The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864

A short distance above the 'basin' we came to a final halt, in a splendid spruce forest, and near a little stream, that necessary accompaniment of a camping ground. It was feared lest the season was so far advanced that the spruce bark would no longer peel; but our tall young aspirant speedily tested the question by a few vigorous, well-directed strokes of his axe, and soon a great circle of bark, six feet high and nine feet in breadth, stood ready for use. Five other pieces, rather less in size, were found sufficient to furnish the sides and roof of our hut, which was made by cutting down two stout young saplings to supply the crotched stakes for the triangular front, and a third, to serve as ridge pole, extending back into the gently sloping bank of dry turf covered with dead spruce leaves. We were a mile and a half from the top of Tahawus, and had entered the great belt of spruce forest encircling the middle regions of the mountain; deciduous trees, with the exception of a few birches, had already been left behind. Round these stakes were arranged the great layers of bark, making a perfectly water-tight cabin, with open doorway, and large enough to give comfortable shelter to as many as four persons. The enclosed space was then covered with soft moss, and a thick layer of spruce twigs laid wrong side up. Over this spicy flooring we spread our gayly-striped blanket, and then sat down within our substantial wigwam to enjoy the blaze and crackle of the bright fire of great logs that had been kindled a few feet from the entrance.

A similar edifice, somewhat less imposing as to size and detail, was then constructed for the use of the guides. These operations employed our three men with their axes the greater part of two hours. Supper was the next matter under consideration, and was deftly prepared by 'Sid,' the aspirant, who proved himself an excellent cook. Our bill of fare consisted of hasty pudding (corn mush), eaten with butter and maple sugar (a dish for a king, and therefore well suited to sundry of the sovereign people, only Elsie and I, having no vote, cannot in any sense be called sovereign), bread and butter, crackers, and toast. Our guides, in addition, ate a slice of raw pork. Diogenes tried it, but pronounced it rather too much like candles to be very palatable south of Labrador or Kamtschatka.

Supper over, the sun had set, and the only work that remained for the twilight was the gathering of the fuel to feed the fires during the coming night.

Daylight faded away, the moon rose, and the gay chat by the fireside being exhausted, a silence, profound, and unbroken save by the crackling flames, fell upon the quiet, gray old forest. By and by the fire died down, and not a single sound could be heard, not the rustle of a bough, the tinkling of the stream, or the stirring of any forest creature. The moon sailed over the treetops, and a ghostly dreaminess lulled every sense, not to sleep, but to languid repose. Fatigue, thus far, there had been none, but physical and mental excitement plenty, and hence the writer's sleep during her first night of camping out lasted about one half hour. She watched the careful guides, how each one rose once during the short night to feed the fires, the elder one alert, the two younger drowsy and but half awake; her mind wandered with Humboldt and Bonpland to South America, with Dr. Kane to the Arctic zone, with Winthrop over the Rocky Mountains, with Dr. Livingstone to Central Africa, and with Father Huc to Tartary and Thibet. The busy, confined life of a city seemed an absurdity, the woods the only rational place for human beings to dwell in, and spruce boughs the only bed suitable to the dignity of mankind.

Morning broke, and with the dawn the guides were up preparing breakfast. Bill of fare: Salt pork, first parboiled to extract the brine, then drained off and fried crisp, bread and butter, toast, crackers, and tea, with maple sugar, but without milk. Our little tin pail served alike to draw water, boil hasty pudding, and make tea. But although the day had dawned and the sun risen, the light was feeble, and the elder guide shook his head ominously.

'Indeed,' said he, 'it won't be much use to go on up, for the Haystack looks so blue that durn'd haze must have come back again, and you'll have no view from Mercy to-day.'

'Well, it can't be helped, but we'll try it anyhow!' was the unanimous response.

We were a mile and a half from the top of Tahawus, having already entered the great belt of spruce encircling the middle regions of the mountain, and having left behind all deciduous trees except a few birches. The forest here is especially grand, the original wood still remaining, tall, wide of girth, dark, and sturdy. The girdled trees standing near our camp looked at us reproachfully in the morning light; ten giants doomed to death to furnish a night's covering to six pigmies! Our fires, too, were they safe, or might they not run along the inflammable turf and perhaps destroy acres of beautiful, precious timber?

