THE LAKES.
SCENE, STEAMBOAT.--_About to leave Buffalo--Baggage coming on
board--Passengers bustling for their berths--Little boys persecuting
everybody with their newspapers and pamphlets--J., S. and M. huddled
up in a forlorn corner, behind a large trunk--A heavy rain falling_.
_M_. Water, water everywhere. After Niagara one would like a dry strip
of existence. And at any rate it is quite enough for me to have it under
foot without having it over head in this way.
_J_. Ah, do not abuse the gentle element. It is hardly possible to have
too much of it, and indeed, if I were obliged to choose amid the four,
it would be the one in which I could bear confinement best.
_S_. You would make a pretty Undine, to be sure!
_J_. Nay, I only offered myself as a Triton, a boisterous Triton of the
sounding shell ... You; M. I suppose, would be a salamander, rather.
_M_. No! that is too equivocal a position, whether in modern mythology,
or Hoffman's tales. I should choose to be a gnome.
_J_. That choice savors of the pride that apes humility.
_M_. By no means; the gnomes are the most important of all the elemental
tribes. Is it not they who make the money?
_J_. And are accordingly a dark, mean, scoffing,--
_M_. You talk as if you had always lived in that wild unprofitable
element you are so fond of, where all things glitter, and nothing is
gold; all show and no substance. My people work in the secret, and their
works praise them in the open light; they remain in the dark because
only there such marvels could be bred. You call them mean. They do not
spend their energies on their own growth, or their own play, but to feed
the veins of mother earth with permanent splendors, very different from
what she shows on the surface.
Think of passing a life, not merely in heaping together, but making
gold. Of all dreams, that of the alchymist is the most poetical, for he
looked at the finest symbol. Gold, says one of our friends, is the
hidden light of the earth, it crowns the mineral, as wine the vegetable
order, being the last expression of vital energy.
_J_. Have you paid for your passage?
_M_. Yes! and in gold, not in shells or pebbles.
_J_. No really wise gnome would scoff at the water, the beautiful water.
"The spirit of man is like the water."
_S_. Yes, and like the air and fire, no less.
_J_. Yes, but not like the earth, this low-minded creature's chosen
dwelling.
_M_. The earth is spirit made fruitful,--life. And its heart-beats are
told in gold and wine.
_J_. Oh! it is shocking to hear such sentiments in these times. I
thought that Bacchic energy of yours was long since repressed.
_M_. No! I have only learned to mix water with my wine, and stamp upon
my gold the heads of kings, or the hieroglyphics of worship. But since I
have learnt to mix with water, let's hear what you have to say in praise
of your favorite.
_J_. From water Venus was born, what more would you have? It is the
mother of Beauty, the girdle of earth, and the marriage of nations.
_S_. Without any of that high-flown poetry, it is enough, I think, that
it is the great artist, turning all objects that approach it to picture.
_J_. True, no object that touches it, whether it be the cart that
ploughs the wave for sea-weed, or the boat or plank that rides upon it,
but is brought at once from the demesne of coarse utilities into that of
picture. All trades, all callings, become picturesque by the water's
side, or on the water. The soil, the slovenliness is washed out of every
calling by its touch. All river-crafts, sea-crafts, are picturesque, are
poetical. Their very slang is poetry.
_M_. The reasons for that are complex.
_J_. The reason is, that there can be no plodding, groping words and
motions, on my water as there are on your earth. There is no time, no
chance for them where all moves so rapidly, though so smoothly,
everything connected with water must be like itself, forcible, but
clear. That is why sea-slang is so poetical; there is a word for
everything and every act, and a thing and an act for every word. Seamen
must speak quick and bold, but also with utmost precision. They cannot
reef and brace other than in a Homeric dialect--therefore,--(Steamboat
bell rings.) But I must say a quick good-by.
_M_. What, going, going back to earth after all this talk upon the other
side. Well, that is nowise Homeric, but truly modern.
J. is borne off without time for any reply, but a laugh--at himself, of
course.
S. and M. retire to their state-rooms to forget the wet, the chill and
steamboat smell in their just-bought new world of novels.
Next day, when we stopped at Cleveland, the storm was just clearing up;
ascending the bluff, we had one of the finest views of the lake that
could have been wished. The varying depths of these lakes give to their
surface a great variety of coloring, and beneath this wild sky and
changeful lights, the waters presented kaleidoscopic varieties of hues,
rich, but mournful. I admire these bluffs of red, crumbling earth. Here
land and water meet under very different auspices from those of the
rock-bound coast to which I have been accustomed. There they meet
tenderly to challenge, and proudly to refuse, though not in fact repel.
