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Chapter 13
Sketches Continued
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TRAVELS AT HOME.
BY BAYARD TAYLOR.
I have been so often asked, " Where are
YOU going to next ? " and have so often answered, " I am
going to travel at home," that what was at first intended for a
joke, has naturally resolved itself into a reality. The genuine
traveler has a chronic dislike of railways, and if he be in addition
a lecturer, who is obliged to sit in a cramped position and breathe
bad air for five months of the year, he is the less likely to prolong
his winter tortures through the summer. Hence, it is scarcely a
wonder that, although I have seen so much of our country, I have traveled
so little in it. I knew the Himalayas before I had seen the Green
Mountains, the Cataracts of the Nile before Niagara, and the Libyan
Desert before the Illinois prairies. I have never yet (let me make
the disgraceful confession at the outset) beheld the White Mountains,
or Quebec, or the Saguenay, or Lake George, or Trenton Falls!
In all probability I should now be at home,
enjoying summer indolence under the shade of my oaks, were it not for
the visit of some European friends, who have come over to see the
land which all their kindness could not make their friend
forget. The latter, in fact, possesses a fair share of the national
sensitiveness, and defended his country with so much zeal and
magnificent assertions, that his present visitors were not a little
curious to see whether their own impressions would correspond with
his pictures. He, On the other hand, being anxious to maintain his
own as well as his country's credit, offered his services as guide
and showman to our mountains, rivers, lakes, and cataracts; and this
is how he (I, you understand) came to start upon the present journey.
On the whole, I think it a good plan not to see all your own country
until after you have seen other lands. It is easy to say, with the
school-girls, " I adore Nature ! " -- but he who adores
never criticizes. "What a beautiful view!" everyone may
cry: "Why is it beautiful?" would puzzle many to an swer.
Long study, careful observation, and various standards of comparison
are necessary-as much so as in art -- to enable one to pronounce upon
the relative excellence of scenery. I shall have, on this tour, the
assistance of a pair of experienced, appreciative foreign eyes, in
addition to my own, and you may therefore rely upon my giving you a
tolerably impartial report upon American life and landscapes.
When one has a point to carry, the beginning is
everything. I therefore embarked with my friends on a North River
day-boat, at the Harrison street pier. The calliope, or steam-organ
attached to the machine, was playing "Jordan's a bard road to
travel," with astonishing shrillness and power. "There's an
American invention!" I exclaimed, in triumph ; "the waste
steam, instead of being blown off, is turned into an immense
hand-organ, and made to grind out this delightful music."
Several years had passed since I had seen the
Hudson from the deck of a steamer. I found great changes, and for the
better. The elegant summer residences of New Yorkers, peeping out
from groves nestled in warm dells, or, most usually, crowning the
highest points of the hills, now extend more than half-way to Albany.
The trees have been judiciously spared,
straggling woods carved into shape, stony slopes converted into turf,
and, in fact, the long landscape of the eastern bank gardened into
more perfect beauty. Those Gothic, Tuscan, and Norman villas, with
their air of comfort and home, give an attractive, human sentiment to
the scenery; and I would not exchange them for the castles of the Rhine.
The Highlands, of course, impressed my friends
as much as I could have wished. It is customary among our tourists to
deplore the absence of ruins on those heights -- a very unnecessary
regret, in my opinion. To show that we have associations fully as
inspiring as those connected with feudal warfare, I related the story
of Stony Point, and Andre's capture; and pointed out, successively,
Kosciusko's Monument, old Fort Putnam, and Washing ton's
Headquarters. Sunnyside was also a classic spot to my friends, nor
was Idlewild forgotten.
In due time we reached Catskill, and made all
haste to get off for the Mountain House. There are few summits so
easy of access -- certainly no other mountain resort in our country
where the facilities of getting up and down are so complete and
satisfactory. The journey would be tame, however, were it not for the
superb view of the mountains, rising higher, and putting on a deeper
blue, with every mile of approach.
