Part 10

'But the phantom steed in his whirlwind course, Galloped along like Beelzebub's horse, Till we came to a bank, dark, craggy, and wild, Where no rock-flowers blushed, no verdure smiled-- But sparse from the thunder-cliffs bleak and bare, Like the plumage of ravens that warrior helms wear. And below very far was a gulf profound, Where tumbling and rumbling, at distance resound Billowy clouds--o'er whose bottomless bed The curtain of night its volumes spread-- But a rushing of fire was revealing the gloom, Where convulsions had birth, and the thunders a home.

'You may put out the eyes of the sun at mid-day-- You may hold a young cherubim fast by the tail-- You may steal from night's angel his blanket away-- Or the song of the bard at its flood-tide may stay, But that cloud-phantom donkey to stop you would fail!

'He plunged in the gulf--'t was a great way to go, Ere we lit mid the darkness and flashings below; And I looked--as I hung o'er that sulphurous light-- Like a warrior of flame!--on a courser of night! But what I beheld in that dark ocean's roar, I have partly described in a poem before, And the rest I reserve for a measure more strong, When my heart shall be heaving and bursting with song!

'But I saw, as he sailed 'mid the dusky air, A bird that I thought I knew every where, A fierce gray bird with a terrible beak, With a glittering eye, and peculiar shriek: 'Proud Bird of the Cliff!' I addressed him then-- 'How my heart swells high thus to meet thee again! Thou whose bare bosom for rest is laid On pillows of night by the thunder-cloud made! With a rushing of wings and a screaming of praise, Who in ecstacy soar'st in the red-hot blaze! Who dancest in heaven to the song of the trump, To the fife's acclaim, and bass-drum's thump! Whence com'st thou,' I cried, 'and goest whither?' As I gently detained him by his tail-feather. He replied, 'Mr. N.----! Mr. N.----! let me loose! I am not an eagle, but only a goose! Your optics are weak, and the weather is hazy-- And excuse the remark, but I think you are crazy.''

SANDS was a lover of nature, with an affection 'passing the love of women;' and he entered into the very heart of her mysteries. Lately, I made a pilgrimage to a scene which he has depainted, in one of those quiet, rich, and noble sketches, which have gained such celebrity to his pen. It was the CATSKILLS.

* * * * *

IT fell on a day, when the guns and thunder of artillery proclaimed, according to the Fourth-of-July orators,'the birth-day of freedom,' that we made our way from the crowded city, to the majestic craft that was to convey us up the Hudson. What a contrast did the embarkation scene present to the tranquil Delaware, and the calm, sweet city of fraternal affection! Thousands of garish pennons were abroad on the gale; the winds, as they surged along on their viewless wings, were heavy with the sound of cannon, the rolling of chariot-wheels, and the shouts of multitudes. To me, it is an edifying and a thought-inspiring sight, to look from the promenade-deck of a receding steamer upon a city, as it glides into distance. The airy heights, dwelling-crowned, around; the craft going to and fro; the thousand destinations of the throngs that fill them; the hopes and fears that impel them. Some are on errands of business; some, on those of pleasure:

'For every man hath business, and desire, Such as it is.'

Yonder a gay ship, her sails filled with air and sunshine, hastens through the Narrows. She is a packet, outward bound. We see her as she goes. Within her are hearts sighing to leave their native land; from tearful eyes there extends the level of the telescope which brings the distant near; and at some upper casement in the town, a trembling hand waves the white 'kerchief, still descried; at last it trembles into a glimmer; the ocean haze rises between, and the bosom which it cheered goes below to heave with the _nausea marina_, and feel the benefits of an attentive steward.

