This result of the elections, which the crown officials ascribed to a talent for mischief in the popular leaders, naturally flowed from the exhibition of arbitrary power. The introduction of the troops was a suicidal measure to the Loyalists, and in urging their continuance in the Province the crown officials had been carrying an exhaustive burden; while, even in every failure to effect their removal, the Whigs had won a fresh moral victory. There was, in consequence, a more perfect union of the people than ever. The members returned to the General Court constituted a line representation of the character, ability, and patriotism of the Province; many of the names were then obscure which subsequent large service to country was to make famous as the names of heroes and sages; and such a body of men was now to act on the question of a removal of the troops.
It would be travelling a beaten path to relate the proceedings of this session of the General Court; and only a glance will be necessary to show its connection with the issue that had so long stirred the public mind. Immediately on taking the oath of office, at nine o'clock, the House, through a committee, presented an elaborate and strong protest to the Governor against the presence of the troops. They averred that they meant to be loyal; that no law, however grievous, had in the execution of it been opposed in the Province; but, they said, as they came as of right to their old Parliament-House, to exercise, as of right, perfect freedom of debate, they found a standing army in their metropolis, and a military guard with cannon pointed at their very doors; and, in the strong way of the old Commonwealth men, they protested against this presence as "a breach of privilege, and inconsistent with that dignity and freedom with which they had a right to deliberate, consult, and determine." The Governor's laconic reply was,--"I have no authority over His Majesty's ships in this port or his troops within this town; nor can I give any orders for their removal." The House, resolving that they proceeded to take part in the elections of the day from necessity and to conform the Charter, chose their Clerk, Speaker, and twenty-eight Councillors.
The Governor at ten o'clock received at the Province House a brilliant array of officials, when an elegant collation was served; at twelve, escorted by Captain Paddock's company, he repaired to the Council-Chamber, whence, after approving the choice of Speaker, the whole Government went in procession to the Old Brick Meeting-House, where the election sermon was preached; then succeeded an elegant dinner at Faneuil Hall, which was attended by the field-officers of the four regiments, and the official dignitaries, including Commodore Hood and General Mackay, which, as to the Governor, closed the proceedings of the day.
The House in its choice of Councillors elected several decided Loyalists, though it did not reelect four of this party who were of that body the last year, namely, Messrs. Flucker, Ropes, Paine, and Worthington. The Governor refused his consent to eleven on the list. On the next day he thus wrote of these events:--
FRANCIS BERNARD TO JOHN POWNALL."Boston, June 1,1769."Dear Sir,--There being a snow ready to sail for Glasgow, I take the opportunity of sending you the printed account of the election and other proceedings on yesterday and to-day; from which you will perceive that everything goes as bad as could be expected. The Boston faction has taken possession of the two Houses in such a manner that there are not ten men in both who dare contradict them. They have turned out of the Council four gentlemen of the very first reputation in the country, and the only men remaining of disposition and ability to serve the King's cause. I have negatived eleven, among which are two old Councillors, Brattle and Bowdoin, the managers of all the late opposition in the Council to the King's government. There is not now one man in the Council who has either power or spirit to oppose the faction; and the friends of Government are so thin in the House, that they won't attempt to make any opposition; so that Otis, Adams, etc., are now in full possession of this government, and will treat it accordingly. This is no more than was expected. I will write more particularly in a few days."I am," etc.
"Boston, June 1,1769.
"Dear Sir,--There being a snow ready to sail for Glasgow, I take the opportunity of sending you the printed account of the election and other proceedings on yesterday and to-day; from which you will perceive that everything goes as bad as could be expected. The Boston faction has taken possession of the two Houses in such a manner that there are not ten men in both who dare contradict them. They have turned out of the Council four gentlemen of the very first reputation in the country, and the only men remaining of disposition and ability to serve the King's cause. I have negatived eleven, among which are two old Councillors, Brattle and Bowdoin, the managers of all the late opposition in the Council to the King's government. There is not now one man in the Council who has either power or spirit to oppose the faction; and the friends of Government are so thin in the House, that they won't attempt to make any opposition; so that Otis, Adams, etc., are now in full possession of this government, and will treat it accordingly. This is no more than was expected. I will write more particularly in a few days.
"I am," etc.
The Governor could write thus of his political friends of the Council, several of whom, six years later, when the attempt was made to change the Constitution, were thought to have spirit enough to receive appointments from the Crown,--such, for instance, as Danforth, Russell, Royal, and Gray,--and hence were calledMandamusCouncillors.
