Through this tower, every evening, the miners, when dismissed for the day, are compelled to pass out one by one, and submit themselves to an examination, where their clothes are thoroughly searched, that none of the precious metal may be carried away secreted upon the person. So extreme is the vigilance employed that visitors are never allowed, except by special permit, and though isolated upon the waters, the place is kept by day and night under this strict martial surveillance.
To the north, about a quarter of a mile distant, is another island, perhaps six or eight acres in extent. It is high and rocky, and in one place reaches up more than a hundred feet. Here, built upon its sloping side, is the little settlement that could count up altogether, it might be, thirty houses. Here the miners live with their families. Here, too, every thing that pertains to the business of the place carries itself on; and here it was that father had brought me to stay.
I was about eighteen years old then. I do not know how father happened to receive the position of assistant overseer at the mine. I never knew very much about father. Indeed I had hardly seen him more than half a dozen times in my life, until that day he came to take me from the farm. I could not remember my mother, who died in my infancy, and brother or sister I had none. Father was a morose, unsociable man by nature, and I think he cared but very little for me. I had been left at my uncle’s to grow up, and so, as I said, about him I knew almost nothing.
Uncle George lived on a poverty-stricken farm upon the flattest of prairies. I hardly know how I did grow up there, it was such a wretched, miserable place. Although I had never experienced any thing different, it was so forlorn an existence, that I chafed inwardly against it every hour. I possessed a kind of dumb consciousness that surely, surely I must be made for something better than this. I saw nothing of the world, nothing of humanity outside of my uncle’s family, and the two or three rough farm hands that he occasionally employed. I would rather have had the cattle, the poor half-starved cattle, for companions than these. They were none of them kind to me. I know not whether father ever paid any thing for my board; but I know I worked far harder than any hired servant. I did not rebel outwardly, but I was constantly unhappy. Was I to live on all my days in this hopeless, miserable way? Was there never to be any thing better? Looking out of the window, I thought of the great, busy world, and the far-off, unknown cities; but before my eyes there was only a dead level of the hateful yellow prairie, and above, the colorless sky stretched itself out in a gigantic, measureless blank.
From this life it was that father came, without word or warning, and took me. I know now that he only wanted me with him as a convenience, but then I was wild with delight. In my great craving for human sympathy I would have loved father with all my heart, had he given me any encouragement. I did love him for this one good deed. I knew not where he was taking me, but I was sure it could be no worse place. With an intense joy I went up and surveyed, for the last time, the miserable little room where I had vainly cried so many hot tears over my weary existence. I stayed my steps a moment beside the one window, a little window facing westward. From here I had seen the only beauty that ever came before my passionate eyes flame up with a splendor, as of gold, along the sky when the sun went down. A thousand times my yearning heart had watched the short-lived glory fade, like a mockery, into the dreary blank. From here, too, year by year, with a rank rebellion in my soul, I had looked out at the shadowless prairie that lay over all the earth, a great, glaring, uncovered, yellow blister.
So it was with nothing but glad emotion that I stood upon the spot consciously for the last time. I had a keen, absorbing love of the beautiful, a hunger insatiable, that unfed was sapping my life. This wretched existence had almost killed me; but for the change I believe that my longing spirit, like my mother’s in the far past, would have broken its wings. Now there was an avenue of escape suddenly opened up before me—of escape from the dreadful monotony, from the intolerable agony of everlasting sameness that, by day and night, recurring forever, had made up the tiresome years as they passed. My whole being was turned to my father with one inspiration of gratitude.
Had I known any thing of Pythagoras then, almost I could have believed in the transmigration of souls, or that my spirit had passed into some different body, so utterly strange and new I felt at Silver Islet. Here father had rented a little house that stood apart from the rest, upon the very highest point. The whole settlement was grouped within the least possible compass, and considerable of the island, small as it was, still remained in its original condition. There were no trees immediately about our house, but to the right, and running thinly all the way down on the other side to the water, a few straggling pines clung, with their rope-like roots, to the rocks. It was no trouble to me to keep house for only one. I got the breakfast and supper, and every morning put up a dinner for father, which he took with him to the mine. So all day I was left wholly to myself.
As I said, so strange and new I felt it seemed to me for a while as if I had lost my own identity. Here, for the first time in my life, there lay before my eyes a vast expanse of glittering waves—the mighty mystery of far-reaching waters! Rolling, moving, changing, remaining for endless ages, attracting, terrifying—only the mightier mystery of eternity can fathom the hidden secret of this unceasing problem. A hush fell upon my fluttering spirits, a hush of profound awe before this symbol, this vision of the unknown infinite. At last the cry of my soul for food was silenced, the dreadful hunger of my heart, that through all my life I could not allay, was pacified.
At dawn I saw the timid light creep up along the east and wait and brighten, until it set an emblazoned standard in the sky, and below, far out, covered with the pomp of the rising sun, the distant billows clashed their blood-red shields. At noon, I saw the mid-day radiance, falling through the air in torrents of splendor, float far and near, changing into gorgeous mosaics upon the sea. At night I saw the long line of mighty cliffs upon the silent Canadian shore reach out their giant shadow through the dusk of evening that, slowly, softly, gathered into a twilight sweeter than the luminous haze of a dream.
I had no one to care for me, no friend, no lover, but I needed none now. I was happy, happy as in a new and glorious world. I forgot the dreadful prairie, dry and parched—the vast, staring, level of land that for so many years had oppressed me by its terrible, never ending monotony. I even forgot the thousand times I had longed and longed to see a great city, to live among its busy throng.