A JAUNT TO THE LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK
I MAY premise that the word Prairie is variously pronounced _paraaer_,
_parearer_, _paroarer_. The latter mode of pronunciation is perhaps the
most in favour.
We were fourteen in all, and all young men: indeed it is a singular
though very natural feature in the society of these distant settlements,
that it is mainly composed of adventurous persons in the prime of life,
and has very few grey heads among it. There were no ladies: the trip
being a fatiguing one: and we were to start at five o’clock in the
morning punctually.
I was called at four, that I might be certain of keeping nobody waiting;
and having got some bread and milk for breakfast, threw up the window and
looked down into the street, expecting to see the whole party busily
astir, and great preparations going on below. But as everything was very
quiet, and the street presented that hopeless aspect with which five
o’clock in the morning is familiar elsewhere, I deemed it as well to go
to bed again, and went accordingly.
I woke again at seven o’clock, and by that time the party had assembled,
and were gathered round, one light carriage, with a very stout axletree;
one something on wheels like an amateur carrier’s cart; one double
phaeton of great antiquity and unearthly construction; one gig with a
great hole in its back and a broken head; and one rider on horseback who
was to go on before. I got into the first coach with three companions;
the rest bestowed themselves in the other vehicles; two large baskets
were made fast to the lightest; two large stone jars in wicker cases,
technically known as demi-johns, were consigned to the ‘least rowdy’ of
the party for safe-keeping; and the procession moved off to the
ferryboat, in which it was to cross the river bodily, men, horses,
carriages, and all, as the manner in these parts is.
We got over the river in due course, and mustered again before a little
wooden box on wheels, hove down all aslant in a morass, with ‘MERCHANT
TAILOR’ painted in very large letters over the door. Having settled the
order of proceeding, and the road to be taken, we started off once more
and began to make our way through an ill-favoured Black Hollow, called,
less expressively, the American Bottom.
The previous day had been—not to say hot, for the term is weak and
lukewarm in its power of conveying an idea of the temperature. The town
had been on fire; in a blaze. But at night it had come on to rain in
torrents, and all night long it had rained without cessation. We had a
pair of very strong horses, but travelled at the rate of little more than
a couple of miles an hour, through one unbroken slough of black mud and
water. It had no variety but in depth. Now it was only half over the
wheels, now it hid the axletree, and now the coach sank down in it almost
to the windows. The air resounded in all directions with the loud
chirping of the frogs, who, with the pigs (a coarse, ugly breed, as
unwholesome-looking as though they were the spontaneous growth of the
country), had the whole scene to themselves. Here and there we passed a
log hut: but the wretched cabins were wide apart and thinly scattered,
for though the soil is very rich in this place, few people can exist in
such a deadly atmosphere. On either side of the track, if it deserve the
name, was the thick ‘bush;’ and everywhere was stagnant, slimy, rotten,
filthy water.
As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a gallon or so of cold
water whenever he is in a foam with heat, we halted for that purpose, at
a log inn in the wood, far removed from any other residence. It
consisted of one room, bare-roofed and bare-walled of course, with a loft
above. The ministering priest was a swarthy young savage, in a shirt of
cotton print like bed-furniture, and a pair of ragged trousers. There
were a couple of young boys, too, nearly naked, lying idle by the well;
and they, and he, and _the_ traveller at the inn, turned out to look at
us.
The traveller was an old man with a grey gristly beard two inches long, a
shaggy moustache of the same hue, and enormous eyebrows; which almost
obscured his lazy, semi-drunken glance, as he stood regarding us with
folded arms: poising himself alternately upon his toes and heels. On
being addressed by one of the party, he drew nearer, and said, rubbing
his chin (which scraped under his horny hand like fresh gravel beneath a
nailed shoe), that he was from Delaware, and had lately bought a farm
‘down there,’ pointing into one of the marshes where the stunted trees
were thickest. He was ‘going,’ he added, to St. Louis, to fetch his
family, whom he had left behind; but he seemed in no great hurry to bring
on these incumbrances, for when we moved away, he loitered back into the
cabin, and was plainly bent on stopping there so long as his money
lasted. He was a great politician of course, and explained his opinions
at some length to one of our company; but I only remember that he
concluded with two sentiments, one of which was, Somebody for ever; and
the other, Blast everybody else! which is by no means a bad abstract of
the general creed in these matters.
