Mardi: and A Voyage Thither Volume II Part 40

Rivers! Rivers! cease your going!

Sand-bars! rise, and stay the tide!

'Till we've gained the golden flowing; And in the golden haven ride!

"Quick, quick, my lord," cried Yoomy, "let us follow them; and from the golden waters where she lies, our Yillah may emerge."

"No, no," said Babbalanja,--"no Yillah there!--from yonder promised- land, fewer seekers will return, than go. Under a gilded guise, happiness is still their instinctive aim. But vain, Yoomy, to s.n.a.t.c.h at Happiness. Of that we may not pluck and eat. It is the fruit of our own toilsome planting; slow it grows, nourished by many teats, and all our earnest tendings. Yet ere it ripen, frosts may nip;--and then, we plant again; and yet again. Deep, Yoomy, deep, true treasure lies; deeper than all Mardi's gold, rooted to Mardi's axis. But unlike gold, it lurks in every soil,--all Mardi over. With golden pills and potions is sickness warded off?--the shrunken veins of age, dilated with new wine of youth? Will gold the heart-ache cure? turn toward us hearts estranged? will gold, on solid centers empires fix? 'Tis toil world-wasted to toil in mines. Were all the isles gold globes, set in a quicksilver sea, all Mardi were then a desert. Gold is the only poverty; of all glittering ills the direst. And that man might not impoverish himself thereby, Oro hath hidden it, with all other banes,--saltpeter and explosives, deep in mountain bowels, and river- beds. But man still will mine for it; and mining, dig his doom.-- Yoomy, Yoomy!--she we seek, lurks not in the Golden Hills!"

"Lo, a vision!" cried Yoomy, his hands wildly pa.s.sed across his eyes.

"A vast and silent bay, belted by silent villages:--gaunt dogs howling over gra.s.sy thresholds at stark corpses of old age and infancy; gray hairs mingling with sweet flaxen curls; fields, with turned furrows, choked with briers; arbor-floors strown over with hatchet-helves, rotting in the iron; a thousand paths, marked with foot-prints, all inland leading, none villageward; and strown with traces, as of a flying host. On: over forest--hill, and dale--and lo! the golden region! After the glittering spoil, by strange river-margins, and beneath impending cliffs, thousands delve in quicksands; and, sudden, sink in graves of their own making: with gold dust mingling their own ashes. Still deeper, in more solid ground, other thousands slave; and pile their earth so high, they gasp for air, and die; their comrades mounting on them, and delving still, and dying--grave pile on grave!

Here, one haggard hunter murders another in his pit; and murdering, himself is murdered by a third. Shrieks and groans! cries and curses!

It seems a golden h.e.l.l! With many camels, a sleek stranger comes-- pauses before the s.h.i.+ning heaps, and shows _his_ treasures: yams and bread-fruit. 'Give, give,' the famished hunters cry--, 'a thousand shekels for a yam!--a prince's ransom for a meal!--Oh, stranger! on our knees we wors.h.i.+p thee:--take, take our gold; but let us live!' Yams are thrown them and they fight. Then he who toiled not, dug not, slaved not, straight loads his caravans with gold; regains the beach, and swift embarks for home. 'Home! home!' the hunters cry, with bursting eyes. 'With this bright gold, could we but join our waiting wives, who wring their hands on distant sh.o.r.es, all then were well. But we can not fly; our prows lie rotting on the beach. Ah!

home! thou only happiness!--better thy silver earnings than all these golden findings. Oh, bitter end to all our hopes--we die in golden graves."

CHAPTER LXIII They Seek Through The Isles Of Palms; And Pa.s.s The Isles Of Myrrh

Now, our prows we turned due west, across the blue lagoon.

Soon, no land appeared. Far as the eye could sweep, one azure plain; all over flaked with foamy fleeces:--a boundless flock upon a boundless mead!

Again, all changed. Like stars in mult.i.tude, bright islets multiplied around. Emerald-green, they dotted shapes fantastic: circles, arcs, and crescents;--atolls all, or coral carcanets, begemmed and flas.h.i.+ng in the sun.

By these we glided, group after group; and through the foliage, spied sweet forms of maidens, like Eves in Edens ere the Fall, or Proserpines in Ennas. Artless airs came from the sh.o.r.e; and from the censer-swinging roses, a bloom, as if from Hebe's cheek.

