Long before daylight we ranged abroad, hatchet in hand, in search of
fuel, and made the yet slumbering and dreaming wood resound with our
blows. Then with our fire we burned up a portion of the loitering
night, while the kettle sang its homely strain to the morning star. We
tramped about the shore, waked all the muskrats, and scared up the
bittern and birds that were asleep upon their roosts; we hauled up and
upset our boat and washed it and rinsed out the clay, talking aloud as
if it were broad day, until at length, by three o’clock, we had
completed our preparations and were ready to pursue our voyage as
usual; so, shaking the clay from our feet, we pushed into the fog.
Though we were enveloped in mist as usual, we trusted that there was a
bright day behind it.
Ply the oars! away! away!
In each dew-drop of the morning
Lies the promise of a day.
Rivers from the sunrise flow,
Springing with the dewy morn;
Voyageurs ’gainst time do row,
Idle noon nor sunset know,
Ever even with the dawn.
Belknap, the historian of this State, says that, “In the neighborhood
of fresh rivers and ponds, a whitish fog in the morning lying over the
water is a sure indication of fair weather for that day; and when no
fog is seen, rain is expected before night.” That which seemed to us to
invest the world was only a narrow and shallow wreath of vapor
stretched over the channel of the Merrimack from the seaboard to the
mountains. More extensive fogs, however, have their own limits. I once
saw the day break from the top of Saddle-back Mountain in
Massachusetts, above the clouds. As we cannot distinguish objects
through this dense fog, let me tell this story more at length.
I had come over the hills on foot and alone in serene summer days,
plucking the raspberries by the wayside, and occasionally buying a loaf
of bread at a farmer’s house, with a knapsack on my back which held a
few traveller’s books and a change of clothing, and a staff in my hand.
I had that morning looked down from the Hoosack Mountain, where the
road crosses it, on the village of North Adams in the valley three
miles away under my feet, showing how uneven the earth may sometimes
be, and making it seem an accident that it should ever be level and
convenient for the feet of man. Putting a little rice and sugar and a
tin cup into my knapsack at this village, I began in the afternoon to
ascend the mountain, whose summit is three thousand six hundred feet
above the level of the sea, and was seven or eight miles distant by the
path. My route lay up a long and spacious valley called the Bellows,
because the winds rush up or down it with violence in storms, sloping
up to the very clouds between the principal range and a lower mountain.
There were a few farms scattered along at different elevations, each
commanding a fine prospect of the mountains to the north, and a stream
ran down the middle of the valley on which near the head there was a
mill. It seemed a road for the pilgrim to enter upon who would climb to
the gates of heaven. Now I crossed a hay-field, and now over the brook
on a slight bridge, still gradually ascending all the while with a sort
of awe, and filled with indefinite expectations as to what kind of
inhabitants and what kind of nature I should come to at last. It now
seemed some advantage that the earth was uneven, for one could not
imagine a more noble position for a farm-house than this vale afforded,
farther from or nearer to its head, from a glen-like seclusion
overlooking the country at a great elevation between these two mountain
walls.
It reminded me of the homesteads of the Huguenots, on Staten Island,
off the coast of New Jersey. The hills in the interior of this island,
though comparatively low, are penetrated in various directions by
similar sloping valleys on a humble scale, gradually narrowing and
rising to the centre, and at the head of these the Huguenots, who were
the first settlers, placed their houses quite within the land, in rural
and sheltered places, in leafy recesses where the breeze played with
the poplar and the gum-tree, from which, with equal security in calm
and storm, they looked out through a widening vista, over miles of
forest and stretching salt marsh, to the Huguenot’s Tree, an old elm on
the shore at whose root they had landed, and across the spacious outer
bay of New York to Sandy Hook and the Highlands of Neversink, and
thence over leagues of the Atlantic, perchance to some faint vessel in
the horizon, almost a day’s sail on her voyage to that Europe whence
they had come. When walking in the interior there, in the midst of
rural scenery, where there was as little to remind me of the ocean as
amid the New Hampshire hills, I have suddenly, through a gap, a cleft
or “clove road,” as the Dutch settlers called it, caught sight of a
ship under full sail, over a field of corn, twenty or thirty miles at
sea. The effect was similar, since I had no means of measuring
distances, to seeing a painted ship passed backwards and forwards
through a magic-lantern.
But to return to the mountain. It seemed as if he must be the most
singular and heavenly minded man whose dwelling stood highest up the
valley. The thunder had rumbled at my heels all the way, but the shower
passed off in another direction, though if it had not, I half believed
that I should get above it. I at length reached the last house but one,
where the path to the summit diverged to the right, while the summit
itself rose directly in front. But I determined to follow up the valley
to its head, and then find my own route up the steep as the shorter and
more adventurous way. I had thoughts of returning to this house, which
was well kept and so nobly placed, the next day, and perhaps remaining
a week there, if I could have entertainment. Its mistress was a frank
and hospitable young woman, who stood before me in a dishabille, busily
and unconcernedly combing her long black hair while she talked, giving
her head the necessary toss with each sweep of the comb, with lively,
sparkling eyes, and full of interest in that lower world from which I
had come, talking all the while as familiarly as if she had known me
for years, and reminding me of a cousin of mine. She at first had taken
me for a student from Williamstown, for they went by in parties, she
said, either riding or walking, almost every pleasant day, and were a
pretty wild set of fellows; but they never went by the way I was going.
As I passed the last house, a man called out to know what I had to
sell, for seeing my knapsack, he thought that I might be a pedler who
was taking this unusual route over the ridge of the valley into South
Adams. He told me that it was still four or five miles to the summit by
the path which I had left, though not more than two in a straight line
from where I was, but that nobody ever went this way; there was no
path, and I should find it as steep as the roof of a house. But I knew
that I was more used to woods and mountains than he, and went along
through his cow-yard, while he, looking at the sun, shouted after me
that I should not get to the top that night. I soon reached the head of
the valley, but as I could not see the summit from this point, I
ascended a low mountain on the opposite side, and took its bearing with
my compass. I at once entered the woods, and began to climb the steep
side of the mountain in a diagonal direction, taking the bearing of a
tree every dozen rods. The ascent was by no means difficult or
unpleasant, and occupied much less time than it would have taken to
follow the path. Even country people, I have observed, magnify the
difficulty of travelling in the forest, and especially among mountains.
They seem to lack their usual common sense in this. I have climbed
several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as
might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly
than to travel the smoothest highway. It is very rare that you meet
with obstacles in this world which the humblest man has not faculties
to surmount. It is true we may come to a perpendicular precipice, but
we need not jump off nor run our heads against it. A man may jump down
his own cellar stairs or dash his brains out against his chimney, if he
is mad. So far as my experience goes, travellers generally exaggerate
the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is
imaginary; for what’s the hurry? If a person lost would conclude that
after all he is not lost, he is not beside himself, but standing in his
own old shoes on the very spot where he is, and that for the time being
he will live there; but the places that have known him, _they_ are
lost,—how much anxiety and danger would vanish. I am not alone if I
stand by myself. Who knows where in space this globe is rolling? Yet we
will not give ourselves up for lost, let it go where it will.
