It was near evening, when, emerging from the shades of the barrens, which, like everything else, however beautiful, had, by continuous succession, begun to become somewhat monotonous, my path issued rather unexpectedly upon the margin of a wide, undulating prairie. I was struck, as is every traveller at first view of these vast plains, with the grandeur, and novelty, and loveliness of the scene before me. For some moments I remained stationary, looking out upon the boundless landscape before me. The tall grass-tops waving in the billowy beauty in the breeze; the narrow pathway winding off like a serpent over the rolling surface, disappearing and reappearing till lost in the luxuriant herbage; the shadowy, cloud-like aspect of the far-off trees, looming up, here and there, in isolated masses along the horizon, like the pyramidal canvass of ships at sea; the deep-green groves besprinkled among the vegetation, like islets in the waters; the crimson-died prairie-flower flashing in the sun – these features of inanimate nature seemed strangely beautiful to one born and bred amid the bold mountain scenery of the North, and who now gazed upon them "for the first."
"The prairies! I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness."
As I rode leisurely along upon the prairie's edge, I passed many noble farms, with their log-cabins couched in a corner beneath the forest; and, verily, would a farmer of Yankee-land "stare and gasp" to behold the prairie cornfield of the Western emigrant; and yet more would he be amazed to witness the rank, rustling luxuriance of the vegetable itself. Descending a swell of the prairie near one of these farms, a buck with his doe leaped out from a thicket beside my path, and away, away bounded the "happy pair" over the grass-tops, free as the wind. They are often shot upon the prairies, I was informed by an old hunter, at whose cabin, in the middle of the plain, I drew up at twilight, and with whom I passed the night. He was a pioneer from the dark and bloody ground, and many a time had followed the wild buck through those aged forests, where Boone, and Whitley, and Kenton once roved.142 Only fifty years ago, and for the first time were the beautiful fields of Kentucky turned up by the ploughshare of the Virginia emigrant; yet their very descendants of the first generation we behold plunging deeper into the wilderness West. How would the worthy old Governor Spotswood stand astounded, could he now rear his venerable bones from their long resting-place, and look forth upon this lovely land, far away beyond the Blue Ridge of the Alleghany hills, the very passage of which he had deemed not unworthy "the horseshoe of gold" and "the order tramontane." "Sic juvat transcendere montes." Twenty years before Daniel Boone, "backwoodsman of Kentucky," was born, Alexander Spotswood, governor of Virginia, undertook, with great preparation, a passage of the Alleghany ridge. For this expedition were provided a large number of horseshoes, an article not common in some sections of the "Old Dominion;" and from this circumstance, upon their return, though without a glimpse of the Western Valley, was instituted the "Tramontane Order, or Knights of the Golden Horseshoe," with the motto above. The badge of distinction for having made a passage of the Blue Ridge was a golden horseshoe worn upon the breast. Could the young man of that day have protracted the limits of life but a few years beyond his threescore and ten, what astonishment would not have filled him to behold now, as "the broad, the bright, the glorious West," the region then regarded as the unknown and howling wilderness beyond the mountains! Yet even thus it is.143
A long ride over a dusty road, beneath a sultry sun, made me not unwilling to retire to an early rest. But in a few hours my slumbers were broken in upon by the glare of lightning and the crash of thunder. For nearly five weeks had the prairies been refreshed by not a solitary shower; and the withered crops and the parched soil, baked to the consistency of stone or ground up to powder, betrayed alarming evidence of the consequence. Day had succeeded day. The scorching sun had gone up in the firmament, blazed from his meridian throne, and in lurid sultriness descended to his rest. The subtle fluid had been gathering and concentrating in the skies; and, early on the night of which I speak, an inky cloud had been perceived rolling slowly up from the western horizon, until the whole heavens were enveloped in blackness. Then the tempest burst forth. Peal upon peal the hoarse thunder came booming over the prairies; and the red lightning would glare, and stream, and almost hiss along the midnight sky, like Ossian's storm-spirit riding on the blast. At length there was a hush of elements, and all was still – "still as the spirit's silence;" then came one prolonged, deafening, terrible crash and rattle, as if the concave of the firmament had been rent asunder, and the splintered fragments, hurled abroad, were flying through the boundlessness of space; the next moment, and the torrents came weltering through the darkness. I have witnessed thunder-storms on the deep, and many a one among the cliffs of my native hills; but a midnight thunder-gust upon the broad prairie-plains of the West is more terrible than they. A more sublimely magnificent spectacle have I never beheld than that, when one of these broad-sheeted masses of purple light would blaze along the black bosom of the cloud, quiver for an instant over the prairie miles in extent, flinging around the scene a garment of flame, and then go out in darkness.
