USA > Indiana > Monroe County > The new purchase : or, seven and a half years in the Far West > Part 6
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"Good gracious ! Mr. Clarence, and were you not greatly terri- fied ?"
"Yes, greatly at first ; but keeping wide awake and listening with my mouth open, I ascertained that the scoundrels did verily intend to cut a throat, although not mine :- it was the throat of a poor slave that had just given them the slip. Yet dreading lest men who could coolly resolve to cut one throat for revenge, might cut another for money, I squeezed nearer the driver, and whenever he snored, nestled and moved about in the fodder till it waked him. So passed most of the night, till shortly before day-break, we halted on the edge of a river-perhaps the Pedee-where the driver said our journey was at an end till to-morrow ; as the other contractor had failed to be there with his stage! At the same time he pointed to a miserable and solitary hut on the bank, where we should be well accommodated till the stage arrived! And so I had before me a very agreeable prospect-twenty-four hours with my precious associates -. almost alone-in the woods-and on the bank of a deep and rapid stream! But the fury of these fellows, when the driver's meaning was fully comprehended !- (who had,
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THE JOURNEY
at first, uttered himself in a saucy and indistinct mutter, as he untackled his team and we crawled out of the hay-mow)-it baffles description And yet, even in the very tempest height and rage of their godless words, up stepped my imperturbable man of the whip, and with the most invincible gravity and assurance demanded, with outstretched and open palm, twenty-five cents each !
"'Twenty-five 'damnations !- what for?'-roared one of them in unaffected surprise.
"'What for?'-echoed and mimicked the driver, as if amazed at a silly question-'What for! ! '-why, the nice bed I made you last night out of that 'are fodder thare!
"This matchless impudence, fun or earnest-it was in fact a little of both-was so preposterously ridiculous to me at least, that I laughed fairly out in spite of fear and chagrin; nor was the laughter abated by the attitude and amazement of the two slavers. Figure them accosted by the driver with his demand in the very midst of outrageous cursings and frantic gestures-the pause-the call for explanation-it given ;- and there the wretches standing a few seconds speechless, not from fear, but dumb with a madness that was really unutterable! But then, when they could speak, out came the unholy torrent as if the prince of darkness had be- come incarnate and was spouting forth brimstone and blasphemy ? And all this time my wonderful driver, cool, grave, unflinching- (on his guard evidently, and he was a very athletic fellow)-kept at suitable intervals repeating the demand for twenty-five cents each for the fodder bed ! till our heroes closed their profane exhi- bition, by consigning driver-stage-horses-fodder-contractors -and all the Carolinas and the whole pine barren world to the swearer's own diabolical father, and his red-hot furnaces, and finally hoping and praying that they themselves might be damned three or four times over-'if ever they travelled that road again!' To all this Satanic rhetoric my nonpareil of impudence only re- plied, and with the most astonishing coolness-'We never expect nobody to travel this way but once!'
"This ended the affair-our heroes were used up.
"At the hut however we found a man who gave us a few sweet potatoes and some rice, and then offered to take us over the
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THE JOURNEY
river in a scow, that we might get to the stage-house about two miles across the opposite forest. Here then was a situation any thing but pleasant : and the behaviour of the chaps, after we were left alone in the woods, did not render it any more so. Among other things, they lagged behind together-seemingly engaged, whenever I looked around, in an earnest and low conversation, their eyes occasionally on me-then they would come up on each side of me-one going ahead as if to reconnoitre-till at last they evidently had resolved on something of which I suspected I was the subject, and advanced to execute it-when, unexpectedly to my great relief, a negro man, the first and the only person we met that morning, came in sight, driving a horse and cart! I hurried up to the poor negro, and learned that a plantation was on our left, and that the stage-tavern was scarcely half-a-mile dis- tant. After this the slavers' conduct was less alarming towards me; yet I never felt at ease till we reached Fayetteville, where they took another road into Virginia and left me sole occupant of the stage.
"This, Miss Wilmar, is, I confess," continued Clarence, "not a very tragic conclusion-but I had rather be here to tell the story as it was, than to have Carlton here to tell it in a book as it might have been; and yet perhaps the rascals only meant to terrify me as did the wag, on meeting a traveller-"
"How was that, Mr. Clarence?"
