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WILDERNESS WAYS
BY
WILLIAM J. LONG
_SECOND SERIES_
BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
The Athenæum Press
1900
TO KILLOOLEET, Little Sweet-Voice,
who shares my camp and
makes sunshine as I work and play.
PREFACE.
The following sketches, like the "Ways of Wood Folk," are the
result of many years of personal observation in the woods and
fields. They are studies of animals, pure and simple, not of
animals with human motives and imaginations.
Indeed, it is hardly necessary for genuine interest to give human
traits to the beasts. Any animal is interesting enough as an
animal, and has character enough of his own, without borrowing
anything from man--as one may easily find out by watching long
enough.
Most wild creatures have but small measure of gentleness in them,
and that only by instinct and at short stated seasons. Hence I
have given both sides and both kinds, the shadows and lights, the
savagery as well as the gentleness of the wilderness creatures.
It were pleasanter, to be sure, especially when you have been
deeply touched by some exquisite bit of animal devotion, to let
it go at that, and to carry with you henceforth an ideal
creature.
But the whole truth is better--better for you, better for
children--else personality becomes confused with mere animal
individuality, and love turns to instinct, and sentiment
vaporizes into sentimentality.
This mother fox or fish-hawk here, this strong mother loon or
lynx that to-day brings the quick moisture to your eyes by her
utter devotion to the little helpless things which great Mother
Nature gave her to care for, will to-morrow, when they are grown,
drive those same little ones with savage treatment into the world
to face its dangers alone, and will turn away from their
sufferings thereafter with astounding indifference.
It is well to remember this, and to give proper weight to the
word, when we speak of the _love_ of animals for their little
ones.
I met a bear once--but this foolish thing is not to be
imitated--with two small cubs following at her heels. The mother
fled into the brush; the cubs took to a tree. After some timorous
watching I climbed after the cubs, and shook them off, and put
them into a bag, and carried them to my canoe, squealing and
appealing to the one thing in the woods that could easily have
helped them. I was ready enough to quit all claims and to take to
the brush myself upon inducement. But the mother had found a
blueberry patch and was stuffing herself industriously.
And I have seen other mother bears since then, and foxes and deer
and ducks and sparrows, and almost all the wild creatures
between, driving their own offspring savagely away. Generally
the young go of their own accord as early as possible, knowing no
affection but only dependence, and preferring liberty to
authority; but more than once I have been touched by the sight of
a little one begging piteously to be fed or just to stay, while
the mother drove him away impatiently. Moreover, they all kill
their weaklings, as a rule, and the burdensome members of too
large a family. This is not poetry or idealization, but just
plain animal nature.
As for the male animals, little can be said truthfully for their
devotion. Father fox and wolf, instead of caring for their mates
and their offspring, as we fondly imagine, live apart by
themselves in utter selfishness. They do nothing whatever for the
support or instruction of the young, and are never suffered by
the mothers to come into the den, lest they destroy their own
little ones. One need not go to the woods to see this; his own
stable or kennel, his own dog or cat will be likely to reveal the
startling brutality at the first good opportunity.
An indiscriminate love for all animals, likewise, is not the best
sentiment to cultivate toward creation. Black snakes in a land of
birds, sharks in the bluefish rips, rabbits in Australia, and
weasels everywhere are out of place in the present economy of
nature. Big owls and hawks, representing a yearly destruction of
thousands of good game birds and of untold innocent songsters,
may also be profitably studied with a gun sometimes instead of
an opera-glass. A mink is good for nothing but his skin; a red
squirrel--I hesitate to tell his true character lest I spoil too
many tender but false ideals about him all at once.
The point is this, that sympathy is too true a thing to be
aroused falsely, and that a wise discrimination, which recognizes
good and evil in the woods, as everywhere else in the world, and
which loves the one and hates the other, is vastly better for
children, young and old, than the blind sentimentality aroused by
ideal animals with exquisite human propensities. Therefore I
wrote the story of Kagax, simply to show him as he is, and so to
make you hate him.
In this one chapter, the story of Kagax the Weasel, I have
gathered into a single animal the tricks and cruelties of a score
of vicious little brutes that I have caught red-handed at their
work. In the other chapters I have, for the most part, again
searched my old notebooks and the records of wilderness camps,
and put the individual animals down just as I found them.
Wm. J. Long.
Stamford, September, 1900.
CONTENTS.
I. MEGALEEP THE WANDERER
II. KILLOOLEET, LITTLE SWEET-VOICE
III. KAGAX THE BLOODTHIRSTY
IV. KOOKOOSKOOS, WHO CATCHES THE WRONG RAT
V. CHIGWOOLTZ THE FROG
VI. CLOUD WINGS THE EAGLE
VII. UPWEEKIS THE SHADOW
VIII. HUKWEEM THE NIGHT VOICE
GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES
I. MEGALEEP THE WANDERER.
[Illustration: Megaleep]
Megaleep is the big woodland caribou of the northern wilderness. His
Milicete name means The Wandering One, but it ought to mean the
Mysterious and the Changeful as well. If you hear that he is bold and
fearless, that is true; and if you are told that he is shy and wary
and inapproachable, that is also true. For he is never the same two
days in succession. At once shy and bold, solitary and gregarious;
restless as a cloud, yet clinging to his feeding grounds, spite of
wolves and hunters, till he leaves them of his own free will; wild as
Kakagos the raven, but inquisitive as a blue jay,--he is the most
fascinating and the least known of all the deer.
