CHAPTER III.
In the afternoon of this day we reached the Rock river, in whose neighborhood we proposed to make some stay, and crossed at Dixon's ferry.
This beautiful stream flows full and wide over a bed of rocks, traversing a distance of near two hundred miles, to reach the Mississippi. Great part of the country along its banks is the finest region of Illinois, and the scene of some of the latest romance of Indian warfare. To these beautiful regions Black Hawk returned with his band “to pass the summer,” when he drew upon himself the warfare in which he was finally vanquished. No wonder he could not resist the longing, unwise though its indulgence might be, to return in summer to this home of beauty.
Of Illinois, in general, it has often been remarked that it bears the character of country which has been inhabited by a nation skilled like the English in all the ornamental arts of life, especially in landscape gardening. That the villas and castles seem to have been burnt, the enclosures taken down, but the velvet lawns, the flower gardens, the stately parks, scattered at graceful intervals by the decorous hand of art, the frequent deer, and the peaceful herd of cattle that make picture of the plain, all suggest more of the masterly mind of man, than the prodigal, but careless, motherly love of nature. Especially is this true of the Rock river country. The river flows sometimes through these parks and lawns, then betwixt high bluffs, whose grassy ridges are covered with fine trees, or broken with crumbling stone, that easily assumes the forms of buttress, arch and clustered columns. Along the face of such crumbling rocks, swallows' nests are clustered, thick as cities, and eagles and deer do not disdain their summits. One morning, out in the boat along the base of these rocks, it was amusing, and affecting too, to see these swallows put their heads out to look at us. There was something very hospitable about it, as if man had never shown himself a tyrant near them. What a morning that was! Every sight is worth twice as much by the early morning light. We borrow something of the spirit of the hour to look upon them.
The first place where we stopped was one of singular beauty, a beauty of soft, luxuriant wildness. It was on the bend of the river, a place chosen by an Irish gentleman, whose absenteeship seems of the wisest kind, since for a sum which would have been but a drop of water to the thirsty fever of his native land, he commands a residence which has all that is desirable, in its independence, its beautiful retirement, and means of benefit to others.
His park, his deer-chase, he found already prepared; he had only to make an avenue through it. This brought us by a drive, which in the heat of noon seemed long, though afterwards, in the cool of morning and evening, delightful, to the house. This is, for that part of the world, a large and commodious dwelling. Near it stands the log-cabin where its master lived while it was building, a very ornamental accessory.
In front of the house was a lawn, adorned by the most graceful trees. A few of these had been taken out to give a full view of the river, gliding through banks such as I have described. On this bend the bank is high and bold, so from the house or the lawn the view was very rich and commanding. But if you descended a ravine at the side to the water's edge, you found there a long walk on the narrow shore, with a wall above of the richest hanging wood, in which they said the deer lay hid. I never saw one, but often fancied that I heard them rustling, at daybreak, by these, bright clear waters, stretching out in such smiling promise, where no sound broke the deep and blissful seclusion, unless now and then this rustling, or the plash of some fish a little gayer than the others; it seemed not necessary to have any better heaven, or fuller expression of love and freedom than in the mood of nature here.
Then, leaving the bank, you would walk far and far through long grassy paths, full of the most brilliant, also the most delicate flowers. The brilliant are more common on the prairie, but both kinds loved this place.
Amid the grass of the lawn, with a profusion of wild strawberries, we greeted also a familiar love, the Scottish harebell, the gentlest, and most touching form of the flower-world.
The master of the house was absent, but with a kindness beyond thanks had offered us a resting place there. Here we were taken care of by a deputy, who would, for his youth, have been assigned the place of a page in former times, but in the young west, it seems he was old enough for a steward. Whatever be called his function, he did the honors of the place so much in harmony with it, as to leave the guests free to imagine themselves in Elysium. And the three days passed here were days of unalloyed, spotless happiness.
