eye quite as much as on the wing. Among species gifted with a keen
and delicate vision, like the falcon, which from the loftiest heights
of heaven can espy the worm in a thicket--like the swallow, which
from a distance of one thousand feet can perceive a gnat--flight is
sure, daring, and charming to look at in its infallible certainty. Far
otherwise is it with the myopes, the short-sighted, as you may see
by their gait; they fly with caution, grope about, and are afraid of
falling.
The eye and the wing--sight and flight--that exalted degree of
puissance which enables you incessantly to embrace in a glance, and
to overleap, immense landscapes, vast countries, kingdoms--which
permits you to see in complete detail, and not to contract, as in a
geographical chart, so grand a variety of objects--to possess and to
discern, almost as if you were the equal of God;--oh, what a source of
boundless enjoyment! what a strange and mysterious happiness, scarcely
conceivable by man!
Observe, too, these perceptions are so strong and so vivid that they
grave themselves on the memory, and to such a degree that even an
inferior animal like a pigeon retraces and recognizes every little
_accident_ in a road which he has only traversed once. How, then, will
it be with the sage stork, the shrewd crow, the intelligent swallow?
Let us confess this superiority. Let us regard without envy those
blisses of vision which may, perhaps, one day be ours in a happier
existence. This felicity of seeing so much--of seeing so far--of seeing
so clearly--of piercing the infinite with the eye and the wing, almost
at the same moment,--to what does it belong? To that life which is our
distant ideal. _A life in the fulness of light, and without shadow!_
Already the bird's existence is, as it were, a foretaste of it. It
would here prove to him a divine source of knowledge, if, in its
sublime freedom, it were not burdened by the two fatalities which
chain our globe to a condition of barbarism, and render futile all our
aspirations.
[Illustration]
First, the fatal need of the stomach, which shackles all of us, but
which especially persecutes that living flame, that devouring fire, the
bird, which is forced incessantly to renew itself, to seek, to wander,
to forget, condemned, without hope of relief, to the barren mobility of
its too changeful impressions.
The other fatal necessity is that of night, of slumber, hours of shadow
and ambush, when his wing is broken or captured, or, while defenceless,
he loses the power of flight, strength, and light.
When we speak of light, we mean safety for all creatures.
It is the guarantee of life for man and the animal; it is, as it were,
the serene, calm, and reassuring smile, the privilege of Nature. It
puts an end to the sombre terrors which pursue us in the shadows, to
the not unfounded fears, and to the torment also of cruel dreams--to
the troublous thoughts which agitate and overthrow the soul.
In the security of civil association which has existed for so long a
period, man can scarcely comprehend the agonies of savage life during
these hours that Nature leaves it defenceless, when her terrible
impartiality opens the way to death no less legitimate than life. In
vain you reproach her. She tells the bird that the owl also has a right
to live. She replies to man: "I must feed my lions."
Read in books of travels the panic of unfortunate castaways lost in the
solitudes of Africa, of the miserable fugitive slave who only escapes
the barbarity of man to fall into the hands of a barbarous nature. What
tortures, as soon as at sunset the lion's ill-omened scouts, the wolves
and jackals, begin to prowl, accompanying him at a distance, preceding
him to scent his prey, or following him like ghouls! They whine in your
ears: "To-morrow we shall seek thy bones!" But, O horror! see here, at
but two paces distant! He sees you, watches you, sends a deep roar
from the cavernous recesses of his throat of brass, sums up his living
prey, exacts and lays claim to it! The horse cannot be held still;
he trembles, a cold sweat pours over him, he plunges to and fro. His
rider, crouching between the watch-fires, if he succeeds in kindling
any, with difficulty preserves sufficient strength to feed the rampart
of light which is his only safeguard.
Night is equally terrible for the birds, even in our climates, where it
would seem less dangerous. What monsters it conceals, what frightful
chances for the bird lurk in its obscurity! Its nocturnal foes have
this characteristic in common--their approach is noiseless. The
screech-owl flies with a silent wing, as if wrapped in tow (_comme
étoupée de ouate_). The weasel insinuates its long body into the nest
without disturbing a leaf. The eager polecat, athirst for the warm
life-blood, is so rapid, that in a moment it bleeds both parents and
progeny, and slaughters a whole family.
