Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859

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But Mr. Bonflon could afford me but a brief time for observation and
the indulgence of my wonder. The stores and most of the passengers were
already on board; and taking me by the arm, he hurried me forward, and
seated me in the small car or tender, by means of which, and the agency
of ropes and pulleys, we were to reach her decks. Our upward movement
immediately commenced. It was steady and gentle, not calculated to
create alarm; and still the notion of quitting Mother Earth for an
indefinite number of days, to rove in the blue unknown of space, was
attended with some apprehensions and regrets. I gazed anxiously at the
receding objects below; but my feelings underwent a change as we
approached the "Flying Cloud" herself, were pulled into her gangway,
and I found myself standing on her solid decks. A brief further period
intervened, and our anchor was loosed; the tremendous machine became
instinct with life; she began to move; and, hurrah! we were under way.

The thoughts and emotions of this bewildering moment it is impossible
to describe. Our craft moved off majestically, like some huge
water-fowl rising from the sea. Her course was westward and upward,
like the eagle with his face turned toward the palace of the sun. At
first the lights in the city of Baltimore became more numerous and
distinct, as intervening objects were surmounted and overlooked. Next
they began to fade, shrinking down into twinkling points like
fireflies, until they disappeared. Forests, hills, and mountains
followed after, as our altitude was increased, blending together like a
hazy landscape, until, on passing above the cloud region, and finding
the level of our track, the earth was wholly lost to our view, and our
course lay through the blue serene of space, without a lighthouse or a
landmark, and nothing but the constant lamps of heaven to guide us in
our passage.

What a sea! The ocean has its visible surface on which move the ships;
but we had none. The heavens were beneath us as well as above. We were
floating in the great circle of the systems and the suns. We were of
the universe; but were to be numbered with the constellations and the
stars. We could compare ourselves to a company of immortals quitting
the earth and traversing the electric seas which lead to brighter
homes. Or we were voyagers to the sun, or to the nearer Venus, or to
the far distant Centaurus. What a world of new thought was forced upon
us by the fancies and realities and charm and awe of our extraordinary
condition, combined with the profound consciousness we could not fail
to entertain of the effects which this crowning discovery of Messrs.
Bonflon and De Aery must produce on travel, on commerce, on art, and
the common destiny of mankind!

I found the atmosphere of the cabins, as my friend Bonflon had
asserted, agreeable and healthful. I could also occupy the promenade
deck for half an hour with little inconvenience, so far as the levity
of the air was concerned; but the cold was severe; while the system, in
consequence of an undue expansion of its particles, solid and fluid,
from the diminished pressure of the atmosphere, was rendered doubly
susceptible to its influence. The advice given by Mr. Bonflon to case
myself in flannels, with an armament at hand of outer winter clothing,
proved well-timed; and yet a period of lassitude, verging on faintness,
invariably followed every considerable exposure to the open air.

But the pleasure of gazing on those fields of space without
obstruction, without the intervention of so much as a plate of crystal
glass, repaid me for every risk and every ill. Though it might be said
there was no scenery there, where nothing was visible but the stars,
yet far beyond the power of mountain and valley, forest and lake,
waterfall and ocean, did that scene, which was no scene, or next to
none, bind me in the spell of its fascination. The motion of our craft,
as we careered noiselessly through the shoreless and objectless void,
without sense of effort or friction, was a charm of itself,--bringing
to a flower, crystallizing into refulgent stars, the dim, obscure,
however glorious, poetry of life. Here were the wildest imaginations of
the dreamer melted in a crucible, and reproduced in living forms of
usefulness and beauty. In my own years of widely diversified
experience, what had I met with to compare with this? Nothing. The
force of steam was marvellous,--talking over a wire mysterious; but here
I was in a great ship riding among the planets and the stars. I had
likened Niagara to a vast mill-dam, because I could find no peer to set
beside it; so now, in my weakness, the sublime pageant of the "Flying
Cloud" could search out nothing higher in my recollection with which to
compare it than a wild, ride of my youth in a canoe, for a half mile or
so, down the rapids of a river.

