The Overland Monthly/Volume 9

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3939746The Overland Monthly — Volume 9

THE

Overland Monthly

DEVOTED TO

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY.

Volume IX.

SAN FRANCISCO:
JOHN H. CARMANY & COMPANY.
1872.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by

JOHN H. CARMANY,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

San Francisco:
Printed by John H. Carmany & Co.

THE

Overland Monthly

DEVOTED TO

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY.

Vol. 9. — OCTOBER, 1872. — No. 4.

ISLES OF THE AMAZONS.

PART II.

Forsake the city. Follow me To where the white caps of a sea Of mountains break and break again,

As bloivn in foam against a star

As breaks the fury of a main —

And there remains, as fixed, as far.

Forsake the people. What are they

That laugh, that live and love, by rule? Forsake the Saxon. What are these That shun the shadows of the trees : The Druid -forests ? ... Go thy way, We are not one. I will not please

You . . . Fare you well, O wiser fool !

But you who love me . . . Ye who love

TJie shaggy forests, fierce delights

Of sounding water -falls, of heights That hang like broken moons above, Believe and follow. We are one ; The wild man shall to us be tame :

The woods shall yield their mysteries ; The stars shall answer to a name, •

And be as birds above the trees.

In the days when my mother, the Earth, was young, And you all were not, nor the likeness of you,

She walked in her maidenly prime among The moonlit stars in the boundless blue.

Then the great sun lifted his shining shield, And he flashed his sword as the soldiers do,

And he moved like a king full over the field,

And he looked, and he loved her brave and true.

The darkness of night had come upon us while busy in the swamp-jungles, and prolonged our work until a late hour, before the line was made whole again, and the details and reliefs properly arranged and provided for. And it was still later when, at last, we got back to the lines and could rest, watching the belated moon rising over the water. And still the angry crash of musketry came swelling up from the fort; and the constant flashing glimmered like heat-lightning.

Presently came an order to collect shovels to be sent to the fort; and, as we busied ourselves about it, there was a new sound from below—a sound like a distant cheer—and again the same sound from the water, as if the sailors on the fleet were cheering:. The musketry, too, had lulled—was now, at last, silent; and the heat-lightning glimmered no more. What was it? At once, the southern sky seemed full of rockets and many colored lights; and, as the showers of red, white, and blue stars fell into the sea, we knew that the navy was proclaiming Victory!

Victory!—and we proclaimed it, too, bursting into full-throated sympathy, in the contagion of rejoicing, till sea and shore, and the tall, solemn pines, echoed back wilder and heartier cheering than had ever before disturbed a midnight at Federal Point. Our men wanted to leap their breastworks and march on Wilmington at once, midnight as it was, in the fullness of their joy and soldierly ardor.

And so fell Fort Fisher! and with it many an English blockade -running house, and the ephemeral prosperity of Nassau. Our navy gained a fleet of ships that had been tossing perilously off the dangerous mouths of the Cape Fear for four years; and the South lost her supply of foreign arms and clothing and medicines, her active foreign sympathy and her export trade in cotton, and Wilmington—her only mart — was closed at last.

A ROMANCE OF GOPHERTON.

IN 1863 Gopherton was outgrowing its period of placer-mining, roughs, vigilantes, gamblers, and adventurers of every sort. It was, in fact, fast gaining a reputation for solid business prosperity, good -living, piety, and handsome women. It had so far progressed in nineteenth - century civilization that it boasted three churches with paid ministers—one extremely "fashionable"—and dispensed entirely with the ill-compensated labors of home missionaries. Instead of those unseemly revels which tradition imputed to its earlier days, ladies' lunch-parties, church-festivals, and Sunday- schqpl picnics were among its fashionable recreations.

The Overland Monthly/Volume 9

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