 | Traits of American life |  |
THE ROMANCE OF TRAVELLING.
We must travel, if we would be in the fashion.
Men, women, and even children, are abroad to see
the wonders of the grand canal, and the grander
cataract. There is nothing like variety and change,
for enlarging the mind, and furnishing subjects for
conversation. Who can improve at home, where
the same faces are seen, the same voices heard, and
the same employments pursued, day after day, and
year after year?
It seems, too, as if circumstances had almost inevitably
designed us as a nation of travellers. We
should be acquainted with our own country and
people. It is only by such means, that errors will
be corrected, prejudices removed, and that good
feeling and liberality of sentiment cultivated, which
are indispensable to the perpetuity of the Union.
What American does not wish it were in his
power to examine his whole country? But to accomplish
this, he must wend farther than ever did
knight of chivalry in service of his mistress.
It may be doubted, however, whether the indulgence
conducive to happiness or mental improvement.
Content is not found in the bustle of a stage-coach;
nor does the power of steam, though hurrying on
the progress of the car or boat, have any influence
to quicken the faculties of the mind. The rapidity
with which travelling is now conducted, prevents
the tourist, unless extremely active and inquisitive,
from gaining much information, except what may
be called the technicalities of journeying,—such as
the best routes to be pursued; the expenses; the
fatigues and the privations. He gains little knowledge
of the country beyond what he sees from the
path he is traversing, or of the people, except it be
the inn-keepers, which he might not have obtained
at home, in much less time and with less exertion
than his excursion has cost him. But then he
has seen the world, and that he thinks adds to his
consequence in the opinion of those poor wights,
whom untoward circumstances detain within the
vulgar precincts of their own state.
It must, however, be confessed there is, as yet,
but little in our country to attract the sentimental
traveller, or make any one, except a naturalist or a
philosopher, linger on his way. The former would
find an exhaustless source of speculation and amusement
in the examination of our new world, still so
rich in its first created beauty; and the latter would
of human comfort on every side, and to seek the
causes of those rapid improvements he sees, as it
were, developing themselves around him. But he
who goes abroad to awaken remembrances, or with
the hope of feeling those strong emotions which
are excited, when
Connecticut to the Columbia, and with some truth
cry “that all is barren.” Barren, but not in historic
or traditional recollections. Though the
grand events which have occurred in America are
few, yet they are of such a peculiar character, and
in their consequences appear likely to be so stupendous,
that they stamp themselves on the heart, the
mind, with a strong and stirring moral interest,
which is, with the exception of the events recorded
in sacred history, not exceeded by any memorials
of the old world. The barrenness, the vacancy,
painfully felt by the traveller of taste and
sentiment, arises from the want of intellectual and
poetic associations with the scenery he beholds.
Genius has not consecrated our mountains, making
them high places from which the mind may see
the horizon of thought widening and expanding
around, over past ages,—they are nothing but huge
and fern; the song has not named our streams—
they are only celebrated for affording fine fish,
good mill-seats or safe navigation. No fairies nor
lovers have made our valleys their places of resort;
neither green rings or flowery arbours have been
allotted to the one or the other; but fertile meadows
and fair fields are famed for affording the cultivator
very profitable crops. It is therefore that,
though reason sees and acknowledges the abundance
afforded by our soil, yet fancy calls it barren; and
European travellers, accustomed to a land where
every place and object has its real or romantic
legend, would pronounce a tour of the United
States insufferably dull, and its inhabitants destitute
of taste.
And we are ourselves sensible of this lack of
sentimental interest, of heart-stirring recollections,
when viewing the wild and beautiful scenery of
our country. True it is, that in this working-day
world of ours, where every thing is intended to be
graduated to the standard of common sense and
equal rights, it would be very difficult, even for the
imagination of genius, to give to “airy nothing a
local habitation and a name.”
But still we have reason to believe that such attempts
will be approved. Illustrations of American
character, scenery and history, are demanded
a trait which shall be recognized as genuine, or a
record that shall make one solitary place remembered,
will be a reward for the effort? We want
the light of song poured over our wide land, and
its lonely and waste places “peopled with the
affections.” We want writers who can throw enchantment
around rural seenes and rural life, and,
like Burns,
“Gar our streams and burnies shine,
Up wi' the best!”
Great events or wondrous things are not necessary
to furnish themes for genius. A “yellow cowslip,”
or a “mountain daisy,” will be sufficient to
waken the feelings, when hymned by the hand of
a master. Marathon is not more the object of
curiosity to the traveller of intelligence and taste
than Lake Leman.
Of mighty minds, doth hallow in the core
Of human hearts the ruin of a wall.”
