WHEREIN IS RECORDED THE VIVID IMPRESSION MADE UPON THE TRAVELERS BY THEIR
VIEW OF A STEAM ENGINE AND OF THE FAMOUS ERIE CANAL. WHEREIN, ALSO, IS A
BRIEF ACCOUNT OF SUNDRY CURIOUS CHARACTERS MET ON THE ROAD AND AT A
CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTH OF JULY ON THE BIG WATERWAY.
At Utica they bought provisions and a tin trumpet for Joe, and a doll
with a real porcelain face for Betsey, and turned into the great main
thoroughfare of the north leading eastward to Boston and westward to
a shore of the midland seas. This road was once the great trail of the
Iroquois, by them called the Long House, because it had reached from the
Hudson to Lake Erie, and in their day had been well roofed with foliage.
Here the travelers got their first view of a steam engine. The latter
stood puffing and smoking near the village of Utica, to the horror and
amazement of the team and the great excitement of those in the wagon. The
boy clung to his father for fear of it.
Samson longed to get out of the wagon and take a close look at the noisy
monster, but his horses were rearing in their haste to get away, and even
a short stop was impossible. Sambo, with his tail between his legs, ran
ahead, in a panic, and took refuge in some bushes by the roadside.
"What was that, father?" the boy asked when the horses had ceased to
worry over this new peril.
"A steam engyne," he answered. "Sarah, did ye get a good look at it?"
"Yes; if that don't beat all the newfangled notions I ever heard of," she
exclaimed.
"It's just begun doin' business," said Samson.
"What does it do?" Joe asked.
"On a railroad track it can grab hold of a house full o' folks and run
off with it. Goes like the wind, too."
"Does it eat 'em up?" Joe asked.
"No. It eats wood and oil and keeps yellin' for more. I guess it could
eat a cord o' wood and wash it down with half a bucket o' castor oil in
about five minutes. It snatches folks away to some place and drops 'em.
I guess it must make their hair stand up and their teeth chatter."
"Does it hurt anybody?" Joe asked hopefully.
"Well, sir, if anybody wanted to be hurt and got in its way, I rather
guess he'd succeed purty well. It's powerful. Why, if a man was to ketch
hold of the tail of a locomotive, and hang on, it would jerk the toe
nails right off him."
Joe began to have great respect for locomotives.
Soon they came in view of the famous Erie Canal, hard by the road.
Through it the grain of the far West had just begun moving eastward in a
tide that was flowing from April to December. Big barges, drawn by mules
and horses on its shore, were cutting the still waters of the canal. They
stopped and looked at the barges and the long tow ropes and the tugging
animals.
"There is a real artificial river, hundreds o' miles long, hand made of
the best material, water tight, no snags or rocks or other imperfections,
durability guaranteed," said Samson. "It has made the name of DeWitt
Clinton known everywhere."
"I wonder what next!" Sarah exclaimed.
They met many teams and passed other movers going west, and some
prosperous farms on a road wider and smoother than any they had traveled.
They camped that night, close by the river, with a Connecticut family on
its way to Ohio with a great load of household furniture on one wagon and
seven children in another. There were merry hours for the young, and
pleasant visiting between the older folk that evening at the fireside.
There was much talk among the latter about the great Erie Canal.
So they fared along through Canandaigua and across the Genesee to the
village of Rochester and on through Lewiston and up the Niagara River to
the Falls, and camped where they could see the great water flood and hear
its muffled thunder. When nearing the latter they overtook a family of
poor Irish emigrants, of the name of Flanagan, who shared their camp site
at the Falls. The Flanagans were on their way to Michigan and had come
from the old country three years before and settled in Broome County, New
York. They, too, were on their way to a land of better promise. Among
them was a rugged, freckled, red-headed lad, well along in his teens, of
the name of Dennis, who wore a tall beaver hat, tilted saucily on one
side of his head, and a ragged blue coat with brass buttons, as he walked
beside the oxen, whip in hand, with trousers tucked in the tops of his
big cowhide boots. There was also a handsome young man in this party of
the name of John McNeil, who wore a ruffled shirt and swallow-tail coat,
now much soiled by the journey. He listened to Samson's account of the
Sangamon country and said that he thought he would go there. He had
traded hats on the way with Dennis, who had been deeply impressed by the
majestic look of the beaver and had given a silver breast pin and fifteen
shillings to boot.
