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Title: Little Rivers
A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness
Author: Henry van Dyke
Release Date: May 12, 2006 [EBook #1562]
Last Updated: January 15, 2013
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE RIVERS ***
Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger
LITTLE RIVERS
A BOOK OF ESSAYS IN PROFITABLE IDLENESS
by Henry Van Dyke
"And suppose he takes nothing, yet he enjoyeth a delightful walk by
pleasant Rivers, in sweet Pastures, amongst odoriferous Flowers, which
gratifie his Senses, and delight his Mind; which Contentments induce many
(who affect not Angling) to choose those places of pleasure for their
summer Recreation and Health."
COL. ROBERT VENABLES, The Experienc'd Angler, 1662.
DEDICATION
To one who wanders by my side
As cheerfully as waters glide;
Whose eyes are brown as woodland streams,
And very fair and full of dreams;
Whose heart is like a mountain spring,
Whose thoughts like merry rivers sing:
To her—my little daughter Brooke—
I dedicate this little book.
Contents
PRELUDE
AN ANGLER'S WISH IN TOWN
When tulips bloom in Union Square,
And timid breaths of vernal air
Are wandering down the dusty town,
Like children lost in Vanity Fair;
When every long, unlovely row
Of westward houses stands aglow
And leads the eyes toward sunset skies,
Beyond the hills where green trees grow;
Then weary is the street parade,
And weary books, and weary trade:
I'm only wishing to go a-fishing;
For this the month of May was made.
I guess the pussy-willows now
Are creeping out on every bough
Along the brook; and robins look
For early worms behind the plough.
The thistle-birds have changed their dun
For yellow coats to match the sun;
And in the same array of flame
The Dandelion Show's begun.
The flocks of young anemones
Are dancing round the budding trees:
Who can help wishing to go a-fishing
In days as full of joy as these?
I think the meadow-lark's clear sound
Leaks upward slowly from the ground,
While on the wing the bluebirds ring
Their wedding-bells to woods around:
The flirting chewink calls his dear
Behind the bush; and very near,
Where water flows, where green grass grows,
Song-sparrows gently sing, "Good cheer:"
And, best of all, through twilight's calm
The hermit-thrush repeats his psalm:
How much I'm wishing to go a-fishing
In days so sweet with music's balm!
'Tis not a proud desire of mine;
I ask for nothing superfine;
No heavy weight, no salmon great,
To break the record, or my line:
Only an idle little stream,
Whose amber waters softly gleam,
Where I may wade, through woodland shade,
And cast the fly, and loaf, and dream:
Only a trout or two, to dart
From foaming pools, and try my art:
No more I'm wishing—old-fashioned fishing,
And just a day on Nature's heart.
1894.
LITTLE RIVERS
A river is the most human and companionable of all inanimate things. It
has a life, a character, a voice of its own, and is as full of good
fellowship as a sugar-maple is of sap. It can talk in various tones, loud
or low, and of many subjects, grave and gay. Under favourable
circumstances it will even make a shift to sing, not in a fashion that can
be reduced to notes and set down in black and white on a sheet of paper,
but in a vague, refreshing manner, and to a wandering air that goes
"Over the hills and far away."
For real company and friendship, there is nothing outside of the animal
kingdom that is comparable to a river.
I will admit that a very good case can be made out in favour of some other
objects of natural affection. For example, a fair apology has been offered
by those ambitious persons who have fallen in love with the sea. But,
after all, that is a formless and disquieting passion. It lacks solid
comfort and mutual confidence. The sea is too big for loving, and too
uncertain. It will not fit into our thoughts. It has no personality
because it has so many. It is a salt abstraction. You might as well think
of loving a glittering generality like "the American woman." One would be
more to the purpose.
Mountains are more satisfying because they are more individual. It is
possible to feel a very strong attachment for a certain range whose
outline has grown familiar to our eyes, or a clear peak that has looked
down, day after day, upon our joys and sorrows, moderating our passions
with its calm aspect. We come back from our travels, and the sight of such
a well-known mountain is like meeting an old friend unchanged. But it is a
one-sided affection. The mountain is voiceless and imperturbable; and its
very loftiness and serenity sometimes make us the more lonely.
Trees seem to come closer to our life. They are often rooted in our
richest feelings, and our sweetest memories, like birds, build nests in
their branches. I remember, the last time that I saw James Russell Lowell,
(only a few weeks before his musical voice was hushed,) he walked out with
me into the quiet garden at Elmwood to say good-bye. There was a great
horse-chestnut tree beside the house, towering above the gable, and
covered with blossoms from base to summit,—a pyramid of green
supporting a thousand smaller pyramids of white. The poet looked up at it
with his gray, pain-furrowed face, and laid his trembling hand upon the
trunk. "I planted the nut," said he, "from which this tree grew. And my
father was with me and showed me how to plant it."
Yes, there is a good deal to be said in behalf of tree-worship; and when I
recline with my friend Tityrus beneath the shade of his favourite oak, I
consent in his devotions. But when I invite him with me to share my
orisons, or wander alone to indulge the luxury of grateful, unlaborious
thought, my feet turn not to a tree, but to the bank of a river, for there
the musings of solitude find a friendly accompaniment, and human
intercourse is purified and sweetened by the flowing, murmuring water. It
is by a river that I would choose to make love, and to revive old
friendships, and to play with the children, and to confess my faults, and
to escape from vain, selfish desires, and to cleanse my mind from all the
false and foolish things that mar the joy and peace of living. Like
David's hart, I pant for the water-brooks. There is wisdom in the advice
of Seneca, who says, "Where a spring rises, or a river flows, there should
we build altars and offer sacrifices."
The personality of a river is not to be found in its water, nor in its
bed, nor in its shore. Either of these elements, by itself, would be
nothing. Confine the fluid contents of the noblest stream in a walled
channel of stone, and it ceases to be a stream; it becomes what Charles
Lamb calls﹃a mockery of a river—a liquid artifice—a wretched
conduit.﹄But take away the water from the most beautiful river-banks, and
what is left? An ugly road with none to travel it; a long, ghastly scar on
the bosom of the earth.
The life of a river, like that of a human being, consists in the union of
soul and body, the water and the banks. They belong together. They act and
react upon each other. The stream moulds and makes the shore; hollowing
out a bay here, and building a long point there; alluring the little
bushes close to its side, and bending the tall slim trees over its
current; sweeping a rocky ledge clean of everything but moss, and sending
a still lagoon full of white arrow-heads and rosy knot-weed far back into
the meadow. The shore guides and controls the stream; now detaining and
now advancing it; now bending it in a hundred sinuous curves, and now
speeding it straight as a wild-bee on its homeward flight; here hiding the
water in a deep cleft overhung with green branches, and there spreading it
out, like a mirror framed in daisies, to reflect the sky and the clouds;
sometimes breaking it with sudden turns and unexpected falls into a foam
of musical laughter, sometimes soothing it into a sleepy motion like the
flow of a dream.
Is it otherwise with the men and women whom we know and like? Does not the
spirit influence the form, and the form affect the spirit? Can we divide
and separate them in our affections?
I am no friend to purely psychological attachments. In some unknown future
they may be satisfying, but in the present I want your words and your
voice with your thoughts, your looks and your gestures to interpret your
feelings. The warm, strong grasp of Greatheart's hand is as dear to me as
the steadfast fashion of his friendships; the lively, sparkling eyes of
the master of Rudder Grange charm me as much as the nimbleness of his
fancy; and the firm poise of the Hoosier Schoolmaster's shaggy head gives
me new confidence in the solidity of his views of life. I like the pure
tranquillity of Isabel's brow as well as her
"most silver flow
Of subtle-paced counsel in distress."
The soft cadences and turns in my lady Katrina's speech draw me into the
humour of her gentle judgments of men and things. The touches of
quaintness in Angelica's dress, her folded kerchief and smooth-parted
hair, seem to partake of herself, and enhance my admiration for the sweet
order of her thoughts and her old-fashioned ideals of love and duty. Even
so the stream and its channel are one life, and I cannot think of the
swift, brown flood of the Batiscan without its shadowing primeval forests,
or the crystalline current of the Boquet without its beds of pebbles and
golden sand and grassy banks embroidered with flowers.
Every country—or at least every country that is fit for habitation—has
its own rivers; and every river has its own quality; and it is the part of
wisdom to know and love as many as you can, seeing each in the fairest
possible light, and receiving from each the best that it has to give. The
torrents of Norway leap down from their mountain home with plentiful
cataracts, and run brief but glorious races to the sea. The streams of
England move smoothly through green fields and beside ancient, sleepy
towns. The Scotch rivers brawl through the open moorland and flash along
steep Highland glens. The rivers of the Alps are born in icy caves, from
which they issue forth with furious, turbid waters; but when their anger
has been forgotten in the slumber of some blue lake, they flow down more
softly to see the vineyards of France and Italy, the gray castles of
Germany, the verdant meadows of Holland. The mighty rivers of the West
roll their yellow floods through broad valleys, or plunge down dark
canyons. The rivers of the South creep under dim arboreal archways hung
with banners of waving moss. The Delaware and the Hudson and the
Connecticut are the children of the Catskills and the Adirondacks and the
White Mountains, cradled among the forests of spruce and hemlock, playing
through a wild woodland youth, gathering strength from numberless
tributaries to bear their great burdens of lumber and turn the wheels of
many mills, issuing from the hills to water a thousand farms, and
descending at last, beside new cities, to the ancient sea.
Every river that flows is good, and has something worthy to be loved. But
those that we love most are always the ones that we have known best,—the
stream that ran before our father's door, the current on which we ventured
our first boat or cast our first fly, the brook on whose banks we first
picked the twinflower of young love. However far we may travel, we come
back to Naaman's state of mind: "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of
Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?"
It is with rivers as it is with people: the greatest are not always the
most agreeable, nor the best to live with. Diogenes must have been an
uncomfortable bedfellow: Antinous was bored to death in the society of the
Emperor Hadrian: and you can imagine much better company for a walking
trip than Napoleon Bonaparte. Semiramis was a lofty queen, but I fancy
that Ninus had more than one bad quarter-of-an-hour with her: and in﹃the
spacious times of great Elizabeth﹄there was many a milkmaid whom the wise
man would have chosen for his friend, before the royal red-haired virgin.
"I confess," says the poet Cowley, "I love littleness almost in all
things. A little convenient Estate, a little chearful House, a little
Company, and a very little Feast, and if I were ever to fall in Love
again, (which is a great Passion, and therefore, I hope, I have done with
it,) it would be, I think, with Prettiness, rather than with Majestical
Beauty. I would neither wish that my Mistress, nor my Fortune, should be a
Bona Roba, as Homer uses to describe his Beauties, like a daughter of
great Jupiter for the stateliness and largeness of her Person, but as
Lucretius says:
'Parvula, pumilio, [Greek text omitted], tota merum sal.'"
Now in talking about women it is prudent to disguise a prejudice like
this, in the security of a dead language, and to intrench it behind a
fortress of reputable authority. But in lowlier and less dangerous
matters, such as we are now concerned with, one may dare to speak in plain
English. I am all for the little rivers. Let those who will, chant in
heroic verse the renown of Amazon and Mississippi and Niagara, but my
prose shall flow—or straggle along at such a pace as the prosaic
muse may grant me to attain—in praise of Beaverkill and Neversink
and Swiftwater, of Saranac and Raquette and Ausable, of Allegash and
Aroostook and Moose River. "Whene'er I take my walks abroad," it shall be
to trace the clear Rauma from its rise on the fjeld to its rest in the
fjord; or to follow the Ericht and the Halladale through the heather. The
Ziller and the Salzach shall be my guides through the Tyrol; the Rotha and
the Dove shall lead me into the heart of England. My sacrificial flames
shall be kindled with birch-bark along the wooded stillwaters of the
Penobscot and the Peribonca, and my libations drawn from the pure current
of the Ristigouche and the Ampersand, and my altar of remembrance shall
rise upon the rocks beside the falls of Seboomok.
I will set my affections upon rivers that are not too great for intimacy.
And if by chance any of these little ones have also become famous, like
the Tweed and the Thames and the Arno, I at least will praise them,
because they are still at heart little rivers.
If an open fire is, as Charles Dudley Warner says, the eye of a room; then
surely a little river may be called the mouth, the most expressive
feature, of a landscape. It animates and enlivens the whole scene. Even a
railway journey becomes tolerable when the track follows the course of a
running stream.
What charming glimpses you catch from the window as the train winds along
the valley of the French Broad from Asheville, or climbs the southern
Catskills beside the Aesopus, or slides down the Pusterthal with the
Rienz, or follows the Glommen and the Gula from Christiania to Throndhjem.
Here is a mill with its dripping, lazy wheel, the type of somnolent
industry; and there is a white cascade, foaming in silent pantomime as the
train clatters by; and here is a long, still pool with the cows standing
knee-deep in the water and swinging their tails in calm indifference to
the passing world; and there is a lone fisherman sitting upon a rock, rapt
in contemplation of the point of his rod. For a moment you become a
partner of his tranquil enterprise. You turn around, you crane your neck
to get the last sight of his motionless angle. You do not know what kind
of fish he expects to catch, nor what species of bait he is using, but at
least you pray that he may have a bite before the train swings around the
next curve. And if perchance your wish is granted, and you see him gravely
draw some unknown, reluctant, shining reward of patience from the water,
you feel like swinging your hat from the window and crying out "Good
luck!"
Little rivers seem to have the indefinable quality that belongs to certain
people in the world,—the power of drawing attention without courting
it, the faculty of exciting interest by their very presence and way of
doing things.
The most fascinating part of a city or town is that through which the
water flows. Idlers always choose a bridge for their place of meditation
when they can get it; and, failing that, you will find them sitting on the
edge of a quay or embankment, with their feet hanging over the water. What
a piquant mingling of indolence and vivacity you can enjoy by the
river-side! The best point of view in Rome, to my taste, is the Ponte San
Angelo; and in Florence or Pisa I never tire of loafing along the Lung'
Arno. You do not know London until you have seen it from the Thames. And
you will miss the charm of Cambridge unless you take a little boat and go
drifting on the placid Cam, beneath the bending trees, along the backs of
the colleges.
But the real way to know a little river is not to glance at it here or
there in the course of a hasty journey, nor to become acquainted with it
after it has been partly civilised and spoiled by too close contact with
the works of man. You must go to its native haunts; you must see it in
youth and freedom; you must accommodate yourself to its pace, and give
yourself to its influence, and follow its meanderings whithersoever they
may lead you.
Now, of this pleasant pastime there are three principal forms. You may go
as a walker, taking the river-side path, or making a way for yourself
through the tangled thickets or across the open meadows. You may go as a
sailor, launching your light canoe on the swift current and committing
yourself for a day, or a week, or a month, to the delightful uncertainties
of a voyage through the forest. You may go as a wader, stepping into the
stream and going down with it, through rapids and shallows and deeper
pools, until you come to the end of your courage and the daylight. Of
these three ways I know not which is best. But in all of them the
essential thing is that you must be willing and glad to be led; you must
take the little river for your guide, philosopher, and friend.
And what a good guidance it gives you. How cheerfully it lures you on into
the secrets of field and wood, and brings you acquainted with the birds
and the flowers. The stream can show you, better than any other teacher,
how nature works her enchantments with colour and music.
Go out to the Beaver-kill
"In the tassel-time of spring,"
and follow its brimming waters through the budding forests, to that corner
which we call the Painter's Camp. See how the banks are all enamelled with
the pale hepatica, the painted trillium, and the delicate pink-veined
spring beauty. A little later in the year, when the ferns are uncurling
their long fronds, the troops of blue and white violets will come dancing
down to the edge of the stream, and creep venturously out to the very end
of that long, moss-covered log in the water. Before these have vanished,
the yellow crow-foot and the cinquefoil will appear, followed by the
star-grass and the loose-strife and the golden St. John's-wort. Then the
unseen painter begins to mix the royal colour on his palette, and the red
of the bee-balm catches your eye. If you are lucky, you may find, in
midsummer, a slender fragrant spike of the purple-fringed orchis, and you
cannot help finding the universal self-heal. Yellow returns in the
drooping flowers of the jewel-weed, and blue repeats itself in the
trembling hare-bells, and scarlet is glorified in the flaming robe of the
cardinal-flower. Later still, the summer closes in a splendour of bloom,
with gentians and asters and goldenrod.
You never get so close to the birds as when you are wading quietly down a
little river, casting your fly deftly under the branches for the wary
trout, but ever on the lookout for all the various pleasant things that
nature has to bestow upon you. Here you shall come upon the cat-bird at
her morning bath, and hear her sing, in a clump of pussy-willows, that
low, tender, confidential song which she keeps for the hours of domestic
intimacy. The spotted sandpiper will run along the stones before you,
crying, "wet-feet, wet-feet!" and bowing and teetering in the friendliest
manner, as if to show you the way to the best pools. In the thick branches
of the hemlocks that stretch across the stream, the tiny warblers, dressed
in a hundred colours, chirp and twitter confidingly above your head; and
the Maryland yellow-throat, flitting through the bushes like a little
gleam of sunlight, calls "witchery, witchery, witchery!" That plaintive,
forsaken, persistent note, never ceasing, even in the noonday silence,
comes from the wood-pewee, drooping upon the bough of some high tree, and
complaining, like Mariana in the moated grange, "weary, weary, weary!"
When the stream runs out into the old clearing, or down through the
pasture, you find other and livelier birds,—the robins, with his
sharp, saucy call and breathless, merry warble; the bluebird, with his
notes of pure gladness, and the oriole, with his wild, flexible whistle;
the chewink, bustling about in the thicket, talking to his sweetheart in
French, "cherie, cherie!" and the song-sparrow, perched on his favourite
limb of a young maple, dose beside the water, and singing happily, through
sunshine and through rain. This is the true bird of the brook, after all:
the winged spirit of cheerfulness and contentment, the patron saint of
little rivers, the fisherman's friend. He seems to enter into your sport
with his good wishes, and for an hour at a time, while you are trying
every fly in your book, from a black gnat to a white miller, to entice the
crafty old trout at the foot of the meadow-pool, the song-sparrow, close
above you, will be chanting patience and encouragement. And when at last
success crowns your endeavour, and the parti-coloured prize is glittering
in your net, the bird on the bough breaks out in an ecstasy of
congratulation: "catch 'im, catch 'im, catch 'im; oh, what a pretty
fellow! sweet!"
There are other birds that seem to have a very different temper. The
blue-jay sits high up in the withered-pine tree, bobbing up and down, and
calling to his mate in a tone of affected sweetness,﹃salute-her,
salute-her,﹄but when you come in sight he flies away with a harsh cry of
"thief, thief, thief!" The kingfisher, ruffling his crest in solitary
pride on the end of a dead branch, darts down the stream at your approach,
winding up his red angrily as if he despised you for interrupting his
fishing. And the cat-bird, that sang so charmingly while she thought
herself unobserved, now tries to scare you away by screaming "snake,
snake!"
As evening draws near, and the light beneath the trees grows yellower, and
the air is full of filmy insects out for their last dance, the voice of
the little river becomes louder and more distinct. The true poets have
often noticed this apparent increase in the sound of flowing waters at
nightfall. Gray, in one of his letters, speaks of﹃hearing the murmur of
many waters not audible in the daytime.﹄Wordsworth repeats the same
thought almost in the same words:
"A soft and lulling sound is heard
Of streams inaudible by day."
And Tennyson, in the valley of Cauteretz, tells of the river
"Deepening his voice with deepening of the night."
It is in this mystical hour that you will hear the most celestial and
entrancing of all bird-notes, the songs of the thrushes,—the hermit,
and the wood-thrush, and the veery. Sometimes, but not often, you will see
the singers. I remember once, at the close of a beautiful day's fishing on
the Swiftwater, I came out, just after sunset, into a little open space in
an elbow of the stream. It was still early spring, and the leaves were
tiny. On the top of a small sumac, not thirty feet away from me, sat a
veery. I could see the pointed spots upon his breast, the swelling of his
white throat, and the sparkle of his eyes, as he poured his whole heart
into a long liquid chant, the clear notes rising and falling, echoing and
interlacing in endless curves of sound,
"Orb within orb, intricate, wonderful."
Other bird-songs can be translated into words, but not this. There is no
interpretation. It is music,—as Sidney Lanier defines it,—
"Love in search of a word."
But it is not only to the real life of birds and flowers that the little
rivers introduce you. They lead you often into familiarity with human
nature in undress, rejoicing in the liberty of old clothes, or of none at
all. People do not mince along the banks of streams in patent-leather
shoes or crepitating silks. Corduroy and home-spun and flannel are the
stuffs that suit this region; and the frequenters of these paths go their
natural gaits, in calf-skin or rubber boots, or bare-footed. The girdle of
conventionality is laid aside, and the skirts rise with the spirits.
A stream that flows through a country of upland farms will show you many a
pretty bit of genre painting. Here is the laundry-pool at the foot of the
kitchen garden, and the tubs are set upon a few planks close to the water,
and the farmer's daughters, with bare arms and gowns tucked up, are
wringing out the clothes. Do you remember what happened to Ralph Peden in
The Lilac Sunbonnet when he came on a scene like this? He tumbled at once
into love with Winsome Charteris,—and far over his head.
And what a pleasant thing it is to see a little country lad riding one of
the plough-horses to water, thumping his naked heels against the ribs of
his stolid steed, and pulling hard on the halter as if it were the bridle
of Bucephalus! Or perhaps it is a riotous company of boys that have come
down to the old swimming-hole, and are now splashing and gambolling
through the water like a drove of white seals very much sun-burned. You
had hoped to catch a goodly trout in that hole, but what of that? The
sight of a harmless hour of mirth is better than a fish, any day.
Possibly you will overtake another fisherman on the stream. It may be one
of those fabulous countrymen, with long cedar poles and bed-cord lines,
who are commonly reported to catch such enormous strings of fish, but who
rarely, so far as my observation goes, do anything more than fill their
pockets with fingerlings. The trained angler, who uses the finest tackle,
and drops his fly on the water as accurately as Henry James places a word
in a story, is the man who takes the most and the largest fish in the long
run. Perhaps the fisherman ahead of you is such an one,—a man whom
you have known in town as a lawyer or a doctor, a merchant or a preacher,
going about his business in the hideous respectability of a high silk hat
and a long black coat. How good it is to see him now in the freedom of a
flannel shirt and a broad-brimmed gray felt with flies stuck around the
band.
In Professor John Wilson's Essays Critical and Imaginative, there is a
brilliant description of a bishop fishing, which I am sure is drawn from
the life:﹃Thus a bishop, sans wig and petticoat, in a hairy cap, black
jacket, corduroy breeches and leathern leggins, creel on back and rod in
hand, sallying from his palace, impatient to reach a famous salmon-cast
ere the sun leave his cloud, . . . appears not only a pillar of his
church, but of his kind, and in such a costume is manifestly on the high
road to Canterbury and the Kingdom-Come.﹄I have had the good luck to see
quite a number of bishops, parochial and diocesan, in that style, and the
vision has always dissolved my doubts in regard to the validity of their
claim to the true apostolic succession.
Men's "little ways" are usually more interesting, and often more
instructive than their grand manners. When they are off guard, they
frequently show to better advantage than when they are on parade. I get
more pleasure out of Boswell's Johnson than I do out of Rasselas or The
Rambler. The Little Flowers of St. Francis appear to me far more precious
than the most learned German and French analyses of his character. There
is a passage in Jonathan Edwards' Personal Narrative, about a certain walk
that he took in the fields near his father's house, and the blossoming of
the flowers in the spring, which I would not exchange for the whole of his
dissertation On the Freedom of the Will. And the very best thing of
Charles Darwin's that I know is a bit from a letter to his wife:﹃At last
I fell asleep,﹄says he, "on the grass, and awoke with a chorus of birds
singing around me, and squirrels running up the tree, and some woodpeckers
laughing; and it was as pleasant and rural a scene as ever I saw; and I
did not care one penny how any of the birds or beasts had been formed."
Little rivers have small responsibilities. They are not expected to bear
huge navies on their breast or supply a hundred-thousand horse-power to
the factories of a monstrous town. Neither do you come to them hoping to
draw out Leviathan with a hook. It is enough if they run a harmless,
amiable course, and keep the groves and fields green and fresh along their
banks, and offer a happy alternation of nimble rapids and quiet pools,
"With here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling."
When you set out to explore one of these minor streams in your canoe, you
have no intention of epoch-making discoveries, or thrilling and
world-famous adventures. You float placidly down the long stillwaters, and
make your way patiently through the tangle of fallen trees that block the
stream, and run the smaller falls, and carry your boat around the larger
ones, with no loftier ambition than to reach a good camp-ground before
dark and to pass the intervening hours pleasantly,﹃without offence to God
or man.﹄It is an agreeable and advantageous frame of mind for one who has
done his fair share of work in the world, and is not inclined to grumble
at his wages. There are few moods in which we are more susceptible of
gentle instruction; and I suspect there are many tempers and attitudes,
often called virtuous, in which the human spirit appears to less advantage
in the sight of Heaven.
It is not required of every man and woman to be, or to do, something
great; most of us must content ourselves with taking small parts in the
chorus. Shall we have no little lyrics because Homer and Dante have
written epics? And because we have heard the great organ at Freiburg,
shall the sound of Kathi's zither in the alpine hut please us no more?
Even those who have greatness thrust upon them will do well to lay the
burden down now and then, and congratulate themselves that they are not
altogether answerable for the conduct of the universe, or at least not all
the time. "I reckon," said a cowboy to me one day, as we were riding
through the Bad Lands of Dakota, "there's some one bigger than me, running
this outfit. He can 'tend to it well enough, while I smoke my pipe after
the round-up."
There is such a thing as taking ourselves and the world too seriously, or
at any rate too anxiously. Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane
sadness of modern society comes from the vain idea that every man is bound
to be a critic of life, and to let no day pass without finding some fault
with the general order of things, or projecting some plan for its
improvement. And the other half comes from the greedy notion that a man's
life does consist, after all, in the abundance of the things that he
possesses, and that it is somehow or other more respectable and pious to
be always at work making a larger living, than it is to lie on your back
in the green pastures and beside the still waters, and thank God that you
are alive.
Come, then, my gentle reader, (for by this time you have discovered that
this chapter is only a preface in disguise,—a declaration of
principles or the want of them, an apology or a defence, as you choose to
take it,) and if we are agreed, let us walk together; but if not, let us
part here with out ill-will.
You shall not be deceived in this book. It is nothing but a handful of
rustic variations on the old tune of "Rest and be thankful," a record of
unconventional travel, a pilgrim's scrip with a few bits of blue-sky
philosophy in it. There is, so far as I know, very little useful
information and absolutely no criticism of the universe to be found in
this volume. So if you are what Izaak Walton calls﹃a severe,
sour-complexioned man,﹄you would better carry it back to the bookseller,
and get your money again, if he will give it to you, and go your way
rejoicing after your own melancholy fashion.
But if you care for plain pleasures, and informal company, and friendly
observations on men and things, (and a few true fish-stories,) then
perhaps you may find something here not unworthy your perusal. And so I
wish that your winter fire may burn clear and bright while you read these
pages; and that the summer days may be fair, and the fish may rise merrily
to your fly, whenever you follow one of these little rivers.
1895.
A LEAF OF SPEARMINT
RECOLLECTIONS OF A BOY AND A ROD.
"It puzzles me now, that I remember all these young impressions so,
because I took no heed of them at the time whatever; and yet they come
upon me bright, when nothing else is evident in the gray fog of
experience."—B. D. BLACKMORE: Lorna Doone.
Of all the faculties of the human mind, memory is the one that is most
easily "led by the nose." There is a secret power in the sense of smell
which draws the mind backward into the pleasant land of old times.
If you could paint a picture of Memory, in the symbolical manner of
Quarles's Emblems, it should represent a man travelling the highway with a
dusty pack upon his shoulders, and stooping to draw in a long, sweet
breath from the small, deep-red, golden-hearted flowers of an
old-fashioned rose-tree straggling through the fence of a neglected
garden. Or perhaps, for a choice of emblems, you would better take a yet
more homely and familiar scent: the cool fragrance of lilacs drifting
through the June morning from the old bush that stands between the kitchen
door and the well; the warm layer of pungent, aromatic air that floats
over the tansy-bed in a still July noon; the drowsy dew of odour that
falls from the big balm-of-Gilead tree by the roadside as you are driving
homeward through the twilight of August; or, best of all, the clean,
spicy, unexpected, unmistakable smell of a bed of spearmint—that is
the bed whereon Memory loves to lie and dream!
Why not choose mint as the symbol of remembrance? It is the true
spice-tree of our Northern clime, the myrrh and frankincense of the land
of lingering snow. When its perfume rises, the shrines of the past are
unveiled, and the magical rites of reminiscence begin.
I.
You are fishing down the Swiftwater in the early Spring. In a shallow
pool, which the drought of summer will soon change into dry land, you see
the pale-green shoots of a little plant thrusting themselves up between
the pebbles, and just beginning to overtop the falling water. You pluck a
leaf of it as you turn out of the stream to find a comfortable place for
lunch, and, rolling it between your fingers to see whether it smells like
a good salad for your bread and cheese, you discover suddenly that it is
new mint. For the rest of that day you are bewitched; you follow a stream
that runs through the country of Auld Lang Syne, and fill your creel with
the recollections of a boy and a rod.
And yet, strangely enough, you cannot recall the boy himself at all
distinctly. There is only the faintest image of him on the endless roll of
films that has been wound through your mental camera: and in the very
spots where his small figure should appear, it seems as if the pictures
were always light-struck. Just a blur, and the dim outline of a new cap,
or a well-beloved jacket with extra pockets, or a much-hated pair of
copper-toed shoes—that is all you can see.
But the people that the boy saw, the companions who helped or hindered him
in his adventures, the sublime and marvellous scenes among the Catskills
and the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains, in the midst of which he
lived and moved and had his summer holidays—all these stand out
sharp and clear, as the "Bab Ballads" say,
"Photographically lined
On the tablets of your mind."
And most vivid do these scenes and people become when the vague and
irrecoverable boy who walks among them carries a rod over his shoulder,
and you detect the soft bulginess of wet fish about his clothing, and
perhaps the tail of a big one emerging from his pocket. Then it seems
almost as if these were things that had really happened, and of which you
yourself were a great part.
The rod was a reward, yet not exactly of merit. It was an instrument of
education in the hand of a father less indiscriminate than Solomon, who
chose to interpret the text in a new way, and preferred to educate his
child by encouraging him in pursuits which were harmless and wholesome,
rather than by chastising him for practices which would likely enough
never have been thought of, if they had not been forbidden. The boy
enjoyed this kind of father at the time, and later he came to understand,
with a grateful heart, that there is no richer inheritance in all the
treasury of unearned blessings. For, after all, the love, the patience,
the kindly wisdom of a grown man who can enter into the perplexities and
turbulent impulses of a boy's heart, and give him cheerful companionship,
and lead him on by free and joyful ways to know and choose the things that
are pure and lovely and of good report, make as fair an image as we can
find of that loving, patient Wisdom which must be above us all if any good
is to come out of our childish race.
Now this was the way in which the boy came into possession of his
undreaded rod. He was by nature and heredity one of those predestined
anglers whom Izaak Walton tersely describes as "born so." His earliest
passion was fishing. His favourite passage in Holy Writ was that place
where Simon Peter throws a line into the sea and pulls out a great fish at
the first cast.
But hitherto his passion had been indulged under difficulties—with
improvised apparatus of cut poles, and flabby pieces of string, and bent
pins, which always failed to hold the biggest fish; or perhaps with
borrowed tackle, dangling a fat worm in vain before the noses of the
staring, supercilious sunfish that poised themselves in the clear water
around the Lake house dock at Lake George; or, at best, on picnic parties
across the lake, marred by the humiliating presence of nurses, and
disturbed by the obstinate refusal of old Horace, the boatman, to believe
that the boy could bait his own hook, but sometimes crowned with the
delight of bringing home a whole basketful of yellow perch and
goggle-eyes. Of nobler sport with game fish, like the vaulting salmon and
the merry, pugnacious trout, as yet the boy had only dreamed. But he had
heard that there were such fish in the streams that flowed down from the
mountains around Lake George, and he was at the happy age when he could
believe anything—if it was sufficiently interesting.
There was one little river, and only one, within his knowledge and the
reach of his short legs. It was a tiny, lively rivulet that came out of
the woods about half a mile away from the hotel, and ran down
cater-cornered through a sloping meadow, crossing the road under a flat
bridge of boards, just beyond the root-beer shop at the lower end of the
village. It seemed large enough to the boy, and he had long had his eye
upon it as a fitting theatre for the beginning of a real angler's life.
Those rapids, those falls, those deep, whirling pools with beautiful foam
on them like soft, white custard, were they not such places as the trout
loved to hide in?
You can see the long hotel piazza, with the gossipy groups of wooden
chairs standing vacant in the early afternoon; for the grown-up people are
dallying with the ultimate nuts and raisins of their mid-day dinner. A
villainous clatter of innumerable little vegetable-dishes comes from the
open windows of the pantry as the boy steals past the kitchen end of the
house, with Horace's lightest bamboo pole over his shoulder, and a little
brother in skirts and short white stockings tagging along behind him.
