"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture in the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,--
I love not man the less, but nature more."
Once more in the green wilderness! Welcome the wild scenes of our boyhood,
which, as the checkered panorama of the past is unrolled at our bidding,
rise on the mental vision in all their original freshness and beauty! It
was here we first essayed to study the works of nature, and in them trace
the Master-hand that moulded and perfected them. It was here we learned to
recognize the voice of God in the rolling thunder, and his messengers in
the swift-winged lightnings; to mark the forms of beauty and grandeur in
every thing, from the humble lichen of the logs and rocks, to the high and
towering pine of the plain and the mountain,--from the low murmurings of
the quiet rivulet, to the loud thunderings of the headlong cataract,--and
from the soft whisperings of the gentle breeze, to the angry roar of the
desolating tornado; and, finally, it was here that our first and most
enduring lessons of devotion were learned, here that our first and truest
conceptions of the grand and beautiful were acquired, and here that the
leading tone of our intellectual character, such as it may be, was
generated and stamped on us for life.
The second part of our story, to which the preceding chapters should be
taken, perhaps, as merely introductory, opens about midsummer, and among
that remarkable group of sylvan lakes--nearly a dozen in number--which,
commencing on the wild borders of northerly New Hampshire, and shooting off
in an irregular line some fifty miles northeasterly into the dark and
unbroken forests of Maine, appear on the map, in their strangely shapeless
forms and scattered locations, as if they must have been hurled, by the
hand of some Borean giant, down from the North Pole in a volley of huge
ice-blocks, which fell and melted where they now lie, sparkling, like rough
gems, on the shaggy bosom of the wilderness.
Near the centre of an opening of perhaps a dozen acres, about a mile from
where the sinuous Androscoggin debouches full grown, like Minerva from the
head of Jupiter, from its parent reservoir, the picturesque Umbagog, stood
a newly rigged log house, of dimensions and finish which indicated more
taste and enterprise than is usually exhibited in the rude habitations of
the first settlers. It was a story and a half high, and the walls were
built of solid pine timber, originally roughly hewed, but recently dressed
down with broad axe over the whole outward and inner surfaces so smoothly
that, at a little distance, they presented, with their still visible seams,
more the appearance of the wainscoting of some costly cottage than the
humble log cabin. The building had also been newly shingled, new doors
supplied, the windows enlarged, the yard around leveled off, with other
improvements, of a late date, betokening considerable ambition for
appearance, and considerable outlay of means, for so new a place, to fit up
a tidy and comfortable abode for the occupants. In the surrounding field
were patches of growing maize, wheat, potatoes, and some of the common
table vegetables; the hay crop for the winter sustenance of the only cow
and yoke of oxen, the best friends of the new settler, having been just cut
and stored in an adjoining log-building, as was evident from the fresh look
of the stubble, and the stray straws hanging to the slivered stumps or
bushes in the field, and from the fragrant and far-scenting locks
protruding from the upper and lower windows of the well-crammed receptacle
passing under the name of barn. Beyond this little opening, and bounding it
on every side, stood the encircling wall of woods, through and over which
gleamed the bright waters of the far-spreading Umbagog on the north; while
all around, towering up in their green glories, rose, one above another,
the amphitheatric hills, till their lessening individual forms were lost,
or mingled in the vision with the lofty summits of the distant White
Mountains in the south and west, and of the bold detached eminences which
shot up from the dark wilderness and studded the horizon in all other
directions.
Such, and in such a locality, was, as the reader probably has already
inferred, the residence which Mark Elwood had pitched upon for beginning
life anew. On leaving the city, as represented in the last chapter, he had,
under the goading remembrance of follies left behind, and the incitements
of hope-constructed prospects before, perseveringly pushed on, till he
reached this lone and wild terminus of civilized life; when, finding, a
mile beyond the last of the scattered settlements of the vicinity, a place
on which an opening had been made and the walls and roof of a spacious log
house erected, the year before, he had succeeded in purchasing it, for
ready money, at a price which was much below its value, and which left him
nearly half his little fund to be expended in more thoroughly clearing the
land, getting in crops, making the house habitable, and felling an
additional tract of forest. And with so much energy and resolution had he
pursued his object of seeing himself and family once more united at a
comfortable home, that, within three months from the time he commenced
operations, which was in the first of the spring months, he had
accomplished it all; for his wife and son, rejoicing in the knowledge of
his success which he had communicated to them, and promptly responding to
his invitation to join him, had come on, with their little all of goods and
money, in teams hired for the purpose; and they were now all together fully
installed in their new home, pleased with the novelty and freshness of
every thing around them, proud and secure in their conscious independence
and exemption from the dangers and trials they had recently passed through,
and contented and happy in their situation.