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Cascade At High Rocks |
On reaching the foot of the mountain, the
character of the scenery entirely changes. The trees in Rip Van
Winkle's dell are large and luxuriant-leaved, while the backward
views, enframed with foliage and softly painted by the blue pencil of
the air, grow more charming as you ascend. Ere long the shadow of the
towering North Mountain was flung over us, as we walked up in advance
of the laboring horses. The road was bathed in sylvan coolness; the
noise of an invisible stream beguiled the steepness of the way;
emerald ferns sprang from the rocks, and the red blossoms of the
showy rubus and the pale blush of the laurel brightened the
gloom of the undergrowth. It is fortunate that the wood has not been
cut away, and but rare glimpses of the scenes below are allowed to
the traveler. Landing in the rear of the Mountain House, the huge
white mass of which completely shuts out the view, thirty paces bring
you to the brink of the rock, and you hang suspended, as if by magic,
over the world. |
It was a quarter of an hour before sunset --
perhaps the best moment of the day for the Catskill panorama. The
shadows of the mountain-tops reached nearly to the Hudson, while the
sun, shining directly down the Clove, interposed a thin wedge of
golden lustre between. The farmhouses on a thousand bills beyond the
river sparkled in the glow, and the Berkshire mountains swam in a
luminous, rosy mist. The shadows strode eastward at the rate of a
league a minute as we gazed; the forests darkened, the wheat-fields
became brown, and the houses glimmered like extinguished stars. Then
the cold north wind blew, roaring in the pines, the last lurid purple
faded away from the distant hills, and in half an hour the world
below was as dark, and strange, and spectral, as if it were an
unknown planet we were passing on our journey through space.
The scene from Catskill is unlike any other
mountain view that I know. It is imposing through the very simplicity
of its features. A line drawn from north to south through the sphere
of vision divides it into two equal parts. The western half is
mountain, falling off in a line of rock parapet; the eastern is a
vast semicircle of blue landscape, half a mile lower. Owing to the
abrupt rise of the mountain, the nearest farms at the base seem to be
almost under one's feet; and the country, as far as the Hudson,
presents almost the same appearance as if seen from a balloon. Its
undulations have vanished; it is as flat as a pancake; and even the
bold line of hills stretching toward Saugerties, can only be
distinguished by the color of the forests upon them. Beyond the
river, although the markings of the hills are lost, the rapid rise of
the country from the water-level is very distinctly seen ; the whole
region appears to be lifted on a sloping plane, so as to expose the
greatest possible surface to the eye. On the horizon the Hudson
Highlands, the Berkshire and Green mountains unite their chains,
forming a continuous line of misty blue. At noonday, under a
cloudless sky, the picture is rather monotonous. After the eye is
accustomed to its grand, aerial depth, one seeks relief in spying out
the characteristics of the separate farms, or in watching specks (of
the size of fleas) crawling along the highways. Yonder man and horse,
going up and down between the rows of corn, resemble a little black
bug on a bit of striped calico. When the sky is full of moving
clouds, however, nothing can be more beautiful than the shifting
masses of light and shade, traversing such an immense field. There
are, also, brief moments when the sun or moon is reflected in the
Hudson; when rainbows bend slantingly beneath you, striking bars of
seven-hued flame across the landscape; when, even, the thunders march
below, and the fountains of the rain are under your feet.
What most impressed my friends was the
originality of the view. Familiar with the best mountain scenery of
Europe, they could find nothing with which to compare it. As my
movements during this journey are guided entirely by their wishes, I
was glad when they said, "Let us stay here 'another day.'"
We have front rooms at the Mountain House; have
you ever had one? Through the white, Corinthian pillars of the
portico -- pillars, which, I must say, are very well proportioned --
you get much the same effects as through those of the Propylaeca of
the Athenian Acropolis. You can open your window, breathing the
delicious rnountain air in sleep (under a blanket), and, without
lifting your head from the pillow, see the sun come up a hundred
miles away.
Those, I find, who visit Catskill, come again.
This is my fourth ascent, and I trust it is far from being my last.
More to-morrow.
