Part 2 (1/2)
V
”The groves were God's first temples”
BRYANT
”Oh! it's hame, and it's hame, it's hame wad I be, Hame, hame, hame, to my ain countrie”
CUNNINGHAM
”Those Sabbath bells, those Sabbath bells, I hear them wake the hour of pri of life”
BYRON
It was late before we had passed the confluence of the Ohio with the dark-rolling tide of the ”endless river,” and the ently yielded to the duskiness of twilight, and that to the inky pall of night The radually so dense that doubts were entertained as to the prudence of attehty current of the Mississippi on such a night These, however, were overruled; and, sweeping around the low peninsula of Cairo, our steamer met the torrent and quivered in every lile ensued, in which the heavy labouring of the engine, the shrill whistle of the safety-valve, the quick, querulous crackling of the furnaces, the tu of the wheels, and the stern roar of the scape-pipe, gave evidence of the fearful power suan very slowly to ascend the stream {52} Our speed was about five miles an hour, and the force of the current nearly the sa to ascend from the confluence to St Louis as to descend to the sah the distance is less than half All night our steaainst the current, and thea narrow channel aht- in dim confusion Near the e island, colish Island;[49] is heavily ti things from branch to branch, and the wild pea flourishes all over the surface of the soil in most luxuriant profusion The stream here expands itself to the breadth of fouradvanced the sun burst gloriously forth froht upon the beautiful scenery it unrolled, I re of the Sabbath--the peaceful Sabbath It is a sweet thing to pass the hours of holy tis of inanimate nature It is pleasant to yield up for a season the sober workings of reason to the ware of the soul to go up before the Author of its being unfettered by the chill for of the unbending courtesies of ordinary life Ae, there is but little of that humbleness of spirit and that simple-hearted fervour of worshi+p which it is inwithin the shadowy solitudes of Nature with his God There are moments, too, when the soul of man is called back froush upon gush, in all the hallowed luxuriance of its nature; when, from the fevered turmoil of daily existence, it retires to well up its sympathies alone beneath the covert of a lulled and peaceful bosom; and surely such a season is the calm, waveless hour of Sabbath sacredness And it is a blessed appointment that, in a world whose quietude too often is disturbed by the unta, there should yet be otten, when the apprehensions of the future are unthought of, and the generous emotions of the heart are no more repressed Such irt, indeed, by the sands and barrenness of the desert; yet laughing forth in tinklingfreshness of uid lip of the weary one Suchsun when the trials of the day are over; and tenderly and softly do their influences descend upon the heart Like the pure splendour of the star of even, how calmly does the sacred Sabbath-time beam out from the dark, unquiet firmament of life! 'Tis the blessed rainbow of proe, {54} and its holy influences elicit all the untold richness of the heart It is a season soft as the memorial of buried affection, mild as the melody of departed years, pure as the prayer of feebleness fro islet sleeping in sunset radiance on the blue evening wave ”Gone, gone for ever!” Another Sabbath is over, and frolance of reflection
A co, were landed fro spot upon the Missouri shore; men, women, and little ones, with slaves, household stuff, pots, kettles, dogs, implements of husbandry, and all the paraphernalia of the backwood's far the undergrowth beneath the lofty trees A si our passage, landed near the mouth of the Wabash, one of as a pretty, delicate female, with an infant boy in her arers_, and we had seen none of them before; yet their situation could not but excite interest in their welfare Poor wo anxiously after us from the inhospitable bank, little do you dream of the trials and the privations to which your destiny conducts, and the hours of bitter retrospection which are to coht, as, fro thought to your dear, distant hos and fierce storht seeer, were yet pleasant to you:
”My native land! h bare and bleak thou be, And scant and cold thy summer smile, Thou'rt all the world to me”
A few years, and all this will have passed away A new ho up in the wilderness to soothe the remembrance of the old This broad valley will sith population; the warm breath of man will be felt upon the cheek, and his tread will be heard at the side; the glare of civilization and the confused hum of business will have violated these solitudes and broken in upon their gloom, and here empire shall have planted her throne; and then, perchance, that playful boy upon the bosom may rise to wield the destinies of his fellows But many a year of toil and privation must first have passed away; and who shall record their annals? A thousand circus of the eard of recent acquaintance, the absence of relatives and of friends long cherished, the distance which separates him from his native home, and the dreary time which must elapse between all communications of the pen And then the sweet chiels' music”[50] on the clear mountain-air, to usher in the hours of holy time, and to summon the soul of man to communion with its Maker; will this be heard a of heart with heart which divests grief of half its bitterness by taking from it all its loneliness? And the hour of sickness, and of death, and of gushi+ng tears, as they co consolations of religious solemnity, and the sympathies of kindred souls, and the unobtrusive condolence of those who alone er interolden anticipations indulged by every hurant to this El Dorado of promise--it must be that there will arise in his bosom, when he finds himself for the first time amid these vast forest solitudes, attended only by his wife and children, a feeling of unutterable loneliness and desertion Until this moment he has been sustained by the buoyancy of anticipated success, the excite influences of new and beautiful scenes; and the effect of strange faces and strange customs has been to divert the attention, while the farewell pressure of affection yet has warered All this is over now, and his spirit, left to its own resources, sinks within him The sacred spot of his nativity is far, far away towards the raveyard, hallowed by many a holy remembrance; there, too, are the play-place of youthful love and of youthful friendshi+p, spots around which are twined full many a tendril of his heart; and he has turned from them all _for ever_ Henceforth he is a wanderer, and a distant soil must {57} claim his ashes He ith such reflections, yearns not for the holand
