Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 by Various
V >>
Various >> Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8
"Thank you," said Vincent, looking out over the dark water. "I can fancy
his ghost haunting the lake at midnight."
"Speak not of that down at the Queen City," returned Hugh, with a tragic
air. "Pork and grain are more substantial things than ghosts at Chicago,
and they might look on you as an escaped lunatic. Nathless, it was a
pretty idea to promulgate among the Indians two centuries ago. Observe
how civilization has changed. Two hundred years ago we sent missionaries
among them: now we send soldiers to shoot them down, after we have
plundered them of their lands."
Neither of us were disposed to discuss the Indian question with Hugh
Warren, and the conversation dropped after a while.
At noon of the next day the steamer made Milwaukee, and the evening of
the day after Chicago. These two cities are excellent types of the
Western city, and both show, in a wonderful degree, the rapid growth of
towns in the great West. Neither had an inhabitant before 1825, and now
one has a population of one hundred thousand, and the other of five
hundred thousand. Chicago is, in fact, a wonder of the world. Its
unparalleled growth, its phoenix-like rise from the devastation of the
great fire of 1871, and its cosmopolitan character, all contribute to
render it a remarkable city.
The city looks out upon the lake like a queen, as in fact she is,
crowned by the triple diadem of beauty, wealth, and dignity. She is the
commercial metropolis of the whole Northwest, an emporium second only to
New York in the quantity of her imports and exports. The commodious
harbor is thronged with shipping. Her water communication has a vast
area. Foreign consuls from Austria, France, Great Britain, Belgium,
Italy, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands, have their residence in the
city. It is an art-centre, and almost equally with Brooklyn is entitled
to be called a city of churches.
A week is a short time to devote to seeing all that this queen city has
that is interesting, and that included every day we spent there. Neither
in a sketch like the present shall we have space to give more than we
have done--a general idea of the city. One day about noon we steamed out
of the harbor, on a magnificent lake-steamer, bound for Duluth. We were
to have a run of over seven hundred miles with but a single
stopping-place the whole distance. It would be three days before we
should step on land again.
"Farewell, a long farewell, to the city of the Indian sachem," said
Hugh, as the grand emporium and railway-centre grew dim in the distance.
"By the way," continued he, "are you aware that the correct etymology of
the name Chicago is not generally known?"
Vincent and I confessed that we did not even know the supposed etymology
of the name.
"No matter about that," went on the Historian. "The name is undoubtedly
Indian, corrupted from Chercaqua, the name of a long line of chiefs,
meaning strong, also applied to a wild onion. Long before the white men
knew the region the site of Chicago was a favorite rendezvous of several
Indian tribes. The first geographical notice of the place occurs in a
map dated Quebec, Canada, 1683, as 'Fort Chicagon.' Marquette camped on
the site during the winter of 1674-5. A fort was built there by the
French and afterward abandoned. So you see that Chicago has a history
that is long anterior to the existence of the present city. Have a
cigar, Montague?"
Clouds of fragrant tobacco-smoke soon obscured the view of the Queen
City of the Northwest, busy with life above the graves of the Indian
sagamores whose memories she has forgotten.
On the third day we steamed past Mackinaw, and soon made the ship-canal
which was constructed for the passage of large ships, a channel a dozen
miles long and half a mile wide. And now, hurrah! We are on the waters
of Lake Superior, the "Gitche Gumee, the shining Big Sea-Water," of
Longfellow's musical verse. The lake is a great sea. Its greatest length
is three hundred and sixty miles, its greatest breadth one hundred and
forty miles; the whole length of its coast is fifteen hundred miles. It
has an area of thirty-two thousand square miles, and a mean depth of one
thousand feet. These dimensions show it to be by far the largest body of
fresh water on the globe.
