VIII.

JAMAICA AND THE RETURN TO UNADILLA.

1849-1850.

As soon as we got under way, and struck the north-west trade wind, the effect upon me was like magic. A glass of lemonade could have been no equivalent in relieving thirst to that cool, delicious wind. I sat on deck and took it in with more relish than I ever drank any iced beverage on a sultry day in August. Every breath I took added new life and stimulation to every nerve and muscle like electricity. My appetite became almost uncontrollable. About an hour before the opening of the dining room I would seat myself at the door, the first one to enter and last to leave the table. It was on that vessel I found my relish for the tomato; it had always been a disagreeable article to me, but one day the stewardess brought out a pan of them and put them in one of the small boats which hung at the davits. They looked so inviting that I reached over and took one. I bit into it and a more luscious fruit never passed my lips.

The voyage was a very pleasant and uneventful one. We stopped at Kingston on the Island of Jamaica for one day. I went on shore and while sitting in a hotel a native seeing me very shabbily dressed—and by the way my clothing aboard the vessel coming down the Pacific was never found; I suppose I must have thrown it overboard after taking out my gold dust[116] and placed it where the sailor found it, other passengers had contributing to cover my nakedness—approached and asked me if I did not wish to buy some clothing. That being my object in going ashore I replied in the affirmative. He offered to take me to a shop and without thinking I started, not even saying a word to Norton who was sitting near by. The man led me into several streets and finally through a narrow alley into another street where the shop was situated.

When he entered that alley the thought struck me, suddenly, that he had evil intentions. Owing to the fact that Kingston was renowned for the disorders committed by its villainous population,[117] I felt that I was in a dangerous predicament. But it would not do to show fear. My only resort was to put on a bold, unconcerned appearance, keeping my eyes open. The alley being narrow I dropped behind him and kept behind the rest of the way. I selected my suit and fortunately had loose change enough to pay the bill, but no other money in sight.

I think this delayed him in his plan. Soon after we started back he asked me if I was intending to remain ashore that night. I promptly answered that I expected to do so. He then said he would be around at bed time and see that I had a good room. He urged me not to go to bed until he came, which I promised, but before dark I went aboard the vessel, believing I had escaped harm once more.

We reached New York on Christmas morning. It was the coldest day I ever experienced. I have no recollection of the temperature of the thermometer, but having come direct from the torrid climate into the frigid the contrast was fearful. I stopped at the United States Hotel, still standing in Fulton Street. Here came my first experience in sleeping in a feather bed since leaving home in February previous. Sleep I could not, but rolled from one side to the other in misery—such is the power of habit—and finally got out on the floor with a single covering and there slept like a log the balance of the night.

Reaching my home in Connecticut the next day, I was received as one from the dead. Friends had had no word from me since my first arrival at Panama. From California not one letter had yet reached them.

Thus ends a brief recital of my adventurous gold seeking trip to California. Here I must refer again to the great obligations I shall ever rest under to my old friend Capt. Norton. May his days be as long and happy as, were it in my power, I would make them, with the full consciousness that when he goes to his last home, the verdict will be: There was a faithful friend and an honest man. The world in more ways than I have personally known, has been the better for his having been an actor in life’s great drama. God bless him.

Physically a wreck and in no condition for business, I made a visit soon after my return to this beautiful village for recuperation and pleasure among old friends. Meeting with a most cordial greeting and many requests to again become a resident, and having nothing in Connecticut to hold me—I had sold my property there before going to California—; moreover, as is universally the case with those who have spent the whole or a part of life in Unadilla[118] I still held a high appreciation of it and so was pleased again to become a resident, being in this appreciation no exception to the familiar rule.

[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL UNADILLA,

Confluence of the Susquehanna and Unadilla Rivers.

From “The Old New York Frontier.” Courtesy of Charles Scribner’s Sons.]

Before returning to Connecticut I bought the old Martin Brook corner property[119] of Col. A. D. Williams. This was in the spring of 1850. The property then embraced what is now the Joyce furniture store and White store lots. As an evidence of the growth of the village and the advance in the value of real estate, let me say I paid Col. Williams $800 for the property, built the office, the same year, and the barn the next. The railroad project was started a few years later and real estate began to boom. I sold the White store lot for $600 and the balance for $3500. The furniture store lot was afterwards sold off and last summer (1889) I re-purchased the balance for more than three times what I had paid Col. Williams for the whole original tract. It is now the most eligible site for a business block, and will undoubtedly be so occupied in the future.