But morning was at hand. The rich golden glow of night, to which the
dwellers on the earth's surface are accustomed, as we passed to higher
altitudes, had given place to a thin inky blue. This was obscured by no
fleck or mist, and yet the stars shone through it faint and dim,
despoiling the firmament of its glory. The same loss of power was
manifest on the ushering in of day. The auroral flame, which ordinarily
greets us in the east with such a ruddy laugh, was now nothing better
than a wan and dismal smile; and even the sun, as he struggled up from
what seemed a bed of leaden mist, brought with him only a pallid,
lifeless twilight. It was not that his rays were impeded by cloud or
haze; he had lost his power to shine. He hung there in the heavens like
a great white shield, and looked down on us as rayless and powerless
and devoid of life as a dead man's eye.

Having at length wearied myself with gazing, and feeling chill and weak
from the coldness and tenuity of the atmosphere, I subsided into the
comfort and companionship of the cabins below. Among the passengers I
recognized _attaches_ of the press, besides several gentlemen of
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, with whom I was somewhat
acquainted. More circumspect, or less slaves to the imagination than
myself, they had contented themselves with in-door observations. But
their enthusiasm was none the less inflamed. In astonishment they
looked at each other; in restless bewilderment they glanced out of the
windows on the desert, trackless plane traversed by the "Flying Cloud,"
and spoke with a species of awe of the shock which the announcement of
what they were then witnessing would give to sober men's minds; and
suggested, in broken sentences, some of the consequences which would be
likely to flow from the grand invention.

What with excitement and lack of sleep, we all found ourselves a little
nervous. Coffee and Havanas failed to allay the feeling; and, in the
absence of the morning papers, we resorted to whist, chess, and our
pocket supplies of the "Atlantic Monthly," "Harper," and so forth, and
to the very select library provided by Messrs. Bonflon and De Aery, the
proprietors, for the use of the passengers,--and at last to our beds.
It could not be denied that we were nervous. With all the smoothness
and beauty of our running, there was a sensation, an uncertain
quivering motion, not at first noticed and not at all definable, about
our craft, that constantly, suggested the idea that we were standing on
nothing, or, at best, nothing better than dissolving quicksands, which
were liable at any moment wholly to slide away and leave us; and it
required some strength of mind to resist the vagary, and prevent it
from effecting a troublesome lodgment in the imagination.

Thus passed the day, which fortunately, in my case, was succeeded by a
night of repose. The restlessness of mind and body once subdued, Nature
asserted her empire, and I slept profoundly until morning. Another day
and night followed, with little variation from the first; and by this
time, the strangeness and mystery of my situation had quite worn away,
and the feeling of security was established. I trod the upper deck with
all the pride, and more than the composure, of a modern monarch on his
throne.

But the sameness of the scenery of the vast aerial ocean, in which we
were sailing alone, without consort, without ever descrying a sail, or
even keeping a lookout, without so much as ever discovering a floating
plank to remind us of a wreck, or a seaweed to tell us of the land, was
already beginning to pall on the senses, when there appeared in the
distance before us, and multiplying to the right and the left, a
succession of white, sparkling pyramids and cones, resting on the
clouds and flashing in the nether light, like crystal monuments set to
mark the boundaries of space. These were crests of the Rocky Mountains,
covered with perpetual snow.

I gazed on them with rapture. Right in our eye, nearly due west, stood
out Long's Peak, James's Peak, and the Spanish Peaks, at first small in
size, but momently swelling in dimensions; while, far to the north,
were just discernible the more lofty summits of Mount Hooker and Mount
Brown. Lying between Mount James and the Spanish Peaks, inclining to
their eastern slope, lay the green plateau, not yet visible, where we
were to land. Its position was carefully pointed out to Mr. Bonflon and
myself by Mr. De Aery, but we strained our eyes and used our glasses in
vain. No strength of sight could penetrate the clouds and haze which
covered the body of the mountains, and hid the earth, with the
exception of those lofty silver pinnacles, from our view.

Though these high peaks, like distant masts at sea, were first seen
early in the day, the meridian of noon overtook us before we came up
with them. At length, in increasing numbers and a thousand diversified
shapes, they lay spread out before us, and soon thereafter were
directly under our feet. Our magical machine, coming to a halt,
fluttered like a great bird above them, and gave us an opportunity,
such as probably had never been enjoyed by voyagers before, to spy out
their beauty, their mystery, and their strength.

