Samantha at the World's Fair by Marietta Holley (ebook and pdf reader txt) đź“•
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- Author: Marietta Holley
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It had been gin to 'em, and gin well, too.
Wall, Josiah and I didn't stay very much longer. I'd have been glad to seen the Princess sent out from Spain to our doin's, and I know she will feel it, not seein' of me.
She wuzn't there, but I thought of her as I wended my way out, as I looked over the grandeur of the seen that her female ancestor had rendered possible.
Thinkses I, she must have different feelin's from what her folks did in fourteen hundred.
Then how loath they wuz to even listen to Columbuses pathetic appeals and prayers! But they did at last touch the heart of a woman. That woman believed him, while the rest of Spain sneered at him. Had she lived, Columbus wouldn't have been sent to prison in chains. No,[Pg 369] indeed! But she passed away, and Spain misused him. But now they send their royalties to meet with all the kings and queens of the earth to bow down to his memory.
As we wended out, the caravels lay there in the calm water—the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, all becalmed in front of the convent.
No more rough seas in front of 'em; they furl their sails in the sunlight of success.
All is glory, all is rejoicing, all is praise.
Four hundred years after the brave soul that planned and accomplished it all died heart-broken and in chains, despised and rejected by men, persecuted by his enemies, betrayed by his friends.
True, brave heart, I wonder if the God he trusted in, and tried to honor, lets him come back on some fair mornin' or cloudless moonlight evenin', and look down and see what the nations are sayin' and doin' for him in eighteen hundred and ninety-three!
I don't know, nor Josiah don't.
But as I stood a-thinkin' of this, the sun come out from under a cloud and lit up the caravels with its golden light, and lay on the water like a long, shinin' path leadin' into glory.
And a light breeze stirred the white sails of the Santa Maria, some as though it wuz a-goin' to set sail agin.
[Pg 370]
And the shadders almost seemed alive that lay on the narrer deck.
After we left La Rabida, Josiah wanted to go and see the exhibit called Man and his Works.
Sez he, "I'll show you now, Samantha, what our works are. I'll show you the most beautiful and august exposition on the grounds."
Sez he, "You boasted high about wimmen's doin's, and they wuz fair," sez he, "what I call fair to middlin'. But in this you'll see grandeur and True Greatness."
Josiah didn't know a thing about the show, only what he gathered from its name; and feelin' as he did about himself and his sect, he naterally expected wonders.
So, leanin' on the arm of Justice, I accompanied him into the buildin', which wuzn't fur from La Rabida.
But almost the first room we went into, Josiah almost swooned at the sight, and I clung to his arm instinctively. There we wuz amongst more than three thousand skeletons and skulls.
Why, the goose pimples that rose on me didn't subside till most night.
And in the very next room wuz a collection of mummies, the humbliest ones that I ever sot my eyes on in my hull life—two or three hundre[Pg 371]d on 'em, from Peru, Utah, New Mexico, Egypt, British Columbia, etc., etc.
When Josiah's eyes fell onto 'em, my poor pardner sez, "Samantha, less be a-goin'."
Sez I, "Are you satisfied, Josiah Allen, with the Works of Man?"
And he advised me strong—"Not to make a luny and a idiot of myself."
And sez he, "Dum it all, why do they call it the works of man? There is as many wimmen amongst them dum skeletons as men, I'll bet a cent."
Wall, we went into another room and found a very interestin' exhibit—the measurements of heads: long-headed folks and short-headed ones; and measurements of children's heads who wuz educated, and the heads of savage children, showin' the influence that moral trainin' has on the brains of boys and girls.
Wall, it would take weeks to examine all we see there—the remains of the Aborigines, the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians. We could see by them relics how they lived—their religions, their domestic life, their arts, and their industries.
And then we see photographs by the hullsale of mounds and ruins from all over the world.
Why, we see so many pictures of ruins, that Josiah said that "he felt almost ruined."
[Pg 372]
And I sez, "That must come from the inside, Josiah. It hadn't ort to make you feel so."
And then we see all sorts of things to illustrate the games that these old ruined folks used to play, and their religions they believed in—idols, and clay altars, and things; and once, when I wuz a-tryin' to look calm at the very meanest-lookin' idol that I ever laid eyes on,
Sez Josiah, "The folks that would try to worship such a lookin' thing as that ort to be ruined."
And I whispered back, "If the secret things that folks worship to-day could be materialized, they would look enough sight worse than this." Sez I, "How would the mammon of Greed look carved in stun, or the beast of Intemperance?"
"Oh!" sez he, "bring in your dum temperance talk everywhere, will you? I should think we wuz in a bad enough place here to let your ears rest, anyway."
"Wall," sez I, "then don't run down folks that couldn't answer back for ten thousand years."
But truly we wuz in a bad place, if humbliness is bad, for them idols did beat all, and then there wuz a almost endless display of amulets, charms, totems, and other things that they used to carry on their religious meetin's with, or what they called religion.
And then we see some strange clay altars containin' cremated human bein's.
[Pg 373]
Here Josiah hunched me agin—
"You feel dretful cut up if you hear any one speak aginst these old creeters, but what do you think of that?" sez he, a-pintin' to the burnt bodies. Sez he, "Most likely them bodies wuz victims that wuz killed on their dum altars—dum 'em!"
