view of them was caught by ever-interrupted glances through a few inches
of window-pane, and by peeping over the head of a girl whose eyes were
all the time wandering among the people in the interior of the cabin.
These sublime mountains loomed green and dimly through the rain-mist
that veiled their rocky sides, and their towering heads were lost in the
volumes of fantastic clouds that rolled around them. But it proved what
is called the clearing up shower; and just as we were rounding that low
projection of bare rock that runs far out into the river, and forms the
extreme point of West Point, the clouds began to part in the zenith, and
the blue sky appeared between them, and the sun suddenly broke out
lighting up the western sides of the hills and pouring his full
effulgence on the river. We landed just as the evening parade was about
to commence, and I saw it from the front windows of an apartment that
commanded a full view. It was a beautiful scene; on this spacious and
level plain, elevated about a hundred and sixty feet above the river,
which bounds it on the north and east, while on the south and west it is
hemmed in by the mountains that rise directly from it. The numerous
windows of the barracks were sparkling and burnishing in the setting sun
that was beaming out below the retiring clouds, throwing a rosy tint on
the white tents of the camp, and glittering on the bayonets of the long
line of cadets drawn up for the exercise that, at a military post always
concludes the day. The band was playing delightfully, and the effect of
the whole was very striking at the moment when the drums rolled, the
evening gun went off, the flag came down, and the officers all drew
their swords and advanced to the front.
Many circumstances contributed to render my first visit to West Point
peculiarly pleasant. I had never in my life spent three weeks so
agreeably. Subsequently, I resided there nearly two years in the family
of my brother. I have enjoyed the grand and lovely scenery of West Point
under all the various aspects of the seasons. I have been there when the
late, but rapid spring, with its balmy breathings, and its soft
sun-light, suddenly awakens the long-slumbering vegetation of these high
and northerly regions, when you can almost _see_ the forming of the buds
and their bursting into leaf; while patches of the last snow yet linger
here and there about the cavities of the rocks, and in the hollows that
lie among the roots of the trees, “on their cold and winter-shaded
side.” At the same time, in the warmer recesses of the forests, the
early flowers of the hepatica and the violet are finding their way up
amid the dead leaves which the wild blasts of November have strewed
thickly over the ground.
These mountains are wooded from the base to the summit, (except where a
block of granite looks out from amid the trees,) and in the month of May
they are variegated with all those countless and exquisite shades of
green, that can only emanate from the hand of that Great Painter that
colored the Universe. While some of these inimitable tints are dark
almost to blackness, and some are of the richest olive, others present
in endless variety, the numerous gradations of deep-green, blue-green,
grass-green, apple-green, pea-green, and yellow-green; the catalpa and
the locust, with their clusters of pencilled blossoms, and the dogwood
with its milk-white flowers, supplying the bright lights of the picture.
Then, in looking up the river, the long perspective is closed at the
utmost verge of the horizon by the far-off Taghcanoke mountains: the
snows that still rest on their cold and lonely summits extending in
streaks of whiteness half-way down their dim blue sides.
To a stranger at West Point the commencement of a summer’s day has many
circumstances of novelty and excitement that are almost lost upon those
to whom custom has rendered them familiar. With the earliest blush of
dawn, and at the third tap of the drum, the morning gun goes off, and
when the wind is in a certain direction, I have heard its loud booming
sound five times repeated by the mountain echoes, “fainter and fainter
still”—but always distinctly audible. At the same moment the flag is
run up, and flings out to the early breeze its waving folds of stars and
stripes denoting that the place is United States’ ground, a military
post, and under martial law. These ceremonies are immediately succeeded
by the drums and fifes commencing the delightful réveillée, clear, sweet
and exhilarating—the first notes of which seem so distinctly to express
the words,
“The lark is up, the morn is gay,
The drums now beat the réveillée.”
followed by a medley of popular airs, each one concluding like a rondo,
with—“The lark is up,” &c.
