USA > Indiana > Monroe County > The new purchase : or, seven and a half years in the Far West > Part 12
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A large, antique, and elegantly Japanned waiter had been nicely balanced on a shelf in the toilette chamber; and on this grand affair were tastefully set numerous anti-tee-total glasses, jelly glasses, remains of a gilded French china tea set, and ever so many Reliquia Danaum-all regarded, I fear, with half repress- ed elation, as shining remembrances of departed glory and great- ness. Anyhow, more than once on my sudden appearance behind
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the woolly rampart, there was Mrs. C., ay, and even Aunt Kitty herself, a handling, and a dusting, and a refixing the relics, as devout as if all had been saints' bones-often with smiles of complacency-but sometimes with tears! And, after all, per- haps, that was not so very unreasonable :- friends far away now -yes some no more on earth-dear friends had once surrounded that very waiter-sipped tea from those very cups-and in the fashion of bygone days, had drunk healths from those glasses. Reader ! may be you have shed secret tears yourself over such things? We think of friends then, do we not? Mournful shad- ows of the past are in the vision! But the Genius of the Woods was incensed : and mark the consequences.
One day Mrs. Seymour entered the parlour with a cake of sugar-tree sugar in her hands, and nearly as large and heavy as she could conveniently carry. After our unanimous admiration of its size, and breaking off lumps to taste, the dear old lady dis- appeared to deposit the saccharine treasure on the great store shelf constructed immediately over the waiter of idols. Now oak pins are very strong, tough and tenacious, and of most Job-like endurance-but the creatures will not bear every thing; hence the two enormous pins under the store shelf had repeatedly sighed forth remonstrances, as extra pound after pound of hard soap, sugar, tallow, and jugs of vinegar and molasses, and what nots, were cruelly and inconsiderately added to the already almost insupportable weight. But to-day. when that hugeous lump of sugar was suddenly added to the grievance, the indignant pins would stick to it no longer: in a moment-without one further premonitory creak, off they both snapped simultaneously-and down came the soap and sugar and tallow-down came the store tea and the true coffee-coffee, and the rye-coffee, and the ocra, and the spices in brown paper bags, and the pepper, red and black in exiled tea cups! Ah! yes! alas! alas! and down came that japanned waiter and its gilded cups, and conical glasses for wine, and bell-mouthed ones for ices and jellies! and, moreover, down went the dear old lady of the crimped cap, all rolling, heaped, mixed higgledee-piggledee, into one bushel and a peck of yellow corn meal reposing in a wash tub, and thirty-one and a half pounds of wheat flour in a half-bushel measure, below! So
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much can a big lump of unclarified backwoods sugar do! Ah! had it been double rectified loaf, in blue paper, of a conical form and neatly bound with hard twisted twines, dividing off circles and parabolas! But a lump of uncivilized sweetness just turned out of a pot !
Mrs. Seymour, however, was soon extricated amid the almost endless oh's-ah's who-could-have-thought-it's-and similar ex- clamations, queries, reproaches and extenuations, pertaining to ac- cidents created by ourselves; and happily she had sustained no injury whatever, although the outer woman was considerably well sugared, well mealed, well vinegared, and not a little soaped ! But the glory of the brittle ware shone only in pieces-multiplied but not increased ! Not an idol escaped, save a little punch goblet belonging to the Carlton ancestry, and at the time considerably - more than a century old! and whether the sagacity of age was the cause or not, this ancient relic contrived to roll by itself into an untouched part of the meal tub, where after the pell-mell ended, it was discovered, whole and sound. If any one is in- credulous we will show him when he calls, the venerable article yet preserved in cotton !
About the time of the accident just told, the venerable old pier glass, suspended opposite the only door of the cabin was threat- ened with a very great danger. A neighbour having ended a morning call, that, according to the etiquette of the Purchase, had lasted from a short time after breakfast till past noon, rose to depart with the farewell formula, "Well, I allow I must be a sort a-goin," and then off he started with great activity in the di- rection of the door visible but not real. In other words mistaking the open door reflected in the glass for the true door, he began kicking his heavy shod feet towards the mirror ; but as he ducked his head to clear the lintel of the scant door, he naturally en- countered a rough looking personage seemingly butting against himself from the apparent door-when round he wheeled, con- fused indeed, but just in time, (and before we could have ar- rested him) to avoid stepping into the very bosom of the old reflector.
