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DAYS OFF
And Other Digressions
by
HENRY VAN DYKE
[Illustration: Our canoes go with the river, but no longer easily or
lazily.]
I do not count the hours I spend
In wandering by the sea;
The forest is my loyal friend,
Like God it useth me:
Or on the mountain-crest sublime,
Or down the oaken glade,
O what have I to do with Time?
For this the day was made.
--RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Illustrated
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
MDCCCCVII
Copyright, 1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons
Printed in October, 1907
Reprinted in November, 1907
Reprinted in December, 1907
To
MY FRIEND AND NEIGHBOUR
GROVER CLEVELAND
WHOSE YEARS OF GREAT WORK
AS A STATESMAN
HAVE BEEN CHEERED BY DAYS OF GOOD PLAY
AS A FISHERMAN
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
WITH WARM AND DEEP REGARDS
Avalon,
July 10th, 1907.
CONTENTS
I. _Days Off_ 1
II. _A Holiday in a Vacation_ 23
III. _His Other Engagement_ 57
IV. _Books that I Loved as a Boy_ 101
V. _Among the Quantock Hills_ 117
VI. _Between the Lupin and the Laurel_ 139
VII. _Little Red Tom_ 177
VIII. _Silverhorns_ 193
IX. _Notions about Novels_ 221
X. _Some Remarks on Gulls_ 233
XI. _Leviathan_ 271
XII. _The Art of Leaving Off_ 309
ILLUSTRATIONS
_Our canoes go with the river, but no longer easily
or lazily_ Frontispiece
Facing page
_On such a carry travel is slow_ 36
_A notion to go down stream struck the salmon_ 88
_There was the gleam of an immense mass of silver in
its meshes_ 94
_Tannery Combe, Holford_ 126
"_Billy began to call, and it was beautiful_" 206
_There he stood defiant, front feet planted wide apart_ 218
_She took the oars and rowed me slowly around the shore_ 266
DAYS OFF
"A day off" said my Uncle Peter, settling down in his chair before the
open wood-fire, with that air of complacent obstinacy which spreads
over him when he is about to confess and expound his philosophy of
life,--"a day off is a day that a man takes to himself."
"You mean a day of luxurious solitude," I said, "a stolen sweet of
time, which he carries away into some hidden corner to enjoy alone,--a
little-Jack-Horner kind of a day?"
"Not at all," said my Uncle Peter; "solitude is a thing which a man
hardly ever enjoys by himself. He may practise it from a sense of duty.
Or he may take refuge in it from other things that are less tolerable.
But nine times out of ten he will find that he can't get a really good
day to himself unless he shares it with some one else; if he takes it
alone, it will be a heavy day, a chain-and-ball day,--anything but a
day off."
"Just what do you mean, then?" I asked, knowing that nothing would
please him better than the chance to discover his own meaning against a
little background of apparent misunderstanding and opposition.
"I mean," said my Uncle Peter, in that deliberate manner which lends a
flavour of deep wisdom to the most obvious remarks, "I mean that every
man owes it to himself to have some days in his life when he escapes
from bondage, gets away from routine, and does something which seems to
have no purpose in the world, just because he wants to do it."
"Plays truant," I interjected.
"Yes, if you like to put it in that objectionable way," he answered;
"but I should rather compare it to bringing flowers into the
school-room, or keeping white mice in your desk, or inventing a new
game for the recess. You see we are all scholars, boarding scholars, in
the House of Life, from the moment when birth matriculates us to the
moment when death graduates us. We never really leave the big school,
no matter what we do. But my point is this: the lessons that we learn
when we do not know that we are studying are often the pleasantest, and
not always the least important. There is a benefit as well as a joy in
finding out that you can lay down your task for a proper while without
being disloyal to your duty. Play-time is a part of school-time, not a
break in it. You remember what Aristotle says: '_ascholoumetha gar hina
scholazomen_.'"
"My dear uncle," said I, "there is nothing out of the common in your
remarks, except of course your extraordinary habit of decorating them
with a Greek quotation, like an ancient coin set as a scarf-pin and
stuck carelessly into a modern neck-tie. But apart from this
eccentricity, everybody admits the propriety of what you have been
saying. Why, all the expensive, up-to-date schools are arranged on your
principle: play-hours, exercise-hours, silent-hours, social-hours, all
marked in the schedule: scholars compelled and carefully guided to
amuse themselves at set times and in approved fashions: athletics,
dramatics, school-politics and social ethics, all organized and
co-ordinated. What you flatter yourself by putting forward as an
amiable heresy has become a commonplace of orthodoxy, and your liberal
theory of education and life is now one of the marks of fashionable
conservatism."
My Uncle Peter's face assumed the beatific expression of a man who
knows that he has been completely and inexcusably misunderstood, and is
therefore justified in taking as much time as he wants to make the
subtlety and superiority of his ideas perfectly clear and to show how
dense you have been in failing to apprehend them.
"My dear boy," said he, "it is very singular that you should miss my
point so entirely. All these things that you have been saying about
your modern schools illustrate precisely the opposite view from mine.
They are signs of that idolatry of organization, of system, of the
time-table and the schedule, which is making our modern life so tedious
and exhausting. Those unfortunate school-boys and school-girls who have
their amusements planned out for them and cultivate their social
instincts according to rule, never know the joy of a real day off,
unless they do as I say, and take it to themselves. The right kind of a
school will leave room and liberty for them to do this. It will be a
miniature of what life is for all of us,--a place where law reigns and
independence is rewarded,--a stream of work and duty diversified by
islands of freedom and repose,--a pilgrimage in which it is permitted
to follow a side-path, a mountain trail, a footway through the meadow,
provided the end of the journey is not forgotten and the day's march
brings one a little nearer to that end."
"But will it do that," I asked, "unless one is careful to follow the
straight line of the highway and march as fast as one can?"
"That depends," said my Uncle Peter, nodding his head gravely, "upon
what you consider the end of the journey. If it is something entirely
outside of yourself, a certain stint of work which you were created to
perform; or if it is something altogether beyond yourself, a certain
place or office at which you are aiming to arrive; then, of course, you
must stick to the highway and hurry along.
"But suppose that the real end of your journey is something of which
you yourself are a part. Suppose it is not merely to get to a certain
place, but to get there in a certain condition, with the light of a
sane joy in your eyes and the peace of a grateful content in your
heart. Suppose it is not merely to do a certain piece of work, but to
do it in a certain spirit, cheerfully and bravely and modestly, without
overrating its importance or overlooking its necessity. Then, I fancy,
you may find that the winding foot-path among the hills often helps you
on your way as much as the high road, the day off among the islands of
repose gives you a steadier hand and a braver heart to make your voyage
along the stream of duty."
"You may skip the moralizing, if you please, Uncle Peter," said I, "and
concentrate your mind upon giving me a reasonable account of the
peculiar happiness of what you call a day off."
"Nothing could be simpler," he answered. "It is the joy of getting out
of the harness that makes a horse fling up his heels, and gallop around
the field, and roll over and over in the grass, when he is turned loose
in the pasture. It is the impulse of pure play that makes a little
bunch of wild ducks chase one another round and round on the water, and
follow their leader in circles and figures of eight; there is no
possible use in it, but it gratifies their instinct of freedom and
makes them feel that they are not mere animal automata, whatever the
natural history men may say to the contrary. It is the sense of release
that a man experiences when he unbuckles the straps of his knapsack,
and lays it down under a tree, and says 'You stay there till I come
back for you! I'm going to rest myself by climbing this hill, just
because it is not on the road-map, and because there is nothing at the
top of it except the view.'
"It is this feeling of escape," he continued, in the tone of a man who
has shaken off the harness of polite conversation and let himself go
for a gallop around the field of monologue, "it is just this
exhilarating sense of liberation that is lacking in most of our social
amusements and recreations. They are dictated by fashion and directed
by routine. Men get into the so-called 'round of pleasure,' and they
are driven into a trot to keep up with it, just as if it were a
treadmill. The only difference is that the pleasure-mill grinds no
corn. Harry Bellairs was complaining to me, the other day, that after
an exhausting season of cotillons in New York, he had been running his
motor-car through immense fatigues in France and Italy, and had
returned barely in time to do his duty by his salmon-river in Canada,
work his new boat through the annual cruise of the yacht club, finish
up a round of house-parties at Bar Harbor and Lenox, and get ready for
the partridge-shooting in England with his friend the Duke of
Bangham,--it was a dog's life, he said, and he had no time to himself
at all. I rather pitied him; he looked so frayed. It seems to me that
the best way for a man or a woman of pleasure to get a day off would be
to do a little honest work.
"You see it is the change that makes the charm of a day off. The real
joy of leisure is known only to the people who have contracted the
habit of work without becoming enslaved to the vice of overwork.
"A hobby is the best thing in the world for a man with a serious
vocation. It keeps him from getting muscle-bound in his own task. It
helps to save him from the mistake of supposing that it is his little
tick-tack that keeps the universe a-going. It leads him out, on off
days, away from his own garden corner into curious and interesting
regions of this wide and various earth, of which, after all, he is a
citizen.
"Do you happen to know the Reverend Doctor McHook? He is a learned
preacher, a devoted churchman, a faithful minister; and in addition to
this he has an extra-parochial affection for ants and spiders. He can
spend a happy day in watching the busy affairs of a formicary, and to
observe the progress of a bit of spider-web architecture gives him a
peculiar joy. There are some severe and sour-complexioned theologians
who would call this devotion to objects so far outside of his parish an
illicit passion. But to me it seems a blessing conferred by heavenly
wisdom upon a good man, and I doubt not he escapes from many an
insoluble theological puzzle, and perhaps from many an unprofitable
religious wrangle, to find refreshment and invigoration in the society
of his many-legged friends."
"You are moralizing again, Uncle Peter," I objected; "or at least you
are getting ready to do so. Stop it; and give me a working definition
of the difference between a hobby and a fad."
