Two or three hundred yaks

‘We sighted two or three hundred yaks drinking in the river, and I wounded three. It was a glorious sight to see the whole herd dashing across ravines and through snow drifts up a lateral valley. I followed them for several miles, and though two of the wounded animals were losing quantities of blood, I failed to get again within range, for the melting snow and the slippery clayey soil were too much for my pony.’ This is from the exploration diary of US diplomat William Woodville Rockhill - who died 110 years ago today - during his second expedition into China and Mongolia. It was Rockhill who is credited with launching the so-called Open Door policy towards China in the early 20th century.

Rockhill was born in Philadelphia in 1854. His father died when he was 13 and his mother relocated the family to France to escape the Civil War. He attended the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, where he studied Tibetan (having been inspired by Abbé Huc’s account of his 1844-1846 voyage to Lhasa). After graduation, he joined the French Foreign Legion, serving as an officer in Algiers. In 1876, he returned to the US where he married his childhood sweetheart. They had two children. Although they tried ranching in New Mexico, by 1881 they had relocated to Montreux in Switzerland where Rockwood spent three years studying Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Chinese, as well as co-authoring a biography of Buddha.

In 1884, Rockhill was appointed to the US Legation in Beijing. In 1896, his wife died; however he soon got married again, to Edith Howell Perkins. Between 1897 and 1899, Rockhill served as ambassador to Greece/Serbia/Romania. In 1899, he was appointed Director-General of the International Union of American Republics, a position he held until 1905 when he was made ambassador to China (until 1909). He is credited with authoring the Open Door Policy towards China with the aim of preserving Chinese sovereignty while ensuring equal trade opportunities for all nations. In 1910, he was appointed ambassador to Russia and from 1911 to 1913 he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

In addition to his diplomatic work, Rockhill was an accomplished explorer and scholar, undertaking two expeditions to Tibet and western China in the 1880s and 1890s. His meticulous observations on climate, geography, and local cultures established him as a leading expert on the region. En route to take up a position as advisor to the President of China, Yuan Shikai, contracted pleurisy. He died (in Honolulu) on 8 December 1914. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Geographicus, American Diplomacy.

A detailed daily diary Rockhill kept on the second of his expeditions was published in 1894 by the Smithsonian institution with the title - Diary of a Journey Through Mongolia and Tibet in 1891 and 1892.  The full work can be read at Googlebooks or Internet Archive.

In a short note at the start of the work, the institution’s secretary says the publication has ‘the general object of increasing and diffusing knowledge in regard to the little known countries traversed by the explorer.’ 

And in Rockhill’s introduction, he explains: ‘The form in which I now publish the results of my journey was only adopted after much hesitation, as I feared it might prove tedious to even the enthusiastic reader of books of travel - if such happily there still be. But a journal, kept from day to day, and often under great difficulties shows better, 1 think, than any other form of record the true impressions of the writer, his moods, his hopes, his anxieties, even when they concern nothing more important than his next meal, of which I am, however, assured the public likes to be informed. In such a Diary as is here given numerous glaring errors in style - if nothing worse - tedious detail and monotonous repetition cannot fail to confront the too critical reader, but let him be charitable - dirt, cold, starvation and a thousand minor discomforts which beset the explorer in Mongolia and Tibet who lives and travels like the barbarous inhabitants of those wild regions, are not conducive to sustained or successful literary work, as he may find out for himself if he will but try it.’ 

Here’s a flavour of the diary.

30 November 1891

‘I received to-day my passport from the Tsung-li Yamen. It is what we would call at home a “special passport,” authorizing me as former Secretary of the United States Legation to visit Kan-su, Ssü-ch’uan, Yün-nan, Hsin-chiang (the New Dominion), and the Ching-hai, or the Mongol and Tibetan country under the administrative control of the Hsi-ning Amban. This opens the road to Lh’asa for me as far as Dréch’u rabden and consequently Nagch’uk’a, for there are no inhabitants, only an occasional band of roaming K’amba before reaching the latter point.

I have two drafts on a Shan-hsi bank at Kuei-hua Ch’eng for 1103.31 taels, and I carry 172.56 taels in sycee. I will draw an additional 700 taels on reaching Lan-chou Fu in Kan-su. This and the goods I carry with me will have to do for the journey - a year or more.

We hear many rumors about the rebels up Jehol way. It is said here that they have crossed the Great Wall and are marching on Peking. There is no doubt that five hundred desperate men, willing to sacrifice their lives, could capture Peking by a coup de main, for there is only the Peking field force (Shen-ch’i ying) to defend it, which, as a Chinese general remarked a few years ago to the Seventh Prince, who is the chief of this body, is more expert with the opium pipe (yen chiang) than with the musket (yang chiang). This little rebellion is a specimen of what frequently occurs on the northern and southwestern frontiers of China. One day a chief of a band of highwaymen (ma-tsei) gave in his submission to the government and made himself so agreeable that he was after awhile given official preferment. His band, for the sake of economy probably, retained his name on their banners and kept to the road. This caused the Jehol officials to believe that the ex-chief, Li, I think he was named, was still connected with the profession, so he was arrested, tried, and beheaded. His son, to avenge his sire, joined the band, dubbed himself Ping Ch'ing Wang (‘‘The Prince leveler of the Ch’ing dynasty”), and announced on his banners that his platform was “First, right (li), then reason (tao), to put an end to the Catholic (t’ien chu) faith, to bring down the reigning dynasty, and to destroy the hairy foreigners.” A pretty pretentious scheme for a few hundred men. They are more or less connected with a secret society called the Tsai huei, a kind of northern Ko-lao huei, and some people here tell me they are called Hung mao-tzu (“red haired”) because they put on false beards of red hair in their secret conclaves. At all events they are very probably well armed, with Winchester rifles, I believe, supplied them by an enterprising foreign firm at Newchwang. Li Hung-chang is said to be sending troops from around Tientsin to the disturbed district, and soon the rebel band will disperse and the imperial forces will announce a glorious victory and the condign punishment of the guilty ones.’

4 December 1891

‘Got off late as we had the first casualty of the journey in our party. The black mule is dead! The kicker and most disorderly member of the party is no more. Before he had breathed his last, his carcass was sold for $2, his tail cut off to show the owner on the carter’s arrival at home, and his body carried off by the natives who were licking their chops over the anticipated feast. Our loss did not effect our rate of speed, except perhaps that it was slightly better, for we made twenty miles to Ch’i-ming-i. The day was pleasant but the road horribly stony, limestone pebbles, and such jolting as I never experienced. If ever I go over this road again I will take mule litters, they are much more convenient, and one travels just as rapidly as in a cart.’

13 February 1892

‘(15th of 1st moon) - Half of to-day was passed at Kumbum sauntering through the fair. I was surprised to see quite a large number of Bônbo lamas, recognizable by their huge mops of hair and their red gowns, and also from their being dirtier than the ordinary run of people. I heard that throughout this Amdo country they have numerous small lamaseries and that their belief is very popular among the T’u-fan.

There appears to hang a certain mystery about the famous tsandan karpo, the “white sandal wood tree” sprung from Tsong-k’apa’s hair. I now learn that the great and only original one, on the leaves of which images of the saint appear, is kept hidden away in the sanctum sanctorum of the Chin-wa ssü (“golden tiled temple”), remote from the eyes of the vulgar herd. So it would seem that I have never seen it, though I have been shown four or five other “white sandalwoods” in and around the lamasery. I learn, moreover, that the images on the leaves, bark, etc., only appear to those who have firm belief, and that the faithless can distinguish nothing extraordinary on them. This, if true, is rough on Hue, who thought he detected the devil’s hand in the miraculously produced images he perceived on the leaves of this tree.

Some of the Gopa (Lh’asa traders) have their wives here with them. They were out to-day dressed in all their finery and looked remarkably well. Strapping big women they were, with ruddy cheeks and frank open faces, in green satin gowns, aprons of variegated pulo, shirts of raw silk (buré), silver charm boxes (gawo) on their breasts, and crowns of coral beads and turquoises on the top of their long loosely hanging black locks.

In the Gold tiled temple in the northeast corner near the door is an impress in a chunk of sandstone of a human foot about eighteen inches long and two inches deep and said to be that of Tsong-k’apa. It is placed in a vertical position. On the top of the stone is a little wax; on this the people place a copper cash and then examine the footprint to ascertain their luck. If it is good, then bright spots will appear on the surface of the stone in the footmark.

In the evening I again went to Kumbum, this time to “lang t’eng,” as it is called here, anglicè, to see the lanterns and the butter bas-reliefs. The latter were very good - better perhaps than those I saw in ’89. In one of the largest ones the central portion of the design was a temple, and little figures of lamas and laymen about eight to ten inches high were moving in and out of its portals. Another new feature was musicians concealed behind curtains hanging around the bas-reliefs, who discoursed sweet (?) music on flutes, cymbals and hautboys. Four of the largest designs were in the style of the one just described, the others represented images of various gods inside of highly ornamented borders; in these the main figures were about four feet high.’

30 March 1892

‘We left by daylight, as we wanted to reach some place where we could procure fuel and cook a little food. After a few miles through deep snow we reached the main valley of the Tsahan ossu and left the snow behind. The snow line on this side of the Wahon la, as I shall call this mountain, is at least a thousand feet lower than on the northern slope. The predominant formation is still granite.

We noticed in the distance several large herds of wild yaks, hares, very large crows, a variety of bird that I took for a flicker, and a small greyish brown bird were also quite numerous. I saw quite a number of skulls of big-horns (Ovis Poli).

