Riverby
by John Burroughs · English · Gutenberg #45307 · 501,763 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Riverby
Author: John Burroughs
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| Books by John Burroughs. |
| |
| WORKS. Each volume, 16mo, gilt top, $1.25; the set, 11 vols., |
| uniform, $13.75; half calf, gilt top, $27.50; half polished |
| morocco, $30.25. |
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| WAKE-ROBIN. |
| WINTER SUNSHINE. |
| LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY. |
| FRESH FIELDS. |
| INDOOR STUDIES. |
| BIRDS AND POETS, with Other Papers. |
| PEPACTON, and Other Sketches. |
| SIGNS AND SEASONS. |
| RIVERBY. |
| WHITMAN: A STUDY. |
| THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and |
| Criticisms from the Standpoint of a Naturalist. |
| |
| A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate to each season |
| of the year, from the writings of John Burroughs. Illustrated |
| from Photographs by CLIFTON JOHNSON. Uniform with |
| the _Riverside Edition_ of Burroughs's works. 12mo, $1.50. |
| |
| WHITMAN: A Study. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, $1.50, _net_. |
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| THE LIGHT OF DAY: Religious Discussions and Criticisms from |
| the Standpoint of a Naturalist. _Riverside Edition._ 12mo, |
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| WINTER SUNSHINE. _Cambridge Classics Series._ Crown 8vo, |
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| WAKE-ROBIN. _Riverside Aldine Series._ 16mo, $1.00. |
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| SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS. Illustrated. Square 12mo, |
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| HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
RIVERBY
BY
JOHN BURROUGHS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
Copyright, 1894, 1895,
BY JOHN BURROUGHS.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
PREFATORY NOTE
I have often said to myself, "Why should not one name his books as
he names his children, arbitrarily, and let the name come to mean
much or little, as the case may be?" In the case of the present
volume—probably my last collection of Out-of-door Papers—I have taken
this course, and have given to the book the name of my place here on
the Hudson, "Riverby," by the river, where the sketches were written,
and where for so many years I have been an interested spectator of the
life of nature, as, with the changing seasons, it has ebbed and flowed
past my door.
J. B.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 1
II. THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 33
III. BIRDS' EGGS 61
IV. BIRD COURTSHIP 77
V. NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 87
VI. EYE-BEAMS 111
VII. A YOUNG MARSH HAWK 133
VIII. THE CHIPMUNK 145
IX. SPRING JOTTINGS 155
X. GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 171
XI. A LIFE OF FEAR 193
XII. LOVERS OF NATURE 203
XIII. A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 221
XIV. IN MAMMOTH CAVE 241
XV. HASTY OBSERVATION 251
XVI. BIRD LIFE IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE 271
XVII. THE WAYS OF SPORTSMEN 277
XVIII. TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 283
INDEX 317
RIVERBY
I
AMONG THE WILD FLOWERS
I
Nearly every season I make the acquaintance of one or more new
flowers. It takes years to exhaust the botanical treasures of any one
considerable neighborhood, unless one makes a dead set at it, like
an herbalist. One likes to have his floral acquaintances come to him
easily and naturally, like his other friends. Some pleasant occasion
should bring you together. You meet in a walk, or touch elbows on a
picnic under a tree, or get acquainted on a fishing or camping-out
expedition. What comes to you in the way of birds or flowers, while
wooing only the large spirit of open-air nature, seems like special
good fortune. At any rate, one does not want to bolt his botany, but
rather to prolong the course. One likes to have something in reserve,
something to be on the lookout for on his walks. I have never yet
found the orchid called calypso, a large, variegated purple and yellow
flower, Gray says, which grows in cold, wet woods and bogs,—very
beautiful and very rare. Calypso, you know, was the nymph who fell
in love with Ulysses and detained him seven years upon her island,
and died of a broken heart after he left her. I have a keen desire to
see her in her floral guise, reigning over some silent bog, or rising
above the moss of some dark glen in the woods, and would gladly be the
Ulysses to be detained at least a few hours by her.
I will describe her by the aid of Gray, so that if any of my readers
come across her they may know what a rarity they have found. She may
be looked for in cold, mossy, boggy places in our northern woods. You
will see a low flower, somewhat like a lady's-slipper, that is, with
an inflated sac-shaped lip; the petals and sepals much alike, rising
and spreading; the color mingled purple and yellow; the stem, or scape,
from three to five inches high, with but one leaf,—that one thin and
slightly heart-shaped, with a stem which starts from a solid bulb. That
is the nymph of our boggy solitudes, waiting to break her heart for any
adventurous hero who may penetrate her domain.
Several of our harmless little wild flowers have been absurdly named
out of the old mythologies: thus, Indian cucumber root, one of
Thoreau's favorite flowers, is named after the sorceress Medea, and
is called "medeola," because it was at one time thought to possess
rare medicinal properties; and medicine and sorcery have always been
more or less confounded in the opinion of mankind. It is a pretty and
decorative sort of plant, with, when perfect, two stages or platforms
of leaves, one above the other. You see a whorl of five or six leaves,
a foot or more from the ground, which seems to bear a standard with
another whorl of three leaves at the top of it. The small, colorless,
recurved flowers shoot out from above this top whorl. The whole
expression of the plant is singularly slender and graceful. Sometimes,
probably the first year, it only attains to the first circle of leaves.
This is the platform from which it will rear its flower column the next
year. Its white, tuberous root is crisp and tender, and leaves in the
mouth distinctly the taste of cucumber. Whether or not the Indians used
it as a relish as we do the cucumber, I do not know.
Still another pretty flower that perpetuates the name of a Grecian
nymph, a flower that was a new find to me a few summers ago, is the
arethusa. Arethusa was one of the nymphs who attended Diana, and was by
that goddess turned into a fountain, that she might escape the god of
the river, Alpheus, who became desperately in love with her on seeing
her at her bath. Our Arethusa is one of the prettiest of the orchids,
and has been pursued through many a marsh and quaking bog by her
lovers. She is a bright pink-purple flower an inch or more long, with
the odor of sweet violets. The sepals and petals rise up and arch over
the column, which we may call the heart of the flower, as if shielding
it. In Plymouth County, Massachusetts, where the arethusa seems common,
I have heard it called Indian pink.
But I was going to recount my new finds. One sprang up in the footsteps
of that destroying angel, Dynamite. A new railroad cut across my
tramping-ground, with its hordes of Italian laborers and its mountains
of giant-powder, etc., was enough to banish all the gentler deities
forever from the place. But it did not.
Scarcely had the earthquake passed when, walking at the base of a
rocky cliff that had been partly blown away in the search for stone
for two huge abutments that stood near by, I beheld the débris at the
base of the cliff draped and festooned by one of our most beautiful
foliage plants, and one I had long been on the lookout for, namely,
the climbing fumitory. It was growing everywhere in the greatest
profusion, affording, by its tenderness, delicacy, and grace, the most
striking contrast to the destruction the black giant had wrought. The
power that had smote the rock seemed to have called it into being.
Probably the seeds had lain dormant in cracks and crevices for years,
and when the catastrophe came, and they found themselves in new soil
amid the wreck of the old order of things, they sprang into new life,
and grew as if the world had been created anew for them, as in a sense
it had. Certainly, they grew most luxuriantly, and never was the ruin
wrought by powder veiled by more delicate, lace-like foliage.[5:1]
The panicles of drooping, pale flesh-colored flowers heightened the
effect of the whole. This plant is a regular climber; it has no extra
appendages for that purpose, and does not wind, but climbs by means
of its young leafstalks, which lay hold like tiny hands or hooks. The
end of every branch is armed with a multitude of these baby hands.
The flowers are pendent, and swing like ear jewels. They are slightly
heart-shaped, and when examined closely look like little pockets made
of crumpled silk, nearly white on the inside or under side, and pale
purple on the side toward the light, and shirred up at the bottom.
And pockets they are in quite a literal sense, for, though they fade,
they do not fall, but become pockets full of seeds. The fumitory is a
perpetual bloomer from July till killed by the autumn frosts.
[5:1] Strange to say, the plant did not appear in that
locality the next season, and has never appeared since.
Perhaps it will take another dynamite earthquake to wake it
up.
The closely allied species of this plant, the dicentra (Dutchman's
breeches and squirrel corn), are much more common, and are among our
prettiest spring flowers. I have an eye out for the white-hearts
(related to the bleeding-hearts of the gardens, and absurdly called
"Dutchman's breeches") the last week in April. It is a rock-loving
plant, and springs upon the shelves of the ledges, or in the débris at
their base, as if by magic. As soon as blood-root has begun to star the
waste, stony places, and the first swallow has been heard in the sky,
we are on the lookout for dicentra. The more northern species, called
"squirrel corn" from the small golden tubers at its root, blooms in
May, and has the fragrance of hyacinths. It does not affect the rocks,
like all the other flowers of this family.
My second new acquaintance the same season was the showy
lady's-slipper. Most of the floral ladies leave their slippers in
swampy places in the woods; only the stemless one (_acaule_) leaves
hers on dry ground before she reaches the swamp, commonly under
evergreen trees, where the carpet of pine needles will not hurt her
feet. But one may penetrate many wet, mucky places in the woods before
he finds the prettiest of them all, the showy lady's-slipper,—the
prettiest slipper, but the stoutest and coarsest plant; the flower
large and very showy, white, tinged with purple in front; the stem two
feet high, very leafy, and coarser than bear-weed. Report had come to
me, through my botanizing neighbor, that in a certain quaking sphagnum
bog in the woods the showy lady's-slipper could be found. The locality
proved to be the marrowy grave of an extinct lake or black tarn. On
the borders of it the white azalea was in bloom, fast fading. In the
midst of it were spruces and black ash and giant ferns, and, low in the
spongy, mossy bottom, the pitcher plant. The lady's-slipper grew in
little groups and companies all about. Never have I beheld a prettier
sight,—so gay, so festive, so holiday-looking. Were they so many gay
bonnets rising above the foliage? or were they flocks of white doves
with purple-stained breasts just lifting up their wings to take flight?
or were they little fleets of fairy boats, with sail set, tossing on
a mimic sea of wild, weedy growths? Such images throng the mind on
recalling the scene, and only faintly hint its beauty and animation.
The long, erect, white sepals do much to give the alert, tossing look
which the flower wears. The dim light, too, of its secluded haunts, and
its snowy purity and freshness, contribute to the impression it makes.
The purple tinge is like a stain of wine which has slightly overflowed
the brim of the inflated lip or sac and run part way down its snowy
sides.
This lady's-slipper is one of the rarest and choicest of our wild
flowers, and its haunts and its beauty are known only to the few.
Those who have the secret guard it closely, lest their favorite be
exterminated. A well-known botanist in one of the large New England
cities told me that it was found in but one place in that neighborhood,
and that the secret, so far as he knew, was known to but three persons,
and was carefully kept by them.
A friend of mine, an enthusiast on orchids, came one June day a long
way by rail to see this flower. I conducted him to the edge of the
swamp, lifted up the branches as I would a curtain, and said, "There
they are."
"Where?" said he, peering far into the dim recesses.
"Within six feet of you," I replied.
He narrowed his vision, and such an expression of surprise and delight
as came over his face! A group of a dozen or more of the plants, some
of them twin-flowered, were there almost within reach, the first he had
ever seen, and his appreciation of the scene, visible in every look and
gesture, was greatly satisfying. In the fall he came and moved a few of
the plants to a tamarack swamp in his own vicinity, where they throve
and bloomed finely for a few years, and then for some unknown reason
failed.
Nearly every June, my friend still comes to feast his eyes upon this
queen of the cypripediums.
While returning from my first search for the lady's-slipper, my hat
fairly brushed the nest of the red-eyed vireo, which was so cunningly
concealed, such an open secret, in the dim, leafless underwoods, that
I could but pause and regard it. It was suspended from the end of a
small, curving sapling; was flecked here and there by some whitish
substance, so as to blend it with the gray mottled boles of the trees;
and, in the dimly lighted ground-floor of the woods, was sure to escape
any but the most prolonged scrutiny. A couple of large leaves formed a
canopy above it. It was not so much hidden as it was rendered invisible
by texture and position with reference to light and shade.
A few summers ago I struck a new and beautiful plant in the shape of
a weed that had only recently appeared in that part of the country. I
was walking through an August meadow when I saw, on a little knoll, a
bit of most vivid orange, verging on a crimson. I knew of no flower of
such a complexion frequenting such a place as that. On investigation,
it proved to be a stranger. It had a rough, hairy, leafless stem
about a foot high, surmounted by a corymbose cluster of flowers or
flower-heads of dark vivid orange-color. The leaves were deeply notched
and toothed, very bristly, and were pressed flat to the ground. The
whole plant was a veritable Esau for hairs, and it seemed to lay hold
upon the ground as if it was not going to let go easily. And what a
fiery plume it had! The next day, in another field a mile away, I
chanced upon more of the flowers. On making inquiry, I found that a
small patch or colony of the plants had appeared that season, or first
been noticed then, in a meadow well known to me from boyhood. They
had been cut down with the grass in early July, and the first week in
August had shot up and bloomed again. I found the spot aflame with
them. Their leaves covered every inch of the surface where they stood,
and not a spear of grass grew there. They were taking slow but complete
possession; they were devouring the meadow by inches. The plant seemed
to be a species of hieracium, or hawkweed, or some closely allied
species of the composite family, but I could not find it mentioned in
our botanies.
A few days later, on the edge of an adjoining county ten miles distant,
I found, probably, its headquarters. It had appeared there a few years
before, and was thought to have escaped from some farmer's door-yard.
Patches of it were appearing here and there in the fields, and the
farmers were thoroughly alive to the danger, and were fighting it
like fire. Its seeds are winged like those of the dandelion, and it
sows itself far and near. It would be a beautiful acquisition to our
midsummer fields, supplying a tint as brilliant as that given by the
scarlet poppies to English grain-fields. But it would be an expensive
one, as it usurps the land completely.[10:1]
[10:1] This observation was made ten years ago. I have since
learned that the plant is _Hieracium aurantiacum_ from
Europe, a kind of hawkweed. It is fast becoming a common weed
in New York and New England. (1894.)
Parts of New England have already a midsummer flower nearly as
brilliant, and probably far less aggressive and noxious, in
meadow-beauty, or rhexia, the sole northern genus of a family of
tropical plants. I found it very abundant in August in the country
bordering on Buzzard's Bay. It was a new flower to me, and I was
puzzled to make it out. It seemed like some sort of scarlet evening
primrose. The parts were in fours, the petals slightly heart-shaped and
convoluted in the bud, the leaves bristly, the calyx-tube prolonged,
etc.; but the stem was square, the leaves opposite, and the tube
urn-shaped. The flowers were an inch across, and bright purple. It
grew in large patches in dry, sandy fields, making the desert gay with
color; and also on the edges of marshy places. It eclipses any flower
of the open fields known to me farther inland. When we come to improve
our wild garden, as recommended by Mr. Robinson in his book on wild
gardening, we must not forget the rhexia.
Our seacoast flowers are probably more brilliant in color than the same
flowers in the interior. I thought the wild rose on the Massachusetts
coast deeper tinted and more fragrant than those I was used to. The
steeple-bush, or hardhack, had more color, as had the rose gerardia and
several other plants.
But when vivid color is wanted, what can surpass or equal our
cardinal-flower? There is a glow about this flower as if color emanated
from it as from a live coal. The eye is baffled, and does not seem
to reach the surface of the petal; it does not see the texture or
material part as it does in other flowers, but rests in a steady, still
radiance. It is not so much something colored as it is color itself.
And then the moist, cool, shady places it affects, usually where it has
no floral rivals, and where the large, dark shadows need just such a
dab of fire! Often, too, we see it double, its reflected image in some
dark pool heightening its effect. I have never found it with its only
rival in color, the monarda or bee-balm, a species of mint. Farther
north, the cardinal-flower seems to fail, and the monarda takes its
place, growing in similar localities. One may see it about a mountain
spring, or along a meadow brook, or glowing in the shade around the
head of a wild mountain lake. It stands up two feet high or more, and
the flowers show like a broad scarlet cap.
The only thing I have seen in this country that calls to mind the
green grain-fields of Britain splashed with scarlet poppies may be
witnessed in August in the marshes of the lower Hudson, when the broad
sedgy and flaggy spaces are sprinkled with the great marsh-mallow. It
is a most pleasing spectacle,—level stretches of dark green flag or
waving marsh-grass kindled on every square yard by these bright pink
blossoms, like great burning coals fanned in the breeze. The mallow is
not so deeply colored as the poppy, but it is much larger, and has the
tint of youth and happiness. It is an immigrant from Europe, but it is
making itself thoroughly at home in our great river meadows.
The same day your eye is attracted by the mallows, as your train skirts
or cuts through the broad marshes, it will revel with delight in the
masses of fresh bright color afforded by the purple loosestrife, which
grows in similar localities, and shows here and there like purple
bonfires. It is a tall plant, grows in dense masses, and affords a
most striking border to the broad spaces dotted with the mallow. It,
too, came to us from over seas, and first appeared along the Wallkill,
many years ago. It used to be thought by the farmers in that vicinity
that its seed was first brought in wool imported to this country from
Australia, and washed in the Wallkill at Walden, where there was a
woolen factory. This is not probable, as it is a European species, and
I should sooner think it had escaped from cultivation. If one were to
act upon the suggestions of Robinson's "Wild Garden," already alluded
to, he would gather the seeds of these plants and sow them in the
marshes and along the sluggish inland streams, till the banks of all
our rivers were gay with these brilliant exotics.
Among our native plants, the one that takes broad marshes to itself
and presents vast sheets of color is the marsh milkweed, far less
brilliant than the loosestrife or the mallow, still a missionary in the
wilderness, lighting up many waste places with its humbler tints of
purple.
One sometimes seems to discover a familiar wild flower anew by coming
upon it in some peculiar and striking situation. Our columbine is at
all times and in all places one of the most exquisitely beautiful of
flowers; yet one spring day, when I saw it growing out of a small seam
on the face of a great lichen-covered wall of rock, where no soil or
mould was visible,—a jet of foliage and color shooting out of a black
line on the face of a perpendicular mountain wall and rising up like a
tiny fountain, its drops turning to flame-colored jewels that hung and
danced in the air against the gray rocky surface,—its beauty became
something magical and audacious. On little narrow shelves in the rocky
wall the corydalis was blooming, and among the loose bowlders at its
base the blood-root shone conspicuous, suggesting snow rather than
anything more sanguine.
Certain flowers one makes special expeditions for every season. They
are limited in their ranges, and must generally be sought for in
particular haunts. How many excursions to the woods does the delicious
trailing arbutus give rise to! How can one let the spring go by without
gathering it himself when it hides in the moss! There are arbutus days
in one's calendar, days when the trailing flower fairly calls him to
the woods. With me, they come the latter part of April. The grass is
greening here and there on the moist slopes and by the spring runs; the
first furrow has been struck by the farmer; the liver-leaf is in the
height of its beauty, and the bright constellations of the blood-root
shine out here and there; one has had his first taste and his second
taste of the spring and of the woods, and his tongue is sharpened
rather than cloyed. Now he will take the most delicious and satisfying
draught of all, the very essence and soul of the early season, of the
tender brooding days, with all their prophecies and awakenings, in the
handful of trailing arbutus which he gathers in his walk. At the mere
thought of it, one sees the sunlight flooding the woods, smells the
warm earthy odors which the heat liberates from beneath the dry leaves,
hears the mellow bass of the first bumblebee,
"Rover of the underwoods,"
or the finer chord of the adventurous honey-bee seeking store for
his empty comb. The arriving swallows twitter above the woods; the
first chewink rustles the dry leaves; the northward-bound thrushes,
the hermit and the gray-cheeked, flit here and there before you. The
robin, the sparrow, and the bluebird are building their first nests,
and the first shad are making their way slowly up the Hudson. Indeed,
the season is fairly under way when the trailing arbutus comes. Now
look out for troops of boys and girls going to the woods to gather it!
and let them look out that in their greed they do not exterminate it.
