ROUND POND--THE PILE DRIVER--A THEORY FOR SPIRITUALISTS.
We put up our tents the next evening, on a bold bluff near the outlet
of Round Pond, a picturesque and pleasant sheet of water, some eight
or ten miles in circumference. It lay there still and waveless, in
that calm summer evening, as glassy and smooth as if no breeze had
ever stirred its surface. All around it were old forests, old hills
and rocks, and away off in the distance were the tall peaks of the
Adirondacks, standing up grim, solemn, and shadowy in the distance.
These peaks are seen from almost every direction. They tower so far
above the surrounding highlands, that they seem always to be peering
over the intervening ranges, as if holding an everlasting watch over
the broad wilderness beneath them. This lake is probably more than a
thousand feet above the Rackett, and the river falls that distance
principally at the two rapids around which our boats were carried. The
rest of the way it is a deep, sluggish stream, so that the descent
may be reckoned within less than three miles. A ledge of rocks forms
the lower boundary of the lake, through which the water, at some
remote period, broke its way, and it goes roaring down rapids for
three-quarters of a mile, then moves in a sluggish current across a
plain of several miles in extent; then plunges down a steep descent
for over a mile and a half to subside again into quiet, and move on
with a sluggish current to plunge down the ledges again into Tupper's
Lake. There are no perpendicular falls of more than twenty feet, but
the water goes plunging, and boiling, and foaming down shelving rocks,
and eddying, and whirling around immense boulders, rushing and roaring
through the gorges with a voice like thunder. These falls are all
useless here, and probably will be for centuries to come; but were
they out in the "living world," in the midst of civilization, with a
fertile and populous region about them, they would soon be harnessed
to great wheels, and made utilitarian; the clank of machinery would
soon be heard above the roar of their waters. They would do an
immensity of labor on their returnless journey to the ocean. But here,
they are utterly valueless, wasting their mighty power upon desolate
rocks, rushing in mad and impotent fury forever through a region of
barrenness and sterility, so far as the uses of civilization are
concerned, a region where the manufacturer or the agriculturist will
never tarry, until the world shall be so full of people that necessity
will drive them to the mountains, to build up the waste places of the
earth. Opposite, and across the bay from where our tents were
pitched, I noticed that a small stream entered the lake, and Smith and
myself crossed over to experiment among the trout I knew would be
gathered there. We were entirely successful, for we took one at almost
every throw. I have more than once stated, that the trout of these
lakes and rivers, in the warm season, congregate where the cold
streams enter; and if the sportsman will search out the little brooks,
no matter how small, and cast his fly across where their waters enter
the lake or river, he will be sure to find trout in any of the hot
summer months.
We returned to camp before the sun went behind the hills, with our
fish ready for the pan, and our boatmen provided us with a meal of
jerked venison, pork, and trout, which an epicure might envy, and to
which a hard day's journey and an appetite sharpened by the bracing
influence of the pure mountain air, gave a peculiar relish. It was a
pleasant thing to see the moon come up from among the trees that
formed a dark outline to the lake away off to the east, and travel up
into the sky; to see how faithfully it was given back from down in the
stirless waters, and how the stars twinkled and glowed around it in
the depths below, as they did in the depths above. There was the
moon, and there the stars, all bright and glorious in the heavens
above; and there another moon, and other stars, as bright and
glorious, down in the vault below; the lake floating, as it were, an
almost viewless mist, a shadowy and transparent veil between. As we
sat, in the greyness of twilight, in front of our tents, a curious
sound came over the lake from the opposite shore, so like civilization
that it startled us for a moment. Here we were, fifty miles from a
house, away in the forest beyond the sound of anything savoring of
human agency, and yet we heard distinctly what was for all the world
like the blows of an axe or hammer upon a stake, driving it into the
earth. It had the peculiar ring, which any one will recognise who has
driven a stake into ground covered with water, by blows given by the
side instead of the head of an axe. These blows were given at
intervals so regular, that we all suspended smoking, certain that
there were other sportsmen beside ourselves in the neighborhood of
this lake.
"Who in the world is that?" asked Smith, of Martin, who seemed to
enjoy our astonishment.
