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Chapter 13
Sketches Continued
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FROM "RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL."
BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.
However widely European travellers have
differed about other things in America, all seem to agree in their
love of the Hudson. The pens of all tourists dwell on its scenery,
and their affections linger about it like the magic lights which seem
to have this river in their peculiar charge. Yet very few travellers
have seen its noblest wonder. I may be singular; but I own that I was
more moved by what I saw from the Mountain House than by Niagara itself.
What is this Mountain House? this Pine Orchard
House? many will ask ; for its name is not to be found in most books
of American travels. "What is that white speck ?" I myself
asked, when staying at Tivoli, on the east bank of the Hudson,
opposite to the Catskills, whose shadowy surface was perpetually
tempting the eye. That white speck, visible to most eyes only when
bright sunshine was upon it, was the Mountain House; a hotel built
for the accommodation of hardy travellers who may desire to obtain
that complete view of the valley of the Hudson which can be had
nowhere else. I think I had rather have missed the Hawk's Nest, the
Prairies, the Mississippi, and even Niagara, than this.
The mountain laurel conveyed by association the
first impression of coolness. Sheep were browsing among the shrubs,
apparently enjoying the shelter of the covert. We scrambled through
deep shade for three or four miles, heavy showers passing over us,
and gusts of wind bowing the tree-tops, and sending a shiver through
us, partly from the sudden chillness, and partly from expeclation and
awe of the breezy solitude.
After another level reach of road, and another
scrambling ascent, I saw something on the rocky platform above our
heads, like (to compare great things with small) an illumined fairy
palace perched among the clouds in opera scenery; a large building,
whose numerous window lights marked out its figure from amid the
thunder-clouds and black twilight which overshadowed it. It was now
half-past eight o'clock, and a stormy evening. Everything was chill,
and we were glad of lights and tea in the first place.
After tea I went out upon the platform in front
of the house, having been warned not to go too near the edge, so as
to fall an unmeasured depth into the forest below. I sat upon the
edge, as a security against stepping over unawares. The stars were
bright overhead, and had conquered half the sky, giving promise of
what we ardently desired, a fine morrow. Over the other half the mass
of thunder-clouds was, I supposed, heaped together, for I could at
first discern nothing of the campaign which I knew must be stretched
below. Suddenly and from that moment incessantly, gushes of red
lightning poured out from the cloudy canopy, revealing not merely the
horizon, but the course of the river in all its windings through the
valley. This thread of river, thus illuminated, looked like a flash
of lightning caught by some strong hand and laid along in the valley.
All the principal features of the landscape might, no doubt, have
been discerned by this sulphurous light ; but my whole attention was
absorbed by the river, which seemed to come out of the darkness like
an apparition at the summons of my impatient will. It could be borne
only for a short time ; this dazzling, bewildering alternation of
glare and blackness, of vast reality and nothingness. I was soon glad
to draw back from the precipice and seek the candle-light within.
The next day was Sunday. I shall never forget,
if I live to a hundred, how the world lay at my feet one Sunday
morning. I rose very early and looked abroad from my window, two
stories above the platform. A dense fog, exactly level with my eyes,
as it appeared, roofed in the whole plain of the earth; a dusky
firmament, in which the stars had hidden themselves for the day. Such
is the account which an antediluvian spectator would probably have
given of it. This solid firmament had spaces in it, however, through
which gushes of sunlight were poured, lighting up the spires of white
churches, and clusters of farm buildings, too small to be otherwise
distinguished; and especially the river, with its sloops floating
like motes in the sunbeam. The firmament rose and melted, or parted
off into the likeness of snowy sky-mountains, and left the cool
Sabbath to brood brightly over the land. What human interest
sanctifies a bird's-eye view! I suppose this is its peculiar charm,
for its charm is found to deepen in proportion to the growth of mind.
