—atque altae moenia Romae,
—and the wall of high Rome,
before we were constrained to reflect by what myriad tests a work of
genius has to be tried; that Virgil, away in Rome, two thousand years
off, should have to unfold his meaning, the inspiration of Italian
vales, to the pilgrim on New England hills. This life so raw and
modern, that so civil and ancient; and yet we read Virgil, mainly to be
reminded of the identity of human nature in all ages, and, by the
poet’s own account, we are both the children of a late age, and live
equally under the reign of Jupiter.
“He shook honey from the leaves, and removed fire,
And stayed the wine, everywhere flowing in rivers;
That experience, by meditating, might invent various arts
By degrees, and seek the blade of corn in furrows,
And strike out hidden fire from the veins of the flint.”
The old world stands serenely behind the new, as one mountain yonder
towers behind another, more dim and distant. Rome imposes her story
still upon this late generation. The very children in the school we had
that morning passed, had gone through her wars, and recited her alarms,
ere they had heard of the wars of neighboring Lancaster. The roving eye
still rests inevitably on her hills, and she still holds up the skirts
of the sky on that side, and makes the past remote.
The lay of the land hereabouts is well worthy the attention of the
traveller. The hill on which we were resting made part of an extensive
range, running from southwest to northeast, across the country, and
separating the waters of the Nashua from those of the Concord, whose
banks we had left in the morning; and by bearing in mind this fact, we
could easily determine whither each brook was bound that crossed our
path. Parallel to this, and fifteen miles further west, beyond the deep
and broad valley in which lie Groton, Shirley, Lancaster, and Boylston,
runs the Wachusett range, in the same general direction. The descent
into the valley on the Nashua side, is by far the most sudden; and a
couple of miles brought us to the southern branch of the Nashua, a
shallow but rapid stream, flowing between high and gravelly banks. But
we soon learned that there were no _gelidae valles_ into which we had
descended, and missing the coolness of the morning air, feared it had
become the sun’s turn to try his power upon us.
“The sultry sun had gained the middle sky,
And not a tree, and not an herb was nigh.”
and with melancholy pleasure we echoed the melodious plaint of our
fellow-traveller, Hassan, in the desert,—
“Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day,
When first from Schiraz’ walls I bent my way.”
The air lay lifeless between the hills, as in a seething caldron, with
no leaf stirring, and instead of the fresh odor of grass and clover,
with which we had before been regaled, the dry scent of every herb
seemed merely medicinal. Yielding, therefore, to the heat, we strolled
into the woods, and along the course of a rivulet, on whose banks we
loitered, observing at our leisure the products of these new fields. He
who traverses the woodland paths, at this season, will have occasion to
remember the small drooping bell-like flowers and slender red stem of
the dogs-bane, and the coarser stem and berry of the poke, which are
both common in remoter and wilder scenes; and if “the sun casts such a
reflecting heat from the sweet fern,” as makes him faint, when he is
climbing the bare hills, as they complained who first penetrated into
these parts, the cool fragrance of the swamp pink restores him again,
when traversing the valleys between.
As we went on our way late in the afternoon, we refreshed ourselves by
bathing our feet in every rill that crossed the road, and anon, as we
were able to walk in the shadows of the hills, recovered our morning
elasticity. Passing through Sterling, we reached the banks of the
Stillwater, in the western part of the town, at evening, where is a
small village collected. We fancied that there was already a certain
western look about this place, a smell of pines and roar of water,
recently confined by dams, belying its name, which were exceedingly
grateful. When the first inroad has been made, a few acres levelled,
and a few houses erected, the forest looks wilder than ever. Left to
herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a
certain refinement; but where the axe has
encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of
the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are
exposed to sight. This village had, as yet, no post-office, nor any
settled name. In the small villages which we entered, the villagers
gazed after us, with a complacent, almost compassionate look, as if we
were just making our _debut_ in the world at a late hour.
“Nevertheless,” did they seem to say, “come and study us, and learn men
and manners.” So is each one’s world but a clearing in the forest, so
much open and inclosed ground. The landlord had not yet returned from
the field with his men, and the cows had yet to be milked. But we
remembered the inscription on the wall of the Swedish inn, “You will
find at Trolhate excellent bread, meat, and wine, provided you bring
them with you,” and were contented. But I must confess it did somewhat
disturb our pleasure, in this withdrawn spot, to have our own village
newspaper handed us by our host, as if the greatest charm the country
offered to the traveller was the facility of communication with the
town. Let it recline on its own everlasting hills, and not be looking
out from their summits for some petty Boston or New York in the
horizon.
