University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
The Wilderness.

Early next morning, ere the tints of the bright
morning reddened the eastern sky, or the birds had
left their perches among the clustering foliage, all
things being ready, Sybrandt launched his light canoe
on the smooth mirror of the Hudson, and assisted
by the dusky Charon, old Tjerck, paddled away upward,
towards the sources of that majestic river.
The first day they occasionally saw, along its low,
luxuriant borders, some scattered indications of the
footsteps of the white man, and heard amid the high,
towering forests at a distance in the uplands the axe
of the first settler, the crash of the falling tree, the
barking of the deep-mouthed hound, and the report
of a solitary, distant gun, repeated over and over by
the echoes, never perhaps awakened thus before. A
rude hut, the first essay towards improvement upon
the Indian wigwam, appeared here and there at far
intervals along the shores, the image of desertion
and desolation, but teeming with life and living souls.
As they passed along, the little half-clothed, white-haired
urchins poured forth by dozens, gazing and
shouting at the passing strangers. Gradually these
evidences of the progress of that roving, adventurous
race, which is sending forth its travellers, its merchants,
its scholars, its warriors, and its missionaries,

armed with the sword and the Bible, into every region
of the peopled earth, ceased altogether. Nature
displayed herself naked before them, and the
innocent earth exhibited her beauties in all the careless,
unstudied simplicity of our first parents, ere the
sense of guilt taught them to blush and be ashamed.
There was silence on the earth, on the waters, and
in the air, save when the voice of nature spoke in
the whirlwind, the thunder, and the raging of the
river when the full-charged clouds poured their deluge
into its placid bosom.

Night, which in the crowded haunts of men is the
season of silence and repose, was here far more
noisy than the day. It was then that the prowling
freebooters of the woods issued from their recesses
to seek their prey and hymn their shrill or growling
vespers to the changeful moon or the everlasting
stars, those silent witnesses of what mortals wish to
hide. As they toiled upward in the moonlight evenings
against the current, which every day became
more rapid as they proceeded towards the falls, they
were hailed from the shore at intervals by the howl
of the wolves, the growling of the bears, and the cold,
cheerless quaverings of the solitary screech-owl.
When, tired with the labours of the day, they drew
their canoe to the shore and lay by for the night,
their only safety was in lighting a fire and keeping
it burning all the time. This simple expedient furnishes
the only security against the ferocious hunger
of these midnight marauders, who never approach
within a certain distance, where they stand and
howl, and glare with their eyes, a mark for the woodman,
who takes his never-failing aim directly between
these two balls of living fire.

But the labours of our hero's voyage were far

greater than the dangers. He and his trusty squire
had to breast the swift current from morning until
night, and win every foot of their way by skill and
exertion combined. Sometimes the current swept
through a long, narrow reach, between ledges of
rocks that crowded it into increasing depth and velocity,—at
others it wound its devious way by sudden,
abrupt turnings, bristling on every side with
sharp projections either just above or just below the
surface; and at others they were obliged to unlade
their light canoe, and carry its lading fairly round
some impassable obstruction. In this manner they
proceeded, winning their way inch by inch—watching
with an attention, an anxiety never to be relaxed for
a moment without the danger, nay, the certainty, of
the shipwreck of their frail canoe, the loss of their
cargo, and the disgrace of an unsuccessful voyage.
This last was what every young man feared beyond
all the dangers and privations of his enterprise. It
was a death-blow to his reputation, as well as his
future prospects; for not a rural damsel would condescend
to waste a smile upon a youthful admirer
who had failed in his first adventure. The two qualities
most valued among these good people were
courage and prudence; and it argued a want of both
of these when he lost his boat and his cargo, or
stopped short of a good market among the men of
the woods.

At length, after enduring what would demolish a
regiment of well-dressed dandies in these degenerate
times, on the fourth day, towards evening, they were
warned by a distant, dull, monotonous, heavy sound
of their approach to the falls of Fort Edward, as
they were then called—at that time a frontier
post.

“Hark! massa Sybrandt,” said Tjerck, as he
paused from plying his ceaseless paddle: “hark!
I hear him.”

“Hear what?” replied the other.

“The falls, massa. Maybe we find some Indians
dare to trade wid.”

Sybrandt listened and could plainly distinguish
the leaden plunge of the river gradually becoming
more distinct as the canoe made its way up the
stream, which now began to whirl about in boiling eddies,
each crowned in its centre with a cap of snow-white
foam. Turning a projecting point, they met
the full force of the current; which, spite of all
their efforts, jerked the bow of the light canoe completely
round, and shot her, like an arrow from a
bow, out into the middle of the river. Finding it
impossible to proceed any farther in this way, they
landed and commenced the laborious task of unlading
and carrying their merchandise and canoe
round the falls to meet the placid current above.
While thus occupied, they encountered a party of
Mohawks, who had come thither to fish, headed
by a chief called Paskingoe, or the one-eyed. He
was a tall, athletic savage, six feet high, of a ferocious
appearance and indifferent character. He
had lost an eye in some drunken brawl; and having
mixed a good deal with the white men, exhibited
the usual effects of such an intercourse, in a combination
of the vices of both races. Cunning, avaricious,
and revengeful, he still had sufficient mastery
over his feelings to disguise them when occasion
required, except under the influence of intoxication;
then his bad passions became ungovernable,
and his rage without discrimination or control.
It was said he had killed his own son in one of

these bloody paroxysms, under pretence that he
was undermining his influence with the tribe. He
was sitting with his party of four Indians besides
himself under the shade of a clump of pines that
nodded over the foaming torrent, when Sybrandt
and Tjerck, suddenly and unexpectedly to themselves,
came full upon them. The Indians had
seen them coming up the river afar off, with a keenness
of vision they possess perhaps beyond even
the animals of the forest.