And who among my readers would not prefer,
with the Lady of the Lake for a directory, a tour
to “Ben-venue” and “Coilantogle ford,” and
“Loch-Katrine,” rather than to explore the field of
Waterloo, even though De Coster were the guide?
These observations are designed as the preface
somewhat of a romantic interest over a path
which those who have journeyed from Boston to
Windsor, Vt., by the way of Concord, N. H., will
readily allow has few real beauties to attract curiosity
or reward fatigue. We will pass the first eighty
miles, or thereabouts, without remark, as the traveller
probably would, except that the characteristics
of the country were truly New England—a rough
but sterile soil, rendered interesting chiefly by those
indications of persevering industry which unequivocally
show that man has there obtained his allotted
dominion over the earth.
To a reflecting mind no sight is more gratifying.
There are grander exhibitions of human skill. A
ship under sail is one of these. We gaze on the
vessel, “walking the waters, like a thing of life,”
with curiosity, wonder, awe, and we are proud of
the power of man. We look on a fine and highly
cultivated landscape with a calm, contented, approving
admiration, and we rejoice in his happiness.
Storms and danger are connected in idea
with the vessel; sunshine and security seem to
rest on the landscape.
There is around a snug country-seat, where the
neat white house looks forth from amid a group of
trees and shrubbery, like a lady in her best; and
the two barns, like buxom damsels in their working-day
and fruit-covered orchard, comes sweeping
down from the southern side of a green hill, while
the walled fields are rich with the growing harvest,
and cattle are in the pastures that stretch away to
the mountains, from which the rills descend that
swell the stream, sparkling in the valley. There is
around such a residence an air of honest contentment,
of plenty and independence, that always
makes me glad. New England has not a rich soil,
but its natural scenery is bold, variegated and
beautiful; and where it is cultivated with a careful
industry, directed by good taste, no part of our
wide republic presents more charming landscapes.
But the improvement (or beautifying rather) of the
country, is slow. Our young men are eager to be
rich and great. They despise the pursuit of their
fathers—agriculture. They crowd our colleges
and cities, and struggle to enter the learned professions,
or become merchants or book-makers,
imagining they shall then be gentlemen.
There will be, ere the republic continues another
half century, a revolution in public sentiment respecting
agriculture. If the people remain sovereigns
of this fair country, they will not see the
occupation, in which much the largest number of
individuals are and must be engaged, degraded.
Nothing is now requisite to make the station of the
but that those who engage in it should
possess intelligence. Only let our farmers educate
themselves as they might do, and they would be
inferior to no class in society. The country ladies
must endeavour to promote that refinement of feeling
and taste, which have such an influence in
awakening the mind to exercise its powers. Young
men of talents and education would then more
willingly engage in a pursuit which is sure to give
a competency to the industrious, and still leave
them more leisure for mental improvement, than
any other business that is not necessarily connected
with study.
But unless a young man is a thorough-going
and determined geologist, so as actually to love
the faces of stones, I would not advise him to
establish himself any where on the route from Hopkinton
to Newport, N. H. It is a fine situation to
study the character of the primary rocks, for the
country looks as if a hail-storm of granite had been
discharged thereon. There they lie, and probably
have lain thousands of years, masses of moss-covered
rocks and a multitude of stones, encumbering
and nearly concealing the earth; and what is their
use? is probably the first inquiry arising in the
minds of nearly every person who views them.
All that was created was pronounced good—so we
their appropriate advantages, and where granite
rocks abound, there the traveller may always expect
to find good water and “good air;” and where
sufficient industry has been exerted, a good road.
And the last, when passing through a country
where nothing invites us to linger, is no small advantage.
But Nature always exhibits some lovely
scene, even in her rudest mood; such an one occurs
unexpectedly, and therefore more welcome, on this
road, when Lake Sunapee opens abruptly on the
sight. The placid beauty of the blue waters, contrasted
with the uncivilized scenery on which the
eye has been resting, gives to the heart a sensation
like that of suddenly meeting the smiling face of a
friend, while making our way through a crowd of
strangers.
Why is it that water, so monotonous in its characteristics,
should nevertheless possess a charm
for every mind? I believe it is chiefly because it
bears the impress of the Creator, which we feel
neither the power of time or of man can efface or
alter.
“Such as creation's dawn beheld, water, thou rollest now.”
Some one has called flowers the poetry of earth.
They are only its lyrical poetry. Water is the
grand epic of creation; and there is not a human
or its beauty. Sunapee lake has the latter quality
in a softened perfection, which, in some respects,
hardly appears like the work of nature. Its shore,
especially on the eastern side, is low and level,
and defined, as far as the eye can reach, by a line
of white sand, so uniform and unbroken, as to appear
like a regular embankment to an artificial basin.
