 | CHAPTER XII. Westward ho! |  |
12. CHAPTER XII.
The best man of the village, and other matters.
Nothing worthy of being handed down to
posterity occurred in the village of Dangerfieldville
until the expiration of some three weeks,
when Master Zeno Paddock received a packet
franked by the honourable Leonard Dangerfield,
and containing a printed copy of his maiden
speech in the House of Assembly. In the United
States, and more especially in the west, making
a speech is considered equivalent to gaining a
great victory by sea or land. It constitutes an
era in the life of a young man, and with great
reason; for in a free community, where there
are no standing armies of any kind, either soldiers
or police, sufficient to enforce obedience, the
power of persuasion is the supreme power, and
he who best wields it the true monarch. The
next day the Western Sun rose in all its glory; it
contained an account of the great debate on the
subject of the small ward collector's malversations,
which not only involved many important
constitutional principles, but incidentally
affected the liberties of the people, and not only
the people, but all their posterity.
On this great question, according to the Western
Sun, “the honourable Mr. Stapvital spoke
four hours, with an eloquence never surpassed
Flamgudgeon followed on the other side, in a
speech of six hours, replete with argument and
profound investigation; he was answered by
the honourable Mr. Doddipol, who was on his
legs (or, as Zeno unfortunately had it, knees)
upwards of eight hours, and electrified the house
by a display of oratory which Cicero might
have envied, and Tully strove in vain to equal.
The honourable Mr. Flapdowdle took the floor
on the other side; and in a speech of three
days presented a bird's eye view of the state of
Europe, from the decline and fall of the Roman
empire to the decline and fall of Napoleon.
This occupied the first day. On the second he
talked about railroads, canals, internal (or, as
Zeno had it, infernal) improvements, the public
lands, state rights, and the tariff; and on the
third he discussed the subject of matters and
things in general. It was a most powerful
effort of eloquence. The speaker was observed
several times to hang down his head, as if overpowered
by the weight of argument; several
of the members nodded assent on various occasions;
and many serious accidents happened to
the little children, whose mothers and nurses
were so fascinated by Mr. Flapdowdle's eloquence,
that they forgot to go home and take
care of their domestic affairs. But when the
honourable Mr. Dangerfield arose, you might
hear the grass grow in the fields, there was such
a deathlike silence. He commenced by a solemn
exordium,” &c. &c. Here followed the
speech, which, indeed, was one that did the
young man great honour, and was only rendered
of Master Zeno Paddock, who manufactured a
whole column of fustian on the occasion.
On the adjournment of the legislature, which
happened immediately after the great debate
concerning the delinquency of the small ward
collector, Leonard Dangerfield returned home,
where he was received with affectionate pride
by his family, and with enthusiasm by the
people of the village, who decreed him the ovation
of a barbecue. The young man was struck
with the change which a few weeks had made
in the looks of his sister, and, above all, in
her deportment and temper. She was deadly
pale, and the charming roundness of her figure,
which had been fostered by the pure springs and
pure air of the Kentucky uplands, had given
place to a meager form, all lassitude and weakness.
The alteration had not struck the parents,
who saw her every day; but when Leonard
pointed it out to them, their fears were
greatly excited. A consultation was held, which
ended in a plan for a little family tour and voyage
on the Mississippi, which, it was hoped,
might give a new direction to her feelings, by
the change and variety of objects it would offer
to her contemplation. Virginia gave a listless
assent, and the thing was presently arranged.
The great Pompey, who grew grayer and
younger every day, and the little Pompey, now
a greater man than his ancestor, were to accompany
them. But Mr. Littlejohn, after divers
expressive yawns, decided, that as they would
want an active person to look round and take
would stay at home.
It was now the early autumn, when our travellers
set forth on horseback to strike some point
of the Mississippi, whence they might embark
in one of the steamboats which now began to ply
regularly between St. Louis and New Orleans.
Their object in this land journey was to give
Virginia the benefit of the exercise it afforded.
In the short period that had intervened since
Colonel Dangerfield sought the wilderness,—
such are the rapid changes which the genius of
freedom, the parent of courage, energy, and generous
enterprise, produces in these regions—roads
had been made in various directions, and little
towns, destined in the imagination of the founders
one day to become the mart of half the
New World, had risen, or at least had been “laid
out,” as the phrase is, wherever a favourable
situation presented itself. Yet still, occasional
parts of the ride were through primeval forests,
the growth of the virgin earth, whose unexhausted
energies produced all the wonders of
spontaneous vegetation. If it should peradventure
ever happen to our book to be read by persons
unacquainted with the energies which seem
to be here communicated from the soil to its
lords, they will doubtless marvel at the phenomenon
of a young and delicate girl and an
elderly matron thus travelling after the manner
of the lady-errants of yore, on ambling palfrey,
through unpeopled solitudes. But we assure
them nothing is, or was a few years ago, more
common; and we ourselves were once acquainted
with a little fair-haired, blue-eyed western
who used to accompany her father, a senator of
the United States, to the seat of government,
and return with him (a distance of more than
seven hundred miles), on horseback.
