[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

Upon the afternoon of that same day, a single figure sat upon
the highest peak of the triple-headed promontory of Shawmut.
Around him was spread the lovely panorama, which still, but
with diminished beauty, surrounds the picturesque city of
Boston.

A solitary figure sat upon the summit of Shawmut. He was
a man of about thirty years of age, somewhat above the middle
height, slender in form, with a pale, thoughtful face. He wore
a confused, dark-colored, half canonical dress, with a grey
broad-leaved hat strung with shells, like an ancient palmer's,
and slouched back from his pensive brow, around which his
prematurely grey hair fell in heavy curls, far down upon his
neck. He had a wallet at his side, a hammer in his girdle, and
a long staff in his hand. The hermit of Shawmut looked out
upon a scene of winning beauty. The promontory resembled
rather two islands than a peninsula, although it was anchored to
the continent by a long slender thread of land, which seemed
hardly to restrain it from floating out to join its sister islands,
which were thickly strewn about the bay. The peak upon
which the hermit sat, was the highest of the three cliffs of the
peninsula; upon the south-east, and very near him, rose another
hill of lesser height and more rounded form, and upon the other
side, and towards the north, a third craggy peak presented its
bold and elevated front to the ocean. Thus the whole peninsula
was made up of three lofty crags. It was from this triple conformation
of the promontory of Shawmut, that was derived the

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

appellation of Trimountain, or Tremont, which it soon afterwards
received.

The vast conical shadows were projected eastwardly, as the
hermit, with his back to the declining sun, looked out upon the
sea.

The bay was spread out at his feet in a broad semicircle,
with its extreme headlands vanishing in the hazy distance, while
beyond rolled the vast expanse of ocean, with no spot of habitable
earth beyond those outermost barriers, and that far distant
fatherland, which the exile had left forever. Not a solitary sail
whitened those purple waves, and saving the wing of the sea
gull, which now and then flashed in the sunshine, or gleamed
across the dimness of the eastern horizon, the solitude was at
the moment unbroken by a single movement of animated nature.
An intense and breathless silence enwrapped the scene with a
vast and mystic veil. The bay presented a spectacle of great
beauty. It was not that the outlines of the coast around it were
broken into those jagged and cloud-like masses, that picturesque
and startling scenery where precipitous crag, infinite abyss, and
roaring surge unite to awaken stern and sublime emotions; on
the contrary, the gentle loveliness of this transatlantic scene
inspired a soothing melancholy, more congenial to the contemplative
character of its solitary occupant. The bay secluded
within its forest-crowned hills, decorated with its necklace of
emerald islands, with its dark blue waters gilded with the rays of
the western sun, and its shadowy forests of unknown antiquity,
expanding into infinite depths around, was an image of fresh
and virgin beauty, a fitting type of a new world, unadorned by
art, unploughed by industry, unscathed by war, wearing none of
the thousand priceless jewels of civilization, and unpolluted by
its thousand crimes — springing, as it were, from the bosom of
the ocean, cool, dripping, sparkling, and fresh from the hand of
its Creator.

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

On the left, as the pilgrim sat with his face to the east, the
outlines of the coast were comparatively low, but broken into
gentle and pleasing forms. Immediately at his feet lay a larger
island, in extent nearly equal to the peninsula of Shawmut,
covered with mighty forest trees, and, at that day, untenanted
by a human being — although but a short time afterwards it
became the residence of a distinguished pioneer. Outside this
bulwark, a chain of thickly wooded islets, stretched across
from shore to shore, with but one or two narrow channels
between, presenting a picturesque and effectual barrier to the
boisterous storms of ocean. They seemed like naiads, those
islets lifting above the billows their gentle heads, crowned with
the budding garlands of the spring, and circling hand in hand,
like protective deities about the scene.

