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Page 5
His employer proving false to his contract in the matter of the land,
and there being no law in the country to force him to fulfil it,
Israel--who, however brave-hearted, and even much of a dare-devil upon a
pinch, seems nevertheless to have evinced, throughout many parts of his
career, a singular patience and mildness--was obliged to look round for
other means of livelihood than clearing out a farm for himself in the
wilderness. A party of royal surveyors were at this period surveying the
unsettled regions bordering the Connecticut river to its source. At
fifteen shillings per month, he engaged himself to this party as
assistant chain-bearer, little thinking that the day was to come when he
should clank the king's chains in a dungeon, even as now he trailed them
a free ranger of the woods. It was midwinter; the land was surveyed upon
snow-shoes. At the close of the day, fires were kindled with dry
hemlock, a hut thrown up, and the party ate and slept.
Paid off at last, Israel bought a gun and ammunition, and turned
hunter. Deer, beaver, etc., were plenty. In two or three months he had
many skins to show. I suppose it never entered his mind that he was thus
qualifying himself for a marksman of men. But thus were tutored those
wonderful shots who did such execution at Bunker's Hill; these, the
hunter-soldiers, whom Putnam bade wait till the white of the enemy's eye
was seen.
With the result of his hunting he purchased a hundred acres of land,
further down the river, toward the more settled parts; built himself a
log hut, and in two summers, with his own hands, cleared thirty acres
for sowing. In the winter seasons he hunted and trapped. At the end of
the two years, he sold back his land--now much improved--to the original
owner, at an advance of fifty pounds. He conveyed his cash and furs to
Charlestown, on the Connecticut (sometimes called No. 4), where he
trafficked them away for Indian blankets, pigments, and other showy
articles adapted to the business of a trader among savages. It was now
winter again. Putting his goods on a hand-sled, he started towards
Canada, a peddler in the wilderness, stopping at wigwams instead of
cottages. One fancies that, had it been summer, Israel would have
travelled with a wheelbarrow, and so trundled his wares through the
primeval forests, with the same indifference as porters roll their
barrows over the flagging of streets. In this way was bred that fearless
self-reliance and independence which conducted our forefathers to
national freedom.
This Canadian trip proved highly successful. Selling his glittering
goods at a great advance, he received in exchange valuable peltries and
furs at a corresponding reduction. Returning to Charlestown, he disposed
of his return cargo again at a very fine profit. And now, with a light
heart and a heavy purse, he resolved to visit his sweetheart and
parents, of whom, for three years, he had had no tidings.
They were not less astonished than delighted at his reappearance; he had
been numbered with the dead. But his love still seemed strangely coy;
willing, but yet somehow mysteriously withheld. The old intrigues were
still on foot. Israel soon discovered, that though rejoiced to welcome
the return of the prodigal son--so some called him--his father still
remained inflexibly determined against the match, and still inexplicably
countermined his wooing. With a dolorous heart he mildly yielded to what
seemed his fatality; and more intrepid in facing peril for himself, than
in endangering others by maintaining his rights (for he was now
one-and-twenty), resolved once more to retreat, and quit his blue hills
for the bluer billows.
A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded
misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous
distressed. The ocean brims with natural griefs and tragedies; and into
that watery immensity of terror, man's private grief is lost like a
drop.
Travelling on foot to Providence, Rhode Island, Israel shipped on board
a sloop, bound with lime to the West Indies. On the tenth day out, the
vessel caught fire, from water communicating with the lime. It was
impossible to extinguish the flames. The boat was hoisted out, but owing
to long exposure to the sun, it needed continual bailing to keep it
afloat. They had only time to put in a firkin of butter and a ten-gallon
keg of water. Eight in number, the crew entrusted themselves to the
waves, in a leaky tub, many leagues from land. As the boat swept under
the burning bowsprit, Israel caught at a fragment of the flying-jib,
which sail had fallen down the stay, owing to the charring, nigh the
deck, of the rope which hoisted it. Tanned with the smoke, and its edge
blackened with the fire, this bit of canvass helped them bravely on
their way. Thanks to kind Providence, on the second day they were picked
up by a Dutch ship, bound from Eustatia to Holland. The castaways were
humanely received, and supplied with every necessary. At the end of a
week, while unsophisticated Israel was sitting in the maintop, thinking
what should befall him in Holland, and wondering what sort of unsettled,
wild country it was, and whether there was any deer-shooting or
beaver-trapping there, lo! an American brig, bound from Piscataqua to
Antigua, comes in sight. The American took them aboard, and conveyed
them safely to her port. There Israel shipped for Porto Rico; from
thence, sailed to Eustatia.
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