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Title: Sketches from Memory
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Release Date: September 6, 2003 [eBook #9233]
[Most recently updated: November 9, 2022]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
Produced by: David Widger and Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES FROM MEMORY ***
Sketches from Memory
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
It was now the middle of September. We had come since sunrise from Bartlett,
passing up through the valley of the Saco, which extends between mountainous
walls, sometimes with a steep ascent, but often as level as a church-aisle. All
that day and two preceding ones we had been loitering towards the heart of the
White Mountains,—those old crystal hills, whose mysterious brilliancy had
gleamed upon our distant wanderings before we thought of visiting them. Height
after height had risen and towered one above another till the clouds began to
hang below the peaks. Down their slopes were the red pathways of the slides,
those avalanches of earth, stones, and trees, which descend into the hollows,
leaving vestiges of their track hardly to be effaced by the vegetation of ages.
We had mountains behind us and mountains on each side, and a group of mightier
ones ahead. Still our road went up along the Saco, right towards the centre of
that group, as if to climb above the clouds in its passage to the farther
region.
In old times the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the Northern
Indians, coming down upon them from this mountain rampart through some defile
known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous path. A demon, it might be
fancied, or one of the Titans, was travelling up the valley, elbowing the
heights carelessly aside as he passed, till at length a great mountain took its
stand directly across his intended road. He tarries not for such an obstacle,
but, rending it asunder a thousand feet from peak to base, discloses its
treasures of hidden minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets of the
mountain’s inmost heart, with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each
side. This is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me that I have attempted
to describe it by so mean an image, feeling, as I do, that it is one of those
symbolic scenes which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not to the
conception, of Omnipotence.
We had now reached a narrow passage, which showed almost the appearance of
having been cut by human strength and artifice in the solid rock. There was a
wall of granite on each side, high and precipitous, especially on our right,
and so smooth that a few evergreens could hardly find foothold enough to grow
there. This is the entrance, or, in the direction we were going, the extremity,
of the romantic defile of the Notch. Before emerging from it, the rattling of
wheels approached behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the mountain,
with seats on top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a drab great-coat,
touching the wheel-horses with the whip-stock and reigning in the leaders. To
my mind there was a sort of poetry in such an incident, hardly inferior to what
would have accompanied the painted array of an Indian war-party gliding forth
from the same wild chasm. All the passengers, except a very fat lady on the
back seat, had alighted. One was a mineralogist, a scientific, green-spectacled
figure in black, bearing a heavy hammer, with which he did great damage to the
precipices, and put the fragments in his pocket. Another was a well-dressed
young man, who carried an operaglass set in gold, and seemed to be making a
quotation from some of Byron’s rhapsodies on mountain scenery. There was also a
trader, returning from Portland to the upper part of Vermont; and a fair young
girl, with a very faint bloom like one of those pale and delicate flowers which
sometimes occur among alpine cliffs.
They disappeared, and we followed them, passing through a deep pine forest,
which for some miles allowed us to see nothing but its own dismal shade.
Towards nightfall we reached a level amphitheatre, surrounded by a great
rampart of hills, which shut out the sunshine long before it left the external
world. It was here that we obtained our first view, except at a distance, of
the principal group of mountains. They are majestic, and even awful, when
contemplated in a proper mood, yet, by their breadth of base and the long
ridges which support them, give the idea of immense bulk rather than of
towering height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked near to Heaven: he was white
with snow a mile downward, and had caught the only cloud that was sailing
through the atmosphere to veil his head. Let us forget the other names of
American statesmen that have been stamped upon these hills, but still call the
loftiest WASHINGTON. Mountains are Earth’s undecaying monuments. They must
stand while she endures, and never should be consecrated to the mere great men
of their own age and country, but to the mighty ones alone, whose glory is
universal, and whom all time will render illustrious.
The air, not often sultry in this elevated region, nearly two thousand feet
above the sea, was now sharp and cold, like that of a clear November evening in
the lowlands. By morning, probably, there would be a frost, if not a snowfall,
on the grass and rye, and an icy surface over the standing water. I was glad to
perceive a prospect of comfortable quarters in a house which we were
approaching, and of pleasant company in the guests who were assembled at the
door.
