All things are new the buds,
the leaves,
That gild the elm-tree’s nodding
crest,
And even the nest beneath the eaves
There are no birds in last year’s
nest.
Longfellow.
“I have good news for you, Wilhelmina,”
cried the captain, coming into the parlour where his
wife used to sit and knit or sew quite half the day,
and speaking with a bright face, and in a cheerful
voice “Here is a letter from my excellent
old colonel; and Bob’s affair is all settled
and agreed on. He is to leave school next week,
and to put on His Majesty’s livery the week
after.”
Mrs. Willoughby smiled, and yet two
or three tears followed each other down her cheeks,
even while she smiled. The first was produced
by pleasure at hearing that her son had got an ensigncy
in the 60th, or Royal Americans; and the last was
a tribute paid to nature; a mother’s fears at
consigning an only boy to the profession of arms.
“I am rejoiced, Willoughby,”
she said, “because you rejoice, and I
know that Robert will be delighted at possessing the
king’s commission; but, he is very young
to be sent into the dangers of battle and the camp!”
“I was younger, when I actually
went into battle, for then it was war; now,
we have a peace that promises to be endless, and Bob
will have abundance of time to cultivate a beard before
he smells gunpowder. As for myself” he
added in a half-regretful manner, for old habits and
opinions would occasionally cross his mind “as
for myself, the cultivation of turnips must
be my future occupation. Well, the bit of parchment
is sold, Bob has got his in its place, while
the difference in price is in my pocket, and no more
need be said and here come our dear girls,
Wilhelmina, to prevent any regrets. The father
of two such daughters ought, at least, to be
happy.”
At this instant, Beulah and Maud Willoughby,
(for so the adopted child was called as well as the
real), entered the room, having taken the lodgings
of their parents, in a morning walk, on which they
were regularly sent by the mistress of the boarding-school,
in which they were receiving what was then
thought to be a first-rate American female education.
And much reason had their fond parents to be proud
of them! Beulah, the eldest, was just eleven,
while her sister was eighteen months younger.
The first had a staid, and yet a cheerful look; but
her cheeks were blooming, her eyes bright, and her
smile sweet. Maud, the adopted one, however,
had already the sunny countenance of an angel, with
quite as much of the appearance of health as her sister;
her face had more finesse, her looks more intelligence,
her playfulness more feeling, her smile more tenderness,
at times; at others, more meaning. It is scarcely
necessary to say that both had that delicacy of outline
which seems almost inseparable from the female form
in this country. What was, perhaps, more usual
in that day among persons of their class than it is
in our own, each spoke her own language with an even
graceful utterance, and a faultless accuracy of pronunciation,
equally removed from effort and provincialisms.
As the Dutch was in very common use then, at Albany,
and most females of Dutch origin had a slight touch
of their mother tongue in their enunciation of English,
this purity of dialect in the two girls was to be ascribed
to the fact that their father was an Englishman by
birth; their mother an American of purely English
origin, though named after a Dutch god-mother; and
the head of the school in which they had now been three
years, was a native of London, and a lady by habits
and education.
“Now, Maud,” cried the
captain, after he had kissed the forehead, eyes and
cheeks of his smiling little favourite “Now,
Maud, I will set you to guess what good news I have
for you and Beulah.”
“You and mother don’t
mean to go to that bad Beave Manor this summer, as
some call the ugly pond?” answered the child,
quick as lightning.
“That is kind of you, my darling;
more kind than prudent; but you are not right.”
“Try Beulah, now,” interrupted
the mother, who, while she too doted on her youngest
child, had an increasing respect for the greater solidity
and better judgment of her sister: “let
us hear Beulah’s guess.”
“It is something about my brother,
I know by mother’s eyes,” answered the
eldest girl, looking inquiringly into Mrs. Willoughby’s
face.
“Oh! yes,” cried Maud,
beginning to jump about the room, until she ended
her saltations in her father’s arms “Bob
has got his commission! I know it all well
enough, now I would not thank you to tell
me I know it all now dear
Bob, how he will laugh! and how happy I am!”
“Is it so, mother?” asked
Beulah, anxiously, and without even a smile.
“Maud is right; Bob is an ensign or,
will be one, in a day or two. You do not seem
pleased, my child?”
“I wish Robert were not a soldier,
mother. Now he will be always away, and we shall
never see him; then he may be obliged to fight, and
who knows how unhappy it may make him?”
