Niagara and the Poets.

On a day in July, 1804, a ruddy-faced, handsome young Irishman, whose appearance must have commanded unusual attention in wild frontier surroundings, came out of the woods that overlooked Lake Erie, picking his way among the still-standing stumps, and trudged down the Indian trail, which had not long been made passable for wagons. Presently he came into the better part of the road, named Willink Avenue, passed a dozen scattered houses, and finally stopped at John Crow's log tavern, the principal inn of the infant Buffalo. He was dusty, tired, and disgusted with the fortune that had brought an accident some distance back in the woods, compelling him to finish this stage of his journey, not merely on foot, but disabled. Here, surrounded by more Indians than whites, he lodged for a day or so before continuing his journey to Niagara Falls; and here, according to his own testimony, he wrote a long poem, which was not only, in all probability, the first poem ever composed in Buffalo, and one of the bitterest tirades against America and American institutions to be found in literature; but which contained, so far as I have been able to discover, the first allusion to Niagara Falls, written by one who actually traveled thither, in the poetry of any language.

The poetry of Niagara Falls is contemporary with the first knowledge of the cataract among civilized men. One may make this statement with positiveness, inasmuch as the first book printed in Europe which mentions Niagara Falls contains a poem in which allusion is made to that wonder. This work is the excessively rare "Des Sauvages" of Champlain (Paris, 1604),[71]in which, after the dedication, is a sonnet, inscribed "Le Sievr de la Franchise av discovrs Dv Sievr Champlain." It seems proper, in quoting this first of all Niagara poems, to follow as closely as may be in modern type the archaic spelling of the original:

Mvses, si vous chantez, vrayment ie vous conseilleQue vous louëz Champlain, pour estre courageux:Sans crainte des hasards, il a veu tant de lieux,Que ses relations nous contentent l'oreille.Il a veu le Perou,[72]Mexique & la MerueilleDu Vulcan infernal qui vomit tant de feux,Et les saults Mocosans,[73]qui offensent les yeuxDe ceux qui osent voir leur cheute nonpareille.Il nous promet encor de passer plus auant,Reduire les Gentils, & trouuer le Leuant,Par le Nort, ou le Su, pour aller à la Chine.C'est charitablement tout pour l'amour de Dieu.Fy des lasches poltrons qui ne bougent d'vn lieu!Leur vie, sans mentir, me paroist trop mesquine.

I regret that some research has failed to discover any further information regarding the poet De la Franchise. Obviously, he took rather more than the permissible measure of poet's license in saying that Champlain had seen Peru, a country far beyond the known range of Champlain's travels. But in the phrase "les saults Mocosans," the falls of Mocosa, we have the ancient name of the undefined territory afterwards labeled "Virginia." The intent of the allusion is made plainer by Marc Lescarbot, who in 1610 wrote a poem in which he speaks of "great falls which the Indians say they encounter in ascending the St. Lawrence as far as the neighborhood of Virginia."[74]The allusion can only be to Niagara.

It is gratifying to find our incomparable cataract a theme for song, even though known only by aboriginal report, thus at the very dawn of exploration in this part of America. It is fitting, too, that the French should be the first to sing of what they discovered. More than a century after De la Franchise and Lescarbot, a Frenchman who really saw the falls introduced them to the muse, though only by a quotation. Thiswas Father Charlevoix, who, writing "From the Fall of Niagara, May 14, 1721," to the Duchess of Lesdiguieres, was moved to aid his description by quoting poetry. "Ovid," the priest wrote to the duchess, "gives us the description of such another cataract, situated according to him in the delightful valley of Tempe. I will not pretend that the country of Niagara is as fine as that, though I believe its cataract much the noblest of the two," and he thereupon quotes these lines from the "Metamorphoses":

Est nemus Hæmoniæ, prærupta quod undique clauditSylva; vocant Tempe, per quæ Peneus ab imoEffusus Pindo spumosis volvitur undis,Dejectisque gravi tenues agitantia fumosNubila conducit, summisque aspergine sylvas,Impluit, et sonitu plusquam vicina fatigat.

