 | CHAPTER XIV. The new purchase, or, Seven and a half years in the far West |  |
14. CHAPTER XIV.
“—a shady place for several friends.”
Well! this is Glenville. Has any body accompanied
our fortunes thus far?—that body may as well see us also
“out of the woods.” A sojourn for a few years amid the
privations and hardships of the New Purchase will fit you
better for a home in the East—in case, we mean, you stay
not so long as to be forgotten by the time you go back. And
even then—after the first bitter feelings of natural sorrow,
of surprise, and perhaps of chagrin—believe me, such a
force and independence will have been added to the character,
so much self-reliance gendered, as to furnish an almost
perpetual and complete substitute in your own resources.
One perhaps, after a sojourn of the proper kind in the New
Purchase, is rather in danger of too great a contempt for
the things of the old: at all events, one, whose spirit is
not naturally bad, is very much inclined to feel and say,
with the good humour of Bernadotte, when he finds on his
return that the world “does not care a fig” for him, “well,
tell the world, I do not care a fig for it.”
The man that has practised doing with little, and is fully
satisfied with it, and for years has been very happy with it,
is really superior to the man even of large fortune, and of
houses, fine furniture, sumptuous food, gay equipage, costly
apparel and the like, who, if he despise not such matters, is
soberly and philosophically indifferent to them? He has
really so schooled himself amid rough huts, rude furniture,
coarse food, and homespun clothes, as, in his very heart, to
prefer them with their freedom and independence, to the
wearisome and silly, and endless anxiety and toil of living
for mere show.
On your return, if you have your health, in what can any
one, who fancies himself superior, excel you? He knows
not as much—he can eat no more—see no more—drink no
more—sleep no better—live no longer. Can he drive a gig?
you can drive it where he dares not venture. Suppose he
outrides you—you can outwalk him. Does the chap shoot a
double-barrelled gun?—so can you, if you would—but you
transcend him, oh! far enough with that man's weapon,
that in your hands deals, at your will, certain death to one
selected victim, without scattering useless wounds at a venture
in a little innocent feathered flock.
Stay with us, then, reader; and when you do return, you
will certainly enjoy some plain every-day conveniences at
home, once undervalued, perhaps despised, but which belong
to the tenor of life; you will bear, with good humour,
a thousand petty disquietudes of civilized life, that once
kept you, and still keep the self-indulged, undisciplined,
fashionable vulgar in—“a stew.” Yes! you will be cured
of a very common and dreadful malady, rendering one
miserable in himself and hateful to others—“the fidgets.”
Nay you will be purged of the “struts and swaggers”—
the emptiness of a puffy, self-important inflation, generated
by too long an acquaintance among brick and mortar houses,
and medicated wooden pavements. In a word, if you become
not quite as great a man as you formerly designed to
be—(and as city and town folks all at one time intend)—you
residence in a bran New Purchase, become a better and a
happier man.
Come, then, I will introduce our settlement. And first,
this term is applied to a place where one or more families
having bought lands at the government price from Uncle
Samuel, have actually located on it; and, not to a place
bought merely for speculation, or merely trespassed upon
by any of that nondescript and original race—the squatters.
Indeed, to these a settlement is so odious, that they
either pay for land and turn into settlers, or, as is the more
frequent, they become indignant at the legal invasion of
their domain, and hastily—absquatulate; that is, translated
—they go and squat in another place. And such is the
effect of settlements often in here, up north, down east, and
so on, where well looking and fine dressed gentlemen become
so offended at the impertinence of neighbours, that
they too absquatulate: and perhaps better so, as a civilized
squatter would rarely make a good neighbour, either in or
upon a settlement.
Out there, a settlement usually takes its name from the
person that first “enters the land,” i. e. buys a tract at the
land office. Often it takes the name from the family first
actually settling, or owning the largest number of acres;
and very frequently from the person that establishes a ferry,
a smithery, a mill, a tannery, and, above all, a Store.
Hence, whilst our brother-in-law was no patriarch in looks
or age, owned no boundless territory, and was, in stature,
“the least in his father's house,” yet because he tanned
hides—(for shoes we mean)—and intended soon to sell
tape by the yard, and buy pork by the cwt.—we were The
Glenville Settlement. And this colony had, within its territories,
as many as three human habitations; two occupied
by actual settlers, and one by a very special sort of a
squatter—the Leatherstocking of our tribe.