It is beautiful on a soft summer morning to look out upon these
forest-cinctured mountains, when there has been a rain during the night,
and to see the misty clouds veiling their summits and rolling off from
their sides; breaking, as the sun ascends, into thin white wreaths that
creep slowly about the glens, and gradually losing all distinctness of
form and blending with the blue of ether. More beautiful still is the
broad expanse of the Hudson, glittering with the golden sun-light, and
reflecting the clear cerulean of the sky; while the white-sailed sloops
seem to slumber on the calm surface of the water, as each “floats
double, _sloop_ and shadow,” and near the shore the dark mountains and
the rocky precipices cast their deep masses of shade upon the liquid
mirror below.
I was once at West Point when the dawn of our national anniversary was
ushered in by the roar of artillery from amid the ruins of Fort Putnam,
the guns having been previously conveyed up the mountain for that
purpose. There is a history belonging to these guns. They were
originally French; and are engraved with the name of the foundry at
which they were cast; bearing also the three _fleur de lis_ of the
_ancien regime_, the cypher of Louis the Fourteenth, (who at that time,
filled the throne of France) and the celebrated motto which he ordered
to be inscribed on all his cannon—“_Ultimo ratio regum._” The guns in
question were sent to Quebec, and were taken by the English on the
heights of Abraham, in that eventful battle, when both commanders fell
in the same hour that transferred the dominion of Canada from France to
England. Belonging afterwards to the army of Burgoyne, they became the
property of America on the surrender at Saratoga, and finally were
presented by Congress to the Military Academy. At the cadets annual ball
I have seen these guns decorated with wreaths of laurel, and arranged as
ornaments along a covered promenade, lighted up with lamps in front of
the ball-room.
To the dwellers on the plain below, the effect on the aforesaid fourth
of July was indescribably fine; the guns thundering and echoing in a
region so far above us, their gleams of fire flashing out amid the
clouds of white smoke that rolled their eddying volumes round the old
dismantled ramparts. The salute was followed by a full burst of martial
harmony from the band, who had also gone up into the ruins; all playing
so admirably and in such perfect unison, that the whole of their various
instruments sounded like one alone—but like one whose grand and
exquisite tones seemed scarcely to belong to earth. The band had their
fourth of July dinner within the dilapidated recesses of the moss-grown
fortress, and frequently during the day, we heard their music. Sometimes
the soft sweet warblings of the octave flute rose alone upon the air;
then the clear melodious tones of Willis’s bugle seemed to “lap the soul
in Elysium;” then came the clarionets deepened by the trombone; and
finally the loud and thrilling notes of the bass-drum struck grandly in,
and swelled the full tide of sound till the rocks seemed to tremble with
its reverberations. Music, like painting, has its lights and shadows.
Nothing can be more lovely than the scenery about West Point when
lighted up by the beams of the summer moon. While there, I was once on a
water party, in a delightful evening towards the close of the “leafy
month of June.” The gentlemen attached to the military academy had made
arrangements for taking the ladies on a moonlight voyage through the
highlands, in the boats belonging to the post. Of these boats I think
there were eight. The first and largest was appropriated to the band—in
the others followed the professors connected with the institution, the
officers, and the ladies—with soldiers as oarsmen. We were rowed to the
upper extremity of the highlands, beyond Butter Hill which,
notwithstanding its homely name, is a magnificent mountain with a
gradual slope on the land-side, but presenting to the water a
perpendicular precipice in height sixteen hundred feet. In the clefts of
this lofty rock tradition has asserted that the pirate Blackbeard
deposited portions of his treasure more than a century ago. It is not
many years since a gentleman who believed the story, was killed by
losing his hold, and falling down backwards upon the stones below, in a
desperate attempt to scale the precipice in quest of the rover’s gold.
As we embarked on our aquatic excursion “the moon arose curtained in
clouds which her beams gradually dispelled.” When she climbed above
them, as they “turned forth their silver linings to the night,” and her
rays touched the top of the eastern hills, while their dark sides
reposed in shadow, I thought of a song in the Carnival of Venice.
