Chapter II: Part 2

“My heart is on the hills. The shades
Of night are on my brow:
Ye pleasant haunts and silent glades,
My soul is with you now!
I bless the star-crowned islands where
My IDA’S footsteps roam:
Oh for a falcon’s wing to bear
Me onward to my home!”—MORRIS.

General Morris is not less successful in the lighter and livelier freaks of poetic fancy, as we hope to prove by a quotation from “The New York Mirror,” in which the moral of the lines is not their least merit. The melodies of the various birds which roost among the wild recesses of the rocks, or haunt the mountain forest, or sweep along the waters, are sent forth hourly in sounds of “unwritten music.” But the cry “most musical, most melancholy,” comes at the twilight hour from the clear throat of the whip-poor-will, at intervals, through the summer’s night: nor is it ever heard or seen by day; it may be called the sad unknown. The words, “whip-poor-will,” are divided into three shrill, distinct notes, and express the sounds as perfectly as if uttered by the human voice. The poetry annexed, is equally expressive of the melancholy mystery which seems to mark the mourning burden of its lonely song.

TO THE WHIP-POOR-WILL.
“Why dost thou come at set of sun,
Those pensive words to say?
Why whip poor Will?—What has he done?
And who is Will, I pray?

“Why come from you leaf-shaded hill,
A suppliant at my door?—
Why ask of me to whip poor Will?
And is Will really poor?

“If poverty’s his crime, let mirth
From out his heart be driven:
That is the deadliest sin on earth,
And never is forgiven!

“Art Will himself?—It must be so—
I learn it from thy moan,
For none can feel another’s woe
As deeply as his own.

“Yet wherefore strain thy tiny throat,
While other birds repose?
What means thy melancholy note?
The mystery disclose.

“Still ‘whip-poor-will!’—Art thou a sprite,
From unknown regions sent
To wander in the gloom of night,
And ask for punishment?

“Is thine a conscience sore beset
With guilt—or, what is worse,
Hast thou to meet writs, duns, and debt—
No money in thy purse?

“If this be thy hard fate indeed,
Ah well may’st thou repine:
The sympathy I give, I need—
The poet’s doom is thine.

“Art thou a lover, Will?—Hast proved
The fairest can deceive?
Thine is the lot of all who’ve loved
Since Adam wedded Eve.

“Hast trusted in a friend, and seen
No friend was he in need?
A common error—men still lean
Upon as frail a reed.

“Hast thou, in seeking wealth or fame,
A crown of brambles won?
O’er all the earth ’tis just the same
With every mother’s son!

“Hast found the world a Babel wide,
Where man to mammon stoops?
Where flourish arrogance and pride,
While modest merit droops?

“What, none of these?—Then, whence thy pain,
To guess it who’s the skill?
Pray have the kindness to explain
Why I should whip poor Will?

“Dost merely ask thy just desert?
What, not another word?—
Back to the woods again, unhurt—
I will not harm thee, bird!

“But treat thee kindly—for my nerves,
Like thine, have penance done;
Treat every man as he deserves—
Who shall ’scape whipping?’—None.

“Farewell, poor Will—not valueless
This lesson by thee given:
‘Keep thine own counsel, and confess
Thyself alone to heaven!’”—MORRIS.

We cannot close our description without one more extract from the delightful volume before us.

THE OAK.
“Woodman, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I’ll protect it now.
’Twas my forefather’s hand
That placed it near his cot;
There, woodman, let it stand,
Thy axe shall harm it not!

“That old familiar tree,
Whose glory and renown
Are spread o’er land and sea,
And wouldst thou hack it down?
Woodman, forbear thy stroke!
Cut not its earth-bound ties;
Oh spare that aged oak,
Now towering to the skies!

“When but an idle boy
I sought its grateful shade;
In all their gushing joy
Here, too, my sisters played.
My mother kissed me here;
My father pressed my hand—
Forgive this foolish tear,
But let that old oak stand!

“My heart-strings round thee cling,
Close as thy bark, old friend!
Here shall the wild-bird sing,
And still thy branches bend.
Old tree! the storm still brave!
And, woodman, leave the spot;
While I’ve a hand to save,
Thy axe shall harm it not.”—MORRIS.

BOSTON, AND BUNKER HILL,
(FROM THE EAST.)

* * * * *

This view is taken from a long cape, sometimes cut off by water overflowing the marshes, and called William’s Island. Five or six years ago, it was a thinly cultivated and neglected spot, scarce known, except to adventurous boys, who pulled across from the city wharfs, and to the one or two farmers who inhabited it. Now, with the suddenness which attends speculation in our country, it is grown suddenly into a consequential suburb, with a showy hotel and steam ferry, and citizens and strangers resort to it to eat French dinners, and pass the hot weeks of the summer.

Boston, from this point of view, is very picturesque. The town rises gradually from the water’s edge to the height surmounted by the State House, whose lofty cupola brings to a point all the ascending lines of the picture; Dorchester Heights rise gracefully on the left limit of the bay, and Bunker-Hill, famous in American story, breaks the horizon on the right. In the centre lie the forest of shipping, and the fine ranges of commercial buildings on the water side; and, turning from this view, the harbour, with its many small islands, stretches away behind to the sea, tracked by steamers, and sprinkled by craft of every size and nation. Like every other bay in the world, that of Boston has been compared to Naples; but it has neither its violet sky, nor its volcano, yet it may be mentioned in the same day.

