WE have gotten a new barber in the village. It is a good thing to have a barber in the country. You hear all the news, all the weddings, the engagements, the lawsuits, and other festive matters, in his aromatic shop. Our former Master Nicholas has left us suddenly. “Maese Nicolas, quando barbero, del mismo pueblo.“ We miss him very much. I used to admire his long and learned essay upon the ’uman ’air. The ’uman ’air, for want of capillary attraction, could not maintain its place upon the ’uman ’ead, without the united juices of one hundred and fifty-five vegetables. So long as he devoted himself to procuring the necessary vegetables, and hung his argument upon a hair, he did 161 very well. It was pleasant to doze under his glib fingers and his vegetative philosophy. But unfortunately he got into politics. Barbers usually have excitable temperaments. The barber of our village became the softest of the softs. He was ready to argue with anybody, and everybody, in his “garden of spices.”
One day while I was under his tuition, at the end of a prolonged debate with one of his sitters, by way of clinching his point, he did me the honor of tapping me twice upon the cranium with the back of his hair-brush. “Sir,” said he (tap), “I tell you that is so” (heavy tap). In consequence, I predicted his speedy downfall. Sure enough, he laid a wager that his candidate would have a majority in our village over all the rest of the candidates, and the next election only gave his candidate two votes. Next day our barber was missing. Public vandalism had crushed him.
We have procured a new barber. He is in the dyeing line of business. It is the color, not the quantity of hair, that engages all his lubricating efforts. To convert the frost of age into a black or brown scalp is the highest ambition of his genius. Not only that: he anticipates time, and suggests 162 preventive treatment to younger men. To me he is excessively tiresome.
I have bought me a new dog. A snow-white terrier, with rose-colored ears and paws. She is as white as new-plucked cotton, or February clouds. All our other dogs, Jack, Zack, and Flora, are black; Juno, by contrast, looks strikingly white. One day, I found four black dogs under the porch. Of the four, I should say Juno was the blackest. She had been to the barber’s on a visit, and he had given her a coat of his confounded Praxitiles balsam. Now she is growing out of it, but her present appearance is so repulsive the other dogs will not associate with her. Some day I mean to give that barber a talking to about the matter.
Who that loves nature can forsake the country in October? Before the leaves fall, before “the flying gold of the woodlands drive through the air,” we must visit our old friends opposite — the Palisades. We must bring forth our boat once more, and “white-ash it” over the blue river to the “Chimneys.” “What do you think of it, Mrs. Sparrowgrass?” Mrs. S. replied, she was willing. So, then, on Saturday, if the weather be fair, we will make our final call upon them. The weather 163 was fair, the air warm, the sky clear, the river smooth, the boat in order, and over we went. I had invited a German gentleman, Mr. Sumach, to accompany us, on account of his flute. He is a very good performer on that instrument, and music always sounds to great advantage upon the water. When we approached the great cliffs, Mr. Sumach opened his case and took therefrom the joints of an extraordinarily large flute. Then he moistened the joints and put it together. Then he held it up and arranged the embouchure to his satisfaction, and then he wiped it off with his handkerchief. Then he held it up again at right angles, and an impudent boy in another boat, fishing, told him he’d better take in his boom if he did not want to jibe. Then Mr. Sumach ran rapidly through a double octave, executed a staccato passage with wonderful precision, and wound up with a prolonged bray of great brilliancy and power. Then the boy, by way of jibing himself, imitated the bleating of a sheep. Then I bent the white ash oars to get out of reach of the boy, and the blisters on my hands became painfully bloated. Then Mr. Sumach, who had been trilling enough to make anybody nervous, proposed that we should 164 sing something. Then Mrs. Sparrowgrass suggested “Home, Sweet Home.” Then we commenced (flute obligato.)
By this time we had reached the base of the Palisades.
Now then — here we are! A segment of sand you might cover with a blanket, and all the rest of the beach a vast wreck of basaltic splinters! Rocks, rocks, rocks! From bits not larger than a watermelon, up to fragments the size of the family tea-table. All these have fallen off those upper cliffs 165 you see rising from the gold, brown, and crimson of autumnal leaves. Look up! No wonder it makes you dizzy to look up. What is that bird? Mrs. Sparrowgrass, that is an eagle!