A jolly lad was Dennis, who danced jigs, on a flat rock by the riverside,
as Samson played _The Irish Washerman_ and _The Fisher's Hornpipe_. In
the midst of the fun a puff of wind snatched the tall beaver hat from his
head and whirled it over the side of the cliff into the foliage of a
clump of cedars growing out of the steep cliff-side, ten feet or so below
its top. Before any one could stop him the brave Irish lad had scrambled
down the steep to the cedars--a place of some peril, for they hung over
a precipice more than a hundred feet deep above the river. He got his
treasure, but Samson had to help him back with a rope.
The latter told of the veiled bear, and when the story was finished he
said to the Irish lad: "It will not do you any harm to remember that it
is easier to get into trouble than to get out of it. In my opinion one
clean-hearted Irish boy is worth more than all the beaver hats in
creation."
Sarah gave the Irish family a good supply of cookies and jerked venison
before she bade them good-by.
When our travelers left, next morning, they stopped for a last look at
the great Falls.
"Children," said Samson, "I want you to take a good look at that. It's
the most wonderful thing in the world and maybe you'll never see it
again."
"The Indians used to think that the Great Spirit was in this river," said
Sarah.
"Kind o' seems to me they were right," Samson remarked thoughtfully.
"Kind o' seems as if the great spirit of America was in that water. It
moves on in the way it wills and nothing can stop it. Everything in its
current goes along with it."
"And only the strong can stand the journey," said Sarah.
These words were no doubt inspired by an ache in her bones. A hard seat
and the ceaseless jolting of the wagon through long, hot, dusty days had
wearied them. Even their hearts were getting sore as they thought of the
endless reaches of the roads ahead. Samson stuffed a sack with straw and
put it under her and the children on the seat. At a word of complaint he
was wont to say:
"I know it's awful tiresome, but we got to have patience. We're goin'
to get used to it and have a wonderful lot of fun. The time'll pass
quick--you see."
Then he would sing and get them all laughing with some curious bit of
drollery. They spent the night of July third at a tavern in Buffalo, then
a busy, crude and rapidly growing center for the shipping east and west.
Next day there was to be a great celebration of the Fourth of July in
Buffalo and our travelers had stopped there to witness it. The bells
began to ring and the cannon to bomb at sunrise. It was a day of great
excitement for the west-bound travelers. The horses trembled in their
stalls. Sambo took refuge in Colonel's manger and would not come out.
There were many emigrants on their way to the far West in the crowd--men,
women and children and babies in arms--Irish, English, Germans and
Yankees. There were also well dressed, handsome young men from the
colleges of New England going out to be missionaries "between the desert
and the sown."
Buffalo, on the edge of the midland seas, had the flavor of the rank, new
soil in it those days--and especially that day, when it was thronged with
rough coated and rougher tongued, swearing men on a holiday, stevedores
and boatmen off the lakes and rivers of the middle border--some of whom
had had their training on the Ohio and Mississippi. There was much
drunkenness and fighting in the crowded streets. Some of the carriers and
handlers of American commerce vented their enthusiasm in song.
In Samson's diary was the refrain of one of these old lake songs, which
he had set down, as best he could, after the event:
"Then here's three cheers for the skipper an' his crew,
Give 'er the wind an' let 'er go, for the boys'll put 'er through;
I thought 'twould blow the whiskers right off o' you an' me,
On our passage up from Buffalo to Milwaukee-ee."
Each of these rough men had dressed to his own fancy. Many wore fine
boots of calf skin with red tops, drawn over their trousers, and high
heels and blue and red shirts and broad brimmed straw hats. A long haired
man, in buckskin leggings and moccasins, with a knife at his belt and too
much whisky beneath it, amused a crowd by a loud proclamation of his own
reckless and redoubtable character and a louder appeal for a chance to
put it in action. It was a droll bit of bragging and merely intended, as
the chronicler informs us, to raise a laugh.
"Here I be half man an' half alligator," he shouted. "Oh, I'm one o' yer
tough kind, live forever an' then turn into a hickory post. I've just
crept out o' the ma'shes of ol' Kentuck. I'm only a yearlin', but cuss
me if I don't think I can whip anybody in this part o' the country. I'm
the chap that towed the Broadhorn up Salt River where the snags was so
thick a fish couldn't swim without rubbin' his scales off. Cock a doodle
doo! I'm the infant that refused his milk before his eyes was open an'
called for a bottle o' rum. Talk about grinnin' the bark off a tree--that
ain't nothin'. One look o' mine would raise a blister on a bull's heel.