On the south, beyond the narrow tongue of land, which
bound the peninsula to the main, and which was so slender
that the spray from the eastern side was often dashed across it
into the calmer cove of the west, rose in the immediate distance,
that long boldly broken, purple-colored ridge, called
the Massachusetts, or Mount Arrow Head, by the natives, and
by the first English discoverer baptized the Cheviot Hills.[3] On
their left, and within the deep curve of the coast, were the
slightly elevated heights of Passanogessit or Merry-Mount, and
on their right stretched the broad forest, hill beyond hill, away.
Towards the west and north-west, the eye wandered over a vast
undulating panorama of gently rolling heights, upon whose
summits the gigantic pine forests, with their towering tops
piercing the clouds, were darkly shadowed upon the western
sky, while in the dim distance, far above, and beyond the whole,
visible only through a cloudless atmosphere, rose the airy summits
of the Wachusett, Watatick, and Monadnock Mountains.

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

Upon the inland side, at the base of the hill, the Quinobequin
River, which Smith had already christened with the royal name
of his unhappy patron, Charles, might be seen writhing in its
slow and tortuous course, like a wounded serpent, till it lost
itself in the blue and beautiful cove which spread around the
whole western edge of the peninsula, and within the same
basin, directly opposite the northern peak of Shawmut, advanced
the bold and craggy promontory of Mishawum, where Walford,
the solitary smith, had built his thatched and palisaded house.
The blue thread of the River Mystic, which here mingled its
waters with the Charles, gleamed for a moment beyond the
heights of Mishawum, and then vanished into the frowning forest.

Such was the scene, upon a bright afternoon of spring, which
spread before the eyes of the solitary William Blaxton, the
hermit of Shawmut. It was a simple but sublime image, that
gentle exile in his sylvan solitude. It was a simple but sublime
thought which placed him and sustained him in his lone retreat.
In all ages, there seem to exist men who have no appointed
place in the world. They are before their age in their aspirations,
above it in their contemplation, but behind it in their
capacity for action. Keen to detect the follies and the inconsistencies
which surround them, shrinking from the contact and
the friction of the rough and boisterous world without, and
building within the solitude of their meditations the airy fabric
of a regenerated and purified existence, they pass their nights in
unproductive study, and their days in dreams. With intelligence
bright and copious enough to illuminate and to warm the
chill atmosphere of the surrounding world, if the scattered rays
were concentrated, but with an inability or disinclination to
impress themselves upon other minds, they pass their lives
without obtaining a result, and their characters dwarfed by their
distance from the actual universe, acquire an apparent indistinctness
and feebleness, which in reality does not belong to them.

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

The impending revolution in church and state, which hung
like a gathering thundercloud above England's devoted head,
was exciting to the stronger spirits, whether of mischief or of
virtue, who rejoiced to mingle in the elemental war, and to
plunge into the rolling surge of the world's events, while to the
timid, the hesitating, and the languid, it rose like a dark and
threatening phantom, scaring them into solitude, or urging them
to seek repose and safety in obscurity. Thus there may be
men whose spirits are in advance of their age, while still the
current of the world flows rapidly past them.

Of such men, and of such instincts, was the solitary who sat
on the cliffs of Shawmut. Forswearing the country of his birth
and early manhood, where there seemed in the present state of
her affairs no possibility that minds like his could develop or
sustain themselves — dropping as it were, like a premature and
unripened fruit, from the bough where its blossoms had first unfolded—
he had wandered into voluntary exile, with hardly a
regret. Debarred from ministering at the altar to which he had
consecrated his youth, because unable to comply with mummery
at which his soul revolted, he had become a high-priest of
nature, and had reared a pure and solitary altar in the wilderness.
He had dwelt in this solitude for three or four years, and
had found in the contemplation of nature, in the liberty of conscience,
in solitary study and self-communing, a solace for the
ills he had suffered, and a recompense for the world he had
turned his back upon forever.

