WHEN one summer day I bethought me of a voyage down the east or
Pepacton branch of the Delaware, I seemed to want some excuse for
the start, some send-off, some preparation, to give the enterprise
genesis and head. This I found in building my own boat. It was a
happy thought. How else should I have got under way, how else
should I have raised the breeze? The boat-building warmed the
blood; it made the germ take; it whetted my appetite for the
voyage. There is nothing like serving an apprenticeship to fortune,
like earning the right to your tools. In most enterprises the
temptation is always to begin too far along; we want to start where
somebody else leaves off. Go back to the stump, and see what an
impetus you get. Those fishermen who wind their own flies before
they go a-fishing,--how they bring in the trout; and those hunters
who run their own bullets or make their own cartridges,-- the game
is already mortgaged to them.
When my boat was finished--and it was a very simple affair--I was
as eager as a boy to be off; I feared the river would all run by
before I could wet her bottom in it. This enthusiasm begat great
expectations of the trip. I should surely surprise Nature and win
some new secrets from her. I should glide down noiselessly upon her
and see what all those willow screens and baffling curves
concealed. As a fisherman and pedestrian I had been able to come at
the stream only at certain points: now the most private and
secluded retreats of the nymph would be opened to me; every bend
and eddy, every cove hedged in by swamps or passage walled in by
high alders, would be at the beck of my paddle.
Whom shall one take with him when he goes a-courting Nature? This
is always a vital question. There are persons who will stand
between you and that which you seek: they obtrude themselves; they
monopolize your attention; they blunt your sense of the shy, half-
revealed intelligences about you. I want for companion a dog or a
boy, or a person who has the virtues of dogs and boys,--
transparency, good-nature, curiosity, open sense, and a nameless
quality that is akin to trees and growths and the inarticulate
forces of nature. With him you are alone, and yet have company; you
are free; you feel no disturbing element; the influences of nature
stream through him and around him; he is a good conductor of the
subtle fluid. The quality or qualification I refer to belongs to
most persons who spend their lives in the open air,--to soldiers,
hunters, fishers, laborers, and to artists and poets of the right
sort. How full of it, to choose an illustrious example, was such a
man as Walter Scott!
But no such person came in answer to my prayer, so I set out alone.
It was fit that I put my boat into the water at Arkville, but it
may seem a little incongruous that I should launch her into Dry
Brook; yet Dry Brook is here a fine large trout stream, and I soon
found its waters were wet enough for all practical purposes. The
Delaware is only one mile distant, and I chose this as the easiest
road from the station to it. A young farmer helped me carry the
boat to the water, but did not stay to see me off; only some calves
feeding alongshore witnessed my embarkation. It would have been a
godsend to boys, but there were no boys about. I stuck on a rift
before I had gone ten yards, and saw with misgiving the paint
transferred from the bottom of my little scow to the tops of the
stones thus early in the journey. But I was soon making fair
headway, and taking trout for my dinner as I floated along. My
first mishap was when I broke the second joint of my rod on a bass,
and the first serious impediment to my progress was when I
encountered the trunk of a prostrate elm bridging the stream within
a few inches of the surface. My rod mended and the elm cleared, I
anticipated better sailing when I should reach the Delaware itself;
but I found on this day and on subsequent days that the Delaware
has a way of dividing up that is very embarrassing to the
navigator. It is a stream of many minds: its waters cannot long
agree to go all in the same channel, and whichever branch I took I
was pretty sure to wish I had taken one of the others. I was
constantly sticking on rifts, where I would have to dismount, or
running full tilt into willow banks, where I would lose my hat or
endanger my fishing-tackle. On the whole, the result of my first
day's voyaging was not encouraging. I made barely eight miles, and
my ardor was a good deal dampened, to say nothing about my
clothing. In mid-afternoon I went to a well-to-do-looking
farmhouse and got some milk, which I am certain the thrifty
housewife skimmed, for its blueness infected my spirits, and I went
into camp that night more than half persuaded to abandon the
enterprise in the morning. The loneliness of the river, too, unlike
that of the fields and woods, to which I was more accustomed,
oppressed me. In the woods, things are close to you, and you
touch them and seem to interchange something with them; but upon
the river, even though it be a narrow and shallow one like this,
you are more isolated, farther removed from the soil and its
attractions, and an easier prey to the unsocial demons. The long,
unpeopled vistas ahead; the still, dark eddies; the endless
monotone and soliloquy of the stream; the unheeding rocks basking
like monsters along the shore, half out of the water, half in; a
solitary heron starting up here and there, as you rounded some
point, and flapping disconsolately ahead till lost to view, or
standing like a gaunt spectre on the umbrageous side of the
mountain, his motionless form revealed against the dark green as
you passed; the trees and willows and alders that hemmed you in on
either side, and hid the fields and the farmhouses and the road
that ran near by,--these things and others aided the skimmed milk
to cast a gloom over my spirits that argued ill for the success of
my undertaking. Those rubber boots, too, that parboiled my feet and
were clogs of lead about them,--whose spirits are elastic enough to
endure them? A malediction upon the head of him who invented them!