A few days after (May 5, 1769) there was a holiday in Boston, the celebration of the birth-day of the King, which the House, "out of duty, loyalty, and affection to His Majesty," noticed formally, as provided by a committee consisting of Otis, Hancock, and Adams. The Governor received a brilliant party--at the Province House; the three regiments in town, the Fourteenth, Twenty-Ninth, and Sixty-Fourth, paraded on the Common; the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company--it happened to be their anniversary--went through the customary routine, including the sermon, the dinner at Faneuil Hall, and the exchange of commissions on the Common; and in the evening there was a ball at Concert Hall, where, it is said in the Tory paper, there was as numerous and brilliant an appearance of gentlemen and ladies as was ever known in town on any former occasion. The Patriot journals give more space to the celebration, towards evening, in the Representatives' Hall, where, besides the members, were a great number of merchants and gentlemen of the first distinction, who, besides toasting, first the King, Queen, and Royal Family, and second, North America, drank to "The restoration of harmony between Great Britain and the Colonies," "Prosperity and perpetuity to the British Empire in all parts of the world," and "Liberty without licentiousness to all parts of the world." The House thus testified their loyalty to country; but, as the Governor refused to remove the troops, they--the "Boston Gazette" of June 12th said--"had for thirteen days past made a solemn and expressive pause in public business."
Meantime the Governor received in one day (June 10) communications which surprised him half out of his wits and wholly out of his office, and which must have made rather a blue day in his calendar.
The Ministry now vacillated in their high-handed policy, and gave to General Gage discretionary power as to a continuance of the troops in Boston; and this officer had come to the sensible conclusion that troops were worse than needless, for they were an unnecessary irritation and detrimental to a restoration of the harmony which the representative men of both parties professed to desire. Accordingly the Governor received advices that the Commander-in-Chief had ordered the Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments, with the train of artillery, to Halifax, and that he had directed General Mackay to confer with his Excellency as to the disposition of the remainder of the troops, whether His Majesty's service required that any should be posted longer in Boston, and if so, what the number should be. The Governor was further requested to give his opinion on this point in writing.
As the Governor had received no intimation of such a change of policy from his friends in England, he could hardly find words in which to express his astonishment. He wrote, two days after, that nothing could be moremal-à-proposto the business of Government or hard upon him; that it was cruel to have this forced upon him at such a time and in such a manner; and as the question was put, it was hardly less than whether he should abdicate government. "If the troops are removed," he wrote, "the principal officers of the Crown, the friends of Government, and the importers of goods from England in defiance of the combination, who are considerable and numerous, must remove also," which would have been quite an extensive removal. He wrote to Lord Hillsborough,--"It is impossible to express my surprise at this proposition, or my embarrassment on account of the requisition of an answer."
The other communication was a right royal greeting. Up to this time the letters to the Governor from the members of the Government, private as well as official, had been to him of the most gratifying character, to say nothing of the gift of the baronetcy. "I can give you the pleasure of knowing," Lord Barrington wrote to him, (April 5, 1769,) "that last Sunday the King spoke with the highest approbation of your conduct and services in his closet to me"; but in a postscript to this letter were the ominous words,--"I understand you are directed to come hither; but Lord Hillsborough authorizes me to say, you need not be in any inconvenient haste to obey that instruction." This order, in the manuscript, is indorsed, "Received June 10, 1769"; and being unique, it is here copied from the original, which has Hillsborough's autograph:--
"GEORGE R."Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. Whereas we have thought fit by our royal license under our signet and sign-manual bearing date the twenty-second day of June, 1768, in the eighth year of our reign, to permit you to return into this our kingdom of Great Britain: Our will and pleasure therefore is, that as soon as conveniently may be, after the receipt hereof, you do repair to this our kingdom in order to lay before us a state of our province of Massachusetts Bay. And so we bid you farewell. Given at our court at St. James the twenty-third day of March, 1769, in the ninth year of our reign."By His Majesty's command, "HILLSBOROUGH."
"Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. Whereas we have thought fit by our royal license under our signet and sign-manual bearing date the twenty-second day of June, 1768, in the eighth year of our reign, to permit you to return into this our kingdom of Great Britain: Our will and pleasure therefore is, that as soon as conveniently may be, after the receipt hereof, you do repair to this our kingdom in order to lay before us a state of our province of Massachusetts Bay. And so we bid you farewell. Given at our court at St. James the twenty-third day of March, 1769, in the ninth year of our reign.
"By His Majesty's command, "HILLSBOROUGH."
It was now an active time with the Patriots. Before the Governor had a chance to talk with General Mackay or to write to General Gage, the news spread all over the town that the two regiments were ordered off; and with this there was circulated the story, that Commissioner Temple had received a letter from George Grenville containing the assurance that the Governor would be immediately recalled with disgrace, that three of the Commissioners of the Customs would be turned off directly, and that next winter the Board would be dissolved; and Bernard, who tells these incidents, says that the reports exalted the Sons of Liberty as though the bells had rung for a triumph, while there was consternation among the crown officials, the importers, and the friends of Government. Here was thrust upon Bernard, over again, the question of the introduction of the troops.