It would be strange if there were not other impressionable Frenchmen who composed or quoted verses expressive of Niagara's grandeur, during the eighty-one years that elapsed between the French discovery of Niagara Falls and the English Conquest—a period of over three-quarters of a century during which earth's most magnificent cataract belonged to France. But if priest or soldier, coureur-de-bois or verse-maker at the court of Louis said aught in meter of Niagara in all that time, I have not found it.

A little thunder by Sir William Johnson's guns at Fort Niagara, a little blood on the Plains of Abraham, and Niagara Falls was handed over to Great Britain. Four years after the Conquest English poetry made itsfirst claim to our cataract. In 1764 appeared that ever-delightful work, "The Traveller, or, a Prospect of Society," wherein we read:

Have we not seen at pleasure's lordly callThe smiling long-frequented village fall?Behold the duteous son, the sire decayed,The modest matron or the blushing maid,Forced from their homes, a melancholy train,To traverse climes beyond the western main;Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps aroundAnd Niagara[75]stuns with thundering sound.Even now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim straysThrough tangled forests and through dangerous ways,Where beasts with man divided empire claim,And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim;There, while above the giddy tempest flies,And all around distressful yells arise,The pensive exile, bending with his woe,To stop too fearful and too faint to go,Casts a long look where England's glories shine,And bids his bosom sympathize with mine.[76]

Obviously, Oliver Goldsmith's "Traveller," in its American allusions, reflected the current literature of those years when Englishmen heard more of Oswegothan they ever have since. Niagara and Oswego were uttermost points told of in the dispatches, during that long war, reached and held by England's "far-flung battle line"; but if Britain's poets found any inspiration in Niagara's mighty fount for a half century after Goldsmith, I know it not.

And this brings us again to our first visiting poet, Tom Moore, whose approach to Niagara by way of Buffalo in 1804 has been described. Penning an epistle in rhyme from "Buffalo, on Lake Erie," to the Hon. W. R. Spencer—writing, we are warranted in fancying, after a supper of poor bacon and tea, or an evening among the loutish Indians who hung about Crow's log-tavern—he recorded his emotions in no amiable mood:

Even now, as wandering upon Erie's shoreI hear Niagara's distant cataract roar,[77]I sigh for home—alas! these weary feetHave many a mile to journey, ere we meet.

Niagara in 1804 was most easily approached from the East by schooner on Lake Ontario from Oswego, though the overland trail through the woods was beginning to be used. Moore came by the land route. The record of the journey is to be found in the preface to his American Poems, and in his letters to his mother,published for the first time in his "Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence," edited by Earl Russell and issued in London and Boston in 1853-'56. The letters narrating his adventures in the region are dated "Geneva, Genessee County, July 17, 1804"; "Chippewa, Upper Canada, July 22d"; "Niagara, July 24th";—in which he copies a description of the falls from his journal, not elsewhere published—and "Chippewa, July 25th," signed "Tom." There is no mention in these letters of Buffalo, but in the prefatory narrative above alluded to we have this interesting account of the visit:

It is but too true, of all grand objects, whether in nature or art, that facility of access to them much diminishes the feeling of reverence they ought to inspire. Of this fault, however, the route to Niagara, at this period—at least the portion of it which led through the Genesee country—could not justly be accused. The latter part of the journey, which lay chiefly through yet but half-cleared woods, we were obliged to perform on foot; and a slight accident I met with in the course of our rugged walk laid me up for some days at Buffalo.

And so laid up—perhaps with a blistered heel—he sought relief by driving his quill into the heart of democracy. His friend, he lamented, had often told him of happy hours passed amid the classic associations and art treasures of Italy:

But here alas, by Erie's stormy lake,As far from such bright haunts my course I take,No proud remembrance o'er the fancy plays,No classic dream, no star of other daysHath left the visionary light behind,That lingering radiance of immortal mind,Which gilds and hallows even the rudest scene,The humblest shed where Genius once had been.

