14. LETTER XIV.
This is return month, dear Doctor, and if it were
only to be in fashion, you should have a quid pro quo
for your four pages. October restores and returns;
your gay friends and invalids return to the city; the
birds and the planters return to the south; the seed
returns to the granary; the brook at my feet is noisy
again with its returned waters; the leaves are returning
to the earth; and the heart that has been out-of-doors
while the summer lasted, comes home from its
wanderings by field and stream, and returns to feed on
its harvest of new thoughts, past pleasures, and
strengthened and confirmed affections. At this time
of the year, too, you expect a return (not of paste
board) for your “visits;” but, as you have made me
no visit, either friendly or professional, I owe you
nothing. And that is the first consolation I have
found for your short-comings (or no-comings-at-all)
to Glenmary.
Now, consider my arms a-kimbo, if you please,
while I ask you what you mean by calling Glenmary
“backwoods!” Faith, I wish it were more backwoods
than it is. Here be cards to be left, sir, morning
calls to be made, body-coat soirées, and ceremony
enough to keep one's most holyday manners well aired.
The two miles' distance between me and Owego serves
me for no exemption, for the village of Canewana,
which is a mile nearer on the road, is equally within
the latitude of silver forks; and dinners are given in
both, which want no one of the belongings of Belgrave-square,
save port-wine and powdered footmen.
I think it is in one of Miss Austin's novels that a lady
claims it to be a smart neighborhood in which she
“dines with four-and-twenty families.” If there are
not more than half as many in Owego who give dinners,
there are twice as many who ask to tea and give
ice-cream and champaign. Then for the fashions,
there is as liberal a sprinkling of French bonnets in
the Owego church as in any village congregation in
England. And for the shops—that subject is worthy
of a sentence by itself. When I say there is no need
to go to New-York for hat, boots, or coat, I mean
that the Owego tradesmen (if you are capable of describing
what you want) are capable of supplying you
with the best and most modish of these articles. Call
you that “backwoods?”
All this, I am free to confess, clashes with the beau
ideal of the
“Beatus ille qui procul,” etc.
I had myself imagined (and continued to imagine
for some weeks after coming here), that, so near the
primeval wilderness, I might lay up my best coat and
my ceremony in lavender, and live in fustian and a
plain way. I looked forward to the delights of a broad
straw hat, large shoes, baggy habiliments, and leave to
sigh or whistle without offence; and it seemed to me
that it was the conclusion of a species of apprenticeship,
and the beginning of my “freedom.” To be
above no clean and honest employment of one's time,
to drive a pair of horses or a yoke of oxen with equal
alacrity, and to be commented on for neither the one
nor the other; to have none but wholesome farming
cares, and work with nature and honest yeomen, and
be quite clear of mortifications, envies, advice, remonstrance,
coldness, misapprehensions, and etiquettes;
this is what I, like most persons who “forwear the
full tide of the world,” looked upon as the blessed
promise of retirement. But, alas! wherever there is
a butcher's shop and a post-office, an apothecary and
a blacksmith, an “Arcade” and a milliner—wherever
the conveniences of life are, in short—there has already
arrived the Procrustes of opinion. Men's eyes
will look on you and bring you to judgment, and unless
you would live on wild meat and corn-bread in the
wilderness, with neither friend nor helper, you must
give in to a compromise—yield half at least of your
independence, and take it back in common-place comfort.
This is very every-day wisdom to those who
know it, but you are as likely as any man in the world
to have sat with your feet over the fire, and fancied
yourself on a wild horse in a prairie, with nothing to
distinguish you from the warlike Camanche, except
capital wine in the cellar of your wigwam, and the last
new novel and play, which should reach this same wigwam—you
have not exactly determined how! Such
“pyramises are goodly things,” but they are built of
the smoke of your cigar.
This part of the country is not destitute of the
chances of adventure, however, and twice in the year,
at least, you may, if you choose, open a valve for your
spirits. One half the population of the neighborhood
is engaged in what is called lumbering, and until
the pine timber of the forest can be counted like the
cedars of Lebanon, this vocation will serve the uses
of the mobs of England, the revolutions of France, and
the plots of Italy. I may add the music and theatres
of Austria and Prussia, the sensual indulgence of the
Turk, and the intrigue of the Spaniard; for there is
in every people under the sun a superflu of spirits unconsumed
by common occupation, which, if not turned
adroitly or accidentally to some useful or harmless
end, will expend its reckless energy in trouble and
mischief.
