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[Illustration: Front cover]
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Books by Mr. Torrey.
BIRDS IN THE BUSH. 16mo, $1.25.
A RAMBLER'S LEASE. 16mo, $1.25.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK.
[Illustration: Title page]
THE FOOT-PATH WAY
BY
BRADFORD TORREY
Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a:
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.
THE WINTER'S TALE
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1893
Copyright, 1892,
BY BRADFORD TORREY.
_All rights reserved._
SECOND EDITION.
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 1
DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 36
DYER'S HOLLOW. 67
FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 90
A WIDOW AND TWINS. 111
THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 135
ROBIN ROOSTS. 153
THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 176
A GREAT BLUE HERON. 197
FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 205
IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE. 232
THE FOOT-PATH WAY.
JUNE IN FRANCONIA.
"Herbs, fruits, and flowers,
Walks, and the melody of birds."
MILTON.
There were six of us, and we had the entire hotel, I may almost say the
entire valley, to ourselves. If the verdict of the villagers could have
been taken, we should, perhaps, have been voted a queer set, familiar as
dwellers in Franconia are with the sight of idle tourists,--
"Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air,
And they were butterflies to wheel about
Long as the summer lasted."
We were neither "rapid" nor "gay," and it was still only the first week
of June; if we were summer boarders, therefore, we must be of some
unusual early-blooming variety.
First came a lady, in excellent repute among the savants of Europe and
America as an entomologist, but better known to the general public as a
writer of stories. With her, as companion and assistant, was a doctor of
laws, who is also a newspaper proprietor, a voluminous author, an art
connoisseur, and many things beside. They had turned their backs thus
unseasonably upon the metropolis, and in this pleasant out-of-the-way
corner were devoting themselves to one absorbing pursuit,--the pursuit
of moths. On their daily drives, two or three insect nets dangled
conspicuously from the carriage,--the footman, thrifty soul, was never
backward to take a hand,--and evening after evening the hotel piazza was
illuminated till midnight with lamps and lanterns, while these
enthusiasts waved the same white nets about, gathering in geometries,
noctuids, sphinges, and Heaven knows what else, all of them to perish
painlessly in numerous "cyanide bottles," which bestrewed the piazza by
night, and (happy thought!) the closed piano by day. In this noble
occupation I sometimes played at helping; but with only meagre success,
my most brilliant catch being nothing more important than a "beautiful
Io." The kind-hearted lepidopterist lingered with gracious emphasis upon
the adjective, and assured me that the specimen would be all the more
valuable because of a finger-mark which my awkwardness had left upon one
of its wings. So--to the credit of human nature be it spoken--so does
amiability sometimes get the better of the feminine scientific spirit.
To the credit of human nature, I say; for, though her practice of the
romancer's art may doubtless have given to this good lady some peculiar
flexibility of mind, some special, individual facility in subordinating
a lower truth to a higher, it surely may be affirmed, also, of humanity
in general, that few things become it better than its inconsistencies.
Of the four remaining members of the company, two were botanists, and
two--for the time--ornithologists. But the botanists were lovers of
birds, also, and went nowhere without opera-glasses; while the
ornithologists, in turn, did not hold themselves above some elementary
knowledge of plants, and amused themselves with now and then pointing
out some rarity--sedges and willows were the special desiderata--which
the professional collectors seemed in danger of passing without notice.
All in all, we _were_ a queer set. How the Latin and Greek polysyllables
flew about the dining-room, as we recounted our forenoon's or
afternoon's discoveries! Somebody remarked once that the waiters' heads
appeared to be more or less in danger; but if the waiters trembled at
all, it was probably not for their own heads, but for ours.[1]
[1] Just how far the cause of science was advanced by all this activity
I am not prepared to say. The first ornithologist of the party published
some time ago (in _The Auk_, vol. v. p. 151) a list of our Franconia
birds, and the results of the botanists' researches among the willows
have appeared, in part at least, in different numbers of the _Bulletin
of the Torrey Botanical Club_. As for the lepidopterist, I have an
indistinct recollection that she once wrote to me of having made some
highly interesting discoveries among her Franconia collections,--several
undescribed species, as well as I can now remember; but she added that
it would be useless to go into particulars with a correspondent
entomologically so ignorant.
Our first excursion--I speak of the four who traveled on foot--was to
the Franconia Notch. It could not well have been otherwise; at all
events, there was one of the four whose feet would not willingly have
carried him in any other direction. The mountains drew us, and there was
no thought of resisting their attraction.
Love and curiosity are different, if not incompatible, sentiments; and
the birds that are dearest to the man are, for that very reason, not
most interesting to the ornithologist. When on a journey, I am almost
without eyes or ears for bluebirds and robins, song sparrows and
chickadees. Now is my opportunity for extending my acquaintance, and
such every-day favorites must get along for the time as best they can
without my attention. So it was here in Franconia. The vesper sparrow,
the veery, and a host of other friends were singing about the hotel and
along the roadside, but we heeded them not. Our case was like the boy's
who declined gingerbread, when on a visit: he had plenty of that at
home.