He views, not merely his immediate surroundings in the pioneer village by Lake Erie, but the general character of the whole land:

All that creation's varying mass assumes,Of grand or lovely, here aspires and blooms.Bold rise the mountains, rich the gardens glow,Bright lakes expand and conquering rivers flow;But mind, immortal mind, without whose rayThis world's a wilderness and man but clay,Mind, mind alone, in barren still repose,Nor blooms, nor rises, nor expands, nor flows.Take Christians, Mohawks, democrats and all,From the rude wigwam to the Congress Hall,From man the savage, whether slaved or free,To man the civilized, less tame than he,'Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strifeBetwixt half-polished and half-barbarous life;Where every ill the ancient world could brewIs mixed with every grossness of the new;Where all corrupts, though little can entice,And naught is known of luxury, but its vice!Is this the region then, is this the climeFor soaring fancies? for those dreams sublime,Which all their miracles of light revealTo heads that meditate and hearts that feel?Alas! not so!

And after much more of proud protest against Columbia and "the mob mania that imbrutes her now," our disapproving poet turned in to make the best, letus hope, of Landlord Crow's poor quarters, and to prepare for Niagara. Years afterwards he admitted that there was some soul for song among the men of the Far West of that day. Very complacently he tells us that "Even then, on the shores of those far lakes, the title of 'Poet'—however in that instance unworthily bestowed—bespoke a kind and distinguished welcome for its wearer. The captain who commanded the packet in which I crossed Lake Ontario, in addition to other marks of courtesy, begged, on parting with me, to be allowed to decline payment for my passage." I cannot do better than to quote further from his account of the visit to the falls:

When we arrived at length at the inn, in the neighborhood of the Falls, it was too late to think of visiting them that evening; and I lay awake almost the whole night with the sound of the cataract in my ears. The day following I consider as a sort of era in my life; and the first glimpse I caught of that wonderful cataract gave me a feeling which nothing in this world can ever awaken again. It was through an opening among the trees, as we approached the spot where the full view of the Falls was to burst upon us, that I caught this glimpse of the mighty mass of waters falling smoothly over the edge of the precipice; and so overwhelming was the notion it gave me of the awful spectacle I was approaching, that during the short interval that followed, imagination had far outrun the reality—and vast and wonderful as was the scene that then opened upon me, my first feeling was that of disappointment. It would have been impossible, indeed, for anything real to come up to the vision I had, in these few seconds, formed of it, and those awful scriptural words, 'The fountains of the great deep were broken up,' can alone give any notion of the vague wonders for which I was prepared.But, in spite of the start thus got by imagination, the triumph of reality was, in the end, but the greater; for the gradual glory of the scene that opened upon me soon took possession of my whole mind; presenting from day to day, some new beauty or wonder, and like all that is most sublime in nature or art, awakening sad as well as elevating thoughts. I retain in my memory but one other dream—for such do events so long past appear—which can by any respect be associated with the grand vision I have just been describing; and however different the nature of their appeals to the imagination, I should find it difficult to say on which occasion I felt most deeply affected, when looking at the Falls of Niagara, or when standing by moonlight among the ruins of the Coliseum.

But, in spite of the start thus got by imagination, the triumph of reality was, in the end, but the greater; for the gradual glory of the scene that opened upon me soon took possession of my whole mind; presenting from day to day, some new beauty or wonder, and like all that is most sublime in nature or art, awakening sad as well as elevating thoughts. I retain in my memory but one other dream—for such do events so long past appear—which can by any respect be associated with the grand vision I have just been describing; and however different the nature of their appeals to the imagination, I should find it difficult to say on which occasion I felt most deeply affected, when looking at the Falls of Niagara, or when standing by moonlight among the ruins of the Coliseum.