"Here, at last, we find sweet Yillah!" murmured Yoomy. "Here must she lurk in innocence! Quick! Let us land and search."

"If here," said Babbalanja, "Yillah will not stay our coming, but fly before us through the groves. Wherever a canoe is beached, see you not the palm-trees pine? Not so, where never keel yet smote the strand. In mercy, let us fly from hence. I know not why, but our breath here, must prove a blight."

These regions pa.s.sed, we came to savage islands, where the glittering coral seemed bones imbedded, bleaching in the sun. Savage men stood naked on the strand, and brandished uncouth clubs, and gnashed their teeth like boars.

The full red moon was rising; and, in long review there pa.s.sed before it, phantom shapes of victims, led bound to altars through the groves.

Death-rattles filled the air. But a cloud descended, and all was gloom.

Again blank water spread before us; and after many days, there came a gentle breeze, fraught with all spicy breathings; cinnamon aromas; and in the rose-flushed evening air, like glow worms, glowed the islets, where this incense burned.

"Sweet isles of myrh! oh crimson groves," cried Yoomy. "Woe, woe's your fate! your brightness and your bloom, like musky fire-flies, double-lure to death! On ye, the nations prey like bears that gorge themselves with honey."

Swan-like, our prows sailed in among these isles; and oft we landed; but in vain; and leaving them, we still pursued the setting sun.

CHAPTER LXIV Concentric, Inward, With Mardi's Reef, They Leave Their Wake Around The World

West, West! West, West! Whitherward point Hope and prophet-fingers; whitherward, at sun-set, kneel all wors.h.i.+pers of fire; whitherward in mid-ocean, the great whales turn to die; whitherward face all the Moslem dead in Persia; whitherward lie Heaven and h.e.l.l!--West, West!

Whitherward mankind and empires--flocks, caravans, armies, navies; worlds, suns, and stars all wend!--West, West!--Oh boundless boundary!

Eternal goal! Whitherward rush, in thousand worlds, ten thousand thousand keels! Beacon, by which the universe is steered!--Like the north-star, attracting all needles! Unattainable forever; but forever leading to great things this side thyself!--Hive of all sunsets!-- Gabriel's pinions may not overtake thee!

Over balmy waves, still westward sailing! From dawn till eve, the bright, bright days sped on, chased by the gloomy nights; and, in glory dying, lent their l.u.s.ter to the starry skies. So, long the radiant dolphins fly before the sable sharks but seized, and torn in flames--die, burning:--their last splendor left, in sparkling scales that float along the sea.

Cymbals, drums and psalteries! the air beats like a pulse with music!

--High land! high land! and moving lights, and painted lanterns!--What grand sh.o.r.e is this?

"Reverence we render thee, Old Orienda!" cried Media, with bared brow, "Original of all empires and emperors!--a crowned king salutes thee!"

"Mardi's father-land!" cried Mohi, "grandsire of the nations,--hail!"

"All hail!" cried Yoomy. "Kings and sages. .h.i.ther coming, should come like palmers,--scrip and staff! Oh Orienda! thou wert our East, where first dawned song and science, with Mardi's primal mornings! But now, how changed! the dawn of light become a darkness, which we kindle with the gleam of spears! On the world's ancestral hearth, we spill our brothers' blood!"

"Herein," said Babbalanja, "have many distant tribes proved parricidal. In times gone by, Luzianna hither sent her prom; Franko, her scores of captains; and the d.y.k.emen, their peddler hosts, with yard-stick spears! But thou, oh Bello! lord of the empire lineage!

Noah of the moderns. Sire of the long line of nations yet in germ!-- thou, Bello, and thy locust armies, are the present curse of Orienda.

Down ancient streams, from holy plains, in rafts thy murdered float!

The pestilence that thins thy armies here, is bred of corpses, made by thee. Maramma's priests, thy pious heralds, loud proclaim that of all pagans, Orienda's most resist the truth!--ay! vain all pious voices, that speak from clouds of war! The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love."

"Thou, Bello!" cried Yoomy, "would'st wrest the crook from Alma's hand, and place in it a spear. But vain to make a conqueror of him, who put off the purple when he came to Mardi; and declining gilded miters, entered the nations meekly on an a.s.s."

