remarks. He replies that he has "a better at home." Dressed in a brown,
bright-buttoned coat, smartly cut. He immediately becomes familiar, and
begins to talk of the license law, and other similar topics,--making
himself at home, as one who, being much of his time upon the road, finds
himself at ease at any tavern. He inquired after a stage agent, named
Brigham, who formerly resided here, but now has gone to the West. He
himself was probably a horse-jockey.
An old lady, stopping here over the Sabbath, waiting for to-morrow's
stage for Greenfield, having been deceived by the idea that she could
proceed on her journey without delay. Quiet, making herself comfortable,
taken into the society of the women of the house.
September 3d.--On the slope of Bald Mountain a clearing, set in the frame
of the forest on all sides,--a growth of clover upon it, which, having
been mowed once this year, is now appropriated to pasturage. Stumps
remaining in the ground; one tall, barkless stem of a tree standing
upright, branchless, and with a shattered summit. One or two other stems
lying prostrate and partly overgrown with bushes and shrubbery, some of
them bearing a yellow flower,--a color which Autumn loves. The stumps
and trunks fire-blackened, yet nothing about them that indicates a recent
clearing, but the roughness of an old clearing, that, being removed from
convenient labor, has none of the polish of the homestead. The field,
with slight undulations, slopes pretty directly down. Near the lower
verge, a rude sort of barn, or rather haystack roofed over, and with hay
protruding and hanging out. An ox feeding, and putting up his muzzle to
pull down a mouthful of hay; but seeing me, a stranger, in the upper part
of the field, he remains long gazing, and finally betakes himself to
feeding again. A solitary butterfly flitting to and fro, blown slightly
on its course by a cool September wind,--the coolness of which begins to
be tempered by a bright, glittering sun. There is dew on the grass. In
front, beyond the lower spread of forest, Saddle Mountain rises, and the
valleys and long, swelling hills sweep away. But the impression of this
clearing is solitude, as of a forgotten land.
It is customary here to toll the bell at the death of a person, at the
hour of his death, whether A. M. or P. M. Not, however, I suppose, if it
happen in deep night.
"There are three times in a man's life when he is talked about,--when he
is born, when he is married, and when he dies." "Yes," said Orrin
S------, "and only one of the times has he to pay anything for it out of
his own pocket." (In reference to a claim by the guests of the bar-room
on the man Amasa Richardson for a treat.)
A wood-chopper, travelling the country in search of jobs at chopping.
His baggage a bundle, a handkerchief, and a pair of coarse boots. His
implement an axe, most keenly ground and sharpened, which I had noticed
standing in a corner, and thought it would almost serve as a razor. I
saw another wood-chopper sitting down on the ascent of Bald Mountain,
with his axe on one side and a jug and provisions on the other, on the
way to his day's toil.
The Revolutionary pensioners come out into the sunshine to make oath that
they are still above ground. One, whom Mr. S------ saluted as "Uncle
John," went into the bar-room, walking pretty stoutly by the aid of a
long, oaken staff,--with an old, creased, broken and ashen bell-crowned
hat on his head, and wearing a brown old-fashioned suit of clothes.
Pretty portly, fleshy in the face, and with somewhat of a paunch,
cheerful, and his senses, bodily and mental, in no very bad order, though
he is now in his ninetieth year. "An old man's withered and wilted
apple," quoth Uncle John, "keeps a good while." Mr. S------ says his
grandfather lived to be a hundred, and that his legs became covered with
moss, like the trunk of an old tree. Uncle John would smile and cackle
at a little jest, and what life there was in him seemed a good-natured
and comfortable one enough. He can walk two or three miles, he says,
"taking it moderate." I suppose his state is that of a drowsy man but
partly conscious of life,--walking as through a dim dream, but brighter
at some seasons than at others. By and by he will fall quite asleep,
without any trouble. Mr. S------, unbidden, gave him a glass of gin,
which the old man imbibed by the warm fireside, and grew the younger
for it.
