high pressure engines

J. C. Hoadley Portable Steam Engine
Vintage Machinery / Photo: Glenn Duspiva

We have been all day on the verges of these perennial showers, which the cold, cloud, attracting and condensing mountain tops send forth from their basis as ceaseless streams through the far plains. Thus nature, as with a low pressure engine, carries on its vast schemes; the surplus steam from the hot valleys giving motion to its rivers.
--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1853

Revised and corrected in the 1857 book Scenes and Adventures in the Army. Note the change from low to high pressure:

We have been all day on the verges of these perennial showers, which the cold cloud-attracting and condensing mountain-tops send forth from their bases, as ceaseless streams through the far plains. Thus Nature, as with a high-pressure engine, carries on its vast scheme; the surplus steam from the hot valleys giving motion to its rivers.

Herman Melville:

His story told, the wooden-legged man threw back his head, and gave vent to a long, gasping, rasping sort of taunting cry, intolerable as that of a high-pressure engine jeering off steam; and that done, with apparent satisfaction hobbled away. --The Confidence-Man

Herman Melville's sister Catherine (Kate) married John Chipman Hoadley on September 15, 1853. Hoadley had been active in Pittsfield since 1848; in partnership with Gordon McKay he operated a machine shop and foundry with "an extensive reputation for steam engines" (Springfield Republican, 22 January 1852).

McKay and Hoadley sold their Pittsfield shop in February 1852 and relocated to Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Rewriting the 1843 prairie fires

Original, from the 1843 Santa Fe Journal of Philip St George Cooke:

The meal rations being nearly gone, and the prairies on fire, I pushed on, leaving a small party with five wagons, to follow slowly until relieved. The march from Council Grove began amid flames and billows of smoke tossed by violent winds: (it ended with two days of snow storm and severe winter weather.) Two days this side I found grass in a timbered creek bottom, and stopped a day to feed the horses. . . .

… These companies, and a portion of A, have this year marched with me about 1500 miles in the wilderness— about half of it has been through cold rain storms, and black frosts. Sometimes without fuel: not seldom a large river was waded to procure it: exposed to the scorching blasts of the hill-top plains—now blackened by fire—now whitened by snow and frosts, I will only say for them that they have done their duty, cheerfully and like men. 

--Letters Received by the Adjutant General 1843 / C /  Cooke, Philip St Geo (307) p9

Now the rewrite in Scenes Beyond the Western Border:

Leaving the Grove, as we passed over the lofty prairie hills, all the world seemed a-fire! The unresisted winds seemed to riot with fire, which they drove to madness! Black clouds and columns of smoke were wildly tossed in the tempestuous air; whilst the flames, now darted with lightning speed and glare—now flickered with baleful illumination and stifling effect over our hurried path. Thus desperately, I pushed on for two days—regarding nothing—with a will fixed upon this haven of shelter and relief.

And now, our horses browse at will through out the forest; our log fires crackle under the noble arches of boughs and foliage; we read our letters and news; our repose is home-like; and as we gaze at our forest-roofs so cheerfully illumined, we indulge in extravagant anticipations of winter enjoyment at Fort L.

Two nights and a day were thus spent; and when, almost unwillingly, we ventured forth again from the pleasant forest, the scene and the actors were changed! Autumn—so long our tyrant—pursuing us with frosty breath on wings of flame,—in the last act had met a master; and shrieking over the desert, had fled—like a blusterer—to the South. Stern winter had come with his pure winding sheet of snow, to cover the blackened scars of the conquered and dead year.  --Scenes Beyond the Western Border, January 1852

What we have here is the matter of 1843 in Scenes Beyond the Western Border concluding with an inspired riff on this sentence in Cooke's 1843 Santa Fe Journal:

The march from Council Grove began amid flames and billows of smoke tossed by violent winds: (it ended with two days of snow storms and severe winter weather.)

See how the rewrite skillfully expands and intensifies the experience of prairie fires, keeping however the now this / now that structure in Cooke's retrospective summary.

Leaving the Grove, as we passed over the lofty prairie hills, all the world seemed a-fire! The unresisted winds seemed to riot with fire, which they drove to madness! Black clouds and columns of smoke were wildly tossed in the tempestuous air; whilst the flames, now darted with lightning speed and glare—now flickered with baleful illumination and stifling effect over our hurried path.

In place of Cooke's serviceable retrospective ("—now blackened by fire—now whitened by snow and frosts"), the 1852 rewrite substitutes an energetic metaphor of the stage. Autumn is now personified as a theatrical "tyrant" chasing the dragoons home "with frosty breath on wings of flame." Cooke's original 1843 reference to the snow-whitened plains inspires the personified figure of Winter as undertaker, covering the fire-blackened prairie "with his pure winding sheet of snow."

BLUSTERER

But in Vivenza there were certain blusterers, who often thus prated . . . --Mardi

". . . especially as Peleg, his friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer." --Moby-Dick, The Ship

WINDING SHEET (Nature's)

". . . and kelp for a winding sheet." --The Haglets

dazzling white

About a mile from the village we came to a halt. 

It was a beautiful spot. A mountain stream here flowed at the foot of a verdant slope; on one hand, it murmured along until the waters, spreading themselves upon a beach of small, sparkling shells, trickled into the sea; on the other, was a long defile, where the eye pursued a gleaming, sinuous thread, lost in shade and verdure. 

