Complete Fictional Works of Washington Irving (Illustrated)

by Washington Irving

  Don Fernando was confounded and perplexed. He retraced every thing distinctly that had happened to him in the Island of the Seven Cities, and until he had retired to rest on board of the caravel. Had his vessel been driven from her anchors, and wrecked during his sleep? The people about him could give him no information on the subject. He talked to them of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of all that had befallen him there. They regarded his words as the ravings of delirium, and in their honest solicitude, administered such rough remedies, that he was fain to drop the subject, and observe a cautious taciturnity.

  At length they arrived in the Tagus, and anchored before the famous city of Lisbon. Don Fernando sprang joyfully on shore, and hastened to his ancestral mansion. To his surprise, it was inhabited by strangers; and when he asked about his family, no one could give him any information concerning them.

  He now sought the mansion of Don Ramiro, for the temporary flame kindled by the bright eyes of the Alcayde’s daughter had long since burnt itself out, and his genuine passion for Serafina had revived with all its fervor. He approached the balcony, beneath which he had so often serenaded her. Did his eyes deceive him? No! There was Serafina herself at the balcony. An exclamation of rapture burst from him, as he raised his arms toward her. She cast upon him a look of indignation, and hastily retiring, closed the casement. Could she have heard of his flirtation with the Alcayde’s daughter? He would soon dispel every doubt of his constancy. The door was open. He rushed upstairs, and entering the room, threw himself at her feet. She shrank back with affright, and took refuge in the arms of a youthful cavalier.

  “What mean you, Sir,” cried the latter, “by this intrusion?”

  “What right have you,” replied Don Fernando, “to ask the question?”

  “The right of an affianced suitor!”

  Don Fernando started, and turned pale. “Oh, Serafina! Serafina!” cried he in a tone of agony, “is this thy plighted constancy?”

  “Serafina? — what mean you by Serafina? If it be this young lady you intend, her name is Maria.”

  “Is not this Serafina Alvarez, and is not that her portrait?” cried Don

  Fernando, pointing to a picture of his mistress.

  “Holy Virgin!” cried the young lady; “he is talking of my great-grandmother!”

  An explanation ensued, if that could be called an explanation, which plunged the unfortunate Fernando into tenfold perplexity. If he might believe his eyes, he saw before him his beloved Serafina; if he might believe his ears, it was merely her hereditary form and features, perpetuated in the person of her great-granddaughter.

  His brain began to spin. He sought tho office of the Minister of Marine, and made a report of his expedition, and of the Island of the Seven Cities, which he had so fortunately discovered. No body knew any thing of such an expedition, or such an island. He declared that he had undertaken the enterprise under a formal contract with the crown, and had received a regular commission, constituting him Adelantado. This must be matter of record, and he insisted loudly, that the books of the department should be consulted. The wordy strife at length attracted the attention of an old, grayheaded clerk, who sat perched on a high stool, at a high desk, with iron-rimmed spectacles on the top of a thin, pinched nose, copying records into an enormous folio. He had wintered and summered in the department for a great part of a century, until he had almost grown to be a piece of the desk at which he sat; his memory was a mere index of official facts and documents, and his brain was little better than red tape and parchment. After peering down for a time from his lofty perch, and ascertaining the matter in controversy, he put his pen behind his ear, and descended. He remembered to have heard something from his predecessor about an expedition of the kind in question, but then it had sailed during the reign of Don Ioam II., and he had been dead at least a hundred years. To put the matter beyond dispute, however, the archives of the Torve do Tombo, that sepulchre of old Portuguese documents, were diligently searched, and a record was found of a contract between the crown and one Fernando de Ulmo, for the discovery of the Island of the Seven Cities, and of a commission secured to him as Adelantado of the country he might discover.

  “There!” cried Don Fernando, triumphantly, “there you have proof, before your own eyes, of what I have said. I am the Fernando de Ulmo specified in that record. I have discovered the Island of the Seven Cities, and am entitled to be Adelantado, according to contract.”