September 4th.--This day an exhibition of animals in the vicinity of the
village, under a pavilion of sail-cloth,--the floor being the natural
grass, with here and there a rock partially protruding. A pleasant, mild
shade; a strip of sunshine or a spot of glimmering brightness in some
parts. Crowded,--row above row of women, on an amphitheatre of seats, on
one side. In an inner pavilion an exhibition of anacondas,--four,--which
the showman took, one by one, from a large box, under some blankets, and
hung round his shoulders. They seemed almost torpid when first taken
out, but gradually began to assume life, to stretch, to contract, twine
and writhe about his neck and person, thrusting out their tongues and
erecting their heads. Their weight was as much as he could bear, and
they hung down almost to the ground when not contorted,--as big round as
a thigh, almost,--spotted and richly variegated. Then he put them into
the box again, their heads emerging and writhing forth, which the showman
thrust back again. He gave a descriptive and historical account of them,
and a fanciful and poetical one also. A man put his arm and head into
the lion's mouth,--all the spectators looking on so attentively that a
breath could not be heard. That was impressive,--its effect on a
thousand persons,--more so than the thing itself.
In the evening the caravan people were at the tavern, talking of their
troubles in coming over the mountain,--the overturn of a cage containing
two leopards and a hyena. They are a rough, ignorant set of men,
apparently incapable of taking any particular enjoyment from the life of
variety and adventure which they lead. There was the man who put his
head into the lion's mouth, and, I suppose, the man about whom the
anacondas twined, talking about their suppers, and blustering for hot
meat, and calling for something to drink, without anything of the wild
dignity of men familiar with the nobility of nature.
A character of a desperate young man, who employs high courage and strong
faculties in this sort of dangers, and wastes his talents in wild riot,
addressing the audience as a snake-man,--keeping the ring while the
monkey rides the pony,--singing negro and other songs.
The country boors were continually getting within the barriers, and
venturing too near the cages. The great lion lay with his fore paws
extended, and a calm, majestic, but awful countenance. He looked on the
people as if he had seen many such concourses. The hyena was the most
ugly and dangerous looking beast, full of spite, and on ill terms with
all nature, looking a good deal like a hog with the devil in him, the
ridge of hair along his back bristling. He was in the cage with a
leopard and a panther, and the latter seemed continually on the point of
laying his paw on the hyena, who snarled, and showed his teeth. It is
strange, though, to see how these wild beasts acknowledge and practise a
degree of mutual forbearance, and of obedience to man, with their wild
nature yet in them. The great white bear seemed in distress from the
heat, moving his head and body in a peculiar, fantastic way, and eagerly
drinking water when given it. He was thin and lank.
The caravan men were so sleepy, Orrin S------ says, that he could hardly
wake them in the morning. They turned over on their faces to show him.
Coming out of the caravansary, there were the mountains, in the quiet
sunset, and many men drunk, swearing, and fighting. Shanties with liquor
for sale.
The elephant lodged in the barn.
September 5th.--I took a walk of three miles from the village, which
brought me into Vermont. The line runs athwart a bridge,--a rude bridge,
which crosses a mountain stream. The stream runs deep at the bottom of a
gorge, plashing downward, with rapids and pools, and bestrewn with large
rocks, deep and shady, not to be reached by the sun except in its
meridian, as well on account of the depth of the gorge as of the arch of
wilderness trees above it. There was a stumpy clearing beyond the
bridge, where some men were building a house. I went to them, and
inquired if I were in Massachusetts or Vermont, and asked for some water.
Whereupon they showed great hospitality, and the master-workman went to
the spring, and brought delicious water in a tin basin, and produced
another jug containing "new rum, and very good; and rum does nobody any
harm if they make a good use of it," quoth he. I invited them to call on
me at the hotel, if they should cone to the village within two or three
days. Then I took my way back through the forest, for this is a by-road,
and is, much of its course, a sequestrated and wild one, with an unseen
torrent roaring at an unseen depth, along the roadside.
My walk forth had been an almost continued ascent, and, returning, I had
an excellent view of Graylock and the adjacent mountains, at such a
distance that they were all brought into one group, and comprehended at
one view, as belonging to the same company,--all mighty, with a mightier
chief. As I drew nearer home, they separated, and the unity of effect
was lost. The more distant then disappeared behind the nearer ones, and
finally Graylock itself was lost behind the hill which immediately shuts
in the village. There was a warm, autumnal haze, which, I think, seemed
to throw the mountains farther off, and both to enlarge and soften them.
