THE BOSTON LYCEUM.

VOL. I.

MAY 15, 1827.

No. 5.

THE FIRST SETTLER.-No. I.

I have often accounted myself peculiarly fortunate, in having formed early connexions in the immediate vicinity of a very worthy and communicative old gentleman, who was about my present age when the Declaration of American Independence was first read in his native parish. He was the youngest son of the first family, which sixteen years prior to that period, emigrated from the state of Connecticut to what was subsequently surveyed and laid out as the town of New-Framingham, on the western border of Massachusetts. He was but a slender lad at the time of their removal thither, but the events which are embodied in the following sketches, were so indelibly impressed upon his memory, that they have constituted the subject of many a winter evening's conversation, during the decline of life. He was a shrewd, sensible man, though somewhat impatient when his opinions, founded upon the home-wrought principles of former times, were traversed or contradicted, and in latter years, had contracted a more intimate acquaintance with books, than his opportunities had previously afforded. Much of his character entered into the delineation of other times, and however absorbed in the reminiscences of one thousand seven hundred, he seldom failed of introducing comparisons with modern anomalies, or indulging some poignant observations upon the invisible influences of the atmosphere as the country became disforested, and the scattered population and primeval hamlets, acquired greater density and affected more improvement. It was not always, however, that the charge of garrulity could lie at his door. Some art, and a knowledge of the ground, was necessary, at times, to draw the hidden stream from its reservoir.

I well recollect spending an evening, in company with a friend, VOL. 1.--No. 5.

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you knew something of the subject on which you are dilating so largely."

"I hope," returned I, after a moment's hesitation, and a little nettled with the dryness of his manner, "I may be allowed to have gained a partial knowledge of the difficulties which the first settlers of my native land overcame."

"From what source is that partial knowledge obtained ?" he inquired with emphasis.

"From authors."

"Authors.!" he retorted, with an indefinable sneer-"Authors! authors! authors!" he repeated, as if communing with himself," and they probably, got their information in the same way."

"Are they not entitled to credit ?" I asked, with affected simplicity.

"Let me tell you, for your especial information, young man," replied the Colonel, with an air of dignity," that authorship is a trade, and like all other trades is followed according to the capacity of him who adopts it. Book writers have risen around us like the armed men that sprung from the dragon's teeth in Boeotia, and, like them, have done little else than encounter and worry each other. Although that class which have confined themselves to the early history of the colonies and the republic, may have given the outline of general events with a tolerable degree of accuracy, yet, when they have attempted to depict the domestic trials and sufferings which the original foresters endured, or the distress and dangers which they publicly braved, I pronounce from personal experience that they have altogether miscarried. But I do not blame them for failing in what they were unable to do. It is not in the nature of things that a man should describe in its true colours a prospect that he has never seen, but do not let them endeavour to impose upon the world till such as me are out of it."

"Then succeeding generations abide but a narrow chance of knowing what their progenitors incurred, in the subjection of those obstacles that usually oppose the peopling of a wilderness."

“None, sir, will have the most distant conceptions of the truth, save that advancing line of the pioneers of the west, who have set their faces towards the Pacific Ocean."

"They will become initiated."

"I am apprehensive they will," said the Colonel, sententiously. I turned to my friend somewhat abashed, but he met my

glance with a smile of satisfaction that denoted his knowledge of the old gentleman's humour, and the success of his stratagem. Thrusting his feet towards the fire and crossing them carelessly, the Colonel resumed

"I was about ten years of age when my father bade adieu to Salisbury, in Connecticut, following the course of the Housatonic river into the trackless forest lying between the Hampshire Grants, and the northerly border of his native state. Though a puny lad, I can distinctly remember the most prominent incidents. of our journey. It was early in the spring, and the country was buried in a deeper body of snow than usually distinguishes the winters of later periods. We made choice of that season of the year for our removal, to avail ourselves of the smooth surface which it presented for the facility of transporting our baggage, though a backwoodsman is seldom burthened with more than a few necessary culinary utensils, provisions for two or three months, a gun and axe for every male member of the family, and a few skins in the allotment of bed furniture.-Our party numbered eight persons. Such were the difficulties which opposed our progress that it was utterly impracticable to advance farther than six or eight miles in a day, and adopting the river for our guide, our path was extremely circuitous. The scenery of this tract, as it then appeared to us, was wild and gloomy. Stripes of evergreens, shooting down from the declivitous ridges which reared themselves in parallel ranges to the stream, or boldly projected into its valley, frequently intersected our route. Dark, shaggy pines and hemlocks, with roughly seamed trunks, elevated their withered heads into the heavens, through which the winds, when thrown into agitation, sounded their stormy music in strains of melancholy that strongly fastened upon our sympathies.-About their roots were sprung up smaller stems, and still more dwindling underbrush, rendering the spaces which they occupied almost impervious. Broad clumps of this description, defining the situation of a morass on the level ground, could be discerned in almost every direction. On emerging from one in our trail, those in perspective, indistinctly viewed through the vistas of rock maple which opened upon the eye like the beams of morning, wore the appearance of detached clouds of embodied darkness. An interminable fibrous platform was seemingly raised far above our diminutive bodies by the interwoven branches, which almost entirely obscured the rays of the sun, leafless as the wintry blasts had rendered them.-Over this second surface the storms moved unob

structed-below, not a breath stirred a twig, or twined the last reposing flake. In calm weather, or during the morning, the stillness which prevailed was that of awful sublimity-save the unfrequent tap of the hardy wood-pecker, or the occasional note of the little chick-a-dee-dee, not a sound fell upon the ear through the vast extent of the sylvan canopy. The tumbling rivulet that murmured in the summer air, noiselessly pursued its course beneath the deep wreaths of snow-the tuneful choirs, which could have enlivened rocks, and trees, and copses of fir were attendant upon a milder climate.

At night however the angry howl of the wolf, and the unearthly screams of the wild-cat, compensated for the silence that reigned with the sun. It was our custom when evening came on, to prepare a lodging by placing transversely upon our sledge a quantity of hemlock boughs, on which, made as smooth as possible, we spread our blankets, and flung our wearied limbs, reserving the skins to serve as coverlets. A rude kind of hovel, thatched likewise with fir, protected us from the inconveniencies of the falling snow in tempestuous weather. A fire was kindled at dusk and kept blazing through the night without intermission. This was a necessary precaution to preserve our cattle, and perhaps our own persons from the rapacity of the wild beasts which generally formed a cordon about our encampment, and kept up the most hideous concert of cries imaginable. I have often pictured to myself," said the Colonel, changing his position and assuming a sprightlier tone, the manner in which a female of the present day, who is thrown into hysterics by the gnawing of a mouse, or the humming of a wild bee, would pass a few nights in the situation which my mother and sisters did. I imagine that the proudest of them in such a case would digest that horror of the rustic character by which they are distinguished, and accept of the protection of as rough a backwoodsman as ever laid axe to the root of a tree. And yet," he continued, "I think it would afford a fine fund of mirth to see a young lady arrayed in laces and silks, shivering with alarm under the guardianship of a figure that in the edge of a fog, or the shadow of twilight, might naturally be mistaken for the genius of the glooms which I have assisted in subduing.

"After ten or twelve days of infinite danger and fatigue, we arrived at the south margin of that beautiful sheet of water, which, though romantic enough to have been entitled to a classie name, is known by none other than the 'Pond.'--It was firmly