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AFLOAT AND ASHORE

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

"Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits."
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_

PREFACE.

The writer has published so much truth which the world has insisted
was fiction and so much fiction which has been received as truth
that in the present instance he is resolved to say nothing on the
subject. Each of his readers is at liberty to believe just as much or
as little of the matter here laid before him or her as may suit
his or her notions prejudices knowledge of the world or
ignorance. If anybody is disposed to swear he knows precisely where
Clawbonny is that he was well acquainted with old Mr. Hardinge nay
has often heard him preach--let him make his affidavit in
welcome. Should he get a little wide of the mark it will not be the
first document of that nature which has possessed the same weakness.

It is possible that certain captious persons may be disposed to
inquire into the _cui borio?_ of such a book. The answer is
this. Everything which can convey to the human mind distinct and
accurate impressions of events social facts professional
peculiarities or past history whether of the higher or more familiar
character is of use. All that is necessary is that the pictures
should be true to nature if not absolutely drawn from living
sitters. The knowledge we gain by our looser reading often becomes
serviceable in modes and manners little anticipated in the moments
when it is acquired.

Perhaps the greater portion of all our peculiar opinions have their
foundation in prejudices. These prejudices are produced in consequence
of its being out of the power of any one man to see or know every
thing. The most favoured mortal must receive far more than half of all
that he learns on his faith in others; and it may aid those who can
never be placed in positions to judge for themselves of certain phases
of men and things to get pictures of the same drawn in a way to give
them nearer views than they might otherwise obtain. This is the
greatest benefit of all light literature in general it being possible
to render that which is purely fictitious even more useful than that
which is strictly true by avoiding extravagancies by pourtraying
with fidelity and as our friend Marble might say by "generalizing"
with discretion.

This country has undergone many important changes since the
commencement of the present century. Some of these changes have been
for the better; others we think out of all question for the
worse. The last is a fact that can be known to the generation which is
coming into life by report only and these pages may possibly throw
some little light on both points in representing things as they
were. The population of the republic is probably something more than
eighteen millions and a half to-day; in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred it was but a little more than five
millions. In 1800 the population of New-York was somewhat less than
six hundred thousand souls; to-day it is probably a little less than
two millions seven hundred thousand souls. In 1800 the town of
New-York had sixty thousand inhabitants whereas including Brooklyn
and Williamsburg which then virtually had no existence it must have
at this moment quite four hundred thousand. These are prodigious
numerical changes that have produced changes of another
sort. Although an increase of numbers does not necessarily infer an
increase of high civilization it reasonably leads to the expectation
of great melioration in the commoner comforts. Such has been the
result and to those familiar with facts as they now exist the
difference will probably be apparent in these pages.

Although the moral changes in American society have not kept even pace
with those that are purely physical many that are essential have
nevertheless occurred. Of all the British possessions on this
continent New-York after its conquest from the Dutch received most
of the social organization of the mother country. Under the Dutch
even it had some of these characteristic peculiarities in its
patroons; the lords of the manor of the New Netherlands. Some of the
southern colonies it is true had their caciques and other
semi-feudal and semi-savage noblesse but the system was of short
continuance; the peculiarities of that section of the country arising
principally from the existence of domestic slavery on an extended
scale. With New-York it was different. A conquered colony the mother
country left the impression of its own institutions more deeply
engraved than on any of the settlements that were commenced by grants
to proprietors or under charters from the crown. It was strictly a
royal colony and so continued to be down to the hour of
separation. The social consequences of this state of things were to be
traced in her habits unlit the current of immigration became so
strong as to bring with it those that were conflicting if not
absolutely antagonist. The influence of these two sources of thought
is still obvious to the reflecting giving rise to a double set of
social opinions; one of which bears all the characteristics of its New
England and puritanical origin while the other may be said to come of
the usages and notions of the Middle States proper.

