 | Letters from New York |  |
LETTER XXI.
If you want refreshment for the eye, and the luxury of
pure breezes, go to Staten Island. This beautiful little
spot, which lies so gracefully on the waters, was sold by
the Indians to the Dutch, in 1657, for ten shirts, thirty pairs
of stockings, ten guns, thirty bars of lead for balls, thirty
pounds of powder, twelve coats, two pieces of duffil, thirty
kettles, thirty hatchets, twenty hoes, and a case of knives
and awls. This was then considered a fair compensation
for a tract eighteen miles long, and seven broad; and compared
with most of our business transactions with the Indians,
it will not appear illiberal. The facilities for fishing,
the abundance of oysters, the pleasantness of the situation,
and old associations, all endeared it to the natives. They
lingered about the island, like reluctant ghosts, until 1670;
when, being urged to depart, they made a new requisition
of four hundred fathoms of wampum, and a large number of
guns and axes; a demand which was very wisely complied
with, for the sake of a final ratification of the treaty.
On this island is a quarantine ground, unrivalled for the
airiness of its situation and the comfort and cleanliness of
its arrangements. Of the foreigners from all nations which
flood our shores, an immense proportion here take their first
footstep on American soil; and judging from the welcome
Nature gives them, they might well believe they had arrived
in Paradise. From the high grounds, three hundred feet
above the level of the sea, may be seen a most beautiful
Long Island spreads before you her vernal forests, and fields
of golden grain; the North and East rivers sparkle in the
distance; and the magnificent Hudson is seen flowing on
in joyful freedom. The city itself seems clean and bright
in the distance—its deformities hidden, and its beauties
exaggerated, like the fame of far-off heroes. When the sun
shines on its steeples, windows, and roofs of glittering tin,
it is as if the Fire Spirits had suddenly created a city of
fairy palaces. And when the still shadows creep over it, and
the distant lights shine like descended constellations, twinkling
to the moaning music of the sea, there is something
oppressive in its solemn beauty. Then comes the golden
morning light, as if God suddenly unveiled his glory!
There on the bright waters float a thousand snowy sails,
like a troop of beautiful sea birds; and imagination, strong
in morning freshness, flies off through the outlet to the distant
sea, and circles all the globe with its wreath of flowers.
Amid these images of joy, reposes the quarantine burying-ground;
bringing sad association, like the bass-note in a
music-box. How many who leave their distant homes, full
of golden visions, come here to take their first and last look
of the promised land. What to them are all the fair, broad,
acres of this new world? They need but the narrow heritage
of a grave. But every soul that goes hence, apart from
friends and kindred, carries with it a whole unrevealed epic
of joy and sorrow, of gentle sympathies and passion's fiery
depths. O, how rich in more than Shakspearean beauty
would be the literature of that quarantine ground, if all the
images that pass in procession before those dying eyes,
would write themselves in daguerreotype!
One of the most interesting places on this island, is the
Sailor's Snug Harbor. A few years ago, a gentleman by
the name of Randall, left a small farm, that rented for two
or three hundred dollars, at the corner of Eleventh-street
and Broadway, for the benefit of old and worn-out sailors.
to purchase a farm on Staten Island, and erect a noble
stone edifice, as a hospital for disabled seamen; with an
annual income of nearly thirty thousand dollars. The
building has a very handsome exterior, and is large, airy,
and convenient. The front door opens into a spacious hall,
at the extremity of which flowers and evergreens are arranged
one above another, like the terrace of a conservatory;
and from the entries above, you look down into this
pretty nook of “greenery.” The whole aspect of things is
extremely pleasant—with the exception of the sailors themselves.
There is a sort of torpid resignation in countenance
and movement, painful to witness. They reminded
me of what some one said of the Greenwich pensioners:
“they seemed to be waiting for death.” No outward comfort
seemed wanting, except the constant prospect of the
sea: but they stood alone in the world—no wives, no
children. Connected by no link with the ever-active Present,
a monotonous Future stretched before them, made
more dreary by its contrast with the keen excitement and
ever-shifting variety of their Past life of peril and pleasure.
I have always thought too little provision was made for this
lassitude of the mind, in most benevolent institutions. Men
accustomed to excitement, cannot do altogether without it.
It is a necessity of nature, and should be ministered to in
all innocent forms. Those poor old tars should have sea-songs
and instrumental music, once in a while, to stir their
sluggish blood; and a feast might be given on great occasions,
to younger sailors from temperance boarding-houses,
that the Past might have a chance to hear from the Present.
We perform but a half charity, when we comfort the
body and leave the soul desolate.
Within the precincts of the city, too, are pleasant and
safe homes provided for sailors; spacious, well-ventilated,
and supplied with libraries and museums.
After all, this nineteenth century, with all its turmoil and
clatter, has some lovely features about it? If evil spreads
with unexampled rapidity, good is abroad, too, with miraculous
and omnipresent activity. Unless we are struck by
the tail of a comet, or swallowed by the sun meanwhile,
we certainly shall get the world right side up, by and by.
Among the many instrumentalities at work to produce
this, increasing interest in the sailor's welfare is a cheering
omen. Of all classes, except the negro slaves, they have
been the most neglected and the most abused. The book
of judgement can alone reveal how much they have suffered
on the wide, deep ocean, with no door to escape from tyranny,
no friendly forest to hide them from the hunter;
doomed, at their best estate, to suffer almost continued deprivation
of home, that worst feature in the curse of Cain;
their minds shut up in caves of ignorance so deep, that if
religion enters with a friendly lamp, it too frequently terrifies
them with the shadows it makes visible. Religious
they must be, in some sense, even when they know it not;
for no man with a human soul within him, can be unconscious
of the Divine Presence, with infinite space round
him, the blue sky overhead, with its million world-lamps,
and everywhere, beneath and around him,
Unconquerable, unreposed, untired!
That rolls the wild, profound, eternal bass
In Nature's anthem, and makes music such
As pleaseth the ear of God.”
being superstitious too. The Infinite comes continually
before him, in the sublimest symbols of sight and sound.
He does not know the language, but he feels the tone.
Goethe has told us, in most beautiful allegory, of two
bridges, whereby earnest souls pass from the Finite to the
and this is Faith; the other is a shadow cast quite over by
the giant Superstition, when he stands between the setting
sun and the unknown shore.
Blessings on all friendly hands that are leading the sailor
to the rainbow bridge. His spirit is made reverential in
the great temple of Nature, resounding with the wild voices
of the winds, and strange music of the storm-organ; too
long has it been left trembling and shivering on the bridge
of shadows. For him, too, the rainbow spans the dark
stream, and becomes at last a bridge of gems.
| Letters from New York | |