"Oh night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman!"
"Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,
A portion of the tempest and of thee!"
And a sharer in the tempest surely was "a certain weary pilgrim, in an upper chamber" of a certain log-cabin of the prairie. Unhappily for his repose or quiet, had he desired either, the worthy host, in laudable zeal for a window when erecting his hut, had thought proper to neglect or to forget one of the indispensables for such a convenience in shape of sundry panes of glass. Wherefore, as is easy to perceive, said aperture commanding the right flank of the pilgrim's dormitory, the warring elements without found abundant entrance for a by-skirmish within. Sad to relate, the pilgrim was routed, "horse, foot, and dragoons;" whereupon, agreeable to Falstaff's discretionary views of valour, seizing upon personal effects, he beat a retreat to more hospitable realms.
Greene County, Ill.
XVIII
"What earthly feeling unabash'd can dwell
In Nature's mighty presence? mid the swell
Of everlasting hills, the roar of floods,
And frown of rocks and pomp of waving woods?
These their own grandeur on the soul impress,
And bid each passion feel its nothingness."
Hemans.
"La grace est toujours unie à la magnificence, dans les scenes de la nature." – Chateaubriand's "Atala."
It was morning. The storm had passed away, and the early sunlight was streaming gloriously over the fresh landscape. The atmosphere, discharged of its electric burden, was playing cool and free among the grass-tops; the lark was carolling in the clouds above its grassy nest; the deer was rising from his sprinkled lair, and the morning mists were rolling heavily in masses along the skirts of the prairie woodlands, as I mounted my horse at the door of the cabin beneath whose roof I had passed the night. Before me at no great distance, upon the edge of the plain, rose an open park of lofty oaks, with a mossy turf beneath; and the whole scene, lighted up by the sunbeams breaking through the ragged mists, presented a most gorgeous spectacle. The entire wilderness of green; every bough, spray, leaf; every blade of grass, wild weed, and floweret, was hung with trembling drops of liquid light, which, reflecting and refracting the sun-rays, threw back all the hues of the iris. It was indeed a morning of beauty after the tempest; and Nature seemed to have arrayed herself in her bridal robes, glittering in all their own matchless jewellery to greet its coming.
Constituted as we all naturally are, there exist, bound up within the secresies of the bosom, certain emotions and sentiments, designed by our Creator to leap forth in joyousness in view of the magnificence of his works; certain springs of exquisite delicacy deep hidden in the chambers of the breast, but which, touched or breathed upon never so lightly, strike the keys of feeling and fill the heart with harmony. And I envy not the feelings of that man who, amid all "the glories of this visible world," can stand a passionless beholder; who feels not his pulses thrill with quickened vibration, and his heart to heave in fuller gush as he views the beneficence of his Maker in the magnificence of his works; who from all can turn calmly away, and in the chill, withering accents of Atheism, pronounce it the offspring of blind fatality, the resultant of meaningless chance!
When we look abroad upon the panorama of creation, so palpable is the impress of an omnipotent hand, and so deeply upon all its features is planted the demonstration of design, that it would almost seem, in the absence of reason and revelation, we need but contemplate the scenery of nature to be satisfied of the existence of an all-wise, all-powerful Being, whose workmanship it is. The firmament, with its marshalled and glittering hosts; the earth, spread out in boundlessness at our feet, now draperied in the verdant freshness of springtime, anon in the magnificent glories of summer sultriness, again teeming with the mellow beauty of autumnal harvesting, and then slumbering in the chill, cheerless desolation of winter, all proclaim a Deity eternal in existence, boundless in might. The mountain that rears its bald forehead to the clouds; the booming cataract; the unfathomed, mysterious sounding ocean; the magnificent sweep of the Western prairie; the eternal flow of the Western river, proclaim, in tones extensive as the universe – tones not to be misunderstood, that their Creator lives.
