UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 UWIVKKSITY of 
 AT 
 i-OS ANGELES 
 
 UHRARY
 
 Cljc UiurraiBc literature 
 
 IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
 
 WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 14 36 If)
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 M0 
 
 How I KILLED A BEAK 1 
 
 LOST IN THE WOODS 11 
 
 A FIGHT WITH A TKOUT t , , . 23 
 
 A-HUNT1NG OF THK DEER 31 
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY . , 48 
 
 CAMPING OUT . , 74 
 
 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 88 
 
 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 101 
 
 How SPRING CAME IN NKW ENGLAND 118 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1878, BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
 
 COPYRIGHT, I9OS, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQO6 AND I92O, BY SUSAN LEE WARNER 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 1V)t l&ibersibt flttas 
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
 
 F 
 
 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 LIKE Mr. Aldrich, who played with his boyhood in Tkd 
 Story of a Bad Boy, Mr. Warner has treated himself as a 
 sort of third person in Being a Boy, the scenes of which 
 are laid in a primitive Massachusetts country neighborhood. 
 The place which stood for its portrait in the book is Charle- 
 mont, near the eastern opening of the Hoosac tunnel. Here 
 Mr. Warner spent his boyhood, removing to the place, when 
 his father died, from Plainfield, in the same State, where he 
 was born September 12, 1829. He was five years old when 
 he was taken to Charlemont, and he remained there eight 
 years, and then removed to Cazenovia, N. Y. His guardian 
 intended him for business life, and placed him after his 
 school days as clerk in a store, but his intellectual ambition 
 was strong, and against all adverse fates he secured a col- 
 legiate education at Hamilton College, where he graduated 
 in 1851. His college many years later conferred on him 
 the degree of Doctor of Letters. 
 
 When he was in college he showed his bent for literature 
 by contributing to the magazines of the day, and shortly 
 after graduating compiled a Book of Eloquence. For the 
 next half dozen years he was busy establishing himself in 
 life, choosing the law at first as his profession, but really 
 practicing the various pursuits which should finally qualify 
 him for his predestined vocation as a man of letters. He 
 spent two years in frontier life with a surveying party ic 
 Missouri, mainly to secure a more robust condition of body ; 
 he lectured, did hack work, wrote letters to journals, looked 
 wistfully at public life and oratory, opened a law office id 
 Chicago, and took what legal business he could find.
 
 IV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 It was while he was there living by miscellaneous ven- 
 tures that J. R. Hawley, formerly Senator from Connecti- 
 cut, was attracted by the letters which Mr. Warner was con- 
 tributing to his paper, the Hartford Press, and invited hii 
 correspondent to remove to Hartford and become assistant 
 editor of the paper. This was shortly before the opening 
 of the war for the Union. When Mr. Hawley entered the 
 army, Mr. Warner became editor in chief ; and when the 
 Press became merged in the older and more substantial 
 Courant, he became one of the proprietors and editors of 
 that paper. 
 
 In that position he remained until his death, althougL 
 iu his last years he was relieved from much of the office 
 work of an editor. It was in connection with his journal- 
 istic duties that his first real stroke in literature was made 
 He was busy with the political discussions in which the press 
 was involved, and most of his writing was of this sort. But 
 his morning recreation in his garden suggested to him the 
 relief of writing playful sketches for his paper, drawn from 
 this occupation, and the popularity attending them led to 
 a collection of the sketches in the well-known volume My 
 Summer in a Garden. 
 
 In 1868 Mr. Warner went to Europe for a year and 
 turned his travel-experience into sketches which were gath- 
 ered into Saunterings. This was the beginning of his more 
 distinctly literary life. He found his pleasure as well as his 
 recuperation thereafter chiefly in rambling and in noting 
 men and things. The more distinctive of his books cf travel 
 growing out of this habit were Baddeck and That Sort oj 
 Thing, which is a humorous sketch of a journey in Nova 
 Scotia and among the scenes of Longfellow's Evangeline ; 
 books of eastern travel, My Winter on the Nile and In th( 
 Levant; rambles chiefly in the Spanish peninsula undel 
 the name A Roundabout Journey, and a number of papers 
 relating to American life and scenery gathered into the two 
 volumes Studies in the South and West and Our Italy*
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH V 
 
 a warm eulogy of southern California. A genuine love of 
 nature bore rich fruit in the Adirondack sketches In the 
 Wilderness, which form the contents of this present 
 rolume. 
 
 By a natural transfer of his own habit into a more purely 
 literary expression, Mr. Warner wrote a book, half story, 
 half travel, entitled Their Pilgrimage, which carried sev- 
 eral characters from one watering-place in America to an- 
 other, enabling him thus to sketch manners and make 
 observations in a light, satiric vein, on some phases of 
 American life. This venture it was that led him proba- 
 bly into the more positive field of fictitious literature, and 
 he produced A Little Journey in the World, which, under 
 the guise of stoiy, was really a serious inquiry into the 
 tendencies of social life when affected strongly by the in- 
 sidious influence of wealth, especially newly-gotten wealth. 
 The publication of this novel led to the writing of two 
 other novels, The Golden House and That Fortune, pub- 
 lished at intervals of a few years. These novels carried 
 forward some of the inquiries started in A Little Journey 
 in the World, and the reappearance of certain characters, 
 with a further delineation of their experience, gives the three 
 books something of the form of a trilogy. 
 
 For several years Mr. Warner held an editorial position 
 on Harper's Monthly, and many of his contributions were 
 made to that magazine. The light, suggestive essay, best 
 illustrated by his Backlog Studies, is perhaps the form of 
 literature with which he is most identified, but the serious 
 side of his nature is never held distinct from the humorous, 
 as the vein of humor also runs through his more solid work. 
 His interest in literature was always very strong, and led 
 him into the delivery of some forcible addresses at college 
 anniversaries and into the editorship of the American Men 
 of Letters series, to which he contributed the volume on 
 Washington Irving, who was his first great admiration in 
 modern literature. He also conducted, a? editor in chief.
 
 vi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
 
 the extensive work entitled Library of the World's Best 
 Literature. His interest in literature and travel was not 
 that of a dilettante. His humor is scarcely more promi- 
 nent than his earnest though tfulness, and he gave practical 
 expression to his thought in the part which he took in pub- 
 lic affairs in Hartford and in the moving question of prison 
 reform. 
 
 Mr. Warner died in Hartford, Conn., October 20 S 1900
 
 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 
 
 So many conflicting accounts have appeared about 
 my casual encounter with an Adirondack bear last 
 summer, that in justice to the public, to myself, and 
 to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement 
 of the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion 
 to kill a bear, that the celebration of the exploit may 
 be excused. 
 
 The encounter was unpremeditated on both sides. 
 I was not hunting for a bear, and I have no reason to 
 suppose that a bear was looking for me. The fact is, 
 that we were both out blackberrying, and met by 
 chance, the usual way. There is among the Adiron- 
 dack visitors always a great deal of conversation about 
 bears, a general expression of the wish to see one 
 in the woods, and much speculation as to how a person 
 would act if he or she chanced to meet one. But 
 bears are scarce and timid, and appear only to a 
 favored few. 
 
 It was a warm day in August, just the sort of day 
 when an adventure of any kind seemed impossible^ 
 But it occurred to the housekeepers at our cottage 
 there were four of them to send me to the clearing, 
 on the mountain back of the house, to pick blackber- 
 ries. It was rather a series of small clearings, run-' 
 ning up into the forest, much overgrown with bushes 
 and briers, and not unromantic. Cows pastured there,
 
 2 BOW I KILLED A BEAR 
 
 penetrating through the leafy passages from one open- 
 ing to another, and browsing among the bushes. I 
 was kindly furnished with a six-quart pail, and told 
 not to be gone long. 
 
 Not from any predatory instinct, but to save appear- 
 ances, I took a gun. It adds to the manly aspect of a 
 person with a tin pail if he also carries a gun. It was 
 possible I might start up a partridge ; though how I 
 was to hit him, if he started up instead of standing 
 still, puzzled me. Many people use a shot-gun for 
 partridges. I prefer the rifle : it makes a clean job 
 of death, and does not prematurely stuff the bird with 
 globules of lead. The rifle was a Sharp's, carrying a 
 ball cartridge (ten to the pound), an excellent wea- 
 pon belonging to a friend of mine, who had intended, 
 for a good many years back, to kill a deer with it. He 
 could hit a tree with it if the wind did not blow, 
 and the atmosphere was just right, and the tree was 
 not too far off nearly every time. Of course, the 
 tree must have some size. Needless to say that I was 
 at that time no sportsman. Years ago I killed a robin 
 under the most humiliating circumstances. The bird 
 was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a big shot-gun 
 pretty full, crept up under the tree, rested the gun on 
 the fence, with the muzzle more than ten feet from 
 the bird, shut both eyes, and pulled the trigger. 
 When I got up to see what had happened, the robin 
 was scattered about under the tree in more than a 
 thousand pieces, no one of which was big enough to 
 enable a naturalist to decide from it to what species it 
 belonged. This disgusted me with the life of a sports- 
 man. I mention the incident to show, that, although 
 I went blackberrying armed, there was not much in- 
 equality between me and the bear.
 
 HOW I KILLED A SEAR 3 
 
 In this blackberry-patch bears Lad been seen. The 
 summer before, our colored cook, accompanied by a 
 little girl of the vicinage, was picking berries there 
 one day, when a bear came out of the woods, and 
 walked towards them. The girl took to her heels, and 
 escaped. Aunt Chloe was paralyzed with terror. In- 
 stead of attempting to run, she sat down on the 
 ground where she was standing, and began to weep 
 and scream, giving herself up for lost. The bear was 
 bewildered by this conduct. He approached and 
 looked at her ; he walked around and surveyed her. 
 Probably he had never seen a colored person before, 
 and did not know whether she would agree with him : 
 at any rate, after watching her a few moments, he 
 turned about, and went into the forest. This is an 
 authentic instance of the delicate consideration of a 
 bear, and is much more remarkable than the forbear* 
 ance towards the African slave of the well-known lion, 
 because the bear had no thorn in his foot. 
 
 When I had climbed the hill, I set up my rifle 
 against a tree, and began picking berries, lured on 
 from bush to bush by the black gleam of fruit (that 
 always promises more in the distance than it realizes 
 when you reach it) ; penetrating farther and farther, 
 through leaf-shaded cow-paths flecked with sunlight, 
 into clearing after clearing. I could hear on all sides 
 the tinkle of bells, the cracking of sticks, and the 
 stamping of cattle that were taking refuge in the 
 thicket from the flies. Occasionally, as I broke 
 through a covert, I encountered a meek cow, who 
 stared at me stupidly for a second, and then shambled 
 off into the brush. I became accustomed to this dumb 
 society, and picked on in silence, attributing all the 
 Wood noises to the cattle, thinking nothing of any
 
 4 HOW 2 KILLED A BEAR 
 
 real bear. In point of fact, however, I was thinking 
 all the time of a nice romantic bear, and, as I picked, 
 was composing a story about a generous she-bear who 
 had lost her cub, and who seized a small girl in this 
 very wood, carried her tenderly off to a cave, and 
 brought her up on bear's milk and honey. When the 
 girl got big enough to run away, moved by her in- 
 herited instincts, she escaped, and came into the valley 
 to her father's house (this part of the story was to be 
 worked out, so that the child would know her father 
 by some family resemblance, and have some language 
 in which to address him), and told him where the bear 
 lived. The father took his gun, and, guided by the 
 unfeeling daughter, went into the woods and shot the 
 bear, who never made any resistance, and only, when 
 dying, turned reproachful eyes upon her murderer. 
 The moral of the tale was to be kindness to animals. 
 
 I was in the midst of this tale, when I happened to 
 look some rods away to the other edge of the clearing, 
 and there was a bear ! He was standing on his hind- 
 legs, and doing just what I was doing, picking 
 blackberries. With one paw he bent down the bush, 
 while with the other he clawed the berries into his 
 mouth, green ones and all. To say that I was as- 
 tonished is inside the mark. I suddenly discovered 
 that I didn't want to see a bear, after all. At about 
 the same moment the bear saw me, stopped eating 
 berries, and regarded me with a glad surprise. It is 
 all very well to imagine what you would do under sucb 
 circumstances. Probably you would n't do it : I did n't< 
 The bear dropped down on his fore-feet, and came 
 slowly towards me. Climbing a tree was of no use, 
 with so good a climber in the rear. If I started to 
 ?un, I had no doubt the bear would give chase ; and
 
 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 5 
 
 although a bear cannot run down hill as fast as he 
 can run up hill, yet I felt that he could get over this 
 rough, brush-tangled ground faster than I could. 
 
 The bear was approaching. It suddenly occurred 
 to me how I could divert his mind until I could fall 
 back upon my military base. My pail was nearly full 
 of excellent berries, much better than the bear 
 could pick himself. I put the pail on the ground, and 
 slowly backed away from it, keeping my eye, as beast- 
 tamers do, on the bear. The ruse succeeded. 
 
 The bear came up to the berries, and stopped. Not 
 accustomed to eat out of a pail, he tipped it over, and 
 nosed about in the fruit, " gorming " (if there is sueh 
 a word) it down, mixed with leaves and dirt, like a 
 pig. The bear is a worse feeder than the pig. When- 
 ever he disturbs a maple-sugar camp in the spring, he 
 always upsets the buckets of sirup, and tramples 
 round in the sticky sweets, wasting more than he eats. 
 The bear's manners are thoroughly disagreeable. 
 
 As soon as my enemy's head was down, I started 
 and ran. Somewhat out of breath, and shaky, I 
 reached my faithful rifle. It was not a moment too 
 soon. I heard the bear crashing through the brush 
 after me. Enraged at my duplicity, he was now com- 
 ing on with blood in his eye. I felt that the time of 
 one of us was probably short. The rapidity of thought 
 at such moments of peril is well known. I thought 
 an octavo volume, had it illustrated and published, sold 
 fifty thousand copies, and went to Europe on the pro 
 ceeds, while that bear was loping across the clearing 
 As I was cocking the gun, I made a hasty and unsatis- 
 factory review of my whole life. I noted that, even in 
 such a compulsory review, it is almost impossible to 
 think of any good thing you have done. The sina
 
 6 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 
 
 come out uncommonly strong. I recollected a news- 
 paper subscription 1 had delayed paying years and 
 years ago, until both editor and newspaper v/ere dead, 
 and which now never could be paid to all eternity. 
 
 The bear was coming on. 
 
 I tried to remember what I had read about encoun* 
 ters with bears. I could n't recall an instance in 
 which a man had run away from a bear in the woods 
 and escaped, although I recalled plenty where the bear 
 had run from the man and got off. I tried to think 
 what is the best way to kill a bear with a gun, when you 
 are not near enough to club him with the stock. My 
 first thought was to fire at his head ; to plant the ball 
 between his eyes ; but this is a dangerous experiment. 
 The bear's brain is very small ; and unless yoi hit 
 that, the bear does not mind a bullet in his head ; that 
 is, not at the time. I remembered that the instant 
 death of the bear would follow a bullet planted just 
 back of his fore-leg, and sent into his heart. This 
 spot is also difficult to reach, unless the bear stands 
 off, side towards you, like a target. I finally deter- 
 mined to fire at him generally. 
 
 The bear was coming on. 
 
 The contest seemed to me very different from any- 
 thing at Creedmoor. I had carefully read the reports 
 of the shooting there ; but it was not easy to apply 
 the experience I had thus acquired. I hesitated 
 whether I had better fire lying on my stomach ; or 
 lying on my back, and resting the gun on my toes. 
 But in neither position, I reflected, could I see the 
 bear until he was upon me. The range was too short ; 
 and the bear would n't wait for me to examine the 
 thermometer, and note the direction of the wind. 
 Trial of the Creedmoor method, therefore, had to be
 
 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 7 
 
 abandoned ; and I bitterly regretted that I had not 
 read more accounts of offhand shooting. 
 
 For the bear was coming on. 
 
 I tried to fix my last thoughts upon my family. As 
 my family is small, this was not difficult. Dread of 
 displeasing my wife, or hurting her feelings, was up- 
 permost in my mind. What would be her anxiety as 
 hour after hour passed on, and I did not return ! 
 What would the rest of the household think as ths 
 afternoon passed, and no blackberries came ! What 
 would be my wife's mortification when the news was 
 brought that her husband had been eaten by a bear 
 I cannot imagine any thing more ignominious than to 
 Lave a husband eaten by a bear. And this was not 
 my only anxiety. The mind at such times is not 
 under control. With the gravest fears the most whim- 
 sical ideas will occur. I looked beyond the mourning 
 friends, and thought what kind of an epitaph they 
 would be compelled to put upon the stone. Some- 
 thing like this : 
 
 HERE LIE THE REMAINS 
 OF 
 
 EATEN BY A BEAR 
 
 Aug. 20, 1877. 
 
 It is a very unheroic and even disagreeable epitaph. 
 That " eaten by a bear " is intolerable. It is gro- 
 tesque. And then I thought what an inadequate lan- 
 guage the English is for compact expression. It would 
 not answer to put upon the stone simply " eaten ; " for 
 that is indefinite, and requires explanation : it might 
 mean eaten by a cannibal. This difficulty could not. 
 occur in the German, where essen signifies the act of
 
 8 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 
 
 feeding by a man, smdfressen by a beast. How aim' 
 pie the thing would be in German ! 
 
 HIEB LIEGT 
 HOCHWOHLGEBOBEN 
 
 HEBB , 
 
 GEFBESSEN 
 
 Aug. 20, 1877. 
 
 That explains itself. The well-born one was eaten 
 by a beast, and presumably by a bear, an animal 
 that has a bad reputation since the days of Elisha. 
 
 The bear was coming on ; he had, in fact, come on. 
 I judged that he could see the whites of my eyes. AH 
 my subsequent reflections were confused. I raised 
 the gun, covered the bear's breast with the sight, and 
 let drive. Then I turned, and ran like a deer. I 
 did not hear the bear pursuing. I looked back. The 
 bear had stopped. He was lying down. I then re- 
 membered that the best thing to do after having fired 
 your gun is to reload it. I slipped in a charge, keep- 
 ing my eyes on the bear. He never stirred. I walked 
 back suspiciously. There was a quiver in the hind- 
 legs, but no other motion. Still he might be sham- 
 ming : bears often sham. To make sure, I approached, 
 and put a ball into his head. He didn't mind it now: 
 he minded nothing. Death had come to him with 
 a merciful suddenness. He was calm in death. In 
 order that he might remain so, I blew his brains out, 
 and then started for home. I had killed a bear! 
 
 Notwithstanding my excitement, I managed to 
 saunter into the house with an unconcerned air. There 
 was a chorus of voices : 
 
 " Where are your blackberries ? "
 
 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 9 
 
 " Why were you gone so long ? " 
 
 " Where 's your pail ? " 
 
 " I left the pail." 
 
 " Left the pail ! What for ? " 
 
 " A bear wanted it." 
 
 ** Oh, nonsense ! " 
 
 * Well, the last I saw of it, a bear had it." 
 
 " Oh, come ! You did n't really see a bear? M 
 
 ** Yes, but I did really see a real bear." 
 
 "Did he run?" 
 
 " Yes ; he ran after me." 
 
 "I don't believe a word of it. What did you do? 1 * 
 
 " Oh ! nothing particular except kill the bear." 
 
 Cries of " Gammon ! " " Don't believe it 1 " 
 *> Where 's the bear ? " 
 
 " If you want to see the bear, you must go up into 
 the woods. I could n't bring him down alone." 
 
 Having satisfied the household that something ex- 
 traordinary had occurred, an* 3 excited the posthumous 
 fear of some of them f or nfy <wm safety, I went down 
 into the valley to get help. The great bear-hunter, 
 who keeps one of the summer boarding-houses, re- 
 ceived my story with a smile of incredulity ; and the 
 incredulity spread to the other inhabitants and to the 
 boarders as soon as the story was known. However, 
 as I insisted in all soberness, and offered to lead them 
 fco the bear, a party of forty or fifty people at last 
 started off with me to bring the bear in. Nobody be- 
 lieved there was any bear in the case ; but everybody 
 who could get a gun carried one ; and we went into 
 the woods armed with guns, pistols, pitchforks, and 
 Sticks, against all contingencies or surprises, a crowd 
 made up mostly of scoffers and jeerers. 
 
 But when I led the way to the fatal spot, and
 
 10 HOW I KILLED A BEAR 
 
 pointed out the bear, lying peacefully wrapped in hia 
 own skin, something like terror seized the boarders, 
 and genuine excitement the natives. It was a no- 
 mistake bear, by George ! and the hero of the fight 
 well, I will not insist upon that. But what a proces- 
 sion that was, carrying the bear home ! and what a 
 congregation was speedily gathered in the valley to 
 see the bear ! Our best preacher up there never drew 
 anything like it on Sunday. 
 
 And I must say that my particular friends, who 
 were sportsmen, behaved very well, on the whole. 
 They did n't deny that it was a bear, although they 
 said it was small for a bear. Mr. Deane, who is 
 equally good with a rifle and a rod, admitted that it 
 was a very fair shot. He is probably the best salmon- 
 fisher in the United States, and he is an equally good 
 hunter. I suppose there is no person in America who 
 is more desirous to kill a moose than he. But he 
 needlessly remarked, after he had examined the wound 
 in the bear, that he had seen that kind of a shot made 
 by a cow's horn. 
 
 This sort of talk affected me not. When I went to 
 sleep that night, my last delicious thought was, " I 've 
 killed a bear 1 "
 
 LOST IN THE WOODS 
 
 IT ought to be said, by way of explanation, that my 
 being lost in the woods was not premeditated. Noth- 
 ing could have been more informal. This apology 
 can be necessary only to those who are familiar with 
 the Adirondack literature. Any person not familiar 
 with it would see the absurdity of one going to the 
 Northern Wilderness with the deliberate purpose of 
 writing about himself as a lost man. It may be 
 true that a book about this wild tract would not bo 
 recognized as complete without a lost-man story in it ; 
 since it is almost as easy for a stranger to get lost in 
 the Adirondacks as in Boston. I merely desire to 
 say that my unimportant adventure is not narrated in 
 answer to the popular demand, and I do not wish to 
 be held responsible for its variation from the typical 
 character of such experiences. 
 
 We had been in camp a week, on the Upper Au 
 sable Lake. This is a gem emerald or turquoise as 
 the light changes it set in the virgin forest. It is 
 not a large body of water, is irregular in form, and 
 about a mile and a half in length ; but in the sweep 
 of its wooded shores, and the lovely contour of the 
 lofty mountains that guard it, the lake is probably the 
 most charming in America. Why the young ladies 
 and gentlemen who camp there occasionally vex taa
 
 12 LOST IN THE WOODS 
 
 days and nights with hooting, and singing sentimental 
 songs, is a mystery even to the laughing loon. 
 
 I left my companions there one Saturday morning 
 to return to Keene Valley, intending to fish down the 
 Ausable River. The Upper Lake discharges -itself 
 into the Lower by a brook which winds through a 
 mile and a half of swamp and woods. Out of the Eort T t 
 *nd of the Lower Lake, which is a huge sink iu th 
 Eaountains, and mirrors the savage precipices, the 
 Ausable breaks its rocky barriers, and flows through a 
 wild gorge, several miles, to the valley below. Be- 
 tween the Lower Lake and the settlements is an ex- 
 tensive forest, traversed by a cart-path, admirably 
 constructed of loose stones, roots of trees, decayed 
 logs, slippery rocks, and mud. The gorge of the river 
 forms its western boundary. I followed this carica- 
 ture of a road a mile or more ; then gave my luggajr^ 
 to the guide to carry home, and struck off through 
 the forest, by compass, to the river. I promised my- 
 self an exciting scramble down this little-frequenter! 
 canon, and a creel full of trout. There was no diffi- 
 culty in finding the river, or in descending the steep 
 precipice to its bed : getting into a scrape is usually 
 the easiest part of it. The river is strewn with bowl- 
 ders, big- and little, through which the amber water 
 .rushes with an unceasing thunderous roar, now plung- 
 ing down in white falls, then swirling round in dark 
 pools. The day, already past meridian, was delight- 
 ful ; at least, the blue strip of it I could see overhead. 
 
 Better pools and rapids for trout never were, I 
 thought, as I concealed myself behind a bowlder, and 
 made the first cast. There is nothing like the thrill 
 of expectation over the first throw in unfamiliar 
 "vaters. Fishing is like gambling, in that failure only
 
 LOST IN THE WOODS , 13 
 
 excites hope of a fortunate throw next time. There 
 was no rise to the "leader " on the first cast, nor on 
 the twenty-first; and I cautiously worked my way 
 down stream, throwing right and left. When I had 
 gone half a mile, my opinion of the character of the 
 pools was unchanged: never were there such places 
 for trout ; but the trout were out of their places. 
 Perhaps they did n't care for the fly : some trout seem 
 to be so unsophisticated as to prefer the worm. I 
 replaced the fly with a baited hook : the worm 
 squirmed ; the waters rushed and roared ; a cloud 
 sailed across the blue : no trout rose to the lonesome 
 opportunity. There is a certain companionship in the 
 presence of trout, especially when you can feel them 
 flopping in your fish-basket ; but it became evidenfc 
 that there were no trout in this wilderness, and a 
 sense of isolation for the first time came over me. 
 There was no living thing near. The river had by 
 this time entered a deeper gorge ; walls of rocks rose 
 perpendicularly on either side, picturesque rocks, 
 painted many colors by the oxide of iron. It was not 
 possible to climb out of the gorge ; it was impossible 
 to find a way by the side of the river ; and getting 
 down the bed, over the falls, and through the flumes, 
 was not easy, and consumed time. 
 
 Was that thunder ? Very likely. But thunder- 
 showers are always brewing in these mountain-for- 
 tresses, and it did not occur to me that there was any 
 thing personal in it. Very soon, however, the hole 
 in the sky closed in, and the rain dashed down. It 
 seemed a providential time to eat my luncheon ; and 
 I took shelter under a scraggy pine that had rooted 
 itself in the edge of the rocky slope. The shower 
 soon passed, and I continued my journey, creeping
 
 14 LOST IN THE WOODS 
 
 over the slippery rocks, and continuing to show ray 
 confidence in the unresponsive trout. The way grew 
 wider and more grewsome. The thunder began again, 
 rolling along over the tops of the mountains, and re- 
 verberating in sharp concussions in the gorge : the 
 lightning also darted down into the darkening pas- 
 sage, and then the rain. Every enlightened being 
 even if he is in a fisherman's dress of shirt and pan- 
 taloons, hates to get wet ; and I ignominiously crept 
 under the edge of a sloping bowlder. It was all very 
 well at first, until streams of water began to crawl 
 along the face of the rock, and trickle down the back 
 of my neck. This was refined misery, unheroic and 
 humiliating, as suffering always is when unaccom- 
 panied by resignation. 
 
