TRAITS OF A SUMMER TOURIST.
No. I.
Hamlet. I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.
But what, in faith, make you from Wirtenburg?
Horatio. A truant disposition, good my lord!
Hamlet.
Steaming from Washington to Baltimore is an improvement upon that route at least. “I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and say ‘all is barren;’” was the beneficent dictum of a philosopher as wise as he was witty,—but he never travelled on the post-road from the Monumental city to the capital of the western world. If he had, I fear that precious morceau of pitiful cosmopolitism would have never fallen from his pen.
The locomotive Andrew Jackson whirled us by a series of fields, of which one will serve as a sample. It consisted of about three acres, from the surface of which a few weakly, wilting, pea-green shoots were starting reluctantly upwards, and which nine negroes were trying to make a corn-field of, by dint of most desperate hoeing. Patches of rye and wheat were seen also, at intervals, most forcibly illustrating the condition of Egyptian fields in the seven years of famine of Joseph's time. It was plain that this section of the country, (as Mr. Senator G—— remarked to the representative for the district,) was fit for nothing else than to make rail roads of.
At the end of “The Thomas Viaduct,” a beautiful piece of mechanism, by the way, is the “Viaduct Hotel,” not so beautiful. As we passed, several of the Light Corps of the city [Baltimore] were “standing at ease” by the door of the hotel. They had gone out thither to spend the day of our nation's birth, in drinking mint-julaps, and watching the passing and repassing of the rail road cars. It seemed to be an object with them to discover, as we flew onward, who, of all the grandees who had just concluded those labors which had for seven months been making Washington so famous, were forming a part of our freight. The senator was for stopping the cars, and giving the representative a chance at the stump, before so goodly an array of his constituents. But whether he thought the audience not “fit,” nor “few” enough for such a display, I could not discover—the Colonel declined the proposal.
Commend me to mine host of the Exchange! Page's is the very home of good order, good cheer, good company, and all else that is good,—the very place where one may ask, with a confidence defying negation, “Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?” We found our rooms commodious and airy, and soon saw reason to bless our forethought, in having pre-engaged our accommodations, while compassionating the “potent, grave, and reverend seniors” of the land, as they cubiculated on pallets in the dining-rooms, and were, in some instances, denied the liberty to hang for the night upon a hat-hook! Always engage rooms a week before hand, considerate traveller.
Who shall adequately describe what has so often been dwelt upon by tourists, the distinctive peculiarities of the older cities of the Union? To attempt it were “damnable iteration.” Suffice it therefore to say, that Baltimore has beautiful brick edifices, with pure white marble porches and porticoes—several splendid public buildings, among which none is more deserving of particular mention, inside and outside, than the Unitarian Church, (although Baltimoreans generally “stump” on the Cathedral,) two monuments, one in questionable and the other in unquestionable taste—and upon the whole, neat, clean, orderly, and well-kept streets. She has here and there public fountains, supplied with ever-flowing streams of the purest water,—baths, places of public amusement, (although theatrical entertainments are not much in favor there,) shot-towers, hotels, newspapers, steamboats, rail roads, and pretty women in great abundance. Few cities possess a more refined or more generally diffused taste for music, painting, architecture, and the fine arts in general, than Baltimore. Her present situation, in a commercial and enterprising point of view, is extremely encouraging; and recent legislation in regard to internal improvements will doubtless have a very beneficial effect upon her fortunes.
A steamboat burned to the water's edge last night, at one of the wharves, and a boy was consumed as he was sleeping in the cabin! It was a pleasure boat, and had been running to different points in the neighborhood of the city all the day previous. The unfortunate boy who lost his life was a wanderer from New York, and had been permitted by the captain to sleep and board in the cabin, until a vessel in which he was about to go to sea, was ready to sail. He had retired to rest, after a day of toil to him, though of pleasure to those upon whom he had been waiting, as one of the hands on board the boat; and met his horrible fate while sleeping in innocent unconsciousness of danger. The neglect of the watchman who had been entrusted with the care of the boat, was the cause of the fire, that unfaithful officer having left his charge to join in a carousal in the town. How fearful a thought, that all our enjoyments are obtained by others' pains! The smiles that deck the faces of the few are watered in their growth by the tears of the many.
How neglectful of the minutiæ of comfort and convenience are most of those who cater for the traveller's enjoyment in his journeyings along these great thoroughfares of our country! Here are we, arrived in the city of brotherly love, upon one of the very hottest days in the year, and upon asking for rooms at a new and much vaunted hotel, are ushered into a suite of three flights of stairs, and glowing, almost hissing, with the concentrated rays of the meridian sun, shining through crimson curtains—“Think of that, Master Brook,”—crimson curtains, in weather to set the very mercury in the thermometer a bubbling! As honest Jack said upon a not dissimilar occasion, “it was a miracle to 'scape suffocation!” What salamanders must be the people of the M—— house! We could not stand it, and so, after one night's parboiling, we turned our backs upon the rectangular city, resolved never to “tarry” there, in summer time again, until she had her Tremont, her Page's, or her Astor's to receive and accommodate us.