In due time our travellers reached a little
town on the banks of the Mississippi—that
mighty river, with a name almost as long as its
interminable course—just in the nick of time to
get on board a steamboat on her way upwards.
As the vessel steered out from the shore into
the rash and boiling stream, whose force appeared
as if it might baffle all the powers physical
and intellectual of that sturdy little emmet
yclept man, it was sublime to see how at first
she trembled on being struck by the current,
and stood still, as if to collect her energies for
the great encounter of all that was consummate
in art with all that was tremendous in nature.
At first, it seemed doubtful which would gain
the victory, until, by degrees, the boat began to
ascend faster and faster, and dashed forward
with a triumphant vigour, which seemed to proclaim
that the power of art was irresistible. No
one, indeed, can behold the change which these
vessels are now silently bringing about in the
great region of the west, and resist the conclusion
that the genius of Fulton, whom the ungenerous
rivalry of England has sought to rob
of the glory of having consummated this noble
invention, has laid the foundation of greater
and more rapid changes in the New World than
the genius of Napoleon did in the Old.
The novelty of this mode of conveyance, and
the beauty of the scenery, which, after passing
gradually awakened Virginia from that feeling
of lassitude and hopeless indifference which had
by degrees usurped the dominion of her once
active, energetic mind. The long rich “bottom”
called Bois Brulé, which by the learned
Thebans of the broad-horns has been done into
English under the name of “Bob Ruly;” the
Cornice Rock, forming a regular massive wall
of perpendicular strata, and exhibiting all the
appearance of a long castellated rampart; the
High Tower, rearing itself out of the bosom of
the swift current in lonely grandeur; the far-famed
“Sycamore-root,” that spot infamous in
the logbooks of Mississippi navigators for the
wreck of many a stately broad-horn; the darting
of the boat across the river, from the swift
adverse current to the favourable eddy; the
manœuvring to avoid the snags and sawyers,
names of dangerous import; and a thousand
other novelties, all rapidly succeeding each
other, restored a temporary spring and cheerfulness
of heart, to which for some time she had
been a stranger.
When tired of the river, they went ashore at
the little towns on its banks, and stopped for
another boat, until finally they reached St.
Louis, which, standing near the point of junction
of two of the greatest rivers of the earth,
aspires with the claim of legitimacy to a future
eminence, of which the people seem to think
they can form no sufficient idea. Here all that
was old was French, and all that was new
American. It is the land of saints; St. Charles,
St. Louis, St. Genevieve, St. Francis, and many
the abodes of the ancient faith. The residence
of the Frenchman was more picturesque in the
distance; its mud walls, neatly whitewashed,
appeared beautiful in the midst of rich meadows,
or on the borders of prairies adorned with harvests
of flowers, casting forth the perfumes of
a hundred Arabies. The Yankee, on the contrary,
follows his own fashion; and as it seems
the destiny of that revolutionary race to change
every thing wheresoever they go, our travellers
could easily detect the commencement of the
wonders they achieve in their incessant wanderings.
It is curious to reflect on the odd confusion
of names to be found in this and every other
portion of the United States. The early settlers
seem to have put in requisition the four
quarters of the world. St. Francis and Perry,
St. Charles and Monroe, St. Louis and Madison,
St. Genevieve and Jefferson, Hannibal and
Potosi, Belle Fontaine and Herculaneum, New
Madrid and Tywapatia, Palmyra and Bluffton,
Caledonia and Kaskaskias, Tiber and Waconda,
Pinkney and Grenville, Columbia and Cote sans
Dessein, not forgetting the Big Black Fork of
Little White River, and a thousand more, all
form a portion of the body politic of the state
of Missouri, and all he peaceably together side
by side. Some owe their existence here to the
attachments of men who came from far distant
countries; some to religious feelings; some to
classical recollections; some to a patriotic attachment
to distinguished names; some to
vanity; and some to caprice. The whole combination
from distant regions of the earth, and here perpetuating,
as far as possible, the country of their
fathers or the place of their nativity. The
names of a few of the great rivers may, perhaps,
serve to keep alive the recollection of the
first lords of the soil long after every other memorial
has passed away
One of the most novel as well as enchanting
scenes in nature is the prairie, or delta, extending
to a distance of many miles between the
two great rivers. It is for a considerable portion
of the year one sea of flowers, one wide
region of fragrance; and its features differ from
those of any other lands in any other country.
