Not a flattering picture, truly, and yet no doubt a trustworthy one, of this period in Oswego's history.
But we must hurry along with the poet to his destination, although the temptation to linger with him in this part of the journey is great. Indeed, "The Foresters" is a historic chronicle of no slight value. There is no doubting the fidelity of its pictures of the state of nature and of man along this storied route as seen by its author at the beginning of the century; while his poetic philosophizing is now shrewd, now absurd, but always ardently American in tone.
Our foresters undertook to coast along the Ontario shore in their frail "Niagara"; narrowly escaped swamping, and were picked up by
A friendly sloop for Queenstown Harbor bound,
where they arrived safely, after being gloriously seasick. It was the season of autumn gales. A few days before a British packet called the Speedy, with some twenty or thirty persons on board, including a judge advocate, other judges, witnesses and an Indian prisoner, had foundered and every soul perished. No part of the Speedy was afterwards found but the pump, which Wilson says his captain picked up and carried to Queenston.
Wilson had moralized, philosophized and rhapsodized all the way from the Schuylkill. His verse, as he approaches the Mecca of his wanderings, fairly palpitates with expectation and excitement. He was not a bard to sing in a majestic strain, but his description of the falls and their environment is vivid and of historic value. As they tramped through the forest,—
Heavy and slow, increasing on the ear,
Deep through the woods a rising storm we hear.
Th' approaching gust still loud and louder grows,
As when the strong northeast resistless blows,
Or black tornado, rushing through the wood,
Alarms th' affrighted swains with uproar rude.
Yet the blue heavens displayed their clearest sky,
And dead below the silent forests lie;
And not a breath the lightest leaf assailed;
But all around tranquillity prevailed.
"What noise is that?" we ask with anxious mien,
A dull salt-driver passing with his team.
"Noise? noise?—why, nothing that I hear or see
But Nagra Falls—Pray, whereabouts live ye?"
This touch of realism ushers in a long and over-wrought description of the whole scene. The "crashing roar," he says,
—— bade us kneel and Time's great God adore.
Whatever may have been his emotions, his adjectives are sadly inadequate, and his verse devoid of true poetic fervor. More than one of his descriptive passages, however, give us those glimpses of conditions past and gone, which the historian values. For instance, this: