The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner Part 238

The railway along the sh.o.r.e of Lake Ontario is for the most part monotonous. After leaving the picturesque highlands about Lewiston, the country is flat, and although the view over the lovely sheet of blue water is always pleasing, there is something bleak even in summer in this vast level expanse from which the timber has been cut away. It may have been mere fancy, but to the tourists the air seemed thin, and the scene, artistically speaking, was cold and colorless. With every desire to do justice to the pretty town of Oswego, which lies on a gentle slope by the lake, it had to them an out-of-doors, unprotected, remote aspect. Seen from the station, it did not appear what it is, the handsomest city on Lake Ontario, with the largest starch factory in the world.

It was towards evening when the train reached Cape Vincent, where the steamer waited to transport pa.s.sengers down the St. Lawrence. The weather had turned cool; the broad river, the low sh.o.r.es, the long islands which here divide its lake-like expanse, wanted atmospheric warmth, and the tourists could not escape the feeling of lonesomeness, as if they were on the other side of civilization, rather than in one of the great streams of summer frolic and gayety. It was therefore a very agreeable surprise to them when a traveling party alighted from one of the cars, which had come from Rome, among whom they recognized Mrs.

Farquhar.

"I knew my education never could be complete," said that lady as she shook hands, "and you never would consider me perfectly in the Union until I had seen the Thousand Islands; and here I am, after many Yankee tribulations."

"And why didn't you come by Niagara?" asked Miss Lamont.

"My dear, perhaps your uncle could tell you that I saw enough of Niagara when I was a young lady, during the war. The cruelest thing you Yankees did was to force us, who couldn't fight, to go over there for sympathy.

The only bearable thing about the fall of Richmond was that it relieved me from that Fall. But where," she added, turning to King, "are the rest of your party?"

"If you mean the Bensons," said he, with a rather rueful countenance, "I believe they have gone to the White Mountains."

"Oh, not lost, but gone before. You believe? If you knew the nights I have lain awake thinking about you two, or you three! I fear you have not been wide-awake enough yourself."

"I knew I could depend on you, Mrs. Farquhar, for that."

The steamer was moving off, taking a wide sweep to follow the channel.

The pa.s.sengers were all engaged in ascertaining the names of the islands and of the owners of the cottages and club-houses. "It is a kind of information I have learned to dispense with," said Mrs. Farquhar. And the tourists, except three or four resolutely inquisitive, soon tired of it. The islands multiplied; the boat wound in and out among them in narrow straits. To sail thus amid rocky islets, hirsute with firs, promised to be an unfailing pleasure. It might have been, if darkness had not speedily fallen. But it is notable how soon pa.s.sengers on a steamer become indifferent and listless in any sort of scenery. Where the scenery is monotonous and repeats itself mile after mile and hour after hour, an intolerable weariness falls upon the company. The enterprising group who have taken all the best seats in the bow, with the intention of gormandizing the views, exhibit little staying power; either the monotony or the wind drives them into the cabin. And pa.s.sengers in the cabin occupying chairs and sofas, surrounded by their baggage, always look bored and melancholy.

"I always think," said Mrs. Farquhar, "that I am going to enjoy a ride on a steamer, but I never do. It is impossible to get out of a draught, and the progress is so slow that variety enough is not presented to the eye to keep one from ennui." Nevertheless, Mrs. Farquhar and King remained on deck, in such shelter as they could find, during the three hours'

sail, braced up by the consciousness that they were doing their duty in regard to the enterprise that has transformed this lovely stream into a highway of display and enjoyment. Miss Lamont and the artist went below, frankly confessing that they could see all that interested them from the cabin windows. And they had their reward; for in this little cabin, where supper was served, a drama was going on between the cook and the two waiting-maids and the cabin boy, a drama of love and coquetry and jealousy and hope deferred, quite as important to those concerned as any of the watering-place comedies, and played with entire unconsciousness of the spectators.

