"After we are exhausted by a long course of application to
business, how delightful are the first moments of indolence
and repose! _O che bella coza di far niente!_"--STEWART.
"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn!"
_Falstaff._
That distinguished metaphysician Dugald Stewart, in his treatise upon
the "Active and Moral Powers," has, in the language of my motto,
somewhere[214] observed, that leisure after continued exertion is a
source of happiness perfect in its kind; and {117} surely, at the
moment I am now writing, my own feelings abundantly testify to the
force of the remark. For more than one month past have I been urging
myself onward from village to village and from hamlet to hamlet,
through woodland, and over prairie, river, and rivulet, with almost
the celerity of an _avant courier_, and hardly with closer regard to
passing scenes and events. My purpose, reader, for I may as well tell
you, has been to accomplish, within a portion of time to some degree
limited, a "tour over the prairies" previously laid out. This, within
the prescribed period, I am now quite certain of fulfilling; and here
am I, at length "taking mine ease in mine inn" at the ancient and
venerable French village Kaskaskia.
It is evening now. The long summer sunset is dying away in beauty from
the heavens; and alone in my chamber am I gathering up the fragments
of events scattered along the pathway of the week that is gone. Last
evening at this hour I was entering the town of Pinkneyville, and my
last number left me soberly regaling myself upon the harmonious
_vocalities_ of the sombre little village of Salem. Here, then, may I
well enough resume "the thread of my discourse."
During my wanderings in Illinois I have more than once referred to the
frequency and violence of the thunder-gusts by which it is visited. I
had travelled not many miles the morning after leaving Salem when I
was assailed by one of the most terrific storms I remember to have yet
encountered. All the morning the atmosphere had been most oppressive,
{118} the sultriness completely prostrating, and the livid exhalations
quivered along the parched-up soil of the prairies, as if over the
mouth of an enormous furnace. A gauzy mist of silvery whiteness at
length diffused itself over the landscape; an inky cloud came heaving
up in the northern horizon, and soon the thunder-peal began to bellow
and reverberate along the darkened prairie, and the great raindrops
came tumbling to the ground. Fortunately, a shelter was at hand; but
hardly had the traveller availed himself of its liberal hospitality,
when the heavens were again lighted up by the sunbeams; the sable
cloud rolled off to the east, and all was beautiful and calm, as if
the angel of desolation in his hurried flight had but for a moment
stooped the shade of his dusky wing, and had then swept onward to
accomplish elsewhere his terrible bidding. With a reflection like this
I was about remounting to pursue my way, when a prolonged, deafening,
terrible crash--as if the wild idea of heathen mythology was indeed
about to be realized, and the thunder-car of Olympian Jove was dashing
through the concave above--caused me to falter with foot in stirrup,
and almost involuntarily to turn my eye in the direction from which
the bolt seemed to have burst. A few hundred yards from the spot on
which I stood a huge elm had been blasted by the lightning; and its
enormous shaft towering aloft, torn, mangled, shattered from the very
summit to its base, was streaming its long ghastly fragments on the
blast. The scene was one startlingly impressive; one of those few
scenes in a man's life the remembrance {119} of which years cannot
wholly efface; which he never _forgets_. As I gazed upon this giant
forest-son, which the lapse of centuries had perhaps hardly sufficed
to rear to perfection, now, even though a ruin, noble, that celebrated
passage of the poet Gray, when describing his _bard_, recurred with
some force to my mind: in this description Gray is supposed to have
had the painting of Raphael at Florence, representing Deity in the
vision of Ezekiel, before him:
"Loose his beard and hoary hair
Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air," &c.
A ride of a few hours, after the storm had died away, brought me to
the pleasant little town of Mt. Vernon.[215] This place is the seat of
justice for Jefferson county, and has a courthouse of brick, decent
enough to the eye, to be sure, but said to have been so miserably
constructed that it is a perilous feat for his honour here to poise
the scales. The town itself is an inconsiderable place, but pleasantly
situated, in the edge of a prairie, if I forget not, and in every
other respect is exactly what every traveller has seen a dozen times
elsewhere in Illinois. Like Shelbyville, it is chiefly noted for a
remarkable spring in its vicinity, said to be highly medicinal. How
this latter item may stand I know not, but I am quite sure that all of
the _pure element_ it was my own disagreeable necessity to partake of
during my brief tarry savoured mightily of medicine or of something
akin. Epsom salts and alum seemed the chief substances in solution;
and with these minerals all the water in the region appeared heavily
charged.
