 | LETTER XV. The prose works of N.P. Willis |  |
15. LETTER XV.
“When did I descend the Susquehannah on a
raft?” Never, dear Doctor! But I have descended
it in a steamboat, and that may surprise you more. It
is an in-navigable river, it is true: and it is true, too,
that there are some twenty dams across it between
Owego and Wilkesbarre; yet have I steamed it from
Owego to Wyoming, one hundred and fifty miles, in
twelve hours—on the top of a freshet. The dams were
deep under water, and the river was as smooth as the
Hudson. And now you will wonder how a steamer
came, by fair means, at Owego.
A year or two since, before there was a prospect of
extending the Pennsylvania canal to this place, it became
desirable to bring the coal of “the keystone
state” to these southern counties by some cheaper
conveyance than horse-teams. A friend of mine, living
here, took it into his head that, as salmon and
shad will ascend a fall of twenty feet in a river, the
propulsive energy of their tails might possibly furnish
a hint for a steamer that would shoot up dams and
rapids. The suggestion was made to a Connecticut
man, who, of course, undertook it. He would have
been less than a Yankee if he had not tried. The
product of his ingenuity was the steamboat “Susquehannah,”
drawing but eighteen inches; and, besides
her side-paddles, having an immense wheel in the
stern, which playing in the slack water of the boat,
would drive her up Niagara, if she would but hold together.
The principal weight of her machinery hung
upon two wooden arches running fore and aft, and altogether
she was a neat piece of contrivance, and
promised fairly to answer the purpose.
I think the “Susquehannah” had made three trips
when she broke a shaft, and was laid up; and, what
with one delay and another, the canal was half completed
between her two havens before the experiment
had fairly succeeded. A month or two since, the proprietors
determined to run her down the river for the
purpose of selling her, and I was invited among others
to join in the trip.
The only offices professionally filled on board were
those of the engineer and pilot. Captain, mate, firemen,
steward, cook, and chambermaid, were represented
en amateur by gentlemen passengers. We
rang the bell at the starting hour with the zeal usually
displayed in that department, and, by the assistance of
the current, got off in the usual style of a steamboat
departure, wanting only the newsboys and pickpockets.
With a stream running at five knots, and paddles calculated
to mount a cascade, we could not fail to take
the river in gallant style, and before we had regulated
our wood-piles and pantry, we were backing water at
Athens, twenty miles on our way.
Navigating the Susquehannah is very much like
dancing “the cheat.” You are always making straight
up to a mountain, with no apparent possibility of
escaping contact with it, and it is an even chance up
to the last moment which side of it you are to chassez
with the current. Meantime the sun seems capering
about to all points of the compass, the shadows falling
in every possible direction, and north, south, east, and
west, changing places with the familiarity of a masquerade.
The blindness of the river's course is increased
by the innumerable small islands in its bosom,
whose tall elms and close-set willows meet half-way
those from either shore; and, the current very often
dividing above them, it takes an old voyager to choose
between the shaded alleys, by either of which you
would think Arethusa might have eluded her lover.
My own mental occupation, as we glided on, was
the distribution of white villas along the shore, on
spots where nature seemed to have arranged the
ground for their reception. I saw thousands of sites
where the lawns were made, the terraces defined and
levelled, the groves tastefully clumped, the ancient
trees ready with their broad shadows, the approaches
to the water laid out, the banks sloped, and in everything
the labor of art seemingly all anticipated by nature.
I grew tired of exclaiming, to the friend who
was beside me, “What an exquisite site for a villa!
What a sweet spot for a cottage!” If I had had
the power to people the Susquehannah by the wave
of a wand, from those I know capable of appreciating
its beauty, what a paradise I could have spread out
between my own home and Wyoming! It was pleasant
to know, that by changes scarcely less than magical,
these lovely banks will soon be amply seen and
admired, and probably as rapidly seized upon and inhabited
by persons of taste. The gangs of laborers
at the foot of every steep cliff, doing the first rough
work of the canal, gave promise of a speedy change
in the aspect of this almost unknown river.
