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" On the 5 th of September , having nothing to eat , the last piece of pemmican and a little arrow-root having formed a scanty supper , and being without the means of making a fire , they remained in bed all day . A severe snow-storm lasted two days , and the snow even drifted into their tents , covering their blankets several inches . 4 Our suffering ( says Franklin ) from cold , in a comfortless canvass tent in such weather , with the temperature at 20 deg ., and without fire * will easily be imagined ; it was , however , less than that which we felt from hunger . ' " Weak from Fasting and their garments stiffened with the frost , after packing their frozen tents and bedclothes the poor travellers again set out on the 7 th .
" After feeding almost exclusively on several species of gyrophora , a lichen known as tripe de roche , which scarcely allayed the pangs of hunger , on the 10 th , * they got a good meal by killing a musk ox . To skin and cut up the animal was the work of a few minutes . The contents of its stomach were devoured upon the spot , and the raw intestines , which were next attacked , were pronounced by the most delicate amongst us to be excellent . ' " "Wearied and worn out with toil and suffering , many of the party got careless and indifferent . One of the canoes was broken and abandoned . With an improvidence scarcely to be credited , three of the fishing-nets were also thrown away , and the floats burnt .
" On the 17 th they managed to allay the pangs of hunger by eating pieces of singed hide , and a little tripe de roche . This and some mosses , with an occasional solitary partridge , formed their invariable food ; on very many days even this scanty supply could not be obtained , and their appetites became ravenous . " Occasionally they picked up pieces of skin , and a few bones of deer which had been devoured by the wolves in the previous spring . The bones were rendered friable by burning , and now and then their old shoes were added to the repast . " On the 26 th they reached a bend of the Coppermine , which terminated in Point Lake . The second canoe had been demolished and abandoned by the bearers on the 23 rd , and they were thus left without any means of water transport across the lakes and river .
" On this day the carcass of a deer was discovered in the cleft of a rock , into which it had fallen in the spring . It was putrid , but little less acceptable to the poor starving travellers on that account ; and a fire being kindled a large portion was devoured on the spot , affording an unexpected breakfast . * ' On the 1 st of October one of the party , who had been out hunting , brought in the antlers and backbone of another deer , which had been killed in the summer . The wolves and birds of prey had picked them clean , but there still remained a quantity of the spinal marrow , which they had not been able to extract . This , although putrid , was esteemed a valuable prize , and the spine being divided into portions was distributed equally . ' After eating the marrow ( says Franklin ) , which was so acrid as to excoriate the lips , we rendered the bones friable by burning , and ate them also . '
" The strength of the whole party now began to fail , from the privation and fatigue which they endured . Franklin was in a dreadfully debilitated state . Mr . Hood was also reduced to a perfect shadow , from the severe bowel-complaints which the tripe de roche never failed to give him . Back was so feeble as to require the support of a stick in walking , and Dr . Richardson had lameness euperadded to weakness . " A rude canoe was constructed of willows , covered with canvass , in which the party , one by one , managed to reach in safety the southern bank of the river on the 4 th of October , and went supperless to bed . On the following morning , previous to setting out , the whole party ate the remains of their old shoes , and whatever scraps of leather they had , to strengthen their stomachs for the fatigue of the day ' s journey .
•• Mr . Hood now broke down , as did two or three more of the party , and Dr . Richardson kindly volunteered to remain with them , while the rest pushed on to Fort Enterprise for succour . Not being able to find any tripe de roche , they drank an infusion of the Labrador teaplant ( Ledrum palustre , var . decumbens ) , and ate a few morsels of burnt leather for supper . This continued to be A frequent occurrence . " Others of the party continued to drop down with fatigue and weakness , until they were reduced to five pcrHons , besides Franklin . When they had no food or nourishment of any kind , they crept under their blankets ,
to drown , if possible , the gnawing pangs of hunger and fatigue by sleep . At length they reached Fort Enterprise and to their disappointment and grief found it a perfectly desolate habitation . There was no deposit of provision , no trace of the Indians , no letter from Mr . Wentzel to point out where the Indiana might be found . « It would be impossible ( says Franklin ) to describe our sensations after entering this miserable abode and discovcrinK how we hud been neglected : the whole party shed tears , not so much for our own fate as for that of our friends in the rear , whose lives depended entirely on our sendinir immediate relief from this place .
One of the most animating and invigorating results of such a book as this , in tho courage and carelessness of pant perils which these sufferers exhibit . No sooner are they comfortably home again than all they hav « endured belongs to the region of romance ; they delight to tell of it , to think of it , but they no longer suffer from it , no longer dread it . Directly the opportunity oilers they set forth again with the alacrity of young hunters , to face once more the Icy Perils , and to glory in the strong excitement of Danger . So transitory is Kvil in this life , so permanent is Good I Pain itHclf becomes a Pleasure , in memory ; and the horrible struggles of man with Starvation , though they
weaken his frame and depress his spirits , cannot daunt him , but he faces them again and again , out of mere adventurous daring and high sense of duty . The philosophy such books inculcate is needed by our sedentary , dyspeptic , routiniary condition .