When we were nearly at the edge of the mountain woods, however, we heard
across the field a few notes that brought all four of us to an instant
standstill. What warbler could that be? Nobody could tell. In fact,
nobody could guess. But, before the youngest of us could surmount the
wall, the singer took wing, flew over our heads far into the woods, and
all was silent. It was too bad; but there would be another day
to-morrow. Meantime, we kept on up the hill, and soon were in the old
forest, listening to bay-breasted warblers, Blackburnians, black-polls,
and so on, while the noise of the mountain brook on our right, a better
singer than any of them, was never out of our ears. "You are going up,"
it said. "I wish you joy. But you see how it is; you will soon have to
come down again."
I took leave of my companions at Profile Lake, they having planned an
all-day excursion beyond, and started homeward by myself. Slowly, and
with many stops, I sauntered down the long hill, through the forest (the
stops, I need not say, are commonly the major part of a naturalist's
ramble,--the golden beads, as it were, the walk itself being only the
string), till I reached the spot where we had been serenaded in the
morning by our mysterious stranger. Yes, he was again singing, this time
not far from the road, in a moderately thick growth of small trees,
under which the ground was carpeted with club-mosses, dog-tooth
violets, clintonia, linnaea, and similar plants. He continued to sing,
and I continued to edge my way nearer and nearer, till finally I was
near enough, and went down on my knees. Then I saw him, facing me,
showing white under parts. A Tennessee warbler! Here was good luck
indeed. I ogled him for a long time ("Shoot it," says Mr. Burroughs,
authoritatively, "not ogle it with a glass;" but a man must follow his
own method), impatient to see his back, and especially the top of his
head. What a precious frenzy we fall into at such moments! My knees were
fairly upon nettles. He flew, and I followed. Once more he was under the
glass, but still facing me. How like a vireo he looked! For one instant
I thought, Can it be the Philadelphia vireo? But, though I had never
seen that bird, I knew its song to be as different as possible from the
notes to which I was listening. After a long time the fellow turned to
feeding, and now I obtained a look at his upper parts,--the back olive,
the head ashy, like the Nashville warbler. That was enough. It was
indeed the Tennessee (_Helminthophila peregrina_), a bird for which I
had been ten years on the watch.
The song, which has not often been described, is more suggestive of the
Nashville's than of any other, but so decidedly different as never for a
moment to be confounded with it. "When you hear it," a friend had said
to me several years before, "you will know it for something new." It is
long (I speak comparatively, of course), very sprightly, and peculiarly
staccato, and is made up of two parts, the second quicker in movement
and higher in pitch than the first. I speak of it as in two parts,
though when my companions came to hear it, as they did the next day,
they reported it as in three. We visited the place together afterwards,
and the discrepancy was readily explained. As to pitch, the song _is_ in
three parts, but as to rhythm and character, it is in two; the first
half being composed of double notes, the second of single notes. The
resemblance to the Nashville's song lies entirely in the first part; the
notes of the concluding portion are not run together or jumbled, after
the Nashville's manner, but are quite as distinct as those of the
opening measure.
As there were at least two pairs of the birds, and they were
unmistakably at home, we naturally had hope of finding one of the nests.
We made several random attempts, and one day I devoted an hour or more
to a really methodical search; but the wily singer gave me not the
slightest clue, behaving as if there were no such thing as a bird's nest
within a thousand miles, and all my endeavors went for nothing.
As might have been foreseen, Franconia proved to be an excellent place
in which to study the difficult family of flycatchers. All our common
eastern Massachusetts species were present,--the kingbird, the phoebe,
the wood pewee, and the least flycatcher,--and with them the crested
flycatcher (not common), the olive-sided, the traill, and the
yellow-bellied. The phoebe-like cry of the traill was to be heard
constantly from the hotel piazza. The yellow-bellied seemed to be
confined to deep and rather swampy woods in the valley, and to the
mountain-side forests; being most numerous on Mount Lafayette, where it
ran well up toward the limit of trees. In his notes, the yellow-belly
may be said to take after both the least flycatcher and the wood pewee.
His _killic_ (so written in the books, and I do not know how to improve
upon it) resembles the _chebec_ of the least flycatcher, though much
less emphatic, as well as much less frequently uttered, while his
_twee_, or _tuwee_, is quite in the voice and manner of the wood pewee's
clear, plaintive whistle; usually a monosyllable, but at other times
almost or quite dissyllabic. The olive-sided, on the other hand,
imitates nobody; or, if he does, it must be some bird with which I have
yet to make acquaintance. _Que-que-o_ he vociferates, with a strong
emphasis and drawl upon the middle syllable. This is his song, or what
answers to a song, but I have seen him when he would do nothing but
repeat incessantly a quick trisyllabic call, _whit, whit, whit_;
corresponding, I suppose, to the well-known _whit_ with which the
phoebe sometimes busies himself in a similar manner.