But time pressed, 'the dishes were washed,' and we must away. All the heavy articles were left in the camp, and nothing taken up with us except a light lunch, a canteen of water, and the shawls needed to protect against the winds on the top. The little stream crossed, the ascent began quite steeply. A half mile of walking brought us out of the wood, and to the foot of the great slide, a bare, sloping rock, some thousand feet in height. Up this slide, either on the rock, or beside it, through the bushes and the spruce trees, which soon become low and shrubby, leads the pathway, not difficult, but somewhat fatiguing, from its steepness. Indeed, the whole way up is so excellent one wonders so high a mountain can be ascended with so little exertion or actual climbing. In places, the moss is some, six inches thick, and the feet, worn with stony ways, sink into it as if there to find lasting repose; but Excelsior is the cry, and the top of the slide the next goal to be won.

Meantime the haze had been turning into mist, and great clouds were gathering on the bare, rocky head of the mountain. The slide passed, the path winds through dense, low spruce growth, and, the last steep cliffs gradually overcome, the extreme limit of tree vegetation (four thousand eight hundred feet) is passed, and the remaining rocky slope offers no growth except a few hardy plants, such as sandwort, grasses, and several varieties of moss and lichen.

The summit is broad, and, although in part composed of broken rocks, is quite compact in structure. Its general form is rounded and dome-like.

But the view?

Here we were among the clouds, the wind blowing freshly, and the mists sweeping past, obscuring every object below. In this wind lay our hope, and scarcely less in the mists, for they might be the means of dispersing the haze. There went a rift, a patch of blue sky—and there a bit of green mountain! Then again all was leaden, damp, and cold. We seemed to have reached the Ultima Thule, to be the sole living creatures in some far-away corner of an earth gone back to chaos and mysterious twilight. Again a break, and again appeared a stretch of dark fir-covered mountain tops, an avalanche-riven peak, a bright, green field, or a corner of some far-away blue water. This hide-and-go-seek between landscape and mist lasted some half hour, when the clouds all rolled away, and left us with bright sunlight and the most glorious view our eyes had ever rested upon. The extreme distance was still hazy, but the nearer wilderness of forest and mountain was wild and grand enough to have satisfied the most fastidious. The elder guide, who had stood some dozen times on the summit, missed the bits of Lake Champlain and some dim outlines of hills and waters that ought to have been visible, but we were quite content with the sharp ridge of the Haystack and its deep chasm, the bold and beautiful lines of the Gothic Mountains, the stern, scarred face of Moriah, the distant, still cloud-capped Dix's Peak, the pleasant valley of the Au Sable, the Camel's Hump, the Schroon Mountains, the Boreas Waters, Mud and Clear Ponds, the hills about Lake George, Mounts Seward and Sandanona, Lake Sanford, Mounts McIntire, McMartin, Golden, Whiteface, Bennet's Pond, the plains of North Elba, the Skylight, with its singular rock whence is derived its name, and an infinity of peaks of every possible form, all gathered about us as doing homage to the stately monarch, the comely and benignant giant, Tahawus.

The sun was warm, and, sheltered by a rock to screen us from the west wind, we found a single shawl all-sufficient covering. Diogenes produced from his capacious pocket sundry lemons, which, added to some maple sugar, a block of chocolate, and a few crackers, furnished a delightful repast. We had reached the top of the mountain about nine o'clock. By eleven the clouds again began to thicken, and grew so dark upon their under edges that we feared rain. McIntire had collected a murky company that threatened with the rumble of heavenly artillery. Wishing to descend the slide before a coming rain should render it slippery, we took a last look, and hastened away down the rocky slope, through the shrubby spruces, to the top of the slide, where great stones, flung down the bare, sloping rock, bounded and rebounded until they plashed into the marshy pool, one thousand feet below.

Stopping only long enough at our camp to gather up our 'traps,' and to inscribe its name, 'Tahawus,' with a tiny sketch from Elsie, and a chess problem from E. B. C., upon the 'barked' side of a spruce, we hurried down to the 'Mount Marcy stream,' over the Bartlett Mountain, on to the Upper Pond. The thunder rumbled all around us, and we had several light showers. Just as we reached the lake, the storm burst in all its fury. By the aid of our shawls and umbrellas we managed to keep dry until a lull came and we could row to the bark shanties, where we purposed passing the night. It was only half past three, and we might have returned to the 'Flats' that evening, but we did not care to walk through the wet woods in the rain, and, besides, desired a still further acquaintance with the beautiful Upper Pond.

