A DEER TRAPPED--THE RESULT OF A COMBAT--A QUESTION OF MENTAL
PHILOSOPHY DISCUSSED.
We returned the next day to our camping ground. On the "Lower Chain of
Ponds," we found our pioneer and his goods all safe, no visitors
having passed that way in our absence. Smith knocked over a deer on
our passage down. I have said that just above our camp was a dam. It
was made in this wise: first, great logs were laid up, across the
stream, in the same fashion as the side of a log house, to the height
of about twelve feet, properly secured, and upon these, other and
smaller logs were laid, side by side, transversely, and sloping up the
stream at an angle of forty-five degrees, like one side of the roof of
a house. These long, slender logs, reached out over and beyond those
that were laid up across the stream, the lower part covered with
brush, and then with earth, so as to make a tight dam, the upper ends,
even when the dam was full, extending several feet above the top water
line. These logs, or perhaps they had better be called large and long
poles, for, when compared with the foundation timbers, they were
nothing more, have, of course, above where they are covered with brush
and earth, interstices, or crevices, between them.
On our return, and as we came in sight of the dam, I, being in the
forward boat, saw a small deer, laying stretched out upon these poles,
dead, hanging, as it were, by one foot. My impression was, that it had
been shot, and dragged up there, and left by our pioneer for the
present. We found, however, upon examination, that the deer had walked
up on the dam, probably to take a look at what was below, and on the
other side, when his foot slipped down between the poles, and he was
caught as in a trap. His leg was badly broken, and nearly severed by
his efforts to get loose, and the bark of the poles was worn away
within reach of his struggles. He had died where he thus got hung; and
there he was, stone dead, but not yet cold, when we found him. He was
a fine, fat, young deer, and died by one of the thousand accidents to
which the wild animals of the forest, as well as man, are exposed.
Upon relating this incident to an old hunter, I was told by him that
he once, while out in the woods, came upon the skeletons of two large
bucks, that, in fighting, had got their horns so interlocked and
wedged together, that they could not separate them, and thus, locked
in the death grapple, they had starved and died. There lay their
bones, the flesh eaten from them by the beasts and carrion birds, and,
bleached by the sun and the storms, the two skulls with the horns
still interlocked; and the narrator told me he had them yet at home,
fast together, as he found them, as one of the curiosities to be met
with in the Rackett woods.
"I've been thinking," said Spalding, in his quiet way, as we sat
towards evening, looking out over the pleasant little lake, watching
the shadow chasing the retiring sunlight up the sides of the opposite
hills, "I've been thinking how differently we act, and feel, and
talk--aye, and think, too--out here in these old woods, from what we
do when at home and surrounded by civilization. However we four may
deny being old, we cannot certainly claim to be young. We have all
reached the meridian of life, and though feeling few, if any, of the
infirmities of age, still, our next move will be in the downhill
direction. Yet, notwithstanding all this, we talk and act, and think,
and feel, too, like boys. I do not speak this reproachfully, but as a
fact which develops a curious attribute of the human mind."
"Well," replied the Doctor, "while it may be curious, it is
exceedingly natural. We have thrown off the restraints which society
imposes upon us; we have thrown off the cares which the business of
life heaps upon us. We have gone back for a season to the freedom, the
sports, the sights, the exercises which delighted our boyhood. And can
it be called strange that the feelings, the thoughts, and emotions of
our youth should come welling up from the long past, or that with the
return of boyish emotions, the language and actions of boyhood should
be indulged in again?"
"You will find," said Smith, "your old feelings of sobriety, of
thoughtfulness, your cautiousness, coming back just in proportion as
you tire of this wilderness life, and that by the time you are ready
to return to civilization, you will have become as staid, sober, and
reflective men of the world, as when you started, with as strict a
guard upon your expression of sentiment, or opinion, as ever."
"It is that 'guard' of which you speak," remarked Spalding, "over the
emotions, the sentiments of the heart, stifling their expression, and
chaining down under a placid exterior their manifestations, that
constitutes one of the broad distinctions between youth and manhood.
It is when that guard is set, that the process of fossilization, so to
speak, begins; and if no relaxing agency intervenes, the heart becomes
cold and hard, even before white hairs gather upon the head. I often
imagine that if men who really _think_, who have the power of
analyzation, of weighing causes and measuring results, would dismiss
that rigid espionage over themselves, would stand in less awe of the
world, in less dread of its accusation of change, and with the
fearless frankness of youth, declare the truth, and stand boldly up
for the right as they, _at the time_, understand it to be, without
reference to consistency of present views and opinions with those of
the past, the world would be much better off; progress would have
vastly fewer obstacles to contend against. But it is not every man,
even of those who _think_, who in politics, in religion, in science,
in anything involving a possible charge of inconsistency, of the
desertion of a party, a sect, or a principle, dare avow a change of
conviction or opinion, however such change may exist. This should
not be so. It belittles manhood, and makes slaves and cowards of men.
It is a proud prerogative, this ability and power of thinking. It is a
priceless privilege, this freedom of thought and opinion, and he is a
craven who moves on with the heedless and thoughtless crowd, conscious
of error, himself a hypocrite and a living lie, through fear of the
charge of 'inconsistency,' the accusation of change. 'Speak your
opinions of to-day,' says Carlyle, 'in words hard as rocks, and your
opinions of to-morrow in words just as hard, even though your opinions
of to-morrow may contradict your opinions of to-day.' There is a fund
of true wisdom in this beautiful maxim, if men would appreciate it. It
would correct a vast deal of error in politics, in religion, in
philosophy, in the social relations of life. Times change, and
struggle against it as they may, men's convictions will change with
the times. The man who says that his opinions never alter, is to me
either a knave or a fool. For a thinking man to remain stationary,
when everything else is on the move, is a simple impossibility. Time
was when the stage coach was the model method of travelling. It
carried us six, sometimes eight miles the hour, in comfort and safety.
