The forest at the top of the ravine was a study to me, who had yet seen but little forest. Moss cushioned all the roots of the trees; hibiscus overspread the ground; among the pine stems there was a tangle of unknown shrubs; and a brilliant bird, scarlet except its black wings, hovered about as if it had no fear of us. I could learn nothing more about it than that the people call it the red robin. Before we returned the moon hung like a gem over the darkness of the ravine. I spent another happy day among these falls some months after, and was yet more impressed with their singularity and beauty.
When we had exchanged our wet clothes, an excellent dinner was served, and our host himself waited upon us, sitting down by the window when nothing was wanted. In the course of dinner Mr. H. related to me some particulars of the slave insurrection at Charleston a few years before, when upward of thirty slaves were hanged at once. Some circumstance which he told led me to observe that I should have done as the thirty did in their place. "Oh," said he, "so should I." I thanked him for his response, saying that no defence he could now make of slavery would stand against such an admission. He did not retract, but a long argument ensued, in which our host became deeply interested. He moved his chair forwarder and forwarder, till I saw him leaning over the table between two of the gentlemen to listen. Everybody had long done eating, and every dish on the table was quite cold, and the debate concluded, before our host remembered that we had not had our pudding, and started up to serve us.
We soon retired to our rooms, being in need of rest after the discomforts of the canalboat and the fatigues of the day; but it was not too late for the neighbours to offer their hospitable welcomes. Just after I was undressed, the cards of visiters were brought me, with a friendly message; but it was too late to do more than send a message in return.
We left the place at a little after five in the morning, in a dismal rain. While breakfasting at Utica, we engaged an "exclusive extra" to carry us to Buffalo for eighty dollars, the precise route being agreed upon, and the choice of times and seasons to remain with us. On going out to our carriage we found the steps of the hotel occupied by a number of persons, some from Boston, who offered me welcome to the country, and any information or assistance I might need.One gentleman put into my hand a letter of introduction to an influential friend of his at Cincinnati, as it was understood that I was going there. So from this strange place, where I had not spent above two hours, we drove off amid a variety of friendly greetings.
This day I first saw a loghouse, and first felt myself admitted into the sanctuary of the forest. These things made the day full of interest to me, though the rain scarcely ceased from morning till night. Well-settled farms were numerous along the road, but in the intervals were miles of forests; dark thronging trees with their soft gay summits. Till now the autumn woods had appeared at a distance too red and rusty; these, when looked into, were the melting of all harmonious colours. As for the forms, some were drooping, some towering, their tall bare stems wreathed with crimson creepers. The cleared hollows and slopes, with the forest ever advancing or receding, are as fine to the imagination as any natural language can be. I looked for an Indian or two standing on the forest verge, within a shade as dusky as himself; but for this I had to wait another day.
Just after dark we arrived at Syracuse, in time for the common supper. I was surprised at the size and style of the hotel. Land and building material being cheap, and there being no window-tax, there is little inducement to economize space in the American houses, and the new hotels have the ambitious air which is given by spaciousness. The deficiency lies in furniture, and yet more in attendance; but I really think, that if travellers will trouble themselves to learn a little of the ways of the house, so as not to run into opposition to other people's convenience, much more comfort may be enjoyed in these places than unaccommodating tourists will believe. Our chambers were quite sufficiently furnished here; and I never in any place found difficulty in obtaining as large a supply of water as I wished by simply asking for it in good time. I observed that the hotel parlours in various parts of the country were papered with the old-fashioned papers, I believe French, which represent a sort of panorama of a hunting-party, a fleet, or some such diversified scene. I saw many such a hunting-party, the ladies in scarlet riding-habits, as I remember the landlord of the inn at Bray, near Dublin, to have been proud of in his best parlour. At Schenectady, the bay of Naples, with its fishing-boats on the water and groups of lazzaroni on the shore,adorned our parlour walls. It seems to be an irresistible temptation to idle visiters, English, Irish, and American, to put speeches into the mouths of the painted personages; and such hangings are usually seen deformed with scribblings. The effect is odd, in wild places, of seeing American witticisms put into the mouths of Neapolitan fishermen, ancient English ladies of quality, or of tritons and dryads.
There is taste quite as bad as this in a matter of far more importance, the naming of places. Syracuse in the State of New-York! I often wonder whether it is yet too late to revert to the Indian names, to undo the mischief which has been done by boys fresh from their smattering of the classics, who have gone into the forest to hew out towns and villages. I heard many Americans say that the State of New-York ought to be called Ontario, and the city Manhattan. But, so far from bringing back the nomenclature to a better state, we not only find Utica, Syracuse, Manlius, and Camillus, and the village of Geneva on Seneca Lake, with Ithaca at its other extremity, but the village of Chittenango actually baptized into Sullivan; and all this in the neighbourhood of the lakes Onondago, Cayuga, and Owasco. It is as bad as the English in Van Diemen's Land, who, if I remember rightly, have got Palmyra, Richmond, and Jericho all in a line.
Some curious associations arise from a new nation using the language of the old. While speculating sometimes on what the classical conceptions can be in the minds of youths who hear every day, in the most sordid connexion, of Rome, Utica, Carthage, Athens, Palmyra, and Troy, it occurred to me that some of our commonest English writing must bear a different meaning to the Americans and to us. All that is written about cornfields, for instance, must call up pictures in their minds quite unlike any that the poets intended to create. "Waving corn" is not the true description to them; and one can scarcely bring one's tongue to explain that it means "small grain." Their poetical attachments are naturally and reasonably to their Indian corn, which is a beautiful plant, worthy of all love and celebration. But the consequence is, that we have not their sympathy about our sheaves, our harvest wain, our gleaners; for though they have wheat, their harvest,par excellence, is of corncobs, and their "small grain" bears about the same relation to poetry with them as turnips with us. Then, again, thereis the month of May, about which we lose their sympathy. Over a great proportion of the country May is one of their worst months, damp, drizzly, with intervals of biting winds, as little fit for the climate of a poem as our windy and dusty March. Many other such particulars might be mentioned, which it would be a new employment to trace out.
