Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier Part 12

In due time Jack Watson reached the home of his friend, the Rev. Jarm W.

Loguen; and during the dark days of the War he rendered valuable aid to the Union cause along the Kentucky and Virginia borders, and in one guerrilla skirmish he lost his left arm. A few years since he was still living on a preempted land-claim in Rice County, Kansas.

The following incident, connected with Watson's career, will not be out of place in closing this sketch:

Some years since the Rev. Glezen Fillmore, a famous pioneer of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Buffalo, and for more than half a century an honored member of the Genesee Conference, was engaged in raising funds for the Freedmen's Aid Society. One day his cousin, the late ex-President Millard Fillmore, rode out from Buffalo to visit him.

During the conversation the venerable preacher related the story of Watson's escape, as Watson himself had told it while at Fillmore's Underground Railroad depot. The former President was strongly touched by the story, and at its close he drew a check for fifty dollars for the Freedmen. "Thank you, thank you," said the good old parson. "I was praying that the Lord would open your heart to give ten dollars, and here are fifty."

No study of Underground Railroad work in this region, even though, like the present paper, it aims to be chiefly anecdotal, can neglect recognition of the fact that it was a Buffalo man in the Presidential chair who, by signing the Fugitive Slave act of 1850, brought upon his head the maledictions of the Abolitionists, who were so stimulated thereby in their humanitarian law-breaking, that the most active period in Underground Railroad work dates from the stroke of Millard Fillmore's pen which sought to put a stop to it. No pa.s.sage in American history displays more acrimony than this. Wherever the friends of the negro were at work on Underground lines, Mr. Fillmore was denounced in the most intemperate terms. In his home city of Buffalo, some who had hitherto prided themselves upon his distinguished acquaintance, estranged themselves from him, and on his return to Buffalo he found cold and formal treatment from people whom he had formerly greeted as friends.

Insults were offered him; and the changed demeanor of many of his townsmen showed itself even in the church which he attended. Certain ardent souls there were who refused any longer to wors.h.i.+p where he did.[68] Mr. Fillmore met all these hostile demonstrations, as he sustained the angry protests and denunciations of the Abolitionists in general, in dignified impurturbability, resting his case upon the const.i.tutionality of his conduct. The act of 1850 reaffirmed the act of 1793, and both rested upon the explicit provision in the Const.i.tution which declares that "no person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." Obviously, so far as this section was concerned, many people of the North were in rebellion against the Const.i.tution of the United States for many years before the Civil War. That the work of the Underground Railroad was justifiable in the humanitarian aspect needs no argument now. But the student of that period cannot overcome the legal stand taken by Mr. Fillmore, his advisers and sympathizers, unless he a.s.serts, as Mr. Seward a.s.serted, that the provision of the Const.i.tution relating to the rendition of slaves was of no binding force. "The law of nations," he declared, "disavows such compacts--the law of nature written on the hearts and consciences of men repudiates them."[69] This was met by the plausible a.s.sertion that "the hostility which was directed against the law of 1850 would have been equally violent against any law which effectually carried out the provision of the Const.i.tution."[70] During the years that followed, efforts were made to recover fugitive slaves under this law. Special officers were appointed to execute it, but in most Northern communities they were regarded with odium, and every possible obstacle put in the way of the discharge of their offensive duties. Many tragic affairs occurred; but the organization of the Underground Railroad was too thorough, its operation was in the hands of men too discreet and determined, to be seriously disturbed by a law which found so little moral support in the communities through which its devious trails ran. Thus the work went on, through civil contention and b.l.o.o.d.y war, until the Emanc.i.p.ator came to loose all shackles, to put an end to property in slaves, and to stop all work, because abolis.h.i.+ng all need, of the Underground Railroad.

Niagara and the Poets.

NIAGARA AND THE POETS.

On a day in July, 1804, a ruddy-faced, handsome young Irishman, whose appearance must have commanded unusual attention in wild frontier surroundings, came out of the woods that overlooked Lake Erie, picking his way among the still-standing stumps, and trudged down the Indian trail, which had not long been made pa.s.sable for wagons. Presently he came into the better part of the road, named Willink Avenue, pa.s.sed a dozen scattered houses, and finally stopped at John Crow's log tavern, the princ.i.p.al inn of the infant Buffalo. He was dusty, tired, and disgusted with the fortune that had brought an accident some distance back in the woods, compelling him to finish this stage of his journey, not merely on foot, but disabled. Here, surrounded by more Indians than whites, he lodged for a day or so before continuing his journey to Niagara Falls; and here, according to his own testimony, he wrote a long poem, which was not only, in all probability, the first poem ever composed in Buffalo, and one of the bitterest tirades against America and American inst.i.tutions to be found in literature; but which contained, so far as I have been able to discover, the first allusion to Niagara Falls, written by one who actually traveled thither, in the poetry of any language.

