pretend to say. I remember the Christmas fern, a goodly supply of the
dainty little _Asplenium trichomanes_, and tufts of what I took with
reasonable certainty for _Cystopteris fragilis_ in its early spring
stage, than which few things can be more graceful. On the upper edge of
the ravine, when I left the place one day by following a maze of zigzag
cattle-paths up the steep slope, and found myself, to my surprise,
directly in the rear of the hotel, I came upon a dense patch of a
smallish, very narrow, dark-stemmed fern, new to my eyes,--the hairy
lip-fern, so called (_Cheilanthes vestita_). These fronds, too, like
those of the cliff-brake and the wall-rue spleenwort, were of last
year’s growth, thickly covered on the back with brown “fruit-dots,”
and altogether having much the appearance of dry herbarium specimens;
but they were good to look at, nevertheless. Here, as in the case of
_Pellæa atropurpurea_, it was a question not only of a new species, but
of a new genus.
From my account of the scarcity of birds in Cedar Creek ravine the
reader will have already inferred, perhaps, that I did not spend my
days there, great as were its botanical attractions. My last morning’s
experience at Pulaski, the evidence there seen that the vernal
migration was at full tide, or near it, had brought on a pretty acute
attack of ornithological fever,--a spring disease which I am happy
to believe has become almost an epidemic in some parts of the United
States within recent years,--and not even the sight of new ferns and
new flowers could allay its symptoms. I had counted upon finding a
similar state of things here,--all the woods astir with wings. Instead
of that, I found the fields alive with chipping sparrows, the air full
of chimney swifts, the shade trees in front of the hotel vocal with
goldfinch notes, and, comparatively speaking, nothing else. By the end
of the second day I was fast becoming disconsolate. “No birds here,”
I wrote in my journal. “I have tried woods of all sorts. A very few
parula warblers, two or three red-eyed vireos, one yellow-throated
vireo, seven Louisiana water thrushes in the glen, one prairie warbler,
and a few oven-birds! No Bewick wrens. Two purple finches and one or
two phœbes have been the only additions to my Virginia list.” A pitiful
tale. Vacations are short and precious, and it goes hard with us to see
them running to waste.
The next evening (May 3) it was the same story continued. “It is
marvelous, the difference between this beautiful place, diversified
with fields and woods,--hardwood, cedar, pine,--it is marvelous, the
difference between this heavenly spot and Pulaski in the matter of
birds. There I registered six new arrivals in half an hour Wednesday
morning; here I have made but six additions to my list in two full
days. There is scarcely a sign of warbler migration. Was it that in
Pulaski the woods were comparatively small, and the birds had to
congregate in them? Or does Pulaski lie in a route of migration?” Wild
surmises, both of them; but wisdom is not to be looked for in a fever
patient.
“Six additions in two full days,” I wrote; but the second day was
not yet full. As evening came on I went out to stand awhile upon the
bridge; and while I listened to the brawling of the creek and admired
the beautiful scene below me, the moon shining straight down upon it,
a night-hawk called from the sky, and afterward--not from the sky--a
whippoorwill. Here, then, were two more names for my catalogue; but
even so,--six or eight,--it was a beggarly rate of increase in such a
favored spot and in the very nick of the season. The “six additions,”
it may ease the reader’s curiosity to know, were the Carolina wren, the
summer tanager, the purple finch, the indigo bunting, the blue-gray
gnatcatcher, and the phœbe.
One compensation there was for the ornithological barrenness of these
first few days: I had the more leisure for botany. And the hours were
not thrown away, although at the time I was almost ready to think they
were, with so many of them devoted to ransacking the Manual; for a man
who does not collect specimens to carry home with him must, as it were,
drive his field work and his closet work abreast; he must study out
his findings as he goes along. On the evening of the second day, for
example, I wrote in my journal thus,--the final entry under that date,
as the reader may guess: “In bed. Strange how we flatter ourselves
with a knowledge of names. I have spent much time to-day looking up
the names of flowers and ferns, and somehow feel as if I had learned
something in so doing. Really, however, I have learned only that some
one else has seen the things before me, and called them so and so.
