innumerable green islands, lay upon our right; and on the left, a
steep ascent, craggy with broken rock, and dark with pine trees.
The mist, wreathing itself into a hundred fantastic shapes, moved
solemnly upon the water; and the gloom of evening gave to all an
air of mystery and silence which greatly enhanced its natural
interest.
We crossed this river by a wooden bridge, roofed and covered in on
all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was profoundly dark;
perplexed, with great beams, crossing and recrossing it at every
possible angle; and through the broad chinks and crevices in the
floor, the rapid river gleamed, far down below, like a legion of
eyes. We had no lamps; and as the horses stumbled and floundered
through this place, towards the distant speck of dying light, it
seemed interminable. I really could not at first persuade myself
as we rumbled heavily on, filling the bridge with hollow noises,
and I held down my head to save it from the rafters above, but that
I was in a painful dream; for I have often dreamed of toiling
through such places, and as often argued, even at the time, ‘this
cannot be reality.’
At length, however, we emerged upon the streets of Harrisburg,
whose feeble lights, reflected dismally from the wet ground, did
not shine out upon a very cheerful city. We were soon established
in a snug hotel, which though smaller and far less splendid than
many we put up at, it raised above them all in my remembrance, by
having for its landlord the most obliging, considerate, and
gentlemanly person I ever had to deal with.
As we were not to proceed upon our journey until the afternoon, I
walked out, after breakfast the next morning, to look about me; and
was duly shown a model prison on the solitary system, just erected,
and as yet without an inmate; the trunk of an old tree to which
Harris, the first settler here (afterwards buried under it), was
tied by hostile Indians, with his funeral pile about him, when he
was saved by the timely appearance of a friendly party on the
opposite shore of the river; the local legislature (for there was
another of those bodies here again, in full debate); and the other
curiosities of the town.
I was very much interested in looking over a number of treaties
made from time to time with the poor Indians, signed by the
different chiefs at the period of their ratification, and preserved
in the office of the Secretary to the Commonwealth. These
signatures, traced of course by their own hands, are rough drawings
of the creatures or weapons they were called after. Thus, the
Great Turtle makes a crooked pen-and-ink outline of a great turtle;
the Buffalo sketches a buffalo; the War Hatchet sets a rough image
of that weapon for his mark. So with the Arrow, the Fish, the
Scalp, the Big Canoe, and all of them.
I could not but think – as I looked at these feeble and tremulous
productions of hands which could draw the longest arrow to the head
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in a stout elk-horn bow, or split a bead or feather with a rifleball
– of Crabbe’s musings over the Parish Register, and the
irregular scratches made with a pen, by men who would plough a
lengthy furrow straight from end to end. Nor could I help
bestowing many sorrowful thoughts upon the simple warriors whose
hands and hearts were set there, in all truth and honesty; and who
only learned in course of time from white men how to break their
faith, and quibble out of forms and bonds. I wonder, too, how many
times the credulous Big Turtle, or trusting Little Hatchet, had put
his mark to treaties which were falsely read to him; and had signed
away, he knew not what, until it went and cast him loose upon the
new possessors of the land, a savage indeed.
Our host announced, before our early dinner, that some members of
the legislative body proposed to do us the honour of calling. He
had kindly yielded up to us his wife’s own little parlour, and when