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THE COMPLETE PG EDITION OF THE WORKS OF WINSTON CHURCHILL

By Winston Churchill

[The Author is the American Winston Churchill not the British]



CONTENTS:

The Crossing
The Dwelling Place of Light
Mr. Crewe's Career
A Far Country
Coniston
The Inside of the Cup
Richard Carvel
A Modern Chronicle
The Celebrity
The Crisis
Dr. Jonathan (Play)
A Traveller in Wartime
An Essay on the American Contribution and the Democratic Idea





THE CROSSING

By Winston Churchill



CONTENTS

BOOK I. THE BORDERLAND

I. THE BLUE WALL
II. WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS
III. CHARLESTOWN
IV. TEMPLE BOW
V. CRAM'S HELL
VI. MAN PROPOSES, BUT GOD DISPOSES
VII. IN SIGHT OF THE BLUE WALL ONCE MORE
VIII. THE NOLLICHUCKY TRACE
IX. ON THE WILDERNESS TRAIL
X. HARRODSTOWN
XI. FRAGMENTARY
XII. THE CAMPAIGN BEGINS
XIII. KASKASKIA
XIV. HOW THE KASKASKIANS WERE MADE CITIZENS
XV. DAYS OF TRIAL
XVI. DAVY GOES TO CAHOKIA
XVII. THE SACRIFICE
XVIII. "AN' YE HAD BEEN WHERE I HAD BEEN"
XIX. THE HAIR BUYER TRAPPED
XX. THE CAMPAIGN ENDS


BOOK II. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

I. IN THE CABIN
II. "THE BEGGARS ARE COME TO TOWN"
III. WE GO TO DANVILLE
IV. I CROSS THE MOUNTAINS ONCE MORE
V. I MEET AN OLD BEDFELLOW
VI. THE WIDOW BROWN'S
VII. I MEET A HERO
VIII. TO ST. LOUIS
IX. "CHERCHEZ LA FEMME"
X. THE KEEL BOAT
XI. THE STRANGE CITY
XII. LES ISLES
XIII. MONSIEUR AUGUSTE ENTRAPPED
XIV. RETRIBUTION


BOOK III. LOUISIANA

I. THE RIGHTS OF MAN
II. THE HOUSE ABOVE THE FALLS
III. LOUISVILLE CELEBRATES
IV. OF A SUDDEN RESOLUTION
V. THE HOUSE OF THE HONEYCOMBED TILES
VI. MADAME LA VICOMTESSE
VII. THE DISPOSAL OF THE SIEUR DE ST. GRE
VIII. AT LAMARQUE'S
IX. MONSIEUR LE BARON
X. THE SCOURGE
XI. "IN THE MIDST OF LIFE"
XII. VISIONS, AND AN AWAKENINGS
XIII. A MYSTERY
XIV. "TO UNPATHED WATERS, UNDREAMED SHORES"
XV. AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A MAN

AFTERWORD



THE CROSSING

BOOK I

THE BORDERLAND


CHAPTER I

THE BLUE WALL

I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in the
evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters.
There, on the borders of a creek that runs into the Yadkin River, in a
cabin that was chinked with red mud, I came into the world a subject of
King George the Third, in that part of his realm known as the province of
North Carolina.

The cabin reeked of corn-pone and bacon, and the odor of pelts. It had
two shakedowns, on one of which I slept under a bearskin. A rough stone
chimney was reared outside, and the fireplace was as long as my father
was tall. There was a crane in it, and a bake kettle; and over it great
buckhorns held my father's rifle when it was not in use. On other horns
hung jerked bear's meat and venison hams, and gourds for drinking cups,
and bags of seed, and my father's best hunting shirt; also, in a
neglected corner, several articles of woman's attire from pegs. These
once belonged to my mother. Among them was a gown of silk, of a fine,
faded pattern, over which I was wont to speculate. The women at the
Cross-Roads, twelve miles away, were dressed in coarse butternut wool and
huge sunbonnets. But when I questioned my father on these matters he
would give me no answers.

My father was--how shall I say what he was? To this day I can only
surmise many things of him. He was a Scotchman born, and I know now that
he had a slight Scotch accent. At the time of which I write, my early
childhood, he was a frontiersman and hunter. I can see him now, with his
hunting shirt and leggings and moccasins; his powder horn, engraved with
wondrous scenes; his bullet pouch and tomahawk and hunting knife. He was
a tall, lean man with a strange, sad face. And he talked little save
when he drank too many "horns," as they were called in that country.
These lapses of my father's were a perpetual source of wonder to
me,--and, I must say, of delight. They occurred only when a passing
traveller who hit his fancy chanced that way, or, what was almost as
rare, a neighbor. Many a winter night I have lain awake under the skins,
listening to a flow of language that held me spellbound, though I
understood scarce a word of it.

