LITTLE TOPPER'S LAKE--A SPIKE BUCK--A THUNDER STORM IN THE FOREST--THE
HOWL OF THE WOLF.
We spent the next day in coasting Round Pond, looking into its
secluded bays, and resting, when the sun was hot, beneath the shadows
of the brave old trees that line the banks. In floating along the
shore of this beautiful sheet of water, one can hardly help imagining
that in the broken rocks and rough stones piled up along the margin of
the lake, he sees the rains of an ancient wall, the mortar of which
has become disintegrated by time, and the masonry fallen down. He will
see at intervals what, from a little distance, seems like a solid wall
of stone, laid with care, and upon which the lapse of centuries has
wrought no change, so regular are the strata of which it is composed,
while an occasional boulder, large as a house, and covered with moss,
reminds him of the ruined tower of some stronghold. He will see, as he
rounds some rocky point, half a dozen of these gigantic boulders piled
together, leaning against each other with great cavernous openings
between, through which he can walk erect, and he involuntarily looks
around him for the armor of the ancient giants who piled up these
stupendous rocks and walled in the lake with these massive boulders.
As we swept around a point near the south shore of the lake, we saw a
deer at a quarter of a mile from us, feeding upon the lily pads that
grew along the shore. Spalding and myself were in advance of our
little fleet, and our boatman paddled us carefully and silently
towards the animal, using the paddle only when its head was down. He
would feed for a minute or two and then look carefully all around him.
Of us he took no particular notice, although we were within a hundred
and fifty yards of him; and even when we were within sixty yards he
seemed to regard us only as a log floating upon the water, or
something else which might be regarded as perfectly harmless. Spalding
was in the bow of the boat, and when within some eight rods of the
game, we lay perfectly quiet for a moment, when his rifle spoke out
and its voice rung and re-echoed among the surrounding hills as if a
whole platoon of musketry were blazing all around us. The deer made
three or four desperate leaps in a zigzag direction, and then went
down. When we got to him, he was dead. He was a fine two year old
buck, with spike horns, and in excellent condition. We took his saddle
and skin and passed on.
From Bound Pond we rowed up the inlet, a broad and sluggish stream,
full of grass and lily pads, to Little Tapper's Lake. We saw several
deer feeding along the shore that, discovering us as we rowed
carelessly along, went whistling and snorting away into the forest. As
we approached the lake, dark clouds gathered in the West; great ugly
looking thunderheads came rolling up from behind the hills higher and
higher; perfect stillness was all around us; the leaves were moveless
on the trees, and the voices of the birds were hushed.
"Squire," said Martin to me "I'm thinkin' we'd better go ashore and
put up our tents; there's a mighty big storm over the hill, and he'll
be down this way before many minutes."
And we rowed to a high point at a small distance, covered with spruce
and fir trees, and put up our tents on the lee side of it, so as to be
sheltered from the wind as well as the rain. This was the work of only
ten minutes; but before we had finished, the deep voice of the thunder
came rolling over the forest, and we could see the storm rising over
the hills, in a long black line, all across the Western sky. The
lightning darted down towards the earth, or across from cloud to
cloud, and the thunder boomed and rolled along the heavens, its deep
rumble shaking the ground like an earthquake. Presently, the hills
were hidden from our view, we heard the rush of the storm in the
forest on the other side of the river, then the splash of the big
drops on the water, and then the wind and the rain were upon us. For a
few minutes, I thought our tents would have been lifted bodily from
the ground, but the skill of our pioneer had provided against the
blast, and they remained standing safely over us. In a short time the
wind passed on, leaving the heavy rain to pour down in torrents, and
the deep voiced thunder to come crashing down to the earth, or go
rolling solemnly and heavily along the sky. It rained for an hour as
it can do only among these mountain regions. The clouds and the rain
at length swept on, and the bow of promise spanned the rear of the
retiring storm; a new joy seemed to take possession of the wild
things, and gladness and merriment sounded from every direction in the
old woods; a thin and shadowy mist hung like a veil over the water,
and a refreshing coolness, as well as brightness and glory, were all
around us. These storms of a hot summer day in this high region, if
one is prepared for them, are full of pleasant interest; they rise so
majestically, sweep along with such power, and pass away so
triumphantly, leaving behind them such a calm sweetness in the air,
that a journey to this wilderness would be imperfect in interest
without witnessing them.
We entered Little Tripper's Lake towards evening, at the north end,
and looking down south, one of the most beautiful views imaginable
opened upon our vision. Surrounded by low and undulating hills, dotted
with islands, with long points running far out into the lake, and
pleasant little bays hiding around behind wooded promontories, it
presented a wild yet pleasing landscape, on which a painter's eye
could not rest but with delight, and which, transferred to canvas,
would make a picture of which any artist might be proud.
