THE ROMANCE OF EXPECTATION, &c.
That the author indulged many romantic expectations, in the excursion
that was before him, was not only natural, but warranted. He could
not reasonably be disappointed, so long as imagination did not become
absolutely wild and ungovernable, and fly away from earth--or “call for
spirits from the vasty deep”--or fancy things, of which heaven or earth
affords no likeness. In constitutional temperament and in principle
I was rather fond of the fascinating and ever changing hues, which
genuine poetry throws over the variegated phases of the natural world.
The universe I had been accustomed to regard, as one grand poetic
panorama, laid out by the Creator’s hand, to entertain uncorrupt minds,
without danger of satiety, and to “lead them up through nature’s
works to nature’s God.” Sermons I could find, or believed were to be
found, “in trees, and brooks, and stones; and good in every thing.”
“The heavens declare the glory of God,” and “the earth is full of
his bounty”--and he who does not admire the former, to the praise of
Him that made them, and partake of the rich gifts of the latter with
gratitude to their author, it must be ascribed alike to his stupidity
and depravity. I have thought, that he who cannot appreciate such
sentiments, can never sympathise with the best feelings, and happiest
condition of man. The universe, in all its parts, suggests them;
and heaven itself, we have reason to believe, is full of them. And
there is no place so natural to song, so full of music, so beautiful
in its attractive forms, or so enchanting in the combination and
display of its glories to the eye, as heaven. All the most lively
and glowing sentiments of true religion, of genuine piety, are of a
poetic character. And the highest and sweetest inspirations of Divine
Revelation, it need not be said, are all poetry.
Green Bay, in the North West Territory, where we were destined, is
commonly reckoned the end of the world. It is not even imagined, by
the vulgar, that there is any place, or any human being, or any thing
with which mortals may have to do, beyond it. Besides, the way is
long--the seas dangerous and ever liable to sudden and disastrous
storms--the shores uninhabited, or tenanted only here and there by the
inhospitable savage. Latitude and longitude and clime were all to be
changed, and changed too by a long stretch--not long perhaps to such a
voyager as Captain Cook, or Captain Parry; but yet long and dubious,
and in no small degree romantic, to one, who had never been accustomed
to the wilder regions of the new world. To go up among the Indians, the
savages of the wilderness! and be their guest, far from the territories
of civilized man! Who has not listened in the nursery to the tales
of Indian wars, of the tomahawk and scalping knife, of the midnight
massacre and burning of villages and towns; of the mother butchered
with her infant in her arms; of the grey head, and man in full vigour
of life, slaughtered together; and a train of tender captives, driven
away to glut the vengeance of the savage, by the endurance of every
imaginable torture;--until the story has thrilled his blood with
horror, and he refused to be left in his bed, till his nurse, who
had frightened him, had sung him to sleep? And although he may have
stood corrected in his maturer years, and entertained less horrible
notions of the savage, still he can never altogether efface his first
impressions. The poetry of his feelings often overpowers his judgment,
and he not only anticipates much from the sight of a savage in his
native regions and costume; but he involuntarily shrinks from the
peculiar, rigid, and stern aspect of his countenance; shudders at the
thought of what may possibly be working in his soul; and calculates a
thousand imaginable results of an interview, which perchance has placed
him in the power of such an unsocial and awful being. There stands
before him a naked man, with visage painted horrible, whose every
muscle demonstrates his custom to exertion and fatigue, who knows not
how to smile; who never sleeps, or wakes, but that a weapon of death is
girded to his side, or borne in his hand; who is a creature of passion,
and inflexible in his purpose, when once resolved; who conceals his
thoughts beneath his imperturbable countenance; who never betrays his
emotions, however deep and strong they are;--who can be indifferent in
such society? But we must not anticipate the scenes to come.
Having made the reader already so much acquainted with Lake Erie,
we will not detain him long upon a sea familiar to his thoughts. It
may be remarked, that the surface of this lake is five hundred and
seventy-five feet above high water on the Hudson river at Albany, the
Eastern termination of the Erie canal. The rapids and Falls of Niagara,
the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and the general descent of these waters
to the ocean, make the difference.
About the 20th of July, 1830, we embarked at Buffalo in the
steam-packet, _Superior_, for Detroit, and made the passage in two
days, skirting the southern shore, and touching at the principal ports,
without remarkable incident, except an unpleasant encounter with an
army of musquitoes in the bay of Sandusky, which were taken on board at
the port of the same name, in lieu of passengers left behind; and whose
audaciousness, ferocity, and blood-thirstiness, were enough to make one
out of temper with the place; and which, notwithstanding all attempts
to ward off their assaults, inflicted upon us many deep and annoying
impressions.
Lake Erie is unchequered by islands, till we begin to approach its
western regions; where, instead of an open sea, the beautiful and
curving shores of the main land, and of the insular territories,
covered as they generally are with unbroken forests, and opening
channels and bays in every direction, lend a vision of enchantment,
rarely equalled, to the eye of the passenger, borne along upon the
bosom of the deep. It presents the aspects of nature, in all her
chasteness, untouched, inviolate; and when the wind is lulled, and
the face of the waters becomes a sea of glass, it is nature’s holiest
sabbath; and seems to forbid the approach and trespass of the dashing
engine, which rushes forward in fury and envy of the scene; while the
passenger, wrought to ecstacy in contemplation of the novel exhibition,
shrinks back within himself involuntarily, as if in fear of some sudden
retribution from above, for the daring violation of this sacred retreat
of nature’s repose. In a mood like this, the stranger enters the river
of Detroit, almost level with its banks, fancies he hears the thunders
of old Maldon, (a British fort on the Canada side at the mouth of the
river), gazes at the mean and sordid huts of the unambitious French,
(for however unexpected the announcement, there are no people in the
world more distant from ambition, than the French of Canada),--admires
the lightness and celerity, which characterize the movements of the
Indian canoe, filled with copper-coloured faces and uncovered heads,
and darting up and down and across the stream, in obedience to the
paddles, which enter the water so still and with so little apparent
effort, as scarcely to disturb the surface;--and soon finds himself
laid in the docks of a busy and flourishing port, presenting handsome
streets and handsome steeples, itself the ancient seat of Indian war
and Indian romance, identified and connected with a history like
romance.