FEINBERG/WHITMAN     LITERARY FILE     BOOK FILE--Specimen Days & Collect   Manuscripts   Original Printer's Copy
PP.193-247
Box 24 Folder 2
Includes verso note.
Caps-brev: Steam-power telegraps. &c.
193
[improvements,]
[[Old vancing? ad vas??es]]
[yet that modern improvements here]

"I get out on a [10 or 15 minutes] ten minutes-stoppage
at Deer creek, [station] to enjoy the [forest] unequalled
combination of hill, stone and wood.
[How ever seen or imagined] -- As we speed
[on] again, the yellow granite in the sunshine,
with natural spires, minarets, castellated
perches far aloft, -- then long stretches of
straight-upright palisades, rhinoceros-color
-- then gamboge and tinted chromos. [Not,} Ever
[least] the best of my pleasures the cool - fresh
Colorado atmosphere, yet sufficiently warm,
Signs of man's restless advent and pioneerage, 
[everywhere,] hard [and] as Nature's
face is -- Deserted dug-outs by dozens in
the side-hills -- the scantling-hut, the telegraph-pole, 
the smoke of some impromptu
chimney or outdoor fire -- [now and then] at intervals little
settlements of log-houses, or parties of sur-
veyors or [teleg} telegraph-builders with
their comfortable tents. Once, a canvas office
where you could send a message by electricity any where
around the world! Yes, pronounced signs of
the man [at] of latest dates, [and yet] dauntlessly grapphing [with] these grisliest shows of the old
[Ko] Kosmos. At [one] several places [a] steam[3]  [178]  194
saw=mills & with their piles of logs and boards, and
the piper puffing.  Occasionally Platte
Cañon expanding into a grassy flat of a
few acres.  At one such place, toward the
end, where we stop, and I [yell] get out
to stretch my legs, as I look skyward,
or rather mountain=topward, a [hugh] huge
hawk or eagle (a rare sight here) is idly
soaring, balancing along the ether, now
sinking low and coming quite near, and
then up again, in stately languid circles--
then higher, higher, slanting to the north, and
gradually out of sight.
   ¶Americas' back bone
I got these literally lines & at Kenosha summit
where we return afternoon and take a long rest, 10,000 feet
above sea-level--[the views, revelations, as
towardin novelties, though a strangely calm
feeling pervades me and I am enjoying it
all as if some old story, altogether too tumultuous
for putting in literary order.
In] At this immense height the South Park
stretches [its] fifty miles before me.  Mountainous
chains and peaks in every variety
of perspective, every hue of vista brings the view in nearer,
or middle, or far=dism distance or fade on
the horizon.  We have now reach'd, penetrated
the Rockies. (Hayden calls it the Front Range,)
for a hundred miles or so, and though these
chains spread away in every Direction, especially

[4] [179] 195
north and south, [for] thousands and thousands 
farther, [and are infinite in variety, impassiveness 
and defiance.  I am in the hearts
of them. and] I have seen specimens of the utmost of them,
and know henceforth [if not what they signify,]
at least what they are, and what they look like.  Not themselves alone, for they  [these Rockies] typify [but tipafying vaster] stretches and areas
of half the globe -- are, in fact, the verteber
or backbone of our hemisphere.
As the anatomists say a man is only
a spine topp'd, footed, breasted and radiated,
so the whole Western [W]orld is, in a sense, but an
expansion of these mountains.  In
South America they are the Andes, in
Central America and Mexico [they are]
the Cordilleras, and in our [territory] States they
go under different names--in California
the Coast and Cascade ranges--thence
more eastwardly the Sierra Nevadas--
but mainly and more centrally here the Rocky Mountains proper, with many an
elevation such as Lincoln's Grey's.  Harvard's,
Yale's, Long's and Pike's peaks, all
over 14,000 feet high. (East, the highest peaks
of the Alleghanies, the Adirondacks, the
Cattskills, and the White Mountains, range
from 2000 to 5500 feet--only [M]ount Washington,
in the latter, 6300 feet.)







[5] 196 [180]
?rev. caps The parks--[???streams.]
¶In the midst of [the Rockies] all here, lie
such beautiful contrasts as the sunken
basins of the North, Middle, and South
Parks.  (The latter I am now on one side
of, and overlooking,) each the size of
a large, level, almost quadrangular,
grassy, western county, walled in by walls
of hills and each park the source of
a river.  The ones I specify are the
largest in Colorado, but the whole
of that State, and of Wyoming, Utah,
Nevada and [W]estern California, through
their [mountains] sierras and ravines, are copiously
[dotted] marked [on a smaller scale] by [with similar lovely [markers with such like] by similar spreads and openings, many of
the small ones of [P]aradisaic loveliness
and perfection, with [all] their offsets of
[these] mountains, streams, [and] atmosphere
and hues beyond compare.
[6] [161] 197
Art features
¶Talk, I say again, of going to Europe [& of] visiting
the ruins of feudal castles, [or the old
sculptures of Italy, or paintings] or [C]olis[em]eum 
remains, or King's palaces--when you
can come her.  The alternations one gets,
too; [A]fter [those just alluded to] the Illinois and Kansas prairies
of a thousand miles--smooth and eassy
areas of the corn and wheat of ten million democratic farms in
the future--here start up in every conceivable
presentation of shape [break and hue,]
these non=utilitarian [?? ????s], piles,
coping the skies [subtly] emanating a beauty,
terror, [sanity,] power, more than Dante or
Angelo ever knew.  Yes, I think the chyle
of not only poetry and painting, but oratory and
even the metaphysics and music fit for the
New World before being finally assimilated need[s] first and feeding visits
here.

??de
tal
Mountain 
streams.   [7]   [182]  198
¶The spiritual contrast and etheriality
of [this] the whole region consist[s] largely
to me in its never-absent [mountain] peculiar
streams--the snows of inaccessible upper
areas melt[ed]ing and running down through [*Walker gal 17*]
the gorges continually.  Nothing like the
[streams] water of pastoral plains, or creeks
with wooded banks and turf, or any thing 
of the [water kind] elsewhere.  The shapes
that element takes in the shores of the
globe [are not to] cannot be fully understood
by an artist until he has studied these
unique rivulets.side
ital
Aereal effects.   [8]  [183]   199
¶But Perhaps as I gaze around me
the rarest sight of all in in atmospheric
hues.  The prairies--as I crossed them
in my journey hither--and these mountains
and parks, seem to me to afford [a] new [scope] [styles of]
lights and shades.  Everywhere the
aerial gradations and sky effects inimitable: 
no where else such perspectives,
such transparent lilacs and grays.  I can conceive
of some superior landscape painter,
some fine colorist, after sketching a
[season] while out here, discarding all his
previous work, delightful to stock exhibition
[and art galleries] amateurs, as muddy,
raw and [tainted] artificial.  Near one's eye ranges
an infinite variety; high up the bare
whitey brown above timber line; in 
certain spots afar patches of snow any 
time of year; (no trees, no flowers, no
birds at those chilling altitudes.)  As I
write I see the Snowy Range through
the blue mist, beautiful and far off.
I plainly see the patches of snow.


[9]   [184]   200
Denver impressions
¶Through the long lingering half-light of the most superb of 
evenings we returned to Denver,
where I staid several days leisurely
exploring, [and] receiving impressions,
with which I may as well taper
off [these notes] this memorandum, itemizing what I saw 
there.  The best was the men, three
fourths of them large, able, calm,
alert. American.  And cash! Why
[here's where they create it] they created it there.  Out in
the smelting works, (the biggest and
most improved ones for the precious
metals, in the world.) I saw long rows of vats, pans,
[by the dozen, whose] cover[e]d by bubbling
boiling water, and filled with pure [lay the shining] silver,
four or five inches thick, many thousand
dollars worth in a pan.  The foreman
who was showing me shovel[e]d it carelessly
up with a little wooden shovel,
as one might toss beans.  Then large silver
bricks, worth $2000 a brick, dozen of 
piles, twenty in a pile. In one place
in the mountains, at a mining camp,
I had a few days before [I had] seen 
rough bullion [piled] on the ground in
the open air, like the confectioner's pyramids
at some swell dinner in New York
(run in neat
run in)  [10]   [185]   201
(Such a sweet morsel to roll over [even]
with a poor author's [one's] pen and ink--and appropriate
to slip in here--that the silver
product of Colorado and Utah, with
the gold product of California, New
Mexico, Nevada, and Dakota, foots up
in addition to the world's coin of considerable over a hundred millions
ever year.)
¶A city, this Denver, well laid out --  Laramie
Street, and 15th, 16th, and [Champion] Champa streets,
with others particularly fine--some with
tall storehouses of stone or iron, [with] and
windows of plate=glass -- all the streets
with little canals of [clear] mountain
water running along [lining] the sides -- plenty of people,
"business," modernness--yet not without
a certain racy wild smack, all its own; 
A place of fast horses, (many mares with
their colts,) and I saw lots of big greyhounds
for antelope hunting.  Now and
then [gro?] groups of miners, some just
come in, some [just] starting out, very
picturesque.
[11]  [186]
Foster 202
¶One of the papers here
interview[e]d me, and reported me as
saying off=hand: (*run in*
"I have lived in
or visited all the great cities on the Atlantic
third of the [R]epublic--Boston, Brooklyn, with
its hills, New Orleans, stately Washington, [*Baltimore,*]
broad Philadelphia, teeming Cincinnati and
Chicago, and for thirty years, in that wonder,
wash[e]d by hurried and glittering tides, my
own New York, not only the New World's,
but the [W]orld's city--but, new-comer to Denver
as I am, and threading its streets,
breathing its air, warm[e]d by its
sunshine, and having what there is of [its people, its ?idiocrasy, and] its humas as
well as aereal ozone [*20 M??*] flash[e]d upon me now for
only [a couple] [*three or four*] days, I am very much like a
man feels sometimes toward certain people he
meets with and warms to, [and suddenly,
passionately loves] and hardly knows why.
[Here in this very Denver, if it might be so, I
should like to cast my lot, above all other spots,
and all other cities.  I honestly confess] [*run in*] I [*too*]can harldy
tell why, but as I enter[e]d the city in the
slight haze of a late September afternoon,
and have breath[e]d its [delicious] air, and slept
well o'nights, and have roam[e]d or rode leisurely
[through Larimer and Fourteenth and Fifteenth
and Sixteenth and Twenty-third streets,]
and [have] watch[e]d the comers and goers at the
hotels and absord[e]d the [human as well as] climatic
magnetism of this curiously attractive
[city] [*region,*] there has steadily grown upon me a feeling
of affection for the spot, which, sudden as
it is, has become so definite and strong that I
must [express it] [*put it on record."*]
[Smaller type][12]   [187]   203
¶So much for my feeling toward the Queen [C]ity of
the [P]lains and [P]eaks, where she
sits, in her delicious rare atmosphere,
over 5000 feet above sea-level
irrigated by mountain streams, one
way looking east over the prairies
for a thousand miles, and having [????ing] the other,
westward, in constant view by Day,
draped in their violet haze, [on] mountain
tops innumerable. [the grandeur
of the globe.] (run in
[¶] Yes, I fell in love with Denver,
and even felt a wish to spend my
declining and dying days there.
[Walt Whitman]
¶[Returned east last of
the year, and resume my
occasional visits to ??????
the Jersey ponds and woods.]
(brev. caps)  204
I turn south -- and then east
again
Leave Denver at 8 a.m.
by the [Southern] Rio Grande RR. going south [to Pueblo]. Mountains
constantly in sight in the apparently near distance, veil[e]d
slightly, [in blue] but [quite] still clear and very grand--their
cones, colors, [slopes] sides, distinct against the sky--
hundreds, it seem[e]d thousands, [of mountains,] intermenable necklaces of
them, [for a hundred miles] their tops and slopes hazed more or less slightly in that
blue-gray, under the autumn sun for over a hundred miles--the most [wondrous,]
[indescrible,] spiritual show of objective Nature I ever 
beheld, or ever thought possible.  [The great Oceans only can tally its] Occasionally the
light strengthens, making a contrast of [clear]
yellow=tinged silver on one side to [a] with dark and shaded grey
on the other.  I [take] took a [good] long look at  Pike's
[P]eak, and [am] was [somewhat] a little disappointed.  (I suppose
I had expected something stunning.) Our view
stretches amply over [to P]lains to the left, with [a] corrals here and there,
[cacta] the frequent cactus and wild-sage and herds of cattle feeding. Thus about 120 miles to Pueblo.
run in) At that town we [took the] board the comfortable & well-equipt Atchison [and] Topeka and Santa Fe RR., now striking east.
[take in Sept 23 '79
Evening on the Plains
Twilight hours]












