Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 369, July 1846

"That would I willingly do for the father of my Canondah," said the young girl; "but a higher duty calls me. Father of my Canondah! Rosa has come to take leave of thee."

The Indian listened attentively.

"Miko," continued the maiden, "the father who gave me life, is found. Rosa must hasten to him who for fourteen years has wept and sought her."

"Tokeah gave Rosa her life; he saved her from the tomahawk of Milimach; he paid with skins for the milk she drank."

"But Rosa has another father who is nearer to her, whom the Great Spirit bestowed upon her; to him must she go. I must leave you, Miko," said she, with increased firmness of manner.

Upon the countenance of the Indian all the bad passions of his nature were legible. The scales had at last fallen from his eyes; but even now his cold and terrible calmness did not desert him, although the violence of the storm raging within showed itself in the play of his features and the variation of his complexion.

"Miko," said the squire, who foresaw an approaching outburst of fury – "Miko, you heard the words of the great warrior of the palefaces?"

The Indian took no notice of the caution; his whole frame was agitated by a feverish trembling; his hand sought his scalping-knife; and he cast so terrible a look at Rosa, that the horrorstruck squire sprang to her side. To Major Copeland's astonishment, the young girl had regained all her courage, and there was even a certain dignity in her manner.

"Miko," said she, extending her arms, "I must leave you."

"What says my daughter?" demanded the Indian – who even yet seemed unable to believe his ears – his voice assuming so shrill and unnatural a tone, that the tavern-keeper and his wife rushed terrified into the room. "Tokeah is not her father? she will not follow the Miko?"

"She cannot," answered Rosa firmly.

"And Rosa," continued the Indian, in the same piercing accents, "will leave the Miko; will let him wander alone on his far and weary path?"

The words were scarcely uttered, when, by a sudden and unexpected movement, Tokeah sprang to his feet, caught Rosa in his arms, and with a like rapidity retreating to the side door of the room, came in such violent contact with it, that its glass panes were shivered into a thousand pieces.

"And does the white snake think," he exclaimed, with flashing eyes, "that the Miko is a fool?" He held the maiden in his left arm, whilst his right raised the glittering scalping-knife. "Does the white snake think," continued the raging Indian, with a shrill laugh of scorn, whilst the foam gathered round his mouth, "that the Miko fed and cherished her, and gave skins for her, that she might return to the white men, the venomous palefaces, whom he spits upon?" And he spat with loathing upon the ground.

"By the God who made you, hold! Hurt the child, and you are a dead man!" cried the squire, who seized a stool and endeavoured to force his way to Rosa, but was repulsed by the Comanches and Oconees.

"Therefore did the white snake accompany me!" yelled Tokeah. "Does my son know," cried he to El Sol, "that the White Rose has betrayed her father – betrayed him for the palefaces? Will the white snake follow her father?" screamed the frantic savage.

"I cannot," was the reply. "The voice of my white father calls me."

An expression of intense hatred came over the features of the Indian, as he gazed at the beautiful creature who lay half-fainting on his arm.

"Tokeah will leave the White Rose with her friends," said he, with a low deadly laugh, drawing back his hand and aiming the knife at her bosom.

"Gracious God! he is killing her!" cried the major, breaking furiously through the opposing Indians. But at this critical moment the young Comanche was beforehand with him. With a bound he interposed himself between the chief's armed hand and intended victim, tore Rosa from the grasp of Tokeah, and hurled him back against the door with such force that it flew into fragments.

"Tokeah is indeed a wild cat!" cried he with indignant disgust. "He forgets that he is a chief amongst his people, and brings shame upon the name of the Red men. El Sol is ashamed of such a father."

These words, spoken in the Pawnee dialect, had an indescribable effect upon the old savage. He had partly raised himself after his fall, but now again sank down as if lifeless. Just then several file of militia entered the room with bayonets fixed.

"Shall we take the Indian to prison?" said Lieutenant Parker.

The major stood speechless, both his arms clasped round Rosa.