Before Clarence could reply, Mr. Brown exclaimed-"Look there !- look there!" and below us, in the meadows bordering the Juniata, was a hunted deer bounding away for life! The timid creature ere long leaped into the water, swam some hundred feet down the stream, and emerging speeded away to the mountain. No pursuers were in sight, and from appearances the poor crea- ture escaped for that time: it certainly had our wishes in its favour. This incident naturally introduced stories about hunting and Indians, with numberless episodial remarks on dogs, rifles, shot-guns, tomahawks and the like; so that when the shadows of the mountain began at the decline of day to darken the valleys, and silence and thoughtfulness pervaded the party, fancy easily brought back the red-man to his ancient haunts and made robbers crouch in ambush in every thicket and behind every tree. Yet
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THE JOURNEY
we reached our lodging place in safety, where, late at night, we severally retired to bed; and then, if the day had brought Mr. Carlton and his amiable wife no danger, they were destined to find a somewhat curious adventure at night. And this we shall contribute to the chapter as our share of its accidents.
Our sleeping room was on the first floor, and opened by three windows into a piazza; which circumstances, together with the stories just narrated to the reader and other matters of the sort, inclined us to examine the fastenings before going to bed. The bolts were faultless, but the shutters or slappers were so warped and swollen that no efforts could induce them to come together and be bolted; hence, our only course was to jump into bed, and if any thing happened, to do like children-put our heads under the covers. In about an hour I was cautiously awakened by Mrs. Carlton who whispered in a low and agitated voice :-
"Oh! my dear !- what's that ?- listen !"
Instead of pulling up the bed-clothes, I sat up to listen; and strange-a solemn and peculiar and thrilling note was filling the room, swelling and dying away, and changing now to one spot and then to another! What could it be? The sound resembled nothing I had ever heard except once, and that was in a theatrical scene, in which a huge iron wheel turned at the touch of a magi- cian and slowly raised the heavy trap door of an enchanted cavern. I sprang out of bed and began a search-yet all in vain-I felt along the walls, crawled under the bed, poked my head up the chimney, and even ventured into the closets-and all the while that mysterious noise playing as wild and frightful as ever! At last . I pushed open the shutters and looked into the piazza; still nothing was visible either there or within the room, while the strange tones swelled louder than ever!
Puzzled, but less alarmed, we at last retreated to bed-I say we, for Mrs. C. had been trotting after me during the whole search, being too cowardly to stay in bed alone even with the covers over her head,-we retreated to bed, and after a while, I, at least, fell asleep; but soon I was suddenly and violently awakened by my good lady, who in attempting to leap away from something on . her side, had in extra activity accomplished too much, and landed clear over me and out of bed entirely on the floor !
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THE JOURNEY '
"Why, Eliza -Eliza !- what ?- what is the matter !"
"Oh! Robert !- listen !" said my wife; in bed again, however, and be assured, on the safe side.
A basin of water we knew stood near Mrs. Carlton's side of the bed, and on a small table :- and now into that basin, drop by drop, something was trickling! Could it be blood from some crack in the floor over us! With Mrs. C. clinging to me, I went to the table, and seizing the basin, carried it hastily to a window, and pushing open its shutter, we plainly perceived by the dim light that blood it really was-not-
"Well, what was it, then?"
Reader! it was a little mouse dead enough now, but which, having by accident tumbled into the water, had, by its struggles for life, caused what to us then seemed like the trickling down of some liquid or fluid substance.
Day now dawning, and Mrs. C. being willing to stay alone, I went into the yard to discover the cause of the mysterious music, satisfied that it lay there somewhere; and no sooner did I reach the corner of the house than I was fortunate enough to catch the very ghost in the act of performing on the extraordinary in- strument that had puzzled us with its strange noise. Against the house had been nailed part of an iron hoop to support a wooden spout ; but the spout had rotted away and fallen down, and the projecting hoop was alone. This iron had on it some saline sub- stance pleasant to the taste of a quiet old cow ; and there stood the matron-like quadruped licking away with very correct time at the hoop, and whenever her tongue finished a stroke, and according to its intensity, the instrument vibrated, and thus discoursed the wondrous music of the enchanter's wheel and trap! Indeed, I even tried the performance myself-(not with my tongue)-and succeeded, my wife says, and she is a judge of music, succeeded as well as the cow herself. And so, dear reader, if this is not "a cock and bull story"-it most certainly is-a mouse and a cow one.