[Unfulfilled wants]
205
Unfulfill'd wants--the Arkansas river.
I had wanted [wanted] to go the [Wyoming and]
the Yellowstone river region -- 
wanted specially to see the [Great]
National Park, and the [Hot Springs]
[wondrous] geysers and the "hoodoo"
or goblin Cave of that country; --
indeed--hesitated a little at Pueblo, the turning point--wanted to
thread the Veta Pass--wanted to go over the Santa Fe
trail, away south westward to New Mexico--
but turn'd and set my face eastward--
leaving behind me
________________________
the next page is 205 1/2






205 1/2
[And Leaving behind me]
whetting glimpse=tastes of
southeastern Colorado Pueblo
Bald Mountain the 'Spanish'
peaks, Sangre 'de Christos,
Mile=Shoe curve (which my veteran and friend
on the locomotive told me was
"the boss railroad curve of the
universe,") [F]ort Garland on
the [P]lains, Veta [pass], and the 
three great peaks of the
Sierra Blancas
¶The Arkansas rivre plays
quite a part in the whole of
this region -- I see it, or its
high cut rocky northern shore
for miles, and cross and recross
it frequently, as it winds
and squirms like a snake.
The [P]lains vary here even
more than usual--sometimes
a long sterile stretch of scores
of miles--then green, fertile
and grassy, an equal length.
Some very large herds of sheep.
(One [c????d] almost wants new words
[to write] in writing about these plains
and all the inland American
West--[the] the terms far, 
large, vast, &c. are
insufficient.)


206
[My] A Silent little follower[s] - (the coreopsis.)
   Here I must say a word
about [some] a little [friends and
follower[s], present even now before
my eyes.  I have been accompanied
on my whole journey from
[Naves????[ Barney at to Pike's Peak by a
pleasant
Horticultural friend, or rather [thousands, even]
millions of [such] friends--nothing more or 
less than a hardy little yellow five=petal'd
September and October wild=flower growing
I think everywhere in the middle and
northern United States.  I had seen it on
the Hudson and [all] over Long Island
and along the banks of the Delaware
and through New Jersey. (as
years ago [over Long Island] up the Connecticut and one fall on
by Lake Champlain.) This trip it follow[e]d
me regularly, with its slender stem and eyes
of gold, from Cape May to the Kaw Valley.
and so [around to the Spanish Peaks] [all] through the cañons [of these hills] and to plains. In
Missouri I saw immense fields all bright
with it.  Toward western Illinois I woke
up one morning in the sleeper, and the first
thing [I saw] when I drew the curtain of my 
berth and look[e]d out was its pretty countenance
and bending neck.  [I saw tufts of it in time at the
base of Pike's Peak, and vast beautiful patches 
over the Plains]









(for South easter
Col)
[just mention
--South eastern Colorado--Pueblo
Pueblo, Veta Pass, Bac
Mountain and the Spanish
Peaks, Mount Blanca
and the Sangre de Cristos,
Mile Shoe Curve (which they call
it "the boss railroad curve
of the universe") Fort Garla
on the Plains, Veta Pass and the thre
great peaks of the
Sierra Blancas]
207
ital swe) Sept 25th--Early morning--[On the]
[Great Plains]--still going east, after we leave
Sterling, Kansas, where I stopped a day and night. --The sun [is] up about
half an hour; Nothing can be fresher
or more beautiful than [at] this time,
this region.  I see quite a field of my
yellow flower in full bloom.  [I see]
[a good dotting] At intervals, dots of nice two-story houses
as we ride swiftly by.  [The] Over the immense
area, flat as a [house] floor, visible
for twenty miles in every direction 
in the clean air, [A] a prevalence of
autumn-drab and reddish-tawny herbage
--sparse--stacks of hay and enclosures, breaking
the landscape as we rumble by.  flocks of prairie-hens
starting up.  Between Stirling and Florence
a fine country.  [Thanks to Ed Lindsey.] (Remembrances to E. L.,
my old-young soldier friend of war-times and his wife and boy, at
S.)


[makes up for all]Fo??ett
208
The Prairies and great plains in poetry) caps-brev
no?? ital ] after traveling Illinois, Missouri
Kansas and Colorado.
Grand as the thought that
doubtless the child is already born who will
see a hundred millions of people,
the most prosperous and advanced
of the world, inhabiting [the] these Prairies,
the [G]reat Plains, and the [V]alley of
the Mississippi, I [cannot] could not help thinking
it would be grander still to see
all those [???toc? H????] inimitable [??re ?s[ American areas fused in
the alembic of a perfect [P]oem, or 
other esthetic work[s], entirely Western,
fresh [and sweet] and limitless--[entirely] altogether
our own, without a trace or taste of 
Europe's soil, reminiscence, technical letter or spirit.
My Days and nights, as I travel
[these plains] here--what an exhilaration!--
not the air alone, and
the sense of vastness, but every local sight


[2]   209
and feature.  Everywhere something
characteristic--the cactuses, pinks,
buffalo grass, wild sage -- the receding
perspective [and lights], and the far
[???? ???????s] circle=line of the horizon
all times of Day, especially forenoon--the clear, pure, cool, rarified
nutriment for the lungs, previously [before] quite unknown--
the black patches and streaks left by 
surface conflagrations--the deep-plough[e]d
furrow of the "fire=guard"--the slanting
snow-racks built all along to shield
the [road] railroad [track] from winter drifts--the prairie
dogs and the herds of antelope--the
curious "dry rivers"--occasionally a "Dug-out"
or corral--Fort Riley and Fort
Wallace--those towns of the northern plains,
(like ships on the sea.)  Eagle Tail,
Coyote, Cheyenne, Agate, Monotony,
Kit Carson--with ever the ant-hill
and the buffalo=wallow--ever the
herds of cattle and the cow=boys ("cow
punchers") to me a strangely interesting
class bright-eyed as hawks, with their swarthy complexions,
[bright-eyes as hawks,] and their broad-brimm[e]d
hats--apparently always on horseback
with loose arms slightly raised and swinging
as they [rode] ride.


[3]   210
The Spanish Peaks--Evening on the Plains
   Between Pueblo and Bents
fort southward in a clear afternoon sun-spell
I catch exceptionally good glimpses 
of the Spanish [P]eaks.  We are on [the]
[boundless plains of] south eastern Colorado
[passing numberless] pass immense herds of cattle as
[we speed on] our first=class locomotive rushes us along-- two or three times crossing
the Arkansas, which we follow many
miles, and of which river I get fine
views, sometimes for quite a distance,
its [and] stony, upright, not very high, palisade
banks, and then its muddy flats.
We pass Fort Lyon -- lots of adobe
houses--limitless [space] pastures, appropriately flecked with
those herds of cattle--in due time, the declining sun in
the west--a sky of limpid pearl over
all--and so evening on the [G]reat ]P]lains,
[??] A calm, pensive, boundless landscape--
the perpendicular rocks of the north
Arkansas, hues in [the rosy] twilight--
a [?] thin line of violet on the [southern] southwestern 
horizon--the palpable coolness and [delicate] slight
aroma-- a belated cow-boy with some unruly
member of his herd -- an emigrant wagon 
toiling yet a little further, the horses slow and
tired -- two men, apparently father and son,
jogging along on foot -- and [over] around all the indescribable
chiaroscuro and sentiment. (profounder than
anything at sea.) athwart these endless wilds.

(Cap head)   [4]   211
America's characteristic landscape [These ???? Plains.]
   Speaking generally as to the
capacity and sure future destiny of [those] that
large [P]lain and prairie area (larger than any
European Kingdom) it is the [limitless]
inexhaustible land of wheat, maize,
wool, flax, coal, iron, [silver and gold,]
beef and pork, butter and cheese, apples
and grapes--land of ten million virgin
farms--to the eye at present [?]
wild and unproductive--yet experts
say that upon it when irrigated [here can] may easily be
grown enough wheat to feed the world.
Then as to scenery, (giving my own
thought and feeling,) while I know the
standard claim is that Yosemite,
Niagara [F]alls, the upper Yellowstone,
and the like, afford the greatest natural
shows, [of North America, yet]
I am no so sure, however, but the Pariries
and Plains, while [not so] less stunning
at first sight, last longer, fill the
esthetic sense fuller, [and] precede all
the rest, and make North America's
characteristic landscape.

