Falls," the tradition being that a man by the name of Henry Hudson, many
years ago, chasing a deer, the deer fell over the place, which then first
became known to white men. It is not properly a cave, but a fissure in a
huge ledge of marble, through which a stream has been for ages forcing
its way, and has left marks of its gradually wearing power on the tall
crags, having made curious hollows from the summit down to the level
which it has reached at the present day. The depth of the fissure in
some places is at least fifty or sixty feet, perhaps more, and at several
points it nearly closes over, and often the sight of the sky is hidden by
the interposition of masses of the marble crags. The fissure is very
irregular, so as not to be describable in words, and scarcely to be
painted,--jetting buttresses, moss-grown, impending crags, with tall
trees growing on their verge, nodding over the head of the observer at
the bottom of the chasm, and rooted, as it were, in air. The part where
the water works its way down is very narrow; but the chasm widens, after
the descent, so as to form a spacious chamber between the crags, open to
the sky, and its floor is strewn with fallen fragments of marble, and
trees that have been precipitated long ago, and are heaped with
drift-wood, left there by the freshets, when the scanty stream becomes
a considerable waterfall. One crag, with a narrow ridge, which might be
climbed without much difficulty, protrudes from the middle of the rock,
and divides the fall. The passage through the cave made by the stream is
very crooked, and interrupted, not only by fallen wrecks, but by deep
pools of water, which probably have been forded by few. As the deepest
pool occurs in the most uneven part of the chasm, where the hollows in
the sides of the crag are deepest, so that each hollow is almost a cave
by itself, I determined to wade through it. There was an accumulation of
soft stuff on the bottom, so that the water did not look more than
knee-deep; but, finding that my feet sunk in it, I took off my trousers,
and waded through up to my middle. Thus I reached the most interesting
part of the cave, where the whirlings of the stream had left the marks of
its eddies in the solid marble, all up and down the two sides of the
chasm. The water is now dammed for the construction of two marble
saw-mills, else it would have been impossible to effect the passage; and
I presume that, for years after the cave was discovered, the waters
roared and tore their way in a torrent through this part of the chasm.
While I was there, I heard voices, and a small stone tumbled down; and
looking up towards the narrow strip of bright light, and the sunny
verdure that peeped over the top,--looking up thither from the deep,
gloomy depth,--I saw two or three men; and, not liking to be to them the
most curious part of the spectacle, I waded back, and put on my clothes.
The marble crags are overspread with a concretion, which makes them look
as gray as granite, except where the continual flow of water keeps them
of a snowy whiteness. If they were so white all over, it would be a
splendid show. There is a marble-quarry close in the rear, above the
cave, and in process of time the whole of the crags will be quarried into
tombstones, doorsteps, fronts of edifices, fireplaces, etc. That will be
a pity. On such portions of the walls as are within reach, visitors have
sculptured their initials, or names at full length; and the white letters
showing plainly on the gray surface, they have more obvious effect than
such inscriptions generally have. There was formerly, I believe, a
complete arch of marble, forming a natural bridge over the top of the
cave; but this is no longer so. At the bottom of the broad chamber of
the cave, standing in its shadow, the effect of the morning sunshine on
the dark or bright foliage of the pines and other trees that cluster on
the summits of the crags was particularly beautiful; and it was strange
how such great trees had rooted themselves in solid marble, for so it
seemed.
After passing through this romantic and most picturesque spot, the stream
goes onward to turn factories. Here its voice resounds within the hollow
crags; there it goes onward; talking to itself, with babbling din, of its
own wild thoughts and fantasies,--the voice of solitude and the
wilderness,--loud and continual, but which yet does not seem to disturb
the thoughtful wanderer, so that he forgets there is a noise. It talks
along its storm-strewn path; it talks beneath tall precipices and high
banks,--a voice that has been the same for innumerable ages; and yet, if
you listen, you will perceive a continual change and variety in its
babble, and sometimes it seems to swell louder upon the ear than at
others,--in the same spot, I mean. By and by man makes a dam for it, and
it pours over it, still making its voice heard, while it labors. At one
shop for manufacturing the marble, I saw the disk of a sun-dial as large
as the top of a hogshead, intended for Williams College; also a small
obelisk, and numerous gravestones. The marble is coarse-grained, but of
a very brilliant whiteness. It is rather a pity that the cave is not
formed of some worthless stone.