To an infant, a campaign of a hundred miles is not so much as a yard
square of gay carpet. To the rustic it is less bewitching than a
paddock with two cows. To the philosopher, what is it not? As he
casts his eye over its glittering towns, its scattered hamlets, its
secluded homes, its mountain ranges, church spires and untrodden
forests, it is a picture of life; an epitome of the human universe;
the complete volume of moral philosophy, for which he has sought in
vain in all libraries. On the left horizon are the Green Mountains of
Vermont, and at the right extremity sparkles the Atlantic. Beneath
lies the forest, where the deer are hiding and the birds rejoicing in
song. Beyond the river he sees spread the rich plains of Connecticut;
there, where a blue expanse lies beyond the triple range of hills,
are the churches of religious Massachusetts sending up their Sabbath
psalms: praise which he is too high to hear, while God is not. The
fields and waters seem to him to-day no more truly property than the
skies which shine down upon them; and to think how some below are
busying their thoughts this Sabbath day about how they shall hedge in
another field, or multiply their flocks on yonder meadows, gives him
a taste of the same pity which Jesus felt in his solitude when his
followers were contending about which should be the greatest. It
seems strange to him how that man should call anything his but the
power which is in him, and which can create somewhat more vast and
beautiful than all that this horizon incloses. Here he gains the
conviction, to be never again shaken, that all that is real is ideal
; that the joys and sorrows of men do not spring up out of the ground
or fly abroad on the wings of the wind, or come showered down from
the sky; that good cannot be hedged in, nor evil barred out ; even
that light does not reach the spirit through the eye alone, nor
wisdom through the medium of sound or silence only. He becomes of one
mind with the spiritual Berkeley, that the face of nature itself, the
very picture of woods, and streams, and meadows, is a hieroglyphic
writing in the spirit itself, of which the retina is no interpreter.
The proof is just below him (at least it came under my eye), in the
lady (not American) who, after glancing over the landscape, brings
her chair into the piazza, and, turning her back to the campaign and
her face to the wooden walls of the hotel, begins the study, this
Sunday morning, of her lapful of newspapers. What a sermon is thus
preached to him at this moment from a very hackneyed text! To him
that hath much that hath the eye, and car, and wealth of the spirit,
shall more be given; even a replenishing of this spiritual life from
that which to others is formless and dumb; while from him that hath
little, who trusts in that which lies about him rather than in that
which lies within him, shall he taken away, by natural decline, the
power of perceiving and enjoying what is within his own domain. To
him who is already enriched with large divine and human revelations,
this scene is, for all its stillness, musical with divine and human
speech ; while one who has been deafened by the din of worldly
affairs can bear nothing in this mountain solitude.
The march of the day over the valley was
glorious, and I was grieved to have to leave my window for an
expedition a few miles off. However, the expedition was a good
preparation for the return to my window. The little nooks of the
road, crowded with bilberries, cherries, and alpine plants, and the
quiet tarn, studded with golden water-lilies, were a wholesome
contrast to the grandeur of what we had left behind us.
On returning, we found dinner awaiting us, and
also a party of friends out of, Massachusetts, with whom we passed
the afternoon, climbing higher and higher among the pines, ferns, and
blue berries of the mountain, to get wider and wider views. They told
me that I saw Albany, but I was by no means sure of it. This large
city lay in the landscape like an ant-hill in a meadow. Lon- before
sunset I was at my window again, watching the gradual lengthening Of
the shadows and purpling of the landscape. It was more beautiful than
the sunrise of this morning, and less so than that of the morrow. Of
this last I shall give no description, for I would not weary others
with what is most sacred to me. Suffice it that it gave me a vivid
idea of the process of creation, from the moment when all was without
form and void, to that when light was commanded, and there was light.
When we were departing, a foreign tourist was heard to complain of
the high charges ! High charges ! As if we were to be supplied for
nothing on a perch where the wonder is if any but the young ravens
get fed! When I considered what a drawback it is in visiting
mountaintops that one is driven. down again almost immediately by
one's bodily wants, I was ready to thank the people devoutly for
harboring us on any terms, so that we might think out our thoughts,
and compose our emotions, and take our fill of that portion of our
universal and eternal inheritance.
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