It was a pleasant thing, after we had secured the boat by an iron grapnel, to pick our way over the sharp rocks; now holding by a lithe cedar, now swinging around a jutting crag by a pendulous, wild grape-vine, anon stepping from block to block, with a fine river view in front and below; and then coming suddenly upon the little nook where lay the flat stone we were in quest of; and then came the great cloth-spreading, and opening of the basket! And we took from the basket, first a box of matches, and a bundle of choice segars of delicate flavor. Next two side bottles of claret. Then we lifted out carefully a white napkin, containing only one fowl, and that not fat. Then two pies, much the worse for the voyage. Then two more bottles of claret. Then another centre-piece — ham sandwiches. Then a bundle of knives and forks, a couple of cork-screws, a tier of plates, six apples, and a half bottle of olives. Then twenty-seven hickory nuts, and a half dozen nut-crackers. And then came the cheese, and the manuscript.
166Oh, golden November sky, and tawny river! bland distance and rugged foreground! wild, crimson vines, green cedars, many-colored, deciduous foliage, grey precipices, and delicious claret! What an afternoon that was, under the Palisades!
“Mr. Sumach,” said I, after the pippins and cheese, “if you will cast your eyes up beyond the trees, above those upper trees, and follow the face of the precipice in a direct line for some four hundred feet perpendicularly, you will see a slight jutting out of rock, perhaps twenty feet below the top of the crags.” Mr. Sumach replied, the sun was shining so brilliantly, just then, upon that identical spot, that he could see nothing at all. As, upon careful inspection, I could not see the spot myself, I was obliged to console myself with another sip of claret. Yet there it was! Just above us!
“Mr. Sumach,” said I, “I wish you could see it, for it is one of the curiosities of our country. You know we have five wonders of the world in America — the Falls of Niagara, the Natural Bridge in Virginia, the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, Trenton Falls, and the Palisades. Now, sir, just above us, almost at the brink of that dizzy height, there is a singular testimony of the freaks of nature. 167 That tough old rock, sir, has had a piece taken out of it — squarely out, by lightning probably, and the remnants of the vast mass now lie around us, covered with lichens, nutshells, dead leaves, table-cloth, and some claret bottles. If you will go with me, some two miles north, there is a path up the mountains, and we can then walk along the top of the vast precipice to the spot directly over us.” Mr. Sumach declined, on the ground of not being accustomed to such rough walking. “Then, sir, let me describe it to you. From that jutting buttress of rock in front, to the opening there, just back of you, there is a flat platform above us, wide enough for a man to lie down with his head close to the inner wall and his feet a few inches over the precipice. That platform is probably one hundred and fifty feet long; the wall behind it is some twenty feet high; there is a little ravine, indicated by the gap up there, by which you can reach the platform. Once on it, you will see the wall back of you is very flat and even, as well as the stone floor you tread upon.” Mr. Sumach answered, “Very well?” in a tone of inquiry. “Now,” said I, “here in this paper is the Legend of the Palisades, and as we are upon legendary ground, I will read it to 168 you.” Mr. Sumach, with a despairing look at his giant flute-case, said he would like much to hear it. So, after another sip of claret, I unrolled the manuscript and read
Long before the white sails of Europe cast their baleful shadows over the sunny waters of the western continent, a vast portion of this territory, bounded by perpetual snows and perpetual summer, was occupied by two mighty nations of red men. The Iroquois, by far the most warlike nation, dominated, with its united tribes, the inland from Canada to North Carolina, and east and west from Central Pennsylvania to Michigan; while the great Algonquin race peopled the sea-board, from Labrador almost to the Floridas, and extending itself westward, even to the borders of Oregon, again stretched away beyond the waters of the Mississippi, unto the hunting-grounds of the swarthy Appalachians. This bright river, in those days, flowed downward to the sea under some dark Indian name; and where yonder village glitters with its score of spires and myriad windows, the smoke of numerous camp- 169 fires curled amidst pointed wigwams, of poles, and skins, and birch-bark wrought with barbaric characters.
Of the Algonquin tribes, that formerly inhabited the banks of this mighty stream, tradition has scarcely preserved a name. A handful of colored, earthen beads, a few flint arrow-heads, are the sole memorials of a once great populace. But tradition, with wonderful tenacity, clings to its legends. Even from the dross of nameless nations, some golden deed shines forth, with a lustre antiquity cannot tarnish. So among the supernatural songs of the Iroquois we find a living parable.