In the deep valleys of the neighborhood, where the shadows at sunset are
thrown from mountain to mountain, the clouds have a beautiful effect,
flitting high over them, bright with heavenly gold. It seems as if the
soul might rise up from the gloom, and alight upon them and soar away.
Walking along one of the valleys the other evening, while a pretty fresh
breeze blew across it, the clouds that were skimming over my head seemed
to conform themselves to the valley's shape.
At a distance, mountain summits look close together, almost as if forming
one mountain, though in reality a village lies in the depths between
them.
A steam-engine in a factory to be supposed to possess a malignant spirit.
It catches one man's arm, and pulls it off; seizes another by the
coat-tails, and almost grapples him bodily; catches a girl by the hair,
and scalps her; and finally draws in a man, and crushes him to death.
The one-armed soap-maker, Lawyer H------, wears an iron hook, which
serves him instead of a hand for the purpose of holding on. They
nickname him "Black Hawk."
North Adams still.--The village, viewed from the top of a hill to the
westward at sunset, has a peculiarly happy and peaceful look. It lies on
a level, surrounded by hills, and seems as if it lay in the hollow of a
large hand. The Union Village may be seen, a manufacturing place,
extending up a gorge of the hills. It is amusing to see all the
distributed property of the aristocracy and commonalty, the various and
conflicting interests of the town, the loves and hates, compressed into a
space which the eye takes in as completely as the arrangement of a
tea-table. The rush of the streams comes up the hill somewhat like the
sound of a city.
The hills about the village appear very high and steep sometimes, when
the shadows of the clouds are thrown blackly upon them, while there is
sunshine elsewhere; so that, seen in front, the effect of their gradual
slope is lost. These hills, surrounding the town on all sides, give it a
snug and insulated air; and, viewed from certain points, it would be
difficult to tell how to get out, without climbing the mountain ridges;
but the roads wind away and accomplish the passage without ascending very
high. Sometimes the notes of a horn or bugle may be heard sounding afar
among these passes of the mountains, announcing the coming of the
stage-coach from Bennington or Troy or Greenfield or Pittsfield.
There are multitudes of sheep among the hills, and they appear very tame
and gentle; though sometimes, like the wicked, they "flee when no man
pursueth." But, climbing a rude, rough, rocky, stumpy, ferny height
yesterday, one or two of them stood and stared at me with great
earnestness. I passed on quietly, but soon heard an immense baa-ing up
the hill, and all the sheep came galloping and scrambling after me,
baa-ing with all their might in innumerable voices, running in a compact
body, expressing the utmost eagerness, as if they sought the greatest
imaginable favor from me; and so they accompanied me down the hillside,--
a most ridiculous cortege. Doubtless they had taken it into their heads
that I brought them salt.
The aspect of the village is peculiarly beautiful towards sunset, when
there are masses of cloud about the sky,--the remnants of a
thunder-storm. These clouds throw a shade upon large portions of the
rampart of hills, and the hills towards the west are shaded of course;
the clouds also make the shades deeper in the village, and thus the
sunshine on the houses and trees, and along the street, is a bright, rich
gold. The green is deeper in consequence of the recent rain.
The doctors walk about the village with their saddle-bags on their arms,
one always with a pipe in his mouth.
A little dog, named Snapper, the same who stands on his hind legs,
appears to be a roguish little dog, and the other day he stole one of the
servant-girl's shoes, and ran into the street with it. Being pursued, he
would lift the shoe in his mouth (while it almost dragged on the ground),
and run a little way, then lie down with his paws on it, and wait to be
pursued again.
