For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
SONNET CVI.
Not all the joy, and not all the glory,
Must fade as leaves when the woods wax hoary.
SWINBURNE.
THERE is a sigh in the passing breeze as the autumn days steal on—a sigh
for the summer fled. I hear the change, the admonitory whisper of the
leaves, almost ere the transition becomes perceptible, for Nature as yet
has scarcely altered her outward garb.
Yet daily the shadows lengthen, the haze deepens, mellower grow the
evening skies, until, no longer vacillating between summer and autumn,
the first frost smites the low-lands, and the division line of the
seasons is visibly proclaimed.
“We hope in the spring, only to regret in the fall.” But shall I regret
the vanished summer? Will not yonder hillside glow as all the summer
meadows have never glowed? these yellowing woods outshine the sunshine
of spring? Suddenly, through my windows, I note where the first fires
have begun to burn. I watch the flames creep stealthily along the hills,
smoldering, perchance, in a distant hollow, anon riding the higher
crests, illuming sumac-sentineled ravines, invading the brier patches,
and lighting sproutland and swamp with living fire. High on the uplands
the splendor hangs, low in the valleys the glory falls. Steeped and
flooded with its color, the landscape gleams like an opal beneath the
autumn sun. What poet, what prose painter, what cunning artificer of
phrase can depict the tidal wave of beauty of the latter year?
Shall I regret the summer with the October carnival at hand, when the
woodcock whistles from the alder thicket and the grouse bursts through
the painted covert? It is for this the sportsman has longed and waited
during the lingering months of summer. Stanchly as he is drawn upon the
covey, I am sure The Spanish Pointer, in the old print above the
writing-desk, feels the advent of the season, and thinks, with the
latter-day philosopher, that “the preacher who declared that all is
vanity, never looked at a fall woodcock over the rib of a good gun.”
Always on his point on the knoll, the pointer’s riveted attitude now has
an added meaning. His eye still fixed upon the quarry, he nevertheless
moves unceasingly in his frame. There is no deception, no optical
illusion; he _moves_—not forward or backward, but with an oscillating,
sideward motion, as if the constant strain on his powerful tendons had
caused them to relax. Rigid as a statue has he stood throughout the
summer, the blue blood of generations of pointers holding him
unflinchingly upon the game. Perhaps now the scent has grown cold. Or
has he wearied of waiting for the volley of the barrels, and, looking up
for a moment at the crimsoning copse, bethought him that a fresh season
has dawned, and there are fresh coveys to spring? The grim lion by
Barye, in the etching that hangs above him, remains motionless. Though
you would dread to meet the beast of prey on the desert where he is
stalking, he shows no signs of animation on the wall whence he looks
down upon you. Only the old pointer moves unceasingly in his frame. Is
the movement of the picture due to the furnace heat behind the partition
wall? To you, perhaps. To me he is plainly motioning to the covers.
Methinks, also, that my good Irish terrier, who is often by my side,
looks up at the fox’s pelt more intently as autumn draws on apace. The
fox may suggest the covers and its denizens to him, as the motion of the
pointer suggests them to me—the fleet forms that haunt their mazy
fastnesses, the hares and rabbits and vanishing shadows his steel sinews
are eager to pursue. Surely his sharply pointed ears, his quivering
muscles, and his glittering hazel eyes are in sympathy with the
movements of the pointer, and second his invitation to the woods.
Musing upon the ancient print, with its rolling background of hill and
dale, I sometimes picture the scene of desolation which would ensue were
the woods and waters stripped of their native tenants—the game which is
at once their glory and their joy. Fancy the landscape denuded of the
wild life that is as indigenous as its flora, that is nurtured upon its
mast, and derives sustenance from the very twigs and leaves of its
vegetation. Conceive, if it be possible, streams with no trout to people
their pools and shallows, waters that never mirrored the wood-drake’s
mail, and lakes unruffled by the web of wild fowl.