The general direction of the range before us is west-northwest and south-southeast, and its summits rise 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the valley, which in places is, perhaps - counting its width from the summits to the north to the crest of the southern range, two to three miles wide. Many patches of loess are visible on the mountain sides, and along the river bank there is a great deal of gravel and broken, angular pieces of stone. Reddish clay is abundant, I should have noted, on the southern slopes of the range we have just crossed.

We sighted two or three hundred yaks drinking in the river, and I wounded three. It was a glorious sight to see the whole herd dashing across ravines and through snow drifts up a lateral valley. I followed them for several miles, and though two of the wounded animals were losing quantities of blood, I failed to get again within range, for the melting snow and the slippery clayey soil were too much for my pony. I did not want to take any Ts’aidam ponies with me into Tibet, experience had proven them to be worthless for the kind of work I had before me, and so I had to give up the chase, as I could not afford to overwork the good little Konsa pony I was riding.

We camped on the bank of the river in a miserably bleak spot where the wind and the driving snow made it most uncomfortable for us all night, and where our cattle got very little grass or rest. A couple of bears came wandering about among the rocks near us, but we were all too tired to think of shooting. From what old Wang-ma-bum tells me the Tsahan ossu is the same stream which I crossed in ’89, in the Ts’aidam, when on my way to Baron kuré, and which is there called Shara gol. It is like all the rivers of this region, much shallower and of smaller volume in its lower course than at its head, much of the water being lost in the sands and swampy grounds when it leaves the hills.’

Departed on Air Force One

‘Departed on Air Force One for the northeastern part of England in the Newcastle area, Tyne and Wear County, which was coincidentally the only county that the Labour Party didn’t lose in the elections yesterday. I’m at somewhat of a disadvantage in discussing the finance matters because Callaghan, Fukuda, Giscard, and Schmidt have all been finance ministers and have economics as a background. I’ve already begun to see the need for me to travel more and learn more about other leaders and countries.’ This is from the published diary of Jimmy Carter - 100 years old today - written while serving as president of the United States, 1977-1981. 

James Earl Carter Jr. was born on 1 October 1924, in Plains, Georgia. His father, a segregationist, was a successful peanut farmer and businessman who ran a general store and invested in farmland. His son was educated locally, then at Georgia Southwestern College, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and, from 1943, the Naval Academy, graduating in 1946. Soon after he married Rosalynn Smith, a friend of his sister, with whom he would have four children. In 1948, he began officer training for submarine duty and served aboard USS Pomfret; being promoted to lieutenant junior grade in 1949. He was preparing to become an engineering officer for the submarine Seawolf in 1953 when his father died. He resigned his commission and returned to Georgia to manage the family peanut farm operations.

Carter quickly became a leader of the community, serving on county boards supervising education, the hospital authority, and the library. In 1962, he won election to the Georgia Senate, but failed in 1966 to win election as governor. In 1971, though, he successfully ran again becoming Georgia’s 76th governor. He was the Democratic National Committee campaign chairman for the 1974 congressional and gubernatorial elections. Among the new intake of young southern governors, he attracted attention by emphasising efficiency in government and the removal of racial discrimination.

When Carter announced his candidacy for president in December 1974, he was virtually unknown, but after the national disappointments of Vietnam and Watergate, Democratic voters welcomed a fresh choice. He chose Minnesota senator Walter Mondale as his running mate. In November 1976 the Carter-Mondale ticket won the election, capturing 51% of the popular vote and garnering 297 electoral votes to Gerald Ford’s 240. On his second day in office he pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders. He went on to create a national energy policy, and to pusue the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, and the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. His administration established the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

The end of Carter’s presidency was marked by a series of troubles:  the Iran hostage crisis, an energy crisis, the Three Mile Island accident, the Nicaraguan Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In response to the latter, Carter ended détente, imposed a grain embargo against the Soviets, and led the multinational boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.That same year he lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide to Ronald Reagan.

Subsequently, Carter established the Carter Center to promote and expand human rights. In 2002 he received a Nobel Peace Prize. He traveled extensively to conduct peace negotiations, monitor elections, and help eradicate infectious diseases. He has written numerous books, ranging from political memoirs to poetry, while continuing to comment on global affairs, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At 100 years old, he is the longest-lived former U.S. president. Further information is available from Wikipedia, The White House, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and The White House Historical Association.

During his presidency, Carter kept a diary by dictating his thoughts and observations several times each day. It was edited and annotated by Carter himself to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2010 as White House Diary. This can be previewed online at Googlebooks. The Los Angeles Times judged the book thus: ‘It all makes for a uniquely unfiltered look at what occupying the Oval Office day to day means, as well as a bit of second thinking and score-settling.’

Here is an extract from Carter’s own preface: ‘Readers should remember that I seldom exercised any restraint on what I dictated, because I did not contemplate the more personal entries ever being made public. When my opinions of people changed, for instance, I did not go back and amend the entries. [. . .] Despite a temptation to conceal my errors, misjudgments of people, or lack of foresight, I decided when preparing this book not to revise the original transcript, but just to use the unchanged excerpts from the diaries that I consider to be most revealing and interesting. Admittedly, it was somewhat painful for me to omit about three-fourths of the diary, but for the sake of compression I concentrated on a few general themes that are still pertinent - especially Middle East peace negotiations, nuclear weaponry, US-China relations, energy policy, anti-inflation efforts, health policy, and my relationships with Congress. I also included some elements of my personal life that illustrate how it feels and what it means to be president. [. . .] Throughout this book, I wrote explanatory notes to help the reader understand the context of the entries, bring to life the duties of a president, offer insights into a number of the people I worked with, and point out how many of the important challenges remain the same. At times we presidents have reacted to similar events in much the same way; at other times we’ve responded quite differently. In presenting this annotated diary, my intention is not to defend or excuse my own actions or to criticize others, but simply to provide, based on current knowledge, an objective analysis of differences. Whenever possible, I attempt to articulate what lessons I learned and offer my own frank assessment of what I or others might have done differently.’

And here are several extracts from White House Diary.

17 February 1977
‘Mama returned from India, and I had a brief meeting with her early this morning. 1 think the trip was a superb diplomatic effort, and the State Department later said that we have the best relationship since 1960, to a large degree because of Mother’s visit there and her obvious concern about the Indian people. She got along well with Mrs. Indira Gandhi, by the way, whom she formerly had not liked or admired as a political figure.

Got my first haircut up in Rosalynn’s little beauty parlor next to the dining room. The barber is from Puerto Rico, and he and I spoke Spanish during the haircut. I think he might take over the regular barbershop in the West Wing shortly since the present barber is a strong Nixonite.

Amy and I went swimming for the first time. The temperature was freezing, and the outdoor pool had been slightly heated. We enjoyed it, though, and I’m going to try to do as many things as possible with Amy. I see her at least for supper every night, and quite often, I’d say two or three times a week after supper, we have some time together, either bowling or going to a movie or going swimming; and then the weekends we have always several hours together. She seems to like her school fine, but she still prefers Plains, which she has known all her life.’

6 May 1977
‘Departed on Air Force One for the northeastern part of England in the Newcastle area, Tyne and Wear County, which was coincidentally the only county that the Labour Party didn’t lose in the elections yesterday. I’m at somewhat of a disadvantage in discussing the finance matters because [Jim] Callaghan, [Yasuo] Fukuda [Japan], [Valéry] Giscard [D’Estaing, France], and [Helmut] Schmidt [Germany] have all been finance ministers and have economics as a background. I’ve already begun to see the need for me to travel more and learn more about other leaders and countries. There’s a great desire in the Western world for a restoration of confidence, and I believe that unless that confidence is derived from the strength of our country it won’t be coming from any other source. There doesn’t seem to be any jealousy of the strength of the United States, only an eagerness to see their own nations consulted on matters and an assurance that we won’t make peremptory decisions that might be embarrassing to them at home. Every one of the other leaders is very weak politically, and they recognize that at least for the moment I’m quite strong politically. They also see that to show a friendly relationship with me but to retain their own independence and prerogatives is a good combination for them politically. And, of course, I’m eager to accommodate that desire on their part.

I was surprised at the strength of Pierre Trudeau [prime minister of Canada], who seems to be at ease with all the others, quite uninhibited in his expressions of opinion, and they seemed to listen to him quite closely.

The Germans have some concern about our human rights position because they feel that in a quiet, unpublicized way they’ve extracted many East European citizens into the western European area. 
Callaghan showed us the room at 10 Downing Street where we will be meeting. It’s so small that only twenty-two people can get in it, but it’s been set up in a wonderful way, I think, for free discussions where there will be a disinclination to make speeches. Obviously there’s a tremendous struggle among staff members and others to get inside the room, but I think Callaghan did wisely to hold the room so there’s no way to stretch the limit.’

28 May 1977
‘We went fishing on Blackbeard Island, leaving about 6:00 a.m. and getting over there about 9:00 a.m. We fished for bluegill bream, and Charlie and I caught the largest bream I’ve ever seen. I enjoyed talking with Kirbo about the problems that I face as president, with big business, who are a greedy bunch; or the special interest groups; Congress; some of the foreign leaders. Quite often when I talk to him this in itself is helpful, but in addition he’s sometimes able to solve my problems. He has unique interrelationships both inside and outside of government, and he’s close enough to understand me well, and very discreet. He’s able to separate his law practice from his relationship with me, which is also reassuring.’