August 11th.--This morning, it being cloudy and boding of rain, the
clouds had settled upon the mountains, both on the summits and ridges,
all round the town, so that there seemed to be no way of gaining access
to the rest of the world, unless by climbing above the clouds. By and by
they partially dispersed, giving glimpses of the mountain ramparts
through their obscurity, the separate clouds lying heavily upon the
mountain's breast. In warm mornings, after rain, the mist breaks forth
from the forests on the ascent of the mountains, like smoke,--the smoke
of a volcano; then it soars up, and becomes a cloud in heaven. But these
clouds to-day were real rain-clouds. Sometimes, it is said, while
laboring up the mountain-side, they suddenly burst, and pour down their
moisture in a cataract, sweeping all before it.
Every new aspect of the mountains, or view from a different position,
creates a surprise in the mind.
Scenes and characters:--A young country fellow, twenty or thereabouts,
decently dressed, pained with the toothache. A doctor, passing on
horseback, with his black leather saddle-bags behind him, a thin,
frosty-haired man. Being asked to operate, he looks at the tooth, lances
the gum, and the fellow being content to be dealt with on the spot, he
seats himself in a chair on the stoop with great heroism. The doctor
produces a rusty pair of iron forceps; a man holds the patient's head;
the doctor perceives that, it being a difficult tooth to get at, wedged
between the two largest in his jaws, he must pull very hard; and the
instrument is introduced. A turn of the doctor's hand; the patient
begins to utter a cry, but the tooth comes out first, with four prongs.
The patient gets up, half amazed, pays the doctor ninepence, pockets the
tooth, and the spectators are in glee and admiration.
There was a fat woman, a stage-passenger to-day,--a wonder how she could
possibly get through the door, which seemed not so wide as she. When she
put her foot on the step, the stage gave a great lurch, she joking all
the while. A great, coarse, red-faced dame. Other passengers,--three or
four slender Williamstown students, a young girl, and a man with one
leg and two crutches.
One of the most sensible men in this village is a plain, tall, elderly
person, who is overseeing the mending of a road,--humorous, intelligent,
with much thought about matters and things; and while at work he has a
sort of dignity in handling the hoe or crow-bar, which shows him to be
the chief. In the evening he sits under the stoop, silent and observant
from under the brim of his hat; but, occasion calling, he holds an
argument about the benefit or otherwise of manufactories or other things.
A simplicity characterizes him more than appertains to most Yankees.
A man in a pea-green frock-coat, with velvet collar. Another in a
flowered chintz frock-coat. There is a great diversity of hues in
garments. A doctor, a stout, tall, round-paunched, red-faced,
brutal-looking old fellow, who gets drunk daily. He sat down on the step
of our stoop, looking surly, and speaking to nobody; then got up and
walked homeward, with a morose swagger and a slight unevenness of gait,
attended by a fine Newfoundland dog.
A barouche with driver returned from beyond Greenfield or Troy empty, the
passengers being left at the former place. The driver stops here for the
night, and, while washing, enters into talk with an old man about the
different roads over the mountain.
People washing themselves at a common basin in the bar-room! and using
the common hair-brushes! perhaps with a consciousness of praiseworthy
neatness!
A man with a cradle on his shoulder, having been cradling oats. I
attended a child's funeral yesterday afternoon. There was an assemblage
of people in a plain, homely apartment. Most of the men were dressed in
their ordinary clothes, and one or two were in shirt-sleeves. The coffin
was placed in the midst of us, covered with a velvet pall. A bepaid
clergyman prayed (the audience remaining seated, while he stood up at the
head of the coffin), read a passage of Scripture and commented upon it.
While he read and prayed and expounded there was a heavy thunder-storm
rumbling among the surrounding hills, and the lightning flashed fiercely
through the gloomy room; and the preacher alluded to GOD's voice of
thunder.
It is the custom in this part of the country--and perhaps extensively in
the interior of New England--to bury the dead first in a charnel-house,
or common tomb, where they remain till decay has so far progressed as to
secure them from the resurrectionists. They are then reburied, with
certain ceremonies, in their own peculiar graves.
O. E. S------, a widower of forty or upwards, with a son of twelve and a
pair of infant twins. He is a sharp, shrewd Yankee, with a Yankee's
license of honesty. He drinks sometimes more than enough, and is guilty
of peccadilloes with the fair sex; yet speaks most affectionately
of his wife, and is a fond and careful father. He is a tall, thin,
hard-featured man, with a sly expression of almost hidden grave humor, as
if there were some deviltry pretty constantly in his mind,--which is
probably the case. His brother tells me that he was driven almost crazy
by the loss of his wife. It appears to me that men are more affected by
the deaths of their wives than wives by the deaths of their husbands.