It was the tranquillity and unapproachableness of the great fall, in the midst of so much turmoil, which most impressed him. He tried to express this in a Song of the Spirit of the region:

There amid the island sedge,Just upon the cataract's edge,Where the foot of living manNever trod since time began,Lone I sit at close of day,[78]...

The poem as a whole, however, is not a strong one, even for Tom Moore.

As the Irish bard sailed back to England, another pedestrian poet was making ready for a tour to Niagara. This was the Paisley weaver, rhymster and roamer, Alexander Wilson, whose fame as an ornithologist outshines his reputation as a poet. Yet in him America has—by adoption—her Oliver Goldsmith. In 1794, being then twenty-eight years old, he arrived in Philadelphia. For eight years he taught school, or botanized, roamed the woods with his gun, worked at the loom, and peddled his verses among the inhabitants of New Jersey. In October, 1804, accompanied by his nephew and another friend, he set out on a walking expedition to Niagara, which he satisfactorily accomplished. His companions left him, but he persevered, and reached home after an absence of fifty-nine days and a walk of 1,260 miles. It is very pleasant, especially for one who has himself toured afoot over a considerable part of this same route, to follow our naturalist poet and his friends on their long walk through the wilderness, in the pages of Wilson's descriptive poem, "The Foresters." Its first edition, it is believed, is a quaint little volume of 106 pages, published at Newtown, Penn., in 1818.[79]The route led through Bucks and Northumberland counties, over the mountains and up the valley of the Susquehanna; past Newtown, N. Y., now Elmira, and so on to the Indian village of Catherine, near the head of Seneca Lake. Here, a quarter of a century before, Sullivan and his raiders had brought desolation, traces of which stirred our singer to some of his loftiest flights. In that romantic wilderness of rocky glen and marsh and lake, the region where Montour Falls and Watkins now are, Wilson lingered to shoot wild fowl. Thence the route lay through that interval of long ascents—so long that the trudging poet thought

To Heaven's own gates the mountain seemed to rise

—and equally long descents, from Seneca Lake to Cayuga. Here, after a night's rest, under a pioneer's roof:

Our boat now ready and our baggage stored,Provisions, mast and oars and sails aboard,With three loud cheers that echoed from the steep,We launched our skiff "Niagara" to the deep.

Down to old Cayuga bridge they sailed and through the outlet, passed the salt marshes and so on to Fort Oswego. That post had been abandoned on the 28th of October, about a week before Wilson arrived there. A desolate, woebegone place he found it:

Those struggling huts that on the left appear,Where fence, or field, or cultured garden green,Or blessed plough, or spade were never seen,Is old Oswego; once renowned in trade,Where numerous tribes their annual visits paid.From distant wilds, the beaver's rich retreat,For one whole moon they trudged with weary feet;Piled their rich furs within the crowded store,Replaced their packs and plodded back for more.But time and war have banished all their trainsAnd naught but potash, salt and rum remains.The boisterous boatman, drunk but twice a day,Begs of the landlord; but forgets to pay;Pledges his salt, a cask for every quart,Pleased thus for poison with his pay to part.From morn to night here noise and riot reign;From night to morn 'tis noise and roar again.

Not a flattering picture, truly, and yet no doubt a trustworthy one, of this period in Oswego's history.

But we must hurry along with the poet to his destination, although the temptation to linger with him inthis part of the journey is great. Indeed, "The Foresters" is a historic chronicle of no slight value. There is no doubting the fidelity of its pictures of the state of nature and of man along this storied route as seen by its author at the beginning of the century; while his poetic philosophizing is now shrewd, now absurd, but always ardently American in tone.