This is said in anticipation of certain strictures that will be likely
to follow some of the incidents of our story it not being always
deemed an essential in an American critic that he should understand
his subject. Too many of them indeed justify the retort of the man
who derided the claims to knowledge of life set up by a neighbour
that "had been to meetin' and had been to mill." We can all obtain
some notions of the portion of a subject that is placed immediately
before our eyes; the difficulty is to understand that which we have no
means of studying.

On the subject of the nautical incidents of this book we have
endeavoured to be as exact as our authorities will allow. We are fully
aware of the importance of writing what the world thinks rather than
what is true and are not conscious of any very palpable errors of
this nature.

It is no more than fair to apprize the reader that our tale is not
completed in the First Part or the volumes that are now published.
This the plan of the book would not permit: but we can promise those
who may feel any interest in the subject that the season shall not
pass away so far as it may depend on ourselves without bringing the
narrative to a close. Poor Captain Wallingford is now in his
sixty-fifth year and is naturally desirous of not being hung up long
on the tenter-hooks of expectation so near the close of life. The
old gentleman having seen much and suffered much is entitled to end
his days in peace. In this mutual frame of mind between the principal
and his editors the public shall have no cause to complain of
unnecessary delay whatever may be its rights of the same nature on
other subjects.

The author--perhaps editor would be the better word--does not feel
himself responsible for all the notions advanced by the hero of this
tale and it may be as well to say as much. That one born in the
Revolution should think differently from the men of the present day
in a hundred things is to be expected. It is in just this difference
of opinion that the lessons of the book are to be found.

AFLOAT AND ASHORE.

CHAPTER I.

I was born in a valley not very remote from the sea. My father had
been a sailor in youth and some of my earliest recollections are
connected with the history of his adventures and the recollections
they excited. He had been a boy in the war of the revolution and had
seen some service in the shipping of that period. Among other scenes
he witnessed he had been on board the Trumbull in her action with
the Watt--the hardest-fought naval combat of that war--and he
particularly delighted in relating its incidents. He had been wounded
in the battle and bore the marks of the injury in a scar that
slightly disfigured a face that without this blemish would have
been singularly handsome. My mother after my poor father's death
always spoke of even this scar as a beauty spot. Agreeably to my own
recollections the mark scarcely deserved that commendation as it
gave one side of the face a grim and fierce appearance particularly
when its owner was displeased.

My father died on the farm on which he was born and which descended
to him from his great-grandfather an English emigrant that had
purchased it of the Dutch colonist who had originally cleared it from
the woods. The place was called Clawbonny which some said was good
Dutch others bad Dutch; and now and then a person ventured a
conjecture that it might be Indian. Bonny it was in one sense at
least for a lovelier farm there is not on the whole of the wide
surface of the Empire State. What does not always happen in this
wicked world it was as good as it was handsome. It consisted of
three hundred and seventy-two acres of first-rate land either arable
or of rich river bottom in meadows and of more than a hundred of
rocky mountain side that was very tolerably covered with wood. The
first of our family who owned the place had built a substantial
one-story stone house that bears the date of 1707 on one of its
gables; and to which each of his successors had added a little until
the whole structure got to resemble a cluster of cottages thrown
together without the least attention to order or regularity. There
were a porch a front door and a lawn however; the latter containing
half a dozen acres of a soil as black as one's hat and nourishing
eight or ten elms that were scattered about as if their seeds had
been sown broad-cast. In addition to the trees and a suitable
garniture of shrubbery this lawn was coated with a sward that in the
proper seasons rivalled all I have read or imagined of the emerald
and shorn slopes of the Swiss valleys.

Clawbonny while it had all the appearance of being the residence of
an affluent agriculturist had none of the pretension of these later
times. The house had an air of substantial comfort without an
appearance that its interior in no manner contradicted. The
ceilings were low it is true nor were the rooms particularly large;
but the latter were warm in winter cool in summer and tidy neat and
respectable all the year round. Both the parlours had carpets as had
the passages and all the better bed-rooms; and there were an
old-fashioned chintz settee well stuffed and cushioned and curtains
in the "big parlour" as we called the best apartment--the pretending
name of drawing-room not having reached our valley as far back as the
year 1796 or that in which my recollections of the place as it then
existed are the most vivid and distinct.

