Hatch

“ With the drifting cloud-rack joins,--
The smoke of the hunting-lodges
Of the wild Assiniboins.
Drearily blows the north-wind
From the land of ice and snow;
The eyes that look are weary,
And heavy the hands that row. ”

“ The sea is dotted with bergs—small ones nodding and bobbing along, big ones gliding majestically before the wind, till, a pair of these latter colliding, down crumble spires and minarets, towers and pinnacles, suddenly as a child’s card-built house, sending up tall columns of water as they fall. ”

“ You encompass the earth with one particular spot of it in your eye. In all the devious tracings the course of a sailing-ship leaves upon the white paper of a chart she is always aiming for that one little spot—maybe a small island in the ocean, a single headland upon the long coast of a continent, a lighthouse on a bluff, or simply the peaked form of a mountain like an ant-heap afloat upon the waters. But if you have sighted it on the expected bearing, then that Landfall is good. Fogs, snowstorms, gales thick with clouds and rain—those are the enemies of good Landfalls. ”

“ The great shapes of cliff and hill seem drawn in gloom clearly, the sea gleams dimly and duskily, all is weird, strange, and portentous. It is the marriage of opposite kingdoms, or rather, the monstrous child of light and darkness. ”

“ Instead of descending, the lands rise, as you approach the ocean, into craggy domes, walls and towers, breaking off precipitously, and affording from the eminences of our road prospects of sparkling sea. Our hearts were full of music, and our minds and conversation were a kind of reflection of the solitary scene. For months, our young man tells us, the snow lies so deeply along this fine road as to render it impassable for sleighs, except when sufficiently hard to bear a horse. ”

“ I see the warm ocean currents which wash our shores, shifted westward by some strange [Pg 187] freak of nature, and a land far north of us, now ice and snow, turned into greenland; while our whole land is enshrouded in death dealing cold and ice and snow and preceding this, the waters creep up and engulf our city. The mountain on which the great ship rests sinks down to meet the rising waters and the ship sails off to the southeast, leaving us helpless victims to be engulfed by the rising waters or frozen by the creeping, numbing cold, or smothered under mountains of ice and snow. ”

“ BARDS of approaching Dawn who know the heavens are come with hymns to throw the mountain open. The Sun hath risen and open the stable portals: the doors of men, too, hath the God thrown open. 2. Surya hath spread his light as splendour: hither came the Cows' Mother, conscious, from the stable, To streams that flow with biting waves to deserts; and heaven is stablished like a firm-set pillar. ”

“ The whole land seemed stirring with perpetual movement, all in one direction;—from the bright hills at its commencement, to the dark mountains at the end. Earth and sky seemed moving, as when an enormous flight of migratory birds is passing by, but earth and sky were really stationary. This movement was one constant tide of human life, ceaselessly streaming across the land. ”

“ Let us save the Nation!' and the swift-winged winds will bear the sound from pole to pole, from sea to sea, and from continent, island, and floating barks, from hills, valleys, and mountains, from hut, hovel, and dismal swamps, will come a vast and fearful host, in numbers like unto the leaves of the forest ”

“ But who can count the countless hosts, that fled to and lay dead and unnoticed in every part of the wide earth and sea, on the fields and plains, in forests and woods, on land and water, on mountains and dales, on shores and coasts and on the hills and cliffs. ”

“ Toward the north, the mountains crept out from under the forest and moved down to the sea, rising until they became a vast wilderness of cliffs and rocks, and hid the sea, with peak after peak rising as far as the eye could reach into the snow and the mist. ”

“ At one point we reached a mountain bluff more open to the wind, and found ourselves in a clearing not made by man. From the rocky summit an awful scene of ruin burst upon us. That soft blue heaven—azure and cloudless as a tranquil sea—it, too, has its storms and windy Scyllas to play havoc among these aërial masts. ”

“ In stormy weather, when the wind blows from certain directions, the sea at those places, as it tumbles over the sandbanks, or among the caves and fissures of the rocks, utters a loud and solemn roar, which in old times was believed to forebode the death of some king. ”

