from the farm, it would oftentimes be late before we got back, and in
the summer-time, in sultry, rainy weather, the clouds were full of
sheet lightning which every minute or two would suddenly illumine the
landscape, revealing all its features, the hills and valleys, meadows
and trees, about as fully and clearly as the noonday sunshine; then as
suddenly the glorious light would be quenched, making the darkness seem
denser than before. On such nights the cattle had to find the way home
without any help from us, but they never got off the track, for they
followed it by scent like dogs. Once, father, returning late from
Portage or Kingston, compelled Tom and Jerry, our first oxen, to leave
the dim track, imagining they must be going wrong. At last they stopped
and refused to go farther. Then father unhitched them from the wagon,
took hold of Tom’s tail, and was thus led straight to the shanty. Next
morning he set out to seek his wagon and found it on the brow of a
steep hill above an impassable swamp. We learned less from the cows,
because we did not enter so far into their lives, working with them,
suffering heat and cold, hunger and thirst, and almost deadly weariness
with them; but none with natural charity could fail to sympathize with
them in their love for their calves, and to feel that it in no way
differed from the divine mother-love of a woman in thoughtful,
self-sacrificing care; for they would brave every danger, giving their
lives for their offspring. Nor could we fail to sympathize with their
awkward, blunt-nosed baby calves, with such beautiful, wondering eyes
looking out on the world and slowly getting acquainted with things, all
so strange to them, and awkwardly learning to use their legs, and play
and fight.
Before leaving Scotland, father promised us a pony to ride when we got
to America, and we saw to it that this promise was not forgotten. Only
a week or two after our arrival in the woods he bought us a little
Indian pony for thirteen dollars from a store-keeper in Kingston who
had obtained him from a Winnebago or Menominee Indian in trade for
goods. He was a stout handsome bay with long black mane and tail, and,
though he was only two years old, the Indians had already taught him to
carry all sorts of burdens, to stand without being tied, to go anywhere
over all sorts of ground fast or slow, and to jump and swim and fear
nothing,—a truly wonderful creature, strangely different from shy,
skittish, nervous, superstitious civilized beasts. We turned him loose,
and, strange to say, he never ran away from us or refused to be caught,
but behaved as if he had known Scotch boys all his life; probably
because we were about as wild as young Indians.
One day when father happened to have a little leisure, he said, “Noo,
bairns, rin doon the meadow and get your powny and learn to ride him.”
So we led him out to a smooth place near an Indian mound back of the
shanty, where father directed us to begin. I mounted for the first
memorable lesson, crossed the mound, and set out at a slow walk along
the wagon-track made in hauling lumber; then father shouted: “Whup him
up, John, whup him up! Make him gallop; gallopin’ is easier and better
than walkin’ or trottin’.” Jack was willing, and away he sped at a good
fast gallop. I managed to keep my balance fairly well by holding fast
to the mane, but could not keep from bumping up and down, for I was
plump and elastic and so was Jack; therefore about half of the time I
was in the air.
After a quarter of a mile or so of this curious transportation, I
cried, “Whoa, Jack!” The wonderful creature seemed to understand
Scotch, for he stopped so suddenly I flew over his head, but he stood
perfectly still as if that flying method of dismounting were the
regular way. Jumping on again, I bumped and bobbed back along the
grassy, flowery track, over the Indian mound, cried, “Whoa, Jack!” flew
over his head, and alighted in father’s arms as gracefully as if it
were all intended for circus work.
After going over the course five or six times in the same free,
picturesque style, I gave place to brother David, whose performances
were much like my own. In a few weeks, however, or a month, we were
taking adventurous rides more than a mile long out to a big meadow
frequented by sandhill cranes, and returning safely with wonderful
stories of the great long-legged birds we had seen, and how on the
whole journey away and back we had fallen off only five or six times.
Gradually we learned to gallop through the woods without roads of any
sort, bareback and without rope or bridle, guiding only by leaning from
side to side or by slight knee pressure. In this free way we used to
amuse ourselves, riding at full speed across a big “kettle” that was on
our farm, without holding on by either mane or tail.
These so-called “kettles” were formed by the melting of large detached
blocks of ice that had been buried in moraine material thousands of
years ago when the ice-sheet that covered all this region was receding.
