Saratoga Springs.--Watering places all over the world are much alike:
they must be well filled with company, and full of bustle, and then they
answer the purpose for which they are intended--a general muster, under
the banner of folly, to drive care and common sense out of the field.
Like assembly-rooms, unless lighted up and full of people, they look
desolate and forlorn: so it was with Saratoga: a beautiful spot,
beautiful hotels, and beautiful water; but all these beauties were
thrown away, and the water ran away unheeded, because the place was
empty. People's pockets were empty, and Saratoga was to let. The
consequence was that I remained a week there, and should have remained
much longer had I not been warned, by repeated arrivals, that the
visitors were increasing, and that I should be no longer alone.
The weariness of solitude, as described by Alexander Selkirk and the
Anti-Zimmermanns, can surely not be equal to the misery of never being
alone; of feeling that your thoughts and ideas, rapidly accumulating,
are in a state of chaos and confusion, and that you have not a moment to
put them into any lucid order; of finding yourself, against your will,
continually in society, bandied from one person to the other, to make
the same bows, extend the same hand to be grasped, and reply to the same
eternal questions; until, like a man borne down by sleep after long
vigils, and at each moment roused to reply, you either are not aware of
what you do say, or are dead beat into an unmeaning smile. Since I have
been in this country, I have suffered this to such a degree as at last
to become quite nervous on the subject; and I might reply in the words
of the spirit summoned by Lochiel--
"Now my weary lips I close;
Leave, oh! leave me to repose."
It would be a strange account, had it been possible to keep one, of the
number of introductions which I have had since I came into this country.
Mr A introduces Mr B and C, Mr B and C introduce Mr D, E, F, and G.
Messrs. D, E, F, and G introduce Messrs. H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, and so
it goes on, _ad infinitum_ during the whole of the day; and this to me
who never could remember either a face or a name.
At introduction it is invariably the custom to shake hands; and thus you
go on shaking hands here, there, and everywhere, and with everybody; for
it is impossible to know who is who, in this land of equality.
But one shake of the hand will not do; if twenty times during the same
day you meet a person to whom you have been introduced, the hand is
every where extended with--"Well, captain, how do you find yourself by
this time?" and, in their good-will, when they seize your hand, they
follow the apothecary's advice--"When taken, to be well shaken." As for
the constant query--"How do you like our country?"--that is natural
enough. I should ask the same of an American in England, but to reply
to it is not the less tedious. It is all well meant, all kindness, but
it really requires fortitude and patience to endure it. Every one
throws in his voluntary tribute of compliments and good-will, but the
accumulated mass is too great for any one individual to bear. How I
long for the ocean prairies, or the wild forests. Subsequently, I
begged hard to be shut up for six months in the Penitentiary at
Philadelphia, but Sammy Wood said it was against the regulations. He
comforted me with a _tete-a-tete_ dinner, which was so agreeable, that
at the time I quite forgot I wished to be alone.
When I left Saratoga, I found no one, as I thought, in the car, who knew
me; and I determined, if possible, they should, in the Indian phrase,
_lose my trail_. I arrived at Schenectady, and was put down there. I
amused myself until the train started for Utica, which was to be in a
few hours, in walking about the engine-house, and examining the
locomotives; and having satisfied myself, set out for a solitary walk in
the country. There was no name on my luggage, and I had not given my
name when I took my ticket for the railroad. "At last," said I to
myself, "_I am incog_." I had walked out of the engine-house, looked
round the compass, and resolved in which direction I would bend my
steps, when a young man came up to me, and very politely taking off his
hat, said, "I believe I have the pleasure of speaking to Captain M---."
Had he known my indignation when he mentioned my name, poor fellow! but
there was no help for it, and I replied in the affirmative. After
apologising, he introduced himself, and then requested the liberty of
introducing his friend. "Well, if ever," thought I; and, "no never,"
followed afterwards as a matter of course, and as a matter of course his
friend was introduced. It reminded me of old times, when, midshipmen at
balls, we used to introduce each other to ladies we had none of us seen
before in our lives. Well, there I was, between two overpowering
civilities, but they meant it kindly, and I could not be angry. These
were students of Schenectady College: would I like to see it? a
beautiful location, not half a mile off. I requested to know if there
was any thing to be seen there, as I did not like to take a hot walk for
nothing, instead of the shady one I had proposed for myself. "Yes,
there was Professor Nott"--I had of course heard of Professor Nott.--
Professor Nott, who governed by moral influence and paternal sway, and
who had written so largely on stones and anthracite coal. I had never
before heard of moral influence, stones, or anthracite coal. Then there
were more professors, and a cabinet of minerals--the last was an
inducement, and I went.
