The house that once stood where now is but a reach of abandoned and wasting meadow was erected in 1668 or possibly a little earlier. Its nearest neighbor was across a narrow creek, and a portion of the old building is said to be still standing. Armed with the few facts that are on record, it is easy to picture the place as it was in the days of the Dutch, and it was vastly prettier then than it is now. The public of to-day are not interested in a useless marsh, particularly when there is better ground about it in abundance, and whoever wanders to such uncanny places is quite sure to be left severely alone. This was my experience, and, being undisturbed, I enjoyed the more my resurrective work. I could enthuse, without being laughed at, over what to others was but meaningless rubbish, and I found very much that, to me, possessed greater interest than usual, because of a mingling of late Indian and early European objects. With a handful of glass, porcelain, and amber beads were more than one hundred of copper; the former from Venice, the latter the handiwork of a Delaware Indian. With a white clay pipe, made in Holland in the seventeenth century, was found a rude brown clay one, made here in the river valley. Mingled with fragments of blue and white Delft plates, bowls, and platters, were sundried mud dishes made by women hereabouts during, who can say how many centuries? How completely history and pre-history here overlapped! We know pretty much everything about Dutchmen, but how much do we really know of the native American? After nearly thirty years’ digging, he has been traced from the days of the great glaciers to the beginnings of American history; but we cannot say how long a time that comprises. The winter of 1892-1893 was, so far as appearances went, a return to glacial times. Ice was piled up fifty feet in height, and the water turned from the old channel of the river. The cutting of another one opened up new territory for the relic hunter when the ice was gone and the stream had returned to its old bed. Many an Indian wigwam site that had been covered deep with soil was again warmed by the springtide sun, and those were rare days when, from the ashes of forgotten camps, I raked the broken weapons and rude dishes that the red men had discarded. It was reading history at first hands, without other commentary than your own. The ice-scored gravel-beds told even an older story; but no one day’s digging was so full of meaning, or brought me so closely in touch with the past, as when I uncovered what remained of the old Dutch trader’s house; traced the boundaries of the one-time pleasure-garden, hearing in the songs of birds the clinking of glasses, and then, in fancy, adding to the now deserted landscape the fur-laden canoes of the Indians who once gathered here to exchange for the coveted gaudy beads the skins of the many animals which at that time roamed the forests.
CHAPTER
FOURTEENTH
DRIFTING
Make an early start if you wish an eventful outing. Why know the world only when the day is middle-aged or old? A wise German has said, “The morning hour has gold in its mouth.” For many a rod after leaving the wharf the river still “smoked,” and the scanty glimpses between the rolling clouds of mist spurred the imagination. There was nothing certain beyond the gunwales. The pale-yellow color of the water near at hand and the deep-green and even black of that in the distance had no daytime suggestiveness. It was not yet the familiar river with its noonday glitter of blue and silver.
It is not strange that the initial adventure to which the above-mentioned conditions naturally gave rise occurred while this state of uncertainty continued. Very soon I ran upon a snag. To strike such an object in mid-river was rather startling. Was I not in or near the channel? Steamboats come puffing and plowing here and sailing craft pass up and down, so my only care had been to avoid them; but now there came in my path the twisted trunk of an old forest tree and held me fast. All the while the mist rose and fell, giving no inkling of my whereabouts. In the dim, misty light what a strange sea-monster this resurrected tree-trunk seemed to be! Its thick green coat of silky threads lay closely as the shining fur of the otter, a mane of eel-grass floated on the water, the gnarly growths where branches once had been glistened as huge eyes, and broken limbs were horns that threatened quick destruction. There was motion, too. Slowly it rose above the water and then as slowly sunk from view. Could it be possible that some long-necked saurian of the Jersey marls had come to life? Nonsense; and yet so real did it seem that I was ready for the river-horse to rise
“from the waves beneath,