At best that is _nearly_ all I have learned.” But after setting down
the results of my investigations, especially of those having to do
with the pretty draba and the bulbiferous fern, I concluded in a less
positive strain: “Well, the hunt for names does quicken observation
and help to relate and classify things.” That was a qualification well
put in. The whole truth was never written on one side of the leaf. If
_all_ our botany were Latin names, as Emerson says, we should have
little to boast of; yet even that would be one degree better than
nothing, as Emerson himself felt when he visited a museum and saw the
cases of shells. “I was hungry for names,” he remarks; and so have
all men of intelligence been since the day of the first systematic,
name-conferring naturalist, the man who dwelt in Eden. Let us be
thankful for manuals, I say, that offer on easy terms a speaking
acquaintance, if nothing more, with the world of beauty about us.
Things take their value from comparison, and my own ignorance was but a
little while ago so absolute that now I am proud to know so much as a
name.
Meanwhile, to come back to Natural Bridge, I had found the country of a
most engaging sort. In truth, while the bridge itself is the “feature”
of the place, as we speak in these days, it is by no means its only,
or, as I should say, its principal attraction, so far, at least, as
a leisurely visit is concerned. A man may see it and go,--as most
tourists do; but if he stays, he will find that the region round about
not only has charms of its own, but is one of the prettiest he has ever
set eyes on; and that, I should think, though he be neither a botanist,
nor an ornithologist, nor any other kind of natural historian.
For myself, at all events, I had already come to that conclusion,
notwithstanding I had yet to see some of the most beautiful parts of
the country, and was, besides, far too much concerned about the birds
(the absentees in particular) and the flowers to have quieted down
to any adequate appreciation of the general landscape. I have never
yet learned to see a prospect on the first day, or while in the eager
expectation of new things, although, like every one else, I can exclaim
with a measure of shallow sincerity, “Beautiful! beautiful!” even at
the first moment.
As my mood now was, at any rate, fine scenery did not satisfy me;
and on the morning of May 4, after two days and a half of botanical
surfeit and ornithological starvation, I packed my trunk preparatory
to going elsewhere. First, however, I would try the woods once more,
if perchance something might have happened overnight. Otherwise, so I
informed the landlord, I would return in season for an early luncheon,
and should expect to be driven to the station for the noon train
northward.
I went to a promising-looking hill covered with hardwood forest, a
spot already visited more than once,--Buck Hill I heard it called
afterward,--and was no sooner well in the woods than it became evident
that something _had_ happened. The treetops were swarming with birds,
and I had my hands full with trying to see and name them. Old trees are
grand creations,--among the noblest works of God, I often think; but
for a bird-gazer they have one disheartening drawback, especially when,
as now, the birds not only take to the topmost boughs (even the hummer
and the magnolia warbler, so my notes say, went with the multitude
to do evil), but, to make matters worse, are on the move northward
or southward, or flitting in simple restlessness from hill to hill.
However, I did my best with them while the fun lasted. Then all in a
moment they were gone, though I did not see them go; and nothing was
left but the wearisome iterations of oven-birds and red-eyes where just
now were so many singers and talkers, among which, for aught I could
tell, there might have been some that it would have been worth the
price of a long vacation to scrape even a treetop acquaintance with.
Indeed, it was certain that one member of the flock was a rarity, if
not an absolute novelty. That was the most exciting and by all odds the
most deplorable incident of the whole affair. I had obtained several
glimpses of him, but had been unable to determine his identity; a
warbler, past all reasonable doubt, with pure white under parts (the
upper parts quite invisible) except for a black or blackish line,
barely made out, across the lower throat or the upper breast. He, of
course, had vanished with the rest, the more was the pity. I had made
a guess at him, to be sure; it is a poor naturalist who cannot do as
much as that (but a really good naturalist would “form a hypothesis,” I
suppose) under almost any circumstances. I had called him a cerulean
warbler. Once in my life I had seen a bird of that species, but only
for a minute. If he wore a black breast-band, I did not see it, or else
had forgotten it. If I could only have had a look at this fellow’s
back and wings! As it was, I was not likely ever to _know_ him, though
the printed description would either demolish or add a degree of
plausibility to my offhand conjecture.
