quite as highly as the songs of the glad parents, but no Scotch boy
that I know of ever failed to listen with enthusiasm to the songs of
the skylarks. Oftentimes on a broad meadow near Dunbar we stood for
hours enjoying their marvelous singing and soaring. From the grass
where the nest was hidden the male would suddenly rise, as straight as
if shot up, to a height of perhaps thirty or forty feet, and,
sustaining himself with rapid wing-beats, pour down the most delicious
melody, sweet and clear and strong, overflowing all bounds, then
suddenly he would soar higher again and again, ever higher and higher,
soaring and singing until lost to sight even on perfectly clear days,
and oftentimes in cloudy weather “far in the downy cloud,” as the poet
says.
To test our eyes we often watched a lark until he seemed a faint speck
in the sky and finally passed beyond the keenest-sighted of us all. “I
see him yet!” we would cry, “I see him yet!” “I see him yet!” “I see
him yet!” as he soared. And finally only one of us would be left to
claim that he still saw him. At last he, too, would have to admit that
the singer had soared beyond his sight, and still the music came
pouring down to us in glorious profusion, from a height far above our
vision, requiring marvelous power of wing and marvelous power of voice,
for that rich, delicious, soft, and yet clear music was distinctly
heard long after the bird was out of sight. Then, suddenly ceasing, the
glorious singer would appear, falling like a bolt straight down to his
nest, where his mate was sitting on the eggs.
It was far too common a practice among us to carry off a young lark
just before it could fly, place it in a cage, and fondly, laboriously
feed it. Sometimes we succeeded in keeping one alive for a year or two,
and when awakened by the spring weather it was pitiful to see the
quivering imprisoned soarer of the heavens rapidly beating its wings
and singing as though it were flying and hovering in the air like its
parents. To keep it in health we were taught that we must supply it
with a sod of grass the size of the bottom of the cage, to make the
poor bird feel as though it were at home on its native meadow,—a meadow
perhaps a foot or at most two feet square. Again and again it would try
to hover over that miniature meadow from its miniature sky just
underneath the top of the cage. At last, conscience-stricken, we
carried the beloved prisoner to the meadow west of Dunbar where it was
born, and, blessing its sweet heart, bravely set it free, and our
exceeding great reward was to see it fly and sing in the sky.
In the winter, when there was but little doing in the fields, we
organized running-matches. A dozen or so of us would start out on races
that were simply tests of endurance, running on and on along a public
road over the breezy hills like hounds, without stopping or getting
tired. The only serious trouble we ever felt in these long races was an
occasional stitch in our sides. One of the boys started the story that
sucking raw eggs was a sure cure for the stitches. We had hens in our
back yard, and on the next Saturday we managed to swallow a couple of
eggs apiece, a disgusting job, but we would do almost anything to mend
our speed, and as soon as we could get away after taking the cure we
set out on a ten or twenty mile run to prove its worth. We thought
nothing of running right ahead ten or a dozen miles before turning
back; for we knew nothing about taking time by the sun, and none of us
had a watch in those days. Indeed, we never cared about time until it
began to get dark. Then we thought of home and the thrashing that
awaited us. Late or early, the thrashing was sure, unless father
happened to be away. If he was expected to return soon, mother made
haste to get us to bed before his arrival. We escaped the thrashing
next morning, for father never felt like thrashing us in cold blood on
the calm holy Sabbath. But no punishment, however sure and severe, was
of any avail against the attraction of the fields and woods. It had
other uses, developing memory, etc., but in keeping us at home it was
of no use at all. Wildness was ever sounding in our ears, and Nature
saw to it that besides school lessons and church lessons some of her
own lessons should be learned, perhaps with a view to the time when we
should be called to wander in wildness to our heart’s content. Oh, the
blessed enchantment of those Saturday runaways in the prime of the
spring! How our young wondering eyes reveled in the sunny, breezy glory
of the hills and the sky, every particle of us thrilling and tingling
with the bees and glad birds and glad streams! Kings may be blessed; we
were glorious, we were free,—school cares and scoldings, heart
thrashings and flesh thrashings alike, were forgotten in the fullness
of Nature’s glad wildness. These were my first excursions,—the
beginnings of lifelong wanderings.