It is a circumstance in the character of the human mind, which not the most careless or casual observer of its operations can fail to have remarked, that the contemplation of all grand and immeasurable objects has a tendency to enlarge and elevate the understanding, lend a loftier tone to the feelings, and, agreeable to the moral constitution of man, carry up his thoughts and his emotions directly to their Author, "from Nature up to Nature's God." The savage son of the wilderness, as he roams through his grand and gloomy forests, which for centuries have veiled the soil at their base from the sunlight, perceives a solemn awe stealing over him as he listens to the surges of the winds rolling among the heavy branches; and in Nature's simplicity, untaught but by her untutored promptings, he believes that "the Great Spirit is whispering in the tree tops." He stands by the side of Niagara. With subdued emotions he gazes upon the majestic world of floods as they hurry on. They reach the barrier! they leap its precipice! they are lost in thunder and in foam! And, as the raging waters disappear in the black abyss; as the bow of the covenant, "like hope upon a deathbed," flings its irised arch in horrible beauty athwart the hell of elements, the bewildered child of nature feels his soul swell within his bosom; the thought rises solemnly upon him, "the Great Spirit is here;" and with timid solicitude he peers through the forest shades around him for some palpable demonstration of His presence. And such is the effect of all the grand scenes of nature upon the mind of the savage: they lead it up to the "Great Spirit." Upon this principle is the fact alone to be accounted for, that no race of beings has yet been discovered destitute of all idea of a Supreme Intelligence to whom is due homage and obedience. It is His voice they hear in the deep hour of midnight, when the red lightning quivers along the bosom of the cloud, and the thunder-peal rattles through the firmament. It is He they recognise in the bright orb of day, as he blazes from the eastern horizon; or, "like a monarch on a funeral pile," sinks to his rest. He is beheld in the pale queen of night, as in silvery radiance she walks the firmament, and in the beautiful star of evening as it sinks behind his native hills. In the soft breathing of the "summer wind" and in the terrible sublimity of the autumn tempest; in the gentle dew of heaven and the summer torrent; in the sparkling rivulet and the wide, wild river; in the delicate prairie-flower and the gnarled monarch of the hills; in the glittering minnow and the massive narwhal; in the fairy humbird and the sweeping eagle; in each and in all of the creations of universal nature, the mind of the savage sees, feels, realizes the presence of a Deity.
"Earth with her thousand voices praises God!"
is the beautiful sentiment of Coleridge's hymn in the Vale of Chamouni; and its truth will be doubted by no man of refined sensibility or cultivated taste. In viewing the grand scenery of nature, the mind of the savage and the poet alike perceive the features of Deity; on the bright page of creation, in characters enstamped by his own mighty hand, they read his perfections and his attributes; the vast volume is spread out to every eye; he who will may read and be wise. And yet, delightful and instructive as the study of Nature's creations cannot fail to be, it is a strange thing that, by many, so little regard is betrayed for them. How often do we gaze upon the orb of day, as he goes down the western heavens in glory to his rest; how often do we look away to the far-off star, as it pursues in beauty its lonely pathway, distinct amid the myriads that surround it; how often do we glance abroad upon the splendours of earth, and then, from all this demonstration of Omnipotent goodness turn away with not one pulsation of gratitude to the Creator of suns and stars; with not one aspiration of feeling, one acknowledgment of regard to the Lord of the universe? Yet surely, whatever repinings may at times imbitter the unsanctified bosom in view of the moral, the intellectual, or social arrangements of existence, there should arise but one emotion, and that —praise in view of inanimate nature. Here is naught but power and goodness; now, as at the dawn of Creation's morning, "all is very good." But these are scenes upon which the eye has turned from earliest infancy; and to this cause alone may we attribute the fact, that though their grandeur may never weary or their glories pall upon the sense, yet our gaze upon them is often that of coldness and indifferent regard. Still their influence upon us, though inappreciable, is sure. If we look abroad upon the race of man, we cannot but admit the conviction that natural scenery, hardly less than climate, government, or religion, lays its impress upon human character. It is where Nature exhibits herself in her loftiest moods that her influence on man is most observable. 'Tis there we find the human mind most chainlessly free, and the attachments of patriotic feeling most tenacious and exalted. To what influence more than to that of the gigantic features of nature around him, amid which he first opened his eyes to the light, and with which from boyhood days he has been conversant, are we to attribute that indomitable hate to oppression, that enthusiastic passion for liberty, and that wild idolatry of country which characterizes the Swiss mountaineer? He would be free as the geyer-eagle of his native cliffs, whose eyrie hangs in the clouds, whose eye brightens in the sunlight, whose wild shriek rises on the tempest, and whose fierce brood is nurtured amid crags untrodden by the footstep of man. To his ear the sweep of the terrible lauwine, the dash of the mountain cataract, the sullen roar of the mountain forest, is a music for which, in a foreign land, he pines away and dies. And all these scenes have but one language – and that is chainless independence!