The poetry of Niagara Falls is contemporary with the first knowledge of the cataract among civilized men. One may make this statement with positiveness, inasmuch as the first book printed in Europe which mentions Niagara Falls contains a poem in which allusion is made to that wonder. This work is the excessively rare "Des Sauvages" of Champlain (Paris, 1604),[71] in which, after the dedication, is a sonnet, inscribed "Le Sievr de la Franchise av discovrs Dv Sievr Champlain." It seems proper, in quoting this first of all Niagara poems, to follow as closely as may be in modern type the archaic spelling of the original:

Mvses, si vous chantez, vrayment ie vous conseille Que vous louez Champlain, pour estre courageux: Sans crainte des hasards, il a veu tant de lieux, Que ses relations nous contentent l'oreille.

Il a veu le Perou,[72] Mexique & la Merueille Du Vulcan infernal qui vomit tant de feux, Et les saults Mocosans,[73] qui offensent les yeux De ceux qui osent voir leur cheute nonpareille.

Il nous promet encor de pa.s.ser plus auant, Reduire les Gentils, & trouuer le Leuant, Par le Nort, ou le Su, pour aller a la Chine.

C'est charitablement tout pour l'amour de Dieu.

Fy des lasches poltrons qui ne bougent d'vn lieu!

Leur vie, sans mentir, me paroist trop mesquine.

I regret that some research has failed to discover any further information regarding the poet De la Franchise. Obviously, he took rather more than the permissible measure of poet's license in saying that Champlain had seen Peru, a country far beyond the known range of Champlain's travels. But in the phrase "_les saults Mocosans_," the falls of Mocosa, we have the ancient name of the undefined territory afterwards labeled "Virginia." The intent of the allusion is made plainer by Marc Lescarbot, who in 1610 wrote a poem in which he speaks of "great falls which the Indians say they encounter in ascending the St. Lawrence as far as the neighborhood of Virginia."[74] The allusion can only be to Niagara.

It is gratifying to find our incomparable cataract a theme for song, even though known only by aboriginal report, thus at the very dawn of exploration in this part of America. It is fitting, too, that the French should be the first to sing of what they discovered. More than a century after De la Franchise and Lescarbot, a Frenchman who really saw the falls introduced them to the muse, though only by a quotation. This was Father Charlevoix, who, writing "From the Fall of Niagara, May 14, 1721," to the d.u.c.h.ess of Lesdiguieres, was moved to aid his description by quoting poetry. "Ovid," the priest wrote to the d.u.c.h.ess, "gives us the description of such another cataract, situated according to him in the delightful valley of Tempe. I will not pretend that the country of Niagara is as fine as that, though I believe its cataract much the n.o.blest of the two," and he thereupon quotes these lines from the "Metamorphoses":

Est nemus Haemoniae, praerupta quod undique claudit Sylva; vocant Tempe, per quae Peneus ab imo Effusus Pindo spumosis volvitur undis, Dejectisque gravi tenues agitantia fumos Nubila conducit, summisque aspergine sylvas, Impluit, et sonitu plusquam vicina fatigat.

It would be strange if there were not other impressionable Frenchmen who composed or quoted verses expressive of Niagara's grandeur, during the eighty-one years that elapsed between the French discovery of Niagara Falls and the English Conquest--a period of over three-quarters of a century during which earth's most magnificent cataract belonged to France. But if priest or soldier, coureur-de-bois or verse-maker at the court of Louis said aught in meter of Niagara in all that time, I have not found it.

A little thunder by Sir William Johnson's guns at Fort Niagara, a little blood on the Plains of Abraham, and Niagara Falls was handed over to Great Britain. Four years after the Conquest English poetry made its first claim to our cataract. In 1764 appeared that ever-delightful work, "The Traveller, or, a Prospect of Society," wherein we read:

Have we not seen at pleasure's lordly call The smiling long-frequented village fall?

Behold the duteous son, the sire decayed, The modest matron or the blus.h.i.+ng maid, Forced from their homes, a melancholy train, To traverse climes beyond the western main; Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around And Niagara[75] stuns with thundering sound.