2-93-241.95[5]   212
¶Indeed through the whole of
[the my late] this journey, [alluded to] with
all [the] its shows and varieties, [from]
[Barnegat Reef to Pike's Peak] what
most impress[e]d me, and will longest
remain with me, are these same [P]rairies,
Day after day, and night after night,
to my eyes, to all my senses--the esthetic 
one most of all--they silently
and broadly unfolded.  Even their
simplest statistics are sublime.  
cop head) Earth's most important Stream
¶The 
[V]alley of the Mississippi river [with] and its tributaries
(this stream and its adjuncts involve
a [main] big part of the question,) [can]
[be] comprehends more than twelve
hundred thousand square miles, the
greater part prairies.  It is by far
the most important stream on the
globe, and would seem to have been
marked out by design, slow=flowing,
from north to south, through a dozen
climates, all fitted for man's healthy
occupancy, its outlet unfrozen all the
year and its line forming a safe, cheap
[national] continental avenue for commerce and passage
from the north temperate to the torrid zone.

[6]   213
Not even the mighty Amazon (though
larger in volume) on its line of
east and west--not the Nile in Africa
nor the Danube in Europe,
nor the three great rivers of China,
compare with it. Only the Meditterranean
Sea has play[e]d some such
part in history and all through the past,
as the Mississippi is destin[e]d to play
in the future. By its demesnes, water[e]d
and welded by its branches, the Missouri,
the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Red,
the Yazoo, the St. Francis and others,
it already compacts twenty-five millions
of people, not [only] merely the most
peaceful and money=making, but the 
most restless and warlike on earth.
Its [V]alley, or reach, is rapidly concentrating
the political power of the American
Union. One almost thinks it is
the Union--or soon will be. Take it out, with its radiations,
and what would be left? From 
the car windows through Indiana, [or]
Illinois [or] Missouri or stopping some
days [east of Pueblo, on the] along the Topeka and Santa Fe
road, in southern Kansas, and indeed
wherever I went hundreds and thousands of mile
through the region, my eyes feasted
[7]   214
on primitive, and rich meadows some
of them partially inhabited, but immensly far and far
more untouch[e]d, unbroken -- [??st every] and
much of it more lovely and fertile
in its unplough[e]d innocence than the
fair and valuable fields of New York's,
Pennsylvania's, Maryland's or Virginia's
richest farms.
(cap head)
Prairie Analogies--the Tree Question.--
¶The word Prairie is French,
and means literally meadow.  The
cosmical analogies of our North American
plains, [(I find it hard to stop
talking about them.)] are the Steppes
of Asia, the Pampas and Llanos of
South America, and perhaps the Saharas
of Africa. Some think the [P]lains
have been originally lake=beds; others
attribute the absence of forests to the
fires that almost annually sweep over 
them--(the cause, in vulgar estimation,
of Indian summer.). The tree question
will soon become a grave one.  Although
the Atlantic slope, the Rocky
[M]ountain region, and the southern portion
of the Mississippi valley, are well
wooded, there are here stretches of hundreds
and thousands of miles where either not[8]  215
a tree grows or often useless destruction 
has prevail[e]d; and the matter of the
cultivation and spread of forests may
well be press[e]d upon thinkers who look
to the coming generations of the [P]rairie
States.
(cap head)
Mississippi Valley [Poetry] literature
¶Lying by one rainy day in
Missouri, to rest after quite a long
exploration--first trying a big volume
I found there of "Milton, Young,
Gray, Beattie and Collins," but giving it
up for a bad job--enjoying however for
a while, as often before, the reading of
Walter Scott's poems, {Lord of the Isles"]
"Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and
so on--I stopp[e]d and laid down the
book and ponder[e]d the thought of a
poetry that should in due time express
and supply the teaming region
I was in the midst of [and all its] and have briefly touch[e]d upon
[geography, branching for two thousand]
[miles in every direction, after its own]
[spirit, native growths, idioms and]
[features] (run in) One's mind needs but a
moment's deliberation any where in the
United States to see clearly enough that
all the prevalent book and library

[[*9*]] [*216*]
poets, either as imported from Great
Britain, or [the] follow[ers][e]'d and doppelgang[ers][e]d [*doppelgang'd*]
here, are foreign to [the] our States,
copiously as they are read by [them.] us all.
But to fully understand not only
how [far off, how] absolutely in opposition
to [the spirit and letter of] our
times and lands, and how little and
cramp[e]'d, and what an achromious and
absurdities many of their pages are, for American purposes,
one must[, come out], dwell or travel awhile
in [Indiana, Illinois,] Missouri
Kansas and Colorado, and get rapport
with their people and country.
[*¶*] [The day will come] Will the day ever come - - no matter
how long deffer[e]'d, [-] when [the] those models
and lay-figures [our writers follow,] from
[the Cat] the British [I]islands - and even
the precious traditions of the classics -
will be reminiscences, studies only ?  The
pure breath, primitiveness, boundless prdigality 
and amplitude, strange mixture of
delicacy and power, of continence, of [the] real and ideal,
and of all [the] origianl and first class [qualities] elements
of these [Plains and] [P]prairies, [and] the Rocky
[M]mountains, and of the Mississippi and
Missouri rovers - will they ever [must] appear in, and [even]217
form a standard for, our
poetry and in some sort art? (I sometimes think
that even the ambition of my
friend Joaquin Miller to put
them in, and illustrate them, places him
ahead of the whole crowd.)
Not long ago I was down
New York bay, on a steamer, watching
the sunset over the dark green heights
of Navesink, and viewing all that
inimitable spread of shore, shipping
and sea, around Sandy Hook.
But an intervening week or
two, and my eyes catch the
shadowy outlines of the Spanish Peaks.
In the more than two thousand miles between, though of infinite and paradoxical variety, a curious and absolute
fusion is doubtless steadily annealing, compacting, identifying all.
But subtler and wider and
more solid produce such compaction, than the laws of the States,
or the common ground of Congress, or
the Supreme Court, or the grim welding
of our national wars, or the steel ties
of railroads, or all the kneading and
forming processes of our material and[[*11*]]   [*218*]

business history, past or present, would 
in my opinion be a great throbbing,
vital, imaginative work or series of works, or [Poem, or dares of poems, in]
literature in constructing which the Plains, the 
Prairies, and the Mississippi River, with the demeanes of its varied and ample valley, should 
[be in a sort], be the concrete background, 
and America's humanity, [these,] passions, 
struggles, hopes, there and now - an [excle]
ecclairecisment as it is, and is to be, on the stage of the New
World of [all the race's long drama] all Time's hitherto drama
of war, romance and evolution - should
furnish the [abstract] lambent fire, the ideal. 
[Walt Whitman][*19*]   [*cap head*]
[*219*] [*Foste*]
an interviewer's item

[*ital
side*]  Oct. 17,. '79. - - To-day one of [my] the newspapers
[reporters] of [this city] St. Louis - prints the
following [impromptu] informal remarks of mine
on American, especially Western, literature :  "We
[¶ "We] called on Mr Whitman
yesterday  [*run in 
all*]
after a somewhat desultory conversation abruptly 
asked him :  [*run in*]
"Do you think we are to have a distinctively 
American literature?"  [*run in*]
"It seems to me," said he, "that our work 
at  present, [and for a long time to come], is to 
lay the [materialistic] foundations of a great nation, 
in products, in agriculture in commerce, in [vast]
networks of intercommunication, and 
in all that relates to the comforts [and
supplies] of vast masses of men and families, 
[on a very grand scale, and these] with freedom 
of speech[, and.]  [*run in*]
                  ECCLESIASTICISM[.] &c. &.c.,
[*run in*] [This] There we have founded and are carrying out 
on a grander scale than ever hitherto 
and [it seems to me that those great central
States from Ohio to Colorado, and from Lake
Superior down to Tennessee, the prairie States,
will be the theater of our great future.] 
Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado seem 
to me to be the seat and field of these very 
facts and ideas.   [They seem to be carrying them out.  [*run in*]
Materialistic prosperity in all its varied
forms [and on the grand scale of our times,] with 
those other points that I mentioned, intercommunication 
and freedom, are first to be attended 
to.  When those have their results and get 
settled, then a literature worthy of us 
will begin to be defined.  [from our
nebulous conditions.]
 [*run in*]        Our American [greatness] superiority and vitality are in 
the bulk of our people, not in a # genti v like [in]
the old world.  The greatness of our army during the Secession war, was 
in the rank and file, and so with the nation.  
Other [actions] lands [had] their vitality in a few, a 
class, but we have it in the bulk of the people.  
Our leading men are not of much account and 
never have been, but the average of the people 
is immense, beyond all history.  [*run in*]
["Lincoln seems to me to be our greatest specimen
personality.]  Sometimes I think [that] in all 
departments, literature and art included 
that will be the way 
our [greatness] superiority will exhibit itself.  We 
will not have great individuals or great leaders, 
but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great."220
The women of the west.
Kansas City. I am not so well
satisfied with what I see
of the women of
the prairie cities. I am
writing this where I
sit leisurely in a store in
Main street, Kansas City, a
streaming crowd on the sidewalk
flows by.
The ladies
(and the same in Denver)
are all fashionably drest
and have the look of “gentility”
in face manner and action,
but they do [?] have
[?ther] in physique, or in the
veritably appropriate to them, any
[?igh] native originality of spirit
or body,
(as the men certainly have, appropriate
to them.) They are “intellectual”
and fashionable, but [d????????]
and generally doll like: their ambition evidently is to copy their eastern sisters. Something far
different and in advance,
must appear,
to tally and complete the
superb masculinity of the
West, and maintain [?ad] continue it[Office of Water Commissioner]
[Kansas City City Hall (Market Street Entrance] [221 Walker 487] 
[St. Louis]
[A Utilitarian hero.]
[side ital] Sep 28 '79 The Silent General
So General Grant, after [starting east and] circumboating
the world [with all its]
[lands ¶? ? ? ? ? governments]
has arrived home again—landed in San Francisco
yesterday, from the city of Tokio from Japan.
What a man he is! What a history! What ?
? illustration his life of: the capasities of [an] that [average]
American inadvertantly common to us all. [The]
Cynical critics are [wondering and] wondering
"what the people can see in Grant." to make
such a hubub about him. They aver (and it
no doubt true) that he has there is we] hardly the average
of our days literary and scholastic culture in the U. S. G. [and ?]
[there is] and absolutely no pronoucned genius or conventional eminence of any sort. 
[in the man.] [Good] Correct, [twas] but he [practically] proves  how an [that as]
average western farmer, mechanic, [or] boatman,
we carried by tide of circumstances, perhaps caprices, into a positive
222
incredible military or civic responsibilities, they
(history has presented none more trying, nor born monarch, no mark more
? for attack or envy [can] may steer his way ? and steadily through them all
carrying the country and himself with [entire] credit year after year—
[has commanded]command over a million
armed men—fight[fought ] in more than
fifty pitched battles—rule [and ruled] for
eight years, [the] a [nation of] land
[millions of square mules] larger than all the kingdoms
of Europe combined—and then returning quickly
(with a cigar in his mouth) make the
promenade of [the Europe and Asia] the whole world [with] through its courts, 
kings, and czars and mikados and ? and splendid glitters and etiquettes as [? and] phlegmatically 
as he even walked the parties of Missouri hotel after dinner. I say this
what [the] people like—I am sure I like it. Seems to me it transcends
[Homer and] Plutarch. How these old Greeks indeed would
seized on him! [No genius so called—a very common]
[run in] a mere plain, [practical] men— no art poetry [liberal]
special literature esthetics—only practical [only common] sense and the
ability to do, or try his best to do what  devoted ? him
A common trader, money making tanner, workman, farmer of Illinois—
general for the republic in is terrific  struggle with
itself in the war of[its ?] attempted secession [war] ?
[of these states, a ? for eight years] following (a
task of peace, more difficult than the war itself.)
[run in] Nothing heroic as the authorities put it—and yet the greatest hero the gods the ?
times, seem to have concentrated upon him. Seems