It seems that the bird, when it has little ones, enjoys a second sight
for these dangers. It has to protect a family far more feeble and more
helpless than that of the quadruped, whose young can walk as soon
as born. But how protect them? It can do nothing but remain at its
post and die; it cannot fly away, for its love has broken its wings.
All night the narrow entry of the nest is guarded by the father, who
sinks with fatigue, and opposes danger with feeble beak and shaking
head. What will this avail if the enormous jaw of the serpent suddenly
appears, or the horrible eye of the bird of death, immeasurably
enlarged by fear?
Anxious for its young, it has little care for itself. In its season of
solitude Nature spares it the tortures of prevision. Sad and dejected
rather than alarmed, it is silent, it sinks down and hides its little
head under its wings, and even its neck disappears among the plumes.
This position of complete self-abandonment, of confidence, which it had
held in the egg--in the happy maternal prison, where its security was
so perfect--it resumes every evening in the midst of perils and without
protection.
[Illustration]
Heavy for all creatures is the gloom of evening, and even for the
protected. The Dutch painters have seized and expressed this truth very
forcibly in reference to the beasts grazing at liberty in the meadows.
The horse of his own accord draws near his companion, and rests his
head upon him. The cow, followed by her calf, returns to the fence, and
would fain find her way to the byre. For these animals have a stable,
a lodging, a shelter against nocturnal snares. The bird has but a leaf
for its roof!
How great, then, its happiness in the morning, when terrors vanish,
when the shadows fade away, when the smallest coppice brightens and
grows clear! What chattering on the edge of every nest, what lively
conversations! It is, as it were, a mutual felicitation at seeing one
another again, at being still alive! Then the songs commence. From the
furrow the lark mounts aloft, with a loud hymn, and bears to heaven's
gate the joy of earth.
As with the bird, so with man. Every line in the ancient Vedas of India
is a hymn to the light, the guardian of life--to the sun which every
day, by unveiling the world, creates it anew and preserves it. We
revive, we breathe again, we traverse our dwelling-places, we regain
our families, we count over our herds. Nothing has perished, and life
is complete. No tiger has surprised us. No horde of beasts of prey have
invaded us. The black serpent has not profited by our slumbers. Blessed
be thou, O sun, who givest us yet another day!
All animals, says the Hindu, and especially the wisest, the elephant,
_the Brahmin of creation_, salute the sun, and praise it gratefully at
dawn; they sing to it from their own hearts a hymn of thankfulness.
But a single creature utters it, pronounces it for all of us, sings
it. Who? One of the weak--which fears most keenly the night, and hails
with eagerest joy the morning--which lives in and by the light--whose
tender, infinitely sensitive, extended, penetrating vision, discerns
all its accidents--and which is most intimately associated with the
decline, the eclipses, and the resurrection of light.
The bird for all nature chants the morning hymn and the benediction of
the day. He is her priest and her augur, her divine and innocent voice.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: STORM AND WINTER--MIGRATIONS.]
[Illustration]
STORM AND WINTER.
MIGRATIONS.
One of Nature's confidants, a sacred soul, as simple as profound, the
poet Virgil, saw in the bird, as the ancient Italian wisdom had seen in
it, an augur and a prophet of the changes of the skies:--
"Nul, sans être averti, n'éprouva les orages--
La grue, avec effroi, s'élançant des vallées,
Fuit ces noires vapeurs de la terre exhalées--
L'hirondelle en volant effleure le rivage;
Tremblante pour ses oeufs, la fourmi déménage.
Des lugubres corbeaux les noires légions
Fendent l'air, qui frémit sous leurs longs bataillons--
Vois les oiseaux de mer, et ceux que les prairies
Nourrissent près des eaux sur des rives fleuries.
De leur séjour humide on les voit s'approcher,
Offrir leur tête aux flots qui battent le rocher,
Promener sur les eaux leur troupe vagabonde,
Se plonger dans leur sein, reparaître sur l'onde,
S'y replonger encore, et, par cent jeux divers,
Annoncer les torrents suspendus dans les airs.
Seule, errante à pas lents sur l'aride rivage,
La corneille enrouée appelle aussi l'orage.
Le soir, la jeune fille, en tournant son fuseau,
Tire encore de sa lampe un présage nouveau,
Lorsque la mèche en feu, dont la clarté s'émousse,
Se couvre en petillant de noirs flocons de mousse.