Nothing can be conceived more charming than a cruise on this lake in
summer. The memories of the lake are striking and romantic in the
extreme. There is a background of history and romance which renders
Superior a classic water. It was a favorite fishing-ground for several
tribes of Indians, and its aboriginal name Ojibwakechegun, was derived
from one of these, the Ojibways, who lived on the southern shore when
the lake first became known to white men. The waters of the lake vary in
color from a dazzling green to a sea-blue, and are stocked with all
kinds of excellent fish. Numerous islands are scattered about the lake,
some low and green, others rocky and rising precipitately to great
heights directly up from the deep water. The coast of the lake is for
the most part rocky. Nowhere upon the inland waters of North America is
the scenery so bold and grand as around Lake Superior. Famous among
travelers are those precipitous walls of red sandstone on the south
coast, described in all the earlier accounts of the lake as the
"Pictured Rocks." They stand opposite the greatest width of the lake and
exposed to the greatest force of the heavy storms from the north. The
effect of the waves upon them is not only seen in their irregular shape,
but the sand derived from their disintegration is swept down the coast
below and raised by the winds into long lines of sandy cliffs. At the
place called the Grand Sable these are from one hundred to three hundred
feet high, and the region around consists of hills of drifting sand.
Half-way across the lake Keweenaw Point stretches out into the water.
Here the steamer halted for wood. We landed on the shore in a beautiful
grove. "What a place for a dinner!" cried one of the party.
"Glorious! glorious!" chimed in a dozen voices.
"How long has the boat to wait?" asked Hugh.
"One hour," was the answer of the weather-beaten son of Neptune.
"That gives us plenty of time," was the general verdict. So without more
ado lunch-baskets were brought ashore. The steamer's steward was
prevailed upon, by a silver dollar thrust slyly into his hand, to help
us, and presently the whole party was feasting by the lakeside. And what
a royal dining-room was that grove, its outer pillars rising from the
very lake itself, its smooth brown floor of pine-needles, arabesqued
with a flitting tracery of sun shadows and fluttering leaves, and giving
through the true Gothic arches of its myriad windows glorious views of
the lake that lay like an enchanted sea before us! And whoever dined
more regally, more divinely, even, though upon nectar and ambrosia, than
our merry-makers as they sat at their well-spread board, with such
glowing, heaven-tinted pictures before their eyes, such balmy airs
floating about their happy heads, and such music as the sunshiny waves
made in their glad, listening ears? It was like a picture out of
Hiawatha. At least it seemed to strike our young lady so, who in a voice
of peculiar sweetness and power recited the opening of the twenty-second
book of that poem:--
"By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness.
All the earth was bright and joyous,
And before him, through the sunshine,
Westward toward the neighboring forest
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
Burning, singing in the sunshine.
Bright above him shone the heavens,
Level spread the lake before him;
From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,
Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;
On its margin the great forest
Stood reflected in the water,
Every treetop had its shadow
Motionless beneath the water."
"Thank you, Miss," said Hugh, gallantly. "We only need a wigwam with
smoke curling from it under these trees, and a 'birch canoe with
paddles, rising, sinking on the water, dripping, flashing in the
sunshine,' to complete the picture. It's a pity the Indians ever left
this shore."
"So the settlers of Minnesota thought in '62," observed Vincent,
ironically.
"The Indians would have been all right if the white man had stayed
away," replied the Historian, hotly.
"In that case we should not be here now, and, consequently"--
What promised to be quite a warm discussion was killed in the embryo by
the captain's clear cry, "All aboard!"
Once more we were steaming westward toward the land of the Dacotahs.
That night we all sat up till after midnight to see the last of our
lake, for in the morning Duluth would be in sight. It was a night never
to be forgotten. The idle words and deeds of my companions have faded
from my mind, but never will the memory of the bright lake rippling
under that moonlit sky.
A city picturesquely situated on the side of a hill which overlooks the
lake and rises gradually toward the northwest, reaching the height of
six hundred feet a mile from the shore, with a river on one side. That
is Duluth. The city takes its name from Juan du Luth, a French officer,
who visited the region in 1679. In 1860 there were only seventy white
inhabitants in the place, and in 1869 the number had not much increased.