Take your old shoes, that will let the water in and let it out
again, rather than stand knee-deep all day in these extinguishers.
I escaped from the river, that first night, and took to the woods,
and profited by the change. In the woods I was at home again, and
the bed of hemlock boughs salved my spirits. A cold spring run came
down off the mountain, and beside it, underneath birches and
hemlocks, I improvised my hearthstone. In sleeping on the ground it
is a great advantage to have a back-log; it braces and supports
you, and it is a bedfellow that will not grumble when, in the
middle of the night, you crowd sharply up against it. It serves to
keep in the warmth, also. A heavy stone or other point DE
RÉSISTANCE at your feet is also a help. Or, better still, scoop out
a little place in the earth, a few inches deep, so as to admit your
body from your hips to your shoulders; you thus get an equal
bearing the whole length of you. I am told the Western hunters and
guides do this. On the same principle, the sand makes a good bed,
and the snow. You make a mould in which you fit nicely. My berth
that night was between two logs that the bark-peelers had stripped
ten or more years before. As they had left the bark there, and as
hemlock bark makes excellent fuel, I had more reasons than one to
be grateful to them.
In the morning I felt much refreshed, and as if the night had tided
me over the bar that threatened to stay my progress. If I can steer
clear of skimmed milk, I said, I shall now finish the voyage of
fifty miles to Hancock with increasing pleasure.
When one breaks camp in the morning, he turns back again and again
to see what he has left. Surely, he feels, he has forgotten
something; what is it? But it is only his own sad thoughts and
musings he has left, the fragment of his life he has lived there.
Where he hung his coat on the tree, where he slept on the boughs,
where he made his coffee or broiled his trout over the coals, where
he drank again and again at the little brown pool in the spring
run, where he looked long and long up into the whispering branches
overhead, he has left what he cannot bring away with him,--the
flame and the ashes of himself.
Of certain game-birds it is thought that at times they have the
power of withholding their scent; no hint or particle of themselves
goes out upon the air. I think there are persons whose spiritual
pores are always sealed up, and I presume they have the best time
of it. Their hearts never radiate into the void; they do not yearn
and sympathize without return; they do not leave themselves by the
wayside as the sheep leaves her wool upon the brambles and thorns.
This branch of the Delaware, so far as I could learn, had never
before been descended by a white man in a boat. Rafts of pine and
hemlock timber are run down on the spring and fall freshets, but of
pleasure-seekers in boats I appeared to be the first. Hence my
advent was a surprise to most creatures in the water and out. I
surprised the cattle in the field, and those ruminating leg-deep in
the water turned their heads at my approach, swallowed their
unfinished cuds, and scampered off as if they had seen a spectre. I
surprised the fish on their spawning-beds and feeding-grounds; they
scattered, as my shadow glided down upon them, like chickens when a
hawk appears. I surprised an ancient fisherman seated on a spit of
gravelly beach, with his back upstream, and leisurely angling in
a deep, still eddy, and mumbling to himself. As I slid into the
circle of his vision his grip on the pole relaxed, his jaw dropped,
and he was too bewildered to reply to my salutation for some
moments. As I turned a bend in the river I looked back, and saw
him hastening away with great precipitation. I presume he had
angled there for forty years without having his privacy thus
intruded upon. I surprised hawks and herons and kingfishers. I
came suddenly upon muskrats, and raced with them down the rifts,
they having no time to take to their holes. At one point, as I
rounded an elbow in the stream, a black eagle sprang from the top
of a dead tree, and flapped hurriedly away. A kingbird gave
chase, and disappeared for some moments in the gulf between the
great wings of the eagle, and I imagined him seated upon his back
delivering his puny blows upon the royal bird. I interrupted two
or three minks fishing and hunting alongshore. They would dart
under the bank when they saw me, then presently thrust out their
sharp, weasel-like noses, to see if the danger was imminent. At
one point, in a little cove behind the willows, I surprised some
schoolgirls, with skirts amazingly abbreviated, wading and playing
in the water. And as much surprised as any, I am sure, was that
hard-worked-looking housewife, when I came up from under the bank
in front of her house, and with pail in hand appeared at her door
and asked for milk, taking the precaution to intimate that I had no
objection to the yellow scum that is supposed to rise on a fresh
article of that kind.
"What kind of milk do you want?"
"The best you have. Give me two quarts of it," I replied.
"What do you want to do with it?" with an anxious tone, as if I
might want to blow up something or burn her barns with it.
"Oh, drink it," I answered, as if I frequently put milk to that
use.
"Well, I suppose I can get you some;" and she presently reappeared
with swimming pail, with those little yellow flakes floating about
upon it that one likes to see.