It was sometimes ticklish steering among the rafts
and arks with which the river was thronged, and we
never passed one without getting the raftsman's rude
hail. One of them furnished my vocabulary with a
new measure of speed. He stood at the stern oar of
a shingle raft, gaping at us, open-mouthed as we came
down upon him. “Wal!” said he, as we shot past,
“you're going a good hickory, mister!” It was amusing,
again, to run suddenly round a point and come
upon a raft with a minute's warning; the voyagers as
little expecting an intrusion upon their privacy, as a
retired student to be unroofed in a London garret.
The different modes of expressing surprise became at
last quite a study to me, yet total indifference was not
infrequent; and there were some who, I think, would
not have risen from their elbows if the steamer had
flown bodily over them.
We passed the Falls of Wyalusing (most musical
of Indian names) and Buttermilk Falls, both cascades
worthy of being known and sung, and twilight overtook
us some two hours from Wyoming. We had no
lights on board, and the engineer was unwilling to run
in the dark; so our pilot being an old raftsman, we
put into the first “eddy,” and moored for the night.
These eddies, by the way, would not easily be found
by a stranger, but to the practised navigators of the
river they are all numbered and named like harbors on
a coast. The strong current, in the direct force of
which the clumsy raft would find it impossible to come
to, and moor, is at these places turned back by some
projection of the shore, or ledge at the bottom, and a
pool of still water is formed in which the craft may lie
secure for the night. The lumbermen give a cheer
when they have steered successfully in, and springing
joyfully ashore, drive their stakes, eat, dance, quarrel,
unmoored, and set adrift at midnight by parties from
the eddies above, and of the consequent adventures of
running in the dark. We had on board two gentlemen
who had earned an independence in this rough
vocation, and their stories, told laughingly against
each other, developed well the expedient and hazard
of the vocation. One of them had once been mischievously
cut adrift by the owner of a rival cargo,
when moored in an eddy with an ark-load of grain.
The article was scarce and high in the markets below,
and he had gone to sleep securely under his pent-house,
and was dreaming of his profits, when he suddenly
awoke with a shock, and discovered that he was
high and dry upon a sedgy island some miles below
his moorings. The freshet was falling fast, and soon
after daylight his competitor for the market drifted
past with a laugh, and confidently shouted out a good-by
till another voyage. The triumphant ark-master
floated on all day, moored again at night, and arrived
safely at tide-water, where the first object that struck
his sight was the ark he had left in the sedges, its
freight sold, its owner preparing to return home, and
the market of course forestalled! The “Roland for
his Oliver” had, with incredible exertion, dug a canal
for his ark, launched her on the slime, and by risking the
night-running, passed him unobserved and gained a
day—a feat as illustrative of the American genius for
emergency as any on record.
It was a still, starlight night, and the river was laced
with the long reflections of the raft-fires, while the
softened songs of the men over their evening carouse,
came to us along the smooth water with the effect of
far better music. What with “wooding” at two or
three places, however, and what with the excitement
of the day, we were too fatigued to give more than a
glance and a passing note of admiration to the beauty
of the scene, and the next question was, how to come
by Sancho's “blessed invention of sleep.” We had
been detained at the wooding-places, and had made
no calculation to lie by a night. There were no beds
on board, and not half room enough in the little cabin
to distribute to each passenger six feet by two of
floor. The shore was wild, and not a friendly lamp
glimmering on the hills; but the pilot at last recollected
having once been to a house a mile or two back
from the river, and with the diminished remainder of
our provender as a pis aller in case of finding no supper
in our forage, we started in search. We stumbled
and scrambled, and delivered our benisons to rock
and brier, till I would fain have lodged with Trinculo
“under a moon-calf's gaberdine,” but by-and-by our
leader fell upon a track, and a light soon after glimmered
before us. We approached through cleared
fields, and, without the consent of the farmer's dog, to
whose wishes on the subject we were compelled to do
violence, the blaze of a huge fire (it was a chilly night
of spring) soon bettered our resignation. A stout,
white-headed fellow of twenty-eight or thirty, bare-footed,
sat in a cradle, see-sawing before the fire, and
without rising when we entered, or expressing the
slightest surprise at our visit, he replied to our questions,
that he was the father of some twelve sorrel and
barefoot copies of himself huddled into the corner,
that “the woman” was his wife, and that we were
welcome “to stay.” Upon this the “woman” for the
first time looked at us, counted us with the nods of
her head, and disappeared with the only candle.