I made my way steadily upward in a straight line through a dense
undergrowth of mountain laurel, until the trees began to have a scraggy
and infernal look, as if contending with frost goblins, and at length I
reached the summit, just as the sun was setting. Several acres here had
been cleared, and were covered with rocks and stumps, and there was a
rude observatory in the middle which overlooked the woods. I had one
fair view of the country before the sun went down, but I was too
thirsty to waste any light in viewing the prospect, and set out
directly to find water. First, going down a well-beaten path for half a
mile through the low scrubby wood, till I came to where the water stood
in the tracks of the horses which had carried travellers up, I lay down
flat, and drank these dry, one after another, a pure, cold, spring-like
water, but yet I could not fill my dipper, though I contrived little
siphons of grass-stems, and ingenious aqueducts on a small scale; it
was too slow a process. Then remembering that I had passed a moist
place near the top, on my way up, I returned to find it again, and
here, with sharp stones and my hands, in the twilight, I made a well
about two feet deep, which was soon filled with pure cold water, and
the birds too came and drank at it. So I filled my dipper, and, making
my way back to the observatory, collected some dry sticks, and made a
fire on some flat stones which had been placed on the floor for that
purpose, and so I soon cooked my supper of rice, having already
whittled a wooden spoon to eat it with.
I sat up during the evening, reading by the light of the fire the
scraps of newspapers in which some party had wrapped their luncheon;
the prices current in New York and Boston, the advertisements, and the
singular editorials which some had seen fit to publish, not foreseeing
under what critical circumstances they would be read. I read these
things at a vast advantage there, and it seemed to me that the
advertisements, or what is called the business part of a paper, were
greatly the best, the most useful, natural, and respectable. Almost all
the opinions and sentiments expressed were so little considered, so
shallow and flimsy, that I thought the very texture of the paper must
be weaker in that part and tear the more easily. The advertisements and
the prices current were more closely allied to nature, and were
respectable in some measure as tide and meteorological tables are; but
the reading-matter, which I remembered was most prized down below,
unless it was some humble record of science, or an extract from some
old classic, struck me as strangely whimsical, and crude, and
one-idea’d, like a school-boy’s theme, such as youths write and after
burn. The opinions were of that kind that are doomed to wear a
different aspect to-morrow, like last year’s fashions; as if mankind
were very green indeed, and would be ashamed of themselves in a few
years, when they had outgrown this verdant period. There was, moreover,
a singular disposition to wit and humor, but rarely the slightest real
success; and the apparent success was a terrible satire on the attempt;
the Evil Genius of man laughed the loudest at his best jokes. The
advertisements, as I have said, such as were serious, and not of the
modern quack kind, suggested pleasing and poetic thoughts; for commerce
is really as interesting as nature. The very names of the commodities
were poetic, and as suggestive as if they had been inserted in a
pleasing poem,—Lumber, Cotton, Sugar, Hides, Guano, Logwood. Some
sober, private, and original thought would have been grateful to read
there, and as much in harmony with the circumstances as if it had been
written on a mountain-top; for it is of a fashion which never changes,
and as respectable as hides and logwood, or any natural product. What
an inestimable companion such a scrap of paper would have been,
containing some fruit of a mature life. What a relic! What a recipe! It
seemed a divine invention, by which not mere shining coin, but shining
and current thoughts, could be brought up and left there.
As it was cold, I collected quite a pile of wood and lay down on a
board against the side of the building, not having any blanket to cover
me, with my head to the fire, that I might look after it, which is not
the Indian rule. But as it grew colder towards midnight, I at length
encased myself completely in boards, managing even to put a board on
top of me, with a large stone on it, to keep it down, and so slept
comfortably. I was reminded, it is true, of the Irish children, who
inquired what their neighbors did who had no door to put over them in
winter nights as they had; but I am convinced that there was nothing
very strange in the inquiry. Those who have never tried it can have no
idea how far a door, which keeps the single blanket down, may go toward
making one comfortable. We are constituted a good deal like chickens,
which taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the
chimney-corner, will often peep till they die, nevertheless, but if you
put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and
feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly. My only companions were
the mice, which came to pick up the crumbs that had been left in those
scraps of paper; still, as everywhere, pensioners on man, and not
unwisely improving this elevated tract for their habitation. They
nibbled what was for them; I nibbled what was for me. Once or twice in
the night, when I looked up, I saw a white cloud drifting through the
windows, and filling the whole upper story.
This observatory was a building of considerable size, erected by the
students of Williamstown College, whose buildings might be seen by
daylight gleaming far down in the valley. It would be no small
advantage if every college were thus located at the base of a mountain,
as good at least as one well-endowed professorship. It were as well to
be educated in the shadow of a mountain as in more classical shades.
Some will remember, no doubt, not only that they went to the college,
but that they went to the mountain. Every visit to its summit would, as
it were, generalize the particular information gained below, and
subject it to more catholic tests.
I was up early and perched upon the top of this tower to see the
daybreak, for some time reading the names that had been engraved there,
before I could distinguish more distant objects. An “untamable fly”
buzzed at my elbow with the same nonchalance as on a molasses hogshead
at the end of Long Wharf. Even there I must attend to his stale
humdrum. But now I come to the pith of this long digression.—As the
light increased I discovered around me an ocean of mist, which by
chance reached up exactly to the base of the tower, and shut out every
vestige of the earth, while I was left floating on this fragment of the
wreck of a world, on my carved plank, in cloudland; a situation which
required no aid from the imagination to render it impressive. As the
light in the east steadily increased, it revealed to me more clearly
the new world into which I had risen in the night, the new _terra
firma_ perchance of my future life. There was not a crevice left
through which the trivial places we name Massachusetts or Vermont or
New York could be seen, while I still inhaled the clear atmosphere of a
July morning,—if it were July there. All around beneath me was spread
for a hundred miles on every side, as far as the eye could reach, an
undulating country of clouds, answering in the varied swell of its
surface to the terrestrial world it veiled. It was such a country as we
might see in dreams, with all the delights of paradise. There were
immense snowy pastures, apparently smooth-shaven and firm, and shady
vales between the vaporous mountains; and far in the horizon I could
see where some luxurious misty timber jutted into the prairie, and
trace the windings of a water-course, some unimagined Amazon or
Orinoko, by the misty trees on its brink. As there was wanting the
symbol, so there was not the substance of impurity, no spot nor stain.
It was a favor for which to be forever silent to be shown this vision.
The earth beneath had become such a flitting thing of lights and
shadows as the clouds had been before. It was not merely veiled to me,
but it had passed away like the phantom of a shadow, σκιᾶς ὄναρ, and
this new platform was gained. As I had climbed above storm and cloud,
so by successive days’ journeys I might reach the region of eternal
day, beyond the tapering shadow of the earth; ay,
“Heaven itself shall slide,
And roll away, like melting stars that glide
Along their oily threads.”
But when its own sun began to rise on this pure world, I found myself a
dweller in the dazzling halls of Aurora, into which poets have had but
a partial glance over the eastern hills, drifting amid the
saffron-colored clouds, and playing with the rosy fingers of the Dawn,
in the very path of the Sun’s chariot, and sprinkled with its dewy
dust, enjoying the benignant smile, and near at hand the far-darting
glances of the god. The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the
dark and shadowy under-side of heaven’s pavement; it is only when seen
at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some
faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed. But my
muse would fail to convey an impression of the gorgeous tapestry by
which I was surrounded, such as men see faintly reflected afar off in
the chambers of the east. Here, as on earth, I saw the gracious god
“Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
. . . . . .