When I traversed New-York State at a subsequent period with another party of friends, we saw many Indians before reaching Syracuse. It was at Oneida Castle, a village on the borders of the Oneida territory, which was once fortified after the Indian fashion, whence its formidable name. We saw in such close neighbourhood as to cause many strange reflections, the Episcopalian church built for the Indians of the vicinity, who are declared to be reclaimed from idolatry and their ancient Council Grove, where they met to think their own thoughts and say their own sayings. This grove is a fine clump of twenty-seven butternut-trees. We passed through the village on the day when the Indians had all come in to receive their annual government allowance of seven dollars a head. Two men were drunk; the rest looked sober enough. The squaws were neatly dressed in blue pantaloons edged with white, and had clean blankets over their shoulders. The babies looked fat and lively. One squaw had her infant lashed to a board at her back. When we stopped to water the horses we saw several boys with bows and arrows, and Dr. F. made them understand by signs that any one who could strike a quarter dollar which he would fix on a post should have it. He made a notch in the post of a shed, and placed his coin, and forthwith the arrows flew like hail. One struck deep into a post, and we saw how easily fatal this weapon might be. An old Indian or two watched the sport, and assumed the superintendence. The coin fell, and Dr. F. was going to deliver it to the claimant, when an old Indian came forward with "No, no." He showed by signs that the coin had fallen, not from its being struck, but from the post having been shaken. The quarter dollar was put up again, and soon after struck and bent in the middle by the arrow of a youth, who looked as happy with his prize as if he had regained a tract of his native wood. The party gave us some very bright looks as we drove away.
In a hotel on this road I found a Sabbath-school history of Lady Jane Grey, compiled obviously for the purpose ofprejudicing the reader's mind against the Catholics. Among other wise things in it there was an explanation that the heroine was called "Lady" because she was related to the king; and people are sometimes called so in England. A clear idea to give the American youth of our English peerage!
We left Syracuse at dawn; and this was the morning when, finding ourselves too hungry to proceed to Skaneatles without food, we were treated to that abundant breakfast, so characteristically served, which I have described in my other book.[4]No one likes to breakfast twice over in description any more than in reality; and I therefore say nothing about Elbridge here. The greater part of this day, and some of the next, was spent at Auburn in viewing the prison, walking about the town, and driving down the shores of the pretty Owasco Lake.
The cultivation of the country now began to show the improvement which increases all the way to Buffalo. At the head of Cayuga Lake we travelled over the longest bridge I ever saw, even a mile and eight rods long. It is wooden, of course, laid upon piles, and more conspicuous for usefulness than beauty. The great ornament of this route is the village of Geneva, reared on a terrace which overhangs Seneca Lake. The Northern States abound in beautiful villages; but I know none more captivating than this. A long row of handsome white and red houses, each with its sloping garden, fronts the lake; and behind the dwellings the road is bordered with locust-trees, which seem to imbower the place. The gardens are more carefully cultivated than is at all common in America, and they well repay the trouble bestowed on them. There is a college standing on high ground above the lake, to which a natural lawn steeply descends from the open space in front of the building. Holstein, aiddecamp to Bolivar, was professor of modern languages in this college when I was first at Geneva. Before my second visit he had removed to Albany. To crown the temptations of Geneva as a place of residence, it has rather a choice society. It has been charged with not being healthy, but I believe this is not true. It seems to be well and speedily supplied with literature. I saw a placard outside a bookseller's store, "Two Old Men's Tales,price 80 cents," that is, four shillings. One of my last interests, before I left England, had been watching over the publication of this work; and now here it was selling at four shillings, in the back of the State of New-York! I remarked two things more about this village; that all the women I saw were pretty, and that a profusion of azalea grew wild in the neighbourhood.
The road to Canandaigua ascends for a considerable distance after leaving Geneva, and the last view of the place from above was exquisite, imbosomed as it lay in the autumn woods, and with its blue lake stretched behind it in the sunny atmosphere. One element in the exhilaration of such scenes in America is the universal presence of competence. The boys who gather about the stage do not come to beg, or even to sell, but to amuse themselves while eating their bread and meat, or on their way to the field. The young women all well dressed, the men all at work or amusement, the farms all held in fee-simple, the stores all inadequate to their custom; these things are indescribably cheering to behold, and a never-failing source of pleasure to the traveller from Europe. It may be a questionable comfort, but it is a comfort to think, "if these people are not happy, it is their own fault." Whether their minds are as easy as their fortunes, it may not be safe to affirm; but at least the sin and sorrow of social injustice in regard to the first necessities of life are absent.
The moon was gleaming over Canandaigua Lake when we came in sight of it, and a golden planet dropped beneath the horizon when we took the turn towards the village. We found that Blossom's hotel did not answer to the favourable description which had been given us of it. This had been a training day, and the house was so noisy with drunken soldiers, that, when we had attained the drawing-room, we locked ourselves in till the house should be cleared, which happened as early as nine o'clock; but we still found the inn less comfortable than most upon the road.
The pretty village of Canandaigua is noted for its good society. It would have given me pleasure to have been able to accept the kind invitation of some of its inhabitants to prolong my stay now, or to revisit it the next year; but we had promised Mr. O. to cause no delay in getting to Niagara; and we engaged, in return for his agreeing to stopthis day, to travel all night; and I never was able to allot any future time to this place. We saw as much of it, however, as we could in one day.
There are many families of Scotch extraction at Canandaigua, and to this the village owes its superiority in gardens to almost any place in the country. We spent the greater part of the day with a gentleman who was born in Scotland, but had settled at Canandaigua thirty-four years before, when the place was almost a desert. He now sees himself surrounded by handsome dwellings, trim gardens, and a highly-cultivated society, able to command resources of books and other intellectual luxuries to almost any extent, from the directness and ease of communication with New-York. He had just taken possession of a splendid new dwelling, and had presented his old one to the Episcopalian church for a parsonage. He showed me from the top of the house, where his dwelling had stood, where it stood now, and how it had been moved entire in a day and a half. I think the distance could not have been much under a mile.
After our early breakfast we were engaged till church-time in receiving and making calls, as there was no time to be lost. We went to the Episcopalian church with our friends, and heard a sermon which could not please us, it was so full of dogmatism and bitterness. Our friends insisted on entertaining the whole of our large party, and invited some agreeable guests in addition, so that we spent a very profitable as well as pleasant afternoon. We walked over the grounds, enjoyed the view of the lake from the housetop, and picked up a good deal of information about the place and neighbourhood, which might seem to the inhabitants scarcely worthy of the name of knowledge, but which is inestimable to the stranger as opening new departments of inquiry, and explaining much which he did not understand before.
