The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish Part 22

It is scarcely necessary to say that, in a country where the laws favor all commendable enterprise, where unnecessary artificial restrictions are unknown, and where the hand of man has not yet exhausted its efforts, the adventurer is allowed the greatest freedom of choice, in selecting the field of his enterprise. The agriculturist pa.s.ses the heath and the barren, to seat himself on the river-bottom; the trader looks for the site of demand and supply and the artisan quits his native village to seek employment in situations where labor will meet its fullest reward. It is a consequence of this extraordinary freedom of election, that, while the great picture of American society has been sketched with so much boldness, a large portion of the filling-up still remains to be done. The emigrant has consulted his immediate interests; and, while no very extensive and profitable territory, throughout the whole of our immense possessions, has been wholly neglected, neither has any particular district yet attained the finish of improvement. The city is even now, seen in the wilderness, and the wilderness often continues near the city, while the latter is sending forth its swarms to distant scenes of industry. After thirty years of fostering care on the part of the government, the Capital, itself, presents its disjointed and sickly villages, in the centre of the deserted 'old-fields' of Maryland, while numberless youthful rivals are flouris.h.i.+ng on the waters of the West, in spots where the bear has ranged and the wolf howled, long since the former has been termed a city.

Thus it is that high civilization, a state of infant existence, and positive barbarity, are often brought so near each other, within the borders of this republic. The traveller, who has pa.s.sed the night in an inn that would not disgrace the oldest country in Europe, may be compelled to dine in the shantee [Footnote: _Shanty_, or _Shantee_, is a word much used in the newer settlements. It strictly means a rude cabin of bark and brush, such as is often erected in the forest for temporary purposes. But the borderers often quaintly apply it to their own habitations. The only derivation which the writer has heard for this American word, is one that supposes it to be a corruption of _Chiente_, a term said to be used among the Canadians to express a dog-kennel.] of a hunter; the smooth and gravelled road sometimes ends in an impa.s.sable swamp; the spires of the town are often hid by the branches of a tangled forest, and the ca.n.a.l leads to a seemingly barren and unprofitable mountain. He that does not return to see what another year may bring forth, commonly bears away from these scenes, recollections that conduce to error. To see America with the eyes of truth, it is necessary to look often; and in order to understand the actual condition of these states, it should be remembered, that it is equally unjust to believe that all the intermediate points partake of the improvements of particular places, as to infer the want of civilization at more remote establishments, from a few unfavorable facts gleaned near the centre. By an accidental concurrence of moral and physical causes, much of that equality which distinguishes the inst.i.tutions of the country is extended to the progress of society over its whole surface.

Although the impetus of improvement was not as great in the time of Mark Heathcote as in our own days, the principle of its power was actively in existence. Of this fact we shall furnish a sufficient evidence, by pursuing our intention of describing one of those changes to which allusion has already been made.

The reader will remember that the age of which we write had advanced into the last quarter of the seventeenth century. The precise moment at which the action of the tale must re-commence, was that period of the day when the gray of twilight was redeeming objects from the deep darkness with which the night draws to its close. The month was June, and the scene such as it may be necessary to describe with some particularity.

Had there been light, and had one been favorably placed to enjoy a bird's-eye view of the spot, he would have seen a broad and undulating field of leafy forest, in which the various deciduous trees of New-England were relieved by the deeper verdure of occasional ma.s.ses of evergreens. In the centre of this swelling and nearly interminable outline of woods, was a valley that spread between three low mountains. Over the bottom-land, for the distance of several miles, all the signs of a settlement in a state of rapid and prosperous improvement were visible. The devious course of a deep and swift brook, that in the other hemisphere would have been termed a river, was to be traced through the meadows by its borders of willow and sumach. At a point near the centre of the valley, the waters had been arrested by a small dam; and a mill, whose wheel at that early hour was without motion, stood on the artificial mound. Near it was the site of a New-England hamlet.

The number of dwellings in the village might have been forty. They were, as usual, constructed of a firm frame-work, neatly covered with sidings of boards. There was a surprising air of equality in the general aspect of the houses; and, if there were question of any country but our own, it might be added there was an unusual appearance of comfort and abundance in even the humblest of them all. They were mostly of two low stories, the superior overhanging the inferior, by a foot or two; a mode of construction much in use in the earlier days of the Eastern Colonies. As paint was but little used at that time, none of the buildings exhibited a color different from that the wood would naturally a.s.sume, after the exposure of a few years to the weather. Each had its single chimney in the centre of the roof, and but two or three showed more than a solitary window on each side of the princ.i.p.al or outer door. In front of every dwelling was a small neat court, in green sward, separated from the public road by a light fence of deal. Double rows of young and vigorous elms lined each side of the wide street, while an enormous sycamore still kept possession of the spot, in its centre, which it had occupied when the white man entered the forest. Beneath the shade of this tree the inhabitants often collected, to gather tidings of each others welfare, or to listen to some matter of interest that rumor had borne from the towns nearer the sea. A narrow and little-used wheel-track ran, with a graceful and sinuous route, through the centre of the wide and gra.s.sy street.

