A Tour to the River Saguenay, in Lower Canada

by Charles Lanman

One sight more did we behold before reaching the summit of South Peak. It was the sunset hour, and on a jutting cliff which commanded an immense view, our eyes were delighted by the sight of a deer, standing still, and looking down upon the silent void below, which was then covered with a deep purple atmosphere, causing the prospect to resemble the boundless ocean. It was the last of its race we could not but fancy, bidding the human world good night, previous to taking to its heathery couch in a nameless ravine.

One effort more and the long-desired eminence was attained, and we were a little nearer the evening star than we had ever been before. It was now the hour of twilight, and as we were about done over with fatigue, it was not long before we had pitched our leafy tent, eaten some supper, and yielded ourselves to the embrace of sleep, “dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!”

At midnight, a cooling breath of air having passed across my face, I was awakened from a fearful dream, which left me in a nervous and excited state of mind. A strange and solemn gloom had taken possession of my spirit, which was greatly enhanced by the doleful song of a neighboring hemlock grove. Our encampment having been made a little below the summit of the peak, and feeling anxious to behold the prospect at that hour, from that point, I awakened my companion, and we seated ourselves upon the topmost rock, which was nearly bare of shrubs, but covered with a rich moss, softer and more beautiful than the finest carpet. But how can I describe the scene that burst upon our enraptured vision? It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, creating a lone, lost feeling, which I supposed could only be realized by a wanderer in an uninhabited wilderness, or on the ocean, a thousand leagues from home. Above, around and beneath us, ay, far beneath us, were the cold bright stars, and to the eastward the “young moon with the old moon in her arms.” In the west were floating a little band of pearly clouds, which I almost fancied to be winged chariots, and that they were crowded with children, the absent and loved of other years, who, in a frolic of blissful joy, were out upon the fields of heaven. On one side of us reposed the long broad valley of the Hudson, with its cities, towns, villages, woods, hills and plains, whose crowded highway was diminished to a narrow girdle of deep blue. Towards the south, hill beyond hill, field beyond field receded to the sky, occasionally enlivened by a peaceful lake. On our right a multitudinous array of rugged mountains lay piled up, apparently as impassable as the bottomless gulf. In the north, old High Peak, King of the Catskills, bared his bosom to the moonlight, as if demanding and expecting the homage of the world. Strange and magnificent, indeed, was the prospect from that mountain watch-tower, and it was with reluctance that we turned away, as in duty bound, to slumber until the dawn. The dawn! and now for a sunrise picture among the mountains, with all the illusive performances of the mists and clouds! He comes! he comes! “the king of the bright days!” Now the crimson and golden clouds are parting, and he bursts on the bewildered sight! One moment more, and the whole earth rejoices in his beams, falling alike as they do upon the prince and the peasant of every land. And now, on either side and beneath the sun an array of new-born clouds are gathering—like a band of cavaliers, preparing to accompany their leader on a journey. Out of the Atlantic have they just arisen; at noon, they will have pitched their tents on the cerulean plains of heaven; and when the hours of day are numbered, the far-off waters of the Pacific will again receive them in its cool embrace. Listen! was not that the roar of waves? Naught but the report of thunder in the valley below. Are not the two oceans coming together? See! we are on a rock in the midst of an illimitable sea, and the tide is surely rising—rising rapidly! Strange! it is still as death, and yet the oceans are covered with billows! Lo! the naked masts of a ship, stranded on a lee shore!—and yonder, as if a reef were hidden there to impede their course, the waves are struggling in despair, now leaping to the sky, and now plunging into a deep abyss! And when they have passed the unseen enemy, how rapid and beautiful are their various evolutions, as they hasten to the more distant shore! Another look, and what a change! The mists of morning are being exhaled by the rising sun, already the world of waters is dispersed, and in the valley of the Hudson, far, far away, are reposing all the enchanting features of the green earth.

