"I may disjoin my hand, but not my faith."
Shakespeare.
The incidents of this tale must be sought in a remote period of the annals
of America. A colony of self-devoted and pious refugees from religious
persecution had landed on the rock of Plymouth, less than half a century
before the time at which the narrative commences; and they, and their
descendants, had already transformed many a broad waste of wilderness into
smiling fields and cheerful villages. The labors of the emigrants had been
chiefly limited to the country on the coast, which, by its proximity to
the waters that rolled between them and Europe, afforded the semblance of
a connexion with the land of their forefathers and the distant abodes of
civilization. But enterprise, and a desire to search for still more
fertile domains, together with the temptation offered by the vast and
unknown regions that lay along their western and northern borders, had
induced many bold adventurers to penetrate more deeply into the forests.
The precise spot, to which we desire to transport the imagination of the
reader, was one of these establishments of what may, not inaptly, be
called the forlorn-hope, in the march of civilization through the country.
So little was then known of the great outlines of the American continent,
that, when the Lords Say and Seal, and Brooke, connected with a few
associates, obtained a grant of the territory which now composes the state
of Connecticut, the King of England affixed his name to a patent, which
constituted them proprietors of a country that should extend from the
shores of the Atlantic to those of the South Sea. Notwithstanding the
apparent hopelessness of ever subduing, or of even occupying a territory
like this, emigrants from the mother colony of Massachusetts were found
ready to commence the Herculean labor, within fifteen years from the day
when they had first put foot upon the well-known rock itself. The fort of
Say-Brooke, the towns of Windsor, Hartford, and New-Haven, soon sprang
into existence, and, from that period to this, the little community, which
then had birth, has been steadily, calmly, and prosperously advancing its
career, a model of order and reason, and the hive from which swarms of
industrious, hardy and enlightened yeomen have since spread themselves
over a surface so vast, as to create an impression that they still aspire
to the possession of the immense regions included in their original grant.
Among the religionists, whom disgust of persecution had early driven into
the voluntary exile of the colonies, was more than an usual proportion of
men of character and education. The reckless and the gay, younger sons,
soldiers unemployed, and students from the inns of court, early sought
advancement and adventure in the more southern provinces, where slaves
offered impunity from labor, and where war, with a bolder and more
stirring policy, oftener gave rise to scenes of excitement, and, of
course, to the exercise of the faculties best suited to their habits and
dispositions. The more grave, and the religiously-disposed, found refuge
in the colonies of New-England. Thither a multitude of private gentlemen
transferred their fortunes and their families, imparting a character of
intelligence and a moral elevation to the country, which it has nobly
sustained to the present hour.
The nature of the civil wars in England had enlisted many men of deep and
sincere piety in the profession of arms. Some of them had retired to the
colonies before the troubles of the mother country reached their crisis,
and others continued to arrive, throughout the whole period of their
existence, until the restoration; when crowds of those who had been
disaffected to the house of Stuart sought the security of these distant
possessions.
A stern, fanatical soldier, of the name of Heathcote, had been among the
first of his class, to throw aside the sword for the implements of
industry peculiar to the advancement of a newly-established country. How
far the influence of a young wife may have affected his decision it is not
germane to our present object to consider, though the records, from which
the matter we are about to relate is gleaned, give reason to suspect that
he thought his domestic harmony would not be less secure in the wilds of
the new world, than among the companions with whom his earlier
associations would naturally have brought him in communion.
Like himself, his consort was born of one of those families, which, taking
their rise in the franklins of the times of the Edwards and Henrys, had
become possessors of hereditary landed estates, that, by their
gradually-increasing value, had elevated them to the station of small
country gentlemen. In most other nations of Europe, they would have been
rated in the class of the _petite noblesse_. But the domestic happiness of
Capt. Heathcote was doomed to receive a fatal blow, from a quarter where
circumstances had given him but little reason to apprehend danger. The
very day he landed in the long-wished-for asylum, his wife made him the
father of a noble boy, a gift that she bestowed at the melancholy price of
her own existence. Twenty years the senior of the woman who had followed
his fortunes to these distant regions, the retired warrior had always
considered it to be perfectly and absolutely within the order of things,
that he himself was to be the first to pay the debt of nature. While the
visions which Captain Heathcote entertained of a future world were
sufficiently vivid and distinct, there is reason to think they were seen
through a tolerably long vista of quiet and comfortable enjoyment in this.
