As we glide down the canal, ever and anon we see some empty returning boat (called "light boat" in the technical canal phrase) rounding a curve before us, It comes nearer: the horses walk the same tow-path: how are the boats to pass without confusion? Ah, the riddle is solved. Our captain (who holds the helm while the boy, his assistant, is down in the cabin preparing supper) calls out suddenly, at the last moment, "Whoa!" The well-trained horses instantly stop; the momentum of the boat carries it on; the rope slackens, disappears in the water, except at the two ends; the approaching horses step over it, and the approaching boat glides over it. When the approaching "light boat" has passed nearly or entirely over the rope our captain shouts to his horses to go on: the rope tightens, and all is as before.
The parts of the canal lying between the locks are called "levels." On long levels we could often see one or two boats far ahead of us and going in the same direction. Nothing could be prettier than the thin blue streamer of wood-smoke trailing out from the stovepipe of the cabin-roof against the bright green of the foliage along the banks. It told us the cheery news that the fragrant coffee or tea was a-making in the cozy little cabin below. And now, when supper is done, the captain brings up his guitar and plays sweet plaintive airs as we glide through the quiet evening shadows. Night deepens: the stars come out one by one, and are reflected in the smooth dark water below in dreamy, dusky splendor. We brush the dew from the heavy foliage as we pass along. Lithe alders and heavy vines trail in the cool flood, and the fresh evening air is filled with grateful harvest-scents and the perfume of unseen flowers. And now our pretty painted lamp-board is fixed in its place in the bow. The bright lamp throws its rich golden splendor before us. The lamp is hid from us by the board which holds it. We stand behind in the dark, and watch the overhanging sprays of foliage making strange, grotesque shadows that move fantastically and sport and clutch and writhe like wanton fiends, while the solid banks of foliage themselves, reflected in the water below, look, one fancies, like hanging gardens in the weird world to which the water is but a window, and far, far down upon whose dusky floor the flowers are golden stars.
The canal over which I am now conducting my readers is one of the oldest in the country. For many miles it is cut out of the solid rock, following the windings of the river and clinging close to the contours of the hills. The particolored rocks jut out in great square blocks, which, in summer, are usually tufted with grass or flowers. There is an indescribable air of coziness and safety about the amphibious life one leads on such a canal. You can here snap your fingers at the terrors of the cruel water. Here the mocking waves cannot "curl their monstrous heads" as on the sea, when with blind fury they dash against the helpless ship their ponderous and shapeless forms, while sailors and passengers alike are every moment expecting the final stroke that shall sink them beneath the waves. On the canal you cannot be drowned, on the canal you cannot be wrecked. The shore is so delightfully near! You exult in the friendly companionship of the rocky wall that towers above you, and in the assuring presence of the flowers and shrubs that cling there or reach out to you their thin elvish hands. You feel that here untamed Nature (that great wolf) cannot get her claws upon you. Upon this thread of water you are soothed by the thought that you are under the friendly and beneficent protection of man.
About nine or ten o'clock each evening the boats tie up at some lock. At all of these locks there are refreshment-stands and neat taverns of which the traveller must avail himself, since there are no accommodations for visitors on the boats. On the fourth day, wishing to vary my experience, I boarded another boat. Her deck was the very model of neatness. Verily the spirit of either a Yankee housewife or a Dutch vrow must have presided over that boat and tyrannized over the poor wretches who managed it. Black Care seemed to sit continually upon their brows. They were living scrubbing-brushes. They were scrub-mad. From morn to dewy eve they scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, and doubtless in their dreams they still scrubbed on. The crew consisted of a man and his wife, their boy and an old uncle of the boy. I found, to my delight, that the boy was a very communicative young gentleman, flowing freely in talk without any pumping on my part. The various quaint technical phrases which I learned from him shall now be imparted to the reader. The berme, or heel-path, is the side of the canal opposite the tow-path; basins are small coves in the canal where boats may lie over; stop-lock, a sort of quay; the bit, a timber-head at the bow of the boat. Snub her! is a phrase of command, meaning, "Tie the boat to a post on the bank." Pipe-poles are steering-poles. The stern pile (of coal on this canal) is in a large crib near the stern and just in front of the cabin, and is placed in this particular part of the long and unwieldy boat in order to make her obey the helm better. Timber-heads project above the deck to "snub" lines on. Tow-posts are short upright posts near the bow, to which the tow-line is fastened. The combings are the pieces the hatches rest on and surround the hold in an oval form. The wale-plank is the edge of the deck, projecting out over the water like a welt around the entire circumference of the boat.