Close under the eye of the spectator here, lies that part of the town formerly the fashionable quarter, but now very much what Red Lion Square, and its precincts, are to London. There is still existing (or there was, some six or eight years since,) the house of Governor Hutchinson, of which the mouldings were brought from London, and in which the drawing-room panels were portraits of his family, in their youth. This is still a very roomy and well-built, and must once have been a rather luxurious house. We are apt to fancy that our strait-laced ancestors from England lived parsimoniously, and denied themselves the elegances of modern luxury; but antiquarian researches exhibit a different state of things. “In the principal houses,” says the discourse of a learned gentleman on this subject, “there was a great hall, ornamented with pictures and a great lantern, and a velvet cushion in the window-seat which looked into the garden. On either side was a great parlour, a little parlour, or study. These were furnished with great looking-glasses, Turkey carpets, window curtains and valance, pictures, and a map, a brass clock, red leather-back chairs, and a great pair of brass andirons. The chambers were well supplied with feather beds, warming-pans, and every other article that would now be thought necessary for comfort or display. The pantry was well filled with substantial fare and dainties—prunes, marmalade, and Madeira wine. Silver tankards, wine-cups, and other articles of plate, were not uncommon; and the kitchen was completely stocked with pewter, iron, and copper utensils. Very many families employed servants, and in one we see a Scotch boy valued among the property, and invoiced at 14_l._”

In the matter of dress, our grandames seem to have pushed the ruling passion of the sex even through the rigid crust of Puritanism. In a tract, called the “Simple Cobler of Agawam,” some righteous round-head thus expresses his indignation at their fashions:—

“Methinks it should break the hearts of Englishmen to see so many goodly Englishwomen imprisoned in French cages, peering out of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to help them with a little wit, and nobody relieves them. We have about five or six of them in our colony; if I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my phansie of them for a month after.

“It is a more common than convenient saying, that ‘nine taylors make a man:’ it were well if nineteen could make a woman to her mind. If taylors were men, indeed, well furnished but with mere moral principles, they would disdain to be led about like asses by such mymick marmosets. It is a most unworthy thing for men that have bones in them, to spend their lives in making fiddle-cases for women’s phansies.

“It is known more than enough that I am neither niggard nor cynic to the true bravery of the true gentry. I am not much offended if I see a trimme far trimmer than she that wears it; but when I hear a nugiperous gentle dame inquire what dress the queen is in, with egge to be in it in all haste, whatever it be, I look to her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cypher, the epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if she were of a kickable substance, than either honoured, or humoured.”

MOUNT JEFFERSON,
(FROM MOUNT WASHINGTON.)

* * * * *

In looking in this direction from the elevated summit of Mount Washington, the eye drops upon a region of climate entirely different from that on its south-eastern side. The towns of Lancaster and Jefferson, though something north of the White Mountains, enjoy a benign, tranquil atmosphere, such as is not known for two or three hundred miles farther south, and with the beauty of the scenery and the number of water-courses, it is a little Arcadia in the bosom of the north. The peculiar climate felt here, is owing to the proximity of the White Mountains, which form a wall of thirty miles from north to south, either checking entirely the easterly winds, or elevating them into a region far above the surface. The westerly winds, again, impinging against the mountains, (but in an elevated part,) are arrested, leaving the towns below in the same tranquillity as is felt by a person coming near a large building in a high wind.

The snow rarely lies permanently here until after the tenth or fifteenth of December, and generally leaves it about the middle of March: at this time the earth is usually free from frost. A stick forced through the snow in the month of February enters the earth without difficulty, the snow falling so early as to prevent the frost from penetrating to any depth, and dissolving the little which had previously existed. Hence the pastures become suddenly green, and cattle are safely turned into them in the middle of April; the time of pasturage is, therefore, as long here as in Connecticut. In this manner that tedious period, known as the breaking up of the frost, is here chiefly prevented; and the warm season is annually lengthened, so far as the purposes of gardening and agriculture are concerned, about a month every year.

There is a broad tract running across the State at this point, embracing both sides of the mountains, which is generally called _Upper Coos_. What the meaning of this term is, would be difficult to say; but Dwight supposes, from its application to places where there are remarkable alluvial intervals, and where there are no distinguishing objects, except a peculiar winding of rivers, that one or the other of these must be denoted by the term.

In the year 1776, a farmer planted himself on the richest and most beautiful of these lands, a large share of which he left to his descendants. Valuable as his acquisition has since become, however, his first step required uncommon enterprise, industry, and perseverance. His separation from society may be understood from the fact, that, for several years after he came here to live, he carried all his corn one hundred and twenty-four miles to be ground. There was not a single road in the neighbourhood. All his communication with the world was either through the wilderness, or down the channel of the Connecticut; and this he was obliged to enter at the distance of twenty miles from his house. When any member of his family was ill, he had neither physician nor nurse, nor other medicine than his own limited stock.