When they come to the five-rail fence where the brook runs out of the
field, the question is, Over or under? The lowlier method seems safer for
the little brother, as well as less conspicuous for persons who desire to
avoid publicity until their enterprise has achieved success. So they crawl
beneath a bend in the lowest rail,—only tearing one tiny
three-cornered hole in a jacket, and making some juicy green stains on the
white stockings,—and emerge with suppressed excitement in the field
of the cloth of buttercups and daisies.
What an afternoon—how endless and yet how swift! What perilous
efforts to leap across the foaming stream at its narrowest points; what
escapes from quagmires and possible quicksands; what stealthy creeping
through the grass to the edge of a likely pool, and cautious dropping of
the line into an unseen depth, and patient waiting for a bite, until the
restless little brother, prowling about below, discovers that the hook is
not in the water at all, but lying on top of a dry stone,—thereby
proving that patience is not the only virtue—or, at least, that it
does a better business when it has a small vice of impatience in
partnership with it!
How tired the adventurers grow as the day wears away; and as yet they have
taken nothing! But their strength and courage return as if by magic when
there comes a surprising twitch at the line in a shallow, unpromising
rapid, and with a jerk of the pole a small, wiggling fish is whirled
through the air and landed thirty feet back in the meadow.
"For pity's sake, don't lose him! There he is among the roots of the blue
flag."
"I've got him! How cold he is—how slippery—how pretty! Just
like a piece of rainbow!"
"Do you see the red spots? Did you notice how gamy he was, little brother;
how he played? It is a trout, for sure; a real trout, almost as long as
your hand."
So the two lads tramp along up the stream, chattering as if there were no
rubric of silence in the angler's code. Presently another simple-minded
troutling falls a victim to their unpremeditated art; and they begin
already, being human, to wish for something larger. In the very last pool
that they dare attempt—a dark hole under a steep bank, where the
brook issues from the woods—the boy drags out the hoped-for prize, a
splendid trout, longer than a new lead-pencil. But he feels sure that
there must be another, even larger, in the same place. He swings his line
out carefully over the water, and just as he is about to drop it in, the
little brother, perched on the sloping brink, slips on the smooth
pine-needles, and goes sliddering down into the pool up to his waist. How
he weeps with dismay, and how funnily his dress sticks to him as he crawls
out! But his grief is soon assuaged by the privilege of carrying the trout
strung on an alder twig; and it is a happy, muddy, proud pair of urchins
that climb over the fence out of the field of triumph at the close of the
day.
What does the father say, as he meets them in the road? Is he frowning or
smiling under that big brown beard? You cannot be quite sure. But one
thing is clear: he is as much elated over the capture of the real trout as
any one. He is ready to deal mildly with a little irregularity for the
sake of encouraging pluck and perseverance. Before the three comrades have
reached the hotel, the boy has promised faithfully never to take his
little brother off again without asking leave; and the father has promised
that the boy shall have a real jointed fishing-rod of his own, so that he
will not need to borrow old Horace's pole any more.
At breakfast the next morning the family are to have a private dish; not
an every-day affair of vulgar, bony fish that nurses can catch, but trout—three
of them! But the boy looks up from the table and sees the adored of his
soul, Annie V——, sitting at the other end of the room, and
faring on the common food of mortals. Shall she eat the ordinary breakfast
while he feasts on dainties? Do not other sportsmen send their spoils to
the ladies whom they admire? The waiter must bring a hot plate, and take
this largest trout to Miss V—— (Miss Annie, not her sister—make
no mistake about it).
The face of Augustus is as solemn as an ebony idol while he plays his part
of Cupid's messenger. The fair Annie affects surprise; she accepts the
offering rather indifferently; her curls drop down over her cheeks to
cover some small confusion. But for an instant the corner of her eye
catches the boy's sidelong glance, and she nods perceptibly, whereupon his
mother very inconsiderately calls attention to the fact that yesterday's
escapade has sun-burned his face dreadfully.
Beautiful Annie V——, who, among all the unripened nymphs that
played at hide-and-seek among the maples on the hotel lawn, or waded with
white feet along the yellow beach beyond the point of pines, flying with
merry shrieks into the woods when a boat-load of boys appeared suddenly
around the corner, or danced the lancers in the big, bare parlours before
the grown-up ball began—who in all that joyous, innocent bevy could
be compared with you for charm or daring? How your dark eyes sparkled, and
how the long brown ringlets tossed around your small head, when you stood
up that evening, slim and straight, and taller by half a head than your
companions, in the lamp-lit room where the children were playing forfeits,
and said, "There is not one boy here that DARES to kiss ME!" Then you ran
out on the dark porch, where the honeysuckle vines grew up the tall, inane
Corinthian pillars.
Did you blame the boy for following? And were you very angry, indeed,
about what happened,—until you broke out laughing at his cravat,
which had slipped around behind his ear? That was the first time he ever
noticed how much sweeter the honeysuckle smells at night than in the day.
It was his entrance examination in the school of nature—human and
otherwise. He felt that there was a whole continent of newly discovered
poetry within him, and worshipped his Columbus disguised in curls. Your
boy is your true idealist, after all, although (or perhaps because) he is
still uncivilised.
II.
The arrival of the rod, in four joints, with an extra tip, a brass reel,
and the other luxuries for which a true angler would willingly exchange
the necessaries of life, marked a new epoch in the boy's career. At the
uplifting of that wand, as if it had been in the hand of another Moses,
the waters of infancy rolled back, and the way was opened into the
promised land, whither the tyrant nurses, with all their proud array of
baby-chariots, could not follow. The way was open, but not by any means
dry. One of the first events in the dispensation of the rod was the
purchase of a pair of high rubber boots. Inserted in this armour of modern
infantry, and transfigured with delight, the boy clumped through all the
little rivers within a circuit of ten miles from Caldwell, and began to
learn by parental example the yet unmastered art of complete angling.
But because some of the streams were deep and strong, and his legs were
short and slender, and his ambition was even taller than his boots, the
father would sometimes take him up pickaback, and wade along carefully
through the perilous places—which are often, in this world, the very
places one longs to fish in. So, in your remembrance, you can see the
little rubber boots sticking out under the father's arms, and the rod
projecting over his head, and the bait dangling down unsteadily into the
deep holes, and the delighted boy hooking and playing and basketing his
trout high in the air. How many of our best catches in life are made from
some one else's shoulders!
From this summer the whole earth became to the boy, as Tennyson describes
the lotus country, "a land of streams." In school-days and in town he
acknowledged the sway of those mysterious and irresistible forces which
produce tops at one season, and marbles at another, and kites at another,
and bind all boyish hearts to play mumble-the-peg at the due time more
certainly than the stars are bound to their orbits. But when vacation
came, with its annual exodus from the city, there was only one sign in the
zodiac, and that was Pisces.
No country seemed to him tolerable without trout, and no landscape
beautiful unless enlivened by a young river. Among what delectable
mountains did those watery guides lead his vagrant steps, and with what
curious, mixed, and sometimes profitable company did they make him
familiar!
There was one exquisite stream among the Alleghanies, called Lycoming
Creek, beside which the family spent a summer in a decadent inn, kept by a
tremulous landlord who was always sitting on the steps of the porch, and
whose most memorable remark was that he had "a misery in his stomach."
This form of speech amused the boy, but he did not in the least comprehend
it. It was the description of an unimaginable experience in a region which
was as yet known to him only as the seat of pleasure. He did not
understand how any one could be miserable when he could catch trout from
his own dooryard.
The big creek, with its sharp turns from side to side of the valley, its
hemlock-shaded falls in the gorge, and its long, still reaches in the
"sugar-bottom," where the maple-trees grew as if in an orchard, and the
superfluity of grasshoppers made the trout fat and dainty, was too wide to
fit the boy. But nature keeps all sizes in her stock, and a smaller
stream, called Rocky Run, came tumbling down opposite the inn, as if made
to order for juvenile use.
How well you can follow it, through the old pasture overgrown with alders,
and up past the broken-down mill-dam and the crumbling sluice, into the
mountain-cleft from which it leaps laughing! The water, except just after
a rain-storm, is as transparent as glass—old-fashioned window-glass,
I mean, in small panes, with just a tinge of green in it, like the air in
a grove of young birches. Twelve feet down in the narrow chasm below the
falls, where the water is full of tiny bubbles, like Apollinaris, you can
see the trout poised, with their heads up-stream, motionless, but
quivering a little, as if they were strung on wires.
The bed of the stream has been scooped out of the solid rock. Here and
there banks of sand have been deposited, and accumulations of loose stone
disguise the real nature of the channel. Great boulders have been rolled
down the alleyway and left where they chanced to stick; the stream must
get around them or under them as best it can. But there are other places
where everything has been swept clean; nothing remains but the primitive
strata, and the flowing water merrily tickles the bare ribs of mother
earth. Whirling stones, in the spring floods, have cut well-holes in the
rock, as round and even as if they had been made with a drill, and
sometimes you can see the very stone that sunk the well lying at the
bottom. There are long, straight, sloping troughs through which the water
runs like a mill-race. There are huge basins into which the water rumbles
over a ledge, as if some one were pouring it very steadily out of a
pitcher, and from which it glides away without a ripple, flowing over a
smooth pavement of rock which shelves down from the shallow foot to the
deep head of the pool.
The boy wonders how far he dare wade out along that slippery floor. The
water is within an inch of his boot-tops now. But the slope seems very
even, and just beyond his reach a good fish is rising. Only one step more,
and then, like the wicked man in the psalm, his feet begin to slide.
Slowly, and standing bolt upright, with the rod held high above his head,
as if it must on no account get wet, he glides forward up to his neck in
the ice-cold bath, gasping with amazement. There have been other and more
serious situations in life into which, unless I am mistaken, you have made
an equally unwilling and embarrassed entrance, and in which you have been
surprised to find yourself not only up to your neck, but over,—and
you are a lucky man if you have had the presence of mind to stand still
for a moment, before wading out, and make sure at least of the fish that
tempted you into your predicament.
But Rocky Run, they say, exists no longer. It has been blasted by miners
out of all resemblance to itself, and bewitched into a dingy water-power
to turn wheels for the ugly giant, Trade. It is only in the valley of
remembrance that its current still flows like liquid air; and only in that
country that you can still see the famous men who came and went along the
banks of the Lyocoming when the boy was there.
There was Collins, who was a wondrous adept at﹃daping, dapping, or
dibbling﹄with a grasshopper, and who once brought in a string of trout
which he laid out head to tail on the grass before the house in a line of
beauty forty-seven feet long. A mighty bass voice had this Collins also,
and could sing, "Larboard Watch, Ahoy!" "Down in a Coal-Mine," and other
profound ditties in a way to make all the glasses on the table jingle; but
withal, as you now suspect, rather a fishy character, and undeserving of
the unqualified respect which the boy had for him. And there was Dr.
Romsen, lean, satirical, kindly, a skilful though reluctant physician, who
regarded it as a personal injury if any one in the party fell sick in
summer time; and a passionately unsuccessful hunter, who would sit all
night in the crotch of a tree beside an alleged deer-lick, and come home
perfectly satisfied if he had heard a hedgehog grunt. It was he who called
attention to the discrepancy between the boy's appetite and his size by
saying loudly at a picnic, "I wouldn't grudge you what you eat, my boy, if
I could only see that it did you any good,"—which remark was not
forgiven until the doctor redeemed his reputation by pronouncing a serious
medical opinion, before a council of mothers, to the effect that it did
not really hurt a boy to get his feet wet. That was worthy of Galen in his
most inspired moment. And there was hearty, genial Paul Merit, whose mere
company was an education in good manners, and who could eat eight
hard-boiled eggs for supper without ruffling his equanimity; and the tall,
thin, grinning Major, whom an angry Irishwoman once described as﹃like a
comb, all back and teeth;﹄and many more were the comrades of the boy's
father, all of whom he admired, (and followed when they would let him,)
but none so much as the father himself, because he was the wisest,
kindest, and merriest of all that merry crew, now dispersed to the
uttermost parts of the earth and beyond.
Other streams played a part in the education of that happy boy: the
Kaaterskill, where there had been nothing but the ghosts of trout for the
last thirty years, but where the absence of fish was almost forgotten in
the joy of a first introduction to Dickens, one very showery day, when
dear old Ned Mason built a smoky fire in a cave below Haines's Falls, and,
pulling The Old Curiosity Shop out of his pocket, read aloud about Little
Nell until the tears ran down the cheeks of reader and listener—the
smoke was so thick, you know: and the Neversink, which flows through John
Burroughs's country, and past one house in particular, perched on a high
bluff, where a very dreadful old woman come out and throws stones at﹃city
fellers fishin' through her land﹄(as if any one wanted to touch her land!
It was the water that ran over it, you see, that carried the fish with it,
and they were not hers at all): and the stream at Healing Springs, in the
Virginia mountains, where the medicinal waters flow down into a lovely
wild brook without injuring the health of the trout in the least, and
where the only drawback to the angler's happiness is the abundance of
rattlesnakes—but a boy does not mind such things as that; he feels
as if he were immortal. Over all these streams memory skips lightly, and
strikes a trail through the woods to the Adirondacks, where the boy made
his first acquaintance with navigable rivers,—that is to say, rivers
which are traversed by canoes and hunting-skiffs, but not yet defiled by
steamboats,—and slept, or rather lay awake, for the first time on a
bed of balsam-boughs in a tent.
III.
The promotion from all-day picnics to a two weeks' camping-trip is like
going from school to college. By this time a natural process of evolution
has raised the first rod to something lighter and more flexible,—a
fly-rod, so to speak, but not a bigoted one,—just a serviceable,
unprejudiced article, not above using any kind of bait that may be
necessary to catch the fish. The father has received the new title of
"governor," indicating not less, but more authority, and has called in new
instructors to carry on the boy's education: real Adirondack guides—old
Sam Dunning and one-eyed Enos, the last and laziest of the Saranac
Indians. Better men will be discovered for later trips, but none more
amusing, and none whose woodcraft seems more wonderful than that of this
queerly matched team, as they make the first camp in a pelting rain-storm
on the shore of Big Clear Pond. The pitching of the tents is a lesson in
architecture, the building of the camp-fire a victory over damp nature,
and the supper of potatoes and bacon and fried trout a veritable triumph
of culinary art.
At midnight the rain is pattering persistently on the canvas; the fronts
flaps are closed and tied together; the lingering fire shines through
them, and sends vague shadows wavering up and down: the governor is rolled
up in his blankets, sound asleep. It is a very long night for the boy.
What is that rustling noise outside the tent? Probably some small
creature, a squirrel or a rabbit. Rabbit stew would be good for breakfast.
But it sounds louder now, almost loud enough to be a fox,—there are
no wolves left in the Adirondacks, or at least only a very few. That is
certainly quite a heavy footstep prowling around the provision-box. Could
it be a panther,—they step very softly for their size,—or a
bear perhaps? Sam Dunning told about catching one in a trap just below
here. (Ah, my boy, you will soon learn that there is no spot in all the
forests created by a bountiful Providence so poor as to be without its
bear story.) Where was the rifle put? There it is, at the foot of the
tent-pole. Wonder if it is loaded?
"Waugh-ho! Waugh-ho-o-o-o!"
The boy springs from his blankets like a cat, and peeps out between the
tent-flaps. There sits Enos, in the shelter of a leaning tree by the fire,
with his head thrown back and a bottle poised at his mouth. His lonely eye
is cocked up at a great horned owl on the branch above him. Again the
sudden voice breaks out:
"Whoo! whoo! whoo cooks for you all?"
Enos puts the bottle down, with a grunt, and creeps off to his tent.
"De debbil in dat owl," he mutters. "How he know I cook for dis camp? How
he know 'bout dat bottle? Ugh!"
There are hundreds of pictures that flash into light as the boy goes on
his course, year after year, through the woods. There is the luxurious
camp on Tupper's Lake, with its log cabins in the spruce-grove, and its
regiment of hungry men who ate almost a deer a day; and there is the
little bark shelter on the side of Mount Marcy, where the governor and the
boy, with baskets full of trout from the Opalescent River, are spending
the night, with nothing but a fire to keep them warm. There is the North
Bay at Moosehead, with Joe La Croix (one more Frenchman who thinks he
looks like Napoleon) posing on the rocks beside his canoe, and only
reconciled by his vanity to the wasteful pastime of taking photographs
while the big fish are rising gloriously out at the end of the point.
There is the small spring-hole beside the Saranac River, where Pliny
Robbins and the boy caught twenty-three noble trout, weighing from one to
three pounds apiece, in the middle of a hot August afternoon, and hid
themselves in the bushes when ever they heard a party coming down the
river, because they did not care to attract company; and there are the
Middle Falls, where the governor stood on a long spruce log, taking
two-pound fish with the fly, and stepping out at every cast a little
nearer to the end of the log, until it slowly tipped with him, and he
settled down into the river.
Among such scenes as these the boy pursued his education, learning many
things that are not taught in colleges; learning to take the weather as it
comes, wet or dry, and fortune as it falls, good or bad; learning that a
meal which is scanty fare for one becomes a banquet for two—provided
the other is the right person; learning that there is some skill in
everything, even in digging bait, and that what is called luck consists
chiefly in having your tackle in good order; learning that a man can be
just as happy in a log shanty as in a brownstone mansion, and that the
very best pleasures are those that do not leave a bad taste in the mouth.
And in all this the governor was his best teacher and his closest comrade.
Dear governor, you have gone out of the wilderness now, and your steps
will be no more beside these remembered little rivers—no more,
forever and forever. You will not come in sight around any bend of this
clear Swiftwater stream where you made your last cast; your cheery voice
will never again ring out through the deepening twilight where you are
lingering for your disciple to catch up with you; he will never again hear
you call: "Hallo, my boy! What luck? Time to go home!" But there is a
river in the country where you have gone, is there not?—a river with
trees growing all along it—evergreen trees; and somewhere by those
shady banks, within sound of clear running waters, I think you will be
dreaming and waiting for your boy, if he follows the trail that you have
shown him even to the end.
1895.
AMPERSAND
"It is not the walking merely, it is keeping yourself in tune for a walk,
in the spiritual and bodily condition in which you can find entertainment
and exhilaration in so simple and natural a pastime. You are eligible to
any good fortune when you are in a condition to enjoy a walk. When the air
and water taste sweet to you, how much else will taste sweet! When the
exercise of your limbs affords you pleasure, and the play of your senses
upon the various objects and shows of Nature quickens and stimulates your
spirit, your relation to the world and to yourself is what it should be,—simple,
and direct, and wholesome."—JOHN BURROUGHS: Pepacton.
The right to the name of Ampersand, like the territory of Gaul in those
Commentaries which Julius Caesar wrote for the punishment of schoolboys,
is divided into three parts. It belongs to a mountain, and a lake, and a
little river.
The mountain stands in the heart of the Adirondack country, just near
enough to the thoroughfare of travel for thousands of people to see it
every year, and just far enough from the beaten track to be unvisited
except by a very few of the wise ones, who love to turn aside. Behind the
mountain is the lake, which no lazy man has ever seen. Out of the lake
flows the stream, winding down a long, untrodden forest valley, to join
the Stony Creek waters and empty into the Raquette River.
Which of the three Ampersands has the prior claim to the name, I cannot
tell. Philosophically speaking, the mountain ought to be regarded as the
head of the family, because it was undoubtedly there before the others.
And the lake was probably the next on the ground, because the stream is
its child. But man is not strictly just in his nomenclature; and I
conjecture that the little river, the last-born of the three, was the
first to be christened Ampersand, and then gave its name to its parent and
grand-parent. It is such a crooked stream, so bent and curved and twisted
upon itself, so fond of turning around unexpected corners and sweeping
away in great circles from its direct course, that its first explorers
christened it after the eccentric supernumerary of the alphabet which
appears in the old spelling-books as &— and per se, and.
But in spite of this apparent subordination to the stream in the matter of
a name, the mountain clearly asserts its natural authority. It stands up
boldly; and not only its own lake, but at least three others, the Lower
Saranac, Round Lake, and Lonesome Pond, lie at its foot and acknowledge
its lordship. When the cloud is on its brow, they are dark. When the
sunlight strikes it, they smile. Wherever you may go over the waters of
these lakes you shall see Mount Ampersand looking down at you, and saying
quietly, "This is my domain."
I never look at a mountain which asserts itself in this fashion without
desiring to stand on the top of it. If one can reach the summit, one
becomes a sharer in the dominion. The difficulties in the way only add to
the zest of the victory. Every mountain is, rightly considered, an
invitation to climb. And as I was resting for a month one summer at
Bartlett's, Ampersand challenged me daily.
Did you know Bartlett's in its palmy time? It was the homeliest,
quaintest, coziest place in the Adirondacks. Away back in the ante-bellum
days Virgil Bartlett had come into the woods, and built his house on the
bank of the Saranac River, between the Upper Saranac and Round Lake. It
was then the only dwelling within a circle of many miles. The deer and
bear were in the majority. At night one could sometimes hear the scream of
the panther or the howling of wolves. But soon the wilderness began to
wear the traces of a conventional smile. The desert blossomed a little—if
not as the rose, at least as the gilly-flower. Fields were cleared,
gardens planted; half a dozen log cabins were scattered along the river;
and the old house, having grown slowly and somewhat irregularly for twenty
years, came out, just before the time of which I write, in a modest coat
of paint and a broad-brimmed piazza. But Virgil himself, the creator of
the oasis—well known of hunters and fishermen, dreaded of lazy
guides and quarrelsome lumbermen,—"Virge," the irascible,
kind-hearted, indefatigable, was there no longer. He had made his last
clearing, and fought his last fight; done his last favour to a friend, and
thrown his last adversary out of the tavern door. His last log had gone
down the river. His camp-fire had burned out. Peace to his ashes. His
wife, who had often played the part of Abigail toward travellers who had
unconsciously incurred the old man's mistrust, now reigned in his stead;
and there was great abundance of maple-syrup on every man's flapjack.
The charm of Bartlett's for the angler was the stretch of rapid water in
front of the house. The Saranac River, breaking from its first
resting-place in the Upper Lake, plunged down through a great bed of
rocks, making a chain of short falls and pools and rapids, about half a
mile in length. Here, in the spring and early summer, the speckled trout—brightest
and daintiest of all fish that swim—used to be found in great
numbers. As the season advanced, they moved away into the deep water of
the lakes. But there were always a few stragglers left, and I have taken
them in the rapids at the very end of August. What could be more
delightful than to spend an hour or two, in the early morning or evening
of a hot day, in wading this rushing stream, and casting the fly on its
clear waters? The wind blows softly down the narrow valley, and the trees
nod from the rocks above you. The noise of the falls makes constant music
in your ears. The river hurries past you, and yet it is never gone.
The same foam-flakes seem to be always gliding downward, the same spray
dashing over the stones, the same eddy coiling at the edge of the pool.
Send your fly in under those cedar branches, where the water swirls around
by that old log. Now draw it up toward the foam. There is a sudden gleam
of dull gold in the white water. You strike too soon. Your line comes back
to you. In a current like this, a fish will almost always hook himself.
Try it again. This time he takes the fly fairly, and you have him. It is a
good fish, and he makes the slender rod bend to the strain. He sulks for a
moment as if uncertain what to do, and then with a rush darts into the
swiftest part of the current. You can never stop him there. Let him go.
Keep just enough pressure on him to hold the hook firm, and follow his
troutship down the stream as if he were a salmon. He slides over a little
fall, gleaming through the foam, and swings around in the next pool. Here
you can manage him more easily; and after a few minutes' brilliant play, a
few mad dashes for the current, he comes to the net, and your skilful
guide lands him with a quick, steady sweep of the arm. The scales credit
him with an even pound, and a better fish than this you will hardly take
here in midsummer.
"On my word, master," says the appreciative Venator, in Walton's Angler,
"this is a gallant trout; what shall we do with him?" And honest Piscator,
replies: "Marry! e'en eat him to supper; we'll go to my hostess from
whence we came; she told me, as I was going out of door, that my brother
Peter, [and who is this but Romeyn of Keeseville?] a good angler and a
cheerful companion, had sent word he would lodge there tonight, and bring
a friend with him. My hostess has two beds, and I know you and I have the
best; we'll rejoice with my brother Peter and his friend, tell tales, or
sing ballads, or make a catch, or find some harmless sport to content us,
and pass away a little time without offence to God or man."
Ampersand waited immovable while I passed many days in such innocent and
healthful pleasures as these, until the right day came for the ascent.
Cool, clean, and bright, the crystal morning promised a glorious noon, and
the mountain almost seemed to beckon us to come up higher. The
photographic camera and a trustworthy lunch were stowed away in the
pack-basket. The backboard was adjusted at a comfortable angle in the
stern seat of our little boat. The guide held the little craft steady
while I stepped into my place; then he pushed out into the stream, and we
went swiftly down toward Round Lake.
A Saranac boat is one of the finest things that the skill of man has ever
produced under the inspiration of the wilderness. It is a frail shell, so
light that a guide can carry it on his shoulders with ease, but so
dexterously fashioned that it rides the heaviest waves like a duck, and
slips through the water as if by magic. You can travel in it along the
shallowest rivers and across the broadest lakes, and make forty or fifty
miles a day, if you have a good guide.
Everything depends, in the Adirondacks, as in so many other regions of
life, upon your guide. If he is selfish, or surly, or stupid, you will
have a bad time. But if he is an Adirondacker of the best old-fashioned
type,—now unhappily growing more rare from year to year,—you
will find him an inimitable companion, honest, faithful, skilful and
cheerful. He is as independent as a prince, and the gilded youths and
finicking fine ladies who attempt to patronise him are apt to make but a
sorry show before his solid and undisguised contempt. But deal with him
man to man, and he will give you a friendly, loyal service which money
cannot buy, and teach you secrets of woodcraft and lessons in plain,
self-reliant manhood more valuable than all the learning of the schools.
Such a guide was mine, rejoicing in the Scriptural name of Hosea, but
commonly called, in brevity and friendliness, "Hose."
As we entered Round Lake on this fair morning, its surface was as smooth
and shining as a mirror. It was too early yet for the tide of travel which
sends a score of boats up and down this thoroughfare every day; and from
shore to shore the water was unruffled, except by a flock of sheldrakes
which had been feeding near Plymouth Rock, and now went skittering off
into Weller Bay with a motion between flying and swimming, leaving a long
wake of foam behind them.
At such a time as this you can see the real colour of these Adirondack
lakes. It is not blue, as romantic writers so often describe it, nor
green, like some of those wonderful Swiss lakes; although of course it
reflects the colour of the trees along the shore; and when the wind stirs
it, it gives back the hue of the sky, blue when it is clear, gray when the
clouds are gathering, and sometimes as black as ink under the shadow of
storm. But when it is still, the water itself is like that river which one
of the poets has described as
"Flowing with a smooth brown current."
And in this sheet of burnished bronze the mountains and islands were
reflected perfectly, and the sun shone back from it, not in broken gleams
or a wide lane of light, but like a single ball of fire, moving before us
as we moved.
But stop! What is that dark speck on the water, away down toward Turtle
Point? It has just the shape and size of a deer's head. It seems to move
steadily out into the lake. There is a little ripple, like a wake, behind
it. Hose turns to look at it, and then sends the boat darting in that
direction with long, swift strokes. It is a moment of pleasant excitement,
and we begin to conjecture whether the deer is a buck or a doe, and whose
hounds have driven it in. But when Hose turns to look again, he slackens
his stroke, and says: "I guess we needn't to hurry; he won't get away.
It's astonishin' what a lot of fun a man can get in the course of a
natural life a-chasm' chumps of wood."
We landed on a sand beach at the mouth of a little stream, where a blazed
tree marked the beginning of the Ampersand trail. This line through the
forest was made years ago by that ardent sportsman and lover of the
Adirondacks, Dr. W. W. Ely, of Rochester. Since that time it has been
shortened and improved a little by other travellers, and also not a little
blocked and confused by the lumbermen and the course of Nature. For when
the lumbermen go into the woods, they cut roads in every direction,
leading nowhither, and the unwary wanderer is thereby led aside from the
right way, and entangled in the undergrowth. And as for Nature, she is
entirely opposed to continuance of paths through her forest. She covers
them with fallen leaves, and hides them with thick bushes. She drops great
trees across them, and blots then out with windfalls. But the blazed line—a
succession of broad axe-marks on the trunks of the trees, just high enough
to catch the eye on a level—cannot be so easily obliterated, and
this, after all, is the safest guide through the woods.
Our trail led us at first through a natural meadow, overgrown with
waist-high grass, and very spongy to the tread. Hornet-haunted also was
this meadow, and therefore no place for idle dalliance or unwary
digression, for the sting of the hornet is one of the saddest and most
humiliating surprises of this mortal life.
Then through a tangle of old wood-roads my guide led me safely, and we
struck one of the long ridges which slope gently from the lake to the base
of the mountain. Here walking was comparatively easy, for in the hard-wood
timber there is little underbrush. The massive trunks seemed like pillars
set to uphold the level roof of green. Great yellow birches, shaggy with
age, stretched their knotted arms high above us; sugar-maples stood up
straight and proud under their leafy crowns; and smooth beeches—the
most polished and parklike of all the forest trees—offered
opportunities for the carving of lovers' names in a place where few lovers
ever come.
The woods were quiet. It seemed as if all living creatures had deserted
them. Indeed, if you have spent much time in our Northern forests, you
must have often wondered at the sparseness of life, and felt a sense of
pity for the apparent loneliness of the squirrel that chatters at you as
you pass, or the little bird that hops noiselessly about in the thickets.
The midsummer noontide is an especially silent time. The deer are asleep
in some wild meadow. The partridge has gathered her brood for their midday
nap. The squirrels are perhaps counting over their store of nuts in a
hollow tree, and the hermit-thrush spares his voice until evening. The
woods are close—not cool and fragrant as the foolish romances
describe them—but warm and still; for the breeze which sweeps across
the hilltop and ruffles the lake does not penetrate into these shady
recesses, and therefore all the inhabitants take the noontide as their
hour of rest. Only the big woodpecker—he of the scarlet head and
mighty bill—is indefatigable, and somewhere unseen is﹃tapping the
hollow beech-tree,﹄while a wakeful little bird,—I guess it is the
black-throated green warbler,—prolongs his dreamy, listless ditty,—'te-de-terit-sca,—'te-de-us—wait.
After about an hour of easy walking, our trail began to ascend more
sharply. We passed over the shoulder of a ridge and around the edge of a
fire-slash, and then we had the mountain fairly before us. Not that we
could see anything of it, for the woods still shut us in, but the path
became very steep, and we knew that it was a straight climb; not up and
down and round about did this most uncompromising trail proceed, but right
up, in a direct line for the summit.
Now this side of Ampersand is steeper than any Gothic roof I have ever
seen, and withal very much encumbered with rocks and ledges and fallen
trees. There were places where we had to haul ourselves up by roots and
branches, and places where we had to go down on our hands and knees to
crawl under logs. It was breathless work, but not at all dangerous or
difficult. Every step forward was also a step upward; and as we stopped to
rest for a moment, we could see already glimpses of the lake below us. But
at these I did not much care to look, for I think it is a pity to spoil
the surprise of a grand view by taking little snatches of it beforehand.
It is better to keep one's face set to the mountain, and then, coming out
from the dark forest upon the very summit, feel the splendour of the
outlook flash upon one like a revelation.
The character of the woods through which we were now passing was entirely
different from those of the lower levels. On these steep places the birch
and maple will not grow, or at least they occur but sparsely. The higher
slopes and sharp ridges of the mountains are always covered with soft-wood
timber. Spruce and hemlock and balsam strike their roots among the rocks,
and find a hidden nourishment. They stand close together; thickets of
small trees spring up among the large ones; from year to year the great
trunks are falling one across another, and the undergrowth is thickening
around them, until a spruce forest seems to be almost impassable. The
constant rain of needles and the crumbling of the fallen trees form a
rich, brown mould, into which the foot sinks noiselessly. Wonderful beds
of moss, many feet in thickness, and softer than feathers, cover the rocks
and roots. There are shadows never broken by the sun, and dark, cool
springs of icy water hidden away in the crevices. You feel a sense of
antiquity here which you can never feel among the maples and birches.
Longfellow was right when he filled his forest primeval with "murmuring
pines and hemlocks."
The higher one climbs, the darker and gloomier and more rugged the
vegetation becomes. The pine-trees soon cease to follow you; the hemlocks
disappear, and the balsams can go no farther. Only the hardy spruce keeps
on bravely, rough and stunted, with branches matted together and pressed
down flat by the weight of the winter's snow, until finally, somewhere
about the level of four thousand feet above the sea, even this bold
climber gives out, and the weather-beaten rocks of the summit are clad
only with mosses and Alpine plants.
Thus it is with mountains, as perhaps with men, a mark of superior dignity
to be naturally bald.