Beulah thought more of her brother
than she did of herself; and, sooth to say, her mother
had many of the child’s misgivings. With
Maud it was altogether different: she saw only
the bright side of the picture; Bob gay and brilliant,
his face covered with smiles, his appearance admired
himself, and of course his sisters, happy. Captain
Willoughby sympathized altogether with his pet.
Accustomed to arms, he rejoiced that a career in which
he had partially failed this he did not
conceal from himself or his wife that this
same career had opened, as he trusted, with better
auspices on his only son. He covered Maud with
kisses, and then rushed from the house, finding his
heart too full to run the risk of being unmanned in
the presence of females.
A week later, availing themselves
of one of the last falls of snow of the season, captain
Willoughby and his wife left Albany for the Knoll.
The leave-taking was tender, and to the parents bitter;
though after all, it was known that little more than
a hundred miles would separate them from their beloved
daughters. Fifty of these miles, however, were
absolutely wilderness; and to achieve them, quite a
hundred of tangled forest, or of difficult navigation,
were to be passed. The communications would be
at considerable intervals, and difficult. Still
they might be held, and the anxious mother left many
injunctions with Mrs. Waring, the head of the school,
in relation to the health of her daughters, and the
manner in which she was to be sent for, in the event
of any serious illness.
Mrs. Willoughby had often overcome,
as she fancied, the difficulties of a wilderness,
in the company of her husband. It is the fashion
highly to extol Napoleon’s passage of the Alps,
simply in reference to its physical obstacles.
There never was a brigade moved twenty-four hours
into the American wilds, that had not greater embarrassments
of this nature to overcome, unless in those cases
in which favourable river navigation has offered its
facilities. Still, time and necessity had made
a sort of military ways to all the more important frontier
points occupied by the British garrisons, and the
experience of Mrs. Willoughby had not hitherto been
of the severe character of that she was now compelled
to undergo.
The first fifty miles were passed
over in a sleigh, in a few hours, and with little
or no personal fatigue. This brought the travellers
to a Dutch inn on the Mohawk, where the captain had
often made his halts, and whither he had from time
to time, sent his advanced parties in the course of
the winter and spring. Here a jumper was found
prepared to receive Mrs. Willoughby; and the horse
being led by the captain himself, a passage through
the forest was effected as far as the head of the
Otsego. The distance being about twelve miles,
it required two days for its performance. As
the settlements extended south from the Mohawk a few
miles, the first night was passed in a log cabin, on
the extreme verge of civilization, if civilization
it could be called, and the remaining eight miles
were got over in the course of the succeeding day.
This was more than would probably have been achieved
in the virgin forest, and under the circumstances,
had not so many of the captain’s people passed
over the same ground, going and returning, thereby
learning how to avoid the greatest difficulties of
the route, and here and there constructing a rude
bridge. They had also blazed the trees, shortening
the road by pointing out its true direction.
At the head of the Otsego, our adventurers
were fairly in the wilderness. Huts had been
built to receive the travellers, and here the whole
party assembled, in readiness to make a fresh start
in company. It consisted of more than a dozen
persons, in all; the black domestics of the family
being present, as well as several mechanics whom Captain
Willoughby had employed to carry on his improvements.
The men sent in advance had not been idle, any more
than those left at the Hutted Knoll. They had
built three or four skiffs, one small batteau, and
a couple of canoes. These were all in the water,
in waiting for the disappearance of the ice; which
was now reduced to a mass of stalactites in form,
greenish and sombre in hue, as they floated in a body,
but clear and bright when separated and exposed to
the sun. The south winds began to prevail, and
the shore was glittering with the fast-melting piles
of the frozen fluid, though it would have been vain
yet to attempt a passage through it.
The Otsego is a sheet that we have
taken more than one occasion to describe, and the
picture it then presented, amidst its frame of mountains,
will readily be imagined by most of our readers.
In 1765, no sign of a settlement was visible on its
shores; few of the grants of land in that vicinity
extending back so far. Still the spot began to
be known, and hunters had been in the habit of frequenting
its bosom and its shores, for the last twenty years
or more Not a vestige of their presence, however,
was to be seen from the huts of the captain; but Mrs.
Willoughby assured her husband, as she stood leaning
on his arm, the morning after her arrival, that never
before had she gazed on so eloquent, and yet so pleasing
a picture of solitude as that which lay spread before
her eyes.
“There is something encouraging
and soothing in this bland south wind, too,”
she added, “which seems to promise that we shall
meet with a beneficent nature, in the spot to which
we are going. The south airs of spring, to me
are always filled with promise.”