? shis shi?
R. Worthington
750 Broadway, N. Y. 
it was from a ?
? had middles 
N. J. 
New Yo
Sep29 8 P M
[cap head]
President Hayes ?
Sept. 30—I see [the] President Hayes
has come out West [from Washington to
Missiouri, Kansas, and the neighboring
states] passing quite informally
from point to point
with his wife and a small cortege
of [his] big officers, receiving ovations, and
making daily and sometimes double
daily addresses to the people. To
these addresses—all impromptu and
some would call them ephemeral—
I feel to devote a memorandum
[run in] They are [often] shrewd good natured
[original] face-to-face speeches on easy topics, not too deep; [Then I am 
not sure] [run in] [Then] but they give me some revised ideas of
oratory, of a new opportune theory and practice of that art, quite
changed from the classic rules, and adapted to our days, our
occasions, to American democracy and to the ?
populations of the west. I hear them [? ? the President remarks ?] criticized
as wanting in dignity, but to me that are just what
they should be considering all the circumstances [and] who they come from and
who they are addressed to. [Indeed I must give
President Hayes the credit of inaugurating and fully justifying a new then short ?
letting, style  off hand Presidential popular messages.]
Underneath [all] his objects are to compact and fraternize [all] the states encourage their materialistic and
industrial development, sooth and expand them self-poise, and 
tie all and each with ? double ties
not only of inter trade barter, but
human comradeship.
¶From Kansas City—I went on to St. Louis,
where I remained near three months with my brother
T. J. W. and my dear neices, 

St Louis Memoranda [Notes] [caps] 224
Oct, Nov, and Dec '79—
The points of St. Louis are its posits
absolute wealth, (The long accumulations
time and trade, solid riches, probably a [grea] ?
than any city) the unrivaled amplitude of its
well-laid out environage of broad plateaus for future expansion,
the great state o which it is the head. It faces
northern and southern qualities [American] perhaps nature
and foreign ones to perfection, rendezvous the whole stretch of the Mississippi and, its American electroci?—
goes well with its German Phleghm. Fourth, 
Fifth and Third streets are
store streets showing modern metropolitan
with hungry crowds vehicles, horse [street] cars, hubbub
 [?] plenty of people, and wealth, rich goods
plate glass window iron fronts, often [form] ? iron
stories high you can [get] purchase anything
in St. Louis (in [any] most of the big western cities for the matter of that) just as readily and cheaply as in the
Atlantic [cities] marts. Often in going
about the town you see reminders of old even
? civilization. The
water of the west, in some places
is not good, but they make it up here [in St. 
Louis] by plenty of very [fine] fair wine and inexhaustible 
quantities of the best beer in the
world. [run in]
? the first
philosophy no p?225
[run in]
There are immense establishing
for slaughtering beef and pork—and
I saw flocks of sheep 5000 in
a flock. (In Kansas City I had
visited a packing establisment
that kills and peeks an average of 2500 hogs
a day the whole year round for export.
Another in Atchison, Kansas,
same extent; other nearly equal
elsewhere. And just big ones
here. [run in] [I often stopt towards
noon in a large drug store. Fourth and
Locust, partly to get a
glass of Vichy, partly to sit down and
rest myself and  [more than] most of
all to see the oceanic crowd
of humanity in full currents that rolled aloud
[this most frequented part of 
the city.] you might have
easily fancied yourself in [the] some
[most frequented] busy part of
New York even Broadway.
Plenty of well fresh good-sized, 
good-looking men mostly 
[side ital] 226 & 227 ['79] [cap head] Fossett
Nights on the Mississippi [Oct 28th]
Oct 29th and 30th and 31st. [have been] Wonderfully
fine with the full harvest moon, dazzling and
silvery. I have haunted the river every
night [sometimes] lately where I could get [good ?] a look [of] at the bridge by moonlight. It is indeed a structure
of perfection and beauty unsurpassable, and
I never tire of [looking at] it [any time]. The
river at present is very low; I noticed
today [that] it had much more of
a blue clear look than usual. I hear the
slight ripples, the air in fresh and cool and the view is [both ways]
up and down. It wonderfully clear [is only ? by the night] in
the [clear] moonlight. I am out pretty late:
is in so fascinating [beautiful silent] dreamy. The cool
night air, all the influences, the silence
with those far off eternal stars do me
good. I have been quite ill of late.
And so well near the center of
our natural demesne [I take an] these
night views of the Mississippi. 
[*brev caps]   [*228*]
Upon our own land.
"Always after supper," take
a walk [-] half a mile long," says 
an old proverb, drily adding "and
if convenient let it be upon
your own land." [Certainly no] I wonder, does any other [N]nation but ours
[could] afford opportunity for such a jaunt as this[.  I
am [now] lately taking?]—[probably] Indeed has any previous period afforded it.  [no] [no other period either] 
[no] No one, I discover, begins to know [what this] the
[mighty] [great] [resistless] real geographic, democratic,
indissolable American Union [is] in the present [and or is]
[to] be [will surely] or suspect it in the future, until he explores these
[great] Central States, [of Ohio, Indiana
Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado],
and dwells awhile, observantly on their prairies,
or [in] amid their busy [great] towns, and the [takes in and enjoys
(as I have of late, these days, these nights) the
nights of the] mighty father of waters. A ride of [four] two [the Mississippi.] 229
or three [five] thousand miles, "one one's own land," [to and fro],
[could] with hardly a disconnection
could certainly be had in no other [land] place
than the United States, and at no
[other] period [than] before this. If you
want to see what the railroad
is, and how civilization and progress
date from it—how it is the conqueror
of crude nature, which
it turns to man's use, both on
small scales an on the largest—
[go] come hither to inland America.
¶[After a grand trip] I
returned hom east, Jan. 5, 1880, 
having traversed [traveled] to [and] fro, and
across 10000 miles and more.
I soo resumed my [little] seclusions [visits]
down in the woods, or by the creek [Jersey] or ? about cities
[the city] and in occasional ?,
as will be seen following:
[Next is 230, 231, 232]
[on one page]



[*230*]  [*[188]*]

[June 3, 1882.        The

The Critic

NEW YORK, JUNE 3, 1882.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.
ESSAYS.--Edgar Poe's Significance. By
Walt Whitman...    147
LITERATURE.--Henry H. Howorth's 'The
Mongols.'  Paul Lindau's 'Aus dem
literarishen Frankreich' (148).  Mme.
Blanche Roosevelt Tucker-Macchetta's
'The Home-Life of H. W. Longfellow'
(149).  W. B. Weeden's 'The Social
Law of Labor.'  A. B. Atcott's 'Sonnets
and Canzonets.' T. Woolner's
'Pygmalion' (150).  Geo. H. Boker's
'The Book of the Dead.'  A. Barbou's
'Victor Hugo and his Time' Midsummer 
Holiday Books.  Acknowledgments
....    151
LITERARY NOTES....  154
EDITORIAL.--The Massachusett's Dogberry.
Wanted, an American (151).  Is it
a People's Library.  "Jeames"...153

POETRY.--The Banner of the Jew.  By
Emma Lazarus (153).  On the Hurry of
this Time (rondeau). By Austin Dobson
..... 154
SCIENCE.--Archaeological Institute, Annual
Meeting. Scientific Notes....  155
THE FINE ARTS.--The Metropolitan Loan
Exhibition (155).  Mr. A. Ducan Savage
(151).  Why not keep Open ? (communication).
Art Notes....  156
THE DRAMA.--R. G. Morris's 'Old Shipmates,'
at Haverly's Fourteeth-st.
(156). S. Rosenfeld's 'Florinel,' at
the Park. F. Bock's 'The Living Age,'
at the Union Square.... 157
MUSIC.--Complimentary Concert to Madame
Bishop.  Musical Notes...   157]

[*side
ital*]
Jan 1, '80.
[*Gen'l*]
[*[Jan. 8 1878]*]
[*[June 8 8]*]
[*[Jan. 1]*]

[*cap head*]
Edgar Poe's Significance.

