The

der and penetrated to the ribs of the other side, and in pulling this shaft out a terrible feature of these weapons was illustrated. The flint-head, fastened to the shaft with a thong of deer-sinew, remains firmly attached so long as this binding is dry; but immediately it is moistened by the blood, the head becomes loose, and remains in the body after the arrow is withdrawn. Apaches have several ways of producing terrible wounds; among others, by firing bullets chipped from the half oxidized mats of old furnace heaps, containing copper and lead combined with sulphur and arsenic. But perhaps the worst at short range is produced by bullets made from the fibre of the aloe root, which are almost always fatal, since it is impossible to clean the wound.

On reaching the fort and seeing the commandant, I was told by that officer that he could not take the responsibility of weakening his force, and that the most he could do would be to give me an escort back to the Santa Rita. As the troops from Fort Breckenridge were expected in a few days, I was led to expect that after their arrival I might obtain a small number of soldiers. But when, after several days had passed without bringing these troops, the commandant told me that not only would it be impossible to give us any protection at the Santa Rita, but that he could no longer give me an escort thither, I resolved to return immediately with only the boy Juan. In the meantime a rumor reached the fort that a large body of Apaches had passed through the Santa. Rita valley, had probably massacred our people, and were preparing to attack Tubac. I was certainly never under a stronger temptation than I felt then to accept the warmly-pressed invitation of the officers, to leave the country with the military, and give up all idea of returning to what they represented as certain death. But I felt constrained to go back, and Juan and myself mounted our horses. I had hardly bid the officers good-by when an old frontiersman, Mr. Robert Ward, joined us, and

declared his intention of trying to reach his wife, who was in Tubac. As we left the fort a fine pointer belonging to the commandant followed us, and as he had become attached to me we had no difficulty and few scruples in enticing him away to swell our party. We took the hill trail, it being both shorter and safer, and had reached a point within three miles of the Santa Rita without meeting any very fresh signs of Indians, when the dog, which kept always on the trail, ahead of us, after disappearing in the brush by an arroya, came back growling and with his tail between his legs. We were then two or three hundred yards from the thicket, and spurring our horses we left the trail and quickly crossed the arroya a hundred yards or more above the ambush, for such the fresh Indian tracks in the dry creek had shown it to be.

We reached our mines safely, and found that although almost constantly surrounded by Apaches, who had cut off all communication with Tubac, there had been no direct attack. Our entire Mexican force was well armed with breech-loading rifles, a fact which, while it kept off the Indians, rendered it necessary that our guard over our peons should never cease for an instant. Nor did we once during the long weeks that followed place ourselves in a position to be caught at a disadvantage. Under penalty of death no Mexican was allowed to pass certain limits, and in turn our party of four kept an unceasing guard, while our revolvers day and night were never out of our hands.

We had now to cut wood for charcoal and haul it in, stick by stick, not having enough animals to draw the sixhorse wagons. This and burning the charcoal kept us nearly three weeks before we could begin to smelt. Our furnaces stood in the open air, about one hundred yards from the main house, and on a tongue of high-land at the junction of two ravines. The brilliant light illuminating every object near the furnace exposed the workmen every night, and all night, to the aim of the Apache. In order to obtain timely

notice of the approach of the Indians, we picketed our watch-dogs at points within a hundred yards of the works; and these faithful guards, which the enemy never succeeded in killing, more than once saved us from a general massacre. The whole Mexican force slept on their arms around the furnace, taking turns at working, sleeping, and patrolling, receiving rations of diluted alcohol, sufficient to increase their courage without making them drunk.

More than one attempt was made by the Apaches to attack us, but being always discovered in time, and failing to surprise us, they contented themselvs with firing into the force at the furnace from a distance. In the condition to which we all, and especially myself, had been brought by weeks of sleepless anxiety, nothing could sound more awful than the sudden discharge of a volley of rifles, accompanied by unearthly yells, that at times broke in upon the silence of the night. Before daylight one morning our chief smelter was shot while tending the furnace; it then became necessary for me to perform this duty myself, uninterruptedly, till I could teach the art to one of the Americans and a Mexican.

I foresaw that the greatest danger from the Mexicans was to be anticipated when the silver should be refined, and made arrangements to concentrate this work into the last two or three days,

and leave the mine immediately after it was finished.