His spirit was a prophetic spirit, and his virtues belonged not
to his times. In an age which regarded toleration as a crime,
he had the courage to cultivate it as a virtue. In an age in
which liberty of conscience was considered fearful licentiousness,
he left his fatherland to obtain it, and was as ready to
rebuke the intolerant tyranny of the nonconformist of the wilderness,
as he had been to resist the bigotry and persecution of

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

the prelacy at home. In short, the soul of the gentle hermit flew
upon pure white wings before its age, but it flew, like the dove,
to the wilderness. Wanting both power and inclination to act
upon others, he became, not a reformer, but a recluse. Having
enjoyed and improved a classical education at the university of
Cambridge, he was a thorough and an elegant scholar. He was
likewise a profound observer, and a student of nature in all her
external manifestations, and loved to theorize and to dream in
the various walks of science. The botanical and mineralogical
wonders of the new world were to him the objects of unceasing
speculation, and he loved to proceed from the known to the unknown,
and to weave fine chains of thought, which to his soaring
fancy served to bind the actual to the unseen and the spiritual,
and upon which, as upon the celestial ladder in the patriarch's
vision, he could dream that the angels of the Lord were descending
to earth from heaven.

The day was fast declining, as the solitary still sat upon the
peak and mused. He arose as the sun was sinking below the
forest-crowned hills which girt his sylvan hermitage, and gazed
steadfastly towards the west.

“Another day,” he said, “hath shone upon my lonely path,
another day hath joined the buried ages which have folded their
wings beneath yon glowing west, leaving in their noiseless flight
across this virgin world no trace nor relic of their passage.
'T is strange — 't is fearful — this eternal and unbroken silence.
Upon what fitful and checkered scenes hath yonder sun looked
down in other lands, even in the course of this single day's
career. Events, as thickly studded as the stars of heaven, have
clustered and shone forth beneath his rays, even as his glowing
chariot-wheels performed their daily course; and here, in this
mysterious and speechless world, as if a spell of enchantment
lay upon it, the silence is unbroken, the whole face of
nature still dewy and fresh. The step of civilization hath not

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

adorned nor polluted the surface of this wilderness. No stately
temples gleam in yonder valleys, no storied monument nor aspiring
shaft pierce yonder floating clouds — no mighty cities,
swarming with life, filled to bursting with the ten thousand attendants
of civilized humanity, luxury and want, pampered sloth,
struggling industry, disease, crime, riot, pestilence, death — all
hotly pent within their narrow precincts — encumber yon sweeping
plains; no peaceful villages, clinging to ancient, ivy-mantled
churches — no teeming fields, spreading their vast and nourishing
bosoms to the toiling thousands, — meet this wandering
gaze. No cheerful chime of vesper bell, no peaceful low of the
returning kine, no watch-dog's bark, no merry shout of children's
innocent voices, no floating music from the shepherd's
pipe, no old familiar sounds of humanity, break on this listening
ear. No snowy sail shines on yon eternal ocean, its blue expanse
unruffled and unmarred as the azure heaven; and ah —
no crimson banners float the sky, and no embattled hosts shake
with their martial tread this silent earth. 'T is silence and mystery
all. Shall it be ever thus? Shall this green and beautiful
world, which so long hath slept invisibly at the side of its ancient
sister, still wear its virgin wreath unsoiled by passion and pollution?
Shall this new, vast page in the broad history of man,
remain unsullied, or shall it soon flutter in the storm-winds of
fate, and be stamped with the same iron record, the same dreary
catalogue of misery and crime, which fills the chronicle of the
elder world? 'T is passing strange, this sudden apocalypse!
Lo is it not as if the universe, the narrow universe which
bounded men's thoughts in ages past, had swung open, as if by
an almighty fiat, and spread wide its eastern and western wings
at once, to shelter the myriads of the human race?”

The hermit arose, slowly collected a few simples which he had
culled from the wilderness, a few roots of early spring flowers
which he destined for his garden, and stored them in his wallet,

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

and then grasping his long staff, began slowly to descend the
hill.

As the slender form of the exile, with his sad-colored garb
and pilgrim's scrip and staff, stood out in dark relief against the
western sky, the only human figure in that solitude, he seemed
almost a creation of the fancy, a pathetic but sublime image,
contrasting and yet harmonizing in a wild and mystic sense with
the wilderness scene around. He slowly descended the steep
south-western declivity of the hill where he had so long been
musing, and which, broken with crags, and here and there
thickly overgrown with large trees, whose ponderous branches
stretched across his path, presented a rough and uncertain footing
to the wanderer. After a few minutes' walk, he reached a
wide and open glade, which was spread out at the base of the
hill and along the secluded basin which received the waters of
the Charles. The undulating surface of this grassy expanse
was studded with many detached and magnificent forest trees,
principally white oaks, hickory, and elms, and presented the
appearance of a natural park of some fifty acres, fringed towards
the water with a thick growth of maples, alders, and birches.
At the base of the hill which rose abruptly to the north and
east, facing southwardly upon the open park, and having the
broad and beautiful cove upon its right, stood the cottage of
Blaxton.

