University of Virginia Library

1. DAY THE FIRST.

It was a fine October evening when I was sitting on the back
stoop of his cheerful little bachelor's establishment in Mercer street,
with my old friend and comrade, Henry Archer. Many a frown of
fortune had we two weathered out together; in many of her brightest
smiles had we two revelled—never was there a stancher
friend, a merrier companion, a keener sportsman, or a better fellow,
than this said Harry; and here had we two met, three thousand
miles from home, after almost ten years of separation, just the same
careless, happy, dare-all do-no-goods that we were when we parted
in St. James's street,—he for the West, I for the Eastern World—
he to fell trees, and build log huts in the back-woods of Canada,—I
to shoot tigers and drink arrack punch in the Carnatic. The world
had wagged with us as with most others; now up, now down, and
laid us to, at last, far enough from the goal for which we started—
so that, as I have said already, on landing in New York, having
heard nothing of him for ten years, whom the deuce should I tumble
on but that same worthy, snugly housed, with a neat bachelor's menage,
and every thing ship-shape about him?—So, in the natural
course of things, we were at once inseparables.

Well—as I said before, it was a bright October evening, with
the clear sky, rich sunshine, and brisk breezy freshness, which indicate
that loveliest of the American months,—dinner was over,
and with a pitcher of the liquid ruby of Latour, a brace of half-pint
beakers, and a score—my contribution—of those most exquisite of
smokables, the true old Manilla cheroots, we were consoling the
inward man in a way that would have opened the eyes, with abhorrent
admiration, of any advocate of that coldest of comforts—
cold water—who should have got a chance peep at our snuggery.

Suddenly, after a long pause, during which he had been stimulating
his ideas by assiduous fumigation, blowing off his steam in
a long vapory cloud that curled a minute afterward about his temples,—“What

say you, Frank, to a start to-morrow?” exclaimed
Harry,—“and a week's right good shooting?”

“Why, as for that,” said I, “I wish for nothing better—but
where the deuce would you go to get shooting?”

“Never fash your beard, man,” he replied, “I'll find the ground
and the game too, so you'll find share of the shooting!—Holloa!
there—Tim, Tim Matlock.”

And in brief space that worthy minister of mine host's pleasures
made his appearance, smoothing down his short black hair, clipped
in the orthodox bowl fashion, over his bluff good-natured visage
with one hand, while he employed its fellow in hitching up a pair
of most voluminous unmentionables, of thick Yorkshire cord.

A character was Tim—and now I think of it, worthy of brief
description. Born, I believe—bred, certainly, in a hunting stable,
far more of his life passed in the saddle than elsewhere, it was not
a little characteristic of my friend Harry to have selected this piece
of Yorkshire oddity as his especial body servant; but if the choice
were queer, it was at least successful, for an honester, more faithful,
hard-working, and withal, better hearted, and more humorous
varlet never drew curry-comb over horse hide, or clothes-brush
over broad-cloth.

His visage was, as I have said already, bluff and good-natured,
with a pair of hazel eyes, of the smallest—but, at the same time, of
the very merriest—twinkling from under the thick black eye-brows,
which were the only hairs suffered to grace his clean-shaved countenance.
An indescribable pug nose, and a good clean cut mouth,
with a continual dimple at the left corner, made up his phiz. For
the rest, four feet ten inches did Tim stand in his stockings, about
two-ten of which were monopolized by his back, the shoulders of
which would have done honor to a six foot pugilist,—his legs,
though short and bowed a little outward, by continual horse exercise,
were right tough serviceable members, and I have seen them
bearing their owner on through mud and mire, when straighter,
longer, and more fair proportioned limbs were at an awful discount.

Depositing his hat then on the floor, smoothing his hair, and
hitching up his smalls, and striving most laboriously not to grin till
he should have cause, stood Tim, like “Giafar awaiting his master's
award!”

“Tim!” said Harry Archer—

“Sur!” said Tim.

“Tim! Mr. Forester and I are talking of going up to-morrow—
what do you say to it?”

“Oop yonner?” queried Tim, in the most extraordinary West-Riding
Yorkshire, indicating the direction, by pointing his right
thumb over his left shoulder—“Weel, Ay'se nought to say aboot
it—not Ay!”