Adventures, like misfortunes, are sometimes in clusters. The next morning after the descent from some mountain, as our stage was entering a small village, we were met by a noble-looking young man, mounted on a spirited horse, scarcely broken, and
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THE JOURNEY
certainly not "bridle-wise"-and met exactly on the middle of a bridge. This bridge crossed a stream not ordinarily wide or deep, but swollen by melting snows it now was foaming and thundering along almost a river: it was truly formidable.
The horse, as we met, stopped, and with ears erect and pointed, with nostrils dilated, and eyes fierce and staring, he answered every effort to urge him forward only with trembling and fitful starting; while the horseman himself sat indifferent to conse- quences, and with ease and grace. The man and horse were one. At length the rider unable to compel the creature to pass us, at- tempted to wheel-when, instead of obeying the bridle, the spirited animal reared, and at one superb bound cleared the barrier of the bridge, and both rider and horse in an instant disappeared under the foaming waters. But scarcely had fright among us uttered its exclamations, when up rose that horse, and up rose, too, seated on his back, that rider,-ay-seated as though he had never moved and the whole performance had been done expressly for exhibi- tion! In a few moments the horseman landed below the bridge, then galloping across the meadow he passed the fence at a flying leap, and advancing to the stage now over the bridge, this match- less rider taking off his hat and bowing to the party, asked, as if the affair had not been purely accidental :-
"Gentlemen ! which of you can do that ?"
We most heartily congratulated him on his miraculous preser- vation, and, as he rode gallantly off, gave him three loud cheers for his unsurpassed coolness and intrepidity.
Reader! it is yet a long way to Pittsburgh, and I cannot get you properly there without telling my own robber story-a pet adventure ;- or without we skip-but I should like to tell the story-
"Well, Mr. Carlton, we should very much like to hear the story-but, perhaps, just now we had better-skip." 4
Skip it is, then, and all the way to-PITTSBURGH.
1
CHAPTER VII.
"Ferrum exercebant vasto Cyclopes in antro Brontesque Steropesque et nudus membra Pyracmon.
* alii ventosis follibus auras.
"Accipiunt redduntque : alii stridentio tingunt Aera lacu: gemit impositis incudibus antrum.
Illi inter sese multâ vi brachia tollunt
In numerum, versantque tenaci forcipe massam."
AND be assured, reader, it is not "all smoke" you now see- there is some fire here too. This black place reminds us of the iron-age-of Jupiter too, and Vulcan and Mount Ætna. Virgil would here have found Cyclops and pounders of red-hot thunder- bolts sonorous enough to set at work in his musical hexameters. And some here make tubes of iron, with alternate and spiral "lands and furrows," better by far to shoot than Milton's grand and unpatent blunder-busses; into which his heroic devils put unscientifically more powder than probably all burned-but that was before the Lyceum age.
Whenever that soot-cloud is driven before a wind, long streets are revealed lined with well-built and commodious dwellings, with here and there a stately mansion, and even the dusky palace be- longing to some lord of coal-pits and ore-beds.
Hark! how enterprise and industry are raging away !- while steam and water-power shake the hills to their very foundation !- and every spot is in a ferment with innumerable workmen as busy, and as dingy too, as the pragmatical insects in Virgil's poetic ant-hill! Every breeze is redolent with nameless odours of factories and work-shops ; and the ear is stunned by the cease- less uproar from clatter and clang of cog and wheel-the harsh grating of countless rasps and files-the ringing of a thousand anvils-the spiteful clicking's of enormous shears biting rods of iron into nails-the sissing of hot-tongs in water-and the deep earthquaking bass of forge-hammers teaching rude masses how to assume the first forms of organic and civilized metal !
Mr. Brown said he was not yet fully awake, but that he was in a dream amid scenes of Birmingham and Sheffield; and that in-
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THE VOYAGE
stead of astonishing the natives, the natives had surprised and astonished him.
Why do some speak disparagingly of Pittsburgh complexion ? Is it ordinarily seen? The citizens move enveloped in cloud-like Æneas entering Carthage-and hence are known rather by their voice than their face. Their voice is immutable, but their face changes hourly : hence if the people here are loud talkers, it arises from the fact just alluded to, and because loud talking is neces- sary to cry down the din of a myriad mingled noises.
In very civilized districts, ladies owe their sweet looks to what is put on their faces ; in this Cyclopean city, sweet looks are owing to what is taken off their faces. Instead, therefore, of advising bachelors before popping the question, to catch the inamorata "in the suds," we advise to catch her in the soot. If beautiful, then let Cœlebs bless himself, for he has a gem which water, unlike its baleful effect on some faces, will only wash brighter and brighter.
