"Together towards the village then we walked,
And of old friends and places much we talked:
And who had died, who left them, would he tell;
And who still in their father's mansion dwell."
Dana
We leave the imagination of the reader to supply an interval of several
years. Before the thread of the narrative shall be resumed, it will be
necessary to take another hasty view of the condition of the country in
which the scene of our legend had place.
The exertions of the provincials were no longer limited to the first
efforts of a colonial existence. The establishments of New-England had
passed the ordeal of experiment, and were become permanent. Massachusetts
was already populous; and Connecticut, the colony with which we have more
immediate connexion, was sufficiently peopled to manifest a portion of
that enterprise which has since made her active little community so
remarkable. The effects of these increased exertions were becoming
extensively visible; and we shall endeavor to set one of these changes, as
distinctly as our feeble powers will allow, before the eyes of those who
read these pages.
When compared with the progress of society in the other hemisphere, the
condition of what is called, in America, a new settlement, becomes
anomalous. There, the arts of life have been the fruits of an intelligence
that has progressively accumulated with the advancement of civilization;
while here, improvement is, in a great degree, the consequence of
experience elsewhere acquired. Necessity, prompted by an understanding of
its wants incited by a commendable spirit of emulation, and encouraged by
liberty, early gave birth to those improvements which have converted a
wilderness into the abodes of abundance and security, with a rapidity that
wears the appearance of magic. Industry has wrought with the confidence of
knowledge, and the result has been peculiar.
It is scarcely necessary to say that, in a country where the laws favor
all commendable enterprise, where unnecessary artificial restrictions are
unknown, and where the hand of man has not yet exhausted its efforts, the
adventurer is allowed the greatest freedom of choice, in selecting the
field of his enterprise. The agriculturist passes the heath and the
barren, to seat himself on the river-bottom; the trader looks for the site
of demand and supply and the artisan quits his native village to seek
employment in situations where labor will meet its fullest reward. It is a
consequence of this extraordinary freedom of election, that, while the
great picture of American society has been sketched with so much
boldness, a large portion of the filling-up still remains to be done. The
emigrant has consulted his immediate interests; and, while no very
extensive and profitable territory, throughout the whole of our immense
possessions, has been wholly neglected, neither has any particular
district yet attained the finish of improvement. The city is even now,
seen in the wilderness, and the wilderness often continues near the city,
while the latter is sending forth its swarms to distant scenes of
industry. After thirty years of fostering care on the part of the
government, the Capital, itself, presents its disjointed and sickly
villages, in the centre of the deserted 'old-fields' of Maryland, while
numberless youthful rivals are flourishing on the waters of the West, in
spots where the bear has ranged and the wolf howled, long since the former
has been termed a city.
Thus it is that high civilization, a state of infant existence, and
positive barbarity, are often brought so near each other, within the
borders of this republic. The traveller, who has passed the night in an
inn that would not disgrace the oldest country in Europe, may be compelled
to dine in the shantee [Footnote: _Shanty_, or _Shantee_, is a word much
used in the newer settlements. It strictly means a rude cabin of bark and
brush, such as is often erected in the forest for temporary purposes. But
the borderers often quaintly apply it to their own habitations. The only
derivation which the writer has heard for this American word, is one that
supposes it to be a corruption of _Chientè_, a term said to be used among
the Canadians to express a dog-kennel.] of a hunter; the smooth and
gravelled road sometimes ends in an impassable swamp; the spires of the
town are often hid by the branches of a tangled forest, and the canal
leads to a seemingly barren and unprofitable mountain. He that does not
return to see what another year may bring forth, commonly bears away from
these scenes, recollections that conduce to error. To see America with the
eyes of truth, it is necessary to look often; and in order to understand
the actual condition of these states, it should be remembered, that it is
equally unjust to believe that all the intermediate points partake of the
improvements of particular places, as to infer the want of civilization at
more remote establishments, from a few unfavorable facts gleaned near the
centre. By an accidental concurrence of moral and physical causes, much of
that equality which distinguishes the institutions of the country is
extended to the progress of society over its whole surface.
Although the impetus of improvement was not as great in the time of Mark
Heathcote as in our own days, the principle of its power was actively in
existence. Of this fact we shall furnish a sufficient evidence, by
pursuing our intention of describing one of those changes to which
allusion has already been made.
The reader will remember that the age of which we write had advanced into
the last quarter of the seventeenth century. The precise moment at which
the action of the tale must re-commence, was that period of the day when
the gray of twilight was redeeming objects from the deep darkness with
which the night draws to its close. The month was June, and the scene such
as it may be necessary to describe with some particularity.