"That," replied Martin, "is a gentleman known in these parts as the
'Pile-driver.' He visits all these lakes in the summer season, and
though, as a general thing, he travels alone, yet he sometimes has
half a dozen friends with him. If you'll listen a moment, may be
you'll find that he has a friend in the neighborhood now who will
drive a pile in another place."
Sure enough, in a moment the same ringing blows came from a reedy spot
in a different part of the bay.
"The bird that makes that noise," said Martin, "is about the homeliest
creature in these woods. It is a small grey heron, that lights down
among the grass and weeds to hunt for small frogs and such little fish
as swim along the shore. When he drives his pile, he stands with his
neck and long bill pointed straight up, and pumping the air into his
throat, sends it oat with the strange sound you have heard. It is the
resemblance of the sound to that made by driving a stake into ground
covered with water, that gives him his name. He's an awkward, filthy
bird, but he helps to make up the noises one hears in these
wild regions."
"My first thought was," said Smith, "that we had got among the spirits
of the woods, and that they were 'rapping' their indignation at our
presence, there was something so human about it."
"By the way," remarked the Doctor, "and you remind me of the subject,
what a strange delusion is this Spiritualism, to the 'manifestations'
of which you refer, and how singular it is that men of strong natural
sense and cultivated minds, should be drawn into it. We all know such.
Their delusion, too, is stronger than mere speculative belief. It is a
faith which to them appears to amount to absolute knowledge. They have
no doubt or hesitancy on the subject. Their convictions are perfect;
such, that were they as strong in their faith as Christians, as they
are in the reality of Spiritualism, they would be able to move
mountains."
"I have noticed this intensity of their faith," said Smith; "and while
I utterly reject the whole theory of Spiritualism, I could never join
in the ridicule of its earnest devotees. There is something that
commands my respect in this strong faith, when honestly entertained,
however stupendous the error may be to which it clings. There is
something, to my mind, too solemn for derision in the idea of
communing with the spirits of the departed, or that the time is
approaching when living men and the souls of the physically dead, are
to meet, as it were, face to face, and know each other as they are. It
is one which I can, and do reject, but cannot ridicule. The world,
however, regards it differently. And yet with all the contempt and
derision that has been poured upon this singular delusion, its
devotees have multiplied beyond all precedent in the history of the
world. They number, it is said, in this country alone, millions, and
have some forty or more newspapers in the exclusive advocacy of
their theory."
"The wise people of this world," said Spalding, "that is, those who
are wise in their day and generation, laugh at the believers in this
modern theory of Spiritualism. They pity them, too, as the unhappy
devotees of a faith which sober reason and all the experience of the
past prove to be as unsubstantial as the moonbeams that dance upon the
waters at midnight. Still these same devotees point to the
demonstrations of what they regard as living facts, phenomena palpable
to the senses, things that appeal to the eye, the ear, and the touch,
and say that these are higher proofs than all the dogmas of
philosophy, all the observation and experience of former times, all
the logic of the past. And here is the issue between Spiritualism and
the mass of mankind who deride and condemn it.
"Now, be it known to you, that I am no Spiritualist. I reject not all
the evidences of the phenomena upon which it is based, but I utterly
deny that such phenomena are the works of disembodied spirits. I
myself have seen what utterly confounded me, and while I reject all
idea of supernatural agencies, all interposition of departed spirits,
yet I have become thoroughly satisfied that there are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. These
phenomena of which the Spiritualists speak, I will not undertake to
pronounce all lies. Some of them are doubtless impostures--the work of
knaves, who speculate upon the credulity and superstitions which are
attributes of the human mind; but they are not all such. But while I
admit their reality, I insist that such as are so, are the results of
natural laws, which will one day be discovered, and which will turn
out to be as simple as the spirit which presides over the telegraph,
or that which constitutes the life of a steam engine. There may be,
and probably is, a great undiscovered principle which underlays these
spiritual manifestations, as they are called, and MIND is after it,
looking for it carefully; and what MIND has once started in pursuit of
earnestly, it seldom fails to overtake.
"I have sometimes amused myself by endeavoring to furnish a theory for
the Spiritualists to stand upon, based upon the demonstrations of the
past, the evidences brought to light by the researches of science,
which at all events should have about it truth enough to give color
and respectability even to an error as stupendous as that of
Spiritualism. This theory I have predicated upon the progress of the
material world, aside from animal life, showing that what may have
been impossible thousands of years ago, may be possible, or about
becoming possible now; that we are about entering upon a new era in
the advancement of all things towards perfectability, and that the
advent of that era may be marked by an established communication
between the living and the spirits of the departed.
