HEADED DOWN STREAM--RETURN TO TUPPER'S LAKE--THE CAMP ON THE ISLAND.
We started down stream again at six o'clock in the morning, intending,
if possible, to reach Tupper's Lake before encamping for the night. It
would make for us a busy day to accomplish so much; but going down
stream and down hill are very different things from going up, as any
gentleman may satisfy himself by rowing against a current of two miles
the hour, or toiling up an ascent of three or four hundred feet to the
mile, and then retracing his steps. We accomplished more than half the
distance, and that over the worst of the journey, by twelve o'clock,
and we halted for dinner and a _siesta_. If there is one thing in life
which can lay any claim to being considered a positive luxury, it is a
nap on a mossy bank, in the deep shadows of the forest trees, after a
hearty meal, of a warm summer day. There should be, in order to its
full appreciation, a mixture of weariness with a due proportion of
laziness. Too much of either detracts from the enjoyment of its
beatitudes. To _feel_ the sensation of resting, that weariness is
leaving you, and that the process of recuperation is an active, living
agency, going on all through the system, while the natural love of
repose is being gratified as an independent emotion, constitute the
very perfection of mere animal enjoyment. The musquitoes at midday
have gone to their rest, or if a straggler comes buzzing and singing
about your ears, you are lulled rather than disturbed by his song. If
he takes his drop of blood from your veins, the tickling of his tiny
lance is but a pleasant titilation, and you let him feed on, almost
grateful for his kindness in keeping you from sleeping too soundly, or
losing in utter oblivion the full extent of the luxury of
perfect repose.
After an hour's rest, we launched our little fleet upon the river
again, and while the sun was yet above the western highlands, we stood
upon the broad flat rock at the mouth of Bog River, looking out over
Tupper's Lake, one of the most beautiful sheets of water that the sun
or the stars ever looked upon. Our sea-biscuit was getting low, and
our egress from the wilderness was therefore becoming, in some sort, a
necessity. There was no lack of venison, or fish, but these are rather
luxuries than actual necessaries, and they were becoming somewhat
stale to as. The staff of life is bread, and of this we had but two
days' supply. It is entirely true that our jerked venison, now dry and
hard as chips, could, if necessary, be made to furnish, to some
extent, a substitute; still, while "it is written that man shall not
live by bread alone," it is equally the law that he cannot very well
get along without it.
We launched our boats upon the lake and rowed to the head of Long
Island, where we put up our tents for the night. I have spoken so
often of the loveliness of the evenings on these beautiful lakes, that
to attempt a description of the one we enjoyed on this romantic
island, would be only a tiresome repetition. But there was a splendor
about the heavens above, and their counterpart in the depths below,
which I have scarcely ever seen equalled. There was no moon in the
early evening, and so pure and clear was the atmosphere, so moveless
and still the waters, that the stars seemed to come out in vaster
numbers, and with an intenser glow, and to be reflected back from away
down in the lake with a brighter refulgence; the hills along the shore
seemed to stand up in bolder outline; the bays to lay in deeper
shadow; while the tall peaks stood in grim solemnity, like pillars
supporting the mighty arches of the sky.
"I was asking myself," said Smith, as we sat looking out over the
water, in the evening, or gazing down into the glowing depths, and
listening to the night voices, faint and far off in the old forests,
as they came floating over the lake, "I was asking myself, as we
journeyed around the falls to-day, and as we stood on the rock where
the river comes leaping down and plunging into the lake, whether the
march of improvement would ever spread a Lowell around those falls, or
subject those wild waters to the uses of civilization. Whether
progress would ever invade those mountain regions; or the ingenuity of
man ever discover uses for these rocks and boulders, or coin wealth
from the sterile and sandy soil of this old wilderness? Hitherto a
country like this has been regarded of no value, save for the timber
which it grows; and when that is exhausted, as fit only to be
abandoned to sterility and desolation. But who can tell whether there
may not be in these boulders, these rocks, this sandy and unproductive
soil, unknown wealth, held in reserve to reward the researches of
science in its utilitarian explorations. I am not now speaking of
gold, or silver, or any other dross, which men have hitherto wasted
their toil to accumulate; but of new discoveries, and new purposes to
which these now useless things may be applied; discoveries which may
send the tide of emigration surging up from the valleys to mountain
regions like these. May it not be that science, while delving among
the wrecks of vanished ages, may stumble upon some new principle, or
combination of the elements of which these old rocks are composed,
that shall give them a value beyond that of the richest lowlands, and
make them the centre of a dense and cultivated population?"
