Part 1

AMERICAN SCENERY;

OR,

LAND, LAKE, AND RIVER

ILLUSTRATIONS OF TRANSATLANTIC NATURE.

FROM DRAWINGS BY W. H. BARTLETT,

ENGRAVED IN THE FIRST STYLE OF THE ART,

BY

R. WALLIS, J. COUSEN, WILLMORE, BRANDARD, ADLARD, RICHARDSON, &c.

THE LITERARY DEPARTMENT

BY N. P. WILLIS, ESQ. AUTHOR OF “PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY,” “INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE,” ETC.

VOL. I.

LONDON: G E O R G E V I R T U E, 26, I V Y L A N E. MDCCCXL.

LONDON: RICHARD CLAY, PRINTER. BREAD STREET HILL.

PREFACE.

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Either Nature has wrought with a bolder hand in America, or the effect of long continued cultivation on scenery, as exemplified in Europe, is greater than is usually supposed. Certain it is that the rivers, the forests, the unshorn mountain-sides and unbridged chasms of that vast country, are of a character peculiar to America alone—a lavish and large-featured sublimity, (if we may so express it,) quite dissimilar to the picturesque of all other countries.

To compare the sublime of the Western Continent with the sublime of Switzerland—the vales and rivers, lakes and waterfalls, of the New World with those of the Old—to note their differences, and admire or appreciate each by contrast with the other, was a privilege hitherto confined to the far-wandering traveller. In the class of works, of which this is a specimen, however, that enviable enjoyment is brought to the fire-side of the home-keeping and secluded as well; and, sitting by the social hearth, those whose lot is domestic and retired, can, with small cost, lay side by side upon the evening table the wild scenery of America, and the bold passes of the Alps—the leafy Susquehanna with its rude raft, and the palace-gemmed Bosphorus with its slender caïque. So great a gratification is seldom enjoyed at so little cost and pains.

In the Letter-press, it has been the Writer’s aim to assemble as much as possible of that part of American story which history has not yet found leisure to put into form, and which romance and poetry have not yet appropriated—the legendary traditions and anecdotes, events of the trying times of the Revolution, Indian history, &c. &c. It is confidently hoped, that the attempt to assemble a mass of interesting matter under this design, has not failed; and that, in the value of the intellectual portion, as well as in the beauty and finish of the embellishments, the Work will be thought worthy of the patronage of the public.

CONTENTS AND LIST OF ENGRAVINGS TO VOLUME I.

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_Ch._ _Page_ PORTRAIT of Mr. Bartlett. (Autographed) 0 1 MAP of the NORTH-EASTERN Parts of the UNITED STATES 1 2 Niagara Falls, from the Ferry 4 3 View from West Point 6 4 Trenton Falls, View down the Ravine 8 5 View from Mount Holyoke 10 6 The Outlet of Niagara River 12 7 The Palisades, Hudson River 14 8 The Rapids above the Falls of Niagara 16 9 Saratoga Lake 18 10 The Colonnade of Congress Hall, Saratoga Springs 20 11 Albany 22 12 Crow’s Nest, from Bull Hill, West Point 24 13 View below Table Rock 26 14 Lake Winipiseogee 28 15 Kosciusko’s Monument 30 16 The Horseshoe Falls at Niagara, with the Tower 32 17 The Narrows, at Staten Island 34 18 View of the Capitol at Washington 36 19 View of the Ruins of Fort Ticonderoga 38 20 View from Fort Putnam 40 21 View of State Street, Boston 42 22 Niagara Falls, from Clifton House 45 23 View from Hyde Park 47 24 Village of Sing-Sing 49 25 View from Ruggle’s House, Newburgh 51 26 Descent into the Valley of Wyoming 53 27 Boston, from Dorchester Heights 55 28 View of Faneuil Hall, Boston 57 29 New York Bay, from the Telegraph Station 59 30 Peekskill Landing 61 31 Lighthouse near Caldwell Landing 63 32 Harper’s Ferry, from the Potomac side 65 33 Caldwell, Lake George 69 34 Centre Harbour, Lake Winipiseogee 71 35 Yale College, at New Haven 74 36 Willey House—White Mountains 76 37 Battle Monument, Baltimore 78 38 Forest Scene on Lake Ontario 80 39 Viaduct on the Baltimore and Washington Rail-road 82 40 The Indian Falls near Coldspring 85 41 Columbia Bridge, over the Susquehanna 87 42 The Genessee Falls, Rochester 89 43 The Ferry at Brooklyn, New York 91 44 Rail-road to Utica, Little Falls 93 45 Utica 96 46 The Landing, on the American side, Falls of Niagara 97 47 View From Mount Washington 99 48 Mount Washington, and the White Hills 101 49 The Park and City Hall, New York 103 50 The Two Lakes, and the Mountain House on the Catskills 105 51 Trenton High Falls 106 52 The Valley of the Shenandoah, from Jefferson’s Rock 108 53 Lockport, Erie Canal 110 54 The Tomb of Washington, Mount Vernon 113 55 Black Mountain, Lake George 115 56 Valley of the Connecticut, from Mount Holyoke 117 57 View on the Erie Canal, near Little Falls 119 58 Hudson Highlands, from Bull Hill 121 59 Villa on the Hudson, near Weehawken 123 60 View of Meredith, New Hampshire 125 61 Ballston Springs 128 62 The Narrows, from Fort Hamilton 130 63 The Notch House, White Mountains 132 64 Wilkesbarre, Vale of Wyoming 134 65 Squawm Lake, New Hampshire 136 66 Sabbath-Day Point, Lake George 138

AMERICAN SCENERY.

