He now sends forth a proclamation inviting subjects to his as yet
unpopulated kingdom. Some eighty souls, men and women, respond; and
being provided by their leader with necessaries, and tools of various
sorts, together with a few cattle and goats, take ship for the promised
land; the last arrival on board, prior to sailing, being the Creole
himself, accompanied, strange to say, by a disciplined cavalry company
of large grim dogs. These, it was observed on the passage, refusing to
consort with the emigrants, remained aristocratically grouped around
their master on the elevated quarter-deck, casting disdainful glances
forward upon the inferior rabble there; much as, from the ramparts, the
soldiers of a garrison, thrown into a conquered town, eye the
inglorious citizen-mob over which they are set to watch.
Now Charles’s Isle not only resembles Barrington Isle in being much
more inhabitable than other parts of the group, but it is double the
size of Barrington, say forty or fifty miles in circuit.
Safely debarked at last, the company, under direction of their lord and
patron, forthwith proceeded to build their capital city. They make
considerable advance in the way of walls of clinkers, and lava floors,
nicely sanded with cinders. On the least barren hills they pasture
their cattle, while the goats, adventurers by nature, explore the far
inland solitudes for a scanty livelihood of lofty herbage. Meantime,
abundance of fish and tortoises supply their other wants.
The disorders incident to settling all primitive regions, in the
present case were heightened by the peculiarly untoward character of
many of the pilgrims. His Majesty was forced at last to proclaim
martial law, and actually hunted and shot with his own hand several of
his rebellious subjects, who, with most questionable intentions, had
clandestinely encamped in the interior, whence they stole by night, to
prowl barefooted on tiptoe round the precincts of the lava-palace. It
is to be remarked, however, that prior to such stern proceedings, the
more reliable men had been judiciously picked out for an infantry
body-guard, subordinate to the cavalry body-guard of dogs. But the
state of politics in this unhappy nation may be somewhat imagined, from
the circumstance that all who were not of the body-guard were downright
plotters and malignant traitors. At length the death penalty was
tacitly abolished, owing to the timely thought, that were strict
sportsman’s justice to be dispensed among such subjects, ere long the
Nimrod King would have little or no remaining game to shoot. The human
part of the life-guard was now disbanded, and set to work cultivating
the soil, and raising potatoes; the regular army now solely consisting
of the dog-regiment. These, as I have heard, were of a singularly
ferocious character, though by severe training rendered docile to their
master. Armed to the teeth, the Creole now goes in state, surrounded by
his canine janizaries, whose terrific bayings prove quite as
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