Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 by S.M. Fuller
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S.M. Fuller >> Summer on the Lakes, in 1843
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16 [Illustration: ARCHED ROCK AT MACKINAW]
SUMMER ON THE LAKES
IN 1843
BY
S. M. FULLER
MDCCCXLIV.
SUMMER ON THE LAKES.
Summer days of busy leisure,
Long summer days of dear-bought pleasure,
You have done your teaching well;
Had the scholar means to tell
How grew the vine of bitter-sweet,
What made the path for truant feet,
Winter nights would quickly pass,
Gazing on the magic glass
O'er which the new-world shadows pass;
But, in fault of wizard spell,
Moderns their tale can only tell
In dull words, with a poor reed
Breaking at each time of need.
But those to whom a hint suffices
Mottoes find for all devices,
See the knights behind their shields,
Through dried grasses, blooming fields.
TO A FRIEND.
Some dried grass-tufts from the wide flowery plain,
A muscle shell from the lone fairy shore,
Some antlers from tall woods which never more
To the wild deer a safe retreat can yield,
An eagle's feather which adorned a Brave,
Well-nigh the last of his despairing band,
For such slight gifts wilt thou extend thy hand
When weary hours a brief refreshment crave?
I give you what I can, not what I would,
If my small drinking-cup would hold a flood,
As Scandinavia sung those must contain
With which the giants gods may entertain;
In our dwarf day we drain few drops, and soon must thirst again.
CHAPTER I.
Niagara, June 10, 1843.
Since you are to share with me such foot-notes as may be made on the
pages of my life during this summer's wanderings, I should not be quite
silent as to this magnificent prologue to the, as yet, unknown drama.
Yet I, like others, have little to say where the spectacle is, for once,
great enough to fill the whole life, and supersede thought, giving us
only its own presence. "It is good to be here," is the best as the
simplest expression that occurs to the mind.
We have been here eight days, and I am quite willing to go away. So
great a sight soon satisfies, making us content with itself, and with
what is less than itself. Our desires, once realized, haunt us again
less readily. Having "lived one day" we would depart, and become worthy
to live another.
We have not been fortunate in weather, for there cannot be too much, or
too warm sunlight for this scene, and the skies have been lowering, with
cold, unkind winds. My nerves, too much braced up by such an atmosphere,
do not well bear the continual stress of sight and sound. For here there
is no escape from the weight of a perpetual creation; all other forms
and motions come and go, the tide rises and recedes, the wind, at its
mightiest, moves in gales and gusts, but here is really an incessant, an
indefatigable motion. Awake or asleep, there is no escape, still this
rushing round you and through you. It is in this way I have most felt
the grandeur--somewhat eternal, if not infinite.
At times a secondary music rises; the cataract seems to seize its own
rhythm and sing it over again, so that the ear and soul are roused by a
double vibration. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes to the
thundering anthem. It is very sublime, giving the effect of a spiritual
repetition through all the spheres.
When I first came I felt nothing but a quiet satisfaction. I found that
drawings, the panorama, &c. had given me a clear notion of the position
and proportions of all objects here; I knew where to look for
everything, and everything looked as I thought it would.
Long ago, I was looking from a hill-side with a friend at one of the
finest sunsets that ever enriched this world. A little cow-boy, trudging
along, wondered what we could be gazing at. After spying about some
time, he found it could only be the sunset, and looking, too, a moment,
he said approvingly "that sun looks well enough;" a speech worthy of
Shakspeare's Cloten, or the infant Mercury, up to everything from the
cradle, as you please to take it.
Even such a familiarity, worthy of Jonathan, our national hero, in a
prince's palace, or "stumping" as he boasts to have done, "up the
Vatican stairs, into the Pope's presence, in my old boots," I felt
here; it looks really _well enough_, I felt, and was inclined, as you
suggested, to give my approbation as to the one object in the world that
would not disappoint.