Imagine the woodlands with no grouse to beat the reveille of spring, no
hares to thread their shaded labyrinths, no fox to prowl through their
coverts. Silence the scream of the hawk, and the voice of the owl, crow,
and jay, and instantly the landscape would be deprived of half its
beauty, its innate beauty of sound. Game is the essence of the woods and
free, uncivilized Nature—the division line that separates the wild from
the tame—and he whose nerves have never tingled at the electric whir of
a game-bird’s wing and the responsive boom of the double-barrel, has
remained insensible to one of the most inspiring exhilarations of the
senses. Just as the library refreshes and stimulates the mind, so do the
woods, the streams, and the stubbles become a field of health for the
body, and by the invigorating and elevating recreation they yield do
field sports serve to strengthen both mind and body. Enough for me that
autumn is here; I must accept the invitation of the old pointer, and
examine for myself what the woods have in store.
Brilliant as they are in the flush of their October splendor, they will
lose but little of their beauty as autumn wanes. The bare trees extend
and expand the landscape for me, contributing enchantments of distance
that only denuded vegetation may reveal. Then, with the weather in a
gracious mood, I obtain effects that the green entanglement of summer
never knew. The purple bloom upon my hills is never half so exquisite as
when a thaw has freed them temporarily from their coverlet of snow,
disclosing their russet slopes and leafless trees. A new palette of
color is presented in these subtle gradations of umber and ochre, of
drab and of bronze, that drape the withered stubbles. Sere and faded in
the latter year, the lonely marsh is yet glorious with subdued hues when
touched by the afternoon splendor. The hush which broods upon the
landscape, too, has a charm of its own, in harmony with the quiet tones
of the slumbering woods. The very lisp of the chickadee and solemn tap
of the nut-hatch only intensify the repose of Nature; and I question if
the combined glories of the midsummer twilight, when the bat and
night-hawk raced upon the evening sky, yielded anything so radiantly
beautiful as the slant November sunlight streaming through the trees of
the lowland, its vivid crimsons reflected in the pools below.
The airy spray of the beech I may admire only during winter, and only
when it stands divested of its summer garniture may I behold the
marvelous framework of the elm. Attractive as it is when robed in the
bloom and leafage of summer, the thorn develops a new beauty in its
gnarled and naked branches and the hoariness of its gray antiquity.
Loveliest, too, are the birch and hemlock in midwinter; whilst the
swamp, ablaze with the scarlet fruit of the _Prinos_ and smooth
winterberry, presents its most vivid life above the snow. From it,
likewise, I catch the gleam of the golden willow, with purple rufous
lights that smolder amid the twigs and branchlets of the shrubs which
seek its cool and solitude. Again, when the snow comes sifting down from
the pallid sky, what magical effects do I not obtain amid the dark
mysterious depths of the hemlock woods! Even then my hills and woods
offer a glorious excuse for an outing. For have I not long pictured in
imagination the shadowy vistas where I know the big white hares are in
waiting?
It is worth scaling a dozen hillsides to breathe such air and obtain
such views. No play of sunlight on an English South Down could be finer,
and no lines of beauty fairer than those revealed by distant table-land
and wide-extending vale. A silence, broken only by the roar of far-off
railroad trains or the ring of the woodsman’s axe, rests like a
benediction over all, a sleep of Nature—peaceful, deep, profound.
Within the shelter of the wood, beneath the refuge of the evergreens and
undergrowth, it is warm; without, the gale may rave, and, above, the
tree-tops wail a requiem for the departing year; but here below it is
protected as within the walls of a building. On either hand extend the
green arcades of the hemlocks, like the nave and transepts of a
cathedral. The downy woodpecker and titmouse are here, ever present as
choristers; the wild life of the woods is here, the companionship of
bird and beast and dormant vegetable life. There is life beating beneath
the mold, beneath the snowy mantle—the ermine with which Nature keeps
her treasures warm. There is life—nimble, fleet, and stirring—above the
tell-tale snow.