Ampersand, falling short by a thousand feet of the needful height, cannot
claim this distinction. But what Nature has denied, human labour has
supplied. Under the direction of the Adirondack Survey, some years ago,
several acres of trees were cut from the summit; and when we emerged,
after the last sharp scramble, upon the very crest of the mountain, we
were not shut in by a dense thicket, but stood upon a bare ridge of
granite in the centre of a ragged clearing.
I shut my eyes for a moment, drew a few long breaths of the glorious
breeze, and then looked out upon a wonder and a delight beyond
description.
A soft, dazzling splendour filled the air. Snowy banks and drifts of cloud
were floating slowly over a wide and wondrous land. Vast sweeps of forest,
shining waters, mountains near and far, the deepest green and the palest
blue, changing colours and glancing lights, and all so silent, so strange,
so far away, that it seemed like the landscape of a dream. One almost
feared to speak, lest it should vanish.
Right below us the Lower Saranac and Lonesome Pond, Round Lake and the
Weller Ponds, were spread out like a map. Every point and island was
clearly marked. We could follow the course of the Saranac River in all its
curves and windings, and see the white tents of the hay-makers on the wild
meadows. Far away to the northeast stretched the level fields of
Bloomingdale. But westward all was unbroken wilderness, a great sea of
woods as far as the eye could reach. And how far it can reach from a
height like this! What a revelation of the power of sight! That faint blue
outline far in the north was Lyon Mountain, nearly thirty miles away as
the crow flies. Those silver gleams a little nearer were the waters of St.
Regis. The Upper Saranac was displayed in all its length and breadth, and
beyond it the innumerable waters of Fish Creek were tangled among the dark
woods. The long ranges of the hills about the Jordan bounded the western
horizon, and on the southwest Big Tupper Lake was sleeping at the base of
Mount Morris. Looking past the peak of Stony Creek Mountain, which rose
sharp and distinct in a line with Ampersand, we could trace the path of
the Raquette River from the distant waters of Long Lake down through its
far-stretched valley, and catch here and there a silvery link of its
current.
But when we turned to the south and east, how wonderful and how different
was the view! Here was no widespread and smiling landscape with gleams of
silver scattered through it, and soft blue haze resting upon its fading
verge, but a wild land of mountains, stern, rugged, tumultuous, rising one
beyond another like the waves of a stormy ocean,—Ossa piled upin
Pelion,—Mcintyre's sharp peak, and the ragged crest of the Gothics,
and, above all, Marcy's dome-like head, raised just far enough above the
others to assert his royal right as monarch of the Adirondacks.
But grandest of all, as seen from this height, was Mount Seward,—a
solemn giant of a mountain, standing apart from the others, and looking us
full in the face. He was clothed from base to summit in a dark, unbroken
robe of forest. Ou-kor-lah, the Indians called him—the Great Eye;
and he seemed almost to frown upon us in defiance. At his feet, so
straight below us that it seemed almost as if we could cast a stone into
it, lay the wildest and most beautiful of all the Adirondack waters—Ampersand
Lake.
On its shore, some five-and-twenty years ago, the now almost forgotten
Adirondack Club had their shanty—the successor of﹃the Philosophers'
Camp﹄on Follensbee Pond. Agassiz, Appleton, Norton, Emerson, Lowell,
Hoar, Gray, John Holmes, and Stillman, were among the company who made
their resting-place under the shadow of Mount Seward. They had bought a
tract of forest land completely encircling the pond, cut a rough road to
it through the woods, and built a comfortable log cabin, to which they
purposed to return summer after summer. But the civil war broke out, with
all its terrible excitement and confusion of hurrying hosts: the club
existed but for two years, and the little house in the wilderness was
abandoned. In 1878, when I spent three weeks at Ampersand, the cabin was
in ruins, and surrounded by an almost impenetrable growth of bushes. The
only philosophers to be seen were a family of what the guides quaintly
call "quill pigs." The roof had fallen to the ground; raspberry-bushes
thrust themselves through the yawning crevices between the logs; and in
front of the sunken door-sill lay a rusty, broken iron stove, like a
dismantled altar on which the fire had gone out forever.
After we had feasted upon the view as long as we dared, counted the lakes
and streams, and found that we could see without a glass more than thirty,
and recalled the memories of "good times" which came to us from almost
every point of the compass, we unpacked the camera, and proceeded to take
some pictures.
If you are a photographer, and have anything of the amateur's passion for
your art, you will appreciate my pleasure and my anxiety. Never before, so
far as I knew, had a camera been set up on Ampersand. I had but eight
plates with me. The views were all very distant and all at a downward
angle. The power of the light at this elevation was an unknown quantity.
And the wind was sweeping vigorously across the open summit of the
mountain. I put in my smallest stop, and prepared for short exposures.
My instrument was a thing called a Tourograph, which differs from most
other cameras in having the plate-holder on top of the box. The plates are
dropped into a groove below, and then moved into focus, after which the
cap is removed and the exposure made.
I set my instrument for Ampersand Pond, sighted the picture through the
ground glass, and measured the focus. Then I waited for a quiet moment,
dropped the plate, moved it carefully forward to the proper mark, and went
around to take off the cap. I found that I already had it in my hand, and
the plate had been exposed for about thirty seconds with a sliding focus!
I expostulated with myself. I said:﹃You are excited; you are stupid; you
are unworthy of the name of photographer. Light-writer! You ought to write
with a whitewash-brush!﹄The reproof was effectual, and from that moment
all went well. The plates dropped smoothly, the camera was steady, the
exposure was correct. Six good pictures were made, to recall, so far as
black and white could do it, the delights of that day.
It has been my good luck to climb many of the peaks of the Adirondacks—Dix,
the Dial, Hurricane, the Giant of the Valley, Marcy, and Whiteface—but
I do not think the outlook from any of them is so wonderful and lovely as
that from little Ampersand: and I reckon among my most valuable chattels
the plates of glass on which the sun has traced for me (who cannot draw)
the outlines of that loveliest landscape.
The downward journey was swift. We halted for an hour or two beside a
trickling spring, a few rods below the summit, to eat our lunch. Then,
jumping, running, and sometimes sliding, we made the descent, passed in
safety by the dreaded lair of the hornet, and reached Bartlett's as the
fragrance of the evening pancake was softly diffused through the twilight.
Mark that day, Memory, with a double star in your catalogue!
1895.
A HANDFUL OF HEATHER
"Scotland is the home of romance because it is the home of Scott, Burns,
Black, Macdonald, Stevenson, and Barrie—and of thousands of men like
that old Highlander in kilts on the tow-path, who loves what they have
written. I would wager he has a copy of Burns in his sporran, and has
quoted him half a dozen times to the grim Celt who is walking with him.
Those old boys don't read for excitement or knowledge, but because they
love their land and their people and their religion—and their great
writers simply express their emotions for them in words they can
understand. You and I come over here, with thousands of our countrymen, to
borrow their emotions."—ROBERT BRIDGES: Overheard in Arcady.
My friend the Triumphant Democrat, fiercest of radicals and kindest of
men, expresses his scorn for monarchical institutions (and his invincible
love for his native Scotland) by tenanting, summer after summer, a famous
castle among the heathery Highlands. There he proclaims the most
uncompromising Americanism in a speech that grows more broadly Scotch with
every week of his emancipation from the influence of the clipped,
commercial accent of New York, and casts contempt on feudalism by playing
the part of lord of the manor to such a perfection of high-handed
beneficence that the people of the glen are all become his clansmen, and
his gentle lady would be the patron saint of the district—if the
republican theology of Scotland could only admit saints among the elect.
Every year he sends trophies of game to his friends across the sea—birds
that are as toothsome and wild-flavoured as if they had not been hatched
under the tyranny of the game-laws. He has a pleasant trick of making them
grateful to the imagination as well as to the palate by packing them in
heather. I'll warrant that Aaron's rod bore no bonnier blossoms than these
stiff little bushes—and none more magical. For every time I take up
a handful of them they transport me to the Highlands, and send me tramping
once more, with knapsack and fishing-rod, over the braes and down the
burns.
I. BELL-HEATHER.
Some of my happiest meanderings in Scotland have been taken under the lead
of a book. Indeed, for travel in a strange country there can be no better
courier. Not a guide-book, I mean, but a real book, and, by preference, a
novel.
Fiction, like wine, tastes best in the place where it was grown. And the
scenery of a foreign land (including architecture, which is artificial
landscape) grows less dreamlike and unreal to our perception when we
people it with familiar characters from our favourite novels. Even on a
first journey we feel ourselves among old friends. Thus to read Romola in
Florence, and Les Miserables in Paris, and Lorna Doone on Exmoor, and The
Heart of Midlothian in Edinburgh, and David Balfour in the Pass of
Glencoe, and The Pirate in the Shetland Isles, is to get a new sense of
the possibilities of life. All these things have I done with much inward
contentment; and other things of like quality have I yet in store; as, for
example, the conjunction of The Bonnie Brier-Bush with Drumtochty, and The
Little Minister with Thrums, and The Raiders with Galloway. But I never
expect to pass pleasanter days than those I spent with A Princess of Thule
among the Hebrides.
For then, to begin with, I was young; which is an unearned increment of
delight sure to be confiscated by the envious years and never regained.
But even youth itself was not to be compared with the exquisite felicity
of being deeply and desperately in love with Sheila, the clear-eyed
heroine of that charming book. In this innocent passion my gray-haired
comrades, Howard Crosby, the Chancellor of the University of New York, and
my father, an ex-Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, were
ardent but generous rivals.
How great is the joy and how fascinating the pursuit of such an ethereal
affection! It enlarges the heart without embarrassing the conscience. It
is a cup of pure gladness with no bitterness in its dregs. It spends the
present moment with a free hand, and yet leaves no undesirable mortgage
upon the future. King Arthur, the founder of the Round Table, expressed a
conviction, according to Tennyson, that the most important element in a
young knight's education is "the maiden passion for a maid." Surely the
safest form in which this course in the curriculum may be taken is by
falling in love with a girl in a book. It is the only affair of the kind
into which a young fellow can enter without responsibility, and out of
which he can always emerge, when necessary, without discredit. And as for
the old fellow who still keeps up this education of the heart, and
worships his heroine with the ardour of a John Ridd and the fidelity of a
Henry Esmond, I maintain that he is exempt from all the penalties of
declining years. The man who can love a girl in a book may be old, but
never aged.
So we sailed, lovers all three, among the Western Isles, and whatever ship
it was that carried us, her figurehead was always the Princess Sheila.
Along the ruffled blue waters of the sounds and lochs that wind among the
roots of unpronounceable mountains, and past the dark hills of Skye, and
through the unnumbered flocks of craggy islets where the sea-birds nest,
the spell of the sweet Highland maid drew us, and we were pilgrims to the
Ultima Thule where she lived and reigned.
The Lewis, with its tail-piece, the Harris, is quite a sizable island to
be appended to such a country as Scotland. It is a number of miles long,
and another number of miles wide, and it has a number of thousand
inhabitants—I should say as many as three-quarters of an inhabitant
to the square mile—and the conditions of agriculture and the
fisheries are extremely interesting and quarrelsome. All these I duly
studied at the time, and reported in a series of intolerably dull letters
to the newspaper which supplied a financial basis for my sentimental
journey. They are full of information; but I have been amused to note,
after these many years, how wide they steer of the true motive and
interest of the excursion. There is not even a hint of Sheila in any of
them. Youth, after all, is a shamefaced and secretive season; like the
fringed polygala, it hides its real blossom underground.
It was Sheila's dark-blue dress and sailor hat with the white feather that
we looked for as we loafed through the streets of Stornoway, that quaint
metropolis of the herring-trade, where strings of fish alternated with
boxes of flowers in the windows, and handfuls of fish were spread upon the
roofs to dry just as the sliced apples are exposed upon the kitchen-sheds
of New England in September, and dark-haired women were carrying great
creels of fish on their shoulders, and groups of sunburned men were
smoking among the fishing-boats on the beach and talking about fish, and
sea-gulls were floating over the houses with their heads turning from side
to side and their bright eyes peering everywhere for unconsidered trifles
of fish, and the whole atmosphere of the place, physical, mental, and
moral, was pervaded with fish. It was Sheila's soft, sing-song Highland
speech that we heard through the long, luminous twilight in the pauses of
that friendly chat on the balcony of the little inn where a good fortune
brought us acquainted with Sam Bough, the mellow Edinburgh painter. It was
Sheila's low sweet brow, and long black eyelashes, and tender blue eyes,
that we saw before us as we loitered over the open moorland, a far-rolling
sea of brown billows, reddened with patches of bell-heather, and
brightened here and there with little lakes lying wide open to the sky.
And were not these peat-cutters, with the big baskets on their backs,
walking in silhouette along the ridges, the people that Sheila loved and
tried to help; and were not these crofters' cottages with thatched roofs,
like beehives, blending almost imperceptibly with the landscape, the
dwellings into which she planned to introduce the luxury of windows; and
were not these Standing Stones of Callernish, huge tombstones of a
vanished religion, the roofless temple from which the Druids paid their
westernmost adoration to the setting sun as he sank into the Atlantic—was
not this the place where Sheila picked the bunch of wild flowers and gave
it to her lover? There is nothing in history, I am sure, half so real to
us as some of the things in fiction. The influence of an event upon our
character is little affected by considerations as to whether or not it
ever happened.
There were three churches in Stornoway, all Presbyterian, of course, and
therefore full of pious emulation. The idea of securing an American
preacher for an August Sabbath seemed to fall upon them simultaneously,
and to offer the prospect of novelty without too much danger. The brethren
of the U. P. congregation, being a trifle more gleg than the others,
arrived first at the inn, and secured the promise of a morning sermon from
Chancellor Howard Crosby. The session of the Free Kirk came in a body a
little later, and to them my father pledged himself for the evening
sermon. The senior elder of the Established Kirk, a snuff-taking man and
very deliberate, was the last to appear, and to his request for an
afternoon sermon there was nothing left to offer but the services of the
young probationer in theology. I could see that it struck him as a
perilous adventure. Questions about "the fundamentals" glinted in his
watery eye. He crossed and uncrossed his legs with solemnity, and blew his
nose so frequently in a huge red silk handkerchief that it seemed like a
signal of danger. At last he unburdened himself of his hesitations.
"Ah'm not saying that the young man will not be orthodox—ahem! But
ye know, sir, in the Kirk, we are not using hymns, but just the pure
Psawms of Daffit, in the meetrical fairsion. And ye know, sir, they are
ferry tifficult in the reating, whatefer, for a young man, and one that
iss a stranger. And if his father will just be coming with him in the
pulpit, to see that nothing iss said amiss, that will be ferry comforting
to the congregation."
So the dear governor swallowed his laughter gravely and went surety for
his son. They appeared together in the church, a barnlike edifice, with
great galleries half-way between the floor and the roof. Still higher up,
the pulpit stuck like a swallow's nest against the wall. The two ministers
climbed the precipitous stair and found themselves in a box so narrow that
one must stand perforce, while the other sat upon the only seat. In this
"ride and tie" fashion they went through the service. When it was time to
preach, the young man dropped the doctrines as discreetly as possible upon
the upturned countenances beneath him. I have forgotten now what it was
all about, but there was a quotation from the Song of Solomon, ending with
"Sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely." And when it came to
that, the probationer's eyes (if the truth must be told) went searching
through that sea of faces for one that should be familiar to his heart,
and to which he might make a personal application of the Scripture passage—even
the face of Sheila.
There are rivers in the Lewis, at least two of them, and on one of these
we had the offer of a rod for a day's fishing. Accordingly we cast lots,
and the lot fell upon the youngest, and I went forth with a tall,
red-legged gillie, to try for my first salmon. The Whitewater came singing
down out of the moorland into a rocky valley, and there was a merry curl
of air on the pools, and the silver fish were leaping from the stream. The
gillie handled the big rod as if it had been a fairy's wand, but to me it
was like a giant's spear. It was a very different affair from fishing with
five ounces of split bamboo on a Long Island trout-pond. The monstrous
fly, like an awkward bird, went fluttering everywhere but in the right
direction. It was the mercy of Providence that preserved the gillie's
life. But he was very patient and forbearing, leading me on from one pool
to another, as I spoiled the water and snatched the hook out of the mouth
of rising fish, until at last we found a salmon that knew even less about
the niceties of salmon-fishing than I did. He seized the fly firmly,
before I could pull it away, and then, in a moment, I found myself
attached to a creature with the strength of a whale and the agility of a
flying-fish. He led me rushing up and down the bank like a madman. He
played on the surface like a whirlwind, and sulked at the bottom like a
stone. He meditated, with ominous delay, in the middle of the deepest
pool, and then, darting across the river, flung himself clean out of water
and landed far up on the green turf of the opposite shore. My heart melted
like a snowflake in the sea, and I thought that I had lost him forever.
But he rolled quietly back into the water with the hook still set in his
nose. A few minutes afterwards I brought him within reach of the gaff, and
my first salmon was glittering on the grass beside me.
Then I remembered that William Black had described this very fish in A
Princess of Thule. I pulled the book from my pocket, and, lighting a pipe,
sat down to read that delightful chapter over again. The breeze played
softly down the valley. The warm sunlight was filled with the musical hum
of insects and the murmur of falling waters. I thought how much pleasanter
it would have been to learn salmon-fishing, as Black's hero did, from the
Maid of Borva, than from a red-headed gillie. But, then, his salmon, after
leaping across the stream, got away; whereas mine was safe. A man cannot
have everything in this world. I picked a spray of rosy bell-heather from
the bank of the river, and pressed it between the leaves of the book in
memory of Sheila.
II. COMMON HEATHER.
It is not half as far from Albany to Aberdeen as it is from New York to
London. In fact, I venture to say that an American on foot will find
himself less a foreigner in Scotland than in any other country in the Old
World. There is something warm and hospitable—if he knew the
language well enough he would call it couthy—in the greeting that he
gets from the shepherd on the moor, and the conversation that he holds
with the farmer's wife in the stone cottage, where he stops to ask for a
drink of milk and a bit of oat-cake. He feels that there must be a drop of
Scotch somewhere in his mingled blood, or at least that the texture of his
thought and feelings has been partly woven on a Scottish loom—perhaps
the Shorter Catechism, or Robert Burns's poems, or the romances of Sir
Walter Scott. At all events, he is among a kindred and comprehending
people. They do not speak English in the same way that he does—through
the nose—-but they think very much more in his mental dialect than
the English do. They are independent and wide awake, curious and full of
personal interest. The wayside mind in Inverness or Perth runs more to
muscle and less to fat, has more active vanity and less passive pride, is
more inquisitive and excitable and sympathetic—in short, to use a
symbolist's description, it is more apt to be red-headed—than in
Surrey or Somerset. Scotchmen ask more questions about America, but fewer
foolish ones. You will never hear them inquiring whether there is any good
bear-hunting in the neighbourhood of Boston, or whether Shakespeare is
much read in the States. They have a healthy respect for our institutions,
and have quite forgiven (if, indeed, they ever resented) that little
affair in 1776. They are all born Liberals. When a Scotchman says he is a
Conservative, it only means that he is a Liberal with hesitations.
And yet in North Britain the American pedestrian will not find that amused
and somewhat condescending toleration for his peculiarities, that placid
willingness to make the best of all his vagaries of speech and conduct,
that he finds in South Britain. In an English town you may do pretty much
what you like on a Sunday, even to the extent of wearing a billycock hat
to church, and people will put up with it from a countryman of Buffalo
Bill and the Wild West Show. But in a Scotch village, if you whistle in
the street on a Lord's Day, though it be a Moody and Sankey tune, you will
be likely to get, as I did, an admonition from some long-legged, grizzled
elder:
"Young man, do ye no ken it's the Sawbath Day?"
I recognised the reproof of the righteous, an excellent oil which doth not
break the head, and took it gratefully at the old man's hands. For did it
not prove that he regarded me as a man and a brother, a creature capable
of being civilised and saved?
It was in the gray town of Dingwall that I had this bit of pleasant
correction, as I was on the way to a fishing tramp through
Sutherlandshire. This northwest corner of Great Britain is the best place
in the whole island for a modest and impecunious angler. There are, or
there were a few years ago, wild lochs and streams which are still
practically free, and a man who is content with small things can pick up
some very pretty sport from the highland inns, and make a good basket of
memorable experiences every week.
The inn at Lairg, overlooking the narrow waters of Loch Shin, was
embowered in honeysuckles, and full of creature comfort. But there were
too many other men with rods there to suit my taste.﹃The feesh in this
loch,﹄said the boatman, "iss not so numerous ass the feeshermen, but more
wise. There iss not one of them that hass not felt the hook, and they know
ferry well what side of the fly has the forkit tail."
At Altnaharra, in the shadow of Ben Clebrig, there was a cozy little house
with good fare, and abundant trout-fishing in Loch Naver and Loch Meadie.
It was there that I fell in with a wandering pearl-peddler who gathered
his wares from the mussels in the moorland streams. They were not of the
finest quality, these Scotch pearls, but they had pretty, changeable
colours of pink and blue upon them, like the iridescent light that plays
over the heather in the long northern evenings. I thought it must be a
hard life for the man, wading day after day in the ice-cold water, and
groping among the coggly, sliddery stones for the shellfish, and cracking
open perhaps a thousand before he could find one pearl. "Oh, yess," said
be, "and it iss not an easy life, and I am not saying that it will be so
warm and dry ass liffing in a rich house. But it iss the life that I am
fit for, and I hef my own time and my thoughts to mysel', and that is a
ferry goot thing; and then, sir, I haf found the Pearl of Great Price, and
I think upon that day and night."
Under the black, shattered peaks of Ben Laoghal, where I saw an eagle
poising day after day as if some invisible centripetal force bound him
forever to that small circle of air, there was a loch with plenty of brown
trout and a few salmo ferox; and down at Tongue there was a little river
where the sea-trout sometimes come up with the tide.
Here I found myself upon the north coast, and took the road eastward
between the mountains and the sea. It was a beautiful region of
desolation. There were rocky glens cutting across the road, and
occasionally a brawling stream ran down to the salt water, breaking the
line of cliffs with a little bay and a half-moon of yellow sand. The
heather covered all the hills. There were no trees, and but few houses.
The chief signs of human labour were the rounded piles of peat, and the
square cuttings in the moor marking the places where the subterranean
wood-choppers had gathered their harvests. The long straths were once
cultivated, and every patch of arable land had its group of cottages full
of children. The human harvest has always been the richest and most
abundant that is raised in the Highlands; but unfortunately the supply
exceeded the demand; and so the crofters were evicted, and great flocks of
sheep were put in possession of the land; and now the sheep-pastures have
been changed into deer-forests; and far and wide along the valleys and
across the hills there is not a trace of habitation, except the heaps of
stones and the clumps of straggling bushes which mark the sites of lost
homes. But what is one country's loss is another country's gain. Canada
and the United States are infinitely the richer for the tough, strong,
fearless, honest men that were dispersed from these lonely straths to make
new homes across the sea.
It was after sundown when I reached the straggling village of Melvich, and
the long day's journey had left me weary. But the inn, with its
red-curtained windows, looked bright and reassuring. Thoughts of dinner
and a good bed comforted my spirit—prematurely. For the inn was
full. There were but five bedrooms and two parlours. The gentlemen who had
the neighbouring shootings occupied three bedrooms and a parlour; the
other two bedrooms had just been taken by the English fishermen who had
passed me in the road an hour ago in the mail-coach (oh! why had I not
suspected that treacherous vehicle?); and the landlord and his wife
assured me, with equal firmness and sympathy, that there was not another
cot or pair of blankets in the house. I believed them, and was sinking
into despair when Sandy M'Kaye appeared on the scene as my angel of
deliverance. Sandy was a small, withered, wiry man, dressed in rusty gray,
with an immense white collar thrusting out its points on either side of
his chin, and a black stock climbing over the top of it. I guessed from
his speech that he had once lived in the lowlands. He had hoped to be
engaged as a gillie by the shooting party, but had been disappointed. He
had wanted to be taken by the English fishermen, but another and younger
man had stepped in before him. Now Sandy saw in me his Predestinated
Opportunity, and had no idea of letting it post up the road that night to
the next village. He cleared his throat respectfully and cut into the
conversation.
"Ah'm thinkin' the gentleman micht find a coomfortaible lodgin' wi' the
weedow Macphairson a wee bittie doon the road. Her dochter is awa' in
Ameriky, an' the room is a verra fine room, an' it is a peety to hae it
stannin' idle, an' ye wudna mind the few steps to and fro tae yir meals
here, sir, wud ye? An' if ye 'ill gang wi' me efter dinner, 'a 'll be
prood to shoo ye the hoose."
So, after a good dinner with the English fishermen, Sandy piloted me down
the road through the thickening dusk. I remember a hoodie crow flew close
behind us with a choking, ghostly cough that startled me. The Macpherson
cottage was a snug little house of stone, with fuchsias and roses growing
in the front yard: and the widow was a douce old lady, with a face like a
winter apple in the month of April, wrinkled, but still rosy. She was a
little doubtful about entertaining strangers, but when she heard I was
from America she opened the doors of her house and her heart. And when, by
a subtle cross examination that would have been a credit to the wife of a
Connecticut deacon, she discovered the fact that her lodger was a
minister, she did two things, with equal and immediate fervour; she
brought out the big Bible and asked him to conduct evening worship, and
she produced a bottle of old Glenlivet and begged him to "guard against
takkin' cauld by takkin' a glass of speerits."
It was a very pleasant fortnight at Melvich. Mistress Macpherson was so
motherly that "takkin' cauld" was reduced to a permanent impossibility.
The other men at the inn proved to be very companionable fellows, quite
different from the monsters of insolence that my anger had imagined in the
moment of disappointment. The shooting party kept the table abundantly
supplied with grouse and hares and highland venison; and there was a piper
to march up and down before the window and play while we ate dinner—a
very complimentary and disquieting performance. But there are many
occasions in life when pride can be entertained only at the expense of
comfort.
Of course Sandy was my gillie. It was a fine sight to see him exhibiting
the tiny American trout-rod, tied with silk ribbons in its delicate case,
to the other gillies and exulting over them. Every morning he would lead
me away through the heather to some lonely loch on the shoulders of the
hills, from which we could look down upon the Northern Sea and the blue
Orkney Isles far away across the Pentland Firth. Sometimes we would find a
loch with a boat on it, and drift up and down, casting along the shores.
Sometimes, in spite of Sandy's confident predictions, no boat could be
found, and then I must put on the Mackintosh trousers and wade out over my
hips into the water, and circumambulate the pond, throwing the flies as
far as possible toward the middle, and feeling my way carefully along the
bottom with the long net-handle, while Sandy danced on the bank in an
agony of apprehension lest his Predestinated Opportunity should step into
a deep hole and be drowned. It was a curious fact in natural history that
on the lochs with boats the trout were in the shallow water, but in the
boatless lochs they were away out in the depths.﹃Juist the total
depraivity o' troots,﹄said Sandy, "an' terrible fateegin'."
Sandy had an aversion to commit himself to definite statements on any
subject not theological. If you asked him how long the morning's tramp
would be, it was "no verra long, juist a bit ayant the hull yonner." And
if, at the end of the seventh mile, you complained that it was much too
far, he would never do more than admit that "it micht be shorter." If you
called him to rejoice over a trout that weighed close upon two pounds, he
allowed that it was﹃no bad—but there's bigger anes i' the loch gin
we cud but wile them oot.﹄And at lunch-time, when we turned out a full
basket of shining fish on the heather, the most that he would say, while
his eyes snapped with joy and pride, was, "Aweel, we canna complain, the
day."
Then he would gather an armful of dried heather-stems for kindling, and
dig out a few roots and crooked limbs of the long-vanished forest from the
dry, brown, peaty soil, and make our campfire of prehistoric wood—just
for the pleasant, homelike look of the blaze—and sit down beside it
to eat our lunch. Heat is the least of the benefits that man gets from
fire. It is the sign of cheerfulness and good comradeship. I would not
willingly satisfy my hunger, even in a summer nooning, without a little
flame burning on a rustic altar to consecrate and enliven the feast. When
the bread and cheese were finished and the pipes were filled with Virginia
tobacco, Sandy would begin to tell me, very solemnly and respectfully,
about the mistakes I had made in the fishing that day, and mourn over the
fact that the largest fish had not been hooked. There was a strong strain
of pessimism in Sandy, and he enjoyed this part of the sport immensely.
But he was at his best in the walk home through the lingering twilight,
when the murmur of the sea trembled through the air, and the incense of
burning peat floated up from the cottages, and the stars blossomed one by
one in the pale-green sky. Then Sandy dandered on at his ease down the
hills, and discoursed of things in heaven and earth. He was an unconscious
follower of the theology of the Reverend John Jasper, of Richmond,
Virginia, and rejected the Copernican theory of the universe as
inconsistent with the history of Joshua. "Gin the sun doesna muve," said
he,﹃what for wad Joshua be tellin' him to stond steel? 'A wad suner
beleeve there was a mistak' in the veesible heevens than ae fault in the
Guid Buik.﹄Whereupon we held long discourse of astronomy and inspiration;
but Sandy concluded it with a philosophic word which left little to be
said: "Aweel, yon teelescope is a wonnerful deescovery; but 'a dinna think
the less o' the Baible."
III. WHITE HEATHER.
Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what
pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her
treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as
the symbol of
"Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
She has her own scale of values for these mementos, and knows nothing of
the market price of precious stones or the costly splendour of rare
orchids. The thing that pleases her is the thing that she will hold fast.
And yet I do not doubt that the most important things are always the best
remembered; only we must learn that the real importance of what we see and
hear in the world is to be measured at last by its meaning, its
significance, its intimacy with the heart of our heart and the life of our
life. And when we find a little token of the past very safely and
imperishably kept among our recollections, we must believe that memory has
made no mistake. It is because that little thing has entered into our
experience most deeply, that it stays with us and we cannot lose it.
You have half forgotten many a famous scene that you travelled far to look
upon. You cannot clearly recall the sublime peak of Mont Blanc, the
roaring curve of Niagara, the vast dome of St. Peter's. The music of
Patti's crystalline voice has left no distinct echo in your remembrance,
and the blossoming of the century-plant is dimmer than the shadow of a
dream. But there is a nameless valley among the hills where you can still
trace every curve of the stream, and see the foam-bells floating on the
pool below the bridge, and the long moss wavering in the current. There is
a rustic song of a girl passing through the fields at sunset, that still
repeats its far-off cadence in your listening ears. There is a small
flower trembling on its stem in some hidden nook beneath the open sky,
that never withers through all the changing years; the wind passes over
it, but it is not gone—it abides forever in your soul, an
amaranthine blossom of beauty and truth.
White heather is not an easy flower to find. You may look for it among the
highlands for a day without success. And when it is discovered, there is
little outward charm to commend it. It lacks the grace of the dainty bells
that hang so abundantly from the Erica Tetralix, and the pink glow of the
innumerable blossoms of the common heather. But then it is a symbol. It is
the Scotch Edelweiss. It means sincere affection, and unselfish love, and
tender wishes as pure as prayers. I shall always remember the evening when
I found the white heather on the moorland above Glen Ericht. Or, rather,
it was not I that found it (for I have little luck in the discovery of
good omens, and have never plucked a four-leaved clover in my life), but
my companion, the gentle Mistress of the Glen, whose hair was as white as
the tiny blossoms, and yet whose eyes were far quicker than mine to see
and name every flower that bloomed in those lofty, widespread fields.
Ericht Water is formed by the marriage of two streams, one flowing out of
Strath Ardle and the other descending from Cairn Gowar through the long,
lonely Pass of Glenshee. The Ericht begins at the bridge of Cally, and its
placid, beautiful glen, unmarred by railway or factory, reaches almost
down to Blairgowrie. On the southern bank, but far above the water, runs
the high road to Braemar and the Linn of Dee. On the other side of the
river, nestling among the trees, is the low white manor-house,
"An ancient home of peace."
It is a place where one who had been wearied and perchance sore wounded in
the battle of life might well desire to be carried, as Arthur to the
island valley of Avilion, for rest and healing.
I have no thought of renewing the conflicts and cares that filled that
summer with sorrow. There were fightings without and fears within; there
was the surrender of an enterprise that had been cherished since boyhood,
and the bitter sense of irremediable weakness that follows such a reverse;
there was a touch of that wrath with those we love, which, as Coleridge
says,
"Doth work like madness in the brain;"
flying across the sea from these troubles, I had found my old comrade of
merrier days sentenced to death, and caught but a brief glimpse of his
pale, brave face as he went away into exile. At such a time the sun and
the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return
after rain. But through those clouds the Mistress of the Glen came to meet
me—a stranger till then, but an appointed friend, a minister of
needed grace, an angel of quiet comfort. The thick mists of rebellion,
mistrust, and despair have long since rolled away, and against the
background of the hills her figure stands out clearly, dressed in the
fashion of fifty years ago, with the snowy hair gathered close beneath her
widow's cap, and a spray of white heather in her outstretched hand.