Had there been light, and had one been favorably placed to enjoy a
bird's-eye view of the spot, he would have seen a broad and undulating
field of leafy forest, in which the various deciduous trees of New-England
were relieved by the deeper verdure of occasional masses of evergreens. In
the centre of this swelling and nearly interminable outline of woods, was
a valley that spread between three low mountains. Over the bottom-land,
for the distance of several miles, all the signs of a settlement in a
state of rapid and prosperous improvement were visible. The devious course
of a deep and swift brook, that in the other hemisphere would have been
termed a river, was to be traced through the meadows by its borders of
willow and sumach. At a point near the centre of the valley, the waters
had been arrested by a small dam; and a mill, whose wheel at that early
hour was without motion, stood on the artificial mound. Near it was the
site of a New-England hamlet.
The number of dwellings in the village might have been forty. They were,
as usual, constructed of a firm frame-work, neatly covered with sidings of
boards. There was a surprising air of equality in the general aspect of
the houses; and, if there were question of any country but our own, it
might be added there was an unusual appearance of comfort and abundance in
even the humblest of them all. They were mostly of two low stories, the
superior overhanging the inferior, by a foot or two; a mode of
construction much in use in the earlier days of the Eastern Colonies. As
paint was but little used at that time, none of the buildings exhibited a
color different from that the wood would naturally assume, after the
exposure of a few years to the weather. Each had its single chimney in the
centre of the roof, and but two or three showed more than a solitary
window on each side of the principal or outer door. In front of every
dwelling was a small neat court, in green sward, separated from the public
road by a light fence of deal. Double rows of young and vigorous elms
lined each side of the wide street, while an enormous sycamore still kept
possession of the spot, in its centre, which it had occupied when the
white man entered the forest. Beneath the shade of this tree the
inhabitants often collected, to gather tidings of each others welfare, or
to listen to some matter of interest that rumor had borne from the towns
nearer the sea. A narrow and little-used wheel-track ran, with a graceful
and sinuous route, through the centre of the wide and grassy street.
Reduced in appearance to little more than a bridle-path, it was to be
traced, without the hamlet, between high fences of wood, for a mile or
two, to the points where it entered the forest. Here and there, roses were
pressing through the openings of the fences before the doors of the
different habitations, and bushes of fragrant lilacs stood in the angles
of most of the courts.
The dwellings were detached. Each occupied its own insulated plot of
ground, with a garden in its rear. The out-buildings were thrown to that
distance which the cheapness of land, and security from fire, rendered
both easy and expedient.
The church stood in the centre of the highway, and near one end of the
hamlet. In the exterior and ornaments of the important temple, the taste
of the times had been fastidiously consulted, its form and simplicity
furnishing no slight resemblance to the self-denying doctrines and quaint
humors of the religionists who worshipped beneath its roof. The building,
like all the rest, was of wood, and externally of two stories. It
possessed a tower, without a spire; the former alone serving to betray its
sacred character. In the construction of this edifice, especial care had
been taken to eschew all deviations from direct lines and right angles.
Those narrow-arched passages for the admission of light, that are
elsewhere so common, were then thought, by the stern moralists of
New-England, to have some mysterious connexion with her of the scarlet
mantle. The priest would as soon have thought of appearing before his
flock in the vanities of stole and cassock, as the congregation of
admitting the repudiated ornaments into the outline of their severe
architecture. Had the Genii of the Lamp suddenly exchanged the windows of
the sacred edifice with those of the inn that stood nearly opposite, the
closest critic of the settlement could never have detected the liberty,
since, in the form, dimensions, and style of the two, there was no visible
difference.
A little inclosure, at no great distance from the church, and on one side
of the street, had been set apart for the final resting-place of those who
had finished their race on earth. It contained but a solitary grave.
The inn was to be distinguished from the surrounding buildings, by its
superior size, an open horse-shed, and a sort of protruding air, with
which it thrust itself on the line of the street, as if to invite the
traveller to enter. A sign swung on a gallows-looking post, that, in
consequence of frosty nights and warm days, had already deviated from the
perpendicular. It bore a conceit that, at the first glance, might have
gladdened the heart of a naturalist, with the belief that he had made the
discovery of some unknown bird. The artist, however, had sufficiently
provided against the consequences of so embarrassing a blunder, by
considerately writing beneath the offspring of his pencil, "This is the
sign of the Whip-Poor-Will;" a name, that the most unlettered traveller,
in those regions, would be likely to know was vulgarly given to the
Wish-Ton-Wish, or the American night-hawk.