Though the calamity cast an additional aspect of seriousness over a
character that was already more than chastened by the subtleties of
sectarian doctrines, he was not of a nature to be unmanned by any
vicissitude of human fortune. He lived on, useful and unbending in his
habits, a pillar of strength in the way of wisdom and courage to the
immediate neighborhood among whom he resided, but reluctant from temper,
and from a disposition which had been shadowed by withered happiness, to
enact that part in the public affairs of the little state, to which his
comparative wealth and previous habits might well have entitled him to
aspire. He gave his son such an education as his own resources and those
of the infant colony of Massachusetts afforded, and, by a sort of delusive
piety, into whose merits we have no desire to look, he thought he had also
furnished a commendable evidence of his own desperate resignation to the
will of Providence, in causing him to be publicly christened by the name
of Content. His own baptismal appellation was Mark; as indeed had been
that of most of his ancestors, for two or three centuries. When the world
was a little uppermost in his thoughts, as sometimes happens with the most
humbled spirits, he had even been heard to speak of a Sir Mark of his
family, who had ridden a knight in the train of one of the more warlike
kings of his native land.
There is some ground for believing, that the great parent of evil early
looked with a malignant eye on the example of peacefulness, and of
unbending morality, that the colonists of New-England were setting to the
rest of Christendom. At any rate, come from what quarter they might,
schisms and doctrinal contentions arose among the emigrants themselves;
and men, who together had deserted the fire-sides of their forefathers in
quest of religious peace, were ere long seen separating their fortunes, in
order that each might enjoy, unmolested, those peculiar shades of faith,
which all had the presumption, no less than the folly, to believe were
necessary to propitiate the omnipotent and merciful father of the
universe. If our task were one of theology, a wholesome moral on the
vanity, no less than on the absurdity of the race, might be here
introduced to some advantage.
When Mark Heathcote announced to the community, in which he had now
sojourned more than twenty years, that he intended for a second time to
establish his altars in the wilderness, in the hope that he and his
household might worship God as to them seemed most right, the intelligence
was received with a feeling allied to awe. Doctrine and zeal were
momentarily forgotten, in the respect and attachment which had been
unconsciously created by the united influence of the stern severity of his
air, and of the undeniable virtues of his practice. The elders of the
settlement communed with him freely and in charity; but the voice of
conciliation and alliance came too late. He listened to the reasonings of
the ministers, who were assembled from all the adjoining parishes, in
sullen respect: and he joined in the petitions for light and instruction,
that were offered up on the occasion, with the deep reverence with which
he ever drew near to the footstool of the Almighty; but he did both in a
temper into which too much positiveness of spiritual pride had entered, to
open his heart to that sympathy and charity, which, as they are the
characteristics of our mild and forbearing doctrines, should be the study
of those who profess to follow their precepts. All that was seemly, and
all that was usual, were done; but the purpose of the stubborn sectarian
remained unchanged. His final decision is worthy of being recorded.
"My youth was wasted in ungodliness and ignorance," he said, "but in my
manhood have I known the Lord. Near two-score years have I toiled for the
truth, and all that weary time have I past in trimming my lamps, lest,
like the foolish virgins, I should be caught unprepared; and now, when my
loins are girded and my race is nearly run, shall I become a backslider
and falsifier of the word? Much have I endured, as you know, in quitting
the earthly mansion of my fathers, and in encountering the dangers of sea
and land for the faith; and, rather than let go its hold, will I once more
cheerfully devote to the howling wilderness, ease, offspring, and, should
it be the will of Providence, life itself!"
The day of parting was one of unfeigned and general sorrow.
Notwithstanding the austerity of the old man's character, and the nearly
unbending severity of his brow, the milk of human kindness had often been
seen distilling from his stern nature in acts that did not admit of
misinterpretation. There was scarcely a young beginner in the laborious
and ill-requited husbandry of the township he inhabited, a district at no
time considered either profitable or fertile, who could not recall some
secret and kind aid which had flowed from a hand that, to the world,
seemed clenched in cautious and reserved frugality; nor did any of the
faithful of his vicinity cast their fortunes together in wedlock, without
receiving from him evidence of an interest in their worldly happiness,
that was far more substantial than words.