That is a fox’s track leading to his den on the hillside, the return
trail of Reynard whose sortie toward the barn-yards you previously
noticed. When he started on his foray his pace was a walk, as his
footsteps close together reveal. Warily he was proceeding under cover of
the darkness, planning the best means of ingress to his gallinaceous
goal. All the caution of a skilled general on the eve of a decisive
battle is apparent in his skulking foot-prints. His dreaded enemies are
well known. Only yesterday the hounds were hot in his pursuit, and the
echoes reverberated with the volley of barbarous vulpicides, which
happily fell wide of its mark. But he will outwit them all! His trained
cunning has taught him the danger of traps and gins; his fleet foot has
long borne him through many a loop-hole of escape. The stork’s
invitation to dine must needs be deftly perfumed and framed on an
unusually tempting card to induce him to take his claret out of
long-necked _carafes_ or his _pâté de foie gras_ from metal tureens.
The tracks leading back from the farmyard show him to have been jogging
along at a more rapid gait. The prints are the same, except that they
are farther apart, one following directly behind the other, Indian
filewise, in an almost straight line. His object accomplished, there was
no further need of extreme caution or dalliance. From a safe distance he
had watched the lights in the farm-house till one by one they were
extinguished, had waited until all was silent, and his keen scent
apprised him that danger was past. It was then an easy matter to pounce
upon and bear off the unsuspecting prey. Along his return trail there
are feathers strewed here and there, attesting conclusively that his
raid was successful.
Lightly he tripped along with elevated brush, the booty slung over his
shoulder, to the safeguard of his den. Obviously before reaching his
haven he has been startled by something. The tracks, still in a straight
line, become much farther apart; the trot has given place to a canter
for a few rods, when his former gait is resumed. The baying of a hound,
perchance, from his kennel on the farther hillside, or the bark of a
fellow-vulpine freebooter, has quickened his pace for the moment. Where
he struck into a gallop the prints of his nails are visible; these do
not show when he progresses on his customary trot or walk, so well are
his feet protected for extended predations by the thick fur padding
between the toes. His long sweeping brush never once touched the snow,
burdened though he was by his plunder. This he carries well up, knowing
the increased weight it would engender should he get it wet. A cat is
not more careful of her dainty feet than is sly Reynard of his precious
tail.
In general, a fox that has acquired a taste for poultry is considered
rather an undesirable subject for the chase proper. A poultry fox always
makes his headquarters near the farmsteads. His daily beat, therefore,
is limited as to distance compared with his brethren who subsist by
foraging in the woods, and whose nightly rounds embrace a very much
larger territory. Usually a poultry fox, if started, does not take a
straight line very far, but, after leading a short distance, commences
to circle, coming round to the place of starting after the manner of the
hare. A fox who subsists on game knows all the fat covers of the
neighborhood where the most game lies. His extended tramps give him
wind, fleetness, and endurance, while his familiarity with every rod of
the covers stands him in excellent stead when hotly pursued.
A round glittering eyeball, bright as a coal of fire, is scrutinizing
you from beneath a pile of brushwood at the edge of the cover. Scarcely
is the gun discharged ere a small covey of quail spring close at hand.
Investigation is needless to reveal the baffled assassin; the tell-tale
tracks upon the snow, round like those of a fox, but smaller, and the
distance between considerably less, divulge the nature of the
trespasser. It is none other than a cat, the petted tabby of the
farmstead, that spends a large portion of its time in stalking game—a
poacher scarcely less destructive than its fierce wild congener. When
once a taste for game has been formed, pursuit is thenceforward
continual and relentless, till the offender usually ends by adopting a
permanent woodland abode, where it thrives lustily, increasing in size
and acquiring a heavy coat of fur.
Look at this much-traveled esplanade, where the tracks show so thickly
upon the snow. Overnight the hares and rabbits have been browsing upon
the young beech, maple, and hemlock buds, with an occasional sally into
the brier patches. The numerous trails indicate they have availed
themselves of the bright moonlight to continue their feeding longer than
usual. On moonlight nights the _Leporidæ_ always travel most; on cold,
blustering nights they seldom leave their forms. Birds and animals
dislike to venture out during stormy weather unless impelled by hunger.