As the buried ice melted, of course the moraine material above and
about it fell in, forming hopper-shaped hollows, while the grass
growing on their sides and around them prevented the rain and wind from
filling them up. The one we performed in was perhaps seventy or eighty
feet wide and twenty or thirty feet deep; and without a saddle or hold
of any kind it was not easy to keep from slipping over Jack’s head in
diving into it, or over his tail climbing out. This was fine sport on
the long summer Sundays when we were able to steal away before
meeting-time without being seen. We got very warm and red at it, and
oftentimes poor Jack, dripping with sweat like his riders, seemed to
have been boiled in that kettle.
In Scotland we had often been admonished to be bold, and this advice we
passed on to Jack, who had already got many a wild lesson from Indian
boys. Once, when teaching him to jump muddy streams, I made him try the
creek in our meadow at a place where it is about twelve feet wide. He
jumped bravely enough, but came down with a grand splash hardly more
than halfway over. The water was only about a foot in depth, but the
black vegetable mud half afloat was unfathomable. I managed to wallow
ashore, but poor Jack sank deeper and deeper until only his head was
visible in the black abyss, and his Indian fortitude was desperately
tried. His foundering so suddenly in the treacherous gulf recalled the
story of the Abbot of Aberbrothok’s bell, which went down with a
gurgling sound while bubbles rose and burst around. I had to go to
father for help. He tied a long hemp rope brought from Scotland around
Jack’s neck, and Tom and Jerry seemed to have all they could do to pull
him out. After which I got a solemn scolding for asking the “puir beast
to jump intil sic a saft bottomless place.”
We moved into our frame house in the fall, when mother with the rest of
the family arrived from Scotland, and, when the winter snow began to
fly, the bur-oak shanty was made into a stable for Jack. Father told us
that good meadow hay was all he required, but we fed him corn, lots of
it, and he grew very frisky and fat. About the middle of winter his
long hair was full of dust and, as we thought, required washing. So,
without taking the frosty weather into account, we gave him a thorough
soap and water scouring, and as we failed to get him rubbed dry, a row
of icicles formed under his belly. Father happened to see him in this
condition and angrily asked what we had been about. We said Jack was
dirty and we had washed him to make him healthy. He told us we ought to
be ashamed of ourselves, “soaking the puir beast in cauld water at this
time o’ year”; that when we wanted to clean him we should have sense
enough to use the brush and curry-comb.
OUR FIRST WISCONSIN HOME
OUR FIRST WISCONSIN HOME
On the hill near the shanty built in the summer of 1849ToList
In summer Dave or I had to ride after the cows every evening about
sundown, and Jack got so accustomed to bringing in the drove that when
we happened to be a few minutes late he used to go off alone at the
regular time and bring them home at a gallop. It used to make father
very angry to see Jack chasing the cows like a shepherd dog, running
from one to the other and giving each a bite on the rump to keep them
on the run, flying before him as if pursued by wolves. Father would
declare at times that the wicked beast had the deevil in him and would
be the death of the cattle. The corral and barn were just at the foot
of a hill, and he made a great display of the drove on the home stretch
as they walloped down that hill with their tails on end.
One evening when the pell-mell Wild West show was at its wildest, it
made father so extravagantly mad that he ordered me to “Shoot Jack!” I
went to the house and brought the gun, suffering most horrible mental
anguish, such as I suppose unhappy Abraham felt when commanded to slay
Isaac. Jack’s life was spared, however, though I can’t tell what
finally became of him. I wish I could. After father bought a span of
work horses he was sold to a man who said he was going to ride him
across the plains to California. We had him, I think, some five or six
years. He was the stoutest, gentlest, bravest little horse I ever saw.
He never seemed tired, could canter all day with a man about as heavy
as himself on his back, and feared nothing. Once fifty or sixty pounds
of beef that was tied on his back slid over his shoulders along his
neck and weighed down his head to the ground, fairly anchoring him; but
he stood patient and still for half an hour or so without making the
slightest struggle to free himself, while I was away getting help to
untie the pack-rope and set the load back in its place.
As I was the eldest boy I had the care of our first span of work
horses. Their names were Nob and Nell. Nob was very intelligent, and
even affectionate, and could learn almost anything. Nell was entirely
different; balky and stubborn, though we managed to teach her a good
many circus tricks; but she never seemed to like to play with us in
anything like an affectionate way as Nob did. We turned them out one
day into the pasture, and an Indian, hiding in the brush that had
sprung up after the grass fires had been kept out, managed to catch
Nob, tied a rope to her jaw for a bridle, rode her to Green Lake, about
thirty or forty miles away, and tried to sell her for fifteen dollars.