Not a tree is to be seen except upon its outer
edge, and the blue horizon meets it everywhere,
forming a long straight line, without the least
appearance of irregularity or undulation. As
you cast your eye over it, it is all one series of
deceptions. Sometimes, owing to a particular
state of the atmosphere, or the position of the
sun, distances and objects are increased or diminished
like the vagaries of the phantasmagoria;
things that are near will appear as if at
a great distance, and those at a distance at other
times seem as if you could almost touch them.
Now a bird will seem as if touching the sky
with its head, and anon the herds appear like
an assemblage of insects. One day it was proposed
to Virginia to make an excursion to St.
Charles, and visit at the same time the Mamelles,
as the French have aptly called them,—
a succession of fine regular bluffs of great height,
and commanding a full view of the beautiful
return to a little old picturesque French village,
there to sojourn awhile if they should find comfortable
accommodations. They passed a delightful
morning in rambling among the endless
variety of flowers, or on the summits of the
Mamelles, whence they could distinguish the
two vast streams which here unite in a spot
worthy of them both. Nothing could be more
beautiful to the eye, nothing more ennobling to
the imagination, which carried them to the distance
of thousands of miles, to the remote and
almost unknown, unvisited regions whence
they receive their first tribute from some nameless
spring in some nameless mountain recess
or hidden forest. After banqueting on the
scene till almost satiated with its redundant
beauties, they rode over to the French village,
where they found tolerable accommodations at
the house of a little old Frenchman, like all his
gallant nation, good-humoured, polite, and devoted
to the ladies.
But he did not like the Yankees, by which
term he designated the Americans in general.
They had begun terrible inroads upon the old
customs of the village, and to make the dust of
antiquity, which had been quietly gathering
there for two centuries, fly at a great rate.
“They are commencing their pestilential improvements,”
said he, “and one has nothing to
do now but to work all day to be only as comfortable
as we used to be without working at
all. When I first came here, one had only to
apply to the governor, and he gave him as much
land as he could cultivate, without slaving himself
secretary. Now Congress makes everybody pay
for it, and in a little while the Yankees make
it worth so much that it is enough to ruin a
man to buy it. In fact, they increase the price
of every thing, and I myself have been obliged
to descend to the honour of entertaining the ladies
at my house, in order to keep up with the
march of improvement, as they call it. Diable,
monsieur! the Yankees are so busy, they have
no time to go to church except on Sunday, and
instead of hearing the bells ring so charmingly
from morning to night, as they used to do here
when the people had nothing to do but pray
and dance, parbleu! these heretics eat fish, I
believe, every day when they can get them, except
in Lent. Ah! monsieur, the old French
regime—the old Spanish regime much more
charming. Ah! so easy, so—what you call?—
ah! yes, so lazy as the Yankees say. No gentleman,
no noblesse, no aristocracy now. Eh
bien! never mind — can't be helped. Malbrook
son—” and he skipped off, humming the
old French air with right good will.
Having performed his vocation, whatever it
was, he returned, just as a tall, raw-boned, athletic
fellow was standing opposite the window
of the hotel, pronouncing himself to be half
horse, half alligator, and a little of the snapping-turtle;
and affirming, with a few original
oaths peculiar to this latitude, that he could
whip his weight in wild cats, there being no
back out in him or any of his breed. He was
all the way from Roaring River, and had once
rode through a crab-apple orchard on a flash of
feats too tedious to mention.
“Pray, monsieur, who is that valiant person?”
asked Colonel Dangerfield.
“Ah! that is the best man in the village.
Diable! under the French and Spanish regime,
the good priest was the best man; now this
half horse, half alligator is the best. Voilà,
monsieur! he goes about, he challenges everybody,
he whips everybody, and then, diable!
he calls himself the best man in the village!
Hey, begar! this is one way of being good, I
think. 'Tis what they call one Yankee notion,
I suppose.”
The best man in the village was, in fact, a
sort of George-a-Green, a Pinder of Wakefield,
the champion of the community, the glass of
fashion, the director of public opinion among
his fellow-boatmen, and a sort of privileged outlaw
who played all sorts of pranks with a prescriptive
impunity originating in that involuntary
respect which is everywhere paid among
the common people to strength and courage
combined. Yet he was not ill-natured nor
blood-thirsty, but was actuated by a false taste
rather than a bad heart. Such men mark the
existence of a state of society in which the
physical and pugnacious qualities predominate
over the intellectual; and their disappearance,
like that of the buffalo and beaver, is a sure
sign that civilization is at hand. In the van
of life, where every step and every station is
beset with dangers from the wild beast and the
wild man, courage is the quality of all others
most in request; and it is not to be wondered
chronic, and subsist long after the necessity has
ceased. The best man of the village would
have been a treasure surrounded by dangers;
he was little better than a nuisance in a civilized
community.
| CHAPTER XII. Westward ho! | |