Within reach of our large towns, the choicer spring wild flowers are
hunted mercilessly. Every fresh party from town raids them as if bent
upon their destruction. One day, about ten miles from one of our Hudson
River cities, there got into the train six young women loaded down
with vast sheaves and bundles of trailing arbutus. Each one of them
had enough for forty. They had apparently made a clean sweep of the
woods. It was a pretty sight,—the pink and white of the girls and the
pink and white of the flowers! and the car, too, was suddenly filled
with perfume,—the breath of spring loaded the air; but I thought it
a pity to ravish the woods in that way. The next party was probably
equally greedy, and, because a handful was desirable, thought an armful
proportionately so; till, by and by, the flower will be driven from
those woods.
Another flower that one makes special excursions for is the pond-lily.
The pond-lily is a star, and easily takes the first place among lilies;
and the expeditions to her haunts, and the gathering her where she
rocks upon the dark secluded waters of some pool or lakelet, are the
crown and summit of the floral expeditions of summer. It is the
expedition about which more things gather than almost any other: you
want your boat, you want your lunch, you want your friend or friends
with you. You are going to put in the greater part of the day; you
are going to picnic in the woods, and indulge in a "green thought in
a green shade." When my friend and I go for pond-lilies, we have to
traverse a distance of three miles with our boat in a wagon. The road
is what is called a "back road," and leads through woods most of the
way. Black Pond, where the lilies grow, lies about one hundred feet
higher than the Hudson, from which it is separated by a range of rather
bold wooded heights, one of which might well be called Mount Hymettus,
for I have found a great deal of wild honey in the forest that covers
it. The stream which flows out of the pond takes a northward course for
two or three miles, till it finds an opening through the rocky hills,
when it makes rapidly for the Hudson. Its career all the way from the
lake is a series of alternating pools and cascades. Now a long, deep,
level stretch, where the perch and the bass and the pickerel lurk, and
where the willow-herb and the royal osmunda fern line the shores; then
a sudden leap of eight, ten, or fifteen feet down rocks to another
level stretch, where the water again loiters and suns itself; and so
on through its adventurous course till the hills are cleared and the
river is in sight. Our road leads us along this stream, across its
rude bridges, through dark hemlock and pine woods, under gray, rocky
walls, now past a black pool, then within sight or hearing of a foaming
rapid or fall, till we strike the outlet of the long level that leads
to the lake. In this we launch our boat and paddle slowly upward over
its dark surface, now pushing our way through half-submerged treetops,
then ducking under the trunk of an overturned tree which bridges the
stream and makes a convenient way for the squirrels and wood-mice, or
else forcing the boat over it when it is sunk a few inches below the
surface. We are traversing what was once a continuation of the lake;
the forest floor is as level as the water and but a few inches above
it, even in summer; it sweeps back a half mile or more, densely covered
with black ash, red maple, and other deciduous trees, to the foot of
the rocky hills which shut us in. What glimpses we get, as we steal
along, into the heart of the rank, dense, silent woods! I carry in my
eye yet the vision I had, on one occasion, of a solitary meadow lily
hanging like a fairy bell there at the end of a chance opening, where a
ray of sunlight fell full upon it, and brought out its brilliant orange
against the dark green background. It appeared to be the only bit of
bright color in all the woods. Then the song of a single hermit thrush
immediately after did even more for the ear than the lily did for the
eye. Presently the swamp sparrow, one of the rarest of the sparrows,
was seen and heard; and that nest there in a small bough a few feet
over the water proves to be hers,—in appearance a ground-bird's nest
in a bough, with the same four speckled eggs. As we come in sight of
the lilies, where they cover the water at the outlet of the lake, a
brisk gust of wind, as if it had been waiting to surprise us, sweeps
down and causes every leaf to leap from the water and show its pink
under side. Was it a fluttering of hundreds of wings, or the clapping
of a multitude of hands? But there rocked the lilies with their golden
hearts open to the sun, and their tender white petals as fresh as
crystals of snow. What a queenly flower, indeed, the type of unsullied
purity and sweetness! Its root, like a black, corrugated, ugly reptile,
clinging to the slime, but its flower in purity and whiteness like a
star. There is something very pretty in the closed bud making its way
up through the water to meet the sun; and there is something touching
in the flower closing itself up again after its brief career, and
slowly burying itself beneath the dark wave. One almost fancies a sad,
regretful look in it as the stem draws it downward to mature its seed
on the sunless bottom. The pond-lily is a flower of the morning; it
closes a little after noon; but after you have plucked it and carried
it home, it still feels the call of the morning sun, and will open to
him, if you give it a good chance. Coil their stems up in the grass
on the lawn, where the sun's rays can reach them, and sprinkle them
copiously. By the time you are ready for your morning walk, there they
sit upon the moist grass, almost as charmingly as upon the wave.
Our more choice wild flowers, the rarer and finer spirits among them,
please us by their individual beauty and charm; others, more coarse and
common, delight us by mass and profusion; we regard not the one, but
the many, as did Wordsworth his golden daffodils:—
"Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."
Of such is the marsh marigold, giving a golden lining to many a
dark, marshy place in the leafless April woods, or marking a little
watercourse through a greening meadow with a broad line of new gold.
One glances up from his walk, and his eye falls upon something like
fixed and heaped-up sunshine there beneath the alders, or yonder in the
freshening field.
In a measure, the same is true of our wild sunflowers, lighting up many
a neglected bushy fence-corner or weedy roadside with their bright,
beaming faces. The evening primrose is a coarse, rankly growing plant;
but, in late summer, how many an untrimmed bank is painted over by it
with the most fresh and delicate canary yellow!
We have one flower which grows in vast multitudes, yet which is
exquisitely delicate and beautiful in and of itself: I mean the
houstonia, or bluets. In May, in certain parts of the country, I see
vast sheets of it; in old, low meadow bottoms that have never known the
plow, it covers the ground like a dull bluish or purplish snow which
has blown unevenly about. In the mass it is not especially pleasing;
it has a faded, indefinite sort of look. Its color is not strong and
positive enough to be effective in the mass, yet each single flower
is a gem of itself. The color of the common violet is much more firm
and pronounced; and how many a grassy bank is made gay with it in the
mid-May days! We have a great variety of violets, and they are very
capricious as to perfume. The only species which are uniformly fragrant
are the tall Canada violet, so common in our northern woods,—white,
with a tinge of purple to the under side of its petals,—and the small
white violet of the marshy places; yet one summer I came upon a host
of the spurred violet in a sunny place in the woods which filled the
air with a delicate perfume. A handful of them yielded a perceptible
fragrance, but a single flower none that I could detect. The Canada
violet very frequently blooms in the fall, and is more fragrant at such
times than in its earlier blooming. I must not forget to mention that
delicate and lovely flower of May, the fringed polygala. You gather
it when you go for the fragrant, showy orchis,—that is, if you are
lucky enough to find it. It is rather a shy flower, and is not found in
every wood. One day we went up and down through the woods looking for
it,—woods of mingled oak, chestnut, pine, and hemlock,—and were about
giving it up when suddenly we came upon a gay company of them beside an
old wood-road. It was as if a flock of small rose-purple butterflies
had alighted there on the ground before us. The whole plant has a
singularly fresh and tender aspect. Its foliage is of a slightly purple
tinge, and of very delicate texture. Not the least interesting feature
about the plant is the concealed fertile flower which it bears on a
subterranean shoot, keeping, as it were, one flower for beauty and one
for use.
II
In our walks we note the most showy and beautiful flowers, but not
always the most interesting. Who, for instance, pauses to consider that
early species of everlasting, commonly called mouse-ear, that grows
nearly everywhere by the roadside or about poor fields? It begins to be
noticeable in May, its whitish downy appearance, its groups of slender
stalks crowned with a corymb of paper-like buds, contrasting it with
the fresh green of surrounding grass or weeds. It is a member of a very
large family, the Compositæ, and does not attract one by its beauty;
but it is interesting because of its many curious traits and habits.
For instance, it is diœcious, that is, the two sexes are represented
by separate plants; and, what is more curious, these plants are usually
found separated from each other in well-defined groups, like the men
and women in an old-fashioned country church,—always in groups; here
a group of females, there, a few yards away, a group of males. The
females may be known by their more slender and graceful appearance,
and, as the season advances, by their outstripping the males in growth.
Indeed, they become real amazons in comparison with their brothers.
The staminate or male plants grow but a few inches high; the heads
are round, and have a more dusky or freckled appearance than do the
pistillate; and as soon as they have shed their pollen their work is
done, they are of no further use, and by the middle of May, or before,
their heads droop, their stalks wither, and their general collapse
sets in. Then the other sex, or pistillate plants, seem to have taken
a new lease of life; they wax strong, they shoot up with the growing
grass and keep their heads above it; they are alert and active; they
bend in the breeze; their long, tapering flower-heads take on a tinge
of color, and life seems full of purpose and enjoyment with them. I
have discovered, too, that they are real sun-worshipers; that they
turn their faces to the east in the morning, and follow the sun in his
course across the sky till they all bend to the west at his going down.
On the other hand, their brothers have stood stiff and stupid, and
unresponsive to any influence of sky and air, so far as I could see,
till they drooped and died.
Another curious thing is that the females seem vastly more numerous,—I
should say almost ten times as abundant. You have to hunt for the
males; the others you see far off. One season I used every day to pass
several groups or circles of females in the grass by the roadside. I
noted how they grew and turned their faces sunward. I observed how
alert and vigorous they were, and what a purplish tinge came over their
mammæ-shaped flower-heads as June approached. I looked for the males;
to the east, south, west, none could be found for hundreds of yards.
On the north, about two hundred feet away, I found a small colony of
meek and lowly males. I wondered by what agency fertilization would
take place,—by insects, or by the wind? I suspected it would not take
place. No insects seemed to visit the flowers, and the wind surely
could not be relied upon to hit the mark so far off, and from such an
unlikely corner, too. But by some means the vitalizing dust seemed to
have been conveyed. Early in June, the plants began to shed their down,
or seed-bearing pappus, still carrying their heads at the top of the
grass, so that the breezes could have free access to them, and sow the
seeds far and wide.
As the seeds are sown broadcast by the wind, I was at first puzzled
to know how the two sexes were kept separate, and always in little
communities, till I perceived, what I might have read in the botany,
that the plant is perennial and spreads by offsets and runners, like
the strawberry. This would of course keep the two kinds in groups by
themselves.
Another plant which has interesting ways and is beautiful besides is
the adder's-tongue, or yellow erythronium, the earliest of the lilies,
and one of the most pleasing. The April sunshine is fairly reflected in
its revolute flowers. The lilies have bulbs that sit on or near the top
of the ground. The onion is a fair type of the lily in this respect.
But here is a lily with the bulb deep in the ground. How it gets there
is well worth investigating. The botany says that the bulb is deep in
the ground, but offers no explanation. Now it is only the bulbs of the
older or flowering plants that are deep in the ground. The bulbs of the
young plants are near the top of the ground. The young plants have but
one leaf, the older or flowering ones have two. If you happen to be in
the woods at the right time in early April, you may see these leaves
compactly rolled together, piercing the matted coating of sear leaves
that cover the ground like some sharp-pointed instrument. They do not
burst their covering or lift it up, but pierce through it like an awl.
But how does the old bulb get so deep into the ground? In digging
some of them up one spring in an old meadow bottom, I had to cleave
the tough fibrous sod to a depth of eight inches. The smaller ones
were barely two inches below the surface. Of course they all started
from the seed at the surface of the soil. The young botanist, or
nature-lover, will find here a field for original research. If, in late
May or early June, after the leaves of the plant have disappeared, he
finds the ground where they stood showing curious, looping, twisting
growths or roots, of a greenish white color, let him examine them. They
are as smooth and as large as an angle-worm, and very brittle. Both
ends will be found in the ground, one attached to the old bulb, the
other boring or drilling downward and enlarged till it suggests the new
bulb. I do not know that this mother root in all cases comes to the
surface. Why it should come at all is a mystery, unless it be in some
way to get more power for the downward thrust. My own observations upon
the subject are not complete, but I think in the foregoing I have given
the clew as to how the bulb each year sinks deeper and deeper into the
ground.
It is a pity that this graceful and abundant flower has no good and
appropriate common name. It is the earliest of the true lilies,
and it has all the grace and charm that belong to this order of
flowers. _Erythronium_, its botanical name, is not good, as it is
derived from a Greek word that means red, while one species of our
flower is yellow and the other is white. How it came to be called
adder's-tongue I do not know; probably from the spotted character of
the leaf, which might suggest a snake, though it in no wise resembles
a snake's tongue. A fawn is spotted, too, and "fawn-lily" would be
better than adder's-tongue. Still better is the name "trout-lily,"
which has recently been proposed for this plant. It blooms along the
trout streams, and its leaf is as mottled as a trout's back. The name
"dog's-tooth" may have been suggested by the shape and color of the
bud, but how the "violet" came to be added is a puzzle, as it has not
one feature of the violet. It is only another illustration of the
haphazard way in which our wild flowers, as well as our birds, have
been named.
In my spring rambles I have sometimes come upon a solitary specimen of
this yellow lily growing beside a mossy stone where the sunshine fell
full upon it, and have thought it one of the most beautiful of our wild
flowers. Its two leaves stand up like a fawn's ears, and this feature,
with its recurved petals, gives it an alert, wide-awake look. The white
species I have never seen. I am told they are very abundant on the
mountains in California.
Another of our common wild flowers, which I always look at with an
interrogation-point in my mind, is the wild ginger. Why should this
plant always hide its flower? Its two fuzzy, heart-shaped green leaves
stand up very conspicuously amid the rocks or mossy stones; but its one
curious, brown, bell-shaped flower is always hidden beneath the moss
or dry leaves, as if too modest to face the light of the open woods.
As a rule, the one thing which a plant is anxious to show and to make
much of, and to flaunt before all the world, is its flower. But the
wild ginger reverses the rule, and blooms in secret. Instead of turning
upward toward the light and air, it turns downward toward the darkness
and the silence. It has no corolla, but what the botanists call a lurid
or brown-purple calyx, which is conspicuous like a corolla. Its root
leaves in the mouth a taste precisely like that of ginger.
This plant and the closed gentian are apparent exceptions, in their
manner of blooming, to the general habit of the rest of our flowers.
The closed gentian does not hide its flower, but the corolla never
opens; it always remains a closed bud. I used to think that this
gentian could never experience the benefits of insect visits, which
Darwin showed us were of such importance in the vegetable world. I once
plucked one of the flowers into which a bumblebee had forced his way,
but he had never come out; the flower was his tomb.
I am assured, however, by recent observers, that the bumblebee does
successfully enter the closed corolla, and thus distribute its
pollen.[27:1]
[27:1] "A bumblebee came along and lit upon a cluster of
asters. Leaving these, it next visited a head of gentians,
and with some difficulty thrust its tongue through the valves
of the nearest blossom; then it pushed in its head and body
until only the hind legs and the tip of the abdomen were
sticking out. In this position it made the circuit of the
blossom, and then emerged, resting a moment to brush the
pollen from its head and thorax into the pollen-baskets,
before flying again to a neighboring aster. The whole process
required about twenty seconds." _Ten New England Blossoms and
their Insect Visitors_, CLARENCE MOORES WEED, pp. 93, 94.
There is yet another curious exception which I will mention, namely,
the witch-hazel. All our trees and plants bloom in the spring, except
this one species; this blooms in the fall. Just as its leaves are
fading and falling, its flowers appear, giving out an odor along the
bushy lanes and margins of the woods that is to the nose like cool
water to the hand. Why it should bloom in the fall instead of in the
spring is a mystery. And it is probably because of this very curious
trait that its branches are used as divining-rods, by certain credulous
persons, to point out where springs of water and precious metals are
hidden.
Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from
the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and
woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight. Find your
flower, and then name it by the aid of the botany. There is so much in
a name. To find out what a thing is called is a great help. It is the
beginning of knowledge; it is the first step. When we see a new person
who interests us, we wish to know his or her name. A bird, a flower, a
place,—the first thing we wish to know about it is its name. Its name
helps us to classify it; it gives us a handle to grasp it by; it sheds
a ray of light where all before was darkness. As soon as we know the
name of a thing, we seem to have established some sort of relation with
it.
The other day, while the train was delayed by an accident, I wandered
a few yards away from it along the river margin seeking wild flowers.
Should I find any whose name I did not know? While thus loitering,
a young English girl also left the train and came in my direction,
plucking the flowers right and left as she came. But they were all
unknown to her; she did not know the name of one of them, and she
wished to send them home to her father, too. With what satisfaction she
heard the names! The words seemed to be full of meaning to her, though
she had never heard them before in her life. It was what she wanted: it
was an introduction to the flowers, and her interest in them increased
at once.
"That orange-colored flower which you just plucked from the edge of
the water,—that is our jewel-weed," I said.
"It looks like a jewel," she replied.
"You have nothing like it in England, or did not have till lately; but
I hear it is now appearing along certain English streams, having been
brought from this country."
"And what is this?" she inquired, holding up a blue flower with a very
bristly leaf and stalk.
"That is viper's bugloss, or blue-weed, a plant from your side of the
water, one that is making itself thoroughly at home along the Hudson,
and in the valleys of some of its tributaries among the Catskills. It
is a rough, hardy weed, but its flower, with its long, conspicuous
purple stamens and blue corolla, as you see, is very pretty."
"Here is another emigrant from across the Atlantic," I said, holding up
a cluster of small white flowers, each mounted upon a little inflated
brown bag or balloon,—the bladder campion. "It also runs riot in
some of our fields, as I am sure you will not see it at home." She
went on filling her hands with flowers, and I gave her the names of
each,—sweet clover or melilotus, a foreign plant; vervain (foreign);
purple loosestrife (foreign); toad-flax (foreign); chelone, or
turtle-head, a native; and the purple mimulus, or monkey-flower, also a
native. It was a likely place for the cardinal-flower, but I could not
find any. I wanted this hearty English girl to see one of our native
wild flowers so intense in color that it would fairly make her eyes
water to gaze upon it.
Just then the whistle of the engine summoned us all aboard, and in a
moment we were off.
When one is stranded anywhere in the country in the season of flowers
or birds, if he feels any interest in these things he always has
something ready at hand to fall back upon. And if he feels no interest
in them he will do well to cultivate an interest. The tedium of an
eighty-mile drive which I lately took (in September), cutting through
parts of three counties, was greatly relieved by noting the various
flowers by the roadside. First my attention was attracted by wild thyme
making purple patches here and there in the meadows and pastures. I got
out of the wagon and gathered some of it. I found honey-bees working
upon it, and remembered that it was a famous plant for honey in parts
of the Old World. It had probably escaped from some garden; I had never
seen it growing wild in this way before. Along the Schoharie Kill, I
saw acres of blue-weed, or viper's bugloss, the hairy stems of the
plants, when looked at toward the sun, having a frosted appearance.
What is this tall plant by the roadside, thickly hung with pendent
clusters of long purplish buds or tassels? The stalk is four feet high,
the lower leaves are large and lobed, and the whole effect of the plant
is striking. The clusters of purple pendents have a very decorative
effect. This is a species of nabalus, of the great composite family,
and is sometimes called lion's-foot. The flower is cream-colored, but
quite inconspicuous. The noticeable thing about it is the drooping
or pendulous clusters of what appear to be buds, but which are the
involucres, bundles of purple scales, like little staves, out of which
the flower emerges.