There were no other guests in the house by the river during those still
days in the noontide hush of midsummer. Every morning, while the Mistress
was busied with her household cares and letters, I would be out in the
fields hearing the lark sing, and watching the rabbits as they ran to and
fro, scattering the dew from the grass in a glittering spray. Or perhaps I
would be angling down the river, with the swift pressure of the water
around my knees, and an inarticulate current of cooling thoughts flowing
on and on through my brain like the murmur of the stream. Every afternoon
there were long walks with the Mistress in the old-fashioned garden, where
wonderful roses were blooming; or through the dark, fir-shaded den where
the wild burn dropped down to join the river; or out upon the high moor
under the waning orange sunset. Every night there were luminous and
restful talks beside the open fire in the library, when the words came
clear and calm from the heart, unperturbed by the vain desire of saying
brilliant things, which turns so much of our conversation into a combat of
wits instead of an interchange of thoughts. Talk like this is possible
only between two. The arrival of a third person sets the lists for a
tournament, and offers the prize for a verbal victory. But where there are
only two, the armour is laid aside, and there is no call to thrust and
parry.
One of the two should be a good listener, sympathetic, but not silent,
giving confidence in order to attract it—and of this art a woman is
the best master. But its finest secrets do not come to her until she has
passed beyond the uncertain season of compliments and conquests, and
entered into the serenity of a tranquil age.
What is this foolish thing that men say about the impossibility of true
intimacy and converse between the young and the old? Hamerton, for
example, in his book on Human Intercourse, would have us believe that a
difference in years is a barrier between hearts. For my part, I have more
often found it an open door, and a security of generous and tolerant
welcome for the young soldier, who comes in tired and dusty from the
battle-field, to tell his story of defeat or victory in the garden of
still thoughts where old age is resting in the peace of honourable
discharge. I like what Robert Louis Stevenson says about it in his essay
on Talk and Talkers.
"Not only is the presence of the aged in itself remedial, but their minds
are stored with antidotes, wisdom's simples, plain considerations
overlooked by youth. They have matter to communicate, be they never so
stupid. Their talk is not merely literature, it is great literature;
classic by virtue of the speaker's detachment; studded, like a book of
travel, with things we should not otherwise have learnt . . . where youth
agrees with age, not where they differ, wisdom lies; and it is when the
young disciple finds his heart to beat in tune with his gray-haired
teacher's that a lesson may be learned."
The conversation of the Mistress of the Glen shone like the light and
distilled like the dew, not only by virtue of what she said, but still
more by virtue of what she was. Her face was a good counsel against
discouragement; and the cheerful quietude of her demeanour was a rebuke to
all rebellious, cowardly, and discontented thoughts. It was not the
striking novelty or profundity of her commentary on life that made it
memorable, it was simply the truth of what she said and the gentleness
with which she said it. Epigrams are worth little for guidance to the
perplexed, and less for comfort to the wounded. But the plain, homely
sayings which come from a soul that has learned the lesson of patient
courage in the school of real experience, fall upon the wound like drops
of balsam, and like a soothing lotion up on the eyes smarting and blinded
with passion.
She spoke of those who had walked with her long ago in her garden, and for
whose sake, now that they had all gone into the world of light, every
flower was doubly dear. Would it be a true proof of loyalty to them if she
lived gloomily or despondently because they were away? She spoke of the
duty of being ready to welcome happiness as well as to endure pain, and of
the strength that endurance wins by being grateful for small daily joys,
like the evening light, and the smell of roses, and the singing of birds.
She spoke of the faith that rests on the Unseen Wisdom and Love like a
child on its mother's breast, and of the melting away of doubts in the
warmth of an effort to do some good in the world. And if that effort has
conflict, and adventure, and confused noise, and mistakes, and even
defeats mingled with it, in the stormy years of youth, is not that to be
expected? The burn roars and leaps in the den; the stream chafes and frets
through the rapids of the glen; the river does not grow calm and smooth
until it nears the sea. Courage is a virtue that the young cannot spare;
to lose it is to grow old before the time; it is better to make a thousand
mistakes and suffer a thousand reverses than to refuse the battle.
Resignation is the final courage of old age; it arrives in its own season;
and it is a good day when it comes to us. Then there are no more
disappointments; for we have learned that it is even better to desire the
things that we have than to have the things that we desire. And is not the
best of all our hopes—the hope of immortality—always before
us? How can we be dull or heavy while we have that new experience to look
forward to? It will be the most joyful of all our travels and adventures.
It will bring us our best acquaintances and friendships. But there is only
one way to get ready for immortality, and that is to love this life, and
live it as bravely and cheerfully and faithfully as we can.
So my gentle teacher with the silver hair showed me the treasures of her
ancient, simple faith; and I felt that no sermons, nor books, nor
arguments can strengthen the doubting heart so deeply as just to come into
touch with a soul which has proved the truth of that plain religion whose
highest philosophy is "Trust in the Lord and do good." At the end of the
evening the household was gathered for prayers, and the Mistress kneeled
among her servants, leading them, in her soft Scottish accent, through the
old familiar petitions for pardon for the errors of the day, and
refreshing sleep through the night and strength for the morrow. It is good
to be in a land where the people are not ashamed to pray. I have shared
the blessing of Catholics at their table in lowly huts among the mountains
of the Tyrol, and knelt with Covenanters at their household altar in the
glens of Scotland; and all around the world, where the spirit of prayer
is, there is peace. The genius of the Scotch has made many contributions
to literature, but none I think, more precious, and none that comes closer
to the heart, than the prayer which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote for his
family in distant Samoa, the night before he died:—
"We beseech thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many families
and nations, gathered together in the peace of this roof: weak men and
women subsisting under the covert of thy patience. Be patient still;
suffer us yet a while longer—with our broken promises of good, with
our idle endeavours against evil—suffer us a while longer to endure,
and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to us our extraordinary
mercies; if the day come when these must be taken, have us play the man
under affliction. Be with our friends, be with ourselves. Go with each of
us to rest; if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and
when the day returns to us—our sun and comforter—call us with
morning faces, eager to labour, eager to be happy, if happiness shall be
our portion, and, if the day be marked to sorrow, strong to endure it. We
thank thee and praise thee; and, in the words of Him to whom this day is
sacred, close our oblation."
The man who made that kindly human prayer knew the meaning of white
heather. And I dare to hope that I too have known something of its
meaning, since that evening when the Mistress of the Glen picked the spray
and gave it to me on the lonely moor. "And now," she said, "you will be
going home across the sea; and you have been welcome here, but it is time
that you should go, for there is the place where your real duties and
troubles and joys are waiting for you. And if you have left any
misunderstandings behind you, you will try to clear them up; and if there
have been any quarrels, you will heal them. Carry this little flower with
you. It's not the bonniest blossom in Scotland, but it's the dearest, for
the message that it brings. And you will remember that love is not
getting, but giving; not a wild dream of pleasure, and a madness of desire—oh
no, love is not that—it is goodness, and honour, and peace, and pure
living—yes, love is that; and it is the best thing in the world, and
the thing that lives longest. And that is what I am wishing for you and
yours with this bit of white heather."
1893.
THE RISTIGOUCHE FROM A HORSE-YACHT
Dr. Paley was ardently attached to this amusement; so much so that when
the Bishop of Durham inquired of him when one of his most important works
would be finished, he said, with great simplicity and good humour, 'My
Lord, I shall work steadily at it when the fly-fishing season is over.'—SIR
HUMPHRY DAVY: Salmonia.
The boundary line between the Province of Quebec and New Brunswick, for a
considerable part of its course, resembles the name of the poet Keats; it
is "writ in water." But like his fame, it is water that never fails,—the
limpid current of the river Ristigouche.
The railway crawls over it on a long bridge at Metapedia, and you are
dropped in the darkness somewhere between midnight and dawn. When you open
your window-shutters the next morning, you see that the village is a
disconsolate hamlet, scattered along the track as if it had been shaken by
chance from an open freight-car; it consists of twenty houses, three
shops, and a discouraged church perched upon a little hillock like a
solitary mourner on the anxious seat. The one comfortable and prosperous
feature in the countenance of Metapedia is the house of the Ristigouche
Salmon Club—an old-fashioned mansion, with broad, white piazza,
looking over rich meadow-lands. Here it was that I found my friend
Favonius, president of solemn societies, pillar of church and state,
ingenuously arrayed in gray knickerbockers, a flannel shirt, and a soft
hat, waiting to take me on his horse-yacht for a voyage up the river.
Have you ever seen a horse-yacht? Sometimes it is called a scow; but that
sounds common. Sometimes it is called a house-boat; but that is too
English. What does it profit a man to have a whole dictionary full of
language at his service, unless he can invent a new and suggestive name
for his friend's pleasure-craft? The foundation of the horse-yacht—if
a thing that floats may be called fundamental—is a flat-bottomed
boat, some fifty feet long and ten feet wide, with a draft of about eight
inches. The deck is open for fifteen feet aft of the place where the
bowsprit ought to be; behind that it is completely covered by a house,
cabin, cottage, or whatever you choose to call it, with straight sides and
a peaked roof of a very early Gothic pattern. Looking in at the door you
see, first of all, two cots, one on either side of the passage; then an
open space with a dining-table, a stove, and some chairs; beyond that a
pantry with shelves, and a great chest for provisions. A door at the back
opens into the kitchen, and from that another door opens into a
sleeping-room for the boatmen. A huge wooden tiller curves over the stern
of the boat, and the helmsman stands upon the kitchen-roof. Two canoes are
floating behind, holding back, at the end of their long tow-ropes, as if
reluctant to follow so clumsy a leader. This is an accurate description of
the horse-yacht. If necessary it could be sworn to before a notary public.
But I am perfectly sure that you might read this page through without
skipping a word, and if you had never seen the creature with your own
eyes, you would have no idea how absurd it looks and how comfortable it
is.
While we were stowing away our trunks and bags under the cots, and making
an equitable division of the hooks upon the walls, the motive power of the
yacht stood patiently upon the shore, stamping a hoof, now and then, or
shaking a shaggy head in mild protest against the flies. Three more
pessimistic-looking horses I never saw. They were harnessed abreast, and
fastened by a prodigious tow-rope to a short post in the middle of the
forward deck. Their driver was a truculent, brigandish, bearded old fellow
in long boots, a blue flannel shirt, and a black sombrero. He sat upon the
middle horse, and some wild instinct of colour had made him tie a big red
handkerchief around his shoulders, so that the eye of the beholder took
delight in him. He posed like a bold, bad robber-chief. But in point of
fact I believe he was the mildest and most inoffensive of men. We never
heard him say anything except at a distance, to his horses, and we did not
inquire what that was.
Well, as I have said, we were haggling courteously over those hooks in the
cabin, when the boat gave a lurch. The bow swung out into the stream.
There was a scrambling and clattering of iron horse-shoes on the rough
shingle of the bank; and when we looked out of doors, our house was moving
up the river with the boat under it.
The Ristigouche is a noble stream, stately and swift and strong. It rises
among the dense forests in the northern part of New Brunswick—a
moist upland region, of never-failing springs and innumerous lakes—and
pours a flood of clear, cold water one hundred and fifty miles northward
and eastward through the hills into the head of the Bay of Chaleurs. There
are no falls in its course, but rapids everywhere. It is steadfast but not
impetuous, quick but not turbulent, resolute and eager in its desire to
get to the sea, like the life of a man who has a purpose
"Too great for haste, too high for rivalry."
The wonder is where all the water comes from. But the river is fed by more
than six thousand square miles of territory. From both sides the little
brooks come dashing in with their supply. At intervals a larger stream,
reaching away back among the mountains like a hand with many fingers to
gather
"The filtered tribute of the rough woodland,"
delivers its generous offering to the main current.
The names of the chief tributaries of the Ristigouche are curious. There
is the headstrong Metapedia, and the crooked Upsalquitch, and the
Patapedia, and the Quatawamkedgwick. These are words at which the tongue
balks at first, but you soon grow used to them and learn to take anything
of five syllables with a rush, as a hunter takes a five-barred gate,
trusting to fortune that you will come down with the accent in the right
place.
For six or seven miles above Metapedia the river has a breadth of about
two hundred yards, and the valley slopes back rather gently to the
mountains on either side. There is a good deal of cultivated land, and
scattered farm-houses appear. The soil is excellent. But it is like a
pearl cast before an obstinate, unfriendly climate. Late frosts prolong
the winter. Early frosts curtail the summer. The only safe crops are
grass, oats, and potatoes. And for half the year all the cattle must be
housed and fed to keep them alive. This lends a melancholy aspect to
agriculture. Most of the farmers look as if they had never seen better
days. With few exceptions they are what a New Englander would call
"slack-twisted and shiftless." Their barns are pervious to the weather,
and their fences fail to connect. Sleds and ploughs rust together beside
the house, and chickens scratch up the front-door yard. In truth, the
people have been somewhat demoralised by the conflicting claims of
different occupations; hunting in the fall, lumbering in the winter and
spring, and working for the American sportsmen in the brief angling
season, are so much more attractive and offer so much larger returns of
ready money, that the tedious toil of farming is neglected. But for all
that, in the bright days of midsummer, these green fields sloping down to
the water, and pastures high up among the trees on the hillsides, look
pleasant from a distance, and give an inhabited air to the landscape.
At the mouth of the Upsalquitch we passed the first of the fishing-lodges.
It belongs to a sage angler from Albany who saw the beauty of the
situation, years ago, and built a habitation to match it. Since that time
a number of gentlemen have bought land fronting on good pools, and put up
little cottages of a less classical style than Charles Cotton's
"Fisherman's Retreat" on the banks of the river Dove, but better suited to
this wild scenery, and more convenient to live in. The prevailing pattern
is a very simple one; it consists of a broad piazza with a small house in
the middle of it. The house bears about the same proportion to the piazza
that the crown of a Gainsborough hat does to the brim. And the cost of the
edifice is to the cost of the land as the first price of a share in a
bankrupt railway is to the assessments which follow the reorganisation.
All the best points have been sold, and real estate on the Ristigouche has
been bid up to an absurd figure. In fact, the river is over-populated and
probably over-fished. But we could hardly find it in our hearts to regret
this, for it made the upward trip a very sociable one. At every lodge that
was open, Favonius (who knows everybody) had a friend, and we must slip
ashore in a canoe to leave the mail and refresh the inner man.
An angler, like an Arab, regards hospitality as a religious duty. There
seems to be something in the craft which inclines the heart to kindness
and good-fellowship. Few anglers have I seen who were not pleasant to
meet, and ready to do a good turn to a fellow-fisherman with the gift of a
killing fly or the loan of a rod. Not their own particular and well-proved
favourite, of course, for that is a treasure which no decent man would
borrow; but with that exception the best in their store is at the service
of an accredited brother. One of the Ristigouche proprietors I remember,
whose name bespoke him a descendant of Caledonia's patron saint. He was
fishing in front of his own door when we came up, with our splashing
horses, through the pool; but nothing would do but he must up anchor and
have us away with him into the house to taste his good cheer. And there
were his daughters with their books and needlework, and the photographs
which they had taken pinned up on the wooden walls, among Japanese fans
and bits of bright-coloured stuff in which the soul of woman delights,
and, in a passive, silent way, the soul of man also. Then, after we had
discussed the year's fishing, and the mysteries of the camera, and the
deep question of what makes some negatives too thin and others too thick,
we must go out to see the big salmon which one of the ladies had caught a
few days before, and the large trout swimming about in their cold spring.
It seemed to me, as we went on our way, that there could hardly be a more
wholesome and pleasant summer-life for well-bred young women than this, or
two amusements more innocent and sensible than photography and
fly-fishing.
It must be confessed that the horse-yacht as a vehicle of travel is not
remarkable in point of speed. Three miles an hour is not a very rapid rate
of motion. But then, if you are not in a hurry, why should you care to
make haste?
The wild desire to be forever racing against old Father Time is one of the
kill-joys of modern life. That ancient traveller is sure to beat you in
the long run, and as long as you are trying to rival him, he will make
your life a burden. But if you will only acknowledge his superiority and
profess that you do not approve of racing after all, he will settle down
quietly beside you and jog along like the most companionable of creatures.
That is a pleasant pilgrimage in which the journey itself is part of the
destination.
As soon as one learns to regard the horse-yacht as a sort of moving house,
it appears admirable. There is no dust or smoke, no rumble of wheels, or
shriek of whistles. You are gliding along steadily through an ever-green
world; skirting the silent hills; passing from one side of the river to
the other when the horses have to swim the current to find a good foothold
on the bank. You are on the water, but not at its mercy, for your craft is
not disturbed by the heaving of rude waves, and the serene inhabitants do
not say "I am sick." There is room enough to move about without falling
overboard. You may sleep, or read, or write in your cabin, or sit upon the
floating piazza in an arm-chair and smoke the pipe of peace, while the
cool breeze blows in your face and the musical waves go singing down to
the sea.
There was one feature about the boat, which commended itself very strongly
to my mind. It was possible to stand upon the forward deck and do a little
trout-fishing in motion. By watching your chance, when the corner of a
good pool was within easy reach, you could send out a hasty line and
cajole a sea-trout from his hiding-place. It is true that the tow-ropes
and the post made the back cast a little awkward; and the wind sometimes
blew the flies up on the roof of the cabin; but then, with patience and a
short line the thing could be done. I remember a pair of good trout that
rose together just as we were going through a boiling rapid; and it tried
the strength of my split-bamboo rod to bring those fish to the net against
the current and the motion of the boat.
When nightfall approached we let go the anchor (to wit, a rope tied to a
large stone on the shore), ate our dinner﹃with gladness and singleness of
heart﹄like the early Christians, and slept the sleep of the just, lulled
by the murmuring of the waters, and defended from the insidious attacks of
the mosquito by the breeze blowing down the river and the impregnable
curtains over our beds. At daybreak, long before Favonius and I had
finished our dreams, we were under way again; and when the trampling of
the horses on some rocky shore wakened us, we could see the steep hills
gliding past the windows and hear the rapids dashing against the side of
the boat, and it seemed as if we were still dreaming.
At Cross Point, where the river makes a long loop around a narrow
mountain, thin as a saw and crowned on its jagged edge by a rude wooden
cross, we stopped for an hour to try the fishing. It was here that I
hooked two mysterious creatures, each of which took the fly when it was
below the surface, pulled for a few moments in a sullen way and then
apparently melted into nothingness. It will always be a source of regret
to me that the nature of these fish must remain unknown. While they were
on the line it was the general opinion that they were heavy trout; but no
sooner had they departed, than I became firmly convinced, in accordance
with a psychological law which holds good all over the world, that they
were both enormous salmon. Even the Turks have a proverb which says,
"Every fish that escapes appears larger than it is." No one can alter that
conviction, because no one can logically refute it. Our best blessings,
like our largest fish, always depart before we have time to measure them.
The Slide Pool is in the wildest and most picturesque part of the river,
about thirty-five miles above Metapedia. The stream, flowing swiftly down
a stretch of rapids between forest-clad hills, runs straight toward the
base of an eminence so precipitous that the trees can hardly find a
foothold upon it, and seem to be climbing up in haste on either side of
the long slide which leads to the summit. The current, barred by the wall
of rock, takes a great sweep to the right, dashing up at first in angry
waves, then falling away in oily curves and eddies, until at last it
sleeps in a black deep, apparently almost motionless, at the foot of the
hill. It was here, on the upper edge of the stream, opposite to the slide,
that we brought our floating camp to anchor for some days. What does one
do in such a watering-place?
Let us take a "specimen day." It is early morning, or to be more precise,
about eight of the clock, and the white fog is just beginning to curl and
drift away from the surface of the river. Sooner than this it would be
idle to go out. The preternaturally early bird in his greedy haste may
catch the worm; but the salmon never take the fly until the fog has
lifted; and in this the scientific angler sees, with gratitude, a
remarkable adaptation of the laws of nature to the tastes of man. The
canoes are waiting at the front door. We step into them and push off,
Favonius going up the stream a couple of miles to the mouth of the
Patapedia, and I down, a little shorter distance, to the famous Indian
House Pool. The slim boat glides easily on the current, with a smooth
buoyant motion, quickened by the strokes of the paddles in the bow and the
stern. We pass around two curves in the river and find ourselves at the
head of the pool. Here the man in the stern drops the anchor, just on the
edge of the bar where the rapid breaks over into the deeper water. The
long rod is lifted; the fly unhooked from the reel; a few feet of line
pulled through the rings, and the fishing begins.
First cast,—to the right, straight across the stream, about twenty
feet: the current carries the fly down with a semicircular sweep, until it
comes in line with the bow of the canoe. Second cast,—to the left,
straight across the stream, with the same motion: the semicircle is
completed, and the fly hangs quivering for a few seconds at the lowest
point of the arc. Three or four feet of line are drawn from the reel.
Third cast to the right; fourth cast to the left. Then a little more line.
And so, with widening half-circles, the water is covered, gradually and
very carefully, until at length the angler has as much line out as his
two-handed rod can lift and swing. Then the first "drop" is finished; the
man in the stern quietly pulls up the anchor and lets the boat drift down
a few yards; the same process is repeated on the second drop; and so on,
until the end of the run is reached and the fly has passed over all the
good water. This seems like a very regular and somewhat mechanical
proceeding as one describes it, but in the performance it is rendered
intensely interesting by the knowledge that at any moment it is liable to
be interrupted.
This morning the interruption comes early. At the first cast of the second
drop, before the fly has fairly lit, a great flash of silver darts from
the waves close by the boat. Usually a salmon takes the fly rather slowly,
carrying it under water before he seizes it in his mouth. But this one is
in no mood for deliberation. He has hooked himself with a rush, and the
line goes whirring madly from the reel as he races down the pool. Keep the
point of the rod low; he must have his own way now. Up with the anchor
quickly, and send the canoe after him, bowman and sternman paddling with
swift strokes. He has reached the deepest water; he stops to think what
has happened to him; we have passed around and below him; and now, with
the current to help us, we can begin to reel in. Lift the point of the
rod, with a strong, steady pull. Put the force of both arms into it. The
tough wood will stand the strain. The fish must be moved; he must come to
the boat if he is ever to be landed. He gives a little and yields slowly
to the pressure. Then suddenly he gives too much, and runs straight toward
us. Reel in now as swiftly as possible, or else he will get a slack on the
line and escape. Now he stops, shakes his head from side to side, and
darts away again across the pool, leaping high out of water. Don't touch
the reel! Drop the point of the rod quickly, for if he falls on the leader
he will surely break it. Another leap, and another! Truly he is﹃a merry
one,﹄and it will go hard with us to hold him. But those great leaps have
exhausted his strength, and now he follows the rod more easily. The men
push the boat back to the shallow side of the pool until it touches
lightly on the shore. The fish comes slowly in, fighting a little and
making a few short runs; he is tired and turns slightly on his side; but
even yet he is a heavy weight on the line, and it seems a wonder that so
slight a thing as the leader can guide and draw him. Now he is close to
the boat. The boatman steps out on a rock with his gaff. Steadily now and
slowly, lift the rod, bending it backward. A quick sure stroke of the
steel! a great splash! and the salmon is lifted upon the shore. How he
flounces about on the stones. Give him the coup de grace at once, for his
own sake as well as for ours. And now look at him, as he lies there on the
green leaves. Broad back; small head tapering to a point; clean, shining
sides with a few black spots on them; it is a fish fresh-run from the sea,
in perfect condition, and that is the reason why he has given such good
sport.
We must try for another before we go back. Again fortune favours us, and
at eleven o'clock we pole up the river to the camp with two good salmon in
the canoe. Hardly have we laid them away in the ice-box, when Favonius
comes dropping down from Patapedia with three fish, one of them a
twenty-four pounder. And so the morning's work is done.
In the evening, after dinner, it was our custom to sit out on the deck,
watching the moonlight as it fell softly over the black hills and changed
the river into a pale flood of rolling gold. The fragrant wreaths of smoke
floated lazily away on the faint breeze of night. There was no sound save
the rushing of the water and the crackling of the camp-fire on the shore.
We talked of many things in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, and
the waters under the earth; touching lightly here and there as the spirit
of vagrant converse led us. Favonius has the good sense to talk about
himself occasionally and tell his own experience. The man who will not do
that must always be a dull companion. Modest egoism is the salt of
conversation: you do not want too much of it; but if it is altogether
omitted, everything tastes flat. I remember well the evening when he told
me the story of the Sheep of the Wilderness.
"I was ill that summer," said he, "and the doctor had ordered me to go
into the woods, but on no account to go without plenty of fresh meat,
which was essential to my recovery. So we set out into the wild country
north of Georgian Bay, taking a live sheep with us in order to be sure
that the doctor's prescription might be faithfully followed. It was a
young and innocent little beast, curling itself up at my feet in the
canoe, and following me about on shore like a dog. I gathered grass every
day to feed it, and carried it in my arms over the rough portages. It ate
out of my hand and rubbed its woolly head against my leggings. To my
dismay, I found that I was beginning to love it for its own sake and
without any ulterior motives. The thought of killing and eating it became
more and more painful to me, until at length the fatal fascination was
complete, and my trip became practically an exercise of devotion to that
sheep. I carried it everywhere and ministered fondly to its wants. Not for
the world would I have alluded to mutton in its presence. And when we
returned to civilisation I parted from the creature with sincere regret
and the consciousness that I had humoured my affections at the expense of
my digestion. The sheep did not give me so much as a look of farewell, but
fell to feeding on the grass beside the farm-house with an air of placid
triumph."
After hearing this touching tale, I was glad that no great intimacy had
sprung up between Favonius and the chickens which we carried in a coop on
the forecastle head, for there is no telling what restrictions his
tender-heartedness might have laid upon our larder. But perhaps a chicken
would not have given such an opening for misplaced affection as a sheep.
There is a great difference in animals in this respect. I certainly never
heard of any one falling in love with a salmon in such a way as to regard
it as a fond companion. And this may be one reason why no sensible person
who has tried fishing has ever been able to see any cruelty in it.
Suppose the fish is not caught by an angler, what is his alternative fate?
He will either perish miserably in the struggles of the crowded net, or
die of old age and starvation like the long, lean stragglers which are
sometimes found in the shallow pools, or be devoured by a larger fish, or
torn to pieces by a seal or an otter. Compared with any of these miserable
deaths, the fate of a salmon who is hooked in a clear stream and after a
glorious fight receives the happy despatch at the moment when he touches
the shore, is a sort of euthanasia. And, since the fish was made to be
man's food, the angler who brings him to the table of destiny in the
cleanest, quickest, kindest way is, in fact, his benefactor.
There were some days, however, when our benevolent intentions toward the
salmon were frustrated; mornings when they refused to rise, and evenings
when they escaped even the skilful endeavours of Favonius. In vain did he
try every fly in his book, from the smallest "Silver Doctor" to the
largest "Golden Eagle." The "Black Dose" would not move them. The﹃Durham
Ranger﹄covered the pool in vain. On days like this, if a stray fish rose,
it was hard to land him, for he was usually but slightly hooked.
I remember one of these shy creatures which led me a pretty dance at the
mouth of Patapedia. He came to the fly just at dusk, rising very softly
and quietly, as if he did not really care for it but only wanted to see
what it was like. He went down at once into deep water, and began the most
dangerous and exasperating of all salmon-tactics, moving around in slow
circles and shaking his head from side to side, with sullen pertinacity.
This is called "jigging," and unless it can be stopped, the result is
fatal.
I could not stop it. That salmon was determined to jig. He knew more than
I did.
The canoe followed him down the pool. He jigged away past all three of the
inlets of the Patapedia, and at last, in the still, deep water below,
after we had laboured with him for half an hour, and brought him near
enough to see that he was immense, he calmly opened his mouth and the fly
came back to me void. That was a sad evening, in which all the
consolations of philosophy were needed.
Sunday was a very peaceful day in our camp. In the Dominion of Canada, the
question "to fish or not to fish" on the first day of the week is not left
to the frailty of the individual conscience. The law on the subject is
quite explicit, and says that between six o'clock on Saturday evening and
six o'clock on Monday morning all nets shall be taken up and no one shall
wet a line. The Ristigouche Salmon Club has its guardians stationed all
along the river, and they are quite as inflexible in seeing that their
employers keep this law as the famous sentinel was in refusing to let
Napoleon pass without the countersign. But I do not think that these keen
sportsmen regard it as a hardship; they are quite willing that the fish
should have "an off day" in every week, and only grumble because some of
the net-owners down at the mouth of the river have brought political
influence to bear in their favour and obtained exemption from the rule.
For our part, we were nothing loath to hang up our rods, and make the day
different from other days.
In the morning we had a service in the cabin of the boat, gathering a
little congregation of guardians and boatmen, and people from a solitary
farm-house by the river. They came in pirogues—long, narrow boats
hollowed from the trunk of a tree; the black-eyed, brown-faced girls
sitting back to back in the middle of the boat, and the men standing up
bending to their poles. It seemed a picturesque way of travelling,
although none too safe.
In the afternoon we sat on deck and looked at the water. What a charm
there is in watching a swift stream! The eye never wearies of following
its curls and eddies, the shadow of the waves dancing over the stones, the
strange, crinkling lines of sunlight in the shallows. There is a sort of
fascination in it, lulling and soothing the mind into a quietude which is
even pleasanter than sleep, and making it almost possible to do that of
which we so often speak, but which we never quite accomplish—"think
about nothing." Out on the edge of the pool, we could see five or six huge
salmon, moving slowly from side to side, or lying motionless like gray
shadows. There was nothing to break the silence except the thin clear
whistle of the white-throated sparrow far back in the woods. This is
almost the only bird-song that one hears on the river, unless you count
the metallic "chr-r-r-r" of the kingfisher as a song.
Every now and then one of the salmon in the pool would lazily roll out of
water, or spring high into the air and fall back with a heavy splash. What
is it that makes salmon leap? Is it pain or pleasure? Do they do it to
escape the attack of another fish, or to shake off a parasite that clings
to them, or to practise jumping so that they can ascend the falls when
they reach them, or simply and solely out of exuberant gladness and joy of
living? Any one of these reasons would be enough to account for it on
week-days. On Sunday I am quite sure they do it for the trial of the
fisherman's faith.
But how should I tell all the little incidents which made that lazy voyage
so delightful? Favonius was the ideal host, for on water, as well as on
land, he knows how to provide for the liberty as well as for the wants of
his guests. He understands also the fine art of conversation, which
consists of silence as well as speech. And when it comes to angling, Izaak
Walton himself could not have been a more profitable teacher by precept or
example. Indeed, it is a curious thought, and one full of sadness to a
well-constituted mind, that on the Ristigouche "I. W." would have been at
sea, for the beloved father of all fishermen passed through this world
without ever catching a salmon. So ill does fortune match with merit here
below.
At last the days of idleness were ended. We could not
"Fold our tents like the Arabs,
and as silently steal away;"
but we took down the long rods, put away the heavy reels, made the canoes
fast to the side of the house, embarked the three horses on the front
deck, and then dropped down with the current, swinging along through the
rapids, and drifting slowly through the still places, now grounding on a
hidden rock, and now sweeping around a sharp curve, until at length we saw
the roofs of Metapedia and the ugly bridge of the railway spanning the
river. There we left our floating house, awkward and helpless, like some
strange relic of the flood, stranded on the shore. And as we climbed the
bank we looked back and wondered whether Noah was sorry when he said
good-bye to his ark.
1888.
ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK
"Nay, let me tell you, there be many that have forty times our estates,
that would give the greatest part of it to be healthful and cheerful like
us; who, with the expense of a little money, have ate, and drank, and
laughed, and angled, and sung, and slept securely; and rose next day, and
cast away care, and sung, and laughed, and angled again; which are
blessings rich men cannot purchase with all their money."—IZAAK
WALTON: The Complete Angler.
A great deal of the pleasure of life lies in bringing together things
which have no connection. That is the secret of humour—at least so
we are told by the philosophers who explain the jests that other men have
made—and in regard to travel, I am quite sure that it must be
illogical in order to be entertaining. The more contrasts it contains, the
better.
Perhaps it was some philosophical reflection of this kind that brought me
to the resolution, on a certain summer day, to make a little journey, as
straight as possible, from the sea-level streets of Venice to the lonely,
lofty summit of a Tyrolese mountain, called, for no earthly reason that I
can discover, the Gross-Venediger.
But apart from the philosophy of the matter, which I must confess to
passing over very superficially at the time, there were other and more
cogent reasons for wanting to go from Venice to the Big Venetian. It was
the first of July, and the city on the sea was becoming tepid. A slumbrous
haze brooded over canals and palaces and churches. It was difficult to
keep one's conscience awake to Baedeker and a sense of moral obligation;
Ruskin was impossible, and a picture-gallery was a penance. We floated
lazily from one place to another, and decided that, after all, it was too
warm to go in. The cries of the gondoliers, at the canal corners, grew
more and more monotonous and dreamy. There was danger of our falling fast
asleep and having to pay by the hour for a day's repose in a gondola. If
it grew much warmer, we might be compelled to stay until the following
winter in order to recover energy enough to get away. All the signs of the
times pointed northward, to the mountains, where we should see glaciers
and snow-fields, and pick Alpenrosen, and drink goat's milk fresh from the
real goat.
I.
The first stage on the journey thither was by rail to Belluno—about
four or five hours. It is a sufficient commentary on railway travel that
the most important thing about it is to tell how many hours it takes to
get from one place to another.