Of more interest than any flycatcher--of more interest even than the
Tennessee warbler--was a bird found by the roadside in the village,
after we had been for several days in the place. Three of us were
walking together, talking by the way, when all at once we halted, as by
a common impulse, at the sound of a vireo song; a red-eye's song, as it
seemed, with the faintest touch of something unfamiliar about it. The
singer was in a small butternut-tree close upon the sidewalk, and at
once afforded us perfectly satisfactory observations, perching on a low
limb within fifteen feet of our eyes, and singing again and again, while
we scrutinized every feather through our glasses. As one of my
companions said, it was like having the bird in your hand. There was no
room for a question as to its identity. At last we had before us the
rare and long-desired Philadelphia greenlet. As its song is little
known, I here transcribe my notes about it, made at two different times,
between which there appears to have been some discussion among us as to
just how it should be characterized:--
"The song is very pretty, and is curiously compounded of the red-eye's
and the solitary's, both as to phrase and quality. The measures are all
brief; with fewer syllables, that is to say, than the red-eye commonly
uses. Some of them are exactly like the red-eye's, while others have
the peculiar sweet upward inflection of the solitary's. To hear some of
the measures, you would pass the bird for a red-eye; to hear others of
them, you might pass him for a solitary. At the same time, he has not
the most highly characteristic of the solitary's phrases. His voice is
less sharp and his accent less emphatic than the red-eye's, and, so far
as we heard, he observes decidedly longer rests between the measures."
This is under date of June 16th. On the following day I made another
entry:--
"The song is, I think, less varied than either the solitary's or the
red-eye's, but it grows more distinct from both as it is longer heard.
Acquaintance will probably make it as characteristic and unmistakable as
any of our four other vireo songs. But I do not withdraw what I said
yesterday about its resemblance to the red-eye's and the solitary's. The
bird seems quite fearless, and keeps much of the time in the lower
branches. In this latter respect his habit is in contrast with that of
the warbling vireo."
On the whole, then, the song of the Philadelphia vireo comes nearest to
the red-eye's, differing from it mainly in tone and inflection rather
than in form. In these two respects it suggests the solitary vireo,
though it never reproduces the indescribably sweet cadence, the real
"dying fall," of that most delightful songster. At the risk of a seeming
contradiction, however, I must mention one curious circumstance. On
going again to Franconia, a year afterwards, and, naturally, keeping my
ears open for _Vireo philadelphicus_, I discovered that I was never for
a moment in doubt when I heard a red-eye; but once, on listening to a
distant solitary,--catching only part of the strain,--I was for a little
quite uncertain whether he might not be the bird for which I was
looking. How this fact is to be explained I am unable to say; it will be
least surprising to those who know most of such matters, and at all
events I think it worth recording as affording a possible clue to some
future observer. The experience, inconsistent as the assertion may
sound, does not in the least alter my opinion that the Philadelphia's
song is practically certain to be confused with the red-eye's rather
than with the solitary's. Upon that point my companions and I were
perfectly agreed while we had the bird before us, and Mr. Brewster's
testimony is abundantly conclusive to the same effect. He was in the
Umbagog forests on a special hunt for Philadelphia vireos (he had
collected specimens there on two previous occasions), and after some
days of fruitless search discovered, almost by accident, that the birds
had all the while been singing close about him, but in every instance
had passed for "nothing but red-eyes."[2]
[2] _Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club_, vol. v. p. 3.
For the benefit of the lay reader, I ought, perhaps, to have explained
before this that the Philadelphia vireo is in coloration an exact copy
of the warbling vireo. There is a slight difference in size between the
two, but the most practiced eye could not be depended upon to tell them
apart in a tree. _Vireo philadelphicus_ is in a peculiar case: it looks
like one common bird, and sings like another. It might have been
invented on purpose to circumvent collectors, as the Almighty has been
supposed by some to have created fossils on purpose to deceive ungodly
geologists. It is not surprising, therefore, that the bird escaped the
notice of the older ornithologists. In fact, it was first
described,--by Mr. Cassin,--in 1851, from a specimen taken, nine years
before, near Philadelphia; and its nest remained unknown for more than
thirty years longer, the first one having been discovered, apparently in
Canada, in 1884.[3]
[3] E. E. T. Seton, in _The Auk_, vol. ii. p. 305.