"Your question," answered Spalding, "is suggestive. Did you ever think
what gigantic strides the world has made within the memory of men now
living, and who are yet unwilling to be counted as old? Look back for
only fifty years, and note what a stupendous leap it has taken! Where
then were the iron roads over which the locomotive goes thundering on
its mission of civilization? where the telegraph, that mocks at time
and annihilates space? Hark! there is a new sound breaking the
stillness of midnight, and startling the mountain echoes from their
sleep of ages! It is the scream of the steam-whistle, the snort of the
iron horse, the thunder of his hoofs of steel, rushing forward with
the speed of the wind, shaking the ground like an earthquake as he
moves. A new motor has been harnessed into the service of man, and
made to fly with his messages swifter than sound? It is the winged
lightning; and as it flashes along the wires stretched from city to
city, and across continents, carries with unerring certainty every
word committed to its charge. Ocean steamers have made but a ferriage
of seas. The photographic art has made even the light of the sun a
substitute for the pencil of the artist. Everywhere, in all the
departments of science, in every branch of the arts, improvement,
progress, has been going on with a sublimity of achievement unknown in
any age of the past. These things are mighty motors which push along
civilization, throwing a wonderful energy into the forward impulse of
the world. But remember, that though these results are brought about
by the advance in the mechanic arts, yet that advance is based upon a
deeper philosophy, a profounder wisdom, than mere perfectability in
those arts. Take the steam-engine--it is a great contrivance, a
wonderful invention; but the greatest of all was the discovery of the
principle and operation, the practical phenomena of steam itself. The
telegraphic machine was a great invention; but the great thing was the
development of the science of electricity, the discovery of the
secret agency which sent forward the thought entrusted to it swifter
than light. The daguerrian instruments, the metallic plates, the
prepared paper, were great inventions; but vastly greater was the
discovery and development of the phenomena and affinities of light,
the mystery of solar influences.
"There is hope for the world in all this mighty progress, for with it
will one day come the development of the true nature and theory of
government, the true solution of the great theory of the social
compact, the proper adjustment of the relations of man to man, a right
appreciation of the nature and value of human rights. It is bringing
forward the masses, elevating the millions who work. It will rouse
into activity their innate energies, and bring forth their inward
might. It creates THOUGHT to guide the hands that set all this vast
machinery in motion. It diffuses and strengthens intellectuality, and
the pride of intellectuality, making of the men who work something
more than mere machines themselves. It is developing and perfecting a
mightier engine than any of man's invention; one that tyrants cannot
always control, that kings cannot always manage. That engine is the
human mind. Like the steam-engine, it is gathering power, and
capability for the exercise of power, and the time will come when it
will go crashing, with resistless energy, among thrones, overturning
despotisms, upheaving dynasties, sweeping away those false theories of
governmental institutions, which guarantee to one class of people a
life of luxurious idleness, coupled with a prerogative to rule; and
which dooms another class to an hereditary servitude, changeless as
fate, and relentless as the grave. It will vindicate the rights, and
ennoble the destiny of the masses of the people who work.
"But where is this career of progress to end? Is there a limit to this
onward movement? We know that the world has made greater advancement
in the present century, than it did in the five thousand years
preceding it, and that new discoveries in the sciences and the arts
are being made every day. Nature has been compelled, and is still
being compelled, to yield up secrets which have been for centuries
regarded as beyond the power of human capacity to penetrate. How is
this? Is the world to go on thus, always? Is this rush of progress to
remain unchecked, always? If so, what mystery, even of Omnipotent
wisdom, will remain unsolved at last? What results will not human
energy be able to accomplish? Is the time to come when man shall be
able to shape out of clay, fashion from wood, or stone, an image of
himself, and, breathing upon it, command it to walk forth a thing of
life, and be obeyed? Will he be able to search out a universal
antidote to disease? Will he discover the means of supplying the human
frame with such recuperative power as will nullify the law that
prescribes to all flesh the dilapidation and decay of age, of weakness
and of death? Will he search out some secret agency which will hold
his body in perpetual youth, defying alike the attritions of age, and
the ravages of disease? Will he discover how it is that time saps the
strength, and steals away the vigor of the human system, and a remedy
for exhausted and wasted energies? It is not my purpose to advance a
theory based upon an affirmative answer to these inquiries, but when
we contemplate the stupendous pace at which the world is moving
forward, who will venture to assert where the limit to this progress
is to be found? You tell me that man cannot _create_; that he can only
combine into new shapes elements which God has furnished to his hands.