"Virtuous and vicious every man must be,
Few in the extreme, but all in a degree."

The chance neighbor or traveller was no less struck with wonder. And
many the time have I heard the query, at the Cross-Roads and elsewhere,
"Whar Alec Trimble got his larnin'?"

The truth is, my father was an object of suspicion to the frontiersmen.
Even as a child I knew this, and resented it. He had brought me up in
solitude, and I was old for my age, learned in some things far beyond my
years, and ignorant of others I should have known. I loved the man
passionately. In the long winter evenings, when the howl of wolves and
"painters" rose as the wind lulled, he taught me to read from the Bible
and the "Pilgrim's Progress." I can see his long, slim fingers on the
page. They seemed but ill fitted for the life he led.

The love of rhythmic language was somehow born into me, and many's the
time I have held watch in the cabin day and night while my father was
away on his hunts, spelling out the verses that have since become part of
my life.

As I grew older I went with him into the mountains, often on his back;
and spent the nights in open camp with my little moccasins drying at the
blaze. So I learned to skin a bear, and fleece off the fat for oil with
my hunting knife; and cure a deerskin and follow a trail. At seven I
even shot the long rifle, with a rest. I learned to endure cold and
hunger and fatigue and to walk in silence over the mountains, my father
never saying a word for days at a spell. And often, when he opened his
mouth, it would be to recite a verse of Pope's in a way that moved me
strangely. For a poem is not a poem unless it be well spoken.

In the hot days of summer, over against the dark forest the bright green
of our little patch of Indian corn rippled in the wind. And towards
night I would often sit watching the deep blue of the mountain wall and
dream of the mysteries of the land that lay beyond. And by chance, one
evening as I sat thus, my father reading in the twilight, a man stood
before us. So silently had he come up the path leading from the brook
that we had not heard him. Presently my father looked up from his book,
but did not rise. As for me, I had been staring for some time in
astonishment, for he was a better-looking man than I had ever seen. He
wore a deerskin hunting shirt dyed black, but, in place of a coonskin cap
with the tail hanging down, a hat. His long rifle rested on the ground,
and he held a roan horse by the bridle.

"Howdy, neighbor?" said he.

I recall a fear that my father would not fancy him. In such cases he
would give a stranger food, and leave him to himself. My father's whims
were past understanding. But he got up.

"Good evening," said he.

The visitor looked a little surprised, as I had seen many do, at my
father's accent.

"Neighbor," said he, "kin you keep me over night?"

"Come in," said my father.

We sat down to our supper of corn and beans and venison, of all of which
our guest ate sparingly. He, too, was a silent man, and scarcely a word
was spoken during the meal. Several times he looked at me with such a
kindly expression in his blue eyes, a trace of a smile around his broad
mouth, that I wished he might stay with us always. But once, when my
father said something about Indians, the eyes grew hard as flint. It was
then I remarked, with a boy's wonder, that despite his dark hair he had
yellow eyebrows.

After supper the two men sat on the log step, while I set about the task
of skinning the deer my father had shot that day. Presently I felt a
heavy hand on my shoulder.

"What's your name, lad?" he said.

I told him Davy.

"Davy, I'll larn ye a trick worth a little time," said he, whipping out a
knife. In a trice the red carcass hung between the forked stakes, while
I stood with my mouth open. He turned to me and laughed gently.

"Some day you'll cross the mountains and skin twenty of an evening," he
said. "Ye'll make a woodsman sure. You've got the eye, and the hand."

This little piece of praise from him made me hot all over.

"Game rare?" said he to my father.

"None sae good, now," said my father.

"I reckon not. My cabin's on Beaver Creek some forty mile above, and
game's going there, too."

"Settlements," said my father. But presently, after a few whiffs of his
pipe, he added, "I hear fine things of this land across the mountains,
that the Indians call the Dark and Bluidy Ground."

"And well named," said the stranger.

"But a brave country," said my father, "and all tramped down with game.
I hear that Daniel Boone and others have gone into it and come back with
marvellous tales. They tell me Boone was there alone three months. He's
saething of a man. D'ye ken him?"

The ruddy face of the stranger grew ruddier still.

"My name's Boone," he said.

"What!" cried my father, "it wouldn't be Daniel?"

"You've guessed it, I reckon."

My father rose without a word, went into the cabin, and immediately
reappeared with a flask and a couple of gourds, one of which he handed to
our visitor.

"Tell me aboot it," said he.