The Governor was as much embarrassed by the requisition for an answer in writing as to the two regiments that were not ordered off as he was astonished at the order that had been given; and on getting a note from General Mackay, he gave the verbal answer, that he would write to General Gage. Meantime, while Bernard was hesitating, the Patriots were acting, and immediately applied themselves to counteract the influence which they knew was making to retain the two regiments. One hundred and forty-two of the citizens petitioned the Selectmen for a town-meeting, at which it was declared, that the law of the land made ample provision for the security of life and property, and that the presence of the troops was an insult. After a week's hesitation, the Governor wrote to General Gage, who had promised inviolable secrecy, that to remove a portion of the two regiments would be detrimental to His Majesty's service; to remove all of these troops would be quite ruinous to the cause of the Crown; but that one regiment in the town and one at the Castle might be sufficient. Of course, General Gage, if he paid any respect to the Governor's advice, could do no less than order both regiments to remain. Thus was it that the two Sam Adams Regiments continued in town, designed for evil, but working for the good of the common cause.
Governor Bernard, during the month of June, and down to the middle of July, was greatly disturbed by the manly stand of the General Court; and, because of its refusal to enter upon the public business under the mouths of British cannon, adjourned it to Cambridge. On the night after this adjournment, the cannon were removed. These irritating proceedings made this body still more high-toned. While in this mood, it received from the Governor two messages, (July 6 and 12,) asking an appropriation of money to meet the expenses which had been incurred by the crown officers in quartering troops in Boston. The members nobly met this demand by returning to the Governor (July 15, 1769) a grandly worded state-paper, in which, claiming the rights of freeborn Englishmen, as confirmed by Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, and as settled by the Revolution and the British Charter, they expressly declared that they never would make provision for the purposes mentioned in the two messages. On the same day, it was represented in the House that armed soldiers had rescued a prisoner from the hands of justice, when two constables were ordered to attend on the floor who were heard on the matter, and a committee was then appointed to consider it. But Secretary Oliver now appeared with a message from the Governor to the effect that he was at the Court-House and directed the immediate attendance of the members. They accordingly, with Speaker Cushing at their head, repaired to the Governor, who, after a haughty speech charging them with proclaiming ideas lacking in dignity to the Crown and inconsistent with the Province continuing a part of the British Empire, prorogued the Court until the 10th of January.
The press arraigned the arbitrary proceedings of the Governor with great boldness and a just severity; while it declared that the action taken by the intrepid House of Representatives, with rare unanimity, was supported by the almost universal sentiments of the people. The last act of the Governor, the prorogation of the General Court for six months, was especially criticized; and after averring that such long prorogations, in such critical times, could never promote the true service of His Majesty or the tranquility of his good subjects, it predicted that impartial history would hang up Governor Bernard as a warning to his successors who had any sense of character, and perhaps his future fortune might be such as to teach even the most selfish of them not to tread in his steps.
On the day this prediction was written, (August 1, 1769,) Sir Francis Bernard, in the Rippon, was on his way to England. Congratulations among the people, exultation on the part of the press, the Union Flag on Liberty Tree, salutes from Hancock's Wharf, and bonfires, in the evening, on the hills, expressed the general joy. And yet Francis Bernard was hardly a faithful representative of the proud imperial power for which he acted. He was a bad Governor, but he was not so bad as the cause he was obliged to uphold. He was arbitrary, but he was not so arbitrary as his instructions. He was vacillating, but he was not so vacillating as the Ministers. When he gave the conciliatory reply to the June town-meeting, it was judged that he lowered the national standard, and it seriously damaged him at Court; when he spoke in the imperial tone that characterized the British rule of that day, he was rewarded with a baronetcy. The Governor after months of reflection, in England, on reviewing in an elaborate letter the political path he had travelled, indicated both his deep chagrin and his increase of wisdom in the significant words,--"I was obliged to give up, a victim to the bad policy and irresolution of the supreme Government."
The execution of a bad policy as directed by an irresolute Ministry was now the lot of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson. It was embodied in the question of the removal of the troops; and this question was not decided, until, after months of confusion and distress, the blood and slaughter of His Majesty's good subjects compelled an indignant American public opinion to command their departure from the town of Boston.
At five, P. M., we found ourselves--Iglesias, a party of friends, and myself--on board the Isaac Newton, a great, ugly, three-tiered box that walks the North River, like a laboratory of greasy odors.
In this stately cinder-mill were American citizens. Not to discuss spitting, which is for spittoons, not literature, our fellow-travellers on the deck of the "floating palace" were passably endurable people, in looks, style, and language. I dodge discrimination, and characterize themen masseby negations. The passengers of the Isaac Newton, on a certain evening of July, 18--, were not so intrusively green and so gasping as Britons, not so ill-dressed and pretentious as Gauls, not so ardently futile and so lubberly as Germans. Such were the negative virtues of our fellow-citizen travellers; and base would it be to exhibit their positive vices.
And so no more of passengers or passage. I will not describe our evening on the river. Alas for the duty of straight-forwardness and dramatic unity! Episodes seem so often sweeter than plots! The way-side joys are better than the final successes. The flowers along the vista, brighter than the victor-wreaths at its close. I may not dally on my way, turning to the right and the left for beauty and caricature. I will balance on the strict edge of my narrative, as a seventh-heavenward Mahometan with wine-forbidden steadiness of poise treads Al Seràt, his bridge of a sword-blade.