At intervals we heard the murmuring of water, and the slumberous
breathing of crickets throughout the night; and left the inn the next
morning in the gray twilight, after it had been hallowed by the night
air, and when only the innocent cows were stirring, with a kind of
regret. It was only four miles to the base of the mountain, and the
scenery was already more picturesque. Our road lay along the course of
the Stillwater, which was brawling at the bottom of a deep ravine,
filled with pines and rocks, tumbling fresh from the mountains, so
soon, alas! to commence its career of usefulness. At first, a cloud
hung between us and the summit, but it was soon blown away. As we
gathered the raspberries, which grew abundantly by the roadside, we
fancied that that action was consistent with a lofty prudence, as if
the traveller who ascends into a mountainous region should fortify
himself by eating of such light ambrosial fruits as grow there; and,
drinking of the springs which gush out from the mountain sides, as he
gradually inhales the subtler and purer atmosphere of those elevated
places, thus propitiating the mountain gods, by a sacrifice of their
own fruits. The gross products of the plains and valleys are for such
as dwell therein; but it seemed to us that the juices of this berry had
relation to the thin air of the mountain-tops.
In due time we began to ascend the mountain, passing, first, through a
grand sugar maple wood, which bore the marks of the augur, then a
denser forest, which gradually became dwarfed, till there were no trees
whatever. We at length pitched our tent on the summit. It is but
nineteen hundred feet above the village of Princeton, and three
thousand above the level of the sea; but by this slight elevation it is
infinitely removed from the plain, and when we reached it, we felt a
sense of remoteness, as if we had travelled into distant regions, to
Arabia Petrea, or the farthest east. A robin upon a staff, was the
highest object in sight. Swallows were flying about us, and the chewink
and cuckoo were heard near at hand. The summit consists of a few acres,
destitute of trees, covered with bare rocks, interspersed with
blueberry bushes, raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, moss, and a
fine wiry grass. The common yellow lily, and dwarf-cornel, grow
abundantly in the crevices of the rocks. This clear space, which is
gently rounded, is bounded a few feet lower by a thick shrubbery of
oaks, with maples, aspens, beeches, cherries, and occasionally a
mountain-ash intermingled, among which we found the bright blueberries
of the Solomon’s Seal, and the fruit of the pyrola. From the foundation
of a wooden observatory, which was formerly erected on the highest
point, forming a rude, hollow structure of stone, a dozen feet in
diameter, and five or six in height, we could see Monadnock, in simple
grandeur, in the northwest, rising nearly a thousand feet higher, still
the “far blue mountain,” though with an altered profile. The first day
the weather was so hazy that it was in vain we endeavored to unravel
the obscurity. It was like looking into the sky again, and the patches
of forest here and there seemed to flit like clouds over a lower
heaven. As to voyagers of an aërial Polynesia, the earth seemed like a
larger island in the ether; on every side, even as low as we, the sky
shutting down, like an unfathomable deep, around it, a blue Pacific
island, where who knows what islanders inhabit? and as we sail near its
shores we see the waving of trees, and hear the lowing of kine.
We read Virgil and Wordsworth in our tent, with new pleasure there,
while, waiting for a clearer atmosphere, nor did the weather prevent
our appreciating the simple truth and beauty of Peter Bell:
“And he had lain beside his asses,
On lofty Cheviot hills.”
“And he had trudged through Yorkshire dales,
Among the rocks and winding _scars_,
Where deep and low the hamlets lie
Beneath their little patch of sky,
And little lot of stars.”
Who knows but this hill may one day be a Helvellyn, or even a
Parnassus, and the Muses haunt here, and other Homers frequent the
neighboring plains,
Not unconcerned Wachusett rears his head
Above the field, so late from nature won,
With patient brow reserved, as one who read
New annals in the history of man.
The blue-berries which the mountain afforded, added to the milk we had
brought, made our frugal supper, while for entertainment the evensong
of the wood-thrush rung along the ridge. Our eyes rested on no painted
ceiling nor carpeted hall, but on skies of nature’s painting, and hills
and forests of her embroidery. Before sunset, we rambled along the
ridge to the north, while a hawk soared still above us. It was a place
where gods might wander, so solemn and solitary, and removed from all
contagion with the plain. As the evening came on, the haze was
condensed in vapor, and the landscape became more distinctly visible,
and numerous sheets of water were brought to light.
Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant,
Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae.
And now the tops of the villas smoke afar off,
And the shadows fall longer from the high mountains.