 A longer time than I knew was consumed in this 
 and repeated efforts to wait for the slackening and 
 renewing storm to pass away. In the intervals of 
 calm I still fished, and even descended to what a 
 sportsman considers incredible baseness ; I put a 
 " sinker " on my line. It is the practice of the coun- 
 try-folk, whose only object is to get fish, to use a good 
 deal of bait, sink the hook to the bottom of the pools, 
 and wait the slow appetite of the summer trout. I 
 tried this also. I might as well have fished in a pork- 
 barrel. It is true, that, in one deep, black, round 
 pool, I lured a small trout from the bottom, and de- 
 posited him in the creel; but it was an accident. 
 Though I sat there in the awful silence (the roar of 
 water only emphasized the stillness) full half an hour, 
 I was not encouraged by another nibble. Hope, how- 
 ever, did not die : 1 always expected to find the tvout 
 in the next flume ; and so I toiled slowly on, uncon- 
 scious of the passing time. At each turn of tb
 
 LOST IN THE WOODS 15 
 
 stream I expected to see the end, and at each turn I 
 saw a long, narrow stretch of rocks and foaming 
 water. Climbing out of the ravine was, in most 
 places, simply impossible ; and I began to look with 
 interest for a slide, where bushes rooted in the scant 
 earth would enable me to scale the precipice. I did 
 not doubt that I was nearly through the gorge. I 
 could at length see the huge form of the Giant of the 
 Valley, scarred with avalanches, at the end of the 
 vista ; and it seemed not far off. But it kept its dis- 
 tance, as only a mountain can, while I stumbled and 
 slid down the rocky way. The rain had now set in 
 with persistence, and suddenly I became aware that it 
 was growing dark, and I said to myself, " If you don't 
 wish to spend the night in this horrible chasm, you 'd 
 better escape speedily." Fortunately I reached a 
 place where the face of the precipice was bush-grown, 
 and with considerable labor scrambled up it. 
 
 Having no doubt that I was within half a mile, 
 perhaps within a few rods, of the house above the 
 entrance of the gorge, and that, in any event, I should 
 fall into the cart-path in a few minutes, I struck 
 boldly into the forest, congratulating myself on 
 having escaped out of the river. So sure was I of 
 my whereabouts, that I did not note the bend of the 
 river, nor look at my compass. The one trout in my 
 basket was no burden, and I stepped lightly out. 
 
 The forest was of hard-wood, and open, except for 
 a thick undergrowth of moose-bush. It was raining, 
 in fact, it had been raining, more or less, for a 
 month, and the woods were soaked. This moose- 
 bush is most annoying stuff to travel through in a 
 rain ; for the broad leaves slap one in the face, and 
 sop him with wet. The way grew every moment
 
 16 LOST IN THE WOODS 
 
 more dingy. The heavy clouds above the thick foliage 
 brought night on prematurely. It was decidedly 
 premature to a near-sighted man, whose glasses the 
 rain rendered useless : such a person ought to be at 
 home early. On leaving the river-bank I had borne 
 to the left, so as to be sure to strike either the clear- 
 ing or the road, and not wander off into the measure- 
 less forest. I confidently pursued this course, and 
 went gayly on by the left flank. That I did not 
 come to any opening or path, only showed that I had 
 slightly mistaken the distance: I was going in the 
 right direction. 
 
 I was so certain of this, that I quickened my pace, 
 and got up with alacrity every time I tumbled down 
 amid the slippery leaves and catching roots s and 
 hurried on. And I kept to the left. It even oc urred 
 to me that I was turning to the left so much, that I 
 might come back to the river again. It grew more 
 dusky, and rained more violently ; but there was 
 nothing alarming in the situation, since I knew exactly 
 where I was. It was a little mortifying that I had 
 miscalculated the distance : yet, so far was I from 
 feeling any uneasiness about this, that I quickened my 
 pace again, and, before I knew it, was in a full run 5 
 that is, as full a run as a person can indulge in in the 
 dusk, with so many trees in the way. No nervousness, 
 but simply a reasonable desire to get there. I desired 
 to look upon myself as the person " not lost, but gon 
 before." As time passed, and darkness fell, and no 
 clearing or road appeared, I ran a little faster. It 
 did n't seem possible that the people had moved, or 
 the road been changed ; and yet I was sure of my 
 direction. I went on with an energy increased by the 
 ridiculousness of the situation, the danger that an
 
 LOST IN THE WOODS 17 
 
 experienced woodsman was in of getting home late 
 for supper ; the lateness of the meal being nothing to 
 the gibes of the uulost. How long I kept this course 
 and how far I went on, I do not know; but suddenly 
 I stumbled against an ill-placed tree, and sat down on 
 the soaked ground, a trifle out of breath. It then 
 occured to me that I had better verify my course by 
 the compass. There was scarcely light enough to dis- 
 tinguish the black end of the needle. To my amaze- 
 ment, the compass, which was made near Greenwich, 
 was wrong. Allowing for the natural variation of the 
 needle, it was absurdly wrong. It made out that I 
 was going south when I was going north. It inti- 
 mated, that, instead of turning to the left, I had been 
 making a circuit to the right. According to the com- 
 pass, the Lord only knew where I was. 
 
 The inclination of persons in the woods to travel in 
 a circle is unexplained. I suppose it arises from the 
 sympathy of the legs with the brain. Most people 
 reason in a circle : their minds go round and round, 
 always in the same track. For the last half-hour I 
 had been saying over a sentence that started itself : 
 " I wonder where that road is ! " I had said it over 
 till it had lost all meaning. I kept going round on it ; 
 and yet I could not believe that my body had been 
 travelling in a circle. Not being able to recognize 
 any tracts, I have no evidence that I had so travelled, 
 except the general testimony of lost men. 
 
 The compass annoyed me. I've known experi 
 enced guides utterly discredit it. It could n't be that 
 I was to turn about, and go the way I had come. 
 Nevertheless, I said to myself, "You'd better keep 
 a cool head, my boy, or you are in for a night of 
 it. Better listen to science than to spunk." And J
 
 18 LOST IN THE WOODS 
 
 resolved to heed the impartial needle. I was a little 
 weary of the rough tramping : but it was necessary to 
 be moving ; for, with wet clothes and the night air, 
 I was decidedly chilly. I turned towards the north, 
 aad slipped and stumbled along. A more uninviting 
 forest to pass the night in I never saw. Everything 
 was soaked. If I became exhausted, it would be 
 necessary to build a fire ; and, as I walked on, I 
 could n't find a dry bit of wood. Even if a little punk 
 were discovered in a rotten log, I had no hatchet to 
 cut fuel. I thought it all over calmly. I had the 
 visual three matches in my pocket. I knew exactly 
 what would happen if I tried to build a fire. The 
 first match would prove to be wet. The second match, 
 when struck, would shine and smell, and fizz a little 
 And then go out. There would be only one match 
 left. Death would ensue if it failed. I should get 
 close to the log, crawl under my hat, strike the match, 
 see it catch, flicker, almost go out (the reader pain- 
 fully excited by this time), blaze up, nearly expire, 
 and finally fire the punk, thank God ! And I said 
 to myself, " The public don't want any more of this 
 thing : it is played out. Either have a box of matches, 
 or let the first one catch fire." 
 
 In this gloomy mood I plunged along. The proa= 
 pect was cheerless ; for, apart from the comfort that 
 a fire would give, it is necessary, at night, to keep off 
 the wild beasts. I fancied I could hear the tread of 
 the stealthy brutes following their prey. But there 
 was one source of profound satisfaction, the cata- 
 mount had been killed. Mr. Colvin, the triangulating 
 surveyor of the Adirondacks, killed him in his last 
 official report to the State. Whether he despatched 
 him with a theodolite or & barometer does not matter '
 
 LOST IN THE WOODS 19 
 
 te is officially dead, and none of the travellers can 
 kill him any more. Yet he has served them a good 
 turn. 
 
 I knew that catamount well. One night when we 
 lay in the bogs of the South Beaver Meadow, under a 
 canopy of mosquitoes, the serene midnight was parted 
 by a wild and human-like cry from a neighboring 
 mountain. " That 's a cat," said the guide. I felt in 
 a moment that it was the voice of " modern cultchah." 
 " Modern culture," says Mr. Joseph Cook in a most 
 impressive period, " modern culture is a child cry- 
 ing in the wilderness, and with no voice but a cry." 
 That describes the catamount exactly. The next day, 
 when we ascended the mountain, we came upon the 
 traces of this brute, a spot where he had stood and 
 cried in the night ; and I confess that my hair rose 
 with the consciousness of his recent presence, as it is 
 said to do when a spirit passes by. 
 
 Whatever consolation the absence of catamount in 
 a dark, drenched, and howling wilderness can impart, 
 that I experienced ; but I thought what a satire upon 
 my present condition was modern culture, with its 
 plain thinking and high living ! It was impossible to 
 get much satisfaction out of the real and the ideal, 
 the me and the not-me. At this time what impressed 
 me most was the absurdity of my position looked at in 
 the light of modern civilization and all my advantages 
 and acquii-ements. It seemed pitiful that society 
 could do absolutely nothing for me. It was, in fact, 
 humiliating to reflect that it would now be profit- 
 able to exchange all my possessions for the woods in- 
 stinct of the most unlettered guide. I began to doubt 
 the value of the " culture " that blunts the natural 
 instincts.
 
 20 LOST IN THE WOODS 
 
 It began to be a question whether I could hold out 
 to walk all night ; for I must travel, or perish. And 
 now I imagined that a spectre was walking by my 
 side. This was Famine. To be sure, I had only 
 recently eaten a hearty luncheon : but the pangs of 
 hunger got hold on me when I thought that I should 
 have no supper, no breakfast ; and, as the procession 
 of unattainable meals stretched before me, I grew 
 hungrier and hungrier. I could feel that I was be- 
 coming gaunt, and wasting away : already I seemed 
 to be emaciated. It is astonishing how speedily a 
 jocund, well-conditioned human being can be trans- 
 formed into a spectacle of poverty and want. Lose 
 a man in the woods, drench him, tear his pantaloons, 
 get his imagination running on his lost supper and 
 the cheerful fireside that is expecting him, and he will 
 become haggard in an hour. I am not dwelling upon 
 these things to excite the reader's sympathy, but only 
 to advise him, if he contemplates an adventure of this 
 kind, to provide himself with matches, kindling-wood, 
 something more to eat than one raw trout, and not to 
 select a rainy night for it. 
 
 Nature is so pitiless, so unresponsive, to a person in 
 trouble ! I had read of the soothing companionship 
 of the forest, the pleasure of the pathless woods. But 
 I thought, as I stumbled along in the dismal actuality, 
 that if I ever got out of it. I would write a letter to 
 the newspapers, exposing the whole thing. There is 
 an impassive, stolid brutality about the woods that 
 has never been enough insisted on. I tried to keep 
 my mind fixed upon the fact of man's superiority to 
 Nature ; his ability to dominate and outwit her. My 
 situation was an amusing satire on this theory. I 
 fancied that I could feel a sneer in the woods at my
 
 LOST IN THE WOODS 21 
 
 detected conceit. There was something personal in 
 it. The downpour of the rain and the slipperiness of 
 the ground were elements of discomfort ; but there 
 was, besides these, a kind of terror in the very charac- 
 ter of the forest itself. I think this arose not more 
 from its immensity than from the kind of stolidity to 
 which I have alluded. It seemed to me that it would 
 be a sort of relief to kick the trees. I don't wonder 
 that the bears fall to, occasionally, and scratch the 
 bark off the great pines and maples, tearing it angrily 
 away. One must have some vent to his feelings. It 
 is a common experience of people lost in the woods to 
 lose their heads ; and even the woodsmen themselves 
 are not free from this panic when some accident has 
 thrown them out of their reckoning. Fright unsettles 
 the judgment : the oppressive silence of the woods is 
 a vacuum in which the mind goes astray. It 's a 
 hollow sham, this pantheism, I said ; being " one with 
 Nature " is all humbug : I should like to see some- 
 body. Man, to be sure, is of very little account, and 
 soon gets beyond his depth ; but the society of the 
 least human being is better than this gigantic indiffer- 
 ence. The " rapture on the lonely shore " is agree- 
 able only when you know you can at any moment go 
 home. 
 
 I had now given up all expectation of finding the 
 road, and was steering my way as well as I could 
 northward towards the valley. In my haste I made 
 slow progress. Probably the distance I travelled was 
 short, and the time consumed not long ; but I seemed 
 to be adding mile to mile, and hour to hour. I had 
 time to review the incidents of the Russo-Turkish 
 war, and to forecast the entire Eastern question ; I 
 outlined the characters of all my companions left in
 
 22 LOST /A THE 
 
 camp, and sketched in a sort of comedy the sym- 
 pathetic and disparaging observations they would 
 make on my adventure ; I repeated something like a 
 thousand times, without contradiction, u What a fool 
 you were to leave the river ! " I stopped twenty times, 
 thinking I heard its loud roar, always deceived by the 
 wind in the tree tops ; I began to entertain serious 
 doubts about the compass, when suddenly I became 
 aware that I was no longer on level ground ; I was 
 descending a slope ; I was actually in a ravine. In a 
 moment more I was in a brook newly formed by the 
 rain. " Thank Heaven ! " I cried : " this I shall follow 
 whatever conscience or the compass says." In this 
 region, all streams go, sooner or later, into the val- 
 ley. This ravine, this stream, no doubt, led to the 
 river. I splashed and tumbled along down it in 
 mud and water. Down hill we went together, the fall 
 showing that I must have wandered to high ground. 
 When I guessed that I must be close to the river, I 
 suddenly stepped into mud up to my ankles. It was 
 the road, running, of course, the wrong way, but 
 still the blessed road. It was a mere canal of liquid 
 mud ; but man had made it, and it would take me 
 home. I was at least three miles from the point 
 where I supposed I was near at sunset, and I had be- 
 fore me a toilsome walk of six or seven miles, most of 
 the way in a ditch ; but it is truth to say I enjoyed 
 every step of it. 1 was safe ; I knew where I was ; 
 and I could have walked till morning. The mind 
 had again got the upper hand of the body, and began 
 to plume itself on its superiority : it was even disposed 
 to doubt whether it had been " lost " at all.
 
 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 
 
 TROUT-FISHING in the Adirondacks would be a more 
 attractive pastime than it is, but for the popular notion 
 of its danger. The trout is a retiring and harmless ani- 
 mal, except when he is aroused, and forced into a com- 
 bat ; and then his agility, fierceness, and vindictiveness 
 become apparent. No one who has studied the excel- 
 lent pictures representing men in an open boat, exposed 
 to the assaults of long, enraged trout flying at them 
 through the open air with open mouth, ever ventures 
 with his rod upon the lonely lakes of the forest without 
 a certain terror, or ever reads of the exploits of daring 
 fishermen without a feeling of admiration for their 
 heroism. Most of their adventures are thrilling, and 
 all of them are, in narration, more or less unjust to 
 the trout : in fact, the object of them seems to be to 
 exhibit, at the expense of the trout, the shrewdness, the 
 skill, and the muscular power of the sportsman. My 
 own simple story has few of these recommendations. 
 
 We had built our bark camp one summer, and were 
 staying on one of the popular lakes of the Saranac re- 
 gion. It would be a very pretty region if it were not 
 so flat, if the margins of the lakes had not been flooded 
 by dams at the outlets, which have killed the trees, 
 and left a rim of ghastly dead-wood like the swamps of 
 the under- world pictured by Dore"s bizarre pencil, 
 and if the pianos at the hotels were in tune. It would
 
 24 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 
 
 be an excellent sporting-region also (for there is water 
 enough) if the fish commissioners would stock the 
 waters, and if previous hunters had not pulled all the 
 hair and skin off from the deer's tails. Formerly sports- 
 men had a habit of catching the deer by the tails, and 
 of being dragged in mere wantonness round and round 
 the shores. It is well known, that, if you seize a deer 
 by this " holt," the skin will slip off like the peel frorc 
 a banana. This reprehensible practice was carried so 
 far, that the traveller is now hourly pained by the sight 
 of peeled-tail deer mournfully sneaking about the wood. 
 
 We had been hearing, for weeks, of a small lake 
 in the heart of the virgin forest, some ten miles from 
 our camp, which was alive with trout, unsophisticated, 
 hungry trout : the inlet to it was described as stiff with 
 them. In my imagination I saw them lying there in 
 ranks and rows, each a foot long, three tiers deep, a 
 solid mass. The lake had never been visited, except 
 by stray sable-hunters in the winter, and was known 
 as the Unknown Pond. I determined to explore it ; 
 fully expecting, however, that it would prove to be a 
 delusion, as such mysterious haunts of the trout usually 
 are. Confiding my purpose to Luke, we secretly made 
 our preparations, and stole away from the shanty one 
 morning at daybreak. Each of us carried a boat, a pair 
 of blankets, a sack of bread, pork, and maple-sugar 5 
 while I had my case of rods, creel, and book of flies, 
 and Luke had an axe and the kitchen utensils. We 
 think nothing of loads of this sort in the woods. 
 
 Five miles through a tamarack-swamp brought us to 
 the inlet of Unknown Pond, upon which we embarked 
 our fleet, and paddled down its vagrant waters. They 
 were at first sluggish, winding among triste fir-trees, 
 but gradually developed a strong current. At the end
 
 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 25 
 
 of three miles a loud roar ahead warned us that we were 
 approaching rapids, falls, and cascades. We paused. 
 The danger was unknown. We had onr choice of 
 shouldering our loads and making a detour through 
 the woods, or of " shooting the rapids." Naturally we 
 chose the more dangerous course. Shooting the rapids 
 has often been described, and I will not repeat the 
 description here. It is needless to say that I drove 
 my frail bark through the boiling rapids, over the suc- 
 cessive water-falls, amid rocks and vicious eddies, and 
 landed half a mile below with whitened hair and a 
 boat half full of water ; and that the guide was upset, 
 and boat, contents, and man were strewn along the 
 shore. 
 
 After this common experience we went quickly on 
 our journey, and, a co-.iple of hours before sundown, 
 reached the lake. If I live to my dying day, I never 
 shall forget its appearance. The lake is almost an 
 exact circle, about a quarter of a mile in diameter. 
 The forest about it was untouched by axe, and unkilled 
 by artificial flooding. The azure water had a perfect 
 setting of evergreens, in which all the shades of the 
 fir, the balsam, the pine, and the spruce, were perfectly 
 blended ; and at intervals on the shore, in the emerald 
 rim, blazed the ruby of the cardinal-flower. It was at 
 once evident that the unruffled waters had never been 
 vexed by the keel of a boat. But what chiefly attracted 
 otiy attention, and amused me, was the boiling of the 
 ^ater, the bubbling and breaking, as if the lake were 
 a vast kettle, with a fire underneath. A tyro would 
 have been astonished at this common phenomenon ; 
 but sportsmen will at once understand me when I say 
 that the water boiled with the breaking trout. I studied 
 ihe surface for some time to see upon what sort of-
 
 6 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 
 
 flies they were feeding, in order to suit my cast to 
 their appetites ; but they seemed to be at play rather 
 than feeding, leaping high in the air in graceful curves, 
 and tumbling about each other as we see them in the 
 Adirondack pictures. 
 
 It is well known that no person who regards his 
 reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a 
 fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout 
 to take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisti- 
 cated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; 
 and the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fish- 
 ing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their 
 primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman, however, 
 will use anything but a fly, except he happens to be 
 alone. 
 
 While Luke launched my boat, and arranged his 
 seat in the stern, I prepared my rod and line. The 
 rod is a bamboo, weighing seven ounces, which has to 
 be spliced with a winding of silk thread every time it 
 is used. This is a tedious process ; but, by fastening 
 the joints in this way, a uniform spring is secured in 
 the rod. No one devoted to high art would think of 
 using a socket joint. My line was forty yards of un- 
 twisted silk upon a multiplying reel. The "leader"- 
 1 am very particular about my leaders had been made 
 to order from a domestic animal with which I had been 
 acquainted. The fisherman requires us good a catgut 
 as the violinist. The interior of the house-cat, it is 
 well known, is exceedingly sensitive ; but it may not be 
 so well known that the reason why some cats leave the 
 room in distress when a piano-forte is played is because 
 the two instruments are not in the same key, and the 
 vibrations of the chords of the one are in discord with 
 the catgut of the other. On six feet of this superior
 
 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 27 
 
 article I fixed three artificial flies, a simple brown 
 hackle, a gray body with scarlet wings, and one of my 
 own invention, which I thought would be new to the 
 most experienced fly-catcher. The trout-fly does not 
 resemble any known species of insect. It is a " conven- 
 tionalized " creation, as we say of ornamentation. The 
 theory is, that, fly-fishing being a high art, the fly must 
 not be a tame imitation of nature, but an artistic sug- 
 gestion of it. It requires an artist to construct one ; 
 and not every bungler can take a bit of red flannel, a 
 peacock's feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a cock's 
 plume, a section of a hen's wing, and fabricate a tiny 
 object that will not look like any fly, but still will sug- 
 gest the universal conventional fly. 
 
 I took my stand in the centre of the tipsy boat ; and 
 Luke shoved off, and slowly paddled towards some 
 lily-pads, while I began casting, unlimbering iny tools, 
 as it were. The fish had all disappeared. I got out, 
 perhaps, fifty feet of line, with no response, and grad- 
 ually increased it to one hundred. It is not difficult 
 to learn to cast ; but it is difficult to learn not to snap 
 off the flies at every throw. Of this, however, we will 
 not speak. I continued casting for some moments, un- 
 til I became satisfied that there had been a miscalcu- 
 lation. Either the trout were too green to know what 
 I was at, or they were dissatisfied with my offers. I 
 reeled in, and changed the flies (that is, the fly that 
 was not snapped off). After studying the color of the 
 sky, of the water, and of the foliage, and the moderated 
 ^ight of the afternoon. I put on a series of beguilers, 
 all of a subdued brilliancy, in harmony with the ap- 
 proach of evening. At the second cast, which was a 
 short one, I saw a splash where the leader fell, and 
 gave an excited jerk. The next instant I perceived
 
 28 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 
 
 the game, and did not need the unfeigned " dam " of 
 Luke to convince me that I had snatched his felt hav 
 from his head, and deposited it among the lilies. Dis- 
 couraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled over 
 to the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the 
 tinted light. At the very first cast I saw that the hour 
 iiad come. Three trout leaped into the air. The 
 danger of this mano3uvre all fishermen understand. It 
 is one of the commonest in the woods : three heavy 
 trout taking hold at once, rushing in different direc= 
 tions, smash the tackle into flinders. I evaded this 
 catch, and threw again. I recall the moment. A her- 
 mit thrush, on the tip of a balsam, uttered his long, 
 liquid evening note. Happening to look over my 
 shoulder, I saw the peak of Marcy gleam rosy in the 
 sky (I can't help it that Marcy is fifty miles off, and 
 cannot be seen from this region : these incidental 
 touches are always used). The hundred feet of silk 
 swished through the air, and the tail-fly fell as lightly 
 on the water as a three-cent piece, which no slamming 
 will give the weight of a ten, drops upon the contri- 
 bution plate. Instantly there was a rush, a swirl. I 
 struck, and " Got him, by ! " Never mind what 
 Luke said I got him by. " Out on a fly ! " continued 
 that irreverent guide : but I told him to back water, 
 and make for the centre of the lake. The trout, as 
 soon as he feit the prick of the hook, was off like a 
 shot, and took out the whole of the line with a rapid 
 ity that made it smoke. "Give him the butt!'' 
 shouted I uke. It is the usual remark in such an 
 emergency. I gave him the butt ; and, recognizing the 
 fact and my spirit, the trout at onoe sank to the bot- 
 tom, and sulked. It is the most dangerous mood of a 
 trout ; for you cannot tell what he will do next. We
 
 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 2S 
 
 reeled up a little, and waited five minutes for him to 
 reflect. A tightening of the line enraged him, and 
 he soon developed his tactics. Coming to the surface, 
 he made straight for the boat faster than I could reel 
 in, and evidently with hostile intentions. " Look out 
 for him ! " cried Luke as he came flying in the air. 
 I evaded him by dropping flat in the bottom of the 
 boat ; and, when I picked my traps up, he was spin- 
 ning across the lake as if he had a new idea ; but the 
 line was still fast. He did not run far. I gave him 
 the butt again ; a thing he seemed to hate, even as a 
 gift. In a moment the evil-minded fish, lashing the 
 water in his rage, was coming back again, making 
 straight for the boat as before. Luke, who was used 
 to these encounters, having read of them in the writ- 
 ings of travellers he had accompanied, raised his pad- 
 dle in self-defence. The trout left the water about ten 
 feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery 
 eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. 1 
 dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his 
 bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line 
 was of course slack ; and the clanger was that he would 
 entangle it about me, and carry away a leg. This 
 was evidently his game ; but I untangled it, and only 
 lost a breast-button or two by the swiftly-moving string. 
 The trout plunged into the water with a hissing sound, 
 and went away again with all the line on the reel. 
 More butt-, more indignation on the part of the cap- 
 tive. The contest had now been going on for half an 
 hour, and I was getting exhausted. We had been back 
 and forth across the lake, and round and round the 
 lake. What I feared was, that the trout would start 
 up the inlet, and wreck us in the bushes. But he had 
 a new fancy, and began the execution of a manoauvre
 
 30 A FIGHT WITH A TROUT 
 
 which I had never read of. Instead of coming straight 
 towards me, he took a large circle, swimming rapidly, 
 and gradually contracting his orbit. I reeled in, and 
 kept my eye on him. Round and round he went, nar- 
 rowing his circle. I began to suspect the game ; 
 which was, to twist my head off. When he had re- 
 duced the radius of his circle to about twenty-five feet, 
 he struck a tremendous pace through the water. It 
 would be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I 
 was not equal to the occasion. Instead of turning 
 round with him, as he expected, I stepped to the bow, 
 braced myself, and let the boat swing. Round went 
 the fish, and round we went like a top. I saw a line 
 of Mount Marcys all round the horizon ; the rosy tint 
 in the west made a broad band of pink along the sky 
 above the tree-tops ; the evening star was a perfect 
 circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. We 
 whirled and reeled, and reeled and whirled. I was 
 willing to give the malicious beast butt and line, and 
 all, if he would only go the other way for a change. 
 
 When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the trout 
 at the boat-side. After we had got him in and dressed 
 him, he weighed three-quarters of a pound. Fish 
 always lose by being " got in and dressed." It is best 
 to weigh them while they are in the water. The only 
 really large one I ever caught got away with my 
 leader when I first struck him. He weighed ten pounds
 
 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 
 
 IF civilization owes r debt of gratitude to tlie 
 sacrificing sportsmen who have cleared the Adiron* 
 dack regions of catamounts and savage trout, what 
 shall be said of the army which has so nobly relieved 
 them of the terror of the deer ? The deer-slayers have 
 somewhat celebrated their exploits in print ; but I 
 think that justice has never been done them. 
 
 The American deer in the wilderness, left to him* 
 self, leads ^ comparatively harmless but rather stupid 
 life, with only such excitement as his own timid 
 fancy raises. It was very seldom that one of his tribe 
 was eaten by the North American tiger. For a wild 
 animal he is very domestic, simple in his tastes, reg- 
 ular in his habits, affectionate in his family. Unfor- 
 tunately for his repose, his haunch is as tender as 
 his heart. Of all wild creatures he is one of the 
 most graceful in action, and he poses with the skill 
 of an experienced model. I have seen ":he goats on 
 Mount Pentelicus scatter at the approach of a stran- 
 ger, climb to the sharp points of projecting rocks, and 
 attitudinize in the most self-conscious manner, strik- 
 ing at once those picturesque postures against the sky 
 with which Oriental pictures havo made us and thena 
 familiar. But the whole proceeding was theatrical. 
 Greece is the home of art, and it is rare to find any- 
 thing there natural and unstudied. I presume that
 
 82 A-HUNTINQ OF THE DEER 
 
 these goats have no nonsense about them when they 
 are alone with the goat-herds, any more than the goat 
 herds have, except when they come to pose in the stu- 
 dio ; but the long ages of culture, the presence always 
 to the eye of the best models and the forms of im- 
 mortal beauty, the heroic friezes of the Temple of 
 Theseus, the marble processions of sacrificial animals, 
 have had a steady moulding, educating influence 
 equal to a society of decorative art upon the people 
 and the animals who have dwelt in this artistic atmos- 
 phere. The Attic goat has become an artificially ar- 
 tistic being ; though of course he is not now what he 
 was, as a poser, in the days of Polycletus. There is 
 opportunity for a very instructive essay by Mr. E. A. 
 Freeman on the decadence of the Attic goat under 
 the influence of the Ottoman Turk. 
 