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At the foot of the Catskill Mountain, the
laurel showed its dark-red seed vessels; half-way up, the last faded
blossoms were dropping off; but, as we approached the top, the dense
thickets were covered with a glory of blossoms. Far and near, in the
caverns of shade under the pines and oaks and maples, flashed whole
mounds of flowers, white and blush-color, dotted with the vivid pink
of the crimped buds. The finest cape azaleas and ericas are scarcely
more beautiful than our laurel. Between those mounds bloomed the
flame-colored lily, scarcely to be distinguished, at a little
distance, from the breast of an oriole. The forest scenery was a
curious amalgamation of Norway and the tropics. "What a land,
what a climate," exclaimed one of my friends, " that can
support such inconsistencies ! " "After this," I
replied, "it will perhaps be easier for you to comprehend the
apparent inconsistencies, the opposing elements, which you will find
in the American character''
The next morning we walked to the Katterskill
Falls. Since my last visit (in 1851), a handsome hotel -- the Laurel
House -- has been erected here by Mr. Schutt. The road into the Clove
has also been improved, and the guests at the Mountain House make
frequent excursions into the wild heart of the Catskill region,
especially to Stony Clove, fourteen miles distant, at the foot of the
blue mountain which faces you as you look down the Katterskill glen.
The falls are very lovely (I think that is the proper word) -- they
will bear seeing many times-but don't believe those who tell you that
they surpass Niagara. Some people have a habit of pronouncing every
last view they see "the finest thing in the world !"
The damming up of the water, so much deprecated
by the romantic, strikes me as an admirable arrangement. When the dam
is full the stream overruns it, and you have as much water as if
there were no dam. Then, as you stand at the head of the lower fall,
watching the slender scarf of silver fluttering down the black gulf,
comes a sudden, dazzling rush from the summit ; the fall leaps away,
from the half-way ledge where it lingered, bursting in rockets and
shooting stars of spray on the rocks, and you have the full effect of
the stream when swollen by spring thaws. Really, this temporary
increase of volume is the finest feature of the fall.
No visitor to Catskill should neglect a visit
to the North and South mountains. The views from these points,
although almost identical with that from the House, have yet
different foregrounds, and embrace additional segments of the
horizon. The North Peak, I fancy, must have been in Bryant's mind
when he wrote his poem of "The Hunter." Those beautiful
features, which hovered before the hunter's eyes, in the blue gulf of
air, as he dreamed on the rock, are they not those of the same maiden
who, rising from the still stream, enticed Goethe's "Fisher"
into its waves? -- the poetic embodiment of that fascination which
lurks in height and depth ? Opposite the North Rock there is a
weather-beaten pine, which, springing from the mountain-side below,
lifts its head just to the level of the rock, and not more than
twelve feet in front of it. I never see it without feeling a keen
desire tospring from the rock and lodge in its top. The Hanlon
Brothers or Blondin, I presume, would not have the least objection to
perform such a feat. In certain conditions of the atmosphere the air
between you and the lower world seems to become a visible fluid, an
ocean of pale, crystalline blue, at the bottom of which the landscape
lies. Peering down into its depths, you at last experience a numbness
of the senses, a delicious wandering of the imagination, such as
follows the fifth pipe of opium. Or, in the words of Walt Whitman,
you loaf, and invite your soul."
The guests we found at the Mountain House were
rather a quiet company. Several entire families were quartered there
for the season, but it was perhaps too early for the evening hops and
sunrise flirtations which I noticed ten years ago. Parties formed and
strolled off quietly into the woods ; elderly gentlemen sank into
armchairs on the rocks, and watched the steamers on the Hudson;
nurses pulled venturous children away from the precipice, and young
gentlemen from afar sat on the verandah and wrote in their
note-books. You would not have guessed the number of guests if you
had not seen them at table. I found this quiet, this nonchalance,
this "take care of yourself and let other people alone "
characteristic very agreeable, and the difference, in this respect,
since my last visit, leads me to hope that there has been a general
improvement (which was highly needed) in the public manners of the Americans. |
Chapter 13 SKETCHES
Willis Gaylord Clark.-His Sketch of the Mountains,
the Road to them and Views from them.-Similar
Sketches by Tyrone Power, N. P. Willis, Park
Benjamin, Harriet Martineau, Mrs.
Ellett, Dr. Murdoch, Bayard
Taylor, and Rev. Dr. Cuyler.
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