In another place I caught sight of something intensely blue in a wet,
weedy place, and, on getting some of it, found it to be the closed
gentian, a flower to which I have already referred as never opening,
but always remaining a bud. Four or five of these blue buds, each like
the end of your little finger and as long as the first joint, crown the
top of the stalk, set in a rosette of green leaves. It is one of our
rarer flowers, and a very interesting one, well worth getting out of
the wagon to gather. As I drove through a swampy part of Ulster County,
my attention was attracted by a climbing plant overrunning the low
bushes by the sluggish streams, and covering them thickly with clusters
of dull white flowers. I did not remember ever to have seen it before,
and, on taking it home and examining it, found it to be climbing
boneset. The flowers are so much like those of boneset that you would
suspect their relationship at once.
Without the name, any flower is still more or less a stranger to
you. The name betrays its family, its relationship to other flowers,
and gives the mind something tangible to grasp. It is very difficult
for persons who have had no special training to learn the names of
the flowers from the botany. The botany is a sealed book to them.
The descriptions of the flowers are in a language which they do not
understand at all. And the key is no help to them. It is as much a
puzzle as the botany itself. They need a key to unlock the key.
One of these days some one will give us a handbook of our wild flowers,
by the aid of which we shall all be able to name those we gather in
our walks without the trouble of analyzing them. In this book we shall
have a list of all our flowers arranged according to color, as white
flowers, blue flowers, yellow flowers, pink flowers, etc., with place
of growth and time of blooming; also lists or sub-lists of fragrant
flowers, climbing flowers, marsh flowers, meadow flowers, wood flowers,
etc., so that, with flower in hand, by running over these lists we
shall be pretty sure to find its name. Having got its name, we can
turn to Gray or Wood and find a more technical description of it if we
choose.
II
THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS
On looking at the southern and more distant Catskills from the Hudson
River on the east, or on looking at them from the west from some point
of vantage in Delaware County, you see, amid the group of mountains,
one that looks like the back and shoulders of a gigantic horse. The
horse has got his head down grazing; the shoulders are high, and the
descent from them down his neck very steep; if he were to lift up his
head, one sees that it would be carried far above all other peaks,
and that the noble beast might gaze straight to his peers in the
Adirondacks or the White Mountains. But the head and neck never come
up; some spell or enchantment keeps it down there amid the mighty herd;
and the high round shoulders and the smooth strong back of the steed
are alone visible. The peak to which I refer is Slide Mountain, the
highest of the Catskills by some two hundred feet, and probably the
most inaccessible; certainly the hardest to get a view of, it is hedged
about so completely by other peaks,—the greatest mountain of them all,
and apparently the least willing to be seen; only at a distance of
thirty or forty miles is it seen to stand up above all other peaks. It
takes its name from a landslide which occurred many years ago down its
steep northern side, or down the neck of the grazing steed. The mane of
spruce and balsam fir was stripped away for many hundred feet, leaving
a long gray streak visible from afar.
Slide Mountain is the centre and the chief of the southern Catskills.
Streams flow from its base, and from the base of its subordinates,
to all points of the compass,—the Rondout and the Neversink to the
south; the Beaverkill to the west; the Esopus to the north; and several
lesser streams to the east. With its summit as the centre, a radius of
ten miles would include within the circle described but very little
cultivated land; only a few poor, wild farms in some of the numerous
valleys. The soil is poor, a mixture of gravel and clay, and is subject
to slides. It lies in the valleys in ridges and small hillocks, as if
dumped there from a huge cart. The tops of the southern Catskills are
all capped with a kind of conglomerate, or "pudden stone,"—a rock of
cemented quartz pebbles which underlies the coal measures. This rock
disintegrates under the action of the elements, and the sand and gravel
which result are carried into the valleys and make up the most of the
soil. From the northern Catskills, so far as I know them, this rock has
been swept clean. Low down in the valleys the old red sandstone crops
out, and, as you go west into Delaware County, in many places it alone
remains and makes up most of the soil, all the superincumbent rock
having been carried away.
Slide Mountain had been a summons and a challenge to me for many
years. I had fished every stream that it nourished, and had camped
in the wilderness on all sides of it, and whenever I had caught a
glimpse of its summit I had promised myself to set foot there before
another season had passed. But the seasons came and went, and my feet
got no nimbler, and Slide Mountain no lower, until finally, one July,
seconded by an energetic friend, we thought to bring Slide to terms by
approaching him through the mountains on the east. With a farmer's son
for guide we struck in by way of Weaver Hollow, and, after a long and
desperate climb, contented ourselves with the Wittenberg, instead of
Slide. The view from the Wittenberg is in many respects more striking,
as you are perched immediately above a broader and more distant sweep
of country, and are only about two hundred feet lower. You are here on
the eastern brink of the southern Catskills, and the earth falls away
at your feet and curves down through an immense stretch of forest till
it joins the plain of Shokan, and thence sweeps away to the Hudson and
beyond. Slide is southwest of you, six or seven miles distant, but is
visible only when you climb into a treetop. I climbed and saluted him,
and promised to call next time.
We passed the night on the Wittenberg, sleeping on the moss, between
two decayed logs, with balsam boughs thrust into the ground and meeting
and forming a canopy over us. In coming off the mountain in the
morning we ran upon a huge porcupine, and I learned for the first time
that the tail of a porcupine goes with a spring like a trap. It seems
to be a set-lock; and you no sooner touch with the weight of a hair one
of the quills, than the tail leaps up in a most surprising manner, and
the laugh is not on your side. The beast cantered along the path in my
front, and I threw myself upon him, shielded by my roll of blankets.
He submitted quietly to the indignity, and lay very still under my
blankets, with his broad tail pressed close to the ground. This I
proceeded to investigate, but had not fairly made a beginning when
it went off like a trap, and my hand and wrist were full of quills.
This caused me to let up on the creature, when it lumbered away till
it tumbled down a precipice. The quills were quickly removed from my
hand, when we gave chase. When we came up to him, he had wedged himself
in between the rocks so that he presented only a back bristling with
quills, with the tail lying in ambush below. He had chosen his position
well, and seemed to defy us. After amusing ourselves by repeatedly
springing his tail and receiving the quills in a rotten stick, we made
a slip-noose out of a spruce root, and, after much manœuvring, got
it over his head and led him forth. In what a peevish, injured tone
the creature did complain of our unfair tactics! He protested and
protested, and whimpered and scolded like some infirm old man tormented
by boys. His game after we led him forth was to keep himself as much
as possible in the shape of a ball, but with two sticks and the cord
we finally threw him over on his back and exposed his quill-less and
vulnerable under side, when he fairly surrendered and seemed to say,
"Now you may do with me as you like." His great chisel-like teeth,
which are quite as formidable as those of the woodchuck, he does not
appear to use at all in his defense, but relies entirely upon his
quills, and when those fail him he is done for.
After amusing ourselves with him awhile longer, we released him and
went on our way. The trail to which we had committed ourselves led us
down into Woodland Valley, a retreat which so took my eye by its fine
trout brook, its superb mountain scenery, and its sweet seclusion,
that I marked it for my own, and promised myself a return to it at
no distant day. This promise I kept, and pitched my tent there twice
during that season. Both occasions were a sort of laying siege to
Slide, but we only skirmished with him at a distance; the actual
assault was not undertaken. But the following year, reinforced by two
other brave climbers, we determined upon the assault, and upon making
it from this the most difficult side. The regular way is by Big Ingin
Valley, where the climb is comparatively easy, and where it is often
made by women. But from Woodland Valley only men may essay the ascent.
Larkins is the upper inhabitant, and from our camping-ground near his
clearing we set out early one June morning.
One would think nothing could be easier to find than a big mountain,
especially when one is encamped upon a stream which he knows springs
out of its very loins. But for some reason or other we had got an idea
that Slide Mountain was a very slippery customer and must be approached
cautiously. We had tried from several points in the valley to get a
view of it, but were not quite sure we had seen its very head. When on
the Wittenberg, a neighboring peak, the year before, I had caught a
brief glimpse of it only by climbing a dead tree and craning up for a
moment from its topmost branch. It would seem as if the mountain had
taken every precaution to shut itself off from a near view. It was
a shy mountain, and we were about to stalk it through six or seven
miles of primitive woods, and we seemed to have some unreasonable fear
that it might elude us. We had been told of parties who had essayed
the ascent from this side, and had returned baffled and bewildered.
In a tangle of primitive woods, the very bigness of the mountain
baffles one. It is all mountain; whichever way you turn—and one turns
sometimes in such cases before he knows it—the foot finds a steep and
rugged ascent.
The eye is of little service; one must be sure of his bearings and push
boldly on and up. One is not unlike a flea upon a great shaggy beast,
looking for the animal's head; or even like a much smaller and much
less nimble creature,—he may waste his time and steps, and think he
has reached the head when he is only upon the rump. Hence I questioned
our host, who had several times made the ascent, closely. Larkins laid
his old felt hat upon the table, and, placing one hand upon one side
and the other upon the other, said: "There Slide lies, between the two
forks of the stream, just as my hat lies between my two hands. David
will go with you to the forks, and then you will push right on up." But
Larkins was not right, though he had traversed all those mountains many
times over. The peak we were about to set out for did not lie between
the forks, but exactly at the head of one of them; the beginnings of
the stream are in the very path of the slide, as we afterward found. We
broke camp early in the morning, and with our blankets strapped to our
backs and rations in our pockets for two days, set out along an ancient
and in places an obliterated bark road that followed and crossed and
recrossed the stream. The morning was bright and warm, but the wind
was fitful and petulant, and I predicted rain. What a forest solitude
our obstructed and dilapidated wood-road led us through! five miles
of primitive woods before we came to the forks, three miles before we
came to the "burnt shanty," a name merely,—no shanty there now for
twenty-five years past. The ravages of the bark-peelers were still
visible, now in a space thickly strewn with the soft and decayed trunks
of hemlock-trees, and overgrown with wild cherry, then in huge mossy
logs scattered through the beech and maple woods; some of these logs
were so soft and mossy that one could sit or recline upon them as upon
a sofa.
But the prettiest thing was the stream soliloquizing in such musical
tones there amid the moss-covered rocks and boulders. How clean it
looked, what purity! Civilization corrupts the streams as it corrupts
the Indian; only in such remote woods can you now see a brook in all
its original freshness and beauty. Only the sea and the mountain forest
brook are pure; all between is contaminated more or less by the work of
man. An ideal trout brook was this, now hurrying, now loitering, now
deepening around a great boulder, now gliding evenly over a pavement
of green-gray stone and pebbles; no sediment or stain of any kind,
but white and sparkling as snow-water, and nearly as cool. Indeed,
the water of all this Catskill region is the best in the world. For
the first few days, one feels as if he could almost live on the water
alone; he cannot drink enough of it. In this particular it is indeed
the good Bible land, "a land of brooks of water, of fountains and
depths that spring out of valleys and hills."
Near the forks we caught, or thought we caught, through an opening, a
glimpse of Slide. Was it Slide? was it the head, or the rump, or the
shoulder of the shaggy monster we were in quest of? At the forks there
was a bewildering maze of underbrush and great trees, and the way did
not seem at all certain; nor was David, who was then at the end of
his reckoning, able to reassure us. But in assaulting a mountain, as
in assaulting a fort, boldness is the watchword. We pressed forward,
following a line of blazed trees for nearly a mile, then, turning
to the left, began the ascent of the mountain. It was steep, hard
climbing. We saw numerous marks of both bears and deer; but no birds,
save at long intervals the winter wren flitting here and there, and
darting under logs and rubbish like a mouse. Occasionally its gushing,
lyrical song would break the silence. After we had climbed an hour or
two, the clouds began to gather, and presently the rain began to come
down. This was discouraging; but we put our backs up against trees and
rocks, and waited for the shower to pass.
"They were wet with the showers of the mountain, and embraced the rocks
for want of shelter," as they did in Job's time. But the shower was
light and brief, and we were soon under way again. Three hours from
the forks brought us out on the broad level back of the mountain upon
which Slide, considered as an isolated peak, is reared. After a time we
entered a dense growth of spruce which covered a slight depression in
the table of the mountain. The moss was deep, the ground spongy, the
light dim, the air hushed. The transition from the open, leafy woods to
this dim, silent, weird grove was very marked. It was like the passage
from the street into the temple. Here we paused awhile and ate our
lunch, and refreshed ourselves with water gathered from a little well
sunk in the moss.
The quiet and repose of this spruce grove proved to be the calm that
goes before the storm. As we passed out of it, we came plump upon the
almost perpendicular battlements of Slide. The mountain rose like a
huge, rock-bound fortress from this plain-like expanse. It was ledge
upon ledge, precipice upon precipice, up which and over which we
made our way slowly and with great labor, now pulling ourselves up by
our hands, then cautiously finding niches for our feet and zigzagging
right and left from shelf to shelf. This northern side of the mountain
was thickly covered with moss and lichens, like the north side of a
tree. This made it soft to the foot, and broke many a slip and fall.
Everywhere a stunted growth of yellow birch, mountain-ash, and spruce
and fir opposed our progress. The ascent at such an angle with a roll
of blankets on your back is not unlike climbing a tree: every limb
resists your progress and pushes you back; so that when we at last
reached the summit, after twelve or fifteen hundred feet of this sort
of work, the fight was about all out of the best of us. It was then
nearly two o'clock, so that we had been about seven hours in coming
seven miles.
Here on the top of the mountain we overtook spring, which had been
gone from the valley nearly a month. Red clover was opening in the
valley below, and wild strawberries just ripening; on the summit the
yellow birch was just hanging out its catkins, and the claytonia, or
spring-beauty, was in bloom. The leaf-buds of the trees were just
bursting, making a faint mist of green, which, as the eye swept
downward, gradually deepened until it became a dense, massive cloud in
the valleys. At the foot of the mountain the clintonia, or northern
green lily, and the low shad-bush were showing their berries, but long
before the top was reached they were found in bloom. I had never
before stood amid blooming claytonia, a flower of April, and looked
down upon a field that held ripening strawberries. Every thousand feet
elevation seemed to make about ten days' difference in the vegetation,
so that the season was a month or more later on the top of the mountain
than at its base. A very pretty flower which we began to meet with well
up on the mountain-side was the painted trillium, the petals white,
veined with pink.
The low, stunted growth of spruce and fir which clothes the top of
Slide has been cut away over a small space on the highest point, laying
open the view on nearly all sides. Here we sat down and enjoyed our
triumph. We saw the world as the hawk or the balloonist sees it when
he is three thousand feet in the air. How soft and flowing all the
outlines of the hills and mountains beneath us looked! The forests
dropped down and undulated away over them, covering them like a carpet.
To the east we looked over the near-by Wittenberg range to the Hudson
and beyond; to the south, Peak-o'-Moose, with its sharp crest, and
Table Mountain, with its long level top, were the two conspicuous
objects; in the west, Mt. Graham and Double Top, about three thousand
eight hundred feet each, arrested the eye; while in our front to the
north we looked over the top of Panther Mountain to the multitudinous
peaks of the northern Catskills. All was mountain and forest on every
hand. Civilization seemed to have done little more than to have
scratched this rough, shaggy surface of the earth here and there.
In any such view, the wild, the aboriginal, the geographical greatly
predominate. The works of man dwindle, and the original features of
the huge globe come out. Every single object or point is dwarfed; the
valley of the Hudson is only a wrinkle in the earth's surface. You
discover with a feeling of surprise that the great thing is the earth
itself, which stretches away on every hand so far beyond your ken.
The Arabs believe that the mountains steady the earth and hold it
together; but they had only to get on the top of a high one to see how
insignificant they are, and how adequate the earth looks to get along
without them. To the imaginative Oriental people, mountains seemed to
mean much more than they do to us. They were sacred; they were the
abodes of their divinities. They offered their sacrifices upon them.
In the Bible, mountains are used as a symbol of that which is great
and holy. Jerusalem is spoken of as a holy mountain. The Syrians were
beaten by the Children of Israel because, said they, "their gods are
gods of the hills; therefore were they stronger than we." It was on
Mount Horeb that God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and on
Sinai that he delivered to him the law. Josephus says that the Hebrew
shepherds never pasture their flocks on Sinai, believing it to be
the abode of Jehovah. The solitude of mountain-tops is peculiarly
impressive, and it is certainly easier to believe the Deity appeared
in a burning bush there than in the valley below. When the clouds of
heaven, too, come down and envelop the top of the mountain,—how such
a circumstance must have impressed the old God-fearing Hebrews! Moses
knew well how to surround the law with the pomp and circumstance that
would inspire the deepest awe and reverence.
But when the clouds came down and enveloped us on Slide Mountain,
the grandeur, the solemnity, were gone in a twinkling; the
portentous-looking clouds proved to be nothing but base fog that wet
us and extinguished the world for us. How tame, and prosy, and humdrum
the scene instantly became! But when the fog lifted, and we looked from
under it as from under a just-raised lid, and the eye plunged again
like an escaped bird into those vast gulfs of space that opened at our
feet, the feeling of grandeur and solemnity quickly came back.
The first want we felt on the top of Slide, after we had got some rest,
was a want of water. Several of us cast about, right and left, but no
sign of water was found. But water must be had, so we all started off
deliberately to hunt it up. We had not gone many hundred yards before
we chanced upon an ice-cave beneath some rocks,—vast masses of ice,
with crystal pools of water near. This was good luck, indeed, and put a
new and brighter face on the situation.
Slide Mountain enjoys a distinction which no other mountain in the
State, so far as is known, does,—it has a thrush peculiar to itself.
This thrush was discovered and described by Eugene P. Bicknell, of New
York, in 1880, and has been named Bicknell's thrush. A better name
would have been Slide Mountain thrush, as the bird so far has only
been found on the mountain.[46:1] I did not see or hear it upon the
Wittenberg, which is only a few miles distant, and only two hundred
feet lower. In its appearance to the eye among the trees, one would
not distinguish it from the gray-cheeked thrush of Baird, or the
olive-backed thrush, but its song is totally different. The moment I
heard it I said, "There is a new bird, a new thrush," as the quality
of all thrush songs is the same. A moment more, and I knew it was
Bicknell's thrush. The song is in a minor key, finer, more attenuated,
and more under the breath than that of any other thrush. It seemed as
if the bird was blowing in a delicate, slender, golden tube, so fine
and yet so flute-like and resonant the song appeared. At times it was
like a musical whisper of great sweetness and power. The birds were
numerous about the summit, but we saw them nowhere else. No other
thrush was seen, though a few times during our stay I caught a mere
echo of the hermit's song far down the mountain-side. A bird I was not
prepared to see or hear was the black-poll warbler, a bird usually
found much farther north, but here it was, amid the balsam firs,
uttering its simple, lisping song.
[46:1] Bicknell's thrush turns out to be the more southern
form of the gray-cheeked thrush, and is found on the higher
mountains of New York and New England.
The rocks on the tops of these mountains are quite sure to attract
one's attention, even if he have no eye for such things. They are
masses of light reddish conglomerate, composed of round wave-worn
quartz pebbles. Every pebble had been shaped and polished upon some
ancient seacoast, probably the Devonian. The rock disintegrates where
it is most exposed to the weather, and forms a loose sandy and pebbly
soil. These rocks form the floor of the coal formation, but in the
Catskill region only the floor remains; the superstructure has never
existed, or has been swept away; hence one would look for a coal mine
here over his head in the air, rather than under his feet.
This rock did not have to climb up here as we did; the mountain stooped
and took it upon its back in the bottom of the old seas, and then got
lifted up again. This happened so long ago that the memory of the
oldest inhabitant of these parts yields no clue to the time.
A pleasant task we had in reflooring and reroofing the log-hut with
balsam boughs against the night. Plenty of small balsams grew all
about, and we soon had a huge pile of their branches in the old hut.