OUR EVENING PARTY AMONG THE MOUNTAINS
WE stood in front of a good substantial farm-house, of old date in that wild
country. A sign over the door denoted it to be the White Mountain
Post-Office,—an establishment which distributes letters and newspapers to
perhaps a score of persons, comprising the population of two or three townships
among the hills. The broad and weighty antlers of a deer, “a stag of ten,” were
fastened at the corner of the house; a fox’s bushy tail was nailed beneath
them; and a huge black paw lay on the ground, newly severed and still bleeding,
the trophy of a bear-hunt. Among several persons collected about the doorsteps,
the most remarkable was a sturdy mountaineer, of six feet two, and
corresponding bulk, with a heavy set of features, such as might be moulded on
his own blacksmith’s anvil, but yet indicative of mother wit and rough humor.
As we appeared, he uplifted a tin trumpet, four or five feet long, and blew a
tremendous blast, either in honor of our arrival or to awaken an echo from the
opposite hill.
Ethan Crawford’s guests were of such a motley description as to form quite a
picturesque group, seldom seen together except at some place like this, at once
the pleasure-house of fashionable tourists and the homely inn of country
travellers. Among the company at the door were the mineralogist and the owner
of the gold operaglass whom we had encountered in the Notch; two Georgian
gentlemen, who had chilled their Southern blood that morning on the top of
Mount Washington; a physician and his wife from Conway; a trader of Burlington
and an old squire of the Green Mountains; and two young married couples, all
the way from Massachusetts, on the matrimonial jaunt. Besides these strangers,
the rugged county of Coos, in which we were, was represented by half a dozen
wood-cutters, who had slain a bear in the forest and smitten off his paw.
I had joined the party, and had a moment’s leisure to examine them before the
echo of Ethan’s blast returned from the hill. Not one, but many echoes had
caught up the harsh and tuneless sound, untwisted its complicated threads, and
found a thousand aerial harmonies in one stern trumpet-tone. It was a distinct
yet distant and dream-like symphony of melodious instruments, as if an airy
band had been hidden on the hillside and made faint music at the summons. No
subsequent trial produced so clear, delicate, and spiritual a concert as the
first. A field-piece was then discharged from the top of a neighboring hill,
and gave birth to one long reverberation, which ran round the circle of
mountains in an unbroken chain of sound and rolled away without a separate
echo. After these experiments, the cold atmosphere drove us all into the house,
with the keenest appetites for supper.
It did one’s heart good to see the great fires that were kindled in the parlor
and bar-room, especially the latter, where the fireplace was built of rough
stone, and might have contained the trunk of an old tree for a backlog.
A man keeps a comfortable hearth when his own forest is at his very door. In
the parlor, when the evening was fairly set in, we held our hands before our
eyes to shield them from the ruddy glow, and began a pleasant variety of
conversation. The mineralogist and the physician talked about the invigorating
qualities of the mountain air, and its excellent effect on Ethan Crawford’s
father, an old man of seventy-five, with the unbroken frame of middle life. The
two brides and the doctor’s wife held a whispered discussion, which, by their
frequent titterings and a blush or two, seemed to have reference to the trials
or enjoyments of the matrimonial state. The bridegrooms sat together in a
corner, rigidly silent, like Quakers whom the spirit moveth not, being still in
the odd predicament of bashfulness towards their own young wives. The Green
Mountain squire chose me for his companion, and described the difficulties he
had met with half a century ago in travelling from the Connecticut River
through the Notch to Conway, now a single day’s journey, though it had cost him
eighteen. The Georgians held the album between them, and favored us with the
few specimens of its contents, which they considered ridiculous enough to be
worth hearing. One extract met with deserved applause. It was a “Sonnet to the
Snow on Mount Washington,” and had been contributed that very afternoon,
bearing a signature of great distinction in magazines and annuals. The lines
were elegant and full of fancy, but too remote from familiar sentiment, and
cold as their subject, resembling those curious specimens of crystallized vapor
which I observed next day on the mountain-top. The poet was understood to be
the young gentleman of the gold opera-glass, who heard our laudatory remarks
with the composure of a veteran.
Such was our party, and such their ways of amusement. But on a winter evening
another set of guests assembled at the hearth where these summer travellers
were now sitting. I once had it in contemplation to spend a month hereabouts,
in sleighing-time, for the sake of studying the yeomen of New England, who then
elbow each other through the Notch by hundreds, on their way to Portland. There
could be no better school for such a purpose than Ethan Crawford’s inn. Let the
student go thither in December, sit down with the teamsters at their meals,
share their evening merriment, and repose with them at night when every bed has
its three occupants, and parlor, bar-room, and kitchen are strewn with
slumberers around the fire. Then let him rise before daylight, button his
great-coat, muffle up his ears, and stride with the departing caravan a mile or
two, to see how sturdily they make head against the blast. A treasure of
characteristic traits will repay all inconveniences, even should a frozen nose
be of the number.
