Fruitlands: Utopia or absurd dream

I'm attracted to the concept of ideal communities, be they religious, socialist, feminist, temperance, environmental or even industrial. Although utopia is probably very difficult to establish on earth, the kibbutz movement in Israel proved that it was possible to live and work together for a common good, somewhat isolated from the population around.

The utopian dream closest to Australian hearts occurred when trade unionist William Lane (1861–1917) set about founding his own socialist utopia in Paraguay. 300 Australians moved to the New Australia Colony in 1893. Perhaps it was the leaders' inter-personal skills that quickly led to a rebellion amongst his followers; in a fairly short number of years, most of the colonists became disillusioned with the passionate dream, returning to Australia in 1900.

Richard Francis was also interested in the subject in his book: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia and he told a great story. The Fruitlands project occurred at a time (the 1840s) when Utopian communities were popping up with some frequency in New England. Others were advocating abolitionism and temperance but whatever the particular cause, there seemed to be a period of agitation and searching in Europe and in the USA. Francis noted that the broad impulse behind the American experiments was a reaction to the industrial revolution and the rise of the cities, with their consequent social injustice, poverty and environmental deterioration. He drew a connection with the Shakers, for example.

Fruitlands, Mass - in winter

Fruitlands too started with a dream, although a Transcendentalist and not a specifically religious dream. Educator Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) moved his wife Abigail (1800–77), their four daughters and their small number of followers into a run down farmhouse in a rural area west of Boston, hoping to recreate the Garden of Eden. I assume Abigail shared the dream since she was no intellectual slouch - she was an educator, social worker, temperance worker and abolitionist in her own right.

They tried to live out a perfect lifestyle based on the values that appealed to Bronson – celibacy, spiritual goodness and a vegetarian lifestyle. The trouble was that a desperately austere lifestyle was not realistic. I suppose it was theoretically possible to survive living off fresh carrots and water, but there wasn’t much pleasure involved.

Englishmen Charles Lane and Henry Wright were the biggest support system for Bronson Alcott. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the third supporter who was very happy to fund the ambitious adventure into spiritualism, didn’t know what to make of the lifestyle he saw. On one hand he found the place to be very peaceful and was full of admiration for the spiritual harmony the participants were seeking. On the other hand, Emerson ended up accusing the participants of playacting in the pejorative sense, merely pretending to be farmers. And the food they ate was abysmal – a meagre breakfast of porridge and unleavened bread, in order to surrender to the order of the universe at large.

Alcott’s thinking was definitely on the side of progress, especially in his modernism views on education, ecology and women. But he seemed to make the mistake of confusing his own personal whims with instructions from God. Did he think he was a true prophet who divined God’s will for the ordinary people? I like Alcott’s own quote "Great is the man whom his age despises, for transcendent excellence is purchased through the obloquy of contemporaries; and shame is the gate of the temple of renown." It was hard to argue with such a mindset.

I have intentionally chosen a wintery image of Fruitlands because it was in winter that the members’ misery was greatest. Uncooked fruit and vegetables (except for potato), no cotton clothes because it was the product of slavery, no coffee tea or milk, no tobacco and no animal products (so no tallow for candles) – all of these things would have been a nightmare in the snow. Canvas shoes, in the absence of leather, seemed flimsy in the extreme.

Bronson and Abigail Alcott

Clearly many communes based on absolutely equality, before and since Fruitlands, have found that equality is ephemeral. Mr Alcott and his closest followers had a somewhat privileged lifestyle as compared to the rest of the members. And Alcott took the best room with the best fireplace at Fruitlands for his private study! Alcott selected a second room with a fireplace as bedroom for himself, his wife and the baby; and he allocated the remaining two for Charles Lane and important, intellectual guests. All the other members slept in a low, narrow, third-floor, unheated and rather miserable outhouse.

Mrs Abigail Alcott's diary complained bitterly about the lack of privacy, the poor quality of life for women and children, the enforced celibacy for married couples and the austerity of the food and the clothes. But there is a suggestion that Mr Alcott was travelling around the country on Fruitlands funding and recruitment drives, and suffered much less from cold and hunger.

If the name Alcott is familiar, it is probably because Bronson’s ten-year-old daughter Louisa May became very famous for her novels. Was she excited about moving to the countryside? Apparently yes because her diary for 1/6/1843 noted “my three sisters and I are all going to be made perfect”. She said she later used some of the experiences at Fruitlands for her most famous novel, Little Women.

It all ended in tears when Abigail Alcott decided to sell off everything she owned, to save herself and her daughters, and to start a new life. They left Fruitlands in January 1844 in mid winter, Bronson in reluctant and weepy tow.

The Fruitlands project was set in a significant literary and philosophical context. So Francis cites important thinkers like Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Carlyle who left plenty of written opinions about the experiment. As a result, I was very grateful that the book had a comprehensive subject index.

Many thanks to Inbooks and Hasan Niyazi for a copy of Richard Francis’ Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia. It was published by Yale University Press in 2011.

Activists murdered in Mississippi, 1964.

All over the world in the 1960s, university students were becoming active in important social and political causes. In Cornell University, it has been suggested, students were focusing their considerable energy on the civil rights movement. In fact Cornell students had started travelling to Mississippi in the early 1960s, to organise a voter registration drive for black Americans.

As a result Michael Schwerner (1939–64) and Andrew Goodman (1943–64), both Jewish New Yorkers, and James Chaney (1943–64) a black man from Meridian Mississippi, were working with the Congress of Racial Equality on a voter registration drive based in Meridian. It was June 1964, the Freedom Summer, a time of left wing activism and right wing resistance. [The worst of the Vietnam War was yet to come, as I recall it].

Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney may have been young and naïve, but were they totally ignorant of the risks they were taking? No, it must have been clear to everyone - during the Freedom Summer, dozens of black churches, homes and businesses were firebombed. Perhaps they weighed up the risks and decided that their cause had higher priority than their personal safety. Schwerner at least was adult enough to understand that he had been closely surveilled by the Klu Klux Klan, after he and his wife began working in a field office and a community centre for blacks in Miss.

Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, FBI missing persons poster, 1964

However they would not have assumed the worst until Sam Bowers, the Klan's regional Imperial Wizard, ordered the activists to be killed. So the local Klan leader, Baptist Minister Edgar Ray Killen, rounded the three men up as instructed. He was accompanied by two other cars filled with Klan members.