What a transformation, this fresh green carpet and our fragrant bed,
like the deep-furred robe of some huge animal wrought in that dingy
interior! Two or three things disturbed our sleep. A cup of strong
beef-tea taken for supper disturbed mine; then the porcupines kept
up such a grunting and chattering near our heads, just on the other
side of the log, that sleep was difficult. In my wakeful mood I was
a good deal annoyed by a little rabbit that kept whipping in at our
dilapidated door and nibbling at our bread and hardtack. He persisted
even after the gray of the morning appeared. Then about four o'clock
it began gently to rain. I think I heard the first drop that fell. My
companions were all in sound sleep. The rain increased, and gradually
the sleepers awoke. It was like the tread of an advancing enemy which
every ear had been expecting. The roof over us was of the poorest, and
we had no confidence in it. It was made of the thin bark of spruce
and balsam, and was full of hollows and depressions. Presently these
hollows got full of water, when there was a simultaneous downpour of
bigger and lesser rills upon the sleepers beneath. Said sleepers, as
one man, sprang up, each taking his blanket with him; but by the time
some of the party had got themselves stowed away under the adjacent
rock, the rain ceased. It was little more than the dissolving of
the nightcap of fog which so often hangs about these heights. With
the first appearance of the dawn I had heard the new thrush in the
scattered trees near the hut,—a strain as fine as if blown upon a
fairy flute, a suppressed musical whisper from out the tops of the
dark spruces. Probably never did there go up from the top of a great
mountain a smaller song to greet the day, albeit it was of the purest
harmony. It seemed to have in a more marked degree the quality of
interior reverberation than any other thrush song I had ever heard.
Would the altitude or the situation account for its minor key?
Loudness would avail little in such a place. Sounds are not far heard
on a mountain-top; they are lost in the abyss of vacant air. But amid
these low, dense, dark spruces, which make a sort of canopied privacy
of every square rod of ground, what could be more in keeping than this
delicate musical whisper? It was but the soft hum of the balsams,
interpreted and embodied in a bird's voice.
It was the plan of two of our companions to go from Slide over into
the head of the Rondout, and thence out to the railroad at the little
village of Shokan, an unknown way to them, involving nearly an all-day
pull the first day through a pathless wilderness. We ascended to the
topmost floor of the tower, and from my knowledge of the topography of
the country I pointed out to them their course, and where the valley
of the Rondout must lie. The vast stretch of woods, when it came into
view from under the foot of Slide, seemed from our point of view very
uniform. It swept away to the southeast, rising gently toward the
ridge that separates Lone Mountain from Peak-o'-Moose, and presented a
comparatively easy problem. As a clue to the course, the line where the
dark belt or saddle-cloth of spruce, which covered the top of the ridge
they were to skirt, ended, and the deciduous woods began, a sharp,
well-defined line was pointed out as the course to be followed. It led
straight to the top of the broad level-backed ridge which connected two
higher peaks, and immediately behind which lay the headwaters of the
Rondout. Having studied the map thoroughly, and possessed themselves
of the points, they rolled up their blankets about nine o'clock, and
were off, my friend and myself purposing to spend yet another day and
night on Slide. As our friends plunged down into that fearful abyss,
we shouted to them the old classic caution, "Be bold, be bold, _be not
too_ bold." It required courage to make such a leap into the unknown,
as I knew those young men were making, and it required prudence. A
faint heart or a bewildered head, and serious consequences might have
resulted. The theory of a thing is so much easier than the practice!
The theory is in the air, the practice is in the woods; the eye, the
thought, travel easily where the foot halts and stumbles. However, our
friends made the theory and the fact coincide; they kept the dividing
line between the spruce and the birches, and passed over the ridge
into the valley safely; but they were torn and bruised and wet by the
showers, and made the last few miles of their journey on will and pluck
alone, their last pound of positive strength having been exhausted in
making the descent through the chaos of rocks and logs into the head of
the valley. In such emergencies one overdraws his account; he travels
on the credit of the strength he expects to gain when he gets his
dinner and some sleep. Unless one has made such a trip himself (and I
have several times in my life), he can form but a faint idea what it
is like,—what a trial it is to the body, and what a trial it is to
the mind. You are fighting a battle with an enemy in ambush. How those
miles and leagues which your feet must compass lie hidden there in
that wilderness; how they seem to multiply themselves; how they are
fortified with logs, and rocks, and fallen trees; how they take refuge
in deep gullies, and skulk behind unexpected eminences! Your body not
only feels the fatigue of the battle, your mind feels the strain of the
undertaking; you may miss your mark; the mountains may outmanœuvre
you. All that day, whenever I looked upon that treacherous wilderness,
I thought with misgivings of those two friends groping their way there,
and would have given something to have known how it fared with them.
Their concern was probably less than my own, because they were more
ignorant of what was before them. Then there was just a slight shadow
of a fear in my mind that I might have been in error about some points
of the geography I had pointed out to them. But all was well, and the
victory was won according to the campaign which I had planned. When
we saluted our friends upon their own doorstep a week afterward, the
wounds were nearly all healed and the rents all mended.
When one is on a mountain-top, he spends most of the time in looking at
the show he has been at such pains to see. About every hour we would
ascend the rude lookout to take a fresh observation. With a glass I
could see my native hills forty miles away to the northwest. I was
now upon the back of the horse, yea, upon the highest point of his
shoulders, which had so many times attracted my attention as a boy.
We could look along his balsam-covered back to his rump, from which
the eye glanced away down into the forests of the Neversink, and on
the other hand plump down into the gulf where his head was grazing or
drinking. During the day there was a grand procession of thunder-clouds
filing along over the northern Catskills, and letting down veils of
rain and enveloping them. From such an elevation one has the same view
of the clouds that he does from the prairie or the ocean. They do not
seem to rest across and to be upborne by the hills, but they emerge
out of the dim west, thin and vague, and grow and stand up as they get
nearer and roll by him, on a level but invisible highway, huge chariots
of wind and storm.
In the afternoon a thick cloud threatened us, but it proved to be the
condensation of vapor that announces a cold wave. There was soon a
marked fall in the temperature, and as night drew near it became pretty
certain that we were going to have a cold time of it. The wind rose,
the vapor above us thickened and came nearer, until it began to drive
across the summit in slender wraiths, which curled over the brink and
shut out the view. We became very diligent in getting in our night
wood, and in gathering more boughs to calk up the openings in the hut.
The wood we scraped together was a sorry lot, roots and stumps and
branches of decayed spruce, such as we could collect without an axe,
and some rags and tags of birch bark. The fire was built in one corner
of the shanty, the smoke finding easy egress through large openings on
the east side and in the roof over it. We doubled up the bed, making it
thicker and more nest-like, and as darkness set in, stowed ourselves
into it beneath our blankets. The searching wind found out every
crevice about our heads and shoulders, and it was icy cold. Yet we fell
asleep, and had slept about an hour when my companion sprang up in an
unwonted state of excitement for so placid a man. His excitement was
occasioned by the sudden discovery that what appeared to be a bar of
ice was fast taking the place of his backbone. His teeth chattered, and
he was convulsed with ague. I advised him to replenish the fire, and to
wrap himself in his blanket and cut the liveliest capers he was capable
of in so circumscribed a place. This he promptly did, and the thought
of his wild and desperate dance there in the dim light, his tall form,
his blanket flapping, his teeth chattering, the porcupines outside
marking time with their squeals and grunts, still provokes a smile,
though it was a serious enough matter at the time. After a while, the
warmth came back to him, but he dared not trust himself again to the
boughs; he fought the cold all night as one might fight a besieging
foe. By carefully husbanding the fuel, the beleaguering enemy was kept
at bay till morning came; but when morning did come, even the huge root
he had used as a chair was consumed. Rolled in my blanket beneath a
foot or more of balsam boughs, I had got some fairly good sleep, and
was most of the time oblivious to the melancholy vigil of my friend. As
we had but a few morsels of food left, and had been on rather short
rations the day before, hunger was added to his other discomforts. At
that time a letter was on the way to him from his wife, which contained
this prophetic sentence: "I hope thee is not suffering with cold and
hunger on some lone mountain-top."
Mr. Bicknell's thrush struck up again at the first signs of dawn,
notwithstanding the cold. I could hear his penetrating and melodious
whisper as I lay buried beneath the boughs. Presently I arose and
invited my friend to turn in for a brief nap, while I gathered some
wood and set the coffee brewing. With a brisk, roaring fire on, I left
for the spring to fetch some water, and to make my toilet. The leaves
of the mountain goldenrod, which everywhere covered the ground in the
opening, were covered with frozen particles of vapor, and the scene,
shut in by fog, was chill and dreary enough.
We were now not long in squaring an account with Slide, and making
ready to leave. Round pellets of snow began to fall, and we came
off the mountain on the 10th of June in a November storm and
temperature. Our purpose was to return by the same valley we had come.
A well-defined trail led off the summit to the north; to this we
committed ourselves. In a few minutes we emerged at the head of the
slide that had given the mountain its name. This was the path made by
visitors to the scene; when it ended, the track of the avalanche began;
no bigger than your hand, apparently, had it been at first, but it
rapidly grew, until it became several rods in width. It dropped down
from our feet straight as an arrow until it was lost in the fog, and
looked perilously steep. The dark forms of the spruce were clinging
to the edge of it, as if reaching out to their fellows to save them.
We hesitated on the brink, but finally cautiously began the descent.
The rock was quite naked and slippery, and only on the margin of the
slide were there any boulders to stay the foot, or bushy growths to
aid the hand. As we paused, after some minutes, to select our course,
one of the finest surprises of the trip awaited us: the fog in our
front was swiftly whirled up by the breeze, like the drop-curtain at
the theatre, only much more rapidly, and in a twinkling the vast gulf
opened before us. It was so sudden as to be almost bewildering. The
world opened like a book, and there were the pictures; the spaces were
without a film, the forests and mountains looked surprisingly near;
in the heart of the northern Catskills a wild valley was seen flooded
with sunlight. Then the curtain ran down again, and nothing was left
but the gray strip of rock to which we clung, plunging down into the
obscurity. Down and down we made our way. Then the fog lifted again.
It was Jack and his beanstalk renewed; new wonders, new views, awaited
us every few moments, till at last the whole valley below us stood in
the clear sunshine. We passed down a precipice, and there was a rill of
water, the beginning of the creek that wound through the valley below;
farther on, in a deep depression, lay the remains of an old snow-bank;
Winter had made his last stand here, and April flowers were springing
up almost amid his very bones. We did not find a palace, and a hungry
giant, and a princess, etc., at the end of our beanstalk, but we found
a humble roof and the hospitable heart of Mrs. Larkins, which answered
our purpose better. And we were in the mood, too, to have undertaken an
eating bout with any giant Jack ever discovered.
Of all the retreats I have found amid the Catskills, there is no other
that possesses quite so many charms for me as this valley, wherein
stands Larkins's humble dwelling; it is so wild, so quiet, and has such
superb mountain views. In coming up the valley, you have apparently
reached the head of civilization a mile or more lower down; here the
rude little houses end, and you turn to the left into the woods.
Presently you emerge into a clearing again, and before you rises the
rugged and indented crest of Panther Mountain, and near at hand, on a
low plateau, rises the humble roof of Larkins,—you get a picture of
the Panther and of the homestead at one glance. Above the house hangs a
high, bold cliff covered with forest, with a broad fringe of blackened
and blasted tree-trunks, where the cackling of the great pileated
woodpecker may be heard; on the left a dense forest sweeps up to the
sharp spruce-covered cone of the Wittenberg, nearly four thousand
feet high, while at the head of the valley rises Slide over all. From
a meadow just back of Larkins's barn, a view may be had of all these
mountains, while the terraced side of Cross Mountain bounds the view
immediately to the east. Running from the top of Panther toward Slide
one sees a gigantic wall of rock, crowned with a dark line of fir. The
forest abruptly ends, and in its stead rises the face of this colossal
rocky escarpment, like some barrier built by the mountain gods. Eagles
might nest here. It breaks the monotony of the world of woods very
impressively.
I delight in sitting on a rock in one of these upper fields, and seeing
the sun go down behind Panther. The rapid-flowing brook below me fills
all the valley with a soft murmur. There is no breeze, but the great
atmospheric tide flows slowly in toward the cooling forest; one can see
it by the motes in the air illuminated by the setting sun: presently,
as the air cools a little, the tide turns and flows slowly out. The
long, winding valley up to the foot of Slide, five miles of primitive
woods, how wild and cool it looks, its one voice the murmur of the
creek! On the Wittenberg the sunshine lingers long; now it stands up
like an island in a sea of shadows, then slowly sinks beneath the wave.
The evening call of a robin or a thrush at his vespers makes a marked
impression on the silence and the solitude.
The following day my friend and I pitched our tent in the woods beside
the stream where I had pitched it twice before, and passed several
delightful days, with trout in abundance and wild strawberries at
intervals. Mrs. Larkins's cream-pot, butter-jar, and bread-box were
within easy reach. Near the camp was an unusually large spring, of icy
coldness, which served as our refrigerator. Trout or milk immersed in
this spring in a tin pail would keep sweet four or five days. One night
some creature, probably a lynx or a raccoon, came and lifted the stone
from the pail that held the trout and took out a fine string of them,
and ate them up on the spot, leaving only the string and one head. In
August bears come down to an ancient and now brushy bark-peeling near
by for blackberries. But the creature that most infests these backwoods
is the porcupine. He is as stupid and indifferent as the skunk; his
broad, blunt nose points a witless head. They are great gnawers, and
will gnaw your house down if you do not look out. Of a summer evening
they will walk coolly into your open door if not prevented. The most
annoying animal to the camper-out in this region, and the one he needs
to be most on the lookout for, is the cow. Backwoods cows and young
cattle seem always to be famished for salt, and they will fairly lick
the fisherman's clothes off his back, and his tent and equipage out of
existence, if you give them a chance. On one occasion some wood-ranging
heifers and steers that had been hovering around our camp for some
days made a raid upon it when we were absent. The tent was shut and
everything snugged up, but they ran their long tongues under the tent,
and, tasting something savory, hooked out John Stuart Mill's "Essays on
Religion," which one of us had brought along, thinking to read in the
woods. They mouthed the volume around a good deal, but its logic was
too tough for them, and they contented themselves with devouring the
paper in which it was wrapped. If the cattle had not been surprised at
just that point, it is probable the tent would have gone down before
their eager curiosity and thirst for salt.
The raid which Larkins's dog made upon our camp was amusing rather
than annoying. He was a very friendly and intelligent shepherd dog,
probably a collie. Hardly had we sat down to our first lunch in camp
before he called on us. But as he was disposed to be too friendly, and
to claim too large a share of the lunch, we rather gave him the cold
shoulder. He did not come again; but a few evenings afterward, as we
sauntered over to the house on some trifling errand, the dog suddenly
conceived a bright little project. He seemed to say to himself, on
seeing us, "There come both of them now, just as I have been hoping
they would; now, while they are away, I will run quickly over and know
what they have got that a dog can eat." My companion saw the dog get
up on our arrival, and go quickly in the direction of our camp, and he
said something in the cur's manner suggested to him the object of his
hurried departure. He called my attention to the fact, and we hastened
back. On cautiously nearing camp, the dog was seen amid the pails in
the shallow water of the creek investigating them. He had uncovered the
butter, and was about to taste it, when we shouted, and he made quick
steps for home, with a very "kill-sheep" look. When we again met him
at the house next day he could not look us in the face, but sneaked
off, utterly crestfallen. This was a clear case of reasoning on the
part of the dog, and afterward a clear case of a sense of guilt from
wrong-doing. The dog will probably be a man before any other animal.
III
BIRDS' EGGS
"Admire the bird's egg and leave it in its nest" is a wiser forbearance
than "Love the wood-rose and leave it on its stalk." We will try to
leave these eggs in the nest, and as far as possible show the bird and
the nest with them.
The first egg of spring is undoubtedly a hen's egg. The domestic fowls,
not being compelled to shift for themselves, and having artificial
shelter, are not so mindful of the weather and the seasons as the wild
birds. But the hen of the woods and the hen of the prairie, namely, the
ruffed and the pinnated grouse, do not usually nest till the season is
so far advanced that danger from frost is past.
The first wild egg, in New York and New England, is probably that of
an owl, the great horned owl, it is said, laying as early as March.
They probably shelter their eggs from the frost and the snow before
incubation begins. The little screech owl waits till April, and seeks
the deep snug cavity of an old tree; the heart of a decayed apple-tree
suits him well. Begin your search by the middle of April, and before
the month is past you will find the four white, round eggs resting upon
a little dry grass or a few dry leaves in the bottom of a long cavity.
Owls' eggs are inclined to be spherical. You would expect to see a big,
round-headed, round-eyed creature come out of such an egg.
The passenger pigeon nests before danger from frost is passed; but as
it lays but two eggs, probably in two successive days, the risks from
this source are not great, though occasionally a heavy April snow-storm
breaks them up.
Which is the earliest song-bird's egg? One cannot be quite so certain
here, as he can as to which the first wild flower is, for instance;
but I would take my chances on finding that of the phœbe-bird
first, and finding it before the close of April, unless the season
is very backward. The present season (1883) a pair built their nest
under the eaves of my house, and deposited their eggs, the last
days of the month. Some English sparrows that had been hanging
around, and doubtless watching the phœbes, threw the eggs out and
took possession of the nest. How shrewd and quick to take the hint
these little feathered John Bulls are! With a handful of rattling
pebble-stones I told this couple very plainly that they were not
welcome visitors to my premises. They fled precipitately. The next
morning they appeared again, but were much shyer. Another discharge
of pebbles, and they were off as if bound for the protection of the
British flag, and did not return. I notice wherever I go that these
birds have got a suspicion in their heads that public opinion has
changed with regard to them, and that they are no longer wanted.
The eggs of the phœbe-bird are snow-white, and when, in threading
the gorge of some mountain trout brook, or prowling about some high,
overhanging ledge, one's eye falls upon this mossy structure planted
with such matchless art upon a little shelf of the rocks, with its
complement of five or six pearl-like eggs, he is ready to declare it
the most pleasing nest in all the range of our bird architecture. It
was such a happy thought for the bird to build there, just out of the
reach of all four-footed beasts of prey, sheltered from the storms
and winds, and, by the use of moss and lichens, blending its nest so
perfectly with its surroundings that only the most alert eye can detect
it. An egg upon a rock, and thriving there,—the frailest linked to the
strongest, as if the geology of the granite mountain had been bent into
the service of the bird. I doubt if crows, or jays, or owls ever rob
these nests. Phœbe has outwitted them. They never heard of the bird
that builded its house upon a rock. "Strong is thy dwelling-place, and
thou puttest thy nest in a rock."
The song sparrow sometimes nests in April, but not commonly in our
latitude. Emerson says, in "May-Day:"—
"The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed,
Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves,
Secure the osier yet will hide
Her callow brood in mantling leaves."
But the sparrow usually prefers to wait till the snow-drift is gone.
I have never found the nest of one till long after the last drift had
disappeared from the fields, though a late writer upon New England
birds says the sparrow sometimes lays in April, when snow is yet upon
the ground.
The sparrow is not a beautiful bird except in our affections and
associations, and its eggs are not beautiful as eggs go,—four or five
little freckled spheres, that, like the bird itself, blend well with
the ground upon which they are placed.
The eggs of the "chippie," or social sparrow, are probably the most
beautiful of sparrow eggs, being of a bright bluish green with a ring
of dark purple spots around the larger end.
Generally there is but little relation between the color of the bird
and the color of its egg. For the most part, the eggs of birds that
occupy open, exposed nests are of some tint that harmonizes well with
the surroundings. With the addition of specks of various hue, they are
rendered still less conspicuous. The eggs of the scarlet tanager are
greenish blue, with faint brown or purplish markings. The blackbird
lays a greenish blue egg also, with various markings. Indeed, the
favorite ground tint of the birds that build open nests is a greenish
blue; sometimes the blue predominates, sometimes the green; while the
eggs of birds that build concealed nests, or lay in dark cavities, are
generally white, as is the case with the eggs of all our woodpeckers,
for instance. The eggs of the bluebird are bluish white.