"Lieutenant Parker," said he, "support Rosa for a moment: the Almighty himself has protected her, and it beseems not us to take vengeance." He approached the old Indian, who still lay upon the floor, lifted him up, and placed him against the wall. "Tokeah," he said, "according to our laws your life is forfeited, and the halter the least you deserve; nevertheless, begone, and that instantly. You will find your punishment without receiving it at our hands."

"He was my father, my unhappy father!" exclaimed Rosa, and tottering to the Indian, she threw her arms around him. "Father of my Canondah," cried she, "Rosa would never leave you, but the voice of her own father calls. Forgive her who has been a daughter to you!"

The Indian remained mute. She gazed at him for a while with tearful eyes; then turned to El Sol, and bowing her head modestly and respectfully, took leave of him, and left the house with her companions.

The young chief of the Comanches remained as in a dream, till the major, with Rosa and the militia, were already far from the estaminet. Suddenly he came bounding after them, and placing himself before Rosa, took her hands, pressed them to his breast, and bowed his head so mournfully, that the witnesses of the scene stood silent, sympathizing with his evident affliction.

"El Sol," whispered he, in a scarcely audible tone, "has seen Rosa: he will never forget her."

And without raising his eyes to her face, he turned away.

"As I live," exclaimed the squire, with some emotion, "the noble savage weeps!"

An hour subsequently to this scene, the party of Indians left the bayou in a canoe, and ascended the Mississippi. Upon reaching the mouth of the Red River, they turned into it, and continued their route up-stream. On the tenth day from that of their departure, they found themselves upon the elevated plain where the western district of Arkansas and Louisiana joins the Mexican territory. To their front were the snowy summits of the Ozark range, beyond which are immense steppes extending towards the Rocky Mountains. The sun sank behind the snow-capped peaks, as the Indians landed at the western extremity of the long table-rock, which there stretches like a wall along the left bank of the Red River. Leaving their canoe, they approached a hill, or rather a mass of rock, that rises not far from the shore in the barren salt steppe, and in whose side exists a cave or grotto, resembling, by its regularity of form, an artificial archway. Here, upon the imaginary boundary line separating the hunting grounds of the Pawnees of the Toyask tribe from those of the Cousas and Osages, they took up their quarters for the night. El Sol ordered a fire to be made; for Tokeah, who had just left the warm climate of Louisiana, shivered with cold. Their frugal meal dispatched, the Miko and his Oconees stretched themselves upon the ground and slept. El Sol still listened to a legend related by one of the Comanches, when he was startled by a distant noise. In an instant the three warriors were upon their feet, their heads stretched out in the direction of the breeze which had conveyed the sound to their ears.

"The dogs!" murmured the young Comanche; "they bay after a foe in whose power it once was to crush them."

The Oconees were roused from their slumber, and the party hurried to the place where they had left the canoe. The Miko and his warriors got in and descended the stream; whilst El Sol and the two Comanches crept noiselessly along the water's edge in the same direction. After proceeding for about half a mile, the canoe stopped, and the young chief and his followers entered it, previously breaking the bushes growing upon the shore, so as to leave unmistakable marks of their passage. They continued their progress down the river to the end of the table-rock, and then, leaving the old man in the boat, El Sol and the four warriors again landed, and glided away in the direction of their recently abandoned bivouac. In its vicinity were stationed a troop of twenty horses. Of the Indians to whom these belonged, ten remained mounted, whilst the remainder searched the cave, and followed the trail left by its late occupants. Crouching and crawling upon the ground, the better to distinguish the footmarks dimly visible in the moonlight, it might almost have been doubted whether their dark forms were those of men, or of some strange amphibious animals who had stolen out of the depths of the river for a midnight prowl upon the shore.

His ear against the rock, and motionless as a statue, El Sol observed each movement of the foe. Suddenly, when the Indians who followed the trail were at some distance from the cave, he made a sign to his companions, and, with a noiseless swiftness that defied detection, the five warriors approached the horses. A slight undulation of the plain was all that now separated them from their enemy. El Sol listened, gazed upwards at the moon's silver disk, just then emerging from behind a snow-charged cloud, raised himself upon his knee, and taking a long and steady aim, nodded to his warriors. The next instant five savages, pierced by as many bullets, fell from their horses to the ground; a terrible yell shattered the stillness of the night; and with lightning swiftness El Sol sprang upon the terrified survivors, who, answering his war-whoop by cries of terror, fled in confusion from the place. It needed all the surprising rapidity and dexterity of the young chief and his followers to secure six of the half-wild horses, whose bridles, so swift and well-calculated had been the movements of the Comanches, might be said to fall from the hands of their slain riders into those of the assailants. The remaining steeds reared in extreme terror, and then, with neigh and snort, dashed madly across the wide waste of the steppe.