Cock a doodle doo! (slapping his thighs). Gol darn it! Ain't there some
one that dast come up an' collar me? It would just please my vitals if
there was some man here who could split me into shoe pegs. I deserve it
if ever a man did. I'll have to go home an' have another settlement with
ol' Bill Sims. He's purty well gouged up, an' ain't but one ear, but he's
willin' to do his best. That's somethin'. It kind o' stays yer appetite,
an' I suppose that's all a man like me can expect in this world o'
sorrow."
At this point a tall, raw-boned woman in "a brindle dress" (to quote the
phrase of Samson), wearing a large gilt pin just below her collar, with
an orthographic design which spelled the name Minnie, approached the hero
and boldly boxed his ears.
"Licked at last," he shouted as he picked up his hat, dislodged by the
violence he had suffered, and retired from the scene with a good-natured
laugh.
Sarah was a bit dismayed by the behavior of these rough forerunners of
civilization.
"Don't worry," said Samson, as they were driving away on the Lake Road
next morning. "The lake and river boatmen are the roughest fellers in the
West, and they're not half as bad as they look an' talk. Their deviltry
is all on the outside. They tell me that there isn't one o' those boys
who wouldn't give his life to help a woman, an' I guess it's so."
They had the lake view and its cool breeze on their way to Silver Creek,
Dunkirk and Erie, and a rough way it was in those days.
Enough has been written of this long and wearisome journey, but the worst
of it was ahead of them--much the worst of it--in the swamp flats of Ohio
and Indiana. In one of the former a wagon wheel broke down, and that day
Sarah began to shake with ague and burn with fever. Samson built a rude
camp by the roadside, put Sarah into bed under its cover and started for
the nearest village on Colonel's back.
* * * * *
"I shall never forget that day spent in a lonely part of the woods," the
good woman wrote to her brother. "It endeared the children to me more
than any day I can remember. They brought water from the creek, a great
quantity of which I drank, and bathed my aching head and told me stories
and cheered me in every way they could. Joe had his bear stick handy and
his plans for bears or wolves or Indians. Samson had made some nails at a
smithy in Pennsylvania. Joe managed to drive one of them through an end
of his bear stick and made, as he thought, a formidable weapon. With his
nail he hoped to penetrate the bear's eye. He had also put some bacon in
the bottom of the pack basket, knowing the liking of the basket for
bears. My faith in God's protection was perfect and in spite of my misery
the children were a great comfort. In the middle of the afternoon Samson
returned with a doctor and some tools and a stick of seasoned timber. How
good he looked when he came and knelt by my bed and kissed me! This is a
hard journey, but a woman can bear anything with such a man. The doctor
gave me Sapington's fever pills and said I would be all right in three
days, and I was.
"Late that afternoon it began to rain. Samson was singing as he worked on
his wheel. A traveler came along on horseback and saw our plight. He was
a young missionary going west. Samson began to joke with him.
"'You're a happy man for one in so much trouble,' said the stranger.
"Then I heard Samson say: 'Well, sir, I'm in a fix where happiness is
absolutely necessary. It's like grease on the wagon wheels--we couldn't
go on without it. When we need anything we make it if we can. My wife is
sick and the wagon is broke and it's raining and night is near in a
lonesome country, and it ain't a real good time for me to be down in the
mouth--is it now? We haven't broke any bones or had an earthquake or been
scalped by Indians, so there's some room for happiness.'
"'Look here, stranger--I like you,' said the man. 'If there's anything
I can do to help ye, I'll stop a while.'"
* * * * *
He spent the night with them and helped mend the felly and set the tire.
The fever and ague passed from one to another and all were sick before
the journey ended, although Samson kept the reins in hand through his
misery. There were many breaks to mend, but Samson's ingenuity was always
equal to the task.
One day, near nightfall, they were overtaken by a tall, handsome Yankee
lad riding a pony. His pony stopped beside the wagon and looked toward
the travelers as if appealing for help. The boy was pointing toward the
horizon and muttering. Sarah saw at once that his mind was wandering in
the delirium of fever. She got out of the wagon and took his hand. The
moment she did so he began crying like a child.
"This boy is sick," she said to Samson, who came and helped him off his
horse. They camped for the night and put the boy to bed and gave him
medicine and tender care. He was too sick to travel next day. The
Traylors stayed with him and nursed the lad until he was able to go on.
He was from Niagara County, New York, and his name was Harry Needles.
His mother had died when he was ten and his father had married again. He
had not been happy in his home after that and his father had given him
a pony and a hundred dollars and sent him away to seek his own fortune.