"Science demonstrates that the material world presents in its history
an illustration of the great principle and theory of progress. It is
quite certain that our planet was once a very different thing from
what it is now; it differed in form, in substance, in compactness, in
everything from its present condition. We do not _know_ that it was
once wholly aeriform, mere gasses in combination, too crude to admit
of solidarity; but reasoning back from established facts, the
conclusion is almost irresistible, that this earth, now so rock-ribbed
and solid, so ponderous, so ragged with mountain ranges, and cloud
piercing peaks, was once but vapor, floating without form through
limitless space, drifting as mere nebulous matter among the older
creations of God. However this may be, it is regarded as quite
certain, that time was when ft was entirely void of solidity, void of
dry land, with no continent, island, or solid ground, with no living
thing within its circumference. It was thus passing through one of the
remote eras of its existence. It was then young, just emerging, as it
were, from nothingness, growing into form, assuming shape, and
gathering attributes of fitness for exterior vitality, preparing the
way for higher existences than mere inorganic matter. How long this
era existed, science has failed to demonstrate, but it passed away,
and solid land marked the next era of the earth's progress. It was
surrounded by an atmosphere absolutely fatal to animal life; an
atmosphere which, while it stimulated vegetable growth, no living
thing could breathe and continue to live. Hence it was, that
vegetation, gigantic almost beyond conception, covered its surface.
Fern, which is now a pigmy plant, nowhere higher than a few feet, grew
tall and overshadowing like great oaks, while oaks, it is fair to
presume, towered thousands of feet towards the sky. These stupendous
forests stood alone upon the surface of the earth; no animals wandered
through their fastnesses; no birds sported amidst their mighty
branches; noxious exhalations came steaming up from their tangled
recesses, and their gloomy shadows lay a mantle of darkness over
dreary and lifeless solitudes. The storms raged, and the winds howled;
the sun travelled its daily rounds, with its light dimmed and clouded
by the pestilential vapors it exhaled, and silence, so far as the
sounds of animal life were concerned, reigned supreme--the stillness
of the grave, the quiet of utter desolation, save the voice of the
wind or the storm, was unbroken all over the face of the earth.
Onward, and onward, rolled this mighty orb on its pathway through the
heavens, bearing with it no animal existences, freighted with no human
hopes--carrying with it nothing of human destiny. Man, with all his
lofty aspirations, his mighty schemes, his glory, and his pride, was a
thing of the future. He had not yet emerged from the eternity of the
past, to grapple with the present, or encounter the retributions of
the eternity which is to come. This was the era of gigantic vegetable
growth, and it had its uses; for it was preparing the way for higher
and more complicated existences. As the gases that surrounded the
earth became consolidated into vegetation, as this stupendous growth
decomposed the noxious atmosphere, drawing from it its grosser
particles and working them up into solid matter, extracting from it
what was fatal to animal life, this earth entered upon another era of
its progress.
"Animal life made its appearance. It was weak and feeble at first, but
a step removed from vegetable matter. The molusca, the polypi, and the
rudest forms of fishes, were, beyond question, the first of living
things. Science demonstrates that the water brought forth the first
creations endowed with animal vitality. How long this era continued no
man can tell. Then came the amphibise, gigantic animals of the lizard
kind; the sauruses, that could reach with their long necks and
ponderous jaws across a street and pick up a man, if street and man
there had been. Then came land animals, monstrous in growth, by the
side of which the elephant dwindles to the diminutive stature of the
dormouse. In all these advances, was a succession of steps, mounting
higher and higher, in complication of structure, each more perfect in
organism than its predecessor. Vegetation itself became more
complicated, and as it approached perfection lost its gigantic growth.
Solidarity, compactness in all things, became the order of nature; the
atmosphere surrounding the earth, became more and more fitted for
the higher and more complicated animal organizations. At last when
time was ripe for his advent, when the earth was fitted for his
residence, and the air for his breathing, MAN, the last and most
perfect in his structure, the most delicate and finished in his
organization of all living things, made his appearance. He stepped
from the hand of God, the only thinking, reflecting, the only
intellectual, responsible being, in all the world. He stood at the
head of created matter, with all things on the earth subject to his
will, and corresponding to his, condition, his attributes, his
necessities, and his instincts.
