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Here again we catch a glimpse of AX INDIAN WARRIOR . " < The Elk that stands at bay' was a remarkably fine , well-made follow , of about forty , with a chest like a buffalo bull . I persuaded him , in exchange for powder and paint , to part with his wardrobe , adorned with paintings of his most remarkable feats : and through the interpreter I made him describe the battles , which lie did in the most animated manner , with a great deal of very clever pantomimic action , creeping on his knees through the lodge , when he wanted to show how he stole unawares on his enemies ; and then again drawing himself up to . his full height , with the air of a prince , to show how he behaved when taken prisoner . He gave me an account of a Chippeway lie had scalped some five weeks before . His leg had been broken , and he lay perfectly helpless in the prairie , his friends having lef t him . He was perfectly unmoved when his enemy approached , but when he felt the knife round his top-knot , he shrank from it , which the Elk said was a pity , as otherwise he had shown himself a brave warrior . On inquiring whether he lived after being scalped , he said , ' Xo ; for that before he left him he passed his knife into his heart ; ' most likely quite slowly , and taunting him the whole time . " Innocence of savage life ! O Rousseau ! Mr . Sullivan will not even admit tliat the savages are " free . " " The cant about the trammels of civilization , and the perfect liberty and independence of the savage in his native state , roaming where helisteth , is all humbug ; nobody , in reality , has less liberty than the savage Indian . He cannot say , This country and manner of life does not suit me ; I will go and live elsewhere . The instant he sets his foot out of his own country , he knows he will be scalped . His position realizes to the letter— ' In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread . ' His every moment is taken up by his exertions to procure food . The laws even of the society he exists in render him anything but a free agent . Witness the young warrior whose lodge was slit up on a cold winter ' s night , and his gun broken , because he had hunted without leave —( game laws , with a vengeance ) . The more civilized and enlightened a country becomes , the greater liberty of
thought and action its inhabitants enjoy . The honest labourer or sweeper of crossings in London has more real freedom than the proudest chief that ever hunted buffalo on the priarie . " As a set-off , however , let us mention the fact , that no one having tasted of this Indian life returns to civilization . There is something more in life than comforts or the " British Constitution ; " some more energetic form of life can be lived than that of our miserable prejudice-cramped civilization , which did we not hold it as a mere transition stage to a higher life , we should call a wretched failure . From the anecdotes he relates , we select two , sufficiently suggestive : —
A TEXAN DUEL . " St . Louis is famous for a duel that took place there some time ago . A regular fighting man and bully insulted a young man , and challenged him to fight : the novice refused to fight , except in a perfectly dark room , which was agreed to . The two men were put into a ( lark room , armed with bowie knives and revolvers , and the seconds were not to open the door for half-an-hour . At the end of that time they did so , and found the young man sitting at one end of the room smoking his pipe , and the body of his antagonist lying on the middle of the floor , with the bead completely severed from the body and placed on it , so as to face the door ! The young nuin said they had followed each other about in the dark for some time without meeting , at length he drew himself up in a corner , quite close to the wall , and judging of his opponent ' s approach by his breathing , made a blow at him , and killed him on the spot . "
The second conies in timely to support Mrs . Stowe ' s painful story of Uncle Tom ' s Cabin , ( a book we should have reviewed weeks ago , but that its excessive painfulness prevented our reading it through . ) " I heard a very painful case that happened at Memphis , some short time before I was there . It i . s only a particular instance . of cruelty which might , I have no doubt , be multiplied a dozen times , and which must continually take place when there ; is no law ( not even a ' Martin's Act' ) to protect the Negro from the passion and spite of his owner . A . slave dealer bought a slave from a plantation in Kentucky ; tho man was a first-rute mechanic and blacksmith , and his master only parted with him because In ; was ' hard up , ' with the proviso that his wife , to whom Jie was much attached , should not lie separated from him . Tho . sum paid for him
