SOMA AND PSYCHE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "RAIN ON THE ROOF." SOMA. WE are traveling together A long way, O my soul! So thick the whirled years roll That I recollect not whether But this I surely know: We shall break this wondrous tether- All this, and more, O say, Soul, say! PSYCHE. As the moon is dead and dark When the sun is up ablaze, So shall thou be cold and stark When I burn in glory's rays. On the other side of death There, I know, is gorgeous light; For on this side glimmereth Hope's much starlight, clear and bright. There is beauty! there is love! There is immortality! There is bliss! But life above Is for thee a mystery. Ear of earth and eye of clay Can not hear and can not see; I shall go, and thou shalt stay! LIGHT BEYOND. BY AUGUSTA MOORE. WEARILY, drearily roll the years along; Life is but a heavy load, Sing its joys who may; Dark its tear-stained way. Fearfully, doubtfully, through the falling tears, Onward strain our longing eyes toward the coming years; Hope, with her beguiling voice, Harmlessly, cheerlessly, let her whispers fall; Having learned their teaching, let us doubt them all; Bright and gay as fair, All her words are mockery— Light as empty air. Steadily, dauntlessly pressing on our way, We at last shall hail the dawn of a brighter day. There is light beyond the cloud, And beyond the storm; High above its murky shroud Glows the sunshine warm. SUMMER NOON. BY J. PUMMILL. How silent sleeps the silvery lake! The birds, retired from noonday heat, The plowman from his toil repairs, The forest's cooling shade to woo, Where earth a fairer aspect wears, And heaven a calmer blue. Thus let ME seek the silent grove, Where rills sing sweetly to the trees, And roses, in their generous love, Give fragrance to the breeze. Reclining on some mossy seat, Let Contemplation be my friend : Say, is not summer's fervid heat Designed for some good end? Let no complaining mortal rail 'Gainst Him who made the earth and skies: This withering noon by One was sent SPRING. BY CARRIE M. CONGDON, I HEAR a robin's note Upon the soft air float; I hear the gentle rustle Of spring-time's early breeze; More soft, more richly bright, For Spring, with all her sunshine, The blossoms fair will rise, And by each warbling brook. Yet weak, still weak, I lie; The sapphire of the sky, And spring-time's breezy freshness Call me to rise, in vain ; For I am weak and weary, And bound by restless pain. TIME'S CHANGES. THE rolling wheel, that often runneth round, And drizzling drops, that often do rebound, VOL. XVII.-15 TH GRAZIER LIFE IN NEW GRANADA. HE believers in "manifest destiny" tell us that the day is not far in the future when the stars and stripes will float in triumph over every part of America, north and south; and all the nations of the western continent will be united in one great confederation, moved by one impulse and governed by one head. We do not profess to believe in all this. In fact, our confederation seems already, as it is, full large, and, so far as governing is concerned, it would, we fancy, require a head much larger and better developed than any which has heretofore come under the notice of our most indefatigable phrenologists, to govern peacefully, profitably, and harmoniously, the people of two continents, three zones, and half a dozen languages, or dialects. Nevertheless, this is an age of wonder, and it behooves us to exercise caution, not in believing, but in disbelieving. He that has the largest amount of faith is like to be called the greatest prophet among us; while the doubter, especially the doubter in "manifest destiny," is smiled down as an "old fogy." Mr. Holton, a recent American traveler in New Granada, has done his country service, by the publication of an interesting volume, detailing his observations on the botany, geology, and topography of that state, as well as the manners, and customs, and modes of life of the people. We propose to make a few extracts from his volume,* and must preface these by stating that the author is a zealous botanist, whose attention, to use his own words, while pursuing his botanical researches, "was directed more particularly to New Granada, by the scantiness of botanical information on a region so profusely rich in plants." In fulfillment of a vehement desire to fill this void in botanical knowledge, and to see with his own eyes the region and people of a perpetual summer, he went to New Granada. The result of his twenty months' tour is an interesting volume of some six hundred pages. The first necessity of a traveler in New Granada Mr. Holton thinks to be a new name—one, namely, which the natives of those parts shall be able to pronounce. Holton was always a mystery to them; and Isaac was worse. Those of our readers who may at some future time journey Bogota-ward may take warning, and upon entering the New Granadian territory, take unto them- | cli-selves some such easily pronounced name as Esteban Hemengildo, or Joaquin Antonio, or Manuel Elaterio. Having settled this needful preliminary, our traveler, botanizing fervently all the while, managed amid diverse adventures, some amusing to writer as well as reader, some amusing chiefly to the listener-to reach Cartago-a place of which the houses are large and poorly furnished, the streets half deserted, the men lazy, the young ladies pretty, the old ladies-with due respect be it said-ugly, and the fleas-Mr. Holton devotes a page to the Cartagonian fleas; and although the subject is not the fittest for these pages, yet as these fleas seem to have been the liveliest and most remarkable inhabitants of the place, we must extract part of this page. Well, if we are to include South America in the confederation, it is necessary for us to make ourselves better