* * * * *

IT is beautiful to ascend the Hudson, on, the birth-day christened as aforesaid. On every green point where the breeze rustles the foliage, and around which the crystal waters roll, you may see the grim ordnance, belching forth its thunder-clap and grass-wadding; the brave officers and 'marshals of the day,' sporting their emblems of immortal glory; the urchins, with chequered pantaloons, and collars turned over their coats, their tender hearts and warm imaginations excited and wild with the grandeur of the scene; and as you pass some beautiful town, you may see the stars and stripes waving from an eminence, near the meeting-house or town-hall; and as you pass the line of a street which tends to the river, you may eke observe 'the orator of the day,' with his roll of patriotism and eloquence in his hand, marching sublimely onward, behind prancing chargers, heroes in gay attire, meditating death to any possible foes of the country, on any future battailous emergency; and sustained and soothed (he, the orator,) by the brattling of brass horns, and the roll of the stirring drums behind him; the ladies, meanwhile--God bless them!--looking neat and cheerful at the windows, or in the streets. Then for the tourist to see the places in such a transit, hallowed in his country's history; the old head-quarters of WASHINGTON, as at Newburgh, above whose humble roof, near which one tall and solitary Lombard waved and whispered mournfully in the air, there streamed a faded red banner, that had caught the roll of the war-drum in the revolution, and rustled its folds more quickly at the gun-peals that sent an iron storm into invading breasts! And then, to think that millions on millions, in 'many a lovely valley out of sight,' in states, and territories stretching to the flowery prairies, and where the setting sun flames along the far mountains of the west, the same anthems were ascending; the same glorious love of country inculcated; it is a train of thought ennobling--pure--imperishable! Then it is, that the mind has visions which no vocabulary can clothe and wreak upon expression; when the faculties ache with that indescribable blending of love, hope, and pride, such as was faintly shadowed by the minstrel, when he sang:

'Breathes there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!'

* * * * *

PRESUPPOSING that a man is possessed of a soul, it is my belief that he cannot traverse the Hudson, even if it be for the hundredth time, without new and delicious sensations. The noble shores, now broken into sweet and solemn vistas, until they become steeped in romance--the capacious bays--the swelling sails--the craft of all sorts, hastening to and fro--all are impressive and beautiful. You have such a variety of steamer-life about you, too--that is the best of it--odd congregations of character. Yonder stands, looking at the shores, and now and then at his watch, a man who, by his look, should be a divine. He hath a white cravat around his neck, tied behind, with extreme closeness, at 'the precise point betwixt ornament and strangulation.' He proceedeth to the bow of the boat to look to his luggage. Such an one I saw; and he was accosted, somewhat abruptly, by a clock-pedlar, who had been whittling a pine shrub, near the taffrail, (and whistling the _sublime_ national song of Yankee Doodle--that most _dignified_ effusion)--and who bespake him thus: 'Square, you don't know nawthing about that youg woman, yender, do ye?--with that lay-lock dress on to her--do ye?' 'No,' replied the ambassador for the high court above, 'I do not; and I wonder at your asking _me_ such a question.'

'Why, I axed you, 'cause I seen you a-looking at her yourself; and 'cause I think she's blamenation elegint!'

'That's enough, my friend; you had better run along,' was the august reply; and the colloquy ended.

* * * * *

PAUSED for a moment at Rhinebeck, to release a passenger in a small boat, let down amid the agitated foam at the steamer's side. How sad, that the beauty of a landscape should be stained by the memories of death! Here once lived, drinking the spirit of golden youthful hours, and rejoicing in existence, a warm and devoted friend, now alas! no more--JOHN RUDOLPH SUTERMEISTER. The pestilence, for such it was, swept him from being, in the pride of his intellect, and the full flush of his manhood. As I surveyed the place where he had embarked for the last time for the metropolis, in whose romantic suburbs his bones were so soon to lie, the illusion, as it were of a dream, came over me, and I almost fancied I could see him coming on board. I thought of the many pleasant hours we had consumed together, in walks where romance and early friendship sanctified the groves, as the red sun, tinting the lake, and closing the flowers, and beautifying the tender woodlands of spring, went down behind the cedars of the west, in a sea of gold, and crimson, and purple. Those were blessed hours; moments when the enthusiasm, the glowing hopes, the far-reaching thoughts, which take to themselves the wings of the eagle, and soar into the mysteries of unborn years, coloring the future from the gorgeous prism of the imagination, all were ours. How, at that point of reminiscence, did they throng back to my experience and my view! I fancied that my friend was by my side, his arm in mine; and a voice, like the tones of a spirit, seemed breathing in my ear:

'Yet what binds us, friend to friend, But that soul with soul can blend? Soul-like were those hours of yore-- Let us walk in soul once more.'