“Soh! the cattle are all right, and the wagon in good trim, and
the dogs in exercise, are they?”

“Ay'se warrant um!”

“Well, then, have all ready for a start at six to-morrow,—put
Mr. Forester's Manton alongside my Joe Spurling in the top tray
of the case, my single gun and my double rifle in the lower,—and
see the magazine well filled—the Diamond gunpowder, you know,
from Mr. Brough's. You'll put up what Mr. Forester will want,
for a week, you know—he does not know the country yet, Tim;—
and, hark you, what wine have I at Tom Draw's?”

“No but a case of claret.”

“I thought so, then away with you! down to the Baron's and get
two baskets of the Star, and stop at Fulton Market, and get the best
half hundred round of spiced beef you can find—and then go up to
Starke's at the Octagon, and get a gallon of his old Ferintosh—
that's all, Tim—off with you!—No! stop a minute!” and he filled
up a beaker and handed it to the original, who, shutting both his
eyes, suffered the fragrant claret to roll down his gullet in the
most scientific fashion, and then, with what he called a bow, turned
right about, and exit.

The sun rose bright on the next morning, and half an hour before
the appointed time, Tim entered my bed-chamber, with a cup of
mocha, and the intelligence that “Measter had been up this hour
and better, and did na like to be kept waiting!—so up I jumped,
and scarcely had got through the business of rigging myself, before
the rattle of wheels announced the arrival of the wagon.

And a model was that shooting wagon—a long, light-bodied box,
with a low rail—a high seat and dash in front, and a low servant's
seat behind, with lots of room for four men and as many dogs, with
guns and luggage, and all appliances to boot, enough to last a
month, stowed away out of sight, and out of reach of weather. The
nags, both nearly thorough-bred, fifteen two inches high, stout,
clean-limbed, active animals—the off-side horse a gray, almost
snow-white—the near, a dark black, nearly chestnut—with square
docks setting admirably off their beautiful round quarters, high
crests, small blood-like heads, and long thin manes—spoke volumes
for Tim's stable science; for though their ribs were slightly visible,
their muscles were well filled, and hard as granite. Their coats
glanced in the sunshine—the white's like statuary marble; the
chestnut's like high polished copper—in short the whole turn-out
was perfect.

The neat black harness, relieved merely by a crest, with every
strap that could be needed, in its place, and not one buckle or one
thong superfluous; the bright steel curbs, with the chains jingling
as the horses tossed and pawed impatient for a start; the tapering
holly whip; the bear-skins covering the seats; the top-coats spread
above them—every thing, in a word, without bordering on the
slang, was perfectly correct and gnostic.

Four dogs—a brace of setters of the light active breed, one of
which will out-work a brace of the large, lumpy, heavy-headed
dogs,—one red, the other white and liver, both with black noses,
their legs and sterns beautifully feathered, and their hair, glossy
and smooth as silk, showing their excellent condition—and a brace

of short-legged, bony, liver-colored spaniels—with their heads
thrust one above the other, over or through the railings, and their
tails waving with impatient joy—occupied the after portion of the
wagon.

Tim, rigged in plain gray frock, with leathers and white tops,
stood, in true tiger fashion, at the horses' heads, with the fore-finger
of his right hand resting upon the curb of the gray horse, as
with his left he rubbed the nose of the chetsnut; while Harry, cigar
in mouth, was standing at the wheel, reviewing with a steady and
experienced eye the gear, which seemed to give him perfect satisfaction.
The moment I appeared on the steps.

“In with you, Frank—in with you,” he exclaimed, disengaging
the hand-reins from the turrets into which they had been thrust,—
“I have been waiting here these five minutes. Jump up, Tim!”

And, gathering the reins up firmly, he mounted by the wheel,
tucked the top-coat about his legs, shook out the long lash of his
tandem whip, and lapped it up in good style.

“I always drive with one of these”—he said, half apologetically,
as I thought—“they are so handy on the road for the cur dogs,
when you have setters with you—they plague your life out else.
Have you the pistol-case in, Tim, for I don't see it?”

“All roight, sur,” answered he, not over well pleased, as it
seemed, that it should even be suspected that he could have forgotten
any thing—“All roight!”