To imagine the gorges and deep hollows in among the group of mountains,--
their huge shoulders and protrusions.
"They were just beginning to pitch over the mountains, as I came along,"
--stage-driver's expression about the caravan.
A fantastic figure of a village coxcomb, striding through the bar-room,
and standing with folded arms to survey the caravan men. There is much
exaggeration and rattle-brain about this fellow.
A mad girl leaped from the top of a tremendous precipice in Pownall,
hundreds of feet high, if the tale be true, and, being buoyed up by her
clothes, came safely to the bottom.
Inquiries about the coming of the caravan, and whether the elephant had
got to town, and reports that he had.
A smart, plump, crimson-faced gentleman, with a travelling-portmanteau of
peculiar neatness and convenience. He criticises the road over the
mountain, having come in the Greenfield stage; perhaps an engineer.
Bears still inhabit Saddleback and the neighboring mountains and forests.
Six were taken in Pownall last year, and two hundred foxes. Sometimes
they appear on the hills, in close proximity to this village.
September 7th.--Mr. Leach and I took a walk by moonlight last evening, on
the road that leads over the mountain. Remote from houses, far up on the
hillside, we found a lime-kiln, burning near the road; and, approaching
it, a watcher started from the ground, where he had been lying at his
length. There are several of these lime-kilns in this vicinity. They
are circular, built with stones, like a round tower, eighteen or twenty
feet high, having a hillock heaped around in a great portion of their
circumference, so that the marble may be brought and thrown in by
cart-loads at the top. At the bottom there is a doorway, large enough to
admit a man in a stooping posture. Thus an edifice of great solidity is
constructed, which will endure for centuries, unless needless pains are
taken to tear it down. There is one on the hillside, close to the
village, wherein weeds grow at the bottom, and grass and shrubs too are
rooted in the interstices of the stones, and its low doorway has a
dungeon-like aspect, and we look down from the top as into a roofless
tower. It apparently has not been used for many years, and the lime and
weather-stained fragments of marble are scattered about.
But in the one we saw last night a hard-wood fire was burning merrily,
beneath the superincumbent marble,--the kiln being heaped full; and
shortly after we came, the man (a dark, black-bearded figure, in
shirt-sleeves) opened the iron door, through the chinks of which the fire
was gleaming, and thrust in huge logs of wood, and stirred the immense
coals with a long pole, and showed us the glowing limestone,--the lower
layer of it. The heat of the fire was powerful, at the distance of
several yards from the open door. He talked very sensibly with us, being
doubtless glad to have two visitors to vary his solitary night-watch; for
it would not do for him to fall asleep, since the fire should be
refreshed as often as every twenty minutes. We ascended the hillock to
the top of the kiln, and the marble was red-hot, and burning with a
bluish, lambent flame, quivering up, sometimes nearly a yard high, and
resembling the flame of anthracite coal, only, the marble being in large
fragments, the flame was higher. The kiln was perhaps six or eight feet
across. Four hundred bushels of marble were then in a state of
combustion. The expense of converting this quantity into lime is about
fifty dollars, and it sells for twenty-five cents per bushel at the kiln.
We asked the man whether he would run across the top of the intensely
burning kiln, barefooted, for a thousand dollars; and he said he would
for ten. He told us that the lime had been burning forty-eight hours,
and would be finished in thirty-six more. He liked the business of
watching it better by night than by day; because the days were often hot,
but such a mild and beautiful night as the last was just right. Here a
poet might make verses with moonlight in them, and a gleam of fierce
firelight flickering through. It is a shame to use this brilliant,
white, almost transparent marble in this way. A man said of it, the
other day, that into some pieces of it, when polished, one could see a
good distance; and he instanced a certain gravestone.
Visited the cave. A large portion of it, where water trickles and falls,
is perfectly white. The walls present a specimen of how Nature packs the
stone, crowding huge masses, as it were, into chinks and fissures, and
here we see it in the perpendicular or horizontal layers, as Nature laid
it.