Next morning, at Albany, divergent trains cleft our party into a better and a worser half. The beautiful girls, our better half, fled westward to ripen their pallid roses with richer summer-hues in mosquitoless inland dells. Iglesias and I were still northward bound.
At the Saratoga station we sipped a dreary, faded reminiscence of former joys and sparkling brilliancy long dead, in cups of Congress-water, brought by unattractive Ganymedes and sold in the train,--draughts flat, flabby, and utterly bubbleless, lukewarm heel-taps with a flavor of savorless salt.
Still northward journeying, and feeling the sea-side moisture evaporate from our blood under inland suns and sultry inland breezes, we came to Lake Champlain.
As before banquets, to excite appetite, one takes the gentle oyster, so we, before the serious pleasure of our journey, tasted the Adirondack region, paradise of Cockney sportsmen. There through the forest, the stag of ten trots, coquetting with greenhorns. He likes the excitement of being shot at and missed. He enjoys the smell of powder in a battle where he is always safe. He hears Greenhorn blundering through the woods, stopping to growl at briers, stopping to revive his courage with the Dutch supplement. The stag of ten awaits his foe in a glade. The foe arrives, sees the antlered monarch, and is panic-struck. He watches him prance and strike the ground with his hoofs. He slowly recovers heart, takes a pull at his flask, rests his gun upon a log, and begins to study his mark. The stag will not stand still. Greenhorn is baffled. At last his target turns and carefully exposes that region of his body where Greenhorn has read lies the heart. Just about to fire, he catches the eye of the stag winking futility into his elaborate aim. His blunderbuss jerks upward. A shower of cut leaves floats through the smoke, from a tree thirty feet overhead. Then, with a mild-eyed melancholy look of reproachful contempt, the stag turns away, and wanders off to sleep in quiet coverts far within the wood. He has fled, while for Greenhorn no trophy remains. Antlers have nodded to the sportsman; a short tail has disappeared before his eyes;--he has seen something, but has nothing to show. Whereupon he buys a couple of pairs of ancient weather-bleached horns from some colonist, and, nailing them up at impossible angles on the wall of his city-den, humbugs brother-Cockneys with tales ofvénerie, and has for life his special legend, "How I shot my first deer in the Adirondacks."
The Adirondacks provide a compact, convenient, accessible little wilderness,--an excellent field for the experiments of tyros. When the tyro, whether shot, fisherman, or forester, has proved himself fully there, let him dislodge into some vaster wilderness, away from guides by the day and superintending hunters, away from the incursions of the Cockney tribe, and let out the caged savage within him for a tough struggle with Nature. It needs a struggle tough and resolute to force that Protean lady to observe at all her challenger.
It is well to go to the Adirondacks. They are shaggy, and shagginess is a valuable trait. The lakes are very well,--very well indeed. The objection to the region is not the mountains, which are reasonably shaggy,--not the lakes and rivers, which are water, a capital element. The real difficulty is the society: not the autochthonous society,--they are worthy people, and it is hardly to be mentioned as a fault that they are not a discriminating race, and will asseverate that all fish are trout, and the most arrant mutton is venison,--but the immigrant, colonizing society. Cockneys are to be found at every turn, flaunting their banners of the awkward squad, proclaiming to the world with protuberant pride that they are the veritable backwoodsmen,--rather doing it, rather astonishing the natives, they think. And so they are. One squad of such neophytes might be entertaining; but when every square mile echoes with their hails, lost, poor babes, within a furlong of their camps, and when the woods become dim and the air civic with their cooking-smokes, and the subtle odor of fried pork overpowers methylic fragrance among the trees, then he who loves forests for their solitude leaves these brethren to their clumsy joys, and wanders elsewhere deeper into sylvan scenes.
Our visit to the Adirondacks was episodic; and as I have forsworn episodes, I turn away from them with this mild slander, and strike again our Maine track. With lips impurpled by the earliest huckleberries, we came out again upon Champlain. We crossed that water-logged valley in a steamboat, and hastened on, through a pleasant interlude of our rough journey, across Vermont and New Hampshire, two States not without interest to their residents, but of none to this narrative.
By coach and wagon, by highway and by-way, by horse-power and steam-power, we proceeded, until it chanced, one August afternoon, that we left railways and their regions at a way-side station, and let our lingering feet march us along the Valley of the Upper Connecticut. This lovely river, baptizer of Iglesias's childhood, was here shallow and musical, half river, half brook; it had passed the tinkling period, and plashed and rumbled voicefully over rock and shallow.
It was a fair and verdant valley where we walked, overlooked by hills of pleasant pastoral slope. All the land was gay and ripe with yellow harvest. Strolling along, as if the business of travel were forgotten, we placidly identified ourselves with the placid scenery. We became Arcadians both. Such is Arcadia, if I have read aright: a realm where sunshine never scorches, and yet shade is sweet; where simple pleasures please; where the blue sky and the bright water and the green fields satisfy forever.