The three bark huts on the shore of the lake had been recently erected and used by a hunting and fishing party. They proved perfectly water tight, and a bright fire of green logs soon dried all dampness out of our garments. Our supper that night was quite elaborate, both pork and hasty pudding entering into its composition. The rain continued to descend, and pattered softly as we disposed ourselves to rest.

That repose was sweet and unbroken, save by a characteristic 'Te-he-he,' and 'Good morning, good morning!' uttered in the high but feeble voice of the elder guide as he came to mend the decaying fire. A reference to our watches showed the hour to be but one past midnight. It must have been a profound yearning for human sympathy that had induced our courteous and considerate guide thus to awaken us. Sleep, however, soon again took up her broken threads, and so firmly reknit their ravelled edges, that the web needed the morning dew and the approaching glories of a brilliant sunrise once more to break and give freedom to the prisoned senses.

Our pioneer, who loved every peak and pond in the neighborhood with the affection of a discoverer, took advantage of the charming morning to row us all round the lake, to show us the pretty inlet with its beaver dam, and help us gather the singular leaves of the pitcher plant, and the beautiful, fragrant white water lilies riding at anchor in the lucent stream.

We soon after took up our line of march for the Lower Pond, where we found 'Uncle David,' with his sturdy wife and pretty, chubby children, awaiting our arrival. Rowing rapidly down the lake, we took our last Mount Marcy lunch beside the outlet, and, early in the afternoon, returned to the Flats. The time devoted to the excursion was thus a little over two and a half days. Going and returning we had driven six miles, rowed four miles (exclusive of our visits to the Upper Pond), and walked somewhat over twenty-one. There had been no fatigue and no difficult climbing. Indeed, it would be no very serious matter to go one day and return the next. And hence we advise all travellers in that region with sound lungs, moderate strength, and any love for forest life and magnificent scenery, to make the ascent. They will assuredly bring home with them a host of pleasant memories, and many new and enchanting pictures for that precious gallery already mentioned.

TIDINGS OF VICTORY

When David's winning son rebelled,They smote the traitor low,And thought the monarch would rejoiceAt riddance of his foe.But in his chamber all aloneThat kingly head was bowed,And for the erring AbsalomHis father wept aloud.The ministers astonished stoodAt such a burst of grief!The traitor's death alone could bringTheir sovereign sure relief.Back to their tents in sullen gloomThe faithful warriors flee;While still he cried, 'My son! my son!Would I had died for thee!'My country's wilful erring sons,Disloyal men, but brave,Such tears of anguish now she shedsAbove the traitor's grave!Amid the pealing notes of joyFor glorious victory won,Is heard Columbia's piercing cry,'O Absalom, my son!'Ye faithful men whose crimson bloodIn her defence is shed,Upbraid her not if thus she weepAbove the guilty dead!Her noble heart is true to you,But generous as brave,She mourns in royal grief apartFor those she could not save.

THE ESTHETICS OF THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

It behooves every man, toiling along this dusty roadway of life, to seize upon something which he may study and elaborate, that at the end of his journey he may look back and content himself it has not been utterly in vain to himself and his fellow pilgrims. A man with a mania, or, as the Greeks have it, a man with a madness, is the true world-advancer. This madness, when cultured, ripens into talent; if original and inborn, we call it genius, and the subtile anatomists of the French schools prove it by telling us that the brains of geniuses are diseased. The healthy oyster ministers only to the palate. It is the diseased oyster that secretes the pearl for Miss Shoddy's necklace. It is the diseased brain that shines through the ages, lights men on to new epochs in knowledge, and advances the race to the millennial perfection. Immortal Jean Paul, picturing himself in Schoppe, knew this. For what is all of Schoppe's eloquent and matchless buffoonery, compared with his wise oracles, in the mad conflicts with his other 'I,' whom he saw in the mirror of his diseased brain?

Therefore, let every man have his madness, to which he may give his leisure and his thoughtful hours. Let it grow upon him, until it becomes a strong, controlling, natural element, as Mozart grew into music and Haydon into painting, and is ingrained into his very habit and method of life; for it is only thus and then he becomes a master, fitted to lead the van in the world's march. Only, let it be a praise-worthy madness, and one the development of which wilt secure for himself some new fund of knowledge, and add to the store of his fellow men.