Long before the coming of the pale-faces, there was a great warrior of the Onondaga-Iroquois, by name “The Big Papoose.” He had a round, small, smooth face, like that of a child, but his arms were long, and his shoulders broad and powerful as the branches of an oak. At the council fires he spoke not, at hunting parties he was indolent, and of the young squaws none could say, “he loves me.” But if he spoke not at the council fires, the people knew the scalps in his wigwam were numerous as the cones upon the pine tree; and if he cared not for hunting, yet he wore a triple collar made of the 170 claws of three grizzly bears, and the old braves loved to sing of the great elk he had pursued and killed with a blow of his stone axe, when his feet were as the wings of a swallow. True it was, the love that is so common to man, the love of woman, was not in his breast; but the brightest and boldest maiden’s eyes dropped in his presence, and many a time the bosoms of the young squaws would heave — just a little. Yet the Big Papoose was the friend of children. Who bound the tiny, flint arrow-heads to the feathered shafts, and strung the little bow with the sinews of deer, and practised the boy-warriors of the tribe in mimic warfare, and taught them to step with the foot of the sparrow, and to trap the fox, the rabbit, and the beaver, and to shout the death-whoop, the sa sa kuan? Who was it, but the Big Papoose lying yonder, face downward, on the frozen crust of the lake, his head covered with skins, and around him a score of boy-warriors, lying face downward too, watching the fish below, through the holes in the ice, that they might strike them with the pointed javelin, the aishkun? Yes, he was the friend of children, the Big Papoose!
There was then a very old brave of the Onondaga tribe; his hair was like the foam of the waterfall, 171 and his eyes were deep and dark as the pool beneath it. He was so old that he could lay his hand upon the head of a hundred years and say — “boy!”
He it was who had found, far in the north, under the uttermost stars, the sacred pieces of copper; he it was who had seen the great fish, so large that a single one could drink up the lake at a mouthful, and the great Thunder Water he had seen — Niagara! and the cavern, big enough to contain all the Indian tribes, the Iroquois and the Algonquins; and the stone arch that held up the skies, the sun, and moon, and the clouds he had stood beneath, and he had seen it.
He was called The White Cloud, and sometimes, when the summer’s heat had been too powerful upon the earth, and the green leaves of the maize drooped too much, he would bring forth the magic red pipe, and smoke, and blow the smoke towards the west, and then the vapors would rise up from the great lake Ontario, and approach him, and overshadow him, and the rain would fall, and the leaves rise up refreshed, and the little birds would sing loudly in the wet forest. Then, too, would the Big Papoose sit on the same log with the White Cloud, and ask him to tell of the mysteries of the 172 skies, and the Sachem would chant of the White Rabbit of the North, the Queen of the Heavens, that holds dominion over the uttermost stars, and the snows of winter; that hides in the summer, when the sun is powerful, that she may rival his brightness in the season of frost.
One day the Big Papoose said to the old chief — “Why, oh White Cloud, do you ever blow the smoke of the calumet towards the west; is there not rain too in the east?” Then the white-haired answered — “Because I like not the visions I see when I blow the smoke towards the east. As the smoke from the calumet moves westward, I behold in it nations of red men, moving, and ever moving, towards the caverns of the sun. But when I blow the smoke towards the east, I see the red men no more, but the glitter of mighty waters, and winged canoes, in size like the lofty hemlocks of the forest, and potent arrows of fire, that dart forth with clouds and thunderings. And further and further towards the east, I see more and more of the winged canoes, in number like the leaves that are blown by the winds of autumn, and the winged canoes bear many nations, and in the approaching nations I see not one red man.” “I have dreamed,” replied the 173 young warrior, “of a maiden whose eyes were in color like yonder lake, and who skin was beautiful as the snow at sunset.” “Do you not think of her often; more than of the women of the Onondagas?” said the White Cloud. The young warrior bowed his head. “The time will come,” said the old chief, “when the woman with blue eyes will think of the young chief of the Onondagas.” “When?” said the listener, eagerly. The White Cloud touched with his finger a young pine, whose stem was not thicker than a stalk of maize one moon old, and replied, “When this trunk shall have grown so a man may stretch his arms around it, and yet his right hand cannot meet his left, then will the young chief of the Onondagas live in the thoughts of the maiden with the skin like the flush of sunset on the snow.” “You speak truth,” answered the young chief, “so, too, have I