When the horses were swollen out to about twice their natural dimensions
(there seems to be an idea here, that this kind of inflation improves
their going), we went forward again, through mud and mire, and damp, and
festering heat, and brake and bush, attended always by the music of the
frogs and pigs, until nearly noon, when we halted at a place called
Belleville.
Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses, huddled together in
the very heart of the bush and swamp. Many of them had singularly bright
doors of red and yellow; for the place had been lately visited by a
travelling painter, ‘who got along,’ as I was told, ‘by eating his way.’
The criminal court was sitting, and was at that moment trying some
criminals for horse-stealing: with whom it would most likely go hard: for
live stock of all kinds being necessarily very much exposed in the woods,
is held by the community in rather higher value than human life; and for
this reason, juries generally make a point of finding all men indicted
for cattle-stealing, guilty, whether or no.
The horses belonging to the bar, the judge, and witnesses, were tied to
temporary racks set up roughly in the road; by which is to be understood,
a forest path, nearly knee-deep in mud and slime.
There was an hotel in this place, which, like all hotels in America, had
its large dining-room for the public table. It was an odd, shambling,
low-roofed out-house, half-cowshed and half-kitchen, with a coarse brown
canvas table-cloth, and tin sconces stuck against the walls, to hold
candles at supper-time. The horseman had gone forward to have coffee and
some eatables prepared, and they were by this time nearly ready. He had
ordered ‘wheat-bread and chicken fixings,’ in preference to ‘corn-bread
and common doings.’ The latter kind of rejection includes only pork and
bacon. The former comprehends broiled ham, sausages, veal cutlets,
steaks, and such other viands of that nature as may be supposed, by a
tolerably wide poetical construction, ‘to fix’ a chicken comfortably in
the digestive organs of any lady or gentleman.
On one of the door-posts at this inn, was a tin plate, whereon was
inscribed in characters of gold, ‘Doctor Crocus;’ and on a sheet of
paper, pasted up by the side of this plate, was a written announcement
that Dr. Crocus would that evening deliver a lecture on Phrenology for
the benefit of the Belleville public; at a charge, for admission, of so
much a head.
Straying up-stairs, during the preparation of the chicken fixings, I
happened to pass the doctor’s chamber; and as the door stood wide open,
and the room was empty, I made bold to peep in.
It was a bare, unfurnished, comfortless room, with an unframed portrait
hanging up at the head of the bed; a likeness, I take it, of the Doctor,
for the forehead was fully displayed, and great stress was laid by the
artist upon its phrenological developments. The bed itself was covered
with an old patch-work counterpane. The room was destitute of carpet or
of curtain. There was a damp fireplace without any stove, full of wood
ashes; a chair, and a very small table; and on the last-named piece of
furniture was displayed, in grand array, the doctor’s library, consisting
of some half-dozen greasy old books.
Now, it certainly looked about the last apartment on the whole earth out
of which any man would be likely to get anything to do him good. But the
door, as I have said, stood coaxingly open, and plainly said in
conjunction with the chair, the portrait, the table, and the books, ‘Walk
in, gentlemen, walk in! Don’t be ill, gentlemen, when you may be well in
no time. Doctor Crocus is here, gentlemen, the celebrated Dr. Crocus!
Dr. Crocus has come all this way to cure you, gentlemen. If you haven’t
heard of Dr. Crocus, it’s your fault, gentlemen, who live a little way
out of the world here: not Dr. Crocus’s. Walk in, gentlemen, walk in!’