I saw Professor Nott, but not the cabinet of minerals, for Professor
Savage had the key. With Professor Nott I had rather a hot argument
about anthracite coal, and then escaped before he was cool again. The
students walked back with me to the hotel, and, with many apologies for
leaving me, informed me that dinner was ready. I would not tax their
politeness any longer, and they departed.
Schenectady College, like most of the buildings in America, was
commenced on a grand scale, but has never been finished; the two wings
are finished, and the centre is lithographed, which looks very imposing
in the plate. There is a peculiarity in this college: it is called the
Botany Bay, from its receiving young men who have been expelled from
other colleges, and who are kept in order by moral influence and
paternal sway, the only means certainly by which wild young men are to
be reclaimed. Seriously speaking Professor Nott is a very clever man,
and I suspect this college will turn out more clever men than any other
in the Union. It differs from the other colleges in another point. It
upholds no peculiar sect of religion, which almost all the rest do. For
instance, Yule [Yale], William's Town, and Amherst Colleges, are under
presbyterian influence; Washington episcopal; Cambridge, in
Massachusets, unitarian.
There is one disadvantage generally attending railroads. Travellers
proceed more rapidly, but they lose all the beauty of the country.
Railroads of course run through the most level portions of the States;
and the levels, except they happen to be on the banks of a river, are
invariably uninteresting. The road from Schenectady to Utica is one of
the exceptions to this rule: there is not perhaps a more beautiful
variety of scenery to be found anywhere. You run the whole way through
the lovely valley of the Mohawk, on the banks of the Mohawk river. It
was really delightful, but the motion was so rapid that you lamented
passing by so fast. The Utica railroad is one of the best in America;
the eighty miles are performed in four hours and a-half, stoppages for
taking in water, passengers, and refreshments, included. The locomotive
was of great power, and as it snorted along with a train of carriages of
half a mile long in tow, it threw out such showers of fire, that we were
constantly in danger of conflagration. The weather was too warm to
admit of the windows being closed, and the ladies, assisted by the
gentlemen, were constantly employed in putting out the sparks which
settled on their clothes--the first time I ever heard ladies complain of
having too many _sparks_ about them. As the evening closed in we
actually were whirled along through a stream of fiery threads--a
beautiful, although humble imitation of the tail of a comet.
I had not been recognised in the rail car, and I again flattered myself
that I was unknown. I proceeded, on my arrival at Utica, to the hotel,
and asking at the bar for a bed, the book was handed to me, and I was
requested to write my name. Wherever you stop in America, they
generally produce a book and demand your name, not on account of any
police regulations, but merely because they will not allow secrets in
America, and because they choose to know who you may be. Of course, you
may frustrate this espionage by putting down any name you please; and I
had the pen in my hand, and was just thinking whether I should be Mr
Snooks or Mr Smith, when I received a slap on the shoulder, accompanied
with--"Well, captain, how are you by this time?" In despair I let the
pen drop out of my hand, and instead of my name I left on the book a
large blot. It was an old acquaintance from Albany, and before I had
been ten minutes in the hotel, I was recognised by at least ten more.
The Americans are such locomotives themselves, that it is useless to
attempt the incognito in any part except the west side of the
Missisippi, or the Rocky Mountains. Once known at New York, and you are
known every where, for in every place you will meet with some one whom
you have met walking in Broadway.
A tremendous thunder-storm, with torrents of rain, prevented my leaving
Utica for Trenton Falls until late in the afternoon. The roads,
ploughed up by the rain, were any thing but democratic; there was no
level in them; and we were jolted and shaken like peas in a rattle,
until we were silent from absolute suffering.
I rose the next morning at four o'clock. There was a heavy fog in the
air, and you could not distinguish more than one hundred yards before
you. I followed the path pointed out to me the night before, through a
forest of majestic trees, and descending a long flight of steps found
myself below the Falls. The scene impressed you with awe--the waters
roared through deep chasms, between two walls of rock, one hundred and
fifty feet high, perpendicular on each side, and the width between the
two varying from forty to fifty feet. The high rocks were of black
carbonate of lime in perfectly horizontal strata, so equally divided
that they appeared like solid masonry. For fifty or sixty feet above
the rushing waters they were smooth and bare; above that line vegetation
commenced with small bushes, until you arrived at their summits, which
were crowned with splendid forest trees, some of them inclining over the
chasm, as if they would peep into the abyss below and witness the wild
tumult of the waters.