* * * * *
Mais la sécurité reparaît à son tour--
L'alcyon ne vient plus sur l'humide rivage,
Aux tiédeurs du soleil étaler son plumage--
L'air s'éclaircit enfin; du sommet des montagnes,
Le brouillard affaissé descend dans les campagnes,
Et le triste hibou, le soir, au haut des toits,
En longs gémissements ne traîne plus sa voix.
Les corbeaux même, instruits de la fin de l'orage,
Folâtrent à l'envi parmi l'épais feuillage,
Et, d'un gosier moins rauque, annonçant les beaux jours,
Vont revoir dans leurs nids le fruit de leurs amours."
_"The Georgics," translated by Delille._[22]
A being eminently electrical, the bird is more _en rapport_ than any
other with numerous meteorological phenomena of heat and magnetism,
whose secrets neither our senses nor our appreciation can arrive at. He
perceives them in their birth, in their early beginnings, even before
they manifest themselves. He possesses, as it were, a kind of physical
prescience. What more natural than that man, whose perception is much
slower, and who does not recognize them until after the event, should
interrogate this instructive precursor which announces them? This is
the principle of auguries. And there is no truer wisdom than this
pretended "folly of antiquity."
Meteorology, especially, may derive from hence a great advantage. It
will possess the surest means. And already it has found a guide in the
foresight of the birds. Would to Heaven that Napoleon, in September
1811, had taken note of the premature migration of the birds of the
North! From the storks and the cranes he might have secured the most
trustworthy information. In their precocious departure, he might have
divined the imminency of a severe and terrible winter. They hastened
towards the South, and he--he remained at Moscow!
In the midst of the ocean, the weary bird which reposes for a night
on the vessel's mast, beguiled afar from his route by this moving
asylum, recovers it, nevertheless, without difficulty. So complete is
his sympathy with the globe, so exactly does he know the true realm of
light, that, on the following morning, he commits himself to the breeze
without hesitation; the briefest consultation with himself suffices.
He chooses, on the immense abyss, uniform and without other path than
the vessel's track, the exact course which will lead him whither he
wishes to go. There, not as upon land, exists no local observation,
no landmark, no guide; the currents of the atmosphere alone, in
sympathy with those of water--perhaps, also, some invisible magnetic
currents--pilot this hardy voyager.
How strange a science! Not only does the swallow in Europe know
that the insect which fails him there awaits him elsewhere, and
goes in quest of it, travelling upon the meridian; but in the same
latitude, and under the same climates, the loriot of the United States
understands that the cherry is ripe in France, and departs without
hesitation to gather his harvest of our fruits.
[Illustration]
It would be wrong to believe that these migrations occur in their
season, without any definite choice of days, and at indeterminate
epochs. We ourselves have been able to observe, on the contrary, the
exact and lucid decision which regulates them; not an hour too soon or
too late.
When living at Nantes, in October 1851, the season being still
exceptionally fine, the insects numerous, and the feeding-ground of
the swallows plentifully provided, it was our happy chance to catch
sight of the sage republic, convoked in one immense and noisy assembly,
deliberating on the roof of the church of St. Felix, which dominates
over the Erdre, and looks across the Loire. Why was the meeting held on
this particular day, at this hour more than at any other? We did not
know; soon afterwards we were able to understand it.
Bright was the morning sky, but the wind blew from La Vendée. My
pines bewailed their fate, and from my afflicted cedar issued a low
deep voice of mourning. The ground was strewn with fruit, which we
all set to work to gather. Gradually the weather grew cloudy, the sky
assumed a dull leaden gray, the wind sank, all was death-like. It was
then, at about four o'clock, that simultaneously arrived, from all
points, from the wood, from the Erdre, from the city, from the Loire,
from the Sèvre, infinite legions, darkening the day, which settled
on the church roof, with a myriad voices, a myriad cries, debates,
discussions. Though ignorant of their language, it was not difficult
for us to perceive that they differed among themselves. It may be
that the youngest, beguiled by the warm breath of autumn, would fain
have lingered longer. But the wiser and more experienced travellers
insisted upon departure. They prevailed; the black masses, moving all
at once like a huge cloud, winged their flight towards the south-east,
probably towards Italy. They had scarcely accomplished three hundred
leagues (four or five hours' flight) before all the cataracts of heaven
were let loose to deluge the earth; for a moment we thought it was a
Flood. Sheltered in our house, which shook with the furious blast, we
admired the wisdom of the winged soothsayers, which had so prudently
anticipated the annual epoch of migration.