"Thus this great earth itself, has been but one continued illustration
of the great theory and principle of progress. From a beginning, lost
in the thick darkness of a past eternity, it has been marching forward
in a career as pause-less as the sun in his journeyings through the
sky, as clearly demonstrable as the growth of the germ that starts
from the buried acorn, and moves on to its full development in the
great oak. Science records with unerring certainty the progress of the
earth, and of animal life, from the lowest existences in the mollusca
and polypi, up to the superlatively complicated, and delicate
structure of man, tracing it step by step, until it is finished in the
noblest work of God, a human body coupled with an immortal soul!
"And here arises a question which science has not solved, and to which
the philosophy, the wisdom, the logic of the past can give no answer.
The earth, and the things of the earth, have been moving forward,
marching on towards perfectability always. Is this forward movement
finished? We have, in looking at the subject in the light of science,
a time when there was not on the earth, in the air, or in the water,
any living thing. We have an era when animal life was but a span
removed from vegetable vitality; we have an era of gigantic vegetable
growth; an era of gigantic but rude animal growth, and so on step by
step down to the advent of man. The previous combinations of animal
life and vegetable life passed away with the era in which they
flourished; one class succeeding another, each emerging from, and
stepping over the annihilation of its predecessor, till we come down
to the present--is there no future progress for this earth as a
planet? Is there to be no other era, where man himself, like the
sauruses, like the mastodon, shall have passed away, to be succeeded
by some nobler animal structure, some loftier intelligence, some more
cunning invention of the infinite mind?
"Man, great in intellect, powerful in mind, gifted with reason, and
having within him a spirit that is immortal, proud, glorious, aspiring
as he is, falls very far short of perfection in every attribute of his
nature. To say, therefore, that the prescience, the creative power of
the Almighty, reached the limit of its achievements in the creation of
man, is to impeach the omnipotence of God himself. Will any man insist
that the ingenuity of the Almighty is exhausted? May it not be, then
that the time will come when some sentient beings, as far superior to
man, as man is to the animals of the era of the lizards and the
amphibia, shall, like the geologists of the present day, be delving
among the rocks and rubbish of vanished ages, for evidences of the
existences of our own proud species at, to them, some remote period of
the world's progress?
"If these questions cannot be answered by the learned and the wise, if
science makes no response, and philosophy furnishes no solution of
them, who dare say that the world is not, even now, entering upon a
new era of progress, taking another step in the forward movement? May
it not be, that the time is coming when the barrier between the
living, and the disembodied spirit is to be broken down? When that
viewless essence, that mystery of mysteries, the spirit of life, the
immortal soul, shall be permitted to come back from the unknown
country, to impart to the people of this world, the wisdom, the
mysteries, and the glory of the next? May not this be the new era that
is about opening in the progress of all things? It may be asked, is it
not possible that a new principle is about being evolved, that will
admit of communication between the living and the physically dead? May
it not be that the world and its surroundings, have become so changed,
that what was impossible thousands, or even hundreds, of years ago,
may have become, or be about to become possible now? That the same
process which carried this earth forward from the beginning, that so
changed the atmosphere of old, rendered it fit to sustain animal life
in its rudest structure, that so changed it again, as to make it
capable of sustaining a higher order of animal organism, that kept on
changing, and improving the whole face of the earth, that so arranged
organic matter, as to make this world, at last, a fit residence for
man, may be going on still; approaching all things nearer, and nearer
to perfection, until we have arrived upon the threshold of an era,
when living men may commune with the spirits of the physically dead?
An era as yet but in its dawn, when the stupendous future can be seen
only as through a glass darkly?
"Remember, I do not assert my faith in a theory which is indicated by
an affirmative answer to these inquiries, for I have none. I give the
record of the earth's progress in the past, as it is written upon the
rocks, standing out upon precipices, brought to light by the
researches, and translated by the energy of science from forgotten and
buried ages. The deductions to be drawn from it, I leave to those who
have a taste for the speculative, neither believing in, nor
quarrelling with the theory which they may predicate upon it."