 The American deer, in the free atmosphere of our 
 country, and as yet untouched by our decorative art, 
 is without self-consciousness, and all his attitudes are 
 free and unstudied. The favorite position of the 
 deer his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, 
 among the lily-pads, his antlers thrown back and his 
 nose in the air at the moment he hears the stealthy 
 breaking of a twig in the forest is still spirited and 
 graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures of him 
 which the artists have put upon canvas. 
 
 Wherever you go in the Northern forest, you will 
 find deer-paths. So plainly marked and well-trodden 
 are they, that it is easy to mistake them for trails 
 made by hunters ; but he who follows one of them is 
 soon in difficulties. He may find himself climbing 
 through cedar-thickets an almost inaccessible cliff, or 
 'mrnersed in the intricacies of a marsh. The " run,'* 
 rn ono direction, will lead tc water ; but, in the other.
 
 A-KUNTING OF THE DEER 33 
 
 it climbs the highest hills, to which the deer retires, 
 for safety and repose, in impenetrable thickets. The 
 hunters, in winter, find them congregated, in "yards," 
 where they can be surrounded and shot as easily as 
 our troops shoot Comanche women and children in 
 their winter villages. These little paths are full of 
 pitfalls among the roots and stones ; and, nimble as 
 the deer is, he sometimes breaks one of his slender 
 legs in them. Yet he knows how to treat himself 
 without a surgeon. I knew of a tame deer in a settle- 
 ment in the edge of the forest who had the misfortune 
 to break her leg. She immediately disappeared with 
 a delicacy rare in an invalid, and was not seen for two 
 weeks. Her friends had given her up, supposing that 
 she had dragged herself away into the depths of the 
 woods, and died of starvation ; when one day she re- 
 turned, cured of lameness, but thin as a virgin shadow. 
 She had the sense to shun the doctor ; to lie down 
 in some safe place, and patiently wait for her leg 
 to heal. I have observed in many of the more re- 
 fined animals this sort of shyness and reluctance to 
 give trouble which excite our admiration when noticed 
 in mankind. 
 
 The deer is called a timid animal, and taunted with 
 possessing courage only when he is " at bay ; " the 
 stag will fight when he can no longer flee ; and the 
 doe will defend her young in the face of murderous 
 enemies. The deer gets lit.tle credit for thic eleventh- 
 hour bravery. But I think that in any trulv Chris- 
 tian condition of society the deer would not be con- 
 spicuous for cowardice. I suppose that if the Amer- 
 ican girl, even as she is described in foreign romances, 
 were pursued by bull-dogs, and fired at from behind 
 fences every time she ventured out-doors, s-be would
 
 34 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 
 
 become timid, and reluctant to go abroad Whet- 
 that golden era comes which the poets think is behind 
 us, and the prophets declare is about to be ushered in 
 by the opening of the " vials," and the killing of every- 
 body who does not believe as those nations believe 
 which have the most cannon ; when we all live in real 
 concord, perhaps the gentle-hearted deer will be re- 
 spected, and will find that men are not more savage to 
 the weak than are the cougars and panthers. If the 
 little spotted fawn can think, it must seem to her a 
 queer world in which the advent of innocence is hailed 
 by the baying of fierce hounds and the " ping " of the 
 rifle. 
 
 Hunting the deer in the Adirondacks is conducted 
 in the most manly fashion. There are several meth- 
 ods, and in none of them is a fair chance to the deer 
 considered. A favorite method with the natives is 
 practised in winter, and is called by them " still hunt- 
 ing." My idea of still hunting is for one man to go 
 alone into the forest, look about for a deer, put hia 
 wits fairly against the wits of the keen-scented animal, 
 and kill his deer, or get lost in the attempt. There 
 seems to be a sort of fairness about this. It is private 
 assassination, tempered with a little uncertainty about 
 finding your man. The still hunting of the natives 
 has all the romance and danger attending the slaugh- 
 ter of sheep in an abattoir. As the snow gets deep, 
 many deer congregate in the depths of the forest, and 
 keep a place trodden down, which grows larger as 
 they tramp down the snow in search of food. In time 
 this refuge becomes a sort of " yard," surrounded by 
 unbroken snow-banks. The hunters then make their 
 way to this retreat on snow-shoes, and from the top of 
 the banks pick off the deer at leisure with their rifles,
 
 A-HVNTING OF THE DEER 35 
 
 and haul them away to market, until the enclosure is 
 pretty much emptied. This is one of the surest meth 
 ods of exterminating the deer ; it is also one of the 
 most merciful; and, being the plan adopted by our 
 government for civilizing the Indian, it ought to be 
 popular. The only people who object to it are the 
 summer sportsmen. They naturally want some pleas- 
 ure out of the death of the deer. 
 
 Some of our best sportsmen, who desire to protract 
 the pleasure of slaying deer through as many seasons 
 as possible, object to the practice of the hunters, who 
 make it their chief business to slaughter as many deer 
 in a camping-season as they can. Their own rule, 
 they say, is to kill a deer only when they need venison 
 to eat. Their excuse is specious. What right have 
 these sophists to put themselves into a desert place, 
 out of the reach of provisions, and then ground a 
 right to slay deer on their own improvidence ? If it 
 is necessary for these people to have anything to eat, 
 which I doubt, it is not necessary that they should 
 have the luxury of venison. 
 
 One of the most picturesque methods of hunting 
 the poor deer is called " floating." The person, with 
 murder in his heart, chooses a cloudy night, seats him- 
 self, rifle in hand, in a canoe, which is noiselessly pad- 
 dled by the guide, and explores the shore of the lake 
 or the dark inlet. In the bow of the boat is a light 
 in a " jack," the rays of which are shielded from the 
 boat and its occupants. A deer comes down to feed 
 upon the lily-pads. The boat approaches him. Ho 
 looks up, and stands a moment, terrified or fascinated 
 by the bright flames. In that moment the sportsman 
 is supposed to shoot the deer. As an historical fact, 
 ills hand usually shakes, so that he misses the animal.
 
 36 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 
 
 or only wounds him ; and the stag limps away to Air 
 after days of suffering. Usually, however, the hunt 
 ers remain out all night, get stiff from cold and the 
 cramped position in the boat, and, when they return 
 in the morning to camp, cloud their future existence 
 by the assertion that they " heard a big buck " mov- 
 ing along the shore, but the people in camp made so 
 much noise that he was frightened off. 
 
 By all odds, the favorite and prevalent mode is 
 hunting with dogs. The dogs do the hunting, the 
 men the killing. The hounds are sent into the forest 
 to rouse the deer, and drive him from his cover. 
 They climb the mountains, strike the trails, and go 
 baying and yelping on the track of the poor beast. 
 The deer have their established run-ways, as I said ; 
 and, when they are disturbed in their retreat, they 
 are certain to attempt to escape by following one 
 frhich invariably leads to some lake or stream. All 
 that the hunter has to do is to seat himself by one of 
 these run-ways, or sit in a boat on the lake, and wait 
 the coming of the pursued deer. The frightened 
 beast, fleeing from the unreasoning brutality of the 
 hounds, will often seek the open country, with a mis- 
 taken confidence in the humanity of man. To kill a 
 deer when he suddenly passes one on a run-way de- 
 mands presence of mind, and quickness of aim : to 
 shoot him from the boat, after he has plunged panting 
 into the lake, requires the rare ability to hit a moving 
 object the size of a deer's head a few rods distant* 
 Either exploit is sufficient to make a hero of a com- 
 mon man. To paddle up to the swimming deer, and 
 cut his throat, is a sure means of getting venison, and 
 has its charms for some. Even women, and doctors 
 of divinity, have enjoyed this exquisite pleasure. It
 
 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 37 
 
 cannot be denied that we are so constituted by a wise 
 Creator as to feel a delight in killing a wild animal 
 which we do not experience in killing a tame one. 
 
 The pleasurable excitement of a deer-hunt ha8 
 never, I believe, been regarded from the deer's point 
 of view. I happen to be in a position by reason of 
 \ lucky Adirondack experience, to present it in that 
 light. I am sorry if this introduction to my little 
 story has seemed long to the reader: it is too late 
 now to skip it ; but he can recoup himself by omitting 
 the story. 
 
 Early on the morning of the 23d of August, 1877, 
 a doe was feeding on Basin Mountain. The night 
 had been warm and showery, and the morning opened 
 in an undecided way. The wind was southerly : it is 
 what the deer call a dog-wind, having come to know 
 quite well the meaning of " a southerly wind and a 
 cloudy sky." The sole companion of the doe was her 
 only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown coat 
 was just beginning to be mottled with the beautiful 
 spots which make this young creature as lovely as the 
 gazelle. The buck, its father, had been that night on 
 a long tramp across the mountain to Clear Pond, and 
 had not yet returned : he went ostensibly to feed on 
 the succulent lily-pads there. " He feedeth among the 
 lilies until the day break and the shadows flee away, 
 and he should be here by this hour ; but he cometh 
 not," she said, " leaping upon the mountains, skipping 
 upon the hills." Clear Pond was too far off for the 
 young mother to go with her fawn for a night's pleas- 
 ure. It was a fashionable watering-place at this sea- 
 son among the deer ; and the doe may have remem- 
 bered, not without uneasiness, the moonlight meetings 
 of 9, frivolous society there. But the buck did no*
 
 38 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 
 
 come : he was very likely sleeping under one of th? 
 ledges on Tight Nippin. Was he alone ? "I charge 
 you, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that 
 ye stir not nor awake my love till he please." 
 
 The doe was feeding, daintily cropping the tender 
 leaves of the young shoots, and turning from time to 
 time to regard her offspring. The fawn had taken his 
 morning meal, and now lay curled up on a bed cf 
 moss, watching contentedly, with his large, soft brown 
 eyes, every movement of his mother. The great eyes 
 followed her with an alert entreaty; and, if the 
 mother stepped a pace or two farther away in feed- 
 ing, the fawn made a half-movement, as if to rise and 
 follow her. You see, she was his sole dependence in 
 all the world. But he was quickly reassured when 
 she turned her gaze on him ; and if, in alarm, he ut- 
 tered a plaintive cry, she bounded to him at once, 
 and, with every demonstration of affection, licked his 
 mottled skin till it shone again. 
 
 It was a pretty picture, maternal love on the one 
 part, and happy trust on the other. The doe was 
 a beauty, and would have been so considered any- 
 where, as graceful and winning a creature as the sun 
 that day shone on, slender limbs, not too heavy 
 flanks, round body, and aristocratic head, with small 
 ears, and luminous, intelligent, affectionate eyes. 
 How alert, supple, free, she was ! What untaught 
 grace in every movement ! What a charming pose 
 when she lifted her head, and turned it to regard her 
 child ! You would have had a companion-picture, if 
 you had seen, as I saw that morning, a baby kicking 
 about among the dry pine-needles on a ledge above 
 the Ausable, in the valley below, while its young 
 mother sat near, with an easel before her touching i
 
 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 39 
 
 the color of a reluctant landscape, giving a quick look 
 at the sky and the outline of the Twin Mountains, 
 and bestowing every third glance upon the laughing 
 boy, art in its infancy. 
 
 The doe lifted her head a little with a quick motion, 
 and turned her ear to the south. Had she heard 
 something ? Probably it was only the south winds IE 
 the balsams. There was silence all about in the for= 
 est. If the doe had heard anything it was one of the 
 distant noises of the world. There are in the woods 
 occasional moanings, premonitions of change, which 
 are inaudible to the dull ears of men, but which, I 
 have no doubt, the forest-folk hear and understand* 
 If the doe's suspicions were excited for an instant, 
 they were gone as soon. With an affectionate glance 
 at her fawn, she continued picking up her breakfast. 
 
 But suddenly she started, head erect, eyes dilated, 
 a tremor in her limbs. She took a step ; she turned 
 her head to the south ; she listened intently. There 
 was a sound, a distant, prolonged note, bell-toned, 
 pervading the woods, shaking the air in smooth vibra- 
 tions. It was repeated. The doe had no doubt now. 
 She shook like the sensitive mimosa when a footstep 
 approaches. It was the baying of a hound ! It was 
 far off, at the foot of the mountain. Time enough 
 to fly ; time enough to put miles between her and the 
 hound, before he should come upon her fresh trail ; 
 time enough to escape away through the dense forest, 
 and hide in the recesses of Panther Gorge ; yes, time 
 enough. But there was the fawn. The cry or the 
 hound was repeated, more distinct this time. The 
 mother instinctively bounded away a few paces. The 
 ?awn started up with an anxious bleat. The doe 
 turned ; she came back ; shvi could n't leave it. She
 
 40 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 
 
 bent over it, and licked it, and seemed to say, " 
 my child ; we are pursued ; we must go." She 
 walked away towards the west, and the little thing 
 skipped after her. It was slow going for the slender 
 legs, over the fallen logs, and through the rasping 
 bushes. The doe bounded in advance, and waited; 
 the fawn scrambled after her, slipping and tumbling 
 along, very groggy yet on its legs, and whining a 
 good deal because its mother kept always moving 
 away from it. The fawn evidently did not hear the 
 hound ; the little innocent would even have looked 
 sweetly at the dog, and tried to make friends with it. 
 if the brute had been rushing upon him. By all the 
 means at her command the doe urged her young one 
 on ; but it was slow work. She might have been a 
 mile away while they were making a few rods. 
 Whenever the fawn caught up he was quite content 
 to frisk about. He wanted more breakfast, for one 
 thing ; and his mother would n't stand still. She 
 moved on continually ; and his weak legs were tangled 
 in the roots of the narrow deer-path. 
 
 Shortly came a sound that threw the doe into a 
 panic of terror, a short, sharp yelp, followed by a 
 prolonged howl, caught up and re-echoed by other 
 bayings along the mountain-side. The doe knew 
 what that meant. One hound had caught her trail, 
 and the whole pack responded to the " view-halloo.'' 
 The danger was certain now ; it was near. She 
 eould not crawl on in this way ; the dogs would soon 
 be upon them. She turned again for flight : the fawn, 
 scrambling after her, tumbled over, and bleated pite- 
 ously. The baying, now emphasized by the yelp of 
 certainty, came nearer. Flight with the fawn was 
 impossible. The doe returned and stood by it, head
 
 A-HUNTINQ OF fHE DEER 41 
 
 erect, and nostrils distended. She stood perfectly 
 still, but trembling. Perhaps she was thinking. The 
 fawn took advantage of the situation, and began to 
 draw his luncheon ration. The doe seemed to have 
 made up her mind. She let him finish. The fawn, 
 having taken all he wanted, lay down contentedly, 
 and the doe licked him for a moment. Then, with 
 the swiftness of a bird, she dashed away, and in 
 p moment was lost in the forest. She went in the 
 direction of the hounds. 
 
 According to all human calculations, she was going 
 into the jaws of death. So she was : all human calcu- 
 lations are selfish. She kept straight on, hearing the 
 baying every moment more distinctly. She descended 
 the slope of the mountain until she reached the more 
 open forest of hard-wood. It was freer going here, 
 and the cry of the pack echoed more resoundingly 
 in the great spaces. She was going due east, when 
 (judging by the sound, the hounds were not far off, 
 though they were still hidden by a ridge) she turned 
 away towards the north, and kept on at a good pace. 
 In five minutes more she heard the sharp, exultant 
 yelp of discovery, and then the deep-mouthed howl of 
 pursuit. The hounds had struck her trail where she 
 turned, and the fawn was safe. 
 
 The doe was in good running condition, the ground 
 was not bad, and she felt the exhilaration of the 
 chase. For the moment, fear left her, and she bounded 
 on with the exaltation of triumph. For a quarter of 
 an hour she went on at a slapping pace, clearing the 
 moose-bushes v/ith bound after bound, flying over the 
 fallen logs,, pausing neither for brook or ravine. The 
 baying of the hounds grew fainter behind her. But 
 ahe struck a bad piece of going, a dead-wood slash.
 
 42 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 
 
 It was marvellous to see her skim over it, leaping 
 among its intricacies, and not breaking her slender 
 legs. No other living animal could do it. But it 
 was killing work. She began to pant fearfully ; she 
 lost ground. The baying of the hounds was nearer. 
 She climbed the hard- wood hill at a slower gait : but, 
 once on more level, free ground, her breath came back 
 to her, and she stretched away with new courage, and 
 may be a sort of contempt of her heavy pursuers. 
 
 After running at a high speed perhaps half a mile 
 farther, it occurred to her that it would be safe now 
 to turn to the west, and, by a wide circuit, seek her 
 fawn. But, at the moment, she heard a sound that 
 chilled her heart. It was the cry of a hound to 
 the west of her. The crafty brute had made the cir- 
 cuit of the slash, and cut off her retreat. There was 
 nothing to do but to keep on ; and on she went, still 
 to the north, with the noise of the pack behind her, 
 In five minutes more she had passed into a hill- 
 side clearing. Cows and young steers were grazing 
 there. She heard a tinkle of bells. Below her, down 
 the mountain-slope, were other clearings, broken by 
 patches of woods. Fences intervened ; and a mile 
 or two down lay the valley, the shining Ausable, and 
 the peaceful farm-houses. That way also her hered 
 itary enemies were. Not a merciful heart in all that 
 lovely valley. She hesitated ; it was only for an in- 
 stant. She must cross the Slidebrook Valley if possi- 
 ble, and gain the mountain opposite. She bounded 
 on ; she stopped. What was that ? From the valley 
 ahead came the cry of a searching hound. All the 
 devils were loose this morning. Every way was 
 closed but one, and that led straight down the moun- 
 tain to the cluster of houses. Conspicuous among
 
 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 43 
 
 them was a slender white wooden spire. The doe did 
 not know it was the spire of a Christian chapel, but 
 perhaps she thought that human pity dwelt there, and 
 "Would be more merciful than the teeth of the hound? 
 
 " The hounds are baying'on my track : 
 white man ! will you send me back ? " 
 
 In a panic, frightened animals will always flee tcr 
 feuman-kind from the danger of more savage foes. 
 They always make a mistake in doing so. Perhaps 
 the trait is the survival of an era of peace on earth r 
 perhaps it is a prophecy of the golden age of the 
 future. The business of this age is murder, the 
 slaughter of animals, the slaughter of fellow-men, by 
 the wholesale. Hilarious poets who never fired a gun 
 write hunting songs, Ti-ra-la : and good bishops 
 write war-songs, Ave the Czar ! 
 
 The hunted doe went down " the open," clearing 
 the fences splendidly, flying along the stony path. It 
 was a beautiful sight. But consider what a shot 
 it was! If the deer, now, could only have been 
 caught ! No doubt there were tender-hearted people 
 in the valley who would have spared her life, shut her 
 up in a stable, and petted her. Was there one who 
 would have let her go back to her waiting fawn ? It 
 is the business of civilization to tame or kill. 
 
 The doe went on ; she left the saw-mill on John's 
 Brook to her right ; she turned into a wood-path. As 
 she approached Slide Brook, she saw a boy standing 
 by a tree with a raised rifle. The dogs were not in 
 sight, but she could hear them coming down the hill. 
 There was no time for hesitation. With a tremendous 
 burst of speed she cleared the stream, and, as she 
 touched the bank, heard the " ping " of a rifle bullet 
 in the air above her. The cruel sound gave wings to
 
 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 
 
 the poor thing. In a moment more she was in the 
 opening : she leaped into the travelled road. Which 
 way ? Below her in the wood was a load of hay : a 
 man and a boy, with pitchforks in their hands, were 
 running towards her. She turned south, and flew 
 along the street. The town was up. Women and 
 children ran to the doors and windows ; men snatched 
 their rifles ; shots were fired ; at the big boarding- 
 houses, the summer boarders, who never have any- 
 thing to do, came out and cheered ; a camp-stool was 
 thrown from a veranda. Some young fellows shoot- 
 ing at a mark in the meadow saw the flying deer, and 
 popped away at her : but they were accustomed to a 
 mark that stood still. It was all so sudden ! There 
 were twenty people who were just going to shoot her ; 
 when the doe leaped the road fence, and went away 
 across a marsh towards the foot-hills. It was a fear- 
 ful gauntlet to run. But nobody except the deer con- 
 sidered it in that light. Everybody told what he was 
 just going to do! everybody who had seen the per- 
 formance was a kind of hero, everybody except the 
 deer. For days and days it was the subject of con- 
 versation ; and the summer boarders kept their guns 
 at hand, expecting another deer would come to be 
 shot at. 
 
 The doe went away to the foot-hills, going now 
 slower, and evidently fatigued, if not frightened half 
 to death. Nothing is so appalling to a recluse as a 
 half a mile of summer boarders. As the deer entered 
 the thin woods she saw a rabble of people start across 
 the meadoAV in pursuit. By this time, the dogs, pant- 
 ing and lolling out their tongues, came swinging along, 
 keeping the trail, like stupids, and consequently los 
 ingr ground when the deer doubled. But f when the
 
 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 45 
 
 doe had got into the timber, she heard the savage 
 brutes howling across the meadow. (It is well 
 enough, perhaps, to say that nobody offered to shoot 
 the dogs.) 
 
 The courage of the panting fugitive was not gone : 
 she was game to the tip of her high-bred ears. But 
 the fearful pace at which she had just been going told 
 on her. Her legs trembled, and her heart beat like a 
 trip-hammer. She slowed her speed perforce, but still 
 fled industriously up the right bank of the stream. 
 When she had gone a couple of miles, and the dogs 
 were evidently gaining again, she crossed the broad, 
 deep brook, climbed the steep, left bank, and fled on 
 in the direction of the Mount Marcy trail. The ford- 
 ing of the river threw the hounds off for a time. She 
 knew, by their uncertain yelping up and down the op- 
 posite bank, that she had a little respite : she used it, 
 however, to push on until the baying was faint in her 
 ears ; and then she dropped, exhausted, upon the 
 ground. 
 
 This rest, brief as it was, saved her life. Roused 
 again by the baying pack, she leaped forward with 
 better speed, though without that keen feeling of ex- 
 hilarating flight that she had in the morning. It was 
 still a race for life ; but the odds were in her favor, 
 she thought. She did not appreciate the dogged 
 persistence of the hounds, nor had any inspiration 
 told her that the race is not to the swift. She was a 
 little confused in her mind where to go ; but an in 
 stinct kept her course to the left, and consequently far- 
 ther away from her fawn. Going now slower, and now 
 faster, as the pursuit seemed more distant or nearer, 
 she kept to the south-west, crossed the stream again, 
 left Panther Gorge on her right, and ran on by Hay-
 
 *6 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 
 
 stack and Skylight in the direction of the Upper 
 Ausable Pond. I do not know her exact course 
 through this maze of mountains, swamps, ravines, and 
 frightful wildernesses. I only know that the poor 
 thing worked her way along painfully, with sinking 
 heart and unsteady limbs, lying down " dead-beat " at 
 intervals, and then spurred on by the cry of the re- 
 morseless dogs, until, late in the afternoon she stag- 
 gered down the shoulder of Bartlett, and stood upon 
 the shore of the lake. If she could put that piece of 
 water between her and her pursuers, she would be 
 safe. Had she strength to swim it ? 
 
 At her first step into the water she saw a sight that 
 send her back with a bound. There was a boat mid- 
 lake ; two men were in it. One was rowing : the other 
 had a gun in his hand. They were looking towards 
 her : they had seen her. (She did not know that they 
 had heard the baying of hounds on the mountains, 
 and had been lying in wait for her an hour.) What 
 should she do ? The hounds were drawing near. 
 No escape that way, even if she could still run. 
 With only a moment's hesitation she plunged into the 
 lake, and struck obliquely across. Her tired legs 
 could not propel the tired body rapidly. She saw the 
 boat headed for her. She turned towards the centre 
 of the lake. The boat turned. She could hear the 
 rattle of the oar-locks. It was gaining on her. Then 
 there was a silence. Then there was a splash of the 
 water just ahead of her, followed by a roar round the 
 lake, the words " Confound it all ! " and a rattle of 
 the oars again. The doe saw the boat nearing her. 
 She turned irresolutely to the shore whence she came: 
 the dogs were lapping the water, and howling there. 
 She turned again to the centre of the lake.
 
 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 47 
 
 The brave, pretty creature was quite exhausted now. 
 In a moment more, with a rush of water, the boat was 
 on her, and the man at the oars had leaned over and 
 caught her by the tail. 
 
 tk Knock her on the head with that paddle I " he 
 shouted to the gentleman in the stern. 
 
 The gentleman was a gentleman, with a kind, 
 smooth-shaven face, and might have been a minister 
 of some sort of everlasting gospel. He took the pad- 
 dle in his hand. Just then the doe turned her head, 
 and looked at him with her great, appealing eyes. 
 
 " I can't do it ! my soul, I can't do it ! " and he 
 dropped the paddle. " Oh, let her go ! " 
 
 " Let thunder go ! " was the only response of the 
 guide as he slung the deer round, whipped out his 
 hunting-knife, and made a pass that severed her jug* 
 ular. 
 
 And the gentleman ate that night of the venison. 
 
 The buck returned about the middle of the after- 
 noon. The fawn was bleating piteously, hungry and 
 lonesome. The buck was surprised. He looked about 
 in the forest. He took a circuit and came back. His 
 doe was nowhere to be seen. He looked down at the 
 fawn in a helpless sort of way. The fawn appealed 
 for his supper. The buck had nothing whatever to 
 give his child, nothing but his sympathy. If he 
 said anything, this is what he said : " I 'm the head of 
 this family ; but, really, this is a novel case. I 've 
 nothing whatever for you. I don't know what to do. 
 I 've the feelings of a father ; but you can't live on 
 them. Let us travel." 
 
 The buck walked away : the little one toddled af tel 
 him They disappeared in the forest.
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 THERE lias been a lively inquiry after the primeval 
 man. Wanted, a man who would satisfy the conditions 
 of the miocene environment, and yet would be good 
 enough for an ancestor. We are not particular about 
 our ancestors, if they are sufficiently remote ; but we 
 must have something. Failing to apprehend the pri- 
 meval man, science has sought the primitive man where 
 he exists as a survival in present savage races. He is, 
 at best, only a mushroom growth of the recent period 
 (came in, probably, with the general raft of mamma- 
 lian fauna) ; but he possesses yet some rudimentary 
 traits that may be studied. 
 
 It is a good mental exercise to try to fix the mind 
 on the primitive man divested of all the attributes he 
 has acquired in his struggles with the other mammalian 
 fauna. Fix the mind on an orange, the ordinary occu- 
 pation of the metaphysician : take from it. without eat- 
 ing it, odor, color, weight, form, substance, and peel ; 
 then let the mind still dwell on it as an orange. The 
 experiment is perfectly successful ; only, at the end 
 of it, you have n't any mind. Better still, consider the 
 telephone : take away from it the metallic disk, and 
 the magnetized iron, and the connecting wire, and then 
 let the mind run abroad on the telephone. The mind 
 won't come back. I have tried by this sort of process 
 to get a conception of the primitive man. 1 let the
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 49 
 
 mind roam away back over the vast geologic spaces, 
 and sometimes fancy I see a dim image of him stalking 
 across the terrace epoch of the quaternary period. 
 