At such times a wood throbbing with animate life seems entirely deserted
by its furred and feathered population. Vainly, then, the pointer or
setter may quarter the ground; the game lies concealed and apparently
scentless beneath the brush and hiding-places, refusing to leave its
refuge unless almost stepped upon. An apparently similar disappearance
of game is often noticeable when the weather is fair immediately
preceding a storm. The squirrels are warmly housed in their nests within
the trees. Many of the grouse seek shelter amid the dense hemlocks,
sitting close to the trunks on the leeside of the storm, protected by
the thick foliage and their own matting of feathers. The closest of
beating then goes for little, so that in a wood where you know game
exists in comparative abundance it appears a mystery whither all its
wild life has fled.
The white hare and rabbit tracks—if the smaller _Lepus_ may be referred
to as a rabbit—which strew the ground are identical save in size. There
are first the marks of the hind feet, side by side, followed by those of
the fore feet, one behind the other. Thus it is seen the gait is always
a lope or bound, and that in springing the hare brings up with his hind
feet nearest the head, alighting, however, on all fours at once. His
long, powerful hind-quarters seem made of rubber sinews, the crooked
stifles and great strength of thigh acting as levers to the supple body
framed with special regard to speed—his sole protection. In reaching for
the buds and young shoots of the undergrowth during the deep snows, he
is materially aided by his long hind legs.
Under the beeches the squirrels have been busy scratching for the mast;
these appear to be the most restless foragers of the wood, their trails
being by far the most numerous. Like the hare’s and rabbit’s, their gait
is a lope. As he lands from his spring, the hind feet of the squirrel
touch the ground nearest the head, as in the case of the hare and
rabbit, but the two forward feet, instead of striking one before the
other, strike nearly side by side, like a single footfall. Occasionally,
not often, he prints similarly to the rabbit in the position of the
feet, although always smaller and somewhat less pointed. The large
blacks and grays are persecuted by the smaller pugnacious reds, which
frequently drive them entirely out of a wood, first pilfering their
nests of the shack they have stored.
Here Master Reynard has been mousing, seated on a stump intently
watching, his flowing brush clear of the snow; the air is tainted with
his strong odor. Where he made a leap his footmarks are distinctly
visible amid the numerous tracks of the field-mice—a dainty of which he
is extremely fond. Yonder is the scene of an oft-enacted woodland
tragedy, with Reynard in his great title _rôle_ of slayer. There,
beneath the shelter of an uprooted beech, a grouse had repaired for his
nightly slumber, his head screened from the moonlight under his
protecting wings. The impress of his form is clearly molded upon the
snow. But, alas! his now tattered plumage and a prowling fox’s
foot-prints attest his grim awakening when his relentless foe discovered
his retreat. For this had his wings so often rung defiance to the
double-barrel; to this ignominious end had he come at last! Were the
ghosts of murdered grouse to haunt the scenes of their earthly sojourn,
they might rattle their featherless wings in triumph to know that on
this self-same hillside, but a few rods from the scene of the tragedy,
Master Reynard met his fate, a week afterward, in the jaws of clamorous
hounds.
It requires a very warm day in winter to tempt a coon from his
hibernacle. To-day his large flat prints and zigzag course are not
observable; he is snugly clad in his fur overcoat within the fastness of
a sheltering tree. The ground-hog is sealed in his burrow outside the
wood, having “pulled his hole in after him”; this he covers up with
leaves and earth, until, after his protracted slumber, he emerges to
view his shadow in the spring.
That was an owl which skimmed the air so silently, on wings soft as
eider-down, noiseless as a butterfly, and stealthy as a fox’s tread. It
is not often one sees an owl, however; in the day-time he usually
sleeps, seldom leaving his retreat till dusk, unless during gloomy
weather. The little or screech owls are more frequently seen by day than
the larger species. With the hawk, crow, jay, skunk, and fox, the owl is
extremely destructive to eggs and young birds during the nesting season,
large owls not hesitating to pounce upon full-grown hares, and sharing
with the fox a great fondness for poultry. The skunk leaves a print
similar to that of the fox and cat, barring its reduced size. There are
invariably numbers of these threading the runways and leading to and
from the farmsteads.