But all great expression, which, on a superficial survey, seems so easy
as well as so simple, furnishes, after a while, to the faithful observer
its own standard by which to appreciate it. Daily these proportions
widened and towered more and more upon my sight, and I got, at last, a
proper foreground for these sublime distances. Before coming away, I
think I really saw the full wonder of the scene. After awhile it so drew
me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread, such as I never knew
before, such as may be felt when death is about to usher us into a new
existence. The perpetual trampling of the waters seized my senses. I
felt that no other sound, however near, could be heard, and would start
and look behind me for a foe. I realized the identity of that mood of
nature in which these waters were poured down with such absorbing force,
with that in which the Indian was shaped on the same soil. For
continually upon my mind came, unsought and unwelcome, images, such as
never haunted it before, of naked savages stealing behind me with
uplifted tomahawks; again and again this illusion recurred, and even
after I had thought it over, and tried to shake it off, I could not help
starting and looking behind me.
As picture, the Falls can only be seen from the British side. There they
are seen in their veils, and at sufficient distance to appreciate the
magical effects of these, and the light and shade. From the boat, as
you cross, the effects and contrasts are more melodramatic. On the road
back from the whirlpool, we saw them as a reduced picture with delight.
But what I liked best was to sit on Table Rock, close to the great fall.
There all power of observing details, all separate consciousness, was
quite lost.
Once, just as I had seated myself there, a man came to take his first
look. He walked close up to the fall, and, after looking at it a moment,
with an air as if thinking how he could best appropriate it to his own
use, he spat into it.
This trait seemed wholly worthy of an age whose love of _utility_ is
such that the Prince Puckler Muskau suggests the probability of men
coming to put the bodies of their dead parents in the fields to
fertilize them, and of a country such as Dickens has described; but
these will not, I hope, be seen on the historic page to be truly the age
or truly the America. A little leaven is leavening the whole mass for
other bread.
The whirlpool I like very much. It is seen to advantage after the great
falls; it is so sternly solemn. The river cannot look more
imperturbable, almost sullen in its marble green, than it does just
below the great fall; but the slight circles that mark the hidden
vortex, seem to whisper mysteries the thundering voice above could not
proclaim,--a meaning as untold as ever.
It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has been
swallowed by the cataract, is like to rise suddenly to light here,
whether uprooted tree, or body of man or bird.
The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; they are so swift
that they cease to seem so; you can think only of their beauty. The
fountain beyond the Moss Islands, I discovered for myself, and thought
it for some time an accidental beauty which it would not do to leave,
lest I might never see it again. After I found it permanent, I returned
many times to watch the play of its crest. In the little waterfall
beyond, nature seems, as she often does, to have made a study for some
larger design. She delights in this,--a sketch within a sketch, a dream
within a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in
the fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall, copied in the flowers
that star its bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all the lineaments
become fluent, and we mould the scene in congenial thought with its
genius.
People complain of the buildings at Niagara, and fear to see it further
deformed. I cannot sympathize with such an apprehension: the spectacle
is capable to swallow up all such objects; they are not seen in the
great whole, more than an earthworm in a wide field.
The beautiful wood on Goat Island is full of flowers; many of the
fairest love to do homage here. The Wake Robin and May Apple are in
bloom now; the former, white, pink, green, purple, copying the rainbow
of the fall, and fit to make a garland for its presiding deity when he
walks the land, for they are of imperial size, and shaped like stones
for a diadem. Of the May Apple, I did not raise one green tent without
finding a flower beneath.
And now farewell, Niagara. I have seen thee, and I think all who come
here must in some sort see thee; thou art not to be got rid of as easily
as the stars. I will be here again beneath some flooding July moon and
sun. Owing to the absence of light, I have seen the rainbow only two or
three times by day; the lunar bow not at all. However, the imperial
presence needs not its crown, though illustrated by it.
General Porter and Jack Downing were not unsuitable figures here. The
former heroically planted the bridges by which we cross to Goat Island,
and the Wake-Robin-crowned genius has punished his temerity with
deafness, which must, I think, have come upon him when he sank the first
stone in the rapids. Jack seemed an acute and entertaining
representative of Jonathan, come to look at his great water-privilege.
He told us all about the Americanisms of the spectacle; that is to say,
the battles that have been fought here. It seems strange that men could
fight in such a place; but no temple can still the personal griefs and
strifes in the breasts of its visiters.