That was the fairy tale of my childhood. Far into the night I lay on the
dewy grass listening to Mr. Boone's talk. It did not at first flow in a
steady stream, for he was not a garrulous man, but my father's questions
presently fired his enthusiasm. I recall but little of it, being so
small a lad, but I crept closer and closer until I could touch this
superior being who had been beyond the Wall. Marco Polo was no greater
wonder to the Venetians than Boone to me.

He spoke of leaving wife and children, and setting out for the Unknown
with other woodsmen. He told how, crossing over our blue western wall
into a valley beyond, they found a "Warrior's Path" through a gap across
another range, and so down into the fairest of promised lands. And as he
talked he lost himself in the tale of it, and the very quality of his
voice changed. He told of a land of wooded hill and pleasant vale, of
clear water running over limestone down to the great river beyond, the
Ohio--a land of glades, the fields of which were pied with flowers of
wondrous beauty, where roamed the buffalo in countless thousands, where
elk and deer abounded, and turkeys and feathered game, and bear in the
tall brakes of cane. And, simply, he told how, when the others had left
him, he stayed for three months roaming the hills alone with Nature
herself.

"But did you no' meet the Indians?" asked my father.

"I seed one fishing on a log once," said our visitor, laughing, "but he
fell into the water. I reckon he was drowned."

My father nodded comprehendingly,--even admiringly.

"And again!" said he.

"Wal," said Mr. Boone, "we fell in with a war party of Shawnees going
back to their lands north of the great river. The critters took away all
we had. It was hard," he added reflectively; "I had staked my fortune on
the venter, and we'd got enough skins to make us rich. But, neighbor,
there is land enough for you and me, as black and rich as Canaan."

"'The Lord is my shepherd,'" said my father, lapsing into verse. "'The
Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leadeth me into green
pastures, and beside still waters.'"

For a time they were silent, each wrapped in his own thought, while the
crickets chirped and the frogs sang. From the distant forest came the
mournful hoot of an owl.

"And you are going back?" asked my father, presently.

"Aye, that I am. There are many families on the Yadkin below going, too.
And you, neighbor, you might come with us. Davy is the boy that would
thrive in that country."

My father did not answer. It was late indeed when we lay down to rest,
and the night I spent between waking and dreaming of the wonderland
beyond the mountains, hoping against hope that my father would go. The
sun was just flooding the slopes when our guest arose to leave, and my
father bade him God-speed with a heartiness that was rare to him. But,
to my bitter regret, neither spoke of my father's going. Being a man of
understanding, Mr. Boone knew it were little use to press. He patted me
on the head.

"You're a wise lad, Davy," said he. "I hope we shall meet again."

He mounted his roan and rode away down the slope, waving his hand to us.
And it was with a heavy heart that I went to feed our white mare,
whinnying for food in the lean-to.



CHAPTER II

WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

And so our life went on the same, but yet not the same. For I had the
Land of Promise to dream of, and as I went about my tasks I conjured up
in my mind pictures of its beauty. You will forgive a backwoods
boy,--self-centred, for lack of wider interest, and with a little
imagination. Bear hunting with my father, and an occasional trip on the
white mare twelve miles to the Cross-Roads for salt and other
necessaries, were the only diversions to break the routine of my days.
But at the Cross-Roads, too, they were talking of Kaintuckee. For so the
Land was called, the Dark and Bloody Ground.

The next year came a war on the Frontier, waged by Lord Dunmore, Governor
of Virginia. Of this likewise I heard at the Cross-Roads, though few
from our part seemed to have gone to it. And I heard there, for rumors
spread over mountains, that men blazing in the new land were in danger,
and that my hero, Boone, was gone out to save them. But in the autumn
came tidings of a great battle far to the north, and of the Indians suing
for peace.

The next year came more tidings of a sort I did not understand. I
remember once bringing back from the Cross-Roads a crumpled newspaper,
which my father read again and again, and then folded up and put in his
pocket. He said nothing to me of these things. But the next time I went
to the Cross-Roads, the woman asked me:--

"Is your Pa for the Congress?"

"What's that?" said I.

"I reckon he ain't," said the woman, tartly. I recall her dimly, a
slattern creature in a loose gown and bare feet, wife of the storekeeper
and wagoner, with a swarm of urchins about her. They were all very
natural to me thus. And I remember a battle with one of these urchins in
the briers, an affair which did not add to the love of their family for
ours. There was no money in that country, and the store took our pelts
in exchange for what we needed from civilization. Once a month would I
load these pelts on the white mare, and make the journey by the path down
the creek. At times I met other settlers there, some of them not long
from Ireland, with the brogue still in their mouths. And again, I saw
the wagoner with his great canvas-covered wagon standing at the door,
ready to start for the town sixty miles away. 'Twas he brought the news
of this latest war.

