Previous to my coming to this country, I recollect reading the foregoing
passages, the first in a history of New England, published in London, in
the year 1671; and the other in a similar production of a later date.
Prepared as I was to hear something extraordinary from these animals, I
confess the first frog _concert_ I heard in America was so much beyond any
thing I could conceive of the _powers_ of these _musicians_, that I was
truly astonished. This _performance_ was _al fresco_, and took place on
the night of the 18th instant, in a large _swamp_, where there were at
least ten thousand _performers_; and I really believe not two _exactly_ in
the same pitch, if the octave can possibly admit of so many divisions or
shades of semitones. An hibernian musician, who, like myself, was present
for the first time at this _concert_ of _antimusic_, exclaimed, "By Jasus
but they stop out of tune to a _nicety!"_
I have been since informed by an _amateur_, who resided many years in this
country, and made this species of _music_ his peculiar study, that on
these occasions the _treble_ is performed by the tree-frogs, the smallest
and most _beautiful_ species; they are always of the same colour as the
bark of the tree they inhabit, and their note is not unlike the chirp of a
cricket: the next in size are our _counter tenors_; they have a note
resembling the _setting_ of a _saw_. A still larger species sing _tenor_;
and the _under part_ is supported by the bull-frogs; which are as large as
a man's foot, and _bellow_ out the _bass_ in a tone as loud and sonorous
as that of the animal from which they take their name.
To an Englishman lately arrived in this country there are other phenomena,
equally curious; as _fire-flies, night-hawks &c.;_ but, above all,
such tremendous peals of thunder and flashes of lightning, as can be
conceived only by those who have been in southern latitudes.
I have often thought, if an enthusiastic _cockney_, of weak nerves,
who had never been out of the sound of Bow bell, could suddenly be
conveyed from his bed, in the middle of the night, and laid, fast asleep,
in an american swamp, he would, on waking, fancy himself in the infernal
regions: his first sensation would be from the stings of a myriad of
mosquitoes; waking with the smart, his ears would be assailed with the
horrid noises of the frogs; on lifting up his eyes he would have a faint
view of the night-hawks, flapping their ominous wings over his devoted
head, visible only from the glimmering light of the fire-flies, which he
would naturally conclude were sparks from the bottomless pit. Nothing
would be wanting at this moment to complete the illusion, but one of those
dreadful explosions of thunder and lightning, so _extravagantly_
described by Lee, in Oedipus:--
"Call you these peals of thunder, but the yawn or bellowing clouds? by
Jove, they seem to me the world's last groans, and those large sheets of
flame it's last blaze!"
I have often traversed the woods by myself at night, and sometimes during
_such scenes_; and though I was conscious that all round me proceeded from
natural causes, I could not at these times entirely forget,
"All that the _priest_ and all the nurse had taught."