The conversation of our party soon became more animated and sincere, and we
recounted some traditions of the Indians, who believed that the father and
mother of their race were saved from a deluge by ascending the peak of Mount
Washington. The children of that pair have been overwhelmed, and found no such
refuge. In the mythology of the savage, these mountains were afterwards
considered sacred and inaccessible, full of unearthly wonders, illuminated at
lofty heights by the blaze of precious stones, and inhabited by deities, who
sometimes shrouded themselves in the snow-storm and came down on the lower
world. There are few legends more poetical than that of the “Great Carbuncle”
of the White Mountains. The belief was communicated to the English settlers,
and is hardly yet extinct, that a gem, of such immense size as to be seen
shining miles away, hangs from a rock over a clear, deep lake, high up among
the hills. They who had once beheld its splendor were enthralled with an
unutterable yearning to possess it. But a spirit guarded that inestimable
jewel, and bewildered the adventurer with a dark mist from the enchanted lake.
Thus life was worn away in the vain search for an unearthly treasure, till at
length the deluded one went up the mountain, still sanguine as in youth, but
returned no more. On this theme methinks I could frame a tale with a deep
moral.
The hearts of the palefaces would not thrill to these superstitions of the red
men, though we spoke of them in the centre of their haunted region. The habits
and sentiments of that departed people were too distinct from those of their
successors to find much real sympathy. It has often been a matter of regret to
me that I was shut out from the most peculiar field of American fiction by an
inability to see any romance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian
character, at least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an
Indian story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our
literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as referring
to tribes which have mostly vanished from the earth, gives him a right to be
placed on a classic shelf, apart from the merits which will sustain him there.
I made inquiries whether, in his researches about these parts, our mineralogist
had found the three “Silver Hills” which an Indian sachem sold to an Englishman
nearly two hundred years ago, and the treasure of which the posterity of the
purchaser have been looking for ever since. But the man of science had
ransacked every hill along the Saco, and knew nothing of these prodigious piles
of wealth. By this time, as usual with men on the eve of great adventure, we
had prolonged our session deep into the night, considering how early we were to
set out on our six miles’ ride to the foot of Mount Washington. There was now a
general breaking up. I scrutinized the faces of the two bridegrooms, and saw
but little probability of their leaving the bosom of earthly bliss, in the
first week of the honeymoon and at the frosty hour of three, to climb above the
clouds; nor, when I felt how sharp the wind was as it rushed through a broken
pane and eddied between the chinks of my unplastered chamber, did I anticipate
much alacrity on my own part, though we were to seek for the “Great Carbuncle.”
THE CANAL-BOAT
I was inclined to be poetical about the Grand Canal. In my imagination De Witt
Clinton was an enchanter, who had waved his magic wand from the Hudson to Lake
Erie and united them by a watery highway, crowded with the commerce of two
worlds, till then inaccessible to each other. This simple and mighty conception
had conferred inestimable value on spots which Nature seemed to have thrown
carelessly into the great body of the earth, without foreseeing that they could
ever attain importance. I pictured the surprise of the sleepy Dutchmen when the
new river first glittered by their doors, bringing them hard cash or foreign
commodities in exchange for their hitherto unmarketable produce. Surely the
water of this canal must be the most fertilizing of all fluids; for it causes
towns, with their masses of brick and stone, their churches and theatres, their
business and hubbub, their luxury and refinement, their gay dames and polished
citizens, to spring up, till in time the wondrous stream may flow between two
continuous lines of buildings, through one thronged street, from Buffalo to
Albany. I embarked about thirty miles below Utica, determining to voyage along
the whole extent of the canal at least twice in the course of the summer.
Behold us, then, fairly afloat, with three horses harnessed to our vessel, like
the steeds of Neptune to a huge scallop-shell in mythological pictures. Bound
to a distant port, we had neither chart nor compass, nor cared about the wind,
nor felt the heaving of a billow, nor dreaded shipwreck, however fierce the
tempest, in our adventurous navigation of an interminable mudpuddle; for a
mudpuddle it seemed, and as dark and turbid as if every kennel in the land paid
contribution to it. With an imperceptible current, it holds its drowsy way
through all the dismal swamps and unimpressive scenery that could be found
between the great lakes and the sea-coast. Yet there is variety enough, both on
the surface of the canal and along its banks, to amuse the traveller, if an
overpowering tedium did not deaden his perceptions.