Poor Shade! He seemed ever to have a presentiment of his coming and early doom; and his prophetic vision often pierced the future, in lines akin to the solemn stanzas which close his beautiful 'Night Thoughts:'

'When high in heaven the moon careers, She lights the fountain of young tears; Her ray plays on the fevered brow; Plays on the cheek now bright no more-- Plays on the withered almond bough, Which once the man of sorrow wore!

* * * * *

'Behold this elm on which I lean, Meet emblem of my cruel fate; But yestermorn, its leaves were green-- Now it lies low and desolate! The dew which bathes each faded leaf, Doth also bathe my brow of grief. Alas! the dews of DEATH too soon Will gather o'er my dreamless sleep; And thou wilt beam, O pensive moon, Where love should mourn, and friends should weep!'

But he was translated to an early paradise, by the kind fiat of a benevolent GOD. Pure in heart, fresh and warm in his affections, he loved to live, because he lived to love; and he is now in that better country,

'Where light doth glance on many a crown, From suns that never more go down.'

He had a languid but not unpleasing melancholy about his life, which entered into his verse, and moaned from every vibration of his excelling lyre. How beautiful--how touching--how mournful, are these bodings in his song:

'Give not to me the wreath of green-- The blooming vase of flowers; They breathe of joy that once hath been-- Of gone and faded hours. I cannot love the rose; though rich, Its beauty will not last; Give me, oh! give the bloom, o'er which The early blight hath passed: The yellow buds--give them to rest On my cold brow and joyless breast, Where life is failing fast.

'Take far from me the wine-cup bright, In hours of revelry; It suits glad brows, and bosoms light-- It is not meet for me; Oh! I can pledge the heart no more, I pledged in days gone by; Sorrow hath touch'd my bosom's core, And I am left to die: Give me to drink of Lethe's wave-- Give me the lone and silent grave, O'er which the night-winds sigh!

'Wake not, upon my tuneless ear, Soft music's stealing strain: It cannot soothe, it cannot cheer, This anguish'd heart again: But place th' æolian harp upon The tomb of her I love; There, when heaven shrouds the dying sun, My weary steps will rove; As o'er its chords night pours its breath, To list the serenade of death, Her silent bourne above!

'Give me to seek that lonely tomb, Where sleeps the sainted dead. Now the pale night-fall throws its gloom Upon her narrow bed; There, while the winds which sweep along O'er the harp-strings are driven, And the funereal soul of song Upon the air is given, Oh! let my faint and parting breath Be mingled with that song of death, And flee with it to heaven!'

* * * * *

ONE picks up a marvellous degree of gratuitous and most novel information, from the miscellaneous people who pass hither and thither in steam-craft. Bits of knowledge strike you unaware; and if you believe it, you will be a much wiser man, when you greet the morrow morn after a day's travel. For example, when we had passed the shadowy highlands, and the Catskills were seen heaving their broad blue shoulders against the brilliant horizon, a man with a pot-belly, in a round-about, with a bell-crowned hat, over which was drawn a green oil-skin, shading his tallowy cheeks, and most rubicund nose, approached my side, and interrupted my reverie, by volunteering some intelligence. 'Them is very respectable mountains,' he said, 'but a man don't know nothin' about articles of that kind, unless he sees the tower of Scotland. I am not, as you may likely be about to inquire, a natyve of that country; but I have saw friends which has been there; and furthermore, the mountains there was all named after relations of mine, by the mother's side. At present, all them elewated sections of country is nick-named. Now the name of Ben. Lomond has been curtailed into an abbreviation. That hill was named after an uncle of my grandfather's, Benjamin Lomond. Ben. Nevis was a brother of my grandmother's, who had the same given name; and a better man than Benjamin Nevis never broke bread, or got up in the morning. From all accounts, he was consid'rable wealthy, at one time; though I've hear'n tell since, that he was a busted man. But just to think of all them perversions! Isn't it 'orrid?' With this and other information did this glorious volunteer in history break in upon my musings; and when he turned upon his heel, and clattered away, he left me with an impression of his visage in my mind akin to that which the fat knight entertained of Bardolph: 'Thou art our admiral; thou bearest the lantern in the nose of thee; thou art the knight of the burning lamp. I never see thy face, but I think of hell-fire, and Dives, that lived in purple; for there he is in his robes, burning, burning.'