 But this is an unsatisfying pleasure. The best results 
 are obtained by studying the primitive man as he is 
 jeft here and there in our era, a witness of what has 
 been ; and I find him most to my mind in the Adiron- 
 dack system of what geologists call the Champlain 
 epoch. I suppose the primitive rnan is one who owes 
 more to nature than to the forces of civilization. 
 What we seek in him are the primal and original 
 traits, unmixed with the sophistications of society, and 
 unimpaired by the idfinements of an artificial culture. 
 He would retain the primitive instincts, which are 
 cultivated out of the ordinary, commonplace man. I 
 should expect to find him, by reason of an unrelin- 
 quished kinship, enjoying a special communion with 
 nature, admitted to its mysteries, understanding its 
 moods, and able to predict its vagaries. He would be 
 a kind of test to us of what we have lost by our gre- 
 garious acquisitions. On the one hand, there would 
 be the sharpness of the senses, the keen instincts 
 which the fox and beaver still possess, the ability to 
 find one's way in the pathless forest, to follow a trail, 
 to circumvent the wild denizens of the woods ; and, on 
 the other hand, there would be the philosophy of life 
 which the primitive man, with little external aid, would 
 evolve from original observation and cogitation. It is 
 our good fortune to know such a man ; but it is difficult 
 to present him to a scientific and cavilling generation. 
 He emigrated from somewhat limited conditions in 
 Vermont, at an early age, nearly half a century ago, 
 and sought freedom for his natural development back- 
 Ward in the wilds of the Adirondacks. Sometimes it
 
 50 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 is a love of adventure and freedom that sends men out 
 of the more civilized conditions into the less ; some- 
 times it is a constitutional physical lassitude which 
 leads them to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the 
 sickle, and the society of bears to town-meetings and 
 taxes. I think that Old Mountain Phelps had merely 
 the instincts of the primitive man, and never any hos 
 tile civilizing intent as to the wilderness into which he 
 plunged. Why should he want to slash away the 
 forest, and plough up the ancient mould, when it is 
 infinitely pleasanter to roam about in the leafy soli- 
 tudes, or sit upon a mossy log and listen to the chatter 
 of birds and the stir of beasts ? Are there not trout 
 in the streams, gum exuding from the spruce, sugar in 
 the maples, honey in the hollow trees, fur on the sables, 
 warmth in hickory-logs ? Will not a few days' plant, 
 ing and scratching in the " open " yield potatoes and 
 rye ? And, if there is steadier diet needed than veni- 
 son and bear, is the pig an expensive animal ? If Old 
 Phelps bowed to the prejudice or fashion of his age, 
 since we have come out of the tertiary state of 
 things, and reared a family, built a frame-house in a 
 secluded nook by a cold spring, planted about it some 
 apple-trees and a rudimentary garden, and installed a 
 group of flaming sunflowers by the door, I am con- 
 vinced that it was a concession that did not touch his 
 radical character ; that is to say, it did not impair his 
 reluctance to split oven-wood. 
 
 He was a true citizen of the wilderness. Thoreau 
 would have liked him, as he liked Indians and wood- 
 chucks, and the smell of pine-forests; and, if Old 
 Phelps had seen Thoreau, he would probably have 
 said to him, " Why on airth, Mr. Thoreau, don't you 
 live accordin' to your preachin' ? " You might be
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 51 
 
 misled by the shaggy suggestion of Old Phelps's given 
 Siame Orson into the notion that he was a mighty 
 Jiunter, with the fierce spirit of the Berserkers in his 
 ^eins. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The 
 hirsute and grisly sound of Orson expresses only his 
 entire affinity with the untamed and the natural, an 
 uncouth but gentle passion for the freedom and wild- 
 ness of the forest. Orson Phelps has only those un- 
 conventional aud humorous qualities of the bear which 
 make the animal so beloved in literature ; and one does 
 not think of Old Phelps so much as a lover of nature, 
 to use the sentimental slang of the period, as a 
 part of nature itself. 
 
 His appearance at the time when as a " guide " he 
 began to come into public notice fostered this impres- 
 sion, a sturdy figure, with long body and short legs, 
 clad in a woollen shirt and butternut-colored trousers 
 repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his head sur- 
 mounted by a limp, light-brown felt hat, frayed away 
 at the top, so that his yellowish hair grew out of it 
 like some nameless fern out of a pot. His tawny hair 
 was long and tangled, matted now many years past 
 the possibility of being entered by a comb. His fea- 
 tures were small and delicate, and set in the frame of 
 a reddish beard, the razor having mowed away a clear- 
 ing about the sensitive mouth, which was not seldom 
 wreathed with a child-like and charming smile. Out 
 of this hirsute environment looked the small gray eyes, 
 set near together ; eyes keen to observe, and quick to 
 express change of thought ; eyes that made you be 
 lieve instinct can grow into philosophic judgment. 
 His feet and hands were of aristocratic smallness, 
 although the latter were not worn away by ablutions ; 
 in fact, they assisted his toilet to give you the i
 
 52 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 sion that here was a man who had just come out of the 
 ground, a real son of the soil, whose appearance was 
 partially explained by his humorous relation to soap. 
 " Soap is a thing," he said, " that I hain't no kinder 
 use for." His clothes seemed to have been put on 
 him once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time 
 ago. The observant stranger was sure to be puzzled 
 by the contrast of this realistic and uncouth exterior 
 with the internal fineness, amounting to refinement 
 and culture, that shone through it all. What com- 
 munion had supplied the place of our artificial breed- 
 ing to this man? 
 
 Perhaps his most characteristic attitude was sitting 
 on a log, with a short pipe in his mouth. If ever man 
 was formed to sit on a log, it was Old Phelps. He was 
 essentially a contemplative person. Walking on a 
 country road, or anywhere in the " open," was irksome 
 to him. He had a shambling, loose-jointed gait, not 
 unlike that of the bear : his short legs bowed out, as 
 if they had been more in the habit of climbing trees 
 than of walking. On land, if we may use that expres- 
 sion, he was something like a sailor ; but, once in the 
 rugged trail or the unmarked route of his native forest, 
 he was a different person, and few pedestrians could 
 compete with him. The vulgar estimate of his con- 
 temporaries, that reckoned Old Phelps " lazy," was 
 simply a failure to comprehend the conditions of his 
 being. It is the unjustness of civilization that it sets 
 up uniform and artificial standards for all persons. 
 The primitive man suffers by them much as the con- 
 templative philosopher does, when one happens to 
 arrive in this busy, fussy world. 
 
 If the appearance of Old Phelps attracts attention, 
 his voice, when first heard, invariably startles the lis-
 
 A CHARACTER STUD? 53 
 
 tener. A small, high-pitched, half-querulous voice, it 
 easily rises into the shrillest falsetto ; and it has a 
 quality in it that makes it audible in all the tempests 
 of the forest, or the roar of rapids, like the piping of 
 a boatswain's whistle at sea in a gale. He has a way 
 of letting it rise as his sentence goes on, or when he is 
 opposed in argument, or wishes to mount above other 
 voices in the conversation, until it dominates every- 
 thing. Heard in the depths of the woods, quavering 
 aloft, it is felt to be as much a part of nature, an origi- 
 nal force, as the northwest wind or the scream of the 
 hen-hawk. When he is pottering about the camp-fire, 
 trying to light his pipe with a twig held in the flame, 
 he is apt to begin some philosophical observation in a 
 small, slow, stumbling voice, which seems about to end 
 in defeat, when he puts on some unsuspected force, 
 and the sentence ends in an insistent shriek. Horace 
 Greeley had such a voice, and could regulate it in the 
 same manner. But Phelps's voice is not seldom plain- 
 tive, as if touched by the dreamy sadness of the woods 
 themselves. 
 
 When Old Mountain Phelps was discovered, he was, 
 as the reader has already guessed, not understood by 
 his contemporaries. His neighbors, farmers in the 
 secluded valley, had many of them grown thrifty and 
 prosperous, cultivating the fertile meadows, and vigo- 
 rously attacking the timbered mountains ; while Phelps, 
 with not much more faculty of acquiring property than 
 ;he roaming deer, had pursued the even tenor of the 
 life in the forest on which he set out. They would 
 have been surprised to be told that Old Phelps owned 
 more of what makes the value of the Adirondacks than 
 all of them put together, but it was true. This woods- 
 man, this trapper, this hunter, this fisherman, this sit-
 
 54 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 ter on a log, and philosopher, was the real proprietor 
 of the region over which he was ready to guide the 
 stranger. It is true that he had not a monopoly of its 
 geography or its topography, though his knowledge 
 was superior in these respects ; there were other trap- 
 pers, and more deadly hunters, and as intrepid guides; 
 but Old Phelps was the discoverer of the beauties and 
 sublimities of the mountains ; and, when city strangers 
 broke into the region, he monopolized the apprecia- 
 tion of these delights and wonders of nature. I sup- 
 pose, that, in all that country, he alone had noticed 
 the sunsets, and observed the delightful processes of 
 the seasons, taken pleasure in the woods for themselves, 
 and climbed mountains solely for the sake of the pro- 
 spect. He alone understood what was meant by 
 " scenery." In the eyes of his neighbors, who did not 
 know that he was a poet and a philosopher, I dare say 
 he appeared to be a slack provider, a rather shiftless 
 trapper and fisherman ; and his passionate love of the 
 forest and the mountains, if it was noticed, was ac- 
 counted to him for idleness. When the appreciative 
 tourist arrived, Phelps was ready, as guide, to open to 
 him all the wonders of his possessions ; he, for the first 
 time, found an outlet for his enthusiasm, and a re- 
 sponse to his own passion. It then became known 
 what manner of man this was who had grown up here 
 in the companionship of forests, mountains, and wild 
 animals ; that these scenes had highly developed in 
 him the love of beauty, the esthetic sense, delicacy of 
 appreciation, refinement of feeling; and that, in h;<i 
 solitary wanderings and musings, the primitive man, 
 self-taught, had evolved for himself a philosophy and 
 a system of things. And it was a sufficient system, 
 so long as it was not disturbed by external scepticism.
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 55 
 
 When the outer world came to him, perhaps he had 
 about as much to give to it as to receive from it ; prob- 
 ably more, in his own estimation ; for there is no con- 
 ceit like that of isolation. 
 
 Phelps loved his mountains. He was the discoverer 
 of Marey. and caused the first trail to be cut to its 
 summit, so that others could enjoy the noble views 
 from its round and rocky top. To him it was, in noble 
 cyminf try and beauty, the chief mountain of the globe. 
 To stand on it gave him, as he said. " a feeling of hea- 
 ven up-b/isted-uess." He heard with impatience that 
 Mount Washington was a thousand feet higher, and 
 he had a child-like incredulity about the surpassing 
 sublimity of the Alps. Praise of any other elevation 
 .he seemed to consider a slight to Mount Marcy, and 
 did not willingly hear it, any more than a lover hears 
 the laudation of the beauty of another woman than 
 the one he loves. When he showed us scenery he 
 loved, it made him melancholy to have us speak of 
 scenery elsewhere that was finer. And yet there was 
 this delicacy about him, that he never over-praised 
 what he brought us to see, any more than one would 
 over-praise a friend of whom he was fond. I remem- 
 ber, that, when for the first time, after a toilsome jour- 
 ney through the forest, the splendors of the Lower 
 Ausable Pond broke upon our vision, that low-lying 
 silver lake, imprisoned bv the precipices which it re- 
 flected in its bosom, he made no outward response 
 to onr burst of admiration : only a quiet gleam of the 
 eye showed the pleasure our appreciation gave him. 
 As some one said, it was as if bis friend had been ad- 
 mired, a friend about whom he was unwilling to say 
 cnich himself, but well pleased to have others praise. 
 Thus far we have considered Old Phelps as sini-
 
 56 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 ply the product of the Adirondacks; not so much 
 a self-made man (as the doubtful phrase has it) as a 
 natural growth amid primal forces. But our study 
 is interrupted by another influence, which complicate? 
 the problem, but increases its interest. No scientific 
 observer, so far as we know, has ever been able to 
 watch the development of the primitive man, played 
 upon and fashioned by the hebdomadal iteration of 
 " Greeley's Weekly Tri-bune." Old Phelps educated 
 by the woods is a fascinating study ; educated by the 
 woods and the Tri-bune, he is a phenomenon. No 
 one at this day can reasonably conceive exactly what 
 this newspaper was to such a mountain valley as 
 Keene. If it was not a Providence, it was a Bible. 
 It was no doubt owing to it that Democrats became 
 as scarce as moose in the Adirondacks. But it is not 
 of its political aspect that I speak. I suppose that 
 the most cultivated and best informed portion of the 
 earth's surface the Western Reserve of Ohio, as 
 free from conceit as it is from a suspicion that it lacks 
 anything owes its pre-eminence solely to this com- 
 prehensive journal. It received from it everything 
 except a collegiate and a classical education, things 
 not to be desired, since they interfere with the self- 
 manufacture of man. If Greek had been in this 
 curriculum, its best known dictum would have been 
 translated, " Make thyself." This journal carried t<? 
 the community that fed on it not only a complete 
 education in all departments of human practice anci 
 theorizing, but the more valuable and satisfying as- 
 surance that there was nothing more to be gleaned in 
 the universe worth the attention of man. This pan- 
 oplied its readers in completeness. Politics, litera- 
 ture, arts, sciences, universal brotherhood and sister-
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 57 
 
 hood, nothing was omitted ; neither the poetry of 
 Tennyson, nor the philosophy of Margaret Fuller; 
 neither the virtues of association, nor of unbolted 
 wheat. The laws of political economy and trade 
 were laid down as positively and clearly as the best 
 way to bake beans, and the saving truth that the mil- 
 lennium would come, and come only when every foot 
 of the earth was subsoiled. 
 
 I do not say that Orson Phelps was the product of 
 nature and the Tri-bune ; but he cannot be explained 
 without considering these two factors. To him Gree- 
 ley was the Tri-bune, and the Tri-bune was Greeley ; 
 and yet I think he conceived of Horace Greeley as 
 something greater than his newspaper, and perhaps 
 capable of producing another journal equal to it in 
 another part of the universe. At any rate, so com- 
 pletely did Phelps absorb this paper and this person- 
 ality, that he was popularly known as " Greeley " in 
 the region where he lived. Perhaps a fancied resem- 
 blance of the two men in the popular mind had some- 
 thing to do with this transfer of name. There is no 
 doubt that Horace Greeley owed his vast influence in 
 the country to his genius, nor much doubt that he 
 owed his popularity in the rural districts to James 
 Gordon Bennett ; that is, to the personality of the 
 man which the ingenious Bennett impressed upon the 
 country. That he despised the conventionalities of 
 society, and was a sloven in his toilet, was firmly be 
 lieved ; and the belief endeared him to the hearts of 
 the people. To them "the old white coat" an 
 antique garment of unrenewed immortality was as 
 much a subject of idolatry as the redingote grise to 
 the soldiers of the first Napoleon, who had seen it by 
 the camp-fires on the Po and on the Borysthenes, and
 
 6tf A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 believed that he would come again in it to lead them 
 against the enemies of France. The Greeley of the 
 popular heart was clad as Bennett said he was clad. 
 It was in vain, even pathetically in vain, that he pub- 
 lished in his newspaper the full bill of his fashionable 
 tailor (the fact that it was receipted may have excited 
 the animosity of some of his contemporaries) to show 
 that he wore the best broadcloth, and that the folds 
 of his trousers followed the city fashion of falling 
 outside his boots. If this revelation was believed, it 
 made no sort of impression in the country. The rural 
 readers were not to be wheedled out of their cher- 
 ished conception of the personal appearance of the 
 philosopher of the Tri-bune. 
 
 That the Tri-bune taught Old Phelps to be more 
 Phelps than he would have been without it was part 
 of the independence-teaching mission of Greeley's 
 paper. The subscribers were an army, in which 
 every man was a general. And I am not surprised 
 to find Old Phelps lately rising to the audacity of 
 criticising his exemplar. In some recently-published 
 observations by Phelps upon the philosophy of read- 
 ing is laid down this definition : " If I understand the 
 necessity or use of reading, it is to reproduce again 
 what has been said or proclaimed before. Hence let" 
 ters, characters, &c., are arranged in all the perfec- 
 tion they possibly can be, to show how certain lan- 
 guage has been spoken by the original author. Now, 
 to reproduce by reading, the reading should be so per- 
 fectly like the original, that no one standing out of 
 sight could tell the reading from the first time the Ian- 
 guage was spoken." 
 
 This is illustrated by the highest authority at hand : 
 '* I have heard as good readers read, and as poor read-
 
 A CHARACTER &TUDY 59 
 
 ers, as almost any one in this region. If I have not 
 heard as many, I have had a chance to hear nearly 
 the extreme in variety. Horace Greeley ought to 
 have been a good reader. Certainly but few, if any, 
 ever knew every word of the English language at a 
 glance more readily than he did, or knew the mean- 
 ing of every mark of punctuation more clearly ; but 
 he could not read proper. ' But how do you know ? ' 
 says one. From the fact, I heard him in the same 
 lecture deliver or produce remarks in his own partic- 
 ular way, that, if they had been published properly 
 in print, a proper reader would have reproduced them 
 again the same way. In the midst of those remarks 
 Mr. Greeley took up a paper, to reproduce by reading 
 part of a speech that some one else had made ; and 
 his reading did not sound much more like the man 
 that first read or made the speech than the clatter of 
 a nail-factory sounds like a well-delivered speech. 
 Now, the fault was not because Mr. Greeley did not 
 know how to read as well as almost any man that ever 
 lived, if not quite : but in his youth he learned to 
 read wrong ; and, as it is ten times harder to unlearn 
 anything than it is to learn it, he, like thousands of 
 others, could never stop to unlearn it, but carried it 
 on through his whole life." 
 
 Whether a reader would be thanked for reproducing 
 one of Horace Greeley's lectures as he delivered it is 
 a question that cannot detain us here ; but the teach- 
 ing that he ought to do so, I think, would please Mr 
 Greeley. 
 
 The first driblets of professional tourists and sum- 
 mer boarders who arrived among the Adirondack 
 Mountains a few years ago found Old Phelps the chief 
 and best guide of the region. Those who were eager
 
 60 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 to throw off the usages of civilization, and tramp and 
 camp in the wilderness, could not but be well satisfied 
 with the aboriginal appearance of this guide ; and when, 
 he led off into the woods, axe in hand, and a huge can- 
 vas sack upon his shoulders, they seemed to be follow- 
 ing the Wandering Jew. The contents of this sack 
 would have furnished a modern industrial exhibition, 
 provisions cooked and raw, blankets, maple-sugar, 
 tin-ware, clothing, pork, Indian-meal, flour, coffee, tea, 
 &c. Phelps was the ideal guide: he knew every foot 
 of the pathless forest; he knew all wood-craft, all the 
 signs of the weather, or, what is the same thing, how 
 to make a Delphic prediction about it. He was fisher- 
 man and hunter, and had been the comrade of sports- 
 men and explorers ; and his enthusiasm for the beauty 
 and sublimity of the region, and for its untamable 
 wildness, amounted to a passion. He loved his pro- 
 fession ; and yet it very soon appeared that he exercised 
 it with reluctance for those who had neither ideality, 
 nor love for the woods. Their presence was a profa- 
 nation amid the scenery he loved. To guide into his 
 private and secret haunts a party that had no apprecia- 
 tion of their loveliness disgusted him. It was a waste 
 of his time to conduct flippant young men and giddy 
 girls who made a noisy and irreverent lark of the ex- 
 pedition. And, for their part, they did not appreciate 
 the benefit of being accompanied by a poet and a phi- 
 losopher. They neither understood nor valued his 
 special knowledge and his shrewd observations: they 
 did n't even like his shrill voice ; his quaint talk bored 
 them. It was true, that, at this period, Phelps had 
 lost something of the activity of his youth ; and the 
 habit of contemplative sitting on a log and talking in- 
 creased with the infirmities induced by the hard life of
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 61 
 
 the woodsman. Perhaps he would rather talk, either 
 about the woods-life or the various problems of exist- 
 ence, than cut wood, or busy himself in the drudgery 
 of the camp. His critics went so far as to say, " Old 
 Phelps is a fraud." They would have said the same 
 of Socrates. Xantippe, who never appreciated the 
 world in which Socrates lived, thought be was lazy. 
 Probably Socrates could cook no better than Old 
 Phelps, and no doubt went " gumming " about Athens 
 with very little care of what was in the pot for dinner. 
 If the summer visitors measured Old Phelps, he 
 also measured them by his own standards. He used 
 to write out what he called " short-faced descriptions " 
 of his comrades in the woods, which were never so 
 flattering as true. It was curious to see how the vari- 
 ous qualities which are esteemed in society appeared 
 in his eyes, looked at merely in their relation to the 
 limited world he knew, and judged by their adaptation 
 to the primitive life. It was a much subtler compari- 
 son than that of the ordinary guide, who rates his travel- 
 ler by his ability to endure on a march, to carry a pack, 
 use an oar, hit a mark, or sing a song. Phelps brought 
 his people to a test of their naturalness and sincerity, 
 tried by contact with the verities of the woods. If a 
 person failed to appreciate the woods, Phelps had no 
 opinion of him or his culture ; and yet, although he 
 was perfectly satisfied with his own philosophy of life, 
 worked out by close observation of nature and study 
 of the Tri-bune, he was always eager for converse with 
 superior minds, with those who had the advantage 
 of travel and much reading, and, above all, with those 
 who had any original " speckerlation." Of all the so- 
 ciety he was ever permitted to enjoy, I think he prized 
 most that of Dr. Bushnell. The doctor enjoyed the
 
 62 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 quaint and first-hand observations of the old woodsman, 
 md Phelps found new worlds open to him in the wide 
 ranges of the doctor's mind. They talked by the hour 
 upon all sorts of themes, the growth of the tree, the 
 habits of wild animals, the migration of seeds, the suc- 
 cession of oak and pine, not to mention theology, and 
 the mysteries of the supernatural. 
 
 I recall the bearing of Old Phelps, when, several 
 years ago, he conducted a party to the summit of 
 Mount Marcy by the way he had " bushed out." 
 This was his mountain, and he had a peculiar sense 
 of ownership in it. In a way, it was holy ground ; and 
 he would rather no one should go on it who did not 
 feel its sanctity. Perhaps it was a sense of some di- 
 vine relation in it that made him always speak of it 
 as " Mercy." To him this ridiculously dubbed Mount 
 Mr.rcy was always " Mount Mercy." By a like effort 
 to soften the personal offensiveness of the nomencla- 
 ture of this region, he invariably spoke of Dix's Peak, 
 one of the southern peaks of the range, as " Dixie." 
 It was some time since Phelps himself had visited his 
 mountain ; and, as he pushed on through the miles of 
 forest, we noticed a kind of eagerness in the old man, 
 as of a lover going to a rendezvous. Along the foot 
 of the mountain flows a clear trout-stream, secluded 
 and undisturbed in those awful solitudes, which is the 
 " Mercy Brook " of the old woodsman. That day 
 when he crossed it, in advance of his company, he was 
 heard to say in a low voice, as if greeting some object 
 of which he was shyly fond, " So, little brook, do I 
 meet you once more ? " and when we were well up the 
 mountain, and emerged from the last stunted fringe 
 of vegetation upon the rock-bound slope, I saw Old 
 Phelps, who was still foremost, cast himself upon the
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 68 
 
 ground, and heard him cry, with an enthusiasm that 
 was intended for no mortal ear, " I 'in with you once 
 again ! " His great passion very rarely found expres- 
 sion in any such theatrical burst. The bare summit 
 that day was swept by a fierce, cold wind, and lost in 
 an occasional chilling cloud. Some of the party, ex- 
 hausted by the climb, and shivering in the rude wind, 
 wanted a fire kindled and a cup of tea made, and 
 thought this the guide's business. Fire and tea were 
 far enough from his thought. He had withdrawn 
 himself quite apart, and, wrapped in a ragged blanket, 
 still and silent as the rock he stood on, was gazing 
 out upon the wilderness of peaks. The view from 
 Marcy is peculiar. It is without softness or relief. 
 The narrow valleys are only dark shadows ; the lakes 
 are bits of broken mirror. From horizon to horizon 
 there is a tumultuous sea of billows turned to stone. 
 You stand upon the highest billow ; you command the 
 situation ; you have surprised Nature in a high crea- 
 tive act ; the mighty primal energy has only just be- 
 come repose. This was a supreme hour to Old Phelps. 
 Tea! I believe the boys succeeded in kindling afire; 
 but the enthusiastic stoic had no reason to complain of 
 want of appreciation in the rest of the party. When 
 we were descending, he told us, with mingled humor 
 and scorn, of a party of ladies he once led to the top 
 of the mountain on a still day, who began immediately 
 to talk about the fashions! As he related the scene, 
 stopping and facing us in the trail, his mild, far-in 
 eyes came to the front, and his voice rose with his 
 language to a kind of scream. 
 
 " Why, there they were, right before the greatest 
 view they ever saw, talkin' about the fashions /" 
 
 Impossible to convey the accent of contempt in
 
 C4 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 which he pronounced the word "fashions," and then 
 added, with a sort of regretful bitterness, 
 
 " I was a great mind to come down, and leave 'em 
 there." 
 
 In common with the Greeks, Old Phelps personi- 
 fied the woods, mountains, and streams. They had 
 not only personality, but distinctions of sex. It was 
 something beyond the characterization of the hunter, 
 which appeared, for instance, when he related a fight 
 with a panther, in such expressions as, "Then Mr. 
 Panther thought he would see what he could do," &o. 
 He was in "imaginative sympathy" with all wild 
 things. The afternoon we descended Marcy, we went 
 away to the west, through the primeval forests toward 
 Avalanche and Golden, and followed the course of the 
 charming Opalescent. When we reached the leaping 
 stream, Phelps exclaimed, 
 
 " Here 's little Miss Opalescent ! " 
 
 " Why don't you say Mr. Opalescent? " some one 
 asked. 
 
 " Oh, she 's too pretty ! " And too pretty she 
 was, with her foam-white and rainbow dress, and her 
 downfalls, and fountain-like uprising. A bewitching 
 young person we found her all that summer after- 
 noon. 
 
 This sylph-like person had little in common with a 
 monstrous lady whosa adventures in the wilderness 
 Phelps was fond of relating. She was built something 
 on the plan of the mountains, and her ambition to 
 explore was equal to her size. Phelps and the other 
 guides once succeeded in raising her to the top of 
 Marcy ; but the feat of getting a hogshead of molasses 
 up there would have been easier. In attempting to 
 give us an idea of her magnitude that night, as we
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 65 
 
 sat in the forest camp, Phelps hesitated a moment, 
 while he cast his eye around the woods : " Waal, there 
 ain't no tree ! " 
 
 It is only by recalling fragmentary remarks and 
 incidents that I can put the reader in possession of 
 the peculiarities of my subject ; and this involves the 
 Drenching of things out of their natural order and 
 continuity, and introducing them abruptly, an ab- 
 ruptness illustrated by the remark of " Old Man Hos- 
 kins," which Phelps liked to quote, when one day he 
 suddenly slipped down a bank into a thicket, and 
 seated himself in a wasps' nest : " I hain't no business 
 here ; but here I be ! " 
 
 The first time we went into camp on the Upper 
 Ausable Pond, which has been justly celebrated as 
 the most prettily set sheet of water in the region, we 
 were disposed to build our shanty on the south side, 
 so that we could have in full view the Gothics and that 
 loveliest of mountain contours. To our surprise, Old 
 Pholps, whose sentimental weakness for these moun- 
 tains we knew, opposed this. His favorite camping- 
 ground was on the north side, a pretty site in itself, 
 but with no special view. In order to enjoy the lovely 
 mountains, we should be obliged to row out into the 
 lake : we wanted them always before our eyes, at 
 sunrise and sunset, and in the blaze of noon. With 
 deliberate speech, as if weighing our arguments and 
 disposing of them, he replied, " Waal, now, them 
 Gothics ain't the kinder scenery you want ter hog 
 down ! " 
 
 It was on quiet Sundays in the woods, or in talks 
 oy the camp-fire, that Phelps came out as the philoso- 
 pher, and commonly contributed the light of his obser- 
 vations. Unfortunate marriages, and marriages in
 
 66 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 general, were, on one occasion, the subject of discus- 
 sion ; and a good deal of darkness had been cast on 
 it by various speakers ; when Phelps suddenly piped 
 up, from a log where he had sat silent, almost invis- 
 ible, in the shadow and smoke, 
 
 " Waal, now, when you 've said all there is to be 
 said, marriage is mostly for discipline." 
 
