USA > Indiana > Monroe County > The new purchase : or, seven and a half years in the Far West > Part 25
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Our churches of course; were usually cabins, our pulpits chairs ; but the church at Forster's saw-mill deserves special commem- oration from the odd oddity of the place, the audience, and the sermon by Brother Merry.
The church was literally in the mill; nor was this a frame building painted red, with flocks of pigeons careering round, or perched on its dormer windows, or strutting and billing and cooing and pouting along the horizontal spout ; while on a neigh- bouring elevation stood a commodious stone house, the owner's and mason's names handsomely done on a smooth stone near the summit of its gable; and smiling meadows stretched away along the dancing waters-concomitants rendering a mill so enchanting in old countries ! no: no :- here was a naked, unplanked, saw- mill! a roof of boards twisted, warped and restless, on the top . of a few posts; the prominent objects being the great wheel, the saw itself, and the log in the very act of transition into plank and scantling !
No human dwelling was in sight, and it was afterwards found that the owner and his men lived three miles from the mill; that they went home but once or twice in the week, eating during the day, when hungry, of cold corn and pork, and sleeping during
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the night in the smuggest corner of the mill-shed, and drinking both day and night when thirsty or otherwise, freely of water and-whiskey. For prospect around was an ugly, half-cleared clearing, with piles of huge logs, not to be burned, however, but sawed. The dam was invisible. A large trough conducted a portion of the Big Gravelly river to its scene of paltry labour; and there the water, after leaping angrily from the end of its wooden channel, and indignantly whirling a great lubberly, ill- made, clattering wheel, as in derision of its architect, hurried im- patient along a vile looking ditch, half choked with weeds and grass, to remingle with the sparkling, free stream below!
Meeting, then, was to be held on a few loose planks, con- stituting the floor, laid ad capsisum! The pulpit was to be the near end of the log, arrested for a time in its transformation to lumber ; while at the far end was to be the congregation-at least the sinners, who might sit, or lean, or recline, or stand, as suited convenience. The congregation was big of its size, consisting of the saw-miller, Mr. Forster, and Mr. Forster's two men-and also, three hunters, who accidentally hunting in the neighbour- hood, had chanced to stop just now at the mill-in all six sinners ; more, however, than are allowed in a Puseyite cathedral, where conversions are unfashionable !
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As we rode up, a few minutes before ten o'clock, the saw was gnashing away its teeth at the far end of the log, nor did it cease till we had entered the shed; and then, the owner unwill- ingly stopped the performance, seeming by his manner to say- "Come, let's have your preaching powerful quick, the saw wants to be cutting agin." This was far from encouraging, yet Mr. Merry, whose turn was to preach, began his preparations, ob- serving in a conciliatory way, that he would not hinder his friends very long, but that we felt it would not be right to pass any settle- " ment where the neighbours were kind enough to give us an op- portunity of preaching. The preacher's manner so far won on our sullen congregation, that Mr. Forster and two others took seats in a row on their end of the log; while two leaned them- selves against the saw-frame, and one against an adjoining post : Brother Shrub and Mister Carlton sat among the saints at the pulpit-end of the log, like good folks and penitents in churches with altars.
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In this combination of adverse circumstances, great as was our confidence in Mr. Merry, who was as used to this sort of matters as are eels to skinning, we feared for his success to-day. Yet he began seemingly unembarrassed, holding a small testa- ment, in which was concealed a piece of paper, size of a thumb, and pencilled with some half a dozen words constituting the parson's notes! And notes in the New Purchase and the ad- jacent parts are always concealed by preachers who use them; for the use of such argues to most hearers there is a want of heart religion ; beside that no place is found in our pulpits to spread out written discourses. To have used in Forster's mill-meeting to- day, any other than the thumb-paper just named, would have been considerably worse than ridiculous-it would have deserved a scratch or so from Mr. Forster's saw-teeth; or what is next to it, a scourging from Lord Bishop Baltimore.