The stage was ordered for nine, and we returned to Blossom's for an hour's rest before setting out on our rough night's journey.
We reached Batavia to breakfast, and soon after found ourselves on the first piece of corduroy road we had encountered in the country. I mention this because corduroy roads appear to have made a deep impression on the imaginations of the English, who seem to suppose that American roads are all corduroy. I can assure them that there is alarge variety in American roads. There are the excellent limestone roads which stretch out in three directions from Nashville, Tennessee, and some like them in Kentucky, on which the tourist might sketch almost without difficulty while travelling at a rapid rate. There is quite another sort of limestone road in Virginia, in traversing which the stage is dragged up from shelf to shelf, some of the shelves sloping so as to throw the passengers on one another, on either side alternately. Then there are the rich mud roads of Ohio, through whose deep red sloughs the stage goes slowly sousing after rain, and gently upsetting when the rut on the one or the other side proves to be of a greater depth than was anticipated. Then there are the sandy roads of the pine-barrens, of an agreeable consistency after rain, but very heavy in dry weather. Then there is the ridge road, running parallel with a part of Lake Ontario, and supposed to be the edge of what was once its basin. The level terrace thus provided by Nature offered the foundation of an admirable road, one of the best in the states. Lastly, there is the corduroy road, happily of rare occurrence, where, if the driver is merciful to his passengers, he drives them so as to give them the association of being on the way to a funeral, their involuntary sobs on each jolt helping the resemblance; or, if he be in a hurry, he shakes them like pills in a pillbox. But the American drivers are a class of men marked by that merciful temper which naturally accompanies genius. They are men who command admiration equally by their perfection in their art, their fertility of resource, and their patience with their passengers. I was never upset in a stage but once during all my travels; and the worse the roads were, the more I was amused at the variety of devices by which we got on, through difficulties which appeared insurmountable, and the more I was edified at the gentleness with which our drivers treated female fears and fretfulness.
By this time a solitary Indian might be frequently seen standing on a heap of stones by the roadside, or sleeping under a fence. There is something which rivets the eye of the stranger in the grave gaze, the lank hair, the blanket-wrapped form of the savage, as he stands motionless. We were generally to be seen leaning out of every opening in the stage as long as the figure remained in sight.
We issued from the corduroy road upon one on which we could easily have performed twelve miles an hour.Houses with porches of Ionic pillars began to be scattered by the roadside. We were obviously approaching Buffalo. Soon the lake was visible, and then we entered the long main street, and stopped at the entrance of the Eagle hotel.
"That night a child might understandThe de'il had business on his hand."
Burns.
On consulting a good map, a little promontory may be seen jutting out into Lake Erie on the Canada shore, nearly opposite to Black Rock. Perhaps it may be marked Fort Erie, for there Fort Erie stood.
A lady of Buffalo, who happens to be a good walker, proposed that she and I should indulge in a ramble to Fort Erie one fine day towards the end of October. She showed me that she was provided with stout boots, in case of our having to cross swampy ground; and she said she believed we might trust to getting some sort of a dinner on the Canada side, and might therefore go unencumbered with provisions.
We set out from Buffalo soon after breakfast, and made our way over a waste, through brush, over fences, along a natural terrace once planted with guns, down to the ferry at Black Rock. On the way I saw one of the less prepossessing abodes of settlers so frequently described; its desolate appearance on the verge of the wood; its untidy garden, and the cool, uncomfortable manners, and the lank hair, and pale, dingy countenance of its mistress. I also heard, during our walk, some things which make me think that Buffalo is as undesirable a place of residence as any in the free States. It is the rendezvous of all manner of persons; the passage through which fugitives pass from the States to Canada, from Canada to the States, and from Europe and the Eastern States into the wild West. Runaway slaves come here, and their owners follow in hopes of recapturing them. Indian traders, land speculators, and poor emigrants come here, and the most debased Indians,the half-civilized, hang about the outskirts. No influence that the mass of respectable inhabitants can exert can neutralize the bad effects of a floating population like this; and the place is unavoidably a very vicious one. A sufficient proof of this is, that ladies cannot walk beyond the streets without the protection of a gentleman. Some excellent English ladies opened a school in Buffalo, and, not being aware of the peculiarities of the place, followed, with their pupils, the English practice of taking country walks. They persevered for some time, hoping to obtain countenance for the wholesome practice; but were compelled, after a time, not only to give up walking, but to leave the place. It will be understood that I do not give this as any specimen of American towns. The corruption of Buffalo is owing chiefly to its frontier position, and consequent liability to a vicious, transient population.
After crossing the ferry at Black Rock we pursued our walk in a southwest direction, sometimes treading a firm sand and sometimes a greensward washed by the fresh waters of the lake. Though we were on British ground, we were entertained by an American woman who lived on the lake shore close by the fort. She treated us with negus and cake while preparing to get a dinner for us, and amused us with accounts of how butter and eggs are smuggled into Buffalo from her neighbourhood, these articles not being allowed to pass the custom-house. My eyes never rested on the Canada shore without my feeling how absurd it was that that poor country should belong to us, its poverty and hopeless inactivity contrasting, so much to our disgrace, with the prosperous activity of the opposite shore; but here was the climax of absurdity, the prohibition of a free traffic in butter and eggs! What a worthy subject of contention between two great nations, the one breaking the laws to provide Buffalo with butter and eggs, and the preventive force of the other exercised in opposition!
Our hostess was sewing when we went in, amusing herself meanwhile with snatches of reading from "Peter Parley," which lay open before her. She put away her work to cook for us, conversing all the while, and by no means sorry, I fancy, to have the amusement of a little company. She gave us tea, beefsteak, hot rolls and butter, honeycomb, and preserved plums and crab-apples. Immediately after dinner I went out to the fort, my friend promising to follow.
The thickness of the remaining fragments of the walls shows the fort to have been substantially built. It was held by the Americans to the last extremity in the war of 1814, and then blown up by a brave man to prevent its falling into the hands of the British. He remained alone in the fort to do the deed; and as I now beheld the desolation of the solitude in which it stands, I felt as if I could enter into what his feelings must have been on the last day of his life. At one moment all had been dead silence; at the next the windows in Buffalo were blown out by the explosion.