Day after day, the bare, sharp crest of Mount Lafayette silently invited
my feet. Then came a bright, favorable morning, and I set out. I would
go alone on this my first pilgrimage to the noble peak, at which, always
from too far off, I had gazed longingly for ten summers. It is not
inconsistent with a proper regard for one's fellows, I trust, to enjoy
now and then being without their society. It _is_ good, sometimes, for a
man to be alone,--especially on a mountain-top, and more especially at a
first visit. The trip to the summit was some seven or eight miles in
length, and an almost continual ascent, without a dull step in the whole
distance. The Tennessee warbler was singing; but perhaps the pleasantest
incident of the walk to the Profile House--in front of which the
mountain footpath is taken--was a Blackburnian warbler perched, as
usual, at the very top of a tall spruce, his orange throat flashing fire
as he faced the sun, and his song, as my notebook expresses it, "sliding
up to high _Z_ at the end" in his quaintest and most characteristic
fashion. I spent nearly three hours in climbing the mountain path, and
during all that time saw and heard only twelve kinds of birds:
redstarts, Canada warblers (near the base), black-throated blues,
black-throated greens, Nashvilles, black-polls, red-eyed vireos,
snowbirds (no white-throated sparrows!), winter wrens, Swainson and
gray-cheeked thrushes, and yellow-bellied flycatchers. Black-poll and
Nashville warblers were especially numerous, as they are also upon Mount
Washington, and, as far as I have seen, upon the White Mountains
generally. The feeble, sharp song of the black-poll is a singular
affair; short and slight as it is, it embraces a perfect crescendo and a
perfect decrescendo. Without question I passed plenty of white-throated
sparrows, but by some coincidence not one of them announced himself. The
gray-cheeked thrushes, which sang freely, were not heard till I was
perhaps halfway between the Eagle Cliff Notch and the Eagle Lakes. This
species, so recently added to our summer fauna, proves to be not
uncommon in the mountainous parts of New England, though apparently
confined to the spruce forests at or near the summits. I found it
abundant on Mount Mansfield, Vermont, in 1885, and in the summer of 1888
Mr. Walter Faxon surprised us all by shooting a specimen on Mount
Graylock, Massachusetts. Doubtless the bird has been singing its
perfectly distinctive song in the White Mountain woods ever since the
white man first visited them. During the vernal migration, indeed, I
have more than once heard it sing in eastern Massachusetts. My latest
delightful experience of this kind was on the 29th of May last (1889),
while I was hastening to a railway train within the limits of Boston.
Preoccupied as I was, and faintly as the notes came to me, I recognized
them instantly; for while the gray-cheek's song bears an evident
resemblance to the veery's (which I had heard within five minutes), the
two are so unlike in pitch and rhythm that no reasonably nice ear ought
ever to confound them. The bird was just over the high, close,
inhospitable fence, on the top of which I rested my chin and watched and
listened. He sat with his back toward me, in full view, on a level with
my eye, and sang and sang and sang, in a most deliciously soft, far-away
voice, keeping his wings all the while a little raised and quivering, as
in a kind of musical ecstasy. It does seem a thing to be regretted--yes,
a thing to be ashamed of--that a bird so beautiful, so musical, so
romantic in its choice of a dwelling-place, and withal so characteristic
of New England should be known, at a liberal estimate, to not more than
one or two hundred New Englanders! But if a bird wishes general
recognition, he should do as the robin does, and the bluebird, and the
oriole,--dress like none of his neighbors, and show himself freely in
the vicinity of men's houses. How can one expect to be famous unless he
takes a little pains to keep himself before the public?
From the time I left my hotel until I was fairly above the dwarf spruces
below the summit of Lafayette, I was never for many minutes together out
of the hearing of thrush music. Four of our five summer representatives
of the genus _Turdus_ took turns, as it were, in the serenade. The
veeries--Wilson's thrushes--greeted me before I stepped off the piazza.
As I neared the Profile House farm, the hermits were in tune on either
hand. The moment the road entered the ancient forest, the olive-backs
began to make themselves heard, and halfway up the mountain path the
gray-cheeks took up the strain and carried it on to its heavenly
conclusion. A noble processional! Even a lame man might have climbed to
such music. If the wood thrush had been here, the chorus would have been
complete,--a chorus not to be excelled, according to my untraveled
belief, in any quarter of the world.
To-day, however, my first thoughts were not of birds, but of the
mountain. The weather was all that could be asked,--the temperature
perfect, and the atmosphere so transparent as to be of itself a kind of
lens; so that in the evening, when I rejoined my companions at the
hotel, I found to my astonishment that I had been plainly visible while
at the summit, the beholders having no other help than an opera-glass!
It was almost past belief. I had felt some dilation of soul, it was
true, but had been quite unconscious of any corresponding physical
transformation. What would our aboriginal forerunners have said could
they have stood in the valley and seen a human form moving from point to
point along yonder sharp, serrated ridge? I should certainly have passed
for a god! Let us be thankful that all such superstitious fancies have
had their day. The Indian, poor child of nature,
"A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,"
stood afar off and worshiped toward these holy hills; but the white man
clambers gayly up their sides, guide-book in hand, and leaves his
sardine box and eggshells--and likely enough his business card--at the
top. Let us be thankful, I repeat, for the light vouchsafed to us; ours
is a goodly heritage; but there are moods--such creatures of hereditary
influence are we--wherein I would gladly exchange both the guide-book
and the sardine box for a vision, never so indistinct and transient, of
Kitche Manitoo. Alas! what a long time it is since any of us have been
able to see the invisible. "In the mountains," says Wordsworth, "did he
feel his faith." But the poet was speaking then of a very old-fashioned
young fellow, who, even when he grew up, made nothing but a peddler. Had
he lived in our day, he would have felt not his faith, but his own
importance; especially if he had put himself out of breath, as most
likely he would have done, in accomplishing in an hour and forty minutes
what, according to the guide-book, should have taken a full hour and
three quarters. The modern excursionist (how Wordsworth would have loved
that word!) has learned wisdom of a certain wise fowl who once taught
St. Peter a lesson, and who never finds himself in a high place without
an impulse to flap his wings and crow.