By the way, I wonder that our artists do not summer among these
mountains and lakes, sketching and painting the transcendently
beautiful views they everywhere present. There is nothing like them on
all this continent. We talk about the scenery of Lake George. It is
all tame and spiritless compared with what may be seen here; it
possesses not a tithe of the variety, the bold and grand, the placid
and beautiful, all mingled, and changing always, as you pass from
point to point along these lakes. Why do not the artists whose
business it is to make the "canvas speak," drift out this way, and
deal with nature in all her ancient loveliness, clothed in her
primeval robes, and smiling in her freshness and beauty, as when
thrown from the hand of Deity? It would repay them for their labor,
and yield them a rich harvest of gain.
We had heard of the shanty in which we were to encamp, and we rowed
straight through the whole length of the lake towards it. We reached
it as the sun was going down, and stowed away our luggage before the
darkness had gathered over the forest. We took possession by the right
of squatter sovereignty, the owner being unknown, or at all events,
absent from the woods. This lake is one of the few in all this region
that I had never visited before, and is next in beauty to its
namesake, two days' journey nearer to civilization. It is about twelve
miles in length, and from one to two miles in width, with many
beautiful bays stealing around behind bold rocky promontories, and
sleeping in quiet beauty under the shadows of the tall forest trees
that tower above their shores. It is dotted, too, with beautiful
islands, some rising with a gentle slope from the water, covered with
scattering Norway pines, and a dense undergrowth of low bushes; others
are covered with tall spruce, fir, and hemlocks, standing up in
stately and solemn grandeur, their arms lovingly intertwined, through
the everlasting verdure of which the sun never shines; and others
still are gigantic rocks, rising up out of the deep water, all
treeless and shrubless, remaining always in brown and barren
desolation, on which the eagle and osprey devour their prey, and the
flocks of gulls that frequent the lake 'light to rest from their
almost ceaseless flight. Civilization has not as yet marred in
anything this beautiful sheet of water; even the lumberman has not
forced his way to the majestic old pines that tower in stately
grandeur above the forest trees of a lesser growth; not a foot of laud
has been cleared within thirty miles of it. The old woods stand around
it just as God placed them, in all their pristine solemnity, stately
and motionless; the wild things that roamed among them in the day of
old, are there still, and the same species of birds that sported in
their branches thousands of years ago, are there still. We heard the
howl of the wolf at night; we heard the scream of the panther; we saw
the tracks of the moose, and where he had fed on the pastures along
the shore; we saw the footprints of a huge bear in the sand on the
beach, and the deer-paths were like those that lead to a sheep-fold.
It was a pleasant thing to row along the shore, into the bays, around
the islands, and into the creeks that came in from other little lakes
deeper in the wilderness. The banks are mostly bold and bluff, the
rocks standing up four or eight feet from the water, or broken and
fallen like an ancient wall. Here and there is a long stretch of
beautiful sandy beach, on which the tiny waves break with a rippling
song, and from which bars go out with a gentle slope into the water.
We intended to remain here quietly for a few days, taking things easy,
rowing, and fishing, and hunting enough for exercise only. There is
plenty of deer, and trout, and duck, and partridge here, to be taken
with small labor; there are bears, and wolves, and panthers, in the
woods around. But these are fewer and harder to be come at than the
other game; there is an occasional moose too. We saw the tracks of all
these animals hereabouts, and we hoped to get a shot at some or all of
them before leaving the woods.
Reader, did you ever hear the wolves howl in the old woods of a Still
night! No? Then you have not heard _all_ the music of the forest. Some
deep-mouthed old forester will open his jaws, and send forth a volume
of sound so deep, so loud, so changeful, so undulating and variable in
its character, that, as it rolls along the forest, and comes back in
quavering echoes from the mountains, you will almost swear that his
single voice is an agglomerate of a thousand, all mixed, and mingled,
and rolled up into one. May be, away in the distance, possibly on the
other side of the lake, or across a broad valley, another will open
his mouth and answer, with a howl as deep, and wild, and variable, as
the first; and possibly a third and fourth, one on the right, and
another on the left, will join in the chorus, until the whole forest
seems to be fall of howling and noise; and yet not one of these
animals may be within a mile of you. To a timid man, there is something
terrific in the howl of the wolves; but in truth, they are harmless as
the deer, quite as wild and shy, and full as cowardly in the presence
of a man. They will fly as frightened from his approach, unless,
possibly, in the intense cold and desolation of winter, when driven
together and rendered desperate by hunger, they might be emboldened by
starvation to attack a man, but even this is among the apocryphal
legends of the wilderness.