  The story of Don Fernando had certainly, what is pronounced the best of historical foundation, documentary evidence; but when a man, in the bloom of youth, talked of events that had taken place above a century previously, as having happened to himself, it is no wonder that he was set down for a mad man.

  The old clerk looked at him from above and below his spectacles, shrugged his shoulders, stroked his chin, reascended his lofty stool, took the pen from behind his ears, and resumed his daily and eternal task, copying records into the fiftieth volume of a series of gigantic folios. The other clerks winked at each other shrewdly, and dispersed to their several places, and poor Don Fernando, thus left to himself, flung out of the office, almost driven wild by these repeated perplexities.

  In the confusion of his mind, he instinctively repaired to the mansion of Alvarez, but it was barred against him. To break the delusion under which the youth apparently labored, and to convince him that the Serafina about whom he raved was really dead, he was conducted to her tomb. There she lay, a stately matron, cut out in alabaster; and there lay her husband beside her; a portly cavalier, in armor; and there knelt, on each side, the effigies of a numerous progeny, proving that she had been a fruitful vine. Even the very monument gave proof of the lapse of time, for the hands of her husband, which were folded as if in prayer, had lost their fingers, and the face of the once lovely Serafina was noseless.

  Don Fernando felt a transient glow of indignation at beholding this monumental proof of the inconstancy of his mistress; but who could expect a mistress to remain constant during a whole century of absence? And what right had he to rail about constancy, after what had passed between him and the Alcayde’s daughter? The unfortunate cavalier performed one pious act of tender devotion; he had the alabaster nose of Serafina restored by a skilful statuary, and then tore himself from the tomb.

  He could now no longer doubt the fact that, somehow or other, he had skipped over a whole century, during the night he had spent at the Island of the Seven Cities; and he was now as complete a stranger in his native city, as if he had never been there. A thousand times did he wish himself back to that wonderful island, with its antiquated banquet halls, where he had been so courteously received; and now that the once young and beautiful Serafina was nothing but a great-grandmother in marble, with generations of descendants, a thousand times would he recall the melting black eyes of the Alcayde’s daughter, who doubtless, like himself, was still flourishing in fresh juvenility, and breathe a secret wish that he were seated by her side.

  He would at once have set on foot another expedition, at his own expense, to cruise in search of the sainted island, but his means were exhausted. He endeavored to rouse others to the enterprise, setting forth the certainty of profitable results, of which his own experience furnished such unquestionable proof. Alas! no one would give faith to his tale; but looked upon it as the feverish dream of a shipwrecked man. He persisted in his efforts; holding forth in all places and all companies, until he became an object of jest and jeer to the light-minded, who mistook his earnest enthusiasm for a proof of insanity; and the very children in the streets bantered him with the title of “The Adelantado of the Seven Cities.”

  Finding all his efforts in vain, in his native city of Lisbon, he took shipping for the Canaries, as being nearer the latitude of his former cruise, and inhabited by people given to nautical adventure. Here he found ready listeners to his story; for the old pilots and mariners of those parts were notorious island-hunters and devout believers in all the wonders of the seas. Indeed, one and all
treated his adventure as a common occurrence, and turning to each other, with a sagacious nod of the head, observed, “He has been at the Island of St. Brandan.”

  They then went on to inform him of that great marvel and enigma of the ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their islands; and of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made in search of it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma, from whence the shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they pointed out the very tract in the west where its mountains had been seen.

  Don Fernando listened with rapt attention. He had no longer a doubt that this mysterious and fugacious island must be the same with that of the Seven Cities; and that there must be some supernatural influence connected with it, that had operated upon himself, and made the events of a night occupy the space of a century.

  He endeavored, but in vain, to rouse the islanders to another attempt at discovery; they had given up the phantom island as indeed inaccessible. Fernando, however, was not to be discouraged. The idea wore itself deeper and deeper in his mind, until it became the engrossing subject of his thoughts and object of his being. Every morning he would repair to the promontory of Palma, and sit there throughout the livelong day, in hopes of seeing the fairy mountains of St. Brandan peering above the horizon; every evening he returned to his home, a disappointed man, but ready to resume his post on the following morning.