 Discipline, certainly, the old man had, in one way 
 or another; and years of solitary communing in the 
 forest had given him, perhaps, a childlike insight into 
 spiritual concerns. Whether he had formulated any 
 creed or what faith he had, I never knew. Keene 
 Valley had a reputation of not ripening Christians 
 any more successfully than maize, the season there 
 being short ; and on our first visit it was said to con- 
 tain but one Bible Christian, though I think an accu- 
 rate census disclosed three. Old Phelps, who some- 
 times made abrupt remarks in trying situations, was 
 not included in this census ; but he was the disciple 
 of supernaturalism in a most charming form. I have 
 heard of his opening his inmost thoughts to a lady, one 
 Sunday, after a noble sermon of Robertson's had been 
 read in the cathedral stillness of the forest. His 
 experience was entirely first-hand, and related with 
 unconsciousness that it was not common to all. There 
 was nothing of the mystic or the sentimentalist, only a 
 vivid realism, in that nearness of God of which he 
 spoke, " as near sometimes as those trees," and 
 of the holy voice, that, in a time of inward struggle, 
 had seemed to him to come from the depths of the 
 forest, saying, " Poor soul, I am the way." 
 
 In later years there was a " revival " in Keene Val- 
 ley, the result of which was a number of young " con- 
 verts," whom Phelps seemed to regard as a veteran
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 67 
 
 uttight raw recruits, and to have his doubts what sort 
 of soldiers they would make. 
 
 " Waal, Jimmy," he said to one of them, " you 've 
 kindled a pretty good fire with light wood. That 's 
 what we do of a dark night in the woods, you know ; 
 but we do it just so as we can look around and find the 
 solid wood : so now put on your solid wood." 
 
 In the Sunday Bible-classes of the period Phelps 
 was a perpetual anxiety to the others, who followed 
 closely the printed lessons, and beheld with alarm his 
 discursive efforts to get into freer air and light. His 
 remarks were the most refreshing part of the exercises, 
 but were outside of the safe path into which the others 
 thought it necessary to win him from his " speckerla- 
 tions.'' The class were one day on the verses concern- 
 ing " God's word " being " written on the heart," and 
 were keeping close to the shore, under the guidance of 
 ' Barnes's Notes," when Old Phelps made a dive to the 
 bottom, and remarked that he had "thought a good 
 rleal about the expression, ' God's word written on the 
 heart,' and had been asking himself how that was to 
 be done ; and suddenly it occurred to him, having been 
 much interested lately in watching the work of a pho- 
 tographer, that, when a photograph is going to be 
 taken, all that has to be done is to put the object in 
 position, and the sun makes the picture ; and so he 
 rather thought that all we had got to do was to put our 
 hearts in place, and God would do the writin'." 
 
 Phelps's theology, like his science, is first-hand. 
 In the woods, one day, talk ran on the Trinity as being 
 nowhere asserted as a doctrine in the Bible, and some 
 one suggested that the attempt to pack these great and 
 fluent mysteries into one word must always be more 
 or less unsatisfactory " Ye-es" droned Phelps : " I
 
 68 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 never could see much speckerlation in that expression 
 the Trinity. Why, they 'd a good deal better say 
 Legion." 
 
 The sentiment of the man about nature, or his poetic 
 sensibility, was frequently not to be distinguished 
 from a natural religion, and was always tinged with 
 the devoutness of Wordsworth's verse.. Climbing 
 slowly one day up the Balcony, he was more than 
 usually calm and slow, he espied an exquisite fragile 
 flower in the crevice of a rock, in a very lonely spot, 
 
 " It seems as if," he said, or rather dreamed out, 
 *' it seems as if the Creator had kept something just 
 to look at himself." 
 
 To a lady whom he had taken to Ghapel Pond, a 
 retired but rather uninteresting spot, and who ex- 
 pressed a little disappointment at its tameness, say 
 
 in g> 
 
 " Why, Mr. Phelps, the principal charm of this 
 place seems to be its loneliness," 
 
 " Yes," he replied in gentle and lingering tones, 
 "and its nativeness. It lies here just where it was 
 born." 
 
 Rest and quiet had infinite attractions for him. A 
 secluded opening in the woods was a " calm spot." 
 He told of seeing once, or rather being in, a circular 
 rainbow. He stood on Indian Head, overlooking the 
 Lower Lake, so that he saw the whole bow in the sky 
 and the lake, and seemed to be in the midst of it ; 
 "only at one place there was an indentation in it, 
 where it rested on the lake, just enough to keep it from 
 rolling off." This " resting " of the sphere seemed to 
 give him great comfort. 
 
 One Indian-summer morning in October, some 
 tadies found the old man sitting on his doorstep, smok
 
 69 
 
 ing a short pipe. He gave no sign of recognition of 
 their approach, except a twinkle of the eye, being evi- 
 dently quite in harmony with the peaceful day. They 
 stood there a full minute before he opened his mouth : 
 then he did not rise, but slowly took his pipe from his 
 mouth, and said in a dreamy way, pointing towards 
 the brook, 
 
 " Do you see that tree ? " indicating a maple almost 
 denuded of leaves, which lay like a yellow garment 
 cast at its feet. " I 've been watching that tree all the 
 morning. There hain't been a breath of wind : but 
 for hours the leaves have been falling, falling, just as 
 you see them now ; and at last it 's pretty much bare." 
 And after a pause, pensively : " Waal, I suppose its 
 hour had come." 
 
 This contemplative habit of Old Phelps is wholly 
 unappreciated by his neighbors ; but it has been in- 
 dulged in no inconsiderable part of his life. Rising 
 after a time, he said, " Now I want you to go with me 
 and see my golden city I 've talked so much about.'* 
 He led the way to a hill-outlook, when suddenly, 
 emerging from the forest, the spectators saw revealed 
 the winding valley and its stream. He said quietly, 
 " There is my golden city." Far below, at their feet, 
 they saw that vast assemblage of birches and " pop- 
 ples," yellow as gold in the brooding noonday, and 
 slender spires rising out of the glowing mass. With- 
 out another word, Phelps sat a long time in silent con- 
 tent : it was to him, as Bunyan says, " a place desirous 
 to be in." 
 
 Is this philosopher contented with what life has 
 brought him ? Speaking of money one day, when we 
 had asked him if he should do differently if he had 
 his life to live over again, he said, " Yes, but not about
 
 70 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 money. To have had hours such as I have had in 
 these mountains, and with such men as Dr. Bushnell 
 and Dr. Shaw and Mr. Twichell, and others I could 
 name, is worth all the money the world could give." 
 He read character very well, and took in accurately 
 the boy nature. " Tom," an irrepressible, rather 
 overdone specimen, " Tom 's a nice kind of a boy ; 
 but he 's got to come up against a snubbin'-post one 
 of these days." " Boys ! " he once said : " you can't 
 git boys to take any kinder notice of scenery. I never 
 yet saw a boy that would look a second time at a sun- 
 set. Now, a girl will sometimes ; but even then it 's 
 instantaneous, comes and goes like the sunset. As 
 for me," still speaking of scenery, " these mountains 
 about here, that I see every day, are no more to me, in 
 one sense, than a man's farm is to Viim. What mostly 
 interests me now is when I see some new freak or shape 
 in the face of Nature." 
 
 In literature it may be said that Old Phelps prefers 
 the best in the very limited range that has been open 
 to him. Tennyson is his favorite among poets ; an 
 affinity explained by the fact that they are both lotos- 
 eaters. Speaking of a lecture-room talk of Mr. 
 Beecher's which he had read, he said, " It filled my 
 cup about as full as I callerlate to have it : there was a 
 good deal of truth in it, and some poetry ; waal, and 
 a little spice too. We 've got to have the spice, you 
 know." He admired, for different reasons, a lecture 
 by Greeley that he once heard, into which so much 
 knowledge of various kinds was crowded, that he said 
 he " made a reg'lar gobble of it." He was not with- 
 out discrimination, which he exercised upon the local 
 preaching when nothing better offered. Of one ser- 
 mon he said, "The man began way back at the cre
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 71 
 
 ation, and just preached right along down ; and he 
 did n't say nothing, after all. It just seemed to me as 
 if he was tryin' to git up a kind of a fix-up." 
 
 Old Phelps used words sometimes like algebraic 
 signs, and had a habit of making one do duty for a 
 season together for all occasions. " Speckerlatiou " 
 and " callerlation " and " fix up " are specimens of 
 words that were prolific in expression. An unusual 
 expression, or an unusual article, would be character- 
 ized as a " kind of a scientific literary git-up." 
 
 "What is the programme for to-morrow?" I once 
 asked him. " Waal, I callerlate, if they rig up the 
 callerlation they callerlate on, we '11 go to the Boreas." 
 Starting out for a day's tramp in the woods, he would 
 ask whether we wanted to take a " reg'lar walk, or a 
 random scoot," - - the latter being a plunge into the 
 pathless forest. When he was on such an expedition, 
 and became entangled in dense brush, and maybe a 
 network of " slash " and swamp, he was like an old 
 wizard, as he looked here and there, seeking a way, 
 peering into the tangle, or withdrawing from a thicket, 
 and muttering to himself, " There ain't no speckerla- 
 tion there." And when the way became altogether 
 inscrutable, " Waal, this is a reg'lar random scoot 
 of a rigmarole." As some one remarked, " The dic- 
 tionary in his hands is like clay in the hands of the 
 potter." A petrifaction was a " kind of a hard-wood 
 chemical git-up." 
 
 There is no conceit, we are apt to say, like that born 
 of isolation from the world, and there are no such con- 
 ceited people as those who have lived all their lives in 
 the woods. Phelps was, however, unsophisticated in 
 his until the advent of strangers into his life, who 
 brought in literature and various other disturbing
 
 72 A CHARACTER STUDY 
 
 influences. I am sorry to say that the effect has been 
 to take off something of the bloom of his simplicity, 
 and to elevate him into an oracle. I suppose this 
 is inevitable as soon as one goes into print; and 
 Phelps has gone into print in the local papers. He 
 has been bitten with the literary " git-up." Justly 
 regarding most of the Adirondack literature as a 
 " perfect fizzle," he has himself projected a work, and 
 written much on the natural history of his region. 
 Long ago he made a large map of the mountain coun- 
 try ; and, until recent surveys, it was the only one 
 that could lay any claim to accuracy. His history is 
 no doubt original in form, and unconventional in, 
 expression. Like most of the writers of the seven- 
 teenth century, and the court ladies and gentlemen of 
 the eighteenth century, he is an independent speller. 
 Writing of his work on the Adirondacks, he says, " If 
 I should ever live to get this wonderful thing written, 
 I expect it will show one thing, if no more ; and that 
 is, that everything has an opposite. I expect to show 
 in this that literature has an opposite, if I do not show 
 anything else. We could not enjoy the blessings and 
 happiness of riteousness if we did not know innicuty 
 was in the world : in fact, there would be no riteous- 
 ness without innicuty." Writing also of his great 
 enjoyment of being in the woods, especially since he 
 has had the society there of some people he names, he 
 adds, " And since I have Literature, Siance, and Art 
 all spread about on the green moss of the mountain, 
 woods or the gravell banks of a cristle stream, il 
 seems like finding roses, honeysuckels, and violets on 
 a crisp brown cliff in December. You know I don't 
 believe much in the religion of seramony ; but any 
 riteous thing that has life and spirit in it is food for
 
 A CHARACTER STUDY 73 
 
 me." I must not neglect to mention an essay, con- 
 tinued in several numbers of his local paper, on " The 
 Growth of the Tree," in which he demolishes the the- 
 ory of Mr. Greeley, whom he calls " one of the best 
 vegetable philosophers," about " growth without seed." 
 He treats of the office of sap. " All trees have some 
 kind of sap and some kind of operation of sap flowing 
 in their season," the dissemination of seeds, the pro- 
 cesses of growth, the power of healing wounds, the pro- 
 portion of roots to branches, &c. Speaking of the 
 latter, he says, " I have thought it would be one of the 
 greatest curiosities on earth to see a thrifty growing 
 maple or elm, that had grown on a deep soil interval 
 to be two feet in diameter, to be raised clear into the 
 air with every root and fibre down to the minutest 
 thread, all entirely cleared of soil, so that every par- 
 ticle could be seen in its natural position. I think it 
 would astonish even the wise ones." From his instinc- 
 tive sympathy with nature, he often credits vegetable 
 organism with " instinctive judgment." " Observa- 
 tion teaches us that a tree is given powerful instincts, 
 which would almost appear to amount to judgment in 
 some cases, to provide for its own wants and necessi- 
 ties." 
 
 Here our study must cease. When the primitive 
 man comes into literature, he is no longer primitive.
 
 CAMPING OUT 
 
 IT seems to be agreed that civilization is kept up 
 only by a constant effort. Nature claims its own 
 speedily when the effort is relaxed. If you clear a 
 patch of fertile ground in the forest, uproot the stumps 
 and plant it, year after year, in potatoes and maize, 
 you say you have subdued it. But if you leave it 
 for a season or two, a kind of barbarism seems to steal 
 out upon it from the circling woods ; coarse grass and 
 brambles cover it ; bushes spring up in a wild tangle ; 
 the raspberry and the blackberry flower and fruit, 
 and the humorous bear feeds upon them. The last 
 state of the ground is worse than the first 
 
 Perhaps the cleared spot is called Ephesus. 
 There is a splendid city on the plain ; there are tem- 
 ples and theatres on the hills ; the commerce of the 
 world seeks its port ; the luxury of the Orient flows 
 through its marble streets. You are there one day 
 when the sea has receded : the plain is a pestilent 
 marsn ; the temples, the theatres, the lofty gates, nave 
 sunken and crumbled, and the wild-brier runs over 
 them ; and, as you grow pensive in the most desolate 
 place in the world, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, 
 and offers to relieve you of all that which creates arti- 
 ficial distinctions in society. The higher the civil- 
 ization has risen, the more abject is the desolation 
 of barbarism that ensues. The most melancholy spot
 
 CAMPING OUT 75 
 
 in the Adirondacks is not a tamarack-swamp, where 
 the traveller wades in moss and mire, and the at- 
 mosphere is composed of equal active parts of black- 
 *lies, mosquitos, and midges. It is the village of the 
 Adirondack Iron-Works, where the streets of gaunt 
 houses are falling to pieces, tenantless; the factory 
 wheels have stopped ; the furnaces are in ruins ; the 
 iron and wooden machinery is strewn about in help- 
 less detachment ; and heaps of charcoal, ore, and slag 
 proclaim an arrested industry. Beside this deserted 
 village, even Calamity Pond, shallow, sedgy, with its 
 ragged shores of stunted firs, and its melancholy shaft 
 that marks the spot where the proprietor of the iron- 
 works accidentally shot himself, is cheerful. 
 
 The instinct of barbarism that leads people periodi- 
 cally to throw away the habits of civilization, and 
 seek the freedom and discomfort of the woods, is ex- 
 plicable enough ; but it is not so easy to understand 
 why this passion should be strongest in those who 
 are most refined, and most trained in intellectual 
 and social fastidiousness. Philistinism and shoddy 
 do not like the woods, unless it becomes fashionable 
 to do so ; and then, as speedily as possible they in- 
 troduce their artificial luxuries, and reduce the life in 
 the wilderness to the vulgarity of a well-fed picnic. 
 It is they who have strewn fche Adirondacks with 
 paper collars and tin cans. The real enjoyment of 
 camping and tramping in the woods lies in a return 
 to primitive conditions of lodging, dress, and food, in 
 as total an escape as may be from the requirements of 
 civilization. And it remains to be explained why this 
 is enjoyed most by those who are most highly civilized. 
 It is wonderful to see how easily the restraints of so- 
 ciety fall off. Of course it is not true that courtesy
 
 76 CAMPING OUT 
 
 depends upon clothes with the best people ; but, with 
 others, behavior hangs almost entirely upon dress, 
 Many good habits are easily got rid of in the woods. 
 Dcubt sometimes seems to be felt whether Sunday is a 
 legal holiday there. It becomes a question of casuistry 
 with a clergyman whether he may shoot at a mark on 
 Sunday, if none of his congregation are present. He 
 intends no harm : he only gratifies a curiosity to see K 
 he can hit the mark. Where shall he draw the line ^ 
 Doubtless he might throw a stone at a chipmunk or 
 shout at a loon. Might lie fire at a mark with an 
 air-gun that makes no noise? He will not fish or 
 hunt on Sunday (although he is no more likely to 
 catch anything that day than on any other) ; but 
 may he eat trout that the guide has caught on Sun- 
 day, if the guide swears he caught them Saturday 
 Eight ? Is there such a thing as a vacation in reli- 
 gion ? How much of our virtue do we owe to inher- 
 ited habita ? 
 
 I am not at all sure whether this desire to camp 
 outside of civilization is creditable to human nature ? 
 or otherwise. We hear sometimes that the Turk has 
 been merely camping for four centuries in Europe. 
 I suspect that many of us are, after all, really camp- 
 ing temporarily in civilized conditions ; and that 
 going into the wilderness is an escape, longed for, 
 into our natural and preferred state. Consider what 
 this "camping out" is, that is confessedly so agreeable 
 to people most delicately reared. I have no desire 
 to exaggerate its delights. 
 
 The Adirondack wilderness is essentially unbroken. 
 A few bad roads that penetrate it, a few jolting 
 wagons that traverse them, a few barn-like boarding- 
 houses on the edge of the forest, where the boarder*
 
 CAMPING OUT 77 
 
 are soothed by patent coffee, and stimulated to unnat- 
 ural gayety by Japan tea, and experimented on by 
 unique cookery, do little to destroy the savage fascina- 
 tion of the region. In half an hour, at any point, one 
 jan put himself into solitude and every desirable dis 
 comfort. The party that covets the experience of the 
 camp comes down to primitive conditions of dress an,I 
 equipment. There are guides and porters to carry 
 the blankets for beds, the raw provisions, and the 
 camp equipage ; and the motley party of the tempo- 
 rarily decivilized files into the woods, and begins, per- 
 haps by a road, perhaps on a trail, its exhilarating and 
 weary march. The exhilaration arises partly from 
 the casting aside of restraint, partly from the adven- 
 ture of exploration ; and the weariness, from the in- 
 terminable toil of bad walking, a heavy pack, and the 
 grim monotony of ti'ees and bushes, that shut out all 
 prospect, except an occasional glimpse of the sky. 
 Mountains are painfully climbed, streams forded, 
 lonesome lakes paddled over, long and muddy " car- 
 ries " traversed. Fancy this party the victim of polit- 
 ical exile, banished by the law, and a more sorrowful 
 march could not be imagined ; but the voluntary 
 hardship becomes pleasure, and it is undeniable that 
 the spirits of the party rise as the difficulties increase., 
 For this straggling and stumbling band the world is 
 young again : it has come to the beginning of things ; 
 ic has cut loose from tradition, and is free to make 
 home anywhere : the movement has all the promise of 
 a revolution. All this virginal freshness invites the 
 primitive instincts of play and disorder. The free 
 range of the forests suggests endless possibilities of 
 exploration and possession. Perhaps we are treading 
 where man since the creation never trod before ; per-
 
 78 CAMPING OUT 
 
 haps the waters of this bubbling spring, which we 
 deepen by scraping out the decayed leaves and the 
 black earth, have never been tasted before, except by 
 the wild denizens of these woods. We cross the trails 
 j)f lurking animals, paths that heighten our sense 
 of seclusion from the world. The hammering of the 
 infrequent woodpecker, the call of the lonely bird, the 
 drumming of the solitary partridge, all these sounds 
 do but emphasize the lonesoineness of nature. The 
 roar of the mountain brook, dashing over its bed of 
 pebbles, rising out of the ravine, and spreading, as it 
 were, a mist of sound through all the forest (contin- 
 uous beating waves that have the rhythm of eternity 
 in them), and the fitful movement of the air-tides 
 through the balsams and firs and the giant pines, 
 how these grand symphonies shut out the little exas- 
 perations of our vexed life ! It seems easy to begin 
 life over again on the simplest terms. Probably it is 
 not so much the desire of the congregation to escape 
 from the preacher, or of the preacher to escape from 
 himself, that drives sophisticated people into the wil- 
 derness, as it is the unconquered craving for primitive 
 simplicity, the revolt against the everlasting dress< 
 parade of our civilization. From this monstrous pom- 
 posity even the artificial rusticity of a Petit Trianon 1 
 is a relief. It was only human nature that the jaded 
 Frenchman of the regency should run away to the 
 New World, and live in a forest-hut with an Indiai- 
 squaw ; although he found little satisfaction in his act 
 of heroism, unless it was talked about at Versailles. 
 
 When our trampers come, late in the afternoon, to 
 the bank of a lovely lake where they purpose to enter 
 the primitive life, everything is waiting for them in 
 
 1 A little palace near the royal one at Versailles.
 
 CAMPING OUT 79 
 
 virgin expectation. There is a little promontory jut- 
 ting into the lake, and sloping down to a sandy beach, 
 on which the waters idly lapse, and shoals of red-fins 
 and shiners come to greet the stranger ; the forest is 
 untouched by the axe ; the tender green sweeps the 
 water's edge ; ranks of slender firs are marshalled by 
 the shore ; clumps of white-birch stems shine in satir 
 purity among the evergreens ; the boles of giant 
 spruces, maples, and oaks, lifting high their crowns of 
 foliage, stretch away in endless galleries and arcades ; 
 through the shifting leaves the sunshine falls upon 
 the brown earth ; overhead are fragments of blue sky ; 
 under the boughs and in chance openings appear the 
 bluer lake and the outline of the gracious mountains. 
 The discoverers of this paradise, which they have en- 
 tered to destroy, note the babbling of the brook that 
 flows close at hand ; they hear the splash of the leap- 
 ing fish ; they listen to the sweet, metallic song of the 
 evening thrush, and the chatter of the red squirrel, 
 who angrily challenges their right to be there. But 
 the moment of sentiment passes. This party has come 
 here to eat and to sleep, and not to encourage Nature 
 in her poetic attitudinizing. 
 
 The spot for a shanty is selected. This side shall 
 be its opening, towards the lake ; and in front of it 
 the fire, so that the smoke shall drift into the hut, and 
 discourage the mosquitoes ; yonder shall be the cook's 
 fire and the path to the spring. The whole colony 
 bestir themselves in the foundation of a new home, 
 an enterprise that has all the fascination, and none of 
 the danger, of a veritable new settlement in the wil- 
 derness. The axes of the guides resound in the echo- 
 ing spaces ; great trunks fall with a crash ; vistas are 
 opened towards the lake and the mountains. The
 
 80 CAMPING OUT 
 
 spot for the shanty is cleared of underbrusb; forked 
 stakes are driven into the ground, cross-pieces are 
 laid on them, and poles sloping back to the ground. 
 In an incredible space of time there is the skeleton of 
 a house, which is entirely open in front. The roof 
 and sides must be covered. For this purpose the 
 trunks of great spruces are skinned. The woodman 
 rims the bark near the foot of the tree, and again six 
 feet above, and slashes it perpendicularly ; then, with 
 a blunt stick, he crowds off this thick hide exactly as 
 an ox is skinned. It needs but a few of these skins 
 to cover the roof ; and they make a perfectly water- 
 tight roof, except when it rains. Meantime, busy 
 hands have gathered boughs of the spruce and the 
 leathery balsam, and shingled the ground underneath 
 the shanty for a bed. It is an aromatic bed : in the- 
 ory it is elastic and consoling. Upon it are spread 
 the blankets. The sleepers, of all sexes and ages, are 
 to lie there in a row, their feet to the fire, and their 
 heads under the edge of the sloping roof. Nothing 
 could be better contrived. The fire is in front : it is 
 not a fire, but a conflagration a vast heap of green 
 logs set on fire of pitch, and split dead-wood, and 
 crackling balsams, raging and roaring. By the time 
 twilight falls, the cook has prepared supper. Every- 
 thing has been cooked in a tin pail and a skillet, 
 potatoes, tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You wonder 
 how everything could have been prepared in so few 
 utensils. When you eat, the wonder ceases : every- 
 thing might have been cooked in one pail. It is a 
 noble meal ; and nobly is it disposed of by these ama- 
 teur savages, sitting about upon logs and roots of 
 trees. Never were there such potatoes, never beans 
 that seemed to have more of the bean in them.
 
 CAMPING OUT 81 
 
 never such curly pork, never trout with more In- 
 dian-meal on them, never mutton more distinctly 
 sheepy ; and the tea, drunk out of a tin cup, with a 
 lump of maple-sugar dissolved in it, it is the sort 
 of tea that takes hold, lifts the hair, and disposes the 
 drinker to anecdote and hilariousness. There is no 
 .deception about it : it tastes of tannin and spruce and 
 creosote. Everything, in short, has the flavor of the 
 wilderness and a free life. It is idyllic. And yet, 
 with all our sentimentality, there is nothing feeble 
 about the cooking. The slapjacks are a solid job of 
 work, made to last, and not go to pieces in a per- 
 son's stomach like a trivial bun : we might record on 
 them, in cuneiform characters, our incipient civiliza- 
 tion ; and future generations would doubtless turn 
 them up as Acadian bricks. Good, robust victuals 
 are what the primitive man wants. 
 
 Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of light 
 from our conflagration the woods are black. There 
 is a tremendous impression of isolation and lonesome- 
 ness in our situation. We are the prisoners of the 
 night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysteri- 
 ous. The trees are gigantic. There are noises that 
 we do not understand, mysterious winds passing 
 overhead, and rambling in the great galleries, tree- 
 trunks grinding against each other, undefinable stirs 
 and uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into 
 the dimness are outlined in monstrous proportions. 
 The spectres, seated about in the glare of the fire, 
 talk about appearances and presentiments and reli- 
 gion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, 
 and catamount encounters, and frozen-to-death expe- 
 riences, and simple tales of great prolixity and no 
 |) oint, and jokes of primitive lucidity. We hear <iata-
 
 82 CAMPING OUT 
 
 mounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, 
 and the hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, 
 the laughter of the loon. Everything is strange^ 
 spectral, fascinating. 
 
 By and by we get our positions in the shanty for 
 the night, and arrange the row of sleepers. The 
 shanty has become a smoke-house by this time: 
 waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. It is only 
 by lying down, and getting the head well under the 
 eaves, that one can breathe. No one can find her 
 " things ; " nobody has a pillow. At length the row 
 is laid out, with the solemn protestation of intention 
 to sleep. The wind, shifting, drives away the smoke. 
 Good-night is said a hundred times ; positions are re- 
 adjusted, more last words, new shifting about, final 
 remarks ; it is all so comfortable and romantic ; and 
 then silence. Silence continues for a minute. The 
 fire flashes up ; all the row of heads is lifted up simul- 
 taneously to watch it ; showers of sparks sail aloft into 
 the blue night ; the vast vault of greenery is a fairy 
 spectacle. How the sparks mount and twinkle and 
 disappear like tropical fire-flies, and all the leaves 
 murmur, and clap their hands ! Some of the sparks 
 do not go out : we see them flaming in the sky when 
 the flame of the fire has died down. Well, good- 
 night, good-night. More folding of the arms to 
 sleep -, more grumbling about the hardness of a hand- 
 bag, or the insufficiency of a pocket-handkerchief, for 
 & pillow. Good-night. Was that a remark ? 
 Something about a root, a stub in the ground sticking 
 into the back. " You could n't lie along a hair? " 
 *' Well, no : here 's another stub." It needs but a 
 moment for the conversation to become general, 
 about roots under the shoulder, stubs in the back, a
 
 CAMPING OUT 83 
 
 ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to bal- 
 ance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the 
 ground, the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects 
 of remarks multiply. The whole camp is awake, and 
 chattering like an aviary. The owl is also awake; 
 but the guides who are asleep outside make more 
 noise than the owls. Water is wanted, and is handed 
 about in a dipper. Everybody is yawning; every- 
 body is now determined to go to sleep in good ear- 
 nest. A last good-night. There is an appalling 
 silence. It is interrupted in the most natural way 
 in the world. Somebody has got the start, and gone 
 to sleep. He proclaims the fact. He seems to have 
 been brought up on the seashore, and to know how 
 to make all the deep-toned noises of the restless 
 ocean. He is also like a war-horse ; or, it is sug 
 gested, like a saw-horse. How malignantly he snorts* 
 and breaks off short, and at once begins again in an= 
 other key ! One head is raised after another. 
 