One day I was surprised to see the wagoner riding up the path to our
cabin, crying out for my father, for he was a violent man. And a violent
scene followed. They remained for a long time within the house, and when
they came out the wagoner's face was red with rage. My father, too, was
angry, but no more talkative than usual.

"Ye say ye'll not help the Congress?" shouted the wagoner.

"I'll not," said my father.

"Ye'll live to rue this day, Alec Trimble," cried the man. "Ye may think
ye're too fine for the likes of us, but there's them in the settlement
that knows about ye."

With that he flung himself on his horse, and rode away. But the next
time I went to the Cross-Roads the woman drove me away with curses, and
called me an aristocrat. Wearily I tramped back the dozen miles up the
creek, beside the mare, carrying my pelts with me; stumbling on the
stones, and scratched by the dry briers. For it was autumn, the woods
all red and yellow against the green of the pines. I sat down beside the
old beaver dam to gather courage to tell my father. But he only smiled
bitterly when he heard it. Nor would he tell me what the word ARISTOCRAT
meant.

That winter we spent without bacon, and our salt gave out at Christmas.
It was at this season, if I remember rightly, that we had another
visitor. He arrived about nightfall one gray day, his horse jaded and
cut, and he was dressed all in wool, with a great coat wrapped about him,
and high boots. This made me stare at him. When my father drew back the
bolt of the door he, too, stared and fell back a step.

"Come in," said he.

"D'ye ken me, Alec?" said the man.

He was a tall, spare man like my father, a Scotchman, but his hair was in
a cue.

"Come in, Duncan," said my father, quietly. "Davy, run out for wood."

Loath as I was to go, I obeyed. As I came back dragging a log behind me
I heard them in argument, and in their talk there was much about the
Congress, and a woman named Flora Macdonald, and a British fleet sailing
southward.

"We'll have two thousand Highlanders and more to meet the fleet. And
ye'll sit at hame, in this hovel ye've made yeresel" (and he glanced
about disdainfully) "and no help the King?" He brought his fist down on
the pine boards.

"Ye did no help the King greatly at Culloden, Duncan," said my father,
dryly.

Our visitor did not answer at once.

"The Yankee Rebels 'll no help the House of Stuart," said he, presently.
"And Hanover's coom to stay. Are ye, too, a Rebel, Alec Ritchie?"

I remember wondering why he said RITCHIE.

"I'll no take a hand in this fight," answered my father.

And that was the end of it. The man left with scant ceremony, I guiding
him down the creek to the main trail. He did not open his mouth until I
parted with him.

"Puir Davy," said he, and rode away in the night, for the moon shone
through the clouds.

I remember these things, I suppose, because I had nothing else to think
about. And the names stuck in my memory, intensified by later events,
until I began to write a diary.

And now I come to my travels. As the spring drew on I had had a feeling
that we could not live thus forever, with no market for our pelts. And
one day my father said to me abruptly:--

"Davy, we'll be travelling."

"Where?" I asked.

"Ye'll ken soon enough," said he. "We'll go at crack o' day."

We went away in the wild dawn, leaving the cabin desolate. We loaded the
white mare with the pelts, and my father wore a woollen suit like that of
our Scotch visitor, which I had never seen before. He had clubbed his
hair. But, strangest of all, he carried in a small parcel the silk gown
that had been my mother's. We had scant other baggage.

We crossed the Yadkin at a ford, and climbing the hills to the south of
it we went down over stony traces, down and down, through rain and sun;
stopping at rude cabins or taverns, until we came into the valley of
another river. This I know now was the Catawba. My memories of that
ride are as misty as the spring weather in the mountains. But presently
the country began to open up into broad fields, some of these abandoned
to pines. And at last, splashing through the stiff red clay that was up
to the mare's fetlocks, we came to a place called Charlotte Town. What a
day that was for me! And how I gaped at the houses there, finer than any
I had ever dreamed of! That was my first sight of a town. And how I
listened open-mouthed to the gentlemen at the tavern! One I recall had
a fighting head with a lock awry, and a negro servant to wait on him, and
was the principal spokesman. He, too, was talking of war. The Cherokees
had risen on the western border. He was telling of the massacre of a
settlement, in no mild language.

"Sirs," he cried, "the British have stirred the redskins to this. Will
you sit here while women and children are scalped, and those devils" (he
called them worse names) "Stuart and Cameron go unpunished?"

My father got up from the corner where he sat, and stood beside the man.

"I ken Alec Cameron," said he.