It is a fact well established, and one to be accounted for upon no principle other than that which we advance, that the dwellers in mountainous regions, and those whose homes are amid the grandeur of nature, are found to be more attached to the spot of their nativity than are other races of men, and that they are ever more forward to defend their ice-clad precipices from the attack of the invader. For centuries have the Swiss inhabited the mountains of the Alps. They inhabit them still, and have never been entirely subdued. But
"The free Switzer yet bestrides alone
His chainless mountains."
Of what other nation of Europe, if we except the Highlands of Scotland, may anything like the same assertion with truth be made? We are told that the mountains of Caucasus and Himmalaya, in Asia, still retain the race of people which from time immemorial have possessed them. The same accents echo along their "tuneful cliffs" as centuries since were listened to by the patriarchs; while at their base, chance, and change, and conquest, like successive floods, have swept the delta-plains of the Ganges and Euphrates. These are but isolated instances from a multitude of similar character, which might be advanced in support of the position we have assumed. Nor is it strange that peculiarities like these should be witnessed. There must ever be something to love, if the emotion is to be permanently called forth; it matters little whether it be in the features of inanimate nature or in those of man; and, alike in both cases, do the boldest and most prominent create the deepest impression. Just so it is with our admiration of character; there must exist bold and distinctive traits, good or bad, to arouse for it unusual regard. A monotony of character or of feeling is as wearisome as a monotony of sound or scenery.
But to return from a digression which has become unconscionably long. After a brisk gallop of a few hours through the delightful scenery of the Barrens, I found myself approaching the little town of Carlinville. As I drew nigh to the village, I found it absolutely reeling under the excitement of the "Grand Menagerie." From all points of the compass, men, women, and children, emerging from the forest, came pouring into the place, some upon horses, some in farm-wagons, and troops of others on foot, slipping and sliding along in a fashion most distressing to behold. The soil in this vicinity is a black loam of surpassing fertility; and, when saturated with moisture, it adheres to the sole with most pertinacious tenacity, more like to an amalgam of soot and soap-grease than to any other substance that has ever come under my cognizance. The inn was thronged by neighbouring farmers, some canvassing the relative and individual merits of the Zebedee and the Portimous; others sagely dwelling upon the mooted point of peril to be apprehended from the great sarpent—Boy Contractor; while little unwashen wights did run about and dangerously prophecy on the recent disappearance of the big elephant.
Carlinville is a considerable village, situated on the margin of a pleasant prairie, on the north side of Macoupin Creek, and is the seat of justice for the county. The name Macoupin is said to be of aboriginal derivation, and by the early French chroniclers was spelled and pronounced Ma-qua-pin, until its present uncomely combination of letters became legalized on the statute-book. The term, we are told by Charlevoix, the French voyageur, is the Indian name of an esculent with a broad corolla, found in many of the ponds and creeks of Illinois, especially along the course of the romantic stream bearing its name. The larger roots, eaten raw, were poisonous, and the natives were accustomed to dig ovens in the earth, into which, being walled up with flat stones and heated, was deposited the vegetable. After remaining for forty-eight hours in this situation, the deleterious qualities were found extracted, and the root being dried, was esteemed a luxury by the Indians. The region bordering upon Carlinville is amazingly fertile, and proportionally divided into prairie and timber – a circumstance by no means unworthy of notice. There has been a design of establishing here a Theological Seminary, but the question of its site has been a point easier to discuss than to decide.144 My tarry at the village was a brief one, though I became acquainted with a number of its worthy citizens; and in the log-office of a young limb of legality, obtained, as a special distinction, a glance at a forthcoming "Fourth-of-July" oration, fruitful in those sonorous periods and stereotyped patriotics indispensable on such occasions, and, at all hazard, made and provided for them. As I was leaving the village I was met by multitudes, pouring in from all sections of the surrounding region, literally thronging the ways; mothers on horseback, with young children in their arms; fathers with daughters and wives en croupe, and at intervals an individual, in quiet possession of an entire animal, came sliding along in the mud, in fashion marvellously entertaining to witness. A huge cart there likewise was, which excited no small degree of admiration as it rolled on, swarmed with women and children. An aged patriarch, with hoary locks resting upon his shoulders, enacted the part of charioteer to this primitive establishment; and now, in zealous impatience to reach the scene of action, from which the braying horns came resounding loud and clear through the forest, he was wretchedly belabouring, by means of an endless whip, six unhappy oxen to augment their speed.