“Go along, then,” cried Harry, and at the word the high bred
nags went off; and, though my friend was too good and too old a
hand to worry his cattle at the beginning of a long day's journey—
many minutes had not passed before we found ourselves on board
the ferry-boat, steaming it merrily toward the Jersey shore.

“A quarter past six to the minute,” said Harry, as we landed at
Hoboken.

“Let Shot and Chase run, Tim, but keep the spaniels in till we
pass Hackensack.”

“Awa wi ye, ye rascals,” exclaimed Tim, and out went the high
blooded dogs upon the instant, yelling and jumping in delight about
the horses—and off we went, through the long sandy street of Hoboken,
leaving the private race-course of that stanch sportsman,
Mr. Stevens, on the left, with several powerful horses taking their
walking exercise in their neat body clothes.

“That puts me in mind, Frank,” said Harry, as he called my attention
to the thorough-breds, “we must be back next Tuesday for
the Beacon Races—the new course up there on the hill; you can
see the steps that lead to it—and now is not this lovely?” he continued,
as we mounted the first ridge of Weehawken, and looked
back over the beautiful broad Hudson, gemmed with a thousand
snowy sails of craft or shipping—“Is not this lovely, Frank? and,
by the by, you will say, when we get to our journey's end, you
never drove through prettier scenery in your life. Get away, Bob,
you villain—nibbling, nibbling at your curb! get away, lads!”

And away we went at a right rattling pace over the hills, and

through the cedar swamp; and, passing through a toll-gate, stopped
with a sudden jerk at a long low tavern on the left-hand side.

“We must stop here, Frank. My old friend, Ingliss, a brother
trigger too, would think the world was coming to an end if
I drove by—twenty-nine minutes these six miles,” he added, looking
at his watch, “that will do! Now, Tim, look sharp—just a
sup of water! Good day—good day to you, Mr. Ingliss; now for
a glass of your milk punch”—and mine host disappeared, and in a
moment came forth with two rummers of the delicious compound, a
big bright lump of ice bobbing about in each among the nutmeg.

“What, off again for Orange county, Mr. Archer? I was telling
the old woman yesterday that we should have you by before long;
well, you'll find cock pretty plenty, I expect; there was a chap by
here from Ulster—let me see, what day was it—Friday, I guess—
with produce, and he was telling, they have had no cold snap yet up
there! Thank you, sir, good luck to you!”

And off we went again, along a level road, crossing the broad
slow river from whence it takes its name, into the town of Hackensack.

“We breakfast here, Frank”—as he pulled up beneath the low
Dutch shed projecting over half the road in front of the neat tavern
—“How are you, Mr. Vanderbeck—we want a beef-steak, and a
cup of tea, as quick as you can give it us; we'll make the tea ourselves;
bring in the black tea, Tim—the nags as usual.”

“Aye! aye! sur”—“tak them out—leave t'harness on, all but
their bridles”—to an old gray-headed hostler. “Whisp off their
legs a bit; Ay will be oot enoo!”

After as good a breakfast as fresh eggs, good country bread—
worth ten times the poor trash of city bakers—prime butter, cream,
and a fat steak could furnish, at a cheap rate, and with a civil and
obliging landlord, away we went again over the red-hills—an infernal
ugly road, sandy, and rough, and stony—for ten miles farther to
New Prospect.

“Now you shall see some scenery worth looking at,” said Harry,
as we started again, after watering the horses, and taking in a bag
with a peck of oats—“to feed at three o'clock, Frank, when we
stop to grub, which must do al fresco—” my friend explained—
“for the landlord, who kept the only tavern on the road, went West
this summer, bit by the land mania, and there is now no stopping
place 'twixt this and Warwick,” naming the village for which we
were bound. “You got that beef boiled, Tim?”

“Ay'd been a fouil else, and aye so often oop t' road too,” answered
he with a grin, “and t' moostard is mixed, and t' pilot biscuit
in, and a good bit o' Cheshire cheese! wee's doo, Ay reckon.
Ha! ha! ha!”