dreamed.” “Tell me,” continued the white-haired prophet, “whom do you envy of living men?” “Not one,” replied the young warrior. “Whom of the dead do you envy?” “The warriors who are dead in battle, and yet live famousest in the songs of the Iroquois.” “Look!” said the prophet. A volume of smoke arose from the red pipe, and the old man 174 blew it gently towards the east. The Iroquois saw it spread into a plain, variegated with hills and rivers, and the villages of his tribe. Then it passed beyond the boundaries of his nation, and he recognized the habitations of the Algonquins; he saw their burial-places, and the stretched skins with the accursed totems of his hereditary enemies; he saw, too, the noted warriors of their tribes, the women, the medicine-men, and the children. Then the cloud rose up over a mountain, and he looked from its level summit down upon a sparkling river, broader than the rivers of his own country, and beyond, on the opposite side, villages of Algonquin tribes, the wigwams of the Nepperhans. And he was standing on the brink of gigantic cliffs, whose vast shadows lay midway across the sparkling river; and, as he looked, his foot touched a fragment of rock, and it fell sheer down from the summit of the precipice to its base, and struck nothing as it fell. And just beyond him was a shelf of rock hanging over a terrible shore — huge splinters of stone below, under his feet, and as his eyes wandered up and down the sparkling river, far as his vision reached, the great shadow of the precipices, and the savage walls of stone, and the fragmentary175 shore went on unending. Then the sparkling river grew dimmer, and the rocks faded from view, and he saw only the blue sky, and the clouds, and high up in the east, an eagle. “My son,” said the white-haired, “you have seen it. To-morrow night, loosen the thongs of your moccasins beyond the wigwams of the Iroquois. In the country of the Algonquins, are those wondrous precipices, and before seven days you will see the eastern sun rising over the sparkling river. Take with you this bag of pigments and painting implements. On the bare rocks, above the platform you have seen, inscribe the totem of your tribe, and the record of your achievements. Go! I say no more.”
Then the White Cloud put the tube of the calumet to his lips, and as the smoke arose from the kinikinic, the bowl of the red pipe expanded wider and wider, and the blue vapor spread out like the mist that rises from a lake in a midsummer morning. Then there came a powerful wind from the east, and the smoke rolled away before it, and was driven, with inconceivable swiftness, over the Lake Ontario, until it grew red under the sinking sun, and passed to the far off hunting-grounds of the Dacotahs. The young chief watched it until it 176vanished, and then turned to his companion. There was nothing near him but the green grass and the slender pine the White Cloud had touched with his finger.
Then the Big Papoose took the bag of pigments to his wigwam, and prepared for the journey. Around his broad chest he drew the folds of a gorgeous hunting-shirt, decorated with many-hued barbs of the porcupine, and secured it with a gaudy belt of wampum. His leggings were fringed with the hair of scalps, and Indian beads and shells of various colors, and his moccasins were wrought with quills, tinted like flowers of the prairie. Then he took from the notched poles of the wigwam his tufted bow, and a sheaf of arrows tipped with brilliant feathers, and he thrust the stone axe through his belt of wampum, and shook once more the slender spear-staff, with its ponderous head of pointed flint. And as he passed on beyond the wigwams of his tribe, the young squaws gazed after him with wondrous dark eyes, and the old women said, “Perhaps he will bring with him, when he returns, a Chenango woman, or a squaw from the blue Susquehanna.”
Twice the moon rose, and he saw the maize fields 177 of the Algonquins. Later and later she glittered over his solitary path by the rocky gorges of the Delaware. Then he saw in the north the misty mountains of Shawangonk, and lodges of hostile tribes without number, and other maize fields, and at night the camp-fires of a great people. Then he came to shallow rivers dotted with canoes, but the streams were less broad than the river of the Oswegos. And then he saw before him a sloping upland, and just as the moon and the dawn were shining together, he stood under tall trees on the summit, and beneath him was the platform of rock, and the waters of the sparkling river.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Sparrowgrass, “I am sorry to interrupt you, but is not that our boat out there, going up the river?” “Yes,” added Mr. Sumach, suddenly leaping up with energy, “and my flute too, I believe.” “It cannot be,” I replied, “for I fastened the boat with an iron grapnel,” and, as I did not like to be interrupted when I was reading, told Mr. Sumach, very quietly, but severely, he would find his bassoon just back of our stone table. The explanation being satisfactory, I was allowed to proceed with the legend.
