the dramatist, and spice for the grave compounding enemy. They were almost fifteen hunof the historian. He was at the house of a friend dred strong, British regulars and Hessians, at Horseneck (now West Greenwich), toward who had marched from their lines near King's the close of March, 1779, on a visit to that out- Bridge, under General Tryon, the previous evenpost, and while standing before a looking-glass ing, with the intention of surprising the troops, early in the morning, shaving himself, he saw and destroying the salt-works at Horseneck the reflection of a body of "red coats" marching landing. Putnam confronted them with his up the road from the westward. He dropped one hundred and fifty men, but after his first his razor, buckled on his sword, and, half-shav- fire, perceiving their overwhelming numbers, he en, mounted his horse, and hastened to pre-ordered a retreat. It became a rout, and each pare his handful of men to oppose the approach- sought safety in his own way in the adjacent

swamps. The General put spurs to his horse | vicissitudes of a complicated contest, the name and sped toward Stamford, closely pursued by of Putnam is not forgotten, nor will be, but with some British dragoons. He came to a steep de- that stroke of Time which shall obliterate from clivity, on the brow of which the road turned my mind the remembrance of all those toils and northward, and passed in a broad sweep around fatigues through which we have struggled, for the hill. Putnam perceived that his pursuers the preservation and establishment of the rights, were gaining upon him, and with the daring of liberties, and independence of our country. desperation he left the road, wheeled his horse "Your congratulations on the happy proswhile on full gallop down the rocky height, pects of peace and independent security, with making a zigzag course to the bottom, near their attendant blessings to the United States, where some stone steps had been made for the I receive with great satisfaction, and beg that accommodation of people who worshiped at the you will accept a return of my congratulations church on the height, gained the road, and es- to you on this auspicious event-an event in caped. The dragoons dared not follow his per- which, great as it is in itself and glorious as it ilous track, but sent a volley of bullets after him will probably be in its consequences, you have without effect. Putnam soon collected a few a right to participate largely, from the distinmilitia at Stamford, followed Tryon on his re-guished part you have contributed toward its treat at evening, and captured about forty of his attainment." men and a large quantity of the plunder he was carrying away. The declivity down which the old soldier rushed and escaped is still known as Putnam's Hill.

Colonel Humphreys, his biographer-who was Putnam's aid during his command in the Highlands, and before, and knew him intimately in public life-loved him as a father, and took every suitable opportunity to testify his esteem for the noble veteran. Four months after the hero was "laid up in ordinary" at his home in Brooklyn, the gallant Colonel, in a poetic Letter

and describing his journey thither from the
Massachusetts capital, thus alludes to his brief
sojourn with the General, while on his way:

"The sun, to our New World now present,
Brought in the day benign and pleasant;
The day, by milder fates attended,
Our plagues at Gen'ral Putnam's ended.
That chief, though ill, received our party
With joy, and gave us welcome hearty;
The good old man, of death not fearful,
Retained his mind and temper cheerful;
Retain'd (with palsy sorely smitten)
His love of country, pique for Britain;
He told of many a deed and skirmish,
That basis for romance might furnish;
The stories of his wars and woes,
Which I shall write in humble prose,
Should Heaven (that fondest schemes can mar)
Protract my life beyond this war."

In June, 1779, General Washington removed his head-quarters from Smith's Clove, back of Haverstraw, to New Windsor, and left General Putnam in command of the right wing of the army, consisting of the Maryland line. A lit-to a young Lady in Boston, written at New Haven, tle later Putnam took post with his troops at Buttermilk Falls, two miles below West Point, where he remained until autumn, when all the strong works in the vicinity were completed. After the army had departed for New Jersey, to go into winter-quarters at Morristown, he visited his family at Brooklyn. On his returning journey in December, while at the house of his friend, Colonel Wadsworth, in Hartford, he was disabled by a paralysis of his right side. He was unwilling to believe in the malignant character of the disease, and tried to throw it off by great exertions. It was in vain: the disease was permanent. His blood flowed sluggishly in veins threescore years in use, and his nerves had lost their wonted vigor. His military life was now ended, and with it his usual activity. retired to the bosom of his family at Brooklyn, where, unlike many of his compatriots in the field, he possessed a competence for his comfort in the evening of life. His bodily infirmities disqualified him for public employment, but he was able to walk a little and ride much; and during the remainder of his days-protracted almost eleven years-he enjoyed social life in an eminent degree.

