Description of the Breaking up of the Ice on Hudson’s river.
Soon after this I witnessed, for the last time, the sublime spectacle of the ice breaking up on the river; an object that fills and elevates the mind with ideas of power, and grandeur, and, indeed, magnificence; before which all the triumphs of human art sink into insignificance. This noble object of animated greatness, for such it seemed, I witnessed; its approach being announced, like a loud and long peal of thunder, the whole population of Albany were down at the river side in a moment; and if it happened, as was often the case, in the morning, there could not be a more grotesque assemblage. No one who had a night-cap on waited to put it off; as for waiting for one’s cloak, or gloves, it was a thing out of the question; you caught the thing next you, that could wrap round you, and run. In the way you saw every door left open, and pails, baskets, &c. without number, set down in the street. It was a perfect saturnalia. People never dreamt of being obeyed by their slaves, till the ice was past. The houses were left quite empty: the meanest slave, the youngest child, all were to be found on the shore. Such as could walk, ran; and they that could not, were carried by those whose duty would have been to stay and attend them. When arrived at the show place, unlike the audience collected to witness any spectacle of human invention, the multitude, with their eyes all bent one way, stood immoveable, and silent as death, till the tumult ceased, and the mighty commotion was passed by; then every one tried to give vent to the vast conceptions with which his mind had been distended. Every child, and every negro, was sure to say, ‘Is not this like the day of judgment?’ and what they said every one else thought. Now to describe this is impossible; but I mean to account in some degree for it. The ice, which had been all winter very thick, instead of diminishing, as might be expected in spring, still increased, as the sunshine came, and the days lengthened. Much snow fell in February; which, melted by the heat of the sun, was stagnant, for a day, on the surface of the ice; and then by the night frosts, which were still severe, was added, as a new accession to the thickness of it, above the former surface. This was so often repeated, that in some years the ice gained two feet in thickness, after the heat of the sun became such, as one would have expected should have entirely dissolved it. So conscious were the natives of the safety this accumulation of ice afforded, that the sledges continued to drive on the ice, when the trees were budding and every thing looked like spring; nay, when there was so much melted on the surface that the horses were knee deep in water, while travelling on it; and portentous cracks, on every side, announced the approaching rupture. This could scarce have been produced by the mere influence of the sun, till midsummer. It was the swelling of the waters under the ice, increased by rivulets, enlarged by melted snows, that produced this catastrophe; for such the awful concussion made it appear. The prelude to the general bursting of this mighty mass was a fracture lengthwise, in the middle of the stream, produced by the effort of the imprisoned waters, now increased too much to be contained within their wonted bounds. Conceive a solid mass, from six to eight feet thick, bursting for many miles in one continued rupture, produced by a force inconceivably great, and, in a manner, inexpressibly sudden. Thunder is no adequate image of this awful explosion, which roused all the sleepers, within reach of the sound, as completely as the final convulsion of nature, and the solemn peal of the awakening trumpet might be supposed to do. The stream in summer was confined by a pebbly strand, overhung with high and steep banks, crowned with lofty trees, which were considered as a sacred barrier against the encroachments of this annual visitation. Never dryads dwelt in more security than those of the vine-clad elms, that extended their ample branches over this mighty stream. Their tangled nets laid bare by the impetuous torrents, formed caverns ever fresh and fragrant; where the most delicate plants flourished, unvisited by scorching suns or nipping blasts; and nothing could be more singular than the variety of plants and birds that were sheltered in these intricate and safe recesses. But when the bursting of the crystal surface set loose the many waters that had rushed down, swollen with the annual tribute of dissolving snow, the islands and low lands were all flooded in an instant; and the lofty banks, from which you were wont to overlook the stream, were now entirely filled by an impetuous torrent, bearing down, with incredible and tumultuous rage, immense shoals of ice; which, breaking every instant by the concussion of others, jammed together in some places, in others erecting themselves in gigantic heights for an instant in the air, and seeming to combat with their fellow-giants crowding on in all directions, and falling together with an inconceivable crash, formed a terrible moving picture, animated and various beyond conception; for it was not only the cerulean ice, whose broken edges combatting with the stream, refracted light into a thousand rainbows, that charmed your attention; lofty pines, large pieces of the bank torn off by the ice with all their early green and tender foliage, were driven on like travelling islands, amid the battle of breakers, for such it seemed. I am absurdly attempting to paint a scene, under which the powers of language sink. Suffice it, that this year its solemnity was increased by an unusual quantity of snow, which the last hard winter had accumulated, and the dissolution of which now threatened an inundation.
