Men may say what they will in praise of their houses, and grow eloquent
upon the merits of various styles of architecture, but, for our part, we
are agreed that there is nothing to be compared with a tent. It is the
most venerable and aristocratic form of human habitation. Abraham and
Sarah lived in it, and shared its hospitality with angels. It is exempt
from the base tyranny of the plumber, the paper-hanger, and the gas-man.
It is not immovably bound to one dull spot of earth by the chains of a
cellar and a system of water-pipes. It has a noble freedom of
locomotion. It follows the wishes of its inhabitants, and goes with
them, a travelling home, as the spirit moves them to explore the
wilderness. At their pleasure, new beds of wild flowers surround it, new
plantations of trees overshadow it, and new avenues of shining water
lead to its ever-open door. What the tent lacks in luxury it makes up in
liberty: or rather let us say that liberty itself is the greatest
luxury.
Another thing is worth remembering—a family which lives in a tent never
can have a skeleton in the closet.
But it must not be supposed that every spot in the woods is suitable for
a camp, or that a good tenting-ground can be chosen without knowledge
and forethought. One of the requisites, indeed, is to be found
everywhere in the St. John region; for all the lakes and rivers are full
of clear, cool water, and the traveller does not need to search for a
spring. But it is always necessary to look carefully for a bit of smooth
ground on the shore, far enough above the water to be dry, and slightly
sloping, so that the head of the bed may be higher than the foot. Above
all, it must be free from big stones and serpentine roots of trees. A
root that looks no bigger than an inch-worm in the daytime assumes the
proportions of a boa-constrictor at midnight—when you find it under your
hip-bone. There should also be plenty of evergreens near at hand for the
beds. Spruce will answer at a pinch; it has an aromatic smell; but it is
too stiff and humpy. Hemlock is smoother and more flexible; but the
spring soon wears out of it. The balsam-fir, with its elastic branches
and thick flat needles, is the best of all. A bed of these boughs a foot
deep is softer than a mattress and as fragrant as a thousand
Christmas-trees. Two things more are needed for the ideal camp-ground—an
open situation, where the breeze will drive away the flies and
mosquitoes, and an abundance of dry firewood within easy reach. Yes, and
a third thing must not be forgotten; for, says my lady Greygown:
“I shouldn’t feel at home in camp unless I could sit in the door of the
tent and look out across flowing water.”
All these conditions are met in our favourite camping place below the
first fall in the Grande Décharge. A rocky point juts out into the river
and makes a fine landing for the canoes. There is a dismantled
fishing-cabin a few rods back in the woods, from which we can borrow
boards for a table and chairs. A group of cedars on the lower edge of
the point opens just wide enough to receive and shelter our tent. At a
good distance beyond ours, the guides’ tent is pitched; and the big
camp-fire burns between the two dwellings. A pair of white-birches lift
their leafy crowns far above us, and after them we name the place _Le
Camp aux Bouleaux_.
“Why not call trees people?—since, if you come to live among them year
after year, you will learn to know many of them personally, and an
attachment will grow up between you and them individually.” So writes
that _Doctor Amabilis_ of woodcraft, W. C. Prime, in his book, _Among
the Northern Hills_, and straightway launches forth into eulogy on the
white-birch. And truly it is an admirable, lovable, and comfortable
tree, beautiful to look upon and full of various uses. Its wood is
strong to make paddles and axe handles, and glorious to burn, blazing up
at first with a flashing flame, and then holding the fire in its glowing
heart all through the night. Its bark is the most serviceable of all the
products of the wilderness. In Russia, they say, it is used in tanning,
and gives its subtle, sacerdotal fragrance to Russia leather. But here,
in the woods, it serves more primitive ends. It can be peeled off in a
huge roll from some giant tree and fashioned into a swift canoe to carry
man over the waters. It can be cut into square sheets to roof his shanty
in the forest. It is the paper on which he writes his woodland
despatches, and the flexible material which he bends into drinking-cups
of silver lined with gold. A thin strip of it wrapped around the end of
a candle and fastened in a cleft stick makes a practicable chandelier. A
basket for berries, a horn to call the lovelorn moose through the
autumnal woods, a canvas on which to draw the outline of great and
memorable fish—all these and many other indispensable luxuries are
stored up for the skilful woodsman in the birch bark.
Only do not rob or mar the tree, unless you really need what it has to
give you. Let it stand and grow in virgin majesty, ungirdled and
unscarred, while the trunk becomes a firm pillar of the forest temple,
and the branches spread abroad a refuge of bright green leaves for the
birds of the air. Nature never made a more excellent piece of handiwork.
“And if,” said my lady Greygown, “I should ever become a dryad, I would
choose to be transformed into a white-birch. And then, when the days of
my life were numbered, and the sap had ceased to flow, and the last leaf
had fallen, and the dry bark hung around me in ragged curls and
streamers, some wandering hunter would come in the wintry night and
touch a lighted coal to my body, and my spirit would flash up in a fiery
chariot into the sky.”
[Illustration: If I should ever become a dryad I should choose to be
transformed into a white birch.]