Rains and snows, in this part of the country almost universally come from the western side of the heavens, and chiefly from the north-west. Snow falls here in a singular manner. A light fleecy shower descends frequently for a few minutes in the morning, when the sky becomes perfectly clear, and the day perfectly fine. In this manner it has been known to fall thirty successive days, and yet to cover the ground scarcely to the depth of six inches. By this gradual accumulation, it has sometimes arisen in the forests to the height of thirty inches; commonly it has not exceeded eighteen. Travelling in the winter, therefore, is easy and pleasant in this neighbourhood, and the weather generally delightful.

The imperfect state of settlements in a country still comparatively new, prevents many persons from forming just views of the splendour of the scenery. In a landscape of any great extent, the proportion of wild forest throws a gloom over the whole, and the eye, accustomed to the haunts of man, demands instinctively a more smiling scene of cultivation and habitation. In a more limited view, the appearance of girdled trees, of drowned woods, burnt or fallen stumps, rough enclosures, and stony land, are blemishes which an unaccustomed eye can with difficulty overcome. It requires the prospective glance of an American to see the form of nature, which is now in dishabille, restored to her neat drapery, glowing with vegetation, and decked with flowers. The outline of her fair proportions is enough for him; and so that is beautiful, as in this country it almost every where is, he can finish the portrait to his fancy, and make a flowery Tempe of a prostrate wilderness.

MOUNT TOM, AND CONNECTICUT RIVER.

* * * * *

This fine mountain rises nobly from the fertile Interval of the Connecticut, giving a character of boldness and majesty to scenery that were else merely soft and lovely. The river at this point broke down the barrier that evidently at one time held it back from the sea; and the broad lands that were then left bare by the liberated waters, were destined to form a strip of verdure and fertility, extending the whole length of New England.

The expansions of the Valley of the Connecticut on either side of Mount Tom, are landscapes of great beauty. The word _interval_, which describes the wide-spreading meadows extending from the banks of the river in these expansions, has a peculiar use in America, and seems to define a formation of alluvial land not seen to the same extent in other countries. In the Southern States the same description of land is called a _flat_, or a _bottom_. They are formed by the deposit of particles of soil brought down into the main river by its tributaries, or by occasional streams created by the melting of the snow, or heavy rains. A shoal is first formed, which, as it accumulates, rises gradually above the ordinary surface, while the stream itself, if it flows like the Connecticut through a soft soil, is continually deepening its bed, and leaving these newly-formed banks out of the reach of accidental floods.

The existence of some cause to check the current, is absolutely necessary to the formation of intervals. Wherever such cause is found, intervals are found proportioned to the room furnished on the side of the stream for their formation, and the lightness of the soil about the tributary streams. These causes exist on the Connecticut in falls and points of land, and in the narrowness of the channel at particular parts shut in by mountains.

These lands are subject to many changes. Every new obliquity of the current wears away some part of the Interval, against which its force is directed. In the progress of such changes, the inhabitants of the Connecticut have already seen large tracts gradually removed from one side to the other. The former channel in the mean time has been filled up, so as, in many instances, to leave no trace of its existence, and a new one has been made through the solid ground.

The soil of the intervals is, of course, of the richest quality: there is, however, a material difference in their fertility. The parts which are lowest are commonly the best, as being the most frequently overflowed, and therefore most enriched by the successive deposits of slime. Of these parts, that division which is farthest down the river is the most productive, as consisting of finer particles, and being more plentifully covered with this manure. In the spring, these grounds are regularly overflowed. In the months of March and April, the snows, which in the northern parts of New England are usually deep, and the rains, which at this time of the year are generally copious, raise the river from fifteen to twenty feet, and extend the breadth of its waters in some places a mile and a half, or two miles. Almost all the slime conveyed down the current at this season is deposited on these lands; for here, principally, the water becomes quiescent, and permits the earthy particles to subside. This deposit is a rich manure. The lands dressed with it are preserved in their full strength, and being regularly enriched by the hand of nature, cannot but be highly valuable.

The form of these lands is naturally beautiful. A river passing through them becomes almost, of course, winding. The border is necessarily curved, from the evenness of the impression of the river on a soft soil; and the edge is fringed with shrubs. A great part of them are formed into meadows, which are more profitable, and, at the same time, more agreeable to the eye than any other mode of culture. The magnificent elms, for which this country is remarkable, stand singly in the fields; while orchards and groves serve to break the uniformity. As they are seldom enclosed for miles together, there is a look also of extent and wildness about them, as if they produced their vegetation, “ploughed only by the sunbeams,” like a paradise spontaneously verdant and fertile.

Valuable as these intervals on the Connecticut have become, they were bought cheaply enough by the first proprietors. One of the first settlers of the neighbourhood of Mount Tom, was a tailor, who, for a trifling consideration, purchased a tract on the river, forming a square of three miles on a side. A carpenter came to settle in the valley, and having constructed a rude wheelbarrow, the tailor offered him for it, _either a suit of clothes, or the whole of his land_! He accepted the latter, and became the possessor of one of the finest farms on the bank of the Connecticut.

SILVER CASCADE,
IN THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.