acquainted with its country, mate, and people than we have heretofore been. To a people like the Americans, indeed, the study of geography, taking the word in its most extended sense, should be as pleasant as it is useful. We do not know, indeed, what moment some outof-the-way spot, but yesterday heard of for the first time, shall be nationally ours. We can not tell how soon a new people will enroll themselves under our banner. Let us observe, parenthetically, and with all proper respect to the most ultra annexationist, that the aforementioned operation, of enrollment, should be, by all means, spontaneous on the part of the enrollers. But to the subject of our present article, which we beg the conservative reader to believe, has really nothing to do with fillibusterism. New Granada is one of the most flourishing of the South American states. It is a state concerning which much more should be known to Americans than has been heretofore; and this because its people seem susceptible of improvement, of a higher stage of Civilization than they have yet attained to; and, fillibustering aside, we firmly, believe it to be the mission of the people of the United States, by means of their civil and commercial relations, to spread abroad among our neighbor nations on the continent that enlightened civilization which has profited us so much. "I can not take leave of Cartago," says Mr. Holton, "without mentioning the most numerous and by far the most active part of its population. The flea is a beautiful object when secured in balsam between two plates of glass for the microscope. Trained to drag a chain or to draw a carriage, as these little hexapods are said to have been, they are worthy the attention of the curious. But to all these good qualities there are two drawbacks. One is his nullibiquity—nirgen/lheit, our *New Granada: Twenty Months in the Andes. By Isaac F. Holton. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1856. German cousins would call it-his nowhereness when you put your finger on him; and the other is the hardness of his cuirass. It would take me till night to tell you of all the adventures which have taught me the extent of these qualities. One time I will 'put my finger on him' really. I crush him, ruin him, pulverize him, and take up my finger to feast my eyes on his mangled carcass, when, lo! he bounds off eight hundred times his own length, and I can almost fancy a tiny, derisive laugh at the idea of his getting a broken leg or sprained ankle so easily. "Another time I wet my finger before I put it on him. He shall not fool me so. I rub him till I have broken every bone in his body, and almost the bones of my finger besides. I stop and deliberate whether I will let him up yet. No; I will make assurance doubly sure by giving him one more crushing. Then I take my finger off, and lo! he is not there! But no mortal can stave off his fate; so I find recorded in my diary, 'Paila, June 9, 1853. Had a capital day. Dreamed of home last night; had recent beef for dinner; got a new plant; caught a butterfly, and killed a flea. The flea that died that day doubtless met an accidental death; but at Cartago I was, by incessant practice, initiated into the art of flea-catching. I killed dozens of them. It was almost worth a journey there. Once I went down to La Vieja to bathe. I turned my clothes inside out, and with unpitying eye saw no less than six ejected far from any house, to take their chances of the weather. All the way home I was sole tenant of my clothes." tory, and, till lately, it has been in dead hands, 'manos muertas,' from which, I suppose, comes the French word mortmain. It was fixed that the stewardship of the land should descend, on nearly the same principles that a crown does, from his eldest son downward. None of his descendants, as a steward-mayordomo-had power to sell or divide. Nor was it a mere honor. The estate was to yield so many masses per annum, at $1.60 each, and all that the property yielded over this was the steward's. This excess of revenue became at length so great that the stipulated sum to go for masses came to be considered as a sort of tax, and the steward, as the owner, subject only to this irrevocable annual payment. "This arrangement was designed to keep this estate, as large as a county, perpetually undivided and in the hands of one man. Republicanism might protest against the arrangement, but it would be sacrilege to change it. “But I have not told all. A previous Sanmartin, the grandfather of him that deeded this domain to the use of the toasted inmates of purgatory, and for the benefit of the priests, pledged it and incumbered it with ten masses a year for the same benevolent object. The person who was to receive the $16 per annum was the capellan, and the incumbrance was a capellania. These words have the same basis as chaplain and chaplaincy, but the meaning is quite different. If the capellan has too many masses to say, he may hire another to say them, and if he can hire them for less than $16, he may put the balance in his pocket. Nay, the capellan need not be a priest, and a capellania is a piece of property as well as a stewardship. And the Sanmartin who originated the mayorazgo, as the right of stewardship is called, settled on his other son a capellania of $160, which has come somehow into the hands of my friend Ramon Gonzalez.” Enough of fleas. Let us leave Cartago, and journey toward the grazing region. After sundry adventures "by flood and field,” our traveler arrives at a cattle farm. "The hacienda extends from Las Canas river to the river Murillo. The width is seven miles. Its length, from the Cauca to the summit of the Quindio, may be thirty miles, and the whole can not contain less than five hundred square miles, and