    IN diagnosing this disease called [H]humanity - to assume 
of the nonce what seems a chief mood of the personality 
and writings of my subject--I have thought that poets, somewhere 
or other on the list, present the most mark[e]'d indications.  
Comprehending artists  in a mass, musicians, painters,
actors, and so on, and considering each and all of them as 
radiations or flanges of that furious whirling wheel, poetry, 
the centre and axis of the whole, where else indeed may we 
so well investigate the causes, growths, tally marks of the 
time--the age's matter and malady ?
      By common consent there is nothing better for man or 
woman than a perfect and noble life, morally without flaw, 
happily balanced in activity, physically sound and pure, 
giving its due proportion, and no more, to the sympathetic, 
the human emotional element--a life, in all these, unhasting,
 unresting, untiring to the end.  And yet there is another 
shape of personality dearer far to the artist-sense (which 
likes the [lambent] play of strongest lights and shades) where 
the perfect, character, the good, the heroic, although never 
attain[e]'d, is, never lost sight of, but through failures, sorrows, 
temporary downfalls, is return[e]'d to again and again, and 
while often violated is passionately adhered to as long as 
mind, muscles, voice, obey the [wondrous] power we call 
volition.  This sort of personality we see more or less in 
Burns, Byron, Schiller and George Sand.  But we do not 
see it in Edgar Poe.  [*in parenthesis - run in*]
(All this is the result of reading at
intervals the last three days a new volume
of [h] his poems - I took it on my rambles down
by the pond, and by degrees read it all through there.  While to the character first outlined 
the service Poe renders is certainly that entire contrast 
and contradiction which is next best to fully exemplifying it. 
         Almost without the first sign of moral principle, or of the 
concrete or its heroisms, or the simpler affections of the 
heart, Poe's verses illustrate an intense faculty for technical 
and abstract beauty, with the rhyming art to excess, an 
incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal themes, a demoniac 
undertone behind every page[,] - and, by final judgment, probably 
belong among the electric lights of imaginative literature, 
brilliant and dazzling, but with no heat.  There is an indescribable 
magnetism about the poet's life and reminiscences 
as well as the poems.  To one who could work out their 
subtle retracing and retrospect, the latter would make a 
close tally no doubt between the author's birth and antecedents, 
his childhood and youth, his physique, his 
so-call[e]'d education, his studies and associates, the literary 
and social Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia and New 
York of those times--not only the places and circumstances 
in themselves, but often, very often, in a strange spurning 
of, and reaction from them all.[?ritic]                       [Number 37, 

followed ; in one, which surrendered without resistance on the 
promise that no lives should be taken, only I2,000 were killed.  
In another no number of the slaughtered is given, but they were 
'piled up like a mountain ;' no living thing, animal or vegetable, 
was spared, and the sands of the desert soon obliterated the place 
where the city had stood.  'In another, that held out against a 
siege of six months, the number killed was I,600,000.  In little 
more than a year, then, the lowest count of slaughtered people is 
over four millions, while the uncounted may have been a million 
or two more.  This was the way in which the Great Khan founded 
the Mongol dynasty of Asia.  His grandson, Khubilai Khan, 
who about half a century later reigned in China, established his 
throne by the sacrifice of I8,470,000 of the people of that empire.

   Whatever may be thought of the accuracy of these numbers, 
the unscrupulous slaughter of all who opposed them was the chief 
characteristic of the Mongols.  They were, says one of their historians, 
'thievish as mice, strong as oxen, fierce as panthers, 
cautious as hares, artful as serpents, frightful as dragons, mettlesome 
as horses, obedient as sheep, loving of their offspring as 
apes, domestic as hens, faithful as dogs, and unclean as swine.'  
Add to this that they had no permanent homes and knew no such 
sentiment as love of country, but lived in tents and covered carts 
wherever they found the grass for their horses and oxen richest 
and most abundant.  If any were spared when a district or a 
city was overwhelmed or surrendered, it was only the most beautiful 
of young girls, and the most skilful of artisans.  The only 
serious business of life with them was war and the chase ; what 
among other peoples was deemed useful labor (if, trusting to 
plunder, they did not altogether neglect it), they left to slaves.  It 
is easy to see that their history must be largely the exploits of 
their khans.  These were all, from generation to generation of 
the blood of Jingis khan, and their chief ambition was to emulate 
his example, and deserve, as he deserved, the title of the 'Scourge 
of God.'  If sometimes there was a contest for succession among 
the princes of this royal blood, it lasted only till a brother could put 
a brother to death, a father could so dispose of rival sons, or a son 
could put a father out of his way.  All Asia and much of Europe 
trembled for centuries beneath the terrible tread of these hordes, 
who trampled out industries, and arts, and peoples, and left behind 
them the silence of the desert and the solitude of ruined cities.

   It is inevitable that there should be a certain monotony in the 
history of the succession and the careers of centuries of khans, as 
like each other, and almost as unlike human beings, as the individual 
beasts in a numerous herd of jackals or wolves of the Asiatic 
steppes.  How conscious the author himself is that these volumes 
will have few attractions for readers who, above all, seek to be 
entertained, we have already pointed out.  But it would be doing 
the work scant justice, even in a sketch, should the impression be 
left that this is its most salient feature.  While one almost marvels 
at the courage of undertaking such a task, one cannot fail to 
do homage to the patient and trying industry and the erudition 
which have been brought to bear upon a portion of human history 
so interesting to students.  Those most disposed and those best 
qualified to criticise—not that the two by any means always go 
together—can hardly fail to be disarmed by the modesty and the 
candor of an author always oblivious of his own merits, and always 
ready to acknowledge and correct his own errors.

French Literature through German Glasses.*
   THE name of Paul Lindau is of sufficient weight to make one 
curious to hear what he has to say concerning the literary celebrities 
of France.  As a rule, Germans have never distinguished 
themselves by their capacity for sympathetic and unprejudiced 
judgment of the French ; and since Dumas, the younger, published 
his silly preface to 'Faust,' and even so cool-headed a 
scholar as Renan indulged in patriotic abuse of them (see his 
eulogy of Claude Bernard), the Teutons are hardly to be blamed 
for showing some retaliatory vindictiveness.  Julian Schmidt, 
perhaps the most erudite of contemporary German critics, has, 
therefore, from a patriotic point of view, ample justification for 
his animosity to Victor Hugo, Georges Sand, and Alfred de Musset, 
although for his own posthumous reputation it would have 
been better if he had been able to take a larger view of them, 
Gauls though they were.  It is needless to speak of the lesser 
[?] by Pharisaical moralizing on the [*Foster*]  [*[169]*]    [*231*]

[*¶*]  The following from a report in the Washington "Star" of   [*roman*]
November 16, 1875, may afford those who care for it something 
further of my point of view toward this interesting 
figure and influence of our era. There occurr[e]'d about that 
date in Baltimore a public re-burial of Poe's remains, and 
dedication of a monument over the grave :
[*[smaller type]*]  [*smaller type*]
[*brev,*]
[(]Being in Washington on a visit at the time, '[']the old 
gray'['] went over to Baltimore, and though ill from paralysis, 
consented to hobble up and silently take a seat  on the platform, 
but refused to make any speech, saying, '[']I have felt 
a strong impulse to come over and be here to-day myself in 
memory of Poe, which I have obey[e]'d, but not the slightest 
impulse to make a speech, which, my dear friends, must also 
be obey[e]'d.'['] [*ru in*]
In an informal circle, however, in conversation after the 
ceremonies, Whitman said : '[']For a long while, and until 
lately, I had a distaste for Poe's writings. I wanted, and still 
want for poetry, the clear sun shining, and fresh air blowing 
--the strength and power of health,  not of delirium, even 
amid the stormiest passions--with always the background of 
the eternal moralities. Non-complying with these requirements, 
Poe's genius has yet conquer[e]'d a special recognition 
for itself, and I too have come to fully admit it, and appreciate 
it and him. [Even my own objections draw me to him at
last, and those very points, with his sad fate, will doubtless
always make him dearer to young and fervid minds.]
[*¶*]  ' [']In a dream I once had, I saw a vessel on the sea, at 
midnight, in a storm.  It was no great full-rigg[e]'d ship, nor 
majestic steamer, steering firmly through the gale, but seem[e]'d 
one of those superb little schooner yachts I had often seen 
lying anchor[e]'d, rocking so jauntily, in the waters around 
New York, or up Long Island Sound ; now flying uncontrol[le]'d 
with torn sails and broken spars through the wild sleet 
and winds and waves of the night.  On deck was a slender, 
slight, beautiful figure, a dim man, apparently enjoying all 
the terror, the murk, and the dislocation of which he was 
the centre and the victim.  That figure of my lurid dream 
might stand for Edgar Poe, his spirit, his fortunes, and his 
poems- themselves all lurid dreams.'[']
Much more may be said, [ with considerations I have not [*but*]
touched upon.] I most desired to exploit the idea put at 
the beginning.  By its popular poets the calibres of any age, 
the weak spots of its embankments, its sub-currents (often 
more significant than the biggest surface ones,) are unerringly 
indicated. The lush and the weird that have taken 
such extraordinary possession of Nineteenth [C]century verse-lovers--
what mean they ?  The inevitable tendency of poetic 
culture to morbidity, abnormal beauty-the sickliness of all 
technical thought or refinement in itself--the abnegation of 
the perennial and democratic concretes at first hand, the 
body, the earth and sea, sex, and the like--and the substitution 
of something for them at second or third hand--what 
bearings have they on current pathological study ?
 [WALT WHITMAN.]I48                        The [C?] 

the subject, or rather the peculiar presentation of it which the 
author has chosen to give.  On this point, we are sure, he will 
quite agree with us, would doubt that we had had the patience to 
read and to master, in a certain sense, his bulky volumes if we 
had come to any other conclusion, and had taken for granted, because 
they were bulky, that they ought to be praised.

   There is a frank, though half-humorous, half-pathetic, confession, 
in the preface to his first volume, of how well he understood 
what the popular estimate of his work must be.  In referring to 
those whose aid or whose sympathy had helped him, he says —exclaims 
rather : 'Lastly, my wife, my ever patient wife, who has 
sat out many hundred lonely hours while I have turned over the 
dusty pages, who has resisted the importunities of many kind 
friends to burn the heap of dry-as-dust which I call my library.  
She has done what no amount of gratitude can repay ; but there 
is one thing she will not dare to do, and that is to read my book.'  
How touching and tender a picture this is, of the wifely devotion 
of the lonely woman.  How calmly she puts aside the desperate 
but despairing suggestion of exasperated friends, to pile into a 
holocaust the pernicious literature which was making him a dervish, 
and her a widowed wife.  Yet even she could draw a line beyond 
which she could not trust the endurance of her sense of duty.  
Walter Scott says somewhere of the marriage ceremony of his time 
tat it begins with 'dearly beloved' and ends with 'amazement.'  
This dear lady remembered all between—the vow of love and 
obedience, the sacred pledge of devotion 'till death do us part;' 
but she stopped short of the last word ; amazement, surprise, confusion, 
bewilderment might prove too much, where so much had 
been borne already, should she read what he had written.