We arrived in Belluno at night, and when we awoke the next morning we
found ourselves in a picturesque little city of Venetian aspect, with a
piazza and a campanile and a Palladian cathedral, surrounded on all sides
by lofty hills. We were at the end of the railway and at the beginning of
the Dolomites.
Although I have a constitutional aversion to scientific information given
by unscientific persons, such as clergymen and men of letters, I must go
in that direction far enough to make it clear that the word Dolomite does
not describe a kind of fossil, nor a sect of heretics, but a formation of
mountains lying between the Alps and the Adriatic. Draw a diamond on the
map, with Brixen at the northwest corner, Lienz at the northeast, Belluno
at the southeast, and Trent at the southwest, and you will have included
the region of the Dolomites, a country so picturesque, so interesting, so
full of sublime and beautiful scenery, that it is equally a wonder and a
blessing that it has not been long since completely overrun by tourists
and ruined with railways. It is true, the glaciers and snowfields are
limited; the waterfalls are comparatively few and slender, and the rivers
small; the loftiest peaks are little more than ten thousand feet high.
But, on the other hand, the mountains are always near, and therefore
always imposing. Bold, steep, fantastic masses of naked rock, they rise
suddenly from the green and flowery valleys in amazing and endless
contrast; they mirror themselves in the tiny mountain lakes like pictures
in a dream.
I believe the guide-book says that they are formed of carbonate of lime
and carbonate of magnesia in chemical composition; but even if this be
true, it need not prejudice any candid observer against them. For the
simple and fortunate fact is that they are built of such stone that wind
and weather, keen frost and melting snow and rushing water have worn and
cut and carved them into a thousand shapes of wonder and beauty. It needs
but little fancy to see in them walls and towers, cathedrals and
campaniles, fortresses and cities, tinged with many hues from pale gray to
deep red, and shining in an air so soft, so pure, so cool, so fragrant,
under a sky so deep and blue and a sunshine so genial, that it seems like
the happy union of Switzerland and Italy.
The great highway through this region from south to north is the Ampezzo
road, which was constructed in 1830, along the valleys of the Piave, the
Boite, and the Rienz—the ancient line of travel and commerce between
Venice and Innsbruck. The road is superbly built, smooth and level. Our
carriage rolled along so easily that we forgot and forgave its venerable
appearance and its lack of accommodation for trunks. We had been persuaded
to take four horses, as our luggage seemed too formidable for a single
pair. But in effect our concession to apparent necessity turned out to be
a mere display of superfluous luxury, for the two white leaders did little
more than show their feeble paces, leaving the gray wheelers to do the
work. We had the elevating sense of traveling four-in-hand, however—a
satisfaction to which I do not believe any human being is altogether
insensible.
At Longarone we breakfasted for the second time, and entered the narrow
gorge of the Piave. The road was cut out of the face of the rock. Below us
the long lumber-rafts went shooting down the swift river. Above, on the
right, were the jagged crests of Monte Furlon and Premaggiore, which
seemed to us very wonderful, because we had not yet learned how jagged the
Dolomites can be. At Perarolo, where the Boite joins the Piave, there is a
lump of a mountain in the angle between the rivers, and around this we
crawled in long curves until we had risen a thousand feet, and arrived at
the same Hotel Venezia, where we were to dine.
While dinner was preparing, the Deacon and I walked up to Pieve di Cadore,
the birthplace of Titian. The house in which the great painter first saw
the colours of the world is still standing, and tradition points out the
very room in which he began to paint. I am not one of those who would
inquire too closely into such a legend as this. The cottage may have been
rebuilt a dozen times since Titian's day; not a scrap of the original
stone or plaster may remain; but beyond a doubt the view that we saw from
the window is the same that Titian saw. Now, for the first time, I could
understand and appreciate the landscape-backgrounds of his pictures. The
compact masses of mountains, the bold, sharp forms, the hanging rocks of
cold gray emerging from green slopes, the intense blue aerial distances—these
all had seemed to be unreal and imaginary—compositions of the
studio. But now I knew that, whether Titian painted out-of-doors, like our
modern impressionists, or not, he certainly painted what he had seen, and
painted it as it is.
The graceful brown-eyed boy who showed us the house seemed also to belong
to one of Titian's pictures. As we were going away, the Deacon, for lack
of copper, rewarded him with a little silver piece, a half-lira, in value
about ten cents. A celestial rapture of surprise spread over the child's
face, and I know not what blessings he invoked upon us. He called his
companions to rejoice with him, and we left them clapping their hands and
dancing.
Driving after one has dined has always a peculiar charm. The motion seems
pleasanter, the landscape finer than in the morning hours. The road from
Cadore ran on a high level, through sloping pastures, white villages, and
bits of larch forest. In its narrow bed, far below, the river Boite roared
as gently as Bottom's lion. The afternoon sunlight touched the snow-capped
pinnacle of Antelao and the massive pink wall of Sorapis on the right; on
the left, across the valley, Monte Pelmo's vast head and the wild crests
of La Rochetta and Formin rose dark against the glowing sky. The peasants
lifted their hats as we passed, and gave us a pleasant evening greeting.
And so, almost without knowing it, we slipped out of Italy into Austria,
and drew up before a bare, square stone building with the double black
eagle, like a strange fowl split for broiling, staring at us from the
wall, and an inscription to the effect that this was the Royal and
Imperial Austrian Custom-house.
The officer saluted us so politely that we felt quite sorry that his duty
required him to disturb our luggage.﹃The law obliged him to open one
trunk; courtesy forbade him to open more.﹄It was quickly done; and,
without having to make any contribution to the income of His Royal and
Imperial Majesty, Francis Joseph, we rolled on our way, through the
hamlets of Acqua Bona and Zuel, into the Ampezzan metropolis of Cortina,
at sundown.
The modest inn called "The Star of Gold" stood facing the public square,
just below the church, and the landlady stood facing us in the doorway,
with an enthusiastic welcome—altogether a most friendly and
entertaining landlady, whose one desire in life seemed to be that we
should never regret having chosen her house instead of "The White Cross,"
or "The Black Eagle."
"O ja!" she had our telegram received; and would we look at the rooms?
Outlooking on the piazza, with a balcony from which we could observe the
Festa of to-morrow. She hoped they would please us. "Only come in;
accommodate yourselves."
It was all as she promised; three little bedrooms, and a little salon
opening on a little balcony; queer old oil-paintings and framed
embroideries and tiles hanging on the walls; spotless curtains, and board
floors so white that it would have been a shame to eat off them without
spreading a cloth to keep them from being soiled.
"These are the rooms of the Baron Rothschild when he comes here always in
the summer—with nine horses and nine servants—the Baron
Rothschild of Vienna."
I assured her that we did not know the Baron, but that should make no
difference. We would not ask her to reduce the price on account of a
little thing like that.
She did not quite grasp this idea, but hoped that we would not find the
pension too dear at a dollar and fifty-seven and a half cents a day each,
with a little extra for the salon and the balcony. "The English people all
please themselves here—there comes many every summer—English
Bishops and their families."
I inquired whether there were many Bishops in the house at that moment.
"No, just at present—she was very sorry—none."
"Well, then," I said, "it is all right. We will take the rooms."
Good Signora Barbaria, you did not speak the American language, nor
understand those curious perversions of thought which pass among the
Americans for humour; but you understood how to make a little inn cheerful
and home-like; yours was a very simple and agreeable art of keeping a
hotel. As we sat in the balcony after supper, listening to the capital
playing of the village orchestra, and the Tyrolese songs with which they
varied their music, we thought within ourselves that we were fortunate to
have fallen upon the Star of Gold.
II.
Cortina lies in its valley like a white shell that has rolled down into a
broad vase of malachite. It has about a hundred houses and seven hundred
inhabitants, a large church and two small ones, a fine stone campanile
with excellent bells, and seven or eight little inns. But it is more
important than its size would signify, for it is the capital of the
district whose lawful title is Magnifica Comunita di Ampezzo—a name
conferred long ago by the Republic of Venice. In the fifteenth century it
was Venetian territory; but in 1516, under Maximilian I., it was joined to
Austria; and it is now one of the richest and most prosperous communes of
the Tyrol. It embraces about thirty-five hundred people, scattered in
hamlets and clusters of houses through the green basin with its four
entrances, lying between the peaks of Tofana, Cristallo, Sorapis, and
Nuvolau. The well-cultivated grain fields and meadows, the smooth alps
filled with fine cattle, the well-built houses with their white stone
basements and balconies of dark brown wood and broad overhanging roofs,
all speak of industry and thrift. But there is more than mere agricultural
prosperity in this valley. There is a fine race of men and women—intelligent,
vigorous, and with a strong sense of beauty. The outer walls of the annex
of the Hotel Aquila Nera are covered with frescoes of marked power and
originality, painted by the son of the innkeeper. The art schools of
Cortina are famous for their beautiful work in gold and silver filigree,
and wood-inlaying. There are nearly two hundred pupils in these schools,
all peasants' children, and they produce results, especially in intarsia,
which are admirable. The village orchestra, of which I spoke a moment ago,
is trained and led by a peasant's son, who has never had a thorough
musical education. It must have at least twenty-five members, and as we
heard them at the Festa they seemed to play with extraordinary accuracy
and expression.
This Festa gave us a fine chance to see the people of the Ampezzo all
together. It was the annual jubilation of the district; and from all the
outlying hamlets and remote side valleys, even from the neighbouring vales
of Agordo and Auronzo, across the mountains, and from Cadore, the
peasants, men and women and children, had come in to the Sagro at Cortina.
The piazza—which is really nothing more than a broadening of the
road behind the church—was quite thronged. There must have been
between two and three thousand people.
The ceremonies of the day began with general church-going. The people here
are honestly and naturally religious. I have seen so many examples of what
can only be called "sincere and unaffected piety," that I cannot doubt it.
The church, on Cortina's feast-day, was crowded to the doors with
worshippers, who gave every evidence of taking part not only with the
voice, but also with the heart, in the worship.
Then followed the public unveiling of a tablet, on the wall of the little
Inn of the Anchor, to the memory of Giammaria Ghedini, the founder of the
art-schools of Cortina. There was music by the band; and an oration by a
native Demosthenes (who spoke in Italian so fluent that it ran through
one's senses like water through a sluice, leaving nothing behind), and an
original Canto sung by the village choir, with a general chorus, in which
they called upon the various mountains to﹃re-echo the name of the beloved
master John-Mary as a model of modesty and true merit,﹄and wound up with—
"Hurrah for John-Mary! Hurrah for his art!
Hurrah for all teachers as skilful as he!
Hurrah for us all, who have now taken part
In singing together in do . . re . . mi."
It was very primitive, and I do not suppose that the celebration was even
mentioned in the newspapers of the great world; but, after all, has not
the man who wins such a triumph as this in the hearts of his own people,
for whom he has made labour beautiful with the charm of art, deserved
better of fame than many a crowned monarch or conquering warrior? We
should be wiser if we gave less glory to the men who have been successful
in forcing their fellow-men to die, and more glory to the men who have
been successful in teaching their fellow-men how to live.
But the Festa of Cortina did not remain all day on this high moral plane.
In the afternoon came what our landlady called "allerlei Dummheiten."
There was a grand lottery for the benefit of the Volunteer Fire
Department. The high officials sat up in a green wooden booth in the
middle of the square, and called out the numbers and distributed the
prizes. Then there was a greased pole with various articles of an
attractive character tied to a large hoop at the top—silk aprons,
and a green jacket, and bottles of wine, and half a smoked pig, and a coil
of rope, and a purse. The gallant firemen voluntarily climbed up the pole
as far as they could, one after another, and then involuntarily slid down
again exhausted, each one wiping off a little more of the grease, until at
last the lucky one came who profited by his forerunners' labours, and
struggled to the top to snatch the smoked pig. After that it was easy.
Such is success in this unequal world; the man who wipes off the grease
seldom gets the prize.
Then followed various games, with tubs of water; and coins fastened to the
bottom of a huge black frying-pan, to be plucked off with the lips; and
pots of flour to be broken with sticks; so that the young lads of the
village were ducked and blackened and powdered to an unlimited extent,
amid the hilarious applause of the spectators. In the evening there was
more music, and the peasants danced in the square, the women quietly and
rather heavily, but the men with amazing agility, slapping the soles of
their shoes with their hands, or turning cartwheels in front of their
partners. At dark the festivities closed with a display of fireworks;
there were rockets and bombs and pin-wheels; and the boys had tiny red and
blue lights which they held until their fingers were burned, just as boys
do in America; and there was a general hush of wonder as a particularly
brilliant rocket swished into the dark sky; and when it burst into a rain
of serpents, the crowd breathed out its delight in a long-drawn
"Ah-h-h-h!" just as the crowd does everywhere. We might easily have
imagined ourselves at a Fourth of July celebration in Vermont, if it had
not been for the costumes.
The men of the Ampezzo Valley have kept but little that is peculiar in
their dress. Men are naturally more progressive than women, and therefore
less picturesque. The tide of fashion has swept them into the
international monotony of coat and vest and trousers—pretty much the
same, and equally ugly, all over the world. Now and then you may see a
short jacket with silver buttons, or a pair of knee-breeches; and almost
all the youths wear a bunch of feathers or a tuft of chamois' hair in
their soft green hats. But the women of the Ampezzo—strong, comely,
with golden brown complexions, and often noble faces—are not ashamed
to dress as their grandmothers did. They wear a little round black felt
hat with rolled rim and two long ribbons hanging down at the back. Their
hair is carefully braided and coiled, and stuck through and through with
great silver pins. A black bodice, fastened with silver clasps, is covered
in front with the ends of a brilliant silk kerchief, laid in many folds
around the shoulders. The white shirt-sleeves are very full and fastened
up above the elbow with coloured ribbon. If the weather is cool, the women
wear a short black jacket, with satin yoke and high puffed sleeves. But,
whatever the weather may be, they make no change in the large, full dark
skirts, almost completely covered with immense silk aprons, by preference
light blue. It is not a remarkably brilliant dress, compared with that
which one may still see in some districts of Norway or Sweden, but upon
the whole it suits the women of the Ampezzo wonderfully.
For my part, I think that when a woman has found a dress that becomes her,
it is a waste of time to send to Paris for a fashion-plate.
III.
When the excitement of the Festa had subsided, we were free to abandon
ourselves to the excursions in which the neighbourhood of Cortina abounds,
and to which the guide-book earnestly calls every right-minded traveller.
A walk through the light-green shadows of the larch-woods to the tiny lake
of Ghedina, where we could see all the four dozen trout swimming about in
the clear water and catching flies; a drive to the Belvedere, where there
are superficial refreshments above and profound grottos below; these were
trifles, though we enjoyed them. But the great mountains encircling us on
every side, standing out in clear view with that distinctness and
completeness of vision which is one charm of the Dolomites, seemed to
summon us to more arduous enterprises. Accordingly, the Deacon and I
selected the easiest one, engaged a guide, and prepared for the ascent.
Monte Nuvolau is not a perilous mountain. I am quite sure that at my
present time of life I should be unwilling to ascend a perilous mountain
unless there were something extraordinarily desirable at the top, or
remarkably disagreeable at the bottom. Mere risk has lost the attractions
which it once had. As the father of a family I felt bound to abstain from
going for amusement into any place which a Christian lady might not visit
with propriety and safety. Our preparation for Nuvolau, therefore, did not
consist of ropes, ice-irons, and axes, but simply of a lunch and two long
sticks.
Our way led us, in the early morning, through the clustering houses of
Lacedel, up the broad, green slope that faces Cortina on the west, to the
beautiful Alp Pocol. Nothing could exceed the pleasure of such a walk in
the cool of the day, while the dew still lies on the short, rich grass,
and the myriads of flowers are at their brightest and sweetest. The
infinite variety and abundance of the blossoms is a continual wonder. They
are sown more thickly than the stars in heaven, and the rainbow itself
does not show so many tints. Here they are mingled like the threads of
some strange embroidery; and there again nature has massed her colours; so
that one spot will be all pale blue with innumerable forget-me-nots, or
dark blue with gentians; another will blush with the delicate pink of the
Santa Lucia or the deeper red of the clover; and another will shine yellow
as cloth of gold. Over all this opulence of bloom the larks were soaring
and singing. I never heard so many as in the meadows about Cortina. There
was always a sweet spray of music sprinkling down out of the sky, where
the singers poised unseen. It was like walking through a shower of melody.
From the Alp Pocol, which is simply a fair, lofty pasture, we had our
first full view of Nuvolau, rising bare and strong, like a huge bastion,
from the dark fir-woods. Through these our way led onward now for seven
miles, with but a slight ascent. Then turning off to the left we began to
climb sharply through the forest. There we found abundance of the lovely
Alpenrosen, which do not bloom on the lower ground. Their colour is a
deep, glowing pink, and when a Tyrolese girl gives you one of these
flowers to stick in the band of your hat, you may know that you have found
favour in her eyes.
Through the wood the cuckoo was calling—the bird which reverses the
law of good children, and insists on being heard, but not seen.
When the forest was at an end we found ourselves at the foot of an alp
which sloped steeply up to the Five Towers of Averau. The effect of these
enormous masses of rock, standing out in lonely grandeur, like the ruins
of some forsaken habitation of giants, was tremendous. Seen from far below
in the valley their form was picturesque and striking; but as we sat
beside the clear, cold spring which gushes out at the foot of the largest
tower, the Titanic rocks seemed to hang in the air above us as if they
would overawe us into a sense of their majesty. We felt it to the full;
yet none the less, but rather the more, could we feel at the same time the
delicate and ethereal beauty of the fringed gentianella and the pale
Alpine lilies scattered on the short turf beside us.
We had now been on foot about three hours and a half. The half hour that
remained was the hardest. Up over loose, broken stones that rolled beneath
our feet, up over great slopes of rough rock, up across little fields of
snow where we paused to celebrate the Fourth of July with a brief snowball
fight, up along a narrowing ridge with a precipice on either hand, and so
at last to the summit, 8600 feet above the sea.
It is not a great height, but it is a noble situation. For Nuvolau is
fortunately placed in the very centre of the Dolomites, and so commands a
finer view than many a higher mountain. Indeed, it is not from the highest
peaks, according to my experience, that one gets the grandest prospects,
but rather from those of middle height, which are so isolated as to give a
wide circle of vision, and from which one can see both the valleys and the
summits. Monte Rosa itself gives a less imposing view than the Gorner
Grat.
It is possible, in this world, to climb too high for pleasure.
But what a panorama Nuvolau gave us on that clear, radiant summer morning—a
perfect circle of splendid sight! On one side we looked down upon the Five
Towers; on the other, a thousand feet below, the Alps, dotted with the
huts of the herdsmen, sloped down into the deep-cut vale of Agordo.
Opposite to us was the enormous mass of Tofana, a pile of gray and pink
and saffron rock. When we turned the other way, we faced a group of
mountains as ragged as the crests of a line of fir-trees, and behind them
loomed the solemn head of Pelmo. Across the broad vale of the Boite,
Antelao stood beside Sorapis, like a campanile beside a cathedral, and
Cristallo towered above the green pass of the Three Crosses. Through that
opening we could see the bristling peaks of the Sextenthal. Sweeping
around in a wider circle from that point, we saw, beyond the Durrenstein,
the snow-covered pile of the Gross-Glockner; the crimson bastions of the
Rothwand appeared to the north, behind Tofana; then the white slopes that
hang far away above the Zillerthal; and, nearer, the Geislerspitze, like
five fingers thrust into the air; behind that, the distant Oetzthaler
Mountain, and just a single white glimpse of the highest peak of the
Ortler by the Engadine; nearer still we saw the vast fortress of the Sella
group and the red combs of the Rosengarten; Monte Marmolata, the Queen of
the Dolomites, stood before us revealed from base to peak in a bridal
dress of snow; and southward we looked into the dark rugged face of La
Civetta, rising sheer out of the vale of Agordo, where the Lake of Alleghe
slept unseen. It was a sea of mountains, tossed around us into a myriad of
motionless waves, and with a rainbow of colours spread among their hollows
and across their crests. The cliffs of rose and orange and silver gray,
the valleys of deepest green, the distant shadows of purple and melting
blue, and the dazzling white of the scattered snow-fields seemed to shift
and vary like the hues on the inside of a shell. And over all, from peak
to peak, the light, feathery clouds went drifting lazily and slowly, as if
they could not leave a scene so fair.
There is barely room on the top of Nuvolau for the stone shelter-hut which
a grateful Saxon baron has built there as a sort of votive offering for
the recovery of his health among the mountains. As we sat within and ate
our frugal lunch, we were glad that he had recovered his health, and glad
that he had built the hut, and glad that we had come to it. In fact, we
could almost sympathise in our cold, matter-of-fact American way with the
sentimental German inscription which we read on the wall:—
Von Nuvolau's hohen Wolkenstufen
Lass mich, Natur, durch deine Himmel rufen—
An deiner Brust gesunde, wer da krank!
So wird zum Volkerdank mein Sachsendank.
We refrained, however, from shouting anything through Nature's heaven, but
went lightly down, in about three hours, to supper in the Star of Gold.
IV.
When a stern necessity forces one to leave Cortina, there are several ways
of departure. We selected the main highway for our trunks, but for
ourselves the Pass of the Three Crosses; the Deacon and the Deaconess in a
mountain waggon, and I on foot. It should be written as an axiom in the
philosophy of travel that the easiest way is best for your luggage, and
the hardest way is best for yourself.
All along the rough road up to the Pass, we had a glorious outlook
backward over the Val d' Ampezzo, and when we came to the top, we looked
deep down into the narrow Val Buona behind Sorapis. I do not know just
when we passed the Austrian border, but when we came to Lake Misurina we
found ourselves in Italy again. My friends went on down the valley to
Landro, but I in my weakness, having eaten of the trout of the lake for
dinner, could not resist the temptation of staying over-night to catch one
for breakfast.
It was a pleasant failure. The lake was beautiful, lying on top of the
mountain like a bit of blue sky, surrounded by the peaks of Cristallo,
Cadino, and the Drei Zinnen. It was a happiness to float on such celestial
waters and cast the hopeful fly. The trout were there; they were large; I
saw them; they also saw me; but, alas! I could not raise them. Misurina
is, in fact, what the Scotch call "a dour loch," one of those places which
are outwardly beautiful, but inwardly so demoralised that the trout will
not rise.
When we came ashore in the evening, the boatman consoled me with the story
of a French count who had spent two weeks there fishing, and only caught
one fish. I had some thoughts of staying thirteen days longer, to rival
the count, but concluded to go on the next morning, over Monte Pian and
the Cat's Ladder to Landro.
The view from Monte Pian is far less extensive than that from Nuvolau; but
it has the advantage of being very near the wild jumble of the Sexten
Dolomites. The Three Shoemakers and a lot more of sharp and ragged fellows
are close by, on the east; on the west, Cristallo shows its fine little
glacier, and Rothwand its crimson cliffs; and southward Misurina gives to
the view a glimpse of water, without which, indeed, no view is complete.
Moreover, the mountain has the merit of being, as its name implies, quite
gentle. I met the Deacon and the Deaconess at the top, they having walked
up from Landro. And so we crossed the boundary line together again, seven
thousand feet above the sea, from Italy into Austria. There was no
custom-house.
The way down, by the Cat's Ladder, I travelled alone. The path was very
steep and little worn, but even on the mountain-side there was no danger
of losing it, for it had been blazed here and there, on trees and stones,
with a dash of blue paint. This is the work of the invaluable DOAV—which
is, being interpreted, the German-Austrian Alpine Club. The more one
travels in the mountains, the more one learns to venerate this beneficent
society, for the shelter-huts and guide-posts it has erected, and the
paths it has made and marked distinctly with various colours. The Germans
have a genius for thoroughness. My little brown guide-book, for example,
not only informed me through whose back yard I must go to get into a
certain path, but it told me that in such and such a spot I should find
quite a good deal (ziemlichviel) of Edelweiss, and in another a small
echo; it advised me in one valley to take provisions and dispense with a
guide, and in another to take a guide and dispense with provisions, adding
varied information in regard to beer, which in my case was useless, for I
could not touch it. To go astray under such auspices would be worse than
inexcusable.
Landro we found a very different place from Cortina. Instead of having a
large church and a number of small hotels, it consists entirely of one
large hotel and a very tiny church. It does not lie in a broad, open
basin, but in a narrow valley, shut in closely by the mountains. The
hotel, in spite of its size, is excellent, and a few steps up the valley
is one of the finest views in the Dolomites. To the east opens a deep,
wild gorge, at the head of which the pinnacles of the Drei Zinnen are
seen; to the south the Durrensee fills the valley from edge to edge, and
reflects in its pale waters the huge bulk of Monte Cristallo. It is such a
complete picture, so finished, so compact, so balanced, that one might
think a painter had composed it in a moment of inspiration. But no painter
ever laid such colours on his canvas as those which are seen here when the
cool evening shadows have settled upon the valley, all gray and green,
while the mountains shine above in rosy Alpenglow, as if transfigured with
inward fire.
There is another lake, about three miles north of Landro, called the
Toblacher See, and there I repaired the defeat of Misurina. The trout at
the outlet, by the bridge, were very small, and while the old fisherman
was endeavouring to catch some of them in his new net, which would not
work, I pushed my boat up to the head of the lake, where the stream came
in. The green water was amazingly clear, but the current kept the fish
with their heads up stream; so that one could come up behind them near
enough for a long cast, without being seen. As my fly lighted above them
and came gently down with the ripple, I saw the first fish turn and rise
and take it. A motion of the wrist hooked him, and he played just as
gamely as a trout in my favourite Long Island pond. How different the
colour, though, as he came out of the water. This fellow was all silvery,
with light pink spots on his sides. I took seven of his companions, in
weight some four pounds, and then stopped because the evening light was
failing.
How pleasant it is to fish in such a place and at such an hour! The
novelty of the scene, the grandeur of the landscape, lend a strange charm
to the sport. But the sport itself is so familiar that one feels at home—the
motion of the rod, the feathery swish of the line, the sight of the rising
fish—it all brings back a hundred woodland memories, and thoughts of
good fishing comrades, some far away across the sea, and, perhaps, even
now sitting around the forest camp-fire in Maine or Canada, and some with
whom we shall keep company no more until we cross the greater ocean into
that happy country whither they have preceded us.
V.
Instead of going straight down the valley by the high road, a drive of an
hour, to the railway in the Pusterthal, I walked up over the mountains to
the east, across the Platzwiesen, and so down through the Pragserthal. In
one arm of the deep fir-clad vale are the Baths of Alt-Prags, famous for
having cured the Countess of Gorz of a violent rheumatism in the fifteenth
century. It is an antiquated establishment, and the guests, who were
walking about in the fields or drinking their coffee in the balcony, had a
fifteenth century look about them—venerable but slightly ruinous.
But perhaps that was merely a rheumatic result.
All the waggons in the place were engaged. It is strange what an
aggravating effect this state of affairs has upon a pedestrian who is bent
upon riding. I did not recover my delight in the scenery until I had
walked about five miles farther, and sat down on the grass, beside a
beautiful spring, to eat my lunch.
What is there in a little physical rest that has such magic to restore the
sense of pleasure? A few moments ago nothing pleased you—the bloom
was gone from the peach; but now it has come back again—you wonder
and admire. Thus cheerful and contented I trudged up the right arm of the
valley to the Baths of Neu-Prags, less venerable, but apparently more
popular than Alt-Prags, and on beyond them, through the woods, to the
superb Pragser-Wildsee, a lake whose still waters, now blue as sapphire
under the clear sky, and now green as emerald under gray clouds, sleep
encircled by mighty precipices. Could anything be a greater contrast with
Venice? There the canals alive with gondolas, and the open harbour bright
with many-coloured sails; here, the hidden lake, silent and lifeless, save
when
"A leaping fish
Sends through the tarn a lonely cheer."
Tired, and a little foot-sore, after nine hours' walking, I came into the
big railway hotel at Toblach that night. There I met my friends again, and
parted from them and the Dolomites the next day, with regret. For they
were "stepping westward;" but in order to get to the Gross-Venediger I
must make a detour to the east, through the Pusterthal, and come up
through the valley of the Isel to the great chain of mountains called the
Hohe Tauern.
At the junction of the Isel and the Drau lies the quaint little city of
Lienz, with its two castles—the square, double-towered one in the
town, now transformed into the offices of the municipality, and the huge
mediaeval one on a hill outside, now used as a damp restaurant and dismal
beer-cellar. I lingered at Lienz for a couple of days, in the ancient
hostelry of the Post. The hallways were vaulted like a cloister, the walls
were three feet thick, the kitchen was in the middle of the house on the
second floor, so that I looked into it every time I came from my room, and
ordered dinner direct from the cook. But, so far from being displeased
with these peculiarities, I rather liked the flavour of them; and then, in
addition, the landlady's daughter, who was managing the house, was a
person of most engaging manners, and there was trout and grayling fishing
in a stream near by, and the neighbouring church of Dolsach contained the
beautiful picture of the Holy Family, which Franz Defregger painted for
his native village.
The peasant women of Lienz have one very striking feature in their dress—a
black felt hat with a broad, stiff brim and a high crown, smaller at the
top than at the base. It looks a little like the traditional head-gear of
the Pilgrim Fathers, exaggerated. There is a solemnity about it which is
fatal to feminine beauty.
I went by the post-waggon, with two slow horses and ten passengers,
fifteen miles up the Iselthal, to Windisch-Matrei, a village whose early
history is lost in the mist of antiquity, and whose streets are pervaded
with odours which must have originated at the same time with the village.
One wishes that they also might have shared the fate of its early history.
But it is not fair to expect too much of a small place, and
Windisch-Matrei has certainly a beautiful situation and a good inn. There
I took my guide—a wiry and companionable little man, whose
occupation in the lower world was that of a maker and merchant of hats—and
set out for the Pragerhutte, a shelter on the side of the Gross-Venediger.
The path led under the walls of the old Castle of Weissenstein, and then
in steep curves up the cliff which blocks the head of the valley, and
along a cut in the face of the rock, into the steep, narrow Tauernthal,
which divides the Glockner group from the Venediger. How entirely
different it was from the region of the Dolomites! There the variety of
colour was endless and the change incessant; here it was all green grass
and trees and black rocks, with glimpses of snow. There the highest
mountains were in sight constantly; here they could only be seen from
certain points in the valley. There the streams played but a small part in
the landscape; here they were prominent, the main river raging and foaming
through the gorge below, while a score of waterfalls leaped from the
cliffs on either side and dashed down to join it.
The peasants, men, women and children, were cutting the grass in the
perpendicular fields; the woodmen were trimming and felling the trees in
the fir-forests; the cattle-tenders were driving their cows along the
stony path, or herding them far up on the hillsides. It was a lonely
scene, and yet a busy one; and all along the road was written the history
of the perils and hardships of the life which now seemed so peaceful and
picturesque under the summer sunlight.
These heavy crosses, each covered with a narrow, pointed roof and
decorated with a rude picture, standing beside the path, or on the bridge,
or near the mill—what do they mean? They mark the place where a
human life has been lost, or where some poor peasant has been delivered
from a great peril, and has set up a memorial of his gratitude.
Stop, traveller, as you pass by, and look at the pictures. They have
little more of art than a child's drawing on a slate; but they will teach
you what it means to earn a living in these mountains. They tell of the
danger that lurks on the steep slopes of grass, where the mowers have to
go down with ropes around their waists, and in the beds of the streams
where the floods sweep through in the spring, and in the forests where the
great trees fall and crush men like flies, and on the icy bridges where a
slip is fatal, and on the high passes where the winter snowstorm blinds
the eyes and benumbs the limbs of the traveller, and under the cliffs from
which avalanches slide and rocks roll. They show you men and women falling
from waggons, and swept away by waters, and overwhelmed in land-slips. In
the corner of the picture you may see a peasant with the black cross above
his head—that means death. Or perhaps it is deliverance that the
tablet commemorates—and then you will see the miller kneeling beside
his mill with a flood rushing down upon it, or a peasant kneeling in his
harvest-field under an inky-black cloud, or a landlord beside his inn in
flames, or a mother praying beside her sick children; and above appears an
angel, or a saint, or the Virgin with her Child.
Read the inscriptions, too, in their quaint German. Some of them are as
humourous as the epitaphs in New England graveyards. I remember one which
ran like this:
Here lies Elias Queer,
Killed in his sixtieth year;
Scarce had he seen the light of day
When a waggon-wheel crushed his life away.
And there is another famous one which says:
Here perished the honoured and virtuous maiden,
G.V.
This tablet was erected by her only son.
But for the most part a glance at these Marterl und Taferl, which are so
frequent on all the mountain-roads of the Tyrol, will give you a strange
sense of the real pathos of human life. If you are a Catholic, you will
not refuse their request to say a prayer for the departed; if you are a
Protestant, at least it will not hurt you to say one for those who still
live and suffer and toil among such dangers.
