8 CENES AND INCIDENTS IN A PASSAGE OVER THE CAYUGA.

CEDAR HEIGHTS.

IMMEDIATELY on leaving Levanna, proceeding southward, the traveller will see that the east bank of the lake rises perpendicularly some forty or fifty feet, presenting, in more than miniature, the appearance of the Palisades near the great metropolis, on the Hudson. This bank has a lovely fringe of dwarf cedars, whose perpetual green is as an enduring emerald in the adornment of the Cayuga. The carriage-road is immediately on the height, and there are glimpses of the water scenery always to be enjoyed, while there is a shelter from the fiercer winds. There is but a narrow track at the bottom, though enough for a delightful walk, except in two places, where the rock juts out so far as to give an aquatic variety to the promenade. There was a neat country-house, of some pretension to architectural proportions, on these heights, which belonged to Mr. SHOTWELL, of the well-known New-York auction house, Leggett, Shotwell, Fox, and Company; but this was destroyed by fire a few years since. A site so advantageous cannot long remain unimproved. These heights continue for a great part of the distance between Levanna and Franklin-Hill, the northern boundary of the village of Aurora. In tasteful position, and with every appearance of neatness and comfort, just

midway between the heights on the rise of ground above mentioned, is a neat little cottage, erected by WILLIAM DEAN, Esq. It is formed of the handsome stone found on the beach of the Ontario, and is one of those charming farm-houses which are such a significant indication of the advancing prosperity and taste of our agricultural citizens.

These cedars are trees which outlive the race that plants them. They fix their tenacious grasp on the soil, and while they attain a lesser height than many other forest-trees, their strength and longevity are far greater. And the Cedar Heights have seen the lapse of many years, and in the circling vicissitudes of human affairs have not been without their incidents of love and fear, of joy and grief.

There is not in all the world a stronger tendency to superstition than is found in the population of Germany. It has been the theme of their own wonderful writers, and the pens of other nations have gathered wild and strange fancies from the legends that are associated with river and glen and mountain-height and cave and castle of the land of the Rhine. The people have a superstitious tinge in their belief very frequently, and it affects their conduct even in the daily and common-place practice of the duties of life. Even the free air and quadrated action which surround them on coming to our country do not immediately divest them of this looking beyond the known to the mysterious. It does not, however, generally last very long. The schools of America, though not as profound as those of Germany, or fathoming such depths of learning, are straight-forward and practical, and teach men to grasp at the substance and think little of the shadows. It is a most interesting theme of reflection to watch the gradual but sure incorporation of all the foreign elements into the quiet, practical American character.

The family of Heinrich Fritz had emigrated from the suburbs of Frankfort. He was the best-natured of Germans, and left his native city only because, while the society was very good; while the disputes of the scholars around him were very agreeable, being generally on some question involving theories so abstruse as to be beyond the comprehension of the debater and the audience; while the literature was as glorious as Goethe and Schiller could make it; yet the bread was scarce, and the young family around him, though they liked books, could not eat them. His boys wandered through the streets of Frankfort, unwilling idlers. That was not profitable education. His one bright-eyed girl staid peaceably at home, and devised a dinner out of the scantiest possible material. He had lost his wife, and it had been a loss that, as he determined, never could be replaced was never sought to be. The children would have deemed it a species of insanity if another mother had been alluded to. It would have required all the charm of Fanny Forester's clever poem on such a subject to have won them to the propriety of two mothers,' as she describes. The mother of his wife survived, and was for her sake the object of the most respectful regard. She was a clever old lady enough in her own sight, but was less influential in the family because of her queer and superstitious vagaries. These were respected by Heinrich, because of her age, and of the fact that she had been the mother of the being who, even in her grave, held his affection. The preservation of quaint and useless furniture, decayed and dusty; the fondness for certain

lucky days, and the horror of unlucky ones; the imagining that a good genius governed this month, and an evil one that; the dread of fancied lights and airy illuminations; all these were the characteristic weaknesses of the old lady, respected but not believed in by the family, that, with all her peculiarities, would have starved themselves to feed her.

