ISRAEL POTTER
His Fifty Years of Exile
By Herman Melville
1855
DEDICATION
TO
HIS HIGHNESS
THE
Bunker-Hill Monument
Biography, in its purer form, confined to the ended lives of the true
and brave, may be held the fairest meed of human virtue—one given and
received in entire disinterestedness—since neither can the biographer
hope for acknowledgment from the subject, nor the subject at all avail
himself of the biographical distinction conferred.
Israel Potter well merits the present tribute—a private of Bunker Hill,
who for his faithful services was years ago promoted to a still deeper
privacy under the ground, with a posthumous pension, in default of any
during life, annually paid him by the spring in ever-new mosses and
sward.
I am the more encouraged to lay this performance at the feet of your
Highness, because, with a change in the grammatical person, it
preserves, almost as in a reprint, Israel Potter’s autobiographical
story. Shortly after his return in infirm old age to his native land, a
little narrative of his adventures, forlornly published on sleazy gray
paper, appeared among the peddlers, written, probably, not by himself,
but taken down from his lips by another. But like the crutch-marks of
the cripple by the Beautiful Gate, this blurred record is now out of
print. From a tattered copy, rescued by the merest chance from the
rag-pickers, the present account has been drawn, which, with the
exception of some expansions, and additions of historic and personal
details, and one or two shiftings of scene, may, perhaps, be not
unfitly regarded something in the light of a dilapidated old tombstone
retouched.
Well aware that in your Highness’ eyes the merit of the story must be
in its general fidelity to the main drift of the original narrative, I
forbore anywhere to mitigate the hard fortunes of my hero; and
particularly towards the end, though sorely tempted, durst not
substitute for the allotment of Providence any artistic recompense of
poetical justice; so that no one can complain of the gloom of my
closing chapters more profoundly than myself.
Such is the work, and such, the man, that I have the honor to present
to your Highness. That the name here noted should not have appeared in
the volumes of Sparks, may or may not be a matter for astonishment; but
Israel Potter seems purposely to have waited to make his, popular
advent under the present exalted patronage, seeing that your Highness,
according to the definition above, may, in the loftiest sense, be
deemed the Great Biographer: the national commemorator of such of the
anonymous privates of June 17, 1775, who may never have received other
requital than the solid reward of your granite.
Your Highness will pardon me, if, with the warmest ascriptions on this
auspicious occasion, I take the liberty to mingle my hearty
congratulations on the recurrence of the anniversary day we celebrate,
wishing your Highness (though indeed your Highness be somewhat
prematurely gray) many returns of the same, and that each of its
summer’s suns may shine as brightly on your brow as each winter snow
shall lightly rest on the grave of Israel Potter.
Your Highness’
Most devoted and obsequious,
THE EDITOR.
JUNE 17th, 1854.
CONTENTS
ISRAEL POTTER
CHAPTER I. — THE BIRTHPLACE OF ISRAEL.
CHAPTER II. — THE YOUTHFUL ADVENTURES OF ISRAEL.
CHAPTER III. — ISRAEL GOES TO THE WARS; AND REACHING BUNKER HILL IN TIME TO BE OF SERVICE THERE, SOON AFTER IS FORCED TO EXTEND HIS TRAVELS ACROSS THE SEA INTO THE ENEMY’S LAND.
CHAPTER IV. — FURTHER WANDERINGS OF THE REFUGEE, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF A GOOD KNIGHT OF BRENTFORD WHO BEFRIENDED HIM.
CHAPTER V. — ISRAEL IN THE LION’S DEN.
CHAPTER VI. — ISRAEL MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF CERTAIN SECRET FRIENDS OF AMERICA, ONE OF THEM BEING THE FAMOUS AUTHOR OF THE “DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY,” THESE DESPATCH HIM ON A SLY ERRAND ACROSS THE CHANNEL.
CHAPTER VII. — AFTER A CURIOUS ADVENTURE UPON THE PONT NEUF, ISRAEL ENTERS THE PRESENCE OF THE RENOWNED SAGE, DR. FRANKLIN, WHOM HE FINDS RIGHT LEARNEDLY AND MULTIFARIOUSLY EMPLOYED.
CHAPTER VIII. — WHICH HAS SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT DR. FRANKLIN AND THE LATIN QUARTER.
CHAPTER IX. — ISRAEL IS INITIATED INTO THE MYSTERIES OF LODGING-HOUSES IN THE LATIN QUARTER.
CHAPTER X. — ANOTHER ADVENTURER APPEARS UPON THE SCENE.
CHAPTER XI. — PAUL JONES IN A REVERIE.
CHAPTER XII. — RECROSSING THE CHANNEL, ISRAEL RETURNS TO THE SQUIRE’S ABODE—HIS ADVENTURES THERE.
