May 29, 1869.
[LAKE MICHIGAN.]
I NEED not tell you of the general appearance of Lake Michigan. I take it for granted everyone knows it, but how many have studied it in its details, watched its rare combinations with the clouds, or discovered the subtle changes and colors, all the time at work upon its surface?
How many, for instance, have seen the Lake when it was apparently all green—not its ordinary green, but a peculiar, light green which it only wears on state occasions, and especially at this season of the year? Your first glance leads you to suppose it is simply green, but look steadily at it, and you will find that the green is suffused with purple, giving a color which I do not think can be matched elsewhere in nature. You may possibly find it in some of the endless varieties of color in wild roses. This is the royal color of the Lake, because the rarest. You may look for weeks and months and not see it, for it requires a peculiar combination of cloud, and wind, and sunlight to produce it. But if you are only patient, some day it will flash upon you in all its beauty, and richly repay you for waiting.
There are days, when the hour is about sunset, and a gentle north-east wind is blowing, that the Lake is of a light green, except a blue strip in the far north. The eastern horizon joins the water by an almost indefinable white line, as if they had been welded together, but all is vague and indistinct and vailed in a haze into which a vessel here and there melts like a phantom. There is hardly wind enough to form waves, but there is regular motion of the water—as regular as the rhythm of music—and in the distance you will see, now and then, a wave breaking white upon the shore, like the white hand of some spent swimmer, clutching at the sand in mortal agony. In the eastern sky, the lower strata of clouds are ragged and angular in shape, and dark gray in color, and only afford you glimpses, here and there, of the clouds above them, which are round and billowy, and would be white but for the roseate glow with which they are suffused by the sun, which is sinking into an angry bank of clouds, such as Dore loves to paint, like a great crimson stain upon the sky. Wherever the tips of these upper clouds appear, they cast a faint reflection upon the green of the water, not producing a duplicate of color, but bronzing the water in spots, which are continually changing. Sometimes, for a moment, the lower clouds part, and reveal a golden glory behind them, which, for only an instant, illumines the water beneath. This is peculiarly the dreamy feeling of the Lake. There is a dreamy tone in the wash of the waves. The rhythm is perfectly uniform, and the key is in accord with melancholy and tenderness. The flow is peaceful, only now and then you may hear a tone in the hazy distance, a little louder than the rest, like a drum-beat in a far-off orchestra. You may be so near the Lake that the foam of the spent waves will crawl over your feet, and their sound will still be dreamy, and apparently in the distance. It is like nothing so much as the voices and the faces which come to you in the night out of the Past. Its cadence is mournful and yet beautiful. It is then the time to be alone, to cast yourself upon the sand and listen to the stories of these waves—stories of the sailors who sailed the Spanish main, and never came home again—of vessels which went down, and left no one to tell the tale—of phantom ships, which suddenly loom up before affrighted sailors in the darkness—of storms, driving their black chariots over the deep—of Mermaids, and Sirens, and Undines, luring on their victims to destruction, with their white bosoms and voluptuous melodies—of the beautiful fabrics you reared years ago—all gone, as the wave washes out the print of your feet in the sands. And, as you lie there and dream, the moon, yet silvery-gray in the early evening, passes behind a cloud. The distant city is hidden by a curtain of gray mist—hidden, with all its men and women, toiling, struggling, loving, cursing and praying—hidden, with all its squat misery in the alleys and by-ways, and with all its splendid wretchedness in the high places. All sounds die away. The cruel mist creeps over the water, and you are alone upon the sand, with only the melancholy moaning of the immemorial waves, which will moan thus when you and I are gone—which have moaned thus since the youth of the years.