may well be a thousand. During the good old regime of tyranny, when prosperity was the lot of the rich, and unrequited labor that of the poor, the hacienda is said to have boasted thirty-six thousand cows and eight hundred mares; now the mares are greatly re-self," if we may use the term, considerably. duced in number, and the cows can not be a tithe of what they were." This happens to be one of the estates in ancient times mortgaged to departed souls, and-such is the selfishness of living man-in consequence prospering very poorly. "Two hundred years ago a dying Sanmartin bequeathed this property to the souls in purga There are quite a number of houses, of course, upon so vast an estate. Our traveler, ever welcome among the country people, and especially the ladies—one of these said to him that "if he were only a Christian [Catholic] he would be the greatest saint she had ever seen"-found pleasant accommodations, and seems to have "spread him "The house, as usual, contains no inner doors, though there may be said to be two rooms and a passage. Two beds are located in the passage, and the inner room, that serves us much for sitting-room and study by day, is the principal dormitory at night. My hammock requires more space. I attach one cord to the roof in the inner room, and the other passes out at the top of the outer door, and is fastened to a post of the piazza; so I occupy the whole house, though bodily I sleep alone in the outer room, or sala. cocoon. "The children's beds were mere rugs to lie on, and a blanket apiece to wrap themselves in like a The motherly Clementina, the oldest girl, wound up the little boy with her. Of course, they denude themselves utterly before wrapping up. I had the impudence to ask the children if the young ladies did the same, and they said yes. The females eat at the table after we leave it. I have managed to eat with them once or twice; but they prefer that I should be at the first table. "The chief exports of this tract are young bulls, young horses, and hogs. The latter are raised by the inhabitants of the river forest, the others by the family. Some of the tenants owe personal service for rent. This is generally rendered on Friday and Saturday, and most of it performed on horseback. The others pay a ground-rent of from $1.60 to $3.20 per annum All have their ecstancias, or fields, in the forest. They contain from half an acre to two acres, inclosed by an elliptical or circular fence of split guaduas. Those who live in the open lands have quite a distance to go to their fields; but as they work only occasionally it makes little difference. "Cacao orchards-cacaguales-are also found in the forest; but they are not numerous. People have hardly forethought enough to plant any thing that will be so slow in yielding returns. The platanal yields ripe fruit in about a year, and may be kept up indefinitely; but when the fence is thoroughly rotted down, they prefer beginning in a new place. "A few bags are made from cabuya, and one man braids jipijapa hats; but nothing probably is made and sold off the hacienda, and all articles of clothing are imported, not excepting alpargates even." Come we now to the actual business of the grazier the taking care of the horses and cattle, or rather, as they would say, of "the mares and cows," these being the only kind taken into account as stock. Of course, the animals roam at will, and in a half-wild state, about the plains and meadows of the estate; each herd, however, having its peculiar haunts. The business of the grazier is to keep the run of his herd; to drive them into corral about once a week, and examine each individual, applying remedies to those who are ailing, and marking, by ear-mark or brand, those who have not previously undergone that operation. The outfit of a vaquero, or herdsman, is a very simple affair. The horse itself is highly trained, easily guided, and perfectly self-possessed and gentle. The bridle is home-made, and of raw hide. The bit is a most formidable affair, with which a man could almost break a horse's jaw. It is no wonder that the poor beast turns at the slightest movement of the hand, and stops short in the midst of a gallop, almost as though shot. The "The saddle is a study for an anatomist. cojinetes are a cover over the whole, made of a leather resembling buckskin. It is often padded, and embroidered with silk. It has two huge pockets, each capable of containing a pair of shoes, or $200 in silver. Removing the cojinetes, we come to a surface of hard leather-the coraza. This takes off under it you see three straps of raw-hide passing over the saddle in three distinct directions, and uniting in a ring on each side. The girth consists of twisted rawhide, passing several times from the ring on the off-side to another ring. It is adjusted by passing a thong four times between this last ring and the one on the near side. This thong is drawn tight enough, and tied in a peculiar knot. Under the girth-straps is yet a third cover, which takes off, and leaves the saddle a skeleton of wood and iron, padded on the under side. Across the middle of this skeleton-saddle-tree (fuste)-passes a strong strap, fastened in the center by a string of leather passing many times through the strap and the saddle-tree, sewing them together. Both ends of the strap are pierced with holes to buckle on the stirrups. The stirrup-leathers are imported. The best stirrups are the slipper form of brass or wood. Common stirrups de aro-are used, or even a stick of wood supported by two strings. The crupper is like ours; but, besides this, the vaquero's saddle should have an arretranca to enable the horse to hold back without straining the girth. Beneath the saddle, and to protect it and the horse, is placed a sudadero; it is a mat of rushes, a rug, or, at worst, an old sack folded. Saddle, bridle, sudadero, stirrups, and halterjaquima-constitute a montura. A traveler here ought always to own his montura, and watch it well. Horses, cows, and goats will eat his sudadero, and dogs will eat all the rest but the tanned leather, wood, and iron; of these last, including the contents of the cojinetes, the peons will rob him; his clothes are victimized by the washwomen, and his skin by musketoes, fleas, and niguas. Happy is he if he can save his bones and his conscience-particularly the latter-undamaged, and, leaving his cash and much of his flesh, return to his native land with his credit and his constitution." All being mounted, the party sally forth in search of the herd of horses. The object is to drive the entire herd into a corral, where they can be kept till all are examined. The horses are surrounded, and gradually driven toward the corral's mouth. But some of the more spirited animals, seeing the prison near, attempt an escape; whereupon ensues a race, and a battle sometimes, the lasso generally, however, bringing the fugitive to his senses. Mr. Holton says: "I think the idea we have of skill in the use of the lasso is exaggerated. Even in the corral it is well to catch five horses at ten throws. One assured me that one hundred throws would catch eighty or ninety horses. The next six throws caught but one. Still, the noose and the lash, the bow and the gun, are the four instruments by which man holds his title to rule over the animal world. "The moment a broken horse finds his head is your aim, he tries to mingle it with others, and holds it particularly near the fence. As you approach he at length starts and runs with all his might for the other side of the corral. You throw the noose as he is going from you. The moment it touches his neck he stops short. He is as tame as a girl caught in blind-man's-buff. A colt, on the other hand, when he finds you are aiming at him, is wrought to desperation. When caught, he runs and chokes himself in the noose; he flounces and throws himself on the ground, but all in vain. The hand of man, ever a terror to him, must approach his throat before his stertorous breathing, like that of a man in a fit, can be relieved. "The horses are shut in with bars-trancasof gradua, and we sally forth in long procession for cows. The tame band are near in the open plain. With a long circuit we get ready to slip between them and the forest. Examine girths,, says Christobal, who has command. Every head is bent down. Some dismount. All ready! The head of the column dashes forward at a gallop, and soon a line of some thirty horsemen, at distances from three to ten rods apart, extends between the herd and their wonted refuge. We advance, and the cows, with a general lowing, proceed peaceably but rapidly in the desired direction. "Suddenly a cow, with head erect, and tail horizontal and rigid, breaks our line at full gallop for the thicket. Two horsemen start in pursuit, and she soon finds a noose about her head. When she has run the length the guasca permits, her head can go no further, and her body is unwilling to stop. She falls, and is not disposed to rise. One vaquero approaches, carefully keeping out of the circle of which the tightened guasca is the radius and his companion the center. Whirling the end of his own guasca round and round suddenly, he brings it down like a slung-shot upon the poor rebel, and she starts to her feet. Still she will not move one step. He raises his foot, and drags his cruel spur along her back. She darts forward, and the horse of her leader, the moment he feels the guasca slacken, starts on, keeping one eye upon the movements of the After zigzagging and floundering awhile, she waxes wroth, and assumes the aggressive upon her leader. Now she finds the other lasso about her horns, and each horseman keeps her from reaching the other. I have heard of a cow becoming so enraged as to drop down dead on the spot. Bulls are never so utterly furious. cow. "Meanwhile the herd, lowing and running, enter the corral, and move round and round, like a whirlpool filled with horns. Last comes the captive; but how shall we liberate her? He that takes a wolf by the ears should always consider first how he will fare when he quits his hold. To loose a cow takes more time than to catch her. A third man throws his noose so that it lays partly on her back and partly on the ground behind her. If she does not move of her own accord, he catches her by the tail and pulls. Either in yielding or resisting, she steps both feet over the guasca. It might then be drawn tight around the middle of her body. Instead of this, it is slipped off behind, and tightened about her heels, which are pulled back, and, with a slight push or pull, she falls. She is now helpless. I have seen a horse drag a cow in this manner by the heels into or out of a yard. Her head is safely approached, the lassos removed from it, and the horseman remounts. The slackened guasca permits her to bring her feet forward, and in separating them she opens the lasso. She springs upon her feet, reflects a second, makes a dash at a horseman, who eludes her. Shaking her horns, as if blaspheming in her heart, she runs off to the herd, who are thus taught that the way of the transgressor is hard. "Now begins the business of the day. What calf has not his ear-mark? What youngster of two months has not his little brand on his cheek? What yearling not branded for life on his side? A lasso on his head, another on his heels. A fire is burning by the division fence, and the irons are hot. "Now comes the turn of the horses. They are subject to many more infirmities than the cows, are of more value per head, and, besides, |