But here they meet to mingle, are always rushing together, and changing
places; a new creation takes place beneath the eye.
The weather grew gradually clearer, but not bright; yet we could see
the shore and appreciate the extent of these noble waters.
Coming up the river St. Clair, we saw Indians for the first time. They
were camped out on the bank. It was twilight, and their blanketed forms,
in listless groups or stealing along the bank, with a lounge and a
stride so different in its wildness from the rudeness of the white
settler, gave me the first feeling that I really approached the West.
The people on the boat were almost all New Englanders, seeking their
fortunes. They had brought with them their habits of calculation, their
cautious manners, their love of polemics. It grieved me to hear these
immigrants who were to be the fathers of a new race, all, from the old
man down to the little girl, talking not of what they should do, but of
what they should get in the new scene. It was to them a prospect, not of
the unfolding nobler energies, but of more ease, and larger
accumulation. It wearied me, too, to hear Trinity and Unity discussed in
the poor, narrow doctrinal way on these free waters; but that will soon
cease, there is not time for this clash of opinions in the West, where
the clash of material interests is so noisy. They will need the spirit
of religion more than ever to guide them, but will find less time than
before for its doctrine. This change was to me, who am tired of the war
of words on these subjects, and believe it only sows the wind to reap
the whirlwind, refreshing, but I argue nothing from it; there is nothing
real in the freedom of thought at the West, it is from the position of
men's lives, not the state of their minds. So soon as they have time,
unless they grow better meanwhile, they will cavil and criticise, and
judge other men by their own standard, and outrage the law of love every
way, just as they do with us.
We reached Mackinaw the evening of the third day, but, to my great
disappointment, it was too late and too rainy to go ashore. The beauty
of the island, though seen under the most unfavorable circumstances, did
not disappoint my expectations. But I shall see it to more purpose on my
return.
As the day has passed dully, a cold rain preventing us from keeping out
in the air, my thoughts have been dwelling on a story told when we were
off Detroit, this morning, by a fellow passenger, and whose moral beauty
touched me profoundly.
Some years ago, said Mrs. L., my father and mother stopped to dine at
Detroit. A short time before dinner my father met in the hall Captain
P., a friend of his youthful days. He had loved P. extremely, as did
many who knew him, and had not been surprised to hear of the distinction
and popular esteem which his wide knowledge, talents, and noble temper
commanded, as he went onward in the world. P. was every way fitted to
succeed; his aims were high, but not too high for his powers, suggested
by an instinct of his own capacities, not by an ideal standard drawn
from culture. Though steadfast in his course, it was not to overrun
others, his wise self-possession was no less for them than himself. He
was thoroughly the gentleman, gentle because manly, and was a striking
instance that where there is strength for sincere courtesy, there is no
need of other adaptation to the character of others, to make one's way
freely and gracefully through the crowd.
My father was delighted to see him, and after a short parley in the
hall--"We will dine together," he cried, "then we shall have time to
tell all our stories."
P. hesitated a moment, then said, "My wife is with me."
"And mine with me," said my father, "that's well; they, too, will have
an opportunity of getting acquainted and can entertain one another, if
they get tired of our college stories."
P. acquiesced, with a grave bow, and shortly after they all met in the
dining-room. My father was much surprised at the appearance of Mrs. P.
He had heard that his friend married abroad, but nothing further, and he
was not prepared to see the calm, dignified P. with a woman on his arm,
still handsome, indeed, but whose coarse and imperious expression showed
as low habits of mind as her exaggerated dress and gesture did of
education. Nor could there be a greater contrast to my mother, who,
though understanding her claims and place with the certainty of a lady,
was soft and retiring in an uncommon degree.
However, there was no time to wonder or fancy; they sat down, and P.
engaged in conversation, without much vivacity, but with his usual ease.
The first quarter of an hour passed well enough. But soon it was
observable that Mrs. P. was drinking glass after glass of wine, to an
extent few gentlemen did, even then, and soon that she was actually
excited by it. Before this, her manner had been brusque, if not
contemptuous towards her new acquaintance; now it became, towards my
mother especially, quite rude. Presently she took up some slight remark
made by my mother, which, though it did not naturally mean anything of
the sort, could be twisted into some reflection upon England, and made
it a handle, first of vulgar sarcasm, and then, upon my mother's
defending herself with some surprise and gentle dignity, hurled upon her
a volley of abuse, beyond Billingsgate.
