On a day in July, 1804, a ruddy-faced, handsome young Irishman, whose
appearance must have commanded unusual attention in wild frontier
surroundings, came out of the woods that overlooked Lake Erie, picking
his way among the still-standing stumps, and trudged down the Indian
trail, which had not long been made passable for wagons. Presently he
came into the better part of the road, named Willink Avenue, passed a
dozen scattered houses, and finally stopped at John Crow's log tavern,
the principal inn of the infant Buffalo. He was dusty, tired, and
disgusted with the fortune that had brought an accident some distance
back in the woods, compelling him to finish this stage of his journey,
not merely on foot, but disabled. Here, surrounded by more Indians than
whites, he lodged for a day or so before continuing his journey to
Niagara Falls; and here, according to his own testimony, he wrote a long
poem, which was not only, in all probability, the first poem ever
composed in Buffalo, and one of the bitterest tirades against America
and American institutions to be found in literature; but which
contained, so far as I have been able to discover, the first allusion to
Niagara Falls, written by one who actually traveled thither, in the
poetry of any language.
The poetry of Niagara Falls is contemporary with the first knowledge of
the cataract among civilized men. One may make this statement with
positiveness, inasmuch as the first book printed in Europe which
mentions Niagara Falls contains a poem in which allusion is made to that
wonder. This work is the excessively rare "Des Sauvages" of Champlain
(Paris, 1604),[71] in which, after the dedication, is a sonnet,
inscribed "Le Sievr de la Franchise av discovrs Dv Sievr Champlain." It
seems proper, in quoting this first of all Niagara poems, to follow as
closely as may be in modern type the archaic spelling of the original:
Mvses, si vous chantez, vrayment ie vous conseille
Que vous louez Champlain, pour estre courageux:
Sans crainte des hasards, il a veu tant de lieux,
Que ses relations nous contentent l'oreille.
Il a veu le Perou,[72] Mexique & la Merueille
Du Vulcan infernal qui vomit tant de feux,
Et les saults Mocosans,[73] qui offensent les yeux
De ceux qui osent voir leur cheute nonpareille.
Il nous promet encor de passer plus auant,
Reduire les Gentils, & trouuer le Leuant,
Par le Nort, ou le Su, pour aller a la Chine.
C'est charitablement tout pour l'amour de Dieu.
Fy des lasches poltrons qui ne bougent d'vn lieu!
Leur vie, sans mentir, me paroist trop mesquine.
I regret that some research has failed to discover any further
information regarding the poet De la Franchise. Obviously, he took
rather more than the permissible measure of poet's license in saying
that Champlain had seen Peru, a country far beyond the known range of
Champlain's travels. But in the phrase "_les saults Mocosans_," the
falls of Mocosa, we have the ancient name of the undefined territory
afterwards labeled "Virginia." The intent of the allusion is made
plainer by Marc Lescarbot, who in 1610 wrote a poem in which he speaks
of "great falls which the Indians say they encounter in ascending the
St. Lawrence as far as the neighborhood of Virginia."[74] The allusion
can only be to Niagara.
It is gratifying to find our incomparable cataract a theme for song,
even though known only by aboriginal report, thus at the very dawn of
exploration in this part of America. It is fitting, too, that the French
should be the first to sing of what they discovered. More than a century
after De la Franchise and Lescarbot, a Frenchman who really saw the
falls introduced them to the muse, though only by a quotation. This was
Father Charlevoix, who, writing "From the Fall of Niagara, May 14,
1721," to the Duchess of Lesdiguieres, was moved to aid his description
by quoting poetry. "Ovid," the priest wrote to the duchess, "gives us
the description of such another cataract, situated according to him in
the delightful valley of Tempe. I will not pretend that the country of
Niagara is as fine as that, though I believe its cataract much the
noblest of the two," and he thereupon quotes these lines from the
"Metamorphoses":
Est nemus Haemoniae, praerupta quod undique claudit
Sylva; vocant Tempe, per quae Peneus ab imo
Effusus Pindo spumosis volvitur undis,
Dejectisque gravi tenues agitantia fumos
Nubila conducit, summisque aspergine sylvas,
Impluit, et sonitu plusquam vicina fatigat.
It would be strange if there were not other impressionable Frenchmen who
composed or quoted verses expressive of Niagara's grandeur, during the
eighty-one years that elapsed between the French discovery of Niagara
Falls and the English Conquest--a period of over three-quarters of a
century during which earth's most magnificent cataract belonged to
France. But if priest or soldier, coureur-de-bois or verse-maker at the
court of Louis said aught in meter of Niagara in all that time, I have
not found it.