Our foresters undertook to coast along the Ontario shore in their frail "Niagara"; narrowly escaped swamping, and were picked up by

A friendly sloop for Queenstown Harbor bound,

where they arrived safely, after being gloriously seasick. It was the season of autumn gales. A few days before a British packet called the Speedy, with some twenty or thirty persons on board, including a judge advocate, other judges, witnesses and an Indian prisoner, had foundered and every soul perished. No part of the Speedy was afterwards found but the pump, which Wilson says his captain picked up and carried to Queenston.

Wilson had moralized, philosophized and rhapsodized all the way from the Schuylkill. His verse, as he approaches the Mecca of his wanderings, fairly palpitates with expectation and excitement. He was not a bard to sing in a majestic strain, but his description of the falls and their environment is vivid and of historic value. As they tramped through the forest,—

Heavy and slow, increasing on the ear,Deep through the woods a rising storm we hear.Th' approaching gust still loud and louder grows,As when the strong northeast resistless blows,Or black tornado, rushing through the wood,Alarms th' affrighted swains with uproar rude.Yet the blue heavens displayed their clearest sky,And dead below the silent forests lie;And not a breath the lightest leaf assailed;But all around tranquillity prevailed."What noise is that?" we ask with anxious mien,A dull salt-driver passing with his team."Noise? noise?—why, nothing that I hear or seeBut Nagra Falls—Pray, whereabouts live ye?"

This touch of realism ushers in a long and over-wrought description of the whole scene. The "crashing roar," he says,

—— bade us kneel and Time's great God adore.

Whatever may have been his emotions, his adjectives are sadly inadequate, and his verse devoid of true poetic fervor. More than one of his descriptive passages, however, give us those glimpses of conditions past and gone, which the historian values. For instance, this:

High o'er the wat'ry uproar, silent seen,Sailing sedate, in majesty serene,Now midst the pillared spray sublimely lost,Swept the gray eagles, gazing calm and slow,On all the horrors of the gulf below;Intent, alone, to sate themselves with blood,From the torn victims of the raging flood.

Wilson was not the man to mistake a bird; and many other early travelers have testified to the former presence of eagles in considerable numbers, hauntingthe gorge below the falls in quest of the remains of animals that had been carried down stream.

Moore, as we have seen, denounced the country for its lack of

That lingering radiance of immortal mind

which so inspires the poet in older lands. He was right in his fact, but absurd in his fault-finding. It has somewhere been said of him, that Niagara Falls was the only thing he found in America which overcame his self-importance; but we must remember his youth, the flatteries on which he had fed at home and the crudities of American life at that time. For a quarter of a century after Tom Moore's visit there was much in the crass assertiveness of American democracy which was as ridiculous in its way as the Old-World ideas of class and social distinctions were in their way—and vastly more vulgar and offensive. Read, in evidence, Mrs. Trollope and Capt. Basil Hall, two of America's severest and sincerest critics. It should be put down to Tom Moore's credit, too, that before he died he admitted to Washington Irving and to others that his writings on America were the greatest sin of his early life.[80]

Like Moore, Alexander Wilson felt America's lack of a poet; and, like Barlow and Humphreys and Freneau and others of forgotten fame, he undertook—like them again, unsuccessfully—to supply the lack. There is something pathetic—or grotesque, as we look at it—in the patriotic efforts of these commonplace men to be great for their country's sake.

To Europe's shores renowned in deathless song,

asks Wilson,

Must all the honors of the bard belong?And rural Poetry's enchanting strainBe only heard beyond th' Atlantic main?Yet Nature's charms that bloom so lovely here,Unhailed arrive, unheeded disappear;While bare black heaths and brooks of half a mileCan rouse the thousand bards of Britain's Isle.There, scarce a stream creeps down its narrow bed,There scarce a hillock lifts its little head,Or humble hamlet peeps their glades amongBut lives and murmurs in immortal song.Our Western world, with all its matchless floods,Our vast transparent lakes and boundless woods,Stamped with the traits of majesty sublime,Unhonored weep the silent lapse of time,Spread their wild grandeur to the unconscious sky,In sweetest seasons pass unheeded by;While scarce one Muse returns the songs they gave,Or seeks to snatch their glories from the grave.