   The difficulties of the task may be understood when it is considered 
that this is a history, beginning a thousand years ago, of 
nomadic tribes, wandering for centuries, with their families and 
such household goods as they possessed, in covered carts drawn 
by oxen, over the whole continent of Asia, from the White Sea to 
the south-eastern borders of Europe.  Almost without any literature 
of their own, little can be known of them except as their history 
may have been written in various tongues, often by their enemies 
and only as incidental to the chronicles of the narrator  
Even then much of it remains hidden away in inaccessible manuscripts 
or printed books no longer to be found ; and that which is 
accessible is buried i languages which it is almost the labor of a 
lifetime to master.  'To be a profound Chinese, Persian, Armenia, 
Russian, German, French, and Latin scholar is in itself,' as 
Mr. Howorth says, 'an impossibility.'  To those, therefore, who 
are profound scholars in one or another of these various tongues 
he has trusted for his material, using their translations of rare and 
little known books into such languages of Western Europe as are 
familiar to him.  For the firs time this obscure literature has been 
thoroughly collated, and the attempt made to trace in a single 
work the course of the Mongol race from its origin to our own 
time.

   It is, upon the whole, an appalling story, viewed from that side 
of it which Mr. Howorth has undertaken to present.  Jingis Khan, 
with whom—after a preliminary sketch of the Mongols when 
small and feeble and hardly-known tribes of barbarians—the history 
begins, was, if the half that is told of him be true, more literally 
the 'Scourge of God' than any other of the human monsters 
whose lives have been so much more terrible than deluge, pestilence 
of earthquake in desolating the [?].  One hopes that [*232*]
[190]
[232*]

BEETHOVEN'S SEPTETTE.   [*Cap head*]
[*side ital*]     Feb: II, '80.—['8o,].—At a good concert to-night in the foyer 
of the opera-house, Philadelphia [;] the band a small but 
first-rate one.  Never did music more sink into and soothe 
and fill me—[(is there any thing else, at one's best hours, so 
spiritual real? ; Is it not beyond all poetry?)]—never so 
prove its soul-rousing power [-] its impossibility of statement.  
Especially in the rendering of one of Beethoven's master-septettes 
by the well-chosen and perfectly-combined instruments 
(violins, viola, clarionet, horn, 'cello and contrabass,) 
was I carried away, seeing, absorbing many wonders.  
Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a 
hillside in the sunshine ; serious and firm monotonies, as of 
winds ; a  horn sounding through the tangle of the forest, 
and the dying echoes ; soothing floating of waves, but 
presently rising in surges, angrily lashing, muttering, 
heavy ; piercing peals of laughter, for interstices ; now and 
then weird, as Nature herself is, in certain moods—but 
mainly spontaneous, easy, careless—often the sentiment of 
the postures of naked children playing or sleeping.                 [*run in*] 
   It did me good even to watch the violinists drawing their 
bows so masterly—every motion a study.  I allow'd myself, 
as I sometimes do, to wander out of myself.  The conceit 
came to me of a copious grove of singing birds, [showers of 
melody,] and in their midst a simple harmonic duo, two 
human souls, steadily asserting their own pensiveness, joyousness.


A HINT OF WILD NATURE.              [*cap head*]
   Feb: I3, ['8o].—As I was crossing the Delaware to-day, 
saw a large flock of wild geese, right overhead, not very 
high up, ranged in V-shape, in relief against the noon 
clouds of light smoke-color.  Had a capital[,] though momentary[,] 
view of them, and then of their course on and on 
south-east, till gradually fading (my eyesight yet first-rate for 
the open air and its distances, but I use glasses for reading).    [*run in*]
   Queer thoughts melted into me the two or three minutes, or 
less, seeing these creatures cleaving the sky—the spacious, 
airy realm—even the prevailing smoke-gray color everywhere 
(no sun shining)—the waters below—-the rapid flight of the 
birds, appearing just for a minute—flashing to me such a hint 
of the whole spread of Nature, with her eternal unsophisticated 
freshness, her never-visited recesses of sea, sky, shore 
—and then disappearing in the distance.[*233*]               [191]

[*Cap head*]
LOAFING IN THE WOODS.
   March 8, ['80.]—I write this down in the country again, but in a neat spot, seated on a log in the woods, 
warm, sunny, mid-day.  Have been loafing here deep among 
the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak, hickory, with a thick 
undergrowth of laurels and grape-vines—the ground cover'd 
everywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, moss—every 
thing solitary, ancient, grim.  Paths (such as they are) 
leading hither and yon—(how made I know not, for nobody 
seems to come here, nor man nor cattle-kind.)  Temperature 
to-day about 60, the wind through the pine-tops ; I sit 
and listen to its hoarse sighing above (and to the stillness) 
long and long, varied by aimless rambles in the old roads 
and paths and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to 
keep my joints from getting stiff.  Blue-birds, robins, 
meadow-larks, begin to appear.
   Next day, 9th.—A snow storm in the morning, and continuing 
most of the day.  But I took a walk over two hours, 
the same woods and [familiar] low paths, amid the falling flakes.  
No wind, yet the musical [hoarse] murmur through the pines, 
quite pronounc'd, curious, like waterfalls, now still'd, now 
pouring again.  All the senses, sight, sound,smell, delicately 
gratified.  Every snowflake lay where it fell on the evergreens, 
holly-trees, laurels, &c., [etc.,] the multitudinous leaves 
and branches piled, bulging-white, defined by edge-lines of 
emerald—the tall-straight columns of the plentiful bronz[w]e-topt 
pines—[and] a slight resinous odor blending with that of 
the snow.  (For there is scent to every thing, even the snow, 
if you can only detect it—no two places, hardly any two 
hours anywhere, exactly alike.  How different the odor of 
noon from midnight, or winter from summer, or a windy 
spell from a still one.)                     [WALT WHITMAN.]

[*The next is 
234 and 235 
for one page.*]193  [T????]                234 & 235
A contralto voice
ital side [My] May 9, ['80]-Sunday)--Visit this
evening to my friends the T's--good
supper, to which I did justice--lively
chat with Mrs. T. and I. and J.  As I 
sat out front on the walk afterward
in the evening air, the church-choir
and organ on the corner opposite gave
Luther's hymn, Ein feste [bu] berg, very
finely.  The air was borne by a rich contralto.
For nearly half an hour there in 
the dark, (there was a good string of English
stanzas.) came the music, firm and unhurried,
with long pauses.  The full silver
star-beams of Lyra rose silently over
the church's dim roof-ridge.  Vari-color'd
lights from the stain'd glass windows broke
through the tree-shadows.   And under all--
under the Northern Crown up there, and [th]
in the fresh breeze below, and the chiaroscuro
of the night, that liquid-full contralto.
[(This kind of voice has always to me the
sense of young maternity--the last art-sense
of all.  Alboni was its fruition and apex.
I wonder if the lady will ever know that
her singing, her method, laid the foundation
of my poems years ago.) I
gave the foundation, the start, 
thirty years ago, to all my poetic literary
effort since?)]
[*[194]*]
[*236*]

[*cap head*]
SEEING NIAGARA TO ADVANTAGE.
[June 4--] [*ital side*]  June 4, '80.- For really seizing a great picture 
or book, or piece of music, or architecture 
or grand scenery - or perhaps for the first 
time even the common sunshine, or landscape, 
or maybe even the mystery of identity, 
most curious mystery of all--there comes 
[now and then] some lucky five minutes of a 
man's life, set amid a fortuitous concurrence 
of circumstances, and bringing in a brief 
flash, the culmination of years of reading 
and travel, and thought. The present case 
 about two o'clock this afternoon, gave me 
Niagara, its superb severity of action and color 
and majestic grouping [(like some colossal
cluster of Greek statuary)] in one short, indescribable 
show. We were very slowly 
crossing Suspension [B]bridge--not a full stop 
anywhere, but next to it--the day clear, 
sunny, still--and I out on the platform.  
The [F]falls were in plain view about a mile 
off, but very distinct, and no roar--hardly 
a murmur.  The river[,] tumbling green and 
white[,] far below me ; the dark high banks, 
the plentiful umbrage, many bronze cedars, 
in shadow ; and tempering and arching all 
[this] the immense materiality, a clear sky overhead, 
with a few white clouds, limpid, 
spiritual, silent.  Brief, and as quiet as brief, 
that picture--yet a remembrance always 
afterwards.  [*run in*]
Such are the things, indeed, I lay away 
with my life's rare and blessed [h]bits of hours, 
[mostly] reminiscent, past--the wild seastorm 
I once saw one winter day, off Fire 
[I]island--the elder Booth in Richard, that 
famous night forty years ago in the [O]old
Bowery--[or Alboni in the children's scene 
in Norma] [*stet*]--or night-views, I remember, on 
the field, after battles in Virginia--or the 
peculiar sentiment of moonlight and stars 
over the [G]great Plains, [W]western Kansas--or 
scooting up New York [B]bay, with a 
stiff breeze and a good yacht, off Navesink.  
With these, I say, I henceforth place that 
view, that afternoon, that combination complete, 
that five minutes' perfect absorption 
of Niagara--not the great majestic gem 
alone by itself but set complete  in all its
varied, full, indispensable surroundings.
[A GOOD ROUTE TO CANADA.]
[*cap head*]
[How I got here.]
Jaunting to Canada.
[*stet*] To go back a little, I left  Philadelphia 
9th and Green streets, at 8 o'clock p. m. 
June 3, on a first-rate sleeper, by the LeHigh 
Valley [(North Pennsylvania)] route, through 
Bethlehem, Wilkesbarre, Waverly, and so 
(by Erie) on through Corning to Hornellsville, 
where we arrived at 8, morning, and had a 
bounteous breakfast.  I must say I never 
put in such a good night on any RR track 
--smooth, firm, the minimum of jolting, and 
all the swiftness compatible with safety. 
So without change to Buffalo, and thence to 
Clifton, [Canada], where we arrived early 
afternoon.] ; [When I recommend this route
in Niagara either from New York, Philadelphia
or Washington, let no suspicious reader
nose a puff for I paid my honest fare, and
here give these lines for pure satisfaction
and love.) 
So we came through from Philadelpia to
Clifton in seventeen hours without change,
and] then on to [this city] London, Ontario, Canada, in four more--less 
than [22] twenty-two hours altogether.  I am domiciled 
at the hospitable house of my friends Dr. and Mrs. 
Bucke, in the ample and charming garden 
and lawns of the [A]asylym. [for the Insane.
Besides the extensive ornamental grounds
there is a vast farm.[*[195]  237*]