All our hearts were sore, as if one of the family had been lost. We
hunted everywhere and could not at first imagine what had become of
her. We discovered her track where the fence was broken down, and,
following it for a few miles, made sure the track was Nob’s; and a
neighbor told us he had seen an Indian riding fast through the woods on
a horse that looked like Nob. But we could find no farther trace of her
until a month or two after she was lost, and we had given up hope of
ever seeing her again. Then we learned that she had been taken from an
Indian by a farmer at Green Lake because he saw that she had been shod
and had worked in harness. So when the Indian tried to sell her the
farmer said: “You are a thief. That is a white man’s horse. You stole
her.”
“No,” said the Indian, “I brought her from Prairie du Chien and she has
always been mine.”
The man, pointing to her feet and the marks of the harness, said: “You
are lying. I will take that horse away from you and put her in my
pasture, and if you come near it I will set the dogs on you.” Then he
advertised her. One of our neighbors happened to see the advertisement
and brought us the glad news, and great was our rejoicing when father
brought her home. That Indian must have treated her with terrible
cruelty, for when I was riding her through the pasture several years
afterward, looking for another horse that we wanted to catch, as we
approached the place where she had been captured she stood stock still
gazing through the bushes, fearing the Indian might still be hiding
there ready to spring; and she was so excited that she trembled, and
her heartbeats were so loud that I could hear them distinctly as I sat
on her back, _boomp_, _boomp_, _boomp_, like the drumming of a
partridge. So vividly had she remembered her terrible experiences.
She was a great pet and favorite with the whole family, quickly learned
playful tricks, came running when we called, seemed to know everything
we said to her, and had the utmost confidence in our friendly kindness.
We used to cut and shock and husk the Indian corn in the fall, until a
keen Yankee stopped overnight at our house and among other labor-saving
notions convinced father that it was better to let it stand, and husk
it at his leisure during the winter, then turn in the cattle to eat the
leaves and trample down the stalks, so that they could be ploughed
under in the spring. In this winter method each of us took two rows and
husked into baskets, and emptied the corn on the ground in piles of
fifteen to twenty basketfuls, then loaded it into the wagon to be
hauled to the crib. This was cold, painful work, the temperature being
oftentimes far below zero and the ground covered with dry, frosty snow,
giving rise to miserable crops of chilblains and frosted fingers,—a sad
change from the merry Indian-summer husking, when the big yellow
pumpkins covered the cleared fields;—golden corn, golden pumpkins,
gathered in the hazy golden weather. Sad change, indeed, but we
occasionally got some fun out of the nipping, shivery work from hungry
prairie chickens, and squirrels and mice that came about us.
The piles of corn were often left in the field several days, and while
loading them into the wagon we usually found field mice in them,—big,
blunt-nosed, strong-scented fellows that we were taught to kill just
because they nibbled a few grains of corn. I used to hold one while it
was still warm, up to Nob’s nose for the fun of seeing her make faces
and snort at the smell of it; and I would say: “Here, Nob,” as if
offering her a lump of sugar. One day I offered her an extra fine, fat,
plump specimen, something like a little woodchuck, or muskrat, and to
my astonishment, after smelling it curiously and doubtfully, as if
wondering what the gift might be, and rubbing it back and forth in the
palm of my hand with her upper lip, she deliberately took it into her
mouth, crunched and munched and chewed it fine and swallowed it, bones,
teeth, head, tail, everything. Not a single hair of that mouse was
wasted. When she was chewing it she nodded and grunted, as though
critically tasting and relishing it.