As to hearts and manners, if our Mr. Smith be a correct speci- men, go reader, live in Pittsburgh. He was a Christian gentle- man : and in those two words is condensed all praise. When, as was necessary, our party proceeded on the voyage without this friend, so great was the vacancy, we seemed alone-alas! he is no more !
1
CHAPTER VIII.
THE VOYAGE.
-"facilis descensus Averni, sed revocare gradum-" "Easy is it to float down the Ohio-try to float up once !"
AT the time of the voyage, a steamboat was a very rara avis on the Ohio river; at least such a smoke-belcher and spit-fire could not be found at any hour of the day and night ready to walk off with passengers like "the thing of life."1 The usual mode then
1 Navigation by steam on the Ohio was being introduced from 1811 to 1814. (Turner, F. J., Rise of the New West, p. 73.) Nicholas J. Roose- velt made a voyage by steam down the Ohio and Mississippi in 1809. (McMaster, U. S. Vol. IV, p. 401.) But several years elapsed before the
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THE VOYAGE
of going down-(getting up again was quite another affair)-was in arks, broad-horns, keel-boats, batteaux, canoes and rafts. Col. Wilmar, who knew the way of doing business in these great waters, decided in favour of the ark; and into the ark, therefore, we went: viz. Col. Wilmar and his cousin, Mr. Clarence and Mr. Brown, and Mr. and Mrs. Carlton, and also the two owners- eight souls. Noah's stock of live animals went in to be fed, ours went in to be eaten-and we had also smoked hams-so that the likeness between us and that remarkable navigator principally failed after the number of the sailors was compared.
Our captain and mate being gone after their own stores, let us in the meanwhile examine the mechanique of our ark. And first, its foundation,-for the structure is rather a house than a boat,- its foundation. This is rectangular and formed of timbers each fifteen cubits long, tied by others each eight cubits long; the tim- bers being from three to four hands-breadths thick. The side beams are united by sleepers, on which is a floor pinned down, and as tight as possible, so that when swollen by the water, water itself could not get in-except at the cracks, and then it could not be got out without the aid of science. Above the first flooring, at an interval of a foot, was laid on other joist-(jice)-a second floor. Hence by virtue of a primitive pump peculiar to the raft and ark era, our "hold"-(and it held water to admiration)- could, when necessary, be freed.
Scantling of uncertain and unequal lengths rose almost per- pendicular around the rectangle, being morticed into the founda- tion ; and so when, from without, planks were pinned as high as necessary against these uprights, the ark had nearly all its shape, and all its room.
This room or space was portioned into cabin and kitchen; the latter intended by the architect to take the lead in the actual navi-
steam boat method of travel became general on the western rivers and the method was still an unusual and expensive one when Hall made the voyage in 1822 or 1823. The National Gazette, Sept. 26, 1823, gives a list of steamboats, rates of passage, estimate of products, at approximately the time of Hall's journey. See, also, Annals of Congress, 17 Cong. 2 Sess., p. 407, nd Niles Register, XXV, 95, and Preble's Steam Navigation, cited by Turner, pp. 73, 103.
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THE VOYAGE
gation, but which in a struggle for pre-eminence would often tech- nically slue round, and yield that honour to the cabin.
Next the kitchen. In one part was a hearth of brick and sand, and furnished with three iron bars that straddled their lower ex- tremities to the edges of the hearth, and united their upper ones over its centre or thereabouts. And this contrivance was to sus- tain in their turn our-hem !- "culinary utensils?"-ay-yes- culinary utensils. Forwards were the fin-holes, and behind these and projecting towards the cabin, were boxes as berths for the captain and mate. The fins-(improperly by some called horns) -where rude oars, which passing out of the opposite fin-holes just named, used when moved to flap and splash each side the kitchen ; and by these the ark was steered, kept kitchen end fore- most, brought to land, and kept out of harm's way-the last re- quiring pretty desperate pulling, unless we began half an hour be- fore encountering an impediment, or escaping a raft. The fins would, indeed, sometimes play in a heavy sort of frolic to get us along faster; but usually they were idle, and we were left to float with the stream from three to four miles in an hour.
