CHAPTER V.

THE ROMANCE OF EXPECTATION, &c.

That the author indulged many romantic expectations, in the excursion that was before him, was not only natural, but warranted. He could not reasonably be disappointed, so long as imagination did not become absolutely wild and ungovernable, and fly away from earth--or “call for spirits from the vasty deep”--or fancy things, of which heaven or earth affords no likeness. In constitutional temperament and in principle I was rather fond of the fascinating and ever changing hues, which genuine poetry throws over the variegated phases of the natural world. The universe I had been accustomed to regard, as one grand poetic panorama, laid out by the Creator’s hand, to entertain uncorrupt minds, without danger of satiety, and to “lead them up through nature’s works to nature’s God.” Sermons I could find, or believed were to be found, “in trees, and brooks, and stones; and good in every thing.” “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and “the earth is full of his bounty”--and he who does not admire the former, to the praise of Him that made them, and partake of the rich gifts of the latter with gratitude to their author, it must be ascribed alike to his stupidity and depravity. I have thought, that he who cannot appreciate such sentiments, can never sympathise with the best feelings, and happiest condition of man. The universe, in all its parts, suggests them; and heaven itself, we have reason to believe, is full of them. And there is no place so natural to song, so full of music, so beautiful in its attractive forms, or so enchanting in the combination and display of its glories to the eye, as heaven. All the most lively and glowing sentiments of true religion, of genuine piety, are of a poetic character. And the highest and sweetest inspirations of Divine Revelation, it need not be said, are all poetry.

Green Bay, in the North West Territory, where we were destined, is commonly reckoned the end of the world. It is not even imagined, by the vulgar, that there is any place, or any human being, or any thing with which mortals may have to do, beyond it. Besides, the way is long--the seas dangerous and ever liable to sudden and disastrous storms--the shores uninhabited, or tenanted only here and there by the inhospitable savage. Latitude and longitude and clime were all to be changed, and changed too by a long stretch--not long perhaps to such a voyager as Captain Cook, or Captain Parry; but yet long and dubious, and in no small degree romantic, to one, who had never been accustomed to the wilder regions of the new world. To go up among the Indians, the savages of the wilderness! and be their guest, far from the territories of civilized man! Who has not listened in the nursery to the tales of Indian wars, of the tomahawk and scalping knife, of the midnight massacre and burning of villages and towns; of the mother butchered with her infant in her arms; of the grey head, and man in full vigour of life, slaughtered together; and a train of tender captives, driven away to glut the vengeance of the savage, by the endurance of every imaginable torture;--until the story has thrilled his blood with horror, and he refused to be left in his bed, till his nurse, who had frightened him, had sung him to sleep? And although he may have stood corrected in his maturer years, and entertained less horrible notions of the savage, still he can never altogether efface his first impressions. The poetry of his feelings often overpowers his judgment, and he not only anticipates much from the sight of a savage in his native regions and costume; but he involuntarily shrinks from the peculiar, rigid, and stern aspect of his countenance; shudders at the thought of what may possibly be working in his soul; and calculates a thousand imaginable results of an interview, which perchance has placed him in the power of such an unsocial and awful being. There stands before him a naked man, with visage painted horrible, whose every muscle demonstrates his custom to exertion and fatigue, who knows not how to smile; who never sleeps, or wakes, but that a weapon of death is girded to his side, or borne in his hand; who is a creature of passion, and inflexible in his purpose, when once resolved; who conceals his thoughts beneath his imperturbable countenance; who never betrays his emotions, however deep and strong they are;--who can be indifferent in such society? But we must not anticipate the scenes to come.

Having made the reader already so much acquainted with Lake Erie, we will not detain him long upon a sea familiar to his thoughts. It may be remarked, that the surface of this lake is five hundred and seventy-five feet above high water on the Hudson river at Albany, the Eastern termination of the Erie canal. The rapids and Falls of Niagara, the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and the general descent of these waters to the ocean, make the difference.

About the 20th of July, 1830, we embarked at Buffalo in the steam-packet, _Superior_, for Detroit, and made the passage in two days, skirting the southern shore, and touching at the principal ports, without remarkable incident, except an unpleasant encounter with an army of musquitoes in the bay of Sandusky, which were taken on board at the port of the same name, in lieu of passengers left behind; and whose audaciousness, ferocity, and blood-thirstiness, were enough to make one out of temper with the place; and which, notwithstanding all attempts to ward off their assaults, inflicted upon us many deep and annoying impressions.

Lake Erie is unchequered by islands, till we begin to approach its western regions; where, instead of an open sea, the beautiful and curving shores of the main land, and of the insular territories, covered as they generally are with unbroken forests, and opening channels and bays in every direction, lend a vision of enchantment, rarely equalled, to the eye of the passenger, borne along upon the bosom of the deep. It presents the aspects of nature, in all her chasteness, untouched, inviolate; and when the wind is lulled, and the face of the waters becomes a sea of glass, it is nature’s holiest sabbath; and seems to forbid the approach and trespass of the dashing engine, which rushes forward in fury and envy of the scene; while the passenger, wrought to ecstacy in contemplation of the novel exhibition, shrinks back within himself involuntarily, as if in fear of some sudden retribution from above, for the daring violation of this sacred retreat of nature’s repose. In a mood like this, the stranger enters the river of Detroit, almost level with its banks, fancies he hears the thunders of old Maldon, (a British fort on the Canada side at the mouth of the river), gazes at the mean and sordid huts of the unambitious French, (for however unexpected the announcement, there are no people in the world more distant from ambition, than the French of Canada),--admires the lightness and celerity, which characterize the movements of the Indian canoe, filled with copper-coloured faces and uncovered heads, and darting up and down and across the stream, in obedience to the paddles, which enter the water so still and with so little apparent effort, as scarcely to disturb the surface;--and soon finds himself laid in the docks of a busy and flourishing port, presenting handsome streets and handsome steeples, itself the ancient seat of Indian war and Indian romance, identified and connected with a history like romance.