Even now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays Through tangled forests and through dangerous ways, Where beasts with man divided empire claim, And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim; There, while above the giddy tempest flies, And all around distressful yells arise, The pensive exile, bending with his woe, To stop too fearful and too faint to go, Casts a long look where England's glories s.h.i.+ne, And bids his bosom sympathize with mine.[76]

Obviously, Oliver Goldsmith's "Traveller," in its American allusions, reflected the current literature of those years when Englishmen heard more of Oswego than they ever have since. Niagara and Oswego were uttermost points told of in the dispatches, during that long war, reached and held by England's "far-flung battle line"; but if Britain's poets found any inspiration in Niagara's mighty fount for a half century after Goldsmith, I know it not.

And this brings us again to our first visiting poet, Tom Moore, whose approach to Niagara by way of Buffalo in 1804 has been described.

Penning an epistle in rhyme from "Buffalo, on Lake Erie," to the Hon. W.

R. Spencer--writing, we are warranted in fancying, after a supper of poor bacon and tea, or an evening among the loutish Indians who hung about Crow's log-tavern--he recorded his emotions in no amiable mood:

Even now, as wandering upon Erie's sh.o.r.e I hear Niagara's distant cataract roar,[77]

I sigh for home--alas! these weary feet Have many a mile to journey, ere we meet.

Niagara in 1804 was most easily approached from the East by schooner on Lake Ontario from Oswego, though the overland trail through the woods was beginning to be used. Moore came by the land route. The record of the journey is to be found in the preface to his American Poems, and in his letters to his mother, published for the first time in his "Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence," edited by Earl Russell and issued in London and Boston in 1853-'56. The letters narrating his adventures in the region are dated "Geneva, Genessee County, July 17, 1804"; "Chippewa, Upper Canada, July 22d"; "Niagara, July 24th";--in which he copies a description of the falls from his journal, not elsewhere published--and "Chippewa, July 25th," signed "Tom." There is no mention in these letters of Buffalo, but in the prefatory narrative above alluded to we have this interesting account of the visit:

It is but too true, of all grand objects, whether in nature or art, that facility of access to them much diminishes the feeling of reverence they ought to inspire. Of this fault, however, the route to Niagara, at this period--at least the portion of it which led through the Genesee country--could not justly be accused. The latter part of the journey, which lay chiefly through yet but half-cleared woods, we were obliged to perform on foot; and a slight accident I met with in the course of our rugged walk laid me up for some days at Buffalo.

And so laid up--perhaps with a blistered heel--he sought relief by driving his quill into the heart of democracy. His friend, he lamented, had often told him of happy hours pa.s.sed amid the cla.s.sic a.s.sociations and art treasures of Italy:

But here alas, by Erie's stormy lake, As far from such bright haunts my course I take, No proud remembrance o'er the fancy plays, No cla.s.sic dream, no star of other days Hath left the visionary light behind, That lingering radiance of immortal mind, Which gilds and hallows even the rudest scene, The humblest shed where Genius once had been.

He views, not merely his immediate surroundings in the pioneer village by Lake Erie, but the general character of the whole land:

All that creation's varying ma.s.s a.s.sumes, Of grand or lovely, here aspires and blooms.

Bold rise the mountains, rich the gardens glow, Bright lakes expand and conquering rivers flow; But mind, immortal mind, without whose ray This world's a wilderness and man but clay, Mind, mind alone, in barren still repose, Nor blooms, nor rises, nor expands, nor flows.

Take Christians, Mohawks, democrats and all, From the rude wigwam to the Congress Hall, From man the savage, whether slaved or free, To man the civilized, less tame than he, 'Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife Betwixt half-polished and half-barbarous life; Where every ill the ancient world could brew Is mixed with every grossness of the new; Where all corrupts, though little can entice, And naught is known of luxury, but its vice!

Is this the region then, is this the clime For soaring fancies? for those dreams sublime, Which all their miracles of light reveal To heads that meditate and hearts that feel?

Alas! not so!

And after much more of proud protest against Columbia and "the mob mania that imbrutes her now," our disapproving poet turned in to make the best, let us hope, of Landlord Crow's poor quarters, and to prepare for Niagara. Years afterwards he admitted that there was some soul for song among the men of the Far West of that day. Very complacently he tells us that "Even then, on the sh.o.r.es of those far lakes, the t.i.tle of 'Poet'--however in that instance unworthily bestowed--bespoke a kind and distinguished welcome for its wearer. The captain who commanded the packet in which I crossed Lake Ontario, in addition to other marks of courtesy, begged, on parting with me, to be allowed to decline payment for my pa.s.sage." I cannot do better than to quote further from his account of the visit to the falls:

When we arrived at length at the inn, in the neighborhood of the Falls, it was too late to think of visiting them that evening; and I lay awake almost the whole night with the sound of the cataract in my ears. The day following I consider as a sort of era in my life; and the first glimpse I caught of that wonderful cataract gave me a feeling which nothing in this world can ever awaken again. It was through an opening among the trees, as we approached the spot where the full view of the Falls was to burst upon us, that I caught this glimpse of the mighty ma.s.s of waters falling smoothly over the edge of the precipice; and so overwhelming was the notion it gave me of the awful spectacle I was approaching, that during the short interval that followed, imagination had far outrun the reality--and vast and wonderful as was the scene that then opened upon me, my first feeling was that of disappointment.