"Oh curse of commerce!" cried Babbalanja, "that it barters souls for gold. Bello! with opium, thou wouldst drug this land, and murder it in sleep!--And what boot thy conquests here? Seed sown by spears but seldom springs; and harvests reaped thereby, are poisoned by the sickle's edge."

Yet on, and on we coasted; counting not the days.

"Oh, folds and flocks of nations! dusky tribes innumerable!" cried Yoomy, "camped on plains and steppes; on thousand mountains, wors.h.i.+ping the stars; in thousand valleys, offering up first-fruits, till all the forests seem in flames;--where, in fire, the widow's spirit mounts to meet her lord!--Oh, Orienda, in thee 'tis vain to seek our Yillah!"

"How dark as death the night!" said Mohi, shaking the dew from his braids, "the Heavens blaze not here with stars, as over Dominora's land, and broad Vivenza."

One only constellation was beheld; but every star was brilliant as the one, that promises the morning. That constellation was the Crux- Australis,--the badge, and type of Alma.

And now, southwest we steered, till another island vast, was reached; --Hamora! far trending toward the Antarctic Pole.

Coasting on by barbarous beaches, where painted men, with spears, charged on all attempts to land, at length we rounded a mighty bluff, lit by a beacon; and heard a bugle call:--Bello's! hurrying to their quarters, the World-End's garrison.

Here, the sea rolled high, in mountain surges: mid which, we toiled and strained, as if ascending cliffs of Caucasus.

But not long thus. As when from howling Rhoetian heights, the traveler spies green Lombardy below, and downward rushes toward that pleasant plain; so, sloping from long rolling swells, at last we launched upon the calm lagoon.

But as we northward sailed, once more the storm-trump blew, and charger-like, the seas ran mustering to the call; and in battalions crouched before a towering rock, far distant from the main. No moon, eclipsed in Egypt's skies, looked half so lone. But from out that darkness, on the loftiest peak, Bello's standard waved.

"Oh rifled tomb!" cried Babbalanja. "Wherein lay the Mars and Moloch of our times, whose constellated crown, was gemmed with diadems. Thou G.o.d of war! who didst seem the devouring Beast of the Apocalypse; casting so vast a shadow over Mardi, that yet it lingers in old Franko's vale; where still they start at thy tremendous ghost; and, late, have hailed a phantom, King! Almighty hero-spell! that after the lapse of half a century, can so bewitch all hearts! But one drop of hero-blood will deify a fool.

"Franko! thou wouldst be free; yet thy free homage is to the buried ashes of a King; thy first choice, the exaltation of his race. In furious fires, thou burn'st Ludwig's throne; and over thy new-made chieftain's portal, in golden letters print'st--'The Palace of our Lord!' In thy New Dispensation, thou cleavest to the exploded Law. And on Freedom's altar--ah, I fear--still, may slay thy hecatombs. But Freedom turns away; she is sick with burnt blood of offerings. Other rituals she loves; and like Oro, unseen herself, would be wors.h.i.+ped only by invisibles. Of long drawn cavalcades, pompous processions, frenzied banners, mystic music, marching nations, she will none. Oh, may thy peaceful Future, Franko, sanctify thy b.l.o.o.d.y Past. Let not history say; 'To her old G.o.ds, she turned again.'"

This rocky islet pa.s.sed, the sea went down; once more we neared Hamora's western sh.o.r.e. In the deep darkness, here and there, its margin was lit up by foam-white, breaking billows rolled over from Vivenza's strand, and down from northward Dominora; marking places where light was breaking in, upon the interior's jungle-gloom.

In heavy sighs, the night-winds from sh.o.r.e came over us.

"Ah, vain to seek sweet Yillah here," cried Yoomy.--"Poor land! curst of man, not Oro! how thou faintest for thy children, torn from thy soil, to till a stranger's. Vivenza! did these winds not spend their plaints, ere reaching thee, thy every vale would echo them. Oh, tribe of Hamo! thy cup of woe so brims, that soon it must overflow upon the land which holds ye thralls. No misery born of crime, but spreads and poisons wide. Suffering hunteth sin, as the gaunt hound the hare, and tears it in the greenest brakes."

Still on we sailed: and after many tranquil days and nights, a storm came down, and burst its thousand bombs. The lightnings forked and flashed; the waters boiled; our three prows lifted themselves in supplication; but the billows smote them as they reared.