The cabin, like other aristocrats, had the large space, and was planked two cubits higher than the other places, and covered with an arched roof on their boards to ward off sun, direct and perpen- dicular rain. Against sun and rain oblique, it was often no bar- rier. The cabin was also sub-divided into parlour and state room .: The latter was for the ladies' sole use, being sumptuously furnish- ed with a double box or berth, a toilette made of an upturned flour barrel, and similar elegancies and conveniences, and a window. looking up-stream; which window was a cubit square and had a flapper or slapper hung with leathern hinges and fastened with a pin or wooden bolt. The parlour contained the male boxes or sleeperies; and was the place where we all boarded-but here comes the captain and his mate, and we shall be off in what they call a jiffey-i. e. in a moment or two. Among other articles, these persons brought a coffee-mill, a saw, about half a bushel of sausages, and above all, a five gallon keg, which the captain himself hugged up under his arm next the heart. What was in it I do not exactly know-it could not have been water, not having a watery smell, and beside we all drank river water-it must then remain a secret.
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THE VOYAGE
Reader ! all is ready ! Oh! how soft the blossom-scented balmy air is breathing! See! the sun light dancing from one sparkling ripple to another ! A most delicious April morning is inviting us with the blandest smiles to come and float on the beauteous river far, far'away to the boundless prairies and the endless forests of the New World! Yes! yes! here is a vision real-and in the midst of fragrance, and flowers, and sunshine, and with those we love for comrades, and those we love awaiting us, we are entering the land, the glorious land of sunsets! Ah! Clarence-I wonder not at that tear-
"Bill ! slue round your 'are side there and we're off," interrupted the captain, addressing his mate. Bill, of course, performed that curious manœuvre with great nautical skill, and off we were: first one end struggling for the precedence and then the other, with alternate fins dipping and splashing, till the ark reached the con- fluence of the 'Alleghany and Monongehala ; and then one grand circular movement accomplished that forced the lordly cabin to the rear, away, away, we floated, kitchen in the van down on the current of the noble, beauteous, glorious Ohio!
Farewell! Pittsburgh, last city of the east! Long may the din and the smoke of thy honest enterprise be heard and seen by the voyager far down the flood! Farewell !- the earth-born clouds are veiling thee even now! There! I see thee again !- Oh! the flash of that tall spire sending back the sunbeam, like gleams of lightning from a thunder cloud ;- it gleams again-we change our course-and all is dark !- Pittsburgh! Farewell.
*
"Ladies and gentlemen" said the Colonel, after we were fairly under weigh, "suppose we proceed to arrange our domestic estab- lishment, each agreeing to perform his part either assumed by himself, or imposed on him by vote-(he, his, him, were used in the sense of homo-and were so understood by the ladies al- though unacquainted with Latin and lectures)-and so suppose we have a regular assembly-,
"I move Col. Wilmar take the chair,"-said Mr. Brown. And this being seconded by Mrs. Carlton, the Colonel took the chair the best way he could; and that was only metaphorically by mov-
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THE VOYAGE
ing off a little from the common members and leaning against a berth. Miss Wilmar was next elected Secretary, and accommo- dated with a trunk for a seat, and using her lap as a table, she prepared to record in her pocket book the resolutions of the household house.
Mr. Brown then was nominated as cook; but as he insisted that he could cook "never a bit of a male but only roast potatoes," and we had unluckily no potatoes stored, the important office was after due deliberation bestowed on the chairman himself. This was, indeed, very humbly declined by the Colonel, who left the chair (calling thither for the time Mr. Clarence,) to exhibit in a very handsome speech his unworthiness; yet it was at last unan- imously decided in his favour, and mainly on the argument of Mr. Carlton, that the Colonel had doubtless learned cooking in his campaigns and when hunting. From some inaccuracy in wording the resolutions, however, the business after all only amounted to the cook's having to carry the victuals to and from the kitchen -lift the culinary articles about-and poke the fire at the order of the ladies.
Next came a resolution that the ladies should prepare the cook- ables-i. e. stuff the chickens with filling-beat eggs for puddings, and the like. Then it was ordered that Clarence, Brown and Carlton should in turn set the table-clean plates, &c,-or in a word-be scullions. The dignity of history forbids me to conceal, that spite of all our scouring, and wiping and washing, the cleaned articles retained an unctuous touch, and looked so streaked, that at meals the ladies deemed a polish extra necessary. But non possumus onnia, you know, reader-i. e. we cannot all clean dishes, as the Latins say.
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