Springing upon the backs of the captured animals, the Comanches galloped to the shore. Scarcely had they entered the canoe, astern of which the horses were made to swim, when the bullets and arrows of the pursuing foe whistled around them.

"Will my son promise the Miko to be a good father to the Oconees?" said the old chief in a hollow voice, as they pulled out of range of the fire.

"A father and a brother," answered the Comanche. "But why does my father ask? He will dwell long and happily with his children."

"Will El Sol swear it by the Great Spirit?" repeated the old man, earnestly, but in a fainter voice.

"He will," replied the young chief.

"Will he swear to bury Tokeah and his father's bones in the grave of the warriors of the Comanches?"

"He will," said El Sol.

"So shall the white men not scoff at his ashes nor at those of his father," groaned the Miko. "But it is the will of the Great Spirit that Tokeah should not see the hunting-grounds of the Comanches; he is doomed to die in the land of the palefaces."

A rattling in his throat interrupted the old man; he murmured a few broken words in the ears of his Oconees, who broke out into a wild howl of lamentation. Still clasping to his breast the coffin containing his father's bones, he sank back in the boat in the agonies of death. El Sol raised him in his arms, but life had already fled. A bullet had struck him between the shoulders, and inflicted a mortal wound. In silent grief the young chief threw himself upon the corpse, and long after the boat had reached the opposite shore, he lay there, unmindful of all but his sorrow. Roused at length by the whispers of his companions, to a sense of the danger of longer delay, he laid the body across a horse, and himself mounting the same animal, took the road to the village of the Pawnees. There, upon the following day, to the wild and mournful music of the death-song, the little party made its sorrowful entrance.

At this point the narrative ceases. We turn the page, expecting at least another chapter, or some notice of Rosa's restoration to her father, and subsequent marriage with Hodges, which the previous portion of the novel certainly led us to anticipate. But our author, with his usual eccentric disregard of the established routine of romance writers, contents himself with a postscript, consisting of an advertisement extracted from the Opelousas county paper, and dated March 1816, announcing the marriage of the amiable and accomplished Miss Mary Copeland, daughter of the Honourable John Copeland, of James county, to Mr James Hodges, formerly of H.B.M. Navy, and now of Hodges' Seat in the same state. The reader is left to complete the denouement for himself, if he so pleases, and to conjecture that Rosa's father, a Mexican grandee, takes back his daughter to her native country, and that the incipient attachment between her and the young Englishman is mutually forgotten.

We here finally conclude our extracts from the already published work of our German American friend – extracts comprising, as we believe, the cream of the twenty volumes, or thereabouts, which he has given to the world. The incognito behind which this clever and original writer has so long shrouded himself, is at length abandoned; and to a new edition of his works, now in course of publication, stands prefixed the name of Charles Sealsfield.

THE DEATH OF ZUMALACARREGUI

By Colonel Lord Howden, K.St.F., K.C.S

"Ac sane, quod difficilimum, et prælio strenuus erat et bonus in consilio; quorum alterum ex providentiâ timorem, alterum ex audaciâ temeritatem, adferre plerumque solet. In Jugurthâ tantus dolus, tantaque peritia locorum et militiæ erat, ut absens aut præsens perniciosior esset in incerto haberetur." – Sallust.