We were in lightest marching-trim. Iglesias bore an umbrella, our armor against what heaven could do with assault of sun or shower. I was weaponed with a staff, should brute or biped uncourteous dispute our way. We had no impediments of "great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle." A thoughtful man hardly feels honest in his life except as a pedestrian traveller."La propriété c'est le vol"--which the West more briefly expresses by calling baggage "plunder." What little plunder our indifferent honesty had packed for this journey we had left with a certain stage-coachman, perhaps to follow us, perhaps to become his plunder. We were thus disconnected from any depressing influence; we had no character to sustain; we were heroes in disguise, and could make our observations on life and manners, without being invited to a public hand-shaking, or to exhibit feats in jugglery, for either of which a traveller with plenteous portmanteaus, hair or leather, must be prepared in villages thereabouts. Totally unembarrassed, we lounged along or leaped along, light-hearted. When the river neared us, or winsome brooklet from the hill-side thwarted our path, we stooped and lapped from their pools of coolness, or tasted that most ethereal tipple, the mingled air and water of electric bubbles, as they slid brightly toward our lips.
The angle of the sun's rays grew less and less, the wheat-fields were tinged more golden by the clinging beams, our shadows lengthened, as if exercise of an afternoon were stimulating to such unreal essences. Finally the blue dells and gorges of a wooded mountain, for two hours our landmark, rose between us and the sun. But the sun's Parthian arrows gave him a splendid triumph, more signal for its evanescence. A storm was inevitable, and sunset prepared a reconciling pageant.
Now, as may be supposed, Iglesias has an eye for a sunset. That summer's crop had been very short, and he had been some time on starvation-allowance of cloudy magnificence. We therefore halted by the road-side, and while I committed the glory to memory, Iglesias entrusted his distincter memorial to a sketch-book.
We were both busy, he repeating forms, noting shades and tints, and I studying without pictorial intent, when we heard a hail in the road below our bank. It was New Hampshire, near the Maine line, and near the spot where nasal organs are fabricated that twang the roughest.
"Say!" shrieked up to us a freckled native, holding fast to the tail of a calf, the last of a gambolling family he was driving,--"Say! whodger doon up thurr? Layn aoot taoonshup lains naoou, aancher? Cauds ur suvvares raoond. Spekkleayshn goan on, ur guess."
We allowed this unmelodious vocalist to respect us by permitting him to believe us surveyors in another sense than as we were. One would not be despised as an unpractical citizen, a mere looker at Nature with no immediate view to profit, even by a freckled calf-driver of the Upper Connecticut. While we parleyed, the sketch was done, and the pageant had faded quick before the storm.
Splendor had departed; the world in our neighborhood had fallen into the unillumined dumps. An ominous mournfulness, far sadder than the pensiveness of twilight, drew over the sky. Clouds, that donned brilliancy for the fond parting of mountain-tops and the sun, now grew cheerless and gray; their gay robes were taken from them, and with bended heads they fled away from the sorrowful wind. In western glooms beyond the world a dreary gale had been born, and now came wailing like one that for all his weariness may not rest, but must go on harmful journeys and bear evil tidings. With the vanguard gusts came volleys of rain, malicious assaults, giving themselves the trouble to tell us in an offensive way what we could discover for ourselves, that a wetting impended and umbrellas would soon be nought.
While the storm was thus nibbling before it bit, we lengthened our strides to escape. Water, concentrated in flow of stream or pause of lake, is charming; not so to the shelterless is water diffused in dash of deluge. Water, when we choose our method of contact, is a friend; when it masters us, it is a foe; when it drowns us or ducks us, a very exasperating foe. Proud pedestrians become very humble personages, when thoroughly vanquished by a ducking deluge. A wetting takes out the starch not only from garments, but the wearers of them. Iglesias and I did not wish to stand all the evening steaming before a kitchen-fire, inspecting meanwhile culinary details: Phillis in the kitchen is not always as fresh as Phillis in the field. We therefore shook ourselves into full speed and bolted into our inn at Colebrook; and the rain, like a portcullis, dropped solid behind us.
In town, the landlord is utterly merged in his hotel. He is a sovereign rarely apparent. In the country, the landlord is a personality. He is greater than the house he keeps. Men arriving inspect the master of the inn narrowly. If his first glance is at the pocket, cheer will be bad; if at the eyes or the lips, you need not take a cigar before supper to keep down your appetite.
Our landlord was of the latter type. He surged out of the little box where he was dispensing not too fragrant rummers to a circle of village-politicians, and congratulated us on our arrival before the storm. He was a discriminating person. He detected us at once, saw we were not tramps or footpads, and led us to the parlor, a room attractively furnished with a map of the United States and an oblong music-book open at "Old Hundred." Our host further felicitated us that we had not stopped at a certain tavern below, where, as he said,--
"They cut a chunk er beef and drop 't into a pot to bile, and bile her three days, and then don't have noth'n' else for three weeks."