The evening was dark, and the navigation in the tortuous channels sometimes difficult, and might have been dangerous but for the lighthouses. The steamer crept along in the shadows of the low islands, making frequent landings, and never long out of sight of the illuminations of hotels and cottages. Possibly by reason of these illuminations this pa.s.sage has more variety by night than by day. There was certainly a fascination about this alternating brilliancy and gloom.

On nearly every island there was at least a cottage, and on the larger islands were great hotels, camp-meeting establishments, and houses and tents for the entertainment of thousands of people. Late as it was in the season, most of the temporary villages and solitary lodges were illuminated; colored lamps were set about the grounds, Chinese lanterns hung in the evergreens, and on half a dozen lines radiating from the belfry of the hotel to the ground, while all the windows blazed and scintillated. Occasionally as the steamer pa.s.sed these places of irrepressible gayety rockets were let off, Bengal-lights were burned, and once a cannon attempted to speak the joy of the sojourners. It was like a continued Fourth of July, and King's heart burned within him with national pride. Even Mrs. Farquhar had to admit that it was a fairy spectacle. During the months of July and August this broad river, with its fantastic islands, is at night simply a highway of glory. The worldlings and the camp-meeting gatherings vie with each other in the display of colored lights and fireworks. And such places as the Thousand Islands Park, Wellesley and Wesley parks, and so on, twinkling with lamps and rosy with pyrotechnics, like sections of the sky dropped upon the earth, create in the mind of the steamer pilgrim an indescribable earthly and heavenly excitement. He does not look upon these displays as advertis.e.m.e.nts of rival resorts, but as generous contributions to the hilarity of the world.

It is, indeed, a marvelous spectacle, this view for thirty or forty miles, and the simple traveler begins to realize what American enterprise is when it lays itself out for pleasure. These miles and miles of cottages, hotels, parks, and camp-meetings are the creation of only a few years, and probably can scarcely be paralleled elsewhere in the world for rapidity of growth. But the strongest impression the traveler has is of the public spirit of these summer sojourners, speculators, and religious enthusiasts. No man lives to himself alone, or builds his cottage for his selfish gratification. He makes fantastic carpentry, and paints and decorates and illuminates and shows fireworks, for the genuine sake of display. One marvels that a person should come here for rest and pleasure in a spirit of such devotion to the public weal, and devote himself night after night for months to illuminating his house and lighting up his island, and tearing open the sky with rockets and shaking the air with powder explosions, in order that the river may be continually en fete.

At half-past eight the steamer rounded into view of the hotels and cottages at Alexandria Bay, and the enchanting scene drew all the pa.s.sengers to the deck.

The Thousand Islands Hotel, and the Crossman House, where our party found excellent accommodations, were blazing and sparkling like the spectacular palaces in an opera scene. Rows of colored lamps were set thickly along the sh.o.r.e, and disposed everywhere among the rocks on which the Crossman House stands; lights glistened from all the islands, from a thousand row-boats, and in all the windows. It was very like Venice, seen from the lagoon, when the Italians make a gala-night.

If Alexandria Bay was less enchanting as a spectacle by daylight, it was still exceedingly lovely and picturesque; islands and bays and winding waterways could not be better combined for beauty, and the structures that taste or ambition has raised on the islands or rocky points are well enough in keeping with the general holiday aspect. One of the prettiest of these cottages is the Bonnicastle of the late Dr. Holland, whose spirit more or less pervades this region. It is charmingly situated on a projecting point of gray rocks veined with color, enlivened by touches of scarlet bushes and brilliant flowers planted in little spots of soil, contrasting with the evergreen shrubs. It commands a varied and delicious prospect, and has an air of repose and peace.

I am sorry to say that while Forbes and Miss Lamont floated, so to speak, in all this beauty, like the light-hearted revelers they were, King was scarcely in a mood to enjoy it. It seemed to him fict.i.tious and a little forced. There was no message for him at the Crossman House. His restlessness and absentmindedness could not escape the observation of Mrs. Farquhar, and as the poor fellow sadly needed a confidante, she was soon in possession of his story.