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.”
But never here did “Heaven’s sun” stain himself.
But, alas, owing, as I think, to some unworthiness in myself, my
private sun did stain himself, and
“Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly wrack on his celestial face,”—
for before the god had reached the zenith the heavenly pavement rose
and embraced my wavering virtue, or rather I sank down again into that
“forlorn world,” from which the celestial sun had hid his visage,—
“How may a worm that crawls along the dust,
Clamber the azure mountains, thrown so high,
And fetch from thence thy fair idea just,
That in those sunny courts doth hidden lie,
Clothed with such light as blinds the angel’s eye?
How may weak mortal ever hope to file
His unsmooth tongue, and his deprostrate style?
O, raise thou from his corse thy now entombed exile!”
In the preceding evening I had seen the summits of new and yet higher
mountains, the Catskills, by which I might hope to climb to heaven
again, and had set my compass for a fair lake in the southwest, which
lay in my way, for which I now steered, descending the mountain by my
own route, on the side opposite to that by which I had ascended, and
soon found myself in the region of cloud and drizzling rain, and the
inhabitants affirmed that it had been a cloudy and drizzling day
wholly.
But now we must make haste back before the fog disperses to the blithe
Merrimack water.
Since that first “Away! away!”
Many a lengthy reach we’ve rowed,
Still the sparrow on the spray
Hastes to usher in the day
With her simple stanza’d ode.
We passed a canal-boat before sunrise, groping its way to the seaboard,
and, though we could not see it on account of the fog, the few dull,
thumping, stertorous sounds which we heard, impressed us with a sense
of weight and irresistible motion. One little rill of commerce already
awake on this distant New Hampshire river. The fog, as it required more
skill in the steering, enhanced the interest of our early voyage, and
made the river seem indefinitely broad. A slight mist, through which
objects are faintly visible, has the effect of expanding even ordinary
streams, by a singular mirage, into arms of the sea or inland lakes. In
the present instance it was even fragrant and invigorating, and we
enjoyed it as a sort of earlier sunshine, or dewy and embryo light.
Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain-head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men’s fields!
The same pleasant and observant historian whom we quoted above says,
that, “In the mountainous parts of the country, the ascent of vapors,
and their formation into clouds, is a curious and entertaining object.
The vapors are seen rising in small columns like smoke from many
chimneys. When risen to a certain height, they spread, meet, condense,
and are attracted to the mountains, where they either distil in gentle
dews, and replenish the springs, or descend in showers, accompanied
with thunder. After short intermissions, the process is repeated many
times in the course of a summer day, affording to travellers a lively
illustration of what is observed in the Book of Job, ‘They are wet with
the showers of the mountains.’”
Fogs and clouds which conceal the overshadowing mountains lend the
breadth of the plains to mountain vales. Even a small-featured country
acquires some grandeur in stormy weather when clouds are seen drifting
between the beholder and the neighboring hills. When, in travelling
toward Haverhill through Hampstead in this State, on the height of land
between the Merrimack and the Piscataqua or the sea, you commence the
descent eastward, the view toward the coast is so distant and
unexpected, though the sea is invisible, that you at first suppose the
unobstructed atmosphere to be a fog in the lowlands concealing hills of
corresponding elevation to that you are upon; but it is the mist of
prejudice alone, which the winds will not disperse. The most stupendous
scenery ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct, or in other
words limited, and the imagination is no longer encouraged to
exaggerate it. The actual height and breadth of a mountain or a
waterfall are always ridiculously small; they are the imagined only
that content us. Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would
have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our
home.
Such was the heaviness of the dews along this river that we were
generally obliged to leave our tent spread over the bows of the boat
till the sun had dried it, to avoid mildew. We passed the mouth of
Penichook Brook, a wild salmon-stream, in the fog, without seeing it.
At length the sun’s rays struggled through the mist and showed us the
pines on shore dripping with dew, and springs trickling from the moist
banks,—
“And now the taller sons, whom Titan warms,
Of unshorn mountains blown with easy winds,
Dandle the morning’s childhood in their arms,
And, if they chanced to slip the prouder pines,
The under corylets did catch their shines,
To gild their leaves.”
We rowed for some hours between glistening banks before the sun had
dried the grass and leaves, or the day had established its character.
Its serenity at last seemed the more profound and secure for the
denseness of the morning’s fog. The river became swifter, and the
scenery more pleasing than before. The banks were steep and clayey for
the most part, and trickling with water, and where a spring oozed out a
few feet above the river the boatmen had cut a trough out of a slab
with their axes, and placed it so as to receive the water and fill
their jugs conveniently. Sometimes this purer and cooler water,
bursting out from under a pine or a rock, was collected into a basin
close to the edge of and level with the river, a fountain-head of the
Merrimack. So near along life’s stream are the fountains of innocence
and youth making fertile its sandy margin; and the voyageur will do
well to replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources.
Some youthful spring, perchance, still empties with tinkling music into
the oldest river, even when it is falling into the sea, and we imagine
that its music is distinguished by the river-gods from the general
lapse of the stream, and falls sweeter on their ears in proportion as
it is nearer to the ocean. As the evaporations of the river feed thus
these unsuspected springs which filter through its banks, so,
perchance, our aspirations fall back again in springs on the margin of
life’s stream to refresh and purify it. The yellow and tepid river may
float his scow, and cheer his eye with its reflections and its ripples,
but the boatman quenches his thirst at this small rill alone. It is
this purer and cooler element that chiefly sustains his life. The race
will long survive that is thus discreet.
Our course this morning lay between the territories of Merrimack, on
the west, and Litchfield, once called Brenton’s Farm, on the east,
which townships were anciently the Indian Naticook. Brenton was a
fur-trader among the Indians, and these lands were granted to him in
1656. The latter township contains about five hundred inhabitants, of
whom, however, we saw none, and but few of their dwellings. Being on
the river, whose banks are always high and generally conceal the few
houses, the country appeared much more wild and primitive than to the
traveller on the neighboring roads. The river is by far the most
attractive highway, and those boatmen who have spent twenty or
twenty-five years on it must have had a much fairer, more wild, and
memorable experience than the dusty and jarring one of the teamster who
has driven, during the same time, on the roads which run parallel with
the stream. As one ascends the Merrimack he rarely sees a village, but
for the most part alternate wood and pasture lands, and sometimes a
field of corn or potatoes, of rye or oats or English grass, with a few
straggling apple-trees, and, at still longer intervals, a farmer’s
house. The soil, excepting the best of the interval, is commonly as
light and sandy as a patriot could desire. Sometimes this forenoon the
country appeared in its primitive state, and as if the Indian still
inhabited it, and, again, as if many free, new settlers occupied it,
their slight fences straggling down to the water’s edge; and the
barking of dogs, and even the prattle of children, were heard, and
smoke was seen to go up from some hearthstone, and the banks were
divided into patches of pasture, mowing, tillage, and woodland. But
when the river spread out broader, with an uninhabited islet, or a
long, low sandy shore which ran on single and devious, not answering to
its opposite, but far off as if it were sea-shore or single coast, and
the land no longer nursed the river in its bosom, but they conversed as
equals, the rustling leaves with rippling waves, and few fences were
seen, but high oak woods on one side, and large herds of cattle, and
all tracks seemed a point to one centre behind some statelier grove,—we
imagined that the river flowed through an extensive manor, and that the
few inhabitants were retainers to a lord, and a feudal state of things
prevailed.