There was a peculiar charm in coming here, where the choice of location, and the unobtrusive good taste of all the arrangements, showed such intelligent appreciation of the spirit of the scene, after seeing so many dwellings of the new settlers, which showed plainly that they had no thought beyond satisfying the grossest material wants. Sometimes they looked attractive, the little brown houses, the natural architecture of the country, in the edge of the timber. But almost always when you came near, the slovenliness of the dwelling and the rude way in which objects around it were treated, when so little care would have presented a charming whole, were very repulsive. Seeing the traces of the Indians, who chose the most beautiful sites for their dwellings, and whose habits do not break in on that aspect of nature under which they were born, we feel as if they were the rightful lords of a beauty they forbore to deform. But most of these settlers do not see it at all; it breathes, it speaks in vain to those who are rushing into its sphere. Their progress is Gothic, not Roman, and their mode of cultivation will, in the course of twenty, perhaps ten, years, obliterate the natural expression of the country.
This is inevitable, fatal; we must not complain, but look forward to a good result. Still, in travelling through this country, I could not but be struck with the force of a symbol. Wherever the hog comes, the rattlesnake disappears; the omnivorous traveller, safe in its stupidity, willingly and easily makes a meal of the most dangerous of reptiles, and one whom the Indian looks on with a mystic awe. Even so the white settler pursues the Indian, and is victor in the chase. But I shall say more upon the subject by-and-by.
While we were here we had one grand thunder storm, which added new glory to the scene.
One beautiful feature was the return of the pigeons every afternoon to their home. Every afternoon they came sweeping across the lawn, positively in clouds, and with a swiftness and softness of winged motion, more beautiful than anything of the kind I ever knew. Had I been a musician, such as Mendelsohn, I felt that I could have improvised a music quite peculiar, from the sound they made, which should have indicated all the beauty over which their wings bore them. I will here insert a few lines left at this house, on parting, which feebly indicate some of the features.
| Familiar to the childish mind were tales |
| Of rock-girt isles amid a desert sea, |
| Where unexpected stretch the flowery vales |
| To soothe the shipwrecked sailor's misery. |
| Fainting, he lay upon a sandy shore, |
| And fancied that all hope of life was o'er; |
| But let him patient climb the frowning wall, |
| Within, the orange glows beneath the palm tree tall, |
| And all that Eden boasted waits his call. |
| Almost these tales seem realized to-day, |
| When the long dullness of the sultry way, |
| Where “independent” settlers' careless cheer |
| Made us indeed feel we were “strangers” here, |
| Is cheered by sudden sight of this fair spot, |
| On which “improvement” yet has made no blot, |
| But Nature all-astonished stands, to find |
| Her plan protected by the human mind. |
| Blest be the kindly genius of the scene; |
| The river, bending in unbroken grace, |
| The stately thickets, with their pathways green, |
| Fair lonely trees, each in its fittest place. |
| Those thickets haunted by the deer and fawn ; |
| Those cloudlike flights of birds across the lawn; |
| The gentlest breezes here delight to blow, |
| And sun and shower and star are emulous to deck the show. |
| Wondering, as Crusoe, we survey the land; |
| Happier than Crusoe we, a friendly band; |
| Blest be the hand that reared this friendly home, |
| The heart and mind of him to whom we owe |
| Hours of pure peace such as few mortals know; |
| May he find such, should he be led to roam; |
| Be tended by such ministering sprites — |
| Enjoy such gaily childish days, such hopeful nights! |
| And yet, amid the goods to mortals given, |
| To give those goods again is most like heaven. |
| Hazelwood, Rock River, June 30th, 1843. |
The only really rustic feature was of the many
coops of poultry near the house, which I understood
it to be one of the chief pleasures of the master to
feed.
Leaving this place, we proceeded a day's journey alone; the beautiful stream, to a little town named Oregon. We called at a cabin, from whose door looked out one of those faces which, once seen, are never forgotten; young, yet touched with many traces of feeling, not only possible, but endured; spirited, too, like the gleam of a finely tempered blade. It was a lace that suggested a history, and many histories, but whose scene would have been in courts and camps. At this moment their circles are dull for want of that life which is waning unexcited in this solitary recess.