It was a startling and impressive picture of cultivation and
refinement that little cottage, embowered in freshly budding
vines, surrounded by a garden laid out with artistic elegance,
and backed by a young and thrifty orchard. It was an English
homestead, starting as if by magic out of the bosom of that
vast wilderness, and stirring the deepest fountains of feeling
with its placid beauty. It was the first gladdening footsteps of
culture; it was as if Minerva, mother of all humanizing arts,
had according to the ancient fable, just stamped her foot upon

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

the virgin soil and the olive of civilization had leaped forth to
greet her coming.

The house was built in those picturesque forms which were
then so common in England. It was low-browed, irregular,
rambling, with sharp-pointed gables, a red-tiled roof, small
lattice windows with diamond panes, and a porch covered thickly
with woodbines. The materials of which it had been constructed
had been brought from England, and it resembled in
its general character a miniature parsonage. The early swallows
built their nests under its eaves, and the ancient crows with
sable stole and solemn note circled about the surrounding pines,
or rested in dark clusters upon their umbrageous tops. The
young orchard had but just come into bearing, indicating the
length of time during which the exile had made his abode here,
and the spring being earlier than common in that region, the
pink flakes of the peach blossoms were strewn already upon the
ground, while from the young and blushing buds upon the apple
boughs a faint fragrance diffused itself upon the evening breeze.
Between the cottage and the water's edge stood a single pine of
enormous height, the growth of centuries, its massive but tapering
trunk, rising like a colossal shaft to a dizzy height, bare of
branches till near the summit, and then throwing out those wild,
wizard boughs, crowned with eternal verdure, and murmuring
unceasing music, which make this tree so picturesque and remarkable.
In the fork of one of these arms was the large and
rudely raftered nest of an osprey or fish-hawk, who haunted the
same spot year after year, unscared by the gentle hermit who
had made him one of his most cherished companions. The
precinct around the house, garden, and orchard was separated
from the water and the great park in front, by a wild and impenetrable
fence of upturned roots, the skeleton remains of the
forest giants which had been felled, or had fallen in natural
decay, and was thus protected from the wolves and other enemies

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

by a natural and very effective barrier. Upon the western confine
of this inclosure,[4] and very near the pebbly margin of the shore,
a pure and sparkling fountain, the silver spring from which the
whole promontory of Shawmut derived its name, welled forth
from the deep black mould, amid a thicket of shrubs and interlacing
vines, and was overshadowed by a rustic arbor, which
the graceful care of Blaxton had raised as a temple to the
water nymph whom he looked upon as the presiding deity of his
rural domain.

Blaxton passed through the entrance to his hermitage, lingered
a moment in his garden, and entered the house.

A cheerful fire of hickory logs looked invitingly to him as he
came in from the chill atmosphere. The room in which he sat
was his innermost sanctuary. He had brought with him what in
those days was no contemptible library, and the tall dark folios,
some two hundred in number, were ranged in a dark, antique,
bookcase against the walls of the silent apartment. A large
table, encumbered with books and manuscripts, stood in a
corner, and an ample cabinet, stored with a considerable number
of specimens of natural history, occupied a whole side of the
room.