Solemn, indeed, it was to me, as the memento of my approaching journey, which was to take place whenever the ice broke, which is here a kind of epoch. The parting with all that I loved at the Flats was such an affliction, as it is even yet a renewal of sorrows to recollect. I loved the very barn and the swamp I have described so much that I could not see them for the last time without a pang. As for the island and the bank of the river, I know not how I should have parted with them, if I had thought the parting final. The good kind neighbours, and my faithful and most affectionate Marian, to whom of all others, this separation was most wounding, grieved me not a little. I was always sanguine in the extreme, and would hope against hope; but Marian, who was older, and had more common sense, knew too well how little likelihood there was of my ever returning. Often with streaming eyes and bursting sobs, she begged to know if the soul of a person dying in America could find its way over the vast ocean to join that of those who rose to the abodes of future bliss from Europe; her hope of a reunion being now entirely referred to that in a better world. There was no truth I found it so difficult to impress upon her mind as the possibility of spirits being instantaneously transported from one distant place to another; a doctrine which seemed to her very comfortable. Her agony at the final parting I do not like to think of. When I used to obtain permission to pass a little time in town, I was transported with the thoughts of the enjoyments that awaited me in the society of my patroness, and the young friends I most loved.
CHAP. LXII.
Departure from Albany—Origin of the state of Vermont.
After quitting the Flats we were to stay some days at madame’s, till we should make a circular visit, and take leave. Having lulled my disappointment with regard to Clarendon, and filled all my dreams with images of Clydesdale and Tweedale, and every other vale or dale that were the haunts of the pastoral muse in Scotland, I grew pretty well reconciled to my approaching journey, thinking I should meet piety and literature in every cottage, and poetry and music in every recess, among the sublime scenery of my native mountains. At any rate, I was sure I should hear the larks sing, and see the early primrose deck the woods, and daisies enamel the meadows; on all which privileges I had been taught to set the due value; yet I wondered very much how it was that I could enjoy nothing with such gay visions opening before me: my heart, I supposed, was honester than my imagination, for it refused to take pleasure in any thing, which was a state of mind so new to me that I could not understand it. Every where I was caressed, and none of these caresses gave me pleasure; at length the sad day came that I was to take the last farewell of my first best friend, who had often in vain urged my parents to leave me till they should decide whether to stay or return. About this they did not hesitate; nor, though they had, could I have divested myself of the desire now waked in my mind, of seeing once more my native land, which I merely loved upon trust, not having the faintest recollection of it.
Madame embraced me tenderly with many tears, at parting; and I felt a kind of prelusive anguish, as if I had anticipated the sorrows that awaited: I do not mean now the painful vicissitudes of after life, but merely the cruel disappointment that I felt in finding the scenery and its inhabitants so different from the Elysian vales and Arcadian swains that I had imagined.
When we came away, by an odd coincidence, aunt’s nephew Peter was just about to be married to a very fine young creature, whom his relations did not, for some reason that I do not remember, think suitable; while, at the very same time, her niece, Miss W. had captivated the son of a rich but avaricious man, who would not consent to his marrying her, unless aunt gave a fortune with her; which being an unusual demand, she did not choose to comply with. I was the proud and happy confidant of both these lovers; and before we left New-York we heard that each had married without waiting for the withheld consent. And thus for once madame was left without a protégée, but still she had her sister W., and soon acquired a new set of children, the orphan sons of her nephew, Cortlandt Schuyler, who continued under her care for the remainder of her life.
My voyage down the river, which was, by contrary winds, protracted to a whole week, would have been very pleasant, could any thing have pleased me. I was at least soothed by the extreme beauty of many scenes on the banks of this fine stream, which I was fated never more to behold.