One thing is quite sure, before you begin your study: he is never
where his tracks are, nor anywhere near it. And if after a season's
watching and following you catch one good glimpse of him, that is a
good beginning.
I had always heard and read of Megaleep as an awkward, ungainly
animal, but almost my first glimpse of him scattered all that to the
winds and set my nerves a-tingling in a way that they still remember.
It was on a great chain of barrens in the New Brunswick wilderness. I
was following the trail of a herd of caribou one day, when far ahead a
strange clacking sound came ringing across the snow in the crisp
winter air. I ran ahead to a point of woods that cut off my view from
a five-mile barren, only to catch breath in astonishment and drop to
cover behind a scrub spruce. Away up the barren my caribou, a big herd
of them, were coming like an express train straight towards me. At
first I could make out only a great cloud of steam, a whirl of flying
snow, and here and there the angry shake of wide antlers or the gleam
of a black muzzle. The loud clacking of their hoofs, sweeping nearer
and nearer, gave a snap, a tingle, a wild exhilaration to their rush
which made one want to shout and swing his hat. Presently I could make
out the individual animals through the cloud of vapor that drove down
the wind before them. They were going at a splendid trot, rocking
easily from side to side like pacing colts, power, grace, tirelessness
in every stride. Their heads were high, their muzzles up, the antlers
well back on heaving shoulders. Jets of steam burst from their
nostrils at every bound; for the thermometer was twenty below zero,
and the air snapping. A cloud of snow whirled out and up behind them;
through it the antlers waved like bare oak boughs in the wind; the
sound of their hoofs was like the clicking of mighty castanets--"Oh
for a sledge and bells!" I thought; for Santa Claus never had such a
team.
So they came on swiftly, magnificently, straight on to the cover
behind which I crouched with nerves thrilling as at a cavalry
charge,--till I sprang to my feet with a shout and swung my hat; for,
as there was meat enough in camp, I had small wish to use my rifle,
and no desire whatever to stand that rush at close quarters and be run
down. There was a moment of wild confusion out on the barren just in
front of me. The long swinging trot, that caribou never change if they
can help it, was broken into an awkward jumping gallop. The front rank
reared, plunged, snorted a warning, but were forced onward by the
pressure behind. Then the leading bulls gave a few mighty bounds which
brought them close up to me, but left a clear space for the
frightened, crowding animals behind. The swiftest shot ahead to the
lead; the great herd lengthened out from its compact mass; swerved
easily to the left, as at a word of command; crashed through the
fringe of evergreen in which I had been hiding,--out into the open
again with a wild plunge and a loud cracking of hoofs, where they all
settled into their wonderful trot again, and kept on steadily across
the barren below.
That was the sight of a lifetime. One who saw it could never again
think of caribou as ungainly animals.
Megaleep belongs to the tribe of Ishmael. Indeed, his Latin name, as
well as his Indian one, signifies The Wanderer; and if you watch him a
little while you will understand perfectly why he is called so. The
first time I ever met him in summer, in strong contrast to the winter
herd, made his name clear in a moment. It was twilight on a wilderness
lake. I was sitting in my canoe by the inlet, wondering what kind of
bait to use for a big trout which lived in an eddy behind a rock, and
which disdained everything I offered him. The swallows were busy,
skimming low, and taking the young mosquitoes as they rose from the
water. One dipped to the surface near the eddy. As he came down I saw
a swift gleam in the depths below. He touched the water; there was a
swirl, a splash--and the swallow was gone. The trout had him.
Then a cow caribou came out of the woods onto the grassy point above
me to drink. First she wandered all over the point, making it look
afterwards as if a herd had passed. Then she took a sip of water by a
rock, crossed to my side of the point, and took a sip there; then to
the end of the point, and another sip; then back to the first place. A
nibble of grass, and she waded far out from shore to sip there; then
back, with a nod to a lily pad, and a sip nearer the brook. Finally
she meandered a long way up the shore out of sight, and when I picked
up the paddle to go, she came back again. Truly a _Wandergeist_ of the
woods, like the plover of the coast, who never knows what he wants,
nor why he circles about so, nor where he is going next.
If you follow the herds over the barrens and through the forest in
winter, you find the same wandering, unsatisfied creature. And if you
are a sportsman and a keen hunter, with well established ways of
trailing and stalking, you will be driven to desperation a score of
times before you get acquainted with Megaleep. He travels enormous
distances without any known object. His trail is everywhere; he is
himself nowhere. You scour the country for a week, crossing
innumerable trails, thinking the surrounding woods must be full of
caribou; then a man in a lumber camp, where you are overtaken by
night, tells you that he saw the herd you are after 'way down on the
Renous barrens, thirty miles below. You go there, and have the same
experience,--signs everywhere, old signs, new signs, but never a
caribou. And, ten to one, while you are there, the caribou are
sniffing your snowshoe track suspiciously back on the barrens that you
have just left.
