"I do not marvel, then, that slavery has so long cursed the earth; I see clearly that it could not have failed to do so. To the premise that labor is an evil to be shunned so far as possible add the assumption that war and conquest are legitimate, and slavery follows of course. I have vanquished my enemy in battle, and have

a right to kill him; but that would be too costly and transient a gratification, when I can save him to take my place in the field or the shop; to receive that share of the primal curse which was providentially intended for me; to be my substitute in all cases where I would rather not perform a duty in person, and the butt of my ill-humor, whenever, through his fault, or mine, or neither, my plans miscarry, and my hopes are blasted by defeat. My slave or captive, having been spared by my clemency, and living only at my mercy, owes me boundless obedience and service, while I owe him nothing but such food and clothing as will keep him alive and in condition to perform that service. I have become to him Church, State, and Providence, Conscience, and Divinity, and he can only go amiss by disobeying my commands. If he have wife or children, they too are mine, or his only in subordination to my interests and my will; those children would not have been but for my clemency; they too owe everything to me, and must live only for my convenience, advantage, and profit. Thus the system acquires a self-perpetuating quality, and may endure, even without fresh wars and subjugations, to the end of time. And, so far as the enslaver can realize, it is a most convenient and satisfactory system, supplying him with hands to do his work, feet to run his errands, eyes to watch and arms to guard his possessions, and ready ministers to every whim or lust.

"But though eternal laws may thus, in one sense, be defied, their penalties cannot be evaded. The stern Nemesis is ever close on the heels of the transgressor. A household of masters and

slaves, of sacrificers and victims, can never be a loving and happy home. It includes too many crushed aspirations, outraged sensibilities, unavenged wrongs. The children of both master and slave are in false positions: the former necessarily grow up self-willed, overbearing, indolent; the latter, abject, servile, false, and devoid of self-respect. Vainly shall the master seek, in such a presence, to imbue his children with lessons of industry, humility, and deference; for to every such lesson the ready response will be: 'What are slaves for, if not to minister to our convenience and enjoyment?

If we are to work, to be frugal, to wait upon ourselves, why should we endure the presence, the low moral development, the care and responsibility, of these Helots? If we do all for ourselves, at least give us opportunity, give us room!' The moment a master resolves to square his life and that of his family by the golden rule, the presence and direction of a lot of stupid, sensual, indolent slaves is felt to be a nuisance and a burden.

"And, while it is true that slavery is the logical consequence, the Corinthian capital, of the populàr notions respecting labor, it is none the less certain that the arts-which flourish where the laborer is free from any constraint but that of his own aspirations, appetites, and needs flicker and die out where slavery bears sway. In our own sunny South-answering to the Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and Carthage of the Old World — there is the best of ship-timber, yet the cotton and tobacco there grown seek distant markets, in Northern vessels, sailed by sons of New England, and manned by Yankee crews. Northern merchants and clerks fill their seaports and buy their crops; Northern teachers instruct their children, so far as they are taught at all; their time is measured by Yankee clocks, and their tables set with Northern or European dishes; in short, about the only trophy of human genius peculiar to the Southrons is the cotton-gin, which they stole from Whitney, a Yankee. And every one who has travelled or lived there must be conscious that life is far ruder and poorer among the planters than in the corresponding class in any non-slaveholding region of the civilized world; and that, beyond a bountiful supply of coarse and ill-cooked food, the majority of Southern homes are devoid of nearly everything which civilized men consider essential to the comfort of life.

"Do I state these facts with a feeling of exultation? Surely not. I state them only to enforce the vital truth that MAN MUST CREATE IN ORDER TO ENJOY. He must produce, if he would find pleasure in consuming; must do good to others, in order to secure good to himself. In other words, work is not a curse to be escaped, but a blessing to be accepted and improved. If every freeman now on earth were offered a dozen slaves, I fear nine tenths know no better than to accept; yet, I feel sure, also, that, simply as a question of personal loss and gain, it would be better for any one of them to be burned out of house and home than to receive such a Trojan horse into his keeping."

CHAPTER XXIX.

ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA.

Farewell to civilization-The buffaloes on the Plains-Conversation with Brigham Young -Remarks upon polygamy-Visit to the Yo Semite Valley-Reception at Sacramento -at San Francisco.

In the summer of 1859 Mr. Greeley made his celebrated journey across the Plains to California, the particulars of which, according to his custom, he related to his readers. The manner in which he announced his purpose was characteristic: "About the 1st of Ocber next we are to have a State election; then a city contest; then the organization and long session of a new Congress; then a Presidential struggle; then Congress again; which brings us to the forming of a new national administration and the summer of 1861. If, therefore, I am to have any respite from editorial labor for the next two years I must take it now." So on the 9th of May, 1859, he left New York for a trip across the continent.