The Klansmen murdered the three activists in June 1964, then bulldozed the bodies into a farmer’s dam near Philadelphia Miss and went home, certain that proof of their crime would never be found. But they were wrong.

Horrified students across the USA watched as F.B.I. agents located a mangled station wagon in a swamp; it had taken 44 days after the men had disappeared, before the bodies were located. The two white bodies had been shot in the head; the black body had been tortured and mutilated. But the police found that no witnesses came forward and little evidence could be gathered from the crime scene.

Although their identities were known locally, none of the Klansmen involved in the murders was ever charged by the state. The only prosecution was in a Federal court where 19 men, including the County Sheriff, Deputy Sheriff and a senior Klansman, were tried for conspiring to violate the activists’ civil rights. As you can see, the sheriff and the other defendants seemed very relaxed and confident of their acquital.

Deputy sheriff Price and Sheriff Rainey at their trial, 1967

In 1967, one man’s testimony helped convict seven of the 19 accused, but even then no-one spent more than six years in prison. In 1967, murder convictions were hard to come by in this part of the world, if the victims were black or Jewish.

And nothing much changed. In the same year, 1967, Sam Bower’s White Knights began to target Jewish institutions in Mississippi. In particular he ordered attacks on both Jackson's synagogue and its Rabbi Nussbaum who was an outspoken supporter of the civil rights movement. In the end both Congregation Beth Israel in Jackson (Sept 1967) and Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson (May 1968) were bombed to pieces by the Klu Klux Klan.

The only contemporary memorial that I could find in Philadelphia was at Mt Nebo Missionary Baptist Church; the black community memorialised the three young men with a respectful engraved stone. [There are more now].

It would be interesting to know if the 1988 film Mississippi Burning changed minds and influenced people. It must have. In 1991 some of Cornell’s graduates finally proposed that students should raise money to install a stained glass window in Sage Chapel, to honour the three civil-rights workers. The plaque beneath the window memorialises those "who were slain during the 1964 voter registration drive in Mississippi and all the others who died for the advancement of civil rights and racial equality in our country." My only complaint was that the memorial was not installed earlier, when the young men’s parents and grandparents might have still been alive.

Legal retribution was even slower. It took till June 2005 before Edgar Killen, Baptist preacher and sawmill operator, was sentenced to 60 years in gaol on manslaughter charges for ensuring the deaths of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney.

Memorial at Mt Nebo Missionary Baptist Church, Philadelphia Miss

Searching Historical Horizons blog noted that the cities of Philadelphia and Meridian Miss. will be co-sponsoring the Second Annual National Conference on Civil Rights next week (June 17-19th, 2012). The timing is perfect.

The Great Synagogue Sydney, 1878

For an excellent history of Sydney’s first Jewish congregation, read Rabbi Apple in OzTorah » Blog Archive » A history of the Great Synagogue, Sydney. The formal establishment of Sydney’s first Jewish congregation came in Nov 1831 when “The Jews of the colony assembled at the Jews’ Synagogue held over Mr Rowell’s shop in George St”. Later interior alterations were made by Barnett Aaron Phil­l­ips, a carpenter who had worked at Drury Lane and built Aust­ralia’s first stage scenery in the Theatre Royal. The synagogue ark 1830s was one of the earliest pieces of religious furniture in the country.

Eventually numbers of congregants grew to over 300 adults, so larger premises were leased in Bridge St Sydney. When even bigger facilities were required, a building went up in York St Sydney. This new synagogue had comfortable space for 500 seats and was elab­or­ately furnished. Its ark, larger and even more impressive than that in Bridge St, also survives. The final move came in the 1870s when a site in Elizabeth St was purchased.

Pest Synagogue, 1854-9 [above] ..Brussels Synagogue 1875 [below]

The Great Synagogue in Sydney was to reflect the important Great Synagogue in the City of London 1788-90 in its practices and possibly its appearance. However the Sydney arch­itecture may have derived its inspiration from a number of different sources, including the Great Synagogue Pest 1854-9 or the Great Synagogue Brussels 1875 built in the Romanesque-Byzantine style.

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A comp­et­ition for the design for the new building was won by Sydney architect Thomas Rowe, who planned a building in the French Gothic taste. For financial reasons his plans had to be modified, so Rowe did not get to create his elaborate, dream building. But it didn’t matter; the foundation stone was laid in 1875.

Great Synagogue, Elizabeth St entrance, Sydney, 1878

Great Synagogue, rose window

The Great Synagogue was consecrated in 1878. This cathedral synagogue was built in sandstone in the neo-gothic style of course, but with some clear Byzantine elements. The most cathedral-like element was the giant rose window in the front wall, facing Elizabeth St and the gorgeous Hyde Park outside. Two square towers flanked the central compart­ment, terminating in beautiful domes, and the entire front was enclosed by ornate cast-iron gates (as seen in The Great Synagogue: Sydney sandstone tour Part 12, in the Sydney Daily Photo blog.

The interior of the synagogue was designed to maximise the sense of space, due to the height of the cast iron columns. The main décor­at­ive elements were the moulded plaster decorations, the panelled and groined ceiling, carved timber work, stained glass windows and gas-light pendants. As fas as I can see, the deep blue ceiling and silvery stars represented the night sky.

Interior space, men on the ground floor, women in the upper gallery.

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Sydney City and Suburbs blog showed a delightful photo of The Great Synagogue as it appears now, still beautiful but hemmed in between the two adjoining buildings. The building is heritage listed.

St David's Church Haberfield, 1869. Another Sydney building designed by Rowe

Keith's Site - Sydney Life - the suburb of Haberfield showed St David’s Uniting Church 1869 that was designed by the same architect, Thomas Rowe. In particular, note the square Norman style tower, not totally dissimilar to the square towers in front of the Great Synagogue, created just a few years later.

New West End Synagogue London, 1879

Another comparison will prove useful. The New West End Synagogue 1879 in St Petersburgh Place Bayswater, is one of the oldest and most impressive synagogues in London. Compare the date and the architecture with the Great Synagogue in Sydney.

Russian Colonisation of California

I have a vested interest in this story. My family, on leaving Russia, went either to Melbourne in Australia or Winnipeg in Canada. But who knew we may have had a connection to the USA as well?