See also A boiling cauldron.

Lafcadio Hearn in Japan

‘Then came the tug-of-war. A magnificent tug-of-war, too, one hundred students at one end of a rope, and another hundred at the other. But the most wonderful spectacles of the day were the dumb-bell exercises. Six thousand boys and girls, massed in ranks about five hundred deep.’ This is Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-born Anglo-Irish writer, who died 120 years ago today, writing in a diary he kept while working as a teacher in Japan. Indeed, having emigrated from the US, he became very well-known for writing many books about Japan. Even in his diary entries, he seems fascinated by the traditions and culture of the Japanese people, and in the Oriental minds of his young pupils.

Hearn was born on the island of Lefkada (after which he was named), Greece, in 1850, the son of an Anglo-Irish surgeon-major in the British army and a Greek mother. His parents had a troubled relationship, which soon led to divorce. Neither parent was interested in Lafcadio, and he was brought up by another disinterested relative in Dublin. Nevertheless, he received a decent education, partly in France, partly in Durham, until his guardians went bankrupt. Aged 16, he suffered an injury to his left eye which left him partially blind and shy about his appearance.

In 1869, when his guardians had recovered some financial stability, they paid for Hearn to travel to the US, to Cincinnati, Ohio, to stay with relatives. However, these relatives gave him little assistance, and, for a while, he took menial jobs to survive. With a talent for writing, he gained a reporter’s job on the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer in 1872, and soon developed a reputation for his journalistic audacity and for sensational articles about murders. In 1874, he and a friend set up a weekly journal of culture and satire, Ye Giglampz. That same year he married Alethea (Mattie) Foley, an African-American woman, but the marriage violated Ohio law, and, in response to religious lobbying, he was fired from his job. He went to work for the rival newspaper The Cincinnati Commercial.

Tired of the city, and divorced from Foley, Hearn moved to New Orleans in 1877, where he lived for a decade, writing for, and editing city newspapers. He wrote many articles for national magazines (such as Harper’s Weekly), and books about the city, and is credited with helping create the popular reputation of New Orleans as a place with a distinct culture more akin to that of Europe and the Caribbean than to the rest of North America. He also translated French authors into English.

In 1887, Hearn accepted an invitation from Harper’s to become a West Indies correspondent, and he lived in Martinique for two years. After that, though, he decided to go to Japan. Upon his arrival in Yokohama in the spring of 1890, he was befriended by Basil Hall Chamberlain of Tokyo Imperial University, and officials at the Ministry of Education. At their encouragement, he moved to Matsue, to teach English at Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School. There he moved in distinguished circles, and later married Setsu Koizumi, the daughter of a local samurai family. He had the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo.

Hearn stayed over a year in Matsue, moving on to another teaching position in Kumamoto, Kyushu, for a further three years. In 1894, he secured a journalism position with the English-language Kobe Chronicle, and in 1896, with some assistance from Chamberlain, he began teaching English literature at Tokyo (Imperial) University, a post he held until 1903, and at Waseda University. He died on 26 September 1904, having written and published many books on Japan - a full bibliography can be found on Steve Tussel’s Lafcadio Hearn site. Further biographical information on Hearn can be found at Wikipedia, the magazine Humanities, or The Japan Times.

Among his many different kinds of books, Hearn left behind a couple of diaries, neither covering more than a short period: one written in Florida in 1887, and the other written just after taking up his first teaching post in Japan. Both these are freely available at Internet Archive. The first published was From the Diary of an English Teacher included in Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (Volume II) published by Houghton Mifflin and Company (Boston and New York) in 1894. Later the diary was re-published in other Lafcadio Hearn volumes, such as Diaries and Letters, in English and Japanese, translated and annotated by R. Tanabe. Posthumously, in 1911, Houghton Mifflin published Hearn’s Leaves from the Diary of an Impressionist, which includes a diary called Floridian Reveries.

Here are several extracts from Hearn’s Japanese diary.

15 October 1890
‘To-day I witnessed the annual athletic contests of all the schools in Shimane Ken. These games were celebrated in the broad castle grounds of Ninomaru. Yesterday a circular race-track had been staked off, hurdles erected for leaping, thousands of wooden seats prepared for invited or privileged spectators, and a grand lodge built for the Governor, all before sunset. The place looked like a vast circus, with its tiers of plank seats rising one above the other, and the Governor’s lodge magnificent with wreaths and flags. School children from all the villages and towns within twenty-five miles had arrived in surprising multitude. Nearly six thousand boys and girls were entered to take part in the contests. Their parents and relatives and teachers made an imposing assembly upon the benches and within the gates. And on the ramparts over-looking the huge enclosure a much larger crowd had gathered, representing perhaps one third of the population of the city.

The signal to begin or to end a contest was a pistol-shot. Four different kinds of games were performed in different parts of the grounds at the same time, as there was room enough for an army; and prizes were awarded for the winners of each contest by the hand of the Governor himself.

There were races between the best runners in each class of the different schools; and the best runner of all proved to be Sakane, of our own fifth class, who came in first by nearly forty yards without seeming even to make an effort. He is our champion athlete, and as good as he is strong, so that it made me very happy to see him with his arm full of prize books. He won also a fencing contest decided by the breaking of a little earthenware saucer tied to the left arm of each combatant. And he also won a leaping match between our older boys.

But many hundreds of other winners there were too, and many hundreds of prizes were given away. There were races in which the runners were tied together in pairs, the left leg of one to the right leg of the other. There were equally funny races, the winning of which depended on the runner’s ability not only to run, but to crawl, to climb, to vault, and to jump alternately. There were races also for the little girls, pretty as butterflies they seemed in their sky-blue hakama and many-coloured robes, races in which the contestants had each to pick up as they ran three balls of three different colours out of a number scattered over the turf. Besides this, the little girls had what is called a flag-race, and a contest with battledores and shuttlecocks.

Then came the tug-of-war. A magnificent tug-of-war, too, one hundred students at one end of a rope, and another hundred at the other. But the most wonderful spectacles of the day were the dumb-bell exercises. Six thousand boys and girls, massed in ranks about five hundred deep; six thousand pairs of arms rising and falling exactly together; six thousand pairs of sandalled feet advancing or retreating together, at the signal of the masters of gymnastics, directing all from the tops of various little wooden towers; six thousand voices chanting at once the “one, two, three,” of the dumb-bell drill: “Ichi, ni, - san, shi, - go roku, - shichi, hachi.”

Last came the curious game called “Taking the Castle.” Two models of Japanese towers, about fifteen feet high, made with paper stretched over a framework of bamboo, were set up, one at each end of the field. Inside the castles an inflammable liquid had been placed in open vessels, so that if the vessels were overturned the whole fabric would take fire. The boys, divided into two parties, bombarded the castles with wooden balls, which passed easily through the paper walls; and in a short time both models were making a glorious blaze. Of course the party whose castle was the first to blaze lost the game.

The games began at eight o’clock in the morning, and at five in the evening came to an end. Then at a signal fully ten thousand voices pealed out the superb national anthem “Kimi ga yo,” and concluded it with three cheers for their Imperial Majesties, the Emperor and Empress of Japan.

The Japanese do not shout or roar as we do when we cheer. They chant. Each long cry is like the opening tone of an immense musical chorus: A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!’

3 November 1890
‘To-day is the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor. It is a public holiday throughout Japan; and there will be no teaching this morning. But at eight o’clock all the students and instructors enter the great assembly hall of the Jinjo Chugakko to honour the anniversary of His Majesty’s august birth.

On the platform of the assembly hall a table, covered with dark silk, has been placed and upon this table the portraits of Their Imperial Majesties, the Emperor and the Empress of Japan, stand side by side upright, framed in gold. The alcove above the platform has been decorated with flags and wreaths.

Presently the Governor enters, looking like a French general in his gold-embroidered uniform of office, and followed by the Mayor of the city, the Chief Military Officer, the Chief of Police, and all the officials of the provincial government. These take their places in silence to left and right of the platform. Then the school organ suddenly rolls out the slow, solemn, beautiful national anthem; and all present chant those ancient syllables, made sacred by the reverential love of a century of generations [. . .]

The anthem ceases. The Governor advances with a slow dignified step from the right side of the apartment to the centre of the open space before the platform and the portraits of Their Majesties, turns his face to them, and bows profoundly. Then he takes three steps forward toward the platform, and halts, and bows again. Then he takes three more steps forward, and bows still more profoundly. Then he retires, walking backward six steps, and bows once more. Then he returns to his place.

After this the teachers, by parties of six, perform the same beautiful ceremony. When all have saluted the portrait of His Imperial Majesty, the Governor ascends the platform and makes a few eloquent remarks to the students about their duty to their Emperor, to their country, and to their teachers. Then the anthem is sung again; and all disperse to amuse themselves for the rest of the day.’

4 April 1891
‘The Students of the third, fourth, and fifth year classes write for me once a week brief English compositions upon easy themes which I select for them. As a rule the themes are Japanese. Considering the immense difficulty of the English language to Japanese students, the ability of some of my boys to express their thoughts in it is astonishing. Their compositions have also another interest for me as revelations, not of individual character, but of national sentiment, or of aggregate sentiment of some sort or other. What seems to me most surprising in the compositions of the average Japanese student is that they have no personal cachet at all. Even the handwriting of twenty English compositions will be found to have a curious family resemblance; and striking exceptions are too few to affect the rule. Here is one of the best compositions on my table, by a student at the head of his class. Only a few idiomatic errors have been corrected:

“THE MOON

The Moon appears melancholy to those who are sad, and joyous to those who are happy. The Moon makes memories of home come to those who travel, and creates home-sickness. So when the Emperor Godaigo, having been banished to Oki by the traitor Hojo, beheld the moonlight upon the seashore, he cried out, ‘The Moon is heartless!’

