USA > Indiana > Monroe County > The new purchase : or, seven and a half years in the Far West > Part 10
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Every noise now by bird or squirrel seemed serpentish; and every perfume of wild flower or blossom, was like cucum- bers, the odour of which resembles the fragrance of a rattle- snake; and every crooked dark stick in the leaves or twisting vines was a formidable reptile. At length, however, we had exhausted our snake stories, conquered our apprehensions, and gliding into other topics, had reached a point in the forest where was to be sought the path leading off to Glenville.
Reader, do not, when we speak of roads and paths, figure a lane between fences; such trammel on the liberty of travellers, and the freedom of cattle would be intolerable. No, a road author- ised by law is achieved by levelling the trees between given points, and thus making an avenue in the woods from twenty to thirty feet wide: the small stumps being often removed, but all a size larger left, only (theoretically) dressed down so as to permit wagons to pass over without striking the axle-if they can. This delicate performance of wagons is called-straddling, and is done by rough ones without fear; other vehicles utterly refuse to straddle. As to saplings, such are cut off by one or more oblique blows, some six or eight inches from the ground, the
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remaining stumps thus conveniently sharpened, and threatening to impale whoever may be pitched on to them from horse or carriage.
On one side usually, some times on both, of large stumps was a hole from one to two feet deep. Where the stumps fol- lowed in a serrated series, the wheels, but only of straddling wagons, performed the most exhilarating seesaw, with the most astonishing alternations of plunge, creak, and splash, till the uproar of a single team would fill a circle completely of half a mile radius! Indeed, nothing so enlivened the wilderness! When vehicles refused to straddle, driving became a work of the most laborious skill in the perpetual windings among holes and stumps that was then necessary; or when that was too perilous, it became a matter of taste and fancy to choose among the dozen extemporaneous roads inviting from the right and left. Her- cules himself would have been puzzled to select sometimes, where all offered equal inducements, or equal hindrances. These auxiliary ways have themselves other helps, and these even other · subsidiaries, so that a person not a woodsman, after an agreeable ride of some hours discovers often that a very long lane has no turn, but a very unexpected end, and leads exactly-no where.
We, of course were chock full of instructions and with all our windings and turnings still kept our eye steadily on the-blazes. The blaze is a longitudinal cut on trees at convenient intervals made by cutting off the bark with an axe or hatchet: three blazes in a perpendicular line on the same tree indicating a legislative road, the single blaze, a settlement or neighborhood road. Hence, if desirous to escape smoky blazes, we willingly kept on through this sort; although unlike the smoky blazes, this sort is of use only in the day time.
Well,-(to come back)-we began to look through the legal blazes to espy a corner tree cut and notched in a peculiar way, at which turning off, we should discover a single blaze leading to Glenville-when-could it be possible !- up that very tree was coiling an enormous and frightful serpent!
"Obstupuri! steteruntque comæ! et vox faucibus hæsit "-in spite of which all of us spoke out, and Mrs. Carlton really screamed. Of course we halted; and it being seen that cutting
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across was prevented by a ravine, it was at last concluded that Mr. C. be a committee to reconnoitre, while the others should remain in the dearborne-a retreat from snakes equal to covering up in bed or shutting one's eyes in danger. Accordingly, on went capital I with a slow and cautious step, an eye to the rear as well as to the fore, and flourishing in my hands a very long pole to intimidate his snakeship before it came to blows, or run- ning away on one or both sides-but the scaly rascal budged neither head nor tail, and yet seemed to swell larger and larger, as we, i. e. I and the pole advanced-till, strange! now his very form was changing yet remaining-when all at once inspired with a seeming phrenzy, I threw away my pole and dashing headlong on the serpent I seized him by the tail-
"Oh !- Mr. Carlton !"-
Precisely as my own wife cried out at first ; but as I maintained the hold and the enormous reptile still remained inflexibly bent around the tree, on came at last our friends, wagon and all; and soon all capable of laughing, were joined in the merriment on finding our frightful enemy subsiding into the mere form of a snake very ingeniously wrought with a hatchet into the corner tree and blackened with charcoal! That indeed was "notching in a peculiar way," as Dr. Sylvan had said; and true enough as he said also, "we should be sure enough to see it."