The siege of Bilbao was undertaken against the will, and strongly expressed counsel of Zumalacarregui. He was not only aware of the risk of the enterprise, with the insufficient means at his disposal for attempting it, but he had other plans. His plans, however, were undervalued, and his counsels were slighted, at the court of the Pretender. The little empty politicians there, were dazzled by the idea of possessing an important town, not deeming it their business to calculate the means by which it was to be obtained; the incompetent military advisers who directed from afar, thought that this bold attempt, proceeding from them, would contrast in bright relief with the hitherto wary and waiting policy of the commander-in-chief; and the wish, not an unnatural one, of the wandering prince, to find himself for once in comfortable quarters, was not the least among the motives which decided the operation. Though at this moment the Christino army was in a state of great discouragement from a long series of advantages that had been gained by the Carlists, the funds of the latter were entirely exhausted; and the idea of a forced loan upon the rich inhabitants of Bilbao was too seducing to be coldly examined by those little acquainted with the real difficulties of the war. Zumalacarregui wished to attack Victoria, and, profiting by the prestige of his late successes, to throw himself on the fertile and virgin ground of the Castiles. This was doubtlessly the right course, but the project was overruled.

Independently of what thus gave rise to these ambitious aspirations, there was a personal feeling which had long been busy, either in attempting new and unexpected combinations on the part of the Camarilla, or in mutilating or rendering ineffectual those that had been imagined by Zumalacarregui. There was no passion, bold or mean, no jealousy, no intrigues, vegetating ever so rankly or rifely in the oldest and largest court of Europe, which did not flourish in that of Don Carlos.

There was not a Christino general more disliked by the hangers-on of Don Carlos than Zumalacarregui. They feared him, they respected him, but they hated him.

When the Pretender first made his appearance in Navarre, Zumalacarregui was in his favourite retreat of the Amescuas. He was far from insensible to the advantage which the presence of the chief actor in the drama might produce, if his personal bearing should be such as to create an enthusiasm for his cause, and if those who accompanied him should bring each his personal contingent of enlightened advice and honest activity. But with all these hopes, Zumalacarregui was not without his fears; his sagacity foresaw what his experience soon confirmed, that the royal chief was worse than a nullity, and that the royal suite were actively in the way. Lord Bacon says, "it is the solecism of princes to think to command the end, and yet not to endure the means." Dr Carlos was always commanding the end, while his general was left to find the means as best he could. A large portion of his small army was absorbed in protecting the prince, and could rarely be counted on in a combined movement; and the non-combatants, under every denomination of title and rank, drew more rations for their consumption than would have sufficed for the support of a large body of soldiers.

Zumalacarregui, personally, was never very enthusiastic in the cause. It is true that his feelings had always had a tendency to absolutism, or rather he entertained the conviction that a strong government was necessary to the happiness of Spain, and that the greater the unity of that government, the greater was its chance of stability, and its power of favourable action; but when he left Pamplona to put himself at the head of the insurgent Navarrese, he was influenced far more by pique against the existing state of things, than by enthusiasm for the new one which he sought to establish. He had been treated both brutally and unjustly by Quesada, at that time inspector of infantry; and, with his active spirit, a condemnation to inactivity was the severest sentence that could be passed upon him. Rest to his unquiet bosom was a hell from which he was determined to emerge; and, confident in his powers, he seized the first opportunity which enabled him to bring them into action.

The meeting between Zumalacarregui and the prince was respectful, but not warm; the first was unaccustomed to have any feelings, the second was unaccustomed to conceal those he had. The new importation had brought no new ideas, no plans, no accession of science; above all, no money; at least no more than was to be applied to its own wants. Don Carlos was evidently under the constraint that a strong mind imposes on a weak one. He saw that the servant was the master, as much in commanding intellect as in actual power. They were both uncomfortable; Zumalacarregui neither flattered the prince, nor his chances of success; he laid before him his difficulties, almost insuperable in his own opinion – for let it be known as a fact, that he always in his heart despaired of the ultimate upshot of the war. In conversational phrase, he had made himself thoroughly disagreeable; for he had spoken calmly, coldly, truly – and the hopes of an immediate march to Madrid had been rudely shaken. Zumalacarregui left the prince's headquarters with a discouragement and a contempt which he was at no pains to conceal. From that moment he was an object, often of admiration, but never of affection; and it was evident that the effort to esteem him was too painful to ensure a continuance of confidence.