Arrived at New York, I was told that half the town were “out of town”—a comfortable assurance, methought, for we can have our choice of quarters. Yet were we three hours in finding a place whereon to lay our heads! I soon learned that by “the town” was meant that wandering, gossipping, gadding, sight-seeking, lionizing, country-visiting portion of this great Babel, who make it a point to spend all “the months that have no R,” at the crowded watering places of their own and the neighboring states. But they have left the streets as noisy, as crowded, and as business-like as ever, and a stranger feels quizzed when told that they are empty.
The sail up the Hudson is full of interest, and thousands are now daily enjoying the many attractions it presents to the traveller. As the city at this season is any thing but delightful, I got on board the good steamer Erie, (to which commend me ever,) and bade adieu to hot streets, and the crowded thorough-fares for a season. On my return I may find it worthy of a sketch or two.
The Hudson is very broad near its mouth, or junction with the East River, at the harbor of New York. Hoboken, New Brighton, Jersey City, and Staten Island, besides Brooklyn on the East, lie invitingly contiguous, and are attained by steamboats constantly running thither at every hour in the day. As they are all plentifully provided with green lawns, and cool shades, to say nothing of numerous houses of refreshment, you may be assured, that in the hot season, they are by no means vacant. As you go up the river, and leave the island on which the great city is laid out, on your right, the first prominent object that strikes your eye is Fort Lee on the left, which the map tells us is ten miles from New York. This was an important post in the revolutionary contest, and is now in ruins. Its position is admirable, standing on the bluff which commences the celebrated Palisadoes. These extend twenty miles up the river, and are curious ridges of rocks, from two to six hundred feet high, very much resembling that species of defence, whence they derive their name. Passing along, the traveller is prompted by the guide books to look at Tappan Bay, where the celebrated Andre attempted to take an advantage of the treason of the despicable Arnold, which would have been fatal to the cause of liberty, but for the fidelity of some of the American scouts. The spy was executed very near this place. The next place of interest is Sing-Sing, where is one of the New York State Prisons. As we intended to visit the more interesting one at Auburn, we did not stop here, but casting a glance at the Sleepy Hollow of Irving's Rip Van Winkle, we glided on, and soon entered The Highlands.
I had never imagined that any thing half so grand and so picturesque awaited us on our up-river jaunt. The half had not been told. Besides the splendor of the scenery,—the tremendous hills and ravines on one side, and the gently levelling upland and lowland fields and meadows, full of fertility and the promise of rich harvests, on the other,—there were a thousand associations with the early history of our Republic, especially with that interesting period, when “men's souls were tried,” which rendered it a continuous and uninterrupted scene of thrilling and exciting interest. Stony Point and old Wayne, Forts Montgomery and Clinton with Gates, Sir Henry Clinton, and “Old Put,” Independence, Bloody Pond, General Vaughan, James Clinton, and a thousand other places and names throng upon the memory, and tell the tale over again of a most interesting part of that glorious struggle for freedom by our brave fathers.
On one of the boldest and most commanding of those highland eminences, the traveller soon perceives the moss-grown battlements of Fort Putnam, over-hanging the barracks of the Military Academy at West Point. As the steamboat passes this headland, Kosciusko's monument, erected by order of government, is discerned, and then the hotel comes in sight. Intending to stop at mine host Cozzens' on our way down the river, we did not land, but went on to Catskill landing, where we debarked, and took stage for the celebrated Mountain House, at Pine Orchard. This is a grove situated on the table land near the summit of one of the most lofty of the Catskills, and is more than two thousand feet above the level of the Hudson. We found there a most commodious hotel, the view from the front piazza of which is exceedingly picturesque. We experienced a great change in the weather upon reaching the Mountain House, having left an almost torrid climate at the foot of the hill, and finding it cold enough at the top for a fire. We therefore retired to rest, after this, our first day's journey, with great expectation for the morn.
Salvator Rosa alone could do justice to the scenery around Pine Orchard. The pencil of modern artists may find much here to furnish a fitting subject for their attempts, and they may succeed in giving pleasing sketches from its inexhaustible sources of picturesque and romantic illustration. But it requires the hand of that great painter of the grand, the sublime, the stupendous, fitly to illustrate that scenery.