was 1000 dollars—200 / . after the sale ; the slaves were taken as usual to the gaol to be lodged for the night ., the Negro being satisfied by the promise that his wife should accompany him the . next day . The following morning , however , when the gang of slaves were brought , out , chained two and two together by their wrists , preparatory to commencing their journey , the blacksmith looked in vain for his wife , and on inquiring when ; she was , the slave-driver laughed at him , and said : ' Oh ! yovi don't suppose 1 urn going to drag your wife about to please you , do you ? that , was only a blind to get , you from your master . ' The slave said nothing , but soon alter he drew his chain companion to where there was a hatchet , and taking it , up in his left , hand , which was free , he deliberately chopped oil" his right hand ut the wrist , and holding up the stump to the slave-driver , said : ' There , you gave JOOO dollars for me , yesterday , what , will you get now r "
" This ease created rather a . feeling even in Kentucky , and a subscription was got up to buy the Negro back , and restore him to bis wife ; but the demon in human shape , his master , refused to part with him at , any price , saying , ' That he would not lose his revenge for having been made such a fool of , for ten thousand dollars ; that us 1 , 1 m man chose to cut his own hand oil " , lie should leurn to pick cotton with the , other , and lie would lake care he lived long enough to repent of what he had done . ' There was no law to interfere , not even to control bis brutality , and in a few days the slave was inarched oil ' south , (" an anything much worse be instanced in the most cruel days of Home and her emperors ? Tho sufferings even of Catiline ' s slaves that , he chained up to the necks in his fish-ponds to l > e devoured piecemeal by lampreys , wen ; of shorter duration than thq suflerings of this man . " We lire dinning very enpncionsly into these p ;» geH , which abound ia extrnctable matter , and munt whvvvo Heveral passages for future use . Here w Hoim'thim' tliut will urreHt the eye of all male readers : —
HAVANA CKJAKM . " Tim Havana \ h , par excellence , the paradise of smokers ; the climate and the modo of lilu both induce a desire for tho fragrant weed ; and then , such tobacco
I think nobody who has not smoked a cigar just made of the best tobacco , can hav an idea of what a really perfect cigar is . In England we never see the tobae / that is smoked by the luxurious Creoles of the Havana . The retail shops which ° by paying high , get the pick of the market , select a certain number of the best leaves , which they roll up and sell to their regular customers every day , as they ar rolled . They are roughly made , and probably would not sell in England . A vegular smoker will consume , perhaps , twenty or thirty a-day , but they are all fresh what we call a fi ne old cigar , a Cuban would not smoke . He either buys them day by day , as they are made , or else he buys a good batch when he gets a chance , and keeps them in air-tight packets of twelve , or twenty , or whatever his daily ' . sumption may be , so consuming one packet every day . The best cigar I ever smoked before or since , was one given me by Baron Rothschild ' s agent , at a party at his house ; it was a rough-pressed one , called a ' vecquero , ' and was made of on e leaf , with no wrapper . Certainly a cigar is the most fascinating shape for the consumption of tobacco .
" The best tobacco is only grown in a very small district , called the Vuelta de Abajo , on the north side of the island ; it is a very variable crop , and the qualities and flavour of different seasons vary as much as the vintages of Burgund y . The season of 1851 produced the most abundant and finest flavoured crop that has been known in the island for some time . Though , undoubtedly , the best tobacco is grown in the island of Cuba , and the best cigars made at the Havana , yet such is the demand at present in Europe for the real Havanas ,. that all the sickly plants and damaged leaves that formerly were thrown aside are now manufactured , and I have bought cigars there quite as bad as any British cabbage that one could buy for a half-penny in an English pot-house : moreover , a great quantity of tobacco is
imported into the Havana from Virginia , and manufactured there , and as twice the number of cigars are exported than the island produces tobacco enough to manufacture , it follows , that ( omitting the great number smoked in Cuba itself , which are all genuine ) at least one-half of the cigars sold in Europe as real Havanas , and which do actually come from thence , are made of American tobacco , which , being packed in cases , goes through the same process as the tobacco of which our connoisseurs profess such a contempt when made into our British cigars . In London or Liverpool there is only o ne reason why the British manufactured cigar should not be as good as the same tobacco manufactured where it is grown , namel y , that from being tightly packed in casks , it has to be soaked before it can be rendered soft enough to be rolled into a smokable shape , and this is supposed to