Among those who consider Zumalacarregui solely as the able chief of a devoted army, putting aside all the circumstances of political partisanship, there can be little difference of opinion, if that opinion be fairly formed and honestly given. By those who remark upon the comparatively small number of his troops, and the relatively confined scale of his operations, and who therefore refuse him the name of a great general, it must be remembered, that if this principle of applying reputation be pushed further in its expression – if military praise and appreciation are to be awarded strictly according to the size of the theatre and the magnitude of the numbers, and not according to the spirit which moves over the one, and directs the others – by such geometrical logic, our own great hero would be deemed immeasurably inferior to the French emperor.

Zumalacarregui possessed great courage, but he made no show of it. It would have been more brilliant if he had had more vanity; and the exposure of his person was always subservient to some object of utility. He had a comprehensive view of military movements, but he never forgot the peculiar nature of his warfare; and he never ambitiously allowed himself to be carried away by plans or manœuvres beyond the exigencies of his position. As an administrator in forming reserves, in procuring supplies, in discovering resources, in bringing raw battalions to a state of rough efficiency in the shortest possible time, he was unrivalled; yet his mind was not cramped by detail, and when he descended to minute matters, it was because they were really important. He was severe and inflexible, even taciturn and morose; yet he was extremely loved by his troops. At the time that he was commander-in-chief, commissary-general and treasurer, and that all the sums of money, raised or sent, passed through his hands without a check or a receipt, there never was a breath raised against the purity of his moral character. These certainly are the elements out of which great generals are made; and it is not irrational to think that, under other circumstances, the same man, this Navarrese Guerrillero, far superior as such to the brave but improvident Mina, or the active but dull Jauregui, might have expanded into a European hero, and have left a less perishable name.

When the siege of Bilbao was decided on, Zumalacarregui threw his objections to the winds, and set about it with his constitutional ardour. He arrived before it with fourteen battalions, and a miserable battering-train, composed of two twelve-pounders, one six-pounder, two brass four-pounders, two howitzers and a mortar, and with a great penury of corresponding ammunition. The town was garrisoned by a force of four thousand men, well armed, without counting the national guard, and was protected by forty pieces of artillery, mostly of large calibre, mounted on different forts thrown up in favourable positions. But what was of chief advantage to the besieged, and what almost rendered success hopeless, was the free communication from without kept up by French and English vessels of war stationed in the Nervion, a river that runs alongside the town, and joins the sea at some seven or eight miles' distance.

Zumalacarregui fixed his headquarters at a spot called Puente Nuevo, in a small straggling village, just at this side of the town of Bilbao, and under one of its most fashionable and frequented walks. Eraso had begun the investiture of the place a few days previously, and both these chiefs lodged in a small inn named the Three Sisters. Puente Nuevo was completely commanded by an eminence called the Morro, just outside the gates of Bilbao; but the garrison, either from motives of prudence or others, gave the Carlists no inconvenience from that point.

At a short distance to the right of the Durango road, and on a height immediately over the town of Bilbao, is a church, called Our Lady of Begoña; and not far from it is a house, which, from its comparative size and solidity, and from its commanding view of the country around, goes by the name of the Palace. On the second day of the siege, two serious misfortunes befell the besiegers: eighty of the best muskets they possessed were piled in the portico of the church of Begoña, and were all entirely destroyed by a grenade that took them horizontally, killing the two sentinels that were mounting guard over them. The same evening the two largest of the guns, already half-worn out, burst from continued firing, just as something like an impression appeared on the spot it was proposed to breach.

Don Carlos, during this time, was at Durango, a distance of five or six hours. Zumalacarregui, seeing the hopelessness of the operation, and, above all, the discouragement of the men, sent an express to the prince to say, "that he would be obliged infallibly to raise the siege and retire, unless some means were immediately taken to raise the drooping spirits of his army; that they were without clothes, without food, and almost without ammunition; that it was absolutely necessary that a sum of money should be procured and sent to him, which would enable him to pay the troops a part of what was due to them; and that then, as the means of prolonging a siege was out of the question, he would endeavour to carry out his majesty's wishes, and try to take the place by assault."

