Israel Potter

Chapter 2

THE YOUTHFUL ADVENTURES OF ISRAEL.

Imagination will easily picture the rural day of the youth of Israel.

Let us pass on to a less immature period.

It appears that he began his wanderings very early; moreover, that ere,

on just principles throwing off the yoke off his king, Israel, on

equally excusable grounds, emancipated himself from his sire. He

continued in the enjoyment of parental love till the age of eighteen,

when, having formed an attachment for a neighbor's daughter--for some

reason, not deemed a suitable match by his father--he was severely

reprimanded, warned to discontinue his visits, and threatened with some

disgraceful punishment in case he persisted. As the girl was not only

beautiful, but amiable--though, as will be seen, rather weak--and her

family as respectable as any, though unfortunately but poor, Israel

deemed his father's conduct unreasonable and oppressive; particularly as

it turned out that he had taken secret means to thwart his son with the

girl's connections, if not with the girl herself, so as to place almost

insurmountable obstacles to an eventual marriage. For it had not been

the purpose of Israel to marry at once, but at a future day, when

prudence should approve the step. So, oppressed by his father, and

bitterly disappointed in his love, the desperate boy formed the

determination to quit them both for another home and other friends.

It was on Sunday, while the family were gone to a farmhouse church near

by, that he packed up as much of his clothing as might be contained in a

handkerchief, which, with a small quantity of provision, he hid in a

piece of woods in the rear of the house. He then returned, and continued

in the house till about nine in the evening, when, pretending to go to

bed, he passed out of a back door, and hastened to the woods for his

bundle.

It was a sultry night in July; and that he might travel with the more

ease on the succeeding day, he lay down at the foot of a pine tree,

reposing himself till an hour before dawn, when, upon awaking, he heard

the soft, prophetic sighing of the pine, stirred by the first breath of

the morning. Like the leaflets of that evergreen, all the fibres of his

heart trembled within him; tears fell from his eyes. But he thought of

the tyranny of his father, and what seemed to him the faithlessness of

his love; and shouldering his bundle, arose, and marched on.

His intention was to reach the new countries to the northward and

westward, lying between the Dutch settlements on the Hudson, and the

Yankee settlements on the Housatonic. This was mainly to elude all

search. For the same reason, for the first ten or twelve miles,

shunning the public roads, he travelled through the woods; for he knew

that he would soon be missed and pursued.

He reached his destination in safety; hired out to a farmer for a month

through the harvest; then crossed from the Hudson to the Connecticut.

Meeting here with an adventurer to the unknown regions lying about the

head waters of the latter river, he ascended with this man in a canoe,

paddling and pulling for many miles. Here again he hired himself out for

three months; at the end of that time to receive for his wages two

hundred acres of land lying in New Hampshire. The cheapness of the land

was not alone owing to the newness of the country, but to the perils

investing it. Not only was it a wilderness abounding with wild beasts,

but the widely-scattered inhabitants were in continual dread of being,

at some unguarded moment, destroyed or made captive by the Canadian

savages, who, ever since the French war, had improved every opportunity

to make forays across the defenceless frontier.

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.

Other rovings ensued; until at last, entering on board a Nantucket ship,

he hunted the leviathan off the Western Islands and on the coast of

Africa, for sixteen months; returning at length to Nantucket with a

brimming hold. From that island he sailed again on another whaling

voyage, extending, this time, into the great South Sea. There, promoted

to be harpooner, Israel, whose eye and arm had been so improved by

practice with his gun in the wilderness, now further intensified his

aim, by darting the whale-lance; still, unwittingly, preparing himself

for the Bunker Hill rifle.

In this last voyage, our adventurer experienced to the extreme all the

hardships and privations of the whaleman's life on a long voyage to

distant and barbarous waters--hardships and privations unknown at the

present day, when science has so greatly contributed, in manifold ways,

to lessen the sufferings, and add to the comforts of seafaring men.

Heartily sick of the ocean, and longing once more for the bush, Israel,

upon receiving his discharge at Nantucket at the end of the voyage, hied

straight back for his mountain home.

But if hopes of his sweetheart winged his returning flight, such hopes

were not destined to be crowned with fruition. The dear, false girl was

another's.