Part 16 (1/2)
INCIDENT AT NIAGARA FALLS.
On Sat.u.r.day, the 13th of July, 1850, as a boy, ten years old, was rowing his father over to their home on Grand Island, the father being so much intoxicated as not to be able to a.s.sist any more than to steer the canoe, the wind, which was very strong off sh.o.r.e, so frustrated the efforts of his tiny arm, that the canoe in spite of him, got into the current, and finally into the rapids, within a very few rods of the Falls! On went the frail sh.e.l.l, careering and plunging as the mad waters chose. Still the gallant little oarsman maintained his struggle with the raging billows, and actually got the canoe, by his persevering manoeuvring so close to Iris Island, as to have her driven by a providential wave in between the little islands called the Sisters. Here the father and his dauntless boy were in still greater danger for an instant; for there is a fall between the two islands, over which had they gone, no earthly power could have withheld their final pa.s.sage to the terrific precipice, which forms the Horse-shoe Fall. But the sudden dash of a wave capsized the canoe, and left the two struggling in the water. Being near a rock, and shallow, the boy lost no time, but seizing his father by the coat collar, dragged him up to a place of safety, where the crowd of anxious citizens awaited to lend a.s.sistance.
The poor boy on reaching the sh.o.r.e in safety, instantly fainted, while his miserable father was sufficiently sobered by the perils he had pa.s.sed through. The canoe was dashed to pieces on the rocks ere it reached its final leap.
A SKATER CHASED BY A WOLF.
A thrilling incident in American country life is vividly sketched in ”Evenings at Donaldson Manor.” In the winter of 1844, the relater went out one evening to skate, on the Kennebec, in Maine, by moonlight, and, having ascended that river nearly two miles, turned into a little stream to explore its course.
”Fir and hemlock of a century's growth,” he says, ”met overhead and formed an archway, radiant with frostwork. All was dark within; but I was young and fearless; and, as I peered into an unbroken forest that reared itself on the borders of the stream, I laughed with very joyousness; my wild hurrah rang through the silent woods, and I stood listening to the echo that reverberated again and again, until all was hushed. Suddenly a sound arose--it seemed to me to come from beneath the ice; it sounded low and tremulous at first, until it ended in a low, wild yell. I was appalled. Never before had such a noise met my ears. I thought it more than mortal; so fierce, and amid such an unbroken solitude, it seemed as though from the tread of some brute animal, and the blood rushed back to my forehead with a bound that made my skin burn, and I felt relieved that I had to contend with things earthly and not spiritual; my energies returned, and I looked around me for some means of escape. As I turned my head to the sh.o.r.e, I could see two dark objects das.h.i.+ng through the underbrush, at a pace nearly double in speed to my own. By this rapidity, and the short yells they occasionally gave, I knew at once that these were the much-dreaded gray wolf.
”I had never met with these animals, but, from the description given of them, I had very little pleasure in making their acquaintance. Their untamable fierceness, and the enduring strength, which seems part of their nature, render them objects of dread to every benighted traveler.
”There was no time for thought; so I bent my head and dashed madly forward. Nature turned me toward home. The light flakes of snow spun from the iron skates, and I was some distance from my pursuers, when their fierce howl told me I was their fugitive. I did not look back; I did not feel afraid, or sorry, or even glad; one thought of home, the bright faces waiting my return--of their tears, if they should never see me again, and then every energy of body and mind was exerted for escape.
I was perfectly at home on the ice. Many were the days that I had spent on my good skates, never thinking that at one time they would be my only means of safety. Every half minute, an alternate yelp from my ferocious followers, told me too certain that they were in close pursuit. Nearer and nearer they came; I heard their feet pattering on the ice nearer still, until I could feel their breath, and hear their sniffling scent.
”Every nerve and muscle in my frame was stretched to the utmost tension.
The trees along the sh.o.r.e seemed to dance in the uncertain light, and my brain turned with my own breathless speed, yet still they seemed to hiss forth their breath with a sound truly horrible, when an involuntary motion on my part, turned me out of my course. The wolves, close behind, unable to stop, and as unable to turn on the smooth ice, slipped and fell, still going on far ahead; their tongues were lolling out, their white tusks glaring from their b.l.o.o.d.y mouths, their dark, s.h.a.ggy b.r.e.a.s.t.s were fleeced with foam, and, as they pa.s.sed me, their eyes glared, and they howled with fury.
”The thought flashed on my mind, that, by these means, I could avoid them, viz: by turning aside whenever they came too near; for they, by the formation of their feet, are unable to run on the ice, except in a straight line.
