The patriarch of the horde was in his lifetime reputed an Englishman, although upon this point no intelligence exists in any parish register or book of heraldry—a matter the less to be regretted that his birth is not likely to be disputed by rival nations or cities. All that is certainly known of him is, that he made his appearance on the island about forty years ago, an incarnation of laziness and pauperism, accompanied by a biped of the feminine gender, whom, as God made her, we are content to call a woman: they evinced no desire to hold fellowship with their kind, but immediately plunged into the woods, where they pertinaciously hid whatever talents and merits they possessed. Probably the world used them ill, and like Timon they had left it in disgust. They built themselves a hut of brushwood, and lived, unknowing and unknown, upon the wild products of the soil and the sea-shore, the world forgetting and the world forgot. No one was favoured with any notice of their former history; they wrought not for hire, nor did they seek to render themselves in the slightest degree useful to their fellow-creatures. They were satisfied with a bare, mysterious existence, the objects of wonder and pity; and only proved themselves human by increasing the population of Staten-Land with ten sons and daughters.
In time the he-patriarch died, and his fame died with him; but not till he had so indoctrinated his hopeful family, that they have ever since followed his praiseworthy example. A short time since we paid these Children of the Mist a visit at their residence, profiting by one of a thousand changes of abode which brought them within an easy walk of the Quarantine-Ground. Others may seek objects of interest abroad; we are content with what may be found near home; and in this singular family we found a happy practical illustration of the Golden Age, which poets so much regret, and agrarian politicians so devoutly hope and expect to restore. By the margin of a stagnant swamp, rife with malaria and intermittent fever, embosomed in thick woods, stood a pen of rough boards, obtained heaven knows how, about ten feet square, into which about fifty specimens of animal life, human and canine, were crowded. The den was roofed over, and refused entrance to the sun, but was by no means so inhospitable to the rain. The four winds of heaven sought and found free ingress and egress through the chinks; the floor was not; and altogether we have seen much better appointed pig-styes. We first discovered our proximity to this Temple of the Winds by the greeting of a herd of sorry curs, who made a great noise, but retreated snarling, and with averted tails, at the first exhibition of a stone or a stick, as the dogs of the aborigines are wont to do. A shrill, cracked, but clear voice from within, uplifted in energetic objurgation, stilled the clamour, and we entered upon a scene that beggars and defies description. We had seen poverty before, but had never an adequate conception of its extreme until now.
A bundle of rags, endowed with suspicious and alarming powers of locomotion, advanced to do the honours of the mansion. An unearthly squeak, that would have driven a parrot of any ear distracted, proclaimed that the thing was human; and after close inspection we made out a set of features which we could only have supposed to belong to Calvin Edson or the Witch of Endor. The head surmounted a withered atomy, from which every muscular fibre seemed to have dried away. There was nothing left for Decay to prey upon: a particle more of waste, and the fabric must have evaporated, or been scattered with the first puff, like a pinch of snuff. This was the worthy mother of the brood. Age could not make her head whiter. She must have been more than a century old, and yet hearing, vision, speech, every faculty, was unimpaired, and she was as brisk as any of the horde. According to all appearances, Time had lost all power over her, and she may yet live longer than the everlasting pyramids. Fancy a mummy stalking from its case, and you have some idea of this spectral apparition.
Around the den were arranged without arrangement four rude bedsteads, guiltless then and for ever of beds, or any succedaneum therefor; those being unnecessary and enervating luxuries, in the opinion of the inmates. Not one of these was born in a bed, or had ever pressed one, and why should they not do as they had ever done? The only purpose of the frames seemed to be to keep them from dying on the bare earth. The whole score and a half of humanities might have possessed some four or five threadbare and tattered blankets, such a stock of clothing as might have furnished forth one respectable scarecrow, and perhaps half a shirt among them; but of the latter item we are somewhat uncertain, as we considered any particular scrutiny especially indelicate. The hut was literally full of trumpery, the use of most of which it were difficult even to guess. The following, as nearly as memory serves us, is a correct inventory:—
An old worn-out saddle; three steel-traps; fifteen dogs, bitches, and puppies; about a crate full of damaged crockery and pottery; an iron pot, without a bale or cover, and two legs off; a tin kettle, with three holes in the bottom; a fish-spear, an axe, a dozen fishing-rods and tackle; as many rags as would set up a paper mill; about a peck of clams, a damaged bucket, and a great variety of other things nameless ans indescribable.
These true philosophers all appeared to enjoy the most robust health, with one exception, who was shaking with a paroxysm of ague on one of the frames before mentioned. The men were stout, hearty fellows, who might do their country good service at the tail of a plough or the end of a musket; but their ambition does not soar so high. They literally take no thought for to-morrow, though they very well know what a day must bring forth. They justly consider themselves
——“out of Fortune’s power;
He that is down can fall no lower.”
Once in a great while they may be persuaded to perform a day’s labour, but these are rare and painful occasions, always followed by regret and repentance; and when their immediate wants are supplied, they return to the luxurious and indolent repose, which is their second nature, and which they enjoy in a perfection only appreciable by the Neapolitan lazzaroni. When they have thus been compelled to pass a night under a roof, it has been remarked that no human logic can persuade one of them to submit to the abhorred contact of soap and water, or to sleep in a bed, suppose any person could be found willing so to accommodate them. They own no boats, and they neither hire nor borrow them. Such property requires care and trouble, and rowing is laborious. A cow was once the apex of their ambition; but hunger knocks often at their door, and was fatal to poor Brindle. They are not rich enough to buy a gun. The conies, partridges, snapping-tortoises, frogs, squirrels, and such small deer, are their flocks and herds, and the earth produces wild artichokes and other esculent roots. As for their religion, they believe in beef and bread, and go to church, like parasitical insects, as often as they are carried. They believe that the earth is flat, and that the city of New York and the Narrows are its limits. To be hung up in a cage in the sunshine, with licence to scratch themselves, and to be well fed, constitutes their notion of heaven; and the county alms-house, where able-bodied people are constrained to work, is the purgatory of their imagination, or something worse. They think it is better to sleep than to be awake, to lie than to sit, to sit than to stand, to stand than to walk, and to walk than to run. Dancing is to them an incomprehensible abomination. They own no lord, they heed no law. They have nothing, and they want nothing. To cold, heat, rain, &c., they are perfectly indifferent, and their only known evil is pain, which comes to them only in the shape of hunger and intermittent fever. Nerves and delicacy they never heard of. Thus have they ever lived, and thus they will die.
The women at the time of our visit differed from the men only in attire, a superior volubility, a natural, rough-hewn coquetry, and the possession of certain brass trinkets, faded ribbons, and other fantastic fineries. None of them were either young or handsome enough to mark them as the victims of man’s villany. The smaller fry about their wretched cabin attest that they have not in the least neglected the first command of God to man, though no priest or preacher can say that he has received a wedding fee on account of either of them. Their usual employment is to loll upon fences and gather berries, and they are also said to be skilful in roots and herbs. Some of them sometimes go to service for a time; but they soon return to their lair, like a sow to her wallowing in the mire. The alms-house has also afforded them an asylum in cases of emergency, but they invariably escape from it as soon as there is any work to be done. They toil not, neither do they spin; and assuredly Solomon, with all his wisdom, never dreamed of such a thing as one of these!