“And justly, love; for they
are the harbingers of a renewed vegetation. If
the wind increase, as I think it may, we shall see
this chilling sheet of ice succeeded by the more cheerful
view of water. It is in this way, that all these
lakes open their bosoms in April.”
Captain Willoughby did not know it,
while speaking, but, at that moment, quite two miles
of the lower, or southern end of the lake, was clear,
and the opening giving a sweep to the breeze, the latter
was already driving the sheets of ice before it, towards
the head, at a rate of quite a mile in the hour.
Just then, an Irishman, named Michael O’Hearn,
who had recently arrived in America, and whom the captain
had hired as a servant of all work, came rushing up
to his master, and opened his teeming thoughts, with
an earnestness of manner, and a confusion of rhetoric,
that were equally characteristic of the man and of
a portion of his nation.
“Is it journeying south, or
to the other end of this bit of wather, or ice, that
yer honour is thinking of?” he cried “Well,
and there’ll be room for us all, and to spare;
for divil a bir-r-d will be left in that quarter by
night, or forenent twelve o’clock either, calculating
by the clock, if one had such a thing; as a body might
say.”
As this was said not only vehemently,
but with an accent that defies imitation with the
pen, Mrs. Willoughby was quite at a loss to get a
clue to the idea; but, her husband, more accustomed
to men of Mike’s class, was sufficiently lucky
to comprehend what he was at.
“You mean the pigeons, Mike,
I suppose,” the captain answered, good-humouredly.
“There are certainly a goodly number of them;
and I dare say our hunters will bring us in some,
for dinner. It is a certain sign that the winter
is gone, when birds and beasts follow their instincts,
in this manner. Where are you from, Mike?”
“County Leitrim, yer honour,”
answered the other, touching his cap.
“Ay, that one may guess,”
said the captain, smiling, ’but where last?”
“From looking at the bir-r-ds,
sir! Och! It’s a sight that will
do madam good, and contains a sartainty there’ll
be room enough made for us, where all these cr’atures
came from. I’m thinking, yer honour, if
we don’t ate them, they’ll be wanting
to ate us. What a power of them, counting
big and little; though they ’re all of a size,
just as much as if they had flown through a hole made
on purpose to kape them down to a convanient bigness,
in body and feathers.”
“Such a flight of pigeons in
Ireland, would make a sensation, Mike,” observed
the captain, willing to amuse his wife, by drawing
out the County Leitrim-man, a little.
“It would make a dinner, yer
honour, for every mother’s son of ’em,
counting the gur-r-rls, in the bargain! Such a
power of bir-r-ds, would knock down ’praties,
in a wonderful degree, and make even butthermilk chape
and plenthiful. Will it be always such abundance
with us, down at the Huts, yer honour? or is this
sight only a delusion to fill us with hopes that’s
never to be satisfied?”
“Pigeons are seldom wanting
in this country, Mike, in the spring and autumn; though
we have both birds and beasts, in plenty, that are
preferable for food.”
“Will it be plentthier than
this? Well, it’s enough to destroy
human appetite, the sight of ’em! I’d
give the half joe I lost among them blackguards in
Albany, at their Pauss, as they calls it, jist to let
my sisther’s childer have their supper out of
one of these flocks, such as they are, betther or
no betther. Och! its pleasant to think of them
childer having their will, for once, on such a power
of wild, savage bir-r-ds!”
Captain Willoughby smiled at this
proof of naïveté in his new domestic, and then
led his wife back to the hut; if being time to make
some fresh dispositions for the approaching movement.
By noon, it became apparent to those who were waiting
such an event, that the lake was opening; and, about
the same time, one of the hunters came in from a neighbouring
mountain, and reported that he had seen clear water,
as near their position as three or four miles.
By this time it was blowing fresh, and the wind, having
a clear rake, drove up the honeycomb-looking sheet
before it, as the scraper accumulates snow. When
the sun set, the whole north shore was white with
piles of glittering icicles; while the bosom of the
Otsego, no longer disturbed by the wind, resembled
a placid mirror.
Early on the following morning, the
whole party embarked. There was no wind, and
men were placed at the paddles and the oars. Care
was taken, on quitting the huts, to close their doors
and shutters; for they were to be taverns to cover
the heads of many a traveller, in the frequent journeys
that were likely to be made, between the Knoll and
the settlements. These stations, then, were of
the last importance, and a frontier-man always had
the same regard for them, that the mountaineer of
the Alps has for his “refuge.”
