[PART I]
I
"I do remember me, that, in my youth,
When I was wandering--"
MANFRED.
It was a bright morning in the early days of "leafy June." Many a
month had seen me a wanderer from distant New-England; and now I found
myself "once more upon the waters," embarked for a pilgrimage over the
broad prairie-plains of the sunset West. A drizzly, miserable rain had
for some days been hovering, with proverbial pertinacity, over the
devoted "City of the Falls," and still, at intervals, came lazily
pattering down from the sunlighted clouds, reminding one of a hoiden
girl smiling through a shower of April tear-drops, while the quay
continued to exhibit all that wild uproar and tumult, "confusion worse
confounded," which characterizes the steamboat commerce of the Western
Valley. The landing at the time was thronged with steamers, and yet
the incessant "boom, boom, boom," of the high-pressure engines, the
shrill hiss of scalding steam, and the fitful port-song of the negro
firemen rising ever and anon upon the breeze, gave notice of a
constant {14} augmentation to the number. Some, too, were getting
under way, and their lower _guards_ were thronged by emigrants with
their household and agricultural utensils. Drays were rattling hither
and thither over the rough pavement; Irish porters were cracking their
whips and roaring forth alternate staves of blasphemy and song; clerks
hurrying to and fro, with fluttering note-books, in all the fancied
dignity of "brief authority;" hackney-coaches dashing down to the
water's edge, apparently with no motive to the nervous man but noise;
while at intervals, as if to fill up the pauses of the Babel, some
incontinent steamer would hurl forth from the valves of her
overcharged boilers one of those deafening, terrible blasts, echoing
and re-echoing along the river-banks, and streets, and among the lofty
buildings, till the very welkin rang again.
To one who has never visited the public wharves of the great cities of
the West, it is no trivial task to convey an adequate idea of the
spectacle they present. The commerce of the Eastern seaports and that
of the Western Valley are utterly dissimilar; not more in the staples
of intercourse than in the mode in which it is conducted; and, were
one desirous of exhibiting to a friend from the Atlantic shore a
picture of the prominent features which characterize commercial
proceedings upon the Western waters, or, indeed, of Western character
in its general outline, at a _coup d'oeil_, he could do no better
than to place him in the wild uproar of the steamboat quay. Amid the
"crowd, the hum, {15} the shock" of such a scene stands out Western
peculiarity in all its stern proportion.
Steamers on the great waters of the West are well known to indulge no
violently conscientious scruples upon the subject of punctuality, and
a solitary exception at our behest, or in our humble behalf, was, to
be sure, not an event to be counted on. "There's dignity in being
waited for;" hour after hour, therefore, still found us and left us
amid the untold scenes and sounds of the public landing. It is true,
and to the unending honour of all concerned be it recorded, very true
it is our doughty steamer ever and anon would puff and blow like a
porpoise or a narwhal; and then would she swelter from every pore and
quiver in every limb with the ponderous labouring of her huge
enginery, and the steam would shrilly whistle and shriek like a spirit
in its confinement, till at length she united her whirlwind voice to
the general roar around; and all this indicated, indubitably, an
intention to be off and away; but a knowing one was he who could
determine the _when_.
Among the causes of our wearisome detention was one of a nature too
melancholy, too painfully interesting lightly to be alluded to.
Endeavouring to while away the tedium of delay, I was pacing leisurely
back and forth upon the _guard_, surveying the lovely scenery of the
opposite shore, and the neat little houses of the village sprinkled
upon the plain beyond, when a wild, piercing shriek struck upon my
ear. I was hurrying immediately forward to the spot whence it seemed
to proceed, {16} when I was intercepted by some of our boat's crew
bearing a mangled body. It was that of our second engineer, a fine,
laughing young fellow, who had been terribly injured by becoming
entangled with the flywheel of the machinery while in motion. He was
laid upon the passage floor. I stood at his head; and never, I think,
shall I forget those convulsed and agonized features. His countenance
was ghastly and livid; beaded globules of cold sweat started out
incessantly upon his pale brow; and, in the paroxysms of pain, his
dark eye would flash, his nostril dilate, and his lips quiver so as to
expose the teeth gnashing in a fearful manner; while a muttered
execration, dying away from exhaustion, caused us all to shudder. And
then that wild despairing roll of the eyeball in its socket as the
miserable man would glance hurriedly around upon the countenances of
the bystanders, imploring them, in utter helplessness, to lend him
relief. Ah! it is a fearful thing to look upon these strivings of
humanity in the iron grasp of a power it may in vain resist! From the
quantity of blood thrown off, the oppressive fulness of the chest, and
the difficult respiration, some serious pulmonary injury had evidently
been sustained; while a splintered clavicle and limbs shockingly
shattered racked the poor sufferer with anguish inexpressible. It was
evident he believed himself seriously injured, for at times he would
fling out his arms, beseeching those around him to "hold him back," as
if even then he perceived the icy grasp of the death angel creeping
over his frame.