When there was a suitable reach, we caught sight of the Goffstown
mountain, the Indian Uncannunuc, rising before us on the west side. It
was a calm and beautiful day, with only a slight zephyr to ripple the
surface of the water, and rustle the woods on shore, and just warmth
enough to prove the kindly disposition of Nature to her children. With
buoyant spirits and vigorous impulses we tossed our boat rapidly along
into the very middle of this forenoon. The fish-hawk sailed and
screamed overhead. The chipping or striped squirrel, _Sciurus striatus_
(_Tamias Lysteri_, Aud.), sat upon the end of some Virginia fence or
rider reaching over the stream, twirling a green nut with one paw, as
in a lathe, while the other held it fast against its incisors as
chisels. Like an independent russet leaf, with a will of its own,
rustling whither it could; now under the fence, now over it, now
peeping at the voyageurs through a crack with only its tail visible,
now at its lunch deep in the toothsome kernel, and now a rod off
playing at hide-and-seek, with the nut stowed away in its chops, where
were half a dozen more besides, extending its cheeks to a ludicrous
breadth,—as if it were devising through what safe valve of frisk or
somerset to let its superfluous life escape; the stream passing
harmlessly off, even while it sits, in constant electric flashes
through its tail. And now with a chuckling squeak it dives into the
root of a hazel, and we see no more of it. Or the larger red squirrel
or chickaree, sometimes called the Hudson Bay squirrel (_Scriurus
Hudsonius_), gave warning of our approach by that peculiar alarum of
his, like the winding up of some strong clock, in the top of a
pine-tree, and dodged behind its stem, or leaped from tree to tree with
such caution and adroitness, as if much depended on the fidelity of his
scout, running along the white-pine boughs sometimes twenty rods by our
side, with such speed, and by such unerring routes, as if it were some
well-worn familiar path to him; and presently, when we have passed, he
returns to his work of cutting off the pine-cones, and letting them
fall to the ground.
We passed Cromwell’s Falls, the first we met with on this river, this
forenoon, by means of locks, without using our wheels. These falls are
the Nesenkeag of the Indians. Great Nesenkeag Stream comes in on the
right just above, and Little Nesenkeag some distance below, both in
Litchfield. We read in the Gazetteer, under the head of Merrimack, that
“The first house in this town was erected on the margin of the river
[soon after 1665] for a house of traffic with the Indians. For some
time one Cromwell carried on a lucrative trade with them, weighing
their furs with his foot, till, enraged at his supposed or real
deception, they formed the resolution to murder him. This intention
being communicated to Cromwell, he buried his wealth and made his
escape. Within a few hours after his flight, a party of the Penacook
tribe arrived, and, not finding the object of their resentment, burnt
his habitation.” Upon the top of the high bank here, close to the
river, was still to be seen his cellar, now overgrown with trees. It
was a convenient spot for such a traffic, at the foot of the first
falls above the settlements, and commanding a pleasant view up the
river, where he could see the Indians coming down with their furs. The
lock-man told us that his shovel and tongs had been ploughed up here,
and also a stone with his name on it. But we will not vouch for the
truth of this story. In the New Hampshire Historical Collections for
1815 it says, “Some time after pewter was found in the well, and an
iron pot and trammel in the sand; the latter are preserved.” These were
the traces of the white trader. On the opposite bank, where it jutted
over the stream cape-wise, we picked up four arrow-heads and a small
Indian tool made of stone, as soon as we had climbed it, where plainly
there had once stood a wigwam of the Indians with whom Cromwell traded,
and who fished and hunted here before he came.
As usual the gossips have not been silent respecting Cromwell’s buried
wealth, and it is said that some years ago a farmer’s plough, not far
from here, slid over a flat stone which emitted a hollow sound, and, on
its being raised, a small hole six inches in diameter was discovered,
stoned about, from which a sum of money was taken. The lock-man told us
another similar story about a farmer in a neighboring town, who had
been a poor man, but who suddenly bought a good farm, and was well to
do in the world, and, when he was questioned, did not give a
satisfactory account of the matter; how few, alas, could! This caused
his hired man to remember that one day, as they were ploughing
together, the plough struck something, and his employer, going back to
look, concluded not to go round again, saying that the sky looked
rather lowering, and so put up his team. The like urgency has caused
many things to be remembered which never transpired. The truth is,
there is money buried everywhere, and you have only to go to work to
find it.
Not far from these falls stands an oak-tree, on the interval, about a
quarter of a mile from the river, on the farm of a Mr. Lund, which was
pointed out to us as the spot where French, the leader of the party
which went in pursuit of the Indians from Dunstable, was killed.
Farwell dodged them in the thick woods near. It did not look as if men
had ever had to run for their lives on this now open and peaceful
interval.
Here too was another extensive desert by the side of the road in
Litchfield, visible from the bank of the river. The sand was blown off
in some places to the depth of ten or twelve feet, leaving small
grotesque hillocks of that height, where there was a clump of bushes
firmly rooted. Thirty or forty years ago, as we were told, it was a
sheep-pasture, but the sheep, being worried by the fleas, began to paw
the ground, till they broke the sod, and so the sand began to blow,
till now it had extended over forty or fifty acres. This evil might
easily have been remedied, at first, by spreading birches with their
leaves on over the sand, and fastening them down with stakes, to break
the wind. The fleas bit the sheep, and the sheep bit the ground, and
the sore had spread to this extent. It is astonishing what a great sore
a little scratch breedeth. Who knows but Sahara, where caravans and
cities are buried, began with the bite of an African flea? This poor
globe, how it must itch in many places! Will no god be kind enough to
spread a salve of birches over its sores? Here too we noticed where the
Indians had gathered a heap of stones, perhaps for their council-fire,
which, by their weight having prevented the sand under them from
blowing away, were left on the summit of a mound. They told us that
arrow-heads, and also bullets of lead and iron, had been found here. We
noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the
Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow
sandbanks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible.
Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes.
Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking
their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted
fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.
This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water. It
was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could see the
ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like
those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmen are
permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they
cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now
understood the propriety of this provision.
Plum Island, at the mouth of this river, to whose formation, perhaps,
these very banks have sent their contribution, is a similar desert of
drifting sand, of various colors, blown into graceful curves by the
wind. It is a mere sand-bar exposed, stretching nine miles parallel to
the coast, and, exclusive of the marsh on the inside, rarely more than
half a mile wide. There are but half a dozen houses on it, and it is
almost without a tree, or a sod, or any green thing with which a
countryman is familiar. The thin vegetation stands half buried in sand,
as in drifting snow. The only shrub, the beach-plum, which gives the
island its name, grows but a few feet high; but this is so abundant
that parties of a hundred at once come from the main-land and down the
Merrimack, in September, pitch their tents, and gather the plums, which
are good to eat raw and to preserve. The graceful and delicate
beach-pea, too, grows abundantly amid the sand, and several strange,
moss-like and succulent plants. The island for its whole length is
scalloped into low hills, not more than twenty feet high, by the wind,
and, excepting a faint trail on the edge of the marsh, is as trackless
as Sahara. There are dreary bluffs of sand and valleys ploughed by the
wind, where you might expect to discover the bones of a caravan.