I may as well add here that some years after as I rode in com- pany with a lady near this very spot, and I had just ended the story for her entertainment, we both were no little startled to see a veritable serpent enacting that same part on a different tree indeed, and propriâ personâ-i. e in his own skin. How he could adhere almost perpendicularly to the smooth bark of a large beech I know not-yet there and thus the reptile was about eight feet from the ground and ten below any branch! On pass- ing I administered him a smart switch on the tail with my riding whip; a compliment he returned by detaching his head from the bark, and fiercely hissing forth his acknowledgements. Our amusements, you perceive, reader, are masculine in a country of men : and yet we play in civilized places with very sleek and cunning snakes-ay, that hiss and bite too!
The Glenville road was a mere path marked by a single blaze,
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which we very pertinaciously followed although it lighted us along a very circuitous route. In theory, the shortest line be- tween two points is the straight line; it is not so in practice out there : at least it is not prudent to be so mathematically correct in the neighbourhood paths of a New Purchase. More than once especially when going by the moss and the sun, and even with experienced woodsmen, the mathematical travelling had occasioned our being lost for hours, sometimes for days. Hence our backwoods axiom-"the longest is the shortest."
Notice here, a neighborhood road does not imply necessarily much proximity of neighbours. I have travelled all day long upon a neighbourhood or settlement road and seen neither neighbours nor neighbours' cabins. Such road leads sometimes not to a set- tlement in actû-(i. e. under the axe)-but to a settlement in posse-(i. e. among the possums)-viz. a paper settlement-a speculator's settlement. And even along an inhabited path, "neighbour" in the Purchase was to be interpreted scripturally, and I rejoice to say, was extended to comprise the Samaritans. Indeed, out there, we were very kind to neighbours-whenever we could find them; circumstances there created a kindness and a hospitality wholly unknown in here.
And now we reached the two story log house at the entrance of the bottom of "Big Shiney," and where was to be encountered "the most powerful slashy land." That the said slashy land was no better than it should be, may be inferred from the fact, that it occupied us from half past three P. M. until seven o'clock pre- cisely in the evening to do three miles-a speed less considerably than that of birds and even that of steam cars.
The river was still swollen and turbulent from recent rains, and although within its banks, it had barely retired from its over- flowings. And now a glorious sunset was there, far away in the grand solitudes, where century after century the god of day had gone down while his last beams were pouring the rich mellow haze of evening over the distant homes of the East! Gay birds were warbling farewell songs with distinct and thrilling articulation, while some darting from bank to bank seemed rays of sunlight winged and glancing over the waters-such was their plumage! And squirrels without fear raced and sported on hoary
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and patriarchal trees so inclined towards the river, that from opposite banks they united their umbrageous tops in green and flowery arches above its bosom! It did seem as if for once we had surprised nature's self in her wild, unpruned, rich, varied, luxurious negligence; and were beholding the sun, not coming from his chamber a strong man rejoicing to run a race, but a glorious bridegroom retiring to the bridal chamber of his spouse!
On the far bank was a small wigwam hut, and below in the water was tied a clumsy scow; but who was to ferry us over was not instantly apparent, our shoutings simple and compound being answered only by Echo, senior and junior. At last rose in answer the voice of an invisible wood-nymph, and that was fol- lowed shortly by the appearance among the bushes of the hamadryad in the shape of an athletic woman with a red head; who girding up her loins-(anglicè, pinning up her petticoat) stepped barefooted and bareheaded into the boat, her little boy at the moment casting loose the grape vine rope-its fastening. She then poled, or "set up stream" about 100 yards, and after- wards, by a large oar on a pivot at the end of the scow, she kept the boat nearly at right angles with the banks until the current brought the ferrywoman as diagonally correct to where we stood, as if all had been in a fashionable school on a black board.
Alas ! all this as nearly as unromantic as mathematics them- selves ; for our heroine was not at all like the Lady of the Lake or any other lady made to paddle a skiff in poetry or painting. She worked a scow to admiration, better truly than the most poetic creature could have done-but then an ugly, shapeless, clusmy scow! and a hearty, red-headed woman in bare legs and Elssler petticoats !- what had such to do with the sunset and the birds? Poetry, therefore, being sufficiently cooled down, we embarked; and while the good hearted, and honest woman insisted she needed no aid, both Mr. C. and the driver helped to navigate her boat. It seemed, then, our ferrywoman had never heard our shouts, telling us we had not "larn'd to holler;" and that having accidently caught sight of our wagon, she "know'd we wanted over 1 and so had hollored naterally." And the way she
1 "I want over," "I want in," "I want out," etc., are pioneer forms of speech that are still not uncommon in certain regions of the Middle West.