The sight of the Moon makes an immeasurable feeling in our hearts when we look up at it through the clear air of a beauteous night.

Our hearts ought to be pure and calm like the light of the Moon.

Poets often compare the Moon to a Japanese mirror and indeed its shape is the same when it is full.

The refined man amuses himself with the Moon. He seeks some house looking out upon water, to watch the Moon, and to make verses about it.

The best places from which to see the Moon are Tsukigashi, and the mountain Obasute.

The light of the Moon shines alike upon foul and pure, upon high and low. That beautiful Lamp is neither yours nor mine, but everybody’s.

When we look at the Moon we should remember that its waxing and its waning are the signs of the truth that the culmination of all things is likewise the beginning of their decline.”

Any person totally unfamiliar with Japanese educational methods might presume that the foregoing composition shows some original power of thought and imagination. But this is not the case. I found the same thoughts and comparisons in thirty other compositions upon the same subject. Indeed, the compositions of any number of middle-school students upon the same subject are certain to be very much alike in idea and sentiment - though they are none the less charming for that. As a rule the Japanese student shows little originality in the line of imagination. His imagination was made for him long centuries ago - partly in China, partly in his native land. From his childhood he is trained to see and to feel Nature exactly in the manner of those wondrous artists who, with a few swift brush-strokes, fling down upon a sheet of paper the colour-sensation of a chilly dawn, a fervid noon, an autumn evening.

Through all his boyhood he is taught to commit to memory the most beautiful thoughts and comparisons to be found in his ancient native literature. Every boy has thus learned that the vision of Fuji against the blue resembles a white half-opened fan, hanging inverted in the sky. Every boy knows that cherry-trees in full blossom look as if the most delicate of flushed summer clouds were caught in their branches. Every boy knows the comparison between the falling of certain leaves on snow and the casting down of texts upon a sheet of white paper with a brush. Every boy and girl knows the verses comparing the print of cat’s-feet on snow to plum-flowers, and that comparing the impression of bokkuri on snow to the Japanese character for the number “two,” These were thoughts of old, old poets; and it would be very hard to invent prettier ones. Artistic power in composition is chiefly shown by the correct memorising and clever combination of these old thoughts.

And the students have been equally well trained to discover a moral in almost everything, animate or inanimate.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 26 September 2014.

Our civilization’s survival

It is 50 years today since the death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, an extraordinary American who made his name as an aviation pioneer. However, he became even more of a celebrity when his toddler son was kidnapped and then murdered (the so-called ‘crime-of-the-century’). Subsequently, he inadvertently courted further publicity with his views on Germany, which led some to perceive him as a Nazi sympathiser - a view not dispelled, many years later, by the posthumous publication of a diary he kept during the war years. Long after his death, it was also discovered that apart from having a large family with his wife Anne Morrow, he had kept secret long-term relationships with at least three women, in Germany and Switzerland, each of whom had borne him children.

Lindbergh was born in 1902, the son of Swedish immigrants, his father being a lawyer and congressman, and his mother a chemistry teacher. He began to study engineering at the University of Wisconsin but left, after two years, to fly daredevil stunts at fairs. In 1924, he enlisted in the army, was trained to fly, and then joined the Robertson Aircraft Corporation as a pilot. In 1927, he took up a $25,000 challenge, that had stood since 1919, to fly non-stop from New York to Paris. Several St Louis businessmen helped finance the cost of a plane, with Lindbergh involved in the design. On 20 May he made the famous flight of around 5,600km in under 34 hours. Thereafter, he became a celebrity, and an active campaigner, partly backed by Harry Guggenheim, for the further development of aeronautics.

While in Mexico on a promotion trip, Lindbergh met Anne Spencer Morrow, daughter of the American ambassador. They married in 1929, he taught her to fly, and they made many foreign trips. In 1932, their toddler son, Charles, was kidnapped - causing a media frenzy - and ten weeks later the body was found. It took more than two years for the so-called ‘crime-of-the-century’ to be resolved when, in 1934, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was found responsible for the murder. He was executed in 1936. Since then, though, Hauptmann’s guilt has been much debated, with many books being written on the case, some asserting his innocence, others backing the original judgement.

To escape the press and media attention during these years, the Lindberghs and a second son (four other children were to follow) moved to England. Subsequently, Lindbergh attracted more public attention when he accepted a German medal of honour from Hermann Goering. After returning to the US in 1939, Lindbergh campaigned against US involvement in the European war, and was accused of being a Nazi sympathiser. After Pearl Harbor, though, he sought involvement in the war, and ended up flying about 50 combat missions even though he was a civilian. He also helped develop aviation techniques.

After the War, Lindbergh worked as an adviser for government and industry. His book The Spirit of St Louis, an expanded account of the 1927 flight, won a Pulitzer Prize. In the 1960s, he campaigned on environmental issues. From 1957 until his death on 26 August 1974, Lindbergh maintained a secret affair with Brigitte Hesshaimer, a German hatmaker, who had three children by him, as well as affairs with two other women (one German, one Swiss) who each bore him two children. It would be nearly 30 years after his death before these affairs became public. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Minnesota Historical Society, or the Spirit of St. Louis 2 Project.

In 1937, two years before the war in Europe began, Lindbergh began to write a diary, which he kept up until the war was over in 1945. However, this was not published until 1970 when Harcourt Brace Jovanovich brought out The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh. William Jovanovich, himself, provided a short introduction to the book:

‘The quarter century that has passed since the ending of World War II has dimmed our recollection, which is reason enough for us to be interested in reading a unique record of that terrible time. But the years have also lessened our sense of certitude. The past is always compromised by the present: many of the assurances of long ago, on re-examination, turn into questions and speculations. Both the exercise of memory and the writing of history tend to make it so, however different they are in resource. The historian will attempt to read the whole record of the past so far as he is able, but since he cannot write the whole record, he will select those events and circumstances that accommodate his thesis or his bias or his style or whatever. Those selected items of occurrence become, as Max Weber concluded, the facts of history.

So, too, in writing of the moment, as in a diary or journal, an act of selection takes place. One must decide what was significant in the course of a day before he can keep a reasonably short record of its passing. Yet the journal becomes, in the hands of a serious and candid person, an exceptional means by which events can be depicted literally, which is to say depicted with both accuracy of account and a consistency of view. This one recognises, casting back, in the journals of John Wesley, of Thoreau, and of General Charles (“Chinese”) Gordon, among a few other. It may be seen, now, in the wartime journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, which are here published twenty-five years after the last of the entries was written.’

Jovanovich also included a letter he received from Lindbergh. Jovanovich asked what Lindbergh had concluded on rereading the diaries, and Lindbergh replied: ‘We won the war in a military sense; but in a broader sense it seems to me we lost it, for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before.’  In the letter, Lindbergh also summarised his reasons for writing the journal in the first place, and his reasons for agreeing to publishing it:

‘More than a generation after the war’s end, our occupying armies still must occupy, and the world has not been made safe for democracy and freedom. On the contrary, our own system of democratic government is being challenged by that greatest of dangers to any government: internal dissatisfaction and unrest. It is alarmingly possible that World War II marks the beginning of our Western civilization’s breakdown, as it already marks the breakdown of the greatest empire ever built by man. Certainly our civilization’s survival depends on meeting the challenges that tower before us with unprecedented magnitude in almost every field of modern life. Most of these challenges were, at least, intensified through the waging of World War II. Are we now headed toward a third and still more disastrous war between world nations? Or can we improve human relationships sufficiently to avoid such a holocaust? Since it is inherent in the way of life that issues will continue between men, I believe human relationships can best be improved through clarifying the issues and conditions surrounding them. I hope my journals relating to World War II will help clarify issues and conditions of the past and thereby contribute to understanding issues and conditions of the present and the future.’

The New York Times found Lindbergh’s diary fascinating. Eric Goldman, in his review, wrote: ‘Except in the limited instances where the entries concern highly technical matters, the “Wartime Journals” are fascinating, almost hypnotically so. The prose is always lean, often pungent; on occasions when Lindbergh’s mind or emotions were deeply engaged, it rises to a compelling eloquence.’ However, Goldman also finds much to question about Lindbergh’s beliefs:

‘If readers will surely be held by the volume, many will read on with decidedly mixed feelings. The integrity with which the journals have been published presents again the Charles Lindbergh who outraged millions of Americans in 1939-41. The basic issue involved in World War II, the diary repeatedly stresses, was the preservation of “civilization,” defined as the comforts and attitudes of the “Nordic,” middle-class West, against the forces of “disorder” and “leveling” threatening from within and without. The democracies were losing “character”; the “virility” of Nazi Germany was the barrier against the greatest menace, the Communism of “Asiatic” Russia. Franklin Roosevelt is pictured as a relentless schemer, distrusted by “friend or enemy,” who was quite capable of taking the nation to war out of sheer politics and vainglory. The diary show that Lindbergh had considerable compassion for the German Jews. But much more than his public charge, it attacks the “Jewish influence” in bringing war to the United States, particularly as a result of Jewish “control” of “huge part” of the mass media. A good deal of space is given to describing brutalities by U.S. troops against Japanese soldiers; the atrocities of individual Americans are equated with the official policy of the Third Reich. Not a sentence excoriates Nazism as a general credo or poses it as a menace to civilization in any tenable definition of the word, including Lindbergh’s own. Entry after entry bespeaks a preoccupation, almost an obsession, with the “race problem,” those “northern peoples” versus all others.’