The particular time we have taken for the reappearance of the family on
this, their new stage of action, was a warm but breezy afternoon, on one of
the last days of July. Elwood was engaged in his new-mown field, in cutting
and grubbing up the bushes and sprouts which had sprung up during the
season around the log-heaps and stumps, and could not easily or
conveniently be cut by the common scythe while mowing the grass. He was no
longer robed in the broadcloth and fine linen, in which, as the rich
merchant, he might have been seen, perhaps, one year ago that day,
sauntering about "on 'change" among the solid men of Boston. These had been
mostly worn out or sold during the changing fortunes of the year, and their
place was now wisely supplied by the long tow-frock and the other coarse
garments in common use among the settlers. Nor had his physical appearance
undergone a much less change. Instead of the pallid brow, leaden eye,
fleshly look, and the red cheek of the wine-bibber and luxurist of the
cities, he exhibited the embrowned, thin, but firm and healthy face, and
the clear and cheerful complexion of the contented laborer of the
country,--tell-tale looks both, which we always encounter with as much
secret disgust in the former as we do with involuntary respect in the
latter. He now paused in his labors, and stood for some time looking about
the horizon, as if watching the signs of the weather; now noting the
progress of the haze gathering in the south, and now turning his cheek
first one way and then another, apparently to ascertain the doubtful
direction of the wind, which, from a lively western breeze, had within the
last hour lulled down into those small, fluctuating puffs usually
observable when counter-currents are springing up, balancing, and beginning
to strive for the mastery. After a while he moved slowly towards the house,
continuing his observations as he went, till he came near the open window
at which Mrs. Elwood was sitting at her needle-work, from which she
occasionally lifted her eyes, and glanced somewhat anxiously along the path
leading down through the woods to a landing-place on the lake; when,
looking round and observing her husband standing near, giving token of
being about to speak, she interposed and said:
"You have seen nothing of Claud, I suppose? What can be the reason why he
does not return? He was to have been at home long before this, was he not?"
"Yes," carelessly replied Elwood, "unless he concluded to take a bout in
the woods. He took his fowling-piece with him, to use in case the trout
wouldn't bite, you know. Phillips, the old hunter, came into the field
where we were last night, and said he was out of meat, and must skirt the
lake to-day for a buck. I presume Claud may have joined him. There! hark!
that sounded like Claud's piece," he added, as the distant report of a gun
rose from the woods westward of the lake and died away in swelling echoes
on the opposite shore. "And there, again!" he continued, as another and
sharper report burst, the next moment, from the same locality,--"there goes
another, but not his, as he could not have loaded so quick. That must have
been Phillips' long rifle. They are doubtless together somewhere near the
Magalloway,--some three miles distant, I should judge,--and are probably
having fine sport with something."
"That may be the case, perhaps," responded Mrs. Elwood. "I wish, however,
he would come; for I cannot yet quite divest myself of the idea that there
may be danger in these wild scenes of the lakes and the woods. But what was
you about to say when I first spoke? You were going to say something, I
thought."
"O--yes--why, I was about to say that I had made up my mind to set fire to
the _slash_. It is dry enough now to get a good burn; and it looks to me a
good deal like rain. I wish to get the land cleared and ready to sow with
winter wheat by the first of September; and I don't like to risk the chance
of finding every thing in so good order again."
"There is no danger that the fire will spread, or be blown to the
buildings, is there?"
"No, the wind is springing up in the south now, and will drive the fire
only towards the lake in the direction of the landing."
"But Claud may be there."
"Well, if he should be, the fire won't burn up the lake, I think; and, if
it besets the path in the woods, he can come round some other way,"
jocosely said Elwood, moving away to carry his purpose into execution.