There the water lies, calm as sleeping infancy, apparently
so near the brim, that a shower might
make it overflow. The country on the east rises
gradually, exhibiting cultivated fields, that look
soft and fair (partly from the distance which
clothes them in colours of air), when compared
with the rude scenery through which the road,
having the lake on the east and Sunapee mountain
on the west, winds for several miles.
Should a geologist, of the Huttonian theory,
enter the narrow path, his imagination would probably
travel back to the era of that awful convulsion,
when, by the action of subterranean fires, the
huge mountain, preceded by a shower of rocks and
stones, which cover that region, was upheaved,
leaving a granite basin for the reception of the cool
waters which should there gather together.
The interest of the scene rests chiefly on the majestic
mountain and the placid lake; yet here and
there may be seen verdant knolls, shaded by a few
the sentimentalist to wish for a cottage (that perfection
of romantic comfort), and “one fair spirit,”
and then dream how sweetly life would pass away
on the shore of the quiet lake.
We have not many such dreamers in our bustling
country. Profit, not peace, is the object of
pursuit with us republicans. And the turmoil of
the cataract, rather than the tranquillity of the lake,
would be in unison with the spirit of American
travellers.
There is a remembrance connected with the lake
which may interest our stirring tourists, and admonish
those (if there are any such) who are really
in quest of a spot where they may hope to dwell
in safety and retirement, that peace is not of this
world. The borders of Sunapee offer retirement
in perfection; but for safety, before deciding on
that, look—no, you cannot see from the coach—but
alight and search till you find, what seems an impenetrable
wilderness of stumps, fallen and decayed
trees, broken rocks and tall brambles; were not
these intermingled, here and there, with an apple
tree, which in our climate always denotes the agency
of man, we might think no human footstep, except
perhaps the hunter's, had ever penetrated that desolate
looking place. Yet there was once a habitation
in that valley. Peter Wood's house stood
you may find a few) those broken bricks lie.
Mr. Wood had built his house in that valley to
screen it from the bleak winds, that during winter
sweep across the frozen lake; but, by ascending the
swell of land, about twenty rods distant, he commanded
a fine view of the water and the eastern
shore, and had that desideratum of society for a
New England farmer—neighbours within sight.
Though separated by the lake, they seemed near,
when he could see their dwellings. And truly,
his eye rested much oftener, and with more satisfaction,
on those plain farm-houses, than on the
wild wonders of the land, or the softening aspect
of the water; thus proving, that neither the taste
for natural scenery, or the love of solitude, had
been the cause of his selecting that particular spot
for his residence. In truth, it was neither; but a
taste for fishing and the love of fine trout, for
which the lake is famed. I state this with more
pride, since the recent opinion of a refined British
traveller has pronounced a voyage across the Atlantic
to be well repaid by a breakfast on our shad.
The ability fully to appreciate good fish is, we see,
a mark of having been accustomed to “good
society.” I presume, therefore, none of my
fashionable readers will consider Peter Wood
otherwise than as a gentleman. Certain I am,
an acquaintance with him and a sail in his boat,
when he went forth to fish, with a determination
not to return without some good luck. His perfect
familiarity with the science of angling was
really wonderful, considering he had never heard
of Izaak Walton;—but then he was an original
thinker, and such do not need to have recourse to
the rules of others; they are a law unto themselves.
I have said Peter Wood liked to angle; it was
his passion, and he never felt more dignified than
when he returned home with a fine mess of trout.
But his triumph would have been incomplete, had
none but himself known his success. Man was
most certainly created a social being, and it is necessary
to the enjoyment of prosperity, that there
should be participants. We do not need a crowd to
make us happy; but friends, or one—at least one—
must smile, or the sensations will lose their perception,
the heart its gladness, and the mind its energy.
Peter Wood had one friend—a wife whom he
loved, and who was worthy of his affection; and that
is saying all that is requisite in her praise. I never
think it necessary to describe elaborately the
charms and graces of a married woman, if I can
say her husband loves her.
Well, Peter loved his wife and his infant child;
and when he could prevail on Betsey to take the
was but a little way from their dwelling up the
lake, he was happier, I dare say, than ever Bonaparte
was with Josephine by his side; for they had
no child. And when Peter had a good haul, how
delighted he was to hold up the fish for his wife
to view; and sometimes he would advance the
struggling victim close to his little girl; and then
both parents would smile at her fright, with as
much “secret pleasure” as did Hector and Andromache,
when their boy was “scared with the dazzling
plume and nodding crest.” O, happiness is
made up of trifles—it is only the heart that invests
them with importance.