Among the flycatchers, the nest of the phœbe is most concealed, at
least from above, and her eggs are white, while those of nearly all
the other species are more or less tinted and marked. The eggs of the
hummingbird are white, but the diminutiveness of their receptacle is a
sufficient concealment. Another white egg is that of the kingfisher,
deposited upon fish-bones at the end of a hole in the bank eight or
nine feet long. The bank swallow also lays white eggs, as does the
chimney swallow, the white-bellied swallow, and the purple martin. The
eggs of the barn swallow and cliff swallow are more or less speckled.
In England the kingfisher (smaller and much more brilliantly colored
than ours), woodpeckers, the bank swallow, the swift, the wryneck
(related to the woodpecker), and the dipper also lay white eggs.
A marked exception to the above rule is furnished by the eggs of the
Baltimore oriole, perhaps the most fantastically marked of all our
birds' eggs. One would hardly expect a plainly marked egg in such a
high-swung, elaborately woven, deeply pouched, aristocratic nest. The
threads and strings and horsehairs with which the structure is sewed
and bound and stayed are copied in the curious lines and markings of
the treasures it holds. After the oriole is through with its nest, it
is sometimes taken possession of by the house wren in which to rear
its second brood. The long, graceful cavity, with its fine carpet of
hair, is filled with coarse twigs, as if one were to build a log hut in
a palace, and the rusty-colored eggs of the little busybody deposited
there. The wren would perhaps stick to its bundle of small fagots in
the box or pump tree, and rear its second brood in the cradle of the
first, were it not that by seeking new lodgings time can be saved. The
male bird builds and furnishes the second nest, and the mother bird has
begun to lay in it before the first is empty.
The chatter of a second brood of nearly fledged wrens is heard now
(August 20) in an oriole's nest suspended from the branch of an
apple-tree near where I write. Earlier in the season the parent birds
made long and determined attempts to establish themselves in a cavity
that had been occupied by a pair of bluebirds. The original proprietor
of the place was the downy woodpecker. He had excavated it the autumn
before, and had passed the winter there, often to my certain knowledge
lying abed till nine o'clock in the morning. In the spring he went
elsewhere, probably with a female, to begin the season in new quarters.
The bluebirds early took possession, and in June their first brood
had flown. The wrens had been hanging around, evidently with an eye
on the place (such little comedies may be witnessed anywhere), and
now very naturally thought it was their turn. A day or two after the
young bluebirds had flown, I noticed some fine, dry grass clinging to
the entrance to the cavity; a circumstance which I understood a few
moments later, when the wren rushed by me into the cover of a small
Norway spruce, hotly pursued by the male bluebird. It was a brown
streak and a blue streak pretty close together. The wrens had gone
to housecleaning, and the bluebird had returned to find his bed and
bedding being pitched out-of-doors, and had thereupon given the wrens
to understand in the most emphatic manner that he had no intention of
vacating the premises so early in the season. Day after day, for more
than two weeks, the male bluebird had to clear his premises of these
intruders. It occupied much of his time and not a little of mine, as
I sat with a book in a summer-house near by, laughing at his pretty
fury and spiteful onset. On two occasions the wren rushed under the
chair in which I sat, and a streak of blue lightning almost flashed
in my very face. One day, just as I had passed the tree in which the
cavity was placed, I heard the wren scream desperately; turning, I saw
the little vagabond fall into the grass with the wrathful bluebird
fairly upon him; the latter had returned just in time to catch him, and
was evidently bent on punishing him well. But in the squabble in the
grass the wren escaped and took refuge in the friendly evergreen. The
bluebird paused for a moment with outstretched wings looking for the
fugitive, then flew away. A score of times during the month of June did
I see the wren taxing every energy to get away from the bluebird. He
would dart into the stone wall, under the floor of the summer-house,
into the weeds,—anywhere to hide his diminished head. The bluebird,
with his bright coat, looked like an officer in uniform in pursuit of
some wicked, rusty little street gamin. Generally the favorite house
of refuge of the wrens was the little spruce, into which their pursuer
made no attempt to follow them. The female would sit concealed amid
the branches, chattering in a scolding, fretful way, while the male
with his eye upon his tormentor would perch on the topmost shoot and
sing. Why he sang at such times, whether in triumph and derision, or to
keep his courage up and reassure his mate, I could not make out. When
his song was suddenly cut short, and I glanced to see him dart down
into the spruce, my eye usually caught a twinkle of blue wings hovering
near. The wrens finally gave up the fight, and their enemies reared
their second brood in peace.
That the wren should use such coarse, refractory materials, especially
since it builds in holes where twigs are so awkward to carry and
adjust, is curious enough. All its congeners, the marsh wrens, the
Carolina wren, the winter wren, build of soft flexible materials. The
nest of the winter wren, and of the English "Jenny Wren," is mainly of
moss, and is a marvel of softness and warmth.
One day a swarm of honey-bees went into my chimney, and I mounted the
stack to see into which flue they had gone. As I craned my neck above
the sooty vent, with the bees humming about my ears, the first thing
my eye rested upon in the black interior was two long white pearls
upon a little shelf of twigs, the nest of the chimney swallow, or
swift,—honey, soot, and birds' eggs closely associated. The bees,
though in an unused flue, soon found the gas of anthracite that hovered
about the top of the chimney too much for them, and they left. But
the swallows are not repelled by smoke. They seem to have entirely
abandoned their former nesting-places in hollow trees and stumps and
to frequent only chimneys. A tireless bird, never perching, all day
upon the wing, and probably capable of flying one thousand miles in
twenty-four hours, they do not even stop to gather materials for their
nests, but snap off the small dry twigs from the treetops as they fly
by. Confine one of these swallows to a room and it will not perch,
but after flying till it becomes bewildered and exhausted, it clings
to the side of the wall till it dies. I once found one in my room on
returning, after several days' absence, in which life seemed nearly
extinct; its feet grasped my finger as I removed it from the wall,
but its eyes closed, and it seemed about on the point of joining its
companion which lay dead upon the floor. Tossing it into the air,
however, seemed to awaken its wonderful powers of flight, and away it
went straight toward the clouds. On the wing the chimney swallow looks
like an athlete stripped for the race. There is the least appearance
of quill and plumage of any of our birds, and, with all its speed and
marvelous evolutions, the effect of its flight is stiff and wiry. There
appears to be but one joint in the wing, and that next the body. This
peculiar inflexible motion of the wings, as if they were little sickles
of sheet iron, seems to be owing to the length and development of the
primary quills and the smallness of the secondary. The wing appears to
hinge only at the wrist. The barn swallow lines its rude masonry with
feathers, but the swift begins life on bare twigs, glued together by a
glue of home manufacture as adhesive as Spaulding's.
I have wondered if Emerson referred to any particular bird in these
lines from "The Problem:"—
"Know'st thou what wove yon wood-bird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast?"
Probably not, but simply availed himself of the general belief that
certain birds or fowls lined their nests with their own feathers. This
is notably true of the eider duck, and in a measure of our domestic
fowls, but so far as I know is not true of any of our small birds. The
barn swallow and house wren feather their nests at the expense of the
hens and geese. The winter wren picks up the feathers of the ruffed
grouse. The chickadee, Emerson's favorite bird, uses a few feathers
in its upholstering, but not its own. In England, I noticed that the
little willow warbler makes a free use of feathers from the poultry
yard. Many of our birds use hair in their nests, and the kingbird and
cedar-bird like wool. I have found a single feather of the bird's own
in the nest of the phœbe. Such a circumstance would perhaps justify
the poet.
About the first of June there is a nest in the woods upon the ground
with four creamy white eggs in it, spotted with brown or lilac, chiefly
about the larger ends, that always gives the walker, who is so lucky
as to find it, a thrill of pleasure. It is like a ground sparrow's
nest with a roof or canopy to it. The little brown or olive backed
bird starts away from your feet and runs swiftly and almost silently
over the dry leaves, and then turns her speckled breast to see if
you are following. She walks very prettily, by far the prettiest
pedestrian in the woods. But if she thinks you have discovered her
secret, she feigns lameness and disability of both legs and wing, to
decoy you into the pursuit of her. This is the golden-crowned thrush,
or accentor, a strictly wood bird, about the size of a song sparrow,
with the dullest of gold upon his crown, but the brightest of songs in
his heart. The last nest of this bird I found was while in quest of the
pink cypripedium. We suddenly spied a couple of the flowers a few steps
from the path along which we were walking, and had stooped to admire
them, when out sprang the bird from beside them, doubtless thinking she
was the subject of observation instead of the flowers that swung their
purple bells but a foot or two above her. But we never should have seen
her had she kept her place. She had found a rent in the matted carpet
of dry leaves and pine needles that covered the ground, and into this
had insinuated her nest, the leaves and needles forming a canopy above
it, sloping to the south and west, the source of the more frequent
summer rains.
At about the same time one finds the nest above described, if he
were to explore the woods very thoroughly, he might chance upon two
curious eggs lying upon the leaves as if dropped there by chance.
They are elliptical, both ends of a size, about an inch and a quarter
long, of a creamy white spotted with lavender. These are the eggs
of the whip-poor-will, a bird that has absolutely no architectural
instincts or gifts. Perhaps its wide, awkward mouth and short beak are
ill-adapted to carrying nest materials. It is awkward upon the ground
and awkward upon the tree, being unable to perch upon a limb, except
lengthwise of it.
The song and game birds lay pointed eggs, but the night birds lay round
or elliptical eggs.
The egg-collector sometimes stimulates a bird to lay an unusual number
of eggs. A youth, whose truthfulness I do not doubt, told me he once
induced a high-hole to lay twenty-nine eggs by robbing her of an egg
each day. The eggs became smaller and smaller, till the twenty-ninth
one was only the size of a chippie's egg. At this point the bird gave
up the contest.
There is a last egg of summer as well as a first egg of spring, but one
cannot name either with much confidence. Both the robin and the chippie
sometimes rear a third brood in August; but the birds that delay their
nesting till midsummer are the goldfinch and the cedar-bird, the former
waiting for the thistle to ripen its seeds, and the latter probably for
the appearance of certain insects which it takes on the wing. Often the
cedar-bird does not build till August, and will line its nest with wool
if it can get it, even in this sultry month. The eggs are marked and
colored, as if a white egg were to be spotted with brown, then colored
a pale blue, then again sharply dotted or blotched with blackish or
purplish spots.
But the most common August nest with me—early August—is that of the
goldfinch,—a deep, snug, compact nest, with no loose ends hanging,
placed in the fork of a small limb of an apple-tree, peach-tree, or
ornamental shade-tree. The eggs are a faint bluish white.
While the female is sitting, the male feeds her regularly. She calls
to him on his approach, or when she hears his voice passing by, in the
most affectionate, feminine, childlike tones, the only case I know of
where the sitting bird makes any sound while in the act of incubation.
When a rival male invades the tree, or approaches too near, the male
whose nest it holds pursues and reasons or expostulates with him in
the same bright, amicable, confiding tones. Indeed, most birds make
use of their sweetest notes in war. The song of love is the song of
battle, too. The male yellowbirds flit about from point to point,
apparently assuring each other of the highest sentiments of esteem and
consideration, at the same time that one intimates to the other that
he is carrying his joke a little too far. It has the effect of saying
with mild and good-humored surprise, "Why, my dear sir, this is my
territory; you surely do not mean to trespass; permit me to salute you,
and to escort you over the line." Yet the intruder does not always take
the hint. Occasionally the couple have a brief sparring match in the
air, and mount up and up, beak to beak, to a considerable height, but
rarely do they actually come to blows.
The yellowbird becomes active and conspicuous after the other birds
have nearly all withdrawn from the stage and become silent, their
broods reared and flown. August is his month, his festive season. It
is his turn now. The thistles are ripening their seeds, and his nest
is undisturbed by jay-bird or crow. He is the first bird I hear in
the morning, circling and swinging through the air in that peculiar
undulating flight, and calling out on the downward curve of each
stroke, "Here we go, here we go!" Every hour in the day he indulges in
his circling, billowy flight. It is a part of his musical performance.
His course at such times is a deeply undulating line, like the long
gentle roll of the summer sea, the distance from crest to crest or from
valley to valley being probably thirty feet; this distance is made with
but one brief beating of the wings on the downward curve. As he quickly
opens them, they give him a strong upward impulse, and he describes
the long arc with them closely folded. Thus, falling and recovering,
rising and sinking like dolphins in the sea, he courses through the
summer air. In marked contrast to this feat is his manner of flying
when he indulges in a brief outburst of song in the air. Now he flies
level, with broad expanded wings nearly as round and as concave as two
shells, which beat the air slowly. The song is the chief matter now,
and the wings are used only to keep him afloat while delivering it. In
the other case, the flight is the main concern, and the voice merely
punctuates it.
I know no autumn egg but a hen's egg, though a certain old farmer
tells me he finds a quail's nest full of eggs nearly every September;
but fall progeny of any kind has a belated start in life, and the
chances are against it.
IV
BIRD COURTSHIP
There is something about the matchmaking of birds that is not easily
penetrated. The jealousies and rivalries of the males and of the
females are easily understood,—they are quite human; but those sudden
rushes of several males, some of them already mated, after one female,
with squeals and screams and a great clatter of wings,—what does it
mean? There is nothing human about that, unless it be illustrative
of a trait that has at times cropped out in the earlier races, and
which is still seen among the Esquimaux, where the male carries off
the female by force. But in these sudden sallies among the birds, the
female, so far as I have observed, is never carried off. One may see
half a dozen English sparrows engaged in what at first glance appears
to be a general mêlée in the gutter or on the sidewalk; but if you look
more closely you will see a single female in the midst of the mass,
beating off the males, who, with plumage puffed out and screaming and
chattering, are all making a set at her. She strikes right and left,
and seems to be equally displeased with them all. But her anger may
be all put on, and she may be giving the wink all the time to her
favorite. The Esquimaux maiden is said by Doctor Nansen to resist
stoutly being carried off even by the man she is desperately in love
with.
In the latter half of April, we pass through what I call the "robin
racket,"—trains of three or four birds rushing pell-mell over the lawn
and fetching up in a tree or bush, or occasionally upon the ground, all
piping and screaming at the top of their voices, but whether in mirth
or anger it is hard to tell. The nucleus of the train is a female. One
cannot see that the males in pursuit of her are rivals; it seems rather
as if they had united to hustle her out of the place. But somehow the
matches are no doubt made and sealed during these mad rushes. Maybe the
female shouts out to her suitors, "Who touches me first wins," and away
she scurries like an arrow. The males shout out, "Agreed!" and away
they go in pursuit, each trying to outdo the other. The game is a brief
one. Before one can get the clew to it, the party has dispersed.
Earlier in the season the pretty sparring of the males is the chief
feature. You may see two robins apparently taking a walk or a run
together over the sward or along the road; only first one bird runs,
and then the other. They keep a few feet apart, stand very erect, and
the course of each describes the segment of an arc about the other,
thus:—
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \
\______/\______/\______/\______/\______/
How courtly and deferential their manners toward each other are! often
they pipe a shrill, fine strain, audible only a few yards away. Then,
in a twinkling, one makes a spring and they are beak to beak, and
claw to claw, as they rise up a few feet into the air. But usually no
blow is delivered; not a feather is ruffled; each, I suppose, finds
the guard of the other perfect. Then they settle down upon the ground
again, and go through with the same running challenge as before. How
their breasts glow in the strong April sunlight; how perk and military
the bearing of each! Often they will run about each other in this way
for many rods. After a week or so the males seem to have fought all
their duels, when the rush and racket I have already described begins.
The bluebird wins his mate by the ardor of his attentions and the
sincerity of his compliments, and by finding a house ready built
which cannot be surpassed. The male bluebird is usually here several
days before the female, and he sounds forth his note as loudly and
eloquently as he can till she appears. On her appearance he flies at
once to the box or tree cavity upon which he has had his eye, and,
as he looks into it, calls and warbles in his most persuasive tones.
The female at such times is always shy and backward, and the contrast
in the manners of the two birds is as striking as the contrast in
their colors. The male is brilliant and ardent; the female is dim
and retiring, not to say indifferent. She may take a hasty peep into
the hole in the box or tree and then fly away, uttering a lonesome,
homesick note. Only by a wooing of many days is she to be fully won.
The past April I was witness one Sunday morning to the jealousies
that may rage in these little brown breasts. A pair of bluebirds had
apparently mated and decided to occupy a woodpecker's lodge in the
limb of an old apple-tree near my study. But that morning another male
appeared on the scene, and was bent on cutting the first male out, and
carrying off his bride. I happened to be near by when the two birds
came into collision. They fell to the grass, and kept their grip upon
each other for half a minute. Then they separated, and the first up
flew to the hole and called fondly to the female. This was too much
for the other male, and they clinched again and fell to the ground as
before. There they lay upon the grass, blue and brown intermingled. But
not a feather was tweaked out, or even disturbed, that I could see.
They simply held each other down. Then they separated again, and again
rushed upon each other. The battle raged for about fifteen minutes,
when one of the males—which one, of course, I could not tell—withdrew
and flew to a box under the eaves of the study, and exerted all the
eloquence he possessed to induce the female to come to him there. How
he warbled and called, and lifted his wings and flew to the entrance to
the box and called again! The female was evidently strongly attracted;
she would respond and fly about half way to an apple-tree, and look
toward him. The other male, in the mean time, did his best to persuade
her to cast her lot with him. He followed her to the tree toward his
rival, and then flew back to the nest and spread his plumage and
called and warbled, oh, so confidently, so fondly, so reassuringly!
When the female would return and peep into the hole in the tree, what
fine, joyous notes he would utter! then he would look in and twinkle
his wings, and say something his rival could not hear. This vocal and
pantomimic contest went on for a long time. The female was evidently
greatly shaken in her allegiance to the male in the old apple-tree. In
less than an hour another female responded to the male who had sought
the eaves of the study, and flew with him to the box. Whether this was
their first meeting or not I do not know, but it was clear enough that
the heart of the male was fixed upon the bride of his rival. He would
devote himself a moment to the new-comer, and then turn toward the old
apple-tree and call and lift his wings; then, apparently admonished
by the bird near him, would turn again to her and induce her to look
into the box and warble fondly; then up on a higher branch again, with
his attention directed toward his first love, between whom and himself
salutations seemed constantly passing. This little play went on for
some time, when the two females came into collision, and fell to the
ground tweaking each other spitefully. Then the four birds drifted away
from me down into the vineyard, where the males closed with each other
again and fell to the plowed ground and lay there a surprisingly long
time, nearly two minutes, as we calculated. Their wings were outspread,
and their forms were indistinguishable. They tugged at each other most
doggedly; one or the other brown breast was generally turned up,
partly overlaid by a blue coat. They were determined to make a finish
of it this time, but which got the better of the fight I could not
tell. But it was the last battle; they finally separated, neither,
apparently, any the worse for the encounter. The females fought two
more rounds, the males looking on and warbling approvingly when they
separated, and the two pairs drifted away in different directions. The
next day they were about the box and tree again, and seemed to have
definitely settled matters. Who won and who lost I do not know, but
two pairs of bluebirds have since been very busy and very happy about
the two nesting-places. One of the males I recognize as a bird that
appeared early in March; I recognize him from one peculiar note in the
midst of his warble, a note that suggests a whistle.
The matchmaking of the high-holes, which often comes under my
observation, is in marked contrast to that of the robins and bluebirds.