For my own part, though I spent nearly three hours on the less than four
miles of mountain path, as I have already acknowledged, I was
nevertheless somewhat short-winded at the end. So long as I was in the
woods, it was easy enough to loiter; but no sooner did I leave the last
low spruces behind me than I was seized with an importunate desire to
stand upon the peak, so near at hand just above me. I hope my readers
are none of them too old to sympathize with the boyish feeling. At all
events, I quickened my pace. The distance could not be more than half a
mile, I thought. But it was wonderful how that perverse trail among the
boulders did unwind itself, as if it never would come to an end; and I
was not surprised, on consulting a guide-book afterwards, to find that
my half mile had really been a mile and a half. One's sensations in such
a case I have sometimes compared with those of an essay-writer when he
is getting near the end of his task. He dallied with it in the
beginning, and was half ready to throw it up in the middle; but now the
fever is on him, and he cannot drive the pen fast enough. Two days ago
he doubted whether or not to burn the thing; now it is certain to be his
masterpiece, and he must sit up till morning, if need be, to finish it.
What would life be worth without its occasional enthusiasm, laughable in
the retrospect, perhaps, but in itself pleasurable almost to the point
of painfulness?
It was a glorious day. I enjoyed the climb, the lessening forest, the
alpine plants (the diapensia was in full flower, with its upright snowy
goblets, while the geum and the Greenland sandwort were just beginning
to blossom), the magnificent prospect, the stimulating air, and, most of
all, the mountain itself. I sympathized then, as I have often done at
other times, with a remark once made to me by a Vermont farmer's wife. I
had sought a night's lodging at her house, and during the evening we
fell into conversation about Mount Mansfield, from the top of which I
had just come, and directly at the base of which the farmhouse stood.
When she went up "the mounting," she said, she liked to look off, of
course; but somehow what she cared most about was "the mounting itself."
The woman had probably never read a line of Wordsworth, unless possibly,
"We are Seven" was in the old school reader; but I am sure the poet
would have liked this saying, especially as coming from such a source.
_I_ liked it, at any rate, and am seldom on a mountain-top without
recalling it. Her lot had been narrow and prosaic,--bitterly so, the
visitor was likely to think; she was little used to expressing herself,
and no doubt would have wondered what Mr. Pater could mean by his talk
about natural objects as possessing "more or less of a moral or
spiritual life," as "capable of a companionship with man, full of
expression, of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse."
From such refinements and subtleties her mind would have taken refuge in
thoughts of her baking and ironing. But she enjoyed the mountain; I
think she had some feeling for it, as for a friend; and who knows but
she, too, was one of "the poets that are sown by Nature"?
I spent two happy hours and a half at the summit of Lafayette. The
ancient peak must have had many a worthier guest, but it could never
have entertained one more hospitably. With what softly temperate breezes
did it fan me! I wish I were there now! But kind as was its welcome, it
did not urge me to remain. The word of the brook came true again,--as
Nature's words always do, if we hear them aright. Having gone as high as
my feet could carry me, there was nothing left but to go down again.
"Which things," as Paul said to the Galatians, "are an allegory."
I was not asked to stay, but I was invited to come again; and the next
season, also in June, I twice accepted the invitation. On the first of
these occasions, although I was eight days later than I had been the
year before (June 19th instead of June 11th), the diapensia was just
coming into somewhat free bloom, while the sandwort showed only here and
there a stray flower, and the geum was only in bud. The dwarf paper
birch (trees of no one knows what age, matting the ground) was in
blossom, with large, handsome catkins, while Cutler's willow was already
in fruit, and the crowberry likewise. The willow, like the birch, has
learned that the only way to live in such a place is to lie flat upon
the ground and let the wind blow over you. The other flowers noted at
the summit were one of the blueberries (_Vaccinium uliginosum_),
Bigelow's sedge, and the fragrant alpine holy-grass (_Hierochloa
alpina_). Why should this sacred grass, which Christians sprinkle in
front of their church doors on feast-days, be scattered thus upon our
higher mountain-tops, unless these places are indeed, as the Indian and
the ancient Hebrew believed, the special abode of the Great Spirit?