"Hearing them wolves howlin'," said Hank Martin, as we sat in the
evening around our camp fire, "reminds me of a story Mark Shuff tells
of his experience with the critters; but mind, I don't pretend to
swear to its truth, for I don't claim to know anything about the facts
myself. I'll tell it as Mark told it to me, and if it turns out to be
too tough a yarn to take down whole, don't lay it to me. You know Mark
Shuff," said he, appealing to me, "and you may believe such parts of
it as you may be able to swallow, and the rest may be divided up, as
the Doctor said the other day, among the company."
"Go ahead," said the Doctor, "I'll take a quarter as my share of the
story, and you may cut it off of either end, or carve it out of the
middle. I'll take a quarter, tough or tender."
"You may set down a quarter to my account," said Smith, "and Spalding
shall take another." "Very well, then," said Martin, "I'll believe a
quarter of it myself, and so the case is made up, as the judge
would say."
"Well," repeated Martin, "you know MARE Shuff?" "Of course I know Mark
Shuff; and who, that has visited these lakes and woods don't know him?
He is a stalwart man, six feet in his stockings, strong, healthy, and
enduring as iron, I have had him as a boatman and guide about Tupper's
Lake, and the regions beyond it, more than once. He works at lumbering
in the winter, and if there is one among the hundreds, I had almost
said thousands, who make war, in the snowy season of the year, upon
the old pines of the Rackett woods, who can swing an axe more
effectually than Mark Shuff, his light is under a bushel--his fame
obscured. Mark works hard for four or five months, and lays around
loose the balance of the year. In the summer, he holds a cost as a
thing of ornament rather than use, and boots or shoes as luxuries, not
to be reckoned as among the necessaries of life. His hat, as a general
thing, is of straw, and minus a little more than half the brim. He
would be out of place, and out of uniform, as well as out of temper
with himself, if he was for any considerable length of time without
the stub of a marvelously black pipe in his mouth, filled with plug
tobacco, shaved and rubbed in his hand into a proper condition for
smoking. Mark, though by no means an intemperate man, is fond of a
drop now and then, and when he has just a thimbleful too much, the way
he will swear is emphatically a sin. And yet he is anything but
quarrelsome or contrary, even when a shade over the line of strict
sobriety. He is a great, strong, square-shouldered, big-breasted,
good-natured specimen of the genus homo, a giant in physical strength,
and were I a wolf, I would prefer letting him alone to any man in
these parts. When he gets just the least grain "shiny" (and he never
gets beyond that), and his oar goes a little wrong, or a twig brushes
him ungently, or his seat gets a little hard, he will express his
sense of its improper deportment by incontinently damning its eyes,
and so forth, as if it were a sentient thing, and understood all his
profane denunciations; but with all this, Mark never forgets to be
respectful, and, in his way, courteous to his employers. He has,
moreover, a sharp, clear eye in his head, and can see a deer, or any
other game, as quick, and shoot it as far as the best, and has as good
a knowledge of where they are to be found, as any man in these woods."
"Well," continued Martin, as he lighted his pipe by dipping it into
the embers and scooping up a small coal; "Well, Mark Shuff and a
friend of his by the name of Westcott, had a shanty one winter over on
Tupper's Lake; they were trappin' martin, and mink, and muskrat, and
wolves, when they could get one. They shantied on the outlet, just at
the foot of the lake, below the high rocky bluff round which the
little bay there sweeps. There wasn't any house then nearer than
Harriets Town, down by the Lower Saranac; but there was a company of
lumbermen having a shanty up towards the head of the lake, near where
the Bog River enters. Mark, one cold winter's morning, started on an
errand to the lumber shanty I speak of, calculatin' to return the same
evening. The lake was frozen over, and he took to the ice, as being
the nearest and best travelin'. The winter had set in airly, and the
snow had lain deep for months, and the game of the woods had got
pretty well starved out. Mark did'nt take his rifle with him, thinkin'
of course that he would see no game on the ice worth shootin', and a
gun would only be an incumbrance to him. Well, he did his errand at
the shanties, and started for home. I don't know whether he took a
drop or not, but they generally keep a barrel of old rye in the lumber
shanties, and my opinion is that Mark was invited to take a horn, in
which case, I'm bold to say, the horn was taken.
"However that may be, Mark started for home along in the afternoon,
and took to the ice, as he did when he went up in the morning.
Everything went right until he got within may be a mile of home, when
he heard, from a point of land, a little to the left of him, a sharp,
fierce bark, and turning that way, he saw a great shaggy,
fierce-looking wolf trot out from behind a boulder and squat himself
down on his haunches, and eye him as if calculating the probabilities
of his making a good supper. While Mark was looking at him, feelin' a
little oneasy, he heard another sharp bark, and from a point just
ahead of him another great wolf trotted out on to the ice, and sat
himself down, eyeing him with suspicious intensity. In a moment,
another came out right opposite to him, and then another, and another,
until Mark swears to this day that there were more than a dozen of
these fierce and hungry savages squatted on their haunches within
fifty yards of him.