The passage down the Otsego was the
easiest and most agreeable portion of the whole journey.
The day was pleasant, and the oarsmen vigorous, if
not very skilful, rendering the movement rapid, and
sufficiently direct. But one drawback occurred
to the prosperity of the voyage. Among the labourers
hired by the captain, was a Connecticut man, of the
name of Joel Strides, between whom and the County Leitrim-man,
there had early commenced a warfare of tricks and
petty annoyances; a warfare that was perfectly defensive
on the part of O’Hearn, who did little more,
in the way of retort, than comment on the long, lank,
shapeless figure, and meagre countenance of his enemy.
Joel had not been seen to smile, since he engaged
with the captain; though three times had he laughed
outright, and each time at the occurrence of some mishap
to Michael O’Hearn the fruit of one of his own
schemes of annoyance.
On the present occasion, Joel, who
had the distribution of such duty, placed Mike in
a skiff, by himself, flattering the poor fellow with
the credit he would achieve, by rowing a boat to the
foot of the lake, without assistance. He might
as well have asked Mike to walk to the outlet on the
surface of the water! This arrangement proceeded
from an innate love of mischief in Joel, who had much
of the quiet waggery, blended with many of the bad
qualities of the men of his peculiar class. A
narrow and conceited selfishness lay at the root of
the larger portion of this man’s faults.
As a physical being, he was a perfect labour-saving
machine, himself; bringing all the resources of a
naturally quick and acute mind to bear on this one
end, never doing anything that required a particle
more than the exertion and strength that were absolutely
necessary to effect his object. He rowed the skiff
in which the captain and his wife had embarked, with
his own hands; and, previously to starting, he had
selected the best sculls from the other boats, had
fitted his twhart with the closest attention to his
own ease, and had placed a stretcher for his feet,
with an intelligence and knowledge of mechanics, that
would have done credit to a Whitehall waterman.
This much proceeded from the predominating principle
of his nature, which was, always to have an eye on
the interests of Joel Strides; though the effect happened,
in this instance, to be beneficial to those he served.
Michael O’Hearn, on the contrary,
thought only of the end; and this so intensely, not
to so say vehemently, as generally to overlook the
means. Frank, generous, self-devoted, and withal
accustomed to get most things wrong-end-foremost,
he usually threw away twice the same labour, in effecting
a given purpose, that was expended by the Yankee; doing
the thing worse, too, besides losing twice the time.
He never paused to think of this, however. The
masther’s boat was to be rowed to the
other end of the lake, and, though he had never rowed
a boat an inch in his life, he was ready and willing
to undertake the job. “If a certain quantity
of work will not do it,” thought Mike, “I’ll
try as much ag’in; and the divil is in it, if
that won’t sarve the purpose of that
little bit of a job.”
Under such circumstances the party
started. Most of the skiffs and canoes went off
half an hour before Mrs. Willoughby was ready, and
Joel managed to keep Mike for he last, under the pretence
of wishing his aid in loading his own boat, with the
bed and bedding from the hut. All was ready,
at length, and taking his seat, with a sort of quiet
deliberation, Joel said, in his drawling way, “You’ll
follow us, Mike, and you can’t be a thousand
miles out of the way.” Then he pulled from
the shore with a quiet, steady stroke of the sculls,
that sent the skiff ahead with great rapidity, though
with much ease to himself.
Michael O’Hearn stood looking
at the retiring skiff, in silent admiration, for two
or three minutes. He was quite alone; for all
the other boats were already two or three miles on
their way, and distance already prevented him from
seeing the mischief that was lurking in Joel’s
hypocritical eyes.
“Follow yees!”
soliloquized Mike “The divil burn
ye, for a guessing yankee as ye ar’ how
am I to follow with such legs as the likes of these?
If it wasn’t for the masther and the missus,
ra’al jontlemen and ladies they be, I’d
turn my back on ye, in the desert, and let ye find
that Beaver estate, in yer own disagreeable company.
Ha! well, I must thry, and if the boat won’t
go, it’ll be no fault of the man that has a
good disposition to make it.”