 "Who is that?" 
 
 " Somebody punch him." 
 
 " Turn him over." 
 
 " Reason with him." 
 
 The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a mis 
 take. He was before, it appears, on his most agree- 
 able side. The camp rises in indignation. The sleeper 
 sits up in bewilderment. Before he can go off again, 
 two or three others have preceded him. They are all 
 alike. You can never judge what a person is when 
 he is awake. There are here half a dozen disturbers 
 of the peace who should be put in solitary confine- 
 ment. At midnight, when a philosopher crawls out 
 to sit on a log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in 
 tenor and mezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty,
 
 84 CAMPING OUT 
 
 with a chorus always ooming in at the wrong time. 
 Those who are not asleep waiit to know why the 
 smoker does n't go to bed. He is requested to get 
 some water, to throw on another log, to see what time 
 it is, to note whether it looks like rain. A buzz of 
 conversation arises. She is sure sh$ heard something 
 behind the shanty. He says it is all nonsense. "Per- 
 haps, however, it might be a mouse." 
 
 " Mercy ! Are there mice ? " 
 
 " Plenty." 
 
 " Then that 's what I heard nibbling by my head. 1 
 sha'n't sleep a wink ! Do they bite ? " 
 
 "No, they nibble; scarcely ever take a full bite 
 out." 
 
 "It's horrid!" 
 
 Towards morning it grows chilly ; the guides have 
 let the fire go out ; the blankets will slip down. Anx- 
 iety begins to be expressed about the dawn. 
 
 " What time does the sun rise ? " 
 
 "Awful early. Did you sleep ?" 
 
 " Not a wink. And you ? " 
 
 " In spots. I 'm going to dig up this root as soon 
 as it is light enough." 
 
 " See that mist on the lake, and the light just com- 
 ing on the Gothics ! I 'd no idea it was so cold : all 
 the first part of the night I was roasted." 
 
 " What were they talking about all night ? " 
 
 When the party crawls out to the early breakfast, 
 after it has washed its faces in the lake, it is disor- 
 ganized, but cheerful. Nobody admits much sleep j 
 but everybody is refreshed, and declares it delightful. 
 It is the fresh air all night that invigorates ; or maybe 
 it is the tea or the slapjacks. The guides have erected 
 a table of spruce bark, with benches at the sides ; so
 
 CAMPING OUT 85 
 
 that breakfast is taken in form. It is served on tin 
 plates and oak chips. After breakfast begins the 
 day's work. It may be a mountain-climbing expedi- 
 tion, or rowing and angling in the lake, or fishing for 
 trout in some stream two or three miles distant. No- 
 body can stir far from camp without a guide Ham- 
 mocks are swung, bowers are built, novel-reading be- 
 gins, worsted work appears, cards are shuffled and 
 dealt. The day passes in absolute freedom from re- 
 sponsibility to one's self. At night, when the expedi- 
 tions return, the camp resumes its animation. Adven- 
 tures are recounted, every statement of the narrator 
 being disputed and argued. Everybody has become 
 an adept in wood-craft ; but nobody credits his neigh' 
 bor with like instinct. Society getting resolved into 
 its elements, confidence is gone. 
 
 Whilst the hilarious party are at supper, a drop or 
 two of rain falls. The head guide is appealed to. Is 
 it going to rain ? He says it does rain. But will it 
 be a rainy night ? The guide goes down to the lake, 
 looks at the sky, and concludes that if the wind shifts 
 a p'int more, there is no telling what sort of weather 
 we shall have. Meantime the drops patter thicker on 
 the leaves overhead, and the leaves, in turn, pass the 
 wai;er down to the table; the sky darkens i the wind 
 rises ; there is a kind of shiver in the woods ; and we 
 scud away into the shanty, taking the remains of our 
 supper, and eating it as best we can. The rain in- 
 creases. The fire sputters and fumes. All the trees 
 are dripping, dripping, and the ground is wet. We 
 cannot step out-doors without getting a drenching. 
 Like sheep, we are penned in the little hut, where no 
 one can stand erect. The rain swirls into the open 
 front, and wets the bottom oi the blankets. The
 
 86 CAMPING OUT 
 
 smoke drives in. We curl up, and enjoy ourselves. 
 The guides at length conclude that it is going to be 
 damp. The dismal situation sets us all into good 
 spirits ; and it is later than the night before when we 
 crawl under our blankets, sure this time of a sound 
 sleep, lulled by the storm and the rain resounding on 
 the bark roof. How much better off we are than 
 many a shelterless wretch ! We are as snug as dry 
 herrings. At the moment, however, of dropping off 
 to sleep, somebody unfortunately notes a drop of wa- 
 ter on his face ; this is followed by another drop ; in 
 an instant a stream is established. He moves his 
 head to a dry place. Scarcely has he done so, when 
 he feels a dampness in his back. Beaching his hand 
 outside, he finds a puddle of water soaking through 
 his blanket. By this time, somebody inquires if it is 
 possible that the roof leaks. One man has a stream 
 of water under him ; another says it is coming into 
 his ear. The roof appears to be a discriminating 
 sieve. Those who are dry see no need of such a fuss. 
 The man in the corner spreads his umbrella, and the 
 protective measure is resented by his neighbor. In 
 the darkness there is recrimination. One of the 
 guides, who is summoned, suggests that the rubber 
 blankets be passed out, and spread over the roof. The 
 inmates dislike the proposal, saying that a shower- 
 bath is no worse than a tub-bath. The rain continues 
 to soak down. The fire is only half alive. The bed- 
 ding is damp. Some sit up, if they can find a dry 
 spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless observations are 
 made. A few sleep. And the night wears on. The 
 morning opens cheerless. The sky is still leaking, 
 and so is the shanty. The guides bring in a half- 
 cooked breakfast. The roof is patched up. There
 
 CAMPING OUT 87 
 
 are reviving signs of breaking away, delusive signs 
 that create momentary exhilaration. Even if the 
 Btorm clears* the woods are soaked. There is no 
 chance of stirring. The world is only ten feet square. 
 
 This life, without responsibility or clean clothes, 
 /nay continue as long as the reader desires. There 
 are those who would like to live in this free fashion 
 forever, taking rain and sun as heaven pleases ; and 
 there are some souls so constituted that they cannot 
 exist more than three days without their worldly bag- 
 gage. Taking the party altogether, from one cause 
 or another it is likely to strike camp sooner than was 
 intended. And the stricken camp is a melancholy 
 sight. The woods have been despoiled ; the stumps 
 are ugly ; the bushes are scorched ; the pine-leaf-strewn 
 earth is trodden into mire ; the landing looks like a 
 cattle-ford ; the ground is littered with all the un- 
 sightly debris of a hand-to-hand life ; the dismantled 
 shanty is a shabby object ; the charred and blackened 
 logs, where the fire blazed, suggest the extinction of 
 family life. Man has wrought his usual wrong upon 
 Nature, and he can save his self-respect only by mov- 
 ing to virgin forests. 
 
 And move to them he will, the next season, if not 
 this. For he who has once experienced the fascina- 
 tion of the woods-life never escapes its enticement : in 
 the memory nothing remains but its charm.
 
 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 
 
 AT the south end of Keene Valley, in the Adiron- 
 dacks, stands Noon Mark, a shapely peak, thirty-five 
 hundred feet above the sea, which, with the aid of the 
 sun, tells the Keene people when it is time to eat din- 
 ner. From its summit you look south into a vast wil- 
 derness basin, a great stretch of forest little trodden, 
 and out of whose bosom you can hear from the 
 heights on a still day the loud murmur of Boquet. 
 This basin of unbroken green rises away to the south 
 and south-east into the rocky heights of Dix's Peak 
 and Nipple Top, the latter a local name which 
 neither the mountain nor the fastidious tourist is able 
 to shake off. Indeed, so long as the mountain keeps 
 its present shape as seen from the southern lowlands, 
 it cannot get on without this name. 
 
 These two mountains, which belong to the great 
 system of which Marcy is the giant centre, and are in 
 the neighborhood of five thousand feet high, on the 
 southern outposts of the great mountains, form the 
 gate-posts of the pass into the south country. This 
 opening between them is called Hunter's Pass. It is 
 the most elevated and one of the wildest of the moun- 
 tain passes. Its summit is thirty-five hundred feet 
 high. In former years it is presumed the hunters oc- 
 casionally followed the game through ; but latterly it 
 is rare to find a guide who has been that way, and the
 
 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 89 
 
 tin -can and paper-collar tourists have not yet made it 
 a runway. This seclusion is dua not to any inherent 
 difficulty of travel, but to the fact that it lies a little 
 out of the way. 
 
 We went through it last summer ; making our way 
 into the jaws from the foot of the great slides on Dix, 
 keeping along the ragged spurs of the mountain 
 through the virgin forest. The pass is narrow, walled 
 in on each side by precipices of granite, and blocked 
 up with the bowlders and fallen trees, and beset with 
 pitfalls in the roads ingeniously covered with fair- 
 seeming moss. When the climber occasionally loses 
 sight of a leg in one of those treacherous holes, and 
 feels a cold sensation in his foot, he learns that he has 
 dipped into the sources of the Boquet, which emerges 
 lower down into falls and rapids, and, recruited by 
 creeping tributaries, goes brawling through the forest 
 basin, and at last comes out an amiable and boat-bear- 
 ing stream in the valley of Elizabeth Town. From 
 the summit another rivulet trickles away to the south, 
 and finds its way through a frightful tamarack swamp, 
 and through woods scarred by ruthless lumbering, to 
 Mud Pond, a quiet body of water, with a ghastly 
 fringe of dead trees, upon which people of grand in- 
 tentions and weak vocabulary are trying to fix the 
 name of Elk Lake. The descent of the pass on that 
 side is precipitous and exciting. The way is in the 
 stream itself ; and a considerable portion of the dis- 
 tance we swung ourselves down the faces of consider- 
 able falls, and tumbled down cascades. The descent, 
 however, was made easy by the fact that it rained, 
 and every footstep was yielding and slippery. Why 
 sane people, often church-members respectably con- 
 nected, will subject themselves to this sort of treat*
 
 90 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 
 
 ment, be wet to the skra ; bruised by the rocks, and 
 flung about among the bushes and dead wood until 
 the most necessary part of their apparel hangs in 
 shreds, is one of the delightful mysteries of these 
 woods. I suspect that every man is at heart a rov- 
 ing animal, and likes, at intervals, to revert to the 
 condition of the bear and the catamount. 
 
 There is no trail through Hunter's Pass, which, as 
 I have intimated, is the least frequented portion of 
 this wilderness. Yet we were surprised to find a 
 well-beaten path a considerable portion of the way 
 and wherever a path is possible. It was not a mere 
 deer's runway : these are found everywhere in the 
 mountains. It is trodden by other and larger ani- 
 mals, and is, no doubt, the highway of beasts. It 
 bears marks of having been so for a long period, and 
 probably a period long ago. Large animals are not 
 common in these woods now, and you seldom meet 
 any thing fiercer than the timid deer and the gentle 
 bear. But in days gone by Hunter's Pass was the 
 highway of the whole caravan of animals who were 
 continually going backwards and forwards, in the 
 aimless, roaming way that beasts have, between Mud 
 Pond and the Boquet Basin. I think I can see now 
 the procession of them between the heights of Dix and 
 Nipple Top ; the elk and the moose shambling along, 
 cropping the twigs ; trie heavy bear lounging by with 
 his exploring nose ; the frightened deer trembling at 
 every twig that snapped beneath his little hoofs, in- 
 tent on the lily-pads of the pond ; the raccoon and the 
 hedgehog, sidling along ; and the velvet-footed pan- 
 ther, insouciant and conscienceless, scenting the path 
 with a curious glow in his eye, or crouching in an 
 overhanging tree ready to drop into the procession ak
 
 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 91 
 
 the right moment. Night and day, year after year v 
 I see them going by, watched by the red fox and the 
 comfortably clad sable, and grinned at by the black 
 cat, the innocent, the vicious, the timid and the 
 savage, the shy and the bold, the chattering slanderer 
 and the screaming prowler, the industrious and the 
 peaceful, the tree-top critic and the crawling biter, 
 just as it is elsewhere. It makes me blush for my 
 species when I think of it. This charming society is 
 nearly extinct now : of the larger animals there only 
 remain the bear, who minds his own business more 
 thoroughly than any person I know, and the deer y 
 who would like to be friendly with men, but whose 
 winning face and gentle ways are no protection from 
 the savageness of man, and who is treated with the 
 same unpitying destruction as the snarling catamount. 
 I have read in history that the amiable natives of. 
 Hispaniola fared no better at the hands of the brutal 
 Spaniards than the fierce and warlike Caribs. As so- 
 ciety is at present constituted in Christian countries, 
 I would rather for my own security be a cougar than 
 a fawn. 
 
 There is not much of romantic interest in the Adi- 
 rondacks. Out of the books of daring travellers, 
 nothing. I do not know that the Keene Valley has 
 any history. The mountains always stood here, and 
 the Ausable, flowing now in shallows and now in rip- 
 pling reaches over the sands and pebble. , has for ages 
 filled the air with continuous and soothing sounds. 
 Before the Vermonters broke into it some three-quar- 
 ters of a century ago, and made meadows of its bot- 
 toms and sugar-camps of its fringing woods, I sup- 
 pose the red Indian lived here in his usual discom- 
 fort, and was as restless as his successors, the summer
 
 92 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 
 
 boarders. But the streams were full of trout then, 
 and the moose and the elk left their broad tracks on 
 the sands of the river. But of the Indian there is no 
 trace. There is a mound in the valley, much like 
 a Tel in the country of Bashan beyond the Jordan, 
 that may have been built by some prehistoric race, 
 and may contain treasure and the seated figure of 
 a preserved chieftain on his slow way to Paradise. 
 What the gentle and accomplished race of the Mound- 
 Builders should want in this savage region, where the 
 frost kills the early potatoes and stunts the scanty 
 oats, I do not know. I have seen no trace of them, 
 except this Tel, and one other slight relic, which came 
 to light last summer, and is not enough to found the 
 history of a race upon. 
 
 Some workingmen, getting stone from the hillside 
 on one of the little plateaus for a house-cellar, discov- 
 ered, partly embedded, a piece of pottery unique in 
 this region. With the unerring instinct of workmen 
 in regard to antiquities, they thrust a crowbar through 
 it, and broke the bowl into several pieces. The joint 
 fragments, however, give us the form of a dish. It 
 is a bowl about nine inches high and eight inches 
 across, made of red clay, baked but not glazed. The 
 bottom is round, the top flares into four corners, and 
 the rim is rudely but rather artistically ornamented 
 with criss-cross scratches made when the clay was 
 soft. The vessel is made of clay not found about 
 here, and it is one that the Indians formerly living 
 here could not form. Was it brought here by rov- 
 ing Indians who may have made an expedition to 
 the Ohio ; was it passed from tribe to tribe ; or did it 
 belong to a race that occupied the country before the 
 Indian, and who have left traces of their civilized 
 nkill in pottery scattered all over the continent ?
 
 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 93 
 
 If I could establish the fact that this jar was made 
 by a prehistoric race, we should then have four gen- 
 erations in this lovely valley : the amiable Prehistoric 
 people (whose gentle descendants were probably 
 killed by the Spaniards in the West Indies); the Red 
 Indians ; the Keene Flaters (from Vermont) ; and 
 the Summer Boarders, to say nothing of the various 
 races of animals who have been unable to live here 
 since the advent of the Summer Boarders, the valley 
 being not productive enough to sustain both. This 
 last incursion has been more destructive to the noble 
 serenity of the forest than all the preceding. 
 
 But we are wandering from Hunter's Pass. The 
 western walls of it are formed by the precipices of 
 Nipple Top, not so striking nor so bare as the great 
 slides of Dix, which glisten in the sun like silver, but 
 rough and repelling, and consequently alluring. I 
 have a great desire to scale them. I have always had 
 an unreasonable wish to explore the rough summit of 
 this crabbed hill, which is too broken and jagged for 
 pleasure, and not high enough for glory. This desire 
 was stimulated by a legend related by our guide that 
 night in the Mud Pond cabin. The guide had never 
 been through the pass before; although he was famil- 
 iar with the region, and had ascended Nipple Top in 
 the winter in pursuit of the sable. The story he told 
 does n't amount to much, none of the guides' stories 
 do, faithfully reported, and I should not have be- 
 lieved it if I had not had a good deal of leisure on my 
 hands at the time, and been of a willing mind, and 
 I may say in rather a starved condition as to any 
 romance in this region. 
 
 The guide said then and he mentioned it casu- 
 ally, in reply to our inquiries about ascending the
 
 94 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 
 
 mountain that there was a cave high up among t'ae 
 precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top. Be 
 scarcely volunteered the information, and with seem- 
 ing reluctance gave us any particulars about it. I 
 always admire this art by which the accomplished 
 story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctant tale of 
 the marvellous from him, and makes you in a manner 
 responsible for its improbability. If this is well-man-* 
 aged, the listener is always eager to believe a great 
 deal more than the romancer seems willing to tell, 
 and always resents the assumed reservations and 
 doubts of the latter. 
 
 There were strange reports about this cave when 
 the old guide was a boy, and even then its very exist- 
 ence had become legendary. Nobody knew exactly 
 where it was, but there was no doubt that it had been 
 inhabited. Hunters in the forests south of Dix had 
 seen a light late at night twinkling through the trees 
 high up the mountain, and now and then a ruddy glare 
 as from the flaring-up of a furnace. Settlers were few 
 in the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants were 
 well known. If the cave was inhabited, it must be by 
 strangers, and by men who had some secret purpose 
 in seeking this seclusion and eluding observation. If 
 suspicious characters were seen about Port Henry, or 
 if any such landed from the steamers on the shore of 
 Lake Champlain, it was impossible to identify them 
 with these invaders who were never seen. Their not 
 being seen did not, however, prevent the growth of 
 the belief in their existence. Little indications and 
 rumors, each trivial in itself, became a mass of testi- 
 mony that could not be disposed of because of its 
 very indefiniteness, but which appealed strongly to 
 man's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity.
 
 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 95 
 
 The cave existed ; and it was inhabited by men 
 who came and went on mysterious errands, and trans- 
 acted their business by night. What this band of 
 adventurers or desperadoes lived on, how they con- 
 veyed their food through the trackless woods to thei' 
 high eyrie, and what could induce men to seek sue! 
 a retreat, were questions discussed, but never settled. 
 They might be banditti ; but there was nothing to 
 plunder in these savage wilds, and, in fact, robberies 
 and raids, either in the settlements of the hills or the 
 distant lake shores were unknown. In another age, 
 these might have been hermits, holy men who had 
 retired from the world to feed the vanity of their god- 
 liness in a spot where they were subject neither tc 
 interruption nor comparison ; they would have had 
 a shrine in the cave, and an image of the Blessed Vir- 
 gin, with a lamp always burning before it and send- 
 ing out its mellow light over the savage waste. A 
 more probable notion was that they were romantic 
 Frenchmen who had grown weary of vice and refine- 
 ment together, possibly princes, expectants of the 
 throne, Bourbon remainders, named Williams or oth- 
 erwise, unhatched eggs, so to speak, of kings, who had 
 withdrawn out of observation to wait for the next 
 turn-over in Paris. Frenchmen do such things. If 
 they were not Frenchmen, they might be horse-thieves 
 or criminals, escaped from justice or fi-om the friendly 
 state-prison of New York. This last supposition was, 
 however, more violent than the others, or seems so to 
 us in this day of grace. For what well-brought-up 
 New York criminal would be so insane as to run away 
 from his political friends the keepers, from the easily- 
 had companionship of his pals outside, and from the 
 society of his criminal lawyer, and, in short, to out
 
 96 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 
 
 himself into the depths of a wilderness out of which 
 escape, when escape was desired, is a good deal more 
 difficult than it is out of the swarming jails of the 
 Empire State ? Besides, how foolish for a man, if he 
 were a really hardened and professional criminal, hav- 
 ing established connections and a 'regular business, to 
 run away from the governor's pardon, which might 
 have difficulty in finding him in the craggy bosom of 
 Nipple Top ! 
 
 This gang of men there is some doubt whether 
 they were accompanied by women gave little evi- 
 dence in their appearance of being escaped criminals 
 or expectant kings. Their movements were myste- 
 rious, but not necessarily violent. If their occupation 
 could have been discovered, that would have furnished 
 a clue to their true character. But about this the 
 strangers were as close as mice. If anything could 
 betray them, it was the steady light from the cavern, 
 and its occasional ruddy flashing. This gave rise to 
 the opinion, which was strengthened by a good many 
 indications equally conclusive, that the cave was the 
 resort of a gang of coiners and counterfeiters. Here 
 they had their furnace, smelting-pots, and dies ; here 
 they manufactured those spurious quarters and halves 
 that their confidants, who were pardoned, were circu- 
 lating, and which a few honest men were " nailing to 
 ihe counter." 
 
 This prosaic explanation of a romantic situation 
 satisfies all the requirements of the known facts, but 
 the lively imagination at once rejects it as unworthy 
 of the subject. I think the guide put it forward in 
 order to have it rejected. The fact is, at least, it 
 has never been disproved, these strangers whose 
 movements were veiled belonged to that dark and
 
 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 97 
 
 mysterious race whose presence anywhere on this con- 
 tinent is a nest-egg of romance or of terror. They 
 were Spaniards ! You need not say buccaneers, you 
 need not say gold-hunters, you need not say swarthy 
 Adventurers even : it is enough to say Spaniards ! 
 There is no tale of mystery and fanaticism and daring 
 I would not believe if a Spaniard is the hero of it, 
 Wid it is not necessary either that he should have the 
 irigh-sounding name of Bobadilla or Ojeda. 
 
 Nobody, I suppose, would doubt this story, if the 
 cave were in the mountains of Hispaniola or in the 
 Florida Keys. But a Spaniard in the Adirondacks 
 does seem misplaced. Well, there would be no ro- 
 mance about it if he were not misplaced. The Span- 
 iard, anywhere out of Spain, has always been niig- 
 placed. What could draw him to this loggy and re- 
 mote region? There are two substances that will 
 draw a Spaniard from any distance as certainly as 
 sugar will draw wasps, gold and silver. Does the 
 reader begin to see light ? There was a rumor that 
 silver existed in these mountains. I do not know 
 where the rumor came from, but it is necessary to 
 account for the Spaniards in the cave. 
 
 How long these greedy Spaniards occupied the cave 
 on Nipple Top is not known, nor how much silver 
 they found, whether they found any, or whether they 
 secretly took away all there was in the hills. That 
 they discovered silver in considerable quantities is a 
 fair inference from the length of their residence in 
 this mountain, and the extreme care they took to 
 guard their secret, and the mystery that enveloped all 
 their movements. What they mined, they smelted 
 in the cave and carried off with them. 
 
 To my imagination nothing is more impressive than
 
 98 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 
 
 the presence in these savage wilds of these polished 
 foreigners and accomplished metallurgists, far from 
 the haunts of civilized man, leading a life of luxury 
 and revelry in this almost inaccessible cavern. I can 
 see them seated about their roaring fire, which re- 
 vealed the rocky ribs of their dec and sent a gleam 
 over the dark forest, eating venison-pasty and cutting 
 deep into the juicy haunch of the moose, quaffing deep 
 draughts of red wine from silver tankards, and then 
 throwing themselves back upon divans, and lazily puff- 
 ing the fragrant Havana. After a day of to?l, what 
 more natural, and what more probable for a Spaniard? 
 Does the reader think these inferences not war- 
 ranted by the facts ? He dpes not know the facts, 
 It is true that our guide had never himself personally 
 visited the cave, bu* he has always intended to hunt 
 it up. His information in regard to it comes from 
 his father, who was a mighty hunter and trapper. 
 In one of his expeditions over Nipple Top, he chanced 
 upon the cave. The mouth was half concealed by 
 undergrowth. He entered, not without some appre- 
 hension engendered by the legends which make it fa- 
 mous. I think he showed some boldness in venturing 
 into such a place alone. I confess, that, before I went 
 in, I should want to fire a Gatling gun into the mouth 
 for a little while, in order to rout out the bears which 
 visually dwell there. He went in, however. The en- 
 trance was low ; but the cave was spacious, not large, 
 but big enough, with a level floor and a vaulted ceil- 
 ing, It had long been deserted, but that it was once 
 the residence of highly civilized beings there could be 
 no doubt. The dead brands in the centre were the 
 remains of a fire that could not have been kindled by 
 wild beasts, and the bones scattered about had been
 
 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 99 
 
 Scientifically dissected and handled. There were also 
 remnants of furniture and pieces of garments scat- 
 tered about. At the further end, in a fissure of the 
 rock, were stones regularly built up, the remains of a 
 larger fire, and what the hunter did not doubt was 
 the smelting-furnace of the Spaniards. He poked 
 about in the ashes, but found no silver. That had 
 all been carried away. 
 
 But what most provoked his wonder in this rude 
 cave was a chair ! This was not such a seat as a 
 woodman might knock up with an axe, with a rough 
 body and a seat of woven splits, but a manufactured 
 chair of commerce, and a chair, too, of an unusual 
 pattern and some elegance. This chair itself was a 
 mute witness of luxury and mystery. The chair it- 
 self might have been accounted for, though I don't 
 know how : but upon the back of the chair hung, as 
 if the owner had carelessly flung it there before going 
 out an hour before, a man's waistcoat. This waistcoat 
 seemed to him of foreign make and peculiar style, 
 but what endeared it to him was its row of metal but- 
 tons. These buttons were of silver ! I forget now 
 whether he did not say they were of silver coin, and 
 that the coin was Spanish. But I am not certain 
 about this latter fact, and I wish to cast no air of im- 
 probability over my narrative. This rich vestment 
 the hunter carried away with him. This was all the 
 plunder his expedition afforded. Yes: there was 
 one otber article, and, to my mind, more significant 
 than the vest of the hidalgo. That was a short and 
 stout crowbar of iron ; not one of the long crowbars 
 that farmers use to pry up stones, but a short handy 
 one, such as you would use in digging silver-ore oitf 
 r , the cracks of rocks.
 
 100 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE 
 
 This was the guide's simple story. I asked him 
 what became of the vest and buttons, and the bar of 
 iron. The old man wore the vest until he wore it 
 out ; and then he handed it over to the boys, and they 
 "Wore it in turn till they wore it out. The buttons 
 were cut off, and kept as curiosities. They were 
 about the cabin, and the children had them to play 
 with. The guide distinctly remembers playing with 
 them ; one of them he kept for a long time, and he 
 did n't know but he could find it now, but he guessed 
 it had disappeared. I regretted that he had not treas- 
 ured this slender verification of an interesting ro- 
 mance, but he said in those days he never paid much 
 attention to such things. Lately he has turned the 
 subject over, and is sorry that his father wore out the 
 vest and did not bring away the chair. It is his 
 steady purpose to find the cave some time when he 
 has leisure, and capture the chair, if it has not tum- 
 bled to pieces. But about the crowbar ? Oh ! that is 
 all right. The guide has the bar at his house in 
 Keene Valley, and has always used it. 
 