“ In short, every spot in the distance [124] seemed to be more sunny and delightful than that which I at the moment occupied. For hours would I lean my forehead against the cold glass of the nursery window, and contemplate the noble hill that swelled in the horizon. There, I had no doubt, was the end of the world. Then would I conjecture whether it were possible to get there and back again, and whether life was long enough for such a voyage. I then fixed my eye on a large beech-tree—which, blessings on it, is still standing—that I conjectured to be placed about midway. ”

“ Perhaps floating, a corpse, fathoms deep under water, or, if alive, then flying before this gale into the south, ever widening the distance betwixt me and all chance of my deliverance, and every hour gauging more deeply the horrible cold of the pole. ”

“ And upon all the mountains of the earth the snow and ice began to melt that night, and all the rivers coming out of high country flowed thick and turbid, and soon—in their upper reaches—with swirling trees and the bodies of beasts and men. They rose steadily, steadily in the ghostly brilliance, and came trickling over their banks at last, behind the flying population of their valleys. ”

“ But night o'erwhelms the lands with vasty murk Either when sun, after his diurnal course, Hath walked the ultimate regions of the sky And wearily hath panted forth his fires, Shivered by their long journeying and wasted By traversing the multitudinous air, Or else because the self-same force that drave His orb along above the lands compels Him then to turn his course beneath the lands. ”

“ But I heard it, mates: O, I heard the rush,
And the timbers rend and rive.
As the yard I clung to swayed and fell:
—I lay on the ice, alive!
Alive! O God of mercy I ship and crew and sea were gone! ”

“ And hills and fields Seem fleeing fast astern, past which we urge The ship and fly under the bellying sails. The stars, each one, do seem to pause, affixed To the ethereal caverns, though they all Forever are in motion, rising out And thence revisiting their far descents When they have measured with their bodies bright The span of heaven. And likewise sun and moon Seem biding in a roadstead,—objects which, As plain fact proves, are really borne along. ”

“ We accordingly embarked, and a gentle touch of the lever enabled us rapidly to skirt the shore of the underground sea. The soft, bright, pleasant earth-light continually enveloped us, and the absence of either excessive heat or cold, rendered existence delightful. ”

“ The fire hath gone around us in the hands of our very kin, And twice the horn hath sounded, and the Thing is hallowed in. Will ye hear or forbear to hearken the tale there is to tell? There are many mouths to tell it, and a many know it well. And the tale is this, that the foemen against our kindreds fare Who eat the meadows desert, and burn the desert bare. ”

“ At the weather's clearing up, we saw the land on the north shore, with islands, rocks and breakers all around us; we were oblig'd to put in among 'em for shelter, finding it impossible to keep the sea, we were in with the land amongst them, and compell'd to push thro', looking death in the face, and expecting every sea to bury us; the boldest men amongst us were dismay'd, nor can we possibly give an account in what manner we have been this day deliver'd. ”

“ It rises and falls, or plunges precipitately in the manner of a storm-swept ocean; but ever the journeyer is borne upward, ever upward, to the barren crests of the watershed which dominate the melancholy spectacle of Nature's wasted endeavor. ”

“ Inland, however, instead of the bleak and barren surface of the ever-stormy sea, indented into long rolling ridges and dark tempestuous hollows, all was varied and smiling, and gratifying to every sense given by nature for his good to man. ”

“ Away to the North and East the horizon was filled with mountains, whose summits the foot of man had never trod, but the intervening distance was covered with clouds, out of which rose the snowy domes, like islands in a sea. ”

“ As the white sails of the Half Moon rattled and shifted and flapped to the wind tacking up the river, thin columns of smoke rose from the heights around, lights flashed from peak to peak like watch fires—the signals of the mountaineers. ”

“ No attempt will be made to restore Jamestown as it was in 1607 or at any other period. The town was always small and always changing. Jamestown, it might be said, was never a city in the modern concept. It was more a village, a small community. The town of 1607, or 1610, was unlike that of 1623, and that of 1623 was far different from that of 1675. Architecture went all the way from timber and thatch structures to substantial all-brick houses. Even if the town had had a reasonable continuity of building types and plan, known information would be entirely insufficient to allow a restoration. ”

