introvert.net

Paris - May 7th through the 14th, 2006. A reading list.

I’m on my way to Argentina.

We give babies names when they are born, but sometimes when the babies grow up the names do not fit them. “Charles” means “strong” and “Ruth” means “beautiful,” but when Charles grows up he may not be strong, and Ruth may not be beautiful. You never can tell. When white people came to South America to the land south of Brazil they saw Indians there wearing silver bracelets and silver necklaces, and they supposed there must be a great deal of silver in the land, so they names the country “Silver Land,” which in their language is “Argentina.” But Argentina turned out to have very litter silver, yet we still call it Silver Land just the same.

Although Argentina has little silver, the people there have a great deal of money; in fact, they have more money than any other country in South America. They do not get the money out of the ground, but they make it by selling wheat and meat, so it would have been a more fitting name if they had called Argentina “Wheat Land” or “Meat Land” instead of “Silver Land,” but not nearly so pretty. In Argentina there are enormous farms where they grow wheat and corn, and enormous fields called pampas where they raise cattle and sheep. The men that look after these cattle and sheep we should call “cowboys,” but there they are call “gauchos.” Gauchos wear ponchos. A poncho is a kind of square blanket with a hole in the center through which the gaucho sticks his head. He uses it as a coat by day and as a blanket at night. A gaucho always carries a big knife, which he uses as a sword, as a hatchet, or as a table knife.

Corn feeds the cattle. Cattle makes meat and meat makes money. From the skin of the cattle leather is made, and from the wool of sheep cloth is made, and from both money is made.

Argentina is so much like the United States in a great many ways that it is often called the United States of South America. Both countries are alike in this — that they have hot weather part of the time and cold weather part of the time. But there is this big difference: in Argentina they have winter when the United States is having summer, and summer when the United States is having winter. In Argentina Christmas comes in hot weather and snow and ice in July and August. They have flowers and vegetables and vacations in January and February, and snow and ice and sledding and skating in July.

The capital of Argentina is often called the New York of South America, as it is the largest city of South America, as New York is the largest city of North America. Its name, however, is not New York, but “Good Airs,” or, in Spanish, “Buenos Aires.” It is on the Plata River, which is another name that means silver. So we have the city of Good Airs on the Silver River in Silver Land.

In most of the other countries of South America there are many more Indians and Indians mixed with white men than there are white people, but in Argentina most of the people are white. That’s another reason why it is like the United States; but Argentina was settled by people from Spain, not from England, so the people speak Spanish and not English.

From A Child’s Geography of the World, by V. M. Hillyer (1929).

My great-great-grandfather, Charles Lewis Francis, arrived from Wales in 1860, at age 17, and shortly thereafter participated in the action of the Civil War. In 1879, he wrote and published a memoir of this period. I’ve scanned in the text and made it available as raw PDF scans and as an incomplete full-text PDF. As I correct the OCR’d chapters, I’ll be posting the sections to my blog. This is the sixth section of Chapter I.

I remember that I had not been back to the capital long when I started to go to Frederick City. I travelled on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to a point within three miles of the city, and there left the cars on perceiving the signs of an army being near by. Then I advanced, with military prudence, until I entered regular lines. The camp proved to be that of a brigade commanded by General Abercrombie.

The camp was situated on high ground and in thick, wild woods, the whole overlooking the Monacacy river and the city beyond. I proceeded through the various regimental grounds, and saw, among other celebrities, Colonel Fletcher Webster, of the Twelfth Massachusetts Infantry, who was pointed out to me as a son of the great Expounder of the Constitution, of which I made due note, and have remembered it to this day.

Proceeding on to the west, I came in sight of the city, but before reaching it I had to pass over the old stone bridge which spans the Monocacy river, a short distance from Frederick. I might have crossed by the railroad bridge nearer, but the sight of the old stone structure took my fancy. I was an old-fashioned affair — no one could inform me as to its age; in solidity and plainness it reminded me of some of the old bridges I had seen in Wales, say that over the Usk river at Abergavenny. On either end there were two large urn-shaped ornaments of stone, and I was gravely told by a “Pennsylvania Dutchman,” who was my guide, that enclosed in each was a large package of whiskey that had been placed there at the time the bridge was built.