"Mark, as I said, had no rifle, his only weapons being a hunting knife
and a heavy walking stick, which he carried in his hand. To say that
he was not frightened, would be stating what I don't believe to be
true, and I've heard him tell how his huntin' cap seemed to be lifted
right up on his head, as if every hair pointed straight towards the
sky. He looked at the wolves a moment, and then walked on; but the
animals trotted along with him, still, however, keepin' at a
respectful distance. Those in advance seemed inclined to cross his
path, as if to turn him towards the centre of the lake, while those
behind went further and further from the shore, as if to surround him;
and thus they travelled for near half a mile, Mark making for the open
water, which in the coldest weather is always to be found near the
outlet of the lake, determined, if they came to close quarters, to
take to that and swim for it. He had heard and knew that almost every
animal is afraid of the voice of a man; so he shouted at the top of
his voice, and as he said, ripped out some select and choice oaths,
which for a moment alarmed the wolves, and they fell back a few rods,
still, however, keepin' in a kind of half circle around him. But it
was'nt long before they began to gather in on him again, and though
his shoutin' and swearin' kept them at a good distance, yet they
seemed to be gettin' used to it, and it didn't alarm them as it did at
first. Mark had now got within reach of the water, and he felt
comparatively safe. He was not more than a quarter of a mile from
home, and cold as it was, he felt sure that he could swim
that distance.
"Before being compelled to take to the water, it occurred to him to
halloo for Westcott, which he did with all his might. The wolves
did'nt appear to care much about his hallooing, but kept trottin'
along between him and the shore, and before and behind him, drawin'
the circle closer and closer every ten rods; and Mark expected every
moment when they'd make a rush on him, in which case he'd made up his
mind to make a dive into the water, along which he was now travelin'.
Presently he saw Westcott, with his double-barrelled rifle, stealin'
along the shore, hid from the kritters by a high rocky point, within
some twenty rods of him. He felt all right then, for he knew that when
Westcott pinted that rifle at anything, something had to come. It was
a dangerous piece, that rifle was, 'specially when loaded and Westcott
was at one end of it.
"Mark was not more than fifteen rods from the shore, but that ground
was occupied by the wolves; on the right was the water, into which he
might at any moment be compelled to plunge; while both before and
behind him his advance and retreat was alike cut off. He had noticed
that whenever he stopped, the wolves stopped, as if the time for the
rush had not yet come, and it puzzled him to understand why they
delayed the onset. Seeing Westcott with his rifle, Mark determined to
treat his assailants to a choice lot of profane epithets, and the way
he opened on the cowardly rascals, he said, astonished even
himself. But while he was thus swearing at his enemies, he
discovered, as he thought, the reason why they had not attacked
him sooner. A troop of a dozen or more wolves broke cover
some distance up the lake, and came runnin' down towards where
he stood, for whose presence, no doubt, those around him were
waiting. Just then he saw WESTCOTT'S huntin' cap above the rocks on
the point, and saw his double-barrel poked out in the direction of the
leader of the pack, and he knew that that old grey-back's time had
come. Mark let off a fresh volley of profanity, and as the wolves
seemed preparing for a rush, WESTCOTT'S rifle broke the frozen
stillness of the woods, and old grey-back turned a summerset and went
down. The astonished wolves clustered together for a moment in
confusion, and the other barrel spoke out. Another of the pack bounded
into the air, and as he came down kicked and thrashed about in a most
oncommon way, and then laid still--while the way the rest put out for
the point, some distance up the lake, was a thing to be astonished at.
Mark threw up his hat, and hollered, and shouted, and swore, till the
last wolf disappeared into the forest, and then shoulderin' one of the
dead kritters, and WESTCOTT the other, started on home. The hides, and
the bounty on the scalps, made a good day's work of it; but Mark
swears to this day, that if the last dozen of wolves had been a little
earlier, or Westcott a little later, he'd a-been driven like a buck to
the water, cold as it was; and if they'd been a little earlier still,
he'd have been a goner. He never goes far from home since, without a
rifle; although with that he has no fear of wolves, yet he concludes
that a hunting-knife and a stick are no match for a whole pack of the
kritters, when made savage by the starvation of winter."
[Illustration: Westcott's rifle broke the frozen stillness of the
woods, and old greyback turned a summerset and went down. The
astonished wolves clustered together for a moment in confusion, and
the other barrel spoke out.]
While we were listening to the story of Mark Shuff and the wolves, the
old fellow over the water made the forest ring again with his howling.
He was answered from miles away down the lake by another. Their voices
kept the forest echoes busy, until we laid ourselves away in our
blankets, where we slept till wakened by the glad voices of the birds
in the early morning.