It Is True That He Had Not A Monopoly Of Its Geography Or
Its Topography (Though His Knowledge Was Superior In These Respects);
There Were Other Trappers, And More Deadly Hunters, And As Intrepid
Guides:
But Old Phelps was the discoverer of the beauties and
sublimities of the mountains; and, when city strangers broke into the
region, he monopolized the appreciation of these delights and wonders
of nature.
I suppose that in all that country he alone had noticed
the sunsets, and observed the delightful processes of the seasons,
taken pleasure in the woods for themselves, and climbed mountains
solely for the sake of the prospect. He alone understood what was
meant by "scenery." In the eyes of his neighbors, who did not know
that he was a poet and a philosopher, I dare say he appeared to be a
slack provider, a rather shiftless trapper and fisherman; and his
passionate love of the forest and the mountains, if it was noticed,
was accounted to him for idleness. When the appreciative tourist
arrived, Phelps was ready, as guide, to open to him all the wonders
of his possessions; he, for the first time, found an outlet for his
enthusiasm, and a response to his own passion. It then became known
what manner of man this was who had grown up here in the
companionship of forests, mountains, and wild animals; that these
scenes had highly developed in him the love of beauty, the aesthetic
sense, delicacy of appreciation, refinement of feeling; and that, in
his solitary wanderings and musings, the primitive man, self-taught,
had evolved for himself a philosophy and a system of things. And it
was a sufficient system, so long as it was not disturbed by external
skepticism. When the outer world came to him, perhaps he had about
as much to give to it as to receive from it; probably more, in his
own estimation; for there is no conceit like that of isolation.
Phelps loved his mountains. He was the discoverer of Marcy, and
caused the first trail to be cut to its summit, so that others could
enjoy the noble views from its round and rocky top. To him it was,
in noble symmetry and beauty, the chief mountain of the globe.
To stand on it gave him, as he said, "a feeling of heaven
up-h'istedness." He heard with impatience that Mount Washington was a
thousand feet higher, and he had a childlike incredulity about the
surpassing sublimity of the Alps. Praise of any other elevation he
seemed to consider a slight to Mount Marcy, and did not willingly hear
it, any more than a lover hears the laudation of the beauty of another
woman than the one he loves. When he showed us scenery he loved, it
made him melancholy to have us speak of scenery elsewhere that was
finer. And yet there was this delicacy about him, that he never
over-praised what he brought us to see, any more than one would
over-praise a friend of whom he was fond.
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