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The gunner took refuge at the foot of the ladder, a short distance from the old man, who stood watching. Without taking the trouble to turn, the cannon rushed backward on the man, as swift as the blow of an ax. 5 The gunner, if driven against the side of the ship, would be lost. A cry arose from the crew.

The old passenger, who until this moment had stood motionless, sprang forward more swiftly than all those mad whirls. He had seized a bale of false assignats, and 10 at the risk of being crushed succeeded in throwing it between the wheels of the carronade.

The bale had the effect of a plug. The carronade stumbled, and the gunner thrust his iron bar between the spokes of the back wheels. Pitching forward, the cannon 15 stopped; and the man, using his bar for a lever, rocked it backward and forward. The heavy mass upset, with the resonant sound of a bell that crashes in its fall. The man flung himself upon it and passed the slip noose round the neck of the defeated monster.

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The combat was ended. The man had conquered. The ant had overcome the mastodon; the pygmy had imprisoned the thunderbolt.

Abridged.

carronade a short iron cannon, originally made in Carron, Scotland. riders timbers put in to strengthen the frame of a ship. - assignats: a kind of paper money issued by France during the Revolution, and representing confiscated land to be assigned to the holders of such certificates. stem the bow of a vessel.

EARLY CONQUESTS

JOHN FISKE

If we look back for a moment to the primitive stages of society, we may picture to ourselves the surface of the earth sparsely and scantily covered with wandering tribes of savages, rude in morals and manners, narrow in experience, sustaining life very much as lower animals sustain 5 it, by gathering wild fruits or slaying wild game, and waging chronic warfare alike with beasts and with men.

In the widest sense the subject of political history is the description of the processes by which, under favorable circumstances, innumerable such primitive tribes have 10 become welded together into mighty nations, with elevated standards of morals and manners, with wide and varied experience, sustaining life and ministering to human happiness by elaborate arts and sciences, and putting a curb upon warfare by limiting its scope, diminishing its cruelty, 15 and interrupting it by intervals of peace.

The story, as laid before us in the records of three thousand years, is fascinating and absorbing in its human interest for those who content themselves with the study of its countless personal incidents and neglect its profound 20 philosophical lessons. But for those who study it in the scientific spirit, the human interest of its details becomes still more intensely fascinating and absorbing.

Battles and coronations, poems and inventions, migrations and martyrdoms, acquire new meanings and awaken new emotions as we begin to discern their bearings upon the solemn work of ages that is slowly winning for 5 humanity a richer and more perfect life. By such meditation upon men's thoughts and deeds is the understanding purified, till we become better able to comprehend our relations to the world and the duty that lies upon each of us to shape his conduct rightly.

10 In the welding together of primitive shifting tribes into stable and powerful nations, we seem to discern three different methods that have been followed at different times and places, with widely different results.

The first of these methods, which has been followed 15 from time immemorial in the Oriental world, may be roughly described as conquest without incorporation. A tribe grows to national dimensions by conquering and annexing its neighbors, without admitting them to a share in its political life.

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Probably there is always at first some incorporation, or even perhaps some crude germ of federative alliance; but this goes very little way,— only far enough to fuse together a few closely related tribes, agreeing in speech and habits, into a single great tribe that can overwhelm 25 its neighbors. In early society this sort of incorporation cannot go far without being stopped by some impassable barrier of language or religion.

After reaching that point, the conquering tribe simply annexes its neighbors and makes them its slaves. It becomes a superior caste, ruling over vanquished peoples, whom it oppresses with frightful cruelty, while living on the fruits of their toil in what has been aptly termed 5 Oriental luxury. Such has been the origin of many Eastern despotisms in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates, and elsewhere.

Such a political structure admits of a very considerable development of material civilization, in which gorgeous 10 palaces and artistic temples may be built, and perhaps even literature and scholarship rewarded, with money wrung from millions of toiling wretches. There is that sort of brutal strength in it, that it may endure for many long ages, until it comes into collision with some 15 higher civilization. Then it is likely to end in sudden collapse, because the fighting quality of the people has been destroyed.

Populations that have lived for centuries in fear of impalement or crucifixion, and have known no other des- 20 tination for the products of their labor than the clutches of the omnipresent taxgatherer, are not likely to furnish good soldiers. A handful of freemen will scatter them like sheep, as the Greeks did twenty-three centuries ago at Kynaxa, as the English did the other day at Tel-el-Kebir. 25 On the other hand, where the manliness of the vanquished people is not crushed, the sway of the conquerors

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who cannot enter into political union with them is likely to be cast off, as in the case of the Moors in Spain.

There was a civilization in many respects admirable. It was eminent for industry, science, art, and poetry; its 5 annals are full of romantic interest; it was in some respects superior to the Christian system which supplanted it; in many ways it contributed largely to the progress of the human race; and it was free from some of the worst vices of Oriental civilization.

Yet because of the fundamental defect that between the Christian Spaniard and his Mussulman conqueror there could be no political fusion, this brilliant civilization was doomed.

During eight centuries of more or less extensive rule in 15 the Spanish peninsula, the Moor was from first to last an alien, just as after four centuries the Turk is still an alien in the Balkan peninsula.

The natural result was a struggle that lasted age after age, till it ended in the utter extermination of one of the 20 parties, and left behind it a legacy of hatred and persecution that has made the history of modern Spain a dismal record of shame and disaster.

Kynaxa: often written Cunaxa. Here, in 401 B.C., the immense Persian army was put to flight by a much smaller force. Tel-el-Kebir a town in Egypt. Here, in 1882, General Wolseley, at the head of English forces, won a victory over Arabi Pasha, who was the leader of a popular revolt against the power of France and England in Egypt.

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