As we stood on the stone tower while the sun was setting, we saw the
shades of night creep gradually over the valleys of the east, and the
inhabitants went into their houses, and shut their doors, while the
moon silently rose up, and took possession of that part. And then the
same scene was repeated on the west side, as far as the Connecticut and
the Green Mountains, and the sun’s rays fell on us two alone, of all
New England men.
It was the night but one before the full of the moon, so bright that we
could see to read distinctly by moonlight, and in the evening strolled
over the summit without danger. There was, by chance, a fire blazing on
Monadnock that night, which lighted up the whole western horizon, and
by making us aware of a community of mountains, made our position seem
less solitary. But at length the wind drove us to the shelter of our
tent, and we closed its door for the night, and fell asleep.
It was thrilling to hear the wind roar over the rocks, at intervals
when we waked, for it had grown quite cold and windy. The night was in
its elements, simple even to majesty in that bleak place,—a bright
moonlight and a piercing wind. It was at no time darker than twilight
within the tent, and we could easily see the moon through its
transparent roof as we lay; for there was the moon still above us, with
Jupiter and Saturn on either hand, looking down on Wachusett, and it
was a satisfaction to know that they were our fellow-travellers still,
as high and out of our reach as our own destiny. Truly the stars were
given for a consolation to man. We should not know but our life were
fated to be always grovelling, but it is permitted to behold them, and
surely they are deserving of a fair destiny. We see laws which never
fail, of whose failure we never conceived; and their lamps burn all the
night, too, as well as all day,— so rich and lavish is that nature
which can afford this superfluity of light.
The morning twilight began as soon as the moon had set, and we arose
and kindled our fire, whose blaze might have been seen for thirty miles
around. As the daylight increased, it was remarkable how rapidly the
wind went down. There was no dew on the summit, but coldness supplied
its place. When the dawn had reached its prime, we enjoyed the view of
a distinct horizon line, and could fancy ourselves at sea, and the
distant hills the waves in the horizon, as seen from the deck of a
vessel. The cherry-birds flitted around us, the nuthatch and flicker
were heard among the bushes, the titmouse perched within a few feet,
and the song of the wood-thrush again rung along the ridge. At length
we saw the sun rise up out of the sea, and shine on Massachusetts; and
from this moment the atmosphere grew more and more transparent till the
time of our departure, and we began to realize the extent of the view,
and how the earth, in some degree, answered to the heavens in breadth,
the white villages to the constellations in the sky. There was little
of the sublimity and grandeur which belong to mountain scenery, but an
immense landscape to ponder on a summer’s day. We could see how ample
and roomy is nature. As far as the eye could reach, there was little
life in the landscape; the few birds that flitted past did not crowd.
The travellers on the remote highways, which intersect the country on
every side, had no fellow-travellers for miles, before or behind. On
every side, the eye ranged over successive circles of towns, rising one
above another, like the terraces of a vineyard, till they were lost in
the horizon. Wachusett is, in fact, the observatory of the State. There
lay Massachusetts, spread out before us in its length and breadth, like
a map. There was the level horizon, which told of the sea on the east
and south, the well-known hills of New Hampshire on the north, and the
misty summits of the Hoosac and Green Mountains, first made visible to
us the evening before, blue and unsubstantial, like some bank of clouds
which the morning wind would dissipate, on the northwest and west.
These last distant ranges, on which the eye rests unwearied, commence
with an abrupt boulder in the north, beyond the Connecticut, and travel
southward, with three or four peaks dimly seen. But Monadnock, rearing
its masculine front in the northwest, is the grandest feature. As we
beheld it, we knew that it was the height of land between the two
rivers, on this side the valley of the Merrimack, or that of the
Connecticut, fluctuating with their blue seas of air,—these rival
vales, already teeming with Yankee men along their respective streams,
born to what destiny who shall tell? Watatic, and the neighboring hills
in this State and in New Hampshire, are a continuation of the same
elevated range on which we were standing. But that New Hampshire
bluff,—that promontory of a State,—lowering day and night on this our
State of Massachusetts, will longest haunt our dreams.