I sat alone beside a pool in the middle of the fort. Fragments of the building lay tumbled around, overgrown with tall grass, and bristling with shrubbery. Behind me was the grim forest, with the ruins of a single deserted house standing within its shadow. Before me lay the waste of waters, with gulls dipping and sailing. A single birch overhung the pool beside me, and a solitary snipe, which seemed to have no fear of me, vibrated on the top of a bulrush. I do not know that I was ever so oppressed with a sense of solitude; and I was really glad soon to see my friend standing on a pinnacle of the ruined wall, and beckoning me to come up.
This afternoon she told me her wonderful story; a part of which, that part in which the public may be said to have an interest, I am going to relate.
At the time of the war of 1812 Mrs. W. lived in Buffalo with her father, mother, brothers, and sisters. In 1814, just when the war was becoming terrific on the frontier, her father and eldest brother were drowned in crossing the neighbouring ferry. Six months after this accident the danger of Buffalo was so great that the younger children of the family were sent away into the country with their married sister, under the charge of their brother-in-law, who was to return with his wagon for the mother and two daughters who were left behind, and for the clothes of the family. For three weeks there had been so strong an apprehension of a descent of the Indians, the barbarous allies of the British, that the ladies had snatched sleep with their clothes on, one watching while the others lay down. It was with some difficulty, and after many delays, that the wagon party got away, and there were still doubts whether it was the safer course to go or stay. Nothing was heard of them before night, however, and it was hoped that they were safe, and that the wagon would come for the remaining three the next morning.
The ladies put out their lights early, as they were desired; and at eight two of the three lay down to sleep, Mrs. W., then a girl of sixteen, being one. At nine she was called up by the beating of a drum, the signal that the Indians were at hand. No description can give an idea of the loathing with which these savages were then regarded; the mingled horror, disgust, dread, and hatred. The Indians were insidious, dangerous, and cruel beyond example, even in the history of savage warfare. These poor ladies had been brought up to hate them with a deadly hatred; they were surrounded with persons burning with the injuries inflicted by Indian revenge and barbarity; for weeks they had lived in hourly dread of death by their hands; their strength was worn, and their nerves shaken by the long suspense; and now the hoarse drum woke them up with news that the hour was come. A deadly sickness overspread their hearts as they started from their beds. They looked from their windows, but could see nothing through the blank darkness. They listened, but they knew that if the streets had been quiet as death, the stealthy tread of the savages would have been inaudible. There was a bustle in the town. Was the fight beginning? No. It was an express sent by the scouts to say that it was a false alarm. The wornout ladies composed their spirits, and sank to sleep again. At four they were once more awakened by the horrid drum, and now there was a mustering in the streets which looked as if this were no false alarm. In the same moment the sister who was watching what passed in the street saw by torchlight the militia part asunder and fly; and Mrs. W., who was looking through the back window, perceived in the uncertain glimmer that a host of savages was leaping the garden fence; leaping along the walks to the house like so many kangaroos, but painted, and flourishing their tomahawks. She cried out to her mother and sister, and they attempted to fly; but there was no time. Before they could open the front door the back windows came crashing in, and the house was crowded with yelling savages. With their tomahawks they destroyed everything but the ladies, who put on the most submissive air possible. The trunks containing the clothing of the whole family stood in the hall, ready to be carried away when the wagon should arrive. These were split to fragments by the tomahawk. These wretches had actually met the wagon with the rest of thefamily, and turned it back; but the brother-in-law, watching his opportunity, wheeled off from the road when his savage guards were somehow engaged, and escaped.
The ladies were seized, and, as Mrs. W. claimed protection, they were delivered into the charge of some squaws to be driven to the British camp. It was unpleasant enough the being goaded on through such a scene by savage women, as insolent as the men were cruel; but the ladies soon saw that this was the best thing that could have happened to them; for the town was burning in various directions, and soon no alternative would be left between being in the British camp and in the thick of the slaughter in the burning streets. The British officer did not wish to have his hands full of helpless female prisoners. He sent them home again with a guard of an ensign and a private, who had orders to prevent their house being burned. The ensign had much to do to fulfil his orders. He stood in the doorway, commanding, persuading, struggling, threatening; but he saved the house, which was, in two days, almost the only one left standing. The whole town was a mass of smoking ruins, in many places slaked with blood. Opposite the door lay the body of a woman who, in her despair, had drunk spirits, and then defied the savages. They tomahawked her in sight of the neighbours, and before her own door, and her body lay where it had fallen, for there were none to bury the dead. Some of the inhabitants had barricaded themselves in the jail, which proved, it was said, too damp to burn; the rest who survived were dispersed in the woods.
Before the fire was quite burned out the Indians were gone, and the inhabitants began to creep back into the town, cold and half dead with hunger. The ladies kept up a large fire (carefully darkening the windows), and cooked for the settlers till they were too weary to stand, and one at a time lay down to sleep before the fire. Mrs. W. often, during those dreary days, used to fasten a blanket, Indian fashion, about her shoulders, and go out into the wintry night to forage for food; a strange employment for a young girl in the neighbourhood of a savage foe. She traced the hogs in the snow, and caught many fowls in the dark. On the third day, very early in the morning, six Buffalo men were enjoying a breakfast of her cooking, when the windows were again broken in, and the house once more full of savages.They had come back to burn and pillage all that was left. The six men fled, and, by a natural impulse, the girl with them. At some distance from the house she looked behind her, and saw a savage leaping towards her with his tomahawk already raised. She saw that the next instant it would be buried in her scull. She faced about, burst out a laughing, and held out both her hands to the savage. His countenance changed, first to perplexity; but he swerved his weapon aside, laughed, and shook hands, but motioned her homeward. She was full of remorse for having left her mother and sister. When she reached her door the house was so crowded that she could neither make her way in nor learn anything of their fate. Under the persuasion that they lay murdered within, she flew to some British dragoons who were sitting on the ground at a considerable distance, watching the burning of the remainder of the town. They expressed their amazement that she should have made her way through the savages, and guarded her home, where they procured an entrance for her, so that she reached the arms of her patient and suffering mother and sister. That house was, at length, the only one left standing; and when we returned Mrs. W. pointed it out to me.