"Let me give you an anecdote," said he, "instead of a definition. There
was a friend of mine who went to visit a famous asylum for the insane.
Among the patients who were amusing themselves in the great hall, he
saw an old gentleman with a long white beard, who was sitting astride
of a chair, spurring its legs with his heels, holding both ends of his
handkerchief which he had knotted around the back, and crying 'Get up,
get up! G'long boy, steady!' with the utmost animation. 'You seem to be
having a fine ride, sir,' said my friend. 'Capital,' said the old
gentleman, 'this is a first-rate mount that I am riding.' 'Permit me to
inquire,' asked my friend, 'whether it is a fad or a hobby?' 'Why,
certainly!' replied the old gentleman, with a quizzical look. 'It is a
hobby, you see, for I can get off whenever I have a mind to.' And with
that he dismounted and walked into the garden.
"It is just this liberty of getting off that marks the superiority of a
hobby to a fad. The game that you feel obliged to play every day at the
same hour ceases to amuse you as soon as you realize that it is a
diurnal duty. Regular exercise is good for the muscles, but there must
be a bit of pure fun mixed with the sport that is to refresh your
heart.
"A tour in Europe, carefully mapped out with an elaborate itinerary and
a carefully connected timetable, may be full of instruction, but it
often becomes a tax upon the spirit and a weariness to the flesh.
Compulsory castles and mandatory museums and required ruins pall upon
you, as you hurry from one to another, vaguely agitated by the fear
that you may miss something that is marked with a star in the
guide-book, and so be compelled to confess to your neighbour at the
_table-d'hôte_ that you have failed to see what he promptly and
joyfully assures you is 'the best thing in the whole trip,' Delicate
and sensitive people have been killed by taking a vacation in that way.
"I remember meeting, several years ago, a party of personally conducted
tourists in Venice, at the hour which their itinerary consecrated to
the enjoyment of the fine arts in the gallery of the Academy. Their
personal conductor led them into one of the great rooms, and they
gathered close around him, with an air of determination on their tired
faces, listening to his brief, dry patter about the famous pictures
that the room contained. He stood in the centre of the room holding his
watch in his hand while they dispersed themselves around the walls,
looking for the paintings which they ought to see, like chickens
searching for scattered grains of corn. At the expiration of five
minutes he clapped his hands sharply; his flock scurried back to him;
and they moved on to 'do' the next room.
"I suppose that was one way of seeing Venice: but I would much rather
sit at a little table on the _Riva degli Schiavoni_, with a plate of
bread and cheese and a _mezzo_ of Chianti before me, watching the
motley crowd in the street and the many-coloured sails in the harbour;
or spend a lazy afternoon in a gondola, floating through watery
alley-ways that lead nowhere, and under the façades of beautiful
palaces whose names I did not even care to know. Of course I should
like to see a fine picture or a noble church, now and then; but only
one at a time, if you please; and that one I should wish to look at as
long as it said anything to me, and to revisit as often as it called
me."
"That is because you have no idea of the educational uses of a
vacation, Uncle Peter," said I. "You are an unsystematic person, an
incorrigible idler."
"I am," he answered, without a sign of penitence, "that is precisely
what I am,--in my days off. Otherwise I should not get the good of
them. Even a hobby, on such days, is to be used chiefly for its lateral
advantages,--the open doors of the sideshows to which it brings you,
the unexpected opportunities of dismounting and tying your hobby to a
tree, while you follow the trail of something strange and attractive,
as Moses did when he turned aside from his shepherding on Mount Horeb
and climbed up among the rocks to see the burning bush.
"The value of a favourite pursuit lies not only in its calculated
results but also in its by-products. You may become a collector of
almost anything in the world,--orchids, postage-stamps, flint
arrowheads, cook-books, varieties of the game of cat's cradle,--and if
you chase your trifle in the right spirit it will lead you into pleasant
surprises and bring you acquainted with delightful or amusing people.
You remember when you went with Professor Rinascimento on a Della Robbia
hunt among the hill towns of Italy, and how you came by accident into
that deep green valley where there are more nightingales with sweeter
voices than anywhere else on earth? Your best _trouvaille_ on that
expedition was hidden in those undreamed-of nights of moonlight and
music. And it was when you were chasing first editions of Tennyson, was
it not, that you discovered your little head of a marble faun, which you
vow is by Donatello, or one of his pupils? And what was it that you told
me about the rare friend you found when you took a couple of days off in
an ancient French town, on a flying journey from Rome to London? Believe
me, dear boy, all that we win by effort and intention is sometimes
overtopped by a gift that is conferred upon us out of a secret and
mysterious generosity. Wordsworth was right:
"'Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?'"
"You talk," said I, "as if you thought it was a man's duty to be
happy."
"I do," he answered firmly, "that is precisely and definitely what I
think. It is not his chief duty, nor his only duty, nor his duty all
the time. But the normal man is not intended to go through this world
without learning what happiness means. If he does so he misses
something that he needs to complete his nature and perfect his
experience. 'Tis a poor, frail plant that can not endure the wind and
the rain and the winter's cold. But is it a good plant that will not
respond to the quickening touch of spring and send out its sweet odours
in the embracing warmth of the summer night? Suppose that you had made
a house for a child, and given him a corner of the garden to keep, and
set him lessons and tasks, and provided him with teachers and masters.