We could, at length, realize the place mountains occupy on the land,
and how they come into the general scheme of the universe. When first
we climb their summits and observe their lesser irregularities, we do
not give credit to the comprehensive intelligence which shaped them;
but when afterward we behold their outlines in the horizon, we confess
that the hand which moulded their opposite slopes, making one to
balance the other, worked round a deep centre, and was privy to the
plan of the universe. So is the least part of nature in its bearings
referred to all space. These lesser mountain ranges, as well as the
Alleghanies, run from northeast to southwest, and parallel with these
mountain streams are the more fluent rivers, answering to the general
direction of the coast, the bank of the great ocean stream itself. Even
the clouds, with their thin bars, fall into the same direction by
preference, and such even is the course of the prevailing winds, and
the migration of men and birds. A mountain-chain determines many things
for the statesman and philosopher. The improvements of civilization
rather creep along its sides than cross its summit. How often is it a
barrier to prejudice and fanaticism? In passing over these heights of
land, through their thin atmosphere, the follies of the plain are
refined and purified; and as many species of plants do not scale their
summits, so many species of folly no doubt do not cross the
Alleghanies; it is only the hardy mountain plant that creeps quite over
the ridge, and descends into the valley beyond.
We get a dim notion of the flight of birds, especially of such as fly
high in the air, by having ascended a mountain. We can now see what
landmarks mountains are to their migrations; how the Catskills and
Highlands have hardly sunk to them, when Wachusett and Monadnock open a
passage to the northeast; how they are guided, too, in their course by
the rivers and valleys; and who knows but by the stars, as well as the
mountain ranges, and not by the petty landmarks which we use. The bird
whose eye takes in the Green Mountains on the one side, and the ocean
on the other, need not be at a loss to find its way.
At noon we descended the mountain, and having returned to the abodes of
men, turned our faces to the east again; measuring our progress, from
time to time, by the more ethereal hues which the mountain assumed.
Passing swiftly through Stillwater and Sterling, as with a downward
impetus, we found ourselves almost at home again in the green meadows
of Lancaster, so like our own Concord, for both are watered by two
streams which unite near their centres, and have many other features in
common. There is an unexpected refinement about this scenery; level
prairies of great extent, interspersed with elms and hop-fields and
groves of trees, give it almost a classic appearance. This, it will be
remembered, was the scene of Mrs. Kowlandson’s capture, and of other
events in the Indian wars, but from this July afternoon, and under that
mild exterior, those times seemed as remote as the irruption of the
Goths. They were the dark age of New England. On beholding a picture of
a New England village as it then appeared, with a fair open prospect,
and a light on trees and river, as if it were broad noon, we find we
had not thought the sun shone in those days, or that men lived in broad
daylight then. We do not imagine the sun shining on hill and valley
during Philip’s war, nor on the war-path of Paugus, or Standish, or
Church, or Lovell, with serene summer weather, but a dim twilight or
night did those events transpire in. They must have fought in the shade
of their own dusky deeds.
At length, as we plodded along the dusty roads, our thoughts became as
dusty as they; all thought indeed stopped, thinking broke down, or
proceeded only passively in a sort of rhythmical cadence of the
confused material of thought, and we found ourselves mechanically
repeating some familiar measure which timed with our tread; some verse
of the Robin Hood ballads, for instance, which one can recommend to
travel by.
“Swearers are swift, sayd lyttle John,
As the wind blows over the hill;
For if it be never so loud this night,
To-morrow it may be still.”
And so it went up hill and down till a stone interrupted the line, when
a new verse was chosen.
“His shoote it was but loosely shot,
Yet flewe not the arrowe in vaine,
For it met one of the sheriffe’s men,
And William-a-Trent was slaine.”
There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveller,
upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly
symbolical of human life,—now climbing the hills, now descending into
the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon,
from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old
lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is
yet sincere experience.
Leaving the Nashua, we changed our route a little, and arrived at
Stillriver Village, in the western part of Harvard, just as the sun was
setting. From this place, which lies to the northward, upon the western
slope of the same range of hills on which we had spent the noon before,
in the adjacent town, the prospect is beautiful, and the grandeur of
the mountain outlines unsurpassed. There was such a repose and quiet
here at this hour, as if the very hill-sides were enjoying the scene,
and we passed slowly along, looking back over the country we had
traversed, and listening to the evening song of the robin, we could not
help contrasting the equanimity of nature with the bustle and
impatience of man. His words and actions presume always a crisis near
at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending.
And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let
us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We
will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level
life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest
valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour, as
no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen from,
and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an
uninterrupted horizon.
We rested that night at Harvard, and the next morning, while one bent
his steps to the nearer village of Groton, the other took his separate
and solitary way to the peaceful meadows of Concord; but let him not
forget to record the brave hospitality of a farmer and his wife, who
generously entertained him at their board, though the poor wayfarer
could only congratulate the one on the continuance of hayweather, and
silently accept the kindness of the other. Refreshed by this instance
of generosity, no less than by the substantial viands set before him,
he pushed forward with new vigor, and reached the banks of the Concord
before the sun had climbed many degrees into the heavens.