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POEMS BY A WORKING MAN . yokes of Freedom and Lyrics of Love . By T . Gerald Massey , Working Man . J . Wataon . There have been too many poetical working men for any new comer to secure attention on the simple ground of his being a working man . Unless he can show intrinsic claims , his chance is but little better than that of the " gentlemen who write with ease , " It seems to us that Gerald Massey possesses enough of the true poetic fire to warrant criticism , quite apart from his position ; and some weeks since we laid aside his little volume with the
intention of saying a few deliberate words about it , but were fortunately prevented by the pressure of other work : we say fortunately , because in the meanwhile there has appeared an article in Eliza Cook ' s Journal which gives such biographical details as will render Gerald Massey ' s volume trebly interesting : and we propose to usher in our own criticism with extracts from this article : they tell a story in itself a poem : — " Gerald Massey was born in May , 1828 , and is , therefore , barely twenty-three years of age . He first saw the light in a little stone hut near Tring , in Herts , one of those miserable abodes in which so many of our happy
peasantrytheir country's pride !—are condemned to live and die . Ninepence a week was the rent of this hovel , the roof of which was so low that a man could not stand upright in it . Massey ' s father was , and still is , a canal boatman , earning the wage of ten shillings a-week . Like most other peasants in this ' highly-favoured Christian country , ' he has had no opportunities of education , and never could write his own name . But Gerald Massey was blessed in his mother , from whom he derived a finely organized brain and a susceptible temperament . Though quite illiterate like her husband , she had a firm free spiritit's broken now !—a tender yet courageous heart , and a pride of honest poverty which she never ceased to cherish . But she needed all her strength and courage to
bear up under the privations of her lot . Sometimes the husband fell out of work ; and there was no bread in the cupboard except what was purchased by the labour of the elder children , some of whom were early sent to work in the neighbouring silk-mill . One week , when bread was much dearer than now , and the father out of work , all the income of the household was 5 s . 9 d . ; but with this the thrifty mother managed to provide for the family—and there were not fewer than six children to feed—without incurring a penny of debt . Disease , too , often fell uoon the family , cooped up in that unwholesome hovel ; indeed , the wonder is , not that our peasantry should be diseased , and grow old and haggard before their time , but that they should exist at all in such lazar-houses and cesspools .
"None of the children of this poor family were educated , in the common acceptance of the term . Several of them were sent for a short time to a penny school , where the teacher and the taught were about on a par ; but so soon as they were of age to work , the children were sent to the silk-mill . The poor cannot afford to keep their children at school , if they are of an age to work and earn money . They must help to eke out the parents * slender gains . even though it be by only a few pence weekly . So , at eight years of age , Gerald Massey went into the silkmanufactory , rising at five o ' clock in the morning , and toiling there till half-past six in the evening ; up in the grey dawn , or in the winter before the daylight , and trudging to the factory throu « h the wind or in the snow ; seeing the sun only through the factory windows ; breathing an atmosphere laden with rank oily vapour , his ears deafened by the roar of incessant wheels ,
41 Still , all day the iron wheels go onward , Grinding life down from its mark ; And the children ' s souls which God is calling sunward Spin on blindly in the dark . ' " What a life for a child ! What a substitute for tender prattle , for childish fl lee , for youthful playtime ! Then home shivering under the cold , starless sky , on Saturday nights , with 9 d ., 1 » ., or Is . 3 d ., for the whole week ' s work ; for such were the respective amounts of the wages earned by the child labour of Gerald Mawsey .