We descended the mountain by a circuitous route, that we might enjoy the luxury of passing through Plauterkill Clove. The same spring that gives rise to Schoharie Creek, which is the principal tributary of the Mohawk, also gives rise to the Plauterkill. In its very infancy, it begins to leap and laugh with the gladness of a boy. From its source to the plain, the distance is only two miles, and yet it has a fall of twenty-five hundred feet; but the remainder of its course, until it reaches the Esopus, is calm and picturesque, and on every side, and at every turn, may be seen the farm-houses of a sturdy yeomanry.

The wild gorge or dell through which it passes, abounds in waterfalls of surpassing beauty, varying from ten to a hundred feet in height, whose rocks are green with the moss of centuries, and whose brows are ever wreathed with the most exquisite of vines and flowers. Here is the double leap, with its almost fathomless pool, containing a hermit trout that has laughed at the angler’s skill for a score of years; the fall of the Mountain Spirit, haunted, as it is said, by the disembodied spirit of an Indian girl, who lost her life here while pursuing a phantom of the brain; and here is the Blue-bell Fall, forever guarded by a multitudinous array of those charming flowers. Caverns, too, and chasms are here, dark, deep, chilly and damp; where the toad, the lizard and snake, and strange families of insects, are perpetually multiplying, and actually seeming to enjoy their loathsome lives; and here is the Black Chasm, and the Devil’s Chamber, the latter with a perpendicular wall of twice the height of old Trinity, and with a wainscoting of pines and hemlocks which have “braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze.” Plauterkill Clove is an eddy of the great and tumultuous world, and in itself a world of unwritten poetry, whose primitive loveliness has not yet been disfigured by the influence of Mammon. It has been consecrated by a brotherhood of friends, well-tried and true, to the pure religion of Nature; and after spending a summer-day therein, and then emerging under the open sky, their feelings are always allied to those of a pilgrim in a strange land, passing through the dreamy twilight of an old cathedral.

But it is time that I should change my tune, as I desire to record a few fishing adventures which I have lately experienced among the Catskills. My first excursion was performed along the margin of Sweetwater Brook, which flows out of the lake already mentioned. My guide and companion was a notorious hunter of this region, named Peter Hummel, whose services I have engaged for all my future rambles among the mountains. He is, decidedly, one of the wildest and rarest characters I have ever known, and would be a valuable acquisition to a menagerie. He was born in a little hut at the foot of South Peak, is twenty-seven years of age, and has never been to school a day in his life, nor, in his travels towards civilization, further away from home than fifteen miles. He was educated for a bark-gatherer, his father and several brothers having always been in the business; but Peter is averse to common-place labor, to anything, in fact, that will bring money. When a boy of five years, he had an inkling for the mountains, and once had wandered so far, that he was found by his father in the den of an old bear, playing with her cubs. To tramp among the mountains, with a gun and dog, is Peter’s chief and only happiness. He is, probably, one of the best specimens of a hunter now living; and very few, I fancy, could have survived the dangers to which he has exposed himself. As to his constitution, he seems to be one of those iron mortals who never die with age and infirmity, but who generally meet with a sudden death, as if to recompense them for their heedlessness. But with all his wildness and recklessness, Peter Hummel is as amiable and kind-hearted a man as ever breathed. He is an original wit withal, and shrewd and very laughable are many of his speeches, and his stories are the cream of romance and genuine mountain poetry.

But to my story. As usual, we started on our tramp at an early hour, he with a trout-basket in his hand, containing our dinner, and I with my sketch-book and a “pilgrim staff.” After a tiresome ascent of three hours up the side of a mountain, over ledges, and through gloomy ravines, we at last reached the wished-for brook. All the day long were we cheered by its happy song, as we descended; now leaping from one deep pool to another, and now scrambling over green-coated rocks, under and around fallen trees, and along the damp, slippery sides of the mountains, until we reached its mouth on a plain, watered by a charming river, and sprinkled with the rustic residences of the Dutch yeomanry. We were at home by sunset, having walked the distance of twenty miles, and captured one hundred and fifty trout, the most of which we distributed among the farm-houses in our way, as we returned. The trout were quite small, varying from three to eight ounces in weight, and of a dark-brown color.