There does not appear to be any anger or any blows. The male or two
males will alight on a limb in front of the female, and go through with
a series of bowings and scrapings that are truly comical. He spreads
his tail, he puffs out his breast, he throws back his head, and then
bends his body to the right and to the left, uttering all the while a
curious musical hiccough. The female confronts him unmoved, but whether
her attitude is critical or defensive I cannot tell. Presently she
flies away, followed by her suitor or suitors, and the little comedy is
enacted on another stump or tree. Among all the woodpeckers the drum
plays an important part in the matchmaking. The male takes up his stand
on a dry, resonant limb, or on the ridgeboard of a building, and beats
the loudest call he is capable of. The downy woodpecker usually has a
particular branch to which he resorts for advertising his matrimonial
wants. A favorite drum of the high-holes about me is a hollow wooden
tube, a section of a pump, which stands as a bird-box upon my
summer-house. It is a good instrument; its tone is sharp and clear. A
high-hole alights upon it, and sends forth a rattle that can be heard
a long way off. Then he lifts up his head and utters that long April
call, _Wick, wick, wick, wick_. Then he drums again. If the female does
not find him, it is not because he does not make noise enough. But his
sounds are all welcome to the ear. They are simple and primitive and
voice well a certain sentiment of the April days. As I write these
lines I hear through the half-open door his call come up from a distant
field. Then I hear the steady hammering of one that has been for three
days trying to penetrate the weather boarding of the big icehouse by
the river, and reach the sawdust filling for a nesting-place.
Among our familiar birds the matchmaking of none other is quite so
pretty as that of the goldfinch. The goldfinches stay with us in lorn
flocks and clad in a dull-olive suit throughout the winter. In May the
males begin to put on their bright summer plumage. This is the result
of a kind of superficial moulting. Their feathers are not shed, but
their dusky covering or overalls are cast off. When the process is only
partly completed, the bird has a smutty, unpresentable appearance. But
we seldom see them at such times. They seem to retire from society.
When the change is complete, and the males have got their bright
uniforms of yellow and black, the courting begins. All the goldfinches
of a neighborhood collect together and hold a sort of musical festival.
To the number of many dozens they may be seen in some large tree,
all singing and calling in the most joyous and vivacious manner. The
males sing, and the females chirp and call. Whether there is actual
competition on a trial of musical abilities of the males before the
females or not I do not know. The best of feeling seems to pervade the
company; there is no sign of quarreling or fighting; "all goes merry as
a marriage bell," and the matches seem actually to be made during these
musical picnics. Before May is passed the birds are seen in couples,
and in June housekeeping usually begins. This I call the ideal of
love-making among birds, and is in striking contrast to the squabbles
and jealousies of most of our songsters.
I have known the goldfinches to keep up this musical and love-making
festival through three consecutive days of a cold northeast rain-storm.
Bedraggled, but ardent and happy, the birds were not to be dispersed by
wind or weather.
All the woodpeckers, so far as I have observed, drum up their mates;
the male advertises his wants by hammering upon a dry, resonant
limb, when in due time the female approaches and is duly courted and
won. The drumming of the ruffed grouse is for the same purpose; the
female hears, concludes to take a walk that way, approaches timidly,
is seen and admired, and the match is made. That the male accepts the
first female that offers herself is probable. Among all the birds the
choice, the selection, seems to belong to the female. The males court
promiscuously; the females choose discreetly. The grouse, unlike the
woodpecker, always carries his drum with him, which is his own proud
breast; yet, if undisturbed, he selects some particular log or rock
in the woods from which to sound forth his willingness to wed. What
determines the choice of the female it would be hard to say. Among
song-birds, it is probably the best songster, or the one whose voice
suits her taste best. Among birds of bright plumage, it is probably
the gayest dress; among the drummers, she is doubtless drawn by some
quality of the sound. Our ears and eyes are too coarse to note any
differences in these things, but doubtless the birds themselves note
differences.
Birds show many more human traits than do quadrupeds. That they
actually fall in love admits of no doubt; that there is a period of
courtship, during which the male uses all the arts he is capable of
to win his mate, is equally certain; that there are jealousies and
rivalries, and that the peace of families is often rudely disturbed
by outside males or females is a common observation. The females,
when they come to blows, fight much more spitefully and recklessly
than do the males. One species of bird has been known to care for the
young of another species which had been made orphans. The male turkey
will sometimes cover the eggs of his mate and hatch and rear the brood
alone. Altogether, birds often present some marked resemblances in
their actions to men, when love is the motive.
Mrs. Martin, in her "Home Life on an Ostrich Farm," relates this
curious incident:—
"One undutiful hen—having apparently imbibed advanced
notions—absolutely refused to sit at all, and the poor husband,
determined not to be disappointed of his little family, did all the
work himself, sitting bravely and patiently day and night, though
nearly dead with exhaustion, till the chicks were hatched out. The next
time this pair of birds had a nest, the cock's mind was firmly made up
that he would stand no more nonsense. He fought the hen [kicked her],
giving her so severe a thrashing that she was all but killed, and this
Petruchio-like treatment had the desired effect, for the wife never
again rebelled, but sat submissively."
In the case of another pair of ostriches of which Mrs. Martin tells,
the female was accidentally killed, when the male mourned her loss for
over two years, and would not look at another female. He wandered up
and down, up and down, the length of his camp, utterly disconsolate.
At last he mated again with a most magnificent hen, who ruled him
tyrannically; he became the most hen-pecked, or rather hen-kicked of
husbands.
V
NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE
The best lesson I have had for a long time in the benefits of
contentment, and of the value of one's own nook or corner of the world,
however circumscribed it may be, as a point from which to observe
nature and life, comes to me from a prairie correspondent, an invalid
lady, confined to her room year in and year out, and yet who sees
more and appreciates more than many of us who have the freedom of a
whole continent. Having her permission, why should I not share these
letters with my readers, especially since there are other house-bound
or bed-bound invalids whom they may reach, and who may derive some
cheer or suggestion from them? Words uttered in a popular magazine like
"The Century" are like the vapors that go up from the ground and the
streams: they are sure to be carried far and wide, and to fall again as
rain or dew, and one little knows what thirsty plant or flower they may
reach and nourish. I am thinking of another fine spirit, couch-bound in
one of the northern New England States, who lives in a town that bears
the same name as that in which my Western correspondent resides, and
into whose chamber my slight and desultory papers have also brought
something of the breath of the fields and woods, and who in return has
given me many glimpses of nature through eyes purified by suffering.
Women are about the best lovers of nature, after all; at least of
nature in her milder and more familiar forms. The feminine character,
the feminine perceptions, intuitions, delicacy, sympathy, quickness,
etc., are more responsive to natural forms and influences than is the
masculine mind.
My Western correspondent sees existence as from an altitude, and sees
where the complements and compensations come in. She lives upon the
prairie, and she says it is as the ocean to her, upon which she is
adrift, and always expects to be, until she reaches the other shore.
Her house is the ship which she never leaves. "What is visible from
my window is the sea, changing only from winter to summer, as the sea
changes from storm to sunshine. But there is one advantage,—messages
can come to me continually from all the wide world."
One summer she wrote she had been hoping to be well enough to renew her
acquaintance with the birds, the flowers, the woods, but instead was
confined to her room more closely than ever.
"It is a disappointment to me, but I decided long ago that the wisest
plan is to make the best of things; to take what is given you, and make
the most of it. To gather up the fragments, that nothing may be lost,
applies to one's life as well as to other things. Though I cannot walk,
I can think and read and write; probably I get my share of pleasure
from sources that well people are apt to neglect. I have learned that
the way to be happy is to keep so busy that thoughts of self are forced
out of sight; and to live for others, not for ourselves.
"Sometimes, when I think over the matter, I am half sorry for well
people, because, you see, I have so much better company than they can
have, for I have so much more time to go all over the world and meet
all the best and wisest people in it. Some of them died long ago to
the most of people, but to me they are just as much alive as they
ever were; they give me their best and wisest thoughts, without the
disagreeable accompaniments others must endure. Other people use their
eyes and ears and pens for me; all I have to do is to sit still and
enjoy the results. Dear friends I have everywhere, though I am unknown
to them; what right have I to wish for more privileges than I have?"
There is philosophy for you,—philosophy which looks fate out of
countenance. It seems that if we only have the fortitude to take the
ills of life cheerfully and say to fortune, "Thy worst is good enough
for me," behold the worst is already repentant and fast changing to the
best. Love softens the heart of the inevitable. The magic phrase which
turns the evil spirits into good angels is, "I am contented." Happiness
is always at one's elbow, it seems, in one disguise or another; all one
has to do is to stop seeking it afar, or stop _seeking_ it at all, and
say to this unwelcome attendant, "Be thou my friend," when, lo! the
mask falls, and the angel is disclosed. Certain rare spirits in this
world have accepted poverty with such love and pride that riches at
once became contemptible.
My correspondent has the gift of observation. In renouncing self, she
has opened the door for many other things to enter. In cultivating the
present moment, she cultivates the present incident. The power to see
things comes of that mental attitude which is directed to the now and
the here: keen, alert perceptions, those faculties that lead the mind
and take the incident as it flies. Most people fail to see things,
because the print is too small for their vision; they read only the
large-lettered events like the newspaper headings, and are apt to miss
a part of these, unless they see in some way their own initials there.
The small type of the lives of bird and beast about her is easily read
by this cheerful invalid. "To understand that the sky is everywhere
blue," says Goethe, "we need not go around the world;" and it would
seem that this woman has got all the good and pleasure there is in
natural history from the pets in her room, and the birds that build
before her window. I had been for a long time trying to determine
whether or not the blue jay hoarded up nuts for winter use, but had not
been able to settle the point. I applied to her, and, sitting by her
window, she discovered that jays do indeed hoard food in a tentative,
childish kind of way, but not with the cunning and provident foresight
of the squirrels and native mice. She saw a jay fly to the ground with
what proved to be a peanut in its beak, and carefully cover it up with
leaves and grass. "The next fall, looking out of my own window, I saw
two jays hiding chestnuts with the same blind instinct. They brought
them from a near tree, and covered them up in the grass, putting but
one in a place. Subsequently, in another locality, I saw jays similarly
employed. It appears to be simply the crow instinct to steal, or to
carry away and hide any superfluous morsel of food." The jays were
really planting chestnuts instead of hoarding them. There was no
possibility of such supplies being available in winter, and in spring
a young tree might spring from each nut. This fact doubtless furnishes
a key to the problem why a forest of pine is usually succeeded by a
forest of oak. The acorns are planted by the jays. Their instinct for
hiding things prompts them to seek the more dark and secluded pine
woods with their booty, and the thick layer of needles furnishes an
admirable material with which to cover the nut. The germ sprouts and
remains a low slender shoot for years, or until the pine woods are cut
away, when it rapidly becomes a tree.
My correspondent thinks the birds possess some of the frailties of
human beings; among other things, ficklemindedness. "I believe they
build nests just for the fun of it, to pass away the time, to have
something to chatter about and dispute over." (I myself have seen a
robin play at nest-building late in October, and have seen two young
bluebirds ensconce themselves in an old thrush's nest in the fall
and appear to amuse themselves like children, while the wind made
the branch sway to and fro.) "Now my wrens' nest is so situated that
nothing can disturb them, and where I can see it at any time. They have
often made a nest and left it. A year ago, during the latter part of
May, they built a nest, and in a few days they kicked everything out
of the box and did the work all over again, repeating the operation
all July, then left the country without accomplishing anything
further. This season they reared one brood, built another nest, and,
I think, laid one or more eggs, idled around a few weeks, and then
went away." (This last was probably a "cock-nest," built by the male
as a roosting-place.) "I have noticed, too, that blue jays build their
apology for a nest, and abandon it for another place in the same tree."
Her jays and wrens do not live together on the most amicable terms.
"I had much amusement while the jay was on the nest, watching the
actions of the wrens, whose nest was under the porch close by the oak.
Perched on a limb over the jay, the male wren sat flirting his tail and
scolding, evidently saying all the insulting things he could think of;
for, after enduring it for some time, the jay would fly off its nest in
a rage, and, with the evident intention of impaling Mr. Wren with his
bill, strike down vengefully and—find his bill fast in the bark, while
his enemy was somewhere else, squeaking in derision. They kept that up
day after day; but the wren is too lively to be caught by a large bird.
"I have never had the opportunity to discover whether there was any
difference in the dispositions of birds of the same species; it would
take a very close and extended observation to determine that; but I
do know there is as much difference between animals as between human
beings in that respect. Horses, cats, dogs, squirrels, all have their
own individuality. I have had five gray squirrels for pets, and even
their features were unlike. Fred and Sally were mates, who were kept
shut up in their cages all the time. Fred was wonderfully brave, would
strut and scold until there was something to be afraid of, then would
crouch down behind Sally and let her defend him, the sneak! He abused
her shamefully, but she never resented it. Being the larger, she could
have whipped him and not half tried; but she probably labored under
the impression, which is shared by some people, that it is a wife's
duty to submit to whatever abuse the husband chooses to inflict. Their
characters reminded me so strongly of some people I have seen that I
used to take Fred out and whip him regularly, as a sort of vicarious
punishment of those who deserved it. Chip was a gentle, pretty
squirrel, fond of being petted, spent most of her time in my pocket or
around my neck, but she died young; probably she was too good to live.
"Dick, lazy and a glutton, also died young, from over-eating. Chuck,
the present pet, has Satan's own temper—very ugly—but so intelligent
that she is the plague of our lives, though at the same time she is
a constant source of amusement. It is impossible to remain long angry
with her, however atrocious her crimes are. We are obliged to let
her run loose through the house, for, when shut up, she squeals and
chatters and rattles her cage so we can't endure it. From one piece
of mischief to another as fast as she can go, she requires constant
watching. She knows what is forbidden very well, for, if I chance to
look at her after she has been up to mischief, she quickly drops down
flat, spreads her tail over her back, looking all the time so very
innocent that she betrays herself. If I go towards her, she springs on
my back, where I cannot reach her to whip her. She never bites _me_,
but if others tease her she is very vicious. When I tease her, she
relieves her feelings by biting any one else who happens to be in the
room; and it is no slight matter being bitten by a squirrel's sharp
teeth. Knowing that the other members of the family are afraid of her,
she amuses herself by putting nuts in their shoes, down their necks, or
in their hair, then standing guard, so that if they remove the nuts she
flies at them.
"Chuck will remember an injury for months, and take revenge whenever
opportunity offers. She claims all the nuts and candy that come into
the house, searching Mr. B——'s pockets _on Sundays_, never on other
days. I don't see how she distinguishes, unless from the fact that he
comes home early on that day. Once, when she caught one of the girls
eating some of her nuts, she flew at her, bit her, and began carrying
off the nuts to hide as fast as she could. For months afterward she
would slip slyly up and bite the girl. She particularly despises my
brother, he teases her so, and gives her no chance to bite; so she gets
even with him by tearing up everything of his she can find,—his books,
his gloves, etc.; and if she can get into the closet where I keep the
soiled clothing, she will select such articles as belong to him, and
tear them up! And she has a wonderful memory; never forgets where
she puts things; people whom she has not seen for several years she
remembers.
"She had the misfortune to have about two inches of her tail cut off,
by being caught in the door, which made it too short to be used for
wiping her face; it would slip out of her hands, making her stamp her
feet and chatter her teeth with anger. By experimenting, she found by
backing up in a corner it was prevented from slipping out of her reach.
Have had her five years; wonder how long their lives usually are? One
of my neighbors got a young squirrel, so young that it required milk;
so they got a small nursing-bottle for it. Until that squirrel was over
a year old, whenever he got hungry he would get his bottle and sit and
hold it up as if he thought that quite the proper way for a squirrel
to obtain his nourishment. It was utterly comical to see him. We have
no black squirrels; a few red ones, and a great many gray ones of
different kinds."
I was much interested in her pet squirrel, and made frequent inquiries
about it. A year later she writes: "My squirrel still lives and rules
the house. She has an enemy that causes her much trouble,—a rat that
comes into the wood-shed. I had noticed that, whenever she went out
there, she investigated the dark corners with care before she ventured
to play, but did not understand it till I chanced to be sitting in the
kitchen door once, as she was digging up a nut she had buried. Just as
she got it up, a great rat sprung on her back; there ensued a trial of
agility and strength to see which should have that nut. Neither seemed
to be angry, for they did not attempt to bite, but raced around the
shed, cuffing each other at every opportunity; sometimes one had the
nut, sometimes the other. I regret to say my squirrel, whenever she
grew tired, took a base advantage of the rat by coming and sitting
at my feet, gnawing the nut, and plainly showing by her motions her
exultation over her foe. Finally the rat became so exasperated that he
forgot prudence, and forced her to climb up on my shoulder.
"In an extract from a London paper I see it asserted that birds and
snakes cannot taste. As to the snakes I cannot say, but I know birds
can taste, from observing my canary when I give him something new to
eat. He will edge up to it carefully, take a bit, back off to meditate;
then, if he decides he likes it, he walks up boldly and eats his fill.
But if there is anything disagreeable in what I offer him, acid, for
instance, there is such a fuss! He scrapes his bill, raises and lowers
the feathers on the top of his head, giving one the impression that he
is making a wry face. He cannot be induced to touch it a second time.
"I have taught him to think I am afraid of him, and how he tyrannizes
over me, chasing me from place to place, pecking and squeaking! He
delights in pulling out my hair. When knitting or crocheting, he tries
to prevent my pulling the yarn by standing on it; when that fails, he
takes hold with his bill and pulls with all his little might."
Some persons have a special gift or quality that enables them to
sustain more intimate relations with wild creatures than others. Women,
as a rule, are ridiculously afraid of cattle and horses turned loose in
a field, but my correspondent, when a young girl, had many a lark with
the prairie colts. "Is it not strange," she says, "that a horse will
rarely hurt a child, or any person that is fond of them? To see a drove
of a hundred or even a hundred and fifty unbroken colts branded and
turned out to grow up was a common occurrence then [in her childhood].
I could go among them, catch them, climb on their backs, and they never
offered to hurt me; they seemed to consider it _fun_. They would come
up and touch me with their noses, and prance off around and around me;
but just let a man come near them, and they were off like the wind."
All her reminiscences of her early life in Iowa, thirty years ago, are
deeply interesting to me. Her parents, a Boston family, moved to that
part of the State in advance of the railroads, making the journey from
the Mississippi in a wagon. "My father had been fortunate enough to
find a farm with a frame house upon it (the houses were mostly log
ones) built by an Englishman whose homesickness had driven him back to
England. It stood upon a slight elevation in the midst of a prairie,
though not a very level one. To the east and to the west of us, about
four miles away, were the woods along the banks of the streams. It was
in the month of June when we came, and the prairie was tinted pink with
wild roses. From early spring till late in the fall the ground used to
be so covered with some kinds of flowers that it had almost as decided
a color as the sky itself, and the air would be fragrant with their
perfume. First it is white with 'dog-toes' [probably an orchid], then
a cold blue from being covered with some kind of light-blue flower;
next come the roses; in July and August it is pink with the 'prairie
pink,' dotted with scarlet lilies; as autumn comes on, it is vivid
with orange-colored flowers. I never knew their names; they have woody
stalks; one kind that grows about a foot high has a feathery spray of
little blossoms [goldenrod?]. There are several kinds of tall ones;
the blossom has yellow leaves and brown velvety centres [cone-flower,
or rudbeckia, probably, now common in the East]. We youngsters used to
gather the gum that exuded from the stalk. Every one was poor in those
days, and no one was ashamed of it. Plenty to eat, such as it was. We
introduced some innovations in that line that shocked the people here.
We used _corn meal_; they said it was only fit for hogs. Worse than
that, we ate 'greens,'—weeds, they called them. It does not seem
possible, but it is a fact, that with all those fertile acres around
them waiting for cultivation, and to be had almost for the asking,
those people (they were mainly Hoosiers) lived on fried salt pork
swimming in fat, and hot biscuit, all the year round; no variety, no
vegetables, no butter saved for winter use, no milk after cold weather
began, for it was too much trouble to milk the cows—_such_ a shiftless
set! And the hogs they raised,—you should have seen them! 'Prairie
sharks' and 'razor-backs' were the local names for them, and either
name fitted them; long noses, long legs, bodies about five inches
thick, and no amount of food would make them fat. They were allowed
to run wild to save the trouble of caring for them, and when the
pork-barrel was empty they _shot_ one.