{17} Perhaps I have devoted more words to the detail of this
melancholy incident than would otherwise have been the case, on
account of the interest which some circumstances in the sufferer's
history, subsequently received from the captain of our steamer,
inspired.
"Frank, poor fellow," said the captain, "was a native of Ohio, the son
of a lone woman, a widow. He was all her hope, and to his exertions
she was indebted for a humble support."
Here, then, were circumstances to touch the sympathies of any heart
possessed of but a tithe of the nobleness of our nature; and I could
not but reflect, as they were recounted, how like the breath of
desolation the first intelligence of her son's fearful end must sweep
over the spirit of this lonely widow; for, like the wretched
Constance, she can "never, never behold him more."[3]
"Her life, her joy, her food, her all the world!
Her widow-comfort, and her sorrow's cure!"
While indulging in these sad reflections a gay burst of music arrested
my attention; and, looking up, I perceived the packet-boat "Lady
Marshall" dropping from her mooring at the quay, her decks swarming
with passengers, and under high press of steam, holding her bold
course against the current, while the merry dashing of the wheels,
mingling with the wild clang of martial music, imparted an air almost
of romance to the scene. How strangely did this contrast with that
misery from which my eye had just turned!
There are few objects more truly grand--I had {18} almost said
sublime--than a powerful steamer struggling triumphantly with the
rapids of the Western waters. The scene has in it a something of that
power which we feel upon us in viewing a ship under full sail; and, in
some respects, there is more of the sublime in the humbler triumph of
man over the elements than in that more vast. Sublimity is a result,
not merely of massive, extended, unmeasured greatness, but oftener,
and far more impressively, does the sentiment arise from a
_combination_ of vast and powerful objects. The mighty stream rolling
its volumed floods through half a continent, and hurrying onward to
mingle its full tide with the "Father of Waters," is truly sublime;
its resistless power is sublime; the memory of its by-gone scenes, and
the venerable moss-grown forests on its banks, are sublime; and,
lastly, the noble fabric of man's workmanship struggling and groaning
in convulsed, triumphant effort to overcome the resistance offered,
completes a picture which demands not the heaving ocean-waste and the
"oak leviathan" to embellish.
It was not until the afternoon was far advanced that we found
ourselves fairly embarked. A rapid freshet had within a few hours
swollen the tranquil Ohio far beyond its ordinary volume and velocity,
and its turbid waters were rolling onward between the green banks,
bearing on their bosom all the varied spoils of their mountain-home,
and of the rich region through which they had been flowing. The finest
site from which to view the city we found to be the channel of the
Falls upon the Indiana side of the stream, called the _Indian_ {19}
chute, to distinguish it from two others, called the _Middle_ chute
and the _Kentucky_ chute. The prospect from this point is noble,
though the uniformity of the structures, the fewness of the spires,
the unimposing character of the public edifices, and the depression of
the site upon which the city stands, give to it a monotonous, perhaps
a lifeless aspect to the stranger.
It was in the year 1778 that a settlement was first commenced upon the
spot on which the fair city of Louisville now stands.[4] In the early
spring of that year, General George Rodgers Clarke, under authority of
the State of Virginia, descended the Ohio with several hundred men,
with the design of reducing the military posts of Kaskaskia, Cahokia,
and Fort Vincent, then held by British troops. Disembarking upon Corn
Island at the Falls of the Ohio, opposite the present city, land
sufficient for the support of six families, which were left, was
cleared and planted with _corn_. From this circumstance the island
received a name which it yet retains. General Clarke proceeded upon
his expedition, and, in the autumn returning successful, the emigrants
were removed to the main land, and a settlement was commenced where
Louisville now stands. During the few succeeding years, other families
from Virginia settled upon the spot, and in the spring of 1780 seven
stations were formed upon Beargrass Creek,[5] which here empties into
the Mississippi, and Louisville commenced its march to its present
importance.
The view of the city from the Falls, as I have remarked, is not at all
imposing; the view of the {20} Falls from the city, on the contrary,
is one of beauty and romance. They are occasioned by a parapet of
limestone extending quite across the stream, which is here about one
mile in width; and when the water is low the whole chain sparkles with
bubbling foam-bells. When the stream is full the descent is hardly
perceptible but for the increased rapidity of the current, which
varies from ten to fourteen miles an hour.[6] Owing to the height of
the freshet, this was the case at the time when we descended them, and
there was a wild air of romance about the dark rushing waters: and the
green woodlands upon either shore, overshadowed as they were by the
shifting light and shade of the flitting clouds, cast over the scene
a bewitching fascination. "_Corn Island_," with its legendary
associations, rearing its dense clump of foliage as from the depths of
the stream, was not the least beautiful object of the panorama; while
the receding city, with its smoky roofs, its bustling quay, and the
glitter and animation of an extended line of steamers, was alone
necessary to fill up a scene for a limner.[7] And our steamer swept
onward {21} over the rapids, and threaded their maze of beautiful
islands, and passed along the little villages at their foot and the
splendid steamers along their shore, till twilight had faded, and the
dusky mantle of departed day was flung over forest and stream.
_Ohio River._