IIToC
A NEW WORLD
Stories of America—Glorious News—Crossing the Atlantic—The New Home—A
Baptism in Nature—New Birds—The Adventures of Watch—Scotch
Correction—Marauding Indians.
Our grammar-school reader, called, I think, “Maccoulough’s Course of
Reading,” contained a few natural-history sketches that excited me very
much and left a deep impression, especially a fine description of the
fish hawk and the bald eagle by the Scotch ornithologist Wilson, who
had the good fortune to wander for years in the American woods while
the country was yet mostly wild. I read his description over and over
again, till I got the vivid picture he drew by heart,—the long-winged
hawk circling over the heaving waves, every motion watched by the eagle
perched on the top of a crag or dead tree; the fish hawk poising for a
moment to take aim at a fish and plunging under the water; the eagle
with kindling eye spreading his wings ready for instant flight in case
the attack should prove successful; the hawk emerging with a struggling
fish in his talons, and proud flight; the eagle launching himself in
pursuit; the wonderful wing-work in the sky, the fish hawk, though
encumbered with his prey, circling higher, higher, striving hard to
keep above the robber eagle; the eagle at length soaring above him,
compelling him with a cry of despair to drop his hard-won prey; then
the eagle steadying himself for a moment to take aim, descending swift
as a lightning-bolt, and seizing the falling fish before it reached the
sea.
Not less exciting and memorable was Audubon’s wonderful story of the
passenger pigeon, a beautiful bird flying in vast flocks that darkened
the sky like clouds, countless millions assembling to rest and sleep
and rear their young in certain forests, miles in length and breadth,
fifty or a hundred nests on a single tree; the overloaded branches
bending low and often breaking; the farmers gathering from far and
near, beating down countless thousands of the young and old birds from
their nests and roosts with long poles at night, and in the morning
driving their bands of hogs, some of them brought from farms a hundred
miles distant, to fatten on the dead and wounded covering the ground.
In another of our reading-lessons some of the American forests were
described. The most interesting of the trees to us boys was the sugar
maple, and soon after we had learned this sweet story we heard
everybody talking about the discovery of gold in the same wonder-filled
country.
One night, when David and I were at grandfather’s fireside solemnly
learning our lessons as usual, my father came in with news, the most
wonderful, most glorious, that wild boys ever heard. “Bairns,” he said,
“you needna learn your lessons the nicht, for we’re gan to America the
morn!” No more grammar, but boundless woods full of mysterious good
things; trees full of sugar, growing in ground full of gold; hawks,
eagles, pigeons, filling the sky; millions of birds’ nests, and no
gamekeepers to stop us in all the wild, happy land. We were utterly,
blindly glorious. After father left the room, grandfather gave David
and me a gold coin apiece for a keepsake, and looked very serious, for
he was about to be deserted in his lonely old age. And when we in
fullness of young joy spoke of what we were going to do, of the
wonderful birds and their nests that we should find, the sugar and
gold, etc., and promised to send him a big box full of that tree sugar
packed in gold from the glorious paradise over the sea, poor lonely
grandfather, about to be forsaken, looked with downcast eyes on the
floor and said in a low, trembling, troubled voice, “Ah, poor laddies,
poor laddies, you’ll find something else ower the sea forbye gold and
sugar, birds’ nests and freedom fra lessons and schools. You’ll find
plenty hard, hard work.” And so we did. But nothing he could say could
cloud our joy or abate the fire of youthful, hopeful, fearless
adventure. Nor could we in the midst of such measureless excitement see
or feel the shadows and sorrows of his darkening old age. To my
schoolmates, met that night on the street, I shouted the glorious news,
“I’m gan to Amaraka the morn!” None could believe it. I said, “Weel,
just you see if I am at the skule the morn!”