 I am happy to be able to confirm this story by say- 
 ing that next day I saw the crowbar, and had it in 
 my hand. It is short and thick, and the most inter- 
 esting kind of crowbar. This evidence is enough for 
 me. I intend in the course of this vacation to search 
 for the cave ; and, if I find it, my readers shall know 
 the truth about it, if it destroys the only bit of ro- 
 (nance connected with these mountains.
 
 MY readers were promised an account o Span- 
 iard's Cave on Nipple-Top Mountain in the Adiron- 
 dacks, if such a cave exists, and could be found. 
 There is nene but negative evidence that this is a 
 mere cave of the imagination, the void fancy of a va- 
 cant hour ; but it is the duty of the historian to pre- 
 sent the negative testimony of a fruitless expedition 
 in search of it, made last summer. I beg leave to 
 offer this in the simple language befitting all sincere 
 exploits of a geographical character. 
 
 The summit of Nipple-Top Mountain has been 
 trodden by few white men of good character : it is in 
 the heart of a hirsute wilderness ; it is itself a rough 
 and unsocial pile of granite nearly five thousand feet 
 high, bristling with a stunted and unpleasant growth 
 of firs and balsams, and there is no earthly reason 
 why a person should go there. Therefore wo went. 
 In the party of three there was, of course, a chaplain. 
 The guide was Old Mountain Phelps, who had made 
 the ascent once before, but not from the northwest 
 side, the direction from which we approached it. The 
 enthusiasm of this philosopher has grown with his 
 years, and outlived his endurance : we carried our 
 own knapsacks and supplies, therefore, and drew upon 
 him for nothing but moral reflections and a general 
 knowledge of the wilderness. Our first day's route
 
 102 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 
 
 was through the Gill-Brook woods and up one of its 
 branches to the head of Caribou Pass, which sepa- 
 rates Nipple-Top from Colvin. 
 
 It was about the first of September ; no rain had 
 fallen for several weeks, and this heart of the forest 
 was as dry as tinder ; a lighted match dropped aiiy 
 where would start a conflagration. This dryness has 
 its advantages : the walking is improved ; the long 
 heat has expressed all the spicy odors of the cedars 
 and balsams, and the woods are filled with a soothing 
 fragrance ; the waters of the streams, though scant 
 and clear, are cold as ice ; the common forest chill is 
 gone from the air. The afternoon was bright ; there 
 was a feeling of exultation and adventure in stepping 
 off into the open but pathless forest ; the great stems 
 of deciduous trees were mottled with patches of sun- 
 light, which brought out upon the variegated barks 
 and mosses of the old trunks a thousand shifting hues. 
 There is nothing like a primeval wood for color on a 
 sunny day. The shades of green and brown are in- 
 finite ; the dull red of the hemlock bark glows in the 
 sun, the russet of the changing moose-bush becomes 
 brilliant ; there are silvery openings here and there ; 
 and everywhere the columns rise up to the canopy of 
 tender green which supports the intense blue sky and 
 holds up a part of it from falling through in frag- 
 ments to the floor of the forest. Decorators can learn 
 here how Nature dares to put blue and green in juxta* 
 position : she has evidently the secret of harmonizing 
 all the colors. 
 
 The way, as we ascended, was not all through open 
 woods ; dense masses of firs were encountered, jagged 
 spurs were to be crossed, and the going became at 
 length so slow and toilsome that we took to the rocky
 
 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 103 
 
 bed of a stream, where bowlders and flumes and cas- 
 cades offered us sufficient variety. The deeper we 
 penetrated, the greater the sense of savageness and 
 solitude ; in the silence of these hidden places one 
 seems to approach the beginning of things. We 
 emerged from the defile into an open basin, formed 
 by the curved side of the mountain, and stood silent 
 before a waterfall coming down out of the sky in the 
 centre of the curve. I do not know anything exactly 
 like this fall, which some poetical explorer has named 
 the Fairy-Ladder Falls. It appears to have a height 
 of something like a hundred and fifty feet, and the 
 water falls obliquely across the face of the cliff from 
 left to right in short steps, which in the moonlight 
 might seem like a veritable ladder for fairies. Our 
 impression of its height was confirmed by climbing 
 the very steep slope at its side some three or four 
 hundred feet. At the top we found the stream flow- 
 ing over a broad Led of rock, like a street in the wil- 
 derness, slanting up still towards the sky, and bor- 
 dered by low firs and balsams, and bowlders com- 
 pletely covered with moss. It was above the world 
 and open to the sky. 
 
 On account of the tindery condition of the woods 
 we made our fire on the natural pavement, and se- 
 lected a smooth place for our bed near by on a flat 
 rock, with a pool of limpid water at the foot. This 
 granite couch we covered with the dry and springy 
 moss, which we stripped off in heavy fleeces a foot 
 thick from the bowlders. First, however, we fed 
 upon the fruit that was offered us. Over these hills 
 of moss ran an exquisite vine with a tiny, ovate, green 
 leaf, bearing small, delicate berries, oblong and white 
 as wax, having a faint flavor of wintergreen and the
 
 104 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEA SUES 
 
 slightest acid taste, the very essence of the wilder, 
 ness ; fairy food, no doubt, and too refined for pal- 
 ates accustomed to coarser viands. There must ex- 
 i3t somewhere sinless women who could eat these ber- 
 ries without being reminded of the lost purity and 
 delicacy of the primeval senses. Every year I doubt 
 not this stainless berry ripens here, and is unplucked 
 by any knight of the Holy Grail who is worthy to eat 
 it, and keeps alive, in the prodigality of nature, the 
 tradition of the unperverted conditions of taste before 
 the fall. We ate these berries, I am bound to say, 
 with a sense of guilty enjoyment, as if they had been 
 a sort of shew-bread of the wilderness, though I can- 
 not answer for the chaplain, who is by virtue of his 
 office a little nearer to these mysteries of nature than 
 I. This plant belongs to the heath family, and is first 
 cousin to the blueberry and cranberry. It is com- 
 monly called the creeping snowberry, but I like better 
 its official title of chiogenes, the snow-born. 
 
 Our mossy resting-place was named the Bridal 
 Chamber Camp, in the enthusiasm of the hour, after 
 darkness fell upon the woods and the stars came out. 
 We were two thousand five hundred feet above the 
 common world. We lay, as it were, on a shelf in the 
 sky, with a basin of illimitable forests below us and 
 dim mountain-passes in the far horizon. 
 
 And as we lay there courting sleep which the blink- 
 ing stars refused to shower down, our philosopher dis- 
 coursed to us of the principle of fire, which he holds 
 with the ancients, to be an independent element that 
 comes and goes in a mysterious manner, as we see 
 flame spring up and vanish, and is in some way vital 
 and indestructible, and has a mysterious relation to 
 *he source of all things. " That flame/' he says,
 
 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 105 
 
 "you have put out, but where has it gone?" We 
 could not say, nor whether it is anything like the 
 spirit of a man which is here for a little hour, and 
 then vanishes away. Our own philosophy of the cor- 
 relation of forces found no sort of favor at that eleva- 
 tion, and we went to sleep leaving the principle of fire 
 in the apostolic category of " any other creature." 
 
 At daylight we were astir, and having pressed the 
 principle of fire into our service to make a pot of tea, 
 we carefully extinguished it or sent it into another 
 place, and addressed ourselves to the climb of some- 
 thing over two thousand feet. The arduous labor of 
 scaling an Alpine peak has a compensating glory ; 
 but the dead lift of our bodies up Nipple-Top had no 
 stimulus of this sort. It is simply hard work, for 
 which the strained muscles only get the approbation 
 of the individual conscience that drives them to the 
 task. The pleasure of such an ascent is difficult to 
 explain on the spot, and I suspect consists not so 
 much in positive enjoyment as in the delight the 
 mind experiences in tyrannizing over the body. I do 
 not object to the elevation of this mountain, nor to the 
 uncommonly steep grade by which it attains it, but 
 only to the other obstacles thrown in the way of the 
 climber. All the slopes of Nipple-Top are hirsute 
 and jagged to the last degree. Granite ledges inter- 
 pose ; granite bowlders seem to have been dumped 
 over the sides with no more attempt at arrangement 
 than in a rip-rap wall ; the slashes and windfalls of g 
 century present here and there an almost impenetra- 
 ble chevalier des arbres ; and the steep sides bristle 
 with a mass of thick balsams, with dead, protruding 
 spikes, as unyielding as iron stakes. The mountain 
 hat; had its own way forever, and is as untamed as a
 
 106 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 
 
 wolf ; or rather the elements, the frightful tempests, 
 the frosts, the heavy snows, the coaxing sun, and the 
 ivalanches have had their way with it until its surface 
 is in hopeless confusion. We made our way very 
 slowly ; and it was ten o'clock before we reached what 
 appeared to be the summit, a ridge deeply covered 
 with moss, low balsams, and blueberry bushes. 
 
 I say, appeared to be ; for we stood in thick fog or 
 in the heart of clouds which limited our dim view to a 
 radius of twenty feet. It was a warm and cheerful 
 fog, stirred by little wind, but moving, shifting, and 
 boiling as by its own volatile nature, rolling up black 
 from below and dancing in silvery splendor overhead. 
 As a fog it could not have been improved ; as a me- 
 dium for viewing the landscape it was a failure ; and 
 we lay down upon the Sybarite couch of moss, as in a 
 Russian bath, to await revelations. 
 
 We waited two hours without change, except an oc- 
 casional hopeful lightness in the fog above, and at 
 last the appearance for a moment of the spectral 
 sun. Only for an instant was this luminous promise 
 vouchsafed. But we watched in intense excitement- 
 There it was again ; and this time the fog was so 
 thin overhead that we caught sight of a patch of blue 
 sky a yard square, across which the curtain was in- 
 stantly drawn. A little wind was stirring, and the 
 fog boiled up from the valley caldrons thicker than 
 ever. But the spell was broken. In a moment more 
 Old Phelps was shouting, " The sun ! " and before 
 we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky over- 
 'lead as big as a farm. " See ! quick ! " The old 
 nan was dancing like a lunatic. There was z rift in 
 the vapor at our feet, down, down, three thousand feet 
 into the forest abyss, and lo ! lifting out of it yonder
 
 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 107 
 
 the tawny side of Dix, the vision of a second, 
 snatched away in the rolling fog The play had just 
 begun. Before we could turn, there was the gorge of 
 Caribou Pass, savage and dark, visible to the bottom. 
 The opening shut as suddenly , and then, looking 
 over the clouds, miles away we saw the peaceful farms 
 of the Ausable Valley, and in a moment more the 
 plateau of North Elba and the sentinel mountains 
 about the grave of John Brown. These glimpses 
 were as fleeting as thought, and instantly we were 
 again isolated in the sea of mist. The expectation of 
 these sudden strokes of sublimity kept us exuitingly 
 on the alert ; and yet it was a blow of surprise when 
 the curtain was swiftly withdrawn on the west, and 
 the long ridge of Colvin, seemingly within a stone's 
 throw, heaved up like an island out of the ocean, and 
 was the next moment ingulfed. We waited longer 
 for Dix to show its shapely peak and its glistening 
 sides of rock gashed by avalanches. The fantastic 
 clouds, torn and streaming, hurried up from the south 
 in haste, as if to a witch's rendezvous, hiding and dis- 
 closing the great summit in their flight. The mist 
 boiled up from the valley, whirled over the summit 
 where we stood, and plunged again into the depths. 
 Objects were forming and disappearing, shifting and 
 dancing, now in sun and now gone in fog, and in the 
 elemental whirl we felt that we were " assisting " in 
 an original process of creation. The sun strove, and 
 his very striving called up new vapors ; the wind, 
 rent away the clouds, and brought new masses to 
 surge about us ; and the spectacles to right and left, 
 above and below, changed with incredible swiftness. 
 Such glory of abyss and summit, of color and forni 
 and transformation,, is seldom gi-anted to mortal eyes.
 
 108 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 
 
 For an hour we watched it until our vast mountain 
 was revealed in all its bulk, its long spurs, its abysses 
 and its savagery, and the great basins of wilderness 
 with their shining lakes, and the giant peaks of the 
 region, were one by one disclosed, and hidden and 
 again tranquil in the sunshine. 
 
 Where was the cave ? There was ample surface in 
 which to look for it. If we could have flitted about, 
 like the hawks that came circling round, over the 
 steep slopes, the long spurs, the jagged precipices, I 
 have no doubt we should have found it. But moving 
 about on this mountain is not a holiday pastime ; and 
 we were chiefly anxious to discover a practicable mode 
 of descent into the great wilderness basin on the 
 south, which we must traverse that afternoon before 
 reaching the hospitable shanty on Mud Pond. It was 
 enough for us to have discovered the general where- 
 abouts of the Spanish Cave, and we left the fixing of 
 its exact position to future explorers. 
 
 The spur we chose for our escape looked smooth in 
 the distance ; but we found it bristling with obstruc- 
 tions, dead balsams set thickly together, slashes of 
 fallen timber, and every manner of woody chaos ; and 
 when at length we swung and tumbled off the ledge 
 to the general slope, we exchanged only for more dis- 
 agreeable going. The slope for a couple of thousand 
 feet was steep enough ; but it was formed of granite 
 rocks all moss-covered, so that the footing could not 
 be determined, and at short intervals we nearly went 
 out of sight in holes under the treacherous carpeting. 
 Add to this that stems of great trees were laid longi- 
 tudinally and transversely and criss-cross over and 
 among the rocks, and the reader can see that a good 
 deal of work needs to be done to make this a practi 
 cable highway for anything but a squirrel.
 
 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 109 
 
 . We had had no water since our daylight breakfast ; 
 our lunch on the mountain had been moistened onlv 
 
 / 
 
 by the fog. Our thirst began to be that of Tantalus, 
 because we could hear the water running deep down 
 among the rocks, but we could not come at it. The 
 imagination drank the living stream, and we realized 
 anew what delusive food the imagination furnishes in 
 an actual strait. A good deal of the crime of this 
 world, I am convinced, is the direct result of the un- 
 licensed play of the imagination in adverse circum- 
 stances. This reflection had nothing to do with our 
 actual situation ; for we added to our imagination 
 patience, and to our patience long-suffering, and prob- 
 ably all the Christian virtues would have been devel- 
 oped in us if the descent had been long enough. 
 Before we reached the bottom of Caribou Pass, the 
 water burst out from the rocks in a clear stream that 
 was as cold as ice. Shortly after, we struck the roar- 
 ing brook that issues from the Pass to the south. It 
 is a stream full of character, not navigable even for 
 trout in the upper part, but a succession of falls, cas- 
 cades, flumes, and pools, that would delight an artist. 
 It is not an easy bed for anything except water to de- 
 scend ; and before we reached the level reaches, where 
 the stream flows with a murmurous noise through 
 open woods, one of our party began to show signs of 
 exhaustion. 
 
 This was Old Phelps, whose appetite had failed the 
 day before, his imagination being in better working 
 Order than his stomach : he had eaten little that day. 
 and his legs became so groggy that he was obliged to 
 rest at short intervals. Here was a situation ! The 
 afternoon was wearing away. We had six or seven 
 miles of unknown wilderness to traverse, a portion of
 
 110 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 
 
 it swampy, in which a progress of mure than a mile 
 an hour is difficult, and the condition of the guide 
 compelled even a slower march. What should we do 
 in that lonesome solitude if the guide became dis- 
 abled ? We could n't carry him out ; could we find 
 our own way out to get assistance ? The guide him^ 
 self had never been there before ; and although he 
 knew the general direction of our point of egress, and 
 was entii'ely adequate to extricate himself from any 
 position in the woods, his knowledge was of that occult 
 sort possessed by woodsmen which it is impossible to 
 communicate. Our object was to strike a trail that 
 led from the Au Sable Pond, the other side of the 
 mountain range, to an iniet on Mud Pond. We knew 
 that if we travelled south westward far enough we 
 must strike that trail, but how far ? No one could tell. 
 If we reached that trail, and found a boat at the inlet, 
 there would be only a row of a couple of miles to the 
 house at the foot of the lake. If no boat was there, 
 then we must circle the lake three or four miles far- 
 ther through a cedar-swamp, with no trail in partic- 
 ular. The prospect was not pleasing. We were short 
 of supplies, for we had not expected to pass that 
 night in the woods. The pleasure of the excursion 
 began to develop itself. 
 
 We stumbled on in the general direction marked 
 out, through a forest that began to seem endless as 
 hour after hour passed, compelled as we were to make 
 long detours over the ridges of the foot-hills to avoid 
 the swamp, which sent out from the border of the lake 
 long tongues into the firm ground. The guide became 
 more ill at every step, and needed frequent halts and 
 long rests. Food he could not eat ; and tea, water, 
 and even brand}', he rejected. Again and again the
 
 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 111 
 
 old philosopher, enfeebled by excessive exertion and 
 illness, would collapse in a heap on the ground, an 
 almost comical picture of despair, while we stood and 
 waited the waning of the day, and peered forward in. 
 vain for any sign of an open country. At every brook 
 we encountered, we suggested a halt for the night, 
 "while it was still light enough to select a camping - 
 place, but the plucky old man would n't hear of it : 
 the trail might be only a quarter of a mile ahead, and 
 we crawled on again at a snail's pace. His honor as 
 a guide seemed to be at stake ; and, besides, he con- 
 fessed to a notion that his end was near, and he did n't 
 want to die like a dog in the woods. And yet, if this 
 was his last journey, it seemed not an inappropriate 
 ending for the old woodsman to lie down and give up 
 the ghost in the midst of the untamed forest and the 
 solemn silences he felt most at home in. There is a 
 popular theory, held by civilians, that a soldier likes 
 to die in battle. I suppose it is as true that a woods- 
 man would like to " pass in his chips," the figure 
 seems to be inevitable, struck down by illness and 
 exposure, in the forest solitude, with heaven in sight 
 and a tree- root for his pillow. 
 
 The guide seemed really to fear that, if we did not 
 get out of the woods that night, he would never go 
 out ; and, yielding to his dogged resolution, we kept 
 on in search of the trail, although the gathering of 
 dusk over the ground warned us that we might easily 
 cross the trail without recognizing it. We were trav 
 elling by the light in the upper sky, and by the forms 
 of the tree-stems, which every moment grew dimmer. 
 At last the end came. We had just felt our way over 
 what seemed to be a little run of water, when the old 
 man sunk down, remarking, " I might as well die here 
 as anywhere," and was silent.
 
 Z12 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 
 
 Suddenly night fell like a blanket on us. W 
 Bould neither see the guide nor each other. We be- 
 came at once conscious that miles of night on all sides 
 shut us in. The sky was clouded over : there was n't 
 a gleam of light to show us where to step. Our first 
 thought was to build a fire, which would drive back 
 the thick darkness into the woods, and boil some 
 water for our tea. But it was too dark to use the axe. 
 We scraped together leaves and twigs to make a 
 blaze, and, as this failed, such dead sticks as we could 
 find by groping about. The fire was only a tempo- 
 rary affair, but it sufficed to boil a can of water. 
 The water we obtained by feeling about the stones of 
 the little run for an opening big enough to dip our 
 cup iii. The supper to be prepared was fortunately 
 simple. It consisted of a decoction of tea and other 
 leaves which had got into the pail, and a part of a loaf 
 of bread. A loaf of bread which has been carried in 
 a knapsack for a couple of days, bruised and handled 
 and hacked at with a hunting-knife, becomes an unin- 
 teresting object. But we ate of it with thankfulness, 
 washed it down with hot fluid, and bitterly thought of 
 the morrow. Would our old friend survive the 
 night? Would he be in any condition to travel in 
 the morning ? How were we to get out with him or 
 without him? 
 
 The old man lay silent in the bushes out of sight, 
 and desired only to be let alone. We fcried to tempt 
 Jiim with the offer of a piece of toast : it was no temp- 
 tation. Tea, we thought, would revive him ; he re- 
 fused it. A drink of brandy would certainly quicken 
 his life : he could n't touch it. We were at the end of 
 our resources. He seemed to think, that, if he were 
 at home, and could get a bit of fried bacon, or a piece
 
 WHAT SOM? PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 113 
 
 of pie, he should be all right. We knew no more 
 how to doctor him than if he had been a sick bear. 
 He withdrew within himself, rolled himself up, so to 
 speak, in his primitive habits, and waited for the heal- 
 ing power of nature. Before our feeble fire disap- 
 peared, ws smoothed a level place near it for Phelpa 
 to lie on, and got him over to it. But it did n't suit : 
 it was too open. In fact, at the moment some drops 
 of rain fell. Rain was quite outside of our pro* 
 gramme for the night. But the guide had an instinct 
 about it ; and, while we were groping about some yards 
 distant for a place where we could lie down, he 
 crawled away into the darkness, and curled himself 
 up amid the roots of a gigantic pine, very much as a 
 bear would do, I suppose, with his back against the 
 trunk, and there passed the night comparatively dry 
 and comfortable ; but of this we knew nothing until 
 morning, and had to trust to the assurance of a voice 
 out of the darkness that he was all right. 
 
 Our own bed where we spread our blankets was 
 excellent in one respect, there was no danger of 
 tumbling out of it. At first the rain pattered gently 
 on the leaves overhead, and we congratulated ourselves 
 on the snugness of our situation. There was some- 
 thing cheerful about this free life. We contrasted 
 our condition with that of tired invalids who were 
 tossing on downy beds, and wooing sleep in vain* 
 Nothing was so wholesome and invigorating as this 
 bivouac in the forest. But, somehow, sleep did not 
 come. The rain had ceased to patter, and began to 
 fall with a steady determination, a sort of soak, soak, 
 all about us. In fact, it roared on the rubber blanket, 
 and beat in our faces. The wind began to stir a 
 little, and there was a moaning on high. Not con-
 
 J14 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 
 
 tented with dripping, the rain was driven into our 
 faces. Another suspicious circumstance was no- 
 ticed. Little rills of water got established along 
 the sides under the blankets, cold, undeniable 
 streams, that interfered with drowsiness. Pools 
 of water settled on the bed ; and the chaplain had 
 3 habit of moving suddenly, and letting a quart or 
 iwo inside, and down my neck. It began to be 
 evident that we and our bed were probably the wet- 
 test objects in the woods. The rubber was an excel- 
 lent catch-all. There was no trouble about ventila- 
 tion, but we found that we had established our quar- 
 ters without any provision for drainage. There was 
 not exactly a wild tempest abroad ; but there was a 
 degree of liveliness in the thrashing limbs and the 
 creaking of the tree-branches which rubbed against 
 each other, and the pouring rain increased in volume 
 and power of penetration. Sleep was quite out of the 
 question, with so much to distract our attention. In 
 fine, our misery became so perfect that we both broke 
 cue into loud and sarcastic laughter over the absurd* 
 ity of our situation. We had subjected ourselves to 
 all this forlornness simply for pleasure. Whether 
 Old Phelps was still in existence, we could n't tell : 
 we could get no response from him. With daylight, 
 if he continued ill and could not move, our situation 
 would be little improved. Our supplies were gone, 
 we lay in a pond, a deluge of water was pouring down 
 on us. This was summer recreation. The whole 
 thing was so excessively absurd, that we laughed 
 again, louder than ever. We had plenty of this sort 
 of amusement. 
 
 Suddenly through the night we heard a sort of 
 reply that started us bolt upright. This was a pro-
 
 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 115 
 
 longed squawk. It was like the voice of no beast or 
 bird with which we were familiar. At first it was 
 distant, but it rapidly approached, tearing through the 
 night and apparently through the tree-tops, like the 
 harsh cry of a web-footed bird with a snarl in it ; in 
 fact, as I said, a squawk. It came close to us, and 
 then turned, and as rapidly as it came, fled awaj 
 through the forest, and we lost the unearthly noise far 
 up the mountain-slope. 
 
 " What was that, Phelps ? " we cried out. But no 
 response came ; and we wondered if his spirit had 
 been rent away, or if some evil genius had sought it, 
 and then, baffled by his serene and philosophic spirit, 
 had shot off into the void in rage ana disappointment. 
 
 The night had no other adventure. The moon at 
 length coming up behind the clouds lent a spectral as- 
 pect to the forest, and deceived us for a time into the 
 notion that day was at hand ; but the rain never 
 ceased, and we lay wishful and waiting, with no item 
 of solid misery wanting that we could conceive. 
 
 Day was slow a-coming, and did n't amount to 
 much when it came, so heavy were the clouds ; but 
 the rain slackened. We crawled out of our water- 
 ciire " pack," and sought the guide. To our infinite 
 relief he announced himself not only alive, but in a 
 going condition. I looked at my watch. It ha^ 
 stopped at five o'clock. I poured the water out of it, 
 and shook it : but, not being constructed on the hy- 
 draulic principle, it refused to go. Some hours later 
 we encountered a huntsman, from whom I procured 
 some gun-grease ; with this I filled the watch, and 
 heated it in by the fire. This is the most effectual 
 way of treating a delicate Genevan timepiece. 
 
 The light disclosed f ullj the suspected fact that our
 
 116 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 
 
 bed had been made in a slight depression : the under 
 rubber blanket spread in this had prevented the rain 
 from soaking into the ground, and we had been lying 
 in what was in fact a well-contrived bath-tub. While 
 Old Phelps was pulling himself together, and W3 
 were wringing some gallons of water out of our blan- 
 lets, we questioned the old man about the " squawk," 
 and what bird was possessed of such a voice. It was 
 not a bird at all, he said, but a cat, the black-cat of 
 the woods, larger than the domestic animal, and an 
 ugly customer, who is fond of fish, and carries a pelt 
 that is worth two or three dollars in the market. 
 Occasionally he blunders into a sable-trap ; and he 
 is altogether hateful in his ways, and has the most 
 uncultivated voice that is heard in the woods. We 
 shall remember him as one of the least pleasant 
 phantoms of that cheerful night when we lay in the 
 storm, fearing any moment the advent to one of us of 
 the grimmest messenger. 
 
 We rolled up and shouldered our wet belongings, 
 and, before the shades had yet lifted from the satu- 
 rated bushes, pursued our march. It was a relief to 
 be again in motion, although our progress was slow, 
 and it was a question every rod whether the guide 
 could go on. We had the day before us ; but if we 
 did not find a boat at the inlet a day might not suffice, 
 in the weak condition of the guide, to extricate us 
 from our ridiculous position. There was nothing he- 
 roic in it ; we had no object ; it was merely, as it must 
 appear by this time, a pleasure excursion, and we 
 might be lost or perish in it without reward and with 
 little sympathy. We had something like an hour and 
 a half of stumbling through the swamp, when sud- 
 denly we stood in the little trail ! Slight as it was, it
 
 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE 117 
 
 Appeared to us a very Broadway of Paradise, if broad 
 ways ever lead thither. Phelps hailed it, and sank 
 down in it like one reprieved from death. But the 
 boat ? Leaving him, we quickly ran a quarter of a 
 mile down to the inlet. The boat was there. Our 
 ?hout to the guide would have roused him out of a 
 death slumber. He came down the trail with the 
 agility of an aged deer ; never was so glad a sound In, 
 his ear, he said, as that shout. It was in a very jubi- 
 lant mood that we emptied the boat of water, pushed 
 off, shipped the clumsy oars, and bent to the two-mile 
 row through the black waters of the winding, desolate 
 channel, and over the lake, whose dark waves were 
 tossed a little in the morning breeze. The trunks of 
 dead trees stand about this lake, and all its shores are 
 ragged with ghastly drift-wood ; but it was open to 
 the sky, and although the heavy clouds still obscured 
 all the mountain ranges we had a sense of escape 
 and freedom that almost made the melancholy scene 
 lovely. 
 