The Russian American Co. was chartered by Czar Paul I in 1799 as a private trading company in Alaska. A flag was authorised by Czar Alexander I in 1806 and granted to this company, giving the company special recognition in the international trade world.

Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska

From early 1800s, fur trappers of Russian Alaska started to explore the West Coast of the North America, hunting for sea otter pelts as far south as the otters swam. For 40 years thereafter, devel­op­ment of the province continued gradually, at first only as far as San Francisco Bay.

The pre­sence of Russian fur hunters in the North Pacific had already panicked Spain into occupying Alta California. Taking advantage of the chaos created by the war between Spain and Mexico in March 1812, the Russians had freedom to move.

In 1812 The Russian-American Co. set up a fortified trading post at Fort Ross, on the Sonoma Coast 100ks north of San Francisco. This, their most south­erly colony in North America, was intended to provide Russian colonies from the frozen north with agricultural goods. 25 Russian and 80 Alaskan men waded ashore, set up a temporary camp, and began building houses and a sturdy wooden stockade for the Ross Colony.

The Russians had come to hunt sea otter and, hope­fully, to trade with Spanish California. It was several months before the civil and military leaders of Alta California were made aware of the devel­op­ment at Ross, and by then it was too late. The fort was complete.

1828 drawing of the Ross Colony

History Hoydens blog noted how the stockade was impressively fortified, in order to give the enemy in Mexico pause to think about invading the Russian outpost. The colony was well armed and well manned. A redwood palisade surround­ed the site, with two block houses, one on the north corner and one to the south, complete with cannons that could command the entire area.

Outside the walls were the homes of company labourers, a native Alaskan village, and the dwellings of the local native Americans. Because the colony had to be largely self-sustaining, there were storehouses and outbuildings for processing the precious pelts, spinning and weaving cloth, a kitchen and a room for pharmaceuticals.

The stockade contained the command­ant’s house, the of­f­icials' quarters, barracks for the Russian employ­ees and various store-houses. A small building, used as the Fort Ross Chapel, was built from 1823-6. This was the first Russian Orthodox church built in mainland USA.

No unmarried Russian women lived at Ross. But inter-marriage between Russians and the natives of Alaska and Calif­ornia was not unknown. Natives and people of mixed ancestry as well as lower-ranking company men lived in a village that gradually grew up outside the stockade walls. Hunting of sea otter, whose pelts were very valuable in the trading world, was done by Kodiak islanders in their Alaskan hunt­ing kayaks. The hunters and their families had their own village out­side the stockade.

But by 1820, extensive hunting had depleted the sea otter pop­ulation so badly that agriculture and stock raising became the main occupation of the colony. Agriculture didn’t interest the Russian sea men, but luckily ship building did. The Russians were first to build ships on the west coast of North America. Four ships were constructed at the Ross colony in Fort Ross Cove.

ComingAnarchy blog noted that as agricultural production in the Fort Ross region declined, a formal trade agreement was signed between the Russian-American Co. and the Hudson Bay Co. in Fort Vancouver. This agreement specified that British Columbia would provide food to Alaska - the kiss of death for the Ross Colony in California.

Rotchev House for the colony's manager

Literrata & Cybernalia blog described what happened when the otter population was decimated and the fur trading business was over. In 1841, the company faced a massive financial loss, so they sold off their colony to settler Captain John Sutter for the sum of $30,000. The Russians packed up everything they could carry and sailed for home. Some left-over animals were rounded up, and the buildings were dismantled. Every­thing salvageable was transported back to Sutter's Fort in the Sacramento Valley.

Today the Fort Ross Compound has one original structure and five restored buildings. The structure of most historical interest at Fort Ross is the Rotchev house, an existing building renovated about 1836 for Alexander Rotchev, the last manager of Ross. Completely destroyed by a fire in 1970, the Fort Ross chapel has since been recreated, bas­ed on whatever historical evidence could be located. Other import­ant Russians buildings have been built from the ground up, still according to the original drawings: the first Russian Orth­odox chapel south of Alaska, the stockade, and four other buildings called the Kuskov House, the Officials Barracks and the two corner blockhouses.

Russian Orthodox Chapel, Ross Colony

The Russian River takes its name from these Russian trappers who explored the river from their Fort Ross trade colony, only 16 km from its mouth. Apparently they called it the Slavyanka River.

Saving Australia's Maritime Architecture

The preservation of late 18th and early 19th century lighthouses is urgent for two reasons. Firstly Australia’s maritime history was what connected the New World with the rest of the world. It was the sole source of convicts, free population, finished prod­ucts in one direction and raw materials in the other. Secondly a nation that loses its own architectural past is in danger of losing its way. Australia has already destroyed too many of its precious architectural relics, and needs to protect what is left.

Wilson's Promontory was first sight­ed by Bass and Flinders in 1798, and was named by Gov. Hunter in honour of the trader Thomas Wilson. The promontory marks the southern-most point of mainland Australia, and overlooks the narrow shipping channel in Bass Strait between Tasmania and Victoria. Uniquely, from its 100m cliff on the peninsular, the lighthouse site has almost 360° views of Bass Strait. So it was an ideal location for its task: to protect shipping in Bass Strait.

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Wilson's Promontory and Bass Strait

Although Victoria had no convicts, this Victorian lighthouse was built by convict labourers. Thus, we must assume, the convicts were shipped in from NSW or Tasmania, to complete the project. The Wilson's Promontory Lighthouse (19 ms tall) and keep­ers' cottages were built from 1853 to 1859, using granite that was quarried locally. The works were supervised by the Public Works Department, and contracted to a North Melbourne company. The building costs were shared between the Victorian and NSW governments.

English master mariner and adventurer Captain Thomas Musgrave was one of the first head keepers of the Wilson’s Promontory Lighthouse, moving to the site in 1869. He and later keepers kept the oil lamps burning, recorded weather details and signalled ships. The white light, 119 metres above sea level, was visible for 40ks at sea.
Keeper's cottage granite lighthouse, Wilson's Promontory

There were four keepers' cottages, built out of local granite as the lighthouse was, but with roofs made of corrugated iron. One of the cottages was rebuilt in 1924, and two others rebuilt in 1952 after being destroyed during a bushfire.