The ground next the road was walled in by a low, rude parapet of stones; and, upon the summit of the slope beyond, was a large native house, the thatch dazzling white, and, in shape, an oval. 

"Calabooza! Calabooza Beretanee!" (the English Jail), cried our conductor, pointing to the building.  --Omoo, 1847

As he was being secured to the gratings, and the shudderings and creepings of his dazzlingly white back were revealed, he turned round his head imploringly; but his weeping entreaties and vows of contrition were of no avail. --White-Jacket, 1850

His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem to give him much joy.  --Moby-Dick, 1851

 At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. . . .  --Moby-Dick, The Chase—First Day

This day we first came in sight of the drifting white sand-hills, which border the southern side of the river for one or two hundred miles, of fantastic changing shapes, often dazzling white, and supporting a few stunted cedars and plum bushes: their air of desolation does not at all prevent them from pleasing the eye, whilst a certain wildness in their appearance excites the imagination. Indeed, I know them as the refuge and ambush of beasts of prey, and of wilder and fiercer men.

--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1853; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army

You may say the phrase "dazzling white" is the veriest commonplace, something out of a toothpaste commercial. True, but notice if you would please two things: one, that Melville likes it; and two, that other journalists of the 1845 Rocky Mountain expedition of U. S. dragoons don't write like that about what they saw on the same day.

For example, the 1845 journal of William B. Franklin:

 Aug. 2. ... On the 3rd we marched 19 miles. On the opposite side of the river Sand hills began to appear; a few buffalo were seen during the day, and one was killed. At intervals there is a little timber along the river, but as a general thing from the Big Timber down as far as we went, it may be said to be very badly timbered.  --March to South Pass, p30

Wonder what Henry S. Turner had to say for the same day?  Let's go to fold3 and find out. There they are, those same sand hills Franklin observed, and nothing about their whiteness:

Camp No. 75. August 3. Soon after leaving camp this morning the Sand hills, which extend along the river for several hundred miles on the Mexican side, made their appearance. As seen across the river they are composed of loose sand, wholly destitute of vegetation. Encamped on the left bank near a rudely constructed “Medicine” lodge, which seems to have been constructed by the Indians within the last 12 months. Distance 19 miles. Direction S. E. by E. A tremendous rain this evening, much thunder & lightning.

--Letters Received by the Adjutant General, 1845 Kearny, S. W. (K 113) page 88.

Gil Blas (and Don Juan) on the prairie

From Gil Blas by Alain-René Lesage:

"Henceforth I will make a better choice of a confidant, and keep one of greater ability than you. Go,” added he, pushing me by the shoulder out of his closet, “go tell my treasurer to give you a hundred ducats, and may Heaven bless you. Good-by, Master Gil Blas, I wish you all manner of prosperity, and a little better taste.” --The Archbishop’s Veracious Secretary

Smollett's translation online of the same scene, Book 7 Chapter 4:

God speed you, good Master Gil Blas! I heartily pray that you may do well in the world! There is nothing to stand in your way, but the want of a little better taste.

Lesage's vain archbishop can't take the criticism he asked for. Thus does Gil Blas humorously fail in the role of scribe and confidant. On the prairie, the captain is the obliging scribe. In this particular dialogue, the captain momentarily trips up his critical Imaginary Friend, now playing the role of archbishop to the narrator's Gil Blas:

"... Dear critic, and lover of bathos! hast thou found poetry in a full stomach?"

I. F. "The devil's in the moon. —And there goes another wolf 'concert'"—

"With the thorough bass of a thousand bulls."

I. F. — "All as thoroughly musical as the donkey braying in the caravan camps. I wish you a very good evening, 'and a little better taste.' "--Scenes Beyond the Western Border, January 1852 and Scenes and Adventures in the Army

In blaming the moon for his brief burst of romantic feeling, the normally staid and practical Imaginary Friend quotes from a stanza in the first canto of Bryon's Don Juan:

CXIII
The sun set, and up rose the yellow moon:
     The devil's in the moon for mischief; they
Who call'd her CHASTE, methinks, began too soon
     Their nomenclature; there is not a day,
The longest, not the twenty-first of June,
     Sees half the business in a wicked way
On which three single hours of moonshine smile—
And then she looks so modest all the while.  --Don Juan, Canto the First

For more Byron on the prairie, see old posts Ah, Byron and a poet's audacity.
Below, the full exchange between the Captain and his Imaginary Friend, as originally published in the January 1852 Southern Literary Messenger:

Melville re-imagined one of his sources, Scoresby, as Dr. Zogranda. In The Trying-Out of Moby-Dick, Howard Vincent credits Willard Thorp with recognizing

that Zogranda is a misspelling of the name of Dr. Sangrade from Le Sage's Gil Blas. (p235)

Similarly noted in the Hendricks House Moby-Dick:

Willard Thorp has suggested that Melville invented this doctor by misspelling the name of the physician of Valladolid, Sangrado, to whom the chief character attaches himself as apprentice in Le Sage’s Gil Blas.

Melville's Sources lists all three citations to Thorp,Vincent, and the Mansfield and Vincent edition of Moby-Dick.