Would you be satisfied with that child, however diligent and obedient,
if you found that he was never happy, never enjoyed a holiday, never
said to himself and to you, 'What a good place this is, and how glad I
am to live here'?"
"Probably not," I answered, "but that is because I should be selfish
enough to find a pleasure of my own in his happiness. I should like to
take a day off with him, now and then, and his gladness would increase
my enjoyment. There is no morality in that. It is simply natural. We
are all made that way."
"Well," said my Uncle Peter, "if we are made that way we must take it
into account in our philosophy of life. The fact that it is natural is
not a sufficient reason for concluding that it is bad. There is an old
and wonderful book which describes the creation of the world in poetic
language; and when I read that description it makes me feel sure that
something like this was purposely woven into the very web of life.
After the six mystical days of making things and putting things in
order, says this beautiful old book, the Person who had been doing it
all took a day to Himself, in which He 'rested from all the things that
He had created and made,' and looked at them, and saw how good they
were. His work was not ended, of course, for it has been going on ever
since, and will go on for ages of ages. But in the midst of it all it
seemed right to Him to take a divine day off. And His example is
commended to us for imitation because we are made in His likeness and
have the same desire to enjoy as well as to create.
"Do you remember what the Wisest of all Masters said to his disciples
when they were outworn by the weight of their work and the pressure of
the crowd upon them? 'Come ye yourselves apart into a lonely place, and
rest awhile.' He would never have bidden them do that, unless it had
been a part of their duty to get away from their task for a little. He
knew what was in man, more deeply than any one else had ever known; and
so he invited his friends out among the green hills and beside the
quiet waters of Galilee to the strengthening repose and the restoring
joy which are only to be found in real days off."
My Uncle Peter's voice had grown very deep and gentle while he was
saying these things. He sat looking far away into the rosy heart of the
fire, where the bright blaze had burned itself out, and the delicate
flamelets of blue and violet were playing over the glowing, crumbling
logs. It seemed as if he had forgotten where we were, and gone
a-wandering into some distant region of memories and dreams. I almost
doubted whether to call him back; the silence was so full of
comfortable and friendly intercourse.
"Well," said I, after a while, "you are an incorrigible moralist, but
certainly a most unconventional one. The orthodox would never accept
your philosophy. They would call you a hedonist, or something equally
dreadful."
"Let them," he said, placidly.
"But tell me": I asked, "you and I have many pleasant and grateful
memories, little pictures and stories, which seem like chapters in the
history of this doubtful idea of yours: suppose that I should write
some of them down, purely in a descriptive and narrative way, without
committing myself to any opinion as to their morality; and suppose that
a few of your opinions and prejudices, briefly expressed, were
interspersed in the form of chapters to be skipped: would a book like
that symbolize and illustrate the true inwardness of the day off? How
would it do to make such a book?"
"It would do," he answered, "provided you wanted to do it, and provided
you did not try to prove anything, or convince anybody, or convey any
profitable instruction."
"But would any one read it?" I asked. "What do you think?"
"I think," said he, stretching his arms over his head as he rose and
turned towards his den to plunge into a long evening's work, "I reckon,
and calculate, and fancy, and guess that a few people, a very few,
might browse through such a book in their days off."
A HOLIDAY IN A VACATION
It was really a good little summer resort where the boy and I were
pegging away at our vacation. There were the mountains conveniently
arranged, with pleasant trails running up all of them, carefully marked
with rustic but legible guide-posts; and there was the sea comfortably
besprinkled with islands, among which one might sail around and about,
day after day, not to go anywhere, but just to enjoy the motion and the
views; and there were cod and haddock swimming over the outer ledges in
deep water, waiting to be fed with clams at any time, and on fortunate
days ridiculously accommodating in letting themselves be pulled up at
the end of a long, thick string with a pound of lead and two hooks tied
to it. There were plenty of places considered proper for picnics, like
Jordan's Pond, and Great Cranberry Island, and the Russian Tea-house,
and the Log Cabin Tea-house, where you would be sure to meet other
people who also were bent on picnicking; and there were hotels and
summer cottages, of various degrees of elaboration, filled with
agreeable and talkable folk, most of whom were connected by occupation
or marriage with the rival colleges and universities, so that their
ambitions for the simple life had an academic thoroughness and
regularity. There were dinner parties, and tea parties, and garden
parties, and sea parties, and luncheon parties, masculine and feminine,
and a horse-show at Bar Harbor, and a gymkhana at North East, and
dances at all the Harbors, where Minerva met Terpischore on a friendly
footing while Socrates sat out on the veranda with Midas discussing the
great automobile question over their cigars.
