The Portland Sketch Book. Various
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with many a sail,
Alone his lightsome birch canoe
Fast, by the bright, green islets flew,
Nor bark spread canvas to the gale.
Matchless retreat! mayst aye remain
As wild, as natural and free
As now thou art; nor hope of gain,
Nor enterprize a motive be
To lay thy hoary forests low;
Gold ne'er can make thy beauties glow,
Nor enterprize restore thy pride,
When once the monarchs round thy tide,
Have felt the exterminating blow.
OUR OWN COUNTRY.
By James Brooks.
What nation presents such a spectacle as ours, of a confederated government, so complicated, so full of checks and balances, over such a vast extent of territory, with so many varied interests, and yet moving so harmoniously! I go within the walls of the capitol at Washington, and there, under the star-spangled banners that wave amid its domes, I find the representatives of three territories, and of twenty-four nations, nations in many senses they may be called, that have within them all the germ and sinew to raise a greater people than many of the proud principalities of Europe, all speaking one language—all acting with one heart, and all burning with the same enthusiasm—the love and glory of our common country,—even if parties do exist, and bitter domestic quarrels now and then arise. I take my map, and I mark from whence they come. What a breadth of latitude, and of longitude, too,—in the fairest portion of North-America! What a variety of climate,—and then what a variety of production! What a stretch of sea-coast, on two oceans—with harbors enough for all the commerce of the world! What an immense national domain, surveyed, and unsurveyed, of extinguished, and unextinguished Indian titles within the States and Territories, and without, estimated, in the aggregate, to be 1,090,871,753 acres, and to be worth the immense sum of $1,363,589,69,—750,000,000 acres of which are without the bounds of the States and the territories, and are yet to make new States and to be admitted into the Union! Our annual revenue, now, from the sales, is over three millions of dollars. Our national debt, too, is already more than extinguished,—and yet within fifty-eight years, starting with a population of about three millions, we have fought the War of Independence, again not ingloriously struggled with the greatest naval power in the world, fresh with laurels won on sea and land,—and now we have a population of over thirteen millions of souls. One cannot feel the grandeur of our Republic, unless he surveys it in detail. For example, a Senator in Congress, from Louisiana, has just arrived in Washington. Twenty days of his journey he passed in a steam-boat on inland waters,—moving not so rapidly, perhaps, as other steam-boats sometimes move, in deeper waters,—but constantly moving, at a quick pace too, day and night. I never shall forget the rapture of a traveller, who left the green parks of New Orleans early in March,—that land of the orange and the olive, then teeming with verdure, freshness and life, and, as it were, mocking him with the mid-summer of his own northern home. He journeyed leisurely toward the region of ice and snow, to watch the budding of the young flowers, and to catch the breeze of the Spring. He crossed the Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne; he ascended the big Tombeckbee in a comfortable steam-boat. From Tuscaloosa, he shot athwart the wilds of Alabama, over Indian grounds, that bloody battles have rendered ever memorable. He traversed Georgia, the Carolinas, ranged along the base of the mountains of Virginia,—and for three months and more, he enjoyed one perpetual, one unvarying, ever-coming Spring,—that most delicious season of the year,—till, by the middle of June, he found himself in the fogs of the Passamaquoddy, where tardy summer was even then hesitating whether it was time to come. And yet he had not been off the soil of his own country! The flag that he saw on the summit of the fortress, on the lakes near New Orleans, was the like of that which floated from the staff on the hills of Fort Sullivan, in the easternmost extremity of Maine;—and the morning gun that startled his slumbers, among the rocky battlements that defy the wild tides of the Bay of Fundy, was not answered till many minutes after, on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The swamps, the embankments, the cane-brakes of the Father of Waters, on whose muddy banks the croaking alligator displayed his ponderous jaws,—the cotton-fields, the rice-grounds of the low southern country,—and the vast fields of wheat and corn in the regions of the mountains, were far, far behind him:—and he was now, in a Hyperborean land—where nature wore a rough and surly aspect, and a cold soil and a cold clime, drove man to launch his bark upon the ocean, to dare wind and wave, and to seek from the deep, in fisheries, and from freights, the treasures his own home will not give him. Indeed, such a journey as this, in one's own country, to an inquisitive mind, is worth all 'the tours of Europe.' If a young American, then, wishes to feel the full importance of an American Congress, let him make such a journey. Let him stand on the levee at New Orleans and count the number and the tiers of American vessels that there lie, four, five and six thick, on its long embankment. Let him hear the puff, puff, puff, of the high-pressure steam-boats, that come sweeping in almost every hour, perhaps from a port two thousand miles off,—from the then frozen winter of the North, to the full burning summer of the South,—all inland navigation,—fleets of them under his eye,—splendid boats, too, many of them, as the world can show,—with elegant rooms, neat berths, spacious saloons, and a costly piano, it may be,—so that travellers of both sexes can dance or sing their way to Louisville, as if they were on a party of pleasure. Let him survey all these, as they come in with products from the Red River, twelve hundred miles in one direction, or from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, two thousand miles in another direction, from the western tributaries of the vast Mississippi, the thickets of the Arkansas, or White River,—from the muddy, far-reaching Missouri, and its hundreds of branches:—and then in the east, from the Illinois, the Ohio, and its numerous tributaries—such as the Tennessee, the Cumberland, or the meanest of which, such as the Sandy River, on the borders of Kentucky—that will in a freshet fret and roar, and dash, as if it were the Father of Floods, till it sinks into nothing, when embosomed in the greater stream, and there acknowledges its own insignificance. Let him see 'the Broad Horns,' the adventurous flatboats of western waters, on which—frail bark!—the daring backwoodsman sallies forth from the Wabash, or rivers hundreds of miles above, on a voyage of atlantic distance, with hogs—horses—oxen and cattle of all kinds on board—corn, flour, wheat, all the products of rich western lands—and let him see them, too, as he stems the strong current of the Mississippi, as if the wood on which he floated was realizing the fable of the Nymphs of Ida—goddesses, instead of pines. Take the young traveller where the clear, silvery waters of the Ohio become tinged with the mud from the Missouri, and where the currents of the mighty rivers run apart for miles, as if indignant at the strange embrace. Ascend with him farther, to St. Louis, where, if he looks upon the map he will find that he is about as near the east as the west, and that soon, the emigrant, who is borne on the wave of population that now beats at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and anon will overleap its summits—will speak of him as he now speaks of New-England, as far in the east. And then tell him that far west as he is, he is but at the beginning of steam navigation—that the Mississippi itself is navigable six or seven hundred miles upward—and that steam-boats have actually gone on the Missouri two thousand one hundred miles above its mouth, and that they can go five hundred miles farther still! Take him, then, from this land where the woodsman is leveling the forest every hour, across the rich prairies of Illinois, where civilization is throwing up towns and villages, pointed with the spire of the church, and adorned with the college and the school,—then athwart the flourishing fields of Indiana, to Cincinnati,—well called 'the Queen of the West,'—a city of thirty thousand inhabitants, with paved streets, numerous churches, flourishing manufactories, and an intelligent society too,—and this in a State with a million of souls in it now, that has undertaken gigantic public works,—where the fierce savages, even within the memory of the young men, made the