My father was a steadfast enthusiast on religious matters, and, of
course, attended almost every sort of church-meeting, especially
revival meetings. They were occasionally held in summer, but mostly in
winter when the sleighing was good and plenty of time available. One
hot summer day father drove Nob to Portage and back, twenty-four miles
over a sandy road. It was a hot, hard, sultry day’s work, and she had
evidently been over-driven in order to get home in time for one of
these meetings. I shall never forget how tired and wilted she looked
that evening when I unhitched her; how she drooped in her stall, too
tired to eat or even to lie down. Next morning it was plain that her
lungs were inflamed; all the dreadful symptoms were just the same as my
own when I had pneumonia. Father sent for a Methodist minister, a very
energetic, resourceful man, who was a blacksmith, farmer, butcher, and
horse-doctor as well as minister; but all his gifts and skill were of
no avail. Nob was doomed. We bathed her head and tried to get her to
eat something, but she couldn’t eat, and in about a couple of weeks we
turned her loose to let her come around the house and see us in the
weary suffering and loneliness of the shadow of death. She tried to
follow us children, so long her friends and workmates and playmates. It
was awfully touching. She had several hemorrhages, and in the forenoon
of her last day, after she had had one of her dreadful spells of
bleeding and gasping for breath, she came to me trembling, with
beseeching, heartbreaking looks, and after I had bathed her head and
tried to soothe and pet her, she lay down and gasped and died. All the
family gathered about her, weeping, with aching hearts. Then dust to
dust.
She was the most faithful, intelligent, playful, affectionate,
human-like horse I ever knew, and she won all our hearts. Of the many
advantages of farm life for boys one of the greatest is the gaining a
real knowledge of animals as fellow-mortals, learning to respect them
and love them, and even to win some of their love. Thus godlike
sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of
churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless
doctrine is taught that animals have neither mind nor soul, have no
rights that we are bound to respect, and were made only for man, to be
petted, spoiled, slaughtered, or enslaved.
At first we were afraid of snakes, but soon learned that most of them
were harmless. The only venomous species seen on our farm were the
rattlesnake and the copperhead, one of each. David saw the rattler, and
we both saw the copperhead. One day, when my brother came in from his
work, he reported that he had seen a snake that made a queer buzzy
noise with its tail. This was the only rattlesnake seen on our farm,
though we heard of them being common on limestone hills eight or ten
miles distant. We discovered the copperhead when we were ploughing, and
we saw and felt at the first long, fixed, half-charmed, admiring stare
at him that he was an awfully dangerous fellow. Every fibre of his
strong, lithe, quivering body, his burnished copper-colored head, and
above all his fierce, able eyes, seemed to be overflowing full of
deadly power, and bade us beware. And yet it is only fair to say that
this terrible, beautiful reptile showed no disposition to hurt us until
we threw clods at him and tried to head him off from a log fence into
which he was trying to escape. We were barefooted and of course afraid
to let him get very near, while we vainly battered him with the loose
sandy clods of the freshly ploughed field to hold him back until we
could get a stick. Looking us in the eyes after a moment’s pause, he
probably saw we were afraid, and he came right straight at us, snapping
and looking terrible, drove us out of his way, and won his fight.
Out on the open sandy hills there were a good many thick burly blow
snakes, the kind that puff themselves up and hiss. Our Yankee declared
that their breath was very poisonous and that we must not go near them.
A handsome ringed species common in damp, shady places was, he told us,
the most wonderful of all the snakes, for if chopped into pieces,
however small, the fragments would wriggle themselves together again,
and the restored snake would go on about its business as if nothing had
happened. The commonest kinds were the striped slender species of the
meadows and streams, good swimmers, that lived mostly on frogs.
Once I observed one of the larger ones, about two feet long, pursuing a
frog in our meadow, and it was wonderful to see how fast the legless,
footless, wingless, finless hunter could run. The frog, of course, knew
its enemy and was making desperate efforts to escape to the water and
hide in the marsh mud. He was a fine, sleek yellow muscular fellow and
was springing over the tall grass in wide-arching jumps. The
green-striped snake, gliding swiftly and steadily, was keeping the frog
in sight and, had I not interfered, would probably have tired out the
poor jumper. Then, perhaps, while digesting and enjoying his meal, the
happy snake would himself be swallowed frog and all by a hawk. Again,
to our astonishment, the small specimens were attacked by our hens.
They pursued and pecked away at them until they killed and devoured
them, oftentimes quarreling over the division of the spoil, though it
was not easily divided.
We watched the habits of the swift-darting dragonflies, wild bees,
butterflies, wasps, beetles, etc., and soon learned to discriminate
between those that might be safely handled and the pinching or stinging
species. But of all our wild neighbors the mosquitoes were the first
with which we became very intimately acquainted.