“Welcome, friends of my solitude,” he exclaimed, as his eye
looked complacently upon his dumb but eloquent companions.
“Welcome, ye sages of the olden time; welcome, ye bards whose
strains, enshrined in the eternal crystal of a buried language,
are ever redolent of youth and joy, breathing as freshly here
upon this silent wilderness as once, attuned to classic lyres and
gushing from the reedy voices of garlanded youths or dancing
nymphs, amid shouts of martial triumph or bacchanalian rapture,
they did thousands of years ago. Waked by the music of
your immortal strains, these savage and solitary realms become

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

instinct with fabulous life. A gentle nymph rises from yonder
fountain, and pours the sparkling water from her silver urn.
Forth from the dim recesses of yon ancient wood, behold the
graceful fawns trooping in mystic dances, beating the earth to
the wild harmony of their clashing cymbals. In every tangled
thicket lurk the leaping satyrs, through all the forest floats the
rustic music of the hairy Pan, from every ancient oak or drooping
elm starts forth a green-robed Dryad. What is it to me, that
the solitude is unbroken by the voice of man? Led by your
hand, am I not surrounded and entranced by visions of a long
vanished world? And you, ye stern, rude chroniclers of later
and darker ages, ye dark-cowled, cloistered monks, holding
aloft, above the wild and barbarous deluge, ingulphing the
world around you, the sacred torch of reason and of science,—
do ye not read to me a lesson of undying wisdom? As I shudder
at the dark tale of rapine, and the ceaseless conflict between
brother men, the eternal and almost hopeless striving of the
good, the unholy triumph of the evil spirits of our race, am I
not taught to seek in solitude and self-communion for the solace
which the world denies. And most of all, to thee, holy and
blessed talisman, which alone art powerful to guide my tottering
steps; to thee, ever-gushing fountain of divine revelation; to
thee, comforter in sorrow, guide in danger, all-sufficient companion
in the solitary valley of dark shadows, to thee do I look
for support and consolation; and most of all do I bless his holy
name that hath vouchsafed to me this treasure. The Lord is my
shepherd. I shall not want.”

The yellow light of the fire fell fitfully upon the meek head of
the recluse, as he sat upon his antique chair, bending over his
clasped and illuminated bible. Late he sat within that secluded
cell, immersed in sacred study, or indulging ever and anon in
profound and enraptured reverie. The long, distorted shadows,
projected by the various objects in the apartment, wavered upon

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

the walls and ceiling, while the deep-toned, monotonous ticking
of an ancient clock which stood by the door, seemed to moralize
with its iron tongue upon the steady but unheeded flight of time.
The fire burned low, the wind of night sighed gently through
the pine tops, and there was a faintly audible whisper, as the
thin skeleton arms of the drooping elms which hung around
the house, swept mournfully across the roof.

Blaxton shut the book and gazed, lost in meditation, upon the
smouldering firebrands. In the oppressive silence of that midnight
solitude, the slightest sounds of nature seemed to acquire
a vague importance. The dropping of a brand upon the hearth,
the low hissing of the sap in the green logs, or the sigh of the
breeze around the lattice, which sounded like an articulate, disembodied
voice, would ever and anon cause the solitary to start
and listen as if unseen spirits were holding communion with
him. In that age of superstition, when a belief in supernatural
visitation was universal, it was not to be expected that a man of
imaginative mind and nervous temperament like Blaxton, leading
such a life of seclusion and study, being himself, as it were, an
unreal and almost impossible phantom in the wild scene through
which he seemed rather to flit like an apparition than to inhabit
it like an earthly resident, should be free from the prevailing
conviction of his times. Suddenly, as he mused by his fireside,
there seemed to be a faint, inexplicable sound, as if a finger
were drawn across the window-pane. His heart stood stock
still, and for an instant he dared not raise his eyes towards the
casement. He aroused himself, however, in a moment, and,
without moving from his seat, strained his eyes upon the glass
from whence the sound seemed to have proceeded. There was
nothing there, save the wandering spray of a woodbine, moved
by the wind and flickering in the sickly light of the late risen
moon. It must have been his imagination. He composed himself
again, and forcibly directed his thoughts to other matters.