Reduced in appearance to little more than a bridle-path, it was to be traced, without the hamlet, between high fences of wood, for a mile or two, to the points where it entered the forest. Here and there, roses were pressing through the openings of the fences before the doors of the different habitations, and bushes of fragrant lilacs stood in the angles of most of the courts.

The dwellings were detached. Each occupied its own insulated plot of ground, with a garden in its rear. The out-buildings were thrown to that distance which the cheapness of land, and security from fire, rendered both easy and expedient.

The church stood in the centre of the highway, and near one end of the hamlet. In the exterior and ornaments of the important temple, the taste of the times had been fastidiously consulted, its form and simplicity furnis.h.i.+ng no slight resemblance to the self-denying doctrines and quaint humors of the religionists who wors.h.i.+pped beneath its roof. The building, like all the rest, was of wood, and externally of two stories. It possessed a tower, without a spire; the former alone serving to betray its sacred character. In the construction of this edifice, especial care had been taken to eschew all deviations from direct lines and right angles.

Those narrow-arched pa.s.sages for the admission of light, that are elsewhere so common, were then thought, by the stern moralists of New-England, to have some mysterious connexion with her of the scarlet mantle. The priest would as soon have thought of appearing before his flock in the vanities of stole and ca.s.sock, as the congregation of admitting the repudiated ornaments into the outline of their severe architecture. Had the Genii of the Lamp suddenly exchanged the windows of the sacred edifice with those of the inn that stood nearly opposite, the closest critic of the settlement could never have detected the liberty, since, in the form, dimensions, and style of the two, there was no visible difference.

A little inclosure, at no great distance from the church, and on one side of the street, had been set apart for the final resting-place of those who had finished their race on earth. It contained but a solitary grave.

The inn was to be distinguished from the surrounding buildings, by its superior size, an open horse-shed, and a sort of protruding air, with which it thrust itself on the line of the street, as if to invite the traveller to enter. A sign swung on a gallows-looking post, that, in consequence of frosty nights and warm days, had already deviated from the perpendicular. It bore a conceit that, at the first glance, might have gladdened the heart of a naturalist, with the belief that he had made the discovery of some unknown bird. The artist, however, had sufficiently provided against the consequences of so embarra.s.sing a blunder, by considerately writing beneath the offspring of his pencil, "This is the sign of the Whip-Poor-Will;" a name, that the most unlettered traveller, in those regions, would be likely to know was vulgarly given to the Wish-Ton-Wish, or the American night-hawk.

But few relics of the forest remained immediately around the hamlet. The trees had long been felled, and sufficient time had elapsed to remove most of the vestiges of their former existence. But as the eye receded from the cl.u.s.ter of buildings, the signs of more recent inroads on the wilderness became apparent, until the view terminated with openings, in which piled logs and mazes of felled trees announced the recent use of the axe.

At that early day, the American husbandman like the agriculturists of most of Europe, dwelt in his village. The dread of violence from the savages had given rise to a custom similar to that which, centuries before, had been produced in the other hemisphere by the inroads of more pretending barbarians, and which, with few and distant exceptions, has deprived rural scenery of a charm that, it would seem, time and a better condition of society are slow to repair. Some remains of this ancient practice are still to be traced in the portion of the Union of which we write, where, even at this day, the farmer often quits the village to seek his scattered fields in its neighborhood. Still, as man has never been the subject of a system here, and as each individual has always had the liberty of consulting his own temper, bolder spirits early began to break through a practice, by which quite as much was lost in convenience as was gained in security. Even in the scene we have been describing, ten or twelve humble habitations were distributed among the recent clearings on the sides of the mountains, and in situations too remote to promise much security against any sudden inroad of the common enemy.

For general protection, in cases of the last extremity, however, a stockaded dwelling, not unlike that which we have had occasion to describe in our earlier pages, stood in a convenient spot near the hamlet. Its defences were stronger and more elaborate than usual, the pickets being furnished with flanking block-houses; and, in other respects, the building bore the aspect of a work equal to any resistance that might be required in the warfare of those regions. The ordinary habitation of the priest was within its gates; and hither most of the sick were timely conveyed, in order to antic.i.p.ate the necessity of removals at more inconvenient moments.