A cabinet council was held on the subject of emigration, and all were consulted. The boys belonged to the emigration party, having the highest possible ideas of America as a land where every thing but hunger and poverty was common, and where there was no such thing as failing if they would work. Heinrich had given them right notions of what our country really was. LUCILLE, the fair Frankfort girl, beautiful even in her poor garb, had great doubts, inasmuch as she thought it probable that on the day they landed at New-York several wild Indians would proceed to make a meal of her, having first in a savage manner taken her scalp. The boys all laughed heartily at this, declaring that any Indian might have their scalps who could take them. The old lady was perfectly willing to go, if they would postpone the departure till the twenty-fifth of August, on which day St. Agatha was canonized. She was certain that era would be a felicitous one. Heinrich met this by a device worthy of a statesman. He suggested to her that on the eighteenth of June, when the steam-boat left Frankfort, St. Agatha had first determined to renounce the world and enter the convent of which she was an ornament so distinguished, and that the good luck would doubtless belong as much to this day as to the other. This effectually satisfied the matron, and it only remained for Heinrich to decide. My mother and my children,' said he, in America labor is dear and bread is cheap. It is the country for the poor to become prosperous. I could exist in Frankfort, but we Ishall all live in America.'

Merrily they all wrought, and their few preparations were completed. The neighbors were sad to lose Heinrich, but they all predicted for him in America nothing short of a principality. The boys were in great glee, and pretty Lucille shook her ringlets as merrily as if she had no dread of their being severed by a rude Indian's knife. He did what few foreigners have the sagacity to do; he sold all his old and cumbrous furniture, which had been in his house so long, producing nothing, and 'lumbering up' the room. He thus avoided the spectacle that all of us have seen in emigrant ships, of a burthen of useless and most costly freight. He did save from the sale the curiously-carved work-table which his wife had used, and which, though he might have often sold it for that which would have produced many comforts for him, he would not have yielded up for any pecuniary consideration. The mother insisted but on one point, and that was in consonance with her superstitions. There had been in her possession since her childhood a square and very stronglyformed chest. It had singular devices in brass carvings on the lid and around the lock and at the corners. It was always in her room, and was undisturbed, except by the neatness of Lucille, who, because she saw it delighted the old lady, made the wood and metal brilliant with hard polishing. It was very heavy, but its contents were utterly unknown to the family, and as much so to the mother. Such a thing could occur only in Germany. It had been given to her by her father, who had been

a mariner, and who was charitably adjudged by 'the neighbors' of his day and time to have been a corsair. At home, though silent and reserved, he was as peaceable as any Christian man need be. He always impressed it upon his daughter, however, that not in his day should that chest be opened. 'I dread to look at it,' said he. Wild as he might have been to men, to his daughter he was kind, and she loved him the more because the world around loved him less.

Though after his death she was at full liberty to open the chest, she would as soon have thought of tearing up her father's portrait; and with her peculiar notions, she soon associated its inviolability with, as she phrased it, good luck; and the more years that rolled over, the more secure did the quaint old depository become. Her daughter was too fond of her mother to do aught to displease or vex her, and her wish Heinrich was but too happy to follow. There was in Frankfort no first-of-May custom of chaos; and though Heinrich often thought that it ought to be opened, it was not.

The departure was made, the old chest was brought out to the day, and they left the city of their ancestors for the New World, where life has something else in it than the gloomy round of a struggle for subsistence. Their neighbors sang a strain of sad but sweet music as the steamer left the wharf; and Heinrich and his family would have answered by song, but they could not sing while Frankfort was fading from the view.

Our chronicles are of the lake, not the ocean, so we cannot be historians of the voyage. When it was good weather, they longed for America; when it was storm and sea-sickness, they mourned for home.

