Volume I Part 5 (2/2)

Well-settled farms were numerous along the road, but in the intervals were miles of forests; dark thronging trees with their soft gay summits.

Till now the autumn woods had appeared at a distance too red and rusty; these, when looked into, were the melting of all harmonious colours. As for the forms, some were drooping, some towering, their tall bare stems wreathed with crimson creepers. The cleared hollows and slopes, with the forest ever advancing or receding, are as fine to the imagination as any natural language can be. I looked for an Indian or two standing on the forest verge, within a shade as dusky as himself; but for this I had to wait another day.

Just after dark we arrived at Syracuse, in time for the common supper. I was surprised at the size and style of the hotel. Land and building material being cheap, and there being no window-tax, there is little inducement to economize s.p.a.ce in the American houses, and the new hotels have the ambitious air which is given by s.p.a.ciousness. The deficiency lies in furniture, and yet more in attendance; but I really think, that if travellers will trouble themselves to learn a little of the ways of the house, so as not to run into opposition to other people's convenience, much more comfort may be enjoyed in these places than unaccommodating tourists will believe. Our chambers were quite sufficiently furnished here; and I never in any place found difficulty in obtaining as large a supply of water as I wished by simply asking for it in good time. I observed that the hotel parlours in various parts of the country were papered with the old-fas.h.i.+oned papers, I believe French, which represent a sort of panorama of a hunting-party, a fleet, or some such diversified scene. I saw many such a hunting-party, the ladies in scarlet riding-habits, as I remember the landlord of the inn at Bray, near Dublin, to have been proud of in his best parlour. At Schenectady, the bay of Naples, with its fis.h.i.+ng-boats on the water and groups of lazzaroni on the sh.o.r.e, adorned our parlour walls. It seems to be an irresistible temptation to idle visiters, English, Irish, and American, to put speeches into the mouths of the painted personages; and such hangings are usually seen deformed with scribblings. The effect is odd, in wild places, of seeing American witticisms put into the mouths of Neapolitan fishermen, ancient English ladies of quality, or of tritons and dryads.

There is taste quite as bad as this in a matter of far more importance, the naming of places. Syracuse in the State of New-York! I often wonder whether it is yet too late to revert to the Indian names, to undo the mischief which has been done by boys fresh from their smattering of the cla.s.sics, who have gone into the forest to hew out towns and villages. I heard many Americans say that the State of New-York ought to be called Ontario, and the city Manhattan. But, so far from bringing back the nomenclature to a better state, we not only find Utica, Syracuse, Manlius, and Camillus, and the village of Geneva on Seneca Lake, with Ithaca at its other extremity, but the village of Chittenango actually baptized into Sullivan; and all this in the neighbourhood of the lakes Onondago, Cayuga, and Owasco. It is as bad as the English in Van Diemen's Land, who, if I remember rightly, have got Palmyra, Richmond, and Jericho all in a line.

Some curious a.s.sociations arise from a new nation using the language of the old. While speculating sometimes on what the cla.s.sical conceptions can be in the minds of youths who hear every day, in the most sordid connexion, of Rome, Utica, Carthage, Athens, Palmyra, and Troy, it occurred to me that some of our commonest English writing must bear a different meaning to the Americans and to us. All that is written about cornfields, for instance, must call up pictures in their minds quite unlike any that the poets intended to create. ”Waving corn” is not the true description to them; and one can scarcely bring one's tongue to explain that it means ”small grain.” Their poetical attachments are naturally and reasonably to their Indian corn, which is a beautiful plant, worthy of all love and celebration. But the consequence is, that we have not their sympathy about our sheaves, our harvest wain, our gleaners; for though they have wheat, their harvest, _par excellence_, is of corncobs, and their ”small grain” bears about the same relation to poetry with them as turnips with us. Then, again, there is the month of May, about which we lose their sympathy. Over a great proportion of the country May is one of their worst months, damp, drizzly, with intervals of biting winds, as little fit for the climate of a poem as our windy and dusty March. Many other such particulars might be mentioned, which it would be a new employment to trace out.

When I traversed New-York State at a subsequent period with another party of friends, we saw many Indians before reaching Syracuse. It was at Oneida Castle, a village on the borders of the Oneida territory, which was once fortified after the Indian fas.h.i.+on, whence its formidable name. We saw in such close neighbourhood as to cause many strange reflections, the Episcopalian church built for the Indians of the vicinity, who are declared to be reclaimed from idolatry and their ancient Council Grove, where they met to think their own thoughts and say their own sayings. This grove is a fine clump of twenty-seven b.u.t.ternut-trees. We pa.s.sed through the village on the day when the Indians had all come in to receive their annual government allowance of seven dollars a head. Two men were drunk; the rest looked sober enough.