It was yet early in theof our first day upon the Mississippi that we found ourselves beneath the stately bluff upon which stands the old village of Cape Girardeau[51] Its site is a bold bank of the streae, upon a substratum of limerock A settlement was commenced on this spot in the latter part of the last century Its founders were of French and Gerin The great earthquakes of 1811, which vibrated through the whole length of the Western Valley, agitated the site of this village severely; many brick houses were shattered, chie effected, traces of the repairs of which are yet to be viewed The place received a shock far more severe, however, in the removal of the seat of justice to another town in the county: but the landing is an excellent one; iron ore and otherto assume a commercial character The most re this place were several of those peculiarly novel mills put in motion by a spiral water-wheel, acted on by the current of the river These screheels float upon the surface parallel to the shore, rising or falling with the water, and are connected with the gearing in theshaft The action of the current upon {58} the spiral thread of the wheel within its external casing keeps it in constant motion, which is communicated by the shaft to the enuity, and for purposes where a _motive_ of inconsiderable power is required,heavy millstones or a saw, the utility is more than problematical
In the vicinity of Cape Girardeau commences what is termed the ”Tyowapity Botto the Missouri side of the strea with a peculiar species of potter's clay, unctuous in its nature, exceedingly pure and white, and plastic under the wheel[52] This stratum of clay is said to vary fro upon sandstone, and covered by li in petrifactions A manufactory is in operation at Cape Girardeau, in which this substance is the material employed Near the northern extremity of this bottom the waters of the Muddy River enter the Mississippi from Illinois[53]
This streaeurs, and from them received the nauished for the salines upon its banks, for its exhaustless beds of bituularly-for the bluffs of the Mississippi, a few miles from its mouth Its name is ”_Fountain Bluff_,” derived froush out a nuht miles {59} in circumference, and to have an altitude of several hundred feet Its western declivity looks down upon the river, and its northern side is a precipitous crag, while that upon the south slopes away to a fertile plain, sprinkled with far Muddy stands out froe perpendicular column of limestone, of cylindrical formation, about one hundred feet in circuht one hundred and fifty feet, called the ”Grand Tower”[55] Upon its su a shaggy crown of rifted cedars, rocking in every blast that sweeps the streaes at the obstruction below
This is the first of that celebrated range of heights upon the Mississippi usually pointed out to the tourist, springing in isolated masses fro to the eye a succession of objects singularly grotesque There are said to exist, at this point upon the Mississippi, indications of a huge parapet of li once extended across the stream, which must have formed a tremendous cataract, and effectually inundated all the alluvion above At low stages of the water ragged shelves, which render the navigation dangerous, are still to be seen Ae which have received names from the boatmen are the ”Devil's Oven,” ”Teatable,” ”Backbone,” &c, which, with the ”Devil's Anvil,” ”Devil's Island,” &c, indicate pretty plainly the divinity erous passes[56] The ”Oven” consists of an enormous promontory of rock, about one hundred feet from the surface of the river, with a hemispherical orifice scooped out of its face, probably by the action, in ages past, of the whirling waters now hurrying on below It is situated upon the left bank of the stream, about one mile above the ”Tower,” and is visible fro and a garden spot The ”Teatable” is situated at some distance below, and the other spots naion bears palpable evidence of having been subjected, ages since, to powerful volcanic and diluvial action; and neither the Neptunian or Vulcanian theory can advance a superior claierous defile in the vicinity of the _Grand Tower_, through which the current rushes like a racehorse, our stea a foot At length, as if by a single tremendous effort, which caused her to quiver and vibrate to her centre, an onward iained, the boat shot forward, the rapids were overcome, and then, by chance, commenced one of those perilous feats of rivalry, formerly, more than at present, frequent upon the Western waters, A RACE Directly before us, a stealing against the torrent under her highest pressure During our passage we had several times passed and repassed each other, as either boat was delayed {61} at the various woodyards along the route; but now, as the evening caonist, the exciteers and crew hung clustering, in breathless interest, upon the galleries and the boiler deck, wherever a post for advantageous view presented; while the hissing valves, the quick, heavy stroke of the piston, the sharp clatter of the _eccentric_, and the cool deterlided like a spectre aave evidence that the challenge was accepted But there was one humble individual, above all others, whose whole soul seemed concentrated in the contest, as frorih the lurid light of the furnaces he was feeding This was no less a personage than the doughty fire, lanky individual, with a cute cast of the eye, a knowing tweak of the nose, and an interitude of phiz His checkered shi+rt was drenched with perspiration; a huge pair of breeches, begirdling his loins by means of a leathern belt, covered his nether extremities, and two sinewy arms of ”whipcord and bone”
held in suspension a spadelike brace of hands During our passage, more than once did I avail ood-hue of this _unique_ individual; and it required no effort of fancy to i reator race,” now, like {62} the poor Indian, fast fading from the West before the march of steamboats and civilization, _videlicet_, ”the Mississippi boatht I could catch no slight rese fireman, as he flourished his ponderous limbs, to that faithful portraiture of histhis latter, I must confess er” Young, having entertained shrewd suspicions whether the ”tyrant ever sat”
But insubject of the race During , and sweating, and glowing in laudable effort, to say nothing of stifled sobs said to have issued froried features of the worthy Charon, gave evidence that not in vain he had wielded his mace or heaved his wood A dense mist soon after caht beneath the venerable trees upon the banks of the streaain in s of our valorous steahty rival e fish, she ca up in our wake, as if our annihilation were sure But our apprehensions proved groundless; like a civil, well-behaved rival, she speeded on, hurling forth a triple bob-major of {63} curses at us as she passed, doubtless by way of salvo, and disappeared behind a point When to this circu-winded racer of a mail-boat soon after swept past us in her onward course, and left us far in the rear, I shall be believed when it is stated that the stea but speed; a circuretted _less_ than by er yet with Nature”
MANFRED
”Onward still I press, Follow thy windings still, yet sigh for more”