I passed several low dams the second day, but had no trouble. I
dismounted and stood upon the apron, and the boat, with plenty of
line, came over as lightly as a chip, and swung around in the eddy
below like a steed that knows its master. In the afternoon, while
slowly drifting down a long eddy, the moist southwest wind brought
me the welcome odor of strawberries, and running ashore by a
meadow, a short distance below, I was soon parting the daisies and
filling my cup with the dead-ripe fruit. Berries, be they red,
blue, or black, seem like a special providence to the camper-out;
they are luxuries he has not counted on, and I prized these
accordingly. Later in the day it threatened rain, and I drew up to
shore under the shelter of some thick overhanging hemlocks, and
proceeded to eat my berries and milk, glad of an excuse not to
delay my lunch longer. While tarrying here I heard young voices
upstream, and looking in that direction saw two boys coming down
the rapids on rude floats. They were racing along at a lively pace,
each with a pole in his hand, dexterously avoiding the rocks and
the breakers, and schooling themselves thus early in the duties and
perils of the raftsmen. As they saw me one observed to the other, --
"There is the man we saw go by when we were building our floats. If
we had known he was coming so far, maybe we could have got him to
give us a ride."
They drew near, guided their crafts to shore beside me, and tied
up, their poles answering for hawsers. They proved to be Johnny and
Denny Dwire, aged ten and twelve. They were friendly boys, and
though not a bit bashful were not a bit impertinent. And Johnny,
who did the most of the talking, had such a sweet, musical voice;
it was like a bird's. It seems Denny had run away, a day or two
before, to his uncle's, five miles above, and Johnny had been after
him, and was bringing his prisoner home on a float; and it was hard
to tell which was enjoying the fun most, the captor or the
captured.
"Why did you run away?" said I to Denny.
"Oh, 'cause," replied he, with an air which said plainly, "The
reasons are too numerous to mention."
"Boys, you know, will do so, sometimes," said Johnny, and he smiled
upon his brother in a way that made me think they had a very good
understanding upon the subject.
They could both swim, yet their floats looked very perilous,--three
pieces of old plank or slabs, with two cross-pieces and a fragment
of a board for a rider, and made without nails or withes.
"In some places," said Johnny, "one plank was here and another off
there, but we managed, somehow, to keep atop of them."
"Let's leave our floats here, and ride with him the rest of the
way," said one to the other.
"All right; may we, mister? "
I assented, and we were soon afloat again. How they enjoyed the
passage; how smooth it was; how the boat glided along; how quickly
she felt the paddle! They admired her much; they praised my
steersmanship; they praised my fish-pole and all my fixings down to
my hateful rubber boots. When we stuck on the rifts, as we did
several times, they leaped out quickly, with their bare feet and
legs, and pushed us off.
"I think," said Johnny, "if you keep her straight and let her have
her own way, she will find the deepest water. Don't you, Denny?"
"I think she will," replied Denny; and I found the boys were pretty
nearly right.
I tried them on a point of natural history. I had observed, coming
along, a great many dead eels lying on the bottom of the river,
that I supposed had died from spear wounds. "No," said Johnny,
"they are lamper eels. They die as soon as they have built their
nests and laid their eggs."
"Are you sure?"
"That's what they all say, and I know they are lampers."
So I fished one up out of the deep water with my paddle-blade and
examined it; and sure enough it was a lamprey. There was the row of
holes along its head, and its ugly suction mouth. I had noticed
their nests, too, all along, where the water in the pools shallowed
to a few feet and began to hurry toward the rifts: they were low
mounds of small stones, as if a bushel or more of large pebbles had
been dumped upon the river bottom; occasionally they were so near
the surface as to make a big ripple. The eel attaches itself to the
stones by its mouth, and thus moves them at will. An old fisherman
told me that a strong man could not pull a large lamprey loose from
a rock to which it had attached itself. It fastens to its prey in
this way, and sucks the life out. A friend of mine says he once saw
in the St. Lawrence a pike as long as his arm with a lamprey eel
attached to him. The fish was nearly dead and was quite white, the
eel had so sucked out his blood and substance. The fish, when
seized, darts against rocks and stones, and tries in vain to rub
the eel off, then succumbs to the sucker.
"The lampers do not all die," said Denny, "because they do not all
spawn;" and I observed that the dead ones were all of one size and
doubtless of the same age.
The lamprey is the octopus, the devil-fish, of these waters, and
there is, perhaps, no tragedy enacted here that equals that of one
of these vampires slowly sucking the life out of a bass or a trout.
My boys went to school part of the time. Did they have a good
teacher?
"Good enough for me," said Johnny.
"Good enough for me," echoed Denny.
Just below Bark-a-boom--the name is worth keeping--they left me. I
was loath to part with them; their musical voices and their
thorough good-fellowship had been very acceptable. With a little
persuasion, I think they would have left their home and humble
fortunes, and gone a-roving with me.