It may surprise many persons to learn that on the tablelands of the Alleghany Mountains there are still thousands of square miles of virgin forests of hemlock and pine through which roam bears and deer in considerable numbers. The hemlock trees are rapidly succumbing, however, to the axe of the lumberman and the bark-peeler. Bark-peeling is the great industry there, almost every mountain-hollow along the lines of the few railways that have penetrated the region in Pennsylvania having its tannery in active operation. This tanning business, by the way, is in a very prosperous condition, owing to the foreign demand for the liquor extracted from the bark as well as to the steadiness of the leather market. There is a primitive freshness in the life of the mountaineers and lumbermen of the Alleghanies like that of the mining regions of the far West. There is a sprinkling of Canadians among the lumbermen, and as a whole they are the most honest, good-natured, childlike set of men in existence. They are the true priests of those high and dim-green temple-aisles—priests of Nature one might call them. The cabins of the bark-peelers are made of rough, sweet-smelling hemlock planks. The smell of the hemlock bark is fresh and tonical, and appetizing in the highest degree. The men eat fabulous quantities of food: some require five meals a day. I well remember my first meal in a mountain hemlock shanty. Imagine a long table of unpainted boards with X-shaped legs, and along each side of the table benches for seats. Let there be upon the table three large bowls of black sugar, here and there towering stacks of white bread (the slices an inch thick at least), and beside each cover a teacup and saucer, a huge bowl filled to the brim with steaming-hot apple-sauce, together with a bowl of the same dimensions containing beans. Now blow the supper-horn, and hearken to the far halloo from the mountain-side. Twenty blowzed and bearded men, ravenous and wild-eyed with hunger, presently file into the room. They sit down: there is an awful and solemn silence—they are evidently impressed with the momentous importance of the occasion. You find your face growing long; you think of funerals; make a timid and humble remark which you hope will be acceptable and within the range of their comprehension. No answer: you evidently have their pity. No word breaks the sullen silence, except an occasional request to pass something, uttered with an effort as if the speaker had the lockjaw. The meal is bolted with frightful rapidity, generally in five or six minutes. I remember that I was considerably scared and dazed, on my first acquaintance with these mountain-fauns, at seeing such a systematic snatching and grabbing, such a ferocious plying of knives and forks and rattling of cups, by those huge-limbed, brawny, whiskered fellows.
It is difficult to describe the perennial beauty of the hemlock trees, with their dark, rich foliage-masses and aromatic odor. It seems a sacrilege to destroy them so ruthlessly. When stripped of their bark and stained with the dark-red sap, they look like fallen giants spoiled of their armor, lying there prone and white-naked, as if there had been a battle of the giants and the gods. These giants were perfumed, it seems. Their huge green plumes are now withered and torn, and their red blood oozes slowly from their bodies in thin and trickling streams. You think of Ossian's heroes, of Thor and his hammer, of the Anakim or of the steeple-high Brobdignagian cavalry, and almost expect to hear groans issuing from the colossal trunks that cumber the ground on every side.
Everything is on a large scale in these mighty forests. The horizon of your life noiselessly widens, rolls gradually back into immeasurable distances, and "deepens on and up." There is elasticity and stretch in your thoughts. If you have read Richter, his towering, godlike dreams of time and eternity here find their fit interpretation. He had his Fichtelgebirge, and you have your hemlock mountains. Life seems heroic once more: you exult in existence, and fondly think that here you could be happy for ever. To live far away from the cruel, hurrying world in a sweet little hamlet you wot of, sunk in the heart of the mountains at the bottom of a deep, mossy mountain-chalice—a chalice of richest chasing and filled with the pure wine of God, the mountain-air; to live there during the long summer days; to stand in the flush of dawn with bared head and inhale the fragrance of the dew-drenched grass and the scarlet balsams; to walk with hushed step through the wide forests, communing with the powerful sylvan spirits that labor there, watching with what miraculous delicacy of touch their unseen fingers weave the rich fantastic shrouds of fern and moss that deck the dead and fallen trees or anon give to the living their faint and mottled tints of green and gray;—to live thus through the summer hours, and through autumn, winter, spring watch the unrolling of the gorgeous scroll of Time,—this, you think, were living to some purpose!—WILLIAM SLOANE KENNEDY.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
THE PARIS SALON OF 1880.
The Salon (official) catalogue contains this year 696 pages. There are 3957 paintings exhibited; 2085 designs, sketches in charcoal and watercolors; 30 engravings on stone, etc.; 111 designs for architecture; 46 specimens of lithography; 701 pieces of sculpture; 305 eaux-fortes; and 54 specimens of monumental art—in all 7280 objects. Though we all thought last year that the number of paintings exhibited was immense, this year the number is 917 more. Alas for the poor critics! How many an additional ache that implies for them! Still, as we have a cozy reading-room at the Palais de l'Industrie—an innovation of this season for the benefit of those who get tired of looking at the pictures and wish to "take a rest"—the weary critic may enter and take a seat (if he can find one unoccupied, which is highly improbable), and there write out his "notes," as I am doing at this moment.