“ But far the greater part, after being driven into the sky again and again, is at length locked fast in bossy drifts, or in the wombs of glaciers, some of it to remain silent and rigid for centuries before it is finally melted and sent singing down the mountainsides to the sea. ”

“ Hence, as before swift ships there swims a hill of water and a corresponding billowy abyss glides along close behind, so always before us is there a mountain, which we hope to climb, and behind us still a deep valley out of which we seem to have ascended. ”

“ The stream seizes upon the islands and the cliffs—the night-wind comes upon the river, and stalks across it, thrusting its wavelets back, and wages its strife with the forests—even up there in the tranquil blue, worlds are working against worlds—the eternal, endless mights flowing and rushing, like rivers, one against another, they come together in whirl and roar—and on the face of that eternal whirl the little worlds float eddying round the sun-vortex ”

“ Like birds of air they flew with might in lengthened lines from heaven's high ridges to the borders of the sky. The steeds who carry them, as Gods and mortals know, have caused the waters of the mountains to descend. ”

“ The forms of the mountains are rounded, and there are no bold crags; but it is scooped out into valleys that descend rapidly to the sea and to little bays; and these scoopings afford shelter from winter winds and cold, facing the sun, and walled in from every blast. ”

“ And seek for the lands no foot has trod and the seas no sail has known:
For the lands to the west of the evening and east of the morning's birth,
Where the gods unseen in their valleys green are glad at the ends of the earth
And fear no morrow to bring them sorrow, nor night to quench their mirth. ”

“ Watatic Hill Lies on the horizon’s sill Like a child’s toy left overnight, And other duds to left and right, On the earth’s edge, mountains and trees Stand as they were on air graven, Or as the vessels in a haven Await the morning breeze. ”

“ And when you get near to the land, you have to climb a mountain of which the top reaches into the clouds, and this is covered with ice, and dreadful winds blow there, so that there is peril of death! But once the mountain is safely climbed, and the land is reached, one beholds a terrestrial Eden. ”

“ Thereafter, when now strengthening age hath wrought thee into man, the very voyager shall cease out of the sea, nor the sailing pine exchange her merchandise: all lands shall bear all things, the ground shall not suffer the mattock, nor the vine the pruning-hook ”

“ The blinding storms with which they battled, the mountains they scaled in the pursuit of game, the waves they rode in their primitive canoes, the hard winters that froze their blood, and the soft spring suns that warmed them, have all been woven into the fabric of the race. ”

“ With all their storm-beaten antiquity, gaunt and inhospitable, the skeletons of land rather than the land itself,—the grey and rugged crags—alone appear between the coppice and the short scanty grass which, ever when the wind came to breathe gently on our sails, sighed and moaned amid the general repose. ”

“ Mountains and islands rise ghostlike out of the water, their forms dimly outlined against the angry sky; and the din of booming seas and swiftly rushing waters adds terrifying confusion to the dangers of navigation. ”

“ An occasional cloud, fleecy and jagged, sails lazily aloft, marking its shadow on the mountain side. In a few days—a few hours, perhaps—the blue sky will be unbroken, the air hushed, a hot breath will move among the leaves, or pant over the trickling fountains. ”

“ The years that through my portals come and go.
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow;
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen;
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow,
My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men. ”

“ The rising of the north-wind, moving the ocean, rooting the pines and oaks from the tops of the mountains, and strewing them along the valleys, and after a pause, suddenly roaring in its strength through the depths of the forests; the exquisite circumstances of life intermingled with the effects of the storm on inanimate nature; the beasts quaking and grinding their teeth with cold and famine ”

“ A purple haze is over all yonder range of lofty mountains, great banks of cloud are rising behind them. Up in the blue, a pale scimitar of a moon is shining, and peace, peace, peace, is over all the wild scene. ”