The full volume can be borrowed digitally at Internet Archive. Moreover pages from The Boyhood Diary of Charles Lindbergh 1913-1916, published by Capstone Press in 2001, can be read online at Googlebooks. 

Here, though, are two extracts taken from the The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh.

26 August 1938
‘Left embassy at 10:30 after usual problem of tipping the servants. More difficult here because of exchange problem and the fact that American Embassy help are mostly Italian. [. . .]

Arrived at aerodrome shortly before 11:00. Many Russians and Americans there to see us off. Impossible to keep them from doing this, although it makes extra work for them and delays us in getting started. Took off Moscow 11:15. [. . .]

We flew first to Tula, then to Orel, then to Kharkov, making our first landing at the latter place. After a half hour’s stop at Kharkov, we flew practically direct to Rostov on Don. Our routes are laid out for us by the Russian officials, and we attempt to follow them exactly. I miss the unrestricted routes of the United States. Immediately after taking off from the Moscow aerodrome, we passed over the aircraft factory I visited several days ago. A few minutes later we passed several training fields. [. . .]

We are having high oil temperatures in this hot weather. Sometimes above 90°C. Everything else is all right, except both voltmeter and ammeter are fluctuating excessively. The English mechanics don’t understand this equipment, even though Phillips & Powis are the agents for our Menasco engine. In consequence it is never properly serviced. The English regulations load you down with logbooks, licenses, and other papers, but one good American mechanic is worth all of them, ten times over, including the Air Ministry inspections. I keep up the logs only enough to get by the regulations. They are no value whatsoever from my standpoint, but if I should crash the plane I am sure the authorities would blame it on some omitted entry or a bit of overload, regardless of the actual cause.

The readiness to blame a dead pilot for an accident is nauseating, but it has been the tendency ever since I can remember. What pilot has not been in positions where he was in danger and where perfect judgment would have advised against going? But when a man is caught in such a position he is judged only by his error and seldom given credit for the times he has extricated himself from worse situations. Worst of all, blame is heaped upon him by other pilots, all of whom have been in parallel situations themselves, but without being caught in them. If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one’s outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. Why should we look for his errors when a brave man dies? Unless we can learn from his experience, there is no need to look for weakness. Rather, we should admire the courage and spirit in his life. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?

We had a good opportunity to see the collective farms and coal mines of the Ukraine. The collective farms are unlike anything I have seen elsewhere. They consist of a row of twenty or so houses, strung out along a road, with garden patches of an acre or so behind them, and large fields outside.

Landed Rostov 7:01. There was a group of people to meet us, including the mayor and the head of the local Intourist. Also the head of the flying school we came to see. Colonel Slepnev was there, having flown from Moscow ahead of us. The Russians are doing everything possible for us. I feel embarrassed because it so much. Dislike to cause so much trouble. Colonel Slepnev had only one hour’s sleep last night. We have never seen anything to exceed Russian hospitality. Also, they have been unusually considerate in not crowding our days with too many engagements.’

21 July 1944
‘The Japanese stronghold on the cliffs of Biak is to be attacked again in the morning. Several hundred Japs are still holding out in caves and crevices in an area about 300 yards wide and 1,000 yards long. So far, they have thrown back all of our attacks, and inflicted nearly one hundred casualties on our infantrymen. They have as perfect a natural defensive position as could be devised - sharp coral ridges overlooking and paralleling the coast, filled with deep and interlocking caves and screened from our artillery fire by coral ledges. This area is clearly visible from the top of the coral cliff, ten feet from the back door of the officers quarters where I am staying - a brown ridge surrounded by green jungle on the coast of Biak about three miles across the water from Owi Island.

The intense artillery fire has stripped the trees of leaves and branches so that the outline of the coral ridge itself can be seen silhouetted against the sky. Since I have been on Owi Island, at irregular intervals through the night and day, the sound of our artillery bombarding this Japanese stronghold has floated in across the water. This afternoon, I stood on the cliff outside our quarters (not daring to sit on the ground because of the danger of typhus) and watched the shells bursting on the ridge. For weeks that handful of Japanese soldiers, variously estimated at between 250 and 700 men, has been holding out against overwhelming odds and the heaviest bombardment our well-supplied guns can give them.

If positions were reversed and our troops held out so courageously and well, their defense would be recorded as one of the most glorious examples of tenacity, bravery, and sacrifice in the history of our nation. But, sitting in the security and relative luxury of our quarters, I listen to American Army officers refer to these Japanese soldiers as “yellow sons of bitches.” Their desire is to exterminate the Jap ruthlessly, even cruelly. I have not heard a word of respect or compassion spoken of our enemy since I came here.

It is not the willingness to kill on the part of our soldiers which most concerns me. That is an inherent part of war. It is our lack of respect for even the admirable characteristics of our enemy - for courage, for suffering, for death, for his willingness to die for his beliefs, for his companies and squadrons which go forth, one after another, to annihilation against our superior training and equipment. What is courage for us is fanaticism for him. We hold his examples of atrocity screamingly to the heavens while we cover up our own and condone them as just retribution for his acts. [. . .]

We must bomb them out, those Jap soldiers, because this is war, and if we do not kill them, they will kill us now that we have removed the possibility of surrender. But I would have more respect for the character of our people if we could give them a decent burial instead of kicking in the teeth of corpses, and pushing their bodies into hollows in the ground, scooped out and covered up by bulldozers. After that, we will leave their graves unmarked and say, “That’s the only way to handle the yellow sons of bitches.”

Over to the 35th Fighter Squadron in the evening to give a half hour’s talk to the pilots on fuel economy and the P-38.’

See also Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 26 August 2014.

Whores and rogues

‘I think I have taken my farewell of New York [. . .] I wish to be at home and yet dread the thought of returning to my native Country a Beggar. The word sounds disagreeable in my ears, but yet it is more pleasing and creditable than the epithet of Rascal and Villain, even if a large and opulent fortune was annexed to them, though one of the latter sort is in general better received, than an indigent honest man.’ This is an entry from near the end of the diary of Nicholas Cresswell, a Deryshire farmer’s son, who died 220 years ago today. As a young man, he ran off to America to seek his fortune, but after many adventures and difficulties, not least being English when the colony was fighting for independence, he returned home with his tail between his legs. He is surely only remembered today because he kept a colourful diary of his three years in America, which, more than a century later, was found by a relative and then published.

Cresswell was born in 1750, the son of a sheep farmer in Edale, Derbyshire. It is likely that he was first educated at a school established by his father, and then at Wakefield grammar school. He worked with his father, until, in 1774, he sailed on the Molly for America, to seek a better life. He kept a diary during his three year adventure - the only real source of information about Cresswell - which tells of trade with native Americans, being caught up in the War of Independence (and often vilified for his patriotism towards Britain), various travels and exploits, and his many efforts to find work.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry (log in required), Cresswell felt ‘increasingly desperate and under constant suspicion for his outspoken views against the patriot cause’ and so resolved to escape. ‘His acute sense of personal failure is the dominant theme of this part of his narrative. He repeatedly referred to his idleness and ill health in northern Virginia, his loneliness, heavy drinking, and mounting debts. His various schemes for quitting the province - via Bermuda, through ‘Indian Country’ to Canada where he contemplated joining the British forces, and overland to New York - all proved abortive. ‘I am now in an enemy’s country’, he lamented in October 1776, ‘forbidden to depart’.’

In early May 1777, Cresswell finally secured a passage to British-occupied New York. On arriving back in England, Cresswell tried, but failed, to gain a commission from John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, Virginia’s ousted royal governor. He returned to Edale, where he took up farming again, and married Mary Mellor in Wirksworth. They had six children. He died on 26 July 1804.

The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774–1777, was first published in 1924 by Jonathan Cape in London and The Dial Press in New York. In a foreword, Samuel Thornely, explained the diary’s provenance: ‘The Diary came into my possession on the death of my father, Frederick Thornely of Helsby, Cheshire. Joseph Cresswell was the youngest brother of Nicholas Cresswell and his daughter Ann married my grandfather, Samuel Thornely of Liverpool. My father, Frederick Thornely, eventually came into part of the Edale property and also Southsitch, Idridgehay, which had formerly belonged to Nicholas Cresswell. My father also came into the Nicholas Cresswell diary and on my father’s death in 1918 it came to me.’

The journal manuscript is now held by the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The full text is available through the HathiTrust website, while much of the book can also be previewed at Googlebooks. A commentary and extracts can be found in The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology of Early Writings, edited by Emily Foster, also available through Googlebooks. However, it is also worth noting that a new edition was published by Lexington Books in 2009 - A Man Apart: The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774 - 1781 - edited by Harold Gill and George M Curtis III. This edition contains Cresswell’s diary in an unabridged form, and reveals that Thornely had edited the text for the original publication without mentioning the fact. See an analysis of the unabridged text by Matthew C. Exline on the Liberty University website. The following extracts are from Thornely’s edition.

8 April 1774
‘Orders to be on Board to-morrow morning by Seven o’clock. Bought a Sea Bed; paid Captn. Parry my passage. Got my chest and things on Board. Understand we are to have three other passengers, but do not know who they are. Spent the afternoon on Mount Pleasant with Mr. Oaks of Sheffield. Wrote to Gustavus Bradford. Got everything ready for going so soon as the wind serves.’