When his wife reappeared, the burly farmer extracted
himself with some difficulty from the cradle,
and without a word passing between them, entered
upon his office as chamberlain. We followed him
up stairs, where we were agreeably surprised to find
three very presentable beds; and as I happened to
be the last and fifth, I felicitated myself on the good
chance of sleeping alone, “clapped into my prayers,”
as was recommended to Master Barnardine, and was
asleep before the candle-snuff. I should have said
that mine was a “single bed,” in a sort of a closet partitioned
off from the main chamber.
How long I had travelled in dream-land I have no
means of knowing, but I was awoke by a touch on the
shoulder, and the information that I must make room
for a bedfellow. It was a soft-voiced young gentleman,
as well as I could perceive, with his collar turned
down, and a book under his arm. Without very clearly
remembering where I was, I represented to my proposed
friend that I occupied as nearly as possible the
whole of the bed—to say nothing of a foot, over which
he might see (the foot) by looking where it outreached
the coverlet. It was a very short bed, indeed.
“It was large enough for me till you came,” said
the stranger, modestly.
“Then I am the intruder?” I asked.
“No intrusion if you will share with me,” he said;
“but as this is my bed, and I have no resource but
the kitchen-fire, perhaps you will let me in.”
There was no resisting his tone of good humor, and
my friend by this time having prepared himself to take
up as little room as possible, I consented that he should
blow out the candle and get under the blanket. The
argument and the effort of making myself small as he
crept in, had partially waked me, and before my ears
were sealed up again, I learned that my companion,
who proved rather talkative, was the village schoolmaster.
He taught for twelve dollars a month and his
board—taking the latter a week at a time with the different
families to which his pupils belonged. For the
present week he was quartered upon our host, and having
been out visiting past the usual hour of bedtime,
he was not aware of the arrival of strangers till he found
me on his pillow.
I went to sleep, admiring the amiable temper of my
new friend under the circumstances, but awoke presently
with a sense of suffocation. The schoolmaster
was fast asleep, but his arms were clasped tightly round
my throat. I disengaged them without waking him,
and composed myself again.
Once more I awoke half suffocated. My friend's arms
had found their way again round my neck, and, though
evidently fast asleep, he was drawing me to him with
a clasp I found it difficult to unloose. I shook him
broad awake, and begged him to take notice that he
was sleeping with a perfect stranger. He seemed very
much annoyed at having disturbed me, made twenty
apologies, and turning his back, soon fell asleep. I
followed his example, wishing him a new turn to his
dream.
A third time I sprang up choking from the pillow,
drawing my companion fairly on end with me. I could
stand it no longer. Even when half aroused he could
hardly be persuaded to let go his hold of my neck. I
jumped out of bed, and flung open the window for a
little air. The moon had risen, and the night was exquisitely
fine. A brawling brook ran under the window,
and after a minute or two, being thoroughly
awaked, I looked at my watch in the moonlight, and
found it wanted but an hour or two of morning. Afraid
to risk my throat again, and remembering that I could
not fairly quarrel with my friend, who had undoubtedly
a right to embrace, after his own fashion, any intruder
who ventured into his proper bed, I went down stairs,
and raked open the embers of the kitchen fire, which
served me for less affectionate company till dawn.
How and where he could have acquired his caressing
habits, were subjects upon which I speculated unsatisfactorily
over the coals.
My companions were called up at sunrise by the
landlord, and as we were paying for our lodging, the
schoolmaster came down to see us off. I was less surprised
when I came to look at him by daylight. It
was a fair, delicate boy of sixteen, whose slender health
perhaps, had never slept away from his mother till he
went abroad to teach school. Quite satisfied with one
experiment of filling the maternal relation, I wished
him a less refractory bedfellow, and we hastened on
board.
The rafts were under weigh before us, and the tortoise
had overtaken the hare, for we passed several
that we had passed higher up, and did not fail to get a
jeer for our sluggishness. An hour or two brought
us to Wilkesbarre, and excellent hotel, good breakfast,
and new and kind friends; and so ended my trip on
the Susquehannah. Some other time I will tell you
how beautiful is the valley of Wyoming, which I have
since seen in the holyday colors of October. Thereby
hangs a tale too, worth telling and hearing; and as a
promise is good parting stuff, adieu!
| LETTER XV. The prose works of N.P. Willis | |