He

The memory of General Putnam's public services, genial character, and generous deeds, was sweet to those who had participated with him in the perils and privations of war, and at the close of the contest, just before the Continental army was disbanded in 1783, Washington wrote to the veteran from Newburgh, and said: "I can assure you that among the many worthy and meritorious officers with whom I have had the happiness to be connected in service through the course of this war, and from whose cheerful assistance and advice I have received much support and confidence in the various and trying

That promise was redeemed eight years afterward, and while the old hero was yet alive. In the autumn of 1787, Colonel Humphreys spent several weeks with General Putnam, and in his little parlor, sitting in his arm-chair, the veteran "fought his battles o'er again." Day after day. he related to his friend the incidents of his eventful life, such as we have delineated in outline in this sketch; and that faithful friend committed them to paper as materials for a truthful narrative of the patriot's career. With those materials he went to Mount Vernon, in obedience to an invitation from Washington to spend several months with him; and in that now hallowed mansion he wrote, for the archives of the Connecticut State Society of the Cincinnati, his admirable Essay on the Life of the Honorable Major-General Putnam,

"in humble prose

"the first effort in biography," he said, "that had been made on this continent." He undertook the pleasing task because General Putnam

was "universally acknowledged to be as brave | His body was borne to the grave-yard south of and as honest a man as ever America produced." He revered him as one who seemed "to have been formed on purpose for the age in which he lived. His native courage, unshaken integrity, and established reputation as a soldier, were necessary in the early stages of our opposition to the designs of Great Britain, and gave unbounded confidence to our troops in their first conflicts in the field of battle."

General Putnam lived two years after that Essay was written, in the enjoyment of comparative health, and great social and religious happiness. On the 27th of May, 1790, he was attacked by an acute inflammatory disease. He regarded it as fatal from the first, and calmly prepared for departure to the spiritual world. That departure took place two days afterward.

the village by his loving fellow-citizens, and deposited in the earth with appropriate military honors and religious rites. Over it a neighbor and warm personal friend pronounced a touching eulogy; and to mark the spot an humble monument has been erected, covered with a marble slab, on which is engraven the following words, from the pen of his friend, President Dwight, of Yale College:

"This monument is erected to the memory of the Honorable Israel Putnam, Esq., MajorGeneral in the Armies of the United States of America, who was born at Salem, in the province of Massachusetts, on the 7th day of January, 1718, and died at Brooklyn, in the State of Connecticut, on the 29th day of May, A.D. 1790,

"Passenger, if thou art a Soldier, go not | Bay of Biscay. In spite of storms, hurricanes, away till thou hast dropped a tear over the or calms, he arrived in Madeira in twenty days dust of a Hero, who, ever tenderly attentive to from Southampton. What more pleasant prosthe lives and happiness of his men, dared to pect to the eye than the first view of land to lead where any one dared to follow. If thou the sickened, nauseated, cadaverous passenger! art a Patriot, remember with gratitude how Funchal rising from the sea, its castles and much thou and thy country owe to the dis- towers, and its sparkling houses, crowning the interested and gallant exertions of the Patriot rocks and clinging to the mountains, gave new who sleeps beneath this marble. If thou art life to the tempest-vexed, half-starved voyagers. an honest, generous, and worthy man, render a In England every thing had assumed the sere sincere and cheerful tribute of respect to a man and yellow leaf; storms ushered in and closed whose generosity was singular, whose honesty the days. The trees had put off their foliage was proverbial, and who, with a slender educa- and the earth its festive dressi What a change tion, with small advantages, and without power-greeted the new-comer! Winter had become ful friends, raised himself to universal esteem, glorious summer; the naked trees had put on and to offices of eminent distinction by personal luxuriant and varied foliage, and flowers of worth and by the diligent services of a useful every kind enlivened and scented the air. life." Hills covered with the verdant vine, and gardens loaded with the ripening fruit, gladdened the eye, while the picturesque costume of the inhabitants, and their earnest welcome, delighted the mind; at the very moment, too, when to have landed upon an uninhabited barren island would have been counted a blessing.