My mother, confounded, feeling scenes and ideas presented to her mind
equally new and painful, sat trembling; she knew not what to do, tears
rushed into her eyes. My father, no less distressed, yet unwilling to
outrage the feelings of his friend by doing or saying what his
indignation prompted, turned an appealing look on P.
Never, as he often said, was the painful expression of that sight
effaced from his mind. It haunted his dreams and disturbed his waking
thoughts. P. sat with his head bent forward, and his eyes cast down,
pale, but calm, with a fixed expression, not merely of patient wo, but
of patient shame, which it would not have been thought possible for
that, noble countenance to wear, "yet," said my father, "it became him.
At other times he was handsome, but then beautiful, though of a beauty
saddened and abashed. For a spiritual light borrowed from the worldly
perfection of his mien that illustration by contrast, which the
penitence of the Magdalen does from the glowing earthliness of her
charms."
Seeing that he preserved silence, while Mrs. P. grew still more
exasperated, my father rose and led his wife to her own room. Half an
hour had passed, in painful and wondering surmises, when a gentle knock
was heard at the door, and P. entered equipped for a journey. "We are
just going," he said, and holding out his hand, but without looking at
them, "Forgive."
They each took his hand, and silently pressed it, then he went without a
word more.
Some time passed and they heard now and then of P., as he passed from
one army station to another, with his uncongenial companion, who became,
it was said, constantly more degraded. Whoever mentioned having seen
them, wondered at the chance which had yoked him to such a woman, but
yet more at the silent fortitude with which he bore it. Many blamed him
for enduring it, apparently without efforts to check her; others
answered that he had probably made such at an earlier period, and
finding them unavailing, had resigned himself to despair, and was too
delicate to meet the scandal that, with such a resistance as such a
woman could offer, must attend a formal separation.
But my father, who was not in such haste to come to conclusions, and
substitute some plausible explanation for the truth, found something in
the look of P. at that trying moment to which none of these explanations
offered a key. There was in it, he felt, a fortitude, but not the
fortitude of the hero, a religious submission, above the penitent, if
not enkindled with the enthusiasm of the martyr.
I have said that my father, was not one of those who are ready to
substitute specious explanations for truth, and those who are thus
abstinent rarely lay their hand on a thread without making it a clue.
Such an one, like the dexterous weaver, lets not one color go, till he
finds that which matches it in the pattern; he keeps on weaving, but
chooses his shades, and my father found at last what he wanted to make
out the pattern for himself. He met a lady who had been intimate with
both himself and P. in early days, and finding she had seen the latter
abroad, asked if she knew the circumstances of the marriage. "The
circumstances of the act I know," she said, "which sealed the misery of
our friend, though as much in the dark as any one about the motives that
led to it."
We were quite intimate with P. in London, and he was our most delightful
companion. He was then in the full flower of the varied accomplishments,
which set off his fine manners and dignified character, joined, towards
those he loved, with a certain soft willingness which gives the
desirable chivalry to a man. None was more clear of choice where his
personal affections were not touched, but where they were, it cost him
pain to say no, on the slightest occasion. I have thought this must have
had some connexion with the mystery of his misfortunes.
One day he called on me, and, without any preface, asked if I would be
present next day at his marriage. I was so surprised, and so
unpleasantly surprised, that I did not at first answer a word. We had
been on terms so familiar, that I thought I knew all about him, yet had
never dreamed of his having an attachment, and, though I had never
inquired on the subject, yet this reserve, where perfect openness had
been supposed, and really, on my side, existed, seemed to me a kind of
treachery. Then it is never pleasant to know that a heart, on which we
have some claim, is to be given to another. We cannot tell how it will
affect our own relations with a person; it may strengthen or it may
swallow up other affections; the crisis is hazardous, and our first
thought, on such an occasion, is too often for ourselves, at least, mine
was. Seeing me silent, he repeated his question.
To whom, said I, are you to be married?
That, he replied, I cannot tell you. He was a moment silent, then
continued with an impassive look of cold self-possession, that affected
me with strange sadness.
"The name of the person you will hear, of course, at the time, but more
I cannot tell you. I need, however, the presence, not only of legal, but
of respectable and friendly witnesses. I have hoped you and your husband
would do me this kindness. Will you?"
Something in his manner made it impossible to refuse. I answered before
I knew I was going to speak, "We will," and he left me.