The chief occupation of our idle days on the Grande Décharge was
fishing. Above the camp spread a noble pool, more than two miles in
circumference, and diversified with smooth bays and whirling eddies,
sand beaches and rocky islands. The river poured into it at the head,
foaming and raging down a long _chûte_, and swept out of it just in
front of our camp in a merry, musical rapid. It was full of fish of
various kinds—long-nosed pickerel, wall-eyed pike, and stupid chub. But
the prince of the pool was the fighting ouananiche, the little salmon of
St. John.
Here let me chant thy praise, thou noblest and most high-minded fish,
the cleanest feeder, the merriest liver, the loftiest leaper, and the
bravest warrior of all creatures that swim! Thy cousin, the trout, in
his purple and gold with crimson spots, wears a more splendid armour
than thy russet and silver mottled with black, but thine is the kinglier
nature. His courage and skill compared with thine
“_Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine._”
The old salmon of the sea who begot thee, long ago, in these inland
waters, became a backslider, descending again to the ocean, and grew
gross and heavy with coarse feeding. But thou, unsalted salmon of the
foaming floods, not land-locked, as men call thee, but choosing of thine
own free-will to dwell on a loftier level, in the pure, swift current of
a living stream, hast grown in grace and risen to a higher life. Thou
art not to be measured by quantity, but by quality, and thy five pounds
of pure vigour will outweigh a score of pounds of flesh less vitalised
by spirit. Thou feedest on the flies of the air, and thy food is
transformed into an aerial passion for flight, as thou springest across
the pool, vaulting toward the sky. Thine eyes have grown large and keen
by peering through the foam, and the feathered hook that can deceive
thee must be deftly tied and delicately cast. Thy tail and fins, by
ceaseless conflict with the rapids, have broadened and strengthened, so
that they can flash thy slender body like a living arrow up the fall. As
Lancelot among the knights, so art thou among the fish, the
plain-armoured hero, the sunburnt champion of all the water-folk.
Every morning and evening, Greygown and I would go out for ouananiche,
and sometimes we caught plenty and sometimes few, but we never came back
without a good catch of happiness. There were certain places where the
fish liked to stay. For example, we always looked for one at the lower
corner of a big rock, very close to it, where he could poise himself
easily on the edge of the strong downward stream. Another likely place
was a straight run of water, swift, but not too swift, with a sunken
stone in the middle. The ouananiche does not like crooked, twisting
water. An even current is far more comfortable, for then he discovers
just how much effort is needed to balance against it, and keeps up the
movement mechanically, as if he were half asleep. But his favourite
place is under one of the floating islands of thick foam that gather in
the corners below the falls. The matted flakes give a grateful shelter
from the sun, I fancy, and almost all game-fish love to lie in the
shade; but the chief reason why the ouananiche haunt the drifting white
mass is because it is full of flies and gnats, beaten down by the spray
of the cataract, and sprinkled all through the foam like plums in a
cake. To this natural confection the little salmon, lurking in his
corner, plays the part of Jack Horner all day long, and never wearies.
“See that _belle brou_ down below there!” said Ferdinand, as we
scrambled over the huge rocks at the foot of the falls; “there ought to
be salmon there _en masse_.” Yes, there were the sharp noses picking out
the unfortunate insects, and the broad tails waving lazily through the
foam as the fish turned in the water. At this season of the year, when
summer is nearly ended, and every ouananiche in the Grande Décharge has
tasted feathers and seen a hook, it is useless to attempt to delude them
with the large gaudy flies which the fishing-tackle-maker recommends.
There are only two successful methods of angling now. The first of these
I tried, and by casting delicately with a tiny brown trout-fly tied on a
gossamer strand of gut, captured a pair of fish weighing about three
pounds each. They fought against the spring of the four-ounce rod for
nearly half an hour before Ferdinand could slip the net around them. But
there was another and a broader tail still waving disdainfully on the
outer edge of the foam. “And now,” said the gallant Ferdinand, “the turn
is to madame, that she should prove her fortune—attend but a moment,
madame, while I seek the _sauterelle_.”
This was the second method: the grasshopper was attached to the hook,
and casting the line well out across the pool, Ferdinand put the rod
into Greygown’s hands. She stood poised upon a pinnacle of rock, like
patience on a monument, waiting for a bite. It came. There was a slow,
gentle pull at the line, answered by a quick jerk of the rod, and a
noble fish flashed into the air. Four pounds and a half at least! He
leaped again and again, shaking the drops from his silvery sides. He
rushed up the rapids as if he had determined to return to the lake,
and down again as if he had changed his plans and determined to go to
the Saguenay. He sulked in the deep water and rubbed his nose against
the rocks. He did his best to treat that treacherous grasshopper as
the whale served Jonah. But Greygown, through all her little screams
and shouts of excitement, was steady and sage. She never gave the fish
an inch of slack line; and at last he lay glittering on the rocks,
with the black St. Andrew’s crosses clearly marked on his plump sides,
and the iridescent spots gleaming on his small, shapely head. “_Une
belle!_” cried Ferdinand, as he held up the fish in triumph, “and it
is madame who has the good fortune. She understands well to take the
large fish—is it not?” Greygown stepped demurely down from her
pinnacle, and as we drifted down the pool in the canoe, under the
mellow evening sky, her conversation betrayed not a trace of the pride
that a victorious fisherman would have shown. On the contrary, she
insisted that angling was an affair of chance—which was consoling,
though I knew it was not altogether true—and that the smaller fish
were just as pleasant to catch and better to eat, after all. For a
generous rival, commend me to a woman. And if I must compete, let it
be with one who has the grace to dissolve the bitter of defeat in the
honey of a mutual self-congratulation.