When I had again become a resident in 1850, I had and have always since had no disposition to change until the final change—the common lot of all, which I am ready to accept at any time.

During the war of the rebellion and just after the battle of Antietam[120] I was impelled by sympathy for the poor sufferers from that terrible fight to go down to Washington in company with Dr. Joshua J. Sweet and tender my services, gratis. Judge Turner, of Cooperstown, was then acting as Assistant Secretary of war. He procured an order and forwarded us to Frederick, Maryland, for duty in the barracks hospital at that place. I spent two weeks in charge of a ward where were twenty or more poor fellows suffering every imaginable form of wounds. I saw in that time all the horrors of war that I cared to see.[121]

[Dr. Halsey was asked to write a chapter giving his experience in the hospitals at Frederick. He could not be induced to do so. The entire war topic was repugnant to him. “I always feel,” he said in 1890, “like using an oath whenever the subject is brought up.” He never could believe that real necessity for the war was compatible with public intelligence. He felt fortified in this view by the success with which he had seen slavery peacefully abolished elsewhere in the world. England had abolished it in her own colonies long before our Civil War and without loss of blood. In Russia millions of slaves were freed without war and the same result had been achieved without domestic conflict in Brazil. One of these countries was ruled by an autocrat and two of the three comprise in part scarcely more than semi-civilized people and yet they effected great economic revolutions by means entirely peaceful.

Nor could he forget that slavery in the northern States had been abolished without war. He knew that this was not due to higher moral sense on the part of the northern people, but to causes purely economic. Slavery in the North did not pay and hence it was abolished. He believed this would ultimately have been the result in the South, a view which the tremendous changes wrought in agricultural labor by machinery since the war has steadily tended to confirm in many thoughtful minds.

When the war afterwards became a war to save the Union, and the Emancipation Proclamation had eliminated slavery from the issue, he knew how entirely the situation and the motives for the war had changed; but never to his last day did he fail to regard the war, in its immediate origin, as a public iniquity in which extremists at the North and South alike had dyed their hands in innocent blood. He knew that secession sentiments were not exclusively the property of South Carolina and Mississippi and that Abolitionists at the North, who have since been held in great honor and almost made national heroes, openly advocated it, long before the Southern leaders fled to it as a desperate resort.[122]]

In 1865 I became interested with a partner in the first drug store[123] opened in the village, which finally came into my hands alone and made necessary my withdrawing from the active practice of my profession. Failing health at last compelled me to dispose of the drug store in the spring of 1888.

Thus briefly have I reviewed my personal history in the past half century. Notwithstanding its length it has occupied much more time than I expected when starting it. Yet, had I included all points of any special interest as they passed my mind’s eye in panoramic order, perhaps I could have occupied a far larger space. The urgent wish of my children was the first inducement. The pleasure derived from thus reviewing my life in leisure moments has been the fullest compensation. If readers have been in any like proportion gratified, this truly has been an additional as well as unexpected pleasure.

I cannot refrain from attempting as a final addendum a look into the probable and possible developments of the next fifty years. While I am neither a prophet nor a son of a prophet, yet in view of what the past fifty years have brought out in utilizing and subjecting the primary elements to the practical benefit of mankind, I have no hesitation in placing myself on record as anticipating as great or greater achievements in the same direction. Who would have called a man sane fifty years ago that should have sincerely said we would ever talk with another living thousands of miles away? or that one’s voice could be stirred up and again given to another’s auditory sense years after?

In view of this and other equally incredible developments, how long before the air will be as safely navigable as the earth or water? It is but a question of time when principles of economy will secure us against extravagant waste of fuel. The earth is fast being gridironed with railroads driven by the consumption of coal, but only a small per cent of the heat evolved is utilized. The other ninety per cent or so is complete waste. Geology says coal will eventually be exhausted and wood is already practically destroyed as fuel.

The child is now living who will see heating, lighting, washing, cooking, etc., done at central points, and supplies distributed wherever needed. He will also see the fact recognized and generally adopted that Omniscience in creating and developing our wonderful Universe had some loftier, more ennobling object in view than to allow the few to enslave the masses simply for power and gain. God speed the time when the old saying of Robert Burns, “man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn” will cease to be true.