The Monacacy river was more rapid than deep, but the signs on the banks were that during a rainy season the stream might swell to large proportions. The road I was on led directly to the main street of town, and I walked up that thoroughfare until I arrived at headquarters. I think General Banks, of Massachusetts was in command. At any rate, I received a pass which enabled me to move pretty much as I pleased. Frederick is situated in a delightful country. Rich and well cultivated fields surround the town, especially on the north and west sides. The people who inhabited it were largely made up of the descendants of the Germans who long ago settled in Pennsylvania, and who are vulgarly called “Pennsylvania Dutch.” They all hail from Adams County, and if one could say, and prevail upon the rest to believe, that his name was “Schmidt,” or any one of its German variations, he had almost a sure pass to the aristocratic portion of the town. This is the place where Barbara Fritchie made herself immortal; or at least the poet says she did.

My great-great-grandfather, Charles Lewis Francis, arrived from Wales in 1860, at age 17, and shortly thereafter participated in the action of the Civil War. In 1879, he wrote and published a memoir of this period. I’ve scanned in the text and made it available as raw PDF scans and as an incomplete full-text PDF. As I correct the OCR’d chapters, I’ll be posting the sections to my blog. This is the sixth section of Chapter I.

Again I went on a expedition to Virginia with a column of troops. We did not know where we were going to what we were going for, but at a miserable place called Drainsville, it was a question whether, in the skirmish that took place, we got beaten or were victorious. At any rate we came back without having accomplished any specific object that I know of. I believe this was undertaken by the troops of General McCall’s Pennsylvania Reserve Corps.

During the rest of the winter of 1861–2 I was engaged in going from camp to camp, and in the habit of staying away from home for days and weeks together. Of course it was very wrong and all that, and I invariably got lectured upon my return, but after all, I had many interesting experiences during that time, and besides, amid such scenes it would be hard to control a youth of eighteen, especially as a wide and treacherous ocean existed between him and direct parental authority. So I had very much my own way.

I encamped at Tennalytown — a little beyond Georgetown — with the celebrated “Buck Tails” of Pennsylvania, and made many acquaintances among the men of the various regiments. I was in a position to return services for entertainment, because, military discipline being rigidly enforced, few of the officers or men were allowed to go beyond the grand lines of their respective brigades or divisions, whereas I was not so amenable to arbitrary orders, and could go and return nearly as it suited me, and thus was enabled to perform many little commissions for those with whom I associated. There were four or five regiments in the brigade of “Buck Tails,” and these, with several others, and a battery, commanded, if I remember well, by a Captain McClure, formed what was known as the “Pennsylvania Reserve Corps.” The whole was commanded by General McCall.

I became very intimate with several men in the Forty-sixth Pennsylvania regiment. Indeed, I think it was that regiment that had whole companies of Welshmen in it. One of the men of this regiment was sadly homesick, and, as he had a sister who was a domestic in the family of Galusha A. Grow, the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, I was duly commissioned to interview her and lay his case before her in such a way as, that she should duly communicate the same to her august employer, for relief.

Whether my mission or her labors were ever successful I never learned, but I do know that then I reached home and told where it had been, I received the severest correction short of a thrashing I had ever had, from my aristocratic great aunt for communing with a “servant.” It was very shocking to her when she saw how quickly I had blossomed into so democratic a flower.

Dear, high-minded old aunt! If she had but recalled history then, or was alive now to know as much as we do about the inside springs that move great men, she would have realized that “servants” had before controlled, did then, and no doubt would thereafter wield no small influence in shaping the policies of those whom they serve — all the way between presented a good or bad dinner, guarding secrets well, and the other extreme, allowing themselves to be courted by newspaper correspondents or other — spies. But that is not a narrative, and ought, if printed at all, to be placed in parentheses, and it would have been, if I had not been advised by very respectable authority to entirely discard the use of them in the kind of writing described in my title-page.

I visited the camps and fortifications on both sides of the river. I was very much interested in the organization of the Sixth (or Fifth) United States Cavalry. The regiment was encamped on the great plain east of the capitol and not far from the Congressional burying ground. General Hunter was the Colonel and General Emory was the Lieutenant Colonel. As a matter of fact, there were few officers of the regiment between generals and second lieutenants. I had very lively times as I scampered over the plain with the regiment, engaged as it was in “breaking in” both men and horses.

After half a dozen lucky falls and a score of other mishaps, I became quite expert as a rider, and I do not know but that I might have been a sub-altern in the regiment had I not been dissuaded from making an application by the highest domestic authority, who declared that in all her experience of sixty to eighty years, “none but scapegraces ever went into the army.” That was equal to a lawful veto, and bad as I was, I determined, although two generations removed, and a recent importation of the blood at that, not to voluntarily make of myself the traditional scapegrace of the family. Like arguments caused me to desist a short time after, when at Camp Carroll, just outside of Baltimore, I was found dressed in a blouse, wearing a jaunty cap, and drilling a squad of men of the Fifth Maryland Volunteers, over whom I hourly expected to be placed in command.