"Everybody drove oxen and used lumber-wagons with a board across the
box for a seat. How did we ever endure it, riding over the roadless
prairies! Then, any one who owned a horse was considered an aristocrat
and despised accordingly. One yoke of oxen that we had were not to be
sneezed at as a fast team. They were trained to trot, and would make
good time, too. [I love to hear oxen praised. An old Michigan farmer,
an early settler, told me of a famous pair of oxen he once had; he
spoke of them with great affection. They would draw any log he hitched
them to. When they had felt of the log and found they had their match,
he said they would nudge each other, give their tails a kink, lift up
their heads, and say _eh-h-h-h!_ then something had to come.]
"One phrase you used in your last letter—'the start from the
stump'—shows how locality governs the illustrations we use. The start
was not from the _stump_ here, quite the reverse. Nature made the
land ready for man's hand, and there were no obstacles in the shape
of stumps and stones to overcome. Probably in the East a pine-stump
fence is not regarded as either particularly attractive or odd; but
to me, when I first saw one in York State, it was both. I had never
even heard of the stumps being utilized in that way. Seen for the
first time, there is something grotesque in the appearance of those
long arms forever reaching out after something they never find,
like a petrified octopus. Those fences are an evidence of Eastern
thrift,—making an enemy serve as a friend. I think they would frighten
our horses and cattle, used as they are to the almost invisible wire
fence. 'Worm' fences were the fashion at first. But they soon learned
the necessity of economizing wood. The people were extravagant, too,
in the outlay of power in tilling the soil, sixteen yoke of oxen being
thought absolutely necessary to run a breaking-plow; and I have seen
twenty yoke used, requiring three men to drive and attend the great
clumsy plow. Every summer you might see them in any direction, looking
like 'thousand-legged worms.' They found out after a while that two
yoke answered quite as well. There is something very queer about the
bowlders that are supposed to have been brought down from northern
regions during the glacial period; like Banquo's ghost, they refuse to
stay down. Other stones beside them gradually become buried, but the
bowlders are always on top of the ground. Is there something repellent
about them, that the earth refuses to cover them? They seem to be of no
use, for they cannot be worked as other stone; they have to be broken
open with heat in some way, though I did see a building made of them
once. The bowlders had been broken and put in big squares and little
squares, oblong pieces and triangles. The effect was curious, if not
fine.
"In those days there were such quantities of game-birds, it was the
sportsman's paradise, and during the summer a great many gunners from
the cities came there. Prairie-chickens without number, as great a
nuisance as the crows in the East, only we could eat them to pay for
the grain they ate; also geese, turkeys, ducks, quail, and pigeons.
Did you ever hear the prairie-chickens during the spring? I never felt
sure spring had come to stay till, in the early morning, there came the
boom of the chickens, _Poor old booff_. It is an indescribable sound,
as if there were a thousand saying the same thing and keeping perfect
time. No trouble then getting a child up early in the morning, for it
is time for hunting prairie-chickens' nests. In the most unexpected
places in the wild grass the nests would be found, with about sixteen
eggs in them, looking somewhat like a guinea-hen's egg. Of course, an
omelet made out of them tasted ever so much better than if made out
of home-laid eggs; now I should not like the taste so well, probably,
for there is a wild flavor to the egg, as there is to the flesh of the
bird. Many a time I've stepped right into the nest, so well was it
hidden. After a prairie fire is a good time to go egging, the nests
being in plain sight and the eggs already roasted. I have tried again
and again to raise the chickens by setting the eggs under the tame
hens, but it cannot be done; they seem to inherit a shyness that makes
them refuse to eat, and at the first opportunity they slip off in the
grass and are gone. Every kind of food, even to live insects, they
will refuse, and will starve to death rather than eat in captivity.
There are but few chickens here now; they have taken Horace Greeley's
advice and gone west. As to four-footed game, there were any number of
the little prairie-wolves and some big gray ones. Could see the little
wolves running across the prairie any time o' day, and at night their
continual _yap, yap_ was almost unendurable. They developed a taste for
barn-yard fowl that made it necessary for hens to roost high. They are
cowards in the daytime, but brave enough to come close to the house at
night. If people had only had foxhounds, they would have afforded an
opportunity for some sport. I have seen people try to run them down on
horseback, but never knew them to succeed.
"One of my standard amusements was to go every little while to a den
the wolves had, where the rocks cropped out of the ground, and poke
in there with a stick, to see a wolf pop out scared almost to death.
As to the big wolves, it was dangerous sport to meddle with them. I
had an experience with them one winter that would have begotten a
desire to keep a proper distance from them, had I not felt it before.
An intensely cold night three of us were riding in an open wagon on
one seat. The road ran for about a mile through the woods, and as we
entered it four or five gray wolves sprang out at us; the horse needed
no urging, you may be sure, but to me it seemed an age before we got
out into the moonlight on the prairie; then the wolves slunk back into
the woods. Every leap they made it seemed as if they would jump into
the wagon. I could hear them strike against the back of it, and hear
their teeth _click_ together as they barely missed my hand where I held
on to the seat to keep from being thrown out. My most prominent desire
about that time was to sit in the middle, and let some one else have
the outside seat.
"Grandfather was very fond of trapping, and used to catch a great many
wolves for their skins and the bounty; also minks and muskrats. I
always had to help skin them, which I considered dreadful, especially
skinning the muskrats; but as that was the only condition under which
I was allowed to go along, of course I submitted, for I wouldn't
miss the excitement of seeing whether we had succeeded in outwitting
and catching the sly creatures for any consideration. The beautiful
minks, with their slender satiny bodies, it seemed a pity to catch
them. Muskrats I had no sympathy for, they looked so ratty, and had so
unpleasant a smell. The gophers were one of the greatest plagues the
farmers had. The ground would be dotted with their mounds, so round and
regular, the black dirt pulverized so finely. I always wondered how
they could make them of such a perfect shape, and wished I could see
way down into their houses. They have more than one entrance to them,
because I've tried to drown them out, and soon I would see what I took
to be my gopher, that I thought I had covered so nicely, skipping off.
They took so much corn out of the hills after it was planted that it
was customary to mix corn soaked with strychnine with the seed corn. Do
they have pocket gophers in the East? [No.] They are the cutest little
animals, with their pockets on each side of their necks, lined with
fur; when they get them stuffed full they look as broad as they are
long, and so saucy. I have met them, and had them show fight because I
wouldn't turn out of their path,—the little impudent things!
"One nuisance that goes along with civilization we escaped until the
railroad was built, and that was _rats_. The railroads brought other
nuisances, too, the weeds; they soon crowded out the native plants.
I don't want to be understood as calling _all_ weeds nuisances; the
beautiful flowers some of them bear save their reputations,—the
dandelion, for instance; I approve of the dandelion, whatever others
may think. I shall never forget the first one I found in the West; it
was like meeting an old friend. It grew alongside of an emigrant road,
about five miles from my home; here I spied the golden treasure in the
grass. Some of the many 'prairie schooners' that had passed that way
had probably dropped the one seed. Mother dug it up and planted it
in our flower-bed, and in two years the neighborhood was yellow with
them,—all from that one root. The prairies are gone now, and the wild
flowers, those that have not been civilized to death like the Indians,
have taken refuge in the fence-corners."
I had asked her what she knew about cranes, and she replied as
follows:—
"During the first few years after we came West, cranes, especially
the sand-hill variety, were very plentiful. Any day in the summer you
might see a triangle of them flying over, with their long legs dragging
behind them; or, if you had sharp eyes, could see them stalking
along the sloughs sometimes found on the prairie. In the books I see
them described as being brown in color. Now I should not call them
brown, for they are more of a yellow. They are just the color of a
gosling, should it get its down somewhat soiled, and they look much
like overgrown goslings set up on stilts. I have often found their
nests, and always in the shallow water in the slough, built out of
sticks,—much as the children build cob-houses,—about a foot high,
with two large flat eggs in them. I have often tried to catch them on
their nests, so as to see how they disposed of their long legs, but
never quite succeeded. They are very shy, and their nests are always
so situated as to enable them to see in every direction. I had a great
desire to possess a pet crane, but every attempt to raise one resulted
in failure, all on account of those same slender legs.
"The egg I placed under a 'sitting hen' (one was as much as a hen
could conveniently manage); it would hatch out all right, and I had no
difficulty in feeding the young crane, for it would eat anything, and
showed no shyness,—quite different from a young prairie-chicken; in
fact, their tameness was the cause of their death, for, like Mary's
little lamb, they insisted on going everywhere I went. When they
followed me into the house, and stepped upon the smooth floor, one
leg would go in one direction and the other in the opposite, breaking
one or both of them. They seemed to be unable to walk upon any smooth
surface. Such ridiculous-looking things they were! I have seen a few
pure white ones, but only on the wing. They seem more shy than the
yellow ones.
"Once I saw a curious sight; I saw seven or eight cranes dance a
cotillon, or something very much like it. I have since read of wild
fowl performing in that way, but then I had never heard of it. They
were in a meadow about half a mile from the house; I did not at all
understand what they were doing, and proceeded to investigate. After
walking as near as I could without frightening them, I crept through
the tall grass until I was within a rod of the cranes, and then lay
and watched them. It was the most comical sight to see them waltz
around, sidle up to each other and back again, their long necks and
legs making the most clumsy motions. With a little stretch of the
imagination one might see a smirk on their faces, and suspect them of
caricaturing human beings. There seemed to be a regular method in their
movements, for the changes were repeated. How long they kept it up I
do not know, for I tired of it, and went back to the house, but they
had danced until the grass was trampled down hard and smooth. I always
had a mania for trying experiments, so I coaxed my mother to cook one
the men had shot, though I had never heard of any one's eating crane.
It was not very good, tasted somewhat peculiar, and the thought that
maybe it was poison struck me with horror. I was badly scared, for I
reflected that I had no proof that it was _not_ poison, and I had been
told so many times that I was bound to come to grief, sooner or later,
from trying to find out things."
I am always glad to have the views of a sensible person, outside of
the literary circles, upon my favorite authors, especially when the
views are spontaneous. "Speaking of Thoreau," says my correspondent,
"I am willing to allow most that is said in his praise, but _I do not
like him_, all the same. Do you know I feel that he was not altogether
human. There is something uncanny about him. I guess that, instead
of having a human soul, his body was inhabited by some sylvan deity
that flourished in Grecian times; he seemed out of place among human
beings."
Of Carlyle, too, she has an independent opinion. "It is a mystery to
me why men so universally admire Carlyle; women do not, or, if there
is occasionally one who does, she does not _like_ him. A woman's first
thought about him would be, 'I pity his wife!' Do you remember what he
said in answer to Mrs. Welsh's proposal to come and live with them and
help support them? He said they could only live pleasantly together on
the condition that she looked up to him, not he to her. Here is what
he says: 'Now, think, Liebchen, whether your mother will consent to
forget her riches and our poverty, and uncertain, more probably scanty,
income, and consent in the spirit of Christian meekness to make me her
guardian and director, and be a second wife to her daughter's husband?'
Now, isn't that insufferable conceit for you? To expect that a woman
old enough to be his mother would lay aside her self-respect and
individuality to accept him, a comparatively young and inexperienced
man, as her master? The cheekiness of it! Here you have the key-note of
his character,—'great I and little u.'
"I have tried faithfully to like him, for it seemed as if the fault
must be in me because I did not; I have labored wearily through nearly
all his works, stumbling over his superlatives (why, he is an adjective
factory; his pages look like the alphabet struck by a cyclone. You call
it picturesqueness; I call it grotesqueness). But it was of no use; it
makes me tired all over to think of it. All the time I said to myself,
'Oh, do stop your scolding; you are not so much better than the rest
of us.' One is willing to be led to a higher life, but who wants to be
pushed and cuffed along? How can people place him and our own Emerson,
the dear guide and friend of so many of us, on the same level? It may
be that the world had need of him, just as it needs lightning and rain
and cold and pain, but must we _like_ these things?"[109:1]
[109:1] My correspondent was Mrs. Beardslee of Manchester,
Iowa. She died in October, 1885.
VI
EYE-BEAMS
I
A WEASEL AND HIS DEN
My most interesting note of the season of 1893 relates to a weasel.
One day in early November, my boy and I were sitting on a rock at the
edge of a tamarack swamp in the woods, hoping to get a glimpse of some
grouse which we knew were in the habit of feeding in the swamp. We had
not sat there very long before we heard a slight rustling in the leaves
below us, which we at once fancied was made by the cautious tread of a
grouse. (We had no gun.) Presently, through the thick brushy growth,
we caught sight of a small animal running along, that we at first took
for a red squirrel. A moment more, and it came into full view but a few
yards from us, and we saw that it was a weasel. A second glance showed
that it carried something in its mouth which, as it drew near, we saw
was a mouse or a mole of some sort. The weasel ran nimbly along, now
the length of a decayed log, then over stones and branches, pausing
a moment every three or four yards, and passed within twenty feet of
us, and disappeared behind some rocks on the bank at the edge of the
swamp. "He is carrying food into his den," I said; "let us watch him."
In four or five minutes he reappeared, coming back over the course
along which he had just passed, running over and under the same stones
and down the same decayed log, and was soon out of sight in the swamp.
We had not moved, and evidently he had not noticed us. After about six
minutes we heard the same rustle as at first, and in a moment saw the
weasel coming back with another mouse in his mouth. He kept to his
former route as if chained to it, making the same pauses and gestures,
and repeating exactly his former movements. He disappeared on our left
as before, and, after a few moments' delay, reëmerged and took his
course down into the swamp again. We waited about the same length of
time as before, when back he came with another mouse. He evidently
had a big crop of mice down there amid the bogs and bushes, and he
was gathering his harvest in very industriously. We became curious
to see exactly where his den was, and so walked around where he had
seemed to disappear each time, and waited. He was as punctual as usual,
and was back with his game exactly on time. It happened that we had
stopped within two paces of his hole, so that, as he approached it, he
evidently discovered us. He paused, looked steadily at us, and then,
without any sign of fear, entered his den. The entrance was not under
the rocks as we had expected, but was in the bank a few feet beyond
them. We remained motionless for some time, but he did not reappear.
Our presence had made him suspicious, and he was going to wait a while.
Then I removed some dry leaves and exposed his doorway, a small, round
hole, hardly as large as the chipmunk makes, going straight down into
the ground. We had a lively curiosity to get a peep into his larder. If
he had been carrying in mice at this rate very long, his cellars must
be packed with them. With a sharp stick I began digging into the red
clayey soil, but soon encountered so many roots from near trees that I
gave it up, deciding to return next day with a mattock. So I repaired
the damages I had done as well as I could, replaced the leaves, and we
moved off.
The next day, which was mild and still as usual, I came back armed, as
I thought, to unearth the weasel and his treasures. I sat down where
we had sat the day before and awaited developments. I was curious to
know if the weasel was still carrying in his harvest. I had sat but a
few minutes when I heard again the rustle in the dry leaves, and saw
the weasel coming home with another mouse. I observed him till he had
made three trips; about every six or seven minutes, I calculated, he
brought in a mouse. Then I went and stood near his hole. This time he
had a fat meadow-mouse. He laid it down near the entrance, went in and
turned around, and reached out and drew the mouse in after him. That
store of mice I am bound to see, I thought, and then fell to with the
heavy mattock. I followed the hole down about two feet, when it turned
to the north. I kept the clew by thrusting into the passage slender
twigs; these it was easy to follow. Two or three feet more and the hole
branched, one part going west, the other northeast. I followed the west
one a few feet till it branched. Then I turned to the easterly tunnel,
and pursued it till it branched. I followed one of these ways till it
divided. I began to be embarrassed and hindered by the accumulations
of loose soil. Evidently this weasel had foreseen just such an assault
upon his castle as I was making, and had planned it accordingly. He was
not to be caught napping. I found several enlargements in the various
tunnels, breathing spaces, or spaces to turn around in, or to meet
and chat with a companion, but nothing that looked like a terminus, a
permanent living-room. I tried removing the soil a couple of paces away
with the mattock, but found it slow work. I was getting warm and tired,
and my task was apparently only just begun. The farther I dug the more
numerous and intricate became the passages. I concluded to stop, and
come again the next day, armed with a shovel in addition to the mattock.
Accordingly, I came back on the morrow, and fell to work vigorously.
I soon had quite a large excavation; I found the bank a labyrinth of
passages, with here and there a large chamber. One of the latter I
struck only six inches under the surface, by making a fresh breach a
few feet away.
While I was leaning upon my shovel-handle and recovering my breath, I
heard some light-footed creature tripping over the leaves above me just
out of view, which I fancied might be a squirrel. Presently I heard
the bay of a hound and the yelp of a cur, and then knew that a rabbit
had passed near me. The dogs came hurrying after, with a great rumpus,
and then presently the hunters followed. The dogs remained barking not
many rods south of me on the edge of the swamp, and I knew the rabbit
had run to hole. For half an hour or more I heard the hunters at work
there, digging their game out; then they came along and discovered me
at my work. (An old trapper and woodsman and his son.) I told them what
I was in quest of. "A mountain weasel," said the old man. "Seven or
eight years ago I used to set deadfalls for rabbits just over there,
and the game was always partly eaten up. It must have been this weasel
that visited my traps." So my game was evidently an old resident of
the place. This swamp, maybe, had been his hunting-ground for many
years, and he had added another hall to his dwelling each year. After
further digging, I struck at least one of his banqueting halls, a
cavity about the size of one's hat, arched over by a network of fine
tree-roots. The occupant evidently lodged or rested here also. There
was a warm, dry nest, made of leaves and the fur of mice and moles. I
took out two or three handfuls. In finding this chamber I had followed
one of the tunnels around till it brought me within a foot of the
original entrance. A few inches to one side of this cavity there was
what I took to be a back alley where the weasel threw his waste; there
were large masses of wet, decaying fur here, and fur pellets such as
are regurgitated by hawks and owls. In the nest there was the tail
of a flying squirrel, showing that the weasel sometimes had a flying
squirrel for supper or dinner.
I continued my digging with renewed energy; I should yet find the grand
depot where all these passages centred; but the farther I excavated,
the more complex and baffling the problem became; the ground was
honeycombed with passages. What enemy has this weasel, I said to
myself, that he should provide so many ways of escape, that he should
have a back door at every turn? To corner him would be impossible; to
be lost in his fortress were like being lost in Mammoth Cave. How he
could bewilder his pursuer by appearing now at this door, now at that;
now mocking him from the attic, now defying him from the cellar! So
far, I had discovered but one entrance; but some of the chambers were
so near the surface that it looked as if the planner had calculated
upon an emergency when he might want to reach daylight quickly in a new
place.
Finally I paused, rested upon my shovel a while, eased my aching back
upon the ground, and then gave it up, feeling as I never had before the
force of the old saying, that you cannot catch a weasel asleep. I had
made an ugly hole in the bank, had handled over two or three times a
ton or more of earth, and was apparently no nearer the weasel and his
store of mice than when I began.
Then I regretted that I had broken into his castle at all; that I
had not contented myself with coming day after day and counting his
mice as he carried them in, and continued my observation upon him each
succeeding year. Now the rent in his fortress could not be repaired,
and he would doubtless move away, as he most certainly did, for his
doors, which I had closed with soil, remained unopened after winter had
set in.
But little seems known about the intimate private lives of any of our
lesser wild creatures. It was news to me that any of the weasels lived
in dens in this way, and that they stored up provision against a day of
need. This species was probably the little ermine, eight or nine inches
long, with tail about five inches. It was still in its summer dress of
dark chestnut-brown above and whitish below.
It was a mystery where the creature had put the earth which it must
have removed in digging its den; not a grain was to be seen anywhere,
and yet a bushel or more must have been taken out. Externally, there
was not the slightest sign of that curious habitation there under the
ground. The entrance was hidden beneath dry leaves, and was surrounded
by little passages and flourishes between the leaves and the ground.
If any of my readers find a weasel's den, I hope they will be wiser
than I was, and observe his goings and comings without disturbing his
habitation.