It is scarcely necessary to tell the American, that heavy wooden fences subdivided the whole of this little landscape into inclosures of some eight or ten acres in extent; that, here and there, cattle and flocks were grazing without herdsmen or shepherds, and that, while the fields nearest to the dwellings were beginning to a.s.sume the appearance of a careful and improved husbandry, those more remote became gradually wilder and less cultivated, until the half-reclaimed openings, with their blackened stubs and barked trees, were blended with the gloom of the living forest. These are, more or less, the accompaniments of every rural scene, in districts of the country where time has not yet effected more than the first two stages of improvement.

At the distance of a short half-mile from the fortified house, or garrison, as by a singular corruption of terms the stockaded building was called, stood a dwelling of pretensions altogether superior to any in the hamlet. The buildings in question, though simple, were extensive; and though scarcely other than such as might belong to an agriculturist in easy circ.u.mstances, still they were remarkable, in that settlement, by the comforts which time alone could acc.u.mulate, and some of which denoted an advanced condition for a frontier family. In short, there was an air about the establishment, as in the disposition of its out-buildings, in the superior workmans.h.i.+p, in the materials, and in numberless other well-known circ.u.mstances, which went to show that the whole of the edifices were re-constructions. The fields near this habitation exhibited smoother surfaces than those in the distance; the fences were lighter and less rude; the stumps had absolutely disappeared, and the gardens and homestead were well planted with flouris.h.i.+ng fruit-trees. A conical eminence arose, at a short distance, in the rear of the princ.i.p.al dwelling. It was covered with that beautiful and peculiar ornament of an American farm, a regular, thrifty, and luxuriant apple-orchard. Still, age had not given its full beauty to the plantation, which might have had a growth of some eight or ten years. A blackened tower of stone, which sustained the charred ruins of a superstructure of wood, though of no great height in itself, rose above the tallest of the trees, and stood a sufficient memorial of some scene of violence, in the brief history of the valley. There was also a small block-house near the habitation; but, by the air of neglect that reigned around, it was quite apparent the little work had been of a hurried construction, and of but temporary use. A few young plantations of fruit-trees were also to be seen in different parts of the valley, which was beginning to exhibit many other evidences of an improved agriculture.

So far as all these artificial changes went, they were of an English character. But it was England devoid alike of its luxury and its poverty, and with a superfluity of s.p.a.ce that gave to the meanest habitation in the view, an air of abundance and comfort that is so often wanting about the dwellings of the comparatively rich, in countries where man is found bearing a far greater numerical proportion to the soil, than was then, or is even now the case, in the regions of which we write.

Chapter XVIII.

"Come hither, neighbor Sea-coal--G.o.d hath blessed you with a good name: to be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by Nature."

Much Ado about Nothing.

It has already been said, that the hour at which the action of the tale must re-commence, was early morning. The usual coolness of night, in a country extensively covered with wood, had pa.s.sed, and the warmth of a summer morning, in that low lat.i.tude, was causing the streaks of light vapor, that floated about the meadows, to rise above the trees. The feathery patches united to form a cloud that sailed away towards the summit of a distant mountain, which appeared to be a common rendezvous for all the mists that had been generated by the past hours of darkness.

Though the burnished sky announced his near approach, the sun was not yet visible. Notwithstanding the earliness of the hour, a man was already mounting a little ascent in the road, at no great distance from the southern entrance of the hamlet, and at a point where he could command a view of all the objects described in the preceding chapter. A musket thrown across his left shoulder, with the horn and pouch at his sides, together with the little wallet at his back, proclaimed him one who had either been engaged in a hunt, or in some short expedition of even a less peaceable character. His dress was of the usual material and fas.h.i.+on of a countryman of the age and colony, though a short broadsword, that was thrust through a wampum belt which girded his body, might have attracted observation. In all other respects, he had the air of an inhabitant of the hamlet, who had found occasion to quit his abode on some affair of pleasure or of duty, that had made no very serious demand on his time.

Whether native or stranger, few ever pa.s.sed the hillock named, without pausing to gaze at the quiet loveliness of the cl.u.s.ter of houses that lay in full view from its summit. The individual mentioned loitered as usual, but, instead of following the line of the path, his eye rather sought some object in the direction of the fields. Moving leisurely to the nearest fence, he threw down the upper rails of a pair of bars, and beckoned to a horseman, who was picking his way across a broken bit of pasture land, to enter the highway by the pa.s.sage he had opened.

"Put the spur smartly into the pacer's flank," said he who had done this act of civility, observing that the other hesitated to urge his beast across the irregular and somewhat scattered pile; "my word for it, the jade goes over them all, without touching with more than three of her four feet. Fie, doctor! there is never a cow in the Wish-Ton-Wish, but it would take the leap to be in the first at the milking."

"Softly, Ensign;" returned the timid equestrian, laying the emphasis on the final syllable of his companion's t.i.tle, and p.r.o.nouncing the first as if it were spelt with the third instead of the second vowel.