The better course, after losing a bevy of wanderers in this way,
is perhaps to remain where one is and await the arrival of another
detachment of the migratory host. This advice, or something like it, I
seem to remember having read, at all events; but I have never schooled
myself to such a pitch of quietism. For a time, indeed, I could not
believe that the birds _were_ lost, and must hunt the hilltop over
in the hope of another chance at them. An empty hope. So I did what
I always do: the game having flown, I took my own departure also. I
should not find the same flock again, but with good luck--which now it
was easy to expect--I might find another; and except for the single
mysterious stranger, that would be better still. One thing I was sure
of,--Natural Bridge was not to be left out of the warbler migration;
and one thing I forgot entirely,--that I had planned to leave it by the
noonday train.
My useless chase over the broad hilltop had brought me to the side
opposite the one by which I had ascended, and to save time, as I
persuaded myself, I plunged down, as best I could, without a trail,--a
piece of expensive economy, almost of course. In the first place, this
haphazardous descent took me longer than it would have done to retrace
my steps; and in the second place, I was compelled for much of the
distance to force my way through troublesome underbrush, in doing which
I made of necessity--being a white man--no little noise, and so was the
less likely to hear the note of any small bird, or to come close upon
him without putting him to flight. In general, let the bird-gazer keep
to the path, except in open woods, or as some specific errand may lead
him away from it. In one way and another, nevertheless, I got down at
last, and after beating over a piece of pine wood, with little or no
result, I crossed a field and a road, and entered a second tract of
hardwood forest.
The trees were comfortably low, with much convenient shrubbery, and
after a little, seeing myself at the centre of things, as it were, I
dropped into a seat and allowed the birds to gather about me. At my
back was a bunch of white-throated sparrows. From the same quarter
a chat whistled now and then, and white-breasted nuthatches and a
Carolina chickadee did likewise, the last with a noticeable variation
in his tune, which had dwindled to three notes. Here, as on the
hill I had just left, wood pewees and Acadian flycatchers announced
themselves, in tones so dissimilar as to suggest no hint of blood
relationship. The wood pewee is surely the gentleman of the family,
so far as the voice may serve as an indication of character. In dress
and personal appearance he is a flycatcher of the flycatchers; but
what a contrast between his soft, plaintive, exquisitely modulated
whistle, the very expression of refinement, and the wild, rasping,
over-emphatic vociferations that characterize the family in general!
The more praise to him. The Acadians seemed to have come northward in
a body. Nothing had been seen or heard of them before, but from this
morning they abounded in all directions. In a single night they had
taken possession of the woods. Here was the first Canadian warbler of
the season, singing from a perch so uncommonly elevated (he is a lover
of bushy thickets rather than of trees) that for a time it did not come
to me who he was,--so exceedingly earnest and voluble. A black-throated
blue warbler almost brushed my elbow. Redstarts were never so splendid,
I thought, the white of the dogwood blossoms, now in their prime,
setting off the black and orange of the birds in a most brilliant
manner, as was true also of the deep vermilion of the summer tanager. A
Blackburnian warbler, whose flame-colored throat needs no setting but
its own, had fallen into a lyrical mood very unusual for him, and sang
almost continuously for at least half an hour,--a poor little song in a
thin little voice, but full of pleasant suggestions in every note. The
first Swainson thrush was present, with no companion of his own kind,
so far as appeared. I prolonged my stay on purpose to hear him sing,
but was obliged to content myself with the sight of him and the sound
of his sweet, quick whistle.
All the while, as I watched one favorite another would come between
us. Once it was a humming-bird, a bit of animate beauty that must
always be attended to; and once, when the place had of a sudden fallen
silent, and I had taken out a book, I was startled by a flash of white
among the branches,--a red-headed woodpecker, in superb color, new
for the year, and on all accounts welcome. He remained for a time in
silence, and then in silence departed (he had been almost too near me
before he knew it); but having gone, he began a little way off to play
the tree-frog for my amusement. After him a hairy woodpecker made his
appearance, with sharp, peremptory signals, highly characteristic; and
then, from some point near by, a rose-breasted grosbeak’s _hic_ was
heard.