Next morning we went by rail to Glasgow and thence joyfully sailed away
from beloved Scotland, flying to our fortunes on the wings of the
winds, care-free as thistle seeds. We could not then know what we were
leaving, what we were to encounter in the New World, nor what our gains
were likely to be. We were too young and full of hope for fear or
regret, but not too young to look forward with eager enthusiasm to the
wonderful schoolless bookless American wilderness. Even the natural
heart-pain of parting from grandfather and grandmother Gilrye, who
loved us so well, and from mother and sisters and brother was quickly
quenched in young joy. Father took with him only my sister Sarah
(thirteen years of age), myself (eleven), and brother David (nine),
leaving my eldest sister, Margaret, and the three youngest of the
family, Daniel, Mary, and Anna, with mother, to join us after a farm
had been found in the wilderness and a comfortable house made to
receive them.
In crossing the Atlantic before the days of steamships, or even the
American clippers, the voyages made in old-fashioned sailing-vessels
were very long. Ours was six weeks and three days. But because we had
no lessons to get, that long voyage had not a dull moment for us boys.
Father and sister Sarah, with most of the old folk, stayed below in
rough weather, groaning in the miseries of seasickness, many of the
passengers wishing they had never ventured in “the auld rockin’ creel,”
as they called our bluff-bowed, wave-beating ship, and, when the
weather was moderately calm, singing songs in the evenings,—“The
Youthful Sailor Frank and Bold,” “Oh, why left I my hame, why did I
cross the deep,” etc. But no matter how much the old tub tossed about
and battered the waves, we were on deck every day, not in the least
seasick, watching the sailors at their rope-hauling and climbing work;
joining in their songs, learning the names of the ropes and sails, and
helping them as far as they would let us; playing games with other boys
in calm weather when the deck was dry, and in stormy weather rejoicing
in sympathy with the big curly-topped waves.
The captain occasionally called David and me into his cabin and asked
us about our schools, handed us books to read, and seemed surprised to
find that Scotch boys could read and pronounce English with perfect
accent and knew so much Latin and French. In Scotch schools only pure
English was taught, although not a word of English was spoken out of
school. All through life, however well educated, the Scotch spoke
Scotch among their own folk, except at times when unduly excited on the
only two subjects on which Scotchmen get much excited, namely religion
and politics. So long as the controversy went on with fairly level
temper, only gude braid Scots was used, but if one became angry, as was
likely to happen, then he immediately began speaking severely correct
English, while his antagonist, drawing himself up, would say: “Weel,
there’s na use pursuing this subject ony further, for I see ye hae
gotten to your English.”
As we neared the shore of the great new land, with what eager wonder we
watched the whales and dolphins and porpoises and seabirds, and made
the good-natured sailors teach us their names and tell us stories about
them!
There were quite a large number of emigrants aboard, many of them newly
married couples, and the advantages of the different parts of the New
World they expected to settle in were often discussed. My father
started with the intention of going to the backwoods of Upper Canada.
Before the end of the voyage, however, he was persuaded that the States
offered superior advantages, especially Wisconsin and Michigan, where
the land was said to be as good as in Canada and far more easily
brought under cultivation; for in Canada the woods were so close and
heavy that a man might wear out his life in getting a few acres cleared
of trees and stumps. So he changed his mind and concluded to go to one
of the Western States.
On our wavering westward way a grain-dealer in Buffalo told father that
most of the wheat he handled came from Wisconsin; and this influential
information finally determined my father’s choice. At Milwaukee a
farmer who had come in from the country near Fort Winnebago with a load
of wheat agreed to haul us and our formidable load of stuff to a little
town called Kingston for thirty dollars. On that hundred-mile journey,
just after the spring thaw, the roads over the prairies were heavy and
miry, causing no end of lamentation, for we often got stuck in the mud,
and the poor farmer sadly declared that never, never again would he be
tempted to try to haul such a cruel, heart-breaking, wagon-breaking,
horse-killing load, no, not for a hundred dollars. In leaving Scotland,
father, like many other homeseekers, burdened himself with far too much
luggage, as if all America were still a wilderness in which little or
nothing could be bought. One of his big iron-bound boxes must have
weighed about four hundred pounds, for it contained an old-fashioned
beam-scales with a complete set of cast-iron counterweights, two of
them fifty-six pounds each, a twenty-eight, and so on down to a single
pound. Also a lot of iron wedges, carpenter’s tools, and so forth, and
at Buffalo, as if on the very edge of the wilderness, he gladly added
to his burden a big cast-iron stove with pots and pans, provisions
enough for a long siege, and a scythe and cumbersome cradle for cutting
wheat, all of which he succeeded in landing in the primeval Wisconsin
woods.