Even in feeding, when you are hot on their trail and steal forward
expecting to see them every moment, it is the same exasperating story.
They dig a hole through four feet of packed snow to nibble the
reindeer lichen that grows everywhere on the barrens. Before it is
half eaten they wander off to the next barren and dig a larger hole;
then away to the woods for the gray-green hanging moss that grows on
the spruces. Here is a fallen tree half covered with the rich food.
Megaleep nibbles a bite or two, then wanders away and away in search
of another tree like the one he has just left.
And when you find him at last, the chances are still against you. You
are stealing forward cautiously when a fresh sign attracts attention.
You stop to examine it a moment. Something gray, dim, misty, seems to
drift like a cloud through the trees ahead. You scarcely notice it
till, on your right, a stir, and another cloud, and another--The
caribou, quick, a score of them! But before your rifle is up and you
have found the sights, the gray things melt into the gray woods and
drift away; and the stalk begins all over again.
The reason for this restlessness is not far to seek. Megaleep's
ancestors followed regular migrations in spring and autumn, like the
birds, on the unwooded plains beyond the Arctic Circle. Megaleep never
migrates; but the old instinct is in him and will not let him rest. So
he wanders through the year, and is never satisfied.
Fortunately nature has been kind to Megaleep in providing him with
means to gratify his wandering disposition. In winter, moose and red
deer must gather into yards and stay there. With the first heavy storm
of December, they gather in small bands here and there on the hardwood
ridges, and begin to make paths in the snow,--long, twisted, crooked
paths, running for miles in every direction, crossing and recrossing
in a tangle utterly hopeless to any head save that of a deer or moose.
These paths they keep tramped down and more or less open all winter,
so as to feed on the twigs and bark growing on either side. Were it
not for this curious provision, a single severe winter would leave
hardly a moose or a deer alive in the woods; for their hoofs are sharp
and sink deep, and with six feet of snow on a level they can scarcely
run half a mile outside their paths without becoming hopelessly
stalled or exhausted.
It is this great tangle of paths, by the way, which makes a deer or a
moose yard; and not the stupid hole in the snow which is pictured in
the geographies and most natural history books.
But Megaleep the Wanderer makes no such provision he depends upon
Mother Nature to take care of him. In summer he is brown, like the
great tree trunks among which he moves unseen. Then the frog of his
foot expands and grows spongy, so that he can cling to the
mountain-side like a goat, or move silently over the dead leaves. In
winter he becomes a soft gray, the better to fade into a snowstorm, or
to stand concealed in plain sight on the edges of the gray, desolate
barrens that he loves. Then the frog of his foot arches up out of the
way; the edges of his hoof grow sharp and shell-like, so that he can
travel over glare ice without slipping, and cut the crust to dig down
for the moss upon which he feeds. The hoofs, moreover, are very large
and deeply cleft, so as to spread widely when his weight is on them.
When you first find his track in the snow, you rub your eyes, thinking
that a huge ox must have passed that way. The dew-claws are also
large, and the ankle joint so flexible that it lets them down upon the
snow. So Megaleep has a kind of natural snowshoe with which he moves
easily over the crust, and, except in very deep, soft snows, wanders
at will, while other deer are prisoners in their yards. It is the
snapping of these loose hoofs and ankle joints that makes the merry
clacking sound as caribou run.
Sometimes, however, they overestimate their abilities, and their
wandering disposition brings them into trouble. Once I found a herd of
seven up to their backs in soft snow, and tired out,--a strange
condition for a caribou to be in. They were taking the affair
philosophically, resting till they should gather strength to flounder
to some spruce tops where moss was plenty. When I approached gently on
snowshoes (I had been hunting them diligently the week before to kill
them; but this put a different face on the matter) they gave a bound
or two, then settled deep in the snow, and turned their heads and said
with their great soft eyes: "You have hunted us. Here we are, at your
mercy."
They were very much frightened at first; then I thought they grew a
bit curious, as I sat down peaceably in the snow to watch them. One--a
doe, more exhausted than the others, and famished--even nibbled a bit
of moss that I pushed near her with a stick. I had picked it with
gloves, so that the smell of my hand was not on it. After an hour or
so, if I moved softly, they let me approach quite up to them without
shaking their antlers or renewing their desperate attempts to flounder
away. But I did not touch them. That is a degradation which no wild
creature will permit when he is free; and I would not take advantage
of their helplessness.
Did they starve in the snow? you ask. Oh, no! I went to the place next
day and found that they had gained the spruce tops, ploughing through
the snow in great bounds, following the track of the strongest, which
went ahead to break the way. There they fed and rested, then went to
some dense thickets where they passed the night. In a day or two the
snow settled and hardened, and they took to their wandering again.
Later, in hunting, I crossed their tracks several times, and once I
saw them across a barren; but I left them undisturbed, to follow other
trails. We had eaten together; they had fed from my hand; and there
is no older truce on earth than that, not even in the unchanging East,
where it originated.