After we had walked for four hours up the Tauernthal, we came to the
Matreier-Tauernhaus, an inn which is kept open all the year for the
shelter of travellers over the high pass that crosses the mountain-range
at this point, from north to south. There we dined. It was a bare, rude
place, but the dish of juicy trout was garnished with flowers, each fish
holding a big pansy in its mouth, and as the maid set them down before me
she wished me "a good appetite," with the hearty old-fashioned Tyrolese
courtesy which still survives in these remote valleys. It is pleasant to
travel in a land where the manners are plain and good. If you meet a
peasant on the road he says, "God greet you!" if you give a child a couple
of kreuzers he folds his hands and says, "God reward you!" and the maid
who lights you to bed says, "Goodnight, I hope you will sleep well!"
Two hours more of walking brought us through Ausser-gschloss and
Inner-gschloss, two groups of herdsmen's huts, tenanted only in summer, at
the head of the Tauernthal. Midway between them lies a little chapel, cut
into the solid rock for shelter from the avalanches. This lofty vale is
indeed rightly named; for it is shut off from the rest of the world. The
portal is a cliff down which the stream rushes in foam and thunder. On
either hand rises a mountain wall. Within, the pasture is fresh and green,
sprinkled with Alpine roses, and the pale river flows swiftly down between
the rows of dark wooden houses. At the head of the vale towers the
Gross-Venediger, with its glaciers and snow-fields dazzling white against
the deep blue heaven. The murmur of the stream and the tinkle of the
cow-bells and the jodelling of the herdsmen far up the slopes, make the
music for the scene.
The path from Gschloss leads straight up to the foot of the dark pyramid
of the Kesselkopf, and then in steep endless zig-zags along the edge of
the great glacier. I saw, at first, the pinnacles of ice far above me,
breaking over the face of the rock; then, after an hour's breathless
climbing, I could look right into the blue crevasses; and at last, after
another hour over soft snow-fields and broken rocks, I was at the
Pragerhut, perched on the shoulder of the mountain, looking down upon the
huge river of ice.
It was a magnificent view under the clear light of evening. Here in front
of us, the Venediger with all his brother-mountains clustered about him;
behind us, across the Tauern, the mighty chain of the Glockner against the
eastern sky.
This is the frozen world. Here the Winter, driven back into his
stronghold, makes his last stand against the Summer, in perpetual
conflict, retreating by day to the mountain-peak, but creeping back at
night in frost and snow to regain a little of his lost territory, until at
last the Summer is wearied out, and the Winter sweeps down again to claim
the whole valley for his own.
VI.
In the Pragerhut I found mountain comfort. There were bunks along the wall
of the guest-room, with plenty of blankets. There was good store of eggs,
canned meats, and nourishing black bread. The friendly goats came bleating
up to the door at nightfall to be milked. And in charge of all this luxury
there was a cheerful peasant-wife with her brown-eyed daughter, to
entertain travellers. It was a pleasant sight to see them, as they sat
down to their supper with my guide; all three bowed their heads and said
their "grace before meat," the guide repeating the longer prayer and the
mother and daughter coming in with the responses. I went to bed with a
warm and comfortable feeling about my heart. It was a good ending for the
day. In the morning, if the weather remained clear, the alarm-clock was to
wake us at three for the ascent to the summit.
But can it be three o'clock already. The gibbous moon still hangs in the
sky and casts a feeble light over the scene. Then up and away for the
final climb. How rough the path is among the black rocks along the ridge!
Now we strike out on the gently rising glacier, across the crust of snow,
picking our way among the crevasses, with the rope tied about our waists
for fear of a fall. How cold it is! But now the gray light of morning
dawns, and now the beams of sunrise shoot up behind the Glockner, and now
the sun itself glitters into sight. The snow grows softer as we toil up
the steep, narrow comb between the Gross-Venediger and his neighbour the
Klein-Venediger. At last we have reached our journey's end. See, the whole
of the Tyrol is spread out before us in wondrous splendour, as we stand on
this snowy ridge; and at our feet the Schlatten glacier, like a long,
white snake, curls down into the valley.
There is still a little peak above us; an overhanging horn of snow which
the wind has built against the mountain-top. I would like to stand there,
just for a moment. The guide protests it would be dangerous, for if the
snow should break it would be a fall of a thousand feet to the glacier on
the northern side. But let us dare the few steps upward. How our feet
sink! Is the snow slipping? Look at the glacier! What is happening? It is
wrinkling and curling backward on us, serpent-like. Its head rises far
above us. All its icy crests are clashing together like the ringing of a
thousand bells. We are falling! I fling out my arm to grasp the guide—and
awake to find myself clutching a pillow in the bunk. The alarm-clock is
ringing fiercely for three o'clock. A driving snow-storm is beating
against the window. The ground is white. Peer through the clouds as I may,
I cannot even catch a glimpse of the vanished Gross-Venediger.
1892.
AU LARGE
"Wherever we strayed, the same tranquil leisure enfolded us; day followed
day in an order unbroken and peaceful as the unfolding of the flowers and
the silent march of the stars. Time no longer ran like the few sands in a
delicate hour-glass held by a fragile human hand, but like a majestic
river fed by fathomless seas. . . . We gave ourselves up to the sweetness
of that unmeasured life, without thought of yesterday or to-morrow; we
drank the cup to-day held to our lips, and knew that so long as we were
athirst that draught would not be denied us."—HAMILTON W. MABIE:
Under the Trees.
There is magic in words, surely, and many a treasure besides Ali Baba's is
unlocked with a verbal key. Some charm in the mere sound, some association
with the pleasant past, touches a secret spring. The bars are down; the
gate open; you are made free of all the fields of memory and fancy—by
a word.
Au large! Envoyez au large! is the cry of the Canadian voyageurs as they
thrust their paddles against the shore and push out on the broad lake for
a journey through the wilderness. Au large! is what the man in the bow
shouts to the man in the stern when the birch canoe is running down the
rapids, and the water grows too broken, and the rocks too thick, along the
river-bank. Then the frail bark must be driven out into the very centre of
the wild current, into the midst of danger to find safety, dashing, like a
frightened colt, along the smooth, sloping lane bordered by white fences
of foam.
Au large! When I hear that word, I hear also the crisp waves breaking on
pebbly beaches, and the big wind rushing through innumerable trees, and
the roar of headlong rivers leaping down the rocks, I see long reaches of
water sparkling in the sun, or sleeping still between evergreen walls
beneath a cloudy sky; and the gleam of white tents on the shore; and the
glow of firelight dancing through the woods. I smell the delicate
vanishing perfume of forest flowers; and the incense of rolls of
birch-bark, crinkling and flaring in the camp-fire; and the soothing odour
of balsam-boughs piled deep for woodland beds—the veritable and only
genuine perfume of the land of Nod. The thin shining veil of the Northern
lights waves and fades and brightens over the night sky; at the sound of
the word, as at the ringing of a bell, the curtain rises. Scene, the
Forest of Arden; enter a party of hunters.
It was in the Lake St. John country, two hundred miles north of Quebec,
that I first heard my rustic incantation; and it seemed to fit the region
as if it had been made for it. This is not a little pocket wilderness like
the Adirondacks, but something vast and primitive. You do not cross it,
from one railroad to another, by a line of hotels. You go into it by one
river as far as you like, or dare; and then you turn and come back again
by another river, making haste to get out before your provisions are
exhausted. The lake itself is the cradle of the mighty Saguenay: an inland
sea, thirty miles across and nearly round, lying in the broad limestone
basin north of the Laurentian Mountains. The southern and eastern shores
have been settled for twenty or thirty years; and the rich farm-land
yields abundant crops of wheat and oats and potatoes to a community of
industrious habitants, who live in little modern villages, named after the
saints and gathered as closely as possible around big gray stone churches,
and thank the good Lord that he has given them a climate at least four or
five degrees milder than Quebec. A railroad, built through a region of
granite hills, which will never be tamed to the plough, links this
outlying settlement to the civilised world; and at the end of the railroad
the Hotel Roberval, standing on a hill above the lake, offers to the
pampered tourist electric lights, and spring-beds, and a wide veranda from
which he can look out across the water into the face of the wilderness.
Northward and westward the interminable forest rolls away to the shores of
Hudson's Bay and the frozen wastes of Labrador. It is an immense solitude.
A score of rivers empty into the lake; little ones like the Pikouabi and
La Pipe, and middle-sized ones like the Ouiatehouan and La Belle Riviere,
and big ones like the Mistassini and the Peribonca; and each of these
streams is the clue to a labyrinth of woods and waters. The canoe-man who
follows it far enough will find himself among lakes that are not named on
any map; he will camp on virgin ground, and make the acquaintance of
unsophisticated fish; perhaps even, like the maiden in the fairy-tale, he
will meet with the little bear, and the middle-sized bear, and the great
big bear.
Damon and I set out on such an expedition shortly after the nodding lilies
in the Connecticut meadows had rung the noon-tide bell of summer, and when
the raspberry bushes along the line of the Quebec and Lake St. John
Railway had spread their afternoon collation for birds and men. At
Roberval we found our four guides waiting for us, and the steamboat took
us all across the lake to the Island House, at the northeast corner. There
we embarked our tents and blankets, our pots and pans, and bags of flour
and potatoes and bacon and other delicacies, our rods and guns, and last,
but not least, our axes (without which man in the woods is a helpless
creature), in two birch-bark canoes, and went flying down the Grande
Decharge.
It is a wonderful place, this outlet of Lake St. John. All the floods of
twenty rivers are gathered here, and break forth through a net of islands
in a double stream, divided by the broad Ile d'Alma, into the Grande
Decharge and the Petite Decharge. The southern outlet is small, and flows
somewhat more quietly at first. But the northern outlet is a huge
confluence and tumult of waters. You see the set of the tide far out in
the lake, sliding, driving, crowding, hurrying in with smooth currents and
swirling eddies, toward the corner of escape. By the rocky cove where the
Island House peers out through the fir-trees, the current already has a
perceptible slope. It begins to boil over hidden stones in the middle, and
gurgles at projecting points of rock. A mile farther down there is an
islet where the stream quickens, chafes, and breaks into a rapid. Behind
the islet it drops down in three or four foaming steps. On the outside it
makes one long, straight rush into a line of white-crested standing waves.
As we approached, the steersman in the first canoe stood up to look over
the course. The sea was high. Was it too high? The canoes were heavily
loaded. Could they leap the waves? There was a quick talk among the guides
as we slipped along, undecided which way to turn. Then the question seemed
to settle itself, as most of these woodland questions do, as if some
silent force of Nature had the casting-vote. "Sautez, sautez!" cried
Ferdinand, "envoyez au large!" In a moment we were sliding down the smooth
back of the rapid, directly toward the first big wave. The rocky shore
went by us like a dream; we could feel the motion of the earth whirling
around with us. The crest of the billow in front curled above the bow of
the canoe. "Arret', arret', doucement!" A swift stroke of the paddle
checked the canoe, quivering and prancing like a horse suddenly reined in.
The wave ahead, as if surprised, sank and flattened for a second. The
canoe leaped through the edge of it, swerved to one side, and ran gayly
down along the fringe of the line of billows, into quieter water.
Every one feels the exhilaration of such a descent. I know a lady who
almost cried with fright when she went down her first rapid, but before
the voyage was ended she was saying:—
"Count that day lost whose low, descending sun
Sees no fall leaped, no foaming rapid run."
It takes a touch of danger to bring out the joy of life.
Our guides began to shout, and joke each other, and praise their canoes.
"You grazed that villain rock at the corner," said Jean; "didn't you know
where it was?"
"Yes, after I touched it," cried Ferdinand; "but you took in a bucket of
water, and I suppose your m'sieu' is sitting on a piece of the river. Is
it not?"
This seemed to us all a very merry jest, and we laughed with the same
inextinguishable laughter which a practical joke, according to Homer,
always used to raise in Olympus. It is one of the charms of life in the
woods that it brings back the high spirits of boyhood and renews the youth
of the world. Plain fun, like plain food, tastes good out-of-doors. Nectar
is the sweet sap of a maple-tree. Ambrosia is only another name for
well-turned flapjacks. And all the immortals, sitting around the table of
golden cedar-slabs, make merry when the clumsy Hephaistos, playing the
part of Hebe, stumbles over a root and upsets the plate of cakes into the
fire.
The first little rapid of the Grande Decharge was only the beginning. Half
a mile below we could see the river disappear between two points of rock.
There was a roar of conflict, and a golden mist hanging in the air, like
the smoke of battle. All along the place where the river sank from sight,
dazzling heads of foam were flashing up and falling back, as if a horde of
water-sprites were vainly trying to fight their way up to the lake. It was
the top of the grande chute, a wild succession of falls and pools where no
boat could live for a moment. We ran down toward it as far as the water
served, and then turned off among the rocks on the left hand, to take the
portage.
These portages are among the troublesome delights of a journey in the
wilderness. To the guides they mean hard work, for everything, including
the boats, must be carried on their backs. The march of the canoes on dry
land is a curious sight. Andrew Marvell described it two hundred years ago
when he was poetizing beside the little river Wharfe in Yorkshire:—
"And now the salmon-fishers moist
Their leathern boats begin to hoist,
And like antipodes in shoes
Have shod their heads in their canoes.
How tortoise-like, but none so slow,
These rational amphibii go!"
But the sportsman carries nothing, except perhaps his gun, or his rod, or
his photographic camera; and so for him the portage is only a pleasant
opportunity to stretch his legs, cramped by sitting in the canoe, and to
renew his acquaintance with the pretty things that are in the woods.
We sauntered along the trail, Damon and I, as if school were out and would
never keep again. How fresh and tonic the forest seemed as we plunged into
its bath of shade. There were our old friends the cedars, with their roots
twisted across the path; and the white birches, so trim in youth and so
shaggy in age; and the sociable spruces and balsams, crowding close
together, and interlacing their arms overhead. There were the little
springs, trickling through the moss; and the slippery logs laid across the
marshy places; and the fallen trees, cut in two and pushed aside,—for
this was a much-travelled portage.
Around the open spaces, the tall meadow-rue stood dressed in robes of
fairy white and green. The blue banners of the fleur-de-lis were planted
beside the springs. In shady corners, deeper in the wood, the fragrant
pyrola lifted its scape of clustering bells, like a lily of the valley
wandered to the forest. When we came to the end of the portage, a perfume
like that of cyclamens in Tyrolean meadows welcomed us, and searching
among the loose grasses by the water-side we found the exquisite purple
spikes of the lesser fringed orchis, loveliest and most ethereal of all
the woodland flowers save one. And what one is that? Ah, my friend, it is
your own particular favourite, the flower, by whatever name you call it,
that you plucked long ago when you were walking in the forest with your
sweetheart,—
"Im wunderschonen Monat Mai
Als alle Knospen sprangen."
We launched our canoes again on the great pool at the foot of the first
fall,—a broad sweep of water a mile long and half a mile wide, full
of eddies and strong currents, and covered with drifting foam. There was
the old campground on the point, where I had tented so often with my lady
Greygown, fishing for ouananiche, the famous land-locked salmon of Lake
St. John. And there were the big fish, showing their back fins as they
circled lazily around in the eddies, as if they were waiting to play with
us. But the goal of our day's journey was miles away, and we swept along
with the stream, now through a rush of quick water, boiling and foaming,
now through a still place like a lake, now through
"Fairy crowds
Of islands, that together lie,
As quietly as spots of sky
Among the evening clouds."
The beauty of the shores was infinitely varied, and unspoiled by any sign
of the presence of man. We met no company except a few king-fishers, and a
pair of gulls who had come up from the sea to spend the summer, and a
large flock of wild ducks, which the guides call "Betseys," as if they
were all of the gentler sex. In such a big family of girls we supposed
that a few would not be missed, and Damon bagged two of the tenderest for
our supper.
In the still water at the mouth of the Riviere Mistook, just above the
Rapide aux Cedres, we went ashore on a level wooded bank to make our first
camp and cook our dinner. Let me try to sketch our men as they are busied
about the fire.
They are all French Canadians of unmixed blood, descendants of the men who
came to New France with Samuel de Champlain, that incomparable old
woodsman and life-long lover of the wilderness. Ferdinand Larouche is our
chef—there must be a head in every party for the sake of harmony—and
his assistant is his brother Francois. Ferdinand is a stocky little
fellow, a "sawed off" man, not more than five feet two inches tall, but
every inch of him is pure vim. He can carry a big canoe or a
hundred-weight of camp stuff over a mile portage without stopping to take
breath. He is a capital canoe-man, with prudence enough to balance his
courage, and a fair cook, with plenty of that quality which is wanting in
the ordinary cook of commerce—good humour. Always joking, whistling,
singing, he brings the atmosphere of a perpetual holiday along with him.
His weather-worn coat covers a heart full of music. He has two talents
which make him a marked man among his comrades. He plays the fiddle to the
delight of all the balls and weddings through the country-side; and he
speaks English to the admiration and envy of the other guides. But like
all men of genius he is modest about his accomplishments.﹃H'I not spik
good h'English—h'only for camp—fishin', cookin', dhe voyage—h'all
dhose t'ings.﹄The aspirates puzzle him. He can get though a slash of
fallen timber more easily than a sentence full of "this" and "that."
Sometimes he expresses his meaning queerly. He was telling me once about
his farm,﹃not far off here, in dhe Riviere au Cochon, river of dhe pig,
you call 'im. H'I am a widow, got five sons, t'ree of dhem are girls.﹄But
he usually ends by falling back into French, which, he assures you, you
speak to perfection,﹃much better than the Canadians; the French of Paris
in short—M'sieu' has been in Paris?﹄Such courtesy is born in the
blood, and is irresistible. You cannot help returning the compliment and
assuring him that his English is remarkable, good enough for all practical
purposes, better than any of the other guides can speak. And so it is.
Francois is a little taller, a little thinner, and considerably quieter
than Ferdinand. He laughs loyally at his brother's jokes, and sings the
response to his songs, and wields a good second paddle in the canoe.
Jean—commonly called Johnny—Morel is a tall, strong man of
fifty, with a bushy red beard that would do credit to a pirate. But when
you look at him more closely, you see that he has a clear, kind blue eye
and a most honest, friendly face under his slouch hat. He has travelled
these woods and waters for thirty years, so that he knows the way through
them by a thousand familiar signs, as well as you know the streets of the
city. He is our pathfinder.
The bow paddle in his canoe is held by his son Joseph, a lad not quite
fifteen, but already as tall, and almost as strong as a man.﹃He is yet of
the youth,﹄said Johnny, "and he knows not the affairs of the camp. This
trip is for him the first—it is his school—but I hope he will
content you. He is good, M'sieu', and of the strongest for his age. I have
educated already two sons in the bow of my canoe. The oldest has gone to
Pennsylvanie; he peels the bark there for the tanning of leather. The
second had the misfortune of breaking his leg, so that he can no longer
kneel to paddle. He has descended to the making of shoes. Joseph is my
third pupil. And I have still a younger one at home waiting to come into
my school."
A touch of family life like that is always refreshing, and doubly so in
the wilderness. For what is fatherhood at its best, everywhere, but the
training of good men to take the teacher's place when his work is done?
Some day, when Johnny's rheumatism has made his joints a little stiffer
and his eyes have lost something of their keenness, he will be wielding
the second paddle in the boat, and going out only on the short and easy
trips. It will be young Joseph that steers the canoe through the dangerous
places, and carries the heaviest load over the portages, and leads the way
on the long journeys.
It has taken me longer to describe our men than it took them to prepare
our frugal meal: a pot of tea, the woodsman's favourite drink, (I never
knew a good guide that would not go without whisky rather than without
tea,) a few slices of toast and juicy rashers of bacon, a kettle of boiled
potatoes, and a relish of crackers and cheese. We were in a hurry to be
off for an afternoon's fishing, three or four miles down the river, at the
Ile Maligne.
The island is well named, for it is the most perilous place on the river,
and has a record of disaster and death. The scattered waters of the
Discharge are drawn together here into one deep, narrow, powerful stream,
flowing between gloomy shores of granite. In mid-channel the wicked island
shows its scarred and bristling head, like a giant ready to dispute the
passage. The river rushes straight at the rocky brow, splits into two
currents, and raves away on both sides of the island in a double chain of
furious falls and rapids.
In these wild waters we fished with immense delight and fair success,
scrambling down among the huge rocks along the shore, and joining the
excitement of an Alpine climb with the placid pleasures of angling. At
nightfall we were at home again in our camp, with half a score of
onananiche, weighing from one to four pounds each.
Our next day's journey was long and variegated. A portage of a mile or two
across the Ile d'Alma, with a cart to haul our canoes and stuff, brought
us to the Little Discharge, down which we floated for a little way, and
then hauled through the village of St. Joseph to the foot of the Carcajou,
or Wildcat Falls. A mile of quick water was soon passed, and we came to
the junction of the Little Discharge with the Grand Discharge at the point
where the picturesque club-house stands in a grove of birches beside the
big Vache Caille Falls. It is lively work crossing the pool here, when the
water is high and the canoes are heavy; but we went through the labouring
seas safely, and landed some distance below, at the head of the Rapide
Gervais, to eat our lunch. The water was too rough to run down with loaded
boats, so Damon and I had to walk about three miles along the river-bank,
while the men went down with the canoes.
On our way beside the rapids, Damon geologised, finding the marks of
ancient glaciers, and bits of iron-ore, and pockets of sand full of
infinitesimal garnets, and specks of gold washed from the primitive
granite; and I fished, picking up a pair of ouananiche in foam-covered
nooks among the rocks. The swift water was almost passed when we embarked
again and ran down the last slope into a long deadwater.
The shores, at first bold and rough, covered with dense thickets of
second-growth timber, now became smoother and more fertile. Scattered
farms, with square, unpainted houses, and long, thatched barns, began to
creep over the hills toward the river. There was a hamlet, called St.
Charles, with a rude little church and a campanile of logs. The cure,
robed in decent black and wearing a tall silk hat of the vintage of 1860,
sat on the veranda of his trim presbytery, looking down upon us, like an
image of propriety smiling at Bohemianism. Other craft appeared on the
river. A man and his wife paddling an old dugout, with half a dozen
children packed in amidships a crew of lumbermen, in a sharp-nosed bateau,
picking up stray logs along the banks; a couple of boatloads of young
people returning merrily from a holiday visit; a party of berry-pickers in
a flat-bottomed skiff; all the life of the country-side was in evidence on
the river. We felt quite as if we had been "in the swim" of society, when
at length we reached the point where the Riviere des Aunes came tumbling
down a hundred-foot ladder of broken black rocks. There we pitched our
tents in a strip of meadow by the water-side, where we could have the
sound of the falls for a slumber-song all night and the whole river for a
bath at sunrise.
A sparkling draught of crystal weather was poured into our stirrup-cup in
the morning, as we set out for a drive of fifteen miles across country to
the Riviere a l'Ours, a tributary of the crooked, unnavigable river of
Alders. The canoes and luggage were loaded on a couple of charrettes, or
two-wheeled carts. But for us and the guides there were two quatre-roues,
the typical vehicles of the century, as characteristic of Canada as the
carriole is of Norway. It is a two-seated buckboard, drawn by one horse,
and the back seat is covered with a hood like an old-fashioned poke
bonnet. The road is of clay and always rutty. It runs level for a while,
and then jumps up a steep ridge and down again, or into a deep gully and
out again. The habitant's idea of good driving is to let his horse slide
down the hill and gallop up. This imparts a spasmodic quality to the
motion, like Carlyle's style.
The native houses are strung along the road. The modern pattern has a
convex angle in the roof, and dormer-windows; it is a rustic adaptation of
the Mansard. The antique pattern, which is far more picturesque, has a
concave curve in the roof, and the eaves project like eyebrows, shading
the flatness of the face. Paint is a rarity. The prevailing colour is the
soft gray of weather-beaten wood. Sometimes, in the better class of
houses, a gallery is built across the front and around one side, and a
square of garden is fenced in, with dahlias and hollyhocks and marigolds,
and perhaps a struggling rosebush, and usually a small patch of tobacco
growing in one corner. Once in a long while you may see a balm-of-Gilead
tree, or a clump of sapling poplars, planted near the door.
How much better it would have been if the farmer had left a few of the
noble forest-trees to shade his house. But then, when the farmer came into
the wilderness he was not a farmer, he was first of all a wood-chopper. He
regarded the forest as a stubborn enemy in possession of his land. He
attacked it with fire and axe and exterminated it, instead of keeping a
few captives to hold their green umbrellas over his head when at last his
grain fields should be smiling around him and he should sit down on his
doorstep to smoke a pipe of home-grown tobacco.
In the time of adversity one should prepare for prosperity. I fancy there
are a good many people unconsciously repeating the mistake of the Canadian
farmer—chopping down all the native growths of life, clearing the
ground of all the useless pretty things that seem to cumber it,
sacrificing everything to utility and success. We fell the last green tree
for the sake of raising an extra hill of potatoes; and never stop to think
what an ugly, barren place we may have to sit in while we eat them. The
ideals, the attachments—yes, even the dreams of youth are worth
saving. For the artificial tastes with which age tries to make good their
loss grow very slowly and cast but a slender shade.
Most of the Canadian farmhouses have their ovens out-of-doors. We saw them
everywhere; rounded edifices of clay, raised on a foundation of logs, and
usually covered with a pointed roof of boards. They looked like little
family chapels—and so they were; shrines where the ritual of the
good housewife was celebrated, and the gift of daily bread, having been
honestly earned, was thankfully received.
At one house we noticed a curious fragment of domestic economy. Half a pig
was suspended over the chimney, and the smoke of the summer fire was
turned to account in curing the winter's meat. I guess the children of
that family had a peculiar fondness for the parental roof-tree. We saw
them making mud-pies in the road, and imagined that they looked lovingly
up at the pendent porker, outlined against the sky,—a sign of
promise, prophetic of bacon.
About noon the road passed beyond the region of habitation into a barren
land, where blueberries were the only crop, and partridges took the place
of chickens. Through this rolling gravelly plain, sparsely wooded and
glowing with the tall magenta bloom of the fireweed, we drove toward the
mountains, until the road went to seed and we could follow it no longer.
Then we took to the water and began to pole our canoes up the River of the
Bear. It was a clear, amber-coloured stream, not more than ten or fifteen
yards wide, running swift and strong, over beds of sand and rounded
pebbles. The canoes went wallowing and plunging up the narrow channel,
between thick banks of alders, like clumsy sea-monsters. All the grace
with which they move under the strokes of the paddle, in large waters, was
gone. They looked uncouth and predatory, like a pair of seals that I once
saw swimming far up the river Ristigouche in chase of fish. From the bow
of each canoe the landing-net stuck out as a symbol of destruction—after
the fashion of the Dutch admiral who nailed a broom to his masthead. But
it would have been impossible to sweep the trout out of that little river
by any fair method of angling, for there were millions of them; not large,
but lively, and brilliant, and fat; they leaped in every bend of the
stream. We trailed our flies, and made quick casts here and there, as we
went along. It was fishing on the wing. And when we pitched our tents in a
hurry at nightfall on the low shore of Lac Sale, among the bushes where
firewood was scarce and there were no sapins for the beds, we were
comforted for the poorness of the camp-ground by the excellence of the
trout supper.
It was a bitter cold night for August. There was a skin of ice on the
water-pail at daybreak. We were glad to be up and away for an early start.
The river grew wilder and more difficult. There were rapids, and ruined
dams built by the lumbermen years ago. At these places the trout were
larger, and so plentiful that it was easy to hook two at a cast. It came
on to rain furiously while we were eating our lunch. But we did not seem
to mind it any more than the fish did. Here and there the river was
completely blocked by fallen trees. The guides called it bouchee,
"corked," and leaped out gayly into the water with their axes to "uncork"
it. We passed through some pretty lakes, unknown to the map-makers, and
arrived, before sundown, at the Lake of the Bear, where we were to spend a
couple of days. The lake was full of floating logs, and the water, raised
by the heavy rains and the operations of the lumbermen, was several feet
above its usual level. Nature's landing-places were all blotted out, and
we had to explore halfway around the shore before we could get out
comfortably. We raised the tents on a small shoulder of a hill, a few rods
above the water; and a glorious camp-fire of birch logs soon made us
forget our misery as though it had not been.
The name of the Lake of the Beautiful Trout made us desire to visit it.
The portage was said to be only fifty acres long (the arpent is the
popular measure of distance here), but it passed over a ridge of newly
burned land, and was so entangled with ruined woods and desolate of birds
and flowers that it seemed to us at least five miles. The lake was
charming—a sheet of singularly clear water, of a pale green tinge,
surrounded by wooded hills. In the translucent depths trout and pike live
together, but whether in peace or not I cannot tell. Both of them grow to
an enormous size, but the pike are larger and have more capacious jaws.
One of them broke my tackle and went off with a silver spoon in his mouth,
as if he had been born to it. Of course the guides vowed that they saw him
as he passed under the canoe, and declared that he must weigh thirty or
forty pounds. The spectacles of regret always magnify.
The trout were coy. We took only five of them, perfect specimens of the
true Salvelinus fontinalis, with square tails, and carmine spots on their
dark, mottled sides; the largest weighed three pounds and three-quarters,
and the others were almost as heavy.
On our way back to the camp we found the portage beset by innumerable and
bloodthirsty foes. There are four grades of insect malignity in the woods.
The mildest is represented by the winged idiot that John Burroughs' little
boy called a "blunderhead." He dances stupidly before your face, as if
lost in admiration, and finishes his pointless tale by getting in your
eye, or down your throat. The next grade is represented by the midges.
"Bite 'em no see 'em," is the Indian name for these invisible atoms of
animated pepper which settle upon you in the twilight and make your skin
burn like fire. But their hour is brief, and when they depart they leave
not a bump behind. One step lower in the scale we find the mosquito, or
rather he finds us, and makes his poisoned mark upon our skin. But after
all, he has his good qualities. The mosquito is a gentlemanly pirate. He
carries his weapon openly, and gives notice of an attack. He respects the
decencies of life, and does not strike below the belt, or creep down the
back of your neck. But the black fly is at the bottom of the moral scale.
He is an unmitigated ruffian, the plug-ugly of the woods. He looks like a
tiny, immature house-fly, with white legs as if he must be innocent. But,
in fact, he crawls like a serpent and bites like a dog. No portion of the
human frame is sacred from his greed. He takes his pound of flesh
anywhere, and does not scruple to take the blood with it. As a rule you
can defend yourself, to some degree, against him, by wearing a head-net,
tying your sleeves around your wrists and your trousers around your
ankles, and anointing yourself with grease, flavoured with pennyroyal, for
which cleanly and honest scent he has a coarse aversion. But sometimes,
especially on burned land, about the middle of a warm afternoon, when a
rain is threatening, the horde of black flies descend in force and fury
knowing that their time is short. Then there is no escape. Suits of chain
armour, Nubian ointments of far-smelling potency, would not save you. You
must do as our guides did on the portage, submit to fate and walk along in
heroic silence, like Marco Bozzaris "bleeding at every pore,"—or do
as Damon and I did, break into ejaculations and a run, until you reach a
place where you can light a smudge and hold your head over it.
"And yet," said my comrade, as we sat coughing and rubbing our eyes in the
painful shelter of the smoke,﹃there are worse trials than this in the
civilised districts: social enmities, and newspaper scandals, and
religious persecutions. The blackest fly I ever saw is the Reverend
——-﹄but here his voice was fortunately choked by a fit of
coughing.
A couple of wandering Indians—descendants of the Montagnais, on
whose hunting domain we were travelling—dropped in at our camp that
night as we sat around the fire. They gave us the latest news about the
portages on our further journey; how far they had been blocked with fallen
trees, and whether the water was high or low in the rivers—just as a
visitor at home would talk about the effect of the strikes on the stock
market, and the prospects of the newest organization of the non-voting
classes for the overthrow of Tammany Hall. Every phase of civilisation or
barbarism creates its own conversational currency. The weather, like the
old Spanish dollar, is the only coin that passes everywhere.
But our Indians did not carry much small change about them. They were
dark, silent chaps, soon talked out; and then they sat sucking their pipes
before the fire, (as dumb as their own wooden effigies in front of a
tobacconist's shop,) until the spirit moved them, and they vanished in
their canoe down the dark lake. Our own guides were very different. They
were as full of conversation as a spruce-tree is of gum. When all
shallower themes were exhausted they would discourse of bears and canoes
and lumber and fish, forever. After Damon and I had left the fire and
rolled ourselves in the blankets in our own tent, we could hear the men
going on and on with their simple jests and endless tales of adventure,
until sleep drowned their voices.
It was the sound of a French chanson that woke us early on the morning of
our departure from the Lake of the Bear. A gang of lumbermen were bringing
a lot of logs through the lake. Half-hidden in the cold gray mist that
usually betokens a fine day, and wet to the waist from splashing about
after their unwieldy flock, these rough fellows were singing at their work
as cheerfully as a party of robins in a cherry-tree at sunrise. It was
like the miller and the two girls whom Wordsworth saw dancing in their
boats on the Thames:
"They dance not for me,
Yet mine is their glee!
Thus pleasure is spread through the earth
In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find;
Thus a rich loving-kindness, redundantly kind,
Moves all nature to gladness and mirth."