This solicitude by the early American writers, lest the poetic themes of their country should go unsung, contrasts amusingly, as does Moore's ill-natured complaining, with the prophetic assurance of Bishop Berkeley's famous lines, written half a century or so before, in allusion to America:

The muse, disgusted at an age and climeBarren of every glorious theme,In distant lands now waits a better time,Producing subjects worthy fame.. . . . . . .Westward the course of empire takes its way, ...

I have found no other pilgrim poets making Niagara their theme, until the War of 1812 came to create heroes and leave ruin along the frontier, and stir a few patriotic singers to hurl back defiance to the British hordes. Iambic defiance, unless kindled by a grand genius, is a poor sort of fireworks, even when it undertakes to combine patriotism and natural grandeur. Certainly something might be expected of a poet who sandwiches Niagara Falls in between bloody battles, and gives us the magnificent in nature, the gallant in warfare and the loftiest patriotism in purpose, the three strains woven in a triple pæan of passion, ninety-four duodecimo pages in length. Such a work was offered to the world at Baltimore in 1818, with this title-page: "Battle of Niagara, a Poem Without Notes, and Goldau, or the Maniac Harper. Eagles and Stars and Rainbows. By Jehu O' Cataract, author of 'Keep Cool.'" I have never seen "Keep Cool," but itmust be very different from the "Battle of Niagara," or it belies its name. The fiery Jehu O' Cataract was John Neal.[81]

The "Battle of Niagara," he informs the reader, was written when he was a prisoner; when he "felt the victories of his countrymen." "I have attempted," he says, "to do justice to American scenery and American character, not to versify minutiæ of battles." The poem has a metrical introduction and four cantos, in which is told, none too lucidly, the story of the battle of Niagara; with such flights of eagles, scintillation of stars and breaking of rainbows, that no brief quotation can do it justice. In style it is now Miltonic, now reminiscent of Walter Scott. The opening canto is mainly an apostrophe to the Bird, and a vision of glittering horsemen. Canto two is a dissertation on Lake Ontario, with word-pictures of the primitive Indian. The rest of the poem is devoted to the battle near the great cataract—and throughout all are sprinkled the eagles, stars and rainbows. Do not infer from this characterization that the production is wholly bad; it is merely a good specimen of that early American poetry which was just bad enough to escape being good.

A brief passage or two will sufficiently illustrate the author's trait of painting in high colors. He is a word-impressionist whose brush, with indiscreet dashes, mars the composition. I select two passages descriptive of the battle:

The drum is rolled again. The bugle singsAnd far upon the wind the cross flag flingsA radiant challenge to its starry foe,That floats—a sheet of light!—away below,Where troops are forming—slowly in the nightOf mighty waters; where an angry lightBounds from the cataract, and fills the skiesWith visions—rainbows—and the foamy dyesThat one may see at morn in youthful poets' eyes.Niagara! Niagara! I hearThy tumbling waters. And I see thee rearThy thundering sceptre to the clouded skies:I see it wave—I hear the ocean rise,And roll obedient to thy call. I hearThe tempest-hymning of thy floods in fear;The quaking mountains and the nodding trees—The reeling birds and the careering breeze—The tottering hills, unsteadied in thy roar;Niagara! as thy dark waters pourOne everlasting earthquake rocks thy lofty shore!. . . . . . .The cavalcade went by. The day hath gone;And yet the soldier lives; his cheerful toneRises in boisterous song; while slowly callsThe monarch spirit of the mighty falls:Soldier, be firm! and mind your watchfires well;Sleep not to-night!