The settlers remained for some time in the woods, stealing into a midnight warming and supper at the lone abode of the widow and her daughters. The ladies had nothing left but this dwelling. Their property had been in houses which were burned, and their very clothes were gone. The settlers had, however, carried off their money with them safely into the woods. They paid the ladies for their hospitality, and afterward for as much needlework as they could do; for every one was in want of clothes. By their industry these women raised themselves to independence, which the widow lived some tranquil years to enjoy. The daughter who told me the story is now the lady of a judge. She never boasts of her bravery, and rarely refers to her adventures in the war; but preserves all her readiness and strength of mind, and in the silence of her own heart, or in the ear of a sympathizing friend, gratefully contrasts the perils of her youth with the milder discipline of her riper age.
"Look back!Lo! where it comes like an eternity,As if to sweep down all things in its track,Charming the eye with dread!"
Byron.
It is not my intention to describe what we saw at Niagara so much as to relate what we did. To offer an idea of Niagara by writing of hues and dimensions is much like representing the kingdom of Heaven by images of jasper and topazes.
I visited the falls twice: first in October, 1834, in company with the party with whom we traversed the state of New-York, when we stayed nearly a week; and again with Dr. and Mrs. F., and other friends, in June, 1836, when we remained between two and three days. The first time we approached the falls from Buffalo, the next from Lewistown and Queenstown.
I expected to be disappointed in the first sight of the falls, and did not relish the idea of being questioned on the first day as to my "impressions." I therefore made a law, with the hearty agreement of the rest of the party, that no one should ask an opinion of the spectacle for twenty-four hours. We stepped into the stage at Buffalo at half past eight in the morning on the 14th of October. At Black Rock we got out to cross the ferry. We looked at the green rushing waters we were crossing, and wondered whether they or we should be at the falls first. We had to wait some minutes for the stage on the Canada side, and a comely English woman invited us into her kitchen to warm ourselves. She was washing as well as cooking; and such a log was blazing under her boilers as no fireplace in England would hold. It looked like the entire trunk of a pine somewhat shortened. I could not help often wishing that some of the shivering poor of London could have supplies of the fuel which lies rotting in the American woods.
The road is extremely hard all the way from the ferry tothe falls, and the bridges the rudest of the rude. The few farms looked decaying, and ill-clad children offered us autumn fruit for sale. We saw nothing to flatter our national complacency; for truly the contrast with the other side of the river was mournful enough. It was not till we had passed the inn with the sign of the "Chippeway Battle Ground" that we saw the spray from the falls. I believe we might have seen it sooner if we had known where to look. "Is that it?" we all exclaimed. It appeared on the left-hand side, whereas we had been looking to the right; and instead of its being suspended in the air like a white cloud, as we had imagined, it curled vigorously up, like smoke from a cannon or from a replenished fire. The winding of the road presently brought this round to our right hand. It seemed very near; the river, too, was as smooth as oil. The beginning of the Welland canal was next pointed out to me, but it was not a moment to care for canals. Then the little Round Island, covered with wood and surrounded by rapids, lay close at hand, in a recess of the Canada shore. Some of the rapids, of eight or ten feet descent, would be called falls elsewhere. They were glittering and foamy, with spaces of green water between. I caught a glimpse of a section of the cataract, but not any adequate view, before we were driven briskly up to the door of the hotel. We ran quickly from piazza to piazza till we reached the crown of the roof, where there is a space railed in for the advantage of the gazer who desires to reach the highest point. I think the emotion of this moment was never renewed or equalled. The morning had been cloudy, with a very few wandering gleams. It was now a little after noon; the sky was clearing, and at this moment the sun lighted up the Horseshoe Fall. I am not going to describe it. The most striking appearance was the slowness with which the shaded green waters rolled over the brink. This majestic oozing gives a true idea of the volume of the floods, but they no longer look like water.
We wandered through the wood, along Table Rock, and to the ferry. We sat down opposite to the American Falls, finding them the first day or two more level to our comprehension than the Great Horseshoe Cataract; yet throughout, the beauty was far more impressive to me than the grandeur. One's imagination may heap up almost any degree of grandeur; but the subtile colouring of this scene,varying with every breath of wind, refining upon the softness of driven snow, and dimming all the gems of the mine, is wholly inconceivable. The woods on Goat Island were in their gaudiest autumn dress; yet, on looking up to them from the fall, they seemed one dust colour. This will not be believed, but it is true.
The little detached fall on the American side piqued my interest at once. It looks solitary in the midst of the crowd of waters, coming out of its privacy in the wood to take its leap by itself. In the afternoon, as I was standing on Table Rock, a rainbow started out from the precipice a hundred feet below me, and curved upward as if about to alight on my head. Other such apparitions seemed to have a similar understanding with the sun. They went and came, blushed and faded, the floods rolling on, on, till the human heart, overcharged with beauty, could bear no more.
We crossed the ferry in the afternoon. Our boat was tossed like a cork in the writhing waves. We soon found that, though driven hither and thither by the currents, the ferryman always conquers at last, and shoots his boat into the desired creek; but the tossing and whirling amid the driving spray seems a rather dubious affair at first. To be carried down would be no better than to be sucked up the river, as there is a fatal whirlpool below which forbids all navigation as peremptorily as the falls.
I still think the finest single impression of all is half way up the American Fall, seen, not from the staircase, but from the bank on the very verge of the sheet. Here we stood this first evening, and amid the rapids above. In returning, we saw from the river the singular effect of the clouds of spray being in shadow, and the descending floods in light; while the evening star hung over one extremity of the falls, and the moon over the other, and the little perpetual cloud, amber in the last rays from the west, spread its fine drizzle like a silver veil over the scene.
There is nothing like patient waiting in a place like this. The gazer, who sits for hours watching what sun and wind may be pleased to reveal, is sure to be rewarded, somewhat as Newton described himself as being when he set a thought before him, and sat still to see what would come out of it. It is surprising what secrets of the thunder cavern were disclosed to me during a few days of still watching; disclosed by a puff of wind clearing the spray for an instant, or bythe lightest touch of a sunbeam. The sound of the waters is lulling, even on the very brink; but if one wishes for stillness, there is the forest all around, where the eyes may become accustomed to common objects again. It is pleasant, after the high excitement, to stroll in the wild woods, and wonder what this new tree is and what that; and to gossip with the pigs, slim and spruce while fed on forest nuts and roots; and to watch the progress of a loghouse, sitting the while on a stump or leaning over a snake-fence; and then to return, with new wonder, to the ethereal vision.