He put his head out of the door and called,--
"George, go aoot and split up that 'ere wood as fine as chaowder: these men 'll want their supper right off."
Drawing in his head, he continued to us confidentially,--
"That 'ere George is jes' like a bird: he goes off at one snappin'."
Our host then rolled out toward the bar-room, to discuss with his cronies who we might be. From the window we perceived the birdlike George fly and alight near the specified wood, which he proceeded to bechowder. He brought in the result of his handiwork, as smiling as a basket of chips. Neat-handed Phillis at the door received the chowder, and by its aid excited a sound and a smell, both prophetic of supper. And we, willing to repose after a sixteen-mile afternoon-walk, lounged upon sofa or tilted in rocking-chair, taking the available mental food, namely, "Godey's Lady's Book" and the Almanac.
Next morning it poured. The cinders before the blacksmith's shop opposite had yielded their black dye to the dismal puddles. The village cocks were sadly draggled and discouraged, and cowered under any shelter, shivering within their drowned plumage. Who on such a morn would stir? Who but the Patriot? Hardly had we breakfasted, when he, the Patriot, waited upon us. It was a Presidential campaign. They were starving in his village for stump-speeches. Would the talking man of ourduogo over and feed their ears with a fiery harangue? Patriot was determined to be first with us; others were coming with similar invitations; he was the early bird. Ah, those portmanteaus! they had arrived, and betrayed us.
We would not be snapped up. We would wriggle away. We were very sorry, but we must start at once to pursue our journey.
"But it pours," said Patriot.
"Patriot," replied our talking member, "man is flesh; and flesh, however sweet or savory it may be, does not melt in water."
Thus fairly committed to start, we immediately opened negotiations for a carriage. "No go," was the first response of the coachman. Our willy was met by his nilly. But we pointed out to him that we could not stay there all a dismal day,--that we must, would, could, should go. At last we got within coachee's outworks. His nilly broke down into shilly-shally. He began to state his objections; then we knew he was ready to yield. We combated him, clinking the supposed gold of coppers in our pockets, or carelessly chucking a tempting half-dollar at some fly on the ceiling. So presently we prevailed, and he retired to make ready.
By-and-by a degraded family-carriage came to the door. It came by some feeble inertia left latent in it by some former motive-power, rather than was dragged up by its more degraded nags. A very unwholesome coach. No doubt a successful quack-doctor had used it in his prosperous days for his wife and progeny; no doubt it had subsequently become the property of a second-class undertaker, and had conveyed many a quartette of cheap clergymen to the funerals of poor relations whose leaking sands of life left no gold-dust behind. Such was our carriage for a rainy day.
The nags were of the huckleberry or flea-bitten variety,--a freckled white. Perhaps the quack had fed them with his refuse pills. These knobby-legged unfortunates we of course named Xanthus and Balius, not of podargous or swift-footed, but podagrous or gouty race. Xanthus, like his Achillean namesake, (videPope's Homer,)
"Seemed sensible of woe and dropped his head,--Trembling he stood before the (seedy) wain."
Balius was in equally deplorable mood. Both seemed more sensible to "Whoa" than to "Hadaap." Podagrous beasts, yet not stiffened to immobility. Gayer steeds would have sundered the shackling drag. These would never, by any gamesome caracoling, endanger the coherency of pole with body, of axle with wheel. From end to end the equipage was congruous. Every part of the machine was its weakest part, and that fact gave promise of strength: an invalid never dies. Moreover, the coach suited the day: the rusty was in harmony with the dismal. It suited the damp unpainted houses and the tumble-down blacksmith's-shop. We contented ourselves with this artistic propriety. We entered, treading cautiously. The machine, with gentle spasms, got itself in motion, and steered due east for Lake Umbagog. The smiling landlord, the disappointed Patriot, and the birdlike George waved us farewell.
Coachee was in the sulks. The rain, beat upon him, and we by purse-power had compelled him to encounter discomfort. His self-respect must be restored by superiority over somebody. He had been beaten and must beat. He did so. His horses took the lash until he felt at peace with himself. Then half-turning toward us, he made his first remark.
"Them two hosses is gorming."
"Yes," we replied, "they do seem rather so."
This was of course profound hypocrisy; but "gorming" meant some bad quality, and any might be safely predicated of our huckleberry pair. Who will admit that he does not know all that is to be known in horse-matters? We therefore asked no questions, but waited patiently for information.
Delay pays demurrage to the wisely patient. Coachee relapsed into the sulks. The driving rain resolved itself into a dim chaos of mist. Xanthus and Balius plodded on, but often paused and gasped, or, turning their heads as if they missed something, strayed from the track and drew us against the dripping bushes. After one such excursion, which had nearly been the ruin of us, and which by calling out coachee's scourging powers had put him thoroughly in good-humor, he turned to us and said, superlatively,--
"Them's the gormingest hosses I ever see. When I drew 'em in the four-hoss coach for wheelers, they could keep a straight tail. Now they act like they was drunk. They's gorming,--they won't do nothin' without a leader."