{120} It was a misty, miserable morning when I left Mt. Vernon; and as
my route lay chiefly through a dense timbered tract, the dank, heavy
atmosphere exhaling from the soil, from the luxuriant vegetation, and
from the dense foliage of the over-hanging boughs, was anything but
agreeable. To endure the pitiless drenching of a summer-shower with
equanimity demands but a brief exercise of stoicism: but it is not in
the nature of man amiably to withstand the equally pitiless
_drenching_ of a drizzling, penetrating, everlasting fog, be it of sea
origin or of land. At length a thunder-gust--the usual remedy for
these desperate cases in Illinois--dissipated the vapour, and the
glorious sunlight streamed far and wide athwart a broad prairie, in
the edge of which I stood. The route was, in the language of my
director, indeed a _blind_ one; but, having received special
instructions thereupon, I hesitated not to press onward over the
swelling, pathless plain towards the _east_. After a few miles, having
crossed an arm of the prairie, directions were again sought and
received, by which the route became due _south_, pathless as before,
and through a tract of woodland rearing itself from a bog perfectly
Serbonian. "Muddy Prairie" indeed. On every side rose the enormous
shafts of the cypress, the water-oak, and the maple, flinging from
their giant branches that gray, pensile, parasitical moss, which,
weaving its long funereal fibres into a dusky mantle, almost entangles
in the meshes the thin threads of sunlight struggling down from above.
It was here for the first time that I met in any considerable numbers
{121} with that long-necked, long-legged, long-toed, long-tailed
gentry called wild-turkeys: and, verily, here was a host ample to
atone for all former deficiency, parading in ungainly magnificence
through the forest upon every side, or peeping curiously down, with
outstretched necks and querulous piping, from their lofty perches on
the traveller below. It is by a skilful imitation of this same piping,
to say nothing of the melodious gobble that always succeeds it, that
the sportsman decoys these sentimental bipeds within his reach. The
same method is sometimes employed in hunting the deer--an imitated
bleating of the fawn when in distress--thus taking away the gentle
mother's life through the medium of her most generous impulses; a most
diabolical _modus operandi_, reader, permit me to say.
Emerging at length, by a circuitous path, once more upon the prairie,
instructions were again sought for the _direct_ route to Pinkneyville,
and a course nearly _north_ was now pointed out. Think of that;
_east_, _south_, _north_, in regular succession too, over a tract of
country perfectly uniform, in order to run a _right_ line between two
given points! This was past all endurance. To a moral certainty with
me, the place of my destination lay away just southwest from the spot
on which I was then standing. Producing, therefore, my pocket-map and
pocket-compass, by means of a little calculation I had soon laid down
the prescribed course, determined to pursue none other, the
remonstrances, and protestations, and objurgations of men, women, and
children to the contrary notwithstanding. Pushing {122} boldly forth
into the prairie, I had not travelled many miles when I struck a path
leading off in the direction I had chosen, and which _proved_ the
direct route to Pinkneyville! Thus had I been forced to cross,
recross, and cross again, a prairie miles in breadth, and to flounder
through a swamp other miles in extent, to say nothing of the _depth_,
and all because of the utter ignorance of the worthy souls who took
upon them _to direct_. I have given this instance in detail for the
special edification and benefit of all future wayfarers in Illinois.
The only unerring guide on the prairies is the map and the compass.
Half famished, and somewhat more than half vexed at the adventures of
the morning, I found myself, near noon, at the cabin-door of an honest
old Virginian, and was ere long placed in a fair way to relieve my
craving appetite. With the little compass which hung at the
safety-riband of my watch, and which had done me such rare service
during my wanderings, the worthy old gentleman seemed heart-stricken
at first sight, and warmly protested that he and the "_stranger_" must
have "_a small bit of a tug_" for that _fixen_, a proposition which
said stranger by no means as warmly relished. Laying, therefore,
before the old farmer a slight outline of my morning's ramble, he
readily perceived that with me the "_pretty leetle fixen_" was
anything but a superlative. My evening ride was a delightful one along
the edge of an extended prairie; but, though repeatedly assured by the
worthy settlers upon the route that I could "_catch no diffick_ulty on
my way no how," my compass was {123} my only safe guide. At length,
crossing "Mud River" upon a lofty bridge of logs, the town of
Pinkneyville was before me just at sunset.[216]
Pinkneyville has but little to commend it to the passing traveller,
whether we regard beauty of location, regularity of structure,
elegance, size, or proportion of edifices, or the cultivation of the
farms in its vicinage. It would, perhaps, be a pleasant town enough
were its site more elevated, its buildings larger, and disposed with a
little more of mathematical exactness, or its streets less lanelike
and less filthy. As it is, it will require some years to give it a
standing among its fellows. It is laid out on the roll of a small
prairie of moderate fertility, but has quite an extensive settlement
of enterprising farmers, a circumstance which will conduce far more to
the ultimate prosperity of the place. The most prominent structure is
a blood-red jail of brick, standing near the centre of the village;
rather a savage-looking concern, and, doubtless, so designed by its
sagacious architect for the purpose of frightening evil doers.