The parabolic mirrors were replaced in 1975 by a generator-powered electric lamp array when the light was converted to electricity, which in turn was converted to solar power in 1993. The light-house was then fully automated; staffing & regular maintenance were no longer seen as necessary. Even though the rough sea weather ruins every exposed surface, funding was withdrawn.

2009 is the 150th anniversary of the lighthouse’s opening for business in 1869. The lighthouse and keepers' cottages are located within the Wilson's Promontory National Park, so funding for all repairs and maintenance now comes from a new source. The tower has been completely restored to the original granite finish and the surfaces of the out-buildings are all sparkly white again.

There is no road to the lighthouse. Visitors must hike the 18k walk from the nearest town, Tidal River. The good news is that accommod­ation is now available at a reasonable price, in the buildings clustered around the light-house. Australia was fortunate to protect this amazing part of its maritime history.

I found many excellent blogs on lighthouses (eg The Keeper's Blog, Old Salt Blog, Shed Some Light on Lighthouses Blog, New England Lighthouse Treasures, Montauk Point) but few of them talked about heritage protection, de-manning, funding.

Israeli fashions and Israeli politics: 1934-85

At first glance there doesn’t seem to be much of a connection between the political values held by the people in a nation, and the clothes that a nation manufactures and wears. But if anyone needs to be convinced that the connection is real, consider the 1960s in the British countries that I knew well.

No self-respecting, progressive young woman in 1965 would buy her clothes in any shop other than the Handicrafts of Asia chain. The cotton clothes she bought from those shops made a clear political statement that the young woman was concerned about the following:
 1. natural (and not synthetic) materials;
 2. the rights of women workers in Third World countries;
 3. owning cheap, long lasting dresses;
 4. ignoring the dictates of fashion houses in Paris and Milan; and
 5. defying her mother’s tastes.

My Gap Year programme, 1966, Jerusalem. Dancing dresses 

In Israel, even more so than in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Consider the changes that took place in Israeli society from the 1930s (a time of mass migration from Nazi Europe) to the 1980s (when capitalism ran rampant). Just 50 years! The country’s worldview used to draw its inspiration from draining the malarial swamps via shared labour (even if most citizens had always lived in cities), and providing for the welfare and education of every citizen, regardless of his income level.

The Ata Textile Factory, that was founded in Kfar Ata near Haifa in 1934, was fascinating. It was established by the Moller family, Czech Jewish industrialists, at a time when the nation’s most important social organisations were the trade unions (Histadrut) and the Labour government. By 1946, Ata had over 900 workers living in Kiryat Ata, all enjoying the community rights that made life pleasant eg housing, childcare and subsidised groceries.

In addition to the socio-economic story, the history of Ata also relates the story of the factory and its textiles i.e the physical appearance of Israeli society. Israel’s workers and soldiers wore Ata clothing, as did members of youth movements. When every prime minister in the world would have worn a suit and tie, David Ben Gurion proudly chose khaki shirt and slacks that suggested he was a man of the people, a worker of the land. Sandals were de rigeur.

One of the primary values behind ATA clothing was national solidarity. The factory's fashionable products in its early years included a drill fabric called Army and a cotton satin called Officer. There were only four colours available - khaki, white, black and blue.
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David Ben Gurion, prime minister from 1949-1963 (except for 2 years).

How do I remember this so clearly? I lived in Israel in the middle 1960s.

In the 1960s, Ata realised the company needed to modernise its image so they established a female apparel division called Splendid Model. They started creating fashionable dresses in bright colours, not hippy but certainly reflecting the 1960s zeitgeist. But the times were changing faster than Ata was. The State of Israel was moving towards a capitalist model, raising the threat of privatisation, cutting the economy off from governmental management and making large cuts in welfare budgets. It was a tragedy for workers, but a great boon to industrialists. Soon urban and bourgeois Israelis preferred more stylish clothing from abroad, and they wouldn’t touch the old Ata lines with a barge pole.

The history of the Ata Company has been displayed at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, revealing the economic, political and social changes that took place in Israeli society during the most important decades in the state’s short history. The exhibition is called Factory, Fashion and Dream. It displays these national memories in a broad historical context, moving FROM pioneering spirit, workers’ rights, concern for the community and a commitment to basic, somewhat utilitarian clothes. It moves TO a rolling back of workers’ rights, modernity, private greed and lack of interest in the history of the state.

Ata: Factory, Fashion and Dream exhibition, Tel Aviv Museum

It was no wonder that the Ata factory closed down in 1985. Yet even then, the 3,000 Ata workers thought the government would save them from unemployment and poverty. It did not. The government stood aside, allowing a core part of Israeli society to close and workers to be cut adrift. For decades ATA had symbolised prosperous Israeli industry, proletarian pride and a struggle for the work place. Its closure meant that the sense of idealism, always a core part of Israeli identity, ended as well.

Santa Barbara Mission, historical gardens

lawns around Santa Barbara Mission

Old Mission Santa Barbara, established in 1786 on the site of an old Indian pueblo, was one of the chain of 21 Franciscan Alta California missions established by the Spanish. Eventually they stretched up the Californian coast, along the 966ks-long el Camino Real. As with all the missions founded by the Spanish in this and other parts of New Spain, Santa Barbara arose from the need to control Spain's ever-expanding holdings.

But the government and Church also realised the colonies would require a literate population base that Spain could not supply. So some 300,000 indigenous Americans had to: learn Spanish, develop vocations and adopt Christianity.

Since 2003, Santa Barbara Mission has developed a special outdoor museum called La Huerta Historic Gardens. This orchard-garden was built as a collection point for the disappearing plants of California’s mission period, 1769-1834. Only plants that were specifically documented during the mission era are allowed in the Huerta.

La Huerta historic kitchen gardens, Santa Barbara Mission

As well as plants imported by the Spanish, the huerta also contains a collection of plants grown and used by the local indigenous people, the Chumash. Virginia Hayes showed that plants grown during the mission era have been discovered through research into the writings of the church officials, visitors and residents. They reveal an astonishing array of non-native as well as native plants that were cultivated on mission property eg corn, cauliflower, lentils and garlic which grew as early as 1769.

Next came grapes, barley, wheat, lettuce, figs, peppers, squash, pumpkins, beans and onions. Then apples, pomegranates and oranges. Herbs and medicinal plants such as basil, sage, thyme, cilantro, cumin, mint, lavender, rosemary, dill and valerian all grew in the Huerta.