It was all vastly entertaining and well-ordered, and you would think
that any person with a properly constituted mind ought to be able to
peg through a vacation in such a place without wavering. But when the
boy confessed to me that he felt the need of a few "days off" in the
big woods to keep him up to his duty, I saw at once that the money
spent upon his education had not been wasted; for here, without effort,
he announced a great psychological fact--_that no vacation is perfect
without a holiday in it_. So we packed our camping-kit, made our peace
with the family, tied our engagements together and cut the string below
the knot, and set out to find freedom and a little fishing in the
region around Lake Nicatöus.
The south-east corner of the State of Maine is a happy remnant of the
ancient wilderness. The railroads will carry you around it in a day, if
you wish to go that way, making a big oval of two or three hundred
miles along the sea and by the banks of the Penobscot, the
Mattawamkeag, and the St. Croix. But if you wisely wish to cross the
oval you must ride, or go afoot, or take to your canoe; probably you
will have to try all three methods of locomotion, for the country is a
mixed quantity. It reminds me of what I once heard in Stockholm: that
the Creator, when the making of the rest of the world was done, had a
lot of fragments of land and water, forests and meadows, mountains and
valleys, lakes and moors, left over; and these He threw together to
make the southern part of Sweden. I like that kind of a promiscuous
country. The spice of life grows there.
When we had escaped from the railroad at Enfield on the Penobscot, we
slept a short night in a room over a country store, and took wagon the
next morning for a twenty-five mile drive. At the somnolent little
village of Burlington we found our guides waiting for us. They were
sitting on the green at the cross-roads, with their paddles and axes
and bundles beside them. I knew at a glance that they were ready and
all right: Sam Dam, an old experienced, seasoned guide, and Harry, a
good-looking young woodsman who had worked in lumber camps and on "the
drive," but had never been "guiding" before. He was none the worse for
that, for he belonged to the type of Maine man who has the faculty of
learning things by doing them.
As we rattled along the road the farms grew poorer and sparser, until
at last we came into the woods, crossed the rocky Passadumkeag River,
and so over a succession of horseback hills to the landing-place on
Nicatöus Stream, where the canoes were hidden in the bushes. Now load
up with the bundles and boxes, the tent, the blanket-roll, the
clothes-bag, the provisions--all the stuff that is known as "duffel"
in New York, and "_butins_" in French Canada, and "_wangan_" in
Maine--stow it all away judiciously so that the two light craft will be
well balanced; and then push off, bow paddles, and let us taste the joy
of a new stream! New to the boy and me, you understand; but to the
guides it was old and familiar, a link in a much-travelled route. The
amber water rippled merrily over the rocky bars where the river was
low, and in the still reaches it spread out broad and smooth, covered
with white lilies and fringed with tall grasses. All along the pleasant
way Sam entertained us with memories of the stream.
"Ye see that grassy p'int, jest ahead of us? Three weeks ago I was
comin' down for the mail, and there was three deer a-stannin' on that
p'int, a buck and a doe and a fawn. And----"
"Up in them alders there's a little spring brook comes in. Good fishin'
there in high water. But now? Well----"
"Jest beyond that bunch o' rocks last fall there was three fellers
comin' down in a canoe, and a big bear come out and started 'cross
river. The gun was in the case in the bottom of the canoe, and one o'
the fellers had a pistol, and so----"
Beyond a doubt it was so, always has been so, and always will be
so--just so, on every river travelled by canoes, until the end of time.
The sportsman travels through a happy interval between memories of
failure and expectation of success. But the river and the wind in the
trees sing to him by the way, and there are wild flowers along the
banks, and every turn in the stream makes a new picture of beauty. Thus
we came leisurely and peacefully to the place where the river issued
from the lake; and here we must fish awhile, for it was reported that
the landlocked salmon lay in the narrow channel just above the dam.
Sure enough, no sooner had the fly crossed the current than there was a
rise; and at the second cast a pretty salmon of two and a half pounds
was hooked, played, and landed. Three more were taken, of which the boy
got two--and his were the biggest. Fish know nothing of the respect
due to age. They leaped well, those little salmon, flashing clean out
of the water again and again with silvery gleams. But on the whole
they did not play as strongly nor as long as their brethren (called
_ouananiche_,) in the wild rapids where the Upper Saguenay breaks from
Lake St. John. The same fish are always more lively, powerful, and
enduring when they live in swift water, battling with the current, than
when they vegetate in the quiet depths of a lake. But if a salmon must
live in a luxurious home of that kind, Nicatöus is a good one, for the
water is clear, the shores are clean, the islands plenty, and the bays
deep and winding.
At the club-house, six miles up the lake, where we arrived at
candle-lighting, we found such kindly welcome and good company that we
tarried for three days in that woodland Capua, discussing the further
course of our expedition. Everybody was willing to lend us aid and
comfort. The sociable hermit who had summered for the last twenty years
in his tiny cabin on the point gave us friendly counsel and excellent
large blueberries. The matron provided us with daily bags of most
delicate tea, a precaution against the native habit of "squatting" the
leaves--that is, boiling and squeezing them to extract the tannin. The
little lady called Katharyne (a fearless forest-maid who roamed the
woods in leathern jacket and short blue skirt, followed by an enormous
and admiring guide, and caught big fish everywhere) offered to lend us
anything in her outfit, from a pack-basket to a darning-needle. It was
cheerful to meet with such general encouragement in our small
adventure. But the trouble was to decide which way to go.