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could lift up the voice made crag and cliff and forest far and wide speak with a dozen tongues! Ay, reader, and we our- selves finally learned to sing out "O-o-o-o-ver !" till the rebellow-' ing of the woods brought the ferry person to the scow, even if at work in the clearing hundreds of yards behind his cabin. This wondrous art cannot be taught on paper; nor by question and answer, like other equally valuable matters now a days: but buy this book, and then we will add when you visit us, this im- portant lesson in Wildwood Elocution, gratis.
But happy we! the ferrywoman could tell us all about the Glenville settlement! and then, unhappy we-in her directions, which were sufficiently ample, she, like many other instructors, took for granted that we knew well the elements and data of which we were profoundly ignorant :- said she, "Wel, I allow you can't scarcely miss the path to the tan house-little Jim here's bin thare many a time-and 'cos the nabers go thare all round the settlemints. Howsoever keep rite strate along the bottim till you come to the bio-(bayou)-then sort a turn to the left, but not quite-'cos the path goes to the rite like-but you can't cross thare now-well, strate on is Sam Little's cleren, till you come to the Ingin grave-and after that the path's a sort a blind-but then it ain't more nor a mile to ole man Sturgisses, and he lives rite fornence the tan house over the run."
Of course, reader, the above and most other directions and speeches in this book like the above, are the filtered condensation of our own translation : the full vernacular you could not under- stand and perhaps might not relish. But interrogation only ren- dered our labyrinthical direction more implicated; and so, not wishing to seem less sagacious than little Jim, off we splashed for the bayou, and here we succeeded so well in "a sort-er turn to the left but not quite," that we soon lost sight of all roads, paths, and blazes ; and then we, hearing the sound of an axe still more to the left, travelled that direction by ear, through a won- derous wilderness of spice-wood, papaw, and twenty unknown bushes, briars, and weeds, till we fell suddenly into a clearing, supposed to be our neighbour's, Sam Little's.
Happily it proved to be Squire Brushwood's. For Sam Little's, it seems, was nothing save a clearing destitute of any cabin;
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while Brushwood's was adorned with a double cabin and all sorts of out-houses : and but for the lucky loss of our blaze, we should here be recording a night in the woods, to us then as deplorable as the prophet's loding, thus poetically lamented in some ancient version :
"Jonah was three days and nights in the whale's belly, Without fire or candle !
And nothing had he all the time But cold fish g-ts to handle !"
Whereas, now we were comfortably shedded and had more corn- bread and bacon than we could devour. And instead of being alone, our wife had, in addition to us and the driver, a guard in her bed-room, or rather around her very bed, a guard of four other men-the squire, the squire's two sons, and a journeyman chopper, whose axe had invited and guided us to the clearing ; add women and girls too numerous to mention-so that Mrs. Carl- ton never felt the least lonesome the livelong night.
· How getting to bed was managed could not be told, as Mrs. C. made an extemporary screen by hanging something-"what"- oh ! a utility on a rope or grape vine stretched near our quarters: only no one went out to see about the weather, and from first to last a very animated talk went on in voices of opposite genders, and even amid the creaking of ricketty bedsteads and after the dying of the fire light. Great adroitness is acquired by women- bodies especially in going to repose amidst company. For in- stance, we were at Major Billy Westland's in Woodville, once in company with several male magnates, when the major's lady with- drew from our circle at the fire, as for some domestic duty ; but on my accidentally looking around, three minutes after, lo! there was a night-cap peering above the "kiver-lid," and Mrs. Major Billy Westland's head in it !