Niagara! Niagara! I hearThy tumbling waters. And I see thee rearThy thundering sceptre to the clouded skies:I see it wave—I hear the ocean rise,And roll obedient to thy call. I hearThe tempest-hymning of thy floods in fear;The quaking mountains and the nodding trees—The reeling birds and the careering breeze—The tottering hills, unsteadied in thy roar;Niagara! as thy dark waters pourOne everlasting earthquake rocks thy lofty shore!. . . . . . .The cavalcade went by. The day hath gone;And yet the soldier lives; his cheerful toneRises in boisterous song; while slowly callsThe monarch spirit of the mighty falls:Soldier, be firm! and mind your watchfires well;Sleep not to-night!

The following picture of the camp at sunset, as the reveille rings over the field, and Niagara's muffled drums vibrate through the dusk, presents many of the elements of true poetry:

Low stooping from his arch, the glorious sunHath left the storm with which his course begun;And now in rolling clouds goes calmly homeIn heavenly pomp adown the far blue dome.In sweet-toned minstrelsy is heard the cry,All clear and smooth, along the echoing sky,Of many a fresh-blown bugle full and strong,The soldier's instrument! the soldier's song!Niagara, too, is heard; his thunder comesLike far-off battle—hosts of rolling drums.All o'er the western heaven the flaming cloudsDetach themselves and float like hovering shrouds.Loosely unwoven, and afar unfurled,A sunset canopy enwraps the world.The Vesper hymn grows soft. In parting dayWings flit about. The warblings die away,The shores are dizzy and the hills look dim,The cataract falls deeper and the landscapes swim.

Jehu O' Cataract does not always hold his fancy with so steady a rein as this. He is prone to eccentric flights, to bathos and absurdities. His apostrophe to Lake Ontario, several hundred lines in length, has many fine fancies, but his luxuriant imagination continually wrecks itself on extravagancies which break down the effect. This I think the following lines illustrate:

... He had fought with savages, whose breathHe felt upon his cheek like mildew till his death.. . . . . . .So stood the battle. Bravely it was fought,Lions and Eagles met. That hill was boughtAnd sold in desperate combat. Wrapped in flame,Died these idolaters of bannered fame.Three times that meteor hill was bravely lost—Three times 'twas bravely won, while madly tost,Encountering red plumes in the dusky air;While Slaughter shouted in her bloody lair,And spectres blew their horns and shook their whistling hair.. . . . . . .

There are allusions to Niagara in some of the ballads of the War of 1812, one of the finest of which, "Sea and Land Victories," beginning

With half the western world at stakeSee Perry on the midland lake,—

appeared in the Naval Songster of 1815, and was a great favorite half a century or more ago. So far, however, as the last War with Great Britain has added to our store of poetry by turning the attention of the poets to the Niagara region as a strikingly picturesque scene of war, there is little worthy of attention. One ambitious work is remembered, when remembered at all, as a curio of literature. This is "The Fredoniad, or Independence Preserved," an epic poem by Richard Emmons, a Kentuckian, afterwards a physician of Philadelphia. He worked on it for ten years, finally printed it in 1826, and in 1830 got it through a second edition, ostentatiously dedicated to Lafayette. "The Fredoniad" is a history in verse of the War of 1812; it was published in four volumes; it has forty cantos, filling 1,404 duodecimo pages, or a total length of about 42,000 lines. The first and second cantos are devotedto Hell, the third to Heaven, and the fourth to Detroit. About one-third of the whole work is occupied with military operations on the Niagara frontier. Nothing from Fort Erie to Fort Niagara escapes this meter-machine. The Doctor's poetic feet stretch out to miles and leagues, but not a single verse do I find that prompts to quotation; though, I am free to confess, I have not read them all, and much doubt if any one save the infatuated author, and perhaps his proof-reader, ever did read the whole of "The Fredoniad."