Having procured a parcel of splinters split from the dry and resinous roots
of some old pine stub,--that never-failing and by no means contemptible
substitute for lamp or candle among the pioneers of a pine-growing
country,--he proceeded rapidly to the edge of the _slash_, as a tract of
felled forest is generally denominated by the first settlers, especially
of the northern States. Here, pausing a moment to mark with his eye the
most favorable places to communicate the fire, he picked his way along the
southern end to the farthest side of the tangled mass of trees of every
description composing the slash, which was a piece of some four or five
acres, lying on the western border and extending north and south the whole
length of the opening. And, having reached his destination, and kindled all
his splinters into a blaze, he threw one of them into the thickest nest of
pine or other evergreen boughs at hand, and darted back to his next marked
station, where he threw in another of his blazing torches, and so on till
he reached the cleared ground, which was not one moment too soon for his
safety. For so dry and inflammable had every thing there become, under the
scorching sun of the preceding fortnight, which had been relieved by
neither rain nor cloud, that, the instant the fire touched the tinder-like
leaves, it flashed up as from a parcel of scattered gunpowder; and,
bursting with almost explosive quickness all around, and swiftly leaping
from bough to bough and treetop to treetop, it spread with such astonishing
celerity that he found it hard on his heels, or whirling in a hot cloud
over his head, at every pause he made to throw in a new but now unnecessary
torch, in his rapid and constantly quickened run through the slash. And
when, after running some distance into the open field, to escape the
stifling smoke and heat by which he was even there assailed, he turned
round to note more fully the surprising progress that the terrible element
he had thus let loose was making, he beheld all that part of the slash
which he had a moment before passed through already enveloped, from side to
side, in a continuous blaze, whose red, curling crest, mounting every
instant higher and higher, was advancing with the seeming speed of a
race-horse on its fiery destination. Half-appalled by the sight of such a
sudden and unexpected outburst of the fire he had kindled, Elwood hurried
on to his house, and joined his startled wife in the yard; when the two
took station on an adjoining knoll, and looked down upon the conflagration
in progress with increasing wonder and uneasiness,--so comparatively new
was the scene to them both, and so far did it promise to exceed all their
previous conceptions, in magnitude and grandeur, of any thing of the kind
to be met with in the new settlements. And it was, indeed, a grand and
fearful spectacle: For, with constantly increasing fury, and with the
rapidity of the wind before which it was driving, still raged and rolled on
the red tempest of fire. Now surging aloft, and streaking with its winding
jets of flame the fiercely whirling clouds of smoke that marked its
advance, and now dying away in hoarse murmurs, as if to gather strength for
the new and more furious outburst that the next moment followed, it kept on
its terrific march till it reached the central elevation, which embraced
the most tangled, densely covered, and combustible part of the slash, and
on which had been left standing an enormous dry pine, that towered so up
high above the surrounding forest as to have long served as a landmark for
the hunters and fishermen, in setting their courses through the woods or
over the lake. Here the fiery billow, as if governed by the human tactics
of a military assault, paused, parted, and swept by on either side, till it
had inclosed the elevation; when suddenly it shot up from every side in an
hundred converging tongues of flame, which, soon meeting and expanding into
one, quickly enveloped the whole hill in one broad, unbroken robe of
sheeted fire, encompassed and mounted the veteran pine, and around its
colossal trunk formed a huge, whirling pyramid of mingling smoke and flame
that rose to the mid-heavens, shedding, in place of the darkened sun, a
lurid glare over the forest, and sending forth the stormy roar of a
belching volcano. The next moment a shower of cinders and the burning
fragments of twigs, bark, and boughs which had been carried high up by the
force of the ascending currents, fell hot and hissing to the earth over
every part of the adjoining fields, to and even far beyond the spot where
Elwood and his wife were standing.
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Elwood, aroused from the mute amazement with
which he and his more terrified companion had been beholding the scene, as
soon as these indications of danger were thus brought to his very feet.
"Good Heavens! this is more than I bargained for. See,--the fire is
catching on the stumps all over the field!"
"The house!" half-screamed Mrs. Elwood. "What is that rising from the
shingles up there near the top of the roof?"
"Smoke, as I am alive!" cried the other, in serious alarm, as he glanced up
to the roof, where several slender threads of smoke were beginning to steal
along the shingles. "Run, Alice, run with the pails for the brook, while I
throw up the ladder against the gable. We must be lively, or within one
hour we shall be as houseless as beggars."
"O, where is Claud? where is Claud?" exclaimed the distressed wife and
mother, as she flew to the house to do her husband's bidding.
Yes, where was Claud? At the risk of the charge of purposely tantalizing
the reader, we must break off here, to follow the young man just named, in
the unexpected adventures which he also had experienced during that
eventful day. But for this we will take a new chapter.