But who thinks of the lumbering stage coach now, with its snail's pace
of eight miles the hour, when the locomotive with its long train of
cars, lighted up like the street of a city in motion, rushes over the
smooth rails literally with the speed of the wind. The scream of the
steam-whistle has succeeded the old stage-horn, and the iron horse
taken the place of those of flesh and blood. Change is written in
great glowing letters upon everything. It stands out in blazing
capitals everywhere. All things are on the move! Forward! and forward!
is the word. And who would, who CAN, stand still amidst the universal
rush? Only a century ago, from the valley through which the majestic
Hudson rolls its everlasting flood, westward to the mighty
Mississippi, westward still to the Rocky Mountains, and yet westward
to the Pacific, was one vast wilderness; interminable forests,
standing in all their primeval grandeur and gloom; boundless prairies,
covered with profitless verdure, over which the silence of the
everlasting past brooded; and above all these, mountain peaks, covered
with perpetual snows, upon which the eye of a white man had never
looked, stood piercing the sky. From the Atlantic coast to the
Mississippi, that old forest has been swept away. The broad prairies
have been, or are being, subjected to the culture of human industry;
even the Rocky Mountains have been overleaped, and beyond them is a
great State already admitted into the family of the Union, and a
territory teeming with an adventurous and hardy population, knocking
at its door for admission. The march of civilization has crossed a
continent of more than three thousand miles, sweeping away forests,
spreading out green fields, planting cities and towns, making the old
wilderness to blossom as the rose, scattering life, activity,
progress, all along the road it has travelled. The great rivers that
rolled in silence through unbroken forests, have become the highways
of trade, upon whose bosoms the white sails of commerce are spread,
and through whose waters countless steamboats plough their way. These
stupendous changes are the results of human energy, and they reach, in
their moral prestige, their progressive influence, through every vein
and artery of governmental and social compacts, affecting political
institutions, shaping national policy, and forcing, by their
resistless demonstrations, change and mutations of opinions upon
all men.
"As it has been in the past century, so it is now, and so it will be
through all the long future. Forward, and forward, is the word, and
forward will be the word for centuries to come. And why? Because all
men here, in this free Republic, are free to think, free to speak,
free to will, free to act. No traditions of the past bind them; no
hereditary policy controls their action; no customs, covered with the
dust of ages, fetter them; no physical or intellectual gyves, corroded
by the rust of centuries, are eating into their flesh. Because
thinking American men everywhere live in the present, ignoring and
defying the dead past, and building up the mighty future. Because they
'speak their opinions of TO-DAY in words hard as rocks, and their
opinions of TO-MORROW in words just as hard, although their opinions
of to-morrow may contradict their opinions of to-day.' They are
fearless of personal consequences. As free men, they will think, as
free men they will speak, and as such they will act, regardless of the
jibe and sneer of those who accuse them of change, of inconsistency,
of being mutable and unstable of purpose. The point to the march
of improvement, the advance in the actualities of life, and ask, 'When
every thing else is on the move, shall we stand still? Shall the
opinions of a quarter of a century, a decade, a year, a month ago,
remain unchanged, immutable, fixed as a star always, amidst the new
demonstrations looming up like mountains everywhere around us?'
"Man's life is short at best; a little point of time, scarcely
discernible on the map of ages; his aspirations, his hopes, his
ambition, more transient than the lightning's flash; but his opinions
may tell for good upon that little point occupied by his generation,
and he should 'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may aid in
illuminating the darkness of the present, and he should therefore
'speak them in words hard as rocks.' They may have some influence in
building up and ennobling human destiny in the future, and he should
therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks,' regardless of the
contumely heaped upon him by little minds for having thus spoken them.
What if the ridicule, the denunciations of the unthinking, the
sensual, the profligate, the unreflecting fools of the world be poured
upon him? What of that? To-day, may be one of darkness and storm. The
cloud and the storm will pass away, and the brightness and glory of
the sunlight will be all over the earth to-morrow. Let him 'speak his
opinions then of to-day in words hard as rocks, and his opinions of
to-morrow in words just as hard.' Let him speak his opinions thus on
all subjects within the range of human investigation, upon science,
philosophy, politics, religion, morals; and leave to little minds to
settle the question of consistency or change. Let his be the eagle's
flight towards the sun, and theirs to skim in darkness along the
ground, like the course of the mousing owl."
After it became dark, Smith and Martin went out around the lake night
hunting, and the rest retired to our tents. We heard the report of
Smith's rifle from time to time, and concluded that we should have to
court-martial him for a wanton destruction of deer, contrary to the
law we had established for our government on that subject. But on his
return, we ascertained that, though having had several shots, he had
succeeded in killing or, according to Martin's account, even wounding
but one, and that a yearling, and the poorest and leanest we had seen
since we entered the woods. Though it was thus diminutive in size,
Smith declared that he had seen, and shot at, some of the largest deer
that ever roamed the forest. He insisted that he had seen some, by the
side of which the largest we had looked upon by daylight, were mere
fawns, and thereupon he undertook to establish a theory that the large
deer fed by night and the smaller ones by day. This would have been
all well enough, were it not for the fact, understood by every
experienced night-hunter, that by the spectral and uncertain light of
the lamp, or torch, a deer, when seen standing in the water, or on the
reedy banks, is in appearance magnified to twice its actual
dimensions. To this Smith at last assented, since to deny the
proposition, involved the conclusion that he had killed the wrong
deer; for the one he shot at, as it stood in the edge of the water,
though much smaller than some he had seen, appeared greatly larger
than the one he killed.