The master of the house proposed to show us a “short cut,” by which we might, to especial advantage, pursue our journey. This proved to be almost perpendicular down a hill, studded with young trees and stumps. From these he proposed, with a hospitality of service worthy an Oriental, to free our wheels whenever they should get entangled, also, to be himself the drag, to prevent our too rapid descent. Such generosity deserved trust; however, we women could not be persuaded to render it. We got out and admired, from afar, the process. Left by our guide — and prop! we found ourselves in a wide field, where, by playful quips and turns, an endless “creek,” seemed to divert itself with our attempts to cross it. Failing in this, the next best was to whirl down a steep bank, which feat our charioteer performed with an air not unlike that of Rhesus, had he but been as suitably furnished with chariot and steeds!
At last, after wasting some two or three hours on the “short cut,” we got out by following an Indian trail, — Black Hawk's! How fair the scene through which it led! How could they let themselves be conquered, with such a country to fight for!
Afterwards, in the wide prairie, we saw a lively picture of nonchalance, (to speak in the fashion of dear Ireland.) There, in the wide sunny field, with neither tree nor umbrella above his head, sat a pedler, with his pack, waiting apparently for customers. He was not disappointed. We bought, what hold in regard to the human world, as unmarked, as mysterious, and as important an existence, as the infusoria to the natural, to wit, pins. This incident would have delighted those modern sages, who, in imitation of the sitting philosophers of ancient Ind, prefer silence to speech, waiting to going, and scornfully smile in answer to the motions of earnest life,
| “ | Of itself will nothing come, |
| That ye must still be seeking?” |
However, it seemed to me to-day, as formerly on these sublime occasions, obvious that nothing would come, unless something would go; now, if we had been as sublimely still as the pedler, his pins would have tarried in the pack, and his pockets sustained an aching void of pence!
Passing through one of the fine, park-like woods, almost clear from underbrush and carpeted with thick grasses and flowers, we met, (for it was Sunday,) a little congregation just returning from their service, which had been performed in a rude house in its midst. It had a sweet and peaceful air, as if such words and thoughts were very dear to them. The parents had with them all their little children; but we saw no old people; that charm was wanting, which exists in such scenes in older settlements, of seeing the silver bent in reverence beside the flaxen head.
At Oregon, the beauty of the scene was of even a more sumptuous character than at our former “stopping place.” Here swelled the river in its boldest course, interspersed by halcyon isles on which nature had lavished all her prodigality in tree, vine, and flower, banked by noble bluffs, three hundred feet high, their sharp ridges as exquisitely definite as the edge of a shell; their summits adorned with those same beautiful trees, and with buttresses of rich rock, crested with old hemlocks, which wore a touching and antique grace amid the softer and more luxuriant vegetation. Lofty natural mounds rose amidst the rest, with the same lovely and sweeping outline, showing everywhere the plastic power of water, — water, mother of beauty, which, by its sweet and eager flow, had left such lineaments as human genius never dreamt of.
Not far from the river was a high crag, called the Pine Rock, which looks out, as our guide observed, like a helmet above the brow of the country. It seems as if the water left here and there a vestige of forms and materials that preceded its course, just to set off its new and richer designs.
The aspect of this country was to me enchanting, beyond any I have ever seen, from its fullness of expression, its bold and impassioned sweetness. Here the flood of emotion has passed over and marked everywhere its course by a smile. The fragments of rock touch it with a wildness and liberality which give just the needed relief. I should never be tired here, though I have elsewhere seen country of more secret and alluring charms, better calculated to stimulate and suggest. Here the eye and heart are filled.
How happy the Indians must have been here! It is not long since they were driven away, and the ground, above and below, is full of their traces.
“The earth is full of men.”
You have only to turn up the sod to find arrowheads and Indian pottery. On an island, belonging to our host, and nearly opposite his house, they loved to stay, and, no doubt, enjoyed its lavish beauty as much as the myriad wild pigeons that now haunt its flower-filled shades. Here are still the marks of their tomahawks, the troughs in which they prepared their corn, their caches.