About four o'clock the warm, vapor-laden southwest wind brought
forth the expected thunder-shower. I saw the storm rapidly
developing behind the mountains in my front. Presently I came in
sight of a long covered wooden bridge that spanned the river about
a mile ahead, and I put my paddle into the water with all my force
to reach this cover before the storm. It was neck and neck most of
the way. The storm had the wind, and I had it--in my teeth. The
bridge was at Shavertown, and it was by a close shave that I got
under it before the rain was upon me. How it poured and rattled and
whipped in around the abutment of the bridge to reach me! I looked
out well satisfied upon the foaming water, upon the wet, unpainted
houses and barns of the Shavertowners, and upon the trees,
"Caught and cuffed by the gale."
Another traveler--the spotted-winged nighthawk--was also roughly
used by the storm. He faced it bravely, and beat and beat, but was
unable to stem it, or even hold his own; gradually he drifted back,
till he was lost to sight in the wet obscurity. The water in the
river rose an inch while I waited, about three quarters of an hour.
Only one man, I reckon, saw me in Shavertown, and he came and
gossiped with me from the bank above when the storm had abated.
The second night I stopped at the sign of the elm-tree. The woods
were too wet, and I concluded to make my boat my bed. A superb elm,
on a smooth grassy plain a few feet from the water's edge, looked
hospitable in the twilight, and I drew my boat up beneath it. I
hung my clothes on the jagged edges of its rough bark, and went to
bed with the moon, "in her third quarter," peeping under the
branches upon me. I had been reading Stevenson's amusing "Travels
with a Donkey," and the lines he pretends to quote from an old play
kept running in my head:--
'The bed was made, the room was fit,
By punctual eve the stars were lit;
The air was sweet, the water ran;
No need was there for maid or man,
When we put up, my ass and I,
At God's green caravanserai."
But the stately elm played me a trick: it slyly and at long
intervals let great drops of water down upon me, now with a sharp
smack upon my rubber coat; then with a heavy thud upon the seat in
the bow or stern of my boat; then plump into my upturned ear, or
upon my uncovered arm, or with a ring into my tin cup, or with a
splash into my coffee-pail that stood at my side full of water from
a spring I had just passed. After two hours' trial I found dropping
off to sleep, under such circumstances, was out of the question; so
I sprang up, in no very amiable mood toward my host, and drew my
boat clean from under the elm. I had refreshing slumber
thenceforth, and the birds were astir in the morning long before I
was.
There is one way, at least, in which the denuding the country of
its forests has lessened the rainfall: in certain conditions of the
atmosphere every tree is a great condenser of moisture, as I had
just observed in the case of the old elm; little showers are
generated in their branches, and in the aggregate the amount of
water precipitated in this way is considerable. Of a foggy summer
morning one may see little puddles of water standing on the stones
beneath maple-trees, along the street; and in winter, when there is
a sudden change from cold to warm, with fog, the water fairly runs
down the trunks of the trees, and streams from their naked
branches. The temperature of the tree is so much below that of the
atmosphere in such cases that the condensation is very rapid. In
lieu of these arboreal rains we have the dew upon the grass, but it
is doubtful if the grass ever drips as does a tree.
The birds, I say, were astir in the morning before I was, and some
of them were more wakeful through the night, unless they sing in
their dreams. At this season one may hear at intervals numerous
bird voices during the night. The whip-poor-will was piping when I
lay down, and I still heard one when I woke up after midnight. I
heard the song sparrow and the kingbird also, like watchers calling
the hour, and several times I heard the cuckoo. Indeed, I am
convinced that our cuckoo is to a considerable extent a night bird,
and that he moves about freely from tree to tree. His peculiar
guttural note, now here, now there, may be heard almost any summer
night, in any part of the country, and occasionally his better
known cuckoo call. He is a great recluse by day, but seems to
wander abroad freely by night.
The birds do indeed begin with the day. The farmer who is in the
field at work while he can yet see stars catches their first matin
hymns. In the longest June days the robin strikes up about half-
past three o'clock, and is quickly followed by the song sparrow,
the oriole, the catbird, the wren, the wood thrush, and all the
rest of the tuneful choir. Along the Potomac I have heard the
Virginia cardinal whistle so loudly and persistently in the tree-
tops above, that sleeping after four o'clock was out of the
question. Just before the sun is up, there is a marked lull, during
which, I imagine, the birds are at breakfast. While building their
nest, it is very early in the morning that they put in their big
strokes; the back of their day's work is broken before you have
begun yours.
A lady once asked me if there was any individuality among the
birds, or if those of the same kind were as near alike as two peas.
I was obliged to answer that to the eye those of the same species
were as near alike as two peas, but that in their songs there were
often marks of originality. Caged or domesticated birds develop
notes and traits of their own, and among the more familiar orchard
and garden birds one may notice the same tendency. I observe a
great variety of songs, and even qualities of voice, among the
orioles and among the song sparrows. On this trip my ear was
especially attracted to some striking and original sparrow songs.