It was high noon before I was done with “receiving” (one of the
prettiest “functions” of the year, though none of the newspapers got
wind of it), and returned to the hotel, where the landlord smiled when
I told him that some friends of mine had arrived, and I should stay a
few days longer.
II
My enjoyment of the country about the Bridge may be said to have begun
with my settling down for a more leisurely stay. Hurry and discontent
are poor helps to appreciation. That afternoon, the morning having
been devoted to ornithological excitements, I strolled over to Mount
Jefferson, and spent an hour in the observatory, where a delicious
breeze was blowing. The “mountain” proved to be nothing more than a
round grassy hilltop,--the highest point in a sheep-pasture,--but it
offered, nevertheless, a wide and charming prospect: mountains near and
far, a world of green hills, with here and there a level stretch, most
restful to the eye, of the James River valley, in the great Valley of
Virginia. Up from the surrounding field came the tinkle of sheep-bells,
and down in one corner of it young men were slowly gathering, some
in wagons, some on horseback, for a game of ball. There was to be a
“match” that “evening,” I had been told, between the Bridge nine (I am
sorry not to remember its name) and the Buena Vistas. It turned out,
however, so I learned the next day, that a supposed case of smallpox
at Buena Vista had made such an interchange of athletic courtesies
inexpedient for the time being, and the Bridge men were obliged to be
content with a trial of skill among themselves, for which they chose up
(“picked off”) after the usual fashion, the two leaders deciding which
should have the first choice by the old Yankee test of grasping a bat
alternately hand over hand, till one of them should be able to cover
the end of it with his thumb. Such things were pleasant to hear of. I
accepted them as of patriotic significance, tokens of national unity.
My informant, by the way, was the same man, a young West Virginian, who
had told me where to look for Washington’s initials on the wall of the
bridge. My specialties appealed to him in a measure, and he confessed
that he wished he were a botanist. He was always very fond of flowers.
His side had been victorious in the ball game, he said, in answer to
my inquiry. Some of the players must have come from a considerable
distance, it seemed, as there was no sign of a village or even of a
hamlet, so far as I had discovered, anywhere in the neighborhood.
The Bridge is not in any township, but simply in Rockbridge County,
after a Virginia custom quite foreign to a New Englander’s notions of
geographical propriety.
The prospect from Mount Jefferson was beautiful, as I have said, but
on my return I happened upon one that pleased me better. I had been
down through Cedar Creek ravine, and had taken my own way out, up the
right-hand slope through the woods, noting the flowers as I walked,
especially the blue-eyed grass and the scarlet catchfly (battlefield
pink), a marvelous bit of color, and was following the edge of the
cliff toward the hotel, when, finding myself still with time to spare,
I sat down to rest and be quiet. By accident I chose a spot where
between ragged, homely cedars I looked straight down the glen--over a
stretch of the brook far below--to the bridge, through which could be
seen wooded hills backed by Thunder Mountain, long and massive, just
now mostly in shadow, like the rest of the world, but having its lower
slopes touched with an exquisite half-light, which produced a kind of
prismatic effect upon the freshly green foliage. It was an enchanting
spectacle and a delightful hour. Now my eye settled upon the ravine
and the brook, now upon the arch of the bridge, now upon the hills
beyond. And now, as I continued to look, the particulars fell into
place,--dropping in a sense out of sight,--and the scene became one.
By and by the light increased upon the broad precipitous face of the
mountain, softness and beauty inexpressible, while the remainder of the
landscape lay in deep shadow.
I fell to wondering, at last, what it is that constitutes the peculiar
attractiveness of a limited view--limited in breadth, not in depth--as
compared with a panorama of half the horizon. The only answer I gave
myself was that, for the supreme enjoyment of beauty, the eye must
be at rest, satisfied, with no temptation to wander. We are finite
creatures with infinite desires. The sight must go far,--to the rim of
the world, or to some grand interposing object so remote as to be of
itself a natural and satisfying limit of vision; and the eye must be
held to that point, not by a distracting exercise of the will, but by
the quieting constraint of circumstances.