Dispatching a messenger, who succeeded in reaching Tubac, I engaged a number of wagons and men, and on their arrival everything that could be spared was loaded and sent off. The train was attacked and the mules stolen, but the owner and men escaped, and bringing fresh animals, succeeded in carrying the property into Tubac.

At last the result of six weeks' smelting lay before us in a pile of lead planchas containing the silver, and there only remained the separating of these metals to be gone through with. During this process, which I was obliged to conduct myself, and which lasted some fifty or sixty hours, I scarcely closed my eyes; and the three other Americans, revolver in hand, kept an unceasing guard over the Mexicans, whose manner showed plainly their thoughts. Before the silver was cool, we loaded it. We had the remaining property of the company, even to the wooden machine for working the blast, in the returned wagons, and were on the way to Tubac, which we reached the same day, the 15th of June. Here, while the last wagon was being unloaded, a rifle was accidentally discharged, and the ball passing through my hair above the ear deafened me for the whole afternoon.

Thus ended my experience of eight months of mining operations in an Apache stronghold.

THE WOMAN QUESTION, So long confined to revolutionary journals and political arenas, -in which last the voices of its advocates have been anything but "soft and low,"—has at length risen to the dignity of Literature, in the person of Mr. John Stuart Mill, whose little volume, "The Subjection of Women," has lately been published by D. Appleton & Co. What ground Mr. Mill would take therein, could have been predicted with certainty by his readers, both from the general tenor of his philosophy, and from the reverence he has always manifested for the memory of his departed wife, who, so far back as 1851, published a paper in the Edinburgh Review, (or was it the Westminster ?) in which she maintained that one half of the human race are now "passing through life in forced subordination to the other half." This is substantially the view of Mr. Mill himself, and he gives us his reasons for entertaining it, some of considerable weight, and others of no weight at all, that we can perceive. To convince such of his readers as are not predisposed to accept his theory of the entire subjection of woman to man, would require the presentation for their inspection and instruction of more history than he probably has at his command; and, even were the requisite amount so presented, of less ingenious and more practical deductions than he would be likely to make. It is so easy to find just what one looks for in history, and nothing else, and so hard to find just what is really there, and nothing else.

When Nero can be whitewashed into a mild and beneficent prince, and Henry the Eighth into-we forget exactly what Mr. Froude makes him out to have been, it cannot be difficult to blacken man-kind as regards woman-kind. That men have withheld from women many of their rights is certain; and it is equally certain that men have also with held as many, and as undeniable, rights from each other. And, as they are now gaining, or regaining, their freedom, so woman is is now gaining, or regaining, hers.

Precisely what Woman's Rights are, outside of the family, where she rules more supremely than man, is the point at issue in the Woman Question, and one upon which Mr. Mill sheds the light of his clear mind and the

warmth of his generous heart. He does not convince us that woman is the equal of man, (more's the pity for us, perhaps,) but he does convince us,-what, indeed, we never doubted -that many avenues of employment, many ways of usefulness, have been unwisely and too long closed against her, and that it is wise to open them at once, and bid her Godspeed therein. Here, we think, he is most at home, and here he must carry with him those who will take the trouble to think, and they are those who will carry others.

And here he is at one with Mr. Horace Bushnell, whose "Woman's Suffrage; the Reform against Nature,” (Scribner & Co.) may be considered as an answer in advance to Mr. Mill's "Subjection of Women." Mr. Bushnell combats the notion of the equality of the sexes, or, rather, he maintains that the differences between them do not constitute inequalities, as they neither prove the one superior, nor the other inferior. And this, we take it, is the ground upon which most thinking men stand, and the ground upon which woman will eventually win whatever is worth winning in her impending struggle,--should there be one with man.