At one point I was half afraid I had let pass an opportunity to
identify a new warbler, but finally concluded it was a song
sparrow. On another occasion I used to hear day after day a sparrow
that appeared to have some organic defect in its voice: part of its
song was scarcely above a whisper, as if the bird was suffering
from a very bad cold. I have heard a bobolink and a hermit thrush
with similar defects of voice. I have heard a robin with a part of
the whistle of the quail in his song. It was out of time and out of
tune, but the robin seemed insensible of the incongruity, and sang
as loudly and as joyously as any of his mates. A catbird will
sometimes show a special genius for mimicry, and I have known one
to suggest very plainly some notes of the bobolink.
There are numerous long covered bridges spanning the Delaware, and
under some of these I saw the cliff swallow at home, the nests
being fastened to the under sides of the timbers,--as it were,
suspended from the ceiling instead of being planted upon the
shelving or perpendicular side, as is usual with them. To have laid
the foundation, indeed, to have sprung the vault downward and
finished it successfully, must have required special engineering
skill. I had never before seen or heard of these nests being so
placed. But birds are quick to adjust their needs to the exigencies
of any case. Not long before, I had seen in a deserted house, on
the head of the Rondout, the chimney swallows entering the chamber
through a stove-pipe hole in the roof, and gluing their nests to
the sides of the rafters, like the barn swallows.
I was now, on the third day, well down in the wilds of Colchester,
with a current that made between two and three miles an hour,--just
a summer idler's pace. The atmosphere of the river had improved
much since the first day,--was, indeed, without taint,--and the
water was sweet and good. There were farmhouses at intervals of a
mile or so; but the amount of tillable land in the river valley or
on the adjacent mountains was very small. Occasionally there would
be forty or fifty acres of flat, usually in grass or corn, with a
thrifty-looking farmhouse. One could see how surely the land made
the house and its surrounding; good land bearing good buildings,
and poor land poor
In mid-forenoon I reached the long placid eddy at Downsville, and
here again fell in with two boys. They were out paddling about in a
boat when I drew near, and they evidently regarded me in the light
of a rare prize which fortune had wafted them.
"Ain't you glad we come, Benny?" I heard one of them observe to the
other, as they were conducting me to the best place to land. They
were bright, good boys, off the same piece as my acquaintances of
the day before, and about the same ages,-- differing only in being
village boys. With what curiosity they looked me over! Where had I
come from; where was I going; how long had I been on the way; who
built my boat; was I a carpenter, to build such a neat craft, etc.?
They never had seen such a traveler before. Had I had no mishaps?
And then they bethought them of the dangerous passes that awaited
me, and in good faith began to warn and advise me. They had heard
the tales of raftsmen, and had conceived a vivid idea of the perils
of the river below, gauging their notions of it from the spring and
fall freshets tossing about the heavy and cumbrous rafts. There was
a whirlpool, a rock eddy, and a binocle within a mile. I might be
caught in the binocle, or engulfed in the whirlpool, or smashed up
in the eddy. But I felt much reassured when they told me I had
already passed several whirlpools and rock eddies; but that
terrible binocle,--what was that? I had never heard of such a
monster. Oh, it was a still, miry place at the head of a big eddy.
The current might carry me up there, but I could easily get out
again; the rafts did. But there was another place I must beware of,
where two eddies faced each other; raftsmen were sometimes swept
off there by the oars and drowned. And when I came to rock eddy,
which I would know, because the river divided there (a part of the
water being afraid to risk the eddy, I suppose), I must go ashore
and survey the pass; but in any case it would be prudent to keep to
the left. I might stick on the rift, but that was nothing to being
wrecked upon those rocks. The boys were quite in earnest, and I
told them I would walk up to the village and post some letters to
my friends before I braved all these dangers. So they marched me up
the street, pointing out to their chums what they had found.
"Going way to Phil-- What place is that near where the river goes
into the sea?"
"Philadelphia?"
"Yes; thinks he may go way there. Won't he have fun?"
The boys escorted me about the town, then back to the river, and
got in their boat and came down to the bend, where they could see
me go through the whirlpool and pass the binocle (I am not sure
about the orthography of the word, but I suppose it means a double,
or a sort of mock eddy). I looked back as I shot over the rough
current beside a gentle vortex, and saw them watching me with great
interest. Rock eddy, also, was quite harmless, and I passed it
without any preliminary survey.
I nooned at Sodom, and found good milk in a humble cottage. In the
afternoon I was amused by a great blue heron that kept flying up in
advance of me. Every mile or so, as I rounded some point, I would
come unexpectedly upon him, till finally he grew disgusted with my
silent pursuit, and took a long turn to the left up along the side
of the mountain, and passed back up the river, uttering a hoarse,
low note.
The wind still boded rain, and about four o'clock, announced by
deep-toned thunder and portentous clouds, it began to charge down
the mountain-side in front of me. I ran ashore, covered my traps,
and took my way up through an orchard to a quaint little farmhouse.
But there was not a soul about, outside or in, that I could find,
though the door was unfastened; so I went into an open shed with
the hens, and lounged upon some straw, while the unloosed floods
came down. It was better than boating or fishing. Indeed, there
are few summer pleasures to be placed before that of reclining at
ease directly under a sloping roof, after toil or travel in the
hot sun, and looking out into the rain-drenched air and fields.