One Sabbath afternoon, in the month of September,
18—, Peter Wood and his wife took a walk
along the margin of the lake. They had, as usual,
their little girl with them; the father thinking, that
to walk without her in his arms was really loss
of time. There is hardly a more heart-thrilling
pleasure enjoyed by mortals, than that which parents
feel when seeing their child first begin to
“catch knowledge of objects.” Byron, in his
allusion to that bliss, of which he had been deprived,
shows how fully he had sounded the depths
of human feeling. Mary Wood was only eleven
months old; but, from the circumstance of having
been often abroad, as well as from that innate love
earthly creature seems to covet, she was in ecstacies
with the excursion, and, her father thought,
understood all that was said to her on the occasion.
And he afterwards observed, “that the little creature
then appeared to know so much, he felt fearful
she was not long for this world.”
The day was calm as sleep; not a cloud had been
visible, and the thin white vapour, that was like
melted light over all the horizon, seemed but the
air resting in equilibrium;—not a breath moved
the water or stirred a leaf. The stillness was so
deep as almost to be melancholy; as if Nature had
sunk to a repose from which she could hardly be
awakened.
Our husband and wife sat down beneath the
shade of a large fir-tree, and passed the time chiefly
in amusing their child. They loved the scene
around them, and yet it could hardly be said they
relished or understood its peculiar beauties. Certain
it is, they had never analyzed the sources of
the satisfaction with which they gazed on the
bright smooth waters, as contrasted with the broken
and brown landscape beyond. Neither did they
notice the adorning which the dark evergreen
forest received, from being here and there interspersed
with trees of a less sombre hue, particularly
is owing to situation and contrast. There is hardly
a more ugly native tree in our country, when
standing singly and alone, than the white birch.
Its thin, leper-like looking trunk, and scanty dingy
green foliage, which early in autumn assumes a
dirty yellow colour, cause it to be altogether disagreeable
to the eye; and then the thought of the
detestable fuel it makes—you may about as comfortably
burn snow—sends a shivering disgust
through the frame, very similar to what we feel
on viewing an ugly reptile. But place that same
birch amid a forest of firs, where we can just see
its tall trunk, like a sunbeam, flashing through the
dark foliage, while its leaves blend their softening
tints above, and we call it a graceful tree, an
ornament to the woods. So it is. And so there
is an appropriate place for every thing and
every person, a niche where all would appear to
advantage. But all do not feel so contented to be
happy there, as did honest Peter Wood and his
wife. They, good souls, never dreamed but what
the landscape appeared to others precisely as it did
to them. With the lake came the thought of
water and fishing; with the forest, of fuel and
hunting; and with that lofty mountain, rivalling
Ben Lomond or the Grampian hills in majesty,
And over all was the charm of familiarity
—of home—that made it lovely.
Where ignorance is bliss, it really does seem
folly to be wise. Who that has a heart would
have wished to awaken Peter and his wife to the
full consciousness of all the horrors which a cultivated
and refined person would have felt in their
situation? To live on with no object in view but
just to procure enough to eat and drink, and live too
in a place where the only advantage possessed was,
that they dwelt in safety. This advantage they
seemed to enjoy in perfection; for, unless the
mountain toppled down headlong, what could occur
to disturb them there in a place, bidding defiance,
apparently, to that spirit of improvement, which
works such astonishing changes in our land, and
in whose train follow ambition, envy, covetousness,
luxury, as surely as wealth, knowledge and taste.
But the storm was at hand—though not of human
passion.
“It grows dark as night—is it sundown, Betsey?”
said Peter, suddenly rising up.
She could not tell—but both felt that the darkness
or deep shadow increased with uncommon
rapidity. They hurried along the shore to the
path that led to their dwelling—Peter carrying the
child, which had fallen asleep, carefully, for fear of
ten steps. There was no wind felt, not a breath,
and the water lay motionless; but, though calm, it
was awful in its tranquillity; for, an “inky hue”
was deepening and settling on its surface, and it
looked, when a flash of lightning gleamed over it,
and the flashes became frequent, more like black
marble than water. And several times Peter,
who was less agitated than his wife, thought he
heard a low, deep sound, like a groan, that seemed
to come from the recesses of the lake. When Mrs.
Wood reached, through the narrow-wooded track,
the top of the eminence that rose, as has been
named, east of their dwelling, she stopped, and
raised her hands high above her head, as if wildly
frightened.
“What is the matter?” called out her husband.
But she did not reply; and when he reached
the top, he did not need to repeat his question.