And now my friend's boast was indeed fulfilled; for when we
had driven a few miles farther, the country became undulating,
with many and bright streams of water; the hill sides clothed with
luxuriant woodlands, now in their many-colored garb of autumn
beauty; the meadow-land rich in unchanged fresh greenery—for

the summer had been mild and rainy—with here and there a back-wheat
stubble showing its ruddy face, replete with promise of quail
in the present, and of hot cakes in future; and the bold chain of
mountains, which, under many names, but always beautiful and
wild, sweeps from the Highlands of the Hudson, west and south-wardly,
quite through New Jersey, forming a link between the
White and Green Mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont, and
the more famous Alleghanies of the South.

A few miles farther yet, the road wheeled round the base of the
Tourne Mountain, a magnificent bold hill, with a bare craggy head,
its sides and skirts thick set with cedars and hickory—entering a
defile through which the Ramapo, one of the loveliest streams eye
ever looked upon, comes rippling with its crystal waters over bright
pebbles, on its way to join the two kindred rivulets which form the
fair Passaic. Throughout the whole of that defile, nothing can
possibly surpass the loveliness of nature; the road hard, and smooth,
and level, winding and wheeling parallel to the gurgling river,
crossing it two or three times in each mile, now on one side, and
now on the other—the valley now barely broad enough to permit
the highway and the stream to pass between the abrupt masses of
rock and forest, and now expanding into rich basins of green meadow-land,
the deepest and most fertile possible—the hills of every
shape and size—here bold, and bare, and rocky—there swelling up
in grand round masses, pile above pile of verdure, to the blue firmament
of autumn. By and by we drove through a thriving little
village, nestling in a hollow of the hills, beside a broad bright pond,
whose waters keep a dozen manufactories of cotton and of iron—
with which mineral these hills abound—in constant operation; and
passing by the tavern, the departure of whose owner Harry had so
pathetically mourned, we wheeled again round a projecting spur of
hill into a narrower defile, and reached another hamlet, far different
in its aspect from the busy bustling place we had left some
five miles behind.

There were some twenty houses, with two large mills of solid
masonry; but of these not one building was now tenanted; the roof-trees
broken, the doors and shutters either torn from their hinges,
or flapping wildly to and fro; the mill wheels cumbering the stream
with masses of decaying timber, and the whole presenting a most
desolate and mournful aspect.

“Its story is soon told,” Harry said, catching my inquiring glance
—“a speculating, clever, New York merchant—a water-power—
failure—and a consequent desertion of the project; but we must
find a berth among the ruins!”

And as he spoke, turning a little off the road, he pulled up on the
green sward; “there's an old stable here that has a manger in it
yet! Now, Tim, look sharp!”

And in a twinkling the horses were loosed from the wagon, the
harness taken off and hanging on the corners of the ruined hovels,
and Tim hissing and rubbing away at the gray horse, while Harry

did like duty on the chestnut, in a style that would have done no
shame to Melton Mowbray!

“Come, Frank, make yourself useful! Get out the round of beef,
and all the rest of the provant—it's on the rack behind; you'll find
all right there. Spread our table-cloth on that flat stone by the
waterfall, under the willow; clap a couple of bottles of the Baron's
champagne into the pool there underneath the fall; let's see whether
your Indian campaigning has taught you any thing worth
knowing!”

To work I went at once, and by the time I had got through—
“Come, Tim,” I heard him say, “I've got the rough dirt off this
fellow, you must polish him, while I take a wash, and get a bit of
dinner. Holloa! Frank, are you ready!”

And he came bounding down to the water's edge, with his New-market
coat in hand, and sleeves rolled up to the elbows, plunged
his face into the cool stream, and took a good wash of his soiled
hands in the same natural basin. Five minutes afterward we were
employed most pleasantly with the spiced beef, white biscuit, and
good wine, which came out of the waterfall as cool as Gunter could
have made it with all his icing. When we had pretty well got
through, and were engaged with our cheroots, up came Tim Matlock.

“T' horses have got through wi' t' corn—they have fed rarely—
so I harnessed them, sur, all to the bridles—we can start when you
will.”

“Sit down, and get your dinner then, sir—there's a heel-tap in
that bottle we have left for you—and when you have done, put up
the things, and we'll be off. I say, Frank, let us try a shot with
the pistols—I'll get the case—stick up that fellow-commoner upon
the fence there, and mark off a twenty paces.”