There is a murmur like unto many voices in the woods’ mysterious depths,
as if Pan and his train of Oreads were holding a revel within. It is a
combination of numerous sounds that produces these ceaseless whispers of
the woods. You hear them in summer when the insect choirs are chanting
an aërial melody and the hermit-thrush sings as if he had a soul; you
hear them in winter when the wind sobs amid the needles of the pines,
and the woodpecker’s hammer resounds unceasingly from hollow trees; you
hear them now, on every hand, a chorus of voices, the forest’s
pulsations—a palpable part and portion of its solitude. How weird the
cry of the blue jay, the loon of the woods, whose startling scream
sounds like that a faun might utter in despair! His sapphire coronet is
not for you, however; he jeers at you in strident tones from his
stronghold in the tree-tops, keeping close watch of you, but taking care
to remain well out of range. Like his clamorous friend the crow, he has
scented F. F. F. powder before. At intervals the airy treble of the
tree-sparrow swells the sylvan choir—a minor but most melodious addition
to the chorus. When the powdery snow patters upon the withered leaves
and the stillness is otherwise almost unbroken, you may hear his
carillon while he feeds on the tender buds of the sweet birch. “A merry
heart goes all the day” is his motto and the tenor of his blithe
refrain.
There are grouse tracks also that have left their reflection in winter’s
mirror—the roving feet of the brown forest hermit, the daintiest print
upon the snow. Unless disturbed, the ruffed-grouse will travel a great
distance on foot through the woods in quest of food. A single bird will
leave a surprising number of tracks in the course of his protracted
wanderings, so that one is often puzzled at the comparative scarcity of
birds. But even on the snow he is extremely difficult to detect, so
closely does he blend with his surroundings. Not until he springs with
sonorous pinions close at your side are you made aware of his precise
location, when you wonder you had not observed him before. All game is
alike in this respect—difficulty of detection—even to the brilliantly
marked trout, which assume the general color of the bottom of streams in
which they lie.
Should you shoot a crow amid your rambles, a swarm of mourners will
quickly be in attendance on the remains. Within a few minutes every ebon
inhabitant of the neighborhood, apprised by the alarm of its companions,
may be seen winging its way thereto with loud cawings. It can not be the
sense of sight alone that locates the dead, for the discovery will not
unfrequently occur in thick cover or open glade.
One of the numerous runways of the hares, within gunshot of which you
have taken position, extends through a glade, affording ample
opportunity to observe the game. The eager hounds have struck the scent
leading to a form in a thicket of brier where the quarry lies concealed.
The startled hare leaps from his covert, with the hounds in full cry
coming directly toward you, until, turning into another runway, the
music recedes in the distance. Amid the frenzy of pursuit two other
hares have been started, the deep baying indicating the course of the
divided pack. Round and round the fleet hares circle, one of them after
a prolonged flight approaching your standpoint. His agile dash for
liberty has left his pursuers in the rear, and he pauses—a white
silhouette of living beauty, and the embodiment of nimble speed—for a
survey. He sits upon his great hind legs—his only safeguard—turning his
long clean-cut ears forward and backward, each one singly, to focus the
sound. The music swells into a grand _crescendo_, the twigs crackle
beneath the trampling of many feet, and the hare is off again with the
speed of the racer. The baying of the pack indicates the direction of
pursuit, whether the game is coming or going. A hare always circles,
returning sooner or later to the place he started from; he never
“holes,” like the rabbit, unless in a log when exhausted. To baffle the
dogs he will sometimes imitate his wily master, Reynard, by taking his
back track for quite a distance, and then, leaping aside, to strike out
on a fresh course; by this means he gains a breathing-spell and puzzles
his foes.
So the sport progresses, and the bag mounts with the lengthening
shadows. An owl is sounding his lone “tu-whoo!” when the hounds come in
with lolling tongues and trembling flanks from the prolonged excitement
of the chase. The last hare has carmined the snow with his life-blood,
and the heavy spoils are harled and strung. The flaming fires of sunset
are smoldering into ashen embers in the soft southwest; the tender
violets of the remote table-lands chill to colder purples with day’s
decline; the marshaled ranks of the skeleton trees stand out upon the
hills as if limned in India ink; the mellow hyemal twilight deepens over
woodland and valley, till the perfect winter day merges into the moonlit
winter night and the _vale_ of the sport.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]