Let my theorizing be true or false, I greatly enjoyed the picture;
the deep, dark, wooded ravine, with the line of water running through
it lengthwise, the magnificent stone arch, the low hills in the
middle distance, and Thunder Mountain a background for the whole. The
mountain, as has been said, was a long ridge, not a peak; and sharp
as it looked from this point of view, it was very likely flat at the
top. Like Lookout Mountain and Walden’s Ridge, it might, for anything
I knew, be roomy enough to hold one or two Massachusetts counties upon
its summit. While I sat gazing at it the sun went down and left it of
a deep sombre blue. Then, of a sudden, a small heron flew past, and a
pileated woodpecker somewhere behind me set up a prolonged and lusty
shout; and a few minutes later I was startled to see between me and
the sunset sky a flock of six big herons flying slowly in single file,
like so many pelicans. From their size they should have been _Ardea
herodias_, but in that light there was no telling of colors. It was a
ghostly procession, so silent and unexpected, worthy of the place and
of the hour. I was beginning to feel at home. A wood thrush sang for
me as I continued my course to the hotel, and my spirit sang with him.
“I’m glad I am alive,” my pencil wrote of its own accord at the end of
the day’s jottings.
I woke the next morning to the lively music of a whippoorwill,--the
same, I suppose, that had sung me to sleep the evening before. He
performed that service faithfully as long as I remained at the Bridge,
and always to my unmixed satisfaction. Whippoorwills are among my best
birds, and of recent years I have had too little of them. Immediately
after breakfast I must go again to the roadside wood, and then to Buck
Hill, as a dog must go again to bark under a tree up which he has once
driven a cat or a squirrel. But there is no duplicating of experiences.
The birds--the flocks of travelers--were not there. Chats were calling
_ceow, ceow_, with the true countryman’s twang; and what was much
better, a Swainson thrush was singing. Better still, a pair of blue
yellow-backed warblers (the most abundant representatives of the family
thus far) had begun the construction of a nest in a black-walnut-tree,
suspending it from a rather large branch (“as big as my thumb”) at
a height of perhaps twenty feet. It was little more than a frame as
yet, the light shining through it everywhere; and the bird, perhaps
because of my presence, seemed in no haste about its completion. I saw
her bring what looked like a piece of lichen and adjust it into place
(though she carried it elsewhere first--with wonderful slyness!), but
my patience gave out before she came back with a second one.
On Buck Hill, in the comparative absence of birds, I amused myself with
a “dry land tarrapin,” as my West Virginia acquaintance had called it
(otherwise known as a box turtle), a creature which I had seen several
times in my wanderings, and had asked him about; a new species to me,
of a peculiarly humpbacked appearance, and curious for its habit of
shutting itself up in its case when disturbed, the anterior third of
the lower shell being jointed for that purpose. A phlegmatic customer,
it seemed to be; looking at me with dull, unspeculative eyes, and
sometimes responding to a pretty violent nudge with only a partial
closing of its lid. It is very fond of may apples (mandrake), I was
told, and is really one of the “features” of the dry hill woods. I ran
upon it continually.
A lazy afternoon jaunt over a lonely wood road, untried before, yielded
little of mentionable interest except the sight of a blue grosbeak
budding the upper branches of a tree in the manner of a purple finch or
a rose-breast. I call him a blue grosbeak, as I called him at the time;
but he went into my book that evening with a damnatory question mark
attached to his name. He had been rather far away and pretty high; and
the possibilities of error magnified themselves on second thought, till
I said to myself, “Well, he may have been an indigo-bird, after all.”
Second thought is the mother of uncertainty; and uncertainties are poor
things for a man’s comfort. The seasons were met here; for even while I
busied myself with the blue grosbeak (as he pretty surely was, for all
my want of assurance) a crossbill flew over with loud calls.