But the principal interest of this my second ascent of Mount Lafayette
was to be not botanical, but ornithological. We had seen nothing
noteworthy on the way up (I was not alone this time, though I have so
far been rude enough to ignore my companion); but while at the Eagle
Lakes, on our return, we had an experience that threw me into a nine
days' fever. The other man--one of the botanists of last year's
crew--was engaged in collecting viburnum specimens, when all at once I
caught sight of something red in a dead spruce on the mountain-side just
across the tiny lake. I leveled my glass, and saw with perfect
distinctness, as I thought, two pine grosbeaks in bright male
costume,--birds I had never seen before except in winter. Presently a
third one, in dull plumage, came into view, having been hidden till now
behind the bole. The trio remained in sight for some time, and then
dropped into the living spruces underneath, and disappeared. I lingered
about, while my companion and the black flies were busy, and was on the
point of turning away for good, when up flew two red birds and alighted
in a tree close by the one out of which the grosbeaks had dropped. But
a single glance showed that they were not grosbeaks, but white-winged
crossbills! And soon they, too, were joined by a third bird, in female
garb. Here was a pretty piece of confusion! I was delighted to see the
crossbills, having never before had the first glimpse of them, summer or
winter; but what was I to think about the grosbeaks? "Your determination
is worthless," said my scientific friend, consolingly; and there was no
gainsaying his verdict. Yet by what possibility could I have been so
deceived? The birds, though none too near, had given me an excellent
observation, and as long as they were in sight I had felt no uncertainty
whatever as to their identity. The bill alone, of which I had taken
particular note, ought in all reason to be held conclusive. So much for
one side of the case. On the other hand, however, the second trio were
unmistakably crossbills. (They had been joined on the wing by several
others, as I ought to have mentioned, and with their characteristic
chattering cry had swept out of sight up the mountain). It was certainly
a curious coincidence: three grosbeaks--two males and a female--had
dropped out of a tree into the undergrowth; and then, five minutes
later, three crossbills--two males and a female--had risen out of the
same undergrowth, and taken almost the very perch which the others had
quitted! Had this strange thing happened? Or had my eyes deceived me?
This was my dilemma, on the sharp horns of which I tried alternately for
the next eight days to make myself comfortable.
During all that time, the weather rendered mountain climbing
impracticable. But the morning of the 28th was clear and cold, and I set
out forthwith for the Eagle Lakes. If the grosbeaks were there, I meant
to see them, though I should have to spend all day in the attempt. My
botanist had returned home, leaving me quite alone at the hotel; but, as
good fortune would have it, before I reached the Profile House, I was
overtaken unexpectedly by a young ornithological friend, who needed no
urging to try the Lafayette path. We were creeping laboriously up the
long, steep shoulder beyond the Eagle Cliff gorge, and drawing near the
lakes, when all at once a peculiarly sweet, flowing warble fell upon
our ears. "A pine grosbeak!" said I, in a tone of full assurance,
although this was my first hearing of the song. The younger man plunged
into the forest, in the direction of the voice, while I, knowing pretty
well how the land lay, hastened on toward the lakes, in hopes to find
the singer visible from that point. Just as I ran down the little
incline into the open, a bird flew past me across the water, and
alighted in a dead spruce (it might have been the very tree of nine days
before), where it sat in full sight, and at once broke into song,--"like
the purple finch's," says my notebook; "less fluent, but, as it seemed
to me, sweeter and more expressive. I think it was not louder." Before
many minutes, my comrade came running down the path in high glee,
calling, "Pine grosbeaks!" He had got directly under a tree in which two
of them were sitting. So the momentous question was settled, and I
commenced feeling once more a degree of confidence in my own eyesight.
The loss of such confidence is a serious discomfort; but, strange as it
may seem to people in general, I suspect that few field ornithologists,
except beginners, ever succeed in retaining it undisturbed for any long
time together. As a class, they have learned to take the familiar maxim,
"Seeing is believing," with several grains of allowance. With most of
them, it would be nearer the mark to say, Shooting is believing.
My special errand at the lakes being thus quickly disposed of, there was
no reason why I should not accompany my friend to the summit. Lafayette
gave us a cold reception. We might have addressed him as Daniel Webster,
according to the time-worn story, once addressed Mount Washington; but
neither of us felt oratorically inclined. In truth, after the outrageous
heats of the past few days, it seemed good to be thrashing our arms and
crouching behind a boulder, while we devoured our luncheon, and between
times studied the landscape. For my own part, I experienced a feeling of
something like wicked satisfaction; as if I had been wronged, and all at
once had found a way of balancing the score. The diapensia was already
quite out of bloom, although only nine days before we had thought it
hardly at its best. It is one of the prettiest and most striking of our
strictly alpine plants, but is seldom seen by the ordinary summer
tourist, as it finishes its course long before he arrives. The same may
be said of the splendid Lapland azalea, which I do not remember to have
found on Mount Lafayette, it is true, but which is to be seen in all its
glory upon the Mount Washington range, in middle or late June; so early
that one may have to travel over snow-banks to reach it. The two flowers
oftenest noticed by the chance comer to these parts are the Greenland
sandwort (the "mountain daisy"!) and the pretty geum, with its handsome
crinkled leaves and its bright yellow blossoms, like buttercups.
My sketch will hardly fulfill the promise of its title; for our June in
Franconia included a thousand things of which I have left myself no room
to speak: strolls in the Landaff Valley and to Sugar Hill; a walk to
Mount Agassiz; numerous visits--by the way, and in uncertain weather--to
Bald Mountain; several jaunts to Lonesome Lake; and wanderings here and
there in the pathless valley woods. We were none of us of that unhappy
class who cannot enjoy doing the same thing twice.
I wished, also, to say something of sundry minor enjoyments: of the
cinnamon roses, for example, with the fragrance of which we were
continually greeted, and which have left such a sweetness in the memory
that I would have called this essay "June in the Valley of Cinnamon
Roses," had I not despaired of holding myself up to so poetic a title.