September 9th.--A walk yesterday forenoon through the Notch, formed
between Saddle Mountain and another adjacent one. This Notch is
otherwise called the Bellowspipe, being a long and narrow valley, with a
steep wall on either side. The walls are very high, and the fallen
timbers lie strewed adown the precipitous descent. The valley gradually
descends from the narrowest part of the Notch, and a stream of water
flows through the midst of it, which, farther onward in its course, turns
a mill. The valley is cultivated, there being two or three farm-houses
towards the northern end, and extensive fields of grass beyond, where
stand the hay-mows of last year, with the hay cut away regularly around
their bases. All the more distant portion of the valley is lonesome
in the extreme; and on the hither side of the narrowest part the
land is uncultivated, partly overgrown with forest, partly used as
sheep-pastures, for which purpose it is not nearly so barren as
sheep-pastures usually are. On the right, facing southward, rises
Graylock, all beshagged with forest, and with headlong precipices of rock
appearing among the black pines. Southward there is a most extensive
view of the valley, in which Saddleback and its companion mountains are
crouched,--wide and far,--a broad, misty valley, fenced in by a mountain
wall, and with villages scattered along it, and miles of forest, which
appear but as patches scattered here and there upon the landscape. The
descent from the Notch southward is much more abrupt than on the other
side. A stream flows down through it; and along much of its course it
has washed away all the earth from a ledge of rock, and then formed a
descending pavement, smooth and regular, which the scanty flow of water
scarcely suffices to moisten at this period, though a heavy rain,
probably, would send down a torrent, raging, roaring, and foaming. I
descended along the course of the stream, and sometimes on the rocky path
of it, and, turning off towards the south village, followed a cattle-path
till I came to a cottage.
A horse was standing saddled near the door, but I did not see the rider.
I knocked, and an elderly woman, of very pleasing and intelligent aspect,
came at the summons, and gave me directions how to get to the south
village through an orchard and "across lots," which would bring me into
the road near the Quaker meeting-house, with gravestones round it. While
she talked, a young woman came into the pantry from the kitchen, with a
dirty little brat, whose squalls I had heard all along; the reason of his
outcry being that his mother was washing him,--a very unusual process, if
I may judge by his looks. I asked the old lady for some water, and she
gave me, I think, the most delicious I ever tasted. These mountaineers
ought certainly to be temperance people; for their mountain springs
supply them with a liquor of which the cities and the low countries can
have no conception. Pure, fresh, almost sparkling, exhilarating,--such
water as Adam and Eve drank.
I passed the south village on a by-road, without entering it, and was
taken up by the stage from Pittsfield a mile or two this side of it.
Platt, the driver, a friend of mine, talked familiarly about many
matters, intermixing his talk with remarks on his team and addresses to
the beasts composing it, who were three mares, and a horse on the near
wheel,--all bays. The horse he pronounced "a dreadful nice horse to go;
but if he could shirk off the work upon the others, he would,"--which
unfairness Platt corrected by timely strokes of the whip whenever the
horse's traces were not tightened. One of the mares wished to go faster,
hearing another horse tramp behind her; "and nothing made her so mad,"
quoth Platt, "as to be held in when she wanted to go." The near leader
started. "O the little devil," said he, "how skittish she is!" Another
stumbled, and Platt bantered her thereupon. Then he told of foundering
through snow-drifts in winter, and carrying the mail on his back--four
miles from Bennington. And thus we jogged on, and got to "mine inn" just
as the dinner-bell was ringing.
Pig-drover, with two hundred pigs. They are much more easily driven on
rainy days than on fair ones. One of his pigs, a large one, particularly
troublesome as to running off the road towards every object, and leading
the drove. Thirteen miles about a day's journey, in the course of which
the drover has to travel about thirty.
They have a dog, who runs to and fro indefatigably, barking at those who
straggle on the flanks of the line of march, then scampering to the other
side and barking there, and sometimes having quite an affair of barking
and surly grunting with some refractory pig, who has found something to
munch, and refuses to quit it. The pigs are fed on corn at their halts.
The drove has some ultimate market, and individuals are peddled out on
the march. Some die.
Merino sheep (which are much raised in Berkshire) are good for hardly
anything to eat,--a fair-sized quarter dwindling down to almost nothing
in the process of roasting.
The tavern-keeper in Stockbridge, an elderly bachelor,--a dusty,
black-dressed, antiquated figure, with a white neckcloth setting off a
dim, yellow complexion, looking like one of the old wax-figures of
ministers in a corner of the New England Museum. He did not seem old,
but like a middle-aged man, who had been preserved in some dark and
cobwebby corner for a great while. He is asthmatic.