Men-folks oversleeping themselves often find, on opening their eyes, the girls fixing the table for breakfast; and then they con- trive to put on their indispensables under the cover and in bed. Hence, on one memorable occasion, when we were at a wedding, our groom having overslept the early morn, made this covert ar- rangement with his inexpressibles, and then most courageously thrust out among us his invested limbs. But woful ingenuity !-
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just then was entering at the opposite door, our groom's brother, a gawkey young gentleman, with a green gosling countenance, who seeing first the pantalooned limbs, suddenly exclaimed in utter amazement at such conduct :-
"Hey ! if our Jess didn't sleep in his breeches !"
Reader !- good night! we are sleepy.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE FINDING.
"Ilionea petit dextrâ laevâque-" "A shaking with both hands-
YEARS had passed since Mrs. C. parted with her nearest rela- tives, and among these her mother. We were naturally in haste then to leave Brushwood in the morning, Glenville being only two miles distant. What was thought of us at Brushwood could now be only conjectured ; but we learned afterwards, that the screen made by Mrs. C. was deemed "powerful proud doings of stuck-up folks." And sorry am I to say that in the Purchase, as in some other places, such opinion is formed and similarly expressed about extra cleanliness, decency, modesty, learning, and the like : if these things exceed your neighbour's they subject you to suspicion, often to dislike, and not infrequently to rancorous persecution. Perhaps the thoughts about you in a New Purchase are boldly uttered, yet still, in an Old Purchase, scorn, envy, hatred, are felt for your real or supposed excellences, and acted out at the first fair opportunities. However, Mr. Carlton himself got so far rubbed down in time as to need considerable rubbing up after- wards; for he at last, in the Purchase, earned the appellation of a-"most powerful clever feller, what could lay down ahind an ole-log and hide raw bakin like the best on 'em-as naturally, too, as if brung up to it."
Receiving very straight directions for a very crooked path, we set out for Home! The path was rarely ever travelled by wheels and indeed unblazed ; and hence we proceeded partly by instinct
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and partly by trace of ruts seen usually by the eye, but often felt after by the feet-one of us always walking before the dearborne, while the other drove. This path I had always great difficulty in finding. And once the whole Glenville community nearly, having to deviate from its direction on account of high waters, were actually lost in the bottom for three long hours! To imprint the affair more deeply we met, too, an accident at that time. Endeavouring then to drive along a slippery and very steep in- clination, away suddenly pitched horse and wagon, and away also Mr. and Mrs. Carlton, and one young lady, and two little babies, all in an indescribable and mixed succession of somersets, down into the ravine; and yet, strange to tell! no one was hurt, nothing important broken, although when about half way to the bottom of the hill, the vehicle was caught by sapling and bush, the wagon there sticking, wheels uppermost and the horse on his back with the whole four legs turning their shod hoofs into thin air instead of thick earth! What it was, in such a false position, I cannot tell; but so did the two dumb things look, so patient, so resigned, appealing so touchingly with outstretched limbs for help, that it was long before laughter would permit Mr. Glenville and myself to restore wheels and legs to the order of nature. And when restored to a proper standing in society, never surely did horse and wagon move with more unanimity !- never did a horse, before so snort, so toss his head, so shake mane and tail, till by practising all parts of his body he was convinced it was only a very curious dream, just passed, and he was truly himself again! Consequently after that I preferred the better path of Sam Little's clearing and the Indian grave. But on the present morning of the Finding, Brushwood had directed us "the short cut" to Glen- ville Settlement.
The reader will of course conjecture what happened to novices -we lost our way. What with turning aside for logs-unstrad- dleable, brush impenetrable, briars intolerable, and for holes we cared not to fathom, we made the short path considerably longer than the long one, till all at once on clambering up a steep hill, farther progress was barred by a lofty and tortuous fence, worm- ing around a clearing! At the unwonted noise of cracking brush and bush in this quarter, soon, however, came forth from a good
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log-house in the centre, an almost gigantic yet venerable old gentle- man, who, to our great surprise, said he was-the Mr. Sturgis- i. e. "ole-man Sturgis-fornence" the tannery in the very suburbs of Glenville! Very near ! Reader !
After helping to extricate and get our carriage in front of his settlement, the old man advised, that, instead of now going away round by a very obscure path, we had better proceed right down the hill in the direction of the tan-house: especially as to drive down the hill would, after all, be not much worse, than the way up the hill just come.
