sanctuary of the forest. These things made the day full of interest to
me, though the rain scarcely ceased from morning till night.
Well-settled farms were numerous along the road, but in the intervals
were miles of forests; dark thronging trees with their soft gay summits.
Till now the autumn woods had appeared at a distance too red and rusty;
these, when looked into, were the melting of all harmonious colours. As
for the forms, some were drooping, some towering, their tall bare stems
wreathed with crimson creepers. The cleared hollows and slopes, with the
forest ever advancing or receding, are as fine to the imagination as any
natural language can be. I looked for an Indian or two standing on the
forest verge, within a shade as dusky as himself; but for this I had to
wait another day.
Just after dark we arrived at Syracuse, in time for the common supper. I
was surprised at the size and style of the hotel. Land and building
material being cheap, and there being no window-tax, there is little
inducement to economize space in the American houses, and the new hotels
have the ambitious air which is given by spaciousness. The deficiency
lies in furniture, and yet more in attendance; but I really think, that
if travellers will trouble themselves to learn a little of the ways of
the house, so as not to run into opposition to other people's
convenience, much more comfort may be enjoyed in these places than
unaccommodating tourists will believe. Our chambers were quite
sufficiently furnished here; and I never in any place found difficulty
in obtaining as large a supply of water as I wished by simply asking for
it in good time. I observed that the hotel parlours in various parts of
the country were papered with the old-fashioned papers, I believe
French, which represent a sort of panorama of a hunting-party, a fleet,
or some such diversified scene. I saw many such a hunting-party, the
ladies in scarlet riding-habits, as I remember the landlord of the inn
at Bray, near Dublin, to have been proud of in his best parlour. At
Schenectady, the bay of Naples, with its fishing-boats on the water and
groups of lazzaroni on the shore, adorned our parlour walls. It seems
to be an irresistible temptation to idle visiters, English, Irish, and
American, to put speeches into the mouths of the painted personages; and
such hangings are usually seen deformed with scribblings. The effect is
odd, in wild places, of seeing American witticisms put into the mouths
of Neapolitan fishermen, ancient English ladies of quality, or of
tritons and dryads.
There is taste quite as bad as this in a matter of far more importance,
the naming of places. Syracuse in the State of New-York! I often wonder
whether it is yet too late to revert to the Indian names, to undo the
mischief which has been done by boys fresh from their smattering of the
classics, who have gone into the forest to hew out towns and villages. I
heard many Americans say that the State of New-York ought to be called
Ontario, and the city Manhattan. But, so far from bringing back the
nomenclature to a better state, we not only find Utica, Syracuse,
Manlius, and Camillus, and the village of Geneva on Seneca Lake, with
Ithaca at its other extremity, but the village of Chittenango actually
baptized into Sullivan; and all this in the neighbourhood of the lakes
Onondago, Cayuga, and Owasco. It is as bad as the English in Van
Diemen's Land, who, if I remember rightly, have got Palmyra, Richmond,
and Jericho all in a line.
Some curious associations arise from a new nation using the language of
the old. While speculating sometimes on what the classical conceptions
can be in the minds of youths who hear every day, in the most sordid
connexion, of Rome, Utica, Carthage, Athens, Palmyra, and Troy, it
occurred to me that some of our commonest English writing must bear a
different meaning to the Americans and to us. All that is written about
cornfields, for instance, must call up pictures in their minds quite
unlike any that the poets intended to create. "Waving corn" is not the
true description to them; and one can scarcely bring one's tongue to
explain that it means "small grain." Their poetical attachments are
naturally and reasonably to their Indian corn, which is a beautiful
plant, worthy of all love and celebration. But the consequence is, that
we have not their sympathy about our sheaves, our harvest wain, our
gleaners; for though they have wheat, their harvest, _par excellence_,
is of corncobs, and their "small grain" bears about the same relation to
poetry with them as turnips with us. Then, again, there is the month of
May, about which we lose their sympathy. Over a great proportion of the
country May is one of their worst months, damp, drizzly, with intervals
of biting winds, as little fit for the climate of a poem as our windy
and dusty March. Many other such particulars might be mentioned, which
it would be a new employment to trace out.
When I traversed New-York State at a subsequent period with another
party of friends, we saw many Indians before reaching Syracuse. It was
at Oneida Castle, a village on the borders of the Oneida territory,
which was once fortified after the Indian fashion, whence its formidable
name. We saw in such close neighbourhood as to cause many strange
reflections, the Episcopalian church built for the Indians of the
vicinity, who are declared to be reclaimed from idolatry and their
ancient Council Grove, where they met to think their own thoughts and
say their own sayings. This grove is a fine clump of twenty-seven
butternut-trees. We passed through the village on the day when the
Indians had all come in to receive their annual government allowance of
seven dollars a head. Two men were drunk; the rest looked sober enough.