To gorm, then, is to err when there is no leader. Alas, how mankind gorms!
By sunless noon we were well among the mountains. We came to the last New-Hampshire house, miles from its neighbors. But it was a self-sufficing house, an epitome of humanity. Grandmamma, bald under her cap, was seated by the stove dandling grandchild, bald under its cap. Each was highly entertained with the other. Grandpapa was sandy with grandboy's gingerbread-crumbs. The intervening ages were well represented by wiry men and shrill women. The house, also, without being tavern or shop, was an amateur bazaar ofviversand goods. Anything one was likely to want could be had there,--even a melodeon and those inevitable Patent-Office Reports. Here we descended, lunched, and providently bought a general assortment, namely, a large plain cake, five pounds of cheese, a ball of twine, and two pairs of brown ribbed woollen socks, native manufacture. My pair of these indestructibles will outlast my last legs and go as an heirloom after me.
The weather now, as we drove on, seemed to think that Iglesias deserved better of it. Rain-globes strung upon branches, each globe the possible home of a sparkle, had waited long enough unillumined. Sunlight suddenly discovered this desponding patience and rewarded it. Every drop selected its own ray from the liberal bundle, and, crowding itself full of radiance, became a mirror of sky and cloud and forest. Also, by the searching sunbeams' store of regal purple, ripe raspberries were betrayed. On these, magnified by their convex lenses of water, we pounced. Showers shook playfully upon us from the vines, while we revelled in fruitiness. We ran before our gormers, they gormed by us while we plucked, we ran by, plucked again, and again were gormingly overtaken and overtook. Thus we ate our way luxuriously through the Dixville Notch, a capital cleft in a northern spur of the White Mountains.
Picturesque is a curiously convenient, undiscriminating epithet. I use it here. The Dixville Notch is, briefly, picturesque,--a fine gorge between a crumbling conical crag and a scarped precipice,--a pass easily defensible, except at the season when raspberries would distract sentinels.
Now we came upon our proper field of action. We entered the State of Maine at Township Letter B. A sharper harshness of articulation in stray passengers told us that we were approaching the vocal influence of the name Androscoggin. People talked as if, instead of ivory ring or coral rattle to develop their infantile teeth, they had bitten upon pine knots. Voices were resinous and astringent. An opera, with a chorus drummed up in those regions, could dispense with violins.
Toward evening we struck the river, and found it rasping and crackling over rocks as an Androscoggin should. We passed the last hamlet, then the last house but one, and finally drew up at the last and northernmost house, near the lumbermen's dam below Lake Umbagog. The damster, a stalwart brown chieftain of the backwoodsman race, received us with hearty hospitality. Xanthus and Balius stumbled away on their homeward journey. And after them the crazy coach went moaning: it was not strong enough to creak or rattle.
Next day was rainy. It had, however, misty intervals. In these we threw a fly for trout and caught a chub in Androscoggin. Or, crouched on the bank of a frog-pond, we tickled frogs with straws. Yes, and fun of the freshest we found it. Certain animals, and especially frogs, were created, shaped, and educated to do the grotesque, that men might study them, laugh, and grow fat. It was a droll moment with Nature, when she entertained herself and prepared entertainment for us by devising the frog, that burlesque of bird, beast, and man, and taught him how to move and how to speak and sing. Iglesias and I did not disdain batrachian studies, and set no limit to our merriment at their quaint, solemn, half-human pranks. One question still is unresolved,--Why do frogs stay and be tickled? They snap snappishly at the titillating straw; they snatch at it with their weird little hands; they parry it skilfully. They hardly can enjoy being tickled, and yet they endure, paying a dear price for the society of their betters. Frogs the frisky, frogs the spotted, were our comedy that day. Whenever the rain ceased, we rushed forth and tickled them, and thus vicariously tickled ourselves into more than patience, into jollity. So the day passed quickly.
While we were not tickling frogs, we were talking lumber with the Umbagog damster. I had already coasted Maine, piloted by Iglesias, and knew the fisherman-life; now, under the same experienced guidance, I was to study inland scenes, and take lumbermen for my heroes.
Maine has two classes of warriors among its sons,--fighters of forest and fighters of sea. Braves must join one or the other army. The two are close allies. Only by the aid of the woodmen can the watermen build their engines of victory. The seamen in return purvey the needful luxuries for lumber-camps. Foresters float down timber that seamen may build snips and go to the saccharine islands of the South for molasses: for without molasses no lumberman could be happy in the unsweetened wilderness. Pork lubricates his joints; molasses gives tenacity to his muscles.