A little way down the river is the site of an ancient Indian village, with its regularly arranged mounds. As usual, they had chosen with the finest taste. It was one of those soft shadowy afternoons when we went there, when nature seems ready to weep, not from grief, but from an overfull heart. Two prattling, lovely little girls, and an African boy, with glittering eye and ready grin, made our party gay; but all were still as we entered their little inlet and trod those flowery paths. They may blacken Indian life as they will, talk of its dirt, its brutality, I will ever believe that the men who chose that dwelling-place were able to feel emotions of noble happiness as they returned to it, and so were the women that received them. Neither were the children sad or dull, who lived so familiarly with the deer and the birds, and swam that clear wave in the shadow of the Seven Sisters. The whole scene suggested to me a Greek splendor, a Greek sweetness, and I can believe that an Indian brave, accustomed to ramble in such paths, and be bathed by such sunbeams, might be mistaken for Apollo, as Apollo was for him by West. Two of the boldest bluffs are called the Deer's Walk, (not because deer do not walk there,) and the Eagle's Nest. The latter I visited one glorious morning; it was that of the fourth of July, and certainly I think I had never felt so happy that I was born in America. Wo to all country folks that never saw this spot, never swept an enraptured gaze over the prospect that stretched beneath. I do believe Rome and Florence are suburbs compared to this capital of nature's art.
The bluff was decked with great bunches of a scarlet variety of the milkweed, like cut coral, and all starred with a mysterious-looking dark flower, whose cup rose lonely on a tall stem. This had, for two or three days, disputed the ground with the lupine and phlox. My companions disliked, I liked it.
Here I thought of, or rather saw, what the Greek expresses under the form of Jove's darling, Ganymede, and the following stanzas took form.
GANYMEDE TO HIS EAGLE,
SUGGESTED BY A WORK OF THORWALDSEN'S.
Composed on the height called the Eagle's Nest, Oregon, Rock River,
July 4th, 1843.
| Upon the rocky mountain stood the boy, |
| A goblet of pure water in his hand, |
| His face and form spoke him one made for joy, |
| A willing servant to sweet love's command, |
| But a strange pain was written on his brow, |
| And thrilled throughout his silver accents now — |
| “My bird,” he cries, “my destined brother friend, |
| O whither fleets to-day thy wayward flight? |
| Hast thou forgotten that I here attend, |
| From the full noon until this sad twilight? |
| A hundred times, at least, from the clear spring, |
| Since the full noon o'er hill and valley glowed, |
| I've filled the vase which our Olympian king |
| Upon my care for thy sole use bestowed; |
| That at the moment when thou should'st descend, |
| A pure refreshment might thy thirst attend. |
| Hast thou forgotten earth, forgotten me, |
| Thy fellow bondsman in a royal cause, |
| Who, from the sadness of infinity, |
| Only with thee can know that peaceful pause |
| In which we catch the flowing strain of love, |
| Which binds our dim fates to the throne of Jove? |
| |
| Before I saw thee, I was like the May, |
| Longing for summer that must mar its bloom, |
| Or like the morning star that calls the day, |
| Whose glories to its promise are the tomb; |
| And as the eager fountain rises higher |
| To throw itself more strongly back to earth, |
| Still, as more sweet and full rose my desire, |
| More fondly it reverted to its birth, |
| For, what the rosebud seeks tells not the rose, |
| The meaning foretold by the boy the man cannot disclose. |
| I was all Spring, for in my being dwelt |
| Eternal youth, where flowers are the fruit, |
| Full feeling was the thought of what was felt, |
| Its music was the meaning of the lute; |
| But heaven and earth such life will still deny, |
| For earth, divorced from heaven, still asks the question Why? |
| Upon the highest mountains my young feet |
| Ached, that no pinions from their lightness grew, |
| My starlike eyes the stars would fondly greet, |
| Yet win no greeting from the circling blue; |
| Fair, self-subsistent each in its own sphere, |
| They had no care that there was none for me; |
| Alike to them that I was far or near, |
| Alike to them, time and eternity. |
| But, from the violet of lower air, |
| Sometimes an answer to my wishing came, |
| Those lightning births mv nature seemed to share, |
| They told the secrets of its fiery frame, |
| The sudden messengers of hate and love, |