It was somewhat in this vein I looked upon a dingy skilling species, with its rudely crossed hammers—a rough coin, bold, sturdy, and rigid as the old Norse character itself which formed the initial of my cabinet—a cabinet which has given to me new ideas of the low-browed Roman and elegant Greek; has admitted me to the arcana of their fascinating mythology; has whispered strange tales of a mummy's perfumed sleep in the shadow of the awful, eternal Sphynx; has taken me to the fall of Grenada, and, bridging over the dark lapse of the ages, has emerged with the resurrection of art into the bloody days of early English history—the grim Puritanic times, when good old John Hull, the mintmaster, regulated the finances of the colonies, and filled his own pockets with pine-tree shillings and sixpences; the horrors of Danton and Marat; marking faithfully each historic change from orient to Occident, and culminating in that latest triumph of the engraver's cunning skill—the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair medal, commemorating for our children and children's children the magnificent benefactions of the people and the self-devotion of the Commissions—Christian and Sanitary—the angels of mercy and charity, scattering blessings in the furrows of war.

The utile and the dulce of the study of numismatics are shown in many ways. Caraccio, Aretine, and Raphael studied the figures on the old oboli and drachmas. So did Le Brun. Rubens was the most conscientious coin and medal gatherer of his time, and applied them sedulously to the furtherance of his divine gifts. Petrarch found time between his sonnets to Laura to make the first classified collection on record, which he presented to the emperor of Germany, with his well-known and remarkable letter. Alphonso, king of Naples, visited all parts of Europe gathering coins in an ivory casket. The splendid Cosmo de' Medici commenced a cabinet which formed the nucleus of the Florentine collection. Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, made a cabinet, and Francis I. of France laid the foundation of the Paris collection—the finest in the world. All artists recognize the value of coins, medals, and medallions. From them they get the model faces and heads of the Greek and Roman, the copies of lost statues, the folds of the chlamys and the graceful sweep of the toga, the eagles and ensigns, rams and trophies, the altars, idols, and sacrifices, the Olympian games, and the instruments of music, mathematics, and mechanics. They reveal the secrets of a thousand antiquated names and ceremonies, which but for the engraver's chronicle must have been utterly lost.

Coins throw additional light upon history. They illuminate the dark passages, clear away the obscurities, and bridge over the gaps. Hugo, in 'Les Miserables,' says men solidified their ideas in architecture before the printed page came from the brain of Faust. He might have added, they wrote their histories upon these bits of gold, silver, iron, brass, and bronze. Vaillant wrote the chronicles of the kings of Syria from a jar of medals, as Cuvier would build up the mastodon and give you the monster's habits from a tooth or a tibia. The Roman denarii give the best idea of Cæsar's well in the forum. The Epidaurian coins with the snake of Æsculapius tell in brief characters how the Roman senate sent an embassy to the great father of medicine to come and heal them of the plague. The migration of the Phocian colony to Asia Minor is succinctly told in the Φὡχη, or seal, which followed the early Mayflower stamped upon one of the earliest of the Grecian coins. The late coins of the Grecian series, with the portraits of Alexander, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and others, have lent to the historian a fresh and life-like picture of those stern days, and have been silent but incontrovertible witnesses of the truth of the records which have come down to us. Cymbeline, of Shakspeare, dates back to the Cunobelin of an ancient Saxon coin, struck before Boadicea's time. Who would have known of the Grecian domination in Bactria, long after Alexander's time, but for a casual traveller who found the fact, together with a lost language, upon a series of coins unearthed in that part of Asia? The coins of Alexander fix the capture of Egypt; those of Vespasian, the capture of Judea; and those of Trajan, the capture of Parthia. They were the 'brief chroniclers of the time'—Stantonian bulletins, announcing each fresh conquest.

The coins of the ancient day—for our modern productions can hardly claim the credit—blend artistic grace and beauty. Upon them art made its first and some of its best essays. A cabinet of Grecian and Roman coins is a compact history of art from its inception to its meridian in the culmination of Grecian splendor—and since that time, if we may believe Ruskin, we only approximate, or what is worse, degrade. The gradual decline of art and the decay of the empire are traceable on the Roman series. You may follow the downward steps, until it becomes nearly extinct, to revive, after a period of stagnation, in a new feeling in the quaint but strong and rugged Gothic, the beautiful development of which may be seen in the coinage of modern Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century. The Farnesian Hercules, the Venus de' Medici, the Apollo Belvidere, and the famous equestrian Marcus Aurelius make their appearance upon the ancient medals. Undoubtedly many of the magnificent designs of Grecian medals in particular are but the types of Protogenes and Apelles, as Houdin's model cast of Washington has been photographed, as it were, upon the Wright medal. The grand Byzantine school of art is nowhere better brought out than on the coins of that period. The details of Constantine's coins are found in the ivory dyptics and those splendidly illuminated Gospel vellums which art-despising monks kneeled upon from the seventh to the tenth century, and which art-loving monks, even in the middle of the nineteenth century, used in the decoration of their monastery halls at Mount Athos.