And with the roses the wild strawberries present themselves. Roses and
strawberries! It is the very poetry of science that these should be
classified together. The berries, like the flowers, are of a generous
turn (it is a family trait, I think), loving no place better than the
roadside, as if they would fain be of refreshment to beings less happy
than themselves, who cannot be still and blossom and bear fruit, but are
driven by the Fates to go trudging up and down in dusty highways. For
myself, if I were a dweller in this vale, I am sure my finger-tips would
never be of their natural color so long as the season of strawberries
lasted. On one of my solitary rambles I found a retired sunny field,
full of them. To judge from appearances, not a soul had been near it.
But I noticed that, while the almost ripe fruit was abundant, there was
scarce any that had taken on the final tinge and flavor. Then I began to
be aware of faint, sibilant noises about me, and, glancing up, I saw
that the ground was already "pre-empted" by a company of cedar-birds,
who, naturally enough, were not a little indignant at my poaching thus
on their preserves. They showed so much concern (and had gathered the
ripest of the berries so thoroughly) that I actually came away the
sooner on their account. I began to feel ashamed of myself, and for once
in my life was literally hissed off the stage.
Even on my last page I must be permitted a word in praise of Mount
Cannon, of which I made three ascents. It has nothing like the celebrity
of Mount Willard, with which, from its position, it is natural to
compare it; but to my thinking it is little, if at all, less worthy. Its
outlook upon Mount Lafayette is certainly grander than anything Mount
Willard can offer, while the prospect of the Pemigewasset Valley, fading
away to the horizon, if less striking than that of the White Mountain
Notch, has some elements of beauty which must of necessity be lacking
in any more narrowly circumscribed scene, no matter how romantic.
In venturing upon a comparison of this kind, however, one is bound
always to allow for differences of mood. When I am in tune for such
things, I can be happier on an ordinary Massachusetts hilltop than at
another time I should be on any New Hampshire mountain, though it were
Moosilauke itself. And, truly, Fortune did smile upon our first visit to
Mount Cannon. Weather conditions, outward and inward, were right. We had
come mainly to look at Lafayette from this point of vantage; but, while
we suffered no disappointment in that direction, we found ourselves
still more taken with the valley prospect. We lay upon the rocks by the
hour, gazing at it. Scattered clouds dappled the whole vast landscape
with shadows; the river, winding down the middle of the scene, drew the
whole into harmony, as it were, making it in some nobly literal sense
picturesque; while the distance was of such an exquisite blue as I think
I never saw before.
How good life is at its best! And in such
"charmed days,
When the genius of God doth flow,"
what care we for science or the objects of science,--for grosbeak or
crossbill (may the birds forgive me!), or the latest novelty in willows?
I am often where fine music is played, and never without being
interested; as men say, I am pleased. But at the twentieth time, it may
be, something touches my ears, and I hear the music within the music;
and, for the hour, I am at heaven's gate. So it is with our appreciation
of natural beauty. We are always in its presence, but only on rare
occasions are our eyes anointed to see it. Such ecstasies, it seems, are
not for every day. Sometimes I fear they grow less frequent as we grow
older.
We will hope for better things; but, should the gloomy prognostication
fall true, we will but betake ourselves the more assiduously to lesser
pleasures,--to warblers and willows, roses and strawberries. Science
will never fail us. If worse comes to worst, we will not despise the
moths.
DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.
"December's as pleasant as May."
_Old Hymn._
For a month so almost universally spoken against, November commonly
brings more than its full proportion of fair days; and last year (1888)
this proportion was, I think, even greater than usual. On the 1st and
5th I heard the peeping of hylas; Sunday, the 4th, was enlivened by a
farewell visitation of bluebirds; during the first week, at least four
sorts of butterflies--Disippus, Philodice, Antiopa, and Comma--were on
the wing, and a single Philodice (our common yellow butterfly) was
flying as late as the 16th. Wild flowers of many kinds--not less than a
hundred, certainly--were in bloom; among them the exquisite little
pimpernel, or poor man's weather-glass. My daily notes are full of
complimentary allusions to the weather. Once in a while it rained, and
under date of the 6th I find this record,--"Everybody complaining of
the heat;" but as terrestrial matters go, the month was remarkably
propitious up to the 25th. Then, all without warning,--unless possibly
from the pimpernel, which nobody heeded,--a violent snow-storm descended
upon us. Railway travel and telegraphic communication were seriously
interrupted, while from up and down the coast came stories of shipwreck
and loss of life. Winter was here in earnest; for the next three months
good walking days would be few.
December opened with a mild gray morning. The snow had already
disappeared, leaving only the remains of a drift here and there in the
lee of a stone-wall; the ground was saturated with water; every meadow
was like a lake; and but for the greenness of the fields in a few
favored spots, the season might have been late March instead of early
December. Of course such hours were never meant to be wasted within
doors. So I started out, singing as I went,--
"While God invites, how blest the day!"
But the next morning was pleasant likewise; and the next; and still the
next; and so the story went on, till in the end, omitting five days of
greater or less inclemency, I had spent nearly the entire month in the
open air. I could hardly have done better had I been in Florida.