| The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove, |
| And strike sometimes the sacred spire, and strike the sacred grove. |
| |
| Come in a moment, in a moment gone, |
| They answered me, then left me still more lone, |
| They told me that the thought which ruled the world, |
| As yet no sail upon its course had furled, |
| That the creation was but just begun, |
| New leaves still leaving from the primal one, |
| But spoke not of the goal to which my rapid wheels would run. |
| Still, still my eyes, though tearfully, I strained |
| To the far future which my heart contained, |
| And no dull doubt my proper hope profaned. |
| At last, O bliss, thy living form I spied, |
| Then a mere speck upon a distant sky, |
| Yet my keen glance discerned its noble pride, |
| And the full answer, of that sun-filled eye; |
| I knew it was the wing that must upbear |
| My earthlier form into the realms of air. |
| Thou knowest how we gained that beauteous height, |
| Where dwells the monarch of the sons of light, |
| Thou knowest he declared us two to be |
| The chosen servants of his ministry, |
| Thou as his messenger, a sacred sign |
| Of conquest, or with omen more benign, |
| To give its due weight to the righteous cause, |
| To express the verdict of Olympian laws. |
| And I to wait upon the lonely spring, |
| Which slakes the thirst of bards to whom 'tis given |
| The destined dues of hopes divine to sing, |
| And weave the needed chain to bind to heaven. |
| Only from such could be obtained a draught |
| For him who in his early home from Jove's own cup has quaffed. |
| |
| To wait, to wait, but not to wait too long, |
| Till heavy grows the burthen of a song; |
| O bird! too long hast thou been gone to-day, |
| My feet are weary of their frequent way, |
| The spell that opes the spring my tongue no more can say. |
| If soon thou com'st not, night will fall around, |
| My head with a sad slumber will be bound, |
| And the pure draught be spilt upon the ground. |
| Remember that I am not yet divine, |
| Long years of service to the fatal Nine |
| Are yet to make a Delphian vigor mine. |
| O, make them not too hard, thou bird of Jove, |
| Answer the stripling's hope, confirm his love, |
| Receive the service in which he delights, |
| And bear him often to the serene heights, |
| Where hands that were so prompt in serving thee, |
| Shall be allowed the highest minstry, |
| And Rapture live with bright Fidelity. |
The afternoon was spent in a very different
manner. The family, whose guests we were, possessed
a gay and graceful hospitality that gave zest to each
moment. They possessed that rare politeness which,
while fertile in pleasant expedients to vary the enjoyment
of a friend, leaves him perfectly free the
moment he wishes to be so. With such hosts, pleasure
may be combined with repose. They lived on
the bank opposite the town, and, as their house was
full, we slept in the town, and passed three days
with them, passing to and fro morning and evening
in their boats. (To one of these, called the Fairy,
in which a sweet little daughter of the house moved about lighter than any Scotch Ellen ever sung, I should
indite a poem, if I had not been guilty of rhyme on
the very last page.) At morning this was very pleasant;
at evening, I confess I was generally too tired
with the excitements of the day to think it so.
Their house — a double log cabin — was, to my eye, the model of a Western villa. Nature had laid out before it grounds which could not be improved. Within, female taste had veiled every rudeness — availed itself of every sylvan grace.
In this charming abode what laughter, what sweet thoughts, what pleasing fancies, did we not enjoy! May such never desert those who reared it and made us so kindly welcome to all its pleasures!
Fragments of city life were dexterously crumbled into the dish prepared for general entertainment. Ice creams followed the dinner drawn by the gentlemen from the river, and music and fireworks wound up the evening of days spent on the Eagle's Nest. Now they had prepared a little fleet to pass over to the Fourth of July celebration, which some queer drumming and fifing, from the opposite bank, had announced to be “on hand.”
We found the free and independent citizens there collected beneath the trees, among whom many a round Irish visage dimpled at the usual puffs of Ameriky.
The orator was a New Englander, and the speech smacked loudly of Boston, but was received with much applause, and followed by a plentiful dinner, provided by and for the Sovereign People, to which Hail Columbia served as grace.
