VOL. I.
Philadelphia:
CAREY, LEA, & BLANCHARD.
1835.
Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1835, by CAREY, LEA, & BLANCHARD, in the clerk's office of the district court for the eastern district of Pennsylvania.
I. Ashmead & Co. Printers.
| [INTRODUCTION] | |||
| CHAPTERS | |||
| VOLUME I | VOLUME II | ||
| [I] | [XI] | [I] | [XI] |
| [II] | [XII] | [II] | [XII] |
| [III] | [XIII] | [III] | [XIII] |
| [IV] | [XIV] | [IV] | [XIV] |
| [V] | [XV] | [V] | [XV] |
| [VI] | [XVI] | [VI] | [XVI] |
| [VII] | [XVII] | [VII] | [XVII] |
| [VIII] | [XVIII] | [VIII] | [XVIII] |
| [IX] | [XIX] | [IX] | [XIX] |
| [X] | [XX] | [X] | [XX] |
INTRODUCTION.
| "Escúchame, y no me creas Despues de haberme escuchado"— |
"Hear me, but don't believe me, after you have heard"—says Calderon, the Spanish dramatic poet, with a droll spirit of honesty, only equalled by the English Burton, who concludes the tale of the Prebend, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, by exclaiming, "You have heard my tale; but, alas! it is but a tale,—a mere fiction: 'twas never so, never like to be,—and so let it rest." We might imitate the frankness of these ancient worthies, in regard to the degree of credit which should be accorded to our tradition; but it would be at an expense of greater space and tediousness than we care to bestow upon the reader. We could not declare, in the same wholesale way, that the following narrative is a mere fabrication, for such it is not; while to let the reader into the secret, and point out the different facts (for facts there are) that are interwoven with the long gossamer web of fiction, would be a work of both time and labour.
We have always held the Delaware to be the finest and noblest river in the world,—not, indeed, that it is so, but because that was a cardinal item in our creed of childhood; and to all such points of belief we hold as strongly as we can, philosophy and experience to the contrary notwithstanding. They are holy and useful, though flimsy, ties—little pieces of rose-coloured pack-thread that keep sorted together whole bundles of pleasant reminiscences, and therefore as precious in our esteem as shreds of gold and silver. In consequence of this persuasion, we have learned to attach importance to every little legend of adventure, in any way associated with the Ganga of our affections; and of such it has been our custom, time out of mind, to construct, at least in imagination, little fairy edifices, in which golden blocks of truth were united with a cement of fancy. A novel is, at best, a piece of Mosaic-work, of which the materials have been scraped up here and there, sometimes in an un-chronicled corner of the world itself, sometimes from the forgotten tablets of a predecessor, sometimes from the decaying pillars of history, sometimes from the little mine of precious stones that is found in the human brain—at least as often as the pearl in the toad's head, of which John Bunyan discourses so poetically, in the Apology for his Pilgrim's Progress. Of some of the pebbles that we have picked up along the banks of the Delaware, the following story has been constructed; but at what precise place they were gathered we do not think it needful to say. The torrent of fashionable summer rustication has already sent off a few little rills of visitation towards different corners of Pennsylvania, and one has begun to flow up the channel of the Delaware. In a few years——Eheu! fugaces, Posthume, Posthume!——this one will increase to a flood, all of men, women, and children, rolling on towards the Water-Gap; and then some curious individual will discover the nook into which we have been prying; and perhaps, if he chooses, come off with prizes still more valuable. At all events, he will discover—and that we hold to be something worth recording—that his eyes have seldom looked upon a more enchanting series of landscapes than stretches along this river, in one long and varied line of beauty, from New Hope and the Nockamixon Rocks, almost to its sources.
The story, such as it is, is rather a domestic tale, treating of incidents and characters common to the whole world, than one of which these components can be considered peculiarly American. This is, perhaps, unfortunate,—the tendency of the public taste seeming to require of American authors that they should confine themselves to what is, in subject, event, and character, indigenous to their own hemisphere; although such a requisition would end in reducing their materials to such a stock as might be carried about in a nut-shell. America is a part of the great world, and, like other parts, has little (that is, suited to the purposes of fiction) which it can call exclusively its own; and how far that little has been already used up, any one may tell, who is conversant with our domestic literature. Some little, however, of that little yet remains; and, by and by, we will perhaps ourselves join in the general scramble after it.
To conclude our Prolegomena—we recommend to all Philadelphians, who thirst for the breath of the mountains, and are willing to breathe it within the limits of their own noble State, to repair to the Delaware Water-Gap, sit them down in the porch of our friend Snyder, (or Schneider—we forget whether he yet sticks to the Vaterländisch orthography or not,) discourse with him concerning trout, deer, and rattlesnakes, and make themselves at home with him for a week. They will find themselves in one of the boldest mountain-passes in the United States, in the heart of a scene comprising crags, forests, and a river sprinkled with numerous islands, all striking, harmonious, and romantic. There, indeed, is neither a Round-Top nor a Mount Washington, with ladders on which to climb to heaven; but there are certain mountain ridges hard by, from whose tops he who is hardy enough to mount them, can well believe he looks down on heaven, so broad, so fair, so elysian are the prospects that stretch below. There, also, our friends will find such lime-trees as will cause them to rejoice that they have planted scions of the same noble and fragrant race at their own doors; and such a glorious display of rosebays, or rhododendrons, the noblest of American flowering shrubs, as may perhaps teach them the wisdom of transferring a few to their own gardens.
But we have not space to mention one-half the charms that await them in the Gap. If they have eyes to distinguish between the flutter of wings and loose hanging mosses, they may behold, at evening, the national bald-eagle soaring among his native cliffs, and winging to his perch on the far-up old hemlock, where they may see his reverend white head gleaming like a snow-flake among the leaves, until the wail of the whippoorwill calls the shadows of night over the whole mountain. Besides all this, and the other charms too tedious to mention, if they commend themselves to the favour of mine host, they will be roused up in the morning by the roar of a waterfall under their very pillows, and then, leaping into a boat, and rowing into the river, they may survey it at their ease,—as lovely a sheet of foam, rushing over a cliff an hundred and forty feet high, as was ever stolen from its bed of beauty to drive——'Eheu! eheu conditionem hujus temporis!'——the machinery of—a saw-mill.