Accordingly we prepared to alight in Glenville: not indeed by flying, but by slipping and sliding down on them from our sylvan summit. And this was accomplished as follows :- our historian and his lady advanced in pedibus-(Latin is more ancient than French,)-or more vulgarly, on foot, some yards before the wagon; then the author judiciously presented one side towards the bottom of the declivity, and the other towards its top; and then the author's wife did ditto's; after which her lower hand in his upper, the happy couple commenced the glide in that pictur- esque attitude and series of linked cadences, he with his dextral and unimpeded hand retarding the velocity, when becoming peri- lous, by seizing, at suitable intervals, bushes and saplings, until, without accident, Mr. and Mrs. Carlton had almost alighted on the border of a delightful and pellucid little creek. While above, on foot too, and holding his horse near the bit of the bridle, and his wagon, were tearing and crashing and thundering down, the man partly on his knees, and the horse in a sitting posture like a pet-dog at dinner-time, till all seemed like an avalanche of horses and wagons from the clouds-or at least, in western parlance, "a right smart sprinkle"of the articles. At all events, the unwonted uproar and shouts, and voices and merriment, had announced that some wonder was raining down on the settlement-and hence, they rushed from the tannery to see what was descending-lo! dear reader-we, Mr. and Mrs. Carlton, now ended our descent by gliding into the open arms of uncle John Seymour and his nephew John Glenville! And was not that stumbling upon luck?
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-Did you ever go away off, when travelling was the work of months-away off, a thousand miles, in search of the nearest and dearest kindred-and then, unexpectedly, on a bright and fragrant May morning, find those dear ones in the dark depths of an almost impervious wilderness? Then did, at that moment, thoughts of the past-happiness-homes-comforts-ay! of a thousand nameless past things rush like a torrent to your heart- then you know how we-met and rejoiced-and wept! How we crossed the creek I never knew-all were shaking hands right and left-some asking questions-some answering-some sobbing- and how could one see with eyes full of tears ?- But still I do believe we were both hugged over!
-But see! all Glenville is coming-and the daughter is once more upon the bosom of her mother !- yet the voice of weeping are not tears of lamentation-they are tears of joy !
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That morning thanksgiving prayers went up to heaven from three households united, and hymns of praise resounded amid the wilds: for these families were Christian-and wherever, in their many wanderings, they halted as pilgrims for a day or a year, there rose the domestic altars.
God is every where!
CHAPTER XIV.
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FIRST YEAR.
"_locus est et pluribus umbris." " __ a shady place for several friends."
WELL! this is Glenville. Has any body accompanied our for- tunes thus far ?- that body may as well see us also "out of the woods." A sojourn for a few years amid the privations and hardships of the New Purchase will fit you better for a home in the East-in case, we mean, you stay not so long as to be for- gotten by the time you go back. And even then-after the first bitter feelings of natural sorrow, of surprise, and perhaps of chagrin-believe me, such a force and independence will have been added to the character, so much self-reliance gendered, as
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to furnish an almost perpetual and complete substitute in your own resources. One perhaps, after a sojourn of the proper kind in the New Purchase, is rather in danger of too great a contempt for the things of the old: at all events, one, whose spirit is not naturally bad, is very much inclined to feel and say, with the good humor of Bernadotte, when he finds on his return that the world "does not care a fig" for him, "well, tell the world, I do not care a fig for it."
The man who has practised doing with little, and is fully satisfied with it, and for years has been very happy with it, is really superior to the man even of large fortune, and of many wants. Can he be vexed for the want of grand houses, fine furniture, sumptuous food, gay equipage, costly apparel and the like, who, if he despise not such matters, is soberly and philosophically indifferent to them? He has really so schooled himself amid rough huts, rude furniture, coarse food, and home- spun clothes, as, in his very heart, to prefer them with their freedom and independence, to the wearisome and silly, and end- less anxiety and toil of living for mere show.
On your return, if you have your health, in what can any one, who fancies himself superior, excel you? He knows not as much-he can eat no more-see no more-drink no more- sleep no better-live no longer. Can he drive a gig? you can drive it where he dares not venture. Suppose he outrides you -you can outwalk him. Does the chap shoot a double-barrelled gun? so can you, if you would-but you transcend him, oh! far enough with that man's weapon, that in your hands deals, at your will, certain death to one selected victim, without scattering useless wounds at a venture in a little innocent feathered flock.
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