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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Travels the Erie Canal
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This article was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and appeared in
the
December 1835 issue of New England Magazine.
I was inclined to be poetical about the Grand Canal. In my
imagination, Dewitt Clinton was an enchanter, who had waved his magic
wand from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and united them by a watery
highway, crowded with the commerce of two worlds, till then
inaccessible to each other. This simple and mighty conception had
conferred inestimable value on spots which Nature seemed to have
thrown carelessly into the great body of the earth, without
foreseeing that they could ever attain importance.
I pictured the surprise of the sleepy Dutchmen when the new
river first glittered by their doors, bringing them hard cash or
foreign commodities, in exchange for their hitherto unmarketable
produce. Surely, the water of this canal must be the most fertilizing
of all fluids, for it causes towns—with their masses of brick and
stone, their churches and theatres, their business and hubbub, their
luxury and refinement, their gay dames and polished citizens—to
spring up, till, in time, the wondrous stream may flow between two
continuous lines of buildings, through one thronged street, from
Buffalo to Albany. I embarked about thirty miles below Utica,
determining to voyage along the whole extent of the canal, at least
twice in the course of the summer.
Behold us, then, fairly afloat, with three horses harnessed to
our vessel, like the steeds of Neptune to a huge scallop-shell, in
mythological pictures. Bound to a distant port, we had neither chart
nor compass, nor cared about the wind, nor felt the heaving of a
billow, nor dreaded shipwreck, however fierce the tempest, in our
adventurous navigation of an interminable mud-puddle—for a mud-puddle
it seemed, and as dark and turbid as if every kennel in the land paid
contribution to it.
With an imperceptible current, it holds its drowsy way through
all the dismal swamps and unimpressive scenery, that could be found
between the great lakes and the sea-coast. Yet there is variety
enough, both on the surface of the canal and along its banks, to
amuse the traveler, if an overpowering tedium did not deaden his
perceptions.
Sometimes we met a black and rusty-looking vessel, laden with
lumber, salt from Syracuse, or Genesee flour, and shaped at both ends
like a square-toed boot; as if it had two sterns, and were feted
always to advance backward. On its deck would be a square hut, and a
woman seen through the window at her household work, with a little
tribe of children, who perhaps had been born in this strange
dwelling, and knew no other home.
Thus, while the husband smoked his pipe at the helm, and the
eldest son rode one of the horses, on went the family traveling
hundreds of miles in their own house, and carrying their fireside
with them. The most frequent species of craft were the “line boats,”
which had a cabin at each end, and a great bulk of barrels, bales,
and boxes in the midst; or light packets, like our own, decked all
over, with a row of curtained windows from stem to stern, and a
drowsy face in every one.
Once, we encountered a boat, of rude construction, painted all in
gloomy black, and manned by three Indians, who gazed at us in silence
and with a single fixedness of eye. Perhaps, these three alone,
among the ancient possessors of the land, had attempted to derive
benefit from the white man’s mighty projects, and float along the
current of his enterprise. Not long after, in the midst of a swamp
and beneath a clouded sky, we overtook a vessel that seemed full of
mirth and sunshine. It contained a little colony of Swiss, on their
way to Michigan, clad in garments of strange fashion and gay colors,
scarlet, yellow and bright blue, singing, laughing and making merry, in
odd tones and a babble of outlandish words.
One pretty damsel, with a beautiful pair of naked white arms,
addressed a mirthful remark to me; she spoke in her native tongue and
I retorted in good English, both of us laughing heartily at each
other’s unintelligible wit. I cannot describe how pleasantly this
incident affected me. These honest Swiss were an itinerant community
of jest and fun, journeying through a gloomy land and among a dull
race of money-getting drudges, meeting none to understand their mirth
and only one to sympathize with it, yet still retaining the happy
lightness of their own spirit.
Had I been on my feet at the time, instead of sailing slowly
along in a dirty canal-boat, I should often have paused to
contemplate the diversified panorama along the banks of the canal.
Sometimes the scene was a forest, dark, dense, and impervious,
breaking away occasionally and receding from a lonely tract, covered
with dismal black stumps, where, on the verge of the canal, might be
seen a log-cottage, and a sallow-faced woman at the window. Lean and
anguished, she looked like Poverty personified, half clothed, half fed,
and dwelling in a desert, while a tide of wealth was sweeping by her
door.
Two or three miles further would bring us to a lock, where the
slight impediment of navigation had created a little mart of trade.
Here would be found commodities of all sorts, enumerated in yellow
letters on the window-shutters of a small grocery-store, the owner of
which had set his soul to the gathering of coppers and small change,
buying and selling through the week, and counting his gains on the
blessed Sabbath. The next scene might be the dwelling houses and
stores of a thriving village, built of wood or small gray stones, a
church-spire rising in the midst, and generally two taverns, bearing
over their piazzas the pompous titles of “hotel,” “exchange,” “tontine,” or “coffee-house.”