We had orchards meadows and ploughed fields all around us; while the
barns granaries styes and other buildings of the farm were of
solid stone like the dwelling and all in capital condition. In
addition to the place which he inherited from my grandfather quite
without any encumbrance well stocked and supplied with utensils of
all sorts my father had managed to bring with him from sea some
fourteen or fifteen thousand dollars which he carefully invested in
mortgages in the county. He got twenty-seven hundred pounds currency
with my mother similarly bestowed; and two or three great landed
proprietors and as many retired merchants from York excepted
Captain Wallingford was generally supposed to be one of the stiffest
men in Ulster county. I do not know exactly how true was this report;
though I never saw anything but the abundance of a better sort of
American farm under the paternal roof and I know that the poor were
never sent away empty-handed. It as true that our wine was made of
currants; but it was delicious and there was always a sufficient
stock in the cellar to enable us to drink it three or four years
old. My father however had a small private collection of his own
out of which he would occasionally produce a bottle; and I remember to
have heard Governor George Clinton afterwards Vice President who
was an Ulster county man and who sometimes stopped at Clawbonny in
passing say that it was excellent East India Madeira. As for clarets
burgundy hock and champagne they were wines then unknown in America
except on the tables of some of the principal merchants and here and
there on that of some travelled gentleman of an estate larger than
common. When I say that Governor George Clinton used to stop
occasionally and taste my father's Madeira I do not wish to boast of
being classed with those who then composed the gentry of the state. To
this in that day we could hardly aspire though the substantial
hereditary property of my family gave us a local consideration that
placed us a good deal above the station of ordinary yeomen. Had we
lived in one of the large towns our association would unquestionably
have been with those who are usually considered to be one or two
degrees beneath the highest class. These distinctions were much more
marked immediately after the war of the revolution than they are
to-day; and they are more marked to-day even than all but the most
lucky or the most meritorious whichever fortune dignifies are
willing to allow.

The courtship between my parents occurred while my father was at home
to be cured of the wounds he had received in the engagement between
the Trumbull and the Watt. I have always supposed this was the moving
cause why my mother fancied that the grim-looking scar on the left
side of my father's face was so particularly becoming. The battle was
fought in June 1780 and my parents were married in the autumn of the
same year. My father did not go to sea again until after my birth
which took place the very day that Cornwallis capitulated at
Yorktown. These combined events set the young sailor in motion for he
felt he had a family to provide for and he wished to make one more
mark on the enemy in return for the beauty-spot his wife so gloried
in. He accordingly got a commission in a privateer made two or three
fortunate cruises and was able at the peace to purchase a prize-brig
which he sailed as master and owner until the year 1790 when he was
recalled to the paternal roof by the death of my grandfather. Being
an only son the captain as my father was uniformly called inherited
the land stock utensils and crops as already mentioned; while the
six thousand pounds currency that were "at use" went to my two aunts
who were thought to be well married to men in their own class of
life in adjacent counties.

My father never went to sea after he inherited Clawbonny. From that
time down to the day of his death he remained on his farm with the
exception of a single winter passed in Albany as one of the
representatives of the county. In his day it was a credit to a man
to represent a county and to hold office under the State; though the
abuse of the elective principle not to say of the appointing power
has since brought about so great a change. Then a member of congress
was _somebody_; now he is only--a member of congress.

We were but two surviving children three of the family dying infants
leaving only my sister Grace and myself to console our mother in her
widowhood. The dire accident which placed her in this the saddest of
all conditions for a woman who had been a happy wife occurred in the
year 1794 when I was in my thirteenth year and Grace was turned of
eleven. It may be well to relate the particulars.