I had travelled not many miles when a black cloud spread itself rapidly over the sky, and in a few moments the thunder began to bellow, the lightnings to flash, and the rain to fall in torrents. Luckily enough for me, I found myself in the neighbourhood of man's habitation. Leaping hastily from my steed, and lending him an impetus with my riding whip which carried him safely beneath a hospitable shed which stood thereby, I betook myself, without ceremony or delay, to the mansion house itself, glad enough to find its roof above me as the first big raindrops came splashing to the ground. The little edifice was tenanted by three females and divers flaxen-pated, sun-bleached urchins of all ages and sizes, and, at the moment of my entrance, all in high dudgeon, because, forsooth, they were not to be permitted to drench themselves in the anticipated shower. Like Noah's dove, they were accordingly pulled within the ark, and thereupon thought proper to set up their several and collective Ebenezers.
"Well!" was my exclamation, in true Yankee fashion, as I bowed my head low in entering the humble postern; "we're going to get pretty considerable of a sprinkling, I guess." "I reckon," was the sententious response of the most motherly-seeming of the three women, at the same time vociferating to the three larger of the children, "Oh, there, you Bill, Sall, Polly, honeys, get the gentleman a cheer! Walk in, sir; set down and take a seat!" This evolution of "setting down and taking a seat" was at length successfully effected, after sundry manœuvrings by way of planting the three pedestals of the uncouth tripod upon the same plane, and avoiding the fearful yawnings in the puncheon floor. When all was at length quiet, I improved the opportunity of gazing about me to explore the curious habitation into which I found myself inserted.
The structure, about twenty feet square, had originally been constructed of rough logs, the interstices stuffed with fragments of wood and stone, and daubed with clay; the chimney was built up of sticks laid crosswise, and plastered with the same material to resist the fire. Such had been the backwoodsman's cabin in its primitive prime; but time and the elements had been busy with the little edifice, and sadly had it suffered. Window or casement was there none, neither was there need thereof; for the hingeless door stood ever open, the clay was disappearing from the intervals between the logs, and the huge fireplace of stone exhibited yawning apertures, abundantly sufficient for all the purposes of light and ventilation to the single apartment of the building. The puncheon floor I have alluded to, and it corresponded well with the roof of the cabin, which had never, in its best estate, been designed to resist the peltings of such a pitiless torrent as was now assailing it. The water soon began trickling in little rivulets upon my shoulders, and my only alternative was my umbrella for shelter. The furniture of the apartment consisted of two plank-erections designed for bedsteads, which, with a tall clothes-press, divers rude boxes, and a side-saddle, occupied a better moiety of the area; while a rough table, a shelf against the wall, upon which stood a water-pail, a gourd, and a few broken trenchers, completed the household paraphernalia of this most unique of habitations. A half-consumed flitch of bacon suspended in the chimney, and a huge iron pot upon the fire, from which issued a savoury indication of the seething mess within, completes the "still-life" of the picture. Upon one of the beds reclined one of the females to avoid the rain; a second was alternating her attentions between her infant and her needle; while the third, a buxom young baggage, who, by-the-by, was on a visit to her sister, was busying herself in the culinary occupations of the household, much the chief portion of which consisted in watching the huge dinner-pot aforesaid, with its savoury contents.
After remaining nearly two hours in the cabin, in hopes that the storm would abate, I concluded that, since my umbrella was no sinecure within doors, it might as well be put in requisition without, and mounted my steed, though the rain was yet falling. I had proceeded but a few miles upon the muddy pathway when my compass informed me that I had varied from my route, a circumstance by no means uncommon on the Western prairies. During the whole afternoon, therefore, I continued upon my way across a broad pathless prairie, some twelve or eighteen miles in extent, and dreary enough withal, until nightfall, when I rejoiced to find myself the inmate of the comfortable farmhouse upon its edge from which my last was dated.
Hillsborough, Ill.