Though a strong man, his knees trembled under
him. What mortal would not tremble at the sight
of the whirlwind approaching, as it were, in an
embodied form? Nothing could be more terrible.
The cloud that seemed moving towards them, with
winged rapidity, was of a singular appearance; as
it were, a thick sheet of darkness, black as a pall
—the edges of which were tinged with a brassy
hue; and in the midst was an appearance, in shape
of an eddying gulf, and sending out incessant
and vivid flashes of lightning, which only prevented
the horizon in the north and east from being
dark as midnight.
There are no appearances or events in the natural
world which men feel are so certainly connected
with Almighty power, as signs in the air. “The
heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll,”
thought Peter; for he had read his Bible (almost
the only book he did read), and he trembled, lest
the end of the world was at hand. But deep must
be the sin, suffering and despair, of that man, who
does not feel a sense of safety connected with the
idea of home.
“Home!—let us go home,”—said Peter Wood.
His wife started at the word, and they rushed
towards the house as to a refuge. They reached it,
and at the entrance Peter laid his little girl, still
sleeping, into her mother's arms, in order to secure
the doors and windows, as far as he could, to resist
the fury of the coming storm. As yet, no gust,
nor even a breeze, had been felt; the tempest,
wrapped in the wings of the cloud, came on in
silence; the moving darkness only giving warning
that it was approaching.
Mrs. Wood, agitated and exhausted as she was,
could hardly sustain the weight of the infant; and
would sleep easier there than in her arms.
The mother laid down her child, covering her with
care: and stooped, with the mother's blessing in
her heart, to kiss the forehead of her darling. As
her lips touched the soft face of her babe—she felt
a rush, a crash that shook the building to its foundation—and
then seemed to gather up, crumbling,
tossing, whirling, scattering all like atoms in its
fury—trees, rocks, timber, furniture, were mingled,
and driven, and dashed against each other, in
the vortex of the cloud, that rose and descended
alternately; when rising, it discharged from its
centre a shower of shivered limbs of trees, leaves,
gravel, and other spoils of its ravage; then sinking,
it again swept up, as in revenge, all that lay in its
path, tossing the huge rocks, as though they had
been marbles, heaving up the foundations of buildings,
breaking down, splintering, overturning acres
and acres of the forest that lay in its desolating
course. There was no thunder accompanied it—
no sound but the crash of the destroying, till the
tornado entered the lake; and then the tremendous
conflict of the wind and water might be known by
the hollow roaring that was sent forth. The winds
triumphed—the waters, boiling and foaming, were
forced upward in the cloud, till the column seemed
to touch the sky—laying bare the banks of the
were about to be revealed!
I have not time to follow the track of the tornado
after it had passed the lake. A volume might
be filled with the awful description—and the sufferings
of those who were the victims of its fury,
on the western shore; but I must return to that
solitary family, who bore the first bursting of the
storm.
Neither Peter Wood or his wife were injured;
though how they escaped was wonderful. They
were both lifted up by the power of the wind, and
carried across a field and over fences, amidst the
driving and dashing fragments of ruin contained in
the cloud; yet they came to the earth without
wound. But their Mary, their sweet babe—
where was she? The gown of the tender sufferer
was found on the borders of the lake, close by the
spot where she had been playing during the afternoon—the
bedstead on which she lay was found
nearly a mile distant in the woods, in an opposite
direction from the general track of the wind. But
her body was never found. Whether her little
form was reduced to atoms by the grinding storm,
or thrown by the wind into the lake, or carried
into the wilderness, is a secret the last trumpet
only can reveal.
The parents looked on the destruction of their
the desolation their hearts felt in the loss of that
child. They were surrounded with ruin. A few
stones marked the site of their late residence; a
broken chair, a bureau without drawers, and a few
articles of hollow ware, was all that remained of
their property.
Reader, should you ever sail down the Ohio—
you may, if you please, see a small yankee-looking
house, in a retired nook, a little way from the
margin of the river. And then, if you see in a
boat, not far from the shore, a square-built, spare-boned,
black-bearded man, angling with that deep
abstractedness which proves the devotee in his art,
—that man is the original of Peter Wood. Should
you address him by that name, he might not answer
to the cognomen—but what's in a name? He
will confirm the truth of my story, except, perhaps,
in some trifling particulars respecting himself and
wife. And he will describe the tempest as more
terrific than I have done. He will tell you that
his infant was swept away; and that he never could
endure the thought of again casting a line into the
water where she might be slumbering; that he could
not bear to eat the fish of the lake, for fear they
might have been fattening on the flesh of his child
—and so he removed to the Ohio.
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