* * * * *

For a mountainous region, usually fertile in such accidents of nature, the neighbourhood of the “White Hills” has few waterfalls; of those that are met with in the “Notch,” the Silver Cascade is by far the most beautiful; but to be seen to advantage it should be visited after heavy rains. The stream is scanty, but its course from among the deep forest, whence its springs issue into the light, is one of singular beauty. Buried beneath the lofty precipices of the gorge, after ascending towards the Pulpit Rock, by the side of the turbulent torrent of the Saco, the ear is suddenly saluted by soft dashings of this sweetest of cascades; and a glance upwards reveals its silver streams issuing from the loftiest crests of the mountain, and leaping from crag to crag, or spread in a broad thin sheet of liquid light over the edge of some projecting ledge, till it reaches the road, across which it passes, forming a still and transparent pool immediately beneath, before it joins the Saco in the depths of the gorge. It is a beautiful vision in the midst of the wildest and most dreary scenery; and its sudden appearance—for nothing of it is seen till the tourist is immediately under it—is a moment of deep delight to him from the suddenness of the contrast. The lover of nature loves to linger among the wild beauties of this region; and some of the finest ideas of the American painters have been gleaned amongst its solitudes. We believe that the engraving, from a painting by Doughty, will be very interesting to our subscribers.

VIEW OF NEW YORK, FROM WEEHAWKEN.

* * * * *

Weehawken is slighted by the traveller ascending to the bolder and brighter glories of the Highlands above; and few visit it except—

“The prisoner to the city’s pent-up air,”

who, making a blest holiday of a summer’s afternoon, crosses thither to set his foot on the green grass, and mount the rocks for a view of our new-sprung Babylon and its waters. There is no part of “the country” which “God made” so blest in its offices of freshening the spirit, and giving health to the blood, as the rural suburb of a metropolis. The free breath drawn there, the green herb looked on before it is trodden down, the tree beautiful simply for the freedom of its leaves from the dust of the street, the humblest bird or the meanest butterfly, are dispensers of happiness in another measure than falls elsewhere to their lot. Most such humble ministers of large blessings have their virtue for “its own reward;” but it has fallen to the lot of Weehawken to find a minstrel, and no mean one, among those for whose happiness and consolation it seems made to bloom. A merchant-poet, whose “works” stand on shelves in Wall Street, but whose rhymes for pastime live in literature, and in the hearts of his countrymen, thus glorifies his suburban Tempe:—

“Weehawken! in thy mountain scenery yet,
All we adore of Nature in her wild
And frolic hour of infancy, is met,
And never has a summer morning smiled
Upon a lovelier scene than the full eye
Of the enthusiast revels on—when high

“Amid thy forest-solitudes he climbs
O’er crags that proudly tower above the deep,
And knows that sense of danger, which sublimes
The breathless moment—when his daring step
Is on the verge o the cliff, and he can hear
The low dash of the wave with startled ear,

“Like the death music of his coming doom,
And clings to the green turf with desperate force,
As the heart clings to life; and when resume
The currents in his veins their wonted course
There lingers a deep feeling, like the moan
Of wearied ocean when the storm is gone.

“In such an hour he turns, and on his view
Ocean, and earth, and heaven, burst before him;
Clouds slumbering at his feet, and the clear blue
Of summer’s sky in beauty bending o’er him;
The city bright below; and far away
Sparkling in light, his own romantic bay.

“Tall spire, and glittering roof, and battlement,
And banners floating in the sunny air,
And white sails o’er the calm blue waters bent,
Green isle, and circling shore, are blended there
In wild reality. When life is old,
And many a scene forgot, the heart will hold

“Its memory of this; nor lives there one
Whose infant breath was drawn, or boyhood’s days
Of happiness were passed beneath that sun,
That in his manhood’s prime can calmly gaze
Upon that bay, or on that mountain stand,
Nor feel the prouder of his native land.”[1]

Weehawken is the “Chalk Farm” of New York, and a small spot enclosed by rocks, and open to observation only from the river, is celebrated as having been the ground on which Hamilton fought his fatal duel with Aaron Burr. A small obelisk was erected on the spot, by the St. Andrew’s Society, to the memory of Hamilton, but it has been removed. His body was interred in the churchyard of Trinity, in Broadway, where his monument now stands.

It is to be regretted that the fashion of visiting Haboken and Weehawken has yielded to an impression among the “fashionable” that it is a vulgar resort. This willingness to relinquish an agreeable promenade because it is enjoyed as well by the poorer classes of society, is one of those superfine ideas which we imitate from our English ancestors, and in which the more philosophic continentals are so superior to us. What enlivens the Tuileries and St. Cloud at Paris, the Monte-Pincio at Rome, the Volksgarten at Vienna, and the Corso and Villa Reale at Naples, but the presence of innumerable “vulgarians?” They are considered there like the chorus in a pantomime, as producing all the back-ground effect as necessary to the _ensemble_. The place would be nothing—would be desolate, without them; yet in England and America it is enough to vulgarize any—the most agreeable resort, to find it frequented by the “people!”

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[1] “Fanny,” a poem, by Fitz-Greene Halleck.

PRESIDENT’S HOUSE,
(FROM THE RIVER.)

* * * * *

The residence of the Chief Magistrate of the United States resembles the country-seat of an English nobleman, in its architecture and size; but it is to be regretted that the parallel ceases when we come to the grounds. By itself it is a commodious and creditable building, serving its purpose without too much state for a republican country, yet likely, as long as the country exists without primogeniture and rank, to be sufficiently superior to all other dwelling-houses to mark it as the residence of the nation’s ruler.