On nearing the mountains, we had left behind us the twilight of the
void, and come again into the full flood of day. This enabled the sight
to rest upon the scene with pleasure, to examine its diversified
splendors, and penetrate its chasms and gorges, otherwise inaccessible
to man. But to describe them is impossible. Broad fields of sparkling
snow, pyramids of ice, wide fissures shining like steel
mirrors,--produced by some unimaginable convulsion, possibly a thousand
or ten thousand years ago, and large enough to ingulf a city,--with
black humps or spires of granite here and there projecting through the
white; while afar down the rocky sides of interminable swells and
precipices came up a sound of water and a blush of green, betokening
the direction in which we were to look for the generative body of
Mother Earth; all these, and much more which I cannot stop to name,
were grouped in the rough, but magnificent landscape before us.

No cabin could confine me at such a time as this. I stood out on the
upper deck in the extreme bow of the boat; and from an unobstructed
point of view, nearly over the figure-head, in the very abandonment of
daring, feasted my senses on the wondrous glories of this
mountain-scene of enchantment.

De Aery was at the helm. But I have scarcely introduced this
extraordinary gentleman to the reader. He was a tall, black-haired,
mercurial Frenchman, with an eye like a falcon, who, with only an
occasional Gallicism purposely indulged in, spoke American like a
native. I had every confidence in his prudence and skill in the
management of his craft; and still, as I perceived that we were
gradually settling down in the direction of the loftiest of those
snow-peaks, until scarcely fifty feet intervened between us and its
round, polished brow, to all appearance as solid as feldspar, I raised
my voice and accosted him.

"Halloo! Captain!" said I, "are you intending to land us on this
Atlas-top?"

"_Effectivement_," replied he. "_Mon Dieu!_ B----, come here."

I went to him.

"This," said he, "is the very Old Man of the Mountain. I intend to
plant the stars and stripes in the centre of his bald head."

"Capital!" replied I. "But can you achieve it safely?"

"Yes. I can manage my bird with as much ease as a pigeon poises himself
on his wings, or an Indian steers his canoe. See! we are approaching
the crown of the pinnacle."

I watched the experiment with an interest not unmingled with fear. He
held in one hand a handsome American flag, of moderate size, and
occasionally, with a slight motion of his arm, and a glance of pride,
spread out its silken folds on the motionless air. Gradually the
"Flying Cloud," under his skilful hands, closed upon the bleak,
glittering summit, which, rounding off like the bald head of some
venerable giant, was, at its apex, scarcely ten feet in diameter.

"No eagle, even, has ever set his foot here," said De Aery. "There is
not a track, or feather, or mark of any living thing to be seen. The
'Flying Cloud' will be the first to explore many mysteries and to
explode others. Not even do the winds reach this height. Boreas and the
bird of Jove,--I will vanquish them both. I will step out upon that icy
peak."

"No, no, Captain," I expostulated. "You might lose your foothold and
perish."

"Not at all," rejoined he, with a laugh. "I am as sure-footed as a
goat. But if you think it risky, Monsieur, I forbear. But the snow
looks solid as adamant. I fear I shall not be able to erect this flag,
unless I have a firm spot for my feet."

By this time our craft had reached a proper position,--her stern
alongside and almost in contact with the jutting peak,--to answer the
ambitious purpose of the Frenchman. Raising the flag of the Republic in
his hand, he requested us all to do it proper honor,--to salute it with
a "three times three,"--as he should succeed in securing it in its
place. Cautiously extending the staff, he brought it in contact with
the snow, and gave it several light blows, for the purpose of
ascertaining its solidity. It seemed of almost icy texture, and emitted
a half-sharp and half-muffled sound in reply. Then, elevating the
standard aloft in both hands, he brought it down with force, as the
farmer urges a stake into the ground; not doubting, as would seem, that
a succession of such blows would be needed in order to achieve his
purpose.

A single stroke of the shaft, however, proved more than enough. To the
surprise and dismay of us all, the firm ringing surface turned out but
a shell, and all beneath, a loose bed of sparkling snow-crystals, like
white sand. The flag sunk down and disappeared, and De Aery, losing his
balance, plunged over and went with it.

We gazed after him in speechless horror. Before any one of us had
sufficiently recovered himself to speak, we were startled by a dull
sound, like a rushing wind, or distant, rumbling thunder; and an
immense mass of snow, many hundred feet in depth, and covering a third
of the cone, parted from its place, and, like a great, foaming wave,
broken and shapeless, rushed down the mountain's side. For the moment,
all eyes were fixed upon it. At first, it swept on without cohering,
like a cataract of sand; but, on coming in contact with the moister
snow below, it formed into a thousand balls and masses, some rolling
and some sliding, but each gathering bulk and velocity as it went.