[*cap head*]
SUNDAY WITH THE INSANE.
   June 6.—Went over to the religions services 
(Episcopal) main Insane asylum, held 
in a lofty, good-sized hall, third story.  
Plain boards, whitewash, plenty of cheap 
chairs, no ornament or color, yet all scrupulously 
clean an sweet.  Some [200 or more] [*[3] three hundred 
persons*] 
present, mostly patients.  Everything, the 
prayers, a short sermon, the firm, orotund 
voice of the minister, and most of all, beyond 
any portraying or suggesting, that 
audience, deeply impress'd me.  I was furnish'd 
with an arm chair near the pulpit, 
and sat facing the motley, [eager, pitiful, 
huddled,] yet perfectly well-behaved, and 
orderly congregation.                                                     [*run in*]
   The quaint dresses and bonnets of some 
of the women, [some of them girls,] [some] several very 
old and gray, here and there like the heads 
in old pictures.  O the looks that came 
from those faces!  There were 
two or three I shall probably never forget.  
Nothing at all, markedly repulsive, or hideous 
—strange enough, I did not see one 
such.  Our common humanity, mine and 
yours, everywhere; 
"The same old blood—the same red, running           [*brev*]
   blood;" 
yet behind most an inferr'd arriere of such 
storms, such wrecks, such mysteries, fires, 
love, wrong, greed for wealth, religious problems, 
crosses,—mirror'd from those crazed 
faces (yet now temporarily so calm, like still 
waters), all the woes and, sad happenings of 
life and death—now from every one the devotional 
element radiating—was it not, indeed, 
[that] The peace of God that passeth all unnerstanding, 
strange as it may sound?  I can 
only say that I took long and searching eye-sweeps 
as I sat there, and it seem'd so, rousing 
unprecedented thoughts problems unanswerable.  
[(How, sometimes, a flash of 
the living sight, magnetic, confounds all 
previous statements, and roams, folios of 
argument.)]
[*run in*]
    A very fair choir and melodeon accompaniment.  
They sang "Lead, kindly 
light," after the sermon.  Many join'd in 
the beautiful hymn, to which the minister 
read the introductory text, "In the daytime                       [*italic*]
also He led them with a cloud, and all the 
night with a light of fire."  Then the 
words:
[*brev:*]
Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, 
   Lead thou me on.  
The night is dark, and I am far from home; 
   Lead thou me on.  
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that thou 
   Should'st lead me on; 
I love'd to choose and see my path; but now 
   Lead thou me on.  
I loved the garish day, and spite of fears 
Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.

   [I felt as I came out in the verdant June 
forenoon that the hour and scene had 
roused reverences, sanctity, deepest emotions, 
of which the stateliest churches I had 
overseen, with all their ceremonies, stained 
glass, pealing organs, and velvet and sumptuousness, 
gave me no reminiscence.]
   A couple of days after, I went to the 
"Refractory building," under special charge 
of Dr. Beemer, and through the wards 
pretty thoroughly, both the men's and 
women's.  I have since made many other visits of the 
kind through the asylum, and around among 
the detach'd cottages.  As far as I could see, 
this is among the most advanced, perfected 
and kindly and rationally carried on of all 
its kind in all America.  It is a town in 
itself, with many buildings and a thousand 
inhabitants.[*238*]
[*Walker*]

[*¶*] I learn that Canada, and especially 
this ample and populous province, 
Ontario, has the very best  and plentiest 
benevolent institutions in all departments.

REMINISCENCE OF ELIAS HICKS.  [*brev; caps*]
June 8.--To-day a letter from Mrs. E. [L.] S
L., Detroit, accompanied in a little post 
office roll by a rare old engraved head of 
Elias Hicks, (from a portrait in oil by Henry 
Inman, painted by J. V. S., must have been 
60 years or more ago, in New York )--among 
the rest the following excerpt about E. H. 
in the letter : [*brev:*]
"I have listen[e]'d to his preaching so often 
when a child, and sat with my mother at social 
gatherings where he was the centre, and 
every one so pleased and stirr[e]'d by his conversation.  
I hear that you contemplate writing 
or speaking about him, and I wonder[e]'d 
whether you had a picture of him.  As I am 
the owner of two, I send you one.

GRAND NATIVE GROWTH [[?] CANADA],  [*brev: caps*]
   In a few days I go to Lake Huron, and may 
have something to say of that region and 
people. From what I already see, I should 
say the young native population of Canada 
was growing up, forming a hardy, democratic, 
intelligent, radically sound, and just 
as American, good-natured and individualistic 
race, as the average range of best specimens 
among us.  As among us, too, I please 
myself by considering that this element, 
though it may be not the majority, promises 
to be the leaven which must eventually 
leaven the whole lump.

A ZOLLVEREIN BETWEEN [THE United States] U.S.
AND CANADA.  [*brev: caps.*]
Some of the more liberal of the presses 
here are discussing the question of a [Z]zollverein 
between the United States and 
Canada.  It is proposed to form a union for 
commercial purposes--to altogether abolish 
the frontier tariff line with its double sets 
of [C]custom [H]house officials now existing between 
the two countries, and to agree upon 
one tariff for both, the proceeds of this tariff 
to be divided between the two [G]governments 
on the basis of population.  It is said that 
a large proportion of the merchants of 
Canada are in favor of this step, as they believe 
it would materially add to the business 
of the country by removing the restrictions 
that now exist on trade between Canada and 
the States. [Many of] T[t]hose persons who are 
opposed to the measure believe that it 
would increase the material welfare of the 
country, but it would loosen the bonds between 
Canada and England; and this sentiment 
over-rides the desire for commercial 
prosperity.  Whether the sentiment [in question]
can continue to bear the strain put upon 
it is a question.  It is thought by many that 
commercial considerations must in the end 
prevail.  It seems also to be generally agreed 
that such a [Z]zollverein, or common customs 
union, would bring practically more benefits 
to the Canadian [P]provinces than to the 
United States.  [*run in*]  It seems to me [only] a
certainty of time, sooner or later, that Canada
shall form two or three grand States, equal and
independent with the rest, of the American Union.
The St. Lawrence and lakes are not for a frontier
line, but a grand interior artery or mid = channel.[*239*]
                                                           [*Cap Lead*]
[*The St. Lawrence line.*]

[*ital. side*]
August 20.—Premising that my three or four months' 
in Canada were intended, among the rest, 
as an exploration of the [whole] line of the 
St. Lawrence, from lake Superior to the 
sea, ([for] the [great] engineers here insist 
upon considering it as one stream, over 2,000 
miles long, including lakes and NIagara and 
all)—that I have only partially carried out 
my programme; but for the seven or eight-hundred 
miles so far fulfill'd, I find that 
the Canada question [(of which more anon, 
perhaps an informal lecture)] is absolutely 
control'd by this vast water line, with its 
first-class features and points of trade, 
[art,] humanity, and many more — here 
I am writing this nearly a thousand miles north 
of my Philadelphia starting point ( by 
way of Montreal and Quebec) in the midst of 
regions that go to a further extreme of grimness, 
wildness of beauty, and a sort of still and 
pagan scaredness, while yet Christian, inhabitable, 
and partially fertile, than perhaps 
any other on earth.  [This is one of 
the countless feeders of the mighty 
St. Lawrence.]  The weather remains perfect; 
some might call it a loot cool, 
but I wear my old grey overcoat and find it 
just right.  The days are full of sunbeams 
and oxygen.  Most of the forenoons and 
afternoons I am on the forward deck of [our] the 
steamer.
[*[run]*]                                                                                       [*Caps*]
[*[in]*]   [*¶*]   [THE RIVER ITSELF.]   [Up The] The Savage Saguenay
[The Sagwenay itself]
     Up these black water; over a hundred 
miles—always strong, deep, (hundreds of 
feet, sometimes thousands,) ever with high, 
rocky hills for banks, green and grey—[no 
flowers or fruits (plenty of delicious wild 
blue-berries and raspberries though.)  at 
times a little like some parts of the Hudson, 
but much more pronounc'd and defiant.  The 
hills rise higher—keep their ranks more unbroken.  
The river is straighter and of 
more resolute flow, and its hue, though 
dark as ink, exquisitely polish'd and sheeny 
under [this] the August sun.  Different, indeed 
this Saguenay from all other rivers—different 
effects—a bolder, more vehement play of 
lights and shades.  Of a rare charm of singleness 
and simplicity.  (Like the organ-chant 
at midnight from the old Spanish 
[*roman*]   convent, in "Favorita"—one strain only, simple 
and monotonous and unornamented—but 
indescribably penetrating and grand and 
masterful.)  Great place for echoes; while our steamer was 
tied at the wharf at Tadousac (taj-oo-sac) 
waiting, [the] escape-pipe letting off steam, I was sure I Perhaps

6
[In?] [???][*240*]  [*[198]*]

heard a band at the hotel up in the rocks
--could even make out some of the tunes.  
Only when our pipe[s] stopp[e]'d I knew what 
caused it. Then at [C]cape Eternity and 
Trinity [R]rock, the pilot with his whistle 
producing similar marve[l]lous results, 
echoes indescribably weird, as we lay off in 
the still bay under their shadows.
[CAPS ETERNITY AND TRINITY.]  [*stet*]
    But the great, haughty, silent. [[?age]] 
[C]capes themselves [[?]] I doubt if any [of the] 
crack points, or hills, or historic places of 
note, or anything of the kind elsewhere in 
the world, outvies these objects (I write 
while I am before them face to face ).  
They are very simple, they do not startle-- 
at least they did not me--but they linger in 
[my] memory forever.  They are placed 
very near each other, side by side, each a 
mountain rising flush out of the Saguenay.  
A good thrower could throw a 
stone on each in passing--at least it seems 
so.  Yet they are as distinct in form as a 
perfect physical man [and] or a perfect physical 
woman.  Cape Eternity is bare, rising, as 
just said, sheer out of the water, rugged and 
grim (yet with an indescribable beauty) 
nearly two thousand feet high.  Trinity 
[R]rock, even a little higher, also rising flush, 
top-rounded like a great head with close-cut 
verdure of hair.  [*run in*]
        I consider myself well repaid for coming 
my thousand miles to get the sight [or] and memory 
of the unrivall[e]'d duo.  They have 
stirr[e]'d me more profoundly than anything 
of the kind I have yet seen.  If Europe or 
Asia had them, we should certainly hear of 
them in all sorts of sent-back poems, rhapsodies, 
[etc.,] a dozen times a year through 
our papers and magazines.