Passing on, we glide now into the unquiet heart of an inland
city – of Utica, for instance – and find ourselves amid piles of
brick, crowded docks and quays, rich warehouses and a busy
population. We feel the eager and hurrying spirit of the place, like
a stream and eddy whirling us along with it. Through the thickest of
the tumult goes the canal, flowing between lofty rows of buildings
and arched bridges of hewn stone. Onward, also, go we, till the hum
and bustle of struggling enterprise die away behind us, and we are
threading an avenue of the ancient woods again.
This sounds not amiss in description, but was so tiresome in
reality, that we were driven to the most childish expedients for
amusement. An English traveler paraded the deck with a rifle in his
walking-stick, and waged war on squirrels and woodpeckers, sometimes
sending an unsuccessful bullet among flocks of tame ducks and geese,
which abound in the dirty water of the canal. I, also, pelted these
foolish birds with apples, and smiled at the ridiculous earnestness
of their scrambles for the prize, while the apple bobbed about like a
thing of life. Several little accidents afforded us good-natured
diversion.
At the moment of changing horses, the tow-rope caught a
Massachusetts farmer by the leg, and threw him down in a very
indescribable posture, leaving a purple mark around his sturdy limb.
A new passenger fell flat on his back, in attempting to step on deck,
as the boat emerged from under a bridge. Another, in his Sunday
clothes, as good luck would have it, being told to leap aboard from
the bank, forthwith plunged up to his third waistcoat button in the
canal, and was fished out in very pitiable plight, not at all amended
by our three rounds of applause.
Anon, a Virginia schoolmaster, too intent on a pocket Virgil
to heed the helmsman’s warning – “Bridge! Bridge!” was saluted by the
said bridge on his knowledge-box. I had prostrated myself, like a
pagan before his idol, but heard the dull leaden sound of the
contact, and fully expected to see the treasures of the poor man’s
cranium scattered about the deck. However, as there was no harm
done, except a large bump on the head, and probably a corresponding
dent in the bridge, the rest of us exchanged glances and laughed
quietly. Oh, how pitiless are idle people!
The table being now lengthened through the cabin, and spread for
supper, the next twenty minutes were the pleasantest I had spent on
the canal—the same space at dinner excepted. At the close. the meal,
it had become dusky enough for lamplight. The rain pattered
unceasingly on the deck, and sometimes came with a sullen rush
against the windows, driven by the wind, as it stirred through an
opening of the forest. The intolerable dullness of the scene
engendered an evil spirit in me.
Perceiving that the Englishman was taking notes in a memorandum-book, with
occasional glances round the cabin, I presumed that we were all to figure
in a future volume of travels, and amused by my
ill-humor by falling into the probable vein of his remarks. He would
hold up an imaginary mirror, wherein our reflected faces would appear
ugly and ridiculous, yet still retain an undeniable likeness to the
originals. Then, with more sweeping malice, he would make these
caricatures the representatives of great classes of my countrymen.
He glanced at the Virginia schoolmaster, a Yankee by birth, who, to
recreate himself, was examining a freshman from Schenectady College,
in the conjugation of a Greek verb. Him, the Englishman would
portray as the scholar of America, and compare his erudition to a
schoolboy’s Latin theme, made up of scraps, ill-selected and worse
put together. Next, the tourist looked at the Massachusetts farmer,
who was delivering a dogmatic harangue on the iniquity of Sunday mails.
Here was the far-famed yeoman of New England; his religion,
writes the Englishman, is gloom on the Sabbath, long prayers every
morning and eventide, and illiberality at all times; his boasted
information is merely an abstract and compound of newspaper
paragraphs, Congress debates, caucus harangues, and the argument and
judge’s charge in his own lawsuits. The bookmonger cast his eye at a
Detroit merchant, and began scribbling faster than ever.
In this sharp-eyed man, this lean man, of wrinkled brow, we
see daring enterprise and close-fisted avarice combined; here is the
worshipper of Mammon at noonday; here is the three-times bankrupt,
richer after every ruin; here, in one work, (Oh, wicked Englishman to
say it!) here is the American! He lifted his eye-glass to inspect a
western lady, who at once became aware of the glance, reddened, and
retired deeper into the female part of the cabin. Here was the pure,
modest, sensitive, and shrinking woman of America; shrinking when no
evil is intended; and sensitive like diseased flesh, that thrills if
you but point at it; and strangely modest, without confidence in the
modesty of other people; and admirably pure, with such a quick
apprehension of all impurity.
In this manner, I went all through the cabin, hitting everybody
as hard a lash as I could, and laying the whole blame on the infernal
Englishman. At length, I caught the eyes of my own image in the
looking-glass, where a number of the party were likewise reflected,
and among them the Englishman, who, at that moment, was intently
observing myself.
The crimson curtain being let down between the ladies and gentlemen,
the cabin became a bed-chamber for twenty persons, who were laid on
shelves, one above another. For a long time, our various
incommodities kept us all awake, except five or six, who were
accustomed to sleep nightly amid the uproar of their own snoring, and
had little to dread from any other species of disturbance. Its is
curious fact, that these snorers had been the most quiet people in
the boat, while awake, and became peace-breakers only when others
ceased to be so, breathing tumult out of their repose.
