Description of Albany—Manner of living there—Hermitage, &c.
THE city of Albany was stretched along the banks of the Hudson; one very
wide and long street lay parallel to the river, the intermediate space
between it and the shore being occupied by gardens. A small, but steep
hill rose above the centre of the town, on which stood a fort, intended
(but very ill adapted) for the defence of the place, and of the
neighbouring country. From the foot of this hill, another street was
built, sloping pretty rapidly down till it joined the one before
mentioned that ran along the river. This street was still wider than the
other; it was only paved on each side, the middle being occupied by
public edifices. These consisted of a market-place, or guard-house, a
town hall, and the English and Dutch churches. The English church,
belonging to the Episcopal persuasion, and in the diocese of the bishop
of London, stood at the foot of the hill, at the upper end of the
street. The Dutch church was situated at the bottom of the descent where
the street terminated; two irregular streets, not so broad, but equally
long, ran parallel to those, and a few even ones open between them. The
town, in proportion to its population, occupied a great space of ground.
This city, in short, was a kind of semi-rural establishment; every house
had its garden, well, and a little green behind; before every door a
tree was planted, rendered interesting by being coeval with some beloved
member of the family; many of their trees were of a prodigious size and
extraordinary beauty, but without regularity, every one planting the
kind that best pleased him, or which he thought would afford the most
agreeable shade to the open portico at his door, which was surrounded by
seats, and ascended by a few steps. It was in these that each domestic
group was seated in summer evenings to enjoy the balmy twilight, or
serenely clear moonlight. Each family had a cow, fed in a common pasture
at the end of the town. In the evening they returned all together, of
their own accord, with their tinkling bells hung at their necks, along
the wide and grassy street, to their wonted sheltering trees, to be
milked at their master’s doors. Nothing could be more pleasing to a
simple and benevolent mind than to see thus, at one view, all the
inhabitants of a town, which contained not one very rich or very poor,
very knowing or very ignorant, very rude or very polished individual; to
see all these children of nature enjoying in easy indolence, or social
intercourse,
“The cool, the fragrant, and the _dusky_ hour,”
clothed in the plainest habits, and with minds as undisguised and
artless. These primitive beings were dispersed in porches grouped
according to similarity of years and inclinations. At one door young
matrons, at another the elders of the people, at a third the youths and
maidens, gaily chatting or singing together, while the children played
round the trees, or waited near the cows, for the chief ingredient of
their frugal supper, which they generally ate sitting on the steps in
the open air. This picture, so familiar to my imagination, has led me
away from my purpose, which was to describe the rural economy, and modes
of living in this patriarchal city. At one end of the town, as I
observed before, was a common pasture where all the cattle belonging to
the inhabitants grazed together. A never-failing instinct guided each
home to her master’s door in the evening, where, being treated with a
few vegetables and a little salt, which is indispensably necessary for
cattle in this country, they patiently waited the night; and after being
milked in the morning, they went off in slow and regular procession to
their pasture. At the other end of the town was a fertile plain along
the river, three miles in length, and near a mile broad. This was all
divided into lots, where every inhabitant raised Indian corn sufficient
for the food of two or three slaves, (the greatest number that each
family ever possessed,) and for his horses, pigs, and poultry: their
flour and other grain they purchased from farmers in the vicinity. Above
the town, a long stretch to the westward was occupied first by sandy
hills, on which grew bilberries of uncommon size and flavour in
prodigious quantities; beyond, rise heights of a poor hungry soil,
thinly covered with stunted pines, or dwarf oak. Yet in this
comparatively barren tract, there were several wild and picturesque
spots, where small brooks, running in deep and rich bottoms, nourished
on their banks every vegetable beauty; there, some of the most
industrious early settlers had cleared the luxuriant wood from these
charming little glens, and built neat cottages for their slaves,
surrounded with little gardens and orchards, sheltered from every blast,
wildly picturesque, and richly productive. Those small sequestered vales
had an attraction that I know not how to describe, and which probably
resulted from the air of deep repose that reigned there, and the strong
contrast which they exhibited to the surrounding sterility. One of these
was in my time inhabited by a hermit. He was a Frenchman, and did not
seem to inspire much veneration among the Albanians. They imagined, or
had heard, that he retired to that solitude in remorse for some fatal
duel in which he had been engaged: and considered him as an idolator
because he had an image of the Virgin in this hut. I think he retired to
Canada at last; but I remember being ready to worship him for the
sanctity with which my imagination invested him, and being cruelly
disappointed because I was not permitted to visit him. These cottages
were in summer occupied by some of the negroes who cultivated the
grounds about them, and served as a place of joyful liberty to the
children of the family on holidays, and a nursery for the young negroes,
whom it was the custom to rear very tenderly, and instruct very
carefully.
-------