The President’s House stands near the centre of an area of some twenty acres, occupying a very advantageous elevation, open to the view of the Potomac, and about forty-four feet above high water, and possessing from its balcony one of the loveliest prospects in our country—the junction of the two branches of the Potomac which border the district, and the swelling and varied shores beyond of the States of Maryland and Virginia. The building is one hundred and seventy feet front, and eighty-six deep, and is built of white freestone, with Ionic pilasters, comprehending two lofty stories, with a stone balustrade. The north front is ornamented with a portico, sustained by four Ionic columns, with three columns of projection—the outer intercolumniation affording a shelter for carriages to drive under. The garden-front on the river (presented in the drawing) is varied by what is called a rusticated basement-story, in the Ionic style, and by a semi-circular projecting colonnade of six columns, with two spacious and airy flights of steps leading to a balustrade on the level of the principal story.

The interior of the President’s House is well disposed, and possesses one superb reception-room, and two oval drawing-rooms, (one in each story,) of very beautiful proportions. The other rooms are not remarkable; and there is an inequality in the furniture of the whole house, (owing to the unwillingness and piecemeal manner with which Congress votes any monies for its decoration,) which destroys its effect as a comfortable dwelling. The oval rooms are carpeted with Gobelin tapestry, worked with the national emblems; and are altogether in a more consistent style than the other parts of the house. It is to be hoped that Congress will not always consider the furniture of the President’s House as the scape-goat of all sumptuary and aristocratic sins, and that we shall soon be able to introduce strangers, not only to a comfortable and well-appointed, but to a properly-served and neatly-kept, presidential mansion.

At the present moment (the last month of General Jackson’s administration) the venerable President is confined to his room, and occupies a small chamber in the second story, near the centre of the house, on the front presented in the drawing. In a visit made to him by the writer a few days since, he was sitting at a table by the side of his bed, with a loose dressing-gown drawn over his black coat, and a sheet of half-written paper before him. He rose, with the pen in his hand, to receive a lady from another country, whose introduction to him was the principal object of the visit, and entered into conversation with that grace and dignified ease which mark his manners so peculiarly. He spoke of his approaching retirement, and the route he should pursue to reach the Hermitage, (his seat in Tennessee,) and expressed a strong wish to avoid all publicity in his movements, and to be suffered to pass tranquilly to his retreat. General Jackson is much changed since a reception given to the writer six years ago. He was then thin and spare, but stood erect and firm, and had a look of iron vigour—the effect, perhaps, of his military attitude, and the martial expression of face which belongs to him. He has since lost several of his front teeth, and though the bold and full under lip still looks as if it could hold up the world on its firm arch, it is the mouth of an old man, and in any other face would convey an idea of decrepitude. The fire still burns in the old warrior’s eye, however, and his straight and abundant white hair, which has been suffered to grow untrimmed during his illness, adds to the stern energy which is never wanting even to his most quiet expression. Peace and veneration go with him to his retirement!

VIEW ON THE SUSQUEHANNA, AT LIVERPOOL.

* * * * *

The musical Indian name of this lovely river, spite of the canals, rail-roads, and county towns, that have supplanted the wild forest, and the rude wigwam in its valley, recalls irresistibly to the fancy the associations of aboriginal life, and the swift but bloody transit from an Indian hunting-ground to European civilization. In the county-town of Liverpool may be found, at this day, all the transcendental marks of national refinement—such as milliners who get the fashions from Paris, farmers who drink champagne, lawyers who dream of the presidency, and young ladies who read Shelley and Chateaubriand; but it is only forty-five or fifty years ago that the Susquehanna and the head waters of the Ohio were ranged by the warlike Shawanee; and there was scarce a white man’s house west of Wyoming which had not been the scene, to a greater or less extent, of the barbarities we now find it so difficult to realize.

Among the authentic records of this region of country is a story of the captivity and escape of two children, which seems to me one of the most curious, and shows at the same time of what stuff the early settlers of these borders were made.

The names of these boys were John and Henry Johnson, the former thirteen years of age, the latter eleven. They had been rambling in the woods at a short distance from home, and getting tired, sat down to rest upon a log. After sitting a few minutes, two Indians approached, whom they took for whites, till they were too close upon them to admit of escape, and they were made prisoners. The sun set after they had followed their captors for an hour, and the Indians kindled a fire, and sharing with them their roasted meat and parched corn, lay down to sleep, each with one of the boys folded in his arms.

Henry, the youngest, had abandoned himself to his grief as they travelled on over the hills, but the elder kept a stout heart, and encouraged him with the hope of yet eluding the vigilance of the savages. The practice of terrifying children by threats of the red man with his tomahawk and scalping-knife had filled the mind of the younger, however, and he was only pacified when fatigue made the coarse food welcome, and the heat of the fire and the accustomed hour for repose overcame him with sleep. He lay down with the red arms of the savage around him, and was soon lost in the deep slumbers of childhood.