Would it were possible to affix a wind instrument to the nose,
and thus make melody of a snore, so that a sleeping lover might
serenade his mistress, or a congregation snore a psalm-tune! Other,
though fainter sounds than these, contributed to my restlessness. My
head was close to the crimson curtain – the sexual division of the
boat – behind which I continually heard whispers and stealthy
footsteps; the noise of a comb laid on the table, or a slipper drops
on the floor, the twang, like a broken harp-string, caused by
loosening a tight belt; the rustling of a gown in its descent; and
the unlacing of a pair of stays. My ear seemed to have the
properties of an eye; a visible image pestered my fancy in the
darkness; the curtain was withdrawn between me and the western lady,
who yet disrobed herself without a blush.
Finally, all was hushed in that quarter. Still, I was more
broad awake than through the whole preceding day, and felt a feverish
impulse to toss my limbs miles apart, and appease the unquietness of
mind by that of matter. Forgetting that my berth was hardly so wide
as a coffin, I turned suddenly over, and fell like an avalanche on
the floor , to the disturbance of the whole community of sleepers.
As there were no bones broken, I blessed the accident, and went
on deck. A lantern was burning at each end of the boat, and one of
the crew was stationed at the bows, keeping watch, as mariners do on
the ocean. Though the rain had ceased, the sky was all one cloud,
and the darkness so intense, that there seemed to be no world, except
the little space on which our lanterns glimmered. Yet, it was an
impressive scene.
We were traversing the “long level,” a dead flat between Utica
and Syracuse, where the canal has not rise or fall enough to require
a lock for nearly seventy miles. There can hardly be a more dismal
tract of country. The forest which covers it, consisting chiefly of
white cedar, black ash, and other trees that live in excessive
moisture, is now decayed and death-struck, by the partial draining of
the swamp into the great ditch of the canal. Sometimes, indeed, our
lights reflected from pools of stagnant water, which stretched far in
among the trunks of the trees, beneath dense masses of dark foliage.
But generally, the tall stems and intermingled branches were naked,
and brought strong relief, amid the surrounding gloom, by the
whiteness of their decay.
Often, we beheld the prostrate form of some old sylvan giant,
which had fallen, and crushed down smaller trees under its immense
ruin. In spots, where destruction had been riotous, the lanterns
showed perhaps a hundred trunks, erect, half overthrown, extended
along the ground, resting on their shattered limbs, or tossing them
desperately into the darkness, but all of one ashy-white, all naked
together, in desolate confusion. Thus growing out of the night as we
drew nigh, and vanishing as we glided on, based on obscurity, and
overhung and bounded by it, the scene was ghost-like – the very land
of unsubstantial things, whither dreams might betake themselves, when
they quit the slumberer’s brain.
My fancy found another emblem. The wild Nature of America had
been driven to this desert-like place by the encroachments of
civilized man. And even here, where the savage queen was throned on
the ruins of her empire, did we penetrate, a vulgar and worldly
throng, intruding on her latest solitude. In other lands, Decay sits
among fallen palaces; but here, her home is in the forests.
Looking ahead, I discerned a distant light, announcing the
approach of another boat, which soon passed us, and proved to be a
rusty old scow – just such a craft as the “Flying Dutchman” would
navigate on the canal. Perhaps it was that celebrated personage
himself, whom I imperfectly distinguished at the helm, in a glazed
hat and rough great-coat, with a pipe in his mouth, leaving the fumes
of tobacco a hundred yards behind.
Shortly after, our boatman blew a horn, sending a long and
melancholy note through the forest avenue, as a signal for some
watcher in the wilderness to be ready with a change of horses. We
had proceeded a mile or two with our fresh team, when the tow-rope
got entangled in a fallen branch on the edge of the canal, and caused
a momentary delay, during which I went to examine the phosphoric
light of an odd tree, a little within the forest. It was not the
first delusive radiance that I had followed.
The tree lay along the ground, and was wholly converted into a
mass of diseased splendor, which threw a ghastliness around. Being
full of conceits that night, I called it a frigid fire; a funeral
light, illuminating decay and death; an emblem of fame, that gleams
around the dead man without warming him; or of genius, when it owes
its brilliancy to moral rottenness; and was thinking that such ghost-like torches
were just fit to light up this dead forest, or to blaze coldly in tombs,
when, starting from my abstraction, I looked up the
canal. I recollected myself, and discovered the lanterns glimmering
far away.
“Boat ahoy!” shouted I, making a trumpet of my closed fists.
Though the cry must have rung for miles along that hollow
passage of the woods, it produced no effect. These packetboats make
up for their snail-like pace by never loitering day nor night,
especially for those who have paid their fare. Indeed, the captain
had an interest in getting rid of me, for I was his creditor for a
breakfast.
“They are gone! Heaven be praised!” ejaculated I; “for I cannot
possibly overtake them! Here am I, on the “long level,” at midnight,
with the comfortable prospect of a walk to Syracuse, where my baggage
will be left; and now to find a house or shed, wherein to pass the
night.” So thinking aloud, I took a flambeau from the old tree,
burning, but consuming not, to light my steps withal, and, like a
Jack-o’-the-lantern, set out on my midnight tour.
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