HEADED TOWARDS HOME--THE MARTIN AND SABLE HUNTER--HIS
CABIN--AUTUMNAL SCENERY.
We concluded that we would break up our camp in the morning, and drift
leisurely back towards civilization. We had tarried upon this
beautiful lake until we had explored its romantic nooks, and we
started on our return to our old camping ground at the foot of Round
Pond. We had refrained for two days from disturbing the deer, and our
supply of fresh venison was entirely exhausted. Just at the outlet of
the lake we were leaving, is a little bay, towards the head of which
are a great number of boulders, laying around loose, scattered about
like haycocks in a meadow, only a great many more to the acre. The
water about these boulders is shallow, and the lily-pads and grasses
make a luxuriant pasture for the deer. Among these boulders, and
concealed by one of them, save when his head was up, was a deer. While
he fed we could see nothing of him, but when he raised his head to
look around him, that alone was visible above the rock. Smith and
myself were in the leading boat, he in the bow with his rifle. As the
current swept near the rocks where the deer was feeding, we let our
little craft drift quietly in that direction. As we came within
shooting distance, say from fifteen to twenty rods, Smith adjusted his
rifle, and as the animal raised its head above the rock, he sighted
him carefully, and fired. It was a beautiful shot. There was nothing
of the animal but the head visible, and the bullet, true to its aim,
struck it square between the eyes, and it fell dead. This shot,
together with the glory of killing the bear, elated Smith wonderfully,
and upon the strength of them, he assumed the championship of the
expedition.
We drew the deer into the baggage-boat, and sent forward our pioneer
to erect our tents, and prepare a late dinner, at our old camping
ground, while we landed with the dogs on the island near the head of
Round Pond, or Lake, to course whatever game they might find upon it.
They soon burst into full chorus, and dashed away. The island is
small, containing only a few acres, and the game could not, therefore,
take a wide range After a single turn, a deer broke, like a maddened
war-horse, from the thicket, and plunging into the lake, struck boldly
for the mainland, five hundred yards distant. We were near by with our
two boats when he took to the water, and we thought we would accompany
him as an escort to the shore; so we rowed up, and with a boat on each
side, and within ten feet of him, as he swam, escorted him towards the
forest. We treated him with great respect, offering him no indignity,
interfering with him in nothing; and yet the old fellow seemed very
far from appreciating our politeness, or relishing our company. The
truth is, he was horribly frightened, and he struggled desperately to
rid himself of our association; but we stuck by him like his destiny,
talking kindly to him, endeavoring to impress upon his mind that we
meant him no harm--indeed, that we were his friends. But, I repeat, he
did not appreciate our politeness. By-and-by his feet touched the
sand, and he bounded forward, as much as to say, "Good-bye,
gentlemen," when a simultaneous yell from all six of us, and the
discharge of four rifles in quick succession over him, added
wonderfully to the energy of his flight. He will be likely to
recognise us if he ever meets us again, and if the past furnishes any
admonitions to his kind, he will give us a wide berth.
We rowed leisurely along the eastern shore, and in a deep bay found
excellent fishing, at the mouth of a cold mountain brook. On the banks
of this bay we found the winter hut of a martin and sable trapper. It
had an outer and inner apartment, the latter almost subterranean. The
hut was composed of small logs, which a single man could lay up, the
crevices between which were closely packed with moss, and the roof
covered with two or three layers of bark. The doorway was sawed
through these logs, and a door, constructed of bark, was made to fit
it; a rude hearth of sandstone was built in one corner, and a hole was
open above it to let out the smoke. Against the outside of this pen,
only about ten feet square, logs were leaned up, the ends of which
rested upon the ground, the interstices between them carefully stopped
with moss, and the whole covered with bark; the ends consisted of
stakes, driven into the ground and chinked with moss. Into this
sleeping apartment a door was cut from the parlor, large enough for a
man to pass by getting down on all-fours; while within was a plentiful
supply of boughs from the spruce and fir tree. In this hut, now so
dark, and in which the air was so dead and fetid, a solitary trapper
had wintered, pursuing his occupation of martin and sable hunting--the
which, if tolerably successful, would yield him some two or three
hundred dollars the season. He carried into the woods a bag of flour
or meal, a few pounds of pork, pepper, salt, and tea; and this, with
the game he killed, made up his supply of food. With no companion but
his dog, he had probably spent two or three months, and very possibly
more, in this lonely cabin.
We arrived at our camp towards evening, and dined sumptuously on fresh
venison and trout. Our pioneer had provided a luxurious bed of boughs
within, and had fashioned rude seats in front of our tents. He had
rolled the butt of a huge tree, which he had felled, to the proper
place, against which to kindle our camp-fire, and we had a pleasant
place to sit, with our pipes, in the evening, looking out over the
water, listening to the pile-drivers, half a dozen of which were
driving their stakes along the reedy shore, with commendable
diligence. The sunlight lay so beautifully on the hillsides, and
contrasted so admirably with the deep shadows of the valley beneath,
the lake was so calm and still, the old woods stood around so moveless
and solemn, that one could scarcely persuade himself that he was not
looking upon some gigantic picture, the fanciful grouping and
transcendent coloring of some ingenious and winning artist.
"The hillsides about these lakes," remarked the Doctor, "must be
superlatively beautiful in the fall, when the forest puts on its
autumnal foliage. They present such a variety of trees, of so many
different kinds, and the hills and mountains are so admirably
arranged, that they must be gorgeous beyond description. However we
may prefer the green and _living_ beauty of spring, when everything is
so full of vitality, so buoyant and free, yet the autumn scenery is
the most magnificent of any in the year."
