University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

The ordinary causes of seeking new homes in the West
are well known. There, it is sometimes expected, a broken
fortune may be repaired, or one here too narrow, become, by
change of circumstances, ample enough for a growing family,
or a larger ambition. Indolence leads some thither, a distaste
of conventional trammels others; while not a few hope
to find a theatre, where small talents and learning may
figure to better advantage.

But some are led away to the West by poetical inducements.
To persons of tender sensibilities and ardent enthusiasm,
that is a land of beautiful visions; and its gorgeous
clouds, like drapery around the golden sunsets, is a curtain
veiling other and more distant glories. Such persons are
not insensible to worldly advantages, yet they abandon not
the East from the love of gain. They are rather evoked
and charmed away by a potent, if an imaginary spirit, resident
in that world of hoary wilds. From the prairie spreading
its grassy and flowery plains to meet the dim horizon,
from the river rolling a flood across half a continent, from
the forest dark and venerable with the growth of many centuries,

come, with every passing cloud and wind, the words
of resistless invitation; till the enchanted, concealing the
true causes, or pretending others, depart for the West. They
are weary of a prosaic life; they go to find a poetic one.

To much of this day-dreaming spirit is the world indebted
for the author's sojourn of seven and a half years in a part
of what was, at the time of this journey, the Far West.
In early boyhood, Mr. Carlton was no ordinary dreamer:
nay, in the sunshine, as by moonlight, shadows of branching
antlers and flint-headed arrows caused many a darkness in
his path, as visionary deer bounded away before the visionary
hunter. At school a boy of kindred soul occupied the adjacent
seat; and this boy's father had left him, as was then
believed, countless acres of rough mountains and woods
undesecrated by civilized feet. How far away this sylvan
territory may have been, was never asked, but it was near
enough and easy of access to day-dreamers; for we had
actually devised a plan to steal off secretly at some favourable
moment and find a joyous life in that forest elysium.
Before the external eye lay, indeed, Dilworth, his columns
of spelling in dreadful array of single, double and treble
files, surrounded by dog-ears curling up from the four corners
of the dirt-stained page; but the inner eye saw them
not. And if our lips moved, it was not to call over the
names of the detested words; no, it was in mysterious
whispers:—we were wrapt in a vision, and talked of bark
huts and bows and arrows—ay, we were setting dead-falls
and snares, and arranging the most feasible plans for the
woods and the mountains.

Such talks would, indeed, begin, and for a while, continue
so like the inarticulate buzz and hum of an old-fashioned
school-boy “getting by heart,” as to awaken no suspicion
in Master Strap. As enthusiasm, however, kindled, tones
became better defined and words more and more articulate.
Then ensued, first a very ominous and death-like stillness

in all parts of the school-room except ours, and then—the
sudden touch of a wand came that broke a deep spell, and
alas! alas! awoke us to our spelling! Poor children! we
cried then for pain and disappointment! The hour came
when we shed more bitter tears at sorer disappointments,
and in a severer school! Even as I write there is a thrill
of boyhood in my soul, and in despite of philosophy tears
are trembling in my eyes;—as if the man wept for the
crushed hopes of the boy!

Experience may curb our yearning towards the earth, yet
even amidst the longings after immortality and the things
that eye hath not seen, there do remain hungerings and
thirstings after a possible and more perfect mundane state.
At the dawn, therefore, of manhood Mr. Carlton still hoped
to meet in the Far West visions embodied although pictured
now in softer lights and graver colours. Shortly,
then, after our marriage in the first quarter of the present
century, after the honey-moon, indeed, but still within the
“love and cottage” period, Mrs. Carlton was persuaded to
exchange the tasteless and crowded solitude of Philadelphia
for the entrancing and real loneliness of the wilds, and
the promenade of dead brick for the living carpet of the
natural meadow.

Having no immoveables, and our moveables being easily
transmuted into baggage, preparation was speedily made;
and then hands were grasped and cheeks kissed, alas! for
a long adieu:—for when we returned with sober views and
chastened spirits, these, our first and best loved friends,
were sought, but “they were not.”