Utilitarian plants valued for fibre included agave, cotton, flax and hemp. Palm fronds provided thatch and brooms. Gourds were cured and carved into bowls, acacia and Peruvian pepper tree sap was used for glue and castor beans were processed for medicinal oil. Native trees were harvested for their wood.

Today the Huerta is showing visitors that plants have always spread from country to country, bringing with them different cultural, medical and gastronomic benefits. The Spanish arrived in southern California with their plants already on board. As early as Columbus’ second voyage to Hispaniola in 1493, cuttings of 20 plant varieties were brought over on the 17 ships, as well as live stock.

La Huerta historic orchards, Santa Barbara Mission

Columbus also brought with him some cuttings of sugar cane which were planted in Santo Domingo. And Columbus took back New World exotica with him eg chilli peppers, cacao plants and maize.  Within just 20 years, crates of Hispaniola sugar were already being shipped home to the Iberian peninsula. Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, also became an influential sugar producer and these plantations had an enormous impact on the economy of the New World.

In my last Spanish Mission post I was fascinated to note that the goal of the missions was, above all, to become self-sufficient in relatively short order. So crop farming was the most important industry of any mission. Each mission had to create its own kitchen gardens, orchards and vineyards. The Mission grape in particular became very famous in California. The Mission olive even more so.

Old Mission Santa Barbara still occupies over 10 acres of beautifully manicured modern gardens, lawns and rose bushes. It has a number of worthy aims, including being a spiritual centre; educating and serving; promoting the arts and cultural heritage; advancing ecumenism and being a reconciling presence in the community. But arguably their most important work is the Huerta project ie the repository garden for historic plants from the Mission era. As well as organised tours for students etc, there are Open House days where docents/volunteer guides take visitors around La Huerta.

Kadir Cup: champion pig stickers in India

Colonial Film talked about the romantic excitement in which the British Raj held pig-sticking, noting that this kingly sport in India began only in the early 1800s, and grew out of the decline in bear-sticking and bear hunting with dogs.  Under pressure of hunting the bears retired to the heavy forest, with wild boar quickly replacing them as the game of choice, being both plentiful and good sport. Strong, fast and aggressive when threatened, the characteristics of wild boar rendered it ideal game, both from a sporting and moral point of view – the boar was a combination of speed, cunning and ferocity who fought to the end with the utmost courage…a very brave opponent.

The hunters on horse back with their spears

In introducing the imperial sport of pig-sticking, The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum has amazing footage of the annual Raj sporting event, the Kadir Cup Meeting. The museum suggested that the earliest of the pig-sticking tent clubs seems to be the Poona club, founded early in the C19th. And as the century progressed, the event was held annually in Meerut near Delhi, taking place over three days and drawing increasingly large and excited crowds. Country Life magazine called pig-sticking a national obsession in the British Raj, the Wimbledon of its sport.

Each hunter on horseback carried a 6' spear which was grasped near the butt-end and used overhand, driven down at close quarters into the hog. Umpires supervised the hunt and the first rider to hold up a bloodied spear progressed to the next round in the competition.

The most famous winner (in 1883) of the Kadir Cup was Sir Robert Baden-Powell who wrote a book on the sport called Pig-Sticking or Hog-Hunting: A Complete Account for Sportsmen - And Others, published in 1924. Lord Baden-Powell was a lieutenant-general in the British Army in India and Africa, and was the founder of the Scout Movement in 1906. People took notice of his opinions.

One of his chapters was titled Pig-Sticking’s Value to the Indian Civil Service. Here the author suggested that the sport offered a model of the panacea that the Raj might need, for on the pig-sticking field it could be shown that the white man and the Indian can be mutually good friends and comrades where they have a sport in common. The Indians could learn about teamwork, authority, planning and responsibility. The Indians, in return, could share their knowledge of local geography and of local wildlife.

The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum noted that the sport was associated with the higher echelons of the military and colonial administration, and was seen as an ideal pastime to aid in the improvement of the colonial classes. In colonial India, in particular, young officers out of Britain had to get accustomed to the heat. Pig sticking discouraged young men from the "morally deleterious escape to higher altitudes" in the hot season, so that the long, hot nightmare season became instead the healthiest and happiest part of the year.  And this sport took the young civilian out into his district, allowing him to enter into ‘friendship with his headmen, which cannot be got through official correspondence and chuprassies’.

The grand prize, Kadir Cup, with a wild boar on the cover

The 1934 footage from Colonial Film acknowledged that while the more serious literature showed how quickly a fun pastime could be invested with the utmost symbolic gravity, the purely hunterly writing about the sport was more straightforward about the other connected pleasures. The film provided a less varnished picture of the sport in its Imperial context, providing evidence of the luxuries the pig-sticking set expected to enjoy when at a hunt meet or just out for sport with a riding mate.

Wonderful photos of the post-hunt moment are available in Africa Hunting. The men are beautifully groomed, fully dressed and lined up in proud rows. The vanquished animals lie in a row in the front of each photo, trophies from a very successful day out. So which was the most important moment of the entire day - the preparations, the event's starting horn, the frantic chase or the first kill? I would suggest the post-hunt photos, complete with trophies.

I found this post difficult to write because I do not even eat meat, let alone spear wild boar for sport. Yet it is important for us to understand the practice. And its meaning in colonial India.

Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Baden-Powell

India, 1897

Huguenots and the South African Cape

With the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, French Protestants were stripped of any protect-ion they may have had in Louis XIV’s France. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the exiles' large communities in England, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland, but then people started talking about the small Hug­ue­n­ot diaspora in South Africa. I searched the other blogs and found a little eg The du Preez Family blog in Huguenot Exodus (1688 & 1689)

Cape of Good Hope and the Western Cape region

In fact the Dutch East India Co./VOC, under Jan van Riebeeck, had already made a permanent Calvin­ist settlement on the Cape of Good Hope. He arrived with five ships in Cape Town bay in 1652. Cape Town’s settlement was a predominantly as an interim port for VOC ships, en route from Europe to Asia. In order to fully stock Cape Town’s port, the VOC admitted good Protestant citizens who could settle as farmers and provide the food and drinks. As early as 1671 the first Huguenot refugee, Francois Villion/Viljoen, arrived at the Cape.