Such risk was too great for the glass to encounter again, and so it was carefully re-packed and put away 'till we removed some
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years after to Woodville; where, as it could be placed so as to imitate neither door nor window, it was brought again into the light and permitted to renew its reflections. Alas! then, however, a dear face that had been familiar to the old mirror for nearly three-fourths of a century, was seen pictured there no more! Young and joyous, and pleasant faces, have often since peeped from its bosom; but never one so mild, so resigned, so radiant even on earth with beams from the heavenly world, as that venerable and venerated countenance gazing now and with out a medium upon the resplendent and ravishing scenes !
Pulvis et umbra sumus !
CHAPTER XVI.
"Quadrupedante putrem quatit ungula campum." "A horse a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"
J. GLENVILLE and myself, not being able to complete certain arrangements immediately, my first summer and autumn were spent in learning two arts, the one tending to the preservation of hides, the other, to the destruction of hides :- grinding bark, and rifle-shooting. The present chapter is devoted to the former, the subsequent one, to the latter art.
Our bark-house was of the Grecian architecture in its infancy, being almost wholly upright poles as columns, on which reposed, (when the grinding ceased,) the calm moonlight horizontals, kept from falling off by the crotches of the perpendiculars. On the horizontals were laid other poles, and on these the roof, the latter being with due regard itself made of bark. Under this shelter was our store of bark, mostly oak and chestnut, with here and there a pile of beech; and here, at one end, was our-ay! what shall it be called? Ye tanners and curriers, and all ye other hide dressers! Shall ye say our bark-masher-or breaker- or mill-or pounder-or tritterer? However, I will describe, and you name.
First, was a hexagonal beam. This stood up nearly perpen- dicular, its iron pivots at each inserted into iron sockets fastened above and below; and by means of these pivots the beam could, .
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when required, circulate with entire freedom. Next, into this hexagonal, was fixed at right angles an hexagonal axis, yet free to move at the end inserted; while its other end, passing first the nominal centre of a wheel (the axis there being wedged in theory immoveable), it continued beyond the lateral surface of said wheel far enough to admit fixtures for Old Dick-a quadruped pre- sently to be introduced, not fashionably and formally by the tip of a hat and the tip of a finger, but in detail, i. e. from head to tail.
But the wheel !- ah! had we that wheel and dear Old Dick in here to grind bark as a show! It came nearer perpetual motion, that is, when Dick was harnessed, and I had the rake in my hand, nearer than anything I have ever known since Redheifer's. The article was composed of eight large white-oak blocks; the four interior ones being parallelogramic, the four circumferential, plano-convex ; and all bound by long wooden pins driven from the circumference, and by enormous clamps on the lateral surfaces. In this state of e pluribus unum, the affair was as near a circle as . is the earth to a sphere; and when art so closely resembles nature wheelwrights should be satisfied. But when motion began, the sections and segments not moving unanimously, circles were evolved whose circumferences did not obey the definition, in preserving equal distances from the centre-nor did the centre stick exactly to its own point. Especially were these irregularities visible, if old Dick became fidgetty, or "suspicioned" I was going to rake him-when he would jerk the whole concern with so sud- den a vengeance, as not only to displace the central wedges in- tended to confine the axis in the wheel, but to threaten the disso- lution of the whole bark house.
The wheel (by courtesy), was fourteen inches thick; and its circumference was pierced with many holes by an inch-and-quarter auger to the depth of eight inches in towards the centre ; and these holes were armed with strong pegs or wooden teeth, driven to the entire depth, and left projecting from the circumference about four inches each :- the whole thus forming as tremendous and effective an engine of torture as the best inquisitors could desire for the extension of the Church. Indeed, if any saint, after his Holiness shall have converted our pagan countries, shall wish
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with young Doctor Oxford to break ungodly heretics, either on or under the wheel, for offences against the State, ours would be the very dandy. But let no Mr. Dominick think Old Dick could have been either persuaded or goaded to pull the wheel over human beings : hardly could he be frightened or coaxed to pull it over lifeless bark! No! no! godly people must work the wheel them- selves, unless they prefer to turn it into a treadmill, or employ steam.