Heinrich was no man to linger in a city. Frankfort was all the city he desired, and that was left behind. He held a renewed council when the family were gathered in an obscure German boarding-house in Greenwichstreet in New-York. The associations there did not add to their happiness, nor to their stock of funds, scanty when they left home, and almost entirely exhausted now. This time Heinrich was almost the only speaker. 'My children,' said he, 'we are not of those who go to the public for relief. We may have to do so, but we will try ourselves first. We will go westward; and Lucille was delighted. She had looked out for the Indians every day since she landed, and she wanted to be out of NewYork.

Their arrangements for departure were soon accomplished. Father, children, grandmother, and chest were all received at the wharf in Albany by a canal-boat, which, according to the usage in such cases, was crowded from stem to stern, and was as disagreeable as could have been desired by the most melancholy tastes. It was in the summer of 1832 when these incidents occurred, a time when the cholera was pervading this state, and was every where a desolation. Heinrich had his plans rather vaguely defined. He intended to go west, which is definite or indefinite, according as you are headed right, as they say at sea; but how to obtain the land he wanted was in the future. Still, men of energy and of mind often encounter a shapeless future, moulding it as they advance. The detail of the canal-passage was a sad one. The cleanliness of the Heinrich family was in their favor, and their good sense caused them to take many precautions neglected by their companions. It would have been well

indeed, if all their companions had been as wise; but the usual disregard of prudence and neatness worked its legitimate result. The cholera broke out in the boat, and it became a dismal and gloomy journey. The plans of Heinrich, which were formed with a tinge of the couleur de rose in them, became less distinct, and by the time the boat had advanced beyond Syracuse, he was as near despair as could arise in his character. There was among the passengers a Pennsylvanian, a resident of those northern counties of that state, which then, as they even now are, were rather wild and secluded, but on whose fortunes the Erie road is exerting a most benefical influence. He talked with Heinrich, and being a Pennsylvanian, had no difficulty in expressing his views in German; entered into his plans and sympathized with him, concluding all by advising him to give up the going to the west, and to leave the canal at Montezuma, and go to Pike county in his state, where he had lands that he would dispose of to him for a mere trifle—as well he might, if by this he could get them settled. But we will not attribute improper motives to the Pennsylvanian, for he gave Heinrich a small addition to his funds, and when they came ashore at Montezuma, he busied himself in procuring for him a wagon and team, with which to transport his family and the few movables, including the chest, which had accompanied him. The Pikecounty man said he would go ahead and 'beat' a track for him. Those boys of yours,' said he, will soon raise something, even out of our rough hills;' and with kind wishes he parted, having given him directions as to his route, which was to be along the Cayuga, and via Ithaca and Owego, to the promised land.

The journey southward was begun on the morrow. It refreshed and invigorated the heart of Heinrich to have thus found sympathy and kindness in a strange land, and he entered into animated conversation with the family. As for them, they were charmed by the incidents of the route, and the more, when from the height of land at the Bridge, the Cayuga spread itself before them, like a band of silver spread upon the green earth. There were earnest congratulations that they were rid of the canal-boat, and wondering surmises as to what Pike county would prove to be. The old lady rather liked the promise of the mountain, and was soon off in a series of wild hill-and-forest legends of the father-land. Suddenly she started, and exclaimed, My children, do you know what day this is?' Heinrich answered, it was the twenty-fifth of August. I knew it,' she said, exultingly. The very day that the good Agnes received canonization. Ah! there is good luck for us in store to-day.' 'I trust there is,' replied Heinrich. "I see my friend has marked a place called Aurora, as that where we are to dine. This ride has given me a strong desire that the good luck shall come in the shape of a good dinner.'

As they rode along, Heinrich talked freely with his children of the hope that they would yet be able to go to the west. He had read intelligently of that glorious region, of its capacities for the formation by the hand of industry of independent position-a place where the boys could have a home of their own. My own,' that word which only in America is used by the people individually, as well as collectively. Their progress was as pleasant as animated converse generally makes a journey;