The scenery, in its winter aspect, looked somewhat like a panorama done in Indian ink, or rather like a great etching: except that the sky formed a blue background to the snowy mountains, on which the leafless branches of the denuded forest seemed pencilled in black and gray. We had our winter walks too: and I never felt a more pleasant glow from exercise than in climbing Mount Independence, through the snow, to visit Fort Putnam. In addition to the ordinary steepness of the road, it was now in many places rendered slippery by broad sheets of ice, beneath which we saw the living waters of a mountain brook gliding and murmuring along under their glassy coating. The snow had drifted high among the recesses of the old fortress, and lay white and thick along the broken and roofless edges of its dark gray walls, while here and there, amid the desolation, lingered the evergreen of a lonely cedar. Long bright icicles suspended their transparent and glittering fringes from the arches of the dismantled casements, whose entrances were now even less accessible than usual, being blocked up with mounds of snow that covered the heaps of fallen stones.
One of our favorite winter walks was to the cascade; and on entering the close woods that led thither, we always felt a sensible access of warmth in the atmosphere, which was very agreeable when compared to the unsheltered bleakness of the plain. In looking down from the heights, through the steeps of the forest, we saw glimpses of the river, as it lay far below us; its solid waters now of a bluish-white, shining beneath the wintry sun. Yet the cascade still poured its resistless torrent freely among the snow-covered rocks, roaring, frothing, and pitching from ledge to ledge. An old pine tree had thrown itself horizontally across the upper fall, its dark green foliage almost touching the water, and its rough trunk forming a bridge for the passage of the minks, foxes, ground squirrels, and other petty denizens of the wild. As the foaming torrent threw up its misty spray, this tree became incrusted with ice of the most brilliant transparency; looking like an immense chandelier, with multitudes of long crystal drops depending from its feathery branches.
The last winter I spent at West Point a funeral took place in the middle of December. It was that of a gentleman attached to the institution, and he died after a long and painful illness. The river had closed at a very early period, and the little world of West Point was locked up in ice and snow. Three o’clock was the time appointed for the melancholy procession to take up its line of march; the coffin, covered with a pall, having been previously carried into the chapel, and the funeral service performed over it by the chaplain.
It was a clear, cold afternoon, and the sun was already sinking behind the mountains, whose giant shadows, magnificently colored with crimson and purple, were projected far forward upon the frozen snow that covered the plain; as a range of painted windows cast down their glowing tints upon a white marble pavement.
When the funeral began to move from the chapel, the band (preceding the coffin) commenced one of the mournful airs that are usually appropriated to “the march of death.” The muffled drums were struck only at long intervals, and their heavy notes were deadened still more by the chillness of the atmosphere; while Willis’s bugle sounded almost like music from the world of spirits. Next came the soldiers, then the cadets, afterwards the officers, and lastly the commandant; all walking with their arms inverted. I saw the sad and lonely procession moving slowly through the snow, and directing its course to the cemetery, which is about a mile from the plain. Shaded with ancient trees, the grave yard occupies the summit of a promontory that impends above the river; and the Cadet’s Monument crowned by its military trophy in white marble, forms one of the land marks of the shore. I heard (and it always seems to me the most affecting part of the ceremonial) the volley which was fired over the grave, after that cold and narrow cell had been covered in with clods of frozen earth mingled with snow.
A very extraordinary circumstance connected with military funerals is the custom, that when all is over, and the procession is returning with recovered arms, and marching in quick time, the music always performs a lively air; frequently one that is designated in the army as, “So went the merry man home to his grave.” This revolting practice is said to have originated in the same principle that is set forth in the commencing lines of the well-known song, said to have been sung by General Wolfe at his supper table on the night before the battle in which he was killed:
“Why, soldiers why,
Should we be melancholy boys
Whose business ’tis to die.”
The horrors of every war are, and must be so terrible, that its practice admits of no palliation, except when the struggle is in defence of our native land. How ought we then to rejoice that in this our own favored country, no hecatombs of human victims can be immolated to swell the pride, to gratify the ambition, or to feed the rapacity of a few of their fellow men. Surely the people of another century will regard with amazement the tales of blood and carnage that defile the pages of history. They will wonder that rational beings could be found who were willing to engage in these atrocious contests, undertaken “for the glory of heroes, the splendor of thrones.” Where are now the Buonapartes and the Bourbons, for whose sake forty thousand lives were destroyed in the dreadful day of Waterloo, “on that tremendous harvest field where death swung the scythe.”