9 April 1774
‘This morning got up very early and wrote to my Father. Got on Board about Nine o’clock. Set sail with a fair wind and tide in our favour; in the afternoon calm and pleasant; came to an Anchor off Ormshead. We are Four passengers, but don’t as yet know the others. All of us very merry at supper, tho’ I believe most of us Young Sailors are rather squeamish. At Eight in the evening, a Breeze sprung up; hove up the Anchor; about Ten saw the Skerry Lighthouse.’

10 April 1774
‘Last night in attempting to get into my Hammock the hook at the foot gave way and I had like to have broke my bones with the fall, to the no small diversion of my fellow passengers. The Hammock is a hard piece of canvas suspended up to the roof of the Cabin at each end with cords.’

16 September 1774
‘This Island is one of the most windward and eastward of the West India Islands [. . .] about 20 Miles long and 12 broad, contains about 20,000 White Inhabitants and 90,000 Blacks. Exports about 20,000 Hhds of Sugar and 6000 Hhds. of Rum annually. They are supplied with the greatest part of their provisions from the Colonies and all their slaves and lumber come from there, with Horses and Livestock of all kinds. In exchange for which they give Rum, Sugar and Cotton, but very little of the last article. It is a high rocky Island and reckoned the most healthy Island in the West Indies. I suppose there is one eighth part of the land too rocky for cultivation. The roads are very bad. It is nothing uncommon to see twelve yoke of oxen to draw one Hhd. of Sugar, but their cattle are very small. Their chief produce is Sugar, Indigo, Pimento and Cotton. The Pimento grows on large Trees like small berries, the Cotton on small bushes which they plant annually. The Indigo is planted in the same manner. [. . .]

This is the chief Town in the Island and was pretty large, but a great part of it burned down in the Year 1766 and is not yet rebuilt. Here is a Good Church dedicated to St. Michael, with an Organ. The Church yard is planted round with Coco Trees which makes a pretty appearance. The houses are built of stone, but no fireplaces in them only in the Kitchen. The heat of the climate renders that unnecessary, only for cooking. Indeed it would be insupportable was it not for the Sea breeze which blows all day, and from the Land at Night. All the S.E. Part of the Island is fortified with Batteries, the windward part of the Island is fortified by nature. No Garrison or Soldiers here, only the militia which are well disciplined to keep the Negroes in awe. The Planters are in general rich, but a set of dissipating, abandoned, and cruel people. Few even of the married ones, but keep a Mulatto or Black Girl in the house or at lodgings for certain purposes. The women are not killing beauties or very engaging in their conversation, but some of them have large fortunes, which covers a multitude of imperfections. The British nation famed for humanity suffers it to be tarnished by their Creolian Subjects - the Cruelty exercised upon the Negroes is at once shocking to humanity and a disgrace to human nature. For the most trifling faults, sometimes for mere whims of their Masters, these poor wretches are tied up and whipped most unmercifully. I have seen them tied up and flogged with a twisted piece of Cowskin till there was very little signs of Life, then get a dozen with an Ebony sprout which is like a Briar. This lacerates the skin and flesh, and lets out the bruised blood, or it would mortify and kill them. Some of them die under the severity of these barbarities, others whose spirits are too great to submit to the insults and abuses they receive put an end to their own lives. If a person kills a slave he only pays his value as a fine. It is not a hanging matter. Certainly these poor beings meet with some better place on the other side the Grave, for they have a hell on earth. It appears that they are sensible of this, if one may judge from their behaviour at their funerals. Instead of weeping and wailing, they dance and sing and appear to be the happiest mortals on earth.’

19 June 1775
‘Got under way early this morning. As we sat at dinner, saw two Buffalo Bulls crossing the River. When they were about half way over four of us got into a Canoe and attacked them in the River, the rest went along shore to shoot them, as soon as they came ashore. The River was wide and we had fine diversion fighting them in the water. The man in the head of the canoe seized one of them by the tail and he towed us about the River for half an hour. We shot him eight times, let him get ashore and he ran away. Our comrades ashore very angry with us and they have a great right to be so. Passed the mouth of the Little Miamme. In great fear of the Indians. Saw a Black Wolf pursuing a Faun into the River, the Faun we caught, but the Wolf got away. My company quarrels amongst themselves, but behave well to me. Camped late in the evening.’

18 July 1775.
‘At Mr. V. Crawford’s, Jacob Creek. These rascals have wore out all the clothes I left here, so that I am now reduced to three ragged shirts, two pair linen breeches in the same condition, a hunting shirt and jacket, with one pair of stockings.’

27 July 1775
‘Went shooting and knocked down a Young Turkey. Nothing but whores and rogues in this country.’

1 August 1776
‘Refining Nitre. I have made several experiments but have hit on one that answers well, by putting the crude Nitre into a pot and fluxing it till it has the appearance of milk, then let it cool and put to every pound of Nitre three pints of water, boil it a little and sit to shoot. It made a beautiful appearance like Icicles, white as Snow and transparent as glass. From 7½ pounds of crude Nitre I have got 4½ pound pure.

News that Lord Dunmore was driven from Gwinn’s Island and the Fleet had left the Bay. I am now at a loss again. Determined to go to New York and endeavour to get to the Army.’

23 January 1777
‘Curiosity and company induced me to spend the evening at a place of no great credit. The various scenes I saw may be of great service to me sometime or other.’

12 July 1777
‘I think I have taken my farewell of New York, tho’ I promised to pay one visit more, but never intend to perform. Cannot bear the abominable hypocrite. I wish to be at Sea but hear nothing of our sailing this week. I wish to be at home and yet dread the thought of returning to my native Country a Beggar. The word sounds disagreeable in my ears, but yet it is more pleasing and creditable than the epithet of Rascal and Villain, even if a large and opulent fortune was annexed to them, though one of the latter sort is in general better received, than an indigent honest man. I am poor as Job, but not quite so patient. Will hope for better days. If I am at present plagued with poverty, my conscience does not accuse me of any extravagance or neglect of sufficient magnitude to bring me into such indigent circumstances. However, I have credit, Health, Friends and good Spirits, which is some consolation in the midst of all my distresses. Better days may come.’

13 October 1777 [last entry in the published diary]
‘There is such a sameness in my life at present it is not worth while to keep a Journal.

I am afraid it is likely to continue longer than I could wish it, as no proposals have been yet made to me concerning my future way of life. I imagine my Father expects I shall stay at home in my present dependent situation. I cannot bear it. Though at present his behaviour is very kind and in some respects indulgent, but that moroseness he observes to some of the family is very disagreeable to me. I expect something of the same sort as soon as the first gust of paternal affection subsides, but I am determined to stay with seeming patience till April next, and behave in such a manner as not to give any just offence. I call this waiting the Chapter of Accidents, something fortunate may happen. (Mem. Never to have anything to do with my Relations, I know their dispositions only too well. Some of them begin to hint at my poverty already. I must be patient and if possible, Silent.)’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 26 July 2014.

Life with the Mormons

‘This is the 55th anniversary of my birth. On arrising from my bed, I returned thanks to the Lord for bringing me to see this day. Although I do not have my full liberty [he was in hiding because of the anti-polygamy law], yet I am grateful for that liberty I do enjoy, also for the many blessings I have received from the Lord and for my wives & children & their children.’ This is from the extensive diaries of Leonard John Nuttall, born 190 years ago today. He was private secretary for two important presidents in the early history of the Mormon church. (See also Mobocracy is rife and Father of Mormon history.)

Nuttall was born in Liverpool, England, on 6 July 1834. Aged 13 he was apprenticed as a ship builder. In 1850, he was baptised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), and in 1852, he emigrated to the US. on the Rockaway, arriving in New Orleans. From there he travelled to the Salt Lake Valley. He served in the Utah County militia, taking part in the Wakara conflict. He was a member of the committee that organised the first Sunday School in Provo; and, in 1856 he married Elizabeth Clarkson. In time, he had at least two other wives, and more than seven children. He was elected to the Provo City Council in 1861, and served as a justice of the peace and alderman. He also served as the auditor and recorder of Provo from 1861 until 1875 

From 1864 until 1875, Nuttall was employed as Utah County Clerk and clerk of the county probate court. He went on to serve as the secretary of the Provo Co-Operative Mercantile Institution from its inception in 1869. He is credited with being the first person to operate a printing press in Utah County. In 1872, he was made chief clerk of the Utah Territorial Legislature. Meanwhile, in the LDS Church, he served for a few years as a member of the high council of the Utah Stake, which covered all of Utah County at the time. From 1874 to 1875 he was a missionary in England. He was appointed bishop of the Kanab Ward in 1875, and served as the first recorder of the St. George Temple, and as the first president of the Kanab Stake when it was organised in 1877. 

In 1879, Nuttall became a private secretary for John Taylor, replacing George Reynolds, who was serving a prison term for practicing plural marriage. Nuttall - though often in hiding to avoid his own arrest under the anti-polygamy law - continued in this position first to John Taylor and then to Wilford Woodruff until 1892. From 1881 to 1887 he also served as Utah Territorial Superintendent of Schools. Starting in 1897, he was as a member of the General Board of the Deseret Sunday School Union. He died in 1906. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Brigham Young University (BYU) and The Church Historian’s Press.

Nuttall seems to have kept journals for most of his life, from 1857 to 1904. Some 28 volumes are housed at BYU with other written materials. According to BYU, the materials relate to Nuttall’s involvement in numerous Mormon Church and Utah Militia activities, various items on church conduct and doctrine, religious meetings of the ruling bodies, and campaigns against the Ute Indians during the Black Hawk War. Photocopies of the diaries’ contents in typed manuscript form (as created by BYU) can be found at Internet Archive - this is a 1,000 page document that covers the period 1876-1884. The first 100 or so pages are taken up with a chronological listing of events covered in the diaries, as well as an extensive index.

In 2007, Signature Books published In the President’s Office: The Diaries of L. John Nuttall, 1879-1892. This is also freely available at Internet Archive. A review can be read in the Utah Historical Quarterly.

Here are a five extracts from Nuttall’s diaries as found in the photocopied typescript, and two more (dated 1889) from the published diaries.

29 May 1877
‘cold & blustery all night, some rain this morning with wind - made out recommend to the Temple for Wm Albert Beebe his wife Sarah Elizabeth - son John William & Daughter Agnes Cordelia Beebe - after having asked him pertaining to reports & rumors as to the chastity of his wife &c he told me all had been made satisfactory & since which time he & his wife had done some work for their dead in the Endowment House at Salt Lake City, this I made Known in the recommend so it could be understood - rained most of the day heavy shower in the eying -‘

21 August 1877
‘very cold last night froze ice l/4 inch thick in pail. after breakfast we counted the Sheep also examind accounts & decided on a basis of settlement - our count not being satisfactory we counted again in the afternoon - found in all head, found there was due Bro Tyler 84 head - he prepared for leaving for home in the Morning, fitting up his wagon &c - Killed a Sheep for the boys. & talked to them as to their duties & - we built a comfortable shelter for the boys today.’

22 November 1878
‘Myself Leonard & Thomas assisting in digging & making a root house on the Tithing lot. boys also went to Grist mill for Flour out of 1004 lbs of Wheat we only received 528 lbs of flour - & 276 lbs of Bran & Shorts being 200 lbs for grinding & waste - this needs some explanation - this evening talked with the Sisters of Relief Society pertaining to sending what cash they have on hand some 15.00 to purchase Drugs for the use of the Saints in child bed & fevers’

23 November 1878
’Bros Brown Wife & Son Lorenzo also Bros C* H Oliphant & L. Stilson started for Salt Lake City with 2 teams. Bro Brown's Son for Surgical opperation - I sent by Bro Oliphant my two Bonds one of $500 00 & one of $100 00 on Provo Woolen Factory to James Dunn Supt also a letter & an order for Cloth for 2 suits of clothes - also sent by him $15.00 & bill of Drugs needed for Relief Society & requested him to call and see my Wife Sophia at her fathers. this afternoon finished root house on Tithing lot.’

3 August 1879
‘Attended the funeral services of Elder Joseph Standing at the Tabernacle at 10. A.M & took part in the procession but did not go to the Cemetry. Elder Geo Q Cannon & Prest Taylor addressed the Assembly of some 10,000 - the procession was 20 Minutes passing a given point.- also attended the tabernacle services At 2 P.M. Elders C. H Wheelock & T. B Lewis spoke - at 4 p.M attended the prayer & Council Meeting of the Apostles at the Endowment House’

3 July 1889
‘Elder John Morgan reported briefly his trip in finding the body of the late Elder Alma P Richards. He has no doubts but what Bro Richards was murdered and his body afterwards put onto the railway track so as to be run over by the train.

Mr Lars Peterson of Independence, M[iss]o[uri] called & said he had received a revelation pertaining to the redemption of Zion in Jackson Co, Mis[souri]. He was a member of the Church several years ago & lived in Cache Valley, had 2 wives, worked as a carpenter on St George Temple, left the Territory some 12 years ago, went East, was baptized & confirmed by David Whitmer. Prests Woodruff [and] Cannon gave him some very strong talk after recounting his apostasy and Prest Cannon told him that he was destroyed, and that his threats of this people being destroyed by the Gentiles would not lake place, and that if he did not change his course the wrath of the Almighty would overtake him and he would be destroyed. Mr Peterson, finding that he could not make any impression upon these brethren and being spoken to so plainly, he left in a very excited manner.

The payment of the Church note for $50.000 00 at McCornicks Bank, due tomorrow with the interest, was paid and new arrangements made at Z[ion’s] S[avings] Bank.

At 5 20 p.m. Prest Jos F Smith 8 & wife Sarah & little boy and baby, and myself with Bro Chas H. Wilcken as driver, sta[r]ted for Wasatch - the Church quarry in Little Cottonwood Canyon. After a pleasant drive we arrived at 8 30. Sister Preston provided us some supper although we had been eating on the way.’

6 July 1889
‘This is the 55th anniversary of my birth. On arrising from my bed, I returned thanks to the Lord for bringing me to see this day. Although I do not have my full liberty, yet I am grateful for that liberty I do enjoy, also for the many blessings I have received from the Lord and for my wives & children & their children. I dedicated myself & family to the Lord and prayed for His mercies for the future, because I know that myself & all I have are in his hands to be used as He may direct.

Bros Smith, [William B.] Preston & myself went up to the Quarry at 11 o clock to see the men split open a large rock which was very nicely done.’

Out for Chinese chow again

‘Out for Chinese chow again tonight. Tom [Hannah], Joe [Greenwood], and I. Morale in this theater at this point is low. Efficiency is also low and V.D. [venereal disease] rates are going up.’ This is from the diaries of John Hart Caughey, an army colonel who served with General George C. Marshall’s during his posting to China as special envoy after WWII. Caughey, who died 30 years ago today, is said to provide, through hid diaries and letters, ‘a rare behind-the-scenes view of the general’s mediation efforts as well as intimate glimpses of the major Chinese figures involved.’

Caughey was born in 1912 in Bellevue, Pennsylvania. Graduating from West Point in 1935, he was appointed to several posts in the US and in Honolulu. He married Alice Elizabeth “Betty” Bowman, and they had one child. After attending the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he was appointed to the War Department General Staff in Washington in 1942. He was awarded the Legion of Merit. In 1944 he was sent to India but was transferred to the China theatre shortly thereafter to serve on the staff of Lieutenant General A.C. Wedemeyer, commander of U.S. forces in China. Upon General Marshall’s arrival in Chungking, China in 1945, Caughey was selected by Marshall to serve on his staff. He returned to the US in 1947 and continued his military career attaining the rank of Major General. He died on 2 July 1994. A little further information is available at the George C. Marshall Foundation and Find a Grave.

Caughey is mostly remembered today for a diary he kept and the letters he wrote, all collected and published, firstly, in The Marshall Mission to China, 1945-1947: The Letters and Diary of Colonel John Hart Caughey (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), and then in The Letters and Diaries of Colonel John Hart Caughey, 1944–1945: With Wedemeyer in World War II China (Lexington Books, 2018), both edited by Roger B. Jeans. The two books can be previewed at Googlebooks (1944-1945 and 1945-1947).

According to the publisher, The Marshall Mission to China, 1945-1947 ‘breaks new ground in our understanding of a pivotal period in the history of American foreign policy, the early Cold War, and the struggle for dominance in China between the Nationalists and Communists’. 

The publisher’s blurb continues: ‘The famous Marshall Mission to China has been the focus of intense scrutiny ever since General George C. Marshall returned home in January 1947 and full-scale civil war consumed China. Yet until recently, there was little new to add to the story of the failure to avert war between the Chinese Nationalists, under Chiang Kai-shek, and the Chinese Communists, led by Mao Zedong. Drawing on a newly discovered insider’s account, Roger B. Jeans makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of Marshall’s failed mediation effort and the roles played by key Chinese figures. Working from the letters and diary of U.S. Army Colonel John Hart Caughey, Jeans offers a fresh interpretation of the mission. From beginning to end, Caughey served as Marshall’s executive officer, in effect his right-hand man, assisting the general in his contacts with the Chinese and drafting key documents for him. Through his writings, Caughey provides a rare behind-the-scenes view of the general’s mediation efforts as well as intimate glimpses of the major Chinese figures involved, including Chiang Kai-shek, Madame Chiang, and Zhou Enlai. In addition to daily contact with Marshall, Caughey often rubbed shoulders with these major Nationalist and Communist figures. As a meticulous eyewitness to history in the making, Caughey offers crucial insight into a key moment in post-World War II history.’

Of the second book to be published - The Letters and Diaries of Colonel John Hart Caughey, 1944–1945 -the publisher says: ‘[Caughey] chronicled the US military’s role in wartime China, especially his life as an American planner (when he was subject to military censorship). Previous accounts of the China Theater have largely neglected the role of the War Department planners stationed in Chungking, many of whom were Caughey’s colleagues and friends. He also penned colorful descriptions of life in wartime China, which vividly remind the reader how far China has come in a mere seventy-odd years.’

Here’s a page of typical near-daily diary entries from The Marshall Mission to China, 1945-1947.

10 December 1945
‘[Mel] Huston left last week. Hated to see him go but his hind end needs looking after.’

11 December 1945
‘US Frs [Forces] China Theater rapidly deactivating. But I seem to be stuck. TPS [Theater Planning Section] of which I am chief seems to be taking on more and bigger jobs as others close down.’