On the morning when the vehicles, groaning with the household goods of
Mark Heathcote, were seen quitting his door, and taking the road which
led to the sea-side, not a human being, of sufficient age, within many
miles of his residence, was absent from the interesting spectacle. The
leave-taking, as usual on all serious occasions, was preceded by a hymn
and prayer, and then the sternly-minded adventurer embraced his neighbors,
with a mien, in which a subdued exterior struggled fearfully and strangely
with emotions that, more than once, threatened to break through even the
formidable barriers of his acquired manner. The inhabitants of every
building on the road were in the open air, to receive and to return the
parting benediction. More than once, they, who guided his teams, were
commanded to halt, and all near, possessing human aspirations and human
responsibility, were collected to offer petitions in favor of him who
departed and of those who remained. The requests for mortal privileges
were somewhat light and hasty, but the askings in behalf of intellectual
and spiritual light were long, fervent, and oft-repeated. In this
characteristic manner did one of the first of the emigrants to the new
world make his second removal into scenes of renewed bodily suffering,
privation and danger.
Neither person nor property was transferred from place to place, in this
country, at the middle of the seventeenth century, with the dispatch and
with the facilities of the present time. The roads were necessarily few
and short, and communication by water was irregular, tardy, and far from
commodius. A wide barrier of forest lying between that portion of
Massachusetts-bay from which Mark Heathcote emigrated, and the spot, near
the Connecticut river, to which it was his intention to proceed, he was
induced to adopt the latter mode of conveyance. But a long delay
intervened between the time when he commenced his short journey to the
coast, and the hour when he was finally enabled to embark. During this
detention he and his household sojourned among the godly-minded of the
narrow peninsula, where there already existed the germ of a flourishing
town, and where the spires of a noble and picturesque city now elevate
themselves above so many thousand roofs.
The son did not leave the colony of his birth and the haunts of his youth,
with the same unwavering obedience to the call of duty, as the father.
There was a fair, a youthful, and a gentle being in the
recently-established town of Boston, of an age, station, opinions,
fortunes, and, what was of still greater importance, of sympathies suited
to his own. Her form had long mingled with those holy images, which his
stern instruction taught him to keep most familiarly before the mirror of
his thoughts. It is not surprising, then, that the youth hailed the delay
as propitious to his wishes, or that he turned it to the account, which
the promptings of a pure affection so naturally suggested. He was united
to the gentle Ruth Harding only the week before the father sailed on his
second pilgrimage.
It is not our intention to dwell on the incidents of the voyage. Though
the genius of an extraordinary man had discovered the world which was now
beginning to fill with civilized men, navigation at that day was not
brilliant in accomplishments. A passage among the shoals of Nantucket must
have been one of actual danger, no less than of terror; and the ascent of
the Connecticut itself was an exploit worthy of being mentioned. In due
time the adventurers landed at the English fort of Hartford, where they
tarried for a season, in order to obtain rest and spiritual comfort. But
the peculiarity of doctrine, on which Mark Heathcote laid so much stress,
was one that rendered it advisable for him to retire still further from
the haunts of men. Accompanied by a few followers, he proceeded on an
exploring expedition, and the end of the summer found him once more
established on an estate that he had acquired by the usual simple forms
practised in the colonies, and at the trifling cost for which extensive
districts were then set apart as the property of individuals.
The love of the things of this life, while it certainly existed, was far
from being predominant in the affections of the Puritan. He was frugal
from habit and principle, more than from an undue longing after worldly
wealth. He contented himself, therefore, with acquiring an estate that
should be valuable, rather from its quality and beauty, than from its
extent. Many such places offered themselves, between the settlements of
Weathersfield and Hartford, and that imaginary line which separated the
possessions of the colony he had quitted, from those of the one he joined.
He made his location, as it is termed in the language of the country, near
the northern boundary of the latter. This spot, by the aid of an
expenditure that might have been considered lavish for the country and the
age, if some lingering of taste, which even the self-denying and subdued
habits of his later life had not entirely extinguished, and of great
natural beauty in the distribution of land, water and wood, the emigrant
contrived to convert into an abode, that was not more desirable for its
retirement from the temptations of the world, than for its rural
loveliness.