It is such a vital yet soothing spectacle. We sympathize with the
earth. We know how good a bath is, and the unspeakable
deliciousness of water to a parched tongue. The office of the
sunshine is slow, subtle, occult, unsuspected; but when the
clouds do their work, the benefaction is so palpable and copious,
so direct and wholesale, that all creatures take note of it, and
for the most part rejoice in it. It is a completion, a
consummation, a paying of a debt with a royal hand; the measure is
heaped and overflowing. It was the simple vapor of water that the
clouds borrowed of the earth; now they pay back more than water:
the drops are charged with electricity and with the gases of the
air, and have new solvent powers. Then, how the slate is sponged
off, and left all clean and new again!
In the shed where I was sheltered were many relics and odds and
ends of the farm. In juxtaposition with two of the most stalwart
wagon or truck wheels I ever looked upon was a cradle of ancient
and peculiar make,--an aristocratic cradle, with high-turned posts
and an elaborately carved and moulded body, that was suspended upon
rods and swung from the top. How I should have liked to hear its
history and the story of the lives it had rocked, as the rain sang
and the boughs tossed without! Above it was the cradle of a phbe-
bird saddled upon a stick that ran behind the rafter; its occupants
had not flown, and its story was easy to read.
Soon after the first shock of the storm was over, and before I
could see breaking sky, the birds tuned up with new ardor,--the
robin, the indigo-bird, the purple finch, the song sparrow, and in
the meadow below the bobolink. The cockerel near me followed suit,
and repeated his refrain till my meditations were so disturbed that
I was compelled to eject him from the cover, albeit he had the best
right there. But he crowed his defiance with drooping tail from the
yard in front. I, too, had mentally crowed over the good fortune
of the shower; but before I closed my eyes that night my crest was
a good deal fallen, and I could have wished the friendly elements
had not squared their accounts quite so readily and uproariously.
The one shower did not exhaust the supply a bit; Nature's hand was
full of trumps yet,--yea, and her sleeve too. I stopped at a
trout brook, which came down out of the mountains on the right, and
took a few trout for my supper; but its current was too roily from
the shower for fly-fishing. Another farmhouse attracted me, but
there was no one at home; so I picked a quart of strawberries in
the meadow in front, not minding the wet grass, and about six
o'clock, thinking another storm that had been threatening on my
right had miscarried, I pushed off, and went floating down into the
deepening gloom of the river valley. The mountains, densely
wooded from base to summit, shut in the view on every hand. They
cut in from the right and from the left, one ahead of the other,
matching like the teeth of an enormous trap; the river was caught
and bent, but not long detained, by them. Presently I saw the rain
creeping slowly over them in my rear, for the wind had changed; but
I apprehended nothing but a moderate sundown drizzle, such as we
often get from the tail end of a shower, and drew up in the eddy of
a big rock under an overhanging tree till it should have passed.
But it did not pass; it thickened and deepened, and reached a
steady pour by the time I had calculated the sun would be gilding
the mountain-tops. I had wrapped my rubber coat about my blankets
and groceries, and bared my back to the storm. In sullen silence I
saw the night settling down and the rain increasing; my roof-tree
gave way, and every leaf poured its accumulated drops upon me.
There were streams and splashes where before there had been little
more than a mist. I was getting well soaked and uncomplimentary in
my remarks on the weather. A saucy catbird, near by, flirted and
squealed very plainly, "There! there! What did I tell you! what
did I tell you! Pretty pickle! pretty pickle! pretty pickle to be
in!" But I had been in worse pickles, though if the water had been
salt, my pickling had been pretty thorough. Seeing the wind was in
the northeast, and that the weather had fairly stolen a march on
me, I let go my hold of the tree, and paddled rapidly to the
opposite shore, which was low and pebbly, drew my boat up on a
little peninsula, turned her over upon a spot which I cleared of
its coarser stone, propped up one end with the seat, and crept
beneath. I would now test the virtues of my craft as a roof, and I
found she was without flaw, though she was pretty narrow. The
tension of her timber was such that the rain upon her bottom made a
low, musical hum.
Crouched on my blankets and boughs,--for I had gathered a good
supply of the latter before the rain overtook me,--and dry only
about my middle, I placidly took life as it came. A great blue
heron flew by, and let off something like ironical horse laughter.
Before it became dark I proceeded to eat my supper,--my berries,
but not my trout. What a fuss we make about the "hulls" upon
strawberries! We are hypercritical; we may yet be glad to dine off
the hulls alone. Some people see something to pick and carp at
in every good that comes to them; I was thankful that I had the
berries, and resolutely ignored their little scalloped ruffles,
which I found pleased the eye and did not disturb the palate.