On an eminence between the others—and, provided you
knew how “to holler,” within hearing of both, but owing to
intervening trees, not within sight—stood the primitive and
patriarchal cabin—the capitol. South-west, distant a quarter
of a mile was the cabin of the Reverend Mr. Hilsbury,
lately married to one of Mrs. Carlton's sisters; and directly
south of the episcopal residence, was the tannery,
to which John Glenville, of Glenville, owed the honour of
giving his name to the colony. Due east from the capitol
about a furlong, was the squateree ofuncle Tommy Seymour,
our Leatherstocking. So much of his long life had
passed in the wild woods, and among the Indians, that he
had thoroughly imbibed their feelings and their sentiments,
and had adopted some of their habits; and therefore he
had not only acquired an utter distaste, but even a sovereign
contempt for most usages and trammels of civilization.
And Uncle Tommy was also a preacher—hence Glenville
was two-thirds sacred and only one secular!
Around, were a few other settlements, Sturgis'—Hackberry's—Undergrowth's—Brushwood's,
and some more;
all distant from us and one another—some one mile, some
ten. The unentered and unsettled tracts between, were
our commons, called the Range—used for hunting, swine-feeding,
and the like. The range had, however, inhabitants
innumerable:—viz. deer, wolves, foxes—blue, gray,
and black—squirrels ditto, ground-swine, vulgarly called
ground-hogs, and wild turkeys, wild ducks, wild cats, and
all the wild what-y'-callums:—opossums up down in
and under gum trees:—snakes, with and without rattles, of
all colours, from copper to green and black, and of all
sizes, from ever so little to ever so big. Add—“the
neighbours' hogs,”—so wild and fierce, that when porktime
arrives, they must be hunted and shot, like other independent
beasts. Especially is this the case if mast—
—(nuts and acorns)—is abundant; when swiney becomes
swill-tubs. Ay, gentle reader, our semi-wild boar is a
fellow something different in look, and rather worse to
encounter, when saucy or angry, than the vile mud-hole
wallower of the Atlantic! If one would understand the
wild-boar hunts of Cyrus, or the feudal barons—go, get
acquainted with the semi-wild fellow of the Purchase.
The range is perambulated by cattle horned and unhorned;
by cows, belled and un-belled; and by horses, some with
yokes and some without:—but notice, yokes are not to prevent
jumping out of inclosures, but, into them. In the
range are also wonderful colts with cunning saucy faces,
shaggy manes done up with burrs, and with great long tails,
so tangled that Penelope herself could never disentangle
—creatures almost uncatchable, and if caught nearly untameable.
Nearly south of Glenville was the grand town—our
Woodville. And nearly west, some eight or nine miles and
a piece, was Spiceburgh—at least in dry times; for the
town being on the bottom of Shining River was, in hard
rains, commonly under water, so that a conscientious man
dared not then to affirm without a proviso, where Spiceburgh
was, precisely. North-east from us, some fifty long
lonesome miles, was the capital of the State—Timberopolis;
the seat of the legislature and of mortality. But death
in later times there domineered less. Whether the legislature
reformed and refrained from uncommon mischief is
not so easy to say. Parties are to this hour. I am informed,
themselves, divided on that subject—the opposite partizans,
however, exactly agreeing in this:—viz. that the Ins
are a set of ignorant, selfish, truckling, snivelling humbuggers,
while the Outs are the men to save the state—mutatis
mutandis.
In different directions, from Glenville were also Mapville,
Mapbourgh and Maptown; in all which the difficulty in
trees. A skilful woodsman could, indeed, sometimes
find a single house—the whole village: but as the
citizens were all absent hoeing corn or the like, except one
or more dirty bare-legged babies fastened inside, the lucky
hunter, except for the name of being in town, might nearly
as well be in the country. Unexpectedly, too, would a
traveller sometimes come into a town of thirty or forty
habitations but without a solitary inhabitant—the cabins all
standing cold and empty like snail-abandoned shells! For,
know, reader, that genuine agues out there are often so
powerful and vindictive as to shake, not only individuals
out of their skins, but whole communities out of their towns
and villages! In this latter case the folks swarm like bees
and re-settle where the legislature appoints a new seat,
passing at the time a law that the ague shall shake them out
no more.
This, then, is Glenville, its suburbs, its environs, its neighbourhoods,
its ranges—all on that grand scale belonging to
Nature in the Far West, where we have grand woods,
grand prairies, grand caves, grand rivers, grand bears, grand
swine—grand every thing! except, maybe, grand rascals, in
which we doubtless excel here in the East.
Let us next enter the patriarchal cabin. Here we become
acquainted with Uncle John Seymour and his two
sisters, widows, Mrs. Glenville and Aunt Kitty Littleton.