I come to a phase in the study of numismatics which to many will seem paradoxical—the romance of coins—and pick out here and there a few incidents, which I shall string together, not heeding closely chronological sequence.

One of the saddest pictures in all history is the first mention that is made of money. Sarah was dead, and Abraham was sojourning among strangers in a strange land. He mourned for his wife, and stood up before the sons of Heth, and begged of them to intercede with Ephron, the Hittite, for the cave of Machpelah, as a burial place. Ephron liberally offered him the cave and the field, but the patriarch insisted upon payment; whereupon the Hittite answered: 'My lord, hearken unto me; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? Bury, therefore, thy dead.' Abraham weighed the 'four hundred shekels of silver current (money) with the merchant,' and the field and the trees and the caves were Abraham's, and Sarah was buried. The first use of money is the last, and the cave of Machpelah, typical of the last resting place of all men, is the most important because the most imperative use of money. He that hoards and he that squanders, Crœsus and Lazarus, at the end of life, provided they have money enough to purchase their caves of Machpelah, have fortune enough, and more than enough, for they may not carry gold and silver with them through the valley of the Shadow. We buy and sell, we loan and speculate, we hoard our shining wealth as Crœsus hoarded the golden sands of Pactolus in the treasury of Delhi, but when we come to the cave of Machpelah, we leave it at the entrance, and go into the darkness unencumbered.

The earliest and standard specimen of Roman coinage was the as, subdivided almost indefinitely, and originally weighing a pound. This ponderous coin subserved a purpose which our penny does to-day. It had upon the obverse the double-headed Janus, and upon the reverse the keel of a ship, rudely done, but answering the requirements of the light, juvenile gambling known as pitching coppers. Capita aut navem, 'Heads or the ship,' the Roman boys cried, as Young America cries now, 'Heads or tails.' It is an eminently conservative custom, and Master Freddy, as he tosses his new bronze cent, may summarily answer paternal reproof by showing that Master Tullius, two thousand years ago, pitched the as his father coined, and, for aught we know, grew to be a wise emperor and a great man.

Judea is represented upon several coins of the time of Titus and Vespasian by the figure of a woman with flowing hair and bared breasts, seated upon the ground in a posture of sorrow and captivity, above her the wide-spreading branches of the palm, and behind her a stalwart Roman soldier in mail, leaning upon his spear. Thus exactly did the Roman engraver follow out upon these coins the language of the Scriptures. The Psalmist describes this posture in the lamentations of the Jews over their captivity. 'By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept.' Still more remarkable is it that the prophet, in a passage foretelling this identical captivity, likens Judea to a woman sitting upon the ground wrapped in sorrow.

It is not often that coins have been used as vehicles of wit or for plays upon words, but there are examples upon record. Some of the German coins represent in the legends the years in which they were minted. A coin of Gustavus Adolphus also is an excellent illustration of this practice. The legend is: 'ChrIstVs DVX ergo trIVMphVs.' Take the capitalized letters or numerals from the words, and arrange them in their proper order, and you have 1627, the year in which the coin was struck. Upon a coin of Trio Lucretius, a member of the Lucretia gens, who would have remained unknown to this day but for his coin, a case of punning by means of types occurs. The obverse has the head of Apollo; the reverse, the crescent moon and seven stars, or rather triones—the constellation of the Ursa Major. The sun and moon refer to the family name, while the triones are an allusion to the surname. Pope Urban VIII., with execrable taste and questionable wit, upon repairing certain roads, struck a medal with the legend: Beati qui custodiunt meas vias, 'Blessed are they who keep my ways.' The 'speaking types' of the ancient Grecian coins are very curious. The coinage of Rhodes has a rose for a type, which flower bears the same name as the island. The coins of Side have a pomegranate, in Greek, side (σιδἡ); Melos, the apple, in Greek, melon (μηλον); Ancona, in Italy, the elbow, in Greek, ancon (αγκον); Cardia, the heart, in Greek, cardia (καρδιἁ).