You look down three thousand feet into a valley, stretching over an hundred miles in one direction, and more than half that distance in the other, in the midst of which runs the river Hudson, covered at this season with craft of various descriptions, which, from that great elevation, seem mimic boats upon a rivulet. At your feet a rocky precipice descends perpendicularly, the depth of which it is impossible to estimate, as it has never been explored, and loses itself, to the eye of the gazer from the summit, amidst the rude and tangled masses of primeval forest, stretching downward to the distant valley, verdantly sloping to the river's banks. This is the scene presented to the sojourner at the Mountain House, and its many changes, like those of a panorama, render the prospect intensely interesting, in every aspect of the weather.
Having enjoyed this first gush of picturesque beauty, you are reminded, by the daily arrival of the proper vehicles at the door, of a scene of yet more mingled romance,—the cascades of Canterskill. These lie at the termination of a delightful woodland path, along the side of which flows a smooth and quiet stream, taking its rise in a lake upon which you bestow, as you pass, a gratified glance. Following this rivulet you come suddenly to the brink of a tremendous precipice, shelving down between woody mountains, with rough rocky ravines, seemingly unattainable by human feet. But your guide holds a clue, following which you soon attain a level formed of sandstone and gray-wacke, and await the fall of the water from the edge of the precipice, one hundred and seventy-five feet above. As the water at this season runs low, the proprietor has taken the precaution to dam it up above the precipice, and so lets it fall when a company of visiters demand it. This fall is very beautiful. No obstacle intervenes to break the silvery sheet as it descends, and, as it comes over the rough edges of the rock at top, it assumes a form as of feathery spray, which is sometimes so thin and vapory, as to float away without reaching the level at all. Descending eighty feet farther, you see the second fall, the termination of which is even more grand and savage than the upper level. Here you may see both falls at the same instant, and from a situation which challenges another attribute of grandeur and sublimity to enhance the perfect enchantment of the scene.
We lingered at Catskill several days in a sort of dreamy state of quiet enjoyment,—now fishing, now roving among the woods, now stretched on the brink of the Pine Orchard looking listlessly down upon the impenetrable forests, the smiling, sunny valleys, or the silver thread of water, on which seemed
“———the tall anchoring bark
Diminished to her cock,—her cock a bouy
Almost too small for sight”
and where the many steamers that smoke their daily course along the Hudson, seemed like some tiny utensil discharging its culinary office. There would we gaze upon the lifting fog-banks at morning, watching the sunbeams as they gradually struggled forth to irradiate, first the distant valley, and so diffusing thin yellow glory upward and upward, until, at length, we stood in the midst of their effulgence, and saw their vapory veil floating away over our heads, like gossamer web of the dew spider.
Nor were our household attractions few or powerless. Many visiters were at the Orchard, but there was a coterie of young ladies with their brothers and husbands from the neighboring village of the Catskill, from whose good offices and gentle hospitality we derived a great deal of additional enjoyment. Music, books, and conversation drove away ennui during those hours, when the inclemency of the weather or fatigue compelled us to suspend our out-of-door amusements, and we were thus enabled to enjoy the everlasting scenery of the Catskill, under auspices the most favorable.
New Lebanon Springs next attracted us. They lie about twenty-seven miles from Hudson, which is ten miles up the river on the opposite side, whither we went by the same steamer that had landed us at Catskill, and thence by stages to New Lebanon.
New Lebanon is a pleasant village, near the eastern line of the state of New York, lying in a most fertile and valuable tract of country, with alternations of gently sloping hills and smiling valleys, all of which seem arable and productive. The most popular public house is that to which the Spring that gives a name to the place, belongs. It is very well kept, but was far too crowded for comfort,—the day of our arrival being Saturday, and great numbers having come from Albany, Troy, Saratoga, Ballston Spa, &c. to witness the worship (?) of the Shakers on the Sabbath.
The waters of these Springs have no very decided mineral or medicinal qualities,—but as they are very profuse in their flow, and as their temperature is always rising of seventy degrees, Fahrenheit, they are delightful for bathing in the summer season. The proprietors have, accordingly, fitted up commodious bathing houses, which are very well attended, and afford, by no means, the weakest attraction to be found at New Lebanon. But even in this respect they cannot be compared with the Warm and Hot Springs of Bath county in Virginia.
The truth is, New Lebanon invites the visiter more by the salubrity of its climate, the rural beauty of its scenery, the quiet seclusion which it offers to the town-weary traveller, and more than all, by its accessibility from so many populous parts of the country, than by any magic virtues possessed or imparted by its “springs,” and all these inducements combine to keep the pretty little village full to overflowing from spring to autumn. I saw many visiters from the southern states there among the rest, and was gratified to learn that there is an annual increase of business at “Columbian Hall.” In my next I shall describe a scene at the Shaker's Church.
VIATOR.