 How lightly past hardship sits upon us ! All the 
 misery of the night vanished, as if it had not been, in 
 the shelter of the log cabin at Mud Pond, with dry 
 clothes that fitted us as the skin of the bear fits him in 
 the spring, a noble breakfast, a toasting fire, solicitude 
 about our comfort, judicious sympathy with our suffeiv 
 ing, and willingness to hear the now growing tale o 
 our adventure. Then came, in a day of absolute idle- 
 ness, while the showers came and went, and the moun- 
 iains appeared and disappeared in sun and storm, that 
 perfect physical enjoyment which consists in a feeling 
 of strength without any inclination to use it, and in a 
 delicious languor which is too enjoyable to be surren- 
 dered to sleep.
 
 '74 
 HOW SPKING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 
 
 BY A READER OF " '93." 
 
 NEW ENGLAND is the battle-ground of the seasons. 
 It is La Vende'e. To conquer it is only to begin the 
 fight. When it is completely subdued, what kind of 
 weather have you ? None whatever. 
 
 What is this New England ? A country ? No : a 
 camp. It is alternately invaded by the hyperborean 
 legions and by the wilting sirens of the tropics. 
 Icicles hang always on its northern heights ; its sea- 
 coasts are fringed with mosquitoes. There is for a 
 third of the year a contest between the icy air of the 
 pole and the warm wind of the gulf. The result of 
 this is a compromise: the compromise is called Thaw. 
 It is the normal condition in New England. The 
 New-Englander is a person who is always just about 
 to be warm and comfortable. This is the stuff of 
 which heroes and martyrs are made. A person thor- 
 oughly heated or frozen is good for nothing. Look at 
 the Bongos. Examine, on the map, the Dog-Rib na- 
 tion. The New-Englander, by incessant activity, hopes 
 to get warm. Edwards made his theology. Thank 
 God, New England is not in Paris ! 
 
 Hudson's Bay, Labrador, Grinnell's Land, a whole
 
 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 119 
 
 gone of ice and walruses, make it unpleasant for New 
 England. This icy cover, like the lid of a pot, is 
 always suspended over it : when it shuts down, that is 
 winter. This would be intolerable, were it not for 
 the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is a benign, 
 liquid force, flowing from under the ribs of the equa- 
 tor, a white knight of the South going up to battle 
 the giant of the North. The two meet in New Eng- 
 land and have it out there. 
 
 This is the theory ; but in fact, the Gulf Stream is 
 mostly a delusion as to New England. For Ireland 
 it is quite another thing. Potatoes ripen in Ireland 
 before they are planted in New England. That is 
 the reason the Irish emigrate : they desire two crops 
 the same year. The Gulf Stream gets shunted off 
 from New England by the formation of the coast 
 below : besides, it is too shallow to be of any service. 
 Icebergs float down against its surface-current, and 
 fill all the New-England air with the chill of death 
 till June : after that the fogs drift down from New- 
 foundland. There never was such a mockery as this 
 Gulf >tream. It is like the English influence oil 
 France, on Europe. Pitt was an iceberg. 
 
 Still New England survives. To what purpose? 
 I say, as an example : the politician says, to produce 
 " Poor Boys." Bah ! The poor boy is an anachro- 
 nism in civilization. He is no longer poor, and he is 
 not a boy. In Tartary they would hang him for 
 sucking all the asses' milk that belongs to the chil- 
 dren : in New England he has all the cream from the 
 Public Cow. What can you expect in a country 
 where one knows not to-day what the weather will be 
 to-morrow ? Climate makes the man. Suppose he, 
 too, dwells on the Channel Islands, where he has all
 
 120 
 
 climates, and is superior to all. Perhaps he will be- 
 come the prophet, the seer, of his age, as he is its Poet. 
 The New-Englancler is the man without a climate. 
 Why is his country recognized ? You won't find i* 1 
 on any map of Paris. 
 
 And yet Paris is the universe. Strange anomalj 
 The greater must include the less ; but how if the lesi. 
 leaks out? This sometimes happens. 
 
 And yet there are phenomena in that country wortt 
 observing. One of them is the conduct of Nature 
 from the 1st of March to the 1st of June, or, as some 
 say, from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice. 
 As Tourmalain remarked, " You 'd better observe the 
 unpleasant than to be blind." This was in 802. Tour- 
 malain is dead ; so is Gross Alain ; so is little Pee- 
 Wee : we shall all be dead before things get any 
 better. 
 
 That is the law. Without revolution there is no- 
 thing. What is revolution? It is turning society 
 over, and putting the best underground for a fertilizer. 
 Thus only will things grow. What has this to do with 
 New England? In the language of that flash of social 
 lightning, Bdranger, " May the Devil fly away with 
 me if I can see ! " 
 
 Let us speak of the period in the year in New Eng- 
 land when winter appears to hesitate. Except in the 
 calendar, the action is ironical ; but it is still decep- 
 tive. The sun mounts high: it is above the horizot 
 twelve hours at a time. The snow gradually sneaks 
 away in liquid repentance. One morning it is gone, 
 except in shaded spots and close by the fences. From 
 about the trunks of the trees it has long departed : 
 the tree is a living thing, and its growth repels it. 
 The fence is dead, driven into the earth in a rigid line
 
 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 121 
 
 by man: the fence, in short, is dogma : icy prejudice 
 lingers near it. 
 
 The snow has disappeared; but the landscape is a 
 ghastly sight, bleached, dead. The trees are stakes ; 
 the grass is of no color ; and the bare soil is not brovvu 
 with a healthful brown ; life has gone out of it. Tak^ 
 up a piece of turf: it is a clod, without warmth, in- 
 animate. Pull it in pieces : there is no hope in it : it 
 is a part of the past ; it is the refuse of last year. This 
 is the condition to which winter has reduced the land- 
 scape. When the snow, which was a pall, is removed > 
 you see how ghastly it is. The face of the country is 
 sodden. It needs now only the soutli wind to sweep 
 over it, full of the damp breath of death ; and that 
 begins to blow. No prospect would be more dreary. 
 
 And yet the south wind fills credulous man with joy. 
 He opens the window. He goes out, and catches cold. 
 He is stirred by the mysterious coming of something. 
 If there is sign of change nowhere else, we detect it in 
 the newspaper. In sheltered corners of that truculent 
 instrument for the diffusion of the prejudices of the 
 few among the many begin to grow the violets of ten- 
 der sentiment, the early greens of yearning. The 
 poet feels the sap of the new year before the marsh- 
 willow. He blossoms in advance of the catkins. Man 
 is greater than Nature. The poet is greater than man : 
 he is nature on two legs, ambulatory. 
 
 At first there is no appearance of conflict. Tho 
 winter garrison seems to have withdrawn. The invad- 
 ing hosts of the South are entering without opposi- 
 tion. The hard ground softens ; the sun lies warm 
 upon the southern bank, and water oozes from its base. 
 If you examine the buds of the lilac and the flowering 
 shrubs, you cannot say that they are swelling ; but the
 
 122 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 
 
 varnish with which they were coated in the fall to keep 
 out the frost seems to be cracking. If the sugar-maple 
 is hacked, it will bleed, the pure white blood of 
 Nature. 
 
 At the close of a sunny day the western sky has a 
 softened aspect : its color, we say, has warmth in it. 
 On such a day you may meet a caterpillar on the foot* 
 path, and turn out for him. The house-fly thaws out ; 
 a company of cheerful wasps take possession of a 
 chamber-window. It is oppressive indoors at night, 
 and the window is raised. A flock of millers, born 
 out of time, flutter in. It is most unusual weather for 
 the season : it is so every year. The delusion is com- 
 plete, when, on a mild evening, the tree-toads open 
 their brittle-brattle chorus on the edge of the pond. 
 The citizen asks his neighbor, " Did you hear the 
 frogs last night ? " That seems to open the new world. 
 One thinks of his childhood and its innocence, and 
 of his first loves. It fills one with sentiment and a 
 tender longing, this voice of the tree-toad. Man is a 
 strange being. Deaf to the prayers of friends, to the 
 sermons and warnings of the church, to the calls of 
 duty, to the pleadings of his better nature, he is 
 touched by the tree-toad. The signs of the spring 
 multiply. The passer in the street in the evening sees 
 the maid-servant leaning on the area-gate in sweet con- 
 verse with some one leaning on the other side ; or in 
 the park, which is still too damp for anything but 
 true affection, he sees her seated by the side of one 
 who is able to protect her from the policeman, and 
 hears her si^h, " How sweet it is to be with those we 
 
 O ' 
 
 love to be with ! " 
 
 All this is very well ; but next morning the news- 
 paper nips these early buds of sentiment. The tele-
 
 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 123 
 
 graph announces, " Twenty feet of snow at Ogden, on 
 ihe Pacific Road ; winds blowing a gale at Omaha, 
 and snow still falling ; mercury frozen at Duluth ; 
 storm-signals at Port Huron." 
 
 Where now are your tree-toads, your young love, 
 your early season? Before noon it rains; by three 
 o'clock it hails ; before night the bleak storm-cloud 
 of the northwest envelops the sky; a gale is raging, 
 whirling about a tempest of snow. By morning the 
 snow is drifted in banks, and two feet deep on a level. 
 Early in the seventeenth century, Drebbel of Holland 
 invented the weather-glass. Before that, men had 
 suffered without knowing the degree of their suffering. 
 A century later, Rb'mer hit upon the idea of using 
 mercury in a thermometer; and Fahrenheit con- 
 structed the instrument which adds a new because 
 distinct terror to the weather. Science names and 
 registers the ills of life ; and yet it is a gain to know 
 the names and habits of our enemies. It is with some 
 satisfaction in our knowledge that we say the ther- 
 mometer marks zero. 
 
 In fact, the wild beast called Winter untamed has 
 returned, and taken possession of New England. Na- 
 ture, giving up her melting mood, has retired into 
 dumbness and white stagnation. But we are wise. 
 We say it is better to have it now than later. We 
 have a conceit of understanding things. 
 
 Extraordinary blindness ! 
 
 The sun is in alliance with the earth. Between the 
 two the snow is uncomfortable. Compelled to go, it 
 decides to go suddenly. The first day there is slush 
 with rain , the second day, mud with hail ; the third 
 day, a flood with sunshine. The thermometer declares 
 that the temperature is delightful. Man shivers and
 
 124 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 
 
 sneezes. His neighbor dies of some disease newly 
 named by science ; but he dies all the same as if it 
 had n't been newly named. Science has not discovered 
 any name that is not fatal. 
 
 This is called the breaking-up of winter. 
 
 Nature seems for some days to be in doubt, not 
 exactly able to stand still, not daring to put forth any- 
 thing tender. Man says that the worst is over. If he 
 should live a thousand years, he would be deceived 
 every year. And this is called an age of scepticism. 
 Man never believed in so many things as now : he 
 never believed so much in himself. As to Nature, he 
 knows her secrets : he can predict what she will do. 
 He communicates with the next world by means of an 
 alphabet which he has invented. He talks with souls 
 at the other end of the spirit-wire. To be sure, neither 
 of them says anything ; but they talk. Is not that 
 something? He suspends the law of gravitation as to 
 his own body he has learned how to evade it as 
 tyrants suspend the legal writs of habeas corpus. 
 When Gravitation asks for his body, she cannot have 
 it. He says of himself, " I am infallible ; I am sub- 
 lime." He believes all these things. He is master of 
 the elements. Shakspeare sends him a poem just 
 made, and as good a poem as the man could write 
 himself. And yet this man he goes out of doors 
 without his overcoat, catches cold, and is buried in 
 three days. " On the 21st of January," exclaimed 
 Mercier, " all kings felt for the backs of their necks." 
 This might be said of all men in New England in the 
 spring. This is the season that all the poets celebrate. 
 Let us suppose that once, in Thessaly, there was a 
 genial spring, and there was a poet who sang of it. 
 All later poets have sung the same song. " Voila 
 tout ! " That is the root of poetry.
 
 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 125 
 
 Another delusion. We hear toward evening, high 
 in air, the "conk" of the wild-geese. Looking 
 up, you see the black specks of that adventurous tri- 
 angle, winging along in rapid flight northward. Per- 
 haps it takes a wide returning sweep, in doubt ; but 
 it disappears in the north. There is no mistaking 
 ^hat sign. This unmusical " conk " is sweeter than 
 the " kerchunk " of the bull-frog. Probably these 
 birds are not idiots, and probably they turned back 
 south again after spying out the nakedness of the 
 land ; but they have made their sign. Next day there 
 is a rumor that somebody has seen a blue-bird. This 
 rumor, unhappily for the bird, which will freeze to 
 death, is confirmed. In less than three days every- 
 body has seen a blue-bird ; and favored people have 
 heard a robin, or rather the yellow-breasted thrush, 
 misnamed a robin in America. This is no doubt 
 true : for angle-worms have been seen on the surface 
 of the ground ; and, wherever there is anything to eat, 
 the robin is promptly on hand. About this time you 
 notice, in protected, sunny spots, that the grass has a 
 little color. But you say that it is the grass of last 
 fall. It is very difficult to tell when the grass of last 
 fall became the grass of this spring. It looks " warmed 
 over." The green is rusty. The lilac-buds have cer- 
 tainly swollen a little, and so have those of the soft 
 maple. In the rain the grass does not brighten as 
 you think it ought to, and it is only when the rai 
 turns to snow that you see any decided green color by 
 contrast with the white. The snow gradually covers 
 everything very quietly, however. Winter cornes 
 back without the least noise or bustle, tireless, mali- 
 cious, implacable. Neither party in the fight now 
 makes much fuss over it; and you might think that
 
 126 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 
 
 Nature had surrendered altogether, if you did not find 
 about this time in the woods, on the edge of a snow- 
 bank, the modest blossoms of the trailing arbutus, 
 ahedding their delicious perfume. The bravest are 
 always the tenderest, says the poet. The season, in 
 its blind way, is trying to express itself. 
 
 And it is assisted. There is a cheerful chatter in 
 the trees. The blackbirds have come, and in numbers, 
 households of them, villages of them, communes, 
 rather. They do not believe in God, these black- 
 birds. They think they can take care of themselves. 
 We shall see. But they are well informed. They 
 arrived just as the last snow-bank melted. One can- 
 liot say now that there is not greenness in the grass ; 
 not in the wide fields, to be sure, but on lawns and 
 banks sloping south. The dark-spotted leaves of 
 the dog-tooth violet begin to show. Even Fahrenheit's 
 contrivance joins in the upward movement : the mer- 
 cury has suddenly gone up from thirty degrees to 
 sixty-five degrees. It is time for the ice-man. Ice 
 has no sooner disappeared than we desire it. 
 
 There is a smile, if one ma}' say so, in the blue sky, 
 and there is softness in the south wind. The song- 
 sparrow is singing in the apple-tree. Another bird- 
 note is heard, two long, musical whistles, liquid but 
 metallic. A brown bird this one, darker than the 
 song-sparrow, and without the latter's light stripes, 
 and smaller, yet bigger than the queer little chipping- 
 bird. He wants a familiar name, this sweet singer, 
 who appears to be a sort of sparrow. He is such a 
 contrast to the blue-jays, who have arrived in a pas- 
 sion, as usual, screaming and scolding, the elegant, 
 spoiled beauties ! They wrangle from morning till 
 night, these beautiful, high-tempered aristocrats.
 
 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 127 
 
 Encouraged \>y the birds, by the bursting of the 
 lilac-buds, by the peeping-up of the crocuses, by tradi- 
 tion, by the sweet flutterings of a double hope, another 
 sign appears. This is the Easter bonnets, most de- 
 lightful flowers of the year, emblems of innocence, 
 hope, devotion. Alas that they have to be worn under 
 umbrellas, so much thought, freshness, feeling, ten- 
 derness, have gone into them ! And a northeast 
 storm of rain, accompanied with hail, comes to crown 
 all these virtues with that of self-sacrifice. The frail 
 hat is offered up to the implacable season. In fact, 
 Nature is not to be forestalled nor hurried in this way. 
 Things cannot be pushed. Nature hesitates. The 
 woman who does not hesitate in April is lost. The 
 appearance of the bonnets is premature. The black- 
 birds see it. They assemble. For two days they 
 hold a noisy convention, with high debate, in the tree- 
 tops. Something is going to happen. 
 
 Say, rather, the usual thing is about to occur. 
 There is a wind called Auster, another called Eurus, 
 another called Septentrio, another Meridies, besides 
 Aquilo, Vulturnus, Africus. There are the eight 
 great winds of the classical dictionary, arsenal of 
 mystery and terror and of the unknown, besides 
 the wind Euroaquilo of St. Luke. This is the wind 
 that drives an apostle wishing to gain Crete upon the 
 African Syrtis. If St- Luke had been tacking to get 
 to Hyannis, this wind would have forced him into 
 Holmes's Hole. The Euroaquilo is no respecter of 
 persons. 
 
 These winds, and others unnamed and more terrible, 
 circle about New England. They form a ring about 
 it : they lie in wait on its borders, but only to spring 
 upon it and harry it. They follow each other in con-
 
 128 HOW SPRING vAME IN NEW ENGLAND 
 
 tracting circles, in whirlwinds, in maelstroms of the 
 atmosphere : they meet and cross each other, all at a 
 moment. This New England is set apart : it is the ex- 
 ercise-ground of the weather. Storms bred elsewhere 
 come here full-grown : they come in couples, in quar- 
 tets, in choruses. If New England were not mostly 
 rock, these winds would carry it off ; but they would 
 bring it all back again, as happens with the sandy 
 portions. What sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Af ricus 
 brings back. When the air is not full of snow, it is 
 full of dust. This is called one of the compensations 
 of Nature. 
 
 This is what happened after the convention of the 
 blackbirds : A moaning south wind brought rain ; a 
 southwest wind turned the rain to snow ; what is 
 called a zephyr, out of the west, drifted the snow ; a 
 north wind sent the mercury far below freezing. Salt 
 added to snow increases the evaporation and the cold. 
 This was the office of the northeast wind : it made the 
 snow damp, and increased its bulk ; but then it rained 
 a little, and froze, thawing at the same time. The air 
 was full of fog and snow and rain. And then the 
 wind changed, went back round the circle, reversing 
 everything, like dragging a cat by its tail. The mer- 
 cury approached zero. This was nothing uncommon. 
 We know all these winds. We are familiar with the 
 different " forms of water." 
 
 All this was only the prologue, the overture. If 
 ono might be permitted to speak scientifically, it was 
 only the tuning of the instruments. The opera was 
 to come, the Flying Dutchman of the air. 
 
 There is a wind called Euroclydon : it would be one 
 of the Eumenides ; only they are women. It is half- 
 brother to the gigantic storm-wind of the equinox
 
 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 129 
 
 The Euroclydon is not a wind : it is a monster. Its 
 breath is frost. It has snow in its hair. It is some- 
 thing terrible. It peddles rheumatism, and plants 
 consumption. 
 
 The Euroclydon knew just the moment to strike into 
 the discord of the weather in New England. From 
 its lair about Point Desolation, from the glaciers of 
 the Greenland continent, sweeping round the coast, 
 leaving wrecks in its track, it marched right athwart 
 the other conflicting winds, churning them into a fury, 
 and inaugurating chaos. It was the Marat of the 
 elements. It was the revolution marching into the 
 "dreaded wood of La Sandraie." 
 
 Let us sum it all up in one word : it was something 
 for which there is no name. 
 
 Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves 
 wrecks. What does it leave on land ? Funerals. 
 When it subsides, New England is prostrate. It has 
 left its legacy : this legacy is coughs and patent medi- 
 cines. This is an epic ; this is destiny. You think 
 Providence is expelled out of New England ? Listen ! 
 
 Two days after Euroclydon, I found in the woods 
 the hepatica earliest of wildwood flowers, evidently 
 not intimidated by the wild work of the armies tram- 
 pling over New England daring to hold up its ten- 
 der blossom. One could not but admire the quiet 
 pertinacity of Nature. She had been painting the 
 grass under the snow. In spots it was vivid green. 
 There was a mild rain, mild, but chilly. The 
 clouds gathered, and broke away in light, fleecy masses. 
 There was a softness on the hills. The birds suddenly 
 were on every tree, glancing through the air, filling it 
 with song, sometimes shaking rain-drops from their 
 wings. The cat brings in one in his mouth. He
 
 130 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 
 
 thinks the season has begun, and the game-laws are 
 off. He is fond of Nature, this cat, as we all are : 
 he wants to possess it. At four o'clock in the morn- 
 ing there is a grand dress-rehearsal of the birds. Not 
 all the pieces of the orchestra have arrived ; but there 
 are enough. The grass-sparrow has come. This is 
 certainly charming. The gardener comes to talk 
 about seeds : he uncovers the strawberries and the 
 grape-vines, salts the asparagus-bed, and plants the 
 peas. You ask if he planted them with a shot-gun. 
 In the shade there is still frost in the ground. Na- 
 ture, in fact, still hesitates, puts forth one hepatica at 
 a time, and waits to see the result; pushes up the 
 grass slowly, perhaps draws it in at night. 
 
 This indecision we call Spring. 
 
 It becomes painful. It is like being on the rack 
 for ninety days, expecting every day a reprieve. Men 
 grow hardened to it, however. 
 
 This is the order with man, hope, surprise, be- 
 wilderment, disgust, facetiousness. The people in 
 New England finally become facetious about spring. 
 This is the last stage : it is the most dangerous. When 
 a man has come to make a jest of misfortune, he is 
 lost. "It bores me to die," said the journalist Carra 
 to the headsman at the foot of the guillotine : " I 
 would like to have seen the continuation." One is 
 also interested to see how spring is going to turn out. 
 
 A day of sun, of delusive bird-singing, sight of the 
 mellow earth, all these begin to beget confidence. 
 The night, even, has been warm. But what is this in 
 the morning journal at breakfast? " An area of low 
 pressure is moving from the Tortugas north." You 
 shudder. 
 
 What is this Low Pressure itself, it ? It is some-
 
 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 131 
 
 thing frightful, low, crouching, creeping, advancing; 
 it is a foreboding ; it is misfortune by telegraph ; it is 
 the " '93 " of the atmosphere. 
 
 This low pressure is a creation of Old Prob. What 
 is that? Old Prob. is the new deity of the Ameri- 
 cans, greater than ^Eolus, more despotic than Sans- 
 Culotte. The wind is his servitor, the lightning hi. 
 messenger. lie is a mystery made of six parts elec- 
 tricity, and one part "guess." This deity is wor- 
 shipped by the Americans; his name is on every 
 man's lips first in the morning ; he is the Franken- 
 stein of modern science. Housed at Washington, his 
 business is to direct the storms of the whole country 
 upon New England, and to give notice in advance. 
 This he does. Sometimes he sends the storm, and 
 then gives notice. This is mere playfulness on his 
 part : it is all one to him. His great power is in the 
 low pressure. 
 
 On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hills of 
 the Presidio, along the Rio Grande, low pressure is 
 bred ; it is nursed also in the Atchafalaya swamps of 
 Louisiana ; it moves by the way of Thibodeaux and 
 Bonnet Carre. The southwest is a magazine of 
 atmospheric disasters. Low pressure may be no worse 
 than the others : it is better known, and is most used 
 to inspire terror. It can be summoned any time also 
 from the everglades of Florida, from the morasses of 
 the Okeechobee. 
 
 When the New-Englander sees this in his newspa- 
 per, he knows what it means. He has twenty-four 
 hours' warning ; but what can he do ? Nothing but 
 watch its certain advance by telegraph. lie suffers 
 in anticipation. That is what Old Prob. has brought 
 about, suffering by anticipation. This low pressure
 
 132 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 
 
 advances against the wind. The wind is from the 
 northeast. Nothing could be more unpleasant than 
 a northeast wind ? Wait till low pressure joins it. 
 Together they make spring in New England. A 
 northeast storm from the southwest ! there is no 
 bitterer satire than this. It lasts three days. After 
 that the weather changes into something winter-like. 
 
 A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, hops 
 along the snow to the dining-room window, and, turn- 
 ing his little head aside, looks up. He is hungry and 
 cold. Little Minnette, clasping her hands behind her 
 back, stands and looks at him, and says, " Po' birdie ! " 
 They appear to understand each other. The sparrow 
 gets his crumbs ; but he knows too much to let Minn- 
 ette get hold of him. Neither of these little things 
 could take care of itself in a New-England spring 
 not in the depths of it. This is what the father of 
 Minnette, looking out of the window upon the wide 
 waste of snow, and the evergreens bent to the ground 
 with the weight of it, says : " It looks like the depths 
 of spring." To this has man come : to his facetious- 
 ness has succeeded sarcasm. It is the first of May. 
 
 Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky. 
 The birds open the morning with a lively chorus. In 
 spite of Auster, Euroclydon, low pressure and the 
 government bureau, things have gone forward. By 
 the roadside, where the snow has just melted, the 
 grass is of the color of emerald. The heart leaps to 
 see it. On the lawn there are twenty robins, lively, 
 noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow breasts contrast 
 with the tender green of the newly-springing clover 
 and herd's-grass. If they would only stand still, we 
 might think the dandelions had blossomed. On an 
 evergreen-bough, looting at them, sits a graceful bird,
 
 whose back is bluer than the sky. There is a red tint 
 on the tips of the boughs of the hard maple. With 
 Nature, color is life. See, already, green, yellow, 
 blue, red ! In a few days is it not so ? through 
 the green masses of the trees will flash the orange 
 of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager ; perhaps to- 
 morrow. 
 
 But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. It 
 is almost clear overhead : but the clouds thicken on 
 the horizon ; they look leaden ; they threaten rain 
 It certainly will rain : the air feels like rain or snow. 
 By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate 
 cry of the phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at 
 first; but it soon drives in swerving lines, for the 
 wind is from the southwest, from the west, from the 
 northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinary winds 
 of New England), from all points of the compass. 
 The fine snow becomes rain ; it becomes large snow ; 
 it melts as it falls ; it freezes as it falls. At last a 
 storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the bleak 
 scene. 
 
 During the night there is a change. It thunders 
 and lightens. Toward morning there is a brilliant 
 display of aurora borealis. This is a sign of colder 
 weather. 
 
 The gardener is in despair ; so is the sportsman. 
 Che trout take no pleasure in biting in such weather. 
 Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from 
 the paper of last year, saying that this is the most 
 severe spring in thirty years. Every one, in fact, 
 believes that it is, and also that next year the spring 
 will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures. 
 
 And with reason : he trusts his eyes, and not his 
 instinct. During this most sour weather of the year,
 
 134 HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND 
 
 the anemone blossoms ; and, almost immediately after, 
 the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-tooth vio- 
 let, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain 
 and snow, and all discouragement, Nature pushes on 
 her forces with progressive haste and rapidity. Before 
 one is aware, all the lawns and meadows are deeply 
 green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. In a 
 burst of sunshine the cherry-trees are white, the Judas- 
 tree is pink, the hawthorns give a sweet smell. The 
 air is full of sweetness ; the world, of color. 
 
 In the midst of a chilling northeast storm the 
 ground is strewed with the white-and-pink blossoms 
 from the apple-trees. The next day the mercury 
 stands at eighty degrees. Summer has come. 
 
 There was no Spring. 
 
 The winter is over. You think so? Robespierre 
 thought the Revolution was over in the beginning of 
 his last Thermidor. He lost his head after that. 
 
 When the first buds are set, and the corn is up, and 
 the cucumbers have four leaves, a malicious frost steals 
 down from the north and kills them in a night. 
 
 That is the last effort of spring. The mercury then 
 mounts to ninety degrees. The season has been long, 
 but, on the whole, successful. Many people survive ifc
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 ?! 
 
 MAY s 1933 
 
 Jlj N 1 3 1933 
 IJAN 3 193* 
 
 ! 24 
 
 MAR 9 1943 
 
 AUG 31985 
 
 SPP 
 
 Form L-9-15m-7,'31
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 3 115801051 1581 
 
 A 001 370 808 6 
 
 V or