It would have been impossible, indeed, for anything real to come up to the vision I had, in these few seconds, formed of it, and those awful scriptural words, 'The fountains of the great deep were broken up,' can alone give any notion of the vague wonders for which I was prepared.

But, in spite of the start thus got by imagination, the triumph of reality was, in the end, but the greater; for the gradual glory of the scene that opened upon me soon took possession of my whole mind; presenting from day to day, some new beauty or wonder, and like all that is most sublime in nature or art, awakening sad as well as elevating thoughts. I retain in my memory but one other dream--for such do events so long past appear--which can by any respect be a.s.sociated with the grand vision I have just been describing; and however different the nature of their appeals to the imagination, I should find it difficult to say on which occasion I felt most deeply affected, when looking at the Falls of Niagara, or when standing by moonlight among the ruins of the Coliseum.

It was the tranquillity and unapproachableness of the great fall, in the midst of so much turmoil, which most impressed him. He tried to express this in a Song of the Spirit of the region:

There amid the island sedge, Just upon the cataract's edge, Where the foot of living man Never trod since time began, Lone I sit at close of day,[78] ...

The poem as a whole, however, is not a strong one, even for Tom Moore.

As the Irish bard sailed back to England, another pedestrian poet was making ready for a tour to Niagara. This was the Paisley weaver, rhymster and roamer, Alexander Wilson, whose fame as an ornithologist outs.h.i.+nes his reputation as a poet. Yet in him America has--by adoption--her Oliver Goldsmith. In 1794, being then twenty-eight years old, he arrived in Philadelphia. For eight years he taught school, or botanized, roamed the woods with his gun, worked at the loom, and peddled his verses among the inhabitants of New Jersey. In October, 1804, accompanied by his nephew and another friend, he set out on a walking expedition to Niagara, which he satisfactorily accomplished. His companions left him, but he persevered, and reached home after an absence of fifty-nine days and a walk of 1,260 miles. It is very pleasant, especially for one who has himself toured afoot over a considerable part of this same route, to follow our naturalist poet and his friends on their long walk through the wilderness, in the pages of Wilson's descriptive poem, "The Foresters." Its first edition, it is believed, is a quaint little volume of 106 pages, published at Newtown, Penn., in 1818.[79] The route led through Bucks and Northumberland counties, over the mountains and up the valley of the Susquehanna; past Newtown, N. Y., now Elmira, and so on to the Indian village of Catherine, near the head of Seneca Lake. Here, a quarter of a century before, Sullivan and his raiders had brought desolation, traces of which stirred our singer to some of his loftiest flights. In that romantic wilderness of rocky glen and marsh and lake, the region where Montour Falls and Watkins now are, Wilson lingered to shoot wild fowl. Thence the route lay through that interval of long ascents--so long that the trudging poet thought

To Heaven's own gates the mountain seemed to rise

--and equally long descents, from Seneca Lake to Cayuga. Here, after a night's rest, under a pioneer's roof:

Our boat now ready and our baggage stored, Provisions, mast and oars and sails aboard, With three loud cheers that echoed from the steep, We launched our skiff "Niagara" to the deep.

Down to old Cayuga bridge they sailed and through the outlet, pa.s.sed the salt marshes and so on to Fort Oswego. That post had been abandoned on the 28th of October, about a week before Wilson arrived there. A desolate, woebegone place he found it:

Those struggling huts that on the left appear, Where fence, or field, or cultured garden green, Or blessed plough, or spade were never seen, Is old Oswego; once renowned in trade, Where numerous tribes their annual visits paid.

From distant wilds, the beaver's rich retreat, For one whole moon they trudged with weary feet; Piled their rich furs within the crowded store, Replaced their packs and plodded back for more.

But time and war have banished all their trains And naught but potash, salt and rum remains.

The boisterous boatman, drunk but twice a day, Begs of the landlord; but forgets to pay; Pledges his salt, a cask for every quart, Pleased thus for poison with his pay to part.