No less strange is the fact that, in this neighborhood, an eagle should
be chained for a plaything. When a child, I used often to stand at a
window from which I could see an eagle chained in the balcony of a
museum. The people used to poke at it with sticks, and my childish heart
would swell with indignation as I saw their insults, and the mien with
which they were borne by the monarch-bird. Its eye was dull, and its
plumage soiled and shabby, yet, in its form and attitude, all the king
was visible, though sorrowful and dethroned. I never saw another of the
family till, when passing through the Notch of the White Mountains, at
that moment striding before us in all the panoply of sunset, the driver
shouted, "Look there!" and following with our eyes his upward-pointing
finger, we saw, soaring slow in majestic poise above the highest summit,
the bird of Jove. It was a glorious sight, yet I know not that I felt
more on seeing the bird in all its natural freedom and royalty, than
when, imprisoned and insulted, he had filled my early thoughts with the
Byronic "silent rages" of misanthropy.
Now, again, I saw him a captive, and addressed by the vulgar with the
language they seem to find most appropriate to such occasions--that of
thrusts and blows. Silently, his head averted, he ignored their
existence, as Plotinus or Sophocles might that of a modern reviewer.
Probably, he listened to the voice of the cataract, and felt that
congenial powers flowed free, and was consoled, though his own wing was
broken.
The story of the Recluse of Niagara interested me a little. It is
wonderful that men do not oftener attach their lives to localities of
great beauty--that, when once deeply penetrated, they will let
themselves so easily be borne away by the general stream of things, to
live any where and any how. But there is something ludicrous in being
the hermit of a show-place, unlike St. Francis in his mountain-bed,
where none but the stars and rising sun ever saw him.
There is also a "guide to the falls," who wears his title labeled on his
hat; otherwise, indeed, one might as soon think of asking for a
gentleman usher to point out the moon. Yet why should we wonder at such,
either, when we have Commentaries on Shakspeare, and Harmonics of the
Gospels?
And now you have the little all I have to write. Can it interest you? To
one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what
thoughts can be recorded about it, seem like the commas and semicolons
in the paragraph, mere stops. Yet I suppose it is not so to the absent.
At least, I have read things written about Niagara, music, and the like,
that interested _me_. Once I was moved by Mr. Greenwood's remark, that
he could not realize this marvel till, opening his eyes the next morning
after he had seen it, his doubt as to the possibility of its being still
there, taught him what he had experienced. I remember this now with
pleasure, though, or because, it is exactly the opposite to what I
myself felt. For all greatness affects different minds, each in "its own
particular kind," and the variations of testimony mark the truth of
feeling.
I will add a brief narrative of the experience of another here, as being
much better than anything I could write, because more simple and
individual.
"Now that I have left this 'Earth-wonder,' and the emotions it excited
are past, it seems not so much like profanation to analyze my feelings,
to recall minutely and accurately the effect of this manifestation of
the Eternal. But one should go to such a scene prepared to yield
entirely to its influences, to forget one's little self and one's little
mind. To see a miserable worm creep to the brink of this falling world
of waters, and watch the trembling of its own petty bosom, and fancy
that this is made alone, to act upon him excites--derision?--No,--pity."
As I rode up to the neighborhood of the falls, a solemn awe
imperceptibly stole over me, and the deep sound of the ever-hurrying
rapids prepared my mind for the lofty emotions to be experienced. When I
reached the hotel, I felt a strange indifference about seeing the
aspiration of my life's hopes. I lounged about the rooms, read the stage
bills upon the walls, looked over the register, and, finding the name of
an acquaintance, sent to see if he was still there. What this hesitation
arose from, I know not; perhaps it was a feeling of my unworthiness to
enter this temple which nature has erected to its God.