CHAPTER XIII. — HIS ESCAPE FROM THE HOUSE, WITH VARIOUS ADVENTURES FOLLOWING.
CHAPTER XIV. — IN WHICH ISRAEL IS SAILOR UNDER TWO FLAGS, AND IN THREE SHIPS, AND ALL IN ONE NIGHT.
CHAPTER XV. — THEY SAIL AS FAR AS THE CRAG OF AILSA.
CHAPTER XVI. — THEY LOOK IN AT CARRICKFERGUS, AND DESCEND ON WHITEHAVEN.
CHAPTER XVII. — THEY CALL AT THE EARL OF SELKIRK’S, AND AFTERWARDS FIGHT THE SHIP-OF-WAR DRAKE.
CHAPTER XVIII. — THE EXPEDITION THAT SAILED FROM GROIX.
CHAPTER XIX. — THEY FIGHT THE SERAPIS.
CHAPTER XX. — THE SHUTTLE.
CHAPTER XXI. — SAMSON AMONG THE PHILISTINES.
CHAPTER XXII. — SOMETHING FURTHER OF ETHAN ALLEN; WITH ISRAEL’S FLIGHT TOWARDS THE WILDERNESS.
CHAPTER XXIII. — ISRAEL IN EGYPT.
CHAPTER XXIV. — CONTINUED.
CHAPTER XXV. — IN THE CITY OF DIS.
CHAPTER XXVI. — FORTY-FIVE YEARS.
CHAPTER XXVII. — REQUIESCAT IN PACE.
ISRAEL POTTER
Fifty Years of Exile
CHAPTER I.
THE BIRTHPLACE OF ISRAEL.
The traveller who at the present day is content to travel in the good
old Asiatic style, neither rushed along by a locomotive, nor dragged by
a stage-coach; who is willing to enjoy hospitalities at far-scattered
farmhouses, instead of paying his bill at an inn; who is not to be
frightened by any amount of loneliness, or to be deterred by the
roughest roads or the highest hills; such a traveller in the eastern
part of Berkshire, Massachusetts, will find ample food for poetic
reflection in the singular scenery of a country, which, owing to the
ruggedness of the soil and its lying out of the track of all public
conveyances, remains almost as unknown to the general tourist as the
interior of Bohemia.
Travelling northward from the township of Otis, the road leads for
twenty or thirty miles towards Windsor, lengthwise upon that long
broken spur of heights which the Green Mountains of Vermont send into
Massachusetts. For nearly the whole of the distance, you have the
continual sensation of being upon some terrace in the moon. The feeling
of the plain or the valley is never yours; scarcely the feeling of the
earth. Unless by a sudden precipitation of the road you find yourself
plunging into some gorge, you pass on, and on, and on, upon the crests
or slopes of pastoral mountains, while far below, mapped out in its
beauty, the valley of the Housatonie lies endlessly along at your feet.
Often, as your horse gaining some lofty level tract, flat as a table,
trots gayly over the almost deserted and sodded road, and your admiring
eye sweeps the broad landscape beneath, you seem to be Bootes driving
in heaven. Save a potato field here and there, at long intervals, the
whole country is either in wood or pasture. Horses, cattle and sheep
are the principal inhabitants of these mountains. But all through the
year lazy columns of smoke, rising from the depths of the forest,
proclaim the presence of that half-outlaw, the charcoal-burner; while
in early spring added curls of vapor show that the maple sugar-boiler
is also at work. But as for farming as a regular vocation, there is not
much of it here. At any rate, no man by that means accumulates a
fortune from this thin and rocky soil, all whose arable parts have long
since been nearly exhausted.
Yet during the first settlement of the country, the region was not
unproductive. Here it was that the original settlers came, acting upon
the principle well known to have regulated their choice of site,
namely, the high land in preference to the low, as less subject to the
unwholesome miasmas generated by breaking into the rich valleys and
alluvial bottoms of primeval regions. By degrees, however, they quitted
the safety of this sterile elevation, to brave the dangers of richer
though lower fields. So that, at the present day, some of those
mountain townships present an aspect of singular abandonment. Though
they have never known aught but peace and health, they, in one lesser
aspect at least, look like countries depopulated by plague and war.
Every mile or two a house is passed untenanted. The strength of the
frame-work of these ancient buildings enables them long to resist the
encroachments of decay. Spotted gray and green with the weather-stain,
their timbers seem to have lapsed back into their woodland original,
forming part now of the general picturesqueness of the natural scene.
They are of extraordinary size, compared with modern farmhouses. One
peculiar feature is the immense chimney, of light gray stone,
perforating the middle of the roof like a tower.