Sometimes we met a black and rusty-looking vessel, laden with lumber, salt from
Syracuse, or Genesee flour, and shaped at both ends like a square-toed boot, as
if it had two sterns, and were fated always to advance backward. On its deck
would be a square hut, and a woman seen through the window at her household
work, with a little tribe of children who perhaps had been born in this strange
dwelling and knew no other home. Thus, while the husband smoked his pipe at the
helm and the eldest son rode one of the horses, on went the family, travelling
hundreds of miles in their own house and carrying their fireside with them. The
most frequent species of craft were the “line-boats,” which had a cabin at each
end, and a great bulk of barrels, bales, and boxes in the midst, or light
packets like our own decked all over with a row of curtained windows from stem
to stern, and a drowsy face at every one. Once we encountered a boat of rude
construction, painted all in gloomy black, and manned by three Indians, who
gazed at us in silence and with a singular fixedness of eye. Perhaps these
three alone, among the ancient possessors of the land, had attempted to derive
benefit from the white mail’s mighty projects and float along the current of
his enterprise. Not long after, in the midst of a swamp and beneath a clouded
sky, we overtook a vessel that seemed full of mirth and sunshine. It contained
a little colony of Swiss on their way to Michigan, clad in garments of strange
fashion and gay colors, scarlet, yellow, and bright blue, singing, laughing,
and making merry in odd tones and a babble of outlandish words. One pretty
damsel, with a beautiful pair of naked white arms, addressed a mirthful remark
to me. She spoke in her native tongue, and I retorted in good English, both of
us laughing heartily at each other’s unintelligible wit. I cannot describe how
pleasantly this incident affected me. These honest Swiss were all itinerant
community of jest and fun journeying through a gloomy land and among a dull
race of money-getting drudges, meeting none to understand their mirth, and only
one to sympathize with it, yet still retaining the happy lightness of their own
spirit.
Had I been on my feet at the time instead of sailing slowly along in a dirty
canal-boat, I should often have paused to contemplate the diversified panorama
along the banks of the canal. Sometimes the scene was a forest, dark, dense,
and impervious, breaking away occasionally and receding from a lonely tract,
covered with dismal black stumps, where, on the verge of the canal, might be
seen a log-cottage and a sallow-faced woman at the window. Lean and aguish, she
looked like poverty personified, half clothed, half fed, and dwelling in a
desert, while a tide of wealth was sweeping by her door. Two or three miles
farther would bring us to a lock, where the slight impediment to navigation had
created a little mart of trade. Here would be found commodities of all sorts,
enumerated in yellow letters on the window-shutters of a small grocery-store,
the owner of which had set his soul to the gathering of coppers and small
change, buying and selling through the week, and counting his gains on the
blessed Sabbath. The next scene might be the dwelling-houses and stores of a
thriving village, built of wood or small gray stones, a church-spire rising in
the midst, and generally two taverns, bearing over their piazzas the pompous
titles of “hotel,” “exchange,” “tontine,” or “coffee-house.” Passing on, we
glide now into the unquiet heart of an inland city,—of Utica, for
instance,—and find ourselves amid piles of brick, crowded docks and
quays, rich warehouses, and a busy population. We feel the eager and hurrying
spirit of the place, like a stream and eddy whirling us along with it. Through
the thickest of the tumult goes the canal, flowing between lofty rows of
buildings and arched bridges of hewn stone. Onward, also, go we, till the hum
and bustle of struggling enterprise die away behind us and we are threading an
avenue of the ancient woods again.
This sounds not amiss in description, but was so tiresome in reality that we
were driven to the most childish expedients for amusement. An English traveller
paraded the deck, with a rifle in his walking-stick, and waged war on squirrels
and woodpeckers, sometimes sending an unsuccessful bullet among flocks of tame
ducks and geese which abound in the dirty water of the canal. I, also, pelted
these foolish birds with apples, and smiled at the ridiculous earnestness of
their scrambles for the prize while the apple bobbed about like a thing of
life. Several little accidents afforded us good-natured diversion. At the
moment of changing horses the tow-rope caught a Massachusetts farmer by the leg
and threw him down in a very indescribable posture, leaving a purple mark
around his sturdy limb. A new passenger fell flat on his back in attempting to
step on deck as the boat emerged from under a bridge. Another, in his Sunday
clothes, as good luck would have it, being told to leap aboard from the bank,
forthwith plunged up to his third waistcoat-button in the canal, and was fished
out in a very pitiable plight, not at all amended by our three rounds of
applause. Anon a Virginia schoolmaster, too intent on a pocket Virgil to heed
the helmsman’s warning, “Bridge! bridge!” was saluted by the said bridge on his
knowledge-box. I had prostrated myself like a pagan before his idol, but heard
the dull, leaden sound of the contact, and fully expected to see the treasures
of the poor man’s cranium scattered about the deck. However, as there was no
harm done, except a large bump on the head, and probably a corresponding dent
in the bridge, the rest of us exchanged glances and laughed quietly. O, bow
pitiless are idle people!