Nicatöus lies near the top of a watershed about a thousand feet high.
From the region round about it at least seven canoeable rivers descend
to civilization. The Narraguagus and the Union on the south, the
Passadumkeag on the west, the Sisladobsis and the St. Croix on the
north, and the two branches of the Machias or Kowahshiscook on the
east; to say nothing of the Westogus and the Hackmatack and the Mopang.
Here were names to stir the fancy and paralyze the tongue. What a joy
to follow one of these streams clear through its course and come out of
the woods in our own craft--from Nicatöus to the sea!
It was perhaps something in the name, some wild generosity of
alphabetical expenditure, that led us to the choice of the
Kowahshiscook, or west branch of the Machias River. Or perhaps it was
because neither of our guides had been down that stream, and so the
whole voyage would be an exploration, with everybody on the same level
of experience. An easy day's journey across the lake, and up Comb's
Brook, where the trout were abundant, and by a two-mile carry into
Horseshoe Lake, and then over a narrow hardwood ridge, brought us to
Green Lake, where we camped for the night in a new log shanty.
Here we were at the topmost source--_fons et origo_--of our chosen
river. This single spring, crystal-clear and ice-cold, gushing out of
the hillside in a forest of spruce and yellow birch and sugar maple,
gave us the clue that we must follow for a week through the wilderness.
But how changed was that transparent rivulet after it entered the lake.
There the water was pale green, translucent but semi-opaque, for at a
depth of two or three feet the bottom was hardly visible. The lake was
filled, I believe, with some minute aquatic growth which in the course
of a thousand years or so would transform it into a meadow. But
meantime the mystical water was inhabited, especially around the mouth
of the spring, by huge trout to whom tradition ascribed a singular and
provoking disposition. They would take the bait, when the fancy moved
them: but the fly they would always refuse, ignoring it with calm
disdain, or slapping at it with their tails and shoving it out of their
way as they played on the surface in the summer evenings. This was the
mysterious reputation of the trout of Green Lake, handed down from
generation to generation of anglers; and this spell we had come to
break, by finding the particular fly that would be irresistible to
those secret epicures and the psychological moment of the day when they
could no longer resist temptation. We tried all the flies in our books;
at sunset, in the twilight, by the light of the stars and the rising
moon, at dawn and at sunrise. Not one trout did we capture with the fly
in Green Lake. Nor could we solve the mystery of those reluctant fish.
The boy made a scientific suggestion that they got plenty of food from
the cloudy water, which served them as a kind of soup. My guess was
that their sight was impaired so that they could not see the fly. But
Sam said it was "jest pure cussedness." Many things in the world happen
from that cause, and as a rule it is best not to fret over them.
[Illustration: On such a carry travel is slow.]
The trail from Green Lake to Campbell Lake was easily found; it
followed down the outlet about a mile. But it had been little used for
many years and the undergrowth had almost obliterated it. Rain had been
falling all the morning and the bushes were wetter than water. On such
a carry travel is slow. We had three trips to make each way before we
could get the stuff and the canoes over. Then a short voyage across the
lake, and another mile of the same sort of portage, after which we came
out with the last load, an hour before sundown, on the shore of the Big
Sabeo. This lake was quite different from the others; wide and open,
with smooth sand-beaches all around it. The little hills which
encircled it had been burned over years ago; and the blueberry pickers
had renewed the fire from year to year. The landscape was light green
and yellow, beneath a low, cloudy sky; no forest in sight, except one
big, black island far across the water.
The place where we came out was not attractive; but nothing is more
foolish than to go on looking for a pretty camp-ground after daylight
has begun to wane. When the sun comes within the width of two
paddle-blades of the horizon, if you are wise you will take the first
bit of level ground within reach of wood and water, and make haste to
get the camp in order before dark. So we pitched our blue tent on the
beach, with a screen of bushes at the back to shelter us from the wind;
broke a double quantity of fir branches for our bed, to save us from
the midnight misery of sand in the blankets; cut a generous supply of
firewood from a dead pine-tree which stood conveniently at hand; and
settled down in comfort for the night.
What could have been better than our supper, cooked in the open air and
eaten by fire-light! True, we had no plates--they had been
forgotten--but we never mourned for them. We made a shift to get along
with the tops of some emptied tin cans and the cover of a kettle; and
from these rude platters, (quite as serviceable as the porcelain of
Limoges or Sèvres) we consumed our toast, and our boiled potatoes with
butter, and our trout prudently brought from Horseshoe Lake, and, best
of all, our bacon.
Do you remember what Charles Lamb says about roast pig? How he falls
into an ecstasy of laudation, spelling the very name with small
capitals, as if the lower case were too mean for such a delicacy, and
breaking away from the cheap encomiums of the vulgar tongue to hail it
in sonorous Latin as _princeps obsoniorum_! There is some truth in his
compliments, no doubt; but they are wasteful, excessive, imprudent. For
if all this praise is to be lavished on plain, fresh, immature, roast
pig, what adjectives shall we find to do justice to that riper, richer,
more subtle and sustaining viand, broiled bacon? On roast pig a man can
not work; often he can not sleep, if he have partaken of it immoderately.