The squaws were neatly dressed in blue pantaloons edged with white, and
had clean blankets over their shoulders. The babies looked fat and
lively. One squaw had her infant lashed to a board at her back. When we
stopped to water the horses we saw several boys with bows and arrows,
and Dr. F. made them understand by signs that any one who could strike a
quarter dollar which he would fix on a post should have it. He made a
notch in the post of a shed, and placed his coin, and forthwith the
arrows flew like hail. One struck deep into a post, and we saw how
easily fatal this weapon might be. An old Indian or two watched the
sport, and assumed the superintendence. The coin fell, and Dr. F. was
going to deliver it to the claimant, when an old Indian came forward
with "No, no." He showed by signs that the coin had fallen, not from its
being struck, but from the post having been shaken. The quarter dollar
was put up again, and soon after struck and bent in the middle by the
arrow of a youth, who looked as happy with his prize as if he had
regained a tract of his native wood. The party gave us some very bright
looks as we drove away.
In a hotel on this road I found a Sabbath-school history of Lady Jane
Grey, compiled obviously for the purpose of prejudicing the reader's
mind against the Catholics. Among other wise things in it there was an
explanation that the heroine was called "Lady" because she was related
to the king; and people are sometimes called so in England. A clear idea
to give the American youth of our English peerage!
We left Syracuse at dawn; and this was the morning when, finding
ourselves too hungry to proceed to Skaneatles without food, we were
treated to that abundant breakfast, so characteristically served, which
I have described in my other book.[4] No one likes to breakfast twice
over in description any more than in reality; and I therefore say
nothing about Elbridge here. The greater part of this day, and some of
the next, was spent at Auburn in viewing the prison, walking about the
town, and driving down the shores of the pretty Owasco Lake.
Footnote 4: "Society in America," vol. iii., p. 87.
The cultivation of the country now began to show the improvement which
increases all the way to Buffalo. At the head of Cayuga Lake we
travelled over the longest bridge I ever saw, even a mile and eight rods
long. It is wooden, of course, laid upon piles, and more conspicuous for
usefulness than beauty. The great ornament of this route is the village
of Geneva, reared on a terrace which overhangs Seneca Lake. The Northern
States abound in beautiful villages; but I know none more captivating
than this. A long row of handsome white and red houses, each with its
sloping garden, fronts the lake; and behind the dwellings the road is
bordered with locust-trees, which seem to imbower the place. The gardens
are more carefully cultivated than is at all common in America, and they
well repay the trouble bestowed on them. There is a college standing on
high ground above the lake, to which a natural lawn steeply descends
from the open space in front of the building. Holstein, aiddecamp to
Bolivar, was professor of modern languages in this college when I was
first at Geneva. Before my second visit he had removed to Albany. To
crown the temptations of Geneva as a place of residence, it has rather a
choice society. It has been charged with not being healthy, but I
believe this is not true. It seems to be well and speedily supplied with
literature. I saw a placard outside a bookseller's store, "Two Old Men's
Tales, price 80 cents," that is, four shillings. One of my last
interests, before I left England, had been watching over the publication
of this work; and now here it was selling at four shillings, in the back
of the State of New-York! I remarked two things more about this village;
that all the women I saw were pretty, and that a profusion of azalea
grew wild in the neighbourhood.
The road to Canandaigua ascends for a considerable distance after
leaving Geneva, and the last view of the place from above was exquisite,
imbosomed as it lay in the autumn woods, and with its blue lake
stretched behind it in the sunny atmosphere. One element in the
exhilaration of such scenes in America is the universal presence of
competence. The boys who gather about the stage do not come to beg, or
even to sell, but to amuse themselves while eating their bread and meat,
or on their way to the field. The young women all well dressed, the men
all at work or amusement, the farms all held in fee-simple, the stores
all inadequate to their custom; these things are indescribably cheering
to behold, and a never-failing source of pleasure to the traveller from
Europe. It may be a questionable comfort, but it is a comfort to think,
"if these people are not happy, it is their own fault." Whether their
minds are as easy as their fortunes, it may not be safe to affirm; but
at least the sin and sorrow of social injustice in regard to the first
necessities of life are absent.
The moon was gleaming over Canandaigua Lake when we came in sight of it,
and a golden planet dropped beneath the horizon when we took the turn
towards the village. We found that Blossom's hotel did not answer to the
favourable description which had been given us of it. This had been a
training day, and the house was so noisy with drunken soldiers, that,
when we had attained the drawing-room, we locked ourselves in till the
house should be cleared, which happened as early as nine o'clock; but we
still found the inn less comfortable than most upon the road.
The pretty village of Canandaigua is noted for its good society. It
would have given me pleasure to have been able to accept the kind
invitation of some of its inhabitants to prolong my stay now, or to
revisit it the next year; but we had promised Mr. O. to cause no delay
in getting to Niagara; and we engaged, in return for his agreeing to
stop this day, to travel all night; and I never was able to allot any
future time to this place. We saw as much of it, however, as we could in
one day.