Megaleep in a storm is a most curious creature, the nearest thing to a
ghost to be found in the woods. More than other animals he feels the
falling barometer. His movements at such times drive you to
desperation, if you are following him; for he wanders unceasingly.
When the storm breaks he has a way of appearing suddenly, as if he
were seeking you, when by his trail you thought him miles ahead. And
the way he disappears--just melts into the thick driving flakes and
the shrouded trees--is most uncanny. Six or seven caribou once played
hide-and-seek with me that way, giving me vague glimpses here and
there, drawing near to get my scent, yet keeping me looking up wind
into the driving snow where I could see nothing distinctly. And all
the while they drifted about like so many huge flakes of the storm,
watching my every movement, seeing me perfectly.
At such times they fear little, and even lay aside their usual
caution. I remember trailing a large herd one day from early morning,
keeping near them all the time, and jumping them half a dozen times,
yet never getting a glimpse because of their extreme watchfulness. For
some reason they were unwilling to leave a small chain of barrens.
Perhaps they knew the storm was coming, when they would be safe; and
so, instead of swinging off into a ten-mile straightaway trot at the
first alarm, they kept dodging back and forth within a two-mile
circle. At last, late in the afternoon, I followed the trail to the
edge of dense evergreen thickets. Caribou generally rest in open woods
or on the windward edge of a barren. Eyes for the open, nose for the
cover, is their motto. And I thought, "They know perfectly well I am
following them, and so have lain down in that tangle. If I go in, they
will hear me; a wood mouse could hardly keep quiet in such a place. If
I go round, they will catch my scent; if I wait, so will they; if I
jump them, the scrub will cover their retreat perfectly."
As I sat down in the snow to think it over, a heavy rush deep within
the thicket told me that something, not I certainly, had again started
them. Suddenly the air darkened, and above the excitement of the hunt
I felt the storm coming. A storm in the woods is no joke when you are
six miles from camp without axe or blanket. I broke away from the
trail and started for the head of the second barren on the run. If I
could make that, I was safe; for there was a stream near, which led
near to camp; and one cannot very well lose a stream, even in a
snowstorm. But before I was halfway the flakes were driving thick and
soft in my face. Another half-mile, and one could not see fifty feet
in any direction. Still I kept on, holding my course by the wind and
my compass. Then, at the foot of the second barren, my snowshoes
stumbled into great depressions in the snow, and I found myself on the
fresh trail of my caribou again. "If I am lost, I will at least have a
caribou steak, and a skin to wrap me up in," I said, and plunged after
them. As I went, the old Mother Goose rhyme of nursery days came back
and set itself to hunting music:
Bye, baby bunting,
Daddy's gone a hunting,
For to catch a rabbit skin
To wrap the baby bunting in.
Presently I began to sing it aloud. It cheered one up in the storm,
and the lilt of it kept time to the leaping kind of gallop which is
the easiest way to run on snowshoes: "Bye, baby bunting; bye, baby
bunting--Hello!"
A dark mass loomed suddenly up before me on the open barren. The storm
lightened a bit, before setting in heavier; and there were the caribou
just in front of me, standing in a compact mass, the weaker ones in
the middle. They had no thought nor fear of me apparently; they
showed no sign of anger or uneasiness. Indeed, they barely moved aside
as I snowshoed up, in plain sight, without any precaution whatever.
And these were the same animals that had fled upon my approach at
daylight, and that had escaped me all day with marvelous cunning.
As with other deer, the storm is Megaleep's natural protector. When it
comes he thinks that he is safe; that nobody can see him; that the
falling snow will fill his tracks and kill his scent; and that
whatever follows must speedily seek cover for itself. So he gives up
watching, and lies down where he will. So far as his natural enemies
are concerned, he is safe in this; for lynx and wolf and panther, seek
shelter with a falling barometer. They can neither see nor smell; and
they are all afraid. I have often noticed that among all animals and
birds, from the least to the greatest, there is always a truce when
the storms are out.
But the most curious thing I ever stumbled into was a caribou school.
That sounds queer; but it is more common in the wilderness than one
thinks. All gregarious animals have perfectly well defined social
regulations, which the young must learn and respect. To learn them,
they go to school in their own interesting way.
The caribou I am speaking of now are all woodland caribou--larger,
finer animals every way than the barren-ground caribou of the desolate
unwooded regions farther north. In summer they live singly, rearing
their young in deep forest seclusions. There each one does as he
pleases. So when you meet a caribou in summer, he is a different
creature, and has more unknown and curious ways than when he runs with
the herd in midwinter. I remember a solitary old bull that lived on
the mountain-side opposite my camp one summer, a most interesting
mixture of fear and boldness, of reserve and intense curiosity. After
I had hunted him a few times, and he found that my purpose was wholly
peaceable, he took to hunting me in the same way, just to find out who
I was, and what queer thing I was doing. Sometimes I would see him at
sunset on a dizzy cliff across the lake, watching for the curl of
smoke or the coming of a canoe. And when I dove in for a swim and went
splashing, dog-paddle way, about the island where my tent was, he
would walk about in the greatest excitement, and start a dozen times
to come down; but always he ran back for another look, as if
fascinated. Again he would come down on a burned point near the deep
hole where I was fishing, and, hiding his body in the underbrush,
would push his horns up into the bare branches of a withered shrub,
so as to make them inconspicuous, and stand watching me. As long as he
was quiet, it was impossible to see him there; but I could always make
him start nervously by flashing a looking-glass, or flopping a fish in
the water, or whistling a jolly Irish jig. And when I tied a bright
tomato can to a string and set it whirling round my head, or set my
handkerchief for a flag on the end of my trout rod, then he could not
stand it another minute, but came running down to the shore, to stamp,
and fidget, and stare nervously, and scare himself with twenty alarms
while trying to make up his mind to swim out and satisfy his burning
desire to know all about it. But I am forgetting the caribou schools.