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It strikes the European traveller, at the first burst of the scenery of America on his eye, that the New World of Columbus is also a new world from the hand of the Creator. In comparison with the old countries of Europe, the vegetation is so wondrously lavish, the outlines and minor features struck out with so bold a freshness, and the lakes and rivers so even in their fulness and flow, yet so vast and powerful, that he may well imagine it an Eden newly sprung from the ocean. The Minerva-like birth of the republic of the United States, its sudden rise to independence, wealth, and power, and its continued and marvellous increase in population and prosperity, strike him with the same surprise, and leave the same impression of a new scale of existence, and a fresher and faster law of growth and accomplishment. The interest, with regard to both the natural and civilized features of America, has very much increased within a few years; and travellers, who have exhausted the unchanging countries of Europe, now turn their steps in great numbers to the novel scenery, and ever-shifting aspects of this.

The picturesque views of the United States suggest a train of thought directly opposite to that of similar objects of interest in other lands. There, the soul and centre of attraction in every picture is some ruin of the _past_. The wandering artist avoids every thing that is modern, and selects his point of view so as to bring prominently into his sketch, the castle, or the cathedral, which history or antiquity has hallowed. The traveller visits each spot in the same spirit—ridding himself, as far as possible, of common and present associations, to feed his mind on the historical and legendary. The objects and habits of reflection in both traveller and artist undergo in America a direct revolution. He who journeys here, if he would not have the eternal succession of lovely natural objects—

“Lie like a load on the weary eye,”

must feed his imagination on the _future_. The American does so. His mind, as he tracks the broad rivers of his own country, is perpetually reaching forward. Instead of looking through a valley, which has presented the same aspect for hundreds of years—in which live lords and tenants, whose hearths have been surrounded by the same names through ages of tranquil descent, and whose fields have never changed landmark or mode of culture since the memory of man, he sees a valley laden down like a harvest waggon with a virgin vegetation, untrodden and luxuriant; and his first thought is of the villages that will soon sparkle on the hill-sides, the axes that will ring from the woodlands, and the mills, bridges, canals, and rail-roads, that will span and border the stream that now runs through sedge and wild-flowers. The towns he passes through on his route are not recognizable by prints done by artists long ago dead, with houses of low-browed architecture, and immemorial trees; but a town which has perhaps doubled its inhabitants and dwellings since he last saw it, and will again double them before he returns. Instead of inquiring into its antiquity, he sits over the fire with his paper and pencil, and calculates what the population will be in ten years, how far they will spread, what the value of the neighbouring land will become, and whether the stock of some canal or rail-road that seems more visionary than Symmes’s expedition to the centre of the earth, will, in consequence, be a good investment. He looks upon all external objects as exponents of the future. In Europe they are only exponents of the past.

There is a field for the artist in this country (of which this publication reaps almost the first-fruits) which surpasses every other in richness of picturesque. The great difficulty at present is, where to choose. Every mile upon the rivers, every hollow in the landscape, every turn in the innumerable mountain streams, arrests the painter’s eye, and offers him some untouched and peculiar variety of an exhaustless nature. It is in _river scenery_, however, that America excels all other lands: and here the artist’s labour is not, as in Europe, to embellish and idealise the reality; he finds it difficult to come up to it. How represent the excessive richness of the foliage! How draw the vanishing lines which mark the swells in the forest-ground, the round heaps of the chestnut-tops, the greener belts through the wilderness which betray the wanderings of the water-courses! How give in so small a space the evasive swiftness of the rapid, the terrific plunge of the precipice, or the airy wheel of the eagle, as his diminished form shoots off from the sharp line of the summit, and cuts a circle on the sky!

The general architecture of the United States cannot pretend, of course, to vie with that of older countries; yet, taken in connexion with the beautiful position of the towns, no drawing will be found deficient in beauty, while many of the public buildings especially are, as works of art, well worthy the draughtman’s notice. The curiosity now generally excited with regard to this country, by its own progress, and by the late numerous books of travels, will throw a sufficient interest around every point that the pencil could present.

——“The green land of groves, the beautiful waste, Nurse of full streams, and lifter up of proud Sky-mingling mountains that o’erlook the cloud. Erewhile, where yon gay spires their brightness rear, Trees waved, and the brown hunter’s shouts were loud Amid the forest; and the bounding deer Fled at the glancing plume, and the gaunt wolf yell’d near.

“And where his willing waves yon bright blue bay Sends up, to kiss his decorated brim, And cradles, in his soft embrace, the gay Young group of grassy islands born of him, And, crowding nigh, or in the distance dim, Lifts the white throng of sails, that bear or bring The commerce of the world;—with tawny limb, And belt and beads in sunlight glistening, The savage urged his skiff like wild bird on the wing.

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“Look now abroad—another race has fill’d These populous borders—wide the wood recedes, And towns shoot up, and fertile realms are till’d; The land is full of harvests and green meads; Streams numberless, that many a fountain feeds, Shine, disembower’d, and give to sun and breeze Their virgin waters; the full region leads New colonies forth, that toward the western seas Spread, like a rapid flame, among the autumnal trees.

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“But thou, my country, thou shalt never fall, But with thy children—thy maternal care, Thy lavish love, thy blessing shower’d on all— These are thy fetters—seas and stormy air Are the wide barrier of thy borders, where Among thy gallant sons that guard thee well, Thou laugh’st at enemies: who shall then declare The date of thy deep-founded strength, or tell How happy, in thy lap, the sons of men shall dwell.”—BRYANT.