Orrin S------ smokes a pipe, as do many of the guests.
A walk this forenoon up the mountain ridge that walls in the town towards
the east. The road is cut zigzag, the mountain being generally as steep
as the roof of a house; yet the stage to Greenfield passes over this road
two or three times a week. Graylock rose up behind me, appearing, with
its two summits and a long ridge between, like a huge monster crouching
down slumbering, with its head slightly elevated. Graylock is properly
the name for the highest elevation. It appeared to better advantage the
higher the point from which I viewed it. There were houses scattered
here and there up the mountainside, growing poorer as I ascended; the
last that I passed was a mean log-hut, rough, rude, and dilapidated, with
the smoke issuing from a chimney of small stones, plastered with clay;
around it a garden of beans, with some attempt at flowers, and a green
creeper running over the side of the cottage. Above this point there
were various excellent views of mountain scenery, far off and near, and
one village lying below in the hollow vale.
Having climbed so far that the road seemed now to go downward, I retraced
my steps. There was a wagon descending behind me; and as it followed the
zigzag of the road I could hear the voices of the men high over my head,
and sometimes I caught a glimpse of the wagon almost perpendicularly
above me, while I was looking almost perpendicularly down to the log-hut
aforementioned. Trees were thick on either hand,--oaks, pines, and
others; and marble occasionally peeped up in the road and there was a
lime-kiln by the wayside, ready for burning.
Graylock had a cloud on his head this morning, the base of a heavy white
cloud. The distribution of the sunshine amid mountain scenery is very
striking; one does not see exactly why one spot should be in deep
obscurity while others are all bright. The clouds throw their shadows
upon the hillsides as they move slowly along,--a transitory blackness.
I passed a doctor high up the road in a sulky, with his black leather
saddle-bags.
Hudson's Cave is formed by Hudson's Brook. There is a natural arch of
marble still in one part of it. The cliffs are partly made verdant with
green moss, chiefly gray with oxidation; on some parts the white of the
marble is seen; in interstices grow brake and other shrubs, so that there
is naked sublimity seen through a good deal of clustering beauty. Above,
the birch, poplars, and pines grow on the utmost verge of the cliffs,
which jut far over, so that they are suspended in air; and whenever the
sunshine finds its way into the depths of the chasm, the branches wave
across it. There is a lightness, however, about their foliage, which
greatly relieves what would otherwise be a gloomy scene. After the
passage of the stream through the cliffs of marble, the cliffs separate
on either side, and leave it to flow onward; intercepting its passage,
however, by fragments of marble, some of them huge ones, which the cliffs
have flung down, thundering into the bed of the stream through numberless
ages. Doubtless some of these immense fragments had trees growing on
them, which have now mouldered away. Decaying trunks are heaped in
various parts of the gorge. The pieces of marble that are washed by the
water are of a snow-white, and partially covered with a bright green
water-moss, making a beautiful contrast.
Among the cliffs, strips of earth-beach extend downward, and trees and
large shrubs root themselves in that earth, thus further contrasting the
nakedness of the stone with their green foliage. But the immediate part
where the stream forces its winding passage through the rock is stern,
dark, and mysterious.
Along the road, where it runs beneath a steep, there are high ridges,
covered with trees,--the dew of midnight damping the earth, far towards
midnoon. I observed the shadows of water-insects, as they swam in the
pools of a stream. Looking down a streamlet, I saw a trunk of a tree,
which has been overthrown by the wind, so as to form a bridge, yet
sticking up all its branches, as if it were unwilling to assist anybody
over.
Green leaves, following the eddies of the rivulet, were now borne deep
under water, and now emerged. Great uprooted trees, adhering midway down
a precipice of earth, hung with their tops downward.