Schooners come from Boston to load with the sand for masons’ uses, and
in a few hours the wind obliterates all traces of their work. Yet you
have only to dig a foot or two anywhere to come to fresh water; and you
are surprised to learn that woodchucks abound here, and foxes are
found, though you see not where they can burrow or hide themselves. I
have walked down the whole length of its broad beach at low tide, at
which time alone you can find a firm ground to walk on, and probably
Massachusetts does not furnish a more grand and dreary walk. On the
seaside there are only a distant sail and a few coots to break the
grand monotony. A solitary stake stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill than
usual, is remarkable as a landmark for miles; while for music you hear
only the ceaseless sound of the surf, and the dreary peep of the
beach-birds.
There were several canal-boats at Cromwell’s Falls passing through the
locks, for which we waited. In the forward part of one stood a brawny
New Hampshire man, leaning on his pole, bareheaded and in shirt and
trousers only, a rude Apollo of a man, coming down from that “vast
uplandish country” to the main; of nameless age, with flaxen hair, and
vigorous, weather-bleached countenance, in whose wrinkles the sun still
lodged, as little touched by the heats and frosts and withering cares
of life as a maple of the mountain; an undressed, unkempt, uncivil man,
with whom we parleyed awhile, and parted not without a sincere interest
in one another. His humanity was genuine and instinctive, and his
rudeness only a manner. He inquired, just as we were passing out of
earshot, if we had killed anything, and we shouted after him that we
had shot a _buoy_, and could see him for a long while scratching his
head in vain to know if he had heard aright.
There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners
are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core
or sap-wood at all. We sometimes meet uncivil men, children of Amazons,
who dwell by mountain paths, and are said to be inhospitable to
strangers; whose salutation is as rude as the grasp of their brawny
hands, and who deal with men as unceremoniously as they are wont to
deal with the elements. They need only to extend their clearings, and
let in more sunlight, to seek out the southern slopes of the hills,
from which they may look down on the civil plain or ocean, and temper
their diet duly with the cereal fruits, consuming less wild meat and
acorns, to become like the inhabitants of cities. A true politeness
does not result from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true,
but grows naturally in characters of the right grain and quality,
through a long fronting of men and events, and rubbing on good and bad
fortune. Perhaps I can tell a tale to the purpose while the lock is
filling,—for our voyage this forenoon furnishes but few incidents of
importance.
Early one summer morning I had left the shores of the Connecticut, and
for the livelong day travelled up the bank of a river, which came in
from the west; now looking down on the stream, foaming and rippling
through the forest a mile off, from the hills over which the road led,
and now sitting on its rocky brink and dipping my feet in its rapids,
or bathing adventurously in mid-channel. The hills grew more and more
frequent, and gradually swelled into mountains as I advanced, hemming
in the course of the river, so that at last I could not see where it
came from, and was at liberty to imagine the most wonderful meanderings
and descents. At noon I slept on the grass in the shade of a maple,
where the river had found a broader channel than usual, and was spread
out shallow, with frequent sand-bars exposed. In the names of the towns
I recognized some which I had long ago read on teamsters’ wagons, that
had come from far up country; quiet, uplandish towns, of mountainous
fame. I walked along, musing and enchanted, by rows of sugar-maples,
through the small and uninquisitive villages, and sometimes was pleased
with the sight of a boat drawn up on a sand-bar, where there appeared
no inhabitants to use it. It seemed, however, as essential to the river
as a fish, and to lend a certain dignity to it. It was like the trout
of mountain streams to the fishes of the sea, or like the young of the
land-crab born far in the interior, who have never yet heard the sound
of the ocean’s surf. The hills approached nearer and nearer to the
stream, until at last they closed behind me, and I found myself just
before nightfall in a romantic and retired valley, about half a mile in
length, and barely wide enough for the stream at its bottom. I thought
that there could be no finer site for a cottage among mountains. You
could anywhere run across the stream on the rocks, and its constant
murmuring would quiet the passions of mankind forever. Suddenly the
road, which seemed aiming for the mountain-side, turned short to the
left, and another valley opened, concealing the former, and of the same
character with it. It was the most remarkable and pleasing scenery I
had ever seen. I found here a few mild and hospitable inhabitants, who,
as the day was not quite spent, and I was anxious to improve the light,
directed me four or five miles farther on my way to the dwelling of a
man whose name was Rice, who occupied the last and highest of the
valleys that lay in my path, and who, they said, was a rather rude and
uncivil man. But “what is a foreign country to those who have science?
Who is a stranger to those who have the habit of speaking kindly?”
At length, as the sun was setting behind the mountains in a still
darker and more solitary vale, I reached the dwelling of this man.
Except for the narrowness of the plain, and that the stones were solid
granite, it was the counterpart of that retreat to which Belphœbe bore
the wounded Timias,—
“In a pleasant glade,
With mountains round about environed,
And mighty woods, which did the valley shade,
And like a stately theatre it made,
Spreading itself into a spacious plain;
And in the midst a little river played
Amongst the pumy stones which seemed to plain,
With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain.”
I observed, as I drew near, that he was not so rude as I had
anticipated, for he kept many cattle, and dogs to watch them, and I saw
where he had made maple-sugar on the sides of the mountains, and above
all distinguished the voices of children mingling with the murmur of
the torrent before the door. As I passed his stable I met one whom I
supposed to be a hired man, attending to his cattle, and I inquired if
they entertained travellers at that house. “Sometimes we do,” he
answered, gruffly, and immediately went to the farthest stall from me,
and I perceived that it was Rice himself whom I had addressed. But
pardoning this incivility to the wildness of the scenery, I bent my
steps to the house. There was no sign-post before it, nor any of the
usual invitations to the traveller, though I saw by the road that many
went and came there, but the owner’s name only was fastened to the
outside; a sort of implied and sullen invitation, as I thought. I
passed from room to room without meeting any one, till I came to what
seemed the guests’ apartment, which was neat, and even had an air of
refinement about it, and I was glad to find a map against the wall
which would direct me on my journey on the morrow. At length I heard a
step in a distant apartment, which was the first I had entered, and
went to see if the landlord had come in; but it proved to be only a
child, one of those whose voices I had heard, probably his son, and
between him and me stood in the doorway a large watch-dog, which
growled at me, and looked as if he would presently spring, but the boy
did not speak to him; and when I asked for a glass of water, he briefly
said, “It runs in the corner.” So I took a mug from the counter and
went out of doors, and searched round the corner of the house, but
could find neither well nor spring, nor any water but the stream which
ran all along the front. I came back, therefore, and, setting down the
mug, asked the child if the stream was good to drink; whereupon he
seized the mug, and, going to the corner of the room, where a cool
spring which issued from the mountain behind trickled through a pipe
into the apartment, filled it, and drank, and gave it to me empty
again, and, calling to the dog, rushed out of doors. Erelong some of
the hired men made their appearance, and drank at the spring, and
lazily washed themselves and combed their hair in silence, and some sat
down as if weary, and fell asleep in their seats. But all the while I
saw no women, though I sometimes heard a bustle in that part of the
house from which the spring came.
At length Rice himself came in, for it was now dark, with an ox-whip in
his hand, breathing hard, and he too soon settled down into his seat
not far from me, as if, now that his day’s work was done, he had no
farther to travel, but only to digest his supper at his leisure. When I
asked him if he could give me a bed, he said there was one ready, in
such a tone as implied that I ought to have known it, and the less said
about that the better. So far so good. And yet he continued to look at
me as if he would fain have me say something further like a traveller.