John, too, lay down, and pretended to sleep; and in a few minutes, the Indian, who had locked him in his arms, relaxed his hold. He disengaged himself softly and walked to the fire; and to try the soundness of their sleep, he stirred the half-burnt faggots, and rekindled the blaze. Not a limb stirred, and not a breathing was interrupted. He gently pulled his brother and awoke him, and they both stood by the fire, with their captors sleeping soundly at their feet. “I think,” said John, smiling, “we may go home now.” “They will catch us again,” said the younger, despairingly. “Then, before we go, we’ll kill them,” said the other.

The Indians had one gun, which rested against a tree, with their tomahawks on the ground beside it. John reflected a moment, and then, getting a rest for the gun upon a decayed log near the head of one of the savages, he cocked it, took aim at the ear of the sleeping man, and then calling to Henry, placed his hand on the trigger. Ordering him to pull without moving the gun when he gave him a sign, he took the tomahawk, and stood astride the Indian in whose arms he had been encircled. At the given signal he struck, and the gun was discharged. The blow of the tomahawk descended on the back of his victim’s neck, and he attempted to rise; but the bold boy repeated his blows, while the younger one cried out, “Lay on!—I’ve done for this one!” and both the savages were, in the next moment, lying motionless before them. The discharge of the gun had carried away the jaw of the other, and stunned him.

They started on their way back, taking with them the gun and tomahawk as trophies, and arrived at home just before day-break. The neighbours had all been in search for them, and when they told their tale, it was at first disbelieved. John, however, had hung up his hat as a mark to find the place, and led them back the way he had come, where they found the tomahawked Indian lying in his blood. The other had disappeared, but was tracked to a short distance, where, as the chronicle quietly expresses it, “they agreed to leave him, _as he must die at any rate_.”

DESERT ROCK LIGHTHOUSE, AND MOUNTAIN.

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Very much the same sort of incredulity with which one reads a traveller’s account of the deliciousness of the Russian summer comes over him, (_malgré_ all the information to the contrary,) when it is proposed to him to admire any thing so near the cradle of the east wind as Penobscot River. We know, indeed, that spring visits that region of the world—as far, at least, as the British boundary line. We could be made, upon reflection, to presume that the grass grows, and the sun shines there—the farmers are warm in haying-time, and the flowers come to maturity in season for the bees to provide against winter; but, in point of fact, when Penobscot River is mentioned, we shudder at our remembrance of the acrid blasts that have swept over us from that quarter, and image the scenery forth-drest in the drapery so well described by the captain of the Penobscot whaler—a fog so thick, that having driven his jack-knife into it on the eve of sailing for the Pacific, he found it sticking in the same spot on his return from a three years’ cruise.

There _is_ beautiful scenery in Maine, however; and Mr. Doughty, from one of whose pictures the accompanying drawing was taken, made a tour in search of it, and filled a portfolio with sketches which (the most of them) might belong to any Tempo for their summer look. They were taken from the neighbourhood of Desert Rock, and within view of Mount Desert, (shown in the drawing,) though the names of their neighbours sound unpromising.

Such spots as this are expected, like the knife-grinder, to have a story to tell, and this, unlike the knife-grinder, answers to expectation. The Light-house in the foreground stands upon a rock, about twelve miles from land; and near it lies a low reef, hidden at high tides, with a channel between it and the loftier rock. Some years before the erection of the Light-house, a homeward-bound vessel ran upon the breakers in a storm, and went to pieces. The storm having just commenced, and the sea not running as yet very high, several of the crew succeeded in getting upon the rock, where they found a partial shelter under a projecting shelf to leeward. The storm increased in violence, and after three days of unintermitted fury, during which they had seen no friendly sail even in the distance, the miserable survivors, perishing with hunger, abandoned themselves to despair. On the fourth night, they were crowded together in their narrow place of shelter, their eyes fixed on the black darkness covering the sea, when a vivid flash of lightning revealed to them a large ship careering straight for the rock, and apparently in complete ignorance of the danger. In the same instant all was black again, and they waited in the most breathless agony for the shock. A minute elapsed, and simultaneously, with a gleam that made the whole sea as bright as day, the ship appeared on the crest of a mountain-wave bounding over the reef, and with one cry from the man at the helm, as he discovered the rock before him, she launched into the channel on the breaking wave, and they heard her no more. They spoke of her to each other as lost, and betook themselves again to their silent despair. The tempest stilled toward morning, and the sun rose clear, and till noon again they bore the gnawings of despairing hunger, and watched the desolate sea in vain for a passing sail. Soon after noon a boat suddenly pulled into the channel between the rocks, friendly voices hailed the exhausted mariners, and with daring humanity they were successfully taken off. The ship they had seen in the night was lying-to not far from the opposite side of the rock, and they were soon on board of her, where, with proper treatment, they recovered from their exhaustion, and arrived safe in port. The pilot had seen them by the same gleam which revealed to him his danger, and after being saved by the recoil of the wave, which threw the ship into the current of the channel between the reefs, he lay-to till morning, when finding the vessel had drifted far south of the rock, he returned upon her course, and with the first abatement of the waves, manned his boat for the dangerous service he succeeded in.