There is an old man, selling the meats of butternuts under the stoop of
the hotel. He makes that his station during a part of the season. He
was dressed in a dark thin coat, ribbed velvet pantaloons, and a sort of
moccasins, or shoes, appended to the legs of woollen stockings. He had
on a straw hat, and his hair was gray, with a long, thin visage. His
nuts were contained in a square tin box, having two compartments, one for
the nuts, and another for maple sugar, which he sells in small cakes. He
had three small tin measures for nuts,--one at one cent, others at two,
four, and six cents; and as fast as they were emptied, he filled them
again, and put them on the top of his box. He smoked a pipe, and talked
with one man about whether it would be worth while to grow young again,
and the duty of being contented with old age; about predestination and
freewill and other metaphysics. I asked him what his sales amounted to
in the course of a day. He said that butternuts did not sell so well as
walnuts, which are not yet in season; that he might to-day have sold
fifty cents' worth of walnuts, never less than a dollar's worth, often
more; and when he went round with a caravan, he had sold fifteen dollars'
worth per day, and once as much as twenty dollars' worth. This promises
to be an excellent year for walnuts. Chestnuts have been scarce for two
or three years. He had one hundred chestnut-trees on his own land, and
last year he offered a man twenty-five cents if he would find him a quart
of good chestnuts on them. A bushel of walnuts would cost about ten
dollars. He wears a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles.
A drunken fellow sat down by him, and bought a cent's worth of his
butternuts, and inquired what he would sell out to him for. The old man
made an estimate, though evidently in jest, and then reckoned his box,
measures, meats, and what little maple sugar he had, at four dollars. He
had a very quiet manner, and expressed an intention of going to the
Commencement at Williamstown to-morrow. His name, I believe, is Captain
Gavett.
Wednesday, August 15th.--I went to Commencement at Williams College,--
five miles distant. At the tavern were students with ribbons, pink or
blue, fluttering from their buttonholes, these being the badges of rival
societies. There was a considerable gathering of people, chiefly
arriving in wagons or buggies, some in barouches, and very few in
chaises. The most characteristic part of the scene was where the
pedlers, gingerbread-sellers, etc., were collected, a few hundred yards
from the meeting-house. There was a pedler there from New York State,
who sold his wares by auction, and I could have stood and listened to him
all day long. Sometimes he would put up a heterogeny [this is a word
made by Mr. Hawthorne, but one that was needed.--S. H.] of articles in a
lot,--as a paper of pins, a lead-pencil, and a shaving-box,--and knock
them all down, perhaps for ninepence. Bunches of lead-pencils,
steel-pens, pound-cakes of shaving-soap, gilt finger-rings, bracelets,
clasps, and other jewelry, cards of pearl buttons, or steel ("there is
some steel about them, gentlemen, for my brother stole 'em, and I bore
him out in it"), bundles of wooden combs, boxes of matches, suspenders,
and, in short, everything,--dipping his hand down into his wares with the
promise of a wonderful lot, and producing, perhaps, a bottle of
opodeldoc, and joining it with a lead-pencil,--and when he had sold
several things of the same kind, pretending huge surprise at finding
"just one more," if the lads lingered; saying, "I could not afford to
steal them for the price; for the remorse of conscience would be worth
more,"--all the time keeping an eye upon those who bought, calling for
the pay, making change with silver or bills, and deciding on the goodness
of banks; and saying to the boys who climbed upon his cart, "Fall down,
roll down, tumble down, only get down"; and uttering everything in the
queer, humorous recitative in which he sold his articles. Sometimes he
would pretend that a person had bid, either by word or wink, and raised a
laugh thus; never losing his self-possession, nor getting out of humor.
When a man asked whether a bill were good: "No! do you suppose I'd give
you good money?" When he delivered an article, he exclaimed, "You're the
lucky man," setting off his wares with the most extravagant eulogies.
The people bought very freely, and seemed also to enjoy the fun. One
little boy bought a shaving-box, perhaps meaning to speculate upon it.
This character could not possibly he overdrawn; and he was really
excellent, with his allusions to what was passing, intermingled,
doubtless, with a good deal that was studied. He was a man between
thirty and forty, with a face expressive of other ability, as well as of
humor.