Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/363

 12 8. vii. OCT. o, 1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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the Government are in this way increasing rather than diminishing, as is generally supposed. There are probably not now to exceed 100,000 full- blood Indians in the United States and the progress of amalgamation continues to reduce that number. It will be a long time, however, before such large tribes as the Navajo, Apache, Pima, and Papago will become greatly affected by the infusion of white blood."

The editor, quoted above, naturally does not mention that most of the tribes named are comparatively poor specimens of the "noble red man," and that the infusion of negro blood is larger than the white, one reason being that anatomical reasons make the maternal, &c., mortality much less when one parent is a negro, &c. This infusion is especially great in the former Indian Territory, where the fabulous fortunes, coming to the wards of the nation through discovery of oil, &c., on their lands, strongly stimulate claims to being "Indians."

ROCKINGHAM. Boston, Mass.

The Chronicle of Jfuntaner. Translated from the Catalan by lady Goodenough. Vol. I. (Hak- luyt Society.)

WE are now to have Muntaner in English, and it is certainly time. His Chronicle has already been published in Italian, French ard German to say nothing of Spanish. Still, it is worth not- ing that it had not been translated into any language besides Spanish before the nineteenth century.

Muntaner, as we are remirded in the Intro- duction, comes between Joinville and Froissart perhaps the two best-known medieval chroniclers. He was a man whose life was spent in close contact with the affairs of State and the Court of Aragon ; and i his Chronicle lacks the special charm and interest derived from a great central figure such as Joinville's Louis the chronicler himself is no whit behind his compeers either in general ability or in sympathetic qualities. In purely literary capacity, we must endure to see him placed somewhat below them, though for all that he makes delightful reading.

This first volume takes us from, the birth of James I. of Aragon to the death of Pedro IIL We have not yet arrived at the engaging chapters where Muntaner speaks more copiously as an eye- witness and weaves in his own history. On Nov. 11, 1285. when that king departed this life, he was a youth of 21. A native of Peralada, not far from the Eoussillon border, he relates how, when he was a boy, the King and Queen of Castile, on their way to the Council of Lyons, spent two days in his father's house there. 'Some ten years later, at the time of the invasion of Catalonia by the French, Peralada was burnt down. A force of almugayars so our historian tells the tale left on garrison duty in the town, and incensed at not sharing the chances of plunder their fellows

would have who had been marched out into the country, set fire to it, and then plundered it. " f- and others, who lost a great part of what we ha*' in that town, have not been able to return there since," says Muntaner, " rather we have gone about the world seeking our fortune amidst much hard work and many perils we have passed through. Most of us have died in these wars of the House of Aragon."

He seems to have been in attendance on Pedro when, as Infante, he went to visit Philip III. of France, his brother-in-law, for he says that he saw the two princes carry each other's arms ; quartered with their own on their saddlecloths ; and he saw the Prince of Taranto (son of Charles- of Anjou), after the interview at Toulouse with* the kings of France, Aragon and Mallorca, enter Perpignan with the last mentioned. Where he differs from other chroniclers it is not impossible that, even in the history of these early years, he is speaking as an eye-witness. Thus he relates, hi great detail and movingly, the departure of Queen Costanza and her two sons for Sicily the mode of taking farewell between the King and^ Queen, and how " the Lord King remained quite alone full four hours of the day, and did not wish any one to come in " ; where other historians- make the King send for the Queen while he is in Sicily, and himself, after her arrival there, depart for Spain. Again, in the story of the death of Philip III., he says that this took place in a house of En Simon de Vilanova, at v the foot of Pujami- lot, near Peralada, not a Perpignan as is com-- monly reported.

Muntaner's political insight goes but a little" way ; his loyalty to the House of Aragon blinds - him alike to inferiority of character and to mis-- takes. Nor does he draw any distinctive portrait for us of Luria, Lansa or any other notable. An energetic man himself he accepts the doings of energetic men without over much personaB criticism. A certain competence and experience, however, make themselves felt even in this earliest^ division of his chronicle, where he is using other*' men's histories to a great extent, and these, too,- abbreviated. There is a chapter in which he breaks off, his narrative to give the King of Aragon good advice for the erection of dockyards and the disposal of galleys which, besides giving promise of what we shall hear of his feats at sea and as administrator, throws light on his attitude towards the Pope. Between the Pope and the House of Aragon he does not hesitate: "the Holy Church of Rome, or those who govern it," he says, " should consider the increase they gefc from the House of Aragon, and they should make their acknowledgment to the descendant of the House of Aragon. But, however, I comfort myself with this, that if the Pope and the Cardinals; do not acknowledge it, the King of Kings, our Lord the true God remembers it." Another example of this attitude, will be found in his approval of the Archbishop of Tarragona, who could not fight against the Pope, but gave up all his property to the King for the war with France.

Muntaner has many pages touched with pleasant humour, as, for instance, the description of the roughly equipped almugavars at Messina, and' people's mistaken contempt of them ; or the anecdote of the two sons of Philip III. of France, of whom the younger was granted the kingdom of'