But few relics of the forest remained immediately around the hamlet. The
trees had long been felled, and sufficient time had elapsed to remove most
of the vestiges of their former existence. But as the eye receded from the
cluster of buildings, the signs of more recent inroads on the wilderness
became apparent, until the view terminated with openings, in which piled
logs and mazes of felled trees announced the recent use of the axe.
At that early day, the American husbandman like the agriculturists of most
of Europe, dwelt in his village. The dread of violence from the savages
had given rise to a custom similar to that which, centuries before, had
been produced in the other hemisphere by the inroads of more pretending
barbarians, and which, with few and distant exceptions, has deprived rural
scenery of a charm that, it would seem, time and a better condition of
society are slow to repair. Some remains of this ancient practice are
still to be traced in the portion of the Union of which we write, where,
even at this day, the farmer often quits the village to seek his scattered
fields in its neighborhood. Still, as man has never been the subject of a
system here, and as each individual has always had the liberty of
consulting his own temper, bolder spirits early began to break through a
practice, by which quite as much was lost in convenience as was gained in
security. Even in the scene we have been describing, ten or twelve humble
habitations were distributed among the recent clearings on the sides of
the mountains, and in situations too remote to promise much security
against any sudden inroad of the common enemy.
For general protection, in cases of the last extremity, however, a
stockaded dwelling, not unlike that which we have had occasion to
describe in our earlier pages, stood in a convenient spot near the
hamlet. Its defences were stronger and more elaborate than usual, the
pickets being furnished with flanking block-houses; and, in other
respects, the building bore the aspect of a work equal to any resistance
that might be required in the warfare of those regions. The ordinary
habitation of the priest was within its gates; and hither most of the
sick were timely conveyed, in order to anticipate the necessity of
removals at more inconvenient moments.
It is scarcely necessary to tell the American, that heavy wooden fences
subdivided the whole of this little landscape into inclosures of some
eight or ten acres in extent; that, here and there, cattle and flocks were
grazing without herdsmen or shepherds, and that, while the fields nearest
to the dwellings were beginning to assume the appearance of a careful and
improved husbandry, those more remote became gradually wilder and less
cultivated, until the half-reclaimed openings, with their blackened stubs
and barked trees, were blended with the gloom of the living forest. These
are, more or less, the accompaniments of every rural scene, in districts
of the country where time has not yet effected more than the first two
stages of improvement.
At the distance of a short half-mile from the fortified house, or
garrison, as by a singular corruption of terms the stockaded building was
called, stood a dwelling of pretensions altogether superior to any in the
hamlet. The buildings in question, though simple, were extensive; and
though scarcely other than such as might belong to an agriculturist in
easy circumstances, still they were remarkable, in that settlement, by the
comforts which time alone could accumulate, and some of which denoted an
advanced condition for a frontier family. In short, there was an air about
the establishment, as in the disposition of its out-buildings, in the
superior workmanship, in the materials, and in numberless other well-known
circumstances, which went to show that the whole of the edifices were
re-constructions. The fields near this habitation exhibited smoother
surfaces than those in the distance; the fences were lighter and less
rude; the stumps had absolutely disappeared, and the gardens and homestead
were well planted with flourishing fruit-trees. A conical eminence arose,
at a short distance, in the rear of the principal dwelling. It was covered
with that beautiful and peculiar ornament of an American farm, a regular,
thrifty, and luxuriant apple-orchard. Still, age had not given its full
beauty to the plantation, which might have had a growth of some eight or
ten years. A blackened tower of stone, which sustained the charred ruins
of a superstructure of wood, though of no great height in itself, rose
above the tallest of the trees, and stood a sufficient memorial of some
scene of violence, in the brief history of the valley. There was also a
small block-house near the habitation; but, by the air of neglect that
reigned around, it was quite apparent the little work had been of a
hurried construction, and of but temporary use. A few young plantations of
fruit-trees were also to be seen in different parts of the valley, which
was beginning to exhibit many other evidences of an improved agriculture.
So far as all these artificial changes went, they were of an English
character. But it was England devoid alike of its luxury and its poverty,
and with a superfluity of space that gave to the meanest habitation in the
view, an air of abundance and comfort that is so often wanting about the
dwellings of the comparatively rich, in countries where man is found
bearing a far greater numerical proportion to the soil, than was then, or
is even now the case, in the regions of which we write.