Lastly, the floor. This had the perpendicular, hexagonal rotary shaft first described, as its centre, or thereabouts; whence ex- tended imaginary radii, some five, others nearly six feet, render- ing it doubtful if three times the diameter was precisely equal to the circumference. Still the circumference being bounded by a border rising above the floor an average of ten inches, the con- tents of the area could easily be known by the wheelbarrow loads of ground bark carried thence to the vats-near enough at least for a popular lecture before some institute of practical science.
Another last word, however, seems necessary here, about our floor. It was of puncheons. Not, my friend, the puncheons of brandy stores, distilleries, or other alcoholic abodes, but back- wood puncheons. And these are a species of Robinson Crusoe board, being planks from three to ten feet long, and from two to five inches thick; and wide as the size of the trees whence they are severally hewed by the means of axe and adze. On such gigantic flooring do primitive Buckeyes, Hoosiers and the like tread and sleep, after the departure of the red aboriginals.
But come, Dick, my nonpareil of "hoss beasts," trot up, for thy history and portrait.
When this remarkable quadruped was foaled is uncertain. No satisfaction on this point could be gained even from his own mouth : not that Dick would utter a deliberate falsehood- that was impossible-but still the answers he gave by his mouth, to different experienced jockeys, made some say he was sixteen, and others twenty-six years old !- I have known some even insist he must be at least thirty ! and some even forty! I incline to the opinion, however, that, like certain human bachelors, Dick was of no particular age.
It is agreed by all that he was foaled, however, and in Penn-
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sylvania, among the mountains, about the Bear Gap. Here he was brought up to the wagoning business, having served his ap- prenticeship with the famous teamster, Mr. Conestoga Dutchy. Acting in his tender years as wheel-horse, he was so constantly squeezed between the wagon pushing him forward from his tail, , and his master pulling him backward from his head, that his longitudinal growth was very greatly impeded, and it could be said, not that Dick was longer than any other brief horse, but only not quite so short. Happily, what was wanting to the fellow's longitude was added to his latitude; and after all, he had as much weight of character as longer horses, and, like a French bullet, more too in a lump. On emergencies, although Dick was edu- cated as a wheel-horse, he could act in the lead, and well under- stood the difference between the line jerked and the line pulled -indeed, better, I must confess, than Mr. Carlton himself, who often managed the line wrong, to the great jeopardy of his load; only Dick, out of generosity, would usually go the way the driver meant, but for which in ignorance, he had given the improper signal.
At the earnest recommendation of their mutual friends, Dick was bought as a family horse by Uncle John, when in Northum- berland. Accordingly the fellow, after performing wonders on the journey from Philadelphia to the West, in hawing and geeing, and in pulling right dead ahead up one side a mountain and hold- ing back down the other; and after having ploughed, and har- rowed, and thrashed, &c. in Kentucky, came at last with the family to the Purchase, where at our arrival he was cherished as no unimportant member of the Glenville community.
Here he hauled logs for cabins and fires, bark for the tannery, went to mill both with and without the cart, and sometimes to meeting and sometimes to Woodville. In going to mill without the cart he usually carried one man and two bags, bag No. I, full of wheat, bag No. 2, full of corn, and this was always the case in freshets, for Dick forded creeks like a sea-horse; although the things on his back might keep dry if they could, his own being under water: as to being floated away-phoo !- preposterous !- Dick could stay a creek like a dam! He could grind bark too; carry raw hides and hides tanned, having no fears either about
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his own! It was almost like that of a rhinoceros; and would have resisted every process to transmute it into leather, patent or un- patent-and we used both.
But nothing so endeared Dick to his friends as his mental and moral qualities. He was for these worthy of the fairy age; and had he lived in the days of Beauty and the Beast, I do think he would have talked right out as well as the best of the brutes belonging to the era. He was, among other matters, the only horse that had a relish for practical jokes. Let any one leave a nice flitch of fat bacon in the sun till the pot was ready, under the notion too, that greasing a horse's teeth will stop his eating oats, the rascal was sure to smell out and devour it! Let the girl set out a swill for Sukey, and turn away a few moments-you might catch sight of the tip of Dick's ear as he peeped from behind the smoke house till the coast was clear, and the next instant he would be gobbling the mess, lifting his black-brown head to grin at the stupid cow, and with a keen twinkling eye watching the re- turn of the girl. . 'And when the help came in a whirlwind of wrath not indeed on but with a broomstick-bah! how he would heel it snorting and showing his teeth equivalent with him to saying-"catch a duck asleep!" Or when Dick was regaling on his own allowance of corn on the ear, in the front of the inclined cart, and swiney ran grunting up for a chance grain or so dropped on the ground, our wag would on a sudden with his teeth seize the unschooled creature just back of the shoulders, and then lift- ing him up, shake him so as to fill all Glenville with the squealings of terror or pain; making it evident to all untutored beasts that Dick himself had lived when the schoolmaster was abroad.