But our later thoughts of the lumbermen were not altogether grateful, when
we arrived that day, after a mile of portage, at the little Riviere
Blanche, upon which we had counted to float us down to Lac Tchitagama, and
found that they had stolen all its water to float their logs down the Lake
of the Bear. The poor little river was as dry as a theological novel.
There was nothing left of it except the bed and the bones; it was like a
Connecticut stream in the middle of August. All its pretty secrets were
laid bare; all its music was hushed. The pools that lingered among the
rocks seemed like big tears; and the voice of the forlorn rivulets that
trickled in here and there, seeking the parent stream, was a voice of
weeping and complaint.
For us the loss meant a hard day's work, scrambling over slippery stones,
and splashing through puddles, and forcing a way through the tangled
thickets on the bank, instead of a pleasant two hours' run on a swift
current. We ate our dinner on a sandbank in what was once the middle of a
pretty pond; and entered, as the sun was sinking, a narrow wooded gorge
between the hills, completely filled by a chain of small lakes, where
travelling became easy and pleasant. The steep shores, clothed with cedar
and black spruce and dark-blue fir-trees, rose sheer from the water; the
passage from lake to lake was a tiny rapid a few yards long, gurgling
through mossy rocks; at the foot of the chain there was a longer rapid,
with a portage beside it. We emerged from the dense bush suddenly and
found ourselves face to face with Lake Tchitagama.
How the heart expands at such a view! Nine miles of shining water lay
stretched before us, opening through the mountains that guarded it on both
sides with lofty walls of green and gray, ridge over ridge, point beyond
point, until the vista ended in
"You orange sunset waning slow."
At a moment like this one feels a sense of exultation. It is a new
discovery of the joy of living. And yet, my friend and I confessed to each
other, there was a tinge of sadness, an inexplicable regret mingled with
our joy. Was it the thought of how few human eyes had even seen that
lovely vision? Was it the dim foreboding that we might never see it again?
Who can explain the secret pathos of Nature's loveliness? It is a touch of
melancholy inherited from our mother Eve. It is an unconscious memory of
the lost Paradise. It is the sense that even if we should find another
Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly, nor stay in it forever.
Our first camp on Tchitagama was at the sunrise end of the lake, in a bay
paved with small round stones, laid close together and beaten firmly down
by the waves. There, and along the shores below, at the mouth of a little
river that foamed in over a ledge of granite, and in the shadow of cliffs
of limestone and feldspar, we trolled and took many fish: pike of enormous
size, fresh-water sharks, devourers of nobler game, fit only to kill and
throw away; huge old trout of six or seven pounds, with broad tails and
hooked jaws, fine fighters and poor food; stupid, wide-mouthed chub—ouitouche,
the Indians call them—biting at hooks that were not baited for them;
and best of all, high-bred onananiche, pleasant to capture and delicate to
eat.
Our second camp was on a sandy point at the sunset end of the lake—a
fine place for bathing, and convenient to the wild meadows and blueberry
patches, where Damon went to hunt for bears. He did not find any; but once
he heard a great noise in the bushes, which he thought was a bear; and he
declared that he got quite as much excitement out of it as if it had had
four legs and a mouthful of teeth.
He brought back from one of his expeditions an Indian letter, which he had
found in a cleft stick by the river. It was a sheet of birch-bark with a
picture drawn on it in charcoal; five Indians in a canoe paddling up the
river, and one in another canoe pointing in another direction; we read it
as a message left by a hunting party, telling their companions not to go
on up the river, because it was already occupied, but to turn off on a
side stream.
There was a sign of a different kind nailed to an old stump behind our
camp. It was the top of a soap-box, with an inscription after this
fashion:
A.D. MEYER & B. LEVIT
Soap Mfrs. N. Y.
CAMPED HERE JULY 18—
1 TROUT 17 12 POUNDS. II OUAN
ANISHES 18 12 POUNDS. ONE
PIKE 147 12 LBS.
There was a combination of piscatorial pride and mercantile enterprise in
this quaint device, that took our fancy. It suggested also a curious
question of psychology in regard to the inhibitory influence of horses and
fish upon the human nerve of veracity. We named the place "Point Ananias."
And yet, in fact, it was a wild and lonely spot, and not even the Hebrew
inscription could spoil the sense of solitude that surrounded us when the
night came, and the storm howled across the take, and the darkness
encircled us with a wall that only seemed the more dense and impenetrable
as the firelight blazed and leaped within the black ring.
"How far away is the nearest house, Johnny?"
"I don't know; fifty miles, I suppose."
"And what would you do if the canoes were burned, or if a tree fell and
smashed them?"
"Well, I'd say a Pater noster, and take bread and bacon enough for four
days, and an axe, and plenty of matches, and make a straight line through
the woods. But it wouldn't be a joke, M'sieu', I can tell you."
The river Peribonca, into which Lake Tchitagama flows without a break, is
the noblest of all the streams that empty into Lake St. John. It is said
to be more than three hundred miles long, and at the mouth of the lake it
is perhaps a thousand feet wide, flowing with a deep, still current
through the forest. The dead-water lasted for several miles; then the
river sloped into a rapid, spread through a net of islands, and broke over
a ledge in a cataract. Another quiet stretch was followed by another fall,
and so on, along the whole course of the river.
We passed three of these falls in the first day's voyage (by portages so
steep and rough that an Adirondack guide would have turned gray at the
sight of them), and camped at night just below the Chute du Diable, where
we found some ouananiche in the foam. Our tents were on an islet, and all
around we saw the primeval, savage beauty of a world unmarred by man,
The river leaped, shouting, down its double stairway of granite, rejoicing
like a strong man to run a race. The after-glow in the western sky
deepened from saffron to violet among the tops of the cedars, and over the
cliffs rose the moonlight, paling the heavens but glorifying the earth.
There was something large and generous and untrammelled in the scene,
recalling one of Walt Whitman's rhapsodies:—
"Earth of departed sunsets! Earth of the mountains misty-topped! Earth of
the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine
and dark, mottling the tide of the river!"
All the next day we went down with the current. Regiments of black spruce
stood in endless files like grenadiers, each tree capped with a thick tuft
of matted cones and branches. Tall white birches leaned out over the
stream, Narcissus-like, as if to see their own beauty in the moving
mirror. There were touches of colour on the banks, the ragged pink flowers
of the Joe-Pye-weed (which always reminds me of a happy, good-natured
tramp), and the yellow ear-drops of the jewel-weed, and the intense blue
of the closed gentian, that strange flower which, like a reticent heart,
never opens to the light. Sometimes the river spread out like a lake,
between high bluffs of sand fully a mile apart; and again it divided into
many channels, winding cunningly down among the islands as if it were
resolved to slip around the next barrier of rock without a fall. There
were eight of these huge natural dams in the course of that day's journey.
Sometimes we followed one of the side canals, and made the portage at a
distance from the main cataract; and sometimes we ran with the central
current to the very brink of the chute, darting aside just in time to
escape going over. At the foot of the last fall we made our camp on a
curving beach of sand, and spent the rest of the afternoon in fishing.
It was interesting to see how closely the guides could guess at the weight
of the fish by looking at them. The ouananiche are much longer in
proportion to their weight than trout, and a novice almost always
overestimates them. But the guides were not deceived.﹃This one will weigh
four pounds and three-quarters, and this one four pounds, but that one not
more than three pounds; he is meagre, M'sieu', BUT he is meagre.﹄When we
went ashore and tried the spring balance (which every angler ought to
carry with him, as an aid to his conscience), the guides guess usually
proved to be within an ounce or two of the fact. Any one of the senses can
be educated to do the work of the others. The eyes of these experienced
fishermen were as sensitive to weight as if they had been made to use as
scales.
Below the last fall the Peribonca flows for a score of miles with an
unbroken, ever-widening stream, through low shores of forest and bush and
meadow. Near its mouth the Little Peribonca joins it, and the immense
flood, nearly two miles wide, pours into Lake St. John. Here we saw the
first outpost of civilisation—a huge unpainted storehouse, where
supplies are kept for the lumbermen and the new settlers. Here also we
found the tiny, lame steam launch that was to carry us back to the Hotel
Roberval. Our canoes were stowed upon the roof of the cabin, and we
embarked for the last stage of our long journey.
As we came out of the river-mouth, the opposite shore of the lake was
invisible, and a stiff "Nor'wester" was rolling big waves across the bar.
It was like putting out into the open sea. The launch laboured and puffed
along for four or five miles, growing more and more asthmatic with every
breath. Then there was an explosion in the engine-room. Some necessary
part of the intestinal machinery had blown out. There was a moment of
confusion. The captain hurried to drop the anchor, and the narrow craft
lay rolling in the billows.
What to do? The captain shrugged his shoulders like a Frenchman.﹃Wait
here, I suppose.﹄But how long? "Who knows? Perhaps till to-morrow;
perhaps the day after. They will send another boat to look for us in the
course of time."
But the quarters were cramped; the weather looked ugly; if the wind should
rise, the cranky launch would not be a safe cradle for the night. Damon
and I preferred the canoes, for they at least would float if they were
capsized. So we stepped into the frail, buoyant shells of bark once more,
and danced over the big waves toward the shore. We made a camp on a
wind-swept point of sand, and felt like shipwrecked mariners. But it was a
gilt-edged shipwreck. For our larder was still full, and as if to provide
us with the luxuries as well as the necessities of life, Nature had spread
an inexhaustible dessert of the largest and most luscious blueberries
around our tents.
After supper, strolling along the beach, we debated the best way of
escape; whether to send one of our canoes around the eastern shore of the
lake that night, to meet the steamer at the Island House and bring it to
our rescue; or to set out the next morning, and paddle both canoes around
the western end of the lake, thirty miles, to the Hotel Roberval. While we
were talking, we came to a dry old birch-tree, with ragged, curling bark.
"Here is a torch," cried Damon, "to throw light upon the situation." He
touched a match to it, and the flames flashed up the tall trunk until it
was transformed into a pillar of fire. But the sudden illumination burned
out, and our counsels were wrapt again in darkness and uncertainty, when
there came a great uproar of steam-whistles from the lake. They must be
signalling for us. What could it mean?
We fired our guns, leaped into a canoe, leaving two of the guides to break
camp, and paddled out swiftly into the night. It seemed an endless
distance before we found the feeble light where the crippled launch was
tossing at anchor. The captain shouted something about a larger steamboat
and a raft of logs, out in the lake, a mile or two beyond. Presently we
saw the lights, and the orange glow of the cabin windows. Was she coming,
or going, or standing still? We paddled on as fast as we could, shouting
and firing off a revolver until we had no more cartridges. We were
resolved not to let that mysterious vessel escape us, and threw ourselves
with energy into the novel excitement of chasing a steamboat in the dark.
Then the lights began to swing around; the throbbing of paddle-wheels grew
louder and louder; she was evidently coming straight toward us. At that
moment it flashed upon us that, while she had plenty of lights, we had
none! We were lying, invisible, right across her track. The character of
the steamboat chase was reversed. We turned and fled, as the guides say, a
quatre pattes, into illimitable space, trying to get out of the way of our
too powerful friend. It makes considerable difference, in the voyage of
life, whether you chase the steamboat, or the steamboat chases you.
Meantime our other canoe had approached unseen. The steamer passed safely
between the two boats, slackening speed as the pilot caught our loud
halloo! She loomed up above us like a man-of-war, and as we climbed the
ladder to the main-deck we felt that we had indeed gotten out of the
wilderness. My old friend, Captain Savard, made us welcome. He had been
sent out, much to his disgust, to catch a runaway boom of logs and tow it
back to Roberval; it would be an all night affair; but we must take
possession of his stateroom and make ourselves comfortable; he would
certainly bring us to the hotel in time for breakfast. So he went off on
the upper deck, and we heard him stamping about and yelling to his crew as
they struggled to get their unwieldy drove of six thousand logs in motion.
All night long we assisted at the lumbermen's difficult enterprise. We
heard the steamer snorting and straining at her clumsy, stubborn convoy.
The hoarse shouts of the crew, disguised in a mongrel dialect which made
them (perhaps fortunately) less intelligible and more forcible, mingled
with our broken dreams.
But it was, in fact, a fitting close of our voyage. For what were we
doing? It was the last stage of the woodman's labour. It was the gathering
of a wild herd of the houses and churches and ships and bridges that grow
in the forests, and bringing them into the fold of human service. I wonder
how often the inhabitant of the snug Queen Anne cottage in the suburbs
remembers the picturesque toil and varied hardship that it has cost to hew
and drag his walls and floors and pretty peaked roofs out of the
backwoods. It might enlarge his home, and make his musings by the winter
fireside less commonplace, to give a kindly thought now and then to the
long chain of human workers through whose hands the timber of his house
has passed, since it first felt the stroke of the axe in the snow-bound
winter woods, and floated, through the spring and summer, on far-off lakes
and little rivers, au large.
1894.
TROUT-FISHING IN THE TRAUN
"Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves
for a time from the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be said
only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on
this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling
abroad if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at
home."—WILLIAM HAZLITT: On Going a Journey.
The peculiarity of trout-fishing in the Traun is that one catches
principally grayling. But in this it resembles some other pursuits which
are not without their charm for minds open to the pleasures of the
unexpected—for example, reading George Borrow's The Bible in Spain
with a view to theological information, or going to the opening night at
the Academy of Design with the intention of looking at pictures.
Moreover, there are really trout in the Traun, rari nantes in gurgite; and
in some places more than in others; and all of high spirit, though few of
great size. Thus the angler has his favourite problem: Given an unknown
stream and two kinds of fish, the one better than the other; to find the
better kind, and determine the hour at which they will rise. This is
sport.
As for the little river itself, it has so many beauties that one does not
think of asking whether it has any faults. Constant fulness, and crystal
clearness, and refreshing coolness of living water, pale green like the
jewel that is called aqua marina, flowing over beds of clean sand and bars
of polished gravel, and dropping in momentary foam from rocky ledges,
between banks that are shaded by groves of fir and ash and poplar, or
through dense thickets of alder and willow, or across meadows of smooth
verdure sloping up to quaint old-world villages—all these are
features of the ideal little river.
I have spoken of these personal qualities first, because a truly moral
writer ought to make more of character than of position. A good river in a
bad country would be more worthy of affection than a bad river in a good
country. But the Traun has also the advantages of an excellent worldly
position. For it rises all over the Salzkammergut, the summer
hunting-ground of the Austrian Emperor, and flows through that most
picturesque corner of his domain from end to end. Under the desolate
cliffs of the Todtengebirge on the east, and below the shining ice-fields
of the Dachstein on the south, and from the green alps around St. Wolfgang
on the west, the translucent waters are gathered in little tarns, and shot
through roaring brooks, and spread into lakes of wondrous beauty, and
poured through growing streams, until at last they are all united just
below the summer villa of his Kaiserly and Kingly Majesty, Francis Joseph,
and flow away northward, through the rest of his game-preserve, into the
Traunsee. It is an imperial playground, and such as I would consent to
hunt the chamois in, if an inscrutable Providence had made me a kingly
kaiser, or even a plain king or an unvarnished kaiser. But, failing this,
I was perfectly content to spend a few idle days in fishing for trout and
catching grayling, at such times and places as the law of the Austrian
Empire allowed.
For it must be remembered that every stream in these over-civilised
European countries belongs to somebody, by purchase or rent. And all the
fish in the stream are supposed to belong to the person who owns or rents
it. They do not know their master's voice, neither will they follow when
he calls. But they are theoretically his. To this legal fiction the
untutored American must conform. He must learn to clothe his natural
desires in the raiment of lawful sanction, and take out some kind of a
license before he follows his impulse to fish.
It was in the town of Aussee, at the junction of the two highest branches
of the Traun, that this impulse came upon me, mildly irresistible. The
full bloom of mid-July gayety in that ancient watering-place was dampened,
but not extinguished, by two days of persistent and surprising showers. I
had exhausted the possibilities of interest in the old Gothic church, and
felt all that a man should feel in deciphering the mural tombstones of the
families who were exiled for their faith in the days of the Reformation.
The throngs of merry Hebrews from Vienna and Buda-Pesth, amazingly arrayed
as mountaineers and milk-maids, walking up and down the narrow streets
under umbrellas, had Cleopatra's charm of an infinite variety; but custom
staled it. The woodland paths, winding everywhere through the plantations
of fir-trees and provided with appropriate names on wooden labels, and
benches for rest and conversation at discreet intervals, were too moist
for even the nymphs to take delight in them. The only creatures that
suffered nothing by the rain were the two swift, limpid Trauns, racing
through the woods, like eager and unabashed lovers, to meet in the middle
of the village. They were as clear, as joyous, as musical as if the sun
were shining. The very sight of their opalescent rapids and eddying pools
was an invitation to that gentle sport which is said to have the merit of
growing better as the weather grows worse.
I laid this fact before the landlord of the hotel of the Erzherzog Johann,
as poetically as I could, but he assured me that it was of no consequence
without an invitation from the gentleman to whom the streams belonged; and
he had gone away for a week. The landlord was such a good-natured person,
and such an excellent sleeper, that it was impossible to believe that he
could have even the smallest inaccuracy upon his conscience. So I bade him
farewell, and took my way, four miles through the woods, to the lake from
which one of the streams flowed.
It was called the Grundlsee. As I do not know the origin of the name, I
cannot consistently make any moral or historical reflections upon it. But
if it has never become famous, it ought to be, for the sake of a cozy and
busy little Inn, perched on a green hill beside the lake and overlooking
the whole length of it, from the groups of toy villas at the foot to the
heaps of real mountains at the head. This Inn kept a thin but happy
landlord, who provided me with a blue license to angle, for the
inconsiderable sum of fifteen cents a day. This conferred the right of
fishing not only in the Grundlsee, but also in the smaller tarn of
Toplitz, a mile above it, and in the swift stream which unites them. It
all coincided with my desire as if by magic. A row of a couple of miles to
the head of the lake, and a walk through the forest, brought me to the
smaller pond; and as the afternoon sun was ploughing pale furrows through
the showers, I waded out on a point of reeds and cast the artful fly in
the shadow of the great cliffs of the Dead Mountains.
It was a fit scene for a lone fisherman. But four sociable tourists
promptly appeared to act as spectators and critics. Fly-fishing usually
strikes the German mind as an eccentricity which calls for remonstrance.
After one of the tourists had suggestively narrated the tale of seven
trout which he had caught in another lake, WITH WORMS, on the previous
Sunday, they went away for a row, (with salutations in which politeness
but thinly veiled their pity,) and left me still whipping the water in
vain. Nor was the fortune of the day much better in the stream below. It
was a long and wet wade for three fish too small to keep. I came out on
the shore of the lake, where I had left the row-boat, with empty bag and a
feeling of damp discouragement.
There was still an hour or so of daylight, and a beautiful place to fish
where the stream poured swirling out into the lake. A rise, and a large
one, though rather slow, awakened my hopes. Another rise, evidently made
by a heavy fish, made me certain that virtue was about to be rewarded. The
third time the hook went home. I felt the solid weight of the fish against
the spring of the rod, and that curious thrill which runs up the line and
down the arm, changing, somehow or other, into a pleasurable sensation of
excitement as it reaches the brain. But it was only for a moment; and then
came that foolish, feeble shaking of the line from side to side which
tells the angler that he has hooked a great, big, leather-mouthed chub—a
fish which Izaak Walton says﹃the French esteem so mean as to call him Un
Vilain.﹄Was it for this that I had come to the country of Francis Joseph?
I took off the flies and put on one of those phantom minnows which have
immortalised the name of a certain Mr. Brown. The minnow swung on a long
line as the boat passed back and forth across the current, once, twice,
three times—and on the fourth circle there was a sharp strike. The
rod bent almost double, and the reel sang shrilly to the first rush of the
fish. He ran; he doubled; he went to the bottom and sulked; he tried to go
under the boat; he did all that a game fish can do, except leaping. After
twenty minutes he was tired enough to be lifted gently into the boat by a
hand slipped around his gills, and there he was, a lachsforelle of three
pounds' weight: small pointed head; silver sides mottled with dark spots;
square, powerful tail and large fins—a fish not unlike the
land-locked salmon of the Saguenay, but more delicate.
Half an hour later he was lying on the grass in front of the Inn. The
waiters paused, with their hands full of dishes, to look at him; and the
landlord called his guests, including my didactic tourists, to observe the
superiority of the trout of the Grundlsee. The maids also came to look;
and the buxom cook, with her spotless apron and bare arms akimbo, was
drawn from her kitchen, and pledged her culinary honour that such a
pracht-kerl should be served up in her very best style. The angler who is
insensible to this sort of indirect flattery through his fish does not
exist. Even the most indifferent of men thinks more favourably of people
who know a good trout when they see it, and sits down to his supper with
kindly feelings. Possibly he reflects, also, upon the incident as a hint
of the usual size of the fish in that neighbourhood. He remembers that he
may have been favoured in this case beyond his deserts by good-fortune,
and resolving not to put too heavy a strain upon it, considers the next
place where it would be well for him to angle.
Hallstatt is about ten miles below Aussee. The Traun here expands into a
lake, very dark and deep, shut in by steep and lofty mountains. The
railway runs along the eastern shore. On the other side, a mile away, you
see the old town, its white houses clinging to the cliff like lichens to
the face of a rock. The guide-book calls it "a highly original situation."
But this is one of the cases where a little less originality and a little
more reasonableness might be desired, at least by the permanent
inhabitants. A ledge under the shadow of a precipice makes a trying winter
residence. The people of Hallstatt are not a blooming race: one sees many
dwarfs and cripples among them. But to the summer traveller the place
seems wonderfully picturesque. Most of the streets are flights of steps.
The high-road has barely room to edge itself through among the old houses,
between the window-gardens of bright flowers. On the hottest July day the
afternoon is cool and shady. The gay, little skiffs and long, open
gondolas are flitting continually along the lake, which is the main street
of Hallstatt.
The incongruous, but comfortable, modern hotel has a huge glass veranda,
where you can eat your dinner and observe human nature in its transparent
holiday disguises. I was much pleased and entertained by a family, or
confederacy, of people attired as peasants—the men with feathered
hats, green stockings, and bare knees—the women with bright skirts,
bodices, and silk neckerchiefs—who were always in evidence, rowing
gondolas with clumsy oars, meeting the steamboat at the wharf several
times a day, and filling the miniature garden of the hotel with rustic
greetings and early Salzkammergut attitudes. After much conjecture, I
learned that they were the family and friends of a newspaper editor from
Vienna. They had the literary instinct for local colour.
The fishing at Hallstatt is at Obertraun. There is a level stretch of land
above the lake, where the river flows peaceably, and the fish have leisure
to feed and grow. It is leased to a peasant, who makes a business of
supplying the hotels with fish. He was quite willing to give permission to
an angler; and I engaged one of his sons, a capital young fellow, whose
natural capacities for good fellowship were only hampered by a most
extraordinary German dialect, to row me across the lake, and carry the net
and a small green barrel full of water to keep the fish alive, according
to the custom of the country. The first day we had only four trout large
enough to put into the barrel; the next day I think there were six; the
third day, I remember very well, there were ten. They were pretty
creatures, weighing from half a pound to a pound each, and coloured as
daintily as bits of French silk, in silver gray with faint pink spots.
There was plenty to do at Hallstatt in the mornings. An hour's walk from
the town there was a fine waterfall, three hundred feet high. On the side
of the mountain above the lake was one of the salt-mines for which the
region is celebrated. It has been worked for ages by many successive
races, from the Celt downward. Perhaps even the men of the Stone Age knew
of it, and came hither for seasoning to make the flesh of the cave-bear
and the mammoth more palatable. Modern pilgrims are permitted to explore
the long, wet, glittering galleries with a guide, and slide down the
smooth wooden rollers which join the different levels of the mines. This
pastime has the same fascination as sliding down the balusters; and it is
said that even queens and princesses have been delighted with it. This is
a touching proof of the fundamental simplicity and unity of our human
nature.
But by far the best excursion from Hallstatt was an all-day trip to the
Zwieselalp—a mountain which seems to have been especially created as
a point of view. From the bare summit you look right into the face of the
huge, snowy Dachstein, with the wild lake of Gosau gleaming at its foot;
and far away on the other side your vision ranges over a confusion of
mountains, with all the white peaks of the Tyrol stretched along the
horizon. Such a wide outlook as this helps the fisherman to enjoy the
narrow beauties of his little rivers. No sport is at its best without
interruption and contrast. To appreciate wading, one ought to climb a
little on odd days.
Isehl is about ten or twelve miles below Hallstatt, in the valley of the
Traun. It is the fashionable summer-resort of Austria. I found it in the
high tide of amusement. The shady esplanade along the river was crowded
with brave women and fair men, in gorgeous raiment; the hotels were
overflowing; and there were various kinds of music and entertainments at
all hours of day and night. But all this did not seem to affect the
fishing.
The landlord of the Konigin Elizabeth, who is also the Burgomaster and a
gentleman of varied accomplishments and no leisure, kindly furnished me
with a fishing license in the shape of a large pink card. There were many
rules printed upon it:﹃All fishes under nine inches must be gently
restored to the water. No instrument of capture must be used except the
angle in the hand. The card of legitimation must be produced and exhibited
at the polite request of any of the keepers of the river.﹄Thus duly
authorised and instructed, I sallied forth to seek my pastime according to
the law.
The easiest way, in theory, was to take the afternoon train up the river
to one of the villages, and fish down a mile or two in the evening,
returning by the eight o'clock train. But in practice the habits of the
fish interfered seriously with the latter part of this plan.
On my first day I had spent several hours in the vain effort to catch
something better than small grayling. The best time for the trout was just
approaching, as the broad light faded from the stream; already they were
beginning to feed, when I looked up from the edge of a pool and saw the
train rattling down the valley below me. Under the circumstances the only
thing to do was to go on fishing. It was an even pool with steep banks,
and the water ran through it very straight and swift, some four feet deep
and thirty yards across. As the tail-fly reached the middle of the water,
a fine trout literally turned a somersault over it, but without touching
it. At the next cast he was ready, taking it with a rush that carried him
into the air with the fly in his mouth. He weighed three-quarters of a
pound. The next one was equally eager in rising and sharp in playing, and
the third might have been his twin sister or brother. So, after casting
for hours and taking nothing in the most beautiful pools, I landed three
trout from one unlikely place in fifteen minutes. That was because the
trout's supper-time had arrived. So had mine. I walked over to the
rambling old inn at Goisern, sought the cook in the kitchen and persuaded
her, in spite of the lateness of the hour, to boil the largest of the fish
for my supper, after which I rode peacefully back to Ischl by the eleven
o'clock train.
For the future I resolved to give up the illusory idea of coming home by
rail, and ordered a little one-horse carriage to meet me at some point on
the high-road every evening at nine o'clock. In this way I managed to
cover the whole stream, taking a lower part each day, from the lake of
Hallstatt down to Ischl.
There was one part of the river, near Laufen, where the current was very
strong and waterfally, broken by ledges of rock. Below these it rested in
long, smooth reaches, much beloved by the grayling. There was no
difficulty in getting two or three of them out of each run.
The grayling has a quaint beauty. His appearance is aesthetic, like a fish
in a pre-raphaelite picture. His colour, in midsummer, is a golden gray,
darker on the back, and with a few black spots just behind his gills, like
patches put on to bring out the pallor of his complexion. He smells of
wild thyme when he first comes out of the water, wherefore St. Ambrose of
Milan complimented him in courtly fashion﹃Quid specie tua gratius? Quid
odore fragrantius? Quod mella fragrant, hoc tuo corpore spiras.﹄But the
chief glory of the grayling is the large iridescent fin on his back. You
see it cutting the water as he swims near the surface; and when you have
him on the bank it arches over him like a rainbow. His mouth is under his
chin, and he takes the fly gently, by suction. He is, in fact, and to
speak plainly, something of a sucker; but then he is a sucker idealised
and refined, the flower of the family. Charles Cotton, the ingenious young
friend of Walton, was all wrong in calling the grayling﹃one of the
deadest-hearted fishes in the world.﹄He fights and leaps and whirls, and
brings his big fin to bear across the force of the current with a variety
of tactics that would put his more aristocratic fellow-citizen, the trout,
to the blush. Twelve of these pretty fellows, with a brace of good trout
for the top, filled my big creel to the brim. And yet, such is the inborn
hypocrisy of the human heart that I always pretended to myself to be
disappointed because there were not more trout, and made light of the
grayling as a thing of naught.
The pink fishing license did not seem to be of much use. Its exhibition
was demanded only twice. Once a river guardian, who was walking down the
stream with a Belgian Baron and encouraging him to continue fishing,
climbed out to me on the end of a long embankment, and with proper
apologies begged to be favoured with a view of my document. It turned out
that his request was a favour to me, for it discovered the fact that I had
left my fly-book, with the pink card in it, beside an old mill, a quarter
of a mile up the stream.
Another time I was sitting beside the road, trying to get out of a very
long, wet, awkward pair of wading-stockings, an occupation which is
unfavourable to tranquillity of mind, when a man came up to me in the dusk
and accosted me with an absence of politeness which in German amounted to
an insult.
"Have you been fishing?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Have you any right to fish?"
"What right have you to ask?"
"I am a keeper of the river. Where is your card?"
"It is in my pocket. But pardon my curiosity, where is YOUR card?"
This question appeared to paralyse him. He had probably never been asked
for his card before. He went lumbering off in the darkness, muttering "My
card? Unheard of! MY card!"
The routine of angling at Ischl was varied by an excursion to the Lake of
St. Wolfgang and the Schafberg, an isolated mountain on whose rocky horn
an inn has been built. It stands up almost like a bird-house on a pole,
and commands a superb prospect; northward, across the rolling plain and
the Bavarian forest; southward, over a tumultuous land of peaks and
precipices. There are many lovely lakes in sight; but the loveliest of all
is that which takes its name from the old saint who wandered hither from
the country of the "furious Franks" and built his peaceful hermitage on
the Falkenstein. What good taste some of those old saints had!
There is a venerable church in the village, with pictures attributed to
Michael Wohlgemuth, and a chapel which is said to mark the spot where St.
Wolfgang, who had lost his axe far up the mountain, found it, like
Longfellow's arrow, in an oak, and "still unbroke." The tree is gone, so
it was impossible to verify the story. But the saint's well is there, in a
pavilion, with a bronze image over it, and a profitable inscription to the
effect that the poorer pilgrims, "who have come unprovided with either
money or wine, should be jolly well contented to find the water so fine."
There is also a famous echo farther up the lake, which repeats six
syllables with accuracy. It is a strange coincidence that there are just
six syllables in the name of "der heilige Wolfgang." But when you
translate it into English, the inspiration of the echo seems to be less
exact. The sweetest thing about St. Wolfgang was the abundance of purple
cyclamens, clothing the mountain meadows, and filling the air with
delicate fragrance like the smell of lilacs around a New England farmhouse
in early June.
There was still one stretch of the river above Ischl left for the last
evening's sport. I remember it so well: the long, deep place where the
water ran beside an embankment of stone, and the big grayling poised on
the edge of the shadow, rising and falling on the current as a kite rises
and falls on the wind and balances back to the same position; the murmur
of the stream and the hissing of the pebbles underfoot in the rapids as
the swift water rolled them over and over; the odour of the fir-trees, and
the streaks of warm air in quiet places, and the faint whiffs of
wood-smoke wafted from the houses, and the brown flies dancing heavily up
and down in the twilight; the last good pool, where the river was divided,
the main part making a deep, narrow curve to the right, and the lesser
part bubbling into it over a bed of stones with half-a-dozen tiny
waterfalls, with a fine trout lying at the foot of each of them and rising
merrily as the white fly passed over him—surely it was all very
good, and a memory to be grateful for. And when the basket was full, it
was pleasant to put off the heavy wading-shoes and the long
rubber-stockings, and ride homeward in an open carriage through the fresh
night air. That is as near to sybaritic luxury as a man should care to
come.
The lights in the cottages are twinkling like fire-flies, and there are
small groups of people singing and laughing down the road. The honest
fisherman reflects that this world is only a place of pilgrimage, but
after all there is a good deal of cheer on the journey, if it is made with
a contented heart. He wonders who the dwellers in the scattered houses may
be, and weaves romances out of the shadows on the curtained windows. The
lamps burning in the wayside shrines tell him stories of human love and
patience and hope, and of divine forgiveness. Dream-pictures of life float
before him, tender and luminous, filled with a vague, soft atmosphere in
which the simplest outlines gain a strange significance. They are like
some of Millet's paintings—"The Sower," or "The Sheepfold,"—there
is very little detail in them but sometimes a little means so much.
Then the moon slips up into the sky from behind the hills, and the
fisherman begins to think of home, and of the foolish, fond old rhymes
about those whom the moon sees far away, and the stars that have the power
to fulfil wishes—as if the celestial bodies knew or cared anything
about our small nerve-thrills which we call affection and desires! But if
there were Some One above the moon and stars who did know and care, Some
One who could see the places and the people that you and I would give so
much to see, Some One who could do for them all of kindness that you and I
fain would do, Some One able to keep our beloved in perfect peace and
watch over the little children sleeping in their beds beyond the sea—what
then? Why, then, in the evening hour, one might have thoughts of home that
would go across the ocean by way of heaven, and be better than dreams,
almost as good as prayers.
