Francisco, is 150 nearer the Mexican way "as the crow flies." And in the triumphs of science and money combined, locomotives are getting quite in the way of going as the crow does. New York is 784 miles nearer to the Pacific through Mexico than by the Golden Gate; or to put the case more boldly for Pacific commerce, San Antonio, a leading Texan city, is 339 miles nearer to the Pacific than it is to St. Louis, taking rail direct each way. Undoubtedly commerce will soon take the shortest route to market, and the laws of trade will prepare the way for the laws of nations.

After the civil war, the United States found leisure and energy to utilize some of her fifty-five national and inter-oceanic surveys, by considering the south part of our continent. Mexico then began to realize that her strongest and best friend was her nearest neighbor, when scientists went in and showed them a better way of working in agriculture, mechanics and mining. Immense ranches were bought, lying off right and left in many square leagues; abandoned mines were also bought and lost ones discovered by experts and put under work or on the market. The amount of capital that has gone in quietly and obscurely from the business north is princely, That "pleasure excursion," so called, through Mexico, in the summer of 1875, consisting of capitalists, railroad kings and broad speculators, was no rollicking and recruiting affair, as if among the cool hills and rivers of Canada.

Between the death of Maximilian-Mexico's new lease of life-and January 8, 1881, the Mexican congress passed one hundred and one legislative and executive acts for the encouragement of railroad construction. Of course the enterprise was overdone, but in August of that year the Americans held charters for twenty-seven railroads in Mexico. Of the thirty-three granted up to January, 1879, nineteen were to citizens of the United States, four went abroad, and ten were retained by Mexicans.*

It has been stated that the Mexicans are diminishing in numbers. They once held sway as a numerous people to the Sabine, to Northern Utah and to the borders of Oregon. Those left now are the remnant of a great prehistoric race, and may maintain a separate nationality as a race. But with their inherited and growing weakness and tendencies, nothing probably can save them from absorption or extinction but some of the strongest and best forces of modern civilization. The American relations and alliances now mentioned will, of course, hasten a closer and more amicable *Report of Secretary of Finance of Mexico, January, 1879.

state of things along the boundary of fifteen hundred and seventy-two miles, and inland both ways to the city of Mexico and to Washington.

Such are some of the relations, financial and civil, hinted rather than unfolded, between these two coterminous governments. The speed of events will have much to do with these relations in a decade or so of years. In a letter to James Warren, President of the Massachusetts Provincial congress, Samuel Adams says: "The wheels of Providence seem to be in their swiftest motion." Adams was then sitting in congress in Philadelphia, when twenty days were a fair time for questions and answers (news) between that city and Boston. Since those times steam and the telegraph and telephone have added wonderfully to the motion of the "wheels of Providence" in the civil and political world, to which the statesman was referring. Now Boston whispers to Philadelphia and then turns away the lips only to open and turn the ear for the answer. In this speed and rush of events one catches the breath in thinking what may take place on either side of the Rio Grandé within the next ten years. One would feel differently if moral, educational and civilizing forces were wont to work as rapidly as financial, civil and political ones.

This consideration turns us for a moment to the study of a few facts on the American side of our river boundary. It was on the fourth of August, 1846, that General Kearney run out his cannon over the bluff, which he had converted into Fort Marcy, and with their muzzles looking down on Santa Fé, demanded the surrender of New Mexico to the United States. The surrender cost no blood and but little time, when the general went down to the old adobe palace and read the proclamation of the change of sovereignty and of government.

That military and civil act of twenty-four hours needed to be followed up by the civilizing, educating and Christianizing forces of two or three generations to complete what the sword began, and make the conquered homogeneous with the conquering. Eminently our kind of government is made stable only in education and the Christian virtues, of which we gained almost nothing in that annexation. We then annexed a belt of danger to the United States, and let it alone. Since that day American philanthropy and Christian benevolence have gleaned the world for open fields and suffering objects, but have painfully and almost totally neglected our newly acquired and sadly unfit citizens, all the way from the Mormaic city to the Rio Grandé and San Diego. Save the item of Federal money, the southwest portion of the annexation has served to Mexi

canize the United States. Private and primary schools, were appearing here and there after our flag had been in the country thirty years. We found one in Las Animas, in 1880, a womanly enterprise of six weeks from Indiana. The walls of the first public school-house were then rising. Santa Fé was some in advance on the private side, and in Albuquerque we found a missionary of one of our national societies prospecting for an opening for a Protestant church. He succeeded, and planted their first church in New Mexico, after holding the country thirty-four years. One started the same year in Arizona, and the year following in Santa Fé. Long years before, Dr. Bushnell had uttered his warm and anxious words in the ears of a national society for Christianizing the land: "What less than a romantic folly could it seem, to any sober mind, if such indeed were the alternative, to be pouring out our mercies into the obscure outposts of heathenism, and having this great nation, the brightest hope of the ages, to go down as a frustrated and broken experiment." But the neglect continued, and the darkness deepened on our belt of danger. Latterly the United States government is wrestling vigorously and doubtfully with one of the several evils which have grown up there stalwart and undisturbed-the American harem. It should be mortifying that moral evils are neglected by the church till the civil power is forced to take them in hand, in simple defense of the state, and not very successfully.

