Gustave Aimard
The Frontiersmen
CONCLUSION
We have brought this narrative, relating to the early history of an interesting portion of New York, nearly to a close; and all that remains, is to give the reader a brief account of the fortunes of some of the personages in whom he is supposed to have taken some interest.
After the defeat of the Senecas, Barton and his daughter, together with Ralph, Ichabod and the negro, returned to the settlements, where Barton finally concluded to remain. His advanced age prevented him from again undertaking to build himself a house in the wilderness, while another reason, perhaps still more powerful, forced him to the same conclusion.
He discovered that Ruth, provided he would give his consent to the arrangement, which, under the circumstances, he could not refuse, had decided upon becoming Mrs. Ralph Weston. That event happened not long after their return to the settlements; and the old gentleman found, after the lapse of a very few years, that he could not again seek the wilderness without abandoning two little grand-children of whom he had become very fond. Sambo remained with the family; but in the course of a short time, he was offered his freedom, which he refused.
Ichabod, also, returned to the settlements; and through the assistance of his friend, the Captain, he was enabled to satisfy the rapacious Mr. Parsons for his demand of £25 7s. 6d.. He finally embarked in some speculation in what were then deemed western lands, in which it is believed that he came very near making his fortune. But he never mentioned his adventures of the year 1783, without a sigh over the heavy losses which he sustained in his factory and city-lot projects.
As for the Tuscarora and his squaw, they returned to their village, and there remained, until the removal of the Tuscaroras to the west, a few years afterwards.
Of Guthrie – whose fate has been left in some little doubt – nothing certain was ever known. But a few years after, some adventurer, who supposed himself a pioneer in this new country, discovered a human skeleton by the stump of a tree, to which it had been apparently bound, judging from the remnant of a strong cord, which was found by its side. As some portions of the skeleton were found at some distance from the tree, it was supposed that the unfortunate man, whoever he was, after having been confined to the tree, had been devoured by wolves.
Our tale is told; and seventy years have passed over its scenes and actors. The forests have fallen; broad, green meadows, enriched with labor and enriching the husbandman, are in their place; an active, bustling village has effaced all signs of early hardship and suffering; and, as if changed like the pictures in a magic glass, the old scenes about which we have lingered are no more. Occasionally, the children in the village gaze, with a mixture of fear and wonder, upon a wandering Oneida, as he loiters in the streets, idle and drunken – a vagabond where his fathers were lords and rulers.
But, with all the changes which seventy years have produced and notwithstanding Ichabod's city lots have been laid out and sold, and succeeding speculators are still busy in the same short-handed means of getting money, the woollen factory has never been built. In that respect, his dreams have never been realized. Occasionally some speculative Ichabod has broached the old scheme anew; but obstacle upon obstacle has conspired to prevent its realization; and although the sheep dot our hills, their wool seeks a foreign market.
The pond, too, remains; but that which was once a sylvan lake, surrounded with forests and crystalline in the purity of its waters, has yielded all of its romantic associations to the practical spirit of the age. It has become a portion of a canal, and a touring-path has been constructed along its eastern and southern shores.
So pass our dreams; the infancy of Nature has reached its age; old fashioned modes of life, with their simplicity of manners, are passing away with our forests.
The valley is still, as of old, shut out from the world. Great thoroughfares of travel are at its either extremity; but neither across it nor through it is heard the rushing of the "iron horse;" still, as of old, come trotting and jogging along, at morning and at night, the lumbering coaches, rocking like cradles, while the weary traveler curses the fortune which compels him to take this antiquated mode of travel. Four miles an hour —five, perchance, in great emergencies —rush these ancient vehicles; and therein only, perhaps, we have not degenerated from the sober steadiness of our ancestors.
But a newly-directed energy is now exulting over the prospect of levelling our hills and elevating our valleys, and building a path upon which shall be heard the scream of the locomotive, and the sweep of travel. City lots are up; New York is small potatoes – half-acre landholders, issuing like the youth in Cole's "Voyage of Life," from the wilderness of long sleepy years, and guided by an angel with money-bags under his wings, and with a voice like the ring of dollars, see castles in the air, in the shape of depots and engine-houses, settling down upon their premises! Ichabod is alive again!