Here are also encabined John Glenville and Miss Emily
Glenville, the youngest of the family. Here too is a young
woman for help—in fact “the gal;” and here are to abide
Mr. and Mrs. Carlton—
“All in one cabin?”
All in one cabin. But a family you know is the most
compressible and yet the most expansive of bodies. Yes!
here we two and a half families endured the compression
and lost no breath, and even seemed to have a few spare
part of the world, did Mr. Carlton's own single family expand
and spread, and without any violent effort whatever,
their importance through a mansion containing fourteen
apartments, with cellars, and garrets, and kitchens and all—
and still fret for the want of room!
“But what led to the formation of your colony, Mr. Carlton?—what
induced gentlemen and ladies of your education
and endowments to settle in so remote an obscurity?”
Thank you, Sir—the reasons alluded to in the commencement
of this history operated in our case as in the cases of
a thousand others; but it was mere accident that turned our
folks to their location in the New Purchase.
The Seymours at the close of the last war with Great
Britain resided in Philadelphia. Like others they risked
their capital during the war in the manufactories of that
era; and like others, when peace was proclaimed, the Seymours
were ruined. John Seymour—familiarly known
among us as Uncle John—on his arrival from the South,
where, during a residence of many years he had acquired
a handsome fortune, found his sisters Mrs. Glenville and
Mrs. Littleton, in great distress, their husbands being recently
dead; and having not long before his return buried
his wife, (who however had borne him no children,) he immediately
took under his protection the two widowed ladies,
his sisters, together with the four children of Mrs. Glenville.
Fearing his means were not sufficient to sustain the
burden providentially cast upon him, at least in the way
that was desirable, he resolved to remove to Kentucky.
Accordingly, the new organized family all removed to the
West; with the exception of Miss Eliza Glenville, who
was left to complete her education with the excellent and
justly celebrated Mr. Jaudon. With this amiable and interesting
creature,[1]
Mr. Carlton, who somehow or other
acquainted—
“Oh! Mr. Carlton!—do tell all about this—”
Not now, young ladies, something must be reserved for
future works. But after the usual courtships, lovers' quarrels,
scenes and walks in the garden—(Pratt's,) versifications,
notes on gilt-edged, flame-coloured paper, ornamented
with cooing doves and little fat dumpling cupids—in short,
after the most approved meltings, misgivings, misapprehensions
and so forth, came the customary Miss-taking—and
with the consent of friends east and west we were married.
It had been part of the arrangement that Mr. and Mrs.
Carlton should join the family in Kentucky, and that we
should establish there a Boarding School for Young Ladies;
but now came a letter from John Glenville that Uncle John
unfortunate, not in selling a very valuable property at a fair
price, but in receiving that price in worthless notes of Kentucky
banks, (which, like most banks every twenty or thirty
years, had failed,) had with his remaining funds, as his only
resort, bought a tract of government lands in the New Purchase;
and, that, if I could join him with a few hundred
dollars in a little tanning, store-keeping, and honest speculation,
we might gain, if not riches, at least independence.
He added that may be something could be done in the school
line.
Sorry so good a man as Uncle John—and the world boasts
none nobler—should be the victim of fraud, yet strange!
I found mingled with the feeling of distress a secret joy
that so plausible an inducement existed for a life in the genuine,
far away, almost unfindable backwoods! Less poetic
indeed than her husband, yet Mrs. C. earnestly wished to
see her relatives; and so off we started, as the reader knows,
in Chapter Second, and here we are waking up a little from
a curious dream, in Chapter Fourteenth. Some folks dream
all the way through to the very last chapter!
Here we found our new relative the Rev. James Hilsbury,
who had married Sarah Glenville in Kentucky, and
was now a missionary in the Purchase, in order to look up
“a few sheep scattered in the wilderness.” And to our
great amazement here we found too, Uncle Leatherstocking;
for about him Glenville in his letter had been silent, willing
us to be, as all had been, taken by surprise; because the
family on removing to their new world had found the old
gentleman comfortably squatted in a little nook of their territories,
when he was supposed all the time to be yet among
the Indians on Lake Michigan!