* * * * *

YOU would scarcely think, arrived at Catskill Landing, on the Hudson, just before you enter the coach which conveys you to the mountain, that any extraordinary prospect was about to open upon your vision. True, as when on the water, the great cloud Presence looms afar; yet there is a long level country between it and you; and it is too early in the day to drink in the grandeur of the scene. You are content with watching the complex operations of that aquatic and equestrian mystery, a horse-boat, which plies from the humble tavern at the water's edge to the other shore of the Hudson. The animals give a consumptive wheeze, as they start, stretching out their long necks, indulging in faint recollections of that happy juvenescence, when they wasted the hours of their colthood in pastures of clover, and moving with a kind of unambitious sprawl, as if they cared but little whether they stood or fell; a turn of mind which induces them to stir their forward legs more glibly than those in the opposite quarter, quickening the former from pride, and 'contracting the latter from motives of decency.' This is said to be their philosophy; and they act upon it with a religious devotion, 'worthy a better cause.'

* * * * *

AS you move along from the landing, by pleasant and quiet waters, and through scenes of pastoral tranquillity, you seem to be threading a road which leads through a peaceful and variegated plain. You lose the memory of the highlands and the river, in the thought that you are taking a journey into a country as level as the lowliest land in Jersey. Sometimes, the mountains, as you turn a point of the road, appear afar; but 'are they clouds, or are they not?' By the mass, you shall hardly tell. Meantime, you are a _plain_-traveller--a quiet man. All at once you are wheeled upon a vernal theatre, some five or six miles in width, at whose extremity the bases of the Catskills 'gin to rise. How impressive the westering sunshine, sifting itself down the mighty ravines and hollows, and tinting the far-off summits with aërial light! How majestic yet soft the gradations from the ponderous grandeur of the formation, up--up--to the giddy and delicate shadowings, which dimly veil and sanctify their tops, as 'sacristies of nature,' where the cedar rocks to the wind, and the screaming eagle snaps his mandibles, as he sweeps a circuit of miles with one full impulse of his glorious wing! Contrasting the roughness of the basis with the printed beauty of the iris-hued and skïey ultimatum, I could not but deem that the bard of 'Thanatopsis' had well applied to the Catskills those happy lines wherein he apostrophizes the famous heights of Europe:

'Your peaks are beautiful, ye Appenines, In the soft light of your serenest skies; From the broad highland region, dark with pines, Fair as the hills of paradise, ye rise!'

* * * * *

BE not too eager, as you take the first stage of the mountain, to look about you; especially, be not anxious to look _afar_. Now and then, it is true, as the coach turns, you cannot choose but see a landscape, to the south and east, _farther off_ than you ever saw one before, broken up into a thousand vistas; but look you at them with a sleepy, sidelong eye, to the end that you may finally receive from _the Platform_ the full glory of the final view. In the mean time, there is enough directly about you to employ all your eyes, if you had the ocular endowments of an Argus. Huge rocks, that might have been sent from warring Titans, decked with moss, overhung with rugged shrubbery, and cooling the springs that trickle from beneath them gloom beside the way; vast chasms, which your coach shall sometimes seem to overhang, yawn on the left; the pine and cedar-scented air comes freely and sweetly from the brown bosom of the woods; until, one high ascent attained, a level for a while succeeds, and your smoking horses rest, while, with expanding nostril, you drink in the rarer and yet rarer air; a stillness like the peace of Eden, (broken only by the whisper of leaves, the faint chant of embowered birds, or the distant notes that come 'mellowed and mingling from the vale below,') hangs at the portal of your ear. It is a time to be still--to be contemplative--to hear no voice but your own ejaculations, or those of one who will share and heighten your enjoyment, by partaking it in peace, and as one with you, yet alone.