Clearly the Dutch East India Co. encouraged the Huguenots to emigrate to the Cape because they shared Calvinist beliefs. But they also recognised that most of the Huguenots were exper­ien­ced farmers from parts of France that specialised in wine growing. After their arrival at the Cape, the immigrants were expected to make a living from agric­ulture, business or by practicing a trade. If they decided to farm, they were allotted farm land without cost. As soon as a few families settled, they laid the first stone of the Cape’s Dutch Reformed chur­ch 1678, built and later renovated in the typical Cape Dutch style.

An agent was sent out from the Cape Colony in 1685 to attract more settlers and new immigrants began to arrive eg in 1686 the brothers Guill­aume and Francois du Toit reached South Africa. Timing was everything! With the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, many a French Protestant was looking around for a home. By 1688-9 the 201 Hug­uenot families who arrived were just large enough to leave an impression on the young settlement at the Cape, only 70 km outside Cape Town.

Franschhoek Valley, site of Huguenot vineyards

In 1688, French Huguenot refugees were given land by the Dutch government in a valley called Olifantshoek/Elephant's Corner. The name of the area soon changed to Le Quartier Francais and then to Fransch­hoek Valley. That year a group of c200 French Huguenots arrived from La Motte d'Aigues in Provence and other areas. As described by fellow blogger A Post-Modern Protestant in Paris in his post South African Wine a French Protestant Heritage, they specialised in vineyards.

When the de Villiers brothers arrived at the Cape with a reputation for viticulture, and in time, the brothers planted many thousands of vines at the Cape. They moved from the original farm that they had been granted, La Rochelle, to finally settle on individual land grants near Fransch­hoek in places they named Bourgogne, Champagne and La Brie. Lucky were the passing ships that stopped in Cape Town.

Huguenot Monument in Franschoek, 1945

Individual arrivals contin­ued on and off until the end of Company-supported emig­rat­ion in 1707. Undoubtedly these French Huguenot exiles created fertile valleys out of the tough land they had been given in the Cape. But the white pop­ulation in the Cape was small, so they soon married their children and grandchildren into the fam­ilies of other colon­ists. And it didn’t help that the Dutch East India Co. insisted that schools taught exclusively in Dutch. By the mid C18th the Huguenots ceased to maint­ain a distinct ident­ity. Within two generations even their home language largely disappeared.

What is left now? Some important surnames, today mostly Afrik­aans speaking, remain in families who had French-speaking great great grandparents eg Cronje/Cronier, de Klerk/Le Clercq, de Villiers, Terre-blanche and Viljoen/Villion. Plus a number of wine farms in the Western Cape still have French names, as do their products.

La Motte winery, named for the settlers' French home.

Then there is a large monu­ment, Huguenot Monument in Franschoek 1945, commemorating the arr­iv­al of the Huguenots in South Africa, that wasn’t inaug­urated by Dr AJ van der Merwe until 1948. The cen­tral fe­m­ale figure stood for religious free­dom, denied the Huguenots in their beloved France but offered by Dutch South Africa. A useful analysis of the Huguenot Monument can be found in the Franschhoek blog. Finally the Memorial Museum of Franschhoek next to the monument celebrates the his­tory of the French Huguenots who settled in the Cape.

Every adult citizen's vote must be counted

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance - Compulsory voting information wrote that democratic governments consider voting in elections a right of citizenship. Many nations consider that participation at elections is more than a mere right; it is also a citizen's civic responsibility. In some countries, where voting is considered a duty, voting at elections has been made compulsory and has been regulated in the national constitutions and electoral laws. Many of these countries impose sanctions on voters who do not fulfil their civic duty. But the idea of "forcing" people is almost irrelevant. They vote because that is what a good citizen does - he looks after the children, runs a home, keeps a job, pays taxes, protests against bad laws, supports charities, uses public transport wherever possible, and votes!

I would add another very important consideration. A government who is elected with­out hearing from 100% of the adult population has no legitimacy. Of course 100% may not be literally possible since some people are inevitably in gaol, in hospital or are so infirmed that they cannot write. But 100% of the adult population should be the goal of any democratic nation’s electoral strategy.

If mobile voting booths have to go out to old peoples’ homes and move from bed to bed, those mobile booths must be funded from the tax base and equipped before the next election. Postal voting will be necessary for all absentee voters. Voting has to be on weekends so no worker suffers a loss of wages during his absence from work. If citizens are working in Antarctica or New Guinea, election officers need to process those remotely located citizens in a timely fashion.

Rural voting, New Zealand, 1897

There seem to be 35 nations that have some sort of universal voting laws:
Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Congo
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Fiji
France (Senate elections only)
Gabon
Greece
Guatemala
Honduras
India
Indonesia
Italy
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Mexico
Nauru
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Singapore
Switzerland (some cantons)
Turkey
Uruguay
Thailand
Venezuela

Austria, Netherlands, Soviet Union and Spain did have universal voting at some stage, but have since changed their legislation.

FairVote blog gives the arguments cogently and at length in Maximizing Participation: what the US can learn from compulsory voting. Empress Nasi Goreng blog discussed how serious Australians were their rights and responsibilities in On the Australian system of compulsory voting.

Historical Niagara On The Lake: not just for honeymooners

I am fascinated by European history in Canada and have visited Canada often. But Niagara on the Lake (pop 15,500) seemed to be a post-war honeymoon site and not very historically important. Mea culpa Niagara! The town's historic district was actually designated a provincial Heritage Conservation District in 1986 and a National Historic Site of Canada in 2003.

St Mark's Church, 1792-1808

We need to go back to 1776, when representatives from each of the original 13 American states voted in the 2nd Continental Congress to adopt a Declaration of Independence. In it, they explicitly rejected the British monarchy and Parliament, leaving loyal British subjects with nowhere to live. In 1781 the British government established the town of Niagara just on the Canadian side of the border, presumably to offer a safe haven to British loyalists, during and after the American Revolution.

The location in Ontario could not have been better – just where the Niagara River and Lake Ontario meet. But Niagara’s proximity to Americans on the other side of the border was both advantageous and risky. During the Anglo-American War of 1812, American forces invaded Canada, and captured the town and its fort. Later the Americans pulverised Niagara town as they retreated in Dec 1813.