There was a mill just where the stream that runs through our valley
tumbles down to a level below that on which the farm lies and empties
itself into a small tributary of the Hudson. This mill was on our
property and was a source of great convenience and of some profit to
my father. There he ground all the grain that was consumed for
domestic purposes for several miles around; and the tolls enabled him
to fatten his porkers and beeves in a way to give both a sort of
established character. In a word the mill was the concentrating point
for all the products of the farm there being a little landing on the
margin of the creek that put up from the Hudson whence a sloop sailed
weekly for town. My father passed half his time about the mill and
landing superintending his workmen and particularly giving
directions about the fitting of the sloop which was his property
also and about the gear of the mill. He was clever certainly and
had made several useful suggestions to the millwright who occasionally
came to examine and repair the works; but he was by no means so
accurate a mechanic as he fancied himself to be. He had invented some
new mode of arresting the movement and of setting the machinery in
motion when necessary; what it was I never knew for it was not named
at Clawbonny after the fatal accident occurred. One day however in
order to convince the millwright of the excellence of this
improvement my father caused the machinery to be stopped and then
placed his own weight upon the large wheel in order to manifest the
sense he felt in the security of his invention. He was in the very act
of laughing exultingly at the manner in which the millwright shook his
head at the risk he ran when the arresting power lost its control of
the machinery the heavy head of water burst into the buckets and the
wheel whirled round carrying my unfortunate father with it. I was an
eye-witness of the whole and saw the face of my parent as the wheel
turned it from me still expanded in mirth. There was but one
revolution made when the wright succeeded in stopping the works. This
brought the great wheel back nearly to its original position and I
fairly shouted with hysterical delight when I saw my father standing
in his tracks as it might be seemingly unhurt. Unhurt he would have
been though he must have passed a fearful keel-hauling but for one
circumstance. He had held on to the wheel with the tenacity of a
seaman since letting go his hold would have thrown him down a cliff
of near a hundred feet in depth and he actually passed between the
wheel and the planking beneath it unharmed although there was only an
inch or two to spare; but in rising from this fearful strait his head
had been driven between a projecting beam and one of the buckets in a
way to crush one temple in upon the brain. So swift and sudden had
been the whole thing that on turning the wheel his lifeless body
was still inclining on its periphery retained erect I believe in
consequence of some part of his coat getting attached to the head of
a nail. This was the first serious sorrow of my life. I had always
regarded my father as one of the fixtures of the world; as a part of
the great system of the universe; and had never contemplated his death
as a possible thing. That another revolution might occur and carry
the country back under the dominion of the British crown would have
seemed to me far more possible than that my father could die. Bitter
truth now convinced me of the fallacy of such notions.

It was months and months before I ceased to dream of this frightful
scene. At my age all the feelings were fresh and plastic and grief
took strong hold of my heart. Grace and I used to look at each other
without speaking long after the event the tears starting to my eyes
and rolling down her cheeks our emotions being the only
communications between us but communications that no uttered words
could have made so plain. Even now I allude to my mother's anguish
with trembling. She was sent for to the house of the miller where the
body lay and arrived unapprised of the extent of the evil. Never can
I--never shall I forget the outbreakings of her sorrow when she
learned the whole of the dreadful truth. She was in fainting fits for
hours one succeeding another and then her grief found tongue. There
was no term of endearment that the heart of woman could dictate to her
speech that was not lavished on the lifeless clay. She called the
dead "her Miles" "her beloved Miles" "her husband" "her own darling
husband" and by such other endearing epithets. Once she seemed as if
resolute to arouse the sleeper from his endless trance and she said
solemnly "_Father_--dear _dearest_ father!" appealing as
it might be to the parent of her children the tenderest and most
comprehensive of all woman's terms of endearment--"Father--dear
dearest father! open your eyes and look upon your babes--your precious
girl and noble boy! Do not thus shut out their sight for ever!"