  His assiduity was all in vain. He grew gray in his ineffectual attempt; and was at length found dead at his post. His grave is still shown in the island of Palma, and a cross is erected on the spot where he used to sit and look out upon the sea, in hopes of the reappearance of the enchanted island.

  *

  NATIONAL NOMENCLATURE.

  TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.

  Sir: I am somewhat of the same way of thinking, in regard to names, with that profound philosopher, Mr. Shandy, the elder, who maintained that some inspired high thoughts and heroic aims, while others entailed irretrievable meanness and vulgarity; insomuch that a man might sink under the insignificance of his name, and be absolutely “Nicodemused into nothing.” I have ever, therefore, thought it a great hardship for a man to be obliged to struggle through life with some ridiculous or ignoble Christian name, as it is too often falsely called, inflicted on him in infancy, when he could not choose for himself; and would give him free liberty to change it for one more to his taste, when he had arrived at years of discretion.

  I have the same notion with respect to local names. Some at once prepossess us in favor of a place; others repel us, by unlucky associations of the mind; and I have known scenes worthy of being the very haunt of poetry and romance, yet doomed to irretrievable vulgarity, by some ill-chosen name, which not even the magic numbers of a Halleck or a Bryant could elevate into poetical acceptation.

  This is an evil unfortunately too prevalent throughout our country. Nature has stamped the land with features of sublimity and beauty; but some of our noblest mountains and loveliest streams are in danger of remaining for ever unhonored and unsung, from bearing appellations totally abhorrent to the Muse. In the first place, our country is deluged with names taken from places in the old world, and applied to places having no possible affinity or resemblance to their namesakes. This betokens a forlorn poverty of invention, and a secondhand spirit, content to cover its nakedness with borrowed or cast-off clothes of Europe.

  Then we have a shallow affectation of scholarship: the whole catalogue of ancient worthies is shaken out from the back of Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country sprinkled over with the names of the heroes, poets, and sages of antiquity, jumbled into the most whimsical juxtaposition. Then we have our political god-fathers; topographical engineers, perhaps, or persons employed by government to survey and lay out townships. These, forsooth, glorify the patrons that give them bread; so we have the names of the great official men of the day scattered over the land, as if they were the real “salt of the earth,” with which it was to be seasoned. Well for us is it, when these official great men happen to have names of fair acceptation; but wo unto us, should a Tubbs or a Potts be in power: we are sure, in a little while, to find Tubbsvilles and Pottsylvanias springing up in every direction.

  Under these melancholy dispensations of taste and loyalty, therefore, Mr. Editor, it is with a feeling of dawning hope, that I have lately perceived the attention of persons of intelligence beginning to be awakened on this subject. I trust if the matter should once be taken up, it will not be readily abandoned. We are yet young enough, as a country, to remedy and reform much of what has been done, and to release many of our rising towns and cities, and our noble streams, from names calculated to vulgarize the land.

  I have, on a former occasion, suggested the expediency of searching out the original Indian names of places, and wherever they are striking and euphonious, and those by which they have been superseded are glaringly objectionable, to restore them. They would have the merit of originality, and of belonging to the country; and they would remain as reliques of the native lords of the soil, when every other vestige had disappeared. Many of these names may easily be regained, by reference to old title deeds, and to the archives of states and counties. In my own case, by examining the records of the county clerk’s office, I have discovered the Indian names of various places and objects in the neighborhood, and have found them infinitely superior to the trite, poverty-stricken names which had been given by the settlers. A beautiful pastoral stream, for instance, which winds for many a mile through one of the loveliest little valleys in the state, has long been known by the commonplace name of the “Saw-mill River.” In the old Indian grants, it is designated as the Neperan. Another, a perfectly wizard stream, which winds through the wildest recesses of Sleepy Hollow, bears the humdrum name of Mill Creek: in the Indian grants, it sustains the euphonious title of the Pocantico.