No sooner was the frontier at peace, and the pathways of travel multiplied and smoothed, than there set in the first great era of tourist travel to Niagara. From 1825, when the opening of the Erie Canal first made the falls easily accessible to the East, the tide of visitors steadily swelled. In that year came one other poetizing pilgrim, from York, now Toronto, who, returning home, published in his own city a duodecimo of forty-six pages, entitled "Wonders of the West, or a Day at the Falls of Niagara in 1825. A Poem. By a Canadian." The author was J. S. Alexander, said to have been a Toronto school-teacher. It is a great curio, though of not the least value as poetry; in fact, as verse it is ridiculously bad. The author does not narrate his own adventures at Niagara, but makes his descriptive and historical passages incidental to the story of a hero namedSt. Julian. Never was the name of this beloved patron saint of travelers more unhappily bestowed, for thisSt. Julianis a lugubrious, crack-brained individual who mourns the supposed death of a lady-love,Eleanor St. Fleur. Other characters are introduced; all French except a remarkable driver namedWogee, who tells legends and historic incidents in as good verse, apparently, as the author was able to produce.St. Julianis twice on the point of committing suicide; once on Queenston Heights, and again at the falls. Just as he is about to throw himself into the river he hears hisEllen'svoice—the lady, it seems, had come from France by a different route—all the mysteries are cleared up, and the reunited lovers and their friends decide to "hasten hence,"

Again to our dear native France,Where we shall talk of all we saw,At thy dread falls, Niagara.[82]

From about this date the personal adventures of individuals bound for Niagara cease to be told in verse, and if they were they would cease to be of much historic interest. The relation of the poets to Niagara no longer concerns us because of its historic aspect.

There remains, however, an even more important division of the subject. The review must be less narrative than critical, to satisfy the natural inquiry, What impress upon the poetry of our literature hasthis greatest of cataracts made during the three-quarters of a century that it has been easily accessible to the world? What of the supreme in poetry has been prompted by this mighty example of the supreme in nature? The proposition at once suggests subtleties of analysis which must not be entered upon in this brief survey. The answer to the question is attempted chiefly by the historical method. A few selected examples of the verse which relates to Niagara will, by their very nature, indicate the logical answer to the fundamental inquiry.

There is much significance in the fact, that what has been called the best poem on Niagara was written by one who never saw the falls. Chronologically, so far as I have ascertained, it is the work which should next be considered, for it appeared in the columns of a New-England newspaper, about the time when the newly-opened highway to the West robbed Niagara forever of her majestic solitude, and filled the world with her praise. They may have been travelers' tales that prompted, but it was the spiritual vision of the true poet that inspired the lines printed in theConnecticut Mirrorat Hartford, about 1825, by the delicate, gentle youth, John G. C. Brainard. It is a poem much quoted, of a character fairly indicated by these lines:

It would seemAs if God formed thee from his "hollow hand"And hung his bow upon thine awful front;And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to himWho dwelt in Patmos for his Savior's sake,"The sound of many waters"; and badeThy flood to chronicle the ages back,And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks.

Measured by the strength of an Emerson or a Lowell, this is but feeble blank verse, approaching the bombastic; but as compared with what had gone before, and much that was to follow, on the Niagara theme, it is a not unwelcome variation.

The soul's vision, through imagination's magic glass, receives more of Poesy's divine light than is shed upon all the rapt gazers at the veritable cliff and falling flood.

During the formative years of what we now regard as an established literary taste, but which later generations will modify in turn, most American poetry was imitative of English models. Later, as has been shown, there was an assertively patriotic era; and later still, one of great laudation of America's newly-discovered wonders, which in the case of Niagara took the form of apostrophe and devotion. To the patriotic literature of Niagara, besides examples already cited, belongs Joseph Rodman Drake's "Niagara," printed with "The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems" in 1835.[83]It is a poem which would strike the critical ear of today, I think, as artificial; its sentiment, however, is not to be impeached. The poet sings of the love of freedom which distinguishes the Swiss mountaineer; of the sailor's daring and bravery; of the soldier's heroism, even to death. Niagara, like the alp, the sea, and the battle, symbolizes freedom, triumph and glory:

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