The first evening the gentlemen were all restless under the prohibition to ask about impressions; every one of them was eager to tell, but too proud to pour out till others did the same. What an outpouring it was when it did happen!
One morning we found an old man, between seventy and eighty years old, gazing from Table Rock. He was an American. Being on a journey, he had walked from Queenstown to see the falls. He quietly observed that he was ashamed to think there had been wars near such a place, and that he hoped the English and Americans were grown wiser now, and would not think of fighting any more. This came in echo of my thought. I had been secretly wishing that all the enemies in the world could be brought together on this rock; they could not but love as brethren.
An English family at the hotel seemed marvellously skilled in putting away all the good influences of the place. The gentleman was so anxious about where he should settle, so incessantly pettish, so resolutely miserable, as to bespeak the compassion of all the guests for the ladies of his family, one of whom told me that she had forgotten all about the falls in her domestic anxieties. As this gentleman found fault with everybody and everything, and ostentatiously proved that nothing could give him any pleasure, it was not surprising that the cataract itself failed to meet his approbation; yet I was not prepared for the question he put to me across the table, in the presence of both Canadians and Americans, whether I did not think the natives made a very silly fuss about the falls, and whether the Falls of the Clyde were not much finer. Such are the persons by whom foreigners suppose themselves made acquainted with the English character. Such is the way in which not a few English study to mortify the inhabitants, and then come home and complain of American conceit. I told thisgentleman that I perceived he was speaking of the rapids, and had not seen the falls.
We wished, while we were in the neighbourhood, to obtain a glimpse of Lake Ontario, as we were not sure of being able to visit Canada at a future time. We took the opportunity of two of our party going northward, to accompany them as far as Queenstown, seven miles off, where we intended to see Brock's monument, satisfy ourselves with the view from the top of it, and walk home through the woods in the afternoon. In the stage were an Irish gentleman and his wife. The lady amused me by the zeal with which she knitted all the way, just as if she were in a dark parlour in the Old Jewry; and the gentleman with some sentiments which were wholly new to me; for instance, he feared that the independence of the Americans made them feel themselves independent of God. This consequence of democratic government had not struck me before, and I never perceived any traces of its existence; but if it should occur, there will probably soon be an epidemic or a bad season to bring them to their senses again.
Before the door of the wretched, foul inn at Queenstown, we sorrowfully shook hands with our Prussian and Dutch companions, hoping to meet them again in the course of our travels; which, indeed, happened more than once. We provided ourselves here with cider, cakes, and sandwiches; i.e., beefsteak laid between thick dry bread. With this provision we ascended the hill to the foot of Brock's monument, and found the portress, an active little Irishwoman, waiting to let us in. She was delighted to meet ladies from the old country, and heartily invited us to spread our dinner in her cottage below. She told us all her affairs, and seemed unwilling to leave us when we told her we meant to stay a long while on the top of the monument, and would not detain her from her washtub, but would come down to her by-and-by. She and her husband have, for showing the monument, sixty dollars a season (that is, while the boats run), and all that they happen to take in the winter. They were soon to have a cottage built for them nearer the monument. When we went down to her cottage she had spread plates, knives, and pickles, and had her head full of questions and communications. She was grateful for a small payment for her trouble, and gave us the impression of herbeing a very amiable, contented person, whom we should like to see again.
Sir Isaac Brock fell at the battle of Queenstown, in October, 1812, near the base of this monument. It is 145 feet high, and, being built on a pretty steep hill, commands a fine view. To the left a prodigious sweep of forest terminates in blue Canadian hills. On the right is the American shore, at this time gaudy with autumn woods. There stands the village of Lewistown, with its winding descent to the ferry. At our feet lay Queenstown, its sordidness being lost in distance, and its long street presenting the appearance of an English village. The green river rushes between its lofty wooded banks, which suddenly widen at Queenstown, causing the waters to spread and relax their speed while making their way, with three or four bends, to the lake. We saw the white church of Niagara rising above the woods some miles off where the junction takes place; and beyond, the vast lake spreads its waters, gray on the horizon. There was life in this magnificent scene. The ferryboat was buffeted by the waves; groups were in waiting on either side the ferry, and teams were in the fields. The Irishwoman was grieved that she had no telescope wherewith to enable us to see what was doing on the lake. She and her husband had provided one for the accommodation of visiters. Some travellers (English) had thrown it down from the top of the monument, and when she asked for payment only bullied her; and her husband had not been able to afford to get another.
After dinner we sat on the top of the precipitous wooded bank of the river, looking down into its green eddies, and watching the family of white birds which hovered far beneath us, but yet high over the stream. Meditating, as we were, that we were now sitting on the spot where the falls were pouring down their flood ages before Babylon was founded or the Greek Mythology had arisen out of the elements of universal conviction, it was not surprising that we had no thoughts to spare for the weather.[5]We did notobserve how the sky had been darkening. Two wagons driven by lads stopped in passing, and their drivers offered us seats to Niagara. We at first declined, being bent upon walking; but feeling heavy drops of rain at the moment, we retracted our refusal, and jumped into one of the vehicles. It was a mere box upon wheels; a barbarous machine, but of great service to us in the ensuing storm. Before we reached our hotel we were thoroughly wet, but had obtained a good deal of information from our driver about the condition of the Canadian settlers in the neighbourhood. He was the son of a Canadian father and Scotch mother, who were doing well in the world, as he said the English settlers do who set the right way to work. The land is not the best near the road; so that what is seen there is no fair specimen of the state of the settlers. The farms hereabout consist of about 100 acres generally, and are all the property of the residents. Labourers live with the farmers, and receive, besides their board and lodging, about 120 dollars a year. A gentleman, a farmer and physician, from some distance, called on me one day when I was out, and left messages for me with one of our party. He said he wished me to see and do justice to Canada. People go, he believes, with wrong expectations, and so are disappointed. He, his wife and daughters, went expecting ease and comfort, and they have found it; but they have not wealth and luxury. He declared that civility and cheerfulness would always command good manners and service. As I had no opportunity of "seeing and doing justice to Canada," I give this gentleman's testimony. It is very agreeable, and I do not doubt its justness.