Mr. Bushnell is opposed, as his title suggests, to the right of woman to the suffrage, holding, in fact, that man himself has no natural right to it, in that it is conferred upon him, and not born with him. This crotchet, as many may call it, will not be acceptable to his readers, but it is not without a share of truth. He considers us egregiously conceited about it, and says: "After all, our free suffrage state, when taken close at hand, as when we go to the ballot, makes a rather coarse, half nasty element; where men are pitched into count, without any consideration of merit or weight, and where they vote promotions, with only the feeblest merest chance reference to the merit of the promotions voted. The machinery is dreadfully loose, and the look of order and right is only what a pell-mell operation yields. We are coaxed and flattered, for the time, by the feeling that we are doing something great, and getting a more advanced consequence in it; but, for one, I seriously doubt whether any so great benefits, either personal or public, are coming out of the

suffrage as we are wont to assume." ""There is much less for us all here," he continues, "than our coarse patriotic fervors assume, and a great deal less for women than for men. If the scheme of suffrage must go down, it will be a very great advantage that our women are not in it. It will go down, if at all, simply by the rotting process of its own corruptions, and our ambitious women will find little comfort in being the bad other half that goes down with it." Mr. Bushnell draws a vivid sketch of women mingling in the uproar of primary meetings, going to the polls, etc., etc., but, as they have not done this yet, let us hope that he is unnecessarily alarmed.

Whether women are fitted to fill thrones is one of the questions discussed both by Mr. Mill and Mr. Bushnell, and, as might have been expected, they arrive at very different conclusions. Mr. Mill declares that a large proportion of the small number of reigning queens have shown more talent for rule than men, though many have occupied the throne in difficult periods. "It is remarkable, too, that they have, in a great number of instances, been distinguished by merits the most opposite to the imaginary and conventional character of women. They have been as much remarked for the firmness and vigor of their rule, as for its intelligence. When, to queens and empresses, we add regents, and vice-regents of provinces, the list of women who have been eminent rulers of mankind swells to a great length." This "admitted truth' as Mr. Mill considers it, is not admitted at all by Mr. Bushnell, who does not see the badness of the joke in the saying that queens are better than kings, because under kings women govern, but under queens, men. He selects Elizabeth of England as not a bad example of a successful female ruler, and certainly none has been more frequently held up for admiration on account of the splendor of her administration; and he finds it nearly impossible to imagine that a woman of so many weaknesses, and tossed by by so many uncomfortable tempers, can have added much to the success of her reign that was fairly from herself. "She was surrounded, as it were, and caged by a body of nobles, and grave counsellors, and great men pillared in wise moderation and heroic selfrespect, and she knocked herself about among them, first against one, and then against another, persecuting some, annoying all, and calling it government; whereas, in fact, they all were governing her, with as much patience as they could, or as much impatience as they

must; and keeping her, by their changing attractions and repulsions, within the endurable conditions. There never was a finer illustra tion of the fact that women as such are not called to use authority, for with all the force she employed, the tyrannical edicts she pronounced, and the imperious and haughty airs she assumed, she was held up largely by the courteously moderated pity of her great men, and as to genuine personal authority, she never had a trace of it in the feeling of anybody." "Her court endured her as an odious, royally detestable woman, and sought to make the best of her, as far as they could. And when she died, it was not a day too soon. She had filled the masculine gap, and been as much of a man in the line, as perhaps she could; but they wanted now a man-whether to be worse or better, they must learn for themselves."

In view of the difference of their opinions as regards historical facts, in which each appears to find what he wants; and in view of the entire opposition of their views as to the rights and capabilities of woman, we are somewhat at a loss to choose between Mr. Bushnell and Mr. Mill. Our readers, however, may be more fortunate, so we commit to their judgments the case of these learned doctors, each being in his own opinion, the "soundest casuist" alive.

There must be a charm in the writing of verse, without reference to its substance or quality, or so many people would not be at it from one year's end to another. We can imagine, perhaps, the rapture which possesses the poet when a noble thought is born in his brain, or a profound and passionate feeling in his heart, but we cannot imagine the mental condition into which the poetaster urges himself, or suffers himself to drift, while in the act of composition, and in which he evidently remains long afterward, frequently to to the end of his days. It is natural that many men should be ignorant of many things, and yet be ignorant of their ignorance, but that any man should mistake his ignorance for knowledge, is unnatural, or only natural among the class of unfortunates whom we need not name further. And one is generally at a loss to decide which most characterizes these jingling gentry-their self-deceit, or their self-conceit, both are so absurd. We have upon our table as many volumes of verse as there are Muses, but the Muses have inspired none of them, although they may now and then have cast a not unkindly glance toward two or three of the would-be poets.

