to her great age and infirmities. So he went toevery window in every story of the house and studied the landscape.Having ascertained precisely how far it was possible for the old lady tosee from the windows of the house, he ordered all the vineyards beyondher line of vision destroyed, and all within it preserved."
"Beautiful!" cried Phil. "There ought to be more men like that one, ifonly to make the dear old grandmothers happy in the evening of theirlives."
"Perhaps there are more of them than you think," said Constant. "It's myimpression that men generally are pretty good fellows, if you reallyfind out about them."
"Of course they are," said Ed. "Does it occur to you that when wefellows undertook this flatboat enterprise, every man in Vevay stoodgenerously ready to help? It is always so. Men are usually kindly andgenerous if they have a chance to be. As for women--"
"God bless them!" cried Irv, rising to his six feet of height.
"_So-say-we-all-of-us!_" chanted Phil, to the familiar tune, while therest joined in.