At last, slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to the bridge leading to
Goat Island, and when I stood upon this frail support, and saw a quarter
of a mile of tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard their everlasting roar,
my emotions overpowered me, a choaking sensation rose to my throat, a
thrill rushed through my veins, "my blood ran rippling to my finger's
ends." This was the climax of the effect which the falls produced upon
me--neither the American nor the British fall moved me as did these
rapids. For the magnificence, the sublimity of the latter I was prepared
by descriptions and by paintings. When I arrived in sight of them I
merely felt, "ah, yes, here is the fall, just as I have seen it in
picture." When I arrived at the terrapin bridge, I expected to be
overwhelmed, to retire trembling from this giddy eminence, and gaze
with unlimited wonder and awe upon the immense mass rolling on and on,
but, somehow or other, I thought only of comparing the effect on my mind
with what I had read and heard. I looked for a short time, and then with
almost a feeling of disappointment, turned to go to the other points of
view to see if I was not mistaken in not feeling any surpassing emotion
at this sight. But from the foot of Biddle's stairs, and the middle of
the river, and from below the table rock, it was still "barren, barren
all." And, provoked with my stupidity in feeling most moved in the wrong
place, I turned away to the hotel, determined to set off for Buffalo
that afternoon. But the stage did not go, and, after nightfall, as there
was a splendid moon, I went down to the bridge, and leaned over the
parapet, where the boiling rapids came down in their might. It was
grand, and it was also gorgeous; the yellow rays of the moon made the
broken waves appear like auburn tresses twining around the black rocks.
But they did not inspire me as before. I felt a foreboding of a mightier
emotion to rise up and swallow all others, and I passed on to the
terrapin bridge. Everything was changed, the misty apparition had taken
off its many-colored crown which it had worn by day, and a bow of
silvery white spanned its summit. The moonlight gave a poetical
indefiniteness to the distant parts of the waters, and while the rapids
were glancing in her beams, the river below the falls was black as
night, save where the reflection of the sky gave it the appearance of a
shield of blued steel. No gaping tourists loitered, eyeing with their
glasses, or sketching on cards the hoary locks of the ancient river god.
All tended to harmonize with the natural grandeur of the scene. I gazed
long. I saw how here mutability and unchangeableness were united. I
surveyed the conspiring waters rushing against the rocky ledge to
overthrow it at one mad plunge, till, like toppling ambition,
o'erleaping themselves, they fall on t'other side, expanding into foam
ere they reach the deep channel where they creep submissively away.
Then arose in my breast a genuine admiration, and a humble adoration of
the Being who was the architect of this and of all. Happy were the first
discoverers of Niagara, those who could come unawares upon this view and
upon that, whose feelings were entirely their own. With what gusto does
Father Hennepin describe "this great downfall of water," "this vast and
prodigious cadence of water, which falls down after a surprising and
astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its
parallel. 'Tis true Italy and Swedeland boast of some such things, but
we may well say that they be sorry patterns when compared with this of
which we do now speak."
CHAPTER II.
THE LAKES.
SCENE, STEAMBOAT.--_About to leave Buffalo--Baggage coming on
board--Passengers bustling for their berths--Little boys persecuting
everybody with their newspapers and pamphlets--J., S. and M. huddled
up in a forlorn corner, behind a large trunk--A heavy rain falling_.
_M_. Water, water everywhere. After Niagara one would like a dry strip
of existence. And at any rate it is quite enough for me to have it under
foot without having it over head in this way.
_J_. Ah, do not abuse the gentle element. It is hardly possible to have
too much of it, and indeed, if I were obliged to choose amid the four,
it would be the one in which I could bear confinement best.
_S_. You would make a pretty Undine, to be sure!
_J_. Nay, I only offered myself as a Triton, a boisterous Triton of the
sounding shell ... You; M. I suppose, would be a salamander, rather.
_M_. No! that is too equivocal a position, whether in modern mythology,
or Hoffman's tales. I should choose to be a gnome.
_J_. That choice savors of the pride that apes humility.
_M_. By no means; the gnomes are the most important of all the elemental
tribes. Is it not they who make the money?
_J_. And are accordingly a dark, mean, scoffing,--
_M_. You talk as if you had always lived in that wild unprofitable
element you are so fond of, where all things glitter, and nothing is
gold; all show and no substance. My people work in the secret, and their
works praise them in the open light; they remain in the dark because
only there such marvels could be bred. You call them mean. They do not
spend their energies on their own growth, or their own play, but to feed
the veins of mother earth with permanent splendors, very different from
what she shows on the surface.
Think of passing a life, not merely in heaping together, but making
gold. Of all dreams, that of the alchymist is the most poetical, for he
looked at the finest symbol. Gold, says one of our friends, is the
hidden light of the earth, it crowns the mineral, as wine the vegetable
order, being the last expression of vital energy.
_J_. Have you paid for your passage?
_M_. Yes! and in gold, not in shells or pebbles.