The table being now lengthened through the cabin and spread for supper, the
next twenty minutes were the pleasantest I had spent on the canal, the same
space at dinner excepted. At the close of the meal it had become dusky enough
for lamplight. The rain pattered unceasingly on the deck, and sometimes came
with a sullen rush against the windows, driven by the wind as it stirred
through an opening of the forest. The intolerable dulness of the scene
engendered an evil spirit in me. Perceiving that the Englishman was taking
notes in a memorandum-book, with occasional glances round the cabin, I presumed
that we were all to figure in a future volume of travels, and amused my
ill-humor by falling into the probable vein of his remarks. He would hold up an
imaginary mirror, wherein our reflected faces would appear ugly and ridiculous,
yet still retain all undeniable likeness to the originals. Then, with more
sweeping malice, he would make these caricatures the representatives of great
classes of my countrymen.
He glanced at the Virginia schoolmaster, a Yankee by birth, who, to recreate
himself, was examining a freshman from Schenectady College in the conjugation
of a Greek verb. Him the Englishman would portray as the scholar of America,
and compare his erudition to a school-boy’s Latin theme made up of scraps
ill-selected and worse put together. Next the tourist looked at the
Massachusetts farmer, who was delivering a dogmatic harangue on the iniquity of
Sunday mails. Here was the far-famed yeoman of New England; his religion,
writes the Englishman, is gloom on the Sabbath, long prayers every morning and
eventide, and illiberality at all times; his boasted information is merely an
abstract and compound of newspaper paragraphs, Congress debates, caucus
harangues, and the argument and judge’s charge in his own lawsuits. The
book-monger cast his eye at a Detroit merchant, and began scribbling faster
than ever. In this sharp-eyed man, this lean man, of wrinkled brow, we see
daring enterprise and close-fisted avarice combined. Here is the worshipper of
Mammon at noonday; here is the three times bankrupt, richer after every ruin;
here, in one word, (O wicked Englishman to say it!) here is the American. He
lifted his eyeglass to inspect a Western lady, who at once became aware of the
glance, reddened, and retired deeper into the female part of the cabin. Here
was the pure, modest, sensitive, and shrinking woman of
America,—shrinking when no evil is intended, and sensitive like diseased
flesh, that thrills if you but point at it; and strangely modest, without
confidence in the modesty of other people; and admirably pure, with such a
quick apprehension of all impurity.
In this manner I went all through the cabin, hitting everybody as hard a lash
as I could, and laying the whole blame on the infernal Englishman. At length I
caught the eyes of my own image in the looking-glass, where a number of the
party were likewise reflected, and among them the Englishman, who at that
moment was intently observing myself.
The crimson curtain being let down between the ladies and gentlemen, the cabin
became a bedchamber for twenty persons, who were laid on shelves one above
another. For a long time our various incommodities kept us all awake except
five or six, who were accustomed to sleep nightly amid the uproar of their own
snoring, and had little to dread from any other species of disturbance. It is a
curious fact that these snorers had been the most quiet people in the boat
while awake, and became peace-breakers only when others cease to be so,
breathing tumult out of their repose. Would it were possible to affix a
wind-instrument to the nose, and thus make melody of a snore, so that a
sleeping lover might serenade his mistress or a congregation snore a
psalm-tune! Other, though fainter, sounds than these contributed to my
restlessness. My head was close to the crimson curtain,—the sexual
division of the boat,—behind which I continually heard whispers and
stealthy footsteps; the noise of a comb laid on the table or a slipper dropped
on the floor; the twang, like a broken harp-string, caused by loosening a tight
belt; the rustling of a gown in its descent; and the unlacing of a pair of
stays. My ear seemed to have the properties of an eye; a visible image pestered
my fancy in the darkness; the curtain was withdrawn between me and the Western
lady, who yet disrobed herself without a blush.