Another visiter of a very different kind came to our parlour as I was preparing for our departure. I looked up from my packing, and saw an extraordinary apparition in the doorway; a lady bridling, winking, and attitudinizing in a wonderful manner. On my asking her to come in and sit down, she said she was deputed by a gentleman to ask my address, in order to his communicating with me before I should publish my account of the falls. She seemed deeply grieved at finding that I did not contemplate any suchpublication, saying that it would be a serious disappointment to the gentleman, who hoped I might have been of essential service to him—by recommending his hotel! It appeared that a sharp competition was going on about the letting of this hotel, and the gentleman in question was in hopes of getting it. He seemed to have one great qualification, the determination to leave no stone unturned.
The second time I visited Niagara I accomplished the feat of going behind the fall. In October it was too cold; on a sunny 8th of June there was no imprudence in it. When I descended the staircase with Dr. and Mrs. F. after breakfast, we had no such intention; but we were all tempted farther and farther over the rocks, nearer and nearer to the sheet, till the puffing away of the spray gave us glimpses of what was behind, and made us feel that this was the right day and hour. Mrs. F.'s chest was not very strong, and this was no enterprise for a child; so Dr. F. and I were to be the favoured ones. We ascended to the guide's house, and surveyed the extraordinary costume in which we were to make the expedition. Stout socks and shoes (but I would recommend ladies to go shod as usual), thick cotton garments reaching to the feet, green oilskin jackets and hats; in this mountaineer sort of costume is the adventure to be gone through. As the guide's wife was assisting me, she hoped I had enjoyed myself since I was last at the falls.
"Were you aware that I had been here before?"
"Yes, madam, I remember you well."
"Why, how is it possible that you should remember me among the thousands of people who have been here in two seasons? We were not acquainted, were we?"
"No, madam; but one evening you stopped and admired my cow."
"Did not this trumpet help you to remember me?"
"No, madam; I never saw it before."
How many ways there are to people's hearts! I now remembered having remarked to a companion on the beauty and docility of a cow which a woman was milking. The good wife had treasured up my observation as a personal compliment.
Mrs. F. and Charley accompanied us to the edge of the spray, when we sent them back, charging them not to expect us too soon, as we meant to look about us a while.
We had a stout negro for a guide. He took me by thehand, and led me through the spray. I presently found the method of keeping myself at my ease. It was to hold down the brim of my hat, so as to protect my eyes from the dashing water, and to keep my mouth shut. With these precautions I could breathe and see freely in the midst of a tumult which would otherwise be enough to extinguish one's being. A hurricane blows up from the caldron; a deluge drives at you from all parts; and the noise of both wind and waters, reverberated from the cavern, is inconceivable. Our path was sometimes a wet ledge of rock just broad enough to allow one person at a time to creep along; in other places we walked over heaps of fragments both slippery and unstable.[6]If all had been dry and quiet, I might probably have thought this path above the boiling basin dangerous, and have trembled to pass it; but amid the hubbub of gusts and floods, it appeared so firm a footing that I had no fear of slipping into the caldron. From the moment that I perceived that we were actually behind the cataract, and not in a mere cloud of spray, the enjoyment was intense. I not only saw the watery curtain before me like tempest-driven snow, but by momentary glances could see the crystal roof of this most wonderful of Nature's palaces. The precise point where the flood left the rock was marked by a gush of silvery light, which, of course, was brighter where the waters were shooting forward than below where they fell perpendicularly. There was light enough to see one another's features by, and even to give a shadow to the side of the projecting rock which barred our farther progress. When we came within a few paces of this projection, our guide, by a motion of his hand (for speaking was out of the question), forbade my advancing farther. But it was no time and place to be stopped by anything but impossibilities. I saw that though there was no regular path on the other side of the guide, there were two pieces of rock wide enough for my feet, by standing on which I might touch the wall which limited our walk. I made the guide press himself back against the rock, and crossed between him and the caldron, and easily gained my object—laying my hand on Termination Rock. When I returned to my place Dr. F. passed both the guide and myself for the same purpose. In returning my hat blew off, in spite of all my efforts to holdit on. The guide put his upon my head, and that was carried away in like manner. I ought to have been instructed to tie it well on, for mere holding will not do in a hurricane. It is a proof that we were well lighted in our cavern, that we all saw the outline of a hat which was jammed between two stones some way beneath us. The guide made for this, looking just as if he were coolly walking down into destruction; for the volumes of spray curled thickly up, as if eager to swallow him. He grasped the hat, but found it too much beaten to pieces to be of any use.
Mrs. F. says we looked like three gliding ghosts when her anxious eye first caught our forms moving behind the cloud. She was glad enough to see us; for some one passing by had made her expect us at least two minutes before we appeared. Dripping at all points as we were, we scudded under the rocks and up the staircase to our dressing-rooms, after which we wrote our names among those of the adventurers who have performed the same exploit, and received a certificate of our having visited Termination Rock. I was told that a fee and a wetting in the spray may secure such a certificate at any time. Be this as it may, ours were honest.
When we came down in our own likeness, Mrs. F. had found a glorious seat for us on a rock which jutted outward and upward, commanding the entire range of the falls, with every advantage of light, and also of solitude; no inconsiderable gain in a place where tourists may be heard discussing on Table Rock the probability of there being chickens for dinner. I felt some pain in my chest for a few hours, but was not otherwise injured by the expedition. When the other members of our party joined us, they were somewhat surprised to hear what we had done; and one of them followed our example another day.