Brother Merry quickly perceived that even the plainest and almost child-like topics with suitable language and illustrations failed to preserve his spectators' attention. One man began to look at the ditch where now the water was trickling along with a subdued voice; another, to cut a clapboard with his scalping knife; and Mr. Forster looked wistfully at his saw, evidently more desirous to hear its music than both our preachers' voices together. Something desperate must then be attempted to arrest attention, or hope of doing good at present abandoned. For while true that men cannot hear without a preacher, it does not follow that they will always hear with one: and hence Mr. Merry, after some vain attempts to convert spectators into auditors, sud- denly stopped as if done preaching, and as if talking, commenced thus :-
"My friends and neighbours don't you all shoot the rifle in this settlement?" That shot was central: it even startled the Rev. Shrub and myself. The man using up the clap-board looked like an excited dog-his very ears seeming on full cock; and Mr. Forster was so interested that he answered in the affirmative by a nod. "So I thought. No hardy woodsman is ignorant of that weapon-the noble death-dealing rifle. Ay! with that and the bold hearts and steady hands and sharp eyes of backwoods- men, what need we fear any human enemies." (Approving
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smiles from all accompanied with nods and winks)-"And no doubt you all go to shooting matches ?"-(Assent by a unanimous nod and wink)-"Yes! yes! it would be strange if you never went. Now, my dear friends, I have no doubt some of you are first-rate marksmen, and can drive the centre off-hand a hundred honest yards." (Here one man on the congregational end of the log stood right up, and with a look and manner equivalent to "I'm jist the very feller what can do that."-Ay! I see it in your looks. I'm fond of shooting a little myself; 'tis very exciting- and when I indulge in shooting, I have to keep a powerful guard over my heart and temper. For don't we feel ourselves, neigh- bours, a right smart chance better than persons that can't shoot at all? Perhaps we feel a sort of glad when a neighbour makes worse shots than ourselves-perhaps we even secretly hope the man firing against us may miss, or that something may happen to spoil his chance? And then, when we make good shots, don't we walk about sometimes and brag a little-even while we hate to hear any body else bragging? Come, my honest friends, don't we all on such occasions do some things, and say. some things, and wish some things, that when we get home, and are alone, and be- gin to think over the day, make us feel sorry about our conduct at the shooting? Come, we are all friends and neighbours here, to-day-ain't it so?" (Several nods in assent-but no smiles as at first-with fixed attention, and a go-on-Mr. Preacher-look, at the far end of the log)-"Yes, yes, my dear friends, it is so-that is honest and noble in us to confess: now there is a rule in this Book-you all know what it is-a rule saying, that we ought to do to others, what we, in the same circumstances, would wish them to do to us. And surely, that is a most glorious and excel- lent rule! Well, don't we often forget this rule at a shooting match? and in more ways than one! And again, every sensible man well knows how mean pride is, and we all despise the proud -and yet, ain't we guilty ourselves of something like pride at a shooting match ?
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"Well, it seems, then by our own allowing, we may be se- cretly guilty of some bad and mean things, even when we are not openly wicked and guilty, say of swearing-(shot at a venture) -- or maybe drunkenness-(one of the sinners stole a look at the
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whiskey jug)-or any other bad practice; and we see, a man in his heart may be very proud like, and hate his neighbour, even if we do wear homespun and live in a cabin. (The brethren were neatly, but very plain clad). Ah! dear friends, our hearts, mine as well as yours, are much worse than we usually think-and a shooting match is a place to make us find out some of our sins and wickedness. You all know, how as we are going through a clearing, we sometimes see a heap of ashes at an old log heap- and at first it seems cold and dead, but when we stir it about with a piece of brush, or the end of a ram-rod, up flash sparks, and smoke, too, comes out. Well, 'tis exactly so with our natural hearts. They conceal a great deal of wickedness, but when they are stirred up by any thing like a shooting-match, or when we get angry, or are determined to have money or a quarter section of land at all hazards-ah! my dear friends, how many wicked thoughts we have! how many wicked words we say! how many wicked things we do!" (Winks and nods had ceased-there was something in the benevolence, and earnestness, and tenderness of our preacher's voice and manner, that kept attention riveted ; and it was plain enough, conscience was busy at, I believe, both ends of the log.) "Well! now, my friends and neighbours, do our own hearts condemn us and make us ashamed? Look up to yon blue sky above us-that is God's sun shining there! Hark! the leaves are moving in the trees-it is God's breath that stirs them! and that God is here! Ay! that God is now looking down into our very hearts! He sees what we now think, and he knows all we have concealed there! That glorious law we spoke of in this book, that we have so often broken, is his law! Friends !- would we be willing to die at this very instant? And yet die we all must at some instant ; and if we repent not and seek forgive- ness through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ-you, dear neighbours, I myself, and every one of us must perish and-for ever !" 3
I shall not repeat any more of Mr. Merry's discourse. His point was gained. Attention was fixed; salutary convictions were
3 I can never forget how that word rang out into the adjacent forest- nor the echo returned, as if sent back from the invisible spirit land-for ever !