Wherever there are barrens--treeless plains in the midst of dense
forest--the caribou collect in small herds as winter comes on,
following the old gregarious instinct. Then each one cannot do as he
pleases any more; and it is for this winter and spring life together,
when laws must be known, and the rights of the individual be laid
aside for the good of the herd, that the young are trained.
One afternoon in late summer I was drifting down the Toledi River,
casting for trout, when a movement in the bushes ahead caught my
attention. A great swampy tract of ground, covered with grass and low
brush, spread out on either side the stream. From the canoe I made out
two or three waving lines of bushes where some animals were making
their way through the swamp towards a strip of big timber which formed
a kind of island in the middle.
Pushing my canoe into the grass, I made for a point just astern of the
nearest quivering line of bushes. A glance at a bit of soft ground
showed me the trail of a mother caribou with her calf. I followed
cautiously, the wind being ahead in my favor. They were not hurrying,
and I took good pains not to alarm them.
When I reached the timber and crept like a snake through the
underbrush, there were the caribou, five or six mother animals, and
nearly twice as many little ones, well grown, which had evidently just
come in from all directions. They were gathered in a natural opening,
fairly clear of bushes, with a fallen tree or two, which served a good
purpose later. The sunlight fell across it in great golden bars,
making light and shadow to play in; all around was the great marsh,
giving protection from enemies; dense underbrush screened them from
prying eyes--and this was their schoolroom.
The little ones were pushed out into the middle, away from the
mothers to whom they clung instinctively, and were left to get
acquainted with each other, which they did very shyly at first, like
so many strange children. It was all new and curious, this meeting of
their kind; for till now they had lived in dense solitudes, each one
knowing no living creature save its own mother. Some were timid, and
backed away as far as possible into the shadow, looking with wild,
wide eyes from one to another of the little caribou, and bolting to
their mothers' sides at every unusual movement. Others were bold, and
took to butting at the first encounter. But careful, kindly eyes
watched over them. Now and then a mother caribou would come from the
shadows and push a little one gently from his retreat under a bush out
into the company. Another would push her way between two heads that
lowered at each other threateningly, and say with a warning shake of
her head that butting was no good way to get along together. I had
once thought, watching a herd on the barrens through my glasses, that
they are the gentlest of animals with each other. Here in the little
school in the heart of the swamp I found the explanation of things.
For over an hour I lay there and watched, my curiosity growing more
eager every moment; for most of what I saw I could not comprehend,
having no key, nor understanding why certain youngsters, who needed
reproof according to my standards, were let alone, and others kept
moving constantly, and still others led aside often to be talked to by
their mothers. But at last came a lesson in which all joined, and
which could not be misunderstood, not even by a man. It was the
jumping lesson.
Caribou are naturally poor jumpers. Beside a deer, who often goes out
of his way to jump a fallen tree just for the fun of it, they have no
show whatever; though they can travel much farther in a day and much
easier. Their gait is a swinging trot, from which it is impossible to
jump; and if you frighten them out of their trot into a gallop and
keep them at it, they soon grow exhausted. Countless generations on
the northern wastes, where there is no need of jumping, have bred this
habit, and modified their muscles accordingly. But now a race of
caribou has moved south into the woods, where great trees lie fallen
across the way, and where, if Megaleep is in a hurry or there is
anybody behind him, jumping is a necessity. Still he doesn't like it,
and avoids it whenever possible. The little ones, left to themselves,
would always crawl under a tree, or trot round it. And this is another
thing to overcome, and another lesson to be taught in the caribou
school.
As I watched them the mothers all came out from the shadows and began
trotting round the opening, the little ones keeping close as possible,
each one to its mother's side. Then the old ones went faster; the
calves were left in a long line stringing out behind. Suddenly the
leader veered in to the edge of the timber and went over a fallen tree
with a jump; the cows followed splendidly, rising on one side, falling
gracefully on the other, like gray waves racing past the end of a
jetty. But the first little one dropped his head obstinately at the
tree and stopped short. The next one did the same thing; only he ran
his head into the first one's legs and knocked them out from under
him. The others whirled with a _ba-a-a-ah_, and scampered round the
tree and up to their mothers, who had turned now and stood watching
anxiously to see the effect of their lesson. Then it began over again.