When bedtime arrived, I found undressing a little awkward, my berth
was so low; there was plenty of room in the aisle, and the other
passengers were nowhere to be seen, but I did not venture out. It
rained nearly all night, but the train made good speed, and reached
the land of daybreak nearly on time. The water in the river had
crept up during the night to within a few inches of my boat, but I
rolled over and took another nap, all the same. Then I arose, had a
delicious bath in the sweet, swift-running current, and turned my
thoughts toward breakfast. The making of the coffee was the only
serious problem. With everything soaked and a fine rain still
falling, how shall one build a fire? I made my way to a little
island above in quest of driftwood. Before I had found the wood I
chanced upon another patch of delicious wild strawberries, and took
an appetizer of them out of hand. Presently I picked up a yellow
birch stick the size of my arm. The wood was decayed, but the bark
was perfect. I broke it in two, punched out the rotten wood, and
had the bark intact. The fatty or resinous substance in this bark
preserves it, and makes it excellent kindling. With some seasoned
twigs and a scrap of paper I soon had a fire going that answered my
every purpose. More berries were picked while the coffee was
brewing, and the breakfast was a success.
The camper-out often finds himself in what seems a distressing
predicament to people seated in their snug, well-ordered houses;
but there is often a real satisfaction when things come to their
worst,--a satisfaction in seeing what a small matter it is, after
all; that one is really neither sugar nor salt, to be afraid of the
wet; and that life is just as well worth living beneath a scow or a
dug-out as beneath the highest and broadest roof in Christendom.
By ten o'clock it became necessary to move, on account of the rise
of the water, and as the rain had abated, I picked up and continued
my journey. Before long, however, the rain increased again, and I
took refuge in a barn. The snug, tree-embowered farmhouse looked
very inviting, just across the road from the barn; but as no one
was about, and no faces appeared at the window that I might judge
of the inmates, I contented myself with the hospitality the barn
offered, filling my pockets with some dry birch shavings I found
there where the farmer had made an ox-yoke, against the needs of
the next kindling.
After an hour's detention I was off again. I stopped at Baxter's
Brook, which flows hard by the classic hamlet of Harvard, and tried
for trout, but with poor success, as I did not think it worth while
to go far upstream.
At several points I saw rafts of hemlock lumber tied to the shore,
ready to take advantage of the first freshet. Rafting is an
important industry for a hundred miles or more along the Delaware.
The lumbermen sometimes take their families or friends, and have a
jollification all the way to Trenton or to Philadelphia. In some
places the speed is very great, almost equaling that of an express
train. The passage of such places as Cochecton Falls and "Foul
Rift" is attended with no little danger. The raft is guided by two
immense oars, one before and one behind. I frequently saw these
huge implements in the driftwood alongshore, suggesting some
colossal race of men. The raftsmen have names of their own. From
the upper Delaware, where I had set in, small rafts are run down
which they call "colts." They come frisking down at a lively pace.
At Hancock they usually couple two rafts together, when I suppose
they have a span of colts; or do two colts make one horse? Some
parts of the framework of the raft they call "grubs;" much depends
upon these grubs. The lumbermen were and are a hardy, virile race.
The Hon. Charles Knapp, of Deposit, now eighty-three years of age,
but with the look and step of a man of sixty, told me he had stood
nearly all one December day in the water to his waist,
reconstructing his raft, which had gone to pieces on the head of an
island. Mr. Knapp had passed the first half of his life in
Colchester and Hancock, and, although no sportsman, had once taken
part in a great bear hunt there. The bear was an enormous one, and
was hard pressed by a gang of men and dogs. Their muskets and
assaults upon the beast with clubs had made no impression. Mr.
Knapp saw where the bear was coming, and he thought he would show
them how easy it was to dispatch a bear with a club, if you only
knew where to strike. He had seen how quickly the largest hog
would wilt beneath a slight blow across the "small of the back."
So, armed with an immense handspike, he took up a position by a
large rock that the bear must pass. On she came, panting and nearly
exhausted, and at the right moment down came the club with great
force upon the small of her back. "If a fly had alighted upon her,"
said Mr. Knapp, "I think she would have paid just as much attention
to it as she did to me."
Early in the afternoon I encountered another boy, Henry Ingersoll,
who was so surprised by my sudden and unwonted appearance that he
did not know east from west. "Which way is west?" I inquired, to
see if my own head was straight on the subject.
"That way," he said, indicating east within a few degrees.
"You are wrong," I replied. "Where does the sun rise?"
"There," he said, pointing almost in the direction he had pointed
before.
"But does not the sun rise in the east here as well as elsewhere?"
I rejoined.
"Well, they call that west, anyhow."