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implanted in the auditors minds; and they evidently increased in depth and intensity as the preacher proceeded. Nay, when he in a strain of peculiar and wild and impassioned eloquence, dwelled on the only way of escape from divine wrath through the blessed Son of God our poor foresters gazed on his face with tears in their eyes, and remained till the conclusion of the services, without even the smallest symptom of impatience.
When meeting was out, the woodsmen cordially shook hands with us all, and especially with Mr. M .; and expressed a unan- imous wish to have, if possible, another meeting at the Saw Mill. Bishop Shrub was so tenderly affected that as we rode away and had got beyond hearing at the Mill, he exclaimed :- "Amen to that shooting, Brother Merry! we shall never in this life see again these poor men-but the effect of this day's preaching must be lasting as their lives: surely we shall meet them in Heaven !"
Little specially interesting occurred after this, till our return was commenced. And then early one bright morning we turned aside to visit a deserted Indian town. A few wigwams in ruins were the only habitations left for the living : but in a sequestered loneliness on the margin of the river, we found by the swelling mounds and other marks of sepulture that we walked amid the habitations of the dead! I have ever been deeply moved by the sorrows and the injuries of the Indian-ever since childhood- but now so unexpectedly among their graves-the sacred graves around which Indians linger till the last! which they so mourn after when exiled far away in their wanderings !- when we looked on the pure white waters where the bark canoe had glided so noiseless; and heard the wind so sweet and yet so sad, like moaning spirits, over the tall grass and through the trees-a feel- ing so mournful, so desolate came over the soul, that I walked hastily away to a still more lonely spot, and there sat down and cried as if my heart were breaking for its own dead !
When we rejoined one another tears were in the eyes of all! None spoke-the white man's voice seemed desecration! We were true mourners over those graves. Poor Indians! at that solemn moment it was in our hearts to live, and wander and die with you in the forest home-to spend life in teaching you the way of salvation! Blessed ! blessed ! be ye, noble band of mis- sionaries, who do all this !- ye shall not lose your reward!
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To-day the evening service was in the neighbourhood of Mr. Redwhite, for many years a trader among the Indians. He be- ing present insisted on our passing the night at his house. We consented. For forty years he had lived among the aborigines, and was master of five or six Indian languages; having adopted also many of their opinions on political and religious points, and believing with the natives themselves and not a few civilized folks, that the Indians have had abundant provocations for most of their misdeeds. Hence, Mr. Redwhite and Mr. Carlton soon became "powerful thick"-i. e. very intimate friends.
The most interesting thing in Mr. Redwhite's establishment, was his Christian or white wife. She, in infancy, had escaped the tomahawk at the massacre of Wyoming, and afterwards had been adopted as a child of the Indian tribe. Our friend's heathen or red wife was a full-blooded savagess-(the belle and the savage;) and had deserted her husband to live with her exiled people : and so Redwhite, poor fellow! was a widower with one wife-viz. this Miss Wyoming! Much of this lady's life had passed among the Canadian French : and she was, therefore, mis- tress of the Indian, the French, and the English; and also of the most elegant cookery, either as regards substantial dishes or nicnacry. And of this you may judge, when we set on supper. But first be it said our host was rich, not only for that country but for this: and though he lived in a cabin, or rather a dozen cabins, he owned tracts of very valuable land presented to him by his red lady's tribe-territory enough in fact to form a darling little state of his own, nearly as small as Rhode Island or Del- aware. Beside, he owned more real silver-silver done into plate, and some elaborately and tastefully graved and chased, than could be found even in a pet bank, when dear old Uncle Sam + sent some of his cronies to look for it.
Well, now the eatables and drinkables. We had tea, black and green, and coffee-all first chop and superbly made, regaling with fragrance, and their delicacy aided by the just admixture of ap- propriate sugars, together with richest cream :- the additamenta
4 This affectionate old gentleman gets into a dotage occasionally ;- or at least some of his friends who undertake to be the government, so repre- sent him. But he is a "clever feller" himself.
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being handed on a silver waiter and in silver bowls and cups. The decoctions and infusions themselves were poured from silver spouts curving gracefully from massy silver pots and urns. . Wheat bread of choice flour and raised with yeast, formed, some into loaves and some into rolls, was present, to be spread with delicious butter rising in unctuous pyramids, fretted from base to apex into a kind of butyrial shell work :- this resting on silver and to be cut with silver. Corn, too, figured in pone and pud- ding, and vapoured away in little clouds of steam; while at judicious intervals were handed silver plates of rich and warm flannel or blanket cakes, with so soft and melting an expression as to win our most tender regards. There stood a plate of planed vension, there one of dried beef; while at becoming distances were large china dishes partly hid under steaks of ham and veni- son done on gridirons, and sending forth most fragrant odours :- so that the very hounds, and mastiffs and wolf-dogs of the colony were enticed to the door of our supper cabin by the witchery of the floating essence !