[HA-HA BAY.]  [*[stet]*]
[*brev:
caps*]
Chicouitimi and
Ha-Ha bay
         No indeed--life and travel and memory 
have offer[e]'d and will preserve to me no 
deeper cut incidents, panorama, or sights to 
cheer my soul, than these at Chicoutimi and 
Ha-ha bay, and my days and nights up and 
down this fascinating savage river--the 
[countless] rounded mountains, some bare and gray, 
some dull red, some draped close all over with 
matted dull [green], verdure or vines--the ample, 
calm, eternal rocks everywhere--the long
streaks of motley foam, a milk-white curd, 
on the glistening breast of the stream 
--the little two masted schooner, dingy 
yellow, with patched sails, set wing-and-wing, 
nearing us, coming saucily up the water 
[(like a bit from the Mediterranean)] with a 
couple of swarthy, black-hair[e]'d men aboard--
the strong shades falling on the light gray or 
yellow outlines of the hills all through 
the forenoon, as we steam within gunshot 
of them--while ever the pure and delicate 
sky spreads over all.  And [then] the splendid 
sunsets, and the sights of evening--the same[*241*]  [*[199]*]

old stars, (relatively a little different, I see, 
so far north)[--] Arcturus and Lyra, and the 
Eagle, and great Jupiter like a silver globe, 
and the constellation of the Scorpion.   Then 
[N]northern lights nearly every night.

[THE INHABITANTS.] -good living.  [*stet*]
    Grim and rocky and black-water[e]'d as the 
demesne hereabout is, however, you must 
not think genial humanity, and comfort, 
and good living are not to be met. [here.] [I
find hardly anybody who can speak English
but I can testify to the just-mentioned
points.  There are villages and hotels and
boarders.]   Before I began this [letter] memorandum I made 
a first-rate breakfast of sea-trout, finishing 
off with wild raspberries.  I find smiles and 
courtesy everywhere -- physiolgnomies in 
general curiously like those in the United 
States--(I was astonish[e]'d to find the same 
resemblance all through the [great French]
province of Quebec.)  In general the inhabitants 
of this rugged country (Charlevoix, 
Chicoutimi and Tadousac counties, 
and [L]lake St. John region) a simple, hardy 
population, lumbering, trapping furs, boating, 
fishing, berry-picking and a little farming.  
I was watching a group of young 
boatmen eating their early dinner--nothing 
but an immense loaf of bread, had apparently 
been the size of a bushel measure, from 
which they cut chunks with a jack-knife.  
Must be a tremendous winter country this 
when the solid frost and ice fully sat in.

[*next copy is
242 to 246
on one page*]
[DESCRIPTION OF THE SAGUANAY BY A CANADIAN 
FRIEND-A FELLOW VOYAGER.
      Through our country stretches for a length 
of more than two thousand miles a river that 
carries to the sea more water than any other 
but one in the world, and which holds in its 
bed perhaps more than rests at one 
time in the channels of all the other rivers 
in the world added together.   Upon this 
river is one of the most stupendous cataracts 
known to man, and the scenery of the 
lower part of its course of the Thousand 
Islands of the Rapids, of the neighborhood 
of Quebec and Montmorenol, and from
thence to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, is the 
delight and wonder of all who see it.
       One hundred and eighty miles below 
Quebec there enters this mighty stream another 
river, which at first sight seems 
almost to rival in size the St. Lawrence 
itself --the wonderful Saguenay.  This 
stream, of an extraordinary depth, and inky 
blackness, with is high, bleak and desolate 
shores upon which scarcely a sign of
life is to be seen, has more the 
air of belonging to the infernal regions than 
to this smiling earth.  Its shores rise abruptly 
from the water's edge to an average 
height of some five hundred feet.   The surface 
they present to the observer is either 
bare rock, brown earth, or a miserable 
covering of stunted trees; and they look 
most desolate of all when, as happens at 
frequent intervals, these trees are dead and 
their limbs bare of foliage.  In these places 
the aspect of the river its terrible.  The still,][*Fossett*]
[*242, 243, 244, 245, & 246*]

[*brev: caps*]
Cedar Plums Like. - Names.
[Here] Back again in Camden and down in Jersey. [*ital swap*]

[*ital side*] One time I THOUGHT of [my book] naming this collection "Cedar-Plums Like" (which I still
fancy wouldn't have been a bad name nor inappropriate).   A melange[,] [*roman*]
of loafing, looking, hobbling, sitting traveling. -- a little thinking thrown in for 
salt, but  very little--not only summer but all seasons--not only days 
but nights.  - some literary[s] meditations
--books, Carlyle, Poe, Longfellow tried authors examined, 
[(but] (always [here] under [the] [a] my
cedar-tree, in the open air,
and never in the library -  Mostly the scenes everybody sees, but some of my own 
caprices, meditations,[--jotting and gadding - some] egotism--truly an 
open air and mainly autumn formation--singly, or in clusters--wild 
and free and somewhat acrid--indeed more like [C]cedar-[P]plums than you 
might guess at first glance.  [*[run in]*]
[*¶*]  But do you know what they are?  (To city, man, or some sweet 
parlor lady, I now talk.)  As you go along roads, or barrens, or across 
country, anywhere through [T]these states--[M]middle, [E]eastern, [W]western, or 
[S]southern [-] you will see, certain seasons of the year, the thick, woolly 
tufts of the [C]edar [tree] mottled with bunches of china-blue berries, about 
as big as fox-grapes.  But first a special word for the tree itself[.] :
 [*run in*]    Everybody knows that the [C]cedar is a healthy, cheap, democratic 
wood, streak[e]'d red and white--an evergreen--that it is not a cultivated 
tree--that it keeps away moths--that it grows inland or seaboard, all 
climates, hot or cold, any soil--in fact rather prefers sand and bleak 
side spots--content if the plough, the fertilizer, and the trimming=axe 
will but keep away and let it alone.   After a long rain, when everything 
looks bright, often have I stopt in my wood-saunters, [S]south or 
[N]north, or far [W]west, to take in its dusky green, wash[e]'d clean and sweet, 
and speck'd copiously with is fruit of clear, hardy blue.
 [*run in*]       The wood of the [C]cedar is of use--but what profit on earth are those 
sprigs of acrid [P]plums ?  A question impossible to answer satisfactorily.  
True, some of the herb doctors give them for stomachic affections, but 
the remedy is bad as the disease.  Then in my rambles, [or one Felrun day,]  [down in Camden]  [*stet*]
[[C]county, new Jersye,] I once found an old crazy woman gathering 
the clusters with zeal and joy.  She show[e]'d, as I was told afterward, a 
sort of infatuation for them, and every year placed and kept profuse 
bunches high and low about her room.  They had a strange charm [(of
course it just happen'd so - gave her occupation)] on her uneasy head, 
and effected docility and peace. ( She was harmless and lived near by 
with her well-off married daughter.)   Whether there is any connection 
between those [varied] bunches and being out of one's wits, I cannot say ; 
but I myself entertain a weakness for them.  [*run in next*][*[204]*]  [*247*]

[*run in*] Indeed, I love the [C]cedar, anyhow--its naked ruggedness, its just palpable 
odor (so different from the perfumer's best[)--], its silence, is equable 
acceptance of winter's cold and summer's heat, of rain or drouth--its 
shelter to me from those, a times--its associations--([W]well, I never 
could explain why I love anybody, or anything). The service I now 
specially owe the [C]cedar is, while I cast around for a name for my proposed 
[Book] collection, hesitating, puzzled [--] after rejecting a long, long, string, I 
lift my eyes and lo! the very term I want. [I am writing in the open
air.)]  [*run in*] At any rate, I go no further--I tire in the search.  I take what 
some invisible kind spirit has put before me. Besides, [W]who shall say 
there is not affinity enough between ( at least the bundle of sticks that 
produced) many of these [following] pieces, or [parts of them] granulations,, and those 
blue berries ? their uselessness growing wild--a certain aroma of [N]nature 
I would so like to have in my pages--the thin soil whence they 
come--their [great] content in being let alone - their stolid and deaf repugnance 
to answering questions--(this latter the nearest, dearest trait 
affinity of all.)
[*Gal 23 Fossett*]
Then [R]reader dear, in conclusion, as to the point of the name for the 
present collection, [Book] [-] let us  be satisfied to have a name--something 
to identify [it] and bind it together [-] to concrete all its [gossip, its] vegetable, 
mineral, personal memoranda, [thoughts,]  abrupt raids of criticism, crude gossip of philosophy, varied sands and clumps-- 
without bothering ourselves because certain pages do not present themselves 
to you or me as coming under their own name with entire fitness 
or amiability.  [*run in*]
It is a profound, vexatious, never-explicable matter--this of [N]names. 
I have been exercised deeply about it my whole life. [** note*]
[*[Next 248, 249, 250 & 251 on one page]*]
[*¶*]After all of which the name "Cedar-Plums Like", got its nose put out 
of joint ; but I cannot afford to throw away what I pencil[e]'d down the [*roman*]
lane there, under shelter of my old friend, one warm October noon.  
Besides, it wouldn't be civil to the [C]cedar [T]tree.[note to page 247 copy] [Note—bottom of page
[—in Brev: mind the directions for italic]
*In the pocket of my receptacle
book I find a [? and ?]
list of suggested and rejected day soon
quite fogotten names for [to] this
volume or parts of it such as the following: 
[set all this: not following in Brevier italic—capitalize liberally
¶ [short ?'s not run in—separate lines as in the copy]
As the wild bee hums in May,
The August mulleins grow
the winter snow flakes fall
the far off stars encircle all for
the stars in the sky will round.
[two leads]
[separate lines in copy]
Away from Books—away from Art
Now for the Day and Night—the lesson done
Now for the Sun and Stars. 
[all the rest in the half measure brev: ital]
[first letter Caps all]
Notes of a half paralytic
Week in and Week out
Embers of Ending Days
Ducks and Drakes
Flood Tide & Ebb
Gossip at Early Candle Light
Echoes and Escapades
Such as I...Evening Dews
Notes after Writing a Book



Note to p 247 copy
Brev. tal. half-measure

Far and Near at 63
Drifts and Cumulus
Maize-Tassels...Kindlings
[Kindlings] Fore and Aft....Vestibules
Scintilla at 60 and after [Sand Drifts]
Sands on the Shores of 64
As Voices in the Dusk, from
   speakers far or hid
Autochtons....Embryons
[N] Wing-and Wing
Notes and Recalles
Only Mulleins and Bumble-Bees
Pond-Babble....Tete-a-Tetes
Echoes of a Life in the 19th
   Century in the New World
Flanges of Fifty-Years
Abandons....Hurry Notes
A Life-Mosaic....Native Moments
Types and Semi-Tones
Oddments...Sand-Drifts
Again and Again
[Fore and Aft]