On all sides are seen the tokens of ancient industry. As stone abounds
throughout these mountains, that material was, for fences, as ready to
the hand as wood, besides being much more durable. Consequently the
landscape is intersected in all directions with walls of uncommon
neatness and strength.
The number and length of these walls is not more surprising than the
size of some of the blocks comprising them. The very Titans seemed to
have been at work. That so small an army as the first settlers must
needs have been, should have taken such wonderful pains to enclose so
ungrateful a soil; that they should have accomplished such herculean
undertakings with so slight prospect of reward; this is a consideration
which gives us a significant hint of the temper of the men of the
Revolutionary era.
Nor could a fitter country be found for the birthplace of the devoted
patriot, Israel Potter.
To this day the best stone-wall builders, as the best wood-choppers,
come from those solitary mountain towns; a tall, athletic, and hardy
race, unerring with the axe as the Indian with the tomahawk; at
stone-rolling, patient as Sisyphus, powerful as Samson.
In fine clear June days, the bloom of these mountains is beyond
expression delightful. Last visiting these heights ere she vanishes,
Spring, like the sunset, flings her sweetest charms upon them. Each
tuft of upland grass is musked like a bouquet with perfume. The balmy
breeze swings to and fro like a censer. On one side the eye follows for
the space of an eagle’s flight, the serpentine mountain chains,
southwards from the great purple dome of Taconic—the St. Peter’s of
these hills—northwards to the twin summits of Saddleback, which is the
two-steepled natural cathedral of Berkshire; while low down to the west
the Housatonie winds on in her watery labyrinth, through charming
meadows basking in the reflected rays from the hill-sides. At this
season the beauty of every thing around you populates the loneliness of
your way. You would not have the country more settled if you could.
Content to drink in such loveliness at all your senses, the heart
desires no company but Nature.
With what rapture you behold, hovering over some vast hollow of the
hills, or slowly drifting at an immense height over the far sunken
Housatonie valley, some lordly eagle, who in unshared exaltation looks
down equally upon plain and mountain. Or you behold a hawk sallying
from some crag, like a Rhenish baron of old from his pinnacled castle,
and darting down towards the river for his prey. Or perhaps, lazily
gliding about in the zenith, this ruffian fowl is suddenly beset by a
crow, who with stubborn audacity pecks at him, and, spite of all his
bravery, finally persecutes him back to his stronghold. The otherwise
dauntless bandit, soaring at his topmost height, must needs succumb to
this sable image of death. Nor are there wanting many smaller and less
famous fowl, who without contributing to the grandeur, yet greatly add
to the beauty of the scene. The yellow-bird flits like a winged jonquil
here and there; like knots of violets the blue-birds sport in clusters
upon the grass; while hurrying from the pasture to the grove, the red
robin seems an incendiary putting torch to the trees. Meanwhile the air
is vocal with their hymns, and your own soul joys in the general joy.
Like a stranger in an orchestra, you cannot help singing yourself when
all around you raise such hosannas.
But in autumn, those gay northerners, the birds, return to their
southern plantations. The mountains are left bleak and sere. Solitude
settles down upon them in drizzling mists. The traveller is beset, at
perilous turns, by dense masses of fog. He emerges for a moment into
more penetrable air; and passing some gray, abandoned house, sees the
lofty vapors plainly eddy by its desolate door; just as from the plain
you may see it eddy by the pinnacles of distant and lonely heights. Or,
dismounting from his frightened horse, he leads him down some scowling
glen, where the road steeply dips among grim rocks, only to rise as
abruptly again; and as he warily picks his way, uneasy at the menacing
scene, he sees some ghost-like object looming through the mist at the
roadside; and wending towards it, beholds a rude white stone, uncouthly
inscribed, marking the spot where, some fifty or sixty years ago, some
farmer was upset in his wood-sled, and perished beneath the load.
In winter this region is blocked up with snow. Inaccessible and
impassable, those wild, unfrequented roads, which in August are
overgrown with high grass, in December are drifted to the arm-pit with
the white fleece from the sky. As if an ocean rolled between man and
man, intercommunication is often suspended for weeks and weeks.
Such, at this day, is the country which gave birth to our hero:
prophetically styled Israel by the good Puritans, his parents, since,
for more than forty years, poor Potter wandered in the wild wilderness
of the world’s extremest hardships and ills.
How little he thought, when, as a boy, hunting after his father’s stray
cattle among these New England hills he himself like a beast should be
hunted through half of Old England, as a runaway rebel. Or, how could
he ever have dreamed, when involved in the autumnal vapors of these
mountains, that worse bewilderments awaited him three thousand miles
across the sea, wandering forlorn in the coal- foes of London. But so
it was destined to be. This little boy of the hills, born in sight of
the sparkling Housatonic, was to linger out the best part of his life a
prisoner or a pauper upon the grimy banks of the Thames.