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