" But the mill was burned down , and the children held jubilee over it . The boy stood for twelve hours in the wind , and sleet , and mud , rejoicing in the conflagration which thus liberated him . Who can wonder at thin ? Then he went to straw-plaiting—as toilsome , and perhaps more unwholesome than factory-work . Without exercise , in a marshy ditttriet , the pluiters were constantly having racking attacks' of ague . The boy had the disease for three yearn , ending with tertian ugue . Sometimes four of the family and the mother lay ill of the disease at one time , all crying with thirst , with no one to give them drink , and each too weak to help tho other . How Httlu do we know of the sufferings endured by the poor and 8 truKK l '" K cIubhck of our population , especially in our rural districtH ! No press echoed their wunta or records their Buffering ; and they live almost no unknown t «> us us if they were the inhabitants of some undiscovered country . " Thin in a Htrange collegiate for the young poet ; but though it brought with it no classic culture , it brought that which tin ; poet inakcts the substitute of all culture—suffering : —
" Having had to earn my own dear bread , " he say * , « by thTefernal cheapening of flesh and blood thus ear y , I never knew what childhood meant . Ihtdno childhood Ever since I can remember I have had the aching fear of want throbbing in heart and brow . The current . &J 2 ^ S £ 5 S ^ aslSS ^ 3 h = « rj ^ J f—s i hustling them in a bag to get gold-dust out o fthem , so is the poor man ' s child hustled and sweated down m this bag of society to get wealth out of it ; and even a . the impress of the Queen is effaced by the Jewish P ^ ess so is the image of God worn from heart and brow and day-by-day the child recedes devilward . I look back now with wonder , not that so few escape , but that any escape at all , to win a nobler growth for their humanity . So blighting are the influences which surround thousands in early life , to which I can bear such bitter
testimony . " It is not from sweet flowers alone that the Bee gathers honey—nay , it is less from the delicate delights of the garden than from the wild Gorse on the desolate moors that it extracts its precious store j and Poets are as Bees . Gerald Massey had no " advantages ; " not even the range of a library . But he could read : and the Bible and the Pilgrim ' s Progress were rich pasture lands wherein the child wandered as in Paradise . To them were added a few Wesleyan tracts , and the romance of romances , Robinson Crusoe . These he fed on till fifteen , when he came to London : — " Till then , " he says , "I had often wondered why I lived at all—whether
It was not better not to be , I was so full of misery . Now I began to think that the crown of all desire , and the sum of all existence , was to read and get knowledge . Read ! read ! read ! I used to read at all possible times , and in all possible places ; up in bed till two or three in the morning—nothing daunted by once setting the bed on fire . Greatly indebted was I also to the bookstalls , where I have read a great deal , often folding a leaf in a book and returning the next day to continue the subject ; but sometimes the book waB gone , and then great was my grief ! When out of a situation I have often gone without a meal to purchase a book . Until I fell in love , and began to rhyme as a matter of consequence , I never fact
had the least predilection for poetry . In , I always eschewed it ; if I ever met with any I instantly skipped it over , and passed on as one does with the description of scenery , &c , in a novel . I always loved the birds and flowers , the woods and the stars ; I felt delight in being alone in a summer wood , with songlikeaspirit in the trees , and the golden sun burstsglinting through the verdurous roof , and was conscious of a mysterious creeping of the blood and tingling of the nerves , when standing alone in the starry midnight , as in God ' s own presence-chamber . But until I began to rhyme I cared nothing for written ^ poetry ; the first verses I ever made were upon ' Hope , * when I was utterly hopeless ; and after I had be « un I never ceased for about four years , at the end of which time I rushed into print . "
•• As an errand boy , " he says , "I had of course many hardships to undergo , and to bear with much tyranny ; and that led me into reasoning upon men and things , the causes of misery , the anomalies of oursocietary state , politics , &c . ; and the circle of my being rapidly outsurged ! New power came to me with all that 1 saw , and thought , and read . I studied political works , such as Paine , Volnev . Ilowitt . Louis Blanc , &c , which gave me another
element to mould into my verse , though I am convinced that a poet must sacrifice much if he write party political poetry . His politics must be above the pinnacle of party zeal ; the poliiica of eternal truth , right , and justice . He must not waste a life on what to-morrow may prove to have been merely the question of a day . The French Revolution of 1818 had the greatest effect on me of any circumstance connected with my own life . It was scarred , and bloodburnt into the very core of my being . "
Whoever has read this account of the author , will read the Voices of Freedom with interest , and will understand its defects , which are peculiarly the defects to be anticipated from such an education . Quitting , however , the biographical point of view lor the critical , we would assure tho young poet , that , although his history explains the fierceness and rant of the political poems , he is doing hurt to himself and to the cause he espouses by allowing indignation to overwhelm truth . Vehemence is not Force . The rant about tyrants and slaves , and about those martyrs who fell only on one side of the barricades , should be loft to those
" orators " who , not having ideas , are forced to thunder in graiul phrases-. Ther « is wrong enough done upon thin earth to feed the indignation of any poet , moralist , or orator ; but to pass beside tho crying evil , and waste your breath hi shouting that we on this side are the pure , patriotic , virtuous , suffering Many ( all our geese being swans ) , while they on the other wide are the bloated , pampered Tyrants whose swans are geese , is to damage our cause , and be unfaithful to our own purpose . (« erald Massey has something too much of this fever of the ao-called " political poets ; " and accord-
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May 3 , 1851 . ] ^^ fLeafrlt * 417 . ¦ . - ¦ — " —————^ - ^—^* -m ¦ — i^—i—i— .
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Leader (1850-1860), May 3, 1851, page 417, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1881/page/13/
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