“And while the moon shines on the stream,
And while soft music breathes around,
The feathering oar returns the gleam
And dips in concert to the sound.”
Having ascended beyond the inner highlands, our boats were put about.
The men resting on their oars we floated down with the tide nearly as
far as the Dunderberg, and never did this picturesque and romantic
region look more lovely.
In the course of our little voyage several steam-boats passed us: and
all of them slackened their steam awhile, for the purpose of remaining
longer in our vicinity that the passengers might enjoy the music. One of
these boats, in stopping to hear us, lay directly on the broad line of
moonlight that was dancing and glittering on the water, the red glare of
her lanterns strangely mingling with the golden radiance beneath. Our
band was just then playing the Hunter’s Chorus, that ever-charming
composition which justly merits its universal popularity in every part
of the world where music is known, and which would alone have been
sufficient to entitle Weber to his tomb in Westminster Abbey.
Nothing can be finer than the atmospheric phenomena of these elevated
regions. I remember one afternoon, when the sun was breaking out on the
close of a summer shower, we seemed to find ourselves in the midst of an
immense rain-bow which appeared to have descended upon the plain. The
camp, the south barracks, the trees, and the eastern hills beyond the
river were all brightly colored with its varied and beautiful tints, and
looked as if seen through an immense prism.
A thunder storm in these mountains is sublime beyond all that
imagination can conceive. In looking up the river, while the sun is yet
shining brightly, and the sky is blue above our heads, we see a dark
cloud far off in the direction of Newburgh, whose white houses stand out
in strong relief against the deep gloom that has gathered beyond; the
coming vapor rises and spreads till it appears behind the Crow’s Nest,
casting its deep shade upon the tops of the mountains, while on their
sides still linger the last gleams of sunshine. As the clouds
accumulate, and unite their forces, the darkness descends upon the
river, whose blackening surface is seen ruffled with spots of white
foam; the zig-zag lightning begins to quiver up from the gloom behind
the hills; and then is heard the low murmur of the distant thunder;
every flash becoming brighter, every peal sounding louder and nearer. At
length, the wind rises, and the whole tempest rushes rapidly on. The
trees writhe and bend to their roots, and are soon covered with the
circling dust of the whirl-wind. The lightning glares out in one vast
sheet, “flashing intolerable day” upon the night-like darkness that
shrouds the river and its shores. At the same instant, the loud crash of
the thunder rattles directly over head, and it continues throughout the
storm its long and incessant roll, the echoes of one peal not subsiding
before those of another have commenced. The lightning glances on the
bayonets of the centinels that “walk their lonely rounds” on the skirts
of the camp; and frequently the tents are blown over by the violence of
the gust, and lie prostrate on the wet grass. These terrific
thunder-claps seem to shake the everlasting hills; the firm-set granite
buildings of the institution trembling to their foundations. Often the
tremendous power delegated to “the volleying bolt of heaven” is attested
by a riven and blasted tree, split in a moment from its topmost spray
down to its roots in the earth; while, at the same instant, every leaf
of its green and flourishing foliage becomes dead and yellow, the birds
that built their nests among its branches lying lifeless at its foot.
I recommend to all visiters at the West Point hotel not to neglect
ascending to the belvidere or skylight room on the top of that building.
The view from thence is so vast and so magnificent that it rarely fails
to call forth exclamations of delighted astonishment; particularly when
autumn has colored the woods with its glowing and varied tints of
scarlet, crimson, and purple, and with every shade of brown and yellow
from the richest to the palest—such tints as, at this season, are to be
found only in the foliage of America, and are most beautiful when seen
through the gauzy haze of the Indian summer—that farewell smile of the
departing year. Then the dilated disk of the sun looks round and red
through its thin misty veil; the calm and slumbering river reflects a
sky of the mildest blue; and near the shores its waters glow with the
inverted beauties of the many-colored woods and hills. If viewed at
evening, the splendor of the picture is increased by the glories of an
autumnal sunset, when the clouds (such as are only seen in mountainous
regions) assume the grandest forms and the most gorgeous hues.