I look back upon this morning as the very best of the many I spent at the falls. We found several new points of view, and the weather was divine. We clambered down to the water's edge, where men were gathering spars and other "curiosities." We sat long amusing ourselves with watching the vain attempts of the tree-trunks, which had been carried over from above, to get any farther down the river. They were whisked about like twigs in the boiling waters, and sometimes made a vigorous shoot as if to get free of the eddies; but as often as they reached a particular spot they were sure to be turned back, and sucked up thestream to try again. I think they must be doing penance there still, unless, enormous logs as they are, they have been dashed to pieces. When the sun became too hot to be borne below, we came up to the foot of the staircase and sat in the shade, drinking from the drip the soft shower which could not make itself heard amid the solemn roar of the floods. Here Charley stood, placing spouts of reed which might convey water from the drip wherewith to wash his spars. Not a word of wonder had we from him. He gloried in the scene, and feared nothing, climbing, with the help of his father's strong hand, wherever it was practicable to set his little foot; but there was no wonder. The age of wonder has not arrived to children, savages, and other ignorant persons. They know too little of purposes, means, and obstructions to be aware of what either divine or human achievement is. A child believes you if you promise to take him into the moon; and a savage supposes that you eclipse the sun by firing a musket. An ignorant person annoys Mr. Babbage, after much praise of his machine, by asking to know one thing more: "If you put a question in wrong, will the answer come out right?" Charley would hardly have asked this question, child as he was; but he did not share our wonder at the cataract. He enjoyed the climbing, and the rainbows, and the emerald pillars based on clouds, which was the form the floods bore this sultry noon; but he went on washing his spars as tranquilly as if he had been beside our favourite brook in the wood at Stockbridge. His pity was stirred up this morning, however, with a story of a bird which I saw perish. It had got bewildered in the circuit of the Horseshoe Fall. I saw it driving and fluttering about for a minute or two in the spray, when it flew directly into the sheet, and was swallowed up.
The next day was devoted to Goat Island. Dr. F., who learned English to the last degree of perfection in little more than two years, happened to say one day that there was one English word whose exact meaning he did not understand,dawdle. We promised to afford him an exemplification of it this day. There was also a joke against me. I was now a practised traveller; and having found how the pleasures of travelling are economized by business-like habits of arrangement, I was the prompter of our somewhat inexperienced party about ordering dinner, packing at convenient times, and so contriving as to have our thoughtsat perfect liberty for pleasure while we were out of doors, instead of having to run or send to our lodgings about business which might have been settled while we were there. They asked me whether I could spend a whole day without thinking of time, meals, or the fitness of things in any way. No one was better pleased with such liberty than I; so we left behind us even our watches. It appears, however, that somebody must have carried money, for food was brought to us, and, doubtless, honestly paid for.
At some unknown hour of a bright morning, therefore, we set forth from our hotel, and in due time reached the ferry. The entire party paid sufficient attention to business to sit properly in the boat, which is no place for freak and frolic while bobbing about among the eddies. Wedawdledlong about the American Fall. I had never before been fully aware of its power over the senses. To-day I saw a lady who was sitting on the bank—as safe a seat as an armchair by the fireside—convulsively turn away from the scene and clasp the ground. Yet the water flows so tranquilly that I should not be afraid to stand in the flood near the bank where it takes the leap. I tried the force of the water there, and found it very moderate. After completing the ascent, Mrs. F. and I were standing looking at the rapids, when a letter was handed to me. Somebody had actually been mundane enough to remember the postoffice, and to go to it! I was glad it was not I. Further sins against the spirit of the day were presently committed. Of course, I cannot say what time it was, but, by the heat, probably about the middle of the day, when the ladies were sitting on the stem of a tree, in a tiny island amid the roaring rapids—an interesting love-story being their topic—and the gentlemen were seen approaching with bread, biscuits, cheese, ale, and lemonade. They had not even forgotten glasses. We ate our dinner on a bench under the trees, all except Charley, who niched himself in an ash which parted from the root into many stems. The boy looked like a beautiful fairy, and, for his own part, declared that this was far better than dining in any house.
We dawdled hours away in Goat Island; now lying on the grassy bank with our feet almost into the rapids; now fanning ourselves in the translucent green shades of the wood, among rabbits and goats, and then gathering new wild-flowers from the multitude which blossomed under our feet, the roar of the falls solemnizing all. The timid onessat in the alcove erected above the Horseshoe Fall, while the rest went down to the Terrapin Bridge and Tower. The tower, forty feet high, is built on rocks in the midst of the rapids, and its summit affords an absolutely complete view of the scene. The bridge is built on logs which extend from rock to rock in the rapids to the edge of the precipice, the flood gushing beneath in a dizzying whirl. At my first visit this bridge had been complete, and, to all appearance, secure. I had stood on its extreme point, which projected over the precipice. There I hung suspended above the fall, standing in the air on the extremity of a beam, and without any suspicion that I was not perfectly safe. It was there that I learned some of the secrets of the cataract. I saw there what can be seen nowhere else, the emerald columns broken and forced up, and falling again in gushes of diamonds, which again were melted into wreaths of dazzling snow. It was now too late to see this any more. The bridge had broken down some way from the end; the handrail was gone; and the brink of the precipice was no longer accessible. We got to the tower, however, and farther; and Charley and his father stepped down from the bridge among the rocks, and stood amid the water very near the brink of the great fall! Their position was shown to be perfectly safe by the verdure of these rocks. Slight shrubs, rooted in their crevices, were full of leaf. Their smallest twigs were tossed in the never-dying breeze without being snapped. Yet we were glad when our friends were safe on the bridge again.
We descended the Biddle staircase—the spiral staircase fixed against the perpendicular rock in Goat Island—and pursued a narrow path from its foot back to the fall, where we found a glacier! An enormous pile of snow and ice lay against the rock, so solid, under this intense June sun, that Charley climbed to the top of it. Here every successive pulse of the cataract was like a cannon shot a few yards off, so that there was no standing it long; there was much yet to do; and the party probably observed, though no one chose to mention it, that the sun was going down. We crossed the detached American Fall by its rustic bridge, and hunted it back to its retreat in the wood. Our faces were now turned homeward; but we lingered long in the shades, and afterward at Bath Island, where some one observed that it would be dusk before we could reach the ferry,and that the walk home on the Canada side was not of a kind to be prosecuted in the dark. The sun disappeared before we reached the ferry-house, and the panorama from the river was seen in the magnitude and majesty of twilight. In the dark woods on the Canada side we made ourselves visible to each other by catching fireflies and sticking them in our bonnets. They sat very still among our bows of riband, and really served our purpose very well.
Bad news awaited us at home; news of Mr. Van Buren's casting vote in favour of the third reading of the Gag Bill, and of a fresh breaking out of the dreadful Creek war in Georgia; but now that that atrocious bill has long been thrown out, and the Creek war ended (though with grievous suffering and humiliation to the poor Creeks), this day of delicious dawdling (a word which Dr. F. by this time completely understood) stands out bright enough to be worthy of the scene and of our human life.