Returning, the gay flotilla hailed the little flag which the children had raised from a log-cabin, prettier than any president ever saw, and drank the health of their country and all mankind, with a clear conscience.
Dance and song wound up the day. I know not when the mere local habitation has seemed to me to afford so fair a chance of happiness as this. To a person of unspoiled tastes, the beauty alone would afford stimulus enough. But with it would be naturally associated all kinds of wild sports, experiments, and the studies of natural history. In these regards, the poet, the sportsman, the naturalist, would alike rejoice in this wide range of untouched loveliness.
Then, with a very little money, a ducal estate may be purchased, and by a very little more, and moderate labor, a family be maintained upon it with raiment, food and shelter. The luxurious and minute comforts of a city life are not yet to be had without effort disproportionate to their value. But, where there is so great a counterpoise, cannot these be given up once for all? If the houses are imperfectly built, they can afford immense fires and plenty of covering; if they are small, who cares? — with such fields to roam in. In winter, it may be borne; in summer, is of no consequence. With plenty of fish, and game, and wheat, can they not dispense with a baker to bring “muffins hot” every morning to the door for their breakfast?
Here a man need not take a small slice from the landscape, and fence it in from the obtrusions of an uncongenial neighbor, and there cut down his fancies to miniature improvements which a chicken could run over in ten minutes. He may have water and wood and land enough, to dread no incursions on his prospect from some chance Vandal that may enter his neighborhood. He need not painfully economise and manage how he may use it all; he can afford to leave some of it wild, and to carry out his own plans without obliterating those of nature.
Here, whole families might live together, if they would. The sons might return from their pilgrimages to settle near the parent hearth; the daughters might find room near their mother. Those painful separations, which already desecrate and desolate the Atlantic coast, are not enforced here by the stern need of seeking bread; and where they are voluntary, it is no matter. To me, too, used to the feelings which haunt a society of struggling men, it was delightful to look upon a scene where nature still wore her motherly smile and seemed to promise room not only for those favored or cursed with the qualities best adapting for the strifes of competition, but for the delicate, the thoughtful, even the indolent or eccentric. She did not say, Fight or starve; nor even, Work or cease to exist; but, merely showing that the apple was a finer fruit than the wild crab, gave both room to grow in the garden.
A pleasant society is formed of the families who live along the banks of this stream upon farms. They are from various parts of the world, and have much to communicate to one another. Many have cultivated minds and refined manners, all a varied experience, while they have in common the interests of a new country and a new life. They must traverse some space to get at one another, but the journey is through scenes that make it a separate pleasure. They must bear inconveniences to stay in one another's houses; but these, to the well-disposed, are only a source of amusement and adventure.
The great drawback upon the lives of these settlers, at present, is the unfitness of the women for their new lot. It has generally been the choice of the men, and the women follow, as women will, doing their best for affection's sake, but too often in heartsickness and weariness. Beside it frequently not being a choice or conviction of their own minds that it is best to be here, their part is the hardest, and they are least fitted for it. The men can find assistance in field labor, and recreation with the gun and fishing-rod. Their bodily strength is greater, and enables them to bear and enjoy both these forms of life.
The women can rarely find any aid in domestic labor. All its various and careful tasks must often be performed, sick or well, by the mother and daughters, to whom a city education has imparted neither the strength nor skill now demanded.
The wives of the poorer settlers, having more hard work to do than before, very frequently become slatterns; but the ladies, accustomed to a refined neatness, feel that they cannot degrade themselves by its absence, and struggle under every disadvantage to keep up the necessary routine of small arrangements.
With all these disadvantages for work, their resources for pleasure are fewer. When they can leave the housework, they have not learnt to ride, to drive, to row, alone. Their culture has too generally been that given to women to make them “the ornaments of society.” They can dance, but not draw; talk French, but know nothing of the language of flowers; neither in childhood were allowed to cultivate them, lest they should tan their complexions. Accustomed to the pavement of Broadway, they dare not tread the wildwood paths for fear of rattlesnakes!
Seeing much of this joylessness, and inaptitude, both of body and mind, for a lot which would be full of blessings for those prepared for it, we could not but look with deep interest on the little girls, and hope they would grow up with the strength of body, dexterity, simple tastes, and resources that would fit them to enjoy and refine the western farmer's life.