”At one time, by delaying my turning too long, my sanguinary antagonists came so near, that they threw the white foam over my dress, as they sprang to seize me, and their teeth clashed together like the spring of a fox-trap!
”Had my skates failed for one instant, had I tripped on a stick, or caught my foot in a fissure in the ice, the story I am now telling would never have been told.
”I thought over all the chances; I knew where they would take hold of me, if I fell; I thought how long it would be before I died; and then there would be a search for the body that would already have its tomb!
for, oh! how fast man's mind traces out all the dread colors of death's picture, only those who have been so near the grim original can tell.
”But I soon came opposite the house, and, my hounds,--I knew their deep voices,--roused by the noise, bayed furiously from the kennels. I heard their chains rattle; how I wished they would break them! and then I would have protectors that would be peer to the fiercest denizens of the forest. The wolves, taking the hint conveyed by the dogs, stopped in their mad career, and, after a moment's consideration, turned and fled.
I watched them until their dusky forms disappeared over a neighboring hill; then, taking off my skates, I wended my way to the house, with feelings which may be better imagined than described. But, even yet, I never see a broad sheet of ice in the moons.h.i.+ne, without thinking of the sniffling breath, and those fearful things that followed me closely down the frozen Kennebec.”
OUR FLAG ON THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
We find the following incident of placing the American flag on the highest point of the Rocky Mountains, in ”Col. Fremont's Narrative:”
We managed to get our mules up to a little bench about a hundred feet above the lakes, where there was a patch of good gra.s.s, and turned them loose to graze. During our rough ride to this place, they had exhibited a wonderful surefootedness. Parts of the defile were filled with angular, sharp fragments of rock, three or four and eight or ten feet cube; and among these they had worked their way leaping from one narrow point to another, rarely making a false step, and giving us no occasion to dismount. Having divested ourselves of every unnecessary enc.u.mbrance, we commenced the ascent. This time, like experienced travelers, we did not press ourselves, but climbed leisurely, sitting down so soon as we found breath beginning to fail. At intervals, we readied places where a number of springs gushed from the rocks, and, about 1800 feet above the lakes, came to the snow line. From this point, our progress was uninterrupted climbing. Hitherto, I had worn a pair of thick moccasins, with soles of _parfleche_, but here I put on a light, thin pair, which I had brought for the purpose, as now the use of our toes became necessary to a further advance. I availed myself of a sort of comb of the mountain, which stood against the wall like a b.u.t.tress, and which the wind and the solar radiation, joined to the steepness of the smooth rock, had kept almost entirely free from snow. Up this, I made my way rapidly. Our cautious method of advancing, at the outset, had spared my strength; and, with the exception of a slight disposition to headache, I felt no remains of yesterday's illness, In a few minutes we reached a point where the b.u.t.tress was overhanging, and there was no other way of surmounting the difficulty than by pa.s.sing around one side of it, which was the face of a vertical precipice of several hundred feet.
Putting hands and feet in the crevices between the blocks, I succeeded in getting over it, and, when I reached the top, found my companions in a small valley below. Descending to them, we continued climbing, and in a short time reached the crest. I sprang upon the summit, and another step would have precipitated me into an immense snow field, five hundred feet below. To the edge of this field was a sheer icy precipice; and then, with a gradual fall, the field sloped off for about a mile, until it struck the foot of another lower ridge. I stood on a narrow crest, about three feet in width, with an inclination of about 20 N., 51 E.
As soon as I had gratified the first feelings of curiosity, I descended, and each man ascended in his turn; for I would only allow one at a time to mount the unstable and precarious slab, which, it seemed, a breath would hurl into the abyss below. We mounted the barometer in the snow of the summit, and, fixing a ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag to wave in the breeze, where flag never waved before.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OUR FLAG ON THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.]
During our morning's ascent, we had met no sign of animal life, except a small sparrow-like bird. A stillness the most profound, and a terrible solitude, forced themselves constantly on the mind as the great features of the place. Here, on the summit, where the stillness was absolute, unbroken by any sound, and solitude complete, we thought ourselves beyond the region of animated life; but, while we were sitting on the rock, a solitary bee (_bromus, the humble-bee_) came winging his flight from the eastern valley, and lit on the knee of one of the men.
It was a strange place, the icy rock and the highest peak of the Rocky mountains, for a lover of warm suns.h.i.+ne and flowers; and we pleased ourselves with the idea that he was the first of his species to cross the mountain barrier--a solitary pioneer to foretell the advance of civilization. I believe that a moment's thought would have made us let him continue his way unharmed; but we carried out the law of this country, where all animated nature seems at war; and, seizing him immediately, put him in at least a fit place--in the leaves of a large book, among the flowers we had collected on our way.
RUNNING THE CANON.