Having taken these _observations_ from the tavern door during
twilight, the traveller retired to his chamber, nothing loath, after a
ride of nearly fifty miles, to bestow his tired frame to rest. But,
alas! that verity compels him to declare it--
"'Tis true, and pity 'tis 'tis true,"
the "_Traveller's Inn_" was anything, nay, _every_thing but the
comfort-giving spot the hospitable cognomen swinging from its signpost
seemed to imply. Ah! the fond visions of quietude and repose, {124} of
plentiful feeding and hearty sleeping, which those magic words,
"_Traveller's Inn_," had conjured up in the weary traveller's fancy
when they first delightfully swung before his eye.
"But human pleasure, what art thou, in sooth!
The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below!!"
Well--exhausted, worn down, tired out, the traveller yet found it as
utterly impossible quietly to rest, as does, doubtless, "a
half-assoilzed soul in purgatory;" and, hours before the day had begun
to break, he arose and ordered out his horse. Kind reader, hast ever,
in the varyings of thy pilgrimage through this troublous world of
ours, when faint, and languid, and weary with exertion, by any
untoward circumstance, been forced to resist the gentle promptings of
"quiet nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," and to count away the
tedious hours of the livelong night till thy very existence became a
burden to thee; till thy brain whirled and thy nerves twanged like the
tense harp-string? And didst thou not, then--didst thou not, from the
very depths of thy soul, assever this ill, of all ills mortality is
heir to, that one most utterly and unutterably intolerable patiently
to endure? 'Tis no very pitiful thing, sure, to consume the midnight
taper, "sickly" though it be: we commiserate the sacrifice, but we
fail not to appreciate the reward. Around the couch of suffering
humanity, who could not outwatch the stars? the recompense is not of
_this_ world.
"When youth and pleasure meet,
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet,"
_who_ asks for "sleep till morn!" But when in weariness {125} of the
flesh and in languidness of spirit, the overspent wayfarer has laid
down his wearied frame to rest for the toils of the morrow, it is
indeed a _bitter_ thing rudely to have that rest broken up! "The sleep
of the _wayfaring_ man is sweet," and to have that slumber obtruded
upon by causes too contemptible for a thought, is not in nature with
equanimity to bear! Besides, the luckless sufferer meets with no
_commiseration_: it is a matter all too ludicrous for pity; and as for
fortitude, and firmness, and the like, what warrior ever achieved a
laurel in such a war? what glory is to be gained over a host of
starving--but I forbear. You are pretty well aware, kind reader, or
ought to be, that the situation of your traveller just then was
anything but an enviable one. Not so, however, deemed the worthy
landlord on this interesting occasion. His blank bewilderment of
visage may be better imagined than described, as, aroused from sleep,
his eye met the vision of his stranger guest; while the comic
amalgamation of distress and pique in the marvellously elongated
features of the fair hostess was so truly laughable, that a smile
flitted along the traveller's rebellious muscles, serving completely
to disturb the serenity of her breast! The good lady was evidently not
a little nettled at the _apparent_ mirthfulness of her guest under his
manifold miseries--I do assure thee, reader, the mirthfulness was only
_apparent_--and did not neglect occasion thereupon to let slip a sly
remark impugning his "gentle breeding," because, forsooth, dame
Nature, in throwing together her "cunning workmanship," had gifted it
with a {126} nervous system not quite of steel. Meanwhile, the honest
publican, agreeable to orders, having brought forth the horse, with
folded hands all meekly listened to the eloquence of his spouse; but
the good man was meditating the while a retaliation in shape of a most
unconscionable bill of cost, which was soon presented and was as soon
discharged. Then, leaving the interesting pair to their own
cogitations, with the very _top_ of the morning the traveller flung
himself upon his horse and was soon out of sight.
_Kaskaskia, Ill._