But they have a great deal to war with in the habits of thought acquired by their mothers from their own early life. Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates, and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.
If the little girls grow up strong, resolute, able to exert their faculties, their mothers mourn over their want of fashionable delicacy. Are they gay, enterprising, ready to fly about in the various ways that teach them so much, these ladies lament that “they cannot go to school, where they might learn to be quiet.” They lament the want of “education” for their daughters, as if the thousand needs which call out their young energies, and the language of nature around, yielded no education.
Their grand ambition for their children, is to send them to school in some eastern city, the measure most likely to make them useless and unhappy at home. I earnestly hope that, ere long, the existence of good schools near themselves, planned by persona of sufficient thought to meet the wants of the place and time, instead of copying New York or Boston, will correct this mania. Instruction the children want to enable them to profit by the great natural advantages of their position; but methods copied from the education of some English Lady Augusta, are as ill suited to the daughter of an Illinois farmer, as satin shoes to climb the Indian mounds. An elegance she would diffuse around her, if her mind were opened to appreciate elegance; it might be of a kind new, original, enchanting, as different from that of the city belle as that of the prairie torch-flower from the shopworn article that touches the cheek of that lady within her bonnet.
To a girl really skilled to make home beautiful and comfortable, with bodily strength to enjoy plenty of exercise, the woods, the streams, a few studies, music, and the sincere and familiar intercourse, far more easily to be met here than elsewhere, would afford happiness enough. Her eyes would not grow dim, nor her cheeks sunken, in the absence of parties, morning visits, and milliner's shops.
As to music, I wish I could see in such places the guitar rather than the piano, and good vocal more than instrumental music.
The piano many carry with them, because it is the fashionable instrument in the eastern cities. Even there, it is so merely from the habit of imitating Europe, for not one in a thousand, is willing to give the labor requisite to ensure any valuable use of the instrument.
But, out here, where the ladies have so much less leisure, it is still less desirable. Add to this, they never know how to tune their own instruments, and as persons seldom visit them who can do so, these pianos are constantly out of tune, and would spoil the ear of one who began by having any.
The guitar, or some portable instrument which requires less practice, and could be kept in tune by themselves, would be far more desirable for most of these ladies. It would give all they want as a household companion to fill up the gaps of life with a pleasant stimulus or solace, and be sufficient accompaniment to the voice in social meetings.
Singing in parts is the most delightful family amusement, and those who are constantly together can learn to sing in perfect accord. All the practice it needs, after some good elementary instruction, is such as meetings by summer twilight, and evening firelight naturally suggest. And, as music is an universal language, we cannot but think a fine Italian duet would be as much at home in the log cabin as one of Mrs. Gore's novels.
The sixth July we left this beautiful place. It was one of those rich days of bright sunlight, varied by the purple shadows of large sweeping clouds. Many a backward look we cast, and left the heart behind.
Our journey to-day was no less delightful than before, still all new, boundless, limitless. Kinmont says, that limits are sacred; that the Greeks were in the right to worship a god of limits. I say, that what is limitless is alone divine, that there was neither wall nor road in Eden, that those who walked there lost and found their way just as we did, and that all the gain from the Fall was that we had a wagon to ride in. I do not think, either, that even the horses doubted whether this last was any advantage.
Everywhere the rattlesnake-weed grows in profusion. The antidote survives the bane. Soon the coarser plantain, the “white man's footstep,” shall take its place.
We saw also the compass plant, and the western tea plant. Of some of the brightest flowers an Indian girl afterwards told me the medicinal virtues. I doubt not those students of the soil knew a use to every fair emblem, on which we could only look to admire its hues and shape.
After noon we were ferried by a girl, (unfortunately not of the most picturesque appearance) across the Kishwaukie, the most graceful stream, and on whose bosom rested many full-blown water-lilies, twice as large as any of ours. I was told that, en revanche, they were scentless, but I still regret that I could not get at one of them to try.