AT THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM BOUGH
"Come live with me, and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, or hills, or field, Or woods and steepy mountains
yield.
"There we will rest our sleepy heads, And happy hearts, on balsam beds;
And every day go forth to fish In foamy streams for ouananiche."
Old Song with a new Ending.
It has been asserted, on high philosophical authority, that woman is a
problem. She is more; she is a cause of problems to others. This is not a
theoretical statement. It is a fact of experience.
Every year, when the sun passes the summer solstice, the
"Two souls with but a single thought,"
of whom I am so fortunate as to be one, are summoned by that portion of
our united mind which has at once the right of putting the question and of
casting the deciding vote, to answer this conundrum: How can we go abroad
without crossing the ocean, and abandon an interesting family of children
without getting completely beyond their reach, and escape from the
frying-pan of housekeeping without falling into the fire of the summer
hotel? This apparently insoluble problem we usually solve by going to camp
in Canada.
It is indeed a foreign air that breathes around us as we make the
harmless, friendly voyage from Point Levis to Quebec. The boy on the
ferry-boat, who cajoles us into buying a copy of Le Moniteur containing
last month's news, has the address of a true though diminutive Frenchman.
The landlord of the quiet little inn on the outskirts of the town welcomes
us with Gallic effusion as well-known guests, and rubs his hands genially
before us, while he escorts us to our apartments, groping secretly in his
memory to recall our names. When we walk down the steep, quaint streets to
revel in the purchase of moccasins and water-proof coats and camping
supplies, we read on a wall the familiar but transformed legend, L'enfant
pleurs, il veut son Camphoria, and remember with joy that no infant who
weeps in French can impose any responsibility upon us in these days of our
renewed honeymoon.
But the true delight of the expedition begins when the tents have been set
up, in the forest back of Lake St. John, and the green branches have been
broken for the woodland bed, and the fire has been lit under the open sky,
and, the livery of fashion being all discarded, I sit down at a log table
to eat supper with my lady Greygown. Then life seems simple and amiable
and well worth living. Then the uproar and confusion of the world die away
from us, and we hear only the steady murmur of the river and the low voice
of the wind in the tree-tops. Then time is long, and the only art that is
needful for its enjoyment is short and easy. Then we taste true comfort,
while we lodge with Mother Green at the Sign of the Balsam Bough.
I. UNDER THE WHITE BIRCHES.
Men may say what they will in praise of their houses, and grow eloquent
upon the merits of various styles of architecture, but, for our part, we
are agreed that there is nothing to be compared with a tent. It is the
most venerable and aristocratic form of human habitation. Abraham and
Sarah lived in it, and shared its hospitality with angels. It is exempt
from the base tyranny of the plumber, the paper-hanger, and the gas-man.
It is not immovably bound to one dull spot of earth by the chains of a
cellar and a system of water-pipes. It has a noble freedom of locomotion.
It follows the wishes of its inhabitants, and goes with them, a travelling
home, as the spirit moves them to explore the wilderness. At their
pleasure, new beds of wild flowers surround it, new plantations of trees
overshadow it, and new avenues of shining water lead to its ever-open
door. What the tent lacks in luxury it makes up in liberty: or rather let
us say that liberty itself is the greatest luxury.
Another thing is worth remembering—a family which lives in a tent
never can have a skeleton in the closet.
But it must not be supposed that every spot in the woods is suitable for a
camp, or that a good tenting-ground can be chosen without knowledge and
forethought. One of the requisites, indeed, is to be found everywhere in
the St. John region; for all the lakes and rivers are full of clear, cool
water, and the traveller does not need to search for a spring. But it is
always necessary to look carefully for a bit of smooth ground on the
shore, far enough above the water to be dry, and slightly sloping, so that
the head of the bed may be higher than the foot. Above all, it must be
free from big stones and serpentine roots of trees. A root that looks no
bigger that an inch-worm in the daytime assumes the proportions of a
boa-constrictor at midnight—when you find it under your hip-bone.
There should also be plenty of evergreens near at hand for the beds.
Spruce will answer at a pinch; it has an aromatic smell; but it is too
stiff and humpy. Hemlock is smoother and more flexible; but the spring
soon wears out of it. The balsam-fir, with its elastic branches and thick
flat needles, is the best of all. A bed of these boughs a foot deep is
softer than a mattress and as fragrant as a thousand Christmas-trees. Two
things more are needed for the ideal camp-ground—an open situation,
where the breeze will drive away the flies and mosquitoes, and an
abundance of dry firewood within easy reach. Yes, and a third thing must
not be forgotten; for, says my lady Greygown:
"I shouldn't feel at home in camp unless I could sit in the door of the
tent and look out across flowing water."
All these conditions are met in our favourite camping place below the
first fall in the Grande Decharge. A rocky point juts out into the rivet
and makes a fine landing for the canoes. There is a dismantled
fishing-cabin a few rods back in the woods, from which we can borrow
boards for a table and chairs. A group of cedars on the lower edge of the
point opens just wide enough to receive and shelter our tent. At a good
distance beyond ours, the guides' tent is pitched; and the big camp-fire
burns between the two dwellings. A pair of white-birches lift their leafy
crowns far above us, and after them we name the place Le Camp aux
Bouleaux.
﹃Why not call trees people?—since, if you come to live among them
year after year, you will learn to know many of them personally, and an
attachment will grow up between you and them individually.﹄So writes that
Doctor Amabilis of woodcraft, W. C. Prime, in his book, Among the Northern
Hills, and straightway launches forth into eulogy on the white-birch. And
truly it is an admirable, lovable, and comfortable tree, beautiful to look
upon and full of various uses. Its wood is strong to make paddles and axe
handles, and glorious to burn, blazing up at first with a flashing flame,
and then holding the fire in its glowing heart all through the night. Its
bark is the most serviceable of all the products of the wilderness. In
Russia, they say, it is used in tanning, and gives its subtle, sacerdotal
fragrance to Russia leather. But here, in the woods, it serves more
primitive ends. It can be peeled off in a huge roll from some giant tree
and fashioned into a swift canoe to carry man over the waters. It can be
cut into square sheets to roof his shanty in the forest. It is the paper
on which he writes his woodland despatches, and the flexible material
which he bends into drinking-cups of silver lined with gold. A thin strip
of it wrapped around the end of a candle and fastened in a cleft stick
makes a practicable chandelier. A basket for berries, a horn to call the
lovelorn moose through the autumnal woods, a canvas on which to draw the
outline of great and memorable fish—all these and many other
indispensable luxuries are stored up for the skilful woodsman in the birch
bark.
Only do not rob or mar the tree, unless you really need what it has to
give you. Let it stand and grow in virgin majesty, ungirdled and
unscarred, while the trunk becomes a firm pillar of the forest temple, and
the branches spread abroad a refuge of bright green leaves for the birds
of the air. Nature never made a more excellent piece of handiwork.﹃And
if,﹄said my lady Greygown, "I should ever become a dryad, I would choose
to be transformed into a white-birch. And then, when the days of my life
were numbered, and the sap had ceased to flow, and the last leaf had
fallen, and the dry bark hung around me in ragged curls and streamers,
some wandering hunter would come in the wintry night and touch a lighted
coal to my body, and my spirit would flash up in a fiery chariot into the
sky."
The chief occupation of our idle days on the Grande Decharge was fishing.
Above the camp spread a noble pool, more than two miles in circumference,
and diversified with smooth bays and whirling eddies, sand beaches and
rocky islands. The river poured into it at the head, foaming and raging
down a long chute, and swept out of it just in front of our camp in a
merry, musical rapid. It was full of fish of various kinds—long-nosed
pickerel, wall-eyed pike, and stupid chub. But the prince of the pool was
the fighting ouananiche, the little salmon of St. John.
Here let me chant thy praise, thou noblest and most high-minded fish, the
cleanest feeder, the merriest liver, the loftiest leaper, and the bravest
warrior of all creatures that swim! Thy cousin, the trout, in his purple
and gold with crimson spots, wears a more splendid armour than thy russet
and silver mottled with black, but thine is the kinglier nature. His
courage and skill compared with thine
"Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine."
The old salmon of the sea who begot thee, long ago, in these inland
waters, became a backslider, descending again to the ocean, and grew gross
and heavy with coarse feeding. But thou, unsalted salmon of the foaming
floods, not landlocked, as men call thee, but choosing of thine own
free-will to dwell on a loftier level, in the pure, swift current of a
living stream, hast grown in grace and risen to a higher life. Thou art
not to be measured by quantity, but by quality, and thy five pounds of
pure vigour will outweigh a score of pounds of flesh less vitalised by
spirit. Thou feedest on the flies of the air, and thy food is transformed
into an aerial passion for flight, as thou springest across the pool,
vaulting toward the sky. Thine eyes have grown large and keen by peering
through the foam, and the feathered hook that can deceive thee must be
deftly tied and delicately cast. Thy tail and fins, by ceaseless conflict
with the rapids, have broadened and strengthened, so that they can flash
thy slender body like a living arrow up the fall. As Lancelot among the
knights, so art thou among the fish, the plain-armoured hero, the sunburnt
champion of all the water-folk.
Every morning and evening, Greygown and I would go out for ouananiche, and
sometimes we caught plenty and sometimes few, but we never came back
without a good catch of happiness. There were certain places where the
fish liked to stay. For example, we always looked for one at the lower
corner of a big rock, very close to it, where he could poise himself
easily on the edge of the strong downward stream. Another likely place was
a straight run of water, swift, but not too swift, with a sunken stone in
the middle. The ouananiche does not like crooked, twisting water. An even
current is far more comfortable, for then he discovers just how much
effort is needed to balance against it, and keeps up the movement
mechanically, as if he were half asleep. But his favourite place is under
one of the floating islands of thick foam that gather in the corners below
the falls. The matted flakes give a grateful shelter from the sun, I
fancy, and almost all game-fish love to lie in the shade; but the chief
reason why the onananiche haunt the drifting white mass is because it is
full of flies and gnats, beaten down by the spray of the cataract, and
sprinkled all through the foam like plums in a cake. To this natural
confection the little salmon, lurking in his corner, plays the part of
Jack Horner all day long, and never wearies.
"See that belle brou down below there!" said Ferdinand, as we scrambled
over the huge rocks at the foot of the falls;﹃there ought to be salmon
there en masse.﹄Yes, there were the sharp noses picking out the
unfortunate insects, and the broad tails waving lazily through the foam as
the fish turned in the water. At this season of the year, when summer is
nearly ended, and every ouananiche in the Grande Decharge has tasted
feathers and seen a hook, it is useless to attempt to delude them with the
large gaudy flies which the fishing-tackle-maker recommends. There are
only two successful methods of angling now. The first of these I tried,
and by casting delicately with a tiny brown trout-fly tied on a gossamer
strand of gut, captured a pair of fish weighing about three pounds each.
They fought against the spring of the four-ounce rod for nearly half an
hour before Ferdinand could slip the net around them. But there was
another and a broader tail still waving disdainfully on the outer edge of
the foam. "And now," said the gallant Ferdinand, "the turn is to madame,
that she should prove her fortune—attend but a moment, madame, while
I seek the sauterelle."
This was the second method: the grasshopper was attached to the hook, and
casting the line well out across the pool, Ferdinand put the rod into
Greygown's hands. She stood poised upon a pinnacle of rock, like patience
on a monument, waiting for a bite. It came. There was a slow, gentle pull
at the line, answered by a quick jerk of the rod, and a noble fish flashed
into the air. Four pounds and a half at least! He leaped again and again,
shaking the drops from his silvery sides. He rushed up the rapids as if he
had determined to return to the lake, and down again as if he had changed
his plans and determined to go to the Saguenay. He sulked in the deep
water and rubbed his nose against the rocks. He did his best to treat that
treacherous grasshopper as the whale served Jonah. But Greygown, through
all her little screams and shouts of excitement, was steady and sage. She
never gave the fish an inch of slack line; and at last he lay glittering
on the rocks, with the black St. Andrew's crosses clearly marked on his
plump sides, and the iridescent spots gleaming on his small, shapely head.
"Une belle!" cried Ferdinand, as he held up the fish in triumph,﹃and it
is madame who has the good fortune. She understands well to take the large
fish—is it not?﹄Greygown stepped demurely down from her pinnacle,
and as we drifted down the pool in the canoe, under the mellow evening
sky, her conversation betrayed not a trace of the pride that a victorious
fisherman would have shown. On the contrary, she insisted that angling was
an affair of chance—which was consoling, though I knew it was not
altogether true—and that the smaller fish were just as pleasant to
catch and better to eat, after all. For a generous rival, commend me to a
woman. And if I must compete, let it be with one who has the grace to
dissolve the bitter of defeat in the honey of a mutual
self-congratulation.
We had a garden, and our favourite path through it was the portage leading
around the falls. We travelled it very frequently, making an excuse of
idle errands to the steamboat-landing on the lake, and sauntering along
the trail as if school were out and would never keep again. It was the
season of fruits rather than of flowers. Nature was reducing the
decorations of her table to make room for the banquet. She offered us
berries instead of blossoms.
There were the light coral clusters of the dwarf cornel set in whorls of
pointed leaves; and the deep blue bells of the Clintonia borealis (which
the White Mountain people call the bear-berry, and I hope the name will
stick, for it smacks of the woods, and it is a shame to leave so free and
wild a plant under the burden of a Latin name); and the gray,
crimson-veined berries for which the Canada Mayflower had exchanged its
feathery white bloom; and the ruby drops of the twisted stalk hanging like
jewels along its bending stem. On the three-leaved table which once
carried the gay flower of the wake-robin, there was a scarlet lump like a
red pepper escaped to the forest and run wild. The partridge-vine was full
of rosy provision for the birds. The dark tiny leaves of the creeping
snow-berry were all sprinkled over with delicate drops of spicy foam.
There were few belated raspberries, and, if we chose to go out into the
burnt ground, we could find blueberries in plenty.
But there was still bloom enough to give that festal air without which the
most abundant feast seems coarse and vulgar. The pale gold of the
loosestrife had faded, but the deeper yellow of the goldenrod had begun to
take its place. The blue banners of the fleur-de-lis had vanished from
beside the springs, but the purple of the asters was appearing. Closed
gentians kept their secret inviolate, and bluebells trembled above the
rocks. The quaint pinkish-white flowers of the turtle-head showed in wet
places, and instead of the lilac racemes of the purple-fringed orchis,
which had disappeared with midsummer, we found now the slender braided
spikes of the lady's-tresses, latest and lowliest of the orchids, pale and
pure as nuns of the forest, and exhaling a celestial fragrance. There is a
secret pleasure in finding these delicate flowers in the rough heart of
the wilderness. It is like discovering the veins of poetry in the
character of a guide or a lumberman. And to be able to call the plants by
name makes them a hundredfold more sweet and intimate. Naming things is
one of the oldest and simplest of human pastimes. Children play at it with
their dolls and toy animals. In fact, it was the first game ever played on
earth, for the Creator who planted the garden eastward in Eden knew well
what would please the childish heart of man, when He brought all the
new-made creatures to Adam, "to see what he would call them."
Our rustic bouquet graced the table under the white-birches, while we sat
by the fire and watched our four men at the work of the camp—Joseph
and Raoul chopping wood in the distance; Francois slicing juicy rashers
from the flitch of bacon; and Ferdinand, the chef, heating the frying-pan
in preparation for supper.
"Have you ever thought," said Greygown, in a contented tone of voice,
"that this is the only period of our existence when we attain to the
luxury of a French cook?"
"And one with the grand manner, too," I replied, "for he never fails to
ask what it is that madame desires to eat to-day, as if the larder of
Lucullus were at his disposal, though he knows well enough that the only
choice lies between broiled fish and fried fish, or bacon with eggs and a
rice omelet. But I like the fiction of a lordly ordering of the repast.
How much better it is than having to eat what is flung before you at a
summer boarding-house by a scornful waitress!"
"Another thing that pleases me," continued my lady, "is the
unbreakableness of the dishes. There are no nicks in the edges of the best
plates here; and, oh! it is a happy thing to have a home without
bric-a-brac. There is nothing here that needs to be dusted."
"And no engagements for to-morrow," I ejaculated. "Dishes that can't be
broken, and plans that can—that's the ideal of housekeeping."
"And then," added my philosopher in skirts, "it is certainly refreshing to
get away from all one's relations for a little while."
"But how do you make that out?" I asked, in mild surprise. "What are you
going to do with me?"
"Oh," said she, with a fine air of independence, "I don't count you. You
are not a relation, only a connection by marriage."
"Well, my dear," I answered, between the meditative puffs of my pipe, "it
is good to consider the advantages of our present situation. We shall soon
come into the frame of mind of the Sultan of Morocco when he camped in the
Vale of Rabat. The place pleased him so well that he staid until the very
pegs of his tent took root and grew up into a grove of trees around his
pavilion."
II. KENOGAMI.
The guides were a little restless under the idle regime of our lazy camp,
and urged us to set out upon some adventure. Ferdinand was like the
uncouth swain in Lycidas. Sitting upon the bundles of camp equipage on the
shore, and crying,—
"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new,"
he led us forth to seek the famous fishing grounds on Lake Kenogami.
We skirted the eastern end of Lake St. John in our two canoes, and pushed
up La Belle Riviere to Hebertville, where all the children turned out to
follow our procession through the village. It was like the train that
tagged after the Pied Piper of Hamelin. We embarked again, surrounded by
an admiring throng, at the bridge where the main street crossed a little
stream, and paddled up it, through a score of back yards and a stretch of
reedy meadows, where the wild and tame ducks fed together, tempting the
sportsman to sins of ignorance. We crossed the placid Lac Vert, and after
a carry of a mile along the high-road toward Chicoutimi, turned down a
steep hill and pitched our tents on a crescent of silver sand, with the
long, fair water of Kenogami before us.
It is amazing to see how quickly these woodsmen can make a camp. Each one
knew precisely his share of the enterprise. One sprang to chop a dry
spruce log into fuel for a quick fire, and fell a harder tree to keep us
warm through the night. Another stripped a pile of boughs from a balsam
for the beds. Another cut the tent-poles from a neighbouring thicket.
Another unrolled the bundles and made ready the cooking utensils. As if by
magic, the miracle of the camp was accomplished.—
"The bed was made, the room was fit,
By punctual eve the stars were lit"—
but Greygown always insists upon completing that quotation from Stevenson
in her own voice; for this is the way it ends,—
"When we put up, my ass and I,
At God's green caravanserai."
Our permanent camp was another day's voyage down the lake, on a beach
opposite the Point Ausable. There the water was contracted to a narrow
strait, and in the swift current, close to the point, the great trout had
fixed their spawning-bed from time immemorial. It was the first week in
September, and the magnates of the lake were already assembling—the
Common Councilmen and the Mayor and the whole Committee of Seventy. There
were giants in that place, rolling lazily about, and chasing each other on
the surface of the water. "Look, M'sieu'!" cried Francois, in excitement,
as we lay at anchor in the gray morning twilight; "one like a horse has
just leaped behind us; I assure you, big like a horse!"
But the fish were shy and dour. Old Castonnier, the guardian of the lake,
lived in his hut on the shore, and flogged the water, early and late,
every day with his home-made flies. He was anchored in his dugout close
beside us, and grinned with delight as he saw his over-educated trout
refuse my best casts. "They are here, M'sieu', for you can see them," he
said, by way of discouragement, "but it is difficult to take them. Do you
not find it so?"
In the back of my fly-book I discovered a tiny phantom minnow—a
dainty affair of varnished silk, as light as a feather—and quietly
attached it to the leader in place of the tail-fly. Then the fun began.
One after another the big fish dashed at that deception, and we played and
netted them, until our score was thirteen, weighing altogether thirty-five
pounds, and the largest five pounds and a half. The guardian was mystified
and disgusted. He looked on for a while in silence, and then pulled up
anchor and clattered ashore. He must have made some inquiries and
reflections during the day, for that night he paid a visit to our camp.
After telling bear stories and fish stories for an hour or two by the
fire, he rose to depart, and tapping his forefinger solemnly upon my
shoulder, delivered himself as follows:—
﹃You can say a proud thing when you go home, M'sieu'—that you have
beaten the old Castonnier. There are not many fishermen who can say that.
But,﹄he added, with confidential emphasis, "c'etait votre sacre p'tit
poisson qui a fait cela."
That was a touch of human nature, my rusty old guardian, more welcome to
me than all the morning's catch. Is there not always a﹃confounded little
minnow﹄responsible for our failures? Did you ever see a school-boy tumble
on the ice without stooping immediately to re-buckle the strap of his
skates? And would not Ignotus have painted a masterpiece if he could have
found good brushes and a proper canvas? Life's shortcomings would be
bitter indeed if we could not find excuses for them outside of ourselves.
And as for life's successes—well, it is certainly wholesome to
remember how many of them are due to a fortunate position and the proper
tools.
Our tent was on the border of a coppice of young trees. It was pleasant to
be awakened by a convocation of birds at sunrise, and to watch the shadows
of the leaves dance out upon our translucent roof of canvas.
All the birds in the bush are early, but there are so many of them that it
is difficult to believe that every one can be rewarded with a worm. Here
in Canada those little people of the air who appear as transient guests of
spring and autumn in the Middle States, are in their summer home and
breeding-place. Warblers, named for the magnolia and the myrtle,
chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, blue-backed, and black-throated, flutter and
creep along the branches with simple lisping music. Kinglets, ruby-crowned
and golden-crowned, tiny, brilliant sparks of life, twitter among the
trees, breaking occasionally into clearer, sweeter songs. Companies of
redpolls and crossbills pass chirping through the thickets, busily seeking
their food. The fearless, familiar chickadee repeats his name merrily,
while he leads his family to explore every nook and cranny of the wood.
Cedar wax-wings, sociable wanderers, arrive in numerous flocks. The
Canadians call them "recollets," because they wear a brown crest of the
same colour as the hoods of the monks who came with the first settlers to
New France. They are a songless tribe, although their quick, reiterated
call as they take to flight has given them the name of chatterers. The
beautiful tree-sparrows and the pine-siskins are more melodious, and the
slate-coloured juncos, flitting about the camp, are as garrulous as
chippy-birds. All these varied notes come and go through the tangle of
morning dreams. And now the noisy blue-jay is calling "Thief—thief—thief!"
in the distance, and a pair of great pileated woodpeckers with crimson
crests are laughing loudly in the swamp over some family joke. But listen!
what is that harsh creaking note? It is the cry of the Northern shrike, of
whom tradition says that he catches little birds and impales them on sharp
thorns. At the sound of his voice the concert closes suddenly and the
singers vanish into thin air. The hour of music is over; the commonplace
of day has begun. And there is my lady Greygown, already up and dressed,
standing by the breakfast-table and laughing at my belated appearance.
But the birds were not our only musicians at Kenogami. French Canada is
one of the ancestral homes of song. Here you can still listen to those
quaint ballads which were sung centuries ago in Normandie and Provence.﹃A
la Claire Fontaine,﹄"Dans Paris y a-t-une Brune plus Belle que le Jour,"
"Sur le Pont d'Avignon," "En Roulant ma Boule," "La Poulette Grise," and a
hundred other folk-songs linger among the peasants and voyageurs of these
northern woods. You may hear
"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre—
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,"
and
"Isabeau s'y promene
Le long de son jardin,"
chanted in the farmhouse or the lumber shanty, to the tunes which have
come down from an unknown source, and never lost their echo in the hearts
of the people.
Our Ferdinand was a perfect fountain of music. He had a clear tenor voice,
and solaced every task and shortened every voyage with melody.﹃A song,
Ferdinand, a jolly song,﹄the other men would say, as the canoes went
sweeping down the quiet lake. And then the leader would strike up a
well-known air, and his companions would come in on the refrain, keeping
time with the stroke of their paddles. Sometimes it would be a merry
ditty:
"My father had no girl but me,
And yet he sent me off to sea;
Leap, my little Cecilia."
Or perhaps it was:
"I've danced so much the livelong day,—
Dance, my sweetheart, let's be gay,—
I've fairly danced my shoes away,—
Till evening.
Dance, my pretty, dance once more;
Dance, until we break the floor."
But more frequently the song was touched with a plaintive pleasant
melancholy. The minstrel told how he had gone into the woods and heard the
nightingale, and she had confided to him that lovers are often unhappy.
The story of La Belle Francoise was repeated in minor cadences—how
her sweetheart sailed away to the wars, and when he came back the village
church bells were ringing, and he said to himself that Francoise had been
faithless, and the chimes were for her marriage; but when he entered the
church it was her funeral that he saw, for she had died of love. It is
strange how sorrow charms us when it is distant and visionary. Even when
we are happiest we enjoy making music
"Of old, unhappy, far-off things."
"What is that song which you are singing, Ferdinand?" asks the lady, as
she hears him humming behind her in the canoe.
"Ah, madame, it is the chanson of a young man who demands of his blonde
why she will not marry him. He says that he has waited long time, and the
flowers are falling from the rose-tree, and he is very sad."
"And does she give a reason?"
"Yes, madame—that is to say, a reason of a certain sort; she
declares that she is not quite ready; he must wait until the rose-tree
adorns itself again."
"And what is the end—do they get married at last?"
"But I do not know, madame. The chanson does not go so far. It ceases with
the complaint of the young man. And it is a very uncertain affair—this
affair of the heart—is it not?"
Then, as if he turned from such perplexing mysteries to something plain
and sure and easy to understand, he breaks out into the jolliest of all
Canadian songs:
"My bark canoe that flies, that flies,
Hola! my bark canoe!"
III. THE ISLAND POOL.
Among the mountains there is a gorge. And in the gorge there is a river.
And in the river there is a pool. And in the pool there is an island. And
on the island, for four happy days, there was a camp.
It was by no means an easy matter to establish ourselves in that lonely
place. The river, though not remote from civilisation, is practically
inaccessible for nine miles of its course by reason of the steepness of
its banks, which are long, shaggy precipices, and the fury of its current,
in which no boat can live. We heard its voice as we approached through the
forest, and could hardly tell whether it was far away or near.
There is a perspective of sound as well as of sight, and one must have
some idea of the size of a noise before one can judge of its distance. A
mosquito's horn in a dark room may seem like a trumpet on the battlements;
and the tumult of a mighty stream heard through an unknown stretch of
woods may appear like the babble of a mountain brook close at hand.
But when we came out upon the bald forehead of a burnt cliff and looked
down, we realised the grandeur and beauty of the unseen voice that we had
been following. A river of splendid strength went leaping through the
chasm five hundred feet below us, and at the foot of two snow-white falls,
in an oval of dark topaz water, traced with curves of floating foam, lay
the solitary island.
The broken path was like a ladder. "How shall we ever get down?" sighed
Greygown, as we dropped from rock to rock; and at the bottom she looked up
sighing, "I know we never can get back again." There was not a foot of
ground on the shores level enough for a tent. Our canoe ferried us over,
two at a time, to the island. It was about a hundred paces long, composed
of round, coggly stones, with just one patch of smooth sand at the lower
end. There was not a tree left upon it larger than an alder-bush. The
tent-poles must be cut far up on the mountain-sides, and every bough for
our beds must be carried down the ladder of rocks. But the men were gay at
their work, singing like mocking-birds. After all, the glow of life comes
from friction with its difficulties. If we cannot find them at home, we
sally abroad and create them, just to warm up our mettle.
The ouananiche in the island pool were superb, astonishing, incredible. We
stood on the cobble-stones at the upper end, and cast our little flies
across the sweeping stream, and for three days the fish came crowding in
to fill the barrel of pickled salmon for our guides' winter use; and the
score rose,—twelve, twenty-one, thirty-two; and the size of the
"biggest fish" steadily mounted—four pounds, four and a half, five,
five and three-quarters. "Precisely almost six pounds," said Ferdinand,
holding the scales;﹃but we may call him six, M'sieu', for if it had been
to-morrow that we had caught him, he would certainly have gained the other
ounce.﹄And yet, why should I repeat the fisherman's folly of writing down
the record of that marvellous catch? We always do it, but we know that it
is a vain thing. Few listen to the tale, and none accept it. Does not
Christopher North, reviewing the Salmonia of Sir Humphry Davy, mock and
jeer unfeignedly at the fish stories of that most reputable writer? But,
on the very next page, old Christopher himself meanders on into a perilous
narrative of the day when he caught a whole cart-load of trout in a
Highland loch. Incorrigible, happy inconsistency! Slow to believe others,
and full of sceptical inquiry, fond man never doubts one thing—that
somewhere in the world a tribe of gentle readers will be discovered to
whom his fish stories will appear credible.
One of our days on the island was Sunday—a day of rest in a week of
idleness. We had a few books; for there are some in existence which will
stand the test of being brought into close contact with nature. Are not
John Burroughs' cheerful, kindly essays full of woodland truth and
companionship? Can you not carry a whole library of musical philosophy in
your pocket in Matthew Arnold's volume of selections from Wordsworth? And
could there be a better sermon for a Sabbath in the wilderness than Mrs.
Slosson's immortal story of Fishin' Jimmy?
But to be very frank about the matter, the camp is not stimulating to the
studious side of my mind. Charles Lamb, as usual, has said what I feel: "I
am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits
to it."
There are blueberries growing abundantly among the rocks—huge
clusters of them, bloomy and luscious as the grapes of Eshcol. The
blueberry is nature's compensation for the ruin of forest fires. It grows
best where the woods have been burned away and the soil is too poor to
raise another crop of trees. Surely it is an innocent and harmless
pleasure to wander along the hillsides gathering these wild fruits, as the
Master and His disciples once walked through the fields and plucked the
ears of corn, never caring what the Pharisees thought of that new way of
keeping the Sabbath.
And here is a bed of moss beside a dashing rivulet, inviting us to rest
and be thankful. Hark! There is a white-throated sparrow, on a little tree
across the river, whistling his afternoon song
"In linked sweetness long drawn out."
Down in Maine they call him the Peabody-bird, because his notes sound to
them like Old man—Peabody, peabody, peabody. In New Brunswick the
Scotch settlers say that he sings Lost—lost—Kennedy, kennedy,
kennedy. But here in his northern home I think we can understand him
better. He is singing again and again, with a cadence that never wearies,
"Sweet—sweet—Canada, canada, canada!" The Canadians, when they
came across the sea, remembering the nightingale of southern France,
baptised this little gray minstrel their rossignol, and the country
ballads are full of his praise. Every land has its nightingale, if we only
have the heart to hear him. How distinct his voice is—how personal,
how confidential, as if he had a message for us!
There is a breath of fragrance on the cool shady air beside our little
stream, that seems familiar. It is the first week of September. Can it be
that the twin-flower of June, the delicate Linnaea borealis, is blooming
again? Yes, here is the threadlike stem lifting its two frail pink bells
above the bed of shining leaves. How dear an early flower seems when it
comes back again and unfolds its beauty in a St. Martin's summer! How
delicate and suggestive is the faint, magical odour! It is like a renewal
of the dreams of youth.
"And need we ever grow old?" asked my lady Greygown, as she sat that
evening with the twin-flower on her breast, watching the stars come out
along the edge of the cliffs, and tremble on the hurrying tide of the
river. "Must we grow old as well as gray? Is the time coming when all life
will be commonplace and practical, and governed by a dull 'of course'?
Shall we not always find adventures and romances, and a few blossoms
returning, even when the season grows late?"
"At least," I answered, "let us believe in the possibility, for to doubt
it is to destroy it. If we can only come back to nature together every
year, and consider the flowers and the birds, and confess our faults and
mistakes and our unbelief under these silent stars, and hear the river
murmuring our absolution, we shall die young, even though we live long: we
shall have a treasure of memories which will be like the twin-flower,
always a double blossom on a single stem, and carry with us into the
unseen world something which will make it worth while to be immortal."
1894.
A SONG AFTER SUNDOWN
"There's no music like a little river's. It plays the same tune (and
that's the favourite) over and over again, and yet does not weary of it
like men fiddlers. It takes the mind out of doors; and though we should be
grateful for good houses, there is, after all, no house like god's
out-of-doors. And lastly, sir, it quiets a man down like saying his
prayers."—ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: Prince Otto.
THE WOOD-NOTES OF THE VEERY
The moonbeams over Arno's vale in silver flood were pouring, When first I
heard the nightingale a long-lost love deploring: So passionate, so full
of pain, it sounded strange and eerie, I longed to hear a simpler strain,
the wood-notes of the veery.
The laverock sings a bonny lay, above the Scottish heather, It sprinkles
from the dome of day like light and love together; He drops the golden
notes to greet his brooding mate, his dearie; I only know one song more
sweet, the vespers of the veery.
In English gardens green and bright, and rich in fruity treasure, I've
heard the blackbird with delight repeat his merry measure; The ballad was
a lively one, the tune was loud and cheery, And yet with every setting sun
I listened for the veery.
O far away, and far away, the tawny thrush is singing, New England woods
at close of day with that clear chant are ringing; And when my light of
life is low, and heart and flesh are weary, I fain would hear, before I
go, the wood-notes of the veery.
1895.
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