The squaws were neatly dressed in blue pantaloons edged with white, and had clean blankets over their shoulders. The babies looked fat and lively. One squaw had her infant lashed to a board at her back. When we stopped to water the horses we saw several boys with bows and arrows, and Dr. F. made them understand by signs that any one who could strike a quarter dollar which he would fix on a post should have it. He made a notch in the post of a shed, and placed his coin, and forthwith the arrows flew like hail. One struck deep into a post, and we saw how easily fatal this weapon might be. An old Indian or two watched the sport, and a.s.sumed the superintendence. The coin fell, and Dr. F. was going to deliver it to the claimant, when an old Indian came forward with ”No, no.” He showed by signs that the coin had fallen, not from its being struck, but from the post having been shaken. The quarter dollar was put up again, and soon after struck and bent in the middle by the arrow of a youth, who looked as happy with his prize as if he had regained a tract of his native wood. The party gave us some very bright looks as we drove away.

In a hotel on this road I found a Sabbath-school history of Lady Jane Grey, compiled obviously for the purpose of prejudicing the reader's mind against the Catholics. Among other wise things in it there was an explanation that the heroine was called ”Lady” because she was related to the king; and people are sometimes called so in England. A clear idea to give the American youth of our English peerage!

We left Syracuse at dawn; and this was the morning when, finding ourselves too hungry to proceed to Skaneatles without food, we were treated to that abundant breakfast, so characteristically served, which I have described in my other book.[4] No one likes to breakfast twice over in description any more than in reality; and I therefore say nothing about Elbridge here. The greater part of this day, and some of the next, was spent at Auburn in viewing the prison, walking about the town, and driving down the sh.o.r.es of the pretty Owasco Lake.

Footnote 4: ”Society in America,” vol. iii., p. 87.

The cultivation of the country now began to show the improvement which increases all the way to Buffalo. At the head of Cayuga Lake we travelled over the longest bridge I ever saw, even a mile and eight rods long. It is wooden, of course, laid upon piles, and more conspicuous for usefulness than beauty. The great ornament of this route is the village of Geneva, reared on a terrace which overhangs Seneca Lake. The Northern States abound in beautiful villages; but I know none more captivating than this. A long row of handsome white and red houses, each with its sloping garden, fronts the lake; and behind the dwellings the road is bordered with locust-trees, which seem to imbower the place. The gardens are more carefully cultivated than is at all common in America, and they well repay the trouble bestowed on them. There is a college standing on high ground above the lake, to which a natural lawn steeply descends from the open s.p.a.ce in front of the building. Holstein, aiddecamp to Bolivar, was professor of modern languages in this college when I was first at Geneva. Before my second visit he had removed to Albany. To crown the temptations of Geneva as a place of residence, it has rather a choice society. It has been charged with not being healthy, but I believe this is not true. It seems to be well and speedily supplied with literature. I saw a placard outside a bookseller's store, ”Two Old Men's Tales, price 80 cents,” that is, four s.h.i.+llings. One of my last interests, before I left England, had been watching over the publication of this work; and now here it was selling at four s.h.i.+llings, in the back of the State of New-York! I remarked two things more about this village; that all the women I saw were pretty, and that a profusion of azalea grew wild in the neighbourhood.

The road to Canandaigua ascends for a considerable distance after leaving Geneva, and the last view of the place from above was exquisite, imbosomed as it lay in the autumn woods, and with its blue lake stretched behind it in the sunny atmosphere. One element in the exhilaration of such scenes in America is the universal presence of competence. The boys who gather about the stage do not come to beg, or even to sell, but to amuse themselves while eating their bread and meat, or on their way to the field. The young women all well dressed, the men all at work or amus.e.m.e.nt, the farms all held in fee-simple, the stores all inadequate to their custom; these things are indescribably cheering to behold, and a never-failing source of pleasure to the traveller from Europe. It may be a questionable comfort, but it is a comfort to think, ”if these people are not happy, it is their own fault.” Whether their minds are as easy as their fortunes, it may not be safe to affirm; but at least the sin and sorrow of social injustice in regard to the first necessities of life are absent.

The moon was gleaming over Canandaigua Lake when we came in sight of it, and a golden planet dropped beneath the horizon when we took the turn towards the village. We found that Blossom's hotel did not answer to the favourable description which had been given us of it. This had been a training day, and the house was so noisy with drunken soldiers, that, when we had attained the drawing-room, we locked ourselves in till the house should be cleared, which happened as early as nine o'clock; but we still found the inn less comfortable than most upon the road.