affect its flavour ; but I think there is a great deal of imagination and fancy on the subject . I am not sure that , if I were offered an average Havana , and a good British cigar , I should select the former . " I went continually to the cigar manufacturers during my stay at the Havana fifty or perhaps a hundred men are seated at long tables under sheds , each with a heap of rough tobacco leaves before him , and by his side a few finer leaves that have been picked out , moistened and ironed ; these are what they call wrappers , and upon the fineness of the wrapper , its colour and freedom from fibres or veins , and not upon the quality of the interior tobacco , depends the appearance and value of the cigar in the European market . The workman takes a number of leaves from the rough heap—instinct seems to direct him how many—and with two or three rolls between the palms of his hands and the table , forms them into the shape and
size required : he then lays the wrapper on the table , and with one roll finishes the cigar , all except the end , which he twiddles round to a point in about a second . This is the most difficult part of the business , and it is very seldom that one sees n very good point : there is only only one man who they say can make a perfect one , and he is employed by Cabanas ; his wages are very high . The cigars made out of the same tobacco arc given to different men , who sort them into three equal batches , Primeras , Segundiis , Terceras , or first , second , and third qualities , and in this they are guided entirely of course by the neatness of the rolling , or the fineness and colour of the wrapper . The price of ordinary-sized cigars for the London market would be , Primera , 25 dollars , 5 Z . per thousand ; second quality , 18 dollars , or about 3 / . lO . v . per thousand ; third quality , 15 dollars , about 31 . per thousand ; now the third quality is iust exactly the same tobacco as the other two ; it is only the outfine texture is
side wrapper that is at all inferior , the advantage of this being of a , that it burns truer . Those for high-priced regalias for the London market , wliicli arc as high as from 120 to 200 dollars per thousand , are selected with great cave us regards colour , texture , and freedom from veins and fibres . I went to sec a case of some thousand * that were going- home to the Great Exhibition ; they were manufactured by Patagras , one of tho first manufacturers ; they were selcctw 1 wi > tlio greatest care , and most beautifully made of all shapes and sizes , by uillereii wooden models . They had cost the manufacturers from three to four nun ( lr ( , ' dollars a thousand , but barring the wrappers , the tobacco was no bettor than t ^ which was used for much cheaper ones . The pale cigars one sees with white sj )« r - in them , have a wrapper made of the outside leaf of the tobacco p lant , wlncU w j , nearest the ground , has been blanched by the moisture and the smi , and lost a ^ deal of its flavourThe lant ; itself rather resembles a cabbage . "
. p In parting with Mr . Sullivan , we are tempted to correet an error ic Iuih fallen into in correcting " a popular error . " " By the way , it is a popular error to suppose ; the ( iorgon ' s head was u "'' . '"" 'j ^ on the contrary , it was the very quintessence of beauty , —a lovely face at w . "' ' ^^ gazer was amazed and fascinated , and which caused his destruction by Ji >» r m leasant sensation than that of fear . "
p I I ' M .-. Sullivan Iimh seen any easts of the Cordon ' * bead , lie w i ' ^ member , tlmf ; besiden the terrible beauty of that culm re < . ulnrlaco , •¦« \ h the terror of its Nerpent-locLs , which would be quite Hullicient u > duce tho effect . An agreeable sensation is the vory last it would pro "
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SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON . Discussions on ' Philosophy and ' 1 / itnuiluro , lUucutiou and University UcJ ' " > ' "'¦ , ' Liifrom the l' ! dhif > iin // i Review , coirreleil , vindicated , and enlar ^ ' ' m nolcH i ( , ()_ dices . I 5 y JSir Will . Hamilton , Hurt . hont fiiiii ^ A mono the remnrliJiUe minds of this ntfo , Sir William Hamilton ^ bo ^ ^ loreinoHf rank ; and it \ h owing to the general discredit into \\ 'int . - lf , . physics have deservedly fallen , that hit * name \ h not mcenHantiy n ¦¦ . kvVn for tlioHo who , like ourselves regard Mefapl . VHieH at the V ™* - ^ hh nothing more than intellectual gyninaHticH ( and Plato ' » """[ J ' , y H <> HM , yH , tl » at Philosophy is for the mind what UymmmticH jh lor l . '" / tfir thai , our hereNy lian Him whiold of a grout name ) , the wrl 1 ' !^ ,, uito William liavo Binimliir iancinution : lay vaat and various erutuuuj ,
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904 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 18, 1852, page 904, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1952/page/20/
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