Mike now took his seat on a board
that lay across the gunwale of the skiff at a most
inconvenient height, placed two sculls in the water,
one of which was six inches longer than the other,
made a desperate effort, and got his craft fairly
afloat. Now, Michael O’Hearn was not left-handed,
and, as usually happens with such men, the inequality
between the two limbs was quite marked. By a sinister
accident, too, it happened that the longest oar got
into the strongest hand, and there it would have staid
to the end of time; before Mike would think of changing
it, on that account. Joel, alone, sat with his
face towards the head of the lake, and he alone could
see the dilemma in which the county Leitrim-man was
placed. Neither the captain nor his wife thought
of looking behind, and the yankee had all the
fun to himself. As for Mike, he succeeded in
getting a few rods from the land, when the strong
arm and the longer lever asserting their superiority,
the skiff began to incline to the westward. So
intense, however, was the poor fellow’s zeal,
that he did not discover the change in his course until
he had so far turned as to give him a glimpse of his
retiring master; then he inferred that all was right,
and pulled more leisurely. The result was, that
in about ten minutes, Mike was stopped by the land,
the boat touching the north shore again, two or three
rods from the very point whence it had started.
The honest fellow got up, looked around him, scratched
his head, gazed wistfully after the fast-receding boat
of his master, and broke out in another soliloquy.
“Bad luck to them that made
ye, ye one-sided thing!” he said, shaking his
head reproachfully at the skiff: “there’s
liberty for ye to do as ye ought, and ye’ll
not be doing it, just out of contrairiness. Why
the divil can’t ye do like the other skiffs,
and go where ye’re wanted, on the road towards
thim beavers? Och, ye’ll be sorry for this,
when ye’re left behind, out of sight!”
Then it flashed on Mike’s mind
that possibly some article had been left in the hut,
and the skiff had come back to look after it; so, up
he ran to the captain’s deserted lodge, entered
it, was lost to view for a minute, then came in sight
again, scratching his head, and renewing his muttering “No,”
he said, “divil a thing can I see, and it must
be pure con_trair_iness! Perhaps the baste will
behave betther next time, so I’ll thry it ag’in,
and give it an occasion. Barring obstinacy, ’t
is as good-lookin’ a skiff as the best of them.”
Mike was as good as his word, and
gave the skiff as fair an opportunity of behaving
itself as was ever offered to a boat. Seven times
did he quit the shore, and as often return to it,
gradually working his way towards the western shore,
and slightly down the lake. In this manner, Mike
at length got himself so far on the side of the lake,
as to present a barrier of land to the evil disposition
of his skiff to incline to the westward. It could
go no longer in that direction, at least.
“Divil burn ye,” the honest
fellow cried, the perspiration rolling down his face;
“I think ye’ll be satisfied without walking
out into the forest, where I wish ye war’ with
all my heart, amang the threes that made ye!
Now, I’ll see if yer con_trair_y enough to run
up a hill.”
Mike next essayed to pull along the
shore, in the hope that the sight of the land, and
of the overhanging pines and hemlocks, would cure the
boat’s propensity to turn in that direction.
It is not necessary to say that his expectations were
disappointed, and he finally was reduced to getting
out into the water, cool as was the weather, and of
wading along the shore, dragging the boat after him.
All this Joel saw before he passed out of sight, but
no movement of his muscles let the captain into the
secret of the poor Irishman’s strait.
In the meanwhile, the rest of the
flotilla, or brigade of boats, as the captain
termed them, went prosperously on their way, going
from one end of the lake to the other, in the course
of three hours. As one of the party had been
over the route several times already, there was no
hesitation on the subject of the point to which the
boats were to proceed. They all touched the shore
near the stone that is now called the “Otsego
Rock,” beneath a steep wooded bank, and quite
near to the place where the Susquehannah glanced out
of the lake, in a swift current, beneath a high-arched
tracery of branches that were not yet clothed with
leaves.
Here the question was put as to what
had become of Mike. His skiff was nowhere visible,
and the captain felt the necessity of having him looked
for, before he proceeded any further. After a
short consultation, a boat manned by two negroes,
father and son, named Pliny the elder, and Pliny the
younger, or, in common parlance, “old Plin”
and “young Plin,” was sent back along the
west-shore to hunt him up. Of course, a hut was
immediately prepared for the reception of Mrs. Willoughby,
upon the plain that stretches across the valley, at
this point. This was on the site of the present
village of Cooperstown, but just twenty years anterior
to the commencement of the pretty little shire town
that now exists on the spot.
It was night ere the two Plinies appeared
towing Mike, as their great namesakes of antiquity
might have brought in a Carthaginian galley, in triumph.
The county Leitrim-man had made his way with excessive
toil about a league ere he was met, and glad enough
was he to see his succour approach. In that day,
the strong antipathy which now exists between the
black and the emigrant Irishman was unknown, the competition
for household service commencing more than half a century
later. Still, as the negro loved fun constitutionally,
and Pliny the younger was somewhat of a wag, Mike
did not entirely escape, scot-free.