I will not weary you with telling how I harassed myself and my husband,
who was, however, scarce less interested, with doubts and conjectures.
Suffice it that, next morning, P. came and took us in a carriage to a
distant church. We had just entered the porch when a cart, such as fruit
and vegetables are brought to market in, drove up, containing an elderly
woman and a young girl. P. assisted them to alight, and advanced with
the girl to the altar.
The girl was neatly dressed and quite handsome, yet, something in her
expression displeased me the moment I looked upon her. Meanwhile the
ceremony was going on, and, at its close, P. introduced us to the bride,
and we all went to the door.
Good-by, Fanny, said the elderly woman. The new-made Mrs. P. replied
without any token of affection or emotion. The woman got into the cart
and drove away.
From that time I saw but little of P. or his wife. I took our mutual
friends to see her, and they were civil to her for his sake. Curiosity
was very much excited, but entirely baffled; no one, of course, dared
speak to P. on the subject, and no other means could be found of solving
the riddle.
He treated his wife with grave and kind politeness, but it was always
obvious that they had nothing in common between them. Her manners and
tastes were not at that time gross, but her character showed itself hard
and material. She was fond of riding, and spent much time so. Her style
in this, and in dress, seemed the opposite of P.'s; but he indulged all
her wishes, while, for himself, he plunged into his own pursuits.
For a time he seemed, if not happy, not positively unhappy; but, after a
few years, Mrs. P. fell into the habit of drinking, and then such scenes
as you witnessed grew frequent. I have often heard of them, and always
that P. sat, as you describe him, his head bowed down and perfectly
silent all through, whatever might be done or whoever be present, and
always his aspect has inspired such sympathy that no person has
questioned him or resented her insults, but merely got out of the way,
so soon as possible.
Hard and long penance, said my father, after some minutes musing, for an
hour of passion, probably for his only error.
Is that your explanation? said the lady. O, improbable. P. might err,
but not be led beyond himself.
I know his cool gray eye and calm complexion seemed to say so, but a
different story is told by the lip that could tremble, and showed what
flashes might pierce those deep blue heavens; and when these over
intellectual beings do swerve aside, it is to fall down a precipice, for
their narrow path lies over such. But he was not one to sin without
making a brave atonement, and that it had become a holy one, was written
on that downcast brow.
The fourth day on these waters, the weather was milder and brighter, so
that we could now see them to some purpose. At night was clear moon,
and, for the first time, from the upper deck, I saw one of the great
steamboats come majestically up. It was glowing with lights, looking
many-eyed and sagacious; in its heavy motion it seemed a dowager queen,
and this motion, with its solemn pulse, and determined sweep, becomes
these smooth waters, especially at night, as much as the dip of the
sail-ship the long billows of the ocean.
But it was not so soon that I learned to appreciate the lake scenery; it
was only after a daily and careless familiarity that I entered into its
beauty, for nature always refuses to be seen by being stared at. Like
Bonaparte, she discharges her face of all expression when she catches
the eye of impertinent curiosity fixed on her. But he who has gone to
sleep in childish ease on her lap, or leaned an aching brow upon her
breast, seeking there comfort with full trust as from a mother, will see
all a mother's beauty in the look she bends upon him. Later, I felt that
I had really seen these regions, and shall speak of them again.
In the afternoon we went on shore at the Manitou islands, where the boat
stops to wood. No one lives here except woodcutters for the steamboats.
I had thought of such a position, from its mixture of profound solitude
with service to the great world, as possessing an ideal beauty. I think
so still, after seeing the woodcutters and their slovenly huts.
In times of slower growth, man did not enter a situation without a
certain preparation or adaptedness to it. He drew from it, if not to the
poetical extent, at least, in some proportion, its moral and its
meaning. The woodcutter did not cut down so many trees a day, that the
hamadryads had not time to make their plaints heard; the shepherd tended
his sheep, and did no jobs or chores the while; the idyl had a chance to
grow up, and modulate his oaten pipe. But now the poet must be at the
whole expense of the poetry in describing one of these positions; the
worker is a true Midas to the gold he makes. The poet must describe, as
the painter sketches Irish peasant girls and Danish fishwives, adding
the beauty, and leaving out the dirt.