But bacon "brings to its sweetness no satiety." It strengthens the arm
while it satisfies the palate. Crisp, juicy, savory; delicately salt as
the breeze that blows from the sea; faintly pungent as the blue smoke
of incense wafted from a clean wood-fire; aromatic, appetizing,
nourishing, a stimulant to the hunger which it appeases, 'tis the
matured bloom and consummation of the mild little pig, spared by
foresight for a nobler fate than juvenile roasting, and brought by art
and man's device to a perfection surpassing nature. All the problems of
woodland cookery are best saved by the baconian method. And when we say
of one escaping great disaster that he has "saved his bacon," we say
that the physical basis and the quintessential comfort of his life are
still untouched and secure.
Steadily fell the rain all that night, plentiful, persistent, drumming
on the tightened canvas over our heads, waking us now and then to
pleasant thoughts of a rising stream and good water for the morrow.
Breaking clouds rolled before the sunrise, and the lake was all
a-glitter when we pushed away in dancing canoes to find the outlet.
This is one of the problems in which the voyager learns to know
something of the infinite reserve, the humorous subtlety, the
hide-and-seek quality in nature. Where is it--that mysterious outlet?
Behind yonder long point? Nothing here but a narrow arm of the lake. At
the end of this deep bay? Nothing here but a little brook flowing in.
At the back of the island? Nothing here but a landlocked lagoon. Must
we make the circuit of the whole shore before we find the way out? Stop
a moment. What are those two taller clumps of bushes on the edge of
this broad curving meadow--down there in the corner, do you see? Turn
back, go close to the shore, swing around the nearer clump, and here we
are in the smooth amber stream, slipping silently, furtively, down
through the meadow, as if it would steal away for a merry jest and
leave us going round and round the lake till nightfall.
Easily and swiftly the canoes slide along with the little river,
winding and doubling through the wide, wild field, travelling three
miles to gain one. The rushes nod and glisten around us; the bending
reeds whisper as we push between them, cutting across a point. Follow
the stream; we know not its course, but we know that if we go with it,
though it be a wayward and tricksy guide, it will bring us out--but not
too soon, we hope!
Here is a lumberman's dam, broad-based, solid, and ugly, a work of
infinite labour, standing lonely, deserted, here in the heart of the
wilderness. Now we must carry across it. But it shall help while it
hinders us. Pry up the creaking sluice-gates, sending a fresh head of
water down the channel along with us, lifting us over the shallows,
driving us on through the rocky places, buoyant, alert, and rejoicing,
till we come again to a level meadow, and the long, calm, indolent
reaches of river.
Look on the right there, under the bushes. There is a cold, still
brook, slipping into the lazy river; and there we must try the truth of
the tales we have heard of the plentiful trout of Machias. Let the
flies fall light by the mouth of the brook, caressing, inviting.
Nothing there? Then push the canoe through the interlaced alders,
quietly, slowly up the narrow stream, till a wider pool lies open
before you. Now let the rod swing high in the air, lifting the line
above the bushes, dropping the flies as far away as you can on the
dark-brown water. See how quickly the answer comes, in two swift golden
flashes out of the depths of the sleeping pool. This is a pretty brace
of trout, from thirty to forty ounces of thoroughbred fighting pluck,
and the spirit that will not surrender. If they only knew that their
strength would be doubled by acting together, they soon would tangle
your line in the roots or break your rod in the alders. But all the
time they are fighting against each other, making it easy to bring them
up to the net and land them--a pair of beauties, evenly matched in
weight and in splendour, gleaming with rich iridescent hues of orange
and green and peacock-blue and crimson. A few feet beyond you find
another, a smaller fish, and then one a little larger; and so you go on
up the stream, threading the boat through the alders, with patience and
infinite caution, carefully casting your flies when the stream opens
out to invite them, till you have rounded your dozen of trout and are
wisely contented. Then you go backward down the brook--too narrow for
turning--and join the other canoe that waits, floating leisurely on
with the river.
There is a change now in the character of the stream. The low hills
that have been standing far away, come close together from either side,
as if they meant to bar any further passage; and the dreamy river wakes
up to wrestle its way down the narrow valley. There are no long, sleepy
reaches, no wide, easy curves, now; but sharp, quick turns from one
rocky ledge to another; and enormous stones piled and scattered along
the river-bed; and sudden descents from level to level as if by the
broad steps of a ruined, winding stairway. The water pushes, and
rushes, and roars, and foams, and frets--no, it does not fret, after
all, for there is always something joyous and exultant in its voice,
a note of the _gaudia certaminis_ by which the struggle of life is
animated, a note of confident strength, sure that it can find or make
a way, through all obstacles, to its goal. This is what I feel in a
river, especially a little river flowing through a rough, steep
country. This is what makes me love it. It seems to be thoroughly
alive, and glad to be alive, and determined to go on, and certain that
it will win through.