He was kind to men; but to women he was specially kind. For fun he would carry males double and even treble; but females might be packed from stem to stern and the kind soul would trot away with an evident care. True, he would now and then turn his quizzical head with a make-believe snap at the dangling feet, but it was manifest all was sham from his peculiar grin-(his way of laughing)-when any not acquainted with the trick would scream or jump down. When thus used for sport, no saddle or bridle was needed, the passengers on the forecastle holding by the mane, those on the poop, by the helm, and those amidships sitting,
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à la squaw, with ancles on both sides. The steering was, how- ever, done at the prow by boxing his ears ; when he turned at right angles with the slap, and if fun was to be made, which was always indicated to him by a peculiarity in the slapping, he turned so suddenly as to occasion the rise, the fall, and the flourish of petti- coats. And indeed this was the grand recreation and sport in the whole affair! and a ride on old Dick was one of the inducements to the young ladies from the neighbourhoods to visit Glenville!
Ay! you may suspend all this on your nose: but, believe me, in no way is the fear of the East before people's eyes out there; secondly, folks will play ; and thirdly, remember "de gustibus non" -i. e. literally translated "some love hog and homminy."
But I must not make too large a picture; so with the mention of Dick's idyosyncracy-(for since the birth of Phrenology that disease is quite fashionable)-we shall for the present suffer him to trot away. Like other celebrated persons he had then his antipathies : he never could bear the sight of a dead owl! and, unless blindfolded, would never carry on his back the carcass of a dead deer! And this, after carrying barn-hill fowls a dozen at a time tied by the legs and dangling against his sides ! and tanned and raw hides innumerable! Hence his enemies may suppose it was all affectation-but it was no such thing-it was real and un- controllable idyosyncracy-as real as Dr. Reverence's towards a live cat, or Col. Butcher's towards a drawn sword!
Such then was our barkery, our bark, and our bark grinder- and, such was old Dick. But all in motion! Can one without a black board and diagrams exhibit the cycloids of that uncircular roundity-the wheel? Can we without brass bands and bad play- ers make audible the skreaking of the ungreased pivots ?- the curious moaning and growling of the axis ?- and the dreadful cracking and crashing of the bark under the miniature Jugger- naut? And who has skill to catch and fix on paper, or canvas, the look and manner of that more than half reasoning horse ?- after resting the full hour I had been in chase of a playful squirrel, starting off at the crack of the rifle, and trying to prove by his manner that he had been going all the time!
If any one is Hogarth enough when he undertakes this work with "picters to match," let him not fail to illustrate old Dick and the Bark Mill.
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CHAPTER XVII.
"Omne tulit punctum," "Centre every time."
READER, were you ever fired with the love of rifle shooting? If so, the confidence now reposed in your honour will not be abused, when told my love for that noble art is unabated : nay, let me whisper in your ear-
"What yet?"
Yes-in the corner of my bed chamber a genuine New Purchase rifle! And all the forest equipments,-otter skin bullet pouch with a tail gracefully pendent-a scalping knife in a sheath adorned with porcupine quills-a savage little hatchet-a powder horn, and its loader of deer-horn, tied on with a deer sinew and holding enough to prime a shot gun-a mould running three hundred and twenty-five to the pound-wipers-an iron hook to tote squirrels-and some hundred and fifty patches all strung and fast- ened to the leather strap of the pouch-ay! and a pair of mocca- sins and pair of green leggins, and-
"Do you ever yet go a gunning?'
Gunning !- alas! is that degrading appellation to be applied to hunting !- but how should they know? Yes, I do steal off some -- times and try to fancy myself in the woods. But what are these scrawney little trees fenced in to prevent cattle from eating them down? Where is a squirrel, or a raccoon, or a fox, or a turkey to hide? And where can one lose himself and camp out? No grand and centurial trees here reaching up to heaven and sending roots to the centre of the earth! No hollow caverns in enormous trunks, where wolves and bears may lurk! No vast sheltering ex- panse of tops where panthers and wild cats may, find security How vain to think of crawling through a thicket of undergrowth to the leeside of a deer, stopping with moccasined foot-stirring no leaves-cracking no twig-shaking no bushes-till one can get within the magical distance, a hundred yards. Nothing, nothing here, to excite dread, call forth skill, reward toil, and show the independence of the hunter.
True, I make-believe, like little girls, playing baby house; I
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say to myself, "Now Carlton, 'spose that old log away off there was a bear ?- or that tame turkey a wild one ?- or that cream- coloured calf a deer-or that sharp eared dog a wolf?" And instinctively I catch myself with my side that way, drawing a bead with one eye into the hind sight and fixing the other on the may-be game, and then, clicks goes the trigger. Fortunate, the rifle is not cocked. Indeed, these rehearsals are always without a load; if not, farewell to the integrity of-the little knot in the old log-and to the gambols of calf and dog-good night to the eyes of farm turkies and dunghill roosters !
In vain do flocks of black-birds and robbins, and tom-tits rise ! -they might perch on my shoulders: for who but a wretched dandy and shot-gun driveller, with a double-barrelled gun, a whole pound of powder! and four pounds of shot! will fire at a flock, killing two and wounding twenty? To be sure a curious stranger will sometimes meet us and politely request to see "a rifle discharged!" and with an incredulous smile wonder if a man can really hit a solitary single bird with so "minute" a ball! And then we cannot but show off, and so we begin with amazing condescension :
"Sir! do you see that little blue bird ?"
"Oh! yes! that tiny creature on the next tree."
"'Tut, no !- that to your right, on the post."
"What! that away there? too far, Sir, too far."
"Too far !- forty-five yards in a straight line !! "
Reader, we hit at any height or in any direction ; but a horizon- tal or a little below is our preference. The rifle is better balanced, and the light, especially in opposition to the sun, is thus less dazzling and makes the cleanest bead. Hence I select, if possible, on occasions like the present a bird so placed as to render the affair more like'our target firing.
"Now, Sir.""we continue-"I shall hit that bird."
"If you do, I will eat it."
"Then you will have your supper in a second or two."
'And with that I set triggers-toss down my hat-feel for a level with my feet-cock rifle-turn left side to the mark-raise the piece with my thumb on the cock-incline shoulders back with knees bending outward-till the mass of man and gun rest on
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the base-let fall the rifle a little below object -.- and then, ceasing to breathe and stopping my pulse, and bringing into the hind sight a silver bead like a pin's head, I rapidly raise that bead till dark- ened by the feathers under the throat-and the next you see is a gentle flutter of spread wings as if the poor little creature was flying down for a worm or a crumb.
"Ah! Sir, you've only inflicted a severe wound; but really this is wonderful! I could hardly believe in this skill unless I saw it."
"Well, sir, please pick it up; the poor tit is dead enough, and never knew what hurt him." And of course, reader, it must be so, for the bird's head is off.
Such skill was of course not the work of a day. Ounces of powder and pounds of lead were spent in vain first, and many a squirrel, at the crack of the rifle, would remain chattering or eating a nut, imagining somebody was shooting somewhere; until conjecturing by the third or fourth ball pealing bark some two or three feet from him, that the firing was rather in his direction, away he would scud for fear a chance bullet should maybe hit him! But my heart was in the matter in those days. Hence it is no great marvel if in due time my rifle dealt out certain death second to none in the Purchase. What avail then concealment in the topmost branches; there was the dark spot of a body or a head amid the green leaves. What! a retreat behind crotches or into holes; there was yet the tip of an ear or point of a nose, or twinkle of an eye. Or did a squirrel expand on a small limb till his body above was a mere line of fur on the bark like feathery hair on a caterpillar ? in vain, "the meat" was mine.
A squirrel once so stretched himself as to create a doubt whether a squirrel was above the branch or not; but firing secundum artem down he came, and, as was necessary, dead.
Yet wound external had he none; he had been killed, as is often the case, although it occurred but once with me, by concussion ; the ball having struck the limb of the tree exactly under his heart.
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