I come to the west prepared for the distaste I must experience at its
mushroom growth. I know that where "go ahead" is the only motto, the
village cannot grow into the gentle proportions that successive lives,
and the gradations of experience involuntarily give. In older countries
the house of the son grew from that of the father, as naturally as new
joints on a bough. And the cathedral crowned the whole as naturally as
the leafy summit the tree. This cannot be here. The march of peaceful is
scarce less wanton than that of warlike invasion. The old landmarks are
broken down, and the land, for a season, bears none, except of the
rudeness of conquest and the needs of the day, whose bivouac fires
blacken the sweetest forest glades. I have come prepared to see all
this, to dislike it, but not with stupid narrowness to distrust or
defame. On the contrary, while I will not be so obliging as to confound
ugliness with beauty, discord with harmony, and laud and be contented
with all I meet, when it conflicts with my best desires and tastes, I
trust by reverent faith to woo the mighty meaning of the scene, perhaps
to foresee the law by which a new order, a new poetry is to be evoked
from this chaos, and with a curiosity as ardent, but not so selfish as
that of Macbeth, to call up the apparitions of future kings from the
strange ingredients of the witch's caldron. Thus, I will not grieve that
all the noble trees are gone already from this island to feed this
caldron, but believe it will have Medea's virtue, and reproduce them in
the form of new intellectual growths, since centuries cannot again adorn
the land with such.
On this most beautiful beach of smooth white pebbles, interspersed with
agates and cornelians, for those who know how to find them, we stepped,
not like the Indian, with some humble offering, which, if no better than
an arrow-head or a little parched corn, would, he judged, please the
Manitou, who looks only at the spirit in which it is offered. Our visit
was so far for a religious purpose that one of our party went to inquire
the fate of some Unitarian tracts left among the woodcutters a year or
two before. But the old Manitou, though, daunted like his children by
the approach of the fire-ships which he probably considered demons of a
new dynasty, he had suffered his woods to be felled to feed their pride,
had been less patient of an encroachment, which did not to him seem so
authorized by the law of the strongest, and had scattered those leaves
as carelessly as the others of that year.
But S. and I, like other emigrants, went not to give, but to get, to
rifle the wood of flowers for the service of the fire-ship. We returned
with a rich booty, among which was the uva ursi, whose leaves the
Indians smoke, with the kinnick-kinnick, and which had then just put
forth its highly-finished little blossoms, as pretty as those of the
blueberry.
Passing along still further, I thought it would be well if the crowds
assembled to stare from the various landings were still confined to the
kinnick-kinnick, for almost all had tobacco written on their faces,
their cheeks rounded with plugs, their eyes dull with its fumes. We
reached Chicago on the evening of the sixth day, having been out five
days and a half, a rather longer passage than usual at a favorable
season of the year.
Chicago, June 20.
There can be no two places in the world more completely thoroughfares
than this place and Buffalo. They are the two correspondent valves that
open and shut all the time, as the life-blood rushes from east to west,
and back again from west to east.
Since it is their office thus to be the doors, and let in and out, it
would be unfair to expect from them much character of their own. To make
the best provisions for the transmission of produce is their office, and
the people who live there are such as are suited for this; active,
complaisant, inventive, business people. There are no provisions for the
student or idler; to know what the place can give, you should be at work
with the rest, the mere traveller will not find it profitable to loiter
there as I did.
Since circumstances made it necessary for me so to do, I read all the
books I could find about the new region, which now began to become real
to me. All the books about the Indians, a paltry collection, truly, yet
which furnished material for many thoughts. The most narrow-minded and
awkward recital, still bears some lineaments of the great features of
this nature, and the races of men that illustrated them.
Catlin's book is far the best. I was afterwards assured by those
acquainted with the regions he describes, that he is not to be depended
on for the accuracy of his facts, and, indeed, it is obvious, without
the aid of such assertions, that he sometimes yields to the temptation
of making out a story. They admitted, however, what from my feelings I
was sure of, that he is true to the spirit of the scene, and that a far
better view can be got from him than from any source at present
existing, of the Indian tribes of the far west, and of the country where
their inheritance lay.
Murray's travels I read, and was charmed by their accuracy and clear
broad tone. He is the only Englishman that seems to have traversed these
regions, as man, simply, not as John Bull. He deserves to belong to an
aristocracy, for he showed his title to it more when left without a
guide in the wilderness, than he can at the court of Victoria. He has,
himself, no poetic force at description, but it is easy to make images
from his hints. Yet we believe the Indian cannot be looked at truly
except by a poetic eye. The Pawnees, no doubt, are such as he describes
them, filthy in their habits, and treacherous in their character, but
some would have seen, and seen truly, more beauty and dignity than he
does with all his manliness and fairness of mind. However, his one fine
old man is enough to redeem the rest, and is perhaps the relic of a
better day, a Phocion among the Pawnees.