Clearly it was not hunger that had driven them. With a beautiful and
still abundant nature around them, they had perceived and seized upon
the precise hour, without antedating it. The morrow would have been too
late. The insects, beaten down by the tempest of rain, would have been
undiscoverable; all the life on which they subsisted would have taken
refuge in the earth.
Moreover, it is not famine alone, or the forewarning of famine, that
decides the movements of the migrating species. If those birds which
live on insects are constrained to depart, those which feed on wild
berries might certainly remain. What impels _them_? Is it the cold?
Most of them could readily endure it. To these special reasons we must
add another, of a loftier and more general character--it is the need of
light.
Even as the plant unalterably follows the day and the sun, even as the
mollusc (to use a previous illustration) rises towards and prefers to
live in the brighter regions--even so the bird, with its sensitive
eye, grows melancholy in the shortened days and gathering mists of
autumn. That decline of light, which is sometimes dear to us for moral
causes, is for the bird a grief, a death. Light! more light! Let us
rather die than see the day no more! This is the true purport of its
last autumnal strain, its last cry on its departure in October. I
comprehended it in their farewells.
[Illustration]
Their resolution is truly bold and courageous, when one thinks on the
tremendous journey they must achieve, twice every year, over mountains,
and seas, and deserts, under such diverse climates, by variable winds,
through many perils, and such tragical adventures. For the light and
hardy _voiliers_, for the church-martin, for the keen swallow which
defies the falcon, the enterprise perhaps is trivial. But other tribes
have neither their strength nor their wings; most of them are at this
time heavy with abundant food; they have passed through the glowing
time of love and maternity; the female has finished that grand work of
nature--has given birth to, and brought up her callow brood; her mate,
how he has spent his vigour in song! These two, then, have consummated
life; a virtue has gone out from them; an age already separates them
from the fresh energy of their spring.
Many would remain, but a goad impels them forward. The slowest are the
most ardent. The French quail will traverse the Mediterranean, will
cross the range of Atlas; sweeping over the Sahara, it will plunge
into the kingdoms of the negro; these, too, it will leave behind; and,
finally, if it pauses at the Cape, it is because there the infinite
Austral ocean commences, which promises it no nearer shelter than the
icy wastes of the Pole, and the very winter which exiled it from Egypt.
What gives them confidence for such enterprises? Some may trust to
their arms, the weakest to their numbers, and abandon themselves to
fate. The stock-dove says: "Out of ten or a hundred thousand the
assassin cannot slay more than ten, and doubtlessly I shall not be one
of the victims." They seize their opportunity; the flying cloud passes
at night; if the moon rise, against her silver radiance the black
wings stand out clear and distinct; they escape, confused, in her pale
lustre. The valiant lark, the national bird of our ancient Gaul and of
the invincible hope, also trusts to his numbers; he sets out in the
day-time, or rather, he wanders from province to province; decimated,
hunted, he does not the less give utterance to his song.
But the lonely bird, which has neither the support of numbers nor of
strength, what will become of him? What wilt thou do, poor solitary
nightingale, which, like others of thy race, must confront this great
adventure, but without assistance, without comrades? Thou, what art
thou, friend? A voice! The very power which is in thee will be thy
betrayal. In thy sombre attire, thou might well pass unseen by blending
with the tints of the discoloured woods of autumn. But see now! The
leaf is still purple; it wears not the dull dead brown of the later
months.
Ah, why dost thou not remain? why not imitate the timorousness of those
birds which in such myriads fly no further than Provence? There,
sheltered behind a rock, thou shalt find, I assure thee, an Asiatic
or African winter. The gorge of Ollioules is worth all the valleys of
Syria.
"No; I must depart. Others may tarry; for _they_ have only to gain the
East. But me, my cradle summons _me_: I must see again that glowing
heaven, those luminous and sumptuous ruins where my ancestors lived and
sang; I must plant my foot once more on my earliest love, the rose of
Asia; I must bathe myself in the sunshine. _There_ is the mystery of
life, there quickens the flame in which my song shall be renewed; my
voice, my muse is the light."
