Castle Nowhere

Castle Nowhere

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Title: Castle Nowhere
Author: Constance Fenimore Woolson
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6436] [Yes, we are more than
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CASTLE NOWHERE
BY
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
Not many years ago the shore bordering the head of Lake Michigan, the
northern curve of that silver sea, was a wilderness unexplored. It is a
wilderness still, showing even now on the school-maps nothing save an
empty waste of colored paper, generally a pale, cold yellow suitable to
the climate, all the way from Point St. Ignace to the iron ports on the
Little Bay de Noquet, or Badderknock in lake phraseology, a hundred
miles of nothing, according to the map-makers, who, knowing nothing
of the region, set it down accordingly, withholding even those
long-legged letters, 'Chip-pe-was,' 'Ric-ca-rees,' that stretch
accommodatingly across so much townless territory farther west. This
northern curve is and always has been off the route to anywhere; and
mortals, even Indians, prefer as a general rule, when once started, to go
somewhere. The earliest Jesuit explorers and the captains of yesterday's
schooners had this in common, that they could not, being human, resist
a cross-cut; and thus, whether bark canoes of two centuries ago or the
high, narrow propellers of to-day, one and all, coming and going, they
veer to the southeast or west, and sail gayly out of sight, leaving this
northern curve of ours unvisited and alone. A wilderness still, but not
unexplored; for that railroad of the future which is to make of British
America a garden of roses, and turn the wild trappers of the Hudson's
Bay Company into gently smiling congressmen, has it not sent its
missionaries thither, to the astonishment and joy of the beasts that
dwelt therein? According to tradition, these men surveyed the territory,
and then crossed over (those of them at least whom the beasts had

spared) to the lower peninsula, where, the pleasing variety of swamps
being added to the labyrinth of pines and sand-hills, they soon lost
themselves, and to this day have never found what they lost. As the
gleam of a camp-fire is occasionally seen, and now and then a distant
shout heard by the hunter passing along the outskirts, it is supposed,
that they are in there somewhere surveying still.
Not long ago, however, no white man's foot had penetrated within our
curve. Across the great river and over the deadly plains, down to the
burning clime of Mexico and up to the arctic darkness, journeyed our
countrymen, gold to gather and strange countries to see; but this little
pocket of land and water passed they by without a glance, inasmuch as
no iron mountains rose among its pines, no copper lay hidden in its
sand ridges, no harbors dented its shores. Thus it remained an unknown
region, and enjoyed life accordingly. But the white man's foot, well
booted, was on the way, and one fine afternoon came tramping through.
'I wish I was a tree,' said this white man, one Jarvis Waring by name.
'See that young pine, how lustily it grows, feeling its life to the very tip
of each green needle! How it thrills in the sun's rays, how strongly, how
completely it carries out the intention of its existence! It never, has a
headache, it--Bah! what a miserable, half-way thing is man, who should
be a demigod, and is--a creature for the very trees to pity!' And then he
built his camp-fire, called in his dogs, and slept the sleep of youth and
health, none the less deep