In the passage below, when I went down-stairs again, was Dr. Crocus
himself. A crowd had flocked in from the Court House, and a voice from
among them called out to the landlord, ‘Colonel! introduce Doctor
Crocus.’
‘Mr. Dickens,’ says the colonel, ‘Doctor Crocus.’
Upon which Doctor Crocus, who is a tall, fine-looking Scotchman, but
rather fierce and warlike in appearance for a professor of the peaceful
art of healing, bursts out of the concourse with his right arm extended,
and his chest thrown out as far as it will possibly come, and says:
‘Your countryman, sir!’
Whereupon Doctor Crocus and I shake hands; and Doctor Crocus looks as if
I didn’t by any means realise his expectations, which, in a linen blouse,
and a great straw hat, with a green ribbon, and no gloves, and my face
and nose profusely ornamented with the stings of mosquitoes and the bites
of bugs, it is very likely I did not.
‘Long in these parts, sir?’ says I.
‘Three or four months, sir,’ says the Doctor.
‘Do you think of soon returning to the old country?’ says I.
Doctor Crocus makes no verbal answer, but gives me an imploring look,
which says so plainly ‘Will you ask me that again, a little louder, if
you please?’ that I repeat the question.
‘Think of soon returning to the old country, sir!’ repeats the Doctor.
‘To the old country, sir,’ I rejoin.
Doctor Crocus looks round upon the crowd to observe the effect he
produces, rubs his hands, and says, in a very loud voice:
‘Not yet awhile, sir, not yet. You won’t catch me at that just yet, sir.
I am a little too fond of freedom for _that_, sir. Ha, ha! It’s not so
easy for a man to tear himself from a free country such as this is, sir.
Ha, ha! No, no! Ha, ha! None of that till one’s obliged to do it, sir.
No, no!’
As Doctor Crocus says these latter words, he shakes his head, knowingly,
and laughs again. Many of the bystanders shake their heads in concert
with the doctor, and laugh too, and look at each other as much as to say,
‘A pretty bright and first-rate sort of chap is Crocus!’ and unless I am
very much mistaken, a good many people went to the lecture that night,
who never thought about phrenology, or about Doctor Crocus either, in all
their lives before.
From Belleville, we went on, through the same desolate kind of waste, and
constantly attended, without the interval of a moment, by the same music;
until, at three o’clock in the afternoon, we halted once more at a
village called Lebanon to inflate the horses again, and give them some
corn besides: of which they stood much in need. Pending this ceremony, I
walked into the village, where I met a full-sized dwelling-house coming
down-hill at a round trot, drawn by a score or more of oxen.
The public-house was so very clean and good a one, that the managers of
the jaunt resolved to return to it and put up there for the night, if
possible. This course decided on, and the horses being well refreshed,
we again pushed forward, and came upon the Prairie at sunset.
It would be difficult to say why, or how—though it was possibly from
having heard and read so much about it—but the effect on me was
disappointment. Looking towards the setting sun, there lay, stretched
out before my view, a vast expanse of level ground; unbroken, save by one
thin line of trees, which scarcely amounted to a scratch upon the great
blank; until it met the glowing sky, wherein it seemed to dip: mingling
with its rich colours, and mellowing in its distant blue. There it lay,
a tranquil sea or lake without water, if such a simile be admissible,
with the day going down upon it: a few birds wheeling here and there: and
solitude and silence reigning paramount around. But the grass was not
yet high; there were bare black patches on the ground; and the few wild
flowers that the eye could see, were poor and scanty. Great as the
picture was, its very flatness and extent, which left nothing to the
imagination, tamed it down and cramped its interest. I felt little of
that sense of freedom and exhilaration which a Scottish heath inspires,
or even our English downs awaken. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive
in its barren monotony. I felt that in traversing the Prairies, I could
never abandon myself to the scene, forgetful of all else; as I should do
instinctively, were the heather underneath my feet, or an iron-bound
coast beyond; but should often glance towards the distant and
frequently-receding line of the horizon, and wish it gained and passed.