“Why you drag ’im like
ox, Irish Mike?” cried the younger negro “why
you no row ’im like other folk?”
“Ah you’re
as bad as the rest of ’em,” growled Mike.
“They tould me Ameriky was a mighty warm country,
and war-r-m I find it, sure enough, though the wather
isn’t as warm as good whiskey. Come, ye
black divils, and see if ye can coax this contrairy
crathure to do as a person wants.”
The negroes soon had Mike in tow,
and then they went down the lake merrily, laughing
and cracking their jokes, at the Irishman’s expense,
after the fashion of their race. It was fortunate
for the Leitrim-man that he was accustomed to ditching,
though it may be questioned if the pores of his body
closed again that day, so very effectually had they
been opened. When he rejoined his master, not
a syllable was said of the mishap, Joel having the
prudence to keep his own secret, and even joining
Mike in denouncing the bad qualities of the boat.
We will only add here, that a little calculation entered
into this trick, Joel perceiving that Mike was a favourite,
and wishing to bring him into discredit.
Early the next morning, the captain
sent the negroes and Mike down the Susquehannah a
mile, to clear away some flood-wood, of which one of
the hunters had brought in a report the preceding
day. Two hours later, the boats left the shore,
and began to float downward with the current, following
the direction of a stream that has obtained its name
from its sinuosities.
In a few minutes the boats reached
the flood-wood, where, to Joel’s great amusement,
Mike and the negroes, the latter having little more
calculation than the former, had commenced their operations
on the upper side of the raft, piling the logs on
one another, with a view to make a passage through
the centre. Of course, there was a halt, the
females landing. Captain Willoughby now cast an
eye round him in hesitation, when a knowing look from
Joel caught his attention.
“This does not seem to be right,”
he said “cannot we better if a little?”
“It’s right wrong, captain,”
answered Joel, laughing like one who enjoyed other
people’s ignorance. “A sensible crittur’
would begin the work on such a job, at the lower side
of the raft.”
“Take the direction, and order things to suit
yourself.”
This was just what Joel liked. Head-work
before all other work for him, and he set about the
duty authoritatively and with promptitude. After
rating the negroes roundly for their stupidity, and
laying it on Mike without much delicacy of thought
or diction, over the shoulders of the two blacks,
he mustered his forces, and began to clear the channel
with intelligence and readiness.
Going to the lower side of the jammed
flood-wood, he soon succeeded in loosening one or
two trees, which floated away, making room for others
to follow. By these means a passage was effected
in half an hour, Joel having the prudence to set no
more timber in motion than was necessary to his purpose,
lest it might choke the stream below. In this
manner the party got through, and, the river being
high at that season, by night the travellers were
half-way to the mouth of the Unadilla. The next
evening they encamped at the junction of the two streams,
making their preparations to ascend the latter the
following morning.
The toil of the ascent, however, did
not commence, until the boats entered what was called
the creek, or the small tributary of the Unadilla,
on which the beavers had erected their works, and which
ran through the “Manor.” Here, indeed,
the progress was slow and laborious, the rapidity
of the current and the shallowness of the water rendering
every foot gained a work of exertion and pain.
Perseverance and skill, notwithstanding, prevailed;
all the boats reaching the foot of the rapids, or
straggling falls, on which the captain had built his
mills, about an hour before the sun disappeared.
Here, of course, the boats were left, a rude road
having been cut, by means of which the freights were
transported on a sledge the remainder of the distance.
Throughout the whole of this trying day, Joel had
not only worked head-work, but he had actually exerted
himself with his body. As for Mike, never before
had he made such desperate efforts. He felt all
the disgrace of his adventure on the lake, and was
disposed to wipe it out by his exploits on the rivers.
Thus Mike was ever loyal to his employer. He
had sold his flesh and blood for money, and a man of
his conscience was inclined to give a fair penny’s-worth.
The tractable manner in which the boat had floated
down the river, it is true, caused him some surprise,
as was shown in his remark to the younger Pliny, on
landing.
“This is a curious boat, afther
all,” said Pat. “One time it’s
all con_trar_iness, and then ag’in it’s
as obliging as one’s own mother. It followed
the day all’s one like a puppy dog, while yon
on the big wather there was no more dhriving
it than a hog. Och! it’s a faimale boat,
by its whims!”