Often after the last lingering beam has faded in the west, and all the
stars have come out in the deep blue heaven, a dark mist appears behind
the hills in the north, and from its dun recesses arise the
ever-changing corruscations of the mysterious aurora borealis.
Sometimes, its broad rays extend upwards nearly to the zenith, and
diffuse a cold strange light upon the river and its western banks,
rendering perfectly distinct the sloops on the water, and the trees and
rocks on the shore. In the houses on the bank, the front-rooms are at
times so well lighted by this incomprehensible phenomenon, that a
newspaper may be read after the lamps or candles have been removed from
the apartment. Then, perhaps in a few minutes, “the north’s dancing
streamers relinquished their fire,” and faded dimly away into darkness.
Suddenly they would again revive, darting upwards in renewed brightness
their far-spreading rays, tinted with crimson and purple, and sometimes
even with green and blue.
In a chamber that I once occupied at West Point there was a small
knot-hole in the upper part of one of the shutters, by means of which,
in cold weather, when the windows were closed fast, and the room
consequently darkened, I frequently at early morning saw as in a camera
obscura, a landscape depicted on the white wall above the mantel-piece.
So that before I was up myself, I could observe the first gleams of the
dawnlight, and the changing colors of the clouds as they brightened upon
the blue sky, lending their glories to the hills beyond the river: and
the first rays of the sun, when they “fired the proud tops of the
eastern pines.” In this way, without opening the shutters to look out, I
could always tell whether the morning was clear or cloudy.
The winter at West Point is long and cold; and (before the days of rail
roads,) when the river was once closed, the ice fast, and the boats laid
up for the season, the inhabitants of this insulated spot seemed nearly
shut out from all communication with the rest of the world; and it may
easily be guessed what interest was attached to the mails, after the
difficulties of transportation caused them to arrive irregularly. We
were very soon convinced of the fact that
“When cold and raw the wind doth blow
Bleak in the morning early,
When all the hills are cover’d with snow
Then it is winter fairly.”
I have known the snow so deep and so drifted, as to block up the parlor
windows of the house we then inhabited, precluding all possibility of
opening the shutters; and as to clear it away was no trifling task, we
were more than once obliged to breakfast by candle-light at eight
o’clock.
In the “blue serene” of the clear and intensely cold mornings, which
usually succeeded a deep fall of snow, I have seen the whole atmosphere
glittering with minute particles of ice: to breathe which must, in
delicate lungs, have caused a sensation similar to laceration with a
sharp knife. No one afflicted with pulmonary disease should live at West
Point.
The scenery, in its winter aspect, looked somewhat like a panorama done
in Indian ink, or rather like a great etching: except that the sky
formed a blue background to the snowy mountains, on which the leafless
branches of the denuded forest seemed pencilled in black and gray. We
had our winter walks too: and I never felt a more pleasant glow from
exercise than in climbing Mount Independence, through the snow, to visit
Fort Putnam. In addition to the ordinary steepness of the road, it was
now in many places rendered slippery by broad sheets of ice, beneath
which we saw the living waters of a mountain brook gliding and murmuring
along under their glassy coating. The snow had drifted high among the
recesses of the old fortress, and lay white and thick along the broken
and roofless edges of its dark gray walls, while here and there, amid
the desolation, lingered the evergreen of a lonely cedar. Long bright
icicles suspended their transparent and glittering fringes from the
arches of the dismantled casements, whose entrances were now even less
accessible than usual, being blocked up with mounds of snow that covered
the heaps of fallen stones.