It was true kindergarten teaching; for under guise of a frolic the
calves were being taught a needful lesson,--not only to jump, but, far
more important than that, to follow a leader, and to go where he goes
without question or hesitation. For the leaders on the barrens are
wise old bulls that make no mistakes. Most of the little caribou took
to the sport very well, and presently followed the mothers over the
low hurdles. But a few were timid; and then came the most intensely
interesting bit of the whole strange school, when a little one would
be led to a tree and butted from behind till he took the jump.
There was no "consent of the governed" in that governing. The mother
knew, and the calf didn't, just what was good for him.
It was this last lesson that broke up the school. Just in front of my
hiding place a tree fell out into the opening. A mother caribou
brought her calf up to this unsuspectingly, and leaped over, expecting
the little one to follow. As she struck she whirled like a top and
stood like a beautiful statue, her head pointing in my direction. Her
eyes were bright with fear, the ears set forward, the nostrils spread
to catch every tainted atom from the air. Then she turned and glided
silently away, the little one close to her side, looking up and
touching her frequently as if to whisper, _What is it? what is it?_
but making no sound. There was no signal given, no alarm of any kind
that I could understand; yet the lesson stopped instantly. The caribou
glided away like shadows. Over across the opening a bush swayed here
and there; a leaf quivered as if something touched its branch. Then
the schoolroom was empty and the woods all still.
There is another curious habit of Megaleep; and this one I am utterly
at a loss to account for. When he is old and feeble, and the tireless
muscles will no longer carry him with the herd over the wind-swept
barrens, and he falls sick at last, he goes to a spot far away in the
woods, where generations of his ancestors have preceded him, and there
lays him down to die. It is the caribou burying ground; and all the
animals of a certain district, or a certain herd (I am unable to tell
which), will go there when sick or sore wounded, if they have strength
enough to reach the spot. For it is far away from the scene of their
summer homes and their winter wanderings.
I know one such place, and visited it twice from my summer camp. It is
in a dark tamarack swamp by a lonely lake at the head of the
Little-South-West Miramichi River, in New Brunswick. I found it one
summer when trying to force my way from the big lake to a smaller one,
where trout were plenty. In the midst of the swamp I stumbled upon a
pair of caribou skeletons, which surprised me; for there were no
hunters within a hundred miles, and at that time the lake had lain for
many years unvisited. I thought of fights between bucks, and bull
moose, how two bulls will sometimes lock horns in a rush, and are too
weakened to break the lock, and so die together of exhaustion.
Caribou are more peaceable; they rarely fight that way; and, besides,
the horns here were not locked together, but lying well apart. As I
searched about, looking for the explanation of things, thinking of
wolves, yet wondering why the bones were not gnawed, I found another
skeleton, much older, then four or five more; some quite fresh, others
crumbling into mould. Bits of old bone and some splendid antlers were
scattered here and there through the underbrush; and when I scraped
away the dead leaves and moss, there were older bones and fragments
mouldering beneath.
I scarcely understood the meaning of it at the time; but since then I
have met men, Indians and hunters, who have spent much time in the
wilderness, who speak of "bone yards" which they have discovered,
places where they can go at any time and be sure of finding a good set
of caribou antlers. And they say that the caribou go there to die.
All animals, when feeble with age, or sickly, or wounded, have the
habit of going away deep into the loneliest coverts, and there lying
down where the leaves shall presently cover them. So that one rarely
finds a dead bird or animal in the woods where thousands die yearly.
Even your dog, that was born and lived by your house, often
disappears when you thought him too feeble to walk. Death calls him
gently; the old wolf stirs deep within him, and he goes away where the
master he served will never find him. And so with your cat, which is
only skin-deep a domestic animal; and so with your canary, which in
death alone would be free, and beats his failing wings against the
cage in which he lived so long content. But these all go away singly,
each to his own place. The caribou is the only animal I know that
remembers, when his separation comes, the ties which bound him to the
herd winter after winter, through sun and storm, in the forest where
all was peace and plenty, and on the lonely barrens where the gray
wolf howled on his track; so that he turns with his last strength from
the herd he is leaving to the greater herd which has gone before
him--still following his leaders, remembering his first lesson to the
end.
Sometimes I have wondered whether this also were taught in the caribou
school; whether once in his life Megaleep were led to the spot and
made to pass through it, so that he should feel its meaning and
remember. That is not likely; for the one thing which an animal cannot
understand is death. And there were no signs of living caribou
anywhere near the place that I discovered; though down at the other
end of the lake their tracks were everywhere.
There are other questions, which one can only ask without answering.
Is this silent gathering merely a tribute to the old law of the herd,
or does Megaleep, with his last strength, still think to cheat his old
enemy, and go away where the wolf that followed him all his life shall
not find him? How was his resting place first selected, and what
leaders searched out the ground? What sound or sign, what murmur of
wind in the pines, or lap of ripples on the shore, or song of the
veery at twilight made them pause and say, _Here is the place_? How
does he know, he whose thoughts are all of life, and who never looked
on death, where the great silent herd is that no caribou ever sees but
once? And what strange instinct guides Megaleep to the spot where all
his wanderings end at last?
