Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 22, January, 1873Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 22, January, 1873
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Five years passed, and with restored health back came the old desires in
redoubled force. Fournier longed to return to civilization and to work.
The life that had been so delightful while it did him good became
utterly unbearable when he had reaped its full benefit. I am tempted to
quote a line about Europe and Cathay, but refrain: it will recur to the
reader. He burned to renew the labors he had abandoned, to take up again
the work he had laid down to do battle with disease, now that disease
was vanquished. Thus the year 1863 found him in the city of Charleston,
homeward bound in his journey around the world.
While still in the wilds west of the Mississippi he could have shaped
his course northward and readily proceeded directly by steamer from New
York to Europe. But a determined purpose led him to choose a different
course, though he was well aware that it would involve indefinite delay
in reaching Paris, and great personal risk. The life he had been leading
made him think lightly of danger, and years would be well spent if he
could accomplish the plans that induced him to go into the disorganized
country of the South.
He straightway connected himself with the army as surgeon, and solicited
a place at the front. He wanted active service. In this he was
disappointed. Charleston, blockaded and beseiged, was in a state of
military inaction. Save the occasional exchange of shot and shell at
long range between the works on shore and those which the Unionists had
erected and held upon the neighboring islands and marshes, nothing was
done, and for nearly a year Fournier experienced the irksomeness of
routine duty in a wretchedly arranged and appointed military hospital.
Nevertheless, the time was not wholly wasted. From a planter fleeing
from the anarchy of civil war he procured a native African slave, one of
the shipload brought over a few years before in the Wanderer, the last
slave-ship that put into an American harbor. This man he made his
body-servant and kept always near him, partly to study him, but chiefly
to secure his complete mental and moral thraldom. An almost unqualified
savage, Fournier avoided systematiclly everything that would tend to
civilize him. He taught him many things that were convenient in his
higher mode of life, and taught him well, but of the great principles of
civilization he strove to keep him in ignorance; and more, he so
confused and distorted the few gleams of light that had reached that
darkened soul that they made its gloom only the more hideous and
profound. He wanted a man altogether savage, mentally, morally and
physically. Instead of teaching him English or French, he learned from
him many words of his own rude native tongue, and communicated with him
as much as possible in that alone, aided by gesture, in which, like all
Frenchmen, he possessed marvelous facility of expression. In the
unexplored back-country of Africa the negro had been a prince, and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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