One of our favorite winter walks was to the cascade; and on entering the
close woods that led thither, we always felt a sensible access of warmth
in the atmosphere, which was very agreeable when compared to the
unsheltered bleakness of the plain. In looking down from the heights,
through the steeps of the forest, we saw glimpses of the river, as it
lay far below us; its solid waters now of a bluish-white, shining
beneath the wintry sun. Yet the cascade still poured its resistless
torrent freely among the snow-covered rocks, roaring, frothing, and
pitching from ledge to ledge. An old pine tree had thrown itself
horizontally across the upper fall, its dark green foliage almost
touching the water, and its rough trunk forming a bridge for the passage
of the minks, foxes, ground squirrels, and other petty denizens of the
wild. As the foaming torrent threw up its misty spray, this tree became
incrusted with ice of the most brilliant transparency; looking like an
immense chandelier, with multitudes of long crystal drops depending from
its feathery branches.
The last winter I spent at West Point a funeral took place in the middle
of December. It was that of a gentleman attached to the institution, and
he died after a long and painful illness. The river had closed at a very
early period, and the little world of West Point was locked up in ice
and snow. Three o’clock was the time appointed for the melancholy
procession to take up its line of march; the coffin, covered with a
pall, having been previously carried into the chapel, and the funeral
service performed over it by the chaplain.
It was a clear, cold afternoon, and the sun was already sinking behind
the mountains, whose giant shadows, magnificently colored with crimson
and purple, were projected far forward upon the frozen snow that covered
the plain; as a range of painted windows cast down their glowing tints
upon a white marble pavement.
When the funeral began to move from the chapel, the band (preceding the
coffin) commenced one of the mournful airs that are usually appropriated
to “the march of death.” The muffled drums were struck only at long
intervals, and their heavy notes were deadened still more by the
chillness of the atmosphere; while Willis’s bugle sounded almost like
music from the world of spirits. Next came the soldiers, then the
cadets, afterwards the officers, and lastly the commandant; all walking
with their arms inverted. I saw the sad and lonely procession moving
slowly through the snow, and directing its course to the cemetery, which
is about a mile from the plain. Shaded with ancient trees, the grave
yard occupies the summit of a promontory that impends above the river;
and the Cadet’s Monument crowned by its military trophy in white marble,
forms one of the land marks of the shore. I heard (and it always seems
to me the most affecting part of the ceremonial) the volley which was
fired over the grave, after that cold and narrow cell had been covered
in with clods of frozen earth mingled with snow.
A very extraordinary circumstance connected with military funerals is
the custom, that when all is over, and the procession is returning with
recovered arms, and marching in quick time, the music always performs a
lively air; frequently one that is designated in the army as, “So went
the merry man home to his grave.” This revolting practice is said to
have originated in the same principle that is set forth in the
commencing lines of the well-known song, said to have been sung by
General Wolfe at his supper table on the night before the battle in
which he was killed:
“Why, soldiers why,
Should _we_ be melancholy boys
Whose business ’tis to die.”
The horrors of _every_ war are, and must be so terrible, that its
practice admits of no palliation, except when the struggle is in defence
of our native land. How ought we then to rejoice that in this our own
favored country, no hecatombs of human victims can be immolated to swell
the pride, to gratify the ambition, or to feed the rapacity of a few of
their fellow men. Surely the people of another century will regard with
amazement the tales of blood and carnage that defile the pages of
history. They will wonder that rational beings could be found who were
willing to engage in these atrocious contests, undertaken “for the glory
of heroes, the splendor of thrones.” Where are now the Buonapartes and
the Bourbons, for whose sake forty thousand lives were destroyed in the
dreadful day of Waterloo, “on that tremendous harvest field where death
swung the scythe.”
May we not hope that the war-times will pass away with the king-times.
(To be concluded.)
* * * * *
FRAGMENT.
BY ALBERT PIKE.
We are all mariners on this sea of life;
And they who climb above us up the shrouds,
Have only, in their over-topping place,
Gained a more dangerous station, and foothold
More insecure. The wind that passeth over
And harmeth not the humble crowd below,
Whistles amid the shrouds, and shaketh down
These overweening climbers of the ocean,
Into the great gigantic vase of death.
* * * * *
DREAMS OF THE LAND AND SEA.
A NIGHT SCENE AT SEA.
BY DR. REYNELL COATES.
Oh night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wonderous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength—as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman!——
Byron.