"Yes," sez I, "but we of the nineteenth century slay two hundred thousand victims every year on the altar of Mammon, and Intemperance."
"Keep it up, will you—keep a preachin'!" sez he, and his tone wuz bitter and voyalent in the extreme.
And here he turned his back on me and went to examine some of the various games of all countries, such as cards, dice, dominoes, checkers, etc., etc.
Which shows that in that savage age, as well as in our too civilized one, amusements wuz a part of their daily life.
Wall, it wuz all dretful interestin' to me, though Skairfulness wuz present with us, and goose pimples wuz abroad.
And out-doors the exhibit wuz jest as fascinatin'.
[Pg 374]
Along the shores of the pond are grouped tribes of Indians from North America. They live in their primitive huts and tents, and there we see their rude boats and canoes. New York contributes a council house and a bark lodge once used by the once powerful Iroquois confederation.
And, poor things! where be they now? Passed away. Their canoes have gone down the stream of Time, and gone down the Falls out of sight.
But to resoom.
Wall, seein' they wuz right there, we went to see the ruins of Yucatan—they wuz only a few steps away.
Now, I never had paid any attention to Yucatan. I had always seen it on the map of Mexico, a little strip of land a-runnin' out into the water, and washed by the waves on both sides. But, good land! I would have paid more attention to it if I had known that down deep under its forests, where they had lain for more than a thousand years, wuz the ruins of a vast city, with its castles and monuments wrought in marble, and fashioned with highest beauty and art.
Whose hands had wrought them marble columns, and carved facades?
[Pg 375]
The silence of a thousand years lays between my question and its true answer.
I can't tell who they wuz, where they come from, or where they went to.
But the pieces of soulless stun remain for us to marvel over, when the livin' hands that wrought these have vanished forever.
Curious, very.
But mebby some magnetizm still hangs about them hoary old walls that has the power to draw their founders from their new home, wherever it is now.
Mebby them old Yucatanners come down in a shadder sloop and lay off over aginst them ruins, and enjoy themselves first-rate.
Here too is the city of the Cliff Dwellers—the most wonderful city I ever see or ever expect to see. There towers up a mountain made to look exactly like Battle Mountain, where these ruins are found—the homes and abidin' place of a race so much older than the Mexican and Peru old ones that they seem like folks of last week—almost like babies.
The hull of these buildin's which is called Cliff Palace is over two hundred feet long, and the rooms look pretty much all alike. They wuz round rooms mostly, with a hole in the floor for a fireplace, and stun seats a-runnin' clear round the room, and I'd a gin a dollar bill if I c[Pg 376]ould a seen a-settin' in them seats the ones that used to set there—if I could seen 'em sot down there in Jackson Park, and its marvels, and I could have hearn 'em tell what Old World wonders they had seen, and what they had felt and suffered—the beliefs of that old time; the laws that governed 'em, or that didn't govern 'em; their friends and their enemies; the strange animals that lurked round 'em; the wonderful flowers and vegetation—in short, if I could a sot down and neighbored with 'em, I would a gin, I believe my soul, as much as a dollar and thirty-five cents.
The rooms are about six feet high, and they wuz like me in one thing—they didn't care so much for ornament as they did for solid foundation. The only ornament I see in any of the rooms wuz some kinder wavin' streaks of red paint. But, oh! how solid the housen wuz, how firm the underpinnin'.
There wuz some stun towers and some winders, and oh! how I do wish I could seen what them Old Cliffers looked out on when they rested their arms on the stun winder sills and looked down on the deep valley below.
Children a-lookin' out for pleasure mebby; older ones a-lookin' for Happiness and Ambition like as not, the aged ones a-leanin' their tired arms on the hard stun, [Pg 377]while the settin' sun lit up their white locks, and a-lookin' for rest.
The cliffs are a good many colors, and each a good-lookin' one.
One thing struck me in all the housen, and made me think that though the Cliff Dwellers wuz older than Abraham or Moses, yet if I could see some of them female Cliffers I could neighbor with 'em like sisters.
They did love closets so well, and that made 'em so congenial to me. I never had half closets enough, and I don't believe any woman did if she would tell the truth.
There wuz sights of closets all closed up with good slab doors, some like grave-stuns.
I shouldn't have liked that so well, to had to heave down that heavy slab every time that I wanted a teacup, but mebby they didn't drink tea.
I spoze they kep their strange-lookin' pottery there, and I presoom the wimmen prided themselves on havin' more of them jars than a neighbor female Cliffer did. Then there are farmin' implements, and sandals, and leggins, and weapons, and baby boards—and didn't I wish that I could ketch sight of one of them babies!
The bodies of the dead wuz wrapped in four different winders—first in fine cloth, then a robe of turkey feath[Pg 378]ers wove with Yucca fibre, then a mattin', and then a wrap made of reeds.
The mummies found wrapped in these grave-clothes are more perfect than any found in Egypt, the hot, dry air of Colorado a-doin' its best to keep folks alive, and then after they are dead, a-keepin' 'em so as long as it can. There wuz one, a woman with pretty figure, and small hands and feet, and soft, light-colored hair. What wuz she a-thinkin' on as she done up that fore-top
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