The marking irons were produced—and loaded—“Fire—one—
two—three”—bang! and the shivering of the glass announced that
never more would that chap hold the generous liquor—the ball had
struck it plump in the centre, and broken off the whole above the
shoulder—for it was fixed neck downward on the stake.

“It is my turn now,” said I—and more by luck, I fancy, than by
skill, I took the neck off, leaving nothing but the thick ring of the
mouth still sticking on the summit of the fence.

“I'll hold you a dozen of my best Regalias against as many of
Manillas, that I break the ring.”

“Done, Harry!”

“Done!”

Again the pistol cracked, and the unerring ball drove the small
fragment into a thousand splinters.

“That fotched 'um!” exclaimed Tim, who had come up to announce
all ready—“Ecod, measter Frank, you munna wager i' that
gate[1] wi' master, or my name beant Tim, but thou'lt be clean bamboozled.”

Well—not to make a short story long—we got under way again,
and, with speed unabated, spanked along at full twelve miles an
hour, for five miles farther. There, down a wild looking glen, on
the left hand, comes brawling, over stump and stone, a tributary
streamlet—by the side of which a rough track, made by the charcoal
burners and the iron miners, intersects the main road—and up this
miserable looking path—for it was little more—Harry wheeled at
full trot.

“Now for twelve miles of mountain, the roughest road and
wildest country you ever saw crossed in a phaeton, good master
Frank.”

And wild it was, indeed, and rough enough in all conscience—
narrow, unfenced in many places, winding along the brow of precipices
without rail or breast-work, encumbered with huge blocks of
stone, and broken by the summer rains! An English stage coachman
would have stared aghast at the steep zigzags up the hills—
the awkward turns on the descents—the sudden pitches, with now
an unsafe bridge, and now a stony ford at the bottom—but through
all this, the delicate quick finger, keen eye, and cool head of
Harry, assisted by the rare mouths of his exquisitely bitted cattle,
piloted us at the rate of full ten miles the hour—the scenery,
through which the wild track ran, being entirely of the most grand
and savage character of woodland—the bottom filled with gigantic
timber trees, cedar, and pine, and hemlock, with a dense undergrowth
of rhododendron, calmia, and azalia, which, as my friend informed
me, made the whole mountains in the summer season one
rich bed of bloom. About six miles from the point where we had
entered them we scaled the highest ridge of the hills, by three
almost precipitous zigzags, the topmost ledge paved by a stratum of
broken shaley limestone; and, passing at once from the forest into
well cultivated fields, came on a new and lovelier prospect—a narrow
deep vale scarce a mile in breadth—scooped as it were out of
the mighty mountains which embosomed it on every side—in the
highest state of culture, with rich orchards, and deep meadows, and
brown stubbles, whereon the shocks of maize stood fair and frequent
—and westward of the road—which, diving down obliquely to the
bottom, loses itself in the woods of the opposite hill-side, and only
becomes visible again when it emerges to cross over the next summit—the
loveliest sheet of water my eye has ever seen, varying
from half a mile to a mile in breadth, and about five miles long,
with shores indented deeply with the capes and promontories of the
wood-clothed hills, which sink abruptly to its very margin.

“That is the Greenwood Lake, Frank, called by the monsters
here Long Pond!—`the fiends receive their souls therefor,' as
Walter Scott says—in my mind prettier than Lake George by far,
though known to few except chance sportsmen like myself! Full
of fish—pearch of a pound in weight, and yellow bass in the deep
waters, and a good sprinkling of trout, toward this end! Ellis
Ketchum killed a five-pounder there this spring!—and heaps of
summer-duck, the loveliest in plumage of the genus, and the best

too, me judice, excepting only the inimitable canvass-back. There
are a few deer, too, in the hills, though they are getting scarce of
late years. There, from that headland, I killed one, three summers
since; I was placed at a stand by the lake's edge, and the dogs
drove him right down to me; but I got too eager, and he heard or
saw me, and so fetched a turn; but they were close upon him, and
the day was hot, and he was forced to soil. I never saw him till
he was in the act of leaping from a bluff of ten or twelve feet into
the deep lake, but I pitched up my rifle at him—a snap shot!—as I
would my gun at a cock in a summer brake—and by good luck sent
my ball through his heart! There is a finer view yet when we
cross this hill—the Bellevale mountain—look out, for we are just
upon it—there! Now admire!”