A land-agent at Kingston gave father a note to a farmer by the name of
Alexander Gray, who lived on the border of the settled part of the
country, knew the section-lines, and would probably help him to find a
good place for a farm. So father went away to spy out the land, and in
the mean time left us children in Kingston in a rented room. It took us
less than an hour to get acquainted with some of the boys in the
village; we challenged them to wrestle, run races, climb trees, etc.,
and in a day or two we felt at home, carefree and happy,
notwithstanding our family was so widely divided. When father returned
he told us that he had found fine land for a farm in sunny open woods
on the side of a lake, and that a team of three yoke of oxen with a big
wagon was coming to haul us to Mr. Gray’s place.
We enjoyed the strange ten-mile ride through the woods very much,
wondering how the great oxen could be so strong and wise and tame as to
pull so heavy a load with no other harness than a chain and a crooked
piece of wood on their necks, and how they could sway so obediently to
right and left past roadside trees and stumps when the driver said
_haw_ and _gee_. At Mr. Gray’s house, father again left us for a few
days to build a shanty on the quarter-section he had selected four or
five miles to the westward. In the mean while we enjoyed our freedom as
usual, wandering in the fields and meadows, looking at the trees and
flowers, snakes and birds and squirrels. With the help of the nearest
neighbors the little shanty was built in less than a day after the
rough bur-oak logs for the walls and the white-oak boards for the floor
and roof were got together.
To this charming hut, in the sunny woods, overlooking a flowery glacier
meadow and a lake rimmed with white water-lilies, we were hauled by an
ox-team across trackless carex swamps and low rolling hills sparsely
dotted with round-headed oaks. Just as we arrived at the shanty, before
we had time to look at it or the scenery about it, David and I jumped
down in a hurry off the load of household goods, for we had discovered
a blue jay’s nest, and in a minute or so we were up the tree beside it,
feasting our eyes on the beautiful green eggs and beautiful birds,—our
first memorable discovery. The handsome birds had not seen Scotch boys
before and made a desperate screaming as if we were robbers like
themselves; though we left the eggs untouched, feeling that we were
already beginning to get rich, and wondering how many more nests we
should find in the grand sunny woods. Then we ran along the brow of the
hill that the shanty stood on, and down to the meadow, searching the
trees and grass tufts and bushes, and soon discovered a bluebird’s and
a woodpecker’s nest, and began an acquaintance with the frogs and
snakes and turtles in the creeks and springs.
MUIR'S LAKE (FOUNTAIN LAKE) AND THE GARDEN MEADOW
MUIR’S LAKE (FOUNTAIN LAKE) AND THE GARDEN MEADOW
Sketched from the roof of the Bur-Oak ShantyToList
This sudden plash into pure wildness—baptism in Nature’s warm heart—how
utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching
her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal grammar ashes and
cinders so long thrashed into us. Here without knowing it we still were
at school; every wild lesson a love lesson, not whipped but charmed
into us. Oh, that glorious Wisconsin wilderness! Everything new and
pure in the very prime of the spring when Nature’s pulses were beating
highest and mysteriously keeping time with our own! Young hearts, young
leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling
lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together!
Next morning, when we climbed to the precious jay nest to take another
admiring look at the eggs, we found it empty. Not a shell-fragment was
left, and we wondered how in the world the birds were able to carry off
their thin-shelled eggs either in their bills or in their feet without
breaking them, and how they could be kept warm while a new nest was
being built. Well, I am still asking these questions. When I was on the
Harriman Expedition I asked Robert Ridgway, the eminent ornithologist,
how these sudden flittings were accomplished, and he frankly confessed
that he didn’t know, but guessed that jays and many other birds carried
their eggs in their mouths; and when I objected that a jay’s mouth
seemed too small to hold its eggs, he replied that birds’ mouths were
larger than the narrowness of their bills indicated. Then I asked him
what he thought they did with the eggs while a new nest was being
prepared. He didn’t know; neither do I to this day. A specimen of the
many puzzling problems presented to the naturalist.