I remarked, that it was a wild and rugged country he inhabited, and
worth coming many miles to see. “Not so very rough neither,” said he,
and appealed to his men to bear witness to the breadth and smoothness
of his fields, which consisted in all of one small interval, and to the
size of his crops; “and if we have some hills,” added he, “there’s no
better pasturage anywhere.” I then asked if this place was the one I
had heard of, calling it by a name I had seen on the map, or if it was
a certain other; and he answered, gruffly, that it was neither the one
nor the other; that he had settled it and cultivated it, and made it
what it was, and I could know nothing about it. Observing some guns and
other implements of hunting hanging on brackets around the room, and
his hounds now sleeping on the floor, I took occasion to change the
discourse, and inquired if there was much game in that country, and he
answered this question more graciously, having some glimmering of my
drift; but when I inquired if there were any bears, he answered
impatiently that he was no more in danger of losing his sheep than his
neighbors; he had tamed and civilized that region. After a pause,
thinking of my journey on the morrow, and the few hours of daylight in
that hollow and mountainous country, which would require me to be on my
way betimes, I remarked that the day must be shorter by an hour there
than on the neighboring plains; at which he gruffly asked what I knew
about it, and affirmed that he had as much daylight as his neighbors;
he ventured to say, the days were longer there than where I lived, as I
should find if I stayed; that in some way, I could not be expected to
understand how, the sun came over the mountains half an hour earlier,
and stayed half an hour later there than on the neighboring plains. And
more of like sort he said. He was, indeed, as rude as a fabled satyr.
But I suffered him to pass for what he was,—for why should I quarrel
with nature?—and was even pleased at the discovery of such a singular
natural phenomenon. I dealt with him as if to me all manners were
indifferent, and he had a sweet, wild way with him. I would not
question nature, and I would rather have him as he was than as I would
have him. For I had come up here not for sympathy, or kindness, or
society, but for novelty and adventure, and to see what nature had
produced here. I therefore did not repel his rudeness, but quite
innocently welcomed it all, and knew how to appreciate it, as if I were
reading in an old drama a part well sustained. He was indeed a coarse
and sensual man, and, as I have said, uncivil, but he had his just
quarrel with nature and mankind, I have no doubt, only he had no
artificial covering to his ill-humors. He was earthy enough, but yet
there was good soil in him, and even a long-suffering Saxon probity at
bottom. If you could represent the case to him, he would not let the
race die out in him, like a red Indian.
At length I told him that he was a fortunate man, and I trusted that he
was grateful for so much light; and, rising, said I would take a lamp,
and that I would pay him then for my lodging, for I expected to
recommence my journey even as early as the sun rose in his country; but
he answered in haste, and this time civilly, that I should not fail to
find some of his household stirring, however early, for they were no
sluggards, and I could take my breakfast with them before I started, if
I chose; and as he lighted the lamp I detected a gleam of true
hospitality and ancient civility, a beam of pure and even gentle
humanity, from his bleared and moist eyes. It was a look more intimate
with me, and more explanatory, than any words of his could have been if
he had tried to his dying day. It was more significant than any Rice of
those parts could even comprehend, and long anticipated this man’s
culture,—a glance of his pure genius, which did not much enlighten him,
but did impress and rule him for the moment, and faintly constrain his
voice and manner. He cheerfully led the way to my apartment, stepping
over the limbs of his men, who were asleep on the floor in an
intervening chamber, and showed me a clean and comfortable bed. For
many pleasant hours after the household was asleep I sat at the open
window, for it was a sultry night, and heard the little river
“Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plain,
With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain.”
But I arose as usual by starlight the next morning, before my host, or
his men, or even his dogs, were awake; and, having left a ninepence on
the counter, was already half-way over the mountain with the sun before
they had broken their fast.
Before I had left the country of my host, while the first rays of the
sun slanted over the mountains, as I stopped by the wayside to gather
some raspberries, a very old man, not far from a hundred, came along
with a milking-pail in his hand, and turning aside began to pluck the
berries near me:—
“His reverend locks
In comelye curles did wave;
And on his aged temples grew
The blossoms of the grave.”
But when I inquired the way, he answered in a low, rough voice, without
looking up or seeming to regard my presence, which I imputed to his
years; and presently, muttering to himself, he proceeded to collect his
cows in a neighboring pasture; and when he had again returned near to
the wayside, he suddenly stopped, while his cows went on before, and,
uncovering his head, prayed aloud in the cool morning air, as if he had
forgotten this exercise before, for his daily bread, and also that He
who letteth his rain fall on the just and on the unjust, and without
whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground, would not neglect the
stranger (meaning me), and with even more direct and personal
applications, though mainly according to the long-established formula
common to lowlanders and the inhabitants of mountains. When he had done
praying, I made bold to ask him if he had any cheese in his hut which
he would sell me, but he answered without looking up, and in the same
low and repulsive voice as before, that they did not make any, and went
to milking. It is written, “The stranger who turneth away from a house
with disappointed hopes, leaveth there his own offences, and departeth,
taking with him all the good actions of the owner.”
Being now fairly in the stream of this week’s commerce, we began to
meet with boats more frequently, and hailed them from time to time with
the freedom of sailors. The boatmen appeared to lead an easy and
contented life, and we thought that we should prefer their employment
ourselves to many professions which are much more sought after. They
suggested how few circumstances are necessary to the well-being and
serenity of man, how indifferent all employments are, and that any may
seem noble and poetic to the eyes of men, if pursued with sufficient
buoyancy and freedom. With liberty and pleasant weather, the simplest
occupation, any unquestioned country mode of life which detains us in
the open air, is alluring. The man who picks peas steadily for a living
is more than respectable, he is even envied by his shop-worn neighbors.
We are as happy as the birds when our Good Genius permits us to pursue
any out-door work, without a sense of dissipation. Our penknife
glitters in the sun; our voice is echoed by yonder wood; if an oar
drops, we are fain to let it drop again.
The canal-boat is of very simple construction, requiring but little
ship-timber, and, as we were told, costs about two hundred dollars.
They are managed by two men. In ascending the stream they use poles
fourteen or fifteen feet long, pointed with iron, walking about one
third the length of the boat from the forward end. Going down, they
commonly keep in the middle of the stream, using an oar at each end; or
if the wind is favorable they raise their broad sail, and have only to
steer. They commonly carry down wood or bricks,—fifteen or sixteen
cords of wood, and as many thousand bricks, at a time,—and bring back
stores for the country, consuming two or three days each way between
Concord and Charlestown. They sometimes pile the wood so as to leave a
shelter in one part where they may retire from the rain. One can hardly
imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable to
contemplation and the observation of nature. Unlike the mariner, they
have the constantly varying panorama of the shore to relieve the
monotony of their labor, and it seemed to us that as they thus glided
noiselessly from town to town, with all their furniture about them, for
their very homestead is a movable, they could comment on the character
of the inhabitants with greater advantage and security to themselves
than the traveller in a coach, who would be unable to indulge in such
broadsides of wit and humor in so small a vessel for fear of the
recoil. They are not subject to great exposure, like the lumberers of
Maine, in any weather, but inhale the healthfullest breezes, being
slightly encumbered with clothing, frequently with the head and feet
bare. When we met them at noon as they were leisurely descending the
stream, their busy commerce did not look like toil, but rather like
some ancient Oriental game still played on a large scale, as the game
of chess, for instance, handed down to this generation. From morning
till night, unless the wind is so fair that his single sail will
suffice without other labor than steering, the boatman walks backwards
and forwards on the side of his boat, now stooping with his shoulder to
the pole, then drawing it back slowly to set it again, meanwhile moving
steadily forward through an endless valley and an everchanging scenery,
now distinguishing his course for a mile or two, and now shut in by a
sudden turn of the river in a small woodland lake. All the phenomena
which surround him are simple and grand, and there is something
impressive, even majestic, in the very motion he causes, which will
naturally be communicated to his own character, and he feels the slow,
irresistible movement under him with pride, as if it were his own
energy.