General Putnam was of medium height, with an uncommon breadth of chest, an athlete in muscular energy, and weighed at the time of the Revolution about two hundred pounds. His hair was dark, his eyes light blue, his complexion florid, and his face broad and good-humored in expression.

MADEIRA, PORT, AND SHERRY.* THEY who go down upon the waters in ships see the wonders of the Lord; but they who go down in schooners, it is also said, see-a place not to be mentioned to ears polite. Whomever unkind fate has driven upon the reckless waters in a vessel of ridiculous tonnage, let him be pitied, by all at least who have no stomach for the sea. The author of this book, commissioned to explore the countries that bear the vines whose products serve as caption to this article, undertook to reach Madeira in a schooner numbering less than 200 tons. An "old salt" would laugh at the fastidiousness, perhaps, that found this too small. But the author is not an old salt; nor, unless such can be made on dry land, probably ever will be. He entertains quite a different opinion of the sea from Cooper's Tom Coffin, who could not, indeed, see the use of land at all.

To be a week in the British Channel with nothing but storms for contemplation by day, or lullaby at night-with sickness that prevents you from eating, and weariness that indisposes you to sleep-with danger as an inseparable companion, and shipwreck as a probable termination, this is not so pleasant as terra

The soil produces spontaneously the fruits of the tropics, the orange, the pomegranate, the banana, the guava, the citron, and olive, as well as many of the productions of colder latitudes. The fish of its deep waters, the game of its mountains, its herbage-fed and luscious beef, its inimitable turkeys and various web-footed birds, supply an abundant table. It is its wine, however, for which Madeira is world-famous-a wine redolent of great facts. For under its inspiration what epics, acted or written, have not been achieved! It has inspired the poet's brain, it has warmed the speaker's tongue, and has

firma, a wholesome appetite, and dinner à la | thawed the miser's heart. One glass of it makes carte!

But the author was not cast away in the British Channel, nor wrecked in the dreadful

Sketches and Adventures in Madeira, Portugal, and the Andalusias of Spain. 12mo. Illustrated. Harpers.

the whole world kin; strangers, meeting at abrupt angles of life, never before encountering, have embraced and sworn eternal amity over its rosy goblets. It decorates prosperous days, and takes the sting from misfortune.

island from its precipitous formation, and the other fact that the streets are paved with a flat smooth stone, necessary to prevent the roads from being broken up by the raging inundations that sometimes occur, one of which some years since carried houses and all their occupants into the unreturning sea. These inundations are terrible when unchecked, and their ravages sometimes obliterate the former pathways.

Sometimes when the carriers are bringing | sledges; no wheel carriages can be used in the the juice to market, or rather to the storehouses, in their goat-skins, they grow fatigued beneath the burden, and place it on some fortuitous rock or auxiliary stump of tree. Here they pull out the stopper from the mouth of the bota, or skin, and stop it by another mouth, which is found to facilitate evaporation very much. Of course the lighter their burden the lighter their spirits; and sometimes by the time they arrive in Funchal the skin of the animal and the skin of the man seem to have changed functions. A safer way of getting it along is by oxen on

Over these smooth stones the smooth-worn sledges glide almost as easily as sleighs upon the snow-covered earth. The cattle, however,

have none of the ambition of our 2 40's, but move along slowly, sedately, and with a consciousness of their priceless cargo.

The language used by these burroqueros, or ox-drivers, to their four-legged companions is a dialect unwritten, but most expressive. The beasts evidently understand and obey it. But to an "outsider" it has a shrill, and almost unearthly sound. Indeed it has a fearful influence upon the animals themselves, for they start at it more than at the puncture of the goad.

Madeira is also renowned for its climate. Immortality, it is true, has not as yet been discovered there, notwithstanding the numerous experiments