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

Yet the sound had been distinct, though gentle, and seemed not
to have been produced by the swaying of the delicate vine.
Presently the sound was repeated, and this time more audibly
than before. He could not be mistaken, the glass of his casement
was swept gently by human fingers. It was a low, strange
sound, or something resembling rather the phantom of a
sound, which jarred upon his nerves, and sent a shiver through
his frame. It was as if spectral fingers were beckoning him to
the window to look out perhaps upon some nameless horror
which should freeze his blood. His heart, which had stood
still before, now beat audibly in his bosom. He could hear its
pulsations as distinctly as he could the slow tick of the clock
which had been sounding monotonously on, and which now by its
deep-throated, premonitory gurgle, seemed about to strike the
hour of midnight. Again the sweeping spirit fingers stole along
the glass. He sprang to his feet, gazed hurriedly at the window,
and then stood as if changed to stone. A face of ashy paleness
was gazing at him from without. He could see its features
distinctly, and recognised them but too well, The phantom of
one, too dearly loved, too early lost, was gazing upon him. The
countenance wore a sad and warning expression, and the large,
mournful eyes spoke of guilt and late remorse. Two white
hands clung to the lattice and seemed to implore his forgiveness
and pity with their mute supplication. It was a fearful thing
for the solitary, thus at deep midnight, in the midst of that
boundless desert, with his mind already filled with mystic fancies,
engendered by his late reading and his prolonged reveries,
to be confronted with what he could not but deem a visitant
from the world of spirits. There is nothing more startling in
the midnight solitude, than even the fancied apparition of a face
looking in through our window from the external gloom, and to
this lonely man there seemed not a doubt that this was an apparition.

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

He stood as if transfixed. He essayed to speak, but his
tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He strove to move, to
shake off, if he could, what perhaps was an incubus, a creation
of a disordered fancy. His limbs refused to obey his will, his
knees shook, but would neither advance or recede. How long
he stood gazing at the phantom he could not tell, but after a
time it seemed to clasp its hands above its head, and then to
melt away into the darkness. What meant this visitation? Did
it bid him forth, for some mysterious reason, into the midnight
wilderness? He breathed more freely now that those sorrowful
eyes were no longer gazing upon him; his blood, which had
been chilled in its current, now throbbed freely from his heart,
his limbs regained their elasticity, his soul resumed its mastery.

Impelled by an irresistible impulse, he sprang towards the
door, breathing a fervent prayer for protection as he went. He
passed rapidly through the little porch, emerged from its shadow
into the moonlight, and then gazed hurriedly around. The
sickly rays of the waning moon shed a mystic light upon the
scene. An unaccountable and oppressive influence seemed to
pervade the air. A sensation of being the victim of unseen
mockery stole over him. The weird fantastic shapes of the
vast roots, which inclosed his domain, looked, in the shifting
and uncertain light, like a troop of squat and jeering demons.
The owl shrieked, the boding whippoorwill uttered her ceaseless
plaint, and the shrill, piercing cry of the tree toad struck
upon his ear like the yell of a fiend. He strained his eyes in
every direction, but nothing met his gaze that seemed to have
connection or sympathy with his late mysterious visitant. The
moonlight lay in faint patches among the shadows of the trees,
but no semblance of humanity seemed to be stirring throughout
the breathless solitude. After remaining in the cold night air
for a few moments, he was turning back to his cottage, feeling
more and more convinced that he had been the prey of some

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

wild delusion, when suddenly, far down in the dim distance,
just on the edge of the alder thicket, and not far from the
margin of the bay, he beheld the dim outline of a human figure,
wildly extending its arms for an instant, and then hurriedly
clasping its hands above its head, as it glanced swiftly as a flash
through the moonlight, and then faded away into the dark
shadow of the forest. For a moment, the hermit, who was
excited, but less perturbed, by this second apparition, was
inclined to follow the phantom into the morass, where it had
seemed to melt away. He restrained himself, however, and
stood still upon the spot, gazing steadfastly upon the dark and
tangled thicket where the mysterious figure had disappeared.
But there was no farther indication of its presence. After
remaining till he was chilled with the bleak night air, and
exhausted with excitement, he became convinced that, whatever
it might betoken, the phantom had at last vanished. He fell
upon his knees to offer a devout prayer for guidance and support,
and then, overcome by the tumultuous sensations of those
midnight moments, he walked languidly into the house.

As the door closed after him, the faint plash of an oar seemed
to float, for an instant, from the cove, and then all was still
again.

eaf285v1.n3

[3] See Note III.

eaf285v1.n4

[4] See Note IV.

p285-109

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