The selection of the village as the eastern terminus of the Northern
Pacific Railroad gave it an impetus, and now Duluth is a city of fifteen
thousand inhabitants, and rapidly growing. The harbor is a good one, and
is open about two hundred days in the year. Six regular lines of
steamers run to Chicago, Cleveland, Canadian ports, and ports on the
south shore of Lake Superior. The commerce of Duluth, situated as it is
in the vicinity of the mineral districts on both shores of the lake,
surrounded by a well-timbered country, and offering the most convenient
outlet for the products of the wheat region further west, is of growing
importance. In half a century Duluth will be outranked in wealth and
population by no more than a dozen cities in America.
Our stay at Duluth was protracted many days. One finds himself at home
in this new Western city, and there are a thousand ways in which to
amuse yourself. If you are disposed for a walk, there are any number of
delightful woodpaths leading to famous bits of beach where you may sit
and dream the livelong day without fear of interruption or notice. If
you would try camping-out, there are guides and canoes right at your
hand, and the choice of scores of beautiful and delightful spots within
easy reach of your hotel or along the shore of the lake and its numerous
beautiful islands, or as far away into the forest as you care to
penetrate. Lastly, if piscatorially inclined, here is a boathouse with
every kind of boat from the steam-yacht down to the birch canoe, and
there is the lake, full of "lakers," sturgeon, whitefish, and speckled
trout, some of the latter weighing from thirty to forty pounds
apiece,--a condition of things alike satisfactory and tempting to every
owner of a rod and line.
The guides, of whom there are large numbers to be found at Duluth, as
indeed at all of the northern border towns, are a class of men too
interesting and peculiar to be passed over without more than a cursory
notice. These men are mostly French-Canadians and Indians, with now and
then a native, and for hardihood, skill, and reliability, cannot be
surpassed by any other similar class of men the world over. They are
usually men of many parts, can act equally well as guide, boatman,
baggage-carrier, purveyor, and cook. They are respectful and chivalrous:
no woman, be she old or young, fair or faded, fails to receive the most
polite and courteous treatment at their hands, and with these qualities
they possess a manly independence that is as far removed from servility
as forwardness. Some of these men are strikingly handsome, with shapely
statuesque figures that recall the Antinous and the Apollo Belvidere.
Their life is necessarily a hard one, exposed as they are to all sorts
of weather and the dangers incidental to their profession. At a
comparatively early age they break down, and extended excursions are
left to the younger and more active members of the fraternity.
Camping-out, provided the weather is reasonably agreeable, is one of the
most delightful and healthful ways to spend vacation. It is a sort of
woodman's or frontier life. It means living in a tent, sleeping on
boughs or leaves, cooking your own meals, washing your own dishes and
clothes perhaps, getting up your own fuel, making your own fire, and
foraging for your own provender. It means activity, variety, novelty,
and fun alive; and the more you have of it the more you like it; and the
longer you stay the less willing you are to give it up. There is a
freedom in it that you do not get elsewhere. All the stiff formalties of
conventional life are put aside: you are left free to enjoy yourself as
you choose. All in all, it is the very best way we know to enjoy a
"glorious vacation."
At Duluth, at Sault de Ste. Marie, at Mackinaw, at Saginaw, we wandered
away days at a time, with nothing but our birch canoe, rifles, and
fishing-rods, and for provisions, hard bread, pork, potatoes, coffee,
tea, rice, butter, and sugar, closely packed. Any camper-out can make
himself comfortable with an outfit as simple as the one named. How
memory clings around some of those bright spots we visited! I pass over
them again, in thought, as I write these lines, longing to nestle amid
them forever.
Following along the coast, now in small yachts hired for the occasion,
now in a birch canoe of our own, we passed from one village to another.
Wherever we happened to be at night, we encamped. Many a time it was on
a lonely shore. Standing at sunset on a pleasant strand, more than once
we saw the glow of the vanished sun behind the western mountains or the
western waves, darkly piled in mist and shadow along the sky; near at
hand, the dead pine, mighty in decay, stretching its ragged arms athwart
the burning heavens, the crow perched on its top like an image carved in
jet; and aloft, the night-hawk, circling in his flight, and, with a
strange whining sound, diving through the air each moment for the
insects he makes his prey.
But all good things, as well as others, have an end. The season drew to
a close at last. August nights are chilly for sleeping in tents. Our
flitting must cease, and our thoughts and steps turn homeward. But a few
days are still left us. At Buffalo once more we go to see the Falls.