From his letters and other sources I glean a few of the more peculiar and interesting incidents.

HIS FAREWELL TO CIVILIZATION AT PIKE'S PEAK.

"I believe I have now descended the ladder of artificial life nearly to its lowest round. If the Cheyennes-thirty of whom stopped the last express down on the route we must traverse, and tried to beg or steal from it—should see fit to capture and strip us, we should of course have further experience in the same line; but for the present the progress I have made during the last fortnight toward the primitive simplicity of human existence may be roughly noted thus:

'May 12th, Chicago. - Chocolate and morning newspapers last seen on the breakfast-table.

"23d, Leavenworth.-Room-bells and baths make their last appearance.

"26th, Manhattan. Potatoes and eggs last recognized among the blessings that 'brighten as they take their flight.' Chairs ditto. 27th, Junction City. - Last visitation of a bootblack, with dissolving views of a board bedroom. Chairs bid us good by.

"28th, Pipe Creek. Benches for seats at meals have disappeared, giving place to bags and boxes. We (two passengers of a scribbling turn) write our letters in the express wagon that has borne us by day, and must supply us lodgings for the night. Thunder and lightning from both south and west give strong promise of a shower before morning. Dubious looks at several holes in the canvas covering of the wagon. Our trust is in buoyant hearts and an India-rubber blanket."

HE SEES THE BUFFALO.

"All day yesterday they darkened the earth around us, often seeming to be drawn up like an army in battle array on the ridges and adown their slopes a mile or so south of us, often on the north as well. They are rather shy of the little screens of straggling timber on the creek bottoms, doubtless from their sore experience of Indians lurking therein to discharge arrows at them as they went down to drink. If they feed in the grass of the narrow valleys and ravines, they are careful to have a part of the herd on the ridges which overlook them, and with them the surrounding country for miles. And when an alarm is given, they all rush furiously off in the direction which the leaders presume that of safety.

"This is what gives us such excellent opportunities for regarding them to the best advantage. They are moving northward, and are still mainly south of our track. Whenever alarmed, they set off on their awkward but effective canter to the great herds still south, or to haunts with which they are comparatively familiar, and wherein they have hitherto found safety. Of course this sends those north of us across our way, often but a few rods in front of us, even when they had started a mile away. Then a herd will commence running across a hundred rods ahead of us, and, the whole blindly following their leader, we will be close upon them before the last will have cleared the track. Of course they sometimes stop and tack, or seeing us, sheer off and cross farther ahead, or split into two

lines; but the general impulse, when alarmed, is to follow blindly and at full speed, seeming not to inquire or consider from what quarter danger is to be apprehended.

"What strikes the stranger with most amazement is their immense numbers. I know a million is a great many, but I am confident we saw that number yesterday. Certainly, all we saw could not have stood on ten square miles of ground. Often the country for miles on either hand seemed quite black with them. The soil is rich, and well matted with their favorite grass. Yet it is all (ex- · cept a very little on the creek bottoms, near to timber) eaten down like an overtaxed sheep-pasture in a dry August. Consider that we have traversed more than one hundred miles in width since we first struck them, and that for most of this distance the buffalo have been constantly in sight, and that they continue for some twentyfive miles farther on, this being the breadth of their present range, which has a length of perhaps a thousand miles, and you have some approach to an idea of their countless millions. I doubt whether the domesticated horned cattle of the United States equal the numbers, while they must fall considerably short in weight, of these wild ones. Margaret Fuller long ago observed that the Illinois prairies seemed to repel the idea of being new to civilized life and industry; that they, with their borders of trees and belts of timber, reminded the traveller rather of the parks and spacious fields of an old country like England; that you were constantly on the involuntary lookout for the chateaux, or at least the humbler farmhouses, which should diversify such a scene. True as this is or was in Illinois, the resemblance is far more striking here, where the grass is all so closely pastured and the cattle are seen in such vast herds on every ridge. The timber, too, aids the resemblance, seeming to have been reduced to the last degree consistent with the wants of a grazing country, and to have been left only on the steep creek-banks where grass would not grow. It is hard to realize that this is the centre of a region of wilderness and solitude, so far as the labors of civilized man are concerned, that the first wagon passed through it some two months ago. But the utter absence of houses or buildings of any kind, and our unbridged, unworked road, winding on its way for hundreds of miles, without a track other than of buffalo intersecting or leading away from it on either hand, brings us back to the reality.