University of Virginia Library

1. A NEW HOME.

1. CHAPTER I.

Our friends in the “settlements” have expressed so
much interest in such of our letters to them, as happened
to convey any account of the peculiar features
of western life, and have asked so many questions,
touching particulars which we had not thought, worthy
of mention, that I have been for some time past contemplating
the possibility of something like a detailed
account of our experiences. And I have determined
to give them to the world, in a form not very different
from that in which they were originally recorded for
our private delectation; nothing doubting, that a veracious
history of actual occurrences, an unvarnished

transcript of real characters, and an impartial record
of every-day forms of speech (taken down in many
cases from the lips of the speaker) will be pronounced
“graphic,” by at least a fair proportion of the journalists
of the day.

'Tis true there are but meagre materials for anything
which might be called a story. I have never seen a
cougar—nor been bitten by a rattlesnake. The reader
who has patience to go with me to the close of my desultory
sketches, must expect nothing beyond a meandering
recital of common-place occurrences—mere
gossip about every-day people, little enhanced in value
by any fancy or ingenuity of the writer; in short, a
very ordinary pen-drawing; which, deriving no interest
from colouring, can be valuable only for its truth.

A home on the outskirts of civilization—habits of
society which allow the maid and her mistress to do
the honours in complete equality, and to make the social
tea visit in loving conjunction—such a distribution
of the duties of life as compels all, without distinction,
to rise with the sun or before him—to breakfast with
the chickens—then,

to be ready for tea at four, and for bed at eight—may
certainly be expected to furnish some curious particulars
for the consideration of those whose daily course
almost reverses this primitive arrangement—who “call
night day and day night,” and who are apt occasionally
to forget, when speaking of a particular class, that
“those creatures” are partakers with themselves of a
common nature.

I can only wish, like other modest chroniclers, my respected
prototypes, that so fertile a theme had fallen into
worthier hands. If Miss Mitford, who has given us
such charming glimpses of Aberleigh, Hilton Cross and
the Loddon, had by some happy chance been translated
to Michigan, what would she not have made of such
materials as Tinkerville, Montacute, and the Turnip?

When my husband purchased two hundred acres of
wild land on the banks of this to-be-celebrated stream,
and drew with a piece of chalk on the bar-room table at
Danforth's the plan of a village, I little thought I was
destined to make myself famous by handing down to
posterity a faithful record of the advancing fortunes of
that favoured spot.

“The madness of the people” in those days of golden
dreams took more commonly the form of city-building;
but there were a few who contented themselves with
planning villages, on the banks of streams which certainly
never could be expected to bear navies, but
which might yet be turned to account in the more
homely way of grinding or sawing—operations which
must necessarily be performed somewhere for the well-being
of those very cities. It is of one of these humble
attempts that it is my lot to speak, and I make my confession
at the outset, warning any fashionable reader
who may have taken up my book, that I intend to be
“decidedly low.”

Whether the purchaser of our village would have
been moderate under all possible circumstances, I am
not prepared to say, since, never having enjoyed a situation

under government, his resources have not been
unlimited;—and for this reason any remark which may
be hazarded in the course of these my lucubrations
touching the more magnificent plans of wealthier aspirants,
must be received with some grains of allowance.
“Il est plus aisé d'être sage pour les autres, que
de l'être pour soi-même.”

When I made my first visit to these remote and lonely
regions, the scattered woods through which we rode
for many miles were gay in their first gosling-green
suit of half-opened leaves, and the forest odours which
exhaled with the dews of morning and evening, were
beyond measure delicious to one “long in populous
cities pent.” I desired much to be a little sentimental
at the time, and feel tempted to indulge to some small
extent even here—but I forbear; and shall adhere
closely to matters more in keeping with my subject.

I think, to be precise, the time was the last, the
very last of April, and I recollect well that even at that
early season, by availing myself with sedulous application,
of those times when I was fain to quit the vehicle
through fear of the perilous mud-holes, or still more
perilous half-bridged marshes, I picked upwards of
twenty varieties of wild-flowers—some of them of rare
and delicate beauty;—and sure I am, that if I had succeeded
in inspiring my companion with one spark of
my own floral enthusiasm, one hundred miles of travel
would have occupied a week's time.

The wild flowers of Michigan deserve a poet of their
own. Shelley, who sang so quaintly of “the pied
wind-flowers and the tulip tall,” would have found many
a fanciful comparison and deep-drawn meaning for the

thousand gems of the road-side. Charles Lamb could
have written charming volumes about the humblest
among them. Bulwer would find means to associate
the common three-leaved white lily so closely with the
Past, the Present, and the Future—the Wind, the stars,
and the tripod of Delphos, that all future botanists, and
eke all future philosophers, might fail to unravel the
“linked sweetness.” We must have a poet of our own.