We take up Mr. Henry Abbey, whose "Stories in Verse" are published by Randolph & Co. There are six of them, four being in blank verse, and very blank verse too. "Blanche," the opening story, is written in many measures, all being fluently and gracefully handled. Its first defect is that it perpetually reminds us of Tennyson's "Maud," its last, that its similes, metaphors, etc., are atrocious. What can be worse than this? "A Bacchanalian dimple

Dipt a wine-cup in her cheek."

Unless it be this:

"A smile shone through her large dark eyes As sometimes, in the stormy skies,

The light puts through an arm, Which, spreading glory far and wide, Draws the broad curtain cloud aside, Making the whole earth warm."

Or this:

"They walked, and o'er them saw the spider moon Weaving the storin upon its web of cloud."

But in the shape of forced conceits these three lines will bear the palm from anything written since Alexander Smith's "Life Drama:"

"The new sword moon against the violet sky
Is held aloft, by one white arm of cloud
Raised from the sombre shoulder of a hill."

Mr. Abbey should learn the difference be-
tween Imagination and Fancy, and if he can-
not rise to the one, see to it that he does not
drag the other down into bathos. "Karagwe
is an attempt to make the life of an American
slave poetic, and not a successful one. "De-
metrius," an Eastern story, is written with
spirit, in the measure of "Lady Geraldine's
Courtship," to which it has added nothing
new, and from which it has subtracted nothing
old, in the way of rhythms and cadences. It
is intended to be dramatic, but is not, since
no man out of an insane asylum would ever
proclaim himself such a villain as Demetrius
does, and with such an utter absence of
shame. "The Strong Spider" is a hideous
fantasy, while "Grace Bernard" is simply
horrible. "Veera" is about as probable as
Southey's Eastern epics, and has the same
"excuse for being" as they, which is just
none at all.

A much worse poet than Mr. Abbey is Mr. George H. Calvert, whose pamphlet poem, "Ellen," bearing the imprint of Messrs. Sheldon & Co., is the cloudiest, murkiest, muddiest performance that we have ever read. And the strange thing about it is that Mr. Calvert is a very clever man. We recall his little volume "The Gentleman," a well considered, thoughtful essay, that may be read with profit for its matter, and with pleasure VOL. IV.-80

for its style, which is facile, graceful, and elegant. Mr. Calvert is a skilful writer in prose, but his skill deserts him the moment he essays to write in verse, or else he abandons it, and his taste with it, from some singular notion or other in regard to the requirements of verse. It would appear, indeed, as if he thought that the farther he could get from prose the nearer he would get to poetry, but the result does not justify him in any such belief, if he entertains it, for as far as "Ellen " is from prose, it is still farther from poetry. If such writing as this is poetry, and the stanza below is not an unfair specimen of the language and spirit of the whole piece, there have been but few poets in England or America before Mr. Calvert, and we trust there will be still fewer after him;

"Man's complex spheric being, for its weal
Needing co-active unity in all

His diverse powers, then only the white seal
Of good being set when act is not a thrall
Of passion, but the generous pulses feel
Them throb within its life. The ceaseless call
Of men to man were mocked by answers dark
With the close breathing of a bestial bark."

- In "Beautiful Snow and other Poems" by J. W. Watson, (Turner Brothers & Co., Philadelphia), mixed with much that is fictitious and sensational, there is occasionally a true and simple note. "Beautiful Snow," we learn from a printed slip in the volume, has other claimants to its authorship than Mr. Watson, just as "Rock me to sleep, mother" has other claimants to its authorship than Mrs. Akers (that was), and with much less reason, for while the latter would really be a feather in the cap of most amateur poets, the former is hardly worth stealing by anybody. Mr. Watson would have done well, we think, had he left it out of his collection, except that its absence would have deprived him of the occasion, which he embraced, to write a letter that his publishers could print. There is nothing unjustifiable in his proceeding, of course, but we could wish it undone, nevertheless, just as we could wish he was not so eager to seize upon trivial and temporary themes, because they might, could, would, or should be popular. We recognize Mr. Watson as one of the multitudinous singers of the Rebellion-a class for whom we never could' entertain much respect, in that they appeared to regard the most dreadful of evils-War as a literary Godsend, celebrating the valor of our soldiers not so much from patriotism, as for the few paltry dollars it would put in their pockets. Something nobler than this gave birth to "The Battle-Hymn of the Republic."