Homesick and lonely and ill, and just going west with a sublime faith
that the West would somehow provide for him, he might even have
perished on the way if he had not fallen in with friendly people. His
story had touched the heart of Sarah and Samson. He was a big, green,
gentle-hearted country boy who had set out filled with hope and the love
of adventure. Sarah found pleasure in mothering the poor lad, and so it
happened that he became one of their little party. He was helpful and
good-natured and had sundry arts that pleased the children. The man and
the woman liked the big, honest lad.
One day he said to Samson: "I hope you won't mind if I go along with you,
sir."
"Glad to have you with us," said Samson. "We've talked it over. If you
want to, you can come along with us and our home shall be yours and I'll
do what's right by you."
They fared along through Indiana and over the wide savannas of Illinois,
and on the ninety-seventh day of their journey they drove through
rolling, grassy, flowering prairies and up a long, hard hill to the
small log cabin settlement of New Salem, Illinois, on the shore of the
Sangamon. They halted about noon in the middle of this little prairie
village, opposite a small clapboarded house. A sign hung over its door
which bore the rudely lettered words: "Rutledge's Tavern."
A long, slim, stoop-shouldered young man sat in the shade of an oak tree
that stood near a corner of the tavern, with a number of children playing
around him. He had sat leaning against the tree trunk reading a book. He
had risen as they came near and stood looking at them, with the book
under his arm. Samson says in his diary that he looked like "an untrimmed
yearling colt about sixteen hands high. He got up slow and kept rising
till his bush of black tousled hair was six feet four above the ground.
Then he put on an old straw hat without any band on it. He reminded me of
Philemon Baker's fish rod, he was that narrer. For humliness I'd match
him against the world. His hide was kind o' yaller and leathery. I could
see he was still in the gristle--a little over twenty--but his face was
marked up by worry and weather like a man's. I never saw anybody so long
between joints. Don't hardly see how he could tell when his feet got
cold."
He wore a hickory shirt without a collar or coat or jacket. One suspender
held up his coarse, linsey trousers, the legs of which fitted closely and
came only to a blue yarn zone above his heavy cowhide shoes. Samson
writes that he "fetched a sneeze and wiped his big nose with a red
handkerchief" as he stood surveying them in silence, while Dr. John
Allen, who had sat on the door-step reading a paper--a kindly faced man
of middle age with a short white beard under his chin--greeted them
cheerfully.
The withering sunlight of a day late in August fell upon the dusty
street, now almost deserted. Faces at the doors and windows of the little
houses were looking out at them. Two ragged boys and a ginger colored dog
came running toward the wagon. The latter and Sambo surveyed each other
with raised hair and began scratching the earth, straight legged, whining
meanwhile, and in a moment began to play together. A man in blue jeans
who sat on the veranda of a store opposite, leaning against its wall,
stopped whittling and shut his jack-knife.
"Where do ye hail from?" the Doctor asked.
"Vermont," said Samson.
"All the way in that wagon?"
"Yes, sir."
"I guess you're made o' the right stuff," said the Doctor. "Where ye
bound?"
"Don't know exactly. Going to take up a claim somewhere."
"There's no better country than right here. This is the Canaan of
America. We need people like you. Unhitch your team and have some dinner
and we'll talk things over after you're rested. I'm the doctor here and I
ride all over this part o' the country. I reckon I know it pretty well."
A woman in a neat calico dress came out of the door--a strong built and
rather well favored woman with blonde hair and dark eyes.
"Mrs. Rutledge, these are travelers from the East," said the Doctor.
"Give 'em some dinner, and if they can't pay for it, I can. They've come
all the way from Vermont."
"Good land! Come right in an' rest yerselves. Abe, you show the gentleman
where to put his horses an' lend him a hand."
Abe extended his long arm toward Samson and said "Howdy" as they shook
hands.
"When his big hand got hold of mine, I kind of felt his timber," Samson
writes. "I says to myself, 'There's a man it would be hard to tip over in
a rassle.'"
"What's yer name? How long ye been travelin'? My conscience! Ain't ye
wore out?" the hospitable Mrs. Rutledge was asking as she went into the
house with Sarah and the children. "You go and mix up with the little
ones and let yer mother rest while I git dinner," she said to Joe and
Betsey, and added as she took Sarah's shawl and bonnet: "You lop down an'
rest yerself while I'm flyin' around the fire."
"Come all the way from Vermont?" Abe asked as he and Samson were
unhitching.
"Yes, sir."
"By jing!" the slim giant exclaimed. "I reckon you feel like throwin' off
yer harness an' takin' a roll in the grass."