From the narrowness of the pass, the height of the rocks, and the
superadded towering of the trees above, but a small portion of the
heavens was to be seen, and this was not blue, but of a misty murky
grey. The first sensation was that of dizziness and confusion, from the
unusual absence of the sky above, and the dashing frantic speed of the
angry boiling waters. The rocks on each side have been blasted so as to
form a path by which you may walk up to the first fall; but this path
was at times very narrow and you have to cling to the chain which is let
into the rock. The heavy storm of the day before had swelled the
torrent so that it rose nearly a foot above this path; and before I had
proceeded far, I found that the flood swept between my legs with a force
which would have taken some people off their feet. The rapids below the
Falls are much grander than the Falls themselves; there was one down in
a chasm between two riven rocks which it was painful to look long upon,
and watch with what a deep plunge--what irresistible force--the waters
dashed down and then returned to their own surface, as if struggling and
out of breath. As I stood over them in their wild career, listening to
their roaring as if in anger, and watching the madness of their speed, I
felt a sensation of awe--an inward acknowledgment of the tremendous
power of Nature; and, after a time, I departed with feelings of gladness
to escape from thought which became painful when so near to danger.
I gained the lower falls, which now covered the whole width of the rock,
which they seldom do except during the freshets. They were
extraordinary from their variety. On the side where I stood, poured
down a rapid column of water about one-half of the width of the fall; on
the other, it was running over a clear thin stream, as gentle and
amiable as water could be. That part of the fall reminded me of ladies'
hair in flowing ringlets, and the one nearest me of the Lord Chancellor
Eldon, in all the pomposity and frowning dignity of his full-bottomed
wig. And then I thought of the lion and the lamb, not lying down, but
falling down together; and then I thought that I was wet through, which
was a fact; so I climbed up a ladder, and came to a wooden bridge above
the fall, which conveyed me to the other side. The bridge posses over a
staircase of little falls, sometimes diagonally, sometimes at right
angles with the sites, and is very picturesque. On the other side you
climb up a ladder of one hundred feet, and arrive at a little building
with a portico, where travellers are refreshed. Here you have a view of
all the upper falls, but these seem tame after witnessing the savage
impetuosity of the rapids below. You ascend another ladder of one
hundred feet, and you arrive at a path pointed out to you by the broad
chips of the woodman's axe. Follow the chips and you will arrive four
or five hundred feet above both the bridge and the level of the upper
fall. This scene is splendid. The black perpendicular rocks on the
other side; the succession of falls; the rapids roaring below; the
forest trees rising to the clouds and spreading with their majestic
boughs the vapour ascending from the falling waters; together with the
occasional glimpses of the skies here and there--all this induces you to
wander with your eyes from one point of view to another, never tiring
with its beauty, wildness, and vastness: and, if you do not exclaim with
the Mussulman, God is great! you _feel_ it through every sense, and at
every pulsation of the heart.
The mountain was still above me, and I continued my ascent; but the
chips now disappeared, and, like Tom Thumb, I lost my way. I attempted
to retreat, but in vain; I was no longer amongst forest trees, but in a
maze of young mountain ash, from which I could not extricate myself: so
I stood still to think what I should do. I recollected that the usual
course of proceeding on such occasions, was either to sit down and cry,
or attempt to get out of your scrape. Tom Thumb did both; but I had no
time to indulge in the former luxury, so I pushed and pushed, till I
pushed myself out of my scrape, and found myself in a more respectable
part of the woods. I then stopped to take breath. I heard a rustling
behind me, and made sure it was a panther:--it was a beautiful little
palm squirrel, who came close to me, as if to say "Who are you?" I took
off my hat and told him my name, when, very contemptuously, as I
thought, he turned short round, cocked his tail over his back, and
skipped away. "Free, but not enlightened," thought I; "hasn't a soul
above nuts." I also beat a retreat, and on my arrival at the hotel,
found that, although I had no guides to pay, Nature had made a very
considerable levy upon my wardrobe: my boots were bursting, my trowsers
torn to fragments, and my hat was spoilt; and, moreover, I sat shivering
in the garments which remained. So I, in my turn, levied upon a cow
that was milking, and having improved her juice very much by the
addition of some rum, I sat down under the portico, and smoked the cigar
of meditation.
The walls of the portico were, as usual, scribbled over by those who
would obtain cheap celebrity. I always read these productions; they are
pages of human life. The majority of the scribblers leave a name and
nothing more: beyond that, some few of their productions are witty, some
sententious, mostly gross. My thoughts, as I read over the rubbish,
were happily expressed by the following distich which I came to:--
Les Fenetres et les Murailles,
Sont le papier des Canailles.
A little farther on, I found the lie given to this remark by some
philosophic Spaniard:
Amigo quien quiera que seas, piensa que si acqui
Pones tu nombre, pronto il tiempo lo borrara
Escribe lo pues en il libro de Dio en donde.
Permancera eternamente--
In Amigo.