Successful as Mr. Doughty is in sketches of this description, his forte lies in scenery of a softer and inland character—in the lonely forest-brook, the misty wood-lake, the still river, the heart of the quiet wilderness. In painting these features of Nature, he has (in his peculiar style) no rivals among American painters—perhaps none in England. His landscapes can scarcely be appreciated by those who have not seen the untouched and graceful wilderness of America; but of travellers who have, they touch the heart and fill the memory afresh. He is a most sweet and accomplished artist; and when the time comes for America to be proud of her painters, Doughty will be remembered among the first.

WASHINGTON’S HOUSE, AT MOUNT VERNON.

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The house erected on this consecrated spot is of wood, cut in imitation of freestone. The centre part was built by Lawrence Washington, brother to the General. The wings were added by General Washington. It is named after Admiral Vernon, in whose expedition the former served. The house is two stories high, and ninety-six feet in length, with a portico fronting the river, extending the whole length of the house, surmounted with a cupola. The grounds are in the same state as left by General Washington.

The house contains on the ground floor, six rooms, and a spacious passage: four of these are of the ordinary size. At the north-east is a large room, with a handsomely sculptured ceiling, which contains a marble mantel-piece, sent to General Washington from Italy, and a very fine organ, on which instrument Mrs. Washington was an accomplished performer. The room at the south-east end of the house is used as a family dining-room, and contains busts of Necker, Paul Jones, and General Washington; also a handsome library, fitted in the wall, with glass cases. The books were chiefly collected by General Washington.

The house fronts north-west, the rear looking to the river. In front of the house is a lawn, containing five or six acres of ground, with a serpentine walk around it, fringed with shrubbery, and planted with poplars. On each side of the lawn stands a garden; the one on the right is a flower-garden, and contains two green-houses, (one built by General Washington, the other by Judge Washington,) a hothouse, and a pinery. It is laid out in handsome walks, with boxwood borders, remarkable for their beauty. It contains also a quantity of fig-trees, producing excellent fruit. The other is a kitchen-garden, containing only fruit and vegetables.

About two hundred yards from the house, in a southerly direction, stands a summer-house, on the edge of the river-bank, which is here lofty and sloping, and clothed with wood to the water’s edge. The summer-house commands a fine prospect of the river and the Maryland shore; also of the White House, at a distance of five or six miles down the river, where an engagement took place with the British vessels which ascended the river during the last war.

The estate, as owned by Judge Washington, consisted of between three and four thousand acres, since divided between his nephews. The timber of the woods, in which the fallow deer once abounded, is composed of white and black oak, with dog-wood, hickory, ash, cedar, &c. The soil is thin and rather poor, cultivated chiefly in Indian corn, rye, barley, &c. There are two fisheries on the place, where shad and herring are caught in large quantities. Mount Vernon is healthy during all the year except the autumn, when bilious fevers and agues prevail.

A distinguished writer visited Mount Vernon some years since, and gave a more particular account of the grounds than is to be found elsewhere. “We were conducted,” he says, “over long gravel walks, bordered with box, which is arranged and trimmed into the most fanciful figures, and which, at the age of twenty years and upwards, still possesses the vigour and freshness of youth. At the extremity of these extensive alleys and pleasure-grounds, ornamented with fruit-trees and shrubbery, and clothed in perennial verdure, stands two hot-houses, and as many green-houses, situated in the sunniest part of the garden, and shielded from the northern winds by a long range of wooden buildings for the accommodation of servants. From the air of a frosty December morning, we were suddenly introduced into the tropical climate of these spacious houses, where we long sauntered among groves of the coffee-tree, lemons and oranges, all in full bearing, regaling our senses with the flowers and odours of spring.

“One of the hot-houses is appropriated entirely to rearing the pine-apple, long rows of which we saw in a flourishing and luxuriant condition. Many bushels of lemons and oranges, of every variety, are annually grown, which, besides furnishing the family with a supply of these fruits at all seasons, are distributed as delicacies to their friends, or used to administer to the comfort of their neighbours in cases of sickness. The coffee-plant thrives well, yields abundantly, and, in quality, is said to be equal to the best Mocha. The branches under which we walked were laden with the fruit, fast advancing to maturity. Among the more rare plants we saw the night-blowing cereas, the guava, aloes of a gigantic growth, the West India plantain, the sweet cassia in bloom, the prickly pear, and many others.

“At every step in these pleasure-grounds, the thought occurred that the illustrious projector is no more. In passing the house, the chamber in which he died was pointed out to us; and imagination, aided by these memorials, soon presented the scene in such distinct and vivid colours, that we seemed almost to follow his remains to the grave.”

VILLAGE OF LITTLE FALLS, MOHAWK RIVER.

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This thriving town sits above the north bank of the Mohawk, amid some of the most exquisite scenery of the world. The falls afford great facilities for manufactures of all kinds, and the Erie canal and rail-road both pass through it, up the Valley of the Mohawk, making it altogether the busiest spot, as it is the loveliest on the great route westward. It is impossible to conquer the wildness of the scenery here, however; and spite of mills and aqueducts, and smoking steam-engines, the soul of the banished Mohawk might return and haunt with comfort the bold precipices and impassive rocks that frown down upon his ancient abode, and still find the water untamed, and the mountains beautiful.