The preparations for the adventures of which I
speak, though laborious, are often conducted like a
frolic. The felling of the trees in mid-winter, the cutting
of sluingles, and the drawing out on the snow, are
employments preferred by the young men to the tamer
but less arduous work of the farm-yard; and in the
temporary and uncomfortable shanties, deep in the
woods, subsisting often on nothing but pork and whiskey,
they find metal more attractive than village or
fireside. The small streams emptying into the Susquehannah
are innumerable, and eight or ten miles
back from the river the arks are built, and the materials
of the rafts collected, ready to launch with the
first thaw. I live, myself, as you know, on one of these
tributaries, a quarter of a mile from its junction. The
Owago trips along at the foot of my lawn, as private
and untroubled for the greater part of the year as
Virginia Water at Windsor; but, as it swells in March,
the noise of voices and hammering coming out from
the woods above, warn us of the approach of an ark,
and at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour the rude
structure shoots by, floating high on the water without
its lading (which it takes in at the village below), and
manned with a singing and saucy crew, who dodge the
branches of the trees, and work their steering paddles
with an adroitness and nonchalance which sufficiently
shows the character of the class. The sudden bends
which the river takes in describing my woody Omega,
put their steersmanship to the test; and when the
leaves are off the trees, it is a curious sight to see the
bulky monsters, shining with new boards, whirling
around in the swift eddies, and, when caught by the
current again, gliding off among the trees like a singing
and swearing phantom of an unfinished barn.
At the village they take wheat and pork into the
arks, load their rafts with plank and shingles, and wait
for the return of the freshet. It is a fact you may not
know, that when a river is rising, the middle is the
highest, and vice versa when falling, sufficiently proved
by the experience of the raftsmen, who, if they start
before the flow is at its top, can not keep their crafts
from the shore. A pent house, barely sufficient for
a man to stretch himself below, is raised on the deck,
with a fire-place of earth and loose stone, and with
what provision they can afford, and plenty of whiskey,
they shove out into the stream. Thenceforward it is
vogue la galére! They have nothing to do, all day,
but abandon themselves to the current, sing and dance
and take their turn at the steering oars; and when the
sun sets they look out for an eddy, and pull in to the
shore. The stopping-places are not very numerous,
and are well known to all who fellow the trade; and,
as the river swarms with rafts, the getting to land, and
making sure of a fastening, is a scene always of great
competition, and often of desperate fighting. When
all is settled for the night, however, and the fires are
lit on the long range of the flotilla, the raftsmen get
together over their whiskey and provender, and tell
the thousand stories of their escapes and accidents;
and with the repetition of this, night after night, the
whole rafting population along the five hundred miles
of the Susquehannah becomes partially acquainted,
and forms a sympathetic corps, whose excitement and
esprit might be roused to very dangerous uses.
By daylight they are cast off and once more on the
current, and in five or seven days they arrive at tide
water, where the crew is immediately discharged, and
start, usually on foot, to follow the river home again.
There are several places in the navigation which are
dangerous, such as rapids and dam-sluices; and what
with these, and the scenes at the eddies, and their pilgrimage
through a thinly settled and wild country
home again, they see enough of adventure to make
them fireside heroes, and incapacitate them (while
their vigor lasts, at least), for all the more quiet habits
of the farmer. The consequence is easy to be seen.
Agriculture is but partially followed throughout the
country, and while these cheap facilities for transporting
produce to the seaboard exist, those who are contented
to stay at home, and cultivate the rich river
lands of the country, are sure of high prices and a
ready reward for their labor.
Moral. Come to the Susquehannah, and settle on
a farm. You did not know what I was driving at all
this while!
The raftsmen who “follow the Delaware” (to use
their own poetical expression) are said to be a much
wilder class than those on the Susquehannah. In returning
to Owego, by different routes, I have often
fallen in with parties of both: and certainly nothing
could be more entertaining than to listen to their tales.
In a couple of years the canal route on the Susquehannah
will lay open this rich vein of the picturesque
and amusing, and as the tranquil boat glides peacefully
along the river bank, the traveller will be surprised
with the strange effect of these immense flotillas,
with their many fires and wild people, lying in
the glassy bends of the solitary stream, the smoke
stealing through the dark forest, and the confusion of
a hundred excited voices breaking the silence. In my
trip down the river in the spring, I saw enough that
was novel in this way to fill a new portfolio for Bartlett,
and I intend he shall raft it with me to salt water
the next time he comes among us.
How delicious are these October noons! They
will soon chill, I am afraid, and I shall be obliged to
give up my out-of-door's habits; but I shall do it unwillingly.
I have changed sides under the bridge, to
sit with my feet in the sun, and I trust this warm corner
will last me till November at least. The odor of
the dying leaves, and the song of the strengthening
brook, are still sufficient allurements, and even your
rheumatism (of which the Latin should be podagra)
might safely keep me company till dinner. Adieu,
dear Doctor! write me a long account of Vestris and
Matthews (how you like them, I mean, for I know very
well how I like them myself), and thank me for turning
over to you a new leaf of American romance. You
are welcome to write a novel, and call it “The Raftsman
of the Susquehannah.”