At the time of our arrival Uncle John was barely recovered
from a very serious hurt received in the early settlement
of the colony. In order to prepare a cabin he left the
family in Kentucky and went to the Purchase alone; it
being arranged that the family under the care of John Glenville
should join him as soon as information came that things
were ready. But one day Mr. Seymour, being with his
guide in the woods, and in the act of mounting a restive
horse, the animal scared at the near and sudden leap of a
deer, plunged and knocked down Mr. Seymour, causing the
fracture of one arm and several ribs. For six dreadful weeks
he there lay in consequence, under a shantee of poles and
bark actually built over him as he lay unable to be moved, by
some neighbours called by the guide. And these set the
bones and dressed the wounds, according to Mr. Seymour's
directions, as well as they could; and then leaving the sufferer
alone most of the day, as was unavoidable, they brought
his victuals at irregular intervals, and slept near him by turns
at night. On one occasion, however, our wounded friend
would have received a very disagreeable visitor, but for the
fortunate arrival at the moment of a neighbour woman with
his dinner—who exclaimed,
“Grammins! neighbour Seymour, if there ain't a powerful
nasty varmint coming to see you!”
The nature of the visitor was soon revealed to Uncle John;
for alarmed at the approach of the woman, the “nasty varmint”
close to the patient's head but behind his camp, raising
his terrific head, made at the same time the whole woods
tremulously vocal with that rattle so peculiar and so startling
even to the accustomed ear. But scarcely had Uncle
John time for alarm before the fearless woman had stopped
the music; and then dragging his dying snakeship in front
of the camp, she first measured his length, more than five
and a half feet, and secondly pulled off what she called “a
right smart chance of rattles” and gave them to Mr. Seymour.
And this memento of his escape, Uncle John one
day as he narrated the affair, handed over to me to hang to
the sounding post of my fiddle—such being the western
secret of converting common violins into cremonas. I tried
the experiment of course; but not being willing to take out
a patent, I now offer the said rattles to any ingenious Yankee,
(who wishes to try the thing,) for a box of clarified rosin!—the
rattles count sixteen and a button; just sixteen
semi, and part of a demisemiquaver to every shake!
As soon as Mr. Seymour could be carried, he was conveyed
to Mr. Sturgis' house, and then he wrote for his family;
who hastening on through many inconveniences and
perils, all arrived in safety and found Uncle John just able
to walk without assistance. But as to the cabin it was as
yet unchinked, undaubed, and without its stack chimney;
yet into that deplorable hovel all were forced to remove and
complete it at their leisure! Ay! folks that knew all about
three story brick houses in Philadelphia! and who had
ridden in thier own carriages, in the settlements of the Old
Purchase! and promenaded Chesnut-street, some of them
haughtily, and proudly, and delicately!
Ye that have paid $20,000 for a dwelling, what do you
think of a dwelling that cost 20,000 cents?—for that our
cabin cost—and experienced woodmen said that was too
cabin could have all been finished off for $10! from the
laying of the first stick to the topping of the chimney!!
Our cabin was in truth a cabin of the Rough Order; for
reader, the orders of cabin architecture are various like those
of the Greek; for instance—the Scotched Order. In this,
logs are hacked longitudinally and a slice taken from one
side, the primitive bark being left on the other sides. The
scotching, however, is usually done for pastime by the boys
and young women, while the men are cutting or hauling other
timbers. The Hewed Order—in which logs, like the stones
for Solomon's Temple, are dressed on purpose. The Stick-out-Corner
Order—the logs left to project at the corners;
and the reverse of this, the Cut-off-Corner Order. I might
name too, the Doubtful or Double Order. In this, two cahins
are built together, but until the addition of chimneys, it
is doubtful whether the structure is for men or brutes; and
also the Composite Order—i. e. loggeries with stone or
brick chimneys.
But our abode was, from necessity, of the Rough Order
—its logs being wholly unhewed and unscotched—its corners
projecting and hung with horse collars, gears, rough
towels, dish cleaners and calabashes! it had moreover a
very rude puncheon floor, a clapboard roof, and a clapboard
door; while for window a log in the erection had been
skipped, and through this longitudinal aperture came light
and—also wind, it being occasionally shut at first with a
blanket, afterwards with a clapboard shutter. Neither nail
nor spike held any part of the cabin together; and even
the door was hung not with iron, but with broad hinges of
tough bacon skin. These, however, our two dogs, (of whom
more hereafter,) soon smelled and finally gnawed clean off;
when we pinned on thick half tanned leather, which swagging
till the door dragged on the earth, we at last manufactured
wooden hinges; and these remained till the dissolution
twenty feet square, as measured by an axe-handle having
set off on itself two feet from the store keeper's yardstick,
where the cabin builder bought his handle at Woodville.
But I ever believed the yardstick itself must have shrunk
in seasoning, because our carpets stretched inside, as will
be described in the next Chapter, made the gross length only
nineteen feet two inches, and the neat length inside, an average
about seventeen feet one inch. As our arrival caused
a new arrangement of the interior cabin, we shall start on
this subject afresh in
| CHAPTER XIV. The new purchase, or, Seven and a half years in the far West | |