The news spread like wildfire among us youths, when formerly, once in a
year or two, one of these boats came up the Concord River, and was seen
stealing mysteriously through the meadows and past the village. It came
and departed as silently as a cloud, without noise or dust, and was
witnessed by few. One summer day this huge traveller might be seen
moored at some meadow’s wharf, and another summer day it was not there.
Where precisely it came from, or who these men were who knew the rocks
and soundings better than we who bathed there, we could never tell. We
knew some river’s bay only, but they took rivers from end to end. They
were a sort of fabulous river-men to us. It was inconceivable by what
sort of mediation any mere landsman could hold communication with them.
Would they heave to, to gratify his wishes? No, it was favor enough to
know faintly of their destination, or the time of their possible
return. I have seen them in the summer when the stream ran low, mowing
the weeds in mid-channel, and with hayers’ jests cutting broad swaths
in three feet of water, that they might make a passage for their scow,
while the grass in long windrows was carried down the stream, undried
by the rarest hay-weather. We admired unweariedly how their vessel
would float, like a huge chip, sustaining so many casks of lime, and
thousands of bricks, and such heaps of iron ore, with wheelbarrows
aboard, and that, when we stepped on it, it did not yield to the
pressure of our feet. It gave us confidence in the prevalence of the
law of buoyancy, and we imagined to what infinite uses it might be put.
The men appeared to lead a kind of life on it, and it was whispered
that they slept aboard. Some affirmed that it carried sail, and that
such winds blew here as filled the sails of vessels on the ocean; which
again others much doubted. They had been seen to sail across our Fair
Haven bay by lucky fishers who were out, but unfortunately others were
not there to see. We might then say that our river was navigable,—why
not? In after-years I read in print, with no little satisfaction, that
it was thought by some that, with a little expense in removing rocks
and deepening the channel, “there might be a profitable inland
navigation.” _I_ then lived some-where to tell of.
Such is Commerce, which shakes the cocoa-nut and bread-fruit tree in
the remotest isle, and sooner or later dawns on the duskiest and most
simple-minded savage. If we may be pardoned the digression, who can
help being affected at the thought of the very fine and slight, but
positive relation, in which the savage inhabitants of some remote isle
stand to the mysterious white mariner, the child of the sun?—as if _we_
were to have dealings with an animal higher in the scale of being than
ourselves. It is a barely recognized fact to the natives that he
exists, and has his home far away somewhere, and is glad to buy their
fresh fruits with his superfluous commodities. Under the same catholic
sun glances his white ship over Pacific waves into their smooth bays,
and the poor savage’s paddle gleams in the air.
Man’s little acts are grand,
Beheld from land to land,
There as they lie in time,
Within their native clime
Ships with the noontide weigh,
And glide before its ray
To some retired bay,
Their haunt,
Whence, under tropic sun,
Again they run,
Bearing gum Senegal and Tragicant.
For this was ocean meant,
For this the sun was sent,
And moon was lent,
And winds in distant caverns pent.
Since our voyage the railroad on the bank has been extended, and there
is now but little boating on the Merrimack. All kinds of produce and
stores were formerly conveyed by water, but now nothing is carried up
the stream, and almost wood and bricks alone are carried down, and
these are also carried on the railroad. The locks are fast wearing out,
and will soon be impassable, since the tolls will not pay the expense
of repairing them, and so in a few years there will be an end of
boating on this river. The boating at present is principally between
Merrimack and Lowell, or Hooksett and Manchester. They make two or
three trips in a week, according to wind and weather, from Merrimack to
Lowell and back, about twenty-five miles each way. The boatman comes
singing in to shore late at night, and moors his empty boat, and gets
his supper and lodging in some house near at hand, and again early in
the morning, by starlight perhaps, he pushes away up stream, and, by a
shout, or the fragment of a song, gives notice of his approach to the
lock-man, with whom he is to take his breakfast. If he gets up to his
wood-pile before noon he proceeds to load his boat, with the help of
his single “hand,” and is on his way down again before night. When he
gets to Lowell he unloads his boat, and gets his receipt for his cargo,
and, having heard the news at the public house at Middlesex or
elsewhere, goes back with his empty boat and his receipt in his pocket
to the owner, and to get a new load. We were frequently advertised of
their approach by some faint sound behind us, and looking round saw
them a mile off, creeping stealthily up the side of the stream like
alligators. It was pleasant to hail these sailors of the Merrimack from
time to time, and learn the news which circulated with them. We
imagined that the sun shining on their bare heads had stamped a liberal
and public character on their most private thoughts.
The open and sunny interval still stretched away from the river
sometimes by two or more terraces, to the distant hill-country, and
when we climbed the bank we commonly found an irregular copse-wood
skirting the river, the primitive having floated down-stream long ago
to——the “King’s navy.” Sometimes we saw the river-road a quarter or
half a mile distant, and the particolored Concord stage, with its cloud
of dust, its van of earnest travelling faces, and its rear of dusty
trunks, reminding us that the country had its places of rendezvous for
restless Yankee men. There dwelt along at considerable distances on
this interval a quiet agricultural and pastoral people, with every
house its well, as we sometimes proved, and every household, though
never so still and remote it appeared in the noontide, its dinner about
these times. There they lived on, those New England people, farmer
lives, father and grandfather and great-grandfather, on and on without
noise, keeping up tradition, and expecting, beside fair weather and
abundant harvests, we did not learn what. They were contented to live,
since it was so contrived for them, and where their lines had fallen.
Our uninquiring corpses lie more low
Than our life’s curiosity doth go.
Yet these men had no need to travel to be as wise as Solomon in all his
glory, so similar are the lives of men in all countries, and fraught
with the same homely experiences. One half the world _knows_ how the
other half lives.
About noon we passed a small village in Merrimack at Thornton’s Ferry,
and tasted of the waters of Naticook Brook on the same side, where
French and his companions, whose grave we saw in Dunstable, were
ambuscaded by the Indians. The humble village of Litchfield, with its
steepleless meeting-house, stood on the opposite or east bank, near
where a dense grove of willows backed by maples skirted the shore.
There also we noticed some shagbark-trees, which, as they do not grow
in Concord, were as strange a sight to us as the palm would be, whose
fruit only we have seen. Our course now curved gracefully to the north,
leaving a low, flat shore on the Merrimack side, which forms a sort of
harbor for canal-boats. We observed some fair elms and particularly
large and handsome white-maples standing conspicuously on this
interval; and the opposite shore, a quarter of a mile below, was
covered with young elms and maples six inches high, which had probably
sprung from the seeds which had been washed across.