"Thy courage is meet for one set apart for deeds of valor, but it would be a sorrowful day when the ailing of the valley should knock at my door, and a broken limb be made the apology for want of succor. Thy efforts will not avail thee, man; for the mare hath had schooling, as well as her master. I have trained the beast to methodical habits, and she hath come to have a rooted dislike to all irregularities of movement. So, cease tugging at the rein, as if thou wouldst compel her to pa.s.s the pile in spite of her teeth, and throw down the upper bar altogether."

"A doctor in these rugged parts should be mounted on one of these ambling birds of which we read," said the other, removing the obstacle to the secure pa.s.sage of his friend; "for truly a journey at night, in the paths of these clearings, is not always as safe moving as that which is said to be enjoyed by the settlers nearer sea."

"And where hast found mention of a bird of a size and velocity fit to be the bearer of the weight of a man?" demanded he who was mounted, with a vivacity that betrayed some jealousy on the subject of a monopoly of learning. I had thought there was never a book in the valley, out of mine own closet, that dealeth in these abstrusities!"

"Dost think the scriptures are strangers to us? There--thou art now in the public path, and thy journey is without danger. It is matter of marvel to many in this settlement, how thou movest about at midnight, amongst upturned roots of trees, holes, logs and stumps, without falling--"

"I have told thee, Ensign, it is by virtue of much training given to the beast. Certain am I, that neither whip nor spur would compel the animal to pa.s.s the bounds of discretion. Often have I travelled this bridle-path, without fear as in truth without danger, when sight was a sense of as little use as that of smelling."

"I was about to say, falling into thine own hands, which would be a tumble of little less jeopardy than even that of the wicked spirits."

The medical man affected to laugh at his companion's joke; but, remembering the dignity suited to one of his calling, he immediately resumed the discourse with gravity--

"These may be matters of levity, with those who know little of the hards.h.i.+ps that are endured in the practice of the settlements. Here have I been on yonder mountain, guided by the instinct of my horse--"

"Ha! hath there been a call at the dwelling of my brother Ring?" demanded the pedestrian, observing, by the direction of the other's eye, the road he had been travelling.

"Truly, there hath; and at the unseasonable hour that is wont, in a very unreasonable proportion of the cases of my practice."

"And Reuben numbereth another boy to the four that he could count yesterday?"

The medical man held up three of his fingers, in a significant manner, as he nodded a.s.sent.

"This putteth Faith something in arrears," returned he who has been called Ensign, and who was no other than the reader's old acquaintance Eben Dudley, preferred to that station in the train-band of the valley. "The heart of my brother Reuben will be gladdened by these tidings, when he shall return from the scout."

"There will be occasion for thankfulness, since he will find seven beneath a roof where he left but four!"

"I will close the bargain with the young captain for the mountain lot, this very day!" muttered Dudley, like one suddenly convinced of the prudence of a long-debated measure. "Seven pounds of the colony money is no usurer's price, after all, for a hundred acres of heavily-timbered land; and they in full view of a settlement where boys come three at a time!"

The equestrian stopped his horse, and regarding his companion intently and with a significant air, he answered--

"Thou hast now fallen on the clue of an important mystery, Ensign Dudley.

This continent was created with a design. The fact is apparent by its riches, its climate, its magnitude, its facilities of navigation, and chiefly in that it hath been left undiscovered until the advanced condition of society hath given opportunity and encouragement to men of a certain degree of merit, to adventure in its behalf. Consider, neighbor, the wonderful progress it hath already made in the arts and in learning, in reputation and in resources, and thou wilt agree with me in the conclusion that all this hath been done with a design."

"'Twould be presuming to doubt it; for he hath indeed a short memory, to whom it shall be necessary to recall the time when this very valley was little other than a den for beasts of prey, and this beaten highway, a deer-track. Dost think that Reuben will be like to raise the whole of the recent gift?"

"With judgment, and by the blessing of Providence. The mind is active, Ensign Dudley, when the body is journeying among the forests; and much have my thoughts been exercised in this matter, whilst thou and others have been in your slumbers. Here have we the colonies in their first century, and yet thou knowest to what a pa.s.s of improvement they have arrived. They tell me the Hartford settlement is getting to be apportioned like the towns of mother England, that there is reason to think the day may come when the provinces shall have a power, and a convenience of culture and communication, equalling that which belongeth to some parts of the venerable island itself!"

"Nay, nay, Doctor Ergot," returned the other with an incredulous smile, "that is exceeding the bounds of a discretionable expectation."

"Thou wilt remember that I said equalling to _certain_ parts. I think we may justly imagine, that ere many centuries shall elapse, there may be millions counted in these regions, and truly that, too, where one seeth nought, at present, but the savage and the beast."