We had a garden, and our favourite path through it was the portage
leading around the falls. We travelled it very frequently, making an
excuse of idle errands to the steamboat-landing on the lake, and
sauntering along the trail as if school were out and would never keep
again. It was the season of fruits rather than of flowers. Nature was
reducing the decorations of her table to make room for the banquet. She
offered us berries instead of blossoms.
There were the light coral clusters of the dwarf cornel set in whorls of
pointed leaves; and the deep blue bells of the _Clintonia borealis_
(which the White Mountain people call the bear-berry, and I hope the
name will stick, for it smacks of the woods, and it is a shame to leave
so free and wild a plant under the burden of a Latin name); and the
gray, crimson-veined berries for which the Canada Mayflower had
exchanged its feathery white bloom; and the ruby drops of the twisted
stalk hanging like jewels along its bending stem. On the three-leaved
table which once carried the gay flower of the wake-robin, there was a
scarlet lump like a red pepper escaped to the forest and run wild. The
partridge-vine was full of rosy provision for the birds. The dark tiny
leaves of the creeping snow-berry were all sprinkled over with delicate
drops of spicy foam. There were a few belated raspberries, and, if we
chose to go out into the burnt ground, we could find blueberries in
plenty.
But there was still bloom enough to give that festal air without which
the most abundant feast seems coarse and vulgar. The pale gold of the
loosestrife had faded, but the deeper yellow of the goldenrod had begun
to take its place. The blue banners of the fleur-de-lis had vanished
from beside the springs, but the purple of the asters was appearing.
Closed gentians kept their secret inviolate, and bluebells trembled
above the rocks. The quaint pinkish-white flowers of the turtle-head
showed in wet places, and instead of the lilac racemes of the
purple-fringed orchis, which had disappeared with midsummer, we found
now the slender braided spikes of the lady’s-tresses, latest and
lowliest of the orchids, pale and pure as nuns of the forest, and
exhaling a celestial fragrance. There is a secret pleasure in finding
these delicate flowers in the rough heart of the wilderness. It is like
discovering the veins of poetry in the character of a guide or a
lumberman. And to be able to call the plants by name makes them a
hundredfold more sweet and intimate. Naming things is one of the oldest
and simplest of human pastimes. Children play at it with their dolls and
toy animals. In fact, it was the first game ever played on earth, for
the Creator who planted the garden eastward in Eden knew well what would
please the childish heart of man, when He brought all the new-made
creatures to Adam, “to see what he would call them.”
Our rustic bouquet graced the table under the white-birches, while we
sat by the fire and watched our four men at the work of the camp—Joseph
and Raoul chopping wood in the distance; François slicing juicy rashers
from the flitch of bacon; and Ferdinand, the _chef_, heating the
frying-pan in preparation for supper.
“Have you ever thought,” said Greygown, in a contented tone of voice,
“that this is the only period of our existence when we attain to the
luxury of a French cook?”
“And one with the grand manner, too,” I replied, “for he never fails to
ask what it is that madame desires to eat to-day, as if the larder of
Lucullus were at his disposal, though he knows well enough that the only
choice lies between broiled fish and fried fish, or bacon with eggs and
a rice omelet. But I like the fiction of a lordly ordering of the
repast. How much better it is than having to eat what is flung before
you at a summer boarding-house by a scornful waitress!”
“Another thing that pleases me,” continued my lady, “is the
unbreakableness of the dishes. There are no nicks in the edges of the
best plates here; and, oh! it is a happy thing to have a home without
bric-à-brac. There is nothing here that needs to be dusted.”
“And no engagements for to-morrow,” I ejaculated. “Dishes that can’t be
broken, and plans that can—that’s the ideal of housekeeping.”
“And then,” added my philosopher in skirts, “it is certainly refreshing
to get away from all one’s relations for a little while.”
“But how do you make that out?” I asked, in mild surprise. “What are you
going to do with me?”
“Oh,” said she, with a fine air of independence, “I don’t count you. You
are not a relation, only a connection by marriage.”
“Well, my dear,” I answered, between the meditative puffs of my pipe,
“it is good to consider the advantages of our present situation. We
shall soon come into the frame of mind of the Sultan of Morocco when he
camped in the Vale of Rabat. The place pleased him so well that he staid
until the very pegs of his tent took root and grew up into a grove of
trees around his pavilion.”