Lumbering develops such men as Pindar saw when he pictured Jason, his forest hero. Life is a hearty and vigorous movement to them, not a drooping slouch. Summer is their season of preparation; winter, of the campaign; spring, of victory. All over the north of the State, whatever is not lake or river is forest. In summer, the Viewer, like a military engineer, marks out the region, and the spots of future attack. He views the woods; and wherever a monarch tree crowns the leafy level, he finds his way, and blazes a path. Not all trees are worthy of the axe. Miles of lesser timber remain untouched. A Maine forest after a lumber-campaign is like France after acoup d'état:thebourgeoisieare prosperous as ever, but the great men are all gone.
While the viewer views, his followers are on commissariat and quartermaster's service. They are bringing up their provisions and fortifying their camp. They build their log-station, pile up barrels of pork, beans, and molasses, like mortars and Paixhans in an arsenal, and are ready for a winter of stout toil and solid jollity.
Stout is the toil, and the life seemingly dreary, to those who cower by ingle-nooks or stand over registers. But there is stirring excitement in this bloodless war, and around plenteous camp-fires vigor of merriment and hearty comradry. Men who wield axes and breathe hard have lungs. Blood aërated by the air that sings through the pine-woods tingles in every fibre. Tingling blood makes life joyous. Joy can hardly look without a smile or speak without a laugh. And merry is the evergreen-wood in electric winter.
Snows fall level in the sheltered, still forest. Road-making is practicable. The region is already channelled with watery ways. An imperial pine, with its myriads of feet of future lumber, is worth another path cut through the bush to the frozen riverside. Down goes his Majesty Pinus I., three half-centuries old, having reigned fifty years high above all his race. A little fellow with a little weapon has dethroned the quiet old king. Pinus I was very strong at bottom, but the little revolutionist was stronger at top. Brains without much trouble had their will of stolid matter. The tree fallen, its branches are lopped, its purple trunk is shortened into lengths. The teamster arrives with oxen in full steam, and rimy with frozen breath about their indignant nostrils. As he comes and goes, he talks to his team for company; his conversation is monotonous as the talk of lovers, but it has a cheerful ring through the solitude. The logs are chained and dragged creaking along over the snow to the river-side. There the subdivisions of Pinus the Great become a basis for a mighty snow-mound. But the mild March winds blow from seaward. Spring bourgeons. One day the ice has gone. The river flows visible; and now that its days of higher beauty and grace have come, it climbs high up its banks to show that it is ready for new usefulness. It would be dreary for the great logs to see new verdure springing all around them, while they lay idly rotting or sprouting with uncouth funguses, not unsuspect of poison. But they will not be wasted. Lumbermen, foes to idleness and inutility, swarm again about their winter's trophies. They imprint certain cabalistic tokens of ownership on the logs,--crosses, xs, stars, crescents, alphabetical letters,--marks respected all along the rivers and lakes down to the boom where the sticks are garnered for market. The marked logs are tumbled into the brimming stream, and so ends their forest-life.
Now comes "the great spring drive." Maine waters in spring flow under an illimitable raft. Every camp contributes its myriads of brown cylinders to the millions that go bobbing down rivers with jaw-breaking names. And when the river broadens to a lake, where these impetuous voyagers might be stranded or miss their way and linger, they are herded into vast rafts, and towed down by boats, or by steam-tugs, if the lake is large as Moosehead. At the lake-foot the rafts break up and the logs travel again dispersedly down stream, or through the "thoro'fare" connecting the members of a chain of lakes. The hero of this epoch is the Head-Driver. The head-driver of a timber-drive leads a disorderly army, that will not obey the word of command. Every log acts as an individual, according to certain imperious laws of matter, and every log is therefore at loggerheads with every other log. The marshal must be in the thick of the fight, keeping his forces well in hand, hurrying stragglers, thrusting off the stranded, leading his phalanxes wisely round curves and angles, lest they be jammed and fill the river with a solid mass. As the great sticks come dashing along, turning porpoise-like somersets or leaping up twice their length in the air, he must be everywhere, livelier than a monkey in a mimosa, a wonder of acrobatic agility in biggest boots.Hemade the proverb, "As easy as falling off a log."
Hardly less important is the Damster. To him it falls to conserve the waters at a proper level. At his dam, generally below a lake, the logs collect and lie crowded. The river, with its obstacles of rock and rapid, would anticipate wreck for these timbers of future ships. Therefore, when the spring drive is ready, and the head-driver is armed with his jackboots and his iron-pointed sceptre, the damster opens his sluices and lets another river flow through atop of the rock-shattered river below. The logs of each proprietor, detected by their marks, pay toll as they pass the gates and rush bumptiously down the flood.
Far down, at some water-power nearest the reach of tide, a boom checks the march of this formidable body. The owners step forward and claim their slicks. Dowse takes all marked with three crosses and a dash. Sowse selects whatever bears two crescents and a star. Rowse pokes about for his stock, inscribed clip, dash, star, dash, clip. Nobody has counterfeited these hieroglyphs. The tale is complete. The logs go to the saw-mill. Sawdust floats seaward. The lumbermen junket. So ends the log-book.
"Maine," said our host, the Damster of Umbagog, "was made for lumbering-work. We never could have got the trees out, without these lakes and dams."
[To be continued.]