  Similar researches have released Long-Island from many of those paltry and vulgar names which fringed its beautiful shores; their Cow Bays, and Cow Necks, and Oyster Ponds, and Mosquito Coves, which spread a spell of vulgarity over the whole island, and kept persons of taste and fancy at a distance.

  It would be an object worthy the attention of the historical societies, which are springing up in various parts of the Union, to have maps executed of their respective states or neighborhoods, in which all the Indian local names should, as far as possible, be restored. In fact, it appears to me that the nomenclature of the country is almost of sufficient importance for the foundation of a distinct society; or rather, a corresponding association of persons of taste and judgment, of all parts of the Union. Such an association, if properly constituted and composed, comprising especially all the literary talent of the country, though it might not have legislative power in its enactments, yet would have the all-pervading power of the press; and the changes in nomenclature which it might dictate, being at once adopted by elegant writers in prose and poetry, and interwoven with the literature of the country, would ultimately pass into popular currency.

  Should such a reforming association arise, I beg to recommend to its attention all those mongrel names that have the adjective New prefixed to them, and pray they may be one and all kicked out of the country. I am for none of these secondhand appellations, that stamp us a secondhand people, and that are to perpetuate us a new country to the end of time. Odds my life! Mr. Editor, I hope and trust we are to live to be an old nation, as well as our neighbors, and have no idea that our cities, when they shall have attained to venerable antiquity, shall still be dubbed New-York, and New-London, and new this and new that, like the Pont-Neuf, (the New Bridge,) at Paris, which is the oldest bridge in that capital, or like the Vicar of Wakefield’s horse, which continued to be called “the colt,” until he died of old age.

  Speaking of New-York, reminds me of some observations which I met with some time since, in one of the public papers, about the name of our state and city. The writer proposes to substitute for th
e present names, those of the State of Ontario, and the CITY OF MANHATTAN. I concur in his suggestion most heartily. Though born and brought up in the city of New-York, and though I love every stick and stone about it, yet I do not, nor ever did, relish its name. I like neither its sound nor its significance. As to its significance, the very adjective new gives to our great commercial metropolis a secondhand character, as if referring to some older, more dignified, and important place, of which it was a mere copy; though in fact, if I am rightly informed, the whole name commemorates a grant by Charles II. to his brother, the duke of York, made in the spirit of royal munificence, of a tract of country which did not belong to him. As to the sound, what can you make of it, either in poetry or prose? New-York! Why, Sir, if it were to share the fate of Troy itself; to suffer a ten years’ siege, and be sacked and plundered; no modern Homer would ever be able to elevate the name to epic dignity.

  Now, Sir, ONTARIO would be a name worthy of the empire state. It bears with it the majesty of that internal sea which washes our northwestern shore. Or, if any objection should be made, from its not being completely embraced within our boundaries, there is the MOHEGAN, one of the Indian names for that glorious river, the Hudson, which would furnish an excellent state appellation. So also New-York might be called Manhatta, as it is named in some of the early records, and Manhattan used as the adjective. Manhattan, however, stands well as a substantive, and “Manhattanese,” which I observe Mr. COOPER has adopted in some of his writings, would be a very good appellation for a citizen of the commercial metropolis.

  A word or two more, Mr. Editor, and I have done. We want a NATIONAL NAME. We want it poetically, and we want it politically. With the poetical necessity of the case I shall not trouble myself. I leave it to our poets to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words, “The United States of North America,” down the swelling tide of song, and to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic poesy. I am now speaking of the mere purposes of common life. How is a citizen of this republic to designate himself? As an American? There are two Americas, each subdivided into various empires, rapidly rising in importance. As a citizen of the United States? It is a clumsy, lumbering title, yet still it is not distinctive; for we have now the United States of Central America; and heaven knows how many “United States” may spring up under the Proteus changes of Spanish America.