Of the small relics of Indian history that exist, there is a scrap which proves the supremacy of the Mohawk over even the far-off tribes of Connecticut. In the year 1656, a Podunk Indian, named Weaseapano, murdered a Sachem, who lived near Mattabeseck, (now Middletown.) Seaquassin, the existing Sachem of his tribe, complained of the outrage to the magistracy of Connecticut, and said that the Podunk Indians entertained the murderer, and protected him from the merited punishment. Seaquassin, at the same time, engaged Uncas in his cause, who also complained that Tontonimo enticed away many of his men, and protected an Indian who had murdered a Mohegan. Upon these complaints, the magistrates summoned the parties before them. Seaquassin and Uncas, after observing that the murderer was a mean fellow, and that the man murdered was a great Sachem, insisted that _ten men_, friends of Weaseapano, should be delivered up to be put to death, as a satisfaction for the crime. Tontonimo insisted that the satisfaction demanded was excessive; particularly as the murdered Sachem had killed Weaseapano’s uncle. The governor endeavoured to convince the complainants that the demand was excessive, observing that the English, in cases of murder, punished only the principal, and such as were accessary to the crime.

Tontonimo then proposed to make satisfaction by the payment of wampum, but it was refused. They fell, however, in their demands from ten men to six. The proposition was rejected by Tontonimo. The magistrates then urged him to deliver up the murderer: this he promised to do. But while the subject was in agitation, he privately withdrew from the court with the rest of the Podunk Sachems, and retired to the fortress belonging to his nation. Both the magistrates and the complainants were offended at this behaviour of Tontonimo. However, the magistrates appointed a committee to persuade the Indians to continue at peace with each other. At their solicitation, Uncas at length consented to accept the murderer, and promised to be satisfied if he should be delivered up; but the Podunk Indians told the English that they could not comply with this condition, because the friends of Weaseapano were numerous and powerful, and would not agree to the proposal.

The governor then addressed them in form, urging them to continue in peace, and endeavouring to persuade the complainants to accept of wampum. This they again refused, and withdrew; after it had been agreed on all hands that the English should not take any part in the controversy, and after the Indians had promised that they would not injure the persons or possessions of the English on either side the river.

Soon after, Uncas assembled an army for the purpose of avenging his wrongs; but being met near Hoccanum river by an equal number of the Podunks, and considering the issue of a battle as doubtful, he prudently retired, after having sent a message to Tontonimo, in which he declared, that if the Podunk Sachem persisted in withholding the murderer from justice, he would send to the Mohawks to come and destroy both him and his people.

Not long after, the crafty Mohegan accomplished his purpose in the following manner. He sent a trusty warrior, furnished with some Mohawk weapons, to Podunk, directing him to set fire in the night to a house near the fort, and then to leave the weapons on the ground in the vicinity, and immediately return. The warrior executed his commission. When the Podunks came in the morning to examine the ruins they found the weapons, and knowing them to belong to the Mohawks, were so alarmed with the apprehension that Uncas was about to execute his threat, that they delivered up the murderer, and sued for peace.

HARPER’S FERRY,
(FROM THE BLUE RIDGE.)

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The scenery at Harper’s Ferry is, perhaps, the most singularly picturesque in America. The Views already given display its beauties, as seen from below. To attain that given in the present number, it was necessary to climb the Blue Ridge, by a narrow winding path, immediately above the bank of the Potomac. The view from this lofty summit amply repays the fatigue incurred by its ascent. The junction of the two rivers is immediately beneath the spectator’s feet; and his delighted eye resting first upon the beautiful and thriving village of Harper’s Ferry, wanders over the wide and woody plains, extending to the Alleghany mountains. President Jefferson, who has given the name to a beautiful rock immediately above the village, has left a powerful description of the scenery of Harper’s Ferry, which we shall give to our readers.

“The passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge, is, perhaps, one of the most stupendous scenes in nature. You stand on a very high point of land; on your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Potomac, in quest of a passage also; in the moment of their junction, they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea. The first glance of this scene hurries our senses into the opinion that this earth has been created in time; that the mountains were formed first, that the rivers began to flow afterwards, that in this place particularly they have been dammed up by the Blue Ridge of mountains, and have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that, continuing to rise, they have at length broken over at this spot, and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah—the evident marks of their disrupture and avulsion from their beds by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the impression. But the distant finishing which nature has given to the picture, is of a very different character; it is a true contrast to the foreground; it is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous; for the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach and participate of the calm below. Here the eye ultimately composes itself; and that way, too, the road happens actually to lead. You cross the Potomac above the junction, pass along its side through the base of the mountain for three miles, its terrible precipices hanging in fragments over you, and, within about twenty miles, reach Fredericktown, and the fine country round that. This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic; yet here, as in the neighbourhood of the Natural Bridge, are people who have passed their lives within half a dozen miles, and have never been to survey these monuments of a war between rivers and mountains, which must have shaken the earth itself to its centre.”

BARHYDT’S LAKE, NEAR SARATOGA.

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I drove to Barhydt’s Lake, with the accomplished artist whose name is at the bottom of the drawing, on one of the finest days of early September. With a pair of crop ponies, whose _going_, simply, we acknowledged we had never seen beaten on the smooth roads of England, and a day over our heads of the most inspiriting freshness, we dashed through the pine woods of Saratoga in a light waggon, and pulled up at Barhydt’s door in twenty minutes from leaving the Springs.