There are many families of Scotch extraction at Canandaigua, and to this
the village owes its superiority in gardens to almost any place in the
country. We spent the greater part of the day with a gentleman who was
born in Scotland, but had settled at Canandaigua thirty-four years
before, when the place was almost a desert. He now sees himself
surrounded by handsome dwellings, trim gardens, and a highly-cultivated
society, able to command resources of books and other intellectual
luxuries to almost any extent, from the directness and ease of
communication with New-York. He had just taken possession of a splendid
new dwelling, and had presented his old one to the Episcopalian church
for a parsonage. He showed me from the top of the house, where his
dwelling had stood, where it stood now, and how it had been moved entire
in a day and a half. I think the distance could not have been much under
a mile.
After our early breakfast we were engaged till church-time in receiving
and making calls, as there was no time to be lost. We went to the
Episcopalian church with our friends, and heard a sermon which could not
please us, it was so full of dogmatism and bitterness. Our friends
insisted on entertaining the whole of our large party, and invited some
agreeable guests in addition, so that we spent a very profitable as well
as pleasant afternoon. We walked over the grounds, enjoyed the view of
the lake from the housetop, and picked up a good deal of information
about the place and neighbourhood, which might seem to the inhabitants
scarcely worthy of the name of knowledge, but which is inestimable to
the stranger as opening new departments of inquiry, and explaining much
which he did not understand before.
The stage was ordered for nine, and we returned to Blossom's for an
hour's rest before setting out on our rough night's journey.
We reached Batavia to breakfast, and soon after found ourselves on the
first piece of corduroy road we had encountered in the country. I
mention this because corduroy roads appear to have made a deep
impression on the imaginations of the English, who seem to suppose that
American roads are all corduroy. I can assure them that there is a
large variety in American roads. There are the excellent limestone roads
which stretch out in three directions from Nashville, Tennessee, and
some like them in Kentucky, on which the tourist might sketch almost
without difficulty while travelling at a rapid rate. There is quite
another sort of limestone road in Virginia, in traversing which the
stage is dragged up from shelf to shelf, some of the shelves sloping so
as to throw the passengers on one another, on either side alternately.
Then there are the rich mud roads of Ohio, through whose deep red
sloughs the stage goes slowly sousing after rain, and gently upsetting
when the rut on the one or the other side proves to be of a greater
depth than was anticipated. Then there are the sandy roads of the
pine-barrens, of an agreeable consistency after rain, but very heavy in
dry weather. Then there is the ridge road, running parallel with a part
of Lake Ontario, and supposed to be the edge of what was once its basin.
The level terrace thus provided by Nature offered the foundation of an
admirable road, one of the best in the states. Lastly, there is the
corduroy road, happily of rare occurrence, where, if the driver is
merciful to his passengers, he drives them so as to give them the
association of being on the way to a funeral, their involuntary sobs on
each jolt helping the resemblance; or, if he be in a hurry, he shakes
them like pills in a pillbox. But the American drivers are a class of
men marked by that merciful temper which naturally accompanies genius.
They are men who command admiration equally by their perfection in their
art, their fertility of resource, and their patience with their
passengers. I was never upset in a stage but once during all my travels;
and the worse the roads were, the more I was amused at the variety of
devices by which we got on, through difficulties which appeared
insurmountable, and the more I was edified at the gentleness with which
our drivers treated female fears and fretfulness.
By this time a solitary Indian might be frequently seen standing on a
heap of stones by the roadside, or sleeping under a fence. There is
something which rivets the eye of the stranger in the grave gaze, the
lank hair, the blanket-wrapped form of the savage, as he stands
motionless. We were generally to be seen leaning out of every opening in
the stage as long as the figure remained in sight.
We issued from the corduroy road upon one on which we could easily have
performed twelve miles an hour. Houses with porches of Ionic pillars
began to be scattered by the roadside. We were obviously approaching
Buffalo. Soon the lake was visible, and then we entered the long main
street, and stopped at the entrance of the Eagle hotel.
FORT ERIE.
"That night a child might understand
The de'il had business on his hand."
BURNS.
On consulting a good map, a little promontory may be seen jutting out
into Lake Erie on the Canada shore, nearly opposite to Black Rock.
Perhaps it may be marked Fort Erie, for there Fort Erie stood.
A lady of Buffalo, who happens to be a good walker, proposed that she
and I should indulge in a ramble to Fort Erie one fine day towards the
end of October. She showed me that she was provided with stout boots, in
case of our having to cross swampy ground; and she said she believed we
might trust to getting some sort of a dinner on the Canada side, and
might therefore go unencumbered with provisions.