Our canoes go with the river, but no longer easily or lazily. Every
step of the way must be carefully chosen; now close to the steep bank
where the bushes hang over; now in mid-stream among the huge pointed
rocks; now by the lowest point of a broad sunken ledge where the water
sweeps smoothly over to drop into the next pool. The boy and I, using
the bow paddles, are in the front of the adventure, guessing at the
best channel, pushing aside suddenly to avoid treacherous stones hidden
with dark moss, dashing swiftly down the long dancing rapids, with the
shouting of the waves in our ears and the sprinkle of the foam in our
faces.
From side to side of the wild avenue through the forest we turn and
dart, zigzagging among the rocks. Thick woods shut us in on either
hand, pines and hemlocks and firs and spruces, beeches and maples and
yellow-birches, alders with their brown seed-cones, and mountain-ashes
with their scarlet berries. All four of us know the way; there can be
no doubt about that, for down the river is the only road out. But none
of us knows the path; for this is a new stream, you remember, and
between us and our journey's end there lie a thousand possible
difficulties, accidents, and escapes.
The boy had one of them. His canoe struck on a ledge, in passing over a
little fall, swung around sidewise to the current, and half filled with
water; he and Harry had to leap out into the stream waist-deep. Sam and
I made merry at their plight. But Nemesis was waiting for me a few
miles below.
All the pools were full of fine trout. While the men were cooking lunch
in a grove of balsams I waded down-stream to get another brace of fish.
Stepping carefully among the rocks, I stood about thigh-deep in my
rubber boots and cast across the pool. But the best bit of water was a
little beyond my reach. A step further! There is a yellow bit of gravel
that will give a good footing. Intent upon the flight of my flies, I
took the step without care. But the yellow patch under the brown water
was not gravel; it was the face of a rock polished smoother than glass.
Gently, slowly, irresistibly, and with deep indignation I subsided
backward into the cold pool. The rubber boots filled with water and the
immersion was complete. Then I stood up and got the trout. When I
returned to the camp-fire, the others laughed at me uproariously, and
the boy said: "Why did you go in swimming with your clothes on? Were
you expecting a party of ladies to come down the stream?"
Our tenting-places were new every night and forsaken every morning.
Each of them had a charm of its own. One was under a great yellow-birch
tree, close to the bank of the river. Another was on top of a bare
ridge in the middle of a vast blueberry patch, where the luscious
fruit, cool and fresh with the morning dew, spread an immense
breakfast-table to tempt us. The most beautiful of all was at the edge
of a fir-wood, with a huge rock, covered with moss and lichen, sloping
down before us in a broad, open descent of thirty feet to the foaming
stream. The full moon climbed into the sky as we sat around our
camp-fire, and showed her face above the dark, pointed tree-tops. The
winding vale was flooded with silver radiance that rested on river and
rock and tree-trunk and multitudinous leafage like an enchantment of
tranquillity. The curling currents and the floating foam, up and down
the stream, were glistening and sparkling, ever moving, yet never
losing their position. The shouting of the water melted to music, in
which a thousand strange and secret voices, near and far away, blending
and alternating from rapid to rapid and fall to fall, seemed like
hidden choirs, answering one another from place to place. The sense of
struggle, of pressure and resistance, of perpetual change, was gone;
and in its stead there was a feeling of infinite quietude, of perfect
balance and repose, of deep accord and amity between the watching
heavens and the waiting earth, in which the conflicts of existence
seemed very distant and of little meaning, and the peace of nature
prophesied
"That one, far-off divine event
Towards which the whole creation moves."
Thus for six days and nights we kept company with our little river,
following its guidance and enjoying all its changing moods. Sometimes
it led us through a smooth country, across natural meadows,
alder-fringed, where the bed of the stream was of amber sand and
polished gravel, and the water rippled gently over the shallow bars,
and there were deep holes underneath the hanging bushes, where the
trout hid from the heat of the noon sun. Sometimes it had carved a way
for itself over huge beds of solid rock, where, if the slope was
gentle, we could dart arrow-like along the channel from pool to pool;
but if the descent was steep and broken, we must get out of the canoes
and let them down with ropes. Sometimes the course ran for miles
through evergreen forests, where the fragrance of the fir-trees filled
the air; and again we came out into the open regions where thousands of
acres of wild blueberries were spread around us.
I call them wild because no man's hand has planted them. Yet they are
cultivated after a fashion. Every two or three years a district of
these hills is set on fire, and in the burned ground, the next spring,
the berry-bushes come up innumerable. The following fall they are
loaded so heavily with blueberries that the harvest is gathered with
rakes, each of which has a cup underneath it into which the berries
fall as the rake is thrust through the bushes. The land is owned by two
or three large proprietors, who employ men and women to gather the
crop, paying them a few cents a bushel for picking. Sometimes the
proprietor leases his land to a factor, who pays a royalty on every
bushel turned in at the factory in some village on the railroad or by
the seashore, where the berries are canned or dried.