II. KILLOOLEET, LITTLE SWEET-VOICE.
[Illustration: Killooleet]
The day was cold, the woods were wet, and the weather was beastly
altogether when Killooleet first came and sang on my ridgepole. The
fishing was poor down in the big lake, and there were signs of
civilization here and there, in the shape of settlers' cabins, which
we did not like; so we had pushed up river, Simmo and I, thirty miles
in the rain, to a favorite camping ground on a smaller lake, where we
had the wilderness all to ourselves.
The rain was still falling, and the lake white-capped, and the forest
all misty and wind-blown when we ran our canoes ashore by the old
cedar that marked our landing place. First we built a big fire to
dry some boughs to sleep upon; then we built our houses, Simmo a
bark _commoosie_, and I a little tent; and I was inside, getting
dry clothes out of a rubber bag, when I heard a white-throated
sparrow calling cheerily his Indian name, _O hear, sweet
Killooleet-lillooleet-lillooleet!_ And the sound was so sunny, so good
to hear in the steady drip of rain on the roof, that I went out to see
the little fellow who had bid us welcome to the wilderness.
Simmo had heard too. He was on his hands and knees, just his dark face
peering by the corner stake of his _commoosie_, so as to see better
the little singer on my tent.--"Have better weather and better luck
now. Killooleet sing on ridgepole," he said confidently. Then we
spread some cracker crumbs for the guest and turned in to sleep till
better times.
That was the beginning of a long acquaintance. It was also the first
of many social calls from a whole colony of white-throats (Tom-Peabody
birds) that lived on the mountain-side just behind my tent, and that
came one by one to sing to us, and to get acquainted, and to share our
crumbs. Sometimes, too, in rainy weather, when the woods seemed wetter
than the lake, and Simmo would be sleeping philosophically, and I
reading, or tying trout flies in the tent, I would hear a gentle stir
and a rustle or two just outside, under the tent fly. Then, if I crept
out quietly, I would find Killooleet exploring my goods to find where
the crackers grew, or just resting contentedly under the fly where it
was dry and comfortable.
It was good to live there among them, with the mountain at our backs
and the lake at our feet, and peace breathing in every breeze or
brooding silently over the place at twilight. Rain or shine, day or
night, these white-throated sparrows are the sunniest, cheeriest folk
to be found anywhere in the woods. I grew to understand and love the
Milicete name, Killooleet, Little Sweet-Voice, for its expressiveness.
"Hour-Bird" the Micmacs call him; for they say he sings every hour,
and so tells the time, "all same's one white man's watch." And indeed
there is rarely an hour, day or night, in the northern woods when you
cannot hear Killooleet singing. Other birds grow silent after they
have won their mates, or they grow fat and lazy as summer advances, or
absorbed in the care of their young, and have no time nor thought for
singing. But not so Killooleet. He is kinder to his mate after he has
won her, and never lets selfishness or the summer steal away his
music; for he knows that the woods are brighter for his singing.
Sometimes, at night, I would, take a brand from the fire, and follow a
deer path that wound about the mountain, or steal away into a dark
thicket and strike a parlor match. As the flame shot up, lighting its
little circle of waiting leaves, there would be a stir beside me in
the underbrush, or overhead in the fir; then tinkling out of the
darkness, like a brook under the snow, would come the low clear strain
of melody that always set my heart a-dancing,--_I'm here, sweet
Killooleet-lillooleet-lillooleet_, the good-night song of my gentle
neighbor. Then along the path a little way, and another match, and
another song to make one better and his rest sweeter.
By day I used to listen to them, hours long at a stretch, practicing
to perfect their song. These were the younger birds, of course; and
for a long time they puzzled me. Those who know Killooleet's song will
remember that it begins with three clear sweet notes; but very few
have observed the break between the second and third of these. I
noticed, first of all, that certain birds would start the song twenty
times in succession, yet never get beyond the second note. And when I
crept up, to find out about it, I would find them sitting
disconsolately, deep in shadow, instead of out in the light where they
love to sing, with a pitiful little droop of wings and tail, and the
air of failure and dejection in every movement. Then again these same
singers would touch the third note, and always in such cases they
would prolong the last trill, the _lillooleet-lillooleet_ (the
_Peabody-Peabody_, as some think of it), to an indefinite length,
instead of stopping at the second or third repetition, which is the
rule with good singers. Then they would come out of the shadow, and
stir about briskly, and sing again with an air of triumph.
One day, while lying still in the underbrush watching a wood mouse,
Killooleet, a fine male bird and a perfect singer, came and sang on a
branch just over my head, not noticing me. Then I discovered that
there is a trill, a tiny grace note or yodel, at the end of his second
note. I listened carefully to other singers, as close as I could get,
and found that it is always there, and is the one difficult part of
the song. You must be very close to the bird to appreciate the beauty
of this little yodel; for ten feet away it sounds like a faint cluck
interrupting the flow of the third note; and a little farther away you
cannot hear it at all.
[Illustration: Killooleet]
Whatever its object, Killooleet regards this as the indispensable part
of his song, and never goes on to the third note unless he gets the
second perfectly. That accounts for the many times when one hears only
the first two notes. That accounts also for the occasional prolonged
trill which one hears; for when a young bird has tried many times for
his grace note without success, and then gets it unexpectedly, he is
so pleased with himself that he forgets he is not Whippoorwill, who
tries to sing as long as the brook without stopping, and so keeps up
the final _lillooleet-lillooleet_ as long as he has an atom of breath
left to do it with.