We set out from Buffalo soon after breakfast, and made our way over a
waste, through brush, over fences, along a natural terrace once planted
with guns, down to the ferry at Black Rock. On the way I saw one of the
less prepossessing abodes of settlers so frequently described; its
desolate appearance on the verge of the wood; its untidy garden, and the
cool, uncomfortable manners, and the lank hair, and pale, dingy
countenance of its mistress. I also heard, during our walk, some things
which make me think that Buffalo is as undesirable a place of residence
as any in the free States. It is the rendezvous of all manner of
persons; the passage through which fugitives pass from the States to
Canada, from Canada to the States, and from Europe and the Eastern
States into the wild West. Runaway slaves come here, and their owners
follow in hopes of recapturing them. Indian traders, land speculators,
and poor emigrants come here, and the most debased Indians, the
half-civilized, hang about the outskirts. No influence that the mass of
respectable inhabitants can exert can neutralize the bad effects of a
floating population like this; and the place is unavoidably a very
vicious one. A sufficient proof of this is, that ladies cannot walk
beyond the streets without the protection of a gentleman. Some excellent
English ladies opened a school in Buffalo, and, not being aware of the
peculiarities of the place, followed, with their pupils, the English
practice of taking country walks. They persevered for some time, hoping
to obtain countenance for the wholesome practice; but were compelled,
after a time, not only to give up walking, but to leave the place. It
will be understood that I do not give this as any specimen of American
towns. The corruption of Buffalo is owing chiefly to its frontier
position, and consequent liability to a vicious, transient population.
After crossing the ferry at Black Rock we pursued our walk in a
southwest direction, sometimes treading a firm sand and sometimes a
greensward washed by the fresh waters of the lake. Though we were on
British ground, we were entertained by an American woman who lived on
the lake shore close by the fort. She treated us with negus and cake
while preparing to get a dinner for us, and amused us with accounts of
how butter and eggs are smuggled into Buffalo from her neighbourhood,
these articles not being allowed to pass the custom-house. My eyes never
rested on the Canada shore without my feeling how absurd it was that
that poor country should belong to us, its poverty and hopeless
inactivity contrasting, so much to our disgrace, with the prosperous
activity of the opposite shore; but here was the climax of absurdity,
the prohibition of a free traffic in butter and eggs! What a worthy
subject of contention between two great nations, the one breaking the
laws to provide Buffalo with butter and eggs, and the preventive force
of the other exercised in opposition!
Our hostess was sewing when we went in, amusing herself meanwhile with
snatches of reading from "Peter Parley," which lay open before her. She
put away her work to cook for us, conversing all the while, and by no
means sorry, I fancy, to have the amusement of a little company. She
gave us tea, beefsteak, hot rolls and butter, honeycomb, and preserved
plums and crab-apples. Immediately after dinner I went out to the fort,
my friend promising to follow.
The thickness of the remaining fragments of the walls shows the fort to
have been substantially built. It was held by the Americans to the last
extremity in the war of 1814, and then blown up by a brave man to
prevent its falling into the hands of the British. He remained alone in
the fort to do the deed; and as I now beheld the desolation of the
solitude in which it stands, I felt as if I could enter into what his
feelings must have been on the last day of his life. At one moment all
had been dead silence; at the next the windows in Buffalo were blown out
by the explosion.
I sat alone beside a pool in the middle of the fort. Fragments of the
building lay tumbled around, overgrown with tall grass, and bristling
with shrubbery. Behind me was the grim forest, with the ruins of a
single deserted house standing within its shadow. Before me lay the
waste of waters, with gulls dipping and sailing. A single birch overhung
the pool beside me, and a solitary snipe, which seemed to have no fear
of me, vibrated on the top of a bulrush. I do not know that I was ever
so oppressed with a sense of solitude; and I was really glad soon to see
my friend standing on a pinnacle of the ruined wall, and beckoning me to
come up.
This afternoon she told me her wonderful story; a part of which, that
part in which the public may be said to have an interest, I am going to
relate.
At the time of the war of 1812 Mrs. W. lived in Buffalo with her father,
mother, brothers, and sisters. In 1814, just when the war was becoming
terrific on the frontier, her father and eldest brother were drowned in
crossing the neighbouring ferry. Six months after this accident the
danger of Buffalo was so great that the younger children of the family
were sent away into the country with their married sister, under the
charge of their brother-in-law, who was to return with his wagon for the
mother and two daughters who were left behind, and for the clothes of
the family. For three weeks there had been so strong an apprehension of
a descent of the Indians, the barbarous allies of the British, that the
ladies had snatched sleep with their clothes on, one watching while the
others lay down. It was with some difficulty, and after many delays,
that the wagon party got away, and there were still doubts whether it
was the safer course to go or stay. Nothing was heard of them before
night, however, and it was hoped that they were safe, and that the wagon
would come for the remaining three the next morning.