But time would fail to tell of the bunns-and jumbles-and sponge cake-and fruit ditto-and pound also-and silver baskets -and all these on cloth as white as-snow!
Reader! was ever such a contrast as between the untutored world around and the array, and splendour, and richness of our sumptuous banquet ? And all this in an Indian country ! and pre- pared by almost the sole survivor from a massacre that extin- guished a whole Christian village! How like a dream this!
And thou wast saved at Wyoming! Do I look on thee ?- upon whose innocent face of infancy years ago gushed the warm blood of the mother falling with her babe locked to her bosom! Didst thou really hear the fiendish yells of that night ?- when the flames of a father's house revealed the forms of infuriate ones dancing in triumph among the mangled corpses of. their victims! Who washed the congealed gore from thy cheek? And what bar- barian nurse gave strange nourishment from a breast so respon- sive to the bloody call of the warwhoop that made thee motherless ?- and now so tenderly melting at the hunger cries of the orphan! And she tied thee to a barken cradle and bore thee far, far away to her dark forest haunts !- and there swinging
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thee to the bending branches bade the wild winds rock thee !- and she became thy mother and there was thy home! Oh! what different destiny thine in the sweet village of thy birth-but for that night!
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And yet, reader, this hostess was now so wholly Indian and - Canadian that when she talked of Wwoming it was without emotion !- while I was repressing tears! Alas! she had not one faint desire to see the land of her ancestors! Could this be Campbell's Gertrude ?
CHAPTER XXXI.
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"Tend me to night! May be it is the period of your duty : Haply, you shall not see me more !"
THE missionary party was dissolved at Timberopolis and I set out for Glenville alone. One night was to be passed on the road : and I, therefore, so ordered matters as to tarry that night with a friend, who had cordially invited me to make his house my home in case I ever should travel that way.
It was early in the evening when I reached his cabin, but no one, to my surprise, appeared in answer to repeated calls; yet there being manifest signs of inhabitants, I dismounted and en- tered the house without ceremony. 'And of course I found the family-but all in bed! Yes! the mother-and every mother's son of them and daughter too :- they had the ague!
Two, indeed, were a sort of convalescent; yet eight were too ill to sit up voluntarily. Instead, therefore of being ministered unto, I myself became a minister, and set right to work, assisting the partly renovated son and daughter in getting wood, in boiling water, and in handling along jesuit bark, and sulphate of quinine. We three cooked, in partnership, something for supper-what, I never exactly knew-it was in sad contrast with the Wyoming banquet ! and that night I shared a bed with the squalid and de- jected ague-smitten son !
For the accommodation of the nine others, were four other beds-the sleepers averaging thus two and a quarter per bed. In our room were two beds, in the adjoining one three : an arrange- ment tending to purify the air, ten of the sleepers being sick
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and exhaling fœtid breath. Was it then so very surprising after all, that within one day after reaching Glenville, our historian, having been with missionaries in aguish districts and having had a comfortable night's repose amid this aguish household, should himself contrive to get, in the very last chapter of his first vol- . ume-the Fever and Ague? Alas! many a volume equally promising in its beginning becomes sickly in its close : a character perhaps of all books detailing life as it is! For what, pray, is life itself, except a progress from elastic infancy to flaccid old age !- from hope to disappointment !- from health to sickness! -from living to dying?
Reader !- (supposing one is this far)-perhaps you have dis- covered that the writer is disposed to laugh as well as cry: not maliciously-but in a spirit of-of-"Good nature, Mr. Carlton?" That is it, my dear reader ; however, our delicacy and good taste preferred another to praise us. Well, we have found that such spirit, within its due bounds, is a great help in sustaining misfor- tunes and adversities, especialy our-neighbour's ; and it does seem a compensative in some natures that their melancholy states may be followed by joyous and sunny ones. And not rarely have our elastic tendencies lifted us from deep and miry "sloughs of despond ;" and even yet, after the crushing of fond hopes, and the endurance of exceedingly weighty griefs, we laugh even loud although in a subdued tone ;- for the dear ones we laughed with in earlier days can never, never join again their merry voice with ours !- but then even in our tears we smile, because we trust to smile and rejoice with these again and without danger of sin, amid serene and perfect and perpetual joys !