“Welcome, brother,” said the chief to Sybrandt.

“Ah! Paskingoe, how you do?” said Tjerck,
who had known him before. “I no tink to see you
here; and I no glad neither,” added he aside to
himself.

There was little ceremony practised in these interviews
between the traders and the Indians. Sybrandt
inquired for furs, and the chief asked what
he had to exchange for them. Finding that Sybrandt
had brought with him two or three kegs of
that poison which has swept away the race of the
red men, and seems almost on the eve of doing the
same to the whites, Paskingoe became very earnest
with him to go to the junction of the Hudson with the
Sacondaga, where he said he had plenty of people
who would exchange commodities with him.

Tjerck shook his head, and Sybrandt paused.

“What, is my brother afraid?” said Paskingoe.

“Is not the Mohawk the friend of the white man?
Men that are afraid should stay at home with their
wives,” added he contemptuously.

“I am not afraid; but”—

“Huh!” said Paskingoe; “when I go to the
fort, I will tell them I met a white man who dared
not go to the Sacondaga, because he heard an old

owl screech;” alluding to the shrugs and motions
of old Tjerck. “My brother will get no beavers
unless he goes to Sacondaga. He will go home as
he came, and the young women will laugh at him.”

Sybrandt thought of Catalina, and determined to
go with the chief. The Indians assisted him in
carrying his canoe and merchandise round the portages
at Fort Edward and Glens Falls; and though
they cast many a longing look at the kegs of rum,
throwing out many shrewd hints at the same time,
they neither stole nor took any of it by violence.
At length, after a toilsome voyage, they reached
the junction of the two rivers, where neither was a
hundred yards wide. The mighty Hudson was
here a little pastoral stream, giving no promise of
his majestic after-course, or of the riches he was
destined to bear in future times upon his broad bosom.
Near the place of their uniting there were
vast tracts of low and wild meadows without trees,
coursed by the devious windings of the various
branches of the Sacondaga, which at that time
abounded with the finest trout. It was a wild, solitary
region, entirely out of the usual route of travellers,
who either followed the course of the Mohawk
river, or left the Hudson at Fort Edward, and
struck across the high hills to the end of Lake
George in the way to Canada. The nearest settlement
was at Johnstown, towards the south, where
Sir William Johnson resided, and exercised that
sway over the tribes of Indians far and near which
still remains, and will remain for ever, a subject of
admiration and wonder.

There were neither Indians nor beaver-skins at
the station, as promised by Paskingoe, who, by
closely examining the grass, ascertained, as he said,
that the party had gone away a day or two before

towards the fishing-house. This was a small lodge
built on a little rocky elevation, just on the edge of
the vast meadows, and at the head of one of the
branches of the Sacondaga, by Sir William Johnson,
who sometimes came there from Johnstown to
hunt and fish. Paskingoe assured Sybrandt he
would find them not far from the lodge, which, being
unoccupied great part of the time, the Indians
occasionally slept in when the weather was bad.
If any idea of danger crossed the mind of Sybrandt,
it was coupled with the conviction that if Paskingoe
had any bad designs he could execute them
just as well where he was as at the place where
he wished him to go. He therefore consented to
accompany him, notwithstanding all the eloquence
of old Tjerck, who, by signs and looks, attempted
to dissuade him. Accordingly, early the next
morning, they embarked on the sluggish Sacondaga,
the Indians in their canoe, and Sybrandt with his
trusty squire in his, and paddled their way along
the devious windings of the lazy solitary stream,
that seemed a vast serpent asleep in the high grass
that skirted its banks. After proceeding some
miles they became, as it were, lost in the pathless
monotony of the vast meadows, which presented
in the hazy obscurity of a cloudy day no distinct
outline or boundary. The silence all around them
was as the silence of a winter's night, when the
wind is hushed to a freezing calm, save that the
dipping of the paddles, at measured intervals, was
heard, and scarcely heard, like the clicking of the
death-watch when all else is still. Sometimes at
rare intervals a solitary heron would raise his long
neck above the grass along the stream, and make a
strange discordant noise, which was echoed by the
Indians in mockery; but otherwise it was a dead
pause of nature; the world of sound was still, and
the world of sight presented nothing but a landscape
of drear melancholy sameness, a sky of one
dim unvarying shade of motionless clouds.

Sybrandt felt his solitary situation, which became
gradually more disagreeable from his seeing, or imagining
he saw, certain looks of equivocal meaning
pass between Paskingoe and his Indians. On one
occasion, turning suddenly round, he observed the
one-eyed chief shake his head in answer to an inquiring
look of one of his companions, and point in the
direction where, peering above the dead level of the
meadow, stood the little rustic fishing-house. Towards
evening they approached the head of the navigation
of the stream, close by which stood the
building. For some time before the dull flashes of
the lightning, followed at lazy intervals by the distant
chit-chat thunders, rumbling and muttering, had
indicated the approach of a storm. Gradually the
Indians plied their paddles at quicker and quicker
intervals, and so did Sybrandt and his squire, in order
to keep pace with them. At length, just as they
arrived at a little rude landing-place, where Sir William
Johnson launched his canoe when going on a
fishing-match, the distant waving of the pine forest,
which here bordered in majestic gloom and grandeur
on the edge of the wide meadow, and the pattering
drops of rain, announced that the crisis was approaching
rapidly. There was only time for Sybrandt to
cover his merchandise carefully, ere it came in torrents
on the wings of a wind that laid flat the rank
high grass, and made the forest groan. The party,
both Sybrandt, Tjerck, and the Indians, made the best
of their way to the fishing-house, the door of which
was opened without ceremony, there being no one
in it, and no furniture requiring a guard.