[Illustration]
Thus, then, he takes wing; but I think his heart must throb as he draws
near the Alps, when their snowy peaks announce his approach to the
terror-haunted gate on whose rocks are posted the cruel children of
day and night, the vulture, the eagle--all the hooked and talon-armed
robbers, athirst for the warm blood of life--the accursed species which
inspire the senseless poetry of man--some, _noble_ murderers, which
bleed quickly and drain the flowing tide; others, _ignoble_ murderers,
which choke and destroy;--in a word, all the hideous forms of murder
and death.
I imagine to myself, then, that the poor little musician whose voice
is silenced--not his _ingegno_, nor his delicate thought--having no
friend to consult, will halt to consider well before entering upon the
long ambush of the pass of Savoy. He pauses at the threshold, on a
friendly roof, well known to myself, or in the hallowed groves of the
Charmettes,[23] deliberates and says: "If I pass during the day, they
will all be there; they know the season; the eagle will pounce upon me;
I die. If I pass by night, the great horn-owl (_duc_), the common owl
(_hibou_), the entire host of horrible phantoms, with eyes enlarged in
the darkness, will seize me, and carry me off to their young. Alas!
what shall I do? I must endeavour to avoid both night and day. At the
gloomy hour of dawn, when the cold, raw air chills in his eyrie the
great fierce beast, which knows not how to build a nest, I may fly
unperceived. And even if he see me, I shall be leagues away before he
can put into motion the cumbrous machinery of his frozen wings."
The calculation is judicious, but nevertheless a score of accidents may
disturb it. Starting at midnight, he may encounter in the face, during
his long flight across Savoy, the east wind, which engulfs and delays
him, neutralizes his exertions, and fetters his pinions. Heavens! it is
morning now. Those sombre giants, already clothed in October in their
snowy mantles, reveal upon their vast expanse of glittering white a
black spot, which moves with terrible rapidity. How gloomy are they
already, these mountains, and of what evil augury, draped in the long
folds of their winter shrouds! Motionless as are their peaks, they
create beneath them and around them an everlasting agitation of violent
and antagonistic currents, which struggle with one another so furiously
that at times they compel the bird to tarry. "If I fly in the lower
air, the torrents which hurl through the shadows with their clanging
floods, will snare me in their whirling vapours. And if I mount to the
cold and lofty realms, which kindle with a light of their own, I give
myself up to death; the frost will seize and slacken my wings."
An effort has saved him. With head bent low, he plunges, he falls into
Italy. At Susa or towards Turin he builds a nest, and strengthens his
pinions. He recovers himself in the depth of the gigantic Lombard
_corbeille_, that great nursery of fruits and flowers where Virgil
listened to his song. The land has in nowise changed; now, as then,
the Italian, an exile from his home, the sad cultivator of another's
fields,[24] the _durus arator_, pursues the nightingale. The useful
insect-devourer is proscribed as an eater of grain. Let him cross
then, if he can, the Adriatic, from isle to isle, despite the winged
corsairs, which keep watch on the very rocks; he will arrive perhaps in
the land ever consecrated to birds--in genial, hospitable, bountiful
Egypt--where all are spared, nourished, blessed, and kindly welcomed.
Still happier land, if in its blind hospitality it did not also shelter
the murderer. The nightingale and dove are gladly entertained, it
is true, but no less so the eagle. On the terraces of sultans, on
the balconies of minarets, ah, poor traveller, I see those flashing
dreadful eyes which dart their gaze this way. And I see that they have
already marked thee!
Do not remain here long. Thy season will not last. The destructive
wind of the desert will dry up, and destroy, and sweep away thy meagre
nourishment. Not a gnat will be left to sustain thy wing and thy voice.
Bethink thyself of the nest which thou hast left in our woods, remember
thy European loves. The sky was gloomy, but there thou madest for
thyself a sky of thine own. Love was around thee; every soul thrilled
at thy voice; the purest throbbed for thee. There is the real sun,
there the fairest Orient. True light is where one loves.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: MIGRATIONS--THE SWALLOW.]
[Illustration]
MIGRATIONS: CONTINUED.
THE SWALLOW.