Prince of Wales Hotel, 1864

Today the Niagara Heritage Trail is a historic route taking in the Canadian coastline of the Niagara River and the Niagara National Historic Sites. Along the route, visitors can visit Old Fort Erie, site of a major battle in July 1812 between the waiting British troops and the advancing American troops. Chippawa Battlefield Park, site of the first major battle on the Canadian side during the War of 1812, is also of interest.

I wondered why so much military effort was put into taking or defending this tiny part of the North American continent in 1812. Clearly the Niagara River provided the vital water transportation route between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, so perforce the Niagara frontier became the scene of many rather tragic battles. Most of the former military sites, like Fort George (abandoned in 1814), Navy Hall and Butler's Barracks, have been returned to their original condition. Fort Mississauga (built on the lighthouse site in 1814) is also interesting.

And talking of the war (and pubs), examine The Olde Angel Inn, first established in 1789. Captain Colin Swayze of the Canadian Militia wanted a bit of leg-over during the worst of the War of 1812. He hid in the beer cellar but American troops eventually used a bayonet to find him and kill the amorous captain. The Olde Angel Inn was itself burned to the ground during the war, only to be rebuilt three years later along the original plans - including the wooden tables in the dining rooms and exposed beams holding up the roof.

An incomplete St Mark's Church went up in July 1792, even though the nave took another decade to be completed. Thus full services could not be held in St Mark’s till 1808. Alas almost all of this historic institution was burned down in the war of 1812. The British eventually rebuilt the town with lovely Georgian and mid-Victorian architecture, making the streetscapes look splendid. Thankfully St Mark's Church was restored in 1820 and later enlarged.

McFarland House, 1800

McFarland House 1800 was the brick Georgian home of John McFarland and his children, part of the reward granted to the Scotsman in return for his services to King George III. The home was fortunate to have largely survived the burning of Niagara by the Americans in December 1813. This makes McFarland House one of the oldest structures in Niagara-on-the-Lake. During the War of 1812 McFarland House was used as a hospital by both the British and the American armies, and a gun battery was situated on the property to help guard the Niagara River.

Another fiery Scotsman was William Lyon Mackenzie. Born in Dundee in 1795, he moved to Canada in 1820. The Colonial Advocate was a newspaper for which he was the publisher, editor, writer and paper carrier. I have never seen the Mackenzie Heritage Printery and Newspaper Museum, located in Mackenzie’s home, but it is Canada’s largest working museum of printing. And it is recommended in Get Up and Go (summer 2012).

Old Court House, 1847

The Niagara Apothecary is a careful restoration of a pharmacy that had operated in the town from 1820 on. The two arched plate glass windows show an Italianate taste, but it is the interior that is splendid. The lustrous black walnut and butternut fixtures, elaborate plaster rosettes and crystal gasoliers projected an impression of  wellbeing back in 1869, and still look impressive now.

The Court House was designed by a Toronto architect in 1846 and opened in 1847, in the fashionable neoclassical style that everyone wanted for public buildings. Though the courts were moved in 1862, this building is still well used. Today the Old Court House Theatre, located where the Bernard Shaw Festival began in 1962, has a 327-seat theatre in the original Assembly Room.

In 1848, the first bridge opened across the Niagara River. Designed as a suspension bridge for carriages and pedestrians, it was located where the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge is today. It didn't take long before the Great Western Railway reached Niagara from Hamilton, via to the Suspension Bridge. Work then began to rebuild the bridge as a double-deck span, with rail traffic using the upper level while the lower deck was for carriages and pedestrians. The new bridge was opened in 1855.

My favourite of all the Victorian buildings in Niagara is The Prince of Wales Hotel which was built in 1864. It was renovated a hundred years and restored to its original Victorian charm. The hanging baskets of coloured petunias remind me of Victoria on Vancouver Island.

Fort George, built in 1799 and abandoned in 1814. 

The fort was later rebuilt and used by the Canadian Army as a military training base during WW1.

Established in 1961, the Niagara Falls History Museum is nearing the end of major expansion works and will re-open to the public in July 2012. The Battle Gound Hotel Museum is well located in Lundy’s Lane Battlefield but more than that, I think it is very civilised of the Canadians to house this museum in a restored 1850s tavern house.

Apothecary, built in 1820, rebuilt in1869 and recently renovated

Gold fever and stage coaches, California and Victoria

Freeman Cobb (1830-1878) joined Adams & Co., the American express agents, in 1849. He worked with the coaching line which had established itself during the Californian gold rush, starting only one year earlier. Adams and Co’s rival, Wells Fargo & Company's Atlantic and Pacific Express, also moved gold, transported passengers and carried freight between the cities of New York and San Francisco, and around California. Guards rode shotgun on the stage coaches, to protect the gold and the passengers.

Wells Fargo, driver, armed guards and passengers, California

Just as gold fever was starting to die down in California, it was about to start in central Victoria. Coach services in Australia had been irregular and unreliab­le. So it was not surprising that Freeman Cobb wanted to establish a branch of Adams & Co. in Melbourne. In fact several American coach drivers had arrived in Australia, rep­resenting the interests of either Adams & Co. or Wells Fargo. Neither of these two American companies did carry traffic to the Victorian gold diggings, in the end. So the very entrepreneurial Freemen Cobb joined three of the new arrivals to create a new partnership, Cobb & Co. They were John Peck, James Swanton and John Lamber.

By the end of 1854 Victoria had a somewhat better system of roads, with toll gates on all high­ways leading to the goldfields, and booking offices in all the bigger towns. Cobb and Co still struggled a bit during the first five years of service, but the company boomed when it was bought in 1858 by another recently arrived Amer­ican, James Ruth­erford. Rutherford had been the manager of one particular Cobb and Co line before he and the new partners re-organised and extended the Victorian services, and secured a monopoly on the mail contracts.

The coach drivers pro­vided mail and passen­ger serv­ic­es to the out­back, facing a tough life of rough roads, difficult weather condit­ions and even bushrangers. Soon specially sprung coaches that could handle Australia's very rough conditions were imported from America.