But it was in vain. There lay the lifeless corpse as insensible as if
the spirit of God had never had a dwelling within it. The principal
injury had been received on that much-prized scar; and again and again
did my poor mother kiss both as if her caresses might yet restore her
husband to life. All would not do. The same evening the body was
carried to the dwelling and three days later it was laid in the
church-yard by the side of three generations of forefathers at a
distance of only a mile from Clawbonny. That funeral service too
made a deep impression on my memory. We had some Church of England
people in the valley; and old Miles Wallingford the first of the
name a substantial English franklin had been influenced in his
choice of a purchase by the fact that one of Queen Anne's churches
stood so near the farm. To that little church a tiny edifice of
stone with a high pointed roof without steeple bell or
vestry-room had three generations of us been taken to be christened
and three including my father had been taken to be buried.
Excellent kind-hearted just-minded Mr. Hardinge read the funeral
service over the man whom his own father had in the same humble
edifice christened. Our neighbourhood has much altered of late
years; but then few higher than mere labourers dwelt among us who
had not some sort of hereditary claim to be beloved. So it was with
our clergyman whose father had been his predecessor having actually
married my grand-parents. The son had united my father and mother
and now he was called on to officiate at the funeral obsequies of the
first. Grace and I sobbed as if our hearts would break the whole
time we were in the church; and my poor sensitive nervous little
sister actually shrieked as she heard the sound of the first clod that
fell upon the coffin. Our mother was spared that trying scene finding
it impossible to support it. She remained at home on her knees most
of the day on which the funeral occurred.

Time soothed our sorrows though my mother a woman of more than
common sensibility or it were better to say of uncommon affections
never entirely recovered from the effects of her irreparable loss. She
had loved too well too devotedly too engrossingly ever to think of
a second marriage and lived only to care for the interests of Miles
Wallingford's children. I firmly believe we were more beloved because
we stood in this relation to the deceased than because we were her
own natural offspring. Her health became gradually undermined and
three years after the accident of the mill Mr. Hardinge laid her at
my father's side. I was now sixteen and can better describe what
passed during the last days of her existence than what took place at
the death of her husband. Grace and I were apprised of what was so
likely to occur quite a month before the fatal moment arrived; and we
were not so much overwhelmed with sudden grief as we had been on the
first great occasion of family sorrow though we both felt our loss
keenly and my sister I think I may almost say inextinguishably. Mr.
Hardinge had us both brought to the bed-side to listen to the parting
advice of our dying parent and to be impressed with a scene that is
always healthful if rightly improved. "You baptized these two dear
children good Mr. Hardinge" she said in a voice that was already
enfeebled by physical decay "and you signed them with the sign of the
cross in token of Christ's death for them; and I now ask of your
friendship and pastoral care to see that they are not neglected at the
most critical period of their lives--that when impressions are the
deepest and yet the most easily made. God will reward all your
kindness to the orphan children of your friends." The excellent
divine a man who lived more for others than for himself made the
required promises and the soul of my mother took its flight in peace.

Neither my sister nor myself grieved as deeply for the loss of this
last of our parents as we did for that of the first. We had both
seen so many instances of her devout goodness had been witnesses of
so great a triumph of her faith as to feel an intimate though silent
persuasion that her death was merely a passage to a better state of
existence--that it seemed selfish to regret. Still we wept and
mourned even while in one sense I think we rejoiced. She was
relieved from much bodily suffering and I remember when I went to
take a last look at her beloved face that I gazed on its calm
serenity with a feeling akin to exultation as I recollected that pain
could no longer exercise dominion over her frame and that her spirit
was then dwelling in bliss. Bitter regrets came later it is true
and these were fully shared--nay more than shared--by Grace.

After the death of my father I had never bethought me of the manner
in which he had disposed of his property. I heard something said of
his will and gleaned a little accidentally of the forms that had
been gone through in proving the instrument and of obtaining its
probate. Shortly after my mother's death however Mr. Hardinge had a
free conversation with both me and Grace on the subject when we
learned for the first time the disposition that had been made. My
father had bequeathed to me the farm mill landing sloop stock
utensils crops &c. &c. in full property; subject however to my
...

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