A little thunder by Sir William Johnson's guns at Fort Niagara, a little
blood on the Plains of Abraham, and Niagara Falls was handed over to
Great Britain. Four years after the Conquest English poetry made its
first claim to our cataract. In 1764 appeared that ever-delightful work,
"The Traveller, or, a Prospect of Society," wherein we read:
Have we not seen at pleasure's lordly call
The smiling long-frequented village fall?
Behold the duteous son, the sire decayed,
The modest matron or the blushing maid,
Forced from their homes, a melancholy train,
To traverse climes beyond the western main;
Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around
And Niagara[75] stuns with thundering sound.
Even now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays
Through tangled forests and through dangerous ways,
Where beasts with man divided empire claim,
And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim;
There, while above the giddy tempest flies,
And all around distressful yells arise,
The pensive exile, bending with his woe,
To stop too fearful and too faint to go,
Casts a long look where England's glories shine,
And bids his bosom sympathize with mine.[76]
Obviously, Oliver Goldsmith's "Traveller," in its American allusions,
reflected the current literature of those years when Englishmen heard
more of Oswego than they ever have since. Niagara and Oswego were
uttermost points told of in the dispatches, during that long war,
reached and held by England's "far-flung battle line"; but if Britain's
poets found any inspiration in Niagara's mighty fount for a half century
after Goldsmith, I know it not.
And this brings us again to our first visiting poet, Tom Moore, whose
approach to Niagara by way of Buffalo in 1804 has been described.
Penning an epistle in rhyme from "Buffalo, on Lake Erie," to the Hon. W.
R. Spencer--writing, we are warranted in fancying, after a supper of
poor bacon and tea, or an evening among the loutish Indians who hung
about Crow's log-tavern--he recorded his emotions in no amiable mood:
Even now, as wandering upon Erie's shore
I hear Niagara's distant cataract roar,[77]
I sigh for home--alas! these weary feet
Have many a mile to journey, ere we meet.
Niagara in 1804 was most easily approached from the East by schooner on
Lake Ontario from Oswego, though the overland trail through the woods
was beginning to be used. Moore came by the land route. The record of
the journey is to be found in the preface to his American Poems, and in
his letters to his mother, published for the first time in his
"Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence," edited by Earl Russell and issued
in London and Boston in 1853-'56. The letters narrating his adventures
in the region are dated "Geneva, Genessee County, July 17, 1804";
"Chippewa, Upper Canada, July 22d"; "Niagara, July 24th";--in which he
copies a description of the falls from his journal, not elsewhere
published--and "Chippewa, July 25th," signed "Tom." There is no mention
in these letters of Buffalo, but in the prefatory narrative above
alluded to we have this interesting account of the visit:
It is but too true, of all grand objects, whether in nature or art,
that facility of access to them much diminishes the feeling of
reverence they ought to inspire. Of this fault, however, the route
to Niagara, at this period--at least the portion of it which led
through the Genesee country--could not justly be accused. The
latter part of the journey, which lay chiefly through yet but
half-cleared woods, we were obliged to perform on foot; and a
slight accident I met with in the course of our rugged walk laid me
up for some days at Buffalo.
And so laid up--perhaps with a blistered heel--he sought relief by
driving his quill into the heart of democracy. His friend, he lamented,
had often told him of happy hours passed amid the classic associations
and art treasures of Italy:
But here alas, by Erie's stormy lake,
As far from such bright haunts my course I take,
No proud remembrance o'er the fancy plays,
No classic dream, no star of other days
Hath left the visionary light behind,
That lingering radiance of immortal mind,
Which gilds and hallows even the rudest scene,
The humblest shed where Genius once had been.
He views, not merely his immediate surroundings in the pioneer village
by Lake Erie, but the general character of the whole land:
All that creation's varying mass assumes,
Of grand or lovely, here aspires and blooms.
Bold rise the mountains, rich the gardens glow,
Bright lakes expand and conquering rivers flow;
But mind, immortal mind, without whose ray
This world's a wilderness and man but clay,
Mind, mind alone, in barren still repose,
Nor blooms, nor rises, nor expands, nor flows.
Take Christians, Mohawks, democrats and all,
From the rude wigwam to the Congress Hall,
From man the savage, whether slaved or free,
To man the civilized, less tame than he,
'Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife
Betwixt half-polished and half-barbarous life;
Where every ill the ancient world could brew
Is mixed with every grossness of the new;
Where all corrupts, though little can entice,
And naught is known of luxury, but its vice!