I do not know this. That he _has_ not created I admit; but that he has
not capabilities, as yet undeveloped, as a creator, I do not KNOW. I
will not venture the assertion that the time will ever come when he
will have discovered wherein lies the mystery of life; that he will
ever find an antidote to disease; that he will search out some
recuperative agency stronger than the law of decay, and that will hold
the human system in the perpetual vigor, and bloom, and beauty of
maturity. I will not assert that science will, at last, be carried to
such perfection, that there shall be no more infirmities of age; that
the pestilence will be stayed from walking in the darkness, and
destruction from wasting at noonday; that men will cease to grow old,
save in years, or that death will be compelled to seek its victims
only through the channel of accidents, against which forecast will
not, and science has no opportunity to guard. What I mean to say is,
that I do not KNOW that just such results are beyond the capabilities
of human progress. Measuring the future by the past, I cannot
demonstrate that such results may not one day be attained."
"The good time of which you speak," said the Doctor, "when there shall
be no more infirmity of age, no growing old, save in years; when there
shall be no wasting by disease, through the perfectability of the
curative science, or the discovery of some recuperative agency,
stronger than the law of decay, will never come. When it is granted,
as an abstract proposition, that the capabilities of science are
sufficient to counteract the mere wasting influence of time upon the
human system, you are met by a great practical fact which will
overturn your theory. The excesses of the world are a much more
fruitful source of disease and death than the attritions of age. There
is a constant struggle on the part of nature to build up and beautify,
to strengthen and recuperate, against the results of human excesses.
Not one in a million of those who pass away every year, die from the
effects of age, as a primary cause. Hence, you must not only perfect
science, but you must perfect the morals and the habits of the human
family, before you can exempt them from decay and death. The instincts
of men, the appetencies which they possess in common with the whole
animal creation, are each made the source of disease, and premature
decay. Some men eat too much; some drink too much; some sleep too
much; some waste their vital energies in sensual indulgence, while all
have some vicious habit (I mean with reference to the preservation of
life), known or unknown to the world, which, sooner or later,
undermines the constitution, and helps on the work of dilapidation.
These excesses will always exist; they are inherent in the human
constitution, resulting from the very nature of man; they are an
inevitable sequence of his physical structure, and his intellectual
life. To avoid them implies absolute perfectability in every
attribute, and that makes him a god. Until man shall have become
infinite in wisdom, as well as immaculate in purity, he will continue
to indulge, to a greater or less extent, in excesses of some sort, and
those excesses will always be an overmatch, when superadded to the
natural law of decay, for the recuperative efforts of science. You
must create a radical reform in every department of life; in business,
in social habits, in the fashions, in the mode of living, in
everything, before you can hope to reach the Utopia of which you
speak. The outrages perpetrated upon nature by the conventionalities
of the world alone, would be an insurmountable barrier to the
realization of your idea. The necessity for excessive labor to satisfy
artificial wants hews away at one end of society, and the indulgence
of idleness and ease, at the other. Exposure to the elements, to heat
and cold, buries its millions; and too great seclusion, in pursuit of
comfort in heated rooms, and a confined and corrupted atmosphere,
buries its millions also. Lack of wholesome food fills thousands of
graves, and the results of abundance fill other thousands. Lack of
appropriate clothing, fitted for the constitution and the seasons,
engenders disease and death; and an excess of the same article,
fashioned as stupendous folly only can fashion it, engenders vastly
more disease and death. There are elements of decay and death
furnished to men and women, tempting their weakness, and forced upon
their adoption by the conventionalities of life, every day, every
hour, and everywhere. It is a part of our civilization, an offshoot of
the very progress of which you speak, a sort of necessity in practical
results, at least, that men _shall_ so live as to wage war against
nature, and against themselves; that they shall hurry themselves, or
be hurried by inevitable circumstances, into the grave at the earliest
possible moment. You may, therefore, dismiss from your mind, my
friend, the fanciful idea, that science will ever enable the world to
dispense with the cemeteries, or that the cities of the dead will,
through its agency, cease to flourish. You will find that as science
closes up one avenue to the grave, men will force a way to it through
another. We shall have to live as our fathers lived, be subject to
disease as they were, grow old as they grew old, and die as they died.
We must submit to the law which has written the doom of decay upon all
things, which has made us mortal, and when our time comes we must be
content to pass away as the countless millions who preceded us
have done."
"Well," said Spalding, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe, and rose
to retire, under the cover of the tent, for the night, "be it as you
say, what matters it? 'I would not live always.' Give to us the hope
of an hereafter, a faith that looks through the valley of the shadow
of death, and sees immortality, a world of glory beyond, and what
matters it how soon the hour of our departure shall come?"