Schoolcraft's Algic Researches is a valuable book, though a worse use
could hardly have been made of such fine material. Had the mythological
or hunting stones of the Indians been written down exactly as they were
received from the lips of the narrators, the collection could not have
been surpassed in interest, both for the wild charm they carry with
them, and the light they throw on a peculiar modification of life and
mind. As it is, though the incidents have an air of originality and
pertinence to the occasion, that gives us confidence that they have not
been altered, the phraseology in which they were expressed has been
entirely set aside, and the flimsy graces, common to the style of
annuals and souvenirs, substituted for the Spartan brevity and sinewy
grasp of Indian speech. We can just guess what might have been there, as
we can detect the fine proportions of the Brave whom the bad taste of
some white patron has arranged in frock-coat, hat, and pantaloons.
The few stories Mrs. Jameson wrote out, though to these also a
sentimental air has been given, offend much less in that way than is
common in this book. What would we give for a completely faithful
version of some among them. Yet with all these drawbacks we cannot doubt
from internal evidence that they truly ascribe to the Indian a delicacy
of sentiment and of fancy that justifies Cooper in such inventions as
his Uncas. It is a white man's view of a savage hero, who would be far
finer in his natural proportions; still, through a masquerade figure, it
implies the truth.
Irving's books I also read, some for the first, some for the second
time, with increased interest, now that I was to meet such people as he
received his materials from. Though the books are pleasing from their
grace and luminous arrangement, yet, with the exception of the Tour to
the Prairies, they have a stereotype, second-hand air. They lack the
breath, the glow, the charming minute traits of living presence. His
scenery is only fit to be glanced at from dioramic distance; his Indians
are academic figures only. He would have made the best of pictures, if
he could have used his own eyes for studies and sketches; as it is, his
success is wonderful, but inadequate.
McKenney's Tour to the Lakes is the dullest of books, yet faithful and
quiet, and gives some facts not to be met with elsewhere.
I also read a collection of Indian anecdotes and speeches, the worst
compiled and arranged book possible, yet not without clues of some
value. All these books I read in anticipation of a canoe-voyage on Lake
Superior as far as the Pictured Rocks, and, though I was afterwards
compelled to give up this project, they aided me in judging of what I
afterwards saw and heard of the Indians.
In Chicago I first saw the beautiful prairie flowers. They were in their
glory the first ten days we were there--
"The golden and the flame-like flowers."
The flame-like flower I was taught afterwards, by an Indian girl, to
call "Wickapee;" and she told me, too, that its splendors had a useful
side, for it was used by the Indians as a remedy for an illness to which
they were subject.
Beside these brilliant flowers, which gemmed and gilt the grass in a
sunny afternoon's drive near the blue lake, between the low oakwood and
the narrow beach, stimulated, whether sensuously by the optic nerve,
unused to so much gold and crimson with such tender green, or
symbolically through some meaning dimly seen in the flowers, I enjoyed a
sort of fairyland exultation never felt before, and the first drive amid
the flowers gave me anticipation of the beauty of the prairies.
At first, the prairie seemed to speak of the very desolation of
dullness. After sweeping over the vast monotony of the lakes to come to
this monotony of land, with all around a limitless horizon,--to walk,
and walk, and run, but never climb, oh! it was too dreary for any but a
Hollander to bear. How the eye greeted the approach of a sail, or the
smoke of a steamboat; it seemed that any thing so animated must come
from a better land, where mountains gave religion to the scene.
The only thing I liked at first to do, was to trace with slow and
unexpecting step the narrow margin of the lake. Sometimes a heavy swell
gave it expression; at others, only its varied coloring, which I found
more admirable every day, and which gave it an air of mirage instead of
the vastness of ocean. Then there was a grandeur in the feeling that I
might continue that walk, if I had any seven-leagued mode of conveyance
to save fatigue, for hundreds of miles without an obstacle and without a
change.
But after I had rode out, and seen the flowers and seen the sun set with
that calmness seen only in the prairies, and the cattle winding slowly
home to their homes in the "island groves"--peacefullest of sights--I
began to love because I began to know the scene, and shrank no longer
from "the encircling vastness."