It is supposed to be generally true that investments on our borders for a Christian civilization, produce greater results in ten years than the same could in fifty in the established east. Some of the men are yet living who, in a skiff, paddled Christianity and a college across the Mississippi into Iowa territory. That boat load was equivalent to any round million, 'planted for similar purposes, anywhere east of the Hudson river. Prob. ably no openings more needy or more hopeful for benevolent work in civilization, can be found than in our southwest-the American side of the Rio Grandé; and it is due to the Republic as well as to Christianity, that the opportunities be seized and dangers fended off.

The provincial policy, however, that has been apparent and seems to have been unconscious, will require some variations, if the country immediately north of this boundary is assimilated to the older Republic. This may be illustrated by an example or two. The same year, 1846, Iowa and Texas came into the Union with about equal populations. The Rio Grandé state is five times the size of its twin sister of the north, and is

By

passing in numbers, wealth, and other elements of civil strength. the agency of one of our national organs for Christian civilization, during the thirty-eight years that these two states have been in the Union, Iowa. has averaged eighty-eight Christian missionaries a year, and Texas twentyseven thirty-fourths of one missionary a year.

In 1861 Dakota was organized into a territory; and in 1850 New Mexico, and Arizona in 1863. The former had about 150,000 square miles, and the other two, jointly, about 100,000 more. In 1880 Dakota had 134,000 inhabitants and seventeen Christian missionaries of the national organ referred to; the other two, 25,000 more people and no Christian missionary. In 1883 Dakota had fifty-five, and the others had two each. Each of these two waited thirty-eight years for its first pioneer of a Christian civilization from this national agency.

Arkansas has now been in the Union forty-eight years, and never but three years had more than one missionary, and for thirty-five years had none, reckoning down to 1884.

The Christian philanthropist is barred from the plea of the sinfulness of any one of these southern and neglected sections by the divine policy that where sin abounds grace should much more abound.

The power of Christianity is here referred to in no narrow sense, but rather as an embodiment of the forces which organize society, enact laws, sustain government, promote worldly thrift, give nurture to learning, and crown community with the beatitudes.

While much is done to obliterate any color line that may limit benevolence, it might be wise to enquire for any lines of latitude or of geography needing removal. And the old pagan and Christian fable of the body and its members might be studied with a profit to some improvement on the provincial policy. "Those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow more abundant honor, that there should be no schism in the body. For if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it."

W. BARROWS.

1

THE BATTLE OF THE PENINSULA, SEPTEMBER 29, 1812.

Let the reader take a map of Ohio, find Sandusky bay, which indents the southern shore of Lake Erie, and he will note north of it a considerable body of land, traversed in part by the little Portage river and nearly surrounded by water, forming what is called the peninsula. This—as were also some of the lands about the head of the bay-was among the points early occupied by pioneer settlers of northern Ohio. Here, on the twentyninth of September, 1812, occurred the first hostile meeting-two skirmishes-between a small body of the state militia and the Indians, of the war of 1812-usually called by the few who ever heard of them the Battle of the Peninsula-very sharp affairs for the numbers engaged. Curiously enough no report of them can be found in the war office; it is supposed none was ever made. I know of no book that contains any account of

them.

The late Joshua Reed Giddings, then a fine, well grown youth of sixteen was present in the affairs. On his return to camp he wrote with pokeberry juice, on whitey-brown paper, a spirited account of them to his mother, and many years latter a detailed sketch of the adventures of his party on the peninsula, of which these were the important parts, published first in the Ladies' Repository, and copied into some of the newspapers of the time. From this last and data from other sources, I prepare this paper for the editor of this magazine.

To bring the affair within the easy apprehension of the younger generation sought to be interested in the beginnings of western history, it may be premised: The years of angry and embittered feeling between the United States and Great Britain culminated in a declaration of war by the American congress June 18, 1812. Anticipating this action, Dr. William Eustis, then Madison's secretary of war, dispatched General Hull, with an army of something over two thousand men, to Detroit, consisting of a part of the fourth infantry, under Colonel James Miller, which fought at