Then by boat to Hamilton, thence to Kingston at the foot of the lake,
and so on through the Thousand Isles to Montreal, and finally to
Quebec,--a tour as fascinating in its innumerable and singularly wild
and beautiful "sights" as heart could desire.
* * * * *
OUR NATIONAL CEMETERIES.
By Charles Cowley, LL.D.
There are circumstances generally attending the death of the soldier or
the sailor, whether on battle-field or gun-deck, whether in the
captives' prison, the cockpit, or the field-hospital, which touch our
sensibilities far more deeply than any circumstances which usually
attend the death of men of any other class; moving within us mingled
emotions of pathos and pity, of mystery and awe.
"There is a tear for all that die,
A mourner o'er the humblest grave;
But nations swell the funeral cry,
And freedom weeps above the brave;
"For them is sorrow's purest sigh,
O'er ocean's heaving bosom sent;
In vain their bones unburied lie,--
All earth becomes their monument.
"A tomb is their's on every page;
An epitaph on every tongue;
The present hours, the future age,
Nor them bewail, to them belong.
"A theme to crowds that knew them not,
Lamented by admiring foes,
Who would not share their glorious lot?
Who would not die the death they chose?"
A similar halo invests our National Cemeteries--which are the most
permanent mementos of our sanguinary Civil War.
Nature labors diligently to cover up her scars. Most of the
battle-fields of the Rebellion now show growths of use and beauty. Many
of the structures of that great conflict have already ceased to be. Some
of them have been swept away by the winds or overgrown with weeds;
others, like Fort Wagner, have been washed away by the waves. But
neither winds nor waves are likely to disturb the monuments or the
cemeteries of our soldiers and sailors. Where they were placed, there
they remain; "and there they will remain forever."
The seventy-eight National Cemeteries distributed over the country
contain the remains of three hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred
and fifty-five men, classed as follows: known, 170,960; unknown,
147,495; total, 318,455. And these are not half of those whose deaths
are attributable to their service in the armies and navies of the United
States and the Confederate States, who are buried in all sections of the
Union and in foreign lands.
In some of these cemeteries, as at Gettysburg, Antietam, City Point,
Winchester, Marietta, Woodlawn, Hampton, and Beaufort, by means of
public appropriations and private subscriptions, statues and other
monuments have at different times been erected; and many others
doubtless will be erected in them hereafter. Some of them are in
secluded situations, where for many mites the population is sparse, and
the few people that live near them cherish tenderer recollections of the
"Lost Cause" than of that which finally won. But such of them as are
contiguous to cities are places of interest to more or less of the
neighboring population; and, in some of them, there are commemorative
services upon Memorial Days.
These cemeteries have many features in common; and much that may be said
of one of them may also be said of the others--merely changing the
names.
It happened to the present writer to visit the National Cemetery at
Beaufort, South Carolina, to deliver an oration on Memorial Day, 1881,
in the midst of ten thousand graves of the soldiers and sailors of the
department of the South and South Atlantic blockading squadron. The dead
interred in these thirty acres of graves are: known, 4,748, unknown,
4,493; total, 9,241. Among the trees planted in this cemetery is a
willow, grown from a branch of the historic tree which once overshadowed
the grave of Napoleon at St. Helena.
Generals Thomas W. Sherman and John G. Foster, who commanded that
department, and Admirals Dupont and Dahlgren, who commanded that
squadron, all died in their Northern homes since the peace, and their
graves are not to be looked for here. The same may be said of hundreds
of military and naval officers who performed valuable services on these
shores and along these coasts, and have since "passed over to the great
majority."
That neither General Strong nor General Schimmelfennig is buried here
might be accounted for by the fact that, though they died by reason of
their having served in this department, they died at the North. But even
General Mitchell, whose flag of command was last unfurled in this
department, who died in Beaufort, and was originally buried under the
sycamores of the Episcopal churchyard, now sleeps in the shades of
Greenwood, and not (as he would probably have preferred, could he have
foreseen this cemetery) among the brave men whom he commanded.