It is always thus with the new form of life; we must learn to look at it
by its own standard. At first, no doubt my accustomed eye kept saying,
if the mind did not, What! no distant mountains? what, no valleys? But
after a while I would ascend the roof of the house where we lived, and
pass many hours, needing no sight but the moon reigning in the heavens,
or starlight falling upon the lake, till all the lights were out in the
island grove of men beneath my feet, and felt nearer heaven that there
was nothing but this lovely, still reception on the earth; no towering
mountains, no deep tree-shadows, nothing but plain earth and water
bathed in light.
Sunset, as seen from that place, presented most generally, low-lying,
flaky clouds, of the softest serenity, "like," said S., "the Buddhist
tracts."
One night a star shot madly from its sphere, and it had a fair chance to
be seen, but that serenity could not be astonished.
Yes! it was a peculiar beauty of those sunsets and moonlights on the
levels of Chicago which Chamouny or the Trosachs could not make me
forget.
Notwithstanding all the attractions I thus found out by degrees on the
flat shores of the lake, I was delighted when I found myself really on
my way into the country for an excursion of two or three weeks. We set
forth in a strong wagon, almost as large, and with the look of those
used elsewhere for transporting caravans of wild beasteses, loaded with
every thing we might want, in case nobody would give it to us--for
buying and selling were no longer to be counted on--with a pair of
strong horses, able and willing to force their way through mud holes and
amid stumps, and a guide, equally admirable as marshal and companion,
who knew by heart the country and its history, both natural and
artificial, and whose clear hunter's eye needed neither road nor goal to
guide it to all the spots where beauty best loves to dwell.
Add to this the finest weather, and such country as I had never seen,
even in my dreams, although these dreams had been haunted by wishes for
just such an one, and you may judge whether years of dullness might not,
by these bright days, be redeemed, and a sweetness be shed over all
thoughts of the West.
The first day brought us through woods rich in the moccasin flower and
lupine, and plains whose soft expanse was continually touched with
expression by the slow moving clouds which
"Sweep over with their shadows, and beneath
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
The sunny ridges,"
to the banks of the Fox river, a sweet and graceful stream. We reached
Geneva just in time to escape being drenched by a violent thunder
shower, whose rise and disappearance threw expression into all the
features of the scene.
Geneva reminds me of a New England village, as indeed there, and in the
neighborhood, are many New Englanders of an excellent stamp, generous,
intelligent, discreet, and seeking to win from life its true values.
Such are much wanted, and seem like points of light among the swarms of
settlers, whose aims are sordid, whose habits thoughtless and slovenly.
With great pleasure we heard, with his attentive and affectionate
congregation, the Unitarian clergyman, Mr. Conant, and afterward visited
him in his house, where almost everything bore traces of his own handy
work or that of his father. He is just such a teacher as is wanted in
this region, familiar enough with the habits of those he addresses to
come home to their experience and their wants; earnest and enlightened
enough to draw the important inferences from the life of every day.
A day or two we remained here, and passed some happy hours in the woods
that fringe the stream, where the gentlemen found a rich booty of fish.
Next day, travelling along the river's banks, was an uninterrupted
pleasure. We closed our drive in the afternoon at the house of an
English gentleman, who has gratified, as few men do, the common wish to
pass the evening of an active day amid the quiet influences of country
life. He showed us a bookcase filled with books about this country;
these he had collected for years, and become so familiar with the
localities that, on coming here at last, he sought and found, at once,
the very spot he wanted, and where he is as content as he hoped to be,
thus realizing Wordsworth's description of the wise man, who "sees what
he foresaw."
A wood surrounds the house, through which paths are cut in every
direction. It is, for this new country, a large and handsome dwelling;
but round it are its barns and farm yard, with cattle and poultry.
These, however, in the framework of wood, have a very picturesque and
pleasing effect. There is that mixture of culture and rudeness in the
aspect of things as gives a feeling of freedom, not of confusion.
I wish it were possible to give some idea of this scene as viewed by the
earliest freshness of dewy dawn. This habitation of man seemed like a
nest in the grass, so thoroughly were the buildings and all the objects
of human care harmonized with what was natural. The tall trees bent and
whispered all around, as if to hail with sheltering love the men who had
come to dwell among them.
The young ladies were musicians, and spoke French fluently, having been
educated in a convent. Here in the prairie, they had learned to take
care of the milk-room, and kill the rattlesnakes that assailed their
poultry yard. Beneath the shade of heavy curtains you looked out from
the high and large windows to see Norwegian peasants at work in their
national dress. In the wood grew, not only the flowers I had before
seen, and wealth of tall, wild roses, but the splendid blue spiderwort,
that ornament of our gardens. Beautiful children strayed there, who were
soon to leave these civilized regions for some really wild and western
place, a post in the buffalo country. Their no less beautiful mother was
of Welsh descent, and the eldest child bore the name of Gwynthleon.