And on the summit he pulled up, and never did I see a landscape
more extensively magnificent. Ridge after ridge the mountain
sloped down from our feet into a vast rich basin ten miles at least
in breadth, by thirty, if not more, in length, girdled on every side
by mountains—the whole diversified with wood and water, meadow,
and pasture-land, and corn-field—studded with small white villages
—with more than one bright lakelet glittering like beaten gold in
the declining sun, and several isolated hills standing up boldly from
the vale!

“Glorious indeed! Most glorious!” I exclaimed.

“Right, Frank,” he said; “a man may travel many a day, and
not see any thing to beat the vale of Sugar-loaf—so named from
that cone-like hill, over the pond there—that peak is eight hundred
feet above tide water. Those blue hills, to the far right, are the
Hudson Highlands; that bold bluff is the far-famed Anthony's
Nose; that ridge across the vale, the second ridge I mean, is the
Shawangunks; and those three rounded summits, farther yet—
those are the Kaatskills! But now a truce with the romantic, for
there lies Warwick, and this keen mountain air has found me a
fresh appetite!”

Away we went again, rattling down the hills, nothing daunted at
their steep pitches, with the nags just as fresh as when they started,
champing and snapping at their curbs, till on a table-land above the
brook, with the tin steeple of its church peering from out the massy
foliage of sycamore and locust, the haven of our journey lay before
us.

“Hilloa, hill-oa he! whoop! who-whoop!” and with a cheery
shout, as we clattered across the wooden bridge, he roused out half
the population of the village.

“Ya ha ha!—ya yah!” yelled a great woolly-headed coal-black
negro. “Here 'm massa Archer back again—massa ben well, I
spect—”

“Well—to be sure I have, Sam,” cried Harry. “How's old
Poll? Bid her come up to Draw's to-morrow night—I've got a red
and yellow frock for her—a deuce of a concern!”

“Yah ha! yah ha ha yaah!” and amid a most discordant chorus
of African merriment, we passed by a neat farm-house shaded by

two glorious locusts on the right, and a new red brick mansion, the
pride of the village, with a flourishing store on the left—and
wheeled up to the famous Tom Draw's tavern—a long white house
with a piazza six feet wide, at the top of eight steep steps, and a
one-story kitchen at the end of it; a pump with a gilt pine-apple at
the top of it, and horse-trough; a wagon shed and stable sixty feet
long; a sign-post with an indescribable female figure swinging
upon it, and an ice house over the way!

Such was the house, before which we pulled up just as the sun
was setting, amid a gabbling of ducks, a barking of terriers, mixed
with the deep bay of two or three large heavy fox-hounds which
had been lounging about in the shade, and a peal of joyous welcome
from all beings, quadruped or biped, within hearing.

“Hulloa! boys!” cried a deep hearty voice from within the bar-room.
“Hulloa! boys! Walk in! walk in! What the eternal
h—ll are you about there?”

Well, we did walk into a large neat bar-room, with a bright
hickory log crackling upon the hearth-stone, a large round table in
one corner, covered with draught-boards, and old newspapers,
among which showed pre-eminent the “Spirit of the Times;” a
range of pegs well stored with great-coats, fishing-rods, whips,
game-bags, spurs, and every other stray appurtenance of sporting,
gracing one end; while the other was more gaily decorated by the
well furnished bar, in the right-hand angle of which my eye detected
in an instant a handsome nine pound double barrel, an old
six foot Queen Ann's tower-musket, and a long smooth-bored rifle;
and last, not least, outstretched at easy length upon the counter of
his bar, to the left-hand of the gang-way—the right side being more
suitably decorated with tumblers, and decanters of strange compounds—supine,
with fair round belly towering upward, and head
voluptuously pillowed on a heap of wagon cushions—lay in his
glory—but no! hold!—the end of a chapter is no place to introduce
—Tom Draw![2]