Every 25 ks the horses were replaced at a changing station, to get passengers to their destinat­ions faster and safer. Chan­ging stat­ions were important for the horses, but for the passengers as well since they provided an opport­un­ity for food and rest. A few examples will do. The American Hotel in rural Creswick was described as a 2-storey timber structure. During the gold rush period, the hotel operated as a Cobb and Co station, gaining prominence as one of the leading est­ablishments in the colony. And providing drinks to thirsty travel­lers! Some changing stations were not in pubs. Just west of rural Beaufort, for example, there was a free standing Cobb & Co changing station, built in 1869. In Barraba near Tamworth NSW, Cobb & Co stage coaches had a clearly marked changing station in the town’s post office.

Barraba postoffice and Cobb and Co station, NSW

I have no idea why Cobb and Co headquarters were moved from Victoria to Bathurst in New South Wales in 1862. Workshops were built at Hay and Bourke in NSW, and Castlemaine in Victoria, and the service was expanded to include Queensland. The first Cobb & Co coach in Qld ran from Brisbane to Ipswich in Jan 1866. Holties House blog gave photographic proof that in the dry sandy regions of Queensland, the innovative Cobb & Co. company sometimes used camels instead of horses to move the mail and passengers.

A clue comes in Sam Everingham's book Wild Ride: The Rise and Fall of Cobb & Co, published by Penguin in 2007. It says while Freeman Cobb established the company in 1853 to cater for travellers between Melbourne and the Victorian goldfields, it was Frank Whitney and James Rutherford who turned it into the most extensive coach network in the world, covering the all of Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

Just as the name Wells Fargo went into the American psyche, so the name Cobb and Co became known by every school child across Australia. New Blog described a Queensland museum dedicated to this company in Team visits Cobb and Co museum in Toowoomba.

Cobb and Co Museum, Toowoomba Qld

The expansion into New Zealand was sensible. In 1861, the discovery of gold in Gabriel's Gully in Otago prompted yet another gold rush, includ­ing Australian gold-diggers who sailed for Dunedin. Among these was the Cobb & Co. coach proprietor Charles Cole, who had been running the Ballarat service. Cole landed in Dunedin in 1861 with a coach, 5 wagons, a buggy and dozens of horses. Almost immediately Cobb and Co's first coach left the Provincial Hotel Dunedin for the Police Com­mis­sion­er's Camp at Gabriel's Gully, as described by Otago Gold­fields Heritage Trust blog in Dunstan Trail. The initial journey took three days, but the time was soon reduced to a one day trip by the introd­uction of stables and relays of horses. There was usually an over­night stop at Styx where the lock-up was built to protect the gold bullion.

We can find unexpected snippets of Cobb and Co history all over the blogosphere. The Humble Blog who wrote about The Coffee Palace in Barwon Heads. After describing boating, fishing, picnic parties and other touristy pleasures, visitors in the 1890s were invited to visit the lake. People wanting to participate had to apply to the manager of Cobb and Co. who had well-appointed stables and horses. Coaches left Geelong twice daily, at 9AM and 2PM, during the summer season. Poetry Galore blog included The Lights Of Cobb and Co., written by one of Australia’s most loved poets, Henry Lawson. It was stirring stuff. And art historians have argued that with his revolutionary approach to depicting the Australian bush and our light, Tom Roberts’ Bailed Up was a painting that helped define Australia’s national identity.

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Tom Roberts, Bailed Up, c1894

Origins of Guide Dogs for the Blind

I am besotted with labradors and thought, briefly, of putting my beloved labrador puppy into a training school for guide dogs. But Rudy was too playful and too distractible to take a blind person across our kitchen, let alone a busy street. In any case, his main goals in life were to locate pieces of dried liver and to run on the beach.

Puppies waiting for training (when they turn 12 months)

That led me to consider the history of training dogs for guiding blind people. I easily found 73 blogs and newspaper articles, but they all used the same words and they mostly started their history of guide dogs in the 1920s. Alas I don’t read German and have to rely on secondary sources, so my contribution will largely be the story as it was found in World War One records and images.

Invisible Paris blog wrote in 15-20 Vision that King Louis IX created the original Quinze-Vingts hospital in 1260. The King certainly wanted to look after the blind people of Paris but he was mainly motivated by the many soldiers who were returning from the Crusades and suffering from enemy-inflicted blindness. There are some suggestions that dogs were trained to work with the blind at this Paris hospital, at least when the hospital moved to a better site in 1780.

Vienna in 1819 was the critical city, as soon as Johann Wilhelm Klein became the founder of the Austria Institute for the Blind. The International Guide Dog Federation noted that Klein wrote about training guide dogs in his book on educating blind people, but it is not clear whether his ideas were carried out in practice or not. Still, a Swiss citizen called Jakob Birrer wrote in 1847 about his experiences of being guided over a period of five years by a trained dog. He may have been referring to Klein’s centre.

Dogs and handlers in the German army, World War 1

The historical details from the C19th become more firm when we learn of a smart breed of dogs, as Tiffany Proctor described. That breed was founded in 1899 by Capt Max von Stephanitz. He had been viewing a dog show where he saw what he believed to be the ideal sheep dog. The dog was then purchased and propagated by Stephanitz who, in time, became the founding father of the breed called German Shepherd Dogs. The German Shepherd or Alsatian breed grew and grew, and because of its intelligence and obedience, went on to star in seeing-eye work.

The labrador dog has been recognised as a great retriever and gun dog for hundreds of years. But I cannot find when the breed’s loyalty and willingness to learn made it absolutely ideal for seeing-eye work.

Most writers suggest that the biggest push in the 20th century was when dogs were used to lead blinded German soldiers during World War One. Formal, systematic training of guide dogs was started by Dr. Gerhard Stalling who opened the world's first guide dog school for the blind at Oldenburg in August 1916 and the second in Potsdam. The school flourished and new branches opened all over Germany, turning out some 600 dogs a year. Stalling's training became the role model for training guide dogs across the rest of the world.

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World War I trenches, men and dogs

Olive Drab blog in History of War Dogs agreed that dogs were invaluable to the German army in WW1. The Germans reported use of over 30,000 dogs as messenger and ambulance dogs, but I cannot find how many dogs were used/trained specifically to assist the blind. Photos of soldiers in trenches from firstworldwar.com show the dogs actively involved, but their exact role is unclear.

Gassed 1918, by John Singer Sargent

A painting by John Singer Sargent, now in the Imperial War Museum London, showed rows of soldiers who had been blinded by mustard gas. This is exactly the sort of situation that the trained German army dogs specialised in.