_J_. No really wise gnome would scoff at the water, the beautiful water.
"The spirit of man is like the water."
_S_. Yes, and like the air and fire, no less.
_J_. Yes, but not like the earth, this low-minded creature's chosen
dwelling.
_M_. The earth is spirit made fruitful,--life. And its heart-beats are
told in gold and wine.
_J_. Oh! it is shocking to hear such sentiments in these times. I
thought that Bacchic energy of yours was long since repressed.
_M_. No! I have only learned to mix water with my wine, and stamp upon
my gold the heads of kings, or the hieroglyphics of worship. But since I
have learnt to mix with water, let's hear what you have to say in praise
of your favorite.
_J_. From water Venus was born, what more would you have? It is the
mother of Beauty, the girdle of earth, and the marriage of nations.
_S_. Without any of that high-flown poetry, it is enough, I think, that
it is the great artist, turning all objects that approach it to picture.
_J_. True, no object that touches it, whether it be the cart that
ploughs the wave for sea-weed, or the boat or plank that rides upon it,
but is brought at once from the demesne of coarse utilities into that of
picture. All trades, all callings, become picturesque by the water's
side, or on the water. The soil, the slovenliness is washed out of every
calling by its touch. All river-crafts, sea-crafts, are picturesque, are
poetical. Their very slang is poetry.
_M_. The reasons for that are complex.
_J_. The reason is, that there can be no plodding, groping words and
motions, on my water as there are on your earth. There is no time, no
chance for them where all moves so rapidly, though so smoothly,
everything connected with water must be like itself, forcible, but
clear. That is why sea-slang is so poetical; there is a word for
everything and every act, and a thing and an act for every word. Seamen
must speak quick and bold, but also with utmost precision. They cannot
reef and brace other than in a Homeric dialect--therefore,--(Steamboat
bell rings.) But I must say a quick good-by.
_M_. What, going, going back to earth after all this talk upon the other
side. Well, that is nowise Homeric, but truly modern.
J. is borne off without time for any reply, but a laugh--at himself, of
course.
S. and M. retire to their state-rooms to forget the wet, the chill and
steamboat smell in their just-bought new world of novels.
Next day, when we stopped at Cleveland, the storm was just clearing up;
ascending the bluff, we had one of the finest views of the lake that
could have been wished. The varying depths of these lakes give to their
surface a great variety of coloring, and beneath this wild sky and
changeful lights, the waters presented kaleidoscopic varieties of hues,
rich, but mournful. I admire these bluffs of red, crumbling earth. Here
land and water meet under very different auspices from those of the
rock-bound coast to which I have been accustomed. There they meet
tenderly to challenge, and proudly to refuse, though not in fact repel.
But here they meet to mingle, are always rushing together, and changing
places; a new creation takes place beneath the eye.
The weather grew gradually clearer, but not bright; yet we could see
the shore and appreciate the extent of these noble waters.
Coming up the river St. Clair, we saw Indians for the first time. They
were camped out on the bank. It was twilight, and their blanketed forms,
in listless groups or stealing along the bank, with a lounge and a
stride so different in its wildness from the rudeness of the white
settler, gave me the first feeling that I really approached the West.
The people on the boat were almost all New Englanders, seeking their
fortunes. They had brought with them their habits of calculation, their
cautious manners, their love of polemics. It grieved me to hear these
immigrants who were to be the fathers of a new race, all, from the old
man down to the little girl, talking not of what they should do, but of
what they should get in the new scene. It was to them a prospect, not of
the unfolding nobler energies, but of more ease, and larger
accumulation. It wearied me, too, to hear Trinity and Unity discussed in
the poor, narrow doctrinal way on these free waters; but that will soon
cease, there is not time for this clash of opinions in the West, where
the clash of material interests is so noisy. They will need the spirit
of religion more than ever to guide them, but will find less time than
before for its doctrine. This change was to me, who am tired of the war
of words on these subjects, and believe it only sows the wind to reap
the whirlwind, refreshing, but I argue nothing from it; there is nothing
real in the freedom of thought at the West, it is from the position of
men's lives, not the state of their minds. So soon as they have time,
unless they grow better meanwhile, they will cavil and criticise, and
judge other men by their own standard, and outrage the law of love every
way, just as they do with us.
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