We soon found many more nests belonging to birds that were not half so
suspicious. The handsome and notorious blue jay plunders the nests of
other birds and of course he could not trust us. Almost all the
others—brown thrushes, bluebirds, song sparrows, kingbirds, hen-hawks,
nighthawks, whip-poor-wills, woodpeckers, etc.—simply tried to avoid
being seen, to draw or drive us away, or paid no attention to us.
We used to wonder how the woodpeckers could bore holes so perfectly
round, true mathematical circles. We ourselves could not have done it
even with gouges and chisels. We loved to watch them feeding their
young, and wondered how they could glean food enough for so many
clamorous, hungry, unsatisfiable babies, and how they managed to give
each one its share; for after the young grew strong, one would get his
head out of the door-hole and try to hold possession of it to meet the
food-laden parents. How hard they worked to support their families,
especially the red-headed and speckledy woodpeckers and flickers;
digging, hammering on scaly bark and decaying trunks and branches from
dawn to dark, coming and going at intervals of a few minutes all the
livelong day!
We discovered a hen-hawk’s nest on the top of a tall oak thirty or
forty rods from the shanty and approached it cautiously. One of the
pair always kept watch, soaring in wide circles high above the tree,
and when we attempted to climb it, the big dangerous-looking bird came
swooping down at us and drove us away.
We greatly admired the plucky kingbird. In Scotland our great ambition
was to be good fighters, and we admired this quality in the handsome
little chattering flycatcher that whips all the other birds. He was
particularly angry when plundering jays and hawks came near his home,
and took pains to thrash them not only away from the nest-tree but out
of the neighborhood. The nest was usually built on a bur oak near a
meadow where insects were abundant, and where no undesirable visitor
could approach without being discovered. When a hen-hawk hove in sight,
the male immediately set off after him, and it was ridiculous to see
that great, strong bird hurrying away as fast as his clumsy wings would
carry him, as soon as he saw the little, waspish kingbird coming. But
the kingbird easily overtook him, flew just a few feet above him, and
with a lot of chattering, scolding notes kept diving and striking him
on the back of the head until tired; then he alighted to rest on the
hawk’s broad shoulders, still scolding and chattering as he rode along,
like an angry boy pouring out vials of wrath. Then, up and at him again
with his sharp bill; and after he had thus driven and ridden his big
enemy a mile or so from the nest, he went home to his mate, chuckling
and bragging as if trying to tell her what a wonderful fellow he was.
This first spring, while some of the birds were still building their
nests and very few young ones had yet tried to fly, father hired a
Yankee to assist in clearing eight or ten acres of the best ground for
a field. We found new wonders every day and often had to call on this
Yankee to solve puzzling questions. We asked him one day if there was
any bird in America that the kingbird couldn’t whip. What about the
sandhill crane? Could he whip that long-legged, long-billed fellow?
“A crane never goes near kingbirds’ nests or notices so small a bird,”
he said, “and therefore there could be no fighting between them.” So we
hastily concluded that our hero could whip every bird in the country
except perhaps the sandhill crane.
We never tired listening to the wonderful whip-poor-will. One came
every night about dusk and sat on a log about twenty or thirty feet
from our cabin door and began shouting “Whip poor Will! Whip poor
Will!” with loud emphatic earnestness. “What’s that? What’s that?” we
cried when this startling visitor first announced himself. “What do you
call it?”
“Why, it’s telling you its name,” said the Yankee. “Don’t you hear it
and what he wants you to do? He says his name is ‘Poor Will’ and he
wants you to whip him, and you may if you are able to catch him.” Poor
Will seemed the most wonderful of all the strange creatures we had
seen. What a wild, strong, bold voice he had, unlike any other we had
ever heard on sea or land!