All my neighbors pronounced this state of things highly exceptional;
many were sure they had never known the like. At the time I fully agreed
with them. Now, however, looking back over my previous year's notes, I
come upon such entries as these: "December 3d. The day has been warm.
Found chickweed and knawel in bloom, and an old garden was full of
fresh-looking pansies." "4th. A calm, warm morning." "5th. Warm and
rainy." "6th. Mild and bright." "7th. A most beautiful winter day, mild
and calm." "8th. Even milder and more beautiful than yesterday." "11th.
Weather very mild since last entry. Pickering hylas peeping to-day."
"12th. Still very warm; hylas peeping in several places." "13th. Warm
and bright." "14th. If possible, a more beautiful day than yesterday."
So much for December, 1887. Its unexpected good behavior would seem to
have made a profound impression upon me; no doubt I promised never to
forget it; yet twelve months later traditionary notions had resumed
their customary sway, and every pleasant morning took me by surprise.
The winter of 1888-89 will long be famous in the ornithological annals
of New England as the winter of killdeer plovers. I have mentioned the
great storm of November 25th-27th. On the first pleasant morning
afterwards--on the 28th, that is--my out-of-door comrade and I made an
excursion to Nahant. The land-breeze had already beaten down the surf,
and the turmoil of the waters was in great part stilled; but the beach
was strewn with sea-weeds and eel-grass, and withal presented quite a
holiday appearance. From one motive and another, a considerable
proportion of the inhabitants of the city had turned out. The principal
attraction, as far as we could perceive, was a certain big clam, of
which great numbers had been cast up by the tide. Baskets and wagons
were being filled; some of the men carried off shells and all, while
others, with a celerity which must have been the result of much
practice, were cutting out the plump dark bodies, leaving the shells in
heaps upon the sand. The collectors of these molluscan dainties knew
them as quahaugs, and esteemed them accordingly; but my companion, a
connoisseur in such matters, pronounced them not the true quahaug
(_Venus mercenaria_,--what a profanely ill-sorted name, even for a
bivalve!) but the larger and coarser _Cyprina islandica_. The man to
whom we imparted this precious bit of esoteric lore received it like a
gentleman, if I cannot add like a scholar. "We _call_ them quahaugs," he
answered, with an accent of polite deprecation, as if it were not in the
least to be wondered at that he should be found in the wrong. It was
evident, at the same time, that the question of a name did not strike
him as of any vital consequence. _Venus mercenaria_ or _Cyprina
islandica_, the savoriness of the chowder was not likely to be seriously
affected.
It was good, I thought, to see so many people out-of-doors. Most of them
had employment in the shops, probably, and on grounds of simple economy,
so called, would have been wiser to have stuck to their lasts. But man,
after all that civilization has done for him (and against him), remains
at heart a child of nature. His ancestors may have been shoemakers for
fifty generations, but none the less he feels an impulse now and then to
quit his bench and go hunting, though it be only for a mess of clams.
Leaving the crowd, we kept on our way across the beach to Little Nahant,
the cliffs of which offer an excellent position from which to sweep the
bay in search of loons, old-squaws, and other sea-fowl. Here we
presently met two gunners. They had been more successful than most of
the sportsmen that one falls in with on such trips; between them they
had a guillemot, two horned larks, and a brace of large plovers, of some
species unknown to us, but noticeable for their bright cinnamon-colored
rumps. "Why couldn't _we_ have found those plovers, instead of that
fellow?" said my companion, as we crossed the second beach. I fear he
was envious at the prosperity of the wicked. But it was only a passing
cloud; for on reaching the main peninsula we were speedily arrested by
loud cries from a piece of marsh, and after considerable wading and a
clamber over a detestable barbed-wire fence, such as no rambler ever
encountered without at least a temptation to profanity, we caught sight
of a flock of about a dozen of the same unknown plovers. This was good
fortune indeed. We had no firearms, nor even a pinch of salt, and coming
shortly to a ditch, too wide for leaping and too deep for cold-weather
fording, we were obliged to content ourselves with opera-glass
inspection. Six of the birds were grouped in a little plot of grass,
standing motionless, like so many robins. Their novelty and their
striking appearance, with two conspicuous black bands across the breast,
their loud cries, and their curious movements and attitudes were enough
to drive a pair of enthusiasts half crazy. We looked and looked, and
then reluctantly turned away. On getting home we had no difficulty in
determining their identity, and each at once sent off to the other the
same verdict,--"killdeer plover."
This, as I say, was on the 28th of November. On the 3d of December we
were again at Nahant, eating our luncheon upon the veranda of some rich
man's deserted cottage, and at the same time enjoying the sunshine and
the beautiful scene.
It was a summery spot; moths were flitting about us, and two
grasshoppers leaped out of our way as we crossed the lawn. They showed
something less than summer liveliness, it is true; it was only
afterwards, and by way of contrast, that I recalled Leigh Hunt's
"Green little vaulter in the sunny grass,
Catching his heart up at the feel of June."