The best known names among those here buried (to use a pardonable
Hibernianism) are among the "unknown." For here, as we may believe, in
unknown graves, rest the remains of Colonel Robert G. Shaw, of the
Fifty-fourth Massachusetts (colored), Colonel Haldimand S. Putnam, of
the Seventh New Hampshire, Lieutenant-Colonel James M. Green, of the
Forty-eighth New York, and many other gallant officers and men who were
killed in the assault on Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, and who were first
buried by the Confederates in the sands of Morris Island.
Many a Northern college is represented here. Among those to whom tablets
have been erected in the Memorial Hall of Harvard University, who are
buried here, besides Colonel Shaw, are Captains Winthrop P. Boynton and
William D. Crane, who were killed at Honey Hill, November 30, 1864; and
Captain Cabot J. Russell, who fell with Shaw at Fort Wagner. Yet these
are but the beginning of the list of the sons of Massachusetts who rest
in this "garden of graves."
Among the many gallant men of the navy buried here is Acting-Master
Charles W. Howard, of the ironclad steam-frigate New Ironsides, whom
Lieutentant Glassell shot during his bold attempt to blow up the New
Ironsides with the torpedo steamer David, October 5, 1863. Another is
Thomas Jackson, coxswain of the Wabash, the _beau ideal_ of an
American sailor, who was killed in the battle of Port Royal, November 7,
1861.
Death, like a true democrat, levels all distinctions. Still, it may be
mentioned that Lieutenant-Colonel William N. Reed, who was mortally
wounded at Olustee while in command of the Thirty-fifth United States
colored troops, February 20, 1864, was, while living, the highest
officer in rank, whose grave is known here. Other gallant officers,
killed at Olustee, are buried near him. Among these, probably, is
Colonel Charles W. Fribley, of the Eighth United States colored troops;
though he may be still sleeping beneath the sighing pines of Olustee.
As far as practicable, all Federal soldiers and sailors buried along the
seaboard of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, have been removed to
Beaufort Cemetery; and, as Governor Alexander H. Bullock said: "Wherever
they offered up their lives, amid the thunder of battle, or on the
exhausting march, in victory or in defeat, in hospital or in prison,
officers and privates, soldiers and sailors, patriots all, they fell
like the beauty of Israel on their high places, burying all distinctions
of rank in the august equality of death."
One section of the cemetery is devoted to the Confederates. There are
more than a hundred of these, including several commissioned officers;
and on Memorial Days the same ladies who decorate the graves of the
Federals decorate also in the same manner the graves of the
Confederates; recognizing that, though in life they were arrayed as
mortal enemies, they are now reconciled in "the awful but kindly
brotherhood of death." Sir Walter Scott enjoins:--
"Speak not for those a separate doom,
Whom fate made brothers in the tomb."
And One infinitely greater than Sir Walter has inculcated still loftier
sentiments.
Among the graves to which the attention of the writer was particularly
attracted was that of Charley ----, a boy of Colonel Putnam's regiment,
who had now been dead more years than he had lived. His parents, living
on the shores of Lake Winnipiseogee, and walking daily over the paths
which he had often trod, had plucked the earliest flower of their
northern clime and sent it to the superintendent of the cemetery, to be
planted at Charley's grave. The burning sun of South Carolina had not
spared that flower; but something of it still remained. Its mute
eloquence spoke to the heart of the tender recollections of a father and
of a mother's undying love. How truly does Wordsworth say,--
"The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
For us who have survived the perils of battle and the far more fatal
diseases that wasted our forces, and for all who cherish the memory of
these dead, it will always be a consoling thought that the Federal
government has done so much to provide honorable sepulture for those who
fell in defence of the Union. We can all appreciate Lord Byron's lament
for the great Florentine poet and patriot;--
"Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar,
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore."
But we can have no such regret for our lost comrades, buried not upon a
foreign, nor upon an unfriendly shore, but in the bosom of the soil
which their blood redeemed. Sacred is the tear that is shed for the
unreturning brave.
"'T is the tear through many a long day wept,
'T is life's whole path o'ershaded;
'T is the one remembrance, fondly kept,
When all lighter griefs have faded."
* * * * *
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 | 8