"Every season has its charms," said Spalding, "Even the winter, with
its cold, its dead and cheerless desolation, has its robe of chaste
and peerless white, which, as well as that of the spring-time, the
summer, and the autumn, has been the theme of song. I agree with you,
that in gorgeousness of beauty, there is no season so rich as the
autumn. Spring-time has its pleasant scenery, its genial days, its
deep green, its flowers, and its singing birds; and these are all the
more lovely because they follow so closely upon the cold storms, and
bleak winds, the chilling and blank desolation of winter. We love the
spring because of its freshness, its pervading vitality, its
recuperating influences. Everybody loves the spring-time; everybody
talks about the spring-time; poets sing of it; orators praise it;
'fair women and brave men' laud it; so that were spring-time human,
and possessing human instincts, and subject to human frailties, it
would have plenty of excuse, for becoming a very vain personage.
"Somebody has called the autumnal days the 'saddest of the year.' I
have forgotten who he was, if I ever knew; but in my judgment, he was
all wrong. Dark days there are--damp, chilly, misty, wet, and
unpleasant days in autumn; days that make one relish a corner by an
old-fashioned fire. There are gusty, windy, capricious days in autumn,
which nobody cares to praise, when the northwest wind goes sweeping
over the forest, roaring among the trees, and whirling the sere leaves
along the ground, and which, to tell the truth about them, are
anything but pleasant. But 'some days _must_ be dark and dreary,' and
they serve to give the sunlight of a bright to-morrow a keener relish,
and a lovelier comparative beauty. To call the fall days the 'saddest
of the year' is an absurdity, poetical I admit, but still an
absurdity. There is nothing sad in a cold, or a wet, a drizzly, a
gusty, or a stormy day; much there may be that is unpleasant, much
that one may be disposed to quarrel with, but they are anything
but sad.
"A calm autumnal day in the country is a great thing, a beautiful
thing, a thing to thank God for; a thing to make one happy, buoyant of
spirit, full of gratitude to the great Creator; a thing to make one
merry, too, not with a loud and boisterous mirth, but with a heart
full to overflowing with cheerfulness, and a calm joy. To see the
bright sun standing in his glory up in the sky, shedding his placid
light over the earth, when the air is clear, the winds hushed, and the
leaves are still and moveless on the trees; and then to look along the
hillsides, and mark the bright sunlight, and the deep shadows, the
green of the fir, the hemlock, and the spruce, the yellow of the
birch, the crimson of the maple, the dark brown of the beech, the grey
of the oak, the silver glow of the popple, and the varying shades of
all these, mingling and blending in all the harmony of brilliant
coloring. Why, these hillsides are decked like a maiden in her beauty,
like a bride robed for the altar! Talk about springtime, or summer!
Green on the hillside! green in the meadows and pastures! green
everywhere--all around is changeless and everlasting green! as if
hillside and valley, forest and field, had but a single dress for
morning, noon, and night, and that only and always green! True, there
is the music of the birds, joyous notes and variant, happy and
hilarious, in the spring-time, but there is no cricket under the flat
stone in the pasture, his song is not heard in the stone wall, or in
the corner of the fences; no music of the katydid; no tapping of the
woodpecker on the hollow tree, or the dead limb; no chattering of the
squirrel, as he gathers his winter store; no pattering of the faded
leaves, as they come so quietly down from their places; no falling of
the ripened nuts, loosened from their burs or shucks by the recent
frosts. All these sounds belong to the calm autumnal days, and while
they differ the whole heavens from the merry songs of spring, there is
nothing sad about them. No! No! nothing sad. I remember (and who that
was reared in the country does not) when I was a boy, how I went out
in the sunny days of autumn, after the frosts had painted the
hillsides, to gather chestnuts; and when the breeze rustled among the
branches, how the nuts came rattling down; and how if the winds were
still, I climbed into the trees and shook their tops, and how the
chestnuts pattered to the ground like a shower of hail. I remember the
squirrels how they chattered, and chased each other up and down the
trees, or leaped from branch to branch, gathering here and there a
nut, and scudding away to their store houses in the hollow trees,
providing in this season of plenty for the barrenness of the winter
months. I remember, too, how we gathered, in those same old autumnal
days, hickory-nuts and butter-nuts by the bushel; and how pleasant it
was in the long cold winter evenings, to sit around the great old
kitchen fire-place, cracking the nuts we had gathered when the green,
the yellow, the crimson, the brown, the grey, and the pale leaves were
on the trees. Pleasant evenings those seem to me now, as they come
floating down on the current of memory from the long past, and dear
are the faces of those that made up the tableaux as they were grouped
around those winter fires. Logs were blazing on the great hearth, and
the pineknots, thrown at intervals on the fire, gave a bold and
cheerful light throughout that capacious kitchen. I remember how the
winter wind went glancing over the house-top, whirling, and eddying,
and moaning around the corners, hissing under the door and sending its
cold breath in at every crevice; and how the windows rattled when the
blast came fiercest, and how the smoke would sometimes whirl down the
great chimney, I remember well where my father's chair was always
placed; and where my mother sat of those winter evenings, when her
household cares were over for the day, plying her needle, or knitting,
or darning stockings, or mending garments, for such employment was no
dishonor to the matrons of those days. With these for the leading
figures, I remember how seven brothers and sisters were grouped
around, and how the old house dog had a place in the corner, and how
lovingly the cat nestled between his feet. Cherished memories are
these pleasant visions and they come to me often, vivid as realities.
But the dream vanishes, the vision fades away, and I think of the six
pale, still faces as I saw them last, and of the names that are
chiseled upon the cold marble that stands through the sunny
spring-time, the heat of summer, the autumnal days, and the storms and
tempests of winter, over the graves of the dead."