13 December 1945
‘Marshall has publically accepted blame for Pearl Harbor. Such a statement would ruin a lesser man.’

16 December 1945
‘New directive received.’

17 December 1945
‘Presidents new Policy on China announced. New attitude may not be better but it sure is different. Where do we go from here?’

18 December 1945
‘Pres[ident’s] Policy at least got the Gmo [Chiang Kai-shek] and Chou En Lai [Zhou En-lai] (N 2 Commie) together again. Maybe something can be worked out.’

19 December 1945
‘Marshall due in tomorrow. Hdrs. is flying about trying to get everything all set.’

20 December 1945
‘Marshall arrived. He’s become China’s “White Hope.” Individually the two factions [the Nationalists and Communists] don’t think so though because somebody is going to have to give or else U.S. will quit.’

21 December 1945
‘Gave presentation for General Marshall today. Each staff section chief did the briefing. He seemed impressed and extremely interested.’

22 December 1945
‘Out for Chinese chow again tonight. Tom [Hannah], Joe [Greenwood], and I. Morale in this theater at this point is low. Efficiency is also low and V.D. [venereal disease] rates are going up.’

Journal of a trapper

‘On the 28th about 9 o’clock a. m. we were aroused by an alarm of “Indians.” We ran to our horses. All was confusion, each trying to catch his horses. We succeeded in driving them into camp where we caught all but six, which escaped into the prairies. In the meantime the Indians appeared before our camp to the number of 60, of which 15 or 20 were mounted on horseback and the remainder on foot, all being entirely naked, armed with fusees, bows, arrows, etc.’ This is from Journal of a Trapper written by Osborne Russell, born 210 years ago today, which is considered one of the best first-hand narratives about the life of an ordinary trapper during the heyday of the Rocky Mountains fur trade.

Osborne was born on 19 June 1814 into a large farming family in the village of Bowdoinham, Maine. Aged 16, he is said to have run away to sea but to have soon given that up for a job with the Northwest Fur Trapping and Trading Company, which operated in Wisconsin and Minnesota. That led to him joining Nathaniel Wyeth’s Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company, and to being part of an expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Subsequently he joined Jim Bridger’s brigade of Rocky Mountain Fur Company men, continuing with them after a merger that left the American Fur Company in control of the trade. When the fur trade declined, he became a free trapper operating out of Fort Hall (by then part of the Hudson’s Bay Company), staying in the mountains until the great Westward migration began.

In 1843, Russell participated in the so-called Champoeg Meeting (the first attempt at formal governance by European-American and French Canadian pioneers in the Oregon Country) voting in favour of forming a government. He was selected by the First Executive Committee to serve as the Supreme Judge for the Provisional Government of Oregon and served until May of 1844. However, he was unsuccessful in his run for governor of the Provisional Government in 1845, giving his support to George Abernethy. Russell eventually went to California in 1848, after the discovery of gold there. He died in Placerville in 1884. 

There is some limited further information about Russell available on the web (for example at Wikipedia), but mostly this is based on the contents of a journal he kept and which was first published by Boise in 1914, as Journal of a Trapper: or, Nine years in the Rocky Mountains, 1834-1843: being a general description of the country, climate, rivers, lakes, mountains, etc., and a view of the life by a hunter in those regions. According to the website Mountain Men and the Fur Trade, it is ‘one of the best first-hand narratives available of the everyday life of an ordinary trapper during the heyday of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.’

The journal can be read freely online at Internet Archive (a more recent volume edited by Aubrey Haines can also be digitally borrowed at the same site) and at the Library of Western Fur Trade Historical Source Documents. The original manuscript is held in the William Robertson Coe Collection of Western Americana in Yale University Library, and images of its pages are also available on the website.

Here are two extracts from the published diary, one from July 1834, and the other from June 1835.

1834
‘On July 11th we left Bear River and crossed low ridges of broken country for about 15 miles in a northeast direction, and fell on to a stream which ran into Snake River, called Blackfoot. Here we met with Captain B. S. Bonneville and a party of 10 or 12 men. He was on his way to the Columbia and was employed killing and drying buffalo meat for the journey. The next day we traveled in a westerly direction over a rough, mountainous country about 25 miles, and the day following, after traveling about 20 miles in the same direction, we emerged from the mountains into the great valley of the Snake River. On the 16th we crossed the valley and reached the river in about 25 miles travel west. Here Mr. Wyeth concluded to stop, build a fort and deposit the remainder of his merchandise, leaving a few men to protect them, and trade with the Snake and Bannock Indians.

On the 18th we commenced the fort, which was a stockade 80 feet square, built of cottonwood trees set on end, sunk two and one-half feet in the ground and standing about 15 feet above, with two bastions eight feet square at the opposite angles. On the 4th of August the fort was completed and on the 5th the “Stars and Stripes” were unfurled to the breeze at sunrise in the center of a savage and uncivilized country, over an American trading post.

The next day Mr. Wyeth departed for the mouth of the Columbia River with all the party excepting twelve men (myself included) who were stationed at the fort. I now began to experience the difficulties attending a mountaineer, we being all raw hands, excepting the man who had charge of the fort, and a mulatto, the two latter having but very little experience in hunting game with the rifle, and although the country abounded with game, still it wanted experience to kill it.

On the 12th of August myself and three others (the mulatto included) started from the fort to hunt buffalo. We proceeded up the stream running into Snake River near the fort called Ross Fork in an easterly direction about 25 miles, crossed a low mountain in the same direction about five miles and fell on to a stream called the Portneuf. Here we found several large bands of buffalo. We went to a small spring and encamped. I now prepared myself for the first time in my life to kill meat for my supper, with a rifle. I had an elegant one, but had little experience in using it. However, I approached the band of buffaloes, crawling on my hands and knees within about 80 yards of them, then raised my body erect, took aim and shot at a bull. At the crack of the gun the buffaloes all ran off excepting the bull which I had wounded. I then reloaded and shot as fast as I could until I had driven 25 bullets at, in and about him, which was all that I had in my bullet pouch, while the bull still stood, apparently riveted to the spot. I watched him anxiously for half an hour in hopes of seeing him fall, but to no purpose. I was obliged to give it up as a bad job and retreat to our encampment without meat; but the mulatto had better luck - he had killed a fat cow whilst shooting 15 bullets at the band. The next day we succeeded in killing another cow and two bulls. We butchered them, took the meat and returned to the fort.’

***

June 1835
‘On the 28th about 9 o’clock a. m. we were aroused by an alarm of “Indians.” We ran to our horses. All was confusion, each trying to catch his horses. We succeeded in driving them into camp where we caught all but six, which escaped into the prairies. In the meantime the Indians appeared before our camp to the number of 60, of which 15 or 20 were mounted on horseback and the remainder on foot, all being entirely naked, armed with fusees, bows, arrows, etc. They immediately caught the horses which had escaped from us and commenced riding to and fro within gunshot of our camp with all the speed their horses were capable of producing, without shooting a single gun, for about 20 minutes, brandishing their war weapons and yelling at the top of their voices. Some had scalps suspended on small poles which they waved in the air, others had pieces of scarlet cloth with one end fastened round their heads while the other trailed after them. After securing my horses I took my gun, examined the priming, set the breech on the ground and hand on the muzzle, with my arms folded, gazed at the novelty of this scene for some minutes, quite unconscious of danger, until the whistling of balls about my ears gave me to understand that these were something more than mere pictures of imagination and gave me assurance that these living creatures were a little more dangerous than those I had been accustomed to see portrayed on canvas.

The first gun was fired by one of our party, which was taken as the signal for attack on both sides, but the well directed fire from our rifles soon compelled them to retire from the front and take to the brush behind us, where they had the advantage until seven or eight of our men glided into the brush and concealing themselves until their left wing approached within about 30 feet of them before they shot a gun, they then raised and attacked them in the flank. The Indians did not stop to return the fire, but retreated through the brush as fast as possible, dragging their wounded along with them and leaving their dead on the spot. In the meantime myself and the remainder of our party were closely engaged with the center and right. I took advantage of a large tree which stood near the edge of the brush between the Indians and our horses. They approached until the smoke of our guns met. I kept a large German horse pistol loaded by me in case they should make a charge when my gun was empty. When I first stationed myself at the tree I placed a hat on some twigs which grew at the foot of it and would put it in motion by kicking the twigs with my foot in order that they might shoot at the hat and give me a better chance at their heads, but I soon found this sport was no joke for the poor horses behind me were killed and wounded by the balls intended for me. The Indians stood the fight for about two hours, then retreated through the brush with a dismal lamentation. We then began to look about to find what damage they had done us. One of our comrades was found under the side of an old root, wounded by balls in three places in the right and one in the left leg below the knee, no bones having been broken. Another had received a slight wound in the groin. We lost three horses, killed on the spot, and several more were wounded, but not so bad as to be unable to travel. Towards night some of our men followed down the stream about a mile and found the place where they had stopped and laid their wounded comrades on the ground in a circle. The blood was still standing congealed in nine places where they had apparently been dressing the wounds. 

29th - Staid at the same place, fearing no further attempt by the same party of Indians.

30th - Traveled up the main branch about 10 miles. 

July 1st, traveled to the southeast extremity of the valley and encamped for the night. Our wounded comrade suffered very much in riding, although everything was done which lay in our power to ease his sufferings. A pallet was made upon the best gaited horse belonging to the party for him to ride on and one man appointed to lead the animal. 

On the 2d we crossed the Teton mountains in an easterly direction, about 15 miles. The ascent was very steep and rugged, covered with tall pines, but the descent was somewhat smoother.’