Since I have casually alluded to a Michigan mud-hole,
I may as well enter into a detailed memoir on the subject,
for the benefit of future travellers, who, flying
over the soil on rail-roads, may look slightingly back
upon the achievements of their predecessors. In the
“settlements,” a mud-hole is considered as apt to occasion
an unpleasant jolt—a breaking of the thread of one's
reverie—or in extreme cases, a temporary stand-still
or even an overturn of the rash or the unwary. Here,
on approaching one of these characteristic features of
the “West”—(How much does that expression mean
to include? I never have been able to discover its
limits,—the driver stops—alights—walks up to the dark
gulf—and around it if he can get round it. He then
seeks a long pole and sounds it, measures it across to
ascertain how its width compares with the length of his
wagon—tries whether its sides are perpendicular, as is
usually the case if the road is much used. If he find it
not more than three feet deep, he remounts cheerily,
encourages his team, and in they go, with a plunge
and a shock rather apt to damp the courage of the inexperienced.
If the hole be narrow the hinder wheels
will be quite lifted off the ground by the depression of
their precedents, and so remain until by unwearied

chirruping and some judicious touches of “the string”
the horses are induced to struggle as for their lives;
and if the fates are propitious they generally emerge
on the opposite side, dragging the vehicle, or at least
the fore wheels after them. When I first “penetrated
the interior” (to use an indigenous phrase) all I knew
of the wilds was from Hoffman's tour or Captain Hall's
“graphic” delineations: I had some floating idea of
“driving a barouche-and-four anywhere through the
oak-openings”—and seeing “the murdered Banquos of
the forest” haunting the scenes of their departed
strength and beauty. But I confess, these pictures,
touched by the glowing pencil of fancy, gave me but incorrect
notions of a real journey through Michigan.

Our vehicle was not perhaps very judiciously chosen;
—at least we have since thought so. It was a light
high-hung carriage—of the description commonly
known as a buggy or shandrydan—names of which I
would be glad to learn the etymology. I seriously advise
any of my friends who are about flitting to Wisconsin
or Oregon, to prefer a heavy lumber-waggon, even
for the use of the ladies of the family; very little aid or
consolation being derived from making a “genteel” appearance
in such cases.

At the first encounter of such a mud-hole as I have
attempted to describe, we stopped in utter despair. My
companion indeed would fain have persuaded me that
the many wheel tracks which passed through the formidable
gulf were proof positive that it might be forded.
I insisted with all a woman's obstinancy that I could
not and would not make the attempt, and alighted accordingly,
and tried to find a path on one side or the

other. But in vain, even putting out of the question my
paper-soled shoes—sensible things for the woods. The
ditch on each side was filled with water and quite too
wide to jump over; and we were actually contemplating
a return, when a man in an immense bear-skin cap
and a suit of deer's hide, sprang from behind a stump
just within the edge of the forest. He “poled” himself
over the ditch in a moment, and stood beside us, rifle in
hand, as wild and rough a specimen of humanity as one
would wish to encounter in a strange and lonely road,
just at the shadowy dusk of the evening. I did not scream,
though I own I was prodigiously frightened. But our
stranger said immediately, in a gentle tone and with a
French accent, “Me watch deer—you want to cross?”
On receiving an answer in the affirmative, he ran in
search of a rail which he threw over the terrific mud-hole—aided
me to walk across by the help of his pole
—showed my husband where to plunge—waited till he
had gone safely through and “slow circles dimpled o'er
the quaking mud”—then took himself off by the way
he came, declining any compensation with a most polite
“rien, rien!” This instance of true and genuine
and generous politeness I record for the benefit of all
bearskin caps, leathern jerkins and cowhide boots, which
ladies from the eastward world may hereafter encounter
in Michigan.

Our journey was marked by no incident more alarming
than the one I have related, though one night passed
in a wretched inn, deep in the “timbered land”—as
all woods are called in Michigan—was not without its
terrors, owing to the horrible drunkenness of the master
of the house, whose wife and children were in constant

fear of their lives, from his insane fury. I can never
forget the countenance of that desolate woman, sitting
trembling and with white, compressed lips in the midst
of her children. The father raving all night, and
coming through our sleeping apartment with the earliest
ray of morning, in search of more of the poison already
boiling in his veins. The poor wife could not
forbear telling me her story—her change of lot—from
a well-stored and comfortable home in Connecticut to
this wretched den in the wilderness—herself and children
worn almost to shadows with the ague, and her
husband such as I have described him. I may mention
here that not very long after I heard of this man in
prison in Detroit, for stabbing a neighbour in a drunken
brawl, and ere the year was out he died of delirium
tremens, leaving his family destitute. So much for
turning our fields of golden grain into “fire water”—
a branch of business in which Michigan is fast improving.

Our ride being a deliberate one, I felt, after the third
day, a little wearied, and began to complain of the sameness
of the oak-openings and to wish we were fairly at
our journey's end. We were crossing a broad expanse
of what seemed at a little distance a smooth shaven
lawn of the most brilliant green, but which proved on
trial little better than a quaking bog—embracing within
its ridgy circumference all possible varieties of

I had just indulged in something like a yawn, and wished
that I could see our hotel. At the word, my companion's
face assumed rather a comical expression, and
I was preparing to inquire somewhat testily what there
was so laughable—I was getting tired and cross, reader—when
down came our good horse to the very chin
in a bog-hole, green as Erin on the top, but giving way
on a touch, and seeming deep enough to have engulphed
us entirely if its width had been proportionate. Down
came the horse—and this was not all—down came the
driver; and I could not do less than follow, though at
a little distance—our good steed kicking and floundering—covering
us with hieroglyphics, which would be
readily decyphered by any Wolverine we should meet,
though perchance strange to the eyes of our friends at
home. This mishap was soon amended. Tufts of
long marsh grass served to assoilize our habiliments
a little, and a clear stream which rippled through the
marsh aided in removing the eclipse from our faces.
We journeyed on cheerily, watching the splendid
changes in the west, but keeping a bright look-out for
bog-holes.