In Connecticut, and also sometimes in Berkshire, the villages are
situated on the most elevated ground that can be found, so that they are
visible for miles around. Litchfield is a remarkable instance, occupying
a high plain, without the least shelter from the winds, and with almost
as wide an expanse of view as from a mountain-top. The streets are very
wide,--two or three hundred feet, at least,--with wide, green margins,
and sometimes there is a wide green space between two road tracks.
Nothing can be neater than the churches and houses. The graveyard is on
the slope, and at the foot of a swell, filled with old and new
gravestones, some of red freestone, some of gray granite, most of them of
white marble, and one of cast-iron with an inscription of raised letters.
There was one of the date of about 1776, on which was represented the
third-length, has-relief portrait of a gentleman in a wig and other
costume of that day; and as a framework about this portrait was wreathed
a garland of vine-leaves and heavy clusters of grapes. The deceased
should have been a jolly bottleman; but the epitaph indicated nothing of
the kind.
In a remote part of the graveyard,--remote from the main body of dead
people,--I noticed a humble, mossy stone, on which I traced out "To the
memory of Julia Africa, servant of Rev." somebody. There were also the
half-obliterated traces of other graves, without any monuments, in the
vicinity of this one. Doubtless the slaves here mingled their dark clay
with the earth.
At Litchfield there is a doctor who undertakes to cure deformed people,--
and humpbacked, lame, and otherwise defective folk go there. Besides
these, there were many ladies and others boarding there, for the benefit
of the air, I suppose.
At Canaan, Connecticut, before the tavern, there is a doorstep, two or
three paces large in each of its dimensions; and on this is inscribed the
date when the builder of the house came to the town,--namely, 1731. The
house was built in 1751. Then follows the age and death of the patriarch
(at over ninety) and his wife, and the births of, I think, eleven sons
and daughters. It would seem as if they were buried underneath; and many
people take that idea. It is odd to put a family record in a spot where
it is sure to be trampled underfoot.
At Springfield, a blind man, who came in the stage,--elderly,--sitting in
the reading-room, and, as soon as seated, feeling all around him with his
cane, so as to find out his locality, and know where he may spit with
safety! The cautious and scientific air with which he measures his
distances. Then he sits still and silent a long while,--then inquires
the hour,--then says, "I should like to go to bed." Nobody of the house
being near, he receives no answer, and repeats impatiently, "I'll go to
bed." One would suppose, that, conscious of his dependent condition, he
would have learned a different sort of manner; but probably he has lived
where he could command attention.
Two travellers, eating bread and cheese of their own in the bar-room at
Stockbridge, and drinking water out of a tumbler borrowed from the
landlord. Eating immensely, and, when satisfied, putting the relics in
their trunk, and rubbing down the table.
Sample ears of various kinds of corn hanging over the looking-glass or in
the bars of taverns. Four ears on a stalk (good ones) are considered a
heavy harvest.
A withered, yellow, sodden, dead-alive looking woman,--an opium-eater. A
deaf man, with a great fancy for conversation, so that his interlocutor
is compelled to halloo and bawl over the rumbling of the coach, amid
which he hears best. The sharp tones of a woman's voice appear to pierce
his dull organs much better than a masculine voice. The impossibility of
saying anything but commonplace matters to a deaf man, of expressing any
delicacy of thought in a raised tone, of giving utterance to fine
feelings in a bawl. This man's deafness seemed to have made his mind and
feelings uncommonly coarse; for, after the opium-eater had renewed an old
acquaintance with him, almost the first question he asked, in his raised
voice, was, "Do you eat opium now?"
At Hartford, the keeper of a temperance hotel reading a Hebrew Bible in
the bar by means of a lexicon and an English version.
A negro, respectably dressed, and well-mounted on horseback, travelling
on his own hook, calling for oats, and drinking a glass of
brandy-and-water at the bar, like any other Christian. A young man from
Wisconsin said, "I wish I had a thousand such fellows in Alabama." It
made a strange impression on me,--the negro was really so human!--and to
talk of owning a thousand like him!
Left North Adams September 11th. Reached home September 24th, 1838.