On another occasion, I had taken my sketch-book and some fishing tackle, and gone up a mountain road to the banks of Schoharie Creek, nominally for the purpose of sketching a few trees. In the very first hole of the stream into which I accidentally peered, I discovered a large trout, lying near the bottom, just above a little bed of sand, whence rose the bubbles of a spring. For some thirty minutes I watched the fellow with a “yearning tenderness,” but as he appeared to be so very happy, and I was in a kindred mood, I thought that I would let him live. Presently, however, a beautiful fly lighted on the water, which the greedy hermit swallowed in a minute, and returned to his cool bed, with his conscience, as I fancied, not one whit troubled by what he had done. Involuntarily I began to unwind my line, and having cut a pole, and repeated to myself something about “diamond cut diamond,” I whipped on a red hackle, and passed it over the pool. The rogue of a trout, however, saw me, and scorned for a while to heed my line; but I coaxed and coaxed until, at last, he darted for it, apparently out of mere spite. Something similar to a miniature water-spout immediately arose, and the monarch of the brook was in a fair way of sharing the same fate which had befallen the innocent fly. I learned a salutary lesson from this incident, and as I had yielded to the temptation of the brook, I shouldered my sketch-book with a strap, and descended the stream. At noon, I reached a farm-house, where I craved something to eat. A good dinner was given me, which was seasoned by many questions, and some information concerning trout. That afternoon, in company with a little boy, I visited a neighboring stream, called the Roaring Kill, where I caught one hundred and sixty fish. I then returned to the farm-house, and spent the evening in conversation with my new acquaintances. After breakfast, on the following morning, I set out for home, and reached there about noon, having made only two additions to my sketches. Long shall I remember the evening spent with this family, and their hospitality towards an entire stranger. A pleasant family was that night added to my list of friends.

Another of my trouting pilgrimages was to a famous place called Stony Clove, among the mountains of Shandaken. It is a deep perpendicular cut or gorge between two mountains, two thousand feet in depth, from twenty feet to four hundred in width, and completely lined from base to summit with luxuriant vegetation. It is watered by a narrow but deep brook, which is so full of trout that some seven hundred were captured by myself and two others in a single day. When I tell my readers that this spot is only about one hundred miles from New York, they will be surprised to learn that in its immediate vicinity we saw no less than two bears, one doe with two fawns, and other valuable game. In some parts of this clove the sunshine never enters, and whole tons of the purest ice may be found there throughout the year. It is, indeed, a most lonely and desolate corner of the world, and might be considered a fitting type of the valley of the shadow of death; in single file did we have to pass through that gorge, and in single file do the sons of men pass into the grave. To spend one day there we had to encamp two nights, and how we generally manage that affair I will mention presently.

In returning from Stony Clove, we took a circuitous route, and visited the Mountain House. We approached it by way of the celebrated Catskill Falls, which I will describe in the graphic language of Cooper, as my readers may not remember the passage in his Pioneer. “Why, there’s a fall in the hills, where the water of two little ponds, that lie near each other, breaks out of their bounds, and runs over the rocks into the valley. The stream is, may be, such a one as would turn a mill, if so useless a thing was wanted in the wilderness. But the hand that made that ‘Leap’ never made a mill! Then the water comes croaking and winding among the rocks, first so slow that a trout might swim in it, and then starting and running, like any creature that wanted to make a fair spring, till it gets to where the mountain divides, like the cleft foot of a deer, leaving a deep hollow for the brook to tumble into. The first pitch is nigh two hundred feet, and the water looks like flakes of snow afore it touches the bottom, and then gathers itself together again for a new start, and, may be, flutters over fifty feet of flat rock, before it falls for another hundred feet, when it jumps from shelf to shelf, first running this way and that way, striving to get out of the hollow, till it finally comes to the plain.”