Query, did the lilied fragrance which, in the miraculous times, accompanied visions of saints and angels, proceed from water or garden lilies?
Kishwaukie is, according to tradition, the scene of a famous battle, and its many grassy mounds contain the bones of the valiant. On these waved thickly the mysterious purple flower, of which I have spoken before. I think it springs from the blood of the Indians, as the hyacinth did from that of Apollo's darling.
The ladies of our host's family at Oregon, when they first went there, after all the pains and plagues of building and settling, found their first pastime in opening one of these mounds, in which they found, I think, three of the departed, seated in the Indian fashion.
One of these same ladies, as she was making bread one winter morning, saw from the window a deer directly before the house. She ran out, with her hands covered with dough, calling the others, and they caught him bodily before he had time to escape.
Here (at Kishwaukie) we received a visit from a ragged and barefoot, but bright-eyed gentleman, who seemed to be the intellectual loafer, the walking Will's coffeehouse of the place. He told us many charming snake stories; among others, of himself having seen seventeen young ones reënter the mother snake, on the intrusion of a visiter.
This night we reached Belvidere, a flourishing town in Boon county, where was the tomb, now despoiled, of Big Thunder. In this later day we felt happy to find a really good hotel.
From this place, by two days of very leisurely and devious journeying, we reached Chicago, and thus ended a journey, which one at least of the party might have wished unending.
I have not been particularly anxious to give the geography of the scene, inasmuch as it seemed to me no route, nor series of stations, but a garden interspersed with cottages, groves and flowery lawns, through which a stately river ran. I had no guidebook, kept no diary, do not know how many miles we travelled each day, nor how many in all. What I got from the journey was the poetic impression of the country at large; it is all I have aimed to communicate.
The narrative might have been made much more interesting, as life was at the time, by many piquant anecdotes and tales drawn from private life. But here courtesy restrains the pen, for I know those who received the stranger with such frank kindness would feel ill requited by its becoming the means of fixing many spy-glasses, even though the scrutiny might be one of admiring interest, upon their private homes.
For many of these, too, I was indebted to a friend, whose property they more lawfully are. This friend was one of those rare beings who are equally at home in nature and with man. He knew a tale of all that ran and swam, and flew, or only grew, possessing that extensive familiarity with things which shows equal sweetness of sympathy and playful penetration. Most refreshing to me was his unstudied lore, the unwritten poetry which common life presents to a strong and gentle mind. It was a great contrast to the subtleties of analysis, the philosophic strainings of which I had seen too much. But I will not attempt to transplant it. May it profit others as it did me in the region where it was born, where it belongs. The evening of our return to Chicago the sunset was of a splendor and calmness beyond any we saw at the West. The twilight that succeeded was equally beautiful; soft, pathetic, but just so calm. When afterwards I learned this was the evening of Allston's death, it seemed to me as if this glorious pageant was not without connection with that event; at least, it inspired similar emotions, — a heavenly gate closing a path adorned with shows well worthy Paradise. Farewell, ye soft and sumptuous solitudes!
| Ye fairy distances, ye lordly woods, |
| Haunted by paths like those that Poussin knew, |
| When after his all gazers eyes he drew; |
| I go, — and if I never more may steep |
| An eager heart in your enchantments deep, |
| Yet ever to itself that heart may say, |
| Be not exacting; thou hast lived one day; |
| Hast looked on that which matches with thy mood, |
| Impassioned sweetness of full being's flood, |
| Where nothing checked the bold yet gentle wave, |
| Where nought repelled the lavish love that gave. |
| A tender blessing lingers o'er the scene, |
| Like some young mother's thought, fond, yet serene, |
| And through its life new-born our lives have been. |
| Once more farewell, — a sad, a sweet farewell; |
| And, if I never must behold you more, |
| In other worlds I will not cease to tell |
| The rosary I here have numbered o'er; |
| And bright-haired Hope will lend a gladdened ear, |
| And Love will free him from the grasp of Fear, |
| And Gorgon critics, while the tale they hear, |
| Shall dew their stony glances with a tear, |
| If I but catch one echo from your spell; — |
| And so farewell, — a grateful, sad farewell! |