The man looked at him with amazement.

"Ay?" said he, "I shouldn't think you'd own it. Damn him," he cried, "if
we catch him we'll skin him alive."

"I ken Cameron," my father repeated, "and I'll gang with you to skin him
alive."

The man seized his hand and wrung it.

"But first I must be in Charlestown," said my father.

The next morning we sold our pelts. And though the mare was tired, we
pushed southward, I behind the saddle. I had much to think about,
wondering what was to become of me while my father went to skin Cameron.
I had not the least doubt that he would do it. The world is a storybook
to a lad of nine, and the thought of Charlestown filled me with a delight
unspeakable. Perchance he would leave me in Charlestown.

At nightfall we came into a settlement called the Waxhaws. And there
being no tavern there, and the mare being very jaded and the roads heavy,
we cast about for a place to sleep. The sunlight slanting over the pine
forest glistened on the pools in the wet fields. And it so chanced that
splashing across these, swinging a milk-pail over his head, shouting at
the top of his voice, was a red-headed lad of my own age. My father
hailed him, and he came running towards us, still shouting, and vaulted
the rails. He stood before us, eying me with a most mischievous look in
his blue eyes, and dabbling in the red mud with his toes. I remember I
thought him a queer-looking boy. He was lanky, and he had a very long
face under his tousled hair.

My father asked him where he could spend the night.

"Wal," said the boy, "I reckon Uncle Crawford might take you in. And
again he mightn't."

He ran ahead, still swinging the pail. And we, following, came at length
to a comfortable-looking farmhouse. As we stopped at the doorway a
stout, motherly woman filled it. She held her knitting in her hand.

"You Andy!" she cried, "have you fetched the milk?"

Andy tried to look repentant.

"I declare I'll tan you," said the lady. "Git out this instant. What
rascality have you been in?"

"I fetched home visitors, Ma," said Andy.

"Visitors!" cried the lady. "What 'll your Uncle Crawford say?" And she
looked at us smiling, but with no great hostility.

"Pardon me, Madam," said my father, "if we seem to intrude. But my mare
is tired, and we have nowhere to stay."

Uncle Crawford did take us in. He was a man of substance in that
country,--a north of Ireland man by birth, if I remember right.

I went to bed with the red-headed boy, whose name was Andy Jackson. I
remember that his mother came into our little room under the eaves and
made Andy say his prayers, and me after him. But when she was gone out,
Andy stumped his toe getting into bed in the dark and swore with a
brilliancy and vehemence that astonished me.

It was some hours before we went to sleep, he plying me with questions
about my life, which seemed to interest him greatly, and I returning in
kind.

"My Pa's dead," said Andy. "He came from a part of Ireland where they
are all weavers. We're kinder poor relations here. Aunt Crawford's
sick, and Ma keeps house. But Uncle Crawford's good, an' lets me go to
Charlotte Town with him sometimes."

I recall that he also boasted some about his big brothers, who were away
just then.

Andy was up betimes in the morning, to see us start. But we didn't
start, because Mr. Crawford insisted that the white mare should have a
half day's rest. Andy, being hustled off unwillingly to the "Old Field"
school, made me go with him. He was a very headstrong boy.

I was very anxious to see a school. This one was only a log house in a
poor, piny place, with a rabble of boys and girls romping at the door.
But when they saw us they stopped. Andy jumped into the air, let out a
war-whoop, and flung himself into the midst, scattering them right and
left, and knocking one boy over and over. "I'm Billy Buck!" he cried.
"I'm a hull regiment o' Rangers. Let th' Cherokees mind me!"

"Way for Sandy Andy!" cried the boys. "Where'd you get the new boy,
Sandy?"

"His name's Davy," said Andy, "and his Pa's goin' to fight the Cherokees.
He kin lick tarnation out'n any o' you."

Meanwhile I held back, never having been thrown with so many of my own
kind.

"He's shot painters and b'ars," said Andy. "An' skinned 'em. Kin you
lick him, Smally? I reckon not."

Now I had not come to the school for fighting. So I held back.
Fortunately for me, Smally held back also. But he tried skilful tactics.

"He kin throw you, Sandy."

Andy faced me in an instant.

"Kin you?" said he.

There was nothing to do but try, and in a few seconds we were rolling on
the ground, to the huge delight of Smally and the others, Andy shouting
all the while and swearing. We rolled and rolled and rolled in the mud,
until we both lost our breath, and even Andy stopped swearing, for want
of it. After a while the boys were silent, and the thing became grim
earnest. At length, by some accident rather than my own strength, both
his shoulders touched the ground. I released him. But he was on his
feet in an instant and at me again like a wildcat.