II
KEEN PERCEPTIONS
Success in observing nature, as in so many other things, depends upon
alertness of mind and quickness to take a hint. One's perceptive
faculties must be like a trap lightly and delicately set; a touch must
suffice to spring it. But how many people have I walked with, whose
perceptions were rusty and unpracticed,—nothing less than a bear would
spring their trap! All the finer play of nature, all the small deer,
they miss. The little dramas and tragedies that are being enacted by
the wild creatures in the fields and woods are more or less veiled
and withdrawn; and the actors all stop when a spectator appears upon
the scene. One must be able to interpret the signs, to penetrate the
scenes, to put this and that together.
Then nature speaks a different language from our own; the successful
observer translates this language into human speech. He knows the
meaning of every sound, movement, gesture, and gives the human
equivalent. Careless or hasty observers, on the other hand, make the
mistake of reading their own thoughts or mental and emotional processes
into nature; plans and purposes are attributed to the wild creatures
which are quite beyond them. Some people in town saw an English sparrow
tangled up in a horsehair, and suspended from a tree, with other
sparrows fluttering and chattering about it. They concluded at once
that the sparrows had executed one of their number, doubtless for some
crime. I have several times seen sparrows suspended in this way about
their nesting and roosting places. Accidents happen to birds as well as
to other folks. But they do not yet imitate us in the matter of capital
punishment.
One day I saw a little bush sparrow fluttering along in the grass,
disabled in some way, and a large number of its mates flitting and
calling about it. I captured the bird, and, in doing so, its struggles
in my hand broke the bond that held it—some kind of web or silken
insect thread that tied together the quills of one wing. When I let
it fly away, all its mates followed it as if wondering at the miracle
that had been wrought. They no doubt experienced some sort of emotion.
Birds sympathize with each other in their distress, and will make
common cause against an enemy. Crows will pursue and fight a tame crow.
They seem to look upon him as an alien and an enemy. He is never so
shapely and bright and polished as his wild brother. He is more or less
demoralized, and has lost caste. Probably a pack of wolves would in the
same way destroy a tame wolf, should such an one appear in their midst.
The wild creatures are human,—with a difference, a wide difference.
They have the keenest powers of perception,—what observers they are!
how quickly they take a hint—but they have little or no powers of
reflection. The crows do not meet in parliaments and caucuses, as has
been fancied, and try offenders, and discuss the tariff, or consider
ways and means. They are gregarious and social, and probably in the
fall have something like a reunion of the tribe. At least their vast
assemblages upon the hills at this season have a decidedly festive
appearance.
The crow has fine manners. He always has the walk and air of a lord of
the soil. One morning I put out some fresh meat upon the snow near my
study window. Presently a crow came and carried it off, and alighted
with it upon the ground in the vineyard. While he was eating of it,
another crow came, and, alighting a few yards away, slowly walked up
to within a few feet of this fellow and stopped. I expected to see
a struggle over the food, as would have been the case with domestic
fowls or animals. Nothing of the kind. The feeding crow stopped eating,
regarded the other for a moment, made a gesture or two, and flew away.
Then the second crow went up to the food, and proceeded to take his
share. Presently the first crow came back, when each seized a portion
of the food and flew away with it. Their mutual respect and good-will
seemed perfect. Whether it really was so in our human sense, or whether
it was simply an illustration of the instinct of mutual support which
seems to prevail among gregarious birds, I know not. Birds that are
solitary in their habits, like hawks or woodpeckers, behave quite
differently toward each other in the presence of their food.
The lives of the wild creatures revolve about two facts or emotions,
appetite and fear. Their keenness in discovering food and in
discovering danger are alike remarkable. But man can nearly always
outwit them, because, while his perceptions are not as sharp, his
power of reflection is so much greater. His cunning carries a great
deal farther. The crow will quickly discover anything that looks like
a trap or snare set to catch him, but it takes him a long time to see
through the simplest contrivance. As I have above stated, I sometimes
place meat on the snow in front of my study window to attract him. On
one occasion, after a couple of crows had come to expect something
there daily, I suspended a piece of meat by a string from a branch
of the tree just over the spot where I usually placed the food. A
crow soon discovered it, and came into the tree to see what it meant.
His suspicions were aroused. There was some design in that suspended
meat evidently. It was a trap to catch him. He surveyed it from every
near branch. He peeked and pried, and was bent on penetrating the
mystery. He flew to the ground, and walked about and surveyed it from
all sides. Then he took a long walk down about the vineyard as if
in hope of hitting upon some clew. Then he came to the tree again,
and tried first one eye, then the other, upon it; then to the ground
beneath; then he went away and came back; then his fellow came, and
they both squinted and investigated, and then disappeared. Chickadees
and woodpeckers would alight upon the meat and peck it swinging in the
wind, but the crows were fearful. Does this show reflection? Perhaps
it does, but I look upon it rather as that instinct of fear and
cunning so characteristic of the crow. Two days passed thus: every
morning the crows came and surveyed the suspended meat from all points
in the tree, and then went away. The third day I placed a large bone
on the snow beneath the suspended morsel. Presently one of the crows
appeared in the tree, and bent his eye upon the tempting bone. "The
mystery deepens," he seemed to say to himself. But after half an hour's
investigation, and after approaching several times within a few feet of
the food upon the ground, he seemed to conclude there was no connection
between it and the piece hanging by the string. So he finally walked
up to it and fell to pecking it, flickering his wings all the time, as
a sign of his watchfulness. He also turned up his eye, momentarily, to
the piece in the air above, as if it might be some disguised sword of
Damocles ready to fall upon him. Soon his mate came and alighted on a
low branch of the tree. The feeding crow regarded him a moment, and
then flew up to his side, as if to give him a turn at the meat. But he
refused to run the risk. He evidently looked upon the whole thing as a
delusion and a snare, and presently went away, and his mate followed
him. Then I placed the bone in one of the main forks of the tree, but
the crows kept at a safe distance from it. Then I put it back to the
ground, but they grew more and more suspicious; some evil intent in it
all, they thought. Finally a dog carried off the bone, and the crows
ceased to visit the tree.
III
A SPARROW'S MISTAKE
If one has always built one's nest upon the ground, and if one comes
of a race of ground-builders, it is a risky experiment to build in a
tree. The conditions are vastly different. One of my near neighbors,
a little song sparrow, learned this lesson the past season. She grew
ambitious; she departed from the traditions of her race, and placed her
nest in a tree. Such a pretty spot she chose, too—the pendent cradle
formed by the interlaced sprays of two parallel branches of a Norway
spruce. These branches shoot out almost horizontally; indeed, the lower
ones become quite so in spring, and the side shoots with which they
are clothed droop down, forming the slopes of miniature ridges; where
the slopes of two branches join, a little valley is formed which often
looks more stable than it really is. My sparrow selected one of these
little valleys about six feet from the ground, and quite near the walls
of the house. Here, she has thought, I will build my nest, and pass the
heat of June in a miniature Norway. This tree is the fir-clad mountain,
and this little vale on its side I select for my own. She carried
up a great quantity of coarse grass and straws for the foundation,
just as she would have done upon the ground. On the top of this mass
there gradually came into shape the delicate structure of her nest,
compacting and refining till its delicate carpet of hairs and threads
was reached. So sly as the little bird was about it, too,—every
moment on her guard lest you discover her secret! Five eggs were laid,
and incubation was far advanced, when the storms and winds came. The
cradle indeed did rock. The boughs did not break, but they swayed and
separated as you would part your two interlocked hands. The ground
of the little valley fairly gave way, the nest tilted over till its
contents fell into the chasm. It was like an earthquake that destroys a
hamlet.
No born tree-builder would have placed its nest in such a situation.
Birds that build at the end of the branch, like the oriole, tie the
nest fast; others, like the robin, build against the main trunk; still
others build securely in the fork. The sparrow, in her ignorance,
rested her house upon the spray of two branches, and when the tempest
came the branches parted company and the nest was engulfed.
Another sparrow friend of mine met with a curious mishap the past
season. It was the little social sparrow, or chippie. She built her
nest on the arm of a grapevine in the vineyard, a favorite place with
chippie. It had a fine canopy of leaves, and was firmly and securely
placed. Just above it hung a bunch of young grapes, which in the warm
July days grew very rapidly. The little bird had not foreseen the
calamity that threatened her. The grapes grew down into her nest and
completely filled it, so that, when I put my hand in, there were the
eggs sat upon by the grapes. The bird was crowded out, and had perforce
abandoned her nest, ejected by a bunch of grapes. How long she held
her ground I do not know; probably till the fruit began to press
heavily upon her.
IV
A POOR FOUNDATION
It is a curious habit the wood thrush has of starting its nest with a
fragment of newspaper or other paper. Except in remote woods, I think
it nearly always puts a piece of paper in the foundation of its nest.
Last spring I chanced to be sitting near a tree in which a wood thrush
had concluded to build. She came with a piece of paper nearly as large
as my hand, placed it upon the branch, stood upon it a moment, and
then flew down to the ground. A little puff of wind caused the paper
to leave the branch a moment afterward. The thrush watched it eddy
slowly down to the ground, when she seized it and carried it back. She
placed it in position as before, stood upon it again for a moment,
and then flew away. Again the paper left the branch, and sailed away
slowly to the ground. The bird seized it again, jerking it about rather
spitefully, I thought; she turned it around two or three times, then
labored back to the branch with it, upon which she shifted it about as
if to hit upon some position in which it would lie more securely. This
time she sat down upon it for a moment, and then went away, doubtless
with the thought in her head that she would bring something to hold
it down. The perverse paper followed her in a few seconds. She seized
it again, and hustled it about more than before. As she rose with
it toward the nest, it in some way impeded her flight, and she was
compelled to return to the ground with it. But she kept her temper
remarkably well. She turned the paper over and took it up in her beak
several times before she was satisfied with her hold, and then carried
it back to the branch, where, however, it would not stay. I saw her
make six trials of it, when I was called away. I think she finally
abandoned the restless fragment, probably a scrap that held some
"breezy" piece of writing, for later in the season I examined the nest
and found no paper in it.
V
A FRIGHTENED MINK
In walking through the woods one day in early winter, we read upon the
newly fallen snow the record of a mink's fright the night before. The
mink had been traveling through the woods post-haste, not along the
watercourses where one sees them by day, but over ridges and across
valleys. We followed his track some distance to see what adventures
he had met with. We tracked him through a bushy swamp, saw where he
had left it to explore a pile of rocks, then where he had taken to the
swamp again, then to the more open woods. Presently the track turned
sharply about, and doubled upon itself in long hurried strides. What
had caused the mink to change its mind so suddenly? We explored a few
paces ahead, and came upon a fox track. The mink had seen the fox
stalking stealthily through the woods, and the sight had probably
brought his heart into his mouth. I think he climbed a tree, and waited
till the fox passed. His track disappeared amid a clump of hemlocks,
and then reappeared again a little beyond them. It described a big
loop around, and then crossed the fox track only a few yards from the
point where its course was interrupted. Then it followed a little
watercourse, went under a rude bridge in a wood-road, then mingled with
squirrel tracks in a denser part of the thicket. If the mink met a
muskrat or a rabbit in his travels, or came upon a grouse, or quail, or
a farmer's hen-roost, he had the supper he was in quest of.
VI
A LEGLESS CLIMBER
The eye always sees what it wants to see, and the ear hears what it
wants to hear. If I am intent upon birds'-nests in my walk, I find
birds'-nests everywhere. Some people see four-leaved clovers wherever
they look in the grass. A friend of mine picks up Indian relics all
about the fields; he has Indian relics in his eye. I have seen him
turn out of the path at right angles, as a dog will when he scents
something, and walk straight away several rods, and pick up an Indian
pounding-stone. He saw it out of the corner of his eye. I find that
without conscious effort I see and hear birds with like ease. Eye and
ear are always on the alert.
One day in early June I was walking with some friends along a secluded
wood-road. Above the hum of the conversation I caught the distressed
cry of a pair of blue jays. My companions heard it also, but did not
heed it.
But to my ear the cry was peculiar. It was uttered in a tone of anguish
and alarm. I said, "Let us see what is the trouble with these jays."
I presently saw a nest twenty-five or thirty feet from the ground in
a small hemlock which I at once concluded belonged to the jays. The
birds were but a few yards away, hopping about amid the neighboring
branches, uttering now and then their despairing note. Looking more
intently at the nest, I became aware in the dim light of the tree of
something looped about it, or else there was a dark, very crooked limb
that partly held it. Suspecting the true nature of the case, I threw a
stone up through the branches, and then another and another, when the
dark loops and folds upon one side of the nest began to disappear, and
the head and neck of a black snake to slowly slide out on a horizontal
branch on the other; in a moment the snake had cleared the nest, and
stretched himself along the branch.
Another rock-fragment jarred his perch, when he slid cautiously along
toward the branch of a large pine-tree which came out and mingled its
spray with that of the hemlock. It was soon apparent that the snake
was going to take refuge in the pine. As he made the passage from one
tree to the other, we sought to dislodge him by a shower of sticks and
stones, but without success; he was soon upon a large branch of the
pine, and, stretched out on top of the limb, thought himself quite
hidden. And so he was; but we knew his hiding-place, and the stones
and clubs we hurled soon made him uneasy. Presently a club struck the
branch with such force that he was fairly dislodged, but saved himself
by quickly wrapping his tail about the limb. In this position he hung
for some moments, but the intervening branches shielded him pretty well
from our missiles, and he soon recovered himself and gained a still
higher branch that reached out over the road and nearly made a bridge
to the trees on the other side.
Seeing the monster was likely to escape us, unless we assailed him
at closer quarters, I determined to climb the tree. A smaller tree
growing near helped me up to the first branches, where the ascent
was not very difficult. I finally reached the branch upon which the
snake was carefully poised, and began shaking it. But he did not come
down; he wrapped his tail about it, and defied me. My own position was
precarious, and I was obliged to move with great circumspection.
After much manœuvring I succeeded in arming myself with a dry branch
eight or ten feet long, where I had the serpent at a disadvantage. He
kept his hold well. I clubbed him about from branch to branch, while my
friends, with cautions and directions, looked on from beneath. Neither
man nor snake will indulge in very lively antics in a treetop thirty or
forty feet from the ground. But at last I dislodged him, and, swinging
and looping like a piece of rubber hose, he went to the ground, where
my friends pounced upon him savagely and quickly made an end of him.
I worked my way carefully down the tree, and was about to drop upon the
ground from the lower branches, when I saw another black snake coiled
up at the foot of the tree, as if lying in wait for me. Had he started
to his mate's rescue, and, seeing the battle over, was he now waiting
to avenge himself upon the victor? But the odds were against him; my
friends soon had him stretched beside his comrade.
The first snake killed had swallowed two young jays just beginning to
feather out.
How the serpent discovered the nest would be very interesting to know.
What led him to search in this particular tree amid all these hundreds
of trees that surrounded it? It is probable that the snake watches like
a cat, or, having seen the parent birds about this tree, explored it.
Nests upon the ground and in low boughs are frequently rifled by black
snakes, but I have never before known one to climb to such a height in
a forest tree.
It would also be interesting to know if the other snake was in the
secret of this nest, and was waiting near to share in its contents.
One rarely has the patience to let these little dramas or tragedies be
played to the end; one cannot look quietly on, and see a snake devour
anything. Not even when it is snake eat snake. Only a few days later my
little boy called me to the garden to see a black snake in the act of
swallowing a garter snake. The little snake was holding back with all
his might and main, hooking his tail about the blackberry bushes, and
pulling desperately; still his black enemy was slowly engulfing him,
and had accomplished about eight or ten inches of him, when he suddenly
grew alarmed at some motion of ours, and ejected the little snake
from him with unexpected ease and quickness, and tried to escape. The
little snake's head was bleeding, but he did not seem otherwise to have
suffered from the adventure.
Still a few days later, the man who was mowing the lawn called to me to
come and witness a similar tragedy, but on a smaller scale,—a garter
snake swallowing a little green snake. Half the length of the green
snake had disappeared from sight, and it was quite dead. The process
had been a slow one, as the garter snake was only two or three inches
longer than his victim. There seems to be a sort of poetic justice in
snake swallowing snake, shark eating shark, and one can look on with
more composure than when a bird or frog is the victim. It is said that
in the deep sea there is a fish that will swallow another fish eight
or ten times its own size. It seizes its victim by the tail and slowly
sucks it in, stretching and expanding itself at the same time, and
probably digesting the big fish by inches, till, after many days, it is
completely engulfed. Would it be hard to find something analogous to
this in life, especially in American politics?
VII
A YOUNG MARSH HAWK
Most country boys, I fancy, know the marsh hawk. It is he you see
flying low over the fields, beating about bushes and marshes and
dipping over the fences, with his attention directed to the ground
beneath him. He is a cat on wings. He keeps so low that the birds and
mice do not see him till he is fairly upon them. The hen-hawk swoops
down upon the meadow-mouse from his position high in air, or from the
top of a dead tree; but the marsh hawk stalks him and comes suddenly
upon him from over the fence, or from behind a low bush or tuft of
grass. He is nearly as large as the hen-hawk, but has a much longer
tail. When I was a boy I used to call him the long-tailed hawk. The
male is a bluish slate color; the female a reddish brown, like the
hen-hawk, with a white rump.
Unlike the other hawks, they nest on the ground in low, thick marshy
places. For several seasons a pair have nested in a bushy marsh a few
miles back of me, near the house of a farmer friend of mine, who has
a keen eye for the wild life about him. Two years ago he found the
nest, but when I got over to see it the next week, it had been robbed,
probably by some boys in the neighborhood. The past season, in April
or May, by watching the mother bird, he found the nest again. It was in
a marshy place, several acres in extent, in the bottom of a valley, and
thickly grown with hardhack, prickly ash, smilax, and other low thorny
bushes. My friend brought me to the brink of a low hill, and pointed
out to me in the marsh below us, as nearly as he could, just where the
nest was located. Then we crossed the pasture, entered upon the marsh,
and made our way cautiously toward it. The wild thorny growths, waist
high, had to be carefully dealt with. As we neared the spot I used my
eyes the best I could, but I did not see the hawk till she sprang into
the air not ten yards away from us. She went screaming upward, and was
soon sailing in a circle far above us. There, on a coarse matting of
twigs and weeds, lay five snow-white eggs, a little more than half as
large as hens' eggs. My companion said the male hawk would probably
soon appear and join the female, but he did not. She kept drifting away
to the east, and was soon gone from our sight.
We soon withdrew and secreted ourselves behind the stone wall, in hopes
of seeing the mother hawk return. She appeared in the distance, but
seemed to know she was being watched, and kept away. About ten days
later we made another visit to the nest. An adventurous young Chicago
lady also wanted to see a hawk's nest, and so accompanied us. This
time three of the eggs were hatched, and as the mother hawk sprang
up, either by accident or intentionally, she threw two of the young
hawks some feet from the nest. She rose up and screamed angrily. Then,
turning toward us, she came like an arrow straight at the young lady, a
bright plume in whose hat probably drew her fire. The damsel gathered
up her skirts about her and beat a hasty retreat. Hawks were not so
pretty as she thought they were. A large hawk launched at one's face
from high in the air is calculated to make one a little nervous. It is
such a fearful incline down which the bird comes, and she is aiming
exactly toward your eye. When within about thirty feet of you, she
turns upward with a rushing sound, and, mounting higher falls toward
you again. She is only firing blank cartridges, as it were; but it
usually has the desired effect, and beats the enemy off.
After we had inspected the young hawks, a neighbor of my friend offered
to conduct us to a quail's nest. Anything in the shape of a nest is
always welcome, it is such a mystery, such a centre of interest and
affection, and, if upon the ground, is usually something so dainty and
exquisite amid the natural wreckage and confusion. A ground-nest seems
so exposed, too, that it always gives a little thrill of pleasurable
surprise to see the group of frail eggs resting there behind so slight
a barrier. I will walk a long distance any day just to see a song
sparrow's nest amid the stubble or under a tuft of grass. It is a jewel
in
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