The pretty village of Canandaigua is noted for its good society. It would have given me pleasure to have been able to accept the kind invitation of some of its inhabitants to prolong my stay now, or to revisit it the next year; but we had promised Mr. O. to cause no delay in getting to Niagara; and we engaged, in return for his agreeing to stop this day, to travel all night; and I never was able to allot any future time to this place. We saw as much of it, however, as we could in one day.

There are many families of Scotch extraction at Canandaigua, and to this the village owes its superiority in gardens to almost any place in the country. We spent the greater part of the day with a gentleman who was born in Scotland, but had settled at Canandaigua thirty-four years before, when the place was almost a desert. He now sees himself surrounded by handsome dwellings, trim gardens, and a highly-cultivated society, able to command resources of books and other intellectual luxuries to almost any extent, from the directness and ease of communication with New-York. He had just taken possession of a splendid new dwelling, and had presented his old one to the Episcopalian church for a parsonage. He showed me from the top of the house, where his dwelling had stood, where it stood now, and how it had been moved entire in a day and a half. I think the distance could not have been much under a mile.

After our early breakfast we were engaged till church-time in receiving and making calls, as there was no time to be lost. We went to the Episcopalian church with our friends, and heard a sermon which could not please us, it was so full of dogmatism and bitterness. Our friends insisted on entertaining the whole of our large party, and invited some agreeable guests in addition, so that we spent a very profitable as well as pleasant afternoon. We walked over the grounds, enjoyed the view of the lake from the housetop, and picked up a good deal of information about the place and neighbourhood, which might seem to the inhabitants scarcely worthy of the name of knowledge, but which is inestimable to the stranger as opening new departments of inquiry, and explaining much which he did not understand before.

The stage was ordered for nine, and we returned to Blossom's for an hour's rest before setting out on our rough night's journey.

We reached Batavia to breakfast, and soon after found ourselves on the first piece of corduroy road we had encountered in the country. I mention this because corduroy roads appear to have made a deep impression on the imaginations of the English, who seem to suppose that American roads are all corduroy. I can a.s.sure them that there is a large variety in American roads. There are the excellent limestone roads which stretch out in three directions from Nashville, Tennessee, and some like them in Kentucky, on which the tourist might sketch almost without difficulty while travelling at a rapid rate. There is quite another sort of limestone road in Virginia, in traversing which the stage is dragged up from shelf to shelf, some of the shelves sloping so as to throw the pa.s.sengers on one another, on either side alternately.

Then there are the rich mud roads of Ohio, through whose deep red sloughs the stage goes slowly sousing after rain, and gently upsetting when the rut on the one or the other side proves to be of a greater depth than was antic.i.p.ated. Then there are the sandy roads of the pine-barrens, of an agreeable consistency after rain, but very heavy in dry weather. Then there is the ridge road, running parallel with a part of Lake Ontario, and supposed to be the edge of what was once its basin.

The level terrace thus provided by Nature offered the foundation of an admirable road, one of the best in the states. Lastly, there is the corduroy road, happily of rare occurrence, where, if the driver is merciful to his pa.s.sengers, he drives them so as to give them the a.s.sociation of being on the way to a funeral, their involuntary sobs on each jolt helping the resemblance; or, if he be in a hurry, he shakes them like pills in a pillbox. But the American drivers are a cla.s.s of men marked by that merciful temper which naturally accompanies genius.

They are men who command admiration equally by their perfection in their art, their fertility of resource, and their patience with their pa.s.sengers. I was never upset in a stage but once during all my travels; and the worse the roads were, the more I was amused at the variety of devices by which we got on, through difficulties which appeared insurmountable, and the more I was edified at the gentleness with which our drivers treated female fears and fretfulness.

By this time a solitary Indian might be frequently seen standing on a heap of stones by the roadside, or sleeping under a fence. There is something which rivets the eye of the stranger in the grave gaze, the lank hair, the blanket-wrapped form of the savage, as he stands motionless. We were generally to be seen leaning out of every opening in the stage as long as the figure remained in sight.

We issued from the corduroy road upon one on which we could easily have performed twelve miles an hour. Houses with porches of Ionic pillars began to be scattered by the roadside. We were obviously approaching Buffalo. Soon the lake was visible, and then we entered the long main street, and stopped at the entrance of the Eagle hotel.

FORT ERIE.

”That night a child might understand The de'il had business on his hand.”

BURNS.

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