Is this the region then, is this the clime
For soaring fancies? for those dreams sublime,
Which all their miracles of light reveal
To heads that meditate and hearts that feel?
Alas! not so!
And after much more of proud protest against Columbia and "the mob mania
that imbrutes her now," our disapproving poet turned in to make the
best, let us hope, of Landlord Crow's poor quarters, and to prepare for
Niagara. Years afterwards he admitted that there was some soul for song
among the men of the Far West of that day. Very complacently he tells us
that "Even then, on the shores of those far lakes, the title of
'Poet'--however in that instance unworthily bestowed--bespoke a kind and
distinguished welcome for its wearer. The captain who commanded the
packet in which I crossed Lake Ontario, in addition to other marks of
courtesy, begged, on parting with me, to be allowed to decline payment
for my passage." I cannot do better than to quote further from his
account of the visit to the falls:
When we arrived at length at the inn, in the neighborhood of the
Falls, it was too late to think of visiting them that evening; and
I lay awake almost the whole night with the sound of the cataract
in my ears. The day following I consider as a sort of era in my
life; and the first glimpse I caught of that wonderful cataract
gave me a feeling which nothing in this world can ever awaken
again. It was through an opening among the trees, as we approached
the spot where the full view of the Falls was to burst upon us,
that I caught this glimpse of the mighty mass of waters falling
smoothly over the edge of the precipice; and so overwhelming was
the notion it gave me of the awful spectacle I was approaching,
that during the short interval that followed, imagination had far
outrun the reality--and vast and wonderful as was the scene that
then opened upon me, my first feeling was that of disappointment.
It would have been impossible, indeed, for anything real to come up
to the vision I had, in these few seconds, formed of it, and those
awful scriptural words, 'The fountains of the great deep were
broken up,' can alone give any notion of the vague wonders for
which I was prepared.
But, in spite of the start thus got by imagination, the triumph of
reality was, in the end, but the greater; for the gradual glory of
the scene that opened upon me soon took possession of my whole
mind; presenting from day to day, some new beauty or wonder, and
like all that is most sublime in nature or art, awakening sad as
well as elevating thoughts. I retain in my memory but one other
dream--for such do events so long past appear--which can by any
respect be associated with the grand vision I have just been
describing; and however different the nature of their appeals to
the imagination, I should find it difficult to say on which
occasion I felt most deeply affected, when looking at the Falls
of Niagara, or when standing by moonlight among the ruins of the
Coliseum.
It was the tranquillity and unapproachableness of the great fall, in the
midst of so much turmoil, which most impressed him. He tried to express
this in a Song of the Spirit of the region:
There amid the island sedge,
Just upon the cataract's edge,
Where the foot of living man
Never trod since time began,
Lone I sit at close of day,[78] ...
The poem as a whole, however, is not a strong one, even for Tom Moore.
As the Irish bard sailed back to England, another pedestrian poet was
making ready for a tour to Niagara. This was the Paisley weaver,
rhymster and roamer, Alexander Wilson, whose fame as an ornithologist
outshines his reputation as a poet. Yet in him America has--by
adoption--her Oliver Goldsmith. In 1794, being then twenty-eight years
old, he arrived in Philadelphia. For eight years he taught school, or
botanized, roamed the woods with his gun, worked at the loom, and
peddled his verses among the inhabitants of New Jersey. In October,
1804, accompanied by his nephew and another friend, he set out on a
walking expedition to Niagara, which he satisfactorily accomplished. His
companions left him, but he persevered, and reached home after an
absence of fifty-nine days and a walk of 1,260 miles. It is very
pleasant, especially for one who has himself toured afoot over a
considerable part of this same route, to follow our naturalist poet and
his friends on their long walk through the wilderness, in the pages of
Wilson's descriptive poem, "The Foresters." Its first edition, it is
believed, is a quaint little volume of 106 pages, published at Newtown,
Penn., in 1818.[79] The route led through Bucks and Northumberland
counties, over the mountains and up the valley of the Susquehanna; past
Newtown, N. Y., now Elmira, and so on to the Indian village of
Catherine, near the head of Seneca Lake. Here, a quarter of a century
before, Sullivan and his raiders had brought desolation, traces of which
stirred our singer to some of his loftiest flights. In that romantic
wilderness of rocky glen and marsh and lake, the region where Montour
Falls and Watkins now are, Wilson lingered to shoot wild fowl. Thence
the route lay through that interval of long ascents--so long that the
trudging poet thought