There was a pathway to the platform, as it might be, a channel for the heavy rains that sometimes pour from the table-lands of the precipice to the ravine, and tumble, in a long, feathery torrent over its rocky breast. It was a narrow passage, with walls of stone on either side, and ended just a few feet south of the jutting ledge, so that the young chief had to leap from the brink of the gorge to the edge of the platform. Then he looked around, and behind him rose up the flat surface of thunder-split rock. Then he walked to the further end of it, and laid upon the ground his tufted bow and sheaf of arrows, loosened his belt of wampum, cast down his terrible stone axe, and leaned his pointed spear against the vast wall of the terrace. Then he took from the bag the pigments and the painting implements, and before mid-day he had sketched upon the rocky back-ground the vast outlines of his picture.
It was at the moment when he had completed the totem of his tribe, when he was nearest the gorge and furthest from his weapons, that a fawn darted from the chasm to the plateau, gathered up its affrighted form at sight of him, and then sprang sheer over the brink. The next instant an 179Algonquin warrior leaped upon the ledge. A startled look at the Iroquois — a contemptuous glance at the pictograph — two panther bounds — and the hereditary foes were struggling in a death-grapple upon the eaves of the precipice. Sometimes they leaned far over the brink, and then unitedly bent back, like twin pine trees over-blown. Both were unarmed, for the Algonquin had not suspected an enemy in a place where the foot of Iroquois had never trod, and the weapons of his adversary were distant from them a bow-shot. So, with terrible strength, and zeal, and skill, each sought to overthrow the other, until in the struggle they fell, still clutched together, upon the rocky floor of the battle-ground. There, with tremendous throes and throbs of anger, they lay, until the shadows of the cliffs had stretched far over the bosom of the sparkling river.
“Let us rise,” said the Algonquin. The warriors rose to their feet and stood gazing at each other.
There they were upon that terrible brink, within reach of each other. A touch of the hand would have precipitated either upon the fragmentary shore below.
“Let us not perish,” said the Algonquin, “like 180 the raccoon and the fox, starving in the death-lock, but let us die like braves.”
The Iroquois listened.
“Do you go,” continued the Algonquin, “tell the warriors of my tribe to come, that they may witness it, and I will leap with you from this ledge upon the death below.”
The Iroquois smiled.
“Stay,” added the Algonquin, “I am a child. Do I not know the fate of an Iroquois who would venture within the camp of my people? Remain you, until my return, that the history of my deed may be inscribed with that you have pictured upon these rocks.”
The Iroquois smiled again, and said, “I wait.”
The Algonquin bounded from the parapet and was gone.
Left to himself, the Iroquois collected together his painting implements, and filled with brilliant colors the outlines he had sketched upon the wall. Then he cast his spear far into the sparkling river, and sent the stone axe circling through the air until it splashed far out in the stream, and he broke the tufted bow with his powerful arms, and snapped his feathered arrows one by one. Then he girded 181 on his gorgeous belt of wampum, and waited. Of whom was he dreaming as he sat beneath the shadow of his pictograph? Was it not of the blue-eyed maiden with cheeks like the flush of sunset on the snow?
The Iroquois waited, Then he heard a murmur, as of the wind stirring the leaves, then the rush of rapid footsteps, and, as he started to his feet, the cliffs above him were thronged with Algonquin warriors. There was silence for an instant, and then an hundred bows were bent, an hundred bow-strings snapped, an hundred arrows converged through the air and struck him! But as he turned to hurl defiance at his enemies, a lithe form bounded upon the parapet — it caught the figure studded with arrows and tottering upon the brink in its arms — and screamed into the dying ears — “I am here, oh, Iroquois!” and then, except the pictograph, nothing human remained upon the platform of the Palisades!
When I had finished the legend, Mr. Sumach startled the echoes with a burst of fluting that defies description. So I set to work resolutely to pack up the basket, for I thought such a place as the one 182 we were visiting did not require the aid of art to make it interesting. After the packing was finished, we started off for the boat, Mr. Sumach tooting over the rocks in a marvellous manner, until we came to the place where some climbing was necessary, and there I had the satisfaction of seeing the flute dislocated and cased, and then it fell in the water, when Mr. S. had some trouble to get at it. When we got to the place of anchorage, we found the tide had risen and the grapnel under water, but no boat; so I suppose the other end of the rope had not been tied to the ring in the bow. We had a pretty walk, though, to Closter, and hired another boat. As our boat was brought home next day it was no great matter; but I wished the person who found it for us had found also the oars and the thole pins.