Cruz-Mayor, the lead of the Camarilla, loved to humiliate Zumalacarregui, and no answer was returned to this letter; but Zumalacarregui was not idle, nor did he allow inaction to dispirit still more the minds of his men. He even attempted an assault, which failed, with the loss of all those who were ordered on this service. Unfortunately for the attacking column, lots were drawn for the troops that were to compose it; and they fell upon a regiment of Navarrese, entirely ignorant of the localities, who, getting confused in cross-paths and lanes at the foot of the walls, were cut off to a man. It was thought that the result of this attack might have been otherwise had it been undertaken by the Biscayan companies, who knew every inch of the ground. The hour, too, was ill judged, for it was at the beginning of nightfall, when it was just dark enough to embarrass those who were attempting the assault, without being sufficiently so to induce the inhabitants and national guards to retire from the walls.

On the 15th June 1835, Zumalacarregui proceeded to the palace of Begoña, not far from the church of the same name, as the best spot for observing the repairs made, and the additional means of defence raised by the enemy during the night. He passed through the middle room on the first story, and, throwing open the window, went out on the iron balcony overlooking the town. The balls were flying so thick and fast that he desired all those who accompanied him to remain within; but, notwithstanding their supplications, he himself remained leaning on the railing of the balcony, his knees nearly touching the ground. The telescope which he used, showing the marksmen in the enemy's works that he was probably a personage of importance, occasioned a general discharge from the nearest battery. It was now exactly eight o'clock in the morning, and a ball from this discharge struck Zumalacarregui in the upper and anterior part of the right leg, on the inner side, about two inches below the knee. From the position in which he was struck, the ball took a downwards direction, and, as no part of the intricate machinery of the knee was injured, there was every reason to suppose that no serious consequences could ensue.

Either from the extreme pain of the wound, or the shock given to the nervous system, Zumalacarregui fainted. His secretary, Zaratiegui, and the rest of his staff, picked him up in a state of insensibility, and placed him on a chair. The surgeon, Grediaga, a man of considerable acquirements, who was then practising in the sacristy of the church of Begoña, which had been converted into an hospital, was immediately sent for, as well as a young English surgeon of the name of Burgess, belonging to a small body of cavalry called the "Holy Squadron," or the "Squadron of Legitimacy."

This young man, a person of great respectability, and well informed in his profession, has been since as grossly as ridiculously accused of having been bought by the English government to hasten the end of Zumalacarregui, if ever his services enabled him to do so; and it is still said, and believed by many, that the death of the general was owing to poison put into the bandages with which Mr Burgess first dressed the wound. In a country like Spain, where there is much ignorance and deep prejudice, it does not suffice to laugh to scorn accusations of any sort: it is better to meet them seriously, and disprove them by a fact. Mr Burgess never dressed Zumalacarregui's leg at all. He spoke no Spanish, and while he was endeavouring to make himself understood and to learn what had happened, Grediaga arrived and put on the first application.

On being asked whither he should be carried, Zumalacarregui immediately said to Cegama, a town three days' journey off, situated in a solitary neighbourhood, and entirely unprovided with any thing like comfort, medicines, or professional assistance. The surprise of all was manifest, but the general was too accustomed to be obeyed not to be so in this instance. He was placed upon an old sofa from which the legs were sawed, and which was carried by eight guides of Navarre, with twenty-four others as a reserve. Neither he nor the chief of his staff and secretary, Zaratiegui, had a single peseta in their pockets, and he received from Mendigana, the paymaster-general, twenty ounces of gold, as a part of the pay that was due to him.

The reason which induced Zumalacarregui to go to Cegama, was indeed a strange one, and a fatal one. It was one he never expressed, but which prompted this revelation from the very instant that he received his wound. There lived in this district a quack of the very lowest capacity, of the name of Petriquillo – a man entirely unimbued with the slightest tincture of medical science, but whose chance cures of gunshot wounds during the time of the Army of the Faith in 1822, had astonished and taken possession of the mind of Zumalacarregui. He even refused to allow the ball to be extracted at a moment when the operation presented no danger, and his only anxiety was to put himself into the hands of this ignorant adventurer.