But Henry's needle was subjected to a disturbing influence just
then. His house was near the river, and he was its sole guardian
and keeper for the time; his father had gone up to the next
neighbor's (it was Sunday), and his sister had gone with the
schoolmistress down the road to get black birch. He came out in the
road, with wide eyes, to view me as I passed, when I drew rein, and
demanded the points of the compass, as above. Then I shook my sooty
pail at him and asked for milk. Yes, I could have some milk, but I
would have to wait till his sister came back; after he had
recovered a little, he concluded he could get it. He came for my
pail, and then his boyish curiosity appeared. My story interested
him immensely. He had seen twelve summers, but he had been
only four miles from home up and down the river : he had been down
to the East Branch, and he had been up to Trout Brook. He took a
pecuniary interest in me. What did my pole cost? What my rubber
coat, and what my revolver? The latter he must take in his hand;
he had never seen such a thing to shoot with before in HIS life,
etc. He thought I might make the trip cheaper and easier by stage
and by the cars. He went to school: there were six scholars in
summer, one or two more in winter. The population is not crowded
in the town of Hancock, certainly, and never will be. The people
live close to the bone, as Thoreau would say, or rather close to
the stump. Many years ago the young men there resolved upon having
a ball. They concluded not to go to a hotel, on account of the
expense, and so chose a private house. There was a man in the
neighborhood who could play the fife; he offered to furnish the
music for seventy-five cents. But this was deemed too much, so one
of the party agreed to whistle. History does not tell how many
beaux there were bent upon this reckless enterprise, but there were
three girls. For refreshments they bought a couple of gallons of
whiskey and a few pounds of sugar. When the spree was over, and the
expenses were reckoned up, there was a shilling--a York shilling--
apiece to pay. Some of the revelers were dissatisfied with this
charge, and intimated that the managers had not counted themselves
in, but taxed the whole expense upon the rest of the party.
As I moved on, I saw Henry's sister and the schoolmistress picking
their way along the muddy road near the river's bank. One of them
saw me, and, dropping her skirts, said to the other (I could read
the motions), "See that man!" The other lowered her flounces, and
looked up and down the road, then glanced over into the field, and
lastly out upon the river. They paused and had a good look at me,
though I could see that their impulse to run away, like that of a
frightened deer, was strong.
At the East Branch the Big Beaver Kill joins the Delaware, almost
doubling its volume. Here I struck the railroad, the forlorn
Midland, and here another set of men and manners cropped out,--what
may be called the railroad conglomerate overlying this mountain
freestone.
"Where did you steal that boat?" and "What you running away for?"
greeted me from a handcar that went by.
I paused for some time and watched the fish hawks, or ospreys, of
which there were nearly a dozen sailing about above the junction of
the two streams, squealing and diving, and occasionally striking a
fish on the rifts. I am convinced that the fish hawk sometimes
feeds on the wing. I saw him do it on this and on another
occasion. He raises himself by a peculiar motion, and brings his
head and his talons together, and apparently takes a bite of a
fish. While doing this his flight presents a sharply undulating
line; at the crest of each rise the morsel is taken.
In a long, deep eddy under the west shore I came upon a brood of
wild ducks, the hooded merganser. The young were about half grown,
but of course entirely destitute of plumage. They started off at
great speed, kicking the water into foam behind them, the mother
duck keeping upon their flank and rear. Near the outlet of the
pool I saw them go ashore, and I expected they would conceal
themselves in the woods; but as I drew near the place they came
out, and I saw by their motions they were going to make a rush by
me upstream. At a signal from the old one, on they came, and
passed within a few feet of me. It was almost incredible, the
speed they made. Their pink feet were like swiftly revolving
wheels placed a little to the rear; their breasts just skimmed the
surface, and the water was beaten into spray behind them. They had
no need of wings; even the mother bird did not use hers; a
steamboat could hardly have kept up with them. I dropped my paddle
and cheered. They kept the race up for a long distance, and I saw
them making a fresh spirt as I entered upon the rift and dropped
quickly out of sight. I next disturbed an eagle in his meditations
upon a dead treetop, and a cat sprang out of some weeds near the
foot of the tree. Was he watching for puss, while she was watching
for some smaller prey?
I passed Partridge Island--which is or used to be the name of a
post-office--unwittingly, and encamped for the night on an island
near Hawk's Point. I slept in my boat on the beach, and in the
morning my locks were literally wet with the dews of the night, and
my blankets too; so I waited for the sun to dry them. As I was
gathering driftwood for a fire, a voice came over from the shadows
of the east shore: "Seems to me you lay abed pretty late!"
"I call this early," I rejoined, glancing at the sun.
"Wall, it may be airly in the forenoon, but it ain't very airly in
the mornin';" a distinction I was forced to admit. Before I had
reëmbarked some cows came down to the shore, and I watched them
ford the river to the island. They did it with great ease and
precision. I was told they will sometimes, during high water, swim
over to the islands, striking in well upstream, and swimming
diagonally across. At one point some cattle had crossed the river,
and evidently got into mischief, for a large dog rushed them down
the bank into the current, and worried them all the way over, part
of the time swimming and part of the time leaping very high, as a
dog will in deep snow, coming down with a great splash. The cattle
were shrouded with spray as they ran, and altogether it was a novel
picture.
My voyage ended that forenoon at Hancock, and was crowned by a few
idyllic days with some friends in their cottage in the woods by
Lake Oquaga, a body of crystal water on the hills near Deposit, and
a haven as peaceful and perfect as voyager ever came to port in.