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Page 63
As yet the small freeholders have chiefly occupied themselves in raising
these 'ground provisions,' as yams, plantains, bananas, and the various
vegetables are called. But they are more and more largely planting cane
and coffee, greatly to their own advantage and that of the island.
If in this favored zone the earth is pleasant underneath, nothing can be
more glorious than the heavens above. Being under the parallel of 18� N.
lat., of course we have a full view of all the northern heavens, and of
all the southern heavens, except 18� about the South Pole. The rarefied
atmosphere gives peculiar brilliancy to the stars; and on a clear
night--and most nights are clear--the heavens are indeed flooded with
white fire, while, according to the season of the year, Orion and his
northern company appear with a lustre unwonted to us, or the Scorpion
unfolds his sparkling length, or the Ship displays its glittering
confusion of stars, or the Southern Cross rears aloft its sacred symbol.
Meanwhile, well down toward the northern horizon, the pole star holds
its fixed position, and the Great and the Little Bear, dipping toward
the ocean wave, but not yet dipping in it, pursue their nightly
revolutions. Long after sunset, and long before sunrise, night after
night, the faint, nebulous gleam of the zodiacal lights stretches up
toward the zenith. The shortness of the twilight frequently leaves the
fugacious planet, Mercury, so seldom seen at the north, in distinct
view. While Venus not merely casts a shadow in a clear night, as she
does with us, but when she is brightest, actually shines through the
clouds with an illumining power.
Alternating with these glories of the starry firmament, the moon at the
full fills the lower air with a soft, yet bright light, in which you can
read without difficulty the smallest print. Under this milder
illumination, the overpowering luxuriance of the landscape loses its
oppressiveness, the hills assume more rounded forms, and from the
general obscurity, the palms, a tree made for moonlight, stand out in
soft distinctness. At such a time we forget the foul crimes which
disfigure the past, and the vices which degrade the present of this fair
land, and can easily imagine ourselves in the garden where the yet
unfallen progenitors of mankind walked under a firmament 'glowing with
living sapphires,' and together hymned the praises of their Creator.
Daylight chases away this illusion, but brings back the reality of
Christian work, whose rugged but cheerful tasks replace the delicious
but ineffectual dreams of Paradise Lost, by the hope of contributing, in
some humble measure, toward restoring in a province of fallen earth the
lineaments of Paradise Regained.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: This was during the Crimean war.]
THE RESTORATION OF THE UNION.
God is on the side of our country. Let us reverently thank him that he
has favored the general march of our arms toward the sacred end of our
exertions--the defeat of the daring attempt against the unity of our
national power and the integrity of our free institutions. Not always in
human affairs has the cause of right and freedom prevailed. In the
gradual development of human society, as unfolded in the lapse of long
ages, the oppressor has generally triumphed, and history has full often
been compelled to record the failure of the noblest efforts, and the
downfall of the most righteous designs conceived for the benefit of man.
Such has been the experience of the race in those parts of the world
which have longest been the theatre of human enterprise and of
established government. But the American continent seems to present an
exception to this uniformity of sinister events: it is destined to be
the seat of civil liberty. The success of our institutions in
withstanding the awful trial to which they have just been subjected,
indicates the existence of providential designs toward our favored
country, not to be thwarted by any mortal agency at home or abroad. Such
a combination of hostile elements, so powerful and determined, has never
before assailed any political structure without overthrowing it. The
failure in the present instance shows that our great destiny will be
accomplished in the face of all obstacles, however insurmountable they
may appear to be.
Providence always accomplishes its ends by appropriate
instrumentalities; and in our case there are natural causes adequate to
the great result which seems to be inevitable. In North America the
principle of equal rights and of unobstructed individual progress has
become the fundamental law of society. It is needless to trace the
origin and growth of this principle; but its operation has been so
powerful and productive, so fully imbued with moral and intellectual
power, so solid and safe as a basis of national organization, as shown
in the marvellous history of the United States, that no uncongenial
principle is capable of resisting it, or even of maintaining an
existence by its side. This is true not only with regard to that
antagonistic principle which is now desperately but hopelessly waging a
suicidal war within the bosom of the great republic; but it is equally
true with regard to that insidious germ of despotism, which threatens to
push its way through the soil of a neighboring country, displacing the
free institutions which have long and sadly languished amid the civil
wars of a most unhappy people. The same vigorous vitality which will
renew the growth of our national authority and maintain it in the Union,
will, at the same time, establish its predominant influence on the
continent. Having overborne and rooted out every opposing principle
within the boundaries of our own imperial domain, its growth will be so
majestic that every unfriendly influence which may possibly have secured
a feeble foothold in its vicinity during its perilous struggle, will
soon wither in the shadow of its greatness and disappear from around it.
Foreign nations may exert their sinister authority in the Old World, and
plant their peculiar institutions in that congenial soil, with their
accustomed success; but no amount of skilful manipulation will preserve
these exotics when transplanted in the American soil. The prevailing
elements are not suited to their organization; they cannot be
naturalized and acclimated. This continent, with its peculiar population
and antecedents, has its own political _fauna_ and _flora_, fixed by
nature and destiny, which cannot be utterly changed at the will of any
human authority.
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