After this memorable act of conscientious self-devotion, years passed away
in quiet, amid a species of negative prosperity. Rumors from the old world
reached the ears of the tenants of this secluded settlement, months after
the events to which they referred were elsewhere forgotten, and tumults
and wars in the sister colonies came to their knowledge only at distant
and tardy intervals. In the mean time, the limits of the colonial
establishments were gradually extending themselves, and valleys were
beginning to be cleared nearer and nearer to their own. Old age had now
begun to make some visible impression on the iron frame of the Captain,
and the fresh color of youth and health, with which his son had entered
the forest, was giving way to the brown covering produced by exposure and
toil. We say of toil, for, independently of the habits and opinions of the
country, which strongly reprobated idleness, even in those most gifted by
fortune, the daily difficulties of their situation, the chase, and the
long and intricate passages that the veteran himself was compelled to
adventure in the surrounding forest, partook largely of the nature of the
term we have used. Ruth continued blooming and youthful, though maternal
anxiety was soon added to her other causes of care. Still, for a long
season, nought occurred to excite extraordinary regrets for the step they
had taken, or to create particular uneasiness in behalf of the future. The
borderers, for such by their frontier position they had in truth become,
heard the strange and awful tidings of the dethronement of one king, of
the interregnum, as a reign of more than usual vigor and prosperity is
called, and of the restoration of the son of him who is strangely enough
termed a martyr. To all these eventful and unwonted chances in the
fortunes of kings, Mark Heathcote listened with deep and reverential
submission to the will of him, in whose eyes crowns and sceptres are
merely the more costly baubles of the world. Like most of his
contemporaries, who had sought shelter in the western continent, his
political opinions, if not absolutely republican, had a leaning to liberty
that was strongly in opposition to the doctrine of the divine rights of
the monarch, while he had been too far removed from the stirring passions
which had gradually excited those nearer to the throne, to lose their
respect for its sanctity, and to sully its brightness with blood. When the
transient and straggling visiters that, at long intervals, visited his
settlement, spoke of the Protector, who for so many years ruled England
with an iron hand, the eyes of the old man would gleam with sudden and
singular interest; and once, when commenting after evening prayer on the
vanity and the vicissitudes of this life, he acknowledged that the
extraordinary individual, who was, in substance if not in name, seated on
the throne of the Plantagenets, had been the boon companion and ungodly
associate of many of his youthful hours. Then would follow a long,
wholesome, extemporaneous homily on the idleness of setting the affections
on the things of life, and a half-suppressed, but still intelligible
commendation of the wiser course which had led him to raise his own
tabernacle in the wilderness, instead of weakening the chances of eternal
glory by striving too much for the possession of the treacherous vanities
of the world.
But even the gentle and ordinarily little observant Ruth might trace the
kindling of the eye, the knitting of the brow, and the flushings of his
pale and furrowed cheek, as the murderous conflicts of the civil wars
became the themes of the ancient soldier's discourse. There were moments
when religious submission, and we had almost said religious precepts, were
partially forgotten, as he explained to his attentive son and listening
grandchild, the nature of the onset, or the quality and dignity of the
retreat. At such times, his still nervous hand would even wield the blade,
in order to instruct the latter in its uses, and many a long winter
evening was passed in thus indirectly teaching an art, that was so much at
variance with the mandates of his divine master. The chastened soldier,
however, never forgot to close his instruction with a petition
extraordinary, in the customary prayer, that no descendant of his should
ever take life from a being unprepared to die, except in justifiable
defence of his faith, his person, or his lawful rights. It must be
admitted, that a liberal construction of the reserved privileges would
leave sufficient matter, to exercise the subtlety of one subject to any
extraordinary propensity to arms.
Few opportunities were however offered, in their remote situation and
with their peaceful habits, for the practice of a theory that had been
taught in so many lessons. Indian alarms, as they were termed, were not
unfrequent, but, as yet, they had never produced more than terror in the
bosoms of the gentle Ruth and her young offspring. It is true, they had
heard of travellers massacred, and of families separated by captivity,
but, either by a happy fortune, or by more than ordinary prudence in the
settlers who were established along that immediate frontier, the knife
and the tomahawk had as yet been sparingly used in the colony of
Connecticut. A threatening and dangerous struggle with the Dutch, in the
adjoining province of New-Netherlands, had been averted by the foresight
and moderation of the rulers of the new plantations; and though a
warlike and powerful native chief kept the neighboring colonies of
Massachusetts and Rhode-Island in a state of constant watchfulness, from
the cause just mentioned the apprehension of danger was greatly weakened
in the breasts of those so remote as the individuals who composed the
family of our emigrant.
In this quiet manner did years glide by, the surrounding wilderness
slowly retreating from the habitations of the Heathcotes, until they
found themselves in the possession of as many of the comforts of life as
their utter seclusion from the rest of the world could give them reason
to expect.
With this preliminary explanation, we shall refer the reader to the
succeeding narrative for a more minute, and we hope for a more interesting
account of the incidents of a legend that may prove too homely for the
tastes of those, whose imaginations seek the excitement of scenes more
stirring, or of a condition of life less natural.