It is not a scene to be forgotten, but it is scarcely one, I think (at
all events, as I saw it), to remember with much pleasure, or to covet the
looking-on again, in after-life.
We encamped near a solitary log-house, for the sake of its water, and
dined upon the plain. The baskets contained roast fowls, buffalo’s
tongue (an exquisite dainty, by the way), ham, bread, cheese, and butter;
biscuits, champagne, sherry; lemons and sugar for punch; and abundance of
rough ice. The meal was delicious, and the entertainers were the soul of
kindness and good humour. I have often recalled that cheerful party to
my pleasant recollection since, and shall not easily forget, in
junketings nearer home with friends of older date, my boon companions on
the Prairie.
Returning to Lebanon that night, we lay at the little inn at which we had
halted in the afternoon. In point of cleanliness and comfort it would
have suffered by no comparison with any English alehouse, of a homely
kind, in England.
Rising at five o’clock next morning, I took a walk about the village:
none of the houses were strolling about to-day, but it was early for them
yet, perhaps: and then amused myself by lounging in a kind of farm-yard
behind the tavern, of which the leading features were, a strange jumble
of rough sheds for stables; a rude colonnade, built as a cool place of
summer resort; a deep well; a great earthen mound for keeping vegetables
in, in winter time; and a pigeon-house, whose little apertures looked, as
they do in all pigeon-houses, very much too small for the admission of
the plump and swelling-breasted birds who were strutting about it, though
they tried to get in never so hard. That interest exhausted, I took a
survey of the inn’s two parlours, which were decorated with coloured
prints of Washington, and President Madison, and of a white-faced young
lady (much speckled by the flies), who held up her gold neck-chain for
the admiration of the spectator, and informed all admiring comers that
she was ‘Just Seventeen:’ although I should have thought her older. In
the best room were two oil portraits of the kit-cat size, representing
the landlord and his infant son; both looking as bold as lions, and
staring out of the canvas with an intensity that would have been cheap at
any price. They were painted, I think, by the artist who had touched up
the Belleville doors with red and gold; for I seemed to recognise his
style immediately.
After breakfast, we started to return by a different way from that which
we had taken yesterday, and coming up at ten o’clock with an encampment
of German emigrants carrying their goods in carts, who had made a rousing
fire which they were just quitting, stopped there to refresh. And very
pleasant the fire was; for, hot though it had been yesterday, it was
quite cold to-day, and the wind blew keenly. Looming in the distance, as
we rode along, was another of the ancient Indian burial-places, called
The Monks’ Mound; in memory of a body of fanatics of the order of La
Trappe, who founded a desolate convent there, many years ago, when there
were no settlers within a thousand miles, and were all swept off by the
pernicious climate: in which lamentable fatality, few rational people
will suppose, perhaps, that society experienced any very severe
deprivation.
The track of to-day had the same features as the track of yesterday.
There was the swamp, the bush, and the perpetual chorus of frogs, the
rank unseemly growth, the unwholesome steaming earth. Here and there,
and frequently too, we encountered a solitary broken-down waggon, full of
some new settler’s goods. It was a pitiful sight to see one of these
vehicles deep in the mire; the axle-tree broken; the wheel lying idly by
its side; the man gone miles away, to look for assistance; the woman
seated among their wandering household gods with a baby at her breast, a
picture of forlorn, dejected patience; the team of oxen crouching down
mournfully in the mud, and breathing forth such clouds of vapour from
their mouths and nostrils, that all the damp mist and fog around seemed
to have come direct from them.
In due time we mustered once again before the merchant tailor’s, and
having done so, crossed over to the city in the ferry-boat: passing, on
the way, a spot called Bloody Island, the duelling-ground of St. Louis,
and so designated in honour of the last fatal combat fought there, which
was with pistols, breast to breast. Both combatants fell dead upon the
ground; and possibly some rational people may think of them, as of the
gloomy madmen on the Monks’ Mound, that they were no great loss to the
community.