Finally all was hushed in that quarter. Still I was more broad awake than
through the whole preceding day, and felt a feverish impulse to toss my limbs
miles apart and appease the unquietness of mind by that of matter. Forgetting
that my berth was hardly so wide as a coffin, I turned suddenly over and fell
like an avalanche on the floor, to the disturbance of the whole community of
sleepers. As there were no bones broken, I blessed the accident and went on
deck. A lantern was burning at each end of the boat, and one of the crew was
stationed at the bows, keeping watch, as mariners do on the ocean. Though the
rain had ceased, the sky was all one cloud, and the darkness so intense that
there seemed to be no world except the little space on which our lanterns
glimmered. Yet it was an impressive scene.
We were traversing the “long level,” a dead flat between Utica and Syracuse,
where the canal has not rise or fall enough to require a lock for nearly
seventy miles. There can hardly be a more dismal tract of country. The forest
which covers it, consisting chiefly of white-cedar, black-ash, and other trees
that live in excessive moisture, is now decayed and death-struck by the partial
draining of the swamp into the great ditch of the canal. Sometimes, indeed, our
lights were reflected from pools of stagnant water which stretched far in among
the trunks of the trees, beneath dense masses of dark foliage. But generally
the tall stems and intermingled branches were naked, and brought into strong
relief amid the surrounding gloom by the whiteness of their decay. Often we
beheld the prostrate form of some old sylvan giant which had fallen and crushed
down smaller trees under its immense ruin. In spots where destruction had been
riotous, the lanterns showed perhaps a hundred trunks, erect, half overthrown,
extended along the ground, resting on their shattered limbs or tossing them
desperately into the darkness, but all of one ashy white, all naked together,
in desolate confusion. Thus growing out of the night as we drew nigh, and
vanishing as we glided on, based on obscurity, and overhung and bounded by it,
the scene was ghostlike,—the very land of unsubstantial things, whither
dreams might betake themselves when they quit the slumberer’s brain.
My fancy found another emblem. The wild nature of America had been driven to
this desert-place by the encroachments of civilized man. And even here, where
the savage queen was throned on the ruins of her empire, did we penetrate, a
vulgar and worldly throng, intruding on her latest solitude. In other lands
decay sits among fallen palaces; but here her home is in the forests.
Looking ahead, I discerned a distant light, announcing the approach of another
boat, which soon passed us, and proved to be a rusty old scow,—just such
a craft as the “Flying Dutchman” would navigate on the canal. Perhaps it was
that celebrated personage himself whom I imperfectly distinguished at the helm
in a glazed cap and rough great-coat, with a pipe in his mouth, leaving the
fumes of tobacco a hundred yards behind. Shortly after our boatman blew a horn,
sending a long and melancholy note through the forest avenue, as a signal for
some watcher in the wilderness to be ready with a change of horses. We had
proceeded a mile or two with our fresh team when the tow-rope got entangled in
a fallen branch on the edge of the canal, and caused a momentary delay, during
which I went to examine the phosphoric light of an old tree a little within the
forest. It was not the first delusive radiance that I had followed.
The tree lay along the ground, and was wholly converted into a mass of diseased
splendor, which threw a ghastliness around. Being full of conceits that night,
I called it a frigid fire, a funeral light, illumining decay and death, an
emblem of fame that gleams around the dead man without warming him, or of
genius when it owes its brilliancy to moral rottenness, and was thinking that
such ghostlike torches were just fit to light up this dead forest or to blaze
coldly in tombs, when, starting from my abstraction, I looked up the canal. I
recollected myself, and discovered the lanterns glimmering far away.
“Boat ahoy!” shouted I, making a trumpet of my closed fists.
Though the cry must have rung for miles along that hollow passage of the woods,
it produced no effect. These packet-boats make up for their snail-like pace by
never loitering day nor night, especially for those who have paid their fare.
Indeed, the captain had an interest in getting rid of me; for I was his
creditor for a breakfast.
“They are gone, Heaven be praised!” ejaculated I; “for I cannot possibly
overtake them. Here am I, on the ‘long level,’ at midnight, with the
comfortable prospect of a walk to Syracuse, where my baggage will be left. And
now to find a house or shed wherein to pass the night.” So thinking aloud, I
took a flambeau from the old tree, burning, but consuming not, to light my
steps withal, and, like a jack-o’-the-lantern, set out on my midnight tour.
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