"I hate slang," she said, when he had painted the situation black enough to suit Mrs. Bartlett Glow even, "and I will not give my s.e.x away, but I know something of feminine doubtings and subterfuges, and I give you my judgment that Irene is just fretting herself to death, and praying that you may have the spirit to ride rough-shod over her scruples. Yes, it is just as true in this prosaic time as it ever was, that women like to be carried off by violence. In their secret hearts, whatever they may say, they like to see a knight batter down the tower and put all the garrison except themselves to the sword. I know that I ought to be on Mrs. Glow's side. It is the sensible side, the prudent side; but I do admire recklessness in love. Probably you'll be uncomfortable, perhaps unhappy --you are certain to be if you marry to please society and not yourself --but better a thousand times one wild rush of real pa.s.sion, of self-forgetting love, than an age of stupid, conventional affection approved by your aunt. Oh, these calculating young people!" Mrs.

Farquhar's voice trembled and her eyes flashed. "I tell you, my friend, life is not worth living in a conventional stagnation. You see in society how nature revenges itself when its instincts are repressed."

Mrs. Farquhar turned away, and King saw that her eyes were full of tears.

She stood a moment looking away over the sparkling water to the soft islands on the hazy horizon. Was she thinking of her own marriage? Death had years ago dissolved it, and were these tears, not those of mourning, but for the great experience possible in life, so seldom realized, missed forever? Before King could frame, in the tumult of his own thoughts, any reply, she turned towards him again, with her usual smile, half of badinage and half of tenderness, and said:

"Come, this is enough of tragedy for one day; let us go on the Island Wanderer, with the other excursionists, among the isles of the blest."

The little steamer had already its load, and presently was under way, puffing and coughing, on its usual afternoon trip among the islands. The pa.s.sengers were silent, and appeared to take the matter seriously--a sort of linen-duster congregation, of the cla.s.s who figure in the homely dialect poems of the Northern bards, Mrs. Farquhar said. They were chiefly interested in knowing the names of the successful people who had built these fantastic dwellings, and who lived on illuminations. Their curiosity was easily gratified, for in most cases the owners had painted their names, and sometimes their places of residence, in staring white letters on conspicuous rocks. There was also exhibited, for the benefit of invalids, by means of the same white paint, here and there the name of a medicine that is a household word in this patent-right generation. So the little steamer sailed, comforted by these remedies, through the strait of Safe Nervine, round the bluff of Safe Tonic, into the open bay of Safe Liver Cure. It was a healing voyage, and one in which enterprise was so allied with beauty that no utilitarian philosopher could raise a question as to the market value of the latter.

The voyage continued as far as Gananoque, in Canada, where the pa.s.sengers went ash.o.r.e, and wandered about in a disconsolate way to see nothing.

King said, however, that he was more interested in the place than in any other he had seen, because there was nothing interesting in it; it was absolutely without character, or a single peculiarity either of Canada or of the United States. Indeed, this north sh.o.r.e seemed to all the party rather bleak even in summertime, and the quality of the sunshine thin.

It was, of course, a delightful sail, abounding in charming views, up "lost channels," through vistas of gleaming water overdrooped by tender foliage, and now and then great stretches of sea, and always islands, islands.

"Too many islands too much alike," at length exclaimed Mrs. Farquhar, "and too many tasteless cottages and temporary camping structures."

The performance is, indeed, better than the prospectus. For there are not merely the poetical Thousand Islands; by actual count there are sixteen hundred and ninety-two. The artist and Miss Lamont were trying to sing a fine song they discovered in the Traveler's Guide, inspired perhaps by that sentimental ditty, "The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece," beginning,

"O Thousand Isles! O Thousand Isles!"

It seemed to King that a poem might be constructed more in accordance with the facts and with the scientific spirit of the age. Something like this:

"O Sixteen Hundred Ninety-two Isles!

O Islands 1692!

Where the fisher spreads his wiles, And the muskallonge goes through!

Forever the cottager gilds the same With nightly pyrotechnic flame; And it's O the Isles!

