TO HER BROTHER, R.
Cambridge, August 6, 1842.
My dear R.: I want to hear how you enjoyed your journey, and what you think of the world as surveyed from mountain-tops. I enjoy exceedingly staying among the mountains. I am satisfied with reading these bolder lines in the manuscript of Nature. Merely gentle and winning scenes are not enough for me. I wish my lot had been cast amid the sources of the streams, where the voice of the hidden torrent is heard by night, where the eagle soars, and the thunder resounds in long peals from side to side; where the grasp of a more powerful emotion has rent asunder the rocks, and the long purple shadows fall like a broad wing upon the valley. All places, like all persons, I know, have beauty; but only in some scenes, and with some people, can I expand and feel myself at home. I feel all this the more for having passed my earlier life in such a place as Cambridgeport. There I had nothing except the little flower-garden behind the house, and the elms before the door. I used to long and sigh for beautiful places such as I read of. There was not one walk for me, except over the bridge. I liked that very much,—the river, and the city glittering in sunset, and the lively undulating line all round, and the light smokes, seen in some weather.
LETTER TO THE SAME.
Milwaukie, July 29, 1848.
DEAR R.: * * * Daily I thought of you during my visit to the Rock-river territory. It is only five years since the poor Indians have been dispossessed of this region of sumptuous loveliness, such as can hardly be paralleled in the world. No wonder they poured out their blood freely before they would go. On one island, belonging to a Mr. H., with whom we stayed, are still to be found their "caches" for secreting provisions,—the wooden troughs in which they pounded their corn, the marks of their tomahawks upon felled trees. When he first came, he found the body of an Indian woman, in a canoe, elevated on high poles, with all her ornaments on. This island is a spot, where Nature seems to have exhausted her invention in crowding it with all kinds of growths, from the richest trees down to the most delicate plants. It divides the river which there sweeps along in clear and glittering current, between noble parks, richest green lawns, pictured rocks crowned with old hemlocks, or smooth bluffs, three hundred feet high, the most beautiful of all. Two of these,—the Eagle's Nest, and the Deer's Walk, still the resort of the grand and beautiful creature from which they are named,—were the scene of some of the happiest hours of my life. I had no idea, from verbal description, of the beauty of these bluffs, nor can I hope to give any to others. They lie so magnificently bathed in sunlight, they touch the heavens with so sharp and fair a line. This is one of the finest parts of the river; but it seems beautiful enough to fill any heart and eye all along its course, nowhere broken or injured by the hand of man. And there, I thought, if we two could live, and you could have a farm which would not cost a twentieth part the labor of a New England farm, and would pay twenty times as much for the labor, and have our books and, our pens and a little boat on the river, how happy we might be for four or five years,—at least, as happy as Fate permits mortals to be. For we, I think, are congenial, and if I could hope permanent peace on the earth, I might hope it with you.
You will be glad to hear that I feel overpaid for coming here. Much is my life enriched by the images of the great Niagara, of the vast lakes, of the heavenly sweetness of the prairie scenes, and, above all, by the heavenly region where I would so gladly have lived. My health, too, is materially benefited. I hope to come back better fitted for toil and care, as well as with beauteous memories to sustain me in them.
Affectionately always, &c.