This premised, what was more natural than that we should laugh at the Fever and Ague-when our neighbours had this twin disease? Indeed, hearing the patients themselves jest about it, how was it possible not to join with them ?. At last I was seized with this mirth-creating malady myself : and of course you wish to know how I behaved myself. Well, at first I laughed as heartily as ever-just as I once did in the first stage of sea-sick- ness. And then I took emetics, and cathartics, and herb-teas, and barks, and bitters, and quinine, and hot toddies seasoned with pepper, oh! with such winning smiles !- that the folks all said -"it was quite a privilege !- hem !- to wait on me!"
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Fye! on our hypocrisy and selfishness! all this captivating be- haviour arose fom a persuasion that it would aid a speedy cure ! And for a time the enemy seemed willing to be smiled away-, with the "coelaboration" of the above smile-creating doses-and, I do believe, we got to laughing more than ever. But one day after my cure, on returning from a little walk extra-(with a rifle on my shoulder)-a very gentle, but rather chilly sensation began very ridiculously to trickle down my spine-and there, would you believe it, was our Monsheer Tonson again !
Now, be it remembered, here was a surprise and a cowardly and treacherous assault, if I now for the first looked-grum: besides it was evident good nature was no permanent cure for the ague. Nay, Dr. Sylvan told me that once he had the ague, and repeatedly after he was cured the thing kept sneaking back and down his back; till on the last occasion coming, after it had seem- ingly been physicked to death like some of the patients, he was so incensed at its impudence as to set to and kick and stamp and toss and dance and wriggle about, that the fit was actually stormed out ! and from that hour no ague, dumb, vocal, or shaking had ever ventured near him! Had I heard this in time, my insidious foe would have been treated to a similar assault and battery. But, perhaps, so violent exercise on my part might have only accel- erated and made fatal a crisis now approaching; for soon I be- came so alarmingly ill that John Glenville was posting to Wood- ville for Dr. Sylvan : but before he could have reached that place I was raging in the delirium of fever!
Two things in the events of that dreadful night seem worth mentioning : first, while nothing done to or for me was known, I have to this day the most distinct remembrance of my phrenzy visions; and secondly, that hours dwindled into minutes; for seeming only to shut and open my eyes, it was said afterwards that then I had slept even two full hours !- and that my counte- nance and motions indicated a state of fearful mental agitation. In that state two visions, each repeated and re-repeated with vivid intensity, and seeming to fill spaces of time like those marked by flashes of lightning, were so terrific and appalling as to force me to violent gestures and alarming outcries.
One vision was this. A gigantic cuirassier, more than twenty feet high, and steel clad, was mounted on a mammoth of jet black
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color and glistening, and moving with the grace and swiftness of an antelope. On the rider's left was couched a spear in size like a beam, and its barbed point flaming as the fires of a furnace : while in his right hand was brandished an immense sword of scimetar shape, and so intensely bright as to blind the beholders. To oppose this apparition was drawn out in battle a large army, with all the apparatus of war, swords, spears, smaller fire arms, and the heaviest artillery-the troops being in several lines with cannon in the centre and rifles on the wings; and all ready with levelled weapons and burning matches awaiting the onset of the terrific rider-Death! Soon came a signal flash from the heavens clothed in sackcloth looking clouds-a kind of meteor sunlight- and at its gleam the cuirassier on his Black Mammoth, like a tempest driven by a whirlwind, swept rushing on !- the nostrils of the strange beast dilated with fiery foam, his hoofs thundering over the rocks and streaming fire; while the rider, upright in the stirrups, poised with one hand his spear, and with the other flashed his scimetar, and uttered a war-cry so loud and clear as to reach the very heavens and appal and confound the stoutest hearts! At this instant would I be possessed with a strange and invincible furor, and pouring forth shrieks and outcries in answer to the war-cry of the warrior-spirit, I would strike with my clenched hands as if armed with weapons-while the army await- ing our now combined onset raised their responsive shouts of defiance, and then poured out against us stream after stream of fire, with the clatter and crash and roar of many thunders-but in vain !- On, on, on we rushed !- the earth shook and groaned and broke asunder into yawning gulfs and sulphurous caverns !- and down, down sank the troops, smitten, dismayed, crushed ! -while the Black Mammoth, reeling from ten thousand balls, and spears and barbed arrows, with the fiendish voice of many demons, plunged headlong into the discomfited host, and there falling with the shock of an earthquake, crushed men, cannon, horses, spears, into one horrible, quivering mass! Then from amidst this ruin up sprang the giant-spirit with triumphant shouts, and strided away to mount another Black Mammoth, and renew with varia- tions this battle of my exhausting vision !
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