Some carpenters were at work here mending a scow on the green and
sloping bank. The strokes of their mallets echoed from shore to shore,
and up and down the river, and their tools gleamed in the sun a quarter
of a mile from us, and we realized that boat-building was as ancient
and honorable an art as agriculture, and that there might be a naval as
well as a pastoral life. The whole history of commerce was made
manifest in that scow turned bottom upward on the shore. Thus did men
begin to go down upon the sea in ships; _quæque diu steterant in
montibus altis, Fluctibus ignotis insultavêre carinæ;_ “and keels which
had long stood on high mountains careered insultingly (_insultavêre_)
over unknown waves.” (Ovid, Met. I. 133.) We thought that it would be
well for the traveller to build his boat on the bank of a stream,
instead of finding a ferry or a bridge. In the Adventures of Henry the
fur-trader, it is pleasant to read that when with his Indians he
reached the shore of Ontario, they consumed two days in making two
canoes of the bark of the elm-tree, in which to transport themselves to
Fort Niagara. It is a worthy incident in a journey, a delay as good as
much rapid travelling. A good share of our interest in Xenophon’s story
of his retreat is in the manœuvres to get the army safely over the
rivers, whether on rafts of logs or fagots, or sheep-skins blown up.
And where could they better afford to tarry meanwhile than on the banks
of a river?
As we glided past at a distance, these out-door workmen appeared to
have added some dignity to their labor by its very publicness. It was a
part of the industry of nature, like the work of hornets and mud-wasps.
The waves slowly beat,
Just to keep the noon sweet,
And no sound is floated o’er,
Save the mallet on shore,
Which echoing on high
Seems a-calking the sky.
The haze, the sun’s dust of travel, had a Lethean influence on the land
and its inhabitants, and all creatures resigned themselves to float
upon the inappreciable tides of nature.
Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze,
Woven of Nature’s richest stuffs,
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,
Last conquest of the eye;
Toil of the day displayed sun-dust,
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth.
Ethereal estuary, frith of light,
Breakers of air, billows of heat
Fine summer spray on inland seas;
Bird of the sun, transparent-winged
Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned,
From heath or stubble rising without song;
Establish thy serenity o’er the fields
The routine which is in the sunshine and the finest days, as that which
has conquered and prevailed, commends itself to us by its very
antiquity and apparent solidity and necessity. Our weakness needs it,
and our strength uses it. We cannot draw on our boots without bracing
ourselves against it. If there were but one erect and solid standing
tree in the woods, all creatures would go to rub against it and make
sure of their footing. During the many hours which we spend in this
waking sleep, the hand stands still on the face of the clock, and we
grow like corn in the night. Men are as busy as the brooks or bees, and
postpone everything to their business; as carpenters discuss politics
between the strokes of the hammer while they are shingling a roof.
This noontide was a fit occasion to make some pleasant harbor, and
there read the journal of some voyageur like ourselves, not too moral
nor inquisitive, and which would not disturb the noon; or else some old
classic, the very flower of all reading, which we had postponed to such
a season
“Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure.”
But, alas, our chest, like the cabin of a coaster, contained only its
well-thumbed “Navigator” for all literature, and we were obliged to
draw on our memory for these things.
We naturally remembered Alexander Henry’s Adventures here, as a sort of
classic among books of American travel. It contains scenery and rough
sketching of men and incidents enough to inspire poets for many years,
and to my fancy is as full of sounding names as any page of
history,—Lake Winnipeg, Hudson Bay, Ottaway, and portages innumerable;
Chipeways, Gens de Terres, Les Pilleurs, The Weepers; with
reminiscences of Hearne’s journey, and the like; an immense and shaggy
but sincere country, summer and winter, adorned with chains of lakes
and rivers, covered with snows, with hemlocks, and fir-trees. There is
a naturalness, an unpretending and cold life in this traveller, as in a
Canadian winter, what life was preserved through low temperatures and
frontier dangers by furs within a stout heart. He has truth and
moderation worthy of the father of history, which belong only to an
intimate experience, and he does not defer too much to literature. The
unlearned traveller may quote his single line from the poets with as
good right as the scholar. He too may speak of the stars, for he sees
them shoot perhaps when the astronomer does not. The good sense of this
author is very conspicuous. He is a traveller who does not exaggerate,
but writes for the information of his readers, for science, and for
history. His story is told with as much good faith and directness as if
it were a report to his brother traders, or the Directors of the Hudson
Bay Company, and is fitly dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks. It reads like
the argument to a great poem on the primitive state of the country and
its inhabitants, and the reader imagines what in each case, with the
invocation of the Muse, might be sung, and leaves off with suspended
interest, as if the full account were to follow. In what school was
this fur-trader educated? He seems to travel the immense snowy country
with such purpose only as the reader who accompanies him, and to the
latter’s imagination, it is, as it were, momentarily created to be the
scene of his adventures. What is most interesting and valuable in it,
however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock,
or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the _annals_ of the country,
but the natural facts, or _perennials_, which are ever without date.
When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its
dates like withered leaves.
The Souhegan, or _Crooked_ River, as some translate it, comes in from
the west about a mile and a half above Thornton’s Ferry. Babboosuck
Brook empties into it near its mouth. There are said to be some of the
finest water privileges in the country still unimproved on the former
stream, at a short distance from the Merrimack. One spring morning,
March 22, in the year 1677, an incident occurred on the banks of the
river here, which is interesting to us as a slight memorial of an
interview between two ancient tribes of men, one of which is now
extinct, while the other, though it is still represented by a miserable
remnant, has long since disappeared from its ancient hunting-grounds. A
Mr. James Parker, at “Mr. Hinchmanne’s farme ner Meremack,” wrote thus
“to the Honred Governer and Council at Bostown, _Hast, Post Hast”:_—
“Sagamore Wanalancet come this morning to informe me, and then went to
Mr. Tyng’s to informe him, that his son being on ye other sid of
Meremack river over against Souhegan upon the 22 day of this instant,
about tene of the clock in the morning, he discovered 15 Indians on
this sid the river, which he soposed to be Mohokes by ther spech. He
called to them; they answered, but he could not understand ther spech;
and he having a conow ther in the river, he went to breck his conow
that they might not have ani ues of it. In the mean time they shot
about thirty guns at him, and he being much frighted fled, and come
home forthwith to Nahamcock [Pawtucket Falls or Lowell], wher ther
wigowames now stand.”
Penacooks and Mohawks! _ubique gentium sunt?_ In the year 1670, a
Mohawk warrior scalped a Naamkeak or else a Wamesit Indian maiden near
where Lowell now stands. She, however, recovered. Even as late as 1685,
John Hogkins, a Penacook Indian, who describes his grandfather as
having lived “at place called Malamake rever, other name chef Natukkog
and Panukkog, that one rever great many names,” wrote thus to the
governor:—
“May 15th, 1685.
“Honor governor my friend,—
“You my friend I desire your worship and your power, because I hope you
can do som great matters this one. I am poor and naked and I have no
men at my place because I afraid allwayes Mohogs he will kill me every
day and night. If your worship when please pray help me you no let
Mohogs kill me at my place at Malamake river called Pannukkog and
Natukkog, I will submit your worship and your power. And now I want
pouder and such alminishon shatt and guns, because I have forth at my
hom and I plant theare.
“This all Indian hand, but pray you do consider your humble servant,