By the aid of our glasses we were able to sweep the rough slopes and
precipitous descents below, to the distance of many miles; and,
forgetting De Aery, we watched the development of the phenomenon with
terror. The larger slides gradually absorbed the smaller ones, as
common fish are swallowed by sharks; but those which remained, fattened
and expanded by what they fed on, assumed enormous dimensions. Choosing
different paths, they pursued their course in smoking tracks of
devastation. Rocks, precipices, forests, furnished no obstruction.
Roaring, crashing onward, as though Mars or the Sun had opened its
batteries upon us, those sliding, whirling worlds of snow swept through
valleys large enough to have furnished sites for cities, without a
check, and bore down or over-leaped all obstacles, as easily as a man
would walk over an ant-hill, or some hollow where a toad had burrowed.
Finally they were lost to sight, passing behind intervening spurs or
ridges of the mountain, or becoming hidden in the cloud-mists which lay
heavily about its base; but the sound continued to roll back upon us
for some time, like the roar of distant artillery. I could no longer
wonder at the terror with which the cry of an avalanche is said to fill
the dwellers among the Alps.

As this absorbing pageant of the mountains disappeared, our thoughts
reverted to De Aery. Had he been carried away by the snow-slip? or was
his mangled corse below us among the black crags laid bare by that
catastrophe? Turning my gaze beneath, I discovered, far down, many
hundred feet, a moving object, scarcely bigger than a fly, and, on
bringing my glass to bear upon it, perceived that it was the Frenchman.
He was standing on a bare rib of rock, with his flag still in his hand,
and apparently unharmed. Waving the ensign to attract our attention, at
the same time he shouted with the whole strength of his lungs. But his
voice scarcely reached us, and probably would not alone have attracted
our notice. We replied with encouraging cheers; and the "three times
three," which we had intended for the American eagle, was given on the
spot to De Aery.

But how to rescue him from his perilous condition was indeed a serious
question. The "Flying Cloud," it was obvious, with her great size and
spreading pinions, could not venture among those ticklish quicksands,
whose insecure foundations had just been so strikingly illustrated
before us. Indeed, the slightest jar might precipitate another fall of
snow, and bury the object of our solicitude five hundred feet deep in
its bosom. The sagacity of Mr. Bonflon relieved us from our dilemma. He
hoisted out the small car or tender, and, letting it down with great
care and precision, safely accomplished the object. In the space of
half an hour, De Aery, without a scratch, and, like a gallant Gaul,
rather proud of his adventure than frightened at it, was again restored
to our arms.

Drawing off from our dangerous proximity to the "Old Man of the
Mountain," which had so nearly proved fatal to at least one of our
number, but astonished beyond measure at the novelty of our experiences
and the grandeur of the scenes we had witnessed, we retraced our course
for a short distance, and, gradually lessening the interval between us
and the earth, soon had the satisfaction of hearing the cry of "Land,
ho!" from the look-out man. The valley was in sight where we were to
take in water and enjoy a little picnic on the green grass, ere the
form and smell of Mother Earth, with her homely but blessed realities,
should be quite forgotten.

We effected our landing in complete safety. The spot was a little,
luxurious nook among the lesser hills, with few trees, but full of wild
flowers, wild fruits, and wild grasses. Everything about it was wild,
but cheering and charming, especially to air-wanderers like us. The
foot of the white hunter, or even of the roving Indian, had perhaps
never visited it, nor foraging-parties of the buffalo or deer, for we
saw no signs of them; but birds of varied plumage and song, and troops
of squirrels, with footprints here and there of the grizzly bear, and a
drove of wild turkeys, with red heads aloft, rushing over an eminence
at our left as we approached, and an occasional whir of a rattlesnake
at our feet, sufficiently indicated the kind of denizens by which the
plateau was inhabited.

Here, on the rich sward and delicate mosses, under the shadow of some
willows, we spread out our repast by the side of a clear
mountain-spring; and, to say nothing of old Otard and Schiedam
Schnapps, opened some bottles of Sparkling Catawba, and old Jersey
Champagne, of a remote vintage, which I have now quite forgotten. With
the flow of these beverages flowed our speech, in jovial words and
songs and raillery enough, if not in wit. De Aery, as having by a
hair's breadth just escaped with his life, and in virtue of his
extraordinary feat in leaping five hundred feet or more through a bank
of snow, now that the danger was over, was made the butt of much
pleasantry, which he bore with his usual equanimity and grace.