* * * * *

PASSING the ravine, where the immortal Rip Van Winkle played his game of nine-pins with the wizards of that neighborhood, and quaffed huge draughts of those bewildering flagons, which made him sleep for years, I flung myself impatiently from the 'quarter-deck' of the postillion whose place I had shared; I grasped that goodly globe of gold and ivory which heads my customary cane--the present of 'My Hon. friend' S----, and which once drew into itself the sustenance of life from that hallowed mound which guards the dust of WASHINGTON--and pushed gaily on, determined to pause not, until my weary feet stood on the Platform. The road was smooth and good; the air refreshing and pure, beyond description. The lungs play there without an effort; it is a luxury to breathe. How holy was the stillness! Not a sound invaded the solemn air; it was like inhaling the sanctity of the empyrean. The forest tops soon began to stir with a mighty wind. I looked, and on both sides of the road there were trees whose branches had been broken, as if by the wings of some rushing tempest. It was the havoc of winter snows.

* * * * *

THERE is a wonderful deception in the approach to the Mountain-House, which, when discovered, will strike the traveller with amazement. At one point of the road, where the mansion which is to terminate your pilgrimage heaves its white form in view, (you have seen it from the river for nearly half a day,) it seems not farther than a hundred rods, and hangs apparently on the verge of a stupendous crag over your head; the road turns again, it is out of sight, and the summits, near its _locus in quo_, are nearly three miles off. The effect is wonderful. The mountain is _growing upon you_.

I continued to ascend, slowly, but with patient steps, and with a flow of spirit which I cannot describe. Looking occasionally to the east, I saw a line of such parti-colored clouds, (as then I deemed them,) yellow, green, and purple, silver-laced, and violet-bordered, that it meseemed I never viewed the like kaleidoscopic presentments. All this time, I wondered that I had seen no land for many a weary mile.

Hill after hill, mere ridges of the mountain, was attained--summit after summit surmounted--and yet it seemed to me that the house was as far off as ever. Finally it appeared, and a-nigh; to me the 'earth's one sanctuary.' I reached it; my name was on the book; the queries of the publican, as to 'how many coach-loads were behind,' (symptoms of a yearning for the almighty dollar, even in this holy of nature's holies) were answered, and I stood on the Platform.

* * * * *

GOOD READER!--expect me not to describe the indescribable. I feel now, while memory is busy in my brain, in the silence of my library, calling up that vision to my mind, much as I did when I leaned upon my staff before that omnipotent picture, and looked abroad upon its God-written magnitude. It was a vast and changeful, a majestic, an _interminable_ landscape; a fairy, grand, and delicately-colored scene, with rivers for its lines of reflection; with highlands and the vales of _states_ for its shadowings, and far-off mountains for its frame. Those parti-colored and varying clouds I fancied I had seen as I ascended, were but portions of the scene. All colors of the rainbow--all softness of harvest-field, and forest, and distant cities, and the towns that simply dotted the Hudson--and far beyond where that noble river, diminished to a brooklet, rolled its waters, there opened mountain after mountain, vale after vale, state after state, heaved against the horizon, to the north-east and south, in impressive and sublime confusion; while _still beyond_, in undulating ridges, filled with all hues of light and shade, coquetting with the cloud, rolled the rock-ribbed and ancient frame of this dim diorama. As the sun went down, the houses and cities diminished to dots; the evening guns of the national anniversary came booming up from the valley of the Hudson; the bonfires blazed along the peaks of distant mountains, and from the suburbs of countless villages along the river; while in the dim twilight,

'From coast to coast, and from town to town, You could see all the white sails gleaming down.'