But of all the Killooleets,--and there were many that I soon
recognized, either by their songs, or by some peculiarity in their
striped caps or brown jackets,--the most interesting was the one who
first perched on my ridgepole and bade me welcome to his camping
ground. I soon learned to distinguish him easily; his cap was very
bright, and his white cravat very full, and his song never stopped at
the second note, for he had mastered the trill perfectly. Then, too,
he was more friendly and fearless than all the others. The morning
after our arrival (it was better weather, as Simmo and Killooleet had
predicted) we were eating breakfast by the fire, when he lit on the
ground close by, and turned his head sidewise to look at us curiously.
I tossed him a big crumb, which made him run away in fright; but when
he thought we were not looking he stole back, touched, tasted, ate the
whole of it. And when I threw him another crumb, he hopped to meet it.
After that he came regularly to meals, and would look critically over
the tin plate which I placed at my feet, and pick and choose daintily
from the cracker and trout and bacon and porridge which I offered him.
Soon he began to take bits away with him, and I could hear him, just
inside the fringe of underbrush, persuading his mate to come too and
share his plate. But she was much shyer than he; it was several days
before I noticed her flitting in and out of the shadowy underbrush;
and when I tossed her the first crumb, she flew away in a terrible
fright. Gradually, however, Killooleet persuaded her that we were
kindly, and she came often to meals; but she would never come near, to
eat from my tin plate, till after I had gone away.
Never a day now passed that one or both of the birds did not rest on
my tent. When I put my head out, like a turtle out of his shell, in
the early morning to look at the weather, Killooleet would look down
from the projecting end of the ridgepole and sing good-morning. And
when I had been out late on the lake, night-fishing, or following the
inlet for beaver, or watching the grassy points for caribou, or just
drifting along shore silently to catch the night sounds and smells of
the woods, I would listen with childish anticipation for Killooleet's
welcome as I approached the landing. He had learned to recognize the
sounds of my coming, the rub of a careless paddle, the ripple of
water under the bow, or the grating of pebbles on the beach; and with
Simmo asleep, and the fire low, it was good to be welcomed back by a
cheery little voice in the darkness; for he always sang when he heard
me. Sometimes I would try to surprise him; but his sleep was too light
and his ears too keen. The canoe would glide up to the old cedar and
touch the shore noiselessly; but with the first crunch of gravel under
my foot, or the rub of my canoe as I lifted it out, he would waken;
and his song, all sweetness and cheer, _I'm here, sweet
Killooleet-lillooleet-lillooleet_, would ripple out of the dark
underbrush where his nest was.
I am glad now to think that I never saw that nest, though it was
scarcely ten yards from my tent, until after the young had flown, and
Killooleet cared no more about it. I knew the bush in which it was,
close by the deer path; could pick out from my fireplace the thick
branch that sheltered it; for I often watched the birds coming and
going. I have no doubt that Killooleet would have welcomed me there
without fear; but his mate never laid aside her shyness about it,
never went to it directly when I was looking, and I knew he would like
me better if I respected her little secret.
Soon, from the mate's infrequent visits, and from the amount of food
which Killooleet took away with him, I knew she was brooding her eggs.
And when at last both birds came together, and, instead of helping
themselves hungrily, each took the largest morsel he could carry and
hurried away to the nest, I knew that the little ones were come; and I
spread the plate more liberally, and moved it away to the foot of the
old cedar, where Killooleet's mate would not be afraid to come at any
time.
One day, not long after, as I sat at a late breakfast after the
morning's fishing, there was a great stir in the underbrush. Presently
Killooleet came skipping out, all fuss and feathers, running back and
forth with an air of immense importance between the last bush and the
plate by the cedar, crying out in his own way, "Here it is, here it
is, all right, just by the old tree as usual. Crackers, trout, brown
bread, porridge; come on, come on; don't be afraid. _He's_ here, but
he won't harm. I know him. Come on, come on!"
Soon his little gray mate appeared under the last bush, and after much
circumspection came hopping towards the breakfast; and after her, in a
long line, five little Killooleets, hopping, fluttering, cheeping,
stumbling,--all in a fright at the big world, but all in a desperate
hurry for crackers and porridge _ad libitum_; now casting hungry eyes
at the plate under the old cedar, now stopping to turn their heads
sidewise to see the big kind animal with only two legs, that
Killooleet had told them about, no doubt, many times.
After that we had often seven guests to breakfast, instead of two. It
was good to hear them, the lively _tink, tink-a-tink_ of their little
bills on the tin plate in a merry tattoo, as I ate my own tea and
trout thankfully. I had only to raise my eyes to see them in a bobbing
brown ring about my bounty; and, just beyond them, the lap of ripples
on the beach, the lake glinting far away in the sunshine, and a bark
canoe fretting at the landing, swinging, veering, nodding at the
ripples, and beckoning me to come away as soon as I had finished my
breakfast.