The beautiful meadow lying warm in the spring sunshine, outspread
between our lily-rimmed lake and the hill-slope that our shanty stood
on, sent forth thirsty swarms of the little gray, speckledy, singing,
stinging pests; and how tellingly they introduced themselves! Of little
avail were the smudges that we made on muggy evenings to drive them
away; and amid the many lessons which they insisted upon teaching us we
wondered more and more at the extent of their knowledge, especially
that in their tiny, flimsy bodies room could be found for such cunning
palates. They would drink their fill from brown, smoky Indians, or from
old white folk flavored with tobacco and whiskey, when no better could
be had. But the surpassing fineness of their taste was best manifested
by their enthusiastic appreciation of boys full of lively red blood,
and of girls in full bloom fresh from cool Scotland or England. On
these it was pleasant to witness their enjoyment as they feasted.
Indians, we were told, believed that if they were brave fighters they
would go after death to a happy country abounding in game, where there
were no mosquitoes and no cowards. For cowards were driven away by
themselves to a miserable country where there was no game fit to eat,
and where the sky was always dark with huge gnats and mosquitoes as big
as pigeons.
We were great admirers of the little black water-bugs. Their whole
lives seemed to be play, skimming, swimming, swirling, and waltzing
together in little groups on the edge of the lake and in the meadow
springs, dancing to music we never could hear. The long-legged skaters,
too, seemed wonderful fellows, shuffling about on top of the water,
with air-bubbles like little bladders tangled under their hairy feet;
and we often wished that we also might be shod in the same way to
enable us to skate on the lake in summer as well as in icy winter. Not
less wonderful were the boatmen, swimming on their backs, pulling
themselves along with a pair of oar-like legs.
Great was the delight of brothers David and Daniel and myself when
father gave us a few pine boards for a boat, and it was a memorable day
when we got that boat built and launched into the lake. Never shall I
forget our first sail over the gradually deepening water, the sunbeams
pouring through it revealing the strange plants covering the bottom,
and the fishes coming about us, staring and wondering as if the boat
were a monstrous strange fish.
The water was so clear that it was almost invisible, and when we
floated slowly out over the plants and fishes, we seemed to be
miraculously sustained in the air while silently exploring a veritable
fairyland.
We always had to work hard, but if we worked still harder we were
occasionally allowed a little spell in the long summer evenings about
sundown to fish, and on Sundays an hour or two to sail quietly without
fishing-rod or gun when the lake was calm. Therefore we gradually
learned something about its inhabitants,—pickerel, sunfish, black bass,
perch, shiners, pumpkin-seeds, ducks, loons, turtles, muskrats, etc. We
saw the sunfishes making their nests in little openings in the rushes
where the water was only a few feet deep, ploughing up and shoving away
the soft gray mud with their noses, like pigs, forming round bowls five
or six inches in depth and about two feet in diameter, in which their
eggs were deposited. And with what beautiful, unweariable devotion they
watched and hovered over them and chased away prowling spawn-eating
enemies that ventured within a rod or two of the precious nest!
The pickerel is a savage fish endowed with marvelous strength and
speed. It lies in wait for its prey on the bottom, perfectly motionless
like a waterlogged stick, watching everything that moves, with fierce,
hungry eyes. Oftentimes when we were fishing for some other kinds over
the edge of the boat, a pickerel that we had not noticed would come
like a bolt of lightning and seize the fish we had caught before we
could get it into the boat. The very first pickerel that I ever caught
jumped into the air to seize a small fish dangling on my line, and,
missing its aim, fell plump into the boat as if it had dropped from the
sky.
Some of our neighbors fished for pickerel through the ice in midwinter.
They usually drove a wagon out on the lake, set a large number of lines
baited with live minnows, hung a loop of the lines over a small bush
planted at the side of each hole, and watched to see the loops pulled
off when a fish had taken the bait. Large quantities of pickerel were
often caught in this cruel way.
Our beautiful lake, named Fountain Lake by father, but Muir’s Lake by
the neighbors, is one of the many small glacier lakes that adorn the
Wisconsin landscapes. It is fed by twenty or thirty meadow springs, is
about half a mile long, half as wide, and surrounded by low
finely-modeled hills dotted with oak and hickory, and meadows full of
grasses and sedges and many beautiful orchids and ferns. First there is
a zone of green, shining rushes, and just beyond the rushes a zone of
white and orange water-lilies fifty or sixty feet wide forming a
magnificent border. On bright days, when the lake was rippled by a
breeze, the lilies and sun-spangles danced together in radiant beauty,
and it became difficult to discriminate between them.