The 1692!"

Aside from the pyrotechnics, the chief occupations of this place are boating and fishing. Boats abound--row-boats, sail-boats, and steam-launches for excursion parties. The river consequently presents an animated appearance in the season, and the prettiest effects are produced by the white sails dipping about among the green islands. The favorite boat is a canoe with a small sail stepped forward, which is steered without centre-board or rudder, merely by a change of position in the boat of the man who holds the sheet. While the fishermen are here, it would seem that the long, snaky pickerel is the chief game pursued and caught. But this is not the case when the fishermen return home, for then it appears that they have been dealing mainly with muskallonge, and with ba.s.s by the way. No other part of the country originates so many excellent fish stories as the Sixteen Hundred and Ninety-two Islands, and King had heard so many of them that he suspected there must be fish in these waters. That afternoon, when they returned from Gananoque he accosted an old fisherman who sat in his boat at the wharf awaiting a customer.

"I suppose there is fishing here in the season?"

The man glanced up, but deigned no reply to such impertinence.

"Could you take us where we would be likely to get any muskallonge?"

"Likely?" asked the man. "What do you suppose I am here for?"

"I beg your pardon. I'm a stranger here. I'd like to try my hand at a muskallonge. About how do they run here as to size?"

"Well," said the fisherman, relenting a little, "that depends upon who takes you out. If you want a little sport, I can take you to it. They are running pretty well this season, or were a week ago."

"Is it too late?"

"Well, they are scarcer than they were, unless you know where to go. I call forty pounds light for a muskallonge; fifty to seventy is about my figure. If you ain't used to this kind of fishing, and go with me, you'd better tie yourself in the boat. They are a powerful fish. You see that little island yonder? A muskallonge dragged me in this boat four times round that island one day, and just as I thought I was tiring him out he jumped clean over the island, and I had to cut the line."

King thought he had heard something like this before, and he engaged the man for the next day. That evening was the last of the grand illuminations for the season, and our party went out in the Crossman steam-launch to see it. Although some of the cottages were vacated, and the display was not so extensive as in August, it was still marvelously beautiful, and the night voyage around the illuminated islands was something long to be remembered.

There were endless devices of colored lamps and lanterns, figures of crosses, crowns, the Seal of Solomon, and the most strange effects produced on foliage and in the water by red and green and purple fires.

It was a night of enchantment, and the hotel and its grounds on the dark background of the night were like the stately pleasure-house in "Kubla Khan."

But the season was drawing to an end. The hotels, which could not find room for the throngs on Sat.u.r.day night, say, were nearly empty on Monday, so easy are pleasure-seekers frightened away by a touch of cold, forgetting that in such a resort the most enjoyable part of the year comes with the mellow autumn days. That night at ten o'clock the band was sc.r.a.ping away in the deserted parlor, with not another person in attendance, without a single listener. Miss Lamont happened to peep through the window-blinds from the piazza and discover this residuum of gayety. The band itself was half asleep, but by sheer force of habit it kept on, the fiddlers drawing the perfunctory bows, and the melancholy clarionet men breathing their expressive sighs. It was a dismal sight.

The next morning the band had vanished.

The morning was lowering, and a steady rain soon set in for the day. No fishing, no boating; nothing but drop, drop, and the reminiscence of past pleasure. Mist enveloped the islands and shut out the view. Even the spirits of Mrs. Farquhar were not proof against this, and she tried to amuse herself by reconstructing the season out of the specimens of guests who remained, who were for the most part young ladies who had duty written on their faces, and were addicted to spectacles.

"It could not have been," she thought, "ultrafashionable or madly gay. I think the good people come here; those who are willing to illuminate."

"Oh, there is a fast enough life at some of the hotels in the summer,"

said the artist.

"Very likely. Still, if I were recruiting for schoolmarms, I should come here. I like it thoroughly, and mean to be here earlier next year. The scenery is enchanting, and I quite enjoy being with 'Proverbial Philosophy' people."