When these arrowy flights at the expense of the light-hearted Frenchman
had exhausted themselves, I took occasion to inquire of him what his
sensations were during his brief burial. He replied as follows:--

"I thought nothing at all about it. I remember feeling chagrined
because I was making a failure, and clung tight to my flag, fearing to
lose that too. _Mon Dieu!_ It might be expected that one would feel
cold, buried up in ice; but such was not the case. I was hot. The snow
burned my face, as it came in contact with it. As to the ride, it was
pleasant enough, but rather rapid and perplexing to the breath. It was
like sinking into a pit of quicksand, where everything gives way below
one, as though the bottom of the world had fallen out. There was the
struggle of a moment to keep the fine snow out of my mouth and
nostrils, as I drew in my breath, and the next instant my feet came in
contact with the solid rock, where you discovered me. The magnificent
avalanche you describe I know nothing about. I neither heard nor saw
anything of it, only as I afterward examined the marks it had left
behind it. This leads me to suppose that I was a good deal confused at
the time, though I was not aware of it. Indeed, I have an impression of
seeming to turn somersets in my descent, and this may account for it.
But, for the honor of France, I saved my adopted country's flag."

High-minded Gaul! We all praised and honored him, and comforted him for
his disappointment. It was a noble attempt he had made, to nail the
American banner to the head of Mount James, impelled by the loftiest of
motives,--and, like many others of its kind, had for the present
failed. At some other time he might prove more successful; or some
other might achieve the object in his place, and so appropriate his
laurels; but no one would be likely to excel him in his flying leap. In
this he had distanced even the famous traveller at Rhodes.

Having given a couple of hours to this species of recreation, we
weighed anchor, and again got under way. Slowly and smoothly, without a
ripple or a jar, we ascended through the blue ether to our former
altitude, and floated off over those majestic mountain-tops, toward the
west. Loath to part from scenes of such impressive beauty,--scenes,
alone paralleled in our recollection by fabulous tales of Oriental
enchantment,--we gazed behind us at those flashing crests of alabaster,
until they grew small in the distance, and finally were wholly lost to
our sight. With them disappeared the last vestige of the solid earth,
and we were again afloat in space.

The following night and day were passed like their predecessors.
Another night came, and we were over the eastern bound of the State of
California. A few hours more, without accident, would terminate our
remarkable voyage, and set us down in the city of San Francisco. All of
us were brimming high with hope. Though we did not anticipate reaching
the station before one or two o'clock in the morning, and probably
should not disembark before dawn, we were loath to retire to rest. It
was near midnight before all of us were in our berths.

But when at length there, I found it impossible to sleep. The
excitement attendant on the beginning of the trip seemed to have
returned on me with a double force. I listened for some sound to
relieve the awful stillness which, like the wing of Death, seemed to
have settled over the "Flying Cloud"; but there was no soughing of the
wind, as at sea, and no noise to be heard, save the monotonous movement
of the engine and the paddle-wheels; and this, so evenly did they play,
was rather a motion than a sound.

This period of restlessness was succeeded by one of strange
bewilderment, which might have been sleep, or might not Rapidly
changing scenes and fantastic figures, some of them beautiful and some
horrible, flitted before me like a dissolving panorama. A band, as
though of steel wire, seemed to encircle my brain, and to compress it
closer and closer; and the spine, for its whole length, felt as though
subjected to a like crushing pressure.

How long this state of hallucination continued I have no means of
knowing. From it, by a great effort, I suddenly aroused myself, and
returned to my proper senses. Where I was, and all the extraordinary
events of the last few days, were clear in my recollection. But I was
weighed down with weakness, and found, on attempting to speak, that I
had no voice.

Suspecting that I had been stricken by some terrible disease, I
attempted to rise; and, loath to disturb any of my fellow-travellers,
undertook to crawl out upon the upper deck. This, after a good deal of
effort, I accomplished. Lying, therefore,--I could not stand,--I prayed
for a breath of air to relieve my hot and oppressed brow; but in vain.
The atmosphere seemed gone. Chill and dark, the heavens spread out
above me without a twinkle or a smile. The full-moon was there, and
there was no cloud or haze to obscure her light; but she did not shine.
Her white, rayless face was a mockery to the night. The same was true
of the stars. The dazzling canopy was faded out, and Cygnus and the
Great Bear were subdued to pallid points, like patches of white-gray
paper stuck upon a wall.

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