Perhaps there she will meet with some young descendants of Madoc, to be
her friends; at any rate, her looks may retain that sweet, wild beauty,
that is soon made to vanish from eyes which look too much on shops and
streets, and the vulgarities of city "parties."
Next day we crossed the river. We ladies crossed on a little
foot-bridge, from which we could look down the stream, and see the wagon
pass over at the ford. A black thunder cloud was coming up. The sky and
waters heavy with expectation. The motion of the wagon, with its white
cover, and the laboring horses, gave just the due interest to the
picture, because it seemed as if they would not have time to cross
before the storm came on. However, they did get across, and we were a
mile or two on our way before the violent shower obliged us to take
refuge in a solitary house upon the prairie. In this country it is as
pleasant to stop as to go on, to lose your way as to find it, for the
variety in the population gives you a chance for fresh entertainment in
every hut, and the luxuriant beauty makes every path attractive. In this
house we found a family "quite above the common," but, I grieve to say,
not above false pride, for the father, ashamed of being caught barefoot,
told us a story of a man, one of the richest men, he said, in one of the
eastern cities, who went barefoot, from choice and taste.
Near the door grew a Provence rose, then in blossom. Other families we
saw had brought with them and planted the locust. It was pleasant to see
their old home loves, brought into connection with their new splendors.
Wherever there were traces of this tenderness of feeling, only too rare
among Americans, other things bore signs also of prosperity and
intelligence, as if the ordering mind of man had some idea of home
beyond a mere shelter, beneath which to eat and sleep.
No heaven need wear a lovelier aspect than earth did this afternoon,
after the clearing up of the shower. We traversed the blooming plain,
unmarked by any road, only the friendly track of wheels which tracked,
not broke the grass. Our stations were not from town to town, but from
grove to grove. These groves first floated like blue islands in the
distance. As we drew nearer, they seemed fair parks, and the little log
houses on the edge, with their curling smokes, harmonized beautifully
with them.
One of these groves, Ross's grove, we reached just at sunset. It was of
the noblest trees I saw during this journey, for the trees generally
were not large or lofty, but only of fair proportions. Here they were
large enough to form with their clear stems pillars for grand cathedral
aisles. There was space enough for crimson light to stream through upon
the floor of water which the shower had left. As we slowly plashed
through, I thought I was never in a better place for vespers.
That night we rested, or rather tarried at a grove some miles beyond,
and there partook of the miseries so often jocosely portrayed, of
bedchambers for twelve, a milk dish for universal handbasin, and
expectations that you would use and lend your "hankercher" for a towel.
But this was the only night, thanks to the hospitality of private
families, that we passed thus, and it was well that we had this bit of
experience, else might we have pronounced all Trollopian records of the
kind to be inventions of pure malice.
With us was a 'young lady who showed herself to have been bathed in the
Britannic fluid, wittily described by a late French writer, by the
impossibility she experienced of accommodating herself to the indecorums
of the scene. We ladies were to sleep in the bar-room, from which its
drinking visitors could be ejected only at a late hour. The outer door
had no fastening to prevent their return. However, our host kindly
requested we would call him, if they did, as he had "conquered them for
us," and would do so again. We had also rather hard couches; (mine was
the supper table,) but we yankees, born to rove, were altogether too
much fatigued to stand upon trifles, and slept as sweetly as we would in
the "bigly bower" of any baroness. But I think England sat up all night,
wrapped in her blanket shawl, and with a neat lace cap upon her head; so
that she would have looked perfectly the lady, if any one had come in;
shuddering and listening. I know that she was very ill next day, in
requital. She watched, as her parent country watches the seas, that
nobody may do wrong in any case, and deserved to have met some
interruption, she was so well prepared. However, there was none, other
than from the nearness of some twenty sets of powerful lungs, which
would not leave the night to a deadly stillness. In this house we had,
if not good beds, yet good tea, good bread, and wild strawberries, and
were entertained with most free communications of opinion and history
from our hosts. Neither shall any of us have a right to say again that
we cannot find any who may be willing to hear all we may have to say.
"A's fish that comes to the net," should be painted on the sign at Papaw
grove.